DISCLAIMER: Trigun and its characters belong to Yasuhiro Nightow.

"You're still doing this after all these years?" Meryl asked.

Vash smiled as he finished packing the picnic basket, squeezing in one last bottle of beer. "Yup."

"You do realize the kids are all grown up and moved out? You don't have to do this anymore just for my sake."

"I'm not," he told her. "It's for me, too. You gave me a birthday; why shouldn't I continue to celebrate yours?"

His face bore a triumphant look when she had no response. Patted the basket. "Ready to go?"

"I go where you go."

"Right, then." Vash grabbed the basket and marched happily through town, calling and waving to people as they went. "Howdy, Luther! Bob Lee, Trixie, good to see y'all! Chang, man, how goes?"

"There he goes again, same thing every year," grumbled professional grump Mr. Medina from his rocking chair, boot-clad feet propped on his deck rail. "Pointless, you ask me."

"Nobody asked you," his wife noted from her own rocking chair beside his. "I think it's sweet of a man to celebrate his wife's birthday every year. My own's coming up." Her hint went unacknowledged, her husband having long since acquired a sort of deafness that manifested whenever she made a request of him.

For some time now, Vash had gone to the same picnic spot every year. He made his way there now, chatting with Meryl as he went, reminiscing about birthdays past. "One of my favorites was when you thought I forgot and were mad because I wasn't there, then the look on your face when you discovered that huge cake was fake and I burst out of it!"

"Yes, it's always funny to shock someone like that," Meryl agreed dryly.

"Aw, come on, you thought so plenty when you did it to me!"

Her mouth widened into a grin. "Yes, it is more enjoyable when the shoe's on the other foot. I've always been fond of the time you thought your present was a coupon to the barber shop."

"That wasn't funny." He patted his styled-up hair. "It takes a lot of work to look this good, you can't just send me to any old hack."

Their back-and-forth continued all along the way to the picnic spot. Indeed, it continued through the meal and on into the darkening sky as the suns set. Vash cherished all the memories of his life with Meryl, as much as he cherished the ones he had of Rem.

"It's almost time for you to go back home," Meryl told him. "You don't want to be out here so long you catch cold."

"Home is where you are, insurance girl. Then. Always. There's just the last thing to do, anyway."

The gravestone he was sitting by had a simple inscription on it –

MERYL STRYFE

WIFE

MOTHER

ANGEL

He taped a drawing of a birthday cake to the stone, as he did every year. Didn't care that time would wear it away, sending it blowing across the sands. What mattered was it was here now.

Vash raised a bottle of beer in toast at the stars that were just beginning to show themselves. At his insurance girl, wherever she waited for him.

"Happy birthday."