Up towards the head of the table, Vash was, as Rem would have said, "a fish out of water."
What does anyone need with all these utensils for one meal anyway? he grumbled to himself. Three different forks, three spoons and two knives al laid out in state in the sides of the plates (there was more than one of those too) like some kind of mysterious cutlery Stonehenge, plus a bread knife arrayed on a nearby plate. There were at least four different kinds of drinking glasses including one that they just put water into.
And they kept taking his plates away too... granted they were replaced with different ones that had more food on them, but still; he wasn't finished eating and Rem had always told him to eat everything on his plate.
Fortunately, Meryl wasn't inclined to let him struggle on his own; at the start of every meal she indicated with a subtle gesture which was the right utensil to use for that course. What did anyone need with seven different courses anyway? It was bordering on ridiculous.
"...and after finally deciding on the napkins for the formal dinner before hand we had to order from three towns over and when they arrived they were all creme instead of eccru! It put my table right off I tell you," the chatty bride to be was rambling on. From the look on Meryl's face her patience had worn thin long ago and she was hanging on by a thread. Vash thought it might be a good idea to remove the girl from the temptation presented by the abundance of sharp pointy objects.
"So of course we had to send them back," the young woman finished.
"But they're practically the same color," Meryl said, looking at her sister like she'd lost her mind. It was the first time she'd spoken in the conversation since the rather interesting discussion in the drawing room.
"They are not!" the bride said, sounding shocked. "Anyone with any taste and discernment would swiftly realize that the subtle shadings of difference in color would create a jarring note in what should be a harmonious symphony."
"But... they're still practically the same color," Meryl replied. "And I can't believe you ordered monogrammed silk napkins for a meal that you're going to eat once and then put them away forever in the first place."
"Are you questioning my taste?!" the bride demanded sharply.
"I'm questioning your practicality, but I just remembered that you don't have any," Meryl replied just as sharply. "Ordering them in the first place was extravagant, sending them back because the subtle shadings were a little off and not making do was just plain wasteful."
"Well, you're only married once," her sister replied with a smug look. "And some of us aren't even that." She was looking pointedly at Meryl with a smug little face that Meryl probably wanted to wipe off with a nice, hard slap.
To her credit, Meryl didn't respond to that barb either, but there was a subtle tension about her shoulders and Vash saw her surreptitiously curl her hand into a fist beneath the table.
She's gonna explode, he thought. But was amazed to see her, yet again, force herself to relax and swallow the insult with her wine. Meryl just wasn't the type to grit her teeth and smile, for as long as he had known her she had very firm and decisive ways of dealing with that which offended her. To be honest, Vash had always considered her hair-trigger temper to be a sign of some fundamental lack of control; he was now coming to realize however that perhaps her temper stemmed not from an inability to control herself but as a reaction to always being overly controlled for the earlier part of her life.
"It's been such a long time since you've been home dear," her step-mother (who was only maybe five or six years older than Meryl herself!) said with a sparkling smile. "Do tell us what has been going on in your life."
Meryl was caught off-guard by the sudden interest.
"Going on?" she repeated cautiously.
"Yes," her step-sister quickly seconded. "You said you worked in insurance... any seeds of office romance blossoming in the desert?"
"Not as such," Meryl admitted. "In my experience most men are too intimidated by a woman who not only makes a better salary than they do but graduated magna cum laude from a top university to boot. I call it the H-bomb... the second I mention "I graduated from Halberd University" on the first date there's never a second."
"You could have went to finishing school," her mother pointed out with what was obviously a well-worn argument.
"Yeah, the place they send you to in order to finish you off," Meryl replied scornfully. "No thanks, besides 'proper young men' are vastly over-rated; most of them are either callow youths with big plans and no sense to enact them, or arrogant fat-heads with an overinflated opinion of themselves swaggering about like peacocks hoping to attract the best hen."
And all of that said in Meryls usual brisk and business-like manner. I think she's enjoying herself, Vash thought with an internal headshake. Indeed, Meryl was calm and unflappable in the face of indignant noises from the young men.
"My my, you're as blunt and offensive as ever Meryl," the young man who, even though they hadn't been officially introduced Vash was betting was that ex-fiancee. "Why don't you continue, I don't think you've offended everyone in the room yet."
"Give me time, I just got here," Meryl said lightly with dry humor. "Besides, I don't actually spend much time in the office."
"You work in insurance," her mother replied. "I assumed that you were stuck behind a desk, filing requests and pushing papers."
"...er," Meryl said eloquently, obviously caught short about something. "Well... I'm not actually in the claims department."
"Then what, precisely do you do? Door to door?" her sister demanded in that so-superior 'I've never had to work a day in my life' tone.
"I'm class A-1 Disaster Investigator," Meryl said with a mixture of pride and defiance. "That's the best there is. I get the really tough jobs; level three and above dust-storms, sand-shakes, bandit gangs, -worm and rippler attacks, anything with a truly massive level of destruction. I spend most of my time out in the Outlands, in among the deadly outlaws and the steamer robberies."
Half of the table (mother, sister and ex-boyfriend included) looked absolutely aghast. Meryl seemed to be enjoying their level of discomfort her enjoyment was cut short however by a cool, cutting voice from the doorway.
"No daughter of mine would ever soil her hands or the family name and reputation by involving herself with such dangerous riff-raff. Oh yes, I called your boss at Bernardelli's to find out precisely what shenanigans you've been up to and you've a lot to account for young lady."
The man who was winding up to give his (fully grown) daughter a firm dressing down as if she were an adolescent caught out after curfew was short and stocky but carried himself with air air of authority and command that more than merely bordered on arrogance. Many of Meryl's features obviously came from him; she had his black hair, his complexion was duskier than hers was but they had the same brow, nose and eye-shape. Meryl was smaller and much slighter than he was, possibly inherited from a small mother. But it was clear on a first glance that they were very obviously related, this was probably the dreaded father then.
Meryl gave a small, carefully hidden sigh, fidgeted with her manicured hands for a moment with her head bent down and her eyes in her lap then steeled herself, lifted her chin and met the strange man's eyes squarely without a flicker or a flinch. It looked like she wasn't breathing and the entire room stilled yet again as the two of them were frozen in tableau. Neither of them were smiling.
I wish I knew what was going on, Vash thought. The tension in the room was thick enough to cut with a knife and serve up with sauce and he had no idea why. It was clear to even an idiot (which despite all pretenses, Vash was not) that the two of them had a long history between the two of them. The silence stretched like salt-water taffy until Meryl took a small breath and in an even tone said
"Father. Welcome home, perhaps you would like to join the party for dinner; I had heard that the household was under the understanding that you would not return in time to make it but I'm certain that there can be room made for you." Meryl was smiling her super-friendly, super-fake insurance-girl smile, the one she wore when she was forced to deal with people she did not necessarily like but needed to impress for the sake of her work.
"I have not said my peace young lady," he said with a severe frown directed solely at Meryl.
I recognize that look, Vash thought, a little creeped-out to see it on the face of a middle aged man instead of his short, fiery-tempered virago.
"Then do so when you won't inconvenience your guests," Meryl replied, her tone slightly dismissive. There was a sudden feeling of dread hanging about the room, as if Meryl's reply had quite possibly set match to a fuse and everyone was waiting to see if the fuse-line was going to connect to the keg or not.
"Now you see here-"
"Daddy!" Mellisandra said with a smile that was too bright and a voice that was too sugary sweet. "You won't believe what a great deal I got on a dress for Meryl!"
"Excuse me, dress?" Meryl said in tones of non-plussed surprise.
"Well of course dress Meryl," Mellisandra said in honeyed tones that brooked no argument. "You are my sister, and now that you're attending the wedding, you have to be a bridesmaid."
"I said nothing of taking part in the wedding," Meryl said firmly. "I said that I would attend, I meant as a guest."
"You're sibling-kin, and unmarried at that," her sister replied in a that's-that tone. "That make you automatically a bridesmaid."
"Who makes up these rules anyway?" Meryl demanded of the universe at large.
The subject was seized upon with fervent relief as another chair was brought for the head of the table for the man of the house to eat at. Meryl maintained that she was perfectly happy to stand in the crowd wishing them well, and they didn't need to go to all of the trouble of making a dress for her.
"Nonsense," her step-mother said with a conspiratorial look shared with your youngest daughter. "It's only right that you should be part of the wedding."
"Yeah," her step-sister chimed in. "It may be the only time this family gets to see you at the altar."
"Count on it," she muttered darkly.
"Gee Meryl," Millie piped up cheerfully. "Won't it be fun for you to get all dressed up?"
"No," Meryl replied succinctly.
"Your fitting is at noon tomorrow," the Lady of the House informed her.
"I'd rather be hanged," Meryl said pleasantly. Vash suppressed a chuckle; she sounded like she meant it.
"That's quite enough sauce out of you missy," her father replied sharply, from over a cut of his meat. His tone was premtory and autocratic, exactly the wrong sort of tone to take with a woman like Meryl.
"Tomorrow, you'll go to the dressmaker, have your fitting, and afterwards you'll confine yourself to activities that reflect credibly on that upbringing I know you were given."
Uh-oh, Vash thought with a wince. He's trying to Lay Down the Law.
Any previous attempts at doing so by any outside party, including Knives, had met with the rough edge of her tongue. A pissed off Meryl Stryfe was a force of nature; her temper was as explosive as the worst sand-geyser, her words could flay and sting as easily as the grit from a level one sandstorm could blast the flesh from ones body.
But the man was her father... perhaps this would be the one time where Meryl would bow her head and acquiesce. Family after all, changed all the rules.
"There will be no more of your unbecoming attitude at this or any other time," he continued, thumping the table once sharply to punctuate his decree.
Meryl was listening with an utterly unreadable face so Vash couldn't tell what she was going to do next. Had it been anyone else but her father, Vash's money would have been on the Short One committing bodily harm upon his person.
"You'll attire yourself appropriately," her father was going on. "We are not on the barbarous frontier. We'll discuss later the possibility of you being allowed to continue this career nonsense of yours. You'll re-learn to speak in a manner in keeping with the dignity of our House and you will, by God, start acting like a proper, well-bred, respectable member of this family."
Meryl studied him in the silence that followed his decree, her face a mask of indifference, for a few moments then shook her head in sadness. Her tone sounded regretful as she said
"I had hoped that you might have mellowed your narrow-minded, insensitive, bigoted attitude into something that was a little more accepting but I can see now that you're still the same rigid, unbending, fascist dictator you always have been; raining down judgment upon all of us like some kind of thundering demagogue."
Jaws dropped. Eyes bugged out in shock. For once people were so shocked that they couldn't even lean to their nearest neighbors and whisper amongst themselves about her behavior.
"You will not accept anything outside of the molds you've made," she continued. Her voice. instead of gaining in volume as it usually did, was growing softer.
"It's clear that you will never accept the life I've chosen to live and I know that as long as I remain here you will do everything in your power to make me bend until I fit. I had hoped to make a reconciliation between us but not at that cost. I will remain who I am, I will continue to follow the path I believe in. I'm still your daughter, you are still my father, but neither you nor anyone else will change me save as I choose to be changed."
"This is unacceptable!" her father roared, rising violently to his feet. "You are my daughter! You'll dance to the tune I call or I swear I'll--"
"You'll what?" Meryl demanded sharply. "I am no longer of your House, I've renounced my right-born name. I am far beyond the age of consent. In th eyes of the Law I am my own woman and have been for years."
Her father slammed back into his seat with a frown that should have left the scent of scorched flesh in its wake. Meryl continued
"If I am no longer welcome here, it will be a pity, but I and my friends will pay our respects and leave. You've only to say the words."
She met his gaze directly, a challenge. Vash somehow got the feeling that she was almost wishing he would throw her out.
Her father's eyes went from being ablaze with anger to a look that was coldly calculating. Meryl's figurative guard went up perceptibly.
"You're my daughter," he said slowly. "And still a part of this family no matter how estranged you have become. You should always be welcomed at your true home, and there is no reason we cannot still reconcile."
Meryl looked for a moment like she would have argued with that last but held her tongue and nodded him to continue. She looked like she trusted him about as far as one could throw a horse one-handed, though. Vash thought it was sad that she had to be so wary around family.
Not like I have any real room to throw stone in that department though, Vash thought ruefully. He and his brother had been estranged for the better part of a century, and we even now in a very strain reconciliation that rested on his brother's faith in following a gaeas placed on him while he'd been sleeping swearing not to kill a human, or by inaction allow a human to come to be killed. (He could defend himself and his friends however, as long as it didn't inerfere with the first stricture).
"Provided..." he qualified, holding up a cautionary finger (Meryl's face reflected an "I knew it" attitude). "That you comport yourself in a manner reflecting the dignity of this family and our social rank."
"Comport?" she questioned, raising an eyebrow. "I never... or rarely, behave in an improper manner father."
"That is a matter of opinion," he said darkly. "You're nefarious dealings with an outlaw for instance..." he let the sentence hang while the table buzzed at this new tidbit and he looked smug.
"Have you even read any of my reports?" Meryl replied in in the chill tones of a college professor forced to deal with a very young, cocky student who was trying to bluff his way through the assignment he obviously had not read. She nodded her head when he paused and added
"I thought not. Mister Bernardelli wouldn't release such documents without a court supeona and even though you may have the district judge in your pocket you have no actual charges so I imagine that you've just taken specious accounts and blown them up with the worst possible meanings. Really I'd expect such petty behavior out of boys who don't yet know better but you're old enough to be my father."
"You'll not disrespect me at my own table missy or by heaven I'll drag you over my knee."
Meryl seemed to agree that she might have gone a trifle too far with that last remark for she sidestepped again
"And precisely what outlaw are we discussing?"
"You mean there's more than one?" her sister said, looking like a cat that had found the cream. Meryl and her father both delivered a quelling look to the girl for interrupting their oh-so-civilized verbal dissection of each other.
"Your boss informed me that you had been assigned to track down and keep a twenty-four hour surveillance on the infamous Vash the Stampede."
"True," Meryl said brightly, smiling.
"You don't deny it?" he questioned.
"Naturally not. It's my job," she replied. "Besides..." Meryl paused to consider her words carefully.
"He's my friend," she said simply at last.
Her father looked like he was getting a massive headache and the rest of the table was swiftly using up their stored supply of shock to their sensibilities.
Vash was alternately warmed and dismayed that she was so open about their unusual friendship. Part of him wanted her to reveal that he was traveling at her side openly so that he wouldn't be forced into the whole rigamarole of figuring out and remembering his secret identity of the week; but most of him hoped she'd keep things under wraps. It would be very bad for word to get around that there was sixty billion double dollars running around this county, especially in the midst of a wedding... that could be bad. Just ask the owner of all of the bars in the middle of no-where that had been completely blown away by the bullets of bounty-hunter gangs... now picture that only with white chiffon and a frosted wedding cake. Her family would never forgive her for it. To his relief Meryl quickly changed the subject
"Who I associate with in the course of my work has little bearing on the current subject Father," Meryl said briskly. "We've both agreed that as long as I behave in a manner that harms no-one and is in keeping with the..." she searched for a word. "Exalted rank of this family I'm free to stay along with my guests. Any other issues you may have can certainly wait until after dinner."
Indeed, dessert was already there. It was...
Wow, that must have taken the cooking staff a while to construct, Vash thought in amazement. It was a miniturization to scale of the vineyards and the mansion as viewed from that spot in the road they'd stopped at earlier that day all done up in chilled sugared fruits, whipped creams, and crumbly baked goods with sweets.
With a final toast, saluting the health and happiness of the future couple, the torturous meal was at last over with.
Vash would have joined the men in cigars and port while Millie and Meryl withrew to the drawing room with the women but he saw Meryl sneak out with her partner at a moments inattention from the crowd and skulk down the hallway well away from the guests and further unpleasant scenes for that evening. He waited until the attention of the room was elsewhere and followed after them, he wasn't really up to entertaining a room full of aristocrats if he didn't have to.
Meryl showed him and Millie back to where their rooms were located. Vash already knew where he was going, because he hadn't survived this long without having a fine eye for detail. That eye caught the worried look on Millie's face and he imagined that the two of them were probably going to be up for most of the night talking about whatever it was girls talked about.
"That's a relief," Meryl said, voicing the thought that they all were thinking. "I'd hate to think I'd wasted that steamer fare for nothing. I thought for certain he was going to toss me out. Strange..."
She frowned, apparently thinking hard on something, then dismissed it.
"Well, after all that fun I'm wrung out. Let's get some sleep eh?"
"Good-night," Vash said as he retired to the suite that he shared with his brother. He paused at the threshold as Meryl was turning away to go with Millie to find her own rest and thought about calling her back, but then he realized that he couldn't think of anything to say. "I'm sorry your family are such backstabbing vipers" was definitely out. So was "hey, I'm not doing anything right now, let's go blow up the west wing of this place!" Nah, knowing his luck this place was insured by Bernardelli's and Meryl would be duty bound to stop him.
Knives was sleeping, or pretending to sleep, when he slipped in. Vash was more than a little glad of that, after the trying evening he'd had, being subject to the scrutiny, veiled comments and insults of a room full of the haute couture of Gunsmoke, Vash just wanted a little time to himself to unwind. If this was what he felt like and he didn't even know any of them or care what they thought of him, he could only imagine how Meryl might be feeling right then. No wonder she hadn't wanted to come home.
After having met her family and been forced to spend time among her peers (Vash would call it a very safe bet that Meryl had never called any of those people her friends) a great deal more of the puzzle that was Meryl became clear to him. He'd thought Meryl simply naturally self-contained, possibly from growing up as a very intelligent and precocious child (intelligent children, from his hundred-years worth of observations, were very often separated from the better portion of their peer-groups by that very intelligence). He'd also hypothesized some form of detachment; whether from losing one or both parents at a young age, or some kind of mental or emotional abuse. He'd thought that perhaps her mother or father had been emotionally indifferent or perhaps expected great things and only rewarded her when she excelled forcing a young Meryl to push herself to overacheive in order to win that love or affection she needed.
He'd been right, for the most part, on that last. He'd taken the measure of her father that evening and decided that he did not like what he'd seen. A cold man; maybe not devious, but certainly calculating. He could easily see him as the sort of man that might use his young daughters craving for affection and approval to try to force her into the shape of the person he wanted her to be. It was a credit to his short girl's will and determination that she obviously succeeded in evading his plans for her; possibly through sheer stubbornness. Tractable was not a word one would ever apply to Meryl Stryfe, and he was beginning to see that this was a good thing for her.
Vash privately vowed to himself that the next time he'd done something "noteworthy" he'd let her rant and scream at him as much as she wanted; she'd more than earned the privilege of a little venting, from what he'd seen. Only a woman with as much pride and self-reliance as Meryl could make through a world determined to break her. Of course she'd stay strong in the face of Vash and all of the strangeness that followed him around; she was made of stern stuff. Perhaps...
Knives would never go for it, Vash decided reluctantly.
Meryl shut the door behind her in the small room she shared with Millie with a feeling of world-lifting relief. It hadn't went as badly as she'd been expecting after all. She'd been partly expecting that they'd take one look at her and chuck her out the gates like trash.
Instead I was stared at like a freak, whispered about, insulted to my face and had to put up with their 'oh my now who let that in here' attitudes. Still she had to admit that it could have went a lot worse. Even her argument with her father wasn't as bad as she'd thought it was going to be; the debacle that had happened prior to her leaving was only mentioned in passing. She'd have thought they'd have made a bigger deal out of it, or at least tried to rub her face in it a little.
Maybe they've realized that they were wrong, she thought. It had a spark of hope to it, but only a spark; her cynical side was telling her that either there was something else they were after, or they were saving it for ammunition later. She turned her thought away from that for the time being and the other thing that worried her popped up to take it's place. She needed some privacy to think and get things straight in her head, and for some reason she did her best thinking in the shower.
"Hey Millie," she said tiredly. "Do you mind if I have the first shower? I just want to go to bed after all of that."
"Sure Meryl," Millie said, looking at her friend with concern. "Are you sure you don't want a bath."
"No, I'd rather just clean off and go to bed. Besides, there's something I want to do in the morning; a quick trip by tomas-back to Sandiville," Meryl said brusquely. "There's something there I want to look into. If I'm wrong and everything is fine... well and good. If my suspicions are right..."
"Suspicions Meryl?" Millie questioned. Meryl just shook her head and said
"I'm probably just making up paper tigers," with that she plucked a towel out of the linen closet and closed the water-closet door firmly behind her. She adjusted the flow and temperature on the shower until it was just right, but her fears and suspicions followed her even into this refuge.
I hope I'm just being over cautious. He said that it was under the best shielding. He promised faithfully that that thing wouldn't ever harm anyone but... well what if he's wrong? I don't like the look of those new men hanging about; I know that they're with the groom's party but they don't seem very trustworthy to me.
Meryl was learning from long hard experience that the way things looked on the surface wasn't always (or hell, even often) reliable. Just look at Vash, the Vash she knew liked to loaf around the house all day eating donuts and playing with children in the street, so harmless that he wouldn't hurt a fly; the rest of the world "knew" that Vash the Stampede was a ruthless murderer who would slaughter the innocent just for fun. No, Meryl had gone for too long making snap judgments based on the surface of things, it was well past time she started actually listening to her own intuition and keeping a more open mind.
Both my intuition and my logical self don't like the looks of those men on the grooms side one bit, she thought with a small shiver. Scattered in among the gentlemen and dandies of Society here to attend the wedding had been men that had truly put Meryls back up; they didn't even look particularly out of place, they were dressed the same way as an ordinary gentleman, carried on credible conversations about money and weather, but there was just the faint aura of menace and watchfulness that Meryl hadn't liked.
Maybe her mind was creating phantom dangers in the absence of any real danger due to Vash, maybe she'd just become an adrenaline junkie and was making things up out of unconscious need for excitement but her gut was telling her that there was something going on.
I can feel it. Father would never have missed a formal dinner of this magnitude, with as many of the important branches of the family as were there, over some trifling business matter. And a plague in Sandiville? It sounds way too suspicious for my liking.
It reminded her all-too-much of a case she'd taken on a a B-5 Disaster Investigator, the case that had given her a major jump in promotion because it had been far more dangerous than anyone had predicted. It had seemed like a routine mission; there had been an "outbreak" of "plague" in a small town in the Malipais Sector, the place had been sealed off for quarantine and no-one was let in or out. Bernardelli's had sent Meryl in to assess the risk of liability for one of the Socieity's pet companies and had stumbled across a large-scale organized crime syndicate cover-up.
Mister Mori-Korin and his father own and run Korin Corporation, one of the top ten pharmaceutical corporations on Gunsmoke, Meryl mused. I know for a fact that they also have their fingers in a whole lot of other pies besides their own; they've gotten their own people elected to political offices, as judges and in among the Federal Marshals as well. I also know that one of their subsidiaries is Longshot Corp, the very same arms and munitions company that supplies half of the federal Marshals with their military issue weapons. If they got hold of the secret to make more places like this they're certainly more than unscrupulous enough to do what they want and damn the consequences. I just hope my family hasn't decided to do the same.
If she looked at it objectively, Meryl was connecting dots and adding up an equation that made all too much sense... except that it came to a conclusion that her heart really, really didn't want to believe. Surely her father would never countenance such a thing. Surely not.
I'll take a ride down there tomorrow and see what I can see. I'll bring my kit and know for certain. if it is what I suspect...
She wanted to avoid that for as long as possible, because if it was as she suspected, Meryl wouldn't be able to let it go; she'd be forced by her own conscience to do something she really didn't want to do.
Even if it is what I fear, perhaps they aren't aware of it, I'll inform them and then give them the opportunity to make it right, she compromised with herself. Perhaps I'm worrying over nothing.
She finished her nightly routine of brushing her teeth and washing her face before the mirror in the bathroom then climbed into her sleeping clothes. One of the maids had already laid out a raw silk nightgown for her and for once Meryl wasn't going to quibble about her own things being nice enough for her. Millie was already crashed in her own bed, snoring softly from sleep.
Ah! This is much more like it, she thought, sighing in bliss as she slid between the 600 thread count egyptian cotton sheets that were softer and smoother than anything she'd felt in her life. The mattress beneath her was soft and springy like a cloud brought down from the sky and gathered up under the sheets. They just didn't make bed sets like this on the frontier and the bed itself was cushioned by a pure feather-down duvet, the pillows also stuffed with down. Only the best.
A girl could get used to this kind of luxury, she thought sleepily. I may be too spoiled to want to go back home. But then she realized that thought was silly; of course she wanted to leave this place, and as soon as possible too. All the luxury in the world couldn't make a woman like her want to give up her freedom.
She closed her eyes and drifted off. Her last thought before dreaming was to wonder what Vash thought of her little family reunion.