"Thanks boy, ya jus' made my job easier," the man said as he got a firmer grip on Meryl and cocked the hammer of his pistol back.
Vash had half a heartbeat to realize the magnitude of his mistake.
They weren't after him, they were after her. It was Meryl that they wanted to kill.
"Wait!" he cried desperately. Anything just to buy time so that man wouldn't pull the trigger. The man didn't even flicker a glance at him as his finger tightened around the tiny piece of metal that decided life or death.
His world seemed to end with the sound of a gunshot.
Vash closed his eyes. He closed his eyes as every muscle in his body tightened. Vash didn't want to kill again. He didn't want to take another life, but he knew he wouldn't be able to stop himself if he had to look at her dead body lying on the ground. So he closed his eyes and waited, allowing the man a chance to escape with his life. It was a good thing his gun was out of bullets otherwise he would have surely raised his arm and shot the person still standing there.
"Vash," a voice that sang with the sound of angels... except that it was a snapping, irritated and wholly alive...! His eyes snapped open to see the scowling, irate form of his insurance girl alive and well and looking just as peeved with him as she ever did.
"This is no time to take a nap," she scolded. She would probably have added onto that (just as she usually did) with a lecture about his irresponsibility, but she didn't get the chance. Acting on its own accord, his body simply moved to pick her up and hug her close, assuring himself that she was there and she was real and she was okay.
The body of the man lay on the ground next to him with what looked like a rather large dart sticking out of the bottom of his chin. Meryl tucked what Vash had at first assumed was a derringer back in a holster hidden in the folds of her cloak; now that he got a better look at it, he realized that the derringer was actually a tranq-gun.
"You're okay!" he exulted, arms wrapped securely around her. He snuggled her closer like a life-sized doll, rubbing his cheek against her kitten-soft hair.
"Erg... Yes, yes," she said awkwardly. She patted him uncertainly on the back while he squeezed her close, just so relieved and thankful she was alive. She wasn't exactly melting into his embrace however, she stood stiff and awkward in his arms, clearly unsure as to what she should be doing right then.
"Okay. You can let me go now," she suggested. Vash wasn't interested in hearing the suggestion, no he would be quite content to go on just as he had been going on for the past minute. She was sure to loosen up and hug him back, eventually.
"Vash," she said after another moment, beginning to squirm a little. "Let me go."
He couldn't bring himself to do it. Only a few short moments ago, his world had felt like it had come crashing down around him and now everything was okay. She was here and safe, and she was going to be fine.
Suddenly he was knocked silly by the usual, almost inevitable, display of Meryl's temper. He was going to have a goose-egg on the back of his head in the morning from where she'd struck him down... but it was worth it.
"Stop wasting time," Meryl commanded. "We have to find out what these men were after. I was certain at first that they were after you, but that's apparently not the case."
"Can you think of anyone who would want to kill you instead of me for a change?" he asked as they scanned around for signs that the hombres had brought back-up.
"I'll bet it's Mori-Korin," Meryl growled, looking intent on tracking him down and taking just retribution out on his hide personally. "He's not head of the household yet, he's not even married into the family and already he thinks he can bring in his henchmen to do the dirty work."
Vash had another thought, based on another thing that his brother had told him that he'd found in the family's computer archives while he'd been hacking his way through them to alleviate his boredom. Meryl's father, the current head of the household, did not actually rule the roost; Arthur had turned the day-to-day running of the business over to his son, but he had retained a few very basic controls on the family business. Controls that included controlling interest in the family estate.
The son, Meryl's father, ran the estate and the business with Arthur's permission but did not own the land or the business in his own right despite being his father's heir. He owned thirty-seven percent of it on his own but the rest was still retained by his father, Aurthur. He most likely expected to inherit the rest (the deeds to the estate and controlling interest in the company) upon the death of Arthur, but Knives and Vash (due to Knive's inquiries) knew that this wasn't to be the case. The will had been changed. Arthur had left everything, all the land, all of the amassed wealth, the family business and the secret... to his grand-daughter, Meryl Stryfe. Upon the death of Arthur, Meryl stood to inherit everything.
So, someone else knows about the change in the will, Vash thought. It could just be the groom, like Meryl thinks. It is still in his own interest to kill Meryl, seeing as he is marrying into the family in order to inherit the farm from the father via his marriage to the other daughter.
But it could also be the father who gave the order to kill Meryl. Vash didn't want to believe that, he didn't want to think of someone being ruthless and cold-hearted enough to order the death of his own daughter but Vash knew from personal experience that just having the same flesh and blood did not guarantee that you were safe from someone carrying out a vendetta against you.
Briskly, Meryl rolled the unconscious body over and began searching through the breast pockets of his shirt, patting down his arms and the legs of the sides of his jeans turning his pockets inside out before flipping him over and checking his back pockets. She was riffling through his pockets for money?
"Whoa! Short Girl, I never suspected this side to you," vash said taken aback.
"What are you talking about broom-head?" Meryl demanded. "I'm looking for his wallet."
"That's what I meant. I mean, you seem so straight-laced all the time it's just surprising to me that you'd search a man to take his money," Vash replied.
"I'm looking for his wallet," she said with a tone of strained patience. "So that I can see if he has any form of identification on him. A passport for the steamer or even some kind of club card would be nice. It's not likely, but it's worth a shot. Even if we don't find an ID on him, perhaps even finding cash on him will be useful."
"How so?" he questioned.
"Well, a lot of the territories and provinces print their own version of the double dollar locally," Meryl explained as she went on to search the other bandits. "They're acknowledged by the federal government as valid notes, but they have their own distinctive markings on them. If we find these fellows have a lot of notes printed outside of this territory, we'll know that they come from the outside and it's not an inside job."
"That's... that's actually really clever, Short Girl," he said as he helped her search for some clue that might tell them for certain who had sent them.
"Why do you sound so surprised?" she grumbled. "It's not easy hunting you down you know, especially when I have nothing more to go on than vague rumors. I have to sharpen my other skills at detection in order to track you."
"And you still didn't believe it when you found me," he teased.
"Who could blame me?" she shot back. "I haven't actually been able to decide if you're a very good liar, or a very bad one!" She was trying to hide her amusement with exasperation but Vash could see the smile being suppressed at the edges of her mouth.
"Your grandfather is in tight with the local militia," Vash mused aloud. "With your skills at tracking and your love of bureaucracy, you'd probably be a Federal Marshal's dream-partner; why do you work in insurance?"
"I originally went to the academy to become a Federal Marshal," she admitted reluctantly after a moment. "But they have a minimum height requirement, and I feel short of it... no pun intended."
"Lucky for me," he said lightly. "If they'd sent you after me to arrest me, I'd have had a lot harder a time of things. For one thing, I'm sure my skills at breaking out of prison would have been honed a lot more."
"Besides, I'm not dissatisfied with my work, despite all of the paperwork you make for me," Meryl said."In insurance I'm helping people to rebuild their lives; there's not a whole lot of security in this world and life's tenuous enough as it is, people need a fall back when things go wrong... as they so often do. I've found as well that disaster investigating itself is often fraught with its own challenges, and chasing you around the sands has been its own reward sometimes. I've had fun traveling like this, despite everything or maybe because of it."
"You like the freedom don't you?" Vash said in realization.
"More or less," she said with a small smile and a shrug. "Even if I spend part of the time chained to a desk reporting my every move, I still get to spend time away, out there." She gestured vaguely out to the horizon in the distance.
"But even when we're always on the move, you still don't get to dictate where you go," Vash felt obliged to point out. "You have to follow me, so really I get to pick."
"That's true," she allowed. "But at least I don't have people constantly telling me how to act and how to dress and who I can and cannot be. I have a lot more freedom now, even within the strictures dictated by my work, than I ever had up on the pedestal as a Lady of Society."
"I guess that's true," he said. He waited for another long moment, then decided that he was going to go for it.
"Do you like traveling with me?" he asked. "I mean, really like it?"
"There's never a dull moment with you around," she said wryly, her smile widening. Her tone wasn't giving anything away, though. Getting meryl to admit to anything was like playing tag in a nest of sand-poppers (little rodent-critters that made their homes in twisting labyrinthine warrens in the sands) you could think that you'd finally managed to trap all the exits so the critter couldn't escape only to find that it had wriggled out and down into a hole that you hadn't seen.
"That's not an answer," Vash pointed out. "Do you like traveling with me?"
He'd learned in a hundred-plus years of having to sometimes hunt the little buggers down for food when there was nothing else to eat, that the secret to catching one was to herd it to a place where it had not choice but a flat-out run and run the little critter into exhaustion. (Of course, by the time you finally managed to catch up to it to kill it and eat it, you were exhausted too.)
She paused to consider him for a long moment, he face unreadable, and finally nodded once, firmly.
"You drive me crazy sometimes, most of the time actually," she said by way of reply. "And through no fault of your own you are a lightning rod for all kinds of trouble, but... I like being with you."
That was almost a confession! he exulted. How much longer could she go before he finally managed to run her into the ground?
"A man will chase a woman until she catches him" he thought with heavy irony as the old proverb ran round in his head.
"Well I'm glad you like to travel," he said, deciding to leave off at that for the day. They'd made progress and there was no reason to push the issue now and risk making her uncomfortable; when Meryl got uncomfortable her temper started to spark.
"Why's that?" she asked curiously.
"Because it looks like we're walking back to the Vineyard," Vash said.
"Well, there's one big advantage to using live animals for travel instead of machines," Meryl said, sticking two fingers athwart her lips and blowing a shrill whistle.
"What's that?" Vash asked, echoing her curious tone of a moment earlier. The soft hooting noises and the shuffle of two heavy beasts feet against the sands sounded from a nearby dune a moment later.
"Machines do not come when you call them," Meryl said a little smugly. A moment later her beast obediently shuffled up to her and pulled around for her to mount up. Taka took one look at Vash, made a snorting noise, and shied away, beating the sand with her heavy blunt tail.
"Aw c'mon!" Vash complained. "I even gave you sugar cubes!" He turned to Meryl. "See, I told you. Tomases just don't like me. I think it's ingrained into their genetic code or something."
"It's not only just you," Meryl admitted. "Taka likes to push at people just to see what they'll let her get away with. I thought the two of you might make a good match."
"Why would you think something like that?" Vash grumbled, making a snatch for the reins, missing and stumbling over so he got a faceful of sand for his efforts.
"You let me do much the same," Meryl said, with a small smile.
She caught that eh? he thought, surprised again by how much Meryl actually caught on to. There was no question that Milly was uncannily observant, for all that she had a refreshing genuine innocence to her that tended to throw people off. Meryl was always the sensible one, the one that thought in straight lines, logical, orderly and generally very much in the box; it was because her thinking was so orthodox that Vash tended to dismiss her observant side.
Meryl led the way back to the vineyards, Vash keeping a weather eye out for more trouble along the route. On the way they passed the time by answering questions back and forth.
"So how did you get the nickname "Stampede" anyway?" Meryl asked curiously. "You'd think they'd have chosen something even more destructive sounding, like the Annihilator or something."
"What? The Humanoid Typhoon isn't destructive enough for you?" he teased back.
"I've been out in some typhoons," Meryl replied. "They're only as bad as the winds that blow in them, and generally speaking the damages are minimal compared to sand-shakes or shrieker attacks."
"And people say I live dangerously," he muttered. "You know what the difference between you and me is?"
"Of course," Meryl said. "I'm better looking."
"No. I don't golooking for trouble," he said. "In fact, when trouble finds me I'd be happy to run away from it. Not you though, you just like to rush headlong into danger."
"My friend Karen says that some women just aren't happy unless they're risking their lives," Meryl said humorously. "Of course, she also said that if I keep on rushing into the Outlands after Vash the Stampede, I'd never know womanly happiness, whatever that means."
"I think she just meant that you'd never get married," Vash pointed out.
"Given what happened the last time I got lured to the altar, I'm not so sure I want to be," she said frankly. For all she knew, Vash didn't know anything at all about Meryl having nearly been married to that Dylan Mori-Korin, so for her it was an unusual slip of the tongue. Vash debated calling her on it, but noticed the way she immediately clammed up and looked over at him to see if he'd noticed her slip up. So she wasn't ready to talk about it yet, Vash let it go and instead said
"So what, you're just going to follow me around for the rest of your natural life trying to keep me out of trouble?"
That made her pause for a moment.
"That does sound pretty lame actually," she admitted. "And you never answered my question. I'm sure there's a story behind it, and I'll bet its a good one, so come on, spill."
Way to change the subject.
"No-way," he scoffed. "You already have enough blackmail material on me without my adding to it by telling you exploits from my past."
"So you admit that there were exploits," she teased lightly. If he didn't know any better, Vash would almost swear that it sounded like she was flirting with him... but nah, Meryl wasn't the sort to flirt. Despite his and Milly's numerous attempts to get her to loosen up a little and lighten up when they went out barhopping, Meryl remained as sober as a judge and too serious by half.
The good news is that she's never so much as glanced twice at anyone else, he consoled himself. But now that he thought about it, perhaps that was a bit strange... the ratio of women to men in the Outlands was very much in the women's favor and not all of the men who lived out there were freakish-looking muscle-bound death-squad crackheads like the guy with the big green mohawk or that scary-looking Gofsef fellow.
"Ya got me," he admitted with a shrug. "So how about you then, any dirty details from a sordid past?"
"Can you honestly imagine me having a sordid past Mister Vash?" she said by way of reply.
"The fact that you answered with a question seems suspicious," he replied. "It's been my experience that those who answer questions with other questions are leading the questioner to draw conclusions that the questionee wants them to come to."
"Beware the half-truth that is said to lead away from the real truth, for often times the half truth is worse than the lie," Meryl quoted. "I see what you mean, but in answer to that; no, I have no dirty details from a sordid past."
"Well surely you must have had boyfriends," he pressed.
"A lady doesn't kiss and tell," Meryl adroitly sidestepped.
Vash was reminded once again of the sand-poppers.
"So you clearly don't go for the sophisticated businessman type," he noted, trying another tactic.
"What makes you say that?" she wondered.
"If that were the sort of man you were looking for, you have an entire office building full of them back in December," he replied easily. "You could be married with a house and three kids by now if that were the sort you were attracted to."
"Why are you suddenly so curious about my love life?" Meryl demanded. Vash ignored it and continued
"Perhaps doctor or lawyer types are more your speed." Meryl scowled at him for his shenanigans, but Vash continued, undetered.
"Nah, nah I can't imagine that you'd want to date anyone who might argue with you and win. And as for doctors, what career-woman wants to marry someone who gets called away from their nice warm comfy bed in the middle of the night to go take care of someone's cough?"
Meryl looked at him like he was loosing his mind.
"Mister Vash-!" she began, using that whipcrack tone of voice that almost never failed to make him snap to attention, but he was having too much fun with this
"Maybe you like the artistic types," he said, by now beginning to sort of relish the way her brow was starting to twitch. "Hm, no that doesn't seem your style at all, too dreamy and impractical. You'd probably strangle the poor fellow out of frustration when he started spouting poetry at you and couldn't pay the bills."
"Grrr..." Meryl gritted, clearly not liking this new game of his. So, predictably, she turned the tables on him. Meryl's motto seemed to be that the best defense was a good offense.
"Well it's no mystery what your type is Mister Vash," she growled. "The way you carry on like an idiot anytime an attractive woman steps into a room.Any attractive woman. Except me of course, but I can only guess that that's your instinct for survival kicking in. Like it should be now... telling you that it might be best to leave it alone Vash."
Vash's instincts were indeed screaming at him, they were telling him that provoking Meryl in this way was a good way to get her really really angry with him, and not just in an "you just blew up half a town and now I have to do paperwork on it" sort of way either. But he'd started this, and intended to finish it.
"Or maybe," he continued on heedlessly. "Maybe, just maybe... You like the ruggedly handsome outlaw type." he struck a deliberate pose and looked at her from the corner of one eye to see what her reaction was going to be. She gave an amazing amount of... no reaction at all. Instead she made that blank, pleasant, serene-face that she had worn last night at the party, the one that was a well-practiced mask to keep from giving her feelings away in her expression. She clucked her tomas a little faster and trotted up ahead of him without saying a single word in response. he hurried after her, unwilling to let it go at that.
"After all, who could blame you?"He added, when he caught up to her. "Pampered, rich city girl meets dangerous, skillful, not to mention brave and handsome outlaw? It's the stuff that romance is made of."
"Trashy dime ce-cent novels perhaps," Meryl said with a dismissive sniff. "Which everyone knows have absolutely nothing to do with real life anyway. And who are you calling pampered?!"
Idiot, he berated himself, as she urged her tomas to speed up past him. He'd just barely managed a sedate walk and wasn't sure he wanted to go for any gait more challenging than that just yet. And things were going so well, but you just had to push things.
"So am I right?!" he called up ahead to her. Might as well hang for a lamb as an ewe after all.
"I refuse to dignify this idiocy with a response," she replied in perfectly correct tones. Vash figured that it would be better to make amends now than let her be mad at him, things were too much up in the air where her safety was concerned to risk her alienating him and him not being nearby in case she needed his protection.
"I'm only teasing," he said. "You can't blame a guy for trying to guess after all."
"And why can I not?" she demanded next.
"You've just never indicated one way or another what kind of person you like," he said, trying not to sound uncomfortable or too interested. This was coming out all wrong.
Meryl abruptly kneed her horse around and blocked his path. Taka reared back and planted Vash on his butt on the ground. Meryl looked down at him from on high and said
"You really want to know? Fine. I'll tell you. People that I like and respect are those who try to be all that they can be despite the circumstances they're given. Who do not give in to greed or venality. I like men who stand up for what they believe in, who hold the line even if they're the only one holding it. Who never start a fight but always finish it. I admire someone who... who always tries kindness first, when it would be so much easier for him to just shoot first and ask questions later." She flushed just a little and then smiled softly. "So perhaps you are right when you say that handsome outlaws are my type."
With that she turned her tomas on a pivot and trotted the beast off, leaving him staring after her in shock.
That was not the sort of heartfelt, dewy-eyed confession that most men want to hear, he thought to himself as his shock faded into elation. But I'll take it!
Yayyyyy! She did it! #victory dance on the desk# Thank you to everyone who's stuck with me thus far, your words of encouragement make this story possible. Shout outs to all the wonderful people who reveiwed the last chapter... Sunni danni, Darkbangle, lanenk, taixishi, mistie, Reader, the Quoi (any relation to the Who? Just curious...), Jade Eye, and catgirl26.
