As fate would have it, Vash hadn't been able to get a moment alone with either Millie or Meryl before the fete that evening. Millie volunteered to help out the overworked and panicked staff get things in place for the dinner and ball that evening and was kept busy at that for the rest of the day, and when Meryl returned to her quarters Vash was summarily thrown out on his ear by that she-dragon of a maid so that she could be prepared for the dinner that night.
"I have to talk with you as soon as possible," Vash had managed to say to her before he was tossed out of her bedroom. He'd seen Meryl nod quickly before the door was shut firmly in his face by the scowling she-dragon.
Directly following that one of the household servants had been given orders by the Grandfather to track Vash down and take him back to his quarters to be cleaned up and changed into evening wear fro the evening. It wasn't a tux, but the suit he had been stuffed into with all the ceremony of a little girl dressing her dolly was a nice one, it wasn't black thankfully so he didn't feel like he was impersonating Wolfwood every time he looked down at himself (what kind of an idiot wore black in the desert anyway? it was a sure-fire way to get heat stroke!). The jacket and pants were light grey, the silk undershirt was white and the tie a violet so dark that it was almost black. The thing had been tailored to fit him (which spoke of planning ahead of time, which spoke of some kind of set up) and it was difficult to move his arms, but Knives assured him that that was how he knew it fit him well. Vash was wondering where he was supposed to hide a gun without a shoulder holster.
The bridal dinner and ball was to be held out under the stars on the immense stone patio to the fore of the hedge maze and gardens at the back of the grand residence. The place had been lit up like a fairy garden with lights on strings and paper lanterns hung from poles and the lowest branches of an enormous oak tree in the right-hand side of the garden. One side of the vast flagstone patio was taken up by an enormous set of three tables arranged in a squared off U-shape and set up to host the immense dinner. Laid out with a pristine white table cloth, long tapered candles lit the dinner with their warm, soft romantic golden glow, sparkling off from spotless crystal goblets with gold rims, gold cutlery and elegant white flatware with gold rims.
Guests already mingled with one another in knots and cues, flowing from one to the other like tides in a cave pool, all chatting and laughing with one another. Ladies flowed about, swan-like in their elegant ball gowns attended by young officers in their formal uniforms with decorative sabers at their sides. Their smiles and conversation were as sparkling at the light glinting off the tasteful jewelry they wore. It was like something out of a painting or an old vid. Vash felt awkward and out of place, and suddenly understood what it felt like to be the new kid in high school standing in the cafeteria with a lunch tray in his hand looking for an acceptable place to sit down and eat.
He was saved by a friendly greeting from Artie and a beckoning gesture to come over and talk with his friends. Arthur and his friends were all old retired military, in fact, Vash nervously thought that he might have recognized one or two of them but perhaps that was just paranoia speaking. They talked about their wives and the hunts they planned on making that season and about the degenerate politicians in New Geneva... reassuringly mundane chatter from older gentlemen. Vash was soon put at ease, but it sure was taking a while for Meryl to get to the party, what, had she had to powder her nose and fell in?
The bride and groom were at the center of things, with the biggest knot of sycophants and hangers on that Vash had seen in quite some time. He knew one place where he wasn't going to be intruding in. For one thing, he was bound to get lost in the teeming mass of ruffles. And then there was the lace and the lace with ruffles, was there and unwritten rule somewhere that said ball gowns came in ruffles? He kind of thought they looked silly.
He kept his attention halfway on the guests he was knotted in with, but most of his attention was occupied by trying to keep a lookout for trouble, surreptitious activity, covert gestures or shielded movements. One of the assassins might very well be at this party, and if so, it was his job to make sure that the killer didn't get anywhere near Meryl. The reason he'd come down early was so he could get the layout and a look at the guests faces. He didn't think they'd try anything like putting poison in the punch because there was just one target and it wouldn't make sense to take out the entire guest roster, for one thing it would put a serious damper on her hosts reputation. They might try slipping something into her food, but Vash figured he had that covered he was quick enough to where he could switch the dishes and no-one would notice (he might act like a klutz most of the time, but an act was all it was).
He was busy enough scanning the room that he almost missed her entrance. There was not a single pause in the movement of the gathering when Meryl appeared on the top of the stone steps leading out into the garden, none of the conversations stopped to look at the new entrant, no-one stared or made a fuss, but for Vash it felt like the world stood still for just a second. She looked incredible.
The dress had no sleeves, he actually got to see what her shoulders looked like! In a sea of cleavage, Meryl was an elegant reminder of the simple sexiness of the clavicle. The top of the strapless ball gown hugged her torso and hips like a jealous lover and the rest of the gown flowed down in a clean elegant line to her toes. Her dress was dark violet at the top of the torso that gradually paled in color to a soft lilac at her feet and there was a soft misty grey sheer layer over the skirt that matched the sheer wrap folder over her arms. The top edge of the bust was beaded in a rainfall pattern flowing down in strands to her waist of tiny hematite beads the scintillated in the light.
It was strange how a simple dress and a moonlit night could change a person from someone he spent time with everyday into some new mysterious creature that he was suddenly afraid to touch. She looked so elegant and fragile, like a perfect blossom put on display, meant to be admired but would wilt at the least handling. It was hard to reconcile that image with the image the tough woman he knew she was, who could fire an enormous stun-gun with her feet, didn't flinch at the most disastrous dangers, and thought that having the sandsteamer she was on robbed by bandits (and she, him and Milly taking care of the problem) was commonplace. She did look beautiful though, Vash knew he had to compliment her, tell her how beautiful she looked but when he tried to think of something words failed him and he could only just stare. Her pale skin seemed to glow as if lit from within in the moonlight and the soft curves and angles of her face looked like some fae creature from out of a fairytale come to life.
Meryl paused at the top of the steps, scanning the crowd for a moment and when her eyes met with his she looked relieved. She made straight for him, by-passing quickly several young officers who suddenly noticed her passing them and looked like they would have simply loved to detain her to talk with them for a while. She didn't even glance over at them, Vash thought she might not have even noticed they were there (or likely cared if she had noticed).
"Well, don't you look sharp," she complimented him when she reached his side, taking him in in one long sweeping appraising look. There was a long pause, Vash panicked when he tried to think of something to say but couldn't. Crap! Why did this always happen to him? If he tried one of his usual corny pick up lines on her, he knew she'd sense it and it would hurt her feelings for not being genuine but he had to say something!
"Vash?" she asked a moment later, looking up at him in concern. "Are you okay?"
He tried desperately this time to just say something! All that came out of his throat were inarticulate "uh, er, um" sounds. And he was still staring! Suddenly a smile that just took away any ability he might have had to think for the rest of the evening lit her face up, even her eyes sparkled. That was it, that was all she wrote, Vash the Stampede was officially a drooling staring idiot for the rest of the evening.
"This is surely a moment that will go down in history," she smiled up at him. "I've actually managed to render you speechless."
Worse and worse! Meryl was never a woman who would let go of an advantage; she'd seen right into his weakness and was fully prepared to tease him about it. However a moment later, contrary to his expectations, she showed him a little mercy and turned her attentions to the knot of people Vash was gathered with; her grandfather and all of his old friends. She tucked her arm firmly in his and turned away from the younger crowd in the rest of the room to turn her sparkling regard on a bunch of retired old men. Apparently they had been friends with her when she'd been a child.
"Strange," Arthur remarked when he'd taken in Meryl's dress. "That doesn't look like the dress your stepmother arranged for you to have for the evening."
Meryl mock shuddered in reply and said
"That thing was a travesty in chiffon. I looked like some purple frosted cupcake. So I attacked it with a pair of scissors and an airbrush. Believe me when I say it had it coming. Sometimes I think she goes out of her way to find me the most hideous concoctions to wear to these things just to embarrass me." Meryl shrugged and neatly plucked up a flute of champagne with a raspberry bobbing in it and handed it to Vash.
"I'll take the raspberry though," she said to his questioning look. Vash, seeing an opening at last cleverly said
"Only if you're willing to go after it."
She raised an eyebrow and looked amused.
"Smooth," she complimented. "Very smooth."
Meryl introduced Vash around to her grandfathers circle, introducing this one as General so-and-so of the ninth brigade and he'd taught her to play chess as a child and that one as Major so-and-so of Becker Territory's militia and he used to tell her stories. That one was a former explorer and this one was a former senator and they had all kept her amused at parties when she'd been a young girl. Looking sideways at her, Vash got the impression of a precocious and intelligent young lady. Even now she was more interested in talking politics and the recent military exercises than she was in mingling with the rest of the people her age. It was a little sad in some ways, but he decided that Meryl just wouldn't be Meryl if she were interested in the same things that all these other pretty flowers seemed to be interested in, fashion and gowns and who's daughter or son was coming out that season.
"Pardon me for intruding," Marianne said from the edge of their crowd just as the elderly explorer was getting to the good part in his yarn about the time when he'd discovered a derelict ship out in the wastes that had a fully operational defense grid.
"I may just die of boredom out there if I don't hear some intelligent conversation soon," she explained. She looked as lovely as ever in a powder blue gown with white chiffon ruffles and tiny sparkling bits of silver woven into it to catch the light at the odd interval. The old gentlemen quickly reassured her that she wasn't bothering anyone and she was made to feel welcome there.
Contrary to what Vash had expected there was no feminine by-play between Meryl and Marianne, often when a new woman intruded on a group there was usually some kind of interaction to see where the other stood, but Meryl didn't seem to care one way or the other about her (though Vash would have liked it if she'd gotten a little jealous).
The old man was about to return to his tale when a smart young officer with a nearly trimmed mustache and a perfectly turned uniform walked up to the group and got his girls attention by touching Meryl's arm to ask her if she would like to dance. She stiffened at the familiarity of the contact; Meryl did not like having her exquisite self handled.
"May I have this dance?" the young officer asked. Vash was pleased to note that the guy was shorter than Vash by a head (though it was kind of annoying to note that when compared to Short Girl he made her look slightly less like a doll).
Vash put a hand lightly on the one she had tucked through his arm, signaling tacitly that he would like it if she'd stay at his side. He hadn't been able to tell her yet that there was a threat against her life (too many people around to get a quiet moment to break the news). He certainly wouldn't be able to guard her as well if she was twirling around the dance floor in some strangers arms, assuming that the stranger wasn't the assassin hired to kill her in the first place.
"No thank-you," she said politely, shifting just a little closer to Vash. "I am already engaged." Then she turned back to where the older explorer gentleman was telling his tale that she'd probably already heard at least a dozen times.
"Then can I get you something to drink?" the young man insisted. Vash immediately felt suspicions of him and "opened" his senses, his extra senses, to get a reading on the young man. Somewhat to Vash's disappointment, the young officer was nothing more than merely an earnest young man, shorter than most of the guys in his regiment, that saw a very pretty young woman who wasn't tall enough look him directly in the eyes when they danced. He was most put out that she'd found such a tall partner for the evening, he thought Vash wouldn't look nearly so well with her height as he would.
"Thank-you, no," she declined politely. "I've just finished one." A lie, but Vash knew Meryl wasn't much of a drinker. She was more along the lines of a tea-totaler.
"I see," he said, disappointedly. "Well, if there is anything you should need please call on me."
Meryl smiled her bright, false beaming smile at him, the one she used when she didn't mean it but wanted to make a favorable impression anyway, and assured him that she would.
"You should dance, my dear," her grandfather remarked, once the young officer was out of earshot.
"You know I have two left feet," she replied, blushing a little at having to admit that there was something she didn't do well out loud.
"It's not healthy for a young woman your age to be so unsociable," her grandfather replied to that.
"I'm not unsociable," she defended. "I'm... " she fished for a good synonym that didn't mean unsociable. "I'm sensible."
Arthur didn't look like he was buying it, but he left it alone. Apparently he was well accustomed to her peculiarities. Vash wasn't going to argue with her either, for one thing she was here with him instead of out there with someone else. And she was still a target. Vash couldn't sense anyone in the crowd that might have harmful intentions towards her, but just because Vash couldn't sense him didn't mean that he wasn't there either. Many assassins had other abilities than simple training that helped them make it in their line of work.
An hour of amiable chatter later, dinner was called and they were all seated. Thus began one of the oddest hours of Vash's life. He had to find new ways, with every course, to distract people's attention long enough so that he could switch out his plate or bowl of food with Meryl's before she could eat it, and do it in such a way that no-one suspected him. Oddly enough, his brother helped him with that. Knives seemed to find it amusing to use his telekinetic powers to stir up trouble and confusion ofr a crucial few seconds by doing things like knocking one of the candles into the oil-shaker for the salad or causing a tray of the kabob skewers to accidentally fly up into the air and all of them stick skewer-side-into the enormous sugared-confection centerpiece of the bride and groom in all of their glory. Anarchist.
The skewering distraction had had Meryl in transports of mirth anyway. They'd looked remarkably like sugared cacti by the time Knives was done with them. Even Vash had to admit that, despite the rather disturbing imagery, it was pretty funny... in a macabre sort of way.
Meryl leaned down over to him and quietly asked
"Are you doing that?"
To which Vash could honestly reply
"Nope."
"Oh, so I guess it's just a coincidence then," she said, not seeming to buy his innocence in the odd string of coincidences that had nearly been disasters that evening.
"Must be," he replied. "You know how trouble likes to follow me around."
"I guess so," she said nodding to herself. It looked like she bought it.
He was relieved when the toasts were finally called, that meant that, after the toasts and a final mandatory dance, they could retire gracefully for the evening. The party itself would probably keep going on well into the night, but for them it was almost over. There were many long-winded well wishes from family members, friends, and sycophants alike; the speech from Meryl's father was particularly pompous. Vash was still having a hard time believing that the guy could possibly have called a hit on his daughter and still stand up there wishing everyones health. He didn't seem to be acting suspiciously...
Vash frowned a little, he could read a man like this as easily as anyone could read a page of printed text, and the guy just wasn't acting like he expected anything to happen tonight. He wasn't glancing around him expectantly, wasn't exchanging any surreptitious looks with anyone. No real sweat or increased heart rate, he wasn't glancing covertly over at Meryl so see if anything was happening to her yet, he didn't even look particularly smug or self-satisfied... not more so than usual anyway. Strange, very strange.
The bride-and-groom-to-be led everyone else out onto the floor for the mandatory waltz after dinner. Meryl actually looked nervous as he put a hand at her waist and took her other one in his.
"I hope I don't step on your feet," she whispered. "I haven't done this in a while."
"I'm sure you'll be fine," he reassured her.
It was a good thing that Vash already had a will of iron, because it was taking everything he had to be a perfect gentleman. For one thing, his mama had raised him better than to grope a girl during a dance, and for another thing (and probably more importantly) he didn't want to piss her off. She was a force of nature when she was angry, they called him the Humanoid Typhoon, but he was pretty sure that he had nothing on her when she got mad. So he did not squeeze her waist, nor did he hold her closer than was necessary for the duration of the dance. The way she smiled up at him made the self-control more than worth it.
She wasn't as bad a dancer as she feared she was, Vash had to only make minimal adjustments and he was easily sweeping her around the floor. The light vanilla and lilac scent of her skin combined with the soft warmth of the evening was a heady brew and he felt oddly giddy with it. The soft pale moon-glow on her skin sheathed in that wispy, mist of a dress and that beautiful smile she kept beaming up at him made him wish the dance would never end. It was in a word, romantic.
"I say, do you mind if I cut in," the young officer from before said tapping him on the shoulder (he had to reach up to do so, Vash was pleased to note).
"As a matter of fact I do," Vash replied brusquely. "Scram."
Meryl gave the officer a slightly apologetic look, but Vash noted from the way her hand squeezed his that she wasn't really sorry she was just trying to spare the young man's feelings, and allowed herself to be swept back off into the crowd again.
They hadn't encountered the person who was supposedly there to kill her, but Vash didn't want to take any chances with her safety, even though it meant cutting the evening short. He started slowly making his way toward the edge of the crowd in the back, towards the neat topiary hedge-maze laid out in the garden. Vash swallowed nervously as he glanced around to make certain that no-one was looking over at them at the moment, and then swept her into the man-high hedges and ducked out of sight.
"What are y-" she stated to ask, but he laid a finger athwart her lips, signaling for silence. There was a question in her eyes but she quieted, trusting him. Vash looked around and opened up his senses, there was no-one near the two of them. He took her hand and led her deeper into the hedge maze, which was surprisingly sizable.
"Is there someplace safe and hidden?" he asked her. "Someplace that it's unlikely to be stumbled on by a drunken party guest."
She looked at him measuringly for a long moment, clearly trying to discern his motives behind asking, but seemed to decide that he wouldn't have asked without a good reason so she shrugged and said
"I know most of the secret hiding places in this rats warren. There is one nearby, but with the two of us, it might be a bit of a squeeze."
She led him through the hedge maze, past the rest of the gardens and near a side building that held garden tools and fertilizer. On the other side of the garden shack was another little shack that seemed to hold extra bits of leather and odds and ends; worn out tomas saddles, extra hunting gear, bits of broken handles, fencing wire and the like. She moved a stack of empty wooden crates partly covered by a tarp to reveal a strangely scratched space in the stone flooring; it had several long grooves in it, like someone had taken something really sharp and heavy and scored the tiles with it. Meryl knelt in the dust in her lilac fairy-dress and slammed the heel of her hand hard against one of the stone tiles, then another and then another, and with a grunt of effort, slid one tile over and another down.
"I found out about this place once when I was on the run from my governess when I was ten," she said quietly. "The code on it is just like another one on a wall somewhere else that my grandfather showed me when I was little. He thinks that it was made during the days of prohibition about eighty years ago or so."
Vash snorted ridicule in remembrance at the folly. Some of the territories decided that people were a little too interested in drinking whiskey and having shootouts and barroom brawls so they'd actually tried to outlaw alcohol consumption. Of course, that had only led to bootlegging, faster cars and wilder bandits.
"I remember that time," Vash said in reminiscence. "Boy, you should have seen what some of those guys did to their cars. I knew this one bootlegger who souped up the engine of his car so that he'd never been caught. They called him Dead-Lightning because he could hit a temshwee bird on the wing, in the head, going at a hundred and twenty."
Her eyes widened and she stared at him in disbelief.
"You... you actually knew Dead-Lightning?!"
"Heck yeah, I helped him fix his engine," Vash said, smiling.
"Why am I not surprised that you were involved in bootlegging Mister Vash the Stampede," Meryl said wryly as she turned to descend the ladder into the little hidey-hole.
"Way I see it, you have no room to cast stones, it looks like your own ancestors weren't always so fanatically on the straight and narrow Miss Insurance Girl," he taunted back.
"You can come down now, I'm clear," she said. "And what my ancestors did or did not do with regards to their own alcoholic or law abiding preferences has nothing to do with me."
Vash started to descend the ladder into the little mini-cavelet underneath the storage facility, pulling the slab of stone back over to cover up the hole and the room was abruptly smothered in inky black darkness so thick he literally could not see his own hands in front of his face.
"Hope it still works," she muttered. A moment later the darkness receded to be replaced with a soft blue-white glow lighting up the pale cream of Meryl's skin and casting strange uneven shadows on the rough-hewn stone walls. Clearly it was an older part of the establishment.
"Where does that lead?" Vash asked a moment later, spying an incongruously smooth an unweathered metal door placed inside an otherwise rough and privative-looking structure.
"I don't know," Meryl said honestly. "I was never able to get it to open."
Vash went over to look at it more closely, and was both surprised and unsurprised to note that it was a mechanical door from an old SEEDs ship. Probably brought here and repurposed. Gunsmoke was always a mix-mash of the old-fashioned and the truly old pieces of technology.
"So, what did you ask me to bring you here for?" Meryl asked curiously. "I assume it was something that couldn't be discussed in public."
Mystery door forgotten for the moment as Vash looked over at her, looking more beautiful than ever in her now slightly rumpled dress with a tempting streak of dirt on one shoulder.
"Who says I didn't simply want to get you alone?" he asked, brazenly flirting with her. And it wasn't like it was a lie, he'd been wanting to get her alone since he'd first seen her walking down into the gardens for dinner, and not just because there were assassins after her.
She looked taken aback by his statement, and looked cautiously over at him from the corner of her eye. He gave her his best billion watt disarming smile and she relaxed a little. He didn't know if she was relieved or disappointed, and was more than a little tempted to open his senses up a little and get a reading on her. Suddenly there came a smile to her face that looked, more than a little mischievous.
"Well now, mister infamous outlaw," she said with a little smile that was doing funny things to his insides. "Now that you have me alone, in a place where no-one will find us at an inconvenient moment, and sound doesn't travel..."
There was a strange sway to her walk that he'd never seen her use before as she approached him. He just stood there, mesmerized by the way her hips moved as she got closer and closer to him. The silk of her gown was a whisper in the silence when she abruptly pressed herself up to him. The soft, sweet scent of her skin, mixed with the light perfume she wore for that evening surrounded him, drugging him with passion kept too long hidden and suppressed. His heartbeat sped up faster than it ever had when he'd been in fear of his life and his arms moved of their own accord, like lodestones to iron, to wrap around her and hold her close. She was so tiny, but his senses and his instincts told him that she was all woman.
"What are you going to do with me?" she whispered.
His reply was to capture her lips with his own.
End Ch 11
Well, here it is, chapter eleven and what an awful place to leave off eh? To be honest I've had this written for a little over a week and a half, I was just too lazy to run through and do the final spell-checking and formatting to post it. Sorry. Respond to prodding so if anyone wants to leave a review reminding me to get my butt in gear and edit the next chapter for posting they are more than welcome to do so. Or, well y'know, any review would be good too. I mentioned last post that the story I'm really working on (Home is being written more or less for sh!ts and giggles) could use a run-through. I'm still not sure about the opening chapter or whether it needs a prologue, so I'm going to preview what I'm looking at as making the opening chapter at the end of this, and it would be wonderful if I could get some feedback. It's the bit in italics.
She'd taken one look at him when he strode triumphantly into town with the body of his most troublesome and thankfully still unconscious brother slung over his shoulder like so much baggage and ordered him directly to his bed for some rest.
"You look exhausted, go sleep," she'd said. "Milly and I will take care fo the rest."
He'd almost protested but she'd silenced him with one of her trademark 'argument is futile and if you know what's good for you you'll smile and nod' looks and he'd just decided to thank her for her kindness and do as she said. Space was at a premium in their little house but even so it seemed that the ever-together Meryl had managed to anticipate him. Two small beds, little more than cots with extra padding really, were laid out side by side in the room that had once had only his own bed in it. He laid his brother carefully into the cot farthest from the door resisting the dual temptaions of just tossing him off his shoulder (Knives was very heavy) and tieing him down so he couldn't sneak off and start the battle over again (Knives wouldn't let just a little rope stop him if he was detirmined to win free, and the attempt would likely just piss him off further).
So now what? Vash wondered as he flopped into his own cot with a feeling of such releif. His body was exhausted but over a century of having to keep his instincts alert and his senses sharp for the first hint of threat wouldn't let his mind quiet down the way he wanted it to.
He'd won the fight but the war might just be far from over, that all depended on what Knives did when he woke up. However Vash was tired of taking things as they came, there had to be something he could do ahead of time. Something he could do to prepare. Meryl and Millie were human; if Knives woke up in a mood there was a more than distinct possibility that he would take control of one or both of them, just as he had taken control of those poor villagers and make them do things against their will, possibly even use them to hurt Vash.
I hate to think so ill of my brother, but long experience has shown me that Knives likes to take the the devious route. It would be in keeping with him to make them kill themselves or each other in front of me when I'm unable to stop them.
If having perfect strangers killed before his eyes was horrifying for him, having people he truly cared about killed in the same manner was something from out of a nightmare. He'd suffered horribly when Rem had died, to this day he still suffered the loss of her but...
Mind back on track, he reminded himself. He found he was always easily distracted when the subject he needed to think about was one he really didn't want to. What to do with and/or about Knives was a big question. Vash was rather hoping that his brother might have seen the light or at least be willing somehow to meet him halfway.
He doesn't have to like people... he could just leave them alone, Vash thought hopefully. Vash would even be willing to give up his wandering ways, even (gulp) settle permanently in a place far away from anyone or anything else, maybe some abandoned ship or the like. He wouldn't be happy about it, but if it kept Knives from continuing in his attempt to destroy mankind he'd do it and feel relieved.
I don't wanna live out in the middle of nowhere with my psycho brother though, he thought plaintively. He liked being around people, especially kids. He'd always imagined having a few of his own one day "once all this was over" (that had been a mantra he'd pinned his hopes on for the better part of a century). On the seeds ship he'd enjoyed being with his twin but he'd still had Rem around and had enjoyed her company too.
That was before Knives went crazy, he admitted. They hadn't gotten on well (understatement much?) since he and the rest of humanity had crash-landed on this dustball. Having his brother kill his only other friend and parental-guidance figure had put an understandable strain on their relationship.
And then there's... her, he thought, at last allowing his mind to alight on the thought it had been circling round like a moth fluttering near its chosen flame.
She had given him such a look on his return, all joy and relief and tenderness, he had been so taken aback by it he'd nearly tripped and dropped his brother. Vash was an old hand at reading people and Meryl wasn't so difficult to read once you knew what to look for. Oh, she was still a tough nut; she played her cards close to her chest and didn't go giving herself away at the drop of a coin. That was why the soft look had taken him so completely by surprise, for her to be so open (well, open for Meryl anyway) had to mean she'd realized how she felt and had come to some kind of decision for herself.
Now what to do about that, he wondered. He'd known for a while that Meryls attachment to him had to go beyond an insurance girl just doing her job, no matter how he'd tried to tell her not to get involved she was right there in the thick of things helping him as she could. He didn't know how things would have turned out after That Day... the day he'd killed Legato, if she and Milly hadn't been there for him.
I suppose I have several options open... hopefully anyway.
First, he could ignore it. That would usually be his chosen method, emotional entanglements were something he avoided (despite his skirt-chasing ways) seeing as he had his own personal Sword of Damocles (or was it the Rock of Demosthenes?) hanging over his head in the form of his twin brother and all those Gung-Ho assholes Knives had set on him. But now the matter was settled, or about to be anyway and he had options open to him that he had kept firmly closed before.
That left reciprocation. It was chancey, and problematic. Chancey because he had never let himself feel those sorts of feelings for a woman before simply because he knew for certain it would eventually be used against him, and also because of who he was (a walking disaster) he just knew was bound to screw it up somehow.
Problematic because... well it just was. Knives wouldn't be in favor of the idea (probably another massive understatment) but Vash was tired of planning his life around his twin. He wanted a life of his own dammit! He wanted to be happy.
I don't actually want much out of life, he thought morosely. A pretty wife, lots of kids, maybe a dog. Nah I don't like dogs.
With or without the dog, the universe seemed detirmined to deny him his simple wish. The bounty on his head was only one factor, his brother yet another (rather huge and all consuming factor) but Vash was begining to suspect that he just had rotten luck.
I've given home, happiness, and even mild contentment to make sure people are happy and safe. I have scars on my body that make me look like Doctor Frankenstein's monster. I've endured crazed lunatics trained as assassins out for my blood, federal marshals with obsessive grudges against me and an entire herd of sandworms trying to eat me... I think I've earned a little peace, I think I deserve some happiness.
It was still a problem however... Even though he'd defeated him; Vash's brother Knives was still a factor. Knives didn't need to be able to hold a gun to be effective, he could wipe out an entire town from his bed using only the powers of his mind (or more accurately, force an entire town to wipe itself out).
What was I thinking?! Vash berated himself, feeling fear hit him like cold water, sending a shockwave through him. The memories of exactly what his brother was capale of called themselves up with startling clarity in his minds eye.
I should never have come back here, never even have brought him back here, I've put the girl's lives in danger. He wished with a small pang that his friend Wolfwood were there. Sure, he wasn't exactly forgiving and pacifisty (in fact he'd probably have told Vash to put a bullet in his brother's head, or done it himself) but Vash had never had anyone else he'd trusted as much to watch his back. Vash didn't for a second believe that thier friendship was entirely on Knives' orders, Wolfwood had, after all, saved his life from a bullet from Caine the Longshot.
That doesn't matter now, Vash admonished himself, clearing his thoughts. ?Regrets won't change anything. I have to figure out for myself how I'm going to save my brother, how I'm going to do it before he has a chance to hurt anyone else. Especially the Girls. If he wakes up...
He'd sense them. He'd sense them and he'd kill them.
"...do you think of Mister Vash bringing Mister Knives back?" Millies voice sounded softly in the next room. To a normal human's ears they would have been speaking low enough tha the words would be indistinguishable, but Vash wasn't normal so he could hear them fine. He eavesdropped shamelessly.
There was a soft sigh from Meryl and she paused for a long moment before she said
"I'm honestly not certain what to think. I'd love to believe that Vash knows what he's doing and that everything will be just fine from here on in but I'm afraid I'm a pessimist and blind optimism simply isn't in my nature," she replied frankly. "I don't want to pressure him, Vash has enough to worry about; but maybe it would be a wiser idea to take his twin someplace a little safer, at least until we know one way or the other."
"Safer Meryl?" Millie questioned. "Like where?"
"Good point, there really are no real "safe" places here on Gunsmoke are there?" she said in a dry tone. "Well, maybe someplace far away from everyone; lord knows there's more than enough empty, uninhabited space to go around on this dustball. Maybe we're worrying for nothing; Vash probably already knows his next move. He's a much better person than I am."
"Why do you say that Meryl, I think you're a great person!"
"Are you kidding me?" Meryl said, her tone reflected the view that she thought her friend was nuts. "How could you have been around me this long and not noticed that my personality is, shall we say, eccentric? I'm proud, short-tempered, stubborn, domineering, too blunt for my own good, prickly, judgmental, obsessive, controlling--"
"Hey! Come on now--" Millie tried to protest.
"Millie, I know my faults," she insisted. "I could change them if I wanted to, probably... but the fact is that I don't want to change; not even for love."
"Who say's you have to?" Millie asked softly.
Meryl made no reply and a moment later the sound of typewriter keys clacking filed the silence.
Millie's right, who says she has to change? So what if she's proud, stubborn, judgemental, domineering, prickly and controlling? She doesn't flinch at the worst disaster... of course she wouldn't I guess, being a disaster investigator and all, but still. Anyone who can take my life with any level of equanmity at all is definately worth keeping around.
Even after the unconscious comparisons he'd made between them on That Day, Vash was well aware that Rem and Meryl had little, if anything, in common with one another besides a vague physical resemblance. Meryl was very much her own person with a practical streak that on occasion bordered on heartlessly pragmatic. She was no Saint Rem, even if she had once repeated Rem's philosophy exactly, there was a harsher core to her that he could sense, something made of steel and lightning that wouldn't blink at having to deal with the harsh realities of things; that would do whatever might be necessary to ensure the safety of those she loved.
It was strange; sometimes when he looked at her he saw the kind wise and caring visage of his mentor and mother-figure, Rem, but most times she was purely and wholly Meryl Stryfe and very much her own person. He'd come to realize that comparing the two women was completely futile. Meryl was earthy, practical, pragmatic, and no kind of philosopher... certainly she was no pacifist. With her firey temper and fierce protectiveness she bore little if any resemblance to the woman who insisted that there was always a way to have it both ways. Meryl seemed to accept that sometimes, there really was no other choice than the lesser of two evils.
"Sure, do your best to help out and do good where you can," she'd said late one night while they were doing dishes and having some time together. "But don't beat yourself up if things aren't perfect. It's an imperfect universe, you do what you can."
That pretty much seemed to sum up Meryl's take on things anyway. Vash still wasn't sure of he was able to agree with that outlook or not; he'd spent so long defending his own way of thinking that accepting the idea that there might come a situation where he couldn't save everyone just felt like giving up.
She's right about one thing though; there really are no "safe" places where Knives is involved. The faith she expressed in him warmed him a little, even if it was misplaced.
I have no idea what I'm going to do next. No plan, no direction.
Another thing he liked about Meryl; she always seemed to know what she was doing, even if she really didn't. Her practical no-nonsense nature gave her a sort of appearance of confidence that never seemed to waver. That practicality seemed to cut right through all of the strangeness and confusion and get right down to the heart of matters. It was part of what had made him willing to confide in her, and his faith hadn't been misplaced; she'd been sympathetic to what he'd been through, but not afraid or taken aback by the strangeness of his life. She'd simply accepted his story as part of him and gotten on with things.
It's almost like she's some how used to dealing with weirdness, he thought. For one wild moment he entertained the notion that maybe, like himself, there was a whole lot more to Meryl Stryfe than just a normal insurance girl thrust into an insane situation, but then...
Nah, that's just silly, he thought, immediately dismissing the notion. Meryl's as prosaic as meatloaf, and about as psychically aware as a rock.
He should know too, Vash had always been particularly attuned to psychic vibrations; over the years the teeming sea of humanity had formed a sort of background noise that he'd learned to block out but that didn't mean he was completely incapable of using the other part of his abilities; he'd simply chosen not to.
And look where that landed me, he recriminated himself. If he'd just bitten the bullet and learned to use his powers just the same as his brother had, Vash would have been able to end the fight with Legato without having to kill him. Oh he'd tried alright; Vash had made several stumbling first attempts at using his own clumsy psychic abilities to block out Legato's but to no avail. He simply hadn't had the knowledge or the training to combat a fully trained telepath in his own bailiwick. Knives had known that of course, Knives had known that Vash felt that using his powers to control people was wrong on a very basic level; that was why he'd chosen to fight in that manner. The fight had nearly cost him Meryl, who as a normal person had been unable to defend herself against psychic attack and had been completely at Legato's non-existent mercy that day.
But that's odd, he thought, his mind suddenly stumbling across an anomaly about the incident that had eluded his notice before (Vash had not wanted to mentally revisit the tragedy, and there was the fight with his brother to worry about). There had been a moment, very briefly, when Vash had felt something brush, featherlight, on the edge of his mind. He'd assumed that it had been Legato and so had tried to psychically swat it away, but now he wasn't so sure.
I'm probably just imagining things, he told himself.
In fact, now that he thought about it, the one time he'd ever tried to "listen in" on her thoughts (a moment of weakness out in the sands, before he'd had to leave her) the tiny delicate little probe he'd sent her way had bounced off her like a stone skimming over water. She was not only normal, but abnormally normal.
Some people had minds that were so neat and organized that they were nearly impossible to read. The average person's mind was always somewhat "cluttered" with little stray thoughts poking out here and there to flit through the air to no consequence; but some people had minds that were so organized that nothing escaped them. Trying to poke your telepathic nose in them was like sticking your finger in the cogs of a clock; you'd just get pinched between the gears. Meryl seemed to have one of those clockwork minds, opaque but to a very concentrated probe; and that would be just rude.
Opaque to "sending" or not, Legato was still able to take control of her, he thought darkly. And whatever his minion was capable of, Knives will be able to do in time as well.
Which brought him back to his original quandary... so now what? Keeping him around the girls was just asking for trouble. He really didn't have anyplace else safe to send his brother to heal. He couldn't just lock him in a box and forget about him (tempting as the thought was). And Vash had no real plan for what to do with him if Knives proved uncooperative when he finally did wake up.
Those energy blasts were enough to shut him down for at least a month so I have a few weeks grace period, he thought, closing his eyes and succumbing to exhaustion. I'm sure I'll think of something.
There it is... if anyone wants to volunteer to beta, that would be great! Any questions, comments or concerns will be cheerfully feilded by me, let me know what you think. Should I put the next part of it in the opening chapter or is it too long already?
