Chapter (what is this?) 14

The meeting was cut short, something about France and Chocolate, I wasn't really sure. Anyway, Vash and I went back to the hotel to get our things. I hadn't slept well so I had packed our things in the early hours of the morning. We grabbed our suitcases and checked out. The meetings in Denmark were finaly over and we could just now go home. We had been in the car all of five minutes when Vash decided to break the wonderful silence that had settled around us.

"Um. . . I wanted to. . . apologize for not acting. . . right."

"What?"

"It's just, I know I'm not very good at relationship type things and I feel like you deserve more." This brought a smile to my face, he didn't seem to realize that I knew that before saying those three unforgivable words. "Vash, how long have I known you?" I was answered with a shrug and figured it was all I was going to get. "So don't you think I already knew that before I told you that I love you?"

"Well yes, but it still doesn't seem right. It just seems like you deserve more than what I'm giving you." His cheeks were bright red by now and I couldn't help but giggle.

"Do not tell me what I do and do not deserve." My voice had unintentionally hardened from the light giggle to darkness now. I deserved what I thought I deserved, not what anyone else thought. Vash didn't seem to notice the edge I had developed in my voice and that was ok, I didn't want him mad or hurt because of me.

"Still, I think you deserve better than me."

"But I dont. I dont deserve someone as amazing as you, I deserve someone much, much worse." That was the depression I was trying so hard to fight talking.

"No. never think that you deserve anything but the best, do you understand me?" He sounded upset, I couldn't believe that I had upset him, it wasn't an ok mistake, not at all.

"O-Ok Vash," I tried to force a steady calmness into my voice, but it shook anyways.

"Hey, are you ok?"

"Yeah, why wouldn't I be?"

"Because your voice shook."

"I think you're hearing things, Vash."

Our conversation had trailed off after that, Vash giving me worried glances ever few minutes. I didn't get it, he was worried, but about what?

(Motherfukin awesome line break)

We had gotten to the airport about ten minutes ago and Vash had been arguing with security for about 8 of those.

"Because we're really going to blow our own country up!" The airport had been trying to make us go through security, it wasn't even real security though. They just wanted to run the metel-detector thingy over us.

"For Christs sake!" I said, Vash looked at me, and in his brief pause, I took over.

"Scan me." Nobody argued with me. What was that saying, 'Hell hath no wrath like a womans scorn'? I put my arms out and my feet shoulder length apart, the man holding the scanner wasn't hesitant to run it over my body. It only blipped once, over my pocket.

"Please empty your pocket, Miss." My heart skipped a beat, my razor was in my pocket. I reached into my pocket and groped for anything else that might've set the scanner off. My hand returned clutching about 87 cents in change.

"All the way, Miss."

"That is all the way."

"No, it's not. I can see the outline of somehting else in there." I took a breaath and reached into my pocket, my hand retracted with the razor in tow.

"That's why we insist on doing this, what if she overpowered you with that? She could seriously hurt you, or kill you." I let out a bark of dry laughter. We were countries, I wasn't going to be able to be able to kill or harm him, and more over, I didn't want to.

Something flashed in Vash's eyes when he saw the razor that I couldn't identify. It wasn't anger and it wasn't hurt. I just couldn't identify what it wwwas. The head of security came bursting into the room then, he was pissed, to put it simply.

"Give them back whatever it was you took and let them on their plane."

"But you didn't see what they had with them!"

"I don't care if they're packing heat, let them onto their plane." I was given my stuff back and Vash and I made our way to our plane.

In silence.

I at least expected him to complain about what had happened. But he didn't. I could still see it in his eyes, and confronted him about it on the plane.

"Why do you have that look in your eyes?" Vash didn't answer me. Instead, he looked at my pocket, then at my wrist. He didn't look at the carving from The Laugher, he looked at the self-made ones. I turned my wrist over, it was habit to hide. I tried my hardest everyday to keep him from seeing them, and a lot of the times, I don't think he saw them. The scars were shameful and and proof of weakness, I hated them. I didn't want Vash to see what had become of me after he'd taken me in.

Vash reached over and took my wrist in his hand. He turned it over and stroked the first few scars with his finger tips. I looked away, I couldn't help it. I could barely face my own scars on a good day, and Lord knew I certainly couldn't on a bad day. And apparantly, I couldn't take Vash facing my scars.

"You don't have to hide from me."

"Maybe I'm not hiding from you, maybe I'm hiding from myself." This time, I could identify the emotion that flashed in his eyes.

It was shock.

But it was true, I wasn't so much hiding them from Vash, as I was hiding them from me. I didn't want to see them, I didn't want to face the fact that I had a problem.

Hell, I didn't want a problem.

And God knew just how hard it was to ingnore all all those things when Vash wouldn't let me withing a 5 foot diameter of long sleeves!

"I. . . don't understand." His voice brought me out of my reveree and back into reality.

"I don't want to see them, I don't wan to acknowledge them or remember them. I don't want tot see how weak I am. They're shameful, I'm shameful." My voice was bitter, I was saying things about myself I had ignored for a very long time. Tears were burning my eyes, but I refused to let them fall. I refused to sink to that level of weakness.

Two strong arms wrapped around me and a face burried itself in my hair.

I was stunned. Who wouldn't be? Vash wasn't a very touchy feely or lovey dovey for that matter.

The face turned and a cheek placed istelf where the face had previously been.

"I couldn't bear losing you, not ever. And your cuts arent weak or shameful. Weak is giving up, you haven't yet, and I won't let you." I remained silent, still shocked from his words. I didn't remind him of the party where I had not-so-succesfully tried to commit suiced. If that wasn't giving up, I didn't know what was. Vash didn't appear to want to let go any time soon, so I settled into his embrace and drifted off into the beautiful darkness of sleep.

(Another Motherfukin awesome line break)

He woke me up when we landed, my head was on his shoulder. We grabbed our things and left the plane. We found our car and headed in the direction of home, a comfortable silence had settled around us and neither of us was willing to break it. We were home fairly quickly, and after I put my stuff in my room I headed to the kitchen. What I say, astouned me.

Vash was cooking dinner. He told me to go take a bath, and that I deserved to relax. There we go with the deserve crap again, but I didn't argue. He said he'd take care of dinner. My bath was lovely, I had filled it with bubbles and soaked in it until I was practically a prune. I put on some of my clothes. Not the ones Vash had given me, I liked those, I really did, but I wanted Vash to see the whole me, instead of just his pretty little doll. I went downstairs to see that dinner was already on the table, only something was off. Vash was already sitting down and was cutting his meal.
Mine was already cut up.
I sat down and stared at Vash until he looked up at me, a questioning expression on his normally calm face.
"Vash, where's my knife?"

AN: HOLY FUDGE MONKEYS IM BACK! And you can thank my pen is better than my sword for that ^^ So I have some pretty good ideas for the next couple of chapters and I shouldn't EVER take this long to update again. What can I say, the past 5 months haven't been very nice and I'm sick. . . again. . . for the 3rd time in two weeks -_- So yeah, I don't really deserve reviews, but if you'd like to I certainly won't turn them down! IMAxENIGMAx out, PEACE!

PS: This was typed on WordPad, cause my new computer dont got Word, so if their are mistakes. . . well, I tried.