Meryl forced motion back into her legs and willed her heart to cease it's painful staccato against her ribs.

This couldn't be happening. He couldn't be dead. The man couldn't die! She'd seen thousands of people try, and none of them had succeeded; so who the hell was this man that thought he could kill the infamous Vash the Stampeded?

Meryl ran the last three blocks back to her house with her feet barely touching the ground before they tore up off the street again, kicking up sand in a thick cloud behind her. Oxygen ripped at the lungs inside her chest as she struggled to pull the freezing night air into her body, and the adrenaline screaming through her veins refused to ease the racing of her heart.

Upon reaching the house, Meryl saw that nearly all of the lights were on and the front door was wrenched wide open. She took the steps of the porch in a single leap, and braced herself for what she was to find inside and who.

To her surprise the couch and all of the downstairs was empty. Sitting halfway up the stairs, dressed in her nightgown and with her stun-gun lying at her bare feet, was Millie sobbing uncontrollably into her hands. "He's gone. I can't believe he's gone. It all happened so fast. It always does."

Without stopping, Meryl raced passed Millie to the upstairs apartment; she didn't have time for tears right now. The first thing she saw on reaching the landing was Christian's stiff back framed in the doorway to the bedroom. The room's lights were off, but she could see he had one hand held up over his face while the other hung loosely at his side. Lying forgotten at his feet was his gun.

Before Meryl could say anything, he spun around and stared at her, a look of horror and fear in his eyes. "I think I'm going to be sick." He said and pushed passed her to the bathroom across the landing, his hand still over his mouth.

From where she stood, Meryl could see a pair of booted feet lying motionless on the floor just inside the room, and she suddenly felt her resolve waver and was no longer so keen on entering. The room was deathly quiet; the only sounds Meryl could hear were Millie's weeping on the stairs and Christian vomiting in the bathroom behind her. Nothing came from the room; no moans, no screams or crying, and no one was stepping out.

Whatever had happened, whatever she found in this Godforsaken room, was going to change everything. She could feel the moment closing in around her as it locked into place, and knew it could very well bring all of her slowly forming hopes to a cruel and bitter end. What if he really was - ! There really was no choice.

Time seemed to come to a standstill as Meryl stepped into the room; dread and fear kept thought and emotion suspended somewhere as a hard lump in the pit of her stomach, and she took in the scene with a strange, detached sort of calm. Lying at her feet, just steps from the door, was the man Christian had loosed a full round of bullets into at pointblank range. The disgusting, pitiless, hapless fool hadn't stood a chance as they tore through the thin materials of his coat and shirt and into the soft flesh of his back. In the fragments of light streaming in around her from the landing, Meryl could see the thick pool of deep red spreading out around him. A distant part of her pitied the poor soul whose job it would be to clean him up.

Across the room, in a puddle not unlike the one their attacker laid in, was Vash, curled protectively over his brother whose head was resting gently in his lap. Even from that distance she could see he was beyond the reach of any help.

As always, the air in the room was hot and stuffy. Behind them the chair Vash always sat in next to Knives was knocked on its side, and the bed sheets were in a tangled mess on the floor beside them. Again, that distant part of Meryl's mind still functioning came forward and thought of how she'd never be able to make them white again.

She felt she should say something, anything, but everything that ran through her mind felt wrong and inadequate, and she knew it would sound forced and fake. Her relief that amongst all of this gore and horror Vash was still alive overshadowed any grief she felt in the moment. Grief and tears would certainly come later; she wasn't so hardened to life not to feel at a man's death or for a friend's loss, but she couldn't right now.

There was so much blood.

Behind her she could hear Christian's dry heaving into the toilet, his stomach already emptied but his nerves too scrambled to pull himself together, and for a brief moment feared she'd have to join him. Taking a deep breath, she slowly turned around and walked back down the stairs.

Sitting down next to Millie, Meryl wrapped her arms tightly around her and pulled the sobbing girl to her shoulder. Millie wrapped herself around Meryl as a heart wrenching wail tore from her throat. "Shhh, Millie. Millie, listen to me." Meryl whispered softly into her hair. "Millie, I need you to tell me what happened. What happened here tonight?"

Millie shook her head. "I can't."

Meryl gently stroked her back, and although she felt bad for pushing her, asked her again. She needed to know what happened. "Millie, I know it's hard, but you need to tell me. Take a deep breath and talk with me for just a few minutes. We're going to sort all of this out, but first, I need your help."

After a moment Millie nodded her head and pulled back, leaving behind Meryl's soaked shoulder. With a loud, wet sniff she wiped her sleeve across her nose and turned red rimmed eyes to Meryl. "It's all my fault." She moaned.

Meryl shook her head. "No, it couldn't be. I know this isn't your fault."

"But it is!" the distraught girl protested with a pathetic sob. "I'm always the one who locks the door at night! Always! But tonight, I was so tired, and I decided to go to bed early, and I completely forgot! So it's all my fault that man broke into our house and that two people are now gone forever! Once people are dead, they never come back, Meryl! Not ever!" Falling to a fresh wave of sobs, she let Meryl pull her back to her shoulder and wrapped her arms around her again.

The upstairs toilet flushed, and Meryl could hear Christian turn on the faucet to wash his face. A few minutes later he came down the stairs, his hair dripping wet, and he stopped a few steps below them to lean against the wall. Meryl watched him over Millie's shoulder a moment as he stood there quietly, staring vacantly into the kitchen. He took a deep breath and slowly let it out. "I've never," he stopped and cleared his throat. "I saw the man enter your house as I was walking home, but I didn't think much of it until I heard the gunshots."

He took another deep breath and closed his eyes. "So stupid. If I hadn't been drinking tonight, I would have known something was wrong right from the start. It was only a few drinks, but," He shook his head. "Either way, I was too late. By time I got here, Millie was halfway to the stairs with her stun-gun. Seeing that she was fine, I pushed her back as I didn't want anything to happen to her or the baby, and ran upstairs. Seeing both Vash and your guest lying on the floor, I guess I panicked, and I just-" He slowly lifted his arm, shaping his hand into a gun, shot an imaginary bullet over the railing and into the wall.

No one had anything more to say after he finished, and silence took this to its advantage, wrapping itself confidently around them.

Noticing it for the first time since she entered the house, Meryl looked at the derringer in her hand where it rested on Millie's trembling shoulder. With a sudden wave of revulsion, she threw it away from her with a cry and watched as it landed at the bottom of the stairs. Startled, Christian's eyes came back into focus and he looked down at it as well.

Footsteps stomped across the front porch, squeaking the loose board, and Sheriff Gongora came bursting in the door looking rumpled and half put together as if someone had just woken him. Taking in the three on the stairway, he frowned. "What's going on? What happened?"

With his face and eyes still vacant, Christian pointed silently up stairs to the room, and stepped aside to let the sheriff pass.