Jessica scuffed at the carpet on the floor of her room and fumed a little inwardly. It was all set to be the perfect day, well perhaps not perfect, but better than the days she'd had in a while. Better that the days since Brad had-
:We were only friends,: she thought hard at herself, irritatedly.
She pushed away the thoughts of all of the times when she'd been sent to her room as a punishment for some outrageous stunt she and her coterie had pulled off on the ship he'd snuck around on a secret passage on the outer ledge of the ship (despite the fact that this was dangerous and against the rules) to come and bring her extra food and treats to cheer her up. Or when she'd been given extra chores around the ship for some stupid minor infraction against the rules he'd just shown up and started helping her with them, even after she'd pointedly told him she wasn't interested in having his company and he should just leave.
"Now what kind of a man would I be if I let my girl do all the work without help?" he'd always ask with that stupid smile of his and start in letting her direct him, never complaining when she was harsh or shrewish with him. And when she'd grumble out a grudging thank-you he'd look like she'd handed him the world. Guilt twisted up inside of her again and she pushed that away.
She was in love with Vash, Brad knew that for she'd told him often enough. It wasn't her fault! What he chose to do with his life wasn't her fault! It had nothing to do with her that the man who'd loved her more than anything had sacrificed himself to save the man she loved just because he knew she'd be sad if Vash got hurt.
:I-I love Vash,: she said unsteadily to herself.
It wasn't fair that her traitorous heart kept reminding her that whenever Brad was around, stupid and annoying as he was, she'd always felt safe. There was no point in being sad about it now, no point in thinking about all they might have been. Brad was dead and that was the end of it. She would fare better to concentrate her energy on someone who was alive and who would one day love her back. She'd loved him all of her life, there was no-one who had loved Vash more than she, it just wasn't possible that he should love someone else.
:But this Meryl...: Jessica wondered to herself irritatedly.
Jessica had made certain to look extra nice for thier little outing, wearing the green and white jumper with the matching mantle that brought out her eyes and highlighted the creamy pale texture of her skin, flattered her figure and made her legs look longer and shapelier. He hadn't even noticed! All he'd said when she'd shown of for breakfast, posing and preening a little in the doorway for best effect was "oh good, you're ready." And she'd made sure to pack all of his favorite foods for their picnic lunch together. Not only had they spent the better part of the day underground (in bad lighting no less!) but he'd been reluctant to stop and actually eat the little feast she'd prepared and lugged around for him. All day long he'd been quiet and taciturn with those damned yellow sunglasses on, every time he'd tried to draw him out into conversation she'd gotten either monosyllabic or short replies, his mind clearly elsewhere. Milly had told her that they were on this quest to gather up those stupid stones so that Vash could rescue someone his brother had made off with.
Jessica partly wished that Vash's brother would have kidnapped her so that he would be as distracted for worry about her as he seemed to be for that Meryl woman. Oh she knew it was a stupid thing to wish, from the snippets of eavesdropped conversations she'd heard and that mess with that puppetmaster last year she had gathered that Knives was not a very nice person. But still, she just wanted him to pay attention to her, to look her way and not be thinking of someone else, was that too much to ask?
:I wonder what she's like?: Jessica fretted to herself.
By all accounts Vash liked big, buxom women with large... um fronts and cute faces. She'd heard that he was something of a flirt down on the surface, but Jessica hadn't worried about it then, he was certain to come to realize how deeply she loved him and see the good things that awaited him in the home she would make safe for him far away from his troubles.
:She must be pretty, to have caught his eye,: she fretted again, pacing a hole in the floor.
Her minds eye created the image of a veritable goddess, tall and beautiful with perfect curves, narrow waist and curvacious hips and large bust, beautiful skin, long perfect hair falling in waves to her waist (Vash like women with long hair) an alluring gaze with an expression of saintly kindness on her face. And she was probably a saint among women, kind and sweet and elegant because nothing less than the best would do for Vash.
Jessica sighed gustily, she wasn't bad looking and she'd often been told how sweet she was, but she was no saint, in fact there had been more than one occasion when she'd left Brad offer himself up to take the heat for something she'd done, knowing that he did it because he cared about her and didn't want to see her sad. No, she was no saint among women, but she could be a good wife. Cook and clean and raise kids and... other things that went on among a husband and wife. Jessica felt a happy blush crawl up into her cheeks at the thought, her heart giving its usual flutter of happiness at the idea of the life she was going to have with him someday.
:I have to figure out a way to get his thoughts away from her and on me,: Jessica thought a little desperately.
Once she and Vash were married everything would be perfect, she'd no longer feel this sorrow because she'd be with the only man she'd ever loved and he would keep her perfectly happy. She just knew it.
After Remembrance and Angelina had gotten out of the bath, Meryl had eagerly claimed it for herself. She smelled like a tomas and she was sweaty and itchy, neither of those were states that made her very happy to be in. She'd descended on the hip-bath for cleaning herself off in (preparatory to a soak in the larger tub) with a feeling akin to hunger and immediately started scrubbing. Three blissful encounters with soapy water and a rough cloth later, Meryl was almost satisfied that she'd managed to scour off the dirt that seemed to have embedded itself into her skin (especially along the folds and wrinkles of her skin, in places she sweated the worst it had turned to some kind of dried cracked mud). Having taken the upper layer of her skin off and turned the resulting layer pink, Meryl switched to the waiting full-bath for a good long soak and couldn't contain the noise of pure bliss she'd felt at full-body contact with the hot steaming wonderful goodness that was a real bath.
She was aching in places she hadn't realized she could be sore, her back ached from carrying the heavy burden of her pack, her shoulders, her feet and calves and thighs good lord! Even her abdomen and arms... she'd been doing a lot more physical activity than even she was used to and she considered herself pretty active (maybe not as active as Vash, but who was?) but she was really sore and tired from this grueling hellish hike. her left hand still hurt as well, a dull throbbing burning ache that pulsed with fire at every beat of her heart. She was still afraid to look at what was under the frayed white gauze bandage.
:I'm so tired, i just want to go home,: Meryl thought longingly. Then frowned, her mind stumbling across something.
:Huh. Where is home?: she wondered at herself.
She hadn't been "Home" where her aunt and uncle had raised her since she'd gotten into college, even then on her short visits there was never a feeling of hominess about that place. it was like one of those model homes that people had to display thier wealth and status and you were never allowed to touch anything, there was not a junk drawer in the kitchen nor was there a hobby shack in the garage. She didn't think of that place as her home, just as a place where she had sometimes lived when she wasn't in boarding school. She had a modest little house in December where she had lived after taking the job at Bernardelli's. It was filled with all of her things, momentos from her travels, the desk and file cabinet neatly organized, everything to her taste, but she had been away from it more than she'd actually lived in it. Her mind had been circling round it and at last reluctantly came to rest on the thought that her home wasn't a place per say, the place she felt most at home in was with her friends. True, it was a heck of a job keeping things in line and manageable but Meryl liked being around them, Milly with her quiet strength and unexpected wisdom, she even sometimes appreciated Vash's craziness. Sometimes. And that was all. Really.
:Heh, if that's home to me then I'm definitely not going to be having a rest anytime soon,: she thought humorously to herself.
It was a dry humor though, she knew that trouble was following Vash. that same trouble had sort of resulted in her kidnapping but Meryl had no regrets about it (even if she was missing a finger and it hurt abominably). If it hadn't been her that was taken, it would have been Milly and the thought of Milly being hurt was just not to be borne. Milly was her best friend as well as her junior partner and if Meryl had ever had a little sister she wanted her to be just like Milly so Meryl was as protective of her as she was of her own family. Aside of that, if Meryl hadn't been taken, she wouldn't have wound up on the train with the pacifist twit and the angel, and more importantly and she wouldn't have found out what had happened to her brother.
:And I wouldn't now be arming myself to walk into the dragons maw to go and rescue him,: she thought.
Hard on the heels of that thought was the most recent strangeness to come over her, while she'd been quietly working away on her new project waiting for the bath to clear out she'd gotten that burning sensation along her skin again. She'd been all the way across the room from the fire she'd summoned up as a trial so she knew it hadn't been that.
Meryl took in a deep breath, steeling herself. She'd been putting this off, saying she just didn't have a quiet moment to herself to examine it more closely but the truth of the matter was that the strange things was unnerving and frightening to her. She didn't know what was happening to her own body and that scared her in her bones. But she wasn't going to run anymore.
She'd gotten another of those sharp burning sensations crawling along her skin like the feeling of a current of water when Meryl pushed it over her skin, invisible and barely tangible but in this case quite painful and unexplicable.
:Okay, you can do this, just look down.:
Meryl steeled herself once again closed her eyes, tilted her head downward, and mentally prepared herself for whatever horrible sight awaited her. It had felt like a burning brand on her stomach so reason stood that it might not look very pretty. Then she opened her eyes and forced herself to look at her belly. For a long moment she blinked, frowning.
Well it wasn't horrible. it was strange, but not horrible.
Centered around her navel was a spiraling, twisting knotwork of lines and bursts curling across her skin like little dragons in a spiderweb of lines too intericate for her to follow with her eye. She could get the general pattern of the main lines but the smaller lines, fine as a cobweb were too detailed to follow easily. The lines twisted and spiraled up in a never-ceasing knotwork out from her belly, down towards her thighs and up to the first rib of her chest, fading there like they were somehow unfinished. The oddest thing about this new inexplicable tattoo was that it didn't seem to be made of ink; the delicate filigree lines were composed of something that looked like liquid quicksilver running over her skin. It was like someone had taken the purest of silver, the kind that shines white in the sunlight, and splashed it in shimmering patterns, glistening like water droplets, on her body. The lines moved with the play of muscles and flesh as easily as her own skin. They felt neither hot nor cold, not hard or soft, they just felt like a regular part of her skin, yet when she waved her hand in front of the design it reflected a blob of flesh-color like a wavy silver mirror. Meryl tried scrubbing at it and the flesh beneath the marks went pink gradually but the marks remained unchanged.
:I'm officially creeped out,: she thought to herself.
She knew that the design, whatever it was and however the hell it had gotten there, hadn't been so large at first. The first time she'd felt it it had just been a small pattern around her navel. The second time she'd felt that burn on her flesh the strange patterns had expanded outward and now it seemed for the third time that it was getting even bigger.
:So, what's causing it?: Meryl wondered to herself.
She thought about what she was doing each separate incident that the strange expanding tattoo had burned its way onto her flesh and nothing noteworthy came to mind.
:Maybe I was right the first time and this is just a side-effect of me using that weird ability I have now,: she thought.
If so, perhaps the more she used it the bigger the tatoo would get.
:If that's the case, then what happens when it expands all over me?: she wondered, feeling fearful and aprehensive.
Would it kill her? What would it do to her? What was it? And why was this happeneing to her?
:If my brother weren't in such serious trouble I'd go and see a doctor about this,: meryl thought to herself.
She doubted somehow that a doctor might be able to tell her what the hell was going on.
:Well, there is one person who might be able to tell me,: Meryl thought reluctantly.
Part of her was happy in her ignorance, the less she knew about the weird shit her family was supposedly into, the less it was actually a part of her life. Well, whether she liked it or not, it was a part of her life now, and in this instance ignorance might actually kill her.
:Besides, I've always thought that the person who coined the term ignorance is bliss must have died a really horrible death with a very surprised look on his face.:
Only a quick edit this time, I'm so darned busy its ridiculous. I recall vaguely that someone sent me a reveiw saying they wanted to beta for me. That's great I'd really appreciate the help! Shoot me a PM and I'll doc x you the next few chapters. Thanks a bunch. And to all the rest of you loyal reveiwers, you guys own my soul. Thanks for the encouragememnt.
Oh, and is it just me or is this fic missing the chapter with the part in it where Meryl actually builds the little underground lair they are escaping from the storm in? I can't recall if I posted it or missed it.