Dark: MIA again! Whohoo for exams! Darn them all! Burn them all! Yeah, I'm kinda mad... Like I said, I lack time. A lot.

Enjoy. And please don't forget to review!

"…" is speech.

Italics is thoughts.

: … : is telepathic speaking.


Key-word: Poet.
Rating: T
Genre: Drama.
Pairing(s): None.
Verse: Manga.
Warnings: Some spoilers. Beware.
Summary: Wanderings. Simple wonderings. And simple rumours told over a millennia ago. Or are they?


ºººººº Third Time's the Charm ºººººº

Back in the sixteenth century, still back on Earth, a time when poetry was finally starting to bloom worldwide after the Greek glory of the eighth century, with Homer, there were three fatalities considered obvious to happen to great men.

And History, many, many times has a knack for repeating itself for some reason or another.

Great poets had a tendency to fall prey to money, love and bad luck.

And truly, despite the centuries that passed since that time so damn long ago, a time no one in Gunsmoke had any information about if one even cared to notice, without counting with a certain prodigy-who-was-actually-more-than-just-half-mad, one Vash the Stampede fitted the profile of those little, seemingly innocent fatalities stated above exactly.

(One just had to ignore the fact that "poet" should be substituted by "gunslinger". Or "outlaw". Or "plant". Synonyms, right? Right.)

Indeed, money was a backstabbing close friend of his. Vash needed it; everyone did. He needed it to buy necessities, namely food, bullets whenever they lacked and of course, hair gel. But a man walking around with a goddamned multimillionaire bounty on his head worth sixty billions no more no less, was dangerous if one happened to have distinguishing features. Such as his. Spiky blond hair? Unusual, unique teal coloured eyes? Big, bad red duster, as bright as possible? Ignoring him was what was hard.

Love was mostly the same, but not in the sense the word truly means, not the way said gunman meant it when he shouted it to whoever listened. Just… Love relative to the opposite sex, not his side of the coin.

(Could he consider the women he flirted with? Well, he could, just for the brief moment before they slapped him anyways…)

Before he met his insurance girls, it didn't actually matter, nor did it manifest. Really, he was fine with his attempts at flirting that he knew would fail and women either running and/or hitting him for it.

But then, Meryl came. And that view changed radically.

He started to mind the way she got angry at him, look forward to the way she sometimes (unconsciously) fussed over a wound he received, smile when she allowed a true smile of her own to curl her bow shaped lips, keep his eyes stubbornly down when feeling the gentle weight of her twilight-coloured glance on his frame.

Because he knew it could never happen. Not like this, not between them. Not only because they belonged to different species, because their life spans were completely different. But because their priorities were different. Because Knives was nevertheless his priority and would always be, with the way he was reaching out to their sisters and absorbing them with no regards to stop the growth of the black hair, thus pausing the process of decay they were both going through.

So really, he was back to the beginning. But worse, now that he knew the nature of Meryl's feelings for him.

Bad luck… was a given. For some reason, it made its personal and very serious obsession to chase him down relentlessly while Lady Luck rejoiced on simply ignoring him and his pleas.

But those three fatalities weren't all, of course.

One has to take into account the mistakes, all of them, which he made along his long life. With Knives… putting countless people's lives in danger by simply meeting them… lowering his guard for a sheer moment…

Vash truly should know better, shouldn't put his hopes too high.

That was the way his life had been, is and will be.

The life of a hero for a few… the life of Diablo for most.

Owari


Vocabulary:
Owari:
The end.