Part six

If you had asked Meryl if she was worried, she would have flat-out denied it. Millie had, in fact, asked several times, and still got the same outraged answer every time: no, of course not, she wasn't worried about that big overgrown jerk. Quit asking.

Millie knew her partner doth protested too much but was too polite to point it out.

Meryl just tried to convince herself that the real reason she couldn't sleep was she had a great deal of paperwork she needed to catch up on. It had absolutely nothing to do with Vash the Stampede being out in the middle of the night, looking for something that might well have been able to kill even him.

And it was only curiosity that made her knock on his door when she heard him come back in. "Vash, it's me."

"Come in."

She stuck her head inside. "Find anything?"

He frowned as she closed the door behind her, fingers carefully unbuttoning his coat. "Uh…I'm not sure."

She sighed as she sat at one of the small, breakfast chairs, noticing his face seemed a little swollen. Another fight? "I told you it wasn't a very good plan."

"No, but…" he trailed off, a faraway look on his face. He stared into space so long, Meryl wondered if he had fallen asleep with his eyes open.

"But?"

"Huh? Oh." His cheeks colored slightly. "But I dunno. There was a weird girl out there tonight."

"Define weird."

"Young, blonde. A teenager. Pretty, though."

"So we've established you'd like to cradle rob her. And?" Honestly, he just never got to the important stuff.

"Uh, well," he reached into his coat pocket and withdrew a shaft of wood. He handed it to her and she studied it curiously. "She was carrying this around."

"Just randomly?"

"No, she threw it at me."

"Threw it?"

"Yeah." He mimed the movement, making it look like a knife throw. "I think she wanted to kill me."

"Half the population on this planet wants to kill you," Meryl rolled her eyes. "But why would she use a stick to do it?"

"I don't know."

"Then why was she fighting you in the first place?"

"I don't know." There was a slight hesitation before he answered; he thought he knew but didn't want to tell her. More secrets that she needed a lot more time and a lot more sleep to wrangle out of him. She let it slide for now.

"Do you think she killed all those people?"

This time it was a genuine pause, his eyes going distant as he thought about the question. "I don't think so. She was…I don't know."

Meryl sighed and rubbed tired eyes. "You don't know an awful lot, do you?"

"She was young," he repeated. "She was…too young. She shouldn't be fighting now." His eyes were going distant again.

"O-kaaay," she nodded. "I don't think we're going to get much further right now."

He blinked. "What?"

"Right, I'm going to bed," she announced brusquely. "You're going to bed. We'll try again tomorrow."

"Tomorrow, sure."

"Right, good night." She marched to the door.

"Good night." It was soft, distant. He was already falling asleep. She stepped quietly into the hall and shut the door behind her.

It was only as she was climbing into bed, Millie snoring softly across the room, that she realized she hadn't even asked if he had been all right.

Conflicting emotions troubling her, she didn't fall asleep for quite some time.

End part six