Chapter Eleven: Violet Grey

"Vash."
Vash opened his eyes. He sat up, and saw the blue around him, streaked with white. Rose petals whirled about the sky.
"Here, Vash. I'm over here."
The voice that had called him seemed distant. He looked up and saw her in the distance.
Her back was to him, and he could not see her face.
Her laugh echoed around.
Vash got up, and began to walk towards her. She laughed again, her back still to him.
Her laugh was sad.
He wanted to run, but he couldn't; something kept him back.
"Vash?"
"Yes?"
He said, finding each step he was taking increasingly difficult.
Her voice turned anxious.
"Vash, please, hurry..."
"I'm trying."
He gasped.
"Please, hurry... for if you're too late, you'll never get it back."
Her voice turned desperate as he tried to hurry, but just slogged towards her.
"Oh please, Vash. Promise me. Promise me you won't be afraid."
"Afraid of what?"
He asked, feeling as though he was running through water.
"You're more afraid than she is."
The rose petals ceased. The sky became perfectly clear. Vash stumbled as the invisible force that had been pushing him back stopped suddenly.
He was panting from just the effort of coming up till here.
He couldn't touch her, though. He stretched his arm out as far as it would go, but it wasn't far enough.
She turned around.
Violet grey eyes looked back at him.
Her laugh echoed, but it was a much more different laugh than the first.
She extended a hand, exposing a vertical scar at the back of it.
Their fingertips were millimeters from touching.
His eyes widened.
It was Meryl.

"HUH?!!"
An extremely confused Vash bolted upright from his sleep, waking up Wolfwood who was on the bed across him.
"Whasth wr-wr-wrong?"
Wolfwood asked sleepily, yawning. Vash blinked.
"Sorry. Nightmare. Go back to sleep."
"You sound wide-awake. What did you dream about?"
Wolfwood sounded much more alive now, although he still sounded a little tired.
"Just something weird."
Wolfwood rubbed the sleep out of his eyes as he spoke.
"I get that all the time. Need the confessional?"
Vash got out of bed to stretch.
"Nah, it's okay. Hey, did you get any eggs yesterday?"
"Yeah. Look on the table."
He laughed.
"Why do you suddenly feel like eating eggs?"
Vash went over to the table and got out an egg, then went to the cabinet and pulled out a frying pan.
"Where'd the frying pan come from?"
Wolfwood asked.
"The inn provides."
But he didn't go to the stove to cook it, he went to a more wider space near the foot of the bed, and set the frying pan onto the floor.
"What the hell are you doing?"
"In case I fail."
And so Vash began his daily routine training system. He balanced the egg onto his gun, and swiftly removed the gun, then flitted it back into position. The egg stayed in the same spot in the air as Vash continually balanced the egg perfectly but also kept it there while moving his gun away and back.
"Wow."
said Wolfwood, but Vash was now thinking of other things.
First he tried to forget the dream, but found that he kept thinking of it.
So he tried to understand the dream.
What had happened in it?
She had laughed, but it had sounded so sad.
So he'd tried to go to her.
But it'd been difficult, he recalled.
And then she told him to hurry...
Or else... he'd lose something forever? Was it?
Then the rose petals stopped.
And he was reaching out for her, but when she'd turned around...
It wasn't her anymore.
Violet grey...
It'd been--
"Watch it Tongari!"
"Ahck!!"'
Splat.
"Whoops."
"At least you didn't miss the pan."

He ran a hand through his hair, grinning manically.
"It happens today, Vash the Stampede."
He pointed a finger to a small, short-haired girl by the window of room 204.
"She goes, today."
He pulled an imaginary trigger.
"Bang!"
He laughed out loud.
"Sorry, Vash the Stampede. When I get over-excited, I don't act like my usual self."
He stood up.
It would soon be time.