Bit short, but this took me 4 hours to write as it is.

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Mark didn't really want to sit and talk over what had made her so upset. It was beyond the merely obvious that she loved Knives. Her eyes sparkled when she saw him, thought of him, was near him. There was a glow about her when she was close to him that she never had when she was with him, and he realized what she had been saying the past few years wasn't a lie to save his feelings. She was waiting for someone, someone special to her.

She truly was in love with Knives, and he turned around and did this to her. She waited so patiently, and he dropped her so quickly. It wasn't fair to Anne, he thought as he looked at her huddled form, arms draped around legs held close to her chest. She stared at her feet, ignoring the beauty around her. The sparkle from the morning had disappeared completely, leaving only ashes in its wake; the glimmer that lingered in her eyes long after he left her sight had dissolved in her tears. He closed his eyes and suppressed the urge to do something equally painful to the man. It wasn't that Knives could likely kill him without trouble that stopped him, but the knowledge that killing Knives would likely kill Anne as well that did the trick. He couldn't hurt her. He admitted that now. Seeing her in pain twisted something inside him, that part of his heart that she had claimed over the past couple years. Plant or not, she was still Anne.

Instead of thinking about the problem, he looked about him at the beauty that his friend had created. The colors, the various shades of greens, the explosions of colors and scents that assaulted his eyes were a balm to his soul. It was as if someone had taken all the parks, all the gardens, and all the window boxes in December and crammed them in one place.

He took a deep breath, loving the flavor of the air. It was clean, clean in a way that city air could never be, but fresh in a way that the desert air rarely was. The rock spires that surrounded them were coated with vines and flowers, some with water sheeting and burbling down the sides. On others the vines draped around the rock in a lacy pattern, forming designs and patterns that he could sense, even if his mind could not put a name to what they formed.

The air was filled with the sounds of birds, their songs echoing in the air. Sweet twitters and chips came from secluded places, under hedges He saw a couple go flitting by, playing in the air, flying high, then low, the swooping over the surface of the water before alighting in the protective cover of one of the spires. Bugs buzzed lazily by, going from flower to flower in a slow dance.

He breathed in again, feeling the weight of the air in the back of his throat. Scents were layered so richly that he could nearly taste them. Herbs and flowers, scents deep and light, breathy and cloying, all mixed together with the rich scents of loam and grass.

"This place is amazing," he said quietly after she had a bit on time to compose herself.

"It's nothing much, really. I want it bigger."

"Bigger? This place is huge!"

"To you, maybe. But I'm used to a planet that looks like this. I'm tired of seeing desert all the time. Someday, I want to make more than a garden. I want a forest."

"And then you'll be rich."

"Huh?"

"With the price of wood? You would be rich if you owned a forest."

"But… then I would have to cut it down. I want a real forest, not a bunch of logs hat were once alive."

He shook his head slowly, dazzled by the thought of how much a forest would be worth. "You would have a serious problem with poachers," he cautioned. "I'm a bit surprised that this place is untouched."

"It's nowhere near a road, not on the way to anywhere, and the profile of the land is a little lower than the surrounding area. There's no one coming by to see, and it's below the horizon even if they were close enough to notice. Why, are you planning on coming by with an axe someday?"

"No. No, never. But not everyone is as principled as I am."

"Well, outside of me, you're the only other person who has been here. I think it's still safe." She thought for a moment. "And if it does get destroyed, I can always try again."

"Until that one is found."

She sighed. "I can only do what I can. One of my goals is to make this planet into a biosphere more amicable to human life, but it's going to take me awhile. You know, it's kind of funny, but me, Vash, Knives, we all want to do things that make things grow. Vash had his tree farm, I have my little garden, and Knives would like to pursue viniculture. Funny, plants liking plants. I tried to find out if that was one of the things bred into us, but I couldn't find any conclusive evidence. Too many years passed, too many files lost in the fall. But that would be ironic, wouldn't it?" She sighed, then returned to her brooding.