A/N: WOW! I'm really surprised at the response to the first chapter. People actually seem to like this. Amazing. Lol. Big BIG thanks to those of you who reviewed. Keep it up! *wink wink, nudge nudge* Anyway, this chapter has some romantic elements because, try as I might, I can't help putting it in. *sigh* I've talked enough: on with the second chapter!

Disclaimer: I don't own anything. If I owned my own Trigun DVD's I'd be happy. Sadly enough, even those belong to someone else. U_U I am so alone.

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Chap 2

Rem could hear the birds outside her window chirping happily as the sun rose slowly above the trees that surrounded her home for as long as she could remember. She squinted her eyes as the first rays of light streamed down upon her face and rolled over, trying to fight off waking up before her mother came in to wake her up. As if on cue, she heard the sounds of footsteps making their way up the stairs towards her small room. These weren't her mother's light steps though, they were heavier, which either meant that her father was up already or….

"Nick's here," Rem said happily, snuggling into her warm comforter and closing her eyes, trying to look as if she was still asleep. It was a game that she and her friend had played for years. Every time he came up to wake her, she would do her best to act as if she wasn't aware of his attempts to rouse her. He would laugh and sit on her and tickle her or whatever other torture he had thought up that week and she would lie as still as she could, trying not to laugh. This game would continue until she either laughed and sat up, or he gave up and told her that his mother had brought a large box of donuts, as was Milly's costume every Saturday.

This morning she stifled a giggle as she heard Nick open the door and walk in, not even bothering to knock. He laughed, a good-humored deep sound that filled the small room. She could feel her bed dip beneath his weight as he sat down at her side, where room allowed. "Good-morning, Sleeping Beauty. It's time to wake up and greet the world!" His voice was of a medium pitch, a little deeper than most other men his age. She had once heard her mother telling Milly that Nick both looked and sounded like his father, though she herself had no idea what Nicholas's father was like.

"Bugger off," she said, still keeping her eyes closed and playing along with the game, as was expected.

"Come now, Sleeping Beauty!" the older boy said. She felt his hand slip around her side as he turned her over flat on her back. "You don't want me to wake you in classic fairy-tale fashion, do you?"

Rem felt a blush beginning to creep across her features at the very thought. She did have feelings for her friend, though it was something she would never admit to herself, but she was never sure where his feelings for her lie. One minute he would be flirting shamelessly with the serving girl at the bar, the next, he would be holding her hand and pondering the meaning of life with her beneath the stars. She thought it better to not tell him how she felt, if only to protect what frail relationship they held.

"You wouldn't," she mumbled, ready to end the game and give up this morning. She couldn't always win.

So, her brain didn't register what he was doing quite fast enough as he leaned over and brushed his lips lightly against hers. Her eyes shot open in shock and met with his light blue ones, the same color as his mother's, full of mirth. "I'm awake!" she squeaked, forgetting that they were supposed to be playing a game, that they had played this same game almost three times a week since as long as she could remember. She forgot that this was her best friend since childhood. Instead, she was looking into the laughing eyes of a very attractive man who had just kissed her.

She swung her legs around and nearly jumped out of bed. Spinning on him, she waved her finger in his face, covering her shock with anger, a trait she had inherited from her mother. "What do you think you're doing?!" She questioned, her brows knit together in a look that she hoped didn't betray her inner twelve-year-old who was jumping up and down for joy. "What if one of our parents saw you pulling off such a stunt?!"

He smirked, leaning back on her bed. "Go get dressed, Rem. My mom brought donuts and if you don't hurry, your father is going to eat them all."

Rem huffed as she grabbed her clothes off the chair beside her bed where she laid them out each night and hurried into her small bathroom, her face bright red. Once the door was shut she sighed and slid down the wood surface to sit on the cool floor. "What nerve!" she mumbled quietly, afraid he would hear her as she stood up and began to remove her pajamas. "I can't believe he would pull something like that!" She threw her pj's into the basket where she kept all her dirty clothes and yanked her shirt out from under her pants.

Today, she had picked out one of her favorite shirts, a bright red shirt with long sleeves and a high neck. It fit her snugly, showing off her shapely figure but not making her look too catty. Her pants were a simple pair of jeans, her preferred clothing when it came to covering her legs.

Grabbing a red hair tie from her sink to match her shirt, she pulled her light-blonde hair up in a high ponytail to keep it out of her eyes. She had found that her hair color was something that other's envied at times; a platinum blonde rarely seen on someone over the age of three. It fit her just right, long, almost reaching the small of her back, and straight. Even in a ponytail it hung down between her shoulder blades, brushing against her back with every step.

She made her way downstairs, humming to herself, her mind still on Nicholas' actions a few moments before. "Hello, everyone," she greeted as she walked into the small kitchen of the Saverem household. Nick was no where is site, which was probably for the best at the moment. Her father, mother, and "Aunt" Milly were all sitting at the old wooden table around a large box of donuts and chatting happily. Actually, her mother and Milly were chatting while Vash stuffed his mouth with pastries. "Dad!" Rem exclaimed, horrified at the thought of her father eating all the donuts as Nick had predicted, "leave some for me!"

She sat down next to the happily munching outlaw and reached into the box, pulling out five donuts for herself and setting them on her left side, as far away from her donut-hoarding father as possible. Unlike him, she ate at a normal speed, savoring every bite of the delicious confections.

"So, as I was saying," Meryl was speaking to Milly, ignoring her husband and daughter, "next Monday we need to go shopping for-"

"My birthday party!" Rem exclaimed, interrupting her mother.

"Dear, don't talk with your mouth full," Meryl reminded, knowing it was no use. "But, yes," she continued, "we need to pick up some ingredients from the store for Rem's cake and decorations as well." Rem beamed happily and picked up her third donut. Her birthday was something that she both looked forward too and dreaded every year it rolled around, though she never confided this to anyone. Her birthday meant that she was another year older, but it was a year wasted.

"How old will you be this year?" Milly asked, as she did every year, as if she had forgotten, which, knowing Milly, could have very well been the case.

Rem smiled warmly, though no one at the table saw the pain hidden behind her happy smile. "I'll be fifteen, Aunt Milly." She didn't look fifteen, though, nor did she feel it. She had both appeared and acted around twenty since she was seven. Childhood, those happy days where she was too naïve to worry about her "fast metabolism" had only lasted until she was around five. Puberty had been a joke, starting around age six and ending by her seventh birthday. Since the end of those embarrassing ten months of growth spurts and pimples, she had changed very little outwardly, but inside, she had felt the differences.

Though her body was trapped in a limbo of sorts, her mind and soul had begun to expand very rapidly since she had stopped her physical growth. She soaked up books of philosophy like they were children's stories. She became more physically agile until her movements were more like that of liquid than of a human being. Her soul hardened as she watched those around her age, a few gray hairs and wrinkles from her mother, Nick's voice deepening and cracking at unexpected moments whilst she teased him about it. She knew she was different, that there was something wrong with her. She saw it in her mother's eyes when she looked at her, heard it in her father's voice when he spoke to her of love and peaceful days.

"I really can't wait for my birthday!" she said happily, munching on another donut and resting her chin on her palm. "It's always fun to have a party here on the grove! Hopefully, we won't have any mishaps like last year." She eyed her father teasingly as he lunged for the last donut.

Vash laughed nervously. "Meryl, you looked really good in that cake, though!" The year before, Meryl had baked an enormous cake for Rem's fourteenth birthday. Vash had been carrying it outside and having a hard time seeing around it, when Meryl had entered the kitchen door as he was leaving it.

Meryl groaned. "Don't remind me!" Everyone laughed, including Meryl, at the memory. "I don't think I'll bake the cake quite so big this year. Or, at least, I won't have any needle-noggined husbands carry it!"

"Hey," Vash said defensively, "I was really sorry. Besides, maybe if you would have made it sturdier in the first place…"

Rem laughed at her parents' behavior, knowing full well that they were only teasing one another, as they often did. "Well, I'm going to go tend to my garden. The flowers still need watered and such."

She excused herself and made her way out into the bright morning sun, closing her eyes and soaking in the sun's rays for a few moments before heading in the direction of her area of the geo-plant.

When she had started to express an interest in the plants themselves, her parents had gladly set a piece of the geo-plant for her use. She grew quite a few varieties of foods there, including beans and tomatoes, as well as flowers. She enjoyed the feeling of the dirt between her fingers and the pride of watching something that she herself had sown grow and prosper. When she was in her garden, she felt completely at ease with the world. It was place where she didn't have to sorry about her abnormalities, the people who started fights and shot one another in the nearby town, or the world at all. It was her private place, her Eden.

"Hello, everyone!" She gave the plants the same greeting that she gave her parents and Milly that morning. Anyone who watched her garden would swear that she was tending to children rather than plants as she hummed and spoke to them as if they were brethren. "I see that everyone is growing quite nicely, especially considering the weather we've been having. Particularly dry summer, isn't it?" She sighed and sat down among the white gerber and red rhododendrons that she grew, her favorites of the many species of flower on the geo-plant.

"Isn't it odd," she mused to them, running her fingers through the petals of the small white flowers near her. "I can't chose which between you two." She gestured to the two different plants that she sat near. "If I remember correctly, white gerber is…" she trailed off for a moment trying to recall the hundreds of meanings that flowers could have, "truth and innocence. And rhododendron is dangerous." She sighed and lay back, immersing herself in the scents of her garden, the flowers tickling against her skin.

"What are you doing?" Her eyes shot open to find Nick watching her curiously from the edge of her garden. "Your mum said you were tending to the flowers, not sleeping in them."

"I was experiencing a moment of Zen," she told him, standing up and brushing herself off. A few petals fell to the ground from her, back to the earth from whence they had come. "But you had to come and ruin it for me. I will never reach self-actualization with you always barging in on my meditations."

He laughed and held out a hand for her to balance herself on as she tiptoed her way out of the garden, careful not to tread on anything. "Well, I'm very sorry for that," he said as she finally made her way out of the plants that she cared to.

"You should be," she informed him and readied herself to go back inside the house, which was probably why Nick had come out to find her in the first place.

His voice stopped her however. "Hey, Rem." He sounded unsure and confused, which were two emotions she very rarely heard from her older friend.

"Yes?" She turned around to see him looking at the garden in a peculiar way. She walked over to where he was standing and looked down. In the exact place where she had been laying, the flowers had all grown nearly two inches above their fellows.

Nick looked at her, his eyes wide. "Are you sure all you were doing was meditating?"

A/N: I don't think I need to say it: Review PLEASE! ^_^