Meryl awoke from pleasant dreams into a reality which was somewhat
dreamlike in itself. Suddenly, she sat up straight in bed and clutched the
blankets to her chest.
What if it had been a dream?
Last night had certainly been weird enough for one. What if she had just gone home after going to Millie's and fallen asleep thinking of him? What if she had just imagined it all? Or worse, what if she hadn't, but he was gone anyway? What if he had taken his chance in the early dawn light to sneak away, leaving her with only memories again?
She jumped from her bed in a rush and headed for the door between the rooms, desperate to see whether his lanky form was still draped over her living room sofa.. Halfway there she stopped herself short. She was still in her pajamas. Barefoot and with tousled hair, she had rushed off half cocked.
'You can't go out there looking like this! What if he's still here? '
'What if he's not?'
What followed was a succession of starts and stops as Meryl's desire to find out whether everything she seemed to remember from the night before was real battled with her sensibilities. Finally, she compromised. Running her hands through her hair to smooth out the worst of the snarls, she held her head high and placed her hand courageously upon the doorknob. Opening the door slowly, she peaked at the couch.
It was empty. Meryl's heart fell. Despondent, she let the door swing the rest of the way open.
"Good morning!"
Startled, Meryl turned towards the kitchen, and felt her jaw drop. There he stood. He had stripped down to just a white button down shirt and pants. He was brandishing a frying pan in one hand and a full pot of coffee in the other. He held the coffee pot dangling from one finger like the butt of a pistol. His smile was so big it pulled the corners of his eyes up into a squint.
"I hope you like scrambled. I didn't know, so I guessed."
Meryl blinked in confusion.
"Huh?"
"Your eggs?" he continued, "I hope scrambled is okay."
Meryl shook her head and blinked again, as if that would make the scene before her more comprehensible. "Umm . . .yeah . scrambled's fine."
She made her way to the table and sat gingerly down upon one of the chairs. She had the strange feeling that moving without caution would cause the fragile reality she seemed to be inhabiting to shatter. There was already a stack of buttered toast sitting at her place and an opened box of donuts perched in the table's center. Meryl smiled as she realized that a two or three were already missing. "Thanks," she said somewhat belatedly, "You didn't have to make breakfast." Vash walked over to her carrying a plate of steaming food and a mug of black coffee.
"It was the least I could do after you let me stay."
He returned to the kitchen and Meryl wondered if maybe she should pinch herself. She wasn't 100% sure that she wasn't still dreaming. 'Vash the Stampede is in my kitchen making breakfast,' she thought with a wondering shake of her head. She gripped the mug. It certainly felt warm enough (could you feel heat in dreams?). She tasted it. Yep, that was coffee. A little weaker then she generally liked, but drinkable. Vash returned and sat down next to her. He started to tuck in right away and Meryl realized that she hadn't yet tasted his concoction. She watched him stuffing himself with obvious enjoyment and picked up a fork. 'Come on,' she chided herself, 'What did you think? That it'd be poisonous?' She took a bite of the eggs (they weren't bad) and set herself to finishing her breakfast.
"So," mumbled Vash through a mouthful of donut, "Didn't you say something about going to see Millie?"
Meryl's eyes widened remembering and she swallowed what she was chewing heavily. "That's right. She'll be so excited to see you. I'll have to take of work but, well, I'm due." She smiled, between breakfast and the prospect of spending the entire day with her friends, things were shaping up quite nicely. Plus, it was hard not to smile when one's meal companion was busting his cheeks with donuts and exhibiting a zeal close to religious obsession. Paused with the last of the tasty round cakes bare inches from his open maw, Vash closed his mouth and appeared to consider it with great seriousness.
"I don't want to be a bother," he said simply.
"No, really, you're not," she assured him. "Trust me, I've got lots of comp time coming and it's not as if I'm so integral to the agency that they can't survive one day without me." She smiled reassuringly at him. "Actually, I've been looking forward to taking some time off."
There was a strange look in Vash's blue-green eyes. She was always amazed at how they could change colors with his mood or the environment. For someone who made little attempt to hide his true feelings about things, they really were like portals into his soul. But she was confused by this look. She had studied him for so long, and gone over and over her memories of him during the past ten years, but she couldn't put a finger on what this look meant. If she was forced to make a guess she would have to say it was 'grateful'. But that wasn't it. Not really.
Just a moment, and then the look was gone. Lost in a reverently considered nibble of donut.
"Hey, you didn't want any of these did you?" he queried. Meryl laughed out loud for the second time in two days. She was beginning to like this.
The girl who took the call in the secretaries' pool almost keeled over in shock.
"Meryl who?!?"
"Stryfe. S-T-R-"
"That's what I thought you said, it's just."
"Just what?"
"Well . . . it's just . . . I thought that you never take time off."
Meryl rolled her eyes. "I guess there's a first time for everything."
She hung up and, standing by the phone, cocked her head to better hear what was going on in the other room. She had offered the use of her shower to her guest, who had gladly accepted the chance to wash the grime of travel off of his wearied body. She could hear him singing, now, above the sound of the streaming water. She shook her head wonderingly for what must have been the twentieth time that morning and set about choosing an outfit for the day. Normally she just put on whatever was hanging up next in her closet, but today that didn't seem like quite enough. After several minutes of deliberation she made her decision. She had been tempted for a moment to dress as she had when traveling with Millie a long time ago, she had actually loved that silly caped outfit. It was supposed to be practical, fending off the windswept dust of the desert and concealing her minor arsenal, but she had personally thought it gave her a look of distinction. She quashed that idea almost as soon as it surfaced. It was silly to think of trying to regain the past like that.
'Why so, when the past comes to visit?'
She shook her head for the twenty-first time. When Vash emerged with clean rosy cheeks, still running a towel through damp hair, she was standing pristine and unrumpled in a blue T-shirt (that she thought made her eyes stand out particularly well) and a knee length white skirt. He was wearing the same outfit that he had cooked breakfast in. The front was unbuttoned and through it she could see hints of some of the terrible scars he hid underneath. Meryl couldn't help but grimace upon seeing them. She couldn't even imagine the injuries that must have caused them. She didn't think she wanted to. Vash jauntily flipped his hair back out of his eyes and Meryl's heart caught just a little. He looked over, apparently appraising her and her choice of clothing as she had been doing his. He gave her a questioning look.
"Ready?" she asked. A smile was his only reply.
It was busier outside than it had been the night before. Cars fought for position in the middle of the street. People walked by carrying shopping bags and dragging young children by the arm. One such haggard mother passed between the two of them, her son sniffling and wiping at his nose. Vash leaned down as they passed a made a silly face at him. The kid's eyes widened with surprise, and then he burst into a smile. He stared back over his shoulder, giggling at the tall, silly, yellow-haired man, while his mother pulled him away. The two adults smiled back at him, and then turned to glance at one another. There were sharing the same lighthearted smile. Meryl turned away with a light laugh.
Some things never change.
"I know you're just going to love Millie's kids," she stated.
"Hmmm," he replied. He was walking with hands stuffed deep in the pockets of his coat and a thin smile stretched across his face, enjoying the sights and sounds of the boisterous city. The sunlight angled down between the tall buildings and she could see the blue sky framed behind his spiky hair. It was a beautiful day.
"Ah huh," she continued, "They know all about you."
"Really?" he turned to her with an interested look.
"Yep. Every time I'm over there all they want to hear are stories about outlaws and gunfighters and how their mom helped to temper the infamous humanoid typhoon." She had known that would get a rise out of him and she was not disappointed. Stopping dead in the sidewalk, he punched a pistol shaped fist into the air.
"Nonsense!" he shouted, and began waving his fist in a small circle above his head. "Ha ha! Nobody tames the . . .ah . . . umm . . ." He looked around nervously at the people passing on all sides of them. Bending down to ear level, he questioned her in semi-confidentiality. "You don't happen to know if I'm still wanted, do you?" Meryl laughed once again.
"As far as I know," she said stopping in front of a non-descript white fronted building. "But I think you're safe for today, we're here." With that she mounted the steps and knocked twice with the old rusted knocker. Within moments the sounds of a light footed stampede emanated from the other side of the door.
"I'll get it!"
"No, I'm getting it. Argh, get off me Nicky!"
The door swung inwards revealing two sets of eager brown eyes attached to two bodies still jockeying for position in front of the door. Moving as one, the eyes gave a cursory sweep over Meryl and then took in her companion. It was a long look. Their eyes started at the dust hardened leather of his tall boots and worked their way slowly up six feet of jacket to the top of his perpendicular yellow hair. Meryl observed affectionately as their mouths slid open into wide, round 'O's.
"Kids, who is it?" yelled a cheerful voice from the back of the house.
"It's Aunt Meryl and a strange man," the little girl shouted a piercing reply over her shoulder in a voice just shy of being able to break glass. Meanwhile she pulled the door wider for them to enter. Vash had to stoop a little to get through the doorway. It put him more at Meryl's level for a moment and he took the chance to tease her lightly.
"Aunt Meryl?" He raised an eyebrow at her and she rolled her eyes in reply.
"Meryl," cried Millie poking her head around the door to the kitchen, "I'm so glad you're here, I have to-" Her voice cut out in mid-sentence as she took in the scene before her. Meryl went through a mental countdown in her head as Vash raised his hand in a friendly greeting. Three. . .two. . .one.
"EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!"
A plump, yellow dress wearing cannonball flew down the hallway at the tall man, pushing him back outside onto the stoop with the force of it's attack. Meryl merely closed her eyes and hoped that he didn't crack his head open on the doorframe. When the proverbial smoke cleared, Meryl could see a very surprised looking sixty billion double dollar outlaw being squeezed to death in the grip of a somewhat overzealous Millie. Absently, she dropped a hand to Nicholas's head as he gripped her leg in fear of the horrible screeching monster his mother had suddenly become.
"Oh, Mr. Vash," Millie cried, her face still buried in his coat, "You came back." Looking desperately to Meryl for help and getting none, Vash managed with some difficulty to slip one arm out of his attacker's grip and use it to pat her gently on the shoulder.
"It's nice to see you too, Millie." Millie straightened immediately and, wiping at her eyes with a corner of her frilly blue apron, looked her old friend in the face.
"I always knew you'd come back. I always told Meryl so, you just ask her." She sniffled through the first half of her statement and said the last bit as though it were some sort of challenge. Then, as if forgetting the whole incident, she went on in her normal cheery tone. "Well, there's no use in standing out here on the porch. Come on in and make yourself at home, I've just baked some cookies." And without further ado, she turned abruptly away from him and marched back to the kitchen, pausing only to wave a brief 'Hello' to Meryl as she passed.
Looking even more confused than before, Vash blinked, shook his head, and, smiling, ducked his way back into the house.
What if it had been a dream?
Last night had certainly been weird enough for one. What if she had just gone home after going to Millie's and fallen asleep thinking of him? What if she had just imagined it all? Or worse, what if she hadn't, but he was gone anyway? What if he had taken his chance in the early dawn light to sneak away, leaving her with only memories again?
She jumped from her bed in a rush and headed for the door between the rooms, desperate to see whether his lanky form was still draped over her living room sofa.. Halfway there she stopped herself short. She was still in her pajamas. Barefoot and with tousled hair, she had rushed off half cocked.
'You can't go out there looking like this! What if he's still here? '
'What if he's not?'
What followed was a succession of starts and stops as Meryl's desire to find out whether everything she seemed to remember from the night before was real battled with her sensibilities. Finally, she compromised. Running her hands through her hair to smooth out the worst of the snarls, she held her head high and placed her hand courageously upon the doorknob. Opening the door slowly, she peaked at the couch.
It was empty. Meryl's heart fell. Despondent, she let the door swing the rest of the way open.
"Good morning!"
Startled, Meryl turned towards the kitchen, and felt her jaw drop. There he stood. He had stripped down to just a white button down shirt and pants. He was brandishing a frying pan in one hand and a full pot of coffee in the other. He held the coffee pot dangling from one finger like the butt of a pistol. His smile was so big it pulled the corners of his eyes up into a squint.
"I hope you like scrambled. I didn't know, so I guessed."
Meryl blinked in confusion.
"Huh?"
"Your eggs?" he continued, "I hope scrambled is okay."
Meryl shook her head and blinked again, as if that would make the scene before her more comprehensible. "Umm . . .yeah . scrambled's fine."
She made her way to the table and sat gingerly down upon one of the chairs. She had the strange feeling that moving without caution would cause the fragile reality she seemed to be inhabiting to shatter. There was already a stack of buttered toast sitting at her place and an opened box of donuts perched in the table's center. Meryl smiled as she realized that a two or three were already missing. "Thanks," she said somewhat belatedly, "You didn't have to make breakfast." Vash walked over to her carrying a plate of steaming food and a mug of black coffee.
"It was the least I could do after you let me stay."
He returned to the kitchen and Meryl wondered if maybe she should pinch herself. She wasn't 100% sure that she wasn't still dreaming. 'Vash the Stampede is in my kitchen making breakfast,' she thought with a wondering shake of her head. She gripped the mug. It certainly felt warm enough (could you feel heat in dreams?). She tasted it. Yep, that was coffee. A little weaker then she generally liked, but drinkable. Vash returned and sat down next to her. He started to tuck in right away and Meryl realized that she hadn't yet tasted his concoction. She watched him stuffing himself with obvious enjoyment and picked up a fork. 'Come on,' she chided herself, 'What did you think? That it'd be poisonous?' She took a bite of the eggs (they weren't bad) and set herself to finishing her breakfast.
"So," mumbled Vash through a mouthful of donut, "Didn't you say something about going to see Millie?"
Meryl's eyes widened remembering and she swallowed what she was chewing heavily. "That's right. She'll be so excited to see you. I'll have to take of work but, well, I'm due." She smiled, between breakfast and the prospect of spending the entire day with her friends, things were shaping up quite nicely. Plus, it was hard not to smile when one's meal companion was busting his cheeks with donuts and exhibiting a zeal close to religious obsession. Paused with the last of the tasty round cakes bare inches from his open maw, Vash closed his mouth and appeared to consider it with great seriousness.
"I don't want to be a bother," he said simply.
"No, really, you're not," she assured him. "Trust me, I've got lots of comp time coming and it's not as if I'm so integral to the agency that they can't survive one day without me." She smiled reassuringly at him. "Actually, I've been looking forward to taking some time off."
There was a strange look in Vash's blue-green eyes. She was always amazed at how they could change colors with his mood or the environment. For someone who made little attempt to hide his true feelings about things, they really were like portals into his soul. But she was confused by this look. She had studied him for so long, and gone over and over her memories of him during the past ten years, but she couldn't put a finger on what this look meant. If she was forced to make a guess she would have to say it was 'grateful'. But that wasn't it. Not really.
Just a moment, and then the look was gone. Lost in a reverently considered nibble of donut.
"Hey, you didn't want any of these did you?" he queried. Meryl laughed out loud for the second time in two days. She was beginning to like this.
The girl who took the call in the secretaries' pool almost keeled over in shock.
"Meryl who?!?"
"Stryfe. S-T-R-"
"That's what I thought you said, it's just."
"Just what?"
"Well . . . it's just . . . I thought that you never take time off."
Meryl rolled her eyes. "I guess there's a first time for everything."
She hung up and, standing by the phone, cocked her head to better hear what was going on in the other room. She had offered the use of her shower to her guest, who had gladly accepted the chance to wash the grime of travel off of his wearied body. She could hear him singing, now, above the sound of the streaming water. She shook her head wonderingly for what must have been the twentieth time that morning and set about choosing an outfit for the day. Normally she just put on whatever was hanging up next in her closet, but today that didn't seem like quite enough. After several minutes of deliberation she made her decision. She had been tempted for a moment to dress as she had when traveling with Millie a long time ago, she had actually loved that silly caped outfit. It was supposed to be practical, fending off the windswept dust of the desert and concealing her minor arsenal, but she had personally thought it gave her a look of distinction. She quashed that idea almost as soon as it surfaced. It was silly to think of trying to regain the past like that.
'Why so, when the past comes to visit?'
She shook her head for the twenty-first time. When Vash emerged with clean rosy cheeks, still running a towel through damp hair, she was standing pristine and unrumpled in a blue T-shirt (that she thought made her eyes stand out particularly well) and a knee length white skirt. He was wearing the same outfit that he had cooked breakfast in. The front was unbuttoned and through it she could see hints of some of the terrible scars he hid underneath. Meryl couldn't help but grimace upon seeing them. She couldn't even imagine the injuries that must have caused them. She didn't think she wanted to. Vash jauntily flipped his hair back out of his eyes and Meryl's heart caught just a little. He looked over, apparently appraising her and her choice of clothing as she had been doing his. He gave her a questioning look.
"Ready?" she asked. A smile was his only reply.
It was busier outside than it had been the night before. Cars fought for position in the middle of the street. People walked by carrying shopping bags and dragging young children by the arm. One such haggard mother passed between the two of them, her son sniffling and wiping at his nose. Vash leaned down as they passed a made a silly face at him. The kid's eyes widened with surprise, and then he burst into a smile. He stared back over his shoulder, giggling at the tall, silly, yellow-haired man, while his mother pulled him away. The two adults smiled back at him, and then turned to glance at one another. There were sharing the same lighthearted smile. Meryl turned away with a light laugh.
Some things never change.
"I know you're just going to love Millie's kids," she stated.
"Hmmm," he replied. He was walking with hands stuffed deep in the pockets of his coat and a thin smile stretched across his face, enjoying the sights and sounds of the boisterous city. The sunlight angled down between the tall buildings and she could see the blue sky framed behind his spiky hair. It was a beautiful day.
"Ah huh," she continued, "They know all about you."
"Really?" he turned to her with an interested look.
"Yep. Every time I'm over there all they want to hear are stories about outlaws and gunfighters and how their mom helped to temper the infamous humanoid typhoon." She had known that would get a rise out of him and she was not disappointed. Stopping dead in the sidewalk, he punched a pistol shaped fist into the air.
"Nonsense!" he shouted, and began waving his fist in a small circle above his head. "Ha ha! Nobody tames the . . .ah . . . umm . . ." He looked around nervously at the people passing on all sides of them. Bending down to ear level, he questioned her in semi-confidentiality. "You don't happen to know if I'm still wanted, do you?" Meryl laughed once again.
"As far as I know," she said stopping in front of a non-descript white fronted building. "But I think you're safe for today, we're here." With that she mounted the steps and knocked twice with the old rusted knocker. Within moments the sounds of a light footed stampede emanated from the other side of the door.
"I'll get it!"
"No, I'm getting it. Argh, get off me Nicky!"
The door swung inwards revealing two sets of eager brown eyes attached to two bodies still jockeying for position in front of the door. Moving as one, the eyes gave a cursory sweep over Meryl and then took in her companion. It was a long look. Their eyes started at the dust hardened leather of his tall boots and worked their way slowly up six feet of jacket to the top of his perpendicular yellow hair. Meryl observed affectionately as their mouths slid open into wide, round 'O's.
"Kids, who is it?" yelled a cheerful voice from the back of the house.
"It's Aunt Meryl and a strange man," the little girl shouted a piercing reply over her shoulder in a voice just shy of being able to break glass. Meanwhile she pulled the door wider for them to enter. Vash had to stoop a little to get through the doorway. It put him more at Meryl's level for a moment and he took the chance to tease her lightly.
"Aunt Meryl?" He raised an eyebrow at her and she rolled her eyes in reply.
"Meryl," cried Millie poking her head around the door to the kitchen, "I'm so glad you're here, I have to-" Her voice cut out in mid-sentence as she took in the scene before her. Meryl went through a mental countdown in her head as Vash raised his hand in a friendly greeting. Three. . .two. . .one.
"EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!"
A plump, yellow dress wearing cannonball flew down the hallway at the tall man, pushing him back outside onto the stoop with the force of it's attack. Meryl merely closed her eyes and hoped that he didn't crack his head open on the doorframe. When the proverbial smoke cleared, Meryl could see a very surprised looking sixty billion double dollar outlaw being squeezed to death in the grip of a somewhat overzealous Millie. Absently, she dropped a hand to Nicholas's head as he gripped her leg in fear of the horrible screeching monster his mother had suddenly become.
"Oh, Mr. Vash," Millie cried, her face still buried in his coat, "You came back." Looking desperately to Meryl for help and getting none, Vash managed with some difficulty to slip one arm out of his attacker's grip and use it to pat her gently on the shoulder.
"It's nice to see you too, Millie." Millie straightened immediately and, wiping at her eyes with a corner of her frilly blue apron, looked her old friend in the face.
"I always knew you'd come back. I always told Meryl so, you just ask her." She sniffled through the first half of her statement and said the last bit as though it were some sort of challenge. Then, as if forgetting the whole incident, she went on in her normal cheery tone. "Well, there's no use in standing out here on the porch. Come on in and make yourself at home, I've just baked some cookies." And without further ado, she turned abruptly away from him and marched back to the kitchen, pausing only to wave a brief 'Hello' to Meryl as she passed.
Looking even more confused than before, Vash blinked, shook his head, and, smiling, ducked his way back into the house.