Seated on Millie's patchwork couch while little Meryl bounced around the
room repeating "Vash is here" over and over in a singsong voice and Nicky
crouched on one armrest staring at her companion with eyes that seemed to
take up his whole face, Meryl took the time to appreciate the peculiarity
of her situation. Millie ran in and out of the room with plates full of
delicacies for them to try. Her voice grew and faded in intensity depending
on whether she was dropping a tray off or heading back to the kitchen for
another. She would stand momentarily in front of them with an angelic look
on her face, hands clutching her apron in nervousness, and then escape back
into the relative safety of her culinary sanctum. Vash was, meanwhile,
following young Meryl around the room with his eyes and keeping himself
otherwise completely still. Meryl herself was trying to keep up a
conversation with the itinerant Millie and failing miserably.
Nicholas leaned forward on the couch and addressed Vash in an almost frightened sounding whisper. "Are you really Vash the Stampede?"
Turning his attention to the little boy who was hovering at his shoulder, Vash nodded.
"My daddy says you're not real," the child admitted in a serious voice.
"Well," Vash reasoned, looking at him over the top of his glasses, "What do you think?" Nicholas reached out a tiny forefinger and touched Vash's cheek. The smooth skin depressed under the inquisitive probing and sprung back elastically with its removal.
"You feel real to me," he asserted. Vash smiled at him and raised a finger to his lips indicating that he should keep silence about their little secret. Nicky smiled hugely in response and removed himself from the armrest to plop down trustingly into Vash's lap.
Millie entered the room at that moment carrying several glasses of lemonade.
"Millie," Meryl interjected before she could shuffle out of the room again, "I think we've got enough, thanks." Nodding, the tall woman set the drinks in front of them and proceeded to munch on a chocolate chip laden cookie.
"Mmmmm," she said with obvious enjoyment, then abruptly turned her attention to the outlaw. "So Mr. Vash, whatcha been doing all this time." Vash had been reaching for a cookie and ended up with the sweet poised halfway between the table and his mouth. Sitting up, he studied the treat as if deciding whether answering without a full mouth or diving into its chocolaty sweetness was the more desirable option. Meryl cleared her throat threateningly and he gave a little half jump. Nicky solved the problem by taking the cookie gently from his hand. Raising a hand behind his head in a nervous gesture, he answered.
"Oh, same old thing." He stretched his arms up over his head then folded them behind it and relaxed back onto the seat. "Wandering aimlessly, saving damsels in distress, chasing the elusive mayfly known as love . . ." Meryl choked and almost spit out her lemonade.
"You okay Aunt Meryl?" her namesake asked and patted her roughly between the shoulder blades. Meryl could have sworn she saw a knowing smile flit across Millie's lips, but it was there for such a short time she wasn't sure that she hadn't imagined it.
With an odd sideways glance at his coughing companion, Vash went on. "How about you?"
"Oh, well, first I was working on the well and then we found water so there wasn't any reason to work on the well anymore and Meryl had to get a job waiting tables so we could keep up on the house payments and then after a while I helped dig irrigation ditches and then Meryl said we should get back to the insurance society and we left and I kept being late for work so the boss threatened to fire me if I didn't get my head on straight, but then I met David and then we got married and had little Meryl and Nicky and that's where I am today."
She smiled broadly at her two guests who were both staring back at her in slack jawed amazement. Meryl shook her head in amused admiration. She had no idea how Millie managed to say all that in one breath. Vash turned towards her with a curious look on his face and then looked back at Millie.
"I'm sorry, did you just say Meryl was a waitress?" Realizing which portion of Millie's statement Vash had latched on to, Meryl raised a hand to her face to hide the telltale red glow of her momentary embarrassment.
"Oh, yes," said Millie, shaking her head vigorously. "After you left the townspeople decided they didn't want friends of Vash the Stampede staying in their town for free and so they asked for rent on the house we were staying in. Well, I was having trouble finding more employment and Meryl offered to work at the local saloon to make ends meet." Millie smiled with childish naiveté.
"I don't understand," Vash said, drawing his light blond brows together and lifting Nicholas to the floor. The child immediately ran to his mother and raised his arms, asking to be lifted into her lap. Millie complied unthinkingly. Vash turned to Meryl, his face a mask of confusion. "What about your jobs at the insurance company, didn't they still pay you?"
Meryl smiled sadly and shook her head at him. "We got paid to monitor Vash the Stampede, or even to chase after him across the desert. But they don't pay you for sitting on your butt waiting for him to just appear on your doorstep." Vash's look didn't lighten at her flippant tone. Instead he turned back to Millie and watched her run her hands smoothly through Nicholas's dark curls.
"When . . . how long did you stay there?"
Millie was smiling fondly down at her son. "Oh, it was about a year, wasn't it Meryl, before you said we should probably head home?" She looked up at her former partner for confirmation.
Meryl nodded. "It was a year."
Vash was shaking his head as if he still didn't understand something. "You wait . . .you stayed there all that time?" He raised cloudy blue eyes to meet Meryl's. There were so many emotions coloring them; pain, surprise, confusion, and . . . something else. Something she couldn't quite identify again. She didn't know how to answer him without making everyone uncomfortable. A protracted silence descended upon the living room. That was, until it was broken by Millie's shout.
"Meryl!"
Meryl jumped, an instinctive reaction to hearing her name shouted loudly in a small, otherwise silent, room. A quick glance gave an explanation for the situation. At the same time she had screamed, Millie had made a lunge halfway across the room to catch a falling picture frame that her daughter had knocked off of a side table. Nicky had been dumped unceremoniously onto the floor in the process and began to cry noisily. Replacing the picture, a wedding shot of Millie and her husband, she scolded the young girl.
"Meryl Millicent, exactly what do you think you were doing?"
"I'm sorry Momma," the girl sniffled, backing away, "I was trying to reach that one." She pointed to a picture half hidden behind numerous other family photographs. Millie leaned forward and retrieved it for her. Handing it to her daughter carefully she went to regain control of her now bawling son. Little Meryl walked over to the two guests sitting on the couch and held the photo up for them to see.
"Is this you?" she asked the outlaw. Meryl looked at the photo and smiled inwardly. She had a copy hidden at the bottom of her sock drawer. It was a rare glimpse of her and Millie during their travels for the insurance society. The two of them stood smiling proudly, side by side, in the foreground. However, that was not what had made it her and Millie's favorite. Wolfwood had always been camera shy, and Vash even more so. It wasn't surprising seeing as how one of them was a wanted outlaw and the other a member of a secret gunslingers' society. Meryl had secretly asked the bartender to take the picture with the two insurance girls in the far right so that you could get a good view of the table standing off in the corner behind them. Seated at it was the dark haired priest and the famous outlaw. Wolfwood, his head leaned against the chair back, was blowing smoke towards the ceiling. His Punisher was leaned carelessly against the wall next to him. Vash would have been in profile, leaning on the table, his chin resting tiredly in one hand, but at the last moment he had noticed the camera and tilted his head towards it. He looked out of the photo through glassine haze of his glasses, his unkempt hair falling in a tangle over his forehead.
Vash took the photograph from the young girl and gazed at it. "I suppose it is," he said. Meryl saw his face fall and wondered if seeing it reminded him of all the bad things that had happened to him during that time, or whether he was thinking of the gun toting priest. She chanced a quick glance at Millie, but her old partner wasn't even paying attention. She was busy doing everything she could to cheer her still sobbing son.
"Hey, how about I take you to the park, would that make you happy?" she said, touching a delicate forefinger to his button of a nose.
With a fist half stuffed in his mouth the young boy looked up at his mother through puffy, red eyes, and nodded. Millie looked up at her old partner apologetically. She received a smile in reply.
Taking the picture frame from Vash and causing him to look her way with surprise she said, "An excellent idea Millie, the park sounds like just the thing!"
Meryl had always been of the opinion that there was no problem that a short jaunt outside couldn't cure. Especially if that jaunt just happened to take you past the ice cream stand.
Vash and the kids had, predictably, wolfed their cones down in no time flat, and, with their moods considerably lightened, had run off to play. Vash had produced two child sized dart guns apparently out of nowhere and was now being chased around the park, screaming bloody murder, by two cyclones of pure, sugar fed, energy. Millie and Meryl perched themselves on top of their favorite picnic table and observed the scene in relative complacency while they finished their cones.
Licking a creamy drip off of where it had fallen on to her hand, Millie began the intensive questioning session that Meryl had known would be forthcoming as soon as Vash was out of hearing range.
"So, how long is Mr. Vash planning to stay."
"I couldn't say," Meryl replied, concentrating on her own disintegrating dessert.
"Maybe he'll stay for good." Millie smiled at her with a suggestive twinkle in her eye.
"I doubt it, Millie." Sighing, she leaned forwards upon her knees and gazed at the playful scene of Vash and the kids over the top of her ice cream. "He's still a wanted man, he has to keep moving around." Noticing a pecan revealing itself from within the melting treat Meryl sought it out with her tongue and was soon crunching it delectably. "Besides, he's got that whole 'Love and Peace' quest thing of his to worry about."
"I dunno," said Millie, her voice muffled by her ice cream. Then seeming to change the subject entirely she continued, "Mr. Vash is really good with kids isn't he?" Vash was unsuccessfully attempting to hide behind the bare pole of a swing set while the two siblings fired from point blank range. Three suctioned darts already quivered where they had stuck to the protective post.
"Yeah, he is."
"Bet he'd like a few of his own."
Meryl smiled in contemplation of that. She nodded. It wasn't hard to imagine Vash playing like that with his own kids. Rocking babies to sleep, tumbling with toddlers on the carpet, playing hide and seek amongst the trashcans in back alleys; all of these were roles she could easily see Vash fitting into. "But you know," she said, frowning, "Being who he is, he probably can't even have children." 'Not in the normal sense, anyway,' she thought to herself.
"Well, you'll never know until you try," Millie enthused, finishing her cone in one bite.
"Millie!" Meryl stared at her friend in surprise. Millie appeared to be at her most mischievous.
"What?" she asked innocently enough. "Didn't he stay at your place last night."
Turning purple, Meryl lowered her head. "It wasn't like that." Then feeling that she needed to explain further, "He slept on the couch."
"Well, now, whose fault was that, hmm?"
"MILLIE!!" Meryl gaped at her friend, nearly dropping her ice cream. Though most people despised Millie's openness as a lack of tact, Meryl had always respected the fact that she was unafraid to speak her mind. In this case, however, she was understandably put out. It was her sex life they were discussing so openly in public.
Not knowing how to reply to her smugly smiling companion, Meryl began to stutter inarticulately. "I . . .but . . . we . . .he . . ." Finally, taking a deep breath and regaining a modicum of control, she managed to continue. Turning up her nose and speaking in her best superior officer voice, she informed Millie that THAT was none of her business. Hoping that this would signal the end of the conversation she returned her attentions back to her half eaten cone. Silence prevailed at the picnic table and Meryl thought with relief that she may have finally escaped the uncomfortable conversation.
"You really should tell him how you feel, you know," Millie said simply. Meryl's only reply was a dark look out of the corner of her eye. "Now, don't go looking at me like that, young lady!" Millie had slipped into lecturing mother mode for the moment, her voice getting louder and more authoritative with each point. "You've been pining for ten years now about not telling him the first time. Don't you dare tell me you're going to chicken out again!" Millie was really getting into the act now. She had risen to her feet and was leaning over Meryl with nearly six feet of her intimidating frame and shaking her finger voraciously inches from Meryl nose. Meryl couldn't help but give a nervous glance over to where the outlaw was wrestling with the kids. Millie was getting rather loud and she was frightened that he might overhear. "I am NOT watching you suffer for another decade, Meryl Stryfe! No way!" And with that, Millie huffed in indignation and rested her fists on her hips. Meryl couldn't do anything but stare in open eyed shock at the force of nature her old partner had suddenly morphed into. She didn't even notice the remains of her ice cream cone tipping to the ground.
"I know," Millie interjected brightly, with an extreme reversal of attitude, "I'll just go tell him myself." And with that she turned on her heel and marched off to where her two rambunctious children now had Vash pinned on his stomach with his arms held tightly behind him.
"MILLIE NOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" Meryl screamed, launching herself from her seat at the table. She managed to tackle her friend halfway to her destination (not an inconsiderable feat considering the differences in their size), and with her arms locked in a death grip about her middle started pleading for clemency.
With a look only half teasing, Millie crossed her arms steadfastly. "Promise me you'll tell him."
"I . . ." Meryl stalled.
"Promise!" Millie replied threateningly from her position on the ground. Meryl looked up and saw that Vash and the children were now staring at the two women struggling in the dust with great amusement painted across their faces.
"Fine, I promise," she whispered through clenched teeth, swearing silently that the next time she could get Millie alone she was going to be dead meat.
"Well, that's all right then," said Millie with her customary lightness. She smiled up at her old friend, content in having completed her good deed for the day. Her eyes changed from their normal sky color to a darker blue as a shadow fell across her.
"You know, I was just about to ask you girls to come over and help me, but you look like you're having lots more fun over here." Meryl caught her breath and felt her jaw crack as her teeth gritted even further. She could only imagine how the two of them looked, both covered in dust and her with spilled ice cream marring her shirt front. Not to mention the fact that they were collapsed on the ground in a tight embrace. No, nothing compromising about this position at all.
Letting go of Millie's middle, she slowly stood and, dusting off her skirt, straightened with as much poise as was possible given the situation. Even still, it took all of her courage to raise her eyes to meet those of the person who had addressed them. Steeling herself to their laughing intensity, she screwed up as serious a face as she could manage. It failed utterly. Just a glimpse of Vash's smiling face, eyes shining, above the two curious, childish faces peaking out from behind him was enough to set her to giggling in response. Reaching a hand down towards her friend, she helped Millie pull herself to a standing position next to the beaming outlaw.
"Now that's better," he said, twirling one of the toy guns around one finger, a mimic of the trick reflected in the yellow planes of his glasses. He stopped its spinning with a flick of his thumb and smirked at the two girls. "Although I was kind of hoping I'd have to separate you."
To say that Vash never saw the blow coming would be an insult to his heritage and abilities. To say he just played along with the ordeal as he always had was an insult to Meryl's indignation. Regardless, it hurt just the same.
Nicholas leaned forward on the couch and addressed Vash in an almost frightened sounding whisper. "Are you really Vash the Stampede?"
Turning his attention to the little boy who was hovering at his shoulder, Vash nodded.
"My daddy says you're not real," the child admitted in a serious voice.
"Well," Vash reasoned, looking at him over the top of his glasses, "What do you think?" Nicholas reached out a tiny forefinger and touched Vash's cheek. The smooth skin depressed under the inquisitive probing and sprung back elastically with its removal.
"You feel real to me," he asserted. Vash smiled at him and raised a finger to his lips indicating that he should keep silence about their little secret. Nicky smiled hugely in response and removed himself from the armrest to plop down trustingly into Vash's lap.
Millie entered the room at that moment carrying several glasses of lemonade.
"Millie," Meryl interjected before she could shuffle out of the room again, "I think we've got enough, thanks." Nodding, the tall woman set the drinks in front of them and proceeded to munch on a chocolate chip laden cookie.
"Mmmmm," she said with obvious enjoyment, then abruptly turned her attention to the outlaw. "So Mr. Vash, whatcha been doing all this time." Vash had been reaching for a cookie and ended up with the sweet poised halfway between the table and his mouth. Sitting up, he studied the treat as if deciding whether answering without a full mouth or diving into its chocolaty sweetness was the more desirable option. Meryl cleared her throat threateningly and he gave a little half jump. Nicky solved the problem by taking the cookie gently from his hand. Raising a hand behind his head in a nervous gesture, he answered.
"Oh, same old thing." He stretched his arms up over his head then folded them behind it and relaxed back onto the seat. "Wandering aimlessly, saving damsels in distress, chasing the elusive mayfly known as love . . ." Meryl choked and almost spit out her lemonade.
"You okay Aunt Meryl?" her namesake asked and patted her roughly between the shoulder blades. Meryl could have sworn she saw a knowing smile flit across Millie's lips, but it was there for such a short time she wasn't sure that she hadn't imagined it.
With an odd sideways glance at his coughing companion, Vash went on. "How about you?"
"Oh, well, first I was working on the well and then we found water so there wasn't any reason to work on the well anymore and Meryl had to get a job waiting tables so we could keep up on the house payments and then after a while I helped dig irrigation ditches and then Meryl said we should get back to the insurance society and we left and I kept being late for work so the boss threatened to fire me if I didn't get my head on straight, but then I met David and then we got married and had little Meryl and Nicky and that's where I am today."
She smiled broadly at her two guests who were both staring back at her in slack jawed amazement. Meryl shook her head in amused admiration. She had no idea how Millie managed to say all that in one breath. Vash turned towards her with a curious look on his face and then looked back at Millie.
"I'm sorry, did you just say Meryl was a waitress?" Realizing which portion of Millie's statement Vash had latched on to, Meryl raised a hand to her face to hide the telltale red glow of her momentary embarrassment.
"Oh, yes," said Millie, shaking her head vigorously. "After you left the townspeople decided they didn't want friends of Vash the Stampede staying in their town for free and so they asked for rent on the house we were staying in. Well, I was having trouble finding more employment and Meryl offered to work at the local saloon to make ends meet." Millie smiled with childish naiveté.
"I don't understand," Vash said, drawing his light blond brows together and lifting Nicholas to the floor. The child immediately ran to his mother and raised his arms, asking to be lifted into her lap. Millie complied unthinkingly. Vash turned to Meryl, his face a mask of confusion. "What about your jobs at the insurance company, didn't they still pay you?"
Meryl smiled sadly and shook her head at him. "We got paid to monitor Vash the Stampede, or even to chase after him across the desert. But they don't pay you for sitting on your butt waiting for him to just appear on your doorstep." Vash's look didn't lighten at her flippant tone. Instead he turned back to Millie and watched her run her hands smoothly through Nicholas's dark curls.
"When . . . how long did you stay there?"
Millie was smiling fondly down at her son. "Oh, it was about a year, wasn't it Meryl, before you said we should probably head home?" She looked up at her former partner for confirmation.
Meryl nodded. "It was a year."
Vash was shaking his head as if he still didn't understand something. "You wait . . .you stayed there all that time?" He raised cloudy blue eyes to meet Meryl's. There were so many emotions coloring them; pain, surprise, confusion, and . . . something else. Something she couldn't quite identify again. She didn't know how to answer him without making everyone uncomfortable. A protracted silence descended upon the living room. That was, until it was broken by Millie's shout.
"Meryl!"
Meryl jumped, an instinctive reaction to hearing her name shouted loudly in a small, otherwise silent, room. A quick glance gave an explanation for the situation. At the same time she had screamed, Millie had made a lunge halfway across the room to catch a falling picture frame that her daughter had knocked off of a side table. Nicky had been dumped unceremoniously onto the floor in the process and began to cry noisily. Replacing the picture, a wedding shot of Millie and her husband, she scolded the young girl.
"Meryl Millicent, exactly what do you think you were doing?"
"I'm sorry Momma," the girl sniffled, backing away, "I was trying to reach that one." She pointed to a picture half hidden behind numerous other family photographs. Millie leaned forward and retrieved it for her. Handing it to her daughter carefully she went to regain control of her now bawling son. Little Meryl walked over to the two guests sitting on the couch and held the photo up for them to see.
"Is this you?" she asked the outlaw. Meryl looked at the photo and smiled inwardly. She had a copy hidden at the bottom of her sock drawer. It was a rare glimpse of her and Millie during their travels for the insurance society. The two of them stood smiling proudly, side by side, in the foreground. However, that was not what had made it her and Millie's favorite. Wolfwood had always been camera shy, and Vash even more so. It wasn't surprising seeing as how one of them was a wanted outlaw and the other a member of a secret gunslingers' society. Meryl had secretly asked the bartender to take the picture with the two insurance girls in the far right so that you could get a good view of the table standing off in the corner behind them. Seated at it was the dark haired priest and the famous outlaw. Wolfwood, his head leaned against the chair back, was blowing smoke towards the ceiling. His Punisher was leaned carelessly against the wall next to him. Vash would have been in profile, leaning on the table, his chin resting tiredly in one hand, but at the last moment he had noticed the camera and tilted his head towards it. He looked out of the photo through glassine haze of his glasses, his unkempt hair falling in a tangle over his forehead.
Vash took the photograph from the young girl and gazed at it. "I suppose it is," he said. Meryl saw his face fall and wondered if seeing it reminded him of all the bad things that had happened to him during that time, or whether he was thinking of the gun toting priest. She chanced a quick glance at Millie, but her old partner wasn't even paying attention. She was busy doing everything she could to cheer her still sobbing son.
"Hey, how about I take you to the park, would that make you happy?" she said, touching a delicate forefinger to his button of a nose.
With a fist half stuffed in his mouth the young boy looked up at his mother through puffy, red eyes, and nodded. Millie looked up at her old partner apologetically. She received a smile in reply.
Taking the picture frame from Vash and causing him to look her way with surprise she said, "An excellent idea Millie, the park sounds like just the thing!"
Meryl had always been of the opinion that there was no problem that a short jaunt outside couldn't cure. Especially if that jaunt just happened to take you past the ice cream stand.
Vash and the kids had, predictably, wolfed their cones down in no time flat, and, with their moods considerably lightened, had run off to play. Vash had produced two child sized dart guns apparently out of nowhere and was now being chased around the park, screaming bloody murder, by two cyclones of pure, sugar fed, energy. Millie and Meryl perched themselves on top of their favorite picnic table and observed the scene in relative complacency while they finished their cones.
Licking a creamy drip off of where it had fallen on to her hand, Millie began the intensive questioning session that Meryl had known would be forthcoming as soon as Vash was out of hearing range.
"So, how long is Mr. Vash planning to stay."
"I couldn't say," Meryl replied, concentrating on her own disintegrating dessert.
"Maybe he'll stay for good." Millie smiled at her with a suggestive twinkle in her eye.
"I doubt it, Millie." Sighing, she leaned forwards upon her knees and gazed at the playful scene of Vash and the kids over the top of her ice cream. "He's still a wanted man, he has to keep moving around." Noticing a pecan revealing itself from within the melting treat Meryl sought it out with her tongue and was soon crunching it delectably. "Besides, he's got that whole 'Love and Peace' quest thing of his to worry about."
"I dunno," said Millie, her voice muffled by her ice cream. Then seeming to change the subject entirely she continued, "Mr. Vash is really good with kids isn't he?" Vash was unsuccessfully attempting to hide behind the bare pole of a swing set while the two siblings fired from point blank range. Three suctioned darts already quivered where they had stuck to the protective post.
"Yeah, he is."
"Bet he'd like a few of his own."
Meryl smiled in contemplation of that. She nodded. It wasn't hard to imagine Vash playing like that with his own kids. Rocking babies to sleep, tumbling with toddlers on the carpet, playing hide and seek amongst the trashcans in back alleys; all of these were roles she could easily see Vash fitting into. "But you know," she said, frowning, "Being who he is, he probably can't even have children." 'Not in the normal sense, anyway,' she thought to herself.
"Well, you'll never know until you try," Millie enthused, finishing her cone in one bite.
"Millie!" Meryl stared at her friend in surprise. Millie appeared to be at her most mischievous.
"What?" she asked innocently enough. "Didn't he stay at your place last night."
Turning purple, Meryl lowered her head. "It wasn't like that." Then feeling that she needed to explain further, "He slept on the couch."
"Well, now, whose fault was that, hmm?"
"MILLIE!!" Meryl gaped at her friend, nearly dropping her ice cream. Though most people despised Millie's openness as a lack of tact, Meryl had always respected the fact that she was unafraid to speak her mind. In this case, however, she was understandably put out. It was her sex life they were discussing so openly in public.
Not knowing how to reply to her smugly smiling companion, Meryl began to stutter inarticulately. "I . . .but . . . we . . .he . . ." Finally, taking a deep breath and regaining a modicum of control, she managed to continue. Turning up her nose and speaking in her best superior officer voice, she informed Millie that THAT was none of her business. Hoping that this would signal the end of the conversation she returned her attentions back to her half eaten cone. Silence prevailed at the picnic table and Meryl thought with relief that she may have finally escaped the uncomfortable conversation.
"You really should tell him how you feel, you know," Millie said simply. Meryl's only reply was a dark look out of the corner of her eye. "Now, don't go looking at me like that, young lady!" Millie had slipped into lecturing mother mode for the moment, her voice getting louder and more authoritative with each point. "You've been pining for ten years now about not telling him the first time. Don't you dare tell me you're going to chicken out again!" Millie was really getting into the act now. She had risen to her feet and was leaning over Meryl with nearly six feet of her intimidating frame and shaking her finger voraciously inches from Meryl nose. Meryl couldn't help but give a nervous glance over to where the outlaw was wrestling with the kids. Millie was getting rather loud and she was frightened that he might overhear. "I am NOT watching you suffer for another decade, Meryl Stryfe! No way!" And with that, Millie huffed in indignation and rested her fists on her hips. Meryl couldn't do anything but stare in open eyed shock at the force of nature her old partner had suddenly morphed into. She didn't even notice the remains of her ice cream cone tipping to the ground.
"I know," Millie interjected brightly, with an extreme reversal of attitude, "I'll just go tell him myself." And with that she turned on her heel and marched off to where her two rambunctious children now had Vash pinned on his stomach with his arms held tightly behind him.
"MILLIE NOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" Meryl screamed, launching herself from her seat at the table. She managed to tackle her friend halfway to her destination (not an inconsiderable feat considering the differences in their size), and with her arms locked in a death grip about her middle started pleading for clemency.
With a look only half teasing, Millie crossed her arms steadfastly. "Promise me you'll tell him."
"I . . ." Meryl stalled.
"Promise!" Millie replied threateningly from her position on the ground. Meryl looked up and saw that Vash and the children were now staring at the two women struggling in the dust with great amusement painted across their faces.
"Fine, I promise," she whispered through clenched teeth, swearing silently that the next time she could get Millie alone she was going to be dead meat.
"Well, that's all right then," said Millie with her customary lightness. She smiled up at her old friend, content in having completed her good deed for the day. Her eyes changed from their normal sky color to a darker blue as a shadow fell across her.
"You know, I was just about to ask you girls to come over and help me, but you look like you're having lots more fun over here." Meryl caught her breath and felt her jaw crack as her teeth gritted even further. She could only imagine how the two of them looked, both covered in dust and her with spilled ice cream marring her shirt front. Not to mention the fact that they were collapsed on the ground in a tight embrace. No, nothing compromising about this position at all.
Letting go of Millie's middle, she slowly stood and, dusting off her skirt, straightened with as much poise as was possible given the situation. Even still, it took all of her courage to raise her eyes to meet those of the person who had addressed them. Steeling herself to their laughing intensity, she screwed up as serious a face as she could manage. It failed utterly. Just a glimpse of Vash's smiling face, eyes shining, above the two curious, childish faces peaking out from behind him was enough to set her to giggling in response. Reaching a hand down towards her friend, she helped Millie pull herself to a standing position next to the beaming outlaw.
"Now that's better," he said, twirling one of the toy guns around one finger, a mimic of the trick reflected in the yellow planes of his glasses. He stopped its spinning with a flick of his thumb and smirked at the two girls. "Although I was kind of hoping I'd have to separate you."
To say that Vash never saw the blow coming would be an insult to his heritage and abilities. To say he just played along with the ordeal as he always had was an insult to Meryl's indignation. Regardless, it hurt just the same.