Sorry for the wait. This chapter (which was originally one with ch. 7) has been done for a while, but my family and I are summering in Mexico, and the hotel only has dial-up. For a price. So the next couple of chapters may be a little late getting up, but I'm gonna try to get this fic done by the time we go back home – July 26. I have a definite idea where this is going, and hopefully I can get this done within the next few weeks (crossing my fingers!)

Disclaimer: I do not own Trigun, Twin Peaks, or the Cthulhu Mythos of H.P. Lovecraft. I just provide entertainment of my own.

Chapter 8: Routines

Vash

I've been flying for along time and my wings are getting tired. I want to set myself down and rest, but there's nowhere to do that. Only desert, as far as the eye can see. And I see spiders everywhere; if I fall into a web they'll eat me.

Wait…no, I see something else ahead. I fly toward it and enter a forest.

This place – it's beautiful! So lush and rich and full of life. And there are no spiders, except one that I know.

And there she is.

I alight on her web and my legs immediately stick to it, but I'm not afraid; I know she won't eat me or kill me or anything like that. She crawls down the web and skitters up to me.

"Hello, Vash," she says.

"Hello, Meryl."

"Planning on staying a while?"

"Planning on staying forever, actually."

She smiles and playfully rubs my left wing with her nearest leg.

"I guess I can make accommodations. But what about you?"

I smile and wink.

My wings retract into my back and are replaced by an extra pair of legs as my body fattens. My antennae thicken and become mandibles, and my eyes shrink and multiply.

I smile again. "They won't recognize me now."

She looks at me concernedly.

"But won't you miss your wings?"

"I'd rather crawl here with you than fly alone."

She smiles and skitters up next to me.

"Sounds like a good deal," she murmurs.

We sit there in the sunlight with the sounds of nature all around us.

" Help me!"

I recognize the voice and look up. Knives is stuck in a web. His little legs flail uselessly as he tries to disentangle himself from the web.

"Help me! Help me! Please! Helllllllllllp meeeeeeeee!"

"Don't move, Knives. I'll get you out!"

Another spider comes down the web, looking at Knives with hunger and hatred in its eyes.

It's Steve.

"What are you doing here? You don't belong here, you stupid freak! Get out of here!" A stream of invective pours out of his mandibled jaws as he skitters closer.

Knives panics, getting more and more tangled as he flails about, trying desperately to get away from the monster bearing down on him. Although I'm running as fast as I can, I know he'll get to Knives before I do. Then Knives stops flailing and his eyes begin to glow.

Everything stops and grows silent, and I watch in horror as my brother begins to morph into something else. His wings shrink and blacken, his body fattens and turns green, and his eyes turn bright red.

He's turned into a locust. He rips out of the web and charges Steve, biting the spider's head off.

Suddenly, in the distance, I hear a buzzing noise. The noise grows louder, a cloud moves in front of the sun, and all is plunged into darkness.

Then, with a sudden rush of pure, unbridled fear that paralyzes me, I realize that the darkness is alive.

Millions upon millions of locusts rain down upon the fertile valley. They consume everything, and in the blink of an eye my new Eden has been reduced to nothing. I hear Meryl scream behind me, and I spin around just in time to see her being ripped to shreds. I hear laughter and turn around.

Knives towers over everything, a giant, demonic locust with screaming faces protruding from his pale belly.

"This is but a glimpse, my dear brother. There is no room in my new world for traitors."

The twig I am standing on gives way and I fall into primal blackness, Knives' laughter following me.

-----------------

October 30, 4:23 AM

I bolt upright and scream.

Beside me, Meryl stirs.

"Vash?" she says, half-asleep. "Whuzz wrong?"

"Nothing. Just a dream."

"Uhkay. 'Fraid it wuz somethin' els…" she falls asleep before she can finish her thought.

I lay back down and try to get my breathing under control. God, what a nightmare.

After calling Bernardelli and setting up a time for them to come take a look at our house, we'd spent the rest of the previous night pretty much in silence, both of us trying to understand everything we'd learned that day. I have to admit, Mike's story didn't really hit me until I heard Knives' confession. Beforehand, it all seemed fairly distant: ancient gods, possessions, demon planets – all big, but none seeming all that connected with me. But after my brother poured his heart out to me, it became infinitely more personal.

When Meryl and I had gone to bed, she started crying. I didn't need to ask why, or even read her mind; I knew that the enormity of everything had finally hit her, and it hit hard. I wanted to say something, something that would make her fell better, but I knew nothing could do that. All I could do was hold her. And eventually her sobs abated, and we laid in silence again. Finally, she broke it.

"Vash, what are we going to do?"

I'd thought long and hard about that, and I told her the truth: "I don't think we can do anything. This is just too big. I think we should just go on with our lives and do the best we can while we still have the time."

She looked down, tears welling in her eyes again.

I leaned closer and kissed her softly. When we parted, I whispered in her ear, "But I promise you one thing: no matter what happens, I'll be here for you. If everything Mike feared comes to pass and Ithaqua or Bob or whatever his name is awakens and lays waste to the whole universe, I'll still be right here by your side." I smiled. "My little mayfly."

No matter how desperate things get, I can always count on my little pet name to bring a smile to her face. Sure it's cheesy and silly, but that's all part of it, I think. She laid her head on my chest and I wrapped my good arm protectively around her waist. She said once she felt safe there, listening to my heartbeat, and eventually I heard her breathing slow and her grip on my hand relaxed as she fell asleep.

For me, though, sleep was a long time in coming.

And now I'm not sure I can go back to sleep again.

I look down at her. Her brow's creased and her mouth's twitching; she looks sad, like she might start crying again in her sleep. I don't need to use our psychic link to know what's bothering her most of all; I just know.

Milly.

Dear God, what are we going to do about Milly? We can't just leave her out there, down in that damned pit. But I honestly don't know if we'll be able to get past all those cthonians. Knives could help with them, but there's the risk of Ithaqua reading his mind and countering our rescue attempt. And the only person that could help him keep his mind steady enough to counteract his evil dad is Milly. Ah, Catch-22, my old nemesis; we meet again.

I roll over on my side and try to go to sleep, but I'm too wound up and too bummed out. After about an hour of trying, I decide I'm up for the day. Very slowly so as not to wake Meryl, I slip out of bed and put my robe on. I walk into the bathroom, flip the light on, and gently remove the padding on my injured eye.

It's healing; not very fast, but it's healing. I think it should be back to normal in about two weeks. As I redress it with a new gauze pad I wonder how I'm going to explain it to the guys at the bank. Hell, for that matter, what are we going to tell Bernardelli about the kitchen and the living room?

For the first time in over a year, I find myself missing Wolfwood, and missing him badly. God, I wish he was still here right now. He'd have something pithy to say, or point out something we hadn't seen yet, or…hell, just standing there, smoking one of his ever-bent cigarettes would be enough. I-

-no. To live in the past is to die in the present. It took me a long time to learn that, but that's a rule I live by these days.

I leave the bathroom and switch off the light. Might as well check on Knives.

Meryl

5:38 AM

I wake up and reach over to Vash, but my hand finds cold bedsheets instead. That in and of itself is enough to snap me out of the clouds of sleepiness: Vash never gets up before me – hell, some mornings I have to quite literally drag him out of bed – and the coldness of the sheets means he's been up for a while.

I look at the clock: it's still early, so he hasn't gone to work yet. I get up, throw a robe on, and look in the bathroom. Not there. I go to the kitchen, not there either. I look all over the house, finally stopping in Knives' room. The room's pitch-black, but I don't think he's in here either. Okay, gettin' kinda scared now. I turn around and scream his name.

"I'm right here, Meryl."

I jump up in surprise when I hear his voice right next to me.

"Sorry. Didn't mean to scare you."

He looks up, and in the dim half-light cast by the open door, I can see tears in his remaining eye.

"Vash, what's wrong?"

He doesn't answer. Instead, he reaches up and flicks the light switch.

My eyes burn for a second in the sudden, harsh light, and then they alight on the bed and widen.

Knives is gone. What's more, the window's open.

"I had a nightmare about an hour ago and couldn't go back to sleep. Came in here a few minutes later to check on him. Couldn't sense him, but I didn't take any notice of that. I can't sense him when he's asleep; our power's linked directly to the conscious mind. Walked in the room, sat down on the bed, and I…I saw."

I feel fear spreading icy tendrils all through my body and my hand goes to my throat. He can't have been taken over again just like that. Not Knives. Not the lunatic who was made to kill untold amounts of people before he started doing it on his own. Not the bastard who made Vash's life so miserable for so long. Not the fucker who looked at me with such pure, undiluted hate in his eyes for so long. Not the man who Milly healed, both in body and soul.

"No," Vash says, reading my mind. "No, he hasn't been taken again. I found this," handing me a slip of paper. On it, in Knives' clear, precise handwriting, is:

THINK I KNOW WHAT TO DO. WENT TO GET SOMETHING. BACK SOON. DON'T WORRY. –K

I look up at Vash dubiously. "And how do you know this isn't just a load of bullshit his daddy cooked up the second he came in?"

"Two ways: One," he says, holding up a finger, "if he were possessed, do you think he would have taken the time to write a letter saying he'd be back – rather than just leaving? And two:" another finger pops up. "If he were possessed, why didn't he take the opportunity to kill us in our sleep? No, he's still him. And, for now, that's good."

I nod. Valid points, all, but I'm still not sure I believe it. I'm not sure Vash does either. He gets up, walks to the window and closes it, then turns around. "We'd be getting up around now, anyway. I suggest we go to work, try to have a normal day, and be Randy and Sarah Carter for as long as we can. If we let Ithaqua ruin our lives, we'll be letting him win, spiritually if not physically. Just going about our business lets him know he doesn't matter, and right now I think that's the biggest insult we can throw at him."

"Pretend we're living during the Blitz, in other words."

He chuckles humorlessly, sounding eerily similar to his absent brother. "Yeah, something like that."

We leave the room and head towards our ruined kitchen. One look at the stove tells us we won't be having eggs. Or bacon. Or sausage. Or any of that shit.

"Doughnuts it is, then."

No matter how desperate things get, I can always count on his little vice to bring a smile to his face. We walk out of the kitchen and back into the lives we'd created for ourselves.

-----------

7:38 AM

"Hey, Sarah, what happened?" a voice asks me as I walk in the kitchen.

I turn around and see Connie wearing a worried expression on her face. She was the first friend I had here at the Red Star Café, and she helped me out a lot in the early days when I was first starting here. Although she'd been here way longer than I had, she didn't bear any ill will towards me for climbing the ladder so fast. In fact, none of the cooks (of which there are five, myself not included) were envious or angry; they all said I deserved it. I get along with them pretty well, but Connie and I became best friends. We're the only ones here as of right now; everyone else still hasn't come in.

"I'm sorry?"

"I asked what was wrong. You look bummed."

"It's nothing."

She shakes her head and smiles. "Nice try, Sarah, but I know you better than that. Way better."

I open my mouth and close it again. What should I tell her? That an ancient demon-god is about to break free and wipe out life as we know it on this miserable little dustball of a planet, as well as a few others? Hell, any response other than a call to the local funny farm would be insane.

Finally I come up with something. "You remember my brother-in-law?"

"The ex-bandit?" I'd told her an expurgated version of the truth a while back.

I nod. "We think he has cancer, and we're not sure if he's gonna be able to pull through." Connie's reaction is instantaneous: her eyes widen in horror and understanding. Her uncle battled cancer for a while before succumbing early this spring. That's a reason that I told her that: it would evoke sympathy. And in a way, isn't it the truth? There's something in him that's slowly eating him away a bit at a time – isn't that what cancer is?

"Oh my God. Oh, honey, I'm so sorry." She puts her hand on my shoulder. "Do you know how long he has?" I shake my head, then force a smile. "But he's a tough old bastard; he won't go down without a fight." And I hope he does. I've never liked him and still don't, but I still don't want him to become a slave again. No one deserves that. Not even him.

I hear Julio, another cook, walk in and flip the Closed sign over. I give Connie the old finger-to-the-lips sign. She understands: it's our secret, 'kay? I don't want to spend my first day as head cook getting sad looks and condolences from everyone.

The creaky old order-carousel turns around with the first order of the day attached to it. I take down the paper: scrambled eggs, bacon, sausages,  toast, coffee.

I read it, turn around, and get to work.

-----------

Vash

8:53 AM

"Hey Randy, what happened?" a voice asks me as I walk into the locker room.

I turn around and see Carl, another guard, looking at me with concern on his ruddy face. He helped me out a lot when I first started working here, and despite the fact that I'm about 2.3 times older than he is, I've always thought of him as fatherly. He's the only one here I can really call a friend; the other guards (eight, to be exact), are all indignant towards me. After all, they all were here a lot longer than I was, but I had to go and climb the damn ranks until I better than them, right? Least, that's what I think their deal is.

"I'm sorry?"

"Your eye. What happened?"

I open my mouth and close it again. What should I tell him? That it got hurt as a result of a trip to the abode of an ancient demon-god that's about to break free and wipe out life as we know it on this miserable little dustball of a planet, as well as a few others? Hell, any response other than a call to the local funny farm would be insane.

Finally I come up with something. "The gas main at our house exploded, and I got some shrapnel in the eye."

He grimaces and shudders. "Ych. That's just…ow."

I nod and force a smile. "Don't worry. I'll be fine. It wasn't very deep, and they were able to get it out before too much damage was done. I think it should be okay in a couple of weeks."

Carl nods, then laughs heartily and slaps me on the back. "Hell, Rand, it just makes you look more menacing. Good for a guard, 'specially the head one."

I laugh with him and he walks toward the door, the turns around. "Listen, you wanna swing by the bar after work? I'll buy ya a beer[U1] ."

I shake my head. "Can't. Meeting some folks from the insurance agency. You know, 'bout the gas main."

He nods, says, "Right, right. Well, maybe next time," and leaves.

I turn back to my locker and pull out my uniform. Gonna be a long day, I think.

-----------

5:37 PM

            "What the hell happened?"

Meryl and I look at each other apprehensively. What should we tell her? That an emissary from an ancient demon-god that's about to…never mind. Let's stick with the gas main story.

In actuality, I'm a little surprised (and very relieved) that the agent – Jackie, I think she said her name was – doesn't recognize Meryl. Me, I'm not so worried about – only a few people know who I look like – but Meryl's damn near a legend in Bernardelli. After all, she's The Woman Who Went Out To Cover Vash the Stampede, the Infamous Humanoid Typhoon and Disappeared Along With The Notorious Outlaw after a Giant Shootout that Ripped Apart Half A Forest. Milly still works for the company, but she hasn't done anything to deny the rumors. In a way, I'm glad; being officially MIA is a really effective way to get the bounty hunters off our asses. Needless to say, I wasn't looking forward to this meeting; if Jackie found out who Meryl was, our cover might be blown. Not that it matters much now, I guess, but still…

Jackie pulls out a notebook and a pen. "Just tell me exactly what happened, Mr. and Mrs. Carter."

We made up a story about what really happened over breakfast this morning, and I start it up. "We'd just finished eating breakfast yesterday morning at about 7:30, when we noticed it was getting kind of hot. We didn't think too much of it at the time, but then we heard a rumbling coming from underneath the floor."

Meryl picks up the story. "We got a little closer when suddenly a giant blast of flame erupted out of the floor, which then caved in along with half the wall. In the explosion, a large chunk of wood flew by and punctured his eye."

"And what did you do after that?" Jackie asks, all business.

"We ran like sonsabitches, of course." Me again. "When the living room wall came down, we thought the whole house was gonna go right with it, so we piled up into the jeep and drove to my brother's house. Finally, about 4:30 in the afternoon, we came back and saw the damage. And after spending a couple of hours checking everything, we called you."

Jackie continues writing. "And you believe it was due to your gas main rupturing."

"Yes," Meryl replies.

Jackie mutters something in reply, then stops writing. "All right, Mr. Carter, Mrs. Carter, I'll file the report and you should have an estimate sometime by the middle of next week." She reaches out and shakes our hands, then turns around and leaves.

We listen to her get in her car, start it up, and the pebbles clatter on the driveway as she leaves.

After a rather long bout of silence, I turn to Meryl.

"So, how was your day?"

She shrugs. "Fine, I guess. Y'know, average. Head cook's just like regular, only I got more to do. You?"

I shrug. "'Bout the same. Quiet day."

Yet another awkward silence.

Finally, we walk out to the front porch and sit down on the steps. I put my face in my hands and sigh. God, I hate knowing my days are numbered. I've never really thought about it before, not even when I was in shootouts or showdowns or even the occasional Mexican standoff. On those occasions, my rational mind left and was replaced by what I like to call my "gun brain" – the cold, calculating part of my mind that takes charge whenever my life is put in danger. But the thing is, I can't do that now because there's nothing really concrete for my gun brain to focus on. I mean, I have no clue what Ithaqua looks like, and I can't really focus on the cthonians – it's not really their fault; they're just mindless drones. And aside from that, I can't die naturally. So between my gun brain and my immortality, I've never really had to think about my own death before. And now that it's not just a possibility but a reality, I can't stop thinking about it.

Is this what people with fatal illnesses feel like?

The earthquake snaps me out of my reverie. It starts low, a barely perceptible rumbling deep in the earth, then it quickly gets louder and more intense. Something huge blasts through the sand in front of us, and a panicked thought sweeps through my mind

(oh dear god not again)

when I realize it's not a cthonian – it's a machine. It looks like a giant dusty bullet, only with a huge drill at the end and tank treads on the sides. A hatch pops open on the top and someone jumps out.

He's wearing a trenchcoat, a khaki vest, black leather pants, motorcycle boots, and a large cowboy hat pulled down low over his face. But I don't need to see the chainsaw sticking out of his hand to know who it is.

"Knives!" Meryl shouts.

"I said I'd come back," Knives mutters, "Or did you all not believe me?"

I don't answer, mainly due to the fact that my mind's racing a dozen different directions, and a dozen different questions as well.

He hops off the driller and turns to me, and without my saying everything he answers them all. "I went out to get this. It was Hoppered the Gauntlet's little pet project, but he left it unfinished when you and the priest killed him. I thought we needed an edge if we were going to go up against the cthonians, so I went to get it from where he'd hid it outside of Little Arcadia. It took me longer than I expected to finish it up, but then again, I was only working with one hand. And speaking of my other hand…" The saw starts up, spins for a while, then abruptly stops. "I can control it with my mind. Yet another advantage, I think."

Meryl shakes her head. "But why?"

"Because of Milly." He lowers his head. "She's the closest thing I've ever had to a…a friend, and…" He looks up. "I can't just stand idly by while she might be being hurt. Ithaqua said she was fine, but I don't believe a word that bastard says. And if I don't do something soon, it'll be too late." He pauses. "Now are you with me or not?"

I hold up a hand and shake my head. "Okay, let me see if I've got this straight. You want to take the jury-rigged creation of an insane cyborg through the crushing mantle of this planet into the hell-pit – which, by the way, is probably crawling with a welcoming party – and gain access to an unimpregnable  prison-dimension known only as the 'Black Lodge', run a gauntlet of traps which Ithaqua surely has set for us, rescue Milly, and while we're there, give your omnipotent daddy what-for?"

"Yeah, basically."

I look to Meryl, then back to Knives and smile.

"Sounds like fun. Count me in."

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