Author's Note: First update in several months; I'm sorry, I'm sorry. No excuses. Or rather, same excuses as always, which are so old now they might as well count as none. But I did promise to finish this story and I'm not prepared to break that promise, so never lose hope for a new chapter.

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Chapter Fifteen: The Nobodies
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"You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed."
-- from The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint Exupery
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The funeral was quiet. Not cold-quiet like the funerals of Meryl's memory, all those great-aunts and great-uncles dropping like flies and each one so important in theory but so very, very insignificant in unspoken fact. Her church always battled the outdoor heat with vicious ferocity as if trying to strike the chill of death deep into the bones of the living; relatives breathed down her neck with that cloying musty smell of stale cigarette smoke buried under layers of perfume; her skirts were too short for her mother but too long for the bastards in the back corner -- those cousins or friends of cousins who never grew past the mental age of twelve. Those were the days when Meryl watched her step so closely that she never noticed the sky.

This funeral was quiet because no one spoke. Not a lack of speech like the pursed-lip silent treatment of a disapproving aunt, where the thoughts are there so loud you could hear them with your ears plugged; no. This was real silence. Respectful silence. Meryl was amazed no one else could hear her thinking; she sounded so loud to herself.

Milly stood beside her, but not too close. The larger woman leaned into the warm breeze, hands clasped loosely in front of her, just as quiet as the others. Meryl wondered if this was the sort of funeral Milly had grown up with -- in fact, Meryl wondered if anyone else had grown up like herself. Certainly no one in Sky City had.

She hadn't felt this lonely in a long time. Milly had been hurt that Meryl and Vash hadn't included her in his decision to leave, and she was now giving Meryl the guilt trip treatment of pure innocence. The Doctor was gone and none of the ship's people, not even Natalie and Michael, were willing to interact much with the two outsider girls. Meryl understood their reasons -- even the open-minded folks like Natalie needed to hold onto a measure of respectability in this time of upheaval, and the more scared the people were, the less likely they would be to listen to a leader who fraternized with the so-called enemy. So Meryl didn't blame anyone for keeping their distance.

But... still.

The sun was setting behind the highest of the dunes, painting the desert in a thousand shades of fire. Shadows from the small field of crosses stretched out nearly long enough to touch the base of the ship's twisted hull. They'd been burying their dead here for a long time. Maybe, somewhere deep down, they'd always known they were going to end up on the planet.

People came and went quietly, unobtrusively. Meryl saw Michael bring Tom out for a few minutes -- Tom carried a pair of crutches, but didn't use them; his brother supported him all the way out and back. They stood, quietly, and didn't cry, and Mike laid a small white something at the base of the cross. Meryl never went closer to see what it was. It wasn't her business.

She watched Mike half-carrying Tom back into the ship and wondered, with a sharp pang, where Vash was now.

"Ma'am," said a voice softly in her ear. Milly was there, not as cool and distant as she had been for the past day, as if the spirit of letting-go engendered by the funeral had also affected her grudge against Meryl.

"Yes, Milly?" Meryl cringed inwardly at the sound of her own voice, but she had been dutifully quiet -- no one glanced her way. Still, she felt too loud here. She hoped whatever Milly had to say would be quick.

Milly gave her partner a small smile. "We've been here longer than anyone, ma'am," she murmured. "We can leave now, if you want."

Meryl glanced one last time at the grave and wondered, guiltily, did I say goodbye the way Vash would have wanted to? She was partly here on his behalf, after all, but all she could seem to think about was how uncomfortable she was, and all she could remember were the oppressive days of her youth. Surely Vash would have done or said something meaningful.

But meaningful to him isn't the same as meaningful to you, she told herself. You can't expect to do everything the way he would. No one can.

"Milly..." Meryl whispered self-consciously, raising a hand to the pale blue ties of her cape and twisting them between two fingers. "Do you think, should I... do something? For Vash?"

Milly looked down for a second, then shook her head. "If he hadn't already said goodbye," she said, "he wouldn't have gone away."

"But he did want to come to the funeral, so there must be..."

"We've been here long enough, ma'am," Milly said firmly. "Mr. Vash doesn't need us to be here anymore."

Those words rang in Meryl's head as she followed Milly in a carefully catlike walk back to the ship, padding along toe-to-heel to make the least amount of sound humanly possible. He doesn't, Meryl thought. He really doesn't need us at all -- not here, and not with him. Did he leave us behind to clean up his mess, to get rid of us, both...?

But they were cruel thoughts, and she doubted them strongly. Vash had left them behind with some good intention: to protect them, maybe, or to save them from the fear and heartache of caring for Knives. But as was so often the case with Vash's good intentions, they were beginning to backfire.

It had been a long while since Meryl could say she wasn't addicted to a man. This loneliness and disillusionment was familiar; this was the feeling that had driven her away from home, into big-business social climbing and later into dangerous field work. That half-crazed determination was coming back to her now. And no matter what reasons Vash may have had to leave her behind, she would follow him, and she would find him and stay with him.

This wasn't a case of infatuation anymore; and if it was love, it wasn't the kind that sonnets were written about. Meryl Strife did not give up. And if Vash hadn't figured that out yet, she'd just have to keep coming back until he did.

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"They can't have gotten all that far. Vash travels fast, I know, but Knives is still wounded. They'll be slow, maybe holing up through the white-heat hours..."

"Meryl..."

"Would they be past New Oregon yet? It's been three days, surely, even hurt --"

"Ma'am. Should we be doing this?"

"I told Vash we'd catch up with them in the desert. It's not like they aren't expecting us, Milly."

"But I really don't think... I don't think Mr. Vash wants us around that much."

Meryl gritted her teeth behind the pencil-thin white line of her lips. "I don't think Mr. Vash is in much of a position to argue the point, Milly,"she said pointedly. "And we're going to do this. I don't care what Vash thinks he needs. We may not be on Bernardelli's payroll anymore, but our job was damned important and we know how to do it better than anyone."

Milly sighed, knowing Meryl was right but reluctant nonetheless. "We can't even afford to eat..." she said, more to hear Meryl's counter than to actually talk her out of it.

"The Doctor left some things to Vash in his will," Meryl said stiffly. "People he treated on planetside insisted on paying him, but they don't use any currency here. Natalie's given us the money to take to Vash and it will be in our possession until then. He just has to get the appropriate amount in the end."

Milly nodded. "Well," she said. "I guess Mr. Vash needs whatever help he can get."

"Don't I know it," Meryl said vehemently. "We'll leave early tomorrow."

"Yes, ma'am."

Neither of them noticed, as they parted ways to their own rooms, the pair of bright green eyes that had been watching them from behind a corner flitting away into the dark.

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Loading up with provisions in the morning didn't take long. Meryl had expected some delicate footwork, some negotiation, even some haggling if the tension wasn't too hair-trigger thin, but what she got was three large packages handed over wordlessly and a sigh of relief from the errand boy who'd brought them down to the Jeep. Sky City wanted them gone, end of story.

She checked through the packs -- well-organized, thorough, clearly assembled by someone who knew travel. These people didn't travel. So who...

"Care packages courtesy of the City's scouts and traders," said a voice behind her. Meryl turned, sand squeaking under her sensible shoes. Natalie stood back in the deeper shadow next to the hull of the ship, hands deep in her heavily-darned pockets. "Who would mostly be me," she added. "Not that I don't think you ladies know how to pack for the open road. Figured you wouldn't mind the extra nudge."

"It's really that bad, isn't it?" Meryl asked, losing her harsh authority for a moment. She looked smaller than usual.

"Is is any worse than a planetside city? People are people. An' we're more close-minded than most. Isolation does that."

Meryl looked down.

Natalie moved out of the cooler shadows and leaned against the Jeep on one hand. "It's bad, yeah," she said gently. "It'll prob'ly get worse. And outsiders are going to have to change that, because the people here are gonna need to see that the world is bigger than a few thousand cubic yarz and mostly it's made of all the same old stories. But you two can't do all that, not now. So get out while the getting's good."

Meryl sighed. "I guess I just always thought that the lost technology was... greater than the rest of us, somehow. Everyone planetside does. We've all got to believe in something, and if we could believe in the machines and the people who built them, there'd somehow be a better future... somehow. But that's just stupid to think, isn't it, stupid and human."

Natalie shrugged. "Being human's just being human, not being stupid. But the ships, the technology -- there's no future in them. They're our past. We people who live on the ships aren't forward-thinking or futuristic, we're practically ancient barbarians compared to the brand new civilization growin' like a fungus right under our noses. It's all so ass-backwards sometimes I have trouble figuring out where I stand in it all, forget leading a bunch of idiots even more narrow-minded than myself."

"You don't strike me as narrow-minded."

"You'd be suprised at the number of things I can't stand," Natalie said with a wry smile.

The "front door" -- the hatch most closely resembling level with the ground, anyway -- slid open, admitting the trenchcoat-clad figure of Milly into the rapidly warming air. She waved vaguely at Meryl and started making her way over.

"First and foremost of those things being messy goodbyes," Natalie added. She grasped Meryl's hand tightly. "You girls take care," she said in a matter-of-fact tone that betrayed no sign of either relief or sorrow. Then she turned, clapped Milly on the shoulder as they passed, and was gone.

"Let's go, Milly," Meryl said decisively, trying to inject some of her old authoritative pep into her tone. Milly responded with an equally less-than-genuine grin, clambering into the front passenger's seat as Meryl checked the air in the tires one last time, an almost unconscious act that was the product of long years and hard lessons.

Occupied with finding the too-well-hidden lever that moved the driver's seat forward, Meryl didn't notice when there was a very slight wobble and dip from the Jeep, as if someone other than herself or Milly had been shifting position.

Meryl found the lever, her feet finally found the pedals, and in less than two minutes they were traveling top-speed towards New Oregon and the rising suns.

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The Jeep had been gutted and patched extensively, as had any automobile on the planet that could be bought for the price of a reasonably healthy tomas and two weeks' salary. Only rich snots in wooden mansions could afford new vehicles, because they could afford them custom-built. Nothing common was ever new, not on Gunsmoke.

And these Frankensteinian Jeeps, as could easily be discovered with a little deduction and a little investigation, contained far more niches and storage spaces than your average Earth-design vehicle. It didn't take a genius to figure out that planetside designs had adapted over the decades, becoming skewed toward the lightweight and the fuel-efficient, with lots of gaps for more surplus water. Driving a two-and-a-half-ton, gas-guzzling heap of metal in the open desert with only a canteen or two to your name was utter suicide.

A little wrangling and twisting and one very carefully placed laser shot gave Jessica all the room her slight body needed to lie comfortably underneath the two back seats. As long as nothing heavier than the blankets and provisions chose to sit down on the seat above her head, she'd be perfectly safe. And she hadn't been inconsiderate; between her tightly-wedged knees rested an extra sack of dry food, a change of clothes, and what she hoped were all the travel essentials. Granted she knew markedly less about long-distance travel than the two women above her, as she'd never done it before... but surely it couldn't be that hard.

Jessica bit her lip and closed her eyes, shutting away the claustrophic sight of the seat-bottom bare centimeters from her nose. It was getting warmer. At least, she thought desperately, I won't have to worry about sunburn under here.

There was nothing to do but wait, and thinking about how hot and thirsty and miserable she was going to be in a few hours wasn't going to do her any good. When they were far enough away from Sky City, Miss Meryl and Miss Milly wouldn't be able to afford the time it would take to drive Jessica all the way back, so they would let her stay with them. It would work. It really would.

She had to see this thing through. Brad and the Doctor, two of the three driving forces of Jessica's life, were gone. There was nothing she could do but hunt down the third.

Keeping her breathing even and her heart rate low by sheer force of will, Jessica finally managed to doze off.

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"They're off."

Michael looked up from his paperwork, registered what Natalie had said, and sighed. "No hard feelings?"

"Only the usual kind," Natalie replied with a shrug. "They don't blame us for anything. It's more than we'll probably get from the rest of the world."

"Then it's over." Michael closed his eyes and tried not to choke on his relief.

She decided not to burst his bubble just yet. Let the boy learn the facts of life as they came. First and foremost being that nothing ever ended, not really.

"Mike..." Natalie said after a moment, feeling around for the easiest way to break the news and coming up with none. "Jess went with them. Stowed away. Thinks no one knows, but she's got zip talent for stealth, y'know how she is."

Michael hesitated a moment, but the news didn't feel strange as he turned it over in his head. The young girl had really lost everything now. Everything but the ship itself, which he supposed had rejected her when it rejected Vash. She would follow her idol now. He was the only constant she had left.

"She always wanted to travel," he heard himself saying dully.

Natalie sat down next to him on the bench in front of his worktop and put an arm around his shoulders. "You gotta keep it together, Jones. We've lost some good people. But we're gonna come back from it -- we always do. And I need you, everyone here needs you and thinkers like you to help lead them through the hatches and into the open air. Okay?"

Michael nodded glumly.

Natalie punched him lightly on the shoulder and stood up. "Get some rest, kid," she said. "Tomorrow'll be better."

Michael stared at his paperwork for a long time after she was gone, wondering if -- in this crazy upside-down and backwards world he'd been thrown into -- her words would ever be true.
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