"Now!"
Milly's demand resonated through the room and Meryl sat frozen in shock at the other woman's uncharacteristically severe manner.
For a split-second Milly hesitated, as though she had surprised even herself with the intensity of her reaction, but then her features settled into that same firm expression with even more resolve.
On top of everything else that had happened, in the wake of the physical and emotional exhaustion of her injuries and the conversation with Vash, this sudden confrontation from Milly shattered Meryl's fragile grasp on composure and she just burst into tears again.
Meryl buried her face in her hands, but not before she saw Milly's stubborn expression turn to one of absolute horror.
She could hear Milly spluttering in panic: "Oh—oh, no... Ma'am, I—no, I'm sorry—please don't..."
Meryl tried to stifle her sobs and heard Milly's hurried footsteps approaching the bed. The younger woman sat down next to Meryl, putting an arm around her shoulders and threading long fingers through her short hair in a familiar reassuring gesture. Meryl sighed heavily and leaned into Milly.
It was a pose almost identical to the one she had shared with Vash, but for some reason it didn't quite feel the same. She couldn't put her finger on what had changed; Milly was sitting just where Vash had been, and her embrace now was just as comforting as his had been. It was just... different, and she wasn't sure why. Or maybe she just wasn't willing to admit why. She tried not to think about it too hard, and only then realized that Milly was speaking to her.
"You don't have to say anything, Ma'am," Milly was saying. "I didn't mean to upset you."
"No, Milly," Meryl said, wiping her eyes on one sleeve as she sat up straight again. "You're right, I'm not okay, and you deserve to know why. I'm just... exhausted. After going through this—" Meryl paused for an instant, then quickly finished, "—whole ordeal, I'm just... God, I'm so tired."
She was about to say with Vash, in reference to the conversation on this topic she had finished only moments earlier, but she didn't want to admit to Milly that she'd spilled her guts to a near-stranger in a matter of minutes, as opposed to keeping so much from her own partner over the course of all their travels together.
"It's alright, Ma'am," said Milly, somehow managing to look both understanding and utterly crushed by Meryl's reaction. "It's okay, you don't have to—"
"No, listen," Meryl interrupted, before Milly's disappointment could manifest in one of her devastating kicked-puppy expressions. "I just mean I'm not up for trying to tell a coherent story right now. I can barely string two thoughts together, much less..." Meryl gave up trying to make sense and sighed. "...whatever. But I can answer questions," she finished. "That's easy. That doesn't take a lot of brain power. Just ask, and I'll follow your lead, as best I can right now."
For a moment Milly looked completely taken aback, suddenly overwhelmed at being given carte blanche access to Meryl's past. She opened her mouth, then froze, then closed it again. She repeated the process twice more before finally finding somewhere to start.
"Well, I guess... How did you end up working on a steamer in the first place?"
Meryl took a deep breath and puffed out her cheeks around a long sigh. Here goes.
"I ran away from home," she told Milly. "When I was fifteen. My parents didn't really want kids, and didn't know what to do with me. I didn't belong there, and when I left I didn't belong anywhere." Meryl shrugged. "And then, for awhile, I belonged on the Gunsmoke."
"What did you do? On the steamer. Where did you work, I mean," Milly clarified.
"Well, actually—"
"Because I know it wasn't the laundry, or the kitchens, or as a stewardess," Milly interrupted. She ticked off each possibility on her fingers. "But I can't really think of anything else, for... you know..."
"A girl?" Meryl supplied, and Milly nodded.
"Well, when I went looking for work—because my money ran out," she explained, "I was basically starving until someone suggested I try to find work on a steamer, and then there weren't any positions available. But I was desperate, and when the deck chief made a joke about a job in the boiler room, I said I'd take it."
"The boiler room?" Milly sounded shocked.
"It was like Christmas for those jerks," Meryl went on, ignoring Milly's exclamation. "I was barely 16, five feet maybe, 90 pounds soaking wet. The chief marched me down to the boiler room and handed me a shovel. Two dozen men had seen us go by and tagged along, laughing their asses off when they heard what was happening."
"What did happen?"
"You know me." Meryl shrugged. "I'm stubborn as hell, and they told me I couldn't do something. So I shoveled coal. I don't even know how long. They stopped laughing once my hands went raw and started bleeding, and when someone tried to take the shovel away I hit him in the gut with the flat of the blade and kept working.
"Eventually the foreman showed up and put a stop to it, and I don't think I've ever seen anyone so angry. But the steamer had already shipped out and I was stuck there. I guess I impressed him with sheer will power, and he didn't really have any other options, so he gave me the job. And then—right there, in front of everyone!—he warned all his men to leave me alone, that I was 'off-limits'." Here Meryl made a face, and exaggerated air-quotes with her fingers. "So I kicked him in the crotch and told him I could take care of myself."
"That does sound like you," Milly admitted.
"So I worked below decks," Meryl went on. "Wherever they needed an extra pair of hands. Especially little ones." She showed Milly her palms and waggled her fingers. "I could get into small spaces, do dexterous work those ham-hands couldn't manage. I earned my keep." Meryl could hear the quiet resentment in these last words and wondered if Milly would notice, too.
The other woman waited for some time before speaking again, as though she was trying to decide if what came next would be worth the trouble.
"But something happened to the steamer," said Milly, finally. It wasn't really a question, but it prompted an answer anyway.
"Yeah, it was only in service a couple years, and I was working it when, uh... I'm surprised you don't know, it was all over the news, planet-wide—though I guess you would have been pretty young at the time?" Meryl was babbling, fully aware that she was trying to stall. She also knew it was pointless; she'd have to tell the story anyway. Meryl sighed heavily. "It was... It's the worst steamer disaster in history. Catastrophic mechanical failure; it took months to piece everything back together and figure out what had gone wrong with the engines, the steering, the brakes. I was... lucky—" she choked on the word, "—to survive it."
"My goodness," breathed Milly.
"Yeah, and they had made half a dozen steamers just like it before they realized something was wrong. The whole damn series should have been decommissioned, but there are so few steamers and they're so expensive to make... They're all still in service. Like this one, the S.S. Flourish."
"That's awful," said Milly, aghast. "But how do you know all this?" she asked, puzzled.
"Bernadelli used to cover the whole steamer line," Meryl told her. Then she laughed, despite herself. "Not after that, though! There was a whole investigation into it, and I read all the inquiry reports."
"Oh!" exclaimed Milly. "Is that why you joined the company?"
"Huh? No, that was just a coincidence," Meryl said, shaking her head. "I started off at Bernadelli as a file clerk, long before they let me in the field. My first job was reorganizing the archives. I just happened to find all the files on the Gunsmoke, and then I read everything, cover to cover. It wasn't exactly closure, but knowing what happened felt... better."
"That's good, I guess," said Milly. "But you were still pretty young after—after that," said Milly, avoiding actually saying anything about the Gunsmoke's end. "What happened? Where did you go then? It was awhile before you started at Bernadelli, wasn't it?"
"Well, there was a man on the Gunsmoke that I..." Meryl hesitated. "It was the foreman. Eventually we, um... we were..."
"Lovers?" offered Milly.
Meryl gave a brief manic giggle, totally unprepared for such a forward question from Milly.
"Yeah," said Meryl, nodding. "Yeah."
Milly frowned at her reaction. "Why did you laugh?"
"I just didn't expect you to say it."
"Oh." Now Milly blushed, faintly, as if embarrassment was just an afterthought.
"Anyway," Meryl went on. "He died, and I went to tell his family. It was only his mother left, and she would never have known, otherwise. I was still only 17, and she took me in for a couple years. She taught me a lot about how to survive. How to use—"
Meryl gasped, clutching suddenly at her chest, and Milly looked at her in alarm.
"My derringers!" Meryl had absently reached up to touch the place over her heart, and found that the pistol that belonged there was missing.
"I have them, Ma'am," Milly said, quickly. She kept one hand on Meryl's arm, as though she didn't trust the smaller woman not to jump up and go looking for them that very instant. "They're all in your cloak. I even found the ones below deck."
A rapid knock on their door brought the conversation to a halt and Milly got up to answer it. There was a steward waiting in the hall, and he quickly removed his cap the moment he saw Milly, holding it in both hands as he stood with his mouth slightly agape, apparently trying to remember why he had come.
Meryl rolled her eyes from across the room, prompting him: "Yes?"
"Uh," said the man, startled out of his stupor. He looked past Milly at Meryl, saying, "I'm supposed to tell you, the last shuttle is leaving this afternoon. If you want off the ship before next week sometime, it'd better be today."
"Thank you," Milly told him, smiling. "We'll get packed up here; will you come get us when they start loading the shuttle?"
"Yes Ma'am!" The man nodded enthusiastically, clearly pleased for the excuse to see Milly again later.
Milly closed the door again and turned to Meryl, obviously trying to suppress a grin. "He called me 'Ma'am,'" she said quietly, letting one small snort of laughter escape. Meryl had to suppress a smile of her own.
"So, I guess packing, now?" Meryl asked, wearily.
"Not for you," Milly said, shaking her head. "I'll pack. You go back to bed."
Meryl tried to stand, saying, "But I—"
"Bed," ordered Milly, pressing a firm hand on Meryl's shoulder.
"Oh—okay," Meryl finally agreed, sighing. She flopped onto her side and kicked off her boots before letting Milly pull up the blankets and tuck her in snugly.
Moments later, Milly was gathering up the glass container and rubber tubing apparatus that Meryl had thrown to the floor in her panic when she woke. With some difficulty (when Milly tucks you in, you stay tucked in), Meryl pulled one hand out from under the covers to point at it.
"What is that?"
"Oh," said Milly, smiling excitedly. "Mr. Vash gave it to me, to help you! To keep you from dehydrating while you slept."
"Ah," Meryl replied. She didn't quite understand, but she was too tired to ask for any real explanation and she trusted Milly's medical expertise, so she thought no more of it.
"Rest now, Ma'am," said Milly, patting Meryl's shoulder gently before moving across the room to fit the whole contraption into her medical bag.
Meryl shifted inside her blanket-cocoon and slept fitfully, if at all. The memories of her experiences on this steamer and her time on the Gunsmoke blurred together until she couldn't tell them apart. Vash was dead and Alex was alive, pulling her back to the rear of the ship while Clark was stuck on the upper deck; she didn't know anyone named Alex and it was Vash's mouth and hands on her skin as Clark was being torn apart in the engine room.
She finally woke to Milly's gentle shake of her shoulder and Meryl tried to remember where she was, remember when she was. For a moment Alex still cradled her in his arms as he carried her up through the steamer. For a moment her fingernails still dug deeply into Vash's shoulders as she came, screaming, beneath him.
Then she was back in the present, sitting up suddenly with eyes wide, taking in a shuddering breath and shaking all over.
Milly had leapt back in surprise at Meryl's reaction.
"Ma'am! Are you alright?" Milly asked, worriedly.
"I'm... I'm..." Meryl bent forward, holding her head in her hands. "I don't know..."
Milly sat next to her on the bed and put an arm around Meryl's shoulders to stop her shaking. She didn't ask anything else; she just sat with Meryl and moved her hand gently across Meryl's back as she calmed down again.
"Just... weird dreams," Meryl murmured, finally, as the more vivid images began to fade and she was better able to sort out the truth from the false memories. "Really, really weird dreams..." She sat up straight again and said, "I'm fine. I am. Thanks, Milly."
Milly didn't look entirely convinced, but she nodded anyway.
"The steward came back," she told Meryl. "It's time to head out for the shuttle."
"Oh good," said Meryl. She moved across the room to where Milly had placed their luggage, near the door. "Honestly, I'll be glad to get off this—augh!"
She had pulled open her suitcase to find a familiar black cat curled up in a tangled mess of her clothes. It blinked slowly and gave a great yawn up at Meryl, baring tiny fang-like canines and a scratchy pink tongue.
"Nyao..."
"Kuroneko!" said Milly, jumping to her feet. She hurried over, scooping up the cat from the nest it had made in Meryl's suitcase. It went limp in her arms, purring loudly. "How did you get in here?" Milly asked, with an exaggerated expression of surprise that fooled no one.
"I wonder," Meryl said, flatly.
"Heh," said Milly, giving Meryl a guilty half-smile. She put the cat in the hall outside their room, saying, "Shoo, now! Scat!"
Meryl began rummaging through her clothes and made a face. "There's cat hair everywhere," she complained.
"It can't be that bad, can it Ma'am?" asked Milly, done with her theatrical shooing gestures. Meryl scowled and held up one of her white dress shirts, which now appeared to be a solid, if faint, shade of grey from the even coating of black cat hair. Milly frowned. "Oh. Hmm."
"It's fine, I can wear this," Meryl said, gesturing at the shirt she already wore. It was a little rumpled from having been briefly slept in, but it was white, dammit. For a few moments she tried unsuccessfully to flatten the most severe wrinkles, but then decided no one would notice under her tunic anyway.
Meryl donned the tunic and drew her cloak around her shoulders while Milly checked the room one last time for any forgotten clothes or other sundries.
"Clear?" asked Meryl, suitcase in hand, already pulling open the door.
"Yep!" said Milly, grinning as she gave Meryl an enthusiastic thumbs-up.
Meryl couldn't help smiling back. She ushered Milly out through the empty passenger salons to the open decks beyond, hoping to find someone to point them in the right direction. Eventually they ran across the same steward who had played messenger earlier, now off-duty but just as happy to help them find their way.
The young man led them along the portside of the steamer toward the rear, all the while trying awkwardly to chat Milly up, though Meryl wasn't sure why; they were leaving. Meryl tuned him out, paying strangely careful attention to the details of the ship around her instead. She reached out to trail her fingers along the cracked plaster that coated the sheet metal walls of the passenger deck, glancing in through each of the porthole windows they passed.
Meryl was sure she would be happy if this was the last time she ever even saw a steamer; she had experienced too much hell here, had lost too much to that part of her life. But it had been a part of her life, and this time she took the chance to say goodbye properly, rather than just run away and bury it so deep in her heart that the weight of it dragged her down for years.
She nearly jumped out of her skin as Milly brought an abrupt halt to her thoughts—and her feet—by grabbing her elbow.
"Look, Ma'am!" said Milly, excitedly. She was pointing up at something over Meryl's shoulder.
Meryl turned, and at first all she saw was the waning sunlight glinting off familiar zig-zag-framed glasses. Then she could see Vash properly, leaning on the railing of the upper viewing deck, looking out toward the horizon.
Her earlier muddled memories came suddenly to mind at the sight of him, all bare skin and sweat and gasping breaths—and she hurriedly squashed them down again.
It's not real. It was never real. It was Clark.
The reminder of the real memory brought a pang of guilt, but as uncomfortable as it was, it was better than the alternative.
Meryl gave a start as Milly shouted behind her: "Mr. Vash!" The younger woman waved up at the viewing deck, but when Vash didn't return the greeting she looked disappointed. "Do you think he didn't see us?"
"I don't know," said Meryl, frowning. It would be awfully difficult not to have noticed Milly's emphatic gesturing.
"The shuttle's leaving soon," Milly said, worriedly. "If he doesn't come down now, he might miss it."
"He'll make it," Meryl assured her, handing Milly her suitcase. "Hang on, I'll go get him." She realized their off-duty-steward-guide was still at Milly's side, watching Meryl with mild confusion. "Oh, sorry..." Meryl trailed off.
The man just shrugged. "I can wait," he said, with another hopeful glance at Milly. Milly beamed at him.
Meryl did her very best not to roll her eyes and doubled back the way they had come, following the curve of the steamer around to the front. She turned a sharp corner to take the aft-facing stairwell that led up to the viewing deck, and caught sight of Vash as she neared the top of the stairs.
He stood at the edge, resting with his elbows on the railing, fingers lightly clasped together. Meryl approached him from the side, but Vash didn't acknowledge her presence at all. When she reached where he stood, she leaned against the railing with one hand, watching him look down over the lower deck.
"Hey," she said, in quiet greeting, but Vash gave no reply. Meryl didn't know what else to say; she hadn't made any kind of plan before coming up here, and now she was lost. Their last conversation had ended so suddenly, and so strangely, and Meryl wasn't sure how to approach him now. Instead of forging on blindly into a new conversation, she turned to face the railing and looked down, too. She could see Milly on the lower deck, still talking animatedly with her newly acquired admirer. Meryl remembered everything she had told the younger woman, and realized how much more Vash deserved to know.
"I want to tell you more about the Gunsmoke," Meryl said, without looking up. She waited for a moment, but if Vash was interested he didn't make any sign of it.
Fine.
If she was going to be standing there talking to a wall, so be it. Vash needed to hear this.
She took a deep breath.
"The Gunsmoke was a second generation steamer," said Meryl. "The Humpback class, assembled as quickly as possible when demand for steamer travel skyrocketed basically overnight. They used the same general design as those first ships, but they made a lot of changes to benefit the passenger decks, which turned out to be kind of an engineering clusterfuck. A lot of stuff ended up inadvertently detrimental to all sorts of steamer functions. The emergency brake was one of those accidental changes."
A sidelong glance at Vash revealed seemingly no new interest at these words. She drummed her fingers against the rail in a fidgeting gesture she recognized as agitation, and went on.
"The main brakes..." Meryl was trying to sort out the right order of things even as she told the story, and now she changed her mind in mid-sentence. "If a steamer at full speed just cuts its engines to slow down, it takes more than two iles to coast to a stop. The main braking system is a series of massive iron anchors, a dozen on either side, which are dropped onto the sand to add drag to the steamer. A brakeman has to know exactly when to drop anchor, and how many, in time to slow and stop at a port. It's one of the most difficult crew positions, and it takes a long time to learn.
"If the steamer needs to stop quickly, all the anchors can be dropped at once. It's a bumpy ride, but it works. And even if the main brakes are out, it's not typically that dangerous. The steamer will still come to a stop eventually, and overshooting a target is better than putting too much extra strain on the ship itself.
"The emergency brake is an absolute last-ditch, drastic measure only. It snaps the rear axle and the back of the steamer drops onto the sand, immediately adding half the ship's weight to the drag. It cripples the steamer, but it'll bring it to a stop pretty damn quick."
Meryl drummed her fingers on the rail again, and then gripped it tightly as she relayed the most important information in this story.
"The problem is, on the Humpback steamers the emergency brake doesn't automatically cut the engines like the main brakes do. The engines are amidships, so they were still trying to push the steamer forward even as the back half was trying to drag itself to a stop. There was only so much the Gunsmoke could take before she just tore herself in two. The front half went down when the ridge collapsed, and the back stopped well clear of it."
Meryl turned to face Vash, watching him in profile, hoping for some sign he was even listening to her.
"That's what happened," she told him. "There was no way you could know about the brake, no one did. But what I can tell you, with absolute certainty, is that if you hadn't pulled the emergency brake, the whole of the Gunsmoke would have gone down. It would not have stopped in time, and it would not have steered clear. Over a thousand people would have died, but because of you, five hundred and forty-two people survived that day. Because you pulled that brake."
Meryl wanted to move closer, to put a reassuring hand on Vash's elbow, but she remembered how he had pulled away the last time she tried, so she just kept her grip determinedly on the railing.
"I don't know anything about your other burdens," Meryl said, quietly, "but let this one go."
There was still no response to any of this and Meryl sighed, trying to hide her disappointment.
"Anyway," she said. "The last shuttle is leaving soon." Meryl drummed her fingers once more and turned to go back toward the stairs. At the last moment, Vash's hand covered hers before she could move it from the railing. She glanced back over her shoulder and he was looking down at her with an expression entirely unreadable behind the yellow glasses.
"Thank you," he said, quietly.
Not sure what more she could say, Meryl just nodded. Vash released her hand and she made her way back down to the main deck, wondering if she had done enough to assuage any of his guilt.
When Meryl returned to the main deck, Milly frowned at her.
"Where's Mr. Vash?" Milly asked, looking past Meryl's shoulder as though Vash might somehow be hiding behind the smaller woman.
Meryl turned to gesture up at the viewing deck. "He's still—"
But Vash was gone.
"Oh, I..." said Meryl, feeling a small twinge of worry. "I don't know."
"He must be on his way down," Milly declared, with an impressive tone of certainty that Meryl didn't quite share. Milly turned again to the young man waiting at her side and nodded encouragingly for him to lead on. "Come along, Ma'am," she said, tucking Meryl's arm in hers. "We have to catch the shuttle!"
Bemused, Meryl let herself be pulled along in Milly's cheerful wake, soon realizing that the man was leading them to where passengers would normally disembark from the main deck. There was a small crowd of bustling crewmen nearby. The deck chief looked up as they approached, asking, "You two the last ones?"
"There should be one more—"
"Shuttle's leaving in ten minutes," the chief said, cutting across Meryl's words with little care. He hooked a thumb over this shoulder, toward the empty air over the edge of the steamer. "Better get down there."
"Um... How are we supposed to get down, exactly?" Milly asked, timidly.
One of the crewmen pointed to a rope ladder affixed to a small opening in the deck railing.
"That?" said Meryl, incredulous. The ladder did at least have wooden rungs attached, but it still seemed awfully fragile; it was rattling and swaying in great sweeping arcs in even the slightest breeze.
"It's not like we have a dock to put the gangplank on," snapped the deck chief, scowling.
Meryl stared down at the ladder with a similar scowl.
"I suppose it's not too bad, Ma'am," said Milly, but Meryl could clearly see the younger woman sizing her up, worried about her frailty and fatigue. Meryl was pretty sure they both knew she wasn't likely to make it down on her own.
Past the deck chief, Meryl spotted two more crewmen that had assembled some kind of rope and pulley system along the side of the railing. A wooden platform, about two yarz wide and at least twice as long, was hanging from the ropes securing it at each corner.
"Can't I go on that?" Meryl asked, pointing at the platform.
"What—that?" asked the deck chief. "That's just for luggage," he told her, and even as he spoke, two other deck hands began loading Meryl and Milly's suitcases onto the platform. It swayed under the weight of the bags and the two men waited for it to settle before adding anything else. "It's not very sturdy, because it's not really too much of a problem if we accidentally drop a bag. As opposed to a person," he added.
"Have you dropped anything yet?" Meryl asked.
"Well... no," admitted the chief, begrudgingly.
Meryl took another look at the rope ladder.
"I'll take my chances."
There were only a few other small suitcases to load; Meryl figured their owners must have already descended the ladder (and maybe even survived the trip). When all the bags were in place, Meryl climbed over the side of the railing and gingerly stepped onto the platform. It immediately tilted under her weight and she held tightly to the ropes on one side, widening her stance to balance the platform again before any bags could slide off.
"This is a bad idea," said the chief, shaking his head.
"Ma'am?" Milly's voice was strained with worry.
"It'll be fine," said Meryl, dismissively (and with more bravado than she really felt). "You go ahead and climb down, Milly. I'll meet you at the bottom."
The platform began to lower in small, lurching movements as the men above slowly let out rope through the pulleys. Meryl cringed every time there was a particularly long, sudden drop, gripping the ropes tightly even though it had been maybe eight iches' distance at any time.
Milly climbed down the ladder alongside, though it didn't take long for her to pass Meryl's slow progress.
"Go ahead," Meryl told her, nodding. Milly nodded back with a worried little frown and disappeared past Meryl's view below the platform.
Time seemed to crawl as she stood there, tense, with a white-knuckled grip that made her hands ache. Eventually Meryl heard a commotion above and someone shouted, "No, wait! Don't—"
She glanced up sharply, but she couldn't see much other than the glare of the setting sun on the gleaming metal hull of the upper decks of the steamer. Suddenly a dark shape blocked the blinding reflection, rapidly growing in size as Meryl watched, confused. A moment later the shape resolved itself into a black duffel bag plummeting toward her; it grazed her injured shoulder—ow, shit—before striking the edge of the platform at her feet. The rope securing the nearest corner abruptly tore loose and Meryl gave a yelp as the whole surface tilted under her.
The duffel rolled off the edge and the rest of the luggage began to slide after it, tilting the heavy wooden plank even further. Meryl's fists were clamped in a vise grip around the remaining rope at her end of the platform, trying to dig in her heels as she watched everything around her disappear into the darkness that loomed past her toes. She couldn't even see the ground from this height; it was obscured by the shadow of the steamer and the world below looked black and bottomless.
When the last bag vanished into the abyss the platform tried to right itself, still unsteady on only three anchor points, with Meryl clinging desperately to the unbalanced end and trying to keep her feet steady. Milly was calling up to her from below, but she was too far away and Meryl couldn't make out her words over the shouting happening on the steamer deck above.
"What the hell's going on?" Meryl hollered, craning her neck to look upward. When no one answered her directly, she shouted again, "Hello?" Unwilling to release her death-grip on the rope just to shield her eyes from the sun, Meryl squinted intently up at the deck in hopes of catching sight of someone she could yell at properly.
After blinking rapidly for a few seconds, she could make out several stick-figure shapes at the railing, staring down at her.
"Are you okay?" It was the deck chief, panic in his voice.
"Oh shit, is that—"
Meryl recognized that voice, too, as well as the bristle-headed silhouette that accompanied it. She gritted her teeth fiercely as anger now overwhelmed the fear gripping her.
"What are you even doing down there?" Vash demanded, bent at the waist over the railing so Meryl could see him properly.
"Composing a sonnet!" she snapped, before shrieking, "What does it look like?"
"Okay, okay," called Vash, making exaggerated and unnecessary stay there gestures. "Hang tight, we're going to pull you back up," he told her, leaning so far out over the railing that Meryl was afraid he might just teeter over the edge and join her on the platform.
To her fury, he did.
Vash pitched suddenly forward and Meryl heard him give a quiet, "Whoops!" For one glorious, hopeful moment, it seemed as though he might catch his balance, his gloved hands gripping the railing at his waist. But the moment passed and Vash tumbled forward, ass over teakettle, with long arms wind-milling wildly around him as he fell.
He dropped toward Meryl like a stone and she lunged for the opposite end of the platform, falling jarringly onto her knees as she managed to get an elbow hooked around one of the other ropes. Vash landed where she had been standing moments earlier with a crack of splintering wood as the odd corner with a rope still attached just snapped cleanly off the platform.
While Meryl hadn't been thrown off at Vash's initial impact, the wooden plank now swung in a wild arc, dangling precariously from the two remaining anchor points. She was somehow still clinging to one of the ropes as it dug painfully into the crook of her elbow, but when the flat of the platform slammed into the steamer's hull Meryl's head struck the wood with enough force to momentarily stun her.
Everything went black, just for a second, and then she was falling and everything happened in an instant: she was sliding down along the rough wooden surface, hands desperately searching for something to catch herself. There was a flash of red in her periphery and Meryl reached for it, her fingers brushing against heavy fabric but unable to find purchase, and then she was past the end of the platform and falling into the darkness below.
And then, inexplicably, she wasn't falling anymore. What little breath she'd had was knocked out of her lungs as an arm wrapped around her waist from behind and held tight.
"Gotcha," said Vash, his breath ragged. He pulled her up a little higher and Meryl felt her back pressed solidly to his chest as his arm tightened further around her body. She could feel his heart beating rapidly against her spine, just as wild and erratic as her own. "I've got you," he said, the relief clear in his voice.
For her part, Meryl just wrapped her arm over his. For a moment she clutched at the cuff of his sleeve, then reached past and curled her fingers into his palm. She found strange comfort in Vash's quick squeeze of her hand in response.
The view past her dangling feet was dizzying and Meryl turned to look back up over her shoulder, hoping to catch a glimpse of Vash's face. She knew instinctively that he would be wearing his man in red persona, and she wanted to take courage from the confidence and determination she was certain she would see in him.
Instead, she saw something so baffling and incomprehensible that she forgot the fear and the danger and anything else that had occupied her mind just moments ago.
Vash was holding the bottom edge of the platform in an impossible clawed grip, each of the fingers of his left hand digging half an ich into the wood grain. As Meryl watched, his thumb disappeared up to the first knuckle as his hand tensed further, making long slivers of wood bow out around the dark leather of his glove.
"Okay, I've got a plan," said Vash, suddenly.
"What?" said Meryl, distracted from the impossibility of his grip.
"I'm going to let go," he told her.
"What?"
"Get ready down there!" Vash bellowed, his shout ringing in Meryl's ears and making her wince.
"Me?" she shouted back, confused.
"On three?" Vash asked, his voice back to a more tolerable volume. "One..." he began.
Meryl wriggled in his grasp without thinking, saying, "No! Don't—"
"Three!"