She heard quiet voices speaking in hushed tones it felt like it was coming from outside of her head for a change. She felt groggy. She cracked an eye open to take in her surroundings. She was in a dimly lit white room filled with medical equipment. There was another bed to her left. She tried to focus. It looked like Vash. The equipment near him gave off steady quiet beeps. He was alright.

No rocks. No tunnels. No Knives. Who was she? Meryl Stryfe, Bernardelli disaster claims investigator. The airship must have picked them up. They'd made it.

She sighed, relieved to momentarily be out of danger, happy to finally be remembering the basics clearly again. She felt safe and after a moment, she concentrated on the voices she was hearing.

One sounded like it was coming from a young man, and he sounded perplexed by something. "--increased blood flow to the telltale areas, and all the readings show it has affected the patient's entire body, right through her bones, but there have never been any tumors present in any of the scans." A pause. "It just doesn't add up. Usually, they begin growing as soon as exposure occurs."

Tumors...scans...exposure? What was going on?

A reassuring, wiser voice started. "You really are going to give her cancer if you keep using that scan on her. We'll just have to give it time to see how her condition progresses. Besides, this case is not unprecedented. We'll have to keep monitoring her. We know from previous cases that this kind of radioactive contamination can--"

Contamination? God no. They weren't talking about her, were they? She'd seen plant engineers' widows who made pension claims, pored over their husbands' medical reports, observed the autopsy pictures... Her heart started racing. She closed her eyes tightly. She wanted to cover her ears to block out the words, but her arms felt too weak.

Suddenly, an alarm on one of the medical machines above her head sounded. She heard somebody snap a medical folder closed and the two men approached her. The younger of the two rushed out of the room. The short, older man stayed by her bedside.

"Good morning, Ms. Stryfe. It's good to see you've regained consciousness."

Before she could ask him anything, though, somebody ran into the room sobbing and landed on her midsection. Her mind was filled with so many questions, but she'd have to wait for any answers. She looked down at the person who was holding onto her tightly.

"Oh sempai. I'm so glad you're awake!"

For the last four days since she'd woken up, her life was a blur of medical tests. She didn't know what kind of data they were collecting, let alone care. Every day, she numbly took note that Milly fretted over her health, Knives stalked his cell like a maimed animal, and Vash still hadn't regained consciousness. The doctors really weren't telling her much, really; just that she had been exposed to a "rather large amount of radiation" and they were monitoring her closely for "uninhibited cell growth."

She wished they'd just cut to the chase. When they said "cell growth," they were talking about cancer. She was going to die and Vash was going to wake up and hate her for what she'd done to his brother, only making his attempt at converting his genocidal brother all the more difficult.

In those first days, she contemplated packing up and quietly returning to December. If she had cancer, they wouldn't be able to help her on the ship, anyway. She knew she wouldn't be missed...not by Vash...not after what she'd done.

But Milly wouldn't have let her,and she reallydidn't want to leave him. She would stay, at least until he told her to leave.

This had been her job, right?

She was starting to remember the basics now, if not in exact chronological order, but she didn't tell the resident psychologist. When asked, she said the whole episode was rather hazy still. In truth, she felt like she was constantly walking through a cloud of confusion, so it wasn't really a lie at all.

Besides, she felt nervous about the whole thing, like she needed to talk to someone who had been there before she started spilling her guts to a strange doctor. The sense of isolation she felt hadn't abated, and she was becoming desperate to find someone to relate to. She even went so far as to sit in the little observation room and watch Knives thrash around his cell. He seemed more animal than man, his mutilated torso strangely unbalanced. He hadn't gotten his arms yet due to the fact that Vash was still unconscious. For a moment, even though they swore up and down that a four-inch piece of bullet-proof, one-way glass separated them, he looked directly into her eyes and she could never shake the feeling that he knew she was there.

So she waited patiently between doctor exams and Milly's mothering for Vash to wake up. Maybe he remembered better than she did. Maybe he could tell her how all these other memories got into her head...the ones that didn't happen to her...the ones that didn't even have her in them...the ones that starred him. Sometimes she felt like she could see his entire past. Either that or she was officially losing it.

In the beginning, she'd sit by his bed whenever she could. When Milly and the doctors weren't around, she even held his hand. It felt good to be near him, even if he didn't know she was there. After a few days, though, seeing him like this started to hurt. She knew he would probably snap out of it whenever his body was ready, but not having any power over the situation was making her feel useless. And the silence, punctuated by medical equipment, really didn't do anything to assuage her growing guilt.

She decided it was time to try to get back to work.

The Alarm went off. She hit the buttons blindly until the sound stopped. She swung her legs over the bed and ran her hand through her hair. It was just another day living on the working museum that was the SEEDS ship. She slipped her feet into the slippers by the bed and shuffled to the bathroom.

She looked at her face in the mirror. She gently pulled at the skin around her eyes. Nightmares and no sleep were beginning to take their toll on her skin. Three days out of the medical bay and the confusion still hadn't lifted. She sighed and ran her hand through her hair, stopping suddenly at a white hair poking up stubbornly.

"Old Meryl Stryfe," she said sarcastically to herself. "Going prematurely grey, are we? I'm supposed to be 23, right?"

She pulled the hair out and rolled it between her fingers.

Her mother was seated, looking at her reflection in a mirror. She pulled out a hair. She looked at it, then looked down at Meryl and realized she had an audience. She sighed. "Don't be like your mommy. If you pull out a grey hair, three will grow in its place." Meryl said something in reply. "Don't argue Meryl. Do as I say, honey, not as I do..."

Her mother had told her that when she was very young, hadn't she... It was alarming that she was remembering things from her childhood with astonishing clarity, but she was having trouble recalling events that took place three weeks ago. She found it highly disconcerting.

She looked back at the hair in her hand. Maybe there was some truth to her mother's words after all. She kept finding white hairs mixed in with the black, particularly at her right temple. She'd heard old wives' tales about people being so scared that their hair went completely white. That seemed ridiculous.

Maybe it was a symptom of her "condition"... But it had been a week and they hadn't found any tumors. They hadn't really told her she had cancer, either. It still worried her quite a bit. Then again, no news was good news, right?

She dropped the hair in the waste basket. She ran her hand through her hair again. Another white hair stuck out. She growled a little, about to pull it out, then sighed in resignation. She put both hands on the sink. She had bigger things to worry about besides a few grey hairs.

"Face it, Meryl," she said to her reflection. "You're getting old."

Fifteen minutes later, she found herself staring at a blank piece of paper in a borrowed Smith Corona. She'd told one of the residents, Jessica might have been her name, that she'd needed to write a report. They presented her with this relic. As she looked at the museum piece, she wondered to herself why anybody would even bother to bring a typewriter onto a spaceship. She sighed, trying to break away from the daydream that was threatening to waste all her time away.

She told herself the reason she was avoiding the report was because the keys on the ancient machine stuck, or her recent sleep deprivation was making her edgy. But the longer she looked at that paper, the closer she came to admitting to herself that the reason she didn't want to write it was because she didn't want to remember it. She didn't even want to try.

The door slid open. She jumped.

"Good morning, sempai!"

Meryl took a deep breath, "Milly, don't DO that!" She was already on edge. She didn't need any more help to be pushed over.

"Sorry, I was just--"

"Come on, Milly! For breakfast!"

"Yeah, well, but--"

"Whatever you say... The pudding is in the cabinet over the dishes."

Milly stopped. She started again, testing. "And where--"

"Oh, for crying out loud. The spoons are where they always are."

Milly stood looking at Meryl. She was sitting at the table in front of a typewriter with a cup of coffee in one hand and she was looking over notes in the other. She looked normal...

"Are you..." Milly started.

"No, I'm not reading your mind," was the quick retort. "You tried to have pudding for breakfast yesterday, too." Meryl just kept reading her notes and drinking her coffee. "You're a big girl, if you want to ruin your appetite, go ahead."

Milly thought that was a strange comment. What could possibly ruin her appetite for pudding? "Oh yeah...Hey Meryl?" She stopped to see if the question would be answered before she could ask it again. Meryl just looked at her...waiting. "Are you feeling ok?"

Meryl sighed. "Oh Milly, I'm sorry I was short with you." She looked at the blank paper in front of her. "I've got to write some semblance of a report and, well," she grumbled, "they don't write themselves."

"Oh...Is that all that's...bothering you?"

Meryl put the notes and the coffe cup down. "Honestly, a lot of things are bothering me."

Milly sat down in a chair across from her at the table. "Oh? Like...what?"

"Well," Meryl leaned back in her seat, "like...this report. I don't feel like it's...well...important." She took a breath. "I mean, I don't feel like it's important to write it." She looked at the ground with a faraway look in her eyes. She'd always had a problem articulating what she felt. "I haven't ever felt like that before. It's like...everything I thought I knew about the world is...exactly the same, but somehow I don't fit into it the same way."

Milly looked at her friend. She had been acting peculiar recently. "Go on," she urged.

Meryl looked at her, unsure of herself, but she continued. "And, I've been having this weird feeling that I've been...disconnected? That doesn't seem like the right word... It's like there's something missing, like there's something I lost." She shook her head and laughed a little, "But I don't have a clue as to what it is!"

The psychologist had told her that Meryl might be feeling weird. Post traumatic stress disorderwas what she'd called it, right? Meryl had been through a very traumatic experience. She'd told Milly to encourage Meryl to participate in familiar routines, but nothing seemed familiar anymore. Writing reports didn't even seem to do the trick. "Have you...visited Vash lately?"

Meryl groaned and pushed the heels of her palms into her eyes. "Not today." It was hard looking at him in that hospital bed, surrounded by beeping machinery. She felt so powerless to help him. It was strange how she'd rather take care of him herself in a dirty one room apartment than have doctors who were well-versed in lost technology look after his health.

"Do you want to go?" Milly questioned her innocently.

Yes, but not by myself. "Were you planning on making a visit to the medical bay?"

Milly smiled. "Yeah, right after I had...some breakfast..."

She smiled at Meryl and laughed, and then Meryl started laughing a little. It was a nice sound for Milly to hear. "Okay," said Meryl. "I guess I can tag along."

Meryl swung her legs back and forth. She was sitting on the empty bed next to Vash's. It had been hers a few days ago. Milly sat in a chair next to Vash. She'd offered the chair to Meryl, but Meryl refused.

Vash's status? Nothing to report. Nothing was wrong with him, nothing had changed. It made Meryl nervous. With all these beeping boxes, she didn't feel like he was alright. If something was wrong with him, then they could "fix" it. But this...this was just a waiting game.

Milly was talking to him like she always did. She said it was good for him to hear peoples' voices. Meryl didn't see any quantifiable improvements in Vash, but it kept her from having to focus on the beeping machines.

Milly was just finishing a story about her first toma roundup at her family's farm when Meryl sensed somebody else's presence in the room. She turned to look at the door and saw Lil peaking out from the threshold.

"Hey sweetheart, are you looking for Milly?" The girl looked at her with her dark eyes and nodded rapidly, her hair bobbing up and down. "You can come in if you want to." The girl shook her head rapidly. "Okay." She tapped Milly on the shoulder and cocked her head towards the door. "Someone's looking for you."

Milly jumped up. "Hey Lil! What's the matter?"

Lil motioned rapidly with her hand for Milly to come towards her. Milly bent down and Lil whispered something in her ear.

"Okay, just a second." Milly turned to Meryl. "I need to help Lil with something. Will you be ok by yourself?"

No. Don't leave me here. "Yeah, I'll be fine."

"Okay, I'll see you for lunch."

At that, Milly scooped Lil up and walked down the corridor. Lil really had been stuck to her recently like white on rice.

Meryl looked at her feet. Still swinging. She found herself moving them in time to the beeps from the machinery.

God...what am I hiding from, anyway? She hopped down from the bed and sat on her knees in the chair Milly had just vacated. It's not like he can reject me when he's unconscious. She looked at him. She wanted to lie in bed with him and cry her eyes out. She just looked at him instead. She'd gotten a hold of the "Doc" and asked him what he thought about Vash's condition...about his appearance...

"He's lived through worse," he reassured her.

She leaned over and brushed his hair out of his face...three fourths of it was now black. That worried her a lot. When her hand left, his hair fell back into his face. She got a sense of déjà vu as she brushed his hair out of his face again. She sighed...yet again. She felt so disgusted with herself. Ever since she'd woken up, she'd felt so needy, like she wasn't complete unless she was near him. This wasn't normal and she hated feeling this way. Still, she couldn't shake it. She'd tried staying away from him, but it didn't help. There was always a sense of loss when she wasn't around him. When she was near him, the isolation disappeared She wanted to talk to him...to see if he remembered anything, to fill in the gaps in her memory, to find out what really happened. She looked back to that floppy black hair.

"What have you done to yourself?" she wondered out loud.

She took his right hand in both of hers. She leaned her forehead against his hand, too. Listening to the chorus of medical equipment, she found herself weeping.

She didn't make it to lunch with Milly after all.

A/N: So...they're out of immediate danger, but they're not in the clear yet! MUAHAHAHA! What is wrong with Meryl? And will Vash ever wake up? And will Milly continue to eat pudding for breakfast? And how does Knives feel about having no arms and being surrounded by humans? You'll find out soon...

The reviewing...please...