The place was huge, absolutely palatial; it spread out in a spiderweb of rooms and corridors interspersed with intimate gardens and courtyards. The public rooms all occupied the front of the house with the ballroom, the formal dining room, several withdrawing and music rooms, two billiard rooms, an enormous library and other large rooms suitable for hosting and entertaining large gatherings. Obviously these people were accustomed to entertaining on a large scale fairly regularly. All of them were very richly appointed, with no expense spared; the floors if they weren't covered in plush carpeting were of finely polished marble or granite or in some rare occasions even real wood (which was ruinously expensive to come across). The furnishings and art pieces were all of the finest make and materials. On the wings off to the sides were the living quarters and more private rooms like studies, offices and the like, wings attached to those side-wings held guest accommodations. The tones and shade used were more muted and less openly opulent but even these were luxurious. In the very back were the servants quarters and the rooms devoted to running such an establishment such as kitchens, laundries and the like. Behind the back in a different building were the tomas stables and the garage, the tool sheds and other buildings devoted to running the estate.
Hard to believe Meryl grew up in all of this, Vash thought as he finished looking around. She doesn't seem like the type to have grown up a pampered princess. She so... rough around the edges. She even seemed to enjoy roughing it in the desert sometimes... as long as things went well. He couldn't imagine any of these pampered young women setting foot on a dusty road in the outlands, let alone tracking down an infamous outlaw. They were all so delicate, so perfect, like a room full of porcelain dolls dressed up in their lace and ruffles.
Then he tried to picture Meryl in lace and ruffles and his brain shut down. It just wasn't happening.
Right then the place was a hive of activity with the wedding preparations going on. He'd been chased out of the kitchens by an upper servant wielding a wooden spoon, but how was he supposed to resist the temptation of all of those pastries laid out too cool? The public rooms couldn't even be politely called a hive of activity... it was a screaming mad-house. There were servants rushing thither and yon, nearly tripping over each other in their haste to do whatever errand or task they'd been assigned. Decorations were being finalized and put up in the places meant for their display. People asking anyone who looked like they might know where this or that particular flower bunch was supposed to go and were those arrangements for hanging or centerpieces? Even the family quarters were a little nuts; gaggles of boys and girls, all of them in various stages of wedding costume, being chased by their governesses and scolded to behave themselves. There were lovely young women, presumably bridesmaids, being fitted for their dresses (Vash had been chased of by a burly member of the staff as soon as he evinced any interest in witnessing a fitting). He was just about to try and figure out a way to sneak in when
"oof!" Vash was run smack into by his hurrying short-girl who was rushing down the hallways in search of the women she had an appointment with.
"Short-girl!" he said cheerfully. She looked up blankly at first, blinked and said
"Vash, what are you doing here?" her eyes narrowed immediately with suspicion. "You're not getting in trouble are you?"
"You know it really hurts you always ask me that," he told her, looking injured. Meryl gave him one of her patented skeptical looks (why did they always make him squirm?) and said
"You wouldn't by any chance be looking for a way to investigate the bridesmaids fitting rooms a little closer would you?"
Dammit, I hate it when she guesses right, Vash thought.
Meryl didn't do it often, usually she was more than happy to take whatever solution was most apparent and run with it (which had made for some interesting moments for him, especially early on in their association) but she could be strikingly perceptive as well as suspicious and second-guessing when the mood took her.
"Uh-huh," she grunted looking coolly at him. "I can see by your face that you were. Honestly! You and your philandering ways land us in more trouble than-"
"There you are!" her step-mother exclaimed shrilly, striding down the hallway accompanied by an aide of some sort. "Where have you been all morning?! Nevermind. Come along, the seamstress has been waiting for over an hour!"
"I'm only late by thirty minutes," Meryl grumbled as she was dragged off.
Yeah where did she go this morning? Vash wondered. He'd knocked on their door a few times then peeked in to find them gone so he'd spent the morning looking around the house for them only to overhear in the stables that they'd gone out for a ride at dawn. There was some speculation among the servants that Meryl and her partner were say, more than business associates but that was aside of the point.
Hey! he thought brightly. If I follow Meryl to her seamstress appointment then I'm sure to get in close with the other lovely women there for the fitting!
"Don't even think about it Vash!" Meryl called over her shoulder as she was hauled out of sight by her very irate step-mother.
Nuts.
He sighed in defeat. There'd be plenty of other opportunities later, according to the schedule the wedding wouldn't be taking place for another two or three days.
I guess I'll just go check on Knives, make sure he's kept happy and out of trouble, Vash thought with resignation.
The rooms they'd been assigned were up to even Knives' very demanding standards, and that was really saying something. The only entrance to the suite was off a private garden courtyard shaded by tall palm trees in large decorative urns with a miniature fountain in the center surrounded on four sides by stone benches. Past the private entrance one walked into a small entry foyer tiled in restful neutral colors with a place to remove ones shoes and a small mirror on one side, and a door leading to a small office/reading area, and a private dining area on the other. The foyer opened out to a large open living room, on either side of the front of the living room were two arched ways that led to a suite of separate bedrooms for each of them. The Living room itself was carpeted in very plush carpeting of a light off-white with a set of tan-colored couches two plush chairs, and coordinating tables of glass and wrought-iron done in the spanish-style filigree. Built into the wall on one side of the living space was a large flat display screen and a reader slot of data-hedrons, the shelf next to it containing a large selection of old earth programs and cinemas. The back of the living room wall had three window panels to let in the sunlight and two glass doors on either side that led to the two small back patios (that were also attached to each of their rooms). The two bedrooms off to either side of the living room were mirror images of each other, one done in green with darker woods and the other in blue with lighter wood accents. Each had the exact same large beds and private bathrooms, each done entirely in the signature colors chosen for them. That was good, it meant that he and Knives were no longer fighting over the bathroom in the morning.
Coming here seemed to have settled Knives down anyway, he was surrounded by enough luxury to satisfy his need for elegance, and he need not ever come in contact with anyone outside of the rooms, all he needed to do was either ring out for service or leave a note on his breakfast tray and the staff that ran the place took care of whatever whim he had. Vash felt bad for them, so generally he made as little fuss as possible. For the last little while, Knives had apparently sequestered himself away in the office/reading room just off the foyer and was steadily making his way through whatever was on the house computer system. Knives had been making use of the computer in the office for most of the night, yesterday... he always had been a night owl.
"Hey bro," Vash said unenthusiastically as he opened the door.
His brother turned to look over at him, probably curious by his twin's lack of usual enthusiasm. As ever with the two twins, a single glance was all it took to understand. It was nice to have that back, Vash had forgotten how much he'd missed it.
"If you weren't so obvious about your skirt-chasing, you'd be able to fool the petite one easily; she never looks past the surface," his brother said, reading a lot from only a few clues. "Besides, you shouldn't be pursuing the other species for breeding purposes in the first place; it's disgusting."
"There aren't a whole lot of our own species wandering about outside now are there?" Vash pointed out.
"Immaterial," Knives scoffed.
"What are you watching anyway?" Vash asked, changing the subject.
"Your short pet's wedding debacle," Knives said off-handedly. There was a faint aura of smugness about him however that said he'd brought the subject up because he knew his twin might be interested.
"What?!" Vash said, uncertain he'd heard his brother correctly. "Did you just say-?"
"Yes. I found it in the system archives, along with some other things of minor interest. It has nothing to do with me so I don't care about them, but you might find them interesting simply because you know at least one of the parties involved," Knives said, sounding nonchalant about it but he couldn't quite keep the note of smugness from creeping into his voice.
"You didn't by any chance hack your way into the system and decrypt those files did you?" Vash guessed shrewdly, knowing his brother only too well.
"Naturally. It would have been too boring here otherwise." Left unsaid was the idea that if Knives got bored, he might just find hmself something to do to keep him amused. An amused Knives was almost never a good thing for the people around him.
Vash was torn between curiosity about that wedding debacle and wanting to chide his brother for invading peoples privacy.
Screw the moral high-road, just this once, he decided abruptly. If I ask Meryl she'll probably never tell me, the girl's too proud...
He shrugged and pulled up a seat in front of the monitor where his brother sat. Knives obligingly started the video from the beginning.
The video actually opened on the formal dinner that took place the evening before the wedding. The cammera first zoomed in on the bridal dress on display at one end of the room and it was the most costly and gaudy display of wealth that could be assembled. Vash got the feeling that the dress with its iles of raw silk, crystal beads and seed pearls, handmade silk lace, brocade of satin and elaborately bejeweled headpeice, had not been made so much for the comfort of the bride as it had been made as a way to show for her father his wealth and status before the assembled gathering. The camera person started at the end of the table and recorded all the way down the long, white damask-covered candle-lit table finally zooming in on the happy young couple. Young was the operative word. Vash's jaw dropped.
That- that- that pedophile! That cradle-robber. My god she's still a baby! Vash thought in shock. Granted, Meryl was tiny and would probably always look younger than her age and in the video her face had been done up with make-up to make her look older but...
"She can't be more than fourteen or fifteen!" Vash exclaimed in outrage.
Indeed, even though Meryl as an adult was not what one might call well developed, she at least had all of the curves in the right places; the little girl in the display screen was small and skinny, and looked only somewhat past pubescent.
Obviously her father is of the "old enough to bleed old enough to breed" school of marriage arrangement.
"Stone-caster," Knives rebutted. "You're well over a hundred, where do you get room to criticize?"
"I get room to criticize because she's a fully-grown, consenting adult," Vash shot back, watching the dinner go by with a feeling of disgust because a very, very young Meryl Stryfe was making calf-eyes at a young man who, being above the age of consent, was certainly old enough to know better. Obviously she was in the throes of her very first crush.
"See? She looks happy enough," Knives remarked as the camera zoomed in on a particularly sweet moment between the happy (young) couple during which the groom got up and sang a love song to the very blushing bride-to-be. The little performance fell flat in Vash's eyes however. The young man appeared devoted enough, but there was an air about him that said he was playing up for the crowd, his endearments seemed a little too stiff, his words of love seemed somehow very rehearsed.
Vash said nothing as they continued to watch.
"...wish the bride and groom every happiness and felicity in the years to come," her father was saying at the toast at the end of the meal. It sounded less like a toast and more like a well-thought speech. "I wish also to express my pleasure and surprise at my eldest daughter for at last taking up the mantle of her prescribed responsibilities and finally acting in a manner that is a credit to her family and her upbringing."
Ouch, Vash thought, wincing. He wasn't surprised when Meryl blushed, but it looked less like it was from embarrassment and more like it was from anger. He chuckled suddenly when he noted that Meryl mouthed the words "pompous ass" when no-one was looking. Her glare remained as firey as ever.
The scene changed, showing the rows and rows of long benches out in the midst of one of the main gardens in the estate decked to a fare-thee-well with ribbons streaming from the bouquets flapping in the soft breeze, real roses by the bunch in white and pink, there was shade provided by five enormous inter-connected white silk pavilions with banners of pale blue flapping smartly in the wind. The guests were all arrayed in their finest, the camera person caught some of the asides and they weren't exactly what you would call complimentary about the bride. Most of them centered around a general feeling of disbelief that the bride had been enticed to the altar at all, with acerbic sides about her rough temper and tom-boyish personality as well as the "rebellious " streak in her.
And I thought I was a black sheep, Vash thought. He noted that her grandfather was frowning, looking at the groom with worried eyes; there seemed to be at least one person who was less than happy to see Meryl being married off.
The bridesmaids were all dressed in palest pink with light blue trim, layer upon layer of delicate chiffon of the highest quality flirting in the soft breeze that blew through the pavilion. They looked a little like the cast of Victor Herbert's "Babes in Toyland" in their sugary confection of wedding dress. There were the requisite member of groomsmen and they all looked... suspicious. Vash's instincts told him that they were carrying some form of weaponry on them.
As for the groom himself... the eighteen-year old young man looked very smug about something. He just had the look of a cat who's found the cream about him and Vash's teeth were immediately set on edge. It smelled like a set up.
The traditional wedding march was started up by the string quartet in the nearest pavilion and all hands rose and faced the rear. There was a sudden collective gasp of shock from the assembly. Vash blinked, uncertain at first of what he was seeing, but then began to chuckle.
The sweet blushing bride, instead of being swathed in the half-a-fortune gown of white silk and hand-embroidered lace trimmed with cultured pearls with a train that went on for iles that had been displayed earlier in the video was instead wearing a...different dress. A very different dress. It was simpler in make, plain satin, no extraneous decoration or frills, no pearls or lace or ruffles; a V-neck with thin silk straps on the shoulders lacing down the back and it was...
Red. It was very red. A brilliant, glaring, defiant scarlet dress in the midst of a desert-full of insipid pink ruffly frills.
Her father's face was an angry red to match the dress that was slowly beginning to shade to purple. He was beyond pissed. He looked like he was just going to explode on the spot.
As for Meryl herself, she was looking up the aisle to the young man waiting at the altar with challenge written on her face. There was a defiant tilt to her jaw and a smile playing about her lips that, while not quite smug, certainly had the attitude of "so, what are going to do about it?" She was testing him. Giving him a challenge to see what he would do, if he'd try to punish her for it or if he'd smile and laugh it off. Even at a young age it seemed she hadn't been entirely willing to take true love devotion at face value.
The crowd watching from the sidelines had stopped bothering to whisper and the low hum of muted conversation had risen to a loud buzz. The camera was in a position to hear everything said at the altar and when she reached it to take her place the groom turned to her father and said in smooth tones of honeyed cream
"I think that an embarrassing stunt like this calls for a re-negotiation of our little contract."
"Contract?" Meryl demanded softly. "Father... What is he talking about?"
The was a long moment when the audience and everyone else seemed to hold their breaths. The young Meryl looked over at her beloved groom with wide, pleading eyes. There was a look of combined hope and heartache on her face that was difficult to look at. The groom was less than sympathetic when he replied
"Your father had to offer me quite a tidy sum, on the side of being made heir to the Vineyards, to convince a well respected young gentleman such as myself to take you off his hands." This said in a cavalier tone designed to be cruel. The look of pain and denial on her face as she digested the words of the tragedy before her was heartrending.
"I want double the money," the young man went on as if her pain meant nothing to him (and it obviously didn't). "She's even more of a hell-cat than you told me, and even with her being in love with me it seems she's inclined to flout my authority. I'll have to pay a good deal of money to turn her into a wife that won't embarrass me in public."
Her father opened his mouth; by all appearances he was actually going to haggle over the adjusted bride-price right in front of the family and everyone! Meryl abruptly said
"I should have known."
"What?" Dylan Mori-Korin said, looking over as if he'd just remembered she was there.
"I said; I should have known," Meryl said in a soft, yet carrying voice. "I knew that something wasn't right here; those men you brought with you... they're thugs. I saw them appraising the house valuables and sorting through the things in the safe hidden in father's office. You're planning on taking things over. You weren't ever in love with me, you just pretended to be and I was stupid enough to fall for it. Well consider this the end, I'm calling off the engagement. It's over. There's not going to be any wedding, and the only way you're ever getting me into that goddamned dress is if you use it to dress my corpse."
"That's enough out of you," her father said sharply. "You listen here--"
"And as for you," Meryl said her voice heating up into that familiar tone that Vash knew so well, the one that said she had only just begun to read him the riot act on his long list of faults. "I am sick and tired of always saying how high when you say jump. You think you can just order me around like I have no mind or will of my own? I see now the lengths you'll go to to control me and I am not having it. I'll make it on my own or not at all!"
With that declaration she turned on her heel and strode back down the aisle. When she reached the edge she gave a sharp, shrill whistle between her teeth and a moment later an enormous black beast of a tomas, half a size bigger than even the biggest Vash had ever seen galumphed into view. Meryl leaped onto his bare back, dress and all, from a standing position. She paused just as she was about to ride away, looking back over her shoulder coldly at the groom and her father.
"Take your contract and blow it out your ass," she said succinctly. She kneed the enormous beast she was perched on and started to ride off, probably to anywhere but there.
There was a loud thunder-crack that split the air the camera jumped and there was a minute or two of frenzied wobbling and the sounds of gasping and someone fainting and a general upset of what was supposed to be a calm and dignified ceremony. The camera steadied a moment later just in time to see the tomas Meryl was riding away on give a high-pitched whine and fall to one side. Meryl rolled safely off from its back as it fell.
"Temper? Temper!" Meryl yelled, frantically crawling over to the enormous creatures head. She shook him, waited, and then shook him again. "Temper, open your eyes," she pleaded.
The beast gave out a low-pitched guttural moan, deep in its throat and then went still.
I don't believe it, Vash thought when he saw Meryl bowed over the still form of the tomas, shoulders shaking silently, trying to repress the tears. The camera-person, obviously curious as to who had made the killing shot, looked back up the aisle to show the groom with a smoking six shooter.
"Where do you think you're going?" he demanded, the ugliness hidden behind that urbane demeanor coming out into the open. Meryl said nothing, still slumped over the tomas that had obviously meant a great deal to her. Vash recalled now that Meryl and Millie both liked tomases in general and had tried on several occasions to get him to get one instead of renting or buying a jeep. They both came from a land-tending back ground (Vash had earlier assumed that Meryl had been a city-girl, she was so polished and refined about everything) and apparently they both had made an early attachment to riding tomas-back as opposed to relying on machinery.
Mental note, Vash thought angrily over the long-ago tragedy playing out before his eyes. Line that guy up for target practice. He took a moment to reconsider, as her father had an equal part in this mess. Both of them. The show wasn't over yet.
"Get back up here," the groom commanded. "It appears we're going to have a shot-gun wedding."
Meryl's spine straightened and she stood abruptly, her face was a stone, a calm unreadable mask but for the tear-tracks glittering down her face and the emotions glinting in her eyes.
"You had no right," she whispered. Louder she said "You had no right!"
"No right to what?" the young man demanded impatiently, clicking the cock back and pointing the gun at her head. She met his eyes without flinching, without backing down.
"You had no right to kill Temper!"
"Don't be a sentimental twit," the young man said. "He's just a tomas. There's more where he came from, and he's my rightful property in the first place. I can kill him if I want to, all I've lost is a few hundred double dollars."
"You're wrong," she said, her voice shaking. "Temper was... Temper was my only friend. You or anyone else had no right to kill him. No-one has the right to kill another!"
"So that's where she got it from," Knives asided dryly. Vash shot his brother a sharp look. "All that melodrama over a dead tomas. Must have been a pathetic little girl if a tomas was her only friend."
"I grow weary of this, now be a good little girl and do as you're told... or else." He cocked the hammer back on his pistol as an auditory reminder of what the "or else" was. No-one was stopping him, part of the crowd looked too scared to move and the other part looked on in disinterest, some of them even looked like they agreed with the young man.
There was another thunderclap as a second shot rang out. Meryl's grandfather was standing in the front row with a smoking gun while Dylan howled and curled himself around his hand, the gun he'd been holding at Meryl lying at his feet.
"You flint-hearted young bastard!" the old man roared, his mustache bristling with rage. "I ought to have you horsewhipped and then keel-hauled across the Great Sands Desert!"
In reply the entire groomside busted out with hand-guns and even a concealed semi-automatic in the case of one portly fellow. Meryl hauled out two derringers from god only knew where and a few of the guests on the bride's side of the wedding were probably off duty soldiers from her Grandfather's old militia days because they stood up and busted out with a few handguns. It looked like the entire thing was going to devolve into a shoot-out her father abruptly roared out
"That's enough!" Everyone froze, looking over at him. "All of you. Put down your weapons. I'm not going to host this sectors chapter of the quick-draw contest. Especially you Meryl, put that thing away; you're a disgrace. I don't know where I went wrong with you but I'm going to put and end to it now."
"Kiss my foot," she shot back, not twitching a muscle and certainly not inclined to put her derringers away.
"I've had more impudence out of you than I can stand, it ought to be you that's horsewhipped and hauled across the desert by a rope. I've cared for you, I've raised you, I've given you the best of everything the finest education and tutors, the best clothes, good food and this is how you repay me."
"Good food I won't argue with," Meryl replied. "But as for the rest; you've given me only everything of what you think I ought to have and nothing of what I really need. My tutors taught me to be elegantly useless. I got dancing lessons, walking lessons, dressing lessons, music lessons, etiquette lessons and a slew of others designed to suck the life and soul right out of me. Be a good little girl, conform. Don't think for yourself or say or do anything that might make people think you have a brain."
"Now just a--"
"And as for the clothes; they're more useless and impractical than the lessons were! Iles of lace and skirts designed to hobble me as certain as any tomas, and corsets strung up tight enough to make it impossible to breathe or move or think. If I had to run for my life I'd be caught up in a heartbeat, not to mention accomplishing anything useful."
"But--"
"I can't deny that you did indeed give me the best of everything, as suited for my gender and presumed role in life, but... all of that is only stuff. You haven't once given me what I really need. You've never tried to get to know me as a person, you've just relied on reports from those governesses you hired or that little girl you married. You've never spent even so much as an afternoon in my company. The only words of praise I've ever gotten out of you weren't even for myself but for doing as you wanted me to. I'm sorry father... but you're just not good enough for me."
All of this seemed to be coming out in a torrent of words, an avalanche of repressed feelings and hidden emotions. It was like once she'd started saying what she really felt she couldn't bring herself to stop.
"How dare you, you insolent, headstrong viper-tongued wretch! I curse that your mother had ever bore you you ungrateful, puling, whelp of a girl. Do you know how much trouble I had to go through to get a husband for you?" her father replied angrily. "You're well known to be a troublesome girl among our social circle and it was hard to find a man of good standing who would be willing to attempt to tame such a wild creature."
Meryl actually laughed at that.
"Tame? Me? Don't be ridiculous," she said scornfully. "And don't do me any so-called favors next time."
"If you're so scornful of this family and everything it's done for you then we don't need you. I am disowning you. You'll receive nothing from us, you'll have to work in stables like a common sand-slave, you can have your crusts from the kiken-coop and your water from the tomas troughs! I DISOWN YOU!" He thundered like a saturnine demagogue, raining down divine retribution from on high.
She took a deep breath, looked around her as if seeing the place with new eyes and nodded her head, as if confirming a decision she'd made.
"I'm going to leave this place now," she said with even-voiced conviction. This was more the determined confident sort of tone that Vash was accustomed to hearing. "I've been accepted into a fine prep school in December City and I'll be attending Halberd University this coming fall, father."
"The hell you will!" He roared. "I'll write the damned school myself and-"
"You won't," a firm, hard angry voice from off to the side said. Her grandfather Arthur separated himself out from the crowd and made his way to Meryls side.
"You won't," the grandfather repeated. "I don't know where I went wrong with you that you'd rather count double dollars and ce-cents than spend time with your daughter but if you had you'd realize what a very special and precious young lady she really is. Meryl is... smart as a whip, clever as any desert fox, she can ride better than half your breakers-and-backers, she can shoot as well as a second-year federal marshal trainee, fight like a desert scotura that's nest has been invaded, and she must have the patience of a saint to put up with this indignity heaped on her without complaining... she has hundreds of wonderful things about her that you seem to dismiss out of hand. Meryl is worth ten, a hundred, a thousand of any of those simpering socialites you have hosted here and I won't stand to see her treated this way especially by her own flesh and blood; the ones who are supposed to love her the most."
"Gr-grandfather..." Meryl said, looking at him at a loss for words, choked up and crying silent tears of gratitude.
"I'm sorry about Temper, Meryl, I know you loved him," her grandfather said apologetically. "And about not being aware of what my idiot son was up to but you seemed so happy I didn't want to say anything. You go on ahead to December and you get that proper "man's" education. I'll be more than happy to pay for it myself (as would your father if he had any sense). Let this be my way of apologizing. You can get your freedom and with it you can use it to fly... anywhere you want to."
Meryl wordlessly hugged her grandfather tight and the camera footage ended there.
"Wow," Vash said in the silence after it ended. "That's rough."
It wasn't the same as having your own brother kill the person you loved most in an attempt to exterminate the human race, perhaps in the grand scheme of things it was a teacup tragedy, but it had obviously shaped the person Meryl had become a very great deal.
You can't weigh pain against pain or heartache against heartache anyway, he reminded himself. No-one can stand there and tell you that they feel more or you feel less than them. In the end, all pain stands on its own, I guess.
"No wonder she's so uptight," Knives commented in boredom.
"Yeah," Vash said, smiling, for once actually agreeing with his twin. "You can't make someone they're not."
"Don't be silly, of course you can," Knives replied dismissively. "It's easy with the appropriate use of drugs, torture and mind-controls implanted into them. You can make people do whatever you want them to do and believe anything you tell them is absolute gospel, even if it's bunk."
Or perhaps not.
"If you'd like-" his brother began to offer.
"No," Vash said quickly, picking up on his brother's thoughts.
"But she's so short-tempered and violent," his brother argued. "Granted, it's occasionally amusing and it makes her very easy to manipulate, but I get the feeling it is often a trial for you dear brother. She always jumps to the wrong conclusion where you're concerned."
"Not always," Vash replied. "And besides, after seeing all she's been through I now think she's earned the right to a short temper. At least she's honest about it. It's better to get it out in the open than to bottle it all up inside and let it eat away at you."
"But does she have to let it explode so very often? And aside of that, she's... prudish."
Vash was taken aback.
"I'm surprised, Knives. I'd think you'd be more offended if she was hanging all over me and flinging herself at me."
Vash stuffed the tantalizing thought of THAT deep down where his brother couldn't pick it up.
"I would, so perhaps I will amend that statement. She's irritatingly precise. Inferior beings should not strive so hard for perfection it is inevitably a wasted effort. She spends too much of her time and energy trying to be perfect. Occasionally it's amusing to watch her struggle but the amusement palls after a time. Make her do something else."
Vash didn't know how to explain to his brother that he had no intention of making her do anything, so he did what any wise brother would do; he changed the subject.
A.N. I wish to thank the people who reviewed in the fourth and fifth chapter, input is appreciated. TrisakAminawn, MiraiYume, and Mystic Rains thanks for the love . I wasn't really sure about this chapter, whether it would be better if I just left it out or not, it gives some back-story but I wonder if it isn't too angsty to be believable. Tell me what you think.
Nightheart