Disclaimer in previous chapters. Please see Author's Notes at the end.

-x-

He knew they would worry, but he just couldn't bring himself to go to the cells. Lonely was horrible, it was something he hated more than almost anything, but all he wanted to be was alone.

No expectations. No reminders. No obligations. Someplace where he could think.

His eyes dragged over the valley rim, searching for a cliff that didn't really exist. With Millie so fresh in his mind, Vash wanted to sit and think where the sky was biggest, where every wisp of cloud or bird would seem so tiny in comparison to the brilliant splendor around it.

They would become his problems. That sky was all possibility, and his worries were such insignificant specks against it.

But the ship that had crashed here, over a century ago, it hadn't been concerned about carving out cliffs. The valley rim was better than the valley floor, but if he wanted to get high, it was either the top of a tree, where the view would be partially obstructed, or lying on the roof of their house.

And he didn't want to go there, either. Knives had not gone back to the lab. He'd gone to the house. And it gnawed at him that Knives hadn't mentioned Doc, either last night or this morning.

Vash's eyes ran the perimeter of Eden again, as if they couldn't quite believe that in all this wonder, there was no place for him. He could go see if Doc was with the others, but if he wasn't . . . if he wasn't, then did he have the courage to go to the lab? Did he have the courage to see what a day of not speaking had cost him?

Vash's weight tugged him in a random direction and he let it, meandering towards the bottom of the valley. To the trees, the places where the shadows were longest, where the least amount of sky could smile down on him. To the cool and the damp and the roots that seemed to cradle him as they had even when he was small. He did truly love the large tree. It reminded him of the one in the rec room, the one that had been so perfect in his memory.

The tree Rem used to sit beneath, and read to them.

Now Millie slept beneath that tree. Even if she was reaching out from beyond the grave to worry about him.

Vash didn't bother to wipe his face, letting the tears tickle as they dripped off his jaw. He had a good ten days' growth, give or take the few days he was sure it had grown at all. Millie certainly would have taken him to task for it. It hadn't seemed to bother Aliya.

She'd been Millie-disappointed when he'd pulled away from her, though. The same bright smile, with the same calculation behind her eyes. She was thinking she had not been effective, and it was probably not the last thing she would try before she tired of this new stimulus and discovered something else, like moss.

Vash adorned a false smile of his own, letting his wandering legs take him closer to the big tree. "You don't have to take care of me anymore, tall girl. Everything's going to be fine."

His tears were channeled by his sharp collarbone, trickling down his chest with no metal or grating to stop them, and he absently rubbed the front of his shirt, feeling the slick scars and faint protrusion of the sensor. Knives hadn't removed them yet, and he'd spent most of the last day in the lab. He'd wanted Doc in the lab. It wasn't as simple as his sisters helping him, then.

There was still something wrong.

It was his heart. And the big girl couldn't fix it, not if she reached out to him through every sister Plant he had. Not even if she bounced out of the woods, all smiles and cheerfulness.

Vash gradually rolled to a stop, still rubbing his chest. His body felt as alien to him now as it did in the shower, passing the bar of soap over his skin. He used to have to take such care, to ensure that his flesh was clean, that sweat and blood didn't collect in any crannies. That he carefully dried and polished any of the sub-surgery quality metals that had been used when things had been desperate, so that they didn't rust. That he paid special attention to the flesh around his heart, so that it didn't become infected when he tore it by over-exertion.

Now that same shower didn't take him ten minutes. Less if he'd had his false arm. It was a little hard to shampoo his hair one-handed. Not that he'd paid much attention to it. He grinned through his tears.

"I didn't realize what a mess I must look," he admitted to the tree, staring up at the great boughs and straight trunk. "No spikes today. But I guess you've already seen me at my worst."

He kept the smile firmly in place as he let his gaze drop, to the unmarked grave where one of his very favorite human . . .

Vash blinked, then dragged his arm over his face.

The grave was gone.

He dropped to his knees in shock, digging his fingers into the rich soil. It was as hard as the ground around it, it didn't crumble in his hands as it had the first night. He had no way to see through the ground, not really, but he balled up his fist and slammed it into the dirt, eyes closed, sensing for vibrations. There should be a spot where it was different, where the density wasn't the same –

But he couldn't feel it.

His eyes opened, staring at his dirt-smeared fist, and he wondered if he couldn't tell because she was gone –

Or he was.

On the other side of the tree, some brush rustled. Whoever was moving through it wasn't being particularly careful; he could hear fabric catching and elevated breathing. Aliya had just let him go, this was the most power he was ever going to have at any one time again, and he closed his eyes, concentrating. Whoever it was was small – about Wright's size, though he wouldn't be making that much noise, nor out of breath. Unless he was still injured . . . ?

Vash dared to lean to the left, peering around the tree, and there was no one there. Just shadows and sunlight.

Now that couldn't be right. He wasn't that far gone.

Cold fingers closed around his right ear, and he was jerked back before he could so much as yelp.

"What do you think you're doing?!"

He did yelp, then, falling onto his backside as Meryl Stryfe released him. She looked livid, and also like she'd spent the night climbing every tree in the woods. He stared up at her, knowing she wouldn't appreciate hearing about the grass in her hair, or the seed pod above her left ear, or the slug that was starting to realize her shoulder was not the best place to be-

She put her hands on her hips a little stiffly, and he recalled how cold her fingers had been.

"Have you . . . been out here all night?" he finally ventured, almost afraid to move.

If anything, her frown deepened. "Of course I have!" she shrieked, and then the arms were waving in the air and she was pacing the clearing. "What else would I be doing?! Why wouldn't I want to be chased all over the valley by murderous Plants only to get a lecture from a ghost about not doing what I'm supposed to be doing, which quite obviously is sleeping in a haunted wood!" Her voice was rising in pitch hysterically. "How could I be so stupid as to not realize that would solve everything?!"

She stopped mid arm-wave, then seemed to realize she was no longer even facing him, and she spun on her heels, bearing down on him as if the last ten months simply hadn't happened. "At first I was glad he was there, did you know that?" Her hands curled into fists, and she raised them to the sky. "If you weren't dead I would kill you myself! Auugh!"

Vash just blinked at her, completely nonplussed. It took her a few moments to calm down, getting her breathing back under control with a swallow. Eventually she seemed to realize where she was, or rather, who she was standing above, because she suddenly cleared her throat and tugged her uniform jacket down, which dislodged the slug. It fell at her feet with an apologetic plop, and she stared at it disbelievingly for a moment before her hands started re-fisting at her sides.

Her right eye was also starting to twitch.

"But . . . at least you're warmer now?" After all that excitement, she kind of had to be . . .

"Shut up!" she snarled, cutting the air with her hand. "That is not the point! What was –" But then it trailed off, and her grey eyes grew slowly wider.

Vash gave her an apologetic half-smile, recoiling a little bit and waving. "Uhm, good morning, insurance girl?"

Reality washed over her like a bucket of water upended over her head. It started at the top of her scalp, then her eyebrows melted from their angry knot, her eyes softened, her mouth relaxed into a somber line. The tension drained out of her shoulders, her fingers uncurled, and her feet shifted closer together, her toes pointing ever so slightly inward as she retreated right back into Meryl Stryfe, Bernardelli Insurance investigator, faced with the infamous gunman, the Sixty Billion Double Dollar Man, Vash the Stampede.

Vash held the ridiculous expression as long as he could, but when nothing else happened, he let it slip down his face as well. "So . . . who were you threatening to kill?"

Then he wanted to take his hand and stuff it so far down his throat that his mouth would never say anything that stupid ever again.

She didn't go for the obvious joke – she never did – and instead her hands came together in front of her, a little submissive, a little closing herself off. He thought she might try to play it off as she sometimes did, with a loud and high-pitched giggle, but he wasn't going to get that Meryl today. She shook her head slightly, her eyes welling up, and then, strangely, she gave him a broken half-smile.

". . . Wolfwood."

He caught his reaction just in time, because the last thing he needed to do was start crying again, when she so obviously wanted to. "Nicholas was here, huh?"

Meryl stared at him, then she sucked her bottom lip beneath her teeth and stiffly folded herself up, so that she was kneeling across from him, her hands on her thighs. "I thought he was," she admitted. "Back in New Phoenix, when Millie went missing . . . it was his lighter. When I caught up with Elizabeth, it was the map, where we originally found him. Outside of the ship, it was one of the robots you shot trying to save the little girl." Meryl's eyes were turned inward in thought. "Even on the ship, once, when I woke up, he was there."

Just like he'd been there when he'd finally caught up with Knives.

"Do you think . . . it works that way?" Her voice was very soft.

Vash could no longer meet her eyes, so he stared instead at the earth. Ashes to ashes, the priest would tell him. It was just the universe's way of recycling. But a human's soul, their essence, did that get recycled too?

"He must have had something important to say, if he kept you out all night," Vash offered. But he knew he didn't want to hear it.

Hadn't Millie just done the same thing for him, through Aliya?

He heard her exhale loudly through her nose. "The hell he did," she growled, and then he heard her scrub her face. "But then again, if it had been Millie, she'd just tell me . . . the same thing," she finished lamely.

Vash glanced back up at her despite himself, and she shook her head with a tiny, sincere smile. "Her grave disappeared," Meryl added, almost cheerfully, with a tiny hint of lunacy. "Yesterday. Is that normal around here?"

Vash swallowed. He wasn't actually sure. It was always possible the terraforming efforts might break her remains down more quickly, but it shouldn't have just vanished. Not that Meryl wanted to hear that. "I don't really know," he admitted.

She just gave him a little nod, and the uncomfortable silence stretched into the morning air like a lazy cat.

". . . Vash . . ."

He shook his head, once. "Don't," he pleaded. "I'm sorry. I know this is my fault. I know I hurt you. I didn't . . ." But that was a lie. "I had to keep you safe," he faltered.

He heard her hands fidget with her jacket hem. "And keeping me in the dark, making me think that you had become like your brother, that was your idea of keeping me safe?"

Vash blinked up at her, taken aback. He'd what . . .?

"Don't give me that look." The grey had a tiny bit of steel in it. "In Hondelic, you walked into the mayor's office, and I barely recognized you. And I'm not talking about the Angel Arm," she cut him off. "You humiliated him, Vash. And you wouldn't even look at me. You barely even flinched when you . . . you formed it. In front of people you didn't even know, that didn't know you." She licked her lips. "It was like it wasn't even . . . you."

He closed his eyes.

Three of them. Armed, but just standard issue semi automatic pistols. No armor, not the way they were shifting in the creaking wooden chairs. He struck the match on the wall, lighting the firecracker string and tossing it nonchalantly across the open doorway to the stairs, on the opposite side, where they slid down the first dozen with nothing more than a hiss of paper on wood and the sizzle of the burning fuse.

All three jumped up at the noise, and as a well-trained unit, they immediately came pouring out of the doorframe. To his credit, the second one looked his way, but it was long after sunset, and the shadows in the hallway were more than sufficient. As soon as they passed, he stepped off the wall, crossing the much better lit outer office. Muffled voices carried from inside the room, and Vash put his mechanical hand on the knob, steeling himself.

Then he knocked, politely, and let himself smoothly into the room.

It looked like most of the city council was still there, and the mayor as well. The insurance girls were seated in the center of a horseshoe of desks, and it was clear it was not going in their favor. Millie Thompson was sitting up especially straight, as she did when she wanted to be supportive and tough-looking, and Meryl was wearing her shit-eating smile.

He only listened peripherally, closing the door behind him, and whatever the mayor was saying trailed off as he took in the red coat, the spikey blonde hair, and the six shooter that Vash ensured everyone could see.

He gave them a polite smile. "Good evening." He didn't bother to deepen his voice. There wasn't a need. "I do apologize for the unannounced visit, but I understand that Hondelic is choosing to refuse the Plant retrofit."

The last man on the right of the horseshoe – closest to Meryl – stiffened, and Vash identified him as the town's sheriff. He didn't draw, likely because he thought his backup was in the office behind him, but he and the mayor exchanged a look as the council started to murmur in alarm.

"Now, see here," the mayor blustered, spreading his hands in appeal to the insurance girls, who had frozen in their seats. "Theatrics aren't going to change our minds –"

"Oh, I assure you, I am Vash the Stampede," he cut in apologetically, and the room became pindrop silent. "I've come to tell you that it is your prerogative to refuse the reactor. But, I will be taking the town's Plant this evening. If you resist, I'll take the town as well."

The sheriff swaggered to his feet, drawing his gun and leveling it at his eyes. He was almost two yarz away, plenty of distance to react. "Son, you're not taking anything anywhere. How did you get in here, anyway?"

Vash let his polite demeanor fade, leaving only the cold. He didn't dare look at the girls. "I'd prefer to do this without casualties," he tried, one last time. "You should listen to these representatives of Bernardelli, and accept their offer."

"Deputies!" the sheriff roared, and Vash listened for their footsteps. There was nothing else for it.

"You're under arrest-"

He raised his empty right hand, crossing it over his chest before tearing open the panel on his coat. He tossed it aside in one motion, timing it to ensure that when the door burst open the flutter of geranium red was at its fullest. His right arm naturally fell with the gesture, and he plucked the Colt from its holster, ensuring that everyone could see it was being held to the side, pointed not at the council but at the ceiling.

The deputies had little space to fan around him and he agreeably stepped forward, ensuring that the insurance girls were not in the line of fire. The sheriff's gun was starting to shake.

Vash waited a beat, but outside of gasps of alarm, no one was telling him they were going to let him take the Plant. He let his eyes blaze with as much anger as he could summon around the deep, sick feeling in his gut, and he concentrated on the weapon in his hand.

The Gate in the Colt responded beautifully, as quickly as it had in his fight with Knives. When he wasn't afraid of it, when he just relaxed, it was much easier. It didn't even hurt. He wanted no charge at all and he fired into the air the second the weapon was formed, knowing he could get it in front of the girls if the deputies went crazy-

But they were as terrified as the sheriff. There was a blinding flash, red, the walls around him in July disintegrating, and Vash forced his mind to see the present, forced his arm back into an arm, forced the Colt back into a Colt.

Even with no time to charge, and no emotion behind it, he could see immediately that he'd way overdone it. The roof was gone, along with three inches of the wall in a perfect circle around them. He was tall enough to see over it, to see that every building that was as tall as the city hall was similarly devoid of a roof, for blocks. A soaking wet head, covered with suds, peered over the neighboring wall at them, and Vash winced, dropping his Colt into its holster.

"Whoops," he offered apologetically.

The insurance girls hadn't moved, still seated exactly where they were, and with his peripheral vision Vash could see that Meryl's hand was inside her cloak. Vash chose not to look at them anymore.

"I'll be taking the Plant now," he continued into the silence, punctuated by the metallic rattling of the firearms behind him. "I expect you have about ten minutes to sign your contract before it becomes void."

The mayor had fallen to his knees, hands clasped before him as if in prayer, and the sheriff's palms were so slicked with sweat he wouldn't be able to handle the gun. Vash had intentionally moved so that the sheriff and at least two of the council members were in the deputies' line of fire, and after they looked at their boss, and the bloodless faces of their council members, he heard their guns clatter to the floor.

It almost made him wince again, but none of them went off.

"O-okay, alright, yes, of course!" the mayor agreed, nodding quickly. "Y-you can take whatever you w-want, Mr. Stampede! Just please, don't hurt the townsfolk. We'll g-give you an escort to the plant! Anything you want!"

Vash let a slow smile spread across his face, and he measured his strides, crossing the room deliberately without making it seem like he was moving slowly so as not to startle them. "I'm glad you were able to come to a decision, mayor," he congratulated the man, and he offered his hand to help him stand.

The mayor recoiled back from his outstretched hand, and Vash realized he'd extended the right one. His Angel arm. Behind him, he heard one of the insurance girls smother a sound.

It was already too late, so he left the gesture there, his hand even with the man's face, and eventually the mayor reached out a shaking hand. It was torturous, but eventually the man screwed up his courage and grasped him tightly, as if he expected his hand to be burned to cinders. Vash hauled him to his feet gently, pumping his arm in an exaggerated handshake so he'd get the idea, and trying not to give away that he had caught a whiff of urine.

"I'll just wait downstairs," he suggested, releasing the man's hand and turning – again deliberately – to grab his coat, which had settled across the back of an unused chair. He didn't look at anyone in the room again. "Don't take too long."

Vash opened his eyes, taking in the tree, the glaring morning light, the tiny human kneeling across from him. Yes, it must have looked like Knives to her. It certainly hadn't been him.

As soon as he'd gotten to the lobby he'd thrown up.

"It was me," he said levelly. "I knew . . . I'd only have to do it once."

Meryl looked at him – really looked at him – and he refused to flinch from her examination. "Vash . . . what if the military comes here, to Eden? Then it won't matter what you're willing to do once. It'll be . . .it'll be what Knives is willing to do once and for all."

He felt his mouth open, his tongue ready itself to reply . . . but what was there to say? "Short girl-"

"My name is Meryl, Vash, and it wouldn't kill you to use it," she snapped suddenly. "It's Meryl Stryfe. I am more than an insurance investigator. I am more than short. I believe that we can all live together and work through our differences. I believe that no one has the right to take the life of another. And I believe in you, you broom-headed moron."

She narrowed her eyes, daring him to respond with his usual levity, and he just blinked at her. This didn't seem to be the response she was looking for. "Do I have to spell it out?" she growled to herself. "You're Vash the Stampede. You pursue love and peace. And there's not much of either going on around here, in case you haven't noticed," she added heatedly.

"You're more than a gunman, Vash. You're more than a stupid Plant. You're a force of nature, remember? You're Doitzel Kaiser Whateverthehell it was. So you don't have your gun. So you don't have your armor. Your Plant powers were always off the table, remember? So what's so different about this situation, huh? Why give up now? Why give up when you're so close?"

Vash almost gaped at her. Her voice was strong and sure, not shaking like it had been earlier. Her hands were splayed out on her knees, and her eyes were earnest.

"That's what Wolfwood spent all night telling me," she said suddenly, as if she'd just put it together herself. "He did the same damn thing Terry Asouard did. He reminded me who I am."

She seemed taken aback by her own realization, and Vash didn't know what to say. She was . . . well, she was right, it wasn't the first time he was weak, without the Colt, unwilling to use his Angel Arm. It had never stopped him before.

But his opponents had always been human before. Had always been someone he could handle. Had always been someone who had been wrong, or someone he could compromise with. There was no compromise now. The humans would have feared them, would have attacked them – and Rem would have protected them, as much as she could have.

But Knives wouldn't see it that way. Didn't see it that way.

"I don't know why he's not talking to you," Meryl wondered aloud. "Maybe he doesn't recognize you either."

She waited a beat, but Vash could think of no response, and then Meryl leaned forward, closing the distance between them. He froze, and her shining eyes came nearer, and nearer – and then she straightened her legs, and stood.

"I'm going back to jail, and I'm going to have some breakfast," she declared, as if to a group of onlookers. "I certainly hope Vash decides to visit. And . . . I hope he does it soon."

-x-

The room still wasn't clean.

Librett took on the speckled white of the tiled floors and the utilitarian walls, sinking against them as the door opened. It hadn't been enough time, there had been too much damage, and he didn't like it when they wasted things –

But it wasn't Master Knives.

He watched, perfectly silent, as Master Vash hesitated in the doorframe. As if he, too, wanted to blend in, disappear. As if he too had something to fear.

Though he knew Master Vash knew he was there, he did not release the colors behind him, he just watched, and waited for his orders. There would be orders. The main laboratory was still peppered with shattered glass, broken machinery, and of course the piles that he wasn't finished sorting through. What they could salvage, and what would have to become raw materials once again.

But the gentle master didn't acknowledge him. He didn't seem upset that the laboratory was still unclean. He came in slowly, on the balls of his feet, moving as if in a dream. He took in the monitors, intact and broken both, and went to their preferred console, gesturing at the screen. He stayed there so long that Librett finally felt that perhaps he should continue, so long as he was quiet.

Master Vash didn't respond at all when he picked up the broom, and they remained that way, each in their work, for some time. He pushed a stool closer to the workbench and though Master Vash never spoke, when next he dared to look the gesture had been accepted. His search for the other half of a centrifuge brought him into the back room, and Librett cast his eyes there to the old one, laid flat upon a table.

His sleep could not be disturbed, like the sleep of his brother. The rules were different, but they were really the same. Humans were not sufficient. Humans were not meant to live in the presence of Plants. Sooner or later, humans made errors. They made mistakes. They disobeyed.

And they had to be punished.

None of the missing pieces of centrifuge were in the old one, so Librett left him alone, taking stock. There was less damage here, though what had been done was no less severe, and he had completed all the tasks that could be done quietly before he realized that Master Vash had come into the room behind him.

The master headed straight to the old one, his eyes blue-green and cool. He reached out and touched the old human, but of course he did not wake. The master studied him, then circled to the old one's right, fingering the empty sleeve. He pushed it up onto the remnant, then far higher, onto the old one's shoulder, staring at the scars there for several moments before tucking the cloth back down.

He nor his brother had touched the old one there. There was no rash. There was no reason to be frightened, yet every move Master Vash was making was setting Librett's teeth on edge.

Master Vash said something quiet, laying his hand gently on the old human's lacerated face, and then he strode past him, purposefully, to the apothecary beyond. Librett took the opportunity to escape back to the main lab, but there was no telltale crash. There was no shouting, no raging. There was no sound at all. Master Vash reappeared only a few moments later, his hand in his pocket, and without a word he exited the lab.

-x-

Author's Notes: Hey look! Another chapter! In which . . well, some stuff happened. Vash might have a plan! Or not, he does tend to wing things . . . The next two will move right along as well, I'm getting excited to finally be getting close to the main event! Thanks much for the reviews, I'm glad to see the style change was a positive one for you guys! Not sure when I'll get some more time to dedicate to this, but hopefully it'll be soon. Otherwise I think Mouse would hunt me down. = )