He looked the same.Exactly the same.
She had lines in her face he would probably never see when looking in a mirror. Her eyes no longer shone with young and stupid hope like his. She had the beginnings of bunions and callous from shoes that squished her toes and rubber her raw.
She wore them like the rest of the girls did as it supposedly made their legs look longer, though, it wasn't as if she was tall to begin with, and she seemed to draw in a particular clientele that liked her petite frame for more acrobatic interests, so what good did they do really?
Even with the changes to her face, body, and clothes, he had recognized her right away. Their eyes had met as she called out her proposition, looking to make a few double dollars, realizing too late who the man was. Really, she should have known better. With that vibrant duster of his, could it have been anyone else?
She had turned to flee, but his long legs teleported him to her side where he gently took her hand, calling her real name out to her. "Jessica!"
He stood silently, watching her as she removed her heels and viciously slapped away the grains that stuck her skin with her sweat and fluid from another burst blister.
God, she hated sand. Who she wouldn't screw for her old, cool metal ship back with its hydroponic bay containing only necessary amounts of soft, fluffy soil, carefully nurtured from what had been brought from Earth and from organic waste from their own food farming. Years of painstaking work had created a nearly self-sustaining compost with the most minimal dirt and nutrients needs to grow life. It sounded paradisiacal.
"I think there's a tub," he indicated with a point of his gloved hand toward the only other door in the motel room, "in case you want to wash up."
She stopped abruptly and glowered at her own feet. It wasn't as if it was a bad suggestion or even an uncommon request—in addition to her own strong loathing, most clients disliked even an errant grain of sand between the sheets—but it made her feel dirty and even further from him. She liked to still believe they came from the same place, and somewhere in the mind of her inner-child that still lurked in her brain, she imagined them ending up there together, but him drawing attention to the contents of this arid planet that had stuck to her person reminded Jessica that they only ended up in the same place: on the surface.
She huffed through her nose and, dismissing feelings she didn't have the luxury to deal with, closed herself in the cramped washroom. Since he had suggested it, she fully intended to take her time, not to make herself as presentable as possible, but to give him the opportunity to realize what they were doing and to change his mind. He had always run away from her before, why not do it now?
She soaked her feet in cool water in the tub, letting the faucet continue to run and enjoying the small luxury of running water over tired body. She twirled her toes in it, wondering belatedly if she really should wash the rest of her. She was relatively clean beneath her clothes, but the wind had kicked up noticeable dust. Even if she rinsed off, her clothes were still dusty. She supposed that didn't matter much, given the nature of her business. Most customers seemed to enjoy unwrapping the gift, so to speak.
There was a knock at the door, and before she could answer, the door opened and closed with inhuman speed just enough for a towel and a simple cotton robe to find its way to the countertop next to the sink.
'Hm, I suppose that'll do for wrapping paper,' she mused.
Now under the paper sheets and scratchy Thomas-wool blanket, Jessica twiddled her toes. He simultaneously made her nervous and was getting on her nerves.
"You know, the price isn't going to be lower if you don't do anything," she called over the side of the bed to him. It was confrontational, she knew, but it needed to be said. She was not going to miss out on a nights worth of income so he could dance around what he hired her for.
"I didn't think it would," he said lightly from the floor. He had rolled up his duster as a makeshift pillow and had folded his hands behind his head, carefully keeping an open posture.
She wished again to be back aboard her SEEDS ship. Before the crash, an awkward silence like the one that followed his reply would be swallowed up by the deep continuous exhale of the engines keeping them aloft. It was too quiet on the surface.
It was a too a lot of things on the surface.
Hot, windy, dry.
"Aren't you going to come to bed?" She asked him quietly, almost sullenly. Damn her nerves. It was a question she could normally lend a sultry voice to, but the way she said it, she sounded downright meek.
The man on the floor took a beat before asking, "Would it make you feel better if I did?"
She rolled onto her back, embarrassed and hiding, then grumbled around a moue. "Yes."
Jessica heard a sigh and worried herself that she maybe had annoyed him. Vash had always been so patient with her in the past, but maybe that had been because she had been a child who didn't understand the nuance of their situations. She was a grown woman now, a prostitute for goodness sake, and she wondered how much petulant pestering and prodding at his boundaries he would tolerate. After all, she truly barely knew him well enough to know.
But the sounds that followed his sigh was his boots on the floor, the squeak of the mattress, and the soft shuffle of him settling next to her…on top of the covers. He was usually so talkative, so ready to insert himself and his beliefs into other people's lives, but here he was using the thin covers to erect a wall between them to—what?—preserve her modesty?
What was she even thinking? To him she must still seem a child. He had lived lifetimes before she was born, he was an alien, a monster to some, and an angel to others. He was exactly the same as he always had been.
And what was she?
A whore.
Even knowing what she was, he wasn't treating her that way, and it was off-putting.
When she overcame her embarrassment, she looked to him. His eyes were closed, and he appeared to be resting, yet alert. Relaxed and hyper aware of her presence. Was he actually not going to sleep with her…or was he waiting for her to make the first move?
She rolled toward him onto her hip and pressed her hand on top of his, feeling the warmth emanating from beneath his glove. 'Well, we can start here,' she thinks, lifting his hand and starting to remove the dark material.
His other hand comes into view, his fingers touch hers, and her heart leaps, then falls as he gingerly removes her fingers and places her hands back into her own space…away from him.
Jessica flushes red down below the collar of her robe, turns her back to him, and tenses, temper flaring.
"I'm not some troubled soul for you to save, you know. I'm fine. In fact, our SEEDS ship crashing was the best thing that could have happened to me!" She asserts with more conviction and spite than she feels. "It introduced me to the real world, broke me out of the sheltered fairytale we all lived in, just like he said."
Vash was silent, knowing as well as Jessica did what she just said was a proclamation made in pure denial. She was miserable, often alone, and always in need of money just like the rest of the surviving passengers from the ship. They may have had all they needed aboard their ship environment with the aid of their Plants, but they had no idea how to make any of that work while they were grounded. As strange as it sounded to her own mind, Jessica often thought they would have been lucky to crash with the rest of humanity where they wouldn't have been so far behind the established civilization. They had no money, no updated education, no knowledge of the culture, and their only tradable goods consisted of the raw materials from their ship and Lost Technology.
They were all behind the eight ball, and it would likely take generations before their kinfolk could stand on their feet in respectable ways. In the rays of the multiple suns that No Man's Land orbited and the harsh reality of their own often-unkind species busy trying to scrape together their own existence on an often hostile planet, some from the ship clung together, risking flaunting their outsider status from the relative perceived safety of a group instead of trying to blend in as individuals. It was hard to tell who was having a better go of surviving in this world, but for Jessica's part, she was independently making money, eating, and had a roof over her head.
She yearned for the days when her biggest conundrum was puzzling more ways to stave off Brad for another year while waiting for Vash to return so she could marry him. She held back a bitter laugh. What a joke: thinking a man like Vash would have ever married her. She feels her temper cool in the silence and in the gloom of her own recollections, and—whether out of desire to feel close to him in some way or out of pure curiosity—she asks:
"Where is your friend anyway?"
Vash is quiet in the dim room, then he gently says, "He died."
"Oh," she utters, an unintelligible response as a result of her deflation.
She'd lost countless friends and family members that day on their ship when he'd brought Hell with him to the heavens, and yet she felt worse for him. Vash had lost them, too, and in doing so became even more isolated in the ageless existence he moved through.
Death, blame, and fear followed him and often seemed his only companions. Now he had lost one person who didn't seem off put by his constant passengers, maybe because they had been his own already despite the attempts at the friendly priest persona.
She hears him shift and feels trembling through the mattress. Turning, she sees his eyes are hidden beneath his forearm that presses dark leather to his face. His mouth, however, is pulled into a bare-toothed grimace, and Jessica realizes Vash the Stampede is crying. She's not sure what for: the loss of his friend, relived memories of that terrible day, the of the loss of the last bit of familiar life he had on their ship, pity for the state of her own life, the weight of the blame he placed on himself? Probably a little bit of everything.
In the ten years since the crash, Jessica had a lot of time to consider with whom the fault lay for the loss of life on that day. Vash seemed an obvious choice for many, even himself, but not her. She knew Brad didn't blame him; Brad had made it his last act to save Vash as she had watched from the window as a puppet with her form tried to kill the man currently crying in her bed. She had been helpless then. She had her own guilt to deal with since. She was too weak and naive, easily tricked and captured, kept tied up for her likeness to be used to sabotage her own life. She had survived when so many others had died. She left to strike out on her own, unable to shoulder the grief of others.
After all that, what could she do now?
What could she did she have to offer anyone?
What could she give this immortal being that had chased after her in the street?
She felt Vash tense as her hands found his shoulder and his face. It could have been called a jump, the motion he made with the noticeable sucking in of breath and removal of his arm to glance worriedly at her, looking for indication of what she was trying to communicate.
Whatever her face was conveying to him, the raw emotions she let slip, it made him become pliant as she pulled him to lay on her chest and let him become a weeping mess.
He was quiet about it, but she could feel his sobs, the tears that soaked the chest of the robe, and the near desperate strength in how he clung to her. She threaded her fingers through his hair, surprised it wasn't stiff like she had thought. That priest had called him Needle Nogin, after all.
His sobs and grief eventually calmed, and she was still stroking his hair. His hand came up to where she was petting him and grasped her hand. She stilled, worried again that he would return her limb to her half of the bed and make that distance between them apparent again.
This time, he held her hand. He held her hand and breathed "thank you" against her collarbone. His breathing evened out, and Vash the Stampede effectively cried himself to sleep on her shoulder.
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
The morning came with the smell of coffee, the running of the faucet in the bathroom, and the quiet click of the door.
Jessica opened her eyes, sat up, and took in the room.
He was gone…again. No coat, no note, and no nap sack. He had left a pot of coffee, cream, sugar, and a pink box on the small table for her.
The contents of the box perked her up quicker than the caffeine of the coffee even could: fresh, warm donuts.
They were sugar donuts, and oddly enough, the grains of sugar that stuck Jessica's chin didn't bother her nearly as much as their tiny rock counterparts that covered the ground outside. Underneath the box was the day's newspaper, folded open and obviously read already. She made herself comfortable with a cup of coffee with cream and her second donut, then made to peruse the page the paper was open to.
It was the wanted ads. 'Maybe he was looking for work,' she mused, then chuckled evily around the donut in her mouth. He could always work the streets like her. She could only imagine the amount of money he could rake in with his name and reputation. No one gets to sleep with a guy like that every night.
One caught her eye. It was circled after all.
An advertisement for the Bernardelli Insurance Society requested applicants for their disaster investigator team responding primarily to losses resulting from the actions of Vash the Stampede.
So this was his way of meddling: a none-too-subtle nudge in the direction he thought was best. Jessica genuinely laughed, realizing that he likely hadn't even accidentally bumped into her yesterday. He probably planned to find her just to let her know about this job.
It was sweet, though, she thought to herself. He tried his best to make it seem like she had some sort of choice in the matter of him taking care of her.
Well, she supposed she could apply for this job, she mused as she laced up the boots in just her size that materialized next to her accursed high heels. There was no guarantee she was going to get it, and it wasn't like her current work was going anywhere.
The force of her pumps hitting the small waste bin made it twirl on its rim.
Thank you for reading! Hope you enjoyed it:)