Trigun is copyright (c) Yasuhiro Nightow and Young King Ours.


A Chance to Say Good-Bye By Sholio

This night, like every other night for the past six months, she woke to the sound of weeping.

She lay awake and listened for a long time, feeling like an intruder, angry at her own helplessness. It is only my weakness, she thought, that keeps me lying here. Even Millie thinks so. Millie had never spoken about it, but Meryl had seen the look in her friend's eyes in the morning. Millie had heard the weeping, too, and she knew better than Meryl what the price of a missed opportunity could be.

Our lives are filled with chances to reach out to other human beings. Instead we turn away, and people die...

Meryl rolled over, shoved her face against her pillow and tried to block out the sounds coming from behind the thin wall beside her bed. After a while, the sobbing faded. Meryl lay very still, straining to hear what was happening behind that wall, hating herself for invading his privacy but unable to stop.

I am so worried about you, and there's nothing I can do.

She hoped to hear the soft, even breathing of sleep, but instead she heard the occasional rustles of a man turning restlessly in his bed, and finally the sound of soft footsteps. The quiet click of a door closing, elsewhere in the house.

Meryl closed her eyes, and felt tears gathering around her lashes.

He's gone to check on Knives. Again. Oh, Vash, when will you let it go?

The tall, blond man padded silently through the still town. He could see easily by the light of two of the planet's moons. The smaller moon hung just above the cliff overhanging the town, and when he looked up, he could see the scar on the moon's pale surface.

He tried not to look up.

A low wind swirled dust around his feet. This town had been abandoned for years, but the well still drew water. None of them wanted to speculate on why the people who once lived here had left. The adobe walls were slowly crumbling back to the desert rocks that had given birth to them, and the empty windows gaped like hollow eyes as he walked quickly, soundlessly, toward the other end of town.

They had found safety here in this place of death, where no other humans could interrupt them as they began the long, slow process of healing their bodies, hearts and souls. There had never been any doubt that the former insurance girls would come with him on his slow, painful journey towards the peace he sought. Even Vash had not tried to convince them to stay behind this time. They had earned the right, or inherited the curse, however you wanted to look at it. Ever since Wolfwood's death, Legato's death, the three of them had been bound by ties beyond love or family. Death itself held them together.

Death, and the responsibility to protect this world from death.

Knives.

The wind had picked up a little, and dust reddened the moons when Vash reached the abandoned hospital at the other end of town. Breathing deeply, he ducked his head to step through the low door. The space within was pitch-dark except a block of reddish moonlight on the floor. Vash did not need his eyes to find his way around, though. He'd walked this path so many times in the last few months that he could have dragged himself, deaf and blind and legless.

Up the stairs and down the hall and pause...

He always stopped here, every time, before opening the door, and listened. One day, Vash knew that he would hear nothing from the room beyond. He both anticipated and feared that day. But tonight, as always, he listened until he heard the slow, regular breathing from within the room. And he thought, as he thought every day: Maybe he is faking. But he opened the door anyway.

This room was windowless, and black as pitch. But Vash didn't need his eyes to penetrate that gloom... didn't need to see Knives lying still as death, to feel his brother's presence.

Knives...

In the last six months, Millions Knives had not wakened nor stirred. He might have been truly dead ... if not for his faint, steady breathing, and if not for Vash's overwhelming awareness of Knives' presence. Sleeping or waking, even in the occasional light moment that he shared with the girls, Vash could feel his brother hovering in the back of his head. Oddly, he sensed no hostility from Knives, no anger or hate. Knives was just ... there. Always. Watching. Watching everything Vash did. His most intimate and unguarded moments lay bare before that silent presence in his mind.

Vash thought it might drive him mad.

More than once he had stood over Knives' sleeping body, holding a pillow or a rock, as he had done so many years ago after the crash. More than once he had found himself wishing that Knives would simply die in his sleep. But then he went to clean and replace the makeshift IV that kept his brother hydrated, and cleaned up the bed and left him alone. Knives did not seem to need food; his body never wasted away. Like some grotesque mockery of Cinderella, in the old Earth story that Rem had told the boys long ago, Knives slept, unchanging, beautiful. Cold as the ice that could not form on this hot, dry world.

And always, always, Vash could feel his brother's presence in his head. Just watching.

"What do you want from me?" he whispered to the sleeping figure in the darkness.

Vash leaned against the wall, and then slid slowly down, until he crouched with his knees drawn up to his chin. So many nights he spent like this ... waiting for Knives to die, or to live, and equally afraid of either outcome.

"Why can't you just leave me alone?" he whispered, and his head sank down until his forehead touched his knees. He didn't want to start crying again ... though he'd always believed that tears are a healthy emotional outlet. He had cried so much lately that his eyes hurt. His heart hurt.

He was just tired. So tired.

Vash closed his eyes, and rubbed his forehead slowly on the rough cloth of his pants. Strange to feel cloth rather than the buckles and leather of the leggings he'd worn for so many years. But he had abandoned his red coat, his guns, and so many other things he had carried for all that time.

He wished that he could leave behind the past so easily. But it always rose up to haunt him, dogging his steps like Knives' unseen presence. What if... what if... what if... The mantra repeated itself over and over, endlessly, in his head. What if he'd found a better way to defeat Legato? What if he'd followed Wolfwood to the church just a little faster? What if he'd killed Knives with that rock all those years ago... or stopped Knives somehow, back on the ship...

What if... what if...

"I don't know what to do, Rem," he said aloud into the darkness. "This is eating me alive. Meryl and Millie are good about it, but I know they'd like to get on with their lives. It's not healthy for them to stay in this town, with the smell of death in their nostrils, when they should be finding happiness somewhere else. And yet..." His voice shook; he tried to steady it. "I'm so afraid to be alone again. Alone, Knives, with you. Like those years so long ago. I'm afraid..."

"You should have killed him. You always were too... easy on people."

Vash's head snapped up at the familiar, gravelly voice out of the darkness. Surely he'd imagined it... a hallucination brought on by too many nights of too little sleep.

How many nights he'd wished he could hear that voice one more time...

Vash shook his head, trying to shake off the illusion. "I've really lost it this time," he said aloud.

"Don't be so hard on yourself, Tongari," Wolfwood said, stepping out of the darkness. "Want to take a walk?"

Vash rose without speaking, and followed him. He didn't dare look back -- afraid, irrationally, that he'd see his own body lying beside Knives, crumpled bonelessly like his brother's. He didn't want to think of that.

They walked out into the moonlit night. The wind was blowing fiercely now, and though it wasn't cold, it whipped the sand into Vash's eyes and made him miss his red coat. Wolfwood walked ahead of him, apparently unaffected.

Well, why should he notice a wind? He's dead, you fool.

"Where are we going?" Vash asked.

Wolfwood shrugged, without turning around. "Where do you want to go, Tongari?"

"Home," Vash said. "This is a dream, right?"

"Do you want it to be?"

"No," Vash said. "If this is a dream, I don't want to wake up."

Wolfwood looked over his shoulder, but his face was hidden by the moon's shadows. "This has been hard for you, hasn't it, Tongari? My God, you're so thin. You're halfway to joining me, you fool."

"I ... don't seem to want to eat anymore."

Wolfwood turned around and struck him across the face. Vash staggered, too shocked by the sudden violence to think or speak. Slowly he raised his hand to his face, and felt blood on his cheek.

If this was a dream, it was a very tangible one. He could feel the sharp ache in his jaw, taste the metallic sting of blood on his lips.

Wolfwood turned and started to walk away again.

"Hey!" Vash pursued him. "Hey, what -- what is this supposed to be? Did you come here to torment me?"

"You do such a good job of that yourself." The distance between them was growing, and Vash, terrified that Wolfwood would disappear into the blowing dust, broke into a run until he caught up.

They were out of the city now, mounting the cliffs outside town. Despite his unhappiness and confusion, Vash looked over his shoulder at the town spread out in the moonlight, and the beauty of the sleeping desert touched his heart. He and the girls had come across the desert, and he'd never had the chance to see the town from this angle. He could see, now, why the settlers might have chosen this spot ... strange, though, that they chose to live down in the valley, not up here where the world spread out at their feet like a tablecloth. It was so lovely from up here.

Lovely... and too far away to touch, or to harm.

Then a turn of their path hid the valley behind a wall of stone. This was an old path, almost worn away by the never-ceasing winds. Vash leaned into the cliff to keep his balance.

"Where are we going?" he shouted, over the wind.

Wolfwood turned his head, and Vash was surprised to see that the wind whipped his coarse black hair around his face. Somehow, it seemed that it shouldn't.

"There's something up here that I think you'll like, Tongari."

Another turn of the path, and the wind ceased, shut away by the cliffs above their heads. Vash gasped aloud. Trees!

Dazed now with wonder, he followed Wolfwood down into the second valley, hidden by a fold of the landscape from the one where he and the girls had spent so much time. The air around them was cool and wonderfully damp. Vash could smell the soft perfume of flowers, the dampness of leaf-mold under the trees. He found himself staring at each tree in the moonlight, trying to identify the species from Rem's long-ago lessons on the recreation deck, back on the ship. Birch. Elm. Maple.

This, he thought in wonder, was the world that Rem had envisioned so many years ago. This was her Eden.

"What is this place?" Vash discovered that he was whispering.

"There are many places like this around this world." Wolfwood touched one of the trees hesitantly, and Vash realized that Wolfwood had probably never seen this much vegetation in one place during his entire mortal existance. "I thought you'd like it here."

"I do. I--" Vash raised his hands to his face. Weariness pressed him down like a physical burden. Weariness and despair. "I -- You -- You should not have brought me here. I should not have brought him here. Places of peace and beauty -- I do not belong here any more, not with this thing I carry inside."

"Baka," Wolfwood said, but not with malice, and touched his shoulder. Vash looked up. "Listen," Wolfwood said. "I never noticed places like this before... understand? It took someone else to show me this kind of thing. To make me notice how nice a blue sky can be after a dust storm. Maybe it's time for me to return the favor."

He held out his hand. Vash hesitated, then raised his own hand and touched Wolfwood's fingers lightly. They were warm and dry.

They wandered deeper into the valley.

"It's amazing how you can't feel the wind down here," Wolfwood said.

"Do you ... come here much?"

Wolfwood shrugged. "Every now and then. It's a nice place. It's very ... you, Vash."

They walked deeper into the forest. And it was a forest, of a sort, or at least the closest thing that this world could support.

"I wish the whole world could look like this," Vash said.

He didn't realize he'd spoken out loud until Wolfwood said, "Maybe someday it will. There are more of these places now than there were fifty years ago. Life finds a foothold wherever it can ... isn't that right, Vash the Stampede?"

Vash ducked his head. "Don't call me that. I'm just Vash."

"You never did tell me your last name."

"I told you," Vash said, his heart aching. "There's no need for that kind of thing between us..."

Wolfwood smiled.

"I heard your voice, you know," Vash said, after a moment. "With -- with Knives, there at the end. You told me to pick up the Cross Punisher."

"Whatever happened to it, anyway? And Angelina?"

"You want to know what happened to your bike? Are you insane?"

"Don't insult my Angelina!"

There was a brief pause, and then Vash laughed, and sat down on the grass. Wolfwood followed suit.

"I'll be damned," he said. "There's one of those real smiles again ... Vash."

"I haven't felt much like smiling lately," Vash admitted. He lay back and stared up at the stars, aware of Wolfwood's familiar presence beside him. It felt warm and comforting.

"How's Millie?" Wolfwood asked after a few minutes.

"She's all right. She misses you, of course, but she's smiling again. Actually, I don't think she ever really stopped."

Wolfwood laughed. "That's Millie, all right!"

"It took her a while to forgive you for leaving without saying goodbye."

Wolfwood rolled onto one elbow, and looked at Vash in the moonlight. "I would ... change that, if I could."

Vash closed his eyes. "I'm learning not to play that game. The 'what-if' game. It's a hard one to play and stay sane."

He heard rustling beside him and opened his eyes to discover that Wolfwood had taken off his coat. "Now what are you doing?"

"You look like you could sleep here." Wolfwood laid the coat over Vash.

Vash stared at him. Then he smiled. "I do feel safe here."

"So sleep. You don't have to keep watch all the time, you know. That's what friends are for."

Vash closed his eyes. Wolfwood was right, he was so very sleepy. Sleep had not come this easily to him in many days. As he drifted down into darkness, he thought, Wait! I forgot... I forgot to say what I wanted to say...

I forgot to say goodbye...

"There has never been the need for words between us, remember, Tongari?"

Vash woke with a jolt. The sun shafted into his eyes, and he winced.

How long have I been sleeping?

He stirred and became aware of a weight on top of him. Someone's jacket... He sat bolt upright. It wasn't a dream! But the coat on top of him was white, not black. Its heaviness was because of derringer holsters, empty now, sewn to the underside.

Vash folded it gently and laid it on the grass -- the grass! He looked around. The valley, the forest, was exactly as he remembered from the night before. Maybe the whole thing hadn't been a dream, then. Maybe it hadn't been a dream at all.

He went in search of the girls, somehow unsurprised that they, too, had found their way to this place. Soft voices and giggles led him to a clearing at the far side of the valley. Vash hesitated at the edge of the woods, not wanting to interrupt them, but Millie looked up and saw him.

"Vash-san! You're awake!"

Meryl smiled at him and patted the grass beside her. "Come look what we've found."

It was a find, indeed: a pool of water, perhaps ten feet across, at the heart of the clearing. Vash stared in wonder. By this world's standards, this was a lake... an ocean.

"Senpai thinks this is why the wells in town haven't gone dry," Millie told him.

Meryl nodded. "I think the water level underground is abnormally high here, high enough to support life once it was introduced. Isn't that amazing? To think all this must have ... grown, without any help from humans. And it seems to be thriving even now that the people in town are gone. Surely they must have known about it, but it doesn't seem that they built anything here."

"This is a sacred place," Millie said solemnly.

Vash looked at her quickly but she just looked back with her usual, wide-eyed innocence. He sat down near Meryl.

"How did you girls find me?"

Meryl lowered her head, blushing. "I... I'm sorry, Vash. I followed you last night. I just... I mean you were so -- Stop looking at me like that, Millie!"

"Senpai was very worried about you, Vash-san."

"I was not, Millie!"

"We both were," Millie said. "Senpai came back and got me after she saw you at the top of the cliff. We were afraid that you might be --" She broke off, twisting her hands in her lap.

"I understand," Vash said quietly. "But I was safe here, I hope you can see."

Meryl tilted her head back, looking up at the leaves hanging against the blue sky. "I do see. I can't imagine anything bad happening in a place like this."

Millie nodded, and lay back on the grass, closing her eyes. "I like it here, Senpai. You know, it's odd... walking in this place, I almost feel like ... like he's nearby. Isn't that silly?"

Again Vash looked at her, but she didn't open her eyes, and missed his curious glance. Tears quivered on her lashes, but Vash saw that there was a faint smile on her lips.

Meryl touched her shoulder lightly. Millie didn't respond, and Meryl looked over her head at Vash, with a slight grin. "She fell asleep.... I guess she hasn't been sleeping much these days, either."

She looked away quickly.

"It's all right," Vash said. "I know you've ... that is, thank you for coming to find me."

Meryl blushed and wrapped her arms around her knees. After a moment, she pushed herself roughly to her feet, and then hesitated, and looked back at Vash.

"So while she's asleep, would you like to explore this place? It's bigger than it looks." She looked down at Millie, and added, "I hope she'll be safe here..."

"I think you were right before. I don't think anything bad would come here. This place has its defenders."

They wandered between the trees. Meryl gazed in enchantment at the leaves and flowers. "What a wonderful place. Is this what the old world was like?"

"Parts of it. But it became uninhabitable, long ago. That's why your ancestors came here ... to establish a new, better world, a world that would not end as the other one did."

Meryl sighed, and wrapped her arms around her shoulders. "Instead, they found this one."

"Do you really feel that way...? There's nothing wrong with this world. There are good people in this world." People like you, and Millie... and Brad... Wolfwood... Vash was startled to find he was crying again, silently, tears slipping down his cheeks. Yet the pain he felt was not the overwhelming, aching emptiness of the last few months, but a sadness almost sweet in its simplicity. He raised his hand to his face. Meryl noticed the gesture.

"Oh -- oh, Vash, I'm sorry!"

"No, don't be!" He tried to smile at her. There's one of those real smiles again... "I don't know how to thank you and Millie for coming with me. I don't mean up here to the cliffs ... I mean the last year."

Meryl blushed and looked away.

They walked in silence for a while. Eventually Meryl said, "Do you think it's all right to leave ... him ... alone so long? What if he ... wakes up?"

"If Knives wakes, I'll know," Vash said. "Don't worry."

Meryl looked at him again. "There's something different about you today."

"What do you mean?"

"Something... I don't know. I hate to say this, but Millie could probably describe it better than I can. I mean, she's the one who always... aargh." Meryl clenched her fists. "Never mind."

"No, I'd like to know what you see. Because I feel different today, too."

"You do?"

Vash nodded.

"What I see..." Meryl said carefully. "There was a shadow in your eyes... it's been there for a long time. I don't see it today."

"It's a shadow in my heart." Vash touched his chest. On anyone else, the gesture might have appeared trite and silly, but Vash had an odd way of taking the cliched and sentimental things, and making them new again, through his obvious sincerity. He added, "I don't think it's gone, but it is less. The sun is beginning to shine again."

Meryl smiled at him.

"I feel better too. I don't know why," she said. "But I'm glad."

They wandered deeper into the forest, and neither of them said another word.