More Love and Peace

by Pools of Twilight

Meryl awoke to the sound of a murmuring crowd. She sat up in bed, wondering what it was all about. She threw on her clothes when she heard a knock on her door. She opened it to see Milly, standing there in her overalls and work helmet.

“Meryl,” she said, “He’s back! Mr. Vash came back and he has someone with him! Can you believe it?”

A smile crept over Meryl’s face and she closed her eyes. In her mind, she could hear him singing. “So, one the second celestial evening, all the children of the pebble…”

“Meryl?” Milly said, “C’mon! Don’t you want to see him again?”

Meryl’s eyes snapped open. “Of course!” she responded. “We need to keep a close eye on that trouble-maker before he does something stupid again; after all, we need to get paid for this job, don’t we?”

Milly smiled at her. She was a smart girl, though easy to outwit. She herself didn’t believe in her own intelligence. Very few people could sense it. In fact, Meryl and two others were really the only ones who had ever seen a trace of it. And Milly knew that, deep down, Meryl was excited that she would be seeing Vash again.

The girls ran outside and pushed through the crowd. Walking from the edges of the desert was a tall blonde man dressed in black. He carried another blonde man on his shoulder.

He reached the crowd and they made a path for him, smiling. He didn’t see Milly and Meryl as he walked past them.

Meryl looked disappointed, but Milly was quick to act upon it.

“Mr. Vash!” she called, and ran up to him. Vash turned around, smiling. Meryl followed close behind Milly.

“Hey,” said Vash happily, like he did when they had first met, “It’s the insurance girls!”

Milly giggled. “We’re so glad you’re back! Isn’t that right, Meryl?”

Meryl was somewhat caught off guard at Milly’s turning to her. “Oh,” she said, “Yes.”

Vash smiled. Meryl looked away, a bit embarrassed. “Um… would you like to stay with us? We can heal your friend.”

Vash turned to her and said, “That’d be great. Thanks. Maybe you should make some of your soup; it really helped me last time.”

Vash laid Knives down on the bed that he had once laid upon. He pulled the blanket over him and turned around. Meryl stood there, watching. “Is he okay?”

Vash nodded. “He’s going to be okay.”

“Who is he?”

Vash looked back down at the unconscious man. “My brother.”

“Knives,” whispered Meryl. “You mean he’s the one who killed”-

“Rem?” Vash interrupted. “Yeah.”

“Vash…” Meryl began, ready to confess, but was interrupted again. “Meryl!” She heard Milly’s voice in the next room, and she burst through the door.

“What is it, Milly?” Meryl asked, annoyed.

“I just got a letter from the Chief,” she said, waving the envelope in the air.

“Good,” said Meryl, snatching it from her hand and began to tear it open.

“What was it you wanted to tell me, Meryl?” asked Vash.

Meryl looked up at him, and then looked down. “Nothing,” she muttered. “I’ll leave you here with your brother. C’mon, Milly.”

Vash sat in a chair next to Knives’s bed. His breathing was uneven, Vash noticed. He closed his eyes and remembered their childhood. Knives hadn’t always been a sinner. When the two of them were little, they were both innocent, with no worries and they had had the same beliefs. And then somehow… somehow, they had separated. Maybe it wasn’t too late…

Vash put his hand on Knives’s hand. He truly did love his brother, no matter what they went through. And he knew that Knives felt the same way.

In the next room, Meryl opened the envelope and unfolded the letter. She read over it quickly. “What?!” she screamed.

“What is it, Meryl?” Milly asked.

“The chief- he’s sending someone to join us! It says that due to the lack of success in preventing the situations caused by Vash the Stampede, they will send us one more pair of hands to help until further notice.”

“Who are they sending?” Milly asked.

“It doesn’t say, but they’re going to be here today!”

As if on cue, a horn beeped outside. “Meryl!” yelled a familiar voice.

Meryl ran to the window and saw a blonde woman sitting in a car, waving.

“Karen!” she yelled, and ran from the room. She sprinted outside and embraced Karen. Karen carried a large travel bag with her and headed inside.

Meryl, Milly, and Karen stood in their bedroom room together. Meryl had just finished talking.

“So that’s why he has so much disaster follow him,” Karen said finally. “And I spent all this time thinking that he was a womanizing monster who did it all on purpose. So how did you react when you found out that your boyfriend was a plant?”

Meryl’s eyes got wide and her face burned bright red. “He is not my boyfriend!” she yelled furiously, and crossed her arms and turned away.

“No,” said Milly, smiling sweetly, “but he will be soon, won’t he, Meryl?”

“Milly!” Meryl yelled.

“You can’t hide the fact that you’re hopelessly fallen for this guy,” said Karen. “I can hear it in the way you talk about him. I don’t see why- he’s not even human.”

Someone knocked on the door. It opened, and Vash walked in, wearing his brown pants and white shirt. “Hello!” he said, waving to the girls.

“Hello!” Milly and Karen said at the same time. Meryl made a disgusted face.

Vash ignored it. “Hey, um, when are we having dinner? I’m starving!”

Vash, Milly, and Karen sat at the table. Meryl walked in carrying a giant plate of donuts. Vash’s eyes got wide and he squealed excitedly. “I thought this would be an appropriate meal for Vash’s return,” she said.

“YES!!!” screamed Vash, snatching a handful and stuffing them in his mouth. He laughed out loud with his mouth full. “These are so tasty!” he screamed. “Danke, merci!”

Karen’s eyebrow went up. “So this is the famous humanoid typhoon? Honestly, Meryl, you always seem to go for the”-

“Would you like some donuts, Karen?” Meryl interrupted rudely.

Vash, overhearing their little feud, stopped chewing his donuts and looked from Karen to Meryl, to Karen again. He seemed to be a bit of a combination of amused and confused.

“Whu?” he said, his mouth still filled with donuts.

“Don’t talk with your mouth full!” Meryl snapped.

Milly started laughing and clapping her hands. All eyes in the room turned to her. “It’s so cute, how friendly you and Vash have become Meryl! You’re very fun to watch.”

Vash swallowed. He put his hand behind his head and leaned back. “Yeah, it’s very cute, of course it is! Hahahahaha!” His face burned a light shade of pink. He probably didn’t even understand what Milly had said, Meryl decided.

She carried a bowl over to Vash.

“What’s this?” he asked.

Meryl smiled, handing him the light-colored soup. “For Knives,” she said.

Vash, Meryl, Karen, and Milly stood by Knives’s bed. He was still unconscious.

Meryl spoke up. “Milly and I have to go to work, she said, “You two stay here and keep an eye on him.”

“Excuse me,” said Karen, “But isn’t there some rule about taking part-time jobs?”

“Yes but we need to earn money to stay here and take care of Knives. Vash? What’s wrong?”

Vash was looking at Knives. He looked like he was about to cry.

“I want to get a job too,” he said. “To help him.”

Meryl nodded. “Okay,” she said. “Karen, you watch Knives. If he wakes up, make sure he eats his soup, okay?”

The three of them left Karen alone with Knives.

Karen sat on the chair next to his bed. “So you’re a plant too, huh?” she said to the unconscious man. “Actually, you’re kind of cute, for a killer.”

To Karen’s surprise, Knives stirred.

Vash got home from his new job long after Milly and Meryl. He had had the job of a cashier. It didn’t pay much, but every little bit helps, he thought. He walked into the living room to see Meryl asleep on the couch. His eyes rested on her face for a moment, and then he continued upstairs. The girls’ bedroom was locked, so he assumed that Milly and Karen were asleep too. He silently opened the door and peeked into Knives’s bedroom. To his astonishment, the light was on, and Knives was sitting in a chair, looking out the window. Vash almost walked into the room to speak with his brother, but a sound stopped him. It was the sound of a giggle. A girl’s giggle.

Vash looked closer to see that Knives wasn’t alone. Karen was sitting on his lap with her arm around his shoulders. Knives was talking to her so softly that Vash couldn’t tell what he was saying. He smiled and left the two of them alone in the room. He stood, leaning against the closed door and pondering upon the possibilities of what this meant. Had he really changed so quickly? No, and even if he did, he would deny it. But that was okay. Vash had an entire eternity to change his mind.

Vash walked into his room and lay down in his bed. He didn’t fall asleep right away. He thought about Meryl, and Milly, Knives and Karen, and at the thought of Rem, he drifted asleep.

A week or so later, Knives was up and about the house. It became routine that Meryl, Milly, and Vash went to work while Karen cared for Knives’s wounds.

One night, after everyone was home from work, Knives stood up and left his room. He walked into the girls’ room where the three girls and Vash were playing cards.

“I want to leave this damned house,” he said. Everyone jumped at the realization of his presence.

“You think you’re ready?” Vash asked.

“These filthy humans”-

“Saved your life,” Vash interrupted.

Karen looked up at Knives. Her eyes were huge and insulted. “Filthy humans?” she breathed.

The air in the room seemed awkward. The only one who was smiling was Milly. She stood up. “There’s a party at the bar down the street. Before you go, why don’t you have a little fun?”

Vash could sense what was going on in Milly’s mind. He stood up as well. “That sounds like a good idea. Let’s all go.”

At the bar, Vash ordered drinks for everyone, except Meryl, who didn’t drink much. He placed a giant mug of beer in front of Milly. She liked to drink.

But Milly pushed the mug away. “No thank you,” she said, “I’m not in the mood tonight.”

“But Milly,” said Meryl, “It was your idea to come here in the first place. Don’t you want to drink?”

“I don’t need to drink to have a good time,” Milly responded. Something was wrong, Meryl sensed.

“I agree,” said Vash, taking Milly’s mug and chugging it down himself. Immediately he had a dazed look in his eyes and a huge smile on his face. Minutes later, he also had a tie tied around his head. Knives stared at his brother in disbelief that he was actually related to such a dweeb.

Karen held up her mug of beer. “To the superior breed of beast,” she said half-jokingly.

Knives smiled and held up his mug. “To plants,” he said, hit his against hers, and they both chugged.

Soon Meryl and Milly were the only ones left who weren’t drunk.

“I can’t believe you didn’t want to drink,” Meryl said.

Milly shrugged. “I don’t know. I just didn’t want to, that’s all. Excuse me…” She stood up and headed to the bathroom.

Meryl watched her. Something was different…

Vash, drunk and crazy, stumbled over to Meryl and leaned on the back of her chair. “Give her a break,” he said, his speech a bit slurred. “After what happened between her and Wolfwood…”

“I would have thought that would have made her want to drink even more.”

“I think there was more between Milly and Wolfwood than meets the eye.”

Meryl noticed that his speech wasn’t slurred anymore as he told her this.

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“What I mean is, any girl in her condition shouldn’t be drinking. In just over eight months from now…”

He stopped talking and suddenly sprinted outside. He could be heard vomiting throughout the bar. Meryl pondered upon what he had said. Could it be that Milly was… that Wolfwood would have been…?

And then Knives sat down next to her. He wasn’t all that drunk. In fact, the alcohol hardly affected him at all. “I’ve been reading everyone’s minds,” he told her.

Meryl was a bit frightened of Knives, for she had heard from Vash about all the horrible things he had done. She looked up at him innocently. “Oh,” she said simply, although quite angry that he had been invading people’s privacy.

“Including yours and Vash’s,” he continued. “Vash has this love for all humans. However, there are a few he loves exceptionally. Some he would like to spend the rest of his life with. He knows he can’t because he will live for all eternity, while the people he cares for will grow old and die. It scares him. That’s why he pushes them away. That’s why he’ll be leaving soon.”

Meryl looked over at Vash and suddenly realized that she yet another thing to worry about.

Knives decided to stay with everyone. “To make sure Vash doesn’t do anything stupid” he told them all. Karen seemed utterly thrilled.

Two nights after the party, Vash walked out to the spot where he and Meryl had once sat and looked at the stars. It was the same spot where he had looked off into the distance and tried to picture what he would say to Knives once he fond him, and where he had remembered that last thing that Rem tried to tell him.

The fourth and fifth moons were high in the sky. He noticed a shadow looking up at the two moons, sitting on that hill. It was Meryl, staring at the giant crater on the fifth moon. It reminded her of the day Vash had used his angel arm to put it there, and it reminded her of how he had killed Legato to save her life. Most of all, it reminded her of Vash himself.

Vash took a step closer and the sand underneath his foot crunched. Meryl jumped, suddenly realizing he was there.

“I’m sorry,” said Vash. He looked into Meryl’s eyes and realized that she had been crying. “What’s wrong?” he asked.

Meryl looked away as Vash came and stood next to her. “You’re leaving, aren’t you?”

Vash was caught off guard by her question. “I don’t know,” he told her, “I’ve thought about it…”

“I don’t mind that you’re a plant,” said Meryl. “It never bothered me.”

“I know it doesn’t.”

“Please don’t leave, Vash. I don’t want you to go, because I- I-”

Vash turned to her and put his hand on her back, pressing her against him.

“I won’t leave,” he whispered, “I promise.”

Before Meryl knew what she was doing, she had stood on her toes and pecked him on the cheek.

Vash didn’t see that coming, but he could no longer restrain himself either. He held her hand on one hand, and his other hand was on her cheek. He leaned foreword and pressed his lips against hers.