Scars

by blood-lust6

"Well Boss, you're 10 minutes late." He gulped, his hands balled into tight fists at his side. His large poncho flinced at the wind's gentle touch, it's rough yarn-like material brushing against his bare arms.

"Sorry. We were followed." He watched her delicate, pretty face contort into one of anger and scorn. Before he knew what had happened she had brought one petite hand up and slapped him hard. His head whipped to the side, a little bit of blood flying out among the saliva spouting from between his lips.

"Fool! Imbecile! I knew I shouldn't have sent you in today! What did you do about it?" Her harsh voice was like the howling wind. Boss flinched as she moved closer and grabbed a fistful of his poncho. She was almost the same height as him because he could see directly into her fury-filled blue eyes.

"We - We - Ray set up the machine gun and - and we shot at em - and one of them shot the gun off the car - so - so we rushed 'em and shot em up. They - they tipped their car over! They didn't screw anything up, honest Ms-"

"Shut up you bumbling oaf!" She violently let him go, pushing him away so that he stumbled backwards and feel. He looked up at the angry woman in fear. She glared at him for awhile longer before stalking over to the car, leaning against the bed of the truck.

"So first you start a shoot out in Blue Sky City and then you're followed out of the god forsaken dust bowl where you endanger the cargo. And the worst part of it all is that my best gun is out there, rotting away in the desert!" The woman smirked unceremoniously. Boss gave a wary look to his partner who had edged away from the other side of the truck.

"We can go get it back." He offered. She laughed airily, reaching into the bed of the truck and hauling the 'cargo' out one by one.

"Stand up straight. I need to get a good look at my purchases." Boss looked away from the children. He wasn't proud of his job. In fact he went to bed every night begging God to forgive him even though he'd never forgive himself. Boss watched as the woman walked around the three boys in a circle. They were all terrified, he could tell, brown eyes closed tightly.

"Ms. Songbird, I -"

"Shut up Ray. I'm busy." Her voice was like honey, smooth and sweet but Boss knew better. His sore back could account for what she hid behind that voice. He lifted his cowboy hat off of his sweaty head, running his hand through the black hair underneath it, and then replacing the article back on his head. He assumed by then Ms. Songbird would be ready to rant and rave about his 'find' but she was still inspecting the boys.

Ms. Ebony Songbird wasn't old, maybe about 35 or so, at least that's what Boss had heard when he joined the business. Her hair, a natural ivory color, made her appear an old woman but her perfectly smooth face and vibrant, colbat eyes told everyone different. She didn't wear her hair in an 'old woman' fashion anyway. She tied it up in a simple pony tail, decorated sometimes by a fancy ribbon or two that would color coordinate with her outfit. Today, Boss noticed, she was dressed in just regular clothing. Ms. Songbird donned a sand-stained white shirt and tan dress pants held up with the ever fashionable suspenders. But nothing about her appearance, well maybe her outstanding 6' 2" height, was more intimidating than her twin revolvers holstered on each hip.

"Well Boss, I must say these are better than last time." She removed the gag from the eldest looking boy, the only blonde headed one in the group.

"Open your eyes boy and tell me you and your brothers' names." It was a gentle but firm command. Boss tried sending a mental message to the boy to do what she said or face the consequences. He kept saying it over and over in his mind before the boy finally responded. Large, almond eyes stared ahead at the woman before switching over to Boss.

Ms. Songbird snapped her hand out, the ruby red nails catching on the soft flesh of the boy's skin. Forcefully she snapped his face back to hers and repeated her first order.

"Eric. The two others are twins, Milo and Todd." Eric answered. Boss closed his eyes for a second or two. The boy was trying to be brave, trying to protect his brothers while in the absence of his parents. Eric's parents. Boss opened his eyes looking on as Ms. Songbird talked in hushed tones to him. Ray had killed the mother, shot her in the back. She was dead before she hit the floor.

"Alright Boss. I'll make an offer. 30 thousand double-dollars for the twins and 40 thousand double dollars for the blonde." Boss never refused an offer made by the woman in front of him. No amount of money could ever grant him peace and no amount of money could free the children from their new future.

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At first, Vash had thought the dust on the western horizon was the enemy gunslingers and thus had gently but quickly moved himself and the injured Meryl behind the truck. He hoped they'd pass by without any trouble. Now was not the time to be wasting. Meryl needed help. He could feel her wasting away just as he held her against him, his arms becoming saturated with her blood.

Vash wasn't dumb. He knew, somewhere, this wasn't his fault. A little voice inside his head told him he couldn't blame himself for everything. But that voice was so little and the bigger voice in his head drowned the littler one out. It told him if he hadn't been so unfocused he would have been able to stop this.

The Insurance girl shifted in his embrace and he realized she was trying to move away. The engines were getting louder and louder. And then it hit him. His gun. It had flown out of his hand and then got dumped somewhere back in the sand. He had let go of his gun! He unwrapped one long arm from around the Insurance girl to whack himself upside the head when suddenly a car roared up on the other side of the truck.

"Vash! Meryl!" It was Millie. Help. Help had come. Vash's blue green eyes sought out Meryl's slate blue ones.

"Insurance girl?" He had automatically called her that. It was a habit. But she looked up, moving slow. He gasped at what he saw reflected in her face. Not just the pain of the gunshot wound but another pain, one that cut deeper than any knife, hurt more than any wound, and never healed. Vash knew this pain, in fact he and it were old friends. But Meryl. Of course he always knew she was hiding something but it was a carefully guarded secret and it frightened him in a sort of odd way that she was just allowing her defenses to drop now.

"Vash...I..I'm sorry..Can you...tell Millie...that for me?" He chuckled as light-heartedly as he could get, slowing rising to his feet, holding her in his arms.

"Tell her yourself, Meryl." Her eyes drooped but he could tell they were still trained on him. He'd get to the bottom of her later. Right now there was a more important matter at hand: Her life.

Millie and Wolfwood rounded the front of the car, waving the foul-smelling smoke away from their faces. Millie cried out as she saw the pair, tears trickling down her kind cheeks and she clutched at the collar of her clothing.

"Oh please no..Please no." She whispered quietly, her free hand coming to clutch her mouth. Wolfwood's eyes widened and he looked up into his friend's eyes waiting for an answer.

"They got away." Vash answered calmly then motioned to Meryl. "She needs help now."

"We got a car. Come on. I'm sure there's someone back in the city." Wolfwood said. He helped Millie walk back around to the car, the two following Vash and Meryl. They all piled into the smaller vehicle, Millie in the front seat weeping, Wolfwood driving, and Vash in the back occupying one side of the back seat and Meryl laid out, head on his lap, feet resting barely against the metal edge of the car's edge.

"Where are the kids?" Wolfwood asked, almost in a non-chalant matter. Vash looked down at Meryl, down at the bloody backside of her coat and at her hair, the black stands jostling as the car wound its way over the bumps.

"It's alright, Vash-san." He looked up slowly, his eyes meeting that of Millie Thompson's. Her eyes sparkled with unshed tears and even though there was an immeasurable amount of sadness in them, there was that one spark of hope that never faded. He smiled for her sake even if inside his stomach was churning with guilt.

"Yeah."

"What can't be helped can't be helped. We just got to get small girl here a good damn doctor. Where'd she get hit, anyway?" Vash knew Wolfwood was trying to take his mind off things, namely the feeling of failure of letting the bandits get away with three children, but asking things like the location of Meryl's maybe-fatal (Don't think about that Vash. Don't think like that.) gunshot wound wasn't exactly the same as idle conversation.

"Back." He said simply, staring out at the blur of desert, wondering why trouble, blood, torment, and death never seemed to stop pursuing him.

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Molly watched as the two sped away in her own, private car. She watched them drive quite a distance away before sighing and turning back with a wary sigh to the devastated town square.

"Blue Sky City ain't so blue no more." Leo chided, walking up next to her. Together they stood near the center of the square, surveying the damage with twin eyes.

"It's never truly been blue, Leo. Sad to say a lot of old scars have been reopened even if they've never really been closed." Molly looked over to her trusting counterpart, her green eyes searching his tired, old face.

"Yeah, I s'pose you hit the nail die-rectly on the head there Moll. Like always. Hey, I couldn't help but notice, um, that girl, the raven-haired that came in with the three others-"

"Aye, I know. Looks just like her, doesn't she? I talked to her briefly before coming out here." She sighed heavily, the sigh of a woman who'd seen a lot in her days. Molly leaned her gun down on the stone edge of the decorative wall of the plaque she had helped make. It had been placed right in the center of the square. In memory of them all. She ran a bruised hand over four names, tears rising in her eyes.

"Is she? Oh Molly, Is she Little Meryl, come back to us?" Molly took a shaky breath and shook her head sadly.

"No, Leo. She isn't." Leo stopped, a puzzled look consuming his features.

"But there's no possible way- I mean - that has to be her. No one else has Bill's eyes and Merle's hair! And-"

"No Leo! Damnit she's not her! Now just stop it. Don't get all nostalgic on me. The past is the past and the dead can't rise and walk in the lands of the living. I wish it were true. I wish she had escaped, survived, but-" Molly shook her head, wiping furiously at her eyes and the tears springing from them. She grabbed her gun and began to walk off towards the saloon. She needed a drink.

Leo watched her back as she left him, alone, amongst the large pieces of broken building and plaster. He turned back to the plaque where Molly had once looked at longingly. After staring for quite some time at it's onyx background and gold lettering, he looked up into the blue heavens.

"Well Bill, Merle. I can't tell you how sorry I am, for you and your family. We tried protecting you, protecting everyone in your family. As a man of the law and you're friend, It hurts me to say I failed you but I did. I hope one day you and the Good Lord'll find it in your heart to forgive me." And he left the square, dissapearing down into one of the dusty roads leading back to the Sheriff's quarters. As he walked he realized what Molly had said was true.

Blue Sky City had been a bandage for a gash so large that stitching would never hold. The beautiful memoir in the square had been the whiskey used to heal the wound but sting and bring tears to a grown man's eye. And as the years passed by, The bandage and the whiskey worked their magic and in time the gash healed into a scab and soon the scab fell away. But even if the gash had healed the scar was still present, lingering on the skin. And the ugly mark was never really healed. Underneath the tissue the whiskey still burned and the bandage was still in place. Now that the knife that had made the gash was re-sharpened, It's blade had slowly begun to rip the scar wide open. The gash was bleeding again. The bandage was soaked in blood and the whiskey had lost it's snap.