"If you want me to go just ask me to go, I'll go...
All the way, my love, over the hills and right on through you...
Run away, my love..."
— Sarah McLachlan, "Steaming"
Chimes rang in the quiet. A distant roar across the silent, sleeping city: a church, somewhere far from him, beating out hymns and lies in the dusty twilight.
The sky hummed with the fall of night. It lay like a shadow guiltily drying out the day; restless winds hugged the corners of empty buildings, still alleys.
Vash walked slowly from one edge of the porch to the other, one foot in front of the other, boots falling in heavy gusts of sand and fading light. He sighed softly, brushed his hand across his forehead. It had been weeks since he'd come across a lively town, and he was beginning to feel uneasy. If all else failed, he could always head back toward Inepril, but he'd left for a reason. He'd left because memory, so often pushed back, had crept loosely beneath his skin and settled there. The sands, long and lonely and gold as the burning suns, called him.
And his feet had answered, carrying him out into night and the big empty desert that bruised the land.
Immortality was vastly overrated.
It wasn't like him to be depressed. It wasn't like him to be down. And he wasn't certain it truly was depression: it was simply a pull, magnetic almost, rushing beneath him and spurring him forward. And all he'd found was still ground, the dry world, unchanging.
He laughed once, a chilly little thing that rippled in the air and faded out, slipped on a grin and shrugged quickly. He'd been living too long to be weighed down; there was too much memory in two-hundred years to dwell on past pain.
He'd sleep and then continue on...
--------
It was her cough that caught him.
He twirled, the suns flashing dual shocks of light, bright splashes of silver and gold and red. She was crouched, almost on her knees, dark braids dangling, grazing dirt. Long shadows fell across her back: like bars, like a cross. Black across white.
She looked no more than twenty.
"Hello there, you need some help?" he asked, moving forward, smiling. She didn't seem to be in pain, but afraid, perhaps — hiding, nearly out of sight against the building. "What are you doing here all by yourself? This town looks like it's been deserted for a while..."
Uncertain, she looked upward. "Well, I could ask you the same thing," she replied, slowly lifting to her feet. Her voice was smoky, gray — gray as her eyes. Gray as the sky just before morning, just before night, as the vast empty world of his dreams.
He laughed softly. "Well, there was no other place around here, you know?"
The girl smiled: a thin twist of her lips, almost hidden. "I walked here from the church. I used to live here... I guess I just got to missing it."
"And you were hiding? I don't like that dangerous, do I?"
She hesitated. "Well, you did look a little... suspicious."
Vash grinned. "Me? I'm harmless."
"That's good," she replied, the smile shifting, widening; her eyes filled with light, like pools of sky. Vash recoiled. His throat constricted. He looked at the girl, and finally saw her.
And the past flashed back at him with claws and talons, dragging him into memory, into wishes he'd forgotten —
It wasn't enough... it wasn't, there wasn't, time —
— her dying breath, her smile, her words — Time? Time is nothing to us.
His fear. Don't leave me — don't — you can't —
A smile that shined brighter than the suns, a smile so brilliant, so dazzling, he almost could not look at her, and also could not stop, for fear each blink would lose her.
I'll find you. It doesn't matter... how long it takes. I promise, I will find you. Because time is nothing. It's nothing. Not to us.
Please...
The girl was staring at him. "Are — are you all right?"
He could see himself reflected in her eyes.
He could see worlds, shimmering and shaking and dying.
We're ... all a big circle. We don't end. We won't end, not with this.
Turning, wheeling, whirling.
Don't you see? I'm not going to let you go. Ever.
He breathed. Slowly.
Shh. Close your eyes. I promise, I'll see you again...
And asked her, "What is your name?"
—bjf, 3/18/01
-----
Notes:
Okay, that I wrote out really quickly and really badly. I realize it sucked and it was sappy as all fucking hell, but I got the idea last night, and it was the idea that I wanted written out. And it was the idea, not the horrible writing, that this was written for.
Yes, I realize I can NOT write Vash. So sue me. And I realize Knives should probably have been mentioned, but he wasn't, so sue me again. This was just supposed to... yeah, I know, excuses, excuses for my bad writing.
I think part of this idea came from The Starlight Crystal by Christoper Pike. A lot of it also comes from the songs "Steaming" and "Vox" by Sarah McLachlan.
Oh, and can't forget "My Lover's Gone" by Dido. Not that it necessarily APPLIES to them, but it's good for vibes. I will not watch the ocean.
No, I'm not insinuating that Meryl was a reincarnation of Rem, so don't take it that way. I don't think she is. Rem belongs with her Alex. Meryl belongs with Vash. And because... I don't like sadness, I thought -- whee! Reincarnation! This is just something I wanted to toy with, tho, because I like to live in that never-ending realm of "some time after the series" -- that is, Meryl does not die, or Vash ages with her, or something.
Okay, no longer making sense. Going now.
