“Where the hell is he now

“Where the hell is he now?” I growled to myself as I stalked out of yet another bar. I looked left, then right, weighing my options. Normally, it only took me an hour or so to track him down, but I’d been searching for close to four hours now, and there was still no sign of him. I’d been reduced to walking in to random bars, yelling, “Has anyone seen a debauched priest?” and quickly ducking back out, dodging flying beer bottles. I’d gone to damn near every bar in November, and he was still nowhere to be found. Ever since he started leaving that cross…gun…THING in his hotel room when he went out, he was harder to spot. Although, six-fiel tall, chain-smoking drunken priests aren’t exactly a common sight.

There was something about him that seemed to inspire people to mess with him. Maybe his aura screamed, “Bring it on!” to those with the appropriate level of drunkenness. Course, sometimes he actually did scream, “Bring it on!” Like last night. What had possessed him to take on a man three times his size? As I said, I was usually able to find him within an hour. The yelps of pain and breaking glass were enough of a clue that he was nearby, though it was a tossup as to who was in pain and who was inflicting it. He usually gave as good as he got, if not more. And I’d end up joining in, a swipe here, an elbow there, a quick disarming over there. Fun times.

But for some reason, tonight he was being particularly difficult to locate, and the strip was almost…peaceful. A fact which I’m sure the bar owners gave thanks for, but I was reaching the end of my patience. That happened a lot around him. Aside from Meryl, he was one of the only people who could make me openly cranky. I jammed a hand into my coat pocket and pulled out a much-abused piece of paper. Some generous soul, after watching me get tossed on my ass in the street after a “misunderstanding” at the One-Eyed Jack, had made me a list of all the bars in November, and I’d been steadily making my way through it. I found and crossed The Bleeding Heart off, then swore. The bright side was, there was only one other place left to check. Well, two places actually, but that “misunderstanding” had made it perfectly clear that I was never to enter that place again. Not on my own, anyways.

The problem was, it was nearly closing time and if he wasn’t here…I didn’t know what I was going to do. Odds were good that the drunken bastard had simply found some other poor sot to take him back to his room, while this poor sot was still out hunting for him. * Can my life get any more pathetic? * It’s a good thing I live on a desert planet. In the stories I’d read so many years ago, this was always the part where the skies opened up in a torrential downpour. As it was I managed to trip over a tumbleweed.

Muttering under my breath, I made my way to a small saloon at the end of town. It didn’t really have a name, it was just ‘that place at the end of town.’ I pushed the doors open and scanned the nearly empty place, a slight scowl on my face. The bartender, a very, VERY short man, looked up from his task of wiping down tables and scowled back at me, hackles rising. I plastered a goofy grin on my faced and waved, * See, I’m just a harmless idiot, * and the little man rolled his eyes before returning to his chore.

I’m not above using stupidity to get my way. I probably shouldn’t depend on my ‘dur-hur’ persona as much as I do, but it’s come in handy more than once. It’d be nice not to be continually thought of as a blithering idiot; however, it’s even nicer to remain alive. Lord knows I had both down to an art form. Then, of course, there’s the whole “Humanoid Typhoon” bit. I’m not sure where people came up with the idea that Vash the Stampede was a beast of a man that eats children - that gets kind of annoying after a while, yanno? I will gladly annihilate a box of good doughnuts, but really, the kids beat me up on a regular basis. Yet since being myself seems to be radically out of the question, I only have two choices - the dangerous outlaw or the idiot. It hurts sometimes when that’s all that people see, even when they’ve known me long enough to know better.

It had kept Meryl off my trail for longer than I’d ever dreamed possible, though, so the facades stayed. I repressed a shudder. I’d rather face an entire town armed to the teeth than Meryl on a bad day. * Wait, been there, done that. On both accounts. * That woman is one of the scariest I’ve ever met, even when she’s not angry at the world. And when she’s not angry at the world, she’s usually angry with me. I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s because I don’t fit her idea of what I’m supposed to be, whatever that is. More than once I’ve caught her staring at me with this look of...adoration, quickly followed by a ferocious glare that lasts the rest of the day. And then there was that romance manuscript I found in her bag once… From all appearances, Meryl had been trying her hand at writing one. Having been raised around literature, and curious to boot, I’d started reading it. * Shut up, I know it was stupid. * I got three pages into it when I realized who the main characters were supposed to be.

There are many reasons Meryl scares me, and her bitchiness is only one of them. I have no desire to end up ‘tamed’ by some little hellcat of a female with an axe to grind.

That little fact alone probably explains why I was standing here. ‘Here’ being the last open bar in November at 1 a.m. My grin turned feral as I spotted my quarry sitting alone at a table. Nicholas D. Wolfwood.

Here we go again.

It was a scene that had played out repeatedly over the past few nights. Shit, it was a scene that played itself out every time we met up. I’d find him half-drunk in some bar – and it was always a different one - help him get completely drunk, and take him back to his room, only to be told to “Go the hell away.” Which I had. But I’d always be there in the morning to clean him up, and buy him breakfast if he was up to it. I’d usually stop by around 8 or 9 am, because the lazybones would sleep all day if I let him. It was a perfectly acceptable time; after all, I’d have been up for three hours by then. But for some reason this seemed to piss him off. He’d tell me to leave him the fuck alone, and threaten to wipe the floors with me. I’d laugh, because the thought of him trying to do ANYTHING with a hangover was just funny, and keep pestering till he let me in. It was so pathetic. I kept chasing after him like some abandoned puppy, eager for a scrap of attention. A scrap of affection. But no. He has to maintain his ‘professional distance’. It had gotten truly irritating.

We’d run into him, almost literally, about a week ago. It was rather fortuitous, considering that I’d been looking for an excuse to remove myself from the torture dev – er, tomas, and he had been slowly dying from the heat and dehydration. Wonderful creatures, tomases. Hardy and capable of long-distance travel on little sustenance. But so damned uncomfortable to ride! Not to mention, they aren’t exactly the brightest animals; an example being of just how we uncovered the man Millie affectionately called Mister Priest. Meryl’s tomas had stepped on the buried end of the cross-gun-thingamajig, and said thingamajig had righted itself in the sand, smacking the tomas in the nose as it revealed the prone form it had been shielding from the sun. The tomas had been none too pleased, and neither had Meryl when she got dumped on her ass in the sand. But not even Meryl would leave a man to die in the desert, no matter how much she disliked him, so I woke him up long enough to give him some much-needed water, and slung him across the back of my tomas, much like the way one would transport a sack of flour. I like to think of it as a relatively even trade. My ass got a much-needed reprieve, and he stayed alive. The fact that I got to watch his ass during the rest of the trip was an added bonus.
The fact that I enjoyed looking at his ass was something I was still getting used to.

He’d woken up when we were a few hours outside of November, and after some peaceful discussion (read: arguing) we had all decided to stay in the city for a while. Not only that, we had ended up staying in the same damn hotel. Not that there was usually much of a choice, but November had three hotels. You’d think that if the man wanted to avoid me so damn much he’d have the decency to stay somewhere else. Somewhere that wasn’t right down the hall from me. The girls had decided to share a room due to financial constraints, but he scrounged up enough money for a room to himself. Again. Funny, how he never seemed to have enough for food, or bus fares, or alcohol, but always managed to pay for his own room. He was always avoiding me, and yet, just when I’d given up hope of ever seeing him again, we would end up crossing paths once more. If pressed, he’d just laugh and say that it must have been God’s will, but for a while now I’ve begun to think it was Someone Else’s will pushing him towards me. Someone who had it in for me, and for whatever reason decided to rent out his dirty work to a supposed man of God. And for a while now I’ve realized that doesn’t really bother me. Much. Ok, ok, so it does bother me, but… Hormones don’t really care about possible nefarious allegiances.

At first, it was just a mild dose of fascination on my part. There was the clash of his outer guise and the glimpses I kept getting of what he was really like underneath. Right on the heels of that was the realization that I wanted more of those glimpses. However, it was when Millie pointed out one day that I was staring at him that I finally figured out that glimpses of his personality weren’t all I was after. I was, well, attracted to him. Now, I am not blind. I know very well that Meryl is…obsessed with me. But as I’ve pointed out, Meryl scares me, and anyone who looks on Millie as a romantic interest ought to be ashamed of themselves. So the two females I spent the most time with - and I spent as little time with them as possible - were not viable options. And it seemed like I made a point to hit on girls I had absolutely no chance of getting. Like Marianne. Heh, that had been a major ‘Aw shit’ on my part. Who knew that such a cutie would turn out to be one of the Feds? And then there was Stefany, and Elizabeth, and…yeah. Romeo, I am not. * What’s in a moron? T’is neither hand, nor foot, but Vash the Stampede… *

So what did that leave me? I had yet to meet anyone who could look long enough past both my reputation and my mask except…him. He wasn’t scared of me, wasn’t in awe of me, and…he treated me like everyone else. * When he’s not being an ass, that is. * But we worked well together. Regardless of how he’d come by his training, he used it to help me, not hurt me. As startling as it had seemed to me at first, to think of a man as a possible…significant other, it made an incredible amount of sense once I started thinking about it. Not to mention that it made a really pretty picture in my mind. There was no denying the fact that he was a man, but he was a gorgeous hunk of a man. I am many things; blind is definitely not one of them. But…but. There were those possible nefarious allegiances to think about. I needed more information, one way or another, before this went any further. If it could even go any further, which, considering his reputation was doubtful indeed. He was far too familiar with the waitresses for me to think I had even half a chance. But hope was a tenacious little bitch, and Meryl wasn’t the only one I’d caught staring at me.

I bit back the urge to sigh. I was so confused, about everything. He was probably working for a man that wanted to kill me, but he hadn’t killed me. He’d saved me nearly as many times as I’d saved him. And taking care of him time after time only made me realize how much I didn’t mind it. He may have aggravated the hell out of me with the way he was behaving recently, but I suppose he had his reasons for keeping his distance. And right here, right now, staring into his indigo eyes, I had the sinking suspicion that it didn’t matter what he was anymore. Damn my stupid hea - er- hormones, anyway. Yeah.

“You know full well that a thief won’t fess up. Why don’t you let me search ‘im? That’ll be the way to make sure he’s got nuthin’ on ‘im.” He grinned evilly up at me. * Oh perfect. The little shit was gonna plant a bottle on me. * Nick had been asking me if he’d already done so. “Here,” the bartender continued, extending his gun towards Nick, “You hold the gun on ‘im, and I’ll search ‘im.”

“I am a priest, sir. I can’t be expected to hold a gun on anybody.” Knowing this for the BS it was, I was a bit surprised by his indignation at being asked to hold a gun on me. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time...

“However,” he continued, “You would trust a priest to search this man for you, wouldn’t you?” He flicked his eyes at me, no more than a small glance in my direction, but it was enough to make my heart beat faster. Our eyes met, and - WHAM!

The bartender had taken advantage of my inattention - again - and pistol-whipped me in the jaw. * Oh, how the mighty have fallen, * I chided myself as I landed on the floor in an untidy sprawl. * Over 130 years old, and you still get stupid over a pair of pretty eyes...*

“There. Now I know he won’t move. Go ahead and search ‘im, mister priest man.”

The bartender put his gun against my temple as Nick came over and knelt down next to me. I turned my head away and fought a blush. It’s not like he’d never touched me before or anything, but this was different. It didn’t feel like a detached searching of my coat. It felt more…intimate than that, like a caress. The blush won. Nick stood up suddenly.

“He doesn’t have any other bottles of Wild Turkey, sir,” he said.

“I never said it was Wild Turkey, it was brandy.” What?! I hate brandy! “That varmint stole a fifth of my best brandy! I’ll have it in my hand before you leave the premisees.” He glared at Nick, and the pieces suddenly fell into place. He must have been planning to plant a bottle on me after Nick had searched me, and that way implicate Nick in the “crime.” The rat. Nick apparently caught wind of the rodent-like stench as well, because he suddenly swooped down and grabbed something from the bartender’s pocket. It was a half-full bottle of what looked to be fine-quality brandy.

“Do you make a habit, sir,” Nick said condescendingly, shaking the bottle mockingly, “of stealing from your own establishment?” * Ooh, a four-syllable word. Someone’s been sleeping with the dictionary again. * I ignored the brief flash of envy that thought brought to mind.

“Now, if you don’t mind,” Nick continued, “We’ll enjoy the rest of the night in peace. I trust the sheriff doesn’t need to know about this?” He chucked the bottle at the bartender, who clumsily caught it and nodded dumbly.

“Good. Come on, Broom-head, let’s go,” he said as he strode out of the bar, head held high. * So I’ve been upgraded to Broom-head now, have I? * It still wasn’t exactly complimentary, but it was a definite improvement nonetheless. At least now he wasn’t implying that he thought my head came to a point. Now he was just making fun of my hairdo. I smothered a grin as I got carefully to my feet, and grabbed my bottles off the countertop. I was tempted to shout, “Keep the change!” as I left, but decided it was best not to push my luck. That and, well, the bartender really was keeping the change. About $$40 worth. I shrugged. If nothing else, he could use it to buy cleaning oil for his gun. Those babies have…explosive tempers if they stay dirty for too long.

I gave Nick a silly grin when I saw him waiting outside for me. I’d expected him to just head off once the crisis had been averted; this was a nice surprise. * Progress, we’re making pro~ogress... * I sauntered out into the street in a kind of victory dance, putting a bit of a sway into my walk for good measure, and heard Nick chuckle as he followed. I popped the cap off one of my bottles and sucked down a third of it in one go, feeling the pleasant burn make its way through my system. * Ahh, that was refreshing. * Despite the fact that Wild Turkey tends to taste like recycled spit, tonight it tasted like manna from heaven. With the decided exception of brandy, I liked alcohol; it was one of the few things that soothed my jangled nerves. Kind of like liquid doughnuts, only decidedly less tasty. And thanks to the fact that my body processed it faster than was usual, I could also handle quite a bit of it with hardly any ill effects, which gave me an advantage when I needed to win a drinking bet. Usually, all that ever happened was that I got nauseous. Alcohol isn’t exactly the healthiest of beverages, after all, and despite my liking for it, my stomach usually disagreed with me on the subject. The only time I’d actually had a hangover, however, was during the Quick Draw Tournament. Funny, how Nick was involved in that little fiasco as well…

I threw him a glance over my shoulder. Despite my misgivings, though, the man deserved a thank you.

“Thanks, Wolfwood; I don’t know what I would have done back there without you.” It sounded a bit trite, but nonetheless, it was true. Even Vash the Stampede needs backup once in a while.

“You would have figured it out eventually,” he said, dismissing my thanks. I faced ahead again and raised an eyebrow. It wasn’t like Nick to be so self-effacing. And since when was he that confident in my ‘problem-solving’ capabilities, huh? Usually he was calling me ten kinds of idiot for nearly getting myself killed. I didn’t really mind that, though, as it was one of the only indications I had that he cared at all. Or that he wasn’t…out to kill me or anything. After all, people don’t normally go to the trouble of protecting someone they’re intending to kill, right? Right? I stared down at the ground, frowning a little as I waited for him to catch up.

“Yeah, right.” It’s why I’d decided to ask for his help in the first place, even though I hadn’t known whether he’d back me up or not. And he had. I’d taken a definite risk, but it had worked out. Maybe I could trust him after all. I wanted to, very badly, but if there is one thing the years have taught me, it’s that you can’t always trust the ones you want to. I’d been very cautious so far, but I was fast approaching a point where I wanted to just throw caution to the winds, along with every mask I’d ever created. For now, though, indecision kept me locked in place, unwilling to forge on without a sign of some sort. And all I seemed to be getting were hints so subtle I kept wondering if I’d only imagined them. Like him insisting I wasn’t the type to ‘steal anything from anybody.’

“How’d you know I didn’t steal the brandy?” I asked abruptly. It wasn’t exactly a well-known fact that I didn’t like the stuff, after all, and I couldn’t remember ever mentioning it to him in our ‘conversations.’

“Call it intuition.” He smirked, took a swig out of his nearly empty wine bottle, and tilted his head back, surveying the heavens. I looked up as well, trying to see what held him so captivated, but all I could see were the stars…and Rem. She looked sternly at me for a few seconds, and then she giggled. With a wink and a flip of her star-dusted hair, she was gone again. I could have sworn I heard her tell me, ~Now you behave, Vash.~

* Behave? What on earth – oh. Oh. *

“Sooo,” I said, once the blush had died down a bit, “you still coming up to my room? I’ll sha~are.” I clinked two of my bottles together. He looked at his, then looked at mine, thinking. Finally, he grinned. It had been ages since I’d seen him grin, and my heart gave a funny little twist at the sight of it.

“Sure,” he said, “Someone’s gotta make sure you don’t puke all over the bed.” He snickered. * Ok, happy feeling gone. That little…*

“Hey, I told you not to bring that up again! At least I wasn’t the one that missed the toilet!” It had been a terrible little moment; some combination of what I’d drunk that night hadn’t agreed with my system, and…yeah. I hadn’t even been able to make it off the bed before my stomach erupted. To add insult to injury, I’d been so drained afterwards that I hadn’t been able to move.

“At least I didn’t fall asleep in it.”

“I wouldn’t have if somebody would have dragged my ass off the bed,” I retorted, remembering how Nick had just laughed at me. He wasn’t laughing for very long, though, before his own stomach made its demands on him and I was summarily forgotten till morning. That had been when a suspiciously hangover-free Nick had hauled me, nauseous and blurry-eyed, out to go shoot at things for money. Oh yeah, and love and peace.

“Yeah, and who stuck around to get your sorry ass to the tournament?”

“And who’s been cleaning up after WHO ever since?”

“Not like I ask you to wake me up at the ass-crack of dawn.”

“Since when does nine ‘o clock constitute as dawn, you lazy lush?”

“If you ever see a sunrise, you’re either up way too late or way too damn early.”

He glared at me, and I glared right back at him. * That does it… * He deserved a noogie on general principle for that. Maybe not the Flaming Noogie of Justice, because justified or not I didn’t want to give him a bald spot, but definitely the Death Noogie of Doom this time. No one insults my sunrises with impunity. Grinning evilly, I secured my bottles of Wild Turkey in my coat and pounced.

“Itaiiii!” He yelped, ducking away from the Death Noogie. “What the hell was that for?” I said nothing, only grinning smugly as I dusted my hands off. I glanced up at him out of the corner of my eye, and snickered. His hair looked like a tumbleweed…

“Now what?” He growled at me. I laughed as I pointed to the top of his head, and he attempted to rectify the damage. * Heh, Death Noogie gets ‘em every time. * I fingered the pack of cigarettes I’d lifted from him in the process. It was a little skill I’d picked up longer ago than I cared to recall; useless, really, but fun to execute. I wanted to see how long it took before he noticed the theft, but apparently it wasn’t long at all. Almost immediately, he reached into his pocket, eyes going wide in panic when he realized his precious cigarettes were no longer there. He patted his other coat pocket, his pants pockets, even searching the ground around him. Eventually, he was going to figure it out, so I decided to head that off while I still had the advantage. I held up the pack within the V of my fingers.

“Looking for these?” He spun around, eyes zeroing in on the object in question.

“Yeah, I think you found them.” He held out his hand expectantly. Did he think it was going to be that easy? Lord, I hadn’t even begun yet. I chuckled to myself; it had been years since I’d used my sleight of hand tricks on anyone. I’d forgotten how much fun it could be.

“Here ya go.” I closed my hand into a fist, and opened it up to reveal not the pack of cigarettes, but a book of matches instead. “Oops.” He didn’t look amused.

“Nice trick, Needle-noggin.” There was that name again. I narrowed my eyes.

“Name calling isn’t a very good way to get those back, you know,” I said tauntingly, as I snapped my fingers and the matches disappeared in a ball of flame. * Ha, the look on his face…*

“That better not have been the cigarettes.” He narrowed his eyes menacingly. Ah hah. Looks like I’d found a bargaining chip, for future reference. But not now. I’d had my bit of amusement, and if he wanted to be his usual pain in the ass self, that was his problem.

“Eh, you’re no fun,” I said, doing the old “coin behind the ear” trick with his cigarettes as a grand finale. I dropped them in front of him, and he caught the pack and yanked a cig out with his mouth all in one deft movement. Talent, that.

“Thanks,” he said sarcastically around the cigarette, pulling his matches from his pocket – I’d burned mine instead – and lighting up. He puffed on it a couple times, before asking, “Any particular reason you felt the urge to swipe my smokes?”

“Call it intuition.” I smirked. It was so much fun tossing other people’s words back at them. “You looked like you needed a little fun.” What came out of my mouth next was a result of one of those nasty little voices, the kind that whisper seductively to you, * Just do it, don't think of the consequences, they're nothing compared to the thrill, and those doubts will just slow you down, just DO IT NOW!!! * “All work and no play makes Nick a dull boy.” Shit. I hadn’t meant to call him Nick, it just…came right out. I mean, Wolfwood is such a fucking awkward name to say, and it just…fit. From the looks of things, though, Nick didn’t think so. He tensed up, and I…slung an arm across his shoulders and started singing the first thing that came to mind: “I quick began to speak as she stood right in front of me/ The color of her eyes were the color of insanity/ Crushed beneath her wave, like a ship, I could not reach the shore/ We're all just dancers on the Devil's dance floor.” How…apropos.

I closed my eyes tightly, expecting any minute to get smacked halfway down the street. * Oh shi~it, I’m gonna die, I’m gonna die… * But I kept on singing. “Swing a little more, little more, all the merrier, Swing a little more, little more next to me, Swing a little more, little more, all the merrier, Swing a little more, on the Devil's dance floor.”

To my complete and utter shock, Nick started singing along. My jaw dropped as he – very badly – started singing the next verse. He knew this song? And knew more than one verse of it? I was impressed, despite the fact that he was singing in the wrong key.

“Pressed against her face, I could feel her insecurity/ Her mother'd been a drunk and her father was obscurity/ Nothing ever came from her life, that was a simple one,” at this, I grinned, and joined in with the next line, “Pull yourself together girl, and have a little fun!” His off-key rumble created an interesting counterpoint to my own higher vocal range; together, we made a strange harmony out of discord.

Yet, when we were within a stone’s throw of the hotel, Nick stopped suddenly, in both the middle of the song and the street, a very strange look crossing his face. He craned his head around, looking for something. His eyes unfocused, as if he were looking inwards, or…I watched as his fists clenched and his face tightened. As if he was talking to somebody. Suspicion reared its ugly little head, and stared at me with malevolent golden eyes. Shit. Looks like I’d gotten that sign I was looking for. Hell. Goddammit and fuck it too.

I felt my shoulders droop, and I took my arm from around his shoulders, stepping off a bit to one side. I shivered a little, both at the loss of his body heat and the rest of my illusions. * Oh Nick…* I’d had my doubts the first time I saw him handle a gun, nevermind once I realized what his “luggage” was. I mean, who else but the Gung-Ho Guns carried such insanely specialized hardware? Hell, even my .45 Long Colt was special, but that was because Knives had made “improvements” on it. Damn him anyways.

I guess I hadn’t wanted to believe. True, Nick’s disguise was better than most, but it was still a thin one. I hadn’t wanted to see through it, but watching him hold a conversation in his head with someone who in no uncertain terms wanted me dead, I had to accept that Nick was one of them. But…he hadn’t killed me. Yet. Nick shuddered, and I watched his eyes regain their focus. He muttered something under his breath that I didn’t understand, then his eyes widened. * Welcome back to reality, Nick, how was your trip among the damned? * But…I wasn’t supposed to know that Hell existed, so to speak. Heh. People really don’t give me enough credit. As annoying as it can be at times, it can also be a real advantage. This was not one of those times, however. From the look on Nick’s face, it seemed like he’d finally realized that I did in fact possess a brain, and that this was Not A Good Thing.

As he turned slowly to look at me, I looked right back. Keeping my face as clueless as I could, I asked, “What?” His face screwed up into a grimace. “What was that all about?” I knew he probably wouldn’t give me a straight answer, and even though I already knew the answer, I still had to give him a chance to tell me. There was always the possibility…

“Umm…What was what?” …that he would feign stupidity. Gee, that was original, Nick. Granted, I’d given him the same bullshit after we fought the machines together, so I guess I had it coming to me. That didn’t make me feel any better about it, though.

“Nevermind,” I said, moving a few paces in front of him, “It’s not important.” I laughed bitterly; nothing I want is important, it seems. Not peace, and not…love. I sighed. Guess I’d found that word I was looking for, and proved I was a blithering idiot to boot. Looks like the elusive mayfly of love was just that: forever out of my reach. It was inevitable, I suppose. * No matter what I do, I can’t seem to keep my stupid heart from getting involved. *

My hands moved down into my pockets as we slowly continued to the hotel, which was coming up on the right. I didn’t know what to do. When we’d first met, I’d tried keeping my distance like I did with the girls, but he got right in my face. He shot my mask to hell with one frighteningly accurate comment, and showed me a peek of what lay under his. But when I tried getting closer to him, once everything had been settled, he moved away. I suppose the “It must be God’s will,” comment I’d lobbed at him had clinched it, but hell, I’d just MET the guy. Sure, I could have said, “Oh by the way, I can control lost technology because I’m related to it.” Yeah. Right. People have enough trouble accepting that I’m even Vash the Stampede. Add “inhuman monster” to that, and they wouldn’t just run me out of town with torches and pitchforks, they’d string me up from the tallest nearby structure and use me for target practice with said torches and pitchforks. Me and Frankenstein’s Monster. Heh, now that brings back memories.

The S.E.E.D. ship I’d been raised on had been equipped with an electronic library, with thousands – no, millions – of what Rem called “books.” She’d told me and a grudgingly curious Knives that books used to consist of printed pages bound together, and that they came in a variety of shapes, sizes, and colors. But due to the diminishing materials necessary to produce them, books were no longer made that way. Instead, as many of them as possible were copied into a massive computer bank as files, and then the files were available for download into smaller libraries and bookstores to be loaned and purchased. There were also electronic copies of newspapers and magazines, but because they sometimes had picture files that took up a lot of space, there weren’t as many of these. The S.E.E.D. ships were probably the only such sources of literature left in our part of the galaxy.

Rem had given us free reign in the library, which may have been a mistake on her part. Knives tended to gravitate to historical and political books and essays, like Plato’s Republic and Machiavelli’s The Prince. He’d also taken a shine to Shakespeare, much to the horror of the crew. Imagine, what looked to be a 7-year-old kid, spouting off Hamlet’s soliloquy. Rem thought it was wonderful, though, but then, Rem tended to think that everyone was wonderful. She firmly believed that there was good in all things, and in all people. And sitting there, with works of great authors and philosophers, our sessions in the library were usually accompanied by Rem’s own kind of philosophy.

“We are so ready to look for the bad things in people, that it is often the only thing we see,” she’d told Knives and me once. “We tend to forget that good is there too, if we’d only look a little harder.”

Knives had retorted by telling her that some people were rotten to the core, and that others were too pure. She’d thought a moment, before saying, “I suppose that there are always extreme cases, yes, but they are the exception to the rule, and nature will always go about setting it right again. Bad people do good things, after all, and good people do bad things. Bad things happen to good people, and good things happen to bad people. It is – balance. Some people give it mystical names like karma, and proclaim that every person has a destiny. Fate.” She shook her head. “I don’t believe in fate. I’d like to think that everyone can make their own destiny. Nothing is set in stone. It’s like having a blank check, or…a ticket, and you can go anywhere you choose. But, you have to choose for yourself. No one else can make the decision for you. So you have to consider all the consequences of your choice. Is it selfish, what you want to do? Will it hurt others? Or, will it help a lot of people, but hurt you? Consequence, and…sacrifice. It’s a lot to ask of a person, which is why most people don’t like having to make their own choices. They’d rather blame someone or something else when things go wrong.” She looked away for a moment, a sad expression on her face, and then shook her head again. “But that’s enough of that. Do you want me to read you something today?”

It was always like that with Rem. She’d tell us many things, important things, but it always seemed to make her sad. And when she got sad, I tended to get sad too, so she would purposely change the subject to something less emotionally distressing. Like reading stories. The library had a massive fiction section, divided up into several categories. Rem’s favorites were the children’s stories, and many of what she called “classics” as well. These, she told me, were considered exceptional examples of the genre, and were routinely taught in schools back on Earth as a necessary part of the curriculum. So Alice in Wonderland, The Pearl, The Secret Garden, and Little Women were part of my education as well as books like The Hobbit, The Black Stallion, and the Harry Potter series. And I read all the fairy tales I could get my hands on. Yet, it was a book by a woman named Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley that had the greatest impact on my young mind. Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus.

I’d known for a very long time that Knives and I were not “normal.” Steve had long since disabused us of that little notion, and indeed, abused us any chance he got in any way he thought he could get away with. The crew seemed to share his views of us, though they were more discreet about it, and even Rem sometimes seemed unnerved by the leaps and bounds of our physical and intellectual growth. So reading about a man-made creature that everyone called a monster, an unnatural freak, with Steve’s scathing invectives in my ear…it is easy to see how I would relate to the main character, who never had a proper name of any kind beyond “Frankenstein’s monster.” He had been created for no other purpose save that his creator wanted to see if it could be done. I had often wondered if that was why Knives and I had been created, if we had been the result of some mad whim. I was just glad that they had made two of us. If nothing else, we had each other.

After reading the book I had gone to my twin, needing a comfort that Rem couldn’t give me. After all, Rem was human and I was fast coming to the conclusion that I was…not. That not only was I not normal, I was not even the same species. Knives had been rather startled, but pleased that I’d come to him and not Rem. Looking back, I could see that even then, Knives had begun to change. It had taken him a much shorter time to figure out the differences between our human caretakers and ourselves, but whereas I was distraught by the differences, Knives saw them as a mark of stature. That we were better than the humans. He too had suffered from Steve’s accusations, but instead of trying to alleviate matters, he decided to make them worse. He too had read Frankenstein, but he condemned Frankenstein’s monster for his “weakness.”

“He was created to be strong; he should have used his strength to rid himself of his captors.”

“But he wasn’t like that! All he wanted was a friend, but they blamed that girl’s death on him, and the old man’s too! He was a monster in name only, before they hurt him so badly. He didn’t deserve all those things they said and did to him.”

“Then maybe he should have become the monster they said he was, embraced his nature before they forced it on him. Then he wouldn’t have been nearly as miserable. They would have feared him, feared to go against him.”

“That would only have made him more miserable. You’re wrong, Knives.”

“You know I’m right, Vash.”

It was an argument that would come back to haunt me many times. I did my best to prove him wrong, despite the fact that I now actually resembled Frankenstein’s monster in more ways than thought and circumstance - I even had the bolts. But the worst arguments I had were not with Knives. They were with myself. It was very hard indeed to keep believing that there was good in everyone when I kept seeing so much bad. Kept feeling all the pain around me on this sand-swept world. The struggle between ideal and reality was far harder than any fight I had with my brother, though both had lasted over 130 years. And though some would say that the two struggles are pretty much the same thing, I would have to disagree. Because Knives fights for his own ideal, and that ideal also differs vastly from reality. So, our fights are, in essence, about each other’s ideals, when the true fight is about how to reconcile ideal with reality. Reconciling with my brother, some would say, is just another ideal, and not something that could ever happen. But Rem’s words, the ones about balance and fate, I’ve found those to be pretty true, even a century or so later. Things even out. And we always have a choice.

“What the hell am I doing here?” Nick’s voice cut through the silence. * Good question. I’ve been asking myself that for decades. * I raised an eyebrow and looked around. While I’d been caught up in the past, we’d walked, in silence, right up to the steps of the hotel.

“Well, I think this is our hotel, unless you checked out surreptitiously.”

“Syrup-huh?” I bit back a smirk. I loved tossing big words into our conversations, especially when he was drunk. It was revenge, I suppose, for all the times he called me “Needle-noggin.”

“Surreptitiously,” I repeated. At his blank look, I tried a few more synonyms. “Covertly. Furtively. Oh, for crying out loud, you’re still staying here, right?” I threw him back an exasperated glance. Yeesh, this was thick even for him.

“Oh. Yeah. Still here.” He said distractedly. I shook my head. * That’s my Nick. *

Waitaminute. Rewind: MY Nick? I mean, I knew I was attracted to him, and that I might…but I had no idea that I’d started thinking of him in possessive terms. Then again, my brain has this nasty habit of thinking without me. As we walked in and took the stairs up to my room, I found myself turning back repeatedly to look at him, mulling the idea over in my mind. Nick…mine. Wasn’t the worst idea I’d ever had, really, but for him to be mine, that meant I had to…umm. I blushed. It meant a lot of things, but before any of that I’d need to take him away from the Gung-Ho Guns. And technically I wasn’t supposed to know he even belonged to the Gung-Ho Guns. Which meant that he would have to TELL me about the Gung-Ho Guns, and I don’t think he was drunk enough to do that. Yet.

I mulled over the ethics of getting Nick drunk enough to talk to me about anything remotely important, and then remembered that alcohol made Nick even more reticent than usual. It was unnerving, really. Most people in my experience babbled on and on about everything when they got drunk, but Nick just…shut up. That was all right, I guess, because I wanted…I don’t know why, but for some reason it mattered that he tell me of his own volition. But he never said a damn thing. Unless it was to yell at me. Any attempts at conversation usually ended with me getting yelled at or insulted in some form or other. * Maybe I should stop buying him so much alcohol. * Then again, if I didn’t, what the hell else was there to do with him?

When we got to my room, I unlocked the door, and moved aside to let him in. He went straight for the table, not saying a word. We went through almost two entire bottles of Wild Turkey in absolute silence. I matched him shot for shot, and that amounted to a whole helluva lot of shots. The silence was especially loud tonight, because I wasn’t going to risk asking him anything. Unlike Nick, when I get enough alcohol in me I can never be sure of just what’s going to come out of my mouth. Most of the time it’s pure surface babble, but…I didn’t want to take the chance.

Nick stared at me, his eyes obscured by the effects of the alcohol. For once, I couldn’t read his eyes, and that bothered me. I didn’t want him to look at me like that, I wanted…I stood up, pushed away from the table and the silence, and went to go sit down on the bed. I felt his eyes follow me, those unnerving eyes of his. I tried a couple of times to say something, but I couldn’t concentrate when he was staring at me like that. I dropped my gaze to the floor, and finally rediscovered my powers of speech. What came out however, made me wonder if I hadn’t permanently damaged something somewhere along the way.

“I care, you know.” * Vash, you fucking idiot, now you’ve gone and done it. * It was one thing to think that I might actually…love him. It was another thing entirely to admit it. *And what brilliant timing you’ve got. * Well, hopefully, it had been too ambiguous for him to figure out what I meant.

“Whaddya mean? Ya care too mush, if y’ashk me,” he retorted in a slurred voice, fumbling with a cigarette. Well shit. It had been too ambiguous for him to figure it out. And that, I decided suddenly, was a problem. Because I wanted him to figure it out. And even more, I wanted –

“I meant that I care about you.” I dropped my gaze to the floor again, wishing it would swallow me whole as I waited for Nick to explode.

“What, does that mean ya wanna be friends?” My head jerked up. * The hell? * I blinked, as my mind tried to process what he had just said.

“But, I thought we were friends.” If it was just occurring to him that we could be friends...It hurt, bad enough to make me want to give up entirely. But there was something strange in the way he was looking at me now, something that sent a flash of heat through my body. He smirked, a wicked little smirk that made things low in my body start to burn.

“Heh. Not that kind of friends. My kind of friends.”

“Your kind of friends?” I repeated dumbly, blinking some more. “You must have a strange definition of friends, then.” I flashed back to my previous thought, about our relationship going past anyone’s idea of friends. * It appears I was wrong. But what kind of ‘friends’ could he possibly…No. There was just no way… * Nick lurched to his feet, and stalked over to where I was sitting on the bed. Looming over me, he slurred out, “Ya wanna fin’ out?”

*Ooo-kay, maybe he was thinking about…that. * And I…wasn’t ready for it. Honestly, I don’t know if I’d ever be ready for it, but I knew with painful certainty that I was not ready for it now. Not like this. I leaned back on my hands, eyes wide, trying to back away from him without being obvious about it. This was not something I had been expecting. An outburst, yes. Him storming drunkenly out of my room, definitely. Him standing over me, looking at me like I was the next course and he was famished…NO. * Liar. * Well, okay, maybe I’d been halfway hoping he’d look at me like that, but that was some time in the distant future. Not now. Not when he was so drunk he could hardly speak, nevermind do…anything else he might have in mind. I shivered.

He moved his hand toward my face and I flinched back out of reflex, a little tendril of fear uncurling in my chest. Was he gonna hit me after all? Had he just been messing with me? But as I stared up at him apprehensively, all he did was gently sift his fingers through my hair, the hungry look in his eyes softening a touch. * Oh. Oh, that feels so… *

“Soft,” he said, a slight smile on his face. He ran his fingers through my hair again. “So soft.” All I could do was stare up at him in wide-eyed wonderment, mouth hanging slightly open. Never, he’d never looked at me that way before. No one had ever looked at me that way before, and no one had ever…Nick leaned in closer, bracing himself on the wall behind me. I could feel my pulse jump, lazy warmth spreading through me, and my eyes started to slide shut as I felt his breath on my face…which reeked of alcohol and cigarettes.

* He’s drunk out of his mind and has no fucking clue what he’s doing. Right now, he’d kiss Meryl if she were in your position. It could be anyone, and he wouldn’t care. * I closed my eyes tightly, squeezing them shut in almost-pain and leaning farther away from him.

“No,” I whispered, turning my face to the wall. As much as I wanted this…

“What?” Nick asked, sounding confused. I looked back up at him, a little angry now.

“Not like this,” I said, quiet but firm. I’d rather not have my first time be a drunken one-night stand, thanks much. But I’d be damned before I actually admitted that to him. It was bad enough I’d already told him how I felt.

“Not like what?” He asked, frown deepening. * Oh, for the love of… *

“Like THIS!” I yelled, gesturing wildly to the sides. I let all of the frustration of the past few days come boiling to the surface. “YOU’RE drunk!” I continued, bringing my hands back together to point at him accusingly, “You treat me like shit on a regular basis, and now you wanna KISS ME?” I glared at him indignantly, hands flung back down at my sides again. Damn but it felt good to get that out. * Repressed much? *

Nick stumbled backwards, catching himself on a chair. He blinked, bewilderment spreading across his face followed by something unreadable. He looked down at the floor, hiding his eyes from me.

“Yeah,” he said softly. “Yeah, I do. Crazy, huh?” He shook his head slightly. * Well, crap. * I sat there in shock, anger fading as fast as it had appeared. I drew in a deep breath. Boy, tonight was just full of surprises, wasn’t it? But…

“Why?” I asked, almost plaintively. One little word, with a thousand questions behind it. Why now? Why me, of all the possible people? What could possibly make him want me? Was it just…

“Because you’re beautiful.” My heart slammed up against the grate covering my chest, and I winced in pain, bringing my right hand up to grip at the thick fabric hiding my failures from the world.

* He thinks I’m beautiful? Me? But I’m… *

“I’m sorry. Goodnight.” With that, Nick turned around and headed for the door. * No, you can’t leave, not after telling me that. You can’t leave! I have to show you, show you you’re wrong, about me and about everything. *

“Nick,” I said softly, coat dropping to the floor as I stood up. Without realizing it, I’d pulled it off. Nick turned to look as I bared every wrong decision I’d ever made for him to see. His face blanched, and he immediately turned away. Through the pain ripping through me, I thought fiercely, * See? I’m not beautiful. You can’t even stand to look at me. * It hurt, God how it hurt. On the heels of the pain, the anger rose again, thick and fast, and it wasn’t until Nick spoke, voice low and rough, that I realized it wasn’t my anger I was feeling. Nick had managed to breach my outer shields, and I hadn’t felt a damn thing. * Oh, this is not good... *

“Where are they?” He snarled, still facing the door. “Where are the fucks that did that?” For the second time that night, I was shocked into silence. He whipped around and glared at me. So he wasn’t…? He was angry, that was unmistakable, but not at me. He was angry for me. For me. Once again, the question of why swam its way to the surface of my mind. So many questions, and no answers…I sighed. There was no way in hell I was telling him who. If I told him my own brother had shot off my arm Nick would probably go ballistic. My face hardened into its blank mask at the thought of Knives. * Yeah, that’d go over well. Guess what, Nick? The man that pays you is the same one who almost obliterated your entire species. And because I didn’t agree with him, he shot off my fucking arm. Then I woke up in the blasted ruins of July. Nothing quite like a brotherly spat with weapons of mass destruction. *

Nick slammed his foot on the floor hard enough to rattle the bottles on the table, bringing me back to the matter at hand, so to speak.

“TELL ME!” He screamed, rage vibrating in his voice and in my mind. I winced, trying to force the anger back.

“I don’t know.” It was a blatant lie, because I remembered everything that had ever happened to me. Well, almost everything, but the one event I could never remember wasn’t all that hard to reconstruct. So yes, it was a lie, but as sick as it made me to lie to Nick this way, it was better to tell him one lie than to tell him the truth. I’d found out the hard way that the truth doesn’t always set you free. “I don’t know,” I repeated, flexing the fingers on my left hand in an almost automatic gesture then clenching them into a fist. I kept my face carefully neutral, the fist the only outward sign of what I was feeling. * I’ve got to stop thinking about this; I’ve got to get it under control. * Nick’s anger was feeding mine, and that was a bad thing, because…

“You don’t know. You don’t know? What the fuck are you trying so damned hard to hide? I’ve let it slide before, but I’m asking you now, Vash, because I damn well want to know!” * Shit. * With that, I felt a little of my control over my temper just…slip.

“He wants to know,” I said in a dark caricature of his earlier tone. “He wants to know, he says. Well guess what, Nick? I’ve let some pretty damn big things slide too.” Fuck this. Why the hell should I have to keep up this farce? “I don’t have to tell you a damn thing, Nick, because you already FUCKING know!” With that, I brought my left hand, still clenched in a fist, down on the table. On the table, and right through it. Oops.

+Oh shit.+ Who…? I stared hard at Nick, trying vainly to reign in my temper again. There was a good chance that I hadn’t been meant to catch that little thought, that he had just slid past my shields again, but if he was trying to do something stupid like make a bridge between me and Knives he was toast. * Crap, just listen to yourself. * The anger was beginning to make me paranoid, and that was something I wanted to avoid at all costs.

+All thanks to Fucking Legato Fucking Bluesummers.+

Legato? I’d be the first to agree that he was such a fucker that it deserved to be in his name twice, but why Legato and not Knives? Was it possible that Nick didn’t know Knives after all?

“Fuck!” Nick slammed his head against the door, then began bashing it in time with his shouts, “Fuck, <bang>, fuck, <bang>, fu - ” A buzzing started in my ears and got louder with each bang, and then I felt it: his mind slamming up against mine.

“ – ck, <bang> fuck, <bang>, FUCK!” I reeled backwards as my shields gave the rest of the way - * This shouldn’t be happening, this can’t be happening! * - and an image superimposed itself over my vision.

A woman +Sister Fran+ standing in an archway, surrounded by a multitude of children +Home+.

“Now they’re all going to die.” I could hear him talking to me, but I was still blinded by the image being forced on me. “They’re all going to die.” Vision after vision whipped by, some with Sister Fran, some with the kids, all of them at Home. The word had a weight to it in my mind, an importance above and beyond the usual connotation. Nick has a Home. My only home hadn’t been so much a place as it had been a person. Rem. The very thought of her allowed me to pull back a bit from the onslaught. I had to do something. I’d had my home taken from me, been forced to watch helplessly as her ship exploded with my brother’s laughter in my ears, and…if I didn’t do something, Nick was going to lose his Home too. And it would be All. My. Fault.

What I was about to do was abhorrent to me, but necessary. I didn’t really even know how to do it, because I’d never done it before, but I had to try. I had to take his memory of this away, so that he wouldn’t know that I knew about him, and everything else. And what he didn’t know, he couldn’t be forced to tell. And that way, everyone stayed safe.

* Nick… * So he had become in my mind, and so he would stay.

+Who?+

* Shh, it’s alright now. I’ll take care of it. * Nick’s safety depended on his cover, which I’d effectively shot to hell. If word got back to Legato that I knew Nick was working for them...They’re all going to die…I couldn’t let that happen. * I promised I’d take care of him. Calm down, shh… * I’d promised Rem that I’d take care of Knives. I hadn’t been able to keep her safe, but I was damned if I’d stand by and watch Nick suffer. I was beginning to understand now why people were willing to kill to defend their loved ones. It was a fierce, protective feeling that kept rising up in my chest that I had to keep tamped down. It remained to be seen whether or not I’d go that far, whether I’d forsake the memory of one loved one for the life of…another. But it hadn’t come to that, not yet, and I was determined to keep it that way.

I wasn’t skilled enough to pick and choose what he’d remember, but seeing as how my scars seemed to be a trigger for the entire episode, I simply blanked that and everything after it. With any luck, he’d put it down to the alcohol. The loss of the memory left his anger with no fuel, and it vanished. * Forgive me…* I started to gently remove my mind from his, and opened my eyes in time to see Nick’s body sag against the door and start to topple forwards.

“Shit!” We’d been so close, mentally, that I’d forgotten how far away from me he really was. I dashed over and somehow managed to catch him before his head hit the floor. All he needed right now was a concussion, on top of everything else. * Poor Nick. * I looked down at him, and smoothed his hair away from his face. That protective feeling rose up again. * My Nick. * I smiled. I liked the sound of that.

Carefully, I got to my feet, and carried him over to the bed. I pulled back the sheets one-handed before gently setting him down. His clothes would be a wrinkled mess in the morning, but I figured that waking up in my bed in his underwear would not be a comforting thing for his muddled mind. I started to pull the covers back over him, then thought, * What the hell, * and climbed in beside him. There was no way I was going to sleep on the floor when the bed was big enough for two. *Barely. * Details, details. It’s not as if there was a chance in hell of getting found out. Nick, I knew from experience, would sleep until almost noon if given half the chance, and he was dead to the world right now. I turned on my side to face the door, setting my mental alarm for 7 a.m. Normally I was up at five, but it was about 20 minutes to three right now, and even I needed at least four hours of sleep. I was startled when Nick’s arm came around my waist and pulled me up against his chest. He mumbled something against my neck that sounded suspiciously like, “Hey, you’re really comfortable.” Well now. Perhaps he wasn’t as out of it as I thought. I craned my head back, but Nick’s breathing had already evened out again. Maybe he’d been dreaming of Millie? I frowned a bit and tried shifting away, only to have his arm wind tighter around me.

“No, Vash,” he muttered. “Don’ go.” Okay then. It looked like not only was he mine, but I was his as well. In his dreams, anyways. I smiled at the thought, and closed my eyes. * I’ll stay as long as you want me to. *