The Visit
Author's Note: This is my first attempt at a fan fiction for Trigun. Please be gentle! If you don't like it then stop reading it and/or don't review and let the silence speak for itself.
Disclaimer: I don't even own the DVDs much less the actual characters and series! The italized words belong to a song which is sung by Chad Brock
Vash knew there was no putting it off any longer.
It had to be done to-day.
He had come to realize this a while ago but could never seem to make his way back to that small town. Every time Vash tried to escape his hectic life to go running back to the little no-where town, something else would rear it's nasty, and often armed, head and cause him to run in the other direction. In the end, though, he knew it was always his fault for not coming sooner.
What would he say to her? There was absolutely no excuse for avoiding this for so long. For avoiding her for so long. She was always waiting for him in the small town. She was always there for him whenever he came staggering back from one of his misadventures.
And what was he doing while she was waiting for him? Wondering around the planet in a hope of establishing an ever lasting era of 'love and peace'.
Vash smiled and waved as a little girl ran past, hugging her mother's leg and shyly waving back to him. The small town, as he had dubbed it, wasn't quite so small. Since Millie and the mining crew hit the water vein what seemed like so long ago, the town seemed to have boomed overnight. It was evident by the smell of fresh paint which hung thickly in the air that buildings were being built or renovated. The sounds of construction happening in the distance were all the evidence he needed to know that the town was still expanding. So many faces, so many things. Vash smiled.
Progress.
As he drew close to the house where she stayed, his stomach shriveled up into a sand snail. His booted feet stopped cold about a block from the small wooden house. How could he face her? Gulping, Vash decided to take another trip around the town. Not because he was scared, but because he was just curious about what type of places they offered here.
Maybe doughnuts?
Yes! She'd understand his need for doughnuts!
Vash sighed, he was being a coward but he was a coward who was going to make the block.
Sorry I'm so late,
But I've been out walking
When the second sun hung close to the horizon, Vash made his way back to her and walked through the gates. His eyes had taken on a determined glint, though fear still gripped his stomach painfully. She deserved the truth. It would hurt her, doubtlessly, but she would understand and appreciate it in the end.
Vash gulped again and let the fear and insecurity creep back into his eyes as he slowly began the walk to were she was patiently waiting.
"I'm going to die," he whined pathetically.
She didn't know he was coming because he was late getting back. Later than when he told her he'd be the last time they talked. Although she had grown too used to it over their many adventures, it didn't mean that she wouldn't worry and reprimand him (on the back of the head most likely) about being so thoughtless.
His hand gripped the two red roses he had plucked earlier from the bush she tediously kept in front of their home, hoping it would soften the blow he was about to deal her. Vash came to a complete stop, his breathing hitching in his throat for what felt like the thousandth time that day.
He wasn't sure why he felt the need to tell her about his new…friend. She was always on top of everything, she probably knew why he was late and what his 'friend's' name was and everything. It was one of her qualities he came to admire so much over the years.
But how? How do you tell someone that you love someone else after they have been waiting for you for so long?
Vash 'eeped' at the thought of what she might would do if given the proper chance and proper weapon. Then again knowing her and remembering some of his past experiences with igniting her temper, he knew very well that this petite woman was capable of turning even the most harmless object into a lethal weapon.
He whimpered but stayed true to the path to her. There was so much he wanted to say, but knowing her, there was only so much she'd be willing to hear.
With a deep sigh, Vash stopped in front of her. Closing his eyes he focused on trying to make his courage bloom and his guilt shrivel. When he opened his aqua colored eyes again, they lost the cowardly spark and took on a soft, loving glow.
Clearing his throat, he simply said, "Hi."
Trying to find a way to tell you
What I think you already know
Looking down at her face, as he always had to because of the dramatic height difference, Vash allowed a genuine smile to touch his features. She smiled back up at him and before another instant passed, he held up his hand.
"Let me talk." Vash requested politely with a soft smile. "Or maybe, let me explain before you get mad or upset." He took a deep breath, "I didn't mean to come home so late, but things just kept coming up." A sheepish smile took over his mouth. "You know how trouble seems to follow me everywhere. Well it followed me every which way that didn't led me back to you."
He started to pace. Vash normally didn't pace, but whenever he got nervous around her, only her, he would become restless. She understood, she didn't say anything to deter him from his self-made track. She understood him enough to patiently wait and smile for whenever the blond decided to share what was really going on in his mind.
"Ever have something you want to say, but you don't know how you want to say it?" He gave her a lopsided smile. Those were the words he used the first time he told her how he felt for her. "I know what I need to say, I know I need to say it but I just am having so much trouble pinning down the right words."
He tapped his chin, striking one of his 'hero' posses. She never bought it, even during one of their first meetings. She had acted as if he shot her through the heart and he was surprised, later, that she hadn't tried to shoot him on sight.
Noticing that she wasn't going to say anything or do anything, he heaved another sigh out. She learned the waiting game early on with him and he found it rather annoying. Just like it was now. A comforting annoyance.
His shoulders slumped as the wind tugged on his white shirt and blond hair. "I still love you." Vash whispered, covering his face with his long fingers from his real hand. "I always will love you and before you say it, I know you'll always love me." He got down on his knees in front of her and kept his aqua colored eyes on the ground. "I don't want to hurt you. I don't want to hurt anyone."
There was a moment of suspended silence. He didn't dare look her in the eyes, he didn't ever want to see anything else than love. Vash didn't want to see the pain he was going to bring her in those eyes, just love.
"I don't see you very often and since I'm not around much and you don't really follow me around anymore," Vash laughed nervously, putting a hand behind his head. He was rambling. "I think it's time I--we moved on." He closed his eyes, trying not to let the tears forming drip out. "I think --it's time to let us go."
I'd never want to hurt you 'cause, darling, I still love you
But things aren't like they used to be
It's time for letting go
"Yeah, it's because of someone new before you even ask." His voice was losing volume as his words trailed out. Guilt washed over him as the image of her and of his 'someone new' came to mind.
He didn't want to make her cry. He hated to make her cry. But there was no way Vash's conscience was going to let him go on any longer without coming clean. Vash knew this was going to be hard, it was hard when he told his 'someone new' about her. She'd been so patient and understanding though slightly annoyed that he had yet to break the news to his old, current, whatever love.
"D-don't cry," he sniffled, putting on a humorous sad face. He hiccupped, forced naturally, and struck a pose of pure pity. "I am a firm believer that no one who cries in my presence should ever cry alone!"
She waited, as always, for his sudden silliness to settle down so he could resume the conversation on a somewhat mature level. He cracked one watery eye open and peered at her calm face.
Naturally, she wasn't buying it. She never did. She wanted the whole story before she would give her verdict. He thought it over and came to the conclusion that, in punishment, she rarely gave him a warning or head start. Something that only the past years had changed. Smiling slightly, Vash still had clear memories of him squeaking a quick, "Let me explain" before she'd wallop him in the head.
"I--I guess you want to know something about her." Vash knew that's what she wanted explained. It was the precise reason he had come to see her again. "It wasn't like I went out searching for someone else. I promise!" He put his hand over his heart and gave her a big grin. "I was faithful! I promise, it just sorta happened."
He tapped a finger on his chin as if to think. "I guess it was about a month ago." Glancing down at the petite woman his grin morphed into the more sheepish version. "While I was buying donuts. And, yes, a month is really fast but it had been so long since you---"
Not a smart move. Not if he wished to live any longer.
"I didn't plan it. I wasn't looking. I still love you, you should know that." He let his shoulders slump forward again. "I keep coming back to you, don't I? And---you've---we've changed so much---and I guess she is just like you in so many ways. It felt as if I had the old you back. The one I fell in love with in the beginning."
I wasn't out there looking, but a month ago last Sunday
I met someone just like you in line at the grocery store
"She's a traveler, too. She doesn't chase me around like you use to. Er---" Vash's mind wheeled quickly trying to come up with some other way to term that without making her sound obsessed or something as equally undignified. "I-I mean that you would follow me around. Not chase!" Then he rethought it, and added on in a small, amused voice, "Unless you were trying to hit me because I was doing something stupid…"
"Her name doesn't really matter, does it?" He answered her unasked question. "She's a bit taller and has long red hair---I told you that she reminded me of you." Vash started to draw various pictures with his finger. The pain he felt at confessing wasn't suppose to feel this wrong.
"And I've told her all about you as well. She's the one who prompted me to go out here before anything else developed between us. Yes, I know it took you years to get me to admit the way I felt about you and a month isn't long." He sighed again, "But I'm not calling it love---yet. I'm not sure and knowing how this ended---how we ended up being like---like this."
The lump in his throat that had been developing the entire conversation started to choke him. Tears started to fall from his face. "I promised you forever and here I am breaking that promise."
"But you have to understand. You don't travel with me anymore and she has been. The more time we spend together the more time I want to spend with her. But---I still feel you, no matter where I go, though I know how much you love this little town." Vash looked over his shoulder towards the 'little' town. It wasn't quite so little anymore. But when she decided that this should be the place that they lived, this was the place they choose.
She choose. This town was all her. All her memories, all their life together before he became too restless and struck out again.
Vash shook his head.
"She always says that she runs a distant second to you, and maybe she's right, right now." Vash bit the inside of his mouth to keep from crying anymore than he already was. He didn't even have the spine to look at her anymore. "This is the first time, I swear, that I've looked at another girl since we've been together. I swear!"
Maybe the reassurances weren't so reassuring to her because they were doing absolutely nothing for him. Vash was getting a slight headache from having to analyze and think about every possible way he might have insulted her. Just to make sure he would get away from here with his life intact, unlike her heart, after this visit.
And we've been spending time together
Yeah, she knows all about you
"Sarah." Vash rushed out, knowing that he needed to give the full truth before he would be able to move on. "Her name is Sarah." Before she would ever be able to forgive him for breaking her heart this way.
The tears were steady now, coming out with every blink. He couldn't help it and knew he didn't really want to. Maybe this is what she needed to see. Actions speak louder than words, or so 'they' say. Here he was, broken and crying before her giving his deepest and most sorrowful apologies.
"There's so much that you can't give me anymore," he whispered, almost inaudibly. "So much that I miss about the old you. So much that has changed, that has made us this way." Vash gripped the roses in his hand, causing the thorns to bite into his glove and soft flesh underneath it.
"I promised you forever and you promised me the world and you broke your promise before I did mine." Okay, Vash reasoned in his tear drenched mind, that was just being petty and childish. It was just as if Millie and he were in an argument about who ate the last doughnut and Meryl had to come in and play 'mother' before they wrecked 'her' kitchen again.
She'd get mad but after a while, she'd come back from work with a batch of fresh doughnuts and he'd happily munch on them. Meryl would roll her eyes and chuckle, then kiss him on the cheek and head off to bed.
"I miss that," Vash acknowledged in a cheerless voice. "I miss having you there with me all the time. I miss being able to talk to you. I miss---you, I guess. But missing you won't make you change back into who you were."
She didn't say anything which gave proof that his accusations about the difference of the girl he fell in love with and the woman she was now were completely different. Completely different except for the fact that he still loved her no matter how many times she changed.
"She gives me that. She gives me companionship, something you stopped providing many years ago. Sarah gives me what you can't anymore because---because you've just changed so much." The blonde forced himself to stop the tears as best as he could. He had no right to cry! She should be the one who was balling her eyes out, threatening to knock sense into his broom head, calling him a jerk and an insensitive one at that.
"It hurts," he confirmed, as if those involved didn't already know that. "It hurts to say all this to you, but it's the truth."
The truth is she can give me
What you can't anymore
"Do you remember when we first started?" Vash's mind, or lack of courage to continue, drifted back over the memories. "I had just brought Knives back from our fight. You were stuck somewhere between disgust and relief. You two never did get along very well." Vash took in a deep breath remembering his dead brother.
"As you tended to me, and healed him, you put on a happy face for me." He gave his customary grin. "But you couldn't fool a fool. Wait, that's not right." Shrugging, he let it slid, but he still never glanced in her direction. "I knew you weren't happy with me or with him."
Closing his eyes, he let the memory play in his mind. "You looked so shocked when I told you that I decided to start finding my own words. I had lived under Rem's words so long and, although I'll never forget her, I knew that the words she used weren't my own. I had to find my own way of thinking and it was you who pointed out that I could---change the way Rem said something to make it my own."
Opening his eyes, Vash still focused his eyes solely on his hands. "It was about a year since I came back that Millie finally suggested that I should maybe say something to you. I was confused, or in denial, whatever you want to think. But Millie, being Millie, always knew better.
She was the one who suggested that I start my new words by letting people in. By saying something to them, with sincerity, that I never would have been able to say before. Then she just tipped her head to the side and told me point blank that 'fear' would be my new word if I didn't do as she suggested. Fear and loneliness, she had said. Vash shook his head, gently laughing at the memory and his reaction to it.
He had nearly climbed out the window when Millie even suggested the big "L" word. Vash had whined and protested that he didn't know what or who she was talking about. That's when the tall insurance girl said that Mr. Vash knew exactly what she was talking about. Because, the brunette had chirped, he always came back to her.
"From that day on, I never saw you in the same light. I guess you knew that because you'd catch me watching you when you were cooking or doing anything. I wanted to be sure what Millie said was true. I didn't want to have a one sided love, as it would have been between Rem and me." He paused, "Yes, I know! She was my surrogate mother to everyone, but I was very mature for my age!" Vash winced, knowing he was whining like a spoiled child again.
"I never thought it would end up like this." The seriousness of the situation settled back on his shoulders as the memories were pushed down again. It would only hurt her more to stroll down memory lane.
Lookin' back when we first started
I never thought I'd see this day…
"It's been so long since I have been here to talk to you in this way." He grinned, "It's kind of nice!" Chancing a glance, he flickered his eyes towards her but quickly shifted his eyes downward again.
"I guess I still can talk to you." Vash gave her a soft, genuine smile. "Even though we've both changed so much in the years."
A hot and dry wind brushed over the land, giving a silent promise of a sand storm within the week. Vash shielded the flowers from any damage the gripping wind might cause by cupping his hand around the tender blooms. The last thing he needed was to feel even guiltier about not being able to present her beautiful roses at the end of this visit. It would be breaking their tradition.
Whenever Vash had to throw himself on the mercy of her 'court', he'd always brought her flowers and she, for some unknown reason, would always forgive him. Not because of the flowers, she had told him once, because he just looked so pathetic that she felt she had to have mercy on his poor soul. And, she added later, because he'd make the big puppy eyes which she could never resist.
Mr. Vash the Stampede wasn't looking for forgiveness now. He was searching and hoping for her understanding. Like any female, she wouldn't bow down gracefully and exit his life. No, she was going to give him the silent treatment.
At this, the outlaw decided to continue with his explanation. "I know it hurt you because it hurt me." Vash's voice dropped once again to the soft, apologetic tone he had used earlier. "And I hurt you, and it hurts me more to know that. But I think this was necessary."
Closing his eyes for only a moment, he recalled the moments they had shared. The first kiss, the first fight, the first make-up, everything with her was a first to him. Being in love and having it returned was something he wasn't able to claim before in his 130 years before her.
"It was nice to be able to talk to you. I know it wouldn't have been right, until I talked to you, to even think about doing anything with Sarah." His aqua eyes became wet again. "Maybe there won't be anything there in a few months, maybe there will be. Just don't hate me. Please, don't hate me. I couldn't stand for you to be anywhere and thinking poorly of me."
"I just wish you'd say something now," He choked out, his eyes screwing shut again. "Just like you used to, to make me feel better."
I feel so much better knowing we could have this moment
But it looks like it may rain soon and it's getting kind of late
For what felt like hours, Vash stayed in his seated position in front of her. Begging the unknown being in control of all for her to say something, anything to him. He'd settle for her angry or sweet words. A slap or a gentle caress-- something that proved she was still with him.
Clenching his teeth in frustration and accusing the world briefly for causing all this to happen, Vash felt new tears escape from underneath his eyelashes. It wasn't anyone's fault that this had happened to them. The world couldn't be blamed. Though he tried to blame it and curse it, he still found his heart thankful for being able to know her the way she once was.
The blond man recognized that, even though the term was clichéd, she had made him a better man. She had been the reason Vash experienced new emotions he never knew existed. Though, he admitted quietly to himself, she was also the reason for bringing back emotions he had never wished to feel again.
Vash heard his name being called. Turning he saw "Old" Joe waving his hand as if to call him back to the gates. Raising his hand, Vash smiled and nodded before turning back to where she sat silently. At least she wasn't crying. He hated to make women cry, especially Meryl.
"I have to go now," Vash explained sullenly. Trying to rally her spirits, the blond gunman smiled genuinely down at her, "I promise I won't be late next time, and I'll bring her with me so you two can meet." Giving her the two red roses he brought her, Vash then turned to go with a heavy, thought peaceful heart.
"I will be on time, next time, Meryl. I promise. And don't worry, even if I do bring---her, I still won't forget to bring you your roses. I really have to go now. Joe wants to close the gates, you know, so you and the others aren't disturbed."
Leaning down, he brushed the sand and debris from her name on the chiseled piece of stone. He stood up, and turned to leave again. "See ya, Insurance Girl." Vash walked away in his typical carefree manner but the closer he came to the gate, the more the mask was slipping. Slumped shouldered, he passed through the gate where Old Joe waited for him. As he was locking up rambled on about the grass growing near the town. Vash's aqua eyes stayed directly on the small hunk of rock that had her name forever marked into it.
The gates to the cemetery slammed shut, echoing in the blond man's ears like gun fire. The tall gunman screwed his eyes, trying to not let anymore tears fall.
I'll always bring your roses each time I come to visit
The caretaker's waving, he wants to close the gates
As the traveler left the newly forming metropolis, only glancing back once. The peaceful hill where she slept stood off from the town. It was considered the "old" cemetery since no one had been buried there for over a hundred years.
It was that long ago that he buried all he loved in the ground and had to find another new word. It wasn't the first time Vash had to say good-bye, in fact, he could say it in several different languages. But he buried his heart when she was lowered into the earth.
Millie cried by his side the entire time and for days afterwards. It was no wonder that she chose to leave a month after Meryl's death. The big insurance girl thought her presence would be needed more at Wolfwood's orphanage. Vash stayed around the town for years on end, helping to form the small place into a stable and growing city.
Every time he'd go to their small, empty house, he'd see her in the hill. Sometimes, after a dust storm, he'd swear he would see her silhouette standing by the tree with a little boy. In the end, the dreams only hurt him, only brought him more and more pain because everyday he'd have to wake up and realize he was alone.
He never wanted to forget her, and knew he never would, but Vash came to realize that he needed to live. If not for love and peace, than for her. She'd have hated to see him wasting away in the little town when there was a world who needed his unique type of help.
"I love you, Vash." Those words would always echo in his heart and in his memories. But without them in his ears, to live without them for so long and longing to hear them from her again---Vash had to accept that it was never going to happen again. She was waiting for him, and he'd be with her forever, just as he promised.
And the baby she had died giving birth to, who soon followed his mother, was her promised fulfilled to him. She gave him the world when she gave him a family, no matter how briefly, he'd always have the memories.
If it were up to him, he'd still be back in the little house, coming home to her every night after doing one of his odd jobs. He'd have his son to play with, his wife to love and all around have good friends and good times to share. But as the chilled evening wind tugged at his spiky hair, he knew that it was all a dream to him. One slight moment in time only he would ever remember as the long years drag on.
Vash's heart knew he would never have written their story this way.
But he still pulled his yellow shades over his eyes and walked away.
…If only I could write the pages
Our story wouldn't end this way