One: Plans and Preparations

The plan was a simple one, although it was the compromise to a lengthy and heated argument. Van wanted a quick exchange of vows in front of a justice of the peace. Wendy wanted a church wedding with all of her friends. They agreed to compromise on a quick destination wedding, with just a few close friends in attendance. They'd have a simple reception in a restaurant. And then they would have a week to themselves in an ocean-front cottage. (Van would have preferred an isolated cabin in the mountains, but he supposed it didn't really mattered where they went. He didn't expect to spend much time looking at the scenery.)

It was all supposed to be easy, about as painless as a wedding could be. But Wendy kept adding complications. At first the complications were merely minor additions to the plan that barely concerned Van at all, but then she decided that she needed Yukiko Lundgren's assistance in picking out a dress. Never mind that she had her friend Karen right there in town to help her with planning, along with assorted coworkers who all apparently loved to do nothing more than gossip about weddings; no, she needed Yukiko, because "she's one of my oldest friends!" Why the longevity of the friendship should have mattered so much remained a mystery to Van, but there it was: Wendy insisted that she and Yukiko had to meet to discuss the wedding, and it had to be soon. The wedding was to be in late autumn and, as Wendy kept pointing out, the summer was practically over.

Her first idea was to travel to the town of Gloria to visit the Lundgrens. That would have been reasonable and relatively painless. She could have taken a bus, gone for a few days, and come back without disrupting their lives too much. Van had wholeheartedly supported that plan. But somehow, instead—and Van never understood how this happened—this evolved into a plan by which the Lundgrens would come and spend a four day weekend in Evergreen, bringing their baby and their Cocker spaniel. "I hate dogs," Van grumbled, when he heard about this addition.

"They'll probably keep it in a crate most of the time," Wendy said, using the mild, cheerful voice that she brought out when she thought Van needed soothing. If anyone else had spoken to him that way, he would have thought it was patronizing. Since it was Wendy speaking to him, Van tipped his head up enough to meet her eyes briefly, acknowledging what she had said without having to pause as he shoveled food in his mouth.

Wendy was sitting in her favorite armchair, reading the letter from Yukiko for what was probably the tenth time. A cup of coffee sat cooling on the table next to the chair, along with an empty dessert plate. Van had given a pass to the coffee, but he was on his second piece of pie, and in the back of his mind he was contemplating a third. This was Wendy's strawberry-apple pie, and it was pretty damn good.

"I don't like babies, either," Van muttered. "Are they going to leave little what's-his-name in a crate, too?"

"Van, you're terrible!" Wendy exclaimed.

"I don't mean a dog crate," he qualified, "just one of those pen things people put babies in."

"You don't really hate babies, do you?" He looked up, startled not so much by the words she had spoken as by the tone in which she said them. It seemed that he had misunderstood Wendy's objection.

"It's not like I know much about them," he said cautiously. She didn't look any happier. "Does it matter?"

"Of course it matters! Don't you want to have children?" Her voice had gone from irritated to anxious. This must be important to her. Van took a long swig of milk to get the stickiness out of his mouth, then set the glass aside.

"To tell the truth, I never really thought much about it." What was there to think about? Either you had children, or you didn't. Some people had children they didn't want. Some people wanted children they didn't have. It had never really seemed to have much to do with Van. But clearly, Wendy expected him to have an opinion on this subject. "I guess if you want kids, we can have some. Just promise me you won't name any of them after that idiot brother of yours."

"Van!"

"What?" Wasn't that enough for her? He thought that he was being pretty gracious about the subject.

"What do you really think?" He sighed and hung his head. He could already tell that this was going to be a long conversation. He was right.

Unfortunately, as time was to prove, it was just the first of many such painful conversations. Wendy seemed to have an entire list of things she thought that she and Van needed to talk about before the wedding, and she wasn't willing to accept "Dunno," "Haven't thought about it," or "Whatever you want" as answers to her questions.

It was, therefore, something of a relief when the Lundgrens showed up. With guests to entertain, Wendy didn't have the time to keep springing unexpected personal questions on Van. She was able to chatter with Yukiko about such random subjects as how to recognize which were the best dishtowels, how to expand the customer base for a growing restaurant, or what trends in small-town politics should be taken as warning signs of trouble down the road. And, of course, they spent an inordinate amount of time discussing the wedding.

Van slipped out of the living room the first time the conversation took a turn towards wedding dress design. To his dismay, Joshua following him out to the front porch. "It's great to see you again, Van!"

"You already said that, kid," Van pointed out. He sank down on the porch steps; he was not surprised when Joshua joined him. Time to play nice, he decided. "How've you been?"

"Oh, just great! My armor repair business has been going great, and I've started branching off into customization and upgrading. You'd be surprised how much business you can attract even in a little town in Gloria."

"You'd do better working in a larger city, wouldn't you? Like River City, or Zonnet Junction?"

"It's not a bad living," Joshua said with a shrug, "and Gloria is Yukiko's home. Wherever she is, I'm home."

"Yeah, I get that," Van said. He had no home town; no roots; no place with any but painful memories. As a far as he was concerned, Wendy was his home. His only goal was to spend the rest of his life with her, wherever she might be. And that reminded him of something he'd been wondering about. "Hey, kid . . ."

"Yeah?"

"You've been learning more about the Original Seven, haven't you?" He had a vague memory of Wendy telling him something like that.

"Oh, yeah. We found Saudade's wreckage back when we were searching the ocean for Volcain, you know. It was too damaged for us to repair, though. Maybe we just didn't know enough, but I'm not sure that anyone would have been able to repair it. Anyway, Bucci and I studied that thing for years trying to figure out how it worked. The Originals really are amazing, you know. They aren't like other armor at all."

"Yeah, yeah," Van said quickly, hoping to prevent any unnecessary gushing. He knew that his armor was special. To be honest, right now he wished that it wasn't quite so amazing. "Did you learn anything about how the Originals' healing capacity works?"

"Well, you would know more than I do about that," Joshua said frankly. "You've used the healing factor a lot, haven't you?"

"All I have to do to be healed is ride in the armor," he said. "It works even if I don't want it to work. That's what I wanted to talk to you about."

"But why wouldn't you want to be healed?" Joshua asked, puzzled. "That's part of what makes you and Dann the strongest fighters on the planet. With that healing factor, you're practically immortal!"

"That's the problem," Van said. Joshua frowned. He looked over at Van, his face wrinkled in confusion.

"I don't get it. How is living forever a problem?"

"Would you want to outlive your wife?" Van asked bluntly. "Would you want to watch her grow old and frail while you stayed young and healthy?" The confusion fled Joshua's face, to be replaced by sympathy.

"No, of course I wouldn't want that," Joshua said. "I want to grow old with Yukiko." He stared at the ground for a minute. "I never thought about what that would mean for you and Wendy, Van. Gosh, that's awful."

Van didn't want Joshua's sympathy. He wanted his help. It killed him to have to ask for a favor, but there was no way around it. "Right. So, I've been wondering . . ." He didn't get very far in his request before he was interrupted. Something tumbled down the porch stairs and fell with a thump on the sidewalk below the porch. The thump was followed by an unholy wailing.

"Ray!" Joshua cried. He jumped to his feet to scoop up the baby. "Are you all right?" Judging from the screams the thing emitted, the answer would appear to be "no." Van began edging away slowly.

Wendy and Yukiko had moved from the living room to the kitchen, where they could spread catalogs and magazines out on the table, the better to compare wedding dress patterns. Wendy had already picked out a potential dress at a local dressmaker's shop, but she wanted a second opinion before she put down a deposit, and Yukiko was quite happy to oblige.

They both looked up at the sound of a crying child. "Do you think he's hurt?" Wendy asked, slightly amazed at the volume that so small a child could produce.

"It doesn't sound too serious," Yukiko said. She had put down the magazine in her hand to listen. "I think Joshua will manage," she concluded. "He's very good with the baby." Wendy couldn't help sighing a little at that. Yukiko didn't miss the sound. "Is something wrong?" her friend asked.

"Not really. It's just that Van doesn't like children." She and Van had put that topic of discussion to rest after that initial conversation a couple of weeks ago, but his reaction still bothered her. True, he had said that she could have as many children as she wanted—but she didn't want him to simply tolerate his own family. She wanted him to want a family as much as she did.

"Lots of people who don't like children still end up loving their own children," Yukiko said. "And even if he doesn't think he wants children now, there's still plenty of time. In five years or ten years, Van might think about things differently."

"I know, but . . ." Wendy paused and looked around the room. On the far wall, there was a line of family portraits. Some of them were charred around the edges, showing that they had been rescued from the fire set by the Wild Bunch years ago. "I've been without a family so long," she whispered at last. "I can barely remember my parents, you know. And Michael's been gone for more than six years now. I'd like to have a family again."

"Oh, Wendy." Yukiko reached out and covered Wendy's hand with one of her own. "You have a family. Joshua and I think of you as a sister. And you have Van now, too. You don't need to have children to be a family."

This sounded like wisdom, but Wendy couldn't hep thinking that it was easy enough for Yukiko to say that when she had a husband who clearly adored his young son. "What is it like, being a mother?" she asked. Then, before Yukiko could answer, Wendy changed the question to one that was of more immediate concern to her: "What is it like to be a wife?"

This was the real reason she had wanted to see Yukiko before the wedding. Fun as it was to look over dress patterns, that wouldn't have been reason enough to send for the Lundgrens: after all, Wendy did have friends in Evergreen who loved to do nothing more than talk about weddings. What she didn't have in Evergreen, though, was a close friend who was also a married woman. There were hundreds of things Wendy wanted to know about married life, and some of her questions were ones she would not have felt comfortable asking anyone else. Yukiko answered her questions—even the most embarrassing ones—patiently, without making Wendy feel naive or intrusive for asking. Somehow, too, all of their conversations left Wendy feeling increasingly confident about the new life she and Van would be starting.

There wasn't as much time as Wendy would have liked to have had with her friends. Joshua and Yukiko could only stay for a few days, since they both had work to do in Gloria. To Wendy, at least, it seemed that they had hardly finished saying their hellos before they had to say their goodbyes.

"We'll see you in Harbor Parade in November!" Yukiko said cheerfully on the morning of their departure. "Write to me if anything about the plan changes!"

"What is there to change?" Van grumbled. "It's simple. We go there, we get married, we get out of town."

Joshua laughed. "Don't expect it to be that easy! Weddings are complicated," he said. "But it'll all be fun!"

"Fun?" Van repeated bitterly, once the door closed shut behind the Lundgrens. "The last wedding I was at ended in murder, and he thinks this will be fun?"

"It won't be like that," Wendy promised. She leaned against him, resting her on head on his chest. "The Claw is dead, and there isn't any reason for anyone to want to kill either of us."

"That's what I thought the last time," Van growled. He wrapped his arms around her, hugging her tightly. "I'm not going to be happy until this is all over, and you're safe in my arms."

"I am safe," Wendy murmured. For that matter, she was technically in his arms, too. She didn't point that out, because she was pretty sure that that wasn't what he really meant. "I'll be perfectly fine. And even if some kind of catastrophe did occur, you'd be able to protect me! You're stronger now than you were when . . . when you lost Elena. You have Dann now. Together, you're practically indestructible!" He had been stroking her hair with one hand, but he paused at that sentence.

"That's true . . ." he said slowly, "but . . ."

"But what?" Instead of answering her question, he changed the subject.

"I bet it's not too late for us to elope."

"I thought we were eloping!"

"It's not eloping if you send out invitations." She decided that he had a point there. Even a five minute wedding didn't really count as an elopement if it was planned ahead of time, she supposed. "We could make this even simpler," he suggested. "We could walk over to the courthouse right now, and be married in half an hour."

"Van, we're not doing that! We've been through this already, remember?" They'd had a similar conversation weeks ago, and Wendy had thought that they had resolved the disagreement successfully. She had been working so hard to plan a wedding in such a short time. What was he thinking, trying to change things now? "It's a little late in the game to be changing plans. I've already sent in some of the deposits, you know. I paid for the dress yesterday, and the seamstress may have started making alterations."

"We wouldn't have to cancel the formal wedding," he told her. "Not if you still wanted to go through with it. It would just be a kind of delayed celebration, right?"

"So you're suggesting that we just lie to our friends, and pretend we're not married when we really are?" Wendy was so annoyed that she stepped out of his embrace, pushing his hand away when he tried to reach out for her. She realized almost immediately that that had been a mistake: his eyes narrowed and the corner of his mouth drooped down in one of his lopsided frowns. She had unintentionally antagonized him.

"No one said anything about lying. You could tell everyone that we got married ahead of time. What does it matter?"

"It matters to me," Wendy retorted. "I can't believe that it doesn't matter to you too. You're the one who told me that the day you get married should be the happiest day of your life. Don't you even believe that?"

"Of course I do!" he snapped back. Kameo, who had been snoozing in the corner, woke up and looked over at them, a worried expression on his face. "Getting married is a blessing. But it's getting married that's important, not how you get married. We'd be just as married either way. That's all that matters to me." Wendy sighed. It was hard to argue with that. She decided to try changing tactics.

"I thought we agreed that this was what we were going to do," she said simply. "This is what we decided together." He sighed theatrically, and pulled his hat down to hide his eyes. There was a long and awkward silence then, which Wendy was determined not to break. Let him sulk if he wanted to.

"I know we agreed to wait until November," Van said at last, "but aren't you worried that something will go wrong?"

"No," Wendy said with a confidence that she didn't have to fake. She could see nothing to worry about. "It really is a simple plan. Even if there are some minor mishaps, how could anything go seriously wrong?"

"I guess you're right," he said doubtfully. Then he looked up from under his hat. "Even I couldn't be unlucky enough to have two fatal weddings!" he said, smiling a rather grim smile.

"Of course not," Wendy agreed, infusing as much encouragement into her voice as she could. "Everything will be fine. You'll see!"

Author's note: I plan to update this story about once a week. Don't expect a story as long as "Sweet!"—this one will be considerably shorter. Do expect more drama later on!

Of course, I don't own the characters, setting, or plot of Gun X Sword, but you already knew that, didn't you?