"Shhh.  You'll wake up the girls.  A belt.  You know, like some people hit kids with?"  Nick swung around to face him, suddenly looking cold in the night breeze.  He mimed slashing with something.

                "Who-" Vash had barely gotten the beginning of the question out before Nick cut him off.

                "It doesn't matter.  He's dead now.  He can never hurt anyone again.  Never."

                Vash instantly decided that he didn't want to ask how the man had died.  There was something truly disturbing in Nick's voice as he said the words, an eerie sing-song quality, as if it was a phrase he'd repeated to himself countless times.  "How old were you?" he asked instead.

                "When?"

                "When he died."

                "Seven, maybe eight."  Nick shrugged, then rolled his neck back and forth.  "Seven, I think.  Thanks, Tongari.  It actually doesn't hurt anymore."

                Seven.  Suddenly, a number of little oddities about Nick became much clearer.  Some people killed spiders to save butterflies, and some butterflies became spiders to save themselves.

                "Aren't you tired yet?" Nick asked him.  The phrase 'Can we please not talk about this?' was clearly audible beneath his words.  "It's cold, and it's late, and we've got to move on tomorrow."  He reached for his discarded white shirt, shrugging back into it and buttoning it closed.  The trousers followed, covering the bandage on his thigh, until all traces of scars and injury were concealed.  Black, like red, was a good color for hiding bloodstains.

                Vash eyed the leather straps and buckles that served as his own shirt, and decided to leave them off for a bit longer.  Getting back into the thing was just too much work at the moment.  He shifted his eyes back to the fire, feeling the solid presence of Nick at his right side.  Red, gold, and orange danced against the velvet blackness of the night, holding the dessert cold at bay.  It was like leaves carved out of flame.  A little imagination could turn the column of sparks dancing up through the smoke into flower petals, floating on the wind.  It could also turn the red flickering into blood, and the golden embers into Legato's eyes.  Too much imagination was not always a good thing.

                "Those poems you were saying earlier," Vash ventured, pulling his eyes away from the hypnotic flame shapes and focusing instead on the fourth moon, silvery and clean in the distance.  A smooth, white marble, unblemished by craters or holes.  "What are they?  Do you know any more?  Something that's not as sad, without the smiting part?"  'Come on, Nick,' he urged the other man silently.  'Distract me.  Give me something other than my failures to think about.  Give yourself something to think about other than whoever put those marks on your back.'

                "Poems?"  Nick had retrieved the bottle of whiskey and was now leaning against a rock next to Vash, head tipped back and eyes staring upward, a repetition of his posture earlier in the evening.  "Those were psalms.  They're from the Bible.  Most of them are about smiting, or forgiveness, or celebration."  He paused, breathing in a lung full of smoke.  "They're from old Earth, the place the colony ships came from.  There's all sorts of funny things in them, like cedars, and oceans, and rams, and places that don't exist anymore."  His voice had gone distant, exhaustion, alcohol, and pain finally catching up to him.  "I never learned the colonization charter," he half-explained.  "I got taught by mean nuns who made me memorize scripture."  He broke off, and yawned, eyes closing for a second.  "I didn't realize I remembered so many."

                "They're really pretty," Vash offered, leaning back to share the rock.  He scooped his coat up with one hand and spread the heavy cloth over the pair of them, insulation from the dessert night, and slid the bottle from Nick's hand.  It wasn't very good whiskey, but it was better than nothing, and after a while, you didn't notice the taste anymore.  "Kind of sad and violent, but beautiful at the same time."  Sort of like Nick, really.  Except that Nick wasn't really beautiful.  Certain things about him were; the look on his face when he spoke to kids, the delicateness of his hands when he reloaded and oiled the weapons in his considerable arsenal, the dark, smokey grey-blue of his eyes…  But there was still that nose, and the cigarettes, and the fact that he never seemed to remember to shave on a regular basis.  And the secrets, whatever they were.  Vash had a feeling that some of those secrets were very, very ugly indeed.  Nick would reveal where the scars on his back came from, but he wouldn't explain where he'd been during the past two years.  Deep down, Vash suspected that he probably didn't really want to know.  He might not like the answer.

                Nick sighed, and sent his cigarette spiraling out into the night.  He slung one arm around Vash's shoulders and leaned his head back against the stone.  His fingers were resting against the metal that marked the beginning of Vash's fake arm.  He didn't seem to mind.

                "Here's one for you.  A happy one.  'The Lord is my shepherd.  I shall not want.  He makes me to lie down in green pastures.  He leads me beside cool waters and restores my soul.  Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil…"

                Vash closed his eyes and listened.  He fell asleep before Nick was finished.

^_~

                He awoke sometime later to the sound of voices.  Voices, close by, practically on top of him.  His body stiffened for a second, getting ready to jump up, to dodge, to run, before he recognized the source of the sounds.  Only the insurance girls.  Not a threat.  He kept his eyes closed and tried to regain his lost slumber.

                He was warm, his head against something firm but soft enough to be comfortable, and he could feel the heat of sunlight red against his closed eyelids.  He kept still, sensing that, though he was comfortable enough for now, movement would reawaken the pain in stiff muscles and bruised ribs.

                "Wake them up, Millie.  It's time to go."

                "But just look at them, Sempai.  They're so cute when they're asleep."

                "Yes, because for once, their mouths are shut.  Stop drooling over that priest and wake them up."

                Vash found himself wishing sleepily that Meryl would be quiet.  He was just starting drift off again, and her snarls were interfering.  Also, though he wasn't really paying attention to her words, he had a vague feeling that he'd just been insulted somehow.  Really, she just wasn't a morning person.

                Millie, however, was very much a morning person, and her voice was bright and cheery as she continued to contribute to the sleep-preventing noise.

                "Come on, Sempai.  You can't say that's not cute."

                "Fine.  Mr. Wolfwood's snoring is absolutely adorable.  You can marry him someday and listen to it all night long.  For now, just wake them up.  I'm going to pack."  Footsteps began striding away, then paused.  "What's your first aid kit doing out?"

                "You just don't want to admit that you think Mr. Vash is good looking."

                "I do not!" Meryl howled.  Okay, now Vash knew he was being insulted.  She could be as loud as she wanted.  He wasn't going to wake up.  Nope, not waking up.  He hadn't been this comfortable in weeks.  "Nothing about that man is in any way shape or form attractive!"