A/N: This was originally part of a different story, which I hope I can post later... I discarded this part because I decided that the other story needed to be set several episodes earlier in the timeline. Still, I hated to throw it away, so I tweaked it into a stand-alone vignette-type dealy. Yay for Vash-torture! (Kyr: *posing thoughtfully* Why do you always hurt the ones you love?) ME: *thumps Kyr* Stop waxing philosophical, you twit! (Kyr: Argh! *grumbles & rubs back of head*)

Enjoy.
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Reflection

I know I'm dead on the surface,
But I'm screaming underneath.
-- Coldplay

High noon, and all was still. The gunslinging hour was silent as the grave in the small town of Tonim. No one to fight today; nothing to lose, because everything was already lost. Already lost...

The noon sun baked down on an already dried trail of blood; a warm, dry breeze flaked the sand around it. In the end, nature itself would carry away the last trace of one man's passing.

A pair of aqua eyes drifted closed behind a pair of yellow-tinted, frameless sunglasses. He remembered the digging. The pain of every movement after the first two hours, the strain on recent half-healed wounds, the sweat rusting his left arm... the last was a constant, painful reminder of everything that had led him to this place, this end.

He remembered...

Carrying the body. Reciting what fragments of actual Biblical prayer he knew over the open grave. Meryl gave a proper, quiet elegy for the fallen, but Vash could find no spoken words for what he longed to say. Instead he stood, quietly, heart as bleeding and weary as his body, and shed a tear or two while someone he used to be screamed and raged and wept inside him; but he had forgotten how to let himself out... so he simply stood, looking sadly down at his friend's cold, upturned face, all the while trying to wake up.

Milly, who had been the first and the loudest to cry, had held the longest, most impenetrable silence afterwards. She said nothing at the small funeral. Watching her own silent tears fall onto the sandy earth spoke more powerfully of her pain than words could have.

He remembered...

Preparing to leave. Each twinging muscle in his back reminded him of the fresh grave behind the church. It had taken him nearly an hour just to clean the rust out of his stiff mechanical arm. He tried to think, while he worked: had it hurt this badly, when he lost the limb? When the abominable weapon his brother had created engulfed his other arm, tearing apart organic processes and twisting a part of his body into something almost-metallic and purely destructive, had that ever hurt as badly as he was hurting now? He couldn't tell. Part of him had gone numb, somewhere inside. The part of him that remembered how to be happy had died, or had at least withered away into something half-alive and possibly irretreivable.

I noticed you always smiled and seemed really friendly, but the way you smiled was so empty it hurt to watch you. You're hurting like crazy on the inside, yet you grin and bear it.

If he hadn't listened to me... If he hadn't chosen mercy over practicality in the end...

Vash opened his eyes and stepped away from the wall he'd been leaning against. His last words still rang in his ears.

Well, that's it. Now I need to spend a little time alone, okay?

No, I don't, he thought to himself. I hate being alone. I followed Knives aimlessly across the planet for sixteen years just so I wouldn't have to be alone, even though I was repelled by every moment of his company. Why did I lie to her? Meryl, I didn't mean it... I hope you can understand. Please, forgive me.

Slowly, he stepped away from the low building and walked out into the street. The same breeze that had carried away the last few traces of Nicholas D. Wolfwood's blood tickled Vash's narrow, drawn face, and made his scarlet coat flutter out behind him like a banner.

Red geraniums meant determination and courage, he reminded himself. Still, though... such a strong symbol, for such a delicate thing... how long could it hold out?

Vash shook his head and began his slow, steady walk towards the twin sunset.
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