Truest Kind
Kiri

"Vash-san."

The blond shadow looked up from the chair by the bed, light from two of the moons filtering in through the windows, barely outlining his figure. "Yes?" That voice, the one he had used to speak of his brother with the priest, that gentle, pained, true voice was the one he was using to speak to her now.

It startled her, but she kept her calm. "You're not in danger anymore now, are you?"

Aqua turned to her in the dark, bearing it's own sort of light. "No." A pause, him considering. "I'm not."

She took a step closer, a step further into the room, into the dark. She was feeling braver, but there was a block in her throat that would not let her speak what she wanted. "How is he?"

His eyes turned away, back toward his sleeping twin. "He'll be fine eventually." Soft darkness. "He'll need some care for a while. He won't be able to move very well until those bones heal."

"I see." Moon-veiled starlight. She took a deep breath. She had to tell him now. There was no other time. "Vash-san… you can… you can stay here with him. If you'd like."

Wrong confession! She had already offered him that. She bit her lip.

"I don't want to be a burden to you two anymore." Definitive words. Thick. Regret.

She forced a smile to her lips and tried to speak, but he cut her off.

"You've both worked so hard for me. But your job is over now, isn't it." It was not a question.

"It's not-"

"I'm sure that I would be fine with him." There was something tense in his mannerism.

Cold. Silence. A desert of silence.

"Maybe you should go back to December."

Her throat had closed. Tears threatened her eyes.

"Vash-san."

There was no response, but she knew he was listening.

"You've never said my name."

There was another barren ache of silent emptiness. She stood, her small hands balled into fists at her thighs, wetness on her cheeks. She was ashamed but desperate.

"I'm sorry." And that was all.

She was aware of everything in that instant: the way he bent over his brother, so gently, so carefully; the way there was a bright patch from the window on the floor by the bed; the way her fingernails were digging into her palm. The words tasted hard on her lips. "Vash-san, I love you."

She had said it. Her words hung between them in the night, as tangible as the moonlight, the starlight, her feelings.

There was no way he could escape it now. No jokes or gunshots or brothers killing people. There was only him and her and his unconscious twin. And the cold and the dark and the desert.

Something akin to sorrow and longing thrummed in his tone. "All right. We'll stay."