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“I owe you an apology,” Vash says.
Meryl doesn’t say anything. It just sighs, and leans its weight further against his side, like it’s trying to keep him where he is, beside it on the worn carpet of its apartment, leaning against the front of the couch.
By some small mercy, Meryl hadn’t asked why he wanted to sit on the floor. It had just settled down against him, fitted warmly and firmly to his side.
Vash could pick it up with one hand, but he understands the point of the gesture.
He deserves the pointed reminder, really — he does keep running out on it. But that’s not what he needs to apologize for. It knew that about him long before they were past the point of no return.
“I should have told you he was dead,” Vash goes on, before he loses his nerve.
Meryl swears under its breath, which is also deserved, sitting up just enough to grab the bottle they’re sharing from the floor between their sprawled legs. “You should be saying that to Milly. She’s the one that—”
It trails off, bringing the bottle to its lips.
Vash lets the silence linger, weighing heavier and heavier on the air until it breaks.
“I never even had a chance to—” Meryl starts. It huffs out an exhale, starts to lift the bottle again, then seems to think better of it, settling it against Vash’s knee. The concave of the bottom of the bottle fits perfectly over his kneecap.
Vash very carefully doesn’t think about the last time he shared a drink with someone — the reason he’d asked Meryl to just bring the bottle, no glasses.
(He’s just grateful the liquor it kept in the house wasn’t Bride. He couldn’t have explained — would have drunk it anyway, and probably been sick afterwards, and still wouldn’t have told. Meryl would’ve just assumed he couldn’t hold his liquor, none the wiser.
But it is wiser now — one of the many ways it’s changed. Maybe it would have asked.)
Meryl scrubs a hand through its hair — shorter than it was before… everything, a fluffy sort of thing, grown out from the usual close shave it’s started wearing. There are a few grey hairs right at the front.
The first time Vash saw it, he’d made a joke about how they matched, now, and even now he isn’t sure whether the way it had grabbed him around the neck in response was a joke or a threat.
“He was just so… nice,” Meryl goes on. It grabs Vash by the wrist — he hadn’t even noticed his fingers were trembling — and folds both its hands around his. He isn’t sure which one of them it’s trying to reassure. “Even when he was trying not to be. Like it was bleeding out of him.”
Fuck. Vash’s throat closes up. He curls his fingers weakly. “Yeah.”
Meryl leans harder into his shoulder. Its expression is pinched. Not quite stricken, not the way Milly had looked, not the way Vash feels, though even that is too small a word, just — weary.
It squeezes his hand, tight. “I told Milly, men like that — you can’t marry a man like that. You can’t even think about it.” It sniffs, very pointedly doesn’t look at him. “That sort of man, he always seems like he’s going to get off at the next stop. No matter how much he loves you.”
Vash very, very, very carefully does not scream.
After a long moment, Meryl lets out a breath. “Sorry,” it says, quietly. “I know it’s my own fault I didn’t get to say goodbye.”
“Hey, no,” Vash manages, even around the lump in his throat. “I — if you have to blame anyone, blame me, I’m the one who… I’m the one who frightened you.”
It feels like so long ago, Colnago. Almost two years, now. The fear’s never quite pulled its hooks from him — never will, he’s sure, so long as he can remember the name July, so long as the Fifth Moon hangs cratered in the sky — but it feels more distant now, scarred over like a wound.
He knows his body now better than Knives ever did. The power in him, what’s left of it, doesn’t jump with fear under his skin. Not so much tamed as subsumed — welcomed back, after being torn from him. Amputated, to make him fear it.
For so long, he had. A fear deeper than fear, marrow-deep.
Meryl had felt it too, caught up in his unfurling — even the sight of his feathers, afterwards, had stunned it beyond speech.
A shadow in the moonslight, the quiet click of a handgun cocking—
“Please don’t cry,” Meryl all but whispers. It kneads at his hand. “You know how I get, I’m sorry, please don’t—” and then it goes on anyway, like it can’t stop the words. “Did he miss us, do you think?”
Vash can only nod, for a moment. He chews on his lip, focuses on the pressure of Meryl’s fingers against the back of his hand. He swallows around the choking snarl of grief, wrapped around his ribs and crawling up his throat.
He wishes it would get easier. But it had taken a century and a half to breathe under the weight of Rem’s death. Maybe it would be the rest of his life before he could even think—
“It wouldn’t have been safe,” Vash manages, eventually. “For the two of you. I knew that. So did you.”
Meryl nods, lips pressed together.
Shame rattles dully through Vash’s whole frame, like a ringing bell. He doesn’t even know why. There’s nothing he could have done. He’d turned the events over and over in his head enough times since to be sure of that. There just hadn’t been time, to turn back, to say goodbye. It had all fallen apart too quickly.
After getting out of the Ark, he’d thought of them, of finding them again, and then—
“He was sure what he was doing was the right thing,” Vash’s voice wavers, but he manages to keep it most of the way together. “That it would be better to leave it all to me.” Instead of breaking, his voice twists into a snarl, and he sees the way Meryl startles he feels it jolt against his side but just like it couldn’t stop itself from asking, he can’t stop the answer from spilling out. “Maybe he thought he was the only one who could miss anyone when they were gone.”
Meryl’s arms settle around his neck. Its body pulls flush against his, warm and solid, small enough it folds completely into his chest when he hugs it close.
Its breath is warm against his neck, just slightly ragged, though no more than his, really. “We talked about the two of you all the time.” It squeezes him tighter, as if to rub in that it’s not just dead men it’s speaking ill of. “When we’d see you again.”
“I know,” Vash rasps. “If he’d been thinking, if he hadn’t been so, so stubborn, we would’ve—” he can’t keep his voice from breaking anymore. “He really did care.”
Meryl’s hands curl into fists against his coat, clinging tight. “I know,” it echoes. “I know he did. So why—?”
It doesn’t finish.
There wouldn’t be an answer, if it did.