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Vash loved Milly dearly. She enjoyed making jokes about him being her little garden, he didn’t realize it was a plant joke until much later. But it made him feel good. Made him feel like he could rival Luida’s garden on Home. If he was a garden, Milly was the fountain of freshwater that kept him breathing and bright. He loved her and she loved him in return. They were life partners, just not in the traditional sense. To be fair, nothing about them rang traditional. It was true that they loved each other deeply. Platonic, yet more than friends. And neither would trade that love for anything in the world. “ Not even $$60,000,000? ” Nick had once joked.
Milly was his anchor. She was the anchor of their polycule. She always stood sturdy when Vash felt like falling, but she would catch him if he slipped too far. He knew he could lean on her and she would hold him up. She didn’t always understand his problems in full, but she was always there for him. Her water kept him alive.
She was keeping his head above quicksand that day. Their partners had gone on a food hunt, which usually took only an hour at most, but they had been gone for three. Vash was sat on the floor, eyebrows pinched. He had cleaned his own gun a dozen times before moving onto Milly’s stunner. Milly sat beside him, head resting against his arm. She was humming and combing her fingers through his hair.
He must have made a sound of distress because Milly pressed her lips to his temple and rubbed his back. “It’s okay, sweetheart. They’re alright, I can feel it.”
Vash sighed. “But what if they aren’t?”
“Nope. We aren’t going to let your brain go down that path. I bet they got caught up in an argument and needed to blow off some steam. You know how those two get.”
He shrunk in on himself. “Yeah, but… Three hours?”
She pet his hair. “I know, honey, but they have their guns and can fend for themselves. They’re okay.”
Vash pushed the large gun to the side and took Milly’s hand. “You’re right. I know you’re right. But I’m still scared, Milly. I love them so much and the thought of either of them getting hurt terrifies me.”
“I won’t lie and say it doesn’t scare me too.” She stood up and pulled Vash up into a tight hug. “But I try not to think about that.”
“How?” He whispered into her chest.
“I think about what I love about them.” She took his face in her hands and looked him in the eye. “When I think about how much I love you three, my mind is taken off of the worries I have. It forces me to think about the good things.”
He nodded and closed his eyes, silently taking her advice. Milly swayed them back and forth as he thought. By the twenty-fifth reason, the door opened. Nick and Meryl stepped inside, carrying bags of food. Vash ran to them, waving his hands in front of his chest anxiously while they set the bags down. As soon as the two were empty handed, he wrapped his arms around them.
“Where were you?!”
Meryl squeezed him. “There was a little girl who was lost and Softie here insisted we help her find her parents.”
“Which we did, for the record.” Nick kissed Vash’s head. “Her ma insisted on givin’ us a couple hundred bucks. Told ‘er no, but she was persistent.”
Vash sighed contently, purring loudly. His partners were back safe. Milly was right, of course.