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Meryl’s white cape is one of her favourite garments—in fact, she has two of them, specifically because she likes it so much and she always wants to have a spare on hand for when one of them gets dirty. The only real downside of it is that any stains or imperfections that make their way onto it are completely glaring. Dirt, beverages, food—while they wash out just fine in the aftermath (especially with Millie’s old toolkit for the laundry) it’s always a pain if Meryl isn’t in the position to run a load of clothing right that moment.
Like she isn’t right now, hand crammed over the big ugly bloodstain on her side as she stumbles her way back up to her hotel room. It’s getting a little harder to breathe and see straight—must be the bloodloss—so Meryl’s finding it difficult to keep her thoughts to one thing, split between lamenting the hole in her shirt and feeling mutedly grateful that she and Millie had chosen to opt for separate rooms this time. They don’t usually, but they’d been planning on a slightly longer stay in this part of town, and had decided to splurge for a little bit of extra privacy, for the luxury of not having to take turns in the shower or ration the hot water.
Meryl never minds sharing a room with Millie, and it’d even felt kind of lonely on the first night, but the last thing she wants right now is to give Millie something else to worry about. So it was kind of a serendipitous decision in retrospect. Meryl presses her shoulder into the door to get it shut without removing her hand from her side, propping herself up with an elbow as she fumbles for the dead bolt. Even that much movement makes her feel slightly faint—she’s probably going to pass out soon if she’s not careful—but leaving the door unlocked feels like asking for trouble.
In the first place, she’s probably being reckless in coming back here. Meryl’s mentor had been a pragmatic man, but also a logical one. He advised her to tend to herself the right way, and seek professional medical help wherever possible, rather than risk further harm with shoddy field medicine. Of course sometimes it’s unavailable, but they’re in one of the more populated parts of Inepril right now, and there is a doctor located only a few blocks from where Meryl and Millie are saying.
It’s just that Meryl is only bleeding because she got caught in the crossfire downstairs, in a skirmish that’d led to an outright explosion of violence—and of course, with Vash right at the centre of it. Where else would he be? Meryl will give credit where credit is due that this time Vash hadn’t been the catalyst, but he dove headfirst into the situation as always and soon drew the attention onto him. Meryl only got involved when she noticed his cheeks starting to feather—and maybe the lingering panic of seeing Vash’s down had made her sloppy, because she’d gotten caught by a stray bullet that should’ve been a breeze to dodge. Would’ve been, ordinarily.
It leaves Meryl on a bit of a time crunch, because with the reveal of Vash’s abilities, he and the priest are probably going to leave within the afternoon—which means that while Meryl is here, she has to tend to herself and pack her things and be ready to head out tonight. She can trust that Millie will be ready to leave by the time she hits the street, probably before that. It’s just a matter of actually looking after her injury first without passing out, and that—well, Meryl’s not so sure about her ability to do that.
After everything she’s been through, the sight of the blood on her cape is more of a nuisance than anything else, but Meryl isn’t in public anymore and thus has no reason to worry about anyone seeing the injury. She quickly shucks the cape, then her undershirt, treading to the bathroom in her leggings and bra and using her knee to lever the door open. Her first aid kit is in her luggage, but Meryl doesn’t want to get blood on that too, so her first order of business is wetting a washcloth and pressing it to her side, then scrubbing at her hands.
The act of getting the blood out from under her nails requires Meryl to tilt her head forward, which is a bad idea right now. It’s getting harder to breathe, her vision spotty—Meryl’s starting to wonder if the dark spots under her nails aren’t actually dried blood but the result of her brain lacking oxygen. She’s not sure if the bullet got her somewhere bad, but feeling along her back with her palm tells her there’s not an exit wound, so it’s probably still inside. Meaning she’ll have to dig it out, on top of cleaning and bandaging it.
Meryl smears blood on the sink as she presses the heels of her palms onto it to regain her balance, knees trembling violently beneath her. The adrenaline is beginning to ebb, which is the last thing she needs right now. She wonders if she could manage with the bullet still inside, wrap herself up and hit the road and have a doctor in the next town get it out for her. She’s not sure she has the coordination right now to do it herself without risking further damage. On the other hand, will it be worse to keep the bullet in? What if it’s lodged somewhere vital? Surely Meryl would have bled out by now if that was the case… but maybe taking it out will make it worse?
She’s starting to feel a bit cold, which probably isn’t a good sign. Her vision is tinted with greens and pinks, the only real point of focus being a very small circle right in front of her eyes. She can feel the blood trickling down from her side—the washcloth has already soaked all the way through—and soaking into her pants, sticky, uncomfortably warm. There’s an ache in her neck and shoulders too, which feels secondary to everything else, but it makes remaining upright feel even more impossible. Even without the vertigo, Meryl’s starting to think that collapsing is an inevitability rather than worst-case scenario.
She’s eyeing the shower, wondering if she’ll make it as far as the edge of the bathtub to sit, when she hears a quick repetitive pounding sound—knocking, she registers belatedly. When Meryl blinks the haze out of her eyes, she sees… well, nothing. She’s still in the bathroom, and her bedroom is empty, the same as she left it with her bloody clothes on the floor and scarlet droplets in a trail from the entrance to the tile where she’s standing now. The poor housekeepers will have a nightmare cleaning this place after she leaves, without the time to tidy herself up properly.
Whoever it is is still knocking. Maybe it’s even one of the housekeepers themselves—although Meryl finds herself doubting that, if only because the sound is pretty frantic. Must be Millie, then. Meryl lets out a small breath, but forces herself off the sink and stumbles back into the main room. She’s reluctant to bother Millie with this, but she should’ve known she wouldn’t be able to sneak anything past her, and the extra hands will be useful in getting out of here faster. Millie won’t be happy about it, but she’ll understand the importance of keeping up with Vash after the situation escalated like that… Meryl’s got an apology already on her tongue as she makes it to the door, hands slick as they fumble over the locks, and then—
Meryl’s already looking up, expecting her friend, but rather than Millie’s familiar brown eyes she comes face to face with startling, vibrant aquamarine. Her jaw falls open. Vash’s own does the same, which would almost be funny if his presence here wasn’t so outright horrifying.
“Meryl!” Vash exclaims—and it takes Meryl an embarrassing moment to see that his gaze has dropped to her side, where she’s bleeding—where, oh, the washcloth fell. That’s not a good thing. “You’re—”
“What are you doing here?” Meryl makes herself ask—makes, because she can barely get her tongue to work. It feels like she’s trying to speak through a mouthful of cotton. Over her, Vash’s face does—something, pinches, a crease appearing between his brows as his jaw clenches. It’s the same face he makes whenever someone gets hurt, except—kind of different, in a way Meryl can’t really put to words. “I thought you had to—thought you would have to run.”
Although Vash’s cheeks aren’t feathered anymore, his gun holstered. He doesn’t even look like he’s injured, though if Meryl was being nitpicky, she’d probably point out that his hair looks a little more windswept than usual. The only thing that’s properly off about him right now his his expression, and his hands, which hover over Meryl’s shoulders before lowering to her side, never touching, not even skimming, his fingers trembling visibly.
They’re close enough that Meryl can hear Vash’s swallow. “What happened?”
“I…” Meryl closes her eyes, which is a bad idea, because she immediately starts to sway. Vash’s hand ends up on her then, pressing into her uninjured side, and Meryl knows— fuck, she knows she shouldn’t enjoy it but Vash’s hand is warm even through the leather of his glove and he’s never— touched her before, except to carry her when the situation has absolutely demanded it, and she’s thought about it despite her best efforts not to and she lacks the restraint not to let her mind wander right now. He also asked her a question, so Meryl attempts to gather her concentration, to remember it. “I got shot.”
“Yeah,” Vash breathes out. “I—you should go to a doctor. Or…” His hand is still shaking. Meryl can feel it where he’s touching her, just the slightest touch, only enough to keep her standing. “Can I help you? If this was my—”
His voice breaks, which Meryl doesn’t entirely like. She’s never heard it before, at least, not face to face like this. When she received Vash’s memories—there had been some where he was crying, she thinks, and it’d sounded similar. This sounds more guilty than desperate though, and Meryl puts together that he was going to say this was my fault, so she opens her eyes to glare at him.
“You didn’t shoot me,” Meryl says firmly, “but… yes you can help. I don’t know if I…”
As if to prove her point, Meryl’s knee buckles, and she drops the rest of the way into Vash’s chest. His duster is a little less comfortable than his glove, naturally, being bulletproof. Meryl is also wearing a lot less clothing than normal, which she’s sure she’d be embarrassed about if she had the presence of mind for it. As things are, Meryl has more attention to give to wondering how Vash doesn’t smell absolutely terrible living the way he does. He smells like gunpowder, which is obvious, and a bit like cigarette smoke probably from his proximity to that priest, but beneath that there’s something—else. Very familiar. Maybe from those memories too, but Meryl lacks the coherency to find a source for it.
She’s close enough to feel it rather than hear or see it when Vash swallows.
“All right. I’m going to pick you up, now.”
The warning is appreciated, because it’s disorienting as-is when his hands tuck under her, when her feet leave the ground. Meryl thinks she might still be wearing her boots, which was a silly oversight. She hopes they’re not bloody; they’re white too. She processes that they’re moving, but not how much or where, is only really aware of the creak of the door shutting and the soft thud of Vash’s footsteps against the floor. Meryl’s eyes are closed, so she only realises they’ve reentered the bathroom when the lighting shifts to something marginally harsher.
She does feel it when Vash sets her down on the sink, though. The mirror is smooth against her back. He must’ve put her there for easier access. He’s pretty tall.
“Why didn’t you find a doctor right away?” Vash speaks to her at a murmur. When Meryl cracks her eyes open to watch him, she sees that he’s pulled a first aid kit out of nowhere, maybe his jacket. It’s sitting on the sink next to her. Vash himself has removed his gloves, then his duster, which he drapes over the back of the toilet, leaving him in his cropped top and with the mechanical parts of his prosthesis on full display. They’re interesting to watch in motion, and Meryl finds herself staring as Vash washes his hands, intrigued by the way the joint in his elbow clicks with every subtle motion.
He asked her a question again. A doctor…? “Thought we had to leave,” Meryl mumbles back, tilting her head into the mirror so opening her eyes requires less effort. “You—your feathers.”
Vash winces. Meryl finds that she’s shaking slightly too, to think of it, and because she’s still gazing down at his arm, catches the aborted motion he makes with his hand. Vash’s shoulders go a little tighter.
“I was—able to play it off,” he says quietly. “Wolfwood and Millie—helped.”
That feels… unfair, in a way Meryl doesn’t know how to put into words. When Wolfwood spoke to her after she was rescued, he referred to Vash’s nature as one of those incomprehensible things, the likes of which the two of them just weren’t built to understand or come to terms with. Meryl hadn’t liked it then and still feels off about it now; her brain just isn’t wired not to come to terms with things, no matter how much they might frighten her in the moment. But she’s still scared of Vash even now, can remember how close they’d all been to dying if she just lets her mind wander a little bit—
And yet, at the same time, he had to—play it off, rely on his friends to convince a town full of people that he wasn’t some kind of monster. A town full of people he was only trying to help. Vash has only ever tried to protect people, no matter the circumstances that are out of control, and even still, it’s hard not to feel like all he receives is judgement. Persecution, even from—
Even from Meryl. She curls in on herself slightly, lets out an involuntary hiss because the movement hurts.
“You shouldn’t help me,” she blurts without thinking. “You should—you can get Millie, or a doctor, I don’t—you shouldn’t.”
“Meryl—” Vash starts, then stops. His hands clench and unclench again. “Is that—am I scaring you being here?”
His voice has gone so quiet; Meryl jerks upright at the sound of it, meets his eyes, which are wide and uncharacteristically vulnerable. That crease is in his brow. Meryl shakes her head fervently, even as the motion sends a second wave of stabbing pain through her side.
“No, I—it’s not that I—I mean, it is because I’m afraid but not—I’m not scared now, I just—” Meryl is bad at explaining herself even when she’s not woozy from bloodloss. The weight of Vash’s gaze doesn’t help her either. He must not realise it, but his eyes are so intense, so emotive. He seems inscrutable at times, but feels impossibly honest like this, so close. Meryl’s problem has never been a lack of comprehension, though. She just doesn’t know how to deal with what she’s been able to pick up. She breathes in and tries again. “I—you just had to deal with it, again. People treating you like a monster. And I treated you like—”
“Meryl,” Vash says softly. “I am a monster.”
Her leg jerks—it reminds her of being at the doctor’s office for her yearly checkup, when they’d knock on her knee with that little hammer thing. Except nobody hits Meryl’s kneecap this time; when her leg lashes out, it’s because she’s struck with such abrupt and blinding indignation, all she can do is kick Vash about it.
“You’re not!” she snaps. “I don’t—I can’t control what scares me. But I—” Meryl’s throat closes up. She tries again to speak until she can force the words through. “L-Legato Bluesummers—that man. He’s a monster, and your brother is, and—and that awful scientist, and everyone else who has ever—but you’re not a monster. A monster is—” Millie would say this so much better. Meryl presses her hands into her eyes, even though her palms are still sticky with blood. “A monster is something you—make yourself, not something that you are. You choose to be good every day.”
She’s breathing so hard. It really hasn’t gotten any easier, for all her attempts at powering through the blockage in her throat. Maybe that’s where the bullet ended up. With her eyes covered, she can’t see how Vash is reacting, either to the outburst or the kick, only knows that the latter hadn’t made him budge even an inch. After a moment, the sink turns off, and Meryl hears him flicking the water off his hands. Then his knuckles skim over her side.
“Then let me help you,” Vash murmurs. “I want to help you, Meryl.”
For someone so distant, Vash is so—sincere, in the worst of moments. Meryl doesn’t cry easily at all, but it’s been happening so often lately, she can feel the tears prickling at her eyes. In an attempt at staving them off, Meryl nods, lowering her arms to her sides but keeping her eyes closed. When Vash moves in closer, his fingers trail over her side as if to broadcast the presence of his hands, to keep her steady. It’s unneeded. Meryl trusts him like this, trusts him even with the wings sprouting from his back, even if she can’t control whether she flinches or hyperventilates. It’s Vash.
He works quietly, methodically. Someone with so many injuries is bound to know better how to tend to injuries than Meryl would. He even manages to get the bullet out with minimal discomfort, though there’s no way to make the process entirely painless. When her side is stitched up, Vash wets another washcloth and cleans off the blood, first from her side and stomach, then the splatters on her shoulders, clavicle, and face.
His hands linger around that area for long enough that Meryl opens her eyes, finds tears brimming in Vash’s own. Before she can ask him why, Vash sniffles and drops his gaze.
“All being close to me has ever gotten you is pain,” Vash whispers. “Even when I try to shield you from it.”
Meryl shifts her head, tries to get him to meet her eyes again, but it’s hard from this position. “Not like you make it easy for me to stay close,” she tries. “You’re always running.”
“If I let you stay—” Vash’s voice breaks. “I couldn’t, Meryl. Not when you already…”
His eyes have settled on Meryl’s side, tidied up but unwrapped. Meryl breathes in and out, trying to keep it shallow so she won’t mess with his stitches. It’s the most he’s said her name at once, maybe ever. It should make her happy, but there’s so much in the way he articulates her name, pain and guilt and something even scarier beneath all of it—something almost identical to what Meryl thinks is burning in her own chest, the want and tenderness and care, despite how terrifying it had been to witness the full reality of what Vash is.
Meryl curls her hands to bring the feeling back into them, then reaches for Vash’s, coaxing them off her face and winding her fingers through his. Her own are still bloody, but Vash doesn’t try and pull away, his eyes flitting from Meryl’s injured side to their intertwined hands.
“You’re not getting rid of me,” Meryl tells him. “I chose to believe in you years ago.”
It’s more than she’s known how to say for so long—something she might regret admitting later, when her head is a little clearer. But it’s enough to hear how Vash’s breath hitches, to see how he wets his lower lip and swallows, opening his mouth like he might speak before closing it again and nodding without another word. He squeezes her hands, still so gentle, like she might break if he holds on too tight, and Meryl lets her head tilt back to rest against the mirror again. Her consciousness is slipping.
The suns have moved to a different place in the sky by the time she opens her eyes again, now tucked into bed. Her bra is still on—she can feel it because her chest is a little sore, but she’s got a large shirt on over it, so Meryl assumes that Vash must’ve been trying to preserve her modesty. She doesn’t recognise the shirt she’s wearing. It’s a white button down like the one she sleeps in, but broader in the shoulders and slimmer around the chest. Not Millie’s. It smells a lot like Vash, so that’s probably the obvious explanation.
The lights are off in her room. It takes Meryl a moment to see, but she’s not alone, a gentle weight resting against her arm, because Vash is still here—curled up and sleeping at her bedside, his head cushioned by folding arms. There’s just enough light for Meryl to make out his features, long, fine lashes, the mole on his cheek, the unhappy set of his lips. If he was awake, Meryl would urge him to slip under the covers with her, rest somewhere more comfortable if he’s going to insist on sleeping.
It’s… probably better that he’s not awake. Meryl’s not sure either of them could take that level of vulnerability right now. She does reach for him though—it feels easy enough to ignore the consequences in the quiet—to run her fingers through his hair. Her hands are clean now, and his hair is down, soft, he must’ve washed it at some point while she was sleeping. The black hair is slightly coarser than the blond hair, more similar in texture to Meryl’s own. She pets through it until the repetitive motion starts to tire her again, and when it does, she lets her palm come to rest against his scalp.
Vash’s eyelashes flutter. His eyes are soft, hazy when they peer out at her—a little bit sad. Meryl tries to find a smile for him.
“I’m fine,” Meryl murmurs. “Go back to sleep, I’ll be here when you wake up.”
Vash sighs at that. It’s muffled by his arms. He does close his eyes though, and Meryl slides her thumb through the loose pieces of hair that fall into his eyes before she follows suit, settling back into the pillows tucked under her neck.
It’s a promise she can keep, even if it’s not one that she can trust that Vash would make to her in kind. After everything they’ve been through though—after everything today—Meryl isn’t so sure that she can hold that against him. She’s not sure if she wants to, either.