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At times, it feels the world itself doesn’t seem to know it’s ending.
For instance, the sky is its usual shade of blue, shameless in its beauty as it spans across the endless stretch of hot white sand. Nothing else stirs aside from the odd gust of wind, picking up clouds of dust that only intensify that familiar sensation of being smothered alive.
Alone under the beating suns, it really does feel like nothing has changed, yet Meryl finds her eyes closing all the same as their toma continue the long trek across the wasteland.
It’s eerie in a way, how empty it feels—as if they can sense all the stars behind that picture-perfect blue have already gone out, long before nightfall has revealed their demise. The unnatural isolation matches the lawless planet below, where what little pockets of life it held have been snuffed out like a thumb to the flame over the grueling months.
There had been a time when loneliness was temporary, where woven caravan tracks and toma excrement told you that something was alive between Point A and Point B. Now only the scent of carrion follows them for miles, as if the angel of death himself were saying, I was here. I’ll be wherever you go.
“We should be there soon, ma’am,” Milly says, looking over her shoulder for what might be the sixth time in the last half hour. Meryl nods, remembering that that’s something she should do.
“Right. Thanks, Milly.”
She couldn’t say where there is. Another tiny settlement, probably, one of many dotted across the sand ocean’s shore. Meryl’s learned to let identifying factors like names slip through her mind like water, lest they catch and snag her into depths she can’t afford to struggle under. Not when Milly needs her.
What they’ve been doing, it’s roughly the same each time: they get there, they assess the situation, they help anyone that might still be around, and then they bury the dead. Even with the total collapse of Bernardelli, they’ve fallen into a similar routine. It’s almost comforting, if Meryl’s being honest. They just… do things a little differently now.
They get their hands dirty. Numbers smear into something unidentifiable as chunks of viscera and decay are rolled into makeshift graves. They put a price on the irreplaceable and leave.
At the end of the night, Meryl writes the report.
The two of them make it to their next destination before long, a sudden speck on the horizon that doesn’t get much bigger even as hooves drag across the threshold of a dilapidated welcome arch. Upon first glance, it’s obvious that everyone has either died or run off. The settlement is one “street”, with what seems to have been an inn-slash-saloon for passing travelers and a few homesteads scattered further off in the distance.
Everything is destroyed, of course, in that clumsy way a child might knock over a set of blocks. Thoughtless, as if the action itself wasn’t worth any calculation.
“I wonder who they were,” Milly murmurs. She says that in every town. Meryl can’t fathom how her heart can still take it, how it can possibly want to fit more people. More lives.
…Then again, Meryl’s got hundreds of thousands in her own. They squirm beneath her skin, but they all still fit.
“Let’s begin the assessment,” she replies.
As they begin their crawl down the road, both keep a hand ready to draw. It’s unlikely anyone’s still here in the first place—let alone fit to attempt any sort of ambush—but the end of the world doesn’t negate years of survival instinct, nor of being women.
The street itself is fairly clear of debris, most of the structural wreckage keeping to the immediate proximity of the damaged buildings. Their toma lazily skirt around sun-baked corpses, mummified from the heat and twisted unnaturally upon each other. Several more sit propped against half-intact walls, one in particular draped over a busted window as jagged glass punctures its leathery skin. Dried rivulets of blood run down the weathered wood beneath.
“We should check the saloon first,” Meryl concludes, gingerly touching her face. “If there are any survivors, they’d have their best shot with a roof over their head. Food and water, too—I think I saw a well behind the toma stalls.” A part of her also just wants to get out from under this damn sky.
Milly quickly nods. “Good thinking, ma’am.” Enthused as she’s always been following directions, she feels more so as of late. Meryl really needs to stop worrying her.
With the rest of the settlement only a skeleton of its former self, the saloon stands tall in stark contrast. Four walls, minimal damage. The ransacked frontside and torn hinge of the batwing doors seem more collateral or consequential rather than intentional; if Meryl was as naive as her superiors seemed to think, she’d probably hope that meant it hadn’t been targeted by the Ark or the subsequent fallout.
That someone might even be alive inside.
But as inelegant as his destruction is, Knives is no child. He’s witnessed the worst of humanity, and he understands all too intimately what little nudging a person needs to betray their own morality. If anything, the hub of this rest stop—the only one for miles in either direction—hadn’t been hit in the sole hope of corralling those who survived the initial onslaught to fight amongst themselves for what remained of food and shelter. A game she’s sure he didn’t even stick around to watch.
Still… they have to check. That’s just what they do now.
Milly reels back the moment they slip past the swinging doors, hand pressed to her nose before regaining her composure. It smells awful—or, at least, Meryl assumes it does. Much of the world now resembles the scene in front of them. The stench of death is their ever-constant traveling companion, merely faded into the background. After so many months, it’s something she’s learned to bear.
The thought is a little nauseating, though. Meryl doesn’t like to consider what kind of person she’s become, to no longer be immediately overwhelmed by such cruelty and loss. Maybe she’s meant to interpret it as some kind of newfound strength, but the ease of which her endurance has grown only makes her feel a little more broken.
Even so, she’d be lost without it.
In some fucked up way, blocking things out has been easier with the world gone to hell. Living in a constant nightmare, there’s no time to reflect on what’s actually keeping you up at night… What keeps forcing your food back up.
Like applying pressure to a wound, it all eventually numbs, and Meryl can function as cold and awful as she always has.
…It had been much harder, back when she was touched by his grace.
Meryl looks up to see Milly already several steps ahead, frowning to herself as she attempts to navigate around the mess. It may seem a little silly, all things considered, but Meryl finds the gesture touching. These people spent their last moments here, after all; while others might step all over to ransack the place without a second thought, Milly treats them with the same respect she’d give a proper cemetery. Anywhere, really. That’s just how she is.
When her next glance up meets Meryl’s gaze, she seems surprised.
“Oh! Be careful, ma’am, there’s…” Milly steps closer, offering her hand. “I think I found a clear path to the back. Don’t wanna, um, step on anything. Anyone.” Meryl takes it, her mind briefly pulled to the warmth radiating from calloused fingers as she steps around the remains of a patron sprawled across splintered wood. Glass crunches beneath their feet, loud in the accompanied silence.
Plates of food sit black and hardened on the bar. A dirty rag left half shoved in a mug.
These people didn’t even have a Plant, Meryl thinks bitterly, knowing very well that was never the point. To say they were pushed towards death simply for being human would cheapen Knives’ grievances as well. Whether or not any of them had ever laid eyes on more than the bulb of a Plant before, their livelihood—the sheer ability to exist on this forsaken planet—came from somewhere. Humans would have nothing if it weren’t for the beings they had trampled on to get there, be it with intention like— like God, Tesla—or from pure desperation and ignorance, like those that walked away from the Big Fall.
To Knives, they all have blood on their hands, either earned or inherited from birth, and Meryl… Meryl can’t find it within herself to disagree. To the victim, does the reasoning matter? Should it? Does anyone’s hardship justify the pain and suffering of someone else?
Meryl watches as Milly gently adjusts the dress of a young woman.
At the same time, does being wronged justify this? Scores of dead, most clueless as to the reason for their damnation. Innocent people, who would’ve worked harder to scrub the blood off themselves and their children if they knew. People who might’ve already taught them where that blood came from.
People like… like Rem, who failed Tesla, who Knives gave a chance because he still loved her.
When she chose humanity over escaping with him, it must’ve felt like the deepest betrayal.
When Vash chose her and humanity over him, it must’ve…
Whatever forgiveness Knives might have offered, even if only to his own mother, died alongside the Big Fall. The unfairness of it all angers her. The grief of everything they’ve lost could overwhelm her. None of this brings Tesla back. None of this will give him his brother back. Meryl hates him. Truly, wholly, in her bones she hates him. His callous cruelty, his inability to see how he’s perpetrated his own sisters’ suffering, the refusal to believe that Rem wasn’t an exception but a rule to human nature and their desire to do better…
But then she sees flashes of a much younger boy. She doesn’t want to, but she does—the way he used to peer into those ice cold pods, hands gentle against the frosted glass with eyes alight with hope of their collective future, and Meryl’s feelings get all mixed up again.
Knives is a monster. A ruthless killer… but Meryl could never say he was heartless. That might have been his fatal flaw from the start. Of everything Meryl has witnessed, of all the secondhand memories her mind believes her body has endured, the endless tragedy in Vash’s long life stands front and center—yet the sorrow that paints over happy memories at times burns hotter than anything else.
When was the last time Vash allowed himself to truly recall them?
It happens often for her. Names, locations, even the smallest trinket spring forth recollections of people Meryl has never known, quickly followed by loss she has never felt. A certain flash of sunlight will hit her just right, burning white against closed eyelids, and her stomach promptly sinks into agony. The many ghosts of this world haunt her now, just as they seem to have always haunted Vash.
By this point he’s travelled every inch of this threadbare planet, and ultimately met heartbreak at every corner. Whatever he gains, he loses tenfold. His self-respect, his autonomy... She’s felt his anguish as someone grows cold against him. She’s felt his horror as he aims at a life he knows can never be replaced. She’s felt his animosity as he’s shunned and humiliated, belly up and vulnerable. It’s not something quietly repressed—it bubbles relentlessly beneath the man’s cracked exterior, seeping into every pore and moment of pseudo-immortality he drags his tortured body through.
…But unlike his older brother, Vash still hopes the human race can change. He’s hellbent on risking his life and wellbeing for that wish. It’s something Meryl greatly admires him for, and it was that unwavering conviction that initially drew her to the gentle man behind the catastrophic moniker.
She’s learned by now, though, that it’s far from that—unwavering, she means. It’s messy, and it’s complicated, and she can’t blame him for it. Not for a moment. Sometimes it feels she has to sift through the entire wreckage of his time on this planet to find any shred of decency within her fellow man.
And… she can’t help but wonder if their last encounter added to that pain.
She hates herself for flinching away.
“All clear,” Meryl says, closing the door behind her as she rejoins Milly in the back hall. A part of her had checked two of the five rooms here available for rent, thorough as usual despite her mind entirely elsewhere. “There were some belongings left inside, but no bodies.”
“Mm,” Milly replies, jotting something down in her notebook. “Since we won’t be able to tell who was only passing through, I’ll try to note something for each for identification... Y’know, if we ever come across someone asking around.” She smiles a little, the gesture nearly reaching droopy eyes. “It’d be nice to be able to say where they were laid to rest, even if we aren’t professionals like Mr. Priest.”
Meryl exhales what could be considered a laugh. “Yeah, I was never really the praying type.” She does smile back, though. Just a little. “That’s really considerate of you, Milly. I wouldn’t have thought of that.”
“You have a lot to think about, ma’am,” Milly says, surprisingly firm. “I’m suggesting it because I already know you’d feel the same way.” She closes her notebook and tucks it inside her coat. With it, her voice softens back into that familiar lilt. “I think we can move outside. Just follow me, okay?”
They’re soon back under that blue sky. The same as yesterday. Same as the past century. Before everything happened, Meryl liked to imagine her job was more than just a job, that maybe she was really working to improve society in some way. Not that… insurance is exactly the most straight-forward way to go about it, and it’s true Bernardelli existed out of economical necessity and not the goodness of their hearts, but she liked the sense of justice the career instilled within her. Even if most of her work dealt with reimbursement, the risk mitigation genuinely brought some form of satisfaction to her life. At times, it really did feel like each closed case nurtured the precarious harmony of their civilization.
Now with all the years laid out in front of her, it’s hard to remember that any of their efforts have ever really mattered. Things have changed, of course, in the little ways time will always allow, but the big picture remains the same: humans hurt. They exploit, murder, and steal. In many ways, the mission to replicate that fabled Earth could be considered a success. Perhaps it's only thanks to their lack of resources to inflict harm that stops the human race from sinking even further into depravity.
…But that’s what Knives probably thinks, isn’t it? Nothing based on logic like Meryl, but that of pure emotion. If both avenues result in the same wrong conclusion—something Meryl has to believe—does that mean he’s not thinking clearly, or that she isn’t feeling enough? How do you even know what the balance of heart and mind is supposed to be? It’s just not something she’s ever been good at.
Meryl used to wonder what exactly compelled Vash to follow his moral code so often and commonly to a fault. When it came to herself, she knew more than anything she did not want to kill. Unlike Vash, however, Meryl would kill someone to save her own life. She… has before. The aftermath and consequent guilt doesn’t particularly matter when it comes to that sort of thing. Does that line in the sand make her less human, or more so? Preventing harm is what Meryl has always wanted to do; she loathes nothing more than the fact her finger has ever been forced on any trigger. Or, to be more accurate, that she’s been forced to accept her life is more precious to her than others.
The answer, she’s learned, is other people. It was first Rem, whose steadfast conviction has since become a lifeline as Vash—in his own eyes—fell beyond the point of redemption. Those feelings eventually extended to every person he met, and especially those he learned to love despite himself.
No matter the times he’s been beaten down, Vash the Stampede has always stood back up. It’s those little things that do it, Meryl thinks. The shreds of decency between the grief. Inch by inch, humanity grows for the better, and just as she struggles to fully condemn the heartbroken child laid hidden within his memories, Vash can never give in to any cynicism of humanity’s heart as a whole.
It’s not that he’s naive, or really all that stubborn—he just knows it’s what he wants to fight for. It’s something he’s willing to die for.
Many people die without ever figuring that part out at all.
Around the back of the saloon, right past the empty toma stalls, is a water well and what looks to be a walk-in chicken coop. While the owners living here most likely got their necessities from passing caravans or the other homesteads, fresh eggs are a staple you’d rather not depend on others for.
“Suppose we should check?” Milly asks.
“Can’t hurt to look.” Under normal circumstances, she’d probably tease that Milly just wants a good look at the fluffy chickens. Under normal circumstances, Meryl probably would too.
The chicken run is empty, save for a loose scatter of feed and a few white things that compel Meryl to turn her head. With the exterior door’s lock snapped, she briskly walks through the run with Milly tagging behind, eyes straight ahead. Unsurprisingly, there’s no clucking or noise of any kind coming from inside the coop. Even if they weren’t somehow killed for food or sport, there’s been no one to take care of them in weeks; there’s no doubt the chickens would’ve died from heat and thirst in under a day.
When Meryl opens the interior door, there’s red and white everywhere.
Ma’am?! is what she thinks she hears next, but it’s hard to tell with the ringing in her ears. There’s a sudden, sharp pain in her knees that she belatedly registers as the result of her dropping to the ground.
Right, she’s on the ground. Near the white.
Near the feathers.
Meryl’s heart pounds with a pain so fierce she nearly screams, limbs scrambling away from the mess. Her back hits something hard, maybe, or something soft.
The air inside is hot and cramped. It fills her mouth with dust as she struggles to breathe. Feathers everywhere, scattered and clumped and suffocating her from the inside out. They carry a scent that isn’t chickens, wasn’t Vash, and the sunlight from slitted windows burns white into her skull. There was so much blood, and there was so much nothing. There were so many feathers.
Meryl’s nails dig into her scalp as someone cradles her closer. There were so many feathers and they hurt her. They only wanted to protect her but they hurt her. They hurt her in a way no one can see.
“Meryl, it’s okay,” the voice pleads.
And then Meryl catches the scent of something else.
Cinnamon, almond, and vanilla. That lotion Milly puts on before bed and after her shower. It’s always been one of those things she liked to do to make her day a little more special. She does it every day.
The first time things were bad, really bad, Meryl remembers Milly started crying as she was putting it on. Meryl told her she didn’t have to do that anymore, that she didn’t need to pretend she was okay.
It feels so dumb now, Milly had said, tears dripping from big eyes, but I have to keep doing it. Because those people… they can’t do things like this anymore, ma’am. And I’m so lucky I can.
It’s nice that Milly still smells like cookies.
Meryl clings to that, and to her, and her vision eventually clears with a deep, heaving sigh. Milly continues to hold her. She wonders if it looks bad, crying over chickens. Not even chickens—Meryl’s only crying over her own problems. She hadn’t even thought of how sad it is for them to have been killed for nothing. They hadn’t even crossed her mind at all.
Maybe she’s the wrong person to hold all this. What’s the point of pain and sorrow in a person who does nothing with it? It never seems to move her forward. She knew the coop might make her uncomfortable, but dark toma feathers all smoothed down have never bothered her. She thought she could turn her head and ignore it, swallow the bile and move on like everything else.
Why does she think of loss as a burden?
Is she a bad person for being unable to handle it alone?
“Ma’am…” Milly eventually says, and Meryl’s already wondering what to say to her. The air’s warm and breezy now, both women huddled together in the open doorway. “Are… Are you okay?” She immediately sighs. “No, I know you aren’t… I, I don’t know what it is, but…”
Meryl can’t tell Milly. She knows not doing so causes needless worry, but more than anything she doesn’t want her to think ill of Vash. To see him as some… monster. It’s bad enough the word unwillingly comes to mind whenever she sees July, and all those people, and what exactly their friend is capable of.
“Everything’s fine, Milly. It’s just… stress. I don’t want you to worry about it.”
“But I want to,” Milly interjects. “Ma’am— Meryl.” Her arms curl more around Meryl as her head dips into her shoulder. Meryl can feel her breath shake on the exhale. “Everything’s… been so awful. It’s hard to sleep. I have nightmares—what we’ve seen, what might happen to us… I can’t stop worrying about Mr. Vash and Mr. Priest. But it’s easier, getting through it… because you’re here. Not because you’re strong, though I really admire that about you. You’re just… here. Y’know?”
“Milly…” Meryl’s hands tentatively rest against her arms. Something aches and creaks deep within her chest. It’s not something she’s ever done before.
“If, if you ever need to cry, do, but I don’t need to see it to know how much this hurts you. You don’t need to say or do certain things to prove it. I see you, ma’am. So… if you’re trying to protect me, it’s okay. Whenever you’re ready, I want to listen. Whatever you want to say… Whatever you can’t.”
Sitting here, Meryl thinks she finally gets it. Why Vash holds on. She can logic her way through it all she wants, but she knows what her heart is saying right now: this is nice. This… kindness and warmth is nice. Life is worth it if moments like this can continue.
Meryl sniffles, wiping her nose with her sleeve. “You… you don’t think I’m messed up?”
Milly gasps. “Messed up? Messed up how?”
Meryl doesn’t really have an answer for that, she supposes. When she thinks of wording it, it all sounds so silly. She laughs instead, soft and tired, but the feeling reaches her eyes. “You’re just always saying the nicest things, Milly. I guess it doesn’t make sense to me sometimes.”
“I just say them because they’re true, ma’am,” Milly replies. She finally pulls away, helping Meryl to her feet. “We, um. We can be done here. In the coop…” She closes the door behind them. “No more whatever, yeah?”
“Heh, yeah.”
“We still have a lot of ground to cover,” Milly continues, this time taking the lead. “Do you want to take a break?”
Ah. “No, actually.” Meryl can’t help but laugh a bit at Milly’s immediate frown. “I mean it, Milly. I… I feel a lot better. Thank you.” She smiles, even as a lump oddly lodges in her throat. “Not just for… helping me out back there, but… everything, really. You said earlier that I have a lot to think about, but I think I forget to open my eyes sometimes. I forget to focus on what’s right in front of me, and what I can do about it.”
It was never just Milly needing her. Meryl needed her too. She needs her just like she needs Vash, and Wolfwood, and everyone else doing their part, no matter how small, to put an end to this.
For once, the thought of it all actually entices her. The pain pushes her forward.
“We’re going to leave this town a little better than before. We’re going to keep doing that too, and then we’re going to figure out what else we can do. I know we can, because we’ll be together.”
Meryl reaches forward and squeezes Milly’s hand once. It feels really good to do—reaching out to others.
No wonder Vash won’t ever stop trying.