Trigun Fan Fiction ❯ The Night's End ❯ Dune Running ( Chapter 4 )

Disclaimer: Evidently the last chapter made more sense than I thought it did. Well, peoples, I think I know where I'm going with this now. (In other words, a plot came to me in the middle of a dream, and now I can finish this.) To finish off this note I'll be forced to admit (for the umpteenth) that I don't own the characters and I ain't makin' any money offa this. However, if you wanna send me money, by all means...just don't say it was for this.


Vash felt sick. Really sick. He couldn't explain the reasons as of why he felt horrible, but he knew it was true. Hell, he felt even worse than he had after nearly dying in the desert. Forcing himself to sit up straighter at his barstool, he turned his head slowly towards his companion, repressing the gag reflex as the room spun around him several times. The insurance girl was slumped over the counter, her half-finished beer beside her forgotten. At the mere sight of the alcohol, Vash gagged again, this time searching for any handy wastebasket. He was unsuccessful though and found himself frantically scanning what he could see of the room he was in, which wasn't much.

"You sick again?" The man behind the bar sighed, reaching under the counter for the only wastebasket that Vash had not visited that evening. "No offense, but you certainly can't hold your liquor mister. That girl's doing much better than you."

After a moment of heaving, Vash used a napkin before looking up blearily at the man. 'Oh yeah, now I remember,' he thought carefully, slurring slightly even in his thoughts, 'So that's why I feel so sick.' Some voice in his mind noted that this was a brilliant observation. Pursing his lips carefully, he enunciated as clearly as he could, "Yeah, well...then why's she asleep?"

"Because," the man polished a glass with his towel carefully before setting it on a shelf behind him, "She's been taking care of you for the past twelve hours straight. You passed out at least three times on half of what she drank...and she still took care of you the entire time. I don't know of a single person who wouldn't be exhausted after a night like that. You're really lucky, sir. She's a real friend...and like I said before, she certainly has more of a stomach for the alcohol than you." At the last statement, the bartender glanced worriedly at Vash, but at that moment the infamous $$60,000,000,000 Man was merely attempting to keep his surroundings under control. If only the room would stop spinning he'd be fine.

Vash nodded absently and ordered an orange juice. As an afterthought, maybe the drinking binge in Meryl's absence wasn't such a great idea. For him that was. Millie wasn't fazed by drinking (much like a certain preacher Vash could name), but he certainly wasn't up to her standard of drinking. After getting his drink, he carefully sipped it, warning his stomach to accept it and pleading silently with the orange juice to get rid of the horrible aftertaste that seemed to be coating his entire mouth. After a few minutes of silent sipping, he gave up and put the juice aside. He'd have to give in and ask Meryl for her patented cure for hangovers (tasted awful, but it worked), it might take a little begging on his part, but--

Clearing his throat, he asked the bartender, "Excuse me, but did a lady come in here looking for my friend and I?" An image of Meryl finding them passed out in a bar came to mind and he winced, "She's short with dark hair and white clothes...and she might have been angry." Might have been angry? Now, THAT was an understatement if he'd ever heard one.

The bartender looked up for a moment before returning to polishing the glasses, "No. Just the regulars last night." He chuckled, "Although the guy on shift before me was claiming that Vash the Stampede was here last night. He really seemed terrified, poor guy. He always was the excitable type." Vash winced. "As if the outlaw himself would ever come to a rundown bar in the middle of nowhere. That's a laugh."

"Did he say who he thought the outlaw was?"

"Yeah," the man lifted a glass to his eye and looked for spots, "You." Vash jumped. "Don't worry, I'm not gonna turn you in or anything. Even if you are who he thought you were, you're too sick at the moment to do much in the way of natural disasters...and besides, after last night, I feel more pity for you than fear." With that, the man turned away and began cleaning out the ashtrays lined before him.

Vash had a feeling that the man had seen more of his inner feelings while he was drunk than Vash normally let anyone see. He tried to recall what might have sparked the man's comment, and was greeted with a bit of a dream sequence from the previous night.


"Vash, take care of Knives."

A tear-stained face...

"Vash..."

A door shut...

"...take..."

Shot into infinity...

"...care..."

A sea of stars above, a sea of fire below...

"..of..."

An odd smile backlit by a fiery horizon...a sea of lives lost on an oceanless planet...

"...Knives."


Even just thinking of it after all this time caused his eyes to burn. Sighing heavily, and thinking more clearly than he had for the past twelve hours, he said one last thing to the man before pushing off of the stool and walking towards the stairs. "Thanks, mister. People like you are few and far between." The man looked up sympathetically before continuing on with his job.


After another shower, he felt immeasurably better, and while rooting through his bag for clean clothes, he came across a note from Millie.

Mr. Vash,

Your coat is on the dresser in Senpai's and my room. If Senpai is still sleeping, please be quiet when you pick it up.

Sincerely,

Millie Thompson

Smiling at Millie's childish signature, he frowned as he considered what it said. So Meryl hadn't contacted Millie after leaving them to go to town? Did that mean she was still out in the desert somewhere? What if she was hurt? She was all alone, and he knew from experience that being hurt and alone in the desert was a very dangerous situation situation indeed...

"Don't let your imagination get out of control," he reprimanded himself, "She's a big girl, she can take care of herself." But she should be back by now, the voices in his head clamored. You know it, don't deny it. She might be in trouble.

"She's probably just in her room sleeping, she must've gotten in too late to go looking for us." He kept this mantra up as he walked over to their door. As quietly as he could, he opened their door and peered in. Before him, the bed lay empty and undisturbed. Meryl's pink suitcase was nowhere to be seen. To one side of the door, the dresser sat with his coat folded neatly on top. With this sight his heart sank with the certain knowledge that wherever Meryl had spent the night, it hadn't been in town.

An hour later he was saddled up and ready to go. He'd arranged with the bartender to have Millie taken up to her room, and for their rooms to be held for one more day. Thus, with the Thomas watered and fed and with his head somewhat clearer than before, he felt relatively ready to go and locate the mysteriously missing Ms. Stryfe. He would have felt much better about the whole situation if he hadn't been so weak, but he figured that dehydrating yourself, and then getting hopelessly drunk within the space of two days could do that to a person. However, he felt healthy enough that riding around on a thomas for a couple of hours wouldn't kill him, hopefully, and besides, what if she was in real trouble? Who else would go out and find her?

Shading his eyes against the brilliant light of the twin suns, he carefully pulled on his sunglasses and clucked the Thomas out of town in the direction they had come. He was hoping she wouldn't be that difficult to find, because he was beginning to feel really woozy...

His hopes were unfounded as he soon discovered. It was two hours before he even found a trace of her location. The clue he finally came across was in the form of Thomas tracks across the sand, which he followed happily until he found her Thomas standing unattended, nipping on a patch of tough desert grass. It's reins dangled behind it uselessly, and he gulped. "Oh...damn..."

A half an hour later, after chasing the other Thomas down and tying it to his own saddle, he was off again, this time following the tracks that Meryl's Thomas had made in it's flight across the desert. Although the wind had erased the clarity of the prints, he could still follow their line across the dunes, heading for where he supposed she might be found. His mind was frantically going over the possible scenarios that might have led to her loosing her Thomas. It was not looking good. And, he noted, he was feeling weaker by the hour. Evidently he wasn't as well as he had thought he was, not that that was any surprise.

He rode in silence, his thoughts crowding his mind. The wind was hot and dry, and it seemed to be sucking the moisture out of him. Even the wind is hungry for water, he noted dryly, even the wind--

He stopped the Thomases suddenly, and flipped around in the saddle to stare behind him. No, he had not been imagining it, in his reverie he had failed to see the tracks end, and he had been riding for who-knows-how-long without any tracks to guide him. He had no idea as of where to go from here.

"Damn," he cursed before wheeling the Thomases around to head retrace the tracks. When had he missed it? As he took off, a nearby noise caused him to pause and turn back. The dune next to him began to shudder and shake, the dust on top falling to the base of the dune. Fighting to keep the animals under control even at this distance from the disturbance was incredibly difficult and it took all of his concentration and energy not to get thrown.

"What?!" A beam of pure white light shot out of the dune, straight towards him--

She went looking for a distant light--

--and enveloped him. He squinted and held the reins of the two scared Thomases in check. Silhouetted against the reflected light of the two suns, a figure approached him. It was a slender figure, wearing a shipsuit, and walking towards him rapidly. Behind the figure, the light flashed once more before closing behind her and burying itself under the sand once more. The Thomases whickered in fear as the ground rumbled beneath them.

"Rem..." After all these years, after all the tears, here she was. He realized wearily that the Thomases had stopped bucking and bleating and were now standing somewhat nervously as they watched the figure approach. "...You're back..."

The strain of the past few hours fell away, and he relaxed, realizing how tired he truly was. How very, very tired. It seemed like it had been forever since he had slept. When had he last slept? Had he ever truly slept since that day?

In one graceful motion he slumped over and fell out of the saddle, his face burying itself in the sand. From a distance he heard someone yell his name, and then there was a blessed silence. A golden silence where he sat with Rem and talked about his future. A silence where he dreamed of red petals thrown in the wind. A quiet where even the feel of someone calling his name and cradling his head while forcefeeding him liquid didn't disturb him.

"Rem, what will happen to everyone?'

"They will live on the planet we choose."

"And Knives, you, and I?"

"We will live there as well."

"What will we do?"

"You will have to find your own paths in life. What you do is entirely up to you, but you must always keep those who are affected by what you do in mind."

Vash nodded at this, before looking into the infinite distance of blue. "Rem?"

"Yes?" She seemed slightly distracted.

"What will happen to me?"

She glanced over at him, watching the way he sat with his arms wrapped around his knees, and thought before she answered, "What happens now depends on what you choose to do. As I've told you before, your life is completely open. However, a wrong decision could end it all right here. Open your eyes Vash. Open them now, and work with her. Something is wrong."

"What?" Vash turned to her, but she was gone.

"Vash, come on! Wake up. I'm not tall enough to lift you into the saddle without your help. You need medical attention, and we're only going to find that in town!"

Forcing his eyes open, he found himself staring into Meryl's face. She was watching him carefully, and when she saw his eyes open, her breath escaped her in a sigh of relief. "Found you," he managed to croak, realizing how reminiscent this was of the events of the previous day. It was almost eerie... He grinned weakly before trying to get up.

Glaring at him, she helped him to stand up and get into the saddle after about ten minutes of struggling and resting. All the while, he could hear her muttering curses, most of a variety that he had never heard uttered by Miss Prim and Proper herself. Hell, he hadn't even heard of some of them, which made him wonder slightly. However, he was entirely too weak to wonder for long. Instead he tried to focus on keeping his balance. 'Smooth rescue, Vash the Stampede,' he thought tiredly, before allowing her to tie the reins of his Thomas to her own saddle. As a final precaution, she strapped him into his saddle, shoving padding between him and the ropes tying him in so that he didn't chafe too badly...or something. "Thanks," he muttered, before leaning back in the saddle and grinning tiredly at her, "I guess the rescue effort didn't really work out like I thought it would." God, he felt weaker just saying that.

She mounted the leading Thomas and turned back towards him. "Vash the Stampede, sometimes I wonder about you," she sighed. "Millie should have come, not you. You could have killed yourself."

"So you're not angry?"

"Yes. No. Maybe. Maybe I don't know. My mind is so muddled right now, but the main concern is to get you to town and to see a doctor." With that, she kicked her Thomas and sent it on a beeline towards town. Keeping the Thomas at a fast trot, she glanced back at the man in red. He seemed to have fallen asleep again but still she whispered, "Thank you, anyway," before turning back to driving the Thomas onward.

Behind her, Vash smiled slightly, before adjusting his position slightly. "De nada," he grinned, before lapsing into sleep.

Ahead of them, town shimmered like a mirage in the afternoon heat.


----------------------------

Mild translation note: According to what Spanish I've taken, the phrase 'De Nada,' while it is literally translated as 'of nothing,' is actually used as the English phrase, "You're Welcome." It's only in there because I like the sound of it, so don't ask how Vash knows Spanish.