~the best gesture of my brain is less than

~your eyelids' flutter which says

~we are for each other: then

~laugh, leaning back in my arms

~for life's not a paragraph

~And death i think is no parenthesis.

-e.e cummings

~Vash~

I had thrown the jacket away long ago. In the desert that day, when I had almost taken the life of my brother. I no longer had a use for it now. I no longer had to force myself to fight. So I threw it carelessly into the air, watching as the wind picked it up and blew it a few feet from where I stood. It shielded the sun briefly floating like a red cloud in the wind. I had turned away before I saw it land. My only concern was getting my brother back. My only concern now was being happy.

I had been wrong in thinking that I would never need to fight again. That one day I would have to don the scarlet coat again to get back something I truly loved. Something that this time, chose to run away from me. Something I had caused to run away from me.

So now I chased her. It was funny in an ironic sense. The stable, level headedly stubborn insurance girl that never turned away from me, always stood by me, and never ceased to chase after me when I ran, was now finding her own solace in escape. Something I thought I had been the only one who was all too good at.

It was a little trickier to find her than I had anticipated. I guessed on her location based on Millie's information. She had given the excuse of visiting her family. I knew it was a hint that she had dropped, a purposeful lead that would linger incase anyone was wise enough to grasp it. Her home town was easy to find after I searched through the records in her room, her ID and social papers told me the place of her birth and the name of her parents. The only task that proved to be challenging was locating her actual whereabouts. She could have stayed in a number of inns, used a number of names, or simply chosen to stay with her parents.

I didn't think it very smart to check her parent's home. After all, a tall blond haired guy in a bright red coat was just a bit too conspicuous if you ask me. I really didn't feel like getting shot at more than was necessary. After checking a number of inns I found the one she was staying at and tried her room. Empty. This left one option—the pub. It was the most unlikely place to find Meryl in my opinion. Never much of a drinker, she usually looked down her nose at me when I drank a bit too many and seemed to stare at me with that ever disdainful look of 'you're going to regret that in the morning'. Before I had the chance to properly search for her through the windows I caught a glimpse of white to my left. It had to be her. Only Meryl would find sitting on the edge of a well in the middle of the night a completely acceptable pastime. And here I thought she was supposed to be the sensible one who would pull me back from such a thing scolding, "You could have fallen in! Do you know what's down where?"

The thought brought a soft smile to my face. I could never depend on myself. Through all of my years of existence I could depend on no one around me. Rem had been the only one who had ever showed me otherwise. That people were there to be trusted, that sometimes you just had to open up to them and they showed you the amazing things they had to give in return. All these years I ran from the part of me I despised. All these years I ran from the memory of the only woman I had ever truly loved. And in the end I had run directly back into her arms. In the soul of a woman who cared just the same, who never doubted herself and who saw me as nothing more than a human being. And that was more than I had ever been given in my entire life.

It took me a moment to realize that she was crying. I had thought that the shifting of her body was just the wind blowing her cape about freely. But as I moved closer, I could see that her body shook with each tear that dropped as if it were a part of her that caused her pain to shed. Her small frame shuddered as her hands came up against her face, pressing against her eyes as if to stop the tears or to shield the image of their falling.

There was nothing for me to do. I was afraid to approach her and have her yell at me. To retaliate with a blow and say that she had run from me for a reason. That she was crying because of all the pain I had caused her, that she needed to cry to be rid of me. And yet there was another part that hoped that maybe she was crying for me. It was a stupid hope, and I should have just turned and quietly walked away.

But I never really approved of just walking away.

So instead I came closer to her, close enough to feel as she trembled, to see the tears that dropped onto her lap and into the dark water below her feet.

"Meryl."