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mildlyreckless.livejournal.com) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
tampered2008-01-25 09:53 pm
mildlyreckless.livejournal.com) wrote in tampered2008-01-25 09:53 pm
Backdated Log; Complete
When; Thursday (January 24th) night just before midnight, and then Friday, start of the power-swap curse.
Rating; PG for some swearing and transforming from being a sea horse to being a human with no clothes on.
Characters; Meryl Stryfe (![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
inyourbusiness) and Vash (mildlyreckless)
Summary; Vash and Meryl are out drinking. At midnight, Vash becomes a human and Meryl discovers the joy of having Hatori Sohma's curse.
Log;
Meryl's head rested on her arms, folded tightly around a bottle as she slouched over a booth table in the pub she decided Vash and she absolutely had to go to after spending too much time in a prior bar. Eyes dazed, she was so quiet for the longest time. Most of the places she was dragging him to were places that Rem and she had bounced around to the one time they were able to get out and do things without worrying about curses or Humanoid Typhoons or manic priests.
Conversation had gone through serious and humorous, but had resided for a moment when Meryl rested herself down like that. In reality, Meryl was trying to stifle her habit of being the worst bipolar drunk in the world. She never attacked her company (if she had it), but she got weird.
And that was when Meryl Stryfe, lucid drunk as she was, perked up, grabbed at her bottle and slammed it back down in front of Vash, as though to demand his attention. "Alright, Mr. Stampede." It was said with a bit of difficulty as she fought a slur and a hint of... what was that? An accent? Oh, Meryl. "We should go explode something. To commemorate... something that's worth commemorating."
~*~
Vash opened one eye blearily and watched Meryl with a sense of almost wariness.
"...Explode something?" he echoed a bit dumbly. "That...sounds like it'd go against...love and peace. And stuff. And I don't really feel like it anyway."
He really didn't. He barely felt like doing what he was now. Wolfwood had tried to talk him out of his funk (and had probably done a better job than most would have), but Vash never had been one to let something go that easily. Especially when something had come as a shock.
He wasn't sure what he felt worse about at this point... The issue itself, or the fact that he knew it would be bugging him for a while and probably causing him to make people worry for the next few days.
Both reasons were call enough for alcohol as far as he was concerned, so he drank enough for both of them.
~*~
Meryl watched him with hollow eyes, tired eyes, for a long moment. Where Vash simply sat and mulled it away, Meryl would retaliate against her emotions and try to block them away. That's what she was becoming a pro from in regards to that. After the curses and the fact that Meryl felt so guilty when she let it out...
...and this wasn't helping. She made him miserable by opening her mouth, and even if he didn't say it, Meryl could see it. She could see it, and after a silent moment, she pushed her hand out towards him, outstretching her fingers to gesture that she wanted his hand in turn. "V-Vash. Talk to me?"
~*~
Vash regarded Meryl's hand and sighed softly before taking it in his right hand - his real one - and examining her hand thoughtfully.
"It's nothing you need to be worried about," he murmured. "Not like I've never gotten news like that before."
His biggest qualm with talking about the whole issue was the fact that getting into it would expose more of how tragic his past was. He really didn't like people to think about that.
~*~
What had she done? Seriously? That was plastered on her face as her free hand splayed carelessly across the side of her face, her pinky finger pushing up on her nose without her really knowing. ...or caring. One of the two. Her ring finger poked into her eye and pushed up on the eyelid, but she watched on at him with both eyes regardless.
"I~" it was in singsong, and it was clear she was saying it without a bit of a filter on her mouth, and it was clear moreso that Elendira was right: she really had picked up bad habits from Wolfwood. "--fucking blew it, haven't I."
She was ready to demand drunken staggering back to Building 12. They were in close proximity of... no, not that. Cabs though. Cabs were good. ...were there cabs--yes, of course there were, damn it. And she'd pay for one to assure neither of them would end up falling into a trash can, because she couldn't trust him to help her, and she couldn't trust herself to help him in such a circumstance. They were so mean.
~*~
"...Oh, Meryl," Vash sighed, sagging in his seat slightly. "It's not... No, it's nothing you did. It's my own...issue. That's all."
He rested his head against both their hands on the table and groaned.
"I'm sorry. I shouldn't have... Ugh. I'm sorry."
~*~
Meryl was silent, when he rested his head against their hands, her loaded mind going two different ways. One way was in the direction of curiosity and confused pity. He was hurting, and there just wasn't anything she could do to help him. She was so bad at helping anyone at all, and more so her friends. Rem. Wolfwood. Livio. ...Vash.
The other direction was focused on his hair. Even as Vash slumped down like that, it didn't move. How did it do that? It had to be a Plant thing, and it had to be some sort of bizarre... bizarre shell covering his soft no doubt never closed soft spot on his skull or something. Her curiosity had her pawing at his hair gently soon enough.
"Vash," she sighed as she patted gently, "you need to stop apologizing and start telling how to help you, jackass." If things didn't perk up, she was stumbling out of the booth and leaving the tab for the sake of a cab. Seriously.
~*~
Vash listened to his own breathing in silence for a few moments before tilting his head up so it was resting on his chin.
"It's not that big of a deal," he said, letting Meryl pat him. "Everybody gets sad when they..."
He trailed off and frowned slightly, sniffing at Meryl's hand.
"...Are you wearing perfume or something?"
~*~
Her look of concern fell unenthusiastically. The hand that had been busy patting at his porcupine-like mop of black hair (all that was left was Livio, and they'd all have black hair, Meryl mused) dropped on his head and just stayed there.
"No, Vash," she replied, "I threw up on my hand and it smells like roses." It was so deadpan, albeit struggled straight. "Of course I'm wearing perfume. Women tend to do that. ...and before you ask, yes I am a woman. I'm sure of it."
~*~
Vash's eyes narrowed as he concentrated on the smell and he pulled Meryl's hand closer for another sniff.
"What is it?" he asked. It smelled familiar, but he couldn't remember who it was who used to wear it.
~*~
The hell? Meryl was back to poking herself in the eye as her hand was pulled, her other squinting halfway. "W-What? It's just a floral scent I picked up from a store," she puzzled. And her hand was pulled away from her face so she could sniff at her other hand. "Why?"
How weird it had to look. Then again, she considered, her eyes flitted across the pub at the crude and weird displays all over. Was that a man in a top hat trying to pay off his tab with game money? ...no, no, she wasn't going to ask.
~*~
Vash ignored the question and thought harder. What was it...? Who was it...? Not Rachel, she liked vanilla better. His eyes narrowed further and he turned Meryl's hand over to smell her wrist. This was gonna drive him nuts.
Suddenly it hit him and he thumped his left fist on the table loudly in triumph.
"Lilacs!" he announced a bit too loudly, interrupting some sort of deal for sex a few tables down. "That's it! That woman who cornered me for sex in May city wore the same stuff! God, that was driving me crazy. Thank you, Meryl."
~*~
Meryl's right eyebrow shot up and nearly hit her hairline as she just stared, unamused. What the hell was his--
Yeah, that was her hand shooting out and slapping across his face as she lifted herself from her seat to throw her weight into it. Okay, so she ended up crashing against the table as a result since her own momentum was more than her wobbly knees could handle, but goddamn it, if that wasn't a satisfactory swing.
"Ireallyhateyou!" she blurted in midswing.
~*~
Vash's head went to the side at the slap and he fell out of his booth in surprise, getting a pretty good laugh out of the rest of the bar. He blinked up at Meryl with an injured expression.
"Hey!" he whined. "What was that for?! I wasn't saying that you're anything like her! That's just what it made me think of!"
He had a lot of disturbing stories about propositions. He just tended to forget that others didn't know about them.
~*~
Meryl was still sprawled on the table from where she fell, and one of the bottles of alcohol had fallen victim to her crash, the fluid spilling over one of her hands as it rolled across onto Vash's [former] seat. A scathing, crazed laugh escaped her, though, and Meryl pointed that alcohol-drenched hand at Vash with a spray of liquid.
"Teach you to be a jackass!" she hollered, before going to clamor out of the booth. While it appeared at first that Meryl was getting from her seat to just wail on the man for what he said, it quickly became apparent that Meryl's goal was just to stomp right over him to start for the door. "You're just lucky that I have to get a monkey, beanstalk." It was one of those phrases blurted out from her like they were literally just a bunch of words that sounded nice together as a threat, so she decided to say them. It was really kind of sad.
~*~
Vash blinked at Meryl as she passed, trying to make sense of what she just said. ...Seriously. What the hell. He stumbled to his feet and fell in line behind her, pausing to dig some money out of his pocket as a tip and dumping it on the table before rushing after Meryl and running into the doorframe in the process.
"Hey, wait up," he said weakly. "You can't just leave me here!"
~*~
Meryl waved a hand unenthusiastically, almost joining Vash in getting caught in the doorway, only on the opposing side. "Oh, I can leave you, tinman! It's not fault if you're too busy slurping the tap!"
How dare he--he called her perfume the perfume of a whore. A whore! It was enough for Meryl to whirl around and make another attempt at popping his other cheek once again, just once for good measure, but her whirl only caused to send her toppling and making grabs at his clothes. That was his fault, too.
~*~
"Look, if it's about the perfume," he said apologetically, "I still think it smells really nice! You pull it off way better than--"
When Meryl fell towards him, several things happened at once. The most important of those things was that midnight hit. Vash reached out to catch the shorter woman in his arms just as a strange rush went through his body, as if something was leaving him. It left him feeling strangely hollow. Not to mention the fact that he could no longer sense Knives and Chronica.
"What--" he said, but what happened to Meryl next made him cut off once again.
~*~
Meryl hated the City.
Vash was one of very few men that Meryl didn't flip out about touching her unless she was just being an absolute bitch. Livio and Wolfwood were the other two, although Wolfwood was only once in a while that she'd bother (usually following some sort of horrible curse), and with Livio that was something entirely different. So, really, falling into him wasn't a completely huge deal.
It was the fact that the moment she crashed into his arms, she had no idea what the hell was happening. In her drunken mind, it made it all the worse and harder to follow as it felt as though she was shrinking and slipping from him so rapidly, and her clothes felt awfully big. What the hell had she been drinking?
In reality, it had nothing at all to do with what she'd been drinking before (fairly strong junk, to her credit), but it was clearly one of those goddamn curses.
Meryl Stryfe was turning into a small sea horse after her embrace with Vash. The truly sad part of it was, she didn't even know what the hell a sea horse was.
~*~
Vash was a little surprised his eyes didn't simply fall out of their sockets, they were open so wide.
Meryl had disappeared from her clothes.
For a brief, horrible second he wondered if he had vaporized her somehow, but then it struck him that he might not be able to do that at the moment. He didn't even feel like a Plant anymore.
"...Meryl?" he said stupidly, looking around. Then his eyes went down to her clothes, which had slipped from his arms into a heap on the ground. Something tiny was lying in the folds.
"Meryl?!" Vash repeated, more frantic this time. He dropped to his knees and carefully fished through the clothes to find...some kind of tiny snake-fish thing.
Vash blinked at it. A sea horse. That was it. But how did it get here? He carefully picked it up in his hands and looked around helplessly. Then he put two and two together.
"...Oh, SHIT! WATER! I NEED WATER!!" He looked down at the tiny creature in his hands with wild eyes. "FRESH WATER OR SALT WATER, DO YOU KNOW?!"
~*~
Was he seriously asking her?! Meryl could only think this his fault as she felt a frantic panic fill her from the stifling suffocation she was beginning to experience, and she had no idea why. The perspective difference, and--it was too surreal, and she simply couldn't care because--
And it didn't help that a wobbling drunk came out right about then and seemed to get very interested in what Vash was up to. He was a large, hunched man of the elderly breed, his fuzzy face dirty and red on one side like he had been passed out on something hard for quite some time. With a large hand, trembling and dirty, he reached out to tap at the little thing in the younger [looking] man's hands. "O-Oh, oh my, lookit that little toy, son." His accent was a raw Irish sort. "You best be careful, it might break!"
~*~
Vash stared at Meryl. Then at the drunk.
Then proceeded to flip out.
"OH MY GOD I TURNED HER INTO A SEA HORSE SOMEHOW!!!" he yowled, closing his hands over the tiny Meryl protectively and looking around frantically. "I need to get her home! Sea horses have even more extreme curfews! With water! I need a sink! Oh my God!"
He darted back and forth in a six-foot-radius for a few minutes before finally grabbing Meryl's clothes off of the ground, sputtering in horror before taking off down the street for the apartment. He was definitely different - he wasn't nearly as fast as he had been before. What had happened to him? What had happened to Meryl?!
His mad dash into his home was nothing short of spectacular and he carelessly let Meryl's clothes fall to the floor as he ran into the bathroom and began filling the sink.
"Just hold on, Meryl," he pleaded frantically, holding her in his left palm and gently touching her tiny side with his bare index finger. "Look, I'm getting some water ready for you so you can breathe! Here, here!"
The sink had finally filled enough that he was able to gently submerge her in the water. Once he had laid her down, he sagged over the sink, clutching his heart.
"Oh my God. Are you okay? I know you probably can't talk or anything, but..."
~*~
It felt like a relief of pressure and for a moment she just sagged there, hovering as she tried to regain herself from whatever had just happened. It didn't make any sense, and for some reason the water felt as relieving as a breath of fresh air. Like it was essential to her. Meryl still didn't understand what had happened, and was still torn in her mind with blaming Vash or accusing him of not watching her drinks right in the bar. Maybe it was some violent acid trip...
After a moment, the little form shook this way and that, before hovering upright and doing a little circle as she tried to really grasp where she was. Eyes rolled in their sockets in ways that Meryl fathomed would be painful on a normal day. Drain. Sub-drain. Smooth white. ...faucet.
...Meryl was certain she'd never live this one down, but how was she to get out of this predicament? She was trying her best to stay calm. Yes, calm. Calm would make it better. And then when she was better, Vash was dead. She had the distinct damn feeling it was because she touched him. The tingling in her that was similar to when she felt the transformation back at the bar began again in a far less conspicuous way, and Meryl ignored it as eyes rolled around to look at Vash.
She wondered if Wolfwood took payments for personal assassinations.
~*~
Vash watched Meryl drift and quickly put a finger in the water for her to hold onto with her tail for fear she'd get pushed around by the still-running water.
"...You're pretty cute like that," he mused, mostly to himself. "I bet you'd make good company for Doitzel."
It still didn't make any sense... What had happened? Obviously this was some kind of curse, but... Would he be able to change her back?
"...Crap. I hope you're not stuck like this all day."
~*~
It was instinctual, and that scared her, to wrap her... whatever the hell that was--tail?--around his finger for a brace. She could hear him fairly well in the sink, despite the running water, at that wasn't funny at all to her. That fish, Doitzel, was probably just as evil as his cats were. She'd caught the fish staring at her the time in October when she was helping tend his animals while he was back on No-Man's Land, after all. Everything Vash touched was made of Satan.
Logic said: this was a curse. Meryl said: when confused, blame Vash first.
The tingling increased then and Meryl's temporary, solitary appendage released Vash as her little form lurched forward and it began to grow larger. Everything was a blur to her, between just the sensation of growth and her still-state of being rather tipsy, but Meryl was already returning to her normal form and was going to need major help and fast from Vash.
The actuality of her state of dress (or lack thereof) was simply not factoring in just yet in the rushing blurs.
~*~
This is what happened as Vash experienced it:
Meryl released his finger.
There was a poof.
And then there was a normal Meryl sitting in the sink.
Oh. And she was naked.
There's always a brief, horrible moment in a situation where something dramatic happens quickly where all parties involved can do nothing but stare dumbly at whatever they had been looking at a moment ago. When that moment had passed for Vash, his eyes snapped open wide, and he didn't so much 'turn around' as 'teleport himself so he was facing the opposite direction'.
"I am so. Sorry." he said with genuine horror. Oh, Jesus. That image was going to be burned into his brain for the rest of his life.
~*~
Yeah. Staring dumbly was really all she could do before Meryl realized what was going on, and as she screamed and as she flailed, her entire body slipped from the porcelain and she crash-landed into the floor. Hands went to wrapping her body, and her eyes were as big as her fists.
"What did you do?! Where are my clothes?! Vash!" As if the City wasn't cruel enough. "Get me my clothes so I can leave!" There was a towel hanging on a nearby towel rack that the nude woman frantically pulled free and went to help cover her body. She was soaking wet, anyway, because it was just as well. "I-It's freezing in here--Vash! What the hell happened?!" Because clearly Vash knew. It was all his fault anyway.
~*~
"I didn't do anything!" Vash said frantically, keeping his back to Meryl, his hands up by his eyes to make sure he didn't catch anything by mistake. "I dropped your clothes out there, hold on!"
Vash darted out of the bathroom and scooped the discarded clothing off of the floor, offering them to Meryl from around the corner, keeping everything but his arm on the other side of the wall.
"I don't know WHAT happened! It must be a curse!"
~*~
Meryl clamored quickly to her offered clothes around the corner, her feet slipping and sliding all over the tile. It didn't help in the slightest that she was still tipsy as hell, and she just got transformed into a thing... frankly, she had no idea what she was more mad over. Vash seeing her, even for just a second, without anything on, or getting turned into a thing.
She didn't bother with her bra, too frantic to just cover up. Not even drying off completely. She wore black! That would suffice for the moment. "I--I don't understand, what triggered it to happen, why didn't it happen to you, and what the hell did I turn into?! I swear to God, you better pray this is in fact a curse, Mr. Typhoon!"
~*~
"I ca-- I don-- I didn't--" Vash stammered from the other side of the wall, keeping his hands to his eyes. "It has to be a curse! I think I'm a human! And you turned into a sea horse for...some reason! When I held you!"
Vash wasn't sure of up from down right now. He was far too embarrassed to really grasp what was going on at the moment, let alone logically explained what had just happened.
~*~
Done, what Meryl didn't bother with was shoved into her coat pocket and her coat zipped up tightly. For a moment she didn't say a thing, her hands trembling and going over her face. Embarrassed just like Vash, panicked, and angry, Meryl knew he was right. She knew it, but still. It was always easier to blame him. Poor Vash, for real.
"I have no idea what a sea horse is, but I don't want to do it again, and you know what?" And there went Meryl, out past him, stomping in her boots. Who knew such a little woman could make so much noise? "I want to talk to the deities, I want to give them a piece of my goddamn mind!"
~*~
Vash peered through his fingers to check and make sure Meryl was decent before lowering his hands.
"Hey, don't do that!" he said quickly. "Last time someone did, we got ANOTHER curse! That one made... Well, it wasn't fun! Just settle down!"
Ignore the fact that I just saw you naked. Right. Great.
"Look, as long as I don't touch you, it should be fine, right?"
~*~
"I'm tired of this, Vash! This is ridiculous! You know that--" And that's when she stopped. It registered.
And she just stood there and blinked, before she slowly rolled around on her heel and looked to him. Beyond her beat-read face, her eyes were narrowing in question. "Did you just say you think you're a human, Vash?"
~*~
Vash paused for a minute, the corner of his mouth twitching with discomfort.
"...Yeah. I did. I am."
~*~
And there was where the override happened. While Meryl on a common basis never really thought of Vash as any different from her or anyone else, in the end, she recognized he wasn't and so instant concern was overriding the prior events.
That would come back later with a vengence.
"A-Are you alright?"
~*~
Vash gulped and lifted his hand to look at it, frowning.
"Yeah," he said hesitantly. "...It's weird. Kinda hollow. And lonelier."
He looked down at Meryl with a thoughtful frown.
"Do you always feel like this? Not being able to... I mean..."
He lowered his hand and rubbed his neck with the other.
"Never mind. I'll be okay. It's just a little weird."
~*~
Meryl's head tilted to the side and she watched up at him with as much thoughtfulness as his frown had from before. This wasn't good. He was going to need help.
She nodded slowly. "I'm sure it is. If you promise not to lay one finger on me, I'll answer any questions you have, you know. What do you mean by 'lonelier'?" Not having a clue of how Plants worked, that comment was found to be a bit weird by the midget woman.
~*~
Vash looked at Meryl for a minute as he considered ways to answer her last question. The way he felt now... Would she even be able to understand?
"...It's nothing," he said with a hollow smile. "Don't worry about it. I have to tell you, it's sort of nice not having to slow myself down or anything."
But it wasn't THAT nice. He could already tell he was clumsier than before as he tried to adjust to his new reflexes. It wasn't too much of a change... Whatever human he'd turned into had great physical and mental responses. But it was still different.
~*~
She would have slapped him again if she was positive that she wouldn't transform again just by touching him. She could see right past that hollow smile, having spent a good deal of the time observing each of her friends. Something Meryl Stryfe never bothered with in times passed, but it came in handy.
"Alright," she said with consideration. She paused long enough to pretend to be distracted with rotating her shoulder. "I should really hit you. Do you have any... you should probably sit down, and ask questions, Vash. Running around the City, drunk and like a lunatic, are you trying to get yourself killed?"
~*~
"Ah, to be fair," Vash pointed out, "I was drinking while I was still myself, so I sobered up before I became human."
He wasn't sure what to ask, really. He knew how humans worked. The rest would just have to be...trial and error, right?
...Hey. He COULD get drunk like this...
He'd have to think on that later.
~*~
And Meryl just stared at him. Was that supposed to mean something to her? That was exactly what was what her face said, so obviously. Her lip was curled up and everything as her eyes just spaced out.
... And then she just hauled off and popped him again. Open-handed, of course, although Meryl was tempted to punch him. She hadn't in years, and she hadn't since she'd been taking her self defense lessons with Riou and Nanami. But Meryl was reserving that for something that was far worse than him just trying to put on a brave face for a situation that he was obviously bothered over.
"Oh, just stop it already, you big, stupid tinman!"
~*~
Vash didn't see that one coming. At all. And he nearly fell over from the blow. And it hurt. Her slap earlier had been surprising, but it hadn't hurt... It must've been the human thing.
"Would you stop doing that?!" he yelped, touching his cheek. "That hurt!"
~*~
"I hope it leaves a mark!" Meryl screamed at him. And up when her index finger in a typical Meryl gesture of angry finger pointing. "I really hate when you do that! I really do! You never let anyone help you, and I should just kick your ass for it."
On her heel, Meryl turned again. God, she really did hate it. It was something so small, really, something that would [hopefully] be over by the next midnight to toll, but that just didn't matter. He was such a-- "Jackass. Seriously, Vash. A big one. Even human. Call me if you decide you need help. Jackass."
~*~
Vash just stared off to the side. What did she think she could help him with in this situation? He just needed to feel things out.
...But she was right. He never did let people help. He didn't back when he knew Rachel, and he didn't now. He thought he'd been getting better at it, but maybe he wasn't.
...Now he really needed another drink.
"Goodnight, Meryl," he muttered, keeping his eyes on the same spot by the wall.
~*~
To respond with that with, "Die in a fire, Vash." was really, really tempting. But Meryl just sighed as she flung the door open. The hallway was cold against her hair, and it figured she hadn't bothered with the jacket with the hood. But how did she know she'd be turned into a goddamn whatever?
Instead, Meryl grasped the door and nestled it against her shoulder for a moment. "Vash. It may be just a curse, but there's a line of severity here. Your words have drawn that line before you, as always, locked up. Just remember that. Goodnight, Vash."
And then with a shake of her head, she was gone with a slight slam of the door.
Rating; PG for some swearing and transforming from being a sea horse to being a human with no clothes on.
Characters; Meryl Stryfe (
inyourbusiness) and Vash (mildlyreckless)Summary; Vash and Meryl are out drinking. At midnight, Vash becomes a human and Meryl discovers the joy of having Hatori Sohma's curse.
Log;
Meryl's head rested on her arms, folded tightly around a bottle as she slouched over a booth table in the pub she decided Vash and she absolutely had to go to after spending too much time in a prior bar. Eyes dazed, she was so quiet for the longest time. Most of the places she was dragging him to were places that Rem and she had bounced around to the one time they were able to get out and do things without worrying about curses or Humanoid Typhoons or manic priests.
Conversation had gone through serious and humorous, but had resided for a moment when Meryl rested herself down like that. In reality, Meryl was trying to stifle her habit of being the worst bipolar drunk in the world. She never attacked her company (if she had it), but she got weird.
And that was when Meryl Stryfe, lucid drunk as she was, perked up, grabbed at her bottle and slammed it back down in front of Vash, as though to demand his attention. "Alright, Mr. Stampede." It was said with a bit of difficulty as she fought a slur and a hint of... what was that? An accent? Oh, Meryl. "We should go explode something. To commemorate... something that's worth commemorating."
~*~
Vash opened one eye blearily and watched Meryl with a sense of almost wariness.
"...Explode something?" he echoed a bit dumbly. "That...sounds like it'd go against...love and peace. And stuff. And I don't really feel like it anyway."
He really didn't. He barely felt like doing what he was now. Wolfwood had tried to talk him out of his funk (and had probably done a better job than most would have), but Vash never had been one to let something go that easily. Especially when something had come as a shock.
He wasn't sure what he felt worse about at this point... The issue itself, or the fact that he knew it would be bugging him for a while and probably causing him to make people worry for the next few days.
Both reasons were call enough for alcohol as far as he was concerned, so he drank enough for both of them.
~*~
Meryl watched him with hollow eyes, tired eyes, for a long moment. Where Vash simply sat and mulled it away, Meryl would retaliate against her emotions and try to block them away. That's what she was becoming a pro from in regards to that. After the curses and the fact that Meryl felt so guilty when she let it out...
...and this wasn't helping. She made him miserable by opening her mouth, and even if he didn't say it, Meryl could see it. She could see it, and after a silent moment, she pushed her hand out towards him, outstretching her fingers to gesture that she wanted his hand in turn. "V-Vash. Talk to me?"
~*~
Vash regarded Meryl's hand and sighed softly before taking it in his right hand - his real one - and examining her hand thoughtfully.
"It's nothing you need to be worried about," he murmured. "Not like I've never gotten news like that before."
His biggest qualm with talking about the whole issue was the fact that getting into it would expose more of how tragic his past was. He really didn't like people to think about that.
~*~
What had she done? Seriously? That was plastered on her face as her free hand splayed carelessly across the side of her face, her pinky finger pushing up on her nose without her really knowing. ...or caring. One of the two. Her ring finger poked into her eye and pushed up on the eyelid, but she watched on at him with both eyes regardless.
"I~" it was in singsong, and it was clear she was saying it without a bit of a filter on her mouth, and it was clear moreso that Elendira was right: she really had picked up bad habits from Wolfwood. "--fucking blew it, haven't I."
She was ready to demand drunken staggering back to Building 12. They were in close proximity of... no, not that. Cabs though. Cabs were good. ...were there cabs--yes, of course there were, damn it. And she'd pay for one to assure neither of them would end up falling into a trash can, because she couldn't trust him to help her, and she couldn't trust herself to help him in such a circumstance. They were so mean.
~*~
"...Oh, Meryl," Vash sighed, sagging in his seat slightly. "It's not... No, it's nothing you did. It's my own...issue. That's all."
He rested his head against both their hands on the table and groaned.
"I'm sorry. I shouldn't have... Ugh. I'm sorry."
~*~
Meryl was silent, when he rested his head against their hands, her loaded mind going two different ways. One way was in the direction of curiosity and confused pity. He was hurting, and there just wasn't anything she could do to help him. She was so bad at helping anyone at all, and more so her friends. Rem. Wolfwood. Livio. ...Vash.
The other direction was focused on his hair. Even as Vash slumped down like that, it didn't move. How did it do that? It had to be a Plant thing, and it had to be some sort of bizarre... bizarre shell covering his soft no doubt never closed soft spot on his skull or something. Her curiosity had her pawing at his hair gently soon enough.
"Vash," she sighed as she patted gently, "you need to stop apologizing and start telling how to help you, jackass." If things didn't perk up, she was stumbling out of the booth and leaving the tab for the sake of a cab. Seriously.
~*~
Vash listened to his own breathing in silence for a few moments before tilting his head up so it was resting on his chin.
"It's not that big of a deal," he said, letting Meryl pat him. "Everybody gets sad when they..."
He trailed off and frowned slightly, sniffing at Meryl's hand.
"...Are you wearing perfume or something?"
~*~
Her look of concern fell unenthusiastically. The hand that had been busy patting at his porcupine-like mop of black hair (all that was left was Livio, and they'd all have black hair, Meryl mused) dropped on his head and just stayed there.
"No, Vash," she replied, "I threw up on my hand and it smells like roses." It was so deadpan, albeit struggled straight. "Of course I'm wearing perfume. Women tend to do that. ...and before you ask, yes I am a woman. I'm sure of it."
~*~
Vash's eyes narrowed as he concentrated on the smell and he pulled Meryl's hand closer for another sniff.
"What is it?" he asked. It smelled familiar, but he couldn't remember who it was who used to wear it.
~*~
The hell? Meryl was back to poking herself in the eye as her hand was pulled, her other squinting halfway. "W-What? It's just a floral scent I picked up from a store," she puzzled. And her hand was pulled away from her face so she could sniff at her other hand. "Why?"
How weird it had to look. Then again, she considered, her eyes flitted across the pub at the crude and weird displays all over. Was that a man in a top hat trying to pay off his tab with game money? ...no, no, she wasn't going to ask.
~*~
Vash ignored the question and thought harder. What was it...? Who was it...? Not Rachel, she liked vanilla better. His eyes narrowed further and he turned Meryl's hand over to smell her wrist. This was gonna drive him nuts.
Suddenly it hit him and he thumped his left fist on the table loudly in triumph.
"Lilacs!" he announced a bit too loudly, interrupting some sort of deal for sex a few tables down. "That's it! That woman who cornered me for sex in May city wore the same stuff! God, that was driving me crazy. Thank you, Meryl."
~*~
Meryl's right eyebrow shot up and nearly hit her hairline as she just stared, unamused. What the hell was his--
Yeah, that was her hand shooting out and slapping across his face as she lifted herself from her seat to throw her weight into it. Okay, so she ended up crashing against the table as a result since her own momentum was more than her wobbly knees could handle, but goddamn it, if that wasn't a satisfactory swing.
"Ireallyhateyou!" she blurted in midswing.
~*~
Vash's head went to the side at the slap and he fell out of his booth in surprise, getting a pretty good laugh out of the rest of the bar. He blinked up at Meryl with an injured expression.
"Hey!" he whined. "What was that for?! I wasn't saying that you're anything like her! That's just what it made me think of!"
He had a lot of disturbing stories about propositions. He just tended to forget that others didn't know about them.
~*~
Meryl was still sprawled on the table from where she fell, and one of the bottles of alcohol had fallen victim to her crash, the fluid spilling over one of her hands as it rolled across onto Vash's [former] seat. A scathing, crazed laugh escaped her, though, and Meryl pointed that alcohol-drenched hand at Vash with a spray of liquid.
"Teach you to be a jackass!" she hollered, before going to clamor out of the booth. While it appeared at first that Meryl was getting from her seat to just wail on the man for what he said, it quickly became apparent that Meryl's goal was just to stomp right over him to start for the door. "You're just lucky that I have to get a monkey, beanstalk." It was one of those phrases blurted out from her like they were literally just a bunch of words that sounded nice together as a threat, so she decided to say them. It was really kind of sad.
~*~
Vash blinked at Meryl as she passed, trying to make sense of what she just said. ...Seriously. What the hell. He stumbled to his feet and fell in line behind her, pausing to dig some money out of his pocket as a tip and dumping it on the table before rushing after Meryl and running into the doorframe in the process.
"Hey, wait up," he said weakly. "You can't just leave me here!"
~*~
Meryl waved a hand unenthusiastically, almost joining Vash in getting caught in the doorway, only on the opposing side. "Oh, I can leave you, tinman! It's not fault if you're too busy slurping the tap!"
How dare he--he called her perfume the perfume of a whore. A whore! It was enough for Meryl to whirl around and make another attempt at popping his other cheek once again, just once for good measure, but her whirl only caused to send her toppling and making grabs at his clothes. That was his fault, too.
~*~
"Look, if it's about the perfume," he said apologetically, "I still think it smells really nice! You pull it off way better than--"
When Meryl fell towards him, several things happened at once. The most important of those things was that midnight hit. Vash reached out to catch the shorter woman in his arms just as a strange rush went through his body, as if something was leaving him. It left him feeling strangely hollow. Not to mention the fact that he could no longer sense Knives and Chronica.
"What--" he said, but what happened to Meryl next made him cut off once again.
~*~
Meryl hated the City.
Vash was one of very few men that Meryl didn't flip out about touching her unless she was just being an absolute bitch. Livio and Wolfwood were the other two, although Wolfwood was only once in a while that she'd bother (usually following some sort of horrible curse), and with Livio that was something entirely different. So, really, falling into him wasn't a completely huge deal.
It was the fact that the moment she crashed into his arms, she had no idea what the hell was happening. In her drunken mind, it made it all the worse and harder to follow as it felt as though she was shrinking and slipping from him so rapidly, and her clothes felt awfully big. What the hell had she been drinking?
In reality, it had nothing at all to do with what she'd been drinking before (fairly strong junk, to her credit), but it was clearly one of those goddamn curses.
Meryl Stryfe was turning into a small sea horse after her embrace with Vash. The truly sad part of it was, she didn't even know what the hell a sea horse was.
~*~
Vash was a little surprised his eyes didn't simply fall out of their sockets, they were open so wide.
Meryl had disappeared from her clothes.
For a brief, horrible second he wondered if he had vaporized her somehow, but then it struck him that he might not be able to do that at the moment. He didn't even feel like a Plant anymore.
"...Meryl?" he said stupidly, looking around. Then his eyes went down to her clothes, which had slipped from his arms into a heap on the ground. Something tiny was lying in the folds.
"Meryl?!" Vash repeated, more frantic this time. He dropped to his knees and carefully fished through the clothes to find...some kind of tiny snake-fish thing.
Vash blinked at it. A sea horse. That was it. But how did it get here? He carefully picked it up in his hands and looked around helplessly. Then he put two and two together.
"...Oh, SHIT! WATER! I NEED WATER!!" He looked down at the tiny creature in his hands with wild eyes. "FRESH WATER OR SALT WATER, DO YOU KNOW?!"
~*~
Was he seriously asking her?! Meryl could only think this his fault as she felt a frantic panic fill her from the stifling suffocation she was beginning to experience, and she had no idea why. The perspective difference, and--it was too surreal, and she simply couldn't care because--
And it didn't help that a wobbling drunk came out right about then and seemed to get very interested in what Vash was up to. He was a large, hunched man of the elderly breed, his fuzzy face dirty and red on one side like he had been passed out on something hard for quite some time. With a large hand, trembling and dirty, he reached out to tap at the little thing in the younger [looking] man's hands. "O-Oh, oh my, lookit that little toy, son." His accent was a raw Irish sort. "You best be careful, it might break!"
~*~
Vash stared at Meryl. Then at the drunk.
Then proceeded to flip out.
"OH MY GOD I TURNED HER INTO A SEA HORSE SOMEHOW!!!" he yowled, closing his hands over the tiny Meryl protectively and looking around frantically. "I need to get her home! Sea horses have even more extreme curfews! With water! I need a sink! Oh my God!"
He darted back and forth in a six-foot-radius for a few minutes before finally grabbing Meryl's clothes off of the ground, sputtering in horror before taking off down the street for the apartment. He was definitely different - he wasn't nearly as fast as he had been before. What had happened to him? What had happened to Meryl?!
His mad dash into his home was nothing short of spectacular and he carelessly let Meryl's clothes fall to the floor as he ran into the bathroom and began filling the sink.
"Just hold on, Meryl," he pleaded frantically, holding her in his left palm and gently touching her tiny side with his bare index finger. "Look, I'm getting some water ready for you so you can breathe! Here, here!"
The sink had finally filled enough that he was able to gently submerge her in the water. Once he had laid her down, he sagged over the sink, clutching his heart.
"Oh my God. Are you okay? I know you probably can't talk or anything, but..."
~*~
It felt like a relief of pressure and for a moment she just sagged there, hovering as she tried to regain herself from whatever had just happened. It didn't make any sense, and for some reason the water felt as relieving as a breath of fresh air. Like it was essential to her. Meryl still didn't understand what had happened, and was still torn in her mind with blaming Vash or accusing him of not watching her drinks right in the bar. Maybe it was some violent acid trip...
After a moment, the little form shook this way and that, before hovering upright and doing a little circle as she tried to really grasp where she was. Eyes rolled in their sockets in ways that Meryl fathomed would be painful on a normal day. Drain. Sub-drain. Smooth white. ...faucet.
...Meryl was certain she'd never live this one down, but how was she to get out of this predicament? She was trying her best to stay calm. Yes, calm. Calm would make it better. And then when she was better, Vash was dead. She had the distinct damn feeling it was because she touched him. The tingling in her that was similar to when she felt the transformation back at the bar began again in a far less conspicuous way, and Meryl ignored it as eyes rolled around to look at Vash.
She wondered if Wolfwood took payments for personal assassinations.
~*~
Vash watched Meryl drift and quickly put a finger in the water for her to hold onto with her tail for fear she'd get pushed around by the still-running water.
"...You're pretty cute like that," he mused, mostly to himself. "I bet you'd make good company for Doitzel."
It still didn't make any sense... What had happened? Obviously this was some kind of curse, but... Would he be able to change her back?
"...Crap. I hope you're not stuck like this all day."
~*~
It was instinctual, and that scared her, to wrap her... whatever the hell that was--tail?--around his finger for a brace. She could hear him fairly well in the sink, despite the running water, at that wasn't funny at all to her. That fish, Doitzel, was probably just as evil as his cats were. She'd caught the fish staring at her the time in October when she was helping tend his animals while he was back on No-Man's Land, after all. Everything Vash touched was made of Satan.
Logic said: this was a curse. Meryl said: when confused, blame Vash first.
The tingling increased then and Meryl's temporary, solitary appendage released Vash as her little form lurched forward and it began to grow larger. Everything was a blur to her, between just the sensation of growth and her still-state of being rather tipsy, but Meryl was already returning to her normal form and was going to need major help and fast from Vash.
The actuality of her state of dress (or lack thereof) was simply not factoring in just yet in the rushing blurs.
~*~
This is what happened as Vash experienced it:
Meryl released his finger.
There was a poof.
And then there was a normal Meryl sitting in the sink.
Oh. And she was naked.
There's always a brief, horrible moment in a situation where something dramatic happens quickly where all parties involved can do nothing but stare dumbly at whatever they had been looking at a moment ago. When that moment had passed for Vash, his eyes snapped open wide, and he didn't so much 'turn around' as 'teleport himself so he was facing the opposite direction'.
"I am so. Sorry." he said with genuine horror. Oh, Jesus. That image was going to be burned into his brain for the rest of his life.
~*~
Yeah. Staring dumbly was really all she could do before Meryl realized what was going on, and as she screamed and as she flailed, her entire body slipped from the porcelain and she crash-landed into the floor. Hands went to wrapping her body, and her eyes were as big as her fists.
"What did you do?! Where are my clothes?! Vash!" As if the City wasn't cruel enough. "Get me my clothes so I can leave!" There was a towel hanging on a nearby towel rack that the nude woman frantically pulled free and went to help cover her body. She was soaking wet, anyway, because it was just as well. "I-It's freezing in here--Vash! What the hell happened?!" Because clearly Vash knew. It was all his fault anyway.
~*~
"I didn't do anything!" Vash said frantically, keeping his back to Meryl, his hands up by his eyes to make sure he didn't catch anything by mistake. "I dropped your clothes out there, hold on!"
Vash darted out of the bathroom and scooped the discarded clothing off of the floor, offering them to Meryl from around the corner, keeping everything but his arm on the other side of the wall.
"I don't know WHAT happened! It must be a curse!"
~*~
Meryl clamored quickly to her offered clothes around the corner, her feet slipping and sliding all over the tile. It didn't help in the slightest that she was still tipsy as hell, and she just got transformed into a thing... frankly, she had no idea what she was more mad over. Vash seeing her, even for just a second, without anything on, or getting turned into a thing.
She didn't bother with her bra, too frantic to just cover up. Not even drying off completely. She wore black! That would suffice for the moment. "I--I don't understand, what triggered it to happen, why didn't it happen to you, and what the hell did I turn into?! I swear to God, you better pray this is in fact a curse, Mr. Typhoon!"
~*~
"I ca-- I don-- I didn't--" Vash stammered from the other side of the wall, keeping his hands to his eyes. "It has to be a curse! I think I'm a human! And you turned into a sea horse for...some reason! When I held you!"
Vash wasn't sure of up from down right now. He was far too embarrassed to really grasp what was going on at the moment, let alone logically explained what had just happened.
~*~
Done, what Meryl didn't bother with was shoved into her coat pocket and her coat zipped up tightly. For a moment she didn't say a thing, her hands trembling and going over her face. Embarrassed just like Vash, panicked, and angry, Meryl knew he was right. She knew it, but still. It was always easier to blame him. Poor Vash, for real.
"I have no idea what a sea horse is, but I don't want to do it again, and you know what?" And there went Meryl, out past him, stomping in her boots. Who knew such a little woman could make so much noise? "I want to talk to the deities, I want to give them a piece of my goddamn mind!"
~*~
Vash peered through his fingers to check and make sure Meryl was decent before lowering his hands.
"Hey, don't do that!" he said quickly. "Last time someone did, we got ANOTHER curse! That one made... Well, it wasn't fun! Just settle down!"
Ignore the fact that I just saw you naked. Right. Great.
"Look, as long as I don't touch you, it should be fine, right?"
~*~
"I'm tired of this, Vash! This is ridiculous! You know that--" And that's when she stopped. It registered.
And she just stood there and blinked, before she slowly rolled around on her heel and looked to him. Beyond her beat-read face, her eyes were narrowing in question. "Did you just say you think you're a human, Vash?"
~*~
Vash paused for a minute, the corner of his mouth twitching with discomfort.
"...Yeah. I did. I am."
~*~
And there was where the override happened. While Meryl on a common basis never really thought of Vash as any different from her or anyone else, in the end, she recognized he wasn't and so instant concern was overriding the prior events.
That would come back later with a vengence.
"A-Are you alright?"
~*~
Vash gulped and lifted his hand to look at it, frowning.
"Yeah," he said hesitantly. "...It's weird. Kinda hollow. And lonelier."
He looked down at Meryl with a thoughtful frown.
"Do you always feel like this? Not being able to... I mean..."
He lowered his hand and rubbed his neck with the other.
"Never mind. I'll be okay. It's just a little weird."
~*~
Meryl's head tilted to the side and she watched up at him with as much thoughtfulness as his frown had from before. This wasn't good. He was going to need help.
She nodded slowly. "I'm sure it is. If you promise not to lay one finger on me, I'll answer any questions you have, you know. What do you mean by 'lonelier'?" Not having a clue of how Plants worked, that comment was found to be a bit weird by the midget woman.
~*~
Vash looked at Meryl for a minute as he considered ways to answer her last question. The way he felt now... Would she even be able to understand?
"...It's nothing," he said with a hollow smile. "Don't worry about it. I have to tell you, it's sort of nice not having to slow myself down or anything."
But it wasn't THAT nice. He could already tell he was clumsier than before as he tried to adjust to his new reflexes. It wasn't too much of a change... Whatever human he'd turned into had great physical and mental responses. But it was still different.
~*~
She would have slapped him again if she was positive that she wouldn't transform again just by touching him. She could see right past that hollow smile, having spent a good deal of the time observing each of her friends. Something Meryl Stryfe never bothered with in times passed, but it came in handy.
"Alright," she said with consideration. She paused long enough to pretend to be distracted with rotating her shoulder. "I should really hit you. Do you have any... you should probably sit down, and ask questions, Vash. Running around the City, drunk and like a lunatic, are you trying to get yourself killed?"
~*~
"Ah, to be fair," Vash pointed out, "I was drinking while I was still myself, so I sobered up before I became human."
He wasn't sure what to ask, really. He knew how humans worked. The rest would just have to be...trial and error, right?
...Hey. He COULD get drunk like this...
He'd have to think on that later.
~*~
And Meryl just stared at him. Was that supposed to mean something to her? That was exactly what was what her face said, so obviously. Her lip was curled up and everything as her eyes just spaced out.
... And then she just hauled off and popped him again. Open-handed, of course, although Meryl was tempted to punch him. She hadn't in years, and she hadn't since she'd been taking her self defense lessons with Riou and Nanami. But Meryl was reserving that for something that was far worse than him just trying to put on a brave face for a situation that he was obviously bothered over.
"Oh, just stop it already, you big, stupid tinman!"
~*~
Vash didn't see that one coming. At all. And he nearly fell over from the blow. And it hurt. Her slap earlier had been surprising, but it hadn't hurt... It must've been the human thing.
"Would you stop doing that?!" he yelped, touching his cheek. "That hurt!"
~*~
"I hope it leaves a mark!" Meryl screamed at him. And up when her index finger in a typical Meryl gesture of angry finger pointing. "I really hate when you do that! I really do! You never let anyone help you, and I should just kick your ass for it."
On her heel, Meryl turned again. God, she really did hate it. It was something so small, really, something that would [hopefully] be over by the next midnight to toll, but that just didn't matter. He was such a-- "Jackass. Seriously, Vash. A big one. Even human. Call me if you decide you need help. Jackass."
~*~
Vash just stared off to the side. What did she think she could help him with in this situation? He just needed to feel things out.
...But she was right. He never did let people help. He didn't back when he knew Rachel, and he didn't now. He thought he'd been getting better at it, but maybe he wasn't.
...Now he really needed another drink.
"Goodnight, Meryl," he muttered, keeping his eyes on the same spot by the wall.
~*~
To respond with that with, "Die in a fire, Vash." was really, really tempting. But Meryl just sighed as she flung the door open. The hallway was cold against her hair, and it figured she hadn't bothered with the jacket with the hood. But how did she know she'd be turned into a goddamn whatever?
Instead, Meryl grasped the door and nestled it against her shoulder for a moment. "Vash. It may be just a curse, but there's a line of severity here. Your words have drawn that line before you, as always, locked up. Just remember that. Goodnight, Vash."
And then with a shake of her head, she was gone with a slight slam of the door.