Chapter Text
Reporters were meant to observe. That was her job. It was a job she’d wanted, more than anything.
She thought she had, at least. Right now, Meryl Stryfe would have given anything for the ability to act. Not simply watch.
But she couldn’t. There were too many unknowns. If she killed Conrad, there might not be anyone to stop the machines. If she shot the glass, assuming it wasn’t bulletproof, she could hurt Vash. Or she could catch the attention of Millions Knives, and she wouldn’t be of any use as a bloody smear on the floor. She could scream her friend’s name as much as she wanted, over and over, but it didn’t seem to do anything. Vash stayed frozen in place, floating, staring at his brother, the flora-like tendrils still leaking out of his body.
That didn’t stop her from trying, because it was the only option she had.
“Vash! Vash!” Meryl’s fist bounced off the glass. The progress had stalled, Conrad had said. Maybe he’d heard her. Maybe… “Vash, you have to fight it!” She glanced back over her shoulder at Conrad. “I can’t believe you.”
Conrad kept his head down and his hands braced against the console. She couldn’t tell if he was avoiding her gaze or staring at the screens, so she kept talking. “He’s hurting Vash. Hey!” Meryl stepped away from the glass, the derringer aimed fruitlessly again. “Is this right to you? How does this fit with not demeaning them, huh?”
He flinched. Meryl saw it then, the twitch of his eyes to the tank, to her, back down to the screens. That was something. It had to be something. “Memory manipulation? How is that respectful? Throwing him into a pit so he can’t escape? How is that respectful?”
“It’s necessary…”
“He doesn’t want this! I don’t care how necessary you think it is!” She gave up aiming the pistol, instead slamming both fists down on the top of the console. “Look at him! Look at what you’re doing to him!”
Another quick dart of the eyes. Up to Vash. Down to her. Back up to Vash, this time to linger. Look at him. Look at how much he’s hurting. Look at what your god is doing to his own brother. His own flesh and blood. How is that right? How is any of this right?
Conrad’s chest heaved in a sigh, his eyes dropping down to the consoles again. “How much,” he asked, “did Vash the Stampede’s struggles ever really accomplish? He wanted to help people; what good has any of it done?” His eyes stayed fixed on the frozen percentage, as if willing it to start moving again. “Here, now, his presence will accomplish something. This will fix the world.”
Meryl’s blood ran cold. Her mind scrambled for a response, but found nothing. There were no words that could adequately sum up the disgust she felt, the utter loathing for the man in front of her. She could live to be as old as Vash and never have the right words. All she had was silence–furious, trembling silence.
Someone else had the words, though.
“Hey, Doc?” The figure in the doorway hefted his weapon. “Fuck you.”
The bullet was the loudest thing in that room–louder than Meryl’s racing thoughts, than the echoes of her accusation, than the writhing growth of the flora. It passed right through Conrad’s skull and hit the glass. It lodged itself there, surrounded by a web of spider-thin cracks, but didn’t pierce through.
Oh, Meryl thought distantly. It is bulletproof.
Self-preservation kicked in when she heard footsteps. She raised the derringer. She did not lower it when she realized she knew the person stepping in. “You?!”
Nicholas D. Wolfwood looked sickly in the room’s light–pale and haggard, nauseated. His eyes were full of contempt as they slid over Conrad’s body before moving to Meryl. “Look, if you want to shoot me, do it later,” he snapped. “How do we turn this thing off?”
Meryl started to reply.
She never got the chance.
That’s why I crashed the ships.
It’s my fault?
I did it all for you.
Vash broke, then. Something tore through his soul, shredding through reality too as it went: a black hole, literal and figurative.
Knives had expected it to happen. There would be no severed limbs this time, nothing to get in the way. The gate would be opened. He would have his brother back. Everything was going exactly as he’d planned.
But he hadn’t been able to account for everything.
Knives didn’t see it at first. His focus stayed fixed on stalking down that final memory–on eliminating the final thread keeping his brother from him. But as he stepped closer, ready to finally free him…
“What the hell is that?!”
Red.
Not red like Rem’s geraniums. Red like one of their dying siblings. Red like blood.
The gate to the Higher Dimension was opened, just as he’d planned. But there were other gates, other doorways. Perhaps it was Vash’s mind trying to protect itself, to find some way to escape; perhaps it was inexperience combined with emotions too deep and painful to contain. The result was the same: one door opened. Dozens more followed.
Vash the Stampede broke.
So did everything else.
Meryl couldn’t grasp what she was looking at.
It was as if someone had taken a knife and stabbed the air, tearing open a wide hole. More tears appeared–in the tank, above it, all over the room. On the other side was nothing, nothing but an emptiness so dark she couldn’t believe that it was real. Nothing could be so dark. Even the night had the stars, the moons, but this was…
Nothing.
And the nothingness was starting to swallow her.
“Shit!” Wolfwood braced his weapon against the console and held out a hand to her. “Stryfe!”
Meryl barely managed to grab his hand before she was lifted off her feet. She tried to look into the tank, but the flora had so thoroughly filled the space that she couldn’t tell where anything was. “Vash!” she screamed. “Vash! Vash you have to stop! You - “
meryl
The voice came not from the tank, or from Wolfwood as he desperately gripped her hand. It came from behind her. As she glanced over her shoulder into the yawning, terrifying voice, she could’ve sworn she heard it again -
meryl! meryl! nico!
“How…?”
Wolfwood slipped. The sudden disruption was enough to make Meryl lose her grip. She thought she heard Wolfwood scream after her as she was pulled through but the sound was quickly swallowed up by…
Nothing.
Just the vast, vast void, and the distant sound of her own name.
meryl! meryl, i’m here! meryl. meryl - !
His body slammed into the console hard enough to knock the wind out of him. His hands still worked well enough to grab onto something, but Wolfwood knew it wouldn’t last. It was a clumsy grip, and the whole damn room was being sucked into whatever those things were. He barely managed to dodge Conrad’s body as it flew past. “Shit!”
His mind scrambled for a solution–something, anything. If he could break the glass, kill Knives, maybe…but he didn’t see where Punisher had gone, and he wasn’t sure he could control it in all this chaos anyway. And if he hit Vash…
nico!
The sound of the name nearly made him lose his grip. Wolfwood desperately scanned the room. No, it couldn’t be, it wasn’t…he knew it wasn’t. It couldn’t be.
“Livio?”
But even as the name left his lips, he knew it wasn’t Livio. The voice was all wrong. That was what Livio always called him, but that wasn’t him, couldn’t be him. It sounded more like…
A piece of debris hit his face, knocking the thought away. It took almost everything else with it, including his grip. Wolfwood was only semi-conscious when he fell, unable to really perceive anything around him, not even the sound of his own name. Only one thing felt real to him: a singular thought running through his mind.
You did this. Your fault.
Good job, Wolfwood.
In another time and place, a hundred gates opened. The last chaotic screams of a mind too in pain to control anything sounded through space and time.
In another time and place, July City tore itself apart.