[ h a l c y o n . ] ₍ ₁₈₊ ₎

"No. I—I heard the same thing you did. It's clear t'me that he kept disrespectin' your boundaries, no matter how much you tried t'make him understand."

It's a tale exactly as old as they are. Some naïve Independent Plant sees fit to do what was best for someone else's sake, without even trying to ask if that's what they wanted—without asking what it is that they wanted at all.

So he doesn't. Lets it play out there, plain as day, yet again. To this person who really, probably, shouldn't see it. He'd know, though, probably, if Vash had pulled one out of the dusty old wardrobe, no matter how much he wants to.

The smile that cracks across his face isn't a falsehood-- nor is it a happy one, either, nor is the quiet laugh that accompanies it.

"I treated him so poorly. I can't blame him for what he met me with in return."

"It's funny. You're sayin' you don't want to make the same mistakes, but I'm the one who keeps makin' 'em."

What must if have been like? Being 'new' for the first time was hard enough, but to be so yet again, with everything hanging in the air around his successor-

Careful eyes search the other's face, noting composure and curiosity where Vash wants to see it; yes, six months seemed like it was about enough for him to have moved on. A deep breath. Vash's gloved hand flinches, holds at the inner elbow of his prosthetic arm. Old habit.

"The messages," he starts, and stops.

He's misspoken already. Those hadn't been messages—not if they were never really meant to be found. His stomach feels like it's twisting in knots all over again, just thinking about it. "What he left behind. I wanted to apologize properly. To you.

"Even if I dont remember saying all of that, it… Those words were disgusting. I'm really, truly sorry for the way he's treated you."

Habit. Before the younger Stampede even gets a chance to finish, of course he finds himself barging in. To say he's sorry, that the reason they were like that was--

He's beaten to the punch, anyway. Left blinking in confusion, staring at his counterpart. Still can't wrap his head very far around anything other than the fact that he should still be the one apologizing.

It takes a moment- he always seems to be good at that, no matter which one. Stealing the words right out of Vash's mouth.

Finally, finally, he thaws. Shakes his head.

"Nah."

He sinks into one of the chairs, crossing his legs and propping one elbow on the table as his knuckles tap his cheek. "I'll admit it's a novel concept. Even mortals gravitate towards methods that save them time."

"I suppose plants simply prefer to soak in the details."

Aurelius claps for Vash when he returns, pot and dirt together. For all his grumbling, the Plant did get things done as requested.

"It's worth it, sometimes."

"Slowin' down." He'd spent a very, very long time not doing so, after all. "Smellin' the roses, so to speak."

Pot retrieved and hands empty does leave Vash with a predicament, though, never mind his grumbling at having done the previous tasks. That being-- he now has no way to properly get out of continuing to be in the presence of Aurelius.

... He was really going to have to sit on the porch with this man, wasn't he? It couldn't even properly be called shootin' the shit. He didn't even have a beer.

Well. Then it would stand to reason that he didn't have to recline in the chair, wouldn't it? He can at least take that much for himself.

Grabbing a handful of grapes off the bunch, Vash hauls himself up onto the railing, one foot planted alongside himself and the other leg dangling.

"Why you gotta think I always have some ulterior motive?" Wolfwood grouses. The hand in Vash's hair settles on the nape of his neck to pull him in, planting a kiss to his lips that lingers for a few moments before he lets him go. "Maybe I just wanna look at ya. Or hold ya."

Both hands land on Vash's criminally tiny waist. He gives it a squeeze, fingers kneading into tight muscle and scar tissue through the fabric of his shirt. Wolfwood can feel the bumps and ridges of metal in his flesh, but it blurs together with everything else. They hardly register anymore.

"Not gonna give me a hello? Just gonna complain? Heartless, aren't ya?"

"Cause you do have an ulterior motive half the time," Vash huffs, though it loses much of its attitude muffled by cushion and comfort. As if to punctuate his point, he shoves his arms up and under his husband's torso. The number of times he'd been bitten, or tickled, or tackled, or thrown around, or noogied, or wet-willied-- "You big bully."

He'd be lying if he said the admission didn't still make his insides a little gooey though, even if it's far from the first time he's heard it. There's a reason, after all, that Wolfwood had been able to pull off all those little stunts ( not that Vash was much better, either, but he isn't going to admit that ).

"Alright then, alright," he says, picking the puppet up by the back of his jacket like one of those claw machines back on the boardwalk, bending at the elbow to place him on his shoulder. Talk about deja-vu.

"C'mon," he says as he does so.

He had seen dozens of people darting out of their prison cells, shouting about the situation: everyone had been imprisoned somehow-- imprisoned on the moon above Spirale City.

Legato needed to find someone that he knew. Collaborating in situations like this had been effective in previous incidents.

Rather than joining the rest of the crowd and running, Legato chose to walk briskly, keeping an eye on his surroundings and connecting with his senses. The sensation of static on his skin that usually accompanied his threads was weak-- just how it felt when he first arrived in this city.

Dimmed abilities were dangerous in situations like this.

Stalking forward, Legato frown with irritation and narrowed his eyes to try and focus on formulating a plan while he searched the premise for a familiar face.

Turning the corner in the sterile white hallway, he spotted someone draped in the bright red shade of the flashing lights of the emergency system. Legato's frown intensified momentarily.

" Vash the Stampede. "

He did not need to speak up very loudly. In all of his years of crossing paths with the Humanoid Typhon, they said very little to each other before recognizing the other half of their distorted reflection. It was a wicked aspect of their familiar existence, two sides of the same coin.

" Do you know what this place is? "

The first thing he realizes when his heart stops jackhammering, stops thinking it is somewhere it isn't, and his mind catches up to the realm of the waking, is that he's fully armored, despite having gone to bed in his usual baggy sweats; the Colt sits heavy at his thigh, too, beneath one of his coat tails, despite his tendency these days to leave it home more often than not.

The second thing he realizes is that he is completely alone in this cell.

Before his mind has time to start spiraling with worry there's a loud hiss, and his door's open. Vash barrels through without a second thought, goal formed crystal clear in his mind in an instant, as sharp eyes scan s o many others making for their escape, all vying for an exit- any exit, any way back.

He has people to find, first.

The planet far beneath(?) them, the great expanse spread wide; though Vash had near-immediately categorized them, had grasped exactly where they were, it came with a familiarity that made him level-headed, despite the alarm still blaring. Had to, after all; him being here wasn't what worried him.

his hand's hovering above a control panel mounted on the wall when he hears him. There is nothing like that voice-- one that still sends ice careening directly through his veins, seemingly no matter how much time they're given to thicken themselves.

" ... I don't know," Vash replies, voice surprisingly even, even to his own ears.

"From what I gather we're on the moon, but-- why this place is here, or what it is, is anyone's guess." The cells, even with their doors wide open, still leave an agitated buzzing beneath his skin.

"Goin' off of instinct, here," he says, nodding towards the panel. Even without the familiar sting of threads pressing down, down into muscle and nerve, he still feels frozen in place.

Vash had never been the one with all the tech smarts, though. He'd learned the basics ( and, by extension, far more than most back home ) simply by virtue of having lived upon the fleet. But this isn't necessarily close to then, and anything further than that, and he'd always looked over the shoulder of-

"Knives?!"

His head jolts back to the side, this time returning to facing the door he'd been working on. The buzzing of that ever-open gateway between the two of them seems to throw the gates open wide, a tunnel shortened to little more than an archway, even with the barrier between them.

The potential of having the both of them here at once-- it makes Vash's muscles tense far more than the alarms. Still-- he cannot leave his brother to fend for himself, not being so new to the island.

That, and he had made a promise.

"Are you there?"

A. DAY.

And he's already been beat on, stepped on, fucked up, thrown down, shaken up, stirred around, cracked like an EGG, had moon dust kicked in his eyes, nearly had his nose literally ripped off, been punched in the mouth, shot and left for dead, forced to drink orange juice, been thrown down the space stairs...

And you know what?

Then shakes her head. "No," Richeh says, "Richeh still wants to find them first."

Richeh starts to scoot off the shared bench. "Also that is not Richeh's contraption," she points out. "Professor Qifrey wouldn't know you."

Richeh has no idea if Vash has met her teacher before. "thank you for teaching Richeh, though, mister Vash." She does reach into her cloak and pulls out the gifted pen and journal. Quietly, the blue haired girl connects a circle and grabs the crystalline ribbon that pops out.

"Wh-- huh?"

"B-but-- I could give the phone t'you-- w-wait!"

No, he's not just a Plant. Her friend.

"I can understand that," Meryl says as she picks at the hem of her skirt. "Can't imagine bin' in this place is as sunny as it seems."

She glances over to Vash. "When you're ready," the former insurance agent says, "I want to hear how it all ended."

"I told you," he says,

"everything at Dragon's Nest ended alright." Don't think about Midvalley's mangled corpse in the rubble, nor Hoppered lying there with a bullet in his head. "Legato and Elendira left. Got you n' Millie to the hospital n' then me and Nick helped the the rebuild 'til folks didn't want us around any more."

He knows that's not what she means; there's a spiky elephant in the room that he's had yet to explain, has so far managed to dance around. The pitch of his hair is impossible to ignore for those who knew him, may as well be a neon sign pointing directly at himself.