Vash reopens the old wound

Vash knew what that face meant. There were the eager, uplifted eyes, and there the lips parted in a breathless smile. It was a look of timid love. It was a look of joy restrained.

For years he and Iylaine had each pretended to feel nothing but cousinly affection for the other, so masterfully that both had been fooled – even he, who should have known better. He had learned too late what that face meant.

It was hideous on Nimea.

If it had been Iylaine – if these had been other, happier, more hopeful days – she would have waited for him to make the first move, but at the merest hint of an invitation she would have leapt at him, thrown her arms around him, pressed her face into his coat to remind herself how he smelled, and measured the height of her chin against the height of his shoulder, awaiting the day when her lips would have grown close enough for him to kiss.

But they never would. They never, never would.

If Nimea had tried to throw her arms around him or tried to lift her lips anywhere near his, he would have whipped out his knife and gutted her like the clammy fish she seemed, though it was the last thing he would ever do.

But he would give no hint of an invitation.

“May the waters wash you clean of sorrows, Nimea,” he said coldly.

“Only you can, Vash.” Her body swayed as she approached him, like a frond in slow water. “And so you have, by returning to me.”

Vash passed his hand wearily over his face. His freshly-​​shaved chin felt unfamiliar to him after a month of mourning for Pol. Only a month had passed since the great elf’s death. It seemed like days.

And yet only a month had passed since he had last seen Iylaine, and it seemed like years. An entire month had to pass before he could come here, and he had changed and unchanged his mind a thousand thousand times in the interval. But he had come.

“You will think me a very selfish elf, Nimea. I am come because I need your help.”

“I shall help you all I can, as I always have.”

Vash longed to argue with her. He longed to cast her treachery at her pallid face, to strike that look of love from it with the back of his hand – and to gut her like a fish while he was at it, since striking her would already be the death of him.

But he needed her help.

“You once told me that if I poured water into milk, you could pour the water out again.”

“So I can,” she smiled. “But we are not speaking of water and milk, are we, Vash?”

“We are speaking of life and blood.”

“Are you ready to learn?” she purred.

“I do not wish to learn. I only want you to demonstrate.”

“Demonstrate?” Her voice was coldly suspicious.

Vash held up his palm, though the old scar could no longer be seen by the eye. “So long as she is bound to me, she will never be happy.”

Nimea was quiet for a moment, as if deciding. Her voice was gentle again when she spoke. “And so long as you are bound to her, neither will you be. Let me teach you, Vash, and then you may free yourself from her.”

“I do not wish it.”

“Vash!” she sighed. “Silly, melancholic boy. Do you not wish to be free? Do you not wish to be happy?”

“You don’t know what it’s like,” he said wearily, “if you can ask me that.”

“Vash!”

“I have loved her since I was a child. Everything I am has grown up around that. I would not even know myself without that. I would suddenly be another elf.”

“It would be like being reborn!” she said eagerly.

“But I do not wish to die.”

She shook her head slowly. “You make it too easy for yourself.”

Vash exploded. “Too easy for myself!” He threw his arms wide to distance his hands from his knife. “This is the most difficult thing I’ve ever done! And you call it easy!”

“Easy because you will not let me teach you! Easy because you wish it to be impossible for you to free yourself from her! If you had the choice, then we would see just how essential this love is to you! How long you would last. You wouldn’t last a year,” she sneered.

He glared at her. He knew what she was trying to do. Nevertheless it was almost working.

“It is painful to love someone you cannot have, Vash. It is far more painful to love someone who does not return your love. You will see.” She smiled in anticipation of her victory.

“If you are so certain I shall not last, why are you worried? I shall certainly return soon to beg you to free me from her.”

“Of course,” she said sweetly. “I only wish to spare you from this pain.”

His hands clutched at the air, since he could not allow them to reach her throat. She claimed to love him. He wondered whether she truly believed that this was all love was – this desire to own.

“Will you do it, or will you not?” he growled. “I am very close to changing my mind again.”

“Very well,” she sniffed. “Come outside with me.”

“Outside?”

“Into the water. The still, dark water is what she wants, is it not?”

He followed. Air or water, it made little difference to either of them, except that the water around her glowed like the moon.

The air had likewise seemed to glow around the body of the Dark Lady, but the Dark Lady had been as black and lightless in the center of it as Nimea was pale and radiant.

“Give me your hand, Vash.”

Vash stood stiffly, hesitant and trembling now that he was so close to doing what he had for so long dreaded.

But he was doing it for Iylaine, he reminded himself.

“It won’t hurt her?”

“She won’t even know,” Nimea said soothingly. “It will be as if you died peacefully, and that fraction of her life will return willingly to the world.”

She slipped her fingers into his palm and clamped her thumb against the back of his hand.

“Swear it,” he said.

“I swear.”

She reached into his vest and drew out the small knife he had thought was hidden.

“And I?” he blurted, though he was ashamed to feel frightened for himself.

“And you will feel more lonely than you ever have in your life. I tell you, you will not last long.”

As she sliced into his palm, he distracted his mind by wondering how it was possible to feel lonelier than he already did. Perhaps she was right. Lonelier than this and he could not last long.