Work Text:
All That Glitters is Gold(bile).
A short piece for the Mashwood Week Free Day Slot utilising the lovely Zee’s Trigun x Final Fantasy XIV AU, with permission from @ZeeLinn. Please go and check out the sketches she’s done, they’re great and we need more people to share the AU with.
Beta’d by the amazing AtelierAmelia_ , who stepped in to save you all from my run-on sentences and inconsistent tenses. They are a true miracle worker.
Meryl was no green Adventurer. Don’t get her wrong, she had been a bit naive to the reality of life in Eorzea and the challenges of adventuring when she had arrived on Vylbrand's bright shores as a newly announced Archon and a Student of Baldesion. Her Sage uniform and nouliths had been even more white and gleaming than the stark chalk that Limsa Lominsa was built atop of, with nary a dent, scratch, or scrape to be seen.
That had been many moons ago, and in the intervening months, Meryl had grown into an adept adventurer and found herself embroiled in the most unlikely party she could have imagined.
Milly was the first person to take a look at Meryl and actually took her seriously when Meryl had pronounced that she was going to be a Healer and Adventurer both, never mind the fact that she wanted to study a field as esoteric as dynamis. Not many had given her dreams any weight, with her pressed white robes and her fur preened and perfect. They’d taken her as some fresh school kid, green and untrustworthy.
The tall Roegadyn woman had taken Meryl’s hand and engulfed it gently in her warm, calloused grasp and had pronounced with a bright smile for all of the Studium to hear; “Pleased to be working with you, Miss Meryl. Please take good care of me!” The researcher and the gleaner had been inseparable ever since. It had only made sense that, when Meryl left Sharleyan’s shores for the chaos of Aldenard in the name of research, Milly had gone with her to offer her strength and support to the headstrong Miqo’te. Meryl, in turn, would put her considerable stubbornness and academic knowledge to any end for Milly.
There was a lot that the girls had been capable of alone, but balancing healing, damage and drawing the aggression was a challenge. The plethora of monsters, bandits, and all other manner of deadly creatures that seemed to be found in every single nook and cranny of Eorzea wouldn’t hesitate to take advantage of the weakness in their formation. It was starting to prevent the two of them from going to lesser-explored locales, which coincidentally tended to be where all of the potential was for Meryl’s research. It was a problem that she’d had spent many a night complaining to Milly about.
It was sheer luck, or un-luck depending on your point of view, that Vash Saverem and Nicolas D. Wolfwood were the two to respond to their request for Adventurers. Unexpectedly, they were permanent additions to the party but Meryl was happy to have them along. Both men provided some much-needed versatility to the group, particularly tanking and managing a skirmish. Meryl and Milly were freed up to deal more damage to anything or anyone that couldn’t be scared off by the combination of a large, muscular Roegadyn woman, a lithe, sunny Au Ra, and looming, brooding Elezen.
Vash’s sunny outlook had gelled well with Milly’s in the face of Meryl’s cutting tongue and Wolfwood’s snarky gloom Vash would always take the time to truly listen to Meryl’s many tangents on obscure locations and other academic pursuits, and it was nice to have someone paying attention, able to match her wit
Wolfwood, on the other hand, seemed to relish in their verbal sparring. The Elezen Dark Knight would always rise to the occasion to push and poke at her boundaries, challenging her in ways she never had been, and Meryl flourished under the attention. He was so sweet to Milly that there was never a chance that Meryl could truly hate him, and that was to say nothing of the way that he was constantly pulling Vash out of the chaos he often stumbled into. It was so obvious that he cared for all of them far more than he would let himself admit.
Meryl has to remind herself of all this. Often. Frequently. She does love her party, she does love Milly and her more recently acquired idiots. It doesn’t matter that they are so much larger than her slight Miqo’te stature, that they’re finally letting their guard down at night because they ultimately trust that she can take longer watches being a Keeper of the Moon. She does love them.
However…
“NICOLAS D. WOLFWOOD! I swear to all the twelve that I shall usher you into the Fury’s halls myself if I see you take a step into another thrice-damned puddle of Goldbile!”
Nicolas looked away from the Nix that was attempting to swallow him whole and shot her the most infuriating smirk she had ever seen plastered across his stupid, handsome face.
“Oh?” His smarmy grin widened as she hissed and fluffed up her bob of a tail in anger.
“You mean like this?” Wolfwood jumped into the puddle of Goldbile like the contrary arsehole that he is, sending it hissing and bubbling away at his armour before the nix lunged for him, mouth wide to swallow the idiot Elezen whole.
“Oh no you don’t!” Meryl has spent long enough in the field that her instincts were well honed. She flashes her hand out, a tether of strong Aether whipping across the room and around their Dark Knight’s waist. She does not hold back when she yanks. Nicolas was catapulted towards Meryl and tumbled to a stop by her feet. Wolfwood’s face grated across the ground, his dexterity from his old dragoon training completely abandoning him in the suddenness of the Rescue.
“Come on, Little Lady-”
Wolfwood’s words died in his mouth at the sight of the glowing noulith directly in front of his face. The promise of fire and brimstone burned in the growl that rumbled in Meryl’s chest, unrestrained by the fangs being bared at him.
“ Nicolas,” Meryl seethed, “I may be a healer, but if you truly love playing in the gold bile that much, I will drown you in it myself. ” A second noulith now hovered ominously by his head under Meryl’s delicate control. “Do you understand?”
Wolfwood stared up at her, cheeks and ears blushing a ruddy red before he nodded furiously, pupils blown wide. It was only the high-pitched yelping of Vash, cut off mid-flow and followed by a litany of explosions that re-captured Meryl’s attention on her surroundings.
“Meryl! Vash got hit by Bad Breath!” Milly’s update was followed by even more explosions and the sound of electrical discharge from the Roegadyn’s arsenal of Machinist weaponry.
The Bad Breath certainly explained the aborted yelp from Vash, he must have been Silenced, not to mention the other negative effects that Meryl was now going to have to Esuna from the blonde. Maybe she wouldn’t, after all, he’d been the one who’d dragged them all in here in the first place because ‘It’s somewhere new! Won’t it be fun to explore somewhere none of us have been before?!’.
“We need to get over there!” Meryl growled to herself, treating Wolfwood to an absolute stink-eye. “Don’t forget what I said about the bile.”
Wolfwood snapped into a crisp Ishgardian salute, his throat bobbing nervously. “Ma’am, yes ma’am.”
Healer anger sufficiently conveyed to the idiot tank, Wolfwood plunged back into the fray in a flurry of dark, biting aether and a slash of his giant broadsword. Meryl followed with a bright flare of aether that propelled her across the room landing right next to Milly and her small platoon of mechs. Time to save their other boyfriend from becoming morbol food.
As Wolfwood baited the many vines of the foul-smelling plant, Meryl focused on cleansing Vash of the morbol’s debilitating miasma. She had to flush her aether through Vash’s body several times to remove the taint that seeped into his body from the morbol’s gasses, the blonde eventually perked up after about the seventh attempt.
“Thanks, Meryl!” Vash chirped and bounded back into the horticultural chaos. The morbol was felled with a mighty roar once the group got back on track and tackled the same enemy.
Meryl wasn’t going to spend a moment longer in the Aurum Vale than she had to. Any complaints from Vash and Wolfwood were ignored as she dragged them out of the depths of the mine and Milly traipsed alongside Meryl to giggle at the boys' misfortune.
“I’m sorry, Meryl. How was I supposed to know that the place would be teaming with morbols?” Vash flashed Meryl a wide-eyed, innocent look. Unfortunately for Vash, Meryl was currently immune to his puppy-dog eyes.
“By speaking to literally anyone around here, Vash!” Meryl threw her arms up as her voice rose. “ I will bet you a thousand gil that the first person we speak to when we get back to town will know that that mine is cursed to the Seventh Hell and back with a morbol infestation.” It was a close thing but she reined herself in before her shouting drew the wrong kind of attention to their worn-out little band. “I am banning you from picking any of our destinations or missions for the next month, Vash.”
Wolfwood’s snickering had him swiftly rounded on by Meryl, “And you! Don’t think for a second that I’ve forgotten about you pulling that entire room to use and then standing in corrosive gold bile on purpose .” She jabbed him in the chest for emphasis. ”Never mind the fact that you strolled into that large chamber and hollered until every nasty creature in there was bearing down on us. What if I’d needed to resuscitate either Vash or Milly and didn’t have the mana because you decided to dick about? What if you’d had to resort to pushing yourself to the limits and I didn’t have any larger heals left to bring you back and all for a stupid joke? Thal’s balls, Nicolas, you’re such a dick sometimes.”
Nicolas finally looked sufficiently guilty at that. Milly swooped in to save the boys from any more of Meryl’s wrath with a calming peck on the cheek that drained the tension from Meryl’s spine and let the boys continue back to town under their own steam.
They continued on in silence for long enough that Meryl began to worry that she’d been too angry. However, the gentle way that Vash held her hand and the fondness in the way Wolfwood mussed up her fur let her know that there weren’t any hard feelings about her shouting. That deep down it was just because she worried about them when they all delved into danger and the unknown.
“I am revoking your tank privileges for the next mission. The two of you can back Milly and me up for once.” A satisfied smile and an ear wiggle were her only outward reaction to the protesting squawks from Vash and Nicolas followed by Milly’s light and charming laughter.
It was the perfect revenge for the gold bile and morbols, and the perfect reminder of how much she loved her small, chaotic party.