Title: Sweetheart and Honey
Fandom: Trigun
Author: infraredphaeton
Summary: Knives doesn't understand. How does changing someone's name show affection? The twins and another one of their caretakers. Same verse as Always and Forever.
Kessla calls Vashu a 'Sweetheart', or occasionally 'Sweetie'.
Knives doesn't like it, because Vash is Vash, and calling him something else is wrong.
It doesn't work. It's like calling a book a flower, and it's silly.
Knives calls Vashu Vashu. Sometimes brother, rarely Vash, but usually Vashu. Because although most of the humans couldn't pronounce it, for some stupid human reason, his name is Vashu, not Vash. But humans are moronic, and they think that they are calling Vashu by his real name, and Knives uses a 'nick-name' to show him affection.
Knives doesn't understand. How does changing someone's name show affection? It's pretending someone is something other than what they are, and humans are weird like that.
Vash doesn't understand why Kessla calls him "sweetheart" either. He asked Knives why, later that night, when they were curled up under their blankets, pressed forehead to forehead, and Knives shrugged, and gave his usual answer he didn't understand what humans did. "Because they're different. They aren't like us. Go to sleep, Vashu."
And Vash would nod, and ask the same question he did every night, before snuggling up as close as he could to Knives' warmth. "Watch out for me?"
And Knives would reply, as he always did.
"Of course."
And they would sleep. Knives would wake up before Vash, and enjoy the time when he had his brother to himself, before his more energetic, out going twin woke up and wanted breakfast.
One day, when Vash was busy drawing a picture of something that looked like a Plant, splayed out on the metal floor, crayons scattered around his 'sketchbook', which was actually a pad of butchers paper stapled together by a previous caretaker (he'd asked Knives to write Vash's name on the cover, because Knives had neater writing, and he had written it in English and Arabic and Japanese, which had made Vash laugh and hug him, and that was certainly worth the time it had taken to look it up in the on-board computers), Knives asked Kessla what Sweetheart meant.
Kessla blinked, and looked down at the serious little blond face looking up at her with a slight frown.
"It means…Someone who is very caring, and sweet, and…well, an all-round nice person."
Knives raised an eyebrow, "Why don't you just call him Vashu then?"
Kessla smiled brightly, light brown bangs falling into her emerald green eyes, "Well, sweetheart is a term of endearment, understand? It means that Vash is special."
"Of course he's special. But why do you call him sweetheart?"
Kessla sighed, wiping some flour off her rose pink dress and turning back to the bread she was kneading.
"It's just my way of showing that I appreciate him," she replied, and Knives thought for a minute before nodding, and returning to his station next to Vash, where he'd left an old fashioned book on the floor.
Kessla grinned at them both, and Vash waved back. She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and returned to her baking.
Knives still didn't understand why Kessla called Vash sweetheart, but his attempts to explain to her exactly why she should just call him Vashu didn't seem to get through.
Caring, sweet and an all-round nice guy, she'd explained. Well, that was what Vashu was, wasn't it? So calling Vashu obviously meant that he was caring, sweet and an all-round nice guy. Knives had eventually given up trying to explain, because Kessla just smiled her brilliant (although slightly vacant to Knives' admittedly biased mind) grin, and bribed both brothers with baked goods.
Kessla started calling Knives 'honey', which confused him slightly as well, but when he asked for a definition, she'd simply pointed him in the direction of the dictionary, even going so far as to take down off the high shelf for him.
Not that he needed her help, but it was slightly thoughtful. As far as humans went, anyway.
The dictionary didn't explain anything, so Knives eventually just shrugged it off as another facet of unexplicable human nature.
When Kessla died in childbirth, bringing another child into the world, Vash had cried-not to surprising to Knives, because Vash cried over everything. Not that that made it right, but still- and Knives had felt slightly strange. Hollowish. He kept expecting to be patted on the head and called 'honey', or given a scone dripping with honey and melted butter, and told to 'run along and play'. Knives didn't like Kessla, so much as he didn't violently dislike her. She didn't get in the way, spent most of her time baking and humming tunelessly, and let Knives get on with the business of taking care of Vashu, while providing him with the materials he needed to do so.
Knives never did understand why she called Vashu 'sweetheart'.
An apple is an apple, not a geranium.
A book is a book, not a can.
And Vashu is Vashu. Not sweetheart.