DISCLAIMER: Trigun and its characters belong to Yasuhiro Nightow.

Lyrics to "Broken", by Seether.

Author's note: Maybe someday there will be another. Just never another you. Miss you always. Happy birthday, angel.

Because of You

"'Cause I'm broken
When I'm lonesome
And I don't feel right
When you're gone away…"

The words came from the small stereo for the umpteenth time, because the disc it was playing was old and scratched and with no one actively pressing the button to go to the next track, the song kept skipping back to the beginning and playing over.

Vash the Stampede hadn't noticed this annoyance for hours.

The rocking chair he sat in on the deck didn't rock. Vash hadn't moved a muscle since he first sat down shortly after his wife Meryl had left for work. He had meant to make a productive day of it, meaning to clean their little house, fix a few things, have a meal ready for her upon her return. Stay too busy to drown in his own depths.

It was supposed to be just a pre-start break, because once he started he wouldn't be stopping. Not until Meryl was back. There were dark things inside him – products of both his malicious brother and, he sometimes worried, his own soul. He lived with their whispers, their reminders of every time he had failed, their taunts that he would continue to fail. He was a deluded fool to think he could honor the last words of Rem, the closest thing to a mother he had ever known. "Vash, take care of Knives!" His delusion had led him to bring his brother, his most dangerous enemy, right into the home he was making with Meryl. He would never be able to change Knives, and the arrogant thought that he could had put Meryl in danger.

Staying busy, giving himself things to focus on, had always helped him ignore the whispers. But in a way they never had with anyone else, they quieted when Meryl was around. Her presence, her voice, her touch – Vash had no idea how she did it or even when it had started, but Meryl brought him peace. In her arms, he could sleep comfortably the whole night through, a feat he hadn't managed in decades.

But when she was at work, the dark things made themselves known, reminding him of what a failure he was, and so he ignored them and stayed busy. Today, he would just take a pre-start break, just a little wake-up beer to brace for the day's heat.

The can in his hand had gone warm, not so much as a sip out of it yet. The chair didn't move. The song looped over and over. But Vash wasn't aware. When he sat down…sometimes it happened. If it had been conscious, if there had been any discernible pattern to it, he could have taken steps to address it. The same way he minimized the chances of hurting a civilian who inadvertently triggered a combat reflex by minimizing the chances of a reflex being triggered to begin with – taking corners wide, picking the vantage seat so he could watch the whole room, using both his heightened senses and things like reflective surfaces to stay aware of his immediate environment. A sort of 3D 360-degree hyperawareness. It wasn't enjoyable, but it kept him from unintentionally hurting someone whose offense was simply taking him by surprise.

This, though…there was no consciousness to it. The psyche is tricky, unpredictable. Sometimes something in the present, something you might not even be aware of noticing, will link to something in the past.

This was one of those times. Vash had sat down, had seen something – and through the looking glass he went.

Young Vash didn't know what to do.

He felt hot every time he thought of how Knives had ruined everything. Cost them the future Rem spoke of. Cost them both Rem herself. His hands balled themselves into fists.

But Knives was stronger, and Knives somehow knew how to use his fists. Vash didn't.

Even if he did, what would he do? Rem's last words to him had been to take care of Knives. He had to, for her.

And because Knives was his brother, the only other being like him on this entire cursed world. Vash didn't want to face that world alone, not even if the alternative was life with Knives.

As if summoned by Vash's thoughts, here was Knives now. He trudged into their cave with a cloth sack he dropped at Vash's feet. "Eat."

Vash opened the sack to find a small amount of food. He looked at Knives inquiringly. "Where did this come from?"

"Eat, before I change my mind and eat it myself."

Vash put the pieces together. "You stole this, didn't you?"

He wasn't ready for the kick from Knives that drove him back, knocking his head against the rock wall of the cave. That was to his good fortune, though – he was too dazed to feel most of the beating that Knives gave him.

"So what if I killed them and took what they had!" Knives snarled as he pummeled his brother. "They would have done the same to us! Have you forgotten what they did to Tessla for nothing but curiosity? We're in a war for survival! You've got to learn to fight!"

Vash's hands balled again, but through his haze he heard Rem. "Vash, take care of Knives!" He forced his fists to unclench; as much as he didn't want it, Knives was his burden to bear.

"Fight back, damn you!"

Vash's inaction only fueled Knives to new heights of rage. His fists became wet with his brother's blood, but still he pistoned away, trying to beat Vash into what he wanted him to be. "Get some goddamn hate in your heart!"

"Get the hell away me from me, runt!" the big man snarled at Vash.

"Please, sir, I only need a little!" the boy pleaded. "Anything you can spare!"

The man's answer was to lower his tent flap.

Vash's first thought was, What a jerk. But that was quickly squashed. He had thought maybe the man could help, but this seemed to be the only tent for iles around. It was just as likely the man was in the same situation as everyone else, that he just had nothing he could spare. Could have been nicer about it, true, but maybe Vash would also be grumpy if he had nothing and people kept wanting something…

There was a bustle in the tent, then the man came out again. Stumbled out, was more like it, his beefy mass raising a cloud of dust as it hit the ground. Knives emerged from behind him.

"What do you think you're doing?" Vash demanded.

Knives' answer was to toss something to Vash, who reflexively caught it. It was a canned ration. Its label read PEACHES.

Knives held up another. "This one's spaghetti and sauce. There are dozens of these in there. He must have found a piece of ship wreckage and salvaged them. But he was going to let you starve."

The man had started to rise, sputtering in anger. A solid kick from Knives to the side of his head sent him down again.

Knives look at Vash squarely. "Well?"

"Well what?"

"He would have let you starve. Given you a death sentence. Are you going to let him live to do the same to someone else?"

"Knives, I –"

"Use it."

"What?"

"I gave you a gun for a reason. Use it!"

Vash dropped the can of peaches, steeling himself for the beating to come. "No."

Vash blinked as the sudden mist hit him. There was no beating; instead, Knives had drawn his own gun before Vash could even register what was happening and shot the big man in the head. The sound seemed the loudest he had ever heard, echoing throughout the vast desert of this barren planet.

Knives' face bore none of the anger it had in the times he beat Vash; instead, his expression and eyes were filled with the same stoic conviction his voice held:

"She taught you wrong, brother. Learn to kill."

Mistakes replayed themselves on loops over and over in Vash's mind. The dark things, what some people would tritely call his inner demons, kept opening doors he tried anew every day to keep closed.

What bothered him most was how close he had come with Monev the Gale. Monev had nothing left, he was done. But…Vash had felt sparks of it before, just small embers. They were always quickly extinguished. But as he held his prosthetic gun on Monev and listened to this…this…he wasn't a man, he was nothing more than a male human, groveling for his life so soon after taking so many others without so much decency as to let them even fight back. Vash didn't know if it was anger or that hate Knives wanted in him; whatever it was, it burned high in his heart in that moment. He was ready to pull the trigger. Take a life.

Wanting to…that terrified him. It was one thing to not have a choice, a whole other thing to yield to anger…or maybe hate. He worried over this, too; perhaps there was a hate that had lurked in his heart all along. Legato had left him no choice but to become a killer, but he was only ever one slip of control away from crossing from killer to murderer.

Legato…just as he feared, that had cost him his last bit of Rem, his guiding voice. But eventually, after gaming it out every way he could think of, he had to accept that Legato had engineered a situation with an impossible choice. Staying away wasn't an option, either, not when the slaughters would only continue. Meryl had helped him realize these things.

Meryl…finally, he relived something else besides dark mistakes.

It was the memory of Meryl defending him from the mob that wanted to kill him. Her words reminding him that mistakes can be gotten past.

That memory led to other memories. Their first encounters. The night when she saw his scars, the little slip that she wouldn't run away, before quickly correcting herself. The smile she couldn't hide when he came back, Knives slung over his shoulder. The vows they exchanged. Even the times they fought held joy for him, partially because he knew they'd make up and partially because anything with her was better than everything else. He no longer had Rem to keep him on course, but Meryl had willingly taken up that role; that meant everything to Vash.

These memories of Meryl formed a lifeline that slowly pulled him out of the darkness. He gradually became aware of the pressure of someone holding him. Moved his head, stiff after so many hours of stillness, to find himself in Meryl's embrace, his beer removed from his hand. The suns had set by now, a curtain of clouds cloaking the stars. Vash was stuck between the aura of light from the house and the darkness upon the land.

Meryl was softly singing with the still-looping song:

"There's so much left to learn
And no one left to fight
I want to hold you high and steal your pain…"

She stopped when she felt him move and looked up, her eyes filled with concern. "Are you ok?"

Vash lowered his head to hers, burying himself in her hair to inhale her scent as he wrapped her in his own hug. He wanted to stay like this forever, just feeling her touch.

"I am, insurance girl," he whispered. "Because of you."