Disclaimer: Trigun belongs to Yasuhiro Nightow. The lyrics belong to "Alone I Break," by Korn.
Vague spoilers for the series, especially episodes
23-26. Scary sibling love that isn't
incest.
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"I have lived
the best I can;
Does this make me not a man?"
Knives was not surprised when he opened his eyes, head aching and limbs burning in pain, to find himself lying on a bed. He had fallen unconscious when Vash began to dig the first bullet out of his shoulder, so this awakening did not come as a surprise. Vash had always been the weak one.
Outside, the noise of humans cheering leaked in through the window, making him feel more ill than before. A pity the noise of the gunshots hadn't damaged his ears at the same time they left him as a helpless cripple. But only for a time. He would heal. And perhaps then Vash would see the error of this "mercy" he had brainwashed with.
That mercy was a point he had always counted on. He had given Vash plenty of chances to hurt him, ever since they had crashed on this forsaken planet, and each and every one had been turned down.
He had not forgotten the first time Vash had wanted to kill him. He had been awake the entire time his brother held the rock over his head, waiting, waiting....He remembered how a few grains of the sand that stirred up when Vash dropped the rock had floated into his eyes, making them water irritatingly and echo his brother's contemptible sobbing on the rock above. He had been waiting for Vash to break out of that pathetic belief that he had been trapped in by her....
All these years later, he was still angry at Rem for sacrificing herself to save the rest of the worthless humanity on that ship. She was supposed to live, to keep Vash happy for as long as she was alive, and then die, thus showing his brother how truly worthless these humans really were. Once Rem betrayed his love by dying on him when he had to continue living, surely that would have convinced Vash. That was what was supposed to happen, but she had ruined it all.
In the end, Vash had thrown in completely with the humans. Rather than being the annoying pacifist that Rem's words had made him, he instead began to turn on Knives. His own kind...his own brother! Had shot him twice, all because of the garbage that spoiled their planet!
...But the last two times, Vash had almost come close to breaking free of Rem's spell. When he walked into the office to find her relative dead by Knives' hand, Vash had nearly killed him. He hadn't understood that he was trying to free him, trying to remove all that human taint that made him weak and left him wavering between the beauty of the Plants and the filth of the humans. He only saw what he considered a needless death.
That had a touch of the ironic in it, because that man's death had been one of the few he thought meaningful; others were simple the removal of needless lives. But Vash didn't understand, because Vash was still weak.
Knives breathed slowly as the burning in his legs and shoulders began to lessen to a steady throb. He had almost thought that Vash would kill him this last time. He had worked so hard to push him to his potential, sacrificing even Legato in his quest to bring his brother back to his side. He had imagined that Vash would be somewhat stronger after his decades of wandering; or at the very least, he would not be the same man pathetically leaning against a rock and talking to himself about how lonely it was to be alone.
He had thought that with over a hundred year's passage, Vash would have begun to change. But that had not happened at all--he had only gotten worse. He had expected too much from him.
The door creaked as it was opened, and he narrowed his eyes to glare at the intruder. It was his brother.
Vash leaned down once he reached the bed and looked as if he were about to speak, but the expression on Knives' face stopped him. Instead, he dipped a cloth in the bowl next to the bed and wrung it out, pressing it to his forehead. Again, that human "mercy"...it was disgraceful to their entire kind. Their own bloodkin lived as slaves to the human's whims, and Vash was loathed and hunted by the humans, yet continued to believe and protect them. He was the only one that was free of any taint.
Knives allowed his brother to dress the wounds he had made. Soon he would heal, and then he would find another way to make Vash see the error of his ways. Words had not worked, destroying the last ties of Rem had not worked, violence had not worked, forcing him to see how the rest of the filth hated and alienated him for being superior had not worked...so he would find another way.
In the end, Vash would have to see logic. Even if it took years, at last he would realize that Knives had been right all along--the death of Rem, and then of Wolfwood, had already begun to make that point clear. Soon Vash would follow the idea to its end where the truth would be revealed: humans were worthless, leeching from the strength of the Plants and giving nothing but pain in return.
Eventually his brother would return to Knives' side, and they would rid the planet of the garbage, and they would have their Eden.