DISCLAIMER: I am in negative ownership of both Trigun and Queen. Bah humbug.
A/N: My first Trigun fanfiction. Short, one shot, and she's a tearjerker. Plants are, as we know, immortal. No-one else is. Inspired by the movie 'Highlander'.
"Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, Amen."
Dust…I watched them as they began to shovel it onto the coffin, as the other mourners turned to go. I was crying, I suppose, but then I am always crying, as if my tears could somehow revitalise this hard, dry, sad world. I look up, see another figure crying. An old woman, once tall, bent by the terrible weight of this desert world. I walked over to her, trying as best I could to comfort her.
"Oh, Mr. Vash…" she said, as she grasped round me. I could only hold this old woman tighter, wondering when she too would go to her grave, and to whatever lies beyond the grey veil of death.
Later on, I sat alone in the big old house I had shared with her, looking up at the photographs on the wall. Memories…I took another sip of my bourbon. Everyone became memories, and then dust…Except me. And Knives of course, wherever he is. Sleeping, I think, waiting for more of our people to come to this accursed planet. His Gung-Ho guns are dead, his gun hangs over my mantelpiece, along with my own weapon, both long since stripped of the components to make them useful even as normal guns, let alone the horrific, planet destroying weapons my brother envisaged them as…
I cursed at myself, hang my head. Why had I not seen this? I was a fool, a stupid, love drunk fool when I had married her. It was only as she grew older, and I stayed the same, and we had no children, that I truly realised what knives meant about how different we are to humans. We do not age, we do not grow ill, we do not die. We live outside of time, the short lives of humans are like candle flames compared to us. So how can we love them? How can we cherish them? For they will always die, leaving us alone to wallow in out grief…everyone around me is dead. All my friends, except Milly, and she can't last longer. And it was I that caused her never to find happiness, I that caused Wolfwood's death…
The townspeople don't know what to make of me. I'm a good man, no doubt about it. I work at the Plant, using my affinity with my sister inside to great ends. I do not drink too much, put myself in harms way to break up fights or to snatch children from in front of an oncoming thomas, and always eat a bag of donuts every Sunday. Yet I never, ever grow a day older, and they whisper dark things about me. Maybe one day they will work it out, who I am, and I will have to start running once again. I am ready, if I ever do. I still have the hammer and pin of my gun stored away safely, and I have recently ordered an unusual garment from the local tailor, a red suede coat of my own curious design.
Oh Rem…oh Meryl…what would you think of me, eh? About to run off again on some wild adventure, careening about this desolate world of Gunsmoke like a loose cannon, giving money away to the poor, fighting bandits, outsmarting bounty hunters, causing goodness knows how much damage to all and sundry…the saint among sinners, the legendary outlaw risen once again. Vash the Stampede. And how many more will there be, eh? How many more Rems? How many more Millys, Meryls and Wolfwoods? How many more will have to die because of me.
We are eternal. They all die but us.
Maybe I should go and seek Knives out. But what would I do with him? He hates me, almost as much as he hates the human race. He can't seem to understand why I am so against his vision of a perfect world and, sometimes, in my darker moments, neither can I.
Oh Meryl, is it good up there in heaven? Have you met Wolfwood yet in Paradise, shepherding the souls of all the little children. Milly will be along soon, to see her only love and oldest friend.
But I…I will never come. Not unless someone kills me, and you see, no one can. I'm too fast, too clever, too determined. I will never give up. Why don't I kill myself? But no, such rank hypocrisy I could never stand. I could never survive eternity with that knowledge. I barely get a good nights sleep still without seeing Legato's horribly smiling face, lying there in a pool of blood. Are you in Paradise, Legato Bluesummers, or is there a hell for people like you. If there is, maybe I should go there, if only to say sorry. Or maybe I shouldn't? Maybe you enjoy hell, Legato. You were a very disturbed man…maybe it's good to see all your old friends down there, the Gung Ho Guns that I so inadvertently killed for you.
Yes, maybe I should go to hell. What am I but a filthy murderer? When I look at the balance of what good I have caused and what harm I have done, which really comes out on top? I saved that town when its plant was about to explode…but does that make up for July and August? How can anything? All those people killed or injured by the bounty hunters that chased me, all those people who believed in me, only to have belief shattered by what I did to that city under Legatos command. All those Gung-Ho Guns who killed each other and themselves when I tried to keep them alive. The weight of their severed lives hangs like the proverbial albatross around my neck, pulling me down to the pit.
But no…I don't suppose I will ever find out…maybe there's nothing? Maybe all that will survive of all those dead will be the memories preserved in my extraordinary mind. If so, it must be my duty to keep living. To carry their torch, preserve their thoughts…
Dammit, I so hate these thoughts. They make me want to scream, want to cry.
And I can never know.
Time for another drink.
Who wants to live forever?
When love must die…?
A/N: Very sad…I swear if I do any more Trigun, they'll be comedies…