Reflections on a Peacemaker

II. Experience

It's been said that "guns don't kill people; people kill people." But it was guns that helped Knives engineer the loss of my innocence forever. Rowan killed Mary with a gun, and Knives shot Captain Joey before taking control of the ship. Maybe it was destined to happen anyway – "The Great Fall" definitely sounds like one of those natural acts of God, something no mere mortal could prevent – but I bet it would have been a hell of a lot harder for Knives to do what he did if those accursed things never existed.

At least, that's what I was thinking as we wandered through the desert of death lying iles below the ships. I spent most of that time hating Knives, hating myself, and missing Rem. And then it got worse.

We were all grown up, or at least as physically mature as we were going to get. Somewhere around fifteen years had passed. Knives led me to an abandoned SEEDS factory, then proceeded to disappear inside. He made me wait outside for him, for one. Whole. Year. By the time he finally returned, I was talking to myself and – honestly – no longer really all there, which I guess sort of explains what happened a few minutes later.

He hadn't returned empty-handed, either. He showed me what he'd made in the factory: two large guns, one silver and one black. He handed me the silver one.

"These are our new siblings," he told me. "And this one is yours."

One evil sibling was bad enough. I wasn't about to take on another one. Still, I accepted the gun, if only because it meant there was one less weapon in Knives's possession. On one level, it felt so wrong – the thing was heavy, and I thought back to when I was a child and trying to hold Steve's gun – and yet something inside me seemed to resonate, as though the gun was harmonized to my internal energies.

Knives shocked me even more when he aimed his own gun at the outlying desert, engulfing it in a bright light that rocked me back on my feet, forcing me to squeeze my eyes shut. When I finally opened them, I saw that the desert had been reduced to even more of a wasteland than before: a rotted piece of land beneath a blood-red sky. I was livid, and also terrified. After arguing heatedly with Knives over his intentions, I did the unthinkable: I shot him.

In an instant, I had become the thing that I hated. As Knives knelt on the ground, screaming in pain and trying to ebb the flow of blood from his wounded leg, I did the second most unthinkable thing: I stole his gun and abandoned him.

I set off for no direction in particular, all the while possessed by a despair so deep that I thought it would snatch up my soul into its black, gaping maw. I neither ate nor slept. Thoughts drifted in and out of my mind, none of them I could remember until much later. The thoughts mostly concerned the guns, now the objects of my loathing and obsession.

I didn't know what to do with them. Well, I knew exactly what I wanted to do with them, I just didn't know if it was safe. I could tell from the touch alone that Knives had inserted some of our own genetic material within the housing – God only knew why. That meant I probably couldn't just bury them somewhere. He would be able to tell where they were hidden, same as I could. And what I wanted to do – destroy them until not a trace of them remained on this planet – was simply too dangerous, considering the insane amount of power they could unleash.

After what must have been an eternity wandering the desert, I fell into the hands of a group of humans, who hailed from a floating ship in the sky – one of the SEEDS ships that hadn't succumbed to destruction in the Great Fall. There, I was nursed back to health and introduced to the de facto leader of the group: a doctor who called himself Sensei, or (more conversationally) just Doc. We hit it off pretty quickly, and I was soon telling him the whole sad story. At first he was amazed by my origins, but he quickly sobered when I told him about Rem, Knives, and the real reason for the Fall. He was warm and empathetic, and I considered him my very first human friend.

I also told him everything about the guns.

They couldn't be hidden, I said. Sooner or later Knives would find them. But maybe –

"Can you destroy them?" I asked, hopeful.

"Unfortunately I'm a doctor, not a miracle worker," Sensei said, and he chuckled. When I stared at him, puzzled, he coughed. "...Oh, I'm sorry. Just a bit of humor from my younger days. Actually, it would be more apt to say that I'm not a nuclear scientist." His face became grave. "Because what you described to me sounds just like the mechanism for a nuclear bomb."

Suddenly I wanted to take the guns and throw them off the side of the ship. "...You really can't destroy them then?" I said, finally.

"I'm afraid not. As you yourself concluded, it is far too dangerous. Who knows what kind of Pandora's Box we would be opening..." He shook his head.

"Then what am I supposed to do with them?" I said, feeling helpless.

Sensei's face brightened as quickly as it had fallen. "You could learn to use them."

My voice was flat. "You're kidding."

"No, I'm not," Sensei said. "You have an advantage over your brother now. If he is truly determined on using the black revolver to end humanity's existence, then he will be training as soon as he recovers. However, he will not be using that particular gun. If you learn to use the gun that he gave to you, and are able to incapacitate him when you see him – "

"What? No! No way!" I tried to rise to signal my outrage, but Sensei just gave me a look, so I sat back down. "Even if I wanted to hurt Knives, it's the principle of the thing. I hate guns. And Rem wouldn't want me to be using one, anyway."

"I understand your reluctance," said Sensei. "Still – "

I shook my head emphatically. "I'll stop Knives, but I'll do it in my own way."

"Very well," he said, sounding disappointed but not terribly surprised. "Perhaps we could discuss it another time."

There was a beat of silence, in which I felt very ashamed of myself. It's not like I deserved any of Sensei's hospitality. He could have just as easily kicked me off the ship for being a monster, and I wouldn't have blamed him at all.

"I'm sorry," I said. "I didn't mean to talk back like that."

"It's quite all right. I shouldn't have been pushing the issue onto you so soon. In any case, make yourself at home," the doctor said cheerfully, before the conversation could take a turn for the even-more-depressing-than-it-already-was.

"I would love to, but I can't stay," I said regretfully. "I have to go back to the surface and protect those people from Knives." Although how I was going to stop him with two guns that I wouldn't even bring myself to use, I couldn't rightly say.

"Then consider it your vacation home," Sensei said with a smile.

So that's just what I did.

I ran around the facility like a little kid (or maybe an escaped mental patient), touching all the little trinkets and contraptions that hadn't been present on the mother ship, and eating all the different foods cooked up by people of all ethnicities and from all walks of life. I swear I talked to just about everyone onboard that ship, from the littlest girl to the oldest senior citizen, asking them about life on Earth, and how could they stand sleeping in those frozen chambers for so long (even if they weren't aware for most of it)? I even chatted with the plant that was onboard, the one that had enabled the people to live out this ideal lifestyle (although I couldn't bring myself to tell her what Knives had done). I was heady with a new euphoria, and the people just smiled and took the bundle of craziness that was me in stride.

Someone eventually pointed out that the clothes I was wearing were little more than rags, and the citizens of Sky City – as they now branded themselves – got to work making me some new duds. I was touched when the ship's main seamstress asked if there was anything special I wanted made. Without thinking about it, I said that I would love to wear something that was all red, like geraniums.

And what do you know, she made just that.

The coat was beautiful. That first time I wore it was like... I don't know, it was like dressing for a wedding or something. It was momentous. I decided I wouldn't wear it again until I was back on the planet, as a symbol of the flowers that people deserved to see in the midst of that endless desert.

And that was just one of an endless number of gestures that was extended towards me. Living on that ship, among all those people, was one of the best things that ever happened to me. The people's kindness encouraged me to come out of the shell I'd withdrawn into while traveling with Knives. I learned to vocalize things other than fear and pain. For the first time in over ten years, I was happy.

Then the subject of the guns came up again.

Sensei asked if I had given any thought to the matter. I had, but not in the way that he intended. This whole time – in between scarfing donuts and beer and playing hopscotch with little children – I'd been trying to find some hidden solution to my dilemma, to no avail. I didn't want to admit that to Sensei, though.

"I don't need to learn how to use the gun," I told him again, this time in a tremulous voice. "Even if Knives isn't dead, I still have his gun. I'll make sure he never finds it. And anyway, there has to be another way to stop him. There has to be!"

"I want nothing more than to believe that," Sensei said sadly. "But if everything you've told me about your past is true, then Knives is at least as clever as you are – and twice as ruthless. He will stop at nothing to reclaim what is his."

I stared sullenly at the wall, memories flooding through me as inexorably as a tidal wave. There were so many of them... almost killing myself with that wretched gun when I was a child. Not knowing the intention of the one who left it. Finding Mary's dead body, and Rowan shooting repeatedly, gleefully. Knives's frozen expression of horror as I shot him in the leg. And Rem... Rem had said –

"Guns kill," I said. "I won't be a killer." I managed to sound petulant as well as panicked then. "You... you can't make me!"

"No one is making you do anything," Sensei said patiently. "But you must admit, there are precious few options at this point."

To this I said nothing.

"I'll admit it," Sensei said. "It is a terrible burden I'm putting on you, asking you to do this. But I believe in you. I believe that you can save what's left of this world."

Long after the doctor left, I stared at the wall and thought really hard, not allowing myself the distraction of food or fun. This wasn't something that I could put off any longer. I wondered what would happen to the people living below if I couldn't stop Knives. I wondered what would happen to the people here. Before I knew it, I could taste the tears that dripped down my cheeks and lips.

Sensei was right. There was no other choice. Maybe it was a burden, but it was still my burden. Knives was my responsibility.

It was time to put up or shut up.

I continued to cry that night, just getting it all out of my system. Despite everything, I still missed Knives, even though I tried not think about him. In the end, he was my brother and I loved him; and I couldn't believe that it had come to this. I cried for lost opportunities and could-have-beens, at the horror and frustration of it all. I begged Rem for forgiveness.

The next morning, over a breakfast that I barely tasted, I told Sensei that I wanted to begin training.