DISCLAIMER: Trigun and its characters belong to Yasuhiro Nightow.
The woman, Thompson, had fed Knives. He had barely tasted the food, even though he willingly wolfed it down. He knew he needed food to heal. It was important he heal as quickly as possible; the sooner he did so, the sooner he would be able to continue the war.
She had asked if he was ready for his bath. He had snarled at her to go the fuck away. He had been fed, he didn't need anything else.
"You don't have to be so rude!" she had scolded. "If you don't want a bath, you could have just said so. But I won't allow you to stink up the place!" Sprayed him with some sort of artificially scented spray that claimed to make him smell like lavender. How did she know he hated the smell of lavender? She could at least have chosen vanilla.
Now he was in the darkness. Supposed Vash would not be down. Earlier in the night, he had heard Vash's voice proclaim, "I won't kill him, but I'll be damned if he won't wish I had!"
He had waited for the confrontation. But it seemed it was not coming. A pity; he wanted to know how much he had damaged the Stryfe woman. Relished the thought of how broken she must be. So what if his plan had failed in its execution – and he still wanted to know how she had broken his control over her – he had still hurt her. Just not to the extent he had intended.
Part of him raged that the short bitch had been able to wound him in almost exactly the same manner as Vash. Bad enough that his own brother had done it, but for a mere human to insult his divinity in this way!
She would yet be sacrificed in this war! He would make damned sure of it!
But he controlled the rage. Rolled it into a little ball deep inside and burned a little bit of it at a time to fuel his patience. Patience was what he needed, while his body healed. It had been easier on him healing from July; longer, but he hadn't been conscious like he was for this.
Odin had hung on the world tree for nine days and nights. He was not given the advantage of food and drink that Knives had. If the God of Asgard could survive his ordeal, then the God of Gunsmoke would make sure to survive his.
The basement door open, letting light in. Now what did the Thompson woman want?
Footsteps came down. Light lit the basement.
"Howdy, brother."
So Vash had come for his confrontation, after all.
"Don't call me brother," Knives ground out. "You forfeit that title, just as you forfeit your claim to being a superior being."
"Happily so on the last part," Vash said. "Because we're not superior. But we'll always be brothers, whether you like it or not. Why do you think you're still alive?"
Knives glared. "Because you're weak."
Vash was carrying a folding chair. Set it next to Knives and sat down. Grinned. "But Meryl's not."
"Ah, yes. The short one. Tell me, just how broken is she? She was not looking well after our last meeting."
Vash let the grin turn into a smirk, careful not to let what he felt inside show. "She's a lot better than you think. Turns out you can't even bend her spirit. She's volunteered to pitch in for our little therapy sessions."
You lie! Knives snarled inside. Stayed cool outside. Knight to E7. "Has she now? Good; I look forward to seeing her again. I believe I felt a connection in our encounter."
Something flashed in Vash's eyes. Good. Knight takes pawn, D5.
"That something you felt was four forty-one caliber bullets, I think," Vash told him. "And I'd greatly appreciate it if you would leave Meryl alone from now on."
"You and I no longer speak the same language," Knives informed his brother. "You've crossed over to their side, and cemented your allegiance when you took away my Angel Arm. You declared war, and since you took away what was mine, it's only fair I take what is yours. Your woman will either be mine, or she will die. Either way, I won't stop."
Vash felt the anger rising in him. "You declared war first. You murdered scores of people who had never done anything to harm you. Rem never did anything to harm you."
"She was the same as the rest of them!" Knives blasted at him. "All of them, so proud, so ready to kill in the name of science. They killed Tessla, and she helped them!"
Vash snorted derisively. "You can't even say her name, can you? Admit it, you can't."
"I hate that bitch and I'm glad she's dead!" Knives snarled.
"She she she. You hide behind hate, you hide behind your self-righteousness, but deep down in a place you don't acknowledge, you're sorry you killed Rem."
"I hate her!"
"You don't," Vash corrected. "She raised us. Taught us. I know you were jealous I got so much time with her, but she would have spent just as much with you if you had asked. Rem loved us the same, Knives. Loved you as much as she did me. And I know you love her as much as I do. That's why I didn't kill you; you have that love inside, no matter how much you try to bury it. It's not weakness to save someone who's worth saving."
"Don't talk about loving her," Knives snapped. "You clung to her precious beliefs for so long, but in the end you failed. You took a life! And you've taken more since then!
"And once you broke her rules, she went away, didn't she? You couldn't hear her anymore. So you found a replacement."
Vash shook his head slowly. "I had to let go of Rem's words, true. In the long run, it's impossible to avoid all killing, you're right about that. Sometimes, you find yourself in an impossible situation and have to make an impossible choice. I was forced to choose between the sin of killing and the sin of letting people die. I was a sinner, either way.
"But I let go of her words, not Rem herself. She's right here." Tapped over his heart. "And I didn't find a replacement. I found Meryl. You know where she was? Right in front of me. Just like I'm right in front of you. Someday, brother, you'll realize that. You'll realize that sinners can be saved."
"Listen to you!" Knives spat. "A weakling trying to cover his own weakness. Defending other weaklings. 'Sinners can be saved'," he mocked. "As if it's a sin to do what has to be done. Is it a sin to kill for food? Is it a sin to kill to live? No, it is the course of nature. Just as it is the course of nature for the strong to dominate the weak. Just as it is the course of nature to try to wipe out a plague. Humans have done it for centuries, so don't snivel to me when they're the plague and I am the cure."
Vash sighed, hating the way this was going. He had not meant to be drawn in like this. Only wanted to issue the warning to leave Meryl alone. And it looked like Knives was going to be unreasonable about that, too.
"Here we are again," he said. "We always wind up with me here and you there. And no doubt you see it as you here and me there. No use arguing it over again tonight.
"But you know, Knives – I really do think this all boils down to Rem. All you had to do was ask her for some solo time, but you never did. You just kept feeding that jealousy until it turned to hate. I don't really think your war with me is about anything so grandiose as divinity or war between species or higher callings. In the end, I think you hate me just because I got so much of Rem. And it saddens me, because it didn't have to be this way. All you had to do was just ask."
"Shut up, you broom-headed fucknozzle!" It was a calculated insult, but Vash's talk of Rem had Knives truly angry. If he could have struck, he most certainly would have.
The hesitancy Vash had been feeling dissipated at Knives' use of "broom-headed". He thought of Meryl upstairs, and everything they had talked about that night. The memory of feeling what Knives had put into Meryl left him with a cold resolve to do whatever necessary to protect his Meryl.
He began pulling on the gloves he had brought with him, tugging firmly to make sure they fit right. His expression was a fierce scowl.
"I'm going to do this one more time," he warned. "I'm not asking, I'm telling you – leave Meryl alone from now on. Remember Newton's Third Law of Motion."
Knives had a scowl to equal Vash's. "Don't try to be clever by invoking Newton. 'For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction' applies to interactions of forces working at the atomic and molecular level, building to the complexity of interaction between physical objects. It was never meant to be used as a justification of 'I only did it because you did it first!' Once again, you human-loving simpleton, we are not speaking the same language."
"I know. However much I wish you did, you don't understand what I'm telling you. I can only show you."
Meryl severely bruised all over. Meryl shuddering in his arms. Meryl nearly breaking because her control was taken away.
Meryl hurt because Knives had hurt her.
The gloves Vash had put on each had six ounces of powdered metal sewn into the knuckles. They made muted, thudding sounds that, along with Knives' grunts as they impacted, would never be heard outside the basement where Vash delivered his message. Delivered an object lesson in the consequences of hurting Meryl in a language that Knives could understand.