The soap in her hands held a faint smell of berries and little flecks of red in its smooth, white surface. In her mind flashed an image of a woman sliced up on blood-muddied sand.

She shut her eyes tight, and dropped her hands back into the warm water. Vanessa took a deep breath, and upon opening her eyes she stared out at the ceramic rim of the bathtub, the chrome spout dripping lazily.

"Clean your hair."

"I already did," she muttered, glancing at him in the corner of her eye.

He sat a couple of feet from the tub, arms crossed. "Do it again," Knives commanded in his soft-voiced way.

She gritted her teeth and dunked her head back into the water to rub the soap against her hair. It grated against the grit, the sand accumulated there from 3 days hiking. "Perhaps now you'll enlighten me, what do you want-?"

"Your safety and obedience," he sighed.

"-and don't say 'safety and obedience' again," she finished, talking over him. "Tell me more, what are you thinking?"

He slouched into his chair a little. "I want your loyalty. I want you to look at me as though you aren't disappointed that I'm near."

"I want those things, too. And I want to make you happy as well, if you'd just-"

"Do not offer-"

"I wasn't. I'm not pretending. I just think if you were happy, if you were truly happy, you wouldn't feel this need to hurt, to destroy. You'd appreciate that everyone else just wants to be happy, too."

"Don't spout his philosophy to me," Knives snapped, again avoiding the use of his brother's name.

"I'm not. This is me talking. Tell me what I can do to make you happy, and you can see for yourself if I'm right. I can sing to you, I can hold you, rub your feet, we can go back to the cave..."

"Give me independents."

"I think you're confused, Knives. Independence is what I want you to give me."

Knives did seem a bit confused until he clarified his answer with a smirk. "Not independence the abstract concept. Sentient, independent plants plural."

Vanessa became dizzy all the sudden. Her ears buzzed. Searching for a response, she finally choked out, "You told me not to...not to offer myself to you..."

"You don't have to in order to conceive, Vanessa. Perhaps you assume I'm more naïve than is true. Though I would attempt to make the experience tolerable for you, given your attitude toward me you would probably dislike it. But, for the good of our endangered race, you should bear my children."

She choked in a breath. "That would make you happy?"

"It would."

"Will you promise not to...not to..." Vanessa admonished herself for not considering this facet of sex in her plan. The penultimate purpose of sex is, biologically speaking, to reproduce.

What word would make her the least uncomfortable? 'Inseminate,' 'impregnate,' these words seemed too intimate, and considering the plant angle there were 'fertilize,' 'pollinate,' but those seemed silly in context. She gave up trying to force a synonym for it out of her throat. "Will you promise...not to do this to me until after the humans are gone?"

"If you feel that a fair arrangement."

"Give me your word."

He shifted from his seat and knelt beside the bathtub. Resting his elbows on the edge, his fingertips skimmed the surface of the water, but his eyes kept trained on hers. "If you promise to bear my children after the humans are gone, I promise to wait until then to impregnate you."

"Then I promise to allow you to make as many sentient plants with my body that you can, so long as you keep your promise."

Knives smiled. "Good. I prefer that we agree on this than for me to force it upon you otherwise."

She sunk deeper into the water.

"For what it's worth, I understand your discomfort," Knives offered, helpfully explaining, "As the female you're blessed with the ability to create new life, but cursed with the pain and trouble of the task. I'll do what I can to make it easier for you."

She wanted desperately to move on and stop talking about fertility. "Do you feel better?"

"Yes."

"Well, that's good, I suppose. In the meantime, I'm to follow you around as a trophy, a concubine? Be a tame, little pet?"

"Aren't you funny. You're not my pet, Vanessa. You're my equal."

"Doesn't feel like it. You don't tell me anything and you bark orders at me all the time."

"Then I'll tell you where we're going," he began, glancing up at the ceiling as he spoke. "We're headed to my residence north of May. There are probably still encampments of fanatic plant worshipers nearby, waiting to eagerly serve us once we're within the compound. Don't worry, it's not as my brother had said. You'll be perfectly safe. They're dangerous, terrible vermin, but they won't dare touch or look upon you. I wouldn't let them if they tried."

"Don't you think Vash will know to look for you there?"

"Probably. From the sound of it, we both believe he's searching us out, hmm? Do you believe he's searching for me, or for you?" he asked, amused.

Vanessa scoffed. "You killed a village, so my money's on you."

Smiling, he tapped a finger against his temple. "My brother may want to believe that human lives are as important as ours, but I would wager he considers yours more valuable than many towns-worth of humans. Which is not to insinuate that he's wrong; I feel that more strongly than he is capable." Stepping back to his chair, Knives sat calm a while longer.

Finally, he announced, "Would you like to write him a letter?"

She choked a bit in surprise. "What?"

"Write him a letter. Tell him to come and save you from me. I believe I'll have to kill him if he comes, but that's in your hands."

She rose out of the water, catching a glimpse of her reflection in the mirror. Water rolled off nude flesh as she stood there, and this body she stared at was not hers. Not anymore.

Wrapping a towel around herself, she contemplated his suggestion, and suppressed the hope it invoked in her. Again, she reminded herself, she belonged to Knives.

Pulling her shift over her head, minding her break, she replied casually, "Knives, this is obviously some trick. Some kind of game. I won't play."

Knives' eyes never left her. "There are no games left to play, Vanessa. Tell him whatever you want. I won't read it."

She turned to the wall and sat rubbing her hair against the towel, listening to the sounds of him undressing.

"It won't be so difficult," he added as he lowered himself into the water. "Just write what you would say to him if he were here. I'm sure you've thought up the words already. And don't waste my generosity attempting to sketch one of your designs; I will stop you before anything could affect me and you'll have forfeited the communication."

There were a few sheets of paper and a pen at the bedside table. She'd noticed them the moment they walked into the room, her thoughts on making a design. It took days to make one, unfortunately.

So, a letter, then. Vanessa gulped, and took the pen up in her hand.

Knives rubbed his hands through his soapy hair and was silent as she wrote. She paused often, and it took her long enough to write that he had already dried off and dressed himself before she was done. She folded up the pages and tucked them into an envelope. He pressed his fingers against his temple when he offered, "I'll see that he gets it."

"No," she snapped, tugging on a now-sleeveless gray dress. "Your idea of letter delivery would probably involve a couple of assassins."

He laughed for a moment, but whether because it was silly or true, she couldn't tell.

Once the dress was properly tied and fastened, her fingers furiously braided her drying hair, it all made awkward by the limited mobility of her broken arm. "Let me see he gets it in my own way."

"How ungrateful."

"On the contrary, I simply want him to believe I wrote this." Pulling on her cloak, she went to the door.

"After we eat, perhaps," he replied. "Dinner will be brought to the room momentarily."

"I'll eat when I'm back."

"Let me wrap your arm."

Glancing at the afternoon sky peeking through the windows, Vanessa frowned. "I'll miss my chance if I don't leave now. If I'm not back in twenty minutes, come find me."

Knives said nothing, watching her as she stepped out the door.

OXO

As Knives pinned her to the sand, Vanessa screamed, hoarse and crying. She struggled against him but it only drove his blades further into her flesh. He was careful not to let them go too deep, to bleed too much, because he wanted to play with her much, much longer. Knives smiled and laughed.

Vash's eyes flew open, trying to focus on the sun-baked dunes before him. His fingers were numb against the weight of his duffel's string. His chest ached.

Red coat dancing lazily about him, his legs marched on.

"She's okay," he mouthed to himself, his throat tight and sore. "She's okay." He shouldn't think so badly of his brother. He shouldn't let his imagination run free, but he could hardly believe such horrible things could come from his own thoughts. At least she hadn't any limbs sliced off this time.

Involuntarily, he groaned. The crimson cast of the sunsets bathed the sands in color, giving the illusion of being washed in blood. Shouldn't think badly of Knives? He'd proven himself already. He massacred those people. His brother was capable of horrors he could hardly imagine, but imagine he did.

If only he could shut that part of his mind off, to give himself solace, and the strength of mind to formulate a decent plan. Instead, his lazy daydreams when walking were all filled with visions so vivid he wished someone was around to tell him it wasn't real. Vash felt alone, horribly alone. All the hardship and heartache he'd gone through to find and face his brother, to convince him to concede to a truce, and it was all for naught. It was all lost because he was selfish. He heaved a sob and reminded himself once more that this was all his fault.

If Knives did what he had to those innocent people in Aires, if he was that angry, who knows what he would do to the next town? To her? Why couldn't he have punished Vash instead? "Vent on me," Vash whispered.

Vanessa's face ground into the clay wall of a dark room. Knives shoved his knee into her back, pressing on her head with a handful of hair. She begged him to stop through her cut, swollen lips, her bruised eyes wincing.

Eyes opening again, Vash noticed he was holding in his breath, and let it go in a slow, lazy puff.

He never envisioned her dead. Knives wouldn't kill her. She was the only female sentient plant. It would be logical to keep her alive. There were uses for her. His brother was both logical and skilled at using people.

Giving up to exhaustion, Vash's legs buckled under him and he fell to his side. He struggled to stay awake. He couldn't bear to let himself fall asleep because he didn't want to imagine anything else. But it was no use. His body was too tired.

Head spinning, Vash took one last, greedy, desperate sideways look at the darkening sky.

Vanessa was walking a few steps behind Knives in the night. She wasn't bleeding or limping. Her hair hung in her face. As the slight wind lifted it away from her eyes, he could see the vacant expression on her face. All that was Vanessa, simply wasn't there anymore.

Vash thought he heard himself whimper as he slipped into unconsciousness.