I own nothing remotely Trigun-ish.
I like reviews (hint, hint).
************************************************************************
The next morning was a little calmer. Knives refrained from pushing at her sanity, and Kiley refrained from teasing Knives. Well, mostly refrained. She was trying to be good, though, which should count for something.
Instead, they acted like calm and reasonable adults indulging in consensual acts of information transference. The topic of the day was the mechanics of a link information transfer. Kiley explained theory, meshing biorhythms and whatnot, and Knives listened patiently, passively absorbing knowledge. Only rarely did he feel the need to ask a question, as her teaching was clear and well presented. Instead, he found himself letting his mind wander off into thoughts of what he could do with this link business.
All in all, though, things went well until the afternoon lesson.
This time, Knives' assignment was to link with Kiley. He started out not having any success, and every time he tried to link and failed, he grew angrier. The reasons behind his failure were unknown, but Kiley could guess at his problem. Either he had been daydreaming during an important part of the lecture, which wasn't very probable, or he didn't like the idea of opening his mind to a human. What he was supposed to do was link his mind with hers and deposit a simple memory into her mind. He kept mentally pulling back before forming the link, unable to make his mind lightly touch hers.
"Will you stop trying to block my link," he growled out after yet another failed attempt.
"I'm not the one sabotaging this," she said calmly, trying to decrease his frustration. Think calm, be calm, keep the psycho happy.
"Of course you are," he erupted, very much not calm. "Your stupid human mind keeps slipping away as I attempt to bridge the mental gap."
"I'm not the one slipping away. You seem to be having some problems making your mind actually touch the mind of a human. I suppose that it was alright for you when your mind was dominating the thoughts of a person, that you could tolerate that degree of intimacy because you were in charge and causing pain to your subject, but now that you are only supposed to share, you're having a bit of a problem."
"I'm not the one with the problem," Knives insisted. "If your mind would stop dancing away from mine I would have made this stupid link already."
"Maybe if you trance," she offered, but Knives interrupted her before she could say another word.
"I will not trance again," he said, his eyes icy.
Kiley rolled her eyes and said, "You aren't less of a prodigy if you have to trance."
"You only tranced once, correct? If a human can absorb the concepts without retreating to a mental realm, I can do it."
"Knives, don't measure your progress by mine. I didn't learn the right way, the safe way, of the way I should have. I stressed myself to the max when I could have learned better and more safely if I had only allowed myself to slip into trance."
He obviously wasn't mollified. If she could do it, he could do it, only massively better, because he was a plant. Kiley suppressed the urge to roll her eyes. It was either because he was a plant, or because he was a male. She had seen enough crap in her life as a result of the last condition to be suspicious. Whatever his problem was, she could see that getting mad was Knives' way of dealing with his failure, and since he was a great-and-mighty-plant-man and she was a low-and-simple-human, the failure must be her fault. She debated pointing that chain of reasoning out to him, but refrained. If he hadn't figured that out yet, now was not the time to draw attention to his shortcomings.
Since trying to do it the right way was getting him nowhere, Knives decided that she was teaching him wrong.
"It's really too bad I have to stoop to learning from a human. If another plant were teaching me, I'm sure that the information would be passed along in a much more rational fashion."
"Will you quit acting like such an asshole?" she responded. "You would think that I was deserving of just a little respect, for no other reason then I obviously know more about this sort of thing then you do. And if I say you don't know how to link, I'm not going to be lying to you. And if you would just stow the attitude for a few hours I might get to finish this thankless task with my sanity intact."
Knives snorted. "You have no sanity. Teacher."
Kiley managed to control herself, barely, but the outrush of rage was impossible to ignore. Her hands twitched in her lap, but she managed to keep them from his neck by sheer force of will. Looks like chanting the word to herself all morning long was a good idea after all.
"Bastard. And you say humans are evil."
Their conversation was rapidly devolving into an argument. Both leaned forward and stared angrily into the each other's eyes.
"All humans are evil and deserve to die," he said coldly. "All you do is use, and take, and kill, and pollute, and destroy."
"Whine, whine, whine," she said, her voice rising. "You use that crap you went through as a child as an excuse for everything bad you've done in you entire life. I killed untold millions of sleepers on the Seeds ships? I was abused as a child. You decide that all humans must die? They abused me as a child. Grow up, Knives. It wasn't as bad as you keep bitching about."
"How dare you presume to know what I went through as a child? You act like the horrible acts of brutality I suffered were nothing, to be ignored and overcome just because I feel like it? What humans did to me cannot be forgotten or forgiven." Knives snarled.
And then he kissed her.
As far as kisses go, it was nothing spectacular. It wasn't as if Knives had ever had much practice, myths and rumors of his relationship with Legato notwithstanding. It was mostly a firm meeting of the mouths, a hard, quick smash of lips on lips. There was no passion, no attempt to soften the blow. It was a kiss in the same fashion that rape is like sex; the mechanics were the same, but they were used only to cause terror. Kiley was overwhelmed.
But it wasn't the kiss that assaulted Kiley's senses. Knives had finally figured out to link, and his first transfer wasn't comprised of puppies and roses. Images poured through her mind, memories assaulted her senses as she was forced to relive some of Knives' most hated memories, the memories of his youth, and his abuse at the hands of the first humans he ever knew. That he had to be reliving them as well was scant consolation, as time and familiarity have a way of dimming the impact of memory. That she didn't have such defenses meant they caused him less pain then they caused her.
Thanks to Knives' near-perfect memory, there was no distortion, no loss of detail. What she experienced was close enough to the actual experience as was possible. She could feel the pain of every blow, could feel the fear that immobilized him as he found he couldn't escape. The metallic odor of the floor lingered in her nostrils as she felt her face pressed hard against it. The sound of his flesh being struck, and the accompanying fresh jolts of agony. The need to not cry out, wails stifled by shame and pride. The physical pain of the beatings that lingered for days, refreshed again and again, never going away.
And the emotional pain the words caused was poured on her soul like acid, etching deep chasms of pain that seeped rage at the edges. The hurts of the body were bad enough, but to be called the things that he was called, the words that were used to try to destroy him, just because he was different, just because he was better, just because humans felt threatened by the things they could not control. To be called a monster because he could do things better, could perform dangerous tasks faster and with a higher level of precision then a human ever could, to be hated because he was superior, these things damaged the very fabric of his soul. The denial of any sort of basic humanity, and the assumption of the mantle of monster seemed the only response to such horrible beatings. If being human meant even the possibility of acting in such a horrible manner, he would never, ever wish to be human.
She felt his mind grapple with the concepts of hatred and rage, and knew when it came to the decision to use the evils of the humans against them, to destroy them as they would destroy the superior plants. She was forced to watch as he realized that the time to kill the humans off was before they awoke, before more monsters arose to try to kill him, and most importantly before they tried to kill Vash. Maybe, somehow, he did something to deserve this, but Vash? Never. He made it his mission in life to protect that empty-headed idiot, but was angry that no one ever felt the need to protect him. They needed someone to protect them, and Rem wasn't equal to the task. She and her never-killing, ultra-pacifistic view of the world wouldn't be able to keep them safe. It did make her one of the humans worth saving, if she might actually abstain from the vermin pattern of violence, but leaving the escape pod had been her idea. He didn't mourn her.
She felt that he did mourn the loss of his innocence before his second birthday, and felt his anger when he took his revenge on the humans for what they did to him, and for what they allowed to happen. If no one would protect him, if no one would save him, he would make sure that no one would ever need to, ever again.
The pain of months was transferred to her in moments, and then Knives broke the link. Kiley swayed in her seat, rocked by what she had seen. Her eyes were confused, glassy, and her mouth opened and closed a few times with no noise coming out. He stared at her, pleased with the reaction. He could see that he had staggered her, could see that her confidence had been shaken. Her hands were clenched into fists, but that could not hide their subtle tremors.
That he had managed to figure out that stupid link without having to trace gratified him. The human had been so sure that he would need to fall into that weakness, that escape from reality, but he had proved her wrong. He didn't need to be highly motivated, he just needed to be pissed.
An idea came to him. Now was probably one of the best times to break her, to destroy that damnable self-confidence that was annoying him so much. She didn't lose control like this easily, and if she was already shaken, she might crack with the right sort of pressure.
He leaned forward and said softly, "Now do you know why I hate humans so much? Do you realize why I will never stop until all of you flawed vermin are erased from this universe?"
He paused, then gave the killing blow. "Having problems with what you witnessed? A little harsh for your unprotected mind? 'The depth of the link depends on the intimacy of contact made.' Remember that, teacher?"
The reaction was swift, but it wasn't the one he desired. Rage flashed across her features right before her hands shot out and affixed themselves to the sides of his face. They were followed a fraction of a second later by her lips as she kissed him back.
Kiley's kiss was better, softer, and deeper. Instead of a press of lips on lips, it was a meeting of mouths and tongues, a soft melding of flesh to flesh. It was enticing, electric, and designed to arouse passion. For all that the technique was superior, the effect was the same. Her link was deeper, and she used every part of it.
Kiley forced the memories of her childhood on Knives, the horrors she lived through for over a decade. The emotional, physical, mental, and sexual abuse she suffered at the hands of her stepfather tore through his mind, leaving pain and terror behind. Her memory was not as exact as Knives, so he was spared having to relive her experiences, but that gift paled in light of the mass of memories that descended on him. Memories comprised of still pictures, actions filled by emotions, still shots of her life within the context of pain.
Perfection in all things always expected, never achieved. No matter how good she did, how perfectly she acted, he always found a fault. Starting from the time she was three years old she was subjected to the expectations of perfection and failure. Constantly forced to achieve more while every achievement was subsequently ignored, living where action and inaction both led to pain. Living where her existence was tolerated only because it provided a convenient outlet for her stepfather's rage.
The first time she was beaten was on the eve of her mother's wedding. Before leaving to mount her mother, her stepfather battered her nearly into unconsciousness because she had fidgeted during the wedding. A three year old child, and she was beaten for fidgeting, as if this were somehow not something that a little girl would be expected to do.
The first time she was sexually abused she was seven years old. Her stepfather accused her of being dirty, of someone like her enticing him to her bed with heat-filled glances and the way she showed off her legs. She never tried to tell him that the only heat in her eyes was hate, and that she only wore the clothes he picked out for her. It wouldn't make any difference. The memory of the rain outside the window, falling like bars that trapped her here, the memory of the bare branches on the trees holding her in.
The first time she realized that all this terror had nothing to do with her, personally? When she was eight, and her stepfather loosed a stream of invective towards her father as he cut into her back, some light cuts, some heavy enough that she could feel the hot trickle of blood seep out from the under the blade of the knife as he drew it across her back. The shame that knowledge released, that she wasn't even evil enough to deserve this treatment, that it was her father that caused her agony.
The first and only time she tranced, first the relief she felt as she had managed to perform her first mental trick, then the quick rush of pain as she returned to her body. Her stepfather, her teacher, had used the time that her mind wasn't attached to her body to cover it with paper cuts and rub lemon juice on her skin. Silent pain, invisible yet excruciating. The words whispered in her ear of what would happen next time, and the determination to never, ever need to trance again.
She shared with him the pain that words can cause, the constant put-downs and attempts to destroy her mind, her self-esteem, her pride, her very soul. She shared with him the firsts, and the seconds, and all the other memories that stretched on into infinity, fifteen years of terror, pain, and heart-wrenching horror, fifteen long, loveless years of her childhood. The span was almost ten times longer then Knives had spent being abused, and her abuser had been much more inventive and had a much freer hand with her treatment.
She gave him all those years, a poisoned gift from her soul. Memories that she tried to deny, that she could deny in the light of day but came back to haunt her in the still of the night. Memories that time could not soften, could not make pretty or better. Memories of a sick and twisted time that somehow, amazingly, produced a sick and twisted woman. Memories of a time where everyone and everything seemed to conspire to destroy her, a time where all she had was her pride. Her pride, her only defense, and her only shield, but it was a thin thing, like ice on a pond. But it never cracked, it never broke, and she emerged from that time unbroken. She was never broken, no matter how hard people tried.
Then she broke the link and sat back, sick at heart, both from reliving the memories and from her actions. Knives may have asked for it, but no one should have to live through what she had. How many times had she told herself that to have weakened now and forced it on another? Shame and guilt filled her, turning the rage she had felt to ashes.
Knives didn't move for a second, then he turned and vomited in the sand beside him. The urge to throw up didn't abate for almost a minute, dragged out by the despicable nature of the memories she had "shared" with him. After the heaves ended he pushed himself back up and faced her.
"You're an alien, aren't you," he accused. "None of that happened here."
She blinked, not expecting this. "Well, you weren't born here, either," she pointed out.
"How did you get here?" he demanded. The ultimatum was diluted by the green cast to his face.
Kiley didn't say anything for a minute. When Knives started to make noises of protest, she waved him down. Finding the right words was hard, emotions crowding the facts, clamoring to be included. What finally emerged was stripped of everything unessential, and came out in a flat, tired voice. "I died. And after years of service, doing what I was told, trying to do the right thing, I ended up here. With you. Which goes to show that there really is a hell."
Knives wasn't pleased when Kiley fell silent. He waited impatiently for her to say more, to elaborate on how the hell she got in his ship. Time slipped on, seconds pulled out like taffy, stretching beyond belief but never breaking. Kiley stared down at her hands, fingers laced in her lap, carefully avoiding anything resembling eye-contact as she grappled with her emotions.
Sometimes it the little things that are hard. You can make it through a lot of difficult times, a lot of troubles and keep your cool, but one small irritation and you lose it. This was one of those moments. She could handle that she had ended up on this horrible planet. She could deal with ending up in Knives' ship, and the subsequent need to deal with the psychotic plant, and she was managing the need to teach him how to be a better sociopath. But having to admit that she wasn't born here? It was hitting her harder then it should.
Unfortunately, just because you can rationalize your problem, it doesn't mean you can make it go away. Kiley sat there, fighting with her mind, fighting depression, and fighting a damnable urge to cry. Cry? She never cried. Why did she want to cry now? What was wrong with her? Her eyes fixed on her fingernails, and she idly recognized the need to clean them as her emotions fought within her.
"That's it? That's all you're going to say?" Knives demanded when the silence grew too thick. He wondered what was wrong with her now. All the fire seemed to have left her. Inexplicably, he began to feel a flicker of guilt.
Guilt? What did he have to feel guilty over? He was a plant, a superior form of being. Superior beings never screwed up. The human must just be broken. Nevertheless, the feeling of guilt didn't go away.
Kiley didn't respond. No thoughtful, considered response, no smart-assed reply designed to infuriate, nothing. She just sat there, staring at nothing. Knives grabbed her shoulder and chin, pulling her towards him and her face up until their eyes met. He was surprised by the emptiness there, the emptiness that still failed to hide her pain. The emptiness didn't last long; it was quickly replaced by anger.
"What? What more do you want me to say?" she raged, pulling her head out of his hand, but not breaking eye contact. "This place is wrong; it looks wrong, smells wrong, tastes wrong. I don't know this place, I don't understand it, and I don't like it here. I don't like it here, I don't like where I came from, and what sort of problem is that? I'm not entirely sure how I got here; do you want me to make something up?
"Or maybe you want to make my life even harder," she continued. "I have had a really crappy time this last year; dying was the least of what's been happening to me lately. So, let's continue the pattern of my life. What are you going to do now? What are you going to say to fuck my life up more then it is at the moment? What the hell are you going to do now, you unadulterated bastard?" Her voice rose until she was screaming, trained lungs forcing sound, echoing around the oasis.
"I'm sorry," said Knives, simply. The words surprised him almost as mush as her, and he was more surprised to find that he meant them. What was wrong with him? Stupid human must have affected him more then he thought when she forced her memories on him.
Shock replaced rage. Her face paled from an angry red to a shade only slightly darker then white. She hadn't imagined that reply was even possible. "What?" she whispered.
"I'm sorry," he repeated irritated at having to repeat himself. Irritation was good, safe. He could handle being irritated. "I was wrong to force my memories on you."
"What?" she accused. "Afraid of breaking your new toy? You don't need to pretend anything. Your crap I can handle. Suddenly acquiring lots more memories of pain and abuse I can handle, too. I'm just having a hard time handling it well."
Knives pushed her away. "I don't lie to protect the feelings of vermin, and I'm not apologizing for hurting you in any matter. What I did was reprehensible and wrong. It was much like Steve did, and the only thing I was trying to tell you was that I recognized that what I did was abusive. Verminlike."
"Yippie for you," she said sarcastically. "Does it make you feel all better, to have said you were wrong to the little human? Why bother demeaning yourself, caring about the feelings of such a lower life form? Does acknowledging that you can be just as horrible as your tormenter absolve you from guilt?"
"No," he said quietly. "If I knew that apologizing would only antagonize you, though, I would have refrained."
A sudden thought and more invective flew from her. "No, you don't want to antagonize me. I can handle you when I'm angry. You have a much better chance of controlling me if I listen to you. You want me to think that underneath all the bastard might lie a heart. Go to hell; I'm not buying it."
Knives' hands flew up to the sky and he sighed. "You are the most aggravating person alive," he growled, getting up and pacing away.
"No, you are!" she screamed at his retreating back.
She sat there and glared at his back until she finally felt foolish. He was merely ignoring her. The only thing she could do to feel more foolish would be sticking her tongue out at his back. So she did, then turned and stared at the sky.
Dammit. She needed to get a grip, get a hold of herself. She tried telling herself that she had been through worse, which was true. She tried telling herself that she could get through this, which was also true. She had seen hell, all sorts of hell, and she had survived. What was making this so hard?
Sighing, she finally allowed that you can only run from a problem for so long before you needed to confront it. She relaxed that part of her mind that had been trying to protect her, trying to keep her from accepting her fate. Slowly, the idea formed in her mind, words creeping into formation, description fading into focus.
For the first time in her life, she had no hope.
*************************************************************************
Knives was having trouble grappling with all the new memories in his head. He had been entirely unprepared for the assault, hadn't known just how damaging it was to have someone else's memories downloaded into your mind. It wasn't an experience you could distance yourself from; there was no way to pretend that you weren't affected. It wasn't as if you merely watched the memories, playing a passive role in regards to the past.
You lived them, each memory imprinting itself firmly on your mind. Whatever was placed in your head became a part of your life, undifferentiated from the days you had actually lived. The horror of the memories was still fresh in his mind, but as they cycled through his head he could not tell which episodes of abuse were his and which were hers without actively thinking about it.
That bothered him, that what she put in his head could be so similar to what was already there. Wasn't his pain unique? Shouldn't he be able to tell which memories were his merely by the signature of anguish? Why was he remembering things that had happened to her as the worst things that had happened to him?
It irked him that he had to know so much about a human, and even worse was that he had given her so much of himself. He hadn't realized that he was giving her such a window into his soul. He now knew her entire childhood, and she knew his. Against his will, there was now a bond between them, a strong bond of shared memories. He hadn't even imagined that this could happen, that his link could do this to him, could actually make him feel something other then hate for a human.
This was all her fault. She should have warned him that this could happen. If she were any sort of teacher. . . At that word, he flinched.
Knives' nostrils flared, but otherwise he gave no sign of the anger that erupted within. Not like that female was watching anyway, but some habits were hard to break. She had infected him with her problem! How dare she? Horrible enough that he had to know what she lived through without developing the same mental problems.
But, if he now had the problem, he also must know what caused it. Curious, he reviewed her memories, searching for the clue to this malady. It wasn't an easy task. She could point to the memories that bothered her the most, but he had no such emotional clues to navigate by. Instead, he had to sit there and ponder whatever memories his mind brought up.
In the first one, s/he was sitting primly in a study, well-groomed and careful not to fidget. Her stepfather was entertaining, and the guest was an important person, someone it was essential that s/he not screw up in front of. S/he tried very hard to be perfect, but still managed to mess up.
"Thank you, daddy," s/he had said, sweetly, when offered a sweetmeat.
"That's Teacher-daddy," he had corrected with a smile, but his eyes had hinted at the pain that slip was to cause her.
Another memory, this one while s/he was at school. This school was odd, ranks of children being forced to learn more then he thought human children could. In a time where there was plenty of access to memory aids, the children were being trained to carry all knowledge in their heads, like the ancient scholars. They carried no books, no writing aids of any sort, but were expected to attend lectures and memorize every spoken word. Amazingly, to him at least, the concept worked. The minds that this school produced were some of the most finely trained in the history of the world.
But some of the means to instill this method of learning also left bruises and cuts on the students. Corporeal punishment was an accepted and encouraged method of motivation, and the female's stepfather had tacitly informed his colleagues that s/he needed more correction then most. Despite her near-perfect recall, s/he still managed to be beaten more often then any of her classmates.
Every teacher she met seemed to have the same goal: to break her spirit. S/he defied them all, body bloodied but head unbowed. Hatred flowed from her, and when the teachers saw this, they tried even harder to beat the defiance out of her. They failed, but through no fault of their own. They just couldn't overcome the innate stubbornness of the girl. The more they tried, the more s/he hated them, until even the concept of a teacher filled her with rage, a rage mostly directed at her father, but with enough flexibility to hate anyone who presumed to teach her.
Other memories surfaced in a similar vein, both of her stepfather's insistence that he be called by his proper title at all times and of torment at the hands of her teachers. These only served to reinforce the impression that he got from the first two. One, that teacher was not just a descriptive noun for a occupation, but a title with some prestige attached. Two, that she had suffered at the hands of those who proudly named themselves teachers, and their emphasis on the name caused her to attach some negative emotional significance to the term.
Knives smiled when he figured it out, then frowned. Now he knew how to manipulate her, but the means that he would need to use were as reprehensible to him as they were to her. Trying to control her through her rage would be a chancy business if he were trying to manipulate her while he was upset as well. You needed to be calm to manipulate effectively.
He found that he was drumming his fingers on his knee and forced his hand to still. The thought of manipulating her was bothering him now. Maybe it was because he was closer to her now then any other living creature, although even the idea made him shudder. Causing her pain through these memories would cause him pain as well. Presumably, the same went for her as well, but that would cause her little difficulty. She had other means of manipulating him then pain.
Knives didn't smile at the idea, but he was unable to keep the glint form his eye. It was time he stopped thinking of pain as the only way to manipulate these vermin. There were many methods he could use, and it was as she said herself, she could handle him when she was upset; it was when he tried to be nice that she grew flustered.
Being nice to a vermin might be distasteful, but if it worked. . .
*************************************************************************
Kiley stared morosely around the oasis and resisted the urge to bury her head in her knees. Tempting as it was, she didn't need the luxury of pretending that the situation she was in didn't exist. Some weak people who weren't her might be convinced to imagine that life could be wished into some semblance of what they desired, but she wasn't going to lie to herself. Again. For someone who prided herself on total honesty, she had managed to lie to herself rather well.
It had been her one and only hope. After she had managed to screw up her life beyond hope of redemption back home, she had dusted off an old dream and hung her heart on it. Maybe it was just the old "hope of heaven" routine that kept so many other people going, the same impetus that made martyrs, but she had truly believed that after she died that some being was actually going to make her dreams come true.
And why not? She was a firm believer in infinity. In an infinite universe, paralleled by infinite other universes, there was an infinite variety of possibilities. Why couldn't she be pulled from one universe to another? It was a possibility, and no matter how remote the chance was, she had believed with all her heart that after she died, she would be taken to a land where she could finally know peace.
When she had closed her eyes for the final time in her home dimension, she had cast her soul upon the whims of fate. When she opened them and saw that which she had always hoped for, her heart rejoiced. The happiest moment of her life came after she died, and how pathetic is that? Maybe the concept of Dream Dancer was juvenile, but in her defense, she had developed it when she was six. Six-year olds are allowed a touch of whimsy in their lives, a belief in magic before life grinds away the soft parts of your soul.
Dream Dancer had been the personification of her hopes. The love and warmth that had suffused her soul as she was in her presence had been a balm to a wounded heart. She had needed to believe that she was being given a reprieve, that she was actually going to a place where she could allow herself to stop fighting, to maybe even find someone that could love even a monster like her.
Then she ended up here. With him. She suppressed the urge to shoot an angry glance across the oasis; it wasn't his fault she was upset. He was just being Knives, the psychotic asshole he'd always been. It wasn't his fault that she had been put here, in this world, in his company. That he was a convenient target didn't give her the excuse to get mad at him for just being himself. Easy to say, harder to remember, and maybe impossible to act on, but she would have to try.
It was just so hard to have your one and only dream turn to ashes. Her heart ached with the weight of unshed tears. It sat in her chest like lead, a weight dragging her down farther and farther into depression. Why was life always so hard? Why did bad stuff keep happening to her? Why did she have to be here? Maybe it would be better to just die, again, and hope that she reached an end this time.
She looked around the oasis, carefully avoiding looking near Knives. The land was so stark. This place was a haven compared to most of the planet, and what did she see? Rocks and a few scraggly plants huddling near a puddle of water. Her eyes drifted towards the sky, and her body followed by falling back onto the sand. The sting of impact broke her depression a bit. The suns glittered in the too-blue sky, a sky that needed a cloud or two to break the monotony of unadulterated color.
How many days had she longed to see that color? Her mind cast back over the memories of her childhood, of living in a place that was lucky to see blue sky one day in three, and almost never in the winter. There had been times that her soul ached to see just a glimpse of sunlight, a break in the cloud cover, and now that the sky above her was filled with light she wanted clouds. Idly she wondered if someday she would be content with what she had.
Someday. Every time she wanted something, she always prefaced the desire with someday. Maybe she should stop waiting for someday. Waiting was obviously getting her nowhere, except more and more depressed. Maybe she should start trying to enjoy life now, enjoy every minute as she lived it and telling someday off. Maybe it was time to stop hoping for anything and making the best of what she had. Maybe. . .
"Gah!" she cried out as Knives' head suddenly appeared, blocking the light. She quickly scrambled out from underneath him.
"You could warn somebody that you're stalking them," she said waspishly.
Knives blinked. "Wouldn't that defeat the purpose?" he asked facetiously.
Kiley appeared to give the question some thought as she brushed the sand off her back. "I suppose it would," she said thoughtfully, "but you should do it anyway. I'm not going to be able to teach you much if I'm dead of a heart attack."
"I'll keep that in mind for when I'm done with you, though," he said. "Startling as a tool for murder."
"Mmm. I can see it now, me falling dead of fright. Actually, somehow, not," she joked.
"Anyway, what do you want now?" she asked.
"Maybe, just to talk," he said, hesitantly.
Kiley was shocked, then suspicious. Her suspicions she kept off her face as she patted the sand to her right. "Plenty of ground to go around," she invited.
"So, what do you want to talk about," Kiley asked. "The weather? The latest sports scores? Fashion disasters and gossiping about the rich and famous? Easiest way to kill someone at fifty paces? It's not like we have a lot in common, and frankly, the places our interests collide aren't subjects I care to dwell on." Her voice was even and bored. She was tired of pretending to make small talk. No one cared about her opinions; they just wanted something from her. While it was nice in a sick way to be an object of desire, it would be nicer if she could stop being just an object for a while.
Knives looked a bit taken aback, but he sat down next to her anyway, smoothing the sand before he sat down. Kiley suppressed the urge to ask if that made it any more comfortable. Brushing the few grains of sand away was not going to suddenly make solid ground appear, as this planet had more land area covered with sand then the earth had water, but far be it for her to remark on other people's peculiarities.
"I was thinking that maybe we could get to know each other better," he started. "If we're going to be spending time together, we should see if. . ."
Kiley cut him off. "Hmm. Telling you all about me, so you can better develop a means to kill me when you're done with me. Pardon me if I feel like passing." Sarcasm dripped from her words, her cynicism showing in inflections and changes of tone.
He shot her an exasperated glance. The big blue eyes were particularly expressive, showing equal parts disgust and amusement. "Are you always this confrontational?" he asked. Trust a human to be as obnoxious as possible in the fewest amount of words.
"That depends. Are you always this transparent?" she shot back.
Silence hung in the air while Knives tried to come up with an answer. "Do you find it so difficult to believe that I could be asking just because I'm curious about you as a person?" he said finally.
"In a word: yes," she said quickly. "Knives, call me silly, but I just get this feeling that you don't see humans as people. Saying that you're interested in me as a person is about as believable as saying you are interested in that rock over there as a person. Only, when all is said and done, I'm pretty sure you would prefer the rock."
Silence descended again. Kiley stared between the rocks at the desert beyond and tried to ignore the situation. She could feel Knives staring at her, but tried to pay no attention. Let him stare; he wasn't going to get much out of it.
Knives was at a loss. Here he was, trying to be nice to the vermin, and she was having none of it You would think that she would be glad of his attention, realizing that any time that such a superior being wasted on her was a precious gift, but she spurned it. He sighed, wondering just how he was supposed to get her to open up. Time stretched out between them as he grappled with the age-old problem of a man trying to talk to a prickly woman. He might have been a super-intelligent being, but he was still stumped by that one.
"You know," she said idly, "it's a wonder that a man approaching his sesquicentennial still hasn't learned patience."
"What do you mean by that?" he asked, carefully controlling his tone to make sure he was asking and not demanding. She didn't seem to like demanding, and no matter how much he wanted to grab her by the shoulders and shake all the intriguing things out of her simple little mind he accepted that tactic wasn't going to work. Why he was being forced to be nice to an obnoxious human female was beyond him, and as he waited for her answer he dwelled on the circumstances that brought him to this point. Try as he might, he couldn't see anyway to have stopped this, at least, not after she escaped the ship. But getting upset with himself over that slip wouldn't help matters now. It was no use dwelling on the past, even when the past was much more enticing then what he was going through now.
"I dunno," she finally said. "It just seems that you wouldn't be rushing into trying to be nice to me and being completely obvious if you had just a little more patience. And you would think that a guy your age would have learned that patience is a virtue."
"How long should I have waited?" he asked, matching her light tone, his eyes sparkling.
"Well, now, that's a loaded question," she replied. "If I say a day, now, and you try this again tomorrow, I'll know you listen to me and that you're still trying to manipulate me. If I say a week, I'll get a week of grumpy Knives, and then the same thing. Actually, now you're just screwed. Now no matter when you try this again, I'm going to know that you're full of shit." She paused, then added thoughtfully, "Actually, I didn't need you to try this to know that you're full of shit. But it provides a nice object lesson."
"Hmm. Guess I miscalculated your intelligence."
"Nope. You underestimated my suspicious nature."
"Hmm."
Silence fell again, and Kiley once again settled prone on the sand. Knives amused himself with the memory of that brief time that she had been at his mercy.
"So what did you want to know?" she asked after a few minutes.
"I thought you were suspicious," he said, surprised.
"Yeah, well, I'm also bored. I'll tell a story, then you tell one, deal?" she said.
Knives blinked, then agreed. Just when he thought the woman might make sense, she went and did something like that. Female humans are such odd creatures.
"So, what do you want to know?" she repeated. "I only have all day."
"You said that you died before coming here."
"Yeah, I did say that, didn't I?" She didn't say anything for a moment, trying to find a way to put into words the circumstances that led the end of her life. She scratched by her eye, then laced her fingers behind her head. The blue sky above stared down at her, the brightness of the day a pleasant contrast to her memories.
"Do you want to know how I died?" she asked. Knives made an annoyed noise of assent.
"I guess you can call my death a vengeful suicide. I had been captured by some enemies, and they had been torturing me for almost six months, trying to break me. Then they were going to kill me. I'm strong, but I found that I had limits. Rather then let them have the pleasure of smashing my psyche into bits, I took the only escape I had."
Knives waited for more. It wasn't forthcoming.
He rolled over and shook her lightly. "That is not telling a story," he said, looking into her eyes intently. "That is a précis, perhaps, but it is not a story. Stories need more words, a plot, some description, and a point. Tell a story," he said before releasing her.
She cocked her head and looked at him before nodding.
A moment later, she started over.
"I was captured near the end of a mission. I used to be the leader of a search and rescue team. We were the people who got dispatched to rescue soldiers lost on the field of combat. Anyone in the SAR group were considered to be an extra-special target by our enemies, and as their leader they wanted me beyond easy description. It was demoralizing to our troops to have their rescuers killed or captured in front of their eyes, and due to international law, the SAR troops were not allowed to carry lethal weapons. If any SAR member killed an enemy, even if they were under attack, there would be a murder trial carried out under the High Tribunal. Most of those ended with the SAR member meeting a firing squad.
"So, we were easy targets. Easy to kill, and easy to affect our troops by destroying their hope of rescue. Technically, if the enemy killed a SAR member, it was murder. That rarely stopped them, but it did lead to the second indignity. If they could, they captured someone and broke them. Then they would send them back home. Some people would come back almost the same as before their capture, some would require years of therapy before becoming human again, and some people swore that they were released without having been broken. Then, if anyone questioned their tactics, they would look about innocently, and say 'Well, we didn't kill them,' and wonder what our problem was.
"After being taken by the enemy, your life as a soldier is over, killed, broken, or released. Even those who seemed normal could be harboring plans to sabotage the Union. Some of those who claimed to have been unbroken actually were, and under periods of stress might break under pressure or be compelled to act on impulses ingrained under torture. You couldn't go back to being a soldier, and in many cases your citizenship was severely restricted. Because you couldn't be trusted, you couldn't be relied upon, and a nation at war needs to be able to rely on all it's members.
"Some people didn't mind being returned to the civilian life, but I was definitely in the army for life. It turns out I had a flair for rescuing trapped soldiers. Even better, I found ways to stop the slow bleed of my men from the unit. When I joined the SAR team, the average life expectancy of a member was seven months and two days. When I was captured, I had managed to work that number up to over six years.
"To put that in context, a soldier was rotated in and out of a unit every five years. That means that to begin with, joining the SAR was a virtual death sentence. Seventeen people had managed to serve their entire term and get rotated out over the twenty-nine years of the unit. It was a place that troublemakers got banished to, embarrassments were exiled, and the inept were safely shelved away. When I was done, there were people actually volunteering for the unit, for the prestige. That's an achievement, but doing a good job only gets you noticed. In war, garnering attention is not exactly a good thing.
"Anyway, all of that, plus some incidental personal stuff, made me a prime target. The enemy began to try to capture me, purposefully taking our soldiers hostage to entice my unit into the field, me at the head. I honestly couldn't count the number of times that they tried to trap me, always at the expense of the lives of our ground troops.
"It made me pissy, but that's not really a part of the story.
"Finally, one of their traps, coupled with a few acts of sabotage within the unit, succeeded in capturing me. I was taken and tortured for months, pain unending. I really can't describe it as a fun point in my life, but I managed for the most part. It angered them that they couldn't break me, and the tortures grew worse and worse.
"What they didn't realize was that taking me from the field of battle had pretty much ended my life. If they had released me and forced me to live as a civilian it would have hurt me more then everything else they tried, but they were too focused on physical and emotional pain to figure that one out.
"They hurt me, many ways, many times, torture and disfigurement. They showed me video footage of my stepfather in tears, a full Professor at that point, telling the world that even though I was his daughter, there could be no rescue attempt, and then they detailed how he had colluded with them to assist in my capture. They thought the betrayal might break me, but they didn't realize that I had expected such behavior from him and the people he represented. I had become a politically embarrassing tangled mess, and the easier way to deal with me was to get rid of me. I understood this, and had been waiting for it. It's hard to get overly disappointed when people act the way you expect them to.
"No matter what they did, I didn't break. It made them pissy."
"I knew that it was the last battle of my life, and I do pride myself on the fact that I never lose."
"You did die," interjected Knives.
Kiley shot him a dirty look. "There's dying, and then there's losing. Did Legato lose?"
"Well, since he failed to make Vash change, I would have to say yes," Knives said shortly.
She shrugged. "Well, the intent was there, and it was a very good try. Sometimes death is just another move in the chess game. Anyway, after about a month I knew that no one was going to rescue me, and my enemies did a really neat job of keeping me contained. I truly admire the way they kept me from being able to escape. Even after months in their possession, they didn't relax their guard one iota. Even after I was crippled and unable to move on my own, they didn't change their routine.
"It's nice to be acknowledged as dangerous. It would have been nicer to have been able to escape, but I didn't miss out on much by dying. My life would have changed when I was forced out of the army, and other then fighting I don't have much in the way of job skills. I mean, not many people want to hire a notorious assassin. You can't really work retail; customers looking at the cashier and then running into the street screaming can really put a dent in business.
"Nope, my life had already ended. I had done my bad deeds, and I had done my good deeds, and there wasn't much left for me to do. If they broke me, I'd have suicided within a month. If they hadn't, I might have succeeded in slipping into obscurity after a few years, but I'd been spending too many years accomplishing important things to accept retirement. I'm addicted to excitement, to the thought of affecting the way the world turns. I'm used to being powerful, I guess, to having powerful people come to me and need my help. Taking that from me would have been like stealing a piece of my soul, and a soul like mine doesn't have any it can lose.
"I had accepted death. I hoped that after death would come a period of peace, and a feeling of belonging that I never seemed to find on my own world, and that hope gave me the courage to ignore what my enemies did to me.
"It's a common fact that faith in an afterlife can help someone handle pain. The martyrs and Christian saints had their faith in heaven, their belief that due to persisting in a "right" course of action they would be admitted to paradise. Same with Muslim jihadists. Any time you can believe in a happy afterlife, you have folks who use that belief to help them accept pain and torture. I never expected that I would get into heaven. Personally, I don't think God would take me. But, I did have my hope for a second chance, and I've always been stubborn. So I held out, staying alive as long as I could, annoying the crap out of those who wanted to break me.
"Listen up, I'll tell you something you need to know if you ever want to manipulate me," she said conspiratorially.
Knives looked in her direction again. As she was speaking he found himself looking out over the desert, trying to comprehend what she was saying. Not all of it made sense to him, and there were some things he wanted clarification on, but for the most part he understood what she was saying.
"I am stubborn," she said, drawing each word out like they held more wisdom that way.
At Knives' laugh she continued. "No, you don't get it. I am stubborn. I am probably one of the most stubborn people you will ever meet. I was suicidal; I didn't care to live after they were done torturing me. The only reason I lasted through six months of torture is because I enjoyed pissing my enemies off. That's not quite a sane way of living, but I'm not an entirely sane person.
"Anyway, I continued to be stubborn until I reached a point where they just got tired of me still being alive. When I knew they were coming to kill me, I finally suicided, making sure to leave my dead body in a pose that conveyed my feelings. I would have loved to see the expressions on their faces when they found me. . .but that wasn't quite possible."
She fell silent, wondering if she was leaving something out.
"How did you kill yourself?" asked Knives. "I would assume that they would have taken measures to prevent you from doing such a thing. If you died too early they would be deprived of pleasure from your pain." Trust Knives to look at it from that angle.
"True, true. No, they did a very good job of keeping me from anything that had sharp edges on it and normal objects of danger. And they kept me from blunt objects and anything that I might possibly use to kill myself, or anyone else. And they kept me drugged to the point that I was barely coherent, let alone able to do any sort of tricks."
"So, how did you manage it? Did you will yourself to death?" he prodded.
She snorted. "What sort of horrible books do you read? You can't will yourself to death! Or, at least, I can't. No, it was much more prosaic.
"They kept me in a room with nothing but a door and a tiny ventilation grate in the ceiling. The air grate and the system were clean when they threw me in the cell, but after four months it began to grow mold. I didn't have much that I could do in the way of tricks, but I was capable of making spores grow. In my lungs. I didn't live long without oxygen."
Knives nodded. "That would work," he said.
"It did work. I felt like I had just fallen asleep for a fraction of an instant, and then I awoke near Dream Dancer, healed and healthy in body. You pretty much know what happened after that," she finished.
"That's an interesting way to die," mused Knives.
Kiley shrugged. "I didn't have too many options to work with, and it did the job. Manipulating growth requires a very delicate touch, and I don't think they thought I was quite that practiced with tricks. It's a common misconception that a solider spends so much time learning big flashy tricks that they never learn to be subtle."
Her mouth quirked in a half-grin. "That's if they thought of the mold at all. I doubt they did; it's not like they were expecting me to live as long as I did. Likely, someone just forgot that the ducts needed cleaning. Whatever the reason, I took advantage of their lapse in judgment. I died, and deprived them of the sincere pleasure in killing me."
"Why were these people your enemies?" asked Knives after she had lapsed into silence for a minute.
"That's a whole other story. It's your turn for the next one, so you're just going to have to wait," she chided.
"Hmm." Knives looked around. The suns were beginning to touch the horizon but they were both facing the east. Their shadows stretched out before them, impossibly thin as they reached out into the desert.
"It's getting late," he said, starting to get up. He was stopped by a hand that had grabbed a good portion of the back of his shirt.
"What, the sun sets and you need to go to bed? Come on, it's your turn to tell a story," she demanded while she tugged him back down.
"It's getting dark," he said, allowing himself to be tugged to the sand, but not resettling.
Kiley twisted her free hand about and created a ball of light. She waved five times, and lights of all different colors appeared before her. A careful tap with a fingernail floated them around where the two of them sat.
"How did you do that?" he asked, finally relaxing on the sand.
"It's the same principle behind a neon light," she said, grabbing his hand down as he reached to tough one. "Careful; they're cold. I take heat energy from the surrounding air and excite the atoms until they give off light. Simple, easy, light. I'll teach you tomorrow."
"Now, tell me a story," she demanded. Knives shook himself out of his reverie and looked from the lights to her, disgust heavily painted on his features.
"What do you want to know?" he sighed.
"Hmm. Let me think," she said, settling back down on the sand. Idly she played with the lights, juggling them about with her mind as she pondered her list of questions. Knives watched, then stole one from her grasp to play with. She opened her eyes to look, and saw he has taken control of the one the same shade of blue as the color of his eyes.
That, she thought, is the most strangely vain man I've ever met. He doesn't believe he's gorgeous, but surrounds himself with beautiful things. She forced her mind back to thinking about what question she wanted answered most.
"Why did you kill that guy who was related to Rem? You must have known that it would only hurt your brother, and I thought you loved him," she asked.
Knives played with the ball of light, silent for a minute. Kiley didn't push, but waited to see if he would tell the story in his own time.
"That man actually wasn't related to Rem Saverem at all," he said, finally.
"Mmm?" she said, more an encouraging noise then a comment.
"As far as traps go, it was quite simple. Vash never expects a trap; duplicity isn't a part of his nature. I entered a false genealogy into the Seeds ship database, and Vash came along, just as I thought he would. It was just a matter of timing, of making sure I was in that man's office when he came running in.
"Actually, it had been interesting watching that trash die. I shot him in the chest, but he didn't die quickly. I had amused myself by listening to the little sucking noises as he tried to breathe. He ended up drowning in his own blood, but it was a quick race between that and bleeding out. I am always amazed by the quantity of blood that flows through the human body.
"Anyway, he had just finished dying when Vash came in. I had picked that man because I needed to get Vash to the center of July. Since July was the largest city on the planet, it was the perfect place to truly begin the eradication of the vermin. Unfortunately," and he sighed, "Vash has never agreed that humans all need to die. He shot me, and that was then end of that. I never imagined that the sentimental fool could be stronger then me; I still don't know how he manages it."
Kiley waited as he fell silent.
"That wasn't much more of a story then what you gave me grief for," she pointed out.
"It is all you are going to get," he replied, still intent on the ball of light.
"Why did you want to hurt Vash?" she persisted.
Knives didn't respond, but walked off into the quickening night with her light. She stared after him, and wondered. Thoughts moved through her head in a swirl, touching her consciousness only lightly, no words, only concepts and ideas in their most primal form.
She could never imagine hurting someone she loved. She had died to keep from hurting the only person she loved in her world. Pain is too cheap to spend it on those you cherish; happiness the only coin that is worth the price of their heart. Her life caused him pain, so she gave it up. She hoped he was happy, now, and wished him well. That was love, her sort of love at least, twisted and frail as it may be.
How does love spoil into hate? She wished she knew, but also was glad to be innocent of the knowledge.