I don't own Trigun.
If this chapter is rather random, I'm sorry; I'm uber-tired.
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Knives learned that traveling with a small child is onerous. They get tired easily and wish to rest. Their legs are short and they are slow. They have a short attention span and do not wish to do the same thing for hours. They whine and drag their feet and complain and fuss and are a complete bother.
Early in the morning Ace had tried to get Knives to carry her. The look he gave her would have dissuaded a courageous man but she was unfazed. Small arms reached towards him in a silent demand. His response was to grab her hand and drag her along, her legs running to keep up with his longer strides. This lasted for a whole ten minutes before she felt that she could no longer keep up the pace. Her steps grew slower until he was more dragging her through the sand than he was leading her.
The leaden weight tugging at his arm bothered him. He released her hand and let her drop to the sand. She lay there, panting, as he walked away. She watched him move over the sand dunes and debated following him or going off on her own. She was tired and he couldn't make her walk if she didn't want to.
Then she got an idea. Closing her eyes, she surrendered to the tiredness that was pulling at her limbs. It wasn't fair, she thought as she tried to fall asleep. It was hard enough growing up, growing so fast that her body could barely keep pace. She didn't need to walk over half the planet to suit the whims of some old grown-ups. She was willing to bet that no one had dragged Knives all over miles and miles when he was growing up.
Knives or his brother. Her imagination painted pictures of what his brother would look like. His eyes would probably be cold, too, looking out on the world like it was something distasteful that could be dismissed. He would be tall, tall and lanky, looming over people to cow them, using physical presence to cow others into submission. She couldn't decide if his mouth would look more like a sneer or more pinched, but either one would make him a perfect match for his brother.
She wished that the other plants outside the bulbs could have been nicer. The plants from where she had been born were nice and all, but they just didn't understand what it was like to be outside a bulb. Inside the bulb, all their needs were taken care of, leaving their minds free to think on all sorts of wonderful things. She liked to eavesdrop on some of their conversations, but the bulbed plants weren't much help when she was in trouble. They just didn't know how to cope with the rest of the world. Since they didn't need to deal with her sort of problems, and couldn't conceive a need to, they looked upon her troubles as fancies and flights of imagination. Nothing she could do would make them think otherwise; their lives were too ordered to conceive of chaos.
So, finally she finds a plant who could maybe understand the hell she went through, and he wasn't the right sort of person. At all. He was mean and cruel and hateful and she didn't like him very much. Everything was supposed to go his way or he would throw a fit. Basically, and this was a concept that she could barely grasp, and was even less able to grapple into words, he never grew up. He expected that the whole world was his toy, and every time it did something contrary to what he wanted he tried to break it to his will.
It was a very immature way of looking at things, thinking that others needed to conform to your expectations. She liked Kiley's idea better, her way of being who she was, and making people change their expectations until she fit. It wasn't that she didn't care what others thought of her, it was just that she was willing to do what she felt was right regardless. She didn't expect that other people would automatically agree with her, but she was willing to let them believe what they wanted as long as they didn't try to get her to change her mind. Then she was willing to do whatever was necessary to protect her right to be who she was.
She wondered why an intelligent being like Knives had such trouble with Kiley's point of view. He was a plant, he was smart, and he still refused to see what was so obvious to her. Humans were people, too; good, bad, and mostly indifferent. Just because they weren't quite as smart, fast, or all-around neat as plants didn't mean that they needed to be gotten rid of. They just had problems growing up. Her mind wandered to the case of Knives. He was really old and he still wasn't very mature. How could he expect the much younger humans to act maturely when he still had problems with it? It just didn't make sense.
Gradually, she grew aware of being held, rocked in arms swaying to a walking gait. Her lips curled in a sleepy smile. She had gotten him to carry her, after all. She knew that he wasn't going to leave her, not when he was so happy to have another plant around. Her smile curled into a small frown as she thought on that last statement.
He was happy to have another plant around, not happy just to have her around. He didn't seem to like her very much; she got the distinct impression that most of the time he was just humoring her. She gathered that he would be happier to not have her around, but to have someone else, someone more biddable who also happened to be a plant.
She wasn't sure she liked being loved more for what she was than for who she was. It felt…wrong.