Yup. After twenty-eight days, I took one totally off. *hears the gasps of shock* Sorry, guys, but I was very sleepy.
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The ride back to December was short and quiet, the dark of the night cradling the road and lending an air of unreality to the journey. The forty iles flew by under the wheels of the car, the distance it had once taken a day to walk taking less than an hour to drive. Knives wondered idly if that was progress, or just another way the humans divorced themselves from the world around them.
Vash stared out the window, his gaze distant, locked on the shadows cast by the moons. Knives didn't have to ask to know that he was unsure of his role in the coming emancipation. He could harm the humans, as was his usual wont, or he could quit pretending to have the same limits as the insects and stop them painlessly. It was no question to him which option his brother would choose, but then again, he didn't have to let go of a cherished illusion before the best answer was available. It was foolishness, but pointing that fact out wouldn't help anything.
Plus, his silence kept him from being subjected to the annoyingly hurt look his brother adopted every time he was faced with reality.
Sometimes he wondered just how the universe could create a person like his brother. It wasn't that the man wasn't smart. There were times that Knives wondered if his brother wasn't even more intelligent than him. It was just that he had not the slightest shred of motivation. None. He would be perfectly happy living his life on a tree farm. In fact, hat was what Vash had done with Meryl, ever since he rescued those women from his tender care. Tending trees. Not that an arboreal hobby was a bad one, but as a vocation? It wasn't very taxing, either to the body or to the mind. He could do so much more, should do so much more. Let a human spread mulch. His brother was needed elsewhere.
Knives suppressed a sigh. Not that his brother agreed, and there was no being on the planet as stubborn as his brother. All his grand plans had come to naught because his twin refused to let anything change. He wondered what had gone so wrong in the womb, that he would be born so proactive and Vash so willing to cling to the past. Was it true that twins were only one soul, and only together could form a coherent being?
Nonsense. Superstitious nonsense.
He shot another sideways glance at his brother as the lights of December grew on the horizon. The faint glow barely lit his face, yet the illumination was enough for Knives to make out his hardened expression.
Knives hid a grin this time. His brother had finally made the decision to let go of another one of his ideals in order to keep harm from the undeserving. For this alone, he was tempted to be benevolent to Kiley. For creating a circumstance that forced his brother closer to his true nature, it was almost enough to forgive her the transgression of leaving and not coming back.
Almost.
He frowned at the thought, unsure of what his response to her should be. He hadn't seen her for years. She had left and made him a prisoner in his own home. She had created desires inside him then taken the outlet for them with her. She wasn't even likely the person he remembered anymore, time having the tendency to change people, and she so eager to change herself.
He hadn't missed her, no, not that. He hadn't missed the frustration, the arguments, the times she upstaged him, the time that she shot him in the leg. He had had enough of her secrets and lies and half-truths. All he needed from her now was closure, an explanation or a reason. Why hadn't she told him what she was?
Did she think him that horrible? That he was too great a monster to even share a genome with?
He scowled. Why did all the freeborn plants feel the need to identify themselves with the humans? Even Ace didn't take as much pride in her heritage as she really ought, and she was the best of the lot. All she really cared about were the tricks. The fact that her sisters lived in bondage, the very life sucked from them by people who couldn't even be made to understand the nature of their transgressions, even that wasn't enough to move her. She merely sulked around the ship, reading trashy novels and staring out the window. Meryl excused her behavior by naming her a teenager, but that was no reason to not care for the fate of your species. He had cared at a much younger age, for all that had gotten him.
Some days he felt that he was the only one in the universe who cared about the voiceless members of his family. He saw the looks that passed over the faces of those near him, knew that they thought he was heartless. But how was he supposed to care for those who could make their own decisions when he was the only one who cared for the lives of the enslaved?
And Kiley was a plant. He wondered if she had ever spared a thought for the plight of those in the bulbs as she worked at the plant. Did it ever occur to her that it might be her in there, dying for the parasites that ceaselessly sucked at the finite spring? How could she bear to be a part of the machine that pulled life from the innocent and spread it among the guilty?
He sighed again as he pulled the car over and parked it. He had chosen a street at random, one that was far enough away from the plant that no one would wonder why the vehicle was there, but one that was close enough for him and Vash to get to the plant quickly. Now that they were here, he wanted this whole thing over with.