*groans* I am so tired and stiff. Anyone wanna give me a backrub?
*******************************************************************************
Knives sat slumped next to the half wall and didn't know if he should laugh or cry. Everything was so messed up, everything he thought was real had turned into a lie somehow.
When he and Vash had gone down from the roof yesterday, they had found Ace sitting at the kitchen table, looking blankly into space, a pensive frown between her brows. It took a bit of prodding to get the story out of her, but she finally admitted that Anne had threatened her. Had said that you don't steal an assassin's boyfriend and expect to get away with it. Ace tried to make it look like Anne had gone storming off and was going to calm down, but he, Vash, and Alex had spent the night guarding the place on the chance that Anne was going to try for a bit of retribution.
And all that was a lie?
He rolled the cube around his palm, thinking carefully. He and Vash had suspected that there were listening devices. For the most part they had ignored the possibility, not even speaking of it, but that was one of the reasons they had sought out the roof yesterday. He hadn't wanted his pain to be analyzed by the humans in whatever scheme they were hatching. Bad enough that he had lost Kiley, Anne, whoever she was posing as now. They didn't need to know what she meant to him.
Ace obviously hadn't suspected. Or perhaps she had, perhaps she had wanted the record of what she had done to Anne to exist somewhere, as proof of how brilliant she had been.
Knives sighed again as he realized how neatly he had been ensnared. He had never loved Ace, never pretended to. But she had seemed to love him. After she had emerged from the bulb she had been devastated by Kiley's loss. Every night as he tried to leave her room, she would cry and carry on until she either passed out from exhaustion or until he did. She was afraid to have him out of her sight.
Finally, he had succumbed to the inevitable and let her sleep in his room. A small bed was made up for her in the corner, but many mornings he would find her cuddled by his side.
Then, one morning she had done more than cuddle. He had thought he was dreaming until sensations became more vivid than any dream he could recall. He tried to stop then, to pull away, but she wouldn't let him. She knew what she wanted, and she had it. Afterwards, he tried to rationalize things. She was a plant, a proper mate. He liked her well enough, could picture her company for the rest of his life and the thought did not make him cringe. She wouldn't die on him in just a few short years like Kiley would. She seemed happy enough being near him, and while he wouldn't say that the arrangement was one of unmitigated joy for him, he was comfortable enough with the way things were that he saw no real need to change.
Kiley was becoming more and more of a memory. The most pleasant memory he had, but surely he had begun to color those memories with more happiness then they deserved. He could not have mean t that much to her or she couldn't have just left like she had. Left, and never come back, not even as the years passed. And even if she was as great as he remembered, she was going to die on him soon enough anyway. Far better to build a life with someone who could share his, to not love someone who would end up leaving forever.
Even if it was only a comfortable life, contentment was not something that should be spurned in the pursuit of happiness.
All the rationalizations that had padded the years had fallen away when he had learned that Kiley was a plant, though. Suddenly, she wasn't going to die on him, or at least she wasn't if he could go and save her. The thought of living comfortably with Ace began to wear on him, to feel wrong.
Too bad that the woman he discovered wasn't the one he had loved. She wasn't even Kiley anymore, having given up the nickname for reasons he could understand, even if she never deigned to explain.
She hadn't seemed to have missed him very much, either. He laughed hollowly at the thought. That had obviously been a lie.
He didn't know what he had expected. Gratitude for saving her life? Not Kiley. Likely she still didn't acknowledge that she had needed their help at all. For her to leap into his arms, showering him with kisses and her undying devotion? Not when she thought that the only reason he had finally shown up was because he had discovered that she was a plant.
He sighed again. Why couldn't she see that he had rushed to her side because she was just her? The thought of life on this planet without her twisted something inside him, made him feel ill.
Kiley. Anne. He had assumed that Ace was telling the truth, that this Anne persona was just that, another facet to her personality. He had assumed that Kiley was who she was, a killer. Ace's lie had the ring of truth, but he began to believe that Anne was trying to become who she could have been, had she not killed so many. Gunsmoke was her chance to start over, and she was taking it, trying to not repeat the actions that had brought her so much grief in her first life.
Anne. There were so many things he wanted to say to her, starting with "I'm sorry" and filled with "I love you." He just hoped that he hadn't thrown away his chance to have her listen.