Trigun and all associated characters are the property of Yushiro Nightow, I suppose. They're certainly not my property.
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Hurt
by Cyrus Marriner
He stared down the barrel of a gun without flinching, without moving. All he had was a content smile upon his face. Legato Bluesummers realized at that moment, that he was truly mad.
And he loved it.
*****
"All that exists in this world is pain. Do you understand this?"
The man merely screamed. Understandable, as all of his joints had just been twisted in directions opposite the ones they were designed to travel. A smile grew on Legato's face as the man's feelings flooded into him. He felt as though it were his own bones that bent backwards, his own ligaments that tore, his own pain that coursed to his mind. A cry of ecstasy joined the man's cry of pain.
"You know what the most beautiful thing about this is?" Legato asked his broken subject.
The man could do nothing in reply besides stare at Legato with pure fear in his eyes, and he could only do that because Legato's will was keeping him conscious.
"I don't even know who you are." Legato silently willed the man's death.
And so the man died.
Legato stood and picked up his white coat off the back of a nearby chair. The emotion that had so recently filled his yellow eyes as he drank the man's death disappeared as the heat of the moment passed. Everything was once again dull. All reality returned to what it had been before that moment, a worn painting to which Legato was but a tired observer. He barely heard the knock at the door, so soft it was compared to the brutal intensity of the pain from a moment before.
"Leave," Legato said with uncompromising force of will.
The door opened, and Legato looked up to see the only being ever to betray his will. No surprise showed on his face, nor in his dull eyes. No emotion registered at all.
"It's a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Bluesummers."
Another surprise. This man knew his name. Once again, his face remained silent, betraying no thoughts. "Can I help you?"
"I believe we can help each other," the man said. He stepped over the dead body on the ground and sat in the green leather chair that had once housed it.
Legato remained standing. He felt the other man's mind, gaining little more insight than the bemused expression on his face provided. Then, at the corner of his mind, he felt something more. A minor insight revealed itself for a moment, then a flood of thought on levels higher than Legato could ever dream of understanding. Still, no emotion crossed his face. "What are you, Millions Knives?"
Knives grinned widely. "You couldn't possibly understand. Let's just say I'm here to help."
"Help me do what?"
"Feel." Knives stood and reached into the folds of the coat he was wearing. He pulled out a pair of vicious looking objects, two bands of metal with three spikes driven through each. "Give me your shoulder."
Legato turned, presenting Knives with his right shoulder. Knives took one of the spike bands in his hand and bent it into a curve. His eyes met Legato's for a moment, and then he plunged the three spikes into the side of Legato's shoulder. They pierced cloth, padding, and finally flesh. Legato merely looked at Knives coldly, wondering the point of this exercise.
"You feel nothing," Knives said. He was stating a fact; no reply was necessary. The other band was bent similarly, and the leftmost spike was slid through a hole at the end of the previous band, interconnecting the two. Then Knives once again stabbed through the cloth, the bulbous padding, and finally the flesh. Legato coldly stared at Knives, and suddenly pain coursed throughout his body.
"You feel it, don't you?" Knives said. "That ever-present constant, the one thing you've ever felt. Pain. That sole anchor of your reality, constantly reaffirming your existence. This is all you have, and it is all I have to give."
Legato gasped and fell to his knees as the intensity of the pain grew. He shuddered with orgasmic pleasure as every wound he'd ever felt returned to his mind, sending him into a state of such tortured ecstasy that all he could do was convulse on the floor. Knives' voice was a scream to him.
"Do you want this? I can give this to you. I can give you the pain of millions or the deepest hurt of one. I can let you reaffirm your existence with every action until you are the only one who truly lives. I can give you everything you ever wanted."
Legato's reply came out in a hoarse whisper as he trembled on the floor.
"Please..."
*****
Legato Bluesummers' childhood was the purest vision of hell. He only survived to age four because his father gave him just enough to keep him from dying so he could constantly take revenge on his son. The only thing his father could think of was the loss of his beautiful, young, bride in childbirth, and the hideous child that had caused his pain. All he wanted was to return that pain, tenfold, to that child who robbed him of his one happiness.
Legato never knew his father's first name. All he knew was "Mr. Bluesummers" from hearing yelled conversations through the basement door. After those meetings, his father would come down and do everything he could to hurt the child. Then Legato would get just enough food and water to survive the next torture.
By the time he turned thirteen, Legato had attempted suicide twelve times. His father always found him and saved him from the brink of death, bringing the child back into harsh reality where only pain awaited him.
At age fourteen, Legato figured out how to pick a lock. He escaped into the streets, looking like another destitute orphan, and soon his father came after him. Legato fled as fast as he can, until he came to the plant. The huge bulb that provided the town with water had become practically deserted since its recent malfunction. He fled to the plant, running until he realized he was now deep in the broken ship that housed it.
Legato found the control room that housed the plant's inner workings, and it was there that he slept until the next morning, when he heard the technicians arrive to fix the plant. He hid from them well enough, and listened to them talk about the job. They spoke of stories they had heard from other plants. Legato listened and heard one of them mention how he had actually seen a man caught in the active plant core die, and how quickly it had happened.
When the technicians left to start the plant up, Legato was in the core, waiting to escape his existence. The room began to fill with a light so bright and pure it could only be from heaven itself, and Legato closed his eyes to embrace the escape.
He awoke the next day when his father grabbed him by the hair and pulled him out of the doorway he had fallen asleep in. He had failed. Legato still lived a miserable existence, and now he would return to it, the eternal torture. His father attacked him in every vicious way possible, but this time, Legato could feel nothing. His father screamed at him for his silence. He hit harder, but received no cries. Then he got his gun.
"Scream or I'll blow your head off!"
Legato finally spoke back to his father, in a cool, commanding tone that could only be used when a person with nothing to live for faced death.
"Blow your own head off."
The gun went off, and when Legato looked around, he discovered his father was dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. The young man found a suit that almost fit him in his father's closet, then left the house and city forever.
*****
"Please what?"
Legato gritted his teeth against the pain and rose to his feet. "Please let me exist for you."
The pain stopped, and Knives smiled. "I will find you the greatest pain you could ever want, my friend. Let us go now, and you can enjoy the beauty of life."
Willingly, I follow the devil into hell, Legato thought, because hell is the only place I truly feel alive.
*****
Legato watched the hammer fall back into position. The finger twitched on the trigger.
*****
The wind kicked up as the two men approached the edge of July City. Neither covered their face from the stinging sand, instead stoically enduring the harsh desert winds.
They both stopped together, and Legato spoke, "You do not wish me to accompany you?"
Knives stared at the majestic ruins of the crashed ship in the center of July City for a moment before replying. "No, this is a family matter." The corners of his mouth crept upwards in anticipation.
Legato bowed. "As you wish."
Knives didn't reply. He just walked into the town, a wicked smile marking his face. Legato stood silently, waiting.
Minutes turned to hours, and through it all Legato stood silently on the outskirts of town. He watched people go about their business, unaware of the god that even now resided within their town. All of them could be dead before Knives' might, for they were but ants before him. Feeling someone's eyes upon him, Legato met the gaze of a small child.
So insignificant, Legato thought. Before my master, you and I are but insects. We have no value other than to keep the natural order of things going. I am surpassing my destiny by allying myself with a superior being, little one. Will you be so fortunate?
The child couldn't hear Legato's thoughts, but he reacted as if he had heard them all the same. Fear crossed his face, and he ran to catch up with his mother, who had outpaced him during his staring match with Legato.
A shout was raised, and Legato took his gaze from the child and mother to what had gotten everyone's attention. An explosion was coming, tearing apart buildings as it grew outward from its epicenter. Legato watched as the wall of force advanced towards him. He watched the mother fall on her child, attempting to shield him from the blast. He heard the scream of the child as he and his mother were buffeted by the shockwave. When the blast hit him, he held his ground and let the pain of everyone enter him. It was the purest, pain he had known, thousands screaming out in protest against the inevitable will. As the wind whipped his white coat around him, Legato laughed, reveling in the pain he was feeling.
Then everything died down as the chaos passed. Legato waited for a few minutes after the area had stabilized. When it became evident Knives was not returning, he wandered into the ruins to look for him. It was a fairly simple matter, as Legato was drawn to his master. Legato thought perhaps Knives had always been his goal, and he was drawn to him in order to fulfill his destiny.
Soon, he found the ruins of the building Knives had been in, and proceeded to quickly locate where Knives was half-buried under rubble. Legato lifted the rubble that lay upon Knives' legs. A brief blink was the only indication he was surprised by what should have been a very surprising discovery.
There were no legs there at all.
Knives coughed blood. "Take the arm."
Legato turned to where Knives was looking and saw an arm on the ground, attached to nothing but the long black pistol it was holding in its grip. He picked it up by the wrist and returned to where Knives lay.
"The arm is my gift to you," Knives coughed out. "Its owner has felt more pain than you or I ever will."
Legato nodded. "Do you wish to return home?"
"Yes. Let us go."
Legato lifted his wounded master and walked out of July, past the crying children and shell-shocked parents, the masses wandering around without any purpose or vision. Legato walked against their tide, leaving them to the ruins of their once great city and the harsh truth they endured.
*****
The finger pulled back on the trigger. The cylinder rotated, bringing the bullet into place.
*****
Legato closed the door to the chamber where Knives hung upside down. He was attached to technology from before the crash that would heal him, although the process would be slow. Legato pulled a lever and watched as the clear chamber began to fill with liquid. He would be on his own for a while.
You will never be alone.
Legato turned to where Knives was suspended in the liquid. His eyes were open. "I see. Will you always be there to guide me?"
Knives smiled. Hardly. You will be my representative until I am whole again. The one who will always be with you is there.
Legato followed Knives' gaze to where the arm he had taken lay. It had not atrophied at all. His hand brushed over it for a moment, and his arm tingled as if a series of pinpricks had run up it, more sensation than he had felt in the past decade. He lifted the arm and felt a chill run up his spine. This arm was the key, the key to his existence. It could reaffirm his existence every second of every day, merely by feeling.
It could hurt him.
So you understand.
"Yes," Legato said. He quickly found a knife suitable for his purposes in the assortment of medical supplies kept in storage. He sat down in a chair at the steel operating table and placed his left arm on the metal that he knew was cold despite his inability to feel any of it. Then he swiftly brought the blade down on his arm, neatly cutting it off. He made no cry; the only sound was the strike of the metal tool against the metal table.
Slowly, he lifted his new arm and pressed it against his bleeding stump. He willed the two fleshes to meet, to intertwine, to become one. He felt his own body accept the arm and felt the arm connect with him, and then he fell to the ground in pain. He could feel the wound he had just inflicted upon himself, the cruel cut of the knife, clearer than he had ever felt any injury he could recall. Then he felt the pain of a million souls, weighing down upon him, drowning him in their suffering, until it was all he could see. Pain that he had never seen, that he might have not even had the ability to see, until just now.
In the darkness, Legato screamed.
Whether he cried out in pleasure or pain, even Legato didn't know.
*****
The hammer of the gun fell forward.
Legato did not feel the pain that allowed him to finally escape his existence, nor did he feel the pain he caused the one who took his life. His body just fell limply to the ground, and his blood stained the dirt.
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Thanks for reading. First of all, major thanks to my prereaders, EAG and LP. EAG is responsible for this fic being much better than it was originally, and she stayed up to finish her prereading so I could get this out while I was still enthused by it. LP is great because he made me think about the fic and made me defend the choices I made. Not to mention all the advice he gave me that would have made this so much better than it is now, and added all this extra guilt for not fulfilling my potential.
This fic was directly inspired by the Johnny Cash cover of "Hurt," hence the title. I had that and "Paradise" from Trigun playing in a continuous loop while I was writing this, and I'm still not sick of either of them.
Send comments and such to cyrus@spacklecube.com