Disclaimer: *looks around* has anyone seen Trigun? *searches frantically* Trigun?! Trigun?!? *looks under bed* Nope, not there. *under couch cushions* No, not there either *runs to closet and throws open the doors, revealing her secret Knives shrine* No, not there either! Wah! They got it back! Somehow, someway, the real owners of Trigun got it back! WAH! *cries* Just…go read the chappy…*sobs "I don't own Trigun anymore"*

Chapter Thirty: The Dispute

The sunshine blonde plant, with his eyes so strikingly aquamarine, walked slowly down the metal-lined hallway of his brother's floating ship. He had lived there for over a month, tending to the body of the fallen female; the painstaking process of removing the bullets from her cold flesh, tending to the wounds, cleaning them and such, preparing the plant residing within the massive ship to take in her body, and the careful process of transferring her body into the colossal bulb. That had been the most difficult thing to do, as inside the bulb you were binary coding. Yes, it was true. The plant angels, most powerful, yet fragile beings to inhabit the planet, were naught but zeros and ones. To move Rhianne's body into the bulb, he had to transfer all of her medical data, her physical attributes-everything, into infinitesimally long lines of zeros and ones. When that process was completed, he had inputted the data into the plant's computer base system, and had placed the code to be within the bulb. It was a simple, yet mind-bogglingly complex.

He walked down the hallway, training his fingers along the smooth metal wall of the corridor. His footsteps, boots made for running and trekking through the desert sand rather than walking in a sterile sand-free environment all the time, echoed down the hallway, bouncing off the walls like a rubber ball of sound.

He came to a door, dragging his fingers over the doorframe, across the sleek metallic surface, and finally to grasp the knob. It felt cold beneath his fingers, and the plant shivered involuntarily; his brother's ship was a constant seventy degrees room temperature, though still he shivered therein. As he was not used to the coolness of the metal and air circulation, but to the uncaring harshness of the blazing suns and the sizzling sand crunching within the grips of his boots.

As the door swung open, Vash was faced with a semi-dark room, lit only by the light displayed on the images on the multiple screens adorning an entire of one wall. The screens displayed every part of the ship, some from several angles in the most important rooms. The static hissed lightly, and feedback rang out as a vent started and the recorders picked up on it. There were sixty screens in all, ranging from small ten inches, to the large fifty-six inch sitting at the dead center, atop a large semicircular panel nestled in which were the controls. The minor hallways were displayed at the smallest screens, which were to be found around the outermost parts of the mosaic-like display of television screens. The more important rooms, it seemed, were displayed on the larger screens, and in the middle of them all, displayed on the fifty-six inch screen, was Rhianne's placid, resting face.

And sitting in the large, plush swiveling chair before the screen sat Vash's twin brother, Knives.

He was mimicking his twin's earlier actions, tracing the female's jaw with his gloved hand, running a fabric-tipped finger gently across the screen as delicately as though it were her flesh he felt beneath his finger, not a cold lifeless screen. His finger traced her lips, a cold gray on the colorless screen. They parted with a sigh as she slept, and the ice-eyed plant sighed along with her. Watching this, Vash simply stood in the doorway, unsure if it would be wise to disturb his sibling.

"Vash, I'm not stupid" came Knives' placid voice, as his face was turned away from the broom-haired man in the doorway "I knew you were coming, I saw it on the monitors."

Vash blushed a little "oh…yeah" he moved closer to his brother, leaning against the smooth, slightly curved upwards surface of the control panel. He ran a hand through his spiked hair and sighed a little, moving his gaze to his brother's face.

Knives' pupils had shrunk until they were nearly consumed wholly by his tundra-sky colored irises, as he was nearly nose-to-nose with Rhianne's face on the screen. The gray light that came from the screen gave his pale face a ghastly discoloration to something that resembled a sickly, swampy gray-white. It was the color of cartilage; and Vash likened Knives' face, so placid yet to tense, to that of Death itself.

"She's very beautiful" Vash commented absently, turning his gaze from his twin's ghostly face to that of the sleeping woman on the screen.

"Yes she is" came the monotone reply. A pause, then "it's rather a shame, isn't it?"

"What's that?" Knives smiled sadly, and Vash remarked that this was the first time he had seen such a remorseful look don his brother's handsome features "that she isn't mine"

The darker blonde blinked for a moment, his eyes averting to the screen for naught but a moment, returning then to his brother's pallid face.

"What do you mean by that?" he asked, ever inquisitive. As he spoke a small ray of sunlight shot through the small window in the room, splaying itself delicately across the floor, and momentarily hitting the rays of gold upon the ice-eyed man's face. It brought life to his pale blonde hair, turning it to a shimmering fountain of the palest gold spilling down from the crown of his head, his bangs falling, uncut, like waves upon his skin lit to nearly silver by the light. And for a moment a flash of gold light, a mere pinprick slashed itself through his ice-eyes and they softened in that instant. For a mere second, his eyes were filled with the light only seen when one finds themselves encircled in Love's embrace. His eyes, lit like candles in the ebony black of night, shone for that brilliant moment, with the love and admiration he hid away inside himself; that he covered with a blanket of secrecy and swore never to remove. In that shining moment, Vash saw how truly he loved that woman on the screen, and how the lives of innocents and sinners alike were worth her life and her happiness.

But as the sunlight receded away into the inky black of night, the light left his eyes. It moved swiftly out of his eyes, allowing them to be filled again with the icy blue of the arctic waters, leaving no room for the warmth of summer that had vacated them so suddenly, giving way to the ice that consumed his gaze. Had he ever seen one, Vash could have likened the change that had overtaken his brother to the tail of a great killer whale; rising momentarily out of the waves of the ocean in all it's beauty and splendor, then retreating down into the cold depths of the ice, only to surface when the time befitted it so.

"You know what I mean" Knives stated darkly, never moving his gaze from the screen, acknowledging his brother's presence only by speaking to him.

"I'm sure she had her reasons" Vash offered, placing a gentle hand on his brother's shoulder. Knives sneered at the screen and shrugged his hand away.

"Yes, yes; I'm sure she did. But if she loved me as she says…" he trailed off, leaving the void to be filled with silence. But the aqua-eyed plant wouldn't let the silence thicken between them.

"Knives, if you knew, what would you have done? You wouldn't have loved her like you do; you would have used her. And that's not real love."

"And what do you know of love?" Knives spat back, finally turning to face his sibling, his eyes aflame "you, who has spent his whole life in servitude to a woman he knew for naught two years? You claim to love her, you carry her torch high, and yet it isn't why you do it." He paused, smirking at the look of astonishment that donned upon his brother's face

You do it because you are a coward. You have taken only a single life during the long course of your own; killing my dear Legato. Knowing wholly what you did, knowing you had forsaken that Rem bitch, you cried. And yet, the tears weren't for her, were they Vash? No, they were for you. You, who never stole a life; you, who protected those weaker than yourself; you, who forsook your own twin, your own flesh and blood, for a bunch of worthless mortals! No, you don't love Rem Saverem, and you don't love that little pet of yours either-Merle or whatever it is. You only allow yourself to think that so you can convince yourself that none of this was your fault. I crashed that ship for you Vash. And Rem died therein; you know it. I condemned the spiders to this hellhole of a planet, because of you, and it's because of you that -Meryl is her name, yes?- Meryl, will die. She will die beneath the harsh light of the twin suns and there is nothing you can do about it. You shall cry for her Vash, I know you will. You will shed tear after ill-spent tear upon her grave; but they won't be for her. They won't be because you loved her, they will be for you. They will be for your guilt. The guilt that tears you apart every second of every day, because you know, Vash The Stampede, my brother, that it is all your fault."

A/N: Is that any good? I do hope I got Knives' perspective right, and everything sounds all right. R&R and let me know please! LL