Disclaimer: Elusive as a mayfly is my ownage of Trigun.
Chapter Fifty: Phoenix
A/N: YES! 50 chapters, thank you everyone!!
If I traded it all, if I gave it all away for one thing,
Wouldn't that be something?
If I sorted it out, if I knew all about this one thing,
Wouldn't that be something?
Finger Eleven- One Thing
A/N: I'm SO sorry for the huge gap between updates; I've literally been grounded from the internet for no reason until just today. Gomen nasai!!
Sparkling diamonds glowed in the lazuline, ultramarine sky; fading from a center of sable, black like ink spreading across a cobalt blue ocean that lay awash with color. Tainted with lavender and cyan and amethyst the color blended into the fuchsia pink and rosy red streaks that spread themselves over the sky like some divine fertile goddess would in some long-forgotten tapestry. Meager maroon clouds floated lazily over the display of colors like shadowed guardians that watched over their celestial garden, lit with light from the aurora that shimmered above the golden horizon where slivers of the twin suns remained, casting their glow over the landscape and elongating the dark shadows of the two plants who walked towards the town that sat upon the edge of a ravine so deep that one knew not what lay at the bottom. The canyon cut through the ground like a serpentine crevice, like dark lighting upon the land, and when the wind howled through it the townspeople shivered for fear that their plant would one day tumble into the crevice and die; and their hopes and lives with it. For the huge machine sat upon the very edge of the ravine, still surrounded on it's eastern side by windblown and aged shrapnel from the fallen Seeds ship, that the inhabitants of the town had been too wary to touch for fear that they would shift their precious plant and cause it to fall into the canyon that haunted them in their dreams with it's eventual promise of swallowing up the plant like a monster from the depths come to devour it's mechanical prey. The bulb of this mechanical wonder shone brilliantly in the dying light, reflecting it's light upon the faces of the two bedraggled plants walking with weary feet and hearts towards the town.
Vash's hair tumbled into his eyes as they came upon the bulb, glinting in the light like an ornament hung so carelessly upon a tree, and he brushed them hastily away with his free hand, the other rolling two stones between his fingers. He had found them one night when he and his companion had stopped to set up camp for the night; two almost-perfectly circular stones amongst a pile of other small pebbles, worn smooth over the centuries Vash could not count. He rolled them between his fingers, one moving over his fingers whilst the other rolled over the mounts of his palm, then causing them to roll into the other's place without almost any effort; for he had been rolling them constantly for the last two days. He gazed back at Rhianne, who walked silently behind him, her eyes downcast and her hands clasping at her mouth, and he could see the small trickle of blood that escaped between her lips, and he turned to her and sighed heavily, reaching out without a word and pulling her finger from between her teeth, which she had dug into her flesh in an attempt to dull the pain she felt inside and not cry. Vash bit his lip to keep from scolding her as he pressed his fingers against her wound, willing for it to heal and hating the blood that stained his fingertips; she had come upon this trick a day into their travels, growing weary of her constant crying she had taken to self-mutilation to deal with her pain. It brought tears to his aquamarine eyes to think of it; how many times he had awoken to find her blood spilled over the sand as she dug into her arms with her nails, or the bites and the bruises she now carried upon her like battle wounds upon her skin.
He removed his fingers, feeling the freshly grown skin that covered the bruised and broken flesh beneath and shaking his head at her as he grasped her hand and led her behind him like one would a small child. For that's how she seemed; no longer the proud and graceful woman he had come to know and admire, but a broken shell of a woman who had been reduced to a childlike state in her pain and self-loathing. He lay at night listening to her think, her thoughts that rung so loudly in his head that 'twas as though she screamed them in his ear. Yet she was not even aware that she broadcasted her thoughts in such a manner, for when he heard this she had fallen into the restless and nightmarish slumber that she had suffered these past few days of travel. She barely slept, waking in the middle of the night with an intense pain upon her chest and fresh tears pricking behind her closed lids, and when she did she screamed her pain out to him in waves of remorse and self-hatred that she kept within the confines of her mind whilst conscious. Yet when she was awake it was as though she slept, for she was not fully with him. When she walked it was as though she was not fully aware of her feet touching the sandy ground; what little she ate she seemed not to taste nor to care for; when she spoke she did so in a monotonous voice that gave no indication of her emotions or her heart that broke within her chest. Only the tears she cried showed any indication of that; the tears she wept at night when she thought him asleep and when she felt alone with herself. "Rhianneā¦" he started once again, attempting to put into words the pity and sorrow he felt for her as he held to her hand, watching her cringe as the sand that danced constantly in the wind brushed against the new flesh. As she always did, she looked away, to her right and over the horizon where the rolling dunes that she had watched him walk away over, and fresh tears came to her eyes and she instinctively brought her hand to her mouth, only to have it grasped and pulled firmly away by Vash's forceful hand. "Rhianne, you can't keep doing this to yourself" he stated, jerking her arm forcefully upwards and grasping her chin with his index and thumb fingers "it's over. You have to accept that"
For so long it seemed she stared up at him with her teary eyes that were perfect mirrors of his; shimmering with tears that she only shed when he wasn't looking and boring into his eyes as though she could see his very soul within them. They merely stared at one another, Rhianne's lips firmly shut and quivering with her sorrow, and Vash's lips a thin line of determination, willing her to succumb to his words and to dry her eyes and continue on with her life, for he knew that she did not deserve this strife and this pain. He felt compassion towards her and her sorrow and despair, yet it angered him that she would not even think of life without Knives. That her heart was so devoted to him that she could not fathom life without him, which had to become a reality for her if she were ever to move on. He could see it in her eyes, those lifeless eyes that gazed back up at him that were not those of the woman he had met, but those of a broken woman whose pupils swam behind a veil of unshed tears. She gazed at him, her eyes unwavering as they bored up into his, and he saw her lower lip begin to quiver and again she attempted to pull her finger to her mouth.
"Damn it Rhianne!" Vash snapped, pushing her hand from her mouth in frustration "stop doing this to yourself! You can't just sit here and mourn over him forever, you have to get up and live your life!" He looked into her eyes, narrowed with anger and brimming with tears as she pulled away from him, jerking her hand from his and slapping him across the face, leaving a large red mark as red as blood against the pallor of his skin "there is no life without Knives!" she screamed at him, clutching her chest and backing away from him, rage and pain tainting her voice "I thought I would be alright but I'm not! I want to hate him so much! I want to hate him so much that it makes me mad that I can't; I just can't!" Tears began to flow down her face and she collapsed to her knees, weeping into her palms as Vash stood above her, watching as she cried, unable to speak through the pity that closed his throat and made it difficult to breathe. Kneeling beside her, he placed a hand on her shoulder that pulsed and shook beneath the weight of her sobs "Rhianne" he started, drawing a deep breath "I know this is difficult. I know this is the most difficult thing you've ever been through. I've been where you are and I know what you're going through" There was a long pause before she spoke "do you?" a small voice he barely recognized as hers came from beneath her hands "do you really, Vash?" It sounded dark, menacing and mocking him and a low chuckle escaped her lips "you think you know me, yet you have no idea. You don't know the pain and suffering I've endured, the self-loathing and hatred I've felt for so damnably long" she removed her head from her hands, angry eyes glaring up at him full of rage and contempt "you don't know what it's like to lose the two people who ever really cared about you."
She watched as his eyes narrowed, growing dark and cold and so like Knives' as he glared at her though the cascade of blonde locks that tumbled forth from the crown of his spiked scalp "don't you dare say that" he stated, his tone like ice "you don't know what I've been through, either, so don't act as though your pain is any different. I've suffered as much as you, perhaps more, and you cannot say to me that you are alone in your pain because you haven't even scraped at the surface!" He glared at her for a moment, watching her chew over his words as a fierce light began to shine from within her eyes, and suddenly the impact of her open palm against his cheek erupted in him as she slapped him, his head snapping back as she pulled back and stood, staring angrily at him; eyes glowing beneath her fluttering lashes as tears fell from between them.
"Fuck you Vash" She stated, turning her back to him, pulling her hair free of it's restraints and allowing it to blow in the wind; chestnut silk, tainted with dark stains of blood that blew in the wind. She took a step, hesitating as her left heel pulled up from the sand, and turned back to him, her torso swiveling back to that she could face him, her shoulder pulled up like a pinup model from some long-lost era. Her eyes sparkled with tears in the setting sun, which cast an orange glow over the curves of her face; the hollow of her cheeks and the curve of her throat, her breasts and her stomach whose hollowness seemed less healthy with each passing day, her hips that jutted out from her torso with sickly sharpness, and her legs that became thinner each morning, it seemed. She was skeletal, losing her fragile beauty the same way a rose loses it's own; withering slowly away before his eyes. Vaguely he heard himself utter her name as she turned away once more, silhouetted like an angel by the brilliant light of the setting suns; with a fiery halo and burning wings.
He closed his eyes against the light, his lids erupting in a blazing orange as the light shone through his lids. Yet he could not look at her, this icon of mental decay and deterioration who still blazed with a blinding Inner Light that radiated from every pore on her pale skin. He could not open his eyes and gaze into those that so mirrored his, for within them he could see the torment that he knew lay within his own. He could not come to grips with this horrid pain of reality like this; no, he could not succumb to the reality of her pain and the idea that it might be more than his. Suffering and disease and decay and the slow drift into madness had been his companions for so many years that it nearly pained him to see that they had found a new companion; a new carrier of their plague which seemed to spread with every step taken. Their markings were in her eyes, invisible and yet utterly and undeniably therein, for one glance into her pupils, those pools of utter ebony despair, spoke to him of their dark touch upon her soul. He could not bear to see this, and therefore closed his eyes against the truth and the fiery angel that took her first step away from him; her hands in fists at her sides and the tears that cascaded down her cheeks being snatched from her flushed skin by a violent and uncaring wind who tossed them about like shimmering crystals caught in a tornado of sand and light. He could not bear to see the reality that was so cruelly being rubbed in his face; stinging him like rough sandpaper against his skin. He did not want another to bear the burden of being alone and abandoned; he wanted to be the only one to feel that weight upon his shoulders, but she deserved naught of it. He deserved to be alone and to be unwanted and unloved, and he could not bear to watch her deteriorate before his eyes, for her spirit to evaporate slowly like water beneath a cruel sun.
And so he did not; he closed his eyes against the wind and the sun and the sound of her sobs as her footfalls echoed in the wind as she slowly left him, a tearing mass upon the sand as the fiery angel, his phoenix, took flight and left him to himself, hoping that she would truly prove to be a phoenix and rise from the ashes of her despair.
