Sorry about the break. I got rather sick, and then my dog died, so I've been a little short on energy this month.

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With a whispered sigh, Knives closed the book. He had read it three times and was tempted to read it a fourth, but it didn't take an empath to feel the impatience that his relatives were emoting. They had both happened to wander in for just another glass of water enough times that they were both rotating from the kitchen to the bathroom and back to annoy him. The cycle didn't seem to have an end, but it did have a few breaks. He timed his finish to coincide with one of these, just to have time to sit with his thoughts.

He lightly set the book down on the table, then rubbed the palms of his hands over his eyes. There was so much explained in there, so many quirks and foibles that he would have never the genesis of without that guide. His hands dropped to his sides and he looked at the book, lying so casually on the table before him. Purposefully, he slouched in his chair until his nose was nearly level with the table, but aside from his point of view, nothing changed. He wasn't sure if he had expected anything different.

The cover was lurid and deceiving. Anne had never stacked bodies at her feet. They had all fallen behind her as she moved towards her target faster than gravity could draw the bodies to the bosom of the earth. Or at least so the author claimed. And there were no earthshaking special effects like the ones pictured on the cover. A firebird. Ludicrous.

No, it was just a depressing saga of the life of a villain. She had tried to do good, but her anger and her hate blinded her from the right path until it was too late for her to walk it. No matter how she tried, the sins of her past clutched her too close for her to reach that road.

He wasn't sure what the author had meant when she put pen to paper, or (and he lifted the cover to make a quick check of the copyright date) fingers to keys. It wasn't a cautionary tale, or an uplifting one. There were no heroes, no winners. The world of the book was one of chaos and entropy, a gradual descent into tribal feuds governed by erstwhile houses of learning and arms dealers. He couldn't easily come up with a worse combination than ivory towers combined with greed for pain.

There was no happy ending. Anne had died like she said, and then the book went on to tell of the desecration of her corpse once she had departed from that world. The only constant in the tome was the spilling of blood, from the abnormal body birth that her mother had insisted on to the final paragraph, where the blood collected from her corpse was scattered over the sands of the Sahara Desert, to ensure that nothing could ever grow from her remains.

But aside from the depressing nature of her story, Knives was pleased to have learned a few things about Anne. He knew that they could have lived together a hundred years and she would not have spoken of many of these events. He could sense the scars that they left behind, like ghosts of the events that created them. Anne had learned to live with them, to hide the remains of her pain with a smile or feigned indifference. But he could sometimes sense when something had gone wrong in her past, like when he had suggested that they go out for an ice cream sundae one night. It was the slightest hint of a pause, a veil dropped over her sight as she carefully didn't feel. It was in the way her gaze would flicker away from his every now and again, her vision seeking out something safe, the floor or the wall or her hands as she hid the pang that afflicted her.

She didn't tell him that her husband had asked her out to dinner, then confronted her with his desire for divorce when she was taking her first bite of an ice cream sundae. Her favorite food, now a trigger for one of the things she wished she could forget. He hadn't asked what was wrong then, and he wouldn't ask now, but he would be more circumspect in his choice of desserts,

His mind wandered into ways to supplant the unpleasant memory with a pleasant one of his devising. He was overwhelmed by the ways he could make use of whipped cream, and brought his mind back to the book with a firm admonition to stay on track.

Vash walked in before he had much of a chance to ponder the book anymore. The glass in his hand was still nearly half full, making the flimsy excuse even more of a joke, but he didn't care at the moment.

Vash looked over at his brother, taking in the slouch with more than a hint of surprise. Knives, sitting in a manner less than perfect? He couldn't count the times his twin had lectured him on the need for proper posture, that their lives would stretch to a length that improper alignment of the spine in their youth would cause greater troubles than they needed in the future.

But there he was, more under the table than above it. Vash set his glass down by the sink and walked over and crouched down until his head was level with his brother's. "Good book?" he asked, not sure what else to say.

"Not terribly." Knives gazed at the book a moment longer, then turned his head so his eyes met Vash's. "I'm tired." That wasn't what he had meant to say, his mind still more on the story then on making conversation, but it was true all the same.

"Come on then," said Vash. "Let's get you to bed." He helped his brother up out of the chair, and if his eyes lingered on the book as they left the kitchen, it was only because he had the suspicion that his son would get to read it before Vash got his chance.