Day 252
He is pondering whether or not to abuse his new freedom.
Recently Vash has stopped locking him in his room, now he has free access to the rest of the house. The front door remains locked, of course, but it would not be so difficult to escape via the windows. His limbs are still stiff and sore, but he can move them well enough now. He can walk without the aid of a stick, though he needs regular breaks and occasionally something to lean against. He has a pronounced limp, but he knows that will fade with time.
He could, he knows, escape any time he wishes.
The thought is certainly appealing, there is probably a sand steamer or a bus near by which he could catch and use to get to another city, it might involve stealing some money but that is hardly a challenge. Once he was away from this town he is sure he could use methods to ensure that his brother would never find him again, unless he wanted to be found.
Yet he remains here.
He is not sure why he does so, but there is something about this place, about this situation which appeals to him. Perhaps it is his sense of morbid curiosity, the same thing which drove him to read the gruesome history banks on the SEEDS ship. Perhaps it is the newfound relationship between him and Vash for, whilst they certainly aren't best friends again, there is some spark of love between them. They can talk more comfortably, interact smoothly, they are as close as they have been since Vash first shot Knives after his use of the Angel Arm.
Perhaps it is mere laziness, he has finally grown used to the good life and cannot be bothered moving.
The problem is; he has a sneaking suspicion that it is none of these things. He thinks it might be that some of Vash's preaching might be affecting him. He worries that, after over a century of hatred, he's finally starting to tolerate the humans.
It is a hunch which confuses and frightens him beyond measure.
Yet he promised himself he would give this a try, he would listen to his brother and he has done, he will do. The difficulty is that he never expected his brother to say much worth listening to.
His brother is late tonight, and so Knives has started work on dinner ahead of him. There aren't any blades shaper than a butter knife in the kitchen; Vash has made sure of that, but Knives make-does anyway.
Besides, he thinks as he uses the butter knife to cut the vegetables, it's not as if there aren't other things around the house that can't be used as weapons. Even a pencil can kill, if one jams it through a human's eye.
He sneers, humans are such frail things.
He puts the last ingredients into the pot and sets it to boil. Tonight he's making a stew, he's sure it will turn out well as he's followed the recipe exactly. Knives always follows recipes to the letter and unlike is brother he rarely experiments.
Vash is always trying new things out, most of the time they are edible (even if they don't look it) and occasionally they are delicious. Knives prefers to do things but the book, however. This stew will be nothing spectacular but it will be good enough to eat. He can have it as soon as it is cooked and his brother can reheat it whenever he gets back. It is somewhat unusual for him to be this late…
His concern grows as the minutes tick by. He tries to distract himself with games of solitaire but it doesn't really help.
He considers sending a message telepathically but quickly denies himself, he will not show apprehension, will not show weakness.
For a moment his fears are assuaged by a knocking at the door. He frowns, it cannot be his brother as Vash would just let himself in, and no one, in all the time Knives has been here, has ever knocked at the door.
Driven by curiosity he stalks towards the door, wondering who could be on the other side. The question of whether or not to let them in seems moot, the door is locked.
Never the less, perhaps out of some brief rebellion stirring in his heart, Knives tries to open the door and is shocked when it does, in fact, open!
His idiot of a brother must have forgotten to lock it today!
Before he can stop himself Knives has the door wide open and is staring at the brown haired spider outside.
He is quite a tall man, not as tall as Knives or Vash, but lofty none the less and quite well built.
He seems somewhat off put by the speed with which Knives opened the door, but soon collects himself.
'Hi,' he says, 'I'm Pete, are you Mr Knives?'
'I am.' Replies Knives coldly.
'Well, I was just in the area and um… I thought I'd pop in to let you know that, uh, your brother, Vash, he'll be late back from the Plant tonight. One of the late shift boys is off ill and so he's taking over for a while. Alright?'
Knives frowns: so that's where his brother has been working, the Plant. It makes sense, he supposes, but he cannot help but feel some disgust that his brother would partake of the enslavement of their race.
He turns to regard the nervous human again, 'I understand,' he says and then, as an afterthought, 'why did you come here to tell me anyway? There is nothing for you to gain out of this.'
The man shrugs, still looking uneasy, 'I just figured that you might feel a bit worried and lonesome, on your own and all. Sorry if you take offence, I didn't mean to intrude on your privacy.'
'You came because you were curious,' says Knives, 'you heard there was a madman living here and you wanted to gawp at me, correct?'
The human snorts derisively, 'hardly,' he says, 'I admit, I had heard you were bonkers and I still ain't sure your right in the head. But Vash seems to think your safe enough to leave on you own, so I figure that you can't be that cuckoo. If you were, I wouldn't be riskin' my skin like this.'
Knives blinks, he hadn't expected such a brutally honest answer.
'Say,' exclaims the man, cutting Knives off before the first words of his retort can come to his slack jawed mouth, 'do you smell something burning?'
'Crap!' hisses Knives, 'the stew!'
He runs back into the main room and the kitchen, towards the hob where the stew is bubbling over and burning. He turns the hob down and shoos away the smoke that has been accumulating over the blackened pot.
'Damn, it's ruined!' he cries, cursing his own inattentiveness.
'Don't look too bad,' says a voice behind him, and he turns to see that the spider, Pete, has followed him in, 'the edges are burned, sure, but most of it looks edible.'
Knives' eyes narrow in silent accusation, Pete gets the message.
'I just came in to make sure everythin' was alright,' he says, putting his hands up in a peace making manner, 'check nothing was on fire. Looks like you had a close one, but as I said; at least the stew ain't entirely ruined.'
'Of course it's ruined,' snaps back Knives, 'what would you know!'
'More about cooking than you, it seems. Go on, give it a taste.'
Scowling, but determined to prove this annoying human wrong, Knives picks up a wooden spoon and, from the centre of the pot, spoons up a bit of stew and tastes it.
It doesn't taste all that bad.
Pete grins at the shock in his eyes, 'told you so,' he says somewhat smugly, his eyes glance round the large room quickly, taking in the sights whilst Knives removes the pot from the stove.
He glances at the game of solitaire left half finished upon the kitchen table, 'you play cards?' he asks, lazily putting the queen of harts onto the king of clubs.
'I do,' replies Knives icily, he is growing increasingly annoyed and irritated by this human, so casual and plane spoken.
'Want a game?'
'Excuse me?'
'A game of cards,' Pete clarifies, 'I ain't got nothing better to do, and it'll be a while before Vash gets home. I'm guessing you're pretty bored too, so why not while away a few hours playing a game or two?'
For a moment Knives is tempted to tell this annoying insect exactly where he can stick his cards. Then he rethinks, he had no real idea when Vash will be back and boredom does indeed weight upon him terribly. What could be the harm of it, after all, to have a quick game of cards with this human? He did help save Knives' food, after all and it would make an interesting study into the further flaws of human existence.
'Very well,' he says, drawing himself up a seat by the table, 'what game would you like to play?'
The next few hours pass in a strange manner. They play many games, only breaking briefly for Knives to eat his stew. Most of them Knives wins, though in Pete he does find a challenge. Something he had hardly expected.
Pete, for all his appearance, is actually quite intelligent and refreshingly plane spoken, he tells it as he sees it. Knives learns much of the outside from him. Apparently they are in a town called Angel's Rest(1), which is fifty Illes from January. Both Pete and Vash work in the Plant, which supplies Angel's Rest with all it needs, strangers are not uncommon in the town, though they rarely stay as long as Vash and Knives. Angel's Rest is a stable town but not a growing one, the plant can only provide for so many people and water is still a problem. He also mentions that, recently, there were some problems with the Plant which Vash somehow fixed. This probably explains where he was, those few nights ago, when he sent Meryl and Millie to baby sit him.
It has been a good few hours since Pete arrived, and the night is getting late, when the door opens again and Vash returns. He looks exhausted and is whining to himself under his breath. When he sees Pete and Knives playing cards at the table, however, the look of complete shock upon his face is almost comical.
'Hi Vash,' says Pete, getting up out of his chair, 'thought I'd pop round and keep your brother company, hope you don't mind.'
'Not at all,' replies Vash weakly.
'Good. Well, I'd best be off then. It's been nice meeting you, Knives; maybe we can do this again?'
He holds out his hand for Knives to shake, Knives declines it, but gives a nod of approval.
'Yes,' he finds himself saying, 'I would like that.'
'Great, I might come round tomorrow evening then. See you around!'
He waves and departs, closing the door behind him.
'Knives…' mutters Vash, still stunned.
'I'm tired, there's some stew on the side,' says Knives, ignoring his brother and getting up, moving towards his room, 'you'll need to reheat it. The edges of it are burned, but the insides are actually rather good.'
And with this he retires to bed, undoubtedly leaving questions ringing round Vash's head. Questions to which not even Knives himself has all the answers.
(1) An appropriate name, no? A little corny but I thought it fitted, it's actually taken from a town name computer game called Exile III by Spiderweb Software (Or Avernum III, both are good.) I recommend both of them highly.
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Notes: Meh, I didn't reach 100, but I posted the short story anyway. Look it up, it's called Chess and it's about Wolfwood.
Reader's Replies:
Chibi Nataly: Wow, I'm so glad you like this. You know, every review helps, every review encourages me to write more and write better. So please, keep it up! I'm so happy you're enjoying this!
Grace: Thanks for the comment on Millie. I really like her character, to tell the truth, out of all the characters on Trigun, including Vash himself, she's the one I'd most like to be. Tall, nieve but with some wisdom to her.
Ron the Future Weasel: Well, if I could draw I would do fan art of that. You've read this chapter? Funny how you guessed bits of it, like the burning and the solitaire. I loved the way you said 'Who did Vash drag of the Stree this time,' it sounded like just the sort of thing Knives would say. You can just picture his look as Vash drags in this random ho-bo… lol! Yep, I'm going to try to update pretty often, though it will depend on circumstance!
The DreamsoftheDead: Sorry if the bribery thing insulted you… I didn't mean it to. I hope the story makes up for it. Again, thanks for the plot hole thing, it's nice when people notice this stuff, shows they're paying attention. I'd read and review your other stories, but I'm afraid I'm not into the fandoms you write about really… sorry… :blush: but I'm sure your writing rocks! Is one of the stories you're working on a Trigun story? I look forward to it, you sound like a very conscientious writer.
Angelstryke: Heh, I must keep up these blurbs… the idea was that Knives, even now, still isn't listening. He's looking at the humans with a closed mind, not an open one as Vash wants. He's only seeing the bad, just as Vash tends to only see the good. But I'm glad this worked, anyway.
Aoi: Heh, you've got a point there. Perhaps there's some deep Freudian thing going on with those outfits… makes you wonder… Yes, I think Knives is defiantly afraid of humans on some level, rightly or wrongly. I hope this chapter lived up to your expectations again!
Communist Penguin: It did seem a very Knives-ish line to say, I can picture him and Vash in that kind of relationship. It's scary… in some strange way I think Knives is a little like Wolfwood… but that's a theory for another day…
ATO: Yay! I'm still in character! Excellent, that's what we want to here! As requested, the angst story is up, I hope you can find time to review it.
OTHER NOTES: Boy… that was a lot of reviews. Thanks guys, and sorry to those I missed out last chapter. I also apologise for the OC, but he's necessary, please let me know if he's annoying or anything. I'm not intending for him to be but… well… fingers crossed. Also, I've recently seen the episode Rem Severem again for the second time. Great stuff, gave me loads of new ideas and psychological info on our dear Knives. I also came to realize something else… I was wrong, Knives does have a favourite food. It's apples, he's very, very, very fond of apples. Just so you know. :nods:
NEXT TIME: Knives learns something about his new Pete, something that could catapult him into a more forgiving attitude to humanity… or send him straight back into rabid hatred…