Howdy-doody, people! Here's the next chapter…I hope it's okay. It was really hard for me to write the interactions between Knives and Vash because, well, Knives' character (except for the fact that he is a homicidal maniac) isn't really all that well developed in the series, so I had to take a few creative turns when I was writing his dialogue. (Mwahahaha!) Sorry if it's a little disjointed, but people kept on IMing me while I was trying to write it. ^_^'

Extra bundles and lurve to:

Angel's Wing, Molly-chan the Anime/game fan, Cabbitangel8787, Indie, KaikaNozomi, Krnkaesaeki, Cherry Mecha, AmoebaFive, LadyBlackCat9000, Ladybugg, Vampkestrel, Midnight Star, Dark Phoenix, Ice-angel, and Alucard

(The number's getting bigger every time! Please keep up the reviews!)

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Last episode…

Silhouetted by the flames, a figure stood, laughing malevolently.

"Having a good time, brother?" Knives asked, smiling at me sadistically and hoisting an unconscious Meryl up by the hair. "Or was I interrupting something?"

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I felt my mouth opening and closing as my overloaded brain struggled to think of what to do or say.

"Knives!" I hissed. It was all I could manage.

He laughed again and narrowed his ice-blue eyes at me. He was still wearing what he had been wearing when we'd left, plain cotton pants and bandages wrapped around his torso, with one of my shirts thrown on.

"Did you think that your pathetic, biological botanical inhibitor* would stop me?" He raised his arm and displayed a rough, bloody gash in his arm where he had obviously ripped out the device I had painstakingly constructed and implanted the night before.

"Why, Knives? Why do you continue this…this destruction? Why couldn't you just stop and live among humans like I do?"

"Because I like it, that's why. I would rather have had you kill me than force me to live among this…filth," He tossed Meryl aside casually, and wiped his hand on his pants.

I made a little wordless noise of fury as Meryl's limp body collided with the wall and slid down to the floor.

Knives looked up at me and quirked an eyebrow. "So, you're even more disgusting than I'd thought…you actually have…feelings for this filthy spider."

I was shocked. "No I don't! Meryl and I are just friends…"

Knives didn't say anything; he just looked at me critically for a moment.

"Why didn't you kill me, Vash?"

It was this question that startled and disturbed me more than anything else he'd said. It sounded sincere and almost…sad.

"Well…you're my brother. And I believe what Rem told us…that every life has infinite possibility, that everyone deserves the chance to change. I would be a hypocrite if I killed you. I would be as bad as you are."

He looked at me suspiciously. "You killed Legato. Have you forgotten that?"

I looked away, at anywhere but his unfeeling eyes. "Yes I did," I attempted to prevent my voice from catching to little avail. "I won't try to make excuses for my actions, but that is all in the past now." I straightened and turned to look back at him. "What do you want from me Knives? I won't let you destroy the humans, and I won't allow you to hurt my friends. I have vowed to honor Rem's memory."

"I want you to kill me!" He screamed.

I recoiled in shock. "You…you know I can't do that, Knives."

"I can't stand living. Every day I feel less of me inside of me!" I watched in shock and a little bit of morbid fascination as he went from screaming in fury to what almost looked like he was on the verge of tears. He glared at me, as if furious at me that he had this emotional outbreak.

Despite his obvious resentment, I hadn't the slightest idea what he meant. "Uh…Knives what do you mean?"

He ran up to me in a blur of speed and shook me furiously by the lapels of my tuxedo.

"You're still a stupid naïve child, Vash!" He snarled. "All the dreams I have, you steal from me! Exterminating humankind was my life dream! My mission!"

But his anger slipped away quickly and he let his long, slender hands relax and slide limply down to his sides. "When I had that mission, I was complete. You were the only thing that stood in my way. We were brothers, Vash!" He hissed. "We were meant to live in Eden together! But you were weak. You betrayed my trust and left me wounded. When we met each other in that grove, I was determined. One of us would die, that's what I vowed. And here we are. You were the victor yet I still live. You should have killed me! I died that afternoon. Everything inside of me died. So why am I still here?"

The intensity in his eyes frightened me, but inside of me, I saw the truth. "Knives, you have been given a second chance. A way to redeem yourself. This is what I'd hoped for when I saved you."

"WHAT YOU'D HOPED FOR!!" Something in what I'd said must have broken something in him, for when he next raised his eyes to mine, the sanity I'd seen in them previously had completely vanished.

With a feral snarl, he flung a wall of pure energy at me. Stunned, I attempted to raise a shield, but my relative inexperience with using my inherent plant energy in battle let me down. His blast tore through my half-assed defenses and slammed me backwards into a wall. When I opened my eyes, he was standing over me, his arms hanging limply at his sides and his eyes glowing pale blue with insane anger.

I felt him forming another blast, and I lashed out at him on his own terms, creating a blast that shoved him back several paces and knocking him onto his back, stunned. I leapt over to him and pinned him down, concentrating carefully as he struggled wildly against me.

With one last burst of my quickly dwindling strength, I slammed all my mental energy into his brain, knocking him unconscious.

Feeling the last of my strength slip away, I fell back onto the debris-covered floor.

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I felt myself slowly rising back to consciousness to the sounds of a fight. I opened my eyes and waited for the darkness to clear from them as I focused on the scene before me.

Vash was holding Knives to the floor, his tuxedo in shreds around his torso. Vash's eyes were concentrated on a place just above his brother's head. After several moments of concentration, Vash's eyes bulged and I felt the strangest sensation…almost like my brain was itching. Knives fell limply to the floor, and after a moment, Vash did the same.

"Vash!" His name escaped from my lips unconsciously and I rushed over to him, ignoring the moans of shocked and injured people around me, cursing my dress and the heels I was wearing. I practically fell at his side and lifted him up to check for vital signs. He was just holding onto consciousness and he gazed up at me with half-closed eyes.

"Meryl…thank God you're alright," he murmured. "I just wanted to tell you that…that…" And with that his eyes slipped shut and he went limp.

"Oh my God, Vash," I whispered.

And with that there was the sound of a door opening and Milly stepped out of the bathroom, looking around with wide blue eyes.

"Gosh, Meryl, what happened?"

*I was trying to figure out what Vash would've devised to keep Knives from escaping in the shower one day, and came up with this. Supposedly it targets the plant energy inside of him and uses special electrical impulses to stop his brain waves from reaching his body…except for involuntary stuff (i.e. breathing and heart beating). For him to escape from with would obviously require a great amount of willpower, and he had to rip it from his own arm, something difficult because of his low tolerance for pain. Vash constructed it out of a paper clip, a 9-volt battery, and some duct tape. ^_^

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