i've spent about two solid years trying very, very hard not to write this story. figures my moment of weakness would come at 4 am, when it's impossible to do it justice. my apologies.

this story is set immediately (and i do mean immediately) after the july incident. for those who have read "beginnings," this obviously takes place before that story; hence the immature personality for legato. for those who haven't read it… um… don't. it's pretty poor, as fanfics go.

major, major, major spoilers. you were warned. also: includes graphic violence. if blood grosses you out, turn back now.

last chance…

don't say i didn't warn you.

-veth

-----------------------------

And I just want you to know

That when I do it

I only think of you

--nine inch nails

If the ocean could have been contained between cold steel walls, it would have sounded like the roaring in his ears. If he'd ever seen an ocean, he might have made the connection.

The corridor was long—longer than he'd expected. He'd known that the rat's nest that he called the Complex and others called nothing at all was vast, but he'd never been permitted down here before. Had never had occasion to go exploring, for that matter, even if he had. He didn't have time to take in the sights now, though. The sound of his own harsh breathing, shuddering with each step, was too distracting. Stumbling, Legato caught himself against the cold metal of the wall, swaying on his feet even as he pressed forward. Blood dribbles formed a breadcrumb trail behind him, and if he'd been more coherent, he would have been properly grateful; in this state, it was doubtful he'd be able to remember his way back without it. The dribbles echoed ever-so-slightly as they hit the steel floor. He blocked the blood out of his mind; it was a sign that things had gone wrong. Some of it was even his own.

The blue-haired man was a mess, his white coat singed and blackened, shirt ripped and oozing thick red blood with a slight garnish of dirt and ash. His left hand supported him, pushing off from the wall at each step, leaving red-brown prints on the dull silver. His right hand clenched the neck of a thin canvas sack, the source of most of the blood. It was slung over his shoulder, giving the man an awkward, halting gait that was not improved by his physical condition.

The command was still in his mind, burned deep, imprinted so that Legato would seek to obey even if his body fell to pieces beneath him. His heart screamed out to him to stop, to turn back, to tend the Master in this hour of need, but his feet kept moving. An order such as this could not be disobeyed. He stumbled forward, the hunchbacked posture and irregular rhythm of his steps casting a grossly lurching shadow that lengthened and contracted as he passed the harsh, bare yellow light bulbs that illuminated the corridors. If he'd thought about it for a moment, he would have found the lighting system deeply ironic. So he didn't think.

There—the door. Aching with relief, Legato let his burden thump gracelessly to the floor as he fumbled with the knob. His hands were slick, coated as if with oil, unable to find purchase on the smooth, burnished steel. The compulsion, the need, to get in, in, in was driving him mad. Wrapping both hands around the knob, he finally wrenched the door open, stumbling inside with just enough forethought to drag the grisly bundle in after him. To leave it behind would have been deadly. The door swung shut with a resounding metallic clang.

Dropping to his knees, the shaken man scrabbled at the bundle, clawing it open with feverish single-mindedness. The cloth was soaked through, red and sticky, and the sickly sweet smell filled the room as he pried it open. Pale, taut flesh stared up at him, still warm and oozing the lifeblood of its recent owner. Almost immediately, bile rose up in his gorge and Legato forced it back viciously, angry with his pathetic human instincts. Look at it, he snarled at himself, keeping his eyes on the bloody prize through sheer force of will. Look at it! Look at a piece of perfection.

And indeed it was. The flesh of the bloody left arm, pale and smooth, was everything one could ever hope that flesh could be. The fingers were long and elegant, the wrist sculpted, the muscles still defined, even in the mutable state between shock and rigor mortis. The shoulder was ripped and torn, of course, where the blast had severed it from the torso, but if one ignored that, it truly was perfect. Legato tasted blood and found that he had bitten through his own lip in some sick combination of horror and desire.

He didn't think; he just acted. On orders, on instinct—it really didn't matter, not right now. He stripped off the plain white trenchcoat, exposing the somewhat torn but reparable black turtleneck underneath, which he proceeded to render irreparable by ripping off the left sleeve at the shoulder seam. His arm, beneath the fabric, was pale and baby-smooth, unused to any kind of sunlight. It wasn't exactly scrawny, but it was less well-defined than the bloody treasure before him, and it could not help but suffer by comparison. Though he had always prided himself, somewhat arrogantly, on physical beauty, he gazed at the discrepancy between himself and Perfection and felt physically ill. If one arm—one bloody, mangled arm—could be so exquisite, how could he, a lowly human, ever hope to compare? The swell of self-hatred fueled his purpose, and Legato ripped a strip of black fabric from the hem of his shirt to serve as a restraint.

The room was featureless, a smooth silver cube like a prison cell, with no outcroppings or hooks upon which he could fasten the makeshift handcuff. It didn't matter. He tied it to his wrist, viciously, crushing tendons and veins with reckless abandon. The other end went under his boot, with the force of his weight upon it to make sure it didn't slip. He ripped off a second band and used it to make a tourniquet, high on his shoulder, to ensure that he wouldn't die of blood loss before finishing his appointed task. Breathing quickly through clenched teeth, Legato drew the knife from his right boot, the soft shh-hh-hh sound it made echoing his panting. From the canvas mess he pulled a small black metal box, flicking the latch open to expose his carefully-arranged medical kit. He never would have guessed he'd be using the meticulously assembled items for a task like this. He knew he should have something to shove between his teeth, to bite down on while he did what was necessary, but the compulsion was written behind his golden corneas in letters of fire that burned out of control. He couldn't think. He couldn't feel. He couldn't reason. He just cut.

The first stroke was quick and decisive, the sharp blade sliding into his muscle, catching on gristle and thick striations as he shoved it in. The pain blossomed behind his eyes, nearly eclipsing the orange flaming frenzy of his Master's last command. He jerked backwards reflexively, but the strap held his wrist in place, so the instinctive reaction left only his head out of place, tilted back at an almost unnatural angle. His hands twitched and convulsed, but he forced his fingers to clench, creating a death grip on the knife with his right hand and a futile fist with his left. Blood oozed hungrily from the wound despite the tourniquet, rising up as if to consume the knife hand. He had to clench even tighter to keep his grip on the slippery surface.

An ordinary man would not have been able to keep silent during this treatment, but Legato had had practice—his Master's punishments were swift and decisive, but if Legato made so much as a sound, their length could be extended indefinitely. He gulped in air, panting heavily now, and forced himself to cut deeper. The pain was like white-hot lightning, traveling up and down his arm and shocking his nerves into near-silence. The flesh gave way grudgingly, feeling precisely like a thick, juicy steak beneath the knife of a gourmand. The blade dipped further and Legato couldn't help but whimper, an oddly high-pitched and childlike sound that bounced off the walls of the tiny cell, bringing back to him the fact that he was completely alone beneath miles of rock and sand. If he died here, only the Master would know, and no one would care. Then the knife hit bone, and Legato stopped thinking.

He was panting now, letting out small cries and moans as his right hand sawed doggedly into the bone. The pain was excruciating, and he wished madly, desperately to faint, to find release—but that would run counter to the Master's purpose. The knife wasn't working. He tore it out with one swift jerk, splattering blood across his own face, and dropped it on the already-slick floor. There was a small saw in his kit, never used, that he'd included for the sake of completeness—little more than a serrated blade, but it would have to do. He shoved it in. The scrape of metal against bone resounded in his ears, echoing, propagating like a laser beam and increasing in volume until it battered itself against his ears, worse than the rages of a sandstorm, drowning out his own breathing and frenzied whimpers. Blood exploded in his mouth as Legato bit a hole through his tongue.

The bone seemed to last forever, even though his saw tore at it frantically, willing to cause any increase in pain if only it could end sooner. It seemed that an entire dune could have formed and eroded in the time it took to cut that bone. At last, at last, the blade tore through the last jagged edge of calcium, and the slick red pain of the muscle on the other side was bliss by comparison. Nearly hyperventilating, Legato grinned through the tears of pain. He had survived; he had been purified. Out with the bad, in with the good. His left arm dropped to the floor with a cold thud, formerly grasping fingers stilled forever. The knife dropped from his right hand, out of fingers that shook like old men's limbs, and his blood-coated hand grasped after the new arm, the prize his Master had bestowed upon him in return for these years of loyal service. The foreign limb should knit directly to his flesh by virtue of its regeneration abilities, but he had a small sewing kit in his box, just in case. Legato desperately hoped he wouldn't have to use it. His hands—no, his hand—was shaking too much to even hold a needle, much less thread it.

He grabbed the angel's arm with red-slicked fingers, leaving prints, but neither noticing nor caring. Shaking, he lifted the slightly tanned flesh to meet his own sickly pale and quickly putrefying skin. The instant they touched was the most terrible pain he had ever felt in his life.

Knives-humans-devastation-horror-weapon-ships-murderer-brother-killer-sibling-falling-desert-plants-murderer-survival-pain-horror-murderer-beauty-sunset-pebble-murderer-sand-ships-murderer-bother-murderer-KNIVES!

Legato's back arched as he reeled backwards, cracking his head against the steel floor without feeling it, mouth open in a silent scream as his desperate, blood-slicked fingers clawed at the newly-joined flesh, desperate to rip it apart, desperate to drive these thoughts, these images, these feelings out of his head.

Rem…

He noted, as purely background information, that he was screaming. He knew, somewhere in the pit of his stomach where thought and reason have no place and emotion rules all, that he had made a terrible mistake. This arm wasn't just a magical piece of flesh, a talisman that would stop his aging and increase his already-formidable telepathy. It was alive. This was Legato's first encounter with the mystical being who the Master only called "brother," but whose given name Legato now knew to be Vash.

The human had the advantage of strength, but only because he had a nearly-complete body with which to fight. Nevertheless, the single fantastic and terrible arm struggled desperately, an instinctive clash of wills as it tried blindly to surge forward into the body it found itself attached to. How was the severed arm to know that it had been reattached to flesh that was not its own? If Legato had thought he'd known pain before, all of those fancies disintegrated with this. His arm was on fire, burning like acid, awash with more sensory data than his human brain was capable of processing. The overflow could only be interpreted as pain. The hoarse burning of his throat, raw from helpless screaming, was completely eclipsed. He was no longer capable of caring how he sounded. In the end, of course, it didn't matter. No one could hear him down here.

The battle felt interminable. He was sinkingly aware, from the moment the struggle began, that in a fair fight he would be outmatched. Human will, even the most disciplined and powerful, could not compete with that of a superior being. Desperation drove him on, the desperate, instinctual human need to survive coupled with his advantage of a present and capable center of reasoning. The willpower residing in the new arm was directionless, unformed and irrational, reacting according to a set pattern. Legato could fight against it—but barely. It was by luck alone that he gained the upper hand. He fought until he was exhausted, until his consciousness abandoned him and he curled gratefully into oblivion.

When Legato came to, there was no way to tell how long he'd been out. The bloody mess on the floor had dried; that was the first thing he noticed, because his face was resting in it. When he opened his eyes, it was a task equal to any mountain scaling or sandstorm survival. The room smelled disgusting; the rotting, desiccated smell of once-sweet blood filtered into his nostrils, and he coughed. The recoil made his head spin. Inch by inch, he forced himself to roll onto his back from the facedown position he hadn't remembered collapsing in. The dizzying panorama of the room made his stomach churn, and cautious movement was overruled by a sudden need to vomit.

Instantly, he was on his hands and knees, retching up every meal he'd had in the last forty-eight hours. It wasn't much, but it left him feeling purified. The sensation was oddly familiar. Purified… He frowned, staring down at the acidic pool of food refuse before him, and the realization dawned like a gunshot.

That's not my hand.

The left hand that propped him up, palm to the sticky floor, was slightly larger than his own, and differently shaped. The skin had more color to it, and the tendons and muscle were more defined. With a quick glance upwards, he could see the hand that should have been on his wrist, still attached to the arm that used to be his. In the throes of rigor mortis, it looked entirely alien, and the blood-encrusted knife beside it gleamed sullenly where the blade shone through. Legato was suddenly and forcefully informed that his stomach had not, in fact, been emptied the first time around.

He retched, and retched, and finally dissolved into dry heaves when there was truly nothing left inside. Still his body convulsed, shaking violently with horror. He stared wildly at the unfamiliar arm, not understanding what he could have gotten himself into, when the thing twitched. It moved, of its own accord, fingers grasping sightlessly for a split second and then falling still.

He gazed at his new arm in horror. It had moved—it had moved of its own free will. He could feel it now, just on the edges of his telepathic ability, but becoming more defined as the effects of the new flesh began to penetrate his mind. It wasn't a conscious presence—he had defeated that last night, though the battle had taken from him something indefinable, something he could feel like a hollow in his chest but could not name. No, it wasn't conscious, but it was there. He knew with a sinking certainty that no matter how well it had knit (and, indeed, there was no longer a wound, only a long white scar) this arm would never be his own.

Doubling over, Legato began retching again, and this time he couldn't stop. Blood flecks and spittle flew out of his mouth, mingling with the dried blood and vomit on the floor until it all became an indistinguishable mass. No matter how much he coughed up, he couldn't shake the panic, the inescapable feeling that he had done something irreversible, something with consequences he could not yet name.

It could have been days or weeks that he crouched there, huddled in the corner, new arm twitching periodically like an insect that has been squashed but still retains some shred of life. He retched until his stomach was tied in knots. Hunger crawled at him, a demon that lived deep in his abdomen, one he'd never felt like this before. His eyes, pried wide open and bloodshot so that the red of his veins blended with the deep gold of his corneas, stared at nothing. His body trembled violently between outbursts of retching. No matter what he did, the thread of subconscious existence was always there, tied to him. Mocking him. It was everything he had never been and could never be—and now it was a part of him.

The living presence of hunger could not move him, but as if of its own accord, the bare left arm gravitated towards his chapped and blistering lips. Shivering, he opened his mouth, drawing it in for a lick. It was the sweetest thing he had ever tasted.

Without hesitation, he bit down, half-mad with hunger, the rest from other sources. The sharp sensation of pain accompanied the movement, but it was different somehow—duller, perhaps, and sharper at the same time. It was like seeing the world through a strange colored-filter, where everything's slightly off, but you can't put your finger on the problem. He didn't have a chance to think about it, though—his attention was immediately diverted to another side effect of biting the new hand.

The voices stopped.

For one ecstatic instant, the whispering undercurrent of mingled memory and telepathic information that had come with his "gift" quieted to a murmur. Legato's mouth dropped open and his eyes, for a moment, seemed clear and focused.

Then they began again.

With an inarticulate whimper, Legato curled in on himself, cradling the cursed gift in his right arm. His eyes dulled and unfocused as he sank beneath the stream of others' consciousness.

He might have lost himself, then, if not for a familiar fleck of personality gliding across the surface of the pool. It was questing—crippled, but searching. His heart leapt. Master had come to save him.

The dull blue spark of Legato's consciousness struggled to the surface, reaching, grasping just far enough to brush against the faint but smoldering ember that was Millions Knives.

A tendril of thought whispered out, and Legato could have wept for joy. Master was well—Master had not suffered from his servant's neglect—Master was coming to pick up the pieces, to make things right. With the last of his energy, Legato pried open the last of his telepathic walls, using his new but uncontrolled force as a wedge to make his Master a clear and steady path.

::Vash…?::

The blue-haired man's body froze. His eyes, wide as saucers, stared sightlessly at the opposite wall. Did he…? Legato tried to muster the strength for telepathic communication, but before he could form a coherent thought, he felt his Master's consciousness slip sideways, focusing on its true goal.

The foreign arm.

::Vash… I have you here, with me, at last.:: The mental voice was as soft as an eel's self-satisfied caress, and it was not directed at Legato. ::I own this, this part of you. You are my brother. You'll see that… soon you will. I will wake, and bring you back to me. But for now…:: The caress encompassed the fragile shred of subconscious identity that inhabited Legato's new left arm, drawing it into a warm embrace that Legato watched like a homeless beggar peering through a window at a roaring fire. ::For now, I have this.::

The voice sounded exhausted, and Legato ached in sympathy despite his jealousy. ::Good night, Vash.:: The presence drew back, and Legato gasped as a faint tendril of consciousness brushed across his fragile mind as Knives gave his brother a final caress. Every breath of that excruciating brightness, when touched against his own pale, weak mind, was purest ecstasy, despite being meant for another.

The Master drew back into slumber, and Legato slumped against the wall, helpless tears of frustration pricking behind his eyes. Oh, Master…

He curled into a ball and cried.

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yeah, that's it. let me know what sucks. the crazy part is that i thought this would be a one-shot, but now that i've written the damn thing, i realize there's more to the story. i may or may not bother writing it. we'll see.

-v.

11.22.04 – thanks to those who reviewed this first chapter, i've made some revisions. kyvanna, you're right about the ocean thing—it was getting on my nerves too, but i'd been too lazy to change it. now i have. sairuh, though i have never personally tried to cut through bone, i'll take your word for it that a knife wouldn't do. also, you were completely right about the pus. i don't even know what i was thinking. it was 4am.

i guess the biggest change is that i downgraded the rating, despite the nausea-inducing nature of my subject matter. i reread it, and though it is definitely bloody and gory and gross, it isn't really violent and the k/l is only barely implied. i also want more reviews. so there. if some site admin has a problem with it at this level, i'll put it back up, but since this chapter is going to be the only really graphic one, i'm hoping they'll let it slide.

and…. yes, that's right, you heard me. i've been conned by various individuals into writing a second chapter. i can hear q's voice right now… "may whatever gods you believe in have mercy on your soul."

-v.