"The ticket to the future is always open."
Rem Saverem.
Vash "The Stampede" Saverem.
He took on the last name of the woman he loved as a means of preserving her memory.
Her beautiful idea is doted on religiously by him. Still, it is hard to believe, and even harder to believe in now that her
own death has contradicted its message.
His ticket now does not bear even a passing resemblance to the bright, clear future she had once so pacifistically described. Soon his ticket will be drenched in blood.
This act will kill her placid image in his dreaming- her reoccurring radiance, words and presence, steeped in the longing nostalgia of his subconscious mind. It is a completely ironic and totally sacrificial contradiction.
He upholds her strong belief in regards to the preservation of human life.
"No one has the right to take the life of another."
- Rem Saverem.
This has been his one and only truth for an extensive number of years.
He has been a testament to mercy at its apex. In risking his own life on more than one occasion, his sole mission in existence has been to spare and protect the lives of others that he comes across in plight or in the face of eminent destruction. In complete disregard for their flaws, faults, failures, sins, and even hostile actions pitted against him as a person and their numerous attempts to turn firearms to him and take his life, he extends himself as an expendable appendage to safeguard their own. He has not killed a single human being in all this time that he has been alive.
His body is covered square inch by square inch in scars, cuts, bruises, lacerations, contusions, staples, stitches, open gashes and deeply ingrained bullet holes that still preserve the look and redolence of burning sulfate and lead. These are a result of his attempts.
All of this is about to change. Herein lies the painful irony.
He will avenge the death of the woman he loved. A woman who believed that no one person had the right to condemn another's death for the simple logistic that no one should be capable of choosing whether a kindred human being- a sentient, conscious, aware and living creature with depth and range in feeling and the ability to change their ways- should ultimately live or die. In this act, he not only is denying her justified beliefs, but contradicting something he has adapted over time as his own personal philosophy.
It is enough to charge his tears. He will sacrifice the elusive fragments of who she was, what she stood for, and what little he has left of her to avenge her cruel and untimely human death. He will slaughter the man that, in turn, murdered her in her youth, thus killing her a second time- but this time around, her departure will not be sketched in blood, but in the loosening staples of his open, rendered heart.
His pain is astounding.
"I'm so sorry, Rem. . ." He speaks wistfully and with a ruefulness about his face that transcends into so much more; then, he doubles over as though physically hurting and sobs recklessly into his hands. Why he is apologizing and what exactly he is apologizing for, seems arbitrary as it is compelled against the deep and stunning sadness of this moment in itself.
Rem Saverem in life believed that both he and his twin brother, a Millions Knives, were angels, sent from the stark cold and black of the void for the sake of love and guidance. A gift unto humanity.
How could she have been so wrong?
Now his brother will wither and writhe against the lead that fills his stomach. Respectively, an equal exchange: payment via his own life for the one that he so confidently, cruelly took away, and furthermore, her earliest and greatest misconception. But what is that- her greatest mistake in being human, and in blindly trusting those that never were destined to … should not have betrayed her as it happened? For all that she graciously gave to them, bestowed unto them, instilled in them and provided for, she, ultimately, was the angel.
And now, nothing more than a symbol of all things perfect and irreplaceable.
He cocks his gun and prepares to end this.