UPDATED Author's Note: Forgive me. There was some sort of... bizarre incompatibility... between FF.N and my old computer. I now have a much newer computer and have switched browsers from Internet Exploder to Mozilla Firefox, which seems to have solved the problem. If you go to my website you can find story updates through chapter 13; I'll be posting the most recent chapters on FF.N a little bit spaced apart so as not to flood anyone's mail with author alerts.
Chapter Eleven: Degrees of Innocence
It had been pure chance that led Michael to find the scene of destruction -- Tom hadn't come home in two days, and Michael had finally gotten so worried that he had gone to warn Milly that his little brother might be up to something. On the way to Knives' room, he'd found Milly on the floor, unconscious -- and from there on out it had been pure panic that fueled his discovery. Of all the boys, Thomas had been hurt least. The boy named Vincent, on the other hand...
Knife wounds. Lacerations that couldn't have been made by any manmade weapon -- they were finer than scalpel cuts, made with the kind of surgical precision that only doctors and assassins were capable of. In the end, every one of the boys had been incapacitated. They were in the med bay now, but for some of them, life itself was looking sketchy.
The ship was still dark when Vash found his brother, who had managed to stagger quite a way away from the hall where he'd been attacked. Knives had curled tightly around himself again, that same Sister-like fetal position that he'd adopted after his first waking. He seemed to be asleep.
Vash knelt in front of Knives' wretched, crumpled form. Hesitantly, he reached out and touched Knives' hair, feather-light, brushing the tangled locks out of his brother's face. He used the touch to open a mental link, sending a subliminal message of warm, slow calm. He didn't want Knives to panic when Vash tried to talk.
"Knives," Vash murmured, running his fingers though Knives' hair and rubbing his temple to wake him.
Knives woke at the name -- he jerked away from Vash's touch, shuddering uncontrollably, breath hitching. A sudden mental explosion of pain and confusion and rejection caused Vash's eyes to water -- Knives' reaction was stronger than he had expected. And for some reason, the main rejection was all towards Knives' own name. Vash frowned. The word "knives"? And all those knife wounds on the boys -- there had to be something here he was missing.
"Brother," Vash said instead, treading on the side of caution.
Knives calmed somewhat at that, stirring under Vash's hand. He let out a soft cross between a whimper and a moan.
"Are you hurt?" Vash asked, letting his hand move from Knives' head down to his blood-spattered side and arms.
More of a moan this time. Vash took that as a yes.
Fear threatened to rear up in Vash's gut, but he shoved it down -- he had to be calm here, calm and collected, for his brother's sake. If Knives knew the cold terror and sheer, blinding panic Vash had suffered when he found out what had happened -- well, Knives was unstable enough already.
"Look at me," Vash murmured, tugging on Knives' arms to get him to move, to uncurl.
Knives' head shot up, sick fear and confusion clouding his blue gaze, and he forcibly threw himself away from Vash's searching hands. Vash blinked, stomach lurching unpleasantly in startlement.
"Knives, what --" Vash started, forgetting himself.
"No," Knives rasped. "Get away."
The words ripped at Vash's heart like the same scalpel-blade that had shredded the children. "What?" He couldn't keep the hurt out of his voice or his mind.
But Knives seemed to recover himself, to see who he was talking to.
"Vash." His voice was rough, as if with misuse. "What... why are you..." he trailed off. His eyes betrayed the same helpless confusion that had twisted his face on the day they had split -- it was the same expression that he had borne after Vash had first shot him.
Vash gave Knives a desperate, supplicating look. "Please," he said quietly, "just let me see where you're hurt."
Finally, Knives moved. Keeping his eyes on Vash, he let his legs relax and unfold, exposing his blood-soaked abdomen. The muscles that he'd held scrunched up for so long finally stretched out again, and he made a pitiful little sound in the back of his throat, flinching at every movement.
There was a moment of uncertainty when Vash started to lift Knives' loose hospital shirt and Knives froze, his expression somewhere between nauseated and glaring. Vash sent him soothing thoughts, asked his permission, and Knives acceded... but not without a few unfamiliar flashes of thought passing across the surface of his mind. Once Vash finally got Knives' shirt off, he let out a short breath between clenched teeth and tentatively pressed a palm against the ragged wound. Knives hissed. Vash winced, but continued prodding the bloody area, keeping his touch gentle but firm.
"Muscle damage," Vash murmured finally, "but it missed anything vital. Healing won't be fun, but I don't think it'll take too long."
Knives just gave him a blank look.
"You'll live," Vash clarified shortly.
Knives nodded.
"What happened?" Vash asked, tearing off a long strip of Knives' ruined shirt.
Hesitation -- then a shrug.
Vash folded the remains of the shirt into a thick pad, pressed it against the wound, and made Knives sit up so he could tie the pad on with the strip of fabric. "The boys attacked you?"
Another hesitation, followed by a reluctant nod.
"What did you do to them?"
Knives was silent. Vash noticed that his hands were shaking.
"Never mind," Vash said, relenting. He stood and helped Knives to his feet, supporting his brother as they fell into a stumbling, uneven walk. Knives kept one hand pressed against the makeshift bandage, wincing at each twist and wrench of the ruined muscle.
"You'll have to stay in my room until we leave," Vash said finally.
Knives looked up at that, staggering as he lost his footing. A flash of angry frustration with his own clumsy body pierced his mind, and Vash couldn't help but pity him. The feeling passed, and Knives gasped, "Leave?"
"Something tells me we're not welcome here anymore," Vash said dryly, shifting the arm he had slung around Knives' shoulders to get a better grip.
Silence met that remark. Knives didn't speak again until they were standing outside the door to Vash's room.
"Why?" he asked bluntly.
The question had deeper intonations of meaning in it than Vash was prepared to think about. He left a bloody handprint on the door panel when he palmed it. Vash stared at the red stain for a second, and then said, "I don't know."
"We're different," Knives said simply. "They hate us."
Vash looked morose. "Maybe that's true."
Knives looked away, holding his tongue as Vash helped him across the room and into bed. "Milly?" he asked finally.
Vash moved off to dig for the first aid equipment he always kept with him. "She's fine. The boys knocked her out, but that's all."
"Hurt?"
"Not badly."
"She's hurt."
"Not badly," Vash repeated, coming back to the bed with his hands full of bandages and tape.
"She's one of them," Knives said plaintively. "They hurt their own?"
Vash shook his head. "She was protecting us -- you. The boys only saw her as an obstacle. Something in the way," he clarified, noticing Knives' lack of comprehension. His vocabulary wasn't quite up to par yet.
Knives started to frown, but it turned into a wince when Vash tugged off the torn shirt. Vash darted away again, into the tiny hygiene cubicle attached to the room, and came back with a wet cloth.
"I don't understand," Knives rasped softly, looking away while Vash cleaned blood off his stomach.
"No one does, Knives," Vash said, voice low, concentrating on keeping his hands occupied. Maybe Knives wouldn't notice that they were trembling. "All people are different. No one is any greater or worse than anyone else. They were scared, that's all."
"Fear made them hurt... clean... people." Knives made a face at his own words. "Not... I mean..." He hissed his frustration and reached up to grab Vash's wrist, sending a short, sharp mental impression of what he was trying to say.
"Innocent, Knives," Vash said sadly. "The word you're looking for is innocent."
The rest of the bandaging carried on in silence.
When Tom came around, the first thing he saw was Michael's hand hovering somewhere near his face. It took several slow, heavy blinks to bring the rest of his brother into focus.
"Hey," Michael said by way of greeting, keeping his voice low so as not to disturb the other two injured boys sharing Tom's room.
Tom opened his mouth to speak, but no sound came out.
Michael noticed it. "Don't bother," he said coolly. Tom blinked again and noticed how vacant Mike's expression was -- like he was pretending not to know who Tom was.
Tom worked his throat, painfully dry though it was, and finally managed to rasp, "Mike, I didn't --"
"Shut up."
Tom clenched his teeth and grated out, "At least listen to me."
"Why should I? You didn't listen to me."
Tom let his breath out in one big whoosh, as if he'd been punched. After a second of silence, he said, "I deserved that."
"Yes you did." Mike's voice was toneless. "You deserve more than that, but there are people more willing than me to give it to you. Take this as a blessing."
Ten minutes passed in silence. Tom thought about going back to sleep -- unconsciousness was safer and more comfortable, to be sure. But he didn't want to run away from this again. Not again. He'd done enough damage; he saw that now.
Mike wasn't looking at him. He was reading listlessly, elbow propped on one knee, hunched over with his nose bare inches from the pages. He was ignoring Tom completely.
"Why are you here?" Tom asked finally. "If you're that mad, why did you come?"
"I'm not mad," Mike said without looking up. "I'm here to make sure they--" he nodded at the other two comatose boys "--don't die. The nurses are spread too thin. I volunteered."
Tom hissed in a breath. "It was that bad?"
"How bad did you think it was?" Mike snapped.
"I don't know. I didn't see it all, I... I fell, got knocked out."
"Sounds like you."
Tom flushed with anger at the jibe. "I tried to stop them, dammit!" he exclaimed defensively. "I--"
"When?" Mike looked up at last, shutting his book harder than necessary. "When did you try to stop them? Before you kicked Knives in the face, or after? Before that Vince kid tried to gut him with a pocketknife? Whatever you tried to do didn't stop what happened, but if you'd tried it sooner, maybe it could have. You're a fucking coward, Tom, and I'm sorry you're my brother."
Tom wanted to scream. He hid his face instead.
After a minute, a tiny, choking sob broke the dead silence. Mike looked down and saw that Tom's shoulders were shaking.
Mike sighed, relenting slightly. "But you still are my brother, dammit. So just get better, will ya? And don't ever, ever scare the shit out of me like that again."
Mike went back to his book, and eventually Tom's sobs quieted.
Knives didn't realize he'd fallen asleep until he was rudely awoken by a small hand brushing against his forehead. His eyes snapped open in startlement before he had a chance to think, head lolling to the side to look at whoever was there. The intruder let out a muffled shriek and leapt away.
A young girl? Knives blinked quickly, clearing away the last fog of sleep, and stared. Definitely a girl -- not so young, maybe. Teenaged. Fifteen, sixteen. Nondescript face, nut-brown pigtails, many-pocketed apron. She looked vaguely familiar. She also looked terrified. Knives frowned.
"Who are you?" he asked. His voice was still rusty, though not quite as hoarse as it had been.
The girl trembled like a leaf. "J-Jessica Wright," she stammered. "Mr. V-Vash said you... uh... he said that someone should stay with you. A-and, er, Ms. Milly's still recovering, and Ms. Meryl has to deal with the questions, and there's the Doctor's passing for Vash to take care of and I just thought I could help andVashsaidyouneededlookingaftersir."
A long silence ensued in which Jessica stared wide-eyed at Knives and Knives tried in vain to work out what she'd said.
"Excuse me?" he said finally, giving up.
Jessica blinked. "Excuse you what?" Then she seemed to hear herself, and bit her lip nervously.
Knives shook his head a fraction. "I didn't follow that," he said bluntly.
"I... oh." Jessica blinked again, and relaxed visibly. "Um, I'm sorry?"
Knives just looked fixedly at her.
Jessica laughed nervously, tugging on one braid. "Well, that didn't go too well," she said, flashing a strained smile. "Can we start over?"
"... start over?" The thought had never really occurred to Knives -- that if something went wrong, you could just reset the board and start clean again. The thought was alarming and comforting at the same time.
"Sure," Jessica said, oblivious to the undertones of meaning her question had carried. "So, I'm Jessica. Everyone else is busy and I volunteered when Vash-san said you needed a guard. And..." She looked away, struggling with her next words. "And, um, he mentioned you could use a haircut, sir. And maybe I could help patch up your clothes." She blushed.
Knives blinked again, truly taken aback. Vash sent a human child to guard him -- and not only that, but to take care of him in ways that... well, no one ever had before. Not that he could remember, anyway.
"I..." Knives began, then stopped, bewildered by his own feelings.
"Wait," Jessica cut in quickly. Her words tumbled out in a heartfelt stream. "I just wanted to say that... that I've never liked you, sir. I'd only heard stories, but those and seeing Vash come home hurt so often gave me plenty of reason to hate you. And I've tried to hate you now, sir, I'm sorry but I have. But... I couldn't. I mean, you're... you don't know... well, I couldn't bring myself to really hate you, anyway." She looked steadily at the wall past Knives' head, unable to meet his eyes. She couldn't tell him about the way she'd watched Milly feeding him that night -- she couldn't tell him how helpless he'd been, how utterly pathetic.
She took a deep breath and went on. "But now this happened, with Vincent and the other boys, and I just wanted to say that even though I still don't like you much, I'm here to help if you need it. I don't like sand vipers either, but if a viper with no fangs crawled up bleeding on my doorstep, I'd probably help it, too." At last she met his eyes, her gaze almost defiant, as if daring him to reject her charity.
Knives let out a short breath. Humans were incomprehensible. But he thought he was grateful, maybe, if that's what this feeling of relief washing through him was called. "Thank you," he said simply, not sure what else there was to say.
Jessica's defiant look faded, and she tried out a tentative smile. "So... now that's out of the way." She took a deep breath, and made herself walk over to Knives' bedside. His steady gaze unnerved her, but she raised a hand to his forehead anyway, feeling for fever. "Are you feeling all right?" she asked.
"Yes," he said quietly. "I can't feel the cuts at all."
Jessica bit back a wince and nodded. "Vash probably used some of Doc's antibacterial ointment -- it numbs the area around the wound."
"He put something cold on it..."
"That's the stuff." She pulled Knives' blanket away so she could look over his bandages, fighting back a blush. No fresh blood had soaked through, and the wound seemed firmly closed when she prodded it through the gauze. "I guess you really are like Vash, huh?" she said softly, looking up to meet his gaze. "You both heal so quickly." Her tone carried the ache of nostalgia; Knives didn't know how to respond.
Jessica shook her head then, clearing away whatever thoughts had occupied it. "Sorry," she said quickly. "So, do you think you can sit up, maybe walk around a little? It would be good to stretch anyway, otherwise those torn muscles will get stiff."
But as Knives discovered when he tried to get up, they already were stiff -- and the effects of the anesthetic goo Vash had spread on his stomach had almost completely worn off. By the time he was upright and moving, he felt like someone had run him through with a rusty railroad spike. But the wound didn't reopen, and after a few steps the pain subsided to a more reasonable ache.
Jessica, though she was at least two heads shorter than Knives, put an arm around his waist and helped him all the way around the room, not once but twice. By the time they got back around to the bed, Jessica was a lot less shy about touching the half-naked Plant. She couldn't afford to be, what with the decidedly undignified job of supporting half the weight of a man three times bigger than herself.
Knives collapsed on the edge of the bed, breathing hard but oddly satisfied. It felt good to move again, even if it hurt.
Jessica shook her sore arms out, regaining her breath. "Well!" she said. "That was educational. Next time I'm recruiting someone bigger to carry you around." She smiled -- the first real smile Knives had seen on her. It looked good. Better than the nervous laughter or the skittish defiance, anyway. He smiled back, hesitantly.
She looked him over for a moment, her gaze less restrained now, more calculating than girlish. "Vash was right," she said finally. "You really could do with a haircut."
Knives blinked and reached up automatically to touch his hair. When he tried to run his fingers through it, they got stuck in a tangle. "Hn," he grunted, frowning at the uneven ends. "Yes, probably so."
Jessica laughed at him. "I'll be right back." She darted into the tiny bathroom and emerged a minute later with a cleaning bucket full of water, a bottle of something orange and vaguely scented, a pair of towels and a comb. Setting everything but the comb down on the bedside table, she rummaged through her many apron pockets until she came up with a pair of scissors.
Knives eyed the scissors suspiciously. He wasn't sure he wanted those anywhere near his head.
"So, how do you want it?" Jessica asked obliviously, pushing all the sheets out of the way and laying a towel out behind Knives' back to keep the bed clean. "I don't know how much length I can keep in it, a lot of those knots are just gonna have to go."
Knives felt distinctly out-of-place. He couldn't remember for sure, of course, but he was fairly certain that no one had cut his hair like this before. It felt... different. Alien.
Kind of interesting, actually.
"I... I don't care," he said finally. "Short is fine."
"Good," said Jessica, and got started.
It was awkward, since Knives couldn't bend over backwards to get his hair wet and all the water they had to work with was in a single bucket. But Jessica managed, grumbling good-naturedly, trying not to yank on Knives' scalp too much when she hit a particularly vicious tangle. Eventually his hair was combed and clean, and smelled faintly of ginger.
Then came the cutting itself.
"I don't know," Jessica was saying, "I think you'd look pretty good with longer hair. Like Vash-san, his hair suits him perfectly and you both have the same face shape."
Knives frowned. "I don't want to look like Vash," he said quietly.
Jessica hesitated, reminded for a second of exactly who she was dealing with. "Oh -- okay," she said, her voice suddenly more subdued. "Um. Shorter, then." She combed out another lock, held it carefully between two fingers, and snipped off a good three inches.
After that she cut in silence, and Knives almost regretted saying anything to startle her out of her cheerful mood. The tension in the air was very mild, but after everything that had happened, even a little tension bothered him.
It felt like an eternity before Jessica huffed, ruffled his hair, combed it again, snipped one last uneven end, and walked to the other side of the room to look over her handiwork.
"It'll do," she said, scissors twitching in her hand as if she really wanted to do something else to it, but couldn't decide what. "Want to see? You'll have to get up again, the only mirror is in there." She nodded to the bathroom.
Knives hesitated, putting a hand to his stomach to feel how sore it was. Not that bad, really... it hurt, but he reminded himself that if he didn't keep moving, it would hurt a lot more. Slowly, he started levering himself off the bed, loose strands of hair detaching themselves from his bare back and littering the towel beneath him.
Jessica moved to help him, but he shook his head. "It's not far," he murmured. "I'll be fine."
But the seven or eight feet to the bathroom door sure did feel far once he got moving. He didn't realize how much of his weight Jessica had been taking until he had to support it all himself. He felt as feeble as an old man as he shuffled across the room, wincing at every step. I could learn to hate this body, he thought ruefully.
Then the bathroom sink was in front of him and he fell against the industrial metal countertop, breathing hard, abdominal muscles screaming their protest. He scowled down at his skinny, battered frame, willing the pain to go away.
A few calming breaths later, he looked up, meeting his own gaze for the first time since he'd woken in the ship.
Wrong. That was the first thought that came to mind, so vehement that he startled himself with it.
I look wrong.
Of all the things he still didn't know, his own body was not one of them. He knew what he should look like, and this wasn't it. Gaunt, ashen, peppered with patched scrapes and yellowing bruises. His abdomen was a mass of bandages and scars -- not like Vash, not even close to Vash, but still... he'd never had scars before. I heal myself, he thought desperately. I've always healed myself. I don't even have burn scars from when Vash --
He blinked, confused. When Vash what? He'd dreamed about that argument, the one that had ended in white light, but he didn't know what had happened. Not really.
Knives gritted his teeth and forced himself to keep looking.
His hair... his hair was strange, too. It used to be shorter. He remembered it being shorter, more utilitarian, a rough self-cut style that had suited him fine for over a century. Now it was... tailored. Professionally cut, not so ragged. For some reason, that bothered him. It didn't stick up -- Jessica had left it long enough to hang down, just to where it touched the tops of his ears and brushed the base of his neck in the back. He raised one trembling hand and brushed short bangs out of the way, uncovering a sore, blue-tinged lump where some boy had kicked him in the face.
He'd never had bangs before, either.
Jessica was standing behind him, looking slightly worried at his unhappy expression. "Is it okay?" she asked tentatively.
"It'll take... getting used to," Knives muttered.
"If you don't like it, I can --"
"It's fine," Knives said shortly.
"Oh. Okay."
Then Jessica helped him back to the bed, took his bandages off and applied more of the same cold goo Vash had used earlier. The pain faded away, finally letting Knives relax. His entire body felt sore. He didn't even realize how tensely he had been holding himself.
Jessica tied off the last of the fresh gauze, then stood there in uncertain silence, torn. "I should go," she said finally. "I can get Miss Meryl or Ron or someone to take over."
Knives blinked slowly, eyelids heavy with exhaustion. "You don't have to," he said quietly. Then, after a brief hesitation, "Thank you."
Jessica tugged a braid again, smiling halfheartedly. "Oh, it's nothing really. I have two brothers and a little sister, I'm used to cutting hair and patching people up."
"Not that," Knives said, struggling to find words to express himself. "I mean... thank you for... helping. For not..."
Jessica's hand fell away from her braid and clasped the other one in front of her dress. She suddenly looked much older than her age. "I couldn't hurt someone in cold blood, Mr. Knives," she said softly. "I couldn't see a person in pain and not do something to help. I don't know how much you remember, but you used to do things like that. I hope you won't again, but..." She took a deep breath. "You're welcome for the help, and I... all I ask is that you pay it back to someone else."
Knives was taken aback. He opened his mouth to say something, but realized that there was nothing he could say.
"It's okay," she said, a little sadly. "Don't make promises you can't keep." She looked away. "I'll go get Meryl."
"Don't." The command tore out of Knives' throat before he knew what he was saying. "Stay."
Jessica looked back, surprised. She hesitated, then turned to face him. "Okay," she said softly. "Okay."
She left for a few minutes and returned with a pair of loose drawstring pants; producing thread and needle from somewhere in her apron, she began to let out the legs to accommodate Knives' lanky height. Eventually, Knives fell asleep to the sound of her faint humming.
"So, how is he?" Meryl asked, sipping her lukewarm coffee and making a face at the lack of sugar.
Vash let out a heavy breath, fell into the seat next to her, and dropped his face into his hands. "One big perforated bruise," he said, muffled.
Meryl winced. "Ouch," she muttered.
They were just outside the room where Milly was being examined by a harried nurse for her scalp wound and mild concussion. The big girl was unsteady and slightly dazed, but other than that she seemed fine. Earlier, Vash had talked to the doctors who had taken care of the gang of boys who had attacked Knives -- they were all going to live, probably, but a few would be in intensive care for over a month and one, the leader, was in the grip of a deep coma.
"I didn't want it to come to this," Vash groaned, thumping his head, hands and all, against his knees. "Dammit, I should've seen this coming. I'm losing it."
Meryl leaned forward, patting him tentatively on the shoulder. "Vash… you can't blame yourself. If you'd done anything… preemptive, that would have just made things worse. And Knives isn't dead, you aren't dead, Milly's not dead. It could have been so much worse."
"And a dead boy isn't bad enough? We're more important than him?" Vash snapped.
Meryl grimaced. "Vincent isn't dead, Vash," she said softly. "It's just a coma."
"Oh, that excuses everything," Vash muttered darkly. "Even if he ever wakes, his spinal cord's past repair. He'll never move again. That's worse than death for a worker's child like him -- he won't be able to use his hands, to do his job, to be respected."
"No one would have respected him after what he did anyway," Meryl retorted, but her heart wasn't in it.
"That's not the point," Vash all but growled -- then he heard himself, and stopped. He let the tension seep out of his shoulders, tone and expression sobering. "Sorry. I didn't mean to attack you."
Meryl ran her small hand up the back of Vash's neck and into his hair, combing through the uneven golden strands. "You should get out of here," she said softly. "Leave, with Knives. I should never have brought you both here. I should have thought --"
"Don't," Vash said, "start that. There's already enough blame flying around." He sighed, thumped his head once more, then lifted his face to gaze at the far wall. "Yeah, I'd already made plans to leave. But I can't go until everything's sorted out -- I can't run away from this." He looked down at her, his expression achingly plaintive. "I ran away after the city crashed -- didn't even help get the systems running again. Now I've made their children into murderers. They'll never forgive me if I just --"
"Do you think they would have forgiven you anyway?" Meryl asked sharply. "Vash, 'they' can handle themselves. And there are those here who want you two gone enough to risk the lives of their children to get rid of you." She bit her cheek to keep from being distracted by the bottomless pain in Vash's eyes. "I think it'll be easier on everyone," she said with cold finality, "if you're not here."
Vash opened his mouth to say something, closed it again. Finally he said, voice tight, "The Doc, Meryl. I have to see him off. I promised to stay until the end."
"The end is past, Vash," Meryl reminded him gently. "You know that. There's nothing left of him to see off except an empty body."
Vash said nothing, but there was an accusatory brightness in his eyes that tore Meryl's heart to shreds.
"We'll stay for the funeral," Meryl said calmly, keeping the pain off her face. "Milly and I. Milly can get her feet back under her -- that won't take long, the concussion wasn't serious -- and then we'll follow you and Knives, catch up to you in the desert."
"Do I get a choice?"
"None at all."
Vash looked away, lips pursed, face drawn. "All right," he murmured at last. "We'll leave tomorrow at second sunrise. East, towards Terma. Don't tell anyone the direction, just say we left. White flag. I'll ask Natalie to keep an eye out for any more trouble until you and Milly are gone."
Meryl considered arguing that she and Milly could take care of themselves, then decided that it was better to just let it go for now.
Vash stood to leave and she got up after him, drawing herself up to her full, if not terribly impressive, height.
"Vash," she said quickly, "I want you to know -- I don't like Knives. I don't like this entire situation. But this thing you're doing for him, taking care of him after everything he's done -- it's the kind of right thing that not a lot of people could ever stand to do. I know I couldn't, if I were in your shoes. And... and it's enough, Vash. It's respectable. It's worthy. You're worthy." She touched his arm, standing straight and firm despite the faint blush staining her cheeks.
Vash covered her hand with his for a second, meeting her eyes. He no longer looked like the happy-go-lucky gunman whom she had refused to believe was the infamous Stampede. Now he looked like a bird with clipped wings. A dancer with no music, no stage, no fire. Now he looked like a man built for running, with nowhere left to run. The story until now had been written in stone; now the last page had been turned and suddenly there were no more words to follow.
Vash the Stampede had been spiraling down to this moment for his whole life, and now he'd reached it, and there was nothing left at the end of the spiral but empty space. Nothing left to do but fall. And Vash was afraid of that nothingness, afraid of making the wrong move, afraid of starting over, afraid of no longer being the victim, afraid of not running.
He was afraid to let go of the spiral, the pattern. Afraid to fall.
"Cynthia."
The young woman jumped and clutched the front of her dress, cheeks blotched pink with startlement. (Like most of the ship's people with no regular jobs, she had volunteered to help out in the flooded med bay.) She turned away from the sick girl she was tending to find a stocky, iron-haired woman with crossed arms staring at her.
"Oh, Natalie-sensei," said Cynthia, "it's you. Can I help you?" Her eyes flickered to the side nervously, afraid to meet those of the stern woman standing in front of her.
"It's okay," Natalie said, her expression softening slightly, "I'm not after you. Maybe you had something to do with it, maybe not. I don't like pointing fingers."
Cynthia blinked fast. "Oh," she said softly. "No, neither do I."
Natalie smiled, although her eyes remained just as hard as they had been when she walked into the room. "I'm looking for Charles McKenzie. You know where I might find him?"
"Charlie? He's around here," Cynthia replied, considerably less jittery. "The med bay, I mean. I saw him in the room where they're keeping Vincent maybe an hour ago."
"Thanks, Cynth." Natalie uncrossed her arms. "Take care." She left.
Natalie found Charlie McKenzie right where Cynthia had said -- sitting next to Vincent's bed, staring off into space and fingering his sleeve cuffs. The comatose boy was all a mass of tubes and hastily-assembled machines; they'd been out of rooms equipped for intensive care when he'd been brought in, and now no one dared move him. He looked more machine than human. The blood was gone, but Natalie could see where it had been by the strips of tape and the bruises peeking out from under heavy white bandages. The kid was a wreck. It hardly seemed like a life worth living, comatose or not.
Natalie leaned against the dented metal doorframe, crossed her arms, and gave Charlie a long, hard stare.
Eventually, he looked up. "What do you want?" he said, and there was a clipped coarseness in his voice, like he'd been swallowing back tears and bile for a long time.
Natalie shook her head. "Just wanted to see if you had anything to say for yourself."
"What makes you think this was my idea?" Charlie asked defensively, eyes narrowing.
"Didn't say it was," Natalie said shortly. "Care to correct me?"
Charlie scowled. "I had nothing to do with this. I told him to watch, to keep clear of the guy until we knew more. I didn't know he'd do this."
Natalie nodded sagely. After a beat of silence, she said, "Of course, a few words is plenty enough to keep a group of unhappy young men with a passionate leader from lashing out against what they see as their enemy."
"You're twisting it," Charlie said with the beginnings of anger. "It wasn't like that."
"Wasn't it?" Natalie asked calmly. "Tell me how it wasn't like that."
"Vince -- he was scared. Scared as the rest of us. I'd say the -- the bastard must've done something to just trigger that fear, and Vince did something rash before he could think." Charlie's tone became more self-assured as he talked. "Things like that happen, y'know. Whatever happened, it wasn't Vince's fault. Couldn't of been. I mean, Vince is normal. That other guy, both of them -- no telling what goes through their heads."
Natalie snorted. "Doesn't take a brain surgeon to figure out what goes on in anyone's head, Mac. And Vince was normal, sure. Normal like serial killers are normal. He's just as human as me and you. I can believe he was afraid -- everyone is, now. But Knives didn't trigger it. It triggered itself, if anything. We'd been building up to this for a long time, or were you too blind to see that?"
Charlie pressed his lips into a line so thin and hard that Natalie thought one of them might split. "You can't tell me," he said coldly, "that no matter who or what started it, that -- that creature didn't deserve what he got."
The air between them changed imperceptibly; the tension grew more brittle, more frigid. Natalie stepped slowly away from the door, towards Charlie. He shrank back slightly in his seat, suddenly aware of her sheer matriarchal power.
"None of it matters now," Natalie said in a low, dangerous tone. "It's done and past. But let me tell you one thing, Charles Evan McKenzie. You will find no work or respect on this ship if you choose to stay. I can raise a glass ceiling over you so thick that an atomic bomb couldn't break it. So maybe you better start thinking about the desert you've just exiled 'those creatures' to, because unless you want to spend the rest of your life as scum on the bottom of my shoe, you'll be out there joining them."
Charlie shot up out of his seat, red-hot with anger and indignity. "How dare you!" he said in a half-choked cry. "You can't talk to me like that! My family goes back to the Fall, dammit, back to Earth -- we helped pilot this piece of junk! How dare you try to banish me from my own ship!"
Natalie gave him a level, expressionless stare and said, "This ship belongs to no one. This ship is a good home and it's served its life well. Now it's become a casualty of time, and we are planetside people whether we admit it or not. It will be no different out there from in here. Your family has no legacy anymore."
Charlie was deflating now, desperate and even more angry because of that desperation. "Slander my family name all you want, bitch," he hissed, "but you can't put me out of a job. I've been heading the mech crew for over thirty-five years. I'm a big name around here, and you know it. You've got nothing on me."
"I've got the lives of twelve mutilated children on you," Natalie replied calmly. "And that's more than enough to ruin the greatest of names."
"You--" Charlie began, pointing a gnarled finger at her. Natalie saw that there were tear tracks streaking his red face now, although he didn't seem to have noticed.
"'I' nothin'," Natalie said sharply. "This conversation's over, Mac. I've said everything I came to say. You can stay and find out exactly how low I can bring you, or you can take my word for it and leave now. That town we crashed near, New Oregon -- I've been out there coupla times. It's no so bad once you get used to it."
"You can't make me leave," Charlie said one last time.
"Watch me," Natalie replied, and shut the door in his face on her way out.
First sunrise the next morning found Michael knocking as quietly as he could at Vash's door, not wanting to wake the gunman if he was still sleeping. Meryl had told him the twins were leaving, but Michael was still a little disbelieving that they'd run off so quickly, especially with Knives' injuries.
"Come on in, lock code's off."
The young doctor was a little startled to hear Vash's voice answer his timid knock. He palmed the door panel and discovered that the lock was, indeed, turned off -- although he couldn't imagine why Vash would be so trusting so soon.
The door slid open, and Michael stepped inside warily, noting that the room's single bed was empty and made, and that Vash was sitting on the other side of the room in the chair usually occupied by Meryl or Jessica. Vash gestured absently for him to close the door with one hand; the other was busy buckling and snapping his leather arm-sheath on. He was wearing his usual off-white shirt and loose, faded jeans, but the lower part of the jeans were covered up by tall, heavy boots. Traveling boots.
They looked strange without the coat to go with them.
"Going out?" Michael ventured to ask, when Vash made no further move to acknowledge his existence. The doctor scanned the room surreptitiously -- a beaten old duffel bag was lying half-full on the bed, and a small mound of bullets had been dumped unceremoniously on the table next to the chair where Vash sat. Even as he watched, Vash flexed his newly-gloved fingers, unfolded the hidden machine gun in a flash, pried open a panel on the top, and started loading his arm.
"You could say that," Vash said distractedly, snapping bullets into place with the kind of practiced efficiency that made Michael wonder how many times he'd done the exact same thing before.
A few moments passed in dead silence, the only sounds those of metal scraping metal and the hygiene cubicle running on low. "You shouldn't," Michael said finally, folding his hands behind his back and donning the air of an intervention. "I know what happened hurt you more than anyone, but running is no way to solve --"
Vash looked up sharply at that. "Me?" he asked, and his tone was more cold than Michael had ever heard it. Sea-green eyes leveled with the doctor's dark brown. "You think I was hurt worst? I'm the sensitive one, right, the sweet and compassionate one, so obviously I got hurt worse than the actual victim."
Michael caved under Vash's relentless stare, averting his eyes. He hadn't really thought that... well, that was, Vash's brother was just so... so...
Vash looked away, freeing Michael from his hard gaze. "Don't ever assume evil exists just to make black easier to tell apart from white," he murmured, staring at the far wall vacantly. "Don't ever assume that misled ideals are any less pure. And don't ever think that my brother is incapable of feeling. They hurt him, not me."
"But you..." Michael offered weakly, waving one hand in a helpless gesture.
Vash flipped the panel closed on his arm, retracting the machine gun into the depths of the prosthetic shell. He didn't look at Michael when he stood up and started packing a last few little throwaway items into his duffel.
Just then, the background humming from the hygiene cubicle stopped, and the door slid open. Michael's heart skipped a beat, cold sweat threatening to pop out on his forehead. He wiped his upper lip nervously, staring at the man who had just emerged from the room's tiny bathroom.
Still beaten, yes, but healing fast; the minor cuts and bruises all over his body had all but vanished. His stomach wound was slowing him down and obviously caused him a great deal of pain, but he walked upright anyway, keeping the hurt to himself. He had one towel wrapped firmly high around his waist, and was drying his short hair with another. Michael's eyes were drawn helplessly to the perfect, tiny craters in his shoulders and chest -- gunshot scars. A tiny handful of markings, a mere spattering of history compared to the entire timeline carved into Vash's flesh -- but still, they were there, and they screamed of the total dysfunction and utter wrongness of this twisted little family.
Knives turned to look at Michael, and for a second time seemed to stand still. Michael was afraid to move, breathe, think, exist. Those eyes were still uncomprehending... still so cold, despite Vash's assurance that Knives remembered nothing of who he once was.
"Vash," Knives said quietly, turning his pale blue gaze away from the doctor to look towards his brother. Michael let out a deep breath, shoving his hands in his pockets to stop them from shaking.
Vash moved to the end of the bed and picked up a stack of clothes and a roll of gauze and tape that Michael hadn't noticed before. He gave Michael the barest of glances before motioning to his brother to come closer. "Stand still," he murmured, leaving the clothes close at hand and taking the end of the gauze in his teeth to pull it free of the roll.
Michael watched in stunned bewilderment as Vash gently rebandaged his brother's abdomen, pausing to remove medical tape from the healed cuts and replacing it on the gashes that were coming loose. He bound the white strips more tightly than was comfortable in some places, adjusting for what little stretching the gauze would do while walking. Knives winced, but said nothing.
Tying off the last loose end, Vash patted Knives on the shoulder (mindful not to jar anything painful). "All done," he said, tossing Knives the stack of clothes so he could get dressed. Knives nodded in acknowledgement.
Michael finally found his voice again. "Vash --" he began.
Vash waved a hand to silence him. "I'm taking him away from here," he said firmly, shoving the leftover bandages into his bag and cinching it closed. "It was wrong of us come here in the first place. I had no right to impose on you."
The way he said you, as if he didn't consider himself part of the ship's family anymore, made Michael's heart sink. That lack of possession in his wording, that distance in his tone... Vash was slipping away from them again, and this time Michael didn't think he would come back.
Knives finished fumbling with the last few buttons on his off-white shirt. His clothes mostly matched Vash's except for his pants, which had a drawstring waist so that they would be easy to get on and off and wouldn't cut into his injuries when he moved.
"What about the girls?" Michael asked.
Vash lifted his heavy duffel easily in one hand and swung it over his shoulder, where it thumped against his back. "Let them sleep," he said, walking over to Michael and laying a hand on his shoulder. "When they wake up, tell them we've gone."
"But --"
"They'll follow us eventually," Vash said. "Don't worry about it. They'll tell you everything."
"Vash, I didn't want it to be like this," Michael blurted, wringing his hands wretchedly. "You were always one of us, family -- everyone tried to accept things as they were, but --"
Vash's hand squeezed his shoulder for a split-second before letting go. "It's too late for that," he said. "Drop it."
Michael could think of nothing else to say. Vash helped Knives with one last elusive button on his shirt, and then the brothers were off, leaving the ship for good. Knives was still limping severely, so Vash put an arm around his back for support. Hunched under the weight of the duffel and his brother, Vash looked just like all the old pictures of Atlas, the ancient Greek who carried the world on his shoulders.
Michael followed them outside, trailing a few feet behind, forever too far away to hold them back. He stopped at the outer doorway and watched them move further and further away, out onto the cool early-morning sands. Vash murmured something into Knives' ear, and they turned around a few dozen yards from the ship, squinting into the rising suns and waving at anyone who might be looking. Knives' wave was programmed, unfeeling; but Vash's wave was a true goodbye... maybe a final goodbye.
Only Michael saw them. He waved back, but with the glare of the suns behind him, he was sure they couldn't see.
Next Chapter: Brief scenes from the twins' childhood.
Review Replies:
Glass Bullet: Thank you! And good luck in putting yourself back together, as you say. I'll be looking forward to your return to ficcing.
Lindsey: Your review seems to have gotten cut off. FF.N's been having issues with that lately, just thought I'd mention it...
Jaina: Heh. I wrote that line several months ago; it's been waiting for just the right moment to sneak into a fic. I'm glad it worked here.
Yma: Yay! So glad you liked it, as usual. :grin: I wanted Legato's story to be different, but I wasn't sure how I was going to go about it. So when I sat down to write, I really had nothing in mind past the fact that Knives picked Legato up as a small child. The way they behaved on the page from there on out was entirely spontaneous, and I think it worked really well. Also, I'm a big-time yaoi fan, but I'm with you in that if it doesn't contribute to plot or characterization, it's not all that interesting. I'd rather have plot before pairing. It's good to hear that I managed to keep my priorities straight in the course of the chapter.
Little things you picked up on - Steve's brief line at the end, the two-line Latin tag (which is actually the basis for a big chunk of chpt. 12), and the staggered ending - absolutely made my day when I read your review. Thanks again, and looking forward to more Eden's Children:bounce:
Lunis: Handshake and make up now:grin: Sorry you were subjected to yaoi for the sake of a fic, but I'm glad it wasn't too bad. And isn't poor Knives the most huggable amnesiac psychopath ever? That's part of why I wanted to write him like this -- sympathy for the devil, as it were. But the whole reason the yaoi and other squickyness is in there is so you don't get too comfortable with him! He used to be the bad guy, after all, and he hasn't completely forgotten... :evil grin: