That was…incredibly sloppy. How unlike him, to stand so dangerously close to things, to allow himself to be hurt by what he cut. Throbbing pain in his feet and shin and arm made him tense on the sand, throbbing with his heartbeat and his breath and it sort of made his head quiet.
Tilting his head back into the ground, he glimpsed her, unmoved, still sitting against her backpack. Her legs were folded up to her knees, arms hidden against her chest, chin resting against a knee. She didn't look surprised.
As if waiting to see if he was truly through, minutes passed in the still, still night, until she slowly unfolded herself, shuffled around for something, and began to approach him, to see to his wounds. It was something she'd always done, something she did without thinking. She was a medic first, and a thinking being second. Her own hands seemed to be working against her better judgment when she reached out to examine him.
"Don't touch me," he growled as he lay.
"You're bleeding."
"Let me bleed."
She sighed, as if he was a child, as though he was just being a grouchy child.
"Let me bleed."
"Why?"
Scoffing, he nuzzled his cheek into the coarse sand. Figuring out how to say what was on his mind…he was usually so good at it. But flashes of thoughts didn't seem quite right; he was shoving them away. He was in denial, he realized, analyzing himself. Escapism. Denial. Self-mutilation. Self-hate.
Surely not. He never hated himself.
Never before.
He didn't want to talk; he wanted to act, wanted to hurt. What good was anything? Slaughtering any of those humans wouldn't solve the problem. Hunting down the few still alive, who'd harmed her, that wouldn't satiate the burning inside. Most of those who'd touched her, maimed her, dominated her – he stopped listing, as he felt he may heave – most of them, almost all of them were long dead. Knives wanted a resolution, an end to this never-ending life of suffering. Her never-ending life of pain.
Kill her.
"What were you thinking?" she was asking, leaning over the wreckage he'd just made.
O
O
"We needed those toma. The water, the food, the cart. Where are we going to get a new cart?" She said these things with only a fraction of the concern one would expect. Saying anything at all, anything to start conversation, to bring him back into the present and take some sort of step forward, any step forward…
Vanessa was toeing the pile, pulling out a few small items that were undamaged, that hadn't gotten blood or water or debris inside. At least she had her med-kit in her own bag; at least it was intact. Some water and food; only one blanket, but that wasn't vital to survive the remainder of the trip to Glaston. Glancing back at Knives, she eyed the damage. His boots were scratched; he'd probably cut up his feet some, but not seriously; there wasn't much blood. The shin wound was bad, but it'd stopped gushing blood. No arteries were severed there, or in his arm. Blood leaked out lazily from him, and he had cut up his clothing some, little scratches to the skin; he could make it to Glaston. If he could walk at all.
O
O
Knives lazily eyed the medical supplies she'd left by him. He knew how to clean and bind his own wounds.
Let the garden die. Let the humans die.
Find the settlement Simon described and kill them all. Soak the planet with their blood.
And let the plant angels die? Would they let him go? Was there anything they could do about it anyhow? Maybe the angels would be fine without him. Let them take care of themselves. Let him use up the remains of his energy, let him blacken his hair completely, let him wither and die, finally. Let her die. Help her die.
Callisto? If the girl couldn't take care of herself, let her die as well.
O
O
If it weren't for all the bits of glass and sand and torn up cart in the meat, some of these toma chunks would have been salvageable as food, Vanessa thought, recalling the odd taste of roast toma she'd had only a few times before. Such creatures were so valuable as transportation, it was foolish to purposely kill or injure them. She imagined it must be difficult to catch more in the wild, but they'd have to do it. Or she'd have to do it. Her ears told her Knives was still lying there behind her, breathing rhythmically, angrily.
It was too hazy to try to predict what the outcome of this would be. Would he lose his calm again, lash out at her or the residents of Gunsmoke? Could he come to process what he'd seen in her? When she'd read Vash's and Knives' memories before, it wasn't very jarring, really. Maybe Knives didn't take to it well; maybe this was so intense for him because he'd read all 3 sets of memories in her mind. That could be quite a burden, to take at once, she assumed. After he came out of this, after he let his wounds be bandaged, after he settled on how he would take the 'news' – what then? Could she ever trust him not to go psycho on the residents? He could know anything she knew – where the settlement was, for instance – and with her knowledge and his ability to kill, everyone on Gunsmoke could be dead in a week.
Wiping her hands upon torn cloth remnants, Vanessa was reminded of the hair-darkening effect – that Knives had begun to show, as did she. She was confident that she could keep her arm more controlled than he, not snuff out as quickly. But he fought with blades, she with whips. Could the whips protect her from the blades? One little, quick cut to the throat, the head, and she'd be gone. How could she kill him?
Should she incapacitate him? Drug him, bind him? Cripple him? Could she bear to do such a thing to an immortal creature?
Perhaps he could be trusted, to walk alongside her, if she were to keep him by her side indefinitely, to watch him, to stand guard. There was a chance he'd changed enough over this century, that he could handle what he'd learned and would not be a threat to everyone. Heck, maybe they'd even come to enjoy each other's company again. Of course, knowing all of it, of who'd done what to her, he'd probably never 'like' her, 'want' her in the ways he had before – if Vash knew all of that, really, all of it, he probably wouldn't have either. She'd spent the past hundred years without affection, though, until Knives just weeks ago. She could live like that again. Somehow, she could once more live as the joyless, celibate soldier.
If only the humans HAD all left on those ships. Then she and Knives would've been pretty much alone on Gunsmoke, and Knives' 'demons' could've slept forever.
And things had been going so well.
Too bad. It was all…too bad.