He was more blonde than Vash, if that were possible. The hair was bone white in the unforgiving light of the sun overhead. It couldn't have been any longer than an inch away from his scalp.

The hair matched the impeccably tailored all-white suit. The cane, topped by what strangely looked like a gold tarantula, was a thick column of rare dark wood.

A matchstick made of that wood would have been worth hundreds on a black market. And his car would have been worth three human lives. At least. This is not a man who would have ever chosen a drifter's life.

But the family resemblance was unmistakable. The face that the short white hair framed was Vash's.

And the differences were just as unavoidable. It showed in the different way the men carried themselves. Vash was eternally optimistic, innocent. This man had never been unstained.

A coil of ice unwound in my belly and began to spread through my chest.

There was a moment of silence as he rose from the car, but as he started to walk towards Vash and me, everyone started talking at once.

I could only make out fractions of the conversations, nothing truly concrete. But he wasn't listening. His eyes were the color of a dying sea. And the way they focused on my face, I knew. He already knew what was going on.

When he came in front of me, he held up one hand, and everyone, even Vash, went silent.

His hand grasped my chin and turned my face left and right.

"A remarkable likeness." He murmured.

"Likeness!" Vash protested.

"Father, what he looks like is trivial; he has insulted my skills as a marksman and the family… your children wait…"

He silenced his son with a look.

He stood, slowly, and spoke. "Chapel would have let my son live with his assumptions."

"Not when they were about to get me killed… Knives."

I heard Vash gasp.

"Humans. They pick up one bit of information…." Knives muttered. The old disgust was still there, but it was the disgust of a babysitter to a troublesome child than a superior being to a far lesser one.

"Knives…" Vash said.

Knives looked over the gathered crowd, then looked back at me. "This is a loaded situation. But…" he pulled the gun, the black one, "…perhaps the best solution is to eliminate the problem itself."

And this is where it should have ended.

I did do some research about reincarnation while I had been waiting for Vash to return and rescue me from the church. The first thing the experts on this kind of thing agreed on was that souls travel in packs. The second was that, left unexamined, your past lives repeated each other.

As Knives had killed me because I had dared to reach out for his brother then, he should have killed me again for the same reason.

But he didn't.

And still, to this day, I don't know what I said to make him change his mind.

My vision had blanched, making even the endlessly pale Gunsmoke landscape look like a blank piece of paper, with shadows grey shadows here and there outlining where its masters stood. Time began to slow down; I heard the hammer of the black gun fall back with a slow, sinister cl-lick.

And then I opened my mouth and said something.

While it was my mouth, and my words, I'm still not sure who spoke. Some last of piece of Wolfwood, trying to see this whole sordid thing through, has been my only real guess.

All I know is a second later, Knives hadn't fired, everyone was looking at me funny, and I was stumbling to figure out what I had just said.

"Wait… what?" I asked. "Did I just…"

No one moved for a long second, trying to process… whatever my speech was. Knives was the first to recover, lowering the hammer of the black gun, tucking it back into it's holster, and kneeling down next to me.

"Who do you know me as?" he asked.

"The devil himself." I whispered, before I could stop myself.

The children looked uncomfortable. Vash looked frightened.

"Why do you say that?"

"July." I said, as the old memories rushed through my head, "The Gun-Ho Guns. The populations of the innocent towns that walked into nothingness because you wanted your brother to notice you were still around."

Memories flashed through my mind. I hoped to never see it again.

Knives could read minds. If I had had any doubts, the look on his face would have told me he had been reading mine. He was surprised by what he saw, but as the memories stopped, he grinned. It was a frightening sight.

"Chapel." He was happy to see my return, just not me, particularly. "Yes."

"I'm surprised you remembered a lowly servant."

"You worked hard to distinguish yourself. It's what made me destroy you, as I recall." He lowered the piece, and turned to his brother. "Just how long has it been?"

Vash took his arm and lead him off in the distance. The children, trying to absorb all that was happening, glared at me. I glared back.

"Over a hundred at least…"

"… no hope for me…"

"barely been one hundred since she…"

"… knew what you were looking for."

"…don't you?"

Knives pulled away from Vash, turned looking back over the whole scene and sighed. "Take him inside. I'll keep the children from bothering you both, but I do want to talk to him."

Sen made a noise, but he turned away and walked out into the parking lot.

"Okay. That's fair. Thanks." Vash grabbed his brother in a tight hug, which the blond man fiercely returned

"I'm glad to see you happy again brother." Knives hissed.

The way he said it made me profoundly uncomfortable.