EDIT: You know, guys, I'm not surprised I didn't see a review. The first version of this chapter was ham-fisted and clusy. I was willing to sacrifice quality for speed, in part due to my guilt at having dropped the fic, and in part due to my impatience to get it finished.

Truth is, I'm not going to be happy with it if I write crap, no matter how fast I write it. I've edited the second half to be more in the same style as it was initially, and I, at least, am a LOT happier with the end of this chapter. I hope you will be too! Those that missed the first posting – trust me, this is better.

Disclaimer in previous chapter. Please see Author's Notes at the end.

-x-

He moved so quietly, it was always a surprise.

Aching eyes followed the shadow, thin and tall and grotesque as it moved towards her. Or away. She couldn't tell, not with the way the house reflected light. Carter was pacing between the rooms, always moving, but not always by her door. Not always in line of sight. This shadow rose, straightening and ducking as it met the line of the ceiling, and then was absorbed away altogether into the light concrete.

Meryl rubbed her wrist absently and specifically did not sigh, because if she sighed, then Elizabitch would accuse her of blaming her again, and the defensiveness was getting on her very final last nerve.

At this point she was pretty sure she'd take Terry Asoaurd as a roommate over the two she had.

Four, her brain corrected, and Meryl Stryfe squeezed shut grainy eyes and very carefully did not sigh.

She was fairly sure her sense of time was off, but it felt like they'd been in these rooms for at least three years. It had probably been less than two days, because she didn't remember more than two meals and she wasn't particularly hungry. She was sweaty, but not because the room was hot – well, okay, it was hot, but she wasn't doing much to make it less hot. She still had on the long sleeve uniform jacket to avoid exposing any skin, and she was leaning in the corner of one of the rooms with Elizabitch leaning into the same corner, on her right.

At least that way their backs were covered. Not that that had worked, she was sure. The marks had been steadily appearing on Carter and he hadn't stopped walking the building since they'd first woken.

At least, not that any of them remembered.

And that was really the problem when you were being held hostage in a psychopath's manor, being drugged by invisible people, now wasn't it.

This time Meryl took a deep breath and held it, in the hopes that would be enough to make the urge to sigh go away.

Huh. Didn't have an urge to yawn, either. She couldn't even remember the last time she'd burped.

And there's an important detail, she snapped at herself, envisioning the determinedly cheerful Meryl giving her best professional smile into the mirror. Meryl wanted to break that mirror, rip off that Bernardelli uniform and strangle herself with it. Her whole entire life was going to be forever engulfed by the massive shadow of the worst decision in the history of Gunsmoke.

If, by the end of this, they even remembered making it.

Elizabitch had only just shut up about her most recent epiphany, that their memory was being affected by the drugs. On and on, it must have been an engineer thing. Or maybe she just liked to hear herself talk. Aaron was still one of her slaves, and even he barely grunted acknowledgement anymore. He had his uniform on as tightly as theirs, no way to know how many more of those handprints had appeared.

Or where.

But for all the rationalization-as-replacement-for-fear that the tiresome woman behind her fed them, Meryl couldn't help but think she was right. It was possible that Aaron Carter could make his rounds for a couple days with no sleep. But there was no way for three plates of food to just appear on the floor of an empty room. Dirty dishes didn't simply disappear into thin air. It wasn't like they just wouldn't notice someone walking down the hall to replace the bar of soap in the crappy restroom.

And that last detail bothered her more than she could possibly say.

When she could dredge up a small amount of patience – hadn't happened for a while now – Meryl could imagine herself agreeing with Elizabitch. They were being intentionally frightened. Literally being kept occupied with fear. No real talk of a plan – they could not manage it if they were never alone, and they could never be sure that they were or were not. With all the surveillance on the ship, it wasn't easy but at least it was possible to communicate. You knew the rules. If there was a camera in the room, speak in code. If there was a soldier nearby, engage them in conversation.

But there were no rules here. They might have been alone for the last two hours. Maybe the punishment for talking was getting drugged, which was why she couldn't recall any serious attempts at conversation. Maybe there were drugs in the food, but if they refused it they would no longer be offered any more. Maybe they were all unconscious and this was some terrible dream.

Maybe she was lying against Millie, but couldn't see her through the hallucinations. Maybe Doc was the shadow that kept crawling across the wall in the hallway.

If the point was to keep them too occupied to figure out what to do, the answer was to ignore it, right?

Hadn't they started out doing that?

Meryl shook her head at little, shocked at her own lack of ability to remember something that simple. Adrenaline spiked, weakly beneath her breastbone, and she realized that if they didn't figure out a way, and soon, they literally would no longer be able to.

They'd kill each other first.

Was that what Knives was hoping?

This is ridiculous.

But something stilled her tongue. If she said it, then what? Would the new improved Gung Ho Guns appear and drug away her pitiful attempt at defiance? Or worse? Why couldn't these thoughts stop chasing their tails around her brain?

Because you're Meryl Stryfe, you idiot, Terry's words echoed in her mind. You don't sit quietly. You act on what you believe in.

If she'd already done it and couldn't remember, after all, it couldn't have been fatal. Maybe she'd get lucky this time.

Breathe.

It came out like a sigh, and she felt Elizabeth stiffen behind her. "If we don't figure a way out of here now, we never will," Meryl said clearly, before anything could interrupt her sudden courage. "I've had enough."

And she leaned forward, rolling onto her knees in order to take her feet dramatically - and remembered why she shouldn't.

If the sudden grimace on her face minimized the impact of her words, Elizabeth didn't mention. Her cheeks were as glassy as her eyes, wet with tears, and she leaned a little harder into the wall now that her support was gone.

Meryl stopped, shocked, and the engineer flashed her a painful-looking smile.

"I keep thinking about him," was all she said.

The shadow that approached them was not as tall as the last one, and Meryl rubbed her cracked cheekbone with the outside of her thumb and waited for Carter to join them. He couldn't have missed her speaking, it was quiet as a church, and when he finally came around the corner, no one could have failed to catch her sudden inhale.

He managed another couple plodding steps before stumbling through the doorway, and the rash beneath his jaw was prominent on his pale skin. Elizabeth was closest, still on the floor, and she barely had time to brace herself and reach up before he crashed heavily into her lap and the floor. She gave a small cry, her wrist, but she hadn't the slightest interest in the bandaging, or her new accessory. Something else had her undivided attention.

And that something else was quite visible.

Meryl remembered that bodysuit. He'd made a few changes, certainly, probably a nod to comfort, her suddenly detached mind noted. Certainly the bulletholes were missing.

"Knives," Elizabeth breathed.

He strode into the room without a glance at the unconscious Carter, completely ignoring Elizabeth, and Meryl felt herself hit the wall behind her before she realized she'd been backpedaling. It didn't slow him in the least, every stride he took was worth two of hers, and he picked her up – effortlessly – by the collar of her uniform coat, so that they were at eye level.

Only he didn't touch her. His hands were at his sides. She was sure of it, not that she could look down around the fabric crushing her throat, but because she could see the tops of his shoulders. She was being pinned to the wall by nothing at all.

Legato could do that. Could force people to move. Could move things without touching them.

He stared at her coldly, close enough for her to see that his eyelashes were slightly shorter than Vash's, and he said nothing at all.

She couldn't even hear her own breathing over her pulse, wouldn't have heard him even if he had shouted. Her feet were dangling in air, and she grasped at the collar of the jacket in the hopes of relieving some of the pressure. Why? Why now? What on Gunsmoke had she said that would have caused-

Caused-

I've had enough.

She'd said she'd had enough.

His upper lip curled in disgust, and then he did raise a hand. He held it directly in front of her, she watched the muscles and bone ripple beneath his skin, watched as a tendon seemed to elongate up the back of his hand, parting the skin bloodlessly between two of his fingers to expose the white, perfectly smooth surface of it-

And then he closed his hand, and she saw what it was. It was a knife.

He had just created a knife out of nothing at all. Like Vash's feathers.

Like Vash's arm.

Meryl blinked repeatedly, knowing the dingy shadows on the walls and on his face weren't shadows at all, knowing that she was panicking, and pressed as far from him as she could get as he allowed the knife to fall, tip first, towards her left eye. There was nothing in his face, it was pitiless and devoid of anything resembling his brother.

"W-wait," she heard herself stammer, but she couldn't think of a single reason why. "Wait-"

"For what?" His voice was more resonant than she remembered, it rang in her ears and smothered her pulse. "Godot?"

She was far too terrified to think of it as a joke, though his lips turned up cruelly. "If it's my dear brother we're waiting for, we are indeed waiting in vain."

She stared at him, uncomprehendingly, and his head tilted just slightly to the left. "You believed he would rescue you, did you not?" The knife moved, sinuously, now to her right eye, and she couldn't help but follow it with a barely contained whimper. "That he would save you?" It was almost thoughtful. "After all he has done to you, you still hold the ideal true."

There was something there, he was asking her for something, but Meryl could not bring herself to look away from the knife, just a scant inch away.

He's going to use it.

But . . . but how . . . ? Why . . . ?

"Vash . . . is . . .?" Elizabeth's voice was far away, and the cruel smirk did not leave Knives' mouth as he answered her unfinished question.

"Disappointed." Meryl clung helplessly to her collar, trying not to gasp so loudly lest it anger the psychopath in front of her, and Knives' eyes narrowed, just slightly. "He forbade you from seeking him out, spider." His eyes traced her eyebrows, then her hairline, the line of her cheek and jaw, before locking gazes with her once again. "It was not my bidding, but his preference."

She just stared at him, too shocked to respond. That wasn't true, Millie had said she could read the letters-

Millie had said-

"W-what have you done to Millie?"

In answer, the knife rapped sharply against her cracked cheekbone.

Meryl did whimper, then, more out of surprise than pain, though it blossomed through her terror quickly enough. The knife might have cut her, she wasn't sure, but she could still see, and his eyes were still on her. Watching her. Again, the feeling that he wanted something nagged at her, but she couldn't for the life of her think what it would be. An apology? For what, sparing his life? For speaking? For daring to worry about her friend?

Screw you, she thought at him, as loudly as she could, and hoped he could see it on her face. If these were her last moments, she was not going to apologize for them. Millie deserved better than that.

-x-

It was clear to him, now, and Knives let her fall.

Her eyes were not the silver they were in Vash's mind. They were a dull blue, almost a grey in this light. He'd gotten her underlying facial structure wrong as well. It was more like Rem's, though her eyes had been a soft brown-

He glared at her, now piled in a pitifully small lump in her military garb, and he let the knife fall as well, guiding it slightly so that it pinned her wrist to the concrete floor by her sleeve. She flinched but the knife held, and it was double-edged, so it would keep her occupied for a time. He had no doubt Wright would be sure to relieve her of it in due course.

Another addition to his collection for a job well done.

It was his mistake. He'd never really studied the human at his feet, but there was no doubt Vash had. Even somewhat impaired, and even fully immersed in the mental construct, Vash had somehow known that it wasn't real. That the human in his arms was not really her.

That there was no need to manifest.

If he could prevent Vash from remembering the first attempt, he was fairly certain he could convince him now. Those cloudy eyes were staring back up at him, confusion and fear prominent in the dark pupils, but she had the audacity to repeat herself.

"Where's Millie? What have you done to her!"

A demand. He curbed the urge to relieve her of her offensive jaw, though even her dulled human instincts realized she had misspoken, and she took a breath in anticipation of pain.

That he would not cause. If these humans held so dear to their 'compromise,' it would remain a useful tool. "Nothing more than I have done for you." That she would be concerned more for the other woman than for herself . . . that was unexpected. He had assumed she would whimper and cower, and he wasn't incorrect, but she had been quieter than he'd anticipated.

Of course, she was in the twins' tender care, and he needed to take that into account when he evaluated her fear responses.

She hesitated, he heard the question in her mind before she spoke. Her thoughts were far more muffled than the taller spider's, he had to concentrate to hear it and she wasn't worth the effort. "You gave us your word you'd help her-" The spider cut herself off abruptly and bit her lip.

And he sensed her doubt. It made him smile. "Indeed." And he was. Right now he was helping her teach his sisters about the finer points of human frailty, and soon about death. A quick probing thought came back with a variety of responses, so they were still curious, and the impression of age and rotten -

So the old man had found her. Librett had thought the tree was particularly poetic. Keeping her out of the suns would extend her life, that was certain, as certain as her impending death. There was nothing the old man could do about it but delay the inevitable.

The same thing he was doing for Vash.

Knives let his expression grow dark at the thought. Much as it irritated him to admit it, the old human was correct. Vash's demise was as inevitable as the taller spider's, and the two choices laid out were indeed the only he too could fathom. If he could not find a way to force Vash's cells to accept a surrogate energy source, the only way to save him was to force him to manifest.

But he could, now. Vash still cared for the garbage at his feet. Still saw her, and now that he had studied her, there were some resemblances.

And why was he using this spider when he could just as easily replicate Rem? Use the real thing, as it were?

It occurred to him, belatedly, that he had not offered any expansion on his agreement. "You are free to assist her, if you wish." Knives then turned his back on the human at his feet, studying the engineer to give the spider a chance to try to use the knife he'd all but handed her. She was also on the floor, but then again, she knew her place. The spare was deeply unconscious and no threat.

The engineer averted her eyes, but still spoke. "It's not like you, Knives, to test her without a reason." Perceptive. A bit softer, she continued. "I'm glad Vash is still alive. Is he improving?"

Unspoken was, of course, the assumption that meant that their missing companions were alive, as well.

"I see you've been enjoying the company of the twins." Wright was in the other room, laying out a meal, but there was no reason to summon him. His handiwork was present on the skin of her wrist and the trembling of her frame.

Elizabeth dared to raise her eyes and look at him, though. "There are two of them, then?"

Obviously. "Librett and Wright. Consider them your . . . entertainment directors."

She missed the joke, staring at him blankly, and he graced her with a small smile.

"They direct, and you entertain." In fact, given the state of the piece of meat in her lap, they were enjoying themselves quite a bit. It was fortunate the old man had been rational enough to focus on his brother. The threat of Librett and Wright getting carried away with his companions would keep him in line, and they in turn would maintain control here. Still, he needed to make it clear the old man was off limits. As excitable as they were, they were likely to kill him too soon. It was only a matter of time until he realized the extent of their tampering, anyway, and took measures to counter it.

There was nothing more to be gained by remaining, the spider had not touched the knife pinning her arm, and Knives activated the door. Elizabeth's little inhale was well controlled, considering; the twins really had discomforted her. She was not a complete waste of flesh, he reflected, and paused in the doorway, turning back to the trio of humans.

"You will remain within half an ile of this structure." Exactly. The twins would see to it. "If you attempt interaction with any of my sisters, your life is forfeit."

Cling to your compromise, spiders. Cling to it like the web it is.

-x-

He glared the darkened hallway and the lift doors hissed, as if in warning. He ignored them. The time for warnings was over. In fact, he didn't even let Knives come fully into the lab before he spoke. "It appears our agreement has been nullified. That's far enough."

Knives didn't slow, probably intent on ignoring him until he actually bothered to look. To see. His momentum gradually arrested, but there was no hint of hesitance. It was simply a matter of velocity plus mass over distance. Like a sand steamer docking.

Only this was the last port this sand steamer was ever going to call.

"You left her to die." No need to mince words. He didn't have the time. "We have been here for days, and you manipulated those terrible young men into doing the same to us. I never would have focused on Vash to the point of forgetting about her." Never would he have simply put the thought of her to the side for so long. He did not have the telltale rashes that Millie Thompson bore, but there could be no doubt that he had been influenced.

That went far outside the rules laid down by a simple sedation.

The Plant made a swift gesture, it could have been a fatal one but he had not manifested so much as a whisper of telekinesis, let alone a weapon. "So this is a result of your guilt?" That infuriating smirk. "Misplaced, don't you think?"

Doc drew himself up straight, careful to give nothing away. There was quite a bit of painkiller in his system, the battle had been won by his physical needs, rather than his intellectual, but fortunately he only needed the most primitive part of his brain for this. Overthinking things would just give Knives an edge.

"On the contrary, I am simply keeping a promise. I realize that might be the cause of your confusion. You see," he continued, assuming his best lecturing tone, "it's what beings do when they actually mean what they say, and carry it through."

Knives bared his teeth, but he didn't take another step. It was probable he had not yet discerned what was in the lines. "If you've redefined saving my brother as killing him, then what I have done with the garbage outside should be fully acceptable to you."

Doc fingered the key, dragging his short fingernail over the impression in the polymer, reassuring himself tactilely that it was indeed the right one. It would be foolish to make such an easy mistake, and without knowing how he was being influenced, well, an old fool couldn't be too careful. Could he truly hit that key before Knives stopped him? Could he move faster than a humanoid Plant?

"I made a promise to Vash. Many years ago." More than he cared to remember. Before so many of the scars that were now white shadows had been carved onto that body. "I promised him that if the time came, that he was a threat to the humans, that I would stop him."

It was one of the most idiotic promises he had ever made.

The tall Plant, the true image of what Vash might have been, was unreadable. He didn't ask the expected question. Doc stroked the key again. The key that would send the brightly colored fluids into the comatose Vash. He regretted that Vash did not have a say in the way he was being used, first by Knives, then by Shrew, and yet again by a friend. By someone he trusted. Doc had been sure to correct Dr. Shrew's oversights. After all, even an old man had been able to move faster than the mechanical pump she'd utilized. He'd already put the drugs in the lines, the second he released the vacuum they'd be in Vash's blood. In fact, they were probably already seeping slowly into Vash anyway, drawn in by his admittedly low blood pressure.

Vash was no more than a pawn in all of this, and in truth, he had never been anything else.

"You of course will be wondering how I see him as the larger threat."

"Not at all." Knives' tone was eerily dry. "Like the rest of your kind, you are consumed by your fear."

Very like Knives to dismiss his own influence. "Fear you intentionally caused Miss Thompson. Fear you are undoubtedly causing my charges." He let his voice rise a little in pitch. The time for serenity was past, for better or for worse. "Your entire basis of existence is do unto others before they do unto you. There is no room for love in an existence like that, Knives. No room for compassion, or trust. Not even for your own flesh."

Knives' eyebrows rose a fraction at the implication. Clearly that was not where he expected the conversation to go. "Excuse me?"

"You are not capable of love." He said it slowly, the same tone he used to try to communicate with Millie Thompson less than an hour ago. He got more response from Knives. "You do not love your brother. You seek to control him. You seek to consume him. You don't want companionship, you want domination. I will not leave Vash's soul to be destroyed by the likes of you."

"You do not decide that, old man." There was a bit of the deadliness he was looking for.

"He is defenseless!" He did not dare take his finger from the key. "You can manipulate him as easily as you have us, and you will. You never intended to entertain his solution to the problem. I daresay analysis of the data from the ship will show it was you, not Miss Stryfe, that tipped off the New Kennedy in the first place-"

The answer to his question, whether he could move faster than a Plant - it was no.

Knives was just suddenly there. His hair was close-cropped so it was not disturbed, there was hardly any displacement of air, and his left hand was around the top of Doc's right arm before he even registered the danger. He expected to be thrown – hell, he expected to simply be dead – but the Plant did neither, instead exerting just a few ounces of pressure.

And really, it was like Knives not to waste effort. He seemed to have a tendency towards efficiency.

Doc slipped to the floor without knowing whether he actually hit the key or not, and Knives let him. Once there, it didn't seem to Doc that there was much reason not to stay put, so he did, blinking away the pain that threatened to crowd out the view of Knives' boot.

"You think that I will force Vash to kill the humans he has spent over a hundred years protecting?" Still very conversational. No concern whatsoever, so either the key had not depressed, or Knives was calling his bluff. "That is your mistake, old man. Vash will do that without any help from me."

"L-liar." The painkillers were taking the edge off quickly, and Doc rolled laboriously onto his back, so he could catch Knives' eye. "You are so . . . m-much less than Vash."

A raised eyebrow. "Is that your professional opinion, doctor?" It was clearly not meant as a term of respect, but it appeared the Plant still had some tenuous hold of his temper.

And that was definitely not part of the plan.

"You are . . . lower than those you call human garbage." He tried to make every word count. "^You have become your own deepest fear."

Knives' face became larger in his field of vision, and Doc maintained the glare as best he could around what felt very much like a sudden drop in his blood pressure. Perhaps he had been stabbed after all . . .? Had simply not felt the final blow?

"Is this the best you can do, old man?"

Doc could think of nothing worse to say than calling Knives lower than spiders, and the Plant grew closer still. "You threaten my brother, in the same way as the others. You insult me. Clearly you ache for a quick death. And why? Your end is imminent. Your arm continues to rot . . ." It trailed off after a moment, and even Doc could not miss the slight flick of his eyes to the right – it was the same in humans, when a memory was accessed, a piece of the puzzle located. It only took him a few seconds more to put it together.

The vid feed missing from the record. The reason Knives had asked him about Vash's energy output. The energy spike they recorded – Knives had only now just realized it had resulted in the burn to his arm. A Plant burn.

Knives had just realized it was Vash that took his arm – the injury that would ultimately take his life.

The humanoid Plant ripped the bandaging away from what remained of Doc's right arm in a single motion, and for an unexpectedly long span of time, it felt like nothing more than a rolled up sleeve being unwound, a release of pressure and tingle of circulation.

Then his nerves were finally able to convey the information they were receiving.

Doc could do nothing more than lay there and gasp. The screams of an old man lacked any real volume, his throat was too tight with infection, he choked on his own voice. Still, the chemicals in his blood soothed the worst, and his vision cleared enough to see Knives impassively watching the maggots that had been dislodged by the bandaging wriggling haplessly on the cement, seeking the food source they had been so cruelly ripped from.

The maggots he had painstakingly harvested from the carcass those vultures had been circling, when they'd stopped just three nights ago, and made the decision to spare Knives. He had chased Meryl away with the explanation of intestinal issues, but Aaron Carter had followed him around the rocks.

He smiled at the young man, who looked neither shocked nor disgusted to see him encouraging the wriggling grains of rice to enter an open sore on white, circulation-starved skin. He could hardly blame the mercenary for his lack of reaction, after all – his arm didn't even look like a proper arm so much as a thick rubber glove.

"It's old Earth medicine," he explained calmly. "Maggots eat only ruined flesh, and leave the healthy to continue thriving. The damage is not as bad as it looks."

They both had known he was lying.

Doc roused himself from the surprisingly crisp memory. focused on Knives, concentrating only on the next breath. He was unsurprised when the Plant moved, to crush the insects squirming at his feet.

"You do not wish Vash to wake to your death at his hand." It was hard to tell what Knives thought about that. "You would choose suicide over adding to his foolish, misplaced sense of guilt." Blue eyes cut to his, and the ceiling was moving behind Knives' head, though Doc's inner ear was certain they were remaining stationary.

"I told you, old man. That's not your decision."

-x-

Author's Notes: As I said above, sorry, guys. I let you down. It was true, though, what I said before. All these fun little details would probably be better if two years hadn't gone by between the last time I thought about them and now. First time I've dropped a story (and an idea) for this span of time, and it is taking its toll on quality and level of detail. You expect better, and I need to deliver it, both for you AND for me. This fic has the capacity to be an awesome conclusion to a great idea, and I need to get it there, otherwise I would have been better off leaving it where it was. Thanks for keeping me honest!