Disclaimer in previous chapter. Please see Author's Notes at the end.
EDIT: Sorry about the double post. Posted the wrong version. My bad.
-x-
He was barely alive. Critically dehydrated. Even with the remnants of sandy fabric that served to protect him from the elements aside, he was visibly demolished. Right arm missing.
That body was held together with a lick and a promise, and yet, he was still alive.
Every second counted, and he had never moved so fast in all his life. A line, lifegiving fluids, directly into the blood vessels that fed his heart. Monitors on his brainwaves, his temperature, his blood pressure. All of it showed him what he expected to see.
This young man, this comatose traveler, would not live to see another sunrise.
But he looked so young. Sunny blond hair, so serene beneath his pain and weariness. This was a young man who had accepted death, who had accepted that he had wandered into the desert and would never wander out again.
And that wasn't acceptable.
His right arm ached in sympathy, and he turned to the green workbench, where a new left one lay waiting. It snapped on effortlessly, just like his toys when they came apart, and the young man bounced up and was gone with the echo of maniacal laughter.
He turned, intent on sleeping after his hard work, and a strange black anvil landed where the blond man had been, spinning like a top on the gelform gurney, which collapsed under its apparently considerable weight. The rotations eventually ceased, and a green, armored arm clanked into view, holding the rest of the mass steady and upright.
"I am Hoppard the Gauntlet," the top announced. "I am here to kill you."
A strange grate came into view from behind the top, and the green arm raised, and leveled a cannon in the direction the laughing blond had disappeared.
Brad and Jessica walked, hand in hand, directly into Hoppard's line of sight, and in a flash of light they were gone.
He cried out, rushing toward the place they had been, but no matter how hard he tried, he simply couldn't run. The harder he thought about it, the slower and more clumsy he became, until at last he was panting and moving nowhere through air as thick as pudding. Knives was beside him, also watching, his blue eyes clear.
"Augusta wasn't a mistake," he said deliberately, and in another flash of Hoppard's guns the Plant too vanished.
He collapsed, his chest aching, and landed hard on his right shoulder. The pain was present and immediate, and try as he might, he simply couldn't recover. No amount of struggle got him out of the muck, it was a deep black, congealed blood, and the stench was overwhelming. They were all dead, no one had cleaned up the bodies, no one would find him here. No one would pull him out.
"Sooner or later it had to happen," the black suited priest observed, ruined and rotted cigarette on his blue lips. "How long did you think you could pretend?"
He reached out to the only source of light, but it was too hot, it burned like white fire. The fire raced down his left arm, crawling into his nostril, trickling lava into his throat. He swallowed painfully, and realized that he was awake.
Doc swallowed again, fighting the urge to gag against the unfamiliar, painful thing in his throat. The weariness, the pain in his right arm and chest, all of it was still there. The bright light was on the ceiling, he determined, and he surrendered to the too-warm discomfort of the gelfoam bed, trying to calm the pain.
Breathe. Listen. Breathe.
There was the familiar hum of machinery, and liquid gurgling to his right. Doc shifted gingerly, and fuzzy eyes traced a thick rubber cuff separating his arm from his shoulder – or perhaps not, as it was black and he couldn't see through it. A flushing liquid bubbled in the box beyond. Standard lines crossed from his left arm over his chest, leading to a stand containing a few small bags of clear chemicals. Something tugged his nostril as he turned too far, and the painful thing in his throat shifted again, like drainage after one woke with a cold. An oxygen line, and perhaps a feeding tube as well. A glance past his gnarled bare feet showed him the entrance to the main laboratory, but he could not tell if it was currently occupied.
He was in the side laboratory. He was still in Eden.
It would appear that Knives had decided to save his life. Or rather, prevent him from taking it.
Letting him commit suicide by Knives, as it were, would have been the same as letting Vash off the hook for doing the damage in the first place. He wished to be dead, so contrary Knives decided he should live. Doc felt the ghost of a wavy smile touch his cracked lips. He wasn't sure if that told him more about Knives' relationship with his brother, or his relationship to the Plant himself.
He turned his left wrist experimentally, but there was no resistance. He had not been bound to the table. He could possibly tear the line and his artery, perhaps bleed out before anyone could respond – and the very thought of it roiled his stomach up into knots.
He didn't want to do that. The idea of dying was terrifying, and his trembling left arm would not move.
Doc closed his eyes briefly, willing the new nausea to go away, and then jumped when the machine by his right gurgled, and the flushing liquid drained quickly into the tanks below. With a hiss of releasing gas, the cuff around his right shoulder relaxed, and Doc felt –
Felt warmth, as the machine began drying whatever was in the box. He still had at least part of an arm, and it still contained functioning nerves. It was aching like crazy. The machine chimed to indicate the change in treatment, but no one appeared in the doorway.
Doc waited, breathing the adrenaline out of his system, but even after a significant amount of time, nothing happened. There was no sound from the other lab. Doc let his gaze wander around the room, noting the surprising lack of other life-support equipment around him, and it eventually settled on the steady blink of the maintenance lights, flashing on the repurposed generator panels. On and off. On and off.
Some time later, Doc startled awake. It was a little cooler, but a quick look around showed him the same room as before. He was alone. The machine by his right arm had finished its drying cycle and was now silent, the cuff no tighter than the sleeve of a labcoat. The pain in his chest felt sharper, and he craned his head up to look at the IVs .
The bags were empty.
No wonder he felt more coherent.
There were no alarms sounding, so it was possible Knives did not yet realize he was no longer sedated. Doc eased his left elbow against the gelfoam bed. The oxygen line pulled at the whiskers on his face, and the feeding tube shifted painfully, but he was able to partially lever himself up, and his arm – not just a graft – slipped from the relaxed rubber sleeve. Doc grimaced when the raw flesh contacted the rougher sheet of the gelform table, but it wasn't as painful as he'd expected. The limb still terminated in a stump above where his elbow might have been, but –
But it was clearly flesh. Pale, thin, pink flesh.
Doc stared at it for a moment. This was not artificial. His own skin and muscle had been regenerated. The rotting graft had contained his DNA, so it wasn't as if Knives had had to start from scratch, but this . . . this Lost Technology was beyond anything Doc had on his ship.
Regeneration of flesh required not only a tremendous amount of power, but specifically a very focused frequency of Plant-based power. A dedicated Plant. It was the reason he could not grow Vash's original arm back. His ship had barely been flying as it was, he hadn't been able to isolate an entire Plant for just medical –
But there were no bulbs here. There was no Plant generator here. All Knives had was solar and nuclear power. It could not be converted into Plant-like power. And there was no way that he would believe Knives himself had supplied the necessary energy. Nor did he believe Knives would allow his brother to, even if Vash could have.
Doc turned again to his left, trying to focus dry eyes and a neck trembling with the exertion of holding up a heavy head. The equipment on the far wall . . . but no. Surely Knives had repurposed it for terraforming. Surely it was not actually indicating Plant-based power generation.
That would require bulbs. That would require Knives to put Plants into bulbs.
Elizabeth would have told him if Knives was turning around and re-installing the Plants here. And even if he had hidden it from her, Vash would never have allowed it.
Doc glanced again at the equipment around him, then at his feet. He could hardly keep his left elbow under himself, there was no way he could get off the table and to the computer systems. The last time he had been here, they had been dark. But if they really hadn't been repurposed, if they really were just like the system on his own ship –
Then they indicated bulbs. Dozens of them.
And they indicated that four were active.
Doc focused on the dark monitors, and the lights blinking underneath. He wasn't an authority, nor an engineer, but he could read basic Plant outputs as well as the next man. All four of the bulbs with blinking orange lights were giving off low amounts of energy, which was being fed into the system.
But from where . . . ? Where could Knives keep dozens of bulbs?
Doc let himself sink back against the gelfoam, easing his left arm straight and cursing silently. Of course, the elevator and the sheds he'd seen. They were all maintenance entrances, but access to where . . . ? Was there truly part of a SEEDs ship buried beneath them?
Was this Knives' true purpose? Was talk of setting the Plants free just words, to allow Knives to take control of them?
How could Vash not have known?
Doc studied the rest of the equipment on the far wall closely. Most of it looked much like the equipment on his own ship. There was no indication of a main environmental system, there was no hull integrity system, no apparent weapons system, no engine indicators. Nothing to indicate a full, intact SEEDs ship. And those orange lights indicated sedation levels at best. What he saw would be insufficient to power the equipment at his side, let alone the New Kennedy.
So if Knives had bulbs here in Eden, and Vash had allowed it . . . perhaps the twins were using them to train their sister Plants how to live outside the bulb? Harden their skin to tolerate atmosphere, and solar radiation? Perhaps after their uninstallation Knives put them into bulbs to reduce stress to them during the transition.
And as a bonus, he could use the energy they emitted naturally to continue terraforming. All that green up there, it wasn't coming from the Plants in the forest. It was coming from these Plants.
But Knives would have known he didn't need that many bulbs. Where had he found so many, intact, and unoccupied? He must have stumbled upon a SEEDs ship, more than one. And why not, he'd had over a hundred years to find them, and of course the knowledge of where the majority of the fleet would have crashed, as he was directly responsible.
Was this what he had told them, was it simply freeing his sisters . . . or was it preparations for an offensive?
What are you up to, my dear Knives?
The weight of a hand registered, on his good shoulder, and in the reflection of the polished silver equipment at his feet Doc saw a figure standing behind him.
His gut clenched painfully, but he could tell immediately it was not Knives. The figure was far too short. Doc buried his skull as deeply as he could into the pillow, looking up. He made out a very pale, angular face, studded with what appeared to be tiny, translucent calamus, roughly half an inch long and incredibly thin. The man met his gaze evenly with eyes of a faded red, which normally indicated albinism, and his lips were almost bloodless and neither smiled nor frowned.
The hand on his shoulder remained, and after a moment of silence, Doc tried to speak around the line in his throat.
"Young man . . . what is your name?"
The man – he appeared to be in his upper twenties – gave him a long, impassive look.
Silent. Just the kind of butler that would appeal to someone like Knives. Doc tried again. "Are you responsible for my treatment?"
Slightly narrowed eyes, and then a deliberate, single nod.
Doc graced the man with a smile – or at least he hoped so. "You did a fine job. Thank you."
The eyes didn't change, but the pressure on his shoulder increased slightly. This young man was certainly not a Plant, he was hardly taller than Doc himself. Those strange calamus seemed to cover his entire body, with much longer, flexible tubules on his scalp rather than hair. It seemed to give him a pearled look, and light played across the filaments with a very fascinating pattern.
He was the invisible guard. Perhaps it was gas exchange inside all of those calamus, forcing light to bend in certain ways, that it would appear to bend completely around him . . .
But it didn't really matter, Doc concluded. He was simply a servant of Knives, not worth further study. He relaxed his neck, letting his head fall forward and closing his eyes against the glaring ceiling light. He had been intent on something earlier, but it could wait until he felt better. Perhaps a nap -
Doc opened his eyes with a start. The bulbs, how could he have forgotten -
Doc glanced openly at the man's hand, still on his shoulder. He was still wearing the civilian Oxford shirt he had been issued on the New Kennedy, but at least one fingertip was actually touching his skin. The rash he had observed on Millie Thompson, of course-
Quite suddenly he had no desire to study that hand any further. It was better not to know.
The hand withdrew.
Docc relaxed, staring up at those red eyes, and said the next thing that came to mind. "Your mutation, young man . . . is it terribly painful?"
In answer, he laid his hand gently against his face, and Doc got the feeling that, looking into those calm eyes, there was no pain. He seemed content.
The hand withdrew, and Doc closed his eyes with a sigh. This weariness . . . he just needed a spot of nap. Just a few minutes.
-x-
Meryl Stryfe jerked awake with a squeak.
She was sitting upright. Her back was against a tree. Her legs were stretched out in front of her, one partially propped up. She still had two, which for some reason was not what she had been expecting. Beyond them –
Millie.
She blinked the sleep from her eyes, daring to raise a hand to her face, and it didn't hurt. She felt stiff, as if she'd fallen asleep at her desk at the home office, and her butt was numb. But nothing hurt. No pain, not really.
No burns. No nausea. No blood.
But . . .
She remembered the Plant touching her, remembered each of its fingers wrapping around her leg, and she yanked her right leg up reflexively. Yet the uniform bore no marks. No burns. No tears. It was as if it hadn't even . . . happened . . .
Meryl stared past her knees at Millie, lying exactly where she'd been. The grass around her was thick and green, and it seemed to radiate warmth and life. Her head was turned away from Meryl, but she could see that Millie's mouth was still open, her eyes were still open, and she was looking at the lone Plant beside them.
The one that Meryl had stepped over. The one she didn't recognize.
It lay also where she last remembered, wings still wrapped around itself – herself – like a cloak, and one of their guards was stroking her like a kitten.
Meryl heard herself squeak again, flinching back against the tree, but the trio did not respond. She might as well not have even been there. Millie was staring absently at the sky, or perhaps the Plant, and the Plant was flattened on the ground as the strange, short mutant took his bared, down-covered hand and stroked her shoulder.
His touch left no mark; neither did hers. There was no burn, no rash. The Plant was glowing just slightly, just a little in the early dawn, and all around them was a white, light fog. The tree above her looked shadowy and surreal, and Meryl began to wonder if she was really awake at all.
The Plant turned towards her companion, her yellow eyes wide open, and raised her dominant right arm. She stretched out her long, graceful fingers, and in a moment they were covered as well, in a glowy down. Then she cupped the man's cheek, gently. He leaned into the gesture, red eyes wide with wonder, and then the Plant raised her head, just a little, and gave a quiet sigh.
Quick as lightning he had reached beneath her, and the same way Millie would pick up a steel beam, the short man stood, with the Plant gathered carefully in his arms. There was none of the struggle Aaron had shown, with the Plant over his shoulder, in the mist it looked as if the Plant weighed nothing. A spare foot trailed fondly along Millie's side as the man turned and carried the Plant into the diffuse white light.
For a long moment, nothing happened, and Meryl reached under her sleeve and pinched herself.
That she felt, yet the fog didn't lift. She was far too comfortable and warm, if it really was dawn, it should be too cold, she and Millie should be able to see their breath, but the fog seemed to be insulating them, even with the Plant gone.
Meryl dared to crawl onto her knees, putting her hand on Millie's face and turning it towards her. Millie's eyes were unfocused, and she grunted.
"Millie." She'd fallen asleep. It was already morning. She'd promised Elizabeth she'd be back, the engineer was alone and Aaron-
Meryl scrambled to her feet, using the tree to balance as a sudden wave of dizziness crashed into her. Got up too fast, stupid, she'd wasted so much time –
Which way was the house? The suns were barely up, she couldn't see much beside the glowing fog, and it seemed to her that the tree was . . . but only if she was still on the same side of it . . .
Still disoriented, Meryl stumbled around the tree, and shockingly cold air splashed her in the face. It helped; she sucked down a deep breath, and continued her lap. She couldn't see more than a few feet for the fog, and as she returned to Millie's side of the tree she might as well have walked back into the Bernardelli office on a winter's morning. The air temperature increased, suddenly, at least fifteen degrees.
It wasn't just the fog, then. It was . . . it was around Millie. The air was warmer around her.
Meryl hesitated, kneeling again beside her friend. The ground beneath her knee was warm, but it wasn't hot. It wasn't warm enough to warm the air. She laid a firm hand on Millie's forehead, but Millie didn't feel particularly warm either. No fever. The other woman reacted by jerking her head a little to the side, her left side, and Meryl smoothed her hair without a second thought.
"It's okay, it's me," she crooned, as the taller girl cried out. "I've got you, Millie. I'm not going anywhere." She wasn't even sure which way to look in this fog, let alone whether or not she could find Millie in it again. The suns would burn it off soon enough.
She'd just wait a few minutes, until it lifted. Until she was sure that Millie would still be in line of sight.
Guilt stabbed her, deep in her gut, and Meryl pressed her lips together and stroked Millie's oily hair.
She'd promised Elizabeth she would return. Aaron could be –
Millie stiffened under her fingers, eyes wide open, and stared straight at her.
-x-
Weight on his chest. Unfamiliar, but not uncomfortable. Warm.
He cracked an eye open, wary of the light, but it wasn't as bad as he'd thought it would be. The white ceiling wasn't his, so clearly they were staying at her place. Must have been a hell of a night, that they'd crashed on the floor. Someone had had the sense to grab a blanket-
He closed his eyes against reality, not that it did him a damn bit of good, and intentionally relaxed. Then he opened them again, and pressed his chin into his chest, getting the lay of the land.
Miss Elizabeth was awake; her green eyes were distant but they focused on him as he shifted. He was weak. Worse than useless. Even that little movement caused his neck muscles to tremble. She gave him the faintest impression of a smile, it didn't touch the green.
"Good morning." He hadn't realized her arm had been across his chest until she drew it back, beneath the white blanket. She had glued herself against his side, her head pillowed on what was turning out to be a numb right arm. He could still see the collar of her jacket beneath her dark hair, and the edge of the blanket barely covered her back.
Sharing body heat.
He was suddenly a little relieved that he felt like death warmed over, and her smile became dry. "How are you feeling?"
Here at the end of the world, lying on the floor with a beautiful woman in his arms. His employer, no less. Not the first place you expected to be in the morning. "What did I miss?" Mucus muted his voice, but he wasn't feeling up to coughing it off.
Her eyes closed, giving him quite a view of her long lashes. "A bit. You met one of Knives' staff. Do you remember?"
He grunted a no, and her smile widened, just a little. "I kind of figured. After that, Knives threw Stryfe around a little. I'm not sure why. He left her basically intact." The tone was thoughtful. A good distraction for a bored engineer, at any rate. "You were in need of medical attention, so we split up. Meryl was supposed to find Doc and return."
Her tone changed very subtly, icing slightly, and that was really all he needed to know. "She didn't return."
"We're on our own." Miss Elizabeth stretched a little beneath her quarter of the blanket. "I didn't see any reason to move you from the room, so it seems we've been served breakfast in bed."
Aaron Carter digested that, relaxing back onto the floor. He was in no condition to sit up, let alone protect her from anything. Besides, he wasn't hungry. He was . . . curiously numb. Heavy. Probably not a good sign, not if the Plant had had his staff render first aid.
"And the blanket?" They had been given no such luxuries to this point, after all. Maybe it had to do with the deal Doc had worked out.
Miss Elizabeth nestled a little further into his chest. "I told you. We're on our own."
Carter grunted again, to acknowledge her words. He no longer felt tense, no longer felt fear, but that didn't mean she didn't. As paranoid as they all were, it was no wonder she'd think Stryfe ditched them to protect herself. Especially if Knives had threatened her in person.
Still, he knew that tone. Lefferts' head had rolled the last time she'd used that tone. She'd left something out, something she didn't want to talk about. And it occurred to him to wonder what the blanket might have cost.
-x-
Her face struck the ground, hard, and ash filled her mouth.
Millie Thompson gasped, stunned, and choked on the soft splinters of long-burned wood. Steel fingers dug into the hair on the back of her skull. She coughed, grabbing that wrist with both of her hands as the owner began striding forward, dragging her along.
She scrabbled along as best she could, afraid her head might come off. It was hard to get her feet under her; she kept tripping on her duster, he was holding her head at a funny height and not slowing in the least, not even when she squeezed his wrist as hard as she could.
He was mad at her. He was furious.
Her calves and back were burning from the strain of trying to stumble along with him when he finally tossed her aside, just like he had done in the warehouse a few days before. She was still coughing, still had spongy spent cinders in her mouth, but at least she knew, now. She knew where she was.
And more importantly, this time she knew who she was.
Her duster was all tangled around her legs, and her eyes were watering from her smarting scalp, but she still rolled to her back, just as she had before, and she looked up at Millions Knives.
He was not calm. Not like he'd been back then. He looked a cross between Mr. Vash when she and Meryl were threatened, and a charging thomas. The moment the thought crossed her mind she tried to squash it, because of course Mr. Knives wouldn't be pleased that she was comparing him to a thomas and he could hear her thoughts, she knew that –
And there was no trace of the little boy. It was like he had never been.
Behind him, the wind was roaring, but they were far outside the city. The broken bulb, presiding over its ruins, was still readily visible against the red sky. It was hard to tell if it was dawn or dusk. They were on a road, she could feel the hard cobbles under her back, and his eyes seemed to glow the same color as the lightning that was streaking from cloud to cloud behind his head.
And she found she was not nearly as afraid as she should have been.
"How dare you." His voice was even and deadly. "How dare you."
Millie Thompson fished the last gritty bit onto the tip of her tongue and wiped it off on her lips instead of spitting. Her sleeve was her usual sleeve – this time there was no billowing white shirt, no fitted jeans. She had her brown shoes, her standard Bernardelli uniform. She was herself. She was Millie Thompson and not Rem.
Was that why he was so angry? Because he could see now who she was?
"I don't know-" she started, and then she found herself flying through the air again. She landed hard on her right hip, and the taste of ash in her mouth was replaced with copper. It felt like someone had just dropped a support beam on her chest.
"Do not speak to me, you miserable dullard," he snarled, she could hear his footsteps grinding sand into the cobbles. "Make no sound."
She blinked the spots out of her eyes, trying to make out his shape as he loomed closer – and continued past her. Nonplussed, Millie lay stunned another moment before she dared to crane up her neck.
He had stalked to an intersection in the road she lay on, and stopped there, surveying the branch as if it had just insulted him.
He was in the same bodysuit that he'd been wearing when she had first seen him, red and white and different than he'd worn as a young man. The wind seemed to ease by the fabric of it, raking his hair only gently. Hers, it treated like Rem's. It almost felt like there were fingers trying to hold her by it again, and it was a struggle just to get to her feet.
Upside-up, she could see that it wasn't so much an intersection as another road that had just run right into the first. It was like two civil engineers had had a disagreement about which street had priority, and rather than construct a real intersection, one had just plowed their street right through the other's. The cobbles didn't match; the avenue that ran from the bulb and the city was worn and utilitarian. The stones in the second road had actually cracked the first, like the roots of a tree that had been planted too close to the foundations of a house. They were a brighter color, red clay but with yellow and white ceramic bits in them, like sunlight breaking through. The wind was doing its best to cover them with ash and sand, but these were smooth stones, and it wouldn't stick.
Knives stood there in the center of the cracked joint, glowering at the cobblestones as if he might ignite them with his glare.
Millie watched him a moment, then turned to look up the avenue back towards the city. It was straight and wide and there was a second branch, farther up the way, before the ruined city itself. The third road seemed to lead off to the left, the same direction as this one, and it disappeared into the wind and the sand. It was smooth and hardpacked dirt instead of stone, almost paved, and it was a true intersection rather than a collision of roads. She couldn't see where it went.
Just past that, there was the debris of the city's main gates, stretching around the city almost as far as she could see.
That was the city she had explored. That was where the little boy lived, and every room held one of his memories.
When she was in that city, she was Rem. But now, now that they stood outside of it, she was Millie Thompson.
Millie turned back to Knives, expecting him to say or do something, but he just glared at the stones.
Her ribs still ached from his strike, and she wrapped her right arm around her chest, using her left to scoop her mousy brown hair out of her eyes. Like Rem's, it didn't do her any good at all, and after trying and failing to figure out which direction the prevailing wind was coming from she gave up. Knives was obviously very unhappy about someone putting a road right through his, and he'd acted like it was her fault before he'd told her to be quiet –
Millie's eyes widened.
It will stop hurting if you stop fighting!
And then she'd woken . . . and the computers, and poor Captain Faber and Grey and oh, Sunjy, and Miss Elizabeth and Meryl and –
And Mr. Vash!
Millie hurried towards Mr. Knives. Of course, maybe he didn't know yet –
But the little boy had said his brother felt right next to him. Surely Mr. Knives knew that Mr. Vash was alive and they had escaped.
Didn't he?
"Mr. Knives," she tried, as softly as she could and still be heard over the wind, "Mr. Vash, he's okay, we got off the ship -"
Knives turned from his contemplation of the streets, and anything else she wanted to say crawled back into her throat. If the look he'd been giving the stones had been blistering, the look he was giving her was sheer black hatred.
"Of course," he growled, though it seemed mostly to himself. "Of course." And then a smile that was anything but twisted his lips, and his focus returned to her. "This is the last time you will disobey me."
He started towards her, but she refused to give ground again. He'd done this before, as a young man, and it was no different now. He was Mr. Knives, yes, but now she knew why he felt the things he felt, why he was so frightened and angry.
His lips twisted further, and despite her intentions she flinched back. She couldn't help it; he wasn't walking towards her anymore. He was flying. He had wings, several sets of them, and extra arms and legs and his eyes were a solid yellow, burning into hers. He was a Plant, the biggest one she'd ever seen. He towered over her, he was as large as the bulb and she could see now that it had been his, the one he'd escaped from, in that city. He had broken it.
"Do you think it is I who is frightened?" his voice thundered in her head, she cried out and clamped her hands over her ears in pain. "Do you think it is I who is afraid of you?"
She squeezed her eyes shut against the burning radiation she could feel, sinking into her skin. Her duster wasn't going to protect her, he was going to burn her to ash and –
And he was afraid of her. Because of what she knew. She could hurt him, more deeply than any human alive, because-
"HOW DARE YOU!" he roared, and the force of his anger blew her back. She felt herself sliding along the utilitarian cobbles, but it was cooler, and her thin shirt was no protection for her back. Millie let go of her ears to steady herself, forcing open her eyes despite the ebony hair whipping into them, and her bare feet found purchase on the sandy stones.
Her bare feet.
Millie blinked at her legs, at the blue denim instead of her brown uniform trousers, but she still knew who she was. She wasn't Rem, she was Millie Thompson.
Millie swallowed hard, and then dared to look back up at Mr. Knives.
He was, if anything, larger than he had been a moment ago, so swollen with rage and resentment he was no longer even recognizable as a Plant. Now he just looked like a monster.
"But you're not a monster!" she cried out, more at the world than at the hideous glowing thing that had taken Mr. Knives' place.
"YOU'RE NOT HER!" The wind was suddenly gone, the air was perfectly still, holding its breath. "You think I won't strike because you look like her? Rem was a FOOL! She died to save the very ones she knew would do this to us! She chose them over us!"
"That's not true and you know it!" Her voice shook. "She didn't choose at all! She loved you and she loved them too!"
"HOW COULD SHE LOVE THEM!" He was hovering above her, covering even the sky, and Millie found she could not move, couldn't take her eyes off him. "She KNEW what they would do! Knew what they would do to Vash!"
It was hard to take a breath, but impossible not to gasp. "What they would do to Vash? You mean what YOU did to Mr. Vash!"
He landed with a bellow, she was surrounded by his arm and legs and the brilliance of his body, but still she squinted through her tears to face him. "You hurt Mr. Vash! You caused all those terrible things to happen! You put the price on his head!"
It took her a moment to realize that she was no longer pinned to anything, that there was no more lightning in the sky. Just her and Knives. It was easier to breathe. "And even after everything you've done, he still loves you! I know that you know that, because I saw it! And Mr. Vash, he loves me too, and Meryl and Doc and Miss Elizabeth!"
"And it's her fault! Her stupid idealism! THIS IS HER FAULT!"
"This is your fault," Millie told him simply.
Knives threw back his head and screamed his frustration to the void that was around them, and his fist slammed into the nothing beside her head with a deafening crack. Millie's stomach chilled to ice at the pain in that echo.
"You know nothing!" he hissed at her. "You filthy piece of garbage, you don't have the capacity to understand anything! You saw nothing!"
"I saw what they did to Tessla!" she shot back, and the giant Plant-like thing that was Knives actually looked startled. "I saw what they did when they first crashed. I saw how they survived, and turned on each other." She remembered feeling the revulsion – his revulsion – at the desperate way they fought in long lines for water, and how fearful they had been when he had reached out to his sister and almost caused an overload –
And Mr. Knives was suddenly Mr. Knives again. He was leaning over her, just as he had done in the warehouse, and the hands that had been beside her head were now clamping it between them.
But this time, she knew what was about to happen. "Don't you go into my mind!" she snapped. "I didn't see those things on purpose! You put me in that city! You put me in these clothes! You made me –"
He had made her sick. He had promised that it would stop hurting, but he had done the damage to her anyway.
She blinked up at him, stunned. "You hurt me," she said slowly. "You lied to me."
Knives looked livid, and she could feel his hands shaking with effort, equally trying to crush her and hold himself back. "I lied to you?" Each word was bitten off. "I hurt you?"
The ice in her stomach spread like electricity into her limbs. The left side began to ache, but her right side went totally numb. She couldn't even feel his hand on that side of her face.
"You don't know what pain is," he spat. His eyes bored into hers, and this time she could not close them. Something moved, in her head, behind her eyes, and she cried out in surprise. The sensation eased off, but something kept tickling there.
"So let me teach you," he continued hatefully. "Let me give you the gift of understanding, spider. What you feel is your own clotted blood moving through your brain. Whether it finds its way to your heart or stops somewhere before, it will cut off circulation to whatever lies beyond it. If you want to play at being Rem, then why don't you finish the act and die like she did."
And then his face was gone.
She didn't dare move a muscle, scarcely breathing. The tickle was still there, maddening, and the void wasn't as dark as it had been. Tiny little lights played above her, in the distance, and she could hear indistinctly the sound of a woman's voice.
-x-
Author's Notes: I know many of you are waiting for the action to hit, so hopefully the end gave you a little of what you were looking for. I know it seems slow – it would probably seem faster if I hadn't waited a couple years, and I was a bit faster about it. Sorry about that. I plotted this before I got the hang of long fics, so unfortunately we have a bit of a lull. Doing my best to get us through it as quickly as I can.