Author Note: The summary for this story is vague on purpose. Reading this for the first time, my intent is for the reader to make sense of this on their own, try to guess what is going on. At the end, I'll reveal what it is supposed to be. Enjoy the experience!
- Fantom
The Sands of New July
The sand swirled around his boots, settled, then rolled off as he trudged forward up the side of the dune. Climbing the dune was like wading through water, only drier and meaner. The sand was slow, drowning, and patient, but unlike water, no mercy accompanied it. Rain never fell out here, not in any season folks were still around to name. The land had one kindness, and it was the one that always came at the very end—when you laid down, breathed in the dust, and let it bury you proper.
The man refused to accept this inevitability; had refused to accept it in the past as well.
He'd trudged up steeper slopes in worse boots with more weight on his back. Each step forward sank him deeper, stole his balance, forced him to earn his next. But still, he climbed—without pause, without that thought even crossing his mind. It had come to him too many times before, worn itself out such that it lacked the energy to surface or move him in any significant way.
After all these years, to let this world be the one to undo him would be a disservice— not just to himself, but to those whose fates were entwined with his choices. And to the one whose fate he carried like a second skin. Surrender was less a temptation than it was a ghost, and he'd long since stopped believing in those.
It wasn't just his pride on the line. Hadn't been for a long while. There were debts unspoken, reckonings that hadn't yet come to roost. He walked for the ones who couldn't, and for the one who'd given him the chance to continue on in this shifting, trickling world.
Out here, the only thing more oppressive than the scorching, skin-peeling sun, was the quicksand in his chest. Guilt he'd tried his best to claw out as soon as it had settled there. He'd failed, only managing to convert it to a form of obligation that wouldn't burn away as much as he yearned to escape it. It remained, and so did he. Sure as the sand.
A bead of sweat tracked its way down his arm, lingering at his fingertip. With a shiver, it dropped— simmering into the sand, disappearing the moment it touched. The sand drank it like it'd never existed. He imagined it as blood. Maybe his. Maybe someone else's. Both options were distressing.
He scowled and kicked at the crest of the dune. The sand resisted, shifting just enough to catch his boot and nearly send him stumbling over the edge. He caught himself and stood there, breathing hard, the heat painting halos behind his eyes. The man glared at the horizon.
The sunset's golden glow overshadowed slight speckled stars biding their time to emerge. Below it all, a town stretched in silhouette, a dark jagged scar hashing the sparse moment of beauty this land occasionally allowed.
Once, the sight of man would fill him with only disgust. Now, it brought an unfamiliar and uncomfortable sense of relief. Whatever lay waiting in that shadowed sprawl, it was at least not this—not the desolate void filled with screaming hallucinations, manifestations of the conscience. A distraction, for the first time, was welcome.
And he hated that. Hated how much he'd come to need what was once scorned.
He dropped to the sand with a grunt, the pack sliding from his shoulder and hitting the ground with a dull thud. He didn't open it right away. Just sat there, fingers resting on the buckle like it was the lock on a cell door. He already knew the answer to the question rattling around in his skull.
Do I really have to do this?
Yeah, he did. Of course he did.
He owed a debt. The kind that doesn't go away. Not even when the desert eats your name and forgets your face.
He owed a lot. Not just for the chaos he'd unleashed, not just for the lives upended in the wake of his choices, but for the one person whose pain he understood better than anyone else's. Because he, himself, had carved it.
They'd told him this might help. That beginning here with the one he'd wronged the most—taking on this burden, shouldering it quietly and without recognition—might begin to untangle the rot in his heart. He didn't believe them. But he was out of alternatives.
So, he reached into the pack, pulled out the worn leather straps and bandages, and slowly rolled up his sleeve. The wind brushed against his bare arm, the breath of a ghost. With each careful loop—around the bicep, the forearm, the wrist—his thoughts shifted, not forward, but back.
To him.
To the one whose voice he still heard, even when the world was quiet. The one whose face surfaced when the guilt took shape in his dreams.
They had both endured in their own ways. Persisted when they should have fallen. But the fire they'd walked through had been of his own creation.
Now, though, he was trying to fight the flames; extinguishing it was impossible but he was trying. Get the hounds, usually hot on the man's heels to change course. After all the torment, all the grief he'd caused, the least he could offer him was some time that was peaceful; where the world's hatred and misunderstanding wasn't tracking him down with a loaded gun— a sliver of calm.
Even if, in the end, neither of them truly believed they deserved it.
Author Note: After the events of Trigun Maximum, Vash the Stampede and Millions Knives both live to see another day. Unfortunately for the Independents, the heat from humanity bears down on them just as much, if not more, than before. Outworlders' authoritative figures are after them for reasons widely unknown apart from them being interesting objects of study and questioning (and Knives, of course, being a terrorist). Unable to convince his brother that humanity was worth saving, Vash overwhelmed his brother via the plants' mental link, reprogramming Knives' sense of empathy against his will. Now feeling guilty, Knives begins a journey to cope with his newfound feelings for humanity and his brother. He begins by giving his brother a break to recover from his wounds and lost energy. To throw off the feds' scent, he briefly assumes Vash's identity.
