Trigun Fan Fiction ❯ Finding Heaven ❯ Nostalgia ( Chapter 5 )

Disclaimer: No guarantees, and no ownings. That's about all I have to say on this. That, and the fact that I feel kinda stupid for starting two multichapter fics at the same time. C'est la vie.

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Ivory skin... She had ivory skin at the end. Skin so white and raven black hair to frame it. She was... perfect. Perfect smile, perfect laugh, perfectly honest in life, even if her death was the greatest lie of them all.

And as for him? I don't know what he was. I am sure that of all people, she was most likely to know him, not me. Although I thought I was his ally in all this, the one he told his deepest secrets... he fooled me.

Where are they now? Buried deep? No, that wasn't their style. She was a child of the planet, and she would have wanted to travel its winds until the end of time. And he would have chased her, always asking the question that he posed to me on those lonely nights. The question that I knew deep down, wasn't directed at me at all.

"Can you forgive me?"

I don't know if she ever did. I don't know if I can.

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The house they entered seemed perfectly normal. It had no single feature that distinguished it from any of the others that lined the street. The daub brown walls were exactly the same shade as the earth itself, so it appeared in the morning light, to be melting into the ground itself. Nicholas D. Wolfwood, following closely on the heels of Meryl and Knives, glanced around as they entered the house. It seemed so normal, and yet, it had a certain familiar presence about it. He'd never been here in his life, but some part of him recognized it for what it was, the house from which the dreams originated. The current residence of one Legato Bluesummers. Swallowing slightly as he mounted the porch stoop, Wolfwood wondered what had become of the tearful blue-haired child of his dreams.

Once inside the house, the first thing that Wolfwood noticed was the dark. It seemed to be alive here, in this house. It was an elusive presence that had taken on a tangible form here and he could feel its power. It was power itself. It was a dark crackling energy, one that he could not ignore, despite his best efforts.

Meryl, for her part had noticed the presence in the shadows as he had. Whipping her head from side to side in confusion, she found herself whispering to their guide, "Knives?" Raising a finger to his lips in warning, she watched as he approached a doorway in the corner. How he could tell where anything was in this dark was beyond her, but she didn't question his motives. He knew what he was doing, and all she was required to do at the moment was trust that he knew what was going on. Resting her hand on her guns, she

Knives struck a match in the dark, a tiny flare that the surroundings seemed to swallow. Meryl prayed that it didn't die, even if the match didn't light much it still reduced the strength of the dark. After a moment of watching his shadowed face glance around the room, Meryl heard a muttered curse, and watched as the match sputtered and burned out. Apparently this small light had been enough though, for Knives proceeded to one corner, stumbling over a small stool in the process. She could trace his path across the floor simply from the crashes. Weren't the occupants of this house hearing any of this? Although she wasn't one to put much stock in gut feelings, this felt wrong. The house itself felt dead, as if all of the furniture here was simply here for show.

After a moment of silence, there was a click and the room was flooded with light. Shielding her eyes, she caught a glimpse of Wolfwood doing the same. Knives, however, was standing in the corner with his hand on the light switch, looking around the room in confusion.

"Why didn't you give us a little warning there?" Wolfwood growled at Knives, pulling on a pair of black sunglasses out of his pocket. After receiving no answer, he merely stood there waiting for his eyes to adjust. Meryl wasn't quite as lucky. After a few minutes of psychedelic visions dancing behind her lids, she finally forced her eyes open to her surroundings. Wolfwood stood to one side, fiddling with the buckles on his coat idly, his sunglasses propped up on his head. He struck her as suddenly appearing very boyish and uncertain, until the image was broken by him digging a cigarette out of his pockets and holding it to his lips. Looking over at Knives, he raised his eyebrows questioningly.

"Go ahead," Knives appeared to be enjoying himself and the flash of confusion that she had seen before was gone. Although it was evident he wasn't quite in his element, he certainly knew more about what was going to happen in the next few minutes than either of his companions.

Moments ticked by on a clock against the far wall. Nothing happened. Knives leaned against the table, crossing his arms, "Now we wait. He decides when and if he appears." Sighing slightly, Knives stopped talking and stared at the floor.

"Knives?" Meryl interrupted his reverie after a minute or so of silence. Wolfwood puffed on his cigarette in the corner, only looking up at the sound of Meryl's voice. A ring of smoke circled his head, resembling a halo of sorts. She blinked and the effect was gone.

"Yeah?" Knives' voice reminded her of her question. He was looking at her tiredly. Tired, and yet somehow... anticipatory. It was as if his world was running him down, but in this it was also promising something he had only dreamed of before.

"If Legato is the only one who knows the full story behind Vash, why haven't the Gung-ho Guns gotten to him yet? Do they know where he is?" The idea of one man holding all the answers had been too simple. Something wasn't right about this.

Knives chuckled humorlessly, "Of course they know about Legato. There isn't much on this planet that they don't know about. However, Legato is--"

"Insulated." A new voice joined in the conversation. It was smooth, elegant, and completely unexpected. Wolfwood and Meryl both reached for their guns before feeling something stop their hands. The thing controlling their hands forced them to drop the guns and turn around. Behind them, a tall man stood in the doorway. How long had he been there? His hair was a deep blue, a color that only seemed natural on him. His eyes were the color of a tiger's eye, deep and almost too beautiful to look at. Against such an unusual face, his clothes were particularly mundane. Black shirt, gray pants, a brown duster slung over one shoulder. In one arm he held a bag of groceries. "Knives, I see you came." He nodded at Knives' back before shutting the door behind him and hanging up his coat on a hanger near the door. Approaching the table in the center, he set the bag down before beginning to put the groceries away.

"Legato, where the hell have you been? We've been waiting." Knives glared at the man behind him, who was busily stacking cans of soup in a cabinet on the wall.

"I was getting food. Even the almighty Legato needs to eat every now and then." A faint hint of a smile touched the man's voice. "Besides, you were only here for a few minutes before I came. I felt it when you entered."

Knives nodded briefly in assertion. "Fair enough. These people--"

"Are here about Vash. Yes, I know." He turned to Wolfwood, "Everyone's been speaking of a mysterious man in red these past few days, may I assume that they are speaking of you?"

"Yeah, I guess you could say that." Wolfwood looked appraisingly over at Legato. "I know you, don't I?"

The man looked at Wolfwood startled. "Know me? I don't see how that is possible--"

"I was in your dreams, Legato. You dream of him every night, don't you?" He charged on, hoping that he was right. If he was, then there was the chance that he might be able to sleep peacefully again.

Legato was the most ruffled he had been since finding three people in his kitchen. "So, that was you? You look... different." Wolfwood felt something brush his mind, rifling through files in his head that he wasn't aware were there. "You're telling the truth. That's a rare enough find these days. So, I assume you wish to understand why you were brought here?"

Meryl nodded. Wolfwood paused a moment before snuffing out his cigarette and nodding as well. Knives merely watched before turning to Legato, "Well?"

"Okay," Legato's voice was quiet, the only sound in the room aside from the ticking of the clock. "Then, let's get started. You need the background to understand what is going on today. This is a very long story..."

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"My mother's name was Rem Saverem. She was a member of a crew whose purpose was to locate another planet that was suitable to support life, specifically human life. It was a serious undertaking, supported and financed by all of the major governments of the old planet. Called the last hope for human survival, it was natural that most people would wish for its success. The governments pulled in the best and the brightest to run the starships for the project, and some scientist somewhere decided upon its name, Project Seeds. Slightly corny, it was somehow fitting for the whole operation."

"Mother joined the crew after she lost her boyfriend in an accident. With her qualifications, the committee was more than willing to overlook her emotional state if she wished to help crew the Seed ships. I think that they figured that if she was cryogenically frozen for the majority of the trip, that she might come to terms with his death by the time she was on duty. Her crew mates were to be exceptionally stable, in order to counterbalance her mild unbalance. It all worked out on paper for the bureaucrats, and someone pulled enough strings to force them to allow her on the crew. She was a PR dream, a hero recovering from a tragic blow and sacrificing all she owned to aid in the survival of her species. Like I said, it worked out on paper, and so long as the financing committee insisted on her there was nothing that the people in charge of the project could do about it." Legato smiled bitterly before continuing, "And thus, the SEED ships were fired into space, leaving behind a rotten husk of a world. A world that they called home."

"The ships sailed for many generations, its crew rotating on and off, cryogenically freezing any crew members who weren't working at that moment. However, they never unfroze my mother. Along with the remainder of the Landing Crew, she was untouchable by the years. She was the Sleeping Beauty awaiting her prince, but her prince had died on a planet long ago. And so she dreamed on."

"The ships themselves were powered by a highly experimental technology, which were the predecessors of what we know today as Plants. Developed only months before the SEEDs launch, nobody really knew their potential, or where they had come from. Their creators watched the ships leave without divulging their secrets. And thus, we'll never know where the Plants came from, or what they really are. We only know the next part of the story, where after one of the Plants malfunctioned, several engineers were called down to inspect. What they found, deep within the depths of the Plant itself, were two babies. Where did they come from? Nobody knew."

Legato paused in his oration to take a sip of water. Brushing his bangs out of his eyes, his golden eyes flicked across the room's occupants quickly.

"What were the babies?" Meryl found herself asking.

Clearing his throat slightly, Legato shrugged. "They appeared to be normal human children. All sorts of tests were done on them by the ship's doctors, and after the first few of them it became readily apparent that they were not anything close to what they appeared to be. They were instead, closer to Plants than anything else. Still, they weren't even Plants. Although certain of the crew members called for the two children to be destroyed, the majority of the crew were of the opinion that these weren't threats at all, but a sign from some deity. Some even called them angels."

"Life continued as normal as it could. The children grew incredibly fast, aging physically about ten years in the space of one year. Extremely intelligent, they both possessed inhuman dexterity and strength. The crew grew divided over opinions of the twins. One part of the ship practically worshipped the two, claiming them to be a divine sign. The other claimed that they might be dangerous. And it was in this tense environment that a report was filed of a suitable planet for the humans. Although it was unsatisfactory in many areas, all of these flaws were fixable to some extent. The aging crew was tired of the ships, and many simply wanted to be done with the whole journey. After a vote, the Landing Crew was awakened, fresh and bright. It was time for a touchdown."

Legato sighed, "The twins' names were Vash and Knives." At these names, both Meryl and Wolfwood jumped, glancing over at Knives, who was staring determinedly at the floor. "When Vash first saw Rem, he developed a sort of schoolboy crush on her. She encouraged it, to some extent. Finding this to be a cute development, she took comfort in Vash's adoration. It helped her to forget about her own loss, which although everyone else on board had left behind decades ago, was still a raw pain in her own heart."

"The Day of Landing had seemed normal enough, everything seemed to be going well for the members of the ships. And then... the next thing many of them knew, the ships were crashing into the planet and people were dying, and fires were starting everywhere. The Landing Crew sacrificed themselves for the good of the whole, ejecting the cryogenic pods and the Plant ship..."

Legato paused, a pain creasing his brow. "This is the information that I've gotten from years of speaking with surviving crew. I know the story so well by now that I could tell it backwards. The ships crashed for an unknown reason, the civilians survived for the most part, scraping a living off of the planet with the aid of the Plants. Somehow, in all of this mess Vash, Knives, and Rem survived. According to scattered accounts, Rem traveled with the twins for a few years, watching their growth rate slow down as they approached what passed for their late teens."

Wolfwood struck another match, lighting a waiting cigarette. "Wait a minute, if Knives was there, why isn't he telling the story, instead of relying on your 'scattered accounts?'"

Knives stopped Legato, who had been about to answer, "Nicholas--"

"Wolfwood."

"All right... Wolfwood, I know what he says is true. However, it is best for all concerned that I don't attempt to tell this story." Knives' voice was sharp, his tone acid.

"Why?" Meryl almost feared the answer, but there was none. Knives merely ignored the proceedings. After a moment of tense waiting, Legato continued this time pausing reflectively between each sentence, picking his words for maximum effect.

"Vash," he said carefully, "Was in love with Rem. There was no getting around this fact. Although she had thought it was cute before when he was a child, it became more and more of a problem the older he appeared to be. By the end of their fourth year together, Vash had become obsessed with Rem, and though she tried to deny it as much as she could, it was apparent to even strangers."

"Oedipus complex?" Wolfwood dragged the term from the back of his memory, hoping it was what he remembered it was.

"Yes. And they continued on like this for some time, Rem growing older and older, and Vash pining away for something that Rem was not willing to give. It was an unspoken agreement of sorts, Vash did not press the matter and Rem did not force him to give up his obsession. This worked until one day, Vash looked up and Rem was in her late thirties. She was getting older, and this he couldn't bear. He was ageless, and she was aging faster. He tried to get Knives to help him find a method by which to make Rem like them, but after certain... disagreements... they parted ways. Knives moved to July City, and Vash traveled with Rem around the planet, helping where they could."

Legato paused for a moment. "This is where I come in, one might say. Although I don't know precisely what triggered it, Vash finally outright professed his love of Rem. After she rebuked him, she discovered it was too late. Years of pent up love or lust broke loose and flooded him. My mother was raped that night, and I am standing here as a result."

"So, you're Vash son?" Meryl was amazed. Legato Bluesummers was not only a survivor of July City, but he was also the child of the Humanoid Typhoon.

"Yes." Legato stopped for a moment, his silky voice going husky. "I'm another of his legacies," his voice was bitter. "Mother ran away, pregnant with me. Finding a job in a town far from Vash, she worked until she gave birth to me. She named me and cared for me, always keeping an eye out for my father. He, meanwhile, searched for us. Every now and then he'd catch a rumor of us, but for the most part, we stayed one to two steps ahead of him. This continued on for about a decade. I, for the most part, did not age. Although my father and Knives had aged much faster than a human before plateauing, I seemed to be aging constantly, but far slower than any human."

"Where was Knives during all of this?"

Knives interjected for the first time in this conversation, "I was attempting to live as a human among humans. I was sick of living alone and all I wanted was to have a place where I could fit in."

"Did you ever see your brother?" Wolfwood was wondering where the dream-memory that had been haunting him was supposed to fit into this story.

"Only once. Legato, continue the story."

Legato gave a sideways glance at Knives before continuing. "Mother couldn't stay hidden from him forever, and maybe she didn't want to. I don't know. All I know for sure is that one day he caught up with us. There was no escaping this time as my mother was well aware of. He was appalled at the effects that time had left on her and vowed to reverse it. That night he paid a bartender to slip something into her drink, and he carried her unconscious form and myself away from there." He smiled sadly at the memory, "I thought this was a great adventure, out to see the world and all. How naive."

"Apparently in his travels he had found a portion of a SEED ship that still worked. Keeping Mother drugged for almost two weeks, we made our way there, stopping only to rest for the night. During this time, he told stories of his childhood on the ship, talking about his brother and of Rem herself. He skirted the issue of the Crash, claiming ignorance. I could tell even then though, he knew more than he was letting on."

"After we had finally reached the ship, Father put her into one of the remaining cryogenic pods. He planned keep her in stasis until a time came that he could end her aging, and they could stay together forever. He raised me during this time, teaching me how to use my talents which were evident even then."

"Talents?" Meryl quirked an eyebrow at the vague description.

<Yes. Talents.> Legato's voice echoed through their minds. <I can continue the conversation this way if you wish.> His tone was slightly mocking.

"No, please don't." The voice in her mind laughed once before exiting her mind the way it had come. Legato smiled.

"Very well. To summarize, the next important date in this story happened about twenty years ago. After years of experimentation and teaching, he figured he had finally found out a way to keep my mother alive. However, it required a sacrifice on my part, namely my life."

"At this point in my life, I only had vague recollections of my mother. She was merely the shadowy figure who lived within the tank that my father spent his days watching. Although he disapproved of me calling her anything other than 'Mother,' I found it hard to think of her as a living, breathing individual. I loved my father, but I didn't want to die for a mother who I didn't remember. However, Father insisted. He loved me in some fashion, however it was not enough to override the obsession he had with Rem. In the end, I had no choice. I still appeared to be around the age of three at this time with the attitudes of a teenager. Without much effort, he managed to overpower me and affix me to the machine he had been working on for the past half-century. I was so scared, but there was nothing I could do about it but see where this led."

"My father removed my mother from the tank she had been resting in almost reverently. I watched the care that he lay her on the table, watching his every move as he strapped the pressure cuffs to her arms. I almost felt like a voyeur, but in truth Father was more of one than I ever was." Legato stopped talking suddenly. The silence weighed heavily on everyone, but no one felt courageous enough to break it. Seconds trailed by turning into minutes, and still the quiet ticking of the clock reigned. Finally, as if a floodgate had been opened, Legato rushed forward, telling the next part as fast and as impersonal as he could.

"After a bit, he turned the machine on. Its job was to transfer certain of the chemicals and adjust her genes and such that she would be able to eventually keep herself as immortal as Vash himself was. And I was the sacrificial lamb. The machine began its work almost immediately, making her wrinkles disappear, erasing age from her countenance. It had the opposite effect on me, causing me to age faster than I had ever before. Within the next few hours I gained approximately five years age, and she lost ten. But a side effect of the treatment was that the chemical which had been used to drug her sixty years before, managed to work its way out of her system during the deaging process. When she awoke, it was a small matter for her to unhook herself from the machine. In a confused daze, she barely noticed the child next to her, and she abandoned me to my fate without a thought. My father came in awhile later, having checked on the machinery for the next portion of the procedure." Legato breathed deeply for a moment before continuing. "He unhooked me from the machine and forced me to tell him precisely what had happened. I told him, and he left to 'prepare,' as he put it. He knew what was going on, he claimed. He knew, and Knives was going to pay for this, the ultimate insult. He didn't see me cry.. didn't understand what I was saying..." Legato hunched his shoulders at the memory whose ember was flaming bright now.

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I was seated on a porch, the sunsets blazing off to my side. My hair, newly long, was blowing slightly in the breeze. Beside me, my father sat watching the sunsets. For any other person on this planet, it might have been considered a father-son moment, but for me it was merely a surreal painting of a normal moment. I knew what was coming, and it was anything but normal.

He glanced in my direction, giving me one of his looks, the one that meant that he was deadly serious about the subject at hand, the one that no one could deny. His eyes, his eyes were able to see the smallest of my imperfections at the best of times, and now, they were able to see even farther than that.

"Hey, don't worry, I'll be all right." Father assured me softly.

"I-I know. B-but still--"

"She is your mother, and the one who is my true love. I can't leave her to your uncle. He will poison her, like he tried to do to me back then. This is something I have to do, it's necessary for our continued happiness. Everybody makes sacrifices sometimes-" He refused to meet my eyes. I had never seen him so nervous around me before, it was almost as if he was apologizing for what had happened earlier this day. He didn't know that I was willing to forgive him for that and more if only he would have stayed with me on that day. "I am no exception. You understand that, right?"

"Y-yes, sir."

"Sir?" He laughed without any humor. "That's new." I had nothing to say to that. Sighing, he put his arm around the my shoulders, drawing me into one of his infamous bear hugs. Even he could be caring at times, but only if it suited him. From within the depths of his embrace, I began to cry.

"I promise to come back. Don't worry, I'll be all right. I'll be all right. I'll come back and we'll live here forever. Don't worry." The man whispered this into my hair, hugging me even tighter towards the end. After a few moments, he let go suddenly and turned away. After a moment of awkward silence, he turned back to me and forced a smile. "Well, I'd better go. Don't worry about dinner, I asked Mrs. Marlowe to keep an eye on you." He reached behind him and pulled three things from the shadows, two of which I recognized immediately. "Here." He gave me a small wrapped package. As I stared bewilderedly at it, Father stopped me from opening it. "It's a surprise that I want you to open after I leave. Got it?" I nodded slowly. "Okay. Then I'd better go. Goodbye, Legato." Standing up, he pulled on his coat the one that I had loved to smell, whenever I missed him. I watched as he holstered the big revolver that he always carried but never used in my presence. Buttoning up the coat, he hugged me one last time before walking away from the porch and into the sunset. He never looked back.

I tried to be brave after he left, but after he had disappeared from sight, I couldn't stop the shuddering sobs from coming. "Goodbye, Dad. Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye... goodbye..." It was to be my mantra for the next few years, but I was not to know that just yet.

I sat there for hours, waiting for him to turn around, waiting for life to return to normal. I just wanted to live the way I had been. It was not to be though, not in this lifetime.

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"And then... Vash took off, leaving me to fend for myself. He didn't understand how betrayed and heartbroken I was, having been abandoned twice in one day by the two people who I had been promised would always be there for me. He just left, heading for a town that he suspected Rem had gone to. It was the town that Knives had built his life in, the town of--"

"July City," Wolfwood said breathlessly in realization. "He went to July."

"Yes. Twenty years ago, my father chased my mother to July, and caused the destruction of a city of over one million people."

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Author's Note: Whoa, this is becoming kind of regular. Sorry if I stopped halfway through Legato's story, but this was just sitting here and I wanted to get it posted. I had to set Rem as being about 25 at the time of the crash for biological reasons. Note to possible flamers: I looked back on this chapter and realized that I sort up made Vash fucked up and a psycho. If the last bit seems kind of rushed, it's because it gets a full out explanation later on. Next up: July's Fate