Trigun Fan Fiction ❯ Hidden Knives ❯ Knives ( One-Shot )

Hidden Knives

=<>=

The sweet fragrance of the flowers, cupping soft sunlight in their dewy petals, wafts tantalizingly before my nostrils, there and yet not there at all, fading as it is created. I can still feel on my numb cheek the near-invisible caress of a butterfly's wing, even though I know it is not there.

I can still see the hills, the meadows, and the shady, rustling trees, the perfect fantasy; the beautiful, beautiful glass picture painted on a mirror like the singing river reflecting the sky, to keep us from seeing the truth.

Was it all just a dream? It had the touch of a dream, soft, vague and drifting as a cloud, the consistency of one, comforting as the snug embrace of mountains of overstuffed bedcovers. Too much, all too much, so sweet, sickeningly sweet, really, once one takes the time to stand back and look at it all, knowing it for what it is.

Just another deception, to fool the innocent, to beguile a child's heart into impossible dreams, the invisible, familiar box of ideals conferred and imposed by others. Vash was drawn to it as a moth to a flame, led by his gentle, deluded guide. I was too, at first. We were both so young, then. Then… A funny word to describe it. It makes it sound like so long ago when it wasn't, at all. When I think how short it really was…

He wasn't the one knocked into reality by harsh blows in the dark, venomous words infused with uncontrollable hatred only adding unnecessary but very effective force to the physical brutality. Helpless to fight back? No. Not couldn't, but wouldn't. Even I don't understand the logic behind my actions sometimes. Perhaps there was no rhyme or reason to such foolishness.

Flying… Floating… Falling into a field of stars. Laughter and tears… Don't cry… Just wait a little longer, and maybe… Are plants strong?

Rem and Vash. Birds of a feather. She got through easily to his soft heart by opening her own wide. Stupid, stupid human girl. The pair of them lost to reality in pretty dreams and illusions, and feelings, of all things. It was their endless talk of love and its issues that drove me away to seek my "individuality". The thing is… every word they uttered was true. At least to them. They believed it all, and that was the problem.

A single rose, flourishing beneath its bell of glass, hauntingly beautiful, and so fragile it seems barely there…

Not I. How could I? Steve got to me first. He taught me the truth of human nature and of Nature itself. Kill or be killed. An eye for an eye.

A small sacrifice… Save them both! If you saved all the butterflies, all the spiders would starve…

As I witnessed the sweet spectacle of his downfall I knew that I could do anything.

What happens in your future is your own responsibility…

For Vash. He was still in his fantasy world, green eyes still soft and open and his smile bright and warm. Still a child, walking in light and blinded by it. He caught glimpses of the other world, of course, how could he not? Of my world. But when he did… I held him back. I remember that naïveté, the belief that nothing in the world could go irreversibly sour, that things would always come right in the end. What I had lost. Amazing, isn't it? Once, the boyish innocence wasn't a lie. Once, my mask wasn't a mask at all. Nobody would believe it now.

Vash. My other half, my twin brother, and the light. And I, Knives, the dark. Sometimes I look into space, see the emptiness and the stars winking faintly back at me, not usually worth looking at unless I tire of the endless deserts. And I ask nobody in particular, why. Why must there always be dark for light, a villain for every hero, an emptiness for every star? Then a pair of dancing green eyes and laughter filled with simple joy warm the echoing numbness inside me, and I know the answer, as suddenly and as certainly as I knew it on the ship.

Light may be beautiful and pure, but it's so easily tainted. A smidgen of dark can seep through the light, destroying it all in the blink of an eye, diffusing through the radiance and smothering it completely. Dark, however, is not so easily conquered. It takes more to light up the dark than it does to smother the light. And that is why Vash and I parted ways in the most extreme of directions.

Velvety red blossoms, petals drifting through nothing and into nothing. Melody, hummed, not the clear silvery tones of an instrument, perfectly tuned, but a husky voice, just slightly, every so slightly off-tune…

Rem. A flower, an angel, a human being. So damn imperfect, yet Vash loved her so. He really did; even I could feel it. And she returned it wholeheartedly. It wasn't right; it wasn't supposed to be. She was pulling him down into her imperfection. I couldn't allow it. Vash just didn't see; blinded by her own blind sincerity, the brilliance of her dreams. So I was the one to stand back, I, the dark, and watch for him.

The frightening thing was… before, before, I was in there with them too, wanting to believe, hoping to believe, following on blind, desperate faith till maybe, maybe… I'll never pursue that path of thought any further than this point.

"If only"s never did any good for anyone anyway.

Humans. Vash was being drawn in among them, taking on their characteristics; their myriad imperfections were being imprinted on his unsuspecting mind. I could not allow it. I could not allow it.

So I removed them.

He did not understand. Rem… Rem never understood. She should have. She just didn't want to. Didn't want to see what was right under her nose. The monster being tossed about on the ship, that no one ever caught. Another weakness. Another failure. Foolish, foolish woman. It doesn't matter anyway.

Hands flying over the controls, total power over not only my own fate, but everyone else's too. Complete, dizzying control, as the nose of the ship tilts downward, imitated by the flock of metallic SEEDS all around… Free fall…

Only Vash matters. I was probably too late. He'd already entrenched himself irretrievably into their world, their emotions and foolishness and blind faith in nothing. A world of weakness and failure. In time, humanity will fall. But who cares about that?

Vash, one of them now. He will fall with them, dragged down. An adult and he is still a child at heart. It's ironic, considering what he is.

Vash will fall, and fall hard. However…

He will fall at no one's hand but mine.

No one else. I won't allow it.

=<>=

A/N: My first Trigun fic ever is now complete! *dances* I happily concede that this probably makes no sense whatsoever with the Trigun series. There are probably a lot of "Wtf?!"s and other variations of it floating around out there among you dear readers, so allow me to explain this load of nonsense.

It's simply what you could call my knee-jerk reaction to "Rem Saverem", the only episode of Trigun I've ever watched. Well, that and most of "The Murder Machine". It was conceived immediately after watching "Rem Saverem", using only the information I'd managed to glean from the actual episode. I have done absolutely NO research on Trigun except in the spelling of Knives' name.

So it is probably OOC and horribly out of sync with the series. I. Don't. Give a damn. This is an opportunity for y'all to flame (and I want you to be creative about it, too)! C'mon! Don't be ungrateful! Press that purple button down there, and bring. It. On!!! >8D