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Being a Plant came with an array of experiences and sensations so very different from human ones.
Differences that Vash had, for some time, had a lot of difficulties wrapping his head around.
It was not a simple matter of just knowing that they were a different species, but truly understanding that there were things about them as Plants that could never be truly comprehended by humans and vice versa.
The first time he had become aware of how different he and Knives were from their mother, was when they had been fairly young.
It had been a test to see how far developed their sight was after Rem had noticed Vash sometimes running into doorframes or somehow managing to hip-check the table yet another time that week.
(And didn’t it hurt, how much he had to suppress a full body flinch at the memory – his experiences so warped by that log they had found that fateful day everything had changed?)
Reluctantly, though he hadn’t even come close to understand why at the time, she had sat him and Knives in the infirmary, pulling contraptions out of a hidden compartment in the wall that had looked strange but intriguing.
Rem was quick to explain how different aspects of it worked to examine their eyes, from fluid build-up to the shape of their individual eyeballs and so much more than a six-month-old Vash had been able to wrap around his head at the time.
And it had been fun for a while, as Rem took turns asking them questions, wanting to know if the air balloon was getting more defined or fuzzier as she input something in a keyboard, or when she made them read out ridiculous sentences in different font sizes.
Vash still remembered how he was still in stitches as the next test began and Rem kindly asked him to tell her if he could see the number on a disk filled to the brim with multicolored dots of varying sizes. Try as he might, Vash had sat stumped in his chair, chin and forehead pressed into the cold metal of the device, staring aimlessly at the picture.
At Rem’s gentle “Come on Vash, what do you see?”, he couldn’t help but extricate himself from the machine and look at her questioningly.
“Rem, is there really a number there?”
It had been unusual that first time, seeing her carefree expression slip for a split second, seeing a worried tilt to her brow until it disappeared under a reassuring smile. Knives, for his part, had still been seated in front of his device, expression pinched but still trying to do what Rem had asked of them.
“There should be a number visible Vash. Is there a problem? Is the image too blurry?”
He shook his head, wondering why she seemed more nervous suddenly as she fiddled with the keyboard and consulted the screen for another moment before turning back to him. By this point, Knives had leaned back just enough to follow their little exchange without being too obvious.
“Um, that is…,” she seemed perturbed before taking a breath and giving him her undivided attention, “Vash, honey, can you look at it again and tell me what exactly you see?”
He had nodded meekly, getting comfortable on his stool again and putting his face back on the chinrest just as before.
He squinted at the image, trying very hard not to blink, his eyes watering a little from the effort, as he went on to describe, as best as he could at that age, all the colors he was seeing – from the pale yellows to dark browns, the muted beige and lime greens, the garish red smudges next to the more tolerable pale ones, the different hues of blue he could perceive… and when Rem failed to say anything, he looked up, only to be met with her stunned expression.
(The report said Tesla had only been able to see a small spectrum of colors, much like humans with a condition called Tritanopia. He regretted not having looked it up. He regretted not understanding her better. Regretted not knowing if her deteriorating health was its cause or if they all were as different as humans.)
That was the first thing they learned was different about them: That they could see far more colors than humans usually could. It was also the day that Rem learned that Vash was just really a clumsy kid, with less than stellar spatial awareness that no amount of excellent eyesight could remedy. A fact that Knives had made fun of for the longest time.
The next big difference had been the realization that humans usually couldn’t tell with a mere brush of their fingers if someone was getting sick. That one had actually been on Knives, as he had been the first in front of Rem’s cabin, patiently waiting until the door opened with a silent whoosh.
Vash had only just managed to catch up with him, when he had seen his tiny fingers wrap around Rem’s hand and his face fall into a teary frown as he looked up at their mother in open worry.
Despite how serious he had been when asking her if she was alright, it was such a sweet memory… one of the few ones Vash could look back upon without instantly growing bitter.
And it had been funny in its own right, seeing Rem so flustered, her hair slightly disheveled and dark bags in stark contrast with her pale skin, panicking as Knives actually starting bursting into tears, asking her if she was dying.
As it turned out, she wasn’t. Had merely been dealing with a small cold that she had been fully prepared to soldier through if she could help it.
As she had sat on the couch, Vash and Knives both insisting she take a break “Because that is what you are supposed to do when you don’t feel well”, she asked them how they had known.
It had taken them some time to figure out how to properly describe the sensation; that tingling electrical current that tasted almost rancid when they touched her right now. The unbearable warmth coming off of her that made them almost want to run back to their room to hide under their cool blankets. The way how the mere grazing of skin would make it feel like her heartbeat was taking them over, drowning out every other sound.
In turn, it had been strange to hear how Rem felt whenever she touched them, describing it to be similar to a gentle buzzing. Her description had reminded Vash of when he and Knives had been too curious about one of their toys, dismantling it and retrieving the rechargeable battery from inside. It had numbed their tongues while feeling like it scorched them at the contact point, and Rem had given them a stern talk when they had finally admitted to their little experiment.
(It was the same with his sisters though. Just being in their vicinity, just being in the same town as them, made Vash feel like he was grasping an electric fence with his bare hand. The lack of any such feeling in that horrible med bay was proof enough that all that remained of Tesla, was a lifeless husk.)
Something that had seemed to surprise Rem more than anything though, was when she finally unraveled the secret behind their picky eating habits.
While she always insisted in that first year that they were pretty easy to take care of, mealtime had been a special brand of parental hell for her. Vash could admit that she really had tried hard, despite her average cooking skills and the less than appetizing rations stored on board. But between their almost non-existent appetite, the fact that they simply needed less food, and one other factor that none of them had ever considered, meals usually ended with either Vash or Knives, or mostly both of them sulking.
That was, until she had whipped out a dessert - a treat for having worked exceptionally well on one of the subjects they both did not enjoy that much.
Rem had called it a brownie – a dense but soft pastry that had been the best thing he had eaten until then. Both Rem and Knives – even Vash himself to be honest – were struck speechless at how fast he had cleaned his plate the moment he had taken the first bite. The moment he actually tasted something that wasn’t just turning into bland mush in his mouth.
It had just been so good. It was the first time Vash actually enjoyed something edible, his hand having grabbed his empty plate and thrusting it towards their mother with a fervency that was entirely alien to him.
They had stared at him as though he had grown a second head.
“Wow,” Rem had managed after a small beat, her smile genuine but tremulous as she gingerly took the plate and made to cut out another piece from inside the pan, “if I had known all it took was some sugar to get you boys to eat, we would have spared ourselves quite some problems. So, you really like it that much?”
Vash had nodded his head frantically at that, grinning from ear to ear as he waited to get his next slice of heaven. Until he watched Knives give him the side-eye.
He had turned around looking at his brother in confusion, as Knives’ brows furrowed. His eyes went back to the barely touched slice on his plate, glancing at Vash one more time before he tried another bite.
It had been disconcerting, watching his face crumple in disappointment once the small piece disappeared inside his mouth. By that point, Rem had noticed their silent exchange as well.
“Is something the matter, Knives?”
Knives’ eyes had looked up at her, before he had slowly pulled the teaspoon out of his mouth and deposited it on his plate with a small clink, turning to Vash with a questioning frown.
“Is this a prank?” he’d then asked, looking and sounding hurt as his gaze flit back and forth between Rem and Vash.
Now it was their turn to be speechless. Until Vash tried to reassure him that it did actually taste good, not like any of the other meals they had had until then. Knives eyes had filled with tears by that point, convinced that Vash was just pulling his legs by getting his hopes up. And Rem… her expression was almost stricken, like she had realized something important that very moment.
Turns out that their sense of taste was either severely messed up or, as Rem had quietly mumbled into her hand, maybe theirs was just completely different. A surprising fact, considering that their sense of smell was impeccable.
With what little supplies there were on the ship, and with what little variety it provided, it had been difficult to determine just how much or little they could taste. But from what they had been able to gather thanks to spices and some artificial flavoring, Vash could at the very least taste anything that was very sweet.
Unfortunately, for a reason that they had not been able to understand, Knives just couldn’t taste anything – no matter how much salt, spice or any other kind of ingredient would be added to his food.
It had saddened Vash and Rem, and frustrated Knives to no end. The good thing to come out of it was that Rem finally, truly understood their reluctance when it came to mealtimes. She had been kind about it though, tried her best to see what would serve them best at this point and making food intake less frequent and as pleasant as it could get for them.
(Vash often wondered if Tesla also had not been able to taste anything either. Whether anyone had ever come close to finding out. Not that it had mattered towards the end, her body being pumped full with fluids and nutrients against her will.)
But that was as far as their findings went on that ship. Until Knives sent the fleet hurtling towards the surface of a planet so inhospitable to regular humans that Vash was glad sometimes to be a Plant.
Needing little to no water and food in a desert is a blessing.
So is the ability to stay awake and alert for weeks on end, although it came at the price of being constantly drowsy until he would drop on the very spot he suffered.
Or like the sturdiness of his body and its regenerative capabilities that let him survive bullet wounds that would kill any regular human.
But with every difference that made survival on this planet easier for him, came others that made it almost unbearable to simply exist in his own skin sometimes.
Like the empathetic link that drew him towards his sisters, experiencing a fraction of their pain or joy anytime he came close to them.
(He hadn’t needed one to understand that what Tesla had lived was excruciating and terrible. He doesn’t know if he could have salvaged himself if there had still been a consciousness in that husk to share a mental link with.)
The way imprints of them would linger in the air, both good and bad, while still alive and after having long expired, showing him a glimpse of their lives and in turn leaving his very being stained and saturated with emotions that were overwhelming at times. It had made approaching his sisters a gamble, one where he had needed to learn to turn the odds in his favor – unless he wanted to return to where he came from and lose himself.
Wandering across the sands for as long as he had, he was never not confronted with everything that seemingly separated him and humans.
And yet, and yet… there were things that Vash had found that made humans and Plants similar in ways that were more meaningful than any of the differences that did separate them.
While it might not be apparent to humans, especially after the loss of even the most basic information about Plants after the Great Fall, Plants did periodically fall into a sleep-like state.
And on rare occasions, whenever Vash was around to witness it, it was special. The buzzing air around the enormous bulb structure permeated by a calm that could sooth him or anyone nearby in a way little on this dry planet ever did.
And on the even rarer occasion Vash had allowed himself a peek, just to see, just to know,… just to understand.
Glimpses of better days. Glimpses of smiling faces. Glimpses of a life not separated by a sturdy sheet of glass. Glimpses of a life of fulfillment. Glimpses of love.
He never invaded his sisters’ privacy like that anymore, but it had stayed with him. The knowledge that, despite everything, his sisters loved. Loved with a burning passion that couldn’t be put into words.
Loved life itself.
In spite of the pain life itself brought.
(It made him wonder if Tesla had loved as strongly. If that love had persisted until or died before her body gave out. Knew that it had been Knives back then that had loved humanity more than him. Wondered if him having to learn to love made him the outlier.)
Humans loved too. Deeply, desperately. To the point of destruction at times.
But it was something that united them.
Something he had started to understand in a light-flooded med bay over a century ago.
Something that he could honor for his sisters and Rem.
Something he hoped could one day help them reconcile.
Somwhere in that distant future his sisters dream about.