Work Text:
Blue. A rare color, all things considered.
The only thing on Noman’s Land that echoed it was the never ending sky. It stretched as far as the sand until it kissed the horizon and disappeared beyond. The desert was vast—so much so that they named it The Great Sand Ocean in an ironic twist of words.
Your grandmother had told stories of the ocean. The old one, on a planet whose name you scarcely remember from her storied whispers. She had lived there when she was very young, somewhere near the sea before it had dried up and humanity itself was forced to take to the stars. She often whispered in your ear when she grew too frail to get out of bed; about dipping her toes in wet sand, watching seaweed wash up on the shore, of catching fish and finding shells and crabs and a bounty that seemed impossible to visualize.
She was gone now. Along with the last memories of something that often filled your dreams from her old stories of childhood. Sometimes you imagine how it tastes when the tears fall over your cheeks and reach your lips, but that’s only on days when you have the strength to cry.
“—Hey!”
Your thoughts, the ones that tended to drag you down into their dreary depths should you stay in them too long, are suddenly broken.
You have to squint your eyes, smiling at you is Vash, his grin so wide and so big that you it matches the sun.
He is holding onto something in one hand. You raise a brow and, with the slow uncurling of his fingers, he reveals its secret to you.
Small, no longer than his palm, is a tube of oil paint.
It can’t be helped. Your eyes widen. You climb down from the hood of Meryl and Roberto’s truck. The two had decided to trek along the expanse, accompanied by Wolfwood, in order to retrieve parts for the broken down vehicle. With the “Undertaker’s” help they were certain to return unharmed, but it the nearest outpost was still a full day’s travel or more. Vash had volunteered to stay with the truck in order to protect it from bandits and varmints alike. You had voted to stay with him.
It gave you time to think. To create.
“Where did you get this? And when?” You snatch it out of his hand, holding it up to the light as if you didn’t have enough already, the midday sun baring down on you.
Vash only smiles conspiratorially. It was your ongoing hunch that whenever you started feeling down, he would provide you with another tube of paint from wherever or however he gets it. This only lended more evidence to your hypothesis.
“Pthalo Blue.”
So far you had red, orange, black, white, and yellow.
You smile to yourself. With this, you could create so much more. Paint, especially oil paint, was hard to come by in the desert outside of large cities. It was simply too difficult to produce for anyone but those with the most double dollars, and there weren’t exactly very painters this far into the open terrain.
Vash’s own smile only brightens. “Well,” He says, something eager in his eyes, “Are you gonna use it?”
Without a word you walk towards your pack, thoughts rolling through your mind like the morning fog. Canvas was another thing hard to come by, but if one knew how to use it correctly, it could be taken a long way. You often make your own canvases; stretching the material over wood, nailing and gluing it down piece by piece.
And unfortunately, being around Vash meant being around danger. And being around danger meant getting your stuff damaged. You had only one fully formed canvas left. You would have to wait until you got into town to make more, but that was a problem for later you.
Right now, you wanted to create.
“Blue...” You hum to yourself, beginning to lay out your supplies. Your palette, your brushes, the small bit of turpentine you have left, and of course your canvas and pencils.
Vash stands over you, watching as you plunk right down in the sand and begin drawing.
The scene doesn’t start with any concrete ideas, but it comes to you slowly.
The ocean takes a vague form as you recall the old stories from your grandmother. You don’t know what it looks like. You can’t imagine that amount of water in one place, just waiting to be swam in like a giant bath, but with all sorts of creatures native to living in the waters.
You can’t drink from the ocean—you remember your grandma telling you that. It’s too salty, like tears. But it’s big and blue, just like the sky.
It takes an hour, maybe two, but the piece comes into focus eventually. A careful sketch of ideas that, to an onlooker, seems like a chaotic mess.
And then you start painting.
Vash watches every stroke of the brush as it carries color across the canvas; some smooth and long, others short and targeted. It takes the better part of a day. The color piles on. Thick on thin.
The ocean forms beneath your brushstrokes.
When the morning sun rises Vash is still asleep, so you slide away from your canvas and settle in the front passenger seat of the car, hoping to get a few hours of shut-eye at least.
. . .
“—Whoa!”
The words wake you with a jolt. You pop your head out the window so you can view your art laid out on the hood of car.
“This is amazing!” Vash beams at you.
You stumble out, sleep deprived and a bit hungry. You hadn’t seen your work in the light of day—hadn’t truly seen it finished.
There it is.
The ocean (or maybe it’s the desert? It is the only thing you know,) lies under the dark sky, stars beaming down from their lofty thrones. Kissing the horizon is the pthalo blue, mixing from light to dark as it sweeps across the space. Walking along a wave’s (or a dune’s?) edge is a red cloaked man. His back is to the viewer, but he leaves footsteps in his wake, his hood up, his journey long.
You blink at it, only when you look at your hands do you realize you are the one who made it. The paint is still there, the blue hiding your nails with how thick it is.
“Is that me?” Vash asks, grinning wide again and pointing to his own face.
You smile back at him, nodding. “Yeah.”
“It’s amazing ... but it’s missing something.”
“Like what?”
And when he tells you, you smile.
When the others come back, supplies and parts in hand, they all view your newest painting with amazement. A second figure now walks beside the first:
Vash is still crossing the vast ocean but beside him is you, your footsteps overlapping as your journey together.