Chapter Text
It was a little silly. There was already no one left alive who knew, save for him and Vash, but it was still a secret he'd take to his grave, for the hell of it, because it didn’t matter.
Plant birth (no less, that of a pair of Independents) was a complex, multi-step, even semi-metaphysical process. Unlike Vash, he remembers all of it, and has tried to describe it to him before.
A light , he'd say, brighter than anything you've seen before .
Like Earth's sun? Vash asked.
Brighter , he responded, thinking of that sputtering old gas giant, tired red like the flickering exit signs of that horror movie Mom liked so much.
Not that either of them have seen the Old Sun outside of books, anyway - but, he believed it with all the conviction of his year old heart.
Vash’s whole face would transform in awe, and it made Nai smile in turn. As forgetful as Vash could be, he didn’t mind retelling the story.
Nonetheless - back to the silly, embarrassing little secret: the ship logs mark Vash's birth a minute before Nai's. Mom had even fashioned paper birth certificates that she stored in a small briefcase under her desk, like her mom had done for all their family documents , she’d said. He hadn’t yet learned how to read back then so he really only remembers that he wasn't born the big brother.
Not that some arbitrary timestamp mattered, but it’s still one thing he’s glad went up in flames with the rest of the fleet.
—
He came to understand the concept of a ‘big brother’ before he understood ‘boy’ or ‘girl’. He mouthed the syllables one by one, still getting used to the shape of words. He kept tripping over the ‘g’ whenever Mom asked him to slow down, enunciate.
Under her watchful gaze, he was a month old and tracing a finger over the cartoony smile of characters in a children’s book. His eye caught on the smaller figure with bows in their hair - the book’s protagonist - directly holding hands with a slightly taller figure in a blue cap. My Big Brother , in large sketchy letters, and below it, we play together and he stands up for me when I’m sad!
What’s ‘together’? he asked Vash, who picked up language - enjoyed it even - with a speed Nai had not.
Vash scrunched his face in thought, the word challenging even his impressive vocabulary, It’s, when… you’re with me, or Mommy, he said with a slight lisp, looking to the woman in question for approval. She nodded and he beamed like a light.
Okay , said Nai, honestly still a little confused - why was there a word for that? - but too tired at this point to voice it. He yawned, slowly being lulled to sleep by the deep, dark blue of the library planetarium. Vash smiled at him encouragingly though, scooching closer for support. He even tried to distract him by teaching him the few words he already knew of that second language Mom would shift into when really angry or happy, the sounds throatier and softer than the ship lingua franca.
Nai didn’t retain anything from the impromptu lesson, but he could always recall the feeling of it. My Big Brother , he’d thought, in that warm spot under the soft, winking lights of stars.
—
At some point, Nai realized he had to step up and be the big brother if Vash couldn't.
Maybe it started when they were just a few months old and had to move quarters because Mom got reassigned to another sector of the freighter.
Back then, the ship seemed so much bigger, and the idea of moving was intimidating. Vash was scared, as was Nai, but unlike Vash, he tried to put on a brave face. And, maybe it was a little annoying seeing Vash so distressed over something that didn’t warrant it.
They were at the doorway, belongings in hand, looking back at the room that had been their life until that point. The weak dam holding back Vash's tears finally broke, and he began wailing in earnest, balling his fists against his eyes.
Nai felt something tighten in his chest as he saw Mom set her bags aside and kneel to take his twin into her arms. Then, she drew back and placed her hands on Vash's shoulders as she looked at him. When she spoke, her voice was low, slightly worn from packing all day, but reassuring nonetheless.
"I was terrified when I first left home, remember?" she said, and Nai recalled offhand mentions about the gaping distance between countries, and countries were big like all the ships in the fleet combined and then some, which, how was that possible?
"Well, look at me now," she continued, "traveling across entire galaxies. Moving is hard, but I had Alex, and now you have me and Nai."
At her gentle prompting, Vash looked up at her, hands dropping, sniffles quieting. He gave her a wobbly smile back, face still all red.
"There's my brave boy," she said, pulling a tissue from her pocket and deftly wiping the snot and tears away.
She stood, slinging bags back over her shoulder and checking her keys. She offered them each a hand, and together the trio of them crossed over into the hallway.
“We’ll be there in no time," she said, gazing determinedly ahead. Nai copied her, hoping his confidence would help Vash do the same.
Still, he couldn't help but notice Vash sending one last look and a wave over his shoulder, a quiet murmur of Goodbye .
The door shut behind them with a click.
—
He and Vash had looked old enough to play with the other children - they’d grown like weeds, if not faster, Mom would say. (Sometimes he wondered what the child development researchers noted in their file, if their behavioral growth mapped proportionally to the human standards of their appearance.)
Noone outside of Mom's small team and some of the higher ups knew they were Plants. Mom, or Dr. Saverem - as the other parents called her, had somehow arranged (probably begged) for things to stay that way. Her twins were going to experience as normal a childhood as was possible, or so help her God.
He was hyper conscious of himself, hoping to make friends while keeping his powers in check. The other kids didn’t quite know what to make of them, and they didn’t like him the easy way they liked Vash.
There’d been a bigger, meaner kid who brained Nai with the ball. One moment Nai was standing to the wayside, and the next, he was suddenly flat on his back, seeing nothing but the blue of the skydome roof.
Hot embarrassment crawled up his spine as he took in the sounds of snickering around him. Grass stains streaked across his palms, arms, his legs. Vash's fingers reached for his shoulder, but he shrugged them off, suddenly not wanting to be touched. Nai risked a glance at him, then regretted it. He focused instead on some indeterminate point to Vash's right, anything better than dealing with the tremulous intensity of holding that gaze.
Vash was still hovering at Nai’s side, young and unsure, frozen. His hand reached out again - tentatively, always tentative when Nai got like this, but froze in midair, trying to offer comfort but falling short. Vash tried a different route, asking him in stutters if he was okay, and though the answer was yes , he was just fine, Nai couldn’t find the words to answer. The moment passed as one of the kids tugged Vash away to continue the game.
Nai’s hands began to prickle from where they’d caught his fall. He didn't know what he wanted at that moment, what he wanted Vash to do. The fall itself hadn’t even hurt that much, not really - a scrape that stung less than it looked. Hell - Vash, clumsy as he was, frequently took falls that looked way worse.
Nai stood up slowly, meticulously brushing the dirt off his pants and taking his time before making his way back to the game. Vash looked at him with concern, but Nai just shrugged and joined back in with less enthusiasm than before.
It seemed that Vash was better suited to being protected than being a protector. That was alright, Nai supposed.
—
The cold-sleep rotations were mandatory to maintain not only the cruiser, but also its passengers. Humans hadn't yet been able to quite conquer the falloff after a certain threshold of cryo, when muscles begin to atrophy, synapses growing cold with too much time.
The other kids would get rotated out periodically, so the twins never saw them again. Nai saw it as a blank ticket, ready to try again with newcomers, while Vash would get sad and broody, missing the few friends he made.
On those days, Nai would distract him with music, knowing Vash would get a kick out of his lack of improvisational skills.
Nai didn’t get too attached with their cohorts, maybe out of practicality for the short-lived months they had with them. At least he didn't mope around - between the pair of them, someone had to hold the fort.
Unexpectedly, Nai ended up more popular than Vash as time went by. He didn’t have the guts to be so intensely earnest about it like Vash was, but he tried to bridge the gap, to smile more. Some of the other kids even thought it was cool when he changed how he spelled his name. Mom was so happy the first time he had a friend over.
It was nice, okay in a lot of ways, but with that came the knowledge of what some of them said behind closed doors about Vash.
They’d complain about how uncomfortably touchy Vash was, how inappropriately loud. The worst was they would say it right where Nai could hear them, as if he weren’t there, or perhaps assuming he agreed. The first time it happened, Kni told them off, but it only made things worse.
On the next rotation, Kni took matters into his own hands, rallying the cohort against a girl who’d thoughtlessly insulted Vash. Noone wanted anything to do with her after he was done.
Kni was sure Vash knew what others thought of him, yet - this, he didn’t understand - still his brother would continue to fawn, soften his voice and meander his words, making himself smaller and smaller.
—
“No!” Mom admonished, and Vash jumped, sheepishly withdrawing his hand from the small plate of sweets on the counter. “Those are for Alex,” she explained.
“Oh, ah, I’m so sorry -”
“It’s ok,” Mom said, shaking her head, though not unkindly.
It was the first anniversary of its kind they spent with Mom.
“You have visitors, love,” said Mom, later that day. Her fingertips brushed the glass over Alex’s photo. His face looked kind, with deep brown eyes framed by dark curls of hair.
Death was weird. Back then, death was just a misunderstanding, and there were witnesses. It was something that made Mom go all quiet some days, something that was like cold sleep but somehow worse.
The three of them stood in front of a small shrine for Alex, the best substitute for a grave on a dying planet light years away. Under Mom’s direction, they gently laid down the plates of food they’d brought.
“I wish I could have brought him with me,” she murmured, “but at least this way… he rests with family.”
Death also meant someone he’d never met, and never would.
“What about you?” Asked Kni, blunt as ever and unable to help himself. But Mom, bless her patience, only smiled, having heard the undertone of concern, knew what he meant.
“Are you calling me old?” She teased, pinching his cheek, which he begrudgingly allowed, “You don’t have to worry about that for a long time, dear.”
They prayed, and she introduced the two of them in that wistful voice of hers. Afterwards, since Mom was off for the day, they spent the afternoon climbing the big oak in the rec room. She even boosted them up on her shoulders like they used to beg her to do when they were younger and too energetic for any one person to have to handle.
Kni showed Vash all the tricks he knows - how to make a whistle from a leaf, how to balance yourself high, high up. Warmed by the dapples of skydome light, they ended up dozing on a pair of branches until Mom called them down for dinner, hands on her hips.
It’d been a good day. They ate all of Vash and Kni’s favorites, and it was one of the rare times Kni didn't even mind.
Everything Mom said was funny, so much that his sides hurt by the end of the night from laughing so much - and for a moment he thought he saw her the way Vash does, all rosy cheeks and something to love. He wished they could live forever.