Chapter Text
The last time that Knives had seen his brother, Vash hadn’t been conscious.
He hadn’t been able to see Knives for himself, to see the precious few strands of platinum that tethered him to life, nor had he been able to look straight through him like Knives knew he could. To look at his face and see his shame, his regret, and how he still wished for a different ending to their fight, no matter for his own inability to bring that ideal end to life.
He didn’t stay just because he knew that he wouldn’t be able to stomach having to confront not only the choices that had been made, but because he wouldn’t be able to face whatever it would be that Vash saw fit to offer him. Whether it was forgiveness or condemnation, it would feel the same horrible way.
So he ran. He chose what he had called cowardice when Vash had abandoned him, and knew that he was more of a coward to choose to flee now than Vash had been all those years ago.
He left one parting gift, though it would take years for it to bear fruit, the little apple sapling would eventually provide the little farm with food, and it would give Vash the message he was too afraid to deliver himself.
Surrender.
Millions Knives was gone.
Even if Knives continued to live on, he would be hardly more than a lone ghost passing through the deserts just as Vash had spent so long doing.
It was his own turn to live the kind of life that he’d forced Vash into. It would be exile, it would be as close to atonement as he could offer. Vash would never have to lay eyes upon him again, he would never have to worry about his plans, he would never have to so much as think of him again.
Knives continued to live, but he would be dead in every way that mattered.
He managed to pass seven years in that manner.
Seven years that had both passed so much quicker than he’d ever known, and almost slow enough to drive him mad. Though the desert appeared empty at first, Knives had to quickly learn about everything that lurked just below the surface.
How to protect himself from the freezing temperatures when the suns fell and the moons rose, how to tell when the rumbling under his feet signaled when the sand and dirt were near collapse and when it meant that a worm was passing by or about to breach. How to best conserve his water and portion his meals. When it was possible to collect the sparse water that collected in the divots of rocks when the suns rose again in the morning, and what to do when there was none to be found.
He learned that the sands were not as empty as he’d spent his whole life believing.
Though it was sparse, he saw life.
Plants not unlike the cacti of Earth, the tough grasses that sprung up in the shade of rocky cliffs. The occasional spread of wildflowers and hardy melon-like fruit when he was lucky.
There were even animals.
Toma that’d gathered into wild herds. Lizards and desert birds that’d been unfrozen and freed when the ships fell from the skies. Worms of all sizes preying on the new wildlife and being preyed upon in turn.
The planet had blossomed with life of all kinds while Knives had hidden himself away, scared of one long-dead enemy that only continued to live on in the most animal parts of his own mind.
The sight and knowledge that the new planet that humans had been forced to adapt to had only grown and thrived in the presence of humanity rather than shrivel up and waste away brought with it an odd sense of peace.
Knives had lost the war he’d built his whole life on waging, and that was okay.
It was okay, and it would only continue to improve.
Stranger still, as his feet took him out of the desert and into human settlements, he even found his own hatred of them, a friend he’d known and relied on for almost as long as he’d been alive, began to waver and fade.
In the beginning, they had all been wary of him. More often than not he’d found himself with a target on his back from the moment he stepped into a town and until the moment he was out of sight. Resources were scarce, prices were high, and strangers meant trouble more than they meant trade. But time would always pass, and those days of uncertainty left just as gradually as his own disdain did.
With each village he passed through, they became just as indifferent to his presence as he had been to theirs. They rebuilt their homes, rebuilt their lives. Stores reopened, inns began to have vacancies, and the people that bothered to greet him as he passed through did so with a smile, with honest curiosity about where he’d come from and where he was going, and wishes of good luck for the rest of his journey.
Of course, not every person was kind, and not every experience was good. There were humans that were cruel, ones that saw him as a target, ones that stooped to violence as a first option rather than a last resort - and Knives had even found himself leaving these encounters with a few scars of his own.
They were nothing like the scars that marred every inch of Vash’s skin, but they still pained him when the nights grew cold and when he denied himself enough rest each and every night.
He still fought back. He still drew bloo. He still won the fights others picked against him.
It was after these occasions that Knives felt his conviction waver. It was while he learned to patch his own wounds, to stop bleeding, to pick bullets from his flesh and sew the raw edges of his skin shut. It was in those moments when he bit his tongue and forced himself through the pain that he wanted to keep hating them, when he wanted to curse his brother for fighting so hard against him, wanted to go back on every choice that had led him to where he stood now, but in the light of the next day when scabs had formed and that intense, overbearing pain faded into dull aches and twinges, he was unable to.
Vash had been right about people, and he still was.
For as cruel as some were, there were more that helped him afterwards. There were more that helped make changes, ones that fought to make life better for each other and to lessen the burden that his sisters carried.
The plants both old and new were thriving in a way he had never seen before. They shared tanks, saw the sun, balanced what they needed to produce, and were able to rest for the first time in their long, long lives. They cared for the people they relied on and for those that relied on them.
They were happy.
It was only Knives that wasn’t, and it was for that reason that he now stood in a small town, nameless, old. and still half-empty. The market was filled with residents and travelers alike, market stalls open, bakeries, restaurants, and little local businesses just unlocking their doors for the day.
The crowds made his skin itch, made him grit his teeth against the noise of their chatter, but he knew better now than to stay on the edges or try to skirt around it all. He needed to stay unnoticed, and for some unknowable reason the humans tended to overlook what was right under their noses while they watched the fringes with the eyes of a hawk. Stay in the crowds, stay in the rush, keep his head down, make his errands quick, and find a quiet refuge for a night or two just to recover from it.
It was important to go as undetected as possible in every town he visited, but in this one it was more important than ever.
He’d broken out there in the desert, and he couldn’t name what last, little weight that did it even if he tried.
Maybe it was the cold, maybe it was the shake his hands got when he settled down at the end of every day. Maybe it was the way his voice, so unused and unpracticed, cracked on the first word each and every time he found that he needed it.
Whatever it had been, it left Knives feeling more alone than he ever had, and here he was, breaking almost every vow he’d taken on that ranch before that little tree. Even if he wasn’t going to break the most important one of them all, he had to see Vash again. The loneliness had grown to vast to manage like he had before. He’d never spent so much time alone. Even if those he’d surrounded himself with were not friends nor family, he had never been so truly alone, and back then he hadn’t been coping with the loss of the chance to have his brother back as he had there at the very end of their fight against one another.
As he’d given in and changed his course to one with a goal in sight that he’d realized that had their roles been reversed, Knives would have given in and returned to his brother, begging for a compromise just so that he wouldn’t have had to live as he did now. Though he knew that a compromise between their wants would have been impossible, Vash had tried often enough for him to know, he would have tried, and knowing Vash, they just might have been able to find a path forward.
If only Knives had been a little kinder, a little more open…
But what worth did dwelling on the past have? There would be no changing the choices he made, no going back and fixing his mistakes before he could make them. All he had now was what was in front of him.
All he needed was to know. He just needed to see. What had become of Vash? What kind of life was he leading now?
Rumors of a man in a red coat had tapered out not long after he had left. The Humanoid Typhoon was no more, and the uncertainty left him lost.
He counted himself lucky that he still felt that tug to find his brother instead of having to search the whole planet all over again just in the hope that their paths would cross.
If he could just see… If he could just see for himself that Vash was well, that he had found some peace for himself, Knives could be content. If he could just see one more time… He didn’t even need to speak to him. All he needed was just to know-
“Sir?” A woman’s voice drew Knives out from his thoughts, and he realized that he’d been standing silently in place for some time. “Are you alright?”
His eyes found hers, and he took in her concern, and her wariness. Was he ill? Did he need help? Was the odd man alone in the middle of town a danger somehow? “I’m- I’m quite alright.” Knives answered her, voice cracking before it settled out just as it always did. “Thank you for your concern.” He forced the words out from between his teeth, as pleasant as he could make them to be.
“You lost or something?” She asked him rather than leaving him be. Big green eyes looked him over top to bottom before settling again on his face. Searching for a weapon, maybe? “I could point you in the right direction of whatever you need.”
A polite way to ask him to move along.
“I’m just passing through.” Knives informed the woman, taking his own turn to look her over. Gun at her hip, clothes clean and new-looking, red hair tied up and partially hidden under her hat. Some kind of law enforcement, if he had to guess. If not, she had the air of someone that held power in one way or another. And if she didn’t, she at the very least believed that she did. “I just want to stock up on supplies and spend the night somewhere before I leave.”
Looking satisfied by that, she nodded and pointed him in the direction of the town’s inn, letting him go without trouble. It was clear she didn’t exactly trust him, but this was good enough. Already noticed, Knives didn’t loiter in the market any longer than he needed to. He had one goal being there, and it’d all be a waste if he found himself needing to leave before he could complete it, or, god forbid, Vash found him first.
The day grew on, and he turned up empty handed until he noticed another building off in the distance, just on the outskirts of town.
A farmhouse painted in a soft color, the surrounding land dotted in tilled soil, little out-buildings, and rock that jutted from the sand. Oh-so careful to keep his steps silent and to keep himself out of view of the house, Knives heard the murmur of voices, and felt his heart twist in his chest with a fresh wave of pain as he recognized it.
Taking shelter behind an abandoned wagon piled with hay, he found what he’d come for.
With the mother sun already set and the child sun quickly following in its path, the light was low, but still plenty for him to take in the view presented before him.
Vash, hair all black and out of its customary spiked style, had been kneeling in the center of a garden patch. Gloved hands left the soil, where they’d left a new little highlight of green in the ground. He laughed at something that was said, and took the gloves off to leave in the basket of fresh vegetables at his side.
He had an entire home, he had a garden. Just behind it was a shed for toma. Big enough for a pair, and if Knives strained to hear, he would find the peeping of chicks joining in with the sounds of the adults huffing as they moved about inside. But the toma hardly mattered then, as Vash stood up straight and shifted the weight of the basket to one arm just so he could scoop up a child in the other.
Knives went numb as the shock of the sight settled into his bones. Another voice - the preacher that Vash had been so inexplicably fond of - was just behind, walking just behind the child that’d run up to Vash with another set on his shoulders, holding tight to his hair.
There was no question about what he was seeing.
Even from this distance he knew who the children's parents were.
Slouching against the wagon, Knives had to tear his eyes away. He’d found what he had come for.
In his absence, Vash had built a home.
He had a house, with a garden and toma. A house where he’d clearly been living for some time, and a home where he was most likely planning on living in for much longer. A home where he’d been living as if he were human, with another human. He hadn’t just found a place to live quietly, and he hadn’t just found a home. While he was gone, Vash had built a family, and Knives wasn’t a part of it.
Knives felt his chest go tight as emotions rolled through him one after another with no break in between for him to just breathe.
He was angry, he was jealous.
But there was no one he could point that anger at but himself.
He was the one that made the choice to walk away. He was the one that couldn’t help but come crawling back for just a look.
He was the reason that he was out here in the growing cold looking in instead of in that home with Vash.
It was his own fault that no matter what he wanted, no matter what he did, that he couldn’t be there.
He didn’t deserve it, and he wouldn’t be welcomed should he make himself known.
The child that was sitting on their father’s shoulders turned their head towards Knives’ hiding place.
Vash, who was so diligent, so carefully aware of every movement around him, hadn’t even noticed him. So lost in his own present in a way that Knives hadn’t known he was capable of. He hadn’t noticed, but his child had.
He waited in silence, hiding and still, barely breathing, to be discovered.
But the child said nothing, and Knives heard the sound of a door squeak open and then shut once more.
It was time to leave before he was truly noticed, before the child could alert their parents to the stranger waiting on the edges of their home.
One night. He’d stay in town for one night, and brave the markets once more to replenish the supplies and get the rest that he now found himself needing. He’d leave the following evening under the cover of the night, and Vash would never even know that he’d been so close, and Knives would avoid this town for the rest of his life.
He had his answer, and found that the loneliness was easier to bear than the truth.