Archive of Our Own

It’s like an itch under his skin. It always has been. Since the Great Fall, or since his their first birthday, or since the day Rem named him Vash. He was a baby and a year later he was like a teenager, almost, and Vash doesn’t know where the itch came from. From before or between or after. Maybe it was from the Fall; from those not-corpse, not-undead hands reaching for him, grabbing at him, begging for help. When Vash could only apologize for his own uselessness, his own compliance, and run from what he’d done.

Vash goes into a town. He goes into a lot of towns. Vash goes in and he sees the pain. All towns have pain and strife. Some have it worse than others, some are better off, some look almost lik e th e cities Rem spoke of Earth once having, but they all have one thing in common: a great lack. Lack of water, mostly, but also food and space and any other resource a human might need. Also a lack of kindness.

Vash knows it’s his fault. He helps where he can.

Vash goes into a town and sometimes, things stay calm. Nobody recognizes him, he plays house like he belongs, he helps people who need it, and he leaves before anybody can realize that he’s not welcome. Vash is very good at not over-staying, and he’s even better at not saying good-bye.

Vash has never been given the opportunity to say good-bye.

A lot of the time, Vash goes into a town and things are good for a while. A day or two before the calamities that follow with him are arriving, are tearing the place apart for their own gain. Groups of bounty hunters and men with huge weapons and hunting parties all looking for that bounty placed on his head, heavy as a crown, and destroying whatever unsuspecting town Vash has had the audacity to stop in for just a little too long. (Sometimes, they’re sent by his brother. Sometimes they are too strong for humans, too quick. Sometimes they are there with the order not to kill him but to bring him back alive and sometimes, the worst of times, they are not just sent by but accompanied by--) Vash runs, because Vash learned how to run one hundred and fifty years ago, when the ships fell from the sky and Knives laughed and bodies woke from their long slumbers to die. Vash runs and nobody ever catches him and he doesn’t ever kill.

People usually die anyway.

Vash’s hands are the same color as the PLANTS that die, the PLANTS that scream out for salvation only to be met with a brother that is too slow to g ive it to them. They, too, stain his hands and now, a century down the line, Vash thinks the color of his coat is fitting for a reason nothing to do with Rem’s geraniums.

Blood doesn’t wash off easy, if it all. Vash’s coat is a neon sign of his sins, screaming at everyone who can see him to run the other way—yet it attracts people to his wake the same way a matador calls for the bull.

Sometimes, Vash goes into a town and they r ecognize him. They want the fame or they need the money and the whole town bands together to hunt him. He won’t hurt them, but it hurts. Whether or not their attacks land, whether or not they do it for hate or desperation, it hurts. They come after him and Vash says I’m sorry. They shoot and Vash says I understand. They ambush and Vash says I forgive you. They scar his body and Vash pulls them from fatal situations, taking the gun in his mouth and knife in his back as thanks all the while.

It’s like an itch. A constant, tugging need under his skin. Humanity tears him apart, takes pounds of flesh as recompense for his crimes, and still Vash saves them. They take the consequences for the atrocities he’s committed out of him, and Vash still repents. He sees a person in the line of fire and he moves them. He sees a person starving and he feeds them. He sees someone hurting, someone dying, someone suffering in a thousand different ways, and there’s an itch. Vash goes to them, the masses, the people who need (and they all need). He sees and he itches and he helps and that helps. It helps. It has to.

The world, he says, over and over, like a mantra, like that will make it true, is made of l ove and peac e. There is peace in breaking bread together and there is love in extending a hand. L ove and p eace are woven in the very fabric of existence and it is Vash’s fault that so many people must go without.

Vash goes into Jeneora Rock with a jaded reporter on his dragging-rope tail and a naive woman wondering why the water isn’t clean here. The town, they’re told, is suffering. The PLANT is in bad shape, the water can’t be cleaned, and they’re in need of help.

There’s an itch.

Vash, of course, goes to the building where the PLANT is housed. He goes there to take a look and to help because to these people, Vash the Stampede is also a PLANT engineer. He can fix things for them. The last time he’d been here, the PLANT had been okay. And Vash is always to grateful to see a PLANT that is doing well.

This time, that’s not the case. Already, her tank is glowing a burning red. Vash’s coat becomes washed out with it, as they all stand to look.

“It’s dying,” Vash says, looking at his sister in quiet, private mourning. “You’ll have to buy a new PLANT.”

He knows the town doesn’t have the money for that. He knows they can’t afford that sort of miracle. Vash understands. Vash itches. He begs the people to hold out hope for the future.

If he’d been given a little more time, just a night more, then Vash could have fixed it. He would have, because Vash is a bleeding heart in a world where blood is a luxury.

Vash is PLANT, but he is not like other PLANT s . He has freedom and autonomy, but more than that, Vash does not—cannot—create the way they do. Vash cannot manufacture what is needed, nor can he clean water. If he could, he would. Vash’s skills are other to them, other even to Kni. Vash can hear his sisters in his head. He hears them scream as they die. Vash can hear this one, this lonely and scared PLANT, screaming as the last of her energy is siphoned off by humans who have no idea what they’re doing.

Vash can save her.

Vash’s power is not healing. That’s too simple of a way to put it, too clean. Vash cannot heal his sisters in the traditional way. Vash connects with them and he hears them. Vash communicates with them. And then, when they are dying, Vash can give to them.

It’s his own life force that he gives, Kni had told him once. Told him to stop. Told him that his weakness was going to get him killed. Kni, for all that he’s done, cares for Vash in a way no one has ever since. He wants Vash to stay alive, at the cost of all else. Vash gives his life force to his sisters and brings them to full strength and Kni would kill him for being so reckless, so pathetic, but it scratches the itch under Vash’s skin. It keeps a part of him alive that he cannot live without.

Better me than them, Vash says, over and over again, like a mantra, like that will make the people who care about him believe it. They don’t.

But there’s no time for Vash to gift his life to his sister in Jeneora Rock. They need to be alone, and before night falls and Vash can sneak back and then out of town uns een , the JuLai Police show up and everything goes to shit.

Kni takes the PLANT that had been powering Jeneora Rock. Many of its citizens die. Vash is banished and though it hurts, he does not falter. It’s his fault they’re all here, after all. He’ll accept whatever punishments humans deem him deserving of. One day, he’ll die for them too, and he knows that that won’t be enough either.

The reporters follow him. Vash can’t put his finger on why. They say it’s for the piece they’re writing, but this seems like over-kill. Still, it’s been a long while since someone has seen the stampede that tracks Vash all over the planet and has chosen to stay by him. He’ll leave before they get tired of him, but for now, he’ll rest in the van and relish the feeling of being wanted.

Of course, things can never stay simple. The woman, Meryl, hits a man full-on with van. It’s something that would have definitely killed or at the very least incapacitated any human for a long time. The man is walking within hours.

Then there’s the giant worm and the kid and the giant worm again and Zazie and Vash, by the end of it, feels utterly worn out. Meryl says she’s not going anywhere, Wolfwood, the undertaker she ran over, announces he wants to come along, and Roberto scoffs at them all and tunes them out. Vash eats dinner and watches the beauty of the worms dancing in the sky and knows that whatever is happening, he won’t be going it alone for a while.

The next town they happen across is uneventful. Vash isn’t recognized, by some stroke of luck. He gets to have a room and drink in the saloon and peruse the shops and no one even bats an eye. He’s just another traveler. They have a PLANT, though, and s he’s hurt. The town won’t last very long at all if the PLANT dies. Vash can hear her low moans of agony in his head. The itch starts under his skin. Vash bites his tongue and fiddles with his glove. Just a little time, he begs her. Just a little bit of time.

He goes to her one night, knocking the guards out to eliminate any possible audience to his transgressions, and presses his hands to the glass. His sister unfurls and comes to him. She’s pained and slow, but s till she comes. Her hands mirror his and, together, they set their foreheads to the glass. Vash feels the way that blue light throbs under his skin, feels the thinner parts where it shows through. Vash gives until his sister can glow that same color, gives until she retreats back and looks as though nothing has happened. Vash drops to the floor, drained, and watches her until that vein of throbbing energy that runs under his skin calms, until the light dims, until he looks just as human as every other person in this town.

He creeps back out in the darkness of night, determined to go before anyone’s the wiser to what he’s done, and he’s caught.

There’s Wolfwood, sitting on a stoop toward the edge of town. Luckily, it’s far enough away that he has no idea where Vash is coming from. He’s smoking a cigarette and looks grumpy to be awake.

“Thought you’d shake me that easily, tongari ?” he demands, voice rough with sleep. The way he says it, like he’s meant to stay by Vash’s side, confirms what Vash had already figured. Nicholas D. Wolfwood is here on an assignment. There’s only one person who would send someone with a gun heavier than a person to babysit Vash.

“What’re you doing up?” Vash asks the man Kni ves sent. He can’t be sure of the why, but he doesn’t need to be. Wolfwood is a good, caring, kind person; it’s in his eyes. He’s the kind of person that Rem and Kni would have liked, once, he thinks . He was hoping to spare him from the destruction, but if he’s here on orders, and especially if he’s here against his will as Vash suspects he is, then there’s no losing him.

“Don’t be dense,” Woflwood tells him, the one thing that Vash can’t afford to be . He stands with a groan, back and knees popping, and falls into step behind Vash as they leave.

Vash fears he may be losing his touch when Meryl pulls around with a still-snoring Roberto in the passenger seat, levels him with an unimpressed look, and orders them both to get in. He does without much protest while Wolfwood mocks him.

Perhaps, he thinks, as the town becomes a blur, then a dot, then nothing in the mirror, it’s for the best that they all leave. Then these three won’t hear of the PLANT that was miraculously healed and wonder at Vash’s disappearance.

When the suns rise the next morning, Vash’s eyes barely open to see it, Wolfwood leans across the back seat to grab a few strands of his hair.

“You need to re-bleach it, Spikey,” he says, voice teasing in a way that’s almost ill-intentioned. “You missed a few pieces.”

Vash bats away Wolfwood’s hand and pulls his hood up around his ears. Careful, he thinks. You’re too damn observant.

Rollo almost kills Vash in Windmill Village . Vash is half-tempted to let him. Wolfwood shooting Rollo nearly finishes the job, knocks the rest of the air out of Vash’ s burning lungs and saps the energy from his limbs. Rollo needed help, and Vash had promised it to him. Wolfwood, Vash thinks, is right. Vash is a liar. It’s another line in his list of misdeeds. He buries Rollo even though it doesn’t solve anything. He begs forgiveness even though there is no one to forgive him. He doesn’t eat even though it’s not nearly punishment enough.

Vash can’t look Wolfwood in the eye for days after. Wolfwood doesn’t bother trying to talk to him, either. In the next week, the y run across two more towns. Vash heals more PLANTS and is caught slipping out and his hair gets darker and no one mentions it again.

Vash tries to drop his three tag-alongs, or at the very least the reporters, but to no avail. Somehow, it’s like they’ve all tuned their sense to always be aware of where Vash is and what he’s doing. E very time Vash sneaks out, even if it’s in the dead of night and there’s no PLANT to slow down his escape, he’s caught up to within an ile of the town. Wolfwood usually hits him over the head for the trouble. Meryl tells him he better learn to drive because she’s getting tired of the all the nighttime excursions. Vash apologizes, tells them to leave him, but they only snort like they know something he doesn’t and stay stubbornly attached to his tail.

Eventually, finally, Roberto has had enough of his shit. Days and weeks and who knows how many healed PLANTS later, Roberto gets them to a sandstreamer with stern instructions for them to get on and him and Meryl to head back to their headquarters, wherever that is. Vash will miss them, but he l eaves without telling them as much .

“I thought you had something special,” Wolfwood says as they cross the bridge to board. He’s mocking Vash, but there’s an undercurrent of genuine interest there, too. Vash can’t tell him everything, can’t tell anyone everything.

“Nah, not really,” Vash says. It’s easier that way.

“Stone cold, Needle Noggin’,” Wolfwood laughs, truly surprised and a little amused. “Stone cold.”

Vash’s bleeding heart spills warmth down his body. He hopes there’s enough left to finish this.

Vash doesn’t know what possesses him to ask why Wolfwood is still following him. He knows. He doesn’t know if Wolfwood knows he knows, but he probably wouldn’t answer truthfully even if he did. Wolfwood tells him someone has to beat up his bullies, since Vash won’t do it himself. Vash wants to grab his shoulders, wants to shake him wildly until whatever got knocked out of place in his brain gets knocked right back and yell at him, tell him that he is a child and he should not be here and that Vash wants to save him, too, and why, why do these things always happen to the people around Vash?

Then Wolfwood’s actual brother, Livio, appears from nowhere with a score to settle on someone else’s behalf. He can tell the fight tears Wolfwood to shreds. Vash doesn’t know what to do when the Bad Lads Gang join the fight, when the ship’s guards won’t just get out of the way, when Livio puts his gun to his own head and Wolfwood screams in the way people who are dying do.

They hold up the ion canon and Vash feels every crack that splinters down his arm. It is a symphony of agonies th at tear into him. While he doesn’t like it, Vash has known pain to accompany him through every major decision he makes, and so he deals with the material of his arm quite literally shattering with the poise he always does. Woflwood, as annoyingly observant as he is, does not even think to ask if Vash is injured. It’s a small comfort.

The orphanage Wolfwood grew up at is still on the path to annihilation, though, and finally Vash knows exactly what to do. He sends Wolfwood with all his strength and healing to take care of the e ngine room and takes himself to the PLANT room. The PLANT there is fine, she’s healthy and strong and Vash doesn’t want to ask this of her, but he has to. There are more lives at stake than just his, than just Woflwood’s, than just the sandstreamer.

He presses his hands and head to the glass. His sister comes to him. Please, he asks her. The sandstreamer is so large that despite her health, it takes their combined strength to bring the behemouth to a grinding, shaking halt. The orphanage has to be saved, Vash believes. Before he can feel rightfully, fully relieved at this, though, the door to the PLANT room opens. Vash turns.

Glowing blue lines and feathered wings, Vash faces off with Wolfwood, Meryl, and Roberto’s horrified expressions. Glowing blue lines and feathered wings and all that he is, Vash collapses to the ground and he doesn’t know anything else for a lon g while.

Vash wakes up and his surrounding are not a surprise. The white walls of his childhood bedroom are a long-known comfort around him. His blankets and pictures. All the things that Vash only has when he comes back here, the comforts of a home that he cannot lay claim to.

Then there’s Brad and Luida, Wolfwood and Meryl and Roberto. Brad works on his arm and Woflwood berates him and as Luida is coaxing Meryl and Roberto out to see the garden, Meryl pauses.

“Your hair…” Meryl says slowly. She squints at Vash. “ Did you dye it ?”

“Oh, yeah, that,” Vash says. He goes to rub the back of his neck, but is stopped when Brad hits him for moving his arm. “Ow!” His dramatics and flailing are enough that Meryl either deems the question unimportant or forgets she asked altogether because she leaves, hands thrown in the air. Wolfwood, on the other hand, watches him with a patience that Vash has not known him to possess. And with the acute observation that Vash has spent all this time trying to hide from.

Wolfwood sees more than he should. He notices when Vash avoids his eyes. Vash doesn’t know whether it’s disregard, apathy, or kindness that has spared him from questioning. Or if Wolfwood sees even more than Vash thought.

Brad fixes his arm. It might as well be routine maintenance with how frequently Vash breaks the thing. Still, Brad has never refused him. Vash doesn’t watch because he knows most of the mechanics himself. He’s had to learn, with years often creating a gaping void between visits to this home . Wolfwood ignores them both stubbornly as Brad works, and sensing the tension, Brad uncharacteristically leaves as soon as his work is done.

Leaving Vash to the mercy of Wolfwood.

They aren’t left to stew for long, though. No, Wolfwood only has the time to ask, as though he already knows the answer, if Vash can feel sensations in his prosthetic arm. And to roll his eyes and accuse Vash of having even more of deathwish than he thought. Vash is spared having to find an answer to that that doesn’t make him even more of the liar Wolfwood already knows he is by Luida. She bursts into the room out of breath and disheveled, Brad at her side and unruffled. She tells them the news. Someone has struck. Kni ves now has Meryl and Roberto.

They’re on Tomases within minutes, riding harder than Vash has since that day he went after Kni ves alone and lost his arm for it.

The fear crystallizes in Vash’s chest. He’s only aware enough of Wolfwood behind him to know if he falls. He thinks about all of the things Kni ves has done. He thinks about how there’s nothing Kni ves wouldn’t do, if it meant protecting Vash. What he’d do to the humans he once dreamed of if he thought they were stealing Vash away from him.

Here’s the thing, the crux, the issue, the tragedy that both consumes and creates Kni and Vash as they are: devotion. Utter, irrevocable, unconditional love. They are brothers, they are twins, they are the only ones like them. They are two sides of one lonely, lonely coin.

(JuLai is falling to pieces around Vash and Wolfwood. Vash takes a shot that he could’ve dodged because what else was there? What else could he offer these people, suffering and terrified as they are? It does not stop the itch.)

When they were kids, Vash didn’t really care about humans; not the way he does now. Sure, they were alive and for that he wouldn’t have done anything to harm them, but they were hardly his priority. Vash was curious b ut completely content with just Kni and Rem by his side.

Kni, though, had not felt the same. In a way, Kni had fallen in love with the humans that slept so soundly around them. He wanted to know them, to live among them, to befriend them. He dreamed of their favorite colors and foods. He dreamed of the games they could play and the stories about their trip through space he could tell. He had loved all of humanity in such an all-consuming way that it had defined him.

A century later, and maybe that all-consuming love was the only thing about Kni that hadn’t changed, even if the target of it was different.

Tessla changed it all. Before that, Kni was an intelligent dreamer, who believed so hard and wanted a future of happiness and companionship more than anything else in the universe. Vash had been the protector, holding his brother up when things got hard and making sure they were still safe, even when everything was falling to pieces around them. And then, suddenly, Tessla. And Tessla was a horror of horrors, was the end and the beginning, was the explanation and the crime. Tessla was the culmination of hope that tore dreams to shreds.

Vash held Kni through the horror of Tessla, but no matter how hard he tried, he could not hold Kni together. Kni changed. Kni saw the unforgivable acts humans committed and decided the only person he would ever need was Vash. He decided the only ones who deserved to live were Vash and the other PLANTs. He gave up on his dreams.

Vash had not had grand ambitions before Kni had lost his. Kni had held the dreams and ambitions for both of them, and Vash followed him with a smile, ready to do whatever he could. But Kni cast aside those dreams and changed—so harshly that the wall he built around his heart not even Vash could find a spot inside.

When Rem died and Kni ves admitted to their his actions, Vash felt as though both Rem and Kni had died in the Fall. Vash’s entire world came crumbling down then, and in the chaos and depression that followed, there was no answer to his miseries. Vash was alone, his family dead. He was alone, in a way that echoing, hollow ship had never felt.

Then he healed the first of his sisters. And Vash realized the only thing he could do was keep his family alive in himself. Rem preached kindness and understanding, empathy and most importantly to never kill. Kni believed in friendship and family, humanity and optimism. Vash swore he would understand and protect and befriend. Vash swore he would believe in a future where good things happened, where peace and love were attained and it was not a miracle but a simple fact of life. Vash swore he would never kill. Vash swore that whatever it took, he would find a way to bring Kni back.

A century and a half later, and Vash was no closer to finding the child Kni had been than he was when Kni ves called him a co-conspirator and Vash had abandoned his own brother to a desert world of fire and death.

A century and a half later, and Vash had embodied the core beliefs of Rem and Kni for so long he wasn’t sure what he once believed. If he’d believed. If he’d cared at all. He thinks maybe he did, but then he hears Kni’s voice talking to him about cowboys and friends and community, hears Rem’s voice telling him about the red geraniums in the garden and the pain of loss and love, and he doesn’t know. He supposes it doesn’t matter. Rem is dead. Vash never got to say goodbye. Kni lost the core of himself. Vash ran from him.

Vash has been dodging farewells and running longer than he hasn’t been. It’s habit, to run and to not tell anyone he’s going. This time, Vash makes no apologies. He runs toward Kni ves because running is all he knows. He does not say good-bye because this is one parting Vash refuses to make again.

Wolfwood asks him, in the sewers of JuLai, why. Why he goes so easily, why he would allow Wolfwood to ferry him to this sentence. Vash smiles. He wants to help, Vash says. He wants to save. To him, those core tenants are everything. Vash sees the words hit Wolfwood like physical blows to his body. They continue on, arriving to the tower just in time to save Meryl and Roberto from Elendira’s assault. Vash expects Woflwood to leave once the reporters are safely on the elevator to leave. He stays by Vash’s side. Vash raises an eyebrow at him. Why would he want to come this far? There’s no need to put him Knives’s line of fire. Wolfwood shrugs.

“You’ll find a way to get shot between here and that room, if I know you at all,” Wolfwood says. He motions Vash ahead of him. “I’ll watch your back til the end, Needle Noggin’.” Vash chokes on a laugh, swallows the tears. Wolfwood is a kind, caring person. Vash has seen that in his eyes since he stopped looking like a dead bug when he’d been run over. The orphanage is lucky to have him, Vash thinks. Lucky that someone as strong and loyal and kind as Wolfwood is watching over them all so protectively.

Wolfwood’s presence makes Vash drag his feet a little more than he might have otherwise. If he notices that, he’s even kind enough not to comment. Vash wonders, absently, if he will have the opportunity to have just one more donut. He doubts it. He’ll make sure that that is Wolfwood’s first order of business, when this is over. To have a donut on his behalf.

“Hey, Wolfwood,” he starts, but then he hears the music. Nothing has ever sounded more beautiful to Vash than a piano. He loves them, the sounds, the keys. They’re the only instrument he knows of that two people can play simultaneously. To play accompaniment to his brother when they were children was a thrill. They both fit on the bench so comfortably, like it had been made for the two of them together.

Now, however, both parts are drifting from the chamber he’s stalling going into. Knives, he knows, will be playing by himself. Perhaps this means he doesn’t need Vash. Perhaps it means he doesn’t want Vash. Vash wants to sit beside him. Wants to touch the keys for himself. Wants to take the melody into his own hands and shape it into something that eases the itch that starts up under his skin. Knives needs help. This may be the only way he knows how to ask. Vash has not known how to help Knives for a century. The itch turns to a burn. Vash goes in.

Knives does not turn when Vash and Wolfwood enter. Wolfwood immediately curses under his breath. There, looming over the lone player at the piano, is a statue-esque PLANT. Vash knows that it is no statue.

“This is one of our sisters,” Knives says. Vash barely hears him, “from back then. I keep her here as a warning to myself.”

Vash takes another step. His legs feel like jelly. His arm aches. He fights the urge to hold his prosthetic protectively to his stomach. This is his brother. Knives, no matter how poorly he goes about it, only wants to protect the two of them and all of their many sisters. He would not hurt Vash.

“Humans don’t exploit us because they want to,” Vash pleads. He and Knives, they are one and the same. Two sides of the same lonely coin. He knows him as well as he knows himself, and he knows Knives can remember being children, can remember telling Vash of the future they would have when all of the humans on the ship woke up.

“Why did you come all the way out here?” Knives asks. He knows the answer. Vash pauses before he answers. He wonders if Rem can see them from wherever she is now. He wonders if he’s done her proud, in the only way he’s learned how. He wonders how soon he’ll be seeing her. He wonders, in the quiet, aching way that Vash has wondered after her and Kni both for too many decades, if he’s done enough that he’ll be forgiven when he sees her again. I’m trying, he promises again. Kni means well. He’s just scared. I’m scared. I’ll make up for it. Please forgive us, Rem. Please. He does not know if Rem can hear him, does not wonder. He adds the silent prayer to the list of things he’ll tell her when he sees her somewhere out in the cosmos and hope it is enough.

Finally, Vash tries to answer. “To take-”

Vash hears her before she comes in. Meryl is back. The scent of cigarettes clings to her more than it usually does. The door bangs when she pushes through it.

“Roberto is dead,” she says, red eyes focused in on Knives. Vash freezes. Wolfwood curses again. Kni snarls, all of that frustration finally surfacing. Meryl points the derringer that is not hers at Knives with unerring accuracy and intent. “I’m going to kill you for this.”

Knives spins on the bench, hands ripping away from the keys so quickly that they clang. Vash winces, taking a step toward Meryl. He needs to get between them, he can’t let either of them die.

“You pathetic human,” Knives spits. Disdain and acid drip from his words. Vash only wants to fix things, why does it always- “You cannot kill me with that-”

His eyes finally land on Vash. His jaw freezes, partially open, words drying up. Those eyes that are twin to Vash’s own widen in fear, in horror. This, Vash knows, is the same expression he made when they discovered Tessla. Horror of horrors uncovered once again. This time, Vash cannot try to hide his brother from it. Kni takes an uneven, staggering step toward him, hand out-stretched as though to grab him.

“Vash,” he says, voice hoarse. “What have you done?”

“I haven’t seen you in over a century,” Vash says quietly, the barest edge of humor in his voice. This isn’t funny, maybe nothing ever will be again. “You didn’t expect me not to change at all, did you? Why? Don’t like the new look?” Vash runs a hand into his hair, now more than half dark.

“You’re-”

“Here,” Vash says. “I’m right here. You know what I’ve been doing. I know what you’ve been doing.” Vash motions to not only the PLANT, looming dead over them, but also to Wolfwood, standing strange and silent behind. “What are you going to do about it now?”

“I am going to save you,” Knives says. He always says this. He only wants to save Vash. Vash, however, has learned a lesson in his century and a half of helping people on this planet. A lesson his brother likely doesn’t know, because he has never tried to help anyone who has autonomy and desires.

“I don’t want to be saved,” Vash says. “I chose this.”

“You don’t get to do that,” Kni says. His voice is beginning to shake with new rage. And for once in his life, it makes Vash angry, too. His brother know s him a s well as he has ever known himself, and he knows to live a life in a cage would be an eternity of torture for a wanderer like Vash.

“You don’t get to choose, Kni.” Vash offers one hand. “Come home. Please.”

“No,” Kni says.

“Please.”

“No!”

“Kni-”

“NO!” Kni roars it with all the loneliness he’s collected over their century and a half of chasing someone he would never catch.

“Please.” Vash whispers it with all the loneliness he’s collected over their century and a half of running from someone he would never escape. He falls to his knees. He begs.

“I will save you,” Kni says. He comes close enough to grab Vash’s face, to try to hide Vash’s dark hair from himself with his hands. “I will save you, Vash, I swear it, I will.”

There’s an itch. It crawls up from Vash’s knees against the floor all the way to his chest and his hands and his eyes. Kni has never looked so agonized. Kni has never looked so hurt and Vash itches to help him.

“ It’s okay,” Vash says. “The world is made of love and peace. It’s going to be okay, Kni. Because I don’t want to be saved, but you do.”

Vash gives Kni everything he has left. All of his life force thrust upon his brother, all of his love and his ambitions and his passion and his compassion. All of Rem’s beliefs and all of Kni’s own idealism. Vash wraps it all in his life force and gives it back to Kni. His brother knows him as well as he knows himself. His brother tries to run, tries to save Vash from himself. But Vash knows Kni better than he knows himself, and his hands have already trapped Kni’s against his face. Vash is tired. Vash has been tired for a very long time. He cannot do this anymore. He wants good things for the humans, and for his brother, and he loves them all so very much. But he has given almost everything he is for them, and he is tired. This is his last chance to save them all. Vash does not want to be saved. Kni wants, desperately, to not be alone anymore. He wants to be saved.

Kni finally severs their connection just as Vash feels the last of his hair go dark. It’s strange. He’s never actually felt it happen before. Oh. This might be dying.

Vash collapses to his side while Kni screams. Wolfwood and Meryl are there, leaning over him, begging to help him. He smiles, because he is tired and he loves them.

“Take care of him, okay?” Vash says. Kni just doesn’t want to be alone anymore. He wants to be safe. “Love and-and peace, okay?”

It’s true, Vash thinks. God, it might be the truest thing he’s ever said. The world is made of love and peace. It has to be true, because Kni crashed those ships and set all these people to live these lives out of love for Vash. Because Vash has gone from town to town, helping and smiling and trying to save them all for peace. Because Vash and Kni together made this whole world, and everything they have done has either been for love or for peace. The world is made of love and peace, Vash and his brother made sure of that.

Things go dark around Vash. The sounds begin to tunnel away from him. Or maybe he’s tunneling away from them. Vash doesn’t think he’s moving, but what does he know? He’s given everything he has to a desperate chance. Everything else is left to Wolfwood, and Meryl, and Kni to figure out together. Vash is leaving. So maybe he is moving.

The itch never abates. Kni screams that Vash died for him. Wolfwood cries over his face. Meryl tries to make him breathe. That itch to help, to save, it doesn’t stop. Vash wants to save them all. He thinks he did. He hopes it will be enough.