Archive of Our Own

Luida

In the wake of what Luida is calling the “arm incident” Vash isolates himself. She’s watching years worth of carefully maintained trust and care shatter in one fell swoop. The boy, once happy, talkative and hyper is now a solemn thing that prefers spending time in bed or curled in the Thomas stables. Luida sighs as she peers through the glass door into the stables where their birds have all migrated to the little crater Vash has carved out for himself. He lies in a ball of red fabric in synthetic straw, back against his favorite of the flock. Wendy is the Thomas Vash has ridden for a few years, she’s as protective of and loyal to Vash as he is to her. Even now she has her neck curled around Vash’s shoulders. 

The tray of food that Luida left for the boy is where she left it outside; it’s still full. She has another in her hands as if she didn’t know the tray would be untouched. Still, because she loves to dance with insanity, she swaps out the trays and walks into the room. 

“Vash,” Luida murmurs as she kneels next to his sleeping form. 

The bird rustle around her, making displeased sounds. She pushes them back gently, enamored by their care for her boy. She reaches out, brushes back Vash’s hair. It’s dirty, caught with straw and feathers, greasy from days of being unwashed. Brad had helped the boy shower in those first few days when he was fighting fever and fear, and now that he is somewhat able to complete the task alone, it’s been neglected. Luida frowns gently at him, leans down to press a soft kiss to his forehead. Guilt and love and fear and relief are a roiling ball of contention in her. Vash’s gaunt face, dirty hair, the way his brows are knit in exhaustion, the stump, wrapped in dressings that are still bloody, are all results of Luida’s failure. 

“Vash,” Luida murmurs again, shaking him gently. 

His eyelids flutter as his eyes peel open like it takes a monumental amount of effort. Vash’s eyes are hazy and unfocused, the bright blue that had come back to life after the Great Fall has been smudged over with pain. Again. 

“Re–Luida,” Vash slurs with sleep. “What is it?”

“We need to look at your arm,” Luida says, her voice soft and a smile pulling up the corners of her mouth. 

“Hmn. Do you have to?”

“Absolutely.” Luida stands up, helping Vash to his feet. “Say bye to the birds.”

“Bye birds,” Vash parrots.

He’s disoriented enough that he leans against Luida, sighing heavily against her neck. He’s been on pain meds. Heavy ones that make his depression naps almost coma like. Luida hopes that maybe when he’s off them, her Vash will return in some capacity. Luida makes a soft sound at him and helps him through the room and out into the hall. The med bay has carved out a space specially for Vash, the different needs of his body and the extensive care he needed after the forced amputation. 

They sway down the hall, Vash silent, casting weird shadows of smiles at people they pass by. Not that Luida is any better. She grimaces at her fellow shipmates as they glance at her in sympathy. Everyone knows that Vash has changed, and God who wouldn’t be changed, and after tip-toeing around him they now glance at Brad and Luida in sympathy when it comes to their drugged up, depressed kid. 

“Luida,” Vash whispers.

“Yeah, Vash?”

“I want to go back to the birds.”

Luida winces. They pause at the elevator that’ll take them up to the med bay. She presses the button and watches as the lights above the white door flick down. Oh it’s all the way at the top of the ship. Just their luck. 

“Sorry, kiddo,” Luida says. “We have to make sure your arm is doing okay.”

“The arm is gone,” Vash says.

“It is,” Luida says, carefully. “We need to make sure you’re doing okay.”

“I want to go back to Wendy.”

“Vash,” Luida sighs, “how about after your appointment and a meal, you can go back to Wendy.”

Vash’s face scrunches up. “I’m not hungry.”

That doesn’t matter, but Luida doesn’t say it out right. Vash’s habits of just not eating, are highly concerning, and the doctor’s had given Luida one more chance to get Vash to eat by himself before more drastic measures would have to be taken to get the boy fed. She’s not fond of threatening Vash, even if it’s for his own good, so she hasn’t even mentioned medical intervention to get him to eat. 

“You haven’t eaten in a long time,” Luida hums. 

The elevator finally arrives. The doors slide open and to Luida's displeasure there are a few scientists from deck fifteen inside. They’re in the white and teal colors of the biochemists that introduce new species into the flora room. They smile strained things at Luida and shuffle into the corners as she and Vash enter. Vash ducks his head down, smiles at Christophersen who waves at him. 

“How are you Vash?” Christophersen asks. 

“Fine,” Vash says in the most not–fine tone Luida has ever heard. 

“Good,” Christophersen says. He sends a look at Luida, as if she doesn’t know. 

Vash sways a little where he stands. Luida helps him lean against the wall. He presses his face against the cold metal, sighing long and a little dramatic. He gazes blurry eyes up at Christophersen. 

“How are the–” He swallows and licks his lips. “Uh, the tadpoles?”

“Oh!”

The rest of the ride to medical is full of tales of the little colony of tadpoles that the scientists are raising. Luida isn’t sure how much Vash actually comprehends, but he holds Christophersen’s data tablet with images of the budding creatures, gazing at it with big eyes. Luida gets the name of the other scientist, a red haired man she’s never met, and their service numbers so she can personally thank them for offering the kid some comfort and normalcy even if it was just for a little while. 

Luida stays by the door in Vash’s little corner of the med ward as the doctors unwrap the stump to look at the flesh. It’s deeply bruised, and the tear where stitches had cinched up the flesh, is going to scar. Badly. The doctors speak quietly to Vash, ask him general questions and then pry a little deeper when he answers them with little resistance. Eventually Sally Mae comes to speak quietly with Luida.

“Well, he seems willing to heal, which is good, I was a little concerned he’d just give up.” She swipes at her tablet, nibbles her mouth. “His body is performing reconstruction.”

Luida’s brows rise. “Like…regrowing the arm? Is that possible?”

“I’m not sure,” Sally Mae admits. “I don’t think so, but it is interesting that it’s trying. We know that Plants can grow things off themselves, so maybe limb regrowth is a regular occurrence.”

Luida looks around Sally Mae’s shoulder at Vash. The other doctor has moved away to the sink and Vash sits pathetically on the bed, blinking dopey eyes at the floor. 

“You haven’t mentioned this to Vash have you?”

“Oh god no,” Sally Mae murmurs. “I highly doubt his body will regenerate the limb, no use giving him a false sense of hope. What it might do, and why I’m telling you, is create obstructive bone mass that can turn detrimental rapidly. We’ll keep an eye on it.”

“Send me any notes,” Luida says. 

“Will do. Now. His appetite.”

The cafeteria is empty as Luida and Vash make their way to a back table, away from the whirring cleaning apparatuses that whir up and down the floor until it shines. Vash slumps into a seat, then across the table. 

“Okay, kiddo, here’s what we’re going to do. You’re going to tell me one thing you will at least eat half of,” Luida says.

“Luida, I’m not–”

“Vash, one thing. Now.” Luida takes a calming breath. “Please.”

Vash winces, licks his dry lips and turns to the menu tablet embedded into the table. He scrolls through it, gnawing on his mouth, looking nauseous. The tightness to his expression, the way he’s going to chew blood out of his bottom lip is almost enough for Luida to let him off with a glass of water. He needs food though. Something, anything.

“This.”

Vash has stopped on a breakfast dish. Eggs poached in their equivalent of milk, far more watery than the milk that Luida remembers from her first few years on the ship when they still had stock from Earth. One ship had a herd of cattle, they all died years before The Fall.  

“That looks good,” Luida encourages. “Go ahead and order it, add anything you want and I’ll go get it.”

Vash orders one, not bad, Thomas eggs aren’t small, and he adds a slice of tomato. Those are new accomplishments in the green houses. Vash hits send and Luida gets up to go and get it at the plating station across the room. Vash slumps against the table and Luida tries not to let it stress her out more than it already is. Brad sends her a message as she’s waiting for the bowl to come down the line. 

Kid good?

Kid eating, so probably not, Luida sends back. 

Hey, that's progress. What did the docs say?

He’s healing fine but they’re slightly worried about his body trying to regrow the limb.

The bowl rattles to a stop of the conveyor built in front of Luida. She grabs a spoon from the silverware stand and balances the tablet and bowl as she walks back to the table. She can see Brad starting and stopping to reply. 

“Here go,” Luida says. She slides the food to Vash. “Ah, let me get you water. Or do you want something else?”

They have electrolyte drinks that are sweet and salty and Vash had grown a liking to them on his long rides between ships. He sits up now, blinking lethargically down at the egg.

“Nah,” Vash mumbles. “I’m good.”

Luida doesn’t push. 

He can DO that????

Eh maybe, the doctor said it's unlikely but they’re afraid his body might be trying and it’ll create dangerous bone mass at the stump.

Huh. Well. When he’s not so droopy later I’ll talk prosthetics with him. 

“Luida.”

She looks up at Vash. He has split the egg with his spoon, but it doesn’t look like he’s actually eaten any of it. 

“Yeah?”

“Where is the gun?”

“What?”

Vash swallows, runs the edge of his thumbnail–overgrown and a little dirty–along the handle of the spoon. 

“The gun that N–Knives gave me.”

“Oh, uhm. I think it’s been put in a safe room. Why?”

Vash’s hazy eyes flick up to meet Luida’s. There is something in them. Hurt and exhaustion but also something that makes the blue burn. 

“I’d like it.”

“Vash, what for?”

“I need to learn to use it. Properly.”

She considers him. Her gut instinct is to shoot down the idea immediately. Vash is a Plant engineer, a healer, he doesn’t look good covered in blood or wielding weapons. She doesn’t think it's in his nature. She doesn’t say any of this, because it’s not in Vash’s nature, but the planet is dangerous, and his brother is dangerous and Vash is tender enough to be ripped to pieces by it if he has no way to defend himself. There are spaces on the ship for him to safely practice using the weapon if they can extract it from wherever Brad had taken it after Luida had shoved it at him, sticky with blood after Vash was taken into surgery. 

“Finish your egg and we’ll see what we can do.”

Brad comes to see Vash that evening. He gives Luida a hard look when he steps into the room after she lets him in. Vash is asleep after another dose of pain medication. Luida sinks down into her chair, picking her tablet back up.

“Don’t look at me like that.”

“You’re paranoid,” Brad says as he crosses the room to look closely at Vash’s sleeping face and pull the blankets up around him more snugly.

“And you’re coddling him,” Luida sighs. She scrubs her eyes. 

“We both suck then,” Brad murmurs. He leans against Vash’s picture wall. “Did he eat?”

“He did,” Luida says. “And he kept it down. Exciting.”

Brad scoffs, but some of the tension in his brows evaporates. Luida puts aside her tablet, the words on the screen had blurred out a while ago anyways. 

“Brad, what happened to the gun I gave you?”

“The gun you brought back?”

“Yes.”

“I turned it into the armory. It's the same model as some of our guns. Why?”

Luida blows out a breath. “The kid, he wants to learn to use it.”

“No.” Brad barks a laugh. “Are you kidding me? The kickback alone would snap his twig arm.”

“I don’t think it's a bad idea,” Luida argues.

“Was it your idea?” Brad asks, his eyes go sharp.

“No, of course not. He brought it up.”

Both of them turn to look at Vash. His back is to the room, curled on his side, still in his coat, which from the proximity he and Luida shared, is in dire need of a wash. Tufts of blond hair stick up over his pale blanket.  He looks so young. He is young. Only seventeen, for a few more weeks at least. 

“He doesn’t need to learn how to use a gun, especially not one his psychopath brother forced on him,” Brad says. 

“I don’t think it’s a bad idea,” Luida says again. “And it might be him trying to find some control over the situation.”

Brad frowns deeply. “Who’s going to teach him?”

“I…was hoping you had some experience.”

“Why would I have any experience with guns?”

“I don’t know! I just thought you would. I don’t.”

Vash shifts under his covers, curling tighter into himself and forcing their voices lower. 

“We’ll find someone to help him out,” Luida says. “I’m sure one of the guards can show him how to use it.”

“I still think this is a terrible idea,”Brad whispers. 

Luida sighs. She stands up, gathering her tablet. “Well I think at the end of the day it’s up to him. Besides, he needs something to do, and maybe I’d feel better knowing that one of you knows how to use a weapon when you’re traveling.” 

“There’s no one out there,” Brad says. 

“There is now.” Luida smiles sadly at Vash. “I need to go meet with the Plant team. Don’t wake him up.”

Brad takes the vacated chair. 

Slowly, but steadily, Vash starts to eat more. He’s still a little loopy and out of it most days and Luida didn’t realize just how out of it he was until he came to her, panicky because he can feel the pain of a Plant a week's ride  away. He’s shaking as Luida pulls up the map and a spotty line of communication between the ships. He’s not strong enough to travel yet, he doesn’t know the new way his body moves well enough to stay on a Thomas. It's painful, watching Vash have to grit his teeth through her agony, arm wrapped around his stomach, his markings flaring, muttering half baked assurances. He doesn’t leave the Plant room for hours that day. Luida brings him a blanket, letting him stay pressed against a Plant bulb in the hands of his worried sisters. 

Slowly, but steadily, Vash is taken off the heavy pain meds, Brad measures him for a prosthetic, and he starts physical therapy. It unlocks another layer of Vash’s moods. He’s snappish and easily annoyed during sessions and then quiet and apologetic afterwards sitting in the cafeteria eating. 

Vash turns eighteen on a day of raging sand storms that threaten the fractured integrity of the ships. The lights flicker, the water runs in thin streams and the occasional alarm will sound. Maintenance and Plant teams are on constant standby but Brad and Luida had managed to get away long enough to make a cake the night before. In the morning, walking through swaying halls they bring it to Vash’s room. He’s never been one for big birthday celebrations and Luida is cautious of the way he’ll react to acknowledgement of his birthday this year. Brad had hunted down the gun, he has it now, not wrapped because that’s a bit macabre, but they both agreed that now is a good time to offer him the weapon. 

“Oh,” Vash startles when he opens his door. 

He’s a little sleep mussed, dressed for the day and carrying a toothbrush. Luida holds up the cake. 

“Happy birthday Vash!”

“Ah, thanks,” Vash says. He hesitates before stepping back and out of the door. 

Luida shoves the cake at Brad when they’ve shuffled into Vash’s room and grabs the kid in a hug. He hugs her back awkwardly, patting her while trying not to catch his toothbrush against her clothing. Luida steps away, putting her hands on Vash’s shoulders so she can look at his face properly. He needs a haircut, needs something to kick his sleeping back into routine, something to take the distance out of his eyes and put meat back on his bones. Vash smiles at her, laughs when she reaches up to squeeze his cheeks. 

“You’re so grown up,” Luida coos. “Do you feel grown?”

“Ha, ha, I suppose?” Vash says, then laughs louder when Brad rubs a hand into the top of his head. “Okay, okay, enough!”

Vash ducks away from them, grinning slowly as he puts his toothbrush on a shelf and looks over the cake. It’s simple and a little messy, half packaged cookie mix, half packaged cake mix that was a month expired. They’d managed to frost the thing in a pale green color, Vash’s name written in loopy, drippy shapes. They’d stuck a few candles on the top. Nowhere near eighteen, but enough to light and blow out. 

“Thanks guys,” Vash says. “I think I have plates and forks.”

Brad nudges Luida when Vash has stepped into his tiny storage closet in search of eating ware. He lifts the weapon and Luida waves him down. They’ll give it to him after they’ve had cake. Vash emerges victorious.

“So,” Vash says through a bite of cake, “when am I allowed to leave again?”

“Soon probably,” Brad says. 

“As soon as you’re able to function with your prosthetic,” Luida reminds. “Helping the Plants already takes a lot out of you, we want to make sure you’re in the best shape you can be.”

Vash swallows thickly around his bite. He twists his fork between his fingers. “I think I can handle it without an arm.”

“No negotiation this time,” Luida says firmly.

“Yeah but–”

“Vash.”

Vash frowns hard. He puts his fork down. “Okay.”

Brad glares at Luida; she glares right back at him, she will not be budged on this. 

“It won’t be long, kid,” Brad assures. “The arm just needs a little bit more tuning. Gotta make sure the nerves aren’t going to crap out on you.”

“Yeah but then I have to do more PT,” Vash mutters. He yanks on his bangs, “stupid fucking–”

“Vash,” Luida sighs. “I’m so sorry you’re still going through this.”

“It’s not your fault,” Vash winces, “just Nai.”

Vash chokes on the name, his hand flinching on the table. He stares at the cake, the candles starting to melt down the sides of oozing frosting. The V in Vash’s name is nothing more than a few pitiful lines. There’s guilt on Vash’s face, guilt and a deep creasing emotion that Luida can’t name. In a not so deep part of herself Luida is furious at Nai, Knives. It’s fury that, shamefully, is overcast by an all consuming fear. Fear that she hasn’t been able to shake since the confrontation. It’s a selfish fear for herself as much as it is a broad sweeping thing she can’t control for Vash and whatever poor human finds their end by Nai’s blades. And now, she wishes that Vash would talk to her about it. She doesn’t think there needs to be any guilt on Vash’s face, not over cake, not on his birthday. 

“Uh,” Brad clears his throat. “We have something for you, Vash. If you don’t want it I’ll take it back no problem.”

Vash’s eyes hop up to Brad’s face. “I’m sure I’ll like it.”

The gun is set on the table. Vash’s eyes bug out as he reaches forward to touch it. 

“Did we fuck up with this, kid?”

“Brad!”

“N-no,” Vash rasps. “Uh. Thanks, I didn’t think you’d let me have it again.”

Luida slumps a little in her seat. Vash takes the gun into his hand, balancing it against his stump so he can get a good grip on it. It’s a heavy weapon and it looks out of place in Vash’s thin hand. He turns it, looking over the barrel, his eyes lingering on the very end like he’s expecting something to be there.

“It’s a twenty two,” Brad says, “not the highest or most powerful caliber.”

“That’s okay,” Vash says. “I don’t want to kill anyone. Ever. Not again.”

Brad claps him on the shoulder. “We’ll find someone to help you learn to use it.”

“Thanks,” Vash says.

The gun is placed to the side and Vash turns back to his cake. Luida thinks that she loses something here.

Brad

Because turning eighteen is a big deal Brad packs overnight bags and two Thomases and takes Vash out to the bones of a city rising from the red dunes of the desert. He’s as worried about the kid as Luida is, and the gun, bulky thing, strapped to Vash’s thigh makes something gross curl in the pit of his stomach. He’d fit the boy with version one of the working prosthetic a few days after Vash’s birthday. It’s been functioning fine so far, and Vash seems to have taken to the new weight quickly. They’ll see how it holds up in the sand.

“You’re quiet kid,” Brad says as they crest a dune. “Normally I’d be begging you to shut up at this point. What’s going on?”

“Nothing,” Vash says.

He’s sunburned, but refused to pull his hood up. The freckles that bloom across his skin in the sun have been taken over by red. Brad reaches over and yanks the hood up, then punches a light fist into Vash’s shoulder. Vash grins at him, almost that goofy smile he hands out so easily.

“Nothing you say, but you haven’t said anything in a couple iles.”

Vash shifts in his saddle, looking out over the vast emptiness of the desert.

“I guess I’m just happy to be back in the sunlight,” Vash says. “I’ve missed it.”

“You look a little pink.”

Vash shrugs. “I don’t mind.”

Brad pulls his reins to the side, directing his bird—an ill tempered rooster—to head south. Luida had all but begged him not to offer the trip to Vash. She didn’t want him outside, or worried about the Plants strewn across the desert, and was convinced that Vash’s crazy twin would drop from the sky and finish what he started. But the desert is as silent and dead as it usually is. Heat lines waver the illusion of water for iles and the only signs of life are the occasional drag paths from scavengers. Brad thinks Vash needed this though. He’s a kid, hurt and traumatized, but still a kid. One that had been working almost none stop for a few years and is fuelled by a constant twitch to move. Brad knows Vash well enough, and is at least holds some emotional awareness, to understand that Vash bases his worth to live on doing. So Brad will let him do, just a little, just enough.

“This planet is terrible, isn’t it?” Vash’s voice takes Brad out of his thoughts.

The kid is sulking as the birds trot down one dune and up another and another and—

“Eh, it’s not great,” Brad says, “but we got lucky that the atmosphere is breathable. We’d be completely fucked if we’d ended up on a planet like Jupiter.”

“Gas giant,” Vash mumbles.

“Completely uninhabitable. This place is like Mars, better than Mars if I had to admit it.”

Vash considers this, chewing at his bottom lip. “Rem told me that the people from Earth were trying to live on Mars.”

“We were,” Brad says. “Mars was supposed to be our savior, but I guess we screwed that up too.”

“Do you think—” Vash stops, clears his throat. “Never mind.”

“No, say it. Do I think what?”

“Well, do you think this planet will end up like Earth?” Vash gestures around at the sand.

That’s a great question that Brad doesn’t think he has an answer for. He’s a man of science and he thinks that maybe there is a more theological answer to that question. He’d never say that out loud, but surviving the fall and finding Vash has made Brad believe that there is something out there. And he’s pretty sure it’s the Plants, true providers.

“I think,” Brad says, “that humans are some of the most destructive creatures to exist, the possibility is always there. As we start to understand the planet more we will also understand how we can and are breaking it.”

Brad turns to grin at Vash.

“But I’m going to be honest with you. I don’t think there are enough humans right now to end the planet. If anything the planet is going to kill us first.”

“That’s…yeah,” Vash says. “That’s true. Sad though.”

“Yeah,” Brad says. “Why are you asking?”

“I don’t know, you’re the one who wanted me to talk.”

“Not about the rapid death rate of humanity,” Brad laughs.

Vash squints at him, but a little smile is ticking up his mouth. He pets his Thomas, threading his fingers through the feathers at the back of her neck.

“What do you want to eat when we get there?” Brad asks.

“Uh, I dunno. Will the food be different than the food at Home?”

“Maybe worse, maybe better, I’ve heard good things about the development of the city.”

“Can we try a few things?”

“Sure,” Brad says.

They’ve named the city July because humans are nothing if not painfully unoriginal. It’s more than bones when he and Vash ride into town. They have a few functioning Plants, lined up at the back of the city, towering over the construction of tall buildings, bulbs half covered by massive canvas tarps. Vash stares at them with wide eyes and a mouth tilting open. Brad watches him out of the corner of his eye to make sure the kid doesn’t start glowing.

“You good?” Brad asks when they dismount to stable the birds.

“Yeah,” Vash says, “I wasn’t expecting there to be so many Plants here.”

“Are they good?”

Vash hums. “I think so. Maybe we can stop by on the way out of time and I can check up on them properly.”

Brad doesn’t say that he doubts anyone would willingly let a random kid go up and press himself against the bulbs. Instead he just pats Vash’s shoulder. Sometimes it’s better to not fight Vash on things. He’s a stubborn son of a gun who will get his way through bullheadedness and puppy eyes.

They meander up the street. Brad stops into a few of the fledgling stores to grab electrical parts he hasn’t been able to scavenge or trade for. He barters for the tech and Vash wanders around the store.

“Where are you from?” The store owner asks as she wraps the parts in burlap.

“Ship Three.”

She pauses, her gaze swiveling over to Vash who has found something to entertain himself with, half crouched by a shelve full of old cold sleep pod parts.

“Three huh, heard a lot about Ship Three.”

“We’re the hub for Plant science,” Brad says, keeping his voice casual. “How much did you say that was again?”

Vash comes to the counter as tenor is being exchanged.

“Brad?”His voice is watery.

“Wha—oh.”

The kid has found a cat. He holds it gently to his chest. A tiny orange and white thing that looks perplexed but resigned to being so high off the floor. It has one eye and one ear and it’s little claws are extended against the emerald casing of the arm.

“Kid…”

Vash sniffles, leaning his head down to nuzzle his cheek on top of the cat’s head.

“Oh, that’s Rudy,”the shop owner says.

“Rudy,” Vash says. “He’s cute.”

“He’s a menace,” she says, “wandered in one day and has never wandered out.”

Brad smirks at Vash. “Kind of like someone I know.”

Vash ignores him, pulling up the cat to look into it’s eye. He makes a little cooing noise and the cat responds with a deep meowing sound that doesn’t match his minuscule body. Vash giggles. Brad doesn’t remember which ship had cats, a few had little colonies awake and roaming the ships to keep crews company, and then there were several that had them frozen in cryo-sleep. He’s happy to see that some survived and seem to be thriving on the planet. He watches Vash coo at the little animal for a few moments before he tells him to let it go. Pouting, Vash places the cat on the ground. They bid the shop owner goodbye and step back into the half constructed street.

“Here,” Brad says. He holds out a little purse of money. “I need to go do some other business, you take this, get whatever you want and meet me at that little food spot in half an hour.”

Brad points at a little food stand that’s emitting good smells. Vash nods absently, poking a finger through the bag.

“Say, how much do you think a Rudy is?”

“Kid. You cannot buy a cat.”

Vash grins easy at him. “I know. I’m kidding. Thanks for this.”

He walks away and Brad starts to prepare for when the kid comes back with a cat.

The suns have sunk in the sky by the time Brad has finished in the communications office. He has a new frequency code to try on the ship and had managed to help them set up a computer that runs off solar. At the food stand he lingers, shading his face, searching for Vash in the long shadows casting onto the street.

“What’re you looking for?”

Brad jumps, whirls around to see Vash coming up from behind him. He’s got his coat off, tucked into his elbow. His shoulders peeling and shining where it looks like he’s picked off the skin.

“You, you little asshole,” Brad says. “What did you—oh shit kid.”

Vash’s emerald hand jumps up to his ear where he fiddles with the new piercing. He smiles awkwardly.

“You said anything.”

Brad covers his mouth. “I—yeah. I did. Come here.”

He takes the kid’s chin when he shuffles closer, tilting his face to the side. Its a golden hoop, small enough that it doesn’t hang far off his lobe, but thick and glittering. His skin is a little inflamed around the new hole and the side of his head smells like whiskey.

“What inspired this?”

“I dunno,”Vash says, he squirms.

Brad lets him go, shaking his head. “Well, you are an adult now. Christ, Luida is going to kill me.”

“Is it really that bad?” Vash asks.

Letting out a sigh, Brad ruffles Vash’s hair. “Nah. We’ll just clean it real well when we get home. I’m not sure I trust any kind of piercers out here.”

They get fried Thomas and some pickled thing that Vash chews like he wants to spit it out. It’s fine food, a little dry, but that tends to be the nature of Thomas meat. The real treat are the donuts that go into a vat of oil halfway through the meal. Vash takes one hot, glazed with honey, passes it between his hands, gasps through the heat on his tongue. Brad doesn’t know if the tears in his eyes are from the heat or from how good he thinks the dessert it. Brad laughs at him, bags a few to take back to Luida as an apology for loosing track of her boy long enough for him to get a piercing from who knows where. Vash hops off the overturned bucket he was using as a chair.

“Where to now?”

“Lets get your gun checked out, I saw a gun smith back that way, and then we can go home.”

Vash touches his flesh hand to the gun and nods.

The gun smith looks over the kid’s weapon, tells them it needs a few adjustments, charges Brad an ar—a lot, and then points out where the twenty two bullets sit on the shelves behind him. Vash’s face twists up when he sees the price but Brad tells the guy to add a couple boxes to the bill. Repairs, or whatever the smith does, takes an hour. Brad takes Vash out into the shade of the swaying porch when other customers come in and the space goes from small to unbearable. They sit on splintered wood and Brad asks to see the arm.

“What do you think of it?” Brad asks as he checks the rotator in the wrist. He worried that any interaction with sand would destroy the delicate mechanisms.

“Its…fine,” Vash says. He’s not watching Brad, his eyes are out past the city limits and lingering again on the Plant bulbs.

Brad chuckles, lets go of Vash’s wrist. “You don’t have to like it. You aren’t going to hurt my feelings.”

“It is pretty,” Vash says. He looks down at his hand.

Brad knows that Vash is going to get bigger. It’s in the gangly nature of his legs, in the shape of his hand and maybe in his nature as an Independent. Vash is going to have big hands, big feet, and Brad is already thinking about how he’s going to have to build a series of arms to grow with the boy.

“I used to look so much like Nai.”

His hand goes up again to fiddle with the ear ring. Brad nudges their shoulders together.

“You look like yourself, and that’s all that matters.”

Vash grins at him, wide and lopsided and shit eating. “You’re such a softie. No one even believes me when I tell them you’re so soft.”

“You’ll never get them to believe you.”

Vash laughs, kicks his worn, dirty boots against the slates. “Yeah.”

When the gun is done, Vash balances it in his hands, one and then the other.

“Did you do anything to that weapon?” the smith asks. “It’s fucking heavy.”

Vash’s face goes very still. He turns the gun over again, runs his emerald finger over the tip where the sighting v sits. His mouth goes tight but he shakes his head.

“No.”

The smith doesn’t believe him, but he doesn’t press and instead hands Brad the bullets and vague care instructions scribbled on a piece of brittle paper. Vash is already high tailing it out of the shop by the time the transaction has been completed. Brad catches up with him at the stabling bar they’d left the Thomases at.

“Do I want to know?”Brad asks as he packs his saddle bags.

Vash shakes his head silently.

“Lets go see the Plants,” Brad says instead of pushing.

The connection Vash has with the Plants still makes Brad feel strangely small. He watches the kid talk with the Plant engineer on duty and follows a few paces behind when they move towards the first Plant. Vash steps behind a mass of tarp held up by scaffolding. He puts his flesh hand against the glass, hesitates before he lifts the other one.

“It’s good to see the youth interested in Plant engineering.”

Brad hums.

“I’m Mona,” says Mona holding out a hand.

“Brad.”

They shake hands. Mona watches Vash like he’s far younger than he is and is being entertained by nothing but the liquid in the Plant tank turning a bright orange-pink in the setting suns. The Plant doesn’t come out of her bulb. Which is probably a good thing; they’re hesitant to let random strangers in on the fact that Vash isn’t a human.

“What do you think?” Mona calls. “They’re cool, huh?”

Vash turns to smile at her. “Yeah. She seems happy.”

“Oh, we normally don’t assign pronouns to the Plants. They’re units not so much individuals.”

Yikes.

Vash blinks, smiles a little wider and meets Brad’s eyes over her shoulder.

Its a long ride back. Luida acts pleased when she sees Vash’s new piercing, says it matches his vibe, and then smacks Brad over the head when they’re alone.

Vash

Shooting comes easily for Vash.

He’s not sure how to feel about that.

Vash can hold his arm perfectly steady, can calculate distance in half a second and understand where to hit a moving target to get it to stop. There’s a range in the bottom of Home, mostly abandoned, leaving Vash to destroy targets in privacy. Brad had found someone to teach Vash the basics in the beginning, but then Vash had asked where and how to shoot someone without killing them. Just to stop them. The man had stared at Vash, told him that was normally not worth the risk, and turned back to the target. Vash figured it out alone. Where humans can bleed from without it killing them immediately, how much bone can break, where a bullet can tear without it taking life with them. He figured it out alone, and through strange distressing experiments with training dummies built to match a human as closely as synthetic skin and organs and blood can.

The noise bothered him initially. A loud, brain rattling bang, now though his ears seems to understand how to protect themselves from the sound. Vash doesn’t even use ear muffs anymore. The hardest part is curbing the swell of feeling that comes up Vash’s throat every time he gets the weapon, reloads the cylinder, timing himself until he can do it in a few seconds. It’s a horrible wash of warring feelings. Fear and anger. He knows what it’s like to be angry with Nai.

Once Nai, who hates eating, had made a habit of figuring out what Vash liked to eat the most from their reoccurring meal rotation, and he’d steal it. He’d steal it and ruin it, and laugh when Vash got upset. They got into a fist fight over it when Vash realized that Nai was doing it just to be cruel. Rem had to tug them apart, heave Vash up onto her hip like he was much smaller, and put a hand on Nai’s rapidly rising chest. It was the first time she had snapped at them. At Nai for starting it, at Vash for doing his damnedest to finish it. He’d bitten Nai hard enough that there was a little circle indent of his teeth and little fangs. Vash had buried his head against Rem’s throat, blinking through the tears and the glow in his eyes. Eating already made him feel like a freak and Nai destroying his food just to be cruel was the first taste of betrayal Vash felt towards him. He wishes that it had been that simple forever.

This anger though is different and scary. There is a deep foreboding in Vash. He knows that this, these lovely years on Home are now in jeopardy. The sleep season is coming soon and Brad and Luida have been on the fence about going back into the pods now that they have Vash to look after. But they’ve missed the cycle for the past years, staying awake with Vash as the rest of the ship slept around them.

Vash lowers the gun, considering the hole screwed through the middle of the target, holsters the weapon. He can feel the stirrings of his sisters across the planet, especially the constant prod of his sisters here on Home. There is a selfishness to leaving ship three. They’re central to Plant health, Vash is central to Plant health, and if he wanders off into the desert to protect his family, he could be putting everyone and all the Plants into peril. But the longer he stays here, the more reports that come through about something dangerous and not human stalking the settlements cropping up around the planet, the closer death lingers for the people here. For his family. Vash folds his arms, shivers at the press of the prosthetic against his bare skin. He’s used to it now, as used to it as he can be at least. It’s time.

Over the next few weeks Vash prepares slowly. He takes his physical therapy seriously, learns the ins and outs of the weapon until there is little more he can learn until he’s actually in a situation that demands he use that knowledge. He looks into supplies. Bedding, food, water, none of his favorite things. He spends a lot of time with Luida too. That’s where he is now, lingering with Luida in the flora room as she takes clippings from a lilac bush.

“What’s got you looking so down?” Luida asks breezily, glancing at Vash.

“Huh?”

“You look…mournful. Are you feeling okay?”

Vash swallows. He rubs at the grass with the prosthetic. Sensation comes and goes. The arm either has no sensation or is lit up at a thousand. Brad can’t seem to figure it out.

“Yeah,” Vash croaks. “Yeah I’m—”

And because Vash has always been a crybaby, he starts to cry. He pulls up his knees, buries his forehead against them and sobs.

“Oh—oh, Vash, what is it?”

Luida pulls him into her side and he clings to her. He cries like he’s already gone. Vash leeches Luida’s warmth her cool sterile smell. Everyone onboard smells like that, even Vash. Only the mechanics walk around smelling like oil. Still, he finds comfort in it. In the feeling of Luida’s arm around his shoulders. He doesn’t know how to tell them. What he’s doing feels so ungrateful. After everything they put up with, after Brad made him a crazy impressive arm. After forgiving him. He’s walking out on them.

“Vash,” Luida hums.

Her hand has migrated up to his hair, scratching along his scalp.

“Are you hurting?”

“No,” Vash croaks.

That’s kind of a lie. His arm—stump actually—has never stopped hurting. He doesn’t think it ever will and sometimes it feels like it’s being cut off anew all over again.

“Can I help?" Luida asks.

“No.”

Vash pulls away. He sniffles, rubs a hand under his nose, smiles wetly at Luida. “Sorry.”

She looks at him with patience, and care and worry. He wants to pull away from that look and fall into it at the same time. He wants to say fuck Nai and his stupid tantrum, let him wander around with Conrad all he likes, but he knows he can’t let him hurt people who don’t deserve it. And maybe when he finds Nai he can talk him into coming back to Home. Vash thinks he’d like the science they do on the ship and the movie nights they hold where they can watch all the westerns they want. Vash wouldn’t be so alone during cold periods. Their sisters are happy here too. Cheeky and protective of Vash. He wants this for his brother too. A part of Vash is so sad that Nai is out there living who knows where. What if he gets sunburnt badly enough that all his skin peels off? Rem had joked about that a few times when they were in the flora room of ship five because Nai's skin is so thin and pale, his hair too, he's like the antithesis to things that should be in the sun. It was a joke but Vash has had nightmares about a skinless Nai, burning and crying for Vash.

Vash releases a shuddering sigh, knocking his head against his knees again and again until Luida clicks her tongue and reaches out to stop him gently.

“Don’t apologize from crying, kiddo. I’ll listen to whatever it is.”

“I uh,” Vash licks his lips. “I think I should tell you with Brad too.”

Something flickers in Luida’s gaze and Vash thinks that somehow Luida knows.

Brad cries. Which is horrifying. Vash reaches out for him where he’s sitting at Vash’s messy table. Brad flinches back from his hand, turning away to cover his mouth like he’s trying to hide tears that Vash already saw.

“Brad… I’m sorry,” Vash whispers. His hand curls and he pulls it away. “You—I’ll leave the arm. It’s been great but I—”

Brad whips his head back up and around to stare at Vash. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

“Brad,” Luida murmurs. She puts her hand on his back, runs it up to squeeze at the side of his neck.

“No, what the hell are you talking about, Vash?”

“The—my arm?” Vash asks, confused by the anger that’s making Brad’s wet eyes dark. “I can leave it here, I can make it—”

“Where did you learn to hate yourself so badly?” Brad spits.

Vash flinches, curling away. His mind jumps to the accusations of 'monster' that lived with him for years when the first came aboard Home. The overheard conversation about putting Vash down like a rabid animal. Brad seems to have the same thought at the same time because he gets up with a curse and paces towards the door. He stops with his back to Vash and Luida, leans down and braces his hands on his knees. Vash watches his shoulders heave as he starts to cry again. Almost weeping. It’s horribly disconcerting and Vash as no idea what to do. Brad stands straight comes back over, sits back in his chair.

“If you think I want that arm back you’re dead wrong, kid.”

“Okay,” Vash says. “Thanks.”

Brad wipes at his face then he reaches forward and grabs Vash. He pulls him into a hug, a crushing thing, a hand on the back of Vash’s head, pushing his face into Brad’s shoulder. Vash melts against him, balls his hands into Brad’s shirt, feels the hitching of Brad’s chest and the dampness of his tears. Luida joins the hug and Vash untangles himself to pull her in.

They convince Vash to take Wendy and to tell the rest of the ship that he’s leaving. He says goodbye to everyone but it’s just the three of them in the early morning standing in cold sand. Vash has his gun and bag and Wendy looking towards the rising suns like she’s excited to get going. Vash memorizes these two people, doesn’t cry when Brad kisses his forehead and Luida holds him and tells him to come home anytime he needs to. Vash climbs onto Wendy and rides off with his back to the suns.

Brad

“Hey Brad, isn’t this your boy?”

Francis, Brad’s newest apprentice and pain in his fucking ass, points to a poster when Brad turns to look at him. They’re in July doing a communications check. It’s been nearly thirty years since Vash rode off. Brad is freshly out of cold sleep, cranky as he usually is, and depressed enough that Luida has him on a psych cycle. He’s ready to bite off Francis’s head but the poster is Vash. Grinning stupid above a frankly disgusting amount of money posted for his capture. Brad tears it off the wall, blinking down at it.

“Vash the Stampede?” Francis asks. “What did he even do?”

Turns out he’s done a lot in thirty years. The list includes: bank robbery, resisting arrest every time someone tried to arrest him, highway robbery, kidnapping, murder, Plant theft, terrorism. The list continues. Brad puts a hand on the sheriff's desk to steady himself.

“Where the hell have you been to not know about Vash the Stampede?” The sheriff asks. He shakes his head, mops a hand under his hat. “Damn monster. Not even human.”

“Shut up,” Brad wheezes. He staggers away from the desk suddenly feeling the sixty he really is.

Francis grabs his arm, helps him out onto the porch.

“It’s…probably a mistake?” Francis says, his voice cautious.

Brad wrestles a radio out of his belt to inform Luida that their scrawny, stick of an awkward, sensitive-baby kid, is currently the most wanted man on the planet.

Luida

Vash comes back in year forty five. He comes back wrong. Luida smells the desert on him first and then the blood, hidden under the red of his coat and the dark of his clothing, but he’s bleeding. Terribly. Luida gets him into a med bed, covers her mouth and freezes when his torso is revealed to her. It’s lashings that are bleeding, deep slashes tearing apart his back, full of glass, grit with sand. But it’s not just the new wounds bleeding down his back like a waterfall that turn Luida's stomach. It’s old ones too. Chunks taken out of him, scars, stiches, collapsed hips and a spine that had always been a little strange, twisted wrong and knobbed up.

“What happened to you?” Luida asks through half a breath.

“Oh,” Vash laughs, reaching down to touch at his hip where Luida’s hand had fallen heavily. “I got run over.”

She stares at him. “You got run over?”

“Yeah,” Vash says. His voice is still high and artificially happy. “My fault really.”

Luida shakes her head. She steps back, to put distance between the broken body of her kid and to gather supplies for the lacerations. She’s relieved that Brad is off ship at the moment. She can’t imagine what he’d do if he were here to bear witness to Vash's destroyed body. Luida drops the box of medical supplies, stares at it, and covers her mouth with a trembling hand.

Vash is there before she can kneel down. He picks it up, smiles at her, it’s pinched.

“I’m okay,” Vash says.

“I don’t believe you,” Luida whispers.

She takes the box out of Vash’s hands, tells him to sit back on the bed. He goes obediently. He’s not a child anymore. He’s not a gangly teenager. Vash’s back is broad and he seems twice the height Luida remembers him being. There’s age to his face too, stubble along his jaw and eyes that reflect his true age. Luida picks the glass out of his back, watches as his body helps her, pushing it out with little drippings of blood.

“My God, Vash,” Luida mourns.

“I know. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have—”

“No,” Luida cuts him off. “No, I’m so happy to see you.”

Luida comes around the bed so she can hug him, even if she has to close her eyes against the bitter smell of sweat and blood. Vash hugs her back, lets out a shuddering breath when his forehead notches itself into her shoulder.

The proof was all there in front of Luida but it took a few more visits and a grate over Vash’s all but destroyed heart for her to realize that the damage done to him was rarely accidental. He was chased by humans and betrayed by humans and his brother seems to relish in his agony. The grate was the breaking point for Brad and the yelling match that ensued between him and Vash rattled the windows and made the gravity in the ship go strange as the Plants responded to Vash’s emotions.

Luida knew there was no way to keep Vash on the ship. With each new wound he grew more distant, more set in his wandering. She understands in ways that Brad can’t that the good times are enough for Vash. She understands at least a little. Enough to not demand he stay with them, safe on the ship.

Brad

Brad asks Luida to marry him in year seventy. They’d been in cold sleep for a long while and the last time they’d seen Vash he’d been fine as he can be. Not bleeding out. His arm had been shattered in a bag that he was lugging around. Brad had to make him a new one, or well, tune up the one he had waiting. Something about the broken state of his boy, the gray hair that’s starting to eat away at Brad’s blond had made him realize how much he was letting slip through his fingers.

“Luida?”

Her hair is going gray too, just a little bit, and there are wrinkles starting to form around her mouth. They’re sitting in the floral room, not doing anything but that. She looks at him and he sees his best friend. His partner for many, many years. He remembers the relief that had him going to his knees when he learned she survived the Big Fall. He’s loved her for so many years, loved her through all the strange and terrible and wonderful things.

“I love you.”

Luida’s mouth parts. She smiles and laughs and reaches for him. He lets her cradle his head down until their mouths meet. He’s not experienced in this, love and romance and sex all things that are far from his mind, but he kisses her and he knows that this is right. That she is right.

“If I asked, would you marry me?” Brad whispers when they stop kissing.

“Oh Brad,” Luida sighs. “Sure.”

Brad laughs. “Just sure?”

“Yes,” Luida says. She smiles, laughs sweetly when Brad kisses the back of her hand.

“We should wait ‘til the kid gets back,” Brad says.

And they do just that.

Vash blows onto the ship in year seventy-five, limping something terrible, and the wedding plans are pushed for emergency surgery that doesn’t save the leg. Vash is sitting dopey in a hospital bed when Brad steps into his room, observing him with folded arms.

“Heard what you did in November.”

Vash shrugs at him. “Run of the mill really.”

Not according to the rumors. Vash’s ability with a gun is renowned and feared. He’d stormed a gang’s hideout to save someone or something alone and not a single person died. Vash had walked into November an outlaw and left something of a legend and with a knee blown out by a shotgun.

Brad rubs a hand through his head. “Me and Luida are getting hitched.”

Vash’s eyes go wide. His pupils are two different sizes from the pain meds.

“Really?”

“Really, kid.”

It’s a good wedding, held in the floral room, Vash crying in the crowd still hooked up to meds and in a wheelchair. He plays the piano for them that night in the rec room, and they dance old earth dances and new things crafted in the halls of the ships. Humans will dance no matter what and in the absence of music or form. Brad dances with Luida close to the piano, putting their foreheads together before they turn and catch Vash watching them, smiling, tears pouring down his face like he's at a funeral. Brad drags him up from his chair and he and Luida hold him together. 

Luida

“What do you think of the preacher?” Luida asks Brad.

He grunts, bent over Vash’s arm. There are hairline fissures spread across the casing. Luida hums, looks back at the screens that have the security systems feed on them. He’s not what Luida thought Vash would gravitate towards, but they’re asleep together on the couch in the rec room, like they’ve known each other for the whole of Vash’s long life. Vash is bandaged heavily, his face bruised, hair darkening up the sides. They'd found him half dead, fully traumatized and clinging desperately to the man who Vash rasped is named 'Nicholas. Wolfwood'. He'd begged Luida to save him before collapsing to the floor. Now the preacher holds Vash against his chest with a tight and protective arm, head knocked back as he sleeps, mouth parted.

Brad lets out a quiet curse when something snaps and sparks. Luida turns to glance at him and when she does he’s watching the camera feed too.

“I think,” Brad says, “that man is going to be the wound Vash doesn’t get up from.”

Luida hums again. “He’s happy right now, I think. As much as he can be.”

But she doesn’t disagree.

Vash

Vash buries Luida and Brad together in the packed earth of a cemetery in New July. He’s alone when he does it. Shaking as he cries through digging the graves. They were cremated as was their desire, but wanted to be returned to the planet as was done on earth. As is the tradition that humans never forgot. Vash leans down to kiss the top of each urn, then lowers them into the the holes. He stays on his knees long after he’s covered them and the light on their grave markers flicker on. Silver blue illuminations of their names. Vash imagines himself by them, not cremated, just slowly decomposing into the soil of this cruel place. His place to rest isn’t here though. Its out in the desert. Somewhere no one will even think to look for the body of Vash the Stampede who is less legend and more a tired myth at this point. He’ll die by a gun, he thinks, morbidly hopes. Something quick and painless.

The desert is settled around Vash as he gets to his feet, his old bones protesting, his prosthetics whirring with the strain of missed maintenance. A breeze, slight and warm, catches Vash’s coat and the sound of the city comes rushing back in to meet him. He checks his gun and walks away with the last of the setting suns at his back.

The End