Chapter Text
When Rem told him that “life is a blank ticket”, vash took that to heart. Truly and absolutely, he made it his philosophy, his compass, his way of thinking. No matter what someone has done in the past, or what someone had done to them in the past, their fate is not yet set, and they can always change: for the worse, for the better, or just change. This must be the truth, otherwise his own life would hardly be one worth living. Yet despite this, despite this idea being intrinsically opposed to the concept of fate, there are some moments in the long life he has lived that he feels have sealed one course or another. Kind of like crossroads, where there’s no way to turn back. Even if the ticket is blank, if the train took a certain path, there’s only so many stations it can lead you to.
He’s thought about and counted these “no turning back” points for almost as long as he’d been alive, really. He’s spent days traveling and nights laid in bed thinking, running trough all the different things he could’ve said instead, all the ways he could’ve acted to change the final destination, to take a different path, to shift the tracks. Some are minor, in the grand scheme of things (though they are not minor to him, no loss of life or injury ever is). A dead kid, an injured brother, a grieving man, an angry mother, nothing that will shape history, but enough to shape these people’s lives. His failures burden him. He tells himself that the endlessness of running trough different scenarios and outcomes is helpful, it makes him smarter, better, more prepared. Wolfwood had called it “sulking”. If he was being honest to himself, he’d call it atonement. Or at least an attempt at it.
There are some though… there are far too many that have shaped history. Some very directly, some trough a clear domino effect. These moment’s he’s thought about so often it borders on obsession. Life is built on uncertainty, that’s the challenge, that’s the fun, he knows this and preaches it and tries so hard to look to the future rather than the past. But God, (the same who never answered to his prayers before and never will now), what he wouldn’t give for a do-over. He isn’t sure if he’d be able to refuse it, if such a thing was offered to him. It would be selfish. It would erase all the lives that were lived and kept on living, all the efforts, all the blank tickets, his entire moral code, his entire phylosophy. But he has always been selfish. Always, since the beginning. And maybe if he had ever got dealt a fair hand, he wouldn’t need the crutch of his absolute ideals. Maybe life would feel worth it just because it is. Who knows. He sure as hell doesn’t anymore. The world ended and then it didn’t, he’s not quite alone but he’s still lonely, he’s lost many people and has even more who he holds dear that he’ll soon lose too, and nothing ever changes. So he runs trough his rehearsed scenarios still, where he’s memorized every line of dialogue and every outcome, and permits himself to revel in the bitter sweet “what could’ve been”s, if only for just a moment. After all, he’ll always keep running. And he’s not sad, he’s not hopeless, but… ah there’s a word for it. Melancholic. Perhaps purposeless. He’ll find his footing again one day, and then he’ll loose it too, and find it again for the millionth time. And he’ll keep riding to wherever that blank ticket takes him, because that’s what it means to be alive, despite it all. That’s what it means to be Vash the stampede.