Chapter Text
Meryl clutched four steins filled with cheap beer, sloshing the overfilled mugs as she wove between the other bar patrons until she arrived at their corner booth to serve the table. Milly had her back to the door. Wolfwood sat across from her, the Punisher wedged between him and Vash, who was tightly tucked against the window and staring through the dusty glass into the endless desert.
Milly graciously accepted her drink with a cheery, “Thank you, ma’am!” as Meryl sank onto the bench beside her. The senior reporter hummed in acknowledgement and slid another mug to Wolfwood, slopping some drink over the rim when it hit his open palm. He scowled around his cigarette while wiping his sticky hand on his trouser leg. Meryl ignored him and moved to pass a glass across the table to Vash, but stopped short at the sight of faint patterned lines framing his face, the blue-white glow dulled by the blaze of the setting suns shining through the window.
“Vash!” she shrieked, launching across the tabletop to throw his hood over his head. He squawked in surprise and fluttered his hands to bat her away.
“Meryl!” he countered. “What are you doing!”
The rest of the table was equally curious. Milly blinked her big, kind eyes, throwing darting glances between Meryl and Vash and back again. Wolfwood, meanwhile, leaned out over the table to peer under Vash’s hood.
“Yer glowin’, Spikey,” he explained simply.
Stunned, Vash stopped fending off Meryl to blink in owlish confusion at Wolfwood.
“Just like when you talk with the Plants!” Milly helpfully chirped.
“But there aren’t any Plants here to talk to,” Meryl whispered harshly as she sank back into her seat. “Right, Vash?”
The gunslinger tugged his hood down a little lower, his eyes drifting back to the window and his gaze fading into an unfocused stare toward the horizon. “I think…” he started. “I think one is trying to talk to me . Somewhere east.”
“Well, in that case,” Wolfwood declared, pausing to down a hearty gulp of his drink. “Guess we’re goin’ east.”
“Now, wait a minute!” said Meryl. “We’re going west, to Oasis, remember? To check out that rumor about an actual tree growing on No-Man’s Land. Vash, are you sure it’s really a Plant trying to reach you? This isn’t - I don’t know - a reaction to bad beer, or something?”
Vash snorted into said bad beer. “No, it’s definitely a Plant. I’ve never heard one this insistent before, though.”
“Oh! Is it calling for help?” Milly asked, eyes sparkling with concern.
A moody pall settled over the four. A Plant reaching out over iles of sand to repeatedly call for help was concerningly atypical, Meryl considered. It stood to reason if the Plants could communicate with Vash, they could also communicate with one another. And if the Plants shared their interactions with Vash and told other Plants of Vash’s ability to heal them, then of course a Plant in need would reasonably try contacting the only one they knew could help. Whatever was happening was certainly new and, if Meryl was being honest, a lot more compelling than the rumors out of Oasis.
“I’m not sure,” Vash admitted. “It feels like-.”
“Ugh, fine!” interrupted Meryl. “We’ll check it out, I guess! Can you tell where it is?”
Vash turned back to the window. The winding lines alighting his profile glowed brighter in the darkening twilight. He was quiet for a long time, but this time his gaze was alert and his eyes pinched in concentration. Finally, he spoke.
“Not that far. If we’re up for it, I think we could get to it before midnight.”
Meryl bit her lip in thought. She glanced up at Vash before locking eyes with Wolfwood.
“It’d save us gettin’ a room for the night,” he reasoned. “Not like we haven’t roughed it out there in the dark before.”
“I can drive!” offered Milly. “It’ll be an adventure!”
Meryl grimaced. Most days were an adventure. She could do with less adventure. And while she was so looking forward to an evening in, Wolfwood was right: it was better to save the money. And dammit all if Milly’s enthusiasm wasn’t infectious.
“Alright. We’ll finish the drinks, close the tab, and be out of here in fifteen minutes. Can you dim the lights until then?” she asked Vash.
Turning back to face her, he gave a small smile from under his hood. In reply, the looping marks faded away and he lifted a hand to toss his hood behind him again.
Satisfied, Meryl sipped her beer, and kept sipping until the stein was empty and her belly full of happy bubbles. Milly left to pay the bill, while Wolfwood dragged the Punisher out of the booth. Vash followed him and Meryl brought up the rear as the group slipped out of the bar and into the truck. They drove off into the last light of day and into the open desert.
As usual, Meryl drove, despite Milly’s earlier offer. Vash rode passenger beside her, marks flooding the cab in cool blue light as he stared ahead in deep concentration. Occasionally, he’d close his eyes and wave his hand in whatever direction they needed to go and Meryl, spying the gesture out of her peripheral, would gently steer the truck in kind.
Milly, having been relegated to the back seat with Wolfwood, filled the truck with busy chatter. Presently, she was musing on their destination and the state of the Plant.
“Oh, I hope it hasn’t gone red!” she wailed.
Wolfwood huffed. “Maybe a tech collapsed by the tank and it’s usin’ Spikey as an emergency call,” he snidely suggested, pulling a cigarette from the carton with his teeth.
“That would be very considerate of it,” Milly agreed, completely missing Wolfwood’s sarcastic tone. Meryl glared at him from the rear-view mirror. He smirked back.
Vash hummed in polite disagreement, saying, “I doubt it. They’re not usually too aware of their surroundings in this world.”
The lines decorating his skin ebbed and pulsed in intensity and his hand drifted to the right. Meryl followed and the truck smoothly turned. Far ahead, a jagged structure punctured the horizon, silhouetted by moonlight.
“That’s gotta be it, right?” she asked. Vash nodded.
Milly and Wolfwood pulled themselves forward, wedged between the driver and passenger seats. They stayed there as they drove closer, and as they neared, the structure gained detail.
Like many of the greater buildings of No-Man’s Land, it was a crashed hunk of a space-faring vessel. Or rather, a collection of small space-faring vessels stapled together with twisted and burnt sheets of metal. The truck’s headlights threw dancing shadows across cracked glass and bent steel as it came to stop before a closed docking door.
“Huh,” Wolfwood intoned. “Not where you'd expect t’find a Plant.”
“No, it isn’t,” agreed Meryl. “Okay. Let’s grab some flashlights. Wolfwood, leave the Punisher for now. Milly and I will check out the outside before we- Hey, wait!”
Vash left the truck and was already striding toward the door’s access panel. By the time the others toppled out of the truck, the door was opened and he was stepping inside, shining blue light on the dark walls.
Close behind her, Meryl heard an exasperated, “Dammit, Blondie.” A louder “Wait, Mr. Vash!” quickly followed and now the entire group was recklessly entering a decrepit facility haphazardly assembled from aged spacecrafts in the dead of night to answer the cry of an interdimensional generator only their token alien friend could hear. Meryl reached for her derringer securely strapped to her hip as a glowing worm larvae scurried on the wall beside her. She shuddered.
“Vash,” she hissed, eyes darting between the hurried insect and the gunslinger ahead.
He pressed on as though he didn’t hear her, quickly rounding the corner to the right. There, the short hallway suddenly opened into a cramped chamber filled with thick cables, strewn wires, and banks of computers - some remnants of Lost Tech and others more crudely fashioned from wreckage - all of it bathed in blue light. The four stopped short at the sight of the massive glass cylinder in the center of the room. And suspended in the nutrient-rich solution was - .
“Kni?” Vash breathed.
Millions Knives floated in the water, curled into a loose ball with his legs tucked toward his chest and arms pulled forward. His draped Gate wafted around him, looking just like the large petals of his sisters. With his eyes closed and face lax, he looked to be peacefully sleeping. But brilliant blue-white patterns swirled over his skin, the same lines and curves as on Vash’s, and the room glowed ever brighter with the brothers’ strange call-and-response.
“Kni!” Vash dashed forward, all but slamming his palms and forehead onto the glass. Meryl watched him press hard against the tank and his glow intensified. But unlike the sandsteamer Plant, Knives didn’t unfurl and drift to meet him. He didn’t sink to meet Vash’s hands. He didn’t so much as twitch.
“This is a trap,” Wolfwood muttered beside her.
It certainly had the makings of one: humanity’s greatest villain seemingly imprisoned and weakened in an unfamiliar location could easily be playing into Vash’s vulnerabilities. Access had been easy, the facility appeared empty, and any of the thousands of cords and computer consoles could trigger the door behind them.
Meryl followed one of those cords as it wound across the floor and up to the ceiling. It draped over beams until the sinuous flow of it was interrupted by another worm larvae, quietly munching on the insulating rubber. Meryl wrinkled her brow and frowned. Behind that worm, her eye caught on another glowing cluster of the creatures crowded in the corner of the room, a blinking red light flashing between the busy insects.
If it was a trap, Meryl thought it was strange Zazie was covering the cameras.
“Maybe,” she demurred to Wolfwood.
She turned back to see Vash pull away from the tank, his wide, scared eyes reflecting in the glass.
“He’s not responding,” he announced. “I’m going in.”
A chorus of “hold up!”, “wait!”, and “we’ll help!” filled the chamber. Wolfwood plucked the cigarette from his mouth and marched toward Vash, at the same time Milly hurried forward to dutifully assist. Meryl lingered back, shooting glances at the worms and the cameras and the tangle of wires and the monitor that showed waves scrolling across the screen, falling up and down and up and down. She looked back to the others just in time to see Vash tuck his glasses into his inside pocket.
He disconnected his prosthetic’s pauldron, pulled off his coat, and tossed both to Wolfwood, who caught the bundle despite repeated complaints. Next, he tugged off his boots and unstrapped the Colt, carefully placing his things in Milly’s outstretched arms, before quickly climbing the ladder beside the tank. There was a brief squeal of steel, then they watched Vash the Stampede plunge into the solution.
Knives didn’t react, his curled body only bobbing at the disturbance. Vash reached forward and took his brother’s face in his hands. He slowly pulled their foreheads together and as they connected, the room was filled with blinding white light.
Meryl shielded her eyes. She heard the skitter of countless worm legs clicking against the walls. She also heard the steadily increasing beep from the monitor, saw the waves crowd closer together on the screen. She shrieked when the worms swarmed past her and plastered themselves against a door behind the monitors. They chittered and chirped incessantly.
“Guys!” she called. “We have to go!”
Wolfwood cursed, shoved Vash’s coat on top of his gun and boots in Milly’s arms, and clamored up the ladder to sprawl across the tank lid. He reached down, scruffing Vash’s shirt collar like one would a misbehaving cat.
And just like a cat, Vash breached the surface, spitting and thrashing. Knives, now awake and surprisingly clear-eyed if not a little confused, quickly followed with a single powerful kick. He lifted himself from the tank, momentarily meeting his brother’s eyes and both immediately froze at the sight of one another. Whatever was transpiring between them, though, was interrupted by the sound of pounding footfalls heading their way.
“Move it, Blondie!” Wolfwood shouted while shoving Vash down the ladder. Knives leapt and landed effortlessly on his feet behind them.
“Hey, whoa! I don’t think so!” Wolfwood said, halting Knives with an audacious press of his palm against the white patterned suit under the billowing cloak. Just as surprising as Wolfwood’s boldness, was Knives’s quick compliant response, stopping short with wide, hurt eyes and an uncharacteristic pout.
The surprises continued when Vash spun on Wolfwood and knocked his arm aside. “He’s coming with!” he snarled, gripping his brother’s wrist and bolting ahead.
Wolfwood shot a confused look at Meryl, but before she could so much as shrug back, the worms launched off the door and flew past her in a flurry of buzzing wings and clicking calls. They tumbled and twisted in the air toward the way they’d come, illuminating the halls with a sparkling green light. Meryl followed the insects - and the twins - with Wolfwood and Milly close behind her.
Shouts, thundering footsteps, and clacking weapons echoed down the hall from the chamber. The five of them rounded the corner just as the building lights flickered to life. Meryl could hardly hear the call of the goons and the whir of machinery over her pounding heart and panting breath.
Just ahead, framed by the open dock door, sat the truck. The worms spewed from the entrance, briefly lighting the dusty vehicle with its chipped paint and rusting undercarriage. It was beautiful in the green glow and Meryl would never call it a piece of sh*t again.
But as her feet hit the sand, revving engines roared to her right. Headlights blinded the group as a fleet of motorbikes charged from another dock door on the north wing of the structure.
Meryl stumbled, but caught herself on the passenger door handle. She flung it open, scrambling over the gear shift and into the driver’s seat. Trusting the others to find a way onboard, she started the truck and immediately threw it into gear. The wheels spun in the sand as the rest of the group toppled over one another into the cab.
A bullet sheared off the side mirror just as Wolfwood slammed the passenger door close behind him. Knives, of all people, shoved Vash in the back beside Milly and pulled himself in as the truck caught traction and peeled out into the dark desert. Another bullet skinned the outside of his door.
“Milly!” he called, hand outstretched. “The Colt!”
Meryl glanced at him in the rear view and when their eyes met, she knew she wasn’t looking at Millions Knives.
Milly hesitated with an unsure, “Um?”
“Don’t give it to him!” barked Wolfwood.
“They’re shooting at us!” countered Vash, his face twisted into an angry glower.
“So! They’re always shootin’ at us!”
Meryl looked away from Knives to the pursuing bikes. With so many bouncing headlights, she couldn’t make out how many were chasing them, but she could see they were getting closer.
She also saw a massive ripple in the sand, just in front of the riders. Then the sand erupted and the gargantuan full body of an immense grand worm bucked up toward the night sky, scattering some bikes and crushing the rest when it crashed back down. Milly, Vash, Knives, and Wolfwood fully turned in their seats to gape at the sight, while Meryl jostled the gear shift and opened up the truck’s sandblasted engine to drive as far and as fast as the aged vehicle could go. Quietly to herself, she breathed, “Thanks, Zazie.”
They puttered on, staying just ahead of the grand worm rolling beneath the sand as it followed to cover their tracks. When the dunes hid the facility far behind them and the worm slowed until the sand stilled, Meryl eased the vehicle to a stop. Before Wolfwood could complain, she spun in her seat to face “Vash” and definitively declared, “You’re not Vash.”
Wolfwood’s face scrunched into a confused sneer and he wriggled in his seat to look back, while muttering, “The f*ck’re you talkin’ about?”
At the same time, “Knives” sent her a soft, proud smile. “You’re so clever, Meryl.”
Wolfwood froze. His eyes went wide and his jaw slack. He looked from one twin to the other and back again. Horrified realization drained the color from his face. “Yer sh*ttin’ me,” he breathed.
Milly meanwhile took in the uncharacteristic scowl across “Vash”’s face and the familiar open expression on “Knives”’s.
“Oh!” she realized. “It’s just like that book my big big sister read to us - ‘A New View’! The characters switch places so they can better understand one another! This is just like that!”
Knives-as-Vash growled through his gritted teeth and shoved bodily at his brother. “Move!” he barked and Vash-as-Knives squawked before tumbling out of the truck, the two ultimately landing in an ungainly heap just outside the door. Knives-as-Vash quickly clamored back to his feet and started to sulk off, but his - really Vash’s right knee - suddenly buckled and he fell to the sand once again.
“Vash!” he shrieked in Vash’s voice, twisting to glare at his brother, who was fighting to free himself from the tangle of Knives’s cloaked Gate. When Vash-as-Knives finally emerged from the heavy material, he took quick stock of Knives-as-Vash gesturing angrily at his trick knee and grimaced, embarrassed.
“Bad fall a few years ago,” he explained, shrugging. By now, the others had stepped out of the truck and were watching the exchange with varying levels of amusem*nt, confusion, and caution. Milly moved to help Vash up, while Meryl came to stand beside Wolfwood, who kept eyes on Knives as he lit a fresh cigarette.
“Ridiculous,” Knives scoffed and carefully lifted himself back on his feet. He resumed his march into the desert, now with a tender limp favoring his right leg.
“Hey!” Wolfwood called. “That’s not yours!” he said, waving a wide gesture at Vash’s body with his cigarette pinched between his fingers.
“Yeah, Kni!” seconded Vash, now standing beside Milly and struggling to adjust Knives’s heavy Gate. “We have to stay together until we figure this out!”
Knives-as-Vash halted, head falling and hands curling into tight, frustrated fists. He growled again, before turning and stalking back to the group. The sight of “Vash” scowling and stomping in earnest across the sand was such a confusingly incongruous image to what Meryl knew and expected of the gunslinger’s behavior, that she could only wrinkle her brow and co*ck her head in bewilderment.
Meanwhile, Vash-as-Knives nervously rocked from one foot to the other, the thick Gate cloak swaying with his movements. Meryl was momentarily mesmerized by the motion, so like the floating petals of the Plants in their tanks. But as she watched, the material seemed to fray and dissolve until disappearing. Inch by inch, more and more of the cloak was fading away.
“Um,” she helpfully started, pointing to the ever-shortening hem. “Your cloak’s vanishing.”
Vash-as-Knives followed her finger, saw the rapidly dissipating cloak, and squawked in surprise while flailing in panic. It was such a Vash way to react, but seeing it from “Knives” was something to behold, truly.
For the first time in such a long time, Meryl was reminded of and struck by the fact they were brothers. Their resemblance to one another was a given, being twins and all, but such disparate personalities had altered their appearance in her eye: Vash was open, sunny, and bright, hiding a deep well of melancholy and guilt, while Knives was hooded, closed off, and cool, like a hateful viper waiting to strike. And those characteristics had impacted and distorted their physical selves until Meryl could hardly believe they ever called one another “brother.” Watching Vash panic and whine and dance around properly turned “Knives” into his twin in Meryl’s mind, something that had never truly cemented in her perception before.
“Kni!” Vash cried while flapping his right arm with his left at his approaching twin. Beneath his left hand’s grip, the cuff of the “suit” Knives wore was quickly pulling away from his right wrist, as though an invisible force was unraveling the material from around the appendage.
Knives-as-Vash stopped just before the group with a smug smile, a chilling expression on Vash’s otherwise friendly face. “What’s wrong, Vash? Gate getting away from you again?”
“It’s not my Gate! And all these humans are about to, to… ‘lay eyes’ on your naked body!”
Judging from Knives’s wide eyes, that would be unacceptable. He quickly moved to pull Vash’s black turtleneck over his head, not heeding Vash’s cry, “No, wait! Kni, dont!”
Once freed from the shirt, Knives peered down at Vash’s scarred, stitched, and patched torso with abject horror. He glared back up at Vash, who uselessly shrugged, eyes pleading with Knives. Through all this, Knives’s suit continued to strip itself from Vash. Just when it seemed the humans really were about to lay eyes on the self-proclaimed angel’s body, Vash’s long, red coat landed on his head and he scrambled to put it on.
“There,” Wolfwood said. “Not that I don’t love seein’ some skin, but now everyone can cover themselves up again and we can get back to fixin’ this sh*t.”
Vash finished zipping up his long coat and Meryl was honestly surprised it fit; Knives had always seemed so much broader and thicker than Vash. Though, she thought, glancing at Knives-as-shirtless-Vash, it looked like Vash intentionally hid his size under the billowing coat because he was just as wide and firm as his brother, if not quite as deep in the chest. She remembered seeing him in just his black top on Ship Three, but even then the material, cut, and color had slimmed him. Seeing the expanse of skin stretched from shoulder to shoulder and neck to hip revealed another surprising reminder that again, they were twins.
Knives, meanwhile, did not pull Vash’s turtleneck back on. He instead serenely closed his eyes and stood stockstill. A beat passed. And another, until Milly leaned into Vash to ask, “Uh, what’s he doing?”
Hearing her, Knives opened his eyes again to find himself still shirtless and barefoot in the desert. He pursed his lips and tilted his head at Vash, frustrated. “Why can’t I call your Gate?”
Vash just shrugged again, pulling his glasses from inside his coat. He went to put them on, but Knives cried out, “Don’t put those on! I’ll look washed out!”
“You always look washed out!”
“I do not!”
“I’m looking at you right now!”
“Guys!” Meryl shouted. She had finally fully accepted they were, in fact, brothers. “Can we please address the fact you’re both in the wrong bodies?”
Knives rolled his eyes, but wrestled his shirt back on while Vash wiggled his toes into the sand, looking for all the world like a shamefaced schoolboy.
“We wouldn’t be if you had just left well enough alone,” scolded Knives, his voice surprisingly soft and Vash-like beyond actually being Vash presently.
“You were in a tank, Kni,” Vash defended. He shoved his hands into his coat pockets and hunched his shoulders in a way Meryl now recognized as a means to appear smaller and unassuming.
“I was conducting a test.”
“You were calling ou-.”
“I’m always calling for you!” Knives snapped. “Why answer now?”
A guilt-soaked miasma settled over the group. Wolfwood chuffed an angry “tch” around his cigarette, while Milly’s wide eyes flitted from one twin to the other. Meryl didn’t grow up with any other children, but she knew this feeling from tense holiday meals with family, when Aunt Dot lashed out at her mother for one too many criticisms of her roast or when her grandfather spat a cruel jab at Uncle Rich about proper resource management. Long overdue truths finally pouring out in anger like a simmering pot boiling over.
“Kni,” Vash started, brow wrinkled in sympathy. He pulled his hands out of his pockets to tentatively reach for his brother, but Knives snarled in reply, taking an aggressive step toward him. Vash stepped back in response and his hands fell dejectedly back to his sides while his eyes remained alert and focused on Knives.
Milly’s quiet voice pierced the tension. “We thought you needed help.”
“Yeah,” Meryl agreed. “Why were you in the tank?”
Before Knives could aim his ire at her, Wolfwood stepped between them and leveled Knives with a warning look. “Who gives a sh*t? How do we switch you back?”
Knives, unimpressed with Wolfwood’s chivalrous defense, simply stated, “We have to go back to the tank.”
Wolfwood honked a grating buzzer noise. “We’re not goin’ back there. Gonna hafta come up with something else.”
“Does it have to be that tank?” asked Vash. “Or could we use another one?”
Meryl shivered at the thought of Vash behind glass, drifting lazily like any other Plant, unaware and unresponsive to the world outside. It had been eerie enough seeing Knives curled and bobbing in the solution. What if they went in to switch themselves back and didn’t come out? Could an Independent Plant become just a regular run-of-the-mill Plant, forever floating in a jar? This was already a strange situation - who knows what other unexpected oddities could happen.
“It’s simplest to just turn back,” Knives argued.
“And I just said we ain’t doin’ that.”
Vash huffed a sigh at Wolfwood in frustration before asking again if any tank would work.
“Yes, fine,” conceded his brother. “We get to any Plant facility, get in the tank, and hope your limited control of your Gate doesn’t send us and everything else into a spiraling black hole.”
A pause. Then:
“Wait, what’s Mr. Vash’s Gate?”
“The f*ck you talkin’ about?”
“A black hole?”
“That’s not fair!” Vash wailed, twisting Knives’s face into a hurt pout. “You weren’t answering and I thought it was the only way to get to you! You know I can’t control it!”
“Obviously not,” Knives sneered while gesturing between their bodies.
Milly, ever one to effortlessly defuse a situation, cautiously spoke up. “Why don’t you, you know, help him? With his… Gate, I guess? I mean, my big brothers and sisters helped me learn a lot of things! Tying my shoes, patching clothes, riding a tomas, cooking, and reading and -.”
“We got it, Big Girl,” Wolfwood interrupted not unkindly. “But last time Stabby got ahold of Spikey’s fancy magic Plant bullsh*t, he wasn’t as nice about it as your big brothers were to you.”
Meryl quirked her lip and hummed in consideration. “Yes, but he’s got Vash’s Gate now and can’t access it either. Look, Nick, neither of them can do any magic Plant stuff right now, which means they’re vulnerable and stuck as each other. And if it was somehow Vash’s Gate that caused them to switch, then, yeah, I agree with Milly: Knives needs to teach Vash how to control his power so they can switch back.”
She glanced between the brothers, face pinched in confusion. Vash was self-consciously hugging himself and wearing an unhappy expression, while Knives was trying to comfortably fold his arms with an unyielding prosthetic.
“Or, um, I guess more like Knives needs to figure out Vash’s Gate,” she amended.
Wolfwood growled in displeasure at that notion and Meryl couldn’t fault him for it. The idea of Knives armed with that swirling vortex and whatever it was capable of unnerved her, too. Her memory flooded her senses with the creaking of rapidly growing branches, the sweet floral scent wafting from midnight-purple flowers, and the sight of a looming void churning in Knives’s massive Plant aquarium. She shuddered, heaved a sigh, and straightened her back to collect herself before turning to Vash.
“What do you think? You’re the one dealing with this right now,” she prompted, ignoring Knives’s offended click of his tongue.
“I think,” Vash started with a sheepish smile, looking so much like himself even with Knives’s face and hair. “I’d like some clothes.”
“That’s as good a place as any to start!” Wolfwood crowed as he stepped close to slap a jovial paw on Vash’s shoulder.
“Mr. Knives?” prompted Milly.
Knives tightened his crossed arms and somehow deepened his displeased frown. “Fine. Clothes first, then we find the nearest Plant. Vash and I can practice control along the way.”
“Alright!” Meryl clapped her hands and marched back to the truck. But instead of hopping back into the driver’s seat, she scrambled up to the roof and began shucking bedrolls, a camp stove, and a respectable bundle of debris to fuel a strong fire. She lowered herself back down after tossing the tent kit onto the sand.
“It’s late. It’s hours back to town. And we all need some sleep after all this.”
“Uh, sure,” Milly cautiously agreed. “But, Miss, are we far enough away to be safe?”
“We drove a long way and Zazie covered our tracks. I haven’t heard any bikes since we left the lab, either. I think we’re good.”
“You trust The Beast?” Wolfwood grit from around his cigarette. The cherry flashed on his inhale, already nearly to the filter.
Meryl shrugged. “They covered the camera in the lab, led us out of the building, and helped us get away. I only trust them to follow Knives and right now he’s with us. So, yeah, I think we're safe.”
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Knives shrug a shoulder and bobble his head in agreement. Wolfwood too acquiesced with a growl. At the same time, Milly joined Vash in collecting the overnight equipment and starting camp.
They pulled out the tent, stakes, and anchors and quickly set up the modest little shelter. While the pair finished with the tent, Wolfwood stuffed the stove with the flammable debris and lit it with a flourish from his lighter. Meryl, meanwhile, rolled out bedding, but paused and carefully turned to Knives.
“Uh, sorry, but we only have the four mats.”
He gave her a haughty glance, a strange look on Vash’s usually animated face. “I don’t require sleep.”
Before she could question such a lofty claim, Vash corrected him. “You do now,” he said, pointing at Knives still in Vash’s body. “And you’ll need to take the arm off if you want to sleep comfortably.”
Knives suddenly clutched the limb, startled and unsure. “But then I’ll be… unarmed.”
Meryl smiled at the joke, though she wasn’t sure he meant to make one. Milly giggled girlishly behind her hand and Wolfwood barked a short laugh. Vash simply gave his brother a patient smile before slowly walking to him, hands up and palms out like someone approaching a skittish wild animal.
“It’s okay. I’ve got the Colt, Wolfwood has The Punisher, and the girls are just as capable,” he reasoned, even if Meryl thought he was giving her and Milly a lot of undue credit. They could hardly compare to Vash and Wolfwood’s admittedly inhuman reflexes and precision. But not for nothing, she could clip someone well enough if it came to it.
“You’re safe, Kni,” Vash assured, now standing before Knives and patiently awaiting permission to remove the arm.
A long moment passed as Knives considered. Meryl sympathized. It took Vash far longer to become comfortable taking off his prosthetic in front of them. He would wait until after everyone was asleep before quietly unclasping the collar around the port and carefully prying the entire apparatus off. Even then, he kept it within reach of his right. She remembered the first time he intentionally took it off during waking hours. She had shared a look with Wolfwood and the two made a silent pact to not acknowledge the momentous occasion for fear of Vash sliding back into his secretive habits and damaging the tender trust they had built.
She understood Knives’s hesitation, just as she recognized Vash’s desperate attempt to make his brother comfortable in a very uncomfortable situation.
But to her surprise, Knives let go of the prosthetic and held it out for Vash to remove. With a fragile smile, Vash slowly undid the collar, gripped the arm above the elbow joint with both hands, and with a deft twist, pulled the whole thing off. Knives teetered a bit, unaccustomed to an entire missing limb, before regaining his balance and defiantly straightened once again.
“Thank you, Vash.”
“You’re welcome, Kni,” he murmured. “You can hold onto it, if it will make you feel better.”
He held the prosthetic out for Knives to take, but Knives uselessly reached with the now-stump of his left arm. He and Vash locked eyes, a myriad of emotions flashing across their faces: some embarrassment, shame, guilt, sympathy, sadness, anger, and everything else that washed over them too quickly for Meryl to name.
Knives recovered first, correcting himself and dropping the stump to reach with his right hand instead to grip the prosthetic.
Vash took a respectful step back, murmuring, “Sorry.”
Knives’s head snapped up to stare curiously at Vash as the gunslinger turned away from him. His brow furrowed in angry confusion and his lips parted, but whatever he wanted to say lodged in his throat. Meryl watched him school his face into neutral apathy, before taking a few paces away from the group and folding himself into a cross-legged seat in the sand, the prosthetic draped over his lap.
Meryl followed Vash back to Milly and Wolfwood around the stove, now pleasantly warm and softly glowing in the dark desert. Vash carefully lowered himself to the ground, mindful of his coat as the only article of clothing he currently wore. Wolfwood tended to the stove while Milly greeted Meryl and Vash with an easy smile.
“How is Mr. Knives?”
Vash offered his own easy smile in return. “ Still himself. Er, well. You know what I mean.”
“If we’re not gonna tie him up, then someone’s gonna hafta keep eyes on’im all night,” Wolfwood gruffly declared.
Meryl didn’t disagree. She was only somewhat comforted by the fact Knives couldn’t access his, well, knives. The maniac was still in a very capable body that ran as much on muscle memory as it did skill.
“I can stay up,” offered Vash. “Kni never needed as much sleep as I did, anyway.”
“You’ll wake us if anything comes up, though,” Meryl insisted, shooting him a meaningful look.
“Of course!” he affirmed with a beaming grin. It was a shockingly disarming look on Knives’s face, striking and handsome. Meryl felt her cheeks flare with a blush and quickly turned back to warm her hands off the stove, furiously squashing her body’s ridiculous response to a pretty smile, especially one from the face of a crazy mass murderer. This was just like Albert Hauer in undergrad all over again!
“Fine,” she huffed. “I’m turning in for the night. I want us to head out first thing in the morning, preferably before dawn. Soon after, at least. How does that sound to everyone?”
There was a smattering of agreeable noises. Meryl set her watch, stood up, and dragged a bedroll to lie beside the truck. If she was going to insist they leave early, she herself had better be prepared to leap into the driver’s seat at a moment’s notice.
From her spot, she could see the whole group: Wolfwood seemingly relaxed with a fresh cigarette between his lips and an idle hand on The Punisher laid beside him, while Milly and Vash quietly conversed. Knives sat beyond them, a dark silhouette against a darker night sky. Without Vash’s glasses, the faint patterns in his eyes occasionally caught the light and glowed. It unsettled Meryl, reminding her too much of a predator. She glanced at Vash to compare, but the oversized orange shades blocked the stove’s light and stopped any eerie eyeshine.
She looked again at Knives, at his glittering eyes belying his otherness - Vash’s otherness, really. Her last conscious thought before drifting to sleep was a minor self-correction: not “otherness,” but “otherworldly.” That’s what the twins were, she supposed. Otherworldly.
