Understand

The ancient suns orbiting over the face of the desert planet cast a pale, lurid glow on the figures of the two boys as they trudged onward through the sand, stretched their shimmering shadows over the length of the endless, unblemished expanse. Fine layers of sand coated their faces like dust, and while the younger of the two twins wiped at his face constantly, the older took the irritant in stride, setting off at the same even, undisturbed clip he'd begun the very first day they'd landed on this dusty rock.

It had been a hard journey, and not just because of the physical obstacles, such as the desert's tendency to vacillate between scorching heat and freezing cold, the depths to which the twins were forced to plumb in order to find drinking water, and the very real risk of encountering a carnivorous sandworm or a pit of quicksand. Vash had been irrevocably changed by the events that had transpired in space: Steve's execution for a crime he did not commit, the shooting deaths of Joey and Mary, Rowan's forcible ejection into space, and – of course – the horrifying cremation of Rem Saverem, the twins' guardian and the closest thing Vash had ever had to a mother. As a result, the light of life and happiness had departed from his eyes, replaced by a gloom that could manifest at a moment's notice in either cold apathy or smoldering anger.

Knives couldn't make sense of his brother's melancholy – didn't see the point of making an attempt. The only cure for it, he decided, was to place him firmly in his own shoes: to make him see the wonderful future that was in store for them, if he would only open his eyes and look.

Because more than anything else, Knives just wanted Vash to understand this – understand him. For the last few months he'd been trying to bring him around, without even a quantum of success. At first he'd tried appealing to Vash's emotional nature – one of the few things the older twin could always count on when it came to discussing abstract concepts like love and morality – by explaining to him the inner workings of the Last Run, the horrific descriptions of which he'd encountered during his exhaustive research on plants in their final weeks on the Alpha SEEDS ship.

"Do you know what the humans did to our sisters, Vash? The Earth's heart turned to frost in response to their pollution and waste, and in order to survive, they pushed the plants to limits far beyond what they were capable of." His voice became low then, the first released sounds of pain in it. "All the details were preserved in their historical records. I read about how our sisters screamed in agony, their hair turning completely black. Then, their bodies were ripped in hal – "

"Shut up!" Vash had hissed, shoving his brother away, shoving reality away. "You're lying! You'll say anything to make me go along with you!"

Later, when he'd been forced to concede that Knives was telling the truth – not because Knives was his brother and brothers always believed each other, but because Rem had once told him that humans had sometimes abused the plants back on their home planet – he had quickly gone on to add: "But Rem said those acts were illegal, condemned by the global government. We can't judge all of humanity based on the actions of a few." At that moment Knives wished dearly that Rem Saverem might be resurrected, so that he might personally slaughter the bitch for so utterly corrupting his precious brother.

His next few attempts to enlighten Vash concerned logic and reason. Knowing his brother, he didn't expect this to have much of an effect on his delusional thinking patterns, and he was right. No amount of talk of how spiders had to be sacrificed in order to spare the butterfly could dissuade his brother from the intellectual anathema that Rem had introduced. Nor, it seemed, could it induce Vash to behave towards Knives with even a modicum of decency.

Today Vash seemed even more moody than usual. While Knives enjoyed a broad spectrum of moods and emotions since the Fall – he'd coined the term himself, as the fate of the universe's offal was an apt visual representation of that old adage about pride before the fall – Vash seemed trapped in a perpetual state of anger and misery. The thought briefly flitted through Knives's mind that his brother might be depressed, but he quickly put it down. After all, he was here, wasn't he? The bond that they shared couldn't be broken by temporary setbacks. All right, so it had been three months now since he'd seen Vash smile, but still –

"When are we supposed to get to the next supply ship, Knives?" Vash's voice was plaintive, irritable.

"Soon." Knives's purposeful stride didn't flag for even an instant. "I promise."

"It's been weeks now. Do you even know what you're doing?"

"Of course I do," Knives said, his brother's carping attitude beginning to wear on him. "What kind of a stupid question is that?"

Vash shrugged. Then: "Maybe we're just wandering around in circles. Maybe we'll just die out here." Pause. "I hope we do."

His older brother's vague concern for Vash's mental health solidified upon hearing those words, but anger quickly stamped that out. "Stop being a whiny brat, Vash. We're going to be fine. The last ship gave us enough food and water to survive on for mon – "

Vash's voice resurfaced in a scream. "How can I be fine, Knives? How can I ever be happy again when you killed them all? When you killed her?"

Knives stopped walking. He turned to look at Vash, expression suddenly mild. They'd had this conversation before, of course; it was practically routine. He waited expectantly as Vash spoke his next words, words he'd repeated so many times it seemed they had begun to etch themselves in the older twin's brain:

"I hate you, Knives! I hate you! I don't even know why I'm still following you around." Underneath the garish light imparted by the suns, Vash's eyes appeared to be flaring red in anger. "I don't want to be your brother anymore!"

Knives blinked slowly, swallowed, prepared to once again be reason to his brother's madness –

– and burst into tears.

Vash's eyes widened in shock, and he started towards his brother; but before he had taken more than two steps Knives bolted, abandoning his pack of supplies as well as all vestiges of dignity, and the wind carried his discordant cries of pain over the desert. He ran and ran and ran, determined to reach the end of this godforsaken desert, and then maybe there'd be a drop off into nothingness like in that strange poem Rem had once read to them, and he could suicide off the edge into the inky void, the way he'd seen Rowan disappear, screaming –

After several minutes the older twin began to tire, and without a care as to where he landed, he suddenly let his knees buckle beneath him and send him toppling to the dusty ground. He lay there for some time, whimpering, before finally pulling himself into a sitting position. The gesture served to help make his thoughts more rational again, if no less distressed.

I've been so strong up to this point, he thought, his knees knocking together as he tried to suppress the hiccupy sobs that threatened to escape from the prison of his chest. So far, I've been able to keep myself together. If he ever saw weakness – anything that made it seem like I doubted myself – then I would lose him forever. So why this – why now –

"Kn-Knives...?" Vash drew near to where Knives was sitting, breathing hard from exertion. He carried both of their packs in one hand. "You shouldn't just run off like that... you might get hurt."

Knives kept his face hidden from Vash. "Like you care. You just said you wanted me dead."

"I'm sorry," Vash murmured, guilt evident in his face. "I didn't mean it."

A long silence followed then, occupied only by the soft sounds of the older brother's half-muffled sobs. Eventually Knives lifted his face from his hands, giving Vash a long, resentful look.

"You know, Vash, I'm not some bloodthirsty maniac," he said. "You think I enjoy killing? I'm only doing what needs to be done for us to survive."

Vash went immediately on the offensive (and it was funny, Knives thought, how quickly he could lose all sympathy for his brother when the moment suited him). "You sure seemed to enjoy watching those ships burning up in the atmosphere," he snapped.

"What, I can't be a little happy now that I know those parasites are gone, that they'll never threaten you or me or our sisters again?"

"Even if the humans needed our sisters to survive, what makes you think they would have used us like that? We can't even terraform like they can, Knives."

"Humans created plants, Vash," Knives said patiently, as though he was trying to explain a simple concept to a particularly slow child. "They're the ones who designed the plants to be able to terraform. How do you know they wouldn't have begun some kind of experimentation on us in order to have us develop the same abilities?"

"Th... that's ridiculous!" Vash drew back as if Knives had slapped him. "Rem... Rem wouldn't have let that happen!"

"Yes, because the crew had such a great track record when it came to protecting us," Knives countered, rolling his still-watering eyes. "What about Steve? I don't recall anyone ever doing anything about his despicable behavior, other than giving him verbal warnings – and that includes your precious Rem." The older plant shook his head with conviction. "No, they'd have definitely come up with some excuse to begin experimenting on us once we were of age."

"So you killed them first," Vash said, voice heavy with disgust.

"I didn't even do that," Knives said, sighing and wiping his eyes. When Vash looked at him, stunned, he went on: "Destroying the humans wasn't really my goal – at least, not right away. How could I have predicted that Rowan would be insane enough to kill Steve and Mary?" His eyes narrowed, as though he could still behold a clear picture of that episode in his mind, even though it had occurred months ago. "When I came to Rowan and Mary about framing Steve, it was a sort of... test, I suppose. I wasn't even the one to suggest accusing him of rape. That was all Mary's idea." He snorted with distaste. "But then – even then – I wasn't sure that I'd actually kill anyone."

"What... what about Joey?" Vash said, but much of the fight had drained out of his body, and he spoke in hollow, muted tones.

"I did kill him," Knives conceded. "But only because he was too stupid to live. Rowan was a dangerous lunatic. There was no reason for him to doubt his decision to get rid of him."

"If he doubted himself, that's only because of what Rem said," Vash replied, and the force of his sudden anger upon remembering his beloved guardian brought strength back to his voice. "So why didn't you kill her, too?"

"Because you loved her." Knives could feel the tears – goddamned traitorous tears – coming on again, and he wiped vainly at his eyes. "More than you ever loved me."

Vash visibly deflated. "That's not true, Knives..."

"Well, it's true now, isn't it? Every day you tell me you hate me. Every day you tell me you don't want to be my brother. Even though all I did was try to protect our family, you continue to spit in my face. How do you think that makes me feel, Vash?"

His own eyes spilling over with sorrow, Vash slowly closed the distance between himself and Knives – that great expanse that could perhaps be bridged in terms of physical space, but never in the minds of either twin, where it really mattered. "I don't think I'll ever understand you, Knives," he said, placing a hand on the older plant's unreceptive shoulder. "But, we'll never stop being brothers."

"No," Knives sobbed. He wrenched himself out of Vash's grasp. "It's no good. As long as things are like this... we'll always have this gulf. We can never really be brothers again."

Still crying, Knives trudged away through the sand, with no clear idea of where he was heading anymore – only knowing that the path he walked would take him further and further away from Vash, until he was no more than a speck in the distance, as the twin suns continued to burn overhead, as the lightly dusted tendrils of wind caressing his cheeks disintegrated in the unforgiving waves of light and heat.

That had been the last time Vash had ever seen his brother break. Now, a hundred and thirty years later, he was witnessing it a second time. The two plants were holed up in the shadow of an enormous outcropping of bedrock: appearance-wise, it amounted to little more than an eyesore that disturbed the smooth, uniformly flat surface of the desert landscape, but it had saved both their lives when the sandstorm appeared out of nowhere.

The tent that Vash had managed to hastily erect around them also provided some measure of relief from the noise of the storm, which had continued to rage for the last three hours. Knives's exposed chest – swathed heavily in bandages and riddled with bullet holes – rose and fell slowly as he struggled to take a breath that didn't automatically set his nerves on fire. His face was pale and drawn, and his jaw remained inordinately tight, but this had less to do with the pain and more to do with his stubborn opposition to the silent tears of anguish that continued to stream from his eyes. Vash, for his part, knelt over his brother's helpless and broken body, cleaned and dressed each wound as tenderly as if he hadn't been the one to pump Knives full of lead almost a week ago.

"Why, Knives?"

They were the first words he'd spoken to his twin since the fight. While the question seemed simple, it in fact encapsulated a small universe of meaning, of questions that could never be brought into the open. Why did you torment me with the Gung-Ho Guns? Why did you condemn entire villages of innocents to die in the desert? Why did you force Wolfwood to betray me?

Why did you make me take a life?

"Because..." Knives spoke in a thin rasp, as unaccustomed to speech as Vash was. "I wanted you to understand me."

"You wanted me to understand you?" Vash was darkly amused. "I thought you wanted me to suffer eternally."

"No. That was the aim of Legato Bluesummers. He always hated you for denying your true nature." Knives grimaced as another spasm of pain wracked his legs. There wasn't a single part of him that didn't hurt, but Vash had gone to brutal lengths to ensure that he wouldn't be up and walking around any time soon. "I'll admit, I was still furious about what you did in July, so I certainly wasn't against the idea of making you suffer... but overall, the idea was to instruct. To show you, once and for all, the depths of the human race's depravity."

Vash thought about that. He recognized that, in many ways, he had been unfair to Knives all this time. While Knives had made concerted efforts to reason with Vash and bridge the gap – ever widening – between them, Vash had never reciprocated in kind. Instead, he had retreated into a shell of anger and hatred, lashing out whenever Knives attempted to reach him, before finally turning the modified Colt – and later, the angel arm – on him. In a flash, he discerned that the assembling of the Gung-Ho Guns had been a last-ditch effort to reunite with Vash in brotherhood.

In the end, however, both twins had only been concerned with their point of view. Neither had ever really attempted to understand the thoughts and feelings of the other. Vash decided to talk about something else, while not departing from the subject.

"You know, back when we were kids, first wandering the desert, you always seemed so strong," he said, lifting one of the bandages on his brother's chest and applying a generous coating of antibiotic ointment. "But that was just a mask, wasn't it? Inside, you were just as scared as I was."

"What do you think you're doing, Vash?" Knives's voice pierced him like a dagger. Vash winced, as though he could feel its incisive point literally driving into his flesh. "You think I'll change my mind about the spiders by playing these mind games with me?"

Vash could clearly see that his brother didn't intend to leave that particular door open to him. On the contrary: he had slammed it in Vash's face, then triple-bolted and chained it. Vash wasn't ready to back down, though.

"I wish you'd been more open with me about your feelings then," he said slowly, sadly. "Maybe I wouldn't have hated you so much."

To this Knives had no words. He transferred his gaze to some point beyond Vash's line of sight, blinked the remaining tears out of his eyes. After a few minutes had been spent in this manner, he drew a deep, weary breath.

"Back there," he murmured, indicating the site of their final battle, his voice colored with quiet resentment. "You were going to kill me."

Vash saw no point in lying to his brother. "I was thinking about it."

Knives spat the next words out. "Then why didn't you?"

"I don't know." Vash was quiet as he continued to minister to Knives. "After all, the world would be a better place without you in it." He didn't say this with malice, or bitterness, or even regret. He just said it. "I guess it's because, in the end... I still think there's a chance to save you."

"Save me," Knives repeated. The irony was so monumental that he didn't know whether to laugh uproariously or knee Vash in the balls. Perhaps he would do both at the same time. As he stared up at the ceiling, considering his choices, Vash replied:

"Yes. I want us to be brothers again. True, I don't think I can ever forgive you for what you've done, both to me and the humans..." Vash turned away, and for a moment his face was cascaded in shadow. "You killed a lot of people, Knives. People that I loved, just as much as I love you."

An expression of hurt astonishment crept into Knives's face. "That's a betrayal, Vash."

"Why?" Vash said, returning his gaze mildly. "Love doesn't end in blood." When Knives continued to stare at him in shock, his voice grew gentle. "I'm not saying I don't love you, Knives – far from it. You're my brother. You're irreplaceable."

"Irreplaceable, and yet you still thought about killing me."

Vash ignored his brother's sarcasm. "Yes."

"That isn't fair, Vash." More and more Knives was beginning to sound like the child he had been over a hundred years ago, but he took no notice of the fact. "No matter how bad things got, I never for a moment seriously considered killing you. I never thought there wouldn't be a day when you finally took your rightful place by my side. But you, the self-proclaimed pacifist, weren't willing to extend me the same courtesy – me, your own brother!"

"True." Vash took hold of another bandage, paused when it seemed he was about to remove it. "But then, I'm not the one who's taken millions of innocent lives, either. I think I've earned a little more leeway in my decisions than you." Without warning, he ripped off the entire bandage in one stroke. Knives's lips drew back in a snarl and his limbs shuddered as a white stabbing pain raced up his spine.

Ow! You did that on purpose, you bastard!

If Vash heard his telepathic accusation, he gave no indication. "Not to mention, I'm no longer that indebted to Rem's ideals. I'll try to honor them whenever and however I can, but I can't go on living in a pleasant fantasy, either." He averted his eyes, which had grown glassy with sorrow. "Wolfwood taught me that much."

"So glad to see that you've come to some of your senses," Knives said, his words couched in the familiar language of sarcasm. Vash turned back to look at him, regarded him with an inscrutable expression.

"You know, Knives, in a way... you succeeded. I finally do understand you. The principle guiding the Gung-Ho Guns – how they sacrificed their own humanity in exchange for power – and their utter willingness to slaughter their own... in the end, my best friend even betrayed me. Humanity has always been capable of terrible evil."

"Then – why – "

"Let me finish," Vash said, laughing softly. "I understand your point of view, Knives. I just don't care." He found a new bandage, wrapping it around the injured area with considerably more gentleness than when he had removed it. "Because for every evil you show me, I'll show you ten acts of kindness. For every ruthless murderer, I'll show you a man willing to give the clothes off his back to a complete stranger. For every greedy con artist, I'll show you a single mother working a thankless job day and night to support her children." His smile deepened, as though prompted by the recollection of a fond memory. "For every Legato Bluesummers you show me, I'll show you a Nicholas D. Wolfwood."

Knives sneered, unimpressed. "Spare me your platitudes, brother."

"I'm afraid you don't have a choice, Knives," Vash said. "You've had over a hundred years to make your point. It hasn't worked. Now it's my turn to make you understand me."

Silence again came on the heels on his statement. Although the twins' conversation thus far had been conducted in stops and starts – and with more than a little hostility from Knives – it fulfilled a kind of hunger in Vash that he had been unable to satisfy for almost his entire life. As a result, there was a disparate cheerfulness in his voice as he said:

"It might have been more merciful to kill you, actually. If I can convince you to see things my way, I'm not sure you would ever be able to live with yourself."

Oh, it would have been more merciful to kill me, all right, but not for that reason, Knives thought. Aloud, he said: "And I suppose you'll have me interacting with that filth?"

Vash frowned at him. "Don't call my girls that."

"What?"

"The insurance girls. Meryl Stryfe and Millie Thompson. They're the ones who've stuck by me through thick and thin for the last few years." He smiled adoringly down at his twin. "They'll be taking care of you while you recover from your injuries."

"...You must be joking."

"Not at all," Vash said. "I think you'll like them, Knives. Millie has an excellent bedside manner, and Meryl's a great cook." His face suddenly took on a wistful bearing that Knives didn't like at all. "Really pretty, too."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Knives growled.

"What's what supposed to mean?"

"You said that one of them was... pretty."

"Well, yes." Vash was beginning to blush now. Knives suddenly felt terrified. "Because it's true. Meryl is very pretty."

"Tell me, Vash," he said through clenched teeth, trying to refrain from openly screaming and making his condition worse. "Are you... and it..." He couldn't finish the question.

"What's with this it business?" Vash returned, ever the master of deflection. "It's she, Knives. She."

"Just answer me!" Knives snapped, his entire body as tense as rocks. He knew he could be advancing the onset of a coronary or something equally life-threatening, but such things were trivial compared to what Vash was now suggesting (and in an obscenely casual tone, at that).

"Maybe, maybe not." Vash crossed his arms, eyes filled with childish mirth. "I don't kiss and tell, you know!"

The truth was that he hadn't even told Meryl how he felt about her – the possibility that he might not return from his battle had prevented him from making that leap – but Vash couldn't help provoking Knives a little, if only to try and rekindle a little of their brotherly chemistry. Knives – somewhat predictably – overreacted.

"You... you... I'll kill you! How dare you – defiling yourself with a lowly human – " Blood vessels rose beneath his skin like thick cords of rope as Knives forgot himself, attempted to verbally lash his twin with what was left of his rapidly fading voice. "When I regain control of my limbs, I'm – going to beat your – miserable hide into – " He was brought down once more by his own wounds when he tried to rise, inadvertently freeing the stitches Vash had made up for his shoulder injuries.

Instead of expressing the appropriate amount of remorse for being a hopeless moron and getting his brother hurt – again – Vash laughed. "Uh-oh. Does Knivesy-wivesy need to go to bed again?" He reached into the first aid kit, removed a powerful sedative that he had used to keep Knives quiet and obedient while he worked on stitching up the initial wounds.

"No! You keep that needle away from me!" Knives hissed, but he lacked even the strength to fend off a toddler, and so he fumed in impotent anger as Vash took his hand in his own, searched for a suitable vein in his weakly resisting arm. Knives grit his teeth as Vash proceeded to inject half of the needle's contents into his arm, humming a particularly inane human song as he did so.

The effect was instantaneous. Knives's entire body became limp, like a rag doll, and he closed his eyes in sudden, forlorn weariness. Vash gave his brother's hand a reassuring squeeze, then reached back into his kit for a needle and a thread that he could use to restitch the shoulder wounds. After a moment, on a sudden impulse, he whispered:

"Hey, Knives..."

"Hm...?" Knives was fast approaching unconsciousness: he cracked one bleary eye open at Vash.

"I'm sorry for all the times I said I hated you."

Knives's reply was so faint that he had to strain to hear it. "...S'okay, Vash..."

"I love you."

"Love you... too... now shut up and let me... sleep..."

Outside the tent, the storm continued to rage – flinging up dunes of sand and sending gales of wind crashing against the rock like enormous tidal waves – but for the moment, Vash's heart was still, as completely at peace as when it had been just him, and Rem, and a young blond boy who looked just like him but couldn't be more different, and they had learned to delight in differences rather than let them drive them apart. He felt with a sudden surge of assurance that those days could be his once more – sans Rem, of course, but then she was always still there with him, in his heart – and that this time, he could get things right. He could have a brother again.

Vash smiled. He could only hope that Meryl didn't kill Knives before they reached that landmark.

A/N, 10/11/16: This story was largely a vehicle for me to speculate about Knives's descent into madness in the anime. The manga gives us a very clear explanation for his Face Heel Turn as a child – few people would argue with his conclusions re: humanity's depravity after seeing Tessla – but in the anime Knives is inscrutable from the very beginning, and there just doesn't seem to be any good reason for him to turn as evil as he did. (Vash obviously thinks there's something there worth saving, so I really doubt it could have been pure hard logic – spiders eat butterflies, so spiders must die – and Steve being a dick that swayed him to kill literally millions. At least, not those two facts alone.)

I suppose, in my own way, I was trying to understand Knives as much as Vash was. Whether or not I succeeded is entirely up to the reader. (There's a reason folks prefer manga!Knives.) That said, I'm still not happy with this story, even after significant rewrites and edits. But – five years later, it is what it is. I welcome all thoughts and comments, regardless.

The poem that Knives recalls Rem reading to him once is "The Edge of the World" by Shel Silverstein.