Preserved in Death
Disclaimer / Notes: I do not own Trigun, its characters, or the nursery rhyme "The Itsy Bitsy Spider". I'm a little teen-aged peon, so suing me would not be at all profitable. Sad but true, I'm afraid. This is a fic from Knives' perspective as he looks over a city he destroyed and thinks about a little girl who defied his boxed idea of the human race. I'm pretty sure this will only be a one-shot sort of thing.
Outside of the tiny desert town of Kemberly, there stands a redstone cliff, higher than anything else that can be seen. It stands taller and with more pride than any man, leaning out as if to meet the sky. On the edge of the cliff, Millions Knives sat with his legs over the edge, shaking his head and looking down on the rubble of the town and the few people who still wandered through it, hoping against all reason for a chance to start over.
They're spiders. They're rancid, parasitic insects, every one of them.
He drew a deep, cleansing breath, as if even the thought of those inferior things had tainted him. A pure breeze sifted through his cropped pale blond hair, drying the sheen of sweat that the wretched suns had produced on his face. Blue eyes colder than the coldest night searched the land rolled out in front of them. Knives looked down on the little humans scuttling from place to place, futilely trying to accumulate food and wealth. Their lives were like one of his breaths. He laughed.
They were so small, so insignificant and unimportant. He watched them. A mother dragged two children along, both of them gripping her wrists, displaying the brand of trust that burned away with age and exposure to the horrible conditions here. Murder, betrayal...these people cared only about themselves in the end. They might put on a show of compassion for those lesser than them, but when worse came to worst, they would stomp over the bodies of comrades to make sure they arrived at the top. They were no more than glorified savages.
Knives stretched out his hand, allowing the natural transformation to take place until a small, double-edged blade slid from his fingers. He closed one eye and drew a bead on the oblivious humans below him, aware that he could kill these few survivors in a mere moment and leave before the twin suns sank.
So small...these humans were even smaller than the original inhabitants of this world, the thomases and sandworms.
"Why did you hurt my Mommy and Daddy? Why aren't they breathing now? Mommy said it's bad to hurt people."
Knives clenched his fists at the memory of the little girl who'd stood up to him a few days ago. "It's so sad, little spider, is it not? One day you'll understand what you are. One day you'll be faced with the choice, your life or someone else's, and you'll take that life with ease. You'll enjoy it. You do not comprehend your nature, yet. You don't understand that your existence relies on stealing life from someone else. It must be so depressing to slowly realize that you're an inferior and dying race, must it not? " He hurled the blade into the dust at his side, trying to push the girl's soft voice from his head.
She had looked up at him, smooth, short blonde hair waving in the breeze that smelled of the destruction he'd wrought. The innocence and fear in her eyes pricked at a part of him that he thought had died a long time ago. Why?
Then he realized.
She looked so much like a little girl whose face haunted his dreams. She looked just like Tessla. She was unmistakably human, though. He could tell.
"Go, little spider."
"I'm a lady," the girl had corrected him, pointing a tiny, slender finger to his face. There was no fear in her eyes. "Spiders are bad."
Knives winced, acutely aware of the stench of death and filth all around him. "Yes, spiders are rather disgusting, aren't they?"
Knives stood, looking down on the fallen city. Mothers and fathers milled to and fro, parents holding their children close to them. Groups of those who had no parents flocked instinctively together like wild animals. He made out the different groups. There were those who stuck together only to survive, and those who formed groups for the sole reason of exploiting those who would not fight.
Those who would not fight...
"Are you going to hurt me too, like you did my Mommy and Daddy?"
Knives looked at the little girl who still stood there, despite the blood-stained blades he wielded. Why did she not run away? "And what would you do if I did?"
The girl shrugged. She clasped her tiny porcelain hands together, the perfect, pink fingernails clicking madly away at each other. Blue eyes searched through the sky until they met his. They slowly filled with tears. "No one can help me," she whispered.
"Wouldn't you protect yourself?" He formed a knife and took her hand, pressing the blade into it. He then formed his own. "I can't hurt you if you hurt me first. Don't you want to live?"
The little girl gasped in sobbing breaths, tiny mouth opening and closing with each one. Tears rolled freely over her creamy apricot cheeks, settling onto her chin and dropping to the dust. The knife slipped from her hands. "Mommy says not to! It's not good to hurt people."
"I'll kill you. Pick that knife up!"
She bit her lip and looked up to him, huge lavender-blue eyes wavering. In the wind that swept from the dunes, her violet dress ruffled around her small legs. Despite the filth that covered the town, this girl had managed to stay relatively clean, all except her face, which was smudged with dirt and someone else's blood. Tears cleaned tiny trails through the grime. "I can't." And she still just stood there.
"Itsy bitsy spider," Knives said to himself. The girl's face came to his mind. That's what she was. An insect who had not realized her nature, and therefore denied it. There had been nothing special at all about her except her innocence, and that, like everything else in this mortal world, would fade. She would become just like those monsters he hated.
Like those who he now saw fighting below him, like the looters who stole from shops and killed anyone who got in the way, she would one day be forced to give in to the beast inside of her, and she would feed on her own kind. Knives tried to remember the nursery rhyme he and Vash had learned as boys aboard the SEEDs ship, humming the childish and lilting tune as the parasites below him broke out into a gunfight for the remaining supplies of food in the ravaged city.
"Run away, spider. Run away or I will kill you."
The little child stopped sobbing and looked up at him, wiping the tears and dirt from her face to reveal a smeared view of what she had looked like before all of this. She glanced at him just for a moment, her eyes speaking volumes, and then she ran. Knives leveled his blade at the neck of her tiny form racing over the rubble of what was once her town.
Why did you not harm me? Why not kill me to save your own existence? His game had not ended as he had planned. Knives let the blade drop. He watched as the small child navigated the debris.
She found the tallest standing structure and climbed up it, sitting in the light of the now setting suns. Their bloody rays set upon the destroyed city, and she buried her head in her dress, broken but determined to continue on. Silhouetted in the scarlet light, she was like a ghost. Knives looked at her for a moment, then turned away. She would die soon enough.
Knives remembered the words to the rhyme. Rem had showed them many rhymes one day. She said that all the children knew them back on Earth. He let the words flow through his mind.
"The itsy bitsy spider climbs up the water spout." Knives leaned back, memories and thoughts swirling in his mind. He spoke the words to the rhyme softly as they clarified themselves in his mind. These spiders had landed on the arid planet so long ago, reaching for the impossible, for healing, for a new beginning...
"Down came the rain, and washed the spider out." The humans had been subjected to the worst possible conditions. Their hopes had been washed away by the draining heat of the suns, their lives sapped by the lack of food. They were dying.
"Out came the sun, and dried up all the rain..." Despite all they'd been through, those humans had found a way to survive. They had persevered like their kind always seemed to do, fighting even as they drew their last breath. They fought until they made shelters on this arid, dry universe
Knives spoke the last line aloud. "And the itsy bitsy spider...climbed up the spout again."
That girl, despite all the destruction around her, had climbed up above it and looked to the future, to something beyond what she could now see.
Knives sat up again when he finished the song, looking to the town. The looters were now on the ground, captured by the remnants of this town's shattered justice system. They had not been killed, merely tied up. Families cleaned up the glass from broken windows and the rubble from what Knives' blades had destroyed. Slowly, they climbed that water spout, ready to live again, despite the odds.
Knives shook his head and stood, marveling at their stupidity and blind determination. Didn't they know when to die? His eyes traveled to the leaning tower of rubble the girl had sat on that day. He knew the girl was no longer there, but he could imagine her shadow. He stood, rubbing both hands through his hair. He wondered how long it would be before this fragile system of reform broke apart. These humans would not change. Progress was made and then lost, one step taken forward before sliding back several more, a constant flux of positive and negative. Spiders...
"Mister!" The little girl from yesterday came up behind him, panting as she climbed the slope that led to the precipice of the cliff. "Mister! Look, I was jus' walking around...and I found something. Look, isn't it pretty?"
Without a thought and without even turning around, he pulled the dropped knife from the dust and flung it backward, pinning the girl through her heart. He turned around in time to meet her eyes as she slumped to her knees, beautiful red blood staining the cloud-soft violet of her dress. He looked at the thing she was so excited about, gently held in a tiny hand like a treasure that would fly away.
It was a flower. Knives looked at the girl and the silky white bud. He stomped it out, grinding the petals into the unrelenting sand. He took his knife from the girl's chest and closed her eyes, hurling the knife over the cliff.
He walked away, his back to the destroyed city.
He looked back only once. He did not feel regret.
Such innocence should not have to live in a world like this one.
• Author's notes: I thought that the nursery rhyme related so well to the idea of Trigun that I had to make it into a story. I hope that you weren't bored out of your mind, and that Knives was in character. Everyone has an opinion, and I'm really desperate to hear yours on my story. Good, bad, just plain ugly? Please leave your thoughts and I'll give you donuts and pudding!