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Theme: "10. #10"
Title: "Ten Days"
Fandom: Trigun
Pairing: Knives x Vash
Word count: 2282. I think this is my longest fic yet.
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Angst, violent and sexual references, violence, abuse, citrus
Summary: Ten days pass after the fall of the ships to the sandy planet, and the rift between
Knives and Vash is beginning to widen even more.





"Ten Days"



He had never been more lonely in his, no, their one year of life, the year roughly
equivalent to humans' ten to twelve years.

In those last days, especially during the fight in the escape capsule, he had
watched as Knives, his brother, the only flesh and blood relative he actually had, had undergone
the metamorphosis from the caring, inquisitive, somewhat withdrawn rock of his life into a
murderous, vengeful creature that only somewhat resembled the brother he had been born with
and had grown alongside.

Six lonely days had passed since they had fallen to this planet, since Vash had
watched the destruction of almost two million human beings, including the entire waking crew for
Alpha Ship. The events played over like a never-ending videodisc replay in his mind: Steve was
being executed for a rape he did not commit, Rowan was believing Mary to have been to blame,
being overcome with jealousy, shooting his ex-lover, Joey was ejecting the crazed man out of the
airlock in an attempt to save Rem, the radio silence on Joey's end of the intercom was next, and
then, finally, the explosion of the Alpha Ship, the moment he knew Rem had died.

Vash had cried ever since he had awakened on the first day, after Knives had
apparently won in their fight. He knew he had to be a man now, and real men didn't cry, but he
couldn't fight off the tears, especially at the thoughts of Rem. She had been so beautiful, so
loving, he had absolutely adored her in every way, and now, he would never hear that sweet
laugh again, never talk with someone who listened to him and loved him unconditionally as she
did again.



He would have given anything, even his own life, for a proper grave to worship
his dead goddess, for something other than the only things he had to remember her by: the
photo taken the day before the fall, him and Knives and Rem, the other, older photo taken with
them as young boys with her arms around both, and the communicator receiver earring from her
late lover that had fallen from her jeans pocket to the floor of the escape pod when she had left
them.

It's better than nothing, he bitterly said to himself. I miss you, Rem. Everything I
love dies. I wish I. . . no, we, Knives and I, had never been born.

The idea of the rite of passage had appealed to him in those last days on the
ships: he wanted to be a "man," like Joey, like Rowan, like the people he'd seen on the videodiscs
and TV on the ships, rather than being "such a cute boy," but most of all, like Rem's lost love.

Maybe they were related somehow, or maybe it was out of his love for her, he
didn't know, but he had wondered what he could do, what he had to do to be like that man, and
the fifth night on this planet, he had managed to pierce his own left ear and slip Alex's earring into
it. That night, he had felt so proud of himself for being able to take the pain "like a man," and
most of all for having a tangible, visible symbol of the woman he had loved and the man he
wanted to be that also would serve a purpose.

Knives had laughed at him for being a sentimental fool, a crybaby, and had
threatened to rip the earring out until Vash had finally placated him with reassurances that it
would help them pick up on any transmissions from crashed ships, settlements, anywhere they
could go to end their wandering through this desert.

It had been a half-truth at best: he knew the earring itself wouldn't randomly
pick up a transmission from anything but the attached communicator pen, and he didn't know who
had that, if it had even made it onto the ships or if it and the owner had survived the landing.

Nevertheless, lying to Knives was easier than telling him the truth, because
Vash had learned one lesson about his brother above all others. If you don't like it, you destroy it.
You killed them all. . .

ooo

Adjusting to the new climate of the planet had been one of Vash's problems
from the beginning. Knives had seemed to make the shift flawlessly, to know exactly how much
water and food he needed at what intervals, and seemed to have no problem with what Vash
considered to be scorching heat and unrelenting dryness, turning into nights that could vary from
pleasantly warm to cold enough to give him chills.

Now, he had finally learned what Knives had learned, aside from the apparent
ability to voluntarily adjust his body temperature, but enough to live reasonably normally despite
being hot and miserable.

Knives had seemed to calm somewhat, the solitude and lack of humanity
anywhere around them an apparent balm to his mind, and those days, when they still had
enough supplies and when everything began to seem like some sort of grand adventure through
a new land, had been among the best of his life, no, their life.

That seventh night, as they cuddled together for warmth in their salvaged
sleeping bag, Vash had decided to broach the subject of the changes he had seen in his brother,
looking into his brother's icy, intense gaze and tentatively kissing him before speaking.

"You don't have to be so much of a tease now, Vashu," Knives had mumbled.
"They're gone. There's no one to see us."

"They're gone because you killed them. Why did you," he managed before his
voice cracked and tears welled in his eyes at the thought of Rem, "why did you have to kill them?
Couldn't we have lived together here? We were going to land in a week anyway, and you
promised it would be you and I and Rem forever," he sobbed into Knives's shoulder.

"Stop crying like a baby, you fool. They would have killed us like they killed
Tessla. Then, being the humans that they were, they would have drained our sisters for no
reason and destroyed this planet too. Humanity is nothing but a parasite, Vash. Nothing but an
insect that won't die out and kills everything it manages to get its filthy bodies into."

Vash blinked back tears, reminding himself to be strong, to act like the man he
wanted to be. "They're not parasites! Rem said they just needed to understand us and we could
help them!"

"Help them kill us? No. The only way to help humans is to give them slow,
painful deaths so they can reflect on the misery they have caused." Knives laughed, sending a
chill down Vash's spine that had little to do with the temperature. "Nevertheless, we will let them
build what little of our Eden they can."

"I won't kill anyone," Vash yelled, grabbing for the collar of Knives's spacesuit.
"Rem told me killing was wrong! You're being just like Steve was!"

Knives pushed Vash away, glaring. "You would dare compare me to a human?
To a worthless human like him?"

ooo

The dreams he had of Rem had abruptly changed over the last few weeks, from
dreaming of her talking with him, of her teaching him, to things she would have never done. In
some of the dreams, she would be kissing him much as Knives had that last day on the ships.

More and more often, though, the dreams would be much more graphic and
infinitely more pleasurable. The temptation to finish off what those dreams started was more than
he could bear, despite his feeling conflicted, as if he were defiling her memory and what she
meant to him.

Reading of the physical maturation known as "puberty" in the books on the
ships had deceptively simplified everything. Back then, he had rationalized that even if Plants did
undergo the same process as human males, it would have been only a matter of growing, maybe
a few days of awkward appearance and voice, then everything would be normal again.

Instead, it had been an agonizingly slow process, beginning in the last days on
the ships and painfully obvious by this point. The experience had been almost identical to what he
had read of in the books, except all of the things he had not understood or really paid much
thought to at the time were now happening to both of them.

ooo

On the eighth night, Vash and Knives watched the starry sky overhead, neither
able to sleep.

Knives had broken the silence with what seemed a boyish question of pointless
curiosity, something that reminded his twin of how he was before he had caused the Fall. "How
many moons are there, anyway?"

"I never bothered to look up much," Vash replied, staring at the sky for a
moment. "That's one, two, three there, that looks like a fourth, and there's the fifth."

"Looks like a crater in the first one," Knives said, awed. "Remember what Joey
said when we saw that cratered planet out of the ship's window?"

"Yeah, that something big had blasted into it like a meteor or something."

They stared for a few moments, Vash resting his head on Knives's chest and
listening to his twin's heartbeat. They usually fell asleep like this most nights now, except for
when one or the other would abruptly awaken and run off to the other side of their campsite,
returning anywhere from a few minutes to a half hour later.

ooo

"I want to know what you dream about," Knives had asked him the morning of
the ninth day, as they huddled under their shelter tent, waiting for the sandstorm to blow over so
they could travel once more. "You know, what makes you go over the edge. You can tell me, we
are brothers after all. . ."

Vash sighed and yawned. "It's really none of your business," he said with a
blush. "I don't ask you what you dream about."

"You know you can't hide anything from me," Knives whispered, looking into his
eyes. "It's Rem, isn't it? That meddlesome-"

"Don't call her that! She was looking out for us!"

"She wanted to turn us into her pet angels. That was what she wanted, a
couple of fluffy little boys that she could make into do-gooders like she thought she was! When
will you ever see that? I'm happy she's dead!"

Vash resisted the urge boiling up within him to punch his brother and throw him
out of their tent into the sandstorm, deciding to try a different tactic. "You only say that because
you liked Rowan."

"I do not," Knives roared, almost as enraged as Vash was. "I can tell you in all
truth that I loathed all of the humans. Their looks are inferior, their attitudes may as well have
been barking insanity."

"Then who do you dream about," Vash asked, looking into Knives's blazing
eyes. "The sisters?"

"Nah, they're not what I want," Knives said, meeting his twin's quizzical gaze. "I
dream of you, my brother, my only love-"

The golden blonde twin squirmed uncomfortably. "Knives. I think the sun's
gotten to you or something. You sound like those bad romances we found in Joey's room that
time."

Knives's face twisted into a grimace of rage. "You would dare call me a liar? Rem
was the liar, the one who told you that we shouldn't love each other since we're brothers. Don't
make me hit you again, Vashu. . ."

"I won't," Vash said stonily, moving to the other side of the tent.

ooo

The storm had passed by the tenth day after the Fall, and Vash had noticed
something new in the previously monotonous sand they walked through. Some of the sand now
seemed hard, packed, and there were what looked like the tracks of vehicles and clawed birds.

"You know what this means?" he had excitedly asked Knives, who seemed to
become angrier by each new discovery.

"Of course I know what it means! The humans must have some sort of
settlement ahead. I can't wait to see it," Knives said, laughing the same laugh Vash remembered
from the escape capsule.

"You are not killing anyone there," Vash growled. "I don't care what I have to
do to stop you, you're not doing that. She wouldn't want me to let you kill them."

"You're not my boss, and neither is she. Nevertheless, I want to milk them for
all they can give us first, so they will be safe. . . for now."

Vash smiled at that, a fake smile, nevertheless one he hoped reassured his
increasingly volatile twin. If he isn't killing anyone now, he reasoned, I can keep him from doing it
later. Can't I, Rem? Help me.

Knives concentrated for a moment, forming a small blade on his arm.

"What's that," Vash asked, nervously.

"Something we were born with," Knives said with a smirk. "Someday I will have
millions and millions of blades."

"You're scaring me! Stop it!"

"Don't be scared," Knives said, casually slicing a deep cut into Vash's arm.
"You're mine. I'd never hurt you except when you need it."


By the end of the day, as Knives and Vash set up camp ten iles outside of the
human settlement that they could now see the lights of on the horizon, the cut had healed to a
smooth scar.

"Why did you do that? Knives?"

"To teach you a lesson, brother," Knives whispered as they undressed for bed.
"Look at that scar, the wound that would have killed a human, and remember that you and I are
different."