Chapter Text
Vash is timid.
It’s a word he heard Legato use once, when talking where he thought Nai couldn’t hear. Timid. Scared. Too weak to ever be worthy of Nai’s legacy.
Who Legato had been talking to, Vash doesn’t know. Maybe to himself.
He hid behind the corner before he could see. He hid, because he’s timid.
The word haunts him, bouncing around in his head as he idles down the center aisle of the Plant ship, trailing his hand on the railing. His Sisters don’t waken for him–it takes far too much energy, more than most of them have these days, to unfurl themselves when they aren’t actively dying–but he feels their waves of gentle comfort, like a thick, warm blanket being draped over his shoulders.
“Good morning, everyone,” he says softly to the rows and rows of glass.
Whenever Nai returns from his mysterious trips, he always brings another Plant to add to their family. One that is usually ailing, hurting, the liquid in her container stained pink but not yet the deep red that Vash has come to fear. Vash can feel a pull towards those Plants, towards the ones in need, like a hook in his sternum, trying to drag him forward. He never follows it. He’s too scared to. Too timid.
He sits there on the observation deck, basking in the soft glow of his Sisters, until the large door at the end of the room slides open. Nai steps in with his unreadable gaze already focused on Vash.
“The Doctor told me you haven’t been eating,” Nai says, without even a greeting.
Vash cringes, and pulls his lanky legs closer in to himself. “Haven’t been hungry,” he says.
It’s a lie, and they both know it. Vash needs to eat, but he hates it. It’s too human. Any food he puts on his tongue, no matter how well-prepared or flavorful, just turns into the tasteless sludge he used to be fed. Swallowing feels more like choking.
Nai crouches down beside him and puts a hand on Vash’s head. His Gate, thick and iridescent, drips from Nai’s arm to pool around Vash’s shoulders, layering over the warmth from his Sisters.
“Vash, you know you still need to eat.”
“You don’t need to,” Vash says, aware that he sounds like he’s whining. “The other Plants don’t need to.”
But Vash does. He takes resources, rather than give them. He consumes, and nothing more.
Nai looks at him for a long moment, and then says, “What is this about?”
“Nothing,” Vash says back immediately.
“Vash,” Nai says sternly.
Vash shrugs Nai’s hand and Gate away. He hates how cold he feels without their weight on him. “I mean it,” he says, doubling down on the lie. “I haven’t been hungry.”
The humans always force fed him when he tried to refuse food. They would shove a tube down his throat and keep him strapped to a chair as they pumped the artificial nutrients straight into his stomach, ignoring the tears that would trail down the sides of his face.
He knows Nai won’t do that. It’s the only reason Vash has decided to be stubborn. Nai will never hurt him.
There’s silence for a while, and only the soft bubbling sounds from the Plant containers lining the walls, until Nai breathes out a rough sigh and stands.
He extends a hand down to Vash, and Vash takes it without a word, letting Nai pull him to his feet as well.
But then Nai doesn’t let go of his hand, and Vash finds himself being led down the walkway to the exit. He follows his brother, doing his best to not trip over his own clumsy feet and hold Nai back. Walking was something he had to learn only after Nai saved him and his legs had gained the strength to hold him up, and sometimes he feels like he still doesn’t quite have the hang of it.
Nai, predictably, leads him through the building and to the piano room. He gestures for Vash to sit down, so he does, and then Nai slides onto the seat beside him.
He sits there quietly, expectantly, waiting for Vash to start playing. Vash spreads his hand out over the keys, but they all blur together, becoming a mosaic of shattered colors as he lets his hand fall with a discordant thump down onto the keys. He doesn’t have any energy for playing piano right now. Not when he only has one arm to do it with, and so has to keep time with his brother playing the other half of the notes.
“I can’t,” Vash whispers. “I’m tired, Nai.”
Nai hums, but he doesn’t scold Vash. Rather, he gently brushes Vash’s hand aside, and then begins to play the entire song on his own.
Nai always waits until the first break in the melody to start asking Vash questions. “Are you upset that the Doctor hasn’t finished making you a new arm?” he asks, not even missing a note or faltering for a single beat as the tune changes beneath his skilled fingers.
“No…” Vash answers. That, at least, is true. He hadn’t had two arms long enough to really care that his left is gone. It’s just how he has always existed. Having to wait years for a new arm is nothing to him.
Nai says nothing. Then, after another stretch of silence; “Is it because there are more red Plants around?”
To this, Vash also answers, “No.”
He doesn’t say anything more than that, not wanting to reveal the compulsion he feels towards those Plants.
Nai glances at him out of the corner of his eye at his answer, as if sensing that there is something Vash is keeping from him, but he doesn’t press the issue.
Instead, he next asks, measured and controlled, “Is it because we still haven’t discovered if you have any abilities?”
Vash flinches.
“N-No…”
Nai doesn’t stop playing, but Vash knows he’s been caught.
“You don’t have to worry about that,” Nai says. His fingers run up the keys, in front of Vash’s eyes, then trail back down to the scale Nai had been playing in. Each movement is fluid and smooth. “Even if you can do nothing at all, you’re still my brother.”
But Vash wants to be able to do something. He wants to be more than just the timid little brother Nai has to shelter from the horrors of the world. He wants Nai to tell him what he does when he leaves July. He wants to go with him when he does. He wants to shake off the scars the humans left on his skin and see the world and be something.
It is in the nature of Plants to give, and until Vash can give something, he doesn’t deserve to take.
Now, Nai pauses. The silence is jarring after so long of the piano singing its familiar song, and Vash hunches down into his hood to hide from it.
“Oh,” Nai says, thoughtful, curious, “I see.”
Vash swallows thickly. One of his brother’s hands appears in his vision, to take his chin and tilt his gaze back up so they’re facing each other. Then, Nai lets go of his chin, and runs his fingers through Vash’s black-streaked hair.
“Vash, can you be honest with me?” Nai asks.
Vash’s lips twist, but he gives a shallow nod.
“Do you have any interest in helping me with my work?”
A “yes” flies from Vash’s mouth before he can catch it and wrangle it back down.
He feels foolish immediately for being so eager, but something sparks to life in Nai’s eyes. A smile grows on his face, getting more and more pleased by the second.
Vash had no idea that expressing interest in Nai’s work would excite him so much.
“Yes,” Nai says, almost to himself. “Yes, I believe you’re ready to help me. I wanted to give you time to heal but it’s been a few years already, hasn’t it?”
It’s been five years. Vash counted every day. Each one was another that he was free from that dark lab and the cold operating tables, and he wanted to cherish them all. He’s grown since then, from the thin ghost of a child that he was to a scruffy-haired teen who still feels out of place in his own skin.
“I’ll need to get some things in order first,” Nai says, taking his hand from Vash’s hair and standing from the piano bench. “Just wait a few more days, little brother.”
Nai is lost in thought now, with that pleased smile still on his face. He doesn’t seem as if he’s seeing Vash anymore, his eyes sliding off of Vash like oil on water, and Vash can’t help the way his heart clenches at that.
“Okay,” he says quietly, and watches his brother leave the room.
With just him there, the piano feels too large, the room too cold. Vash turns back to the instrument and slowly presses down on a single key, letting the clear note ring uninterrupted until even its echoes have faded.
His brother nearly vanishes from Vash’s world for the next few days.
The Doctor still checks in on him regularly, and Vash still spends time sitting in the Plant room with his Sisters, but Nai has become nothing more than a presence on the edge of Vash’s awareness. Nai’s work had always been mysterious to him, with Nai never wanting to tell Vash too many details, but this is a level above that. This is something more intense than just regular secretiveness.
He finds out why when Nai calls for him to come to a room he’s never been in before, and when Vash arrives, there’s a human woman tied up on the floor.
“Don’t worry, she can’t hurt you,” Nai reassures, gently taking Vash’s hand and leading him further into the room after Vash freezes in the doorway. Nai knows Vash isn’t comfortable with humans. He barely tolerates the Doctor, and he and Legato hate each other, so why…?
“This will be your first step,” Nai says, squeezing Vash’s hand. “This woman is a Plant Engineer. I stopped her from forcing one of our Sisters into her Last Run.”
“B-But what, why–” Vash looks frantically from the woman to his brother’s face, his frozen fear melting into a shivering panic.
“That’s what I do, Vash, I go out and I save the Plants, and I stop the humans who had been using them.”
Nai’s Gate unfurls into a few thin strands of blades. One of them reaches out and wraps around the whining, sobbing woman, dragging her closer across the floor. Another curls against Vash’s back, the press of cold metal a familiar, grounding sensation.
“My work isn’t clean, Vash, so I need you to prove yourself before I can take you with me.”
Vash still stutters and stumbles. He doesn’t understand what’s going on.
“Here, Vash, this is for you,” Nai says, and he presses something heavy into Vash’s hand. “I made this for you, so you won’t be defenseless against humans ever again, even without any abilities.”
Vash looks down to see a sleek, black gun, and Nai’s hands curling his own fingers around the handle of it. Vash shudders, his breaths coming in short little puffs, as he feels the weight of the metal in his palm.
It’s a human weapon. Something meant to hurt and kill from afar. Revulsion swells in Vash’s throat. Why would Nai make this for him?
But… Vash really has no other options, does he? He can’t create anything to defend himself with, not like Nai can. Nai, with his hundreds of thousands of millions of beautiful blades that move to his whims, spinning and twirling in a deadly dance. A clunky, ugly gun suits Vash just fine in contrast. It's the best weapon he can use to keep him as far from the people trying to hurt him as possible.
It still feels too heavy for him. Too dangerous. Maybe he isn’t as ready as he thought.
“N-Nai…” Vash says. He doesn’t tighten his grip, leaving the gun to still be reliant on Nai’s hold to keep it in Vash’s hand. “I don’t want– I can’t–”
“You can,” Nai says, calm and confident. “Remember what humans did to you?”
Vash jolts at the unexpected question, and he looks to Nai with wide, teary eyes. “Y-Yes,” he answers. He doesn’t think his mind will ever be merciful enough to let him forget.
“I didn’t tell you, but they did that to another Independent,” Nai says. “On the same ship where I was born, but many years before me. Her name was Tesla.”
Tremors rack Vash’s frame, growing stronger as he processes the words being spoken to him. The story being shared with him.
“She would have been our big Sister,” Nai says, “but the humans took even more from her than they did from you.”
A spark passes through Nai’s hands and into Vash’s own, and he sees it. The darkly glowing tanks, the pieces.
He screams, short, in the back of his throat, before biting down on his lips and swallowing the sound of terror out of habit. Nai’s hands leave the gun and go to Vash’s shoulders, pulling Vash into his chest, crushing the gun and Vash’s arm between them.
“I’m sorry,” Nai says, his voice small and afraid for the first time in Vash’s memory. “I didn’t want to show you that, I didn’t mean to show you that.”
But there’s no way to close Pandora’s Box now. No way for Vash to unsee the horrible sight Nai showed him.
Tesla’s eye had been staring out from one tank of many, and it was filled with pain even when pulled apart from her body. Vash wonders, distantly, if his arm still has blood pumping through it, wherever it is. If it’s still intact, and warm with his pulse.
Vash is sure that Nai feels it against his chest, when Vash’s fingers curve tighter together around the handle of the gun.
He pulls away from Vash, and they look into each other’s eyes. Vash sees the same Plant markings he knows are in his eyes reflected in Nai’s.
They’re both different. They will always be different. Humans will never stop wanting to know what makes them different.
“Vash?” Nai breathes, a faint and hesitant drop of hope coloring his voice.
Vash pulls the gun closer to him, looks down at the dark steel barrel. He sees his Plant markings there too, reflected back at him in the metal.
Shakily, he puts his finger on the trigger.
The woman on the ground–a Plant Engineer, Nai had called her. Someone taught how to poke and prod their kind until the desired output was achieved–is babbling behind the cloth gagging her. Her eyes are wide, tears spilling out of them and soaking her cheeks.
Vash raises his trembling arm, and points the gun down at her.
“Good, Vash, very good,” Nai encourages, helping Vash hold his arm straight with a thin string of knives pressing their flat sides up against his elbow.
The woman screams and thrashes against the tight binding of knives wrapped around her, cutting into her skin with every twitch.
Her eyes meet Vash’s and try to plead with him. He doesn’t see anything reflected there except the dark black hole muzzle of the gun.
But something makes his conviction falter in the split second between him pulling the trigger and the bullet leaving the gun.
He’s still too timid.
The woman cries out when the bullet hits her shoulder, and then she doesn’t stop. She screams and wails and howls through her gag. An injured animal, calling for help.
Vash stands there, breathing heavily, face pale. The gun is still smoking. His ears are ringing. He can still feel the faint echo of the impact that had rippled through his bones. “I… I s-shot…”
“Oh Vash, I’m sorry,” Nai says. His brother’s large hands reach over him, and fold around Vash’s shaking, sweaty grip. “I should’ve known this would be too much for you. I’ll help you finish putting an end to this annoyance.”
His arm is raised again. A finger gently presses against his own, compressing the trigger.
The screaming stops.