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Earth to Earth	By : Ravenclaw42 Category: +S to Z > Trigun Views: 2957 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Trigun, nor any of the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
- 9
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A/N: *Phew* The story finally earns its R rating! Heh. I do write PWP on occasion, but this particular story is anything but. Of course, anyone who's read nine chapters already to get to this point has probably already figured that out. ^_^. No offense meant to Christianity or any other religion -- I am not Christian, but that doesn't mean I don't respect the religion. The Bible quote towards the end is entirely for artistic purposes (porpoises, la la la). I'm feeling stupid today, can you tell?

Oh, and for those not familiar with the manga, Knives' random out-of-nowhere weapon last chapter was the Angel Blade -- similar to the Angel Arm, but a blade instead of a gun (durr). It makes a couple of appearances in this chapter, too.

The end is intentionally choppy. Please to not be complaining about it. Otherwise, enjoy!

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Chapter Ten: A Heap of Broken Images

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�What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow

Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,

You cannot say, or guess, for you know only

A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,

And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,

And the dry stone no sound of water. Only

There is shadow under this red rock,

(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),

And I will show you something different from either

Your shadow at morning striding behind you

Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;

I will show you fear in a handful of dust.�

--from The Waste Land (I: The Burial of the Dead) by T.S. Eliot

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Knives huddled, shaking, in an alcove in the wall that housed one of the ship�s many computer terminals. The screen above his head softly announced the time on the half-hour. His shapeless gray hospital clothing was torn and bloody, his ragged hair was tangled, and his fingers... his fingers were cold. So cold. He almost couldn�t feel them -- he could almost believe that they weren�t still tingling from... from...

The shaking increased. Knives curled closer to himself, shoving his knees against his chest until he could barely breathe. The ragged knife wound in his gut was burning, throbbing, but he didn�t know enough about his own body to tell whether it had hit anything vital.

Desperate, helpless, confused and scared, Knives banged his forehead in a soft rhythm against his blood-spattered knees, held his volatile hands out away from his body, and began to cry.

It was there, bleeding and broken in the dark, that he began to remember.

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There was a silence so loud it was deafening, and there was a darkness so thick that it got under his eyelids and tore them open, screaming open, like drowning in thick mud � the very air stuck to his skin like a leather car seat on a sweaty day. He choked on a scream and breathed in a lungful of grit instead.

And he remembered, oh he remembered, the pain wouldn�t let him forget. The pain drove away consciousness, drove away rationality, drove away hope, but it left the memories gruesome and intact. He remembered the look on his brother�s face, and the terrible calm moment when he knew, he knew, and then the trigger had been pulled and the pain had shattered him. There was a moment when he could have moved, but he didn�t. There was a moment when he could have thought, but he couldn�t. Too shocked to think.

Pointing a gun at me. At me.

He was desperate, sprawled broken and crying in the sand and unable to move, scream, think. He was desperate now, lost. Abandoned.

That was before he had anyone to turn to. That was before he had built a world for himself. That was before... before everything. Back then, all he had had run away like a ragged dust-colored ghost and left him, dead, tired, broken, bleeding in the middle of the desert.

He had been young. They had both been so young.

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�Look at me, Legato.�

�Yes, Master.� Tawny eyes turned on him, blank and adoring.

�When I give you an order, do you hesitate?�

�No, Master.� Vicious pleasure in those golden eyes now; the servant knew where this was going, and he liked it.

�I gave the boy an order, did I not?�

�Yes.�

�He questioned my order, Legato.�

�He did, Master.�

Knives turned cold eyes on the cowering child, no more than thirteen or fourteen years old at most, and a scowl darkened his expression. Weak people irritated him. Ironic, of course, seeing as he liked his servants obedient. But the strong could be obedient; the weak merely collapsed under pressure, like badly made machines. The weak were servile, and didn�t think for themselves. There was no mental adaptability there -- the worst kind of mindset for an assassin, and certainly of no use to Knives.

�Teach him,� Knives muttered, and left without another word.

The order was a gift, in a way, to Legato -- the strongest, most obedient of all Knives� servants. Legato was infinitely adaptable, and yet managed to follow orders like a drone. When he was young, Legato had thirsted for something to fill the void in his life that had come of being an outcast. Knives had given him the right kind of ideas to put his inscrutable powers to good use. That drive, that ambition that Knives had planted so long ago had taken root and flourished like nothing Knives had ever known.

Legato liked teaching the new ones. Knives was willing to let him have his fun.

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Vash learned faster, read faster, moved faster than his brother. Knives took his time, pondered, thought before he moved, looked before he leapt. Yet Vash always kept ahead of him, ignorant despite knowing things that Knives had not yet grasped, careless everywhere Knives trod with caution. Vash could fall and pick himself up in an instant; Knives chose not to fall in the first place. And still Vash progressed faster, bruised and happy, while Knives lagged and struggled to keep himself clean.

Learning English was a constant torment. Vash would be on chapter ten while Knives still picked his way delicately through chapter four. But ask either of them what the book had been about the day after they finished it, and their answers skewed to opposite ends of the scale -- Vash would hardly be aware that he had read a book at all, while Knives would give a dissertation on its themes.

Time danced out of Knives� reach, taking his brother with it. His frustration with his own slowness, his own clumsiness with words, was maddening. And slowly, the resentment built.

Knives swore to catch up to Vash no matter what.

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Maxima debetur puero reverentia. Something Rem had said, once. Something that Knives had liked because it had been said in his defense, when he was being teased.

Maxima debetur puero reverentia. The greatest respect is due to a child.

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Legato was the one who found Knives, when they first met.

The young thief had watched Knives for nearly a week, following him into the open desert from Septombre, where Knives had been forced to deal with humans lest he starve. He had planned to steal the Plant�s sidearm, figuring that such an unusual weapon would sell for a lot in the right circles. The child burrowed in the sand for shelter, flitting between dunes like a shadow, keeping out of sight and out of mind. Knives never knew he was there -- the first sign that Legato�s talents were of an unusual caliber.

And then Legato had struck one night, thinking he had pinned Knives into a deep sleep with the mental powers that even he did not understand; but Knives was, of course, much stronger than Legato had counted on. When he woke to the noise of Legato�s pilfering, Knives felt sluggish and violated. He assumed the child had somehow drugged him. His first reaction was the desire to kill the boy.

Legato was nine years old -- small, scrawny, underfed. His dull blue hair was long and matted, tied back with a sun-faded black string that looked like it had once been a shoelace. It didn�t match his shoes; Knives assumed it was stolen. His clothes were ragged and mismatched, patched and grafted together with string. One leg of his jeans had been ripped off above the knee, so he had attached the sleeve from a long-sleeved shirt to complete it. He wore his oversized t-shirt like a tunic, tied about the waist with a length of chain and small-gauge flexible pipe. A flared, ankle-length, dust-stained skirt that had clearly been stolen instead of scrounged from a dumpster served as both cloak -- he had torn it open down one side so he could keep it tied around his neck -- and blanket. Humiliating, maybe, but shame was beyond a boy so deeply impoverished. It was functional, and that was what mattered.

Knives had caught him, but Legato had weaseled out of his grasp, wiry and quick as he was, and had lost Knives in the dunes.

He was the first and only human to ever escape from Knives� wrath.

They met for the second time six months later. Chance brought them both to the outskirts of Terma -- Knives to �commandeer� equipment for the abandoned ship he had set up base in; Legato tracking a drug cartel-cum-slaving ring whose leader carried a hefty bounty. (Legato was a pragmatic street-drifter; he had no qualms about playing both sides of the field, as long as he got the money or the goods.)

Knives was asleep in the corner of a warehouse when Legato stumbled over him -- literally. A string of quiet obscenity and a whirl of shadowed confusion had ended with Knives holding Legato aloft by the throat. As the two recognized each other, there in the darkness, a coldness came over both of them. Knives scowled and prepared to snap Legato�s neck, but that was when the child did something he least expected.

Legato invaded his mind.

It was quick and ugly and unrefined, the wild flailing of a machete instead of the scalpel-precise craftsmanship that the psychic learned later in life. Knives gave a choked cry as his unguarded mind was flooded with alien emotion -- fear, blinding terror, the kind of bloody, mind-shredding horror that would have rendered a normal man to a puddly mess. It took Knives a second to recognize that Legato was the source of the fear, and another to conclude that Legato was not himself afraid, but was merely trying to make Knives drop him.

Knives straightened, scowl deepening, and swatted away the onslaught as if it were an annoying insect, heightening his mental barriers. He tightened his grip on the boy�s throat.

Legato�s eyes widened with true fear, then. He struggled, but Knives shook him hard enough to make the vertebrae in his neck crackle ominously. The boy fell still, trembling.

Knives hesitated on the verge of murder, and spoke the first words that ever passed between them.

�Who are you, boy?�

Legato said nothing.

�When you attacked me. How can you use your mind like that?�

Nothing again.

�Tell me what you did or I�ll kill you!�

Those strange golden eyes simply stared at him, baleful and sullen... resigned to death.

Knives didn�t kill Legato that night. He wasn�t sure why. Maybe because he�d never met anyone besides his brother who could enter his mind like that; maybe because something in those unnatural eyes had captivated him. Either way, the boy�s talents spurred his imagination, and Knives knew that he couldn�t kill this one. Not now, anyway. Not yet.

Wait and see. Wait and see.

Knives watched while Legato brought down the drug cartel. It was beautiful, bloody work. Only the leader and the slaves survived, the former for the bounty and the latter for a not-so-merciful freedom in the slums of Terma.

Legato never said a word throughout the operation.

When he followed Knives out of Terma, afterwards, the Plant didn�t stop him. Their relationship was not something either of them questioned. After that first night in the warehouse, Legato did not try to use his mental powers on Knives again. Instead he studied Knives, as one studies the master of a craft in order to learn the craft. And eventually, Legato came to admire the master as much as he admired the craft itself.

It would be another year before Knives ever heard Legato speak.

-------

�I will find a center in you.

I will chew it up and leave.

I will work to elevate you

just enough to bring you down.�

--Tool, �Sober�

-------

�Legato...�

�Uhhhn... Master?�

�Do you know what your name means?�

Legato�s formerly vacant expression was now bewildered, tousled blue hair hiding one narrowed, red-rimmed eye from view. �No,� he gasped quietly. �It�s only my name. Master.�

Knives moved slowly; Legato gasped again, lithe body twining around Knives� as the Plant spoke.

�It�s a musical term,� Knives murmured. �Latin.� A ghostly expression of pleasure flitted across his face as he thought of the dead language he had once tried to learn.

Legato made a little whimpering noise, pressing upwards against Knives� cool, sweat-sheened body.

Without warning, Knives caressed Legato�s throat, hard, casually denting his windpipe. The human croaked, �I�m sorry -- I�m sorry, Master, I didn�t mean to... interrupt...� A tear leaked out of one eye, and he turned his face away to hide it, useless as that was. The silent beg still hovered there between them: Go on, go on, go on, talk faster, move faster. Please. Please.

This was one of the slow times, almost gentle. Knives wanted to talk, and when Knives wanted to talk, he took his time about it. It was sheer torment to wait as each moment was dragged out, and every minor interruption was greeted with a calm, cavalier infliction of pain. Not like when Knives was angry -- when Knives was angry, the pain was worse. But there was completion in the anger, -- fast, hard, screaming, bloody completion.

Anger was best. Anger was merely an expression of violent ecstasy, and ended quickly. This talkativeness, almost friendliness, was second-best; it dragged, but Knives was Master, and Master always said interesting things, always.

The worst were the playful times. The times when Master wanted something that he didn�t know how to ask for. The times when Master reasserted his power, his ownership, his pure strength and terrible beauty. The times when Master was God.

Legato bit his lip with a desperate conviction not to speak.

�Look at me,� Knives said, tugging at Legato�s hair to make him turn his head. Legato met the cold blue eyes, clouded as they were with memory and formless passion.

�My name,� Legato murmured, quietly reminding. �Latin.�

Knives nodded, one hand drifting across Legato�s bare chest, not quite touching. Legato bit back a hiss and fought the mindless urge to touch himself.

�A legato passage,� Knives whispered, ghosting slender fingers down the human�s sides, where dark violet bruises were already starting to bloom in the pale flesh. �Unbroken melody. Smooth, even notes. Classical. Delicate.�

Legato struggled to formulate a response, but was too desperate to think clearly. Want was the only thing his mind had room for -- want, need, desire, ache. The pain was almost unbearable.

�I like the way you contradict, Legato,� said Knives, flashing a sudden, predatory smile that made Legato shiver. �You break so easily.�

Then he was moving again, smooth and fast; but moving the wrong way, touching nothing of consequence. Within moments he was trembling with controlled release, completing himself but not Legato. With a few harsh, gasping breaths he regained his composure -- and moved away. Legato couldn�t help it; he let out a half-sobbing groan, the sudden emptiness rending him more thoroughly than any blade. �No,� he gasped, �please... please, Master...�

�Don�t whine,� Master snapped. With a few deft movements his perfect body was once again hidden by the familiar red-and-white bodysuit.

Then he was gone.

Not for the first time, Legato felt used. Violated. Low.

Human.

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�Serve the Lord with fear, and rejoice with trembling.�

--the Bible, King James version, Psalm 2:11

-------

The first time had been the worst. It was the first time Master had proven his ownership, the first time he had marked Legato. There was a kind of demented playfulness in the way Master dissected, sliding transformed hands across the human man�s skin, parting the muscle and mapping the ligaments and sinew that held him together, crystalline droplets of blood writing spidery poetry across the organic blades. His fingers were so sharp that the cuts themselves were completely painless. That in itself was the most frightening thing -- that Master could not only take apart his body, but disconnect it from his mind as well.

It was not love. Legato wished that he could pretend that Master was showing him the deepest level of trust and compassion, but he knew better. Master was God, and gods were meant to be feared.

Legato felt sick.

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When Knives was fourteen months old, he knew more than most human sixteen-year-olds. He applied himself to abstract mathematics and the laws of physics, and gazed longingly at the volumes upon volumes of scientific works that packed the ship�s little library, none of which he could yet read.

And yet...

Despite his intelligence, despite his high ideals and complex plans, he was acutely aware that he was still a child.

---------

�Hey, Knives! Look at me, watch this!�

Knives looked up from his book just in time to see his idiot brother dive ungracefully into the rec room�s pool. The water was not part of the illusion -- holographics were only used to make the room appear vast. The largest of the trees, the grass, and the pool were all real. And the insects, of course. Knives absently slapped away an ant that was trying to crawl up his leg.

Of course, there were drawbacks to reality.

�Owww!� Vash said as he surfaced, rubbing the stinging spot where he�d hit the surface of the pool.

�Serves you right,� Knives said cheerfully. �Look before you fall.�

�Didn�t fall!� Vash yelled indignantly. �That was a perfect 10!�

Knives shook his head. Vash read too much about sports.

Vash splashed around, enjoying making noise, as usual. �Knives, come onnnn!� he called, laughing. �Get your nose out of that book!�

Knives shook his head absently. They were both reading T.H. White�s The Once and Future King, and he�d be damned if he didn�t finish it before Vash did.

�Fine then!� Vash was climbing out of the water again, shaking his head like a dog and flinging water everywhere. Knives instinctively bent down over the book to keep it dry. Flicking wet, tangled hair out of his face, Vash turned and prepared for another wild leap.

�Okay, watch this one! Look at me --�

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�Look at me, Legato.�

A broken, guttural cry as the blue head turned, golden eyes squinting against tears, face rendered ugly with contortions of pain. This is what humans really look like, Knives thought. This grotesque truth is what they hide behind that smiling mask.

I wonder if this is what she would have looked like, if I could have torn the mask off her?

The thought of the dead woman brought out a sudden searing anger in Knives, and he took it out on the figure beneath him, its cobalt hair peppered with violet streaks where the blood had soaked in. There was a snapping sound, a scream, and the spider was hiding its face again, damn weak human that he was.

�Look at me, you worthless --�

---------

�--you worthless scum, you monster, how dare you come into this place and expect welcome! You�re a freak, you--�

---------

�Is that your excuse for killing?!�

He remembered shrieking something back at Vash, hardly knowing what he was saying. He knew he was driving his brother away, but he couldn�t stop himself -- he couldn�t help the anger that boiled in his veins, couldn�t help crying out in pain at the knowledge that Vash had rejected him so completely.

The argument ended in white light and flames. The rest of the memory was nothing but a heap of broken images, too muddled and confused for Knives to follow.

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...he was aware that he was only a child...

---------

�When I was a child

I caught a fleeting glimpse

Out of the corner of my eye

I turned to look but it was gone

I cannot put my finger on it now

The child is grown

The dream is gone

And I have become

Comfortably numb.�

--Pink Floyd, �Comfortably Numb�

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A/N 2: The next chapter is LONG, and somewhat lacking in action. Just to warn you.

Where have all the reviewers gone? I can see I've had a lot of hits, but only two people have reviewed. (Thanks, Glass Bullet and DemonCatTakena! You make me feel all speshull and sturf. ^_^.) *bowing and groveling* Pretty please can I have some reviews? They make me feel better and write lots more, they really do.
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Earth to Earth