Earth to Earth

Author’s Note: What can I say, I love writing Knives. Anyway, the foundation of the plot is finally starting to pick up here.

--------
Chapter Five: Ghost in the Machine
--------

“How are you feeling?”

It was a ludicrous question to which Vash didn’t expect an answer -- and he didn’t get one. He sighed, palming the opacity control on the room’s only “window” -- really no more than a tiny hole punched through the wall -- so that the tinted fiberglass pane faded from a stark black circle to an empty hole as clear as air. Cool early-morning sunlight streamed in, although it was refracted at just such an angle as to appear the color of blood.

Vash winced. The dawn twilight of the Child Sun, just before the Great Sun rose and turned the land into a snow-white desert again, was something he’d always loved. But now... now, somehow, red no longer called flowers immediately to mind. Maybe he was growing up, or maybe he’d just seen too much of the reality of one and not enough of the memory of the other -- but blood and flowers had lost their fragile center of balance in his mind.

He turned to the other occupant of the room, who stared back at him with a lethargic, blank look that made him cringe. Knives had progressed no further than sitting upright in the nine days since his awakening. He said nothing, ate little, and refused to make eye contact with anyone but his brother.

Vash wasn’t sure how much he liked the attention.

Staggering into the room adjoining his eight nights ago, sick with the irrational fear that Knives had escaped during Milly’s two-minute absence from his bedside, Vash had been taken aback at the sight that had met him. He hadn’t had any reason to be so terrified -- Knives hadn’t so much as blinked, much less run away.

But he had seemed... deformed, at first. It had taken Vash’s panicked brain a few seconds to process his brother’s strange position, curled around himself with all the covers on his bed gathered into a tight wad in his lap. His eyes were wide open, unblinking, dilated to the extreme and completely void of thought or emotion.

Vash knew what was wrong with him. Somehow, he’d known it from the moment he woke up. That strange... calculator effect... had taken him again, debilitating his mind with figures and equations. Calculating... the position of Knives’ arms, the angle of his ankles (feet toe-down against the mattress in a bizarrely awkward dancers’ stance), his dilated pupils, the mass of sheet and blanket caught in a vice-like grip between his knees and elbows... even the blank expression.

And Vash knew.

After all, it was the way all of their race behaved, wasn’t it?

He sat down on the side of his brother’s bed, smiling at him in the morning twilight, hoping that it didn’t look too fake. They -- he and Milly and Meryl, and a few times Natalie herself -- had managed to coax Knives out of that demi-rigor mortis position over several days, depriving him of anything he could curl up around and forcibly holding his shoulders straight until he finally relented. He still sat hunched over, and still pulled his knees to his chest a lot, but he kept his head up and had gotten used to leaning against the wall.

He never spoke throughout the entire ordeal.

“Can you hear me, Knives?” Vash asked softly, searching his brother’s cold eyes for any sign of life.

No response.

Vash sighed. He knew Knives’ ears were working fine, it was just that his brain could no longer decode those electrical soundwave pulses into anything recognizable as language.

Vash closed his eyes, leaning his elbows on his knees, blew out a slow breath, and opened his mind to his brother’s.

No matter what everyone thought, Knives wasn’t an empty shell. He was alive, awake, aware -- and completely uncomprehending of the world around him. Vash nudged gently against the surfacemost part of his brother’s mind, eliciting an immediate and warm outflowing of welcome. In the outside world, the only visible change was in Knives’ eyes -- a little of the dilation receded, a little bit of life returned to the dead rings of ice.

Amnesia, Vash had told the others. It had happened to Vash every time before when he’d used the Angel Arm; why should Knives be immune to the side effects? Knives had fired the Arm multiple times and even activated both Arms at once -- something absolutely unheard of before that fateful day.

Amnesia, he said, firm and knowing and resolute.

Very few people believed him.

Vash impressed a few simple abstractions into his brother’s mind -- welcome; dawn; the feeling of wakings and beginnings and second chances. It was the only way he could think of to say “good morning.” Knives seemed to understand well enough, and sent back a similar impression -- tinted red, although Vash wasn’t sure if that was supposed to mean the color of sunrise or something else entirely.

So much strain, on both body and mind -- both Arms at once -- it was amazing Knives hadn’t drained all his energy that day and keeled over on the spot. As it was, one wide black streak was prominent in his pale hair, and most of his roots were shadowed with dark gray. All of that strain had translated into a worse case of memory loss than Vash had ever experienced. Everything was gone -- not just the memories of that day, or even just the memories of the Arms and their creation.

Everything.

Race memory was all that was left -- a strong knowledge of how to move in zero-gravity, and an inexplicable urge to curl around a spherical power source. Knives had retained the race memory of a bulb-bound Sister, but had lost whatever it was that made him himself.

Still, some things lingered... hints of personality too deeply ingrained to ever be forgotten. Knives didn’t really remember what the concept of “brother” was, as far as blood and genetics were concerned, but he did know that he held a deep-seated, inexplicable feeling of warm affection for Vash. It was the kind of love that made him want to give Vash a hug when his brother’s greeting-thoughts were tainted with sadness, even though he couldn’t remember what a hug was, either.

Vash slowly opened his eyes again, careful not to lose the tentative link with his brother’s thoughts. He had managed to rebuild his barriers since that first overwhelming night, but he was still wary of losing himself in Knives’ painfully abstract telepathy. Knives was just like a Sister, now... and trying to talk to the Sisters had always given Vash a headache. He’d embraced human language from a very early age, learning to speak out loud and promptly forgetting how to control emotions and images in thought-speech. Vash needed to be able to make clear definitions between words and sentences; he couldn’t live like other Plants did, in a constant flow of abstractions and vague half-formed ideas.

And what bothered him was that he knew Knives was the same way. Knives would never have admitted it past a certain turning point in his life, but when he and Vash were still young enough not to care about differences, Knives had confided to his twin that visiting the six Sisters on board their ship made him extremely uncomfortable. He’d said he always felt like they were laughing at him, as if there was some great joke he wasn’t in on.

It wasn’t a joke, of course -- Knives had only been imagining that odd feeling of being excluded. The Sisters only laughed for the sheer joy of living, and their laughter was never scornful -- it was an invitation. The Sisters had only wanted their younger brothers to join them in the web of intertwined consciousness they all shared.

Neither brother had never really understood them well enough to answer.

Vash tucked one leg under the other and turned to face Knives, whose vacant blue eyes followed every slight movement he made. Cautiously, Vash nudged their mental connection, sending a flash of inquiry, asking permission to touch. Knives’ response was instant and strong -- permission, welcome, invitation, embrace, curiosity.

Raising one hand to Knives’ blank face, Vash hesitated before brushing his brother’s ragged, uncut hair out of his eyes. Knives blinked slowly, so unaccustomed to the sense of sight itself that he hadn’t even noticed that anything was obstructing his vision. Vash let his hand linger, touching the black streak lightly and feeling the deadness there.

It would take a long time for all that damage to heal... if it ever did. The black streak would probably remain, scarring his hair even after the gray roots cleared up into a healthier blonde. Knives would have six scars now, as a reminder of his final confrontation with Vash -- the remnants of five bullets and one massive energy drain.

“Knives...” Vash murmured softly, moving his hand to the back of his brother’s neck and leaning forward to touch foreheads with him. “What have you forgotten? Where are you now, really?”

A faint note of confusion crept into Vash’s mind from his brother, a tentative little prod, like a nervous child asking a weeping parent what was wrong. Vash sighed heavily, and let his barriers down a little more. He had discovered that physical contact helped him keep his thoughts under tighter control, so he could open up easier when he was touching Knives.

Vash sent a brief feeling of empty, apologetic hopelessness.

Knives responded quietly -- bewilderment tainted with the sting of fear.

Lost, Vash thought back. Lost identity. Lost past. Lost self.

No, Knives denied urgently, even more confused. Here. Always here.

“No,” Vash accidentally said aloud, echoing the words mentally. “You’re not here.”

I am.

Vash had already started to compose a response before the reality of what Knives had just said sank in like a lead weight. His eyes flew wide open and he jerked back, breaking all contact with his brother.

He’d just said something out loud in clear English, and Knives had understood. Not only that, but Knives had responded with words -- not an abstract concept or an emotion, but two utterly clear, separate English words.

You’re not so lost after all, are you? Vash thought to himself, carefully blocking the question from Knives. Something was still there -- some instinct, some repressed memory? Vash wasn’t sure. The only way he could truly know what was going on in Knives’ head was to do a deep, invasive mental probe, and the very idea of it repulsed Vash.

Hesitantly, Vash reached out and took Knives’ limp hand in his. Their link opened again instantly, and he could feel the blank, angry, scared confusion coming off his brother in waves. Vash winced and closed his eyes, trying to send an apology that could be heard above the mental white noise that Knives was making.

Finally, Vash managed to calm Knives down and convince him that he hadn’t done something horrible or wrong to make Vash jerk away without warning. Not really thinking about how little the gesture would mean to his brother, Vash tucked Knives’ hair behind his ears and forced a reassuring smile.

I have to go now, he thought to his brother, following up that sentence with a series of images that gave the impression of leaving; escaping; vanishing. Knives protested at first, but Vash repeated the series more firmly and Knives finally relented, sinking back into the comfortable web of light and thought he’d created for himself.

Vash paused by the door, looking back. Knives’ eyes had gone blank as pale slate again.

But just for a second -- just for the length of a breath or a whisper -- Vash saw Knives’ fingers curl into a mockery of a fist.

------

Knives was far from lost. Vash couldn’t convince anyone but the Doctor of this, and the Doctor’s health was failing, his loyal followers becoming steadily more unsure of themselves. Vash was fading from ‘welcomed comrade’ to ‘silent stranger’ in the minds of the ship-city’s people. Meryl and Milly kept up the dangerous illusion of sincerity, but the little group’s frail grasp on the common people’s hospitality was becoming as threadbare as the coat Vash had worn for eighty years.

The girls were fast losing their last hope of finding kindness in strangers. Vash didn’t feel like correcting them. He knew that the people of Sky City still loved him, in some strange, deified way -- but they feared him even more. They feared their self-induced delusion of god.

God -- earth-trembling, lightening-smiting God -- and His evil twin, the Devil himself.

At first, Vash hated it. Passionately, violently hated it. After a little while, though, resignation drowned out everything else, and he could no longer bring himself to feel more than the base emotions: fear... love... regret.

Knives was far from gone. In the little time they had left in Sky City, Vash took it upon himself to teach Knives everything he could about being human. Every day, he learned a little more... every day, he moved a new limb, spoke a new word, rediscovered one of the physical senses. He remembered how to feel and smell and see, how to translate messages recorded by nerve endings, olfactory glands, retinas. He met Vash’s turquoise gaze with his own blue one now -- not as a blank, dead thing, but as alive as a small child, and just as eager.

Eager. No other word could describe Knives better. He clenched his fist constantly now, one of his favorite reflexes to practice while he was thinking. Vash knew it was only idle habit and instinct that made Knives do it, but he still couldn’t help but flinch every time those pale knuckles became almost translucent-white, skin stretched tight over hard bone -- Vash watched Knives clench his fist and remembered what that fist felt like on his cheek, his ribs, his skull, cracking and splitting, dexterous fingers so delicately curled when in combat. Vash remembered that fist curled around the butt of a gun, and he couldn’t help but feel that the buried, ingrained part of Knives’ personality left over from his past life was trying to tell Vash something. Threaten him. Blackmail him.

That steadily clenching and unclenching fist said, “Teach me more. Teach me more or we can start over from the beginning. Teach me more, and I will be sated, and all you’ll ever see of the past are these white knuckles, and I will sleep.”

So Vash taught Knives. Fear and resignation ruled his thoughts; and some internal clock was ticking down to a deadline, but he didn’t know what it was for or when it would happen. He only knew that inertia carried him forward now -- destiny, the wheel of fate, history repeating itself.

Knives learned a little more every day.

-------
“Knowledge and human power are synonymous, since the ignorance of the cause frustrates the effect.”

--Francis Bacon
-------

Afterword: Next chapter will actually be in chronological order to the plot -- sort of. ::shifty look:: Chapter 7 will get back to the girls and the secondary characters more. There’ll definitely be more all-twin chapters in the future, though, so no worries.