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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
- 5
- 6
- 7
The Amazing Universal Disclaimer: Don’t own it. Won’t own it. Can’t own it. The end.

Author’s Note: This is chapter 5 from Knives’ point of view. Pay close attention while reading this chapter -- technically, the whole thing is in first person. In the beginning, however, since Knives has no sense of self, he doesn’t name himself with pronouns like “I” or “me.” He only calls himself “he” -- not because he’s dissociative, but just because he doesn’t know any better. You’ll notice that near the end of the chapter, there’s a brief flashback (in italics) and that afterwards Knives starts referring to himself as “I” and Vash as “he.” This isn’t a POV change, just a change in how Knives is thinking.

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Chapter Six: Speak, Memory
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“‘Do
You know nothing? Do you see nothing? Do you remember
Nothing?'
I remember
Those are pearls that were his eyes.
'Are you alive, or not? Is there nothing in your head?'”
-- from The Waste Land (II: A Game of Chess) by T.S. Eliot
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There was an awareness of slow waking, like the awareness of dawn in the dark hour before sunrise. At first there was nothing to know but a feeling of emptiness, nothing to sense but moving twilight shadows and the sound of far-off mumbling.

Something was missing. Something was wrong.

Flickers of light like burning butterflies crowded the edge of his mind; he dreamed of them, whispered to them, longed to touch them. But they were far away whenever he needed them the most, burning into distant smoke on the horizon. Something was wrong with the light, with his mind... the butterflies refused to speak.

He spent a long time trying to reach them, longing mindlessly. He had no sense of mortal time. If eternity existed, he knew what it felt like.

Eventually he gained a sense of time based on periods of darkness and light, sleeping and waking. And after a while, he began to understand that something other than the butterflies was trying to talk to him. But this new voice was darker, more earthy. At first he was scared, because the butterfly-voices were small and airy like little chiming bells, but the new voice was deep and rich and much too close for comfort.

He slept for a while. He knew what sleep was now: it was the time of butterflies. When he woke, the butterflies burned to black ashes. Waking came with light; waking meant the deeper, earthy voice was speaking again.

At some point he realized that his mind was not the only part of him that was active. There were extremities that didn’t think, but that could do other things: move, grasp, tense, hold, feel. Part of this discovery was fueled by the fact that sometimes there were pains in distant parts of his body that he couldn’t account for. Like his back -- (how did he know it was his back?) -- which cramped up a lot, especially after sleep. And his legs, which ached and burned when moved.

These curiosities kept him occupied and provided a blessed distraction from the butterfly-voices and the deep voice that tried to speak to him when he was awake. But no matter how much he ignored the new voice, it kept coming back. He didn’t know why, but he held a vague fondness for the deep voice -- sensations flickered into vibrant life when it spoke, sensations of caring and nostalgia and childish dreams.

The deep voice made him happy in ways he couldn’t explain... but for some reason, it always sounded sad, and he-it-(was there such a thing as a name?) didn’t know how to change that.

Then came the identity problem. He didn’t have one; that was the problem.

He could identify other things, like the deep voice, the butterfly-voices, the back pain, the leg-ache. He flexed his mind as far as it would go and managed to name more basic things -- hunger, weariness, pain, love, fear, sadness. He knew these. There were words for them, he just couldn’t remember what they were.

But when it came to self-identity, he knew nothing. Sometimes his right hand itched, and he thought that had something to do with his name, if he had a name. But he didn’t know why.

It was enough to drive a person mad.

But he endured; he listened to the deep, sad voice, and even came to have entire conversations with it. It was all that kept him sane. He understood that there were many others with voices that lived near him, but he couldn’t understand them.

Something was still missing. Something was still wrong. But he buried that flaw deep in the core of his lost self, and tried not to dream of it when he slept.

The butterflies still refused to speak.

Then one morning -- he knew the concept of “morning,” though he couldn’t say why -- the deep voice came to speak to him. It greeted him; he replied eagerly. The dream he had had the night before was fresh in his mind and he felt closer than he had ever been to knowing who he was.

The deep voice was weary and mournful. It asked him a question he didn’t know how to answer, and he prodded back tenderly, like a child asking his weeping sibling what was wrong

-flashes of vast weightless cold, a storage room, a screaming burst of pain and then his little brother was weeping in his arms and what’s wrong, aniki? you’re crying again... I’ll get us out of here, I’ll get us out, I will--

“I”?

I am myself. I have a name. Me. A name...

And the deep voice had a name, too: brother.

The deep voice was closer than before, twining its thoughts with my own. (my...?) I flinched away, scared and confused by the strange flashback. The deep voice -- my brother -- didn’t notice my sudden pain.

My brother told me he was sorry, but he couldn’t help me anymore.

I showed him my fear and confusion in hopes of getting an explanation.

Lost, said my brother. Lost identity. Lost past. Lost self.

No, I thought back. Here. Always here. (I want to make you happy, why are you always so sad? Tell me what’s wrong with me and maybe I can make you happy again.)

“No,” said my brother, “You’re not here.”

I am.

Then there was a sudden surge of panic from my brother, fear and panic injected straight into the innermost parts of my mind, like shooting up some bad drug straight into the jugular -- I seized on that panic and screamed my questions at him, but he was gone. Completely and totally gone. I wept in my fear and loneliness, and for the first time since I woke from my butterfly-infested dreams, I understood what it was to be afraid of the dark.

The butterflies won’t talk, the butterflies hate me, why do you leave me when everyone hates me and why are you so sad?

Finally my brother came back and tried to calm me down, but I felt irrational anger towards him and refused to let him speak. He was apologetic and kind even through my noise. I found that I couldn’t continue to rage against such a fond voice, so I relented.

My brother told me I had done nothing wrong, which made me feel a little better. He told me not to worry, that he would keep helping me. I relaxed.

After a moment he told me he was leaving; I stared at him with open eyes and protested. I saw the strange grimace on his face, and for the first time I began to think that maybe the way people moved said something about what they were thinking. I frowned inwardly at my brother’s grimace. Was a grimace a bad thing?

He left anyway, and as I watched him go out the door (maybe these “eye” things were good for something after all), I flexed the muscles in my hand, thinking back to the way my brother would sometimes wave at me when he left. But I couldn’t control my arm muscles enough to make a full wave, just a clenched fist. (For some reason, the fist reminded me of the pain and emptiness and broken black hole that I had buried in the dark recesses of my mind.)

My brother looked at my fist and a flicker of fear passed over his face.

And then he was gone.

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“Hello,
Is there anybody in there?
Just nod if you can hear me.
Is there anyone home?”
-- Pink Floyd, “Comfortably Numb”
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Earth to Earth