Out of Context

Jaya Mitai

Dislcaimer: I don't own Trigun, I'm not making any money, please don't sue. WARNING: This contains spoilers for the most recent issue of the manga, chapter 98. Oneshot sort of drabble based on observations of Vash's expression in the latest Trigun issue.

- x -

She's gone.

I don't know when she left. I don't know when everything got so dark. So quiet. I remember that she stopped me. She held my gun to her face. She held my arm, that scared her so badly, and she tucked her little lap beneath my head, and she told me I wasn't alone.

But she was wrong.

I think I'm on my back, but I'm really not sure. I should be seeing him. It should be bright. There were explosions, the sky was filled with ships and Plants and Knives. It had seemed to start snowing, and I'd closed my eyes.

Had I closed my eyes?

They're open now, but there's nothing to see.

Just stillness.

Only . . . only it's not still. Not truly. There's the faintest sound, somewhere to my right. It's familiar but out of context, like the bass track of a blues tune without the harmonica melody. It reminds me of –

Of lying on my back, in the stillness, listening to her stitching up my coat.

Only there's no pleasant humming. No sound of her breathing. Only the whispering of the thread being pulled across the razor edge of her sewing scissors, just before the decisive metallic scraping of the well-fitted blades that signals the cut.

I must have fallen asleep again.

I must have killed again.

I shift my eyes to where she should be sitting, and I realize why all the other sounds are missing.

Now I make sound, and nothing is missing. I've made these sounds before, heard them echo in my disbelieving ears like they echo now.

I killed him.

He stares at me, clearly emerging from the darkness though there's no source of light. I can't see his eyes, hidden behind his always-shadowing bluish bangs, and his head is tilted to the left, as though in consideration. Blood still trickles from his mouth, dots his high cheeks and streams from a wound in his head.

A gunshot wound. A bulletwound.

His duster's collar is brushing against the circular ornament on his shoulder-guard, the tiny fibers being painstakingly severed by the double-bladed spikes that protrude towards the sky. As sharp as Meryl's special sewing scissors.

He remains still, just watching.

Judging.

But he says nothing.

I stare at him, too frightened to blink. Afraid that if I close my eyes again, he'll have vanished into the darkness. As if by pinning him with my gaze I can keep him here, here with me.

He didn't have to die.

I should have saved him. He was a human. He deserved to live.

If I close my eyes, he'll be gone.

But I'm already gone, the downturn of his lips mocks. He doesn't smile.

He said he wanted this. But he was wrong.

Something stirs over his left shoulder, another oval comes into view. It hurts, but I keep staring, staring at the shape of it, the dark, mussed hair and the thoughtful frown. His bangs are in his eyes too, but as he comes closer, his expression shifts, no longer mirrors Legato's. He tucks a worn cigarette between his lips, and he smiles.

He looks tired, and battered, and I croak out his name.

His eyes are sunken but so alive, so warm.

It's cold. I don't know when it happened, but I'm on my knees, and my breath steams out of me. I can feel sweat or tears on my face, straining my eyes in the darkness as more shapes begin to appear behind Legato.

So . . . so many . . .

Leonoff stands behind Wolfwood, his expression serious and his eyes hidden by his round glasses. And just one step ahead and to his side is Doc. His eyes are crinkled by his usual enigmatic smile, and he stands beside Rai-Dei the Blade. More of them, now. The men and women that died when the Gung-Ho Guns infiltrated Doc's ship.

Like he did.

The darkness relinquishes more of them. They form a semi-ring around me. More are smiling than not. I know them. I haven't seen them this clearly since Knives embraced me, forced my Arm at Jenora Rock –

All these people . . . they were from July.

I stare at each face, noting every detail. Their clothing hasn't changed. Many smile and call out to me in greeting, even the boys I used to wrestle with in front of the ice cream parlor –

And as they shift and gather closer, behind all of them I see a woman with long, dark hair, and a plain cotton blouse.

Oh, god.

Rem.

I'm on my feet, now. I can't tear my eyes away from her. She doesn't look sad. She doesn't look like she's blaming me. I reach out my hand, my real hand, but my fingers fall far short, splaying across the clear glass exactly like a cold sleep tube.

For a moment all I can do is press against it. Are they in the tube, or am I? Is that why it's so cold? I strike the glass experimentally, but it's immovable.

The barrier is curving inwards, towards me. It's me. I'm the one behind the glass. And they're all out there, waiting for me.

I can hear myself screaming, pounding over and over again on the thick, frigid barrier that separates us. It always did. Even as a boy, even on the ships, it was always between me and them.

It's always been there.

It's always been cold.

I pound until I have no strength, no will, and I feel myself sink to my knees. I leave my fist curled and aching against it, leaning on it now for strength.

I have always been here. I have always been beating frantically on this barrier, and it has never cracked. It has never given. They're still smiling, and I drop my eyes to the ground. It hurts too much. I still don't let myself blink, but I cannot stare at them anymore.

Are they smiling because I'm trying, or because I will never succeed?

A thick wall of darkness separates me from the cold glass barrier, and everything becomes still again. I can't hear Legato's coat. I can't hear Wolfwood's cigarette burning.

I was wrong.

I told myself that I'd see them again. I told myself that if I tried hard enough, tried long enough, if I saved them from my brother and myself, that I'd see them again. I'd be with them again. I could love them, and they could love me.

I still lean against the darkness and the glass, but now I turn my gaze away. I look at the darkness, because the darkness is all I have.

I don't belong with them. I never did.

I belong with the darkness, because the darkness belongs with me.

This is my Eden.

This is death.

I turn my eyes back towards the way I came. I know what waits for me there. I know that if I reach up my hand and touch the darkness that brushes against my face, the bangs that hide my eyes, that I will feel just one last lock of healthy hair. Just one lock left that doesn't feel cold and thick and dead.

Just one lock of light.

Just one more.

There is no comfort waiting for me. So long I wished for death, thinking it better than suffering with the humans, with Knives, with myself. Over one hundred and fifty years of living for the humans, for Rem, living because I couldn't take my life and I couldn't make the humans.

Every excuse I could find, I lived for, because I couldn't live for myself.

I was wrong.

That one lock, that's all the light there is in this place. It's the light that I can see them by. When it's gone, the barrier will still be there, but it will be shadowed over. I don't have to blink, but I don't have to watch them, either.

When it's gone, they'll look in my cold sleep tube, and they'll see darkness. We won't have to look at each other anymore. We won't have to wait.

I'll be able to close my eyes, because they won't be there anymore.

Just one more shot.

Just one more death.

Just one more time I have to kill.

I drop my hand from the barrier, and I turn on my knees and look at the darkness. It doesn't judge me, it doesn't blame me. It is . . . what I deserve.

One more time, and then I can return to this darkness, and I can close my eyes.

I don't feel the peace I had hoped for, but I don't feel sadness at its absence.

I stare at the darkness, and I feel what I felt when I realized, so long ago, what living with the humans truly meant. I feel like I did as a child. I feel once more what it is to survive with no will to live.

I hear another sound, familiar but out of context. It takes me back to the SEEDs ship, I don't hear the rustle of the fabric or the clattering of the apple as she dropped it to catch the knife. I hear a hand close around an object, and I realize the sound was that of a sharp edge cutting through air.

But this time it's my hand that catches the blade, not Rem's.

It wasn't a knife, whistling through the air. It was a piece of glass. I'm sitting upright, my head bowed, my eyes open but refusing to look. I hold the piece of glass clenched in my fist.

It's not Rem sitting beside me. I'm not a child. I'm lying on the floor of a small ship, rather than on a bed in a massive one. Nearby is a sharp knife. Not just one blade, but many. Knives. Capable of ending my life, of ending the human's life.

It's the same, just out of context.

I need to move fast. I need to try, one last time.

I need to prevent Rem from catching that knife.

- x -

Author's Notes: Yes, just a drabble. I was struck, in this issue, by how much Vash's eyes looked like they did when he was starving himself as a little kid, horrified that the humans had done what they did to Tessla. Originally it started out as a story that Vash thought he didn't deserve to go to heaven . . . but it sort of took a sharp left. Not a masterpiece by any means, but what the hey. I'm having ridiculous amounts of trouble with Doc and Knives in Fulgor, so I figured I owed you guys something to read until I get the two of them straightened out. And if I don't see you folks until the New Year, Merry Christmas. ; )