Fandom: Trigun
Title: Brotherhood
Author: SweetFirefly
Rating: PG-13
Genre: Drama/Angst
Main Characters: Millions Knives, Vash the Stampede
Spoilers: Up to the Anime Finale.
Summary: Seven things that tore Vash and Knives apart, and one that kept them together until the end.
Disclaimer: I don't own Trigun. I'm not that great.

A/N: First attempt at a Trigun fanfic. I'm working with anime canon here. Please be kind to me! :) Also, English is not my first language, so, any errors that you see, feel free to point it out!

Brotherhood

1.

"Hey, Knives! What are you doing here?", Steve had asked, and his face was torn and deformed, like a monster's.

Nothing, he tried to say, calmly, because, clearly, Steve had been drinking and Rem had told him that alcohol did bad things to one's reason. Why Steve kept on drinking, if that was so, was beyond the child. I was just curious.

He never had the chance to answer.

The kick threw him off-balance and sent him flying, to crash into one of the tubes with humans inside, humans he had been anxious to meet and know more about.

"This place is off-limits to your kind!", Steve shouted, giving Millions Knives the first taste of violence and prejudice of his life. "Got that?"

I got it, Knives thought savagely, when the second kick hit him right in the face. I got it. There is your kind and my kind.

I don't want to be one of your kind.

And, for the first time in his life, Knives hated.

2.

Alone in his room, with anger as his blade, Knives cut his own hair.

When he entered his brother's room, thrilled because of his new haircut, Vash saw all the hair on the floor and the new shine on Knives's eyes, and he thought his brother looked… different, somehow.

Vash felt upset, without knowing why.

3.

Vash looked at the cobweb. Very carefully, he approached it, mindful as not to disturb the spider. Ever so slowly, he raised his hands, ready to disentangle the butterfly.

He was about to actually do it when Knives's tanned hand caught the spider, destroying the cobweb and the spider's life.

"This is easier", he explained, all satisfaction and pride, because he had helped his brother.

He didn't understand the hurt in Vash's eyes.

"You wanted to save the butterfly, didn't you?" I was helping you.

"No!", Vash cried, looking anguished. "I wanted to save both!"

"What are you talking about?", he asked, truly confused as to what Vash meant. "Spiders need to catch butterflies, or they'll die of starvation. You don't even know that?"

Vash looked even more distressed, and that was when Rem intervened. "You mustn't make that choice so easily", she said, and he hated her voice, as he hated everyone that despised them, everyone that wasn't of their kind.

Knives was beginning to understand things better.

"Both have life", she kept on, "so you should—"

"But I'm not wrong!", he said angrily. "If you keep saving butterflies, the spiders will die!"

"But—", she started, looking confused.

"Wanting to save both is a contradiction." And he enjoyed her confusion, enjoyed that feeling of killing the spider. "What would you rather do? Keep deliberating? The butterfly will be eaten in the meantime."

That was when Vash jumped at him, and they rolled in the ground, and he had never seen Vash angry, and he didn't know why Vash was angry.

"What is wrong with that?", Vash asked, the fury evident in his green eyes, and Knives felt like crying. "I want… I want to save both of them!"

And Knives could not understand – weren't they of the same kind? Weren't they brothers? Why was Vash angry at him, how could Vash be angry at him, if all he had wanted to do was help?

Why are you angry at me? I love you.

Panting, as if he'd just run a marathon or something, Vash let Knives go. For a moment, they both stayed there, without moving.

Knives would kill the spider.

Vash would try and save them both.

Years after, thinking about that moment, Knives would pinpoint it as the moment he and Vash realized, however briefly, that their choices would tear them apart.

4.

No one had ever told Vash anything about "grief" before, and many people would die before his eyes before he learned the word, but he didn't need to know the word to feel it.

The sadness, the pain, the incredulity, all mixed into one. He uselessly started punching the window, as if, by breaking it, he could save the woman who could not be saved anymore. She couldn't be gone – not Rem, not the woman who had taken care of them, not that woman with that light smile and shining eyes who he loved so, so much. She could not be gone!

And, then, amidst his desperation and pain, he heard a laugh.

Knives was laughing.

"Humans sure are incomprehensible", he said, and his amusement cut the air like a knife. "They throw away their lives for foolish sentimentalism."

Vash could not understand; better yet, he didn't want to understand. Because Knives could not possibly be laughing at Rem's sacrifice. He could not possibly be laughing at Vash's pain.

Knives wasn't like that.

"I was going to let her live because you were so attached to her, but now I see she was imperfect. You're better off without her."

"Knives!", he exclaimed, dread taking over him as he understood.

"Like hell I'd let them immigrate", Knives laughed even more, apparently very happy with himself. "That would be like spreading germs across our healthy universe."

"Don't tell me that you…"

"That's right. But don't worry. The plant ship will survive. We need to create our new home, after all."

And he didn't sound like the Knives he had loved, like his brother; he sounded like a strange being, as if a monster had taken his soul and was laughing at him right now.

The worse thing about it was that Vash knew that it wasn't true.

"Only the ships carrying the humans will crash."

That boy was his brother.

Vash also didn't know the word "hate", but he didn't need to know the word to feel it, deep in his bones.

5.

Knives shot.

The land exploded in a blast of nuclear force – no, not nuclear, plant force. The sand and rock were crushed down to little bits, and the sky was tainted red; everything that had once stood in that valley was obliterated.

"W—what is that?", Vash asked, sounding scared.

Vash had grown up, like him, but, in spirit, he was nothing but that child Knives had saved from those humans' filthy intentions.

"Our brethren", he said. "This one is yours."

Silly Vash.

"We're going to use these guns to wipe mankind off the planet."

"I—I can't possibly do that!", Vash said, his eyes widening.

Silly, silly Vash who never learned.

"Do it."

"Never."

"Then why did you follow me?" If, from the start, your eyes burned with pain and sadness? Why did you follow me until now? "Because you're hopeless on your own, right?"

Stay with me, Vash. They're not going to give you the things I'm offering you.

"All right", he said, when he realized Vash wasn't going to actually do it. "Just watch."

"Don't!", Vash screamed, and actually attacked him, the stupid idiot.

They rolled down the slope, fighting over the ownership of the guns. Punch, defend, stop; he'd put up with Vash for way too long, and he'd teach him if he had to.

The guns flew out of his grasp during the fight. Knives got a grip on the black one before Vash got to the other, and pointed it at his brother to keep him at bay.

"Are you still worried about that nonsense after 15 years?" Time had made the voice harsher but the incredulity was sincere. "The self-contradicting nonsense of a stupid woman."

A woman that stole your affection and love from the only one entitled to them.

That made Vash angry, and he reached out and pointed his silver gun at him.

"I won't let you kill anymore!", he screamed, as if he had some power over Knives.

Silly Vash. "Hey, I think you got the wrong idea somewhere. You're supposed to aim that at them, not at me."

"They're all alive!", Vash screamed. "Alive! I promised Rem… that we would make this land into…"

"That's right!", he said, willing his brother to understand. "You and I are going to make this land into our private… Eden."

Vash's eyes flared with burning hatred, and Knives couldn't understand.

Don't you understand? You and I are of the same kind. I did everything to save you.

You don't have any reason to hate me!

"It's wrong! It's wrong! WRONG!"

Metal cut through skin and flesh and hit bone, cracking it to little bits. Blood, fresh, jumped from the hole, and, for a moment, Knives didn't even feel it, the pain and the weakness.

Instead, he tasted, for the first time, deception.

"My leg!", he muttered, falling to the ground, unable to believe in what had happened. "My leg… hurts. What is this pain?"

And he wasn't referring to the pain in the leg, he was referring to that one in the heart, to the bitter taste on his mouth – how could Vash? How could he?

How can you hate me when I offer you nothing but the best I have?

"Did you shoot me?", he asked, incredulous and, for the first time in about fifteen years, feeling like crying. "Did you shoot me—? Did you really shoot me?"

And his scream of pain was followed by one of pure horror from Vash, as he run and left him behind, taking his gun in the way.

Leaving him forever with the searing pain of betrayal.

6.

"Hey, Vash!"

The reverend was dead. Dead at his feet.

His future wasn't blank anymore for him to write on. There was no future for him anymore. His choices had been taken from him, his opportunity had been taken from him.

"Now everything joining you and Rem is gone."

Vash felt like screaming. Vash felt like tearing Knives apart, bit by bit, for taking another life – that was wrong! –, for taking from him what little hope he had.

"Is that – is that your excuse?", he spat, shaking with fury.

"What have you learned these past 100 years?", Knives asked nonchalantly, as if he had just met an old friend for tea. "The scars carved into you will never regenerate."

The torn skin, mended by metal and stitches, barely held together after more than a lifetime of running and facing death with open arms and nothing to fight back, itched with Knives's words.

"You are living proof of the folly of human trash."

Knives still didn't understand. "You're wrong", Vash said, trembling. "They're all alive. Alive!"

For a brief moment, Knives looked sad. Then he looked angry.

"Why grow up if you only grow more sentimental, you good-for-nothing weepy-faced kid?", he asked, turning his lifeless blue eyes to him, and, for the first time, Vash felt afraid of Knives.

His brother was too fast for him; the shot tore his artificial arm off. Down in the ground, as Knives slowly approached, Vash could only look and wonder if that child he had loved when he was young was still there, under that mask of fury and hate and inhumanity.

The sound of Knives snapping his fingers echoed as if it was the only sound in the world.

A light.

"W-what's this light?"

"It's something you and I can do. Now", and, right then, Knives looked like a maniac, "let's dispose of all the trash!"

Tearing pain assaulted him as his arm modified and absorbed the gun, turning to a potent organic weapon. Vash could feel the power, the terrifying power, which, he realized suddenly, could blow up June in an instant if he shot. Panic washed over him.

Head clouded by the pain, he did the only sensible thing. He aimed his weapon at Knives, hoping that Knives would stop it.

"Are you going to shoot me again?", Knives asked, first calmly, then demoniacally angry, "Are you really going to shoot me again, VASH?"

The blue light grew and grew and grew and Vash didn't see anything anymore.

7.

"Make Vash suffer… Make Vash suffer eternally."

"I know, my master", Legato said.

For Knives had finally understood that Vash couldn't be saved. For he'd finally understood that, sometimes, even people of your kind can be harmful and traitorous.

For he'd finally understood that they had definitely been driven apart.

1.

The door of the shuttle started to close. Vash tried to fight it, to break it; he could not leave Rem behind, he could not leave Rem to danger, why this damned door had to close, why, why, WHY?

"Vash", Rem said, looking in his eyes, more serious than she ever had been in front of him. "Take care of Knives."

I will, Rem, he didn't say but he promised in his heart.

I will.

Thanks to: The fansub that subtitled Trigun - not sure what the name of the fansub is, but their work is available at Reality Lapse \o