Chapter Text
The knife was so cold on Vash’s arm that he would swear that it was burning him. The blade pressed in enough to sting, but not yet break the skin.
“What are you waiting for?” Vash whispered as gently as he could, trying to act like his heart wasn’t hammering in his chest, like he wasn’t on the edge of hyperventilating. “Do it, Nai.”
Nai gritted his teeth, and his gaze intensified on the knife in his left hand; his right, he used to brace Vash’s wrist against the floor. They were in the lab, easy to clean blood from the tile floors, meant to be doing research. Nai had snuck the knife in earlier; he had more freedoms than Vash, troublesome Vash, stupid Vash, whose fault it was that they were in this position now.
“There has to be another way,” Nai muttered. “This is absurd.”
“If you can think of an alternative, I’m all ears.” Vash swallowed. “Please, just- let’s just get it over with.” There was not an alternative; they were certain of it. The tracker was implanted too deep, too close to the artery, too long ago, and ran the length of Vash’s arm, meticulously designed to be permanent. It was impossible to tell what else that thing was doing, aside from the fact that it sometimes sent shocks coursing through his body, immobilizing him. There was some other purpose to it, though; Nai was certain of it, and Vash trusted him absolutely. Nai hadn’t said what, exactly, he thought the implant was meant to do, but it was clearly very bad. Bad enough to scare him. Not much scared Nai.
Nai took a deep breath in, then out. “Fine. Fine. Okay.” The knife pressed in a little further. “You’d do the same for me, if it became necessary, right?”
“Yes.”
“You promise?” A flicker of fear in his eyes, a ripple beneath still waters.
“I promise, Nai.”
Nai closed his eyes for a moment. “Okay. Okay, fuck. Shit. Okay.” He opened his eyes again, and his expression smoothed over completely. “Bite down.”
Vash used his free hand to put the belt back between his teeth. He looked at his brother and nodded.
Nai’s arm raised. His face was blank.
For a moment, Vash felt nothing.
Then, he felt everything.
His vision whited out, and he distantly felt himself trying to scream, the leather hot in his mouth, the taste of blood, the smell of it, pain that didn’t fade, and didn’t fade, and didn’t fade.
It’ll be worth it, he thought frantically. It’ll be worth it if it gets us out.
There was a ringing in his ears, and his throat burned. A sob caught in his chest and wilted there. He wasn’t sure how much time passed; he did not feel Nai cut the tourniquet away from his skin. He thought he may have passed out for a while, but wasn’t sure. Gradually, Nai’s voice faded back in. He was talking to someone else.
“-my brother, we agreed that you wouldn’t-”
Vash made a noise almost without meaning to, and Nai stopped.
“Vash?” His voice was softer now. Belatedly, Vash realized that his eyes had been squeezed shut.
He opened them, and saw the lab once again. His brother. Head Researcher William Conrad, standing in the doorway with his arms folded. Vash stared at the scientist, and his thoughts screeched to a halt.
Nai was looking at him with his brow slightly furrowed in concern. “You’re still losing blood. You should rest. I’ll deal with him.”
“N-” He spat out the belt. “Nai…? Wh… What?”
Nai shushed him. “Rest,” he repeated, and turned away.
Conrad raised an eyebrow. “Surely you don’t think that we don’t have other ways of tracing him,” he said. Casual, unbothered. A chill ran down Vash’s spine.
“Of course,” Nai said. His voice was different when he addressed Conrad, cold and emotionless. “I will not, however, allow you to turn my brother into a doll you can play with. You will not control him as you do Livio.”
Vash tried to breathe. He could barely focus on the conversation over the pain in his arm. Wasn’t it supposed to be gone? It hurt, he could feel it all the way down through his fingers – why the hell hadn’t Nai cut it all the way off?
“Oh?” Conrad was saying. “Is that so?”
“It is,” Nai said evenly. “Unless you want me to end my cooperation with you. I can make myself very disagreeable, Doctor, I assure you.”
There was a tense silence.
“…I’ll see you in the Plant room in forty-minutes, Knives.”
Knives clicked his tongue, annoyed. “Make it an hour. Now, leave us. I need to tend to my brother’s injury.”
Conrad disappeared from view, and Vash looked helplessly at Nai.
“What was that? Nai- Nai, what was that?” His throat hurt. His arm felt like it was on fire. He couldn’t think straight.
Nai’s expression softened again, and he came back over to Vash. “Negotiations. He won’t try to operate again. You’re safe.”
“But- but I-” Vash swallowed hard. “I thought we- we were going to escape,” he whispered.
“Escape?” Nai sounded incredulous. “Escape where? It’s only desert out there.”
“Just because it was desert thirty years ago-”
“Deserts don’t just disappear, Vash! Are you serious? This was about getting their handiwork out of you, not escape. You didn’t really think this would get us out, did you?” Nai’s eyes widened incrementally. “Did you?”
Vash tried to breathe in, and choked. “We have- we- we have to get out, we have to try, we-” He heaved himself up on the metal table he was lying on. He tried to grab at his throbbing wrist, but his hand met empty air, and he looked down to see his arm was gone. Gone- why did it hurt so much, if it was gone? He couldn’t think straight.
Nai tried to gently press Vash back down, but Vash dodged his hands and got shakily to his feet, only swaying a little.
“We have to leave,” he wheezed. “The back route. We talked about it before. With the tracker gone, we can do it.”
Nai stared at him for a moment, eyes wide. “Vash,” he hissed, “are you insane? He has our sisters here. You want us to abandon them?”
Vash shook his head. “No- no, but- we can’t help them like this. I can’t, anyway, I- please. Please, before he comes back.”
Nai’s eyes narrowed. “Oh, I see. It’s about the humans, isn’t it? You want to go crawling back to them. After everything they’ve done to us.”
“Nothing more than Conrad is still doing!”
“At least Conrad has a vision for our path forward,” Nai insisted. “I’ve made so much progress collecting the dying Plants, and you’ve done so much good by healing them. You would really abandon all of that? Really? And for what?” His voice was rising, anger coloring his tone.
“Nai, you don’t understand-”
“I understand perfectly. You don’t care about our family, you don’t care about our work, you don’t care about anything but your guilt complex!”
Vash clenched his fist and sucked in a sharp breath. “That’s not true,” he said weakly. “Nai, please. Staying here isn’t going to change anything. I want to help, but I can’t.”
“Maybe that’s because you’re not really trying!” Tears of frustration shone in Nai’s eyes. “You really think abandoning m- abandoning them will help? Then go. I’ll finish our work myself. And then you’ll see how idiotic you’re being.”
“Nai…” Vash reached out. “We’ve been stuck in here so long. Don’t you want to see how the world has changed? Don’t you want to even try?”
“The world hasn’t changed, Vash,” Nai hissed. “It never does. It never has, and it never will.” He turned away and stared at a computer, then, after a long silence, tapped a few buttons. “The back route, with the vents. I disabled the inner alarm. You have at least ten minutes before Conrad realizes something is wrong.”
Vash reached forward tentatively. “Nai… come with me.”
Nai shook his head. “No,” he said roughly, “I’m not leaving them. I’m staying.” He threw one last glance back and swallowed. “Mind your arm, Vash,” he murmured, his voice breaking over the words.
Vash looked at him for another moment. Frozen.
And then, for the first time in his life, he turned from his twin and ran away.
His arm was gone.
His arm was gone, and he was free.
The world looked exactly as he remembered it – sand that stretched out seemingly forever, a haze of heat wavering above it, a barren landscape, merciless twin suns. He ran until he could only walk, and then walked until his legs gave out under him and he panted through aching lungs. He had no idea how far he had gotten. He reached out to catch himself, and crashed down to the sand instead, stump-first.
There was a sear of agony, and Vash clenched his teeth, biting down on a cry. The adrenaline had masked the pain well at first, but now that he had stopped, the throbbing seemed to spiderweb out from his shoulder and tense all his muscles at once, like his whole body was on fire. His vision wavered, and he wasn’t sure whether it was the heat, or the pain, or something more worrying.
He tried to stand, and found his legs were locked in place by exhaustion.
Oh, he thought dimly. I’m going to die. After all that, I’m going to die here.
He heard shouting. Distant, and then nearer. And nearer. Panic surged through him. In a last desperate effort, he pushed himself up and stumbled a few steps.
There was a face in front of him, dark hair, sunglasses, dark fabric, the smell of smoke. And then-
And then, nothing.