Chapter Text
"So, where is she?" Meryl pokes around his collar, under his arms and inside his pockets, notebook flipped open, pencil at the ready. Robert grumbles and elbows her, but Meryl is nothing if not persistent in her work; the bar noise quiets considerably in the background. Vash hunches, off-kilter, and shifts away, thumbing his neck with a brittle laugh of someone who's been asked this sort of question far too many times.
Before he can answer July police floods the bar, vicious and trigger happy and quite willing to confiscate the plants that keep Jenora alive for the sake of collecting the highest bounty available.
"Go!" Meryl shouts and Dante carries a .22 in his talons as far up as he can manage before flinging the bullet at Vash. He cries in gratitude, catching it midair, only to stumble from a loose shot, which sends it flying off the cliffside.
"So?" Meryl prods later, disheveled and in need of a shower after the city is miraculously spared by stray missiles and police misconduct. Vash pats Tonis' head as the boy shows him the new insects he collected from the desert lands, see-through green catching against soft chestnut hair. His daemon flits in circles, a swallow, then a squirrel, shifting colors as it gazes at Vash curiously, unafraid.
The door explodes before Vash can open his mouth and Meryl is ready to cry—a form that doesn't fit in the bar entrance and a mad doctor from the northlands, eager to cash in the legendary six mil worth of bounty. People are hurt in the crossfire, blood and daemon gold and desert sand; at the end of the day Vash's face tugs with exhaustion, consecutive events happening in less than the span of twenty seven hours, the aftermath of a typhoon. Meryl can't reconcile within her mind, a seraphic face and the eyes of a sufferer. "Well?" she asks again because she can't help herself. Everyone has a daemon on Gunsmoke, and the absence of one is jarring.
His smile strains. "It's complicated," says Vash.
Nai's earliest memory is crying about a bedtime story Rem tells the two of them before sleep. They're three months soon and Vash turns on his side and grasps in the darkness for Nai's hands.
"Don't be sad, Nai," Vash strokes his face with his hand and traces a thumb under Nai's eyes, brushing away his tears. His eyes glow softly in the dark room, glittering. He smiles, even though his own face is damp.
"Vash the Stampede? He's cursed that man, I'm telling ya—"
"What?"
"Haven't you heard?"
"The Humanoid Typhoon? He's not human—"
"—a freak—"
"—a monster—"
"—he doesn't have one."
"Doesn't have what?"
"A daemon."
"Oh, Nai," Vash says wistfully, "I wish we had them too, wouldn't that be nice? We'd be just like humans."
Annoyance lances through Nai, hot and sharp. "We don't—we don't need these daemon creatures," he says testily, arrogantly even, "We have each other, right?"
"And Rem!" Vash nods and forks another portion of the cheesy omelet into his mouth with great relish.
"And Rem too, I suppose," Nai allows, indulgent. He doesn't understand Vash's fascination with the human species, or his desire to be like one, to look like one, to have a daemon like one. They're different but is that so bad? They don't have these physical manifestations of self but Nai has Vash and Vash has Nai, and when they are together—Nai wants for nothing in the world.
Millions Knives is a planetary catastrophe. Meryl only glimpses him from far away, enough so that she barely escapes with her life—many do not. In her hands, Tonis bleeds out while his daemon is crumpled in his lap, drawing stuttering breaths. She will never fly again.
Vash looks like death warmed over. In the wake of devastation, the people of Jenora hurl acidic cries of reproach at him and their daemons hiss and bark and howl in open hatred at a creature that has no soul to speak of, to speak to. Rosa grieves over her lost friends and sisters, their lost children, her home, her crippled son, her hope.
Rosa's setter snaps and bounds at Vash and bites viciously enough to draw blood—he turns white but doesn't scream or make a sound. He crouches, slowly, and says something quietly until the daemon lets go with a heartwrenching whine; then he turns and leaves because there is nothing else to be done. Meryl didn't know, that daemons could hurt people like that.
Watching Vash's expression, haunted and fragile and religiously dry, she thinks there's a reason why.
Vash plays with Ion like it's the easiest thing in the world. Rem had said that it might be a plant thing, that plants have a different relationship with dimensions and souls and daemons. Yet Nai never felt the urge to touch or even speak with Rem's daemon, or the technician's monkey, or the captain's panther. Vash giggles as he chases Rem's cardinal butterfly around, kicking up grass and dirt. He trips and falls and giggles when Ion settles between his eyebrows.
"Don't you feel uncomfortable?" Nai asks her when Vash is in the shower. "I know how weird you humans are about your animals. And—"
"Nai!" Rem scolds him, then sighs, shaking her head, "We do not address each other in this manner on this ship." She gives Nai a stern look but smiles wryly, "Different people have individual views about these things. If it's family or best friends then it's alright for them to touch, sometimes, depending on the boundaries of a person and their consent."
"But Vash never asked...!" Nai protests, because Vash takes to other daemons like the aquatic lifeforms of Earth did to the water—without second thought.
An odd expression passes over Rem's face before it smooths out deliberately. "Well, that just means there are still manners to be taught, right, Vash?" she asks playfully when Vash comes out from the door, blinking, wet towel dripping at the edges. She headlocks him and messes up his hair and Vash does that thing he always does with humans—the one where he draws back before leaning into their touch, like it's everything he's ever wanted. Nai's teeth clench before he can think twice.
Vash laughs and giggles because Rem knows all his ticklish spots. Ion flits before Nai's face, but he never settles before floating away to Rem's dark hair, an ornament, a symbol Nai doesn't understand. They look happy together, Vash and Rem and Ion.
Why isn't Nai?
Meryl stares at the rear mirror. The car jerks under her wheel and a few drops of water spill from her uncapped flask. Roberto nudges her in passing.
"You're being rude again, newbie," he says and that snaps her out as she jabs a thumb and whispers ardently, "I'm rude? What—well what do you call that?" Roberto looks over her shoulder and visibly starts.
Vash sleeps: he's an amalgamation of limbs and hair and red and a pair of the biggest eyebags on Gunsmoke bruising under his eyes. It hasn't been three days since Jenora. There's nothing new about this, about how Vash sleeps—but Dante nesting in his hair certainly is.
Vash twitches, face scrunching up—he does that a lot too. After another fit the black bird shuffles before settling comfortably in the spiky tangles by Vash's ear. Meryl has never seen Dante like this before, even with her own mother, or any of the people she's dated—Dante's temper runs a notch hotter than Meryl's. Meryl has enough attitude for both of them and they're supposed to be journalists at the end of the day—spiting people isn't beneficial to the maintenance of a pleasant working environment.
"Huh," is all that Roberto offers, pulling another drag of his cigarette. He doesn't elaborate on his thoughts, which is a habit Meryl loathes passionately. Selena curls around his neck, silent like always, half hidden from sight by his collar; she keeps to herself most of the time, fur like Roberto's hair must have been in his youth, a pair of beady, lazy eyes tracking anyone who engages with her human. Meryl has never heard Roberto's daemon speak.
"Mhmm," Vash whimpers in his dream and hides his face in the crook of his elbow, "no, I'm sorry—" and then he's quiet again.
She can count the times someone accidentally brushed against her daemon on one hand and each of those occurrences had been courted by a sense of deep revulsion, the desire to hide Dante far, far away—but there is none of that right now. She doesn't know what that says about her or Vash or Dante but after the events in Jenora Rock and Vash's confession about how he copes with grief—"I don't deserve to,"—she leaves them be. If Dante trusts him, then so does Meryl.
Steve is roaring drunk when he raises a hand at Vash in the controls room. His monkey follows up with the abuse eagerly, just as inebriated, even more malicious.
"Please, don't...!" Vash presses his hands over the hurt and Nai's head blooms in pain because he's highly parasympathetic to his twin, always had been, since before they learned to walk. Vash stares up at Steve with painful lack of understanding and it strikes Nai as if he's the one who's been hit. Steve's breath stinks and he can't tell right from left so Nai darts between the console and the chair, grabs Vash's thin wrist and ducks out of the room while the monkey screeches obscenities. He'd never bothered to learn its name.
Vash cries silently, for the first time since they were two months old. He clings to Nai until he quiets down. The next day Susan brushes by, Vash flinches away without thought. It should hurt, Nai thinks, but when Vash stays closer to him than usual, he can only feel satisfaction. Is that so wrong of him?
"Well, I'll be," Roberto grunts and wonder coats his tone. Meryl switches hands over the wheel and looks back because if there's something that can surprise Roberto she has to see it.
Selena curls around Vash's palm before nuzzling, very, very slowly. Vash is out cold again, another day without food and barely any water, and this requires an intervention as soon as he wakes again. Roberto's daemon climbs over the red coat and sits proudly on Vash's arm. She's not a cat but she sure acts like one at times. Roberto reaches a hand but she snarls at him and bats a clawed paw until he retracts it with a startled curse.
"Ha!" Meryl says, vindicated. She can feel Roberto's dirty look. The feeling of vindication is better than addressing whatever is going on between Vash and their daemons, how completely abnormal and taboo this is.
Tesla's name is linked to another file. It has a different category, it mirrors all the dates, apart from sex and name. Nai draws back in horror, because those aren't the remains of one person, no, they're, that's Tesla and her— they're both still—
Rem finds them in hysterics, Nai pressing a hand over Vash's eyes desperately, and takes them away and she knows when she crosses eyes with Nai, that he knows. "Please," she begs him later, gripping his shoulders tighter than ever, gentle, kind Rem. "Don't tell Vash. He can't know," and Nai understands why. When the humans wake up, how will they treat Vash, if they find out? Will he have his freedom and liberty? Rem doesn't want to take this away from him, or from Nai.
Rem is human and Nai is not, and Tesla hadn't been but if all of this is true, that means, once again, as they did with other kinds, as they did with their own kind, as they did with their own planet—humans can and will exercise subjugation if they can get away with it. They have done it and they continue to do it on this ship, they will do it on the new planet. This is why Nai understands Rem—but he will never listen.
That night Nai wakes up alone, to an empty bed. The bathroom light is on. He draws a steadying breath and climbs out of the cooling covers. Vash is sobbing on the floor, curled up, just like one of their sisters living in the thousands of tanks below deck.
"Vash," Nai says gently and kneels beside him. "Do you know that plants actually have daemons?"
"R-really?" Vash asks uncertainly, horror from Tesla clawing deep into the marrow of his bones even as curiosity flickers. Nai understands, he understands everything now, how they are always together, how they understand each other without fault, how it hurts to be apart from Vash, how there's nothing for him except Vash and his safety.
Nai nods and tells him the truth.
Vash stares at him, whiter and whiter by the second. Before Nai can reach out he scrambles to the toilet and throws up.
"She's not a wolf," says Wolfwood acidly. "She's a wolfhound." Her face certainly looks the former, Meryl thinks to herself. She would rather eat her hat than admit that monstrous black thing has any relation to the domesticated dog. Looking between the creature and Wolfwood though, she can see a resemblance, despite their eerie discrepancies.
Victoria is missing half an ear, a third of a tail, patches of fur and an eye. Wolfwood's face is unmarred, both eyes dark and healthy and full of things that have teeth. Once more they have gained another party member that has little to do with humanity.
The abuse picks up—Steve has found out about the nature of Nai and Vash's bond. He likes making one hurt and watching the other squirm; Nai comes to the realization that something needs to be done with haste. Nai is nothing if not aggressively productive once he sets his mind to it.
Vash is older than he looks but he doesn't move like he is. Nicholas cracks his spine and switches hands, unfolding his cross and the barrel. He narrows his eyes at the outlaws and aims—"Wolfwood no," Vash's voice ghosts over his ear and he startles enough to drop his cigarette. His aim is off but Vash's red coat takes up his whole vision instead as he descends before Nicholas and into the fray.
If Vash had a daemon, Nicholas thinks, it would be one of those great birds of the old world. One born from the sky, wings spanning yards and yards until all you see are feathers and white, white, and black. Vash does this a lot—not looking like he belongs in this dimension.
"Argh!" screams another unruly soul as Vash's boots meet their face. A rabbit daemon flings itself at Vash, who doesn't think twice before scruffing it, gentle, and lowering it onto the ground mid-soar, disoriented. Vash himself collides with the ground a ways off and trips and faceplants and gets up, all in the same beat.
Nicholas shakes his head. For all that Meryl complains, of how odd and glaring Vash's lack of daemon is, Nicholas can't bring himself to agree. Vash looks broken and lonely and missing a half—but it's something else. A hole, a lost piece that will no longer fit even if a miracle brings it back, everlasting, lacking solution. He thinks of Millions Knives and stops himself before he can continue that train of thought. There is work to be done and Vash getting cornered by the rest of the criminal flock is not in his job description.
"We should separate them, before it's too late," the captain's daemon tells Ion. Vash is finishing breakfast in the hall but Nai eavesdrops.
Rem purses her lips and shakes her head. "Are you hearing yourself? That is inhumane and cruel and—"
"Don't you remember what happened last time?" the captain scrolls through the evening logs of the ship, deeply pensive. "That would be catastrophic for this project! If Vash does something like Tesla—"
"That was because of how we treated Nicole," Rem seethes. "You will not be doing that to the boys, not on my watch—"
"You forget yourself—I am the captain of this ship." The panther bares teeth at Ion. "You answer to my authority—one step out of line and we will terminate this project before we have a repeat of last time."
"Nai...?" Nai gasps silently when Vash tugs at his shirt. There's jam stuck to his cheek—Nai wipes it without thought. He takes Vash's hand and sneaks away before breaking into a run. He locks them in their room to Vash's confusion, even if it provides no substantial security.
There's less time than he hoped for.
Wolfwood curses as the keys rattle, useless. He bangs on the door, hoping it's open, but it's locked firmly. Either reception gave him the wrong set or Wolfwood is going mad from insomnia and he wants to make love to a bed as soon as possible. He stalks away to argue a bitch but something shuffles behind the door.
"Wolfwood?" Vash's sleepy voice makes Wolfwood turn in the narrow corridor. He feels Victoria freeze, staring hungrily. He sees legs after that, long and attractive and covered in so many scars Nicholas's throat goes tight. Vash's eyes are barely open as he looks up at Wolfwood, bleary. The fight from last night must have taken a lot out of him, between rescuing townsfolk and saving a failing plant from both plant hunters and his older brother's lackeys.
None of these thoughts linger as Wolfwood stares. Vash is barefoot and wears nothing over his legs, Vash's shirt doing little to cover them but enough to disguise whatever it is that Vash has going on down there. Saliva drips from Vic's mouth and he knees her in embarrassment—she really has no shame.
"Wolfwood?" Vash says again, faint worry stirring in his eyes. For the sake of God, does this man not understand human nature? Does he not know how to read a daemon who stares at him like a hot meal? He's definitely lived much longer than Nicholas but he leans against the doorframe like a young fawn, just as defenseless. One of his sleeves lists off to the side and Nicholas lowers his eyes before he can see anything. None of these thoughts are in the bible. Under Vash's right knee is a stitch scar so horrendous it must have taken a miracle to avoid amputation.
"Tsk," Nicholas kicks Vic again in the side, "Go back to sleep, Needle Noggin," and he has to make himself look away. Vash's legs, scarred and muscled and lean in the shin, are also plush in the thighs. Nicholas's teeth scratch.
"Oh," Vash says, already out of it, and the breathiness of that little sigh summons bad, bad thoughts to Nicholas's mind. "G'night then, W'lfwood," he wisps and the door clicks shut.
"Why," asks Vic immediately, "are we here. And not in that room. Why," she growls.
Nicholas snaps back at her, "Because we have a job," he says, "And it's more important than, than—this," they growl and snap at each other until late into the wee hours of the morning, until they figure out that their room isn't number six but number nine. Wolfwood does not get any sleep.
Love makes daemons stupid and being stupid makes it easy to get the humans to dispose of each other. Nai has read a lot about human love—how to make a daemon fall into affection and then into contempt and homicidal rage, using only words and empty promises.
Meryl gets hurt between one pitstop and the next, when they get ambushed by scavengers for water and provisions. Victoria tries to rip out the throat of a bull daemon and gets hauled away by Vash which makes Wolfwood ogle him from over his sunglasses. They do not address this even as they leave the bandits tied up in the shade of an abandoned station.
Vash carefully tucks in the bandage—he dresses the wound on Meryl's arm so professionally she doesn't want to think of the implications.
Dante shies away into the backseat, behind Meryl's ears—his wing bleeds golden. Vash makes a difficult expression and his eyes shoot between Meryl and the blackbird. "I'm not good at this sort of stuff so he doesn't usually let me treat him," Meryl admits which is true. Dante scoffs and burrows deeper, but his wing is leaking a concerning amount for such a little daemon.
Something shifts in Vash's expression and goes soft. "May I...?" he asks, as if Dante hadn't shamelessly nested in his ears days before. Dante thinks before coming out into the sunlight. There are clumps in his feathers.
Roberto wheels the van rougher than Meryl likes her vehicles handled while desert plain plummets by, unchanging. Meryl props her chin on her hands, and those on her knees as Vash cleans out Dante's wound with bottled water and tries not wince when Vash shoots her a worried look. Once he's bandaged the wound it feels better, the pain muted. Vash offers Dante back, scooped up but Dante bites him by his fingers and gnaws, not letting go.
"Dante, you're shameless," Meryl huffs as Vash laughs like sunspots from a mirror.
Nothing really changes on the ship after that, except for its fate.
Vash starves for touch but when Nicholas tries he flinches away, always. Vash catches himself, and he looks at Nicholas with wide eyes—lost, every single time he does it, and he does this little thing, where he unfurls, like he's a windmill looking for the wind, like he's an animal that gets frightened, before realizing there's no enemy and reaching for the hand that might stroke it with kindness. But Vash is not an animal and he's clearly been around longer than all of them combined so he smiles and doesn't follow his wants. Nicholas feels anger burn his stomach and other, unnamed emotions, too bitter and volatile to define.
"I can't believe how hard this is," Meryl drags her feet as she pulls the spare tires from the station.
"That's what she said," Dante twitters above. Wolfwood's hand smacks against his face and Meryl swipes an angry hand at the blackbird. Vash blinks and laughs, uncertain.
"Could you explain? The joke, I mean," Vash asks Meryl later. He looks barely older than her but she gets the feeling he hasn't been around a lot of his peers, if at all.
"It's just a dumb joke," Meryl says because Vash looks at her with his earnest water-like eyes, "You just say it when—" oh she can't do this, "when someone says something you can interpret in different ways. You know, without context it might imply... other connotations."
"Yeah," says Dante from her shoulder, "it's just like ligma."
"Dante, no—"
Vash frowns and cocks his head. "What's lig—"
"Nothing," says Meryl as she puts a hand over his mouth, "it's nothing, Dante shut up."
"Don't be shy, ask," says Dante coyly. Vash looks confused, eyes darting between the two of them.
"...Young people are very peculiar these days," he says instead with a raised eyebrow. Relieved, Meryl does what she excels at—changing the subject.
It's laughably easy to sabotage humanity, Nai thinks when three of the four conscious humans are gone. It's a good time to descend to the first planet they've ever known—or it would have been good if only Vash stopped crying.
"Welcome to the club, buddy," Robert pats Wolfwood on the back sarcastically as Wolfwood shrugs the hand off with a growl.
Vash leans against the shaded metal plating of the abandoned station. Victoria sits behind him, fur pressed against his side, stubbornly looking anywhere else but him. She makes eye contact with Nicholas and then Robert and Meryl, snuffs audibly and turns her maw away with a yawn. Her teeth, unlike her furcoat, are in pristine condition.
Vash nods and flinches awake and strokes her fur without second thought. He stops then, in broad daylight, and turns. They stare at him and his hand freezes inches away from the wolfhound. Without ceremony, she ducks under his arm, settling it around her back and neck and nuzzles his side. She looks deliberately at Wolfwood with challenge in her eyes before slumping down, maw over Vash's lap.
Nicholas's cigarette snaps in half in his fingers and he stomps it even though it's unnecessary in the sand. Vash's eyes flicker behind the lenses before Victoria headbutts him and he laughs nervously.
Nicholas makes a face and heads into the van. "His ears, his ears," Roberto elbows Meryl because they're burning. "Serves him right," Meryl nods.
"I can hear both of you," Nicholas hisses and slams the door shut. Vash winces. Victoria's tail thumps in victory.
Something sours inside Nai as Rem jams the controls over the shuttle. He catches her wrist and tugs, "Rem," he says and her violet eyes flicker up to his, "Come with us, Rem," he insists and something desperate threads his tone because—Rem is Rem, she didn't want for bad things to happen to Nai and Vash like the rest of them did. Rem hesitates and her gaze shoots to Vash—to Ion, fluttering over his nose. Kissing him on the nose—kissing him goodbye, Nai realizes, as her eyes steel and she slams a fist over the starting key.
"Take care of Nai, Vash," she says and Ion flits out. The glass pane slams down instead. She looks at them like she always does—like there's nothing in the wide universe that she loves more. Something burns in Nai's chest.
"No, Rem," Vash's voice breaks, "Rem, Rem—"
A shuttle pierces the black cosmos.
The mothership blazes.