Archive of Our Own ^beta

Brad didn't hear what Vash said the first time - with the music blasting through his headphones, all he caught was Vash sliding into view across the table, his lips moving as he waved to grab Brad's attention. Slipping a cup off his ear, he lifted his goggles and squinted at the boy over the parts scattered across his workspace.

But boy wasn't really accurate anymore. In the past two years, Vash had sprung up fast, gaining height and beginning to fill out into the shape of a proper young man - his shoulders had broadened, his legs lengthening so fast that his ankles ended up sticking out of every pair of secondhand pants they found for him within weeks. Keeping him in suitable prosthetics had kept Brad so damn busy he'd finally worked out a telescoping bone system which could be lengthened as necessary without disassembling the whole fucking thing again.

That's what he had spread out across his workspace now, actually, since Vash had finally stopped growing taller with each passing day - his birthday gift. A new prosthetic; one final, adult-sized arm.

"What?" He finally asked, when Vash did nothing but stare back at him expectantly.

"Oh - um." Vash twiddled the sleeve of his jacket. He no longer had to roll it up to free his hands. "Luida, uh, said you knew how to bake?"

Brad squinted at him suspiciously. It was a useless skill he'd developed back on Earth, a waste of time since the synth could whip up something to satisfy a craving in a quarter of the time it took to bake a simple batch of cookies. He'd found the delicate chemistry of it satisfying - but he couldn't figure why Vash was showing interest. Last time he'd tried cooking, he'd ruined a pan. "Yeah, I do. Why?"

"Can you teach me how to make a cake?"

Brad's frown only deepened. He pulled the headphones off to hang around his neck. "Your birthday's not for a week, kid. The hell you wanna bake a cake for now? Get something from the synth if you want something sweet."

He knew that stubborn set of Vash's lips, though - the kid even crossed his arms, his dark brows pulling in.

"Can you bake a cake or not?" Vash asked, sharp-like, so uncharacteristically snappish that it brought Brad up short. In the face of that open shock, the kid dropped his eyes, and his cheeks flushed with color. "Sorry. Just… I don't want something from the synth. You can tell if something's printed."

Frowning, Brad tapped the tip of his screwdriver on the tabletop, letting it bounce back into his palm with each tink as he considered the kid. He didn't ask for much; and rarely so blatantly, never with such strident determination. Usually when someone said no, Vash folded like a house of cards and never mentioned it again.

But this time, Vash met his stare again, his brow softening into a plea.

Brad broke first.

"Alright, fine. Gimme your tablet," he said, gesturing him over with the screwdriver. Once Vash had fished the device out of his pocket, Brad yanked it from his outstretched hand and swiped over to the notes app, Vash hovering at his elbow as he tapped out a list. "Get all of this out of the synth and wait for me in the kitchen area. I'll be there in two hours."

"Thank you, Brad!" Vash clutched the tablet to his chest when he handed it back and gave him a beaming grin.

"If you're not there when I get done here, I'm not hanging around!" Brad called after him. Vash gave him a thumbs up over his shoulder, and then he was out of the room.

As the door slid shut, Brad shook his head. "Strange fuckin' kid," he muttered, pulling his goggles down and settling the headphones back over his ears.

But Vash was there when Brad arrived a quarter hour late, and he'd gone so far as to pull out mixing bowls and measuring cups before settling in to pace back and forth before the counters.

"Jesus, kid, it's just cake," he said. Vash gave him a nervous little smile.

He didn't like this. This, weirdly, felt like trouble brewing.

Turned out Vash meant it, though - he didn't want Brad to help make a cake. He wanted Brad to teach him to make a cake, and he prickled each time Brad reached for a spatula or a bowl.

"I want to do it," he said, waving Brad away for the third time. "Just tell me what's next, okay?"

While the batter baked (serviceable, if lumpy), he directed the kid on whipping up a frosting; and then he had to drag Vash out of the kitchen to keep him from ruining all his hard work by trying to ice a hot cake, restless and impatient as he was. Only once Brad was sure the spongy discs would be cool enough did he let Vash coax him back, and from where he sat on the other side of the counter, elbows propped on the laminate, he watched Vash ice it clumsily. Plain vanilla icing on a plain vanilla cake; no decorations, nothing fancy.

"That looks like shit," Brad pointed out helpfully as Vash dropped the spatula back into the bowl. And it did: The icing was grainy and unevenly spread. But he'd covered it well enough that the browned crust didn't show through anywhere when Vash spun the cake on its dolly, and that would have to do.

"Whatever," Vash muttered. The crease was back between his brows as he inspected his handiwork. He licked frosting from his fingers and spun the dolly again with his free hand, his blue eyes shadowed and unreadable. It was a pretty good effort for a first try - but Brad didn't think it was the middling quality of the cake that had him so petulant when he added, "It doesn't matter."

"If you say so," Brad said. Rather than answer, Vash ducked below the counter and began to rifle through the cabinets below. "What're you looking for?"

"Um… a container."

The alarm bells rang a little louder. "In the cabinet over the counter by the sink, kid, you know that. What for?"

"I want to take a slice to someone." Vash stood, turning quickly enough to keep Brad from catching sight of his face, and flung the cabinet open. There weren't many containers - but Vash found one, roughly square, and dug up the matching lid. While he was at it, he fished a knife out of the drawer under the counter. When he turned back to the counter, he avoided meeting Brad's eyes with red-flag-raising dedication.

"A plate's not gonna get it there safely?" Brad asked.

Vash, focused on cutting the cake and transferring a hefty slice into the container, didn't answer. The furrow of his brow had Brad frowning in turn; and the way he set the knife down, the finality of that clack, made him lean back on his stool with suspicion.

He wasn't surprised to see that mulish pout back on his lips when Vash finally looked him in the eye.

"Absolutely fuckin' not," Brad said.

"Brad…" Luida's outstretched palm was as conciliatory as her tone. When Vash had announced his plans, he'd pinged Luida and dragged him straight to her room, hoping for back-up. Instead, he'd gotten this. "Let him explain, and we'll talk about it. Okay?"

"Talk about it! Yeah, let's fuckin' talk about it, Luida! Let's talk about how that monster cut Vash's arm off. Vash." Brad rounded on him again, but Vash didn't move; shoulders tense, head down, the kid sulked in Luida's armchair and stared at the container of cake in his lap. "The hell do you want to see him for? That cake's gonna be stale by the time you get anywhere, anyway!"

Silence. Vash's fingers, flesh and metal both, traced the edge of the lid, his head hung low so that the shag of his blonde hair obscured his eyes. Hand on his hip, Brad pointed at him with a flat palm and stared at Luida. What the fuck was this?

"You said he doesn't need to eat. So why cake, Vash?" How Luida kept her voice so level, Brad couldn't figure; he was ready to lock Vash in his room until this madness had passed.

"It's not - that's not the point." Vash lifted his hands weakly, let them flop back around the container. When he got to fiddling with the lid again, Brad had to fight the impulse to rip the whole thing out of his hands and chuck it in the trash, especially when Vash said, "It's his birthday, too."

"He cut your arm off. You don't have to bring him a goddamn present," Brad snapped. "Luida, we can't let him leave. Last time it was his arm - next time, who knows what he'll do?"

"He was protecting me," Vash muttered at the cake.

"Yeah? And when he tried to kill Luida, was that about protecting you, too?" Brad shot back. The kid had nothing to say to that; he'd pulled into himself, tight and quiet.

Fingers curled loosely around her elbows, Luida looked back and forth between them, her conflict written clearly across her face. If only he'd been there; if only he'd seen what Luida had, because there had to be something that other independent had said or done to put that look on her face, uncertainty staining her brow. Something that made her reach for Vash's shoulder with a gentle hand - and whatever it was, it had Vash lifting his head to meet her eyes.

"Vash," she said softly. "Do you really want to see him?"

He was gripping that little container of cake so hard, Brad wouldn't have been surprised if the lid popped off, but he didn't say anything. Not at first. Slowly, his brow unfurrowed; and he lowered his head again, hair flopping back over his forehead, to stare at that stupid blue lid with shadowed eyes.

Quietly, so low Brad could barely hear him, Vash said, "No. But he's still my brother."

Luida touched his hair with tender fingers. "Okay," she said. "Okay, Vash."

They saw him off early the next morning, just after the suns had risen and banished the worst of the cold from the sands. Vash shivered in his coat and pulled the hood up against the glare of the rising suns off the sand.

"You better be careful, kid," Brad grumbled as he tugged the strap tight on the tomas' saddle. "You come back here missing another limb and I'm gonna let you stay a cripple, you hear me? You'll be building your own damn leg."

"Thank you, Brad," he said, accepting the hand up Brad offered into the saddle. Once he was settled, he reached back to pat the little bag hanging from the packs, checking that it was securely tied.

"You know where to go? Where he is?" Luida asked. Her fingers found his knee, and she patted him gently when he nodded. "Alright. Be safe, please, and come right back home. Okay?"

"I will," he said.

There was nothing else to say. With a little wave, Vash snapped the reins and turned the tomas into the desert.

The day wore steadily on; he stopped only to let the tomas rest when its pace began to flag, and as the moons began to rise, he sat awake by his campfire, his arms wrapped around his knees and the coat draped across his shoulders.

Let's talk about how that monster -

Vash stretched his prosthetic hand out in front of him. Five well-shaped fingers, down to the delicate nails Brad had crafted for him when he'd mentioned his difficulty picking up small items. It was a marvel; a work of art; as beautiful as it was functional. And still it paled in comparison to his original arm. What sensation it offered through the nerve interface was nothing more than basic pressure sensitivity, and there was a lag between when he wanted it to move and when it did, a persistent delay which made him even clumsier than he was by nature.

He tried not to complain.

Tucking the arm back around himself, Vash dropped his chin onto his knees and stared into the flames.

It wasn't like he didn't understand what Brad meant. He could imagine the exact scene he'd been thinking of - his brother's mad, childish cackle as he gloated over the destruction they'd caused. Vash could even do one better: the image of his big brother standing atop the rubble, backlit by the glitter of falling ships arcing through the darkness behind him, was seared into his memory.

Luida hadn't told Brad everything. Not about how Vash had frozen, gun in hand, and said nothing, done nothing as Nai advanced on Luida; not about the gate he'd opened in his desperation, how he would have killed everyone in that room, including himself, if not for Nai's quick action. And Vash hadn't told her everything. The horrible, sickly hope he'd felt when Nai had cooed with pleasure to see him remained his secret, a thorny bramble lodged in his heart.

His secret, yes; and Nai's. His brother had felt his shameful joy as clearly as Vash had felt Nai's.

Even now, he could feel Nai. He was nothing more than a fuzzy blot of a song on the horizon - an amorphous awareness, the details of his emotions blurred into ambiguity by distance and distraction - but he was there, alive, lying at the edge of Vash's mind like a sliver of glass waiting to be stepped on.

Which meant Nai could feel him, too, maybe. Maybe he lurked at the edge of Nai's mind. Maybe Nai fell asleep reaching for that distant beat, like Vash did. But maybe not. Maybe, with how Vash held himself small and quiet and tight - maybe Nai couldn't sense him at all.

Vash shivered and hugged himself into a tighter ball.

Even without his brother's song, he would have known where to find him. When he climbed back into the saddle in the morning, and every morning after, he pointed the tomas towards July and spurred it into motion again. The little bag bounced off the side of the pack. The frosting inside would be melting; the jostling would have it all over the inside of the tupperware, a mess of fat and sugar and synthetic vanilla. He could have tucked it deeper into the sack, but there wasn't much room. It didn't matter anyway. It really didn't.

Five days later, July hove into view, first a shimmer on the horizon, then a mirage which steadily resolved into reality as he approached.

His palm was slick with sweat as he rode into the shadow of the wrecked ship, fingers icy despite the dry heat wrapped around him like a blanket. Time melted around him, flowed past him in syrupy streaks of disjointed, unconnected happenings, his body moving through space in flashes of blurred impressions: The tomas in a stable; the string of the package cutting into his curled fingers with its slight weight; steps, an elevator, more steps, more steps, more steps.

And then the tower rose above him, curving away into the pitiless blue sky, imposing and dark; and Vash stood in its shadow with his head tilted back and the package in hand to stare up at the disc perched atop the spire.

Nai was up there.

This close, Vash could pick individual threads of emotions, bordering on thoughts. There was the cornflower-blue loneliness of him; the shivering heat of his anger bubbling underneath that cool crust; a yawning, throbbing pain throughout that made his arms ache with reciprocal emptiness. Vash caught himself holding his breath, holding himself tight enough to burst; his heart hammered against his ribs in a frantic beat. The bag trembled in his hands.

If Nai knew he was here, what would he do? Would he come down to sweep him into a hug, or would he arrive with those shining blades leading the way?

If he could sense Nai like this, then there was nothing to keep Nai from sensing him no matter how he tried to stay silent - and without someone to help him, what was to stop his brother from wrapping a hand around his arm and dragging him up into that tower? He wouldn't be able to fight, not against that bottle glass-green gaze, so warm and soft, not with his knowing smirk and the loving purr of his voice, and the pain, and the hot blood on his brother's hands where they wrapped around Luida's neck -

"Are you okay?"

Vash startled. The woman who had spoken to him was shorter than he was. Most people were now; he wasn't quite used to it yet. She wore her dark hair in a sensible bun on the back of her head, and she was looking up at him with a smidge of pity, shadowed as it was behind the caution in her brown eyes.

"You've been standing there a while," she said. "Is this your first time in July?"

"No - well. I mean, uh…." He looked at the bag in his hands, then back up at the tower looming above him. His brother was right there - so close, so far away. "I… I wasn't up here last time." Then, seized by inspiration, he asked, "Do you live here?"

She laughed. "God, no. I just work here. Why?"

"There's - there's a man who lives here," he said. "Or works here? Dr. William Conrad? Or, um… something or, whatever. He's a plant specialist."

The woman was looking at him like he was insane. Maybe he was. He barreled on anyway.

"There should be a boy with him. Blonde? My age? Um. This -" he held the bag out to her, and she flinched away. "This is for him. Could you, uh… can you give it to him for me? It's okay if you look inside."

Hesitantly, she took the bag from him; the very first thing she did was pry it open to peek at the meager contents. Confusion creased her brow, and he felt a flush creep up his cheeks. He must look so pathetic.

"It's his birthday," he said, lamely. "I'd really appreciate it. I… I think he would, too."

Hopefully. Maybe. Maybe not.

"Well," she finally said. "I guess I am supposed to take deliveries. Sure, why not. I'll see that this makes it to Dr. Conrad."

"Thank you," he said.

The words were ash in his mouth. His chest was tight, each breath a rattle in his throat; he found, suddenly, that there were tears in his eyes. His hands were shaking again.

"Thanks," he choked out again in the face of her surprise, and darted away before she could reply.

The chime of the doorbell was just loud enough in the lab to intrude on his thoughts, disrupting his concentration. Conrad ignored it; but then it rang again, and he laid his tablet down with a sigh. He knew for a fact that Knives was somewhere in the apartment at large. If the boy would simply answer the door for once, Conrad would have more time to focus on the research that Knives himself demanded be done instead of hopping to and fro taking care of all the little things his hired help had done for him before Knives ordered him to fire them all.

Perhaps it was for the best - Knives could never be accused of cheerfulness, but he'd been especially moody and withdrawn the past week as another birthday drew near. If whoever was at the door bothered him, there was no guarantee Conrad wouldn't have another murder on his hands to mop up.

When the doorbell rang again, Conrad gave into the inevitable and pushed away from the table he'd been working at.

Knives was in the apartment after all. He was, in fact, sprawled across one of the couches in the living area, a scant handful of steps from the chiming doorbell; he was casually flicking his blades in and out of his wrist as if he hadn't heard the door at all. Infuriating, how apathetic the boy could be when he wasn't rippling with fury - but there was a line of blood trickling down Knives' forearm, vividly, startlingly red against his pale skin. His sleeve was spotted with it.

"Stop staring and answer the door," Knives snapped without looking away from the steel splitting the milky flesh of his arm.

Turning away from his observation, Conrad did as he was ordered, opening the door to reveal the woman from the front desk.

"Good afternoon, Dr. Conrad. I'm sorry for the interruption." She gave him a tiny smile and held a small bag out to him. "I have a delivery for that young man who lives with you. It seemed time sensitive."

"For - " Conrad glanced over his shoulder. Knives was looking at him now; the surprise written clearly on his previously-impassive face was enough to tell him that Knives had no hand in this. "Interesting. And who is this from?"

"I didn't get his name, sir, I apologize. He was blonde, about the same age as your charge. He had a very strange prosthetic arm?" She wiggled the fingers of her left hand demonstratively.

"I see. Thank you." Carefully, as if the package were an armed bomb, he lifted the little bag from her fingers. It was light; there couldn't have been much in there. Knives' stare, a physical weight on his shoulders, was far heavier.

Once the woman had dipped her head in acknowledgement of her dismissal, he closed the door on her and turned to Knives again. He'd sat up properly on the couch, his bloody fingers gripping the couch cushions, and his eyes were hot in his pale face.

Not a boy sitting there staring at him, no, but a young man, broad in the shoulders and narrow in the waist. In the past two years, Knives had matured, and Conrad could easily see the fully adult independent he'd become in short order. The rate of maturation still took him by surprise, especially in moments like these; he'd turn around expecting an insolent child and there he was, taller than him.

"Well? Give it here," Knives growled, reaching out his hand.

Once again, Conrad could only obey orders: He set the bag in Knives' expectant palm.

"Be careful," he said, but Knives only huffed his irritation.

The entire situation was so unusual, he couldn't even begin to predict what the bag contained - but at the little container of cake Knives pulled out, he could only blink. It was in horrible shape from its journey from wherever Knives' twin was living. As much icing was smeared across the inside of the plastic as was still on the cake.

Knives' faces did complicated things. There was a wobble to his lips; his brows drew in, down, until his eyes were dark and shining. All Conrad could think of was the fit he'd thrown after the incident with Vash - the fury, the raging sorrow, shattered glass and broken furniture and screaming, and Conrad thankful he'd been useful enough to be left alive in the end. When Knives had put himself back together afterwards, he'd been colder, sadder, sharper somehow; but now, despite the caustic edge to his voice, there were tears budding in his eyes as Nai said, "He knows I don't eat."

Conrad said nothing.

"I didn't even feel him here," Knives mused, softly, as bitter as poison. Slowly, he rotated the container in his hands, as if there might be some hidden message engraved into the bioplastic; but there was nothing, only icing and sagging crumb.

The bag was in Knives' lap now, forgotten there until he dragged his eyes away from the cake and glanced down. He must have seen something else, because he reached back in, cake still in hand, and drew out a simple card, nothing more than a sheet of paper folded in half. Dipping his thumb between the halves, he flipped it open, eyes narrowing as he read.

His hand, already shivering ever so slightly, began to tremble outright, and Knives let his wrist drop to his knee. His eyes fell to the floor, unseeing.

Subtly, Conrad stepped behind an armchair, placing his hands upon the back to bolster the pretense. The tension in Knives' shoulders spoke to violence; he fully expected to be wiping icing off of the carpet later, once Knives had calmed down enough to sulk quietly in his room by himself instead of demanding Conrad's attention for the rant to come.

Instead, after a pause thick with tension, Knives set the cake on the low coffee table before him with tender care, as if he feared the plastic might shatter at the slightest impact; and then he laid the card alongside it, pressing it closed with delicate fingertips. He was deathly pale except for two spots of color, high in his cheeks. His eyes, flat disks of burnished silver, shone with tears.

The force with which he stood shoved the couch back across the floorboards with a horrible scraping. Conrad flinched away, fully prepared to duck if those wild chains of blades made a sudden reappearance - an interesting development of his powers, and a terrifying one - but Knives took a deep breath, broad chest expanding with the inhale, and clenched his hands into tight fists at his sides.

Stiff as a board, his voice choked with tears, Nai said, "I'll be in my room. Do not disturb me."

Conrad bowed his head in acknowledgement, but said nothing as his young master stalked off. Another order; and this one, he was happy to obey, at least until Knives had calmed down. Only when he heard the slam of a door did he dare move. Stepping around his makeshift shield, he crossed over to the table.

The cake was in worse condition than he'd suspected. When he lifted the lid, he was greeted to a bloom of mold across the icing - the trapped humidity, likely, combined with the heat of the desert. Carefully, he snapped the lid back on and set it down again. With any luck, Knives wouldn't notice for days yet, and then he could blame it on the delay. Or maybe… no. It was too much to hope that Knives wouldn't notice if he attempted to bake a new one. He could scrape the mold off, perhaps - there'd be no harm in that. As he'd said, Knives wouldn't eat it anyway.

The card… Conrad hesitated, but his curiosity won out. It was indeed a simple folded sheet of paper, and Vash had written and erased and rewritten something so many times that the layered remnants were impossible to read. What he'd settled on was short, simple, brief:

Happy birthday, Nai
Vash

And that was all. If he tilted the page just so, he imagined he could just make out the shadow of an 'L' in the well-erased smudge before Vash's name.

Gently, Conrad set the card down, as if the whisper-quiet tap of the paper on the table might alert Knives to his snooping. He needn't have worried - the crash of the piano reached his ears as he stood and dusted off his hands, notes racing after each other as if to strangle each other. Clearly he wouldn't be doing any more work in the lab today, not with that noise; but even as he thought that, there was a vicious, amelodic smash of keys, and then silence.

Conrad could imagine him bending his head low to cry. He'd seen it many times, by now.

If Knives would permit such an insult, Conrad would go to him, put a hand on his shoulder as he cried, offer him some meager measure of comfort. But he never would. Not from him - not from the man who'd murdered his sister. All he could do was pick up the cake, take it to the kitchen to scrape away the mold, and replace it on the coffee table while Nai sobbed in his room.

Out in the desert, Vash yanked the tomas to a halt and slid out of the saddle onto shaking legs. Staggering a few feet away, he bent over, hands braced on his knees, and yielded to the nausea clawing at his gut - he puked until there was nothing left to purge, his stomach a heaving hollow. Tears streaked his face; but the hot, dry air of the desert wicked the moisture from his cheeks nearly as fast as it spilled from his lashes, almost before he could wipe his face on his sleeve.

Far, far behind him, a shining beacon at the top of the spire of July, he felt Nai crying, too.