judge / jury / executioner

Fan art of Knives featured in Fanroad Magazine 1999.

Wolfwood's finished off his second glass of bourbon and is taking it over to the bar when it happens. Some tall guy standing there suddenly turns and collides and... now there's booze on his shirt. Wolfwood blinks a few times, looking down at the dark stain, and then looking up to meet the other's eyes.

Once upon a time he might have been scared. He might have frozen, or maybe ran away. His skin might have crawled. He might have sweat. Right now all he feels is irritation.

He squints at the overhead lights, every flash of them in his line of sight drilling the ache deeper into his skull, and each drunken shout of a stranger hammering into the nerves. The drinks were barely enough to endure it.

Now, most of his self-medication stains the shirt of the man whose face Knives had allowed to fade from his memory. The look he gives after the initial irritated observation is slower, more deliberate.

He shakes his head, dragging his eyes away like he's retracting an undeserved blessing or a privilege, shoulders lifting to a half-hearted shrug.

₊˚⊹ ㅤa collection of character analysis/headcanon questions to learn more about your character and your partners'! writing/headcanon prompts requested by anonymous. feel free to edit these as you see fit.

"Well," Vash says, as evenly as he can, "You're looking with your eyes right now, aren't you?" The halted motions of his footsteps once again come to an utter stand-still, as if all the tightness in his jaw had traveled down through his nerves, into his feet, through his calves, locking him in place.

There's more he could add, easily; that Knives himself had had no small roll in the hurt that had forever nipped at Vash's heels ( and that of the entire damn planet, if he really wanted to keep digging ). But they've already had that conversation too many times to count and in almost ever conceivable way they could have.

Well. Except, maybe, civilly. Which really is the opportunity presenting itself here, isn't it? Still, Vash isn't sure he has the argument in him ( and it will be an argument, there's no way around that-- of this he is sure ). At least, not right now.

"And this isn't the afterlife." No matter how many specters seemed to haunt this city's streets, seem to find Vash here with the joy and the sorry they carry in tandem with their presence; Vash himself included in that number, to some extent. "Been here long enough to know that much."

The painful implication of it goes unsaid; that if this were in fact the afterlife, wouldn't Knives had found himself here first? And yet, instead, Vash has carried that quiet sadness with him; the time they'd been given and not, the ways in which it had been wasted, the impassable gaps formed from that which was taken away from them. A race with no winners.

So Vash sighs, the chill in his skin seeping down through to his nerves rendered almost so trivial as to not even be there. Because he can't-- won't-- follow down that same path again, and it's all his body can handle, can latch on to. He owes it to Rem, to his brother, to himself-- though the ease with which that due is swallowed very quickly curtails, even going down such a short list. Unsticks his feet again. Finishes crossing the rest of the distance that still feels just as daunting as having an entire wasteland between them both.

It's-- awkward. The world isn't collapsing around then, and they are not grappling one another in the face of the end of tat least one of them, and Vash sits the one between them with memories unshared. IT's awkward, with a body so used to anticipating the pain that will inevitably come with such a thing as simple as laying a had on his brother's shoulder.

But his palm sits there, and neither his brother nor the ground beneath Vash's feet turn into nothing, and that's got to count for something.

If there is one thing he can be certain of, it's that the joy he felt watching the spaceships collide and crash on the desolate planet, filling the air with black smoke and ash, is a feeling he never experienced again. A part of him chased after it for decades, but tearing cities down and staining the blades with the blood of countless humans failed to spark it. He recalls specific details from the moments before the fall with unsettling detail - the smell of the fresh sheets when he pulled himself up from the bed, casting one final look behind before walking out. The weight of the buttons beneath his fingertips, responding to each shaky press with a steady beep, and the warm flow of blood trailing along his hand, turning dark and sticky as it set.

Some of the mental images reach further back, etching themselves in vivid lines. They are there to keep his mind occupied by things that were - somehow - less sore and bothersome than this unexpected reunion with Vash. 'You're such a quick learner!' he hears the excitable voice of the woman sitting beside him in front of the monitor, the woman who taught him the very thing that led her to her grave.

What remained of her was left buried amid the flaming wreckage of what her darling son called divine punishment.

Knives hadn't visited this place in his mind in decades.

" Humans use the concept of afterlife to console themselves. Not surprising for a species with such measly lifespans. " Most strangers he had observed from afar had settled into their lives and routines despite the absurdity of the situation. The ghosts with empty stares walking among them were truly seen only by those who dragged the shackles and 'what ifs' of the past behind them, or those who wore their pain like a second skin.

What if. What if the door was still open to the place where their biggest fight was a shouting match about who hogged more of the blanket at night or who got to choose the film they'd watch next? A place where parts of them continued to live in blissful ignorance.

The physical reaction to the hand on his shoulder comes late, as if the slumbering nerves have to realign themselves to send the signal all the way through. It drags out a jolt so subtle Knives could mask it behind a well-timed shrug if given the chance. His eyes remain on the ground for a few more seconds, waiting for the earth to split open. But there is nothing. Not even a small quake. Instead, reassuring words break through the silence.

Though there aren't any obvious gaping wounds, Vash hardly thinks someone as proud as 'Knives' would claim to search for the truth in abandoned ruins. There's a chance he could even be residing here, since it means isolation from society largely comprised of humans.

"I came here to sow some flowers," Vash explains, with a light shake of the paper bag, raised up for Knives to see. It's nearly full, but it doesn't rattle with the sound of loose seeds; rather, whatever's in there is too soft to make much noise besides bumping against the material. "From what I understand, it's useless t'even try to find a way to talk to the Stars directly about it. But..."

Careful now. Vash furrows his brow in thought, glancing away from the other Independent as he pieces things together. This man isn't Naï, after all; still, an alternate of his twin would mean...

"Your brother hasn't given you any answers, then.

His body still refuses to recover as it should. It reminds him through aches, flares, and cracking joints that this form was dug up from beneath the scorching sands of No Man's Land and pieced back together by an unknown force. One whose motives could only be guessed. A force that Knives has no chance against in his current state.

" Flowers, " he repeats to readjust his thoughts.

A pause. Whatever would have followed is washed away with a pang of guilt and irritation. It twists his guts into painful knots, like endless invisible hands pushing and pulling at his insides, forcing the remnants to creep up his throat like bile.

" I haven't sought him out. "

I don't know what to say to him. Even when not voiced, the realization is humiliating.