#tgtygm

Knives made no comment and climbed into the passenger’s seat. He had known she longed to scream out all of her grief from the moment he met her, and, by some familiar inner law she followed, suppressed it. He understood.

With his body partially twisted into the cabin’s middle, he leaned forward to rest his elbows on his knees. Knives examined the details of her weeping face bathed in the blue light of three Gibbous moons.

He was too close. Meryl angled herself away in disgust.

“Don’t fucking touch me.”

Knives’s mouth twitched, “I’m not. However, you’re just going to keep crying if I leave you be.”

“Oh, is that bothering you?” She practically growled, radiating an anger that told him that she no longer cared if he wanted to strike her down.

“Yes. You’re too loud.” Knives said simply.

Meryl stared at him, her eyes wide and astonished, “Get out. Get out of my car!”

He didn’t move. His fingers steepled in front of his lips, using the tower of his hands to lean into, as if there were even the particle of an idea for the power he once knew still living within the texture of his now calloused palms. He tensed.

“Get out of my fucking car!” She shrieked, “I don’t want you to find him. You don’t even deserve his audience. After everything... How could you believe... What’s your angle, anyway? You’re not owed anything.”

He closed his eyes and exhaled a short breath, “He allowed me live. We need to talk—”

“And he’s an idiot for it! If you’re not going to stand in front of a firing squad— which is what you deserve, by the way, can’t you just go die in obscurity somewhere? I’m so sick of looking at you.” Her voice stammered through every word, unable to get the whole of such a long and intent thought out into the open.

Knives understood her well enough and returned to silence while Meryl pressed herself against the door and sobbed.

Something in his chest twisted the longer he listened to her, and he squeezed his eyes shut as he fought a noxious taste that burned at the apex of his throat. Her image wouldn’t dissipate even in this darkness; she still waded futilely through his mind, caught in something viscous that kept her trapped in his focal point. Each of her loud, bawling breaths reverberated in the water and ripples distorted her reflection.

He could feel the percussive echo of her sobs as they pressed their chests together and she held him there. Her grip was immense on the back of his neck, and her hair soft against his cheek. He told her that she had become a crybaby— and Knives knew.

He didn’t want to know any more of this.

Meryl was still crying when he opened his eyes. His head was surreal; still aching and unable to purify himself of the growing dread as the last few drops of memory trickled in. The two of them kissed their fists. Knives only felt like punching someone.

It was as if Vash’s hand pressed into his face, and, despite his struggling, through the gaps of his fingers he was forced to look at her.

“Stop.” Knives said.

His eyes squeezed shut again. There was noise all around him.

Meryl looked at his pinched face, and although her seizing throat was too inarticulate to speak it into existence, in her pause he heard the implication of a threat.

“He will never see my point of view, and by extension, neither will you. However,” Knives breathed out, his eyes now open and icy, “We are brothers; he’s the only one I’ll ever have. You can plainly see that I am by myself— I’m with you, even. No harm will come to him. Neither of us have any more power.”

Meryl was trying to stifle her cries so that she could hear him over herself. He continued.

“There is no more grandeur. I want to see him as much as you want to.”

She looked at him, processing.