#vashknives

You can't tell me post-DMC5 Vergil and Dante wouldn't have REALLY conflicted feelings seeing the "Vash and Knives" situation. Like, they'd be especially horrified if they ever learn what Knives did to Rem. Vergil might have had issues with Eva, but to do what Knives did, even as a child? He'd probably feel ill.

Vergil probably spends the rest of the story wrestling with the temptation to beat the shit out of Knives. Not for what he did to the humans, the humans earned it in Vergil's eyes, but for what he did to Vash and Rem. For what he's STILL doing to Vash, who clearly feels the ache of missing Knives despite everything.

Vash hides it well, of course, but it's as clear as day to Vergil, who's lived with Dante for years, and is accustomed to his smiles and masks on his dark days at this point. To see it replicated, albeit with a lot of cosmetic differences, on another younger sibling, the same everlasting pain in old, old eyes on a smiling younger-looking face brings him no joy.

Vergil knows that it isn't his place to interfere, that this isn't his fight. He wouldn't dream of forsaking Dante again, just to go to a different world and beat some sense into another older brother, and he would never want to take that right away from Vash anyway. Vash was the one Knives hurt after all, and Vash was more than capable as a fighter, for all that Vergil didn't like guns. If there was anyone who deserved to draw every ounce of what was owed from Knives, it would be his own twin.

But that temptation simmers mildly underneath his skin nonetheless. It's a very good thing Knives had not followed Vash into their world, then, or he may lose the battle to that impulse, to cut through Knives with words, to shake the collar on that absolute moron and scream at him for discarding the most precious thing he has in all the worlds for the sake of his crusade, like a complete fool.

(Dante knows and sees, and loves Vergil all the more for this. It's a reminder of how far Vergil has come, how far they've both come, that when he draws Vergil into a suffocatingly tight hug for this, Vergil does little more than grump and readjust Dante's grip on him.)

Meanwhile, Vash is really enjoying his temporary stay here on Earth. The taste of pizza blows his ever-loving mind, and he fervently agrees, to Dante's eternal delight and Vergil's faintly judgmental disgust, that pizza and ice cream are the best thing EVER.

Hell, he'd probably get into ridiculous shenanigans with Dante a lot tbh, like sharpshooting competitions that feature increasingly inhuman and ridiculous feats as time wore on.

(Dante gives up in the end. He could probably pull on his DT form or more to increase his eyesight and fine motor control, but he doesn't think it's worth it lol)

Vash would probably be amazed, shocked and kinda frightened at the concept of rain too. Free water falling down from the sky! Why isn't everyone scrambling to collect it?! What do you mean, this just HAPPENS regularly??? Oh man, Earth is amazing! If only he could give this to everyone else back home...

(It's at that moment Lady decides she can't really hate this guy. He might be an idiot, but he's obviously the cinnamon roll here and Dante the bad influence)

Just... Vergil and Wolfwood having to corral not one, but TWO wacky woohoo pizza men 😂 Maybe Lady and Meryl also taking one look at THAT, and escaping to have a ladies' gathering together with Trish, somewhere far, far away from the sausage fest, because nope! Lady did it for YEARS, on and off, and Meryl was stuck with Vash 24/7 some days, let it be someone ELSE'S turn to babysit that headache for once 💀

---

He bled. He was capable of it. It was a very human sight, one he had seen only through the archives in blurry images moving at a rapid pace, coming together to form a pond of lost life. When Rem had seen him, she grabbed his arm and rushed him to the infirmary.

The gel that she had applied burned for only a moment before quickly cooling until he felt and saw nothing at all; sealing the accidental, jagged wound and leaving no traces of it left behind.

He watched her toss the cloth she had used to clean it and wondered, distantly, if Vash held such crimson inside of him, too.

---

Vash bled, of course he did. They were the same, in that aspect, as they were in many. In the sand, after days of wandering, weeks, months, years, they came together, repeatedly, and collided in a seemingly never-ending dance; his brother’s blood spilled stark over the dunes and a bullet lodged deep into Knives’ thigh.

He wanted, desperately, to seal it all up, his brother’s dripping wounds. It looked wrong; another senseless scar to add to the expanding list—such precious life is wasted on fools and their heinous dreams, he thought, he knew—but his brother insisted, arduously, that it was anything but.

---

His humans bled. It was a necessary thing, for blood to spill and lessons to be learned. He had told that to Vash, many times. He knows that he knows, quite intimately.

“So why,” he had asked, during one of their many waltzes beneath the burning suns. “Tell me why, now, suddenly, when it should matter most of all—why do you not let them bleed?”

He was offered a taste, off of his brother’s hand. His finger glistened with his own lost life, the pond breaking into a stream, and Knives consumed it, greedily. A peace offering, meeting in the middle, his brother had described it—a stupid comparison, one that he licked clean all the same.

It was foolish to believe either of them were made up of the same entrails that plagued humanity—aortic work of art that he saw when he looked at his other half, the length of his fingers still precisely memorized in his mind.

---

Nothing, or rather, no one, tasted as delectable as his brother did. It was a meal he often found himself fantasizing over at the worst of times, thinking about the toys found within the sandbox and clenching his fists so hard his nails drew blood; crimson streams riveting down his wrists until they, too, were wasted underneath the first sunrise.

And when he licked his own mess clean, until there was nothing left, he didn’t feel anything at all. That, he thought, was perhaps the worst kind of pain he could ever endure; empty, perpetually, until hereafter blazed out with the twin stars in the sky.

---

Vash bled. And, after having a taste of it, Knives could hardly stomach the thought of never having it again. So, he sought his brother out once more, calling to him in only the way their kind could.

It took weeks for them to come together but once they stepped into place, Knives wasted no time at all in beginning their tragic dance—finally sinking his teeth into delectable flesh and tasting, finally, that sweet offal and ichor he had dreamed of once again devouring since Vash had pulled away all those awful years ago.

He consumed, greedily, his brother, a writhing mess of red beneath him. And he didn’t go willingly—of course he didn’t—but in that moment it didn’t matter; Knives held him down, deep into the grain, and took. Nothing else mattered, nothing but this: the bonding of two singing souls, becoming one, finally, as they were always meant to be—Knives swallowing audibly and Vash screaming a wonderful, beautiful pain.

He tore off flesh until he hit bone—and then turned his head and snapped his jaw until the crunch caved in; and his brother struggled a little less. There was nothing he left behind, not until he was full, satisfied, staring at a stump and when Knives finally pulled away he, too, was once more coated in a brilliant crimson, the gift of his brother’s arm filling him to the brim; an entire part of his kin he’ll carry with him, he hoped, forever.

Not now, but later, when the years drew them together in their intimate dance, he’ll consume again. Another arm, perhaps, a leg, the other half of his ribs. Something, anything to feel connected to this brother when his stomach inevitably growled with a burning desire once more. But for now, this was enough. It had to be, as he looked down and saw so much red.