#verona.

Wellspring greets him with shuttered windows and whispers. The living souls that still wander the streets do not look at him. They hunch their shoulders, murmur excuses under their breaths and scurry away from daylight behind slide-click-shut locks. She does not come to him, so Vash surmises she is not here. Not amongst the people, not at Claudius’s bar. 

There are no answers here for him, and so, Vash casts his gaze upwards to the shadow of the manor that overlooks the town.

The short trek to the manor’s primary entrance is filled with a gnawing anxiety.

Shadows seem taller, ominous, and the intricate spires of welded spacefaring alloys are silent as he approaches the front door. His fingers catch against the brass handle, and Vash steps past the threshold unimpeded. 

Inside, the manor is curiously still and quiet, devoid of staff, but not devoid of signs of life. His heart races in the cage of his ribs as he sweeps through the hallways in a flash of red. There, there, he senses them. Verona, and…

“Knives,” Vash breathes, and dread clings to him like hands clasped around his throat as he stands between the open doors with a blanched aspect. Knives and Verona are perched on their seat cushions, carrying on a conversation no more pressing than passing the time while they wait for afternoon tea. 

Waiting for him, almost.

He does not know how long his brother has been here. This outcome had always been a possibility, an inevitability, but so soon– he thought he would have more time, time to prepare, to head Knives off at the pass, anything. Time escaped him. 

           “Well, you know what they say:   eaten  cunt  is soon forgotten.”     

An untoward riff on a well known phrase, a phrase used to paint a person’s knowledge that their efforts are undervalued. What could justify such boldness? Why, it’s a whispered snark at a full party. There could be nothing more ladylike than softly hissed conspiracy between the smartest, cruelest women in a room.

"Hey, we've all been there." Zack can feel the weight of his elbows where they press into the top of his legs. Living with his own ideals, figuring out Shinra's ideals were so different, finding hope in the hands of other people, entrusting his life in those hands, and doing more than just following orders was a constant struggle.

"I like to frame it as...umm..." He squints, scrunching his face up while attempting to pluck some deeply insightful phrase from the fabric of the universe that doesn't amount to, I know because I feel like one too sometimes.

"Well, you know, people come in all shapes and sizes. They do all sorts of things, good and bad, and the same goes for monsters. So might as well treat them all the same, and let their actions define them."

Zack frowns and opens and closes his mouth a few more times, clearly undecided over whether attempting to pile on more words would further add to the mess of an explanation he just offered up.

"Ah-- woah, hey!"

His complaints seem to fall on deaf ears. The inspection will proceed with or without his say so as Verona angles him this way and that to examine the deep gash cutting across his collarbone to shoulder. Blood seeps steadily into his uniform, dampening purple to black and the left strap of his harness has been completely severed.

"I'm okay. It's fine, see? Just a little blood. It's already clotting up and everything. I mean, yeah, uniform's a total loss but the Company deals with that stuff all the time." He chatters away, seemingly unconcerned now the dust has settled and they've stolen space aside from all the chaos.

In the slums, pretty much anything goes if you can cobble or weld it together yourself. Naturally, that leads to some...dubious attempts at DIY civil engineering, but who hasn't had a leaning tower of boxcars-turned-tenement housing nearly collapse on them nowadays?

"Look on the bright side! No one got hurt!"

when it stops, all's quiet again; all's set to an eerie, forlorn still. silvery eyes are distant, unblinking. "i gave my life to humans. once." vash might have to strain to hear the confession. her claws tighten on the artifact in her hands, the fine metal grunting at the pressure. "and it was, i know now, both a blessing and a curse." a few blinks, head lifting to look at the younger, as if seeing him for the first time ... as if he can see her just as plain: not the harbinger nor the ruinous demon she's been so-called, but merely a woman who lost everything and did not know what else to do.

"you know them, don't you? people. so you tell me..." she carefully sets the music box aside, back on the pastel-painted bedside table, standing in the process to approach, "... why? what was the point in killing--" despite her mantle her voice chokes and she has to snap her head away to regain composure, a hand pressing over her mouth, "-- in taking my daughter? when she did nothing wrong? she- she was a child, vash!" her voice peaks, swelling through the room, the glyphs inlaid into her skin flashing bright and frenzied. "how do i forgive that?!"

Vash has nothing to sacrifice except his own life. He has carefully crafted his existence in this way. To protect himself. To protect others. The loss of those he did come to know and those that he never got the chance to is enough to bring tears to his eyes. He forgives: implicitly, selflessly, and without question. But he has never lost someone he has given himself to, and even if he is no stranger to it, the loss that resonates within the confines of this room nearly brings him to his knees.

Verona’s song of grief surges through him, coruscating across his skin, the wreath of thin, geometric lines that hug the edges of his face. The doorframe is the only thing that keeps him upright.

Eventually, Vash finds his voice. Remembers the sound of it and more importantly, how to use it.

In his experience, the question of why always has an answer. Those answers are not always palatable. They don’t always make sense. 

“That’s the trouble with people. There isn’t a way to fit them all into neat little boxes with labels and warnings.” His voice strains, hoarse and thick with emotion. Grief…and something else. Undertones of more, of rage and fury so carefully locked away, thrumming and amplified in resonant harmony.

Vash squeezes his eyes shut, focusing. 

“You don’t–” It’s almost a gasp, as unsteady as his own efforts to put one foot before the next so that he can stand next to her, to rest his head on her shoulder and hold her until the storm calms. “You don’t have to forgive them. But their guilt is their own. That was their choice. Their wrong. It’s not the same decision every human would have made.

Vash takes a breath.