ok so proper post about this cause i'm like shaking and screaming bruh it's been on the mind for literal years and no one gets it 💔🥀⚰️
the concept of legato being taken in by vash instead of knives is lowk fun to think about, but not at all in the way i keep seeing. ig it's nice sometimes to imagine legato happy, but realistically vash would NOT be any help for him. going from one extreme to another wouldn't just "fix" legato. like i doubt he would be too willing to follow vash in the first place tbh.
one thing people forget is that legato was not completely harmless nor did he get entirely corrupted by knives. he was always (rightfully) a violent, despair-ridden, resentful person since before he was freed. he already had his own warped worldview that he came to on his own, which knives then used to his advantage and made worse. like this kid had literally planned and attempted to kill everyone in that place, which was over a thousand people. he despised them all, including the bystanders for just sitting around and just letting him be abused.
now, which trigun character has gone out of his way to stop someone from killing a rapist and has the whole themes and such of inaction making shit worse tied to him 🧐🧐🧐
basically i'm saying legato would kill that mf ☠️☠️ actually idk but he definitely wouldn't be convinced of vash's love and peace bullshit. considering his abusers would most likely still be alive, i think (if he didn't just straight up end his life) he'd probably be dead set on getting his revenge instead of the whole finding purpose in the person who saved him thing. i mean part of what interested him about knives in the first place was his potential to end the fucking world, which vash (does have more of but) refuses to use so 🤷
yeah, legato'd probably feel like he owes vash a lot, and it could lead to some strange attachment, but just because he would've been the first to treat legato like a person doesn't take away the fact that he would've treated his abusers like people as well. the goal he had in mind wouldn't just disappear and would definitely be a point of conflict. like a homophobic father and an unapologetically gay son. but like over murder.