Notes: One of the things I really like about Trigun is the whole picturesque desert-two-suns-five-moons thing. Mmm... setting. Anyway, I've read a number of fics in which the Plants are said to be terraforming Gunsmoke. I didn't really understand how that was supposed to work... deep space planet future technology action? Must be. So, then I was thinking about this old game called SimEarth and I got an idea and then a whole slew of other ideas I've had about Trigun jumped in there too and well... what can you do? Fic happens.
This AU is based on the manga. The first difference from cannon is that no ships are coming from Earth. There are, of course, other differences but they're a surprise.
Ten thousand thank-yous go to Renet for invaluable betaing and moral support.
Snow
in December
The Plant building is uncomfortably warm after standing outside watching the vast SEEDS ship sail regally through the middle distance. The children are ruddy cheeked and giddy with cold and excitement. They rush forward into the blue-green light to greet beautiful December, pressing fingers and noses against the glass. I am left behind, immobile, rooted in the doorway with baby Naida still clinging shyly to my legs. There is a man there and it's him. He watches my kids with a smile I've never seen before and then looks at me for a long time, searchingly. Some syllable falls from my lips, I take half a step forward and I was waiting for him. I remember now.
He smells like snow and down, sweet, crisp and a little dusty. He whispers my name, lips moving against my hair and I pull my head from the crook of his neck and kiss him. Desperately. On the mouth. He kisses back, brief and firm, then pulls away and I am suddenly aware again of what I'm doing. My face flushes with guilty heat but he's smiling at me. It's smaller than I remember it and brittle around the edges but it's real, he's really here, really happy to see me. We're half-crouched on the floor where my legs must have given out. His arms are strong around me, one warm and one cool even through all our layers of clothing. The children are all watching us curiously, protectively. The Plant watches too, from above. Her energy is both warm and cool here beneath her bulb, a serene and knowing hum felt at the back of your skull.
Somehow I manage to introduce him and Naida wiggles between us, hugging us both, happy to be included in our moment.
Then I look at him, really look and nearly go into shock again. His hair is almost entirely black, the twin streaks of gold at his temples terrifyingly thin. And stranger than that, his face has the barest beginnings of smile lines at the corners of his mouth and eyes. His skin is different too, less supple under my fingers. And this is disquieting because at first it seems so normal, seems right that he had aged. His smile crumbles almost to nothing as he reads the years in my face which is lined and wind burned and paler now from the long winter.
December calls the children to her. They cluster where she floats at the bottom of her bulb and tell her about their lives and goings on out in the town. She responds with facial expressions, projected emotions and half-heard song. Children understand her in ways that adults cannot, which is part of why I bring them here every week. We watch them together. His expression is soft and I can tell without asking that he approves.
There are suddenly many things I want to ask him, want to show him but I still half believe I'm dreaming or that he'll dissolve into thin air if I so much as breathe wrong, so instead I murmur, "My leg is asleep." I realize it's true after the words spill from my lips. His smile is back now as he climbs to his feet. His movements are a little less easy, less effortless then they used to be. He gives me a hand up, my joints protesting audibly, and sure enough my entire right leg is numb and tingling. I feel too old lately to sit on the floor. I limp slightly into the corridor and he follows because I'm still holding his hand. I'm afraid to let it go.
We stop at a window to watch the silvery light of the afternoon suns filter through the low clouds. Tiny flakes of snow drift to the ground, settling lightly on the icy crust left after the warm spell last week.
I finally say to him, "You did it, Tongari. You really did it." I'm whispering and I don't know why.
He smiles at me again and it's so full of both joy and sorrow that my heart breaks and my body overflows with warmth.
He says, softly, "I had to. I promised."
We stand there until the children find us, giggling, and tell us December sent them to take us home. We retrieve our coats and hats and mittens and tramp through the frigid streets back to the orphanage. I'm not touching him anymore but he hasn't vanished yet and something like hope is lodged in between my heart and my ribs. The kids adore Vash immediately, probably have since we found him in the Plant room. The streetlights come on against the gathering darkness, he's playing and chasing and throwing snowballs with the older boys and Millie is suddenly there screaming "Mr. Vash! Mr. Vash!" I find myself thinking this should either feel very familiar or completely alien, not both.
Dinner is loud and merry every day and today he is there. And he's older, so much older with his masks off, but still silly and wise and full of light and still eats like he's half-starved and afraid to take his time. And maybe he's more Vash than ever because he's not hiding anymore and it's so good to see him like this I can't wipe the grin off my face.
Later, we sit in the common room while the children play around us. Vash holds Millie's daughter in his lap and she glows with pride and tells him all of the things that happened to her since he left. She and Meryl fled here after Bernadelli disbanded. Millie stayed to help me when Sister Fran, like so many others, died of a wracking cough that first terrible year. Meryl, though, had to be out and busy. After it happened she organized food and water distribution for all the refugees. She was made assistant mayor when things quieted down and has been practically running the whole city ever since. Millie gets side tracked remembering her sempai's last visit, then things that happened to them back when they all traveled together. They reminisce until they're both exhausted from laughing. The children listen, especially to Vash. Some sit at their feet and ask questions. Some pretend to be busy with other things. I come to the rescue eventually, gathering the kids for their nightly bedtime story so the two can talk alone.
From the next room I can keep one ear on them as she tells Vash how she met Jesse, fell in love and got married. I picture her quivering just slightly as she remembers his death in a construction accident last year. Millie has grown out of her naiveté but not out of her wisdom or her happiness. Her gentle acceptance of life and death, joy and sorrow comforts him. She has always been able to accept when he would blame himself and let guilt eat him alive. Sometimes I think that she's the strongest person I know. Around me the children quiet and settle into sleepy piles.
The clock strikes
She's too perceptive some times. I've barely spoken a word to him all night, though I've stared at him trying to commit him again to memory. He must have noticed, and his eyes devour me as I slip back into the room. I turn off all the lamps but one, the dim one with a red-orange shade.
It seems strange that his presence here isn't dredging up my past. When everything changed I packed all my negativity down somewhere inside me and did what I had to. I hadn't really had a choice. There was too much work to be done to dwell on guilt or anger or regret. But sometime, as surviving became routine again, that snarled mass of old, conflicting emotions had dulled and faded until they no longer had power over me. Looking at him doesn't hurt anymore. I can't stop looking at him.
I want to tell him everything, too. Tell him how my life is no longer filled with fear and desperation. How many snowfalls it takes to wash the blood off one's hands. How each year summer comes a little earlier. Lasts a little longer. How every month the suns shine a little brighter through the ever present haze and sometimes the world seems blanketed in hope. I want to thank him. Tell him even though life is still hard, every person on this planet feels redeemed.
Silence is still comfortable between us, has always been comfortable even when we were more enemies than friends. He is watching my hands play with the edge of the afghan on the back of my chair. I've loved him for so long I don't remember how long it's been.
"I quit smoking." I tell him.
"I know. I could tell when I kissed you." His voice is almost accusing. "I feel like I don't know you anymore... but I know you better than ever, if that makes sense." Then he says, solemnly. "I always knew you'd make a good father."
I smile a little, looking out the window across the snow-covered roofs of December.
"We tried, you know. Millie and I. Right after everything changed. We both just needed someone. Or something. Anything to hold on to. But I couldn't. Something they did to me... made it so I couldn't."
His eyes widen at me, as if this was a possibility that would never have occurred to him. He rests his hand, the warm one, on my forearm.
"It's ok." I tell him, my eyes resting on his hand. "There were so many orphans in the three towns, I had plenty of kids to look after. There aren't so many now, thank God."
I look up at him. He's still staring at me. So I tell him, "Most of the kids here now don't remember the desert."
This thought shakes both of us and we fall silent again.
Finally he says "Do you..."
"Do I what?" I ask, softly.
"Do you- do humans..." He winces apologetically, "know what happened? What changed?"
I remember waking that day filled with deep, strange unease and staggering out into the first grey-pink of dawn. The air was bitter, the streets dead still, people peeking out of doorways and windows. A lance of alien light off to the southeast, like a third, red sun setting as the other two rose. Then the ground rising up and heaving and at first I had thought it was a sandworm, but how could that be? The bedrock under the town twisting and bucking like a living thing. Racing toward the terrified screams of children, through the creaking, buckling church. Finally outside, with everyone safe, watching our home sag slowly to one side, clinging to the lurching ground for what seemed like hours. And still later, watching the sky darken, watching that sullen cloud boil up over the whole sky, hiding the suns and draping the town in night. Fine black ash sifting down from the sky and the townsfolk milling around outside, too unsure of their half-collapsed homes to take shelter in them.
"I-"
Remember the sweet singing tug of December in my mind as she called us all to her out of the first gritty hours of that first long night. Calling all her children in to shelter.
"That is, we-"
Weeks huddled with the children at night, sharing food, water and space with the entire town in the only intact structure- the Plant. Weeks of coughing up black mucus from the stained air. Weeks of hard labor in the dark and the thick, gritty rains that followed the ash, coating everything, making rebuilding miserably difficult. Remember the first dreamlike glimpse of snow and being so cold and wet I almost longed to be trudging across the desert at high noon.
"December – the Plant. She woke up and she knew what was coming. She helped us. Used the computers to help us plan out repairs and new buildings. Heating and water systems. After the earthquake we had to tear everything down and build it all over.
"No one really understood what, exactly, had happened. We all just knew that everything was different now. To be honest we were too busy trying to get by to think that hard about it.
"And I knew that it was over. That you had won. Somehow, I just knew that you were somewhere and you were OK."
His eyes slip closed and his body goes slack against his chair, though his brow is wrinkled as if in thought or worry. I tense in anticipation of his words.
"Knives- he..." I almost flinch at that name. My chest feels strangely hollow.
"By the time I got to them, something in him had snapped. The other plants said it felt like a hole had opened up in him. He was losing his control over the gestalt, losing his ability to keep his mind separate.
"Nicholas, I- I think it was Legato. I think that when Legato died... he just lost it."
My heart contracts and my mouth drops open. The implications of that are so entirely alien to my memories of them, to my understanding of who they were that I can't wrap my mind around it. How could he- Somewhere, distantly, I am so very angry, but right up close under my skin there is only, surprisingly, sorrow. Vash is staring out the window into the dark. His voice reaches me as if from far, far away.
"The other plants began to influence him. They couldn't stop him from killing, from destroying, but they began to change it. They made it so people could escape, so they had places to hide. They had a plan."
He looks towards me again, though I can tell he's not seeing me. His eyes are luminous in the low light, the color that the sky used to be. My knuckles are white against the afghan.
"The Plants knew they were fighting a losing battle. Not against Knives, but against this planet. They knew there wasn't enough water here, that they could only keep you barely alive. That people were so desperate they were destroying themselves. Destroying each other.
"When I got there, I was the last bit of strength they needed. I distracted Knives long enough for them to wrench control away from him. They used all our power to pull a comet down onto the planet."
"A comet?" The awe in my voice finally focuses his eyes on me and he nods, slowly.
"A huge chunk of ice - of water. They pulled it right down from space, so you'd have more. So people could begin to depend on themselves. It took a tremendous amount of power. Half of them died."
He looks frail and worn out. I wonder: all these years he's been taking care of everyone, who was taking care of him? The room is getting cold as the night deepens outside. I am trembling. I clench my teeth so they won't chatter.
"Your brother... is he-" I can't get the words out.
"No." He says, heavily, "No, he's... asleep. He's with the others. They're taking care of him but we're not sure if he'll ever wake up." His voice draws on some deep well of hurt as he says, "Maybe it's better this way. I don't know... if he was awake, if he'd be... "
I'm on my knees in front of his chair now. My hands rest on his thighs and he tips forward gently and then my face is buried in his hair. He doesn't cry, just lets out a long, long breath against my shoulder. I make soothing noises so softly even I can't hear them.
Eventually, he rises and pulls me with him. I turn out the lamp and he takes my hand and leads me unerringly up to my own room. We undress each other in silence, fingers working ever more hastily as we shed our layers, breath white in the chill air. We tumble into my bed and relax against each other slowly. My fingers trace over his body, feeling the still familiar pits and rough patches of his scars. The metal grate is body-warm over his heart. His skin is hot and good against me and it's not strange at all even though I've been sleeping alone for years. He warms the sheets so fast that I think we might not need all my blankets tonight.
I can't stop myself from asking: "Vash, how long are you here for?"
He stiffens against me so I rub his shoulders. I murmur my understanding because I knew this, have known this. He can't stay with me. No one person or thing could ever come first in his affections. I can't shelter him from the world without depriving him of his reason for living.
He will stay as long as he can and then he will leave.
But right now he is with me, curled around my body against the bitter night, the way he sometimes used to under the sharp clear stars of the desert. My lips move against his bicep, then on his chest. His fingers are gentle in my hair and I love him hopelessly, selflessly. That is one thing that hasn't changed.