Chapter Text
Vash hadn't said a word to him since the ships had fallen. He wasn’t keeping silent on purpose, trying to punish Nai like this—no, it would be too pointless and childish, such a thought never even crossed his mind. If he was being completely honest, in the first days after the Fall, no thoughts really crossed his mind—it was empty and hollow, like the skeleton of a burnt-out ship, into which Nai had dragged him, like a lifeless warm corpse, saving him from the heat of the day.
Empty. Quiet. No thoughts, no feelings. A dry chitinous shell of a ship, of Vash himself.
Sometimes, when Vash opened his eyes, he saw a bright white spot of light not far from him, slightly blurred from the heat haze. Sometimes he kept his eyes open long enough to begin to make out the outline of the ship's rigging and a small dark silhouette right at the entrance. Standing, sitting in different poses, bending right over him and blocking the sunlight—he was watching him, Vash's subconscious lazily suggested. He was making sure he didn't run away. Guarding him.
Why was Nai guarding him? Why was the light so bright? Why was the ship around him skewed, broken, melted and covered with sand, as if gravity had heated it with friction against the atmosphere and crashed it into the surface of the planet, like a–
But these questions were too heavy for his overheated brain, and he closed his eyes again.
Sometimes, when Vash opened his eyes, he saw nothing but blissful cool darkness. At such moments, he felt like he was finally awake after a long and stuffy nightmare in his room—in his room on the ship, immersed in the darkness of artificial night; awake in his bed, into which his brother had crawled again and was hugging him from behind, sharing warmth. Everything was exactly as it used to be, except for the fact that out of all the many constants of his dear old life, only one remained in place: his brother's arms, which, as if nothing happened, hugged him and combed his hair after they had broken in half and burned everything else.
“I know you're not sleeping.”
Nai's breath tickled his ear—such a familiar, dear sensation—and scared him. It smelled of burning, because everything around them smelled of burning and heated metal. Everything smelled of burning and heated metal, because the ships fell. Crashed. The ships crashed because Nai made them fall, and everyone died. Everyone died except them. Even Rem. Rem died too, because Nai made the ships fall, and everyone died.
Did this really happen?
No. It shouldn't be like this. It couldn’t be like this.
A quiet chuckle.
“Whatever. I'll still be here when you wake up.”
It was all just a dream, and he had to finally wake up. To wake up, he had to fall asleep. He had to fall asleep. If he falls asleep and wakes up enough times, then there's a chance that one day he will wake up completely—and everything will be right.
Vash closed his eyes.
When he opened them again, there was light around him.
“Good morning.”
Vash blinked. The light was too bright—Nai had dragged him outside, right into the sun, and sat on the sand next to his head. He looked at Vash and smiled, affectionate and kind and loving, making the conditioned reflex of an answering smile immediately pull the corners of Vash's mouth up. But the next second his gaze slid lower, taking in the soot stains on his brother's shirt, and he remembered. He remembered everything.
No. His head was pounding from the heat and sleep, but it wasn't real. It was a dream. He had to wake up—and to wake up, he had to fall asleep. Please. Please, just let me fall asleep again.
Vash closed his eyes again, but the direct daylight was too bright and filtered through his eyelids, flooding his eyes with red-orange. Such a familiar color—the same red-orange was pouring from the burning ships, and it was light as day from all the flames around him. Look how beautiful it is, his brother told him. Look, you've always wanted to see a starfall.
He felt sick.
“Stop sleeping.”
Something touched his face and eyelids, blinding his left eye with light—Nai had parted his eyelids with his fingers. Vash's gaze slowly focused on the face above him, and the flash of anger that suddenly stabbed him had nothing to do with the slight tug of irritation that he felt when Nai did the same on the ship, waking him up in the morning. Rage woke him up completely, and Vash sat up, throwing off Nai's hand. The sudden movement made his head spin, and Vash pressed his fingers into his temples, squeezing his eyes tightly.
A drop of sweat rolled down his face—salty. Salty, like the tears that rolled down his cheeks when the ships fell and burned. They stung his eyes the same way and then they dried out from the heat, leaving salt on his cheeks.
“Nothing will change even if you fall asleep again.”
Shut up —Vash wanted to say— Shut up. Shut your filthy mouth up —but the lump in his throat swelled, blocking the oxygen, not letting anything in or out. Everything came back at once: fear, misunderstanding, resentment and horror, which covered everything with a glass cap, dried it up and embalmed—it will stay like this, it will always be like this. Pandora's box had already been slammed shut, and down there, at the bottom, lay only the hope—the hope which pushed him into the escape capsule and said that they had to survive, and then everything burned down.
Vash covered his face with his hands and finally opened his eyes, staring into the reddish darkness under his palms. Child's play: if I don't see you, then you don't see me either. I don't exist. You don't exist. We both never existed.
Nothing ever happened.
“It's already happened, Vash.”
Vash wanted to ask why Nai had done all this, because everything had to have a reason—even such things. He took his hands away from his face and looked into Nai’s eyes to understand, but he just couldn't, because nothing had changed. His brother's face was the same as before; Vash didn’t expect to see horns and fangs on Nai, but at least something in him had to change. He just couldn't do all this and stay the same, it would–
But no, it was just like that. Nai smiled at him the same way he had a thousand times before, and put his hand on his shoulder. The melted spaceship behind him was slowly sinking into the sand, like an outlandish monument, by some mistake built on shaky ground.
“It's just you and me now.”
Vash wanted to ask why Nai had done all this, but he wasn't sure he really wanted to know the answer. The question swelled in his throat, dug into the soft tissues like a thin bone, and took root there, paralyzing the vocal cords. Taking his voice away from him, because no words could fix what had been done—therefore, there was no need for talking.
It was the real reason why Vash hadn't said a word to him since the ships had fallen.
There was no need for talking, and Nai didn’t ask him anything that could not be answered with a nod of his head.
Are you thirsty? — a nod.
Are you hungry? — a nod.
Can you stand up? — a nod.
We need to inspect this ship to find everything that can be useful to us. Some systems were not affected by the crash, so I unlocked all the doors I could and turned on the lights. Will you take over the left wing? — a nod.
Vash didn't mind taking over the left wing, but he had no idea what he was supposed to look for. What could be useful to them? What were they supposed to do now? They were alone in the middle of a lifeless desert, which was nothing but a cemetery of crashed starships. A cemetery of crashed starships and corpses , Vash added very calmly to himself when he found the first one. Then the second, then the third. They just sat here and there, unburned and already decomposing; the captain died right in his seat behind the control panel—it looked like their bodies simply couldn't withstand the overload. Or, judging by the damage to the ship, it was just depressurized.
For a second, Vash allowed himself to wonder how exactly Rem died, and then moved on. He found an undamaged water tank, supplies of nutrient paste, some clothes. He didn't go to the cryo hall and returned to the entrance, where Nai was already waiting for him; he smiled at Vash and showed him the gun he found. Vash didn't go to the cryo hall. Nai's shirt was too dirty to notice it right away, but its hem was splattered with some tiny red-brown drops, as if someone had sprayed an aerosol on it. Nai said they could pack up and sleep until dusk, and then they would have to go. Vash nodded and didn't ask where to exactly, because it didn't matter. He didn't know where they were going anyway. He didn't know what to do now. All he knew was that he didn't go to the cryo hall. He stood in front of the door for a few minutes, hypnotized, and then went on.
He wanted to know something beyond that. He wanted to have at least the slightest idea of how they were supposed to live now and where to go. He wanted to know why Nai had to do all this, or why every single chamber in the cryo hall was smashed and still filled with sickly-smelling old blood; why the mutilated decomposing corpses lay there, strung on shards as if they were trying to get out but someone didn't let them. Vash would want to know this if he went to the cryo hall.
“Have you found anything else useful?”
Vash shook his head because he didn't go to the cryo hall. If he didn't see it, then it didn't see him either. He wasn't there. There was no one there. He didn't go to the cryo hall.
Vash had been sleeping for too long, so now he couldn't sleep at all and just watched Nai sleep, feeling his thoughts melt from the heat of the day. Vash looked at him and reminded himself of what Nai had done, but this thought didn't fit into his head, as if there wasn't enough space for it. He crushed and chewed on it again and again, like on glass shards, turning them into glass chips, red with blood from his cut mouth, but he still couldn't fit this thought. Couldn't chew and swallow. Digest it. Absorb it into himself and live with it further.
Rem once said that some things were simply beyond people's understanding, and it didn't matter if they were crawling in the mud or plowing through outer space. The ways of God are inscrutable, she said, and patted him on the head. Someday you'll understand what it means.
He seemed to understand now, but Rem could no longer praise him for it.
***
The desert was not lifeless, they found it out quickly enough. All living things hid from the scorching heat in the daytime, burrowing deep into the sand, but they were deprived of such luxury and continued to walk until they managed to find some shelter. There, Nai turned on the transmitter and tablet, checked the planet map compiled while the ships were approaching it, dotted with beacons of fallen ships, and corrected the route.
“You can ask me where we're going,” Nai said one day, lifting his head and looking at Vash, who was staring blankly at the endless sand dunes from their small shelter in the rocks. “If you ask, I will answer.”
Vash shifted his gaze to him and gave a barely perceptible shrug. He didn't care, and Nai knew it.
The days on this planet lasted a little longer than the ones he was used to on the ship, and he lost count after more than thirty. Their hair had grown long and tangled, their faces were darkened with sunburn and dirt; the clothes they had taken from the ship were no longer too big for them, and their bodies quickly got used to long hiking trips. At the beginning of the journey, for some reason, Vash felt like time would do something to him, do something to both of them—smooth the sharp edges with sandpaper, get to something deep inside and crack it open like an eggshell—but it didn't happen. Nothing happened. Nai remained the same, Vash himself remained the same. The desert around them was also the same, and the wrecked ships, in which they occasionally replenished supplies, were still dead.
Nothing had changed. Vash still couldn't sleep well, no matter how tired he was from the day. He looked at his brother's serene sleeping face and turned the familiar thought over and over in his head: Nai killed Rem, Nai killed countless people and did it for no reason. Don't you dare forget about it. He killed Rem. He killed everyone and he still slept like a baby, pressing Vash's palm to his face in an almost sacred gesture; for some reason, Vash did not dare to pull his hand away.
Vash tried to hate him. Really. He wanted to think that was why he couldn't sleep—hated his brother so much that he couldn't sleep next to him, couldn't stand Nai's hugs and Nai's breath on his face—but deep down, he knew that the real reason was something else. The frightened child in his head was convinced that if he closed his eyes for a little too long, he would open them to nothing but emptiness and dead desert around him; that Nai would also disappear, and he would be left alone in the middle of the cruel world, broken and nameless. So Vash kept his eyes open for as long as he could, until fatigue eventually took its toll.
It was natural to be afraid of losing a brother, but was it so natural to be afraid of losing a brother who had done such a thing?
It doesn't matter because you don't have anyone else, his fear whispered to him, sticky with sweat and tears. He's all you have left. If he disappears, you will disappear too, because then there will be no one left who knows you.
But it's because of him that I lost everything, Vash reminded himself. He took everything away from me except himself. He killed everyone who knew me. Don't you dare forget.
He had to remind himself of that because silence was corrupting. It was easy to imagine a long chain of unfortunate coincidences leading them into another gap between the rocks by a completely different path. Imagine that the ships were broken for no reason, that Rem was waiting outside for dawn to call them to breakfast. It was too easy to slip into the endless self-deception fueled by fear, because the reality was almost unbearable.
“We ran out of water. You can do without it, but I don't want it to affect you. We'll have to make a detour before the last long crossing.”
Vash said nothing and unwrapped his sleeping bag. Detour it was then, he didn't care.
***
After two days of marching, they had reached the first human settlement on their way, and it was way stranger than all the bizarre beetles and huge worms they had met before. These people shouldn't have been here, but they were.
It was wild to think that not everyone was dead, especially after he had almost gotten used to this thought. Here they were, those people—alive and well, trying to build something on the ever-shifting sand—and his brother was talking to them, telling them how they had survived the massacre for resources on some distant ship. People who took pity on them, gave them water and food and allowed them to stay with them, because they saw nothing but two exhausted children before them.
“What a tragedy!” a fat woman with a kind face told them, moved almost to tears by their story. Her name was Mary. “Don't be afraid of anything, you and your brother are safe now. Tell me, what's your name?”
Vash looked into her round, tanned face, and before his eyes there were the mutilated bodies from the cryo hall (stop it, you never went there). Vash wanted to tell her that she wasn't safe now; that the boy standing behind her was the worst thing that could find them in this desert; that they must run away before it was too late—but he still couldn't force a single sound out of himself, as if someone had cut out his vocal cords while he was sleeping.
“He hasn't said a word since that day,” Nai said softly, and Mary burst into tears and pressed Vash to her chest, and he wanted to cry too, unbearably so, but his eyes remained dry, all the moisture in them burned out by the desert sun.
Of course, they were allowed to stay. Not a single plant was damaged in the crash of this ship, so these people had an abundance of resources. They had already built some kind of town next to the ship, where they drank beer and sang songs in the evenings, their unusual sounds pouring through the open window of the room in which they were allowed to stay.
“Try to sleep,” Nai said, lying down on the bed. “You need to rest.”
Vash chuckled silently at how absurd it sounded. His body was leaden from mental and physical exhaustion and begged him to obey and close his eyes, to let himself finally enjoy a sleep not on solid ground for the first time in many weeks, but to obey it seemed unthinkable. Over there, just outside the window, there were people—alive and kind, a little drunk and cheerful; they sheltered them here, in their oasis in the middle of the desert—and his brother was lying on the next bed with his eyes closed. He could rip the blades out of his skin, and he could easily kill them all. He had done it before. He had already killed a lot of people. Don't you dare forget. He killed Rem.
Vash lay so that he could see both Nai and the closed door, and counted the seconds. Nine seconds between measured, deep breaths—it seemed that his brother was almost certainly asleep, but Vash could never be completely sure and therefore could spend hours doing this. Sometimes his tired eyes would close for a while, but he would still listen intently, wincing at every rustle, and then open them again.
When Vash opened his eyes for the fourth time, Nai's bed was empty. The window was closed and the curtains were drawn; it was so quiet and dark around that for a second, Vash felt like he was dead and everything was over. And then a belated horror doused him with ice-cold water, and he stared blankly at the empty rumpled bed and blinked, hoping that he imagined it, but nothing changed: his brother's bed was still empty, and not a sound was coming from the street.
Stiff-legged from horror, Vash got up and didn't go to the window because there was no point in it and because he didn't want to. The door handle was cold and turned easily in his hand, and he went out into the empty corridor. Went down the empty stairs. Walked through the empty hallway and came to the front door.
He felt like all his insides had fallen into a bottomless cold abyss that opened up where his stomach had once been, and he stopped. Paused just for a moment to ask himself: will he be able to open the door and then convince himself again that he didn't open it? That he didn't see any blood or mutilated bodies? That they didn't reach out to him with their numb hands, still begging to save them?
Will he be able to pretend that he didn't see anything again, just not to be left alone? Will Nai even be behind that door? What will he do if he isn't?
The door handle wasn't cold in his hand because his fingers were colder. Vash pressed on it, and the door opened.
“Hey there,” Nai said to him and smiled. “So you are awake after all.”
There was no blood on his clothes. He was sitting on the porch steps next to the woman who sheltered them, and she was alive, because she smiled too and beckoned him with her hand, but Vash couldn't move a muscle. For some reason, relief nailed him to the ground even harder, not canceling out the horror but mixing with it into something even more frightening and unbearable, chewing on his insides.
“Since you're not sleeping anyway,” Nai said and pointed to the sky. “Look how beautiful it is.”
Look how beautiful it is, his brother told him and pointed his finger at the sky, where ships were falling and burning. They bloomed in the dark like strange fiery flowers, illuminating everything around with their light, only to soon fall somewhere in the distance and wither away, taking their light with them. Look how beautiful it is, his brother told him. Look, you've always wanted to see a starfall.
Something took Vash's face into its hands and forced him to look up, and he squeezed his eyes shut. He didn't want to see, but something— look at it —forced his eyelids open.
The sky wasn't red—it was green. Myriads of beetles circled high up in it, illuminating it with their fluorescent tails like restless little stars. Vash exhaled softly.
Nothing happened. It was all good. Nai didn't abandon him. Nai didn't kill anyone.
Nai didn't kill anyone—this time.
Vash backed away. The swarm of beetles trembled and throbbed like a huge intelligent organ, and he felt sick. He wanted to cry and hug Rem, because the horror of that night rolled over him as if it had never gone away; as if time had only hidden its sharp rocks with a tidal wave, and then exposed them again, and they dug into his mind, drawing fresh blood over the healing scars. Still here, still with him. It will never go anywhere.
Vash didn't remember going back to his bed. He only remembered himself shaking violently under the blanket in dry urges of either nausea or sobs, and how the door creaked softly as it opened.
“You're shaking,” his brother's voice was quiet just above his ear. “Are you cold?”
Vash wasn't sure he could answer even if the invisible hand on his throat suddenly let it go. Nai interpreted his silence in his own way: he climbed into the bed with him and hugged him from behind, pressing close—just as he had hundreds of times before. A familiar gesture, a simple gesture; warm breath on his neck—it would make pleasant goosebumps run over his skin if every hair on his body wasn't already standing on end from horror.
“Are you scared?” Nai whispered into his neck, snuggling even closer. “Were you afraid that I left you alone? Or that I killed every single one of them here while you were sleeping?”
Yes —Vash wanted to say— And I don't know what I was more afraid o f—but his jaw was still clenched by muscle spasm. Nai didn't expect an answer from him and just kissed him between the cervical vertebrae, and Vash noticed, slightly disgusted, that his trembling had almost calmed down.
“Don't be afraid, I will never leave you.” Vash felt Nai's smile on his skin like a cold touch of metal. “Even if you ever feel like you want it, I will never leave you.”
The promise hung in the air, heavy as mercury vapor.
“And as for the second…” Nai ran his hand over Vash's face and lowered it to his neck, slightly pressing the beating artery down with his finger. “I spared them. Do you hear me, Vash? I didn't kill any of them. I'll let them live because I want you to know that I can be good for you. You want those vermin to keep living their pathetic little lives, so I'll let them do it. See, Vash? I'm not the monster you think I am.”
Another kiss on the neck—wet, this time. Nai licked his lips. Vash suddenly realized that his own lips were dry too, and exhaled softly, only now noticing that he had been holding his breath. Pathetic.
His cheeks were burning from the way Nai greedily sucked in air, running his nose over his neck. Vash's skin suddenly felt too small for him, stretched taut over his bones.
“You want to be human so much, but you don't even smell like them. You've washed your body with their soap, you've put on their clothes, but you still don't smell like them. They feel it too, even though they can't quite figure out what's wrong with you. There's always going to be something wrong with you for them, you know? They don't understand and they never will, you know that, right?”
Vash didn't move. He didn't even breathe, as if the slightest movement threatened to spill out something that could not be put back and sealed. He stared at the white wall in front of his eyes and tried to calm his wildly beating heart, because he knew that Nai was feeling his pulse.
“Say something. Please. Say that you love me, Vash.”
I can't. I just can't. I can't even bear to look at you, because you did all this—and I still love you. I can't bear to look at you, I can't bear to be without you. I've never been able to hate you, and that's why I hate myself. I can't. I can't do anything. Please.
“You still can't? It's okay.”
The arm that was hugging him disappeared, and his neck got cold without his brother's breath. Nai sat up on the bed and pressed his hand into Vash's shoulder, forcing him to roll over on his back, and Vash didn't have time to close his eyes. For a few seconds, Nai looked down at him with an expression indistinguishable in the dark, and then smiled and bent lower. His breathing near Vash's face was heavy and moist, and his eyes were shining.
“You don't have to say anything,” he said.
“Just kiss me, okay?” he said.
“I know she said we couldn't do it, but she's gone now,” he said, and Vash closed his eyes like a coward he was, trying to hold back the tears that had finally welled up.
It was quiet for a few seconds, and then the mattress, bent under Nai's weight, straightened up. There were soft footsteps, then Nai's bed creaked, the blanket rustled. After some time, his brother's ragged breathing leveled off, became rare and deep, but Vash still couldn't open his eyes. Tears were still rolling from under his eyelids—his first tears since the night the ships fell.
He wanted to believe Nai. He really wanted to; saw the look on Nai's face when he was asking for a kiss—and still couldn't bring himself to believe that he wouldn't kill anyone.
Vash had spent too many days meticulously reminding himself of what his brother had done. What exactly his brother had done for no reason.
I'm not the monster you think I am.
This thought often clawed at the back of his mind—the thought that Nai must have had some reason to bring down the ships—but Vash always pushed it away. It was easier to perceive everything that happened as a natural disaster, monstrous and cruel, but without a cause. Because the cause made him feel an almost instinctive horror, akin to the fear of heights or the fear that Nai himself made him feel; sometimes Vash felt like it scared him even more than anything. He was scared that one day he would ask and find out the answer. And the answer had to exist because it wasn't—
I'm not the monster you think I am.
I'm not the monster you think I am.
Just kiss me, okay? I know she said we couldn't do it, but she's gone now.
She's gone. Do you want me to say it again? She's gone.
She's gone because I killed her.
I killed her, but I'm not the monster you think I am.
Say that you love me, Vash.
The next morning, Vash woke up with his teeth itching, the taste of blood faint in his mouth.