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If Fate existed, Legato Bluesummers was its servant. He did not choose life. Life simply happened to him. Survival was not something he pursued. Sometimes he survived purely for lack of better things to do. It couldn't be called a choice. Even in his deliverance under the sharp edges of Millions Knives, it was his Master's decision that left him breathing. He had no interest in carrying on. After that moment, everything Legato did became for the sake of that man, not himself.
Only twice had he ever dug his fingers into the fabric of space and time to choose to selfishly shape it into what he needed, what he craved more than anything in the world, and he always went big with it. Always a spectacle. Always art. They were the only times he believed himself to be anything more than a tool for those who held him. The only times he revealed to his enemies that this passive, powerless life he lived was something he knew so intimately that he could deliver it upon them tenfold.
The first choice nearly killed him.
The second, he'd made certain would kill him.
The moment of his death was conducted by his own hand, an orchestra of gunfire and pain and strings he plucked with the ease of a veteran musician, not just his own, but heartstrings, too. The look in the eyes of Vash the Stampede as his shining and pristine exterior finally caved in under the burden of reality. If Legato could not defeat Vash's body, defeating his soul would have to do. Only one desire boiled in his tar-pit heart, the same as all those years ago: total and glorious retribution.
The moment of his death was an award he'd won for immaculate performance.
So…
Why was it that he felt warmth, now?
It poured into him from the space between his eyes, pooling there in his brainpan until the overflow spilled out down his spine, all the way down to the tips of his toes. More pleasant a heat than he'd expected for Hell. It must be Hell, mustn't it? There couldn't be anything else waiting for him at the end but that, not for the likes of him. But the gentle pressure that cradled his jaw and brushed his hair from his face did not flay him, and the fingertips that traced over his clavicle had no talons.
It was a struggle to open his eyes. All that he saw at first was a haze of mid-darkness, the glow of a lantern diffused across the far wall and fighting back the dim. Shuttered windows rattled in the growing dust storm outside, the standard lullaby in No Man's Land. Now that his eyes had adjusted to the light, Legato saw that the room was small—a shack, really, no bigger than a shed. What he lay on was not a bed, rather something thrown together to be used as a bed. There was no mistaking it. This wasn't Hell and it wasn't a dream.
He was alive.
Life simply happened to him.
The absurdity of it bubbled up in the back of his throat, his laughter dry as the winds outside and hoarse from disuse.
"Have I failed even in this?"
"Blame me."
A brief, horrifying memory clamped down on his whole being like a jaw with a thousand teeth. He recoiled from the voice, shoving himself into the corner and wielding the thin, scratchy blanket across his forearm like a shield. There was someone in that rickety chair beside his makeshift bed, so still and silent, cloaked in coarse sackcloth, that Legato had mistaken him for a bag of potatoes. Reflexively, he summoned his strings to subdue the stranger and…
Found them gone.
Maybe this was Hell.
His panic escalated, breath trapped in his lungs, spiraling, spiraling—
"Hey, shh. It's just me."
The stranger shifted towards him and Legato tried to merge his entire being into the wood of the walls at his back to keep the distance. When the other man eased one knee onto the bed and reached for him, something in him snapped. Powers or not, he had two hands and teeth. Legato lunged at the stranger, his roar of effort drowning out the other's protest—or plea?—as he tackled him to the ground. His fists swung without strategy, anywhere they hit would be fine with him. The first two landed satisfyingly hard against the stranger's skull and now the third was calibrated to break his nose until the man caught it, nearly crushed his knuckles and hand in the force of his grip.
"Bluesummers."
Legato froze. It was a Pavlovian response at that point, his name, that voice, that stern and powerful voice. A voice he worshipped. How could he not recognize it? He went limp in the other man's hold, all of the fight drained out of him and replaced with cold shock.
Millions Knives. His Knives.
The angel propped himself up on one elbow and the hood's cavernous shadow receded. That flawless face, the telltale beauty mark—never once had he considered it a blemish, more like God's own artistic flourish, signing off after creating the two most perfect eyes in all of existence. Legato was not worthy, but neither could he contain his devotion. He flung himself against that broad chest and clung to his clothes. Why had he been in such a rush to die and leave him? He found himself shaking as he wept, relief that it was Knives, relief that he was here, relief that his heart still beat so that he could have this moment. He would be punished for this display, he knew. It would be worth it to hold him, however briefly.
But Knives did not strike him down. Instead, arms wrapped around him and held him gently, one hand stroking up and down his back to soothe him as he sobbed. "It's all right. I've got you." Strong fingers threaded through the short hair at the back of his neck. Grounding him.
What is this?
Legato gathered his wits enough to pry himself off of the angel, to prostrate himself before Knives on the floor where he belonged. "Master, forgive me, I—"
"Don't."
The tone of his voice brooked no argument. Legato dragged his eyes off of the dusty floorboards to meet the pools of aquamarine he so admired. Millions Knives gazed at him with a tight, pained expression that was so unfamiliar against the seething anger, the sharp intellect, or the manic glee that he usually displayed. His hand had raised to silence him.
"I don't want to hear that word, 'Master'. Not from you. Not anymore."
His regal bearing belied his words such that it took Legato a moment to fully absorb them. His expression was a mask of frozen shock. Something was wrong. For all the years that Legato had followed this man, standing at his right hand, there had been one unbreakable boundary between them, one rule he must never break: Know your place.
What could make this illustrious being descend into the dirt to speak to this undeserving worm like he was an equal?
"That's what you are," he insisted, but the line of Knives's mouth only twisted further, the cloak hiding his eyes again. On the floor in this hovel, just the two of them sheltered from the raging winds, filthy and weak and curled in on themselves like larvae—it felt so desolate. Slowly, the here and now melted, mixing into the past. After his death, Vash the Stampede must have continued on to…
A bright, boiling fury flared to life inside his chest. "What did he do to you?" Still Knives said nothing, though his hands clenched into fists where they lay on his thighs. For the first time, Legato took notice of the clothes he worse beneath that makeshift cloak, not his favored gear from the spacefaring age, but something barely a step up from burlap: simple, unadorned and roughhewn. He looked less like the hand that offered deliverance than the hand that begged for it.
With a shaky hand, Legato reached out to the edges of the sackcloth wrapped around Knives's shoulders and covering his head. He pulled it free of his frame and revealed what his Master had been hiding.
His hair black as pitch, dark as sin. Not a trace left of his golden glow. No less beautiful, no less beloved. But irrevocably changed. His angel had fallen.
He could not stop the hot tears that swelled in his eyes and flowed like rivers down his cheeks at the sight.
"I must be…" Knives said, voice weak and broken in a way he had never heard it, "…such a disappointment to you."
A disappointment?
Was that what he thought?
"The years that you've wasted in support of an empty dream, I regret that I can't give them back to you. All I could do was give you the chance to start over. If you despise me, I'll accept it. If you want my life, you can take it. You don't ever have to see my face again."
"Do not mock my devotion!" Legato said it so fiercely, it surprised both of them. His fervor had not wavered in the slightest, but had he ever had to defend Knives from Knives? His yellow eyes fixed on his Master with the ferocity of a predator and, for once, Knives was the one who looked cornered. "I didn't follow you for your power, or for what you could grant me. That's not why I weep."
Surprise was evident on Knives's face, his lips parting wordlessly. In the wake of that lost look, Legato's expression softened and his shoulders trembled with the weight of his grief.
"I'm sorry he stole it from you. I'm sorry that I couldn't stop it. I gave my very last ounce of strength trying to stop it."
The silence that stretched between them was heavy, broken only by the effort spent in swallowing down his tears. Finally, Knives spoke again, gentle and patient, with a touch of dry humor that told Legato the angel he knew was still in there underneath the loss.
"It wasn't all taken," he said, his fingertips brushing along Legato's forehead to sweep his long bands aside. The pad of his thumb stroked over the very center of it, between his eyes. The blue-haired man was stunned to discover scar tissue there. "There's some left in you, now."
So that was it. That's why he woke in this shack, that's what Knives meant by 'start over'. His hand flew to his forehead, tracing the edge of the scar tissue where the bullet wound had healed over. In the back of his skull, slightly larger, the exit wound hid beneath his hair. It was surreal to touch the proof of his demise and yet breathe. His angel had raised him from the dead and then dared to tell him not to call him Master.
And it had cost him the very last piece of himself.
Guilt and despair roiled within him, and the hot shame of being so unworthy of such a blessing. He could not find it in himself to be grateful, rather, the thing that burst out of his mouth was a shaking and desperate, "Why!?"
As Legato panted for breath to keep pace with his racing heart, Knives only watched him with that same mournful gaze. He'd anticipated the question, and seemed to have found the answer only through a long and troubled deliberation. The man watched as his angel averted his eyes to the floor. Averted his eyes! Never had he seen such an act of deference. His heart twisted up in knots again.
It was a long time before Knives spoke, cautious and halting, "I don't know. Or, I didn't know. Not at first." His lips pursed, brows furrowing thoughtfully as he stared at nothing. "Everything came crashing down around me. My sisters were no longer with me. I couldn't hear their voices anymore, or my brother's. I was alone, truly alone, for the first time. And I realized what I had taken for granted."
His eyes finally lifted once more to meet Legato's, and the man saw in them a deep and desperate longing, an unbearable loneliness.
"Vash," Knives said, and Legato tried not to snarl at the sound of the name, "he loved me, but he wanted me to return to the past. And those who followed me, they wanted the future I promised them. Things I was, things I could be, but never what I am. Except you."
Legato's breath caught in his throat.
"Bluesummers," he paused, thinking better of it, "Legato. If I had walked away from it all, would you still have followed me?"
"Yes." He didn't waste a thought on his answer.
"If I had left this world in search of a new one, would you still have followed me?"
"Anywhere."
The slightest hint of a smile, a barely-there tugging of the lips and a ghost of affection in his blue-green eyes, was like the breaking of the first sun's dawn over the horizon. There was something else there, too, an ember struggling to stay alight. The fickle and dangerous thing called hope, and the accompanying fear that the slightest movement would smother it out. "And now that I have nothing? Now that I am nothing. Could you accept me like this?"
Legato looked upon this new version of Millions Knives, or… perhaps not new at all, perhaps this fragile and vulnerable side of himself was always hidden underneath his crusade. The thing that connected him to his sisters' plight. The thing that he saw reflected in Legato the day that they met. He saw him in his most raw and unprotected form, and found that he only loved him more for it.
"To me, you're everything. That hasn't changed."
The tension evaporated from his angel's shoulders. Suddenly, Knives had slumped forward into him, burying his beautiful face into the crook of his neck. His arms wrapped around him fiercely, hands clawing into his threadbare shirt, into his back. Knives did not cry—Legato didn't think he had ever seen him cry—but he trembled like he couldn't keep it all inside anymore. The blue-haired man held him as he mourned everything he no longer was, and everything he could no longer be. Everything from which he was exiled.
"Connect with me again," his voice was hoarse, ovewhelmed. It was not a demand, almost a plea, if the angel had ever pleaded for anything in his life. "I can't feel you in the back of my mind anymore."
And then it hit Legato, too.
The things he no longer was and the things he could no longer be.
His jaw clenched so tightly against this fresh wave of grief that his voice could only hiss through his teeth. "It's gone. I can't." His angel jolted in his embrace, a strangled sound in the back of his throat. It broke Legato's heart in two. Here was his whole universe, his reason for being, and he could not serve him, could not protect him, the way he once could. "I'm sorry, I can't."
A chuckle tore its way out of Knives's throat, compounding on itself until it was full-bodied and delirious laughter, shaking its way out of his body in a forceful purge.
"After all this, after everything…" he murmured, still choking on his own humorless outburst, "…are we condemned to be ordinary men?"
Powers or not, there was nothing ordinary about Knives. The things he could do, the things he could create, were not fueled by the feats of biological generators. They were possible because of the sheer force of his will. Legato resolved in that moment that he would spend the rest of his life reminding his Master of this. However long it took.
He decided there was nothing ordinary about himself, either. Nothing ordinary about the depths of his devotion.
The uncertainty, the stiffness, slowly faded from Legato the longer he held him. He no longer feared being struck down. He no longer wrestled with whether he was worthy. Knives needed comfort and connection, and he could provide that, so he did. They held each other quietly as the shutters beat against the window frames and the wind whistled through the gaps in the worn wooden walls, each unwilling to let go. Each afraid the other might vanish if they did.
"Now that I have nothing," he repeated the words back to Knives, barely above a whisper, "now that I am nothing." The angel stilled in his arms, waiting. Listening. "Will you keep me by your side?"
A shaky exhale, and those hands clutched to him all the tighter.
"Please."
That was all he had to say.
Legato combed his fingers through raven-black hair until his angel's body stopped shivering. He dared to rest the side of his head against the other man's and was not punished. He murmured quiet reassurances, lips pressed gently to the ridges of his ear, and was not scolded. He hadn't realized how much love had hurt to keep inside himself until now that it was finally permitted a release. Knives nuzzled further into his neck and hummed pleasantly as his hand stroked up over his side and softly kneaded at the tightness in his shoulders and the back of his neck.
"You'll want for nothing while I'm here. I swear it."
There was no telling how long they remained that way, finding solace in each other's arms. Knives was the first to pull away, finger's tangling in Legato's to firmly grasp his hand. This time, when their eyes met, there was a sense of completeness that hadn't been there before. An understanding between the two of them: every day from this point on was new. They could do anything with it, or nothing at all, and it would be something they had ripped from the hands of Fate.
"Could we try it?" Knives said, that ember of hope now a hungry flame seeking more to devour. "This 'ordinary' life?" Legato opened his mouth, but Knives raised a hand to stop him. "This isn't an order, Bluesummers. I'm asking you. Can we give it a try and see… if it won't bore us to death…?"
His head tilted, a flicker of good humor in his gaze.
It didn't matter to Legato what they did next. It didn't matter if they stayed in this tiny shed until they wasted away. It didn't matter if they built a home, or a town, or even wandered the sands doling out their justice to the bottom-feeding wretches that caused others the kind of pain the two of them had gone through. All that mattered was that Knives was beside him, and he beside Knives.
"Please," he whispered.
The storm passed, in time. The silence it left in its wake felt… not heavy, but full, fit to bursting with something very like anticipation. Light began to filter into the shack. Knives helped him stand, wrapped an arm around him to steady him so they could step outside and see what new dunes the winds had left them to work with. An ordinary life. He hadn't ever lived one before, and he supposed Knives hadn't either. They would have to learn together. It might take the rest of their lives.
This was the third choice Legato made with his own will, of his own desires. A selfish, but painfully ordinary choice: to Live, instead of Be Alive.
As the second of the suns set and the stars began to twinkle through the cover of dusk, Knives reached over and took his hand. His hold was gentle, but firm, anchoring him to the earth. Legato turned toward him and met his eyes, no less awed by the sight of him than he ever was.
"Are you afraid?" the angel asked, barely audible, leaning in to press their foreheads together. Intimate. Connection. "Don't be."
How could he be? This was the first time Knives had ever looked at him like this. Like he was the only man in the world. This was the first time that he truly understood that the thing that made him feel most safe, most secure, was not violence and control. It was, maybe had always been, nothing more than love reciprocated. Nothing more than time given, time shared. Nothing more than Knives.
Legato made a fourth choice: he slowly closed what little distance remained. Their mouths met with nothing but a promise between them. He felt his angel's lips part beneath his own, a quiet gasp of wonder, and then the kiss was returned. Bold, and then bolder. With the gentle press of his lips, with the touch of his hands, with an overflowing heart, he chose to convey to Knives the depth of his devotion.
With many more such choices to come.