driftfleet | 'cause it's better than nothing

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'cause it's better than nothing

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Otono-Tachibana Makie

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(last updated: 1/25/19)

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[She looks down at their joined hands squeezing his in return.] Yeah. I think I know that feeling.

[Still looking at their hands.] I can see why Meryl is so important to you.

Yeah. She was one of the first to not run away. [He smiles thinking about it.] She's a lot stronger than she looks for someone so short. A lot stronger than I am. [He should know better than to gush about someone you love to someone you also love, but here in his core it was hard to hide how he really felt about things.]

Why did you leave when you were so close to really starting something with her? [Maybe starting wasn't quite the right word, but they weren't together either. Not as far as she could tell. And she knew something about Vash's experience levels when they got together.]

I didn't want to. [If he had any real choice in the matter he wouldn't have been such a drifter to begin with.] But I had to take care of Knives. I couldn't let him go again. If I did then I will never be able to find any sort of peace at home with her. Not with anyone.

How would you have stopped Knives when you found him? [She didn't get the feeling from feeling all his feelings in there that he'd come to the conclusion killing had it's time and place after all.]

I-- Even to this day I'm not completely sure, but I'm not going to kill him. Even after everything he is still my brother. [He sighs gently.] Although I know we'll end up fighting each other. We always do.

I get it. [And she does. This one she gets more than any of the other times when he could have, should have used his abilities to protect people by killing someone else. It's his brother. He's family. He's the only one exactly of his kind. The others she's seen in the bulbs, they aren't living the same kind of life as Vash. How do you kill the only other person like you even when in all the ways that count he's nothing like him. She reaches out to gently touch his face.] You have to figure out what you are going to do though. It's dangerous for you. For everyone. [So much fire power in one place.] There are these things called plans...

Yeah, I know. It's just that my plans usually stink. I do much better when I'm under intense pressure. [He offers her a smile. It's meant to be a joke, but it's also still the truth.] I mean, I sort of have a plan? Talk to him if he doesn't shoot at me. And if he does? Shoot him back until he's too tired to continue or runs out of bullets? I mean, that's kind of a plan isn't it?

Not a good one. For a guy who is against killing you are really comfortable inflicting pain and damage. [She's kind of the opposite. She wants clean, quick deaths if that's what it's coming to. At the word "damage" she touches his arm where she saw him get the scar in his memories.] I'd be worried if you weren't so kind. I'm still kind of worried. [About him. About the life that led him to such conclusions. Not that hers was a great role model of a life.]

I'm not sue comfortable is the right word. [Although he looks down in thought. Was it? Had he become comfortable with the idea? After a moment of thinking it over he decides that is the truth. He does still tend to find a way other than causing pain when he can.] I only do it when it's the last option I have. Some people just have to be stopped and talking isn't always enough.

Yeah... No, it makes sense. If someone doesn't leave you any good options you have to use one of the bad ones. [Killing them, gravely wounding them, removing their freedom of choice and autonomy. None of it's great.] I'm sorry he put you in that position even though he's family.

He wasn't always like that. Me and him? We were so close once. Long ago. [He pauses and looks away from her to the ground.] Is it wrong that part of me still wants that back? Even after everything he's done?

I-- there are times I don't think I can forgive him. And then sometimes I so badly want to.

No, it's not wrong. Of if it is I'd be wrong in the same way. I have people like that. Like Piotr. [She squeezes his hand again and gently rubs it with her thumb.] He was a big part of your life. It makes sense that it would be hard to let go and that you'd hope you don't really have to. Not completely.

He was good once. [He chuckles with little humor to it.] He use to be even more excited than I was about meeting more humans. I want to believe he can be like that again.

But if he can't. If he can't...

I've tried to kill him three times now, but couldn't do it. I just couldn't in the end. But, maybe now... when I've done it once... [He trails off. These thoughts he's carried in his head and has kept him awake most nights for four and a half years that he's never spoken out loud were terrifying out in the open.] I don't want to kill anyone else. Never again. [Tears are starting to stream down his face.] Not him. Not my brother, but he-- he's killed so many people. He killed Rem. What if he can't change? I know I can't go back. Things will never go back.

But...

But...

What if...

I just don't know what to do. I know I must take care of him when I go home. If I have a home to go back to and he hasn't destroyed everything. I think time might really stop, but how can we really know for sure?

I have to and I will. I just... I don't know right now. I don't know. It's been so long. I felt sure that the answer would come to me when I saw him again, but I haven't seen him. I've been here. So I don't know. I don't know!

[Welcome to the spiral that is Vash's thoughts that he usually keeps hidden deep down within himself.]

Hey, hey.... [She pulls him fully into her arms to hold him tightly.] It's okay. We're going to figure it out. You're not alone. You're not alone. [That part felt worth repeating. She even feels her eyes threatening to well up on her seeing how much this upsets him. Of course it does. He feels trapped between bad options and why wouldn't he?]

Do you know what happened to make him change? [Maybe that's the key to getting him to reconsider all of this, but if he's already killed so many people he might not be able to go back. If he lets himself regret it and feel guilty that could be too much. He'll fight that feeling. He'll double down. Still, she wants to help and she can't be there with him and if she could she doesn't know what she could do. Kill his brother for him? She's not sure that helps anyone. But what prison could hold him? What words could change him? Maybe there's a way to take his powers away, but you can still kill plenty of people without powers.]

[He listens quietly and knows that she's right.] You're right. [He returns her hug and also squeezes her tightly. Maybe a bit too tightly, but it felt good to hold someone.] I guess I've been alone for so long I forget that sometimes. [He had her here and he had Meryl back home waiting for him.]

I'm not sure, but I think-- I think it could have been something Steve did. Or something else. [He shakes his head.] It came as such a big surprise that I can't be sure. I just know he thinks he's doing what he must to protect our sisters and himself.

Maybe try asking him when you see him. Make him feel heard. See if you can help him work through whatever initial feelings set him on this path. And...they might have been bad. People weren't kind and accepting of mutants back home. It made it easier for Apocalypse to get other mutants to turn on them. It's harder to do the right thing when you get attacked by the people you're trying to help too. [If his memories showed him anything it was that they had some of that in common. They can both pass for human on the surface and he's spent his life trying to hide his differences and she works to call hers out. She wants to know exactly how people are going to treat her knowing exactly who and what she is up front. But she wasn't always like that. She hid it when it first started happening.]

I'll try. I'm not sure how well that will go, but I'll at least try. [Although he pouts just a little.] And I only attack him because he started it. [Brothers!]

I don't know if it will work either or if he'll be shooting at you on sight before you get any words out. I just know you want to find a way this doesn't end bloody. And I want that for you too. I mean...if you do go back.

[Vash is quiet for a moment. He knows the answer he needs to give, but he doesn't really want to voice it.] When I go back. [He finally says quietly. He stops hugging just enough so he can take her hand in his own. Locking their fingers together.] That's why I'm sometimes afraid of this. [He kisses their locked hands.] Because I have to go home and no one should follow me there.

[She feels a flutter of something inside when he kisses their hands after saying that.] I... I wasn't trying to hold you back. [Was she?] I just don't know if I can believe any of us are getting home. Not really. It doesn't seem like it will be a choice and we don't really know people who disappear go home. I didn't go home when I left Marina. I'm here. Other people have been multiple places. Maybe we just get passed around.

[The "and no one should follow me there" does sting a little. She started this saying they had other people they wanted to be with. Those were the terms. She hasn't changed her mind, and yet it's hard not to think about how if felt on that ferris wheel back in Marina when Reid asked her to come home with him while things were still good between them. Or how loved and wanted she felt when she and Winn would day dream about their home and lives together in National City. They always felt a little like fairy tales that seemed better than they could really be and had no way of really coming true. But she still held on to those ideas until long after they'd outlived even fairy tale viability status. Maybe this is better. It's honest. Things end. There aren't happily ever afters and if she or Vash got one it wouldn't be with each other, right? It would be Winn and Meryl. So there's no reason for it to sting. But still it does.]

I know you're not. [He kisses her hand again.] But I-- I don't want to go back. [He knows he must, but it's hard to want to go to a world that hates you. Where every day is a struggle for survival and to know you're only two of a kind. At least here in the fleet he's accepted. He gets to see so many new worlds. Experience so many different things. More importantly than that he gets to be loved for simply being who he was.]

I'm not sure they go home either. [Nothing he would freely admit if he was awake. He only likes to spread what people hope for. Only positive thoughts.] But if there's one thing I've learned is that things are always changing. That is what makes life exciting. They might not send us home, but I think one day we can find our own way there. One day we'll find where Winn is. We'll get you home too. [It's probably not exactly what she wants to hear. That he's so willing to let her go. Actively willing, but what he wants more in this life is for her to be happy and he knows where she will be most happy.

It's just not with him and he's okay with that.]

[It's a mixed feeling hearing him so willingly giving her up to a hoped for future with Winn. In a way it's a relief because then she's not the only one still thinking it. She doesn't have to harbor the same level of guilt around for it that she might otherwise. But it does make her wonder what she means to Vash. It's an unfair sort of curiosity because she doesn't know if she could put her feelings for him into words. She likes him. She cares about him. She wants the best for him. She worries about him. But when she thinks about who she loves she thinks of Winn. And she doesn't know when or if that will ever change or if she wants it to.]

Why are you so set on it if you don't want to go back? [She feels like she already knows the answer. His brother is his responsibility. He's the only one who can do something about him while also being the only one who can't.]

Because I promised her. I promised Meryl that I would return to her and I know she will still be waiting for me. I've broken so many promises, but I don't think I could live with myself if I break that one too.

[That was at least the most important reason. There was also his brother to think about. If he did not go back who would be the bridge between the humans and his sisters? How many more Plants would die from human ignorance that he could correct? If the Plants fail then the humans that Rem had given her life for, her legacy, would then also die on that dusty planet. He couldn't let her sacrifice be wasted.

Even if those things weren't involved that one promise would have him going back. Always.]

Well... I mean, don't you want to go back to her though? [Except he also said he didn't want to go back.] It's not like it's just a duty, right? You love her? [The first time she's using the L-word like this with him.]

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