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tampered2007-04-21 09:59 pm
sharpest-knife.livejournal.com) wrote in tampered2007-04-21 09:59 pm
LOG; complete
When; April 21, some time after this log and the Doctor's visit
Rating; PG
Characters; Knives [![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
sharpest_knife] & Kururu [tunetone]
Summary; After being patched up by Millennium's Doctor, Knives allows a very concerned and teary-eyed Kururu to visit him. They share awkward silences and tentative understandings for a brief moment.
Log;
This was most likely the first time that Kururu felt so miserable in the span of a day. As always, she blamed it on herself as she felt that she was highly overreacting towards the situation, but that hadn’t kept her from crying a lot the during past 24 hours.
And wasn’t it normal to cry over someone’s death?
Even if that someone didn’t care that much about her, she did care about him and thus, it was quite a blow to wake up to a sobbing Legato and a dead Knives. Definitely not her definition of a good night’s sleep. So she locked herself inside the greenhouse, avoiding anything and anyone. She had tended to the fauna there until Legato came to tell her that Knives had woken up.
Woken up.
It still seemed unbelievably strange for a dead person to wake up and Kururu had no idea what to expect from a living… dead… person. The concept was suspiciously similar to one horror movie she had watched with Hako and Konomi—and frankly, that movie had scared the living daylights out of her. So when she went upstairs, she vaguely considered turning around again and ask Legato to go with her; yet she continued walking anyway.
She still hesitated in front of the bedroom door, but she gathered all her courage and knocked before opening it. Zombie time. Living dead time. She was going to be eaten oh god.
Yet there were no zombies in the room when she entered, just Knives-kun with a different hair colour. Nothing scary about that, really. He didn’t look that different anyway and Kururu almost believed that everything was back to normal again.
However, she didn’t say anything, for she had no idea what would be appropriate and what not. Instead, she stared at her feet with a frown, too shy to open her mouth or to take a step forward. Gosh, she was so bad at this.
Knives opened his eyes upon hearing the door open then shut, and when he peered over he saw Kururu's small and slight frame slouched beside the threshold. She wasn't looking at him but at the floor, frowning. He hadn't expected much else from this quiet human girl who feared him, and he found himself unable to understand what kept her in the house.
Very slowly, gritting his teeth against the pain in his chest, he pulled himself into a sitting position. He paused to allow the pain to subside, one hand pressing against the bandages and gauze above his heart, then opened his mouth to speak.
"Kururu."
Kururu raised her head at the sound of her name and immediately lost her shy attitude while doing so. Her name. Not that dragonfly thing. For some unknown reason, she felt somewhat… happy to be called by her own name. She reprimanded herself inwardly for this feeling, because it was stupid and it just didn’t make sense and plain naïve and ah, why was she thinking about this right now?! Someone was in pain and she was standing there like a ditzy schoolgirl.
…Which she technically was.
She snapped out of her thoughts and rushed to his side, while a worried and uneasy feeling started to develop itself in the pit of her stomach.
"Y-you shouldn’t sit up like that! It’ll only make things worse!" she said, the nursing part of her kicking in—the role she probably had to fulfil for the rest of her life. Assuming, of course, she would ever return home.
He grimaced at another flash of pain, but he conceded and lowered himself back to the bed.
"I've had worse," he replied flatly. It was a little tiring having weepy humans fret over him all the time. Well, previously, it had only been Legato, and Knives had found that absolutely ridiculous, but for some odd reason, he didn't mind so much when it was Kururu fretting. It seemed to fit her appearance better, that was all.
He stared at the blank ceiling, suddenly at a loss for words. What else was there to say to her? Nothing. He was never particularly good at sentiment, not even around his brother. And besides, she was emotional enough for the two of them.
Knives glanced over at her as he stood above him, worried. She looked terrible with her hair unkempt and sticking up in odd places, a perpetual frown on her face. And her eyes... "Have you been crying?"
"No. Yes. I mean, no," she answered a bit frantically, rubbing her eyes with her arm. He didn't need to know that she had, since her tears were probably completely unnecessary. Besides, she didn't want to look… weak or something like that, ignoring the fact that she actually was. In her own opinion, obviously.
"H-how are you feeling?" she asked, trying to change the subject and inspecting him with curious eyes; she wanted to know what had happened. Of course, he had faced Vash, she knew that much. But Legato didn't want to tell her anything and Knives probably wasn’t going to do so either, but if she just knew where he was injured…
Well, she could just draw her own conclusions from that.
He gave her a skeptical, almost exasperated look as she tried to cover up evidence of tears. Silly, foolish girl. There was no reason crying over someone like him. Crying meant a lot of things—pain, attachment, weakness—and if she wept because he'd died... Knives found the idea incredible uncomfortable. He decided to drop the subject altogether and answer her question.
"I'm fine. I'm..." he paused a moment to find the right word, "cold." He raised a hand to his neck to feel for a pulse. There was none. "Everything is cold."
Being dead was a really difficult concept to swallow. It didn't help the fact that he was stuck in the City now. There was no way to return to his world and finish out his carefully-processed plans. He would have to recreate his own sense of paradise here, in this garden, with these people.
He looked over at Kururu again, his expression tense. "I've died."
Kururu smiled sadly at his last remark and nodded slowly. "Yes, you have…" she whispered almost inaudibly and she had to fight the urge to cry again—why was she reacting like this? Maybe the fact that the phenomenon death wasn't a very significant thing in this place was too hard for her to comprehend, since dying was basically a synonym for disappearing back in her world. Dying and coming back like nothing had happened was too simple.
Tentatively, she reached out for his hand. Cold. Was it just that? Having to bear eternal coldness and nothing more? Kururu knew she had little to no knowledge about some things, but she had always thought that she had figured one thing out: death. Everyone had their own beliefs about what happens after death and she had those beliefs too, but this place had greatly jumbled them.
"Why?" she asked, wishing she could do something to make the past 24 hours disappear. Pondering, she entwined her fingers with his and frowned again. She was disappointed. Disappointed in the City, in Knives, in Legato, in Vash and in that idiotic thing called dying.
Though she had to admit that this was a nice alternative to heaven.
"It had to happen eventually," he replied without regret, knowing immediately that she was questioning his reason for killing himself and his brother. He knew she would never fully understand, not unless she went through his same experiences, and seeing into his memories wasn't enough. He didn't expect that much from her. He'd never even expected that much from Legato and his other minions.
Knives stared at their hands, at the way she clung to him. The first thing he noticed was the warmth, and instinct desperately wanted to hold onto it, nevermind that a human was touching him. His brow furrowed in confusion, but he didn't withdraw his hand from hers. It was... comforting.
"I don't know how to explain it beyond that," he continued, raising his eyes to Kururu's face. "Vash and I couldn't live with humans in our world. Our power was too great. They'd fear and loathe us. They'd end up driving us to our deaths if we did nothing." Subconsciously, he tightened his grip on her hand. "They almost killed him several times. I couldn't allow that." Knives sighed and closed his eyes. "He was such a stubborn fool."
"So you killed him out of possessiveness?" she asked quietly without looking at him; she stared blanky at the sheets instead, that familiar feeling of uneasiness returning as she spoke. "Because you would rather have him die by your hands?"
The logic in that was far, far away. Dying, no matter how or when, was horrible enough. She just couldn't understand why he was so indifferent about it. Vash had been his brother. Brothers didn't kill each other. But…
It had to happen eventually.
Since when was killing your twin brother a normal thing to do? These two were so very complicated… Kururu felt completely ignorant about their situation and she didn't like that one bit. Not when they had been hell-bent on killing each other and actually succeeded. She bit her lip and pulled her hand away, urged by the sudden feeling of intrusion—she felt that she was asking way too much.
"No." His expression hardened, and he opened his mouth to continue but no words came out. He lay there for a moment, mentally floundering as he sought for the right words that expressed exactly what he meant.
"When we were young, we promised our... mother that we wouldn't leave each other. Even though I hate her with all of my being... Vash is still my brother. I never really wanted him to die, but he never wanted me to die alone. Our... differences in opinion separated us."
Knives had never told anyone this before, not even to Legato. But with everything he'd accumulated in his life thrown away not twenty-four hours ago, he no longer felt the need to keep certain secrets. He had no reason to reveal everything, but certain things... And it wouldn't hurt to tell Kururu. She had no reason to turn against him.
He frowned slightly at the rush of cold that returned when she withdrew her hand. Much to his horror and embarrassment, he missed her warmth.
"If it’s as you say it is, then… I don’t see why he dislikes you that much," she said after a slight hesitation. She didn’t know who to believe anymore and it felt a bit like betrayal towards Vash for saying such a thing, but… it was a simple explanation. Good enough for her.
For now, at least. Because she was fairly sure that at one point, Vash would tell her something that would make her change her mind again. Kururu still wasn’t too sure about Vash’s claims of Knives being such a horrible person; nothing in his behaviour indicated that he was completely insane and he didn’t seem stupid either. Maybe Vash was just bitter? It all didn’t make sense.
"Having a twin brother seems nice… you’ll always have someone to look after you." A smile suddenly touched her face and she looked at the ground with the uneasy feeling still there; but now, a dash of happiness accompanied it. "I think it must be great to be loved by you like that."
Loved?
If he hadn't been caught off his guard in such a way, Knives would've laughed so hard it would've hurt. Loved? And by him? He—
... had loved once, yes.
He stared at the ceiling for a long moment, unsure of what to say. He was certain he couldn't just go back to those days, to one hundred and fifty years ago when he had smiled as sincerely as any child. He still couldn't see the reason to forgive humans for what they had done to Tessla, to his brother, and to the rest of his family. But the humans responsible and their filthy spawn were a world away, and he had no power to return.
Sighing and wincing slightly at the pain in his chest, Knives looked back at Kururu. He raised his arm, the left one, the one he used to kill... and ruffled her hair. "You don't know what you're talking about," he managed to say, the corner of his mouth tugged upwards in a smirk. "Now go and wash your face. Legato cries enough for the both of you, so you focus on cheering him up."
For a split-second, Kururu really did think that he was going to kill her—a ridiculous thought since he was barely capable of sitting up. So her smile only widened when that was not the case. “Mmhm, I probably don’t,” she said chipper and not caring a bit that she didn’t. These were the moments that made her feel happy enough to not care if she understood anything about the strange man or not. Like it mattered anyway.
"Legato-san isn’t crying anymore, he’s only sulking," she corrected him with a thoughtful face. Seeing Legato cry was a bit… comical, she had to admit that. But seeing men cry always made her feel very uncomfortable, so that was maybe the case. "And I doubt he would appreciate it if I came to cheer him up…"
She quickly ran a hand through her hair and walked towards the door, feeling a lot better than when she had entered the room. She opened the door and hesitated for a moment, turning her head to face Knives again, offering him a cautious smile. "But I hope I succeeded with one person," she said and with that, Kururu walked through the door and closed it behind her back.
Rating; PG
Characters; Knives [
sharpest_knife] & Kururu [tunetone]Summary; After being patched up by Millennium's Doctor, Knives allows a very concerned and teary-eyed Kururu to visit him. They share awkward silences and tentative understandings for a brief moment.
Log;
This was most likely the first time that Kururu felt so miserable in the span of a day. As always, she blamed it on herself as she felt that she was highly overreacting towards the situation, but that hadn’t kept her from crying a lot the during past 24 hours.
And wasn’t it normal to cry over someone’s death?
Even if that someone didn’t care that much about her, she did care about him and thus, it was quite a blow to wake up to a sobbing Legato and a dead Knives. Definitely not her definition of a good night’s sleep. So she locked herself inside the greenhouse, avoiding anything and anyone. She had tended to the fauna there until Legato came to tell her that Knives had woken up.
Woken up.
It still seemed unbelievably strange for a dead person to wake up and Kururu had no idea what to expect from a living… dead… person. The concept was suspiciously similar to one horror movie she had watched with Hako and Konomi—and frankly, that movie had scared the living daylights out of her. So when she went upstairs, she vaguely considered turning around again and ask Legato to go with her; yet she continued walking anyway.
She still hesitated in front of the bedroom door, but she gathered all her courage and knocked before opening it. Zombie time. Living dead time. She was going to be eaten oh god.
Yet there were no zombies in the room when she entered, just Knives-kun with a different hair colour. Nothing scary about that, really. He didn’t look that different anyway and Kururu almost believed that everything was back to normal again.
However, she didn’t say anything, for she had no idea what would be appropriate and what not. Instead, she stared at her feet with a frown, too shy to open her mouth or to take a step forward. Gosh, she was so bad at this.
Knives opened his eyes upon hearing the door open then shut, and when he peered over he saw Kururu's small and slight frame slouched beside the threshold. She wasn't looking at him but at the floor, frowning. He hadn't expected much else from this quiet human girl who feared him, and he found himself unable to understand what kept her in the house.
Very slowly, gritting his teeth against the pain in his chest, he pulled himself into a sitting position. He paused to allow the pain to subside, one hand pressing against the bandages and gauze above his heart, then opened his mouth to speak.
"Kururu."
Kururu raised her head at the sound of her name and immediately lost her shy attitude while doing so. Her name. Not that dragonfly thing. For some unknown reason, she felt somewhat… happy to be called by her own name. She reprimanded herself inwardly for this feeling, because it was stupid and it just didn’t make sense and plain naïve and ah, why was she thinking about this right now?! Someone was in pain and she was standing there like a ditzy schoolgirl.
…Which she technically was.
She snapped out of her thoughts and rushed to his side, while a worried and uneasy feeling started to develop itself in the pit of her stomach.
"Y-you shouldn’t sit up like that! It’ll only make things worse!" she said, the nursing part of her kicking in—the role she probably had to fulfil for the rest of her life. Assuming, of course, she would ever return home.
He grimaced at another flash of pain, but he conceded and lowered himself back to the bed.
"I've had worse," he replied flatly. It was a little tiring having weepy humans fret over him all the time. Well, previously, it had only been Legato, and Knives had found that absolutely ridiculous, but for some odd reason, he didn't mind so much when it was Kururu fretting. It seemed to fit her appearance better, that was all.
He stared at the blank ceiling, suddenly at a loss for words. What else was there to say to her? Nothing. He was never particularly good at sentiment, not even around his brother. And besides, she was emotional enough for the two of them.
Knives glanced over at her as he stood above him, worried. She looked terrible with her hair unkempt and sticking up in odd places, a perpetual frown on her face. And her eyes... "Have you been crying?"
"No. Yes. I mean, no," she answered a bit frantically, rubbing her eyes with her arm. He didn't need to know that she had, since her tears were probably completely unnecessary. Besides, she didn't want to look… weak or something like that, ignoring the fact that she actually was. In her own opinion, obviously.
"H-how are you feeling?" she asked, trying to change the subject and inspecting him with curious eyes; she wanted to know what had happened. Of course, he had faced Vash, she knew that much. But Legato didn't want to tell her anything and Knives probably wasn’t going to do so either, but if she just knew where he was injured…
Well, she could just draw her own conclusions from that.
He gave her a skeptical, almost exasperated look as she tried to cover up evidence of tears. Silly, foolish girl. There was no reason crying over someone like him. Crying meant a lot of things—pain, attachment, weakness—and if she wept because he'd died... Knives found the idea incredible uncomfortable. He decided to drop the subject altogether and answer her question.
"I'm fine. I'm..." he paused a moment to find the right word, "cold." He raised a hand to his neck to feel for a pulse. There was none. "Everything is cold."
Being dead was a really difficult concept to swallow. It didn't help the fact that he was stuck in the City now. There was no way to return to his world and finish out his carefully-processed plans. He would have to recreate his own sense of paradise here, in this garden, with these people.
He looked over at Kururu again, his expression tense. "I've died."
Kururu smiled sadly at his last remark and nodded slowly. "Yes, you have…" she whispered almost inaudibly and she had to fight the urge to cry again—why was she reacting like this? Maybe the fact that the phenomenon death wasn't a very significant thing in this place was too hard for her to comprehend, since dying was basically a synonym for disappearing back in her world. Dying and coming back like nothing had happened was too simple.
Tentatively, she reached out for his hand. Cold. Was it just that? Having to bear eternal coldness and nothing more? Kururu knew she had little to no knowledge about some things, but she had always thought that she had figured one thing out: death. Everyone had their own beliefs about what happens after death and she had those beliefs too, but this place had greatly jumbled them.
"Why?" she asked, wishing she could do something to make the past 24 hours disappear. Pondering, she entwined her fingers with his and frowned again. She was disappointed. Disappointed in the City, in Knives, in Legato, in Vash and in that idiotic thing called dying.
Though she had to admit that this was a nice alternative to heaven.
"It had to happen eventually," he replied without regret, knowing immediately that she was questioning his reason for killing himself and his brother. He knew she would never fully understand, not unless she went through his same experiences, and seeing into his memories wasn't enough. He didn't expect that much from her. He'd never even expected that much from Legato and his other minions.
Knives stared at their hands, at the way she clung to him. The first thing he noticed was the warmth, and instinct desperately wanted to hold onto it, nevermind that a human was touching him. His brow furrowed in confusion, but he didn't withdraw his hand from hers. It was... comforting.
"I don't know how to explain it beyond that," he continued, raising his eyes to Kururu's face. "Vash and I couldn't live with humans in our world. Our power was too great. They'd fear and loathe us. They'd end up driving us to our deaths if we did nothing." Subconsciously, he tightened his grip on her hand. "They almost killed him several times. I couldn't allow that." Knives sighed and closed his eyes. "He was such a stubborn fool."
"So you killed him out of possessiveness?" she asked quietly without looking at him; she stared blanky at the sheets instead, that familiar feeling of uneasiness returning as she spoke. "Because you would rather have him die by your hands?"
The logic in that was far, far away. Dying, no matter how or when, was horrible enough. She just couldn't understand why he was so indifferent about it. Vash had been his brother. Brothers didn't kill each other. But…
It had to happen eventually.
Since when was killing your twin brother a normal thing to do? These two were so very complicated… Kururu felt completely ignorant about their situation and she didn't like that one bit. Not when they had been hell-bent on killing each other and actually succeeded. She bit her lip and pulled her hand away, urged by the sudden feeling of intrusion—she felt that she was asking way too much.
"No." His expression hardened, and he opened his mouth to continue but no words came out. He lay there for a moment, mentally floundering as he sought for the right words that expressed exactly what he meant.
"When we were young, we promised our... mother that we wouldn't leave each other. Even though I hate her with all of my being... Vash is still my brother. I never really wanted him to die, but he never wanted me to die alone. Our... differences in opinion separated us."
Knives had never told anyone this before, not even to Legato. But with everything he'd accumulated in his life thrown away not twenty-four hours ago, he no longer felt the need to keep certain secrets. He had no reason to reveal everything, but certain things... And it wouldn't hurt to tell Kururu. She had no reason to turn against him.
He frowned slightly at the rush of cold that returned when she withdrew her hand. Much to his horror and embarrassment, he missed her warmth.
"If it’s as you say it is, then… I don’t see why he dislikes you that much," she said after a slight hesitation. She didn’t know who to believe anymore and it felt a bit like betrayal towards Vash for saying such a thing, but… it was a simple explanation. Good enough for her.
For now, at least. Because she was fairly sure that at one point, Vash would tell her something that would make her change her mind again. Kururu still wasn’t too sure about Vash’s claims of Knives being such a horrible person; nothing in his behaviour indicated that he was completely insane and he didn’t seem stupid either. Maybe Vash was just bitter? It all didn’t make sense.
"Having a twin brother seems nice… you’ll always have someone to look after you." A smile suddenly touched her face and she looked at the ground with the uneasy feeling still there; but now, a dash of happiness accompanied it. "I think it must be great to be loved by you like that."
Loved?
If he hadn't been caught off his guard in such a way, Knives would've laughed so hard it would've hurt. Loved? And by him? He—
... had loved once, yes.
He stared at the ceiling for a long moment, unsure of what to say. He was certain he couldn't just go back to those days, to one hundred and fifty years ago when he had smiled as sincerely as any child. He still couldn't see the reason to forgive humans for what they had done to Tessla, to his brother, and to the rest of his family. But the humans responsible and their filthy spawn were a world away, and he had no power to return.
Sighing and wincing slightly at the pain in his chest, Knives looked back at Kururu. He raised his arm, the left one, the one he used to kill... and ruffled her hair. "You don't know what you're talking about," he managed to say, the corner of his mouth tugged upwards in a smirk. "Now go and wash your face. Legato cries enough for the both of you, so you focus on cheering him up."
For a split-second, Kururu really did think that he was going to kill her—a ridiculous thought since he was barely capable of sitting up. So her smile only widened when that was not the case. “Mmhm, I probably don’t,” she said chipper and not caring a bit that she didn’t. These were the moments that made her feel happy enough to not care if she understood anything about the strange man or not. Like it mattered anyway.
"Legato-san isn’t crying anymore, he’s only sulking," she corrected him with a thoughtful face. Seeing Legato cry was a bit… comical, she had to admit that. But seeing men cry always made her feel very uncomfortable, so that was maybe the case. "And I doubt he would appreciate it if I came to cheer him up…"
She quickly ran a hand through her hair and walked towards the door, feeling a lot better than when she had entered the room. She opened the door and hesitated for a moment, turning her head to face Knives again, offering him a cautious smile. "But I hope I succeeded with one person," she said and with that, Kururu walked through the door and closed it behind her back.