Chapter Text
A cool damp cloth is laid across Legato’s burning forehead and before the hand that places it can dart away, he awkwardly catches three long fingers in his shaking grasp. Vash the Stampede does not pull back. It isn’t in his nature.
“Kill me,” Legato pleads. And the pale visage that swims above him, familiar in all the wrong ways, frowns out of misplaced pity.
He has lost count of how many times he’s begged for it in the days (months, weeks, years, minutes?) since his useless flesh was dragged out of the blood-soaked wreckage he’d hoped would become his unmarked grave. Vash took a fatal shot once. He can do it again. Legato will be good this time, he swears. There will be no subconscious flick of threads to shift down the severity of his wound from deadly to grievous. He’ll die like the softest, sweetest tomas chick.
As if his thoughts have been projected past the boiling soup of his brain, the faintest sigh breaks through the shimmering red haze of pain and fever. It does not come from Vash. There is a third presence in his sickroom, hidden somewhere over Vash’s shoulder. If Legato strains his neck he is able to catch the edge of spiked hair, so fair that it is nearly white, in his peripheral vision.
“Please,” Legato tries again. His hand wants to slide from Vash’s glove, sweat and muscle spasms working together to further ruin his unsteady grip. He clutches tighter. “Finish what he—what you started. Please.”
“I can’t,” Vash says. Firm. Resigned.
“You can!” A quiet rustle of feathers hits Legato’s ears. He doesn’t know how he hears it above the ragged sound of his own breathing. “We both know you can. Don’t pretend—”
“Legato—”
“—that you prolong my meaningless existence because of your ideals. You can play that game with anyone else but not me. Not me! I made you break. Your cruelty wears a mask of mercy, but I can see right through it.”
“Not a very good mask then, is it?” Vash’s mouth attempts something that might be a smile. There’s no warmth in it. He slips his fingers out of Legato’s tenuous hold. “I should let you get some rest.”
Panic seizes Legato. It is a living thing inside his chest, stretching to fill the expanse of his rib cage. His bones are sure to crack under the strain.
If Vash leaves now, he will take the third person with him. Legato will be left alone, alive, and unable to change either state. He needs to do…something! But it’s so hot and his head is a furious pulsing ache and his limbs have become impossible to manipulate; his threads aren’t listening to him in the agony of this melting static.
“Stampede,” he grits out, teeth clenched.
Vash stops with his hand on the doorknob. “Yeah?”
Dozens of tiny wings have unfurled from the person standing in his shadow, reaching out in spindly glowing curls. It hurts to look at.
Legato’s sight blurs. “We should have died together.”
Vash doesn’t say anything.
Neither does Millions Knives, but this is to be expected. The dead don’t tend to speak.