Trigun Fan Fiction ❯ Axis ❯ Chapter 1

A/N: For some reason something about Trigun always makes me wax poetic. ^_^;; I think this came out pretty well, though it's a little bit confusing.

This kinda relates to another fic idea I have (something of an epic, actually, with a couple of arcs), but it stands alone. If I ever write the idea I have, this would start after the first arc and bridges into the second; but I'm not sure if/when I'll write it.

Axis

He returned to me as night fell with a tired smile and haunted eyes; and though I embraced Him with a joyful spirit, as I had many times before the day He left, I could not erase the five years that had passed and changed us both in so many ways. Had those years made us strangers again? I did not know.

He sat on my porch as the last sun set while I asked Him quiet questions that He would not answer; then we spoke softly of our friends and loved ones and sat side-by-side in the dying of the light, mourning the dead.

The first morning He stayed inside, hiding from those who fear Him. He sat and watched the children play outside, His expression truly happy, yet at the same time unbearably sad.

It was a week before He dared to leave the porch. Even then the hostile expressions of the townsfolk chased Him back inside before even an hour had passed.

It was a month before He went to the store to buy the groceries for us. By then the people's attitudes had relaxed from hostility to distrust and curiosity. There were some rumblings about running Him out of town, but nothing ever came of it.

As the first year drew to a close, He was generally accepted as the town's resident Legend. But He had become restless, and I had a feeling He would be leaving soon.

I didn't question Him or ask for promises when He walked out the door early one morning, leaving with the night.

I tried not to wait for His return, but knew that would be an exercise in futility; but two weeks later He _did_ come back, and things went back to normal. I didn't ask Him where He had been.

He approached life with a new zeal after His return. He began to actively seek out the company of the other townsfolk, adult and child alike. He laughed more often and His smiles were more genuine, and when He smiled at me, my breath caught in my throat.

Three months passed, and with the onset of the seasonal dust-storms a group of bandits arrived in town. He dealt with them in His spectacular fashion.

The rumblings started all over again, and I feared that they would make good on their threats to run Him out this time, but they died down again as He worked alongside them to rebuild the town and at the same time rebuilt their trust.

He left again as our second year drew to a close, brushing a lock of my short hair out of my face and smiling before leaving with the first rising sun at His back.

I waited for Him to return... I waited for a month.

When He returned as the last sun set, He brought the Girl with Him. The Girl was naïveté and wisdom all wrapped up in one big, bubbly, home-grown package.

They sat side-by-side on the porch and talked about the past and the present and the dream of the future. They said more than what passed their lips.

For the first time I felt the enormity of the gulf between my safe little world and His. Though He had become the center of my world, in His I didn't know where I stood; only that the Girl was closer to Him than was I.

I was jealous.

The Girl stayed for a week, and I tried during that time to draw out as much information about Him as I could. The Girl smiled at me with an expression that made me feel that all my complicated emotions were in fact the simplest thing in the world, and told me that He would tell me when it was time for me to know.

The Girl left in the middle of the day.

He began to go to the bar at night, He listened to every bit of news and gossip within those walls, then walk home as a drunkard but enter the house soberly.

He spoke to the visitors when the busses stopped in town, seemingly oblivious to their awe.

Four months later, the Woman came. The Woman burned with tenacity, though they had seen things that would have beaten down a lesser woman.

The Woman sat with her back against one of the posts and faced Him while they talked. Whenever I came near them they quieted and the Woman watched me with those eyes until I left them alone to their secrets.

Though the Woman stayed only a single night, my jealousy was nearly enough to choke me; like the Girl, the Woman was far closer to him than I, but unlike the Girl, she was close in a much more intense way.

The Woman left as the second sun rose.

It was a month and a half before the end of our third year when That Man came at sunset. That Man had the same face as Him, but wore it differently. That Man's cold eyes drove me to hide inside my house, while He went outside.

He stood on the porch while That Man talked to him from the street. I was too afraid of That Man to try to hear what was being said.

He came in after a while and packed up the things He always took when He left, and then walked away with That Man.

I waited. I was afraid he wouldn't be coming back again, but I waited.

He came home with a huge grin on His face, looking as if the weight of the world had been lifted from His shoulders. He swept me up in His arms and kissed me for the first time.

That night I we sat side by side with our fingers entwined. All he told me was that That Man, His brother, had changed for the better.

I didn't know what He meant by that, but thinking of That Man's eyes, I wondered if He wasn't deluding Himself.

Over the next year the dynamics of our relationship changed. He started to tell me things about Himself. He told me about the woman who had raised Him and That Man, though He didn't say what had happened to her. He told me that He'd seen the ships crash on this planet first-hand, though He didn't say why they had crashed. He told me some of His adventures with the Priest, but He didn't tell me how the Priest had died.

We traveled to some of the neighboring towns and met some of His other acquaintances. The Girl sent us an invitation to her wedding.

The Girl's wedding was held at her new home; a house that was surrounded by more trees than I had thought existed in the whole world.

The Girl's family is enormous! He spent several hours talking with the Girl's grandmother; He smiled when I walked over and introduced me to her, then dragged me off to meet other friends of his.

The wedding was beautiful, though the Woman looked rather uncomfortable and out of place in the Maid of Honor's dress. When the bouquet was tossed, I caught it.

After the wedding the Girl and the Woman regaled us with the story of how they had met the groom and his parents. I looked over at Him and saw that He was smiling secretively. On our way home He told me the unknown part he played in that story. He also told me, in more wistful tones, that the Girl's grandmother was his only child.

When we got home I hung the wilting bouquet in a window to dry.

I had hoped that He would take me with Him when He went at the end of that year, but He just smiled at me and kissed me before leaving into the dawn.

I waited, knowing that he would return.

When He came home He kissed me more passionately than ever before, and then took me inside and made love to me for the first time. As I lay in His arms He told me that He wanted me to travel with Him for the next year; He wanted to show me some places from His past.

We left a week later.

We traveled a very long distance to the place where He had met the Girl and the Woman for the first time, and He told me all about it. He took me to a little spot out in the desert where He first met the Priest, though how He could pick that single spot out I will never know. He took me to places where He and the Priest had met and parted ways.

He took me to a town and told me the painful story of a massacre; the first of many designed for no other purpose than to hurt Him.

In the next town we sat in the silhouette of a statue while He told me about the Psychic.

We went to another town and stood on top of a building while He told me about the second massacre and the Cyclops.

Then we went to the town that had been leveled when the fifth moon received it's deepest crater. There He told me about His most fearsome weapon.

We went back home for a while and He told me about the things that happened here that I didn't know about. He told me about the things he talked about with the Priest. I flinched when That Man's name came up.

We left again, and he took me to a town and told me about the family feud that had once raged there. Then He took me to the inhabited remains of a ship that had crashed only recently, and I met a young girl who pretended to like me, while she was eaten up inside with the same jealousy that I once felt for the Girl and the Woman.

As we left He told me about the battle that had caused the crash, and the people who had died there; and He told me about the Plants, and that He was one of them.

He detoured past a town to stop at a stone building where He, the Priest, the Girl, and the Woman had met a group of orphans. He told me about the sandworm attack, then He took me back to the town we had passed and on the roof of a building he told me about the Child, the Child's death by the Priest's hand, and what had happened afterwards.

Finally we went to an abandoned town, where That Man's name was still written on a monument, and He told me about the day and night they had spent there, and the fight that followed it.

Then He took me to the church and told me about the Priest's death.

For the first time since I had known Him, I saw Him truly cry.

Once He'd gathered himself again, He took my hand and led me out of the town to the Priest's grave, and He told me everything else.

He told me about killing the Psychic, and fighting That Man; and He told me about everything that came before He had met the Girl and the Woman.

He told me why the human race is fighting for it's life on this barren planet.

When he finished I was clinging to him while I sobbed. He held me until the tears stopped, and then he asked me:

"Lina, will you marry me?"

Of course, I could not refuse.

Yet in that moment I understood the one thing that He had never and would never tell me: I can never be the one closest to Vash's heart. Like Meryl, Millie, and Knives, I can only come close.

I know this because in every move he had made with me he had sought the approval of that one.

I know this, because he proposed to me while standing before Nicholas D. Wolfwood's grave on the tenth anniversary of the priest's death.

A/N: As for the part about Millie being Vash's great-granddaughter; this is an idea I had a while back and I've been looking for an opportunity to work it into a story.