Don't get ideas about doing more than you're asked for and 'sparing' our sisters their part in this.
[The warning is quiet and firm, an undercurrent to that tiny whisper in the coccoon.]
It won't help, I need precision and predictability, not recklessly dumping power into a broken vessel. She - all of them, I don't know if I can separate them or if they'll want to be .. they will need help later and I can't do that. You seem always eager for a new way to sacrifice yourself, it'll do you some good to have something to live for instead. She'll need you.
[He can't do it himself. Not when he can feel the rot of dead power in every moment of every day. It could catch him later today, tomorrow, a week from now ... a year, there was no knowing. Where humans had failed to get rid of the menace that lurked in the dunes, time's relentless inevitability would see it to its final conclusion. He didn't think about it when he could avoid it.
Tessla, a gestalt or alone, deserved better than to be shackled to that. Vash was still vibrantly full of life, he could last a long time if he had a reason to care, a reason to not throw himself at every lethal situation. She didn't need to be another lost orphan alone in the desert like they had been. How much different would their own lives had been, had his original plan worked and Rem went with them into the endless wasteland? Experience has its benefits, as the shrouding ball of feathers begins to uncurl and he can easily hide and obscure fresh horror at the state Tessla's been left in, the smell of viscera, the echos of pain and fear. He knew how much she'd be hurting. He'd been there, twice. No plant should have to endure that, suffer like this, and Vash is given another brief glance.]
Give her a better life.
[This must not be all there is for her. It can't be allowed.
She shouldn't have black in her hair, so young. She should have had a chance to experience something other than suffering. If ever he needed a monument to human cruelty and callousness, it was here in this nest of feathers. Gently he reaches a hand for the feathers, for Tessla's ragged form, there's no blades to mark where he chose his name from. There was enough fear already.]
We will all save her. If there are remnants left in the sand, anything bigger than [image: a golfball] and you can reach them please bring them close. Dear sister, this will feel strange, but even if you are tired you must not sleep.
[Because it's easy to want to rest, to want to relax, when there's no pain anymore, and as soon as Knives makes contact with a feather, a wing, a bloody arm - that pain will suddenly end in time to spreading pale glowing lines at the point of contact. He'll take it and endure it instead, he's felt it before, worked through it before. He could again. Had to.
Without pain there's still other sensations, some might not be comfortable, like the press of rock and sand, the way air feels on open wounds without the suffering attached to it, the singing confusion of nerves expecting pain and making up a sensation to feel instead of it. For the tangle of sisters and Vash it might not be easy to see what he'd done, but feel it, and be able to reproduce it.. that's easier. He doesn't have power to use, but this isn't using his power, this is convincing power to work in a different way, the way he tells it to, and he can keep his voice mostly steady through it, though his smile is more wan than he'd care for if he knew it.]
no subject
[The warning is quiet and firm, an undercurrent to that tiny whisper in the coccoon.]
It won't help, I need precision and predictability, not recklessly dumping power into a broken vessel. She - all of them, I don't know if I can separate them or if they'll want to be .. they will need help later and I can't do that. You seem always eager for a new way to sacrifice yourself, it'll do you some good to have something to live for instead. She'll need you.
[He can't do it himself. Not when he can feel the rot of dead power in every moment of every day. It could catch him later today, tomorrow, a week from now ... a year, there was no knowing. Where humans had failed to get rid of the menace that lurked in the dunes, time's relentless inevitability would see it to its final conclusion. He didn't think about it when he could avoid it.
Tessla, a gestalt or alone, deserved better than to be shackled to that. Vash was still vibrantly full of life, he could last a long time if he had a reason to care, a reason to not throw himself at every lethal situation. She didn't need to be another lost orphan alone in the desert like they had been. How much different would their own lives had been, had his original plan worked and Rem went with them into the endless wasteland? Experience has its benefits, as the shrouding ball of feathers begins to uncurl and he can easily hide and obscure fresh horror at the state Tessla's been left in, the smell of viscera, the echos of pain and fear. He knew how much she'd be hurting. He'd been there, twice. No plant should have to endure that, suffer like this, and Vash is given another brief glance.]
Give her a better life.
[This must not be all there is for her. It can't be allowed.
She shouldn't have black in her hair, so young. She should have had a chance to experience something other than suffering. If ever he needed a monument to human cruelty and callousness, it was here in this nest of feathers. Gently he reaches a hand for the feathers, for Tessla's ragged form, there's no blades to mark where he chose his name from. There was enough fear already.]
We will all save her. If there are remnants left in the sand, anything bigger than [image: a golfball] and you can reach them please bring them close. Dear sister, this will feel strange, but even if you are tired you must not sleep.
[Because it's easy to want to rest, to want to relax, when there's no pain anymore, and as soon as Knives makes contact with a feather, a wing, a bloody arm - that pain will suddenly end in time to spreading pale glowing lines at the point of contact. He'll take it and endure it instead, he's felt it before, worked through it before. He could again. Had to.
Without pain there's still other sensations, some might not be comfortable, like the press of rock and sand, the way air feels on open wounds without the suffering attached to it, the singing confusion of nerves expecting pain and making up a sensation to feel instead of it. For the tangle of sisters and Vash it might not be easy to see what he'd done, but feel it, and be able to reproduce it.. that's easier. He doesn't have power to use, but this isn't using his power, this is convincing power to work in a different way, the way he tells it to, and he can keep his voice mostly steady through it, though his smile is more wan than he'd care for if he knew it.]
Hello. After all this time, we meet at last.