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corvidrogue · 1 month

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Someone on curiouscat asked me abt my modern trigun au but I wrote 3k words and cc only allows 3k characters so...woe, exposition be upon ye

cw: child abuse/neglect, suicide, self harm, emotional incest, alcoholism. if that's not all of them/if u see something that should be added, please lmk!!!

ok so the gist of the au is as such:

the identity disclaimer: the twins are fraternal. vash is a trans man and knives is apathetic toward his assigned gender – tends to use he/they if pressed to identify. at certain points in their lives knives has leveraged his gender/sex and their twinhood to shut down speculation on vash’s gender/sex by claiming they’re actually identical/mirror twins.

vash and knives were the second and third child of their family, fraternal twins raised mostly by their older sister tesla who was a few years older than they were and entirely too young to be taking care of children

vash was initially raised as a girl, but he’d do things like take nai’s clothes, want nai’s haircut, etc etc etc.

the twins were launched into the foster system when they were very young after they found tesla collapsed at home, and she passed in the hospital. nai had wanted to call their parents; vash had called an ambulance. it led to a CPS case and the twins being taken away in a neglect/abuse case – tesla had been struggling with a chronic condition the twins didn’t know about and the parents didn’t seek treatment for.

vash has always blamed himself for “breaking apart their family” – if he’d let nai call their parents maybe they’d still have them, but if he’d called the ambulance immediately instead of arguing maybe tesla would have had a better chance to live. a lot of internal conflict for a kid in primary school…

rem agreed to foster them, not necessarily intending to keep them, but even in a nurturing environment vash continued to struggle. rem let him present however was comfortable but that was only a small fraction of what he was dealing with. he and nai got very codependent but he didn’t want to “add to nai’s troubles” and things spiraled until vash attempted suicide

rem found him. she was there with him in the hospital afterward. she was there before they let nai in and when vash finally spilled his guts, rem realized how badly she needed to keep these kids. how badly they needed someone in their corner, something they’d never had, something she was uniquely positioned to provide. she could empathize with them. and it was an all-around terrible situation, but it felt like a push. and vash finally opening up to her felt like a sign, if not from alex then from…something.

it was after vash’s attempt that nai started getting difficult. vash was, of course, guilty and ashamed bc he’d managed to ruin his sibling’s life even more. knives had now decided that vash needed someone to look after him, not the other way around – vash, in trying to protect nai, had closed him out. now nai, in trying to protect vash, locked him into a safe little box and never let him out again.

what followed was years of vash practicing every form of quietly self-destructive behavior in the books, and some louder ones, and knives appointing himself his brother’s keeper. rem did her best to support both boys and help them grow but there would inevitably be things that slipped through the cracks – she couldn’t control how they structured their own inner world. she could get vash support when she found him self-harming but she couldn’t control how he and knives interacted around it.

vash would get into trouble a lot through middle and highschool for being scattered, inattentive, or for catching strays when nai acted out. nai would do things to get a reaction out of vash, to try to control him – they decided who was a good friend for vash, who was a bad friend for vash, who was allowed to place anywhere near as important to vash as knives was. (no one was allowed to be as important to vash as knives was.) it took some considerable time for vash to really wise up to how toxic nai actually was about him, and longer still to start feeling like the safe little box nai kept him in was too small

the only “main cast” member who’s really present before college age is wolfwood – he went to their school, was a year or two under them, and vash had a bit of a crush on him but for obvious reasons never pursued

the twins ended up not finishing highschool bc of The Accident in eleventh grade – another one of nai’s dumb escapades. he liked to explore abandoned/dangerous places, thought himself just generally above other people and their rules. would always tell vash it’s fine, xyz rule is for people too stupid to know better. but we’re smart. and vash couldn’t really argue because they were taking AP courses and they had made up the academic time they’d missed after The Tesla Incident so like???

in his mind, at least if nai was going to do something stupid, vash was going to be there to make sure he didn’t get hurt.

he really didn’t want to go into the old mill, he wanted to stay at home and finish watching some show, and they argued about it but nai was gonna go alone and needed a spotter. nai ended up breaking something/almost getting hurt while they were arguing (again) but when vash tried to stop him, it was vash who got hurt instead – he ended up getting his arm caught and crushed and almost got his head caved in and it was just all very terrible, nai freaked out, the only thing he could do was call EMS and it felt like tesla all over again. vash bled everywhere and in the ambulance all nai could think of was the fact that he didn’t have the correct blood type to give to vash. because they weren’t actually identical twins. this wasn’t the first time vash nearly died but it was the first time nai was there for it.

nai ended up the guilty one after this, vash coded on the way to the hospital and ended up in surgery. afterward nai would help him in any way he could – finding binders that vash could get into and out of since The Accident delayed the top surgery vash and rem had been scheduling. helping with physical therapy. driving him to and from appointments so rem wasn’t constantly in and out of work. he kept vash moving. he kept vash eating. same as he always had.

but vash had already started outgrowing his box and now he was chafing for space. he knew what this was, he knew he was on suicide watch again. and “same as knives always had” was suffocating him more than ever.

vash gets his arm from one of rem’s friends/colleagues in biomed – it’s experimental and proprietary and they have to drive like four hours to have it worked on, but it’s years ahead of any other adaptive equipment he’d have access to back home. it’s not a huge issue to take out a day when he has an appointment

until college apps come around and vash only applies for schools on the east coast.

until nai finds out that vash does not want to go to a single school nai wants to go to, and doesn’t want nai applying to any of the ones he’s applying to.

until the vague idea of “escape” that vash had unknowingly chased ever since tesla died (escape from what?) became brilliantly, unquestionably real.

he and nai fought a LOT leading up to leaving for uni. and while at uni. nai ended up going into biology closer to home. nai would text a lot, even though vash was bad at responding. they had one agreement that vash had allowed: if knives called, vash would always pick up the phone.

after all the screaming matches they’d gotten into, this was a privilege he knew better than to abuse.

vash ends up stumbling through two years of gen ed courses, nosing his way into horticulture. he makes a friend, meryl, who’s originally from kinda close to where he grew up. they navigate the inklings of crushes before he realizes he’s just starved for friends and meryl just adores him platonically. nai visits once or twice in vash’s first semester, but after an argument in the car where nai questions every single fucking one of vash’s life choices and vash threatens to drive them both into a ditch, vash has to place some more boundaries.

the twins actually go fully non-contact for a while. it's rough on rem, tbh.

vash slogs his way through classes. he hangs out with meryl and her girlfriend, milly. he gets into situations because he can’t say no, and gets out of them either uncomfortably or only because the girls bail him out. he spends weekends camping in the ugly red camper van that he picked up secondhand and loves to death. he starts spending weeknights camping sometimes, too.

early in his fifth semester, Vash drops out of college. he spends the next two and a half years living out of his camper, making his way across the contiguous US (and has a brief dip into canada!)

rem hates it, but she’s not exactly equipped to stop him. she just makes him check in frequently, give updates, keeps him on the phone bill and health insurance. she listens when vash says he doesn’t want to talk to nai. she knows he’s spent huge chunks of his time in therapy working on his relationship with nai. she knows nai is still in therapy trying to be normal about vash. all she can do is be there for both of them.

vash ends up getting a little bit instagram famous because he’s always posting beautiful views, local food spots, pictures of the dogs he’s petting. he names his van the stampede because meryl said once that it sounded like one when it had a broken part that took him a bit to fix. he goes off his adhd meds, and that gets rough sometimes, but not as rough as it would be when he’d run out of them at uni. he picks up gig work, helps people out, drives for food delivery apps. he tries new things. he drinks too much, but always stays careful about driving – he’s a terrible enough driver already. he sleeps around, realizes it does nothing for him, stops sleeping around. he has weird skills and hobbies and he picks up more weird skills And hobbies.

he makes friends and acquaintances. he pisses people off. he gets into situations because he can’t say no, and gets out of them uncomfortably. he learns how to say no. sometimes he has to learn the hard way.

he puts string lights up in his van and clips polaroids to them, pictures of his favorite donut shops and old selfies with milly and meryl, postcards he’s picked up. he sends postcards back home to rem, sometimes to the girls. once or twice he even sends one to nai, when he’s feeling brave. when he’s feeling particularly lonely.

he does a lot of growing on the road, while knives does a lot of growing at home.

they text more. vash calls sometimes, tentatively, just to chat. knives tries to be normal about it and vash can feel him trying. sometimes nai succeeds, sometimes the attention makes him insufferable. it’s a gamble. sometimes vash is glad he called, sometimes it leaves him feeling sticky and uncomfortable inside.

nai is, of course, dean’s list double major academic prodigy wow what a stellar student. they make friends with a bunch of dysfunctional queers (enter the gung-ho guns, but not necessarily LR – they join once people start to move back home, being wolfwood’s little brother) and, much to knives’s ire, the kid vash had that annoying crush on in high school is here – nicholas d. wolfwood. even more to knives’s ire, nick ends up in the friend group. they end up roommates. knives doesn’t know it but nick also…had a bit of a crush on vash in high school, but the twins fell out of touch with everyone so. nick doesn’t really know what’s up with vash anymore. he occasionally hears knives arguing on the phone, though, and nai never deigns to elaborate past the occasional “my idiot brother.”

wolfwood for his part grew up in a catholic orphanage and was never lucky enough to get adopted out. college is kind of him learning how to be a person, learning what it means to be bisexual and that it’s okay, and nai is awful and caustic and mean but they take no bullshit from anyone and they don’t really stand for their people being fucked with. so wolfwood has some terrible experiences, but he finds some really supportive friends in some really chaotic, terrible people. (like elendira…THE woman ever)

eventually vash just… starts to get tired. it starts to get tough to keep himself afloat and he starts talking to rem about moving home – what’s feasible, some sort of three year plan at least, etc. he’s not used to planning ahead but they work it out, a few months later the Stampede is a blight upon rem’s neighborhood. vash lives with her until he can find a stable job – he picks up more gig work, security for events, works as a barista and manages to net full-time which isn’t great but it helps him put some money away. someone is putting at least two square meals in him each day, something that hasn’t happened in a long time. he’s now within an hour of knives but he keeps a careful distance – baby steps. neither of them is really sure how to re-engage…but they want to.

they’d like to be normal brothers.

vash buys rem flowers whenever he can and he ends up befriending the owner of the florist/nursery. she’s a regular at the cafe where he works too. eventually he manages to start working for her, makes some more money, nails down a place of his own. fills it with plants. starts putting down roots for real.

meanwhile wolfwood is working at a nearby funeral home as an undertaker. and one day he’s running to pick up an order of funeral bouquets because the guy who was supposed to pick them up is out sick and the last thing he expects is to run into vash saverem from high school???

they end up hitting it off. they end up hanging out a lot. knives HATES it…but he has to admit that if someone is gonna come onto his brother, it might as well be nick. at least he begrudgingly accepts nick as trustworthy and respectable

the vashwood kicks off specifically at the twins’ birthday party, when vash follows his time honored tradition of saving his most impossible wishes for blowing out the candle. he never asks for presents or talks about his wishes, and when ppl press him about gifts he gets visibly uncomfortable. and the way he acts about it sets something off in wolfwood, but wolfwood just chews on it until they have a moment alone. stepping out for some fresh air, and a smoke. and vash gives him this almost sleepy, content-for-once look and asks what's eating him, because he can tell. and he's so open and sweet right in that moment that wolfwood folds and the question does slip out. “what's your birthday wish, for real?”

vash is just compromised enough not to think before he says “to date the prettiest boy i know,” just drunk enough not to register what he said and who he said it to before he's booping wolfwood's nose and patting his cheek and wandering back to re-engage with the group and there's something! about him! that makes wolfwood! so! sad! because he just basically told wolfwood that he's into him, and then walked away like he didn't expect wolfwood to do anything about it. like he didn't even consider it being reciprocated.

anyways vash is a remembers-it-all drinker but he acts like that didn’t happen at all, later. and wolfwood chews on that for a few days before finally the two of them are cleaning up after a totally platonic, totally friendly, not gay at all stay-in movie night at vash’s place. finally wolfwood just corners vash into bringing That up, and hits him with the “i also want that” which stumbles into vash trying to play it off and give wolfwood an out to not take it seriously/not be obligated, but wolfwood is Very Serious. and i have this snippet from the master doc: “vash just looking at wolfwood and searching his face, enough faith in wolfwood to know that he's dead serious but not enough faith in himself to be able to measure up to what wolfwood deserves.”

it’s a gamble and they’re both afraid and vulnerable but they’ve also been hanging out SO much and they’ve become SUCH good friends. and meryl has heard vash agonizing SO much about how hot and kind and sweet and thoughtful wolfwood is – not entirely realizing that most of that? that’s just for him. wolfwood is kind, yeah, but he’s not that nice to anyone other than vash…except maybe kids.

anyways they kiss and they start dating after this and that’s how the funeral home/flower shop au trope grabbed me by the throat and dragged me through every layer of hell

oh also in this au, kuroneko is a public figure like pusheen or hello kitty but wolfwood’s cat is a feral who he fed too many times and vash cajoled him into keeping her and named her kuroneko. “because she looks like her!” to which wolfwood pointed out that it’s not hard for a black cat to look like a cartoon of a black cat. but he did keep her. and she is as spoiled as vash is.

#my trigun #my aus #rambling #tag later

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