Tempest Wind (Vash x F!Reader)

Glimpse of the Past

You stare blankly at the profile before you. Status: Deceased [Unconfirmed]. Lines of text blur together, but your mind still picks them up; they hold general information about you, your age, your place of birth, and the occupation you had. And your name. You stare at the words on the screen—a name that, for so long, had been erased from your head—the name you grew up with, the name you bore before your life was forcibly altered. You hear it ringing in your ears, from a different time, from a different part of the universe. Voices soft and cheerful call out to you, a woman, a man, a little girl. Your family, your friends, your people.

Your eyes blink, trying to clear away the tears forming in them as distant memories of home creep back into your head. A little wooden house by a river in the midst of old woods, a path running along it to different roads connecting you to others like veins. The chill of cold water, the whispers of trees, the song of the water. Your little feet feeling the softness of moss, and your fingers twirling a little white flower between them. A life so different from what you have known. The images flash through your head—no order to them, just glimpses into the past. The house you grew up in slowly falling apart, the paths carved through the forest worn down by your steps. Seasons change, snow comes and goes. How many years were you there, and how did you get here? Not all comes back as you wipe your face into your forearm and look at the picture besides your information.

The figure with a general ship uniform in the photo still mostly looks like you, the face is almost the same, minor tweaks to your features and birthmarks that are no longer there, you notice the texture of your skin and the marks of simply living. You look human. The change in you now has never been as apparent to you before, so clearly you're something else, far removed from who you used to be. You cast down your eyes and take a deep breath.

"So you've always been this pretty. And your name... it's beautiful. It suits you so well." Vash's voice is soft and full of wonder and admiration. "You were a survival specialist on the ship? I didn't even know there was someone like this on the crew."

His words help to lessen the overwhelming intensity of the moment, and you look at the screen again. Indeed, your profession is marked down as "Survival Specialist", and you notice your Birth Place at the very bottom is marked as "Sagittarius 7J23". Memories of walking through the forest come into your head. Surrounded by greenery, you felt safe until something feather light touched your nose. It looked like snow, but as you touched the spot with your finger, it left a dark mark behind—soot. You remember running back home as fast as you could, only to find the forest on fire. The dilapidated building you grew up in engulfed in flames. You hear screams in the forest over the loudness of the blaze. You run towards them, hoping to see the people you care about safe, but the people you find are not the ones you expected. Still, you help them nonetheless.

You touch the planet's name, and it opens up an extensive article on it, but you push past the general description and history to the very end: "Destruction of Sagittarius 7J23".

The successful space colony of Sagittarius 7J23 was wiped out due to widespread fires across 75% of the planet's surface. The root cause is unknown. The colony was believed to have been destroyed within days of the incident, and a rescue mission was not dispatched. A research ship sent to investigate picked up a single signal from the planet and found a group of survivors. 124 people from the planet were saved and moved to Earth, 4 died in transit. The refugees credit their successful survival to one of their members...

You stare at your name again, unable to move on. You are reminded of the dark and gloomy days in the little town. Most of the houses were burned down, but one survived in decent condition thanks to some miracle. The basement was used as a bunker and storage for the preserved food people could scavenge from the ruins of the surrounding settlements. You remember cooking with other people, the stew bubbling in a large pot. You remember how crammed it was and how every surface was covered in soot. You were a teenager then, but you carried that burden. You had found a number of these people wandering the burnt forests looking for others. You had brought them together, you had helped them overcome their shock, and you had put them to work with the sole goal of surviving. You had lost everything in this calamity, helping others was your only purpose at that point. You remember people dying, the lack of food and water, and their lungs being too damaged by the smoke and embers. You sang old lullabies to the children when they couldn't fall asleep. The months of hardship flood your mind and make your hands shake.