Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Year: 0610

Location: November University, November City

Population: 48,676

There is a man in a red coat bumbling around the bar. The locals roar for him as he stumbles through them. They could be cheering or calling for his blood, it’s impossible to tell. The man just smiles, tripping over long legs to triumphantly raise the acquired bottle of whiskey for the table. Milly laughs something that sounds too much like a sob, Wolfwood cheers then goes deathly silent, Livio makes a small noise - a painful little chuckle, and Meryl huffs fondly, sadly. The man's golden hair fades to soot black, his smile the same fake, sad grin he plasters on for everyone. It's all wrong. The whole bar needs to pull themselves together because this is just pitiful, and they made Milly cry, so Meryl opens her mouth –

and wakes with an exasperated shout at a crowd that isn’t there.

Across the room, Milly jumps, "Oh! Good morning, Meryl!"

It takes a moment for Meryl to get her bearings. She’s in her dorm, the smell of alcohol replaced by the citrus candle Milly's youngest sister had sent. The sticky bar top softened into the comforter beneath her fingers. The absent weight of her derringers will haunt her shoulders for the rest of the day.

"Meryl? Are you okay?" Milly calls. She's halfway dressed for her morning class, pretty brown locks that haven't been pulled back yet drape over her strong shoulders. The urge to run her hands through those strands is what finally knocks Meryl back into the present day. "That was a pretty strong shout, I didn't accidentally take anything of yours, did I?"

The worried frown on Milly's face has her scrambling over herself, "Oh, no Milly it was just a silly dream. Nothing to do with you!"

Milly's brows unfurrow and her lips stretch into a happy smile. If Meryl could just keep it there forever, she would die happily. "Alright Meryl, if you say so."

"I do! I say so!" Meryl flushes as the words leave her lips, embarrassment warming her cheeks. 'Pull yourself together, Stryfe!' She scolds herself, 'You're freaking her out! Reel it in!’

The oblivious look on Milly's face throughout Meryl's internal dialogue helps soothe her nerves. She's almost jealous of how unaware Milly is. As much as she would love for her wife to remember their past life together, there are moments – nightmares like the one she just woke up from – when Meryl would rather she remain oblivious.

At least she hasn't woken up screaming for her companions since Milly became her roommate. Every day Meryl has Milly back in her life is a blessing. She can't afford to scare her off with a dead woman's memories.

"Meryl!" Milly shouts.

"Yes?" Meryl shakes herself, "Sorry, I got lost in thought for a minute."

"Are you sure you're okay? I can have Miss Martha send me the notes..." Milly offers.

Meryl is shaking her head before Milly finishes, "I'm fine Milly, really. It's just stress for next week's finals."

Milly hesitates but Meryl is finally able to convince her to head off to class with a, "I'll feel worse if you miss class for me, go ahead Milly, please?"

Then she's finally alone in their room. The mattress springs creak as she flops back into bed. She wonders, not for the first time, where her other companions are or if she'll ever see them again. Milly is a ray of hope, a miracle in and of herself. If her lover is the only one she finds again, Meryl will be content.

It feels selfish wishing for everyone else to crash back into her life too, but that doesn’t stop her when she sees a shooting star.

...

Finals pass in a flurry of last-minute, panic-induced cramming and more coffee than her wallet can handle, but they do pass and then, mercifully, it's summer break.

Milly invites her back to her family's farm like she did the year before. Her Uncle has a counteroffer for them.

"An internship at the plant dome?" Meryl repeats.

"Yeah, one of their plant engineers needs a pair of assistants and you two are still gungho about directing that movie of yours, right?" Roberto takes a long inhale of his cigarette, "Could be a good opportunity to get a closer look at the plants."

Meryl grimaces at the smell of nicotine, but Roberto is buying them lunch and they’re seated on a balcony, so she withholds her complaints as long as the wind keeps blowing west.

"What would we be doing, Uncle Roberto?" Milly asks over her banana sundae. She’s dressed in a green button-down, brown trousers hanging from her wide hips. Her coat of choice this lifetime around is a brown trench coat hand-me-down from the very man in front of them. Meryl understands why she puts her hair up, even five hundred years later – despite both human and plant efforts – the twin suns are unbearably hot on Gunsmoke, but it makes it hard to just grab a lock and play with it like she used to.

The older man sighs, "Putting it bluntly you'd be his wranglers. He's damn good at what he does but according to his supervisors, everything else is like pulling teeth with him."

"And how did you find out about it?" Meryl asks. It struck her as odd that an investigative reporter had heard about something so mundane.

Roberto takes a long drag of his cigarette, "Unfortunately for me, I've known the guy for a couple years now. He asked me for recommendations. I think you girls would have more success than anyone else they've tried to hire."

Milly turns to Meryl, sharing a surprised look. Meryl sips at the last of her smoothie, thinking it over. She’s been wanting to write and direct this movie for a long time. Getting to work so closely with a plant engineer could be a great chance to get more information or even inspiration.

"When would we start?"

Roberto waves their server over, "We can go right now."

...

The plant dome is a marvel of technology. Every plant on the Earth fleet ships from 500 years ago had been gathered into the dome along with their surviving sisters from the Ark. It was one of the only good things that came from Millions Knives' rampage across the planet and it only grew more impressive with each millennium. Multiple plants were hauled back to their cities after they spent some time in the dome recovering, but many still remained, and Meryl can't help the gasp that leaves her at the sheer number of plants before her.

Rows upon rows of plants line the inside of the dome, there must be at least thirty in this section alone. Beside her, Milly shouts in wonder, "Wow! Look at all the plants Meryl!"

Catwalks stretch between each bulb, curving up and over their heads before curving back down on the other side to join back up with the main walkway. Each bulb is connected to an enormous pool of water that surrounds the entire dome, allowing the plants to stay in their bulb or join the collective out in the pool.

Roberto continues forward, leaving the two women to jog after him once the awe fades enough for them to realize he's almost left them behind.

Meryl turns her head this way and that, trying to take in everything she can. Why hadn’t she come here sooner? This place was basically November’s crowning achievement, besides the university.

Gentle blue lights guide her from one plant to another. Some have unfurled to watch them with sparkling eyes. Others are interacting with the humans that stand before them. A little boy giggles when the plant in front of him presses her long fingers against the glass where his tiny hand is already waiting. A group of teenage girls has set up a picnic in front of a bulb further down the long path and gossip to a plant that smiles serenely at their words. An older couple presents white and orange flowers to another plant high above them, she presses close to the glass to get a closer look, wide-eyed with wonder and delight.

Periodically, instead of a catwalk or a plant bulb, the glass of the dome juts out in a square-shaped viewing area where multiple plants can gather before a crowd. Three plants are clustered in one of these areas, entertaining a visiting group of schoolchildren. The kids squeal in delight, showing off paper drawings to the enamored plants as their teachers and escorts remind them not to tap on the glass.

It hits her then, the feeling that’s been growing since she first stepped inside and saw the little boy communing with the plant.

Milly comes to an abrupt stop beside her and gently whispers, "Meryl, you're crying."

All those scars, all the running and painful smiling, the exhaustion in his eyes, the slump to his shoulders, the pain and suffering he went through until the very end – every time he got back up was for this. All for this.

Milly is in front of her now, concern etched into her face. Calloused thumbs from farm life ever so gently wiping away her tears. Meryl wants to shake her, demand that she look around them and see, 'This is what we fought for, we did this – us! – two unimportant human women – we fought with Vash the Stampede and this is what we helped make.'

She wished, not for the first time but more strongly than ever, that Milly remembered their past life and could really, truly understand the magnitude of what was happening around them.

If only he were with them now, if he could see how far they've come-

"Hey, Vash!" Roberto gruffly shouts.

Milly goes rigid in front of her, but Meryl is too focused on the ebony hair that peeks out behind a bulb to return Roberto’s greeting. It's not possible, it can't be the same Vash, not over five hundred years later but his face is unmistakable, and Meryl had thought the same about Milly three years ago.

A ghost from the past has appeared in front of her and with him blooms memories older than she's been alive.

"Wow, Mister! Has anyone ever told you, you look a lot like Vash the Stampede?" Milly beams, her hands drifting down to hold Meryl by the shoulders. Her fingers rub comforting circles as she speaks.

The man chuckles as he makes his way down to them, walking along the side of the dome from a plant higher up on the wall. Fear slices through Meryl’s stomach before she remembers the three gravity plants that famously reside somewhere further into the building.

"You know, probably not as often as you would think." The ghost replies.

The closer he gets the more discrepancies Meryl can pick out. The color of his eyes is off, greener with less blue and he’s got an undercut now, once spikey hair flopping forward into teal-green eyes. In place of buckles and leather, black baggy pants and a dark turtleneck cover his body, the only inch of skin she can see aside from his face are the three fingers on his right hand, uncovered by his gloves. The long red coat is different, bigger, and with far fewer buttons. Meryl catches a closer look at his left arm as he brings it up to rub at the side of his neck. The sleeve drops enough to pick out teal metal.

He didn't manage to keep his arm in this life either. She dreads finding out how much he's lost in his new life.

Roberto introduces them, "Vash, this is my niece Milly and her friend Meryl. Girls, this is the cattle you have to herd."

"Cattle...?" Vash's lips twitch as if he can't decide if he's amused or upset by Roberto's words. He settles on a familiar pout.

"You asked me to find you an assistant, I brought you two." And with that, the man turns around and leaves.

"Wait, Mr. Niro!" Meryl calls after him in vain.

"Err, uh..." Vash has his arms outstretched in his own attempt to bring Roberto back. He flails a bit when it's clear the man won't be returning to elaborate more on the situation. It surprises Meryl a little, how shy this version of Vash is. The man she remembers would have kicked up a fuss, Meryl can practically hear him shrieking "DON'T LEAVE US HERE LIKE THIS!! COME BACK!"

"Well, I hope he at least told you what you'll be doing." This Vash sheepishly says instead, rubbing at his neck again. A new nervous tic?

"Oh don't worry about Uncle Roberto Mr. Vash, he's really a nice guy." Milly snatches up Vash's free hand and holds it between her palms. She shakes his hand so hard he almost falls over, "I'm Milly Hopson and this is Meryl Stride just like he said, we were told you needed some assistants over the summer and we're on break now, so we'd be happy to intern with you-"

Meryl loves Milly, she really does, but she can see that Vash is being used as a rag doll and hardly registering any of her words.

"Milly." Meryl lays a soothing palm over their conjoined hands and gently untangles them, "The poor man can't keep up with you."

She smushes the pride in her chest down when she manages to intertwine her fingers with Milly’s instead.

Milly blinks down at her, unconcerned by the exchange of hands, and then looks at her dizzy victim, "Oh...Oh! I'm so sorry, I got carried away again."

"Not at all, it's alright Miss." Vash regains his bearings slowly. Milly hovers nervously, reluctant to touch him as he stumbles back a bit. "Well, it seems like you got the gist of it."

Vash finally settles on his feet before immediately bouncing right back, "I'm Vash Estamp, all I really need you to do is keep me on task. There's so much to do around here, I can hardly keep track of it all." He chuckles.

"And what do you do Mr. Estamp?" Meryl asks. Vash waves her off immediately, "Just call me Vash, the Mister part just reminds me how old I am."

He gestures for them to follow him, and they make their way toward the back of the Dome, "I do some pretty basic stuff, there's just a lot of it and I travel some but it's up to you ladies if you want to come with me when I do."

The rows of bulbs continue, a couple of plants breaking off to follow. Meryl waves at them and they happily wave back. Eventually, they reach a service elevator and Vash swipes a card to call the elevator.

"I try to make schedules, but it changes so much last minute that I sort of gave up and the paperwork is..." Vash grimaces and Meryl hides a snicker, she always figured he'd be horrible at paperwork.

The look on his face after reading one of her insurance reports was nothing short of ghastly and he'd only made it through the first paragraph. As they ride up to the office floors, he explains the finer points of the internship.

She's prepared for a mountain of paperwork to await them in his office but the chaos she sees instead puts even a mountain to shame. There are so many stacks of paper, all piled as high as Meryl is tall. Half of them have been piled onto the floor, his desk too occupied with more papers to handle them.

"Oh my goodness, you're not very good at paperwork are you Mister Vash?" Milly cheerfully informs him. Vash looks ready to cry – scratch that, he is crying.

"It just keeps coming no matter what I do." He sniffles with wet eyes.

Good grief.

Meryl rolls up her sleeves, "How do you want them sorted?"

"Wait you're going to start right now?"  Vash protests, “You don’t even have a card to get into the building yet!”

Heading towards the left side of the room, Meryl glances over the documents on top, "It's only going to get worse the longer we wait. Better start as soon as we can!"

"So, you...really want the job?" Vash mutters in quiet awe.

"Oh, Meryl this is going to be great! I hope we get paid better than that internship last year!" Milly takes the right side of the room, an unspoken agreement to meet in the middle.

"We didn't get paid at all, Milly." Meryl huffs, the remnants of her disdain for that internship still lingering even a year later. The news station was very little help in gaining experience with writing, they were basically coffee mules the whole summer.

"I - yes! Of course you'll get paid!"  Vash assures them, elation evident in how much happier he already looks. "Uh, sorting..."

Milly and Meryl both look back at him. Meryl is ready for him to say something absurd that she will override immediately (she refuses to organize them based on color or title), but then he surprises her again, "I get documents related to mechanical issues and plant-specific issues. Some are from outside the Dome and some are time sensitive so if you could organize them based on priority, location, and job that would be great!"

Were her memories off or is this a more competent version of Vash?

"Are you okay? Is that too much?" He winces at the look on her face. Meryl quickly shakes her head and puffs up with confidence, "Nope, just start the clock and consider this our first day on the job!"

"Don't worry about a thing Mr. Vash, we'll get this sorted for you!" Milly adds.

"You girls are a pair of life savers thank-"

A shout from down the hall calls his attention, "Vash! Amber's tank is leaking again! Hurry!"

Vash is running out the door with a parting holler "-yousomuchIhavetogonowbye!"

A fond grin curls at Meryl's lips, relief loosening her shoulders. Some things just don't change it seems.

Milly giggles across the room, "I think this internship is going to be fun Meryl!"

…

Vash Estamp, they quickly learn, is not notorious for getting distracted as Roberto had told them. Though Meryl supposes on some technical level this does kind of count. Vash has a pager that connects to the terminal in his desk, so the ladies can hear when the man is paged for some crisis or other. At least once every half hour his comm goes off with a -  

“Vash, we need you in section A.”

“Paging Mr. Estamp, we have a problem over here in control room B.”

“Estamp, if you get the chance I have a meeting with the treasurer in an hour and I need your opinion on some notes.”

“Hey V? Hera isn’t responding to any input and we’re not sure if she’s just sleeping or not.”

“Vash! The girls are fighting in section F again! That damn brat is upsetting Ariel!”

Meryl wrinkles her nose. Don’t they have other people to call for things like that? No wonder Vash has bags under his eyes. And the documents they've organized so far…she’s pretty sure this one should have gone to the janitor instead of the Head Plant Engineer. Milly had eventually started a pile specifically for the maintenance officer and transport official. It’s with much disdain that Meryl adds to the piles.

What in the world is going on here?

Thankfully around four (near closing time for the public Meryl notes), the alerts slow significantly and the office goes quiet. Only the sound of shuffling paper fills the space. Six stacks have replaced at least ten smaller ones, and the girls can finally see the floor of Vash’s office.

Meryl is expecting Vash to come back to the office eventually, but another hour passes and he’s oddly absent. Just as she’s about to grab Milly to start looking, a large man with a mean face opens the office door.

“Found him on the pipes.” The man explains, doing very little from persuading Meryl he isn’t a kidnapper. Vash is fast asleep in his arms, dozing away. “You his new assistants?”

“That’s us.” Meryl gawks, it’s not like Vash to just fall asleep anywhere and the sight threw her for a loop. “I’m Meryl and this is Millie.”

“Gofsef. I’m one of the security guys around here.” He grunts and places Vash down onto the couch in the corner. He shifts awkwardly from one foot to another now that his task is completed, “I hear he’s more likely to fall asleep under his desk, so just...check there, I guess? If you can’t find him.”

The man is awfully shy for a guy of his size. Milly is quick to set him at ease and lead him out, much to Gofsef’s obvious relief. In the meantime, Meryl approaches Vash, “Mist – uh, Vash? Hey, Vash, wake up.”

It takes a couple pats on his cheek, but Vash eventually stirs to blink blearily up at her.

“…I fell asleep again, didn’t I?” He laments.

Meryl nods much to his obvious despair. Gloved hands scrub harshly at his face before he smacks his cheeks, “Okay! I’m up now!” Vash leaps to his feet, “What time is it?”

The watch on Meryl’s wrist says, “5:12”

Ebony hair flops with each exaggerated nod he gives, “Right! Okay! That gives us plenty of time to get you guys everything you need for this internship.”

Meryl and Milly follow him out of the room, but not before pointing out the organized piles. “Hey look at that! You got more done than I thought you would, thanks!” And with totally warranted smugness at their progress, they make their way down to security to get their badges and then up to HR to sign the necessary papers.

By the time everything is said and done, their shift is over, and Vash sees them out. He waves enthusiastically at them from the front entrance with energy only Milly tries to match. As the last sun starts to set, washing their apartment in a familiar orange hue, Meryl thinks back to Milly’s words.

Fun might be stretching it; the internship is still a job but...

But Milly is here and now so is Vash. They found each other again. A new adventure in a new time. Maybe they’ll find the others too.

"Yes, I think so too." She whispers into her pillow.

...

With over 700,000 square feet to its name, the Dome remains one of November’s crowning achievements and the greatest tourist attraction since its opening. After six expansions and two remodels, the plants and their tank share a building with the Plant History Museum and a branch of the November Public Library. Suffice it to say, it’s huge and every inch of it rattles with Meryl’s shout of displeasure.

The stacks that they had wrangled into some semblance of order have been replaced with brand-new piles.

"Yeah..." Vash wilts, shrinking back down into his coat. The engineer had taken refuge in its baggy nature at Meryl’s screech, doing his best impression of a turtle. He was only just starting to emerge too when he saw the look on her face, "This is partly why I can't keep any secretaries."

"Good thing there's two of us! Come on Meryl, if that's all they give him every day it shouldn't take us long to catch back up!" Milly recovers the quickest, striding back over to her side of the room.

Meryl sets her jaw. Vash wilts further, letting the red coat collar hide everything except his eyes.

"You're right. Let's get to work! No flimsy sheets of paper will get the best of us!" Meryl rolls up her sleeves, this time with a vengeance. Milly giggles and claps her hands excitedly, unperturbed. She had told Meryl once in their past lives that she found this side of her cute.

Vash perks back up, eyes wide and quickly coming out of his red shell, "I-! I'll get started too!"

He throws himself at the remaining organized piles with enthusiasm.

For the majority of the morning, they sort while he reads and signs. It quickly becomes a silent competition to see if Milly and Meryl can organize faster than Vash can sign. The stack of prioritized papers is already empty and less than half the local job papers remain from yesterday, but the girls keep the papers coming. Meryl smirks every time he puffs up with pride at finishing a pile only to squawk when he immediately gets another stack. It’s fun and the nostalgia of his little noises quickly soothes Meryl’s earlier ire, she nearly forgot how expressive he was, but soon enough Vash starts to fall behind.

There is a seemingly endless demand for him to go out and help around the Dome. They quickly get used to the spontaneous ping of alerts from his pager before Vash is rushing out in a flurry of limbs.

During one of the times that Vash is away, a professionally dressed woman sticks her head in with a new cart of papers.

"Oh, you ladies must be the new assistants!" She greets them, "I hope you stick around; we certainly need the help."

Milly waves at her with a smile that dims a little when Meryl frowns deeply at the cart. "Hang on, is this all really for him?"

"Afraid so..." the woman laments, she leans back out the doorway, checking both ends of the hallway quickly before whispering, "Mr. Estamp got saddled with three other jobs after a couple guys quit two months ago.”

Milly and Meryl lean in closer to hear her better. "The director is cutting corners; I’d be careful if I were you. You might get saddled with more jobs.”

"Thank you, Miss..." Meryl fishes.

"Luida. I'm the head secretary for the Dome."

Luida gives them a parting wave and leaves with far fewer papers for the engineers further down the hall. It’s odd to see her so young and dressed up in modern clothes. Luida was an amazing woman, and Meryl looked up to her leadership skills and no-nonsense attitude when it came to helping Vash and running ship 3.

"Meryl, do you really think Mr. Vash has been taking on all those other jobs?" Milly asks with a concerned press of her lips.

"It makes sense, doesn't it? We made all those extra piles because we thought they were meant for someone else." Meryl responds.

Milly takes a short moment to think about it, "Does that mean he's been working overtime?"

Meryl's head shoots up from the stack, glancing at the empty space where the stacks they had organized the day before were placed, "I didn't notice it before, but he was reading through everything before he signed it. If he got through all the priority stuff that we organized yesterday..." Meryl runs the calculations quick as a lightning strike. She slams the stack of papers down, "NO WONDER THAT MORON FALLS ASLEEP SO FAST!"

She doesn’t have time to decipher the fond look on Milly’s face while she rants and raves. She’s going to give someone a piece of her mind.

...

Vash barges in with lunch an hour later, "I hope I guessed right; I wasn't sure what your preferences were."

Meryl makes grabby hands at the extra cups of coffee he brought, no doubt reading off what was written on their cups this morning. "Oh wow, thank you, Mr. Vash!" Milly wolfs down her sandwich.

“Please just call me Vash.” He begs her.

“No.” Milly smiles sweetly. Meryl cackles at him while he hangs his head and sighs. She loves it when Milly shuts people down in the nicest, bluntest way possible. It flabbergasts people and leaves them sputtering. Vash takes it with much more grace than others like he almost expected such a cheerful denial.

Meryl doesn’t have time to ponder that when she needs to know, “Are all of these really yours?”

Vash wearily eyes the documents for the maintenance officer and sulks, “Yes.”

Meryl groans, pinching the bridge of her nose already sensing the on-coming Vash-the-Stampede-induced migraine. She loves the man, she really does, but could he go one lifetime without sweeping up extra trouble for her?

Her sandwich does not respond to her grumbles, though Vash has his puppy eyes cranked up to eleven, “You can still quit if you want.”

The migraine rears its head, “Absolutely not!” She’s just found him again, like hell a bunch of papers are going to scare her off. “Milly!”

Milly launches to her feet, standing at attention, “Yes?”

“I’m waging war on all this damn paperwork, what say you?”

“Yes!”

Meryl shucks off her jacket. Time to get serious.

“Ah, but your lunch…” Vash trails off, watching his interns go to war on his papers. It’s a massacre.

Injuries on both sides are sustained, and band-aids and tape are dispersed among the troops. It’s fortunate the offices on either side of Vash’s are empty, the police would have been called ten times over. The only soul who dares to brave the battleground is Luida, resupplying troops for the enemy. Vash, fearful of the monsters he’s unleashed, signs his papers under his desk and warns everyone else away. One only has to hear the snarls and cackles coming from his office to heed the warning.

Thus, the legend of the Dome Demons is born.

…

It takes four days to fight the disorganized mess of papers into something resembling order. By then the three had settled into a routine where Meryl and Milly would organize in the morning while Vash ran around like a chicken with his head cut off. Around 12 he would reappear in the office with lunch, always something they both enjoyed despite him never asking what they prefer. Meryl chalks it up to the food itself, who doesn't like a Ruben sandwich with extra mayo, pickles, and bacon? Then it was back to flipping through papers and piling them high until late afternoon when Gofsef would appear with a sleeping Vash like clockwork.

With nothing left to organize Meryl finds herself at a loss on the fifth day. She flounders for something to do. Vash's absence, which hadn't been a problem before, is now keenly felt. Milly looks around the room as if searching for a physical answer when she startles Meryl with a triumphant shout. "Ah-ha!"

She holds up a calendar book from Vash's desk and flips it open. A pink tongue pokes through her lips as she scans it. She’s so cute.

"Who uses paper calendars nowadays?" Meryl openly wonders.

"Aw Meryl, it looks like he really did try to keep up, but it’s blank for the past four weeks." Milly shows her. As she said, the beginning of the year looked neatly organized. Meetings and appointments are jotted down with a time and place. In contrast, Mid-March is chaos. Scratched out and frantically written words squeezed into every open space makes it look like a six-year-old scribbled all over it. It's blank for much of April.

Meryl frowns at it, then down at Vash's terminal. Fingers clench, resolve straightens her spine. "Okay, here's what we're going to do, Milly."

Vash is ambushed at lunch. The poor man goes pale at the sight of their glimmering eyes and stubborn posture. Honestly, he looks like he's about to get mugged.

"I want you to tell us your schedule.” Meryl demands, “As much as you can right now."

"Are you sure?" He hesitates, "It changes by the hour."

Milly insists and no one says 'no' to Milly, so he naturally acquiesces. Meryl informs him in no uncertain terms that she will start fielding all his calls and alerts. She braces for an argument, it's a lot of trust for someone of Vash's standing to suddenly hand his comm over to a bunch of interns, but he gives in with obvious relief.

It's only then that Milly realizes she still doesn't have a job. "Oh but wait, what will I do?"

Vash hums in thought, "You could drive the cart?"

The two ladies give him an uncomprehending blink.

"I use a golf cart to get around downstairs. The dome is so big, even if I ran it would still take ten minutes to get anywhere." He clarifies.

Milly lights up at the prospect, saluting him like she used to at the Bernardelli higher-ups, "You can count on me!"

The lunch hour ends shortly after and Meryl launches herself into her work, reforging every inch of the iron will she had in her last life. The terminal crackles to life, messages and calls flowing in like a vengeful river. If she was actually a newbie this would quickly become overwhelming. Good thing she’s not.

"Vash is in the middle of working on Fiona's tank, I'll send him your way as soon as he's done."

"Mr. Klark, if you wanted something like that done so last minute, you should have said something sooner. Mr. Estamp has more important things to worry about right now."

“He doesn’t have time for a meeting in ten minutes, let me schedule one for you.”

“Ma’am that is not his job.”

The other employees catch on fairly quickly that once Vash's assistant puts her foot down, there's nothing to be done. They argue with her at first, demanding they speak to Vash themselves, but Meryl has faced down far far scarier things than a couple of disgruntled employees.

When the clock strikes 4, instead of Gofsef, it's Milly carting Vash into the office. Meryl's stomach turns at the somber look on her partner's face, "He's very tired, Meryl."

Without exchanging a word, just a look and a nod, they both decide to let him sleep. It reminds Meryl of how they were long after their wedding. Silent conversations happening between them, both sometimes moving without even having to make eye contact. They haven't known each other that long here, but Meryl likes to think some of their past relationship made it through the reincarnation cycle.

Or maybe it's just a coincidence.

"How did it go?" Meryl whispers.

"Great! I'm still getting used to the layout, but I think I'm getting the hang of it. How about you? We got fewer calls than I thought we would." Milly whispers back

"I'm getting there. Mr. Lee is giving me some hell, but he'll get over it."

"Oh, we met him. He was very upset about what you said to him." That was a surprise, though Meryl should have expected the mule of a man to go around her. "I nearly clocked him, the horrible things he was saying about you, but Mr. Vash stuck up for us and I drove over his foot on the way out. You should have seen it, Meryl. I think Mr. Vash likes having us around!"

Ignoring the confession of a hit-and-run, Meryl suppresses the fondness swelling in her chest. The chief didn’t often step in to defend them at Bernardelli. It was nice to know Vash didn’t have the same reservations. He was always a good man, but it was odd he was already so fond of them and trusted them so much.

He must have gotten sappier with his new life.

She watches him doze away on the couch while Milly covers him with a blanket she brought just for this occasion. The larger woman settles down at the end of the couch, quickly drifting off with Vash into dreamland.  

Meryl wonders if maybe they went soft. This version of their world was much nicer, bounties were largely a thing of the past, plant-human relations were stable, and very few people carried guns anymore. Their main concern was a guy shit-talking Meryl at work rather than a townful of hired guns or a humanity-destroying ship.

Vash was falling asleep among strangers, Meryl didn’t have to worry about where their next meal would come from, Milly wrote home more often…

She wonders if the other two got to be softer in this life too.

Chapter Text

There is a small woman in white, quick on the draw and sharp as a whip, she runs towards her objectives with no abandon even as her peers sneer down at her. She is impervious to their mutterings, but the words weigh on her. Still, she remains steadfast and resolute. Milly is honored to have such a woman leading the way and, when the time finally comes, Milly is proud to stand next to her. She loves the woman so much. She would follow her anywhere. In her dreams they walk side-by-side, hand-in-hand along an invisible path through the desert.

Just ahead of them is a tall man in black who carries his cross everywhere he goes. The man is strong, but he uses that strength to help everyone except himself. Sometimes when Milly checks on her companions, prying her attention away from the woman’s reassuring presence, his strong back isn’t there.

Instead, there walks a large man with a cowboy hat who doesn't believe himself worthy of walking with them, but his heart is even bigger than he is, and his hands are so, so gentle with the fragile things that Milly sometimes shouts reminders to him that he is loved and they cherish him. Most of the time, he walks beside the empty space where the man with the cross had been. Sometimes, he’s gone too.

Sometimes, it’s just Milly and the red coat.

The coat is a lithe thing, with a sadness hardly contained in its folds. He walks even further ahead than the other two men. When he looks back at them, it’s with a smile so soft it would put silk to shame.

These people who walk with her are hurt and tired and sad, but they still walk on. Milly loves them, each of them in their own way. She smiles as wide as she can despite her own pain. It's the least they deserve. They can't see how amazing and inspiring they are, but Milly will remind them every single day for the rest of their lives. In the nicest version of this dream, she wakes up with all of them still walking together.

In the meanest version of this dream, before she wakes, when it’s just her and the red coat – when the man in black leaves without a word and the woman follows with a whisper of love and the cowboy fades after a peaceful sigh - when only the red coat remains and she knows deep in her soul that she’ll stop walking that invisible path soon too, leaving him all alone – she asks, 'Will you be okay on your own?'

'Yes,' the red coat lies, 'Don't worry about me.'

She thinks of what the woman would say, of what the cowboy hat or the cross would say. She doesn't say any of those things.

'You should go find a nice place to visit. I'm sure you'll make plenty of friends anywhere you go.'

'I'll try the city, I suppose.' The coat whispers.

And here another red coat greets them bright and early behind an office door, that same gentle smile betraying his fondness for them already.

He did it. She knew he could.

"Good morning, ladies!" Vash waves them in. Meryl grumbles around her caffeine, beautiful even half-asleep in her drink and still dressed in white.

Meryl’s blue beret hides the bedhead she failed to wrangle this morning and Milly despairs over the loss of the short skirt and tights she used to wear so long ago but the blue jean shorts and leggings are still appreciated. On the other hand, Milly can’t say she misses the cloak when Meryl is so adorable drowning in her white jacket.

Milly has never been so certain in the kindness of the universe, to give these two precious people back to her. She will happily carry the memories of their past life - the good, the bad, and the scary - all alone so long as they get a new chance at happiness with her.

"I got a call earlier this morning,” Vash explains to them. The half-packed briefcase on his desk abruptly makes more sense, “I'll be heading towards Mei to check on a plant. Would you girls be willing to come with me? I'll get distracted if no one keeps me on task."

"At least he's self-aware," Meryl mutters.

"I'm free! I'd love to travel a little this summer, especially to a place so famous for its food!" Milly smiles and Vash grins wider at the agreement.

"If Milly goes, so will I." Meryl nods. Good old Meryl, always looking out for them.

"The Dome will handle transportation costs. Don't worry about meals either, just whatever you need to bring and any tourist stuff you want to get!" Vash bounces a little, clearly excited as he moves around, snatching up documents seemingly at random to put in the briefcase. He looks tired to Milly. At the very least, there should be fewer calls to help around the Dome if they’re all out of town.

"We'll leave this afternoon or sooner if you two can manage.” The paper in his hands gets a double take before Vash briefly scowls and tosses it in the trash. “Their food plant has stopped producing, so the sooner the better."

"What?!" Meryl shouts, lurching up out of her slump and scarfing down her breakfast sandwich in one go, "W'y 'i'n you s’y ‘o!"

Milly follows her out, well used to Meryl's habits and mannerisms, "We'll be back soon with our bags packed, Mr. Vash!"

Vash is staring in bewilderment, entirely unprepared for their abrupt leave, when she shuts the door. Milly giggles, happy to see that he’s still baffled by their antics even in this life.

It’s a rush to their summer apartment and back again. Meryl is a whirlwind of determination, marching all the way to their apartment, a small trail of destruction in her wake as pedestrians try and regain their bearings after getting hit by such a small force of nature. Milly skips through the carnage, pleasantly listening to Meryl fret over what to bring and then recreating the same scene on the way back.

They meet Vash at the front of the Dome. The two women draw short at the sight of a black government-issued car already waiting for them. Vash waves them over and a driver jogs around the car to take their bags. The gold badge on the woman’s shirt and the standard-issued NCP uniform confuses Milly.

The officer and Vash load the car while she follows Meryl into the backseat, “Meryl why is there a policewoman here?”

“It must be because of the City Plant.” Meryl answers with her chin in her hand, a thoughtful look on her face that Milly often sees when they do homework together. “I’m glad we didn’t drag our feet getting here.”

The car wobbles as the officer and Vash climb into the front seats. They pull away from the Dome and with a practiced motion, the officer flicks a switch on the dashboard before they drive out onto the main road. Sirens go off from somewhere outside of the car.

“Same as last time, Autumn?” Vash asks their driver from the passenger seat. The woman, Autumn, nods.

“Do you think the plant will be okay?” She asks.

“I already have the readouts; I don’t think it’s anything that can’t be fixed,” Vash reassures.

They're bustled over to the hovertrain station, a large structure with sleek white trains pulling in and out all day long. The officer escorts them over to the intercity terminal which holds the largest out of all the trains. With sixteen large cars including the engine, it’s a behemoth compared to the city trains. It has to be. Even with sand shields, the sandstorms on Gunsmoke could toss the smaller trains around like a ragdoll.

“Thank you miss!” Milly waves at the officer, before they enter their assigned car. Vash and Meryl echo her sentiments.

The policewoman salutes them back and wishes them luck with a worried grimace.

It’s a full day’s ride to Mei from November so most people who can afford it get sleeper cars. Each car has two rooms, which allows Milly and Meryl to have a room that is conjoined to Vash's. Meryl is fascinated by the luxurious room, neither of them had noticed they were boarding a first-class car.

Two twin beds, separated by a nightstand, take up the far end of the room. A couch is nestled against the longer wall with a chair and table across from it. At the other end, directly across from the twin beds is the conjoining door. Perpendicular to that door is a cabinet with dinnerware, snacks, and a complimentary bottle of wine. Milly takes care of the sweets before Meryl even realizes they’re there.

"Wow, being a plant engineer has all kinds of perks huh?" Meryl muses.

Milly gives her a happy noise of agreement, finding a menu delicately placed on a fancy table. "Do you think Mr. Vash will have lunch with us?"

"Can't hurt to ask, I want to pick his brain about plants for our movie."

A whistle pierces the air, the floor beneath them jerking forward as the world outside the window begins to move. Milly keeps her balance, adjusting quickly to the change in acceleration. Meryl does not. The shorter woman squeaks and stumbles back, scrambling to keep her balance. Milly’s arm wraps around her waist mid-fall, catching her before she falls to the floor.

Pink floods the face in front of her. Meryl flushes all the way to her ears, fingerless gloves frantically trying to shield the sight from Milly. Oh, but she’s so cute when she blushes. It had been extremely rare to see Meryl flush so completely. Her more common angry blush only went as far as her cheeks. She only got this red when they were together, and Milly used her strength to manhandle her lover. Meryl got all kinds of hot and bothered when Milly showed off her strength.

Milly’s heart pounds. So, this hadn’t changed either. Soulmates are real; they must be for her to have found her Meryl again.

“There’s no need to be embarrassed, Meryl,” Milly reassures her, playing dumb and pulling Meryl back up out of the accidental dip.

“I- I- uhhh-” Meryl tries valiantly to recover herself, “CARDS! Let’s play cards! Or! Or we can organize the stack of papers Luida gave us this morning! Yes, that! Let’s do that!”

“Okay, Meryl.” Milly happily indulges her.

The greenery outside gives way to nothing but sand and desert. Milly grabs a handful of papers and colored binder clips to separate each pile. The papers offer a nice distraction for Meryl, not that Milly is watching her blush slowly fade from her ears. Not at all.

A phrase on the page catches her attention like a Tomas to feed. It’s…she doesn’t fully understand what the words mean but her gut stirs uncomfortably the longer she tries to piece through it.

Authorization to vend product to consumer(s) sanctioned by director.

“Meryl.” She whispers, unsure suddenly of how secure their room is. “Look at this.”

Meryl leans over from her end of the couch to take a look, “Oh, you noticed it too.”

Her heart drops, “You’ve seen this before?”

The blue beret bobs, “I noticed that the majority of the papers coming from the director all have that phrase in there somewhere. They’re the only ones Vash doesn’t sign.”

“What does he do with them?” Milly’s heart climbs back up to its spot, relief trailing behind it.

“I don’t know.”

…

A long, silent hour later Meryl knocks on the door between their rooms, "Mr. Vash! Do you have a minute?"

There's muffled shuffling on the other side of the door. When it creaks open, Vash stands dazed and sleepy on the other side, his hair tousled from sleep. Milly’s stomach twists a little at the sight. How long did he get to sleep? Hopefully longer than twenty minutes.

"Yeah sure, what's wrong?" A gloved hand covers his yawn.

"Oh nothing, we just wanted to ask if you'd like to join us for lunch."

Vash blinks blearily at them, "...right now?"

"Sure, why not?" Meryl gestures to the clock, "It's almost one o'clock."

The engineer startles at the information, "Ugh, is it really that late already? Damn."

Meryl eyes Vash’s pained look suspiciously, but before she can ask any questions the man is nodding, "Give me a minute and we can eat in my room."

True to his word, about five minutes later Vash reappears looking more awake. They take a seat on his couch and call in their orders using the interface embedded into the wall. Vash had poked at it wearily like Milly’s seen her grandmother do, before Meryl took over and ordered for all of them.

"So, Mr. Vash, Milly and I want to make a movie." Meryl starts, smirking a little at the disgusted face they’ve come to expect when he hears ‘Mister’, "It has to do with plants so we were hoping we could ask you some questions."

“A movie about plants?” Vash frowns in confusion, “Like a documentary?”

Milly shakes her head, then leans forward conspiratorially, “We want to write the next Vash the Stampede movie!”

A gymnast flips less than the engineer’s face does in that moment. Milly is quietly impressed by the sheer range of emotions he goes through. Eventually, he settles on slamming his head on the small table between them with a ‘WHAM’ and the tray of glasses rattles dangerously.

“You don’t like the idea?” Milly pouts. It was Meryl’s dream to make an accurate depiction of the history of Noman’s Land and if Mr. Vash was going to be rude about it then boy did, she have some choice words for him.

“Well…don’t you think there have been enough?” Vash’s face is pained and exasperated when he lifts it up just enough to talk to them, keeping his chin on the table.

“Yeah, well, they all suck,” Meryl states. Exasperation trades places with bafflement.

Please ask her why, please ask her why, please ask-

“What makes you say that?” Vash questions, lifting his head up a little, and Milly all but glows. Meryl’s eyes light up with a fire that makes her gorgeous in a way Milly loves to see. Vash senses he’s made a mistake and leans back.

“They’re ridiculous!” She rants, “Vash the Stampede is most famous for his love and desire for peace between humans and plants. They turned him into an edgy brute! There was too much focus on his status as an outlaw and not enough on what he’s actually famous for so many years later!”

What follows can best be described as a rampage about character assassination, the inaccuracies of how people lived at the time, the way the plants were depicted, and the way the Great Fall and Battle of the Angels was overdone and yet underwritten at the same time.

“That’s why!” Meryl declares, “We’re going to make a movie that accurately depicts the major events on this planet!”

Milly is smitten.

Vash is flabbergasted, looking as if something that wasn’t supposed to explode had gone nuclear in his face. He stares at Meryl in disbelief. Meryl stubbornly holds eye contact. Then all at once, something eases in his posture and his eyes go soft. He gives in with a small smile and a sigh.

“What do you want to know?”

Meryl pumps her fist and cheers, “You’ll help?”

“On one condition.” Vash raises a finger suddenly stern, “You have to make the movie about Gunsmoke. Not Vash the Stampede.”

Meryl puffs up, “But-!”

“That’s my condition.” Vash says resolutely, it’s the first time that he’s looked at them so seriously, “Don’t make another Vash the Stampede movie, do something different. Something no one’s done before.”

“Then we go somewhere else.” Meryl sniffs, leaning back in her seat.

“Wha-?!” Vash flounders, clearly not expecting that sort of reaction.

“Vash the Stampede deserves to have his story told.” Meryl says, “The right way. We can’t talk about this planet without also discussing the plant-human relationships and those were fostered by his efforts and sacrifice.”

“You drive a hard bargain, Ms. Stride,” Vash responds with a groan. Teal eyes slide over to the window, at the passing dunes of sand. Greenery is slowly spreading across the planet. All the cities and towns on Gunsmoke have successfully cultivated grass and trees, but out here in the middle of the Great Sand Desert, there’s still none to be found. His eyes glaze over for a long moment, lost in thought.

“I guess we’re at an impasse.” he finally says, turning away from the dunes to address the ladies in front of him. The smile on his face doesn’t reach his eyes.

“Why?!” She cries. Milly watches her, confused. Everyone else who had dismissed her idea or criticized it was met with Meryl’s iron spine. Vash, for some reason, is different. In a way, Milly understands. Knowing what she knows about the people in front of her, it’s hard to feel stubborn about making the movie when Vash’s reincarnation is the one telling them no.  

Vash takes a measured breath, “It might have been Vash the Stampede who helped bridge the gap between plants and humans, but that wouldn’t have happened without – ” He stops, glancing down and then back up to them, “For a hundred and fifty years he kept believing that humanity had enough good in them for the Transference to succeed, what do you think he could have seen to keep that faith? What did he experience during the worst time in our history to believe it would be enough to stop the Coalescence?”

Meryl falls back into her seat.

They’d never talked about this in their previous life. Vash would go on about the value of life, and how people deserve second chances. A lot of the time, it was like he was preaching in an empty church. Times had been so hard, people had been so cruel, and it was all too easy to forget the little things. Milly thought the Transference succeeded because the plants could feel how sorry humanity was and how little they truly understood about them. If they had known their plants were living and breathing beside them, ‘surely,’ Milly thinks, ‘surely we wouldn’t have treated them so cruelly like the disposable objects humanity had believed them to be.’

She thought the plants were immensely forgiving and kind and maybe that was still true.

But if Vash had seen something that he knew the plants would too, enough for it to stop the Ark. Maybe the conversation had gone deeper than Milly thought.

She remembered the pain and agony of the memory shared with her of a plant on its last run. The horrendous feeling of being demanded to give more and more of herself even though she had nothing left to give – no, please, it hurts so much, please –

Despair, fear, regret, forgiveness.

Those were the things Milly felt.

All sad things. Few happy. A young worker waving up at the bulb. A man in red raising his glass in cheers to his sister. Love and Peace.

Milly hadn’t thought that the infamous declaration might have come from both sides.

Silence stretches for long minutes. The train rattles with the wind, much less steady than a steamer though far faster. By the time Milly comes out of her thoughts Meryl has her chin in her hand still thinking deeply.

Vash is patiently watching the world go by.

“Boots at the Door,” Milly mutters.

Two pairs of eyes drift over to her. “Mr. Vash the Stampede wasn’t the focus of it, but Odie made him a big part with just a few words of dialogue through a door.”

She remembered that conversation between Vash and Livio. She remembered Odie from the orphanage getting caught listening just outside the door. They left the orphanage in his hands after Livio passed.

“The book Snellberg adapted into a movie? The really famous one?” Meryl asks. Milly looks at her with imploring eyes and nods, hoping she’ll pick up on the idea flickering to life in Milly’s head.

“We can still tell the story we want to tell, but Vash the Stampede doesn’t have to be the focus.” Lo and behold, Meryl practically reads her mind. Soulmates really do have to exist; this is more proof of it. This Meryl that she’s only known for two years can read her like they’ve been married for over 50 years.

“I’ll support that,” Vash says softly, eyes glittering.

Meryl hums, “I need to look at what I have so far and see…no, let’s start all over, from a different perspective.”

The smaller woman gets fired back up, “Alright! Where should we start? Who should the main character be? We need to look into firsthand accounts right away – wait let me get my notebook!” Milly watches fondly as Meryl runs back to their room and starts pulling all kinds of things out of her suitcase in search of her notebook. She grumbles and curses, throwing a hairbrush over her shoulder.

“She’s quite a lady.” Vash remarks to Milly, “You better act quick, or someone might just swoop her out from under your nose.”

Milly beams at him and pulls her stun gun 2.0 out from the inside of her coat, “No, they won’t.”

Vash just laughs while Meryl continues to dig for her notebook, throwing clothes and objects this way and that. Gosh, but Milly has missed this.

…

The afternoon passes in a flurry of writing, the stacks of paper abandoned for now. Milly isn’t sure what Vash does during that time, just that he shows up at the adjoining door with a gentle reminder to eat dinner.

The wine is put to good use as Meryl restarts her interrogation over their food. All three of them will have horrible hangovers in the morning when they arrive in Mei, but the more they drink, the more Meryl starts to move away from plants and onto the news station internship they had last year with Milly occasionally reminding her of some of the bullshit they had to put up with. In between sympathetic nods and noises, Vash delights in the praise Meryl throws his way just for not being an asshole to them.

“And one of them had the audacity to spread rumors about Milly. Milly! Milly has never done anything wrong in her life. Ever.” Meryl declares, totally lost in the alcohol. Vash nods in agreement and then chokes on his drink when she continues, “Thanks for not groping either of us.”

“That seems like a basic…courtesy?” Vash coughs.

“You would think, but we had one guy who always went for a grab when we brought his coffee.” Meryl laments.

“Ah, yeah I know how that goes.” Vash sympathizes, “I can’t go to a bar anymore without someone reaching for my ass, but at least I can just leave! You had to work with that guy?”

“I hit him with my car.” Meryl says, incredibly, drunkenly proud of herself for it, “I can find whoever touched you and hit them too.”

“Running people over is a crime, dear.” Milly pats her hand.

“We agreed creeps aren’t people, Milly.” Meryl slurred her argument, turning her hand over so they can intertwine their fingers. “Is on the list.”

“List?” Vash asks, tilting dangerously in his chair.

Meryl opens her notebook up to a page marked with red. “Not people: creeps, celebrities, worms, the asshole next door, dogs, cats-“

“Meryl, I think most of those are a given.” Vash snickers, “Celebrities.”

“They’re not real, did you see how much Randy Scotch thought bananas cost??”

Vash cackles, “Sixty-nine double dollars.”

Milly thrives off the smiles on both their faces, too busy being in love with their familiar drunken conversations to remember that the currency hasn’t been double dollars for over 200 years.  

“Hey, you guys will tell me if I do something wrong before you run me over, right?” Vash asks. Meryl chooses that moment to fall asleep with a loud snore. He turns to Milly, “Right???”

Milly drunkenly pats him on the back in an attempt at comfort.

“MILLY?!” He wails, distraught and now much more fearful for his life.

She’ll have to write a thank you note to Uncle Roberto, even if he doesn’t understand what it’s for. 

…

They’re ushered off the train by an official in a black suit. Meryl and Milly get bundled into one car while Vash is shoved into another. It looks more like a kidnapping than anything. Certainly almost feels like one.

They’re driven through the City of Love (self-declared) quickly. Policemen border them on all sides, escorting them straight over to the plant. Milly was barely able to note the locations of local ice cream shops before they’re bundled back out of the car and into the building with Vash.

A group of people immediately greet them. One woman with high heels that click with each step falls into step with them while the others surround Vash and relay information that goes over Milly’s head. A lanyard is thrown over their heads by the woman and she starts speaking rapid fire, “These are your lanyards, they will get you in and out of the building but will only get you as far as the viewing room without Mr. Estamp. If he needs anything, this is my number. You will be staying at-”

Milly is too overwhelmed to remember the rest. Fortunately, her wife friend started taking notes as soon as the woman opened her mouth.

“Any questions?”

Meryl addresses her, “None so far, we will keep in touch as the need arises.”

“Wow Meryl, I can’t believe you kept up with all that,” Milly whispers the praise once the woman breaks away.

“I got the general idea, but I wasn’t expecting so much so fast,” Meryl whispers back with a stressed twitch of her brow.

Vash is faring much better than his assistants, with loud exclamations and confused noises coming from inside the group that surrounds him. Most of them fall back the closer they get to the plant room until it’s only two men who accompany them through the door.

Like every city plant room, the number of plants housed inside is greater than what the smaller towns have with four to six plants supplying the various needs of the city. This is the first time Milly has seen one light up red instead of blue. It makes the hair on the back of her neck stand up.

She shakes the dread off. Mr. Vash will handle it.

Vash eyes the bulb grimly. He steps forward alone to the main console and his fingers fly over the screen with a grace that only comes with a lifetime of experience. The muted sound of tapping fingers flits over to where they stand with the men.

Milly reads off their name tags while they wait.

Head Plant Engineer Isaac Nebula

Head Maintenance Officer Maxwell Curtis

The two wring their hands, clearly nervous and unsure of what to do. Milly pats them on the back, “It’ll be okay, Mr. Vash will help her!”

“I hope so my dear.” Isaac responds, “I really hope so.”

Just then, Vash’s fingers halt.

“Is that all it was?” They hear him mutter. Vash spins around, red coat flaring briefly, the light of the plant making it hard to see his eyes through orange-tinted glasses.

“Did you ask her for a river?”

Maxwell jumps to attention, “I – yes! Everyone was asking their plants for them at the time, we just put in the request to her.”

“We didn’t demand one.” Isaac insists, “Just asked if she could.”

Vash is uncharacteristically cold when he says, “I know what’s wrong.”

The two men leap at the news, “Really?”

“Can you fix her?”

Vash hums, “That depends.”

The maintenance crews that were buzzing around the plant like bees have stopped working now.  Everyone in the room is watching Vash.

“As you know, just like humans, plants have specialties in what they can create. Your girl here specializes in edible things – food more than water.”

The two men nod.

“Did you know you were asking her for something she couldn’t make?”

Isaac sputters, “It was just a question of if she could, we didn’t - ”

Vash holds up a hand, “I know that. You were just asking her a question and if she said no, you would have accepted it.”

“Of course! Whether she could or not would not have affected how we treat her, it was just a question!” Isaac insists.

“Then let me ask you a question.” Vash fires back, “Which would you prefer, a river and a new plant or this plant and the food it provides?”

“That’s not even a question, of course we’d rather have Panini! She’s the best!” Maxwell shouts, angered at the notion.

“Right now, she’s putting all of her energy into changing herself.” Vash doesn’t react to the anger, still speaking with them in that calm, monotone voice that has Milly reaching for Meryl’s hand. “Her beloved humans have asked her an impossible task unless she changes herself into a different type of plant. She won’t be the same, but that’s the price she’s willing to pay.”

Isaac pales, “No, that’s not…”

“She’s in the final stages, so I will ask you again. Do you want Panini as she is now, or do you want her to change completely so that you can have your river?”

“I think I speak for all of us when I say, we don’t want her to change.” Maxwell steps forward. The workers around them shout in agreement, “Panini loves making food and trying new combinations. She smiles the most when the chefs show her what they’ve done with her creations. We can’t take that from her.”

Vash smiles a bright and genuine thing. He shifts so they can see the delight in his eyes. “I like your answer, Mr. Curtis.”

He spins back to the console and his fingers type raid-fire into the screen once again. Gradually, the red light fades back into blue and the workers cheer when Panini emerges from her cocoon of feathers.

She smiles at them tiredly, the people around her shouting their adoration.

Vash claps a hand on Isaac’s shoulder, “Don’t stress yourself out over this Mr. Nebula, you didn’t do anything wrong. She’s young and she loves you all enough to try and change herself for you.”

Isaac stumbles up the platform to Panini, the plant immediately noticing his approach and drifting down to meet him. A feather appears between them and Milly gasps at the sight of it.

Plants so rarely offer Transference due to the feather quite literally being a shard of themselves, but once every blue moon – if they feel the need, a feather will appear for clearer communication between plants and humans.

Isaac presses his forehead against it. Milly hears a very soft, “Oh.”

“Come on you two, let’s get going.” Vash places a hand on Milly and Meryl’s shoulders to guide them out of the room. Looks like they didn’t need the lanyards after all.

…

Milly is quiet during lunch. Both the girls are, but Vash doesn’t seem to be going through the same crisis his companions are. He’s uncharacteristically quiet, but in a way that means it’s more for their sake than his own.

The pudding she’s eating doesn’t hold the answer to Milly’s burning question. What must it feel like, to love people so much that you’re willing to change who you are for them? It has to be overwhelming to have all that devotion stored in one person. Milly wonders if she would be capable of doing the same thing. Compromise, yes of course. But change who she is? Give up what she loves to pick up a different skill? Even if it’s a skill she doesn’t want?

Meryl chews slowly beside her. Milly watches her fingers tighten around the sandwich in her grasp.

Would Milly change herself for her? She thinks she might, depending on what Meryl wanted.

But…then again, Meryl had never asked her to.

And just like that Milly’s entire soul soothes.

“There you are.” Vash greets her.

“Here I am!” Milly laughs.

“Milly? Vash?” Meryl asks timidly. They give her their full attention. “Don’t ever change. Please?”

“As long as you promise the same thing!” Milly agrees.

“Milly said it.” Vash seconds.

Meryl releases her grip on the sandwich.

“Ah-ha! There you are!” Vash cheers, “Now that you’re both back, let’s get some donuts!”

Milly frowns, “Mr. Vash it is too late in the day for donuts…”

Vash pouts childishly.

“…but not too late for ice cream!”

Meryl groans, “Oh please, I do not need the two of you on a sugar rush right now.”

“You’ll be on one too though, won’t you, Meryl?” Milly giggles.

The shorter woman has a fond smile on her face as she shakes her head. Vash already leaping up to pay the bill so they can head over to the nearest shop.

Milly revels in the nostalgia, in the fondness and happiness around her. They’re missing two people, but Milly is certain they’ll find them. They won’t remember anything either and that’s okay, because soulmates are real, and they’ll be different without their memories but at their core, they will still be fundamentally the same. Milly will be alone with her memories, but if that’s the tradeoff for this with them…

She’ll take it.

Chapter Text

He dreams of a church made of metal and wood. The pews are so hard they might as well be made of stone and the floor is always covered in sand that somehow manages to slip into his clothes even when he sits completely still.

He dreams of praying side-by-side with Livio and the girls. The pastor sounds familiar, but the voice is never the same. It’s a gross amalgamation of the many people Wolfwood has had the displeasure of knowing who recite words he doesn’t believe in. Sometimes he remembers the face attached to the words and the pastor shapeshifts accordingly.

He and Livio are devout in their prayers, and something in him bristles at the thought of standing up. An unknown certainty that something bad will happen and the resignation that almost numbs it keeps him on his knees. But on either side of them, the girls start crying and screaming, shaking so hard it makes the whole pew rattle. When he tries to get up and help, there are chains around his ankles and wrists. The rattles and clanks echo beside him where Livio sits.

Wolfwood thrashes in his restraints, tearing at them with a feral desperation that leaves his wrists and ankles bloody. Something is horribly, terribly wrong.

Livio rebels too, adding to the sharp banging of metal on stone. The screaming gets louder, and the preacher drowns them out with words of false promise and cynicism until a gunshot shatters the crescendo, and two of the chain links around his neck break. With the new give in his restraints, Wolfwood finally manages to rip them off.

He turns to tear the chains off his brother and Livio looks up with hope that morphs into horror when he looks past Wolfwood’s shoulder. Wolfwood spins to look at the altar only to find the man on the cross is scarred and missing all his limbs save for two large wings that fall limp behind him. He is nailed through his heart to the cross, red coat the color of stone. A smoking gun is at his feet. The stained glass behind him depicts the serene faces of Livio and the girls as saints.

And the stone man is smiling.

And Wolfwood is the only one in the pew.

And he prays shackleless and alone.

It’s been a shitty week at the orphanage. Miss Melanie had finally taken a well-deserved two-week vacation after Wolfwood, his brothers, and all the other workers had worn her down after months of polite suggestion and, in the brother’s case, direct action. In hindsight, Wolfwood really should have foreseen everything going to shit once she left. Such was his karma.

Two days after Melanie left for April it became very apparent that their plant was dying. Her steadfast shade of sky-blue had faded so slowly that no one had noticed until Mary burst into the cafeteria before breakfast wailing about the pink hue Thalia was emitting. The plant engineer that came to take a look at her confirmed she was on her last leg and Wolfwood got the honor of breaking the news to the kids. (If he ever figures out where Razlo and Livio had hidden to escape that conversation, he’ll burn it to the ground).

The caretakers, God bless them, managed to wrangle the distraught children into making parting gifts for Thalia while he called the Dome to arrange for a new plant.

He had to leave a message.

The following day brought with it a returning call from the Dome with the absolutely delightful news that there was currently only one guy who could replace the plant, seeing as everyone else had quit and said guy was out working on one of the city plants in Mei.

Less than twelve hours later, the twins came shuffling morosely (Livio) and stomping mad (Razlo) through the front door with the somber news that they had been laid off and the church would be down the extra source of income until they could find a new job.

All the while, Wolfwood had fought tooth and nail with the budget so that they wouldn’t all be starving after having a new plant installed. The victory was only made possible by signing up for a fundraiser gala in the city that he absolutely loathed going to but couldn’t find a way out of with the money issues. He could have called Melanie, but the woman got a disdainful look on her face whenever the Dome was mentioned (an odd reaction given how much she adored the plants and Thalia but whatever), and he really didn’t want to bother her with this. He and the twins could handle it – they were handling it – nope, all good here Missus M! Enjoy the hot tub!

And now, today, the debt collector called again and gave Livio and Razlo a job that Wolfwood would normally take but couldn’t because the plant engineer was supposed to be at the church at 6 pm but was nowhere to be found. Currently, it was 9, three hours after the fact, and time for a general sweep of the church pews to make sure everything was ready for Sunday service.

And what does he find, but a black boot sticking out into the aisle from one of the pews.

In summary, he’s stressed, he’s tired, and he’s pissed. Wolfwood firmly believes he can be forgiven for kicking a drunkard out of the church so late at night after all the bullshit he’s had to deal with in the past couple of days.

There’s a snarl already on his lips when he storms over, he’s never been so ready to give a tongue lashing than he is right now, not even when Aiden released all the farmer’s sheep and numbered them 1-20, conveniently forgetting to label number 13 and sending multiple adults out on a wild goose chase (including Wolfwood) looking for a sheep that didn’t exist. No, Wolfwood is fully prepared to give this guy hell when the man’s sleeping face finally comes into view and he nearly eats shit when his legs go weak at the sight.

One of the moons peers through the glass windows, the gentle light forming a halo around fair features. It paints the man, not in blood red, but a silvery blue that glints off a familiar golden earring. The beauty mark under his eye would give the man away if not for the ebony hair that spills from his head. Vash the Stampede is curled up in the pew, sleeping peacefully under his red coat with a soft, relaxed appearance that Wolfwood had only ever seen when they were on Ship Three. The man in front of him is not Vash the Stampede, Wolfwood suddenly realizes, just Vash, with no last name, existing in a space where he’s at home and safe.

Wolfwood’s mind blanks on what to do, the simmering anger stopping cold in its tracks. Livio and Razlo had been such a blessing (they didn’t remember) he hadn’t dared to think about Vash (would he remember?) or the girls (they won’t remember either) coming back too.

He wants to fall to his knees and pray to God – give his thanks and then beg for Vash to have been reincarnated, for the idiot to have been given a clean slate and not been forced to wander alone for the past five hundred years – for Atlas to have been relieved of his burden.

Then he wants to fall to his knees and pray to Vash – beg his forgiveness for the way they left things. If he hadn’t been so damn stubborn, he could have been with Vash and Livio at the end during the final fight (and maybe even during the peace that happened after). If he had been brave enough to say everything he left unsaid, to be as strong as Vash had been, to be soft in a time when such things were stolen at best and broken at worst…could he have shared tomorrow with them?

Nothing had devastated him quite like the history museum at the Dome. Vash and Livio and the girls all fighting without him, because he had been too damn scared to lose them and too damn stubborn about it to realize Vash would delay saving the world – would let it die just that little bit more – to waste time helping Wolfwood protect his little corner of the world.

He had died at peace, content with finally becoming a man without regrets. Now here he was living with the knowledge that he hadn’t been able to return the favor.

His mind is a typhoon of thoughts and emotions, the feelings he forcefully (mournfully) laid to rest now flood his brain like a river through a broken dam. But no matter what happens next, whether Vash remembers or not, there is one thing he’s certain of:

He owes this man a drink, a proper one this time.

“Hey, buddy, you can’t sleep here.” He says, far gentler than he had initially planned when he’d first seen the boot.

Vash snorts and startles so badly that he falls off the bench and onto the floor with a grunt. Wolfwood winces in sympathy.

“Ow.” Vash grits out, “That really hurt.”

“You shouldn’t be sleeping on a pew in the first place.” Wolfwood scolds, “I thought you were a drunkard.”

Vash looks up at him, pale in the moonlight, and Wolfwood searches for any hint of recognition. An odd mix of relief and despair swirls in his chest when he doesn’t see anything other than a wince. Vash’s eyes are a different shade, he notices, and the guy has lost some height, enough so that Wolfwood is fairly confident that this Vash is the same soul in a new body.

“Oh! I’m so sorry!” Vash scrambles up, “I know I was supposed to be here at six but I sort of got lost and then wrecked my car down the road, so I had to walk but that’s really no excuse for falling asleep, I just wasn’t sure if I was supposed to knock on the house or the chapel and well, I figured I’d just wait for you here.”

What.

Is he serious? Where does Wolfwood even begin here?

“You wrecked your car?” He decides to start with, “Where?”

“Main Street.” Vash taps his pointer fingers together nervously, shrinking into his coat with a bashful pout, like he knows exactly how crazy that is.

“That’s twenty miles away!” Wolfwood exclaims, “You walked the whole way here? In three hours?”

“Well, you guys need a new plant right? And it’s already been a week?” Vash cocks his head to the side turning his new blue-green eyes at Wolfwood like a fucking puppy. All the tolerance Wolfwood had built up against the old baby blues shatters under the new sea-green eyes.  

“You-!” He tries so hard to start scolding but falters fantastically in the face of Vash’s pout and his own storm of emotions. “Christ, come here then, I have a first aid kit.”

“That won’t be necessary, I’m fi-” Vash cuts himself off when he sees the look on Wolfwood’s face, “B-But if you insist!”

Vash follows him through the door connecting the chapel to the house, leading straight to the kitchen. Wolfwood forces him down into a seat at the long dining table and gives him a closer look under the improved lighting.

There’s a bruise forming at his temple, but he doesn’t seem any worse for wear. He shies away when Wolfwood raises his hands to check his ribs.

Wolfwood narrows his eyes.

Suspicious.  

Wolfwood huffs, deciding it would be weird to call a stranger out on their bullshit so quickly into their first meeting, “You’ll be bruised to hell, but you look fine. I’ll get you some ice.”

“Thank you!” Vash chirps, eyes soft in a way that sends chills down Wolfwood’s spine. He never thought he’d see such a look directed at him ever again.

Gathering the ice is a quick affair, normally Wolfwood would find a few stragglers on the way – kids who couldn’t fall asleep or had nightmares, but they all know their plant will be gone in the morning and there’s something heavy in the air. He hopes they’re all in bed. 

“Here.” He tosses the ice to Vash and takes a seat across from him. “So, you’re the plant engineer I’m guessing?”

“That’s me.” Vash doesn’t put the ice on his head, instead, he lifts his right arm and tucks the ice against his ribs. He holds his left hand out, “Vash Estamp.”

Wolfwood takes it, noting the hardness beneath his fingers.

Estamp…as in…estampida? Wolfwood vaguely recalls telling Vash what his nickname would sound like in Wolfwood’s mother tongue and, not for the first time, decides that fate has a shit sense of humor.

“Nicolas D. Wolfwood, I currently run this place.” He drawls, “The kids have already said their goodbyes, but I’d like to know how this is going to go down before I tell them anything else.” The urge for a cigarette makes his fingers twitch. He’s been trying to cut back, and he’s already used up his two for the day. Maybe he can sneak one past Livio and Razlo later if he’s careful about it.

“I’ll check her bulb to make sure we can safely unhook it from your grid and then we’ll take her to the Dome for her final rest.” Vash explains, “The antenna won’t take that long to set up, I should be done in a couple hours.”

Wolfwood’s heart sinks, “We’re not getting a new one?”

“Oh no, you are! The antenna is the new wireless way to-”

Wolfwood cuts him off, “I got that. Fancy antenna, wireless energy, blah blah blah, but I wasn’t aware we were getting an antenna.”

“Well, you can have a plant shipped out here if you want. The antenna is cheaper so that’s usually what people prefer.” Vash eyes him curiously.

“How much would it cost?” Wolfwood asks, dreading the answer.

“You want a plant here?” Vash counters, “Most people are put off by having them in their homes nowadays.”

Wolfwood scoffs, “Most people are idiots. The kids adore Thalia, she’s practically one of the caretakers around here.”

Vash’s face lights up like the fucking sun – fuck, he needs his sunglasses back if blond- black, not blond- spike- NOT SPIKEY ANYMORE EITHER DAMNIT!

While Wolfwood gets more and more irritated at the other man’s hair, nearly lighting it on fire with the force of his glare, Vash whips out a phone that went out of style thirty years ago. “You have a couple options.”

The angry spiral snaps to his tapping fingers, “What for?”

“Your new plant.” Vash clarifies, punching buttons on the device, “Would you prefer a younger or an older plant?”

“What’s the difference?” Wolfwood asks, then demands, “No, wait, what’s it going to cost?”

“They’re both efficient, the only real difference is that the younger ones are more active. Might be better for the kids if she’ll be taking on the role of unofficial caretaker.” Vash explains, “And don’t worry about the cost, this whole thing is being paid for by a donor.”

“Huh?” Wolfwood flounders.

“Ah, well we have a benefactor that pays for the installation of plants for orphanages and other non-profits in this area.” Vash smiles sheepishly, “Don’t worry about the expenses.”

Wolfwood blinks slowly at the smiling puppy dog in front of him, trying to process what he was just told.

“Seriously?!” Wolfwood erupts out of his seat and onto his feet, nearly throwing himself over the table to get into Vash’s space.

“Y-Yes?” Vash leans back in his chair, hands up like he’s expecting Wolfwood to tackle him. With the godsend fucking angel of a man he was reminding Wolfwood he was, Wolfwood just might. Heavens above, the trials he had endured this week were being rewarded.

“So, uh, I have a plant in mind for you already if – uh – if you still-” Vash stutters, trying to lean back as much as he can without falling out of his seat. He fails. Vash squeaks, the only warning Wolfwood gets before he starts to tip backward. A tanned hand shoots forward to grab a fistful of black fabric. Wolfwood holds him up one-handed and hauls him back into his seat as Wolfwood himself falls back into his own chair.  

“…Thanks.” Vash shifts shyly in his seat.

“Don’t. ‘S my fault.” Wolfwood mumbles guiltily.

Vash shakes it off faster than Wolfwood. Her name is Rose, he explains. She’s a younger plant that specializes in producing paper on top of the usual water and electricity generation.

In Wolfwood’s opinion, she’s perfect.

“Great!” Vash stands up and stretches, “We can have her settled by tomorrow. Do you mind taking me to Thalia?”

Wolfwood nods towards the eastern door to the kitchen and Vash follows quietly as Wolfwood tries to wrap his head around the short time frame, “Last time they installed a plant around here it took two weeks.”

“Ah, perks of being short staffed I suppose.” Vash shrugs, “Usually you have to get the Head Plant Engineer, the Plant Maintenance Officer, the Plant Transport Overseer, and the logistics guy to sign it but, well, everyone who needs to sign the paperwork is basically here already.”

Wolfwood stops walking, eyeing the fingers Vash had lifted at each title as he listed them off. Dots connect at rapid fire. Of fucking course. “Is it even legal to have that many jobs shoved off onto someone?”

Vash chuckles and Wolfwood fully understands now why the guy fell asleep in the pew – why he still looks exhausted, “Probably, it won’t be for much longer though.”

“They hiring some new guys soon?” They continue walking down the hallway until they come to a stop outside the plant room.

“Something like that.” Vash hums, then gestures at the doorknob, “May I?”

“Sure,” Wolfwood answers.

They aren’t prepared for the platoon of soldiers on the other side. Neither, it seems, are the soldiers prepared for them.

“What are you doing out of bed?” Wolfwood nudges Vash aside and opens the door fully to glare sternly down at the horde of children with paper swords and pillow shields.

“W-We won’t let you take her!” Kaite shouts, his surprise at Vash quickly turning to righteous anger at Wolfwood. Indignation wells up more so than usual. Ungrateful brat, how hard was it to just stay in bed and let Wolfwood hang out with Vash the adults work? Kaite keeps glancing at Vash with something like surprise and awe – as if he was expecting a monster and got met with an angel instead –

…Lord, give him strength.

Vash, as Wolfwood has come to expect, merely smiles. As usual, his forgiveness is immediate and unbidden. The look on his face is bittersweet, “You really love her, don’t you?”

The youngest kid, five-year-old Ruffin, sniffles and then falls on his butt, paper sword still held tightly in his hands before bursting into tears. The little guy sets off a chain reaction for a lot of the younger kids who all start bawling shortly after. Wolfwood rushes forward along with some of the older ones, gathering the crying kids closer and letting them cling to his dark pants to cry into. Ruffin rubs snot into his shoulder and all Wolfwood does about it is whisper into his hair, “I know, kiddo, I know.”

Thalia has been here longer than Wolfwood has. She’s a steady presence where almost everyone else comes and goes. It’s not really their fault, but the caretakers never usually stick around long. The only constants the kids have are Melanie, Wolfwood, the twins, and the plant that’s been here longer than all five of them combined.

Years ago, it might have been Wolfwood in their position.

Vash who has been keeping away from the mess of emotions in front of him steps forward, “It’s no wonder she loves you so much.”

“Mister Wolfwood always says if you love something, you have to be brave enough to fight for it.” Kaite’s sword is lowered, and the kids still holding their crude paper creations notice the same thing he does. There’s something ethereal and sublime about the man Mister Wolfwood brought to see Thalia.

To Wolfwood’s surprise, they let Vash approach the plant.

“Normally we retire spent plants to the collective consciousness until they run out and pass amongst their sisters.” Vash removes the black glove on his right hand. As he gets closer, Thalia watches him from her cocoon of wings. “But sometimes that’s not what they want.”

“What do you want?” Vash looks back at the children, hand outstretched to the plant where she starts to reach back.

“Well?” Wolfwood jostles the kids tucked into his robes and gruffly prompts them, “What do you want?”

In the midst of all the crying and snotty sniffles come various cries of,

“Don’t take her.”

“I want her to stay.”

“Stay here.”

“Don’t leave us.”

The dim pink light of the bulb brightens a little, Thalia’s hand meeting Vash’s. “And you? What do you want?” He asks her.

They are deaf to Thalia’s response.

“I see,” Vash says anyway. He turns back to Wolfwood and he says, “She’ll look different.”

And he says, “She won’t be the same.”

And he says, “Will you love her anyway?”

“Of course, we will!” Kaite declares before anyone else has the chance, “As long as she stays with us!”

Vash smiles and closes his eyes. The pink brightens to blinding levels and Wolfwood can’t help the instinctive motion to shield the kids from the light.

It’s over in seconds. Wolfwood blinks the light away, willing his eyes to adjust to the dim blue plant light once more. The tank is empty. Thalia is gone. Vash is leaning heavily against the bulb. He stumbles away from it, a budding young plant with green leaves and ripening flowers cradled in his arms. The plant is presented to Kaite, though Vash has not handed it over just yet.

“Well?” His voice shakes with exertion, “Do you still love her?”

Kaite heaves a sob too big for his body, “Yes!” and takes the plant from Vash with a gentleness Wolfwood only sees from him when he’s around the youngest kids.

Vash melts at the sight, “Take good care of her, okay? Her siblings are trusting you with this.”

Kaite gives a teary nod, biting his lips to stop more sobs from falling out.

“Mr. Fang will know how to take care of her.” Mika tugs on Kaite’s sleeve and then a small group of children flee the plant room to go find Livio and Razlo. Wolfwood sighs, at least the twins can handle some of the kids while Wolfwood deals with the rest.

The caretaker on night duty is in for it when he finds them.

…

An hour later, the kids are all bundled into bed and Thalia has been planted in a place of honor in the garden.

Livio and Razlo stumble off to bed while Wolfwood heads back to the plant room. Vash is sitting on top of the bulb, his coat discarded, and up to his arms in the wires that connect to the house. Black sleeves are rolled back revealing a pale muscled arm and a blue-green prosthetic hand that waves a greeting. Wolfwood’s eyes catch on the flesh arm, he can’t get a good enough look to see any familiar scars. The only thing he can tell is that it’s still scarred to hell and back.

His displeasure must show on his face because Vash quickly rolls his sleeves back down and feigns intense focus on the wires. A poorly concealed sadness seeps into his words, “Almost done. Brad should be here with Rose soon.”

The man doesn’t look back at Wolfwood as he finishes fiddling with the wires and replaces the metal covering. Fucking fantastic, two minutes and he’s already ruining everything. Wolfwood is still trying to figure out what to say that isn’t awkward or embarrassing for the both of them when Vash gracefully slides off the bulb and gathers up his coat. “They should be able to handle the rest, but I’ll be a call away if they need help.”

Fuck-shit-fuck.

“Leaving so soon?” Wolfwood manages to get the words out much more calmly than he feels. He can’t let this man get away from him. He can’t. “How about giving me your number if Rose needs anything later?”

Vash’s brows rise, eyes going wide with surprise, “You should be able to just call the Dome.”

“You’re the only plant engineer available right now.” Wolfwood echoes the message from the Dome, for once grateful for the abysmal customer service, “They’ll just take all day to patch me through to you again.”

“Oh yeah, I guess that’s right.” Vash hums, seemingly forgetful of that fact. He digs into his red coat and pulls out a crumpled business card, “Alright. Just call if you need anything.”

Yes!

“What if I need a drink?” Wolfwood raises an eyebrow.

No! That sounded too much like a come-on!

Vash blinks twice, finally (finally!) lifting his eyes to meet Wolfwood’s. “Then I guess we’ll have to meet somewhere for drinks.” Vash grins shyly. His eyes hold something unfathomable in them, but this small smile is lighter and came far easier than any of the ones in Wolfwood’s most treasured memories.

Wolfwood wants to know what a genuine smile, unburdened by the sins of the past and the weight of the future, looks like on this Vash’s face. Will his eyes shine the same way? Will previously unnoticed worry lines smooth out of his features? Will his smile stretch far enough to reveal sharp canines?

Will he look like he’s crying when he laughs?   

“I’ve got some free time on Tuesday. How does 7 o’clock sound?” Wolfwood valiantly fights to keep the anticipation out of his voice, hoping that he’s not just wistfully imagining things. That he’s got a second chance at this.

Vash grin falters a little, “I’m always on call, but I’ll do my best to keep my schedule clear.”

On Call? To the Dome?

A mental map appears in his mind’s eye.

“A new bar just opened on 12^th and Main.” That should be close enough to maximize their available time together, even if it’s a further drive for Wolfwood.

Dark fingers twitch at the urge to curl around the loops on the black pants hanging from Vash’s waist. He longs to pull the other man closer, yearns for the easy touch that used to exist between them. “I’ll buy you a drink.”

They’re close despite his restraint, a hair’s width from brushing against each other. It’s enough to feel the heat from the other’s skin. If Vash had any knowledge of their past relationship Wolfwood would have those hands clasped in his in a heartbeat, promises dripping with each breath he takes, devotion leaking out of his very soul. But Vash doesn’t. So Wolfwood will take this slow, learn everything he can about this new Vash, let the man have anything and everything from him.

It was too dangerous before, there was too much to do and too much at stake and they both knew it. Or maybe they were both too cowardly to try. This time, Wolfwood will take this miracle of a second chance by the reigns and promise all his tomorrows to the man in front of him.

“I look forward to it.” Vash whispers and Wolfwood can smell the sugar on his breath, jots it down on the list he’s been making about this Vash. Still likes donuts, still a self-sacrificing moron (underlined twice), still gorgeous, still forgiving, still Vash as far as he can tell.

“Uh, I don’t suppose someone here could give me a ride home?”

Still a fucking idiot (underlined three times).

…

It takes all of five minutes after Vash is driven home on Angelina IV to remember the debt collector and all the trouble he’ll bring Vash if they do this. He tosses and turns all night over it. Razlo finds him the next morning grouchily munching on a bagel.

“Whoa. What crawled up your ass and died?” The larger of the twins steals the untouched half of the bagel off Wolfwood’s plate. The glare he gets for such an action has no true heat because Wolfwood would never deny any of them food, but goddammit that was his bagel.

“Made a friend.” Wolfwood grumbles, “Dunno if I want him involved in-” He waves a dark hand at the burner phone in Razlo’s pocket. “-all that.”

Razlo pulls the phone out and glares at it with disdain. It’s a risk to even let him hold it, if Razlo ever found out who their collector was, he’d snap the guy’s neck and damn the consequences. Fortunately for the collector, neither of his brothers want to see Razlo in jail or, worse, executed on charges of murder.

Fucking government laws and shit.

Razlo gives him an unimpressed look and says, around Wolfwood’s bagel, “The fuck would he get involved for?”

“He’s a nosy sort, wants to help everyone.” Wolfwood answers, confident that Vash hasn’t changed at all in that regard.  

“What’s his name?” Razlo’s eating comes to a halt.

“The plant engineer from last night, Vash.” Wolfwood stares at his bagel with a scowl, oblivious to how Razlo’s face morphs into a fantastic impression of a fish before grabbing Wolfwood by the shoulders and shouting in his face, “Yes! Finally!”

Wolfwood is offended, he’s not so anti-social that any random friend he makes would get Razlo so excited. Right?

“Hey! I can make friends just fine!” He defends himself.

Razlo laughs in his face, “Whatever, it’s not like he needs to know about debt-douche anyway! Your lonely ass needs a friend Nico!”

As much as Wolfwood resents that last statement, Razlo did make a good point. It’s not like Vash needed to know about the debt collector. At least not yet. And if Wolfwood is perfectly honest with himself, he’s done pretending that was going to stop him from meeting Vash on Tuesday. He learned his lesson about not trusting Vash the last time, he doesn’t want those same regrets to repeat in this life.

Still, the debt collector has taken so much from them already, his stomach turns to lead thinking about Vash being one of them.     

Chapter Text

Children dash under his feet, their squeals of delight filling the warm air with a joy Livio will happily die for. They run right into Milly’s open arms, giggling as she swings them up onto her strong shoulders while Meryl smiles fondly beside her. Three of the children bypass the wives for the enticing challenge of climbing the tall man standing just a few feet away. Vash’s spikey dark hair is their end goal, and the man takes his new role as a tree with his usual grace. The little ones on Milly’s shoulders crow at the climbers over their superiority. Meryl puts a quick stop to the brewing fight with admonishing quips.

Livio joins them, trailing behind the stampede of children as the oldest finally manages to shimmy all the way up to Vash’s chest. Long arms come around to support the kid, for a moment the sadness recedes from blue eyes.

But just as suddenly as they appeared, Meryl vanishes.

“It’s alright, Livio. We’ll take it from here.” Milly reassures kindly, the kids curling into her hold with sniffles and sobs. The child cradled in Vash’s arms wails. Livio won’t regret a single thing in the second chance Nico had granted him, but the agony on Vash’s face – looking about ready to break down along with the kids, yet still managing a shaky grin – comes close to making him mourn the lost time with them.

“C’mon, crybaby.” Nico pats his shoulder and the warmth streaming down his cheeks suddenly makes more sense. Livio turns and Meryl stands with his brother, ready to lead the way.

Razlo urges them forward, the kids cry, and the world goes black.

This is so unfair.

Livio pulls at his collar with one finger. The dress shirt under his silver suit is uncomfortably close to his neck and the black tie is impossible to loosen with Nico leaning forward to smack his hand away whenever he tries.

“Why do I have to go?” He complains. Razlo cackles at him from the driver’s seat, “You lost the game, you know the rules.”

Ugh.

“Because Mary has a fever, and someone has to look after her,” Nico explains, swiping at Livio’s hand again. “We’ll come back for the second half after the kids are asleep.”

Livio narrows his eyes at the rearview mirror and the image of his older brother smirks back. Nico was just a bit too relieved when he won the fierce rock-paper-scissors-gun tournament to determine who would be going to the mayor’s fundraising gala for the whole night.

Coming in dead last, Livio was thrown into a rental suit and shoved into the passenger seat of their truck. Razlo was playing chauffeur and Nico was gracious enough (his own words) to ride with the twins over to the gala for ‘moral support’.

It wasn’t that bad, Livio supposed. During the few times he had attended a fundraising gala in the past, it was always straightforward enough. First, there was socializing with hand-sized food and small champagne glasses, and then each fundraising group was allowed to present their non-profit to the crowd in a bid to convince the wealthy attendees to give them money. It usually turned into a sob-story fest; the rich would get a tax break either way, but public opinion was next on their minds, and it looked better for the wealthy if their money went somewhere most people could sympathize with. A poor orphanage met that particular criterion in spades.

Unfortunately, their lack of any visible progress made it hard to convince the old-money folks to give them donations. It was hard to prove otherwise when Livio and his brothers knew for a fact that it all went to debt-douche (patented by Razlo).

For that reason, the meal was the only highlight. The mayor’s galas usually had dinner at the end, after all the non-profits gave their spiel. So, Nico and Razlo – the bastards – would miss the socializing and the majority of the presentation half but would get to enjoy the free dinner.

Livio pulls at his collar again out of spite and gets his hand smacked for the effort. Finally, they pull up to the mayor’s mansion. The line of cars up to the staircase is fairly short, curling around the fountain in the center and only extending as far as the front gate.

Livio is soaking in as much peace as he can before he gets thrown to the wolves when Razlo whistles, “Who’s that?”

Nico and Livio follow his finger over to the steps of the mansion. A man in a red plaid suit walks up the marble steps, long limbs and broad shoulders accentuated by his outfit. The lights illuminating the staircase to the mansion shine off his crystalline prosthetic arm. There was no attempt to hide the limb, in a loud and proud display, an extension covering the upper half of his arm gives off the illusion that the whole arm is fake. The mysterious man turns towards a scruffy-looking reporter behind the velvet ropes and reveals the right half of a fair, familiar face.

Livio reels, sharp eyes picking out the man’s features. Holy shit, it’s Vash.

In the backseat, Nico sputters, “On second thought, I’ll go inste-”

Razlo cackles, far too amused, “Too late! Livio gets dibs!”

Their brother sulks in his seat, fingers wrapped around the car handle like he’s going to throw himself out of the car and the offer to switch roles nearly leaves Livio’s mouth. Razlo gleefully denies them both the opportunity. When he pulls up to the main steps, he shoves Livio out of the passenger seat and tears off down the driveway before either of his siblings can react.

“Woah, are you alright?” Livio staggers up with the help of a pale hand, metallic fingers steadying on his forearm. Vash the Stampede looks down at him with concerned eyes.

Livio flushes in embarrassment, he had really been looking forward to making better first impressions on everyone. Not that such a thing would be hard with Vash considering just how badly it went in their last lifetime. No matter what the outlaw said, the weight of that particular sin haunted Livio up until his dying breath.

“Yeah, my brother is just being an ass.” He mutters. Oh, he is going to strangle his twin if Nico hasn’t already.

Vash cocks his head to the side with furrowed brows, “Brother…?”

“Ah, my twin, Razlo.”

A sympathetic look is awarded to him. “I get that.”

Vash would, he supposes, but Livio isn’t sure it’s for the same reasons that he’s hoping. Vash hadn’t reacted to his presence with any more surprise than what was warranted for watching a man get thrown out of his car. It’s not like the outlaw would forget Livio’s face, he knew Vash kept a large locket around his neck with his most precious people in it.

“Vash Estamp.” The former outlaw greets and Livio shakes the hand presented to him, “Livio Fang.”

Vash sidles up beside him and takes his arm, “Hope you don’t mind, I hate going in alone.”

“Not at all,” Livio reassures, grateful for the excuse to keep the other man close by.

Livio is scrawnier in this life than he was in the last so it’s more obvious when Vash leans some of his weight onto him as they make their way up the stairs. By the nearly imperceptible stutter of each right step, Vash is trying to hide a limp. It might have worked if Livio wasn’t so familiar with him. It would be weird to call him out on it right? That’s not something strangers would do? He thinks? Maybe he can give Vash an excuse to sit down once they’re inside. For now, Livio will happily be his crutch.

They make their way up the steps and into the building without comment. Livio knows from experience that the place is decorated to cater to the high-standing members of society. True to form, beautiful fabrics drape over every conceivable surface, art hangs on every wall, there are gold details on the ceiling, and a red carpet has been rolled all the way from the entry hall down to the marble staircase leading into it. At the entrance to the main hall, a security officer is taking names from the line of guests.

“So, are you a donor or a fundraiser?” Vash asks once they get in line.

“I’m with the Melanie Marie Orphanage.” Livio answers, vibrating with anticipation for more information, “You?”

“I’m one of the Dome engineers.” Vash sighs like he knows exactly how it sounds. Wide-eyed, Livio doesn’t disappoint him.

The Dome is technically a public building, its basic funds are provided by taxpayer money from citizens who get their energy from it and whatever isn’t covered is subsidized by the government. Any extra costs or projects have to be fundraised, usually by the director.

“Why’d they send you? Shouldn’t the bigwigs be here instead?” Not that Livio is complaining, Vash and the girls were practically family and Livio is thrilled just to see him again. If he’s lucky, Vash has already found the insurance wives. Still, it’s odd that they would send an engineer instead of the director or one of the board members.

“Our director is…a work in progress.” Vash mutters with an annoyed grimace, “Honestly, I wouldn’t give any money to the Dome right now. It’ll be put to better use at the orphanage.”

Livio is saved from a fumbling response when Vash continues, “And what about you? If the orphanage is trying to fundraise, I figured Wolfwood would be here.”

The tone isn’t accusing but Livio flinches anyway. Obviously, Vash would prefer Nico’s company if given the choice…hang on- “You know him?”

“I just installed your new plant last week.” Vash cocks his head to the side innocently.

Livio processes the information as they make it to the front of the line and start digging for their IDs. Forget Razlo, he’s going to strangle Nico, no wonder he was so eager to get back to the plant room that night! Razlo had been thrilled that Nico had befriended the guy. God, no fucking wonder his brother had been on cloud nine on Tuesday! 

…And didn’t he say that he got the plant engineer’s number?

Livio abruptly feels a lot less sympathetic toward his older brother. Razlo was in the right on this one, this was a great opportunity to mess with Nico. You snooze you lose!

Silver and red are both allowed entry into a sea of other colors. Now that they’re inside, it’s…actually really daunting. People in fancier suits that Livio’s buzz around like an active worm nest, and he feels like a Tomas stranded in one of Zazie’s swarms. Silver and red unconsciously move closer together, both uncomfortable with the large crowd surrounding them.

Livio takes everything back, Nico should definitely be here instead.

His brother is far better at making friendly talk with people higher on the food chain than Livio is, but at least Razlo wasn’t here to start a food fight just for shits and giggles. Vash seems to share the same sentiments, his grip tightening briefly on Livio’s bicep before disengaging.

Livio shoots him a panicked look, before remembering that Vash doesn’t remember him. He tries to will an excuse into existence when three fingers snag his cuff. “You’re nervous, I’m nervous, so tell you what,” Vash chews on his lip, “You go that way and I’ll go this way, and we’ll meet up at the snack table in thirty for our efforts and if the other one doesn’t show, we go find them. Deal?”

Livio readily agrees, feeling weirdly better about having a plan and an assured time for rescue. Rich people were like sharks. They smelled blood and devoured their meals with tenacity. God help you if the older folk got their fangs in you, they’re a guaranteed hour off your life span.

Once they split, Vash immediately gets accosted by a woman in white fur and Livio makes it ten steps before a familiar man in a black suit stops him, “You’re with the orphanage, right?”

“Mr. Wayne you have enough children already.”

…

Mercifully they both make it to the snack table by the allotted time. Livio is already exhausted from getting pulled into a circle of long-standing millionaires, forcing himself to laugh at horrible jokes, and then trying to escape. Vash looks to be in the same boat, immediately sitting down in a chair and sagging into it. He stretches two long legs in front of him like he used to after a long day.

Clank.

Vash pales.

Livio watches him do some struggling before realizing that the man’s leg is locked in the stretch and isn’t about to be moving anytime soon.

“Ah, well, looks like I’ll be here for the rest of the night.” He hangs his head in despair.

“Do you need me to call someone?” Livio offers, squatting down and offering Vash something with cheese in it. Vash shakes his head, shoving the little treat in his mouth.

“S’okay.” Vash gives him a false smile, “Thank you though.”

Livio’s face goes flat, “Look, man, you’re the only person here I don’t mind talking to so if you’re here for the night then so am I.”

“Huh?” Vash puzzles, “But what about the kids?”

“Turns out we had a donor pay for the new plant, so this whole thing was just so we could save face rather than cancel.” Livio shrugs, taking the seat next to Vash. He doesn’t mention the debt collector that would get all the money anyway.

Livio is all too happy for the chance to learn more about his reincarnation. Vash is more reserved now, there’s a quietness about him that hadn’t been there before. Where he used to pull anyone in with his boisterous and friendly demeanor, now he’s demure and calm. No less friendly, but he seems somehow happier and yet all the more lonelier in this life. Livio takes this all in while Vash tells him that he got his degree in plant engineering a short while back and has been working for the Dome ever since. There’s no mention of family or friends. Just his new interns, Milly and Meryl who will be here later to present for the Dome as part of their internship.

‘They did come back! They’re here!’ Livio inwardly cheers.

“But enough about me, how are the kids?” Vash asks, “How’s Rose?”

Where Vash is reserved, Livio nearly overshares. He talks about how the kids adore Rose and those who still missed Thalia eventually warmed up to her. He talks about his older brother Nico who took over while Miss Melanie was on vacation for another few days, who wasn’t a real priest by Earth standards but served just fine by Noman’s Land’s much more lenient policies. He talks about his twin Razlo who was a little shit but did everything for a reason, usually so someone else wouldn’t have to. They were both similar in that regard, though Livio wishes they weren’t so stubborn. Nico has been working on it. Razlo has not.

An hour has passed by the time Livio has managed to tell Vash a story on every single person at the orphanage. It’s a victory when Vash snickers at something one of the kids or Nico did.

“Your family is a lot like mine then.” He comments after Livio has told another story about Nico.

“How so?” Livio asks curiously. Vash had never ever talked about Knives and only sometimes did he talk about his mother, Rem. Outside of those two, Livio didn’t realize he had any other family members to talk about.

“We love each other a lot.” Vash clarifies, a trail of sadness in his words, “No matter what dumb things we do.”

Livio leans closer as he opens his mouth, eager to hear the stories about to be told when a phone goes off.

Livio’s ringtones are all personalized, so he knows the default ringing isn’t coming from his phone. The plant engineer on the other hand seems to know exactly whose phone it’s coming from.

Vash pulls out a flip phone (they still made those?) and answers with far more exhaustion than Livio’s ever heard from him, “What’s happened now?”

A teal arm snaps out, rocketing the phone away from Vash’s ear with astonishing speed. The shrieking on the other end of the phone pierces even Livio’s eardrums and he’s a good five feet away from the speaker, “Ida – Ida calm down, what…?”

“THEY’RE RED!! THEY’RE ALL RED!!!!” Ida howls on the other side of the phone.

Vash launches up out of his chair, forgetting his broken leg, and nearly topples over if it wasn’t for Livio’s quick movements. He steadies the other man with a strong grasp on his arm and shoulder. Vash’s flesh hand clutches fiercely at his silver sleeve, teal eyes are wide and unfocused, gazing at the far wall over Livio’s shoulder. 

“What’s the exact readout?” Vash demands, daring to pull the phone back up to his ear again. A swear is uttered shortly after.

Pleading eyes are shot in Livio’s direction.

“What do you need?” He asks without hesitation.

“A car,” Vash responds. Livio nods and whips his phone out to call Razlo. “It’ll take ten minutes, is that-?” – too long, judging by the look on Vash’s face.

A black suit appears in front of them, the whole gala is pretending they aren’t watching them. Livio ignores them in favor of Mr. Wayne who looks between the two of them. The stressed plant engineer and his orphan crutch. “Take mine. One of my children can come pick me up.”

“Thank you.” Vash says, breathless, “It’s – the whole Dome is red.”

Mr. Wayne bristles at the information, Livio going rigid along with him.

“Go.” He urges, waving at a server who darts off.

The two of them hobble out quickly.

“Can you drive like this?” Livio asks.

“No, but I - ”

“I’ll drive.” He insists.

Vash looks at him like he’s a gift from God, awed and disbelieving. Vash should never have that look on his face from such a simple act of kindness. It makes Livio’s stomach twist.

A sleek black car is pulled in front of them. Livio opens the door for Vash before vaulting over the hood to the driver’s side. The valet hands the keys off to Livio and then they’re off like a shot.

“I don’t know the way,” Livio states.

“I do.” Vash asserts.

Vash leads them through the winding turns of the city. Livio breaks every speed law imaginable, but they make it to the Dome in five minutes. Vash is already stumbling out of the car, staff members bursting out of the doors to shout all kinds of technobabble at him. None of them reach out to help him inside until Livio pushes through the horde and shoves himself under Vash’s arm.

The engineer barks orders at the various employees as they make their way inside. A golf cart rolls up with flashing yellow lights and Livio finally remembers who and where he is. He doesn’t – he shouldn’t be here –

Vash squeezes his bicep and declares with no uncertainty, “You’re with me.”

Livio gets in without another word. After everything, the man is still too trusting. Vash doesn’t even know Livio and yet…and yet no one else was willing to be Vash’s crutch. With chaos around them and Vash certain of Livio’s place at his side, he can’t help but sink back into the steady rhythm they used to share.

The security guy driving the cart floors it to the back of the Dome, and the rush of wind makes tears form in his eyes. The maintenance door they’re approaching is propped open before they reach it. Then Vash is yelling orders again, easily accepting Livio back into place under his arm, and demanding specific types of information while dismissing others.

The room they enter is filled with red screens, with shockingly few people typing away frantically while others dart from one computer to another. Vash points at a large, mean-looking security guard, “Gofsef, come with me and Livio. The rest of you maintain those pressure levels no matter what.”

In a show of loyalty and trust, the staff doesn’t argue with him. Their frenzied dance changes with Vash’s orders and a new flurry of movement begins at a different tempo.

The hallway Vash directs them to is claustrophobic, with red spinning lights and blaring alarms filling the area with an artificial presence, making the space smaller than it truly was. They go through two – three – four rooms colored red before making it to a maintenance door. Behind it is a large valve.

“Turn it, please.” Vash nods to the valve, glancing at Gofsef as he speaks. The larger man hesitates.

“They’ll all die! Turn it! Please!” Gofsef is visibly distressed by Vash’s words and shuffles in place a moment longer. Livio moves to do it himself, but Vash grips his arm firmly, preventing him from leaving his side. Confusion wracks Livio’s frame.

“That valve takes more force to turn than anyone here can provide, other than you.” Vash pleads, shaking in Livio’s grasp, “You’re the only one who can save them, Gofsef.”

The large man suddenly jolts forward, trembling hands gripping the valve and the metal groans under the strength needed to turn it. The light above it goes green after three strong rotations, something hisses and rattles above them.

The lights still glare red, but the sirens stop.

 “Thank you.” Vash breathes and he all but sags into Livio’s side. Something about what he said earlier nags at the back of Livio’s mind. Gofsef sniffles, “I didn’t mean to.”

“It’s okay.” Vash extends his free hand, “We all make mistakes sometimes, but you fixed it! You saved the plants, Gofsef.”

Livio holds Vash closer to his side, ready for some sort of fallout, but Gofsef just takes Vash’s smaller hand and cries.

…

Blackmail.

By the red light of the alarms, Gofsef gets his story out. His family got a call this morning, the bank was demanding their house back for debts unsettled. The only way to make it up was to barter for services. Gofsef had been told not to, that it all sounded shady and fake, but the man thought he was helping his family by doing what he was told.

It sounds eerily similar to what Miss Melanie told them about the debt collector. Suspicious, vague, and full of holes, but solid enough that the threats seemed too real to ignore. Nico had been very firm about the kinds of jobs they would take on. Gofsef hadn’t had the same reservations until the very last minute.

Vash presses something into Gofsef’s hand and whispers words in his ear that Livio can’t quite catch.

Gofsef nods red-eyed and lip trembling. And then he leaves.

Vash sinks to the floor once he’s gone. He’s so heavy (Livio is so weak now) that Livio has no choice but to go with him.

In a feat of flexibility, Vash folds over himself to roll up his right pant leg. With each inch that Vash reveals, the illusion of a bloodied leg peeks out at Livio. Red light casts darkly over a heavily damaged teal limb.

“What happened to it?” Livio asks before any semblance of a filter can catch it.

“I was in a car crash on my way to the orphanage.” Vash answers sheepishly, “It’s kind of pathetic, I usually make it farther than Main Street before wrecking. I…can’t drive that well.”

Livio flinches.

Fuck.

Fuck.

The car they were told to wreck was Vash’s.

Vash was in there when they flipped it.

It’s not often, but right now Livio really hopes Razlo and Nico don’t remember their past life, they’d both lose it if they knew.

Vash lets out a self-deprecating chuckle, “I swear I need to hire someone just to drive me around.”

And oh shit, if Vash ever found out…

Livio doesn’t think he would survive the sad look of disappointment from him. Vash had a way of making Livio feel like it was Ms. Melanie scolding him instead of a notorious outlaw. The ‘I’m not mad just disappointed’ look was scarily similar on both of them and just as effective on Livio.

Vash hunches over as much as he can and opens a compartment on his lower leg. He twists his joints until a metallic finger can force a gear just under the knee back into place. A metallic clang and a gritted hiss of pain from Vash precede the knee finally bending. Vash moves his leg around, testing its mobility.

“Well, it’s not perfect but it should get me through the rest of the night.” Vash assesses with a yawn.

Livio’s brows furrow in confusion before he remembers the gala. “Oh yeah, I guess we just ditched the whole thing.”

“For good reason!” Vash reassures, letting his head fall back against the wall, “You really saved us all Livio, I can’t thank you enough.”

“What?” Livio blinks stupidly, “I didn’t do anything!”

“You got me here, didn’t you?” Vash teases, “Or did you and your twin switch places while I wasn’t looking?”

“Er, no, but-“

“No buts! You’re a hero!” Vash laughs, patting him on the shoulder, “Couldn’t have done it without you!”

Livio wants to argue more but he knows the look on the typhoon’s face well enough by now to know he’s going to be fighting a losing battle. Vash was infuriatingly stubborn about humanity being better than they really are.

Lord, he hasn’t changed at all. Still a typhoon and a fool even in this life, and Livio wouldn’t change that for the world. Nico gave him the desire and ability to change for the better. Vash gave him the chance. He will always be indebted to the both of them.

“We should return Mr. Wayne’s car.” Livio smiles, suddenly desperate to meet up with Nico and Razlo.

“Alright, but you’re driving.” Vash agrees, “You know? I was serious about needing a driver, Milly keeps running people over with the cart and Meryl has started hitting people with the car-”

Chapter Text

His hands are bloody. Iron fills his nostrils and burns his lungs. The red liquid warms his hands and freezes his heart. It trickles between his fingers with a drip… drip… drip… of damnation.

“I did this for you.” He speaks. Livio cries in front of him, the bodies between them dressed in black and red and white and brown.

“I did this for us.” Razlo can’t raise his head to look at what he’s done. He stares at his red reflection in the pool cupped in his palms. No one else was going to do it, so Razlo had to. This was his burden to carry. He had to do the hard things, that was his purpose, and this was all he was good for. It still felt like he’s done something horribly wrong.

Dark fingers wrap around his wrist and pull his hands away, letting the puddle crash to the ground and severing the eye contact he was holding with his reflection. A pair of hands, one flesh and one metal gently grasp his and squeeze his dirty fingers reassuringly. The hands slide around his to cradle his blood-smeared hands in their palms.

Two white wet cloths approach carefully from either side. Small hands begin to wipe at the blood on his right hand and a larger set takes care of his left. None of them care how their hands start to become stained too.

But then the bodies are gone, and children are beaming up at him, begging him to come play.

“You shouldn’t have to.” Livio says, “We’re partners. We can share the load.”

The small set of hands is gone, as are the tan fingers around his wrists.  

“You’ll take care of each other.” A kind voice says. Finally, finally, Razlo looks up to see his family gazing fondly back at him, uncaring that he is not Livio – uncaring that he is the monster they need under the bed.

“In this life and the next.” Vash continues.

“We’ll handle the rest.” Milly offers. Removing her blood-soaked rag to pick up a child so they can pat Razlo on the cheeks and plant a sloppy kiss on his forehead.

“We love you too Mr. Razlo!” The child has many shapes and sizes, a little girl or a little boy or a toddler or a budding teenager, but the words are always the same whether they’re sternly said or sobbed out.

He wakes up with the phantom sensation of multiple hands on his.

Nico is already seated by the time he gets to the dining area. It had been hell trying to park the truck without dinging any of the other, far more expensive, vehicles in the lot. He’s grateful that he had the foresight to drop Nico off before being subjected to his backseat driving, but now he stands on the dark floor looking around like a moron. Razlo spends a good couple of minutes trying to spot either of his brothers in the dimly lit room before a large woman in a long green dress with chestnut brown hair draped over her shoulders stands and waves him over to her enthusiastically.

Milly.

And beside her dressed in a pretty petite blue gown is Meryl.

His brothers can wait, he decides, nearly combusting at the sight.

Fifteen years he’s spent looking for them and here they are calling him over like he hasn’t been scouring the world for them ever since the first night he remembered their names. There was no Meryl Stryfe or Milly Thompson on Noman’s Land but their faces are unmistakable and he struggles not to pick them both up and throw them at his brothers.

The girls and Vash made Livio happy, of course he was going to try and find them for his brother. Memories be damned, the three were family. Hell, he thought Nico wouldn’t mind either but they clearly made him happy too if his reaction to Vash was any indicator.

And maybe…maybe he wanted them back in his own life too. Maybe he wanted to show off his new independence, show them who he could be on his own, show them that he still took care of Livio.

The urge to scoop them up and find Nico is nearly overwhelming. Vash is supposed to be here too, he remembers, and Razlo figures he can kick a few people out of their seats so his family can sit together without getting forcibly removed from the premise. He doesn’t have to, he abruptly realizes as he gets closer to the wives, because the table has three empty chairs, and sitting next to Milly, Nico looks pleased as punch.

By their loose postures and sluggish movements, they’re a couple wine glasses in already.

“Hey, Mister! Over here!” Milly waves.

“Not so loud Milly.” Meryl scolds.

“Were you planning on making us wait all night?” Nico grins at him the closer he gets.

“You, always.” Razlo takes a seat next to Meryl, leaving the other two empty seats between himself and Nico for Livio and Vash. “These lovely ladies however…”

He offers his hand, trying not to look overly excited, “I would never dream of it.”

Meryl gives him a friendly smile, fond in the way only drunk girls can manage, “Meryl Stride. This is Milly Hopson, my partner.”

“How do you do?” Milly takes his hand next, still grinning like the second sunrise.

“Razlo Fang.” He introduces himself. “It’s nice to meet you.”

Nico gives him a strange look. Fuck, he’s being too friendly. “You know they’re gay right?”

“I can be nice to people!” Razlo insists. He turns to the women, Meryl blushing furiously, “Nico’s just mad I’m not that nice to him.”

Meryl giggles a little hysterically, and Milly’s eyes gleam in a way that an only child would never understand, “I have noticed he’s the jealous type.”

Nico gapes at them. Razlo supposes to anyone else it would be weird how quickly he’s getting along with… literally anyone on the planet, but their friendship spans a lifetime. Razlo is just glad some of it seemed to carry over. Enough to tease Nico with, anyhow.

“Say Mr. Razlo, did you see Mr. Vash on your way in?” Milly asks.

Halle-fuckin-lujah, they already know him.

Razlo raises his eyebrows, “No? Should I have?”

“He was supposed to be here before us, but we can’t find him,” Meryl explains.

“Livio’s gone too.” Nico points out and oh, oh shit, Razlo should have noticed that first.

“I’ll text him.” Razlo pulls out his phone, about to do just that when a man of considerable height and not much else takes a seat beside Nico. Razlo’s entire body alights with suspicion. The guy is skinny and his suit is expensive. He’s wearing more rings than he has fingers, and his watch has enough diamonds in it that it could blind a man in the daytime. It’s blatantly obvious the guy is trying too hard to seem important.

Razlo could snap him in half…but they’d probably get sued.

See Livio? Progress.

“Mr. Wolfwood, I didn’t expect to see you here!” The man laughs too loudly and slaps Nico on the back with enough force that has his brother wincing. Razlo bristles, baring his teeth at the interloper.

Progress will have to wait.

He knows that voice, how does he know that voice?

“Ah, Mr. Director!” Meryl tries to intervene, a calming hand finding Razlo’s forearm, “We didn’t think you were coming! What brings you all the way over here?”

“Oh well.” The Director hems and haws, “Estamp is dealing with an issue at the Dome so I thought I would come down to take his place.”

Meryl narrows her eyes ever so slightly. Milly doesn’t stop smiling but Razlo can see the twitch of her eyebrow and the subtle movement of her arm, inching closer to Meryl’s side. The girls do not like this man. Razlo does not like this man.

“But since I have you here Mr. Wolfwood let’s talk about your new plant.” The Director turns his attention back to Nico. Razlo’s lip curls further. If a single finger touches his brother, he’s going to start growling.

The voice. The voice. Where did he hear it?

The Director leans into Nico’s space, throwing an arm around the back of Nico’s chair, much to his brother’s obvious displeasure and Razlo’s increasing ire. And holy shit Razlo can smell the man’s revolting cologne from here. Too strong, too much, like a Tomas runt fluffing up its feathers to look bigger.

If any of them gets asthma from this Razlo will do more than just snap this guy’s spine.

“That won’t be necessary, Director.” Meryl cuts in, more firmly this time. She’s found her bearings after the shock of his presence, and Razlo delights in it. He nearly leans back to watch the show. “Mr. Estamp has already settled everything with the Orphanage.”

“The payments-” The Director starts.

“Are taken care of.” Meryl snaps in her backwardly polite tone. She pulls out a manilla envelope and shoots Nico an apologetic look. “We were going to bring this by afterward so you could get it as soon as possible, but the plant is paid for, and you absolutely do not owe the Dome anything.”

She passes the envelope to Milly who in turn passes it to Nico. The Director and Nico eye it with varying levels of trepidation.

Nico opens it.

The director leans over to see too and it takes two lifetimes worth of practicing restraint for Razlo to not drive his steak knife into the man’s eyes. Also, the various looks of disappointment he’ll get after the fact. Mostly that.

“Sir, those are customer documents. I have our merchant documents here.” Meryl pulls out another envelope and passes it to Razlo who, very unwillingly, passes it to the Director.

Nico’s shoulders have sagged by this point, his eyes gazing at the documents in relief. The Director skims his papers quickly and goes red.

“…So it would seem.” The Director acquiesces, “Well then, it was good watching your presentation, Ms. Stride. Ms. Hopson. I will let Estamp know your efforts were…admirable.”

And Razlo watches as the man all but flees the scene.

Nico hands the papers over to him with a cough, “All paid for Raz, just as he promised. Lord, please give that man the sense to take a bath, he smelled like Tomas shit.”

Razlo had never doubted anything about what Nico said or about what Vash had told him. Still, his heart races at the initial price and then slows when he sees the outstanding balance is zero.

The women are whispering fiercely to each other. “-had us print them so quickly?” He hears, “I’m messaging Vash.”

And that reminds him to text Livio.

Appetizers come around (salad??? In this economy?????) and neither the girls nor Razlo have received a response to their texts by the time each setting has been given a plate of steak (STEAK??? IN THIS ECONOMY??????). The girls and Nico entertain themselves with one another, occasionally making Razlo participate. He’s content to listen to them in silence while he sips his wine, but they insist he tell them about how he’s fixing up second-hand cars to resell and he can’t say no to any of them (well, Nico he can say no to, the wonder of his reincarnation wore off the second he lied to Razlo about the tooth fairy). The food in front of the empty seats grows cold by the time their missing companions finally show up.

“Hey, sorry for the wait. Oh! Wolfwood! Good to see you again!” Vash approaches the table with Livio just in front of him, leading the way. Vash lights up at the sight of them, nearly running over to the table.

“Where have you been!?” Meryl shrieks and Vash stumbles back at the force, caught off guard by her ferocity.

“I? Huh? Did you not…?” Vash fumbles. Livio trades glances with Razlo and makes a significant glance at their brother, who all but melted as soon as Vash showed up, and they both share a sneaky grin.

Oh, this was going to be fun.

“What?” Meryl glances at her phone and then back to Vash again. Something runs across the outlaw’s face at that and then he abruptly changes his tune.

“Sorry, sorry, we had some technical difficulties.” Vash scratches the back of his neck sheepishly, a disarming smile stretching across his face. Livio takes the chance to sit in the open seat next to Nico, leaving Vash to sit between Livio and Razlo. Livio ignores the offended glare from his brother like a champ, “Vash tells me you ladies were going to present. Were you nervous?”

“Oh, not at all!” Milly answers, “We spent a lot of time practicing, Meryl could recite the whole thing in her sleep!”

Meryl flushes and smacks Milly lightly on the arm, “Milly!”

“Aww, I told you not to worry too much about it.” Vash pouts at them, “Really, it’s not that big of a deal.”

“Oh, we know, but if they could replace the piping in section G, it would save you a lot of time, Vash. That compressor nearly blew your arm off on Tuesday!” Milly scolds him gently.

“Is that why you smelled like burnt water?” Nico interjects.

“I smelled?!” Vash wails, distraught at the notion.

“Nico doesn’t have a very good sense of smell since the Tractor Incident. I told you the story earlier. He probably just made that up.” Livio stage whispers to Vash.

“Ahhh, Livio is the only nice one. I’m disowning the rest of you.” Vash wraps both arms around Livio’s bicep with a pout.

“You told him about that?!” Nico shouts.

Vash puffs his cheeks up before Livio can respond, “You’re not allowed to scold him, he’s my favorite right now.”

Livio preens at that.

“Hey, what about me? You just met me!” Razlo argues and Vash takes a moment to consider his argument before pulling off of Livio to wrap his left arm around Razlo’s so he has one arm around each twin. “You make a compelling argument and are therefore forgiven, Sir Razlo.”

“Hang on, we made a whole presentation for you!” Meryl objects.

Vash takes a longer moment to ponder over this second argument and then amends, “Alright then, these two are my favorite man-people right now.”

Nico clutches his heart in betrayal while the girls give him a satisfied nod, “You like my brothers better than me?”

And Livio’s smile stretches wider when Vash responds and Razlo sticks out his tongue, “He brought me a cannoli and didn’t insult my hair once.”

“Aw, Sunshine, you know I didn’t mean it, your hair looks fine like this.” Nico whines, leaning forward to show off his chest in a bid for forgiveness.

Whipped! Razlo cackles.

Servers start coming around to pick up empty plates and Vash and Livio start to inhale their food before it can be taken away from them. The girls chat about their presentation while Nico tries to convince the other two to slow down before they choke. Razlo watches, very pleased with himself.

It’s Milly who proposes that they ditch the rest of the night to find a bar. Only Meryl seems hesitant about it, and it doesn’t last long with the assortment of puppy eyes she gets for her trouble. “Oh, you-! Fine!”

According to Vash and the girls, there’s a decent bar not too far from the Gala. The brothers follow them dutifully into a dimly lit bar with televisions on every wall and a crowd of regulars who wave at them as they enter.

“Hey, it’s Milly!”

“Heya girls! Hi Vash!”

“Our triple threats are here!”

Razlo wrinkles his nose at all the attention, “You come here often?”

“Meryl likes to unwind on Fridays and she always ends up ranting about the lack of workers in the Dome,” Milly explains fondly, moving easily over to a table in the corner. “Mr. Vash joins us when he can.”

“They know me via Meryl Rant.” Vash smiles as he sits.

Meryl sputters, “I only complain a little bit! Milly’s the one who runs people over!”

Milly is unperturbed, “Yep!”

“Please don’t confess to criminal activity so casually.” Vash sighs, smile now falling into exasperated despair.

“Aww, what’s a little crime going to hurt?” Nico laughs and quickly seizes the chair next to Vash before Razlo or Livio can block him again.

“Me!” Vash scoots a small amount toward Nico. Razlo narrows his eyes at that. “They hit Mr. Hal the other day for trying to flirt with the plants!”

Meryl makes a noise of disgust, “That was not flirting it was borderline harassment on everyone within hearing range.”

“The plants thought it was funny.” Vash pouts.

“Do they find most flirting funny?” Livio, the absolute madman, asks.

“The plants?” Vash asks and at Livio’s nod, continues, “I guess it depends. Some of them are enamored but…more like how you’d view a purring kitten.”

“We’re just kittens to them?” Razlo hums.

He’s expecting Vash to launch into an immediate denial, something about how they’re all equal, but when Vash opens his mouth and then stops and seems to consider it more seriously, everyone at the table is baffled.

He can’t be serious. No fucking way.

And then Vash laughs in delight, “Sorry! I just didn’t expect you all to take me so seriously!”

Nico huffs, “Jerk. You owe me two drinks for that.”

Vash readily agrees, still giggling.

Razlo gets a beer where everyone else goes for mixtures and cocktails. As the DD he can’t indulge too much. Vash reassures them that all the plants have come to adore them.

“There are still problems but…they love you very much.” And it’s Vash’s kind smile this time. All fondness and a smidge of mirth. Truly, freely happy in their presence.

After that it’s like catching up with a bunch of old friends, no doubt helped along by the alcohol. Meryl grew up in December, an only child of a family of doctors. Milly grew up a farmer with ten siblings and an Uncle in the city. Vash was from some small city along the Thunderwastes and was planning on going back at some point. Nico and Livio talked up and down about the orphanage and what it was like growing up with twenty other kids.

Meryl drifted closer to Milly as Vash and Nico drifted closer to each other with each drink. Something must show on the television over Razlo’s head because Meryl gasps and points, “Look! Milly look!”

“I see it, Meryl.” Milly gazes at her fondly, not looking at the television at all.

“We’re going to make the next one,” Meryl states, tugging on Milly’s sleeve.

“Yes, Meryl.” Milly readily agrees.

Razlo and Livio turn to the tv and catch the end of a trailer for a new movie. It’s called Badlands Rumble and under the title is smaller text that says, ‘Vash the Stampede is Back’.

Vash groans, one hand covering his face.

“We’re going to do it Vash! The best movie ever!” Meryl declares, “You said so!”

“I did, I did.” Vash acquiesces.

 “Those movies suck.” Livio comments and Razlo quietly agrees. They’d been forced to watch the third movie that came out because it was one of the only movies that the orphanage had access to.

Meryl nods furiously, “Did you know, the second movie had a plot point where he killed an army of soldiers just to get to the main bad guy?”

“WHAT?!” Nico roars and nearly launches out of his chair if it weren’t for Vash’s arm around his shoulders. “He would never!”

“RIGHT!” Meryl yells too, “THAT’S WHAT I SAID!!”

“We’ve never seen them, have we Razlo?” Livio drunkenly (foolishly) comments and suddenly the twins find themselves caught between two raging beasts.

Razlo has never seen Nico so riled up over something so small. His older brother is ranting and raving with Meryl over those stupid movies. Vash is trying to calm them both down in vain, turning from one to another so quickly he’ll probably get whiplash here soon.

Milly is too in love with her wife to help him and the twins are too amused by Nico’s previously unknown (and apparently very strong) opinion on Vash the Stampede. He didn’t think Nico even knew what a red herring was.

It’s only when the bartender comes over that Razlo takes pity on the only guy trying to keep them from getting kicked out. “Alright Nico, I think you’ve had enough. You can tell us all about it in the car.”

Milly similarly gets the idea, “Meryl let’s go home so we can work on the story.”

Easily swayed with the four strong cocktails they ingested before, the two surrender to the herding motions from their companions.

Milly hikes Meryl up onto her back and waves as they take off towards their car. “Keep in touch! You have our number!”

Razlo keeps one hand on each brother so neither wanders off in drunken curiosity. Except…they’re both more inclined to keep their other hand on Vash as well.

“Sorry…” He says and Razlo scowls at the pointless apology.

“Livio leggo.” Razlo grunts, “You’ll spook him off.”

Both his brothers release Vash like they’ve been burned, though Nico makes an aborted motion to grab at him again. Razlo shuffles and yanks them until they’re both under his large arms. “See you around?” Razlo means to ask but it comes out as a demand.

Vash’s eyes go so incredibly soft at that, Razlo doesn’t know what to do with the look he’s given.

“Yes.” He whispers and then Vash is spinning on his heel and vanishes into the night.

It sounded like a promise.

It feels like a lie.

…

He gets a text from debt douche after unceremoniously dropping his brothers into their beds.

Kill the man in room xxx at the Dome. You have until 3 am. The reward is a full payment towards your debt.

Chapter Text

He doesn’t smoke often. The bottle has always been Vash’s vice of choice, but when the loneliness creeps in and his sorrow is purely nostalgic, he’ll reach for the stash in his coat and light one up.

It’s one of those nights, he decided a couple of hours after his companions went home.

Standing in front of an open window in his office with a lit cigarette between his lips, he ignores the fact that it’s been ‘one of those nights’ for the past couple of weeks.

The city is quiet at this time of night, a vast difference from the Thunderwastes. The crash of thunder and thrum of rain was constant background noise, but here in the city a gentle silence falls over the population once nighttime truly settles in. From where he stands, Vash can see the greenery of the city, a testament to humanity’s patience and determination. The sight is awe-inducing even now after being in the city for a couple years.

It makes him feel old.

He takes a long drag of his cigarette, trying to make it last. He’ll only smoke one. The brand went out of production 300 years ago, so he needs to stretch his stash as long as he can, no matter how stale they get. Even though the lack of its original taste and smell defeats the purpose of smoking them to begin with.

Would his Wolfwood have smoked the brand that this new Wolfwood has chosen?

Vash exhales long and slow, releasing smoke into the night air and bracing himself for whatever happens next. Roberto has the papers, there’s no real reason to be so risky but Vash needs this to be airtight for his sisters. It’s not often they reach out for his help and if he wants to do this right, it has to be rock solid.

Behind him, someone steps silently into the room.

“Didn’t peg you for a smoker.”

Damn. Vash had been hoping for one of the twins. He would have had a better chance at talking them down.

“I’m not.” He says, suppressing the scream that wanted to come out instead, “It’s just that kind of night.”

“You don’t seem too surprised to see me.” Wolfwood drawls, joining him at the window. It’s still odd to hear him move without the accompanying shuffle of cloth from the Punisher brushing against his back. Vash wonders if he’s still wearing the black suit from earlier or if he’s back in his preacher robes. He bets his unwanted fortune that there’s a pair of sunglasses perched on his face no matter what Wolfwood has decided to dress in.

“I was expecting a good man to walk through that door.” Vash smokes the last of his cigarette, “He did.”

To Vash’s dismay, Wolfwood stiffens next to him. The butt of the cigarette flies out the window with a flick of a mechanical hand. Was it really too much to ask for Wolfwood to see his own goodness, even a little bit, in his new life?

“It will be over soon.” Vash tries to reassure, gazing at a glint in the window of a neighboring building. He wonders which twin it is. “I don’t suppose you could wait another six hours?”

“You haven’t looked at me once since I walked in.” Wolfwood snarls back angrily. Vash doesn’t need to see him to know he’s running a rough tan hand through his dark locks. The only thing missing is the click of a lighter and the stench of nicotine. Though, Vash supposes, I already have that part covered.

Vash shrugs, allowing a small, sad smile to grace his face before he childishly snarks, “I like this view better.”

“You fucking ass-” Wolfwood starts.

The office door opens again and out of the corner of his eye he sees Wolfwood whirl around with a flash of metal in his hands. Vash mournfully turns away from the city to face his target. The Director glares back.

“Mr. Estamp, I see you’re still here.” The Director grits out from the doorway. Artificial light streams in from the hallway behind him, ominously encasing his rigid posture in shadows. Moonlight trickles through the window behind Vash, cascading over his broad shoulders and onto the floor to shine off the Director’s polished black shoes.

“Oh, you know how it is. There’s always something to do around here.” Vash hums innocently, leaning back against the open window so his elbows rest on the sill. Hopefully, the twins won’t shoot him with his back turned. Lina just gave him this coat; he’d hate to see it riddled with bullet holes already.

Wolfwood gives him a vicious glare, demanding his silence. The moons look much better reflecting off his dark eyes than the Director’s shoes, Vash notes.

The Director eyes the gun in Wolfwood’s hands and scowls, “Boy, if you want our terms of agreement to be adhered to then you best be pointing that thing at someone else.”

The glare on Wolfwood’s face turns into a feral grin, it goes straight through Vash’s tattered heart, and he pinches out the flame of jealousy when that grin is directed toward the Director. “So, it was you. Well, nice to finally meet you Debt-Douche.” Wolfwood’s voice drips with sarcasm and disdain pours off every word.

The Director harrumphs nonplussed, “Of course it was me, plant maintenance isn’t cheap.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Wolfwood questions, snarling.

White teeth glint in the moonlight, “Your caretaker never told you?”

Vash tenses, eying Wolfwood’s posture carefully.

The Director continues, “Your plant was faulty. The orphanage couldn’t afford my services, but I did it anyway out of the goodness of my heart. I got it fixed, now you owe me.”

The corner of his mouth twitches briefly into a frown before Vash smooths it back into a pleasant smile. Some humans were still working on seeing plants as more than just objects. He just had to be patient with them. He needs to focus on Wolfwood.

His friend’s reincarnation is silent for a beat before bristling, a low growl rising up from his dark form, “Thalia?”

Warning bells go off in his head like a pin drop, the kind that preludes a fight or a chase, but Vash is practiced with waiting for the pin to land on the floor before reacting. He’s been surprised before.

Wolfwood seethes, dangerously calm as he bared his teeth, “She was worth every penny.”

Vash smiles, a warmth swelling in his chest (this flame he fans into an inferno). Thalia was right to love her Beloved Humans so much. He’ll do his best to save them, no matter what.

“I’m sure.” The Director harrumphs, “Rose on the other hand…”

He finishes with a displeased look towards Vash, “You have been a thorn in my side, Estamp.”

“Aww, thank you.” Vash coyly cradles his cheek in one hand and makes an ‘oh stop it you’ gesture with the other. The Director briefly reels from the unexpected response before continuing his monologue, “For twenty years I’ve been running this operation and you have been getting in my way at every turn.”

“Oh, you’re too kind.” Vash clutches his heart as though he were thoroughly flattered. Wolfwood snorts and that’s all the encouragement he needs to flap his hands and keep going, “Honestly Director, you should be careful waxing so much poetry at me. HR would never allow it.”

“That ends tonight.” The Director snaps, turning back to an amused Wolfwood, “Do it.”

“You must be out of your goddamn mind.” Wolfwood hisses, humor immediately lost, “The only reason we haven’t put a bullet in your skull already is because we had no idea who was using us.”

The Director scowls, “I am giving you an opportunity for it to stop, you ungrateful brat. If you do not shoot that man, I will-”

“You’ll what?” Wolfwood looks absolutely delighted at the notion, “You dumb bastard, we know who you are. I have you at gunpoint right now. If someone is going to die tonight, why in the hell wouldn’t it be you?”

The Director suddenly goes very still, seemingly realizing exactly where he stands in Wolfwood’s eyes.

“You wouldn’t, you- don’t, I can- I will forgive your debt-” The Director takes a nervous step back out of the room. The yellow light crashes down upon his pale, frightened face.

Wolfwood flicks the safety off.

“No! Listen! I will give you the papers, your debt will be swept under the rug!”

He cocks the gun.

“Wait! I can give you money! I was selling plants on the black market, I have tons of it, as much as you want! I-!”

There it is. Wow, Vash had not been expecting Wolfwood to be so helpful, though he probably should have figured the Director would squeal like this. Vash was familiar with his type. But just to be sure, he subtly checks the light on his desk comm. Still green.

Wolfwood is making a big show about shooting, but if he had been serious then he would have fired already so Vash isn’t too worried anyone will get shot tonight. It’s always nice when things work out like this, especially when he had assumed the injured person would be himself.

“Keep begging.” Wolfwood glowers down at the Director, now on the floor with his hands clasped.

Hmmm, or maybe Wolfwood was just really mad.

“Why don’t we go get you your papers, Mr. Wolfwood?” Vash suggests, not really interested in seeing the result of Wolfwood’s demand. Oddly enough, the other man softens at his words. The gun gestures from the Director towards the hallway, “Walk.”

Then he turns back to Vash, “You’re behind me, Sunshine.”

Oh?

Well, Vash won’t complain. Anything to see how tight those pants are.

“As you command, Sire.” Vash gives an overexaggerated bow that has Wolfwood snorting.

The Director nervously backs into the hallway, eyes still on the pistol. The two men are about to follow him out when the high hum of a small engine echoes down the hall.

Vash realizes what’s going to happen seconds before the other two do, “WAIT, DON’T-!”

And then the Director is promptly sent flying into the office by two very vengeful internship girls in a golf cart.

Wolfwood and Vash dive gracelessly to the side with shouts of surprise before the man careens into them. Carpet scrapes harmlessly against his prosthetics. The same cannot be said about the rest of him. “Ow.” He summarizes, rubbing his scuffed jaw with a cool metal hand.

“…He’s still alive, right?” Wolfwood asks, gaping at the sad sack of limbs wheezing against Vash’s desk. Dark fingers dig into the flesh around his tailbone with a wince. Evidently, falling onto his ass instead of going for the full-body dive that Vash performed was just as painful.

Vash groans into his hands. Rem, he’s too old for this, “For their sake, let’s hope so.”

“They don’t seem too worried about it.” Wolfwood points at the girls in the cart high fiving each other, “Do they not get paid or something?”

“I pay them.” Vash mumbles, hoping to God the bug in his intercom did not pick up anything incriminating against the girls. Roberto will have his head if Milly ends up in jail for assault.

The Director twitches and groans on the floor. Meryl looks a little too hard at the gas pedal and Vash throws himself in front of the cart, “Okay! You got him! No need to hit him again!”

“He tried to kill you!” Meryl shouts, flushed and still clearly drunk, “I think we should get to run him over one more time!”

“What? How did you know?” Vash baffles.

“We didn’t!” Milly cheerily informs him from the passenger seat, “Uncle Roberto told me to get everything off my chest with you tonight, which means you were in trouble! So, we came as soon as we could!”

Wolfwood laughs, gun held in a loose grip by his side, “Man you sure keep some interesting characters around don’t you, Sunshine?”

“You…” Vash spins as the Director’s uneven-sized pupils fall onto the green, outgoing call light on his desk comm. “You-!”

It’s been a long time since Vash heard gunfire and even longer since he’s felt a bullet slam into his chest. The girls scream as he falls back against the cart from the momentum. Vash holds his ground between the girls and the Director, horrifically aware that they’re behind him. The next three bullets ricochet off his metallic arm with a ping! ping! ping! safely to the left side of the room.

A dark blur slams into the Director and Vash loses track of the gun. Wolfwood and the Director go down in a heap of limbs. No… No!

The dark shape writhes on the floor, the gunfire replaced with grunts and the sound of fists on flesh that assault Vash’s ears. He stumbles away from the cart to help his friend, ribs screaming and lungs gasping.

He can’t tell who is winning.

Where did the gun go?

“KNOCK IT OFF!” Milly demands, halfway out of the cart and brandishing her stun gun 2.0 towards the shadowed mass. Everyone freezes.

“Both of you stand up slowly.” Meryl orders from the other side, her derringer raised threateningly.

“Alright. Don’t shoot, big girl.” Wolfwood says. A figure detaches itself and stands with his arms raised, a pistol dangling from his right hand, a single finger hooked in the trigger guard. There’s a red mark on his cheek that Vash is sure will bruise and his hair is tousled from the scuffle, but he looks otherwise unharmed.

Wolfwood mistakes his concern for something else, “I didn’t shoot him, Sunshine, don’t look so worried.”

“I will.” Milly shoots an X-shaped claw at the man still on the floor. The Director shrieks in pain. Light bounces off the projectile and reflects off the Director’s gun, a single sniper bullet buried in its barrel.

He smiles, relieved.   

And then he’s on the floor and there are large hands on his face, a gruff voice demanding that he look at them.

‘It’s over.’

It’s over?

Red Brother?

Concern filters through his connection with his siblings. He sends reassurance back. Roberto will handle the rest. This should be more than enough for his article.

The voices around him get louder. Small hands pat around his chest and pull at his clothing, falling upon the locket.

No! Don’t touch that!

“Fine! I’m fine!” He shouts, thrashing his way out of the hands. His back collides with something hard and his ribs screech in protest, definitely cracked. Then he’s gazing up into two pairs of concerned eyes. A frantic scan of them both reveals Meryl and Wolfwood are unharmed, but he can’t be sure. Paranoia takes over. His hands come up shakily, hurriedly patting them down.

“Whoa, take me out to dinner first!” Wolfwood protests, but there is no sticky warmth of blood or deformations of broken bones or pained hisses indicating so much as a bruise. Meryl is next, or she would have been, had Milly not scooped her up and smiled kindly at him, “I promise we’re okay Vash.”

Oh, well. Milly wouldn’t lie about something like this. He trusts her.

“What about…?” He looks past the three to see the Director out stone cold. Wolfwood scowls and raps his knuckles against Vash’s head. Over the ensuing whine he lectures, “Who cares about him? You were the one who got shot!”

“Ah, about that…” Vash lifts the edge of his shirt up so they can see the bulletproof vest underneath. “I got bullied into it.” He pouts, still bitter about losing the four-way shouting match. Three against one just wasn’t fair and honestly, it would have only taken Lina, Roberto, and his independent siblings separately to wrestle him into it. They didn’t have to gang up on him like that.

Roberto’s voice crackles over the intercom, unmuting himself and scaring the hell out of the girls and Wolfwood, “Good thing, too. The interplanetary bureaucracy would have had a fit over it.”

Rem, Vash doesn’t even want to think about that, “It’s going to happen someday.” The words don’t come out as eagerly as they would have a month ago.  

“What the hell? How long have you been there?” Wolfwood points an accusing finger towards the desk, seething to hide his embarrassment. Vash isn’t sure what there is to be embarrassed about, he thought Wolfwood’s squeal was cute.

“Long enough for a career-destroying news segment,” Roberto answers.

“We got him?” Vash asks, just to be sure.

“Oh, kid, we got him.” Roberto delights, something Vash rarely gets from the man. “I called the police as soon as the gunfire went off, we may not even need an article at this point, but we’ve spent too long on this for me to trash it all.”

“Wha-? Vash?” Meryl turns to him for answers, confusion and a tiny amount of hurt written across her face. Vash glances from her to the other two. Milly pouts at the intercom and Wolfwood eyes him with uncertainty.

“I’m sorry.” He smiles sadly. His heart aches, knowing that he’s hurt them in some way. “Plant testimony isn’t viable in court. I had to get creative.”

…

It goes like this: Knives dies, and Vash thinks he’ll follow soon after. The good doctor’s couch would be his final resting place and all that would remain of him is his coat and gun. Maybe they would plant him next to his brother or maybe they would put him in a pot and bury him next to Wolfwood or maybe they would just burn him – a geranium plant wasn’t edible or useful after all, but Vash can’t bring himself to want to be anything else. ‘Tomorrow’ He thought, ‘Tomorrow I will be gone too.’

And tomorrow came but he was still lying on the couch.

‘Tomorrow.’ He thought again.

And so came another tomorrow.

And another…

And another…

And another…

Until he was fairly certain that maybe Tomorrow was not as close as he thought it was. The month passed, he left the doctor and son duo, and he kept waiting for Tomorrow even after he found the girls and Livio again.

His friends grew older. He lost them one by one until even Milly was gone. And still, Tomorrow never came.

Milly had urged him to go to the city and with nothing else to do, he went. He found Chronica and other independents with her. They didn’t know what to make of him. They looked at his head of dark hair like Tomorrow was right around the corner. Overly gentle manners and weary hesitance to so much as touch him turned out to be scarier than any desperate gun-toting townsman. He retreated to his sisters and slept.

He dreamt about graves and an apple tree.

He dreamt about cigarette smoke and whisky.

He dreamt about silver and black and brown and white.

The person who woke up does not look like the person who went to sleep. He runs back out into the desert. He wanders until he comes upon the Thunderwastes. He buys a cottage from which to watch the rain fall.

The independents visit, sometimes for advice and sometimes for stories. The humans want him to be someone important, a symbol for the plant-human relationship, proof that not all independents desire humanity’s destruction, a hero, an ambassador. He turns them all away, scowls at the movies they make about him, and nearly screams when he sees the statues in the Plant History Museum.

Sometimes, rarely, Zazie comes by to watch the rainfall with him. A roll of thunder falls into harmony with the Worm’s answering buzz. It sets Vash at ease in a strange way.

More time passed until humanity couldn’t decide if he was dead or alive. He’s over four-hundred years old when the conspiracy theories about his fate really take off.

Another fifty-odd years later and Thalia’s cry for help stretches all the way across the planet. His response results in a flood of images from the rest of his siblings in November - images of their Beloved Humans in distress, of a sharply dressed man taking them away and selling them off to the highest bidder. Images of a debt shark.

And so he left his cottage and went to November to get a degree in plant engineering, hoping to find a way to remove the Director of the Dome from his seat of power.

He never ever imagined his host family would be so much like Lina and her grandmother. He fully believes that it’s a coincidence until he comes across a reporter with a wallet full of photos, four of them with an image of an old friend.

It had all gone to shit from there.

He tried to stay away. Rem, he tried so hard to let them enjoy this softer world. His existence in their life only brought them suffering, he can’t do it again. But he slips up. He buys the girls sandwiches he has no business knowing are their favorites. He accepts Wolfwood’s offer to drink. He clings to Livio’s arm. He listens to Razlo brag about how well he’s been his brothers’ keepers.

He’s over five-hundred years old. Tomorrow hasn’t come.

But Yesterday has, and it hurts so much more.

Chapter Text

There’s a pounding in Meryl’s skull, an unforgiving throb that beats to an eerily familiar tempo. If she were anywhere else – if she were any one else – she might attribute it to the hangover that’s barreling her way, but she is who she is and the company she keeps is the same as ever so the headache is very distinctly Humaoid-Typhoon-shaped.

Meryl had her suspicions about the documents and just how much trouble Vash had gotten himself into this time, but as usual, she had underestimated his ability to throw himself caterwauling into an imbroglio.

Wolfwood sums up all of her feelings on the matter by ferociously digging his knuckles into Vash’s temples and grinding them into his scalp. “You fucking moron! What the hell is all of this about? Explain yourself!” 

“Owowowowowow! Mercy!” He wails, struggling to escape Wolfwood’s grasp. With a scowl, the priest releases him, and Vash scampers away, a whine of self-pity grating on Meryl’s last nerve. A different whimper that she has no patience for rises from the pathetic lump of a man pinned under Milly’s projectile claw. Disdain wells up from her gut and she swings the pointed tip of her shoe at the Director’s leg, “Hush, you.”

He grumbles something at her, a word unfit to describe a lady such as herself. Before she can kick him again, a pen bounces off his head. Meryl turns to raise an eyebrow at the culprit only to see Vash’s extended arm bracketed by two guns. “Now that wasn’t very nice, Mr. Director. You should be more careful with your words!" Milly cheerfully admonishes from behind the barrel of her stun gun while Wolfwood glowers at him over his pistol.  

It’s overkill, but she really shouldn’t have expected any less from her friends. Vash and Milly were expected, but to see Wolfwood draw his gun too…they must have made a good impression on him. A sparkle of pride washes away her disgust at the Director. So much progress with the preacher in such a short amount of time, that deserves a pat on the back. With any luck, his brothers are starting to become fond of them too. By her calculations, she’ll only need to send one box of donuts a week instead of two.

The Director wisely stays silent on the floor and the guns are stashed away. 

“Well?” Wolfwood grunts at Vash, “We don’t have all morning.”

Vash hems and haws and fiddles with his sleeves before Wolfwood’s patience runs out and he gets smacked over the head for making them wait, “Spit it out!”

“Ow! You could be nicer to me, you know?” Vash cries, clutching at his head with an indignant frown, “I don’t know where to start!”

“The beginning! Where else?” Wolfwood shouts.

“That’s too long and it won’t make any sense!” Vash yells back.

“Then summarize!”

“That’s…” A pained look flickers across Vash’s face, “That’s still too long!”

“Then summarize it again!”

“You can’t summarize a summary!”

“You can if you’re not a coward!”

“Knock it off!” Meryl interrupts their bickering by squeezing between them and shoving at their stomachs with all her might. Why did they always feel the need to get in each other’s face when they argue? And why were they both still so much taller than her?!

“Vash, if you don’t know where to start,” She redirects both men with a pointed finger towards the trashcan by the desk, “then tell me why you threw away those stacks of papers after we spent so long organizing them.” Meryl punctuates the end of her sentence by jabbing her nail into Vash’s side, miffed that her hard work ended up in the trash. 

“Ack!” He dances away from another jab, “I had a good reason!”  

“Oh!” Milly claps her hands together, pulling a document out of the trash and flipping through it, “These are all the documents with that strange phrasing we saw on the train, right Meryl?”

“Yeah, I thought so.” Meryl nods, giving Vash a pointed look that has him averting his gaze, “You never signed any of those, but I couldn’t figure out where they were going.”

Vash squirms under the room’s attention and begins to enter what Milly had started to dub his ‘turtle mode’ by sinking into his coat. It doesn’t work as well when the coat isn’t zipped up.

“We looked up some of the words and figured he was trying to trick you into signing over the rights to sell Plants however and whenever he wanted.” Milly tells him, “Normally he has to have a lot of signatures to do such a thing but since all those jobs got handed off to you, Mr. Vash, he just needed one.” 

“Hang on, he said he was already selling Plants on the black market.” Wolfwood knocks his shoulder gently into Vash’s, his earlier ire vanishing without a trace.

“Most people don’t read the fine print.” Vash emerges from his shell, “And some of our Plants slip through the cracks. That’s why Thalia needed so much money to be fixed.”

“Huh?” Wolfwood blinks, dumbfounded.

“Huh?” Vash stares back at him in surprise, then his face falls, “I’m sorry, I thought you knew…the laws were pretty loose back then, it was much easier for some Plants to slip through but a Plant without papers is harder to maintain which is why the Director – I’m really sorry Wolfwood…”

Meryl isn’t entirely sure what’s going on but thanks to working with Vash she can follow at least some of what he was saying. Every Plant had records and files for engineers to work from in order to keep them happy and healthy. Without those papers, the engineers would have to work from scratch and it was not an easy undertaking. Which meant it was more expensive. 

To make it worse, if the Plant desperately needed maintenance and didn’t have those papers, the likelihood of survival without an Independent around was low.

The preacher harrumphs and sets his jaw stubbornly, “I meant what I said, she was worth every penny. Wasn’t her fault we cut corners to get her.”

Meryl watches him carefully as he strolls over to the Director and viciously drives his foot into the man’s stomach.

Oddly enough Vash isn’t protesting. Instead, he says, “She was the one who called for me.” And Wolfwood whirls around, bristling like a cat only to deflate when he sees the look on Vash’s face. His eyes sparkle, crinkling with affection and a deep-seated fondness that is drawn into the crease of his brow. “She knew you needed help.”

Wolfwood scoffs, “And of course you came running.”

Vash beams, “She loved you enough to reach all the way out to me.” His smile dwindles into a sheepish grin, “But, well, Plant testimony isn’t viable in court, so I reached out to a reporter.”

“Why couldn’t you testify Mr. Vash? You had all these documents and first-hand accounts so why…” Milly questions hesitantly, like she knows the answer as well as Meryl does. Like she can’t bear the thought of Vash being reincarnated and his hair still – without them here to help, running off to solve the world’s problems on his own, rotting alone on behalf of humanity – turning that awful color. 

Vash says, “Independent Plants are still Plants, Milly.” And shatters her heart. 

Meryl throws herself at him, gripping his coat and dragging him down so she can rake her hands through his hair. Vash yelps and shouts, nearly pulls away from her, but then Milly is there too, holding him down while Meryl continues to examine his hair against his loud protests, a morbid echo of how they had acted when Chronica first told them what the dark hair meant. All that was missing was Livio holding Vash’s legs down. 

A string of demands falls from her lips as she frantically searches, “How did this happen? What the hell did you do? Why is your hair black , Vash?!”

“I’m fine, get off of me!” He wriggles. Off to the side, Wolfwood laughs at him. Meryl has to remind herself that he doesn’t know about the black-hair syndrome and just barely refrains from demanding his help. 

Footsteps come pounding down the hall, freezing everyone in place. The tap of polished shoes against the tile floor immediately identifies the crowd heading towards them and Meryl has a second to picture just how bad this looks before it’s too late. 

“This is the November Police, put your hands in the -” Autumn appears in the doorway flanked by two other officers and takes in the scene with wide eyes, “Mr. Saverem?!” 

Milly is fairly certain that this is not what any of them had in mind when they departed from each other earlier in the night. Uncle Roberto’s vague text had sent her and Meryl running back to the Dome to discover Vash and Mr. Wolfwood already confronting the Director. She’s going to give her Uncle an earful about not telling her about Mr. Vash sooner, but that will have to wait until after the Director is arrested.

“I wouldn’t mind, but there are ladies present.” Mr. Wolfwood smirks. Autumn points her gun at him and then back at Milly and Meryl like she can’t decide who the bigger threat is: the unknown man or the two women manhandling their boss. It doesn’t help that after Wolfwood’s comment Vash had turned a damning shade of scarlet. 

“You two, off of him now.” Autumn narrows her eyes at Meryl. She doesn’t notice, enraptured by something she’s found in Vash’s hair.  Milly can see the cogs turning in her head, but this is a bad time to get lost in thought, so she slowly releases Vash and nudges at Meryl to do the same. Once freed, Vash stays where he is, eyeing Autumn’s gun, “It’s alright Autumn, they were just checking me over.”

Autumn glares, “You got shot and they were on top of you. Lina will have my head if I let it get any worse.”

“I don’t suppose it’s too late to keep it from her?”

The pistol lowers, and Autumn’s other hand raises to flick on the office lights, “I’m not lying to my girlfriend for you no matter how much I like you.”

Milly winces at the sudden bright lights. Beside her, Meryl covers her eyes with a cute, displeased hiss.

Vash sulks, “Dang it.”

Autumn hides a smile and directs her two partners to grab the Director. Mr. Wolfwood steps away and eyes the window. Milly hopes he won’t run, it’s always worse when people run. 

“And you?” Autumn assesses the priest from head to toe, eyes moving from the shades on his head to the silver cross dangling from his neck until finally, alarmingly to the pistol on his belt. 

“That’s my accomplice.” The Director grits out from the safety of the other two officers that are keeping him standing. The stern look Milly turns on him isn’t enough to keep him quiet now that the police have shown up. “You can check his phone for proof, he’s with me!”

Autumn shifts her weight, a hand coming up to the cuffs on her belt. Mr. Wolfwood gets a resigned look on his face and starts to lift his arms.

“Actually, he’s with me.” Vash interrupts, stepping between them and halting both motions.

“You sure?” Autumn raises an eyebrow, “You know what that means, right?”

“I do.” 

Autumn gives him a long look while Mr. Wolfwood glances between them, fingers twitching. The tension is palpable, Milly’s heart is racing with uncertainty. She’s not going to arrest him is she? She can’t think Mr. Wolfwood is actually an accomplice for the Director, right?

“The lock he broke on the way in will be around a hundred dollars to replace.” She tells Vash, snapping the tension with a click of her tongue, “And if the guards press charges for the concussions they woke up with, that won’t be cheap either.”

Mr. Wolfwood looks to the side and starts whistling. An unhelpful action in Milly’s opinion, but Vash lights up, “Just concussions?”

Mr. Wolfwood flushes, “Hey!” 

“Obviously there’s more according to him,” Autumn nods at the Director, “but if you’re taking responsibility then there’s no helping it.” 

“WAIT!” A large figure with a guitar case strapped to their back slams into the doorway with a grunt, scaring the daylights out of Milly. “I did it! I confess to everything! Nico didn’t -” 

Another figure slams into the first one with a flash of silver, their briefcase ramming into the other’s stomach and knocking them to the side, “No! I did it! It’s my fault! He’s lying!”

Livio is shoved away a moment later by an irate Razlo, “You asshole that hurt! I’m telling you, I did it! These other guys are all liars!”

Autumn groans and pinches the bridge of her nose, “I’m guessing they’re with you too?”

Vash chuckles nervously.

“Hate to burst your bubble kids,” Uncle Roberto appears behind the now wrestling twins with an indifferent look on his face, “but we already got a guy testifying to blackmail. A couple statements from you and the investigators that aren’t corrupt can handle the rest. So, get rid of the martyr complexes.”

Razlo makes an offended noise from the ground, but as he’s currently pinned by Livio, he can’t do much more than that.

The Director sneers. Uncle Roberto steps around the wriggling pile of brothers on the ground and blows smoke in his face, “Nice try, but we’ve been trailing you long enough to know better. Got a whole list of people who are stuck under your thumb and are more than happy to get out.”

“My involvement in irrelevant, they broke the law.” The Director scowls.

“True, but Stampede has already vouched for them,” Uncle Roberto blows another smoke in his face, “and if I recall correctly, he’s the biggest ball you threw for these pups to chase.”

 Chase after…Vash?

Then, last night was just- 

And they didn’t present at the Gala because-

It hadn’t been a happy coincidence?

Well, there was one way to be sure.

Milly’s lower lip trembles and she sniffles, “You don’t actually like us?”

The twins go pale, tripping over each other to get to their feet. When it’s clear neither of them can get up without falling over the other, Livio starts crawling and Razlo seizes the opening to launch to his feet.

“No-”

“NO!”

“-we weren’t-!”

“That wasn’t-!”

Meryl takes her hand and she feels a little bad that she brought the possibility up for Meryl too, but with how much the brothers are scrambling to reassure them, it might have been worth it. Her wife’s face turns into her shoulder and Milly can feel the smirk that forms against her coat. Her shoulders shake with fake distress and Milly completes the image by wrapping her arms around Meryl and letting out a wet sob. 

Livio stands and hovers around them nervously like he wants to pull the girls into a hug but isn’t sure that he’s allowed to. Razlo isn’t faring much better, throwing out words that he thinks will help but ultimately failing to convey the message he wants.

“-told to do that!”

“-what that was!”

“I promise it wasn’t like that!”

“We weren’t ordered to do that!”

Uncle Roberto gives her a look that says he knows exactly what she’s doing. Milly brings her coat sleeve up to her eyes to wipe away the tears, “Really?”

“Really!”

Milly smiles, “That’s a relief! I’m glad we’re friends!”

She looks down at Meryl to find a great big smile on her face too. Meryl makes a significant glance over to where Vash and Mr. Wolfwood are talking and mouths two words to her.

‘Stampede already vouched for them.’ Her Uncle had said.

Oh.

Oh.

While his brothers try to console the girls, Wolfwood pulls Vash away from the policewoman with a bruising grip on his shoulder, “Whatever the fuck you think you’re doing, you better knock it off.”

Vash cocks his head to one side and in the light of the room his big blue-green eyes grow wider, playing at innocence, “What do you mean?”

God, this man infuriates him.

Wolfwood grabs him by his coat and shakes him, careful of the cracked rib Vash is likely hiding, “The part where you take responsibility for MY actions. Do you even know what you’re getting yourself into?”

“No.” 

Of fucking course. 

“Then why the hell are you taking the fall for us?” Wolfwood hisses, shaking him harder, like maybe the single brain cell rattling around in his stupid pretty head will hit a synapse and Vash will come to his senses.

“I want to.”

God, this man makes Wolfwood despise himself.

Cold hands reach up to cover Wolfwood’s, gently retracting them from his coat, “You’re good people Wolfwood, you and the twins. None of you deserved to be blackmailed into doing things you don’t want to. If I can help you carry the burden, I will.”

God, this man.

“Ain’t your problem.” Wolfwood ascertains, letting his hands linger in Vash’s own. They didn’t use to be this cold, did they?

“Maybe not.” Vash concedes, “But you and your brothers deserve a second chance and I’d like to help you get it.”

God, this man hasn’t changed a single fucking bit. 

Wolfwood wants to turn him down, this isn’t Vash’s problem, and Wolfwood is sick of watching him suffer for people who don’t deserve it. But he wouldn’t be Vash if he didn’t extend a hand to every sorry soul he met. 

And the last time Wolfwood had run off on his own without Vash, he was worse off for it. He wanted to see the men Livio and Razlo would become, he wanted to help raise the kids, he wanted to stand next to Vash as he saved the world, he wanted to see the girls develop their television station. He wanted. He wants.

If he turns down Vash’s offer, what does he have to lose?

If he accepts Vash’s offer, what does he stand to gain?

“Wolfwood?” Vash brings their foreheads together, a brush of hair followed by a gentle press and big blue-green eyes filling his vision, “Please? Let me help?”

God, this stupid fucking spikey-haired, blonde, sunshine of a man had once saved his home without Wolfwood ever asking. 

And damn it all, here he is begging to do it again. 

Wolfwood sighs helplessly and a little smitten, “Okay.”

You’d think both of the suns walked into the room from the look on Vash’s face. “Jesus, Sunshine, at least let me put my shades on if you’re going to blind me.” 

“You’ll look like an asshole if you wear them in here,” Vash goads.

“I am a fucking delight.” He grouchily retorts, pulling back enough to escape Vash’s orbit and refocus on the rest of the world. “So what now?” He asks, rubbing his thumb along the back of Vash’s hand in an attempt to warm him up. 

A twinkle sparks in Vash’s eyes, one that promises mischief, but there’s a gleam to it that Wolfwood has very rarely seen, “Now, we see how much the government owes you for denying you the funds for a new plant and the consequences thereof.”

What? What the fuck is he talking about?

“See?” Vash pouts at the incredulous look on his face, “That’s what I mean. You know there’s a grant for orphanages to buy and maintain their Plants, right?”

“There’s a what ?” His grip tightens on Vash’s hands because if he lets go, he’s either going to jump for joy, fall on his ass, or shoot somebody and he’s scared to find out which one he settles on. 

Vash chuckles, “I’m surprised you didn’t know, it’s got the same name you do after all.”

A million and one things run through Wolfwood’s mind at that moment. There’s a grant named after him ? For orphanages? Which motherfucker was responsible for that? What the fuck? How much-?

The world stills for a moment as the single worst thought that he’s ever had enters his mind. It would make sense, given how much the universe hates him. 

“How…” He really, really hopes it’s not what he thinks it is, but it’s going to keep him up all night wondering, better rip the bandaid off now. “How much is the grant worth?”

Vash whispers, a conspiratorial smirk on his face like he knows exactly what Wolfwood doesn’t want to hear, “Sixty-”

Do not say billion, do not say billion, do not say-

“-billion-”

Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you

“-double-dollars.”

There’s a metric ton of words unfit for a holy man to shout at the top of his lungs in a building full of angels, especially with a seraphim standing right in front of him, but Wolfwood has never claimed to be a good holyman, barely even got his license (because fuck the college requirement that Earth required), and the Lord has tested him enough already in this one hour of tomfoolery (in this whole week of sorely missed chaos), he’s earned this surely (he tells himself this every time).

So at the top of his lungs, completely ignoring the company he’s in, he lets out one of the most heartfelt swears of his entire two lives.  

When Razlo woke him up from his drunken snoozing with a harsh shove and a sinister message shining down on him, there was no doubt in his mind who the target was supposed to be. In the driver’s seat of the car, with his brothers piled into the back and ready to kill the only other person Livio considered a brother, he had turned fully around to look them in the eyes as he declared, “I don’t want to kill him.”

The silence that followed was nerve-wracking. Nico gave him a long look and then shared a glance with Razlo. One hand drifted sneakily down from the wheel to the key fob, ready to kill the engine and dash, if only to buy Vash some time. 

“Okay.” Nico crossed his arms.

“Okay?” Livio asked, vaguely surprised. He liked to think his brothers wouldn’t want to go for the kill, but the reward of a total debt payoff made him doubt just a little bit. Razlo inclines his head in silent agreement. 

Livio took his hand off the fob, eying his siblings curiously, “So…what are we doing?”

“We aren’t the only grunts for debt-douche.” Nico explained and Livio abruptly remembered Gofsef, “He might try to send other assassins.”

Razlo had smirked gleefully at that, “Too bad for them, we’re the best.”

“I’ll stick with Vash.” Nico states, “Razlo will watch the streets. Livio you’ll get eyes on the room if you can.”

It had gone smoothly at first, but when the Director showed up and pulled a gun out it all went to shit. Livio didn’t have an angle on the damn thing until it was too late and cops were storming the building. Livio knew his brothers well enough to throw his gun into its disguised case and haul ass over there before his siblings could open their big stupid mouths.

But of course, Razlo got there just a second quicker, so Livio threw the case into his stomach, rammed into his side, and tried to take the metaphorical fall instead. Somehow that ended up with an old guy showing up talking about a complex, a wrestling match with his brother, the girls crying, the policewoman making an exasperated face, and – Livio has lost track of what the fuck is going on, but one of those things is more important than the others. 

Where did he go wrong? How could Milly have thought she and Meryl were just a stepping stone for them to get to Vash?

Milly’s devastation brings out a panic in Livio and his brother. Tripping and falling over each other to reassure her of their intentions isn’t entirely unfamiliar, but when her mood changes on a dime, wiped away in an instant, he starts to suspect they’ve been played. 

At that last thought, confusion washes over his panic. Livio turns to see his twin is just as flustered as he is. An odd sight considering Razlo has never tripped over himself to apologize to anyone (only Miss Melanie and those apologies were begrudging at best). Now that he thinks about it, Razlo has been oddly friendly to the people they’ve only recently met. Hell, his twin had opted to sit by the girls instead of Nico at the Gala and Razlo hadn’t breathed a word of complaint when they all went out drinking afterward, not even over being saddled as the DD.

Did Razlo actually like the girls and Vash?

Stunned by this revelation Livio observes the girls once more, trying to see what about their new selves has endeared them to his brother so quickly. 

Milly has tucked her chin and whispers down to Meryl in a hushed tone. It’s a bit comical seeing how much of a height difference they have when Meryl is wrapped up in Milly’s arms, but the hilarity has to wait because they’re whispering rapid-fire to each other and Livio is starting to get concerned about what they could possibly be so invested in. It never boded well when the girls started scheming. 

He strains his ears to try and pick up any clues and immediately regrets it when Nico curses loud enough to shake the whole building. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Vash launch three feet off the ground like a spooked cat. The girls hold each other tighter, bracing for an attack. Livio rubs his aching eardrums while Razlo swears back, cursing their brother out for scaring the shit out of them. 

Nico turns wild eyes on the twins, Livio has never seen him so manic before. 

“Did you know,” an accusing tan finger is jabbed in the twins’ direction, “about the grant?”

The twins stare back at him uncomprehendingly. 

“The fucking plant grant, the one that was for orphanages,” Nico explains with a growl.

“Oh yeah.” Livio hums in thought, he’d come across it a while back while looking up ways to help Thalia’s color change. “The Wolfwood Grant?”

“YOU KNEW?!” Nico roars.

“You didn’t?” Livio shouts back. “I thought we didn’t qualify!”

Razlo interjects, “We one-hundred-fucking-percent qualify! How the fuck did we pay for Rose?”

Nico whirls on Vash, swinging his finger around like a sword, “You!”

“Yes?!” Vash rockets to attention.

“How did we pay for Rose?” Nico demands

“The grant, sir! I filled it out for you like I was supposed to, sir!” Vash salutes, snapping his heels together as a soldier would.

Nico seethes, grinding his teeth, “Are you telling me, that it was supposed to be that easy this whole time?” Slowly, like a predator tracking its prey, those wild-dark eyes find the Director’s. “We got fucked over because you didn’t fill out a piece of fucking paper?”

“Er well, it’s a bit more than a piece of-” Vash tries, reaching out a hand to reel him back in. 

“Shaddup, I ain’t talkin’ to you.” Nico seethes, murder written on his face.

Uh oh, Nico was pissed . 

The policewoman steps between Nico and the trembling Director. The two officers holding him don’t look much better than their ward. 

“I want you to think about this very carefully, sir .” She spits out with a snarl, “You can assault this man right here and now in front of three police officers and let Vash take the fall for it or -” The woman lifts her chin, “-you let us finish what we started so we can put him away for good without anyone else getting hurt.”

For a second Livio braces himself to intervene if Nico decides to launch himself at the obstacle in front of him. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Razlo take a step forward, away from Livio and just barely into the space between the policewoman and the Director. He puts a hand on his twin’s shoulder, willing him to understand how monumentally bad of an idea it would be to throw himself at the Director. Giving his older brother the same imploring look, he notices that Nico’s hands are clenched so hard they tremble.

Shit, if they lunge at the same time he won’t be able to stop them both. 

Something small falls from Nico’s fist and he abruptly realizes his big brother’s hands are trickling blood onto the floor. A gloved hand reaches out and takes one of Nico’s. Vash doesn’t say anything, nor does he try to open Nico’s fist. He just holds it, letting the blood stain his black gloves. 

Their eyes meet, something unfathomable passing between them, entire arguments and conversations silently communicated. An ache swells in Livio’s chest just watching it. It hurts knowing he and Razlo had separated them, permanently halting whatever synchronization they used to have with each other. 

But they have a second chance now.

Nico’s fists unclench and so does the vice around Livio’s throat. Blood-encrusted nails and a bleeding palm grasp back at Vash’s. Vash smiles, threading their fingers without hesitation.

He tugs gently at Razlo’s shoulder until his twin finally takes a step back and the girls breathe a sigh of relief. 

The policewoman is unperturbed, “Gentlemen, if you’re done making eyes at each other, I’m going to need a statement from all of you before I can let you go.”

Oh, this should be good.

The lady ushers a grumpy Nico out first, urging the rest of them to have a seat on the couch while they wait their turn. It’s comfy, Livio notes, taking a seat in the middle. The girls curl up together on his right. Milly grabs a blanket from off the back of the couch and wraps herself and Meryl up in it. 

A tiny noise of relief ekes out of Vash when he sinks into the free space on Livio’s left. It’s only then that Livio remembers that he got shot. He lifts a steadying hand to Vash’s chest, subtly feeling for any broken bones or hidden gunshot wounds, “Are you okay? You sound like you’re in pain.”

“Just a bruise,” Vash says, as the tip of Livio’s middle finger brushes a small lump hidden under his clothes. It feels like metal, moves like a necklace, weighs like a locket . “I’ve had worse.”

Earth government was one of the worst things to happen to the planet Gunsmoke with all their rules and police and procedures and laws and shit. If it hadn’t brought about a much safer area to raise kids then Razlo would be first in line to stage a revolution. As it stands, their stupid procedures are taking for-fucking-ever and Razlo is bored. 

The Director got hauled away pretty quickly once Nico was led out of the room so making scary faces at him was out. Following debt-douche out was the strange old man who had appeared long enough to talk shit, smoke, and not much else. 

The rest of his family is too out of it to entertain him either. 

Vash crashed almost as soon as he sat down, the poor bastard. Meryl had forwent the couch for Milly’s lap, leaving just enough space for three broader people to try squeezing onto the couch. Livio was sandwiched between a dozing Vash and a sleepy Milly, looking stupefied and confused over having his shoulders used as pillows. Razlo wisely opted for the rolling chair behind the desk, wheeling it over to the couch and sitting on it backwards, watching the door. 

The policewoman swaps them out periodically. Nico comes back, replacing a groggy Vash. Shortly after, Livio and Vash trade places. Then Milly, who places Meryl down gently into her spot on the couch, leaves when Livio comes back in. Rather than trying to disturb Meryl, Livio takes up a post at the foot of the couch. Milly is gone long enough that everyone (except a sleeping Vash on Nico’s shoulder and the blanket cocoon that Meryl has become) gets antsy, but sure enough, Milly comes back in and Meryl shuffles out with a blanket cape trailing after her. 

Finally, it’s Razlo’s turn. 

“Got a text from Debt-Douche, said ‘e wanted us to kill a guy in that room over there.” Razlo jabs a lazy thumb towards the room he just left, purposefully increasing the heaviness of his accent, “I came to kill ‘im, my brothers didn’t want ta but the payout was too good ta pass up and then the dumbass got in the way n’ I couldn’t follow through.”

The lady’s eye twitches, “The dumbass being…”

“The guy you lot scraped offa the floor.”    

Hands slam onto the counter between them. Razlo doesn’t flinch and the lady storms out of the room. He follows her only because she turns left, back to the room with his family. 

The fancy-ass door falls with a swift kick near the lock. “Are any of you assholes going to tell me the truth or are we going to be here all night?!”

Noises of confusion trickle through the open door and when Razlo pokes his head in, he can see the sleepy folk are wide-awake now. 

“Not a single one of you has said anything that doesn’t contradict another’s!” The lady rages, “Which one of you brothers came to kill Vash? How did the Director end up on the floor? And do not tell me he slipped on a pudding cup again!” She yells at Milly who had started to respond. 

“I told you the truth!” Vash defends himself. Suspiciously quiet about the reliability of the rest of them.

“DECLARING THEM ALL HEROES IS TOO VAGUE AND UNHELPFUL, VASH!” She screams back. Vash pouts and grumbles, “...but they were .”

“So are we getting arrested or what?” Razlo questions.

“I should, just for obstruction of justice.” She scowls something fierce, “But I’m trying to help you and I can’t do that if I don’t know what the hell happened.”

“I maintain that everyone in this room saved my life.” Vash huffs stubbornly.

“They flipped your car, Vash.” The lady hisses.

“We did?” Razlo looks at Livio, breath caught in his lungs. That dinky old car they’d been told to flip had been Vash’s ?

“We did?” Nico sputters, glancing between Livio and Razlo.

Livio sighs sadly, “We did.” 

“Hey! No big deal, I can’t drive that well anyway!” Vash laughs nervously and that, more than anything, confirms it. Nico’s head falls into his hands right as Razlo thumps his head against the door frame. 

Looks like we were always doomed to make a bad first impression.

“I mean, all you really did was save me the trouble of driving everywhere and I needed to get my leg tuned up anyway!” Vash tries, rapping his prosthetic knuckles against his leg with a metallic tink and once again forgiving that bad first impression. 

“Ugh!” The lady fumes while the brothers sulk, “None of your testimony is viable. Girls, we’ll chalk up your shenanigans as self-defense if you just tell me why you ran him over .”

“Well, he was planning to kill our boss.” Meryl offers.

“Great, fine, that will do.” The lady claps her hands together, “And you brothers, each of you claimed the other two were not trying to kill Vash despite confessing to trying to kill him yourselves so you’re going to be questioned again later. The rest will be up to the investigators, our evidence, and Vash.”  

“Um, actually…” Livio starts and the lady pins Livio to the couch with a burning look. “We agreed beforehand we didn’t want to kill him.”

Snitch .

Vash looks incredibly proud for someone whose life had been on the line. 

Razlo scoffs, “Like she’ll believe that. Look, lady, I came to kill ‘im so-”

Nico growls, “No he fucking didn’t-”

Livio panics, “Razlo got the text! He didn’t have to wake us up and-”

The lady yells in frustration, “Do you morons want to go to jail that badly? I can save us all the trouble and arrest all three of you right now!” 

Milly reaches a long, strong arm out and wraps it around Nico’s shoulders, covering his mouth with her hand. Leaning forward in her wife’s lap, Meryl stretches her shorter arms out and draws Livio back into Milly’s legs, both hands crossed over his mouth. The girls start to whisper in his brothers’ ears while Vash stands and crosses the room to Razlo with long, purposeful strides. Razlo wrinkles his nose, fully prepared to lick Vash’s palms if the guy tries to follow the girls’ example. Fuck, would his metal arm even feel that though? 

Thankfully Vash doesn’t try to cover Razlo’s mouth. He whispers, “Autumn has a point, do you want to go to jail that badly?”

No, he doesn’t. He wants to be out here with his family, but he’s the protector, this is what has to be done.

Razlo crosses his arms and grumbles, something between “fuck off” and “none of your business.” Anything he thinks will make Vash leave him alone. This guy doesn’t know them, Razlo reminds himself, he can’t be that serious about keeping them out of jail. 

Irritatingly, Vash smiles, “You’re a good brother Razlo, but you can protect them better out here than in there.” 

And all of a sudden Razlo also remembers who he’s dealing with. It was ironic, how badly he and Livio had wanted to be loved and how many they had killed for just a scrap of affection, and here stood a guy who loved with every inch of his being to the point where killing even the worst of scum was unthinkable. But he’d done it for them . 

The guy should have let them die at Legato’s hand, should have seen them as the piece of shit that killed his partner, but instead looked at them, both of them , like Nico’s last gift. 

Vash the Stampede had killed to save them and they had to watch as he nearly shattered because of it. But not once in the entire lifetime that they had known him, had Vash ever said he regretted it.  

It rubbed Razlo the wrong way, made the hair on the back of his neck stand up whenever Vash stayed in his room all day or drank so much that he went quiet and sad. Even now, he was waiting for the other shoe to drop. It would serve him right, whether this new Vash knew it or not, to send him off to jail and keep him far away from his brothers. 

As Vash opens his mouth, leaning in to whisper right next to Razlo’s ear, his eyes catch on a lump under Vash’s shirt. It’s shaped like an oval, thick and dangling from his neck. 

Vash whispers, “Let me keep you all together.” 

The shoe, bloody and old and stinking of gunpowder, is on the floor. 

Vash turns away from Razlo to scoop up the gun hiding under the golf cart in the middle of the room. His ribs shriek in protest and he’s careful not to accidentally puncture a lung (again) as he bends down to grab it. 

Autumn’s eyes widen at the sight of the sniper bullet wedged into the metal of the barrel, “I think you’ll find this bullet has ballistic markings that match the sniper rifle in Livio’s briefcase.”  

Wolfwood and Livio jerk away from the girls’ grip but Milly is strong and Livio would never try anything that might hurt Meryl so they’re hauled right back in. Razlo is silent behind him, but Vash trusts him not to do anything just yet.

“Fingerprints will show this gun was the Directors.” Vash continues and nods toward the camera above the couch. Razlo shouts a curse at the sight of the small, dark semi-sphere in the corner of the room. It hadn’t been part of the plan to use it as evidence, seeing as they anticipated the footage being wiped (by Vash or by the Director, Roberto hadn’t needed to know), but now, “the cameras should fill in any gaps in our tape recording, which Roberto has already sent to the chief of police.”

Autumn pulls out an evidence bag from a pouch in her belt with an embarrassed red tint on her face. Vash drops it in with a reassuring grin. She was young and, oddly enough, the only police officer in the building. Looking for evidence had probably been the last thing on her mind and, well, Vash hadn’t exactly helped by kicking it under the cart. 

In his defense, he was hoping to buy the twins some time. He hadn’t expected them to come barging in and fighting over who should go to jail.

“Since everyone else lied, how about just using my statement?” He offers, “You’ll have to go through me no matter what they said anyway. No point keeping us all here.”

Autumn scowls, though her brows unfurrow with relief, “If the President had known this was the price of your agreement, I’m not sure she would have offered.”

Vash chuckles, thinking about all the clauses it took for him to sign that particular contract. Bless his sibling for becoming a lawyer, “Oh, no, she knew.”

Autumn huffs, “You’re going to make this whole night a total waste of my time, aren’t you? Alright then, you’re free to go, but the suitcase stays.” 

Vash smiles, taking Razlo’s arm and leading him out with an inviting wave toward the other four, “Thank you, Autumn!”

“Are we really free to go?” Livio asks behind him. 

“Yep!” He chirps, struggling to get Razlo to leave.

“We brought weapons into a government facility, how the hell are we free to go?” Razlo growls into his ear, resisting just enough to make Vash really work to get him out of the room and down the hall. Vash braces himself for his companions to come to a full stop and demand answers, but they keep walking almost frantically like if they stop, Autumn will change her mind. He’s a little surprised Razlo let him drag him this far.

“You might get a fine for that, but since none of you actually fired them inside the building, it’s not much more than a slap on the wrist.” Vash hums, unable to stop himself from squeezing Razlo’s arm sleeve. This might be the last time he sees them for a while, he can’t help himself. 

Razlo twists his head back to the group behind them but continues to keep pace. No words are spoken but something must pass between the group because Razlo turns back with a stubborn look on his face.

They make it outside and bypass the only police car at the entrance before Vash brings them to a halt. One by one he forces his fingers to let go of the fabric of Razlo’s shirt, and Rem help him; he can't turn around to face them when he says, “Welp! I’ve had enough excitement for one night, so I’m going home!”

He pats Razlo’s bicep and somehow manages to put one foot in front of the other. The news station is his next stop, he needs to speak with Roberto about the impending article, then he’ll head to the police station to make sure everything is in order for the brothers, and he needs to call his siblings and Lina to let them know he’s alright before he even thinks about the logistics of keeping the Dome running with the critically few amount of workers-

“Where do you think you’re going blondie? You need a ride after we fucked up yours, don’t you?”

He’s a hundred and fifty-five years old and he’s sitting on a couch while his ticket to the future, finally filled in with a destination, withers away beside him. He’s six hundred and fifty and he’s standing in front of the olive branch for Plants and Humans as that same ticket comes flying along on the breeze of night and smacks him in the face.

“...What?” He turns slowly. The rest of the group is giving Wolfwood the same dumbfounded look that he’s sure is on his face. 

Realizing his mistake, Wolfwood backtracks, “Oh come on, it’s not that much of a stretch. He’s practically a walking sun, it makes sense!”

“No, Nico, it really doesn’t.” Livio is paler than the five moons when he speaks and a large hand suddenly runs through Vash’s hair before Razlo is voicing his agreement, “Got half a strand of blonde, but it’s hidden pretty good.”

How did he find it so quickly?

Vash watches in real time as Wolfwood realizes he’s fighting a losing battle and decides he doesn’t want to admit it, “It was blonde before!”

 “I-” Vash chokes, “-haven’t been blonde for a long time.” Not for five hundred years.

Milly squeals, stars in her eyes, “You remember too don’t you, Mr. Wolfwood! Oh, I thought I was the only one!”

Wolfwood does a double-take at her, flabbergasted. 

Meryl gapes up at her, “What?” and then, nervously, “...Pudding?”

Milly is on her in milliseconds, “Sugar plum! You remember?”

“I thought I was the only one!” Meryl gasps, cradling Milly’s face in both her hands before pulling her in for a kiss that Milly very enthusiastically returns.

Livio makes eye contact with Razlo and, seemingly coming to a realization, points a finger at him. Razlo points one back angrily, “You asshole, how come you never said anything!”

 “You knew too!?” 

“You never brought it up!”

“Oh, I was supposed to bring it up?! Why didn’t you bring it up?!”

“I thought you would have said something!”

“Like what? Oh, hi Livio, remember when we shared a body, killed a bunch of people, and then retired to an orphanage after fighting off an apocalypse with Vash the Sampede?”

“SOMETHING LIKE THAT, YEAH!”

The twins' argument and the girl’s happy reunion fade into the background. All of Vash’s senses are focused on the man staring back at him. “You have a shit memory,” Wolfwood mutters weakly, as if he’s entertaining the idea that Vash could ever forget him.

His flesh hand fumbles for the locket, Wolfwood’s eyes tracking it and lighting up every nerve in Vash’s body. The silver necklace tumbles out of the collar of his shirt and when it opens, those same dark eyes fall upon the people inside.

“I have a very good memory, Wolfwood,” He rebukes, “but if it ever failed, I had this.” A streak of warmth falls from his right eye. It’s too much, this can’t be real. It was one thing to be tortured with their reincarnations, it was another for them to be reborn with all their memories intact. 

Wolfwood is suddenly in his face, swiping the tear away with his thumb. “Fuck, needle-noggin’. I’m sorry.”

“Stay.” Vash latches onto anything he can reach, desperate and fearful. He gets both his arms around Wolfwood and holds him as tight as he dares. Whiskey and smoke fills his world and he’s missed it so badly. “Please, stay.”

Don’t go where I can’t follow. Trust me to have your back. Let me share your burdens.

“You have to stay too, you asshole.” Wolfwood wheezes out, clinging to Vash just as tightly, trying to hold him together through sheer force.

The urge to flee races along Vash’s spine. He has to leave before they get caught up again, they have a second chance, he can leave and not ruin it, he can run and spare what’s left of his heart from losing them again-

But if they die anyway, if he can spend even a fraction of a second longer with them as selfish as it is-

A whine crawls out of his throat. 

Wolfwood can feel the man in his arms shake, “If you don't, I’ll hunt you down and beat your ass.”

A wet laugh is sobbed into his shoulder and Wolfwood pretends he isn’t doing the same to Vash’s.

Another pair of arms wrap around them both, “I’m so happy we’re all here!” Milly cries over their heads. A small body wiggles between them, “You two can cry your man-tears later, this is supposed to be a good thing!” Meryl shouts from below. 

“I can’t believe none of us noticed.” Livio slides in over Vash’s shoulder as Milly hauls Razlo into the space by Wolfwood’s.   

“I can, we’re all a buncha morons.” Razlo huffs. Meryl makes a dying noise from inside the group hug and Vash winces a little in pain, but they’re all here, together. 

They’ll rag on each other later, after some sleep and errands. They’ll argue over who would have given up the game if Wolfwood hadn’t, and then they’ll argue some more over those stupid Vash the Stampede movies and tease him mercilessly about them. 

Best of all, they’ll spend the rest of their second chance together. 

And maybe, just maybe, they’ll get to do it all over again in the next life too.