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The dog starts following him somewhere out of August.
It's big. Gray. A kid in a small town asks what kind of dog it is, mister, and Vash helplessly informs him that it is a big and gray dog. Also, hairy.
He's never known a whole lot about dogs. Is it coming back to bite him now? Dunno. The dog is. He's hungry.
Back in August, Vash had spotted the dog snuffling glumly around the back side of a pub. All it was turning up was cigarette butts, so Vash had thrown him a bone, with the chicken still attached, and the dog's face had split into a hungry grin.
Maybe it would have followed him anyway. It had bounded towards him before he'd even revealed the chicken leg. Then again, he had probably smelled it, dogs being rather good at that sort of thing, or so Vash thinks he remembers. Anyway, Vash thinks it looks thirsty, or possibly just happy, so he tips some beer into a plate. He probably shouldn't be giving a dog beer. "I probably shouldn't be giving a dog beer," he tells the dog, but the dog is lapping it up with glee.
Meryl retired some time ago—quite some time, actually—and is living by herself. She used to be one door over from Milly, but Milly's moved on now, so Meryl is alone.
Vash visits her often enough. The roof usually doesn't fall in. She no longer needs to be kept up to date on his escapades but demands it anyway, angrily knitting all the while. Her hair has faded to a pleasant sort of bluish ivory and her skin is papery. She complains about it. Vash likes it. She complains about this too.
"You got a dog?" she asks him.
"Actually, the dog kind of got me." The dog barks, which could really mean anything. Then he begins to excavate the couch. They watch him for a bit. He's found the spot where Milly used to sit with her coffee and he seems to find it agreeable. Vash glances at Meryl, who ordinarily and wordlessly leaves that spot vacant. But Meryl is smiling.
"He's active, isn't he," she says sorrowfully. "Someone's got to chase you around, Vash, and if it can't be me anymore it might as well be him."
"I don't think I need to be chased around," Vash begins, and gives up.
Meryl strokes the dog's head. It gives her that happy grin. "What's his name?" she asks him.
"Um, I haven't given him one." It felt odd to name a dog he didn't own. Perhaps it already had one. "Did you want to name it?"
"Oh, no," Meryl laughs. "Just, look at the way it smiles. He kind of reminds me of Wolfwood."
Reincarnation: it's not something Vash has ever thought about. He supposes he might like to come back as a flower. Or perhaps a bee. Gunsmoke has those now. He rather likes them.
In the next pub he comes to, he happens across someone who knows a thing or two about dogs. Quite serendipitously, Vash thinks. The fellow informs him that the dog ("your dog," he says, but "not my dog," Vash says firmly back) most closely resembled an old Earth breed known as an Irish wolfhound.
"What's Irish?" Vash asks, but the dog is trying to steal the poor fellow's cigarette and the conversation takes a short tumble after that when a local spots his gun and glasses and bright red coat and decides he's better target practice than the dart board.
Lucky the dog is a dog. Dogs can run.
"Sorry," Vash tells the dog as they run. "I guess now you know what it's like to be me."
He slows to a stop, since he can't hear shouting anymore. The dog slows too. It scratches itself, then sits down and starts licking its own asshole.
Vash contemplates this.
"I don't know what it's like to be you, though," he tells the dog, fairly.
The dog continues to lick its own asshole. They are in a spot with rather a lot of sand, Vash supposes.
"You don't have to follow me," he tells the dog. "I'm sure someone else will feed you."
Lick. Lick.
"I probably won't always be able to smuggle you into motels. And I get shot at a lot."
Lick.
"And I don't know anything about dogs," Vash adds. "I don't really know what to feed you. Probably not this much beer."
The dog stops licking its asshole. Slowly, deliberately, it looks up at Vash.
Then it continues to its balls.
"Okay," Vash says helplessly. "I guess we're camping here."
Big and hairy and dark gray. The dog lolls its tongue out and grins at him.
That was maybe the longest conversation he's had in a while. It's funny, actually, because he didn't really think he could get lonely, and had sort of sold himself on this life specifically because he didn't really mind being chased out of places so long as it was people doing the chasing, because he rather liked people, and chasing implied some past company. But in the periods between the current chasing and the next company, it could get a little isolated. Just him and the sand and the sky.
And now a dog, who habitually takes half his dinner and sleeps with its nose on his belly. Warm and weighty like a friendly arm thrown over him in his sleep.
Bad breath.
"I'm not feeding you fish ever again," Vash groans. The dog makes a snick noise when it licks its lips, and then shoves its wet snout into Vash's armpit. It's 3AM.
Do all dogs like cigarettes?
"Do all dogs like cigarettes?" Vash asks a bartender, who double takes.
"You're not giving him smokes ," she says, eyeing him and eyeing the dog.
"No! He just finds them." He's found one now. He's chewing on it. This is surely why his breath is so bad. Vash takes a bite of his schnitzel and the dog stops chewing badassedly on tobacco to show off his big wet eyes with half a cigarette still hanging out of his mouth.
"Not til you kick the habit," Vash tells him firmly.
Since Meryl had pointed it out, it's been hard not to notice the little things. For example, the chewing, which is not just an analogue for smoking but is an analogue for chewing, for Wolfwood had had an awful habit of chewing on everything he smoked and some things he didn't. The dog squinched its eyes shut when it did its big happy grin and got into Vash's personal space. The dog slept beside Vash every night, a nice solid presence by his side that quieted his mind a little until morning. The dog snored. The dog liked beer.
All normal dog things.
"No," Vash tells the dog firmly. The dog drops the cigarette and its eyes grow somehow wetter. "Fine." He tears off a bit of chicken and tosses it down, and the dog makes a lot of gross wet noises while he snarfs it down, presumably to demonstrate his gratitude.
"You're spoiling him," the bartender notes.
"It's better than cigarettes," Vash says.
The time in which he'd known Nicholas was not so long at all, even by his standard. He often wondered about it—about how their relationship might have changed over time if time had come, how it might have grown, what it might have become. Vash is used to outliving his friends, his enemies, complete strangers, all the same. He never misses Milly more than when he sees butterflies, since Gunsmoke has those now, too. He thinks she would have really liked them. In a funny way, they remind him of her.
Nicholas had been with him for so short a time, yet they'd come to know each other so well that Vash had once thought he would recognise his mannerisms even if Nicholas were to be transformed by magic into a woman, or perhaps a snail. This has come about after several bottles of drink. Nicholas had not appreciated it—or had, at first, until he'd asked Vash to explain what might be snail-like about him and not liked the answer.
It came with necessity and the proximity of constantly being at another person's side in matters of violence. The knowing them well, that is, not the snail thing. It was a matter of life and death sometimes, knowing where Nicholas would be next, what he would do. It was a learned sort of familiarity. A hard work Vash did gladly for the opportunity to have someone by his side. Someone he liked very much, though they bickered constantly. Liked him more for it, sometimes.
In the years since Nicholas has been gone, Vash struggles to imagine him. Where once he’d easily anticipate the direction from which Nicholas would approach the bar, or a threat, or a hotel bed, Vash now finds it difficult to visualise. Instead, there’s just a little hole in the fabric of reality where Vash can’t remember if Nicholas kept his hand in his pocket or on his hip.
The dog does not listen to directions. The dog mostly does whatever it wants. This, too, is familiar.
In the hot season, which comes between the hot season and the other hot season, there are bounty hunters abound. They never seem to tire of Vash, who represents a challenge of pride as much as he does money. But money, also. To gain both, they will do all kinds of things, up to and including sneaking into a sleeping man's tent and trying to kill his dog.
Vash wakes to a yelp and is on his feet before the second yelp sounds. The first was the dog. The second was the man holding a large machete to the dog's neck, or at least, who had been holding a large machete to the dog's neck, and was now finding it difficult to continue doing so, for lack of several fingers.
The other man has his gun raised to Vash’s head. Vash notices this only as the tent begins to collapse around them, which is inconvenient for several reasons.
As he dodges around several frantic bullets, Vash sees the dog lunge for the gunman's throat. Instinctively he throws an arm out and shouts. Instinctively he knows, as he shouts, that this is foolish, pointless, completely fantastical, because the dog does not listen to directions. Instinctively he knows he shouts because he would have shouted out to him , too:
"Don't kill them!"
Lucky the dog is a dog. Dogs can't get offended by the implication that he might care more for the lives of those who sought to kill them than for their own. Vash fights his way out of the canvas expecting to find a man with a bloody mess for a throat. Instead he finds the dog with its jaws clamped around the arm of the gunman who'd tried for Vash's head, worrying at it in a manner that would look almost playful if not for the shouts of pain. The machete man is scrambling for the machete, but the dog's tail is in his face. Both are alive. Both are hurt but overall unmauled. Both are thoroughly deterred. When the dog drops the man's arm—because he does—the both of them run for the hills, and the entire fight Vash hadn't even loaded his gun.
The dog looks at him and grins. There's a little cut on its head, just above its eye.
Vash swallows. Then he swallows again because there is a lump in his throat.
"Good dog," he manages. The dog licks his hand. "Good—good dog."
"You can't be him," Vash decides. "He would have killed them."
The dog twitches an eye open at the sound of his voice. It looks like it's winking. The little bandage Vash had applied to his cut is peeling slightly.
"Or at least hesitated," Vash muses. "Wouldn't he?"
The dog yawns wide, exposing its sharp teeth. It grins at Vash again, then goes back to sleep.
It's not Wolfwood. It's a dog. The last time Vash had seen Wolfwood was hard to relive, but Vash does so multiple times a day, most recently to reassure himself that Wolfwood had definitely been a human guy. The dog catches hold of his prosthetic wrist and starts gumming.
"Hey," Vash says absently. They stop walking.
This is probably stupid.
Vash gestures up at the ornate door. The dog looks up from Vash's wrist to see where Vash has brought him: a church.
"So," says Vash, stupidly.
The dog looks back at him at the sound of his voice. Its tongue lolls out expectantly, like, Okay, now what?
"I was hoping you'd tell me," Vash mutters.
The light inside the church is gentle and filtered through the slightly yellowed windows. There's no one in the confessional, so Vash leads the dog up the aisle and gets into the box. The dog, somewhat less cowed, scrambles in after him and curls up on his feet.
"Hi," says Vash, feeling foolish.
"Hello," says the voice on the other side of the grate.
"Hi," says Vash again. "Uh, I just realised I've never actually been in one of these."
"That's alright," says the voice kindly, and walks him through the words to say. "Do you know what to do?"
"I guess so."
"In your own way, then."
Vash sits back. The dog is snoozing.
"I have a dog in here with me," he says.
A light pause, then the voice asks carefully, "Is that a confession?"
"I guess so."
"It's not really a sin," the voice offers.
"Oh, I guess so." Another lapse into silence. Vash looks at the dog.
He's not sure what he really thought might happen here. Perhaps that the dog would feel the presence of Christ and reveal himself, but Wolfwood had never particularly seemed to feel the presence of Christ even as a man, or at least he'd never said so, not unless someone was offering him money. The dog’s paw twitches, like he might be dreaming, but of what, Vash couldn’t even begin to guess.
“Sorry,” he says out loud. “I guess I don’t really know where to start.”
“That’s alright. You take your time.”
Take your time .
“I think,” Vash starts, just for something to say. “I think I regret that I didn’t know him better.” Pause. “My friend.”
Nothing. The priest must be waiting for him to elaborate, because this isn’t a sin either.
“He died,” Vash says, somewhat unnecessarily.
The dog is a nice weight on his legs. The rise and fall of his steady breathing is soothing. “I always thought I knew him really well,” says Vash. But lately I think… I think if I met him today…” This is harder than he anticipated. “If I met him again, that is, and he looked different, I’m afraid I wouldn’t know him. I’m afraid that… maybe I didn’t try hard enough to know him when I could, because I didn’t think about him being gone. Is that a sin?”
“I don’t think so,” says the priest, after a short pause. “But perhaps it requires forgiveness, nonetheless.”
“Thanks,” Vash says weakly.
“If I may,” the priest continues, when Vash doesn’t say anything else. “I would venture a guess that you knew your friend better than you fear. Human beings often know more than they think they do, when it comes to matters of feeling.”
Vash doesn’t say anything else. If he opens his mouth, it might sound like crying, which is now what is happening.
“Do you have anything else to confess?” the priest asks him.
Vash swallows.
“I’ve let a lot of people down,” he says. It comes out as a funny little rasp. “Even though I didn’t want to. Is that a sin?”
“That’s closer.” Vash can hear a smile, though the priest sounds a little sad.
“Do you have to assign me penance now?” Vash asks.
“I will. Are you ready?”
“Sure.” Vash expects to be told to do some Hail Marys, or potentially to give the priest all his money, though he’s starting to think Wolfwood skewed the religious experience for him somewhat.
Instead the priest says, “You require forgiveness, as I said.”
“I guess.”
“You have been forgiven,” says the priest. “To show penance, forgive yourself.”
“What?”
“I imagine,” says the priest, “that your friend would be quicker to forgive you than you have been yourself. Perhaps to follow his example would bring you closer to him.”
Vash looks down at the dog, then quickly looks up again, because tears are threatening to drip off his chin and he doesn’t want to wake it with his blubbering. Incidentally, this was something Wolfwood had always complained about.
“Can you do that?” the priest asks.
“I… I don’t know.” Try again, Spikey . “I can try.”
“Good.” The priest sounds satisfied.
Vash stumblingly follows his lead as he goes through the motions. Then he says, “I don’t have money.”
“That isn’t another attempted sin of yours, is it?” the priest says patiently.
“No, no. I just mean, I can’t pay you.”
There’s a moment of confused silence. Then: “Why would you need to pay for a confession?”
“Oh,” says Vash. “Good point.”
“How is your dog?”
The dog is, in fact, awake. It snuffles sleepily at Vash’s hand and leaves his palm all wet and gross. It puts its head on Vash’s lap and looks up at him with big, damp eyes. Eyes filled with the power of Christ, probably.
Then it sneezes. From the power of Christ, definitely.
“He’s fine,” says Vash. “Thank you.”
The Princess and the Frog was an old fairytale from the Earth days in which a handsome prince was trapped in the body of a frog. To restore him to his former glory, a beautiful princess had to kiss him, and through the power of having human lips and love or something, the frog regained his human form. Then it transpired that the divine right to rule persisted through frogness and he once again assumed the throne and everyone had to be content with being ruled by a frog, or something. Something like that. And they got married.
This all runs through Vash’s head as he contemplates the dog, who now has his nose in a nest of ants.
“If you were Wolfwood, would you want me to kiss you?” Vash asks the dog’s butt, which is the only part of the dog that is visible.
The dog woofs into the sand and then whines from presumably having eaten an ant.
What happens if Vash kisses the dog and it DOES become Wolfwood? Another regret from when Nicholas had been alive: whatever had been between them, if anything, had gone unspoken and unacted-on. They’d shared a bed more than a few times, held each other to sleep when they’d needed to keep warm in the car. Wolfwood liked to sling his arm around Vash or drop his head on his shoulder. Certainly they’d laughed together, cried together. Shared meals.
Whatever else it was, or might have become, had been quite abruptly cut off. At the time Nicholas had died, Vash wasn’t sure what they were to each other, and now would never know.
What happens if Vash kisses the dog, and it’s been Wolfwood all along? What is it that they have to go back to?
The dog has extracted its face from the ants, and is now covered in a gorgeous mush of wet sand and dead ant. It slurps excitedly and gazes up at Vash with loving eyes.
“Hey,” says Vash. “If it’s you, and I—and I’ve been off base, then… this is just as friends, okay?”
The dog cocks its head.
“If you’re just a dog,” says Vash, “then it’s fine. People kiss their dogs all the time.”
The dog is still covered in dead ants. Vash decides to rub its face down a bit before putting his face near it. Then, before he can reconsider, he closes his eyes, leans in very fast, and kisses the dog’s nose.
It’s wet and sandy. Vash keeps his eyes closed.
After a moment, he’s aware of the sound of breathing. He’s also aware, acutely, of terrible breath. It smells like tobacco.
“Wolfwood?” he asks, and opens his eyes.
The dog is panting in his face.
Vash drops his shoulders and sighs. “Duh,” he says. “You’re a dog.” He sits down, and then flops onto his back in the sand.
He hadn’t thought he’d gotten his hopes up. The most Wolfwood-like behaviours had been ambiguous at best. Just a dog behaving like a dog. Really, all it meant was that Wolfwood behaved in a more dog-like way than he’d ever noticed, which perhaps just went to show that Vash really hadn’t known him that well after all. A small pit in his stomach, which he’d never even realised was there, opens a little wider.
“I thought I was done missing you,” Vash tells the sky, with a hand on his face. It’s been years. “I thought I’d done enough of it.”
The dog scoots over next to him and plops its face on his belly. It’s a dog. Just a dog.
Vash drops a hand on its head and scratches behind its ears.
“I still like you,” he tells it.
The dog doesn’t react. His eyes are fixed out on the horizon, gazing out into the sunlight. His tail thumps. Just happy to be here.
“You seem to like me,” says Vash, tentatively, like maybe the dog will choose this moment to learn speech and tell him it hates his guts. When the dog doesn’t do this, Vash ventures on. “Maybe you are Wolfwood, and I just didn’t figure out the right way to turn you back human.” The dog doesn’t seem to have any insight to offer. “If you are Wolfwood, it means you still want to be with me, right? So you’re probably not mad at me.”
The dog’s face is warm on his belly.
“If you’re not Wolfwood, you’re a nice dog who likes me. Even though being with me probably sucks for a dog.” It sucks for humans too, he thinks. “Do you still want to stay with me?”
The dog flicks an eye back to look at him. No signs to the contrary.
“Am I okay?” Vash asks the dog. “Am I good?"
Wordlessly, for it is a dog, the dog shuffles its head up Vash’s torso. It leaves a wet trail of damp sand, still caught in the dog’s wiry gray fur. It doesn’t stop until its nose rests on Vash’s chest, gazing deep into his eyes.
Then it sneezes again.
That’s as good a sign as any, Vash thinks, so he says, “Okay,” and makes to get up. The dog walks in a little circle when dislodged. Vash looks up at the sky, and down again at the dog. The dog is grinning up at him when he does.
“Okay,” says Vash again. “Do you want to go see Meryl and Milly?”
The dog barks.
“Let’s go,” says Vash.