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Wolfwood leans back in the narrow wooden chair, slowly nursing a glass of what has turned out to be a surprisingly drinkable whiskey. The Punisher is propped up against the repurposed ship-metal wall to his left, still in easy reach. Across the table, Meryl is a little bit tipsy. To his right, Vash is grinning and talking with a greybeard who seems to remember Vash’s first visit to this town several decades ago.
Meryl is hanging off their every word like she thinks there will be a test later. Maybe she’s used to taking tests: she said she went to college, after all. People take a lot of tests in schools like that, right? Roberto is sitting silently beside her with his head tipped back against the wall. It hasn’t escaped Wolfwood’s attention that Roberto’s back is to the only corner their little table has to offer, or that he’s paying closer attention to the conversation than anyone else seems to have noticed.
Wolfwood is only half listening, a pleasant smile fixed to his face, keeping an ear on everyone else in the bar. Maybe he should relax, but he's going to keep listening in, just in case anyone gets the bright idea of trying to take in Vash the Stampede, trying to collect his bounty the way Meryl said they did in Jeneora Rock.
Admittedly, this otherwise unremarkable town is probably safer than they had any right to expect. It's in way better shape than most places that have lost their Plants to Knives’ spate of thefts. Apparently they already had an array of solar panels and a pair of windmills, cobbled together from a local wreck that dates back to the Big Fall. As a consequence, they’ve not only still got clean water, they’ve got a bar that serves food and rents rooms to travelers.
And they’ve got a deep fondness for Vash, because apparently he helped set up the upgraded solar array fifty or so years ago. He still swings by every once in a while to check on things, help them tweak the bits of tech that like to misbehave.
Wolfwood might not have believed Vash capable of it at first, not with the dopey grin he puts on as easily as breathing. But after seeing Vash’s hands flying across the screens on the sand steamer, after seeing the level of technology Vash took utterly for granted on Ship Three? Well, him knowing how tech works makes more sense now.
Wolfwood listens to Vash, tipsy and earnest, discussing something about capacitors with the old man who joined them as soon as they arrived. The guy seems to be in charge of the town’s power supply. The conversation is nowhere near Brad’s running commentary as he tinkered with Vash’s prosthetic arm, or Luida’s cultivation of flora. It must seem laughably simple to Vash in comparison.
It’s still a whole different world from the Hopeland Orphanage. Wolfwood grew up feeding Tomas chicks and learning to read from a handful of badly tattered books. As a kid, anything that needed electricity was a luxury for adults, and only when times were good. Afterwards, well. That was different.
Wolfwood takes a long sip of his whiskey, letting the burn slide down his throat. He’s gotten used to that rough feeling by now. These days he doesn’t grimace or cough — even if he still wants to. His surprised reaction the first time a target bought him a drink got him shot: he learned to drink without complaint after that, to look like he enjoys it. He doesn’t get drunk, not the way other people seem to do, or at least not without spending far too much money. Roberto also doesn’t ever seem to get drunk, but Wolfwood figures that’s more of a question of practice than anything else. From what he’s seen, men who drink as much as Roberto either build up a tolerance, or end up dead.
“Oh!” Meryl says. “I heard about that! Wasn’t that near Hopeland? Wolfwood! You remember that!”
Wolfwood blinks at her behind his sunglasses.
Meryl snapped at him once for wearing sunglasses indoors. She went off on a tear about how rude it was, how it made him look untrustworthy when no one could see his eyes.
Roberto had just coughed, like he was trying not to laugh. It had been the first time Wolfwood had thought he might kind of have liked the old man, if they’d met under different circumstances. He’d been tempted to pull off his glasses, let the light hit his eyes so they reflected red, to prove to her that she shouldn’t trust him. He’d brushed it off with a comment about Vash’s glasses instead. Now he knows Vash’s eyes shine Plant blue, irises lighting up like a maze under direct light, that his glasses are as much of a mask as Wolfwood's own.
“Oh yeah,” Vash chimes in. “You grew up there, right? How’d you all deal with it? Did you lose many Tomases?”
Wolfwood stares at them, having totally lost track of the conversation: two guys at the door were on the verge of getting into a fight about money, and he got distracted, so sue him.
“What?” he asks.
“The acid rain,” Meryl says, impatient. “I was — uh. Six? I think? So —“
“It was just under seventeen years ago,” Roberto says, and throws back his entire remaining glass of whiskey, putting the empty tumbler back on the metal table with careful, precise gestures, with only a faint clink. He only gets more meticulous as the nights go on, more careful. It's still a tell. Wolfwood has cataloged it.
Vash nods.
“It was terrible,” he says, and he looks sad about it.
“What was terrible?” Wolfwood asks, because he knows what acid is, and he’s read about rain, about water falling from the sky, about clouds made of something other than worms or sand, but those two words together make no sense.
The old man Vash has been talking to laughs, loud and brassy, and stares straight at Wolfwood like he’s said something impossible, fixes him with his full attention. Wolfwood doesn’t tense up, but his hands itch for the straps of the Punisher. He sits still.
“What do you mean, what was terrible? Come on, kid, everyone remembers that! It fuckin’ rained. Acid fell from the sky!”
Wolfwood forces a smile.
Seventeen years ago he wasn’t at the orphanage yet. Truth be told, he doesn’t know where he was back then. Maybe in or near Hopewood. Maybe not. He doesn’t remember shit from back then, since he was still in diapers, or buck-ass naked in a dirty cradle, more likely. He definitely can’t say that. It never goes well when he admits his real age.
Wolfwood frantically scours his memory. Old Sister Mirabel comes to mind, talking about an especially bad year. But he hadn’t paid much attention to her back then: she’d been just another grownup, always either missing the good old days or complaining about the bad old days. He’d been more interested in sneaking out to play with the Tomas chicks or smoke Worm legs, to find caves in the cliffs with Livio until the dark and cold of the desert nights drove them back indoors.
“It rained!” The old man insists, louder now, like this is going to be a big deal.
Wolfwood wishes he’d kept his fool mouth shut. He could have asked Vash later — could have just pretended to know what was going on like he’s done a hundred times before.
A woman leaning on the bar looks over, a frown on her face, and now more of the bar’s patrons are looking at them. Wolfwood takes a calm, intentional sip of his drink, feels it burn down his throat like vinegar. He fights back a grimace. He wants a soda, a piece of hard candy, any drink that doesn’t claw its way down his gullet like yet another fight.
“You going on about the acid rain again, pops?” the woman asks. “We know it pitted the panels, leave it be.”
“No!” He shoots back, and raises a glass to Vash in a salute. “Vash helped fix that last time he came by, that’s not it.”
Wolfwood has a moment to hope Vash will steer the conversation away, somehow, back to his unexpected engineering skills, when the man keeps talking
“No, Annie,” the man says, and points straight at Wolfwood. “It’s — this kid says he doesn’t remember when it rained!”
Wolfwood did not actually say that, but, well, he doesn’t remember it, and he’s not going to be able to lie his way out of this one, not now, not with so much attention on him like this.
The woman at the bar — Annie? — stares at the old guy, then stares at Wolfwood, taking him in head to toe.
“Don’t be stupid,” the woman says. “Everyone remembers that.”
There must be something in his face, because Meryl blinks at him.
“You don’t,” she says, and maybe she meant her voice to be soft, but she’s well beyond tipsy, having been keeping up with the other three of them all night. “How can you not remember it raining? Wait—“ a look of exaggerated confusion dawns on her face, like sunrise through a sandstorm. “How old are you?”
Wolfwood gulps the rest of his whiskey and puts the glass back on the table just a little too hard.
“Old enough to know better than to ask stupid questions,” he says, standing up.
Something in his voice, in his face, in his motions must be off-kilter, because she shuts up immediately.
Wolfwood ostentatiously pulls his crumpled pack of cigarettes out of his pocket as he walks slowly towards the door. He doesn’t allow himself to glance at the Punisher, to grab it up the way he wants to. His shoulder is too light without it, his hands too empty. But if he takes it with him, he won’t be back tonight, and he can’t risk letting them leave without him, not this close to July.
Wolfwood keeps walking, pushes out past the saloon doors. He tells himself he doesn’t need to be armed, right now. Not any more than he always is, at least.
Someone calls out after him, and Wolfwood ignores it, pretends he can’t hear any of the buzzing background noise of the bar, can’t separate out the different strands of voices as easily as breathing. Listening comes easier than breathing, some days.
There’s no point going far: the town may be used to the occasional traveler, but that doesn’t make them trusting, and wandering too far after dark would be a good way to get shot. That would be a bad end to an already shitty night, so Wolfwood just turns the corner, leans against the warm metal side of the building, and tips his head back against the wall, closing his eyes under his sunglasses. He doesn’t even light up a cigarette, just does his best to ignore the noises coming through the repurposed ship plating behind him.
Meryl sounds confused; Roberto bored; the townspeople offended and maybe a little angry. That all makes sense: Wolfwood has heard Roberto sound wearily put-upon in the middle of a firefight, and leaving without a word was bound to piss someone off.
Vash’s voice is too close, when he finally speaks:
“Hey,” he says. “You okay?”
Wolfwood opens his eyes to see the infamous Vash the Stampede standing awkwardly before him, rubbing that amazingly complex prosthetic hand against the back of his head like he thinks he’s done something wrong, like he’s concerned.
The Humanoid Typhoon, the eternally-youthful generations-old creature Wolfwood is escorting to his doom, is worried about him. Wolfwood must really have looked terrible back in the bar.
He’s losing his touch, getting too close to these people. Maybe Zazie was onto something. Wolfwood never used to care this much if a mark was unhappy, if a target learned something about Wolfwood that turned their stomach. He’s never cared if something makes them look at him like the monster he’s become.
But Wolfwood doesn’t want to see the moment Vash realizes what he really is.
“Fine,” he says. “Just peachy.”
His voice cracks on the last word. It hasn’t done that in years: of course it does it now. He closes his eyes again, knocks his head gently against the metal wall. The day’s heat is leeching from the metal and into the air. It’ll be chilly against his back before too long.
Unbidden, a memory swarms up like a sudden worm storm, hitting with the force of a fist to the gut. Wolfwood remembers the last time he and Livio ran away to hide out in the cliffs before his selection for the Eye of Michael, how long they’d stayed out after dark, how hard Livio had tried to pretend he wasn’t cold.
Crybaby Livio, who had followed his Nico-nii wherever he led, even when his teeth were chattering from the cold, trying to keep up. Loyal, determined Livio, who had followed his Nico-nii into Millions Knives’ grasp, onto William’s table, under the syringe, under the lights, trying not to be left behind.
His Livio, who had flipped his ammunition before reloading his gun in exactly the way Wolfwood had taught him to flip a lighter, even when there was no recognition in his eyes. His little brother, Livio, who had giggled at his mistakes while learning the trick, who had held back tears when he burned himself once, lest they both get in trouble.
Livio, whose memories only returned when he smelled Wolfwood’s cigarette smoke, who recognized him there on the deck of the sand steamer. Livio, saying his name, his suit ripped and bloody, his too-old body visibly unscarred, healed without so much as a hint of any meds.
Livio, who shot himself in the head, point-blank, when his mind came back to him for even a moment, unable to live with what he’d been made into.
Behind his closed eyes, Wolfwood can see Livio’s body falling again, the way it arced over the railing of the stand steamer, the outflung spray after the dull, meaty sound of a bullet impacting at such close range.
“Wolfwood,” Vash says. His voice is soft. “You’re crying.”
Wolfwood laughs, low and bitter, but even he can hear there’s no humor in it.
“Go inside, tongari,” he says. “I’m fine. The old man will want to talk your ear off about —” he waves, vaguely, unable to conjure a good topic, to remember any of the phrases they were tossing around so freely just a few minutes ago. “Wiring, or something.”
“Jonas is fine without me,” Vash says immediately. “You’re not.” He gives a little laugh, one of the performative, fake ones that puts Wolfwood’s teeth on edge.
It’s even worse right now, knowing Vash is doing the act for him, putting on a cheerful facade for Wolfwood after everything. He’s not sure which is worse: that Vash thinks he needs it, or that Vash thinks he won’t notice the obvious lie, the discomfort lurking under the sunny tones.
“Wiring?” Vash asks, and his tone is bright and artificially cheerful. “Really? You’re not that dense, don’t pretend you weren’t listening.”
“Stop it,” Wolfwood bites out. To his surprise, Vash shuts up.
He can feel the tears wet on his cheeks. What a waste of water, he thinks. No one cries freely on this desert planet except maybe the rich, but Wolfwood’s never been wealthy. He’s bled out into the sand more times than he can count, these last six years. But not crying is an old habit, and those die hard.
He laughs again, low and bitter, and hears himself speak.
“He followed me,” he says. “He always fucking followed me.”
Vash steps closer: Wolfwood can hear his boots hitting the ground. He’s doing that on purpose, too, moving so he can be heard. Wolfwood’s seen him move silently across worse terrain. He laughs, again. It feels acidic in his throat.
“You don’t have to do all that careful shit, tongari,” he says. “I’m not gonna startle if you move too fast.”
He’s seen Vash approach other people this way before, after disasters big or small. If he opened his eyes, he’d see that damn reassuring smile, the big blue eyes, the expression that always seems to soothe strangers’ ills. Wolfwood doesn’t want to be soothed.
“Okay,” Vash agrees, and Wolfwood knocks his head back against the wall again.
“Fuck off,” Wolfwood says, but there’s less heat in it than he’d intended. “Go talk about capacitors and acid rain, or whatever. I’m not going anywhere.”
He made sure of that when he left the Punisher inside, after all. It’s a far more solid anchor than even its substantial weight would suggest. Leaving it in the bar was probably a better call than he’d realized, given how raw he feels right now. He’s still crying, or at least tears are still running down his cheeks. He can’t remember the last time he cried, or at least the last time he cried when he wasn’t on the operating table.
“Jonas doesn’t really need my advice,” Vash says, and there’s the rustling sound that means he’s shrugging. “He just likes to talk shop, and everyone else is sick of it. He’ll get to tell Meryl all about the damage the acid rain caused, and she’ll be a better audience than me, because she didn’t see any of it.”
There’s a pause where the silence gets dangerous. Wolfwood expects a question: where were you when that happened, maybe, or how old are you, anyway.
Instead Vash just sighs.
“Come on,” he says. “There’s a back staircase.”
Wolfwood opens his eyes in surprise.
“Well, we could go back through the bar,” Vash says. “But you didn’t seem like you wanted more company.”
This time when Vash shrugs, Wolfwood can see the Punisher propped behind him, mostly hidden by his ridiculous coat. It was stupid of him to bring it out here, to re-arm Wolfwood when he’d left it behind. It was considerate of him not to leave something Wolfwood clearly values unattended in the bar with a pair of curious, handsy reporters.
But that’s Vash, isn’t it, when he’s distilled down to his essence: reckless with his own safety, putting the wants of others first. That very quality is why Knives sent Wolfwood to babysit him in the first place, to make sure he gets to July safe and sound. It is, paradoxically, why Vash is safer with a murderous freak like Wolfwood at his side than almost anywhere else — maybe absolutely anywhere else — on this damn planet, at least until Wolfwood’s job is done, and Vash has been delivered to his murderous psychopath of an older brother.
Wolfwood shakes that thought off with effort.
“Yeah,” he says. “Okay, lead the way.”
Vash moves to pick up the cross, but Wolfwood grabs it first. The straps fit his hands the way they always have. The feeling of thick leather bands against his fingers and palms is what familiarity feels like, is what he thinks of when he imagines safety. Or at least it’s as close as he’s ever found since leaving the orphanage, since being selected by the Eye of Michael.
He followed me, he thinks, and his hand tightens around the thick Tomas leather. It creaks, slightly: he’ll have to oil everything again soon, lest the desert dry things out too much.
Vash’s expression does something complicated, then, but he just nods.
“This way,” he says. “Annie won’t mind, if we’re quiet.”
Wolfwood thinks Annie might mind, if it were anyone but Vash, but he doesn’t feel like bringing that up. Vash doesn’t seem to have ever understood that he doesn’t ever get treated like most people, that he burns brighter, smiles wider, and consequently gets away with more. It always seems to blow up in his face eventually, but in the short term Vash gets all manner of small liberties Wolfwood has never been able to take for granted while traveling alone.
The stairs, like most of the rest of this town, are metal. Unlike many places Wolfwood has been, they don’t creak underfoot. Vash leads them to the room in which he dropped his bag earlier. Of the two rooms available, he and Wolfwood claimed the one with a single slightly wider bed, leaving the two tiny beds in the other room for the reporters.
Sharing hadn’t seemed like a big deal earlier: now, all Wolfwood can think of is the way Livio cried himself to sleep in his first weeks at the orphanage, the way he snored and snuffled in his sleep after that, like a fluffy baby Tomas, like how he imagined a cat from the old Earth books might have sounded.
Vash closes the door. Wolfood leans the Punisher against the wall where it balances between the door and the bed, in easy reach. Wolfwood forces himself to let go of the straps, one finger at a time, and finds himself stopping in place, unable to finish letting go. He stares at his hand, as if he could move it with his eyes alone. But no, he’s not that much of a monster, not yet. He’s no Legato Bluesummers, to move things merely by wanting them to bend to his will.
“—ood,” someone is saying. The voice sounds worried, but people are always worried around him, especially these last few years. It doesn’t seem angry, and it doesn’t sound scared, so it’s not dangerous. So. It doesn’t matter, not enough for Nicholas to stop looking at his hand, tan against the darker leather, against the light cloth wrappings. His hand is so large. When did his hands get that big?
“Nico?” The voice says, even softer, and Nicholas snaps back to himself, spinning around to face the speaker with both of his hands raised in automatic, instinctive fists.
“No,” he snarls. “Not that. You don’t get to call me that.”
Vash takes a step back, shock flashing across his face, hands raising in open-palmed supplication.
“Okay,” he says. “Wolfwood, okay. I get it.”
He doesn’t get it. How can he, when Wolfwood himself can’t explain it fully, why hearing that snapped him right out of whatever was going on in his head just now.
Other kids at the orphanage called him Nico all the time, before and after Livio joined them. But Wolfwood’s heart carved out a new space the first time Livio called him “Nico-nii,” sweet and trusting the way so few of the kids still were. Other kids might have called him Nico, sure, but only Livio was his little brother.
And then Livio called him “Nico” on the bloody deck of steamer, recognized him, and Wolfwood knew he’d never hear that name again, not from anyone who mattered. Because Livio saw him, saw Nico under the suit, under the weapons, under the weight of years neither of them had earned honestly, and Livio called him by name. And he still killed himself, still shot himself point-blank in the head with one of the guns the Eye of Michael gave him to kill Vash the Stampede.
Livio saw Nico, and he held a cross-shaped gun to his head. He stood there, holding a gun smaller and lighter than the Punisher, more versatile, more subtle, his clothing ragged with bloody bullet-holes, his skin unblemished, and nothing in his eyes but the mission. His makers must have thought he was an upgrade on Nicholas The Punisher in every way.
He’d been better for their purpose in every way but one, in the end, because Livio the Double Fang remembered what he had been made into, and he died to escape it.
And Wolfwood can’t even get that right, can he.
“Wolfwood,” Vash is saying, stepping forwards. His hands are still raised, a gentling gesture he’s seen Vash use on a skittish mount. “I think you should sit down, maybe.”
Wolfwood could protest, but he’s so tired.
“Fuck off,” he says, but he steps over to the bed and sits at the edge before losing steam.
“Yeah, yeah,” Vash says. “Get your jacket off.”
He doesn’t sound fazed at all by Wolfwood’s outbursts, but Brad had been brusque too, hadn’t he. Vash had to have been young when the survivors of Ship Three found him after the Big Fall, from what little Wolfwood has been able to piece together.
Wolfwood pulls off his suit jacket, which still has some holes in it he hasn’t patched yet. He veers away from that thought.
“Don’t kick me,” Vash says, and kneels in front of Wolfwood, hands still gentle, slow, fully visible. “I’m just getting your shoes.”
This might seem to be a compromising position, if someone came through the door now, saw Vash kneeling at Wolfwood’s feet, Wolfwood’s jacket tossed aside, Vash’s hair more windswept than usual. Wolfwood just feels raw, exhausted in a way he doesn’t feel even after over-using the vials.
“Fine,” he says, when Vash doesn’t move, just crouches there, still, evidently waiting for permission.
It’s been so long since someone has asked permission before touching him. Wolfwood veers away from that thought, too.
Vash’s prosthetic hand isn’t chilly as he pulls Wolfwood’s shoes off one at a time.
“Someone needs to get you some damn socks,” Vash murmurs, too soft for a normal person to hear. Wolfwood takes that as permission to ignore it.
“Okay,” Vash says, louder, getting to his feet with that eerie, fluid grace he shows so rarely. Wolfwood’s shoes are tucked neatly under the side of the bed, facing so they’re ready to slip on in a hurry. Before Wolfwood has registered it, Vash is picking up and neatly folding his jacket.
Something falls out of the inside pocket and hits the metal floor with a rattling click.
“Shit, sorry,” Vash exclaims, bending over to pick it up. “Oh, that’s pretty.”
Wolfwood can all but feel the breath freeze in his lungs, as if an invisible hand has him in its grasp yet again. He’s felt more freedom of movement while pinned to a ceiling.
It’s a golden gemstone, maybe a quartz, maybe something fancier. Wolfwood found it in the desert before he was recalled to July, before he was sent after Vash. It was going to be Livio’s birthday present.
“It looks like —“ Vash cuts himself off, but of course he noticed, of course he can tell it’s the exact same color as Livio’s eyes were. “I’ll put it back in your pocket.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Wolfwood says.
“Still,” Vash says, and there’s something old in his voice, unfamiliar despite all the time they’ve spent together. “You might want it later.”
He doesn’t ask what it was for, which means Wolfwood doesn’t have to lie, doesn’t have to tell only a small part of the truth.
It was going to be his sixteenth birthday present — impossible for the questions it would raise. How did Wolfwood know him? How could Livio, who looked like a full-grown man, still be so young? That would lead to other questions, surely, would circle them back to the acid rain, to the damn anecdote that started off this whole mess. I can’t remember the acid rain, but it might just be why they gave me up to the orphanage — similarly unspeakable.
Wolfwood buries his head in his hands, feels his elbows digging into his knees, and focuses on the sensations, trying to drown out his thoughts. His thighs burn with phantom pains, little sparklers of sensation where he’d been shot, where he’d regenerated, where his body made itself anew in the blink of an eye. Miraculous, the doctor called it, the first time he saw it happen before his eyes.
He wonders what the doctor said about Livio. He closes his eyes.
Vash moves around the space of the room, rustling slightly, making just enough noise that Wolfwood can tell where he is. The sounds of him stripping down for bed, putting aside his gun and jacket, have become familiar far too swiftly.
“Here,” Vash says, and Wolfwood looks up to see a glass of water, clear and clean despite the clouded, chipped tumbler. “You don’t want a hangover,” he adds.
Wolfwood could tell him he doesn’t get hangovers, but that’s another thing he doesn’t want to have to explain, so he just nods, drains it down, and lets Vash take it away. He strips mechanically, and when he climbs into bed he wonders, for a moment, if he’ll have to lie here in the silence with Vash at his side, like a horrible parody of childhood.
Then Vash reaches out, faster than Wolfwood has come to expect of him, and reels him into a loose embrace. Wolfwood finds his head resting on Vash’s right shoulder, arm wrapped around his neck, and knows he won’t be able to get up without more of a fight than he has in him right now.
“Fuck off,” he says, but there’s no heat in it.
“You looked like you needed a hug,” Vash says.
Wolfwood has heard that line before, usually from women with too much makeup and too-low necklines. This time it sounds sincere. Trust Vash the Stampede to be the first person to say that to him and mean it, despite everything.
“You keep telling yourself that,” Wolfwood replies, instinctively, because he hasn’t survived this long by trusting people, by letting them get any closer than he has to. Not until this job. Not until this fucking job.
They lie still for a time, Vash’s breathing steady and soothing under his cheek.
“You could tell me about him,” Vash says, voice muffled by Wolfwood’s hair. “If you wanted.”
It’s not exactly a question; it’s an opened door. Vash sounds more like a priest offering to hear confession than Wolfwood has ever managed. Vash sounds like he gives a shit about Wolfwood’s feelings.
“What’s there to say?” Wolfwood says.
The exhaustion is hitting him, now, dragging his limbs down, but his mind won’t stop. If he’s not lucky, it’ll be another sleepless night.
“He a smoker?” Vash asks.
Of course he’d have noticed that flip of the ammunition, Wolfwood’s echoing flip of his lighter, even in the midst of a firefight where the most lethal parties severely outgunned him.
“No,” Wolfwood says. “Well, I don’t think so. I taught him to flip a lighter as a trick when we were small,” and he has to be careful here, talk around the truth, but surely that's vague enough, doesn't say exactly when. “But he hated the sourness of it.”
“That seems like a sign of his good taste, then,” Vash says, and he sounds a little bit amused by something.
“Worm leg smoke smells terrible,” Wolfwood admits. “But they’re practically free, and you don’t feel as hungry when you smoke. They’re a lot cheaper than food.”
He hadn’t run away many times, and never for long, but it had been long enough to pick up that habit. And no matter how much the nuns had chided him for smoking, they’d never minded if he took smaller portions at meals.
Vash exhales, long and slow against his hair, sounding almost pained. Wolfwood can feel individual strands moving, but he doesn’t say anything.
They lie there a little longer, and Wolfwood realizes: Vash isn’t going to ask. It’s a tiny, unexpected mercy, to be spared that one additional lie. Wolfwood feels tears welling up in his eyes again, and blinks them back.
“Shh,” Vash says. “It’s okay. I mean, it’s not okay, but —“ he pauses, and huffs out a breath. “You can take a break, I guess,” he says. “I’ll keep an eye on things for a bit. Just — catch your breath. If you want.”
Wolfwood can’t help a choked almost-laugh.
“Okay,” he says. “But you’re not bitching at me in the morning if there’s snot on your shirt.”
Vash’s puff of surprised laughter is the best thing that’s happened to Wolfwood all day, maybe all week, all year.
“Deal,” he says, and reels Wolfwood in closer, stroking warm, ungloved fingers through his hair.
Grains of sand trickle out from time to time, but Wolfwood pays them no heed. The last time someone stroked his hair, he was too small to remember anymore who had been doing it. He’d done this for Livio once or twice, marveling all the while at how pale his little brother’s hair was, how wispy and fine compared to Nicholas’s own thicker, darker hair.
The tears come, inevitable and still a surprise. Wolfwood presses his face closer into Vash's shoulder, as if he can hide, as if he deserves the comfort offered to him, as if accepting it isn't its own kind of betrayal waiting to strike.
Someday, maybe, in another life, in another world, he’d have been able to tell Vash something more about himself, about Livio. Someday he might have been able to find the words to explain what it’s like, being too old and too young at the same time, being pulled in too many directions and seeing failure on every side.
For now, though, with Vash’s hand petting his hair, impossibly gentle, he doesn’t need to talk.