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He wakes up on a white couch.
Vash's first instinct is bury his head in his hands. He can't go through this. Not again.
But when he looks up, it's... different. The orphanage is bustling, as it is now, with the shouts of children playing tag; he can even hear Miss Melanie scolding someone for not helping sweep the yard. A grove of trees surrounds them, laden with tiny white flowers.
And when he blinks, there's a table, absurdly set for two, draped in a white cloth with all the things Vash loves: a box full of doughnuts, a plate heaped with spaghetti, pint glasses bubbling over with foam. He's seated in one of the rickety folding chairs that they drag out of the closet for visitors, underneath the umbrella he's had close on his fingers more than once.
And in the middle of the table, a bottle, with a familiar label...
"Tongari."
Vash closes his eyes.
"It's impolite to ignore someone right in front of you, spikey."
Slowly, slowly, he opens his eyes, and sees Wolfwood seated across from him.
There's no blood on his suit, no feverish gleam in his gaze, no sweat on his brow, no cross in sight—he looks as neat and pressed as he's always infuriatingly been in the middle of nowhere. Vash drinks him in, going back to the little details he'd already forgotten: the way his buttons have been stitched and restitched on, the tiny crosses standing out stark white on his wrist like cufflinks, the almost delicate way he holds a cigarette between his fingers.
"Tongari," Wolfwood repeats, "I guess I can't call you blondie now, can I?"
"No" is all he can say. His eyes go to Wolfwood's—and stay there. He's not wearing his sunglasses now, and that, of all things, makes his throat close up.
"I hardly recognize you without your coat, either. What did you do with that thing?"
"I... put it away," Vash manages. He remembers Meryl giving a song and dance at not having it for tonight's show, the exclusive interview, Vash shoving her away, laughing, when she (half) jokingly told him to strip to make up for it. You'll ruin me! They'll get us for false advertising! and him howling, You shouldn't have made promises you couldn't keep! and her shrieking, Milly! Milly! Hold him down!
"Your glasses, too?"
No more hiding, he'd told them. Everyone knows who I am anyway. Nai wore them, sometimes, with his cloak. Sometimes Vash would get the shivers, looking at him, his twin a ghost from long ago.
Vash watches as Wolfwood takes another drag, smoke escaping from his lips. "After all this time," he finds himself saying, "you haven't stopped smoking?"
Wolfwood chuckles. "It's not like it'll do anything here."
Vash's eyes fill with tears.
"Come now," Wolfwood says, more gently. "I've missed your smile. I never did get to see it one last time."
"You were dying," Vash retorts, before he can think, marveling at how even now, Wolfwood knew how to push his buttons. "Did you want me to stand up and cheer, too?"
Wolfwood's eyes soften. He really does look different without his glasses; Vash wishes he could have seen more of his eyes. "It was bound to happen at some point, tongari. I'm surprised I made it that long, frankly."
"You should have—" Vash chokes; he's thought this over countless nights, alternatively raging and breaking down into sobs, even once destroying a hotel's box fan. It wasn't fair, it wasn't, it had been the only thing he'd asked whoever was up there, whoever Rem believed in; he wouldn't have even asked Wolfwood to stay by his side. If he could have just been, without having to have so much on his shoulders, had the blank ticket all his life. But because of Vash... "I should have—"
"Ah, tongari," Wolfwood says regretfully, "have you been carrying this around all this time? If anything, I shouldn't have left you. But I thought it was my mess, my burden, and... so many things, really." He takes another puff, breathes it out, reaches for a shot glass.
"If I had been there..."
Wolfwood shakes his head. "You don't know that, and we can't change it." He downs his drink in one gulp, slams the glass down. "Tongari, you've saved the universe. You did what I didn't think was possible: making peace with Knives. And I think without having to run all the time... You're just getting started."
Tears are blurring his vision, now. "But I don't..."
"Tongari. You promised Meryl. Milly is there, Livio is there, you have so many damn people who love you, spikey, for a good reason." He smiles. In the distance, white petals begin falling from the trees. "I'm not going to be mad at you for living. You'll see me again, in time."
He's right, damn him. Vash wipes his eyes, trying to hold in Wolfwood's image for as long as he can, to erase the warm blood soaking through his coat and the sound of dirt thudding on a corpse.
"Nicholas..." he whispers.
Across the table, Wolfwood places a hand on his, squeezing gently, and Vash knows there's nothing more to say.