Chapter Text
Vash sits stone-still on the couch, in a daze. He toys with the weight of the Punisher and traces its contours with the pads of his fingers. The cool metal counterbalances the phantom memory of warm hands held and cherished deep beneath his skin. It still doesn’t hit him that Wolfwood is gone. There’s no way he can be. He imagines how Wolfwood would hold the gun; he remembers the cheeky grin that would accompany the confirmatory glance that they shared before charging head-first into battle. He imagines that the warmth that lingers on its handle is real and not just a desperate manifestation of his denial.
No tears fall as he buries him. Shovels full of dirt hit the casket with dull thuds. Repeat, and repeat. Soon, the ground is level, and he is truly gone. No tears, but his whole world falls. In the depths of the night, left alone with his own suffocating thoughts, Vash sobs. He sobs, the force of his anguish sending tremors through his entire being as he clutches Wolfwood’s smoke-infused blazer to his chest so hard his knuckles turn white. I love you . Vash realizes this, belatedly, in the surreal trance of his grief, and the thought shears his heart open and raw, allowing the fears stowed carefully inside to rear their ugly heads, entangled in the depths of his psyche. The ghost of cigarettes may as well be of incense, prayer, and holy reverence. He’s convinced burying the only person so dear to him — the only one who saw him for more than his cheery facade, the only one who could ever pull him out of his head whenever he floated too far — damns him to a life of perdition.
He brings the cigarette to his lips, taking a slow drag. He coughs, sputters, then collects himself and tries again. One more. The poison seeping into his lungs is his punishment and repentance, the temporary antidote for his guilt and self-loathing. He imagines how Wolfwood’s cigarettes dangled effortlessly between his lips. If he closes his eyes, he can imagine that Wolfwood exists instead of him. That he survives, instead of him. Again, again, and again, he invites the smoke into his lungs, willing it to cloud the despair within, convincing himself that the wound is not severe. He wonders if Wolfwood would laugh at him, at how pathetic he is now, destroying his body to quench his searing, parching, and utterly destroying thirst for a memory long past, that can never be relived, not in this lifetime or the next. (He imagines Wolfwood laughing. The lengths he would go just to hear him laugh again.)