Chapter Text
The insurance girl—Meryl—is not so much of a complainer as she is a nitpicker. She nags incessantly. When she’s not nagging, she’s scolding, and when she’s not scolding, she’s fussing. It’s a wonder that she finds the time between her verbal jabs to get the work done that they’re here to do.
“The humanoid typhoon!” she shouts, heaving her pickaxe in an arc that ends with a loud clang. “It’s always you, always Vash the Stampede!” Another clang, and the boulder splits down the middle.
Nick takes a moment to lean against his cross and wipe sweat off his brow. For all that the mines are dark and damp, there’s still a gross sort of humid heat, the kind that blows up when you walk over a sewer grate. Even Vash has taken off that red coat and rolled up his right sleeve. t’s oddly alluring to see his hair drooping and his shirt soaking up the sweat that drips down his neck, maybe because he usually seems so impervious to the heat and sun and sand.
Milly is sweating as much as the rest of them, but seems to be enjoying it, smiling wide and full of energy.
“Miss Meryl! It’s not Mr. Vash’s fault!”
“Yeah! This time it really isn’t!” Vash cries indignantly. “I was just minding my own business, when—“
Nick snorts, slouching further against his cross as everyone’s eyes snap to him.
“Hey!” Vash yells. At the same time, a rock comes flying at Nick’s head from the direction of the girls. He flails out of the way, but there’s a loud clang as it hits the Punisher. Nick cradles it protectively.
“Who threw that!? Don’t you know we need all the manpower we can get?”
“But you’re not even doing anything! Get back to work!”
He makes a show of hurrying to grab the pickaxe and sticks his tongue out at the three of them.
The mines have obviously fallen out of use, probably because of the town’s bandit problem. They’d solved that. As part of the solution, Vash destroyed the town hospital. And as a solution to that solution, he graciously agreed to pay the damage costs.
But, since none of them have any money, the mayor sentenced them to manual labor instead.
“It is Vash’s fault,” Meryl says.
“What!? Isn’t this exactly the sort of thing that insurance is supposed to pay for?”
Meryl steps forward to poke Vash, who shrieks and brings up his arms in defense. “You know Bernadelli considers you an act of God!”
“Well maybe God should take out a policy! And don’t act like you three weren’t involved!” He punctuates that accusation with a jab of his pickaxe toward Milly. “And you!” He turns toward Nicholas. “You carry around a machine gun! How many bullets does that thing eat up, don’t you know how expensive those are? We could be eating real grain donuts right now if you were better at budgeting!”
“Me and my machine gun just saved your life! Be grateful!”
Vash guffaws. “You and your machine gun are what brought down the building! Hey, hey, Meryl, isn’t it Wolfwood’s fault?”
Nick hammers his pickaxe down with a clang that reverberates up his arms with a sting. The lack of recognition stings a little, too—he really is a prideful man. “I didn’t kill anyone! And they would’ve damn well deserved it, in my opinion. Can I get some credit for that?”
An eerie calm overtakes Vash, his flailing arms and loud laughs halted, and he becomes just a dirt-covered man like Nicholas. His eyes glint bright against the coal dust. “Yeah, you’re right.” He gives a nice smile that softens his eyes again while he addresses Milly and Meryl. “Hey, guys, lay off Wolfwood a bit. He’s—“
Meryl snorts. Vash whips around to glare.
“How much money do we owe again?” Meryl asks.
Nicholas jerks his head at Vash. “More than his bounty.”
“Don’t be stupid,” Milly admonishes. “Sixty billion could never cover all the damage he caused!” She smiles innocently, and when Vash pouts, steps forward to pat him on the head.
They’re idiots, the lot of them. Milly with her comically big grapple gun, Vash with his drooping spiked hair, Meryl with all 3 feet of her height, and Nick with his ledger of dead bodies. Sometimes it’s nice, remembering that there are normal people in the world who aren’t infected by this same plague, but sometimes there’s just dread at knowing there are normal people in the world—good, goofy, just living their lives—because it’s only a matter of time. No one stays like that forever. How come Vash hasn’t had his wake-up call, after all these years? The world isn’t really like that.
“I was joking!” Milly clarifies, still consoling Vash.
“Milly, we’re not turning in Vash for his bounty.”
“I—“
Meryl doesn’t notice Milly’s interruption, eyes closed and finger pointed while she gives a speech. “Half of it would go to taxes, anyway. And we’d be out of a job without anyone to follow around.”
With a pout, Vash nods emphatically.
“Well,” Nicholas pipes up, “I’m sure he’d be gone the next day anyway. You really think any sheriff could hold him? He’d just wriggle his way out of any handcuffs.” He holds up his left hand pointedly.
“Yeah,” Vash starts. “I’m more crafty than I—”
“Plus, how would we split the bounty between the three of us, anyway?”
Milly adds, “And the taxes.”
“Hey!” Vash wipes his forehead and takes another swing at the rock. “Don’t you mean four of us? I’m the one being bountied, here.”
“You’re the one causing all the property damage!”
When they finally leave the mine that evening—with Nicholas physically dragging Vash away from his work—the second sun has just set, leaving a smudge of grayish green over the dunes just past the town gate. Lamps hang from poles and doors to cast a warmish glow that serves the dual purpose of letting them see where they’re going and accentuating the crater of black where the hospital had stood in the middle of town.
Meryl’s complaining about her growling stomach and the fact that she’d used all her money appeasing the mayor already, and Milly’s telling her to be grateful, but Nicholas is watching Vash slink dejectedly from shadow to shadow while his glazed eyes stay tracking the hospital.
“Goddamn,” Nick says, kicking at the side of Vash’s knee. “Quit your moping.”
Vash’s eyes snap to him as he skips out of the way. “What?”
“If you really cared that much, you would’ve killed the guy.”
Vash’s eyes harden and his jaw sets, but only for a second before he crinkles his face in a big smile. “Hey, everyone made it out okay! Even us, for the most part. Heh…”
Nick rolls his eyes, and his arms shake with fatigue as he pulls out his lighter.
When they reach the inn they’ve been staying at, Meryl’s sigh of relief is loud enough to carry back to them.
“Ah, Meryl?” Vash calls. “Are you sure they’ll let us stay the night without paying?”
—
The answer, it turned out, was no. The answer to “Just a meal, sir? We’re very hungry from being in the mines all day. We can pay you back later!” was also no.
Even with Vash and Nicholas’s food-scrounging skills combined, they couldn’t convince anyone in town to feed the people who’d blown up half the place—even if they’d only done so to free them from bandit control.
Nicholas wakes up the next morning in a sticky pile of sand and sweat and peels himself out from under Meryl and Milly. Vash is already sitting up hunched next to them under the canopy they’d flung over the bike.
“Good morning, Wolfwood!” His whisper is so enthusiastic that it sends a worm skittering away.
“Morning,” he grunts back with a nod.
Milly twitches as a drop of drool drips from Meryl’s chin onto her face.
“I know what we’re doing for breakfast,” Vash informs him.
Nicholas gives him a glances, then digs around in his pocket for a cigarette.
They sit in silence as the second sun turns into a bulb on the horizon and wakes up the girls. It quickly becomes too much, and Nicholas marches off toward town, only to come marching back after getting shouted off.
The three of them have packed up and are laughing without him.
“What! Why are you all so damn giggly?” He rips the canvas off the bike. The three of them should be too heavy for it, but they pile on and it works anyway. He curses at it for not having the decency to give him an excuse to kick them all off.
Vash once again announces his breakfast plans, shouting over the wind and gurgle of the engine. “We’ll be rich by the end of the day!”
None of them can hear Meryl’s snort, but they can all see it in the way she throws her head back. “Are we having money for breakfast?”
“Yes! Sixty billion double dollars! It’s delicious and nutritious!”
“Oh no,” Nicholas groans. There’s only one way they’d end up with sixty billion.
With a punch to the air in a rah-rah-rah type of cheer, Vash grins and responds, “Oh, yes!”
“That’s a lot of money, Mr. Vash!”
He’s standing up now and trying to strike the pose of a noble hero. “Of course! The highest bounty for the most fearsome outlaw!”
Within an hour, they’re at the next closest town.
The sheriff looks like he’s sniffed something sour. “You’re sure this is Vash the Stampede?”
Milly holds onto one end of a rope. Vash is wrapped up in the other, his arms tied down to his sides. “Course he is,” Nick says. He pushes his sunglasses up and into his hair. “Gave us a lotta trouble. You know I’m a priest?” He nods toward his huge cross. “He was corrupting all the youth over in … “
“New Chicagosburg!” Meryl supplies, smile too big on her face.
“New Chicagosburg,” he continues. “We were just lucky he’d been drained of so much blood from that demonic ritual, we’d never have caught him otherwise.” Vash nods enthusiastically. Nicholas leans forward, trying to draw the sheriff’s attention back to himself. “I’m not looking for any money,” he says piously, “I’m only doing my duty for the souls of the people. Please, take him.” He shoves Vash into the sheriff’s arms and crosses himself, then clutches the Punisher. “Mercy,” he whispers like a priest, then blows a breath on his sandy fingers. They do that, right?
“I’ll take the money, though,” Meryl says. “It was me and my bodyguard who brought him down.”
It’s the Bernadelli Insurance Company that posted the bounty. The town doesn’t have the money, and the sheriff instructs them to stay in the inn for the week while the Insurance comes to verify and pay. Bernadelli is covering for the inn, too—the attic room of a blacksmith’s shop. They finish the morning with no sixty billion double dollars, and no breakfast.