Chapter Text
The phantom comes to him at dawn.
It’s not all that surprising that it would. Vash was dreaming of Wolfwood — the same dream he’s been having, stirred in among all the other nightmares, in the seven months since…
Since.
Wolfwood, bent double, his suit torn through and soaked with blood from dozen of wounds, the rasp of his breath perfectly audible across the sudden silence.
His eyes, wide and dazed with shock and pain and blood loss, cast across the blasted waste of the battlefield to meet Vash’s gaze, just for a moment, not softening but sharpening with recognition.
Wolfwood’s mouth pulled in a rictus around the case of vials.
Glass breaking under his teeth, the way his body steamed as it healed, the clicking crunch of bones slotting back into place, the smell — all the more horrible for being entirely indistinguishable from cooking meat.
All perfectly recreated, along with the certainty, though that had come later — Wolfwood was dead.
Vash wakes with a jolt, kicking himself out of his bedroll, sweat and tears drying cold on his face.
A specter of the very same man sits across the dying embers of Vash’s campfire.
No Punisher. No sunglasses. Just Wolfwood himself, in the same suit Vash buried him in, lapels still stained brown with seven month old blood. The soles of his shoes are starting to peel off, like he walked a long way to get here.
Wolfwood smiles, wider and brighter than Vash has seen in years — since they met on the bus, what feels like lifetimes ago. Before Wolfwood knew what Vash was, before Vash knew what Wolfwood had sought him out to do.
He lifts a hand and waves. The gesture’s restrained, but his hand is trembling. “Hey there, Needle-noggin.”
There’s a hollow space in Vash’s chest, nestled behind his ribs, taking up more of him than his heart ever did. It’s been empty since Wolfwood fell into his arms and Vash knew — knew all those tomorrows he’d been willing to promise were for naught.
Something cold and angry curled up inside it catches on the spark of Wolfwood’s smile and ignites into fury.
“What are you doing here?” Vash asks, not as cold as he was to Knives, before the end, but coming close.
Wolfwood’s smile vanishes. His brow knits, his expression struggling between confusion and hurt.
“Haven’t you hurt me enough?” Vash asks. “You made your point. You don’t have to haunt me, too.”
He ignores Wolfwood’s plaintive “Needle-noggin, please —” and drops back down onto his bedroll, ignoring the blanket crumpled at his feet, rolling onto his side to face away from the specter, curling around the anger clawing at itself at the core of him.
The anger is surprising in its intensity, but only for that. He’s been angry at Wolfwood for a long time, without a ghost’s face to fling his fury into.
It was that or collapse from the despair of it. What Wolfwood had done. Had chosen to do.
Wolfwood had seen Vash descend to his rescue and still gone through with it, what Vash could only, in hindsight, call a suicide.
He’d looked back.
He’d made sure Vash was watching before he did it.
Whatever reason he’d done it, whatever mix of spite or despair or cold practicality. He’d killed himself while Vash was watching.
Forced Vash to bury him. To go on with the reminder of what Wolfwood had sacrificed himself for trotting at his heels.
That isn’t fair to Livio. But Livio isn’t here. It’s just Vash, and the ghost of the one death he would’ve killed to prevent—
If it hadn’t been Wolfwood’s own finger on the trigger.
Behind him, footsteps crunch across the sand, the feigned heat of the phantom’s body drawing close, almost close enough to—
“Don’t touch me,” Vash snaps, without lifting his head. “Don’t you dare.”
The footsteps stumble back. “Oh,” Wolfwood says, sounding far too distraught for what he’s done. There’s a thump, the weight of a body dropping into the sand. “Okay.” Even weaker on the second word, the specter's voice wet and breaking.
Vash intends to ignore him until he vanishes — all his ghosts do, eventually. They never linger with him long.
He could use some more sleep, anyway.
But the ghost doesn’t fade. It stays right where it is, occasionally taking wet, gulping breaths, a noise Vash only heard Wolfwood make just once, sitting beside him, sharing a drink, choking on dread and listening to Wolfwood struggle with a throatful of blood and tears.
It’s cruel, for his memory to haunt him with.
Worse—
“I’m sorry,” the ghost says. “Okay, Vash? I’m sorry. Whatever it is I did, I’m sorry—”
Vash sits up, turning to glare at the specter of Wolfwood. “Oh, that’s rich—”
His voice almost dies in his throat, seeing him — sitting an arm’s length from Vash in the sand, knees hugged to his chest, his face wet. He works a palm across one eye and looks back at Vash, uncertain and pleading.
“You know exactly what,” Vash finishes, swallowing the lump in his throat.
Wolfwood closes his eyes. Tears clump his lashes together, spill down his cheeks. “Suppose it was too much to ask for you to forgive me,” he croaks. “I am sorry, I hope you know that. I never would have done it, any of it, I swear—” he scrubs a hand down his face. “The Eye knew where the orphanage was, so Knives knew, if I broke rank, they would’ve—”
“I would have helped you!” Vash yells, his voice echoing across the empty desert. Wolfwood’s eyes jolt open. “If you had asked!”
“There wasn’t time!” Wolfwood shouts back. “You’re the one who told me to stand down and then got yourself kidnapped!”
Vash scoffs. “Oh, is that what this is about? You wanted to get me back for not sacrificing you to Knives by sacrificing yourself for me?”
Wolfwood opens his mouth, then snaps it shut. His expression is a mask of grief and defeat, tear-streaked and miserable. “I’m sorry,” he repeats, his voice gone dull, but still breaking. “I couldn’t — I couldn’t let any of them die. And I couldn’t let you suffer any more because of me.”
“You killed yourself,” Vash hisses. “With that horrible drug, right in front of me, you looked to make sure I was watching. What better way to make me suffer?”
“I looked to make sure the kids would be safe,” Wolfwood shoots back. “And I knew — I knew they’d be safe. With you. I would have died anyway if I hadn’t healed up fast enough to put Chapel down,” he chokes out a laugh. “Not that that did any good in the long run. No wonder you’re sick of me. Always needing to be bailed out. I’m sorry. I’m sorry I couldn’t even—” another attempt at a laugh, breaking into a sob. “Couldn’t even die right.”
Vash’s head is starting to pound. He wants to throw something through the ghost’s head, see if that makes it vanish, but the only thing to hand is his gun.
The specter goes stiff at the sound of Vash’s gun cocking. His expression flickers again, like whatever self-destructive projection this is can’t decide whether it’ll hurt Vash more to see Wolfwood horrified or blankly accepting.
It settles on the latter.
Wolfwood raises his hands to the back of his head. Not like surrender. Like he’s waiting for execution. “Okay,” he says, low and almost awed. He shifts his weight, settles cross-legged, straightens his back. “That’s okay,” a smile struggles onto his face. “I — God, I really did you wrong, didn’t I?”
Vash keeps his gun trained on the ghost’s head, but it stays where it is, not even wavering. The heels of its shoes have left scuff marks in the sand.
It just isn’t fair.
“Did you hear me?” Vash whispers, his voice breaking. “You looked at me like you did. I wanted—”
“—to spend your tomorrows with me,” Wolfwood finishes. “I heard you. It was too late by then.” He smiles joylessly. “I think it’s the fact it was too late that let me hear you.” He closes his eyes, the smile spreading into a familiar pained rictus, like the way a skull grins. “Changed your mind, huh?”
Vash doesn’t lower the gun. He doesn’t know if he even can, his arms locked tight to keep himself from shaking to pieces. “You’re not real.”
Wolfwood’s terrible smile twists into a scowl. “I crawled out of my grave,” he spits. “And I walked God knows how many miles to find you, just to have you hate me and threaten to shoot me, and now you’re saying I’m not even real?”
“I don’t hate you,” Vash’s voice comes out mournful. “You made me watch you die.”
That awful smile, again, tears running into Wolfwood’s grinning mouth. “You didn’t watch,” Wolfwood says, shifting forward in the sand, grabbing the Colt by its barrel and pulling it against his forehead. “Watch this time, okay? You owe me that much, making me walk all this way just to die on you again.”
Vash shivers.
It must be a dream, or a hallucination. Wolfwood’s dead.
He’s seen ghosts before, seen Wolfwood, but never like this. Wolfwood’s dead. Vash sat for a long time feeling his wrist for a pulse before he buried him. Just to be sure. Just to have a little longer before letting him go.
Wolfwood’s dead.
“Could I have a last request?” Wolfwood asks, his voice small and scared. His free hand twitches up from his lap. “Could you hold my hand? I—” his face crumples. “I’m scared to die. It was… cold, and slow, and I wanted to go back, I’m not… ready. Please?”
He reaches out, inch by inch, slow enough that Vash could stop him, rests his fingers on Vash’s bent knee. Warm and solid and certain and real.
Oh, god.
Vash drops the gun and lurches across the narrow space between them, crashing into Wolfwood’s arms.
“I’m sorry, oh god, Wolfwood, I thought—” Vash rambles, threading his fingers through Wolfwood’s hair. “You were dead, I buried you.”
Wolfwood shudders in his arms, maybe relief and maybe terror. “Didn’t stick,” he gasps, his breath hot in Vash’s ear. “I really thought you were going to shoot me.”
Vash can’t hit him at the angle they’ve toppled into, half-sitting, half-lying in the sand, clutching at each other, so he settles for squeezing him tighter. “You were going to let me?”
“No one I’d rather do it,” Wolfwood says, and Vash squeezes him again, until he wheezes. “I mean it.”
“This is exactly why I’m angry at you,” Vash manages, through a sob that shakes his whole frame. “You’d rather die for me than just — stay.”
Wolfwood buries his face in Vash’s neck. “Please don’t hate me,” he gets out, muffled and wet. “I’ll stay. I will. I’ll stay — as long as you can stand me.”
Vash grips the back of Wolfwood’s neck. “Promise me. Promise me you won’t do that again.”
“Promise,” Wolfwood echoes. “It wasn’t — I didn’t want you to see. I didn’t want it like that. I never wanted you to know.”
The fury tries valiantly to catch hold again, but Vash’s heart is back where it belongs, filling up that hollow place, and breaking . “You really think you mattered that little to me?”
Wolfwood presses further into Vash’s shoulder, like he’s trying to hide from him. “I just assumed everything else mattered more.”
“Nothing mattered,” Vash says, with all the intensity he can muster, so maybe Wolfwood will listen. “When you were gone. Nothing. I barely remember it. You made me go on,” he nearly chokes on the words. “You made me bury you and then just go on.”
“I’m sorry,” Wolfwood says again, pressing it into Vash’s skin. “I’m sorry, Vash.”
“Make it up to me,” Vash answers, squeezing tighter.
“I promise,” Wolfwood repeats, voice breaking. “I’ll stay.”
This time, Vash starts to believe him.