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“I did not wanna die this way!”
The last thing Nicholas D. Wolfwood expects is to wake up.
So when he does, he assumes these are the final desperate attempts of his dying mind to grasp at something better. To claw its way out of this uncaring existence and into a kinder plane. He wished so hard for a second chance – a more loving reality – that the chemical misfires of his brain, steadily running out of blood, are now producing hallucinations of exactly that.
Except that he isn’t waking up in the Eden he’d dreamed of. All his bleary, sore eyes can make out are a dirty ceiling of aged, bowing wooden boards, occasionally letting a little clump of dust shiver loose and fall to the floor. Somewhere off to one side, out of sight, he can hear the small clinking and clattering sounds of somebody puttering around in the dimly-lit space.
Upon trying to swallow, he discovers his throat dry and sandpaper-rough. Slowly, because it’s the only thing he can focus on, he pries apart his chapped lips and tries to wet them with a tongue that isn’t much better, until he can croak, “Vash?”
The noises to his left pause.
More quietly – more tremulously – he attempts, “Milly?”
“I’m afraid not,” someone answers. Her voice is old and tobacco-hoarse, her tone matter-of-fact but not altogether unkind. The woman steps into his narrow field of view, and she’s got to be one of the oldest human beings he’s ever laid eyes on. That’s saying something, because nuns, in his twenty years’ experience, have a tendency to live until they’re as old as God Himself. She’s tiny, hunched-over, with a face so wizened and wrinkled and leathery he can scarcely even see her eyes. “Nice to see you, son.”
Still dry, still uncertain what’s happening, he tries to lick his lips again. He must be alive, he thinks distantly, because there’s no way you could possibly feel this horrible in death. Heaven’s out of the question either way, but Hell – surely the pain in Hell would be more acute. This is a bland sort of awfulness, bone-deep and everywhere, but distant, deadened.
“Someone left you laid out beneath the altar,” she explains, patting his forearm before turning away and hobbling back to whatever she’d been doing before he woke up. “They must have cared about you. You looked very peaceful. You can’t blame them for thinking you were dead, you know. You certainly seemed it. I just happen to know a few more tricks than most.”
Everything is sore, half-numb, prickling slightly like he’s just getting his circulation back. Dryer than sand, dryer than ash. More than once he’s nearly died of thirst out in the endless deserts of Gunsmoke, and yet he never knew a body could dry out this way without crossing the border into death. “How long?” he manages to ask, his throat burning with the effort.
“I found you nine days ago,” she answers, and he hears the clink of glass, the tantalizing sound of fluid being poured from one vessel to another. “You might’ve been there awhile before then, but not more than a day or two, or there wouldn’t’ve been much even I could do for you.” She comes back into view, holding a chipped glass half-full of water. Approaching his head, she slides one bony old hand beneath his neck and props him up just slightly, bringing the glass to his lips. “Not too much at once, boy. Won’t agree with the stuff I’ve been nursing you along with. But I know you can’t be feeling too good right now.”
He’s greedy for it, thirstier than he’s ever been in his life, but she gives him the water slowly. He wants to gulp it down, and it’s barely more than a trickle. Still, he supposes – thoughts still moving slowly, a little unsteadily – it’s better than nothing.
“What’s your name, boy?” she asks when she lays his head back down.
He couldn’t answer automatically even if he wanted to. He’s still too dry, too enflamed. He swallows a couple times, thinking about how he doesn’t want to be the man he’s been all these years. Not anymore.
“Thompson,” he finally answers. His tear ducts must be too dry, too.
She nods, back already turned as she moves away once again. “Goodwin,” she replies.
They’re in the cellar beneath the church, he learns later. Goodwin has been nursing him down here since she found him, and he’s not the first man she’s brought back from the brink of death in this room. When he comments that he’d thought Tonim Town was empty, she only shrugs and says something about it taking more than a few ugly sand worms to get rid of her. It doesn’t take long for him to realise that she really is that stubborn. Tough, too. Combined with her comfort in the church’s space, he almost asks her if she’s a Sister, because she reminds him strongly of a few women he’s known within the Church, but somehow it feels like it would be invasive. He owes her his life; he has no business questioning hers.
She’s one of a few people still in town, he discovers, when he’s well enough to go outside. Some of the others had taken on the children from Milly and Meryl after the worms cleared out. (He makes a point not to think too much about this; in fact, he avoids running into the kids altogether.) Those who ran will be back, Goodwin assures him; they’ve nowhere else to go.
In the meantime, though, it’s quiet, and he has time to think. As soon as he’s well enough, Nicholas takes it upon himself to wash Knives’ name from the monument at the centre of town. It feels small, almost futile, in the face of everything that’s happened – everything he’s done – but it’s something concrete that he can do. Something to help clear the stain of Millions Knives out of the lives of these innocent people. And as he scrubs the lurid red paint from the stone, he reflects.
He had wished. He’d wished with everything he had to find a new life, even though he’d known he was doomed. And now he finds himself still alive, against all odds. But it isn’t reincarnation. He hadn’t been reborn in Eden with his children and his friends, safe from the cruelty of the world. Human greed still washes Gunsmoke in blood. Vash the Stampede is out there, he has no doubt, saving lives, looking for the kindest solution to every conflict. Even with no news of the world outside of Tonim Town, Nicholas is sure of this much. But even if Millions Knives never hurts another soul, Vash can’t fix everything right away.
He had wished for a second chance to live with his friends, to care for his children, to be good. But this second chance isn’t so idyllic. His mind and body live on, but his old life is lost to him. He can’t be Nicholas D. Wolfwood again. He can’t afford to.
So now he’s Thompson. He hates himself for choosing that name, but at the same time, he knows he wouldn’t change it. Not for anything. If this is the only way left to keep Milly close to his heart, then he’ll embrace it, no matter how it stings every time he hears himself addressed that way aloud. It is as Thompson that he helps Tonim Town’s slowly returning residents repair the damage that he himself was half responsible for, hoping to repay his debt to Goodwin, or at least begin to. It is as Thompson that he grasps her wrinkled hands and promises not to waste what she’s given him. It is as Thompson that he bids Tonim Town goodbye, setting out in a much-repaired, hand-me-down linen shirt and a stiff pair of brown trousers, to find the second chance he was granted not by God but by a calloused and shrivelled old woman with more life in her eyes than he’s ever had in nearly thirty years.
It may not be much, but it’s a clean slate. Nick Thompson wanders from one small town to the next, making few friends, keeping his head down. Steering well clear of any of the rumours of Vash the Stampede or the chaos that follows in his wake. To risk actually seeing Vash, or Milly, or even Meryl, would break him too much, he knows. His heart feels most days like it’s ground to dust already, but he’s doing his best at least to keep that dust contained, and he knows the delicate jar that holds his heart’s remains would shatter if he caught even a glimpse of one of his friends. Sometimes, out of the corner of his eye in a crowd, he’ll catch a flash of long brown hair or the flutter of a red jacket, and every time he thinks it might kill him, even once he’s looked more closely and realised it’s only yet another stranger.
There’s something else, too: he abandoned the Chapel of the Gung-Ho-Guns. Even if he’d only ever known his master, he’s aware that the Chapel is spread throughout the broader Church of Gunsmoke. The only reason they haven’t taken action against him is that they believe Chapel the Evergreen to have killed him. If they ever learn that Nick is alive, they’ll come after him, and after everyone he cares for: Vash, Milly, Meryl, the orphanage, anyone he’s ever befriended or stayed with. The Chapel of the Gung-Ho-Guns exists solely to raise and train assassins from within the power and safety of the Church, and no one is allowed to leave. Nick didn’t just leave – he betrayed his training and his ideals, spat in his mentor’s face. There’s no peace to be had after that.
So he can never see the people he loves again. Not even if he deserved to; not even if they could ever bring themselves to forgive him. To see them, to risk the Chapel of the Gung-Ho-Guns learning of his survival, would be to doom them.
He knows that Goodwin wouldn’t approve of the way he’s living – disconnected, distant, with nothing to dedicate himself to. He knows he isn’t fulfilling the promise he made to her. But he needs time. He can’t just put down new roots. He can’t just let someone new into his heart. There’s no space for anyone there. He needs to try to heal first; needs to put the past at his back and find somewhere he doesn’t feel like he’s suffocating.
At first, after Tonim Town, he doesn’t stay anywhere more than a few days. A week here, another there. When he needs money to carry on, he looks for someone in need of help. There’s always work to be done for a pair of able hands. Eventually he slows down a little, spends more time in each stop along his journey. Moves along only when the tales of the Humanoid Typhoon draw a little too close. One day he happens upon a tiny little town, barely more than a couple hundred people, that exists only to serve as a refueling station along one of the lesser-used sand steamer routes. The people there care little for the outside world, getting their news from passing steamers but keeping to themselves no matter what they hear. Passengers don’t even get off the ships when they stop; there’s nothing worth disembarking for.
Here, Nick Thompson finally stops running for a while. He finally begins to feel safe. Not happy, not even close to satisfied, but safe enough to rent a room from a desert-hardened old man and take a job cleaning the little pub where the townspeople spend most of their time. Nothing ever happens here, and no one shows all that much interest in him while he’s sweeping floors or repairing rickety chairs, so it feels as good a place to stay as any.
It’s mind-numbing, for a few months, but he finds that acceptable. He would rather be numb than think too much. He still has no friends, but he’s on respectful terms with his landlord and the woman who runs the pub and the proprietor of the tiny general store. Once a week he buys a box of cigarettes from the latter, because that’s as often as he can get them in a town whose supplies are restocked maybe monthly.
He’s thought of Milly every time he’s lit a cigarette since the day he should’ve died. Remembers her taking it gently from his lips, remembers her smiling as she chides him. When this quiet little whistle stop of a town forces him to cut back, he decides that maybe that’s a sign it’s time to heed her advice. It’s an old habit, and it’ll take awhile to break – especially given that it’s just about the only thing he really depends on anymore – but he’ll try. Another way to honour her from afar.
It’s as he’s stepping outside for a smoke one afternoon, having worked himself back to just a single cigarette a day, that he sees trouble. There’s a steamer stopped in town, and the stranger must’ve come from there, because no one else unfamiliar has landed here in weeks. The man’s bulky, but not all that tall; what stands out is his heavily studded thomas-leather jacket and the shotgun in his hands. He’s aiming it at a young man who works at the refueling station – Nick recognises him, scarcely more than a boy, as the most junior member of the fuel crew. Normally around this time on a fueling day they’ll send him down to the pub to pick up lunch for the rest of them.
“I’m not playing, kid,” the stranger says, eyes glinting as he racks the gun. “Hand over the money and point me to the nearest stable.”
“We don’t have a stable,” the boy insists, hands in the air, his voice cracking and slipping up an octave. “L-look around, man. This town is too small for that.”
Nick freezes for a fraction of a second, trying to take in the entire scene. Glancing across the street, he sees a petrified woman crouched behind a wagon, and then his gaze flicks back to the boy. His name is Jacob, and there’s sweat beading on his temples, and Nick barely knows him but he knows he doesn’t deserve this. The stranger’s trigger finger twitches, and Nick acts, years of instinct overcoming his dedication to the peaceful non-existence he’s built for himself here.
He drops his cigarette, reaching instead for the knife concealed in its sheath at the back of his waistband. He’d been in no rush to carry a gun again, but he isn’t foolish enough to travel unprotected, no matter how much he wants to live by Vash’s philosophy. In a flash he moves from the pub’s front door to the middle of the dusty street, and he’s positioned behind the interloper, knife to his Adam’s apple.
“You don’t want to hurt that boy,” Nick warns, in a low growl he hasn’t heard come from his own mouth since before he died.
The stranger lets out a sort of strangled squawk, taken by surprise. Jacob and the woman across the street both stare. Nick ignores them for a moment; now isn’t the time to lament the fact that he’s just lost the quiet life he’s been leading here. Instead he presses the knife blade even closer against the stranger’s skin, until blood begins to bead on its edge.
“Finger off the trigger,” he instructs quietly. He watches the man do as he’s told. “Now take your left hand off the barrel and point it at the ground. Slowly.” Again, the stranger obeys.
“You think you can take me with your little knife?” the man asks, but his voice is shaky with nerves behind the bravado. “Who the fuck do you think you are?”
“I promise you don’t want me to answer that question,” Nick murmurs back, making sure no one else can hear. Then he looks up again. “Jacob, I need you to come over here and take the gun from him. We don’t want to risk a shot going off if I ask him to drop it.”
“I… what?” Jacob asks, blinking as if to wake himself from a daze.
“Come and take the gun,” Nick repeats patiently. “I know your father has taught you to handle one safely, boy. I promise I won’t let him hurt you.”
“R… right,” Jacob answers slowly, but it still takes a second for him to jerk to life. Then he hurries closer, coming around the man’s side and reaching for the shotgun.
Foolishly, the stranger tries to fit his finger back into the trigger guard as Jacob draws close, meaning to shoot at anyone he can, but Nick is faster. The shot rings out and the bullet pounds into the sand underfoot at the same time that Nick draws his knife away from the man’s throat, spinning it in his hand and bringing the butt of the handle down hard against the man’s temple. Jacob, this time startled into action instead of freezing up, snatches the gun out of the stranger’s hand even as the man goes limp and falls back against Nick’s chest.
The sound of the shot draws people out of the pub and the surrounding buildings, in time to watch Nick laying the unconscious criminal out on the road. Jacob stands only a foot or so away, eyes wide. At least he has the presence of mind remaining to keep the gun pointed away at the ground, so that no one can get hurt before they have the chance to safely discharge the next round from the chamber – although, Nick reflects distantly, there shouldn’t be another round in the chamber, on an old pump-action piece like that; maybe the boy’s not so present after all. He has no time to think further on it, though, because the fuel crew comes running from the direction of the steamer, accompanied by a handful of men and women wearing steamer marshal badges.
The marshals are looking at Nick and the stranger on the ground, but the fuel station foreman addresses Jacob as he pulls up close. Nick recalls belatedly that the boy is the foreman’s nephew. “What the hell happened?” the foreman demands breathlessly, one hand holding his hat in place.
Jacob is still staring at Nick. “Thompson,” he mumbles. Then, swallowing and recovering his faculties a bit, he says more loudly: “Thompson, what the hell was that? Who… who are you?”
“Never mind that,” Nick says, looking down at the man slumped against his feet, though mostly so that he doesn’t have to look into anybody’s eyes. “My question is, who’s this guy?”
“Kroeger Tinsmith,” one of the marshals answers, taking her hat off and running a hand through her hair as she steps closer. “He’s been fleeing an increasingly severe series of charges from west of here for a couple months now, one city after the next. Bailed over the side of the steamer just now after someone reported spotting him and we went to investigate. You kill him?”
“No,” Nick answers, and he’s not sure if the distaste he feels is more for the criminal now drooling on his shoes, or the thought of having taken him out for good. A year ago, he wouldn’t have hesitated. But he doesn’t want to do that anymore, not even if part of him still feels, in a way, like it might’ve been deserved. “He’s still breathing.” He steps back, freeing his feet from beneath Tinsmith’s head, which falls to the ground with a heavy thud.
“Nicely done,” another marshal comments, raising his eyebrows. “That man has a five million double dollar bounty on his head, brought in alive. I think you’ve just come into some money, my friend.”
Nick’s attention snaps upward at that. “…What?”
When he sets foot in December, Nick feels more emotions than he can even begin to catalogue. He had quite staunchly intended never to come back here.
The people of that tiny town he’d almost begun to think of as home had all sworn to him they wouldn’t ask questions about his past, if that was what he wanted. He’d saved Jacob’s life. Probably more – who knew what Tinsmith might have done, if he hadn’t been stopped. But for all their promises, for all their gratitude, Nick knew they were still looking at him with fresh eyes. He knew they wondered. And while he’d appreciated their intentions, he couldn’t live that way. What he wanted – what he needed, for his own safety, and that of everyone he knew – was to stay anonymous. To live in the background, unremarkable, unseen.
And on top of that was the reward money he was given for apprehending Tinsmith. There was no local sheriff where he’d been living, and the steamer marshals could only pay out a fraction of the bounty – they didn’t carry that kind of money aboard ship – but they were able to issue him a certificate that would grant him the remainder, if he presented it to the sheriff’s office in the next major city.
Five million wasn’t a fortune in this day and age. But it was more than enough to disappear on, he knew. For a couple of days he’d sat in his rented room, staring at the certificate in his hands, considering his choices. With five million to his name, he could live out the rest of his life in solitude, somewhere distant and isolated.
But it didn’t feel right. There was only one thing he wanted to do with that money. So he’d packed up his things, collected the bounty, and then set off for the city where he’d been born.
He makes his way up through the south end of December, where the city is poorest. No one here knows him, and even if someone did, they’d have far too much on their own plates to be bothered dealing with him. The upside to a neighbourhood like this, he’d learned as a child, is that everybody here makes a strong point of minding their own business. It’s a matter of survival.
He doesn’t approach the orphanage immediately. It’s too risky. Instead he goes to the shoddy little hotel down the block – the one that mostly rents beds to couples looking for somewhere discreet to indulge their affairs – and takes a room on the fifth floor, where he can keep an eye on the yard. He needs to wait for an opportunity to drop the money off unseen.
For several hours he watches a couple of the nuns in whose care he’d left the children as they go about their chores. They wash laundry and hang it up to dry under the desert sun, and then one of them begins wiping away the dust caked up on the windows while another heads out into the street, on her way into town on an errand. It’s only late in the day, as the sun drops low and the air cools to a more bearable temperature, that a handful of the children tumble out the front door. It breaks his heart to see them, though he tries not to acknowledge it. He’s not even sure if he deserves that. He’d abandoned them, he reminds himself. What right does he have to miss them?
And then two of the kids come out the door backwards, tugging an adult after them by her arms. She’s small in the distance, but her short hair is black, and her outfit is white, with dark leggings. Certain he must be seeing things, Nick raises his binoculars to his eyes and watches as the children drag Meryl Stryfe, of all people, out into the courtyard. She’s hunched over, laughing as she half-resists their attempts, but the other children crowd around and paw at her until she relents and allows herself to be badgered into joining their after-dinner game of ball.
Nick watches in stunned silence as Meryl and the children, his children, kick their ball around the dusty yard. He doesn’t lower his binoculars until the evening grows dark enough that he can’t make the children out anymore. Then, still no idea what to make of this, he goes to bed and sleeps, heavy and dreamless.
The next day he watches again. It’s quiet, too hot today for anyone to want to work outside. He seldom sees anyone moving around the orphanage all day, and by nightfall he’s convinced himself that he’d never seen Meryl at all. Being so close to home has his mind playing tricks on him.
Still, in spite of the silence surrounding the place, he makes no attempt to go deliver his package.
On day three, the children venture outside again, this time unaccompanied. For a while Nick watches the older kids try to shepherd the younger ones into various chores – beating the rugs from the hallways, sweeping the front stairs, doing their jumping jacks and push-ups and all the other exercises that Sister Kinley has always insisted upon – but after an hour or so, the activity devolves into games of tag or hide-and-seek, a few of the less energetic children instead laying on the ground to gaze at the scant clouds overhead. He wonders why they have no supervision, but he doesn’t move until the front door opens and Meryl emerges again. Hat on her head and a bag slung across her shoulders, she waves back at someone inside, smiling, before setting off. A few of the kids greet her as she crosses the yard and heads toward town. She passes right under Nick’s window, and he’s forced to admit: it’s really her. There’s no mistaking it. Meryl Stryfe, of Bernardelli Insurance, seems to have become a fixture at his orphanage. He can make neither head nor tails of it, but that does nothing to alter the facts.
This time, when he goes to bed, he doesn’t sleep at all. For hours he turns one way and then the other on his uncomfortable hotel mattress, trying to invent a scenario where Meryl’s presence here makes sense. In the early hours of the morning he finally drifts off into a restless doze, dreaming of his friends and his children and guns and Eden and Hell.
When he awakes, sometime past noon, he decides he needs a closer look. So he drags himself out of bed, eats a meagre breakfast, and dresses in the same grubby clothes he’s been wearing since Tonim Town. He feels the weight of a half-full box of cigarettes in his pants pocket, and fingers it thoughtfully for a moment. He hasn’t smoked one since he left for December. Hasn’t felt the need. But he doesn’t discard the box; not yet.
Nick slips between run-down buildings until he can hide himself away in one particularly shadowy alleyway, across the street from the orphanage’s east side. He can only see half of the yard from here, through a fence, but it’s the only place he can think of that the children and the Sisters shouldn’t be able to spot him.
For several days, he spends his mornings and evenings watching from the hotel window, his afternoons in the alleyway out of sight. He sleeps fitfully at night, and refuses ever to think too much about why he still hasn’t dropped off the money. He’s had plenty of opportunities.
He’s trying to persuade himself, one afternoon in the alley, that he’s got to just bite the bullet. He’ll wait for the children to go back inside tonight, and he’ll put his donation in the mailbox, and he’ll leave this place behind once and for all. He can’t keep lingering like this.
He’s finally gotten himself to commit to this plan when Meryl comes outside with some of the younger children, and he hears one of them ask her hopefully, “Can Miss Milly come out and play with us today?”
Nick’s heart clenches in his chest.
“Well, you know it’s a little difficult for Miss Milly to come out in her current condition,” Meryl soothes, scooping the child up, even as Nick fights desperately to come up with an explanation. “And besides, she’s working very hard to help take care of you, remember! She’d love to come out and play, but not today, Rand.”
She and the children move out of earshot, but Nick can hardly breathe. It’s no use trying to convince himself that it’s another, unrelated Milly. There’s no way. But it opens up all manner of new questions – if she is here, then why hasn’t he seen her? In all the time he’s known her, it had always been obvious how much Milly loved kids. She couldn’t resist playing with them, finding ways to make them laugh. So why hasn’t she been out to join their games? To enjoy the sunlight and the breeze, on the days the weather is kind?
Her current condition, Meryl had said. Nick’s ears ring.
He can’t leave yet. Not without seeing her, with his own eyes. Not without knowing she’s okay. It’ll shatter him, he knows, but so would walking away. Just a glimpse is all he needs, no matter what it does to his heart.
It takes four more days. He’s scarcely sleeping, scarcely even going back to the hotel room. There’s too much light in the alley in the morning hours for him to get very close to the yard, but turning his back for even a moment is excruciating. And then finally, finally, early one gorgeous sunny afternoon, when the children are outside, they suddenly crowd up to the front door in an excited clamour, calling out Milly’s name. “Miss Milly, Miss Milly!” they cry cheerfully, bouncing on the balls of their feet, and it’s the voice of an angel that answers: “Oh, hello, everybody!”
Nick cranes his neck to see her standing there in the open door, waving to the children, beaming down at them like the sun personified. For a second he’s awestruck, speechless at the mere sight of her. Her presence knocks the wind clean out of him. And then, all at once, he registers the odd way she’s holding herself, and the fact that she looks to be wearing a dress. She’d once admitted to him that she didn’t often like to wear dresses, except maybe when she was home with her family. Trousers are just a lot comfier, she’d said brightly. And more practical. He strains for a better view, daring to inch just a little closer to the mouth of the alleyway, until he can finally see her better past the cast-iron fence ringing the orphanage’s courtyard.
His heart stops in his chest as he realises that Milly is very, very pregnant.
It doesn’t compute. He tries, desperately, to wrap his mind around what he’s seeing, but he can’t. He’s at an absolute standstill. He’s still trying, with everything he has, to process this information when he feels the barrel of a gun press gently into his lower back.
“Usually when a man hides out in alleyways and dark windows for days on end just to watch innocent children at play, it’s a pretty good indicator that he’s a creep,” a low voice says.
Nick freezes, because it’s a voice he knows well. A voice he’s been hearing in his dreams for months.
For a long, long moment, he doesn’t move. Then, finally, he turns around to meet Vash’s eyes. The blond’s expression is strangely unreadable, and he doesn’t lower his gun, though he also doesn’t move to counter the motion. And to his own surprise, Nick simply bursts into tears.
Swaying sideways to crumple against the wall, he heaves silent sobs like he hasn’t done in years. “I’m sorry,” he finally manages, the words coming out muffled and wet. “I’m so, so sorry.”
“Why would you walk away?” Vash asks, barely above a whisper. “Why would you let us believe you were dead?”
“I believed I was dead,” Nicholas explains, trying to drag in another breath. “And when it turned out I wasn’t, I just… It was better that I was. With me gone, no one would bother the kids. No one would bother you – you, or Milly, or Meryl. I know you’ve got other enemies, but at least none of mine would pose you any danger.”
“Chapel the Evergreen is dead,” Vash says softly. “My brother is still comatose. Your betrayal shouldn’t matter to anyone anymore.”
“It would still matter to the Chapel of the Gung-Ho-Guns,” Nick insists. “Even with Knives out of the picture. He may have patronised the organisation, made it his own, but they predate his involvement. They’re still out there, and no one turns on them.”
“Then we take them on together,” Vash answers simply. Nick shakes his head, but he can’t speak, the sobs overtaking him, and instead he slumps further against the wall. After a moment, Vash opens his mouth again.
“It was Milly’s idea to come looking for the orphanage,” he says, his tone growing gentler. “She thought the children deserved to hear of your death from someone who cared. And then she decided she had to stay here. Look after them, look after your legacy. As a way to honour you. After a while, Meryl came out to join her, help get the administration in order. The place was a mess before she got here, but she’s really whipping things into shape. Milly doesn’t have much of a head for paperwork or bureaucracy, but Meryl’s great at it. Bringing in funding, making sure the kids all have enough documentation to get started in the world once they grow up.” He looks away for a moment. “I visit as much as I can. Under the radar, obviously. When I got here a couple days ago, I could just feel someone watching.”
“I’m so sorry,” Nick says again, barely audible.
Vash looks down at the gun in his hand. “We mourned you,” he continues, quietly. “Deeply. We felt your absence, Wolfwood, every day. When Milly realised for sure she was pregnant… it sent her into such a complicated spiral of hope and grief. Meryl and I didn’t even know what we could do, for a while.”
Nicholas feels a lurch in his stomach at this all-but-direct confirmation that her child is his. He feels another, worse, at the realisation that he’d wanted the child to be his, more than he’d wanted her to have found happiness without him. A burn rises in his throat, and he braces both arms against the wall as he swings around and vomits on the cobblestone.
Vash finally lowers and holsters his gun, reaching out to place a hand on Nick’s hunched back. “Easy, buddy,” he murmurs.
Nick, now weeping in a way he can’t seem to control, reaches into the pocket of his trousers and produces the ragged envelope containing his bounty money. “Give it to Milly and Meryl,” he begs, turning just enough to look Vash in the eye. “Please. I know I have no right to ask you any favours, but I need this. It’s the last request I’ll ever make of you, Vash, and then I swear you’ll never hear from me again.”
Vash’s eyebrows twitch down slightly. “No,” he says, plainly but firmly.
Another sob bubbles up Nick’s throat. Confused and concerned, he tries to bargain: “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. But please, Vash, I’m not asking you to do this for me. Take it for the girls, for the kids. You can hate me if you want–”
Calm the way he only ever is when things are deadly serious, Vash shakes his head once. “No,” he repeats. “Why would I do anything, promise you anything, if all I get in return is the guarantee that I’ll never see my best friend again? How is that fair?”
“I… I’m sorry, Vash. But the children. You. Meryl… Milly, and…” Nick closes his eyes and swallows a lump in his throat, afraid for a moment that he’s going to throw up again. “I can’t put you in that kind of danger. The Chapel won’t spare anyone near me. Anyone who’s ever been near me.”
“Didn’t you hear me? We can handle them.” Vash says, rapping his knuckles gently against the back of Nick’s head. “You think your stupid assassin chapel can hold up against the Humanoid Typhoon?”
Nicholas, still doubled over against the wall, lifts his face enough to stare at the other man.
After a moment, Vash crouches slightly so that he can meet Nick at eye level. “Wolfwood, I can’t tell you how to live,” he says, so kindly it hurts to hear. “But those children miss you every day. We miss you every day. And Milly… she loves you enough to have changed her entire life course, just so that she can live in your memory. Serve others in your honour. She never shows a moment’s weakness in front of the kids. But in private, with just me and Meryl, she’s admitted that she’s terrified a baby with your eyes will break her heart.”
“She… she could never,” Nick croaks, his knees feeling weak. “She could never love her own child with less than her entire heart. Not many people on this Godforsaken planet know how to love as wholly as Milly Thompson.”
“That’s my point,” Vash answers, raising his eyebrows. “Milly loves more than anyone, and she knows that, and still she’s afraid of giving less than her all to that kid. That’s how much she loves you, even still. I’m not saying you can never find love again, because you’re more worthy of love than I think you’ve ever believed, and there are a lot of loving people out there if you look. But… just think about this, Nicholas. Think before you walk away from her again. I know you, and I don’t think you’d ever forgive yourself.”
Stunned, Nick finds himself breathless once again. “I don’t deserve…” he finally manages, only a hoarse whisper, but he can’t even finish the sentence.
“Of course you do,” Vash tells him. “Of course you do. Don’t tell me we don’t know, Wolfwood, because we’ve learned a lot about you these last few months. Milly found your journals under the floorboards.” Nick stiffens a little at that, draws a breath to explain, but Vash shakes his head. “And we still miss you, still love you. We all still wish we could have been there for you through it all. Me, Meryl, Milly… every day we wish you were here.”
Nick crumples again, finally collapsing against the wall and sliding the rest of the way to the ground. He only avoids landing in his own vomit because Vash tugs him to one side. They sit hip-to-hip in the dirty alleyway, backs to the wall, and Vash curls an arm around Nick’s shoulders while Nick cries.
“If you leave,” Vash murmurs, offering up his canteen so that Nick can rinse his sour mouth, “I’ll never tell them you were here. You know I’d never do that to them. Or you. I’ll never breathe a word, and we’ll never see each other again. But I think you belong here, with the people who love you. I think we could get each other through anything. Everything. You know it’s not all behind us – there’s still a bounty of sixty billion on my head. Even the girls have made enemies in the last few years. I have Knives to deal with, whenever he finally wakes up. But we’re family, and we’d take care of each other. And maybe you could finally have a taste of the happiness you’ve been denying yourself all these years.”
Nick Thompson – or Nicholas D. Wolfwood; even he isn’t sure which – doesn’t know what to say to that. But he lets Vash comfort him as he weeps.
Vash is quiet as he lets himself into the office that Meryl and Milly share, leaving the door ajar behind him. With a soft sigh, he crosses to Meryl’s desk – the one that once belonged to Nicholas – and puts a well-beaten envelope down in the centre. She looks up at him, one eyebrow cocked skeptically, but he only nods down at the gift, so she flips up the worn flap and looks inside.
Then she leaps to her feet in shock. “Where did you get this?” she cries, pulling out a few of the bills and holding them up closer to her eyes, as if she’s not sure they’re real.
Vash sighs again, scratching his face and glancing away with an awkward smile. “Well, I’m not really supposed to say, but…” He glances over his shoulder. “Maybe he can tell you himself.”
Meryl looks up as the door creaks open a little further, just enough for Nick to meet her eye. “Hey, Meryl,” he says softly.
She stares at him, disbelieving, for a few long seconds. Finally she manages: “Wolfwood?”
And then there’s a clatter on the other side of the room, and Nick pushes the door the rest of the way open and sees there’s a second desk, now, under the window. Behind it stands Milly, wide-eyed and holding her breath, her chair knocked to the floor.
“Mis… Mr. Wolfwood?” she whispers, hardly audible, her voice shaking.
Nick raises a hand, terrified he’s going to fuck this up. Don’t overthink it, Vash had told him before they came in, but he doesn’t know how not to. “Milly, I…”
The tears welling in Milly’s eyes burst forth and flow freely down her face, and she stumbles around one end of her desk, sobbing: “Nicholas.” Once her path is clear, she throws herself at him, and he rocks when he catches her, and they cling to each other. She weeps into his shoulder, and he starts to cry into her hair. He’d never known it was possible to cry as much as he’d cried today, but he has a feeling there are many more tears to come.
Vash and Meryl stand back, respectfully quiet, as Nick and Milly hold one another. Distantly, Nick is aware of the way that Meryl grips at Vash’s forearm, still stunned, and the way that Vash slides his fingers between hers and gives her a gentle squeeze. Really, though, he barely looks at them in this moment, focussed entirely on the woman in his arms, and on her swollen belly between them.
Finally, Milly manages to choke out, “We thought you were dead–”
“You were safer without me,” Nicholas answers tearfully, pulling her closer in his embrace.
She draws back forcefully, gripping his shoulders, to look him in the eye. “Safer isn’t better, Mr. Wolfwood,” she insists, and the intensity in her eyes, in her words, shakes his foundations.
He puts his trembling hands on either side of her face and looks straight back at her. “I’m sorry, honey, I’m so sorry,” he says, his words tumbling over one another in their rush to escape. “I thought of you every day.” He wants to tell her that he named himself after her, that he dreamt of a different life with her, that he quit smoking for her – the half-box of cigarettes is still in his pocket and suddenly he wants it as far from him as possible – but he doesn’t have time, because there’s such fear in her expression.
“Are you going to leave again?”
“No,” he answers, shaking his head, and he’s never meant anything more than he means this. Today has broken his heart a thousand ways already, but the dread in her eyes now breaks it yet again. Even when you believe yourself numb, he’s discovered, even when you’ve been shattered and ground down to sand, it’s still possible to hurt more. “Not if you want me to stay.”
“Of course we want you to stay, Mr. Wolfwood,” she sobs back, reaching for one of his hands. She pulls it from her cheek and presses it to her stomach, and he realises that when she says we it isn’t because she’s including Vash and Meryl.
“I’ll stay, honey,” he promises, trying to thumb tears away from her cheek, even though it’s clearly futile the way she’s still crying. They’re both still crying. “I’ll tell you everything, and if you still want me to stay, then I’ll never leave again. But please, Milly… please call me Nicholas again. I haven’t been Mr. Wolfwood for months, and I don’t think I ever want to be again, especially not to you. I want to be Nicholas to you, if you’ll have me.”
“Of course, Nicholas,” she agrees without hesitation, nodding desperately. She’s still holding one of his hands to her stomach, but she lifts her other hand to his face and strokes his cheek much the same way he’s been doing to her, searching his eyes. She looks like she’s scared he’s going to disappear, and he hates himself anew for hurting her this way.
There’s a beat of silence in the room, and then Nicholas hears Vash clear his throat and mumble, “Um, what is that?” He looks up to follow the blond’s gaze, leading down to Milly’s feet, and he steps back to investigate.
“Oh,” Milly realises quietly, in the same moment that Nicholas sees the little dribble on the floorboards between her shoes. Milly doesn’t let go of him, but her grip loosens slightly as she turns to look at a suddenly panicking Meryl.
“OH MY GOD,” Meryl squawks, leaping out of her skin. “Vash, get the bag– I’ll go start the car, we have to get to the midwife–” She dashes past them and out the door at full tilt, and it’s about half a second before Vash stumbles into action and follows her.
Nicholas finally grasps what’s happening as they run, and he grips at Milly’s elbows, her hands landing on his biceps. “Oh my God,” he stammers, wide-eyed and alarmed, looking from her stomach up to her face. “Milly, what– what should I–?”
“Help me out to the car,” she suggests with a smile, squeezing his arms. “And then, maybe come with me? I mean, you could stay here and see the children, if you want, but…” She trails off, almost as if suddenly self-conscious.
“No, I’m– don’t get me wrong, I can’t wait to see them, but I– if you want me there, then–” Nicholas cuts himself off, looking up into her eyes in search of confirmation. He’s stared down the barrels of a lot of guns in his twenty-nine years, and he’s certain this is far and away the most terrifying moment of his life yet.
“We want you there. We want you with us,” she tells him, once again drawing his hand to her stomach. She’s beaming, her eyes brimming with fresh tears. “You should be there, Nicholas. To help me welcome our child into the world.”
He feels the baby shift beneath his hand, and for a moment he’s overwhelmed. He leans in to kiss her, hard, hoping she can understand how much he loves her, how much he means it when he promises he’ll never leave again. She kisses him back, and he knows Vash was right, when he’d said that together the four of them could handle anything the Chapel of the Gung-Ho-Guns sent their way. If the Chapel thinks they’ve seen Nicholas at his fiercest, they’ll be in for a nasty shock when they threaten his friends, his orphans, his girl, his child.
“Okay,” he breathes when they part. He moves around to Milly’s side, taking her arm so he can support her weight if she needs it. “Let’s get you to the car, then.”
Nearly half the world away, settling comfortably under her threadbare covers, Eden Goodwin thinks of Thompson, and she hopes that he’s keeping the promise he made to her.