Chapter Text
Wolfwood is standing in a kitchen.
It’s such a stark change from the ship and its green room that for a moment he doesn’t notice that he can feel the floor beneath his feet—for some reason bare on the cool stone. He looks down, past his ruined suit, at his toes. Wiggles them. And nearly topples over as gravity hits him full-force.
He grabs the back of a chair—familiar—and slumps into it. The kitchen, even moonlit and spinning, is also familiar. Smaller now that he’s grown. Doesn’t even need a boost up to the counters anymore. He thinks this is a strange dream for Vash to be having as he hears footsteps in the hall. He half-expects to see his own bloody face leading the way to the alcohol, but instead he’s greeted by a gun.
It lowers a second later, a stunned face behind it. “Nicholas,” Miss Melanie breathes.
“Sorry,” Wolfwood says, otherwise frozen in the chair. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”
She looks the way she did the last time he saw her: older than his memories, lines of both sorrow and joy etched deeper in her face. She looks like she’s seeing a ghost.
She steps into the room and up to the table. Wolfwood watches her lift a hand, watches it come closer, until it touches the side of his face. Her fingers tremble. She’s warm. Wolfwood shuts his eyes and leans into the touch. If it’s only a dream, some kind of last goodbye, he doesn’t want to see the end.
“How?” Miss Melanie says, voice trembling like her hand, now cradling his chin to tilt his face up. “How are you here?”
Wolfwood risks looking again, shocked by the tears in her eyes. She was a hard woman to make cry, at least around the kids. But it was always easier if she was happy. He swallows around a lump in his throat and shakes his head. “I don’t know. I don’t know if I’m really here .”
That gets Miss Melanie’s face to harden a little, her fingers digging into his chin. She puts the gun on the table to put her other hand at his neck. Where she presses, he feels his own heartbeat thundering against hers. He swallows again, but it does nothing to clear away the lump. He can feel himself starting to shake.
“You’re here,” she says, like she’s daring him to argue even as the tears spill down her cheeks. “By some kinda miracle, you’re here.”
“Oh,” he says, baffled and scared and so, so grateful when Miss Melanie gathers him in her arms regardless of the sand and the blood caked to him. He clutches the back of her dress the way he did when he was much, much smaller and learns that even though he’s grown, she’ll still rock him gently, side to side, and hold him until he’s ready to let go.
“I’m sorry,” he says again as he wipes at his face. Sand scrapes his cheeks, and it hurts. Miss Melanie makes a questioning noise as she pulls a tissue from her pocket and holds it out, digging up a second one for herself. It almost makes him laugh—one of her tenets of orphanage-running on display—but it catches in his chest instead. He’s sorry for too much, could never get it all out if he tried. He clears his throat, tissue balled in his fist. “I woke you up.”
Miss Melanie tsks at him. “If it wasn’t you, it’d have been one of the others,” she says, sadness in the smile she offers. She plucks at his jacket. “Let’s get you something clean to wear, hm? I can’t have you tracking this mess all over the place.”
It hurts in a way he’d’ve never expected, being treated so kindly by someone he knew. Someone he loves, despite the distance. He follows her to the laundry room, branched off from the kitchen, and waits to wake up.
He takes a shower. The water is lukewarm, and the pressure sucks this late in the day.
Night.
Whatever time it is.
He watches sand run down the drain, scrubs old blood from his skin. Everything feels—
Everything feels .
It was hit or miss for a while, whether he would actually feel the grass touch his skin or the warmth of an artificial sun. Sometimes there was a breeze, as if Vash’s dreams had remembered to turn on the ship’s air circulation. He felt Vash holding him. And now he feels the water and the sand and his own fingers digging into his skin.
Wolfwood tries to remember how he got from the green room to the kitchen and only feels the phantom touch of Vash’s hands.
By some kinda miracle, Miss Melanie said.
He gets dressed only halfway to dried off and finds Melanie waiting for him in the hall.
“Where was I buried?” he asks.
Standing over his own grave is something Wolfwood wouldn’t have been surprised to do if he hadn’t first crawled out of it. Looking at it, he can feel the phantom scratch of sand against his skin, the weight pressing him down as he stares.
It’s mostly just a depression in the sand where it’s sunk in to fill the space his body left, beside a stone carved with a cross and one of his shoes stuck halfway out of the sand. And then there’s the feathers: pure white, glowing in the moonlight. Only a handful of them trail from the grave, but it’s evidence enough. He kneels to pick one up.
Not for this , he pleads to it. Not for me .
Livio lives in the church. If Wolfwood wasn’t working his way toward a panic, he’d stop and give him shit for it. Instead he only stops to pound a fist on the sacristy door. It opens faster than he expects, and he winds up punching Livio in the chest, nowhere near hard enough to cause the noise he makes upon seeing who just woke him up.
“You—how did you—”
“Hold that thought,” Wolfwood says, holding up his hands. “I need to find Vash.”
“I don’t know where he is,” Livio says immediately. “But Meryl and Milly set up a system with him, they’ll know. Or, they can find out.”
“Okay, then I need to find the girls,” Wolfwood says, impatience building around the dread.
“I have their number!” Livio tells him. “It’s kind of late to be calling—”
“They’ll forgive me,” Wolfwood says. Maybe. Maybe coming back from the dead will be enough to soften whatever happened to Vash.
He doubts it.
“Right,” Livio says. He coughs, valiantly fighting the tears streaming down his face. Wolfwood pats him on the shoulder, and Livio stares at his hand like it might bite him. “But maybe I should call? Since you’re supposed to be dead and all.”
“Good idea,” Wolfwood says, using the hand already on his arm to tug him out of the church.
“W—Hey!” Livio protests, dragging his heels until Wolfwood has gotten him over the last threshold. “You could let me put on shoes!”
“I ain’t wearin’ any,” Wolfwood points out. He drops Livio’s arm when he keeps walking beside him despite the complaint. “And what are you complainin’ for? You step on anything, you’ll heal in two seconds.”
“It’s cold,” Livio sniffs.
Wolfwood looks at him with narrowed eyes, gets a snotty, familiar look back, and laughs so hard he hiccups. He might be losing it a little.
Livio hovers both hands over him when he pauses to get ahold of himself, folded at the waist. He can’t lose it yet. He might, despite the sick feeling spreading to his limbs, not even have anything to lose it about, aside from his own resurrection.
This is where he’s supposed to thrive: adrenaline coursing through his veins to make his thoughts painfully clear. The slim space between alive and dead. He’s pushed through worse.
“Okay,” he says as he straightens, mostly to himself but a little to Livio’s radiating concern. He bats Livio’s hands away and shoves him, lightly, toward the main building of the orphanage. “Come on, we’re wastin’ moonlight.”
“I don’t think anyone says that,” Livio says.
“Like you’d know,” Wolfwood replies.
Waiting as the phone rings is going to make his heart give out again. He watches Livio’s face, wide awake and focused and still teary-eyed. He looks good, and if he’s stayed at the orphanage this long, Wolfwood hopes it means he is good.
The ringing ends with a click, and then a sleepy voice says, “This is Stryfe.”
“It’s Livio. Sorry for callin’ so late, Miss Meryl,” Livio says, and Wolfwood could laugh again at his polite, quiet tone. “I, uh, well.” Livio glances at him, eyebrows raising as he tilts his head. Wolfwood waves a hand impatiently. “Something happened.”
“What?” Meryl demands, alert at once. “Is everyone okay?”
“Everyone’s fine,” Livio hurries to assure her. “Including Wolfwood.”
Meryl is quiet for two long seconds. “What about Wolfwood?” she asks.
“He’s here,” Livio says. “Alive. And do you know where Vash is?”
Quiet reigns again, and then Meryl starts cursing up a storm, voice drifting away and back as fabric rustles.
“I’m gonna kill him,” she says more clearly, and Wolfwood isn’t sure which him she means. It sounds like she’s shuffling papers. “I’m really gonna kill him. Is Wolfwood okay? You said alive, but—”
Livio holds the phone out to him.
“I’m fine,” Wolfwood says. He hears Meryl’s breath catch. “Not a scratch on me. But I really need to find Needle-noggin.”
“Right,” Meryl says, watery but strong. “Um. I’m not sure where he is right now. But we have a plan for—well, not things like this , but for emergencies, if we had to get his attention for some reason.”
“And what if he was having an emergency?” Wolfwood asks.
“He said he’d call us,” Meryl says, huffing out a breath that breaks in the middle. “He’s been better about it. I really thought—”
“How do you get in touch with him?” Wolfwood interrupts, trying to redirect her before she can fall off the same mental cliff as him, as if she hasn’t already.
To her credit, Meryl doesn’t hesitate to change gears. “During the broadcast, we came up with a few signals. One for emergency emergencies so he’d come to us right away, one to get him to check in, one to just say hello. He hasn’t missed one yet.”
Wolfwood is lost. “Why is an insurance company on the radio?”
“Oh,” Meryl says. “We’re not with Bernardelli anymore. We’re reporters. We have a daily television broadcast on NLBC or whenever there’s a Humanoid Typhoon-related update.”
“Okay,” Wolfwood says. He can ask what all that means later. “How quick can you get one of your signals out?”
“We go live in the evenings,” Meryl says, sounding as impatient as Wolfwood feels. “I don’t have anything to get us on earlier, and he might not even see it then anyway.”
This isn’t helpful. This is wasting time.
“Where’s the last place you know he was?” Wolfwood asks. He’s found Vash with practically nothing to go on; whatever Meryl can give him will get him miles ahead of the last time.
“He’s been sticking to the southern settlements pretty consistently,” Meryl says. “But before you go running off, let me see what I can find out? If he gets in touch with us after the broadcast and you’ve already disappeared, how am I supposed to let you know?”
In his periphery, Livio nods. It makes sense. He should wait.
“Okay,” he says again, the agreement sticking in his teeth. “But if he doesn’t get in touch, I’m going after him.”
If there’s a him to still go after. He thinks about the way Vash had said Knives is gone . Not dead. Gone. Wolfwood presses a shaking hand to his forehead to stop that train of thought.
“Us, too,” Meryl says, almost sounding amused. “I’ll do some digging today and get back to you after the broadcast, tomorrow morning at the latest.”
“Fine,” Wolfwood says. “Talk to you then.”
“Wolfwood,” Meryl says before he can hang up, her voice hesitant. He waits. “Is this—permanent? You’re really back?”
Wolfwood flounders for a second, still not sure he isn’t dreaming, and settles on, “As far as I know.”
“ Good ,” Meryl says. “We’ve missed you.”
“Really?” Wolfwood asks. Livio makes the same noise he did when he saw Wolfwood at the door.
Meryl just says, “Yes, really,” and then, “I’m going to hang up now. And if you go running after Vash before tomorrow, I’m sending Milly after you .”
The dial tone rings in Wolfwood’s ears after he’s returned the phone to its cradle. The moonlight is dimming, darkness crowding the edge of his vision.
“Nicholas?” Livio says, grabbing his arm when he turns away from the phone and trips on his own feet.
“I need to sit down,” he mumbles, and then everything goes black.
There are noises in the dark. Not quite voices. They brush against him and leave him feelings, a vision. Fondness he hasn’t earned, a bubbling happiness he hasn’t felt, apology—for what? A figure he’d know blind sitting above a city with a bottle of Bride, mourning him , reflected in so many eyes he feels dizzy.
Wolfwood wakes up. He’s not sure who’s more surprised when he sits up on the cot in Miss Melanie’s office: him or the kids whisper-shouting at each other at his bedside. He blinks at them as they fall silent. The room is sitting at a funny angle, tilting beneath him. He feels too light and too heavy at once. Cactus holds out a glass of water.
“Miss Melanie’s lookin’ for you,” he says, and chaos erupts.
Wolfwood is struggling to follow four different voices talking at once with Linda latched to his side crying. He keeps waiting for blood to appear—on his hands, on the kids, gushing from his own mouth. Instead it’s Miss Melanie that appears in the doorway. She meets Wolfwood’s eyes over the kids’ heads and smiles, small and relieved, before putting on her stern face and giving a single sharp whistle that gets all the kids whipping around to look at her.
“Does ‘stay out’ mean nothin’ to y’all?” she asks. She hitches a thumb over her shoulder. “Git before I feed your breakfast to the worms.” To Wolfwood she says, “Livio’s on the phone. News from your friends.”
The bottom drops out of Wolfwood’s stomach, but he finds his way to his feet. Miss Melanie gives him the water she must’ve taken from Cactus, holding her hand under his like she does to the smallest kids just graduating from sippy cups.
“You need to get something in you,” she says. Wolfwood chugs the water, which just seems to make him more thirsty. And hungry. So hungry he might throw up instead. No wonder he feels shaky. Melanie hooks her hand around his arm and leads him to the main building.
Livio is no longer on the phone by the time they reach the kitchen. He’s picking at the chunks of egg stuck to the pan and eating them, tips of his fingers red.
“How many times,” Miss Melanie starts, and Livio holds up his hands.
“I’m saving on dishes!” he says. Seeing Wolfwood sit, he whirls and grabs an already-full plate, handing it off to Melanie, who puts it on the table in front of Wolfwood, along with a fork.
Wolfwood ignores the growl of his stomach. “What’s the news?”
“Vash called the girls,” Livio says, and Wolfwood slumps against the table, catching himself with his elbows before he faceplants in his eggs.
“He’s alive,” he says.
“Thank God,” Miss Melanie says, running a hand over Wolfwood’s hair as she brings her own plate to the table.
They’re both alive, and Knives is gone. Livio and the orphanage are safe. Wolfwood buries his face in his hands.
“But,” Livio says, making Wolfwood lift his head, “he only left a message, and he didn’t leave a number for them to call him back.”
“What signal did they use?”
“ Emergency emergency,” Livio says. “He said he would meet them at one of their rendezvous points in a week, and that was it.”
“A week for an emergency,” Wolfwood says.
“He probably went too far south again,” Livio says. “They’re meeting near Octovern.”
The way he says it, and the way Melanie raises her eyebrows, suggests a history Wolfwood doesn’t know.
“Eat,” Melanie says before he can ask. “I need Livio to help wrangle the little ones, not be busy carrying you back to bed because you passed out again.”
Wolfwood picks up his fork but looks at Livio expectantly. He joins them at the table.
“I don’t know all of what happened,” he warns.
“Give it your best shot,” Wolfwood says and finally starts eating.
Vash is insane. Something Wolfwood already knew, but he never ceases to be reminded. Disappearing for months after flying ( flying ) off with Knives, nearly killing himself in the process of stopping him from killing everyone else. He’s shocked Meryl and Milly let him out of their sight. Livio waits until he’s finished his food to tell him about Legato, which is good, because any appetite he had would be ruined, and bad, because now he feels sick.
“He doesn’t talk about it,” Livio says.
Wolfwood laughs, grim. “Are you surprised?”
A lot has changed since Wolfwood died, and Livio only gives him the bare bones of it before the kids start finishing their breakfasts. He gets through Earth ships bringing supplies (and holding a grudge against Vash, which is so stupid and predictable Wolfwood wants to scream) and some of the rebuilding, and then Wolfwood is left to his own devices as Livio and Melanie and Sarah get everyone where they’re supposed to be.
He should be helping. He could be helping; even the one meal has him feeling steadier, less like he’ll disappear at any second. He sits at the table and thinks about Vash begging for one more minute to stay dead.
He’d kill for a smoke.
Not even Miss Melanie could save Wolfwood’s suit. Too much blood, too many holes, left for too long underground. He didn’t really want it back, probably. But he also feels strange wearing Livio’s t-shirts and jeans.
For years, he wore slight variations on the same thing. Tees were for training; jeans weren’t really a factor until he woke up on a ship floating above the sea. He feels exposed, literally in the case of his arms. The only thing he brings up when he offers to take over Livio’s errand run, however, are the shoes. He’s well and truly sick of ill-fitting boots.
Miss Melanie hands him money and a list, and Livio returns him his pistol and gives him more money.
“It’s from a job we did in town,” he says when Wolfwood raises an eyebrow. “In case you want more than shoes.”
He buys cigarettes before anything else and smokes two in the shade of an abandoned storefront’s doorway before he gets started on Melanie’s list. The action as much as the nicotine soothes a piece of him back into place, one more tether to the waking world. There were never any cigarettes in Vash’s dreams.
The clothes he leaves for last. There are more options to pick through than he expects. Probably most of their former owners died or fled, leaving their possessions rife for the taking. He hasn’t often been overwhelmed by choice, but he can feel it creeping up on him as he picks through a selection of shirts. He sticks to safe choices: a couple of white button-ups, a pair of black jeans he won’t have to worry about tripping over, and a pair of boots that don’t look much different than his old shoes but have considerably better traction.
His wild card choice is a black hoodie. The zipper pull is shaped like a skull. Miss Melanie tugs on it when he wears it to breakfast the next morning, smiling at him even as she rolls her eyes.
If Wolfwood hadn’t been present for the fight with Chapel, he wouldn’t be able to tell that the orphanage was once bathed in blood and death. It is nicer than what he remembers; somehow their big repairs led to smaller ones, and now everything is a little more stable. The only reminder that remains is his grave.
He can see it from the kitchen, his gaze catching on the corner of it again and again.
He had already gathered the feathers and thrown away his single shoe. He eyes the stone with the cross carved on top and thinks about Vash and his insistence on burying the dead and leaving markers for their graves, the way Wolfwood saw him heft slabs and cobble crosses from stray wood so passersby would know someone was there.
(Livio told him Vash had used the Punisher as his cross, and now it lives in the church with Livio. Wolfwood hasn’t asked for it back.)
He had half a mind to move that stone when he came out, find a place to dump it where he didn’t have to see it every day. He sits in front of it instead. A monument that he was a person and that someone cared enough to bury him, no matter how bloody his life had been.
It’s useless now, because he’s alive again. But Vash left it for him. Carved into the stone for him. He leaves it where it is.
Every night as he falls asleep he expects to open his eyes to the green room. To see Vash sitting in the grass and staring at that tree like it held the answers to the universe, or maybe like it was going to come to life and eat him. He misses it, a little. It was quiet and peaceful, and it had Vash in it, even if he was always as sad as Wolfwood had ever seen him.
But each morning he wakes up, he settles further into his skin. It’s less of a surprise to see Melanie’s not-green office. And he hopes, he hopes that it’s all real. With more time, he might even start to believe it.
He gets to Vash and the girls’ rendezvous point a day ahead of when Vash said he’d be there. Livio had driven him to the bus stop in a beat-up truck and given him a hug so tight, Wolfwood’s spine popped. But he only laughed when Wolfwood told him he could come along if he really didn’t want to say goodbye.
“They need me here,” he said, some of that same awe as when he was a kid shining in his eyes, and Wolfwood had smiled.
As he steps off the bus just outside Octovern, he hears a familiar voice.
“Mr. Priest!”
He looks around in time to see Milly racing toward him and drops his bag so he can catch her before she knocks them both down.
“I’m so happy to see you!” she says, lifting him off his feet and spinning them in a circle. Wolfwood laughs, too surprised to do anything but hold on until he’s set back on his feet, and hears Meryl’s muffled giggling from somewhere under the awning.
“I’m happy to see you, too,” he says when he’s released, and he is. That they made it, that they’re whole. Meryl is smiling as brightly as Wolfwood’s ever seen.
“We got you a room in the same hotel as us,” Milly says, picking up his bag for him. “We can catch up there.”
She points him in the right direction, and they set off.
Meryl falls into step on the other side of him. “I figured you wouldn’t have any money,” she says, nudging him with her elbow.
“Not exactly something I took with me,” Wolfwood replies. He’s been skating by on what Livio gave him.
“Consider it a welcome back present,” Meryl says, then points a stern finger at him. “But don’t get used to it.”
Wolfwood laughs again.
The girls are good. They’re still in contact with most everyone from the ship, and Milly tells him he should visit them, too.
“And take Vash with you,” Meryl says.
Wolfwood makes no promises.
The closer it gets to tomorrow, the more restless Wolfwood gets. He hates waiting like this. He can do it, he’ll survive it, but knowing it’s all he can do makes him itch.
And he worries, a little.
It’s not something he would have actually done, but maybe he should’ve let Vash come to him. The girls could tell him he was back, and Vash could decide if he wanted to see him again, after burying him over a year ago. That’s a long time on a place like No Man’s Land. Long enough to move on.
But Wolfwood needs to see for himself or he’ll never be able to shake it, the dread that Vash is gone for good. Even if he doesn’t want Wolfwood at his side anymore, having the proof that he’s around has to settle this thing churning Wolfwood’s gut.
Milly hugs him again as she and Meryl leave for their own room across the hall. Meryl puts a hand on his arm and squeezes, smiling like she can see him struggling to stay put.
“See you in the morning,” she says.
Rather than throw up, Wolfwood gets himself to smile back and say, “Breakfast’s on me.”
He feels it the second Vash spots him. When he turns around, he sees him in the street: impossible to miss in that stupid coat, helping someone pick up pieces of paper. Wolfwood is standing before he’s told his feet to do anything, and before he knows it he’s at the top of the stairs calling out. Vash’s eyes follow him through the crowd, wide and unreadable.
“Wolfwood?” he says, and Wolfwood’s heart threatens to leap out of his throat.
From behind them, Meryl yells, stealing Vash’s attention for a second. Wolfwood’s nerves catch up to him, and he stops before he can close the distance. Vash stares.
“Am I dreaming?” he asks, voice faint.
“Nope,” Wolfwood says. To convince the both of them, he pinches Vash’s cheek. The kneejerk irritation that flashes across Vash’s face as he grabs his hand makes him grin. “See? Wide awake.”
Vash looks stunned at the sight of their hands, and then he’s pulling Wolfwood against him, squeezing so tight he can’t breathe. Even joking about Vash trying to kill him already doesn’t ease the feeling bubbling in his chest. It works its way out in tears as Vash sobs against his neck.
“Always with the waterworks,” Wolfwood says into his hair.
Vash pulls back, hands leaving the back of his shirt to cradle his face, running his thumbs under Wolfwood’s eyes. “Seems like it’s catching.”
Still crying, Wolfwood makes a face and says, “No one will ever believe you.”
His heart skips as Vash tilts closer so their foreheads meet, laughing. Happy. The same feeling making Wolfwood feel like he’s about to burst. He tightens his arms around Vash’s waist, not caring that people keep bumping into them while they stand here crying and laughing like idiots in each other’s faces. He’s happy.
They have lunch with the girls—Vash’s treat, even though he complains that they didn’t tell him about Wolfwood.
“And how exactly should we have done that?” Meryl asks flatly.
Vash throws his hands in the air. “You’re clever, you could’ve figured something out!”
“But wasn’t it a good surprise?” Milly says, and Vash has no argument against that.
It doesn’t escape Wolfwood’s notice that Vash keeps touching him, brushes that could be considered accidental if it were anyone but Vash. Wolfwood catches the look on his face as his fingers tap on the table—eyebrows drawn together just enough to crease his forehead—and the way it disappears when he knocks his boot into Wolfwood’s shin. Wolfwood puts a hand on his knee, because that one hurt, and Vash settles until they’ve stayed at their table so long the server starts giving them sour looks.
“We have to get back to the city before morning anyway,” Meryl says as they walk back toward the hotel. “Unless you’d like to give me an interview about your work restoring the southern cities?”
Vash laughs like he’s a second from bolting, taking half a step so Wolfwood is between him and Meryl. “No, thank you. You have enough rumors to follow up on anyway.”
Wolfwood glances back and snorts at his grimace of a smile.
“It’s probably better that way,” Milly muses. “What’s the point of rebuilding if people destroy it again looking for Vash?”
“The point is that maybe if they saw that he isn’t actually a walking disaster, they wouldn’t cause so much destruction trying to catch him,” Meryl says.
“The Earth Federation still has a bounty on him,” Milly says, and Meryl huffs.
It’s clearly a well-worn argument. Wolfwood looks at Vash again as it continues, finding a surprisingly honest frown on his face. He bumps their shoulders together, and Vash leans into the touch without looking at him.
It could be any other day they were too broke or tired or whatever to find something to do in the town they ended up in and decided to hole up in a room instead. Lazy days, alternately quiet and tense, depending on the day. Nothing they haven’t done before. Except.
“What’s with the face?” Wolfwood asks, smoking at the window while Vash sits on the bed and stares at him. Through him.
“No face,” Vash says.
Wolfwood turns to him. “Exactly. You’re so deep in whatever’s going on in that needle-noggin, you might as well not be in the room.”
Vash blinks, eyes sharpening until Wolfwood feels pinned. “You’re going back to the orphanage,” he says.
It takes a second, and then it stings.
“Glad you’ve decided that for me,” Wolfwood says. “Really frees up some mental faculties.”
“You had other plans?” Vash asks.
Wolfwood didn’t have anything concrete. He only ever got as far as see Vash , and he figured, if everything didn’t come crashing down around him, he would go from there. With all the touching, he’d thought maybe —maybe he knew.
“I told you, didn’t I?” he says, watching Vash’s brow wrinkle.
“You wanted what Livio has.”
“No,” Wolfwood says then waves his hand, scattering ash on the floor. “Yes but no.” He stubs out his cigarette so he doesn’t have to look at Vash. He told him this already. When it wasn’t a possibility. Doesn’t he remember? “I want that, but—do you want me to go back?”
“I want you to be happy,” Vash says.
“That’s not an answer,” Wolfwood says.
“Neither was yours,” Vash shoots back.
Wolfwood narrows his eyes. Vash frowns back. His hands are fisted in the tails of his coat.
“I didn’t want to leave you,” Wolfwood says, and Vash flinches.
“I didn’t want you to go,” Vash says. “But I can’t —there’s too many people still after me, and you shouldn’t have to deal with that again, you should be safe, away from me. You should go home .”
He might as well carve his chest open and let Vash pick through his insides, but he forces the words out, lets the knife sink its target. “If you want me to go home, you gotta stop trying to keep me from you.”
Vash makes a noise like Wolfwood pulled out his gun and shot him point-blank. He doesn’t get his hands over his face fast enough to hide that he’s crying again. Wolfwood gets up and walks over to him, risking a hand in his hair. Vash drops his head into Wolfwood’s stomach, and Wolfwood has seen him cry plenty of times, but not like this.
“Hey, Needle-noggin, you gotta breathe,” he says, keeping his hands slow as he runs them from the back of Vash’s head down to his shoulders. If he weren’t muffled by Wolfwood’s body, he’s pretty sure there’d be noise complaints. “You’re gonna pass out if ya keep this up.”
Vash only pushes harder against him, like he’s trying to crawl inside him, one arm snaking around the back of his thighs to pull him closer. Wolfwood stumbles over Vash’s feet until his knees are pressed against the end of the bed, keeping him steady.
“Come on, this is a brand new used shirt,” he tries, and there’s a hiccup in Vash’s sobs that might be a laugh, or maybe he’s about to hyperventilate for real. He squeezes the back of Vash’s neck as he lets himself fold around him. “Okay. It’s okay. Just warn me if you’re blacking out so I can get out of the way when you fall.”
Vash is at least with it enough to pinch his leg. Not funny, the move suggests. Fair enough. Wolfwood’s concern eases a little when Vash turns his head and heaves deep, wet breaths under his elbow.
“You gonna tell me what I said?” Wolfwood asks.
Vash hiccups in the middle of a sniffle. His forehead presses against Wolfwood’s ribs. “I don’t want you to go.”
He sounds miserable about it, his voice crackling like the radio. Wolfwood manages to push him back enough to see at least part of his face.
“Would you look at me, Spikey?” he says. Vash shakes his head. Wolfwood barely resists the urge to shake the rest of him. “No one’s forcing me to be here. Not this time. So if neither of us want me to go, why are you trying to get me to leave? Can’t I make that choice for myself?”
Vash shakes his head again. “You always leave. Everyone does. And I can’t do it again. Not with you.”
Oh, Wolfwood thinks. His hands go still on Vash’s shoulders. He remembers holding a feather and thinking it was the last piece of Vash left in the world.
“Vash,” he says. When Vash finally looks up, his eyes are red and swollen and so, so blue. Wolfwood pushes the hair off his forehead and ducks closer. “Don’t be an idiot.”
The offense that sparks in Vash’s eyes is truly a sight to behold. “Excuse me?”
“I can’t promise that I’m not gonna die, but neither can you,” Wolfwood says. “You just said it: everybody dies. And you really think being apart is gonna make it hurt less ?” He jabs a finger in Vash’s chest, digging into the armor beneath his coat. “I thought I came back because you did something. I was convinced you were dead. And I wouldn’t have gotten a chance to see you again. That’s less painful to you?”
Vash opens his mouth to speak and closes it without a sound. He still looks like he’s on the verge of anger, but he’s sad again, too. “No,” he says, like it’s being dragged out of him. “It’s not.”
“Then we agree,” Wolfwood says.
Vash almost-laughs. “I guess we do.”
“Good,” Wolfwood says, detangled enough to flop on the bed next to Vash. He grins up at him. “I win.”
“We were arguing the same point,” Vash says with a scoff. He wipes his face with the cuff of his sleeve and then he flops, too, glaring at Wolfwood through a hint of good humor. His hair is a wreck . “If anything, it’s a draw.”
“Yeah, but a win-win is still a win for me,” Wolfwood says, making Vash’s hair impossibly worse. Strange, still, to see it all black, but somehow it suits him just as much as the gold.
“Your shirt is disgusting,” Vash says.
“Whose fault is that?” Wolfwood replies.
“Yours,” Vash says immediately. He doesn’t flinch when Wolfwood tugs on his hair. For a second he looks considering. “My sisters’,” he adds. “But I’ll forgive them.”
Wolfwood doesn’t ask if he’s forgiven; he doesn’t want to know the answer. He leaves Vash’s hair alone and folds his hands over his chest, which just gets Vash to angle himself closer until their shoulders are touching. He pushes himself up after a moment and looms over Wolfwood, fingers tracing the side of his face. They still as he leans down and presses his lips to Wolfwood’s forehead, lingering too long to really be called a kiss. Wolfwood finds his hand and holds it.
Vash has him in a death grip. At some point in the night, after he’d convinced Vash to sleep, they’d shifted so Vash is curled around him, his arm tight around his ribs, fingers tucked beneath him. It’s not the worst way Wolfwood has woken up. But he would like to be able to move.
He puts a hand on Vash’s arm and feels his breath stutter on the back of his neck. Vash groans and releases him in favor of holding his own head. Wolfwood rolls over to see him squeezing his eyes shut before also covering them with his hand.
“Headache?” he guesses.
Vash shushes him, digging his palm into his eye sockets. He only peeks at Wolfwood when he starts to move away, and man does he look rough.
“Ya look like shit,” Wolfwood tells him.
“Eat shit,” Vash replies, mostly into the pillow.
Wolfwood has seen Vash go from dead asleep to wide awake in less than a blink when necessary. It’s almost nice that he’s indulging in a sulk. Wolfwood pats the dip of his waist and then gets out of bed. When he returns from the bathroom, he also brings water. He lets the cup drip on the exposed bit of Vash’s neck.
Vash jerks, whipping his head around to squint at him. “What ‘re you doing?”
“It’s water,” Wolfwood says, waving the cup at him. He only feels a little bad for the extra pain in his face. “Shoulda drank more of it before the crying jag, for future reference.”
Vash grumbles as he pushes himself up. Wolfwood hands off the water and goes to his bag to dig out his hoodie. It’s early enough to still have a chill in the air, which is only chillier at his perch in the window. The cup thunks, hollow, on the nightstand; Vash is buried under the blanket when Wolfwood glances back.
He makes it through a cigarette before he feels eyes on him. It’s the only part of Vash he can see aside from a few locks of hair. He smiles. “Better?”
“ No ,” Vash says, rolling away. “Now I have to pee.”
Wolfwood laughs. Vash-as-a-cocoon slumps out of bed and disappears into the bathroom. He comes out still cocooned but with the front of his hair dripping, looking slightly less like the walking dead. He crosses the room to the window and shoves Wolfwood’s foot to the floor so he can squeeze onto the sill with him. Wolfwood brings his foot back up to rest in Vash’s lap as Vash reaches out of the blanket to grab Wolfwood’s zipper pull, turning the little skull in his fingers with a faint, tired, real smile.
“Silly,” he says, letting go so he can bundle himself up again.
“ Cool ,” Wolfwood argues.
Vash laughs. “Cool,” he agrees.
He tilts his head back against the wall. Wolfwood mirrors him, alternating between watching the town wake up and watching Vash watch him. He considers a second cigarette, but then he’d have to move.
It’s one of the quietest mornings he can remember. Calm. Sometimes, before, they’d get a chance to actually wake up and just be. Then, later, the tension was always there, no matter how they distracted themselves from it—the end hurtling towards them whether they liked it or not. Death, destruction, loss. Things that are still following Vash.
Wolfwood doesn’t know how it’s going to end this time. But he has hope.