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Wolfwood really should be better at this by now.
It’s his damn job, it’s been his job for years. He’s been ingratiating himself with Vash and his tagalong reporters for weeks now, he shouldn’t be struggling.
And yet.
And yet.
Maybe it’s still sticking in his chest, what Zazie said. You like killing friends. Maybe Vash’s earnest, trusting smile or Meryl’s naïveté or Roberto’s slow softening is getting to him. Maybe he’s just a damn sucker.
Regardless. It shouldn’t hurt so much, to pretend to be their friend.
Shouldn’t hurt to laugh with them, share meals, bump shoulders with Vash in the backseat, take cigarette breaks with Roberto, tease Meryl for her driving, it shouldn’t—
It shouldn’t hurt.
And even if it hurts, he knows better than to cry about it.
But here he is, standing out in the desert with the moons overhead, fingers going numb around his cigarette, trying valiantly to hold it to his mouth despite the way his lips are trembling, and the tears that keep dripping off the end of his nose and getting the paper wet.
It’s a lost cause.
But he should be better with those, too. He’s been one for even longer than he’s been killing his friends.
Abandoning the cigarette to the sand, Wolfwood sinks down in a crouch, wrapping his arms around his knees. Tears drip onto his sunglasses, smearing across the lenses, so he pushes them into his hair, letting the tears fall into the sand.
It’s funny, at least by some measure of the word, that he was designed to be resistant against starvation, dehydration, exhaustion. Designed to be like the angels — like one angel in particular. To be above human needs.
And, sure, he’s used that to survive trekking through the desert and being shot in the gut and getting hit by Meryl’s damn car—
But these days, living the high life traveling with salaried goddamn reporters and Vash, who seems like he can scrounge freebies out of thin air with a few good deeds and a smile, Wolfwood’s mostly using his remarkable tolerance for dehydration for stupid little crying fits.
He’s supposed to be a professional, for fuck’s sake.
But here he is. Dripping tears into the sand. Wishing he was real friends with Vash the goddamn Stampede and his tagalong busybodies.
Stupid.
Fucking stupid.