Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

He comes to awareness choking on dirt and with the weight of the world on his chest.

Panic is the first and only thing he knows. A familiar feeling, and he readily gives himself over to it. His body belongs to nothing else but blind instinct and adrenaline; this isn't the time or place for anything more than that.

His lungs collapse a little further every time he tries and fails to breathe, but his damned mortal body can’t stop trying, like some tragically doomed idiot pushing a boulder up a hill — a futile, hopeless task, but the only thing he has.

Dirt fills his mouth, bitter and metallic and sandy, and his throat spasms around the intrusion, torn between trying to breathe and trying to swallow. He’s unable to do either, but that doesn't stop his body from attempting to force nonexistent air into his lungs, pushing dirt down his clogged throat with involuntary muscle contractions that send rivers of pain through every nerve. 

He keeps his mouth closed, after that. Inhales the earth through his nose instead.

When he opens his eyes, they burn like hellfire. There’s no liquid left in him to blink away the pain, just more dirt. It’s dark as pitch anyway, so he squeezes them shut again, trapping grit behind his eyelids. The sting of it almost feels like crying.

His arms are crossed over his chest, his right hand pressed against his frantic heart by the weight. Every throbbing heartbeat screams at him to run, fight, run, fight, run, fight, run —

There is nowhere to run save for death's embrace. 

So he fights.

He writhes, body shuddering, brain asphyxiating, every limb straining against the earth holding him in place, but the pressure does not release. This unbearable heaviness is all there is, and he's being crushed by it.

Well after the point a normal human would have surrendered, the world finally begins to shift around him. The dirt under his body packs tighter. Above him, the dirt begins to loosen. The weight on his chest retreats just enough to draw out his hellish existence. Inch by agonizing inch, his limbs free themselves.

For far too long, he fumbles blindly. Useless flailing only further prolongs the suffering, but rationality is out of his grasp. His body is doing everything it can just to keep fighting.

He is nothing but fingers clawing at dark earth and a desperate, human need to live.

And then his fingers scratch at hard stone. The panic flares. A choked gasp sends more dirt pouring down his throat. For half a delirious moment, he has the first and only coherent thought he’s had since waking. It’d be a pretty pathetic way to go, drowning on a planet with no water.

But when his hands find the end of the stone and curl around a flat edge, coherence gives way once again to single-minded fight for survival. He crawls around the stone — as much as crawling is a thing he is capable of, having just been born into this nightmare of crushing earth — and continues his push upward.

His right hand breaches the surface first. He only knows it has because he can feel sun on his skin, a sharp contrast to the cold beneath the surface. His other hand isn’t far behind, fingers grasping for open air and warmth.

There's nobody there to pull him out, so he does it himself.

He hauls his body halfway out of the ground before he dares to open his eyes. The suns are ruthless — high noon bears down on him with all its sharp, molten teeth, and his world goes from suffocating black to a white so bright he forces his eyes closed again before they can melt out of his skull. A kaleidoscope of colors swirls behind his eyelids, but he's not sure if it's an afterimage from the suns, or from the last thing his eyes have a clear memory of.

His first breath doesn’t come until after he expels the contents of his stomach and lungs back into the hole he crawled out of.

It’s only when he rolls over, gasping, convulsing in the dirt, dusty bile dripping down his chin, that he remembers — he never should have woken up at all.

He comes to awareness slower, the second time. The panic hasn't quieted or settled, but he’s had practice living past his expiration date before, and the recovery process is almost as automatic as the panic had been. Though the primal fear of death still shrieks in the back of his mind, it’s becoming easier to push aside in favor of reacquainting himself with reality.

Blind instinct is handing his mind and body back, and he's been left to piece himself together in the aftermath.

And so Nicholas D. Wolfwood begins to remember what life feels like.

The first — and perhaps only — thing he is aware of is the pain.

As he takes stock of his limbs, identifying their continued existence one by one, the only sensation he can articulate is everything fucking hurts. Including parts of his body that he didn’t know could hurt, which is saying something, considering the bullet-filled life he lived.

Lived.

Lives?

Is he even alive?

Did he even die at all?

It's a stupid question. Of course he died. He remembers every torturous second of it, right up to the moment his heart broke, and then a few seconds after, when a horrible silence filled the space where his pulse used to be.

He turns his face into his elbow and counts his heartbeats, reassuring himself that they're actually there. His chest throbs with pain for each uneven thu-thump, but he manages to count into the dozens before he loses track of the numbers amongst the pain.

Every wheezing breath he takes along the way is excruciating and rattles his entire body, but he eventually convinces his lungs that they’re safe from further damage. Tentative breaths become full. His ribs expand and find no resistance. He revels in the horrid dry, dusty, desert air of No Man’s Land the way only a recently dead man could.

The ground under him feels solid and real, and there's a breeze teasing the back of his neck, and somewhere in the near-distance, church bells are ringing. 

If this is hell, then hell sure feels an awful lot like home.

Wolfwood rolls onto his back and opens his eyes. Above him, he sees nothing but open sky.

The suns are less brutal now, softened by their descent towards the horizon. Everything’s tinged a warm golden color that makes his chest ache — some metaphysical part of himself that isn’t hurting because the empty spaces in his body were recently filled with dirt, but because of the empty space in his soul that’s afraid he won't live long enough to see it filled to capacity.

He never did figure out how to hold onto hope without it killing him.

But that’s a problem for later, when every heartbeat doesn’t feel like grains of sand trickling through his fingers. Right now, he needs to make sure this second chance lasts more than a few hours. This is not the time for thinking of what he left behind. It’s not the time for wondering what happened and where is he and is anyone even —

Wolfwood clenches his fists until the pain is all he feels. Not the time, he tells himself, ruthlessly locking those questions away in the back of his mind. He needs to focus on what he can see and feel and touch, not what he wants to.

He never figured out how to want something without it killing him either.

The pain helps. It’s hard for his thoughts to hold onto anything intangible for long enough to hurt when the very real pain of being alive again is enough to claim all his attention. 

Wolfwood pushes himself up to a sitting position and stares down at his body. It certainly looks like he just climbed out of his own grave. Every inch of visible skin is covered in dirt, and he’d feel confident betting his second lease on life that the parts of his body he can’t see are similarly coated. There’s probably dirt in his veins. He’ll probably be carrying a grave’s worth of dirt inside him until he dies a second time. Every breath he takes tastes of dirt. Every time he moves to inspect another limb, more dirt flakes off his body. His clothes are covered in dirt too, so much that he can’t even be sure if this was the suit he died in, or if someone kindly switched out his old suit for a nicer one.

I hope not, he thinks as he picks at the cuffs of his sleeves. Would’ve been a waste of perfectly fine cloth.

His fingernails are buried under dirt caked with blood — he faintly recalls desperate scratching against rough stone — but his flesh isn't rotting off his bones and he doesn’t see or feel any gaping wounds.

He doesn't know if he was dead long enough to rot, but he should probably have gaping wounds, shouldn’t he?

Before that thought can gain enough ground to replay the moments leading up to his death, his eyes settle on a slab of stone just shy of the hole he rose from.

That would be the rock he didn’t have the strength to roll away.

Wolfwood's limbs are still getting their bearings, so he drags himself across the ground to get closer and takes it in while slumped over the rectangular slab. It's roughly cut and chipped in several places. A sharp corner digs into his ribs. Flecks of dried blood scratch along one edge of the stone, and his fingertips twinge where they’re scraped raw.

Even a blind man would know that this is a gravestone. There’s a cross chiseled onto the surface.

The events leading up to his demise sweep over him like a sandstorm.

Chapel. Razlo. Livio. Miss Melanie and the kids. Fighting back to back with— With the truest friend he’d had. Two vials too many. One last drink sitting side by side with the man he’d wanted to spend the rest of his life with. Asking him to smile. Shreds of a rainbow falling from the sky, welcoming him home.

He clutches his chest. Presses his forehead to the cross. Tries to remember how to breathe again. He only just relearned, so it takes a few shaky attempts before he's stable.

Don’t fall apart so easy, he chides himself, near hysterically. What kinda stupid ass man gets lucky enough to cheat death then wastes his time weeping over his own damn grave?

But someone — and he knows who — didn’t just bury him. Someone buried Wolfwood six feet deep in a marked grave. Painstakingly carved a cross onto hard stone. For him. 

On this planet, that’s the kind of thing you only do for someone you loved.

Loved.

Love?

Wolfwood’s entire being aches with the acceptance of it . He places a hand on the sun warmed stone and slides his fingers into the chiseled cross, tracing it and trying to adjust to this new breed of agony. 

It could almost be a cruel joke, burying Wolfwood under the same symbol he carried as a weapon, the same symbol he used to punish, but he knows it wasn’t meant that way. It was probably meant as a peace offering: “Please accept him into heaven, he's one of yours.” 

Yeah. That’s probably it. That big dumb stupid spiky blond idiot probably begged God to welcome Wolfwood to paradise.

And then God took one look at him and spat him back out.

Wolfwood lets out a wheeze of a laugh — it’s really more of a whimper — and focuses on the pain — the physical pain — again.

What’s almost worse than the gravestone is what he finds at the foot of it; an offering of whiskey and his favorite brand of cigarettes.

What kinda stupid ass man wastes perfectly good booze and cigarettes on a dead guy? 

The same kind that would take the time to bury a sinner like him. And it kinda pisses him off, how grateful he is for this unnecessary kindness. It almost feels like someone's about to pop up out of nowhere with an, "I knew you'd come back for these," but you wouldn't bury someone you think is coming back for the gifts you’ve left them unless you hated them.

And he's already established that the gravestone proves otherwise.

So just a tangible memory, then. Something to help ease the fear that oblivion is all there is. A desperate wish that some aspect of the recipient still exists, and will feel less alone by knowing they'd been remembered.

Wolfwood's not sure he wants to think about being remembered. Being remembered means being mourned. And that just makes him want to crawl back into his grave and die all over again, but this time it'll be the guilt that takes him out, and he won't have anyone to blame for it but himself.

He was an idiot to hope that anything he said those last few moments would lessen the blow.

No ruminating, he tells himself. Focus up.  

A quick search of his person turns up no way to light the cigarettes, because apparently giving a dead man a way to light up from beyond the grave is a step too far. He dumps a comical amount of dirt from one of his pockets and slips the box into his pants for safekeeping.

The booze, on the other hand, he can indulge in. It’s the good stuff — not quite top shelf, but maybe second from the top. Better than almost anything he could afford when he was alive. The first time. This time, too, since his pockets turned up empty in the search for his lighter. It certainly would've been nice if someone was considerate enough to bury him with a few hundred double dollars. But then again, dead men don’t need cash.

They do need a drink, though. Or at least this one does.

Wolfwood unscrews the lid of the whiskey, flicks it into the grave, and downs half the bottle in one go.

He throws it back up immediately.

Wolfwood stares at the puddle, watching it seep into the thirsty desert dirt, his throat burning in both directions, and feels like a fucking idiot.

He wipes his face with the back of a hand and allows himself a minute of self-hatred (turns out he’s the kinda man who wastes perfectly good booze), then a minute of guilt (he wasted perfectly good booze), before sipping the rest at a more reasonable pace.

The first sip tastes like sand and stomach acid more than it does whiskey, and he swirls it around in his mouth a few times before reluctantly spitting it out. 

The second sip goes down his throat like water.

He gets drunk embarrassingly fast with nothing in his stomach to lessen the blow. By the time he’s licking the last drop from the rim of the bottle, the suns have tipped over the horizon and Wolfwood feels about ready to tip over too. He sways back and forth from his seat at the foot of his grave. The alcohol’s warmth is shielding him from the chilly desert night, but not from the way his mind keeps wandering to the hole a few feet away.

Would he rise again, with the suns, if he sunk under the horizon a second time? Or would the planet swallow him as he swallowed the planet, in an endless ouroboros of dirt?

Ashes to ashes, and dirt to dirt, or something like that.

Was Wolfwood human enough, in the end, to be granted that mercy? Or is that why he’s still alive — too much of an abomination against nature to slide peacefully into the natural cycle of things?

He lifts the bottle to his lips again, forgetting that it’s empty. The rush of disappointment is enough to pull him out of his rapidly spiraling thoughts.

In that brief clarity, Wolfwood tries to focus on his more tangible — and therefore more easily solved — problems.

He’s hungry, in that familiar “haven’t had anything to eat in multiple days,” sort of way. He’d been able to ignore it at first, courtesy of a lifetime of practice on top of everything else going on in his body, but now that it’s starting to sink in that this whole being alive thing might actually stick, the hunger is beginning to rear its head, gnawing at his innards with an almost sadistic fervor.

At least it means you’re probably still human, he tells himself. Only humans suffer like this.

But that’s not exactly true, is it? Wolfwood caused someone so much suffering that they buried him, after all.

And that’s a thought that hovers too close to a dangerous precipice. Not right now, he reminds himself.

Wolfwood lays on his gravestone and tries to will away the nausea and dizziness and gaping emptiness of both his stomach and his soul. He fails, utterly and completely and miserably. Everything still hurts and now the stars are spinning.

He’d kill for a donut right about now.

But killing never did bring anything good in the end, did it?

The third time Wolfwood comes to awareness, his empty stomach is trying to eat itself and he has a hangover so bad it almost makes him wish he was dead again. 

The suns are back at their favorite routine; punishing him for existing in their presence. He’s got a stabbing headache that spikes every time he squints open his eyes. His mouth is so dry you could use it to strike a match. His skin feels somehow both clammy and on fire.

Couldn’t have picked a shadier spot to stick me in the ground, could ya, Needle Noggin? 

Even just that brief, rhetorical question is enough to make him throw up what little liquid remains in his stomach. He groans, curling in on his cramping abdomen, shivering despite the heat. 

Don’t think about it. Don’t think about him digging in the dirt for you. Don't think about him gently arranging your limbs. Don’t think about him laying your body to rest. 

Don’t think about him at all, actually.

Wolfwood presses his hands to his face. And maybe the dehydration is a blessing in disguise, because it means that the shuddering, gasping breaths he takes aren’t accompanied by tears.

Once he’s gotten himself under control again, he assesses his surroundings.

The orphanage is behind him, silent as a grave and still heavily scarred from the fight to defend it. Every bullet hole in the stone walls of his youth pierces him with a complex emotion he has no words for, but that makes his heart yearn and his body ache for something it can’t have.

He can never go back to his childhood. It’s dead and buried under bullets and blood. His sins brought those same things to the very doorstep he’d tried shielding from them, and only the grace of an angel had spared them from it. 

Wolfwood lost many things to the Eye of Michael, his life the least among them. But the most important things were saved, in the end: Miss Melanie and the kids, Livio and— 

Stop bein’ an idiot, he scolds himself. You don’t know that.

Wolfwood has no frame of reference for how long it’s been since he died, aside from the knowledge that a grave ain't an easy thing to make, and neither is a headstone. The unnatural silence could mean that they’re all still alive, whisked to safety far, far away from here, or it could mean that they’re all dead anyway, despite everything. His sacrifice may have only prolonged their suffering. 

He saved them from Chapel, but did someone save them from Millions Knives?

Wolfwood tears his gaze away from the orphanage. Even if they are alive, he doesn’t know if he’s ready to face them until he’s sure blood will never taint his hands again. And he’s not sure he’d be able to get out of explaining to Miss Melanie that he’d died and then somehow stopped being dead. Not when he hasn't wrapped his head around it himself. 

Not when this — being alive — still seems too fragile, too tentative. 

False hope is a cruel thing, and he doesn’t wish it on them. 

Or maybe he’s still just a coward, even after everything. 

Either way, he won’t find answers at an empty grave. He needs to find other people. If there are other people. A heaviness sinks in at the realization. The residents of the orphanage weren’t the only people in danger. If Knives wasn't stopped, Wolfwood might be the only human left on this planet.

There’d be no greater punishment for failure than that.

The city of December sits on the horizon about a few iles directly toward the suns, which is just peachy. The hazy smudge of the downed spaceship wavers in the heat. Wolfwood pats his pocket on instinct and his heart stumbles when he feels the familiar press of sunglasses against his heart.

They’re a little bent, and a lot dirty, but otherwise undamaged. He sucks together all the saliva he can muster from the depths of his throat, spits on the lenses, then wipes the dirt off with the cleanest article of clothing he has to his name: the inside of his left sock.

Once he’s got his glasses as clean as he can manage, which is not very clean at all, Wolfwood stumbles to his feet for the first time since he crawled out of the dirt. His stomach threatens to escape again, but he manages to swallow it down and remain standing.

A small victory, but he'll take what he can get.

Something about leaving behind a desecrated grave — even if it’s his own and he has the right to do whatever he fucking pleases with it — feels shameful.

Wolfwood pushes loose dirt back into his hole and tramps it down until it’s level. It still looks like someone dug up a dead guy, robbed him blind, did a piss poor job hiding the evidence, and then vomited on the ground multiple times to top it off, but at least it doesn’t look like the corpse walked away.

Even if that's exactly what it did.

Wolfwood takes one last look at his final resting place; within sight of home but not so close as to be a burden, a slab of stone lovingly carved with the symbol Wolfwood carried to his death, the now empty bottle of whiskey and the cigarettes in his pocket.

All in all, better than he probably deserved, more than he could have hoped for, and enough to make him feel like something he did in this godforsaken desert might have done more good than harm. 

And then Wolfwood finally lets himself acknowledge the final remaining grave offering.

Jammed in the dirt, wrapped in cloth, and heavy with all the mercy it never gave its owner, stands the Punisher.

Chapter Text

Once a month or so, they’d load everyone onto a bus that was probably older than the dirt it drove on, and take a trip into the city.

It was only when Nicholas started to grow up that he realized the trip’s true purpose was a supply run, and not simply a fun excursion. The caretakers needed all hands on deck to haul a month’s worth of supplies back to the compound, and couldn’t just leave the kids unattended unless they wanted to come back to a burned down orphanage, or worse.

The grownups did try to make it fun for the kids, and the day often included shopping lists cleverly disguised as scavenger hunts, a prayer service at one of the big, fancy, city churches, and dinner at whatever real restaurant was willing to put up with the chaos of a dozen or more orphans, many of whom hadn’t ever interacted with polite society.

In the short span of time between between being too young to explore unchaperoned and being old enough for the Eye to adopt him, Nicholas was allowed to venture away from the group on his own, shopping list scribbled on scrap paper, double dollars shoved so deep in his pants that a pickpocket would have to commit multiple crimes to rob him.

Despite the bumpy, concussion-inducing bus rides and the endless lists of rules Miss Melanie laid out before letting the older kids step away from the group, Nicholas always looked forward to those trips. Seeing the city grow clearer through the desert haze was a much-needed reminder that the world was bigger than the orphanage. One day, Nicholas would be old enough to fly free. He’d be able to help the orphanage with his own money, and not an allowance. He’d be big enough and strong enough that nobody would try to take advantage of him.

That day never came. He became big and strong, yes, but his youth and freedom were stolen. The orphanage became a place he could not return to no matter how much money he saved, lest his bloody hands ruin them the way he’d been ruined.

The only thing he was able to retain from those supply run days was the temporary illusion of hope that entering a crowded city provided.

Stumbling into town dehydrated and half dead is nothing new. It actually makes Wolfwood feel a little nostalgic, like an old man reminiscing on his porch.

Back in my day, we couldn’t go more than a few days without nearly dyin’ in some dusty old bar. I spilled blood in damn near every town on this planet. See there? That’s the place we nearly died because I cheated at cards. And over there is where Va—

Wolfwood closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. Not yet, he reminds himself once again. Stay alive first.

He’d spent at least an hour repeating those words to himself as he slowly made his way the relatively short distance from the orphanage to December proper. Apparently being dead doesn’t cure you of mortal failings like heatstroke, and he’d had to take frequent breaks to sit down, stick his head between his knees, and count his heartbeat.

The Punisher is still at the head of his grave, and he’s glad for it, even if at first he’d been hesitant to leave it behind. So soon after his resurrection, his legs had been as shaky as a baby thomas. He could barely carry the weight of himself, let alone the punishing weight of his gun. And he hadn’t felt ready to decide what to do with it anyway. He’ll have to figure it out at some point, but for now, he’s quite liking not having to haul its weight around, even if he does feel dangerously vulnerable.

By the time Wolfwood arrives at the edge of town, sand blistered and sun burnt, stay alive has long turned into fuck the suns and fuck this fucking desert and most of all, fuck me.

He hears the people before he sees them. The laughter of children, the shouts of shop owners, the chatter of a healthy population. 

For a few harrowing seconds, he thinks he must have gone sun mad. He’s hallucinating, he has to be. The last time he was here, most of the population had already fled in anticipation of Millions Knives. The orphanage had looked abandoned upon waking from death, and in his trek to town, he’d half convinced himself that the rest of the world would be abandoned too.

But then he steps onto the main street and sees people.

The relief that crashes into him nearly knocks him over. He staggers over to the nearest building and leans against it, legs shaking, vision blurring.

He’s not the only human left alive.

Miss Melanie. The kids. Livio. There’s a chance he can still catch up. All he has to do is get his legs under him, get some information, and find his way home to them. And keep his hands clean, but that’s a bridge he’ll cross if (when) he gets to it.

A few passersby give him strange looks, and he realizes what he must look like. Like a worm crawled up from the depths of hell, probably. 

He wonders if he can pass himself off as an undertaker. Do they dig graves? No way in hell anyone would believe the whole priest thing, looking like he does, but if he says he got heat stroke and tripped face first into the grave… It’s sort of the truth, if the truth were backwards. It could work. Maybe. If he’s the luckiest son of a bitch on this planet, which is still up in the air. Hardly anybody ever really believed the whole “man of the cloth” thing for long even when he wasn’t a walking miracle, though.

It’s the first time he’s let himself think so positively about being alive.

A miracle.

It seems weird to apply that word to himself. 

They’d called him a child of blessing, after he’d survived the Eye’s initiation, but never anything so nice as a miracle.

But that’s what you call it, when someone rises from the dead, right?

He only turns it over in his head a few times before his mood sours. A miracle? Yeah fucking right. He’s not a miracle. Never has been, not gonna start now. The dead rising from their graves? Sounds more like a sign of the coming apocalypse. Given what was going on when he kicked the bucket, it's not much of a stretch.

God, he needs a smoke. All this thinking is too much for him when his brain’s still too close to spiraling into dangerous territory.

Just for the comfort of it, he pulls out a single cigarette and sticks it between his teeth. Maybe he'll get lucky and when God strikes him down with lightning for the crime of being not dead, he'll light up the cigarette too.

Wolfwood seeks out one of the seedier bars in town, because they’re the least likely to care that a graverobber is asking for a glass of water and the most likely to not hide the latest gossip behind whispers he’s not privy to. He needs information, and he’s not sure he has it in him to be polite about getting it.

He pushes open the squeaky door of Wilkerson's Tavern, the sort of place he’d been warned away from in childhood, and thinks of what Miss Melanie once told him — “That’s where bad men go, Nico. I can’t stop you from sneakin’ into places you shouldn’t be, Lord knows I’ve tried, but at least do me this one favor and never step foot in there?”

He steps foot in there and immediately decides Miss Melanie had a point, banning impressionable young boys from this establishment. But her definition of “bad men” had conjured up way scarier images in wee Nico’s mind (bandits! murderers! monsters!) than the reality.

Which is that even with the dim lighting, it'd be hard to miss that the walls are plastered floor to ceiling in posters of half-naked women, and that the "bad men” are too busy staring at the scantily clad barmaids to notice that Wolfwood walked in.

It’s a good thing he already decided to ditch the priest act.

The barkeep — a brass name tag pinned to his vest declares him to be Mr. Wilkerson himself — takes pity on Wolfwood and slides him a glass of water without question.

“Thanks,” he croaks, voice scratchy and untested since he’d woken from death.

“Look like you climbed out of a grave,” Wilkerson says humorously. 

Wolfwood chokes on his sip of water and takes what is probably a suspicious amount of time to recover. “Haha, yeah, I bet I do,” he finally says, and takes another sip. 

The bar is crowded and rowdy for this time of day, and everyone seems to be in good spirits. It’s honestly a little unsettling. Just before biting it, the whole world felt like it was teetering over a cliff. Everything was uncertain and everything seemed doomed. This sudden shift is almost as startling as his continued existence. There’s none of the frantic fear he’d encountered on his last journey through December. 

A thin, fragile strand of hope ties itself around Wolfwood’s heart. He almost can’t bear to rip it away. 

Hope comes after information, he tells himself, brushing it away like spider’s silk. Focus on the mission.

It’s easier to pretend like this is just another mission. After those two years of drifting, searching, surviving off scraps, it’s become a pattern he’s familiar with. A different town, but the same story.

If he has a plan (get information), a goal (stay alive), and something he’s fighting for (he refuses to consider the specifics of that one), then he doesn’t have to think about anything else, like how or why he's walking and talking and thinking when he has a very vivid memory of the moment his heart stopped.

Another bar patron flags Wilkerson down before Wolfwood can strike up a casual conversation, so he takes his glass of water over to a shadowy corner, where an ancient looking man has a newspaper folded up on the table in front of him. There’s a much younger woman on his lap and his tongue must be halfway down her chest the way he’s buried in her breasts — Wolfwood hopes she’s making good money — so the man is too preoccupied to notice when Wolfwood snags the paper.

The woman notices though, and he gives her a wave and a smile that still has probably far too much dirt in it. She gives him a smile in return, bright like the sun. It makes his head hurt, so he heads to the other side of the room, to his own shadowy corner.

He settles onto a faded leather cushion and unfurls the newspaper. 

He doesn’t even make it past the month and day. 

If this is today’s paper, then today is three days after he died. Like the second coming of Jesus.

He laughs at the absurdity of that, so hard and for so long that he forgets how to breathe again. Everyone is staring at him. His throat is still scraped raw from swallowing dirt and throwing it back up multiple times, and laughing has never hurt this much, but he can’t seem to stop. He clutches his sides and wheezes. The room starts to spin and the air gets thin and he keeps on laughing because this is the real joke:

Nicholas D. Wolfwood finally decided not to kill, and he died for it.

And now, he's going to have to live with that.

He doesn't remember passing out after his fit of hysterics, but he must have, because when he opens his eyes, he’s horizontal. His cheek is glued to a dusty wooden floor with sweat and drool. His head is throbbing like he banged it on a table on the way down.

Someone has draped a splayed newspaper over him like a blanket. Or maybe a funeral shroud.

If he squints, he can see through an advertisement for shaving cream to see a full page bounty on the other side.

$$60,000,000,000

WANTED ALIVE

That's a hell of a lot of zeroes. Wolfwood wonders if it's a typo. He squints harder, trying to read the words on the other side of "A shave smoother than a baby's bottom for only $$5.99!"

He lurches to a sitting position and rips the newspaper off his face.

"Oh, he's awake!" someone says, but Wolfwood isn't listening. His ears are ringing. He can feel his blood rushing in every vein. The room is spinning again. He thinks he might throw up the nothing that's in his stomach. He's probably going to pass out again.

He stares down at the bounty in his lap. At the face he almost knows better than his own, for how long he’d spent looking at it.

$$60,000,000,000

WANTED ALIVE

VASH THE STAMPEDE

The thin thread of hope becomes a noose.

The barkeep takes even more pity on him the second time, which makes Wolfwood feel like absolute shit. How pathetic does someone have to be before the grizzled owner of a tavern that only stays in business by swindling its patrons decides to give them a meal and a room and 20 minutes in the shower, all on the house?

It took several minutes to peel his eyes off the bounty and his body off the floor, but now he’s back at the bar with a plate of food and a fresh glass of water in front of him. The tavern is closed now; either he scared everyone off or he was out so long that it’s the middle of the night. It’s hard to tell — not much light was getting in through the boarded up windows even when he arrived.

He scarfs down the meal like a starving man, because he is, because he was dead for multiple days, and thanks God that he doesn't throw up again. Then he thanks the barkeep, and offers… something. 

"I don't have money," he says, because someone decided dead men don’t need double dollars in heaven, "but I have my hands. I can cook, or clean, or fix up anything that needs fixing—"

"Oh, none of that," Wilkerson tells him. "Just thank Miss Maybelline, she's the one who vouched for you."

Miss Maybelline turns out to be the young woman who let a patron stick his head down her ample bosom. "You seemed like you needed some help," she tells him, dishrag in hand as she wipes down the bar for the night. "We've all been through so much these last few years, and you never know what's going on in someone's life. It seemed the right thing to do to get you a meal and a soft place to sleep. You look like you haven't had either in a long time. Shower neither, obviously, with all that dirt on you. 'Sides, your laughing got old Mr. Fredricks to leave early for the night, so I appreciate it."

"Thank you," Wolfwood says, gazing at the woman in wonder. He thinks she almost looks like an angel came down to earth. She blushes at the prolonged stare and flicks the rag over her shoulder. 

"You should go get that shower quickly in case Mr. Wilkerson changes his mind, though."

Wolfwood scrambles off the barstool, suddenly embarrassed. "Thank you," he says again, and hurries up the narrow steps to the washroom, feeling a bit like someone is trying to remind him of the inherent goodness of humanity.

Or maybe trying to remind him of his own.

Wolfwood peeks his head into the room he'd been given. Pretty standard fare for a place like this. Less a guest room and more a place for customers to have a bit of privacy. The bed is looking mighty tempting, but he resists its pull. The promise of a shower is stronger. He just got over a multi-day nap, he can stand to wait a little longer before seeing what new nightmares that experience gave him. 

He sets the newspaper he’d still been clutching on the bed. It’s folded open to the bounty. He has half an urge to smooth out the wrinkles and tuck it in, which is the most absurd thought he’s had all day.

Shower first, then delusional hope, he tells himself.

The washroom down the hall is cramped as a coffin, but Wolfwood isn't about to complain, considering where he spent the last few nights. 

There's a mirror over the sink, moderately dusty and with only one crack in it — a long spindly line that dips about halfway down the glass before taking a sharp turn and disappearing into the frame. It means the image in the glass is mostly unobstructed.

Wolfwood stares at his reflection. Approximately six feet of dirt stares back at him. Somewhere under there is a man, but he's having trouble finding him. No wonder everyone took one look at him and immediately clocked that there were a few screws loose — he'd have done the same thing. There's very clear trails in the dirt from his various vomits and the drool. His hair is stiff and spikey and God, he needs to shut up before he thinks something stupid.

Wolfwood pulls his gaze from the mirror and gets to work.

He turns the calcified sink knobs until the water is gushing out with enough force to blast the dirt off his sunglasses when he sticks them under the jet of water. Flecks go spraying everywhere, but it's not like Wolfwood isn't a walking dust cloud anyway. Once his glasses are sparkling like a smile, he sets them aside and starts attempting to pry his dirt-stiffened clothes off.

He gives up almost immediately.

There's an easier way to do this. 

Wolfwood steps under the showerhead and turns it on. The water only comes in one lukewarm temperature, but it's a little slice of heaven all the same. He tips his head back into the stream of water and closes his eyes.

It all feels too good to be true. Not just being alive, but the meal and the bed and the shower and the kindness of strangers. It feels like at any moment, God or the devil or whoever let him go will realize that they made a mistake. It feels like this is all a trick or curse, some cosmic joke just to ice the shitty cake that was his life, and soon the other shoe will drop, or the rug will get pulled out from under him, and his heart will just stop beating all over again, but this time, there will be nobody around to bury him.

It’s terrifying, how fragile life is. How easily it can be taken away from you despite how badly you want to keep on living.

But even with all that, in this shower, with a meal in his belly and water streaming down his body and the promise of a soft bed soon to come, he feels almost more human than he’s ever felt before. 

Wolfwood can't be sure whether or not the water pouring down his cheeks is tears. It tastes a little salty, but that could just be the sand.

He stands there unmoving for several seconds before he remembers the cigarettes he'd stuffed in his pocket and frantically pulls them out before the water can ruin them. He reaches out of the shower and balances the box on the edge of the sink with a sigh of relief. 

His heart is pounding painfully, like it’s trying to scold him. He already wasted the whiskey. It would be a piss poor way to show gratitude to waste the cigarettes too. Same with the shower. This twenty minute gift ain't nearly enough time to stand around feeling sorry. 

Wolfwood scrubs from the top down, rubbing at his hair and face with bare hands until his skin starts to squeak before moving down to his neck. The water runs brown at his feet and it's not long before he's standing in a thick coating of mud that's reluctant to go down the drain. Once his clothes are thoroughly soaked, he peels them off, wrings out as much dirty water as he can, and flings them over the shower curtain rod.

It's obvious, now that most of the dirt is washed away, that these are the clothes he died in. There's scars in the fabric from every bullet hole he remembers and quite a few he doesn't.

Scars, and not gaping wounds, because someone had taken the time to sew them up. With careful, even stitches in red thread.

He screws his eyes shut, but it only makes the image in his head clearer. A lanky body hunched over his corpse, trying to fix what had been torn apart. Sacrificing the thread used to repair a beloved red coat for a different object of affection.

God, he thinks miserably. I almost would've preferred the option where I got a fresh set of clothes.

Once he’s got most of the filth rubbed away, he looks down at his naked body, watching the last remnants of his grave wash down his bare legs, not sure if he should feel relieved or horrified that everything looks normal. Not a single scratch on him, save for the blood still under his nails that he can't seem to excavate.

The water cuts out before he can trip into the rabbit holes of how and why and why him. He lets his body drip dry, then tries to decide whether to go through the miserable experience of putting on wet clothes or pray he can sneak back to his room naked without anyone seeing him.

He compromises by yanking his damp trousers back on, not bothering to button them because he’s just going to take them right off again anyway. He gathers the rest of his clothes in his arms, slips his sunglasses onto his forehead, and sticks the cigarette box between his teeth. And then he takes one last look at himself in the mirror.

A man stares back at him. Damp hair laying flat against his forehead, the unavoidable tan lines of a lifetime in the suns, calluses on his fingers, and muscles built to carry the weight of too many sins.

Wolfwood knows what corpses look like several days past their deathday, and they don’t look like this.

He could spend a lifetime contemplating how he got here. But contemplation is not the same as understanding, and understanding can only come if he focuses on the mission.

It doesn’t matter how he’s alive, not right now. What matters is the plan. The goal. Something to fight for. 

When he arrives back at his room, he dumps his belongings on the floor, peels his trousers back off, and flops gracelessly onto the bed, his beating heart pressed up against the newspaper, still folded open to a wide toothy smile that Wolfwood hopes is genuine, this time around. 

If he dreams, he doesn’t remember them when he wakes, a blessing greater than perhaps any he has received before. All he’s been left with upon waking is a vague sense of emptiness, like something is missing, but his thoughts are moving too slow to catch it. 

The room is midday bright, and it’s habit that moves him to smash his face into the pillow, blocking out the light. He feels warm, and almost content, and only a little bit parched. The bed is soft, or at least softer than the ground, and he doesn’t want to leave it. It isn’t often that he has a chance to sleep in — there’s almost always someone to run from or chase after. 

He shifts, trying to sink deeper into the mattress. Something papery crinkles under his bare chest. And then memories rush to fill the emptiness and Wolfwood remembers that he was recently dead.

He has some catching up to do.

Wolfwood extracts himself from the bed and straightens the sheets to the best of his ability before getting dressed and making his way downstairs with all his belongings: the clothes he died in, the box of cigarettes, and the bounty — ripped from the newspaper, carefully folded, and shoved deep into his pocket where that smile can't hurt him.

The tavern is less crowded than it was when he’d arrived — yesterday must have been Sunday, the day where the only businesses open would be the ones that never cared that God’s only son died for the sins they were committing. Which makes today Monday, and so all those sinful people who have money to spend are off making more of it. He’s glad; it means he doesn’t have to do a walk of shame in front of all the regulars who saw him laugh until he passed out.

He still thinks it’s a little funny — the whole second coming thing — but he’s clear headed enough now to recognize his hysteria for what it was.

He wonders if resurrection fucked Jesus up this much too.

Maybelline gives him a kind smile when he slides up to the bar. “You clean up good,” she says, looking him up and down approvingly. “Did you sleep well?”

“Like the dead,” he replies, with a smile of his own. “Hey, you got a lighter around here? I seem to have lost mine and I could really use a smoke.”

Maybelline purses her lips in thought. “I’m sure we do. Let me go check in the kitchen.”

Wolfwood watches her go and wonders what the hell he was thinking yesterday, about angels. Her hair's more mousy than golden and her smile reaches the corner of her eyes with ease. And they aren’t even a shade of impossible blue.

One look at that bounty and he’s already waxing poetic. He needs to get a grip.

Maybelline returns with a box of matches. She apologizes, but he thanks her more profusely for this gift than he had for everything the night before. He sticks the unlit cigarette from the day before between his teeth, strikes a match, and relaxes as the smoke hits his lungs. The cigarette is stale, but it’s infinitely better than breathing dirt. He hadn’t realized how on edge he’d been until the nicotine works its magic. Apparently not even being dead could cure him of his addiction.

By the time his cigarette burns down to the filter, he’s starting to feel like himself again. He’s not sure whether that’s a good thing or not, to be Nicholas D. Wolfwood, after everything that man did, but it resolidifies his next move. 

A plan. A goal. Something to fight for.

He snuffs out the cigarette stub in the ashtray and gets to his feet. “Thank you again, Miss Maybelline. And tell Wilkerson thanks from me as well. You two did me a real kindness, and I won’t forget that.”

“Leaving so soon?” she asks, a hint of disappointment in her voice.

“Places to be, people to see,” he says. “You know how it is.”

What he doesn’t say is that he feels like he’s going to explode, just sitting around doing nothing while the noose of hope tightens around his neck. It’s gonna kill him a second time if he doesn’t find something more solid than a bounty to stand on.

But still, he waits a few more minutes while Maybelline gathers a bag of food to foist on him — “They’re just leftovers,” she insists when he tries to protest. “Would’ve been thrown out soon enough anyway.”

He hesitates before stepping outside. “One last favor,” he says, shifting the bag of food onto his hip — Leftovers, my ass, this thing weighs more than I do — and pulling the bounty out of his pocket to show her. “Could ya tell me anything about this Humanoid Typhoon guy? Has he been seen anywhere near here?”

Maybelline’s brows furrow. “You a bounty hunter or something?”

“Or something.”

“Wish I could help you, but hardly nobody’s seen hide or hair of him since…” She trails off, brows furrowed in thought. “Well, even before the Ark fell apart he was more a legend than anything else, right? Always destroyin’ some poor town and vanishing again…”

Wolfwood’s heart skips a beat. The Ark crashed? That’s good news, maybe. Or very bad news. But it’s news. It’s something.

Gotta get there, gotta catch up, gotta tell him—

Wolfwood swallows his hope and asks, “And where was that, again?”

Maybelline looks at him like he’s lost his mind. “The Ark? Right over Octovern? Have you been sleeping under a rock or something?”

“Or something,” Wolfwood says again, voice strained. “Sorry, I’m not too great with directions. Couldn’t find my way out of a paper bag some days!” He forces out a laugh. It's too loud, but Maybelline doesn’t press further.

"Well then, I wish you luck, Mister…"

"Wolfwood. Nicholas D. Wolfwood." He refolds the bounty and returns it to his pocket, then holds out his hand. Maybelline shakes it. 

"Mr. Wolfwood, then. And if you find what you’re looking for, come back here and spend a little of that money on us, all right?”

Wolfwood tries not to sound too desperate when he responds, “If I find what I’m looking for, I’ll spend a hell of a lot more than just a little, promise.”

Then he steps outside, feeling a little more secure in his plan (get information), and, he hopes, one step closer to that something he's fighting for.

Chapter Text

Wolfwood hadn’t been paying much attention when he’d stumbled into December the day before, hungover and half dead as he was. He’d let muscle memory guide his steps through the streets he’d once run down as a kid, only paying enough attention to confirm that the people he passed on those streets weren’t resurrected ghosts like himself.

Now that he’s more aware of his surroundings, it’s impossible to ignore the clear evidence of destruction from those few days of chaos before the Ark’s arrival. There are holes in nearly every wall, boarded up with whatever their owners had on hand. Some buildings have been obliterated entirely, and their skeletons still stand in memoriam. Sand crunches under his feet like it’s made of shattered glass.

The orphanage wasn't the only casualty of war. 

But unlike the orphanage, here in town there is evidence of recovery.

Maybe all humans are this way, but Wolfwood thinks fondly that something about those who landed here must be built differently. Generations of recycling and repurposing every scrap leaves scars on the planet and its people in equal measure, but both December and its citizens have learned to bounce back quickly. He can't help but be proud of them.

It’s almost enough to make him revisit the orphanage, but reason stays his hand. There’s nothing to find there but echoes of the death he brought to their doorstep. If they’re alive — they have to be alive, otherwise what was it all for — then they didn’t return to that broken home. He can only hope, despite the danger of hoping, that they found peace and safety somewhere, far away from the troubles of the world.

Maybe one day, life will return to the orphanage. Maybe one day, if he’s forgiven, Wolfwood will be the one to bring them home, shepherd for a lost flock. But not yet. There’s something else he needs to find first.

Answers.

His pool of information is shallow at best. Something happened to the Ark. Something that put Knives’ imminent rains of destruction on hold. Whatever it was, it happened in Octovern, and it was enough to reinstate the bounty in his pocket, and it had to have happened in the short span of time between death and life.

At least three days means the answers can't have run too far.

There's really only one thing to do. Wolfwood heads towards the outskirts of December, where the transit station sits a few dozen yars from the nearest building like a kid who got kicked out of the house and is sulking by the door.

The station is deserted, which isn’t a good sign. He’d been hoping to talk his way into a part time steamer job and get to Octovern without having to hitch a ride or, God-forbid, walk, but maybe with everything that’s been going on it’s too soon for the steamers and buses to be up and running. 

That, or he just missed it.

There’s a bulletin board on the platform, and if nothing else, it might have the schedule posted. Wouldn't hurt to check.

He sets his food bag down on the edge of the raised platform and climbs onto it. There’s a little overhang over the bulletin board, creating just enough shade for Wolfwood to squeeze into.

He scans the sun bleached schedule for today’s date. His eyes catch on the year listed along the top, but quickly pass over it as his gaze drops down towards the end of June.

And then his heart seizes.

He looks back at the top of the calendar, thinking maybe he misread it.

He didn’t.

He quickly reads over every other document posted to the board, in case it was a typo.

It wasn’t.

His heart restarts, racing at lethal speed. His vision fuzzes around the edges. He can’t seem to get enough air, no matter how hard his chest heaves. It feels like he’s dying all over again.

It wasn’t three days.

It was a year and three days.

Wolfwood sinks to the ground and rests his head on his knees, trying to manually force his lungs to work.

Breathe in.

A year.

Breathe out.

He’d been dead for a year.

Breathe in.

How was he not worm food?

Breathe out.

How is he alive?

Breathe in.

Why is he alive?

Breathe out.

He lifts his head.

Breathe in.

Breathe out.

He takes a few more shuddering breaths. Waits for his hands to stop vibrating. Lights a cigarette with one of Maybelline’s matches. Nearly chokes on the smoke because his lungs are still too in shock to work properly.

A few things are making a stupid amount of sense now.

December was not a city miraculously three days past an apocalyptic end. Nobody could bounce back that quick.

Not even Wolfwood, apparently. 

Second coming of Jesus? Yeah right. Of course I needed more time to cook before rising, with the weight of my sins.

He’s realizing, belatedly, that maybe he should have actually read that damn newspaper, instead of passing out at the month and day before getting to the year. He should have read it, instead of tearing out the bounty and leaving the rest at the tavern. He should have read it, instead of being so preoccupied with trying to avoid that damn smile that he hadn’t spared a thought to investigate further.

But he'd thought three days meant there was time to catch up. He thought three days meant that there was still time to return a favor. Three days could’ve been the result of whatever modifications the Eye had made to him. He could’ve explained it away as the serum taking a bit more time than usual to kick in. 

But a year?

That ain't natural. That ain't human .

He pulls the bounty out of his pocket and unfolds it slowly, hands still shaking.

With the light of day on it, it’s impossible to keep ignoring the details that Wolfwood hadn’t wanted to contemplate when he’d first seen it.

The man in the photo grins up at him. There’s a beauty mark under his left eye. His spiky hair is shaded in dark from root to tip.

Not a trace of angelic gold in sight.

A sharp stab of panic nearly tears Wolfwood’s heart open a second time. “Where the hell are you,” he asks the picture. “And what happened after—”

His grip on the bounty tightens. He takes several more deep breaths and forces himself to relax before he can crumple the paper beyond repair. 

And then Wolfwood reads the fine print.

Instated by the Earth Federation. All inquiries and information should be directed to—

Octovern.

A plan. A goal. Something to fight for.

This doesn’t change his mission, only makes it more important. Knives’ Ark crashed, and humanity is still crawling on the surface of this planet like cockroaches, but the orphanage is empty and there’s a $60,000,000,000 bounty issued by the Earth Federation in his hand and that bounty's hair is a deathly shade of black and he needs answers like he needs oxygen.

Breathe in.

Breathe out.

No more wasting time.

Octovern is still his best bet for information. Maybelline said sightings had been scarce since whatever happened to the Ark, which seemed to imply involvement. The Earth Federation's interest also seems to imply it. So surely someone there would've seen something, or heard something, or… or something, right?

If the schedule posted at the station is to be believed, the next sand steamer isn’t coming until next week.

Wolfwood doesn’t have a week. A week is more than enough time to drive yourself mad, to tangle yourself in hope or drown in doubt. But he doesn’t have money for the more regular buses, and he doesn’t particularly want to start this new life by racking up sins to get some. He could hang around December, try asking around for information, hope he scrounges up enough loose change for a bus ticket, and rely on the continued generosity of strangers even more than he already has. Or…

Octovern is a long walk from December, but he’s pretty sure he can make it there in less than a week if he really hauls ass.

But first, if he's going to trek across the desert, there's a piece of unfinished business to attend to before he leaves.

It’s instinctual, the way his body almost refuses to return to its grave. A visceral plea for mercy that he ruthlessly ignores.

But he’s had a lifetime of forcing himself into bad decisions for the sake of someone else; what’s one more?

And so Wolfwood finds himself once again standing at the foot of his grave. He stares at the gravestone and the cross and tries not to feel sick.

He fails.

This time, as he looks at the grave, at his grave, he can't stop himself from imagining the act of its creation. It would have started with someone sliding his eyes shut. Cradling his lifeless body in their arms as they lift him off a couch and carry him away from the scene of his death. He knows through experience the hours it would have taken to dig a proper grave, daylight slipping into night as his body cooled. And then, gently placed in that hole, limbs neatly arranged, arms crossed over his chest. 

He can’t stop himself from wondering if there was a final goodbye before his body was slowly consumed by dirt. If the streaks of blood on the edge of the stone weren’t just from him, but from someone dragging it barehanded across the ground.

The images are so cruelly clear in his mind. It's all too easy to replace the many faceless victims of violence he'd encountered over the years with himself.

None of them had been buried with so large a headstone, though.

The wave of guilt that washes over him is unbearable and brutal. He collapses next to the stone and rests a hand over the cross. The grit of windblown dirt shifts under his palm and his stomach lurches, remembering the taste of it.

I’m sorry.

I'm sorry I made you do all that. 

I’m sorry I didn’t ask for help.

I'm sorry I left you alone.

I'm so damn sorry.

Wolfwood fights to not drown in guilt, but what else is he supposed to feel? He’d laid down there for a year. Abandoned his duty for a year. 

He looks up at the orphanage, still empty a year after he saved it. So much can happen in a year. So many people could have died, without Wolfwood there to protect them. So much can change. And here Wolfwood is, unchanged. Not rotting.

Hope may be a noose, but doubt is an even quicker death. Doubt is putting a gun to your own head and pulling the trigger. Hadn’t he been taught that a quick death was mercy?

So why does uncertainty coil in his stomach like slow acting poison?

Part of him wishes he could just quit. Wishes he could finally lay down this cross he’s carried like a burden, put it all behind him, leave it in the past. Maybe even bury the Punisher in the same grave it’s standing vigil over. Start fresh. Get a new name, a new purpose, a new life. Never fire another bullet again. Leave the bad memories in the dirt. Let anyone who grieved him move on.

But this is No Man's Land, and there is no quiet life unless you fight for it. This planet's people are scarred. Far too many of them lash out like feral animals, even at gentle touches. Wolfwood knows. He used to be one of them.

You cannot run from gunsmoke when it is in the air you breathe. 

But someone taught him that it was possible to wield a gun for love and peace. To use it to save and protect, and not to punish and kill. A different kind of mercy than the one Wolfwood had delivered. 

Wolfwood died believing in that promise. Now, he’s been given a chance to try living and believing it too.

He has to believe that he’s alive for a reason. He can’t just run and hide like a coward. Can’t just let someone who loved him enough to bury him walk through this world alone.

So it's with resignation that Wolfwood digs the base of his loyal weapon out of the hard packed earth.

The Punisher is in remarkably good shape, a testament to the care taken to properly wrap its burial shroud. It's the same breed of care that was given to Wolfwood’s flesh and blood body. An adherence to the proper way of things that only comes from experience. The straps are snug and the edges of the wrap have been tucked in tight the way one might a baby for sleep. Wolfwood never allowed anyone else to wrap the Punisher, but he supposes after enough time watching, you pick a few things up.

When he slips a finger between the belts to loosen them, he can't help feeling like he's disturbing something that should've been left to rust.

And it’s while he unwraps the Punisher's cold, lifeless body that a memory springs to mind.

They’d run for iles that day, trying to put distance between themselves and the latest angry mob. Long after their pursuers had been left in the dust, they finally stopped to rest at an abandoned shack built of rusted, corrugated metal. It was nestled along a lumpy outcropping of desert stone that looked just as rusty. There was a well pump nearby, which explained why there was a shack in the middle of bumfuck nowhere, but no water rose to the surface when they tested it, which explained why the shack had been abandoned.

And there was a body, half of it picked so clean to the bone that Wolfwood could see where the worms had tried burrowing in search of marrow.

Wolfwood had wanted to leave right away, still on edge and half-expecting the mob to turn up, having decided the reward was worth the risk.

“And just leave this poor guy here?”

“Yeah? Ain’t like he’s around to care,” Wolfwood had said, maybe a little callously, but sue him, they’d had a close call back there, and his heart was in his throat thinking of how many bullets would’ve hit their mark if he hadn’t gotten the Punisher’s bulk between them and their target.

“If you want to keep going you can, but I’m going to bury him. I’ll catch up.”

And so Wolfwood had stayed. Of course he'd stayed. What other choice was there? And because two hands made light work and they didn’t have time to dawdle, he even helped dig a shallow grave for a stranger who may not have even deserved the courtesy. There had to be a reason why he’d been left to rot, after all, why there’d been nobody around to keep him from being eaten.

This’ll be me, one day, he’d thought as they lifted the carcass into the hole. After all is said and done, I won’t deserve a proper grave either.

“Doesn’t it feel a little sad?”

Wolfwood shook away the voice that had taken to plaguing him worse the longer he walked side by side with the man he was ordained to betray. “What?”

“It just doesn’t feel right, putting him in the dirt like this. I wish I could’ve built him a coffin, or at least wrapped him up so the worms can't do worse than they've already done. Nobody deserves this kind of end.”

“Maybe this guy was a naturalist, and he'd prefer his body go to the worms instead of preserved for God.”

“Hmm.”

And that kind of noncommittal response just pissed Wolfwood off.

“Maybe guys like that have the right idea of it,” Wolfwood continued. “We humans are nothing more than animals anyway, when you get down to it. At least my body would be of use to something besides killing. If I ever kick the bucket, don’t bother putting my body in a box. And after everything that's been done to it, it'd almost be a relief to rot like the rest of–”  

“Don't joke like that, Wolfwood.”

He clenched his fists. There was no use saying it wasn't a joke, when they both knew it wasn't. He'd gotten carried away, not even sure who he was trying to convince anymore. He'd forced both of them to confront Wolfwood’s worthiness. It was a bad habit he kept tripping into; he knew by then that it wouldn't change either of their minds.

Wolfwood jammed his hands into his pockets. One finger caught the edge of a coin. Guilt welled up in him like blood from a wound. He covered it up by kicking the pile of loose dirt they’d piled up into the grave. 

“Or maybe he was a piece of shit, and doesn't deserve your time and effort.”

His companion gave him a long, disappointed look, then let out a sigh. “I suppose there's no use arguing. Not like we'll ever be able to know this guy's wishes anyway.”

“Exactly. Don't beat yourself up about it,” Wolfwood said, punctuating the words with stomps of his shoes to pack down the dirt. “You already do that too much anyway,” he grumbled.

And his friend, his dear friend who loves all humans more than they deserve and Wolfwood most of all, just gave him a sad smile and said, “You do to, you know.”

He'd forgotten that conversation until now. It had just been another in a long line of their typical difference of opinions, forgotten by the end of the day in favor of more important things: who was covering the tab, who got the bed, whether or not they should've just shot their pursuers and be done with it.

But maybe someone had remembered. Remembered, and thought to care what Wolfwood would have wanted. Remembered, and buried Wolfwood, not in a box, or even wrapped in a bedsheet, but so the worms could feast on his bones.

Except the worms hadn't gotten to him, had they.

He pulls the wanted poster out of his pocket again, scrutinizing the face depicted there for any hint of an explanation, but none comes. Just more questions and doubts, swarming inside his head, gnawing at his guts.

Wolfwood is able to so clearly picture the act of burying him, but for the life of him he can't untangle whatever thoughts were in the mind of his undertaker while it happened. And he can’t figure out how any of it explains his current state of existence, or if any of it is even connected at all.

Whose hand was it that pulled his soul out of death's grasp? Who does he have to thank — or blame — for his life?

Answers can't come until he finds them. He won't find them here.

A plan. A goal. Something to fight for.

And the reason he'd returned here, when he'd wanted to avoid it; if he's going to wander the sands of this planet again, he's going to need something to fight with. 

He cracks open a panel to reveal the Punisher's innards and reaches inside. Fingers close around what he came looking for, assuming an all too familiar position. Finger on the trigger and you'll always fire first. Always fire first and you'll stay alive another day.

If unwrapping the Punisher and extracting one of the handguns nestled inside feels a like robbing a corpse, then rewrapping the Punisher again feels a lot like preparing a body for burial. 

Let the Punisher’s dying act be saving the orphanage, he thinks. Both the gun and the man.

When Wolfwood slides the base of the cross back into the hole he pulled it from, it is with a heavy sense of finality. What stands here now is Nicholas D. Wolfwood, lighter without the burden of punishment on his shoulders.

For love and peace, he promises himself, before tucking the handgun and extra ammunition into his bag of food. He hefts the bag into his arms. It’s not quite so heavy after all. Not even close to the weight he carried for most of his life.

He's grateful for Maybelline’s abundant kindness, because it means he doesn't have to step foot in the orphanage in search of whatever food hasn't spoiled. He doesn't have to retrace his last steps in reverse, from grave to couch, from couch to liquor cabinet.

He heads west, instead. Away from the setting suns. Away from home.

A plan. A goal. Something to fight for.

It’s becoming more than just a mantra. 

It’s becoming a prayer.

Chapter Text

Wolfwood is only a few steps from home, but he already misses his bike fiercely. There’s too much sand in his shoes, and it’s rubbing his skin raw because of course this planet won’t let any part of his newly untainted body remain untainted for long. Octovern isn't even a suggestion on the horizon yet, and he dreads what shape his body will be in when he arrives.

But maybe God is real and maybe He is still watching, because Wolfwood trips over Angelina like a lifeline on his way off the property.

He spits sand out of his mouth before the taste of it can dig up the all too recent memories of his rebirth, and rubs at his ankle, which had gotten caught in the frame. It's not twisted or broken, but he's gonna have a hell of a bruise.

The bike had been half buried in dirt and rubble, easily missed unless you walked right on top of her grave, which is exactly what Wolfwood did. He digs her the rest of the way out of the ground and brushes her clean with reverence. The headlight is dusty and cracked, and the leather satchels have been torn open, what meager food he’d left in them picked clean by scavengers. But she’s in one piece. The key is even still in the ignition.

“Are you real or am I already hallucinating?” he asks her. Being a motorcycle, Angelina does not respond. So probably not a desert induced hallucination, then. Wolfwood shakes her until dirt stops pouring from her crevices, walks her to flatter ground, then turns the key. Angelina purrs to life.

It’s the most beautiful sound he’s heard since waking from death.

"Oh Angelina, darling, love of my life, I could kiss you." 

So he does.

And if he finds himself wishing his lips were met with something softer and sweeter than her dusty metal exterior, that’s nobody’s business but his own.

A few hours out of December, Wolfwood hears the worst sound he’s heard since waking from death: Angelina sputtering and dying, expelling a concerning amount of noxious fumes in her death throes.

He hadn’t planned on stopping until he reached Octovern, but he cuts his losses and what's left of the engine, rolling to a stop. He leans forward against the handlebars and digs into Maybelline’s bag of food, which had been precariously seated in his lap as he drove.

You need to slow down and think first, he chides himself as he bites into some thomas jerky. Shoulda checked to see Angelina was in good condition before settin’ off. It’d be real embarassin’ to die like this, after everything. 

It’s hard to avoid the trap of comparing this to the last few times his ride broke down in the middle of the desert.

At least this time, it’s not the middle of the day, with hell blazing down from above. And he’s got a full canteen of water, which is a vast improvement over the alternative. But there’s no sidecar companion to soothe his loneliness, and he’s not holding out hope for a miraculous rescue, with only the light of the moons and stars to see by. No chance someone will spot him from a passing bus unless they drive right over him. 

The orbits have only brought two waning crescents out tonight, which is barely even enough for Wolfwood's enhanced eyes to work with, so he’ll have to assess Angelina’s condition in the morning. He hopes it's an easy fix. He's not keen on leaving her behind, but the thought of walking a motorcycle the rest of the way to Octovern is not a pleasant one. But sometimes choices have to be made. Sometimes you have to leave something behind to gain something else.

Stopping like this feels a little bit like torture. His body wants to stay in motion, but this halt in momentum has thrown him off. His mind feels scraped raw, his heart feels strangled, and when he looks up at the moons, and sees a sliver of the crater in the fifth's face, it makes something in his soul howl like a wounded animal.

He lights a cigarette and tries to make himself comfortable, but the sand is cooling and sucking away his body heat, and there’s a firm breeze kicking sand into his face.

He only gets through two cigarettes before his cold fingers protest the open air. He decides to shove his hands into his pants in lieu of a third. He rubs his fingers against the folded up bounty, soothing himself with the action. It's not nicotine, but it helps, for a time. It’s physical evidence of his plan, his goal, his something to fight for. 

But as he looks up at the stars, he can't help wondering which one of those specks of light is Earth’s Sun. And he can't help wondering even more why the Earth Federation Army is listed at the bottom of the bounty in his grasp.

He closes his eyes, fighting against the uncertainty like quicksand, and only dooming himself more with the effort. It’s not long before he feels wrung out and exhausted, the whiplash of emotions finally taking their price from his body, mind, and soul.

Sleeping out in the open isn’t ideal, but he might as well get some shuteye, if he can. 

If the nightmares he'd so far avoided remain docile.

He’s lost in an endless wasteland, ghosts in the corners of his eyes and always just out of reach, his feet sinking deeper into the sand with every step, his voice broken and desperate as he calls out for—  

Wolfwood wakes to someone nudging him with their boot.

Years of survival instinct take over, and he lurches to his feet, reaching instinctively for the Punisher. But the Punisher has been laid to rest, and all his fingers touch is sand. 

The man who woke Wolfwood takes a quick step back in surprise. "Thought ya were a dead man," he says, apologetic. 

Wolfwood's heart is beating too fast for him to form words. He takes a second to assess the situation. 

The first sun has half-risen, and there's a golden band of light bleeding along the span of the horizon, fading up into light blue, then dark blue high above their heads.

There's a truck parked a few yars away, engine running. The hum vibrates the air. He must have been even more tired than he thought, if he slept through its approach. Wolfwood doesn't see any other passengers inside, but it looks like there’s a lot of equipment in the back.

The man is older, but not old, and everything about him is gruff and weathered, including his thick mustache. If he has a gun on his person, it’s not a big one.

Wolfwood's food bag — and the gun inside it — are just within reach, but he hopes he doesn't need to test his new for love and peace philosophy so soon.

“You take naps in the middle of nowhere often?”

“Bike broke down,” Wolfwood says, gesturing to Angelina.

“Where’re ya headed?” the man asks, reaching out a hand to help Wolfwood to his feet.

"Octovern."

“Helluva coincidence, I’m headed that way too. Why don’t ya load your bike up — I’ve got straps to tie it to the roof.”

Wolfwood’s not about to look a gift thomas in the mouth, so he nods. 

“You headed there for the celebration?” the man asks once they’re on the road. He didn’t offer his name, and Wolfwood didn’t ask. A classic gentleman’s agreement.

“Celebration?” Wolfwood asks, stupidly.

The man lifts a bushy eyebrow. “The suns gettin’ to ya?”

“Oh, right, of course. The celebration.”

Wolfwood hasn’t the faintest clue what “the celebration” is, but he has a dim hope and enough common sense not to say anything that would reveal he missed a few national headlines due to being dead for a year.

“Nah,” Wolfwood says, just in case this celebration is for something cultish that he shouldn’t admit to being a part of. He’s tired of cults. “I’ve got other business.”

“Lucky you. Half the reporters on the planet are gonna be there, which means we’re all gonna be fighting for scraps.”

“Hmm,” Wolfwood hums noncommittally, glad he didn’t admit he hasn’t been keeping up with the news in front of someone who’s made the news their life’s work.

“What do you do for work?” the man asks.

“Me? I’m a–” Wolfwood halts himself before the automatic answer of priest can spill from his lying lips. “I’m between jobs, at the moment,” he finally says.

“Well, if you’re lookin’ for a job, we’re hiring. Recently lost a couple of our best girls to NMLBC, and we're sorely hurting for it.”

“I’m not cut out for that sort of thing,” Wolfwood says, despite having never once considered it. He’s probably not cut out for it anyway; all he’s ever known is the feel of a trigger under his finger. He thinks again of the gun in his bag, nestled between his feet on the floor. He could reach for it and fire a bullet in two heartbeats. Undoubtedly faster than the man in the driver’s seat could react.

It's possible smoking isn’t the only bad habit that dying didn’t cure.

For love and peace, this time, he reminds himself.

“Fair enough,” the man says. “Pay’s shit anyway.”

The man turns a knob on the radio, and what had been low static becomes the tail end of a news report. 

"—the Stampede remains at large, despite the largest bounty this planet has seen. He is wanted for questioning in the events of last year. Earth Federation authorities remind citizens that the man in question is dangerous, and to proceed with caution. We turn now to the weather—"

"Ah, damn the weather," the man grumbles. "I don't know why they bother, it's always the same." He flicks a different button, leisurely scrolling through the limited station selection before finally settling on slightly staticy jazz.

Wolfwood hasn't breathed since he heard the news.

"You okay there?" the man asks.

Wolfwood blinks a few times, coming back to himself, and takes in a shaky breath. "Yeah, just thinking about— about that Stampede fella."

“You after the bounty?”

Wolfwood can feel said bounty where it's tucked safely in his pocket. “No,” he says. Not the money, anyway.

“Good. Waste of time, if you ask me. The man’s gotta be dead by now anyway. I’d get crucified as a conspiracy theorist if I dragged my personal beliefs into my reporting, but this guy’s been causing trouble since what, Lost July? And nobody’s caught him? It ain’t that hard to just—” the man mimes holding a gun and pulling the trigger. 

Wolfwood feels sick.

The man continues, “Of course, now, they're asking for the two of ‘em alive. You didn’t hear this from me, but I think those hoity-toity Earth folks just want us all scrambling in the sand so that they can swoop in and assert control while we’re all distracted playing the hero.”

The man pauses, as if expecting Wolfwood to add his own commentary, but he’s caught on ‘the two of them’ like a shirt caught on a rusty nail. There’s not many people you could put on the same level as the Humanoid Typhoon, and that’s concerning. If Millions Knives is also alive, then what the hell has he been doing this last year? And if he’s dead, why did the Earth Federation issue a bounty?

The extra confirmation that Earth's fleet did arrive after all isn't nearly as comforting as he thought it would be a lifetime ago, when they'd first celebrated the news. None of Wolfwood's limited info is lining up. In his mind, Earth was coming to provide aid, not hunt down the only man standing between humanity and extinction.

"It makes sense,” Wolfwood says carefully. “With two bounties that large and resources from Earth, we could terraform the planet.”

The man nods. “They don’t like us bein’ all independent, so they’re holdin’ us hostage.”

Wolfwood wonders if it’s true. If the people from Earth really are just using the legend of the Humanoid Typhoon to their advantage. Maybelline said hardly anyone has seen him since the Ark crashed, but Wolfwood doesn’t know if that happened a day after he died or a day before he resurrected. He doesn’t know how long after he died that this new bounty was issued, or even if it was before or after the crash. He doesn’t know anything.

They could just be using the "wanted for questioning" line to prevent people from dragging in lookalikes. Sit back, let the starved people of this hunk of dirt kill themselves searching for a legend that no longer exists, then frame yourselves as the clear headed leadership this planet sorely needs.

It makes sense.

It makes too much sense. 

Wolfwood pulls his cigarettes from his pocket with trembling hands. "Do you mind if I…"

“This is a rental,” the man says with obvious regret. “Believe me, I wish I could say yes. I’ve got these though, if it’ll help.”

The man fishes around under his seat and holds out a lollipop. Wolfwood accepts gratefully. Anything to keep him distracted from all the fears he’s been ignoring since waking up six feet under.

The sweetness of the candy cuts through his thoughts like a knife. He swirls the stick between his fingers and looks out the window and tries not to think too hard about the bounty in his pocket that may or may not be a lie.

The ruins of the Ark become visible long before the rest of Octovern does.

Wolfwood sits up in his seat and leans forward. The Ark is hazy with distance, but immediately recognizable. Its skeleton lies commingled with the ship that gave birth to Octovern, both of them jagged and torn open like ribcages.

His teeth tighten around the lollipop stem he’s been chewing on for the last hour.

“Ever been to the crash site?” the man asks casually.

Wolfwood hasn’t. But he’s been in it pre- crash, and it’s not a place he ever wanted or expected to return to. Thinking of everything that happened on that ship fills him with hot anger and nausea in equal measure. But he shakes his head — it’s not like he can explain that he used to be Millions Knives’ worst employee of the century.

"Have you?"

"Once. Gave me nightmares. If you like feeling ghosts watching you I suppose it'd be a good time."

"Could you drop me off there?"

The man stares ahead in silence for a few seconds before grunting. "Your funeral, I guess."

To get to the Ark, they have to drive around the perimeter of what Wolfwood learns is called a plant dome .

The plants that were merged with Knives and the Ark are something Wolfwood hadn't considered as a factor in whatever the hell happened after he died, but in hindsight, maybe he should have. 

The man points out their new home and calls it an “unsightly marvel of engineering,” before slipping into a tirade that must mean he feels comfortable confessing his thoughts to Wolfwood, now that he knows he's not an Earth Federation sympathizer. Or perhaps there’s still something of a priest left in him after all, something that lets strangers know they can trust him with their truths.

What Wolfwood gleans from their one-sided conversation is this:

The Ark didn't so much crash as it did disintegrate . 

Octovern is now home to more plants than any other city, and their economy is booming because of it.

Many of the people who fled to Octovern have yet to return to their home cities, which is only exacerbating instability elsewhere on the planet.

They have Earth to thank for all this, as they helped erect the plant dome shortly after landing, saving the lives of many plants, but effectively creating a monopoly.

And lastly, there appears to be an endless list of derogatory nicknames for the Earth Federation's forces. Wolfwood's kind of impressed, as a lover of evocative nicknames himself.

Wolfwood's timeline of events is becoming more specific, but not any more decipherable.

“Watch your step while you’re out here,” the man warns when he finally drops Wolfwood off and helps him retrieve Angelina from the roof. “I heard there's still some remnants from the plants scattered about like land mines.” He shudders, like he's remembering a bad dream. “Not sure about you, but I could go the rest of my life and still never shake the feelings of that day. Wouldn't wanna relive that even if you paid me.” He claps Wolfwood on the shoulder. “Take care of yourself, ya hear? Don't want my next article to be about some poor idiot in a dirty suit dying ‘cause he got startled and tripped organs first into some rebar.”

And with that cryptic and ominous final message, he climbs back into his truck and drives away.

Standing alone in the shadow of the Ark, Wolfwood is suddenly very glad that he decided to pick up a gun again, bad habit be damned.

He understands now what the man meant by ghosts. The hollow corpse of the Ark echoes with the absence of life, like those few seconds between Wolfwood’s heart stopping and his brain dying. There’s no pervasive hum of the ship’s heartbeat — the plants — to fill the silence, and without them, the ruins are an empty husk on its last breath.

The plants may be in their shiny new dome, but Wolfwood can’t help but feel he’s being witnessed anyway. He walks Angelina to a shady spot just under an overhang and pulls his handgun out of his food bag.

It's not that he believes there's enemies here to shoot — the chain link fence and warning signs mean someone official has combed through the crash site — but he certainly feels a lot more comfortable with a weapon in hand.

Wolfwood picks his way through the wreckage, not entirely sure what he's even doing here. He should have gone into Octovern first, gotten some information, and then returned to the Ark, if he ever returned at all. He’s not optimistic enough to think he's going to find any answers here, or anything else he's looking for. The ruins of the Ark can't tell him how they became ruins, or what happened to the people who used to fly around on this thing.

Pieces of shit, every one of them, he thinks as he flips over a metal wall panel. I hope they’re all deader than I am.

Even Razlo?

Even Livio?

And that’s a complicated bag of worms he doesn’t know how to tackle yet.

A year is a long time. He doesn’t know where to even begin looking for Livio. He doesn’t know if he’s even alive. And even if he is, he doesn’t know if Livio is still Livio. Or if Livio even wants to see him, after everything. Maybe he's moved on, and Wolfwood's reemergence in his life would just dredge up bad memories.

It has been easier to focus on what he knows for certain exists. The grave and his favorite cigarettes and the red stitches in his suit are all real. The bounty for $$60,000,000,000 in his pocket is real too. It means that someone is at least pretending that the subject is alive, which is more than he knows about Livio or anyone else.

Wolfwood descends deeper into the Ark's depths, stepping over bright caution tape to enter a part of the wreckage that seems untouched by man. There are no footprints in the layers of sand and dust coating everything. Scant light squeezes through cracks and gaps in the rubble, just enough to make the swirling dust visible as he disturbs this graveyard of a ship.

Wolfwood kicks his foot through some debris. Something metal and shiny goes skittering across the ground.

Curious, Wolfwood crouches in front of it. Closer inspection reveals that it's the remains of a small container. Most of it has been obliterated by what looks like a gunshot, but it’s still identifiable.

Wolfwood's heart rate picks up.

The metal is warped and jagged. He has to pry open the ruined metal lid to get at the insides. His shaky fingers fumble with the lid, and one finger catches on a sharp edge, pricking his skin and drawing blood.

And then it's open.

Most of the contents had been expelled by the bullet, but there's still one coin inside — two broken halves of one coin, to be precise. 

His mind swirls, hope and doubt warring like rabid animals. His heart pounds a strangled rhythm in his chest. 

He was here.

He was here.

He was here.

He was here.

He was here

He was here.

Wolfwood picks up the two halves of the last remaining coin. Blood smears across its surface, obscuring the details. He clenches it in his fist, hiding it from view.

Wolfwood doesn’t need to look at it to know that this is the coin that he carried half of like a knife behind his back. He doesn't need to look at it to know the other half was carried by a man who’d walked into that knife with open arms.

He spent enough time with that coin's weight in his pocket, digging the flesh of his fingertips into the edges, to know every molecule of its surface. Where a real priest might carry a rosary, Wolfwood walked around with that coin in his pocket, counting the ridges like beads on a string, praying for forgiveness with each brush of his fingers against the metal.

When Wolfwood died, there were still a few more coins out in the world, eager to wreak havoc in the hopes of being reunited with their other halves.

Were all the coins retrieved? What tragic horrors occurred in the process? How many more people died because he couldn’t pull the trigger when it mattered most?

A low whine escapes Wolfwood’s throat. He presses his clenched fist to his forehead. If Wolfwood lived and he didn’t…

Pull yourself together. Breathe.

But Wolfwood’s not supposed to be breathing at all. The coin halves meant that someone had to die, and Wolfwood was the one that ended up dead. He’d accepted that outcome long before his actual dying breath. 

But he's not dead anymore, is he?

Maybe there is a ghost watching him after all.

That thought — that fear — is what spurs him into action. He shoves the coin deep into his pocket and lurches to his feet.

It's as desperate as the fight against his burial. He tears through the wreckage like he's tearing through hell itself. There’s a tightness in his chest that has nothing to do with dirt, and only one thing can release the pressure.

He can’t help the onslaught of images his mind produces as he turns over rubble and wreckage. Blond hair turned black. A red coat turned red with blood. Blue eyes turned empty and lifeless.

Wolfwood, only alive so that he can bury a loved one the same way that loved one buried him. 

He finds the body, eventually. Half buried under a collapsed wall, discarded and forgotten. 

It's a body Wolfwood would recognize anywhere, even coated in dust, even several stages into decomposition.

It features in half his nightmares, after all.

Wolfwood pushes aside debris and stares down at the broken, mangled corpse of Legato Bluesummers.

Chapter Text

Legato’s limbs are askew, twisted the way he used to twist other people in his sick games. A broken puppet, discarded and abandoned.

Wolfwood shudders at the visceral memories that threaten to overwhelm him. Bones snapping like dry straw, the soft insides of the human body manipulated to fit an enemy’s whims, the agony of being forced to move against your will.

Or the agony of watching a loved one’s body frozen in place, locked away, unable to free itself.

Legato is also missing about half his skull, and this is what rips Wolfwood from his regrets and back into the present.

Wolfwood knows what a gunshot to the face looks like. He’s been the cause of it too many times to count, and knows all too well the carnage that follows. Judging by the way the skull has been punched clean through, the bullet would've been fired point blank.

Before Wolfwood can even feel relief, the weight of the coin in his pocket drags him to the floor. He reaches into the fist sized hole in Legato’s skull, thinking again of all the times Legato reached into other peoples’ bodies with no remorse. His fingers grope around in the decay for several disgusting seconds before they find what he’s looking for. He holds his discovery up to the thin light filtering through the ruins.

A bullet, flattened by the impact like a pressed flower, metal unfurling into blood red petals.

Wolfwood finds himself bent over, the contents of his stomach escaping him. But it’s not the gore that has his entire body rejecting itself. It’s the bullet, and what it means. 

Whoever fired the shot would have had to look Legato in the eyes as they did it.

Once he’s done heaving, he wipes his mouth and stares down at the bullet in his hand. You don’t know it’s his, he tries telling himself desperately. It could be anyone’s. 

But the coin case…

He was here. He had to have been. Who else could have gotten close enough to Legato to hold a gun to his head and pull the trigger? And wouldn’t this bullet have fit perfectly into a gun that promised to never kill?

He was here.

And Legato Bluesummers is dead.

Dead for a while, too. This didn't happen yesterday. Wolfwood knows what a corpse looks like one year after death, and it's something like this.

Wolfwood should be happy that the bastard’s dead and rotting in hell. He should feel vindicated relief that finally, the choice Wolfwood swore was coming had arrived, and passed, and had killed the right person in the process.

But all he feels is a deep, aching sadness and guilt-laden regret and an overwhelming amount of worry, for whatever the aftershocks of this bullet must have been.

He can’t imagine what forced the hand that pulled the trigger. He doesn’t want to imagine the chain of events that led to this choice. And he refuses to imagine that it could have anything to do with himself, though the timeline is tightening around him too close for comfort. 

Wolfwood drops the bullet and wipes blood — and god knows what else — off his hand and onto Legato’s formerly white jacket. He gets to his feet, stomach still churning but confident that he’s not going to find any more answers at Legato’s side.

He was here. 

He’s not here any more.

But a year is a long time to live with what you’ve done.

The suns feel too bright when Wolfwood emerges from the Ark. If there was any poetic justice in this world, the storm of emotions in his head would be reflected in the real world too. But instead, the sky is viciously blue. The gentle breeze caresses his cheek instead of whipping it. 

He rests next to Angelina and drinks what’s left of his canteen. Once the taste of vomit leaves his mouth, he makes a meal out of the remaining leftovers from Maybelline, feeling guilty that he wasted half of her care by puking it onto Legato’s corpse.

Seems to be a pattern with him, lately – wasting someone’s care. It’s why he hasn’t chain smoked the rest of his cigarettes, even though his fingers twitch towards his pocket, seeking out their familiar relief.

Even sitting on the solid ground, he’s unsteady down to his bones, yanked back and forth by hope and doubt so hard it feels more like he’s spiraling into quicksand.

He picks up a handful of loose pebbles and shifts them around in his palm. Then, one by one, he drops them to the ground, an idle mockery of the game girls at the orphanage would play before shyly confessing to their crushes.

He loves me.

He loves me not.

Except it’s not a reciprocated crush he’s looking for, it’s evidence of God’s love.

He loves me, He loves me not.

With each pebble he drops, his wish becomes more desperate.

He’s alive.

He’s dead.

He’s alive.

He’s dead. 

He's alive.

He's dead.

He's alive.

He's–

There are only a few pebbles left when Wolfwood clenches his fist, hiding them from sight before he can do the math to completion. He tosses the pebbles into the dirt with a scowl. 

This is stupid. Wishing on rocks won’t do jack shit except waste time.

He spends the few remaining hours before sunset diagnosing Angelina’s engine failure and digging around the Ark's ruins for suitable replacements, giving a wide berth to the area where he’d discovered Legato. Unlike Legato’s killer ( unconfirmed killer, some part of himself weakly protests), Wolfwood feels no obligation to consider the deceased’s wants and desires. He can keep rotting there, for all Wolfwood cares. It’s a fitting end, for someone who was that far up Millions Knives’ ass. 

By the time he’s done, Wolfwood is too exhausted to do much more than curl up in the shadow of the Ark and fall into a fitful sleep.

His dreams are filled with gunshots and splatters of brain matter and so much red it’s like no other color exists. He dreams of a familiar gun, aimed at Legato, at Knives, at Wolfwood himself. He dreams of bullets blooming into strange blossoms that burst through skin, and fields of flowers that bleed and scream like gunshot victims when he steps too close.

When he wakes, he doesn’t feel well-rested.

Legato may be dead, but Wolfwood can’t shake the sight of what had been done to him. And not knowing if Knives is dead too – if Knives was killed – unsettles him. The more he sits with it, the more the sliver of dread worming its way through his heart becomes a blade carving him open.

Your first murder is hard. The next ones are always easier.

What happens when a gun, that had only restrained itself through ideals, fires? What happens when a man, who’d never intended to survive the fight, lives on? What does he become?

As someone who did survive a fight he hadn’t intended on surviving, Wolfwood has some experience with how destabilizing it can be. Wolfwood’s pretty sure he’s only sane right now because of the plan, the goal, the something to fight for.

But then again, Wolfwood did die, and the only proof of life he has for his mission is the bounty in his pocket, which is increasingly flimsy evidence the longer he goes without solid answers.

Wolfwood pulls out a cigarette and lights it, unable to resist any longer. He takes a long drag, then tips his head back to breathe out the smoke. The Ark’s remains cut through his line of sight, obscuring half the morning moon’s baby blue face.

Movement breaks through the stillness. A flutter of sparkling crystal, caught in the wreckage above his head.

Before he can think better of it, before his half-awake mind can recall the warning he’d received, he stands, reaches, and plucks the feather from the crevice it had been caught in.

He staggers as he’s thrown into what he has no other word for than a violent hallucination.

He’s looking through thick glass at crowd of white-coated scientists running across an elevated walkway like frantic insects and red lights are flashing and alarms pierce through the liquid around him and everything hurts and it feels like his body is disintegrating and he screams but no sound escapes his throat he screams and screams and screams and screams and then it is the humans who are screaming as their limbs fall off like flower petals like feathers like bodies and their blood splatters against his bulb in wide arcs and then someone approaches, someone who looks like a man but isn’t, someone who spreads his arms wide like an embrace, and he takes the pain away, takes it into himself instead, and then he takes you—

Wolfwood is himself again.

His hand shakes as he stares at the feather. What the hell was that?

A dream? A memory? A premonition?

Whatever it was, it reminds him too much of—

Crystalline wings shielding him, embracing him. “You are not wrong, Wolfwood!”

Every instinct in him wants to drop the feather, so it can't reach into his mind again. So he can forget the bloody images he’d been shown and his own resurfacing memories.

Instead, for some reason he can’t even articulate to himself, he tucks the crystalline feather into his pocket’s ever growing collection of remnants and looks to the horizon, where Octovern, and hopefully the information he desperately craves, lies.

The Earth Federation has left its fingerprints all over Octovern. Even if you could somehow ignore the monstrosity they're calling a “plant dome” rising over the city like a ripe bubble, evidence of the Earthen fleet’s arrival is impossible to avoid.

There's tech Wolfwood has never seen before being sold at the street stalls and shops, screens flashing and motors whirring, but the most noticeable evidence of all is the Earthens themselves, in their bulb-like helmets and clean uniforms. They stick out like a bad paint job on an old house, and Wolfwood can't help noticing the way most folks give them a wide berth.

It’s hard to reconcile the joyful celebration when they’d first heard Earth was coming to the tension choking the city now. Earth’s arrival hasn’t fixed much, from what Wolfwood can tell. Maybe this planet and its people were already too far gone.

Speculating on big issues like that is beyond his pay grade though. He’s got smaller worms to fry. Namely, the bounty hunters crawling through the streets, who are also clearly newcomers to Octovern, but more subtle. Not to someone who knows the look of a man hungry for their prey, like Wolfwood, but normal folks probably wouldn’t give them a second thought. They size up Wolfwood, posture and heckle, wave their guns around like toys. In other words, not much difference between them and any other man with enough instinct to know the threat Wolfwood poses and not enough brain cells to be smart about it.

He ignores them, though he feels uneasy letting them walk around with their lives and limbs intact when they’re mortal threats to his mission.

And then there are the bounties themselves, plastered to notice boards and walls and windows. Two inhuman beings with identical, mirrored faces. One smiling. One frowning.

Both worth a mind boggling amount of double dollars each.

Both with the pitch black hair of an independent on its last breath.

-

The dangerously curious part of Wolfwood is tempted to investigate the plant dome. If the feather in his pocket is any indication, he may be able to get some answers from the dependent plants who presumably witnessed the Ark’s demise. But as he approaches the thick glass, it quickly becomes clear that won’t be an easy option. Security is tighter than a worm’s asshole. Every access point has security checks and fancy looking scanners and Earth Federation Security Forces stationed in abundance.

And all Wolfwood has is a single handgun. He doesn’t regret leaving the Punisher behind, but he’s realizing that one way or another, whether he likes it or not, he’s committed to his new philosophy of only shooting for love and peace. The lack of other options, of the flexibility a giant weapon like the Punisher provided… it’s something he’ll have to get used to.

He files away the possibility of breaking into the dome for later. If he has to break in, he will. But he may be able to glean enough intel the old fashioned way. Hopefully this time, he won’t have a hysterical laughing fit and pass out on the floor.

By the time he arrives at the busiest bar in town, Wolfwood has learned that “The Celebration” is for the anniversary. Of what, nobody seems to agree.

One year since the Ark plummeted out of the sky.

One year since the Earth Federation officially touched down on No Man’s Land.

One year since the Plants reached into everyone’s minds and weighed their species’ worth like feathers on a scale in what was apparently a very existentially terrifying moment the whole damn planet except Wolfwood got to trauma bond over.

One year since Millions Knives and his brother flew off into the distance, never to return.

It seems everyone will be celebrating something different on July 21st.

Since the only money he has is the broken coin he couldn't seem to abandon—penance, maybe, or denial, because if he still has the coin it feels like before, when there was still the illusion of time— Wolfwood seeks out the poker table with the most guns on hips and slaps down a fistful of bullets.

“These enough to get me a buy-in?” he asks.

And it is. Of course it is. This is still No Man’s Land, after all.

-

A few hands and a few handfuls of bullets later, Wolfwood finds himself at the tail end of a poker game, seated between a pair of bounty hunters and a pair of Earth Federation officers, and every gun at the table drawn.

Another thing he has learned: the hostility between No Man’s Land and Earth is not one sided. The Earthens have no shortage of derogatory names for the people of No Man’s Land.

Savages.

Barbarians.

Dusty country bumpkins.

With each insult, the two natives grew redder and more twitchy, until one too many became the rock that breaks the thoma’s back.

Wolfwood is oddly calm, for the number of guns in faces. Perhaps there’s a certain amount of peace that comes with dying. Petty disagreements seem trivial when you’ve not just stared death in the face, but walked into its embrace.

Or maybe it’s a peace born of a certain spiky haired gunslinger. In his absence, and in the presence of guilt over the bullet that killed Legato, Wolfwood feels an amount of responsibility that he used to fill with excuses; there was no other way, there was no time, there was no choice.

But there is another way. There is time. And there are infinite choices.

Time to put that new philosophy to use, I suppose.

“How about instead of trading bullets, we trade information?”

Every gun turns to look at him. Better me than each other, a voice that’s only half his own tells him .

“You’re all after the same bounty, right?” Wolfwood pulls his copy of said bounty from his pocket. It has been folded and refolded so many times now that the creases are wearing the ink off the paper, leaving crosshairs right between those impossibly blue eyes.

And it's when every pair of eyes narrows that the urgency he should have felt earlier rears its head.

Wherever you are, I’ll try to take the heat off ya. But you’d better be far, far away from this hellhole city, you needle-noggin idiot.

“Do I know you from somewhere?” asks one of the men. It’s the No Man’s Lander who’d been the first to pull his gun out; a scrawny fellow whose hat has several bullet holes in it.

“I can’t imagine how,” Wolfwood said smoothly, like his heart isn’t racing in his chest.

The man’s friend snaps his fingers. “I know what you mean! He matches that description, you know the one; tall, dark haired priest with a giant cross who runs around with—”

“You must be thinking of someone else,” Wolfwood interrupts. He gestures around. “I don’t see any crosses here, do you? Besides, I ain’t a priest.”

“Then what are you?” One of the Earth Federation soldiers asks.

Ah. Shit. Wolfwood really hadn’t thought ahead, had he. This talking instead of shooting thing is harder than it looks.

“I’m a…” he searches for an answer, suspecting his previous between jobs answer wouldn’t be enough to convince them he wasn’t who he was. He settles on the first thing his grasping thoughts can cling to.

“I’m an investigator.”

That gets the guns to lower a tiny fraction, if only out of bafflement.

“And besides,” Wolfwood continues, “if I really were friends with him, why would I offer to tell you that I saw some suspicious activity over at the Ark this morning?”

It’s the Earth soldiers’ turn to question him.

“What sort of suspicious activity?”

“Why were you even over there? That area’s restricted.”

“As I said, I’m an investigator. Looking for information.” Wolfwood waves the bounty for emphasis. “So if you’ve got any…”

“If we did, we certainly wouldn’t be telling you,” one of the soldiers sneers.

“They don’t know jack shit,” the man with the holes in his hat says with a laugh. The soldiers bristle but their attention is still mostly on Wolfwood.

Wolfwood believes it though. Nobody issues a bounty and then sits around not acting on information. The fact that both Earth Forces and copious bounty hunters are prowling Octovern for clues means they either think there's something to find here, or, as some would say, they know jack shit and are waiting around to leech information off someone who does .

Wolfwood never expected to find anything but information in this city. He knows the man he's hunting for, and knows that he'd never stick around at the scene of the crime.

Which is why…

“Well if you’d like to know some shit, you might wanna check out the Ark. There’s some stuff deep in the ruins that’s worth seeing.” He makes deliberate eye contact with his fellow No Man’s Landers. They’re gullible, and take the false hint with no followup questions. Without so much as a goodbye, they skedaddle. A few seconds of shocked silence pass. Wolfwood raises an eyebrow. Then the Earthens seem to realize what just happened and give chase, shouting about restricted access.

With that settled, Wolfwood gets up from the table. He's won enough times to have a small fistful of cash, so he heads over to the bar and snags a recently vacated stool, ordering a beer half through muscle memory. His thoughts are still on the implications of a one year anniversary, and the way two bounties worth of black hair means a great deal of life force had to have been spent. On what, though?

A fight where nobody died? Seems too good to be true.

If nothing else, then at least Wolfwood can say that things are looking a lot less bleak, these days, without a million knives hanging over their heads. His hope that Knives had died with the Ark had withered when he’d been presented with the information that the twins had flown away — flown, who’d’ve thought that was possible — but the hope that he’d crashed and burned somewhere in the endless wastes is still smoldering inside him.

But if Knives is dead, despite the bounty, that means it is possible his twin is dead too, despite the bounty. And he certainly doesn't deserve to die out there in the desert with nobody to bury him. 

“You new in town?” asks a woman seated next to him. 

Wolfwood nods, shaking away the sharp pointy thoughts he’d almost walked into. He takes in his neighbor’s appearance. She’s Octoverian, based on her accent, but it seems she’s adopted some of the new fashions. He’s not sure he’s ever seen fabric so… shiny. Her hair, styled into excessive curls, is a vibrant, almost unnatural red, and he can't help staring. 

“Thought so.” She nods her head in the direction of the table he’d been playing at. “Most folks would know better than to sit at a table like that. Well, if you’re new, then you have got to order the food here. They’ve got apples!”

She says apples like the fruit is a holy thing. Maybe they are. He can't remember the last time he had a real apple.

“From Earth?” he asks. It’s a reasonable question – apparently even if the Earth Federation is holding the planet hostage, as the man who drove Wolfwood to Octovern theorized, they’re providing their captive audience with three course meals and the comforts of home. The menu at this bar is full of all sorts of things Wolfwood has never heard of before, including something called fresh avocado . And there’s air conditioning blowing frigid air into his face.

She shakes her head. “From Mesa Probe Church! It’s in the frontier, a few iles out of town. The doctor who lives there brings them in. I think half the city’s celebrating that more than anything else, if I’m being honest. Everyone’s sayin’ it’s a miracle, they just started growing out of nowhere about a year ago!”

Wolfwood’s heart stumbles. A miracle, huh?

“What about you?” the woman continues. “What will you be celebrating?”

Wolfwood takes a sip to steady himself. “I’m hoping to meet up with a dear friend,” he says, praying the hope spilling out of him isn’t pathetically visible to the naked eye. “And you? Are you celebrating apples too?”

The woman takes a few seconds to think. “I suppose… well I suppose I’ll celebrate how lively Octovern is, these days! And for bein’ alive myself!”

Wolfwood's smile comes easy. “Cheers to that.” He lifts his drink, and the woman taps the rim of her glass against his.

As he sips his drink again, the woman inches her stool closer. Her body leans even closer still. A pungent floral scent overpowers the other scents in the bar. Wolfwood stiffens.

Before she can open her mouth to proposition him, Wolfwood slides off his stool and leaves a few double dollars on the counter.

“Sorry,” he says. “I've got someone— something ” he corrects before the hope becomes palpable— “I need to get back to.”

“Oh, sorry!” the woman says quickly, backing away to a more appropriate distance. But the damage has already been done. Someone to get back to, echoes in his mind . He’d tried so hard to avoid thinking of the specifics, but it’s getting harder and harder. He’s out of practice. Maybe it’s his own fault though. Maybe the thought was already on his mind because of the pebble game from earlier. Or maybe it was just a matter of time before all the emotions he’d shoved to the side spilled out of him. 

He knows he was loved. He knows it, even if the acceptance is hard. But there’s many ways to love someone. Who’s to say any of one person's love fits neatly into the empty spaces in his own soul? Hope is already a dangerous thing without hoping for reciprocation on top of that.

But, despite the slipup, what he said to the woman isn’t a lie. There is something he needs to get back to.

He’s got a miracle to investigate.

Chapter Text

A few iles out of town turns out to be quite a bit more than a few iles out of town. 

Wolfwood treks across dry, barren land, eyes set on the small outline of a church way into the distance, tucked between sandy hills. It seems impossible that anything could grow out there. It seems impossible that anything could grow anywhere on this wasteland of a planet.

But it also should be impossible that Wolfwood is alive right now, so maybe it’s not his place to judge the plausibility of miracles.

The long drive leaves plenty of time for Wolfwood to wonder if he’s acting irrationally, then convince himself that this is the only logical path, then question his decision making skills, then circle back around to obviously the random plot of land mentioned by some random stranger I met in a random bar is where I’ll get all the answers.

By the time he arrives, sweaty, windblown, and regretting everything he’s ever done, he decides that he’s made it this far, and might as well go check out those trees even if he’s landed on this whole detour being a stupid ass decision. 

He forgoes the church itself for now and sneaks around the side of the building. There’s a thomas pen along the wall, empty, but with feed in the troughs. So someone lives here, but isn’t home. Wolfwood leans Angelina against the fence and continues around the back. There’s a small orchard; several saplings surrounded by a single mature tree, limbs heavy with red apples.

“Well I’ll be damned,” he says to himself, shading his eyes as he looks up into the high branches. “That’s definitely a tree.”

And it definitely seems like a miracle that it’s here, fully grown, with no Plant in sight to nourish the soil or moisten the dry ground.

Unsure what to do with himself, Wolfwood settles at the base of the tree, back against the trunk and legs criss-crossed in front of him. It’s cooler here in the shade, but the air is still thick with the kind of heat that makes men lazy. 

It’s peaceful here. The kind of peace that’s rare to find, on this planet. The kind of peace he'd once ripped someone from, and felt guilty for ever since.

He pulls out the bounty for lack of anything else to do, fingers tracing gently along the jawline.

Were you here? Did you do this?

His bounty does not answer him.

He dreams of a forest. Of plants that touch the sky. Of leaves that change colors with the seasons, from vibrant green to a deep red that makes his heart pound. He dreams of being lost in the depths, surrounded by so many trees that the suns are rendered powerless. First he’s swallowed by shadows, and then, he is swallowed by the cool earth under his feet. Not hard packed desert sand, but soft soil, the kind where life can thrive and grow.

He wakes to the familiar click of a gun readying itself to fire and the even more familiar press of steel against his temple.

He allows a few breaths to pass before he opens his eyes. He stares down the barrel to the gun’s owner – a middle-aged man. He stares past the man to the smaller figure behind him. A child. 

“You won’t find what you’re looking for here,” says the man holding a gun to Wolfwood’s forehead.

“And what is it I’m looking for?” Wolfwood asks.

“You’re after Vash, aren’t you?” the kid accuses, eyes darting to Wolfwood’s lap where the bounty is tucked in the crease of his knee, smiling like a confession.

The man’s eyes tighten, and the gun digs just a little bit deeper into Wolfwood’s skin.

Touchy subject, Wolfwood notes. He tries not to get his hopes up, but it's too late – they’re already strung up in the trees.

Vash, Vash, Vash.

It's like the kid saying his name has broken Wolfwood's vow of silence, and now every other thought in his head is consumed by a single word. Vash.

Vash, where are you. Vash, what happened. Vash, have you moved on, like you should've. Vash, is it too late for me to–

“I just wanted to see these apples I heard so much about,” Wolfwood says. And then, to the kid, because the kid seemed concerned and concerned means he doesn’t want Vash the Stampede dead, Wolfwood adds, “I was hoping I might find a friend here. We got separated about a year ago, and I’m trying to find him.”

The man shifts, blocking the kid from view. “I know your type,” the man says, not easing up on the gun. “You ain’t the first one to come here looking for an ‘old friend.’ I may be a doctor, but I’m not unwilling to shoot you if you won’t leave us in peace.”

This must be the doctor who brings the apples to town, then. 

“If you were willing to shoot me, you should have done it before I woke,” Wolfwood says. “And if I had any intention of killing you, you’d already be bleeding out.”

The doctor holds Wolfwood’s gaze for a few seconds more before sighing and lowering the gun. But the wariness in his eyes hasn’t dissipated. “I’ll tell you again. You won’t find what you’re looking for here. He hasn’t come back since he left.”

Wolfwood’s heart trips over itself. “So he was here?” 

The doctor lets out an amused huff. “Poor excuse for a bounty hunter if you haven’t listened to the radio once in the last six months.”

Wolfwood would be insulted if the man didn't have a point. He hasn't been operating at the top of his game. He's been sloppy. Being dead for a year will do that to a guy. Chasing fragile threads of hope before they blow away will also do that to a guy. 

But he was here.

Six months ago, apparently, but that's several months closer than he'd been previously. That’s almost enough for his feet to find purchase on.

"Can you–" Wolfwood can't get the words out. He tries again. "Can you tell me what happened?"

The desperation in his voice must convince the doctor that he's not a threat, because he softens.

The kid takes the opportunity to speak up. "His brother brought him here to recover–"

Wolfwood’s desperation takes on a new, more bitter flavor, hot and immediate and almost blinding. "His brother?" he growls.

The kid startles at Wolfwood's sudden change in demeanor and hides behind his guardian.

"You won't find him here either," the doctor says, but the words sound distant to Wolfwood’s ears.

If he's still alive… If he’s still alive I swear I'm gonna–

“Won’t find him anywhere, actually,” the doctor continues. 

The world snaps back into focus. “What?”

The man gestures to the tree. “Gave us this parting gift and then…” he waves his hand in the air like he’s brushing away a cobweb. “Of course, no matter what we say, none of you bounty hunters want to believe he’s gone until they see a body, because without a body there’s no reward.”

Wolfwood’s not sure what any of that means. Knives gave them the apple tree? Knives? And then what, he just. Vanished? Died and left behind nothing for his loved ones – loved one – to bury?

Seems cruel. Seems typical of him.

A chill goes down Wolfwood’s spine where it’s touching the tree. He pulls away from the trunk, suddenly expecting it to turn into jagged splinters eager to rip his back apart. He doesn’t like this. This is too much doubt. He’d feel a lot more comfortable with a body to confirm what the doctor is saying. A dead one, preferably, because screw Wanted Alive and screw Millions Knives.

“I’m not a bounty hunter,” he says, for clarity’s sake. 

“But you are looking for Vash?”

Wolfwood nods.

“You said you’re a friend of his?”

Wolfwood hesitates. Friend is too short a word to contain the enormity of his feelings, for condemning Vash to be the one witness to his death, to be his gravedigger, to mourn him enough to leave behind an offering, but it’s the only word safe enough to touch. He nods again, not trusting himself to speak, because speaking the words out loud would be the same as laying a curse on himself.

After all, he’d never learned how to want or hope without dying for it.

“Well then, I’m afraid the answer is still that you won’t find what you’re looking for here. He really hasn’t been back since half the bounty hunters on this planet and that damn Earth Federation descended on our peaceful little church. Can’t even tell you for sure if he’s alive. He’s been keeping himself out of trouble after that last incident, it seems – and ain't that a damn good thing. But I can offer you a warm meal, at the very least.”

“With apples?” Wolfwood asks, unable to keep the curiosity out of his voice. If Knives really was responsible for the tree, that meant he was responsible for the apples, too. It seems impossible that he could create anything other than death and tragedy, but the roots under Wolfwood's feet are proof to the contrary.

“You hear about them in town? They’ve been growing like crazy– I’m practically giving ‘em away.”

“Apparently, they’re a miracle.”

The doctor doesn’t deny it. Because if Millions Knives leaving humanity a parting gift that was sweet and not rotten isn’t a miracle, Wolfwood doesn’t know what is.

Wolfwood tries to wrangle his racing heart before it can escape him.

If miracles really do exist, then maybe it’s not absurd to hope Wolfwood can have one of his own.

Wolfwood lifts the kid – Carlito, he introduces, once he’s gotten over his shyness – onto his shoulders. They pick a few of the ripest apples before heading inside. The living quarters are cluttered in the way he expects from a small frontier church; everything on its third life, or serving multiple functions at once. Paint cans converted into food storage, chipped mugs used to gather all manner of writing implements, stripped wire twisted into clothes lines. 

Wolfwood is given a knife, and he sits at a rickety kitchen table to slice the fruit. The irony of the knife in his hand is not lost on him. And if he cuts into the flesh of the apple with a little more enthusiasm than strictly necessary, nobody tells him off for it.

His first bite of apple is a burst of flavor across his tongue.

“It’s sweet,” he remarks, licking his lips to catch the juice.

“You sound surprised,” the doctor says.

“Because I am.”

“Shhhh!” Carlito hushes, wrapping his hands around the remainder of the apple.

Wolfwood looks to the doctor for an explanation. 

“Kid thinks the apples can hear us.”

“What if he makes them gross again!” Carlito wails.

“They were bitter as hell when the trees first fruited,” the doctor explains. “But they’ve mellowed over time.”

Wolfwood stares at the apple.

If you really can hear me…

But he can’t find anything he wants to say. It’s too soon, and he’s still bitter.

“How are there so many trees?” he asks instead.

The doctor shrugs. “Must be something to do with him being a plant. More potent life energy or something like that. I’m a human doctor, not a plant expert. All I know is he told Carlito it’d help us get a little more food, and then it ended up being a lot more food.”

The doctor sets a small portable radio on the table as he prepares the rest of the meal, humming along to a song Wolfwood has never heard before. He wonders if it’s new, or imported from Earth, or if it’s just a normal song that Wolfwood had missed when he was too busy chasing a needle noggin idiot for years.

It still hurts to think about him. But it's getting harder to convince himself to stop doing it. 

If hope is delusional and suicidal than goddammit Wolfwood is going to live by example and jump headfirst into hell.

It wouldn't be the first time.

The radio continues to play throughout dinner, too cheery music serving as the backdrop to the doctor and his son telling Wolfwood about the days following the Ark's crash. They don't have all the answers, being as isolated as they were, but Wolfwood had been living off scraps and a folded up bounty before.

Now, he's got apples. 

Apples, and the impossible image in his mind of Knives begging at the feet of humans. That image is almost sweeter than the fruit.

Apparently there was a common ground buried in their dying wish. One thing Wolfwood and Knives had in common.

There's no more Chapel. No Gung ho Guns. No more missions, assignments, jobs. Except for the last one Knives gave him. To protect Vash. To be by his side. That mission had fallen from his grasp the moment a bottle slipped from his fingers. But he could pick it back up now.

The last song fades out as they finish telling him about Vash’s recovery and decision to leave them, and the soft melody is replaced by a newscaster's voice. Wolfwood slows down his fork and knife as he listens, remembering the doctor's judgment over his lack of forethought. 

"Thank you for joining us for our commercial free hour of classic rock. We'll be handing the mic over to our reporter in the field, who has an update about the preparations in Octovern as we approach the one year anniversary."

"Thank you, Jacob. For those of you just tuning in, my name is–"

Wolfwood doesn't need to hear the reporter say her name. He's already halfway out of his seat, utensils dropped and forgotten on the table, hands reaching for the radio, gripping the thin wood so hard he's afraid it'll snap under his fingers. 

"– Meryl Stryfe, and I'm here with my partner, Milly Thompson."

His heart is in his throat. No, it's not in his throat. It's in his hands. His heart is in his hands, in the form of a small, wireless radio, and the girls are alive and he hadn't realized how much that mattered until this moment. Hadn't even let himself imagine where they were, or if they'd made it.

But they had. They're alive and they're so close and— they're alive.

He's on his feet now, and his heart is in his hands, and he's saying something, something like sorry, can I borrow this, I'm so sorry, I have to go now, thank you for the meal, can I take this, thank you, thank you for the apples and for the hospitality and for taking care of my friend but I need to go, I need to see them, the girls, need to ask them— I'm sorry, but— thank you thank you thank you.

And then he's on his bike, radio tucked under his left arm, vibrations of good news touching his heart as he throws himself headfirst into hope.

Chapter Text

He's out of breath by the time his tires cross back into Octovern city limits, like he'd run the entire way on his own legs. Meryl has been talking the whole time—he couldn’t say what about, too busy clinging to the sound of her voice; the only thing keeping him tethered to reality.

"I'm outside the embassy right now–"

The embassy. Where's the embassy. What the fuck even is an embassy? He needs to find–

Wolfwood glances around, pulling up to the first person who doesn't run away from him. "Where's the embassy?"

He knows he sounds manic. Probably looks it, too. But he can’t help it. Some part of him has regressed to object impermanence and is afraid that if he doesn't find the girls before the broadcast ends, they will cease to exist. 

The woman he'd asked has hardly pointed before Wolfwood is tearing off again, racing through dusty streets to the city center.

"—Earth Federation has been on the planet for less than a year but–"

Wolfwood swerves around pedestrians—a difficult maneuver with the radio still cradled in his arms, but he manages to narrowly avoid collisions.

Whatever Meryl says next is buried under the instructions looping in Wolfwood’s ears, her voice nothing more than a blur of indistinct sound.

Take a left at the next major intersection.

All that exists is the goal.

Then, turn right on Jabber Way.

The crowds drop away as his focus narrows.

Head towards the edge of the plant dome.

The noise of the city fades as the blood rushing in his ears overtakes the world.

It'll be the newest building, you can't miss it.

And then, there they are. Through a gap in the crowd that has formed near a stately looking building, he sees them. It's the first time since waking that he's seen someone he knew, and he's unprepared for the way it affects him. Angelina suddenly feels immaterial underneath him, and he slides off her to spare himself the pain of tipping over. But standing with his feet on the ground doesn’t help him feel any more grounded; his mind and body are disconnected, like the whole of him is having trouble adhering to reality.

He focuses on them, Meryl and Milly, the no-longer-insurance girls. They look much the same as the last time he saw them, and yet just different enough to be proof that he’s not dredging up their image from his memory.

Milly has recording equipment perched on her shoulder, wires spilling everywhere like spaghetti. One of them connects to the microphone in Meryl's hand. The radio has been silent while they shift to a new position, where the camera can catch the gleaming plant dome in the background, but now Meryl’s back is straightening in the familiar way Wolfwood knows means she is preparing to launch into a speech.

He doesn't want to interrupt while they're on the job, but it's excruciating just watching. If anyone would be able to tell him where Vash is, it would have to be the girls who spent just as much time chasing him as he did.

It's Milly who spots him first; a perk of not being on camera means she can allow her eyes to wander. Her gaze catches on his in much the same way he’d read the year along the top of the sand steamer schedule in December: first, passing over him, then, freezing as comprehension hits her. The equipment she's holding drops to the ground.

He sees Meryl startle, hears her shout in surprise, then exclaim, "Milly!"

A few seconds later, his borrowed radio emits a painful crashing sound as it catches up to the time delay. "Milly!"

Like the beating of a heart, the conversation transpires in syncopated rhythm. First, Meryl's voice, distant and faint across the square, then, the second beat, as the radio echoes reality. Milly isn't on a mic, so Wolfwood only catches half of the conversation as it crackles through the radio. 

Milly is tugging on Meryl's arm.

"Is the camera okay? Milly, what– We're on air, Milly."

Meryl turns, her gaze follows Milly's finger into the crowd.

"What– stop tugging–"

Meryl's hand flies up to her mouth.

"What are you–" A gasp. A beat. "Wolfwood?"

Meryl fumbles with her own equipment.

"I'm sorry, shit, sorry, Milly can you– thank you. Apologies to our listeners, but we'll be back with you shortly."

The radio switches to static as the broadcast is cut. 

Meryl and Milly are already halfway across the square.

Milly launches herself into the crowd. She nearly knocks Wolfwood over in her (successful) attempt to scoop him into her arms. He only barely manages to keep the radio from being crushed in the crook of his elbow.

"I thought you were dead!" she blubbers, lifting him fully off the ground and squeezing him so hard he thinks he might actually die again. His ribs feel like they’re about to snap. He can't breathe. He can't even wheeze out an answer. Faintly, he hears Meryl chastising Milly. 

"Put him down, are you trying to kill him?"

Milly drops Wolfwood the same way she dropped her recording equipment: abruptly and without ceremony. His knees buckle before he can catch himself and he's left ass in the dirt, looking up at the girls. 

There are tears in their eyes, and his heart throbs with guilt as much as it does relief. They'd mourned him. Probably more than he deserved. He loves them for it as much as he hates himself for causing them grief.

"Hey, girls," he says, rubbing at his smarting ribs. Milly's as strong as ever, it seems. "See you've found a new career path."

He gets two small smiles at that, but there’s also space where a third should be, and the vacuum of its absence won’t allow Wolfwood to linger on this happy reunion.

"Is he alive?" he chokes out.

Meryl and Milly look confused. Why do they look confused? Do they not understand that he needs this answer like he needs air to breathe?

“Vash?” Milly asks. Wolfwood nods pathetically. “He was the last time we saw him… Which was, oh, when was it Meryl, a few weeks ago, when we went to meet your family in December?”

Meryl nods, but she still looks thoughtful. 

"Where is he now?" he asks.

Meryl and Milly share a look. Meryl bites at her lip. "He said was visiting his sisters while he was in December, and… you…"

"But I'm here," he says pitifully.

Meryl nods. "Yeah.”

Oh. They mean he was visiting Wolfwood’s grave. A year later and Wolfwood is still causing grief for Vash, too.

You couldn’t really think he’d let himself move on though, right? The man who never let one thing go in his life?

Wolfwood thought he couldn't feel any worse about it, but apparently the depths of guilt are as vast as the desert. Bad habits really do never die, do they.

“If you haven't seen him, then where have you been?" Meryl's lips are pursed. Shit. Is she about to cry? "He was heartbroken, you know," she continues, quieter. “Tried to hide it behind that smile of his, but…”

Oh. This is worse than tears. 

"Why would you–" Meryl takes a shaky breath. 

Milly finishes the sentence for her, voice thick with the tears she's holding back. "Did you fake your death, Mr. Wolfwood? That wasn't very nice of you. I should… I should kick your ass for making–” She sniffles. “For making everyone sad." Despite her earlier joy, she's clearly trying to be upset on someone else's behalf.

Wolfwood feels a surge of warmth. These girls… they've always been too good for this world.

"I woke up six feet under the dirt about a week ago," he says, because they deserve honesty, after everything. And it stings, that they think he’d run away from everyone without saying goodbye.

It stings because it’s true. How many times had he convinced himself it was better to not explain. How many times had he convinced himself that telling the truth would only make things worse. How many times had he left the people who cared about him wondering. How many times did he try to shoulder everything on his own.

How many times did that come back and bite him in the ass.

“A week ago?” Meryl asks, and he sees her do the math on his resurrection. Her eyes widen in understanding, then narrow in confusion. There are too many things that reaction could mean. Wolfwood's heart claws at his chest. His blood screams in his veins.

Milly extends a hand and helps Wolfwood to his feet. She hugs him gentler this time, and Wolfwood allows himself to sink into her, though his arms dangle too limply at his sides to return the embrace. 

Meryl still looks uneasy when Milly finally releases Wolfwood. “Do you know… do you know how you’re alive?”

Wolfwood shakes his head. “Haven’t the faintest idea. Though to be honest with ya, I haven’t let myself stop to think about it much. Too busy tryin’ to catch up.”

“And you didn’t see Vash…” Meryl trails off, wringing her hands together nervously. 

It hits him like a hail of bullets.

Someone visited Wolfwood’s grave on the anniversary of his death. Someone who knew him well enough to leave a gift of whiskey and his favorite cigarettes. Three days later, by some miracle, Wolfwood crawled out of one hell and into another. 

Less than a year ago, Millions Knives begged for his brother’s life, and then did the one good thing he’s done in a century and used the last dregs of his existence to create an impossible apple tree.

Wolfwood knows the cost of a miracle, now.

And the bounty in Wolfwood’s pocket already had black hair. 

“What did you do, Spikey,” he whispers with horror.

Meryl looks up at him sharply. “What did he do?”

Milly echoes her. “What did he do?”

The girls are looking at him with wide eyes, like he has the answers, like the world hasn’t dropped out from beneath his feet and now he’s dangling, choking, dying.

“I need to go back to December,” he manages to say. He didn't know that was his new plan until he said it, but it's the only choice. He needs to be sure. He can’t tell them about the fear ripping into him. He can't speak it into existence. He can’t bear to see them cry for any reason other than joy. Maybe that makes him a coward.

You’re a coward. You give up all hope so easily.

But look where hope got him.

“You’re already leaving?” Milly asks, distraught. “But–”

Meryl puts a hand on Milly’s arm and fixes Wolfwood with a firm look. She reaches into her pocket, pulls out something blue—a business card—and slaps it to his chest. “If you don’t call us within three days, and with good news, we’re coming after you. The only reason I’m letting you go without us is because we need to finish this assignment. Got it?”

Meryl's as strong as ever, too.

So much can change in a year, but so much can stay the same.

Wolfwood doesn’t want to leave the girls behind, not again, not when Meryl looks close to falling apart, not when Milly’s optimism is wavering, not when he just got them back, but he’s already wasted so much time and every nerve is screaming at him to run, run, run, run, run. 

So much can stay the same, in a year. Self-sacrificing, sentimental needle-noggins are not the exception.

Wolfwood grits his teeth against the wind whipping his face. Under him, Angelina shakes like a manifestation of his own mental state. He’s pushing her too hard, and it’ll be a miracle if both of them even make it to December without falling to pieces first, but he can’t ease up on the throttle.

He can’t stop thinking about Millions Knives performing his miracle and then dissolving into nothing but a bad dream.

“Gave us this parting gift and then…”

Wolfwood knows how this will end, when he reaches December. Without closure. 

Nothing left for a loved one to bury.

“None of you bounty hunters want to believe he’s dead until they see a body.”

He finally gave in to hope, only for it to be ripped out from under him. He thought he was getting Vash back. But what if there’s nothing left to get back? He’ll spend the rest of his life dangling, choking, dying hope’s slow death. There will never be anything solid to stand on.

It’s almost as cruel as carving a cross onto a gravestone. It’s typical of Vash though, isn’t it? Leaving without saying goodbye, because he thinks the people he’s leaving behind will hurt less that way?

Spikey I swear to God, if you–

Angelina skids under him and he nearly loses his balance. He curses as he rights himself. Adrenaline burns through his veins. His heart feels about to burst.

Ever since waking up, he’s been racing ahead, trying to catch up, not letting himself hope too hard. And this is why. Because when hope gets taken away from you, it feels worse than dying. Hope is nothing but a fledgling, too easily fallen from the nest to crash to the hard, unforgiving ground.

He blinks his eyes—they’re watering from the wind, not because he’s crying—and squeezes the handlebars so hard it hurts.

The pain doesn’t help.

In front of him hang the moons, glowing like watchful eyes. The fifth moon’s crater carves a gaping hole into Wolfwood. He already lost Vash once. Already lived through two years of searching for an answer. 

He’s not sure he can survive it a second time.

If Vash died like Knives, there would be no trace besides Wolfwood himself. But he has to be sure. If there’s any trace, any explanation, any clue he missed, he needs to know.

With nothing but hours of desert ahead of him, his mind spirals into assumptions. Why. Why me? Why, after letting me go–

Vash already had a martyr complex even before committing the sin of murder. Was suicide too selfish of an act that he thought trading his life for Wolfwood's would balance the scale?

Maybe you have it all wrong. Maybe it wasn’t him.

Or maybe it was, and he brought you back just to suffer in his place. Maybe he didn’t love you after all.

He can’t cling to that thought the way he used to, when lying to himself hurt less than the truth. If Vash is gone, Wolfwood can’t do that to him. He won’t taint his memories of Vash just to avoid a self-inflicted wound.

The first sun is hardly a whisper on the horizon when Wolfwood arrives in December.

He slows down until Angelina’s metallic screeching quiets to a low rumble and makes his way agonizingly slowly through the still sleeping city toward the plant station.

It’s the only place he could think to go to for answers. Vash told the girls that he'd be visiting his sisters, so if anyone would know what happened, it would be them. And if the plants were able to communicate with humans during whatever happened in Octovern, then it should be able to work the other way around too, right? He still has that feather if it’s needed as some sort of transmitter.

There’s minimal security at the station, and after propping Angelina against a fence, he’s able to sneak in through a maintenance corridor without issue.

Unlike the deserted corpse of the Ark, December’s plant station pulses with signs of life. The electric buzz of machinery, the hum of water filters, the vibrations of engines pushing plant-produced miracles to the people of December; it all stands in stark contrast to those silent, lonely hours digging through the Ark.

And yet, the feeling of being watched is the same.

The plants are in their bulbs, lit only by the glowing tech maintaining their, and by proxy, December’s, life support. Wolfwood makes his way to the plant nearest the floor. It’s furled up in a tight bud, and he can’t help but remember, with a painful pang of nostalgia, that Vash would sometimes sleep like that; curled up so tight you couldn’t tell arm from leg. When he didn’t sleep fitfully, limbs every which way, nearly concussing Wolfwood every time his prosthetic arm slapped him in the head.

It’s hard to think of the plant as an it after that.

Wolfwood feels like a fucking idiot, for thinking that she will want to speak to him. And maybe also a fucking creep, watching her sleep.

He can’t be a fucking asshole on top of that and wake her up, no matter how much his soul begs for him to bang on the glass and demand answers.

And anyway, if— If his suspicions are true, it's not like the question is time sensitive anymore.

He watches the minute movements of the sleeping plant for a minute, then sits with his back against the base of the bulb, head tipped back against the glass. He closes his eyes to the dim blue-green glow of his surroundings, and lets exhaustion claim him.

His dream is entirely too lucid.

He’s underwater, but somehow he’s not drowning. In front of him is an angel; many limbed, incomprehensible, beautiful.

The angel smiles at him, and he feels a surge of warmth, gratitude, pride.

Somehow, he understands that these feelings are not his own.

The angel nods in confirmation and drifts closer. Iridescent feathers sway in the water with her movement. She reaches out a hand and pokes Wolfwood in the chest. He looks down to realize that he's naked.

Humor, curiosity, fascination. 

“Uh, hello,” Wolfwood says, suddenly self-conscious. “I’m— I was friends with your brother.”

The plant’s eyes narrow in thought, and it’s so human an action that it unbalances him. Then the plant’s eyes widen, as if she’s recognized him. 

Sharp pain stabs his brain, and it does not belong to him or to the angel in front of him, but to a knife named righteous fury and hot anger and cavernous grief and fear and loneliness and– “No,” he gasps out before the foreign emotions can overwhelm him. “The other one.”

The knife pulls out of his skull. The plant drifts closer, until her wide eyes are all he can see.

Confusion.

"What do you mean, you're confused?"

This time, the emotions are accompanied by images fed directly to his brain in a way that should be impossible, given that his eyes are still looking at the plant floating inches from his face.

He’s looking at the plant but he’s also looking at himself, telling himself to guide Vash, filled with disgust over having to trust his brother’s safety to this pathetic human–

The cold arrogance is instantly familiar.

Wolfwood’s own regret and guilt washes the memory of Knives away. The plant brushes a hand across Wolfwood’s cheek like she’s brushing away a tear, but he’s underwater, so there can’t possibly be anything to wipe away.

Sympathy. Understanding. 

Red spreads through the water like blood until both he and the plant are swimming in it. Until it’s all he can see. Until he’s drowning in it, drowning in righteous fury and hot anger and cavernous grief and fear and loneliness but it’s different than Knives, it’s named–

“Red Brother?”

“Yes,” Wolfwood chokes out. Is this what hid behind your smile, all that time? God, how did you bear it?

The plant’s emotions are incongruous to Wolfwood’s own, overtaking his grief with something lighter. 

Delight! Surprise!

The plant examines him with a curiosity Wolfwood recognizes as an older sibling himself. She swims around him, lifts his arms and prods his legs, examining him from every angle. 

Approval.

“Thanks, I suppose?”

“Red-brother’s friend-companion-partner–life–”

“Did he come here?” Wolfwood asks, cutting off the plant before she can get carried away.

He's hit with a wave of sorrow, so strong it nearly makes him double over.

The red swirls and coalesces into an image of a dark haired man. His forehead presses against a plant bulb and as his eyes slide shut Wolfwood is overcome with the man’s grief, loneliness, grief.

Then another image, the man with a smudge of dirt on his cheek, under the fingernails pressed delicately against his sister’s glass bulb, his eyes filled with exhaustion, frustration, grief.

And then, the man opening his hand to reveal a handful of seeds. Determination, hope, grief. 

Wolfwood didn’t think it was possible to fit so much grief inside a single person. He’d do anything to take it away, but the man is beginning to dissolve now. Wolfwood reaches out his dream hand, tries to grab onto the red before it’s gone forever, but it slips through his grasp, an intangible dream-thing.

No, not again, let me hold on a little longer–

The last clear thing Wolfwood sees is the man clenching his fist around the seeds in his palm.

And then, one final burst of vivid emotion floods Wolfwood, so overwhelming it fills his lungs until he's not sure if it's the plant's feelings he's drowning in, or his own, or someone else’s entirely.

Love.

Chapter Text

Wolfwood wakes to something tapping against the glass behind him. The tap resonates through to his skull with— 

Urgency.

"Wha–"

Urgency!

He blinks himself to awareness and climbs to his feet so quickly his head spins. "Okay, okay, I get it."

He turns to the plant bulb. She's still mostly curled up, but one spindly arm is pressed up against the glass, and her head is peeking out of a large feathery petal like she's under a blanket, eyes wide. 

The ambient noise of the station has gotten noticeably louder. 

December is waking up.

Wolfwood places a hand to the bulb, palm to palm with the plant the way he’d seen Vash do in his not-dream. His heart pounds so forcefully he can feel his pulse in the glass. 

"Thank you” he tells her. "I'll be sure to visit."

Joy, relief, urgency.

Once again, the plant's emotions are so incompatible with his own that it only draws the emptiness in starker relief. "Pushiness runs in the family, I see," he says with a hollow laugh. 

Affection, she presses at him. Fondness. 

Urgency. 

Wolfwood makes it back to Angelina with no issue. He must not have been asleep for long, because the air is still cool and the sky is the dull grey that signifies a hazy day still yet to come. When he passes a few plant scientists heading to their shift, he’s walked Angelina far enough from the fence that he gets away with nothing more than a polite nod.

The plant's urgency is racing under his skin like an itch that won't go away, but he doesn’t know where to go or what to do with it. 

The plan. The goal. Something to fight for. 

Well, he got information, and he’s still alive, but is there anyone who even needs him to fight for them anymore? What else is even he good for?

He should find a public phone and call the number on Meryl’s card, probably, but he’s not sure what to say. He doesn’t have good news. He’s not sure he has any news.

All he has is an old bike, a borrowed radio, and a few reminders of what he lost taking up space in his pockets.

He’s driving through the city at a casual pace, no destination in mind and still trying to shake off the emotional imbalance his visit to the plant left him with, when he nearly runs over a child.

“Shit!” he curses, swerving around the kid. He isn't even driving that fast, but he turns so sharply that Angelina tosses him off into the street like she’s an unruly thomas. The bike skids across the ground in one direction and comes to a rest against a lamp pole with enough force to dent it. Wolfwood skids across the ground in the other direction, leaving an impressive dust cloud in his wake. Pedestrians scatter out of the way with shouts of surprise.

The kid, who couldn't be any older than three, stares at him from the middle of the street with wide eyes, like he didn’t just cause a whole scene.

Wolfwood staggers to his feet, rubbing at his elbow, which had taken the brunt of the impact. He looks around, hoping to find someone who looks like they've lost their child. Nobody pays them any mind, or even glances their way. They’ve already returned to their own lives. Children alone in the street isn’t an uncommon sight, after all.

Wolfwood collects Angelina and shuts her off before he approaches the kid. He crouches down so the kid's at eye level. “You lost?”

The kid seems to think for a few seconds and shakes their head.

“Did you come out here alone?”

The kid nods.

“You’re too young to be out here by yourself though,” Wolfwood says, more to himself than anything. “Where’s your house?”

The kid thinks for so long that Wolfwood worries he doesn't know, but then points down the street. “Blue.”

It’s not even up for debate. Wolfwood pushes aside the urgency still pulsing in his veins, picks the kid up and sets him on Angelina’s seat, then walks the bike down the road towards the nearest blue house in sight. The kid grins like riding on a motorcycle is the best thing since sliced bread. Which, it is. He can't blame the little guy for being excited. Angelina's a thing of beauty, even when she’s temperamental. 

When he gets to this kid’s house he’s gonna have a word with the parents about how to properly teach your offspring not to trust strangers, though. 

“This one?” he asks once they’ve arrived at a small house. The kid is already squirming in the seat, trying to climb down, so Wolfwood takes that as a yes.

“Whoa, hold on, hold on,” Wolfwood says, reaching out to catch the kid before they fall. The kid darts toward the door as soon as his feet touch down, reaching up towards a door handle that’s not quite out of reach.

Wolfwood pushes down Angelina’s kickstand and joins the boy at the door. He can hear multiple kids on the other side. No wonder this one got out undetected if their family is this noisy. 

Wolfwood knocks. There's a yell of “Someone’s at the door!” and a minute later it creaks open. The man who opens the door is taller even than Wolfwood, and wearing an apron. He’s turned away from the door, telling whoever Susie is to get back into the bath.

The kid Wolfwood found tries to squeeze past to enter the house, and then the man turns, sees the kid first, says, “Timmy, what are you—” 

The man freezes as his gaze lands on Wolfwood. 

His heart screams at him to run, fight, run, fight, run fight run fight runfightrunfightrun— 

Wolfwood is pulled into a crushing hug before he can process that it’s too late to run and far too late to fight.

There are already tears soaking Wolfwood’s shoulder. 

“Good to see you too, Crybaby,” Wolfwood croaks.

Livio squeezes him tighter. Wolfwood’s body is shaking, but he’s pretty sure it's from the force of Livio’s relieved sobbing.

When he’s finally released, Wolfwood reaches up and smacks Livio upside the head. “You gotta stop being so trusting. How’d ya know I wasn’t some revenant here to eat ya?”

Livio wipes his face and gives Wolfwood a watery smile. “You’re one to talk, ain’t you the one who just let the guy who killed you give you a hug? How’d you know I wasn’t— you know.”

“Because you’re not, are you?”

Wolfwood almost doesn’t recognize the man standing in front of him. His hair is cropped short, and there’s a light in his eyes that speaks to burdens being put down. And he’s wearing an apron. A goddamn apron. Like he’s some househusband, not a trained killer. Like blood doesn’t stain his hands. Like he’s been forgiven.

Like he’s forgiven himself. 

“I’m not,” Livio confirms, and he sounds proud of that fact. “And somehow, you ain’t the same as the last time we saw each other either. I thought you were dead.”

“I was,” Wolfwood says quickly, before he gets the same accusatory glare he got from the girls. “I was dead. But—”

“But now you’re not?”

Wolfwood tries not to let the confusion in Livio's reply affect him, but his heart falls a little despite himself. “You don’t know anything about how I’m alive?”

Livio gives Wolfwood a careful look. “Only guesses. Why don’t you come in? There’s people who’ll want to say hi to you. We can talk over breakfast.” He grins conspiratorially at Wolfwood, like he knows something Wolfwood doesn’t know. “We’re making donuts.”

-

Livio leaves Wolfwood standing awkwardly in the living room. Timmy has already forgotten Wolfwood exists and is playing with some wooden animals on a worn couch. Wolfwood thinks about joining him on the other cushion, but it would be presumptuous to sit down like he belongs here, right?

Also, there's a pretty significant part of him that never wants to sit on a couch again, if he's being honest with himself.

Wolfwood looks around the room. This place is well lived in. Even without the noises through thin walls, he’d be able to tell that this is a house where too many kids are crammed into a too small space. There’s toys and dishes and dirty clothes everywhere. Not in a messy way, just a side effect of not having enough room to put everything.

Upstairs, Livio is yelling – affectionate yelling, but still yelling – for Susie to, ‘get back here, you little monster, you’re gettin’ the floor all wet.’

Whatever Livio – and maybe Razlo, with that set of lungs – is up to here, he’s got his work cut out for him.

Wolfwood itches for a cigarette, something to calm his nerves, give him something else to focus on besides the couch in his line of sight and the plant's deep sadness when she showed him her brother. But he won’t smoke in a house full of kids. Miss Melanie would kill him, resurrect him, and then kill him again.

And then, as if he summoned her, there she is.

Miss Melanie comes down the stairs with a laundry basket on her hip and tears in her eyes and Wolfwood abruptly and belatedly realizes what Livio meant by people who’ll want to say hi. 

Wolfwood is still weak from the surprise of seeing Livio, and so when Miss Melanie sets the basket down to gather him into her arms he goes without protest, nearly collapsing to the floor from the weight of the gentleness she gives him.

“Oh, Nicholas,” she soothes, rubbing his back as he tries to breathe. “Welcome home.”

He can’t find words to express the relief he feels. Maybe there are no words. Maybe there doesn’t need to be words for this sort of thing, just feelings. He presses his face into her soft shoulder and inhales.

She smells like all the best parts of his childhood.

Melanie pulls back and looks Wolfwood up and down, assessing for damage the same way she would any time he got into a scrap with the city kids. Then she takes his hands into hers. Her hands are small in his, and more wrinkled than he remembers, but none of her strength has faded.

“I’m okay,” he assures her. There’s no blood on my hands anymore. You don’t have to worry. “I don’t understand it but…”

She smiles and pats his hand. “God works in mysterious ways. I’m just grateful you came home.”

Home.

It’s a word that should fill him with comfort. It should ease the restlessness he feels. The urgency still pumping through his body, that keeps him on edge, fighting the urge to run, though he doesn't know where to.

He’s alive, and he’s free of Chapel, and Knives is gone, and the insurance girls are alive, and the kids are alive, and Miss Melanie is alive, and Livio is not just alive but is wearing a goddamn apron and making homemade donuts, and Wolfwood should be content.

It's selfish to want more, but he can't help it. 

It's not fair that Wolfwood gets to have love and peace, when the one person who craved it most of all isn't here to witness it. 

Miss Melanie makes them wait until the kids have all been fed and sent out of the room before she allows Wolfwood to bombard Livio with questions.

Livio fills in the gaps, wielding the truth like a Punisher. Each answer rips through Wolfwood like a bullet.

It was Vash who stayed awake all night to bury Wolfwood. It was Vash who dug the grave, who carved the stone, who carried him to his final resting place, who crossed his arms over his chest and covered him with dirt. It was Vash who fed Livio, who trusted Livio, who forgave Livio, paving his road to redemption. And it was Vash who killed Legato. 

Everything Vash had preached for decades, gone in an instant because Livio’s life was the only thing Wolfwood left behind, and that meant more to him than that unbreakable vow.

Wolfwood has to take a few seconds to compose himself, after that revelation.

Livio pats him on the shoulder. To his credit, he does not try to offer condolences or assuage guilt. Even though there’s no other way to slice it—it was Wolfwood’s fault Vash pulled the trigger.

“Keep going,” Wolfwood whispers.

And Livio does. He tells Wolfwood about how Vash swayed the plants to his side—humanity’s side—and how he and Knives flew off into the sunset like two halves of a broken bird and then weren’t heard from for months, until the Earth Federation and half the bounty hunters on the planet and Meryl and Milly descended on that little rural church.

“And we didn’t see him for a while after the NML broadcast, but a few weeks ago he stopped by and said he’d be in town a while. He’s been spending a lot of time at the old orphanage, and just as much time at the plant station conversing with his sisters – after hours, of course, because he's still a wanted man. Haven't seen him in about a week, though. Not since–” Livio cuts himself off, but it wouldn’t take a genius to know how that sentence was supposed to end.

Someone left Wolfwood whiskey and cigarettes, after all.

Livio clears his throat. “After he visited your, uh, grave… he said not to disturb him at the old orphanage for a while. Said he was gonna try to turn a place of pain and sorrow into something beautiful, and wanted it to be a surprise. And I’ve been so busy with the kids, I haven’t had a chance to ignore his request.” Livio gives Wolfwood a curious look. “You didn’t see him when you–”

“No."

Wolfwood watches Livio put together the same timeline he himself had choked on. 

Livio shakes his head. "He wouldn't…"

But Livio doesn't sound sure, and that's the nail in the coffin for Wolfwood. Something beautiful. Of course he’d think something like that. Wolfwood can’t even feel any type of way about it, because the certainty sinks in his gut like lead. "He would. Who'd be there to stop him?"

Livio opens his mouth to respond, but that’s when a half dozen children tumble into the room and demand naptime stories, oblivious to the grief in the air.

“I’ll be right back,” Livio assures Wolfwood as he fends off the kids’ attempts to turn him into a human jungle gym. “Why don’t you wait in the living room, you look beat.”

Wolfwood nods absently and leaves the kitchen. There's not really anywhere else to wander, besides back to the living room, so that's where he goes. Melanie is bustling around, tidying in a nervous sort of way. She hadn’t sat in on his and Livio’s conversation, but she must have heard some of it. He wonders what she thinks of it all. He’s afraid to ask. 

He feels a little useless, though, just standing around not helping. Those first days after death he'd wanted nothing more than to catch up to everyone. He never really thought about what would happen after that, though. His whole adult life, his next steps were clear as a knife wound. Orders, missions, assignments. He pulled the trigger, bullets hit their mark, and he aimed for the next target on his list. 

He's aimless, now. There's nobody telling him what to do, where to go, who to kill. It's a freedom he'd once envied in others, but now that he has it, all he feels is hollow.

How did Livio do this? Is devoting himself to these kids enough to fill up the gaping emptiness left in the wake of his life's work? Do they even want him, need him, the way he— 

“Nicolas, dear, could you put this up on the top shelf?”

Miss Melanie hands him a tool box, and he dutifully reaches up to put it out little hands’ reach. 

Wolfwood hasn’t asked, but it’s clear that it’s just Melanie and Livio keeping this place afloat. It explains why they’re in the city, and not the compound. Here, they’re in close proximity to supplies. And it would take multiple sets of hands to fix up the structural damage left behind from the fight.

He can at least help clean up the living room. A plan with a simple, easy goal. Put things on shelves, line up shoes by the door, fold blankets.

He can work on something to fight for later.

-

“I ain’t scared of you,” Wolfwood tells the couch after running out of chores to delay the inevitable. “You’re just a piece of furniture. Not even the same one. You can’t hurt me.”

The couch, being a couch, says nothing. Just sits there, mocking him and looking oh so comfy after days of nonstop travel.

Wolfwood brushes Timmy’s wooden animals aside and sits down on the edge of the cushion, muscles tensed. When nothing traumatic happens, he scooches further back until his spine presses against the cushion.

There’s too much empty space on the other half of the couch. It makes the gaping emptiness inside him ache fiercely.

He tips sideways to lay across the length of the couch and tucks his feet up onto it. His cheek presses into the cushion, squeezing one eye shut. The other follows not long after, weighed down with exhaustion.

He’s laying on a couch, and the sky is blue overhead, but the suns are blocked out by a tall figure, who arrives out of nowhere to sit on his lap. The man is leaning over him now, and his eyes are blue, bluer even than the sky, impossibly blue, and when he leans in, Wolfwood meets him halfway, their lips just barely brushing, and— 

Someone giggles. Someone else hushes them. 

The weight on his stomach is too light to belong to a grown man.

The dream shatters into reality.

Wolfwood opens his eyes, squinting at the sudden brightness. Wooden ceiling beams crisscross over his head. There’s two kids sitting on his chest. He sits up, and they tumble backwards with a laugh, though the sound is distant to his ears, muted through the residual fog of sleep.

The dream lingers on his too dry lips. He licks them, but it offers no relief. 

Reality is devastating.

Is that all I’ll ever get? Just intangible visions of something I was too much of a coward to chase when I had the chance?

The kids clamber off Wolfwood and dart out of the room to report to anyone that’ll listen that “Big Brother Nico is awake,” leaving Wolfwood with his head in his hands and a strange feeling like his body is too light, like there’s not enough weight to hold him down.

He wonders if this is how Vash felt when Wolfwood died. If he felt untethered, like a lost feather in a strong breeze. Or if it was different because he, at least, had a body to bury. Maybe having something to do with his hands had grounded him. It had always helped Wolfwood. It had always helped Vash, too, on those nights they shared bent over their weapons, fiddling and fine tuning the mechanics just for something to keep their nervous fingers busy.

Wolfwood wonders if he’d feel worse or better if he had a body to bury, but it doesn’t really matter, does it? It’s not like he had a say.

Their new home is as short on peace and quiet as it is on space.

Wolfwood wonders if he'll ever truly feel at peace, then feels guilty for considering it. Vash sacrificed so much for Wolfwood's sake. Time and promises that Wolfwood can't repay except through living a full life. He can’t waste this gift feeling guilty for things he can’t change.

There’s not nearly enough room to hide from what feels like an endless stream of inquisitive orphans, and Wolfwood does his best to indulge them. Especially the oldest kids, who remember him from his first life, when he was still Big Brother Nico. Before he was turned into something else. 

Still, there’s only so much he can sanitize his explanations of what happened to him, even considering that most of these kids have lived through their own personal hells enough to be desensitized to some level of violence and bloodshed. 

Wolfwood makes up his mind to escape the claustrophobia of the orphanage before he can drown in it. Livio protests, but only until his duties as a caretaker to a dozen orphans return in the form of two dusty toddlers who just had their baths and now needed a second one.

His heart swells with pride for the man Livio has become, and equal grief that he hadn’t been there to see it happen.

But he's here now. Even if there's still something tugging at him, something unresolved. 

Wolfwood makes multiple promises to Miss Melanie that he'll be back. He just needs some time and space to think. And to grieve. Though he doesn’t say that part out loud, Melanie seems to hear what went unspoken, and she regards him with kind eyes as he lingers by the door, feeling somewhat guilty to be running away so soon after arriving.

Seems to be a pattern with him, lately, as much as wasting someone’s care has been. More proof that maybe even a clean slate isn't enough to fix him. 

“Take these with you?” Melanie asks, holding out a paper bag, damp with grease and heavy with warm donuts. “A snack for the road. And truthfully, if I don’t find a way to get them out of the house, they’ll find a way into my poor arteries. You’d be doin’ me a favor.”

And well, Wolfwood could never say no to Miss Melanie after the trouble he'd put her through, so he accepts the donuts and closes the door behind him as he leaves.

He stands on the stoop for a few seconds, watching the city's residents make their way to their destinations.

Wolfwood's world has been upended, but the rest of the world keeps spinning. It's disorienting.

There’s a man and woman walking arm in arm up the street toward him as he steps into the road, maybe barely more than strangers, maybe husband and wife, but they're whispering sweet nothings into each others’ ear and leaning into each other with such affection that it makes Wolfwood nauseous. He gives them a wide berth as he walks Angelina out into the road, but their casual joy still feels like a knife twisting in his chest. 

I'm too sober for this, Wolfwood thinks. 

They don't keep alcohol in the house, and Wolfwood is still broke. He considers stopping by Wilkerson’s and charming a drink out of the nice barmaid, but the promise of a stiff drink isn’t enough to outweigh the prospect of Maybelline’s inevitable questions. He never did find what he was looking for. 

So he's got nothing but a cigarette to soothe his frayed nerves. 

It's his last one. The last one Vash left him. If he could afford sentimentality, he'd have saved it, but he still can't shake that urgency Vash's sister left him with. It clings to him like dust, choking him. 

He finds himself escaping the noise of the city altogether, and making his way to the orphanage. 

He’s not entirely sure why. Self-flagellation, probably. But maybe a small part of him is still hoping he’ll find some kind of answer or explanation. A clue that would reveal what the hell Vash was thinking. If he’s lucky, maybe something tangible he can cling to besides just his own life.

He doesn't return to his grave. Instead, he drives past it, through the front entrance of his old home, and leaves Angelina parked and leaning against the outer wall as he makes his way into the compound. 

It’s only the second time he’s stepped inside the stone walls since he left, all those years ago. 

It's not the abandoned corpse it looked from the outside, or like the Ark had been. There's no bullets rolling under his feet, despite the firefight, and no corpses from Wolfwood’s nightmares. The path to the main building is clear of debris, despite the clear evidence of destruction. Someone began to clean up the mess Wolfwood made. Maybe as some form of penance?

He feels pulled along the path as if by an invisible string. The twin suns stare down at him on either side of the bell tower, casting a cool shadow for him to walk under. He walks slowly, savoring the shade, until he finds himself at the front door of the church.

Then, like a sigh, the urgency that had been pulsing under his skin since his visit to the plant leaves him. Whatever purpose the plant imparted on Wolfwood, he has arrived at her intended destination.

The church looms over him; not menacingly, but like it wishes to embrace him. Despite that, he hesitates when his hand touches the brass doorknob, unsure if he’s welcome after the unholy deeds he committed in his first life.

And in the quiet space between hesitation and action, Wolfwood hears a voice.

There's someone singing, on the other side of the wooden doors. It’s an old tune, but a familiar one. Soft and lilting like flowers swaying in a gentle breeze. 

It’s a melody that Wolfwood has only heard once, but has never been able to forget. It feels a lifetime ago, that he’d fallen asleep to that song, laying on an itchy mattress in a dusty motel, drunk and travel weary, listening to his companion’s song as he moved about the room, shedding layers of clothes before joining Wolfwood on the twin sized bed. 

“I’ve never heard that one before,” Wolfwood had mumbled, as the words faded into hums while they arranged themselves on the bed – a practiced and perfected art, after one too many nights spent fighting for space.

“Oh, it’s just something someone would sing to me when I was a kid,” his friend replied. “Kind of like a lullaby.”

Once they’d settled, he’d returned to singing the actual lyrics, voice low and soothing in Wolfwood’s ear, lulling him into the most peaceful sleep he’d had in years.

He wonders if he’s dreaming, even now.

But the ground feels solid and real beneath Wolfwood’s feet, and there's a breeze teasing the back of his neck, and somewhere in the near-distance, church bells are ringing.

Hope is a feathered beast trapped in his chest. Its wings beat against his rib cage, fighting for freedom.

It ain’t too late to keep bein’ a coward. You open that door, and there'll be no runnin’ from what’s on the other side. Good or bad you’ll have to commit.

Wolfwood takes one last drag of his last cigarette and snubs it out beneath his heel. It feels final, but not like an ending.

When Wolfwood pulls open the door and steps into the church, it's like a whole flock of doves bursting forth. 

Hope's final, desperate plea.