You cannot possibly tell me that you, of all people, intentionally did somethin' to help your brother kill people. I know you. I know you. Vash's breath whooshed out of his lungs helplessly, as the words stuck home. Nobody had put it that way before - not that the two people who... had heard the recording of Nai's words from back then had ever brought it up - and the truth in this cut right through his defenses, absolutely. He listened, though the rest he almost wanted to argue with, instead curling smaller and smaller. He didn't really understand the part about his age, though he heard it, too. Maybe he was going to ask at some point.

By the time Wolfwood raised his face up (Vash did not let go, though in a way he was mostly frozen, trying to fold in on himself except not really), his eyes were closed, and he opened them when Wolfwood told him to look at him. They were, at least, not closed off or distant or unfocused. Instead, they were filled with unshed tears, that he was trying his best not to allow to fall.

Then the words drew to their conclusion, and the blue eyes widened, Vash shaking once and freezing as though he had been hit with a round of the Punisher in the chest, except when he had actually gotten shot last, he'd reacted far less... not that this Wolfwood had been there to see that. The thought that he'd hurt Wolfwood with his words, with his attitude, to think that was absolutely unbearable.

"No! That's not what I said! I - what I did was on a scale that you cannot come close to but - that's not - not impossible!" He was flailing for words and halfway between devastated and angry (at himself). "I said that when people are better, it feels better! I meant - that's - it's how I can make up for it, and when I do, even if it hurts me at the moment, it feels less bad overall!"

He didn't know how to phrase it to make Wolfwood understand, but he was trying.