nomans_land | The Inn at December [CW; will contain desecration of a grave in tags]

The Inn at December [CW; will contain desecration of a grave in tags]

Waking up the morning after drinking enough alcohol to kill a Toma was rarely an enjoyable event, even for Wolfwood. So when the light from the suns blazing in through the window finally managed to rouse him, he groaned, turning his head to bury it in the mattress underneath him. He wanted to roll over and shove his head under the pillow, but moving was...weird. He felt too hot, uncomfortable, like the blankets were wrapped too tightly around his limbs.

There was a moment of confusion before the vague memories of what had happened the night before began creeping into his consciousness, and at first he felt...hollow. Empty. Guilty for the trouble he'd caused. But the more he lay on the bed, the more the memories creeped in, until the hazy memories of the two of them finding him in the bar downstairs and making their way back up to the room for a proper sleep finally sank in, and he breathed in a sharp breath that made him groan all over again.

"Mmmmr...Needle-Noggin? Blondie?" He reached out with the arm he wasn't laying on top of - and the way that one felt like it was probably asleep was not a pleasant thing - slapping around the bed in search of the man he remembered dozing off against, and eventually his hand slapped against what felt like...an ankle? He felt the fabric of tight, knitted fabric over warm skin, and for a moment it made him relax into the bed again. "Mmmr...hey."

He patted the limb in drowsy greeting before reaching out again. One Vash down, the other to go? But even as he patted around, he dimly wondered if the other one had even gotten into the same bed, or if he'd taken another. He turned his head, blinking at the room through barely-opened eyes, only to find it empty, and his hand came up empty no matter where he searched.

That was when he decided he needed to just grin and bear the headache that was throbbing behind his eyes, and he turned, shifting, lifting his head to look around for the other man in the same moment he realized the claustrophobic feeling was from wearing his suit to bed, and found himself staring blearily at a bed that only held himself and the fluffy-haired, soft-spoken Vash he'd been traveling with for the past few months propped up against the headboard, and not the Vash he'd left behind in December.

"Morn'n'." He rolled over, bewildered, shielding his face enough that the light didn't completely blast his retinas and seer an apple-sized hole in his brain, and realized dimly that they were the only two people in the room.

He was gone.

He suddenly felt as if a bucket of rocks had been dumped right into his stomach, his head dropping back heavily and the arm he'd been using to shield his eyes dropping across his face.

Of course he was gone.

He wasn't sure if he was too tired, too hungover, or some combination of the two. It was taking him too long to work up the ability to think about what that actually made him feel. He knew it would kick in eventually. He wasn't looking forward to it.

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Vash was trying to find his voice still when Wolfwood stirred, and smiled, a little tired and a little apologetic but sincere. His words were quiet, the hangover oh so clear in Wolfwood's every motion.

"Good morning. If it helps, he didn't leave. He just... vanished. The way Nai said that he'd lost him."

Beat. Then he held up something - strictly non-alcoholic. "I think some liquid will help with the headache."

His eyebrows furrowed over his arm before he was lifting it just enough to peer up at him from the shadows underneath. It...strangely did help, to be honest. Though he also had to wonder why it was that he kept getting swept up in whatever it was that kept them bouncing around the way they were.

"Mmm...Maybe he didn't go far, then." It didn't stop him from worrying, of course. But...he was at least...as far as he knew, alive. And if he didn't come back soon, then Wolfwood suspected he knew where he would be headed, next.

He squinted at the bottle he held out, taking note of it's very non-alcoholic label, and...decided he actually was rather happy for that. Honestly, he enjoyed drinking as much as the next dysfunctional son of a bitch, but he wasn't quite as great at holding his liquor as...well, Vash, of all people; he preferred drinking socially to barreling straight for inebriation, and took his anxieties out on his lungs, instead, unless something really set him off. So the last thing he really wanted right now was more alcohol, despite what his brain tried to say to the contrary.

He reached out a hand, taking the bottle gingerly before rolling to his side so he could push himself to an uncomfortable sit, popping out the ceramic cork, and tipping the bottle up in Vash's direction in appreciation.

"Thanks. Cheers." The drink went down slowly as he took tiny sips, hoping to avoid triggering his gag reflex before his body had a chance to process everything and make it to the safe zone where he didn't have to worry about becoming violently ill.

Vash relaxed slightly, unfolding somewhat and shoulders easing down.

"Possibly not far. He... was planning to, but I wouldn't have let him sneak out in the night if I could help it. Not after how you two fell asleep."

He made sure that Wolfwood was not sipping when he said that. Choking was not going to help the current state of him at all.

And no, he had not watched. But he had not been able to help hearing.

He let that fact process in his mind for a couple of minutes before taking another drink. He wasn't surprised, not really. The conversation they'd had was fuzzy in his head, at times, but he remembered enough to know that had been the exact thing he'd been terrified of, even if the terror the inebriation had left him feeling wasn't as raw and omnipresent as it had been before.

He turned to give Vash a small, weak little smile, shaking his head gently. There wasn't any risk of choking over that fact, either. He hadn't been paying him much attention last night, once the other Vash had started talking to him in earnest, but he hadn't noticed him leaving, either.

"Still lookin' out for me, huh?" His eyes went unfocused, the smile fading. On some level, he knew why Blondie did it. Not doing it would have gone against his nature. It still felt undeserved, though, sometimes unbelievable, especially given that he wasn't even the man he knew properly. "I owe you a lot, you know? More than I can ever repay."

And then he was looking down at the bottle in his hand, closing his eyes against the light that was still trying to bore a hole in his brain and letting out a long, resigned sigh.

"I am really not lookin' forward to today...I'm...I'm not gonna leave Needle-Noggin out there on his own. Even if he did have it in his head to go. Least I can do to make up for what I did is try an' actually help 'im now that I'm back. But...we...we still gotta...take care of other business first, don't we...?"

And on a hangover, too. Fuck, this was gearing up to be just as bad a day as yesterday had been, tearful reunions notwithstanding.

"...At least my bike should hopefully still be back at the orphanage. Sure have missed her. You don't know how often I wished I had her, these past two years. And she'll make catchin' up t'Spikey that much easier. Unless he's learned t'fly, 'r somethin'."

Vash smiled, if anything a little bashful, at the... well, more statement than a question, then blinked, startled.

"Owe me? Of course you don't owe me anything, it's all right. You've had my back over the last months more than a few times, remember? And you've been looking out for me, too." If anyone owed anything, it was Vash, always had been Vash, but he was not up for bringing up that argument and souring Wolfwood's morning even worse than it already was.

Deep breath. "Bike..." Um. Yeah, that would be faster, and Wolfwood had mentioned it before. It was just. A matter of switching gears.

"We go do that and then look for him." And two more but this might be a priority. Vash took a moment, then smiled, just a little,

"I'm glad that. What happened lets you not... Need to go after him recklessly. Pretty sure he'll need us both in reasonable shape, if things are as bad as he thinks they might be."

Can't watch him die again. Vash had heard him loud and clear, and he was going to do his level best to make sure it wouldn't happen. For the sake of all three of them.

He snorted through the hungover haze, a look crossing his face that spoke volumes about how absurd it was, to think that he would do anything other than look after Vash all this time. As if he hadn't been sent to protect him as a job, and only realized much later that it had become more than a job, had become his entire purpose in life aside from protecting the orphanage. But it was, to be sure, an argument they'd had many, many times before.

"'S just what I do, Blondie." As if it wasn't a paradigm shift about his entire worldview. As if Vash hadn't stepped in and suddenly, Wolfwood had understood the need to give worship and praise to a higher being. There was just more than one "higher being" he would give it to, now, though he suspected the very thought would have made their skin crawl. But then that was the difference between them and their slimy, fucked up brother, wasn't it?

He nodded gently, sighing again before finishing the bottle and putting it on the nightstand, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a packet of cigarettes and lighting one before he moved to grab his shoes and began tugging them on.

"We go do that, make sure Nico's not there...then we go lookin' for Needle-Noggin. Sounds easy, right? No big deal. I built my life around lookin' for his ass. This is just a day that ends in Y for me." Shoes tied, he leaned back, pulling his sunglasses out of his pocket and hiding his eyes from the light behind them before crossing his arms and blowing a couple of smoke rings out into the air thoughtfully.

"Look. If we weren't already here, I'd say let's go. But we don't even know where he is, right now. Could be in Octovern already, could be halfway across the planet at Home, could be stranded out in the middle of the fuckin' Sand Ocean. So we stick to the plan. Check the orphanage, head to Octovern. Then...if he's not there...we go lookin' for Nico somewhere else. Vash can take care of himself. I'll find 'im again."

Not that Nico couldn't take care of himself, too. Wolfwood knew that very well. But he still felt it was his responsibility to make sure he was safe and sound. To find him and make sure he hadn't been killed in whatever it was that had caused these weird rifts in reality.

He hefted himself to his feet, stretching his back out and groaned at the series of cracks that rolled up his spine, and turned to hold his hand out to Vash.

"Come on. Let's...get this over with. The sooner we go, the sooner we can...be done with it."

And the sooner he could stop feeling like he was about to dissociate himself into another realm of existence. Because God damn, was this going to be one Hell of a mind-fuck.

Vash had gotten up to mirror Wolfwood's motions, pulling on his boots, tightening his jacket. His shoulders were a little hunched, but his face determined, after having softened a little at the initial response, and he almost chuckled at the whole part about Wolfwood building his life around looking for Vash.

Almost apologized also, because some of that looking for Vash was Wolfwood, both of him, looking for him, and while he truly ... had thought that it was better off for everyone if the world forgot about him, the knoweledge that the two of them had had to fighte despair as well as the absence of clues for years to get to him...

But he felt oddly... bereft of words that made sense, just now.

They needed to do this so that Wolfwood could keep going without falling into the pit of despair that he caused the death of another version of himself. But then they had so much to do, three people to look for in the entirety of Noman's Land...

"Yeah. Let's go." His smile was soft and small, but he did turn it towards Wolfwood. "It'll be all right."

... beat, after he hefted up his bag.

"You'll need to lead the way though."

He only nodded gently in reply to the soft reassurances, sighing and gathering himself mentally before he walked over and hefted Nico's Punisher over his shoulder.

"'S Fine. It's only a couple iles away. We should be there within the hour."

And then he was out the door of the room, walking down the stairs and out the door to the inn and making his way down the road that lead to the orphanage in the distance, visible by the belltower over the home.

Already, just seeing the place, the closer they got, the more he felt his hangover kicking in, weighing down on his mind, melding with the anxiety and the dissociation until he felt like he was floating more than walking. And that was fine by him, to be honest, he would rather this whole thing go by in a dream-like blur than actually be too conscious of what they were about to do. It wasn't like he hadn't done this before, though it hadn't been since he was fairly young, when the Eye had really started kicking up the fucked up training they'd put him through and he'd gone a bit spacey before he'd learned to deal with everything.

It didn't take long for him to find the grave once they were close enough to make out the landmarks around the building. The sight of his old Punisher wrapped and propped up at the head of a large, flat gravestone was easy to see against the landscape. He didn't say a word as he adjusted his path, didn't even say anything after he had propped the weapon he was carrying against a half-broken wall and stepped forward to stare down at the grave, arranged with care and attention, even more than he was used to seeing even from Needle-noggin's usual burials.

For a long few minutes, he just stood, and stared, motionless. He would need a bit. Sorry, Blondie.

It would be a great lie to say that the sight of the grave, the Punisher at its head, did not upset Vash. Even as his eyes took in the details (the slab, the differences in the way the Punisher was wrapped), the grief written all over the place vereberated with the memory of it from the day before, with his own memory of the state Wolfwood had been in, two years ago.

But the living, breathing man next to him help steady him, and in turn he reached to place a hand on Wolfwood's shoulder, squeezing slightly.

"You're not alone. And... even with what we will do, he is not alone, either." He was not rushing him. Merely reassuring. It was not often that Wolfwood was stopped dead in his tracks, but this was more than reasonable to do it.

The touch on his shoulder seemed to startle him a little; he jerked, looking over at Vash, back down at the grave at their feet, and then back up again. Suddenly, he felt small, smaller than he had in a long time, and for once, the look on his face was just...openly sad, looking for once closer to his true age than he normally did when his face was covered in scowls and glares.

He didn't want to be here. He didn't want to do this, but he couldn't...he couldn't just leave Nico under there, unknown, if it was really him. They had to know. But...he shook his head, reaching up and covering the hand on his shoulder with his own and squeezing back.

"You..." His voice was soft and raspy, and he took a moment to clear his throat. "You don't have to be around for this, you know? It's...this isn't gonna be pleasant. He's-...whoever the poor asshole is under there...he's been there a few days, now. You can go, and I can come find you after."

This was wrong, it was so wrong. Why did he care now, all of a sudden? What a fuckin' hypocrite, after he'd spent all that time lecturing Vash about wasting his time burying everyone who made the mistake of taking a shot at his hide, but when it was his own, the thought of desecrating this place was...fucking awful.

Vash blinked, his eyes soft for the way vulnerability was writ all over the man, body and face and eyes most of all.

Then he smiled, soft and a little sad but so, so warm.

"It's all right. I do need to be here. And you need to see it, as well, or the thought will haunt you. I am sorry. But you don't ... have to do anything. You don't have to even need to look until there is something to see. I'll take care of it all."

Vash had, interestingly, less religious experience (cult that included, well, him as one of the objects notwithstanding) to consider things like sacred and desecration. He buried people because it was how he could protect them from the harsh world that took so much from all of them. And he planned to return it all to give whoever was in this grave rest, after.

But... still. Even if not his Wolfwood, chances were that there was a Nicholas D. Wolfwood here all the same. And he did not ... he did not want to see him lifeless, and worse.

They had to, all the same.

Oh, the look Vash gave him didn't make him feel any stronger. Instead, it mixed with the weird cocktail of dissociation and dread and horror in his head to make him want to cling, like he was only eight again, like Vash was one of the carers trying to wrangle so many children and this was all some nightmare that he could tuck himself into the tails of that coat and hide away from.

He shook his head, turning to face him and stepping close enough that it almost felt like he would try, but instead he simply dropped his forehead onto his shoulder, to give himself a moment to let the feeling pass. He wasn't a snot-nosed little brat anymore, he could do this.

"I do, though, I do. I just...he's your friend. I don't want you havin' the last memory you have of him to be him layin' there, lookin' like that, if it's him under there. I'm sorry I'm makin' you do this."

He sucked in a ragged sniffle, pulling away and wiping his eyes on his sleeve and shook his head, and then stepped away again. Took off his jacket and draped it over the top of Nico's Punisher, rolled up his sleeves, and turned back to the grave.

He had to do this. He could handle it. Even if the entire ordeal happened in the blur of a dissociated panic attack.

"...Sorry, Nico." Even if it wasn't Vash's friend, the same man he'd spent the last two years traveling with. He was still 'Nico' to someone. Just like Nicholas had been, the last time he was here. "I really am.
We'll put it back the way it all was before, when we're done, I promise. "

His relationship with religion had been tenuous at best before the Eye had gotten their hands on him, and it had only gotten shittier from there, but he was still more familiar with the rites and rituals surrounding it than even most normal people. So he crossed himself before he started, because it felt wrong not to. And then he crouched down, gripping the heavy stone and lifting it. It wasn't much heavier than the Punisher was; heavy enough to protect the body beneath, but no problem for Wolfwood, and it was hardly any effort at all to heft it up under his arms and walk it a few yarz away and set it gently back down in the soft sand.

This whole thing was bringing back a lot of emotions he hadn't ever wanted to feel again, memories of the day he should have been buried here, and the strange couple of hours that had passed for him in the aftermath, when he'd been delirious enough to think Vash had been an angel, or a figment of his own dying mind. The strange combination of sorrow and acceptance, relief that he was finally at the end of his suffering and could rest but racked with the guilt of knowing he had caused so much pain for someone so dear with his passing. He hated it so much, not lease of all for the way it made his vision swim with unshed tears as he forced himself to ignore all of it as best he could and look up and around the play yard for whatever Vash - the other Vash - might have used for a shovel.

Blinking the tears away just made them roll down his face and onto his shirt, but at least he was able to finally see, not far away, the old rusted shovel propped up against the wall of the orphanage. He moved to grab it, picked it up, stared down at the shape of it, and...grimaced at the spade-point of the spoon.

Imagined pushing the thing down into the sand, down into fresh, decaying flesh, and the thing dropped from his hands as he felt a wave of nausea hit him suddenly and hard. He leaned his forehed on top of one of his arms against the wall with a groan, regretting not for the first time just how dumb he'd gotten with the alcohol the night before, but after a minute or so he was able to move away from the stucco with a slow, shaky breath.

The shovel was off the damn table, then. He glanced around them, at the few toys that had survived the warzone, and finally found one of the small, chipped sand pails he remembered playing with from time to time.

It was good enough.

He grabbed it, headed back, dropped to his knees next to the outline of the gravestone, and was thankful for the soft, shifting sands as he began shoving handfuls of it into the pail before twisting his body to dump the little piles few feels away.

As Vash's arms came up to wrap around Wolfwood when the man's head came down to his shoulder, his thought was, aside from aching for him, that this was likely a ... well, not good reaction, but a better reaction than anger and denial that it was upsetting. For all that the latter was so, so very Wolfwood.

He did his best to help with the slab, but also made sure to not get in Wolfwood's way, and he watched as the shovel was considered and discarded, and he almost reached for it but.

He would know how deep would be safe to use the shovel if he had done the burying. But his other self, in the emotional state he must have been in?

Hands were fine. He knelt on the other hand and just dug and put the sand on his other side, leaving the pile to its finder.

It went on... for a good while, before the consistency of the sand changed.

"I think... we are close."

The deeper they got, the more he cursed the part of the experiments the Eye had done on him that had given him enhanced senses. It was subtle, at first, but before long, the smell began to hit, and the nausea he'd felt before began to resurface. By the time Vash spoke up, he'd resorted to taking in short, shallow breaths, if only because the thought of breathing in what he was smelling through his mouth was somehow just as bad as breathing it in deep through his nose.

That was the stench of himself, decaying in the ground.

He gave a short nod, an affirmative hum that almost sounded more like a queasy moan. Vash was right. The sand wasn't giving as much as it had, the rounded rim of the bucket meeting subtle resistance. So he tossed it to the side and began using his hands, too. It wasn't long before his hands brushed against fabric and he slowed, his movements becoming gentle, almost reverent.

Slowly, he uncovered an arm, folded on top of the other, on top of a chest. He recognized the small, shining crosses on the cuffs of the jacket, and the white shirt sleeves as much like his own. The skintone, though greyed and bruised, was more like his than Nico's. It should have been enough. It was enough. But something in him couldn't stop, even as his hands began to shake. Some morbid, ghoulish part of him had to know the man buried there, how much like himself he was, where the similarities and the differences were.

And the more that he dug, the more the little details of what he was seeing began to sink in.

His clothes, despite the stains of decay, were whole, free of bullet holes and the blood of the wounds that had left his own clothes beyond ruined, soaked almost every inch through. His body had been laid to rest with so much care, his form gently posed and not just placed haphazardly in the ground. The man wore, of all things, a black leather choker - or was it a collar? He could barely rub two braincells together at the moment to know the difference - with a small silver cross to match the ones on his cuffs. His jaw was more square than Nicholas', though maybe not by much, and his hair was shorter, the fringe near his ears long enough that it could have almost been sideburns.

There was a difference between the filth of decay and the filth that had covered Wolfwood when he'd sat down on that couch to share a drink with Vash. What covered the man in front of him wasn't the same blood and vomit. He had been washed clean when he'd been put into the ground.

And that was the realization that pushed him over the edge.

His sobs broke out sharply, horrified, shameful, grieving things. This wasn't Nico, it wasn't even an exact twin to Nicholas. This man had been laid to rest with love and care and grief, his body had been prepared, as for a quick, but still proper funeral. Cleaned, clothes changed. This man's Vash had put more care into this burial than he had ever seen for any of the other burials he'd done. And Nick had just desecrated that, for no reason.

Whether it was the smell finally hitting him as he took in deep gulps of sobbing breath, the guilt and horror hitting him all at once, or a combination of all of the above, the nausea hit him even harder than before, and he stumbled to his feet, rushing away as far as he could before his body emptied the contents of his stomach out onto the sand. Even after he had nothing left, he was left retching, shuddering and choking on the sand.

His hands shook, covered in gore, and it made it all worse, made him scrub them in the sand to wipe it away and leaving his hands scraped raw. And then he sat back on his ankles, rocking and sobbing, the dissociation passed and leaving him horribly, wretchedly lucid.

He had done that. He had put Vash through that, because he'd been too stupid and too stubborn to actually consider what he would have wanted, hadn't even bothered to give him the courtesy of letting him make the decision of whether he wanted to help on his own. He had just left him alone, run off on his own, and made him suffer through the same thing that had made this man's friend put him in the ground as a result.

He had known, logically, what that meant. On some level. But not like this. Not the way seeing the clear evidence of his mourning laid out in front of him made him finally understand.

And now, he had added "desecrating that grave" to the list of his misdeeds.

"What've I done??? Oh God, what've I done???"

Vash was being careful with the work they were doing, but his attention was about half on Wolfwood, as well. He could see the waves of discomfort coming in and being fought off, until he could take a proper look at the man in the grave. Whom Vash did look at, carefully, and sadly. The clean clothes and the respectful way he was laid out made perfect sense to him, but also the eyes that had seen far, far too much death for a vely long time could see how hard things had been on the man in the last span of time before his final rest. The bruises and fractures were not on his face, on the hands that could be seen, but the memory of them still was, even with the traces of decay.

When Wolfwood stumbled away, he let him be for a brief span of time... enough to return sand enough to cover the body. After making sure that neither of them had disturbed the way it had been laid out.

Then he got up, shedding his coat, and stepped towards the man on his knees, wrapping the familiar brightness around his shoulders.

"Come on, come with me just a few steps away, all right?"

Quietly, his arms wrapped around the broad shoulders, more guiding and supporting than pushing or pulling. Sitting there with all of that was just going to make things worse.

His hold tightened just a little.

"You did what you thought you had to do. We can't know how things will work out in the future, but you did what you thought you needed to do, for both of you. And we can't take back what's already happened. But we're still here. So we can try again to make things better today. And tomorrow."

He meant the words, absolutely, but he also was rather certain that very little of it was going to be even heard. They, or rather his voice, was to serve as an anchor, a reminder of the present as opposed to the vortex that he could imagine was in Wolfwood's mind.

The feeling of the coat draping itself over his shoulders made him draw in a shuddered gasp, but it also made him fold in on himself just a bit more, the lingering warmth and the scent of Vash on the material wrapping around him almost as much as the feeling of the fabric. It made the feeling of being small, of wanting to lean into him for comfort come crashing back down on his head as he tucked his hands - scrubbed of filth but still filthy, still unclean - under his arms where they would have less risk of dirtying the garment covering him.

He was uncharacteristically pliant, following where he was guided without protest, and when they came to stand a few feet away, he crumpled against him, turning so that he could press against the front of him, his forehead pressed against his shoulder as he let the tears fall, unrestrained. On some level, his voice did help, gave him something to latch onto and focus on. But as much as the words were able to get through, they stung, and he shook his head.

"I was wrong! I was wrong, I'm sorry! I'm so sorry!"

He couldn't even articulate just what parts of it he was apologizing for. All of it, really. Leaving, thinking his loss wouldn't hurt as much as it had, that he wouldn't care as much as he had, that he knew what was best and taking away that choice, and then dragging this man into the whole sordid ordeal and putting him through all of this. He had so many things to apologize for, and this was only the tip of the iceberg. But it was the things that, at least for the moment, were all he could think about .

This wasn't the first time he had witnessed Wolfwood crying. This Wolfwood. It wasn't even the gut-wrenching, helpless cry of the first time when he'd asked to hold him. But, for some reason, it was this time that Vash choked up, himself, wishing, just for a moment, for the release of tears, himself. Not for his own grief and fear and hurt. But for the pain he was witnessing, that he could not take away, that nobody could. Choices made in the past that cannot be undone. Even with the second chance that this Wolfwood had been granted, even with knowing he can try to make it up to the man he hurt in the first place, the unbearable weight of having made those choices in the first place could not be lifted.

Oh, how he understood that.

His arms just tightened a little, holdin and steadying him, right hand fingers cupping the back of his head, and he turned his face to press a soft kiss into the hairline at Wolfwood's temple, soothing.

"I understand. I accept that, and I'm here."

He could not tell him he had done nothing wrong. He could not tell him that it was all right. He could not even, with certainty, tell him it would be all right, though at least that one he had some hope for. So he said what he could, as true.

The sound of his voice as he burrowed against him, even being softer and gentler than the other Vash's tended to be, scrambled his thoughts even more than they were before. He knew that this wasn't the man he owed the most apologies. That didn't mean he didn't mean them any less, now that the landslide of emotions had begun. And the kiss to his temple only scrambled his thoughts worse, because they had never spoken about it, but he remembered lips pressing against his forehead just as gently, as he'd lost consciousness the first day he'd met this version of the man, when he'd been delirious and begging for absolution for the pain he was putting the other through, when he thought he was feeling the last of his life fade away into nothingness.

How? How could he be so kind, after what he'd done? And how could the man he'd hurt so badly even bear to look at him, last night?

"I can't-...I can't take it back! I can't make up for that! I don't know what to do, how do I make up for this??? Please, please, tell me what to do, tell me how to make it up to him, I don't know...!"

Was it even fair to ask that of this man? He wasn't the one he needed to atone to, not for this. His head was a mess, he felt so lost, he could barely even think straight.

So instead, he just sobbed, broken and shaking, shattering years of holding it back, pretending it hadn't happened, trying to forget the way the world had felt like it was falling apart around him and knowing he was leaving behind a man he loved, but that he was also causing so much pain.

Vash just held him, for a while quiet to get his own voice under control. Because if he sounded on the verge of breaking down himself, that must make it so much harder on Wolfwood, and he couldn't pile more on him just now. He could not.

He did wait for the sobs to ease down somewhat, too, before he spoke.

"I'll help. Not... exactly to make up, but to keep going. You're right, you can't take it back. But that doesn't mean you can't make things better for him. For both of you."

It did not mean he could not rebuild the trust that was broken, couldn't bring ease and comfort and hope... and love to the other Vash.

Wolfwood... had move into his life, into his heart, without warning or even intent. But he'd made a difference in a way that at least this Vash had not thought possible. He could remember from the day before, but also empathize, the incredible weight of the pain that was the loss...

And he knew that while it added to the pain, to the burden that the other Vash carried, Wolfwood was still one of the very, very few people still able to ease that burden. It would likely be different than it had before, but it could still make things better.

(At least for a while. And when that ran out... I can't watch him die again. Vash didn't know, but the emptiness of loss did not have to be endured for now. Not yet.)

If it had been anyone else, being met with an extended silence might have made the pain worse, but Vash's quiet moments were well familiar by now. Part of him, the side of Nicholas that was used to himself showing such outward displays of weakness being met with equally loud displays in response, often with violence, wanted to worry and fuss. The part of him that had learned to read Vash better than he could himself simply sank into the hold, turning his head into his neck and letting the sobs work their way out of his system, knowing on an instinctive level that this, held by this man or the other he'd known longer, was perhaps the only place that was safe to show this side of himself, to seek out that feeling of comfort and protection. No matter how they fought and bickered and snarled at each other, he knew that if he had ever lost control in this way, Vash would never turn it against him.

So by the time he heard him speak again, the strength of his sobbing had finally begun to ebb, leaving behind a dull, foggy ache as he subtly swayed against him, self-soothing and unconscious, staring out muzzily at the disturbed ground in the distance where Vash had recovered the grave.

There was a moment, though brief, when the confirmation that he couldn't take back what he'd done almost made him shut down, where it felt as if Vash were reassuring him that he would help him keep going because what he had done was beyond repair. His face twisted, for less than a blink of an eye, before the words that followed after rolled over him, and he swallowed back another miserable sound, simply nodding weakly to show that he had heard, he was listening.

And then he just sat with the words, muddled his thoughts over in his head, for a long time.

There wasn't an answer to his pleas in what he'd said, no, but...it hadn't really been his question to answer in the first place, had it? Only the other man could ever answer that. And in the back of Nicholas' mind, the part of himself that still felt so much hate for the person he had become sneered, reminding him that Vash had said the other had intended to leave that morning, whether or not the weird slips in reality had sent him somewhere else while they slept or not. He had pushed him away, he'd broken the only good thing he'd had in his entire adult life, that was his fault.

Maybe it was because he was simply too exhausted to let the little voice take a proper hold the way it normally could, he wasn't sure, but at least for the time being, he was able to let the voice have its say and then move along, unheeded, leaving behind it simply a general, vague feeling of malaise.

"I don't...do this, you know. The whole...people. Thing. Not like you can. People like you when they're not bein' assholes. I can...pretend, for a while. But the only way I really know how to behave is with a gun." It was a miracle he'd made it as long as he had, without either of them sending him packing. The only thing he knew how to do was break shit.

"I am so...Fucked up." His voice dropped, hissing out the last words on a whispered snarl. He was so broken. He knew he was broken, had for a very, very long time. There'd been a time when he'd just accepted it, and let that bitterness effect the way he treated everyone else around him. Now, it just reinforced how wrong he was.

After everything, Wolfwood deserved better, much better than fake reassurances, empty platitudes, and outright lies. He couldn't tell him that things could go back to how they had been. Because in an hour, or a day, or perhaps a week, Wolfwood would remember his word, and the pain of the obvious lie would sink in like poison. And he was already hurting enough.

So he had to wait, and to give him honesty, as much as he could.

But the words that came made him cough a little in surprise.

"Wolfwood, you might not be good at people, but I know nobody who is better at Vash than you." The faint trace of amusment faded with the last hiss, and he breathed out a soft sigh. "I guess if you put it that way, we both are. Just in different ways." His hand came up to card through Wolfwood's hair, soothing. "Yours and his match, and you both know it, in a way. Now you are out of synch, because what happened scarred both of you, but... you can adjust. Just so long as you don't push yourself into breaking yourself further." A small smile curved his lips, though it did not reach his eyes, which were still too... worried, for that. "And I'm here to help with that."

He had more work to do with the grave - a lot more - but the living Wolfwood was higher priority. The other one could wait a little more.

"I know you sometimes think me too optimistic, but... I ask that you trust me a little about not everything being the darkest color that you can imagine. I promise I'll not go off talking or planning for the best possible scenario."

They were here, at the grave, because Wolfwood had dug his mind into the worst possible one. Or one of the worst. Vash thought that they needed to find a middle ground that did not involve, well, this kind of pain. Seeing him...

Seeing both of them like this.

... Vash very deliberately turned his thoughts away from himself. They couldn't both break, not right now, and Wolfwood had far more cause... need? of it.

"Ready for a little water?"

The assurances that he might not be good with most people, but he was good with Vash made his lungs pull in a sharp little breath, something that wanted to be a sniffle but was a bit more like a gasp, and it almost brought him to tears again in a strange sort of relief.

"Yeah?" He wanted to believe it, and when he wasn't buried so far down in his self-loathing that he couldn't breathe, he did. But for the moment, he was floundering, trying to keep his head above the proverbial quicksand, and it was hard to accept. Still, the fingers in his hair helped soothe him further, and his eyes fluttered with it for a moment, letting the words roll over him and do what they could to ease his distress, before one of the points he made sent another stone into his heart with enough weight to make his face crumple again.

"But what if I'm already too broken? What if I'm too far gone?" Because he had been broken for a long, long time now, taken as a child and shattered into so many little pieces and then put back together again, but put back wrong, and he had never been put back right. And it felt, sometimes, like more and more breaks just kept chipping away at him, breaking even further, and how did he know that at this point he wasn't anything but irrepairable dust, slivers and shards that could not be replaced and only sliced through skin when you tried to hold them long enough to piece them back together?

Because right now, that was what he felt like. Broken and wrong and not even worthy to try, something that would just hurt the person trying to fix the mess.

He sniffed again, turning his head to hide his eyes against the crook of his neck in lieu of wiping the tears out of them with filthy hands.

So broken, and yet Vash continued to hope for him, to believe in him and go out of his way to look out for him, and he didn't know how to handle it, sometimes.

"I dont deserve you. Either of you." Maybe...maybe it would be better, to just...let Vash take over. Let him do the thinking for a while, blind optimism be damned. Maybe for a little while, he could just...try to stop thinking about all of it and be the good little follower he was supposed to be, but for them, and not the monsters who had made him this way.

But it was never that simple, was it? He had never been the type to stop the thoughts in his head, the worrying and fretting and anxiety that drove him to lash out at everyone around him. Not even for Vash. Not like Livio and Razlo had done for Chapel for so long.

The offer of water was enough of a distraction to pull him out of his head for just a bit, making him swallow experimentally, take stock of his body and what it needed. His head was splitting, his mouth drier than he'd first noticed, and that made sense. He had probably cried out half his body weight in tears by that point.

So he nodded gently, shifting imperceptibly against his chest as he flexed his fingers under his arms, feeling the visceral need to clean them before he did anything else.

"Probably a good idea, yeah. Think I need to wash up, though. Just a bit. Think the hookups inside will still be on?" With the Plants gone, water would be scarce, but maybe the orphanage had been routed through one of the wells in the area. He'd never had a chance to ask, before.

Vash huffed a small, sharp laugh. "Yeah. I didn't know what it was to be seen as myself until the two of you came to my life. It might be different for your Vash, but I don't think so." He breathed out, and held tighter.

"Broken can heal. You have time now, and so does he. Even if you think yourself broken, you don't have to remain so. As long as there is life, there is hope, and we have that now."

Then Wolfwood said that he didn't deserve them, and Vash stiffened slightly. But then he hummed, mouth firming in a straight line. "You know, that's the kind of thing I say, and you get mad at me for it. You've lived and died and taken lives and destroyed and taken on all the guilt for that to protect others. In a word, not deserving us is kind of bullshit. So let's go see if you can wash up, and you sit in the shade and sip some water while I return things here to how they should be, and then I'll join you. Does that seem about right?"

He was the one who did the burying of people usually, anyway. It shouldn't be too hard for Wolfwood to take that.

Vash hoped, at least.

He gave a small, sad sound at that, the dark thoughts in his head reminding him of the early days, when all he'd seen when he looked at Vash was a loose canon, dangerous and able to go off without any warning.

"I wasn't always very good at that, either, though...I...I was so dumb." It was hard to admit, something he'd kept close to his chest for a long time, because Vash deserved better than that, and knowing that he'd been just as bad as the people who'd hurt him just added to the list of things he hated about himself.

Still, there was something about about hearing Vash have faith that his breaks could be mended that made it feel a little more real, where it might have been something he would have railed against before, snarled and shouted and told him he was delusional, too naive, too kind, going to get himself hurt because he put his trust in the wrong people. What had changed? Why did it feel less like a threat, now, than it had before? When had he stopped wanting to disbelieve the kind things he said about him? And why wasn't that as scary as it used to have been?

"I want to heal, I do. I don't know how. You and him and the girls...you've always been the only ones who treated me like I could." And then Vash was scolding him, but it was different than anger, and hearing such a casual curse coming from this Vash, even if it wouldn't have been at all unusual to hear from the other, was enough of a little surprise that it got a startled little laugh out of him that managed to derail the doubts that still wanted to argue against everything else he'd said. It was different, the hate he felt for himself versus the hate he saw Vash holding for himself, both of them really, and part of him still wanted to argue that they deserved to forgive themselves so much more than he did. But perhaps it was the fatigue that sapped any real energy out of him for arguing, because he found himself accepting the reassurances more easily than he might have otherwise.

He thought about the offer, about leaving Vash to finish reburying the grave, and he hated the idea of making him do it on his own. But for once, he allowed himself a little grace and simply nodded, knowing that going back to it, even to put things back into proper order, would just break him down again. So instead, he let himself pull away slowly, flexing his dirty hands as if forcing sensation back into numb fingers after they'd fallen asleep, and swallowed back the last of his tears.

"I...th-...thank you, and...I'm sorry. I...I know this wasn't easy for you, either."

Vash's eyebrows climbed up, helplessly, at the first part.

"So dumb, huh? I hate to break it to you, but that's going around now and again. So long as you don't get entrenched into it and refuse to budge, it's not that bad. And you did not."

Then he hummed, thoughtful. He did not point out that he believed that of everyone, absolutely everyone, even more so of people that Wolfwood had given up on. So this particular instance was just how the two of them were.

Instead, he thought to the only time he could think when he had healed, a little. Sure, it had only been to where he had been earlier, but it had been healing all the same.

"Sometimes, there isn't a how to it. When I was with Lina and all, it was a matter of being among people who were kind to me, and nothing else happening to break me more. Which is why I said it's a matter of time. Th...ink of it as how most people would be when their arm is broken. It would need to be aligned, and then steadied so it doesn't move, and then not used for a while." Sometimes, it had to be rebroken...

Vash acknowledged that thought and put it away for later consideration.

"... and broken inside might not be that different. I don't know. We can find out, right?" Or Wolfwood and his Vash could find out.

He managed to smile, a little, a smile that was not a grimace, just... very small, and reached up to tug oh so lightly at Wolfwood's hair, in lieu of ruffling it.

"I've got this. It needed to be done, and now this needs to be done. He'll be at peace. You go rest a bit more."

Another squeeze of Wolfwood's shoulder, and he was off, to fill up the grave again - this time with the shovel, as it would not get anywhere near to endangering anything - and then set down the stone, taking time to align it just right comparative to the Punisher, to how he knew now the body was laid out.

Then it was time to seek out a way to wash his hands, too.

The small joke managed to get the smallest of laughs out of him, and he mumbled out an affectionate little "asshole" whispered in reply. He supposed at least he could be satisfied with that much, though. He'd been an idiot, terrified of the kindest, gentlest person on the planet, yes, but he'd also learned to get past it, and ended up in the complete opposite end of the spectrum. So...that stood for something, he supposed, even if it was still hard to openly admit that he was right if only because it would mean giving himself a bit of forgiveness for something he'd done wrong. He masqueraded as a holy man, yes, but he had never really been in the habit of offering absolution, especially not to himself.

And then he fell quiet again, remembering how Vash had been when he'd found him with Sheryl and Lina three-or-someodd years ago, how even having to deal with bandits and perverts intent on ruining the little life he'd managed to eke out for himself, he'd seemed...if not happy, then at least content. Recovering, at the very least. And then doing it all over again just a few short months ago, when he'd found Blondie in such a similar situation, hair different, yes, but undeniably mirroring the events that he had already lived through in his own world.

There had been a part of him then that, even though he'd barely known Vash for a few hours before learning to be absolutely terrified of him with the Fifth Moon incident and then having to go look for him anyway, had honestly felt bad for having to take him away from that. He'd been dangerous, yes, but he had also been the man who stood between Millions Knives and his goals, and even then, there had been something about him that just felt...right to Nicholas.

Even as scared as he was of the Humanoid Typhoon, when he looked at him, he'd never seen a cruel man, not like he had with so many others. Guarded, shy, churlish if you got him in a bad mood even, but underneath that, he'd been able to see kindness. It had been bruised and hurt and abused, and if he lost control of himself, he could still kill everyone around him. But he'd still known. Vash was just a sad, kind man wanting to be left in peace.

"D'you think...if we'd let you stay with Lina? Could Eriks have been happy? Could the breaks have gotten better?" He wasn't really sure he wanted to know the answer. On one hand, if yes, then it meant he'd taken them away from one of the few places they might have been able to find happiness. On the other hand, if no, then it just showed how deep those breaks must have been, to be so irreparable.

Not that Knives would have allowed it to continue for very long, either way. But the thought still lingered in his head.

Still, it was shuffled away for later thought when Vash reassured him about being able to take care of the grave on his own, and was instead replaced with the return of the sick feeling in the pit of his stomach and the overbearing weight of the thought of the man in the grave. He simply gave a small nod before he turned and shuffled inside, in his search for clean water to wash his hands off with.

Luckily enough, the first thing he noticed when he entered the kitchen was the first aid kit, sitting on one of the lunch tables and various bits and pieces scattered out around it. Someone must have been injured, though he supposed that made enough sense. Vash had taken a few hits of his own in the fight. He'd probably patched himself up afterward. What was most important at that moment to Wolfwood, though, was the bottle of rubbing alcohol sitting amongst the pile.

It wasn't soap and water, no, but it was honestly probably better than for what he was doing. He carried the bottle over to the sink and popped it open, pouring some of it into his palm and using it to scrub off the majority of what was still left on his hands. It was weirdly slimey and burned under his nails and the tiny places where his cuticles were cracked that he hadn't even noticed before, but it did what he wanted it to do. Then, thankfully, when he turned the knob on the tap, the pipes rattled to life with a groan and began dribbling out the smallest trickle of water. Not much, but it was enough, and he made quick work of washing his hands the rest of the way.

When Vash saw him again, he had come back to sit outside on the steps of the porch with a chipped bowl filled with water, and the bar of soap, the bottle of alcohol, and a tea towel, and there was a cigarette burning between his teeth He stood when he approached, a distant look on his face as he chewed on the filter of the cigarette, and held out the bottle of alcohol for him to take.

"Before we go, is it-...Can I...I...want a couple of minutes alone...with him. Is that alright?"

They really shouldn't be wasting much more time, and he knew that the man in the grave would have been just as carefully reburied as he had been the first time. There wasn't anything better he could do for him. But...he couldn't stop thinking about the fact that...somewhere out there, his partner might be alone, risking his life to keep everyone else safe, and how much it had hurt when he'd thought he was bound for that same grave, knowing that there wasn't anything he could do to keep him safe or make up for what he'd done.

That, on top of the guilt he felt for disturbing his resting place, made him want to sit for a little bit. Say his own sort of good bye, even if he hadn't known this version of himself. To maybe try and find some way to make amends for the thing he'd done today. The man in the ground deserved that much, at least, instead of Nicholas just riding off into the desert on his motorcycle after defiling his grave, without so much as a "Sorry, man. Tough luck."

Vash looked up, from what he was doing, but his body did not stop moving.

"Those are two different questions." Because they were. "Eriks could not have been happy, because even if he was not sought out - and if not by you, or even by Knives, he would have, eventually, ran into a situation that Eriks could not handle - he would always have known he was living a lie. He would also have started outliving those around him, so he'd have had to run, eventually." It was truth. "But the breaks would have gotten better, as long as he stayed. As long as they were not rebroken." He breathed out, looking back down. "It wouldn't have lasted much longer, I don't think. Because the world was not... calm enough to allow that much time. But that is what I meant when I talked about time and healing, yes. It might not be as isolated, but so long as nothing pushes you past those things that you would not normally choose to do, healing will come."

Slower, sometimes, when things were still too horrible, but it would still do so.

When he asked about some time alone, Vash nodded, putting away the bucket and the shovel both, then going inside following the scent of the rubbing alcohol to use it, himself. Then he sat down, bringing up the heel of one foot to rest on the edge of the chair, resting his forehead against his knee. Rest in peace, Wolfwood. You have been loved, you loved, and you've earned a rest from the pain that you bore. We'll try to make this world safer for those you fought for.

The words only echoed in his mind, but he meant each one.

The answer was, at first, about what he might have expected. It made sense, given what he knew, what Vash's priorities were and the harshness of their world. But then he was reminded of how old he was, of what Luida had told him when the two of them had been recovering from the fight with Grey and Emilio, and he felt his heart breaking a little more than it already had been.

In the end...that was the only possible outcome, wasn't it? Everyone Vash loved would eventually grow old and die, leaving him alone and suffering when he didn't even look as if he'd aged a year. He would be lucky to have a century with the people he cared about, and with the violence inherent to life on this planet? Even that was a massive stretch.

And for Nicholas...? There was going to be far fewer still, and the thought made him want to crumble all over again. His years were numbered, he'd known this since he was very young, and he probably wouldn't live to see his 60th year even if he did decide to live a quiet, peaceful life. It hadn't been something he worried about before. Now it was just cruel, and not for his own sake.

The fight that had happened here might not have been what did it for him, but he was still going to die younger than most, and...it would just end up forcing Vash to go through this pain all over again. Nicholas was going to do it all over again, and this time, there wasn't anything he could do to stop it, it wasn't a result of his poor choices, it was just pure, uncompromising reality.

There were obvious tears in his eyes again when he nodded gently, biting his lip to keep from breaking down again, and unable to look up at him, and for a moment, he tried to smile, to pretend like he hadn't just spiraled into another deep chasm in his mind.

"I'm...I'm so. Sorry." His voice stuttered out, and then he was turning and walking inside, afraid that if he asked why, he wouldn't be able to keep himself from breaking again.

Later, after Vash had left him alone by the graveside, he shuffled slowly to stand at the foot of it, and then lowered himself to his knees. He was quiet for a long time, staring at his hands where they were folded in his lap and worrying at his lip again, so many thoughts and worries roiling inside of his head before he was able to grasp onto the end of a single thread and pull it out from the rest.

"I guess...first thing I owe you is...an apology. I'm sorry, for what I did here. For what I made him do, too. I...don't know if you'd understand or agree with why...why...I felt...like I had to...but I don't think it matters, either. Any reasons I could come up with would just...be an excuse. You didn't deserve what happened today, and I'm sorry we disturbed you." He couldn't help it, he was weeping again, though it was a quiet thing this time, not like the horrified screaming he'd been reduced to earlier. He sniffled sharply and palmed the tears away from his face. "I hope...wherever you are, you're at peace, now. I'm sorry you can't be in my place right now. I...I don't know why I somehow...deserved to live and you didn't. None of it makes sense to me, sometimes I feel like I understand everything less now than when I was...when I was...where you ended up. But I really do hope you have peace, now, I mean it. And...I want to...I hope...maybe I can make it up to you somehow. I know your partner is out there somewhere, missin' you and alone, but...I promise, I wanna find 'im for you and help him. There are more people like him, now. He doesn't have to be alone, anymore. I'll find 'im and make sure they find each other, so they don't have to be alone, anymore. That way...maybe your death will mean somethin'. I'll do it in your name, so they don't have to hurt anymore."

He was sobbing by the time he felt like he had said all he could think to say, his voice broken and rough. It didn't feel as strange, anymore, to be mourning this man, someone who was himself but also not, who'd had his own life and experiences. He reached out, brushing his hand over the cross chiseled into the surface of the grave stone, and then leaned over and kissed it softly. He kept his head close to it, feeling the texture of the stone beneath his fingertips, and when he spoke again, his voice was barely a whisper, only meant for the soul buried only a few short feet beneath him.

"Rest in peace, brother. You've earned it. Good bye."

He wasn't really a priest, and he didn't really know exactly what he believed, but when he sat back up, it only felt right, to pull the rosary he carried in his pocket out and cross himself before whispering a soft prayer before he left. Who knew, maybe this Nicholas had been a believer. It didn't hurt anything to do it right, and it helped ease the guilt he had for what he'd done, if only a little bit. And then, after sitting in a moment of silence, he stood, tucking the rosary back into his pocket, and was halfway turning to leave when he stopped short, startling himself with another thought and glancing back.

"Oh, God, I almost forgot! Don't worry about Angelina! I'll take care of her, too! I'll make sure she's kept in perfect shape, I promise!" He stared at the gravestone again, looking a little like he thought the man beneath it would give some sort of response, and then he finished his turn and went to pick the Punisher back up from where he'd left it against the crumbling ruins, and hurried inside to find Vash.

His head hung low when he found him in the kitchen, and he still had trouble looking him in the eye. But he was at least able to compose himself a bit after wiping away his tears with a sad little sniff, and he shoved his free hand into the pocket of his slacks.

"Ok. I think I'm ready. Let's go find the bike."

Vash had finished cleaning up. And then had done his best to tidy up the room, inasmuch as an abandoned space could be tidied up. Quietly, so as to not disturb Wolfwood. There were things that were important.

When the man came back in, Vash looked up, took in the tears, the head hanging low, and simply stepped up, pressing a kiss to the top of Wolfwood's hair.

"We have spent enough time with the dead and maybe-dead, now, I think." There was no judgment, it was something that needed to be done, and there was a solemnity to his words, rather than impatience.

"Come, let us rejoin the world of the living. There must be something only we can do, here. Let us find out what it is? And find everyone that we need to find, too."

There were things that needed to be set to rights, here. In Vash's mind, reuniting Wolfwood with his Vash was among them, but it was a list, and he was certain that would only grow longer.

The sudden tidiness of the room when he came back wasn't lost on him, and there was a moment of sad fondness when he realized what had been going on when he was out there. Yeah. That checked out. Even when it wasn't needed, Vash was always trying to find something to do just to be helpful.

But then he was pressing another one of those small kisses that he always offered up so freely to the top of his head, and Nick's eyes slid closed again, his lip trembling a little. As if he were some precious thing, worthy of the affection, and shown it so often that at times, he almost wanted to believe he deserved it. At the very least, he was willing to accept the fact, at least in his own mind, that he craved the affection itself, unused to receiving it as he still was.

Even the gentleness of his words, free of judgment and seemingly more just to help pull him out of that dark place in his head, was a sort of balm on his frayed nerves. Vash, either of them, could spend so much time being a petulent brat, or a sweet, soft-spoken eternal-child, playful and dumb and impulsive, but they both had a side to them that was sometimes so rare to see, when he could really believe their age. Stern, but not unkind, commanding but with a gentle sort of guidance that was disarming, and it made him want to sink into it and just let them be in charge.

It was something he'd never experienced before, except perhaps from Chapel, in the earliest of days before he had shown his true colors, and even the mental comparison was enough to make his skin crawl. The only thing he could think of was the way it felt when he'd been particularly small and Miss Melanie or one of the other caregivers at the orphanage had held him when he'd cried.

Which, considering his relationship and feelings towards either of the Vashes, wasn't something he felt like he could even begin to unpack properly. Was that weird? Did that make him weird? God, did it even matter at this point? If that was the weirdest thing about him, maybe he was doing good, and he knew it wasn't.

Either way, it was that same feeling that he had, now, and with as raw as his emotions were, it was comforting, to let Vash metaphorically guide him back out of the nightmare he was living in his own head at the moment. He didn't have to think, he didn't have to try and keep up appearances. He could just accept the gentle reassurances as he was coaxed away from the horrible day he'd forced them to have and into the sun, instead.

So he simply nodded, quiet as he turned and walked back outside and around the building, to the yard he remembered leaving Angelina when it had been himself in this place. And sure enough, there she was; toppled over, sure, but when he righted her, she seemed to be whole and undamaged. Maybe a few scuffs here and there, but he could buff those out. He went through the familiar motions of strapping the Punisher to the back, and whether he realized he was doing it or not, after a few minutes, he began cooing soft little words of reassurance to the bike as he dusted her off, as if she were a living thing. He knows he's not your proper owner, but he promises he'll take care of you. He'll get you cleaned up. It'll be alright, he won't even make you deal with Spikey trying to drive you, this time. He'd need to see if he could find another sidecar, but for now, Vash could ride pillion behind him.

Which was, in the end, how they ended up leaving after the engine revved to life with barely a whimper of protest for the weeks without use, bringing a genuine smile to his face as he held her steady until Vash could climb on behind him.

And then they were off, headed towards Octovern. Just like old times. Mostly. Sort of.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

The Inn at December [CW; will contain desecration of a grave in tags]

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WHOOPS Here's another Emetophobia warning!

poor, poor Wolfwood.

He is having a MOMENT, and it's not a good one.

it's been a long time coming.

Yeah, he really made repression an artform, sooo...

soatheu oh wolfwood. ... i say as though stamp vash is much better

Yeah, no, they really are perfectly matched in the best and worst ways possible.

T_T they are. gods.

Re: T_T they are. gods.

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