The angry little outburst seemed to shock him somewhat out of his sad little stupor, and he blinked owlishly at Vash as he held him out at arms' length before the weight of what he said sank in. It might not have had quite the effect Vash had hoped it would, though, his eyes darting away as his mouth opened as if to speak, and then stopped, his mind warring with itself. He'd already done so much damage today, arguing could only make things worse, and the answers he could give would just dredge up old hurts that Vash had worked so hard to hide from the world. How was it his place to bring those out into the light, after everything he'd done?
Maybe, though, laying his own truths out was for the best. Maybe it would help him understand why, to him, stepping out of their lives so they could be happy seemed like the only kind answer. He was so tired, he didn't want to argue anymore, not after the past few weeks? Months? However long they'd had since coming here. But Vash was obviously furious, and an angry Vash was a stubborn Vash. Well, more stubborn than he was already, and honestly, there were few people who could match Nicholas toe for toe when it came to sheer bullheadedness.
Slowly, he reached up, both of his hands wrapping gently around the right arm where it gripped his shoulder, absorbing the heat of his skin and letting his fingertips feel his pulse through his glove.
"That's the problem, though. I...Ever since the time we spent recovering from that fight with Leonof and Grey..." No, ok, maybe that's not the best direction to start this talk. His brow furrowed and he rolled his eyes, though it looked more like an imploring glance up at the ceiling than a look of irritation. "No, sorry. Back up, ok. Did...did the other Wolfwood ever tell you what exactly the experiments did to 'im? Or the serum? I never did, I mean...not fully. Just sorta...glossed over it. We had worse things to worry about, and...at that point I didn't expect it would matter much longer, anyway, not after I helped you escape."
He'd known his clock was rapidly counting down, even faster than it had been before. There had been no way they would let him live, and he'd only hoped to keep the collatoral damage down to a minimum when they took him out. He sighed and shook his head. There were so many things he should have said, and saying them now would take more time than any reasonable person would put up with.
"When I said the things they did sped up my metabolism an' made me look older than I am...I left out the fact that it's never really stopped." He grimaced around the sour taste actually admitting this to them left in his mouth. He had come to accept this a long time ago, before Vash had given him a reason to want. Knowing his body was burning itself out into an early grave had just been some nebulous thing, just an unchangeable part of his life. He'd barely had the energy to care. But Vash would, and that fact alone had begun the first little flickers of worry in Nick, too. "Same thing happened to Chapel. Fucker looked like he was what, almost fuckin' 90? Truth was, I don't think he was much older'n 50 at most. Same thing is happenin' to me."
His voice dropped to whisper, laced with shame. He squeezed Vash's hand, rubbing at it reassuringly, already anticipating that the information was going to land like a ton of bricks.
"'M not great with tellin' how old people are, an' I don't even know exactly how old I am, anyway, but...I know I look a good deal older than I am. It hit me the other day, too. I might be 30, now. My whole life, I only ever figured I'd make it to my 50's, at best.
Which...gets me back to what I was sayin' a second ago. When we were stayin' with your people after the fight, Luida...helped me understand. Helped me realize part of why you are the way you are. It hadn't occurred to me before then. How you've spent so long on this planet, never aging, watchin' the rest of us get old and die, over and over again. After that...it was always in the back of my head. Even if...even if I hadn't been draggin' you to your brother...even if you forgave me for that...I'd just end up hurtin' you all over again before long, anyway."
He gave a small, sad laugh, a little smile crossing his features.
"Too bad for me, though, I think that's when...when I started fallin' for you. So hey, that's a first, I actually found someone I want in my life, but I have to deal with the fact that everything about me's just gonna cause 'em pain." The smile was gone as quickly as it appeared, evaporating with a heavy sigh, his eyes still staring unfocused at the corner of the room. "Which...all of that's to say...it's better this way, isn't it? You've got your family, now. You won't have to watch the people you care about get old an' die, anymore. And if I let you go, now...you don't have to watch me go the other way. Won't it be easier on you, movin' on now? Maybe if you just forget about me..."
It hurt to think about, and the words caught in his throat again. He knew that wasn't what they would do. He shook his head, Vash's angry accusations about what it seemed like he thought about them crossing his mind, and he squeezed his hand again.
"No, I know that's not right. I'm just...just a damned hypocrite. I'm afraid to be alone again, but I know keepin' you close will just hurt you more. And I already let you get close enough, you're not gonna forget me. But sometimes I wish you could, so I'd just be some asshole you met once, and you wouldn't hurt when I was just...gone one day. So maybe you wouldn't even notice. But that's not who you are."
In the silence after his words trailed off Blondie's voice chimed back in, ever the voice of reason, and he blinked slowly, glancing up at him and just listening. Having what had just happened spelled out in such simple, reasonable-sounding language made him cringe, blinking through the renewed tears, though that comforting thing he always did was still going a long way to keeping even those heightened emotions contained to a low simmer. He gave an awkward shrug, but nodded as well, rolling the explanation around in his head.
"I...I guess that makes as much sense as anything. I felt like..." He shook his head again, his brow furrowed, and he turned a wary, apologetic glance over at Vash, because this was also beginning to skirt close to things he had been trying to ignore, and a tiny worry that had been niggling in the back of his head without being put into tangible thoughts just yet. "Look...this whole situation is...weird. I know it's weird. And I certainly never expected...for both of you to be here, or..." He groaned, reaching up with one hand to rub his face before hiding his eyes behind it with a sigh. Trying to find polite, delicate ways to put things wasn't the way he was used to handling things. He was blunt, put everything out on the table in a way that left no room for doubts when he said something, and he just could not figure out how to dance around this. "Fuck, look, alright. Fuck. Whatever yanked me out of December that first time dropped me right in Blondie's lap, alright? And I was a fuckin' wreck. I didn't know what was happenin', my head was fucked ten ways to Sunday, but...but he took care of me. And the two of you are different, yeah, but he's still you. And I didn't think I'd ever see you again, but Nico was there, too, so-...so-...I spent the past couple'a years tryin' not to get attached or step where I wasn't welcome, but..."
He threw his hand up as if that explained everything, though now he wasn't looking at either of them and he had flushed from the tips of his ears down to his chest.
"I hardly knew how to navigate this kinda thing when it was just the two of us, I'm not used to...lettin' myself care, and I didn't want Nico t'think I was tryin' to move into his place, and I remember enough about what happened the first time you met me to know I was basically pourin' my whole ass heart out there, so then I was worried about you thinkin' I was tryin' to make you take his place when you had your own shit to worry bout, so I did my best to pretend it wasn't a thing! And now you're both here an' Nico's not, and I know people can get real fuckin' jealous if someone steps in with the person they got their heart set on, and I really don't want either'a you to feel like you need to do that, but-...!"
He groaned loudly, his suddenly rushed, rambling tirade cutting off as he reached up to cover his face again. That soothing aura apparently could keep him from breaking down into unproductive crying fits but this...whatever this was apparently didn't register as "upset" enough in his brain that it opted for tossing the emotions out to be swallowed up by the comforting sensations so they didn't effect him.
"But no, no, that's not-...! I'm derailing myself, don't listen to me! No. I meant to say...I was trying to say that...when we found you again...I started worryin' that once we found Nico, you wouldn't stick around anymore, 'cause Needle-Noggin was here. But I don't want you to go. Even if you didn't love me back, that was ok. I...I wanted it to be us, all of us, and I'd just be your friend if nothin' else. And then findin' out that you guys had found your mom again...I doubt she'd be real fond of me, I'm not the type of person you 'take home to mom,' but I was willing to try.
And then...and then it turned out I couldn't go with you. And at first it was painful enough, thinkin' about never seein' Needle-Noggin again, but we still had to find Nico...until I started gettin' into my head again, and...and I realized...I realized it meant losin' both of you, and...my chest just started hurtin' and I couldn't breathe. It's never happened before, not quite like that, except that it...felt kinda like what happened in December. But also not really? I don't know. I guess I panicked, yeah." He pulled his hand away from his face to stare at the ceiling. It was easier to talk that way, as if the words he needed were floating up above his head. "I don't know what I'm supposed to do. I didn't intend to hurt the kid. I'm not gonna lie, at first...when I first saw 'im, I was damn spooked enough that I almost wanted to. But I wasn't seein' him, I was seein' the one that sent me after you. But I couldn't do it. He's just a kid, he hasn't done any of that. He's not responsible for what happened to us. And it would have stayed that way, except...when I got in your head, I saw...I saw 'em hurtin' you, the way they hurt me. It was the same lab, I heard the same fuckin' quack doctor who cut me up an' pumped me full of fuckin' chemicals, and I heard your brother, and...knowin' that they did the same things to you. I never wanted anyone to go through that, but to know they did it to you...! I didn't wanna hurt the kid, I wanted to hurt Millions Knives. Nai was just the body nearest to me when I came to."
He seemed to wilt, his mind honestly still reeling from what he'd learned that morning, and even from the horror of knowing Vash had been experimented on, though that particular horror had at least started to settle somewhat in the days since they were in December.
"And now...knowin' you two had a sister they did that to? Fuck, Vash. It's all just been one long fuckin' cycle of nightmares and horror and pain. You an' your siblings were just the first victims, Knives just broke worse, or...differently than you did. I've seen what can happen when you fuck up a kid that young. There were so many kids at the orphanage who went through some really awful shit. I don't ever wanna add to that, not even with Nai."
He sighed again, finally looking back down from the ceiling, his head hanging low.
"Which...is why I understand if I can't be around, anymore. Even as much as it hurt, takin' care of him an' makin' sure he can heal from what he's been through is more important than what I want, right? Im...I'm not gonna be around much longer, anyway, not compared to you an' your siblings. I don't know what to do to make it better, I really don't. So when you said we couldn't be together, what right did I have to argue?"
...This post is probably going to be two-tags long Jesus Horatio Christo!
Maybe, though, laying his own truths out was for the best. Maybe it would help him understand why, to him, stepping out of their lives so they could be happy seemed like the only kind answer. He was so tired, he didn't want to argue anymore, not after the past few weeks? Months? However long they'd had since coming here. But Vash was obviously furious, and an angry Vash was a stubborn Vash. Well, more stubborn than he was already, and honestly, there were few people who could match Nicholas toe for toe when it came to sheer bullheadedness.
Slowly, he reached up, both of his hands wrapping gently around the right arm where it gripped his shoulder, absorbing the heat of his skin and letting his fingertips feel his pulse through his glove.
"That's the problem, though. I...Ever since the time we spent recovering from that fight with Leonof and Grey..." No, ok, maybe that's not the best direction to start this talk. His brow furrowed and he rolled his eyes, though it looked more like an imploring glance up at the ceiling than a look of irritation. "No, sorry. Back up, ok. Did...did the other Wolfwood ever tell you what exactly the experiments did to 'im? Or the serum? I never did, I mean...not fully. Just sorta...glossed over it. We had worse things to worry about, and...at that point I didn't expect it would matter much longer, anyway, not after I helped you escape."
He'd known his clock was rapidly counting down, even faster than it had been before. There had been no way they would let him live, and he'd only hoped to keep the collatoral damage down to a minimum when they took him out. He sighed and shook his head. There were so many things he should have said, and saying them now would take more time than any reasonable person would put up with.
"When I said the things they did sped up my metabolism an' made me look older than I am...I left out the fact that it's never really stopped." He grimaced around the sour taste actually admitting this to them left in his mouth. He had come to accept this a long time ago, before Vash had given him a reason to want. Knowing his body was burning itself out into an early grave had just been some nebulous thing, just an unchangeable part of his life. He'd barely had the energy to care. But Vash would, and that fact alone had begun the first little flickers of worry in Nick, too. "Same thing happened to Chapel. Fucker looked like he was what, almost fuckin' 90? Truth was, I don't think he was much older'n 50 at most. Same thing is happenin' to me."
His voice dropped to whisper, laced with shame. He squeezed Vash's hand, rubbing at it reassuringly, already anticipating that the information was going to land like a ton of bricks.
"'M not great with tellin' how old people are, an' I don't even know exactly how old I am, anyway, but...I know I look a good deal older than I am. It hit me the other day, too. I might be 30, now. My whole life, I only ever figured I'd make it to my 50's, at best.
Which...gets me back to what I was sayin' a second ago. When we were stayin' with your people after the fight, Luida...helped me understand. Helped me realize part of why you are the way you are. It hadn't occurred to me before then. How you've spent so long on this planet, never aging, watchin' the rest of us get old and die, over and over again. After that...it was always in the back of my head. Even if...even if I hadn't been draggin' you to your brother...even if you forgave me for that...I'd just end up hurtin' you all over again before long, anyway."
He gave a small, sad laugh, a little smile crossing his features.
"Too bad for me, though, I think that's when...when I started fallin' for you. So hey, that's a first, I actually found someone I want in my life, but I have to deal with the fact that everything about me's just gonna cause 'em pain." The smile was gone as quickly as it appeared, evaporating with a heavy sigh, his eyes still staring unfocused at the corner of the room. "Which...all of that's to say...it's better this way, isn't it? You've got your family, now. You won't have to watch the people you care about get old an' die, anymore. And if I let you go, now...you don't have to watch me go the other way. Won't it be easier on you, movin' on now? Maybe if you just forget about me..."
It hurt to think about, and the words caught in his throat again. He knew that wasn't what they would do. He shook his head, Vash's angry accusations about what it seemed like he thought about them crossing his mind, and he squeezed his hand again.
"No, I know that's not right. I'm just...just a damned hypocrite. I'm afraid to be alone again, but I know keepin' you close will just hurt you more. And I already let you get close enough, you're not gonna forget me. But sometimes I wish you could, so I'd just be some asshole you met once, and you wouldn't hurt when I was just...gone one day. So maybe you wouldn't even notice. But that's not who you are."
In the silence after his words trailed off Blondie's voice chimed back in, ever the voice of reason, and he blinked slowly, glancing up at him and just listening. Having what had just happened spelled out in such simple, reasonable-sounding language made him cringe, blinking through the renewed tears, though that comforting thing he always did was still going a long way to keeping even those heightened emotions contained to a low simmer. He gave an awkward shrug, but nodded as well, rolling the explanation around in his head.
"I...I guess that makes as much sense as anything. I felt like..." He shook his head again, his brow furrowed, and he turned a wary, apologetic glance over at Vash, because this was also beginning to skirt close to things he had been trying to ignore, and a tiny worry that had been niggling in the back of his head without being put into tangible thoughts just yet. "Look...this whole situation is...weird. I know it's weird. And I certainly never expected...for both of you to be here, or..." He groaned, reaching up with one hand to rub his face before hiding his eyes behind it with a sigh. Trying to find polite, delicate ways to put things wasn't the way he was used to handling things. He was blunt, put everything out on the table in a way that left no room for doubts when he said something, and he just could not figure out how to dance around this. "Fuck, look, alright. Fuck. Whatever yanked me out of December that first time dropped me right in Blondie's lap, alright? And I was a fuckin' wreck. I didn't know what was happenin', my head was fucked ten ways to Sunday, but...but he took care of me. And the two of you are different, yeah, but he's still you. And I didn't think I'd ever see you again, but Nico was there, too, so-...so-...I spent the past couple'a years tryin' not to get attached or step where I wasn't welcome, but..."
He threw his hand up as if that explained everything, though now he wasn't looking at either of them and he had flushed from the tips of his ears down to his chest.
"I hardly knew how to navigate this kinda thing when it was just the two of us, I'm not used to...lettin' myself care, and I didn't want Nico t'think I was tryin' to move into his place, and I remember enough about what happened the first time you met me to know I was basically pourin' my whole ass heart out there, so then I was worried about you thinkin' I was tryin' to make you take his place when you had your own shit to worry bout, so I did my best to pretend it wasn't a thing! And now you're both here an' Nico's not, and I know people can get real fuckin' jealous if someone steps in with the person they got their heart set on, and I really don't want either'a you to feel like you need to do that, but-...!"
He groaned loudly, his suddenly rushed, rambling tirade cutting off as he reached up to cover his face again. That soothing aura apparently could keep him from breaking down into unproductive crying fits but this...whatever this was apparently didn't register as "upset" enough in his brain that it opted for tossing the emotions out to be swallowed up by the comforting sensations so they didn't effect him.
"But no, no, that's not-...! I'm derailing myself, don't listen to me! No. I meant to say...I was trying to say that...when we found you again...I started worryin' that once we found Nico, you wouldn't stick around anymore, 'cause Needle-Noggin was here. But I don't want you to go. Even if you didn't love me back, that was ok. I...I wanted it to be us, all of us, and I'd just be your friend if nothin' else. And then findin' out that you guys had found your mom again...I doubt she'd be real fond of me, I'm not the type of person you 'take home to mom,' but I was willing to try.
And then...and then it turned out I couldn't go with you. And at first it was painful enough, thinkin' about never seein' Needle-Noggin again, but we still had to find Nico...until I started gettin' into my head again, and...and I realized...I realized it meant losin' both of you, and...my chest just started hurtin' and I couldn't breathe. It's never happened before, not quite like that, except that it...felt kinda like what happened in December. But also not really? I don't know. I guess I panicked, yeah." He pulled his hand away from his face to stare at the ceiling. It was easier to talk that way, as if the words he needed were floating up above his head. "I don't know what I'm supposed to do. I didn't intend to hurt the kid. I'm not gonna lie, at first...when I first saw 'im, I was damn spooked enough that I almost wanted to. But I wasn't seein' him, I was seein' the one that sent me after you. But I couldn't do it. He's just a kid, he hasn't done any of that. He's not responsible for what happened to us. And it would have stayed that way, except...when I got in your head, I saw...I saw 'em hurtin' you, the way they hurt me. It was the same lab, I heard the same fuckin' quack doctor who cut me up an' pumped me full of fuckin' chemicals, and I heard your brother, and...knowin' that they did the same things to you. I never wanted anyone to go through that, but to know they did it to you...! I didn't wanna hurt the kid, I wanted to hurt Millions Knives. Nai was just the body nearest to me when I came to."
He seemed to wilt, his mind honestly still reeling from what he'd learned that morning, and even from the horror of knowing Vash had been experimented on, though that particular horror had at least started to settle somewhat in the days since they were in December.
"And now...knowin' you two had a sister they did that to? Fuck, Vash. It's all just been one long fuckin' cycle of nightmares and horror and pain. You an' your siblings were just the first victims, Knives just broke worse, or...differently than you did. I've seen what can happen when you fuck up a kid that young. There were so many kids at the orphanage who went through some really awful shit. I don't ever wanna add to that, not even with Nai."
He sighed again, finally looking back down from the ceiling, his head hanging low.
"Which...is why I understand if I can't be around, anymore. Even as much as it hurt, takin' care of him an' makin' sure he can heal from what he's been through is more important than what I want, right? Im...I'm not gonna be around much longer, anyway, not compared to you an' your siblings. I don't know what to do to make it better, I really don't. So when you said we couldn't be together, what right did I have to argue?"