Chapter Text
Vash watched Wolfwood’s pulse. It still beat steadily under the warm skin of his throat, in the crook of his elbow, beneath the subtle shift in browns at the tan line of his wrist. Still there, still strong. Tentatively, Vash reached out fingers to trace the line of those veins back towards their source, running his fingers over Wolfwood’s skin and the muscles beneath it. As he did so he sketched the faint tracery of scars that should have been there, but weren’t. They criss-crossed bronzed skin – some slashes, some punctures, some deep and ragged gashes like yesterday’s had been. Bullet holes that were, then weren’t; Vash could feel the ghost of them just beneath the surface, phantom traces like cold spots in a warm room. Not visible to anyone, but he’d be willing to bet that if Wolfwood thought about it, if he concentrated, he would be point them out. Not that he would. Think about it.
Two visible wounds now marred that smooth skin. Punctures at the wrist and throat, already healing over, quick and neat but unmistakably there.
Wolfwood’s broad chest rose and fell under Vash’s fingertips with the movement of his breath. This was the opposite of what had been supposed to happen, the opposite of what Vash had intended; so why did it feel so horribly inevitable? What excuse did he have for…this?
Vash felt his own pulse drumming a double time, a quickstep of anxiety as he saw the paleness of those warm tones, made cooler by blood loss. By him. He took too much blood, just as he’d feared he would and promised he wouldn’t. He should feel sick from it, from overfeeding, but instead- instead it made him sick how good he felt. Strong and light, practically sparking with energy. More alive than he’d felt in a century. Sick. Invigorated by someone else’s weakening, someone’s necessary sacrifice for his gain; a parasite, a black hole. A void. Getting darker and deeper the more it consumed.
The warmth of their skin pressed together was suddenly an overwhelming heat. Vash pushed backward, fighting the rising feeling in his throat. He scrambled backward away from Wolfwood’s body, a knot of fear and revulsion rising from his stomach to the base of his throat. Wolfwood stayed asleep, exhausted, while Vash thrummed with a stolen energy he longed to give back. Even now, sated and revolted at his satiety, something twisted inside him, dark and insistent. Some base instinct to keep taking until there was nothing left.
Vash darted a panicked glance to the sky outside; twilight fading. Good. He had to get out of this room.
~~~
When Wolfwood opened his eyes, he had a brief moment of panic. Everything was red, as though blood covered his eyes, bright and rich. Blinking, chest stuttering with newly awoken breaths, he squinted against the blur of sleep. A too-long moment later, he realised that it wasn’t his eyes at all; it was the room. The flowers that formed the slightly-crushed bower in which he still lay, and wreathed the beams and cracked walls of the tower were no longer an inky blue. They were red. Rich crimson, petals like freshly spilled blood against the dark vines, they filled the space with a heated glow that was at odds with the chill that had spread across Wolfwood’s skin. He shivered in the evening breeze that had long cooled the sweat on his skin. Pushing himself upright, he cast about the room for Vash but there was no sign of him. Wolfwood might have thought it had all been a particularly vivid fantasy if it weren’t for the ache at the side of his neck. Bringing his fingers to it he could still feel the sensation of Vash’s fangs sliding into him, intimate and deadly. He could have died. And yet even now, slightly dizzy with his head aching from what he could only assume was bloodloss, Wolfwood would give it again in a heartbeat. He’d never felt anything so, so- perfect. Did that make him crazy? Only a madman would offer themselves at their most vulnerable, give themselves up like some kind of sacrifice.
So Wolfwood was crazy.
His fingers grazed over something smooth and rounded; a flask. He twisted off the cap and finding it full of water, Wolfwood drank deeply, not drawing breath until it was empty. He felt better already, steadier. The headache receded slightly. His stomach growled loudly, reminding him of its neglected presence.
Where was Vash? He’d probably panicked when Wolfwood had passed out and fled to another dark hole somewhere to nurse his self-disgust in peace. The sky was darkening again outside, so he could be anywhere. Wolfwood sighed and looked around for his clothes. He needed to find something eat before he could tackle the Vash problem, and to do that he was going to have to tackle the other problem. The fact that he’d been MIA for a lot longer than this job should have taken, and as much as the Church didn’t usually give much of a fuck about what happened to him on the day-to-day, something told him that a particular interest might start to be taken if he just disappeared mid-job.
Wolfwood groaned as he got to his feet, a spate of lightheadedness washing over him and making the crimson of the flowers blacken before sputtering into colour again. His clothes were miraculously still intact, and he pulled them on, digging into his coat pocket he pulled out the last cigarette from his stolen pack. The first drag was heady as strong wine in his veins, doubling the wooziness at first before slamming into his senses with a familiar rush of toxicity, righting his sense of balance and grounding him. The flowers seemed to pass silent judgment on his choice of nutrition as he buttoned the coat around him and headed towards the ladder to pick up the Punisher. He blew smoke at them with a twist of his lips.
Outside, dusk was giving way to the dark purple of night, making the shadows loom once more behind the stones and trees. It was weird seeing the bright pops of colour scattered through the bruised greys and greens, where the midnight flowers had been before. Like there’d been a celebration, or a massacre.
Wolfwood retraced his steps towards the old road, but paused when he noticed a smaller track leading off just on the outskirts of the building remains. He lifted his glasses onto his head and squinted into the dark. Something – some inexplicable gut feeling told him that Vash was down there. He could just leave it; the vampire obviously didn’t want a conversation. Maybe now he’d fed from Wolfwood Vash was done with him, no longer interested. But Wolfwood’s memory helpfully conjured images of a flush riding high in pale cheeks, and strong thighs wrapped around his own, and decided for him. He sighed, and turned off the path.
It wasn’t long before the trees opened out into a clearing, an open space where the trees had been cut away to leave room for - a graveyard. Neat, orderly rows of headstones lined the space, free from the looping vines which covered everything else, the grass and moss kept back by frequent attention of careful hands. He didn’t need to read the names and dates; he’d somehow already known this place existed. Wolfwood set down the Punisher, and knelt before one of them. Clasping his hands felt strange, an action at once ingrained and replete with guilty unfamiliarity. He bowed his head and tried to dig up the words to a prayer buried somewhere in the dregs of his memory. Something about valleys and not being afraid. He wasn’t really sure why, to be honest. He’d long ago given up hoping that someone like him would get an answer. Maybe that’s why he only ever prayed for other people these days.
Wolfwood felt a hot tingle run up his spine at the faintest whisper of a footstep behind him.
“Thank you.”
He didn’t turn, keeping his fingers enmeshed. “What for?”
“Praying for them. Giving them proper…rest. It’s good that someone can because I-” Vash trailed off, voice petering out into a dispirited silence.
Wolfwood shrugged. “You could.”
Vash scoffed, a derisive, hurting sound. “I killed them, Wolfwood. I’m a monster. A Damned monster.” His voice cracked. “God doesn’t answer the prayers of the Damned.”
“God doesn’t answer anyone’s prayers, blondie. Doesn’t mean people like me can’t offer up some words every now and then.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out the last cigarette, lighting it like a votive.
“You’re a good person.”
Wolfwood snorted, automatic rejection of the words ringing like a gunshot in his ears. He stood to face Vash. The blonde was frozen just outside the cleared surrounds of the cemetery, staring at the grave Wolfwood had been kneeling at. A mixture of anguish and longing twisted the corners of his pretty mouth downwards, his lithe fingers balled tightly in the fabric of his pants. Vash’s gaze met his for a breath, and Wolfwood saw tears pooling at the edges of his eyes. He wanted to reach forward and wipe them away, to trace their tracks over Vash’s cheeks with his fingers, his mouth. He took a drag of his cigarette, as Vash spoke again.
“I’d vowed that I’d never…I’d never take from humans again.” He was shaking slightly. “I- I tried to make amends-”
Wolfwood kept his tone flat, non-committal. “How does that help these guys though?”
“I have to do something- I have to make penance for-” Vash began, but Wolfwood spoke over him.
“God doesn’t give a shit about your penance. And if God doesn’t, then these poor bastards definitely don’t.” He sighed, taking a drag of smoke and holding it in his lungs for a breath, feeling it burning away at the fragile tissue. “Has it ever occurred to you that if you let them, there might be people out there happy to forgive you?”
“I don’t deserve forgiveness-” Vash began, but Wolfwood cut him off again.
“That’s not for you to decide.”
“I have to do something- I have to make penance for-” Vash began again, but Wolfwood growled in annoyance, biting down on the stub of the cigarette.
“Look, I get it, ok? You did something awful, and you think you deserve to be punished for it. I get it. I’m not exactly a paragon of virtue here.”
“It’s not remotely the same-” Vash began, but Wolfwood cut him off again.
“You can’t say that.”
“Yes I can, you don’t know the things I’ve done, you don’t know-”
He took a breath. “Pretty fucking conceited of you don’tcha think?”
“…what?” Vash blinked at him in confusion.
Wolfwood took one last pull on the cigarette, feeling the heat of the ember reaching the tips of his fingers before tossing it on the ground and stamping it out.
“Assuming your sins are greater than everyone else’s. That you deserve more self-hatred than everyone else is entitled to, because they’re so much heavier and more worthy of condemnation.” He widened his stance slightly.
“Instead of wallowing in self-pity why don’t you just…live. Ok, you killed people. They’re dead, you’re alive. Might as well actually fucking live, blondie - otherwise what was the goddamned point?”
Wolfwood could see Vash bristle, eyes flashing as his instinct spoiled for a fight; but the light in them went out almost as quickly as it appeared. Vash slumped, shoulders sagging as though under a great weight. His slim fingers raised to cover his face.
Wolfwood took a slow breath of smoke. He felt tired. “You know, you don’t have to keep punishing yourself for something that happened so long ago that literally no-one alive remembers it.”
“It’s still my burden to bear.” Vash’s voice was muffled through his fingers, but the bitterness cut through.
“Yeah? Well sometimes you need to just leave the dead in the ground and walk away. Folk can’t rest in peace if you’re constantly dragging them around with you like heavy baggage.”
That caused Vash to straighten, a steely glint in the cold depths of those eyes. “And what about you, Wolfwood? Seems to me you might be something of an expert in excess baggage.”
Wolfwood took one last pull on the cigarette, feeling the heat of the ember reaching the tips of his fingers before tossing it on the ground and stamping it out. His insides twisted with a mix of anger and a desperate kind of sadness that he didn’t know what to do with.
“I ain’t dragging anyone’s corpse around with me, blondie. I got responsibilities to the living, not the dead.”
He shouldered the Punisher and turned his back on Vash, facing towards the main path.
“They don’t need us anymore.”
~~~
It was full dark when Wolfwood made it back to the village town square, and shutters had been pulled closed against the encroaching dark. A seeping fog was sliding its way up the valley, misting the peripheries of his vision and haloing the guttering torches in their brackets. He shivered, pulling the front of his coat closed, and took hurried steps towards the inn where he’d secured a room. Hopefully his shit hadn’t all been stolen during his two-day absence.
He ignored the stares that swung around to meet him as he pushed open the door, instead making his way straight to the bar. The innkeeper’s eyes rounded in surprise as he approached but Wolfwood spoke before she could.
“Hot food to my room. Please.” He glared at her over his sunglasses in what he hoped was a menacing, rather than just tired, fashion. “I’m hoping I still have a room, yeah?”
“O-of course!” she spluttered, “but-”
“Ok well, food. And drink. Lots of it.” He began to climb the stairs to the left of the bar that led to the rooms above.
“But, sir, you-”
“Thank you~” Wolfwood waved her words away over his shoulder and continued on up, frowning with annoyance at the sudden increase in volume from the patrons as he disappeared round the corner. He might’ve come back shirtless, but surely they’d seen weirder things around these parts.
His belongings were thankfully untouched, and Wolfwood put his weapon down with a thunk before flopping face down on the mattress. It was still lumpy. Those flowers in Vash’s had been weirdly soft. So had-
Urgh. He couldn’t get Vash out of his mind. Every movement, every breath, every sigh the blonde had made was so vividly etched onto the back of his eyeballs it may as well have been tattooed there. It wasn’t just how Vash had felt (although it was definitely that too), it was as though he’d invaded every crevice, every underused nook of Wolfwood’s brain. That frisson of barely concealed power buzzing under the thin veneer of humanity, painted in white smiles and drooping blonde lashes over brimming blue eyes. Wolfwood so badly wanted more, wanted so much to still be in that bower of half-crushed flowers feeling them turn crimson with his own spilled blood as Vash took from him all he wanted to give. And yet something about that want, that desperate need, brought other things flooding to the surface; annoyance, anger.
Frustrated teeth gritting and a painfully hard erection was a combination that Wolfwood wasn’t a great fan of, but was proving weirdly addictive.
He was about to reach guiltily into his pants to relieve a fraction of his frustration with there was a knock at the door. Wolfwood rolled over with a sigh, and went to unlatch the door. Standing there was the innkeeper, bearing a tray of bread and stew with two tankards of ale beside it. Wolfwood grabbed the tankard and drank from it deeply, stepping back to let the woman in as he did so. She set the tray down on the table in the room before turning to him, hands twisting in her skirt.
“Um, Mr ‘unter sir-”
Wolfwood set the now-empty tankard down and reached for the hunk of bread, tearing into it with his canines. He raised his eyebrows at the woman and gestured for her to continue while he chewed.
“Well sir, it’s just-” She looked around her as though expecting the wood of the door to have grown ears. “We thought you was dead, sir.”
Oh. Right. Wolfwood swallowed, sighed, and picked up the second tankard. “Well, here I am.”
She looked uncomfortable. “Um, yes sir, but it’s just- well, shouldn’t you go after ‘im then sir?”
Wolfwood paused, mid-gulp, fixing her with a stare. That twisting feeling of unease was back, churning his recently swallowed food and drink. “Go after who?”
“The other ‘unter, sir.”
Wolfwood felt his blood freeze in his veins. He slammed the tankard down and gripped the innkeeper’s arm, trying to keep rising dread out of his voice. “Which other Hunter?”
“Why ‘e came by not too long ago sir, asking which way ‘e should go to- to ‘retrieve his dead colleague’, ‘e said. I didn’t know what to tell ‘him, but young David piped up and said ‘e could lead ‘im there.”
Wolfwood was already standing and pushing past her to drag on a fresh shirt. “What did he look like?”
“Very tall sir, big white coat. Had funny colour hair, blue-like.”
Fuck.
~~~
Pounding through the forest, the darkness was warmed by red. As Wolfwood sprinted beneath them, the flowered vines relinquished their hold on crimson petals. They fluttered earthward, carpeting the forest floor in soft fragments of vermillion. Blood velvet to muffle his footsteps.
Wolfwood heard it before he saw it. The ultrasonic shrieking of superfine wires grating against each other. It raised the hairs on the back of his neck as he slowed his mad dash, trying to progress soundlessly. He could feel his heart in the base of his throat, and it felt like all the rest of his organs had decided to join it there. An overfull hammering, smacking against the skin. He paused to try and get his breathing under control but tensed immediately at quick footsteps bearing towards him through the trees. No sooner had he unwrapped the Punisher than the boy from the previous night burst from the trees, running full pelt as though fleeing from something more terrible than the manticore. As he passed Wolfwood, their eyes met in one of those fleeting moments that feels as though time is ploughing through treacle. The boy’s eyes widened in shock, hardened with defiance, then hooded with a trace of guilt; all the space of two breaths. And then he was gone.
Wolfwood clenched his jaw against the dread and fury rising in his throat and moved forward. The petals continued to fall, filling his peripheral vision with red. He stepped through an opening in a cracked stone wall.
“So you’ve decided to join us, comrade.”
The cold voice licked across the space as Wolfwood’s breath caught between his teeth at the sight that met him. Vash was in the middle of the clearing between the mostly-collapsed wall of what looked like an old barn, and a pair of spreading yew trees. He was suspended in mid-air, seemingly levitating save for the faintest glimmer of ultrafine wires only visible to those who were looking for them. They looped around Vash’s body, ensnaring and immobilising. The wires had cut through his clothing, slim gashes in dark fabric stained darker with blood seeping from shallow wounds bit into smooth skin beneath it. Arms, legs, torso – razor sharp bands wound around every part of him, marking every part of him with bright red. Vash was still, save for his head, which jerked upward at Wolfwood’s arrival. Wolfwood saw his pupils contract as his eyes widened in shock.
“Why did you- ach-!”
Vash coughed as the wire around his neck tightened and Wolfwood felt cold flush through his veins, heart stammering. He turned to the man wielding the wires.
“What are you doing, Legato?”
The blue-haired man’s tone was cold, arch. “Doing? My job.” He turned to face Wolfwood, a smile of pure ice spreading across his features. Wolfwood supressed a shiver of instinctual fear as he raised the Punisher to his shoulder.
Legato continued. “Which is more than perhaps I can say of you, Nicholas the Punisher.”
Wolfwood ducked instinctively, dropping and rolling over his weapon as he heard the whip of wires through the air where his neck had been. Fragments of yew bark rained down to mix with the red petals. Adrenaline was beginning to thrum through his veins, pump heat into his muscles in place of the cold fear.
“Capture isn’t part of our job.” He stood and backed up, keeping a wary eye on Legato’s wires while assessing Vash. Wolfwood didn’t understand why he’d allowed Legato to get close enough to ensnare him; nor why he didn’t just snap the wires with the strength Wolfwood knew he possessed. Something was off.
Legato laughed, a ringing, empty sound like a chalice dropped in a chapel. “You’ve noticed my upgrade, I see.”
Wolfwood traced the lines of shimmering metal as they crisscrossed Vash’s body, and realised what was off. There was steam rising from the myriad wounds but- they weren’t healing. Either because the wire was still in there or… He clenched his jaw, feeling the ball of dread threatening to rise into his throat again.
“Silver.”
“Bingo, dear comrade. Isn’t it lovely? Now I can inflict pain that lasts; that binds.” He jerked at the strings binding Vash, who let out a stifled gasp before going silent again. Wolfwood could see blood beading at his lip where a sharp canine had pierced the flesh there in an effort not to cry out.
Wolfwood raised the Punisher again and levelled it at Legato. “You’re a sick bastard, you know that? What’s the point in torturing them before killing them?” He gestured with his head towards Vash, trying to keep his voice as level as possible so as not to betray his tension. “Our job is disposal.”
“Oh indeed, Punisher, indeed. The irony of you reminding me of this is not, unfortunately for you, lost on me. Except in this case, a small exception has been made.”
Wolfwood braced again, ready for the wires to scythe through the air again but nothing came. His finger twitched around the trigger. He should just shoot. Kill the Hunter, free Vash, and then the two of them could get the fuck out of there and hide from the Church for as long as they could.
You’re a good person.
Vash’s words echoed in his memory, and Wolfwood growled low under his breath. He hesitated on the trigger, and lifted his gaze to find the blue of Vash’s waiting for him. Vash smiled. Wolfwood felt cold.
“I’ll come.” Vash’s voice rang out through the clearing, clearer and stronger suddenly, full of the determination of resignation. “But only if you let him go, safe.”
Legato’s laugh rang out again and that fine shrieking of tightening wires wrenched through Wolfwood’s hearing again. “You really think you’re in a position to bargain with me?” Legato scoffed.
“Not at the moment, maybe.” Vash’s tone was light, but it would take an idiot not to hear the threat in it.
Wolfwood frowned in confusion, turning between Vash and Legato. His finger still hovered over the trigger, but he needed to know what was happening. “What do you mean come? Come where?”
“That is no concern of yours, traitor.” The word was spat staccato at Wolfwood, Legato’s pale lips drawing thin around it.
Wolfwood fired, a volley of shots which embedded themselves in the moist earth an inch in front of Legato’s feet. To his credit, the bastard didn’t flinch. “I said,” Wolfwood growled, straightening and levelling the Punisher’s barrel back at head height, “come where?”
Legato sighed, with the air of a teacher answering a particularly uninspired question from their least favourite student. “Back to our Lord, of course.” He turned, blithely ignoring Wolfwood’s aim trained on his head, and made to walk away; as he did so, Vash began to float through the air after him. Tugged along by the wires, like some kind of macabre balloon.
Lord? Wolfwood had no idea what the fuck Legato was talking about, wracking his brain for an explanation while he tried to calculate trajectories and consequences of blowing Legato’s head off right now. Would Legato die first, or would some weird death-spasm cause Vash to be dismembered by the wires before Wolfwood could do anything about it? He watched, half-paralysed with indecision, as Legato’s heeled boots dug sharp tracks into the carpet of petals. Almost all were fallen now.
A memory stirred somewhere in him at the imprint of those boots. A tall figure before the bars of his cell, silhouetted black against the light from the solitary window. A scentless figure, silent. The clack of sharp heeled boots cross stone floor. The burn as the serum was injected into virgin veins, and after that, just pain-
Wolfwood pushed off and ran, pulling a pistol from the cross-arm of the Punisher and aiming both at the Hunter as he drew alongside. “Let him go or I swear to God I’ll blow your brains out to be fertiliser for the trees.”
Legato smiled, eyes downturned, the fingers of one hand raised slightly before him as though operating a marionette. He splayed those long fingers, and Wolfwood realised with horror that Vash was moving. His arms flung out sideways, extended as though being pulled hard from either side simultaneously. Vash cried out in pain, and Wolfwood cringed at the sound. He shifted the aim of the pistol and fired it at one of the glimmering strands of silver strung through the air. The crack of the shot was following by a spark and a scream of metal as the bullet ricocheted off the wire and embedded itself into the outstretched bough of a yew; mere inches from Vash’s hand. Wolfwood felt cold sweat break across his forehead.
“Careful, careful.” Legato spoke softly, still keeping his gaze on the forest path ahead of him, not deigning to look at Wolfwood. “We must have our guest arrive in one piece; well, more or less.” He giggled quietly as the wires dug almost imperceptibly tighter into Vash’s limbs. Wolfwood crouched slightly, ready to attack or defend, but it came even faster than he could react. He felt a stinging pain whip along the back of his right leg and sprang sideways to dodge too late, swinging the Punisher over his head while spraying bullets in arc towards Legato. As he landed, he felt his leg buckle beneath him and went down on one knee even as he saw Legato step back out from behind the cover of the tree in which Wolfwood’s bullets were now embedded. Wolfwood growled and fired again, aiming at Legato with the pistol and in a line between him and the cover of the tree with the Punisher but shrieks of light burst in front of the Hunter as the bullets were intercepted by unbreakable wires.
Wolfwood rolled, grunting with pain as he pushed off his leg again, and feeling the cold air whip past his ear as another wire lashed out towards him. He could feel blood soaking his pants leg. He thought briefly of the last two vials, stashed in the pouch attached to the back of his belt. Not yet. He swung the Punisher around once more, finger on the trigger. Bullets arced wide, cutting through the space the other Hunter had to hide in, while the shot from Wolfwood’s pistol hit home. He heard a grunt of pain as one found its mark, and watched with satisfaction as Legato pressed his free hand to his right shoulder, staggering backward. Crimson welled through the white fabric of his coat. As Legato faltered, the wired suspension holding Vash captive seemed to weaken; Vash dropped closer to the ground, suspended just above it, and Wolfwood could see the wires that encircled him loosening. Seizing the opening, Wolfwood dashed into the open towards Vash. He didn’t know if it would work but he had to get closer to detach those wires. A point-blank shot should have more chance, or maybe he could peel them off with his hands, his teeth.
As Wolfwood neared, Vash’s eyes opened. A spark of energy lit itself within Wolfwood’s chest and he reached for the closest wire but stopped at Vash’s words.
“Stop it.” Vash’s voice was steady, and his eyes met Wolfwood’s with determination.
“Are you an idiot??” Wolfwood tore at one of the wires, pulling it free from Vash’s forearm. It sliced into Wolfwood’s fingers, but it didn’t matter. “Come on, you’ve got to help me get these free-”
“Leave me.” Wolfwood started shaking his head, a terrible rushing feeling building in his chest, ringing in his ears. Vash’s wrist encircled his own, stilling his movements. “You have to run, now,” Vash went on, calm as though he wasn’t being carried in a portable torture rack, “leave me and go.” Wolfwood’s blood stained his fingers.
His blood.
Wolfwood took a step back, ripping at his shirt collar to expose the side of his throat for Vash, presenting it like an offering. “Go on, drink. Quickly!! It’ll make you stronger, right?” He heard a noise behind him and tightened his grip on his weapon, feeling frantic haste gripping his limbs, numbing his fingers. “Vash!” He yelled his name, a rebuke, a plea.
“I will pay my price.”
Wolfwood stumbled backwards as Vash pushed him away. He staggered on his injured leg and slipped, tripping on a now-bare vine, landing hard on his knee which crunched in complaint. Using his weapon for support he began to push himself upwards when he saw Legato walking towards him. He raised the pistol again, but they both froze at Vash voice.
“You have me, Hunter. Leave him. Please. I’ll cooperate with you and your…master.”
Legato drew in a deep breath and held it, as though willing himself into calm, before replying. “You will, yes.” He raised his hand and motioned with the fingers, drawing the wires taught again. The action forced Vash’s body rigid, lifted higher with his arms pinioned by his sides. Wolfwood jerked instinctively towards him, taking his eye off Legato for a split second. As he did so, he felt a tug at his waist. He wheeled to face Legato again and froze, breath catching at the level of his throat around which a thin strand of metal now wound itself.
“No…” Vash’s voice was little more than a horrified whisper, a vocalisation of Wolfwood’s realisation that what Legato now held in his hands was his vial pouch. Wolfwood’s fingers twitched at his sides, almost on the trigger but unable to raise it to aim. The wire pressed deeper into the skin of his throat, metallic bite stinging. Impersonal compared to the intimacy of Vash’s fangs. He swallowed dryly, feeling his throat bob under the metal and the bite of it. Legato raised the pouch, smiling calmly despite the blood still soaking his coat from his shoulder wound.
“I don’t bargain with monsters, no matter how badly my Lord wants them.” He tipped the vials into his palm, cold eyes fixed on Wolfwood’s, lit with a condensed malice. “And I don’t waste forgiveness on traitors.” He tipped his palm.
Wolfwood watched with a strange sense of detachment as the vials fell to the earth, and were shattered under Legato’s boot heel. The serum soaked into the petals and damp earth.
Ah. Ok. This is it then.
“Wolfwood!!” He heard Vash’s scream at the same time as the louder sound of the wire sliding around his neck at speed. The feeling of it cutting deeper, deeper, before releasing its grip. His hands dropped his weapons to come up and chase it, wrapping around the two halves of his throat that were supposed to be one and clinging desperately, instinctively, to the skin. It was wet. So wet. Warm and slippery. It was hard to hold on to. He felt his knees hit the earth.
Wolfwood looked up. It was really loud inside his head for a moment, a cacophony of thoughts crashing into one another as though his brain had realised that these were its final moments to shine and was firing neurons in excess, a last celebration of its abilities. It made the clearing seem oddly silent, and he watched, fingers slipping in the wet warm at his throat, as Vash’s mouth opened wider, fangs long and white and so beautiful. He was screaming, but it was hard to hear.
The twanging sound of metal snapping at speed cut through his mental clamour and he focused his gaze back on Vash. There was blood. More blood than before because Vash had pushed out against the wires binding him and broken them. The wires pinged in odd directions, whipping stones and trees but seemingly not Vash, who advanced on where Legato stood, his mouth twisting from a grin of sadistic pleasure to an open ‘o’ of horror. Vash looked different. Beautiful. His hair rose to stand on end, and his eyes glowed with that preternatural inner light, colder and more merciless than Wolfwood had yet seen it. He seemed to grow taller as he stalked forwards, blood dripping on the carpet of red. Terrible, like judgement.
Wolfwood felt himself slump sideways but couldn’t catch himself because he needed his hands to stay where they were. It was really important that his throat kept working just a little more because he had to tell Vash-
It was getting hard to see, somehow, everything a bit dimmer and darker than it should be. The reds desaturating from the scene as Vash turned towards him, guilt and horror and fear writ plain across it. Behind him, Wolfwood saw Legato turn and run, stumbling into the darkness of the trees. He felt the vibration of the earth as Vash dropped to his knees beside him.
“Wolfwood, oh God…no…”
Wolfwood couldn’t let go of his throat but he wanted to touch Vash’s hand as it trembled before him. He tried to speak, but blood welled up from the wound and in his mouth and all that came out was a choking splutter of red. Dammit voice, work.
“No no no no no…” Vash was touching him now, cold fingers fluttering around his shoulders and neck and back, alighting here and there like frightened birds but taking off again immediately. Wolfwood wished he’d just hold him. He tried again.
“V- ash-” The name came out choked and wet, and that wasn’t how he wanted to say Vash’s name for the last time but he couldn’t make the mess that used to be his throat cooperate. Instead he used one hand to grab Vash by the hand. He gripped as hard as he could, slipping in warm red. Vash’s shirt was red too, or at least Wolfwood thought so, because it looked the same as the blood, although colours were hard to see now. Except blue. Blue he could see, because Vash’s eyes were shining before him, wide and full of tears, bright and deep and that magical colour that made Wolfwood think of places he’d never been. Never would.
He stared into those eyes and tried as hard as he could to say what he needed to with his own but fuck knows if it worked because he’d never tried to have a damn conversation with his eyes before. His grip slackened on Vash’s hand, and he gave one last effort to move his lips into a grin as the blue of those eyes faded out into the black that had consumed the rest of the world.
~~~
There was so much blood, and yet he didn’t feel thirsty. A feast presented before him that he would have given anything not to have.
Wolfwood’s hand wasn’t warm anymore. Vash felt it growing colder as the red gushed from the terrible wound in his throat, feeling the air punched from his lungs in horror as he heard Wolfwood choke out his name around the blood in his mouth. It spattered Vash’s face, but he didn’t flinch, could only stare into Wolfwood’s eyes with an intensity to match that of the dying man before him. Wolfwood gripped him hard, clearly desperately trying to say something but failing, and Vash didn’t care, he didn’t care what it was he just needed Wolfwood to be able to say it and not be dying here, again.
Dying shouldn’t have a cure, and yet Vash knew of two, now.
He leaned closer to Wolfwood as the dying man’s eyes fluttered closed. The smell of hot iron was so strong in the air it almost drowned out the scent of the man himself. Cigarette smoke, cedar, hot summer wind. It was fading now, along with his life, leaving only the blood and its call, its gory swansong calling him towards it. He had desired this, and tried to refuse it. Now he felt nauseous at the thought of it, but had to anyway.
He placed his mouth on the lip of the hideous wound, closing his eyes against the violence of it, and drank.
~~~
There was something hot and wet dripping against his lips. Wolfwood felt his consciousness stir out of the warm dark it had descended into. Like being roused from deep sleep by a kiss. He dragged his mind back into the moment, confused, feeling the liquid slip into his mouth as it opened.
His eyes flew open as it hit his tongue. It was hot, searing almost, unbearably enticing. It burst around his tongue with a richness he’d never felt before, and he swallowed. It tracked a fiery path down his throat and into his body, a shot of moonshine mixed with molten gold and burning honey, and for a moment Wolfwood was confused because he shouldn’t be able to swallow because his throat was-
And then it hit him, and he couldn’t think around the pain. His body filled with sparks, magnesium bright white hot in his veins, and he curled around the feeling, trying to crush it down to a containable and understandable sensation but it was impossible. It consumed him entirely, he was on fire, he was fire. He was gone.
It took longer, the second time, to surface from the darkness. But when he did, it was not with the sluggishness of sleep but with a spark of the fire that had burned him alive not moments ago. Wolfwood’s eyes flew open and he wrenched himself upright, hands clutching at his chest, his throat. There was no pain. There was no fire. The skin beneath his fingers was tacky with wet and drying blood, shades of red and burgundy and black, but it was whole. He swallowed, running his tongue around his mouth and tasting the remains of that flaming honey which had filled it; and froze as he felt the points of his canines. Longer, sharper.
Wolfwood gasped in a breath as he turned his head to the vampire who knelt beside him. Vash had his fingers so tightly clasped together he would have been in danger of cutting off their circulation if he had been human. His eyes - no longer glowing bright but instead a damp, soft blue – stared at Wolfwood as though he were an apparition. Wolfwood felt displaced, almost – out of body, as though he’d been violently yanked back from somewhere else he should have been. Despite that, he felt a grin tugging at the edges of his mouth and let it spread across his features, a laugh pressing from his lips into the chill air.
“I thought you didn’t pray, Spikey?”
“What- I-” Vash paused as though he couldn’t untangle the words to say next from the ball of them stuck in his throat. He let out a sigh like a man who’d been holding his breath for minutes. “Spikey?” Vash tilted his head quizzically to the side, his fingers seemingly unconsciously reaching toward Wolfwood to grip his shoulders and help pull him upright.
Wolfwood grinned wider, feeling the weird sensation of his canines sliding over his lower lip. “Your hair. It’s all…up.” He gesticulated with his hands, causing Vash to stare at him and then reach his own hands up to feel his now-gravity-defying hair.
Their laugh this time was together, an unlocking of tension. Wolfwood ran his hands over his throat and Vash’s expression darkened.
“What did you do to me, Spikey? Pretty sure I’m supposed to…y’know. Not be here anymore.”
Vash grimaced. He simply stared at his hands for a moment before looking back to Wolfwood with set to his jaw as though he was launching into an argument. “I just did what the vials were supposed to. But…more permanent.”
Wolfwood didn’t process that for a second. “Wait- huh?”
“Your vials. They’re an extract of vampire blood. That’s how they work.”
Wolfwood’s eyes rounded and he thought of the burning, searing feeling of the serum flooding his veins, and the white hot burn of Vash’s blood as he swallowed it. Huh.
“So I was already part vampire or what? Damn. Way to find out.”
That made Vash laugh again, that tinkling, bright sound of amusement Wolfwood had first loved. “God no. If you’d been vampire then you wouldn’t have needed to keep taking it.”
“So…now?”
“You don’t need to take it anymore.”
Wolfwood ran his gaze down Vash’s body. The red weals from the wires were still cut into his previously perfect skin. They were no longer bleeding freely, but they hadn’t healed either. “Will those scar?”
“Probably.”
Wolfwood felt the skin of his throat tentatively; there was ridge of imperfect skin encircling it, mostly healed but definitely present. He swallowed. Somehow it felt better that there was physical evidence of it. It grounded him into this body that had started to feel foreign.
“Vash. Am I dead?”
Vash flicked his head up to meet Wolfwood’s gaze, consternation and a little hint of indignation scrunching his brow and tightening the inner corners of his eyes. Instead of answering, he simply grabbed Wolfwood’s hands, shoving one of them onto Wolfwood’s own chest, and placing the other on his own. Vash’s shirt was in ribbons, so Wolfwood’s palm was directly over skin, directly over-
Heartbeat. Both of them, heartbeats drumming steadily away inside their chests. Wolfwood simply allowed himself to feel it for a while, sinking into that thump-thump, a rhythmic statement of life. After a while it almost felt as though he and Vash were beating in sync. He breathed, feeling his lungs expand, accepting the new, electric feeling of this renewed body as his own. Eventually, he broke the silence.
“Well I guess you’re stuck with me then, Spikey.”
Vash sat back, blinked once and then scrunched those brows up again. “I didn’t- I want you to know that I did what I had to do to save you, because I- I couldn’t let you die. And that doesn’t mean that you’re beholden to me, or you owe me anything, you’re free to go of course and you-”
Wolfwood rolled his eyes and pressed forward, his lips meeting Vash’s and provoking a muffled noise of surprise as Vash froze for a split second before meeting his kiss. Breaking away, Wolfwood pushed himself to standing, stifling a grin at the left-wanting expression on Vash’s face, the way his lips chased Wolfwood’s in the air between them.
He stretched, marvelling at the lack of pain anywhere. “Do you really think I’d just be getting up and leaving? After I pretty much killed myself trying to tell you-” Wolfwood caught himself just in time, and turned away feeling his cheeks heat. He rubbed a hand over his face and then back through his hair, clearing his throat.
“I’m hungry. And we’ve got to get out of here now that bastard knows where we are. He’ll be back.”
He heard a scrabbling behind him as Vash stumbled to his feet and dashed around in front of Wolfwood, gripping his shoulders and staring into his eyes with such intensity that Wolfwood could feel the heat from his cheeks radiating down his neck and into the tips of his ears.
“Tell me what?!”
Wolfwood pushed Vash aside. “Nothing. Doesn’t matter.” He bent to pick up the Punisher where it lay, bloodstained and mud-splashed. Needed a good clean. He started to walk away, letting a slow smile spread across his face as Vash let out a long drawn-out whine of complaint.
“Wolfwooooooood what did you have to tell me so badly??”
“Shut up, Spikey.”