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"You did the best you could, Tongari."
Vash did not respond to Wolfwood's attempt at consolation. He lay perfectly still on top of the blankets of the narrow bed, his eyes on the ceiling, his face blank. A stranger walking in on them then, seeing one bloodied man lying motionless and the other in a black suit bending over him, would have been justified in thinking they'd walked in on an embalming.
Wolfwood, for his part, would rather have buried a few choice upstanding members of the local community, preferably in a mass grave for hypocrites and cowards. But doing so, or even saying so, would not budge the horrible emptiness in Vash's eyes. He knew that by now.
"People still died," Vash whispered. "It wasn't enough."
Wolfwood looked over Vash's bare chest, the scarred skin bruised and bleeding from multiple lacerations and no small number of bullet-grazes, and bit down on his cigarette to keep his anger in check. "The ones whose lives you saved today wouldn't say so. If they had any decency they'd be beating down the door right now to thank you."
Someone did knock on the door then, but it didn't sound like any such visitation. It was timid and hesitant.
"That'll be the landlady," Wolfwood said, even though he doubted that anything he said now would get through the wall of pain around Vash. Instead he took his jacket off the back of his chair and draped it over Vash, to hide the worst of his injuries, old and new. "I'll get it."
The woman at the door was a type Wolfwood knew all too well, and one that could be found in every settlement on the planet, sometimes in multiples. She was small and elderly, with great dark hollow eyes and colorless hair, a ghost already but still wearing flesh and blood out of absentminded habit. She had buried too many of her children, and none remained who would bury her.
"I brought the things you asked for," she whispered.
"Thank you, ma'am," Wolfwood said, accepting her burden of washbasin and towels, and a rusty first aid box that looked older than Wolfwood himself. "We're much obliged."
Her face rumpled and then smoothed like a sheet blowing on a clothesline, and she continued, "My husband says you can stay the night, but you'd best be on your way by dawn."
Wolfwood nodded, knowing full well that the landlady's husband lay in a grave in the back yard alongside his sons, where he had been for years on end. But maybe he had given that message to his wife, all the same. Wolfwood had seen stranger things. Still, haunted or not, the run-down boarding house on the edge of the settlement had been the only place that would accept them, and for that Wolfwood was grateful. For Vash's sake, if nothing else.
"We'll do that. Don't want to trouble any of you any further, ma'am."
The woman's eyes slid from Wolfwood's face to Vash's profile, and without another word, she turned and closed the door behind her.
"Beating down the door, huh?" Vash said, as Wolfwood sat back down beside him.
"Worthless, piss-poor pack of gutless bastards," Wolfwood snarled, before he could help himself. The basin and first aid kit clattered together as he slammed them on the nightstand. "I oughta go back into town and--"
Vash's face closed like a casket lid, and Wolfwood swallowed back the rest of his rage.
"It's fine," Vash said, even though it wasn't, had never been, and would never be.
Wolfwood blew a stream of smoke out of his nose before stubbing out the cigarette on a chipped coffee saucer, and then lifted his jacket off of Vash. "All right," he said. "Tell me where it hurts."
Vash flicked his hand briefly over his heart, but let the gesture turn into something else, holding out his right arm instead. "Probably better start with making sure all the glass is out," he said. "I really ruined that window's day when I went through it."
Wolfwood pulled Vash's arm into his lap, tilted the shade up on the table lamp, rummaged in the the first-aid kit for tweezers, and got to work. Outside the day grew dark, and Vash watched the sky go from blue to crimson to violet as Wolfwood tapped out bloody plate-glass shards next to his cigarette butt. Stars were starting to sprinkle into life at the top of the window by the time he sat back, cracked his neck, and placed one of the towels under Vash's injured arm. It was threadbare and gray with age, but clean.
"Hold on, I'mma wash this out before wrapping it up."
Vash just nodded, and Wolfwood went into the washroom and cranked the rusty faucet, letting the water run until billows of steam rose up in clouds.
You know what it is to suffer, Chapel, murmured a cool, serene voice in Wolfwood's memory. Make sure that he knows it, too.
Wolfwood plunged his bloody hands into the scalding water, and the cracked ceramic sink blushed pink like an apple tree in the spring. He knows, Wolfwood thought. He knows, you bastard.
When his hands were clean and his conscience was as clean as it was going to get, Wolfwood brought back the basin full of hot water, and set about mopping up the mess he'd made of Vash's arm. "This is the worst of it, then?"
Vash, his eyes still on the sky, only nodded. "The rest's pretty superficial, or good old blunt force bruising. Not much in the first aid kit for that."
Wolfwood didn't think there was anything in that first aid kit or in any other for the worst of the wounds, certainly nothing that could reach the aching crack in Vash's soul. He reached for the bottle of iodine instead, and made a face as the brittle, ancient label fell off when he touched it. "Well, good thing I carry my own medication," he said, and put the bottle back in the tin box. The lining of his suit jacket had new blood streaks on it, but the flask in the inside pocket was heavy and full. "Here." Wolfwood slid his hand under Vash's head to lift it, put the flask to his mouth, and let him drink.
Vash swallowed gratefully, coughed, and put his hand up over Wolfwood's to steady the flask. "S'good medicine."
"The best there is. Hold on, this is gonna sting."
Vash's face tensed as he braced for it, and Wolfwood gave the mess of cuts on his arm a good splash. Vash hissed, in spite of himself, and shivered as the whiskey began to evaporate. "Packs a punch," he said, wincing.
Wolfwood was so grateful to see any kind of life return to Vash's face that he didn't even care if pain had done it. He put the whiskey down, found a tin of wound salve in his dopp bag, and slathered some over any cut that looked like it needed it, from the one on Vash's hip to the scrape on his cheek. The bandages in the borrowed first-aid kit were less elderly than the iodine, but Wolfwood still sacrificed part of his shirt-tail for the bits closest to Vash's skin. They were probably cleaner. He was winding the last strip of gauze around Vash's forearm when he finally said, "Why do you do it, Tongari?"
Vash's arm twitched a little in his hands. "I can't do anything else," he said. "I'd think you'd have realized that by now."
"I realize you're an idiot with a big tender heart where his brain should be, yeah," Wolfwood let Vash have his arm back and reached for his cigarettes. "Maybe it's better to ask why you keep doing it."
Vash traced both hands down his chest, over his scar-splashed ribs, before letting them come to rest at his sides. "Just too dumb to quit, I guess." He shifted his head on the pillow, looking Wolfwood in the face for the first time in hours. "Even if it means covering me up so I don't scare the little old ladies with all this mess."
Wolfwood snapped his lighter shut with an annoyed clap of metal. "That was for your sake, Tongari, not hers. Jesus. Try and give a man some privacy, ruin my jacket in the process, and that's the thanks I get."
"I'm grateful," Vash said. "Whatever the reason. And your jacket was already ruined." He held up his bandaged arm above his head. "But maybe if I'd had you around for some of these earlier ones, they wouldn't look so bad. Didn't know you had mending on your resume along with ministry, mayhem, and murder." He blinked up at Wolfwood. "Actually, you know, I'm not sure ministry should be on there, considering I've barely seen you do anything that qualifies."
Wolfwood went still in his chair, in outrage that was only partly feigned. "Nothing that quali--what do you think I just did, you idiot? How is tending to the sick and injured not ministry?"
Vash raised his eyebrows."Do you even know any Bible verses?"
Wolfwood jabbed Vash in the shoulder, in the one square inch of skin that wasn't scarred. "Quotin' shit ain't anything to do with--"
"You don't, do you."
Wolfwood opened his mouth to retort, and then realized that Vash was smiling at him. Genuinely smiling, for the first time in the whole godforsaken day.
"I'll give you a Bible verse," Wolfwood said, and shoved Vash's head down into the pillow. "Blessed are the idiots, but bless more the poor bastards that have to put up with them."
"That's not a real verse," Vash spluttered. "I knew you didn't know any."
"It is so a real verse, it's just apocryphal."
"You're apocryphal--"
Wolfwood punched him in the face with the pillow. "Lie down, you asshole, you're injured."
"Aahahah I'm gonna be if you don't--" Vash sneezed up a great plume of dust and feathers, and fell back onto his side, laughing between tiny noises of pain before he finally stilled. "...Thanks, Wolfwood."
"Fuckwit," Wolfwood replied, smoking furiously. Vash turned his head back to the window, and Wolfwood turned out the light. "Go to sleep."
The dark crept into the room around them, slipping through the old stone walls, winding around the rusty window-frame, sinking down into the warped and dusty floor. The window slowly filled with stars, reflected in Vash's eyes, echoed by one red one which was the ember of Wolfwood's cigarette. The house creaked gently in the wind, around the landlady in her bed downstairs, above the gravestones in the barren backyard. The hard, bitter planet turned slowly under its rising moons.
And in that darkness, Wolfwood took a deep breath, and then he said, "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven."
Vash went still, lips parted as though he might speak, but Wolfwood wasn't finished. "Blessed are those that mourn, for they shall be comforted." He placed his open hand over Vash's breastbone, just to the side of the surgical mesh over his heart, his fingers spreading unflinching over the marks of old pain, over twisted lines of suffering and loss. "Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth." With the same hand, he touched the back of his fingers to the scrape on Vash's cheek, where he had taken the first sucker-punch of the day. "Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness..." His hand slid down to the hollow of Vash's throat, knowing it ached from shouting words that no one that day had heeded. "...for they shall be filled." His fingers grazed the hot metal line where Vash's left arm ended, and from there he went from scar, to scar, to scar, as his recitation continued, until his fingers rested on the bright gold of Vash's hair. "Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy. Blessed are the pure in spirit, for they shall see God."
At last Wolfwood reached out and gathered Vash's right hand in his own, brushing a kiss against the trigger-callused fingertip, breathing a smoky benediction into the bandaged palm. "Blessed are the peacemakers," he said, in a murmur that only the two of them and the night could hear. "For they shall be called the children of God."
Silence then, in the tiny little room of the empty boardinghouse. Vash's hand tightened around Wolfwood's, his scraped knuckles against Wolfwood's cheek, and their eyes met in the darkness in a long and silent communion. And then at last Vash closed his eyes, and slept.
And Nicholas D. Wolfwood lit another cigarette, looked out at the stars, and waited for morning.
~o~