Chapter Text
Rust cleaved from the flatbed’s frame as they roared through the waste towards Raleigh’s Point. A spit of a bordertown on the edge of Nouve Municipality, there were more than a dozen outposts like this relying on one dying Plant. Dead now, and its final surge interrupted by an act of terrorism - or whatever it was Millions Knives did that left the municipality’s entire engineering staff cleaved in two, down to a man.
Vash was chatting about it with the guy driving the truck, nose poked into the cab window as they crossed beneath a black cloud sloughing south off the town. Raleigh’s Point was built to service a treatment facility, and the Plant’s energy was piped in from iles away to purify the water pumped out of the local grotto. After the bulb burst, the facility’s ship-tech burned for two days and only now had cooled to black sludge. The area was wracked by blackouts and burst pipes; collapsed infrastructure; construction equipment with dead batteries and nowhere to grab a charge -
“We could just haul them up the other end of the canyon,” shouted Jack, the truck driver, “- and get ‘em juiced up at the military outpost, but the valley’s full’ve fucking sandworms this time of year -”
“Don’t border patrols pass though?” Vash wondered over the howl of the wind. “They’d have a portable generator for sure!”
“Had our last one two weeks ago! Won’t be another three months at least!”
“Oh no!” Vash gasped. “Sounds like you’re in real trouble!”
He was doing that thing, Spikey was - overplayed, with his eyes real wide and both hands covering his mouth, heart bleeding out of every pore. Today it was kinda pissing Wolfwood off, ‘cause of the way he’d been dragging around with his mood in his boots since they left the girls behind, all heavy and heady with some infinite sadness he was always keeping to himself. And how did they thank him in that last town, huh? This guy.
“No need to go that far,” he grunted, trying to light his cigarette for the fourth time. The wind kept extinguishing it. “It’s spring. There should be Spark Flies crawling out of the grotto to mate. We used to juice them to start to truck where I grew up.”
Jack barked out a short laugh. “Sure, buddy. Ain’t no hand in our town could juice a Spark Fly without losing six fingers and both arms.”
“Shouldn’t be a problem for us,” Wolfwood countered, without really thinking. Spikey’s eyes lit - a burst of a campfire on a moonless night. Sincere for the first time in days. He dipped forward to cup two palms around Wolfwood’s match, and a flame cracked alive in the shelter of his hands. Smiling, smiling. Oh no -
“Is that right~?”
“Hey, wait -”
“You volunteerin’?” Jack yelled. “We can pay.”
“No, no need for that!” Emphatically, and with his whole body. The motion knocked Wolfwood’s cigarette askew and it went rolling, lit, on the corroded bed of the truck. “You know he’s a priest, right? We only take donations, ha ha!”
“You wanna eat nothin’ but lemons until we die of thrist, Spikey?”
“What? It was your idea, Wolfwood.”
He picked up the cigarette and stuck its rumpled filter in Wolfwood’s mouth. The rasp of Vash’s fingertips catching on his bottom lip cut any witty rejoinder off, bleeding. The fingers were cool to the touch, and humming with some quiet, suppressed energy. Vash relaxed across from him and stared: eyes half-lidded with amused calculation, and another thing shimmering beneath which was hard to read. Something new.
It’d been this whole game until now, figuring each other out - only Spikey didn’t need to be playing for keeps. He liked to pretend he wasn’t playing at all. Not like Nicholas ever went for the jugular, and it’d gotten so far there wasn’t much irony left in it. The pretense was tired and creaking on its foundations, threatening familiarity. Things between them were becoming straight-forward.
In town, he watched Vash from under the shade of a tin roof. Shadows yawning in the long, long afternoon, summer lurked in the blister of lingering noon heat. Vash was listening to a sob story about how a gang rolled through the night the fire died and demanded the town hand over the last of the purified water. We provide water for the whole grid, the facility’s foreman explained. There’s an experimental farming operation up by the ship, it’s very important, we couldn’t just -! Instead the council chief offered up a slice of Raleigh’s population to get sold off on the slave market. Civilians only, and non-essential staff. It was that, or we die. We had no choice. So many people relying on us, blah blah blah - the usual. There was no way he’d be able to let it go; for a pacifist, Spikey was always picking fights.
He swept under the shade with Wolfwood, sidling up close to share the marks the foreman’d made on their map. The gang’s travel route, and the precise location of the ship where Millions Knives was last sighted. They meant going in opposite directions, of course, and Vash downplayed this, going on about how lucky they were, since usually you had to deal with the local military branch if you wanted the exact coordinates for a Plant like that. When his pinky finger accidentally brushed Wolfwood’s, he kept dragging up the outer heel of his palm on purpose, until their hands were settled flush against each other, like their shoulders were. “What do you think, Wolfwood?” he murmured. Quietly, and honest too. Sounding vaguely lost, which he did more and more frequently.
Wolfwood wanted to ask him why he went on walking the path his brother laid out from him if he was gonna keep putting the inevitable off and off, and off like this. It was the kinda thing that made you wanna whack the guy with the broad side of a barn - but lately Vash walked around so tragic and riddled with subtle cracks in his surface, like the complicated frown he wore sifting through the sketches of kidnapped townsfolk, the thing he’s compelled to do is flick him in the nose. When no one’s looking. Spikey wrinkled his face and looked up through white eyelashes with one of those small, sad dog smiles, like Big Bro Nico just told him to put the laundry out to hang. Except he actually has got the weight of the whole world on his shoulders.
“I think you look like the earth’s about to open up and swallow you whole. Not everything’s your responsibility, you know.”
“Isn’t it your job to pray to stop the earth from doing that?”
“Wrong faith, Spikey. We’re the kind of priests you call after the disaster.”
Vash contemplated him a moment, smile evolving from forlorn to mischievous. “Oh, your words and deeds, Wolfwood. Watch yourself, now~.”
He flicked Wolfwood’s nose and walked away.
So of course, they went after the slaver’s caravan. It rubbed him wrong too, the way it was only women and girls who got taken. A civilian scout lent them a one-seater sand buggy, and Spikey dangled all ribbon-limbed and coat-flapping off the frame, scanning the flat, white horizon with a pair of shaded binoculars. He didn’t bother faking it out here, and moved through the first abandoned camp site they came across with grim purpose, his mouth drawn tight; brow folded and serious.
“Looks like a day camp,” Wolfwood noted. “They were waiting out noon. We didn’t miss them by much. Maybe an hour, hour and a half.”
“Yeah.” Vash covered one eye, but closed the other anyway, then slowly turned on his heel, until he stopped, and pointed off towards where the sun was setting. “I can see them from here. We’ll catch them by nightfall.”
As they were revving the buggy, something began sniffling and fussing under an abandoned tent tarp. A frilled gecko, or armadillo, they thought, until it started crying. Wolfwood looked at Vash, who looked at him, and they both looked at the writhing, blue fabric. The brown stains pooling where it dipped low. “Christ - what now -”
Wolfwood whisked the tarp away. Underneath were the fresh corpses of two men, shot above the eyes. Struggling in the space left between them was a wailing baby. It was lightly sunburnt, and had a sheet of canvass tied around its face with razor-wire in a botched smothering attempt.
He nicked his fingers tearing the kid free. On his knees in the sand, Wolfwood checked its pulse; its temperature; its breathing. Everything regular, no fever. She was coughing, but her fingers and lips were still pink. The slave market price on infants wasn’t exactly a worthwhile return. Behind him, Spikey was already radiating moral logistics -
“If we take it back to town, we won’t catch the caravan,” he said carefully. “But -”
“We aren’t going to leave him.” Wolfwood looked over his shoulder. “Did you think that’s what I’d say?”
Vash didn’t answer, and his sunglasses had turned opaque against the sunset. Wolfwood jolted at the implication, but the fury quickly surged inward, since that’s what it was about anyway. You’re mad at yourself, Nicholas, because you’ve been in this situation before and you did the wrong thing, for no better reason than that someone had a gun to your head. Nothing in Vash’s tone suggested judgment, but he always felt like Spikey could see it. Whatever “it” was. His eyes were the colour of water, or wind, which eroded everything over time.
He scooped the kid up, surprised by how small it was in his arms since the last time he held one. She rocked to sleep easily, cooled in the shadow of his chest. Vash was giving him a funny look, so Wolfwood dropped the baby in his raised hands. He immediately panicked.
“Woah, hey, Wolfwood, wait - umm, uhh -”
“You wanna drive?”
By nightfall, Vash still hadn’t learned how to hold the baby, but he was talking to it. Finally, Spikey, a conversation partner on your level; hey Wolfwood, that’s not fair - this baby is really wise, you know!
“Thomasina thinks we should approach from the east,” Vash said sagely, after consulting her.
“Why’re you calling her that?”
“Because she sounds like a thomas when you do this -” Spikey started bouncing the kid on his knee until it laughed: honk, honk, kakakaka - it did sound like a little like a thomas. Vash’s goofy expression was making Wolfwood antsy, in an undefinable way. When he moped, it dragged you through the frickin’ depths of Tartarus, but when he laughed it was even worse.
“Would ya concentrate already, needle noggin --” He grabbed Vash’s face in a palmful, and yoinked him around. They were crouched behind an outcropping of eroded mesa, on the hill above the gang’s hideout. The bandits were camped out in a bullet riddled warehouse: easy enough to approach, since there was only one room and two doors. Even easier to turn into a bloodbath. “What are you thinking?”
Vash peeled Wolfwood’s hand off his jaw, clutching Thomasina to his chest with his free arm. “I was serious about going in from the east. There’s a window, see?”
Wolfwood wedged The Punisher up between them so they could both look through the scope. There was a broken ladder leading out of it too, which meant there was a walkway around the inner scaffolding. “What, Spikey, you gonna climb the wall?”
“Yeah.” He grinned, running two fingers up an invisible plane. “I’ll hit the lights, and you -”
“Come in through the bay door. Got it. And after that?”
“Oh, we’ll improvise. What about, um -”
The baby. They stared at each other over The Punisher’s axel, and Thomasina absently pawed at the dangling chain of a flash grenade. Watching the long, shiny tails of Vash’s coat ripple in the wind, Wolfwood got an idea.
“C’mere -”
He grabbed a knife off his weapon and began to hack one of those flaps off at the seam. Spikey protested, until he got what Wolfwood was doing. The outer panels of his coat were bulletproof, and easy to detach for maintenance. They pried the metal threading open together, and Vash helped buckle the makeshift sling tight around Wolfwood’s chest, rocking back on his heels to observe their handiwork with a pleased quirk in his lip. Aunt Mel used to carry the babies around like this, though she kept them from squirming so much by shoving them between her gigantic, honking ti -
“What?”
Vash was watching him soothe the baby back to sleep, holding his mouth shut. Failing to stifle laughter.
“Sh-shut up -!”
“Wolfwood! I didn’t say anything!”
“Shut up and go to hell twice, you giggling nitwit! Are we doing this, or not?”
Vash sprung to his feet, stretching his shoulders and calves, touching his toes. The sun was a low, cool line on the far periphery, and his odd, green eyes were electric against the purple sky. Before he took off running down the hill, he tipped his chin with his face all screwed up and blew a kiss. To the baby. Idiot.
The idiot kicked up a storm behind him, careening down the slippery dune and almost smashing face first into the wall. His initial vault is mis-aimed, but he corrects course and gets halfway up the warehouse’s east wall before losing steam. Wolfwood heard his yelp in the distance, the moment his momentum started dragging him backward and he faltered - free fall - for a tremulous, shivering second until catching himself by the crook of one finger in a bullet hole. From there, Spikey pulled himself up inch by agonizing inch. Wolfwood watched him for a while through the scope, smiling despite himself. This fucking guy. Looks like they weren’t going in quiet.
It was already in chaos by the time Nicholas skid his ass down the rise and blew in through the south door. Humming an old lullaby, he reached under Thomasina to pull the pin on one of his smoke bombs. It rattled ahead of him, rolling and rolling like a top under the stuttering light - the gangsters kept shooting off for every bulb Spikey popped. The canister burst and smoke whisked through the room in a husking, black curtain. Everyone was coughing. The whizzing and clanging died down as the ricochets started to go stray, cloaked by the fog. One of the gangsters was howling about how his gun backfired. Another went down from a ricochet in the thigh. From above, a flailing shadow rocketed from the catwalk: clutched up like a spider and hooting like a madman.
Vash landed on the head honcho as the smoke sucked into the corners. You knew he was the boss ‘cause he was thick as two trucks and wearing a fancy hat. That hat tumbled off when Spikey wrenched his ankles around the guy’s neck and stuck a gun to his temple.
“GOOD EVENING EVERYONE, I AM VASH THE STAMPEDE! I HAVE COME TO KILL EVERY MERCENARY IN THIS JOINT AND STEAL YOUR WOMEN FOR MYSELF!”
“Aw, shit!”
“No fucking way…”
“YOU HAVE TEN SECONDS TO RUN AWAY BEFORE THE SLAUGHTER BEGINS! START-TING… RII~IIIGHT….. NOW! ONE! TWOOOOO…!”
“Are we seriously just gonna -”
“Shut up and scram, amigo!”
“I always knew this day would come!”
“THREE! FOOOO~OOOOUUUUR…”
“Hey, don’t leave me here -!” cried the Boss. Wolfwood hitched The Punisher over his shoulder and waded through the swarm of fleeing brigands towards the prisoners.
“FIVE, SIX - hm, I’m getting a little bored, why don’t we skip a few -”
“I’ve heard a few thing about Vash the Stampede,” the boss growled. “And I think you’re bluffing.”
“Ha ha, well! I’m not! NINE -”
Wolfwood caught the glint of the man’s weapon being raised under the scant moonlight. He’d crooked his hand-canon to take out the main support to the building. He was gonna bring the place down on them.
“TEEEE-EEEENNN -”
The whole thing popped off in under half a breath: Wolfwood steadied The Punisher and leveled a shot that met the muzzle of the hand-canon as it went off. Spikey kicked the canon with his heel, aiming it at the dirt. The backfire blew the bastard’s arm off, clean, up to the elbow, but the loaded ball still went skidding along the ground, hurtling off-course at muted velocity. Vash saw its trajectory before Wolfwood registered it. The last thing he heard before turning to take the round-shot shallow along the torso was Vash calling his name. The cannonball splintered through a corner brace before exploding out the wall. The abused stone began to slouch. Wolfwood threw himself to the floor and turtled over the baby before the ceiling came crashing down on him.
It was quiet under the rubble. Wolfwood couldn’t track time while buried - the air was hot and thin already - after he’d caught his breath… panting and gagging from the pain… had to save it for the baby. He was going in and out, taking shallow breaths, and as little as possible. Chapel taught every recruit how to slow their heartbeat in the first month of training. Could even play dead, and had been close a few times. He was bleeding from something wedged between two ribs from behind and there was no way to tell how bad it was until the rubble was taken away. One moment to the next, breathe, hold. Thomasina cried until Nicholas gave her his hand, and since then she was blinking quietly, with one tiny hand wrapped around his thumb and her dark eyes studying everything carefully. Shhh, sweetheart, shhh, it’s alright now.
He closed his eyes - breathe - and saw a pink spring evening - hold: Maylene hanging off his neck from one of Melanie’s slings, and he and Livio were both wearing rubber gloves. He was minding one end of the booster cable, hooked to a battery cell, and the other end was clamped around a metal rod. Livio was supposed to chase the Spark Flies down and jab them with the rod, but he kept tripping in the shifting sand and shocking himself. Why do I have to do the hard part, Nico? he kept whining. The hard part’s holding the baby, Nicholas told him. What, you wanna switch? Breathe, hold. He never did. So thinking about it, he bet the brigand who got told to smother the baby fucked it up on purpose.
When he was a kid one time, Chapel dragged him through this border town that had already been thrown in a blender by a gang of thrill riders on a trip. Everyone was turned to mincemeat except for one little girl, who Nicholas found clinging to a corpse in the back of a shoe shop and humming a hymnal. She couldn’t get that granny was dead, but understood it when he barked for her to crawl under the body and to not make noise or come out for anything until it was dark, or else - the hanging else. Breathe. Hold - he thought he was pretty clever too, until Chapel sent one of his assassins inside to turn over every corpse and shoot them ten times, just in case. What sort of charity is that, Nicholas? he scolded. To leave her wither in the elements, or live long enough to become your enemy. What’s really kinder? Tell me, Spikey: I don’t know anymore.
A blade of light spilled through the rubble, and soon the kidnapped townsfolk were pulling him from the mess; tugged aloft by the dishpan hands of a dozen hearty bordertown wives. Wolfwood blinked against the dust in his eyes. He was shedding it like rainwater. When he tugged his thumb free of Thomasina to hold his guts in, she started crying again. The noise pieced through the settling clamor and shocked the warehouse silent.
“Marina?” a woman called from the other side of the room.
The baby was coddled from Wolfwood’s grasp, into the arms of its sobbing, grateful mother. He staggered backwards, braced against the wall and feeling around for how close the splinter of wood skewering got to his lungs.
Vash came to lean with him. “None of the women were touched,” he whispered. “The Boss swore as much. He shot those two men in the desert when they tried to, um - you know. He said it’s bad business practice.”
“You believe him?”
“I believe them.”
The women were tying the bandit leader up. Even the nurse wrapping up his shredded arm spat in his face when he complained, but they were all laughing; relieved. Wolfwood couldn’t hold on to what anyone was saying, it was all moving too fast, or too slow -
“Spikey,” he growled, “- c’mere.”
Vash grabbed him by the arms. “What -” his eyes followed to the arch of Wolfwood’s hand, cradling the wound. The blood pooling black under his shoes. “Wolfwood -!”
“I need you to pull it out.”
“Woah - hey, what? Are you serious?” Wolfwood fumbled for Vash’s wrist, to make him grip the splinter. He’d drunk a vial under the rocks and the hiss of knitting flesh was already burning up his back. They didn’t have much time. “Wolfwood, you’re woozy. Won’t that make it worse?”
“It’s not as bad as it looks, trust me.”
“I -”
“Do you trust me?”
Both bare eyed in the dust-settling grey, Wolfwood let Vash search his gaze without any pretense. Right now, if Vash asked him anything, he’d say the truth. Spikey kept that eye contact up, unblinking, as his mechanical hand glided down his torso, and gently closed around the base of the wooden spike.
“Okay, Wolfwood,” he whispered, and jerked it out in one, clean slice.
Wolfwood bucked forward in pain, digging his fingers into Vash’s shoulders. Spikey’s hands were resting on his hips, loosely - sort of loosey, and they were sort of holding each other, but sort of not, which was weirder than if they had been. Nobody was watching them. Wolfwood pulled away to touch the wound, to feel himself heal. Vash kept looming over him, looking him over.
“What?” he rasped. “What?”
If Vash asked him anything right now - about the Guns, the Eye, the four remaining vials clattering in his coat’s inlay. All of it burned like the gaze of God was supposed to. Ask me, Spikey. One of us has to stop playing so both of us can make a decision. One of us has to move first, and I’m the coward.
Instead, Vash’s fickle mouth cracked into a secretive grin, like a cat. He was still looking like that after they loaded up the gang’s truck and had pulled out for Raleigh’s Point, the two of them sitting on the roof ‘cause there was no room for them or Wolfwood’s gun inside.
“I’m serious, cactus brain, what’s with that creepy look?
“What, this look?” And Vash did it more, his chin in both palms. Not just any cat, but a milk thief.
“Yeah, cut it out already.” Looking straight at it felt feverish.
“It’s just that… you are good with children.”
“Huh?”
“When you picked up that baby, you knew the proper way to hold it right away.”
“So?”
“Oh, nothing!” Vash hummed. “It’s interesting, is all. What do you know, you actually might be--”
“Don’t start, Spikey -”
“I mean it! You really are-”
“I’m only gonna warn you once -”
“- a super, duper niiiiice…. guuuuu –”
Wolfwood kicked him off the side of the truck. Vash went rolling along the desert floor, cackling like a lunatic.
Spikey kept that mood up the whole next day, too: awake with the crack of sun and solicitous with his and Wolfwood’s aid. Molting under the tin rooves at siesta, they’d been run like dogs all morning so Nicholas ragged him out over it: Spikey, we’re gettin’ grifted here, at least have ‘em send us off with a one-seater! Oh, c’mon, Wolfwood (sweating and parched at the same time while he said this, and fluttering around like a used piece of paper) they need it more than we do, don’t they?
He was serious by the end of that sentence. Wolfwood peeked over his shades and caught a wistful subtext passing through Vash’s gaze like afternoon clouds: we don’t have much farther to go, do we? Do we, do we? - Spikey, you’re the one that needs to tell me what we’re doing.
Instead of saying anything, Vash stretched out one, long leg and knocked Wolfwood’s foot with his. Wolfwood licked his lips, and looked away. His palms ached, with something like pins and needles and the nausea that lingers after you thought you’d been hit by a bullet, but you weren’t.
All day the town worked to salvage equipment from the facility so they could build a manual grotto pump. They connected it to a simplified sand-filter, which ran the pumped water through a system of wax-lined barrels. Hopefully it was enough to keep Raleigh’s Point wet until help came from the Municipality. There were already talks about taking the thomases into the desert and shooting them before the meat was ruined by thirst, but come evening Wolfwood’s prophecy proved true and he and the Amazing Cactus Brained Man were able to thrush a swarm of Spark Flies out of the grotto.
They were big n’ mean as toddlers, and hissing mad - snapping mandibles and activating their bioluminescent stingers, FLASH FLASH, like sheet-lighting clapping on the edge of town. Wolfwood was kicked back by the battery, smoking and pretending to favor his wound -- oh no, not me, no way lady, the needle noggin here can hold the stick (grinning with incisors as Spikey’s shoulders fell and fell). Vash wasn’t any better at herding flies than Livio, but each time he got shocked he dived into some impressively choreographed prat-fall the for the amusement of the people who’d come to watch.
He waddled bow-legged through the cooling sand when finished, punch-drunk and rubbing the back of his neck. Tufts of organic mass sprouted from his cheeks, neck; his bare arm. Wolfwood blocked the view of the gathered townsfolk with his shoulders and licked his tumb, as if to clean a smudge of dirt off Vash’s cheek. Spikey squished one eye closed as Wolfwood rubbed and rubbed, his skin thrumming and warm under his calloused fingers. The motion of his tumb trailed a web of static electricity towards Vash’s ear.
“Do I have something on my face?”
“Yeah.” Wolfwood looked down. Vash followed his eyes to see spokes of feathered flesh thrust up from his forearm, faintly glowing in the blue evening.
“Oh, ha ha. Sorry about that.”
Wolfwood wanted to ask him who he was saying sorry to. When he checked over his shoulder, one of the engineers was waving them back to the village. Now that the work was done, the townsfolk wanted to party until dawn.
It was the whole settlement crowded up in the saloon: kids and elders too, and even the technicians from the settlement’s core, who usually kept apart from borderfolk. The music was distorted under a haze of static, but half the drunks were singing along anyhow; you know, there were only so many songs. Spikey was sheets to the wind off the moisture in the air soon as they rattled through the batwing doors, though wouldn’t ya know it - now that he’s slid up next to Wolfwood at the bar, he seemed completely sober.
“There was a telegraph from the army outpost earlier,” he reported. They had to press their shoulders together to be heard over the singing. “They’ll be sending a recovery team in two weeks.”
Wolfwood turned his glass around a few times, rocking it back and forth on the cubed corner before knocking back the rest of his shot. “Spikey, you know these folks are just gonna be relocated.”
Vash played with his empty bottle too, rolling the neck between two metal fingers.
“The army’s gonna take over management of the grotto and ship these people off to a tent city outside December - they all know it. S’why they’re drinking. To forget.”
“It could be that. Or maybe they’re remembering that it feels good to be alive.” He snatched the bottle still with a hollow clang and looked up at Wolfwood, wearing a gaze that was almost translucent. “It should feel good. Even if there’s pain, the pain should make you feel the good parts more.”
His voice was clear and soft, almost cloying, as if he held back or something - that’s how Nicholas thought it was obvious Vash was a guy who chose to be soft rather than anything like being squeamish. It rose above the din, in the small space between them, tho’ he was hardly speaking above a whisper. A subtext surged under the conversation, like hitting the vein of an underground stream. Wolfwood slammed his glass on the bar and looked away first.
“Why don’t you live what you preach, huh Spikey?”
He ordered another whiskey, and felt the weight of Vash studying him as a prickle up his spine. For a second he thought he laid a sideways blow that went too deep - the sad sack lout might as well be dragging around the whole hosts of holy hell, as if he’s got a fuckin’ ship chained to both ankles, there isn’t any time left, that’s why. We don’t have much further to go. Do we, do we Spikey? When he turned back, Vash had on that neutral, patient expression he always did when he’d figured something out, only Wolfwood can’t guess what he just gave away. He stared at Vash stupidly as the bar broke into the first chorus of ‘Sweet Clementine’. He felt stupid, and wasn’t even sure why. This fucking guy, he made him feel so fucking stupid all the time.
“Oh, Sweet Clementine, don the blue ribbon and say you’ll be mine -”
Vash spun off his bar-stool in tandem with the horn-pipe’s corkscrew flourish and grabbed Wolfwood by the elbow.
“Come on!”
“Woah, woah - no way -”
But they were already on the dance floor - Wolfwood tottering and tripping as Vash dragged him into the clapping circle, laughing - yeah, ha ha, real funny Spikey. Yer gonna yank my arms out of my socket. Why don’t you lead, he asks (still laughing!), why don’t you lead Wolfwood? And Vash’s hands are over his: strangely delicate movements, so carefully chosen, as he set one of Nicholas’s large, sun-baked hands in the dip of his torso, and Vash’s big, dumb coat was swishing around them like a skirt.
“S’just like fighting,” Vash whispered directly into his ear.
“What?”
“You have to live in the moment, Wolfwood.”
Spikey pulled back and smiled at him for some dazzling length of time that cut right through like he was made of butter. Wolfwood stumbled over his own feet, and Vash shouted: “Someone teach this poor man how to dance!”
“I know how to dance,” Nicholas was saying a few minutes later, spinning round and round to the third verse of ‘Darling Don’t Wait On Me Tonight’.
“Yes, you’re pretty good.” His dance partner giggled, sly but a bit fragile. She was a stout, little red headed woman. Not much older than him, probably - or how old he looked - but aged prematurely from the sun and hard work. They spun, detached, reunited, and she stared at him strangely with her big, brown eyes. “You don’t know who I am, do you? I’m Marina’s mother. You saved my daughter’s life.”
Wolfwood raised his shoulders. “Yeah, well. Your kid got lucky.”
“We all got lucky. Some of the women are angry.” She looked around, furtive suddenly. Pointed to the council representative. “At him. He’s the one who made the deal with the bandits.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
Marina’s mother flushed, caught. “Oh, no reason, no reason - it’s no trouble at all.” Apologetic when she disentangled and curtsied. “Have a good night, Father Wolfwood, thank you for everything.
Spikey was sitting on a table by the local community board, right under a slice of light that illuminated both him and his WANTED poster. Surrounded by children, and subjected to brutal interrogation:
“I always KNEW Vash the Stampede was really a good guy!”
“He’s not really Vash the Stampede stupid.”
“Yeah he just said that to scare the bandits.”
“Nu-uh, Mom says he really shot everyone there in one hit! Like, it was fifteen guys and he got ‘em all with one bullet! It’s like how they say, but he’s a hero!”
“Is that true?” demanded the oldest of the girls, pouting.
“Uhh - heh heh, no comment kids!”
“Wow, it’s like a secret identity!”
“How many cities are you wanted in, Mister Stampede?”
“Oh, all of them, ha ha!”
“What’s your favorite song, Mister Stampede?”
“That depends on which song I heard last!”
“Mister Stampede, how many bad guys have you killed!”
“Uhhh………. pass!”
“Mister Vash the Stampede, what kind of girls do you like?”
“Oh that’s easy -” Wolfwood was reclined against the wall lighting up a smoke when Vash lolled his head around to leer. “I like dark haired, dark eyed beauties who seem kind of mean, but are actually really nice underneath!”
Wolfwood rolled his eyes. Give me a fucking break.
But the joke sat under his skin for the rest of the night. If you could see yourself through my eyes right now, Wolfwood. If you could, you’d see a man forcing himself to play the Devil while his heart cried out in pain. Well, Spikey, wasn’t that true of anyone who did what they had to survive on this Godforsaken chunk of hell they were condemned to? Folks this far out from the settlements didn’t even know there was a rescue fleet coming, and even Nicholas - who knew - couldn’t feel it, really, in his heart. In his bones. Hope makes you bitter so best to always plan for the worst. Vash could say whatever he wanted, but Wolfwood saw the trembling thread of fear and regret running through him that makes every expression wobbly and wet. If you could see yourself through my eyes, Spikey, you’d get that everyone who meets you just wants to see a glimpse, like rainfall, of your real smile; for just one moment, that you wouldn’t be so far away. It’s not only me who’s afraid to trust.
Ten drinks in, and Spikey finally did a faceplant directly into the floorboards. The townsfolk were roaring in delight as he was theatrically peeled off the ground, but Wolfwood didn’t think there was much to laugh about, watching Vash empty his stomach under the high, clear moon.
“I know there was this whole melodrama about it,” he groused, steadying Vash against the wall. “But you might wanna drink some water, Spikey.”
“Oh, Woooolf~wooood,” Spikey sung, clutching Wolfwood’s arms and tugging so they were nearly nose-to-nose. “You… you take such goooood~ care of me…”
No I don’t, idiot. It’s my job and no I don’t. “Yeah, yeah, sure - ain’t you supposed to be an old man under there? How’d you make it all this time not tripping over your shoelace and dying without me around to tell you which way is North?”
“Who knows? I am pretty clumsy, ha ha -” Speaking all light-toned and fake, with a twist to it Wolfwood can’t explain in words, but felt somehow. In his bones. “It’s true, I was in a whole lotta trouble without you around. Completely hopeless…”
His arms came up, hanging loose and wrapped around Wolfwood’s shoulders. Caged him in. Meeting no resistance, his fingers dragged through Wolfwood’s hair before sliding down to cup his face between two cool palms. “You really do,” he whispered, “take care of me.”
The moment before Vash kissed him went on forever, because Wolfwood was thinking of a dozen ways to stop it from happening. Like the heartbeat between when the safety’s slid off a pistol, and it fires. Breath. Calculate. Move. The least worst angle to take it from. Everything is harm reduction, boiled down to base physical mathematics and there’s usually only one - absolutely only one - action that will keep you alive -
“What?” Vash asked between kisses, like he could tell Wolfwood was thinking about getting shot. He traced Wolfwood’s cheekbones with his thumb and reoriented the angle: open mouthed, but almost chaste. Chaste, but inviting - why don’t you lead, Wolfwood? Why don’t you? Tasting like vomit and sand, and beer that was brewed in a latrine, but still inviting - the dam of arousal didn’t feel good when it burst. The blood that went to Nicholas’s dick and head hit like a backhand from an iron two by four - all the things he had been thinking about, and pretending he wasn’t thinking about, and trying not to think about: when Vash looked at him so dewy eyed and beautiful as a pristine spring in the morning glaze, having just splashed water on his hair; or over the orange glow of the campfire which turned his skin the same flourished bronze as the Minor Sun at noon; and Nicholas was so frustrated by desire sometimes his legs ached from it.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry -” Vash was saying now, ‘cause the way he’d had gone stiff as a board. Shaking like a kicked puppy, even though it was just. Just. Spikey: to himself now, mechanical hand covering his eyes. “What am I even doing? I thought that - but don’t you want to do it Wolfwood?” Looking at Nicholas with his clear green eyes. “I can tell you want to, so I thought - it doesn’t have to mean - I, I mean, don’t you ever just want to do things because they feel good?”
“I -” Wolfwood’s mouth was parched. Fingers curled, white-knuckled, in Vash’s lapels. “That’s what I’ve been tellin’ you this whole time, Spikey. Everything I do has consequences.”
The moment stretched, agonizing and long like those late afternoon shadows, as they held each other’s coats and gaze in the still, desert night.
Their standoff was broken by a cascading crash from inside, like a whole tray of glasses got dropped. The music stopped abruptly, and the noise went from boisterous to alarmed. Someone was shouting. Someone else screamed. They rushed inside to see one of the women straddling the chest of the council representative who’d dealt with the bandits.
“Liza, would ya calm down -”
She had a gun to the man’s forehead. “No, I ain’t calmin’ down no more! This ship-fat rat didn’t think one minute ‘bout us after he sold us off -”
“Lizzy, it’s okay! It’s all over now!”
“It ain’t over when if those strangers didn’t come outta the waste like that, we’d still be in chains!”
“But you ain’t -”
“Liza, think of your children!”
“I am!” She screeched, a thick bead of sweat rolling down her face. The man under her had pissed himself crying. “I’m doin’ this for - f-for them!”
She drew the revolver back. A casing clicked into the chamber, audible over the restless hush. Vash reached for the woman. Wolfwood was closer, in the moment between loading and shooting, and he nearly got a hand ‘round her waist to pull her away, but he was too late -
She pulled the trigger.