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Birds of a Feather

Summary:

Laid up in Home’s hospital for a few days, Wolfwood can’t help but keep picking at his metaphorical wounds while trying to work through his feelings seeing Vash show a new side of herself.

Content warnings for internalized transphobia, being so deep in the closet you’re finding new trauma under old clothes, and canon-typical dream imagery.

Notes:

Secret santa gift for my dear friend Jaya @yormgen here and @yormgen.bsky.social on bluesky.

Intended to take place between Trigun Maximum Ch19 and Ch20 (with some lifting from Ch20 events, though not everything matches). Can be read platonically or romantically should you choose, but is mostly about cracking this fucking egg in God’s (or Vash’s) loving hand first and foremost.

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“Pain is holy.” The preacher intones, sweeping one hand across his flock. “This world is harsh, barren rock, and it is only by their pain that we wring life from it. It is said that ‘tis easier to draw blood from a stone than it is to live on this planet. And it is said to be easier for a beast of burden to pass through the eye of a needle than it is for the unshriven to pass into Heaven!”

The stifling air in the church clings to the preacher’s reddened skin, sweat pouring down his bald head and soaking the collar of his vestments. Wolfwood feels tired and fuzzy, his bone-deep fatigue dragging him down into a hazy just-above-unconsciousness he’s grown used to existing in, only for a slap from his minder to fling him back into wakefulness.

“Pay attention, child, or you will live just long enough to regret your laxity.” Chapel mutters, his eyes focused up on the clergyman. 

“-But we are made holy by our devotion to them! We accept the pain of life as a gift from those angels made manifest, the plant who shines down upon us!” In the rafters of the chapel, a glass bulb the size of a truck extends down through the shattered ribs of wood roofing. Inside, female figure adorned in wings and tendrils of purest white contained within writhes in time with the priest’s speech, the sunlight streaming down her body and into the room below. “The plants give life itself to us! Your water is their tears, your food made from the body of the divine! But the unshriven waste their holy gifts, building monuments to their greed and vanity from the very divinity they cage!”

“Blasphemy!” Someone in the crowd roars, an adult with a bruised and fearful child seated bolt upright next to him. That one will be dead in a week, Wolfwood thinks to himself. They don’t have it. 

“The blasphemers defile the gift! They pervert divine works to unholy ends, and they must be laid low and shown the error of their evil ways. Our mission is holy, our cause just! Rise up, brothers, rise up!”

The whole crowd gets to its feet, baying for blood. Adults lift guns and knives in the air, sacred implements of war ready to draw the blood of the unfaithful. Children linger at their sides, the newer ones scared and wide-eyed, the older ones like Wolfwood dull-eyed to the senselessness of the scene. 

Chapel drags Wolfwood upright by his hair, angling his head up to the ceiling. “Pay attention now, my son! Remember Her pain and let it drive you.”

“Be blessed now, bask in the light of Her creation. Be made holy by Her pain and carry out the Work!” The preacher screams over the din of curses and oaths from the crowd.

Above, the soft light from the plant, the angelic woman looking down on them with such gentle eyes, begins to darken. White gives way to yellow, orange, red, the color of blood. When he reaches up towards her and she begins to scream, blood streaming from her eyes. And he sees his hands are painted in blood—


Wolfwood awakens with a gasp, biting down on his tongue and stifling the scream of absolute terror that threatened to escape. This pain, too, is holy, he thinks to himself. When he can finally relax enough to take another breath, the scent of antiseptic fills his lungs. Soft white light pervades the room, blurred by tears he hadn’t even realized he was crying. His mouth tastes of blood, his tongue already itching as the meat begins to sew itself back together of its own accord.

Hospitals always seem to make him feel like this, even the back-country ones in no-name towns with little more than a gurney and a hacksaw. Thinking about old times, old pains, old regrets. C’mon, you’re too young for these things, Wolfie, one person in particular would say, but he feels them deeply anyway. The room is quiet, just two empty beds on either side of him separated by a curtain and some shades. Against the far wall to his left stands an actual window looking out over blue skies above and thin, gauzelike white clouds underneath. It’s a little bit like looking out from Heaven, in a way. So far above it all.

Wolfwood lays himself back down gingerly, feeling every quarter-healed bullet wound and yellowing bruise intimately. The IV in his arm feels nice and cool, and he’s not thirsty, but hunger is definitely settling in. In fact, his whole body is steadily checking in, from feet to face, and the report is: it all fuckin’ sucks, man. Itchy all over from the regeneration, like he’s laying in an anthill, and the feeling of his organs shifting against one another in his gut tells him not to move too much, lest he regret it. His face feels like a cactus when he raises a hand to his cheeks, clicking his tongue in distaste and immediately wishing he hadn’t.

Hospitals reminds him too much of bad days. Bad, bad days. The feeling of bones snapping and reknitting over hours, again and again, joints stretched past their limits, ligaments shifting. The full-body agony of having your body rebuilt from nothing, into a hulking beast that you can’t even recognize in the mirror for months afterward. Sometimes, on the bad days, Wolfwood looks in the mirror and sees only a thing, something else that isn’t truly him. Those days aren’t the worst days, but they’re close.

These times are the worst. Nowhere to go, nothing to do but sit with yourself and feel every tear slowly stitch itself shut over hours. There’s a metal tray next to his bed, with a small hill of lead and shrapnel piled in the middle of it. He stares at it for a long time. How many people have I saved from a gunshot in my life, he wonders to himself. How many more have I condemned with that cross of mine?

The door to his right flies open, the noise of the hospital outside coming up from a dull roar to a crashing wave of activity and pain. An indistinct and yet distinctly lanky figure high-steps into the room bearing two trays that smell awfully like a heaping helping of grub. They kick the door closed behind them without looking, stepping into view with a slice of bread stuffed in their mouth.

Vash looks over at him then, his hair hanging limp at his temples like when he found him, with the black undergrowth of it peeking out here and there between strands. Wearing the same thin hospital gown Wolfwood is, he is forced to confront a fact he’d been choosing not to think about since the day he found Vash the Stampede again in that no-name town:

Was Vash the Stampede always a woman, or is that new?

Vash seems to think nothing of the undoubtedly insane look Wolfwood is giving him (her?), gesturing vaguely with her head to one of the beds and disappearing behind the curtain. Vash returns with one of the trays in one hand, shoving the slice of bread into her mouth and grinning from ear to ear at him. Her hospital gown leaves nearly nothing to the imagination, and the low collar shows both her collarbones and the ruinous expanse of scarring Wolfwood’s already had glimpses of before now.

“Hey, buddy, you’re awake! You’ve been super sleepy and a little whiny, so I figured I’d grab something for both of us since you’re not up.”

“No way in hell am I whiny, you fucker.” Wolfwood snaps back without thinking, then winces as his organs remind him how many of them still contain holes that God did not put there.

“Yeah, yeah, sure.” Vash clears away the tray of bullets from the side table, placing the food on it and sliding where Wolfwood can reach. “I wasn’t sure when you were gonna wake up, so it’s just a sandwich and some stuff, but I hope you enjoy.” She sits down on the stool next to the bed, smiling that empty smile.

Wolfwood is too busy latching into the sandwich (thick slabs of meat, with some kind of horrifyingly spicy, burning cream sauce slathered all over it) like a rabid animal to protest or complain. It’s maybe the best post-gunshot meal he’s had in his life.

When he’s finally plowed through the manna from heaven delivered by an angel, he pounds back the glass of water thoughtfully included in the meal and looks back at Vash.

There’s no mistaking it. There was always something different about Vash after he found her again, 2 years after the last time, but it had been hard to pin down, too easy to attribute to the time. There’s a lot that’s different - the cut of her cheekbones, the set of her shoulders, the softness to her lips. A lot of it was masked by the crazy getup she wears, but it’s obvious now with her sitting so close. The gown reveals quite a lot, but he’d seen it before, when as Erics she had stripped down and barked like a dog to earn the safety of a little girl. He’d thought it maybe a trick of the light, or just something strange that would pass without comment, a practical joke as Vash loved to occasionally pull on herself (or others, but more often self-inflicted). 

“Do I have something on my face?” Vash asks, that easy and false smile faltering.

“Just your usual stupid grin.” He replies, looking away and blinking rapidly, trying to come up with a conversation topic. “How many people died?”

“How do you feel? Nothing too bad, I hope.” Vash says, but he can tell she’s wincing at the question just from her tone of voice.

“How many people died, Vash?” Wolfwood looks back at her for only the briefest moment, and regrets it immediately. She’s leaning forward, staring at her hands cupped between her knees, and the look on her face is indescribable. 

“…170.”

He knows what Vash and Knives are, intellectually. Plants who can walk and talk, as human (or inhuman, as the case may be) as anyone. But before, it was easy to file that status away as a curiosity. A pair of male Plants, so very unlike the others you see in every town capable of supporting life. Holy, surely, but in a different way than he had been raised to believe as the ultimate font of grace. A feminine presence bordering on the divine that makes life possible.

But it felt different now, looking at her and seeing in her face the distant echo of the features he’s seen on all the Plants the whole world over he’d ever had the occasion to see in the flesh. Maybe it’s the blood loss, but…she looks so God-damned sad it’s making his heart ache. If he’d just kept his fucking mouth shut, she wouldn’t be feeling this pain. 

Their pain is holy. But…right now, it just feels like I’m tormenting her. That thought twists him up inside like nothing else ever has.

“We did everything we could.” Wolfwood says, feeling like a hot coal is sliding down his throat as he swallows the words that he wants to say. That Vash’s pacifism is to blame. That if she’d acted decisively, it would have been over in an instant. 

“Thanks, Wolfwood.” That empty smile returns, so heart-achingly sad, that he can’t find anything to say. “I’ll let you rest. Try to get some sleep.” She stands, placing a hand on his shoulder for a moment that feels minutes long before she returns to her bed. 

It takes him hours to stop putting picking at his metaphorical wounds after that and finally pass back into blessed unconsciousness.


Days pass in a slow slideshow of sunrises and sunsets through the hospital room window, broken only by sleep, big meals brought by Vash and the occasional tentative forays to the bathroom. Wolfwood has plenty of time to think, but finds himself unable to put any of it to words, just turning it over in his head again and again. Worrying at his wound like a dog who doesn’t know any better.

There’s been plenty of activity in the room for him to react to, of course— the insurance girls showed up (and man, were they loud and happy to see everybody), along with a brat around his age before he left the orphanage who couldn’t stop hugging Vash and crying. And he saw something crazy - a locket the kid dropped somewhere in the commotion, with a picture of Vash and her posing for the camera…but when she could have only been 5 or so, and Vash didn’t look a day older than now, when it had to have been at least a decade.

None of them seem to mind the new Vash very much - Everyone who comes in just seems to be relieved he’s alive and here. There’s a little bit of conversation, but Wolfwood tunes it out - not his business. The insurance girls shared a look with him, but he couldn’t bring himself to talk to them about it. Felt too much like he’d hear something he didn’t want to. Better to just keep gnawing until his teeth hit bone.

So why does she look so different to me, Wolfwood wonders to himself. Is it just the nature of knowing, that you can’t help but see it everywhere, or did something change? Is there something wrong with me, or with everyone else? But none of that leaves his lips. He quips and he plays along when he needs to, and keeps his own counsel close to his chest, continuing to run his teeth along the bone in his head, despite the pain.

There’s one woman who keeps catching his eye in it all though: striking is the only word he can find to describe her, with short dark black hair and crows feet, the seeming leader of the ship. Luida, her name is, he thinks. Aged, but in a way he’s never seen out in the world. Lean and thin with striking cheekbones, she looks utterly unlike the old folks he’s used to, blasted by the sun and the elements into prematurely aged jerky in the shape of people. 

When Vash takes off to go play with the kids again (where she gets the energy for it day after day, he’ll never know), Wolfwood slips out of the room and wanders the halls looking for the old woman. It takes less time than he thought it would, finding her at a small open-air section of the hospital area where the nurses congregate, discussing some matter with them.

“Got a minute, old lady?” Wolfwood calls in a lull in the conversation, drawing everyone’s attention and more than a few nasty looks from the other participants. He nods his head back towards his room, and she takes a few minutes to finish the conversation, but walks up to him with the faintest whisper of a smile.

“I do now, young man.” Luida gestures for him to lead the way, and they start walking back to his room together. “How are you healing?”

“Well enough.” He says curtly, perhaps a little too fast. What the hell is wrong with him?

They don’t speak further until they’re back in his room, Wolfwood fishing through his pile of clothes to find his crumpled pack of cigarettes and placing one in his mouth.

 “How old are you?” He asks bluntly.

“Old enough to know that some questions don’t need answers.” She replies, then a beat later says, “84.”

“And how old is Vash?”

“…I first met them 70 years ago. We found a body in the desert clinging to life, missing an arm and on the edge of life.”

“And…okay, I gotta ask. Does Vash look different to you? Something’s off.” Finding himself unable to help it, he plucks the cigarette from his lips and stares down at it, because looking at her and saying those words made him feel like he wants to rip his own throat out. Every fiber in his body says that he should be fine by now, so why does he feel like this? A pit in his stomach that aches like a gunshot.

Luida stares at Wolfwood, expression unreadably grim.

“In all my life, I’d never seen Vash change.” She finally says after watching him for awhile. “We’d last seen them over a decade ago, and was the same old Vash. Now…” Luida’s expression softens, or appears to out of the corner of Wolfwood’s eye. “Yes. She does looks different, but it’s still Vash the Stampede.”

“That’s putting it mildly. Hey!” Wolfwood exclaims when Luida plucks the cigarette from his hand, pocketing it.

“I would prefer you not smoke in the hospital, young man.”

“It wasn’t even lit!” Wolfwood glares at her, but can’t find the will to put any actual anger behind it. “…Have you talked to her about it? Is this some kind of space-ship thing, does this happen a lot here? Is that why everyone’s being so weird?” Why is he even asking this?

“You seem preoccupied by this, far more than someone who saved a few hundred lives with at her side not a week ago probably should be.” Luida says without affect. “Have you spent long with Vash?”

“Kinda. Two years ago for only a few days, longer now.” He chooses not to mention the file, the mission from Knives, any of it. “So I shouldn’t be worried about this is what you’re saying.”

“I think you should talk to her about if you should be worried about it. I know Vash very well, I should think, but some pains are difficult to share openly.” Luida looks away from Wolfwood, back to the window. “She walks the earth bearing a burden none of us can fathom. A weight like no other slung across her shoulders. It shouldn’t surprise me if it was hidden under all that, and only when she found respite, even a small one, did it become clear. But that’s only speculation.”

“…Right.” God damn it. Wolfwood curses himself inwardly, looking out the window with Luida and sighing. “Okay.”

“I hope this has helped you, young man.”

“Alright, alright, I’m sorry for the old lady crack, knock it off.” Wolfwood grumbles, and looks back to find her smiling, an echo of Vash’s carefree grin in her expression. Or maybe Vash picked up that smile from her. Who knows?

“I really do hope this has helped you. Think about it, and take the first step when you’re ready.”

When he doesn’t reply, Luida nods once and sees herself out. Leaning back and grabbing his crushed pack of cigarettes, he grimaces to find it empty. Rubbing a hand across his prickly chin, he shakes his head and sighs once more.

Pain is holy, but this just aches. But why does it ache this much?


The churchyard echoes with the laughter of kids, the sounds of play and little feet pounding across the hard-packed sand after one another. It feels like a dream, to see everyone so happy. His heart pounds in his chest, watching from the steps up to the small chapel the orphanage is built around as so many people he cares deeply for go about their lives.

In his hands is a baby, one he doesn’t recognize, with messy black hair and a perpetual scowl. They stare up at him, baby fat scrunched, studying him like something on the horizon they can’t quite make out, trying to find something hidden by the heat-shimmer.

Being one of the oldest kids, he was often dragooned into service as a baby-watcher, milk-deliverer and minder for the youngest kids, so this isn’t really out of his wheelhouse, but it does feel strange. The babies used to be so big in his arms that it would take both hands and a lot of grunting, but this one fits perfectly into the crook of one arm, their head balanced in his palm. It feels…right, somehow. 

“It’s been so long.” A voice behind him says, just barely audible through the door. “Isn’t it nice that Nicholas is visiting?” One of the caretakers of the church, he thinks, a nice matronly old lady who kept the books for the preacher and always led prayer before dinner.

“You think so? I worry—” The new voice he doesn’t recognize is interrupted by the baby in his arms crying, reaching up for him and squalling like a, well, a baby. 

“C’mon, kid.” Wolfwood says, rocking them gently and bouncing a little to calm them down. Thankfully, the baby quiets almost immediately, staring up at Wolfwood with rapt attention. “I’m trying to be sneaky here.”

“Ah, there he goes again.” The second voice suddenly becomes audible. “Is it really alright that we’re letting Nicholas hold that baby? You don’t worry about their influence?”

His heart stops.

“We welcome all equally in this church, you know that.” The matron chastizes her. “Just because Nicholas became a killer since they left doesn’t mean we can’t welcome them back with open arms.”

“That’s not what I worry about. God knows some people in this world are only worth the lead they are due.” The second voice says. “Just…Isn’t it wrong to reject the body that God granted you? How can he try to change who he is into whatever he’s becoming? It surely can’t be human—”

The baby cries again, grasping up at him. And when Wolfwood looks down, he sees the baby grasping at his shirt, pulling down on the collar and grasping at a chest covered in hair that he doesn’t recognize— 


The dreams won’t stop.

Clawing his way out of bed, Wolfwood stumbles into the bathroom and fumbles for the light, wincing as the harsh blue-white light flares into life above him. The mirror over the sink is so pristine it feels out of place in this planet, a perfect rectangular reflection of his haggard face, one he has to struggle to accept.

Sleep is getting harder. Every night it’s something new, blood and pain and sorrow so deep his chest aches for hours afterwards. His eyes are red-rimmed and wet with tears, deep dark puffy circles under them that hurt to touch. His face is a wilderness of patchy fuzz, hard and black as the hair on top of his head. Tough to cut, tougher to control. His chest is covered in it too, and he doesn’t know if removing it or the pain of it growing back in hurts more.

He storms back out of the room when he can’t stand to look himself in the eye anymore, tearing open drawers and cabinets in search of something, anything to help.

“You okay?” Vash calls from her bed, her body in silhouette on the curtain dividing their separate spaces.

“Just need a razor. C’mon, even a scalpel, something!” His jaw aches from clenching it in his sleep, but it throbs as he speaks, muscles flexing painfully around the words.

It was just a dream.

“One sec, I’ve got just the thing!” Vash calls, her silhouette rising from the bed and coming around. She’s dressed simply in the clothes he recognizes from her time as Erics, a simple pair of slacks and a collared shirt, the first two buttons undone. She’s holding up a small leather roll, and gestures to the bed. “Here, sit down.”

“What? Wait, no, nuh uh.” He shakes his head rapidly. “I can do that myself, you loon.”

“Sit down.” She says firmly, sitting next to the bed. “You’re gonna cut yourself if you try to use my razor, and I’ll feel bad.”

His heart thumps hard in his chest at that. You should be nicer to her, he thinks to himself, and then wonders where that came from. He’s leading her to Knives, but he should be nice? Why, because she’s a Plant? I can’t even tell what’s going through my own head anymore, he thinks.  It all feels so jumbled up, chopped up and fried into a pile of nondescript Everything. In the end, he can’t find any good reason to argue back that wouldn’t sound like he’s still 10 years old. A scared kid in a man’s body who just wants it all to stop.

So he sits down grudgingly, mumbling thanks to her as she unrolls it across his lap. A straight razor folded in half for travel, a brush and a small tin of something she cracks open and mixes with a glass of water that was next to his bed, forming a soft white foam.

“If you’ve got anything to say, say it now, because if you talk while I’m shaving I’m gonna cut you, and then I’ll feel really bad.” She says lightly, lathering the mixture and gently daubing it on his face with her right hand after wetting his cheeks with the dregs of the water glass.

“…I’m sorry.” Wolfwood says, not meeting her eyes. He tries to find anything to focus on, landing on the window just past Vash’s shoulder and staying there. Outside, the blue sky yawns infinitely wide, the edge of the world just at the bottom of the sill.

Vash makes a noise of understanding, nodding and pulling the razor open, holding it in her left hand. She runs it along a length of leather built into the roll a few times, holding it up in front of her and testing the edge on her thumb. Wolfwood winces, but doesn’t say anything to see the rivulet of blood run down her skin.

“You don’t have anything to apologize for, you know that?” She raises the razor, tipping his chin up with her organic hand. “There’s a lot out there in the world. I’ve met a lot of kinds of people. Good people, bad people. People with dreams, people with no hope, people who just wanna see tomorrow.” 

The razor scrapes slowly against skin, drawn from the edge of his chin down to the curve of his neck.

“I’m not like any of them. That’s a lonely thing to say, but it’s true. There’s just me…and him, and all the other Plants on this planet. And so many people.”

The razor wiped clean on a cloth, Vash continues. Wolfwood feels taut as a high wire, thrumming with nervous energy he can’t express. His eyes flicker to her, and her smile is so sad he can’t bear to keep looking at it.

“I’ve met a lot of preachers over the years, and we’ve talked about God. A lot of different ways of believing in this world. A lot of old-school fire and brimstone types. Living is our punishment for our sins, get right with God and you can live better than the ones who are going to Hell. Some of them are kinder about it, but that’s the gist of it. Pain is holy punishment, and we must all bear our share.”

Their pain is holy. My pain is holy.

Vash pauses, cleaning the razor again and stropping it across the leather a few times. “Just a second, I need some more water.” She stands, vanishing into the bathroom at a leisurely pace with the glass. Like this is just another day for her.

“What do you think?” Wolfwood calls after her. “What is holy, what is goodness, all that shit?” His throat hurts, raw-feeling for no seeming reason, tight and hoarse.

“Pain’s just pain, I think. We all feel it, but it doesn’t have some higher meaning.” Vash calls from the bathroom, reemerging with a filled glass of water and sitting back down. “It’s nice to believe in God, but to take the place we live and call it Hell feels…too mean, I guess. There’s good here, and a lot of people try hard every day to be good. This isn’t Hell, and saying it is feels like people are trying to say this is the worst it can get, so we’ve got no reason to be nice.”

“So, the world sucks but it’s not it’s fault?”

“Yeah. Hold still again.” She reaches higher, her palm cupping his chin from beneath as she starts working on his cheeks. “We came here, after all. It wasn’t supposed to happen, but we did. If our world, if people became harsher because of the conditions here, that’s not it’s fault. It’s our fault for ending up here.” She pauses. “It’s mine.”

What, you’re gonna just claim original sin for us?, Wolfwood grunts and starts to open his mouth, but stops when Vash holds a finger to his lips.

“Let me finish. Then you can yell at me all you want.” She smiles softly, and Wolfwood finds himself staring at her instead of the window. “What’s holy to me is living despite pain. The thread of life for me is that we’re all here together. We have the ability to make life on this planet better for each other, so we should. We don’t have to kill each other to survive. We can make life easier for each other, not harder. One community, that accepts everyone, no matter what.”

She’s looking into his eyes now too, hasn’t drawn a stroke across his face in nearly a minute, her hand cupping his chin. He looks away, breaking the stalemate, and she goes back to finishing up.

“I know it must be strange, looking at me these days. Everyone’s asking me about it. The people here are used to the same old Vash, no matter how long it’s been since I’ve seen them. So many questions.” Her voice sounds raw, thick with emotion. “It’s been nice, them worrying about me.” She swallows, falls silent for awhile. “It’s weird, being grieved while I’m standing there. I’m usually the one grieving, so I have a hard time finding what to say to them. It hardly feels right.”

When Vash lifts the razor away to clean it again, Wolfwood opens his mouth.

“Are you happy?” It feels like choking on a rock for Wolfwood to get the words out.

“Yeah. I’ll probably always be big scary gunman Vash the Stampede to the world, but now I’ve got something all my own, just for me. I’ve just been telling everyone I’m happier now than I’ve been in…well. Nearly as long as I can remember, I think. That seems like it helps.” She looks up at him from the razor. “Did it help you?”

Something in his chest feels like it’s going to explode, shower the whole room in his entrails. Years of indoctrination, fear and lessons in humility and pain on pain on pain on pain, all to protect people who wouldn’t even recognize him if they saw him now. A body that he can’t stand to exist inside, that feels like a straitjacket, a muzzle getting pulled tighter every time he sees that dark hair spreading across his body like a stain, this bizarre feeling like a snake stuck in its old shed skin. A pain he can’t express, because he could never name it, just hold it on his back and keep moving despite the weight growing by the hour. And the promise of only more pain for the rest of his life, killing and hurting and being hurt for other people to spare them that pain.

But pain isn’t holy, not really. It’s just another thing that happens in life. You don’t have to love it. You don’t even have to accept it.

You can change it. You can turn that pain into joy, even if it’s hard. Even if it goes against your whole life before now, you don’t have to stay the same forever. You can change anything, even who you are.

“Yeah.” Wolfwood nods, blinking tears from his eyes.

“I’m glad.” She makes the last stroke, retrieving a cloth from the roll and wiping Wolfwood’s face with it. “Let me know if there’s anything I can do for you, okay? It’s no trouble.”

“Yeah.” Wolfwood looks down at the roll, the razor gleaming in the light of the sun. “Can I borrow this? I’ve got some other hair I want to take care of.”

Vash nods, gesturing for Wolfwood to be her guest with the first genuine smile he’s seen from her since before they came to the ship. Right as he closes the door, he hears Vash shout after him.

“It’s easier than you’d think, you know!”