Work Text:
Shall I say how it is in your clothes?
A month after your death I wear your blue jacket.
The dog at the center of my life recognizes
you’ve come to visit, he’s ecstatic.
In the left pocket, a hole.
In the right, a parking ticket
delivered up last August on Bay State Road.
In my heart, a scatter like milkweed,
a flinging from the pods of the soul.
My skin presses your old outline.
It is hot and dry inside.
Time is a spiderweb, stretched thin and precarious across space. It’s fragile like spiderweb, messy like spiderweb, attached to one end and another without any reason, without cause other than to glue space together.
The first time Vash sits on that couch, the world halts like a car crash on its own axis. The first time he sits on the couch, he trips over the tendrils of time licking at his heels and gets tangled in them, spills over the delicate precipice of everything that is and isn’t and the things that exist only in the periphery of his mind and tumbles into freefall.
-
They had left the hotel bickering this morning. Vash had been arguing with him about leaving toothpaste all over the sink.
They had swatted at each other’s arms at an appropriate distance away from each other, over the booth table and Wolfwood had had a ridiculously big breakfast that involved at least one burger and Vash had said aren’t you gonna get a tummy ache from all of that and Wolfwood had answered I don’t have delicate french breakfast sensibilities like you and taken a demonstratively big bite. None of it had meant anything in particular because most pleasant moments are taken for granted just like that and Vash should have known never to assume anything good could last he should have known he should have known he should have
Focus.
Wolfwood usually moves so smoothly, like a panther or an arrow shot straight through the air. Always with purpose, no unnecessary actions to sway him from his objective. Vash has spent too many evenings studying him under a half-lidded gaze, when he hoists a child onto his shoulders or brings a bandit to his knees with a flick of his wrist. Has let his eyes linger too-long on the movement of fabric hugging his lower back on the dancefloor, those rare nights when whiskey and tranquility made them both loose and uncaring enough to let go for the night. Vash has considered many, many times what it would be like to have that smoldering warmth of Wolfwood’s attention pinning him to the wall, what it would be like to feel those sturdy lines against his own, to cling to his pillar of a body like a tree in a sandstorm.
Right now Wolfwood is nothing like that. He cuts through the air like a storm, a jumble of anger and survival instinct janked around like a marionette. He’s trembling, breaths coming out in desperate little puffs. His eyes are clouded and distant with pupils like pinpricks, pulled open in an unseeing stare. Vash doesn't know how to help him under the crazed scramble of his own pulse, adrenaline coursing through his body with the force of a flood. Wolfwood is violence and righteous anger, a smear of charcoal over the space he contains. Still, Vash doesn’t doubt him. Secure with the reminder of all impossible situations they have made it through, all of the violence he has endured, all the gunshot wounds he has shrugged off like mosquito bites.
From the very first day they met they have been in a tight lock-step, different but equal, and somewhere along the line Vash forgot Wolfwood is just as mortal as everyone else.
Wolfwood shoulders a blow, then another, then another. Always the protector, the solid rock, the eldest child. Through the grit of his teeth against leather, cracked glass on his lips and the blood smeared across his face he begs Vash not to let the children see him like this, like he’s somehow ruinous or disgraceful and not the kindest person Vash has ever seen. Like the blood on his hands is somehow a mark of perdition and not proof of the goodness Vash has been praying to all this time in lieu of a god. Like he isn’t the most beautiful, gentle, exquisite–
Wolfwood stumbles. Wolfwood stumbles and Vash’s stupid, pacifying smile falls right off his face. Because there’s no way–
Surely not.
It’s bad, sure, but things have been fine before. They fall into lock-step like they always do, one foot next to another, and it’s fine it’s fine it’s fine. Vash isn’t worried. Things have been bad before, and they always make it out okay. They banter, they cover each other and Vash grasps onto normalcy like a lifeline.
Wolfwood doesn’t know what he’s saying, everything will be fine, and the frantic eel-squirm of fear in his stomach doesn’t mean anything. Wolfwood stumbles and falls and he never falls, and Vash grasps at his oak tree back and thinks that the vials will–
[no]
Everything is fast-fast-fast, a whirlwind of movement and labored breaths and the tilt of the barrel of his gun, so quick he barely recognizes the recoil of his gun over the stumble-drop of his heart–
[no]
A fraction of a second stumbles over itself and course corrects.
Vash knows, before he knows. It doesn’t matter. He feels the marred skin, the sickening pulse of blood between his fingers and it doesn’t matter because it’ll be fine, the vials will fix him. His vision whites out at the edges.
Wolfwood has the audacity to look apologetic. It doesn’t matter. He’ll chew him out later, when he’s all patched up.
Wolfwood stumbles. Wolfwood falls. It’s alright. He’ll be okay.
He holds his own bleeding form together, holds his guts in under the folds of his arms and apologizes for showing such an unsightly sight to the kids. Vash fights the breath caught at the top of his throat. It’ll be okay.
If only Vash can make Wolfwood understand that he has to come now, that he has to hurry, that they need to get him patched up as quickly as possible. They don’t have time to sit here. That they need to get going before the whole bloody mess of Vash’s heart falls out from underneath him and soaks into the cracked earth.
Wolfwood tells him to smile. He might as well drive the stake through his heart. They need to hurry. It’ll be okay. It’s already done. They need to hurry.
The world is a blur of confetti and blood and the acrid ash on his tongue.
He can’t look. He won’t look.
They’ll fix him, they’ll fix him, they’ll
They had left the hotel bickering this morning and Vash had been arguing with him about leaving toothpaste all over the sink because that’s the kind of note you end on when you believe the other will come home safe and sound for dinner.
[He’s not he’ll never be again
he’s gone he’s gone he’s /////]
Time vaults forwards and backward, swaying on a knife's edge under its own weight.
The bell tolls to the health of the newlyweds. A bottle falls to the ground. The world stops.
Wolfwood is d////
//
//////
t3 jbd aacraid sd_mod scsi_mod
CPU: 1
EIP: 0060: [<c0156540>]
EFLAGS: 00010246
EIP is at rebalance_laundry_zone [kernel] 0x960 (2.4.21-27.0.2.ELsmp/i686)
eax: 00000000 ebx: c39d9018 ecx: c03a8250 edx: c3a17a84
esi: c39d8ffc edi: 0000003a ebp: c03a7080 esp: c82e1f80
eds: 0068 es: 0068 ss: 0068
Process kswapd (pid: 11, stackpage=c82e1000)
Stack: 00000000 00000001 00000000 c03a8248 00000000 00000000 00000000 c03a7080
0003b448 00000000 00000040 c0156c24 c03a7080 00000040 00000000 00008b1e
00000000 00004091 00000000 00000000 c0156d38 000001d0 00000002 000001d0
Call Trace: [<c015c24>] do_try_to_free_pages_kswapd [kernel] 0x204 (0xc82e1fac)
[<c0156d38>] kswapd [kernel] 0x68 (0xc82e1fd0)
[<c0156cd0>] kswapd [kernel] 0x0 (0xc82e1fe4)
[<c01095ad>] kernel_thread_helper [kernel] 0x5 (0xc82e1ff0)
Code: 0f 0b 1b 03 50 d2 2b c0 e9 2a f7 ff ff b8 04 00 00 00 e8 e9
Kernel panic: Fatal exception
01001101 01111001 00100000 01100110 01110010 01101001 01100101 01101110
01100100 00100000 01000101 01101110 01101011 01101001 01100100 01110101
00101100
01110111 01101000 01101111 01101101 00100000 01001001 00100000 01101100 01101111
01110110 01100101 01100100 00101100
01101000 01100001 01110011 00100000
01110100 01110101
01110010 01101110 01100101 01100100 00100000 01110100
01101111 00100000 01100011 01101100
01100001 01111001
00101110
Screen = Blue
Kernel = Panicked
Vash wakes up to the steady thrum of sunlight pressing at his cheek through the glass of the bus window. He feels floaty and molasses-slow, like he’s just woken up from a good sleep. Had he slept? That would explain the crick in his neck and why he’s so, so tired. He strongly considers falling back asleep, in the warmth of the suns and the steady thrum of the vehicle jostling over the stony road.
“-n I have some of your water?”
He startles into his body. Wolfwood. The Ark. Chapel. The taste of whiskey in the back of his throat, still faintly tingling like the remnants of a cough. He forces a breath into his lungs, aided by many years of practice in the art of getting it the fuck together. He recounts his body - legs, arm, chest, face. Head, shoulders, knees and toes.
“Milly? What happened?”
“You fell asleep, silly! Saw you waking so I thought I could ask.”
Vash hands her his canteen automatically.
[how did he know
where he put that]
The air smells different. Tastes different. Vash feels the molecules pressing against the roof of his mouth in new and unfamiliar constellations. Dread creeps up his back.
“Where’s Wolfwood?”
Milly stares at him blankly, cocking her head to the left. No recognition flashes across her face.
“Who?”
[fuck]
Vash knows, theoretically, how this might be possible. He knows he has access to the functions that would allow this impossible thing, abstractly, like he knows humans blink 900 times an hour and plants only 486. Like he distantly knows the minutiae of how his digestive system functions and how it deviates from how regular humans operate. Like he knows if a person stares at something upside down for long enough it’ll turn itself back around. Like he knows the amount of combinations a deck of playing cards can form.
1 in 8.06e+67. Those are the chances of this happening right now.
He gazes out the window, lets his eyes follow the gentle sweep of dunes over dunes.
8.06e+67
There he is.
8.06e+67
There he is. The remnants of Vash’s crumpled up heart stuffed into his back pocket.
8.06e+67
“Mr. Vash? Are you alright?”
“Stop the bus.”
“Sorry?” Milly looks at him like he’s not quite right in the head, all chestnut hair and big family kindness. She’s always been way too observant for his comfort.
“Stop the bus right now!” He calls out, louder this time.
He doesn’t have time for the angry looks the passengers shoot him or for the worried ones he gets from the girls. He stumbles out of the vehicle, not even playing it up this time, runs runs runs out on the burning sand.
“Wolfwood!”
There he is. Leaning against the Punisher, suns beating down his back, beautiful and warm and alive alive alive.
He jostles out of the defeated stance he’s taken to on the ground, alarmed eyes beating up for just a second. Just a fraction of a beat, a microsecond, before he leans back and lets out a pained cry.
“I… I’m saved!”
Vash stops dead in his tracks. What does he say. What are the rules here. 8.06e+67, what’s the structural stability, how does he define the geometry of it and god damn it it is so hard to remember what he’s read of the Poincaré recurrence theorem when the love of his life was //// was badly hurt just minutes before and now he’s right fucking there.
|fuck it we ball]
“What happened to Livio?”
Wolfwood’s valiant efforts at faking a death from dehydration are cut dumbfoundedly short. His hands fall limply down at his sides and his mouth falls open on an inhale.
The narrative traces its hands across his back, grabs him admonishingly at the scruff of his neck and pulls him back a few steps. Try that again.
[oh, that’s how this is gonna work]
Vash tries again. “Are you alright? Would you like to have some water?”
The man that he definitely doesn’t know says “Oh thank you kindly sir! I thought I was a real goner out here, thank Jesus that He put you on my path today,” and wow, he is really hamming up the youth pastor act this time.
Vash heaves him up over his shoulder. He can feel Wolfwood’s heartbeat, knocking right into the back of his own ribcage. Something wet unlodges from the back of his throat, and he swallows it all down somewhere he cannot reach. He’s right here. He’s okay. That’s all that matters.
Wolfwood is so endearingly bad at acting. Vash has to fight not to laugh when he tells them he’s a soldier of love saving the lambs who have strayed with an accent so rural that it is borderline offensive, even for him. Vash melts into the sunlight and the people who are alive all around him and the comforting rhythm of familiar banter. The setting falls back into an unruffled state, eases back into its inexorable rhythm, and Vash once again picks up the mantle of unreliablest narrator of all time.
It’s easy to get back into it. It’s his number one sport. He can get back into it from almost anything, got back into it when Wolfwood’s blood was seeping into his boots, when he embraced him and felt his guts from the outside.
What’s your name? he says. What do you do for a living? he says. And wow that cross looks mighty heavy sir you must be soo strong you don’t need guns with arms like that haha. Wolfwood tilts his head back and shakes his hand and says Wolfwood, at your service and Vash is so, so fucked.
–
This Wolfwood feels a bit younger, to Vash. Not a huge bit, but maybe a couple of years or so. He has no trouble touching him at their first meeting, with smacking him around or enduring prolonged eye contact. In his original timeline, it took Vash weeks to even get him to look him straight in the eyes at all. He still smokes like a chimney though, and the scruff of his jaw and the heat of his skin makes Vash’s mouth as dry as always. He gives the last of his money to children and wets his lips with his tongue in that same nervous habit that always has Vash stumbling over his own feet. He leans into Wolfwood’s shoulder slightly and hopes he won’t notice.
He is busy considering the merits of proposing that oh mr preacher man I know it’s mighty hot right now but my nights have been so lonely and it’s not every day that one stumbles across a man so handsome as yourself and you must be so tired from your journey and I’d be happy to help give you some relaxation if you wouldn’t mind when the story very rudely interrupts him and has him dodging space lasers instead of getting laid yet again. His heart does a double-triple somersault down his spine when a shot hits the spot Wolfwood was crouched over milliseconds ago, but he has to have some faith in the plotline – there has to be some time before anything like that happens again. Wolfwood needs to carve a place for himself into Vash’s ribcage, to irrevocably change some part of his life. Has to take a part of Vash for himself and stuff it into his breast pocket before he moves on. Vash has faith in that fact, even if it’s tentative. There needs to be the spectacle of it for the tragedy to stick.
They fall into the jaws of an ancient spaceship and get chased by murder robots. It’s all a normal Wednesday.
Both of them fall into lockstep so easily, way too easily for two men that have never met. It makes him wonder how much his body remembers, how much material was reused in the remaking of the stage. Which parts are Theseus, which are just regular old ship. The molecules of sand coating Vash’s tongue taste different, but Wolfwood smells exactly the same. Knives would call him out for freudian affective transference.
It’s strange to watch Wolfwood fight, this time around. He can see the spiderweb-stretches of time connecting one movement to another, body casting afterimages and foreimages like mirrors, rippling through space like smoke in the air. The bitter aftertaste of the last time they fought together lingers in Vash’s periphery, though he does his darndest not to acknowledge it. The past is being a very impolite neighbor and he’s trying to make Wolfwood kiss him in the shortest time possible because the universe gave him another shot at it so he would very much appreciate not being interrupted.
“I’ve never fired a gun before!” Wolfwood exclaims dramatically at some point. Surely his awful acting will excuse Vash toeing the lines of what the cosmos is allowing. It’d be more of a paradox if he didn’t point it out.
“Oh my god will you just stop that and take it. Don’t quit your day job, please.”
Wolfwood’s mouth attempts to shape around some kind of rebuttal, but he shuts it with a click at the look Vash gives him. He sighs and lights another cigarette, smoke coloring his exhale. “You’re a pretty freaky guy, Vash the Stampede.”
“Oh I can be plenty freaky.”
Smoke gets stuck in Wolfwood’s windpipe. “What are you talking about?”
Vash gives his most devilish smile. “Wouldn’t you like to know, weatherboy.”
“Wh– hey, what does that mean? Vash, what does that mean?”
Vash can’t hear him over his own laughter as he vaults over the metal bridge.
–
He should have seen it coming, this time. Knives was right, his clouded judgment was at fault. Nostalgic transference. False sense of security. He should never have dropped his guard.
He had been waiting so attentively, for Razlo, for the Ark, for all the things that happened before.
They had left off fighting this time. That made it worse.
Wolfwood had been alone. That made it unthinkable.
Pause.
Rewind.
Reset.
They are fighting. It’s the worst fight they’ve ever had. No. Before that. They are out drinking, like they always are when there are important things to be done in the morning. Vash has endured more battles violently hungover than there are grains of sand on this planet. They are drinking cheap whiskey, that is to say Wolfwood is drinking cheap whiskey and Vash is drinking something that may or may not be medical grade because for reasons he’d rather not discuss the taste of whiskey makes him want to throw up. They are drinking, and in his mind Wolfwood is tracing the lines of Vash’s throat with his fingers – Vash can tell, because Wolfwood’s thoughts go sticky pink and he’s never as subtle as he thinks he is.
Vash has tried very hard to convey that Wolfwood doesn’t need to be subtle at all, not with him, that Vash would gladly let the man bend him over the table and take him right then and there, but he hasn’t had any luck. Meryl had advised him to try not to sound like he’s joking when he flirts, but Vash doesn’t know how much more obvious he can get without actually taking all his clothes off.
He’s debating the pros and cons of doing just that when shots sound off through the town, and at once their comfortable peace is over.
“If you don’t come out by the count of 10 we’re coming in after you!” Some Guy says, and Vash really doesn’t have time for this. He was making some real progress on the getting his ass plowed front.
“What’s the plan?” Wolfwood asks him.
Deep sigh. “Reasoning is the only way out of a misunderstanding.”
Wolfwood frowns, concern unmistakable. “Reason with those assholes? Can’t you come up with anything better?”
It’s cute how he thinks Vash could get seriously hurt from guys like this. But then he thinks of gunshot wounds, and what Wolfwood’s back felt like when it was leaking blood like a faucet under his suit, and suddenly the thought isn’t very funny anymore.
“Nevermind. I’ll go alone.”
He takes a couple punches to the face, as does Wolfwood because of course he’d come out despite his bitching, and paired with his nasty hangover he ends up with a throbbing head and the tang of iron against the roof of his mouth. It’s whatever. Barely a blip in the grand scheme of things.
Fast forward.
They’re fighting and it’s the worst fight they’ve ever had, though the content is nothing new. Wolfwood punches him and yells at him. Vash spits out blood and takes it, because Wolfwood looks so small, so terrified, even when he is screaming and clenching his fists in fury. Vash is angry, so so angry at him that he lets him walk away, because he has nothing but hurtful words in store right now. There had been no warning signs. There had been no Ark. Vash had thought they had time to fight it out, to cool down, to make up. If he had only called out, if he had only grabbed him by the arm and said let’s have a drink about it. If he hadn’t been so selfishly angry, so spiteful that he’d wished for Wolfwood to go away and have a long deep thought about how fucked up the thing he just did was, if only if only if only.
Skip.
Vash didn’t know, this time. He walked into the church following the red brick road left behind, expecting to see Wolfwood sulking in a corner hoarding cigarettes like candy. He had his best, most annoying smile prepared for the complaints that was sure to come as he tried to patch him up, like tending to a cute but aggressive stray cat.
“You all done, Wolfwoo–”
There he was.
Sunk to his knees in supplication against the cross, eyes closed like he was sleeping. Knees stained dark by the blood pooling around him, half-smoked cigarette fallen aside on the floor.
The narrative permeated its discomfiting scent around the chapel, pressing against every angle of his body, crawling up his spine and pressing into his throat until it was choking him.
Here is the tragedy we want. Here is the conclusion of your struggle. Here is narrative symmetry.
Vash could see the words spoken to cold synapses, rippling in his head still like they, like him, could not accept the absence of their host: e very moment hesitated is a moment gone of life. He could see Wolfwood’s last prayer, his last anger, his last fruitless struggle. It was too much. Bile forced its way up his throat. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fucking fair.
While Vash was busy agonizing about what to say, what to do, how to reconcile, Wolfwood had been spilling his guts onto the cold stone altar floor. It wasn't fucking fair.
Wolfwood’s last, desperate bargain for his life echoed in the church, sticking to the walls and wailing against the stained glass portrait of mother Mary. Vash watched it on horrifying repeat, back and forth, cigarette crumpling in his grip and smoke pouring back into his mouth. Light fading in his eyes, body sagging against the cross, again, again, again.
A scream stumbled out of his gasping mouth, wet and broken and shrieking. Mother Mary smiled down on him in pious benevolence. Vash filled the portrait with bullets until even the shards had turned to dust. There wasn’t a god in this world that shouldn’t burn in hell for what he had done. It’s not fucking fair.
He considered putting the next bullet in his own head. He considered putting it in Chapel’s, in Legato’s, in his brother’s. It was a testament to a hundred years of practice that he didn't burn the building down. It was a testament to a hundred years of loss that he reached his hand to Wolfwood’s cool cheek, felt a whisper of his last breath in lurid tendrils of smoke that aren’t/weren’t/shouldn't've been there, and didn’t burn the whole world down.
Again.
Vash had no idea if it would work a second time. It had to.
Again.
Again.
01010011 01101000 01100001 01101100
01101100 00100000 01001001 00100000 01101110 01101111
01110100 00100000 01100010 01100101 00100000
01101100 01101001 01101011 01100101 00100000
01101000 01101001 01101101 00100000
01100001 01101110 01100100 00100000 01100001
01101100 01110011 01101111 00100000
01101100 01101001 01100101 00100000 01100100 01101111
01110111 01101110 00101100
01101110 01100101 01110110 01100101 01110010 00100000
01110100 01101111 00100000 01110010 01101001
01110011 01100101 00100000 01100001 01100111 01100001
01101001 01101110 00101100
01110100 01101000 01110010 01101111 01110101 01100111
01101000 00100000 01100001 01101100 01101100
00100000 01100101 01110100 01100101 01110010
01101110 01101001 01110100
01111001 00111111
–
Time is cold water running down his throat.
–
This time, he’ll get it right.
–
Time is a faded wallpaper, peeling and crumbling under his fingers.
–
Vash came back to the universe, winded and gasping and there he was, bleeding out under the blades of his brother’s hands.
[nope]
Further back, passing the climax and stumbling through the buildup. Vash stumbled over a metaphor and swam through the stream of consciousness, back back back.
They were walking up the tower.
[further]
They were sprawled around a fire, smoking something that was definitely not legal in his last storyline. There was a man that Vash didn’t recognize. He needed more context, though it looked like they were having a good time.
[further]
There: a car, driving through the sand. In it: Vash, Meryl and mystery man. No Wolfwood. That’s a good sign. He grabbed the grapevine of the moment, swung himself into it.
Action!
He wakes up slower this time, like the force of his trajectory had been just barely enough to swing the landing. Sensation comes back in bursts, flashes of color blinding on his retinas as his brain reboots and synapses reconnect. He feels very bad for the Vash of this time, wherever he may be. Did they switch places? Or is he somewhere in the back of this body, stuck behind the controls and waiting to reemerge? Oh well. Vash can’t bring himself to care much - he’s never been very good at being nice to himself.
Vash pretends to stay asleep, because he doesn’t know the man’s name and he has a feeling it would be terribly impolite to ask him now. He keeps an eye on the horizon through his eyelashes though, because at this point the parallels are kind of obvious. Moving vehicle: check. Meryl and a companion(?): check. All he needs now is for his love interest to enter stage right.
The car swerves and hits something. Hard.
There’s no way.
They run out, find the remains of the poor soul strewn across the dunes. And sure enough.
[mother fucking shit!]
Wolfwood twitches as he reanimates, just in time to halt Vash in his attempt to jump ship. Thank god. He really doesn’t have it in him to do that again for a couple of months at least.
This Wolfwood is even younger than the last, super juice notwithstanding. He wears his heart on his sleeve, which is really quite endearing, and smokes and growls like he’s trying to impress someone. Vash wants to squish him between his hands.
Vash learns the rules of this universe – he’s traveled further than he did before, that’s for sure. The land is more barren, more desperate, more destitute. There’s an equal amount of guns, though he learns his body is less scarred this time. His arm looks cooler, too. He’ll have to thank Brad when he meets him.
Time flows molasses slow when you go through it in the right direction. They travel to July, which is whole until it isn’t. He runs away to be Ericks until he isn’t. Those years are about as clear to him as fog on a mirror. When Wolfwood comes to pick him up, he looks more like his Wolfwood from Before, and the image of him – strong and tan and warm like a lit flame hits Vash’s heart with a baseball bat.
They travel, and travel, and travel. Vash keeps an iron grip over the story, keeps Wolfwood in his line of sight. Even when they fight, the same fight that separated them last time, Vash stays so close he could touch, still.
Scene: Desert, nighttime.
It’s just the two of them, camping by a cliffside. The sky is vast and sparkling, all five moons illuminating the sand blue. The cold is harsh, like it’s wont to be in this type of environment, but the fire thaws his fingertips and keeps his toes warm, which is really the only thing that’s important.
Wolfwood is smoking something that looks like a cigarette but isn’t because tobacco apparently doesn’t exist, or if it does it’s way above their pay grade. The flames redden his skin, painting a flush on his cheeks that is very becoming. Even after two years, Vash still hasn’t quite gotten over the urge to squish them together like a sandwich.
“Is it even nice to smoke that stuff? There’s no nicotine, right?”
Wolfwood looks at him like he’s just paraded in from outer space. Which he kind of has, but that’s besides the point. “What’s nicotine?”
Vash pouts, burrowing further into his jacket. “Nevermind.”
“Were you making a wordplay on my name? That’s cute.”
Vash promptly ignores the stupid butterflies he gets at the fond familiarity. “Have you ever known me to not take credit for a good pun?”
“Nope. Only bad ones.”
“I hate you.”
“Sure.”
The fire crackles as a log breaks and falls, and Vash is lulled into comfortable stillness by it’s dancing light.
“If you stare at fire long enough you’ll go blind Spikey.”
“I’m pretty sure that’s the suns. And also not true.”
Wolfwood hums, unconvinced. He’s full of small cares like that, little admonishments. He’s the eldest child up to his ears and it never fails to make Vash smile.
“What are you laughin’ about dipshit?”
“What? Oh nothing. It’s just my mom used to tell me if I looked at screens for too long my eyes would turn into squares. I got so scared I used to run past computers when I saw them after that.”
Wolfwood snickers, and it comes out in small bursts of smoke. “What’s so fun about looking at screens anyways? It’s just a bunch of zeros and ones.”
“Not those ones. Back in my day you could do anything on a screen – play games, read books, watch videos.”
“So that’s why you’re so lanky.” Wolfwood pokes him in the ribs teasingly. “Never got out enough as a kid.”
Vash swats his hand away and tries very hard not to linger on the heat of Wolfwood’s palm against his own. “Sorry we can’t all be jocks who wrestle in the sand and drink gasoline for breakfast.”
Wolfwood does a squeaky voice that doesn’t sound like him at all, thank you very much. “ Oh look at me I’m Vash I’m too good for regular old peasant activities and I know all the numbers of pi.”
“Nobody knows all the numbers. They’re infinite.”
“Could you count them for infinity?”
Vash pauses to think about it for a second. “...Probably, yeah.”
“See? Alien wonder child.”
Vash pushes him. “Asshole.”
“Math freak.”
“Peasant boy.”
Wolfwood bursts out laughing at that. “ Peasant boy? That’s the dumbest comeback I’ve ever heard.”
Vash can feel his indignant flush creep up his neck, but he still can’t help himself from giggling at the pleasant hearty sound of Wolfwood’s unabashed laughter. He swats him on the head for good measure, though.
Wolfwood leans back, wiping the tears from his eyes. His dress shirt buttoning has gone from mildly unprofessional to absolute harlot, and Vash is having a hard time looking away from the trail of hair dipping into his sternum. Their months of traveling has aged him somewhat, filling out his jaw and shoulders. In this light he can see the reflections of some gray hairs that have started to grow prematurely along his temples. A pang shoots through Vash at the thought of a Wolfwood with crow’s feet and laugh lines, a Wolfwood in his forties or fifties. He’s never seen what he looks like past thirty. There’s no vision he’d rather see. He’d give everything he had and more for it.
He wonders if Wolfwood knows, if he’s ever woken up from a dream of a couch or a chapel in cold sweat and brushed it off as another in a long list of nightmares. He wonders if this Wolfwood knows how adored he is, how easily and fervently Vash would supplicate at his feet if Wolfwood didn’t bristle his feathers and flee at the smallest sign of devotion.
Do you know , he wants to ask, do you know that I’d give up everything for you. Do you know that I already have. Vash wonders if he’d get angry at him for the sacrifice made in his name. The story closes in on his throat in warning, a smothering pressure. He shakes himself free from the dangerous line of thought, switches the subject.
“Wolfwood, do you believe in god?”
Wolfwood slow blinks at him before holding his cross shaped cufflinks up for scrutiny.
“That’s just your job. I’m asking you what you think.”
He raises an eyebrow, lighting another cigarette up from the dying cherry of the last. “That’s a big question, Blondie. Where’d this come from?”
Vash shrugs. “‘M just curious. You don't have to answer if you don’t want.”
Wolfwood leans back on his hands, back arching into a long line and exhales a breath stained gray. “Hmm. Tough to say. I think I do? Not the whole loving and benevolent bit, maybe. But sometimes I think there’s too much in the world to pass for a cosmic coincidence. Like, I don’t know. There’s so many lives out there that sound like they come straight from a storybook. Feels a bit stupid to call that a fluke.”
Vash rests his head on his open palm, wrapping the other around his legs. He knows most of the reasons Wolfwood doesn’t believe in a loving god are his brother’s fault, and by association his as well.
“What about you?” His eyes, charcoal rather than perse, are on Vash now, scalding him with their attention, arresting him like they always do.
“Hm?”
“Do you believe?”
Vash scrunches his face up. “Eugh. No.”
“Wow, I just poured my heart out and that’s the response I get? You’re unbelievable.”
Vash’s snickers soon turn into indignant yelps as their argument devolves into play fighting.
They don’t share a sleeping bag that night, but they lie so close to each other that they might as well have been. Wolfwood’s sharp features are cut marble sharp by the touch of moonlight and Vash can feel the heat of his skin through the layers, the rise and fall of his chest. Vash doesn’t sleep, hasn’t been able to do so properly in a long while without going through at least half a bottle of liquor. As paltry as their resources are right now, he’s excruciatingly sober and left with the poor company of his own thoughts.
He often gets the urge, during these pleasant moments of stillness, to make it all come crumbling down, to turn it into the misery he’s accustomed to. Vash is overcome with the spiteful need to let Wolfwood know that god is just a cosmic force, no more mystical than energy turned into an equation. No more special than a heartbeat is to heat, than stillness into frost. He doesn’t, would never, because Wolfwood is a heap of glass shards held together by nothing but hope for narrative symmetry.
Would his face crumple as the world fell out from under his feet? Would he yell in anger? Would he care at all, would he still trust him enough to let it show? Vash is dying to know.
If he ever told him, he might as well tell him that the holy book of his faith was written by his brother when he was twelve and that in the original version there were no twin angels sent as harbingers of the apocalypse, nor any chance of Eden beyond political reform and taxes. Might as well tell him that the original Bible only had two testaments, just to watch him crumble to dust completely. Which is why he won’t, ever. Maybe something new and beautiful would form out of his unshackled remains, but Vash has always been averse to violence.
If their circumstances were different, if Wolfwood wasn’t muzzled and caged by a contract sealed with blood, if their relationship was contingent on him enjoying Vash’s company he would have tried cruelty long ago. As it is he’s allowed to indulge in their closeness, in touch and feel and smell. In the dimples that only appear out of honest laughter, in the way his eyes puff up when he’s hungover or has cried himself to sleep. A wave of self loathing festers in Vash’s chest at the thought – how can he be glad when Wolfwood is only here due to cruel circumstances. How can he revel in their time together when it’s born from blackmail and torture, from Wolfwood having every other path beaten out of him.
Vash pushes into the guilt like a thumb into an open wound. It’s the only indulgence he deserves.
–
Vash was awakened by a wet sound. He went through the familiar motions of locating his body, of feeling returning to his extremities. There was an aching pain emanating from the palms of his hands, hot and pulsating. Wet was dripping from his temples, pooling in the hollow of one eye. The putrid smell of iron hit him before he could open his unbloodied eye, fluttering and blinking in confusion as the world realigned itself from its tilted axis. Red and glimmers of steel gray and then –
There, his lover, cut open on the altar.
Above him, his brother.
[no no no no
no no no no no
no no no no no no]
At first, Vash couldn’t even make a sound, throat dry from disuse. Then, a scream punched its way out of his ribcage.
“Nai!”
He tried to move but was halted by the vicious sound of ripping flesh and pain like thunder pulsating down his arms. He turned his head, slow in his deteriorated state, and found them both nailed to the wall by jagged blades, a mockery of idolatry.
His brother turned to him at the sound, smile calm and soothing and proud, just like when he killed that spider a hundred and more years ago. A cold shiver ran up Vash’s spine.
“Brother. I’m glad to see you’ve finally awoken.”
Wolfwood hung limp from his grasp, halfway fallen to the floor. A piece of steel was gouged into his ribcage, and his eyes were closed.
“Nai? What is this? What are you doing? Please let him go.” Vash tried to make himself sound cool and soft, like speaking to a frightened animal. He couldn’t quite keep the shiver out of his voice.
His brother’s smile grew wider, all teeth and surgical steel. “I finally figured it out Vash. I can’t believe it took me this long.”
Keep calm, keep calm. “Figured what out?”
“It’s him. The Punisher is what’s been making you sick.” He punctuated the sentence by pushing Wolfwood’s body down on the floor, sliding him free from the knife holding him in suspension. Vash flinched at the sound of his ragdoll body hitting the floor.
“What? What do you mean, Nai, can’t we talk about this?” Electric panic was starting to shorten his breath, putting ice in his veins. He couldn’t keep this up for much longer, Wolfwood was bleeding he needed help–
Knives started walking towards him, arms thrown outward in joy. “All this time I’ve been asking myself why I can’t get through to you, why you refuse to see the truth. And then I realized. This thing , the pet I sent you has been feeding you lies. Has been keeping you tethered to them, even though I’ve shown you the evidence of their animal brutality time and time again.”
He came closer, feet echoing against the stone floor. “And all along I was the one that sent you the poison. So now I’m delivering the cure.”
A wretched sob pulled itself out of Vash’s body, against his permission. Knives raised a cold hand, wiped the tears pearling at his cheeks. “Oh Vash, don’t cry. I know you’ve always been fond of pets, but this is for your own good. Soon you’ll see, I promise you. Soon you’ll understand that I’m setting you free.”
Knives’s face was kind, caring, genuine in its concern like a parent feeding their child bitter medicine. His hand left a red smear on Vash’s skin.
“Please don’t kill him,” Vash said with a small voice. “I’ll do anything you want.”
Knives just patted his head fondly and turned back towards Wolfwood’s crumpled form.
“No! No Nai please, please, I’ll do anything, I promise! Do you want me to stay with you? I will! I swear I will!”
Knives continued walking, like he hadn’t even heard his plea.
“What do you want Nai?” Vash cried, his face a mess of tears and snot and blood.
Knives tilted his face back, just for a second, before his weapons met flesh. “I only ever want what’s best for you.”
Vash screamed.
Wolfwood gurgled as blood frothed and poured from his mouth.
They were both beyond words. Knives was the only one there whose language hadn’t left him.
The last sound that reached Vash before he left his body was the sickening squelch of guts spilling onto stone and his brother’s howling rage as he disappeared from time.
–
Vash starts to drink. He’s never stopped, not really, but he’s never drank like he does now. He didn’t have the energy left to travel far this time, so the universe he ended up crash landing in is the same as the one before, tilted only slightly to the left.
He can tell by the silent exchanges between his comrades that they’re all concerned, but he has no energy to pretend and even less energy to stop what he’s doing. So when he stumbles down the rickety stairs (and really, whoever made stairs as tilted as these should get a new job) and fumbles into the booth they decided on meeting in this morning, they all say nothing.
Meryl gingerly pushes a plate with a bagel across the table, as if he’ll bolt and run at any quick movement. He just might.
“Got you breakfast.”
“Oh! Haha. Thanks.”
Vash studies the sandwich. It looks delicious, but the thought of food sends a spike of nausea through his stomach so overwhelming he has to grip the table for support. Food only tastes like self loathing when he gets like this. He swipes half of it and dumps it sneakily in the trash as he buys himself a coffee – they’re all incredibly observant people, but he’s been playing this game for a long time.
He returns with a steaming cup clutched between his hands, donating some small heat to his chilled body, and begins the well practiced performance of breaking his meal into smaller and smaller pieces in between lulls in their conversation. The coffee tastes like bile.
Their words swarm around his head like bees, buzzing and unwilling to form full sentences in his mind. Meryl calls Wolfwood an asshole and tries to kick the legs of his chair but falls awkwardly short and ends up hunched over the table. Wolfwood snickers around a lollipop and pats her head. Vash can’t bear to look at his face, sight fixed on some distant point between the floorboards and his feet. Milly laughs and it’s a tinkling silver bell sound.
Wolfwood says something teasing and barbed. Milly says something pinpoint accurate that hits heavy like a ten ton truck.
Meryl is brazenly stealing chunks of Wolfwood’s pancakes and her head is full of blueberry green curiosity and dreams of chestnut brown hair. Vash remembers the tightness of her mouth after July, how her shoulders were permanently raised in the months following. What would she say if she knew what Vash had done, how he had acted selfishly to preserve something he’d never even had. How he hadn’t saved Tonis’s arm or Roberto’s chest or any of the bodies they had buried along the way. How would Milly look at him if he could warn them about the grief that hadn’t yet struck them in this timeline, the loss they will have to carry with them because Vash isn’t capable enough to protect anything, just strong enough to run away from his own failures.
Milly is saying something to him, expectant smile on her face and suddenly all of their eyes are on him and none of them know he’s already let them all down, has already buried tragedy in their chests and twisted the knife, and it’s too much too much.
“Bathroom,” he mumbles and retreats up the stairs before he can see the smiles fall from their faces.
–
The thing about drinking is that it never removes the hurt, not completely. Just paralyzes the body enough that the fight drains out of you. Just enough for the pain to wash over you instead of through you.
Vash is lying on the floor, though he doesn’t know how that happened. His chest is beating overtime under the ache of hunger and acid and nicotine, and the off brand vodka is keeping his stomach warm like a furnace, though his hands and feet are cold.
He has a plan this time. If the story requires a sacrifice, he’ll be the one to go in this one. He’ll be the one staining the church floor red. It’s the only option he has left.
His cigarette burns through the filter and into his fingertips, and the jolt of distilled sensation is oddly grounding. In detached fascination Vash brings the glowing remains to the scarred flesh of his underarm and presses in firmly. The sting runs through him like a flame, reconnecting his floating mind to the outlines of his body. Vash exhales, feeling the tension lift from his back slightly.
He’s just about to light another when the door to his hotel room swings open.
“You’re a mess,” says Wolfwood and Vash is nothing but inclined to disagree. He offers no response but a puff of smoke into the already stuffy air.
“Hey, look at me when I’m talking to you Blondie.”
Vash doesn’t.
“This isn’t like you. Will you just tell me what the hell is going on with you already?” He sounds frustrated. He sounds tired.
“Oh?” Vash says, rolling over on his stomach and resting his head between his palms with his elbows pressing the floor. “And how would you know that? You’ve never seen me do anything but make poor choices.” His smile is too large, too many teeth.
The rules of the universe can’t touch him when his body is 78% alcohol. The narrative can fuck right off.
Wolfwood sits down next to him with a sigh and the movement creates afterimages in the spaces around him, faces younger and older and not entirely there. Vash blinks to clear them from his sight.
“I’m,” he tries and then restarts, “They’re worried about you,” because he never wants to be caught in the act of kindness. When he lets it show, it’s because it's a thing so natural to him he doesn’t even recognize it for what it is.
Vash takes another honey-slow drag of his cigarette and laughs it out, a hollow sound. “They’re wasting their time. There’s nothing to worry about.”
“Do you think I’m stupid.”
“I thought we were talking about the girls.”
Wolfwood snatches the cigarette out of his hands and puts it out on the floor. “Cut that out.”
“You have a pretty nose,” Vash giggles. Or tries to, at least. It comes out like the sound of a newborn Thomas.
He sees the moment Wolfwood’s hackles raise, the way he bristles like an angry house cat. Vash wants to drink it in, to savor it, to pour it in a bottle and save it for a bad day.
“Shut up,” is all he manages through his clenched teeth.
Vash wonders if anyone’s ever called him pretty in his life. He wants to overwhelm him with compliments, drown him in affection until he’s so helplessly red he doesn’t know what to do with himself.
Vash’s hold on time is clumsy at best, so he gets to replay the moment a couple of times at least before the seconds untangle themselves and straighten out.
Wolfwood’s thoughts are bathroom tile blue and bee swarm frantic. Vash wants to taste them against his tongue, and he tells him as much.
His thoughts turn to icicle white fear at that. “You– you can read my thoughts?”
“No, no, nothing like that. It’s just a party trick, see? It doesn’t tell me anything. Your secret kinks are safe.” Vash traces a hand across the inseam of his pants, feels the firm muscle tense underneath.
“What the hell are you–”
Vash devours Wolfwood in a kiss, a forbidden thing, all teeth and spit and stale ash.
It’s great – until he realizes Wolfwood is motionless underneath his ministrations, frozen like a statue.
“C’mon,” Vash whispers against his skin, licking into the open cavern of his mouth.
The words kick him back into motion, though not in the way Vash wants.
(and he wants, oh god he wants.)
Big strong hands grab him by the shoulders and push him firmly away.
“Stop that,” Wolfwood begs. He sounds heartbroken.
Oh.
[oh]
“Oh. I’m sorry, I didn’t– Sorry.”
With great effort Vash wrenches free from the grasp and turns to face the very interesting spot on the wall.
Silence hangs around them like a too-big coat.
Vash tries to think of something to say that isn’t imsorryimsorryimsorryimsorry or please don’t leave me, and so he lands on–
“Let’s pretend that didn’t happen. I’m drunk.”
It’s fine. He can come back from almost anything, it’s his number one sport.
In his periphery Vash sees Wolfwood run a hand through his hair.
“That’s not–” he sighs. “It’s not that I don’t want–”
[oh I really don’t wanna hear this]
“It’s okay,” Vash assures him, patting his knee awkwardly without looking. He leans into the pain like pushing a thumb into an open wound. It’s no less than he deserves.
“Fuck’s sake Spikey, will you listen to me!”
Vash recoils at that, looks at him with startled eyes.
“Do that again.”
Vash moves forward into his orbit, helplessly, but is stopped once again by a firm hand on his chest.
“Not now. Do it again when you’re sober.”
And Wolfwood is looking straight into his eyes, all steel pan bravery and oak tree pride, and Vash is all but blinded at the image of him.
“Okay,” Vash says meekly, because what can he do but obey. He’s a dry leaf caught in a summer storm, helpless under his desire for the man looking at him like he’s looking into the sun and trusting it not to burn. “Okay.”
“You should drink some water,” Wolfwood offers, though neither of them move to get any.
“Yeah, I should, huh.”
Wolfwood is a topographic map of beauty in ambient space. He’s a non-euclidean dream of himself, leaving negative images against Vash’s retinas, too bright to ignore.
Wolfwood is a polychromatic kaleidoscope of his own corpse and he doesn’t quite look like a person and Vash doesn’t know if he’s now or soon or five seconds ago so maybe that’s how he manages to say “What would you do if you knew you were going to die soon,” without choking on his own tongue.
The setting closes in. The door to the fourth wall is pulled slightly ajar. Vash is too drunk to care.
“Idiot. I already know that.”
Vash freezes. He can’t move, can’t think, can’t play it off as a joke, a cartoonish figure with a smile halfway drooped.
“No you don’t,” he replies like he can pick and choose what things are true by saying them.
Like he isn’t already holding Wolfwood’s bleeding body together under trembling hands, like Wolfwood isn’t already halfway gone, halfway memory, halfway six years old and strapped to the table, halfway old and graying from years he has yet to live.
And Vash must be losing his grip on the seconds flitting through his fingers like loose red petals because
Time is a rushing river. Time is a thing with feathers. Time is
“Vash,” he says, and he only calls him that when there’s blood on the floor.
The narrative does a freeze-track, a shrieking stop.
They were supposed to have more time than this, they were supposed to fight and laugh and love and cry before the story ends. Wolfwood has done nothing but atone for the sins committed against him, has done nothing but survive. He’s never gotten the chance to live for the sake of it, to have a home, to have children and neighbors that know his name.
Wolfwood had always been at war, was born to it and lost by it. He’s only known a life where the quickest way to the heart is a knife and Vash wishes he knew how to show him anything else but proof.
If anyone deserves a tragic end for all their fatal flaws, for their hamartia and hubris it’s Vash. It should be his heart collapsing, his blood staining the ground. It should be him, it should be him, it should be
Scene: Heart of the tower, the end.
[please, no more.]
“Vash,” Wolfwood said, more intently, grasping at his coat with trembling bloodied hands. It didn't matter that they were staining his coat. It was already red.
His blood staining the floor was a quiet thing, this time. There were no pointed weapons to keep Vash’s mind away from the sounds it made dripping down the stone carved stairs.
“No,” Vash said obstinately, and the world was blurry through his watery eyes.
“Listen to me,” Wolfwood said, holding Vash’s heart between his teeth.
Blood went drip, drip, drip onto stone steps, in rhythm with the cruel ticking of the clock. Vash had had a plan. It was supposed to be him. He’d had a plan.
There were too many mistakes, too many failures, too many moments where his hands were too slow to save anyone. The narrative needed a sacrifice for all the parts of him that fell short.
In the stain glass window Mother Mary was looking down at him benevolently. She looked like Rem.
He pointed the barrel of his gun to his temple. He was so, so tired.
“I’m coming with you,” Vash said and meant it.
Wolfwood’s eyes widened. With weak hands he pulled him down until they were eye level, cradling his face gently, firmly.
“No you aren’t. Listen to people when they’re dying, asshole.”
“You’re not dying.” Here was the lie he wanted to keep. Here was the lie he wanted so desperately to believe. There was the cold truth that forced bile up his throat.
“Stop that,” Wolfwood chided, wiping his tears with his thumb. “Now listen. This is always going to be the way it ends for me. But don’t you dare come with me, not until you finish what you started.”
“I can’t, Nick I can’t, not without you, please–”
Wolfwood held his gaze, even as Vash quaked with it. “You need to go back and finish this, if not for me then for the people I won’t be able to protect anymore. You can’t quit, you can’t give up, not for a second, do you hear me?”
“I’m so tired Nick,” Vash pleaded, holding Wolfwood’s hand to his cheek when he lost the strength to keep it there himself. Snot and blood and tears were dripping down his chin.
“I know. I know baby.”
“Nick–”
“Go back,” Wolfwood said, forehead resting against his own, eyes still furious with oak tree bravery even though his pulse was a tentative whisper. “You’ve kept me waiting long enough, haven’t you?”
Their breaths mingled until they didn’t. He was gone before Vash could answer.
–
(Vash doesn’t leave immediately, this time. He sits in marble solitude with the barrel of a gun resting underneath his chin. Only when the body beside him is cool and he can no longer smell smoke does he put the weapon away and take off.)
–
Vash travels backwards, retraces his footsteps.
Time is a bizarre landscape, a treacherous path he’s carved only to end up where he started.
Time is on a couch, in a church, under his brother’s hands, under his own.
Time swoops him up gentle like a child and takes him back to the beginning.
–
The last time Vash gets tangled up in spiderweb time, he stumbles and falls back to where he started. There is the couch, bloody and broken and real. There is the whiskey, in a trembling grip. There is the terror, the refusal, the sentence he cannot bear to carry out.
There is the natural conclusion. There is narrative symmetry.
There is the love of his life, full of holes.
“You know, I feel like we’ve been here before.”
Wolfwood’s lives are flashing before his eyes and Vash’s, vignettes from places he’s been and places he hasn’t. The circle is connected, the story concluded. Vash knows that this is it. 1/8.06e+67 has run its course. The story is coming to its end and he is clawing, grasping frantically at the last fragments of time that has been given to them. This is it. This is all there is.
“Yeah.”
Silence. Unbearable, obsidian silence.
Rewind rewind rewind rewind come on come on come on–
“Vash.”
Vash swallows the shards of glass in his throat. “Yes?”
“You need to let me go.”
Vash is crying. He doesn’t know how long he’s been crying. He might have been doing it all this time. “I don’t want to.”
Wolfwood lets out an amused huff. “Yeah, I figured as much. There’s no one on this planet as stubborn as you. But there’s gotta be limits even you can’t overcome.”
His voice is unbearably fond.
“Can you blame me? If you could– if you could stop this, wouldn’t you?”
“Yeah. Yeah I would.”
“Fuck, Wolfwood, this isn’t fair. Why should you– you’re so good, you have so much good to see and to do. This isn’t fair. ” He’s protesting like a child, a mess of tears and snot.
“Can’t say I disagree. But Spikey, lemme tell ya this. Dying ain’t so bad. I’ve probably had more practice than most.” He laughs, like it's funny. It's cut short by a violent cough.
Their hands overlap, one strong and one weakly trembling.
“I’d tell you to look out for Ms. Melanie and the kids but I’m sure you’ll do that anyways.”
Wolfwood is smiling, looking up at the sky like it has granted him absolution. Vash wants to shake him by the shoulders and tell him to cry, to scream, to claw against the grip of his mortality. He wants to bottle that smile and keep it in his pocket for what’s to come.
“Of course I will.”
Wolfwood hums and they sit in silence. Vash can feel the seconds slip between his fingers, more smoke than sand, and he tries to will the moment to stay right here, to let him have this moment forever, Wolfwood still warm and alive against him.
Time does nothing but mockingly wander on.
“I used to have this dream.” Vash’s voice isn’t coming out right, too wet and warbly.
“Yeah? About what?”
“We saw the ocean together. It’s silly isn’t it? I’ve never even seen it myself.” He laughs, though it isn’t very funny.
Wolfwood hums. “Tell me about it.”
Vash turns to look at him, all raining skies against perse gray affection. Wolfwood is smiling, though he’s losing strength fast.
“The next time we meet, you should tell me all about everything you did. About the world. About the ocean. About whatever dumb shit you got up to when I wasn’t there to save your ass.”
Vash can’t say anything anymore, not around the quaking sobs that wrack his crunched up form.
“But Vash. Don’t you dare come before you’ve gathered enough stories to keep me entertained over there. If you join me too soon I’ll kick yer ass outta heaven myself.”
Vash laughs, a wet, broken sound. “Yeah. Okay.”
“Promise me?”
“I promise.”
And then, two men share a kiss.
And then, a goodbye.
And then Vash stands, lover curled in his arms, and exits stage right.
Time does a final victory lap, and then follows him out.