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The lurching squeal of the shower knob turning broke into hazed thoughts; the patter of water striking the basin of the shower floor ceased. Muffled through the bedroom wall. Only a few minutes to get himself back together. The crumbled bedding before him, rivers of morning sunlight fingering their way through the dips and swells of fabric. Topography. His feet, toes curled down, was like the foothills leading up to the brown stretch of cliffs.
Not a body. Just a landscape.
He had to wake up. There wasn't time. There was no time. The shower was off. The door was opening up.
Strong shoulders, blond hair flattened to the curve of skull, a body so dug out and scarred that, to this day, it ached to look at him. Wolfwood wondered always what Vash felt like. Did they hurt all the time? Was he able to ignore, forget, focus his thoughts and press on as if there were not so many gouges and cuts and burns. Metal piecing his body back together. In comparison, Wolfwood was untouched. He looked pristine. His body held no scar, not even a bruise. He could not. Before a bullet had even completed a trajectory through his gut, this body was already entering a stage of healing.
Why did it take so long for his mind to do the same?
A towel was slung low on Vash's hips. He puttered, his old-man mannerisms coming out while he searched the room for the loose shirt he had abandoned. They were Home, at least for now, before they would head back out into the whipping of the winds. The sands. Patterns forming in those gold-black whirls. Sunlight blocked.
"Wolfwood, have you seen—"
"Under the desk, where ya threw it."
"There it is," he said. And on it went, some places the fabric dampened and stuck to his skin. The structure of himself still apparent, where cloth clung and highlighted the muscles definition beneath it. Metal bound to bicep.
His new arm was attached. Matte. Still caught the light, but no real reflection, no matter how long Wolfwood stared at it. He watched Vash pull himself into a loose pair of trousers, nothing like the skin-tight leather and buckles he would were they ready to depart this place. This Home. Not Wolfwood's home, but Vash's— A selfish interloper is what he was.
"Why're you so quiet?"
When he checked, a suspicious stare was needling at him. Vash had that shadow darkening the bottom of his hair; he looked perplexed about Wolfwood's lack of talking. Maybe it was odd. Wolfwood stretched out his legs when Vash came to the bed, came onto the bed.
His face was so close, blue eyes intent on uncovering whatever Wolfwood was hiding. But there was nothing— Really nothing.
He couldn't lie to himself in his own mind.
As Wolfwood fled his gaze, looking instead to the blanket, and the wind swirls, and the sunlight above the storm and the bedding. Thick, padded, nothing like what Hopeland had ever been able to give him.
"You've been weird ever since we left the last place," Vash muttered.
"Haven't been sleeping well."
"I could tell." Vash eased closer, hand coming toward Wolfwood, the metal of his prosthetic. Wolfwood saw it coming a mile away, but he still flinched as soon as it landed. "Wolfwood?"
More alarmed now, Vash peeled that touch off, and Wolfwood immediately regretted it. Tears filled his eyes. He hadn't wanted that touch to escape. It had been a reaction, that was all. If it were Vash, Wolfwood always, always wanted to be touched. But Vash had taken his hand and sat up straighter, away from Wolfwood. And didn't that seem right? Vash leaning away. Putting immense amount of distance between them. The foothills, leading up to the brown cliffs. Wolfwood clutched his legs closer to him, body burning with the memory imprint of Vash's hand.
But he didn't have anything else at all. It was already too late.
"Wolfwood. What's the matter?"
Vash's blue eyes were begging him for an answer.
"I don't know what to do. You weren't like this before."
Straighten up. He'll leave you. He'll just ghost along and disappear into the sand, a storm breaking up, and you'll never see him again.
If you tell him, he'll leave, too.
It was Vash, though. His eyes, kind, always piercing Wolfwood like a spear in the side. He could forgive a man who had put a gun to his temple. He could spread his palm, offer his hand, to even the vilest assassins that Knives had gathered up. He could even love Wolfwood, after betrayal. Yet, there were limits, weren't there? Moments, choices, things that shattered every moment that came before.
"Please, just don't walk out." Wolfwood looked up. Felt the heat at his eyes, against the rim. Felt the water. In a desert, every drop counted, but he just let them fall like they were worth nothing.
Vash shifted, wet sprigs of hair falling across his forehead, until he came to hover right in front of Vash's face, staring up at him, intent and focused.
"Hey," he whispered. Then, telegraphing the movement, he brought his hand to Wolfwood's. Stroked the tense back, where tendons were pressing against skin. "I'm right here. Tell me what's going on."
"I—" Wolfwood broke.
As his tears rushed, he told Vash the darkness that had been clotting in his throat for weeks. Their separation, the night, that bar. The strangeness of finding himself without legs as he ambled from it, into a bitter night. Someone, some man, following him down the road. The alleyway. His body pinned down, not moving, confusion making all his muscles relaxed against his will. Some drug that wasn't counteracted by the serum Wolfwood drank that made sure his body was unbeatable.
He was supposed to be a super soldier. But he'd gone down as easy as a tin shed in a wind storm.
Wasn't Vash angry? Through his tears, Wolfwood stared at Vash. At the watery smears of his expression. There was a brief, glossy sort of anger like sand struck into glass by lightning. But Vash raised a hand and cupped it around Wolfwood's head. The touch melted him this time.
"That shouldn't have happened to you, Wolfwood. I wish I'd been there to stop it."
Wolfwood choked up. Then, falling, he clasped his arms around Vash. The cliffs fell into flat ground, and he was back in a body that could touch, feel, be held. Vash held him. Arms so strong and sure and squeezing him close. The endless roll of his tears wouldn't stop. Nothing would make them stop.
For an hour, Vash held him.
The sunlight changed, deepened, darkened. Until it was gashes of red swimming through the windows. Wolfwood, curled half on top of Vash's lap could see the strands of dying gold as the suns braced themselves on the horizon then dipped below. Their window slowly went dark, and they were left in a very calm silence. Wolfwood breathing, still wet, but his tears were dried up.
Had he cried like that in a long time?
Since he was a child?
Not even then. Never. No one had ever held him quite this tight. Like Vash could squeeze and all the toxin of his early life, of Chapel, losing Livio, the man in the alley — all of it would just escape. Forced out like a bullet from the chamber of a gun. Gone. With a bang. Leaving only a trail of steam to curl from the muzzle, then nothing. Calm. Cool.
"Can we stay like this? Just a little, Blondie?"
"I'm not going anywhere," Vash promised him.
Wolfwood swallowed. "And ya don't feel…betrayed?"
Vash smoothed a hand against the back of his head, hair ruffling up. "No. I know it's not your fault. You didn't do anything wrong. This was something done to you. That's all."
His eyes sealed shut. The final tremor exiting his body before, like the light, Wolfwood's worry dimmed down to nothing. He couldn't see a thing in the blackness behind his lids. But the whole time he laid there, he tracked the soothing motion of Vash's hand.