Work Text:
Written for Wolfwood Whump Week
Day 5: Panic Attacks / Cosmic Horror
Nicholas had a secret, something Vash must never find out about.
He didn’t hold any illusions that he’d managed to trick Vash on most things. The man was observant, and inhumanly sharp. Nicholas knew what his brother was, had been sent by that same monster to safely lure Vash to him. He knew Vash wasn’t human.
In theory, he was fine with that. He wasn’t of the opinion that anything that wasn’t human was automatically bad, that only humans were allowed to be an intelligent, self-aware species. He may not understand the worms all that well, but he knew Zazie well enough to know they were sentient in their own right. He knew the worms were probably better stewards of No Man’s Land than humanity ever would be.
Vash and Knives were… Different.
Grand worms ate people, sure. But there was logic to it. They ate because they were hungry, and people got eaten because they didn’t run fast enough. It was just the way of things.
They didn’t level entire cities by accident.
Nicholas knew Vash well enough to know that July, whatever had happened there, was an accident. A guy who balled his eyes out when someone died wasn’t capable of destruction on that level, at least not intentionally. Vash was too kind for it, and he valued life too much. Even scum that Nicholas itched to kill, to spare the world more of the victims they would create—their lives still held meaning to Vash, were worth protecting.
Nicholas didn’t agree with him, but he at least kind of understood the way he worked. There were rules to Vash, and he was predictable. As long as he stayed in control, at least.
That was probably the only thing that got Nicholas even remotely comfortable in his company.
He remembered holding the gun to Knives’s head while he slept, his finger on the trigger. One squeeze, and he’d rid the world of the Eye of Michael’s god, the ringleader responsible for Nicholas’s suffering—for Livio’s and countless other children’s. One squeeze, and the orphanage would be safe. One squeeze, and the world would be rid of a monster.
But that monster had opened his eyes and told him to get back to his duties with a bored expression that told Nicholas even if he squeezed the trigger, it’d change nothing. A simple bullet wasn’t capable of killing him.
Nicholas wasn’t capable of killing him.
Gods among men, immortals sent to walk amongst mortals. Angels who enacted their wrath and mercy, and the destruction and chaos that followed in the quakes of their steps.
Against that… What was Nicholas supposed to do? He may be the Punisher, but he was still human. He was still just a man.
He held his gun to Vash’s head, too.
However kind the man was, he’d destroyed July. He’d blasted a hole in the fifth moon. Whatever his intentions, he’d left permanent scars on the surface of No Man’s Land, and he was responsible for the death of thousands. For someone to hold such power and be unable to control it… To even allow that power to exist to begin with…
Nicholas was terrified of him.
He was terrified of Vash, of what he was capable of.
The gun was out of sight by the time Vash turned his head, nothing but a smile on his features. Nicholas returned the expression, but it felt wrong on his face, his heart still hammering in his chest. Just like with Knives, he was too much of a coward to go through with it, because he knew that squeezing the trigger would be impossible for him.
It was because of an ache that settled deep within him at the thought of killing Vash, of betraying him. It was an ache he didn’t like to ponder, because he knew what it meant, even if he denied it. His hesitation to put a bullet in Vash’s skull didn’t come with the same futility as it had when he’d tried it with Knives; Nicholas was sure that, if he tried, he could kill Vash. Not because he was a man above a god, but because this god might be kind enough to fall on the blade of his own freewill for humanity if they only asked.
Nicholas couldn’t ask that of him, couldn’t stand the idea even through the fear.
And Vash could never know.
Nicholas just hoped he hadn’t already figured it out.
-/-/-
Vash was late.
This wasn’t completely out of the ordinary for him. They’d been sharing hotel rooms for a while now, and Vash liked to go out drinking more often than Nicholas. He also just wandered under the light of the moons sometimes, like a cat allowed to meander the outdoors as it pleased.
Nicholas, meanwhile, didn’t always feel like having a hangover in the morning, so he’d gone and laid down to read in their room for the evening. It was late now, so late he was considering going to bed without waiting for Vash to come back.
It could be nothing. He could’ve just fallen asleep at the bar, or gotten caught up or lost on his midnight stroll. Both had happened before.
But it could also be something. Vash could’ve decided he was sick of Nicholas, and he might be in the next town over. If so, Nicholas was fucked, and so was his mission—he needed to chase him and find him again. Vash also could be in trouble, bleeding out in a ditch somewhere with no one to help him. If so…
Well, no matter what, Nicholas should find him.
He pulled himself up from the bed and made his way down to the bar. There was no sign of Vash, and asking around told him that Vash hadn’t been there all night. Nicholas left out the front door.
It wasn’t a big town, just large enough to have a Plant to sustain it. Couple streets, shops, homes—but that was it. It didn’t take long to search the whole town, but there was zero sign of Vash.
Nicholas had started this search at a leisurely stroll, but as he looked and looked with no hint of spiky hair or a red coat, he picked up the pace. First, he quickened his steps, and before he knew it, he was running. By the time he returned to the inn, his breaths were coming in ragged.
There was an old man sweeping outside a shop next to the inn.
“Oi, gramps,” Nicholas said. “You seen anyone over six feet tall with spiky hair and a red coat?”
The old man raised an eyebrow at Nicholas. “Awfully rude, aren’t you?”
“...Please,” Nicholas amended. “I’m lookin’ for a friend.”
He was more than a friend, it felt like, not that Nicholas would say that. Vash was Nicholas’s mission, his ticket to the safety of the orphanage. Vash was his hope, Vash was his fears, Vash was—well, Vash.
Understanding flashed through the old man’s eyes. “Oh, that was your friend? He went that way. He asked me a few questions before leaving. Helped me out with moving some boxes, too. Good kid. He was asking me about the factory outside of town.”
“A factory.” Of fucking course. Vash had gotten himself involved in something again, and he hadn’t bothered to even tell Nicholas about it. He was just confused about it being a factory, which wasn’t in Vash’s normal M.O. of bandits and violent outlaws. “What factory?”
“Some sort of facility outside the town,” the old man replied. “Not sure what they make, but… Real secretive, they’ve got fancy barbed wire fences and everything. They don’t trade or talk with us, and no one from town works there. Two kids from town got curious and trespassed, and no one’s seen them since. The town militia tried to confront them about it, but two were killed and three came home with bad injuries. We’re down to one member.”
Nicholas ran a hand over his face. No wonder Vash got involved. If the people running the factory were that trigger happy, the kids were probably dead, their bodies left out for the worms. Vash wouldn’t just accept that, though. He’d want to look for them himself, or at least confirm their fate to know for sure that they were no longer with the living.
It was something they shouldn’t mess with. A factory that anal about security either made weapons, dealt in lost technology, or was secretly a research facility, and Nicholas could only think of a few powerful organizations that would have the resources to set something like that up.
It screamed ‘Eye of Michael’ to him, though he had no proof. There were plenty of other gun happy powerful conglomerates with zero morals to go around. The people of No Man’s Land were often as thirsty for bullets as they were water, after all.
“Thanks, gramps,” Nicholas said, already ducking into the inn. “Owe you one!”
It was quick work to retrieve the Punisher, lugging it onto his back and then taking off from the inn in the direction the old man had pointed out. He sprinted, only slowing when the packed material of the roads ebbed into the shifting sands of the desert. He trudged through it, his gaze fixed forward. When he reached the edge of town, he backtracked to retrieve Angelina II—faster than walking, after all.
It took nearly twenty minutes of driving for the factory they were talking about came into view, or at least, its fence did. He parked Angelina II somewhere indiscrete, tucked away behind a sand dune, before approaching it. It was a fancy chain link fence, maintained well and with barbed wire snaked over its top. Nicholas frowned at it for a moment. The structure was sturdy, meaning he couldn’t just kick it over. It’d be a waste of bullets to try and shoot through the mesh, and it’d take too much energy out of the Punisher to blast through it.
Easiest thing to do would just be to climb over it.
Nicholas tossed the Punisher over the fence, then stuck an ampule in his mouth, ready to snap down on it with his teeth. He got his hands and shoes into some of the links of the fence and started climbing, and when he reached the barbed wire, he grabbed it without hesitating.
The metal bit into hands, a stream of blood staining the metal. Nicholas hoisted himself up and over it anyway, ignoring the way it dug into his skin and tore at his clothes. Knowing it’d just get worse if he got himself tangled up in it, Nicholas rolled and shoved himself over the side, coming away from the barbed wire with a wet squelch of tearing flesh.
Cut up to hell and in pain, he hit the sands and the dry sands drank his blood as it spilled from his body. He already had the vial in his mouth though, so all he had to do was bite down and swallow.
The drug has its normal effect, one Nicholas was used to by now. His heart started hammering in his chest, and his blood started boiling. He felt it as his flesh stitched itself back together, the heat of the process making him feel like he was burning alive.
He pulled himself to his feet, feeling shaky and unsteady and like he was dying and like he was flying. He picked up the Punisher, its weight familiar in his grasp and grounding, and started towards the facility with the weight of death on his shoulders.
This was familiar. This was a mission, like any other. Nicholas just had to ignore his body, the way the drug made it scream and sing, and do his job.
He had about an hour until the effects of the serum wore off. That was plenty of time to take care of this. The factory could be as trigger happy as it wanted, and it wouldn’t matter. They wouldn’t be able to kill Nicholas.
It was the Punisher they were dealing with, after all.
“Halt!”
Nicholas was drawing close to the factory, the light of its flood lamps nearly blinding him. It was a large, metal facility, with slits in its walls for the muzzles of guns. It looked more like a prison or a fortress than a factory, which told Nicholas everything he needed.
There was no way Vash would have left this alone if there was even a chance of scared children inside.
For once, Nicholas was on the same page as him.
The Punisher got to work.
-/-/-
Thirty minutes was enough time for Nicholas to have cleaned up most of the factory’s security force. Even though Vash wasn’t there to scold or remind him, he kept his shots low, going for knees and feet and legs rather than torsos and heads and vital organs.
He really was getting too soft, but he didn’t have the time to think about that at the moment. He told himself it was because he didn’t want the earful from Vash whenever he found him.
The factory was a strange one. There was one main room, several stories tall, with what looked like an assembly line. They sure were making something, but operations had ceased by the time Nicholas made it there. It looked like technology of some kind, but he didn’t have the background in the stuff to know what it was.
The halls were long and empty, with signage here and there. Security was impressive for most, but laughable for the kind of stuff Nicholas had been trained for. Clearly, the facility had been designed to keep out citizen militias and outlaws, not the likes of Nicholas. The structure looked fortified and intimidating, but so far, he’d only counted a dozen or so people on the security team, all poorly trained and weakly armed. That certainly wouldn’t be enough to defend from a full-on raid, if it happened. The facility’s defense was a sham, and a laughable one at that.
He ignored it and moved on. The staff must sleep at the facility, since none of them were from the town, but Nicholas ignored the wing labeled ‘staff quarters.’ He wasn’t keen on killing random workers in their sleep.
The ‘research wing’ and ‘holding wing’ were both interesting. Nicholas decided the ‘holding wing’ was probably worth a quick look.
Nicholas stopped and peeked in the doors along the holding wing. They were metal with glass windows, with helpful labels on the side. He didn’t see a lot of people, and maybe he could attribute that to the blaring alarm he’d started to tune out. Everyone who wasn’t a combatant would be hiding, then.
And then he found them. Doors without windows, labeled as holding blocks. They were locked, so Nicholas leveled the Punisher at them and made quick work of that.
He shoved his way inside, finding lines and lines of windowless doors.
“Anyone home?” he called out.
No one responded, so he checked the first room. It was unlocked and empty. He just went down the row, but each cell was exactly the same. That was a lot of cells for a facility that wasn’t using them. Nicholas wondered if this used to be some kind of prison facility that was repurposed at some point.
He moved on to the next hall, finding that the cells were much the same there. No Vash in sight, all just empty. He went down the line, until the squealing of metal hinges was followed by a startled squeak.
Nicholas blinked, finding two kids—one slightly older and taller looking, but both no older than fourteen at most—huddled in the corner. The older had her hand covering the mouth of the younger boy, and they looked similar enough to be siblings. Their eyes were wide and scared, and their cheeks were sunken and sallow.
Alive, but not well cared for.
Anger flared up in Nicholas, but he bundled it away for later. Right now, he had two terrified children on his hands, and if he so much as looked at them wrong, he’d spook them. That was the last thing he wanted.
So he set the Punisher against one wall outside the cell, out of sight and out of mind, and took a step inside. He kneeled, smiling, making himself as small and unimposing as he could manage.
“Hey, kiddos,” he said, keeping his tone soft and jovial. “I’m here to break you out. Ready for a prison break?”
He sent a silent apology to Vash. If he was in trouble, Nicholas would have to delay in getting to him. Granted, he didn’t think Vash would mind; in fact, if Nicholas prioritized him over some scared and starving kids who needed help, Vash would definitely kick his ass over it. Nicholas wouldn’t have it any other way.
Still, though. He had to be fast.
The two kids shared a look, and the older sister narrowed her eyes at him. “You’re not… You don’t work here?”
“Nope,” Nicholas said. “Don’t like these folks, and I’m lookin’ for a friend of mine. Found you along the way, and as a man of the cloth, I can’t very well leave you in trouble, can I?”
Nicholas didn’t look the part of a priest, or even act like one unless it was for his own benefit or for a joke, but it never hurt to tack a little authority behind his name when trying to calm down some scared children. Granted, most so-called ‘holy men’ weren’t exactly safe authority figures to trust, at least not in his experience, but Nicholas wasn’t above invoking their name if it’d help calm some kids down.
The kids still looked wary of him, so he dug around in his pockets for a second before finding a protein bar. It wasn’t as good as candy, but they needed sustenance more than sugar, anyway. It should be light enough to avoid refeeding syndrome, too, if they’d truly been starved this whole time.
He unwrapped the bar and split it down the middle.
“Here,” he said, holding it out to them. “Get something in your systems, then we’re runnin’. Can I count on you?”
The sister’s eyes lit up, then she nodded, her face screwed into a determined frown. She slowly uncurled from where she’d been protecting her little brother, so she could reach forward and take both. She took a bite of her own first, then once she was satisfied that it probably wasn’t poisoned or anything, she passed the other half to her brother, who was quiet as he ate.
Nicholas watched them silently, still blocking the door in case they tried to bolt. They wouldn’t get far alone, so he needed to make sure they stayed with him, at least until he could get them back to town safe and sound.
…That’d take a minute.
Sorry, Spikey, he thought. If you’re in trouble, hold tight, yeah?
Nicholas felt the bad feeling settling into the base of his stomach, even as he ushered the kids out of the cell and picked the Punisher back up (both children eyed it with awe in their eyes, mouthing ‘priest,’ which Nicholas wasn’t sure how to feel about).
Vash would be fine. He was hardy, and hey, maybe he hadn’t heard about this place and was already sleeping off a hangover back in their hotel room. That was the best case scenario. Since Nicholas had already decimated this place’s security and staff, and the kids were retrieved, that should be the end of it.
Right?
-/-/-
Once the kids were returned to the arms of their crying fathers, Nicholas swung by the hotel room in a vain sense of hope that Vash would be there. He wasn’t, because of course Nicholas’s or his luck would allow for such a neat outcome, so Nicholas made his way back out into the desert and to the facility.
All in all, getting the kids back and then returning to the facility took a few hours. It was empty when Nicholas returned, the alarm still blaring. He wondered if they’d just evacuated everyone already. Part of him was happy about that, since it meant less work for him and less blood to spill; a different part of him wasn’t happy about it, because it also meant there was a distinct possibility that if Vash was a captive here, they’d already moved him, and if he was… Well, maybe Nicholas wanted a little more bloodshed.
He didn’t understand it, Vash’s philosophy. It was reckless and stupid, to believe in others when they’d proven over and over that they would just do the same shit over and over again, hurt the same people and commit the same wrongs. Sometimes the best way to break a pattern was to poison someone’s food or put a bullet in their skull.
But Vash would never be convinced of that, and Nicholas didn’t feel like getting an earful from him when he found him. Hopefully the staff would’ve been terrified enough of his earlier rampage that they wouldn’t pull the same shit again.
And if they did? Well, Nicholas wasn’t as big on second chances as Vash was. He wouldn’t aim low a second time, if it came to it. The first time was already more generous than he liked being.
He didn’t bother checking over the same parts of the facility, instead going straight to the other holding cells. It took nearly half an hour to go through all of them, and they were all empty.
A knot started to form in the base of his stomach, and he knew the only place left to check was the ‘research wing.’
He entered the research wing and found the first door in the hall locked. He shot off its lock and peek his head inside. He found tables of little glass tubes, animals in cages, and blood spotted over the otherwise clean room.
He almost left, but the sight of the animals huddling in their cages had him sighing. He shot the locks off each of their cages. (He wished he’d found Vash first, since he could just pick the locks and free the animals of their cages without scaring them half to death.) There were everything from lizards to rodents to little rabbit-rat looking things; all animals that were relatively rare but still could be found here or there on No Man’s Land.
Nicholas didn’t have the time nor the care to escort them outside the facility, so he just let them loose and watched them dart out of the room and into the facility. There was one little rabbit-rat thing that hobbled out of its cage, and Nicholas watched it briefly.
He didn’t have time for this, but he also felt it as the discomfort lodged itself in his throat. He wasn’t some little rabbit-rat thing, but he did know what it was to be thrown into a cage and experimented on.
It had him wanting to blow up the whole damn facility, but unfortunately, he couldn’t do that without the assurance that Vash wasn’t present first.
He left the room once all the animals were free, knowing he couldn’t do much to help the injured or sick ones. They’d either heal or become worm food. Either way, they’d at least be free.
Nicholas’s heart rate picked up when he caught the blood on the floor, drops on the tiling as though someone had been injured and running, leaving a thin trail as they ran. He hadn’t been in this part of the facility. That hadn’t been his doing.
It stood to reason that it was Vash’s doing, instead.
He started to follow the trail, and it got thinner and thinner as he did. The blood was dark and dried. He almost felt like he wasn’t breathing as he found a door with a dark smear on its frame.
“Blondie?”
There was something strange in the air; Nicholas couldn’t tell if it was a sound or a feeling, but there was a buzzing of a type that he’d only felt twice before. Once, on Ship Three, and then again at Dragon’s Nest. He could feel fear and pain lodge in his chest, and he knew only some of the fear was his own.
Vash.
The door was unlocked when he shoved it open. He braced himself for the feeling to get stronger, but it didn’t. What did get stronger, however, was the sound of panicked and terrified growling.
The room was a mess, like a small typhoon had ripped through it. It was another research room, but its table and beakers had been upended and scattered around the room. Shattered glass littered the floor, and several of the tables were cracked from where they had been thrown against the wall and left where they’d fallen.
And huddled in one corner was one very feathery, very angry looking Vash.
He looked almost like he had at Dragon’s Nest—misshapen wings and feathers sprouted from his back and ignored his clothes, curled over him as he struggled to right himself on the ground. The lines that ran over his light skin were glowing to the point Nicholas could see them even under the bright lights from across the room, and his teeth were sharp and bared.
Nicholas frowned, swallowing back the terror at the sight of an inhumanly foreign Vash as he took a step forward. That only seemed to upset him more, the growls growing furious.
Nicholas stopped, raising his hands in a placating gesture for lack of anything better to do. The noises abated somewhat, but Vash still watched him with vacant eyes and bared fangs.
…What triggered this? At Dragon’s Nest, Vash had to get beat to hell and back before he got this bad. Nicholas inspected him for injuries, but all he could see was some blood on his shoulder and some singed clothing. That definitely wasn’t enough to set Vash off like this—Nicholas had seen him dig bullets out of his own stomach in the bathtub once without batting an eye. Even after he’d lost it at Dragon’s Nest, it seemed like he’d been able to control it more and more in the following days and weeks, so Nicholas didn’t buy that he’d just suddenly lose control for no reason.
That was when he saw it: something new strapped to Vash’s neck, thick and metal.
Nicholas recognized it for what it was. A shock collar, the kind shitheads put on animals to “discipline” them. The sight made his blood boil, the anger eating the fear as he reached for his own neck, willing away his own memories.
He could almost picture what happened, now. Vash, showing up at this facility to try and save the kids after hearing about it. Vash, like the stupid idiot he was, trying to talk first and shoot second. Vash, getting shot at and using his feathers to defend himself. Maybe he’d gotten pinned, maybe drugged, or maybe they’d caught him by surprise, but it didn’t really matter, did it? They’d seen the feathers somehow or maybe the Plant lines, and they knew Vash wasn’t human. If they were really a research institute… Well, Vash was too good a subject to pass up, wasn’t he? Drugs, tranquilizers, shock collars—they’d probably do whatever they needed to keep Vash at bay and study him.
Judging by the blood smeared on the wall, Nicholas guessed that hadn’t planned on Vash going berserk like this. He had trouble feeling sorry for them, when they’d decided to slap a collar on him and treat him like some labrat.
Anyone willing to reduce another person to nothing more than a test subject wasn’t worth one ounce of Nicholas’s sympathy.
“Alright, Blondie,” Nicholas said, trying to keep his voice gentle as he stepped closer again. “It’s just me, you don’t gotta—”
He froze when Vash’s growls increased in intensity. The sound of it, his expression, the way another wing ripped itself from his back—all of it sent ice running through his veins, his limbs growing heavy with it.
He swallowed. Vash was… truly out of it. There was no recognition in his eyes, and no sign of the witty idiot that Nicholas was so fond of. Despite Vash’s… inhumanity, a part of Nicholas knew he’d never willingly hurt him. Vash wasn’t one to willingly hurt anyone , at least not without a good cause.
He probably had plenty of good causes to hurt Nicholas if he so chose, given the blood under his nails and gravedirt staining the soles of his shoes, but Vash was too merciful for his own good in that department. He wouldn’t do it, even if Nicholas deserved it.
Now, though… Well, Vash’s morals or affection wouldn’t protect Nicholas here.
“It’s just me,” he tried again, his voice cracking despite his best efforts to keep it steady. “You don’t gotta be so scared, Spikey. I’m here to help you.”
Vash struggled to right himself, still growling and struggling on the floor as more wings sprouted from his back. All they did was cocoon around him, as if trying to protect him from some unseen foe. The way he was moving… It was odd, even with him being out of it. It was almost like he was writhing, in pain from—
Fuck, Nicholas was an idiot.
That shock collar was probably still on, huh? That explained why Vash was so checked out. Depending on the voltage, he might be in too much pain. Maybe he’d passed out, leaving just the inhuman side of him to try and fix the pain, or maybe he was just in so much pain that he couldn’t think straight or control his powers.
All in all, it wasn’t a state Nicholas could leave Vash in, for many reasons. For one, if Vash decided to use that arm of his, Nicholas wasn’t sure he, or anyone from town, would escape the blast, and the last thing they needed was a second July. For two… Nicholas doubted his conscience, as abused as it was, would ever forgive him if he just left Vash like this.
Step one: get that fucking collar off Vash.
Presumably, he wouldn’t even need a step two. Vash might pass out, lose his feathers, and then Nicholas could carry him off to their hotel room and treat whatever injuries he’d managed to earn himself through his selfless negligence. Then, they could go the fuck to bed and put this whole mess behind them.
Now, he just needed to figure out how to get the damn thing off.
“The collar, Blondie,” he said, tapping his own neck. “Come on, that’s the problem. Break it.”
Vash just hissed at him.
Right, so.
Reasoning with him would be… It wouldn’t be possible, would it? At least not right now. As God intended, Nicholas wouldn’t be catching any kind of break today.
Nicholas inched forward. The pitch of Vash’s growls increased, but at the very least, he wasn’t attacking or trying to dart off, either. He kept his hands raised, toeing closer and closer.
Quick. Once he got within arm’s length, he needed to be quick. However fast he was… Well, Vash would be faster, and he seemed bigger than normal. He probably had better reach than Nicholas right now, too. This wouldn’t be easy.
The good news was that once the collar was off, it was over. Vash would pass out or go back to normal or whatever, and then Nicholas could resume with his plan of fucking off with him back to the hotel.
He was about two yarz away when Vash started flashing his very large fangs. This close, Nicholas could see the lines on his face, was keenly aware of the fact that even half-crouched, Vash was almost his height. Another wing freed itself from his back, misshapen and bent at odd angles with five joints, and tried its best to curl around him.
“It’s just me, Blondie,” Nicholas said.
He had to focus. It wasn’t hard, what with years of training ignoring his own panic and distress to get the mission done. He had one hand curled inside of his blazer pocket, the smooth glass of one his vials a comfort against his clammy palm.
He knew he couldn’t use one again so soon. He knew he couldn’t rely on this failsafe, but he clutched at it anyway as he took another tentative step towards Vash.
The noise that came out of Vash’s mouth sounded more like a whine from a wounded animal more than anything, and he pressed himself back against the wall as another wing struggled to free itself from his back. This one wasn’t even fully formed, still half stuck in the skin and clothes of Vash’s back. He must have upwards of two dozen by now, all crowding his back and hanging around him.
That couldn’t be good for him. Nicholas knew they could form with enough precision to stop a bullet if Vash wanted, then be gone in the next moment. Whatever this was… It wasn’t anything controlled or helpful.
“It’s just me,” Nicholas repeated, trying to keep his tone gentle. He prayed to whatever god he knew probably wasn’t listening that something would get through to Vash, make this easier on the both of them.
He was almost within arm’s reach, and thankfully, Vash still wasn’t attacking him. The buzzing in the air hadn’t gotten much worse, either. Nicholas could still tell the difference between it and his own fear eating at the pit of his stomach.
He took a moment to inspect the collar. It was thick and metal, not something that could be broken easily. Nicholas also didn’t see any kind of lock or seam on it, but that wasn’t surprising given it could be lost tech.
He didn’t have time to try and figure the damn thing out, so he supposed he’d just have to break it. It wouldn’t be possible with the strength of a typical human, but Nicholas wasn’t a lab rat for nothing. It might as well get to come in handy for something other than killing every once in a while.
He wasn’t sure he could break it before Vash would be able to get those teeth or claws in him, so… Without being able to rely on his serum, he wanted to be as far from those as he could manage when he broke the collar, and maybe stay out of their way until Vash came back to himself.
Nicholas devised a plan. It was a stupid plan, but it was about the only plan he could think of.
He was within arm’s reach now—both his and Vash’s claws.
Now or never.
Nicholas locked the fear away somewhere else, shutting down his thoughts as he launched himself forward and upwards.
Vash shrieked, rearing back and reaching for Nicholas with both his normal metal hand and the big clawed one, but he already had a grip on Vash’s shoulder. He shoved the feathery guy downwards, tipping his balance as he vaulted up onto his back.
There was barely any room for him, but he forced his way through the wings and ignored the feel of hollow bones crunching and the sound of Vash’s screeching as he got his hands on the back of the collar. Vash was flailing truly now, trying to shake Nicholas off of him.
Nicholas didn’t waste any time in ripping the collar off of Vash’s neck.
Vash chose that moment to buck, the wings flaring to life all around him. They were painted in blood now, and Nicholas didn’t have time to think that it might be more than Vash’s.
With the momentum of snapping the collar, the two useless halves in his grip, Nicholas was sent flying back into the wall. He felt it when his head slammed against the wall, when he slid down it and fell to the floor in a crumpled heap. The air was knocked from him, but when he tried to take another breath, the taste of copper flooded his mouth.
Huh.
Getting thrown against the wall shouldn’t have done that.
His gaze slid downwards, finding red blossoming across his chest—like he’d been stabbed over a dozen times, there were too many wounds to count over his chest and arms. It was staining his shirt and jacket, pooling onto the floor.
There was too much of it. Nicholas was going to bleed out, at this rate.
He reached a shaky, weak arm for his breast pocket, but then froze. It’d only been a few hours since he’d taken his last dose. He couldn’t take another one yet, not without the risk of bursting his heart in his own chest. It was best to wait twenty-four hours, but he could push it at twelve. It’d been maybe four or five.
But… Would he even last eight hours? With these injuries? Probably not.
A chittering drew him from his thoughts.
Vash, still cloaked in broken wings, coated in blood— Nicholas’s blood.
Prowling towards him.
Nicholas passed out as white-hot panic took over.
-/-/-
When Vash came to, it was a foggy and slow thing. It felt exactly like when he came down from the higher dimension after talking with one of his sisters, his brain struggling to get accustomed to a slower, more tangible world with not enough and too much sensory input all at once.
Except he hadn’t talked with any of his sisters, had he? And he didn’t remember what he’d been doing—he always remembered his discussions with his sisters, his time connected to the hive mind. He wouldn’t just forget it.
He ached, too. It felt like his skin had been set ablaze, the itch of healing burns around his neck all too familiar. He could feel the wings to his back, the feathers sending him sensory input that was distracting and unhelpful (most of it painful, too, with the distinct feel of broken bones in the wings). He was the wrong shape, too—his nails too sharp, teeth too pointed, and body bigger than he was used to.
He drew in breath, calling to mind the body he was used to, the one he was familiar with. He swallowed the growing confusion and panic, trying to convince himself that the danger had passed, that there was no need for him to be all… inhuman to defend himself.
He felt the wings slowly meld themselves back through his clothes and into the skin of his back. He felt it when his teeth ached as they shifted to something flatter, when his muscles and bones folded in on themselves.
And finally, he felt like himself again.
Vash blinked, finally able to properly take stock of his surroundings—only to freeze.
Wolfwood, passed out and slumped against the wall, with too much blood pooled around him.
“No, no, no no no no no no.”
Vash scrambled forward to him, knees and hands quickly growing slick with blood. There were too many wounds—most of them were small and shallow, but there were a few that looked deeper, and the blood definitely meant at least one or two arteries had been severed.
He carefully took Wolfwood into his arms, checking his spine before moving him. The man was still breathing, but it was a wheezing, pained thing. He might have a punctured lung, and if that was the case, they didn’t have long before Wolfwood drowned in his own blood. That, or bled out.
As he moved him, something clattered to the floor. Vash scrambled for it, and he found a vial—smeared in blood, one Wolfwood must’ve been clasping.
The easiest thing to do would be to just dose off these injuries… But if Wolfwood had a vial and hadn’t taken it, then… Had he passed out before taking it? Or had he had a reason for not taking it, despite his injuries?
Vash normally didn’t do this, since he didn’t trust himself to reach into and toy with the minds and bodies of others, too inexperienced and doubtful of his own inhuman abilities, but he was out of time and out of options. As little feathers sprouted from his face, he leaned forward to press his forehead against Wolfwood’s, feathers cushioning the little space between them as Vash gently prodded into the man’s mind. He ignored anything cognitive like thoughts, dreams, or emotions, and he instead focused on the electrical signals running through the man’s nervous system.
Punctured lung, a broken rib, a bruise on the back of his head, several lacerations around his torso and arms—his blood pressure was also starting to get dangerously low due to blood loss, and there was still the reminisants of something else in his system, something that shouldn’t be there. Something bordering on toxic.
Vash pulled back and frowned, then rolled the vial in his hand.
…Wolfwood had probably dosed himself to get through the facility’s defenses. Vash had tried to talk his way through it, only to be caught off-guard with tranquilizer darts—not his best moment, but it meant that if Wolfwood was here now and they hadn’t been accosted by security, he’d taken care of it himself.
That meant it was too dangerous to give him another vial. Not with the way his system was already reeling from the shocks of something toxic, something Vash could only think was the serum. Not unless he had no other choice, so Vash tucked the vial into one of his pockets.
Vash needed to find some other way to buy Wolfwood some time before he could get him medical help. Even if a doctor could just keep him alive for another day or so, that’d be enough for some of the toxicity to ebb, for another dose not to be a fatal one.
A thought came to mind, one that had Vash chewing on his own lip with indecision he didn’t have time for. He’d done it countless times with his sisters, and while it normally worked with them… Well, he’d never tried it with a human. Humans were oh so fragile compared to him, compared to Knives, compared to their sisters… Vash had just as much a chance of breaking Wolfwood as he did helping him.
But maybe he could buy Wolfwood some time, time they didn’t have. If he did nothing, Wolfwood would die before Vash could get him back to town. If there was no other way to save him, then…
Vash leaned forward again, resting his forward back against Wolfwood’s.
Humans didn’t run off the same kind of energy that Plants did, but at their core, all life drew from some sort of energy or another. The vitality of life, so to speak. In theory, this should work.
Vash gathered some from his gate, allowing it to pass from himself and into Wolfwood. He made sure it was a slow trickle, something that wouldn’t overwhelm his body but would still re-invigorate his cells, to prevent them from dying due to lack of oxygen from his lungs. It wouldn’t last forever—Wolfwood’s lungs would need to start working again, since Vash was just doing the equivalent of putting him on gate-fed life-support, but every second would count.
He gently prodded Wolfwood’s nervous system, and thankfully, mercifully, it’d worked. Somehow. His vitals were still terrible, but they felt more stable than before. Wolfwood wasn’t in as much danger of dying on him, at least not for now.
Vash did his best to pack and wrap the worst of the wounds to stem some of the bleeding. He shouldn’t be a risk to move around, and with the worst of the bleeding taken care of… Well, there wasn’t much Vash could do about the punctured lung other than what he’d already done.
Something lurked in the back of his mind, a horrible truth about the way Wolfwood must’ve gotten these injures—the lack of memories, the inhuman state he’d woken up in, the fact that no one else was in the room but the two of them, that the wound were the perfect size to have been made by razor-sharp feathers—but Vash pushed it away.
He couldn’t break down now. He couldn’t afford to, not when Wolfwood needed him functional. Not when he needed to get to Wolfwood medical help.
That was the least Vash owed him.
It’d take hours to get back to town, if they took the same way Vash had gotten there and walked.
Good thing Vash wasn’t planning on getting back the normal way.
Vash bundled Wolfwood into his arms, and he forced his gate back open to allow multiple sets of wings, this time strong and whole and in matching sets, to spring from his back. They alone weren’t enough to fly on, but his gate was already taking care of that for him, manipulating the gravity around the two of them to allow him to push off the ground with a gentle flap of his wings.
Vash had never flown before, but he didn’t care. He was clumsy and awkward, but as he tore through the facility, he just cut anything down when it got in his way, be it a wall or a door or an unfortunately placed piece of furniture.
And like that, he burst from the facility and into the night air of No Man’s Land. He pressed Wolfwood into his chest as he pushed onward, soaring through the night sky back towards town.
-/-/-
Vash knew he must’ve been a sight, covered in blood with wings and feathers to his back as he practically crashed onto the local doctor’s front doorstep. He pounded on the door, and when it opened, he wasn’t sure what he said, just that it was an incoherent babbling that begged the doctor to save Wolfwood.
She made a gesture—something to do with a local religion, Vash’s mind supplied—before gesturing for him to come inside. She had him lay Wolfwood onto a sick bed before she promptly shooed him out of the room.
“I want to stay,” he said, feeling his voice crack as he said it.
“You’ll get in my way,” she replied, waving him off as she prepped—pulling on gloves and sanitizing her tools. “Angel or divine being or whatever the hell you are, unless you have a medical degree, you get out of my operating room.”
“...Yes, ma’am.”
With that, Vash slinked out of the room. He sat on the floor next to it, not wanting to bloody any of the doctor’s furniture. Her practice was in her own home, it looked like, and it was still early. He kept quiet and to himself, out of the way and out from underfoot as he waited.
A man, older looking than the doctor, dropped by and offered him some water a few hours in. Vash declined, and it was only the change of clothes put on offer that he accepted. He reeked of drying blood and gore, after all.
The sun was low on the horizon when the doctor finally emerged from the room. Vash was on his feet immediately, and it took all the willpower he could muster to prevent himself from grabbing her shoulders and demanding information on Wolfwood’s condition.
He’d been counting down the hours in his head—thirty minutes to fly here, seven hours in surgery—Wolfwood had maybe sixteen or seventeen more hours before he could take another dose of the serum. There had to be an hour before that for the drug to have taken effect and worn off, given Wolfwood’s injuries hadn’t healed, but Vash wasn’t chancing an overdose.
Wolfwood had dodged any questions as to what ill effects an overdose would have, but Vash had been paying attention as they fought together, when Wolfwood took the drug. His heart rate, blood pressure, metabolism, and body temperature were all thrown wildly out of what was healthy, and Vash could feel something off about him for about a day or so after. The drug worked its magic, but it took its toll, too. If he took too much… Well, Vash didn’t want to think about what the strain might do to Wolfwood.
So overdosing him wasn’t an option, but Vash could wait for the aftereffects of the serum to burn themselves out of Wolfwood’s system. Then, presumably, another dose might not be the best thing for him, but neither was the hole in his lung. At least it would ensure neither was lethal.
“How is he?!” Vash asked, unable to keep the strain from his voice.
The doctor raised an eyebrow at him, bags under her eyes and an exhausted slant to her shoulders. She still had pity in her eyes, though, so Vash must look worse than she did. “He’s stable. The worst of it was the punctured lung—I set him up on our ventilator, too. You’re lucky I just discharged the last guy who needed it, otherwise I wouldn’t have had the spare. The rest of the wounds were minor lacerations. They’ll all heal up fine.”
“He’s not in any danger of dying within the next seventeen hours, is he?” Vash asked, then realized far too late that was probably a weirdly specific time frame to ask about.
Sure enough, the doctor narrowed her eyes at him. “What? Some angel rule where you can’t spirit him away if he dies within the next seventeen hours? Why seventeen, anyway?”
“Um, no, it’s…” Vash searched his mind for a lie. Normally he’d go for a believable one, but fuck it, this lady alright thought he was some sort of angel, though from her tone, he couldn’t tell if she was being purely sardonic or somewhat serious. Maybe a mix of both. “I can heal him. Y’know, with angel powers? But I used them before he got injured, and there’s a cooldown. If he survives the cooldown, then I can help him.”
It wasn’t one of Vash’s best lies. In fact, it might rank among his ten worst lies, and he wasn’t even trying to be silly at the moment—he was just tired, and frayed at the edges. His smile was forced, and he could barely string a coherent thought around the pit of worry gnawing at his stomach.
“Well… Alright, then. I’m going to transfer him from the surgical theater to one of our patient rooms. After that, you’re welcome to hang around his bedside instead of skulking around out here.”
Vash felt relief sweep through him, mainly at the fact she wasn’t asking him any more questions. “Thank you, Doctor.”
“Dr. Maria,” she supplied.
“Do you need help with anything?” he asked, suddenly remembering that doctors normally charged for their services, and Wolfwood and Vash generally didn’t have deep pockets. “I—I don’t have a lot of money, but I can—”
Dr. Maria raised a hand and silenced him. “Look, that man in there… He matches the description of the man who brought John and Sarah back to their fathers last night. Even if you hadn’t shown up on my doorstep with wings, I’m still pretty sure I’d go to hell if I charged you all for medical care after saving two of our town’s kids. It’s on the house.”
Vash wasn’t sure what to say.
It wasn’t the act of kindness alone; as much as Vash was used to cruelty, he also knew humans had great capacity for selflessness, as well—it never ceased to touch him, but it didn’t surprise him.
But… He should’ve known Wolfwood, the kind man he was, had saved those children where Vash failed to.
“Thank you,” Vash said, sincerely.
“Don’t mention it,” Dr. Maria replied, waving him off. “Now, make sure to stay out of the way while we transfer him.”
“I can help?”
Dr. Maria eyed him for a second, then sighed. “Sure, come on.”
They got Wolfwood settled in a regular patient’s room, with Vash doing the heavy lifting (quite literally) while Dr. Maria supervised closely. He felt his heart might stop in his chest as he took Wolfwood, still unconscious and bandaged and looking oh so small and fragile and mortal, into his arms.
He only relaxed once Wolfwood was settled into a bed, safely tucked away in one of Dr. Maria’s patient rooms. There were four total beds in the room, separated by curtains, but there were no other patients occupying the other three beds.
“My only patients right now are him and about half the local militia,” Dr. Maria commented. “They’re in the other room, though. You’re welcome to use one of the beds, unless Jean, our last militia guy, falls and breaks their leg or something. We don’t have regular guest beds, unfortunately.”
“Thank you,” Vash replied. It was about the only thing he’d been able to say for a solid ten minutes.
She just shrugged, then left the room.
Vash settled in at Wolfwood’s bedside, pulling a chair close. He looked… Well, he looked better than he had before, when he was bleeding out and drowning in his own blood back at the facility, but it wasn’t by much. He’d been changed into a simple hospital gown, with bandages peeking out from underneath his collar. Smaller bandages were slapped over his neck and cheek—small lacerations, no doubt.
Vash wasn’t an idiot. There’d been no one else in that room, and the injuries were just the right size to have been caused by his feathers.
Wolfwood had almost died because of him.
Vash was so, so glad he hadn’t. If he had, Vash might as well have crawled into his grave with him, but even that would’ve been a fate too kind for him. He didn’t know how he would even begin to make it up to Wolfwood.
But… Whatever Wolfwood wanted, it was his. Vash would make things right, if he even could. Anything Wolfwood wanted…
Well, for now, there was just getting Wolfwood through the next half-day or so. Once he was recovered, Vash could worry about making amends then.
Vash settled in to wait at Wolfwood’s bedside.
-/-/-
When Nicholas started to come to, the first thing he was aware of was the feeling of a pressure on his chest, almost like a weight. He blinked, awareness slowly coming back to him. Breathing felt strange, like someone was laying on his chest and restricting his breathing. A tube was running down his throat, scraping against it uncomfortably.
Just on the edge of his awareness, too—there was an ache, the beginnings of pain that he wasn’t fully conscious of. He could recognize the feeling of pain killers any day, and he must be on the shitty stuff if he could still feel some of it.
Nicholas looked down, expecting to find something sitting on his chest, but there was nothing. Just a plain white sheet, an ordinary hospital gown, and a tube running from the mask strapped to his face to a machine next to the bed.
Ah. He was in a hospital, then.
The memories floated back, slow enough that Nicholas would blame whatever drugs they had him on for it. The facility, saving the kids, finding Vash—
He felt his heart skip a beat at the memory, and it was that moment he chose to glance to his side. He found a head of blond hair there, a familiar head pooled on his arms as Vash snored away on his bed.
Any other day, and Nicholas would’ve softened at the sight. He knew, logically, that Vash must’ve been the one who saved him, that Vash must’ve been the one who dragged him out of the facility once he’d gotten that collar off, that Vash must’ve been with him this whole time, worried sick for his sake.
But it wasn’t any other day, and the sight of Vash, so soon after facing his fear of him and being ripped to shreds as thanks—
Right in the middle of an unfamiliar place, with medical equipment strapped to his face and arm—
Trapped, can’t breathe, in danger—
Nicholas was nothing more than a terrified child again, the plaything of a god who bent and broke him on a whim.
He scrambled up, barely registering it as the heart monitor next to beeped rapidly as though it was distressed. He quickly grew tangled in the oxygen tube, the IV line, and whatever other nonsense they had him hooked up to, and the way his breathing was coming in rapid pants that did nothing to ease the ache in his chest and lungs.
It felt impossible to breathe around the tube, so Nicholas ripped it out, along with the IV line.
Vash was stirring, sitting up and staring at him with wide, startled blue eyes.
Logically, Nicholas knew he needed to get a fucking grip, that he couldn’t freak out like this in front of Vash, because of Vash. It’d hurt him. Deeply. Irrevocable. It was something Nicholas would never be able to fix, never be able to take back.
Meryl was already terrified of Vash. He didn’t need that from Nicholas, too.
Too bad the logical part of his brain had checked out completely, overtaken by pure panic as a scream ripped itself from Nicholas’s throat.
When Vash started towards him, thinking something was wrong, that he had to help—he hadn’t realized it was him yet, but when Vash reached for him, all Nicholas could see was clawed hands and feathers, all he could hear was snarling, all he could feel was needles in his skin and molten lead pumping through his veins.
Nicholas did the only thing he could think to do, the only thing that would assuage that part of his brain drowning out everything else.
He bolted from the bed.
Nicholas didn’t get far when his body betrayed him, not even making it to the door before his knees buckled on him. He barely even processed it as the world tipped around him, his senses dulled enough by the drugs that he didn’t react in time to catch himself.
He didn’t need to, though. Warm hands were on him in a second, cushioning his fall before he got a chance to crash to the floor.
He looked up, finding that it was Vash who had grabbed him.
Suddenly, the warmth of his hands was scalding.
His heart hammering his chest, breaths coming in choked gasps, the vague sense that Vash was trying to talk to him when all he could hear was inhuman snarling, Nicholas ripped himself away from Vash and scrambled back. Vash let him go, and Nicholas pushed himself back and away from him until his back hit something—another bed, he realized.
“Wolfwood!”
Vash sounded desperate, panicked. Almost as terrified as Nicholas felt.
Then, someone else was in the room—Nicholas didn’t recognize her, but he saw the lab coat, the needle, her angry shouts. She wasn’t Vash, but she wasn’t safe either. Too many memories, of being pinned to tables and cut and picked apart and put back together and drugged and poisoned and changed .
Nicholas snarled at her as she approached, and when she didn’t stop, he lunged for her.
He wouldn’t look back on it proudly, because he knew he was going for her throat. Snap her neck and run, so he’d never be subjected to the experiments that turned him into a monster ever again. Kill, to protect himself from a fate he’d earned, like the selfish ingrate he was.
Later, he’d be thankful that Vash bodily slammed into him, pinning him to the bed as Nicholas thrashed and struggled against his hold. He was less grateful for the pinch in his neck, the familiar feel of sedatives hitting his system even as he fought their effects.
“Don’t,” he sobbed. “Please, don’t… I just… I wanna go home.”
He was barely cognizant of what he was saying, where he was. He babbled all the same, even though he knew his words would be useless. The hot tears on his cheeks would move no one. There was no escape. There never was. The Eye of Michael has its claws in him, its unforgiving and uncaring god claiming his flesh. His body wasn’t his, his blood to spill on the altar and his sinew and muscle to be carved as offering.
There was only one way to free himself.
As consciousness slipped from him, Nicholas couldn’t decide if never waking up again was the kinder fate.
-/-/-
“...Well, he didn’t pull any stitches, at least,” Dr. Maria sighed, finally emerging from Wolfwood’s sickroom.
Vash was, again, sitting against the wall outside. His arm was raw and aching from where Wolfwood had clawed at him, but dull human nails couldn’t do much damage. He knew it’d heal within a day, so he’d declined any treatment for it.
He didn’t say anything.
“I changed his pain medication,” she said. “It’s possible he just reacted poorly to the mix of drugs. It’s rare, but it can happen. I also added an anti-anxiety medication into the mix, to keep him a little calmer while he’s recovering.”
Vash just sighed. He managed to muster a smile, though it felt like he had to crack his face in half to do so. “Thank you. Can I see him?”
“Have you slept? Eaten?” Dr. Maria asked.
“I slept a little bit,” Vash supplied. He had only dozed off for a little bit, but given Wolfwood’s state when he woke up… He’d been unprepared. It took him too long to react.
He wasn’t planning on sleeping at Wolfwood’s bedside again after that. He needed to be awake, vigil. He couldn’t slack off, not when this was his fault.
Vash wasn’t even sure he should be staying. He wasn’t a moron. Wolfwood had been terrified of him. It’d be cruel to stick so closely to him, after what he’d done, after how he’d hurt him. Wolfwood was scared of him, and he had every right to be.
But he couldn’t shake the image of Wolfwood, terrified out of his mind and groggy with his pain medication, lunging for Dr. Maria. Vash didn’t know who he’d thought she was in that moment, but he could make a guess. Wolfwood had never responded well to doctors before, either.
Probably too similar to scientists, if he had to guess—both clinical, both using similar instruments, but the two having wildly different goals. Still, trying to explain that to a panicked, trauma ridden mind was difficult. Vash knew that from experience, even the doctors of Ship Three enough to bring to mind a tube with a girl, dismembered and displayed like a framed butterfly.
Vash couldn’t fault Wolfwood for his fear of doctors without making a massive hypocrite of himself.
There were too many stressors, and that was the last thing Wolfwood needed. It would be better for him if Vash wasn’t here, if Dr. Maria wasn’t a doctor—but Vash needed to make sure she was safe, at least. If Wolfwood accidentally hurt her… Well, it was unlikely in Vash’s opinion, but if it happened, Wolfwood would never forgive himself for it.
It also meant he was more likely to die without her medical care.
“Next time you go in,” Vash asked, “can you… maybe not wear your coat?”
Dr. Maria raised an eyebrow and looked down at herself. “My coat? What’s wrong with my coat?”
“He hasn’t had great experiences with doctors before,” Vash explained, deciding it was best to leave it at that. It wasn’t actually doctors, it was scientists or doctors who’d forsaken their oaths, but to a panicked Wolfwood? The difference would be a hard sell. “It’ll probably help him be a little calmer if you don’t look like a doctor, at least.”
“Oh. Well, yeah, I can do that,” she replied. “I’ll still have to administer medication and all that.”
Only until I give him the serum , Vash thought, but he smiled. “I’ll be there, and… He’s not dangerous, I promise. He was just scared, earlier.”
“Oh, I think he’s plenty dangerous, but who on No Man’s Land isn’t in some way?” Dr. Maria chuckled. “I’m not scared of your friend, don’t worry. I’ve treated murders and criminals before, and that wasn’t the first time a patient has… Well, not taken kindly to me. I can take a few bruises for a scared, injured man willing to stick out his neck for our kids any day of the week.”
“Thank you,” Vash breathed. “I’d rather you not take any bruises at all, though.”
It could also be a lot worse than a few petty bruises, though Vash didn’t mention that part.
Dr. Maria just nodded. “Well, he’ll be out for a few hours, at least. Holler if you need anything.”
Vash just nodded, slinking back into the room like a dog that had been kicked out sneaking back in again. Wolfwood was quiet, fast asleep on the patient bed. The IV line and oxygen tube had been replaced on his person, and the heart monitor sounded off at a steady, healthy interval.
Vash settled across the room this time, tucking himself next to the curtain between patient beds so he could pull it shut if he noticed Wolfwood stirring. That way, at least he wouldn’t see him, and maybe with the pain medication he was on, he might not notice him.
It was the best Vash could offer Wolfwood. Maybe, between that and asking Dr. Maria not to wear her coat… Maybe they could avoid scaring Wolfwood so bad again.
…He could only hope.
Either way, as soon as Wolfwood was safe, Vash knew he had to leave. He couldn’t be selfish—mission or not, Wolfwood didn’t deserve to be stuck with someone he was terrified of.
No one did, but after everyone Wolfwood had been through?
Vash wouldn’t add to it.
The correct choice was to run and never look back, no matter how much it made Vash’s heart ache to do so.
-/-/-
Nicholas woke, and when he did, he felt… Well, normal.
He remembered coming to a few times, but everything was foggy. He knew he’d gotten hurt. He knew he was in a hospital, or what passed for a hospital in the sticks. And as he blinked up at the ceiling, glancing down to himself and finding a chest free of bandages and injuries, he knew someone must’ve intervened. He knew who, and he knew how.
Vash must’ve given him another dose.
They must’ve cut whatever painkillers or drugs they’d had him on before, now that he was healed. And without the medication, he was finally emerging from the brain fog.
He sat up. His throat still ached, and he still felt vaguely sore. It was still iles better than having gotten mauled by—
The thought stuck in his throat, and Nicholas swallowed around it.
Right. He’d been… Vash had been stuck all inhuman, growling and snarling at him, because of a shock collar those fucking freaks back at that facility had stuck on him. Nicholas had found him, after rescuing and returning the kids to their parents. He’d tried to get the collar off, only to…
Right. The wings, the feathers—they were just as much weapons as Vash’s fangs and claws, even if Nicholas had decided to brave them while avoiding the more obvious dangers.
He’d been an idiot.
“Hey, Blondie,” Nicholas croaked, searching the room.
It was empty.
A sinking feeling settled in the pit of Nicholas’s gut. It was tainted by relief, the assurance that he was alone, that Vash wasn’t there. He was alone, so he was safe. He was alone, so he was lonely.
He hated it. He was relieved by it. He hated that he was relieved by it.
Vash wouldn’t run out on him while he was injured, but now?
Vague memories swam back to him, of him waking, of being Vash there—it was all a jumble from there, but he remembered the fear. He remembered trying to run from Vash.
Vash’s thing was running. Nicholas’s thing was chasing.
If Nicholas had tried to run from Vash… Well, there was no reality where Vash stuck around after that.
Nicholas groaned as he pulled himself out of bed. He felt achy and stiff, because not even the serum could cure a full day or more of being stuck in a bed. There were no IV lines or oxygen tubes to rip out this time, and his clothes and bag were left on the patient bed next to him.
He got dressed quickly, trying to shake the stiffness from his muscles. He couldn’t find the Punisher in the room, so he stepped outside, bag slung over one shoulder.
“Oh, you’re awake.”
He blinked, finding a woman descending the staircase. She was of average height, average build, worn clothes—nothing about her stuck out, but Nicholas wasn’t particular looking, either.
He raised a hand in a way. “Mornin’. Do I have you to thank for my miraculous recovery?”
“Hardly,” she snorted. “I didn’t do as much as your friend with the magic angel healing powers.”
Angel healing powers? Nicholas might not be familiar with all that Vash was definitely capable of, but even his stupid ass made the connection that “magic angel healing powers” was probably a moronic way of covering up Nicholas’s serum. If Vash had still been vaguely inhuman when he showed up, then yeah, it was probably easier to just explain any bullshit through that.
“And where is this angel friend of mine?” Nicholas asked. “He didn’t happen to leave a giant cross anywhere, did he?”
Man, he sounded ridiculous. They were quite the pair, the vaguely angelic horror made flesh and the fake priest assassin.
“He left about twelve hours ago,” the woman supplied. “You’ve been conscious a few times, on and off, but I had you on a pretty strong cocktail of stuff after you first woke up. He left once he healed you, and I’ve been weaning you off the drugs since. You might still be experience some of the side-effects of the withdrawals, like—”
Nicholas waved her off. “It’s fine. The big cross thing?”
“Outside,” she sighed. “Your angel friend brought it back for you before heading out.”
She seemed tired, which Nicholas would probably attribute to having a weird day or two. That wasn’t uncommon for the people they met, but if it meant he would walk out of here, no questions asked, then fine.
Nicholas didn’t have a lot of time to waste. Vash already had a twelve hour start on him, so he needed to book it. The only real advantage that Nicholas had was experience in catching him and the fact that Vash couldn’t drive for shit, which meant he’d either be traveling by foot or hitchhiking, unless he managed to secure a thomas somewhere, which Nichoals doubted. He knew the funds Vash would be working with, after all, and while Nicholas knew he wasn’t above stealing, he also knew Vash didn’t like depriving people of their livelihoods. In a town like this? Vash wouldn’t take a thomas, not when it meant someone wouldn’t be eating.
“Thanks,” he said, already making his way to the door. “Appreciate all the help.”
“Call us even,” she replied, “for saving our kids.”
Nicholas started, almost tripping over his own feet. He hadn’t been expecting the thanks, not when it was old news by now. “I… Yeah, no problem. Have a good day.”
With that awkward farewell, Nicholas ducked out of the house. Sure enough, the Punisher was resting against the wall of the front porch, exactly where Vash had probably left it before running off. Nicholas hauled it up by one of its straps, then set out to get Angelina II.
He had an idiot to find.
-/-/-
Tracking Vash was fairly easy. He was a striking figure, one people tended to remember with his flashy coat, dorky shades, and ridiculous hair. Plenty of people had seen him leave, which gave Nicholas a direction to set out. He was on foot, so there was only so far into the desert he’d be able to get alone.
As Nicholas drove through the sands, he had plenty of time to think. He tried not to, but the thoughts came anyway.
He was still scared of Vash.
That was something he couldn’t deny anymore, not to himself or Vash. He’d been trying to hide it, and it’d bitten him in the ass.
He also wasn’t about to let Vash run off by himself.
It wasn’t just for his mission, or some weird sense of obligation. The idea of Vash, some unknowable being capable of destroying July on a whim, terrified him. Nicholas hated feeling out of control, like his life wasn’t his own, and that had been his entire existence, handed from one uncaring holder to another.
Vash was no different—a being Nicholas couldn’t control, who could decide his fate for him and wrest any semblance of control Nicholas had over his own life from him.
And yet.
That idea of Vash was also irreconcilable in his head with the Vash who loved salmon, the Vash who would ramble about inane topics, the Vash who would play with children, the Vash who would fall asleep at his bedside when he was hurt, the Vash who would bicker with him, the Vash who would snore to his back and warm the room when there was only one bed.
Nicholas didn’t have a lot of control in his life. He’d thought getting the mission to follow Vash around and try to keep him alive would just be exchanging one master for another yet again, but…
Vash and Knives might both be unknowable beings with incomprehensible power, but they weren’t the same. They might both be capable of destroying cities, but only one of them actually wanted humanity dead. Only one of them would fall asleep at his bedside and shed tears for him.
Vash might ignite an old, primal fear in Nicholas, but he was also the brightest damn person in his life.
He was worth a little fear, and the last thing Nicholas wanted was for things to end because he’d had a panic attack on the guy. That wasn’t Vash’s problem, and it wasn’t his fault, no matter what he might think.
Nicholas didn’t know if he could make things right, but he had to at least try, for more than just his mission. He knew, eventually, this would have to end. It wouldn’t end happily, most likely, but…
Nicholas, at least, didn’t want it to end like this.
-/-/-
It took three weeks to find Vash.
Nicholas had to admit, the man was crafty, but he wasn’t subtle. He’d apparently gone in a different direction than he’d been seen leaving once he was out of sight of the town, which meant Nicholas had been setting out in the wrong direction for the first week. Unfortunately for Vash, he was also a very loud individual, and it only took one story about the Humanoid Typhoon accidentally blowing up a warehouse in a town a stone’s throw from Octovern to tip Nicholas off.
It’d taken him another two weeks after that to track Vash down. He might’ve made himself damn hard to find, but Nicholas had over a decade of experience tracking down targets who didn’t want to be found.
He found Vash in a bar. It was late, and from the number of empty glasses in front of Vash, he was on a bender even without Nicholas being there to challenge him to drinking contests. Nicholas noticed Vash before Vash noticed Nicholas, so he slunk into a corner and watched him.
Good thing he’d left the Punisher back in his hotel room, otherwise there was no way Vash, even after drinking himself into a stupor, wouldn’t have noticed him.
Vash was drinking alone, pillowing his head in his arms when he wasn’t taking a shot or downing a beer. The bartender hadn’t cut him off yet, but Vash also wasn’t chatting him up. He wasn’t trying to make small talk or flirt with any of the patrons sitting next to him, either.
No, he was just slumped on the stool, staring at the wall.
It was so unlike Vash that Nicholas almost thought he’d been noticed, that Vash was playing up his despondent mood. It wouldn’t be the first time; he did that when he wanted to try and jokingly sob his way into getting Nicholas to pay for him (it only worked sometimes).
It also told Nicholas that Vash wasn’t drinking to be social.
Having seen enough, Nicholas pushed himself off the wall and started marching towards Vash.
He ignored the pit of anxiety forming in his stomach, getting stuck as a lump in his throat. His instincts screamed at him to run, to get away from an unknowable and uncontrollable disaster the likes of which he’d never be able to protect himself from, never be able to fully control, and never be able to fully predict.
Nicholas swallowed it, reminding himself of the reason he’d come here, of the feeling of cold and quiet nights spent traveling by himself, bereft of the normal warmth he’d grown so used to. If Nicholas was picking his poison, he’d take the fear over the loneliness.
It was enough. It had to be enough.
“Oi, Blondie,” Nicholas said flatly, as he closed the final bit of distance between them.
It was only then that Vash noticed him, turning watery, tired eyes his way. They widened, pure panic flashing through Vash’s features.
He was on his feet in an instant, bolting in the next.
Nicholas had seen this coming. With how drunk Vash was, all he needed to do was stick his leg into the path of Vash’s escape at the last second, and he was toppling into the nearest empty table in a tangle of gangly limbs.
“Seriously?” Nicholas put his hand on his hips, rounding Vash and being careful to put himself between him and the door. “I spent like, what, three weeks to come and find you? And this is how you greet me? Runnin’ off the second you see me?”
Vash seemed to recover somewhat, a smile so fake it hurt to look at sliding into place. “Ehehe, sorry, Wolfwood! I guess I was just surprised?”
“Sure. Surprised.” Nicholas stooped to offer Vash his hand, and Vash stared at it for a moment. He reached forward, then stopped, his hand hanging in the air as his uncertainty chipped his awful mask.
Nicholas rolled his eyes and closed the final bit of distance himself, grasping the warmth of Vash’s hand and pulling to his feet. He then righted the table Vash had fallen into, thankful to find it wasn’t broken—Vash’s tab was probably going to cost a pretty double already.
When he turned, Vash was gone, and Nicholas was swearing.
Of course Nicholas ended up having to pay his tab before leaving, a whopping hundreds of double dollars. It nearly wiped out most of his savings, and it wasn’t like he had time to do odd jobs to build it back up, not when it meant Vash could put more and more distance between them. Maybe that’d been the goal, ditching Nicholas and sticking him with the tab.
As if that would stop him. He’d traveled cheap before, and he’d travel cheap again. It just meant more nights sleeping under the moons of No Man’s Land.
If Nicholas hadn’t been keen on finding Vash before, he definitely was now.
-/-/-
The lights flicked on in the hotel room, and Vash stared at him like a deer caught in headlights. Nicholas waved at him, and when Vash turned on a heel to try and bolt out of the room, Nicholas was on him in a second.
He didn’t take any chances this time. Nicholas tackled Vash to the ground before he could make it out the door, ignoring the undignified squawk Vash let out as he went down. Nicholas was prepared for this—he had some of the Punisher’s spare buckles on him, which he used to bind Vash’s hands behind his back as he kicked the door to the hotel room shut.
“Wolfwood,” Vash whined, “this is so mean!”
“Wouldn’t have to do this if I trusted you not to run off the second I take my eyes off you,” Nicholas grumbled. This time, he was relieved to find the sight of Vash hadn’t incited any panic in him—it was hard to be panicked by an awkward gangle of limbs you were tying up, after all, cosmic horror or no. “Why do you keep runnin’ off, anyway?”
“Well! I don’t know!”
That was a lie, and they both knew it.
“We both know damn well why you ran,” Nicholas sighed, pulling himself off of Vash now that he was safely bound. He locked the hotel room door; he knew the window was locked already, so he didn’t bother with that.
Just a locked door or window wouldn’t be enough to stop Vash. He had already kicked himself up into a seated position, dutifully keeping his hands bound behind his back despite the fact they were both aware of the fact he could get out of it if he wanted. There was no universe in which Nicholas could keep Vash if he truly didn’t want to be kept.
Good thing Nicholas wasn’t trying to keep him. Vash wasn’t his to hold, wasn’t his to let go of.
That being said, he’d be damned if he just let him walk out of his life because Vash was convinced it would be the best thing for Nicholas. His agency, his choices, had been taken from him since he was a kid, when his father had taken his mother from him, when he’d been placed in some random orphanage, when he’d been taken by the Eye of Michael.
There were only brief flashes of him taking a step for himself, by himself—his father’s death, letting himself grow comfortable in Hopeland Orphanage, befriending Livio, pointing a gun at Knives, falling in love with—
He had so little to call his own. Vash didn’t get to decide what was good for him, whether Nicholas wanted him to leave. Because he didn’t. That was the last thing he wanted.
Even if it would end in disaster, even if this would just mean that Nicholas was twisting the knife, he wanted something for himself, for once in his life. And fuck Vash, he was the one who’d started to give him hope for a brighter tomorrow he had no right to. He might as well take responsibility and stick around to see it with him, if Nicholas could even hold onto it.
He fell to his knees in front of Vash, bringing himself down to his level. Vash looked startled, like he wanted to run, even more so when Nicholas reached forward to cup his face in his hands.
“Wolfwood—”
“Shut up,” he grumbled, tracing his thumb over that little mole under Vash’s left eye. “You’re not that scary.”
It was a lie, and they both knew it, but it was something Nicholas wanted.
Vash was terrifying, unknowable, uncontrollable—but wasn’t that always the case, when it came to putting your heart in someone else’s hands?
Loving someone was always a leap of faith, and it could always lead to disaster. It could end with a knife in the back just as easily as idyllic happily ever after. Maybe Vash was a bit more powerful than most, but Nicholas couldn’t exactly say he was much different, if compared with the average person.
The important bit was that, deep down, anxieties aside, Nicholas trusted Vash. He’d never hurt him. Never willingly.
For him, that was enough.
“Wolfwood…” Vash’s eyes glistened between Nicholas’s hands. “You don’t have to…”
“I’m not,” Nicholas assured. “Forcing myself, I mean. I… I want to be here. I’m not… Okay, you’re a little scary—”
When Vash’s eyes widened at that, when he tried to pull out of Nicholas’s grip, he just clamped down, practically smushing Vash’s face between his hands.
“No, stop, lemme finish—you’re a little scary, sure, but so am I. I ain’t pretendin’ I’m completely immune to your whole schtick, as much as you try to make it out like you’re harmless,” Nicholas said, loosening his grip on Vash now that he had his attention again. “But… I’m fine. You’re fine.”
“I hurt you,” Vash croaked. “You were… You were terrified. Of me.”
“Yeah? And?” Despite himself, Nicholas leaned in, and for once, Vash didn’t try to run from him. Their foreheads brushed one another, their breath mingling in the space between them. It felt intimate, probably more intimate than Nicholas had ever been with anyone in his life, but he didn’t have the time to think about that. “Remember that time I shot you?”
“I jumped in front of one of your bullets,” Vash protested. “That’s not the same.”
“That time you had a panic attack on me one time?”
Vahs looked sheepish at that. “I mean… I wasn’t expecting to wake up in… Hey.”
“You didn’t blame me when those things happened, and I ain’t blamin’ you now. The only one blamin’ you is you, but it’s not your fault,” Nicholas said. “You’re being an idiot.”
“But I—”
Nicholas did the only thing he could think of to shut Vash up. He tilted his head, mashing their lips together.
It wasn’t Nicholas’s first kiss, but it was the first he enjoyed, despite the poor timing, the unspoken feelings, the awkward and clumsy movements—Nicholas from inexperience and Vash from surprise. Vash went stiff against him, until he relaxed, closing his eyes.
Nicholas’s hands slipped from Vash’s face to his shoulders, and he pulled back. He felt starstruck, even more so when Vash opened his eyes and turned a questioning gaze on him.
“That’s… That’s it,” Nicholas said. “You… You were trying to help, and you got hurt too. Quit blamin’ yourself. Quit denyin’ yourself things ‘cause you think it’s better for everyone, ‘cause you think you need to be punished.”
“It’s not…” Vash chewed on his lip for a moment. “I just… I want you to be happy, Wolfwood. Are you sure…?”
“Stay here,” Nicholas said, unable to voice the fact he was happiest with Vash, goofing off or traveling or fighting together. A little bit of fear, one bad experience, wouldn’t change that. “All I need is for you to stay with me.”
The fear wasn’t going away, at least not soon or not quickly, but if Vash left, then it never would. Nicholas could only change it slowly, one moment at a time, by solidifying this Vash in his mind—this Vash who let himself be bound for Nicholas, this face who let Nicholas kiss him, this Vash who stared at him with adoration, this Vash who was warm under his hands.
Nicholas had chosen so few things in his life.
But he was choosing Vash.