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No Rain	By : blynkin108 Category: +S to Z > Trigun Views: 4334 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Trigun, nor any of the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
- 1
- 2
Disclaimer: Nope, don’t own anything except a POS computer and POS car. I don’t even own my living space.

A/N: Okay, since a good third of some of these chapters were missing after the last AFF crash, they’ve been uploaded again. Just as a reminder, or if you’re new to this fic, Nick is Japanese, and I’ve used brackets ([]) to denote when he is speaking in Japanese and I don’t know how to say it because I don’t SPEAK Japanese. So there. ^.^

~No Rain~

+I hope he doesn’t find me here.+ I thought as I poured myself another glass of wine. I’d picked out the seediest bar I could find that was as far away from the hotel as I could get. The place didn’t even have a sign out front. If I was going to avoid him tonight, this was the place to do it. I’d even stopped carrying my luggage around, opting instead for an easily concealable handgun in my belt. Not the most convenient place for it, but it didn’t draw attention like the cross-punisher. I’d figured that one out a couple nights ago. However, this hadn’t stopped him from locating me with surprising ease. The man was like a goddamned bloodhound. He’d probably just followed his nose. After all, I’d drank so much liquor over the past four days, I probably reeked like a distillery.
I picked up tonight’s bottle. It felt surprisingly light. I sloshed the contents around and discovered that the damn thing was three-quarters empty. +When the hell had that happened?+ I scowled at the bottle and topped off my glass. The scowl was returned by the short, stocky barkeep who’d begun to stack chairs.
I’d come here tonight with the idea that all I was going to do was pick up a bottle and go back to my room tonight. But I’d been side-tracked by one of the serving girls – a cute little blonde – and stayed. Damn me and my preoccupation with blonds! They got me into more trouble… Which was part of the reason I was sitting here in front of a full ashtray and a nearly-empty bottle of wine.
+I’m so pathetic.+ Yet, I couldn’t seem to do anything about it. And to top it off, the blond I was currently hiding from was the same one that buys the second – and third – bottle and then finishes the intoxication process by hauling my sorry carcass up to my room and throwing me unceremoniously into bed, with the threat of coming back for me in the morning. There were some nights it sounded more like a promise, though. And there were some nights I wished he wouldn’t have to come back at all because he’d already be there, arm flung over my chest, breathing gently in his sleep. It was getting more and more difficult to tamp down the little demon that spawned those thoughts, and last night I had come dangerously close to asking him to stay, even though I was pretty sure that would be a Bad Idea. I’d been having a lot of those, lately, and they all seemed to center around him. Bad ideas usually got me in a lot of trouble, and I was trying to avoid trouble with the Typhoon as much as possible. And I was pretty sure he wouldn’t take too kindly to my ideas, anyway. I kept hoping it was just the overabundance of alcohol, but it kept getting increasingly difficult to think about him without my mind adding yet another room to my mansion in the gutter. It was bad enough that I flirted with the waitresses. I didn’t need to be side-tracked every goddamn day by his hands, his throat, his lips. +God, his lips…+ I gritted my teeth. This was getting ridiculous. There were some days I hated myself. And the rest of them tended to center around a bar, a bottle, and more cigarettes. The nights I reserved for him.
I had the sneaky suspicion that I’d been waiting for him. He was the closest thing I had to a… I hesitated to call him a friend. That was something entirely different. It had taken me a while to realize that not everyone’s definition of ‘friend’ was as complicated, or as debased, as mine. I eventually started using it in commonplace expressions, but I still wasn’t entirely comfortable with it. So no, he wasn’t a friend, but this was something more than an acquaintance, too. Heh. Maybe I should start calling him ‘buddy,’ instead of Needle-noggin. Of course, if I did that, he’d probably look at me like I’d grown a third head. Needle-noggin he would stay. Besides, it irritated him, which made me happy in a perverse sort of way. He was always so damn cheerful; it was good to know that something could get under his skin. Unfortunately, in the process, he’d managed to get under mine as well. I’d probably still be here in this bar waiting for him even if I wasn’t getting paid for it. I didn’t even really know why. There was just…something about him. That sounded terrible, but I couldn’t think of another way to explain it, even to myself. God help me if I had to explain it to…anyone else. And I certainly didn’t want to explain it to the ones who were paying me at the moment.
I hate my job. At first it wasn’t so bad, hell, I’d almost enjoyed it, really. All I did was drive around trailing after him. And even after Angelina had kicked the proverbial bucket, I wasn’t all that pissed. But lately, I’d really grown to despise my employer. And my employment. I don’t like being out of the loop on important information, and there were some things about my current mission that had definitely been omitted from the job description. Like how the hell I was supposed to even complete the damn mission when all I seemed to do anymore was drink.
At least I’d nursed the wine out tonight. This was only my first bottle. Any other night, and I’d be well on my way to the bottom of the second. On a particularly good night, I’d be at the bottom of the third. It’s probably a good thing he’d been taking me to breakfast. When left to my own devices, I’d wake up with a bottle and fall asleep with one, too. It didn’t exactly fix anything, but I could forget about my problems for a while. In many ways, the haze of drunkenness was preferable to whatever it was that passed for reality around here. I didn’t really want to go around completely trashed for the rest of my natural life, but that seemed to be the way things were going. The fact that I was even considering that possibility was a bad sign.
And that was probably all his fault, too. After all, he did buy at least one bottle of Wild Turkey every night this past week. Did he prefer it when I was incoherent? It would make sense. If I was incapacitated, he could scurry off under cover of darkness and leave. For some strange reason, he hadn’t yet. Had, in fact, been out looking for me. But, he was later tonight than usual. Maybe he’d finally up and left. Which was a great relief and a great annoyance all at once. I’d have to do actual work, dammit, and it was all his fault again. Because if it wasn’t for him, I’d still be Home. If it wasn’t for him, I would have never had to answer the summons. If it wasn’t for him…I stopped. If it wasn’t for him, those kids at Home would still be starving, and I’d be out chasing down the Nebraska Family. Again. So, here I sat, ashtray full, wine bottle nearly empty. I’d gotten myself into a terrible little tangle now, hadn’t I? It’s a little degrading to have the same person be the cause and the enabler of my getting drunk. Dignity for sale, anyone? Priced to move. Maybe I should just go, sleep it off, and start the hunt in the morning. No good losing the little bastard.
As if my thoughts had summoned him, he walked in. Vash the Stampede. Whereas I did my damnedest to blend in, with varying degrees of success, Vash stood out like a sore thumb. A big, red sore thumb. It made me wonder why it was so bloody hard to find him sometimes. One would think that a long red coat riddled with bullet holes and a spiky blond hairdo would be pretty easy to spot. I mean, he looked like a giant, upside-down, walking broom for Christ’s sake. But it really sort of fit him, considering he liked everybody to think he was as mentally challenged as said broom. Which wasn’t true, but it was as good a mask as any I’d ever come up with. Better than mine, actually. I couldn’t even fool the Demented Duo, and they definitely weren’t the sharpest crayons in the box. Made me wonder why that broom-headed idiot hadn’t called me on it yet. Knowing him, he was probably saving it for some special occasion, like New Year’s or my birthday or something. Not that I even knew when my birthday was, anyways. Not that there was anybody who really gave a shit, either. Now there was a pleasant thought. +Cheers.+ I downed another glassful of wine and started idly tracing patterns in the tabletop. The faux wood-grain of the table made some interesting pictures. Some tasteless person had carved ‘L + K 4EVER’ into it. How…idealistic. It was probably something he’d do, really, if he ever…yeah, right. The thought of him with any kind of girlfriend was just absurd. I was pretty damn sure there wasn’t a single woman on this planet who could put up with him that long. It was probably a miracle Meryl was still sane. Oh. Wait. Never mind. There were some days I almost felt sorry for Meryl. Almost. But it was her own damn fault, really. Honestly, it’s not like he needed some vicious shrew of a woman with short person syndrome gnawing on his ass. Truth be told, if she’d shown up on my doorstep, I might have just shot her in the kneecap and been done with her. Certainly would have made my life a little easier. But no, he had to save her life. Trust him to be impossible. Should have been his middle name. Vash the Impossible Stampede. Who was heading this way. +There goes my plan for avoiding him.+
“Hi,” he said, and reached up to scratch the back of his spiky blond head. He looked a little embarrassed, although I couldn’t imagine why. I lit another cigarette +I’ve already gone through two packs tonight?+ I thought with mild surprise, and nodded my acknowledgement of his presence. He stood there with that stupid smile plastered across his face waiting for me to say something. I didn’t.
“Hi,” he said again as he sat down across from me. I didn’t make eye contact. There was something vaguely uncomfortable about his eyes. Every time he looked at me, it was like he was looking into my soul. And my eternal soul wasn’t exactly something I wanted on display. Not that I wasn’t used to having my brain flayed open for examination, but ‘the plan’ didn’t involve me spilling my guts to that bonehead. I think what held me back, even more effectively than threats, was that I couldn’t see past his empty eyes. And frankly, that was just creepy. They were like mirrors that swallowed everything, and reflected nothing. Like falling down a well. Or a rabbit hole. But my name sure as hell wasn’t Alice, even if he did look like a Wonderland reject. Speaking of rejects, Tweedle Dumber over there at the counter was really starting to warm up those death-ray glares. I raised an eyebrow in his direction, then smiled nastily, enjoying my private joke. Put him in a beanie and suspenders and…okay yeah, I’d had too much to drink already if I was imagining the bartender in that getup. Time to get the hell outta Dodge.
“I think this place is about ready to close. My suggestion would be to get whatever it was you came here for and get out.” Considering he’d just walked in and sat down, maybe he didn’t realize this? But how can you walk into an empty bar and not notice? Especially with the bartender boring holes in your head with his eyes. He walked in here like he walks into everything, totally oblivious until it’s too late. How the hell did he survive before I showed up?
I prayed that he wouldn’t just start babbling at me, like he always did when he found me in a bar. It was always the same babble, too. I think there might have been a grand total of two topics of conversation. No, wait. ‘Conversation’ implies a two-way exchange. This was him talking at me. If it wasn’t his misadventures with the kids in town, it was the story of how I’d been discovered this time around. Meryl hadn’t been paying attention to where she was going because she was yelling at Vash, and her tomas had smacked itself in the face with the machine-gun end of my luggage. The poor beast had been so startled, not to mention hurt, that it had reared and launched Meryl into a nearby sand dune. That thought could usually bring a smile to my face, but after I’d heard it fifty times and could recite it verbatim… I swear, if he started that again, I’d have to leave. +Fuck it. I’m going to leave, anyway.+
I stood up and collected my mostly empty bottle of wine and pocketed the pack of cigarettes. There were only about six left in there, I’d have to pick up a pack tomorrow some time. +I smoked almost two whole packs in four hours. That has to be some kind of record or something…+
“Oh, come on Wolfwood. I don’t bother you that much, do I?” he asked. Heh. I would have thrown him some flippant remark out of sheer frustration, but I sensed that the question had been genuine. The caustic wit could wait for another time.
“No.” I paused. That was probably the most direct answer he’d ever gotten out of me. “But I think you bother him.” I motioned to the bartender who had begun to stack chairs.
Vash snorted. “Well, I’m about to go from ‘bastard nuisance’ to ‘paying customer’ instead of the other way around,” he glanced pointedly at me, “so he’ll just have to cope.” And exactly what was he implying? I hadn’t started a bar fight in…Well, okay, last night, but that doesn’t count because the guy had it coming to him. I’d overheard him talking about a very familiar character.
“You seen that red-coated guy walkin’ around lookin’ for a priest?” the guy had asked his group of drinking buddies. They were all sitting around a table in the middle of the bar, talking very publicly about very private things. Very loudly. Another guy at the table had piped up, “Yeah. He was in here makin’ a ruckus last night, Reggie. Somethin’ about a confession.”
“Wonder what he had to confess in such an all-fire hurry?” Reggie wondered very loudly, and then answered his own question. “That priest’s prob'ly ‘takin’ penance.’” He winked at his crew and they made distinct retching noises. Great place I’d chosen that night.
“Wouldn’t surprise me…” I didn’t let him finish his thought.
“What wouldn’t surprise you, chief?” Not only was he insulting Vash, he was insulting the church. I hadn’t realized I had that kind of job loyalty, in either case. But his comment had touched off an innate need to beat the hell out of anyone who insulted Vash. And dammit, he was insulting me too. He’d just said exactly the wrong thing in the wrong bar at the wrong damn time.
Reggie reared to his feet and looked down on me. I hadn’t realized it before, but upon close inspection, Reggie was about three times my size. This would take a bit of doing on my part.
“I said, it wouldn’t surprise me if that priest was takin’ more than a couple ‘hail marys’. What are you gonna do about it, pretty boy?” If I had been mildly perturbed before, I was downright pissed now. It didn't matter that I'd had more than one fantasy that involved Vash on his knees. But this was something entirely different. These men were talking about it as if it were...wrong. And, well, it was, but not in the way they were making it out to be.
“Pretty boy, am I?” Honestly, I’d never been called a pretty boy before, but I suppose it was only fair. He was a seven-fiel tall, four hundred pound ape. Compared to him, Meryl was pretty. I pondered this for a moment, then shoved my lit cigarette up his flared nostrils. As he backed away, swearing profusely and trying to extract the burning tobacco, I caught his chin with my heel in a very nearly vertical kick. If my legs had been any shorter, it wouldn’t have connected. That was the beginning of the end. Reggie’s buddies, who weren’t that much smaller than Reggie, rushed me. I grabbed the nearest beer bottle, overturned a table, and prepared to beat the living hell out of the brutes. It had been so long since I’d had a nice, relaxing bar brawl.
Not long after I’d managed to get the entire bar pissed at me, including the bartender when I snagged his toupee with a wayward beer bottle, somebody near the fringe of the maelstrom yelled, “Hey, look! It’s the red-coated pouf!” The cavalry had arrived. Reggie, who’d since recovered from my attack, but was still snorting ash, turned around and heaved some poor hapless drunk over his head at said ‘pouf.’ Vash easily ducked the projectile, and jumped right into the fray. I’d never seen somebody move like he did. He slid through the crowd like a snake through sand, nonchalantly taking down everybody in his path. I’d almost gotten the shit kicked out of me while I was watching him. He was that impressive.
We wound up standing back to back, surveying the destruction with satisfaction. If it hadn’t been a ragged scrap of rug, I would have been tempted to keep the bartender’s toupee as a souvenir.
“What the hell? Not that it wasn’t fun, but…” I hadn’t thought he’d be too pleased to hear about his ‘reputation,’ or mine, so I’d simply replied, “He had it comin’ to him.” He’d given me a once-over, taking in my disheveled state, and shrugged. Much like he was doing now.
“You should know by now that it’s never fun to drink alone. You could always finish that bottle in my room. If you want.”
In his room? In his room? This was a first. Well, it wouldn’t be the first time I’d been in his hotel room, but it would be the first time I’d been invited. Before I knocked on the door. This couldn’t mean what I thought it meant. Or, rather, what I hoped it meant. But I didn’t hope it meant that, did I? I may have joked about the idea of Vash with a girlfriend, but I seriously doubted I’d get very far, even if I tried. I mean, the man hit on every female that moved for God’s sake. However, that brought up the question of why he wasn’t very successful in his desperate attempts at seduction. His technique left much to be desired, but his looks more than made up for it. Elegant hands, sinfully long eyelashes, and that ass of his. Goddamn. If it wasn’t for the undeniable fact that Vash was male, he’d be almost…pretty. Was it possible…? But no. There was no way. I shook my head. Of all the stupid questions. He’d never given me a second glance, really. It’s not like I was obvious about it or anything, but Jesus, I’d nearly had my hand on his ass at the quick draw tournament and he hadn’t even… But what was I expecting? I’d made such a damn big show about Neil’s mom. She was pretty and all, but honestly nobody could hold a candle to Vash. And I guess that’s what was so irritating about him. I think the saying goes, “so close and yet so far.”
It was pretty apparent that Vash was expecting an actual answer to his unasked question. I grunted a grudging affirmative, more to the possibility of more liquor than the invite to his room, and went outside to wait for him. I’d had enough of that creepy little barkeep, thank you very much. The guy was shorter than Meryl for God’s sake, and had fists that looked more like blocks of granite than hands. The beady little eyes didn’t help his aura any, either. It was a wonder he was even able to attract customers. He sure as hell couldn’t attract anything else. I guess it wasn’t surprising, then, that I’d spent the evening with the…ahem…lower rungs of society. It was one of my favorite crowds, though, because it was easy to get lost among the filthy, sweaty bodies and the loud voices. Sometimes, humanity had a way of covering a person up until he couldn’t even hear himself in the crowd, anymore. Of course, the sands would eventually part and I’d be alone again, but it was different. It was the kind of alone that’s a relief after being around so many people. But I was never left alone long enough to enjoy it.
I lit a cigarette as I waited for Vash to buy whatever it was he wanted. Probably Wild Turkey. It was cheap, strong, and tasted like toilet water. The sad thing was, I was beginning to acquire a taste for the stuff. It was either that or the acute loss of my taste buds. I took a long drag. It was probably the taste buds.
Wild Turkey, aside from its questionable palatability, had the added bonus of coming in fucking huge bottles. Dallon-sized bottles. And Vash could drink three by himself and never feel it in the morning. Truth be told, I was a little jealous. There were times I wished I could drink like that. No matter how much he drank the night before, he’d be up before the rooster’s crow and chipper as a fucking chipmunk. And after he woke up, he’d knock on my door at some ungodly hour, like eight, and be all sunshine and smiles while he waited for me to clean up enough to be presentable before heading down to breakfast. Most of the time I attempted to get him to just leave me the fuck alone. Having a hangover with Vash the Stampede is not a treat. Ever. But, he kept pestering and prodding and coaxing until all hope of further sleep vanished. I even tried threatening him with bodily harm. His only response to that was, “I’d like to see you try.” In the end, I’d always go down to breakfast with him. Vash can be a persistent little bastard when he wants to be.
I lit another cigarette. What was taking him so long? I mean, did it really take, I checked my watch, thirteen minutes to buy booze in an empty bar? I should have chipped in, really. Considering all the times he’d shared with me, I probably owed him one. It’s never fun to drink alone, indeed. I hadn’t actually drank alone for a week. It had almost occurred tonight, but that plan had been blown to smithereens, along with every other plan I’d had for the evening. That was my own fault, though. I could have simply stormed out of the bar the minute I saw him coming. And I certainly didn’t need to be standing here, waiting for him to buy me more booze. I didn’t need the booze anyway. But I wanted it. Wanted it bad enough to give up the comfort of my own room.
God, I’m pathetic. I’d actually be able to eat something if I’d quit wasting all my money on a separate room. And booze. Can’t forget the booze. Or the cigarettes. I’d nearly drained November dry of all those willing to confess to a traveling priest. I had been lucky there were so many sinners in this city; as it is I only had barely enough for a bus ticket. Otherwise I would have already caught the bus out of here. Actually, I should have anyway, but I stayed. Maybe only because the ‘three amigos’ amused me. And maybe because I didn’t want to go back to the Mausoleum. Either way, if I didn’t leave, I’d end up sharing more than breakfast and booze with that broom-head, and that wasn’t something I was really looking forward to. Then there really wasn’t a place for me to run to, you know? Nowhere to go to escape his brutally cheery disposition. Or his brutally empty eyes. That, and it was either the floor or the bathtub, and that just wasn’t my idea of a good night’s sleep. Not that the mattresses around here were stuffed with feathers or anything, but they were more comfortable than the floor. And if I was going to sleep indoors, I wanted to be comfortable, dammit.
I dropped the cigarette butt on the bar’s porch and scrubbed it out with the toe of my boot. It was taking him way too long to get the booze. +Maybe I should just go back to my room and sleep. Wake up without a hangover for once.+ I was almost ready to step off the porch when Vash’s voice cut through the night air.
“Uh, hey, Wolfwood? Could you come here for a sec?” his voice had an edge to it. Oh God…now what did he want? Probably money. Leave it to him to try and buy expensive liquor for once when he can’t afford it.
“What is it, Needle-noggin?” I called back. I just wanted to see him squirm a little. It’s not like I wasn’t going to go in and pay for it. I may not have had much, but I had a little spare cash. Saturdays, I’d found, were the best days for selling confessions.
“Come in here and find out,” he ground out. He was speaking through clenched teeth. Hmm…maybe this wasn’t that he was just out of money. Best be on my guard. We still weren’t in the clear from the bounty hunters, and if word got out that he actually was the Sixty Billion Double Dollar Man, I wouldn’t put it past somebody to try and ‘bring him to justice.’ Of course, it never occurred to the bounty hunters that bringing him in would be more injustice than anything else.
As I pushed through the saloon doors, I stopped. And stared. I think I might have blinked. Vash was being held against the counter by the diminutive barkeep. The angry little man was pressing a gun into his stomach. He was yelling so loudly that only every other word or so was even comprehensible, but the gist of it was that Vash was some kind of thief. So, the bartender hadn’t recognized him. He was trying to accuse Vash of stealing something. That was just funny. If he hadn’t been in any mortal danger, I would have just laughed out loud. But I kept myself in check this time and politely addressed the barkeep. No sense in upsetting the little man anymore.
“What seems to be the matter, sir?” I asked. I almost took a step back as his wrath was directed at me. The force of it could have probably stunned a tomas. He didn’t waste any time in telling me his grievance.
“This here varmint thinks it’s funny to steal likker from an honest citizen. I know he’s the one that done it!” He released his hold on Vash’s stomach, but started waving the gun in Vash’s face. Actually, it was more like waving it at his shoulder, but the intent was certainly unmistakable. “Right ‘fore he walked up I had se-ven-teen bottles of Wild Turkey, and now I’m missin’ four. This here idgit only paid for three. Tried to steal right out from under my nose!” The barkeep’s face got redder and redder as he spoke. By the time he finished his impassioned soliloquy, he was nearly scarlet. And the story didn’t add up. I knew Vash would never steal anything. I also knew that the barkeep wouldn’t be satisfied unless either a) Vash ended up in jail for the night or b) he got paid for a bottle of liquor we didn’t get. I guess this would be a good time to try those ‘reason with the enemy’ techniques Vash was so fond of. I wasn’t about to let Vash rot in jail, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to pay for liquor I don’t get to drink. And I wasn’t going to stoop to shooting the bartender. That would just be stupid, and doubtless attract…unwanted attention. So would slugging him one. And hitting a man who had a gun pressed against Vash’s stomach was probably not the brightest idea I’d ever had. Words, apparently, were the only tool left to me. Terrific. A tipsy priest trying to talk an over-excited midget out of shooting Vash the Stampede. Hoo-wee.
“Now hold on,” I said. “I know this guy and he would never steal anything from anybody.” Well, for whatever reason, my verbal capacity had expanded to unprecedented proportions. It must have been divine inspiration. Go me. “Needle-noggin?” I looked over at him, “Do you still have those three bottles on you?” Vash made a confined motion over his shoulder.
“They’re right there,” he said. And sure enough, there were the three bottles he’d paid for right there on the counter. Well, this was interesting. My fuzzy brain tried to make sense of the situation. There was the possibility…but I wasn’t sure I should call attention to it. The barkeep might have stashed a bottle in Vash’s coat to frame him. Why he would be in such a hurry to frame Vash was beyond me, but hey, humans do stupid shit all the time.
“Have you checked your coat?” I asked, hoping it would be enough of a hint to Vash and go right over the barkeep’s head. Unfortunately, they both caught on at the same time.
“You know full well a thief won’t fess up. Why don’t I search ‘im? That’ll be the way to make sure he ain’t got nuthin’ on ‘im.” I could hear the wheels turning in the little barkeep’s head. If I let him search Vash, then it really would be all over, because he could plant a bottle on him. “Here. You hold the gun on ‘im, and I’ll search ‘im.” Well, here goes nothing.
“I am a priest, sir. I can’t be expected to hold a gun on anybody.” I hadn’t had a lot of time to think up an excuse, so the one that came easiest was the one I used. I just prayed my ruse would work. I had been sitting in his bar for the past…four hours. Not very priestly behaviour. “However, you would trust a priest to search this man for you, wouldn’t you?” I looked at the barkeep, hoping he’d bought the story, and then flicked an apprehensive glance at Vash. As our eyes met, I saw the flash of silver as the barkeep’s gun hand shot up and caught Vash in the jaw. The blow was so sudden, it sent him crashing to the floor. I repressed the urge to slug the barkeep. He was still holding a gun, after all.

“There. Now I know he won’t move. Go ahead and search ‘im Mister Priest Man.” I threw a glance heavenward. Apparently the Good Lord was taking calls tonight. Hallelujah. It wasn’t the answer I was expecting, but it worked out in the end. I probably should have just shot the stupid little barkeep in the leg and taken off. It’s not like I was getting any important work done in this town anyway. It was about time I moved on. However, that idiot on the floor was making that damn impossible. The only time I went anywhere was when he went somewhere, unless I received a summons. In which case, I had to make up some bullshit excuse, leave, track him down again, and make up another bullshit excuse. All I really wanted to do was go Home and rest. And have some of Sister Fran’s miso soup. But, I knew I was being watched, and disappearing on duty could have some serious repercussions. They were waiting for me to complete the mission. Stupid of me really, to be bought like that, but that’s what happens when you’re low on cash and the kids are going hungry. And I swore they’d never go without under my care. So what was I supposed to do? Well, first of all, I should probably stop worrying and make sure that Vash didn’t get shot tonight.
I knelt carefully beside him and proceeded to conduct a light search of his coat. It suddenly occurred to me that this was the first time I’d so much as touched him since the quick draw tournament. I fought the urge to do more than just pat him down. Vash turned away, blushing hard. Yeah, it really was embarrassing to get taken out by a guy shorter than Meryl. Unless it was… I gave myself a mental slap. I had to stop thinking about things like that or… Shit. I felt the heat of shame in my own cheeks. +Now who’s embarrassed?+ This night was just getting better and better. I stood up carefully, shaking my head to clear it.
“He doesn’t have any other bottles of Wild Turkey, sir.” I stared at him, hard. I tried to look intimidating enough so the barkeep wouldn’t end up deciding that he could take us both on single-handedly.
“I never said it was Wild Turkey. It was brandy. That no-good varmint stole a fifth of my best brandy. I’ll have it in my hands before you leave the premisees!” The barkeep glared at me as though I had orchestrated this little stunt. Well, if he thought the odds were in his favor, he was sadly mistaken. He bent over Vash, still pointing the gun in the vague direction of his head. I could have sworn that only a couple of minutes ago he had said that Vash stole Wild Turkey. I smelled a rat. An under-sized, over-muscled rat. And it was standing over Vash, waiting for a chance to bite. As the barkeep bent over, there was a glint of glass in his pocket. Ah. Now it all made sense. Before he could react, I reached out and produced the ‘missing’ bottle of brandy. It was half-empty. That good for nothing piece of trash.
“Do you make it a habit, sir,” I said condescendingly, waving the bottle back and forth in front of his stunned face “of stealing from your own establishment?” He was speechless. “Now, if you don’t mind, I think we’ll enjoy the rest of this night in peace. I trust the sheriff doesn’t need to hear about this?” I tossed the bottle at him, and he fumbled it, but it didn’t drop. “Good. Come on, Broom-head, let’s go.”
I stalked out of the saloon, head held high. I felt good. Amazingly good, actually. I waited for a couple beats until Vash came out with his legally gained goods scooped in his arms. He gave me a goofy grin, as usual, and stepped off the porch and into the street. I chuckled. After a scene like that, he probably could have asked for those bottles at no charge. Maybe there was something to be said for his tactics, after all. I found myself hoping, for his sake, that that was true. I hummed a few bars of a decidedly lewd drinking song to myself. I tried not to watch Vash walk up the street, keeping those elusive three paces ahead. If he wanted me to stare at him, he was doing a damn good job of keeping my attention. He was, literally, sauntering up the street.
As he walked, Vash ripped the cap off one of the bottles and took a long swallow. The moons reflected in the glass, making it sparkle like diamonds in the gloom of the late night street. He let out a long contented sigh as he brought the bottle back down and looked over his shoulder at me.
“Thanks, Wolfwood. I don’t know what I would have done back there without you.” Somehow I doubted that, but it was good to hear. He always knew what to do. It was part of his essence…his instinct if you will. It was why he was Vash the Stampede after all, the Humanoid Typhoon, worth sixty billion double dollars dead or alive. And it was my job to keep him alive.
“You would have figured it out eventually.” I replied. There wasn’t a situation I could ponder where he didn’t know exactly how to get out of it – without any deaths. Because he wouldn’t kill. Not even a roach. No blood on those hands.
“Yeah, right,” he stared at his boots for a beat then turned his head toward me. “How’d you know I didn’t steal the brandy?” Of all the…he didn’t even drink brandy! And even if he drank it, he wouldn’t be dumb enough to steal it. At least, I hope not.
“Call it intuition,” I smirked. Intuition. Yeah. Or something like that. It was vague enough for my taste. He probably wouldn’t be too impressed with the fact that I remembered little details about him like that, anyway. It embarrassed the hell out of me. There were other small things I noticed about him, too, like how he refuses to drink gin anymore, or how he always scratches the back of his head when he’s nervous, or how he’ll just stare off into space sometimes for no particular reason, like he’s looking for something out there. I couldn’t imagine what it was. Sand all looked the same to me. And then, of course, there was that ugly green and orange men’s necktie that somehow always ended up around his head when he was pretending to be drunk. Why he even had it and where he kept it were complete mysteries.
I took another swig out of my bottle. The night had erased the sweltering heat of the day and replaced it with a cool breeze. The second and fourth moons were on the horizon, and the fifth was already sailing high in the night sky. Most of the lights in town were low now, so the stars shone a brilliant backdrop to the moons. The Dragon curled its tail around the sky and floated there, lazily making his circuit through the heavens.
“So,” Vash interjected, that eternally dopey grin plastered on his face, “you still coming up to my room? I’ll sha~are.” He clinked the two closed bottles together invitingly. I could see through the green glass of my bottle that there were only about three or four good mouthfuls left in the bottom.
“Sure. Somebody’s gotta make sure you don’t puke all over the bed.” I snickered. It had been the one and only time Vash had a hangover. Come to think of it, that was the last time he’d had gin. Probably the only time he’d had gin.
“Hey! I told you not to bring that up again! At least I didn’t miss the toilet!” He had a valid point. I had been god-awful sloppy drunk that night, too, and by the time I’d realized I had to vomit it had almost been too late. I flung myself over the Porcelain God, but missed by a good six inches. The only reason I hadn’t woken up with a hangover the next morning is because I’d puked everything out beside the toilet.
“At least I didn’t fall asleep in it.” I replied. Now I was just being nasty, but it felt good. I hated to be this way, I hated myself for feeling I had to be this way, but I didn’t exactly know what was wrong, or how to go about setting it right again. A flash of guilt flickered across my mind. I didn’t really want to fight with him. Couldn’t we just walk in silence?
“I wouldn’t have if somebody would have dragged my sorry ass off the bed.” Vash retorted. Ouch. I guess not. Well, it’s not like I was in any position to drag his carcass much of anywhere that night. Nobody was, except Meryl, but she had Millie to deal with.
“Yeah, and who stuck around to get your sorry ass to the tournament?”
“And who’s been cleaning up after who ever since?”
“Not like I ask you to wake me up at the ass-crack of dawn.” I would actually prefer it if he would stop waking me up early. I’m just not a morning person, and if I’m out of bed before the suns are directly overhead, it had better be for a better reason than breakfast. Although breakfast had become a pretty good reason to wake up.
“Since when does nine ‘o clock constitute as dawn, you lazy lush?” That wasn’t the point. Anything before noon is just masochistic.
“If you ever see a sunrise, you’re either up too damn late or way too damn early.” I glared at him. An evil grin spread across Vash’s face only moments before he shoved the Wild Turkey bottles into his coat and sprang at me. Before I had time to defend myself, his left arm was secure around my chest, the knuckles of his right hand digging into my scalp.
“Itaiii!” That really hurt! I struggled for a couple seconds before Vash let me go. “What the hell was that for?” My only response was Vash dusting his hands off and then blowing across his knuckles, like they were a goddamn gun barrel. He turned around and looked at me, then tried to stifle a chuckle.
“Now what?” I asked, eyes narrowing. He laughed some more, and pointed at my forehead. Apparently, my hair didn’t take too kindly to that. Whatever the hell it was. I pulled my hand across my head, trying to rid myself of whatever giggle-inducing hairstyle he’d decided to grace me with. Once I was content with what seemed a passable hairstyle for that mop, I reached into my breast pocket for a cigarette. They weren’t there. I patted it, just to make sure I wasn’t missing something, then patted the side pockets, then checked my pants. No cigs. I had five or six left when I stepped off the saloon porch, and I knew I hadn’t smoked them all on the way to the hotel. I glanced around on the ground to make sure they hadn’t fallen out somewhere along the way.
“Looking for something?” Vash’s smug voice echoed in my ears. He stood there, my pack of cigarettes tucked neatly between his first and second fingers, grinning mischievously.
“Yeah, I think you found them.” I held out my hand.
“Here ya go.” He turned his hand around, hiding the pack momentarily, and when he opened his palm again, the cigarettes had been replaced with a book of matches. “Oops.”
“Nice trick, Needle-noggin.”
“Name calling isn’t a very good way to get those back, yanno.” He replied as he twisted his wrist one more time and flames burst from his palm. I was seriously hoping that was the matches. Otherwise, he was toast.
“That better not have been the cigarettes.” I narrowed my eyes. My nicotine habit was something you did not fuck with.
“Eh, you’re no fun.” He reached behind my head, and seemingly plucked the pack from behind my ear, dropping it in front of me. I caught it and extracted a cylinder with my lips in one smooth motion.
“Thanks.” Matches I still had. Sulfur and smoke had been my comfort for longer than I cared to admit. “Any particular reason you felt the urge to swipe my smokes?”
“Call it intuition. You looked like you needed a little fun. All work and no play makes Nick a dull boy.” I stopped. Nobody had called me Nick since…since…
Aunt Kaede’s voice rang in my head. “[Your mother would have been very proud of you, Nick. You did the right thing, Nick. You’re such a good boy, Nick.]” She’d always insisted that I use nihongo when we spoke, and she never used anything else when she talked to me. I called her obasan most of the time. If she was being particularly playful, she’d call me Nicky-chan, but I’d always groan and roll my eyes when she’d do that. I never let her know that I actually liked it. It was a welcome endearment in a sea of indifference. She’d always loved me, always tried to protect me. It was protecting me that finally killed her. I squeezed my eyes shut. No good wallowing in the past. It was gone; she was gone. Before I could descend into self-pity, Vash flung his arm around my shoulders and launched into a raucous bar song. I tensed. He brings all that shit up, and then... Well, how was he supposed to know what that name meant to me? It was the shortened form of my given name, after all. Why shouldn’t he use it? Maybe it was strange that nobody else had ever thought to call me that before. Maybe it was because nobody’d ever... +Stop thinking crazy.+
I glanced over at Vash, who was still singing for all he was worth, eyes squeezed shut. He looked like he was expecting to get hit. Did he really think I would… Well, I hadn’t really given him a reason to think otherwise. God, dear God… Had I become that much of a monster? Every day, bit by bit, I had become the thing I hate. +No, I won’t hurt you, Vash. Not like that, anyway.+ What I was doing was probably much, much worse, however. That thought didn’t help to calm the growing unease as Vash’s arm continued to rest across my shoulders. Although at the moment, Vash didn’t exactly look comfortable, either. Well, I wasn’t going to punch him tonight. I’d spent too much energy keeping him out of jail. I shook my head, finished off my wine in one fell gulp, flopped my arm onto his shoulder and took up the melody. Vash’s eyes opened suddenly, and he looked right at me. I didn’t skip a beat.
“Pressed against her face, I could feel her insecurity/ Her mother was a drunk and her father was obscurity…” I tried to sing it, but the melody was just out of my range. Oh well. I ploughed ahead, enjoying the look of shock on Vash’s face. “Nothing ever came from her life, that was a simple one…”
That’s when Vash chimed in with “Pull yourself together, girl, and have a little fun!” He was grinning ear to ear. And his eyes were sparkling right along with it. I couldn’t help but return the smile. Like I said, his eyes. When they weren’t empty, they held my own like polar magnets, light to dark, blue to black. Two turquoise orbs, the color of pure water, sparkling and shining at me as we sang through the chorus again, my baritone wails giving his thin tenor an odd sort of harmony. I’m sure we looked like two drunken idiots headed home after a night at the bar. Which was accurate. Sort of. Only one of us had even been drinking, and the hotel wasn’t exactly Home.
<How charming.> The intrusion was loud and jarring, which was a feat, considering how smooth his voice usually sounded. Then again, he specialized in making my life a living hell. It was like drinking a fine wine, but I kept choking on it. More to the point was how the fucker had managed to get into my head in the first place. I thought I’d made sure that couldn’t happen. Again. I looked around. Was he here somewhere? Had he been watching me? I couldn’t even see a vague shadow that would suggest such a thing, but it wasn’t past him to use camouflage.
+Thanks, I try.+ I replied, not sure if he was upset or just being his usual holier-than-thou self.
<Your presence is required. Now.> Hmm…looks like it was the usual, ‘I’m the Right Hand of God,’ routine tonight. He didn’t sound too thrilled to be delivering the message. I wondered what I had done this time to warrant an official summons.
+Something wrong?+
<Master wishes to speak to you. Your presence is required. That is all you need know.> With that, he removed himself from my mind in the most obnoxious way he could come up with on the spur of the moment. If he’d had a couple of days to think about it, I’m sure it would have hurt a hell of a lot more. And The Master wanted a chat, huh? That was certainly a new twist.
“Ketsu,” I muttered under my breath as my eyes came back into focus. That was a wonderful word Aunt Kaede hadn’t outright taught me. It meant either ‘excellence’ or ‘mosquito larva’ depending on how it was used. Guess which one I was going for.
My eyes regained focus. +Oh shit.+ We’d stopped walking in the middle of the street, and Vash wasn’t singing anymore. In fact, he was looking at me with a fair amount of alarm. Oh shit. +Wonderful timing you’ve got there, baka. How am I going to explain that one?+ I shot at him, hoping he caught it. His sense of timing had to be the worst I’d ever known. And knowing him, it was all on purpose, too.
“What was that all about?” Vash asked, eyes wide. Goddammit.
“Uhm...What was what?” Brilliant. Fucking brilliant. You know, there were times when I seriously wondered how I had managed to stay alive for as long as I had. Vash drew a couple of paces ahead of me.
“Never mind. It’s not important.” he said, laughing humorlessly. +Yes, Vash, it is important. Very important. Your very life depends on it, and I can’t tell you.+ It might have been easier for me to just announce myself at the beginning and get it over with. Get killed and go on about my afterlife in peace. Oh, Vash wouldn’t have killed me, but I knew who would be by to ‘pick up the pieces’ after I’d gotten the shit kicked out of me.
Dante. Dante and Sylvia. That stupid saxophone of his was more important to him than all of humanity combined, with the notable exceptions of Legato and The Master, although you can’t really qualify them as members of humanity. I suppose the only possible exception would be me, but I wouldn’t bet on that one. I was more ‘tension release’ than anything else. At least, that’s how I’d rationalized it these past years.
Some time after my ‘modification,’ he suddenly showed up. Legato came swaggering into the dining hall with what was unmistakably his new pet. Not that he’d really had an old one, I’d merely been his punching bag. Dominique had looked up from her lunch and nearly dropped her fork.
The ‘pet,’ was literally tall, dark and handsome. Dark brown hair, dark brown eyes, and a smirk that held a whole lot of trouble. And that smirk was aimed at me.
Legato hadn’t bothered with introductions, but I got my own, personal, introduction later on. The new guy cornered me that evening after training. I was getting ready to enter my room when I felt someone tap me on the shoulder. I whirled around and he was right there, hand splayed on the wall over my shoulder.
“What the hell do you want?” I asked, glaring up at him. If I hadn’t been on the defensive, we would have been standing eye-to-eye.
“Well, you just made this a helluva lot easier,” he replied, that troublesome smirk quirking at his lips.
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
“You see this?” He gestured below his waist. In spite of my better judgment, I tracked his hand. My eyes went wide. “Yeah. That’s your fault. And you’re going to take care of it, right?”
Like hell I was. I shoved him and spat, “Fuck you, you slimy perv!” But I hadn’t even fazed him. He pressed closer and ran a finger down my chest.
“That, my friend, was the general idea.”
Dante’s arrival had given a whole new dimension to my training. When I found out how pissed Legato was about our little arrangement, I didn’t mind it nearly so much. There were even times when I enjoyed our…friendship. It was never anything more than sex, though. While Dante was a considerate partner, he wasn’t exactly a warm and caring individual.
But when I went back, well, when I was called back, he wasn’t exactly how I’d remembered. Granted, he was older, we both were, but there was something else. Something in his eyes that said he was genuinely glad to see me again. I suppose it was relief to see someone who was still mostly human. And even though I hate to admit it, the old familiar banter between us had barely even stalled. There were a few awkward moments, to be sure. After all, nine years is a long time. He didn’t waste any time returning to his old habits, though. It started again my first night back.

His footsteps echoed down the hall. I could hear them through the door. I lay huddled in bed, facing the wall. The cramped room was just how I’d left it, except for a fine covering of dust over everything. I was still trying to figure out how a windowless room got that dusty, but then again, everything on this planet gets dusty.
He knocked softly on the door.
“Who is it?” I called, already knowing the answer.
“Dante. Lemme in. Please?” It was the please that caught me. He never asked. ‘Do this, do that,’ yes, but he never asked.
“Just a minute,” I threw off the covers and threw on a pair of pants. It wasn’t necessary, they were only going to end up back on the floor in a few minutes anyway. I flipped the deadbolt and opened the door. There was Dante, his normally impeccably coifed hair disheveled, and his pyjama top torn. He even wore pink to bed. Yeesh.
“What the hell...” before I could finish that thought, Dante pushed me back into my room, and shut the door behind him. He fumbled for the lock, and after the door was secure, flipped on the lights. I winced and tried to shield my eyes with my hand. Dante leaned back against the door. He sighed and drew his sleeve across his forehead.
“What happened to you?” I asked.
“He happened to me.” And really, that said it all. A pang of pity for Dante flashed through my chest. The only places he had to go were back to Legato or here. I wondered what he’d done while I was away.
“Well, I refuse to allow you to remain in this room,” I paused for reaction. His eyes widened. “Wearing that, so...” There was no way I’d let him wear pink in this room. It was a pink-free zone.
Dante slid into his signature smirk. “That’s not a problem.”
The years as Legato’s ‘pet’ had not been particularly kind to Dante. The look of fear on his face when I paused was proof enough of that. It was a shame, really. When he’d first come to the Mausoleum, he’d been full of fire and a zest for life that I couldn’t even fathom. Slowly, as the years passed, the enthusiasm faded from his eyes. The only time he had that look in his eyes, by the time I was let go, was when he played. And, as he stood naked in my room, I wasn’t even sure he could enjoy that anymore.
His body was still a pleasant sight. All smooth, lean muscle tanned to perfection. His eyes, though, were dull and worn. Faded. I couldn’t resist a comment.
“Aww... Does someone need a hug?” I smirked.
“Shaddup. I need a fuck, not a hug, so you can just take your damn cuddle and throw it out the window.” He glared at me, but I could see the spark in his eyes. I laughed.
“No windows here, my friend, so you’re going to have to take the cuddle and cope.” Dante sighed, resigning himself to the fact that anything was better than going back to Legato that night.
“Fine. Just get your skinny little ass over here.” he replied as he sat down on the bed.
“With pleasure.”

What happened next was what always happened with Dante. We fucked. No flowery language, no declarations of love. That’s just the way it was. And I’d tried to convince myself that was just fine with me. But it always seemed to be lacking something. God knows Dante wasn’t my soul mate or anything, but still... it would have been nice if he actually cared. Any capacity he’d had for that was doused by Legato long ago.
I spat. Damn them. Damn them all. They’d sent me off on this wild goose chase without even warning me that Vash would be... What was he, anyway? I knew he wasn’t human. I’d been expecting a monster. After all, who hadn’t heard the rumors about the destruction of July? That was what, twenty-four years ago? But when I met up with Vash, he didn’t look a day over twenty-five. There were serious doubts that a one-year-old could destroy an entire city. A living room, definitely, but not a whole city, and not razed to the ground, and not without any deaths. No matter how you looked at it, there was no way he could be human. It didn’t really bother me, though. I’d gotten used to being around people that weren’t human during my training at the ‘Conservatory’.
The name of that place had always mystified me. I’d gotten my hands on a dictionary while I was there, in the early years, and conservatory was actually defined as a school of the arts. Or a hothouse, whatever the hell that was. I’d asked Chapel about it, what arts we were conserving. He laughed, one of the only times I heard him laugh, and said that we were conserving the deadly arts. That wasn’t really comforting to a nine-year-old kid. I took out the dictionary again and found Mausoleum, a place of the dead. I’d referred to that place as the Mausoleum ever since. When I told Dante about it after he arrived, he smiled.
“How apropos, Nicholas.” I’d had to look that one up, too. Vocabulary was never my...forte. And a ‘traditional education’ was not one of the services offered at the Mausoleum, either. Whatever eloquence I’d acquired above and beyond that of a seven-year-old had been taught by Chapel...and Dante. Although, Dante’s idea of education hadn’t been exactly classical in nature, either. It was more like “How to Spot a Cheap Floozy 101.”
It was Chapel that taught me the most. His lessons were the ones I took to heart. It was his insistence, finally, as well as a considerable monetary ‘donation’ to the orphanage that brought me here. Here, on the ‘mission of my life,’ as he so dramatically put it. The event that I’d been put in that hellhole for in the first place. The assignment they’d had to blackmail me into keeping. I’d been dragged out of the orphanage and semi-retirement to... to make good on a promise I made when I was too young to know better. Lord,
“What the hell am I doing here?” But I knew the answer. It was for Sister Fran. And Home.
“Well, I think this is our hotel, unless you checked out surreptitiously.” Vash replied. Shit. I’d said that out loud. And what the hell did syrup...syrup... Fuck it.
“Syrup-huh?” I asked. I hated it when Vash lorded his huge vocabulary over me. Fuck Humanoid Typhoon, he was the Humanoid Dictionary and occasionally moonlighted as the Humanoid Thesaurus, too.
“Surreptitiously. Covertly. Furtively. Oh, for crying out loud, you’re still staying here, right?” he glanced back, eyebrows raised. +Thanks for the vocab lesson, Needle-noggin.+ I thought.
“Oh. Yeah. Still here.” My mind was still trying to revert to the present. I didn’t usually wallow in the past like that. It was better for me if I just let it go. If I dwelled on it for too long…I didn’t want to think about the consequences of doing that. I’d tried to let it go many times, but I found that just not thinking about it was far easier than anything else.
I followed Vash up the stairs to his room, trying to avoid the glances he kept throwing in my direction that screamed at me to tell him what the hell was going on. +Figure it out for yourself, Vash. You’re not as stupid as you look, you know.+ I kept waiting for him to figure it out. I kept waiting for him to confront me, gun aimed between my eyes, and tell me to go back where I came from. The only things that really passed for my ‘cover’ were omissions from my story, one of which was nearly exposed tonight. Hell, Legato might as well have attached a big,
flashing neon sign to my head that said, “I Am a Gung-Ho Gun!” That might have been a little less obvious, actually. I suppose it was a point of pride with me that I hadn’t actually lied to Vash yet. Not told him the whole story, naturally, but I hadn’t outright lied. Not since the machines, anyway. That was such a stupid thing to say. ‘I’ve never shot a gun before.’ Like Vash couldn’t smell the gunpowder on me. Like he couldn’t see the calluses on my hands. They weren’t the calluses acquired by an honest day’s labor, that’s for sure. And he’d known all along about the Punisher. He may play dumb, but Vash is anything but.
That was what worried me most, I think. I had very specific instructions not to let Vash know who I was or what I was doing there. You’d think Legato would make it easier on me to keep my cover, but no. He probably took great pleasure in watching me suffer. Actually, I knew he did. Always had. He was probably sitting there in the Mausoleum yukking it up while I was here trying to figure out what I could do to keep up the masquerade that was slowly but surely killing me.
Vash didn’t exactly help with that. His capacity for compassion was even greater than his capacity for alcohol. And twice as humbling. There was a part of me that envied him for it, for being able to actually care about everyone he met. I was hard-pressed to give a second thought to most of the people I passed on the street, but I think Vash found a way to feel something for each and every one of them, whether they knew it or not. Even if I’d wanted to, I couldn’t care about people like that. It was one of the consequences of living in the Mausoleum for so long. But unlike the rest of them, I hadn’t lost respect for the entire human race just yet. Put to the task, I would decide who lived and who died, but even I had my limits. With Vash, I found that I’d been constantly toeing yet another line. Straight ‘n narrow, my ass.
As soon as Vash opened the door to his room, I headed straight for the table. I wasn’t really in the mood to chat, and the sooner I got some more liquor into me, the easier it would be to just shut up. And the quicker the night would just be over.
I tried not to notice his long, delicate fingers make quick work of the bottle cap. He poured two smooth shots, and slid one across the table to me. It was gone in three seconds. I grabbed the bottle and poured myself another. Then another. The haze of drunkenness descended, as it always did, between the familiar motions of pouring shots and lighting cigarettes.
I was particularly engrossed in staring at one of the black buttons on Vash’s coat, somewhere near the bottom of the second bottle, when he stood up. The light shifted. The button winked and sparkled as he walked from the table to the bed. I turned around, tracking that elusive button, but when I did, I found myself staring into his eyes instead. He sat down on the bed, hands neatly folded between his knees, and stared back at me. God, he had pretty eyes. The lashes cast their own shadows across his face. He opened his mouth, like he was about to say something, then closed it again. He did this a couple of times as I continued to drown in the pools of water that somehow were captured in his eyes. All I wanted to do at that moment was grasp his face between my hands and kiss him until we couldn’t breathe. I also wanted him to fuck me brainless, then do it all over again for the sheer hell of the sensation. As my mind ran amok on that pretty little scene, Vash finally spoke.
“I care, you know.” What the hell? Where the fuck had that come from? Besides being painfully obvious, it was also annoyingly cryptic. It was, it was…oh, what was the word? Ambiguous! Yeah, that was it.
“Whaddya mean?” I asked, trying to fathom the situation. “Ya care too mush if y’ashk me.” And that was the problem. If he went around caring about everybody, nobody would be left to care about him. Well, I was proof that wasn’t true, so he had to stop caring so damn much. And that made absolutely no sense, but I wasn’t in any shape to rectify the shoddy logic. I pulled another cigarette from the pack, fumbling the match with my less-than-dexterous fingers before finally getting it to light. I made the mistake of looking into his eyes again. Some little demon started a bonfire in the pit of my stomach that raced up to my cheeks and southward at the same time. Shit.
“I meant that I care about you.” More fodder for the little hellspawn in my gut. And what, exactly, was he trying to say? He cared about me. How could he sit there and say that? How could he look at me with a straight face and say something like that? +“I care about you.” Christ. See me for who I am, Vash. See past the mask.+ The facade had been slipping further and further since the day I met him. If something didn’t happen, it would fall completely. Although, in a way, that was preferable to what was happening here, in this cheap hotel room. But what, exactly, was happening? Vash had told me he cared. About me. Like I hadn't known that already. He cared about everybody. Did he really think saying it out loud would make things any easier? If anything it made it more difficult, because all I wanted to do was feel his lips on mine, know what it was like to be touched by those hands. And that stirred something in me that my hazy brain couldn’t stop. Even if I had been able to, I’m not sure I wanted to stop it.
“What, does that mean ya wanna be friends?” Right now, I’d take him any way I could have him. Even if it was only a one-night stand. Maybe this was what he got me so plastered for every night, so eventually he’d…
“But I thought we were friends.” Vash looked a little hurt. Oh yeah. Not everyone thought of friends like I did. I snorted.
“Not that kind of friends. My kind of friends.”
“Your kind of friends? You must have a strange definition of friends, then.” Vash blinked a couple times. I pushed myself out of my chair and walked the three paces over to where he was sitting on the bed. I leered, leaning over him.
“Ya wanna fin’ out?” I cocked an eyebrow. Vash leaned back on his hands, apprehension evident in the wide, wondering eyes. But he didn’t say no. I reached out a hand. Vash flinched. +Oh, its okay, baby…+ He really was nervous. I ran my outstretched fingers through his brilliantly blond hair. It was much softer than I thought it would be.
“Soft…” I murmured as a smile tugged at the corners of my lips. I ran my hand through his hair again. “So soft.” It was wonderful. Given sufficient sustenance, I could have probably stood there running my hands through his hair forever. Vash was staring at me now, still propped up on his hands, his mouth slightly ajar. Oh, how I wanted to kiss that mouth.
Before it even registered that I was doing it, I’d leaned against the wall, hovering over Vash. His eyes were magnets, pulling me closer and closer…
He turned away. Shit. I heard him mutter something too softly for me to understand.
“What?” I asked, trying to coax him back. It was only a kiss, after all. Even though I wanted to, I doubted I was up for much more than that, anyway. I frowned. Vash turned to face me. His eyes were hard, but empty.
“Not like this.” His voice was quiet, but full of… Anger? Disappointment? It was hard to tell. Not like this?
“Not like what?”
“Like THIS!” he was yelling now. His arms flew out, gesturing crazily. “YOU’RE drunk!” His hands came together and pointed at my chest. If he would have been holding a gun, I would have been dead. The haze began to lift a bit. “You treat me like shit on a regular basis and now you want to KISS me?”
I staggered back, catching myself on a chair. I blinked at him. +You know he’s right. You know it, + my conscience chided. I stared at the floor. It didn’t change the fact that I still wanted to. Had wanted to ever since…well, if I wanted to be completely honest it had started back on the fucking bus. I guess I never realized then that it would be so complicated now. My first thought, as always, was +maybe he’d be good for a quick fuck+ or something equally demeaning. Much though I hated to admit it, Dante’s ‘training’ ran deep. But Vash deserved better than that. Better than me.
“Yeah. Yeah I do. Crazy, huh?” I shook my head and just stood there like an idiot, staring at the ground.
“Why?” Why? He really didn’t know why I wanted to kiss him? I’d been expecting him to shove me out the door with a derisive comment spat through the particleboard. The utter confusion in his voice caught me off guard, so I told him.
“Because you’re beautiful.” I watched only for a moment, as Vash hunched his shoulders, wincing at the words. That was my answer then. “I’m sorry. Goodnight.” And with that, I turned around, headed for the door. I almost turned to look at him one last time before I left, maybe to imprint the memory of that beauty on my soul. This time I knew I wouldn’t be coming back. But I didn’t turn. Couldn’t, because if I did… My hand was on the doorknob. All I had to do was…
“Nick…” That name. It triggered an instinctive response, and as soon as it left his lips, I was stone sober. I turned to look. His voice had been so quiet, forlorn. I had the feeling it would hurt him much more if I left now than if I would just confess my sins and have it out with him. What I saw as I turned around shouldn’t have shocked me, but I really wasn’t expecting it. There was nothing that could have prepared me for this. Vash was standing, his coat piled on the bed in a great red heap. He had his hand stretched out to me, as though he was trying to call me back to him with a thought. I squeezed my eyes shut and turned away. I couldn’t look. It just hurt too much. His body was riddled with scars. His left arm wasn’t even flesh. It was metal. In his scars, I saw all of the evil in the world poured out onto one soul. No one should have to take that. No one. Especially not him. It was too late, obviously, to keep him entirely out of harm’s way. His wounds were so deep, even time couldn’t heal them. But there had to be something… some way to rectify this terrible wrong. Lord knows the little bastards who’d done this hadn’t paid in full for their crimes. He’d let the assholes live. He’d let ignorant, bloody fucks walk away from him and he was left with that. Those scars were evidence of sins that could not go unpunished. I hated those nameless, faceless brutes for not being able to see that man for who he truly was. I hated them because they let their jaded little opinions cloud their judgment. And I hated them, too, because I had worked for all these years to rid the world of scum like that. I didn’t care who it was, I would hunt them down to the last man and slaughter them all, because they had destroyed one of the only beautiful things left on this planet.
“Where are they?” I asked, trying hard to keep from screaming at him. I didn’t want to take this out on him. He wasn’t who I was pissed at. “Where are the fucks that did that?” I spun around and glared at him. Vash looked back, wide-eyed, surprised. He let out a long sigh, his shoulders slumped a little, and then nothing. He was blank again. +He shouldn't have to be that way. Goddammit! Nobody should have to be that way! So guarded and careful and EMPTY!+ I slammed my heel down on the floor so hard I thought it would go right through. “TELL ME!”
“I don’t know,” he said quietly, flexing the fingers of his left hand, then closing them into a tight fist. His face, though, remained a frustrating blank. “I don’t know.”
“You don’t know. You don’t know? What the fuck are you trying so damn hard to hide? I’ve let it slide before, but I’m asking you now, Vash, because I want to know!”
“He wants to know,” Vash said, mocking my tone. “He wants to know, he says. Well, guess what, Nick? I’ve let some pretty damn big things slide, too. I don’t have to tell you a damn thing, Nick, because you already FUCKING know!” He raised his left fist and brought it crashing down on the table. The fiberboard gave and splintered like glass. I jumped back, ducking a particularly large shard. I looked from the decimated remains of the table back to Vash. His eyes had changed from their normally placid, empty turquoise to a hard, dark teal. I couldn’t decide if it was a trick of the light or my overactive imagination, but they looked like they were about to catch fire.
+Let some things slide? Big things? I already know? Oh shit.+ It didn’t take me too long to conclude that my ‘cover’ had finally been obliterated. +All thanks to Fucking Legato Fucking Bluesummers.+ Fuck.
“Fuck!” I slammed my head against the door. “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, FUCK!” I punctuated each obscenity with another slam against the door. And then, there was Sister Fran, standing in the archway at Home’s entrance. The kids, all clustered around her as I drove off. She had smiled and waved, wishing me luck. Some luck.
“Now they’re all going to die.” I whispered to the ceiling. I sank to my knees, my hands buried in my hair. After everything I’d done, everything I’d sacrificed, it was all over. And it was all my fault. If I would have been stronger or faster or… I lowered my gaze and looked Vash directly in the eye. “They’re all going to die.”
As clear as day, I flashed through my entire life at Home. Sister Fran teaching the kids, me telling them stories after dinner, and miso soup. God help me, but I was going to miss Sister Fran’s miso soup. I would miss them all. Ryo and Nadia and Logan and Moira… I went through the entire list. And of course, through all those memories, Sister Fran was ever-present. She’d always been there, a guide and a…a friend in the true sense of the word. Not in any mangled, corrupted way. Probably the only person I’d ever been able to say that about, really, without Dante’s laugh coming back to haunt me.
*Nick…* The ‘voice’ in my head was soft, soothing, gentle.
+Who?+ It was the only voice I’d ever heard that didn’t cause me pain. It was so familiar, and yet I couldn’t quite place it…
*Shh. It’s alright now. I’ll take care of it. I promised I’d take care of him. Calm down. Shh…* And suddenly, I was calm. The anger that had driven me to attempt to bash my brains out against the door had subsided. Suddenly, I felt my body go completely limp. I opened my eyes for a brief moment, and saw that the floor was coming up to greet me.
*Forgive me.*
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