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“Rem?”
Vash pokes his head through the doorway.
Nai is engrossed in another one of his westerns. Vash tried to stick around for at least halfway through but wiggled away once the posse was rounded up, careening over the wasteland, guns drawn. He muttered a goodbye to Nai, who nodded absentmindedly but didn't look away from the screen, then slipped out the door.
Usually at this time, she's in her room, reading a book that Nai usually filches (and apologizes for it later, with the intention to do it again) or looking at old photographs from a battered plastic album. But even though the door swings open, Rem's not there.
Maybe she's with Dr. Conrad or checking in on the ships. Vash intends to leave—he really does—but a bright sparkle in a slightly open drawer catches his eye.
Without thinking, he moves towards the light and lays the row of beads flat across his palm. It's a rosary; he knows that much from their studies—“people of most different faiths have a version of these,” she'd told them—but he's never seen one. Rem, who shares anything with them—her duties in checking on the sleeping passengers, another wish for their future together, part of her dessert if Vash and Nai hit her with pleading gazes—has never mentioned this.
The mystery alone is a lure, and it is pretty. He winds the beads twice around his hand, listening to them clack, then slowly slips the rosary over his head; the silver cross hits his belly button.
The slightly pointed circles remind him of a bud, as bright red as the geraniums Rem loves, and the cross is intricately carved with flowers and vines. It's beautiful—but he can't summon anything else besides faint admiration how the light shines through the beads when he rotates them in his hand. Feeling silly, like when he’s trying to stand up straighter to be measured for Dr. Conrad, Vash closes his eyes in an attempt to grasp the peace Rem always seems to possess. He mimics her folded hands, bows his head…
But he comes up empty.
Besides, Vash doesn't know what to pray for. He has Rem, Nai, a room of his own with plenty of blankets, a beautiful meadow to play in, a piano that fits two on a seat. What more could he want?
“Vash?”
He guiltily jumps in place. “Rem!”
But although her eyes widen for the briefest second, she doesn’t seem angry. “Vash, what are you up to? Where’s Nai?”
“Watching his cowboys,” Vash says, beginning to lift the rosary over his head. “I’m sorry, Rem; I was just…”
Rem sits down on the bed and pats the space next to her. “That’s all right, Vash. You were being careful with it; I could see that. Were you trying to use it?”
“Sort of?” Vash hedges. “But I’m sure I was doing it wrong. How does it work?”
Rem laughs. “I don't know exactly,” she admits, with a rueful smile.
“Then why do you have it?”
“It was Alex's,” Rem says. Her voice is far away, very wistful. “He left these to me.” She plucks a bead between her fingers.
“I'm sorry, Rem,” Vash apologizes again. “I shouldn't have touched it.”
She pats his leg. “Don't worry, Vash. Sometimes it's nice to find old things again and use them. Though you would have gotten a scolding from Alex's grandmother—he still remembers the lecture and the chancala when he wore it as a necklace!” Her eyes sparkle with a memory before she swallows, hard, and clasps his hands. “Alex would have loved you, Vash. You and Nai and Te—I wish...”
It's disconcerting to see Rem cry. Vash immediately wraps his arms around her, and she briefly leans into him before wiping her eyes and smiling down at him, lips stretched—Vash thinks later—too wide. “Look at that—your hair is getting so long! Would you like a trim?”
Vash beams up at her. “Nai, too?”
“If he wants. I think there's some scissors in the medical wing...”
A few months later, shivering in his bedroll, Vash wishes for the hundredth time he’d grabbed something of Rem’s. The glass-pressed geranium, a photograph, the rosary. He remembers her touching it so tenderly, hates that he failed to save the relic she’d held onto all these years—something of the man she loved. He never met Alex, of course, but he was alive in Rem’s stories.
Now, Rem’s only another story.
A sob chokes out of his throat. Beside him, Nai sleeps on. The rock Vash held over his head has been discarded, and the thought of it makes Vash shiver, his arms pulling tight over his chest. I won’t, Rem, he promises. I’m so sorry.
He thinks of Rem’s ultimate faith, her steel-cloaked-in-silk conviction. Nai's certainty was his own, but Vash can't help but think Nai inherited more from Rem than he thought, than he wanted. If only it was a different principle…
Alex would have loved you. Would he? Would Rem, looking down at them now? Would she forgive Vash? Nai? She had to know that Nai had killed all those people, but she told them that she loved them, in the end. Does this mean she’ll forgive Vash if he… no.
The mere thought turns his stomach. Nai’s the last one who knew Rem, his own flesh and blood. What had Nai liked to quote from the Bible spread out on his lap? Bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh? It’s all burned now, ashes and fire, and Vash feels his fingers trembling as he glances over the cliff, at the boulders settled at the bottom. Had he chosen wrong? What can he do now?
“Rem,” he whispers, twisting his fingers together, “Rem.”
Nai shifts and kicks his leg. “Shut up, Vash,” he mutters, voice scratchy with sleep.
Vash folds his lips tightly, closes his eyes, and tries to dream of better times.
It’s a continuous debate, even after all these years, whether Wolfwood is actually a priest. Milly votes yes, Meryl votes a solid no—“Do you not remember how much he tried to charge for that phony burial?”—and Vash is split.
Really, it doesn’t matter—but weeks of travel without seeing a plant station or eating more than carefully divided rations makes roadside games and silly bets flourish like mushrooms after rain, as Rem would have said.
So that’s how Vash finds himself rifling through Wolfwood’s bag while ostensibly checking for matches, though he’s not exactly sure what he should be looking for. Some kind of license, maybe?
Instead, there’s at least five cigarette cartons, a finger-sized bit of dried thomas wrapped in newspaper, a bundle of wrapped lollipops, an extra pair of sunglasses, and absolutely no spare clothes or packets of soap. He shakes his head in disgust, vowing to try to get Wolfwood at least a change of pants when they hit civilization, when his fingers skim against a velvet pouch.
With a fervent glance behind him, Vash pulls it out of the bag, loosening the drawstrings. Probably a chunk of that chewing “tobacco” for when smokes are out, Vash thinks, but the slight heft at the bottom says otherwise. An extra set of vials? A few coins? A spare lighter?
He lifts it out, memory reforming as his thumb strokes the underside of a bead. It’s smooth, polished, and plain—not as delicate as Rem’s, cross not made from precious metal—resin, maybe. And it has some sort of bird, one of its wings chipped, a sliver of white amid the ebony—
“Needle noggin. I didn't know you had such sticky fingers.”
Vash blushes, almost dropping the beads on the sand. They rattle hollowly in his hand. “I just—was curious.”
“Yeah, I figured. You do know I have a lighter for the campfire, right?”
“Oh. Well—”
“Milly’s already stewing the beans.” Wolfwood comes closer, rubbing his forehead. “Meryl has some crackers so we’re not just chewing paste all night—but really, spikey? What’s the deal?”
Vash decides to withhold the details of the bet—Wolfwood would make things more difficult for all of them on purpose. Instead, he says, “R—someone I knew had this. She… it was precious to her.” They were red, weren’t they, and they belonged to A… her fiancé? Lover? Friend?
How could he forget? Would he eventually struggle to recall her face, her voice, the color of her hair? Could he lose her again? How long did he have?
Silently, Wolfwood crouches down beside Vash, eyes looking at him, through him, and Vash restrains a shiver. “Well, I'd normally say you could keep ‘em; it’s not like it has any sentimental value. But I need it for the job. The authentic touch, you know, for the locals.”
Tugging himself out of his thoughts, Vash salutes him, handing Wolfwood back the rosary. Got him, he thinks, maybe. “Probably a better prop than your bottle of vodka.”
“Holy water, spikey,” Wolfwood grumbles, slipping the rosary into his pocket. “Blessed.”
“By who?”
Wolfwood rolls his eyes, jabs a thumb at his chest. “Me. I’m a priest, remember?”
Vash tears his gaze away, heat flowing to his ears. Feels his heart beat a little bit faster. “Ohhhhh. I keep forgetting, with the smoking and drinking and shooting—”
“Keep that up and I’m sharing my flask with just the girls.”
“Yes, sir, Holy Father, sir.”
“Thin ice, spikey. Thin fucking ice.”
It’s quiet now, and the only sounds are the chunks of plaster and stray bullets being kicked aside; the insurance girls are going to be pissed when they wake up. The moon shines brightly overhead, full and silver. He wonders if the inn’s still intact.
As Vash makes his way back—Wolfwood trailing at his heels, Punisher hiked up on his shoulder—Vash recalls his words before the shootout: Don’t get tangled up in all the little skirmishes along the way. It’ll be pointless if you get killed before you meet him.
It would be that statement that ties everything together. The fact that Wolfwood knows Knives’s name—that it is a name. The fact that Wolfwood’s followed Vash without a clear explanation all this time—knew where to find Eriks in the first place. The fact that Wolfwood’s lately been alternating between looking at Vash like a savior or an enemy, all while his heart cries out for another option.
What does Knives have planned for him—for both of them? What exactly has Wolfwood gotten entangled with? How? Vash knows his brother like his own heart; Knives will accept no failures, so Wolfwood will have to obey—and even if he falters, that seals his death.
Please spare this man, Vash wishes, hearing the soft, steady patter of Wolfwood’s footsteps behind him. He pictures the rosary beads in Wolfwood’s bag, curled up like a sleeping child. If You know him, please help him.
But if there’s one thing Vash is certain about in this life, no one can protect anyone forever. He doubts whoever Rem believed in—who he can’t name, can’t picture, can’t imagine, even to this day—can do that much.
And if there is—would He take a chance on Wolfwood, even if he invokes His name for profit and disguise? Even if those rosary beads might be no more than a prop? Even if Wolfwood asked, just once—as a boy kneeling in the orphanage chapel or strapped to the operating table for the Eye of Michael—to be saved?
That doesn’t mean anything, either: God didn’t spare Rem. God didn’t spare Nai.
Yet for the whole walk, Vash prays, head bowed, Help him. Please help him.
God, grant me one wish!
What more could he want? Vash had asked so long ago. It had been a foolish question. There’s always been something to lose. He just hadn’t realized it yet.
The half-empty bottle bumps against the toe of his boot. Wolfwood’s cross gleams in the fading sunlight. His tears drop onto his gloves, his shaking hands. The shot glass has rolled underneath the couch. He knows he won’t look for it.
If God won’t save you, I will!
He had failed Rollo. Rem. The sleeping passengers. Jeneora. JuLai. Names on names on names. Wolfwood. And if he stayed here much longer, he’d fail everyone else.
But Vash can’t move.
The last of the confetti flutters to the ground. Livio’s chest moves slowly, up and down, up and down. Another tear slides off his jaw.
My God, my God! Why have you forsaken me?
He’d heard Wolfwood’s words, running, heart bumping against his ribcage: He has never forsaken anything.
I have, Vash argues.
He has to bury him. What would have Wolfwood wanted? They never discussed this. Unbidden, his gaze flickers to the chapel bell, golden and whole, even amid the rubble. Here would be best. Home. And then, should he say some last rites? What good will that do? What good has God done for him? For them?
The sun blots out.
Vash raises his head as the Ark drifts overhead. Pauses, like a hungry bird waiting to strike.
He thinks of Knives, arms spread under a luminous cloak, a spiral of blades blanketing Jeneora Rock. In the past, God rained fire from the sky, destroying the city of depraved fools.
Ships, falling like stars.
With a crack of thunder, Vash tastes lightning between his teeth, rattling in his skill. Between his bunched shoulder blades, wings unfurl, feathers burst from his chest. He raises his arm, high, and aims.
God isn’t merciful.
So he won’t be.