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Wolfwood might have a problem. He liked getting beat half to death. Hell, he liked getting way closer than half. And he might have a problem there, because one of these days someone would finish the job.
He’d picked a fight in the saloon again. Vash got in the way less these days: he seemed to prefer it when Wolfwood got into trouble where he could keep watch, so Wolfwood was getting less private gigs and more public explosions. When you needled a guy until he snapped, the results were usually more predictable than whatever tickled the sadist of the week.
Tonight was an exception. He shouldn’t have gone out to the alleyway; he knew better. Whether for pleasure or pain, alleyway meetups made for nasty surprises. He might step in shit or get bitten by a rat. He might get blueballed by the dumbest mugger of all time. Or he might get ganged up on, roughed up, knocked out, and taken somewhere stupid.
Tonight’s stupid somewhere appeared to be a long-abandoned toma barn. It was full of dust and sand piles, and the old crust of bird splat barely stank anymore—but the equipment still worked. The gang sponsoring his night out must’ve found the ropes too rotten to use; they’d secured him with barbed wire over top of the fraying cords. The barbed wire still worked. So did the crank hoist with its dangling hook. Wolfwood didn’t much care for dangling, but he rarely had a choice. Shitty of the gang to string him up in just his pants, but hey it could be worse; they had let him keep his pants, after all.
Where his suit jacket, shirt, shoes, and Punisher had gone, he had no idea. Punisher was probably tipped over in the alley where he’d dropped her: to most men she looked like nothing more than the world’s holiest, heaviest piece of junk. Finding the ampoules in his jacket pocket was a much more pressing concern—or it would be if he thought he’d get a chance to go looking.
If they’d only used rope, he could’ve gotten out when he got bored. The wire created a dilemma: he might just be stuck until somebody chose to cut him down. He tried to remember what he’d said to piss off this particular group. Maybe they’d tire themselves out and leave him hanging, and if he could just get his wire-wrapped wrists off the hook he could get free.
The presumed leader of the trio stood waiting as someone turned the crank, bringing Wolfwood to eye level. The man bore a brawler’s battle scars—a too-flat nose and cauliflower ears, and when he licked his tongue over his ugly split-lipped mouth, Wolfwood counted a grand total of three teeth in the front. It was not a good sign that the brawler hadn’t brawled him.
“You’re gonna live to regret what you said about my mama, God rest her soul, but don’t worry. We won’t leave you regrettin’ it all that long.”
Hell, not the dead mama. Wolfwood was really in for it this time. Thoroughly concussed as he was, he couldn’t keep the excited grin off his face. The grin grew wicked as the brawler took a step back with the uneasy recoil of a predator turned prey.
“Quit yappin’ and get started, then. Are ya trying to talk me to death like you did your ma? Or are ya just gonna wait for me to drop dead lookin’ at your ugly mug?”
The man stepped forward again with his fighting spirit restored. Wolfwood eyed the little pocket knife in his hand. Those little pocket knives had all kinds of things—screwdrivers, pliers, toothpicks—and he had some prior experience with the multipurpose horrors of the multi-tool. Another guy pulled out a lighter. The third had—the hell was that?—a fillet knife? Christ, was he just off his shift at the worm cannery or what?
Was this it? Was he going to die to the likes of these? He couldn’t bring himself to feel upset quite yet. He’d feel it later, surely.
So he’d admit it, at least to himself: he did have a problem. He’d worry about it later if he made it through the day.
Vash was not exactly content to let Wolfwood go off on his own, not when he knew the trouble Wolfwood was looking for—but they’d reached an uneasy compromise where Vash let him be, ready to step in. He stood aside when Wolfwood picked this particular fight, waiting at the bar while Wolfwood followed his chosen antagonist outside. He’d waited, and waited, and told himself that Wolfwood was a big boy and he could take care of himself.
When a group of blood-splattered thugs returned, bragging about killing a fake priest, Vash etched their faces into his memory and hurried out the door.
He followed the smell of blood. Although faint in the open air, Wolfwood’s blood could sing to him out of any muddle of scents. It sickened him to be so familiar with the smell of someone’s blood. He could track Wolfwood like a hound through any sea of strangers, a skill born of practice he never wanted.
He followed the trail into an old barn that had more hole than wall. At first glance, Vash thought he was too late. The horror of it froze him, rooted in the doorway as he processed the scene. The final hour of sun crept through gaps in the dilapidated roof; its damning, illuminating light cut across the too-still figure strung up by his wrists. Wolfwood could have been sweating blood for all the rivulets free-running his skin. It dripped off of his toes onto the floor grate, a modest patter as loud as thunder.
At this distance, a human wouldn’t be able to see the small, fading motion of breath moving under bruised and carved ribs. Vash saw. His heart stuttered as adrenaline flooded and ferried him into action.
There was a sequence of operations he needed to follow: he threw himself into it, embracing order, embracing a plan step-by-step to avoid thinking beyond. He’d brought serum, but he’d need to get Wolfwood out of the wire first, and for that he’d have to get Wolfwood down. Vash’s hands shook as he grappled with the wire around each ankle, harsh barbs digging into the skin and the wooden post framing the contraption—and here there was a queasy flash of insight, an understanding that this was meant for meat processing, and that was a thought he couldn’t have right now—and soon Wolfwood’s ankles were free.
His eyes flickered toward Wolfwood’s face: there had been no reaction, even as Vash worked to free the deepest bits of wire. Wolfwood’s head hung limp, eyes closed and expression slack with an unconsciousness beyond sleep. Vash would have preferred an expression of pain, a flinch, a gasp—anything to suggest that Wolfwood was closer to life than death.
Vash turned the crank, lowering the hook and chain that held Wolfwood aloft. He looped an arm under Wolfwood’s shoulders to hold him up, heedless of the damp sensation soaking into his clothes and the sharp smell of copper, so overwhelming up close. He put a hand around the junction between wire, hook, and wrist. There were rotten ropes in the mix, layered under the barbed wire as if someone had started with rope and opted for something stronger. Vash grappled with an unholy knot cemented with gore, wincing as his fingers brushed cold hands purpled from constriction. Wrists unbound, he hurried to lay Wolfwood down on his coat, opening the little pouch of serum he had taken from Wolfwood’s bag in the room, thanking God Wolfwood had left that bag and Vash had thought of it—
He scanned the exposed skin one more time, checking for anything that might impede healing. He’d seen Wolfwood heal around embedded metal and glass before; he didn’t want a repeat. A bullet might push itself free, but a cruel twist of wire or hook would not. Finding nothing but empty open wounds, he maneuvered Wolfwood into a sitting position and tipped back his chin, forcing a swallow as he poured in that monstrous, miraculous serum.
Wolfwood choked back to life, spasming and gasping as his skin steamed from a hundred closures. Vash held him through it, indulging in the gentleness that a conscious Wolfwood refused to tolerate. What a strange thing, that they’d both held each other and tended each other’s wounds, but only when they had no choice but to accept the other’s help. When Wolfwood woke and got himself back together, the space between them would be uncrossable once again.
Wolfwood blinked at him, dilated pupils eclipsing his irises. He cracked a blissful grin. Vash waited for him to pull away from the arm supporting his shoulders, but it seemed that he was a little farther gone than usual.
“What’s an angel like you doin’ in a shithole like this?”
“You’re drunk.”
And when Wolfwood opened his mouth to deny it, Vash added, “Drunk off endorphins; I know you’re not soused. You’re going to be very embarrassed later.”
Wolfwood scoffed.
“Nuh-uh. I’m. I’m immune to embarrassment. Don’t feel it, just feel shame ‘n guilt and things.”
“Mmm, yeah, I don’t think that’s true. Come look me in the eye tomorrow and tell me you don’t feel a lick of embarrassment after this conversation.”
Wolfwood pulled away to sit up under his own power. The still-wet blood left Vash’s arms cold in his absence. Vash watched as Wolfwood reoriented, starting with surroundings and working back to himself: his eyes traced the bloody hook dangling hungry and unoccupied, the spatter pattern underneath striking out in all directions, Vash’s coat tucked under his body. Wolfwood ran hands over his face, neck, arms, chest. Vash’s didn’t miss that odd look—wistful, disappointed perhaps—when he found no mark or scar beneath the drying gore.
“Did you have a good time,” Vash asked, unable to lid the anger boiling over now that the crisis had passed.
Wolfwood barked a laugh.
“Sure. Thought I was gonna bite it for a minute there. Pricks wouldn’t even give me a last cigarette.”
And Vash had to stand and turn away, clutching at himself, digging metal fingers into flesh arm until it was sure to bruise. Sometimes he felt a sick pang of empathy for the people goaded into violence: no one had ever pissed him off as incandescently and frequently as Nicholas D. Wolfwood.
“I think you would have, if I had been a little later getting here,” he said, voice wavering between anger and distress.
“Yeah, well. Ain’t that just how it is. I’m a tough guy to kill. You know that, Spikey.”
He said it so casually, as if the brush with death, the what-ifs and the almosts, didn’t matter at all to him—as if his life didn’t matter at all to him.
“You’re not immortal, Wolfwood. You need to stop doing this. You’re going to get yourself killed.”
Wolfwood huffed, and somehow the silence that followed upset Vash more than words. Vash whipped around to look back at him. Wolfwood didn’t look up from his clearly urgent work picking wine-dark clots out of his inseams.
“You’re going to get yourself killed,” Vash repeated, trembling under the oncoming weight of tears. “And you’re going to make me watch.”
And Wolfwood did look up at that, wide-eyed.
“You’re going,” Vash said, hiccuping as the typhoon broke open and tears fell, “To make me bury you.”
Vash was right about one thing: Wolfwood was cooking in post-torture endorphins. His vision narrowed, fuzzed at the corners, and his awareness of self versus other scattered over a ten ile radius. The freshly healed pain ghosted through his nerves, as fond a memory as any lover’s touch, and he wanted to dissolve and live forever in this static.
Disappointing to heal the physical souvenirs away, but the euphoria in the aftermath made it worth the trouble. He’d ridden euphoria of this caliber for days; he looked forward to doing it now.
“You’re going to make me bury you.”
Vash’s tears, Vash’s words, Vash’s distress, shocked the peace right out of him. The world’s wettest electric blanket wept for him—for him?—and the holy demon spoke a prophecy that didn’t bother Wolfwood a bit—but it seemed to bother Vash? It seemed to bother him a lot.
“Ah, Needle Noggin, don’t cry over the likes of me. I’m not worth all that.”
Wolfwood grimaced, holding out his hands as if to clap Vash on the shoulders. His hands hovered stupidly, uncertain whether touch would be welcome.
Vash dropped to his knees, eyes searching the busted-up ceiling for scraps of sky as he snuffled and choked on tears.
“You sure are an ugly crier,” Wolfwood said, adding lying to the list of sins for his next confession.
Vash dropped his head into his hands, muffling a soggy whine. He made no other response.
Wolfwood sighed. It was always so easy with kids: they cried for the same reasons adults cried, and then sometimes they cried over stupid things, and you could ease their pain a little with a silly face, a hug, or a sugary bribe. Wolfwood doubted a silly face would go over well, and Lord knows he didn’t come here packing donuts.
Wolfwood hesitantly wrapped his arms around Vash’s shoulders. The blood was still drying on his arms; it smeared along Vash’s bare shoulders and the leather of his undershirt, but he didn’t seem to notice. Wolfwood noticed: it was weirdly intimate, hugging someone with no shirt but one made of his own caked-on gore. Both of them stiffened as Wolfwood closed the hug, unaccustomed to touch without violence. When Vash slumped against Wolfwood’s shoulder, Wolfwood relaxed in mirror.
“Sorry. Was trying for a joke. You’re not an ugly crier, Spikey. It’s kinda unfair how not-ugly you are, y’know?”
“It’s not that. I don’t… I don’t want you to die. Please.”
Wolfwood patted him on the back, graceful as a newly hatched toma.
“Easy. You fixed me, see? I’m not dyin’, everything’s healed.”
Vash pulled away just far enough to level him with the soggy eyes, and maybe Wolfwood had spoken too soon. He might be dying from that look.
“This time. Fixed you this time. And I almost wasn’t here in time.”
Wolfwood nearly admitted how close he’d gotten. When they went for his heart, nothing but ill-suited tools and unimaginative minds had saved him: they could have gone under his ribs and that would’ve been it.
He swallowed. It bothered him like a future hole in his shoe: he’d deal with it when it happened instead of worrying ahead of time. But if he told Spikey that… And if Vash could get upset hearing about it? Wolfwood considered how it would’ve played out, Vash finding him too late.
He slumped under the flood of emotions. Guilt and shame embraced him, old friends turning up uninvited to drink his liquor dry. He knew those two like he knew his own innards, but not this third, unnameable thing. It carried a sour tang of anxiety, outlined urgent in bright wet aquamarine. His normal guilt was a travel companion, best lived with by ignoring it. His normal shame demanded blood and he paid those bills on time. This unnameable agony demanded attention, but what payment would it ask of him?
“I’m sorry,” he offered.
“You’re sorry, but you won’t stop,” Vash said, and the way he said it—the softness, the undeserved kindness—hurt worse than bitterness.
“You don’t understand,” he started. “I can’t.”
A shit-ass explanation, but he wasn’t sure he understood to explain it himself. He couldn’t stop. He couldn’t. He wouldn’t survive and he couldn’t explain and he just—he couldn’t.
“Alright,” Vash said, unfairly calm for a man who’d cried his eyes out minutes prior.
“Alright?”
“So try me.”
Wolfwood wanted to scoff, but that unnameable third thing kept him quiet. He had nothing to lose here, but there was much to be lost. So, so much: if it were his to lose he wouldn’t have been worried.
“The hell do you mean, ‘try me?’”
“Help me understand, or let me help you. It means anything you want it to mean. What do you want, Wolfwood?”
He froze. He had never had time to waste on wanting. Wanting was hopeless. He had plenty of needs, some unmet, but needs he could handle. He needed things that other men wanted—craving cigarettes like air, adrenaline highs like water—but he’d talked himself up in bravado, claiming he was stronger for not ‘wanting’ comfort and softness. Privately, he reckoned he wasn’t much better than a baby, crying in the night. His need was mindless, an animal urgency threatening to swallow any offer if no limits were enforced. And for Vash to offer? Anything?
Vash broke the embrace as Wolfwood sat paralyzed.
“You’ve got time,” Vash said, a lifeline thrown into quicksand. “Think about it.”