Archive of Our Own ^beta

Nicholas is granted the privilege to at least flirt with the notion of being free - truly free - for just shy of a week.

He leaves July in his shadow as fast as his weary legs are willing to carry him, his head down and hands restless as he pretends the gravelly voice of guilt doesn’t persistently whisper in his ear with every step he takes. Nicholas has no real direction nor destination, and fumbles every now and then as he doesn’t have someone else's orders to lean back on like some hellish crutch. He wanders into some nameless town on his third day of presumed freedom, and doesn’t see any reason to keep moving.

For the first time in years he has nothing to run towards, or to hide from.

He fills the endless hours in the days which trickle by with meaningless tasks, he sits in taverns and scolds himself whenever his mind wanders off from him, reaching for the false comforts which crackle and spark around wayward memories that Nicholas knows he would be smart to dismiss all together. And yet he can’t - Not yet. He tells himself.

His eyes lose focus, his vision blurs ever so slightly around the edges, and far too easily he’s clawed his way backwards through time - the muted grays and browns of the inside of the tavern warp and shift as Nicholas’s foolish imagination pulls him into blissful nothingness, painting scenes of desert nights and the cramped backseat of that damn car, of air charged with gunfire and wild blue eyes.

Nicholas has long lost count of the amount of times his eyes have flicked over his shoulder to make sure Vash is keeping up over the last week, seeking the blonde out like it was simply second nature - a habit Nicholas isn’t naive enough to believe he’ll manage to shake for quite some time.

I left him there. Nicholas catches himself thinking no less than a dozen times a day. I delivered a boy who would have walked through fire for me to a brutal end without a shred of hesitation, and for what?

Nicholas bristles, his grip tightens around the empty glass clutched in his hand.

For a contract?

Nicholas slumps back in the rickety chair he’d draped himself across, his legs stretched out in front of him as he watches the sun retreat below the horizon through the chipped tavern window in front of him. His head luls back as he reaches for another cigarette, but his hand stills as a flicker of white light dances across his peripheral vision. Nicholas winces at the flashing light, and turns to seek it out with his brow furrowed.

Across the tavern sits two boys - clearly no older than fifteen - and clutched in one of their thin hands is a silver camera in a worn leather case.

It’s a piece of hardware that Nicholas would recognise drunk out of his mind or staggering blind. 

He also knows for an absolute fact that its keeper would never let it slip out of her reach.

Nicholas rockets out of his chair and rushes across the dusty floor as a small flicker of panic ignites in the pit of his stomach, one which Nicholas knows can swell into a roaring inferno in a matter of seconds if it’s not doused. Nicholas comes to a wide-stanced halt in front of the teenagers, his sunglasses sitting low on his nose as he leers at them, his tone thick with deadly accusation.

“Where the hell did you get that?”

They both whip towards him with blinding speed, their youthful eyes wide with fear as the one closest to Nicholas draws back - clutching the camera to his chest.

“The camera, keep up kid-” Nicholas drawls, jabbing his finger at the device as the kid fumbles to stop himself from dropping it.

“It’s not stolen! I swear-”

Nicholas spits out a bitter punch of laughter. “Yeah sure it’s not, I know who it belongs too-”

The kid leaps up from his stool. “No really! We didn’t-”

Nicholas takes a step towards him, leaning down so he can peer at the already terrified child over the dark rim of his glasses. “I’m gonna give you ten seconds to tell me where you got it, but I’ll get a whole lot less patient after five-”

“A dumpster!”

Nicholas rolls his eyes “Wanna be a bit more specific?”

The kid blinks away tears as he staggers backwards “In July! There’s this big building right on the outskirts crawling with…with people, but only on the outside, I never saw anyone go in or out-”

Nicholas frowns. “Not soldiers?”

“No way….They’re way scarier, they all have this symbol on their uniforms”

Nicholas feels as if every inch of air has been punched from his lungs. A symbol.

“Was there anything else? Or just the camera?” Nicholas presses forwards.

“I don’t remember, this was the only thing worth taking if that’s what you’re asking-”

Nicholas raises a brow - a silent warning to not test his patience. 

“Come on man! Uh….Maybe some clothes? Light coloured, but they were all….All bloody -”

Nicholas turns on his heel so quickly that his dark hair fans around his head like the halo of something long decayed, a sneering creature that’s deathly loyal to the endless night to which it belongs. 

Slinking back towards the hell he had only just managed to crawl away from. 

Meryl Stryfe is going to die, if she’s somehow not dead already.

Nicholas bursts out of the tavern with a ragged breath and a familiar panic swimming in his chest - his eyes float towards the horizon to where July glitters and festers in the near distance, beckoning for Nicholas in a familiar voice that he’s never understood but always succumbs to. 

And Vash the Stampede is not coming to rescue her.

Nicholas feels his hands ball into steel fists by his sides, as he cannot help but hope that Vash slipped into death like drifting off to sleep, lulled by his own heartbeat. Painless.

It’s a ridiculous lie to ponder, a selfish lie, but it’s the only thing which keeps Nicholas upright - that allows him to keep putting one foot in front of the other as Vash’s gentle voice mutters against his ear, pressing against his back like a summer wind or the merciful hand of retribution.

He knew. Vash knew exactly what he was walking into. He forgave me. 

“Thank you for everything”

Nicholas winces as sand stings his tired eyes. And he walked into it anyway. Nicholas starts walking. He probably forgave Knives too, it might have been the last thing he ever did.

I can’t take it back. A heaving breath. But I sure as hell can do what he would have done.

____

It takes Nicholas a day to retrace his steps and deliver himself willingly back within the reach of a familiar enemy.

He doesn’t allow his eyes to linger in any one place for longer than a moment, keeping his head ducked and his footfalls as light as possible as he slinks from street to street, ducking between neon lights and narrowed gazes with practiced ease. Nicholas peers over his glasses as he slips down a familiar alleyway - and his eyes immediately settle on the familiar structure up ahead, a tower of steel and shadowy despair which did no short of an excellent job at keeping away any lingering eyes.

Anyone who did not have a death wish, that is.

Nicholas quickens his pace, racing towards his own demise as if he’s desperate to meet whoever or whatever it is that waits for him on the other side of his own mortality.

Glass vials clink together in his top pocket like windchimes, his grip on the leather straps which hold the Punisher tightens, his fingers twitching against the cool metal buckles.

Nicholas realizes he’s being followed as he rounds the next narrowed corner - and he pays it not a shred of mind. That is until the eyes that linger on his back find their voice, and brush a familiar drawl over him like knuckles over his cheek.

“Well, this is quite the development ”

Nicholas stops dead in his tracks - his shoulders drawing together as he feels his jaw clench.

“I don’t have time for this” he mutters.

A snicker. “Sure you do!”

Nicholas whips around - and his seeking eyes immediately settle on the dots of glowing green that split apart the gray darkness of the alleyway a handful of meters away from him. 

“Zazie” He mutters.

Zazie saunters towards him as if Nicholas had summoned him, his head lulling side to side like a child as his mask distorts his voice. “He has her, the girl, he’s had her for days….I assume that’s why you’re back”

Nicholas bristles. “Alive?”

“I wouldn’t bother to tell you if she was dead, Punisher”

Nicholas takes a long step towards Zazie, his ears prickling as he slips on a mask of total indifference - one he had used to attempt to trick Vash into believing Nicholas was nothing more than some heartless creature countless times, a comfortable lie.

One he’s not quite sure Vash ever really bought. 

“Give me one reason why I should believe a word you say” Nicholas grits out, eliciting a puff of laughter from Zazie as he continues to waltz towards Nicholas. “I saw her myself, the Angel seems to be holding humans in the basement, more experiments I’d imagine-”

The Angel. Nicholas feels poison rise at the back of his throat, potent and deadly. 

Nicholas knew an Angel, and he was nothing like Millions Knives.

“I’m not hearing a reason” Nicholas spits.

“You think I am loyal to him? To the Eye?” Zazie drawls, sing-songy and mocking as he walks a slow circle around Nicholas.

“Sure do”

“I am loyal to no one, how boring- ”

Nicholas turns on his heel to trap the creature under the heel of his narrowed gaze once more, drawing his lips back over his teeth as he sneers. “Okay I’ll bite, then why the hell are you helping me?”

Zazie simply shrugs, crossing his arms over his lithe and entirely inhuman frame - a monster wearing a cloak of humanity, a nearly perfect mimic of a souled creature, not entirely unlike Nicholas himself. “The girl did nothing, I am unsure why she is being punished for crimes which are not her own…For crimes which are yours ” Zazie sighs.

Nicholas turns away from him, scoffing as he drops his head forwards. “You’re a hypocrite”

“And you are wasting time, which is a valuable thing indeed when it comes to a mortal life….So fickle, so fleeting- ”

Nicholas groans, screwing his eyes shut for one blissful moment before allowing his facade to melt away - slinking back into the blackness of his heart like a wounded animal. “The basement?” He asks, and the hairs on the back of his neck immediately stand alert as memories of such a corner of hell slash across Nicholas’s vision like slashes of a knife. 

“Yes“

Nicholas turns away from Zazie and keeps walking, his tongue pressing against the roof of his mouth as his pulse thrums in the side of his neck.

“Wait-”

Nicholas stops again, rolling his eyes as he flicks his eyes over his shoulder once more.

“I have not seen him, Punisher” Zazie says barely above a whisper.

Stop.

“I didn’t ask” Nicholas hisses. His tone clipped as he tears his eyes away from the creature and strides headfirst into the blackness that only grows denser with every step he takes.

“It’s written all over that silly face of yours, human emotions really are curious-“

“I’m not expecting to find him” Nicholas spits into the frigid air before him.

“No?” Zazie sighs, his tone light and undoubtedly amused.

“No , if Stampede was around the journalist wouldn’t need fuckin’ rescuing in the first place”

____

Nicholas knows every way in, and every way out.

He knows every guard rotation, every vent, every lightless corner. 

He’d committed every single possible escape route to memory years ago, then meticulously ranked them from most likely to succeed to not so hopeful - having been completely certain that one day in the near future his life would depend on his ability to flee the place with speed and ease.

Never in even his most outlandish daydreams did Nicholas think he’d be retracing the paths he carefully planned and memorized backwards; sneaking in, not out.

In the end it’s almost comically easy - Nicholas waits patiently behind a blind corner for barely a minute while the rear security detail strolls languidly around the east side of the building, then tucks himself behind a steel bin and waits for someone to come out of the most commonly used loading bay door. Nicholas ducks in without so much as a sound, and it’s only when he’s completely sure he’s alone that he allows himself to heave in a breath.

Adrenaline thrums under his skin like a livewire - a plume of back smoke on a distant horizon promising destruction to come, a streak of lightning tearing apart the desert sky. It’s a sickening feeling of dread, and the only reason Nicholas manages to stay on his feet is to foolishly attempt to outrun it.

Crawling deeper into the belly of the creature that he barely escaped with his sanity let alone his life mostly intact once before, one which he knows will not be so forgiving a second time.

Nicholas sticks like glue to walls, remaining light on his feet and constantly moving as he weaves through the almost incoherent network of service hallways and lightless concrete stairwells that connect the labyrinth. It’s empty. Nicholas clutches the Punisher flush to his back. That’s probably not fuckin’ good-

Nicholas pants as he comes to a brief pause on a landing of another damp stairwell only long enough to trace his eyes over the steel plate mounted to the wall in front of him - Basement Level 9. 

“Getting close, shit -” He mutters to himself, attempting to chase away even a fragment of the darkness that presses against his clammy skin with the warmth of his breath as he takes off again - descending the steel stairs as fast as he can manage. Nicholas hit’s the very bottom floor at almost running speed, his weight slipping precariously onto his left leg as he throws himself around the corner, ramming his shoulder into a pipe in his haste. 

The pain that explodes there is insignificant and fleeting as Nicholas strides down the hallway, his knees bent and shoulders hunched as he slinks towards a familiar doorway at the end of the endless stretch of steel cladding.

Nicholas fights the urge to squeeze his eyes shut as he steps into the doorway, but his vision is stolen from him regardless as a wall of white light slams into him - pushing the darkness and the grime away from Nicholas with blinding force, shrouding him in folds of blinding white.

He much prefers the darkness.

Nicholas throws his free hand up to shield his eyes from the bright light, wincing as his eyes frantically blink to adjust behind the pitiful protection of his sunglasses. He pulls his hand away with a groan, taking a few steps forwards as the clinical light nips at his bare ankles.

He’s blinded, breathless and wretched for one harrowing moment.

Then from somewhere within the room - which was still a blur of white as Nicholas squints - someone gasps. The sound is small and laced with pure panic, enough that it makes the hairs on the back of Nicholas’s neck stand alert and his jaw slacken.

Hope crawls under his skin like a persistent disease and festers.

Nicholas comes to a staggering halt, and the sight before him comes into focus.

In the very center of the room was a glass cage; four identical walls creating a perfect square. The floor of the cage was made from a mirrored surface bordered with a thin line of impossibly bright lights. A sense of unease seemed to waft off of the device in relentless waves - there’s something mind-numbingly wrong about it, the way it has clearly been expertly designed to allow the captor to peer inside and watch its contents with uninterrupted ease.

And in that cage, sitting in the corner as far away from the door as possible, was Meryl Stryfe.

She does not look pleased to see Nicholas, but then again no one ever really does-

He thinks nothing of her wide eyed and almost paralyzed expression. He’s not the monster he once was. 

“Meryl?” He breathes out, his words punching through the near-silence of the room, joining the low hum of electricity which seems to be emanating from the box.

Nicholas loosens his grip on the Punisher as he walks quickly towards her, his heart aching with steadfast disbelief as he rushes towards the thin control panel which attaches itself to the side of the glass cage like a parasyte. 

She’s alive…..How the fuck is she still alive-

Nicholas swears under his breath as his hands hover over the panel, wide eyes scanning desperately over the countless unfamiliar symbols that make up the dash - space faring, of course-

“No….” Meryl breathes out, her voice is muffled as it forces its way through the thick wall of glass that separates them.

“Gimme a second, alight? I’m not exactly fluent in plant-”

Her voice is impossibly meek, shattered, and yet it drowns out Nicholas’s own with ease as she mutters “No no no, you shouldn’t be here-“

Nicholas rolls his eyes, keeping his eyes fixed on the panel as he leans the Punisher against the glass with a frustrated huff. “Takes a lot more then these fuckers to kill me, little lady, I’m gonna-“

Meryl scrambles to her feet, stumbling across the mirrored floor until she’s pressing both of her hands into the glass panel directly in front of Nicholas. His eyes fly up with a strangled gasp, drawing back as her terrified eyes lock with his own.

“What are you doing here!?” She wails like a wounded animal.

Nicholas’s brows draw together into an impatient scowl. “Taking a page out of blondies book and rescuing your ass, you can thank me later-“

“Run!”

Nicholas draws back as if he’d been struck as a sick feeling prickles at the back of his neck. “What?” He breathes out, watching as Meryl’s panicked panting fogs the glass in front of her slack mouth. She shakes her head frantically, sobs exploding from her chapped lips like gunfire as she slams her palms against the glass.

It’s only then that Nicholas notices that she’s covered in blood - caked around her nose and her delicate fingernails, dried in her hair in clumps and clinging to the hem of her white shirt like a beggar clawing at church steps screaming out for divine deliverance. Not caring in the slightest if such a thing comes in the form of a second chance or a bitter end. 

She’s the one in the cage, and yet Nicholas cannot shake the very sudden feeling that he’s the one who ought to be terrified. 

“Get out of here, Wolfwood!” She screams.

Behind him, something metallic clicks and shifts - the sound of rusted steel groaning floods his ears.

“It’s a trap! ”

It’s as if she’d flipped a switch - as soon as the words leave Meryl’s mouth in the form of a half-sob the room is immediately plunged into darkness. Nicholas swears as he stumbles backwards, his arms splayed beside him as an alarm blasts overhead - a repetitive beep, long and drawling like the heartbeat of something wicked that lurks just out of view.

Shit.

Red light explodes overhead, splitting the darkness once more as it presses into every corner of the room.

Nicholas whips around just in time to see a metal grate sliding slowly over the only door in or out of the room. Nicholas lurches to grab the Punisher, but is immediately stilled when he locks eyes with Meryl - painted red from within the cage, her small hands trembling against the glass.

No….No-

Meryl’s eyes brim with tears as she speaks so quietly that Nicholas barely hears it over the repetitive alarm. “Run, run away ….Nicholas”

Don’t. A soft voice mutters against the shell of Nicholas’s ear, a corpse not yet cold in his shallow grave, surrounded by petals as red as rubies and feathers as iridescent as pearl. Blonde hair brushes against his cheek, and Nicholas’s knees threaten to buckle as he turns his head away. I would never leave her, Wolfwood.

Nicholas tears his eyes away from the cage, unable to look at his own reflection in Meryl’s teary eyes for a second longer.

Painted red from top to toe, clawing at his clothes as betrayal drives her dagger into his side and twists relentlessly.

What I wouldn’t give to be even a likeness of you, Vash.

“I’m sorry, I’m so-”

Nicholas turns on his heel and sprints for the door, dragging the Punisher behind him as his breaths punch from his lungs in patternless gasps. His eyes cut through the red hue of the room to find the metal door up ahead - which is now almost entirely shut. Nicholas hurls himself forwards, sliding across the metal floor on his side with a strangled groan as the grated floor snags the skin over his ribs. Nicholas can do nothing other than squeeze his eyes shut and pray for a miracle he most certainly does not deserve as he feels his cheek brush with the metal of the door as it slides shut above him.

He slides underneath it, making it through the gap by no more than a hairsbreadth.

Nicholas feels something pull taught and snap - and leather stings his forearm as he’s thrown into the wall of the hallway with enough force that it renders him dizzy and breathless for a harrowing moment. He peels his eyes open with a groan - and immediately wishes he hadn’t when he sees the broken strap clutched in his hand like the flimsy lifeline of a common fool. Nicholas’s eyes lift to peer over his glasses and look between the close-knit metal poles of the now completely shut door before him.

The Punisher lies disregarded on the opposite side, strewn across the floor like blood across Nicholas’s knuckles.

Leaving him ensnared in a trap expertly designed for him totally unarmed.

“Oh you’ve got to be joking-”

Nicholas forces himself to his feet with another strangled groan and a mouthful of nonsensical cursing. His head flicks back and forth down the hallway - which is still bathed in red light as the alarm reverberates off of the narrow walls - to try and discern which way to run. In the end he decides to head back the way he came, and thanks the siren that blares overhead for at least partially drowning out the nagging voice in the back of his head that proudly declares that Nicholas is already dead, no matter which direction he sprints. Every step he takes is insignificant - carrying Nicholas blindly towards a fate which was fixed for him years ago, a contract signed in his name with blood he shed without a shred of remorse. 

It’s almost comforting. His feet slam against the steel flooring. I’ve been living on borrowed time for so long. 

And yet he still runs, clinging to the tattered shreds of inherited hope that he has left.

Run. He mutters, and for a second Nicholas swears he can see him amongst the red light flooding the hallway, sprinting right beside Nicholas as he had countless times before. Run, Nicholas. 

Nicholas forces his way between pipes and kicks in the grates which cover manholes in the grated floor, every breath aches as he heaves air into his lungs and still he refuses to slow down. Nicholas throws himself around corners, up stairs and through barely existent gaps in slowly closing doors as the entire facility goes into lockdown - an elaborate cage clawing at the retreating form of the crossbearer.

Nicholas' thoughts sprint ahead of him - and as exhaustion and panic eat away at his already frayed disposition the gap between them grows and grows until Nicholas can barely see it anymore. He skids around another corner with a heaving gasp, pushing himself roughly away from the wall he almost crashes into with dizzying haste. His vision blurs as sweat stings in Nicholas’s eyes - which is why he doesn’t see the pipe that cuts across the hallway in front of him until it’s far too late. Nicholas gasps as his foot catches on the cylinder and his weight is thrown forwards, his feet torn out from underneath him in what feels like a fragment of a second.

One moment he’s hurling himself down the hallway, fleeing like a fool from his own fate, and the next he’s strewn across the floor - winded and heaving as he tries to haul himself up with trembling arms.

Nicholas lifts his eyes, and quickly learns he is not the first to have made this mistake.

A few paces ahead of him lies the corpse of what looks to be a military policeman, his terror frozen on his pale and lifeless expression as his limbs fan around him like a halo, as does the circle of blood which pools under the man's head. 

I wonder what he was running from. Nicholas thinks as he crawls across the icy steel floor towards him. I wonder if he was as fuckin’ terrified as I am.

Nicholas doesn’t hesitate as he shoves the man’s corpse onto its side and draws his standard issue pistol from the holster at his waist. 

I wonder if it hurt, when he was robbed blind of his life.

Nicholas crawls through the man's blood with a shattered breath, wincing as it soaks into the thin material of his undershirt and paints the exposed column of his sternum and his forearms as he desperately clutches the corpse's weapon in his trembling hand. Nicholas drags himself around the next corner before forcing his arms underneath himself once more, sitting up and pressing himself back against the wall behind him before drawing his knees up to his chest.

Nicholas simply sits there for a few long moments - swallowing the crisp and almost damp air which presses against him with fever as he frantically tries to slow his thundering heartbeat.

He drapes his blood-soaked arms over his knees, and utters a silent prayer when he notices the red light of the hallway makes it near to impossible to actually see the ruby liquid which he can most surely feel sliding down his arm and dripping off his elbows. With trembling hands Nicholas cracks open the weapon, and feels what remains of his hope turn to ash under his grimy fingertips as his heavy eyes trace over the single bullet which rests in the chamber. 

For a second Nicholas considers unloading it into his skull - and taking away the satisfaction of watching the light leave his eyes from whichever executioner Knives has sent after him.

The sirens wail on, the red light presses against Nicholas’s eyes and makes his head ache.

He hears the sound of footfalls from around the corner as someone approaches with ease and confidence - making no attempt to hide their approach, as if they desperately wanted Nicholas to know he has been caught, that his fleeing was as ultimately futile as the crossbearer already knew it to have been. Clutching to life for as long as he possibly could. 

Nicholas cocks the barrel back into place, and pushes his back against the wall as he rises slowly to his feet.

No.

He presses the back of his head against the cool steel, sucking in another lungful of air as his eyes drift shut for a blissful moment. Nicholas rubs the back of his hand across his cheek in an attempt to clear away the sweat which clings to his clammy skin, a choice he swiftly regrets as he smears the blood of the stranger in the hall across his cheekbone. Nicholas’s tears his hand away from his cheek and instead feels along the unfamiliar metal ridges of the military pistol before settling around the handle - his pointer finger twitches as it rests against the trigger.

If i’m gonna die here, then it sure as hell is gonna be on my damn feet-

Nicholas doesn’t hesitate, doesn’t give the cowardice which itches just below his skin the chance to worm its way between his ribs and into his racing heart. He switches the pistol's safety off with a trembling breath, and steps around the corner and back into the hallway with the unfamiliar weapon stretched out before him - clutched between his two trembling hands.

Nicholas can barely see, he can barely breathe.

For a split second his death is deathly silent - as a familiar figure greets him from the end of the hall.

Nicholas must be dead already. It happened so damn fast, I didn’t shoot, I didn’t hear anyone shoot-

The grim reaper or god or nothing entirely greets him like an old friend in an unfamiliar place, like bumping into a facet of his own soul in a nameless street a milenia away from home. 

Nicholas heaves in a breath. How am I breathing?

Vash the Stampede stands at the end of the hall, wrapped in that unsightly red coat that Nicholas has missed like a lost limb. 

Nicholas feels sirens prickle in his ears, the sound reverberating around his skull. He looks down fully expecting to see a hole blasted through his chest - and nearly loses his footing when he sees he’s still very much intact, smothered by blood which is not his own but in one piece nonetheless. 

I’m not dead…..He’s-

“Needle noggin?” Nicholas' voice harbors emotions he did not even know he was capable of feeling anymore, and the tip of his borrowed weapon dips ever so slightly - allowing Nicholas to peer over the barrel with wide eyes, sagging with pure disbelief. 

His eyes trace over Vash with scientific precision - narrowed through the tinted lenses of his sunglasses as he rakes his eyes over his form. Vash is half shrouded in the ebbing red light of the hallway and half hidden amongst sheets of darkness, a potent mix which makes it near to impossible to make out any of his features - and so Nicholas traces his silhouette with hungry eyes and a thundering heart. Vash’s red jacket is tattered at the bottom hem, as if the blonde had crawled through a pile of ash or over a floor of jagged glass. His revolver is hanging in the same leather holster on his thigh, and his human hand brushes it loosely as it hangs by his side - a glorified accessory, as Nicholas has never once seen him shoot it at a person. 

Nicholas has a million things he wants to say and a million more that he knows he should - a solemn apology and an empty promise to never wrong the blonde again. I regretted what I did the moment I walked away, believe me Vash…..Please. Nicholas wants to rush to him, to take Vash’s narrow face between his undeserving hands and crowd him against the wall, mutter against his jaw and feel his pulse thrum under his trembling palms.

He wants Vash’s light to bleed into him, to fill the cracks in his fractured soul and make him feel whole again. 

I will never leave you behind again, I never should have done it in the first place.

Nicholas feels his knees buckle, but miraculously he manages to stay on his feet.

“Way to fuckin’ scare me to death, blondie, how did you even get here? I thought-“ Nicholas rushes out, his words jumbled and frantic as he pulls his finger away from the trigger.

He let you live…..How? 

Nicholas drops his pistol further again, letting it hang by his waist as the end of his sentence hangs between them like an ashy fog, making it nearly impossible to breathe at all.

I thought Knives would have obliterated you by now.

Vash doesn’t respond, and Nicholas swallows thickly as he takes a staggering step towards the blonde - desperate to make out his expressions as he lingers at the far end of the hallway, meters away from Nicholas’s disbelieving eyes. 

Is he angry?

“You know what, I don’t give a shit….Somethings going on, Meryl said this is some kind of trap-“ Nicholas punches the words out, feeling a fresh wave of guilt gag him as he drops his head. “I couldn’t save her, I’m sorry-“

Nicholas' words are stolen from his dry throat as Vash slowly steps forwards and fully into the path of one of the red lights mounted to the ceiling - exposing himself to Nicholas’s seeking eyes. Nicholas feels his shoulders draw together with confusion and something other - something which doesn’t belong, not here, not Vash. His clothes are even more tattered then Nicholas thought, so much so that it’s a miracle his jacket still manages to cling to his lithe frame. The blonde's hair is limp and lifeless, hanging across his eyes and brushing against his nose as he breathes slowly and evenly. Nicholas can’t see his eyes, but his orange glasses are nowhere in sight.

He looks like a pathetic mimic of himself, torn from the mind of someone who only knew him from depictions printed on half crumpled wanted posters or carved from fragments of his brother's onyx shadow by a master sculptor - the product of a twisted mind with a tender heart. Vash looks barely like even a ghost of himself - but just enough of him shows that Nicholas can barely contain the soul crushing desire to collapse into a heap at the blonde's feet. 

Nicholas knows all too well how it looks to survive Millions Knives - it looks like this. A warped figure in familiar clothes, a set jaw and lifeless frame. It looks like limbo; the gray and nameless place between mortality and depravity where a strong breeze or a gentle caress could push you onto either side of that impossibly thin line. 

He tortured him….His own brother tried to destroy him-

Nicholas is so entranced, so completely consumed by his own confusion, that he doesn’t even notice that Vash has pulled his revolver from its holster until he’s staring down the barrel from the other side of the narrow hallway. 

“Are you fuckin’ listening to me, needle noggin!?” Nicholas barks, his voice sharp and fearful as he staggers backwards.

His instincts scream for him to slot his finger over the trigger of his own stolen pistol, but his heart refuses to allow him to so much as breathe yet alone move.

No…..It’s Vash-

When Vash speaks, the words blow through Nicholas like a punch to his stomach. 

“What did you call me?” Vash mutters, cold and void. 

Nicholas takes another staggering step towards him, shaking his head as he heaves. “ Huh? We don’t have time for this shit-”

His words trail off as the blonde lifts his chin painfully slowly - and his eyes fix on Nicholas with deadly precision. 

And it’s like staring at a stranger. Like a wooden frame sitting proudly above on the mantle of a family home with the photo that he knows should be there torn out or a brass locket hanging around the neck of an old man left empty and soulless. Nicholas searches and searches and searches for any trace of his Vash in the eyes he silently swore he would go to his grave mesmerized by, and instead he finds miles and eons of nothing . 

“My name-“ Vash breathes out in the same icy voice, a wicked snarl. 

Vash’s right eye is the same cerulean blue color that Nicholas remembers seeing his own reflection within countless times - a far kinder, far gentler depiction of a man he wishes he could be staring back at Nicholas with expectation. But the galaxies which sparkled around his dark pupils have vanished entirely. And as for Vash’s other eye; it has all but completely lost its blue color and instead appears gray and lifeless, like splintered ice.

Like he was frosting over, slowly but surely succumbing to a slow moving poison. 

“-is Vash ” he spits his own name like an insult, and the words bite at Nicholas’s skin like a handful of sand being flung at him. 

Nicholas has never once looked at Vash and seen even a fraction of a likeness to his twin flame, but now he simply can’t help it. Not when the blonde now wears the man’s lifeless gray gaze like a brand of ownership. On Vash’s left side, Nicholas sees Knives; he sees wastelands and curved steel and piano keys. And on the other he sees the ghost of Vash the Stampede; like a corpse wearing a chipped mask carved from his boyish features as some kind of twisted joke. Nicholas drops his gun to hang at his waist, his heart lodged in his throat.

The fool he would have walked through hell and holy fire for barely a week ago now stands before Nicholas completely unrecognizable.

Nicholas feels the same sense of sick dread form in the pit of his stomach that had gripped him when he last locked eyes with Livio, what feels like a lifetime ago.

Like stumbling blindly through a place Nicholas abstractly recognises as his, his home; the bumps in the chipped paintwork is familiar as his calloused fingertips drag along the walls, the floorboards beneath his feet sag under the weight of wayward memories and he can hear voices in the next room - beckoning for Nicholas in words as soft as satin and as familiar to him as the scars scattered haphazardly across his skin.

And yet he hasn’t the slightest clue where he’s meant to go to reach them. 

Nicholas staggers backwards, gagged by pure and all consuming disbelief. “No….”

No, not him.

“No fuckin’ way-“

Knives would never, he needed Vash for something-

Nicholas watches on, stunned rigid and entirely unable to fend for himself as Vash’s finger slides over the trigger of his revolver.

Something important, something more than becoming another mindless foot soldier. Something more than me.

Nicholas takes a staggering step backwards, and at the exact same time that Vash squeezes the trigger and fires. For a moment Nicholas can barely believe what he’s seeing as Vash marches towards him with a set brow and his elbow locked straight - ensuring deadly precision as he fires again.

  “Vash-” 

Pain explodes in Nicholas’s right shoulder, and he groans as he clutches his collarbone with a shattered exhale - letting his stolen pistol clatter to the floor as warmth seeps between his fingers. Nicholas looks down, and even as he watches his own blood gush from the bulletwound in his shoulder he doesn’t quite believe it, he can’t.

Vash….Vash doesn’t hurt people, he-

Nicholas hears the barrel of Vash’s oversized revolver click, and his disbelieving eyes watch on with morbid fascination as Vash shoves his tech hand into the torn pocket of his coat and draws out a handful of gold 22 caliber bullets. He reloads the chamber with speed and practiced ease, and Nicholas staggers backwards as his own blood mixes with that of the corpse which lies thrown across the pathway barely a stride behind him, soaking the fabric of his jacket.“Do not be afraid, Punisher” Vash mutters, his tone devoid of all emotions.

He fills the chamber - all eight bullets - and Nicholas wonders absentmindedly which will be the one that robs him of his life.

Vash slots it back into place, and immediately raises the revolver to point directly at Nicholas again. “I’ll make this quick” Vash sighs, his head cocking as he fits his pointer finger over the trigger once more.

Nicholas shakes his head, muttering out a breathless “No” before he turns on his heel and sprints down the hall. 

He doesn’t need to see or hear Vash to know that the blonde is pursuing him - he makes his presents known as he fires at Nicholas in rapid succession, brushing heat over his shoulders and precariously close to his ear as Nicholas clasps his hands over the back of his head - as if his fragile bones were capable of shielding his skull from a bullet. Nicholas hasn’t the slightest clue where he’s running as he flings himself around blind corners and prays to a god that he doesn’t even believe in that he doesn’t find a dead-end waiting for him on the other side. Nicholas’s shattered breaths pollute the cool air of the basement that confines him, mingling with the persistent and deafening ringing of gunshots ricocheting off of the walls. 

Nicholas feels his fingertips begin to go numb on his injured arm, and he clutches the wound as tight as his trembling hand will allow as blood loss makes his head spin. 

As Nicholas rounds the next corner, hurtling himself across the steel flooring as fast as he can manage, a brief lapse in gunfire settles over him like a gentle breeze. Nicholas heaves in a breath as he staggers, throwing his eyes over his shoulder just in time to see Vash round the very same corner at a languid pace, striding after Nicholas perfectly calm - his nimble fingers moving fluidly as he reloads again.

He’s not gonna stop….He-

Nicholas stumbles, his foot catching on a ledge, and he barely manages to stay on his feet as he hears Vash slot the chamber back into place once more - a sickening click which makes Nicholas want to sink to his knees right then and there, to accept his fate and look upon the face of his executioner with nothing but adoration. A fondness he will go to his grave never having spoken.

I’m grateful. Nicholas forces himself to keep running. If this is it, then I'm grateful that it’s him.

Nicholas shoulder throbs, and his teeth draw back over his snarling teeth as he pulls his blood-soaked hand away from the blooming wound and buries it into his own pocket - seeking contact with smooth glass in a way that had long grown comforting. Nicholas heaves out a breath as he pulls a vial from his pocket, and moves to take the cap between his teeth as Vash squeezes the trigger once more.

The glass shatters barely an inch from Nicholas’s face as Vash’s bullet tears through it - missing Nicholas’s fingers by less than a millimeter, and he winces as the blue liquid explodes against his cheek.

Perfect aim….Too perfect.

Hope whispers in Nicholas' ear in a voice that sounds harrowingly like Vash’s own.

And yet he’s failed to hit me, a much bigger target, every time but once. 

Nicholas skids around another corner, trying to ignore the way his vision has begun to blur and warp from the amount of blood he’s lost.

He’s fighting it….Whatever Knives has done to his head, Vash must be trying to resist it-

Vash fires again, missing Nicholas’s ribs by a terrifyingly small margin.

“Two, okay….Six left blondie, looks like we’re doing this the hard way-” Nicholas mutters to himself as he forces his legs to keep moving despite the way every muscle burns and screams in protest.

Nicholas keeps his pace up enough to not draw suspicion, and banks his survival solely on the theory that Vash is fighting back against whatever orders had been hardwired into him, and therefore wasn’t shooting to kill.

His heartbeat rages like wildfire in his ears, and he bats away the exhausted fog which settles over his eyes to count every shot Vash unleashes.

Five left….Four left….Three….Two-

The second that the last bullet leaves the chamber Nicholas pivots on his heel, his eyes narrowed and sweat dripping off of his chin as he hurls himself back down the hallway and towards Vash with a guttural scream. 

And yet the blonde's emotionless expression doesn’t waver, he simply buries his hand back into the pocket of his jacket and pulls out another handful of bullets.

Nicholas grits his teeth, bracing for the imminent pain which was soon to explode in his injured shoulder, and throws himself at Vash right as he slots the chamber back into place for the third time.

If he’s really resisting. Nicholas curls his fingers around Vash’s wrist on the hand which grips his revolver, wincing as his shoulder screams in protest, and fists his other bloodied hand in the tattered material of Vash coat. Then sooner or later he’s going to get tired, it’ll be harder, probably impossible-

“Enough!” Nicholas barks barely an inch from Vash’s blank expression as he tries to shove his revolver away with his weakened arm, and winces as he feels blood drip off his elbow, soaking the material of his jacket and decorating the silver floor beneath their feet with fat droplets of warm crimson.

Nicholas’s eyes lock with Vash’s over the rim of his sunglasses, and his heart aches as he sees not one flicker of recognition lingering in his vastly different eyes.

“I don’t want to hurt you, please don’t make me fuckin hurt you!” Nicholas seethes.

Vash snickers, dark and sinister. “Something tells me I have little to fear”

He can’t keep this up for much longer.

“It’s me, Vash-” Nicholas breathes out, his voice pleading as his fingers tremble against Vash’s pulse, low on his wrist.

Nicholas’s head spins, and for a moment he swears he sees something - a twitch in his jaw or his lashes fluttering, but it’s quickly chased away as Vash raises his mechanical hand and curls his fingers around Nicholas’s wrist. His eyes narrow, and it’s the only warning Nicholas is granted before his steel-solid grip tightens and twists. A groan of searing pain forces its way between Nicholas’s gritted teeth as Vash pries his limp hand away from his red coat with dizzying ease and bends Nicholas’s arm behind his own back in one fluid movement. Nicholas is forced to bend backwards in a tangle of jarring and entirely unnatural angles to try and prevent his uninjured shoulder from popping out of its socket. “Vash-” he hisses.

“I know who you are, Punisher, what you are. I think I know better than you know yourself- ”

Nicholas’s eyes screw shut as Vash tugs his human hand out of Nicholas grip, and for an impossibly slow second Nicholas is sure he is mere moments from unloading eight identical bullets into his skull. Instead, Vash raises his arm high over his head before bringing it down hard. Colour explodes behind Nicholas' eyes as the barrel of Vash’s revolver collides with his cheekbone, splitting his grimy skin and deafening him with a sickening crack. If Nicholas was fully human, such a blow would have surely broken every bone in his face.

Vash releases Nicholas' arm behind his back, allowing Nicholas to stagger backwards before striding forwards and planting both of his hands against Nicholas’s chest - and shoving him backwards with such a force that Nicholas' feet are immediately ripped out from underneath him.

Nicholas’s back hits the grated floor with another loud thud, winding him on impact as his eyes squeeze shut. “Fuck-”

Vash lets his head flop backwards, painting his splintered expression in sheets of neon red lighting as he releases a puff of laughter before fixing his eyes on Nicholas again.

He looks ragged and undone, bloodthirsty.

“I know that you are a coward. A spineless, brainless attack dog ” Vash’s words cut like knives as they press into Nicholas’s futile resistance, pinning him helplessly to the floor. Nicholas props himself up on his elbows, trying weakly to crawl backwards and away from Vash as pain paints his vision with a flurry of warped black dots that grow larger with every passing moment.

“Let him go, you piece of shit-” Nicholas spits, calling out to the maker, the Angel, who surely whispers to Vash within the confines of the blonde's own scrambled mind. Nicholas ignores the blood he can taste on the back of his teeth as he snarls at the monster who lingers in Vash’s familiar shadow.

Vash shakes his head, dropping his chin with a sigh and another wicked smirk. “Pathetic, even for you”

“He’s your brother, you sick fuck! He…He loves you-” Nicholas punches out the words.

Vash takes a sauntering step forwards, his revolver swinging at his side as he slowly backs Nicholas up against a wall. “You’re right, Nai does love me”

“Quiet Vash, the grown ups are talking-” Nicholas snaps, a mouthful of arrogance he is swiftly punished for as Vash pistol whips him again, forcing Nicholas to slump back against the wall as his skull bounces against the steel surface. 

His eyes squeeze shut as Vash crouches between his spread legs and promptly fists his prosthetic hand in Nicholas dark hair, scraping his painfully cool fingertips against the skin on the crown of Nichola’s head roughly before forcing his head back against the wall - and Nicholas doesn’t need to see him to know the blonde is inspecting the twin gashes which now divide Nicholas’s face; one across his eyebrow and one across his cheek both caused by Vash’s revolver and hands Nicholas has never known to be anything other than gentle.

Maybe he is dead….Maybe I killed him.

“Do you ever stop talking?” Vash drawls as his inhuman fingers tighten in Nicholas' hair. 

Maybe I created this, the perfect weapon-

Nicholas slumps backwards against the wall entirely, allowing his chin to tilt up towards Vash as every remaining inch of fight drains out of him between one shattered breath and the next. He peels his eyes open just in time to see victory flash across Vash’s unfamiliar eyes.

“You were always the weakest of his divine creations, Punisher” 

He releases Nicholas' hair with a firm shove, allowing his head to flop forwards limply as Nicholas fights to even breathe. 

Nicholas feels Vash push away from him, rising up to his full height to loom over Nicholas’s lifeless frame before pressing the icy tip of his revolver to the center of Nicholas’s clammy forehead - forcing his head back against the wall once more. The back of Nicholas skull thumps as he’s pinned back against the cladded wall, and his mouth falls open as he wheezes for breath, his own sickly warm blood sliding over the crooked curve of his nose and dripping off his chin at an almost melodic pace.

“My name is Nicholas, calling me by it is the least you can do” Nicholas scoffs, turning his head ever so slightly to spit a mouthful of his own blood out. 

Vash forces his head back against the wall, pressing the flat face of the barrel of his revolver against Nicholas' forehead harder. Nicholas winces as he feels a slight warmth emanating from the very center of the metal surface.

Nicholas peels his eyes open, and doesn’t even attempt to hide his emotions as he locks eyes with Vash - who looms over him like something Nicholas knows he isn’t, heartless and distant and cruel. Nicholas' jaw twitches, and his eyes brim with wayward tears as his heart shatters into countless pieces which are barely contained by his aching ribs.

He’s gone….Really gone-

Nicholas forces himself to breathe, and lets his hands fall limply to the floor beside his thighs as  his head spins. Nicholas clutches weakly to his own life for reasons he barely understands himself. “What did he do to you?” He breathes out, staring up at Vash with blurred vision.

Nicholas D. Wolfwood is going to die in a dark corner buried deep within a building he detests, his absolution delivered by familiar hands wearing the mask of a monster. No one is going to look for him. 

The end of the blonde's revolver twitches against Nicholas’s forehead. “You’re the last one” He mutters, barely audible over the sirens which still wail in the hallway beyond. Nicholas blinks at him, confusion swirling around him like a storm brewing on a distant horizon. Vash clearly notices Nicholas' state of disorientation and seethes in the face of it, sneering at Nicholas like a rabid animal. Vash’s words crackle and splinter as he spits them, brushing heat across the condemned man who waits patiently for his moment of divine punishment in front of the blondes twitching trigger finger. “The drunk is dead, we have the girl, all I need to do is kill you and it’ll finally end- “

“You knew….You knew i’d come for Meryl”

Vash snarls at him again. “We were counting on it, Punisher”

Nicholas picks one of his hands weakly off of the floor to reach for Vash, a movement that Vash doesn’t even seem to notice. Nicholas fights the urge to vomit as white hot pain rockets up his arm.

Vash looks as if he’s sprinting recklessly along the fine line that exists between mortality and insanity - his eyes wild and his words fragmented as they rush out from between his chapped lips like lightning splitting the desert sky. “Soon, the pain….It’ll stop, just like he promised”

Nicholas' hand falls limply into his lap with a thud. “Wait, just listen to me for one second-“

“Shut up!” Vash screams.

Nicholas finds him once more, pushing through that haze which lingers in his blurred vision, just in time to see Vash lift his tech hand and curl it around the handle of his revolver - clutching the weapon with both hands as he presses the barrel against Nicholas temple, forcing him to tilt his heavy head ever so slightly to the side.

For a second Nicholas is certain he’s imagining it, a byproduct of blood loss and despair; so he blinks hard, forcing his exhausted lungs to heave another desperate breath as he peers up at Vash again - to surely enough discover that his eyes weren’t playing tricks on him at all. Beautiful. Nicholas can’t help but think as his tired eyes trace the glowing blue and perfectly symmetrical lines that now paint the blonde's face and neck, crawling over his flushed skin like a network of tunnels, like veins to a beating heart. I should have told him that he looks beautiful like this, I should have-

“You did this…..You made me into this weak creature, you blinded me with false kindness-”

Even now, even here, he’s still so beautiful.

“He’s lying to you, Vash-“ Nicholas’s words slip from his lips as a slurred mumble as blood drips off of his lip.

“He didn’t! Nai is the only one I can trust….He made me see the truth, that all humanity wants from me is to use me”

Nicholas shakes his head, and somehow finds the strength to speak again. “He’s twisting your memories, listen to me- “

A misplaced and foreign anger blooms across Vash’s cheeks like a rosy blush - weaving between the swooping lines of his plant markings with delicate ease. “This is your fault! You and your kind bleeding me dry, and for what? What do we owe any of you? The faster you’re all gone the better”

“You don’t believe that, not for a second ” Nicholas can’t help but smirk, even now.

Humanity could beat you down a hundred times, and you’d still be smiling when you got up for round one hundred and one. 

Vash’s hands tremble where they grip the handle of his revolver, and Nicholas feels every minute vibration as the ridges of the gun’s wide tip dig into his clammy skin.

“I kill you, and it’s over” Vash spits. 

“Vash ”

“To love is to be mortal, to be weak ” he presses the gun harder into Nicholas temple “And I refuse to be weak for a second longer, I’ve…. we’ve wasted too much time already”

The glowing lines on his face seem to brighten and dim with every breath he draws, racing ahead of the blonde like a thundering heartbeat. 

Hope brushes her fingertips across Nicholas’s bruised and bloody cheekbone in the exact same way that Nicholas would happily raze entire cities to the ground to be able to repeat on Vash’s pale cheek in that moment.“You’re….you’re still in there, aren’t you?” Nicholas breathes out, and he believes it, even in the face of death itself.

Vash’s jaw clenches. “Stop speaking”

His voice rips through Nicholas like a bullet through his ribs, Nicholas feels blood drip off of his chin as it flows from his nose and over his lip.

“Vash-“

He pushes the barrel hard against Nicholas' temple with another animalistic snarl, forcing Nicholas’s head back against the wall behind him once again. Nicholas doesn’t even attempt to resist it as he keeps his eyes locked firmly on Vash’s own, ignoring the voice in his head which grows louder with every breath he defies the odds by drawing - a meek voice begging him to give in, to allow his eyes to slip shut and pray Vash - his Vash - waits for him on the other side. 

“I said enough!” Vash barks, his voice mutilated and warped.

Nicholas can’t help but laugh, dejected and weak.

“It’s okay, it’s okay Vash-“

Vash grips the handle so hard his human knuckles go white, and Nicholas’s eyes finally slip shut.

“I forgive you …..It’s gonna be okay, I promise“ Nicholas breathes out. 

Nicholas braces, his jaw clenching as he waits for death to greet him.

He hears a ragged breath, and then a flurry of movement.

Nicholas peels his eyes open - but the blackness lingers for a few long moments, so Nicholas hasn’t the slightest clue what’s happening until a solid weight settles across his aching thighs. He sucks in a quick breath, frantically blinking as a pair of trembling hands lift to pull his sunglasses off and toss them carelessly down the hall. Nicholas’s weak heartbeat wanes in his chest, and yet he still finds the will to lift his blood-stained hands and grip Vash’s tattered coat as the blonde’s knees press to the outside of his legs; half sitting in Nicholas lap as he pulls Nicholas’s hands away from his coat.

“W-What-” Nicholas chokes out, but his words are stolen from his bone-dry throat as he feels his palms being pressed against something worn and heavy.

Shaking fingers slot against his own as Vash curls Nicholas’s limp hands around the handle of his revolver until it’s Nicholas who has his pointer finger pressed against the trigger, his loose grip cradled by Vash’s deathly cold hands.

What-

Vash urges Nicholas arms up, drawing his own hands away to instead curl them around the elongated barrel of his revolver.

Nicholas is rendered entirely powerless as Vash presses the end of the gun against his own forehead, folding in on himself as if he was desperate to be nearer to the killing machine gripped limply in Nicholas’s trembling hands; Nicholas is surprised he manages to hold the thing at all, he can barely feel his hands-

Nicholas’s eyes find Vash’s, and it’s only then that he sees him. He sees Vash and not a single thing else staring back at him - like the hand of time has miraculously been wound back. Vash’s eyes are dotted with stardust, brimming with tears as his tender soul shines through like a lighthouse on a distant port. Nicholas sees Vash.

And he looks terrified.

Vash seems to gather himself for a moment, and when he finally does speak it’s little more than a breath.

“Pull the trigger”

Nicholas can only stare, his disbelieving eyes aching to trace every familiar emotion and name every fleck of color that creates the kaleidoscope of Vash’s deep blue eyes.

The gray is gone, the ice is gone, the darkness slinks away from them both as if it pities them.

Vash’s lip trembles, and his hands tighten over the end of his revolver, his fingers slotting into familiar ridges on the metal barrel as he presses it against his own forehead. “Shoot!” Vash wails, and the sound slams against Nicholas’s jaw like a weak punch.

Tears spill down Vash’s cheeks, mixing with the glowing lines that still paint his skin in symmetrical strokes, and Nicholas weakly shakes his head as he tries to pull the gun away - but his weak grip is nothing against Vash; who seems to be almost undone under the weight of his own restless soul, frantic. “Are you out of your damn mind- “ Nicholas snaps, gasping for air as Vash slides one of his hands down the barrel to curl around Nicholas hands which remains loosely curled around the gun's handle, refusing to allow the crossbearer to pull his finger away from the trigger. 

“I can’t keep this up, I can’t…..I can’t do it myself, he won’t let me-“ 

Nicholas shakes his head weakly. “Vash, look at me”

“Nicholas! ”

Nicholas' mouth slams shut, and he watches on as Vash appears to move in agonizing slow motion - his tear-filled eyes squeeze shut with a shattered whimper that claws at Nicholas’s cheek like fire brushing across his skin. Vash sobs again, pressing his weight into Nicholas’s lap as his knees slide out on either side of him, sagging under the weight of a pain Nicholas wasn’t foolish enough to even pretend he understands - Vash rubs his forehead back and forth against the end of barrel in slow sweeps, disheveling his limp hair as his human hand shakes against Nicholas’s own. Vash folds forwards, heaving, and the warmth of his breath is so searing that Nicholas is sure it’s going to leave a string of blisters down the side of his neck.

Scars he’ll pray never fade.

“Shoot me, please” Vash pleads again, his eyes peeling open.

Nicholas' jaw tenses, and once again he tries to pull the revolver away. “No“

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry ….But need you to do this for me, I can’t-“

“Fuck you” Nicholas spits, pushing his feet against the smooth flooring beneath him in a fruitless attempt to dislodge Vash from where the blonde straddles his thighs.

“I can’t be his monster….. Please, please Nick don’t let him turn me into something I’m not”

Nicholas’s throat dries up between one weak breath and the next.

Vash’s eyes find his own once more, sparkling with tears as his gloved fingers twitch and writhe over the dull pulse which hums under the thin skin of Nicholas’s wrist - pressed against the worn handle of the revolver. “I can’t hurt you, please don’t let me hurt you” Vash gasps out, his words are laced thickly with fear; a terror so potent that Nicholas has no idea how the blonde manages to speak at all.

Nicholas blinks away frustrated tears of his own, pressing himself back against the wall as he shakes his head. “You can’t ask me to do this, Vash, you piece of shit- “

“Please-“

Vash seems to collapse in on himself, like a star mere moments from going supanova.

“There has to be another way, we can undo whatever it is he did to your head! You’re not giving up just like that….I won’t fuckin’ let you” Nicholas voice leaves his lips in a frantic jumble of slurred syllables.

Vash only cries harder, his chest wracking with relentless sobs. “You don’t understand! “

“Not you! Anyone else but not….. Not you, Vash” The words explode out of Nicholas mouth, not entirely unlike the way the bullet currently lodged in the chamber of Vash’s revolver would if Nicholas were to squeeze the trigger. To do what Vash is begging him too, and free him from the hands of a monster into the grasp of something undoubtedly kinder. 

A moment of silence passes over them like a summer breeze.

When Vash speaks again, his voice is eerily calm. “I want it to be you”

“Stop”

“I want you to be the last thing I see”

It’s only then that Nicholas begins to really cry; pointless tears rolling down his bloody cheeks in relentless streams as he refuses to look anywhere other than Vash’s eyes. Vash’s hand squeezes his wrist, pushing his palm flush against the handle of the revolver. And Nicholas simply lets him.

“Only you, Nico”

Nicholas sobs, desperate and condemned and ugly.

“Shut up-“ He forces out, and he prays Vash can feel the way his pulse lurches under the press of the blondes fingers.

“I’m not scared, I promise I’m-“ Vash whines, attempting to soothe Nicholas in a way that makes it painfully clear that he has already resigned himself to death - that he’s comforted and completely certain that Nicholas will take his life from him in some twisted stroke of mercy.

How? You should be terrified….How are you-

“Enough!” Nicholas screams.

“I want to die as myself, not as his weapon, please…..I’m begging you”

Nicholas’s finger twitches against the trigger, because despite his best efforts to pretend he doesn’t; he understands. He knows exactly how it feels to be torn to shreds and reimagined in some else's image; to be lulled to sleep by chemicals and wake up soulless. 

“Look at me, just look at me…. Nicholas ” Vash pleads, tears pooling on his upper lip. 

Nicholas is rendered completely and utterly helpless to resist Vash’s teary words, slurred and disorganized syllables broken apart by hiccups and sobs that seem to overcome the blondes lithe frame, making him tremble all over. Nicholas’s eyes find Vash’s for the umteenth time, and he can do nothing but fall into the embrace of those bright eyes as Vash’s tech hand slips away from the end of the barrel and slides down Nicholas’s arm until he’s cupping the crossbearers grimy cheek. For a moment Nicholas wants nothing more than to shove him away, to sneer and curse and claw his way through the tight fist of pain that’s clutching them both.

Anchoring them together in ways Nicholas wouldn’t wish on his worst enemy.

He is free to pull the barrel away from Vash’s forehead now, unrestrained, and yet Nicholas doesn’t dare to move.

Vash’s lip trembles, and Nicholas watches on in part adoration and part horror as the blonde tries his hardest to smile at Nicholas. It’s more of a grimace in the end, wobbling and tear-streaked and grimy and glowing blue, and yet Nicholas would rather lose a limb then look away from him.“I’m right here, it’s okay-“ Vash breathes out, a shaking laugh tacking itself to the end of his fragmented words as he drags his in-human thumb back and forth across Nicholas’s cheek, smearing blood across his jaw.

Nicholas lifts his other hand off of his thigh, and grips the handle of Vash’s revolver with both hands.

What am I doing-

In the end, all it takes is a whispered order in a voice as soft as petals, as familiar to Nicholas as gunpowder under his fingertips.

“Shoot” 

Nicholas drops the gun away from Vash’s forehead with a shattered cry, he feels something pull dangerously taught and finally explode in the center of his chest - blowing shrapnel and debris against Nicholas ribs as the remaining fragments of his soul flee from his torso in a deathly hurry.

He presses the nose of the revolver against Vash’s chest, just below his jutting collarbone.

And with his heart falling into the black abyss, Nicholas pulls the trigger.

He barely hears the bullet fly from the barrel, and Vash doesn’t seem to move as it tears its way through his flesh.

The revolver slips out of Nicholas limp grasp, and clatters to the floor beside Vash’s thigh.

It’s as if time itself has come to a screeching halt.

Vash presses both of his hands against either side of Nicholas' neck, and he can only watch on in abstract horror as an expression of pure peace blooms across Vash’s delicate features.

Nicholas heaves in a breath, his lashes fluttering across his cheek as his eyes lock onto the gaping wound under his collarbone, and the way warmth seems to spread across the plane of his lithe chest - soaking through the material that dares to stand in its wake. “No…. No -“

Vash leans forwards, breathing slowly and evenly across Nicholas cheek before pressing a gentle kiss to his slack jaw. It’s barely a kiss at all, more like a brush of his lips.

“I’m not scared, it doesn’t even hurt-“ Vash speaks against Nicholas' grimy skin.

Nicholas can’t look away, he can’t move. “I wasn’t going to shoot”

Vash ‘s fingers twitch against the side of his neck as he paints Nicholas’s filthy skin in a slew of feather-soft brushes of his dry lips.

Nicholas' chest rises and falls rapidly, almost hyperventilating as panic crawls under his skin at blinding speed. His eyes find Vash’s again, shaking his head rapidly as his words leave his lips in a desperate shout “Listen to me! I wasn’t going to shoot, I don’t…. Why did I shoot-“

“S’Okay, you did the right thing, the kind thing-“

Nicholas’s grimaces, his eyes brimming with a fresh wave of undeserving tears as his hands frantically grip Vash’s coat. “You’ve gotta believe me, I never-“

Vash's eyes go painfully soft around the edges for a tender moment before his expression pinches in a pained grimace. Nicholas’s jaw tenses as tears roll freely down his cheek, looking upon his own creation with fire roaring in his chest. How could I do this? Vash lurches forward, heaving in a shaking breath which immediately claws its way out of his lungs in a slew of weak coughing. Nicholas’s anger drains out of him at blinding speed, and his hands move on their own accord as he pulls Vash towards his chest. Vash is almost entirely limp as Nicholas tugs him off of the top of his thighs and spreads his legs as wide as they’ll go. Nicholas fumbles to pull Vash between his legs, arranging the heaving blonde’s lifeless limbs until he can tug him to his chest; Vash’s uninjured shoulder digs into Nicholas’s own wound as he curls his arm around his shoulder and tucks the blondes head under his chin, pressing his mouth against the crown of Vash’s head with his eyes squeezed firmly shut. 

Nicholas presses his other palm against the gushing wound on Vash’s chest, and fights the urge to throw up when he feels his blood push between Nicholas' trembling fingers. “Vash, stay with me okay? It’s not that bad I can-”

Vash breathes against the side of Nicholas' neck, brushing him with slow drags of warmth. “I can’t hear him anymore, it’s so…..so quiet ”

A shattered sob - almost a scream - tears itself from Nicholas lips as Vash’s disoriented mumbling slips easily between his ribs and makes a home for itself in the remnants of his heart. Nicholas draws his knees up, pressing one against Vash’s lower back and the other against the back of his thighs as he desperately pulls him closer, as if Nicholas’s sinful hands could somehow hold him together. Keep him here, keep him alive. 

“Keep your eyes open, I fuckin’ mean it Vash don’t you dare-” Nicholas cries against Vash’s clammy forehead as he pulls his hand away from the gaping wound in the blondes chest and reaches blindly into his pocket. “You’re going to be fine, understand? I’ve got you-” Nicholas forces out the words, his tears soaking Vash’s limp hair as his fingers finally curl around something cool and smooth. Nicholas gasps, a surge of hope shooting up his spine as he draws the vial out of his pocket.

But hope is a fleeting and fickle thing indeed, and she leaves Nicholas alone in the dark mere moments after showing him a flicker of blinding light.

Nicholas stares down at the vial in his hand - his blurred vision fixating on the shattered cap as if he could somehow will it to be whole again.

“No”

There is not one droplet of liquid left in the cylinder, like it was never there at all, like it never even existed.

Nicholas curls his fingers around the vial, wayward and hoarse sobs reducing him to little more than a trembling animal as he crushes the glass against his palm, relishing in the way the broken shards bury themselves in the coarse skin of his palm.

Vash reaches weakly towards Nicholas’s hand. “N-No…. Don’t, you’ll hurt yourself-” He chokes out, but his words trail off as his hand falls limply into his own lap.

Nicholas has never felt so powerless in his life, and he prays to any god that may have enough of a sense of humor to listen to his pleas that he goes to his grave never feeling anything like it ever again. 

Nicholas howls in pain again, tossing the broken glass roughly against the wall across from them before curling both of his arms around Vash’s lifeless shoulders, pulling him roughly against his chest as the gaps between Vash’s breaths grow longer and longer. “Not you, I can’t lose you too” 

He’s lost so much blood….Too much-

Vash’s fingers struggle to curl around the lapels of Nicholas’s jacket. “Thank you, thank you- “ he mutters over and over like some twisted mantra.

The pattern which glows and hums as it traces countless lines over Vash’s deathly pale skin begin to slowly dim.

Nicholas fingers clutch at Vash’s shoulders so tightly he truly believes the small bones that hold his hands together may snap. “You don’t get to leave me behind, you hear?! Please…. Please!“

Vash draws one long breath, and Nicholas knows it is his last long before the blonde goes completely slack in his arms.

Nicholas’s grip does not falter as he sobs against Vash’s forehead.

“I never wanted to hurt you, Vash…. Vash?!”

When Vash the Stampede dies, he takes a part of Nicholas with him. 

Nicholas doesn’t hear the footsteps, he doesn’t hear the desperate shouting, he hears and feels nothing other than the sudden loss of Vash’s soft breaths and gentle heartbeat. I don’t know who I am without him anymore. 

For a moment, it’s as if the world begins and ends with him and him alone, a soulless form clutching at the remnants of his own depravity.

That is until Meryl Stryfe explodes around the corner at the very end of the hall, her eyes wild as her bare feet slip against the metal flooring. She has a deringer gripped in her small hands, a weapon she doesn't even know how to reload yet alone fire.

“Wolfwood?! Where are you?! I heard gunshots from-“

Nicholas pulls Vash’s lifeless body impossibly closer to his chest, as if he feared Meryl would try and take him away.

Nicholas means to scream, but the words come out as barely a whisper.

“You can’t leave me, not like this you coward ” 

Meryl rounds the corner entirely, and Nicholas eyes lift to find her as she freezes in place.

Nicholas folds himself over Vash’s chest, peering up through his blood and sweat soaked fringe like an animal guarding its kill.

“Help me! What the fuck are you doing just standing there?!”

Meryl’s eyes are as wide as ever, and her eyes fix on Vash’s lifeless body between Nicholas’s thighs with such absolution that he wonders if she has even noticed it’s Nicholas who clutches him.

“He’s dying!” Nicholas shouts, his voice raw and ragged.

Dead. He’s already dead. Nichoals turns away from the truth with conviction.

Meryl stumbles backwards a few steps, swaying as her eyes shift to meet Nicholas’s own. She shakes her head, and lets her pathetic weapon fall to hang limp at her waist. “We…..We can’t help him”

Nicholas bares his teeth at her, poison dripping from his teeth.

That simple, huh? Maybe he should have asked you to execute him-

Meryl takes a step towards him, a bravery which Nicholas would happily ensure she regrets as he shakes his head in a warning she scantily deserves.“We need to move, we can-“

“Take one step further and I’ll tear you to fuckin’ pieces” Nicholas snarls.

Her eyes go painfully soft in one fluid wave, a shift that reminds Nicholas achingly of Vash. “We can’t save him….. You can’t save him” She mutters in a voice so small Nicholas barely hears her.

Nicholas heaves, and Meryl takes another step towards him.

“But if anyone can, it’s them “

____

How did he grow up to be so kind? Nicholas thinks as he sits on the floor of the most clinical, lifeless “bedroom” he’s ever seen. Nicholas can hardly imagine any kid existing yet alone thriving in a place that looks and feels like a lab with a miniature bed dropped into the middle of it, if not a prison cell. It’s almost impossible to imagine him in this room…With that ridiculous hair and those damn blue eyes.

Then again, Vash did have this nasty habit of being the brightest thing in any room he graced with his presence, maybe this is where it all started.

Nicholas has tucked himself into the corner furthest away from the door, his knees propped up in front of him as his head hangs forwards. He refuses to change out of his impossibly dirty clothes, stained and crusted with a potent mix of the nameless soldiers blood, Nicholas own and Vash’s along with what feels like a lifetime's worth of sweat and grime. Nicholas refuses to eat, knowing damn well he’ll just throw it up anyway. And he refuses to look anyone in the eye.

You’re scared. A voice mutters against the shell of Nicholas’s ear. You’re absolutely terrified that they’ll look into those black eyes of yours and see the soulless killer that you undoubtedly are.

He hears the automatic door open with a soft hiss, and somehow manages to peer through his dark lashes clumped together with blood to see Brad walking through the doorway. 

He looks at Nicholas with thinly veiled pity, and Nicholas fights the urge to pick up Vash’s revolver from where it lays abandoned and ignored on the floor beside Nicholas and hurl it at Brad’s punched-in expression. In the end, the idea of even touching the gun is too painful to bear; Nicholas still doesn’t know why he brought it with them at all, something deep in the pit of his stomach simply refused to allow him to leave it behind.

“You need to shower” Brad sighs.

Nicholas drops his head again, staring at the gray floor between his feet. “If you know what’s good for you, you’ll walk out of this room right now and you won’t come back”

“I don’t think Vash would appreciate you trekking so much blood into his-“

Nicholas feels venom rise in the back of his throat. He lifts his head again, teeth bared as he snarls at Brad.“Get the fuck away from me”

Brad simply rolls his eyes, waving his hand at Nicholas as he turns in the doorway and allows him to glare daggers into his back. “ Fine, take it up with him when he wakes up then”

Nicholas’s jaw snaps shut instantly, and when Brad turns back over his shoulder to smirk at him, he hardly even cares about the smugness that tugs at the corner of the almost-stranger's mouth.

Brad takes another step towards Nicholas before crossing his arms over his chest, staring down at him as he speaks. “Yeah you heard me right you raging lunatic, Luida says you got him here just in time, he’s stabilizing-“

Nicholas clambers to his feet so fast that his head spins. He doesn’t feel it but he must sway on his feet, as Brad rushes towards him with a pinched expression. Brad presses his palms against Nicholas’s slumped shoulders, clearly trying to stabilize him as dots of inky black dance across Nicholas’s blurred vision. He frantically blinks them away, and can’t help but wince as Brad’s hand presses into his skin painfully close to his entirely untreated bullet wound. Brad’s eyes narrow for a moment, and Nicholas groans as he’s too dizzy to shove the man away before he grabs the collar of Nicholas’s shirt and tugs it aside - revealing the gaping wound, likely already infected.

“Oh you’ve got to be kidding me! You didn’t think to mention that you’d been shot?! ”

“Where is he?” Nicholas chokes out.

Brad’s frown only deepens as he looks at Nicholas with pure disbelief. “You’ve got bigger problems, kid. When did this happen? You’ve lost a lot of blood-“

Nicholas shakes his head, weakly shoving Brad’s hand away from his wounded shoulder as he mutters through gritted teeth.“Take me to him”

Brad's expression softens, and he pats Nicholas’s un-injured shoulder once before drawing his hand away with a low sigh. “Yeah I thought you’d say that, come with me”

____

Vash looks almost peaceful.

Nicholas knows the blonde would absolutely despise the fact that he gets to see him like this - barefoot and dressed in loose white-fitting clothes like a patient or an experiment, covered in wires and floating limply in a tank filled to the brim with some mystery cocktail of chemicals that would likely give Nicholas a headache if he tried to understand what it was made of. The glowing lines are back again, painting every inch of Vash’s skin from the crown of his head to the tips of his human fingers, then crawling out from the bottom hem of the white pants he wears. Nicholas has never been more relieved to trace his eyes over the symmetrical network of curved lines - the only sign that Vash is indeed alive. Like a plant.

If Vash were conscious right now he would blush and stammer; he’d wave his hand weakly with a small, embarrassed smile and ask Nicholas to look away.

God what he would give to see that damn blush again.

“So he’ll be fine?” Nicholas mutters, crossing his arms over his chest as Luida stands beside him, her eyes flicking down to her electronic clipboard and back up to Vash in a flurry of repetitive movements.

“His body will heal, yes” She sighs, as if it was obvious.

Nicholas twists to face her, his brow furrowed as he hisses. “That’s not what I fuckin’ asked”

Brad steps forwards, fixing Nicholas with a scowl which matches his own as he races to Luida’s defense. “Hey, watch your-“

“It’s okay” Luida sighs, waving him off as she turns back to Nicholas. “Vash and Nai share a connection that I cannot even begin to fully comprehend yet alone understand, and so there is no way of knowing if the damaged he caused can be reversed” She says softly, as if she were trying to lessen the blow of uncertainty, fearing what it may reduce Nicholas too.

I’m already barely standing, do your worst.

“But he came back, right as he was going to shoot me he fought it off and came back-“ Nicholas rushes out.

A pang of misplaced guilt flashes across Luida’s aged features. “Yes, and he begged for you to end it before he lost control again, did he not?”

Nicholas turns away from her, tracing his eyes over Vash once more as he sighs. “Meryl told you?”

Luida doesn’t look away - she keeps her eyes fixed firmly on Nicholas’s set jaw as she speaks.“She didn’t need too, I know Vash well enough to make a halfway decent guess about what he’d want if his consciousness was stolen from him”

Nicholas doesn’t speak, he hardly feels like he has any place too.

These people have known him three lifetimes…. Who am I to stand here as if I’m the only one who cares if he lives or dies?

“There’s no way to know until he wakes up,” Luida speaks softly, worry weighing down her words.

Nicholas swallows a lump that’s lodged itself in the back of his throat.“And what….What if he doesn’t wake up as-”

Nicholas trails off as Brad steps up beside him on Nichoas’s other side. “Himself?” Brad finishes Nicholas’s sentence for him.

Nicholas can only nod, refusing to look anywhere other than directly at Vash himself.

“Then I’ll do what you couldn’t” Brad says flatly, so painfully devoid of emotion.

As if taking Vash’s life would be easy, painless.

Nicholas whips towards him with fire in his eyes.“You-“ he sneers.

“Wolfwood, enough” Luida sighs, sounding as exhausted as Nicholas knows he looks.

Silence falls over the three of them like a dense fog.

“You should let me tend to your wound, it looks-“ Luida says, reaching towards his injured shoulder with one of her frail hands.

Nicholas flinches away, staggering backwards as he bares his teeth at her. “Don’t fucking touch me”

She looks at him with familiar pity, like Vash.

Suddenly, Nicholas finds himself desperate to be anywhere else other than here.

“The second he wakes up - hell if he so much as twitches - you come and get me, understood?” Nicholas punches out the words.

Brad rounds on him with a handful of clipped words. “Who the hell do you think you are-“

“Understood?!” Nicholas shouts, his voice ragged.

Luida waves off Brad again, shooting him a pinched look before turning to fix her kind eyes on Nicholas’s undeserving form.

“Of course, Nicholas”

_____

The next time Nicholas leaves Vash’s bedroom, it’s three days later.

Or something like that, he’d hardly kept track of the days as they crawled past him at an impossibly laborious pace. 

The hallway below Vash’s bedroom door is almost entirely dark, a sure sign that it was sometime long after dark. Perfect, the last thing I want is to speak to anyone. Nicholas shuffles down the hall, his eyes flicking up and down adjoining hallways as he looks for some kind of shower wing. He’s been using the small sink in Vash’s bathroom to clean his face for the last three days, scrubbing the skin of his hands until they’re red and raw in an attempt to clean away every fleck of Vash’s blood that seems to cling to him desperately. But Nicholas can’t stand it anymore, his clothes are caked solid with grime and dried blood, and if the infection that surely festers in his shoulder wound wasn’t going to kill him then Nicholas was mere moments from killing himself - festering in his self-created prison cell for three days. 

Nicholas doesn’t realize his feet are trailing a familiar route until he sees an open doorway up ahead - and a soft blue light emanating from inside.

And rendered completely and utterly exhausted and delirious, Nicholas drags his feet slowly towards that familiar glowing.

I should have visited him….Shit-

Nicholas curls his palm around the edge of the doorway, and slowly pulls himself around the corner.

The tank in the middle of the room appears unchanged - glowing blue and surrounded by consoles and keyboards and switches. One thing has changed however, a difference so jarring that Nicholas feels his knees threaten to buckle under the weight of his aching soul.

The tank is completely empty.

Nicholas blinks hard, the cold surface of the doorway bites against his palm as Nicholas remains frozen in place for a few long moments. 

However as soon as he regains his ability to breathe, Nicholas is on the move with blinding speed.

He races back down the hall, long strides spurred onwards by the pure confusion that swims in his chest. Nicholas hasn’t the slightest clue where he’s even walking, he simply marches onwards and waits patiently for someone - anyone - to reveal themselves to him, to provide him with some form of target to unleash the anger that rages in his chest upon. Nicholas turns at the end of another identical hallway, and can’t help but let out a shuddering breath when his eyes lock onto Luida. She’s standing in the hallway in front of another open doorway, painting her aged features in sheets of clinical white light as her fingers move fluidly over a tablet clutched in her other hand.

She clearly hears Nicholas approaching - like a wicken summer storm slinking across the horizon towards her - and when her eyes lift away from the tablet Nicholas can’t help but find himself shocked at just how exhausted she looks.

He wonders if he looks the same, or worse. 

“You….. You swore” Nicholas seethes, his hands balling into fists at his sides as he stalks down the dark hallway towards her.

Her eyes light up as she identifies him. “Nicholas! We were looking for-“

“You swore you’d get me if anything-“ Nicholas barks, his anger ricocheting off of the walls around him like a stray bullet.

Luida says nothing for a long moment, she simply fixes Nicholas with a soft smile as he comes to a grinding halt barely half a meter in front of her. Luida tosses her head to the side, motioning towards the open doorway they both stand in front of.

“Go on, but be quiet- “

Nicholas frowns at her, his jaw set firm with confusion as he turns his head and looks into the room. It’s clearly some kind of hospital wing - Nicholas sees five identical beds lined up along the back wall, each with their own set of monitors and equipment surrounding them. All of the equipment seems to be coated with dust, as do the beds, and it’s obvious they haven’t been occupied in a long time; longer than Nicholas has been alive, if he had to guess.

All but one.

The very last bed on the right side is surrounded by electronic screens and monitors blinking with life, flashing a slew of symbols and data which all meant nothing to Nicholas.

At least nothing compared to the occupant of the bed they surround.

Vash still looks impossibly peaceful; his chest rising and falling as he draws one even breath after the next. He’s lying flat on his back with a white blanket drawn up to his chest, his straw coloured hair fanning around the equally white pillow like a halo or a crown of brilliant gold. His skin has returned to its human state, devoid of his plant markings.

Even unconscious, he is the brightest thing in the room.

And Nicholas can barely breathe.

“It happened so quickly, there wasn’t time-“ Luida sighs.

Nicholas is quick to cut her off, blinking away tears as he stares at Vash’s sleeping form. “He’s alive?”

Luida laughs a little, a sound that brushes over Nicholas like a warm breeze. “Yes, yes he’s very much alive”

“Did he-“ Nicholas whips towards her, just quickly enough to see her smile wilt ever so slightly.

“He was only conscious for a moment” She mutters, her words trailing off as Nicholas looks away.

He could wake up in five minutes, and strangle me to death. Nicholas’s hands ache from how tightly he’s pressing his fingernails into his palms.

Luida takes a step closer to Nicholas, whispering to him as if her words carried some treasured secret. “But….He did say something” She says softly.

Nicholas is unable to stop himself as he takes a staggering step into the room, as if Vash was some monarch planet pulling a wayward star back into his orbit.

Luida watches him go, and Nicholas does not need to look at her to feel her kind and equally exhausted eyes bore into his weary shoulders. “He asked for you, Nicholas”

Nicholas comes to a stop in the middle of the room, and lets his head hang limply forwards.

“That doesn’t mean anything, he was hunting me when he….When he wasn’t himself ” Nicholas chokes out.

Luida sighs from behind him.“You’re right, it doesn’t mean a thing”

Silence settles over them once again, a suffocating feeling which is only made bearable by the occasional reprieve from it that comes in the form of monitors beeping, and Vash’s soft breaths polluting the otherwise totally stagnant air around him. 

“You can stay with him, if you want” Luida mumbles barely above a whisper.

Nicholas stares at Vash, his hands and his bandaged shoulder and the curve of his jaw.

“Okay ….Okay, yeah” He mutters, dragging himself across the room before dropping himself unceremoniously into the uncomfortable metal chair that sits beside Vash’s bed.

Nicholas can hardly believe he’s being allowed to sit so close to Vash. If he weren’t a coward, he could reach out and touch him. “There’s a washroom in the corner…..I’ll bring you a fresh set of clothes, and I’ll tell Meryl” Luida says, and then slips silently from the room, leaving Nicholas alone with his miracle.

_____

“If this was a movie, this would be the part where you open your eyes, blondie”

Nicholas can’t help but laugh, low and quiet and more like a shattered exhale then a laugh at all. He has shuffled his chair all the way to the side of Vash’s bed, and at some point had even given himself permission to reach across the scratchy covers to clutch Vash’s human hand with both of his own. Every time Vash’s pulse thrums against Nicholas' thumb, he swears to immortalize the feeling in his flawed and entirely mortal memory for as long as he somehow manages to cling to life himself. He drags his fingertips around Vash’s knuckles in slow circles, tracing veins and the jut of his bones protruding out from his pale skin in a series of mindless and languid patterns.

At one point Nicholas allows his head to hang forwards, brushing his parted lips over the top of Vash’s hand as he pleads with him. “C‘mon, just open your eyes”

Nicholas sighs, tucking his arms under his chin as his weary eyes slip shut - breathing in the warmth that radiates off of Vash’s skin and the fibers of the blanket that covers him. Nicholas doesn’t mean to fall asleep, he doesn’t even really realize he has until his eyes peel open two hours later - if the small clock on the monitor closest to him is anything to go by. 

Nicholas forces himself up, reluctantly releasing Vash’s warm hand as he slumps back into the deathly uncomfortable chair. He scrubs both of his palms over his eyes, groaning as his neck aches from having been bent over Vash’s bed for hours. Nicholas yawns, stretching his arms out in front of him before forcing himself to stand with another weak groan. His shoulder screams in pain, a sensation Nicholas has almost gotten used to, and he turns slowly to spot the washroom door Luida mentioned. Nicholas casts a longing glance at Vash’s sleeping form as he steps away from the chair, his tired eyes filled to the brim with an unnamed and unfamiliar emotion. Nicholas drags his feet into the bathroom, wincing as he flicks on the light and half-blinds himself for a moment. 

He immediately spots a set of folded clothes sitting on the lid of the singular toilet - the same starch white uniform that seems to follow the space fairing folk like a bad smell or a resilient curse, chasing them through endless stretches of time. He turns up his nose for a childish moment, but just as quickly sets his distaste aside as he begins to peel off his mostly destroyed clothes. The entire process is a painful ordeal, Nicholas clothes have partially fused with his skin over the last three days; dried blood gluing fabric to flesh like cement. Nicholas kicks his clothes into the far corner of the room, and shuffles towards the open shower in the opposite corner as fast as his legs are willing to carry him.

The shower is one step short of heavenly, and Nicholas stands under the warm spray until the water that runs off of his legs and into the drain is mostly clear. He lets his head hang forwards, his eyes shut and mouth parted as the water absolves him of his sins. It takes what feels like eons to wash all of the blood out of his hair, and it’s safe to say Nicholas feels reborn by the time he turns the water off and towels himself dry. He’s so blissed that the loose fitting white trousers and equally clinical looking shirt Luida left him hardly bothers him. 

Nicholas scrubs the towel through his hair as he shuffles over to the mirror, haphazardly drying it before peeling his eyes open.

Nicholas’s sense of ease leaves him just as quickly as it had arrived as his eyes trace over his own reflection. Nicholas looks like he hasn’t so much as flirted with the idea of rest in months, his cheeks are sunken and his dark eyes are dull and lifeless. His tan skin looks paler than it had in years, and for a moment he considers blaming it on the bright white lights of the washroom. Nicholas lifts one of his hands to gently touch the gash that traces his cheekbone before moving to the equally unsightly one that carves through his eyebrow on the opposite side.

Nicholas wonders if when the scabs fall away, he’ll be left mangled - branded by a pair of risen scars.

I deserve it if they do.

Nicholas is promptly yanked from his own spiraling headspace when a sound explodes from outside of the small room.

A deafening crash.

Nicholas tears himself away from the mirror, a strangled gasp falling from his lips as he throws himself back through the doorway barefoot and wide eyed.

To find Vash standing beside his bed.

Well, half-standing.

The blonde’s legs are bowed together as if they could barely support his weight, his knees knocking together as his tech arm grips the end of the bed - the only upper body support he has, as he clutches his other hand to his chest, clearly desperate to not move his injured shoulder. Vash’s expression is pinched together with a glaringly obvious pain, and Nicholas’s heart falls swiftly into a bloody heap between his feet as he grips the doorway with one hand and reaches towards Vash with the other.

“Stop”

Vash’s eyes fly up as Nicholas speaks, his wavering tone laying waste to the silence of the room.

Vash clearly believed himself to be alone before Nicholas made himself known, and his eyes are wide with shock as he stares slack-jawed at Nicholas. He says nothing.

Nicholas releases the doorframe and takes another handful of steps towards Vash, both of his arms raised out in front of him as if he were approaching a wild animal.“Don’t move, you’ll hurt yourself-“

Vash nods, slow and brimming with a profound confusion that Nicholas is certain reflects back at the blonde in his own dark eyes. 

Is he….Himself? He seems scared, but it could be an act, fuck-

Nicholas drops one of his arms.“Just….Stay right there, alright? I’ll get Luida-“ he breathes out before turning to rush towards the door, his breathing ragged and panicked as his bare feet are bitten cold by the floor beneath him.

“W-Wait” Vash chokes out.

Nicholas comes to grinding halt, and is rendered dumbstruck and totally surprised at his own strength when he once again manages to stay on his feet despite the way his knees seem to buckle underneath him. Nicholas turns slowly on his heel, his breaths leaving his lips in shallow pants as his eyes lock onto Vash’s once more.

A brilliant blue that soaks up every drop of color in the room and reflects it back towards Nicholas at double the strength.

Vash’s lip wobbles as his wide eyes glisten with unshed tears, and piece by piece, moment by moment - he becomes himself again. 

“Wolfwood?” He calls out as if he’s been waiting a lifetime to speak Nicholas’s unworthy name.

Nicholas takes a step towards him, then another, trying to silence the roaring of his own heartbeat in his ears as he drinks in the sight before him. “Vash?”

“Where…..Where are we?” Vash asks, his voice painfully small and weak as his eyes scan around the room before settling back on Nicholas, like the crossbearer is the only thing tethering him to the floor.

Nicholas can’t wait a single second longer; he throws caution and rationality to the wind, letting the desert storm that rages around them carry it away with all the other discarded things entrusted to its care. Nicholas rushes forwards, half-running towards Vash before stopping right in front of him. Nicholas hands hover by the blondes waist - wanting desperately to press his palms against the thin material of his white shirt and chase the heat of his skin underneath, warm and real and alive, but detesting the idea of accidentally hurting him in the process. Vash’s eyes find him again, and Nicholas almost collapses when he finds the haunting gray eye that he is sure will haunt his nightmare for the rest of Nicholas’s miserable existence is long gone. The first tears spill over Vash’s waterline, the calm that proceeds the storm they both knew intimately, and Nicholas is powerless to resist Vash’s devine pull as he takes the final step forwards and wraps his arms around Vash as gently as he can. 

Vash heaves in a breath, trembling in Nicholas’s arms as his prosthetic arm fists in the thin material between Nicholas’s shoulder blades. 

“It’s okay, it’s okay sweetheart-“

Vash presses his tear-streaked cheeks into the crook of Nicholas' neck, shaking like a leaf as he crowds in as close as he possibly can.“Nicholas” he breathes out, and the sound reverberates off of the inside of Nicholas’s skull at ten times the volume Vash had actually uttered his name.

It’s Nicholas’s turn to heave for air. “Is it you? Shit. Is it really-“

“What? Of course it’s me, oh my god are you crying- “

Nicholas hands press into Vash’s waist, and he selfishness hopes he brands the blondes impossibly narrow waist with the searing heat that rises from his palms.

“What do you remember?” Nicholas chokes out.

“Nick- “

Nicholas draws back with a sigh, cupping Vash’s tear-streaked cheeks in his hands as the blonde’s tech hand falls to fist in the hem of Nicholas’s shirt. His eyes swim with confusion, but Nicholas forces himself to speak anyway, his words brushing over Vash’s parted lips from how close they’re pressed together. “Listen to me, you gotta listen to me Vash this is important- “

“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” Vash cries.

“Tell me something” Nicholas says softly, brushing the pads of his thumbs across Vash’s cheekbones.

Nicholas draws back again, his eyes flicking over Vash’s expression as one of his hands lift to push his blonde hair out of his wide eyes. “Tell me something only you’d know, Vash”

“Uh….Okay? I uh-“ Vash stammers, his voice laced with potent confusion.

Nicholas punches out the words, laced with a raging desperation that he fully believed he could keep to himself, like the fool he knows he is. “Right now!” 

Vash’s eyes blow impossibly wider. “I know that you don’t like coffee at all you just pretend to, but when you do drink it it’s black…..I know you got that lighter of yours a long time ago, and you fiddle with it when your anxious…..I know you’re lying when you say you don’t care about anything, because I saw you clear as day when you looked at him…..That man with the gray hair…..I know you sleep on your right side and that you pray when you think no one can hear you and-“ Vash talks and talks and talks, his words rush from his mouth so quickly that Nicholas barely hears him, hot tears building in the corners of his eyes.

“Okay, okay that’s enough- “ he chokes out.

Vash’s hand twists in the material of Nicholas’s shirt. “H-Huh?”

“It’s really you, fuck-“ Nicholas breathes out, laced thick with disbelief.

“I don’t know what’s happening, why do you keep saying that? ”

Nicholas doesn’t even realize he’s smiling until he sees it reflected back at him in Vash’s teary eyes. He looks deranged, swelling with a relief so severe that it threatens to tear him limb from limb and consume him entirely.

“What happened? All I remember was it was pitch black and I could hear this loud ringing, and a voice….It was like being underwater” Vash rushes out, his brows pinched together.

“Shhhh, it’s okay Vash” Nicholas coos, dragging his fingers through the short hair at the back of Vash’s neck.

“I don’t-“

“It doesn’t matter, none of it damn matters ”

Vash’s hiccups, shaking his head as he drops his eyes - and lifts his mech hand to press it against the center of Nicholas chest - right over his thundering heart. “You…..You were there” Vash breathes out, walking through blurred memories, before lifting his chin once again to find Nicholas’s waiting eyes.

“Yeah, I was,” Nicholas mutters.

“It was so dark and then…..And then suddenly you were right there, Nick” 

Nicholas can’t speak, especially not while Vash is looking over at him as if he can barely comprehend that Nicholas even exists. 

Vash’s hand presses against the base of Nicholas’s neck as he breathes out the words. “And then I wasn’t scared anymore”

Nicholas sucks in a breath through gritted teeth.“Fuck ” 

When Nicholas finally finds the courage to lean forwards that final smattering of insignificant inches; Vash meets him halfway, as if he had been patiently waiting for Nicholas to take that final step for longer than Nicholas cared to imagine. Their mouths slot together in a tangle of soft sighs that Nicholas doesn’t try to discern from each other. Vash presses forwards so quickly that he almost stumbles, and Nicholas draws back to brush heat against his jaw as he drops one of his hands to curl around his waist “ Easy, angel-” he coos before pulling Vash back towards him by the back of his neck. Vash whimpers as Nicholas guides him, slotting their noses together so that they’re pressed flush together again. 

Vash whines as Nicholas’s tongue easily pushes between his pliant lips, licking into the warmth of his mouth as the blondes in-human hand presses against the curve of Nicholas neck. 

Nicholas takes his time, his fingers trailing up and down Vash’s ribs, pushing at the thin material of his shirt as he draws an endless slew of soft noises from the blondes mouth; and swallows every single one of them. Vash allows Nicholas to drag his tongue across the back of his teeth for a few treasured minutes, going pliant under Nicholass endless attention, before he finally finds the courage to kiss back - sliding his tongue against Nicholas’s own and eliciting a rough groan from Nicholas. Vash’s hand slides into his hair, and Nicholas relishes under the cool touch of his mech hand as he pulls his own from Vash’s hair in favor of clutching his waist with both hands.

Vash presses forwards into Nicholas palms, a petal-soft mewl falling from his lips as he tilts his head the other way, sucking in a trembling breath before surging forwards into another achingly tender kiss.

When Vash finally draws back - his lips bitten red and spit slicked - Nicholas doesn’t waste a moment before ducking his head and pressing his own wet mouth against the curve of his jaw, kissing a long slow line down the side of Vash’s neck.

“Something….Something really bad happened, didn’t it?”

Nicholas' hands push under the material of Vash’s shirt, stealing the warmth from his flushed skin as his tongue presses against his racing pulse.

“Nico?” Vash whispers, his prosthetic nails scratching behind Nicholas’s ear before pushing him gently away, guiding Nicholas’s chin up so that their eyes lock again.

Nicholas sighs, shaking his head as he chases away the far too recent memories that pursue him from every dark corner of Nichoas mind, forming in every shadowy corner of every room and taunting him. “I’ll explain it to you, I’ll tell you everything that happened I swear just….. Not right now okay? Right now I need you to just”

Vash’s eyes drop down to Nicholas' lips before shifting back up to his eyes. “Just?” He presses, his thumb dragging across Nicholas' tight jaw.

Nicholas squeezes his eyes shut, slumping forwards until his forehead is pressing against Vash’s own.“Just stay”

Vash doesn’t speak, he simply sighs as he curls his arm around Nicholas’s shoulders. Nicholas doesn’t need to look at him to see the confusion that swims in Vash’s cerulean blue eyes, clouded with questions Nicholas couldn’t bear to answer, not now.

“Don’t go anywhere that I can’t follow you ever again, understand?” Nicholas breathes out.

Vash nods slowly, ducking his head to press his mouth back to Nicholas’s own in an impossibly gentle kiss that Nicholas struggles to believe he will ever come to deserve. Vash’s prosthetic hand presses into Nicholas shoulder, and Nicholas winces at the contact with his wounded shoulder before he has the sense to swallow the pained sound. 

Vash draws back as if he’d been struck, and his wide eyes drop to stare at Nicholas’s shoulder. Nicholas sighs, shaking his head as he tries to find Vash’s eyes again. “Leave it, Vash-”. Vash reaches across and gently pulls the circle hem on Nicholas’s shirt down to reveal the half-scabbed half-oozing bullet hole that punches its way through Nicholas’s shoulder. Vash gasps, a pained sound which only worsens Nicholas’s wincing.

Vash’s eyes lift to find Nicholas’s, his brow drawn together with worry. “You’re hurt”

Nicholas shakes his head as he cranes for him again, desperate to chase away the worry that lingers on Vash’s candid expression and slots their mouths together.

“You didn’t notice my face?” Nicholas teases despite knowing damn well that Vash was far from joking.

“Of course I did! But this….This is-” Vash’s voice trails off.

“Unimportant-“ He huffs.

Vash draws back, avoiding Nicholas’s seeking mouth as his fingers gently trace the wound. He looks almost guilty, as if his fingers remember something his mind doesn’t. “It sure looks important” Vash breathes out.

Nicholas can’t help but scoff. “Take a look at yourself blondie”

Vash releases his loose grip on Nicholas’s shirt with a sigh, fixing him with a pinched expression before looking down at his bandaged chest, then back and Nicholas’s shirt - which is now dotted with blood from pulling open the wound once again.

“We….We match, we’re the same” Vash breathes out, clearly not having realized he’d spoken aloud until Nicholas laughs softly in response. 

Nicholas presses his mouth against his jaw, smiling weakly as he pulls them back flush together.

“You’re right, we are”

For once in his life Nicholas begs time to speed up, to carry them both gently into a near future. One where they both wear matching scars like badges of honor, a mark of having survived. Nicholas can't wait to brush his fingers painfully gently over the scar on Vash’s shoulder, and watch on in thinly veiled wonder as a cherry blush blooms across the blondes chest.

His miracle.