Work Text:
-1-
Wolfwood is not used to wanting.
Knives is dead. Vash is dead, Conrad can’t do anything, but, flee from July.
Wolfwood is alive.
Wolf- No. Nicholas, doesn’t know how to deal with being alive.
There’s a crumpled piece of paper in his pocket and a crying girl at his feet, there is a distant, horrible part of him that wonders. Which means more? He craved the contract, did he not? The signature, the freedom for years, but Nicholas never thought of what would happen after. He never thought there’d be an after. Not for him.
With Knives gone Wolfwood feels like his childhood is catching up to him, all the terror, stress and the adults - too tall for him to see their eyes, too mean, too powerful for him to fathom up until they needed to be killed - who never explained. Nicholas is an adult now and the world doesn’t make much sense. There’s something to be done and he has no idea what that something is, so he grabs Meryl like a lifeline and walks away from july.
“I expected better from you.” rings in his ears as Meryl is crying into his collar, clutching his shirt like she wants to take it wit her, and Wolfwood wants to ask her if she expected this? Was she surprised when he came for her, whisking her away from July? Or had she hoped, deep down, that he will. He hasn’t expected that much of himself.
He only expected to die. Because there’s some part of him that wanted to prove her wrong, that wanted to show up and rub it in her face. A part that wanted to see Vash’s face one last time before it all ended, before Wolfwood could properly atone for his existence. He expected to come into July and never return.
But then he’d seen Meryl fall off the building and thought the rage, annoyance and “I told you so’s” etching themselves into his brain, their lives had been put in a balance. And, from the moment he’d stepped on the roof to the moment his hand wrapped around hers, he’d decided that saving her life valued more than whatever he could gain from giving his away.
So now, walking away from the ruins of July, with a body that feels too small when it shouldn’t, Wolfwood tells himself that it was worth it.
It has to be.
-2-
They walk - no, he walks. Meryl hangs onto his neck, and then holds his hand like a lost child needing direction – until they reach the news van. This would be a good place to leave. She’s alive, she’s fairly safe and will stay safe as long as she stays in the car. She probably has a change of clothes somewhere stashed away, she doesn’t need him.
She sits in the driver’s seat, somehow smaller than before and Wolfwood is surprised her feet even reach the pedals.
This is a good time to leave.
Wolfwood wastes way too long a time tying the Punisher to the ceiling of the truck, fingers going through familiar motions again and again like they somehow forgot to in the eternity between then and now. Trying to figure out weather he wants to sit in a dead man’s place.
In the end, he sits in the back. His feet don’t fit right, but it’s familiar, it’s safer than the front anyway. The backseat is molded to his back, ripped stuffing filling the grooves where Punisher usually sits. He can’t stand to look at Roberto’s ash tray or spare bottle, can’t stand to set the seat to his liking because the old man always reclined the chair just to annoy the Undertaker. He quoted his bad back upon every possible protest.
The elevator wall must be terribly uncomfortable.
Meryl takes a few deep breaths and turns on the car. Wolfwood watches as she adjusts the seat belt and the mirrors – like anyone else has ever sat there, like it even needs adjusting when her ghost will forever haunt this car. The ghost of who she was before July. She doesn’t look at him, doesn’t yell at him to put on a seatbelt. Somewhere between her getting into the car and this moment, the girl weeping into his shoulder vanished, leaving nothing but cramping fingers around a wheel.
See, she’s fine, she doesn’t need him.
“You should try to sleep.” she says, and Wolfwood starts. He opens his mouth to protest, but his throat is dry. “There’s a… there’s a long way to November.”
She said it, like it’s a done deal, like he’s coming with her either way. Wolfwood wants to walk out. Out of spite, because he just got a shiny piece of paper stating that he is a free man. No one can tell him to stay or to sleep and really, how presumptuous of her to assume that he even wants to stay. How idiotic, how naïve, to wear her heart on her sleeves like he’s not going to break it.
Wolfwood is not used to wanting.
But he is to hating. He is to pain. And the thought of leaving tastes like a rotten combination of both.
Wolfwood doesn’t know what to do, but Meryl looks like she has a good idea, so he trusts her and tries to sleep. He fails, but pretends he doesn’t hear her weeping anyway.
~O~
November appears fairly fast in their periphery. Meryl has an apartment. Wolfwood asked and she’d answered, yet still, she goes straight to the news station. She doesn’t say she wants him to follow, but she leaves the door open long enough for him to get the message.
People stare, first at her brisk, aggressive pace that makes him feel like she’d bulldoze through anyone standing in her way, and then at him, at his Punisher and the way it drags against the floor. He leans in the doorway as Meryl is talking and then yelling to the person who must be her boss, by the sheer size and uselessness of his office. The man is red in the face, but any and each look Wolfwood directs at him, tames him.
Wolfwood smiles a little, and his face cracks from disuse.
He doesn’t listen to what they’re saying. The sound of her voice, raised and full of rage and passion, sends a thrill of relief through his bones, a sense of normality. He can close his eyes and imagine them in the desert, him having just shoved a worm in her face or down her shirt. He can see Vash chuckling in the corner about it.
He can’t do that now, he realizes. He can’t tease her like he used to. She might tell him to leave, and the thought is almost a physical pain in the stitched up remains of his body.
Meryl storms out, and he follows. She fumes in the driver’s seat as he fastens the Punisher once again and then slides behind Roberto’s seat.
“One week break or forced suspension.” She fumes and turns on the ignition. “I don’t need a break.”
“It can’t hurt.” Wolfwood speaks, for the first time since July, and his voice rasps. Meryl (turns around in her seat, so she can look at him), also for the first time since July, and there’s bags under her eyes and exhaustion in her frame.
“You have no right to speak.” she grumbles and floors it, enough to have a chorus of horns following them for a full minute.
Her apartment is fit for a Meryl sized person. Minimally furnished, most likely second hand, but in a way that looks intentional. There’s a couch and a table and a rug that’s probably crochet out of scraps. There’s one or two pictures on the walls, but also miscellaneous books and other things in view. There’s also dust. Lots of dust.
The Punisher barely fits inside, but she’s not concerned with such trivial things. By the time he’s found a way to balance it in a way that wouldn’t fall and dig a hole through the floor on the way down, she’s already back in his face, shoving something soft into his hands with the sound of water running in the background.
Wolfwood hasn’t taken a bath in a while, and savoring it is not a conscious act as much as it is his body just throwing in the towel. Her bathroom is also small, and the bathtub probably older than the building itself, barely enough for him to sit, but she has a lot of shower gels with different scents. It’s a good way to waste time, cataloguing them all and deciding they’re too chemical for his nose.
He stays there till he’s wrinkly and the water unpleasant, and then puts on the pajamas. They fit, in a way that makes him wonder whether she has a boyfriend and how he’ll react to finding Wolfwood there.
Part of him wonders if he should leave, (there is a voice inside his head, telling him to flee, to run away. He should.) Why is he even here, he’s done, he’s free, but if this was a problem, Meryl wouldn’t have brought him here in the first place. And if it’s going to be a problem, she’d deal with it like she’s dealt with everything so far: stubbornness and refusal to give in.
The air outside the bathroom is cold, but it also smells all right. In the time it took him to shower, Meryl had apparently vacuumed, gone out and bought food and a bottle of whiskey – the brand Roberto drank – and was already half through it as the meat was sizzling in the pan.
They eat in silence, and then the food’s gone. Wolfwood doesn’t know what to talk about, so he makes a problem to have a reason.
“How cruel is the Little Lady, to show me your place and then make me sleep in the car.” he jokes, because the couch is not stretching and there’s barely enough space on the floor to begin with.
Meryl blinks, like he’s surprised her. Wolfwood: one! (he doesn’t know what he’s competing for)
“My bed fits us both.” She speaks, standing up and Wolfwood spots a slight shade of pink in the shell of her ear.
“I’d say it’s too early to invite me into your bed, but you did wine and dine me first.”
That pulls a chuckle out of her. Wolfwood feels his face relax a little at that, at the way she shakes her head. “We can talk about that later.” she mumbles and then steps into the bathroom.
~O~
We’ll talk about that later, rings in his head, bouncing on the edges of his skull as Meryl’s chest rises and falls on the other side of the bed. That was a joke. She knows it was a joke, but still, she trusts him.
He’s ponder it during dinner, while she showered and he’d ghosted her balcony, the last of his cigarettes crumbling between his lips. He’s still pondering it now.
Three months isn’t enough to know someone. He’s known the other assassins for longer than that, and he doesn’t trust them to walk behind him. Wolfwood saved her life, yes, but he could demand compensation. Hell, he can just take it, she’s too small to do anything about it, she couldn’t even if she was human.
But she trusts him. Trust him enough to fall asleep – Why why why? Why does she think he’s a good man, why does she give him any benefit? she knows what he is, she’d seen him walk away, it’s just a spur of the moment guilt that made him come back. Why does she think he’s a good man? I see it in his eyes – a few inches away from him, with no door and no lock – like it would even do anything - and Wolfwood wants to wake her up and shake her for being stupid. She must have been so very sheltered to trust him that much, and that’s the kind of trust No Man’s Land eats and spits out in shattered pieces of one's dignity. He should let her. He should let her suffer for it, learn the hard way – and isn’t he so very wise because of it? – but… he can’t. He won’t. The thought of it brings him no joy, there’s no sense of satisfaction thinking they might share more suffering than the gaping hole that is July.
“I have to stay, don’t I?” he whispers, so quiet it gets swallowed by her breaths. “Someone has to keep you safe.” Alive. Alive and wanting to stay that way.
He can see her breathing, but Wolfwood wants to stretch and check it either way.
He keeps his hands to himself.
-3-
One week turns into one month, because, once the gossip mill that is Meryl’s workplace dubbed him as “The Boyfriend” who cared, it was much easier to push the forced rest onto her. Wolfwood knows it’s less about actual care and more because Meryl’s report – that’s so full of rage and grief and sheer pain – cannot be published without major censorship, and they can’t exactly do that with that tiny Terminator breathing down their necks. Meryl screams her lungs out in the car and then goes home and starts chopping any vegetable she can find till she exhausts herself.
Wolfwood has cooked so many soups and stews to simply not waste the vegetables, so he’s not complaining.
Vegetables. Fresh ones. He’s rarely had any fresh ones. At the orphanage, they received canned ones in massive doses, and on the road he hunted enough worms to be well versed in any possible variant. But here he can stretch his hand and grab a carrot, or bite into a tomato and feel all the juice pour down his face. It’s too cold and too thin to be blood, but it reminds him nonetheless. Plant based meat also tastes weird, especially when it’s from a grocery store and not a can!
Wolfwood had shopped before. He’s had to. But he’s rarely had jobs in the city. It’s the first time he’s been long enough to linger, to afford to linger for minutes in front of a food display and panic because just because he can read, that doesn’t mean he understands it. He finds himself reading the labels as Meryl pulls him like a ghost through the aisles, and, for all the times that he’s teased her about how small her hands are, he’s the one who feels like a child. He finds himself looking at some candy – so many different sorts, and the spare lollipops in his pockets feel plain – and then Meryl asks him if he wants any.
It’s awful. To feel his tongue twist in his mouth, because there is a simple answer, he knows it, yet it feels inadequate. Wolfwood is not used to wanting. How is he supposed to choose?
The city is also weird. Wolfwood’s been born in the desert, has grown up and hunted in the desert. The desert is quiet and the threats are loud.
The city itself is loud. Too loud, too buzzing with anything and everything. Every step Wolfwood takes outside the apartment feels like a test in survival, like the trams will morph into metal worms and try to eat him. But he does understand Meryl a little better, or at least the person she was when they met. And not only because of every city person’s inherent inability to keep on the road or use a turn signal.
He understands her excitement and her energy. Meryl is wired to the flow of the city, the chaos and the noise, she vibrates in the way no one in the desert has any energy to. Going out is a lot, it’s too much, and coming past the apartment threshold is a solitude. Meryl takes him to the parks and the quietest places she can think of, to the library, and it’s appreciated, even if extremely foreign. The libraries are quiet and the books are a thing to focus on. He’s never had to read for long periods of time, and his eyes want to skip the pages, but it’s something to focus on that’s not the hell inside his head, so he pushes through. He retreats enough people don’t see him to think he’s a threat, and he tells himself it’s enough for now.
But he needs to adapt. He will adapt. His body adapted to being ripped apart and glued back together. He needs to adapt to the city, because he knows he won’t adapt to the loneliness of the desert. He won’t survive a day alone with his thoughts, so he closes his eyes and lets Meryl’s chatter cover it instead.
Meryl returns to work, but they don’t give her out of town assignments. This should be a relief. Wolfwood rarely got the chance to sleep in a soft bed, to have guaranteed breakfast in the morning. And hell, he doesn’t even have to pay for it. He should. He should, he owes her so much already, he should hurry up and repay her, but few people have need for faith, and those who do ask for proper paperwork.
He should be happy! He gets to enjoy rare comforts – ones he didn’t even know existed – without having to sweet talk his way into someone’s bed and tire them too much so they don’t kick him out till the morning. This is… this is the best! if you’d asked his younger self, when he was still soft in the cheeks and in the heart, if you’d told him that one day he’ll get to live with a gorgeous girl who paid for everything and all he had to do was stay? Young Nico would have jumped for joy.
Wolfwood can’t help but panic.
Because the city is too loud, too fast, too chaotic for what the desert used to look like. His eyes snap to any movement and, the habit that saved his life way too many times in the past only feels useless right now, when there’s cars and dogs and people everywhere. His head is telling him this city is trying to kill him. And he can’t find it in himself to disagree.
Meryl’s apartment is proofed enough to not be a bother, but it’s also minimalistic. It doesn’t hold many things for entertainment, and, this quiet hell of his choosing, the method by which he’s supposed to go insane, somehow feels worse than his service.
Is this how he’s supposed to live from now on?
He’s ungrateful. Wolfwood is ungrateful, Meryl owes him nothing and he’s choosing to stay. She’s not trapping him here, no one is, and why does this feel worse?
Why does he miss the Eye?
He wants to kick himself for it. If there’s one constant, one truth to everything that happened, it’s how much he hated the Eye, Legato, Chapel, everything. The many times he’s been summoned for check ups and reports, he hated every single second of it eagerly waiting for the moment he’d get to go back to the sand – how much he hates sand, but he hates the Eye more. But now he’s free! He’s legally free, he has a paper with a stamp and everything. Knives is dead, Vash is dead too, so there’s no one to come to get him. There’s no one to hurt him anymore.
Well, he is.
He is there to make his life miserable, his mind spinning in circles and not allowing him a second of rest. And the lack of movement, of stress, of running for his life only tires him mentally. Wolfwood is no longer exhausted, and that means he has to stay awake. He stays awake during the day, during the night, and his vision blurs from once in a while. He can’t even drink himself to death, his cursed metabolism running the course too soon for the alcohol to do anything.
Meryl is trying to follow the old man though. He’d checked, she didn’t have any alcohol when they returned, but in the weeks since, she’s filled a whole cabinet with the cheapest booze, the kind Wolfwood himself would rather use to strip paint than for human consumption. She’s holding it surprisingly well for such a little thing, yet one in three nights still ends with her senseless giggling as she sways about the room, talking about her day before she eventually falls into his lap and lays asleep there.
Wolfwood sits in those moments, with her clingy and asleep to him and thinks about that Later. She hadn’t mentioned it yet. Should he? He’s the guy, it only feels right. Despite her soft and pliable body in his hands, or the way his fingers can feel her gale like heart rabbiting through her ribs, he cannot imagine that moment. His mind draws blank whenever it strays further than the familiar habitat of her bed.
In those moments, he hums, and he feels her snuggling closer to the rumbling of his ribcage.
Living is its own hell, a different one than what he’s used to. He can’t look at a flower and not see July, he can’t stand to have Meryl out of his sight for too long, yet he can’t follow her to work. The whole world is made of millions cuts, too small to justify a vial.
Yet it is his life. He hasn’t entertained the thought of leaving, he’s too weak to survive it. The feeling of sand stuck in his shoes sends him grasping, and Punisher looms in his periphery no matter how much he turns his head. He’s stuck in a loop with no ending, but ignorance is bliss or whatever the saying goes. Maybe he can learn to ignore everything and simply survive.
He’s done it for long enough.
~4~
Meryl is allowed to go on missions again. It gives him a mixed feeling of dread and relief.
Of course, it’s nothing big. They don’t trust her with anything big, not after the fit she threw when they did the mother of all censorships on her July article. So they send her as far away as they can, to write an article on a city festival, and when she asks him if he wants to come, Wolfwood wants to scoff.
What else can he even do?
It takes a while but he sits in the front. Punisher somehow got heavier in the month that passed, and hoisting it on the roof doesn’t seem worth it. So the back seat it is.
The passenger seat smells like Roberto, and if there’s some Fate or Destiny symbol about taking a dead man’s seat, he doesn’t bother with it. It’s not important. Meryl’s hands tense against the wheel, and poking and bullying her is enough to relax them enough for her to swipe at him. She pouts, but she’s chuckling, and Wolfwood pinches her cheek about it.
It’s not as plump as it used to be, but it still blushes under his fingers.
They’re a day into the desert and the heat when the tension starts to ebb from his bones. The air is dry and parched, sucking the moisture from his skin whenever he dares look outside the tinted window, but for the first time since this van was full, he can breathe.
The desert is dangerous but familiar, and the bugs in his blood start to quiet. Wolfwood hadn’t noticed how scared he’d been, not till the tension left.
It’s almost comfortable. He doesn’t have a mission, a destination. Meryl has, and staying near her is a good enough purpose. They talk, they fight, they banter. They push the back seat into the truck’s back, and it lays almost flat. They sleep curled around each other, two soft bodies providing warmth in the cold desert night.
In the desert, with only the sound of night bugs to fill the air, Wolfwood can almost allow himself to hope it’s gonna be fixed at some point. That he’ll manage to leave the stasis that is his mind, his body, maybe move forward in a way that matters. Finding a purpose is hard, he still has no idea what to look for, but following is easy when he doesn’t have to do it.
He can see the stars out the window, and a worm on the windowsill, and he wonders whether Zazie is there. The collective, not the singular being that somehow is too many.
It doesn’t matter. He can survive this.
The world allows him exactly two days before it wrecks itself.
Wolfwood hasn’t had nightmares in a while, on account of not being able to sleep. Sleep is, fortunately, a main ingredient when it comes to nightmares, one he’s been able to successfully avoid.
Sleep is also a vengeful and cruel mistress, one who comes in the deep of the night when his heart has elevated to what one might consider normal. Healthy. Pleasant even.
Livio’s guts pop in front of his eyes.
His body is tall and lean, two twin crosses resting between his fingers. “You left me, Nico” he says, but the sound comes from behind him. It’s loud and rough, like a crow, or maybe a rusted chainsaw. It doesn’t sound anything like Livio, but does Wolfwood truly know what Livio sounded like?
They took Livio and broke him like all the others. Yet it was Wolfwood who ended it all.
His body can’t move. His fingers are frozen, creaking, like they might break if he tries to bend them. He tries anyway.
“Look at me, Nico.”
He can’t. Wolfwood physically can’t turn and look around, so Livio’s headless body does it for him. The guts slosh around with every step, a wet sound on the sand that shouldn’t allow it. Claws sink into his shoulders and he’s pivoted around so forcefully, his legs crack under the pressure.
Wolfwood closes his eyes, but there’s a claw prying them open, and Wolfwood sees the rest of his little brother.
He wakes with a start, with blood in his veins and panic in his mind. There’s someone else near him, but he doesn’t notice as he tries to run. The car door falls open with no resistance and his second breath into the waking world is full of sand.
He doesn’t care.
“Wolfwood!” someone yells, but he runs and keeps running until he’s too tired.
He’s awake, the sand is dry, yet his steps are still sloshing everywhere. He can’t see the van. His stupidly strong legs carried him too far, and now he’s too tired for it.
You idiot, you left her alone!
Energy and adrenaline now gone, his steps hurt with every new meter. Wolfwood wants to collapse, to fall and never wake again, wants to stay there till the worms eat him so he can meet Livio and apologize for it all, for getting him killed, for not being able to protect him in the first place. Livio didn’t deserve anything that happened to him, Livio should be the one still alive and with no one to hunt him.
Vash should be alive, and he would’ve been if not for Wolfwood.
Wolfwood wants to fall again, but the van pops into view and if anything, he can’t let Meryl be the one to bury him.
She’s waiting. Back door opened, a blanket wrapped around her shoulders and a water bottle in her hand.
He opens his mouth to speak. No words come out, and she only hands him the water bottle without a word. He chugs it down, throat parched, blood still pumping, then crawls back into the space she’s made for him.
Her hand settles in his hair and her chin above it, Wolfwood nosing her throat. He wants to smoke, he needs to smoke, but she’s so warm and welcoming, he can’t bear to pull away.
“It was just a nightmare” she whispers, nails scraping slightly on the top of his head, and that move sends pleasant shivers throughout him.
“I know.”
She doesn’t say anything, only wraps her small body around his, and it’s not okay, it’s not well, he’s not well, but he’s been pretending for so long it’s not an effort to keep going.
~O~
They haven’t talked about Vash. In the beginning it was too painful. Then Wolfwood tried once, and Meryl brushed him off, so he hadn’t tried again. He’s sorry. He’s so, so sorry, because Vash haunts him, much like everything else, and he wakes up in cold sweat and condensation.
The nightmares aren’t new. He’s had them in the beginning, when he first arrived at the orphanage, and he remembers biting on his hand to keep quiet and not wake the others. With time, he got them less and less and then, when the Eye took him in, they vanished altogether.
It was hard to stay asleep long enough to dream, hard to relax when your muscles were constantly tight.
Still, when he wakes, he bites his hand, and then feels a pair of small hands gently pry it away. He can’t talk about it, can’t bring the monsters into existence and curse Meryl with knowing why they’re there, so he buries his face into her chest and lets her fingers scratch at his scalp.
Her chest is the one part of her that’s still soft. Her abdomen has gotten harder, more toned with the exercise she’s taken, her hands more calloused from the shooting she’s started when she thinks he doesn’t know.
Even her attitude had lost some of the softness she’d had, her heart no longer on her sleeve but hidden somewhere Wolfwood can’t even hope to reach. There is a certain distance, like a tornado where her heart should be, where she sucks in all of his pain yet doesn’t lethim see any of hers.
She must feel some pain, right? She must be suffering a little, she must be missing Vash too, right? Why else would she be keeping him around, if not to replace his company? Wolfwood doesn’t want her to suffer, but he needs her to, otherwise this little bit of world he’s managed to build will collapse under the big, heavy question mark of everything.
But her chest is still soft, soft enough he can lean his head to it and still hear the heart supposedly residing there.
~5~
They’re back to her apartment. Meryl has delivered her quota of listicles and small time reports, and already complaining she’s not getting anything more important. Wolfwood is glad. He doesn’t like the city, he hates the city, but he’s willing to stay inside it if it means she’s never setting foot near anything close to july.
He’s learned about Roberto. Learned how he’d been one of the best reporters, good enough to get a few good cartels and bandits on his ass. Good enough for his superiors to hate him, good enough to survive long enough to hate everything about the world by the time he reached forty.
Roberto died looking so much older than he was, much earlier than he could’ve if he kept to himself and stayed in December. No one said it to his face, but Wolfwood isn’t stupid, he can see how Roberto was sent to hunt Vash, not to catch him, but to have a reason not to come back.
Why they gave him Meryl, Wolfwood didn’t know, but she’d been expendable to her agency long before she became enough of a threat to deserve it.
Wolfwood can understand, although it doesn’t match. He’d never had the luxury to be expendable, always too strong, too fit, too perfect for the mold they’d shoved him into then forced him to grow in. The news agency doesn’t need Meryl, doesn’t care about her, and Wolfwood just wishes she’d see it for the blessing it is.
But no, she just gets pissed. She’s angry, burns bold and bright, and Wolfwood watches her inner fire dim and grow smaller every day. She’s gonna burn like Vash did – but smaller, with herself as the only casualty – and Wolfwood has grown selfish in these past few months, to not allow it.
But it feels wrong to tell her to stop, especially when he’s the one reaping most spoils from her job. If Meryl was by herself, she’d probably forget to eat and wither away, so at least in this, Wolfwood takes solace. He couldn’t save Livio, he couldn’t save Vash. One might say he saved the orphanage, but did he truly, when any and all threats to it are dead?
But at least he saved Meryl.
And this is how time passes between them. On her days off, Meryl insists they go out, she takes him to the library in hopes he’ll learn to love something enough to keep him alive. It works, in part. Wolfwood never had access to books before, at least not those not church related, and the library has enough insulation so the noise outside doesn’t bother him. It’s like the desert all over again, but without sand and worms, with so few people his sensitive ears can analyze and dismiss them as a threat.
It is okay.
There’s times he still can’t sleep, times where he wants to curl up and beg her not to go, because he’s been alone for so long and sometimes the thought terrifies him.
But there’s also good days where they get to pretend, where he can sleep for a while, when he can get lost in a book like he never did in a hunt and allow himself to care for things that do not matter. He can get lost in a book now, his eyes not straining and his heart not running, and it feels like such a big thing. It’s such a small thing to be proud of, but it’s all he has.
It’s neither a good nor a bad day when he can’t sleep. Meryl is breathing next to him, pulse calm but way too loud in his ear. Her words from months before have decided to wake and pinball inside his head.
We’ll talk about this later.
It’s later.
She hasn’t brought it up till now, and a part of Wolfwood hopes she never does, she doesn’t care for it, but she hasn’t brought Vash up either and she cared about him very much. They both do, if only to ignore the void in his shape between them.
It is later and Wolfwood has overstayed his welcome.
He drinks water from the tap and it’s cold and unpleasant. It still burns somehow, but at least washes away the bile. He hovers in the doorframe and wants to stall, to ignore his head, but she has a free day tomorrow, so really, there’s no other time.
He leans on the bed, head on her stomach in the soft space between her ribcage and her pelvis that he lovingly calls his own. Her heart is loud, extremely loud in his ear, and he trails his fingers on her sides until she wakes.
She lets out a soft, almost mute moan before her eyes blink awake, hazy with sleep. Wolfwood waits till she looks at him.
“Undertaker?”
“Hello” he replies, and hopes his voice is gruff enough to hide the tremor. She blinks again, attempting to sit, but he climbs over her till they are face to face. She’s relaxed, and when he rubs a finger along her thinning cheekbone, she leans into it. “I have an idea.”
“You do?” she asks, and she’s not scared. There’s not a lick of tension in her body, and this, if anything, is something new. He leans forward, placing a small peck on her lips, and she melts into his form like she’s wanted to be there all along. He tries to pull away, but her fingers slither into his hair, stealing more of his breath, much more than he can ever afford to give.
He rubs his fingers into her sides. Her ribs are poking under them, and maybe if he focuses on that he doesn’t have to focus on anything else right then.
He’s not exactly used to giving, so he doesn’t know where he messes up that makes her pull away. Her eyes are wide awake, studying him. Wolfwood regrets not wearing his sunglasses, hates that she gets to read him so easily.
“Do you want this?” she asks, voice soft, like she’s talking to a lost child.
“Do you?”
“That’s not what I asked.”
Wolfwood’s mouth is dry. He doesn’t know what to do, so he looks away, pressing his forehead against her sternum.
“I’m fine, I’ve done this before.”
“Nico” she says, voice somehow softer and no, don’t do that, that’s what Livio called me.
“You…” he breathes, and, for some fucking reason, it’s hard. “You said later.”
Her brows knit in confusion as she’s fishing for the memory – such a little, useless thing, if it wasn’t haunting her like it did him – and Wolfwood wants to rub the creases out of her face.
“I’m okay with never.”
“But you want this.”
“And you don’t.”
Her words are final, like that fact alone is enough. City girl, he thinks, almost with disdain, because it’s such a high opinion to have, where simple will is enough to allow a thing into existence. They were born in such different worlds, and wasn’t this why he stayed? So he could keep it that way?
But… she’s offering him a place in her world. Has been since the beginning, but only now, like this, it feels real enough to accept.
~+1~
It’s so quick he doesn’t even register it as different. No, he does. He does register the shot, and the body, but it’s all so familiar, his brain accepts it faster than it could the plant made meat at the supermarket.
One moment they’re eating, the next there’s a shootout and in a flash there's someone on the ground. It’s fast and painless, like assassinations are meant to be.
He’s grabbed Meryl and dashed out of the bar, and the barrel of the gun is still hot when he puts her on the ground. People are screaming, panicking, but he doesn’t care, because Meryl had a gun to her head a few seconds ago, and he can’t be sure she hasn’t been hit anywhere else.
Human bodies are weird like that. They tend not to register pain when it stops survival, but keep bleeding because they’re bitches like that. He’s already taken off her jacket and is now inspecting the pants when he notices her fingers are still clenched around the gun.
“Shortie?” he asks, because the gun is pointed precariously close to his direction, and he hasn’t taken his serum in long enough to know it’s gonna hurt.
“He’s dead.” she says, and she trembled.
“Shortie, give me the gun” he says, as soft as he tries to keep his fingers when they’re prying hers away. They’re wrapped around the handle like a vine – like the vines holding July together, holding Vash in one place – so he tries to be gentle. He doesn’t want to break her fingers.
“I killed him.”
“You did” he says, and then knows he shouldn’t have. Meryl crumbles to the ground, wrapping herself in a small ball and heaving. Wolfwood doesn’t know what to do.
In the past year, Meryl hasn’t cried. Not to his face at least, not where he could see it and be forced to acknowledge it.
“Hey, hey, Mer, look at me.”
She doesn’t. She just shakes her head into her knees and Wolfwood wants to shake her. He needs her to look at him. He can’t have her cave, not here, not now, he can’t have her break because he doesn’t know how to put her back together.
People are still screaming, yelling, and more shots and Wolfwood can do something about it, but he doesn’t truly care enough for it. He’s not Vash, he’ll never be Vash and maybe that’s a good thing. Meryl isn’t moving, isn’t blinking, and when he picks her up, she crumbles into him, many disconnected pieces held together by the frayed edges of her jacket.
She’s not responding when they reach the car, when he belts her in the passenger seat, floors it out of town, when he stops because it’s late and he needs to sleep.
She doesn’t feel real that night, against his chest, but he holds her and hopes it’s going to be well enough in the morning.
Any and all angels he believed in have perished months ago, but there might be a third divinity to listen to his prayers, for Meryl seems awake when the sun hits his eyelids. She’s sitting at the end of the bench, picking at her fingernails like she’s trying to tear them apart.
“Meryl” he groans, voice rough.
“I killed a person.”
“So did I…”
“Not after Vash…”
So we’re finally talking about him, he bites his lip before the words escape through the confines of his teeth. He takes a deep breath, because he doesn’t know what he’s doing but he has to do something, and puts a hand on her shoulder. She seems to register it, even if she doesn’t react.
“Vash wouldn’t have done it.” You’re not him! “He would’ve… Nick, he died for people like that person! He would’ve tried to stop it, and I can’t even find it in myself to regret it!”
Good.
These things didn’t deserve to linger, to take space in one’s head. July already took most of the mind real estate, there should be a legal limit to how many horrible things were allowed inside someone’s noggin. Wolfwood didn’t regret many of his killings and wouldn't have survived regretting all of them. Meryl not having them in the first place was good.
“He could afford it.” he said, with finality. Meryl looked at him. Wolfwood tried not to look away. He hated eye contact, the way her eyes bore into his like she was looking for something to make sense, for someone to forgive her. But Wolfwood had only ever been an undertaker, not a priest. He didn’t have the power to absolve anyone of anything, and any possible god was too dead to grant forgiveness. “Vash was too good for his word, but he could afford its cruelty. He could afford to let himself be torn to pieces, because getting hurt was somehow better than hurting others.” Wolfwood needed a smoke, he really needed something to mess with between his hands. “Vash could afford to save people and he died for it.” It should’ve been Wolfwood, it should have been him who fought Knives and Vash who made it, but Wolfwood chose Meryl and now he was responsible for keeping her alive for it. “And I… I’m not letting you.”
That pulled a chuckle out of Meryl, like he was joking. “Let me? Mr. Undertaker, I don’t think it’s in your power to let me.”
It is, it is. It so is, because, at the end of the day, Meryl is small and tiny and only killed one person, and Wolfwood is strong enough to afford not to. He’s strong enough to stop her, but she laughs at the notion, and that only feels warm. It’s surprising that someone trusts him enough, that she knows about him, his past, his everything, and still trusts him not to hurt her.
He takes her face in his hands. “I’m not letting you waste away for wanting to live.”
Because that’s what it’s all about in the end, isn’t it? the sum of a life, the math involved. It’s always a life in the balance. To Wolfwood, the Orphanage weighed heavier than himself, and to Vash, humanity, even the most horrible parts. The world could use a few more selfish people, and frankly, Wolfwood is glad Meryl is one of them.