Chapter Text
The echoes of gunshots in May City were nothing but long ago memories as the suns drifted towards the horizon. The city had fallen into a shamed silence in the wake of the failure to take the bounty-- except for in front of Clair’s restaurant, where screams resonated through the air.
“No, please!” Vash yodeled as small hands grasped and prodded and pinched. “Fearsome bounty hunters, spare me please! I don’t want to die!” Vash twisted deftly between the little bodies to stop one terror from bending his elbow too far back, which also thankfully got his knee out of stomping range of another. This set was especially vicious, but it made sense considering what their parents had been up to earlier in the day.
“Stop resisting, Vash the Stampede!” Kevin yelled. He had a smear of powdery dirt across his forehead, which supposedly marked him as their leader. “We’re taking you in for the sixty billion double dollars!”
“Anything but that! Mercy!”
“Mercy is right! I-- OW!” Wolfwood yelped. “That doesn’t bend that way, you little terrorist! Stop it!”
“You stop resisting arrest!” a ferocious and tiny girl piped back at him. “Then we won’t have to hurt you!”
“What do we do next, boss?” another pint-sized gangster asked.
Kevin put his finger to his chin in a show of thought. “Tie ‘em up together!” he declared, which was met with a chorus of “yup, okay, you got it boss” in varying volumes and levels of enthusiasm.
In short order, Vash had five kids per arm trying to drag him in. It wasn’t working very well for them, so he was surreptitiously using his flailing to scoot himself along. Wolfwood stubbornly refused to assist his batch of marauders-- he was splayed out flat on the ground, an annoyed look on his face, with seven kids hauling on his arms with all they had and not budging him a single ince-- and Vash muttered to him, “Help them out, would you?”
“Nah,” Woolfwood said sotto voce, sounding much breezier than his scowl would suggest. “It’s kind of a nice stretch, you know?”
“It’ll all be over sooner if you play along,” Vash said between gritted teeth.
“But I’m having ever so much fun-- oof!” The two prisoners were finally close enough together that Vash flopped down aggressively across Wolfwood’s midsection. He was sun-warm, even through the layers Vash was wrapped in, and his heartbeat tickled Vash's nose. Come on, focus.
“Oops, sorry,” Vash said sweetly. “Our captors aren’t very gentle!”
“Tie them up!” Kevin thundered, and the children cheered.
“Damn, I never thought we’d be free of them,” Wolfwood said a good hour and a half later, scrubbing a hand through his hair and grimacing at the cascade of powder that followed the motion. “And I just washed my hair yesterday!”
“Oh, don’t pretend that you didn’t like it,” Vash said. “I saw how sad you looked when their parents started calling them home for dinner.”
“Well, as a priest, it’s my duty to attend to even the littlest lambs of the flock,” Wolfwood said piously. After a brief pause, he added, “Though I still haven’t gotten a clear answer from anybody about what a lamb actually is. ”
A four legged creature with a sweet face, covered in strange hair you can make clothes out of , Vash doesn’t say, because he’s the last being alive that saw pictures of Earth animals and it’s just not worth getting into. Knives, unsurprisingly, skipped that lesson, and that’s even more so not worth getting into. “Like… a kind of sandworm?” Vash said vaguely. “Beats me.” Wolfwood looked at Vash for a long moment. Something lurked deep in his eyes, suspicious and angry, as the silence stretched out between them. It sent a chill down Vash’s skin, one that inspired curiosity more than fear. He'd gone stupid with years of living in danger. It shouldn't appeal to him, that viciousness.
Vash didn't have to turn up the charm because it arrived of its own volition and set up shop regardless of his intentions. “Hey, how’s my hair look? Am I ready to stun the ladies at the saloon?”
The dark look passed, replaced with something resigned and amused. “Yeah, you’ll poke their eyes out when you go to kiss them, spikey,” Wolfwood said. “Come here, I’ll fix it for you.” Wolfwood reached up, but Vash dodged to the left.
“No, my precious hair!” Vash howled. “Don’t touch it!”
“You asked me how you look, you look ridiculous, let me fix it!” Wolfwood hollered back. Vash ran, and Wolfwood chased, and for just a second, Vash was back in the rec room, laughing along with Rem as they played tag and Knives watched.
As with all things, though, it came to an end. Wolfwood’s feet started to drag as he tired of the game, so Vash angled towards a handy pothole he’d spotted earlier and tripped himself on it with a dramatic yell.
“Hah! Got you!” Wolfwood crowed. Vash forced his limbs into stillness as he sensed the bulk of Wolfwood at his back. A shadow fell over Vash’s head as Wolfwood bent over to examine the damage from above, half-upside-down as he squinted at Vash’s hair. Wolfwood’s fingers were oddly delicate as he rearranged the pieces gone askew, careful not to tug at the roots.
“Come on, put your back into it,” Vash said. Oops. That came out too flirty. “You need magic hands to tame this beast.” Oh no. I think I just made it worse.
“You’re not kidding,” Wolfwood said around a cigarette. Unlit: there wasn’t a hint of smoke in the air. “Here, let me try--” Wolfwood’s palm landed on Vash’s forehead, heavy and warm and edged with the sharp bite of calluses.
The world went white.
Vash had learned long ago that time was different for humans. They needed nearly a quarter of a second to react to anything, and Vash had fundamentally shifted his systems to stay aligned to that, because life got boring fast when everything moved slower than you. But the weight of Wolfwood’s hand on his forehead opened up the gulf between the click of the second hand, and Vash was falling, falling, falling, through endless milliseconds of blinding light as a bell tone rang in his bones and started to vibrate outwards--
“Aah! Tickles!” Vash gasped out as he slid away from Wolfwood’s hand. Shit. Shitshitshitshitshit. What the fuck was that??? Whatever it was had lasted for about eighty milliseconds, as best Vash could tell; was that long enough that Wolfwood perceived it too? Or had it not even affected him, and Vash alone had been trapped in a moment outside of time?
Too many questions, not enough answers. Time for his signature move: the Stream of Consciousness Retreat. “Thanks pal, appreciate the help! I’m sure ready to seduce a beautiful woman now! Well, it was nice seeing you again, good job in the quick draw, see you around maybe or maybe not ahahaha!” By the end he was shouting over his shoulder at Wolfwood, who stood frozen in the middle of the street a dozen yarz behind. Vash did a quick calculation; there wasn’t anything in the hotel room worth going back for at the risk of Wolfwood interrogating him, so he beat cheeks towards the town gates.
“Hey-- spikey-- what the fuck-- !!”
------
Vash ran. He ran through the shifting sands and between breeching sandworms and past the shells of SEEDS ships. He ran until he found the canyons, their shade a siren song too strong to ignore. He collapsed, panting and wishing he'd have had the forethought to grab water before evading Wolfwood.
He leapt back up. He could still sense Wolfwood, which meant that he had to be within no more than an ile radius. But that was impossible-- no human could keep up with him-- wait.
Vash collapsed back into the dust. "No, no, no," he muttered frantically. "It can't be-- that's impossible--"
Rem told him, a long time ago, that humans didn't have the same inner world of a plant. They couldn't close their eyes and sink to the bottom of the well of consciousness to check their master systems. There were no banks of dials and info screens and levers to precisely adjust their biology. Humans just wandered through life guessing about what was happening for them. No wonder so many of them worshiped a God; the thought that somebody had answers must be a relief.
But Vash could go to that place. It was so peaceful, inside. Quiet. So far away from the tense chaos of humans and their short, desperate, scrabbling, beautiful lives. Vash ran a finger lovingly across the banks of dials, bump bump bump bump against the rim of each one. Available power, power generation rate, and master power remaining were the final three bumps on the row.
Bump.
Vash froze. Under his finger sat a new dial. He bent close to read the tiny, neat text. NICHOLAS D. WOLFWOOD: HEADING. Due west.
"Oh, fuck." He looked again and realized there was a second new dial. "Oh come on, you've got to be kidding me! What the fuck is this?"
NICHOLAS D. WOLFOOD: DISTANCE. Ten iles.
Vash gave a little scream and slammed his head into the bank of dials. "What--" whack "the--" whack "fuck--" whack "is--" whack "happening--" whack "I didn't ask for this!" whack whack whack
He straightened and drew in a breath through his nose. "No. I can fix this. I can figure it out." He held out his hand, and a manual thunked into it. And another on top of it, and another, and another and another and another--
Crash.
"Aagh! I just asked for the ones pertaining to the master controls, come on!”
Something made a noise like a pop, and Vash's head emerged from the pile of manuals. "Whuzzat?" He thrashed free and stepped over to the screens, expecting to see a new one in the line. But nothing had changed. Vash turned in a full circle, looking for the source, and in the wall to the left of the dials, something caught his eye.
A door. Sprung into existence from nothing, perhaps with a noise like a pop. One simply titled NICHOLAS D. WOLFOOD across the center of it. Nothing more, nothing less.
Vash frowned. "What are you for, then?" He poked at it with a finger. Nothing changed. He frowned and poked harder. Nothing. He attempted what Rem always called percussive maintenance and the door slammed open.
Behind it sat a long, dark hallway. Vash knew instinctively that he couldn't walk down it. He'd get lost in that murky blackness and never return to himself. Ports lined the walls, or at least what little of them were illuminated by the lights in the master control room. They lay dark and silent, waiting for linkages.
"Hello?" he called into the darkness.
A tiny speck of light danced down the hallway. It bounced up and down, curved and bobbed, and took its meandering time to arrive. Vash held his hand out into the darkness, and the light drifted down onto the tip of his finger. It sunk in past his skin, and from it emanated a feeling, one best described as AARGH! It was unmistakably flavored with cigarette smoke and gunpowder and all-encompassing guilt.
Vash squinted down the hallway. In the very furthest distance, he could see the origin of the speck of light: a pinpoint like a distant star in space. It wavered in brightness, like it wasn't quite sure it had the strength to make it through the dark hallway. Vash stepped into the threshold, hanging on to the door frame with his left hand and reaching out as far as he could with his right. He could barely feel the light’s radiance on his skin: a hard soul, soaked in violence, but filled with echoes of a feeling that matched the shouted words, I won’t let any more children suffer! Never again!
Vash grasped for the light, as if he could wrap his fist around it, as if he could cradle it in his hands, as if he could worship it as the precious thing it was.
"Wolfwood…" Vash murmured, and the light drew a little closer. "No!"
Vash stepped back into the bright safety of his control room and slammed the door shut.
It flew right open again. Vash growled and slammed it again. Open. Closed. Open.
"Are you kidding me, there's no latch…!"
The dark maw of the door to Nicholas D. Wolfwood stared accusingly at Vash, the tiny star in the distance its pupil. A door, now opened, that can't be closed again. A soul with a direct line to his. A connection between two fucked up points. Vash stared at it in despair.