He had been young at the time so he didn't remember clearly. Only surreal flashes which startled him awake, filled with hate.
He would jump out of sleep, sweating and cursing, with rage and anger and a next to intolerable sense of helplessness. It was when he woke with that, he knew his goal and his purpose, and he knew what he would do, at any cost. None of the kids he protected would go through his hell. Not if he could help it.
And he could help. He had rage on his side. That world had been his and his alone, a thing of the past, an old era which he would punish out of remembrance. At least for his kids.
He had sworn to protect them and he would do any thing. Even if it meant killing.
Few understood the meaning of his cross. Salvation for the world. Salvation of the innocent. It was the weapon. It was the healer.
Every time he touched he gun, he felt the shadow of, release. His release.
A bullet had been the key to his freedom. The token out of his slavery. His salvation.
With that simple, painful machine in his hands, the old laws were abolished. His age and his side hadn't mattered. His restraints had been shattered all at once as if by magic, that bonds of his weakness were gone. No more useless rage, hopeless struggle, painful defeat, which always ended in the same fatiguing conclusion; he was smaller.
None of his fury had changed the fact of his weakness. A bullet had.
He had known that only death could help him, but this time he saw that it wasn't his own death that he wanted, that he needed…it was the other man's. He had needed to die.
Vash would never change his mind about that, he wasn't wrong.
Vash was banging on his door now. Wolfwood didn't remember if he locked it, but one way or another Vash opened the door and stuck his head in.
"Preacher man! Why don't you open the door?" He looked exuberant, and his eyes were bight on covered aquamarine.
"Because I don't have to it seems."
Vash smiled. "Want to get something to eat?"
Vash. Always so happy. Wolfwood glowered at the thought for a while.
"It's your turn to pay, remember?" Vash crossed his arms still smiling.
"I don't remember that." He actually did.
"What?" Vash's brightness disappeared. "What do you mean? We had agreed…the spaghetti…" Vash trailed off and whining.
"Okay, now I remember."
"Good! Are you coming?" Vash bounded back into the hall after receiving a nod, leaving the door swung wide open.
That was Vash, an open door. Open to happiness, open to possibilities, open to the imaginable.
Wolfwood couldn't be that way; he couldn't find it in his nature anymore. He had lost that childish part of himself so long ago that he couldn't even imagine what it was like.
Vash. Wolfwood knew not to believe his laughter. He had seen Vash's true smile and he knew that the one he always wore wasn't really very deep. He wasn't really laughing all the time.
But he had seen him hoping, looking around himself in wonder, smiling. He had also seen the scares.
God knew what his life had been. Wolfwood had no idea. The only thing he knew was that Knives had been deep inside and mixed with it. So whatever Vash's history was, it couldn't be pretty.
Wolfwood couldn't blame his past for what he was. Vash was living proof that you are what you make yourself, not what you are made. History didn't rule you.
The reason was in his nature. And history didn't rule your nature.
Wolfwood was callused, he bore grudges, he was unforgiving, closed. That was how he responded to the world. That was the only sane response.
How did Vash stay so open? How did he stay vulnerable, without being broken?
Wolfwood heard bunging downstairs under his floor it sounded like knocking metal against wood. Vash was impatient.
Somehow Wolf wood had slipped back into his confusing thoughts. This time though, he left the room, locking the door, and strode down the hall… No wait. He had forgotten the cross. How could he do that? He must have been thinking too much.
Wolfwood turned back around, heading back…
"Wolfwood!" Vash was yelling up the stairs.
Wolfwood stopped. The room was locked already. Maybe he would leave it this once and see what happened. Just this once.
Downstairs, Vash had found the place under Wolfwood's room and was pounding on the exposed floor boards. A few people were staring at him annoyed but no one was stopping him yet.
Disliking fighting so much, he really should learn to be more inconspicuous, Wolfwood thought.
"Ah, there you are! I'm starving." Vash seemed as though he might disintegrate into anxious hunger at any moment.
"Only because I'm paying." Wolfwood growled.
There was a good restaurant across from their sleazy inn and that was their destination. They had decided to spend money on only the most important things. Roaches in your bed was better than roaches in your food, it was established.
The two had briefly observed the preparation of the food served at their inn, which had a bar and a sort of a kitchen on the lower floor. Ever speck of it was cooked alike, in the some mysterious grease, the origin of which was indeterminable.
"Animal, vegetable or mineral?" Vash asked.
Wolfwood rubbed his chin. "Primordial?"
Now they had secured an eating place, the very smell of which didn't make ones stomach turn over and crawl away to hide, and Vash decided on spaghetti. Somehow everything had gotten turned around and now Vash was picking when Wolfwood was paying and visa versa.
When their food arrived Vash dug in with unhidden, energetic relish.
"Don't you ever get tiered of that?"
"Nope!" Vash smiled. "I could live on it!"
"Why?" Wolfwood asked with unconcerned interest.
Vash suddenly wasn't smiling anymore. He voice was low and surprised. "Why? Because…because it's good." Spaghetti was Rem's specialty.
No one it made it as good as she did, but the taste reminded him of her. Every bite made him think of a similar bite, when she had sat across from him, sharing it with him. Sharing her cooking and her smile, her voice and her life.
Rem. Her life was as tangible and nourishing as her food, delicious, aromatic. The love of it was impossible to resist, or to touch with out catching some of it on you.
How she had laughed when he spilled the sauce all over his shirt. Sauce as red as blood, almost as red as her flower…
"Rem." Vash murmured under his breath. The fork slipped from his hand and his forehead came to rest in his palm. All taste left his mouth. There was nothing in his vision but her red and her smiling lips, red as well. He heard her.
"Vash, what's wrong?"
It sounded like something she might say, but it was Wolfwood asking instead. He actually looked concerned. He had no idea who Rem was. No one else alive did, except Knives…
Damn it! Why did these memories attack him like this, mercilessly, without warning, when he couldn't defend himself. He could never defend himself from these.
But he had to say something. Wolfwood's eyes were narrow on him, expectant.
"Too much oregano." Vash stammered, his voice gaining strength. "It ruins the flavor." He ended with a little laugh with could possibly make a grown man cry, if understood.
Wolfwood wondered again, what Vash's life had been. It was disturbing to see him crying over spaghetti, and he was sorry that he had asked about it. Whatever his life had been, it must have been something else.
"Okay…we can shoot the cook on the way out." Wolfwood said seriously.
"What a thing to say! What kind of a man of…
After night fall Vash decided that he needed some air, Wolfwood was already out smoking and when he saw him on the edge of town staring into the distance he decided to join him.
Vash never seemed to notice the polluted air; it was the night which attracted him. It was clear and bright with the two moons. In was never cloudy here, and because of that it never rained, and nothing ever grew.
Wolfwood was standing to the side and behind Vash, he glanced at him every so often and saw the hint of a pale blue eye fixed on the sky above. He followed that gleam to the uncovered stars and saw the flickering sparks of a meteor shower in the south.
The corners of Wolfwood's mouth tugged upward as he watched. It was beautiful.
The display was over in seconds. If it kept too long there would be no stars left to stay in the sky. These shows where rare, precious.
Wolfwood glanced back toward Vash This wasn't what he had expected to see. He hadn't imagined that the sky could make anyone unhappy, much less…what was that look? Desolate? Pained?
He didn't know the right word but the sense of something eerie beside he tugged at his admiration and disintegrated his appreciation of the lights.
The south another late star streaked the sky and then blackened. Another followed it to death.
Wolfwood was struck with pain that heaven was capable of inflicting.
When he was like this, Vash reminded him of one of these stars. Distant, unearthly, falling from grace. He should have been fixed in the sky but he was wandering, wavering, between earth and heaven. Outside of its home, with no place that could hold it.
If he wanted any peace he would have to fall completely and darken. Nothing lived in the momentary display. That was only the transition from light to dark, there was nothing to hold on to there, on one lived in the grey.
Vash was trying to live in something impossible, a perpetual meteor shower. He was already falling, but he was refusing to darken.
Wolfwood tried to picture Vash without his hopeful, idealistic, impossible, moral ideal. Without his light.
Without that light, everything faded, Vash faded, there was absolutely nothing. It was not that he wasn't illuminated. He simply wasn't there. Not Vash.
Wolfwood ground the butt of his cigarette with his heal. There wasn't anything which could possibly burn in this sand, but he wanted to disturb the silence in any way he could.
He was getting out of here, he decided. Vash was too quiet, too still.
"I'm gettin' some sleep. See ya in the morning." He turn to leave uneasily and gave Vash a back handed wave.
The sound brought Vash's eyes down from the sky.
"Hey." Vash remarked to himself. His eye were now glued to something on the earth. He moved and stomped on Wolfwood's cigarette some more, then bend down to examine something of great interest.
Wolfwood furrowed his brow and then crouched beside his friend to see what it was.
"Look at this, he's still alive." Vash pointed.
It was a plant. Short and tan, clinging to the side of a rock, where it had wriggled itself into a crevasse protect itself and hide from the noonday, scorching sun. He couldn't see in the dark, but its very best attempt at green had likely been nothing more than pathetic.
Vash was admiring it and smiling. His real smile. The one that was contentment and peace and wonder.
How could a man who had seen so much wonder? How could the Vash, who only a moment ago was lost and falling, how could he be so excited over a dying plant?
"I wonder what kind it is." Vash touched it gingerly, being careful not to hurt it.
"I have no idea." Wolfwood answered more to himself then Vash. He really had no idea.
"This one's gonna live." He was smiling that boyish, incredible young smile. And his eyes weren't pale any more or cold, they were completely unguarded, filled with wonder. He was open and vulnerable again.
Wolfwood wondered how he did it. The plant was just waiting to die on him. And what would he do with his happiness then? This time Nickolas wondered.
Vash decided the he would water the plant ever day that he was in this town.
Wolfwood scowled. "I you do that, it will be used to having too much water and it'll die when you stop." Wolfwood didn't actually know anything about horticulture, he just supposed form what he knew of people. If you helped them for too long, they became apathetic and accustomed. Plants would probably be the same.
"But it looks like it might die like this."
"If it can't live on its own, then you'll just be suspending its death until you can't help it any more. Besides if you save its live now, you'll be responsible for it forever."
"But I have to help it if I can." Vash frowned, determined. He had made up his mind.
Why did this sound so familiar? It was worded a little differently but it reminded Wolfwood of a very familiar conversation between them.
Wolfwood was thirsty, which in a bazaar Vash-ian way made him feel more sympathy for the dehydrating vegetation.
"It's your plant. Put it in a pot and keep it if you want to. That's the only way you can be sure it lives." Wolfwood growled slightly.
"That's what you do." Vash was calm.
Maybe he was just tiered, but Wolfwood could not decipher the meaning of that one. He was sure it was something which would teach him to be kinder to plants. But hell, no one needed to teach him that, he didn't ever like eating them.
"I what?" He asked, hoping that in the end he would like knowing the answer, unlike a lot of his questions to Vash.
"You take plants out of the dead, lifeless ground and you plant them in your own pots, where you can water and care for them. And ensure that they live."
Orphans. Wolfwood got it now. But, what the hell? Orphans weren't plants, they were children. Anyone should be able to see the difference. Even Vash should know that one.
But the analogy was too good to argue with. "Yah, I do. Start a garden then, save the plants." It'll just be blown to bits with everything else around you.
Vash keeping something which was alive was more like the determination of its death then a way to help it, no matter how much he loved it. Maybe especially if he loved it.
Wolfwood went to bed then, sparing Vash any more sarcasm.
In his dream there was Vash and his dead plant. The weed had been planted and was thriving under the spell of Vash's hopeful magic. And there was spaghetti and then there was Milly. Always Milly.
He wasn't going to dream about the past tonight, her was going to dream of the future. The unwritten tomorrow.