AN: First time I've ever tried anything on Wolfwood.

Disclaimer: I don't own Trigun.


Pissing in the Corner

Like a lover the night greeted him, a short respite this town had of the two suns and the terrible heat. As soon as the light had faded, the temperature had dropped, sending a chilling desert nights' breeze his way to freeze his bones and hopefully wake him back up. The dreams ceased to being restricted only to the hours of sleep, and now came to him in the form of reveries. His memories would flash before his eyes without even the trace of a blink.

But that wasn't only sense in which he was sleeping.

He was a poor priest, who at home had been known for his warmth and love of children. Now he was a working man, hard-living and with a shot just good enough to make him useful to somebody. What he was slept within him while he wore a mask to stay alive. Perhaps he was truly a murderer that wore the mask of an honest man - he was born for no reason, raised not at all, and let loose into the wild perhaps just to see how he'd fair. Perhaps he was a good, honest man wearing the guise of a murderer. Even he knew that his hands were too bloodied to ever return to the lives of the children, and even he regretted it, sometimes.

But perhaps, it was both. He was hiding a part of himself everyday, and each time it wanted to be released. When he looked that broom-head in the face and told him that 'killing wasn't all that bad,' there was a moral or two deep down inside that knew that he was lying to more than just himself. And every time he smiled he felt like a little boy pissing in the corner - knowing he was doing wrong, not caring that he was doing wrong, and covering it up by turning his back on everything but himself. Every time he felt like he could find a friend in the blonde beside him, he remembered that he was only finding a friend that he would lead to a death trap. Either side of the coin he lived on, there was a part that found home as being somewhere else. No matter what role he took, be it at the orphanage or as the special operative for the older brother, he still felt that there was a part of him dying or killing him from within.

And somehow, it took a moment of being out in the cold for him to wake up for the first time today and try to be himself - but obligations are obligations, and leaving his charge alone was not permitted. So he curled back up within himself and went back to sleep, putting on a cheery face and lighting up another smoke and stepping back into the house, where he could only hope that Vash would soon fall asleep, and wouldn't be able to object to an open window.