We never had a place that we'd meet; he would just find his way into my path everyday. We'd talk for as long as we could, and then he'd walk me back to the dormitories. It was nice to have someone you could just talk to about nothing and everything, like an old friend.

But every time we parted ways at the end of the day, I had an irresistible urge to invite him upstairs for a drink. I couldn't do that of course, even if the school permitted it, I didn't drink. But I wanted there to be some progression, didn't want to just keep leaving him on the doorstep. But even if I did get him up in my room, what was I expecting to happen? Desire was constantly racing with feelings of starting an honest friendship with the man. Some days I wasn't sure which one was winning.

It didn't help that I didn't get much out of him, when I tried to talk about his past. I got that he had been traveling a while, and that he had dealt with guns and bars and saloons a lot during his last steady job. I wanted to know how he knew me, and I wasn't sure how to bring it up in conversation.

Then, one day I finally did.

"There sure are a lot of new buildings around here." He said as we walked by a new dry goods shop that was coming up, "It's amazing how fast this city grows."

"Can't say I've noticed it. But it must be real different from your last visit."

"Yeah… but that was a long time ago."

"How long?" I asked.

"Huh?" A guilty blush stained his cheeks.

"Your last visit, how long ago was it?"

"Real long ago, actually, years. There probably isn't anyone around here who'd remember me." He said, hand behind his head in embarrassment. "Why do you want to know?"

"Hmm." I stopped at the bench where I had met him, more than a month by then, and sat down. He paused in confusion for a moment and sat down next to me.

"What's wrong?" he asked.

"Y'know, the orphanage I come from is only a few hundred iles away from here. I once came into the city with a group of my friends with the father that ran the place. He wanted to take the trip to show us kids the big city. I got into trouble, even under the father's careful eye, but I don't think I've ever had more fun than I did that day." I looked at him. He seemed completely clueless. "I was about 9 then. So it's been at least 11 years. Were you around here anytime around then?"

"I don't remember, actually." He said, "Why do you ask?"

"Look Vash…" I said, "I know I've met you before. It's just a gut feeling, and I don't know how or where I met you, but I think you know me from somewhere as well. So could you please cut the crap, and tell me how you know who I am?"

"I'd rather not." He said. "It's kind of… well… silly. I might scare you away. And it's been so nice, just talking to you. It's been a while since anyone was as nice to me as you are…"

"How long?"

He didn't answer.

"Vash, you make it sound like it was ages ago."

He closed his eyes with a sigh.

"Look, you know everything about me." I said, "The least you could do is share something about yourself. Sometimes I feel like I'm talking to a brick wall."

"I don't mean to be. Really."

"Then tell me how you know me. I'm sure the conversation will get livelier." I said. I paused and started a new cig by lighting it off of the old one. "Of course it could all be in my head. I've read so many school books lately, I feel like I'm going crazy."

His eyes blinked over, and he looked at me, as I wolfed down smoke. I tried not to turn and stare at him, knew he needed this moment to figure out what he was going to do. Finally he looked at the ground before he asked, "Nick… do you believe that… sometimes people come back?"

"Come back?" I repeated, "What do you mean?"

"I mean…" he stopped and laughed at himself, "Reincarnation, I guess. When your soul decides to come back in another body after you passed on."

There was a hard gust of wind that hit my back in that second, and it wasn't just in the physical world.

"It's OK if you don't know it; I don't think it's a Christian term…"

"No, no… I've heard of it."

"Oh… do you… do you think it's… possible?"

"No one's ever asked me. Guess I've never really thought about it." I said.

He didn't say a word and he looked absolutely miserable.

"What about you?" I asked. "Do you believe in this kind of stuff?"

"I didn't… but… " he said, trailing off. He shook his head. "You'll think I'm nuts."

"You won't know until you try." I offered.

"… The first time I saw you… I thought it might be possible."

"What am I, a religious experience?"

"Something like that."

If was a come-on, it was the strangest one I'd ever heard of. "Why me?"

"Because… Because you look exactly like someone I used to know… a long time ago."

"What?"

"You do… right down to your little habits. You look like him, you joke like him, you talk to kids the same way, and you even hold a cigarette the way he…" he looked up and stopped. An old happy expression that had worked its way up onto his face

When he saw me again, as me, not as this old memory, it suddenly dropped off.

"He used to live around here, and he was a man of the cloth as well." He told my shoes, "It took me by surprise, so I had to see for myself if you were anything like him."

I couldn't speak.

"I'm sorry," he said.

I shook my head, for lack of anything better to say, finished the cig, which was starting to burn the filter, before I dropped it to the pavement and ground it out. "So… um… what was this guy's name?"

"He called himself Nicholas D Wolfwood." He said the name like a prayer. "He was a preacher, though, not a priest. But it was long ago, way before your time. I guess I still miss him a lot and the way he died… if I had been where I was supposed to be, he wouldn't have..."

I didn't say anything. How could I? What do you say to something like that?

He stopped in front of the building, and looked at me, guilty, over one shoulder. He stood there like that for a long time before he looked away. "Don't worry. You don't have to speak to me again."

And I stood there like an idiot as he walked away.

When he didn't find me the next day, I decided to go looking.

The town hall records were well documented had been ever since the time of the colonists. And they were easy enough to get into as well. It was finding the time in a day that was hard.

I ended up sneaking out of the school during lunch to go rummage in the records. At first it was frustrating. There was just too much information, dry lifeless facts. Births, Deaths, anyone and everyone who bought or lived on land in and around December. But Nicholas D. Wolfwood didn't seem to be among them. I looked under Wolfwood for anyone and got thousands of responses. I looked for N Wolfwood, hundreds. N D Wolfwood, still hundreds. I thought limiting it to the last twenty years would make it easier. Vash didn't look older than twenty himself, so even if his friend was an elderly man by the time he was killed, Vash would only remember him if he lived in the last 10 years or so.

Right?

Nothing.

I was getting frustrated, and the time I had before the church knew I was missing class was getting shorter and shorter.

The library lady at the front desk noticed my frustration as I returned the mountain of files I had pulled. "You couldn't find what you were looking for, dear?"

"Not unless there's any other way to track down a priest who's lived in our area."

"Oh Honey… you're looking for a priest? You of all people should know we keep clergy in a separate set of files."

Veins were ready to burst in my head. "Separate…. Files?"

"If you had told us before, we could have saved you some trouble. Come here sugar…"

The files were sorted by last name. Praise the lord. The lady opened the file cabinet with her key, and excused herself. The W's for the last ten years were pretty slim, and no Wolfwood. I checked back twenty years, still no sign of Wolfwood. Thirty years, just in case. Nobody.

I stood up, popping the vertebra in my back. It was hopeless. Vash was probably long gone by now, Nicholas D Wolfwood didn't exist and I was going to be late for my last class.

Then, I checked my watch and realized I was already was.

If I ran, I might make it to class in time for the teacher to chew me out in front of my delighted classmates.

I looked over the rest of the W files, lumped together. They went as far back as the 0100's.

There were so few of them, in comparison to the rest of the files.

It would be pretty easy to misplace something if you were in a rush.

With an overwhelming feeling of apprehension, I locked up the files I had been looking at, and unlocked the earliest file cabinet and started going through the files one by one.

In the end, he had been correctly filed. That didn't stop it from shocking the hell out of me.

Every piece of paper in the file was yellow, and curling with age.

But it was him. Nicholas D Wolfwood, at least the only one they had. The file had been started for tax purposes when he had laid down roots in the area. His age was listed as an approximate, his town of birth, unknown. He was listed as a metal smith as well as a priest. The majority of the file was about the children under his care, each name listed and catalogued with loving detail. There were even notes made about nicknames. Over a hundred little kids. Two women, who both had names which made me think of large, pleasant great-aunts, were listed as seasonal caretakers.

A copy of a makeshift coroner's report was also in the file. The report itself raised more questions than it answered. There were explanations about the town in question being mysteriously deserted days before. Agents of the old Bernerdelli insurance firm being the only ones present to record what happened. There were general facts of a sniper committing suicide, a gunslinger who escaped custody and a mention of the Stampede himself to round it off. Even the date of death was general. The only clear fact was that he had been turned into Swiss cheese by machine gun fire. Metal smith, huh?

The last thing that had been added to the file was that report, and that had been placed there more than a hundred years ago. How could Vash have known about this guy, let alone knew him personally? Was it just some punk who had taken the name of an obscure idol, a relative, and forgot to tell Vash his real identity before he was taken away?

I saw the pictures last, because they had been kept in a special separate pouch to discourage aging.

They aged me pretty quickly.

One was a black and white picture that almost looked like a carefully cropped mug, shot of Nicholas in bad times, a cigarette hanging pensive from his lip. The second was a clipped newspaper article. He was posing with a bunch of kids, the kids were holding up some sort of award, smiles on their worn little faces.

The third was a picture in faded color, rare for the times back then. Nicholas was shaking the hand of some sort of overdressed government official, people on either side of him.

Nicholas was smiling like he had been born to stand in front of a camera.

Nicholas was me.

A dead ringer. Carbon copy. All right, so the hair was different, but it wouldn't have been if I hadn't shaved my head. Maybe a little older and a little hungrier, but it was me. All me.

And in every single picture he wore the same black suit, white dress shirt, both open to show off his pecs.

Dear Heavenly Father, have mercy on my soul.

I tucked the other pictures back into the pouch and looked at the colored one closely. The government official had several people similarly dressed people crowding around him, but the group of people behind Nicholas was much more diverse. There were two women with him. The tall one was smiling right up into her eyes, eyes that were a pale blue color that I had only seen before in very young babies. The other one was short, dark grey and white in everything, and pouting like she didn't want to be there. There was a blond man in the picture, but he had just turned his head as the shutter had been snapped. The blond was wearing a coat that was redder than blood and had more snaps, fasteners and extra strips of fabric that were attached for no reason than I had ever seen before. Even the whores that worked the west side didn't dress that gaudy.

It finally hit me just as I was thinking that those gloves looked awfully familiar…

I ran to the hotel I knew Vash was staying at from the hall of records. When they told me he had just left, I ran to the sand steamer junction, the car lot, any place I could think of that would offer quick transport out of town.

By the time I got to the bus station, I had been doing far too much running. It was a miracle I could breathe at all.

At a distance I could see him in the line, waiting to get on.

"VASH!" I screamed, "WAIT!"

Everybody but Vash turned their head to see me running. What was he trying to do, ignore me? Bastard…

"DAMMIT VASH, I NEED TO TALK TO YOU!"

He turned as I closed the last few yardz. He looked like he had just killed Christ.

I had planned to say, "I know about Wolfwood." in the most serious tone I could muster, but the sudden stop in all the running made me sputter and cough like a backfiring engine. I could barely get out: "Vash, I /-hack-/ I kn-/-cough cough cough-/ I know abou- /-HACKcoughcoughcoughHACK-/"

I sank down to my knees trying to catch my breath and a familiar hand helpfully slapped my back.

"You all right?" he asked, innocent as the day was long.

"Vash, don't go dammit! I'm sorry I couldn't say anything when you told me, I was just shocked. I don't think you're crazy or anything! Really! I don't want to make you leave town!"

"Nick, you aren't making me do anything. It's just… there's another reason why I have to leave."

"What other reason?"

His face became cold to me, his smile still hung there lifeless, frozen for posterity. "I can't tell you. You could get hurt if you knew too much."

"Don't I already know too much?"

"Maybe. But I'm not going to stick around just to add to it."

"I told you I want to know more! I want to. I mean it." I said, "Please?"

"…oh Nick…" He murmured, saddened beyond words. Kneeling down and pressing a cool hand to my cheek. "Nick."

He looked so beautiful in that one moment. Aside from Middy I hadn't been attracted to anyone fiercely, and had always assumed myself to be straight. But something about the way he touched my cheek violently and unexpectedly turned me on. I suddenly wanted to grab him and hold him down. Kiss him, hit him, break something, do whatever I had to just to make him stay, bystanders be damned.

And then it hit me that I hadn't even asked him yet.

"You're Vash the Stampede… aren't you?"

His face was still a pale mask, but the careful smile had finally slipped away.

"Look, if you aren't, then tell me you aren't."

"I can't do that." He said.

For a second I couldn't believe I had been right. "You're Vash the St-"

"I don't go by that name anymore." He said firmly, taking his hand away, "I can't. If I do, then I'm just living in the past. As much as I want my old life… my old friends to come back to life, I can't make them rise from the dead. I dragged you into all this, and for what? Because you remind me of someone who was important to me? You don't even know who the man I think you are was."

"Damn you, I would if you told me!" I said, angry.

"Then I'd be condemning you to live my past. I wouldn't wish that on anyone."

"Maybe you were right about me… about how sometimes people… come back…"

"Nick, you shouldn't do this to yourse-"

"What if you were right?" I interrupted. I sounded frantic. "You don't know! What if that kind of stuff really does happen? If I am who you think I am, then it's my past too! I need to know!"

The driver gave last call.

He forced his mouth into that painful smile again and stood. "I think this is where we should say goodbye Brother Wolfe. You put yourself into other peoples situations so easily, even those that are none of your concern… it speaks of great compassion in you. I know you'll be a wonderful Father when the time comes."

Picking up his bag, he stepped onto the bus. The gears loudly and with a lurch the bus pulled out onto the road.

He was leaving.

Nothing I had said would change his mind.

Like hell.

The bus could only go 20 iles an hour in the city limits, so it was easy enough to catch up with. Vash's face appeared in the second to last window from the back. He saw me before I was able to reach up and knock.

I slapped the Xerox copy of the color picture against the window, running to keep pace with the bus. Vash's window rolled down from the top. He looked at me, honestly amazed.

"How can you tell me this is none of my concern!" I yelled.

He blinked.

"Well! Are you going to just leave, or are you going to at least tell me about him!"

I know I could have kept running long enough to hear an answer if I had seen that damn rock.

I should have counted my blessings that the bus didn't roll over me, but I would have felt better if it had. As I sat up, spitting out sand and gravel, I saw a pale blond head looking back at me as it disappeared into the distance.

Father Leon was surprisingly lenient when he found me sobbing in the dirt.

"I don't know what to say, Wolfe. You know the church has refused to take a position on reincarnation. You do have an extraordinary resemblance to this Wolfwood man, but he most certainly is not you. I'm afraid you must have been taken in by a con. At least you had the good fortune to appeal to his sense of humanity, before he gained whatever he was after." He frowned at me, "He didn't try to… touch you inappropriately, did he?"

I won't do anything you don't want me to do.

"No father." I said. Vash the Stampede didn't lay a wrong finger on me. He couldn't have even if he had tried.

"Well then. Try to go on, and just chalk this up to one of life's hard lessons."

I had a lot of hard lessons to learn in the days that followed. Most of them involving the cleaning of antique marble floors. Father Leon had assured me total discretion in the whole embarrassing matter. Everyone knew in a matter of hours.

I had never been able to stomach pity.

But I won't be here for long. It might take a while, years even, but I'm going to find him. I don't mind waiting, now. Because now I know I've been waiting for much longer.

I will find Vash the Stampede.

End of 'Coming Back'

Continued in 'Running Down'