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it’s a set of prayers, the rosary; a hotline to god, strung together on beads in your palm.
When you think back on it now, you almost imagine it all as a nativity scene. There are the caretakers, there are the worshippers, and there you are, strangled in your manger. Soon, angels will come to lift you towards your purpose, and concocted divinity will scream through your bones.
You didn’t want it then. You don’t want it now. But if everyone is born into sin anyway, well—
It was only inevitable.
first, make your cross. then, the apostle’s creed.
Memory starts about here; you’re small and scrappy, and there’s a lighter in your pocket before you know how to tie your shoelaces.
Life isn’t bad, but life drawls. You’re sure it could be worse— here’s to you, aimlessly kicking a pebble around the orphanage— but you’re also pretty sure it could be better. You and the other kids live a cycle of sleep, work, prayer and dirt. The meals they serve you are enough to sustain your body, and you’re told that the hymns you mumble while squirming on pews are enough to sustain your mind.
Sometimes, weirdly-dressed adults show up at the orphanage, and they talk to the caretakers in voices too low for any of you to hear. You’re never sure where exactly they’re looking (and you try to avoid looking at them anyway), but you feel like their gazes stick to the back of your neck.
You hate when they’re here.
You’d rather busy yourself with feeding birds than get involved with anything else. That’s what you’re doing when he shows up— a quivering boy tucking his face into his shoulder, his white hair vivid against the sand. He’s crying. Dime a dozen.
His name is Livio, and he sleeps next to you, now. He sobs himself to sleep every night, whining for his parents in a way you haven’t done in years. Part of you thinks it’s annoying. You’re already half-shouldering the adults’ responsibilities, and he’s really making it harder for you to rest.
But there’s a part of you that remembers how you used to do that, too. And that part of you remembers how the only thing you wanted anyone to do was hold you. It’s a risk, opening your heart to Livio; but the first time you see Livio smile, you feel the sweetness in your chest that prayer could never give you. This is holy to you, you decide. Livio’s grin, Livio’s hand, Livio’s head under your chin— this is your favorite religion that you’ve ever found.
It’s been months since Livio has been your brother, and you don’t yet know that fate is itching to rip you apart. Before you are pulled apart at Chapel’s hands, and before Livio is rearranged after, the two of you fall asleep with your pinkies twined. Your rosary drapes over the backs of your hands.
It doesn’t last. Nothing ever does.
say the our father.
“Submit to us.”
pain pain painpainpain and colorsburstingbehindyoureyelidsinshadesmanwasnevermeanttosee—
“You are blessed.”
OVer and over and oveRrr and over Livio, Livio you HAVE TO GET to Livio you—
“A prophet you will be.”
fuck f uck fuck fu ck fu kc fu ckk ck fu uf kkfkg lalf ff —
“Hail the Eye of Michael. Fear our god.”
right
That’s all you have to do
Of course.
Of course you can do that.
say three hail mary’s; faith, hope, and charity.
“It’s not even going to be hard,” Zazie is saying in your ear, buzzing like a mosquito. “It’s just him, some girl, and her work partner. You ferry him on over, you deal with the other two if you need to. You could do that in your sleep.”
Your teeth clamp your cigarette as you fish out your lighter. Your thumb goes to flick against it, but Zazie claps your back, and the lighter falls into the sand in front of you.
You growl and fumble after it, and Zazie laughs. Zazie laughs harder when the now unattended Punisher falls on you and hits the back of your head. With every passing day, your hope that Zazie will get fired grows stronger.
“Can you fucking stop that?”
“They’re bad for you,” says Zazie with faux innocence. “I’m helping.”
“You’re bad for me!”
“Blah, blah, blah.” Zazie shrugs, then jumps, their wings catching their weight and holding them inches above the ground. “Hey, pronto, alright? I’m going to go get into position. And remember, keep up the ruse.”
You roll your eyes. Like you don’t know how to do that. “Fine. Don’t get me killed too.”
“Oh.” Zazie waves their hand over their face, and a gross mask materializes beneath their palm. “That one’s up to you.”
They scatter into mites, twisting and darting in the blank blue sky, until each beat of their thousand wings is out of sight entirely. You sigh, light your cigarette properly, and shuffle the Punisher back onto your shoulder.
Its weigh bears down on you as much as it ever has.
say the glory be.
They’re chumps.
Not that you can really complain. It makes your life easier. There’s a cackle inside of you as they bring you into their arms; a hysterical, Where is your self-preservation? that begs to be howled. But in your line of work, the more trusting the targets, the better. You’ll just stick your head into your confessional later to muffle your laughter.
The girl with the short hair is amusing in her way, trying so hard to focus on actually getting her job done and visibly swallowing screams at every interruption. Her work partner, you actually kind of like— but the brunette’s sharp perception makes you nervous, too. You’ll have to be careful around that one.
Tugging these two from place to place in a wild rush of purpose, there is your highest-value target, the deathless villain who reeks of blood and dollars. Leveler of cities, destroyer of planets, harbinger of rot and decay.
He’s a fucking freak.
Every single thing this maniac does baffles you. He won’t fire his gun at anyone. He tries to keep a low profile and whines whenever he gets chased down. He’s far more likely to cry than throw punches. You’ve seen the man in fights— none of which he’s instigated— and he has a bizarre system of flipping and twirling around the battlefield until he talks them into laying down their guns.
It works.
Every town you go to, there’s someone trying to reap his bounty, and by now, you sit back and let it happen. Today, you’re at a distance, watching the red smudge of the Humanoid Typhoon animatedly speaking to the bandit who had been holding him at gunpoint moments ago. You can’t hear what he’s saying, but you hear his loud, piercing laugh, and then the bandit’s laugh joining it. You see the bandit bend to place his weapon on the ground. Vash the Stampede walks over to him, then he loops an arm around the bandit’s neck, like they’re old friends.
“I don’t get it, either,” says Meryl, and you almost jump. You hadn’t realized you were gawking. “He pulls off things that shouldn’t go right for anyone.”
You suck in smoke and blow it out again. “One of these days, it’s gonna stop working. He better be ready for that when it comes.”
“It’s not like I don’t agree.” Meryl looks at you. You’re still looking at Vash, the way he and the bandit are hurrying together to a bar, moving like ecstatic contestants in a three-legged race. “But somehow, he’s made it this far.”
You can only see Vash’s back now, a crimson flash as he hurries with his improbable new friend. Millions Knives didn’t say a word about this trait of his, or any of his other ones, really. He’ll probably get himself killed before he’s meant to die, but at least you can’t say he’s boring to be around.
You offer your cigarette to Meryl as a joke, but she takes it. She breathes in once, then coughs profusely and shoves it back to you, and you snort as you put it back into your mouth. Vash is gone.
“You just wait for him to get back now?” you ask her, an eyebrow raised.
After her fourth throat-clearing and second spitting of phlegm, she says, “It’s my job to.”
You can understand that, you guess. It’s yours too.
announce the first mystery; our father again follows.
Beneath a violet sky squirming with worms, a light turns off in the tent behind you. The working duo have gone to sleep for the night, and you assume Vash has tucked himself in a corner of their tent, too. You’re left alone with a campfire that you’re listlessly lighting cigarettes on. It loses its novelty after ten minutes.
You pace the campsite. You shake sand from your shoes. You stick your entire hand into the fire once, just out of boredom, and seconds after you pulled it back and cracked a vial over your tongue, your every burn has healed. You sigh and slump against the Punisher as it tilts in the sand and close your eyes.
You’re not sure why you reach for your inner pocket, or why you curl your fist around the beads inside. It’s some childhood habit of comfort, one you’ve never shaken off completely, and you wrap the rosary around your fingers.
As one hand clutches the straps of the Punisher, the other thumbs the beads. You profess yourself a man of faith, but you know the heavens abandoned you long ago, and all lingering angels laugh at what you’ve become; still, you know every prayer on the string.
“What’s that?” Vash’s voice startles you. He is sitting on the other side of the fire, though you never heard him move, and you shove the rosary back into your jacket like it shames you.
“Nothing important,” you say, hoping you mean it. “What’re you awake for?”
You imagine that the smile Vash gives you can placate others. You feel insulted that he thinks it’ll work on you. “Oh, I just wasn’t tired.” This means he was either too paranoid to fall asleep or he had a nightmare. You don’t press him on it. “You should sleep, though.”
You shrug. “I’m not tired, either.” Vash’s mouth twitches, but he stays silent. You’ve drawn a stalemate. “Besides, I can’t let my guard down around the Humanoid Typhoon, eh?”
Vash draws into himself, face reddening and scratching the back of his head. “Guess you’re kinda right about that,” he admits, even though you didn’t really mean it seriously.
“How is it that you go about attracting so much trouble?”
“I don’t mean to. It just happens.”
“No, really. Why?”
“I don’t know! For what it’s worth, the Humanoid Typhoon would love a break from being the Humanoid Typhoon.”
“What would you do with a break?”
“Vacation.”
You laugh so suddenly and so hard that you choke on smoke. As you wheeze, Vash rushes over, pounding his fist on your back like it’ll help anything. Your eyes water from your laughter and coughing. Your dropped cigarette is smothered by sand.
It takes a long time for your diaphragm to stop spasming. Your cheeks are wet with tears and your stomach hurts from clenching. Even as you’re visibly calming down, Vash’s hand still jackhammers your spine. You feel half-dead, but you don’t remember the last time your brain has soaked with so much stupid joy.
Have you ever laughed so deeply that your ribs started to ache? If you did, it was with the brother you were wrenched from a lifetime ago. It wasn’t even that funny— you feel another building giggle for the sheer absurdity of laughing so hard at something so stupid— but Livio would have laughed at it, too. He would’ve liked Vash.
Vash’s face pokes around your shoulder, and he looks worried. “You still with me?”
You can’t shove your smile down completely. You put your hand over your eyes as your shoulders bounce and you say, “Yeah. ‘M fine.”
“Good! I…do not know the Heimlich manuever, but I was going to give it my best shot.” When you lower your hand, Vash is shooting you two thumbs-up’s.
What a fucking thing this all is.
You’ve been tugged from one misery to the next since you were born. You were made unholy, anointed with drugs and myrrh, a self-fulfilling undertaker locked out of redemption. And he should be too; that’s the thing, he should be too.
His name inspires fear in all who hear it. His legend is gruesome, embellished with bloodshed, and the bounty on his head is unfathomable.
But Vash the Stampede sits beside you, bumping his shoulder to yours. It’s a familiar, affectionate gesture, because he is softer than the world demands him to be. No one has dared to try it on you. “You have a good laugh, Wolfwood.” No one ever said that before.
You don’t know why he’s like this; how he can be like this. You stare at the face on the wanted posters, lovely in a way the artists never get right. He is a mystery of joy and wonder. You wish more people marveled at his heart instead of trying to bag it.
You close your eyes and shake your head. “Nah. You’re just weird.”
“Nope. We’re going to work on this.” He scoots closer. “An author comes to a fork in the road. Which way does he go?”
“Don’t you dare.”
Vash’s hands pop up, palms out, fingers wiggling. “He goes write.”
You hit him for making you laugh at something even worse.
consider that mystery. then say ten “hail mary”’s.
“Knives isn’t happy with you.”
You shove your palm to Zazie’s mouth, frantically checking over your shoulder to make sure that the three others are still talking amongst themselves away from you. None of them are looking at you (Meryl is on the balls of her feet to yell at Vash while he’s holding up his hands) but you want Zazie to go away, now.
Zazie doesn’t like that you’re trying to shut them up. They grunt with thinly-veiled annoyance before they de-materialize and form again inches from your hand. “Oh, relax. I’m not going to let them hear me. But if you’re so worried…” Zazie rolls their eyes and jerks their head to behind a nearby building. You stomp into its shadow, and Zazie follows.
“You’re taking a long time, Chapel,” Zazie says, swinging their arms as they walk.
“There’ve been complications,” you hiss.
“Hey, check this: I don’t care.” Zazie leans against the building’s back wall, arms crossed. “You’re pissing off the rest of us.”
Your shoulder-looks are constant. You are terrified of Vash’s blue eyes looking around the corner. “Hasn’t stopped the rest of you from attacking him. Why is this on me?”
“Because we’re doing our job. You’re the escort, and you’re doing a lousy job of that. You’re taking forever. You keep losing him. If you can’t lead him, you’re supposed to hurt him, Punisher.”
An impulse flares inside of you to shove Zazie’s head into the wall. This surprises you. Zazie is only relaying things you had already agreed upon.
You tuck your anger back in your mouth and crush it between your molars like drug capsules. “Sorry,” you say through gritted teeth, as evenly as you can.
The distrust in Zazie’s glare conflicts the jovial clasping of their white-knuckled hands. “Great. Should I go back and let everyone know you have a renewed sense of purpose?”
You grip the straps of the gun behind you tighter. “Be my guest.”
Zazie’s eyes narrow. When they speak, it’s lower than usual. Each word feels like a nail through your hand. “You’re not his friend. You’re not anyone’s friend. I can hear your stupid human heart’s wanting. Kill it. You’ll die as you were made: a monster on a chain.”
Zazie dissolves into a swarm, sickly green tangling insects. You stare after the cloud, hands twitching, before you slam your fist to the building with a cry.
It hurts, but not enough. You pound your knuckles into it over and over, and the searing pain builds in you, even if your torn skin closes. You knock your skull into the concrete and wood in some last, deperate prayer that it’ll shatter your teeth. You’re left scarless. God has never listened to you.
You’re the Punisher. You’re the Punisher. You’re the Punisher. You’re the Punisher. You’re the Punisher.
You’re the Punisher. You’re the Punisher. You’re the Punisher. You’re the Punisher. You’re the Punisher.
return to the glory be.
You’re—
No.
You think that—
No.
How would you start this?
‘Grateful’ is an oversimplification. Generosity feels nice, sure. Working as intended. Humans are a tribal species who are biologically wired to give and accept kindness. But ‘grateful’ doesn’t really account for the disgusting guilt you now harbor everytime your value is affirmed, so not that.
‘Angry’? Not that, either. When they found you behind the building bleeding and shaking, they carried you to a hostel; you were hysterical, but it wasn’t anger. You don’t resent them for keeping you in their ranks and treating you like a friend. You’re furious at something you cannot name, but it’s not Meryl, not her partner. It’s not Vash the Stampede, holding your collapsed body, begging you back to consciousness.
‘Heartbroken’ is maybe closest. Every day is a harrowing new revelation, and every day your exhausted soul crumples further. Livio is alive, pumped with the same artificial miracle, and he turns his guns at you, now. You thought Vash wasn’t human, but you didn’t know he was a plant; your target having godlike power threatens your entire hunt. You can’t bring yourself to kill Livio in any way that matters, and you’re beginning to wonder if you can even kill Vash. You’re a cosmic fucking joke.
In the beds of pickup trucks, in shitty booths of diners, you sit opposite from Vash, silently hoping he’ll leave you. The fool never does.
Though the others have their own work that they bury themselves in, you can’t get Vash away from you; or maybe you can’t get away from him. The two of you fight in every town you pass through, but his kindness is nicotine. You are drawn back to softening cerulean behind orange lenses every time you promise yourself you’ll go.
You scrape your fingers across this rock bottom and hope salvation will collect under your nails.
You’re accustomed now to tending fire at the murky fall of twilight, Vash pressed to your shoulder. You like the warmth of him against you. Wherever he touches, you feel the ghost of him for hours.
Sitting on blankets tossed over sand, you drowsily press your cheek to the top of his head from where it lays against you. Your sunglasses half-hang from your pocket, and his own are falling off of his nose. Your hands nearly touch. You strangle your heart’s cry to take his fingers in yours.
What good would that do you?
You turn your head for your nose to bury in his hair. Maybe this is the root of your addiction; when you do this, he does not turn you away, call you disgusting or call you a title. He presses closer.
“Hey,” he mumbles, voice groggy, “if you want to go sleep, just push me off.”
“Was goin’ to say the same to you,” you murmur into thick blonde.
There is a sweet quiet at the end of your words, filled only with the chirping of insects and gentle roll of the wind. A selfish request forms in your mind suddenly, and it pulls at your gut too much not to act on it. “Hey. Needles. Look at me.”
You almost regret asking for a moment, because his turning disrupts your comfortable position, but God, you like looking at him so much. The design of his face fascinates you. In many ways, you are deeply familiar with it. The shape of his eyes, the curve of his Cupid’s bow, the slant of his jaw and dip of his nose; they’re identical to Knives, and if you never look at Knives again, it’ll be too soon. But for all their similarities, there are differences just as infinite. You love to find them, catalogue them in your mind. Some are stark, like Vash’s hair as a richer yellow than Knives’, and some are quieter.
Vash has a sparkle in his eyes that Knives never does. Despite serving no function, Vash has an earring, just because he likes how it looks. Vash’s true age is betrayed by the faint smile lines that crinkle when he grins.
Knives is perfect, but Knives is porcelain, tightly wrapped in the back of a cabinet for preservation. Not Vash. Vash carries brightness with him. Vash’s body is well-lived-in, an evolution-in-progress. It is profoundly human.
When the stars align, there is one more human thing that Vash will do that Knives never will, and you love it more than any of the rest. You want him to do it now.
You clear your throat and say, “Alright, get ready. I’m about to stoop to your level.”
He raises an eyebrow.
“Here’s one that I heard all the time when I was a kid. Did you know there were pineapples, bananas, pears, and calculators in the garden of Eden?”
“Uh, no. Why?”
You breathe in sharply through your nose and grit your teeth. “To be fruitful and multiply.”
Vash is in hysterics immediately.
This. It’s this. The calcified thing in your ribcage thaws and stutterts to the way Vash laughs— not in triumph, but for joy. There’s a shrillness to the sound that isn’t found in forced laughter, or his nervous giggles when he’s trying to diffuse a situation. He cackles himself to tears over this stupid joke, and you can’t help laughing with him.
When you’re both grinning and gasping for air, bumping your foreheads, he’s not a destructive immortal born from the seams of the universe. You’re not the Punisher, baptized in blood and viscera.
You like being something softer. He does too.
You both ebb into a gradual calm, though you’re both still light on breath and smiling stupidly at one another. Bathed in the brilliant glow of the fire, he is beautiful. Your heart wants louder than your mind warns against it.
You can’t kiss him, wails your last voice of reason, even as your hand slides to his. You can’t have him. You’ll mark him for death.
With your lips inches from his, you stop. Your pulse thumps in your ears. His breath fans across your mouth, warm and waiting, and he is so, so close. But— but you’re— you’re here to lead him to his end of days, you can’t touch him, you want to put your hand in his hair but you know you’ll have to cut it while he sleeps, and—
Vash, under no such restraints, rocks forward. His mouth meets yours, and Heaven opens up beneath your feet.
You don’t know what to do with your hands, so you grip the front of his coat like you’re picking a fight, and he laughs against your lips. You hold him to you, though, and once you have enough sense to, you cup his jaw. His hands are on your shoulders, and you can feel the beat of his heart against yours. It’s just as fast.
You’ve kissed people before, sleazy swappings of saliva when you’re drunk in bars, and once your fingers stop shaking, you slide into the motions. Vash matches your every move. Tongues twining, fingers grasping, your stomach grows hot even as your brain grows stupid. Him, him, him, him. How can you have more of this? How can you keep him forever?
Maybe Vash doesn’t have to breathe, but your experimentation didn’t have the decency to rob you of that burden. You pull back to suck in air. His lips glisten where yours had been. His face is flushed and his hair is mussed and he won’t stop looking at you.
This time, he doesn’t move. He is waiting for you.
You swallow, trying to think of what words you can string together, but none of them do you any good. You’ve always let your actions speak for you, anyway. You lean in, and he smiles as you do.
It is a small sound that you hear before you kiss Vash, one that most people would ignore. A quiet, faint buzzing that shouldn’t have been an interruption to you pulling Vash on top of you and kissing him like teenagers in storage closets.
But you don’t have that luxury.
Your eyes flick up. You’re staring into the glowing eyes of a worm, hovering back behind Vash’s shoulder.
Your heart drops to your stomach. Fuck.
You reach out to grab it in a blind panic, knocking against Vash, but it’s faster than you are. The worm darts out of your reach and is swallowed by the night. You are left collapsed over Vash, trembling and dry-mouthed. You clench your jaw so you do not vomit.
You can’t stand to look at him like this, but you don’t have a choice. Sprawled on the ground, Vash is sick with worry, staring up at you with a trembling lip. You hate it. You hate it so much. “Sorry,” Vash says quietly. “Sorry, I won’t do that again.”
The desire to babble reassurance into his mouth overwhelms you. You so badly want to hold him in your arms and kiss him again, to tell him he did nothing wrong and that you wished this was easier.
You do not.
“It’s whatever,” you find your mouth saying, as you feel your body rising. “Happens. ‘Night.”
Your heart screams.
On legs threatening to buckle, you walk to your tent, and collapse once inside. You pull your knees to your chest and shove your face to them.
You have forgotten yourself. You’re the Punisher. Nothing more. Nothing less.
You tell yourself that this is where it ends for you. If you kiss him, you invite tragedy. You don’t know how much more breaking you can take.
how dedicated to prayer are you, really?
Not at all.
then how will you be saved?
You won’t be.
bring yourself back, little lamb. god forgives you.
Right.
Well, you’re back to doing your job, which has to be some kind of indulgence. You stand with distance between you and the target, and you wear your sunglasses all the time so you don’t have to look him in the eye. He still goes anywhere you tell him to.
Inside, you rage. There’s a hurricane in your hollows, and every time the target says your name, the winds howl louder. You are closer to Knives by the day. God, you’re in a bad place. You’ve started to pray again.
The bandit fight you two just got out of was rough. You largely refused to talk to him, which left you injured and crunching a drug vial. He was hurt, too, and you walked away from him as he clutched his side. You stomped into your room at the motel, and now you’re kneeling on your bed, chainsmoking with your rosary wrapped around your hand.
To be left alone is too big a prayer, you fucking guess. The door flings open behind you, and you don’t have to turn to know who it is.
“Look,” he says sharply, “I’m sorry if I did something to make you angry. But you refusing to talk to me in situations like that is making it harder for both of us.”
“Get out,” you growl.
“Talk to me,” he insists, agitation in every syllable. “Let me fix whatever’s wrong, because this isn’t working.”
You whip your head around, teeth bared. “Then why don’t you leave?”
His stare burns. “Why don’t you?”
Stalemate. Again.
You hear the breath he draws in, and when he walks over to you, you brace yourself. He does not strike you across the face, as you expected anyone in his situation to do. He sits next to you.
He makes this so hard.
“Tell me what you’re thinking,” he whispers, and your nails dig into your palms. “Tell me what you want.”
You’ve been trying not to. “You don’t want it, Spikey,” you snap, throwing your cigarette to the ground and snuffing it with your heel.
“You don’t get to make that decision for me.”
“Fine,” you say, lip pulled in a snarl. “Fine. You want to know what I want?” His hand grabs at the front of your shirt, and yours his. His forehead presses to yours. Blue is all you can see. “I want you. And it’s a very, very bad idea.”
Between a laugh and a command, Vash barks, “Then have me.”
And your will breaks completely.
move on to the next mystery. with another “our father”, let every remaining mystery drag through your mind.
Against God, he is under you.
Your arms shake on either side of his head. His glasses have fallen askew and the blue of his eyes holds you captive. His lips are gently parted, and you can hear the softness of his breath, you can feel it against your chest. He does not beckon you down to him. He makes no move to push you away. He is simply waiting to see what you will do.
You don’t know. You don’t know. You promised yourself you wouldn’t do this. There is a strip of skin showing beneath the slip of his shirt that distracts your attention. His thighs allow your knee between them, and he quietly spreads them further. He is studying you. He sees every drop of sweat at your hairline and he hears how you pant.
Do something, you want to growl, but you are scared and you want him so much. You cannot bring yourself to yell. You only swallow and turn your head.
“Wolfwood,” he says in his soft, predictable way. It’s nothing you want to hear.
“I…” You can’t help flapping your hand aimlessly as you try to form words, but that ruins your balance over him, and you tip to one side as you frantically scrabble to regain it. Your hand skids when you try to slap it to the bed and your elbow almost bends backwards. You’re holding yourself up again, technically, but you’re doing a fucking terrible job of it. You’re breathing twice as hard as before. “What? What do you want?”
“Um,” Vash says, “I thought this was going to go a certain way.”
Your mind is stupid and wild. “A-And? If it did?”
He laughs nervously, but it’s placating, not genuine emotion. “Then we’d sleep together…? That’s the implication here, right? Am I misreading again?”
You won’t say this out loud, but you’re glad he’s said it so you don’t have to. You’re on the same page. He knows what you want. “Yeah. Guess we would.”
There is silence. In it, your memory rages against you, and you are subjecting to sermons ringing in your head; the ones defining sin and warning you away from it. There is a man beneath you, and your desire for him claws its way up your throat. It’s wrong. It’s against everything you’ve ever been taught. You should be a servant of God, and even more than that, you are the Punisher of the Eye of Michael. You are allowed no pleasure. You are a monster with blood drying on your collarbones. Who are you, if not your missions? Who are you, if not a machine?
Then Vash reaches up and cups your cheek, his skin warm through his thin glove. This isn’t the evil tempting into blasphemy you had been told you’d face someday. This is an invitation to something more.
“Only do what you want to,” he whispers.
So you do, and you hope he won’t regret it.
Your trembling fingers reach for the hem of his shirt, and his eyes widen. Vash squirms, and you stop immediately. “Whoa, okay,” he says, laughing in that high pitch again, “uh, you don’t want to see that. My pants are down there.”
Your eyebrows furrow. “You want me to stop?”
“No. Not— um. Just sparing you some of the worst bits.”
You know he has scars, and that he thinks they’re repulsive. You don’t agree. “Look, ball’s in your court, but I wouldn’t be doing this if I couldn’t handle that, Stampede.”
Vash’s mouth flaps before he audibly swallows and nods. “Alright. Then… Lead the way.” You push it up his stomach, the metal over his skin glinting in lowlight, and he apologizes to you with every inch. Sorry, sorry, sorry as it slides up his torso and bunches above his chest, even as the beauty of him dizzies you.
“Stop with the apologies,” you say, harsher than you mean to, and he quiets. Guilt pangs in you, so, as soft as you can make your voice, you add, “It’s nothing I haven’t seen. These just mean you survived every situation you’ve caused yourself. No shame in that.”
“That’s only slightly backhanded,” says Vash, but he’s smiling. You ease up and chuckle too, then lean down to kiss him. Your nerves are momentarily forgotten with the warmth of his lips, but as you pull away, they return.
You look to his thighs, the curve of his body beneath his pants, and you swallow. It suddenly feels real, knowing that that’s probably the next step— an actual act of sex. You can’t hear yourself think past your heartbeat. You can barely breathe.
“...Are you alright, Wolfwood?”
“Fine.” You still do not move.
Vash stares up at you, then tilts his head, and you know that that means he’s figured it out. Sometimes you wish he was actually as stupid as he pretends to be. “Have you ever done this before?”
You’re not particularly old— especially not compared to him— but you are an adult. ‘No’ would sound pathetic at your age, so you deflect. “Have you?”
Vash’s cheeks go pink and he smiles sheepishly, his flesh fingers picking at his prosthetic ones. “I guess? There’s been a few…uh, third base runs. Not many. As for the all-the-way’s… It’s been a while.” He looks away. “Never even took my shirt off for any of them.”
With Vash’s looks and ridiculous lifespan, you’re surprised. But when you consider his jumpiness, his insecurity, and his paranoid vagabond lifestyle, it makes a heartbreaking kind of sense. What he is giving you is sacred, then, and you have to treat it that way.
Your hand trails down his chest, and sensations mix beneath your fingertips. Parts of him are soft, parts of him are hard, parts of him are rough and others are smooth. Touching him, you remember how all the greatest masterpieces of Earth mixed their paint textures and techniques.
This goes on for a while, you exploring Vash with your hands and your mouth, figuring out what draws which sounds from him. Fuck, you’re drunk on it. When you’re kissing his neck and his hands slide into your hair, your hips rock down and the intoxication swells.
He reaches for your waistband, and you still. You’re sure he can sense this, too, how you want more, but you’re not sure how to approach it. It means he has to take initiative. You’d be mortified if you weren’t fevered, body and mind. “Hey, you…”
Vash grins up at you as his thumbs slip the button of your pants. “You’re kinda high-strung about this.”
“Am not,” you snap on instinct, though you realize after you say it that you’re proving his point.
He laughs with no meanness, so your irritation struggles to sustain itself. Your breath catches in your throat when you hear a zipper pulling.
“Can you lean back?” Vash’s thumbs hook in your briefs. “Let me help you calm down.”
You do. You shuffle back awkwardly, letting Vash wiggle out from under you, and then cool air hits your searing skin. But any hiss of discomfort gets stuck in your throat at the slow lap of Vash’s tongue.
A gasp is forced from you, and your eyes widen as your fingers curl in his hair. You’ve never felt anything like this before. The warmth of it makes your mind spin, and the stroke of his fingers past the seal of his lips makes your hips jerk. It’s the best damn thing you’ve ever felt.
This is a sin, screams a voice in your mind that you can’t drown. This is a sin! The rosary in your pocket burns.
But Vash looks so fucking stunning, there between your legs, ocean eyes under thick lashes and his mouth curling to smile around you. He notices you’re looking at him, and he closes one eye in a wink, sliding his head down further. Pleasure bubbles inside of you and your fingernails dig into his scalp. Maybe it is a sin, but it’s a hell of a lot closer to divinity than anything you’ve ever felt in chapels.
Vash knows what he’s doing to you. As your breathing quickens and your grip goes unsteady, he doubles down. His tongue curls as his fingers do. The smell of him overwhelms you, gunsmoke and sugar. Your gut twists, your blood boils, and when Vash’s hand moves to squeeze yours, he beckons you to white out. You oblige.
You make a hoarse, sudden sound, sparks exploding in your muddled mind. Your thighs twitch and clamp against Vash’s shoulders. The rational part of your brain seems to have been fucking raptured, and you’re left quivering, hollow, only capable of panting and groaning in the aftershock. You feel stupid. You can’t think at all. You’ve never felt this good in your life.
Once your eyes focus enough to make lines out of the yellow and black blob at your feet, you see that Vash has sat back on his heels, and he makes a show of gulping. Heat shoots to your face, and that’s before Vash taps a finger to his chin, sticks his tongue out, and says, “Sheesh, would it kill you to eat a vegetable?”
You wouldn’t be able to do arithmetic right now if you were asked, but you can sure as fuck smack Vash upside the head, and Vash whines. “Motherfucker,” you grunt, so wrecked that it holds no weight. Vash goes right back to smiling. This time, his eyes are crinkled at the corners.
Vash wipes his mouth on the back of his hand, then pulls his ankles towards himself to sit criss-cross. He looks almost demure. You’re still hacking up half a lung and trying to remember what your middle name is. “So,” he chirps, “do we, uh, call it there?” He’s hard to read. He’s not letting on any of his own feelings about this, and you know he’s doing it on purpose. He’s an intensely frustrating man and the fact that you came down his throat doesn’t change that.
“I dunno,” you say, breathing heavily. “Do we?”
“Can’t you just answer my own question? You always just kind of repeat the—”
You move yourself forward, pressing flush to Vash, and he cuts himself off with a squeak. “This goes both ways, doesn’t it?” Vash’s throat bobs with another hard swallow. “I’m going to get you off, too.”
His pupils dilate. Close as you are to him, when the light streaming through the window falls over his face, you can see the faint lines in his eyes. “You don’t have to.”
“I know I don’t.”
Vash’s hands grip the sheets below them. “I mean, are you sure? What good would that do you? You can go. It’d be fine.”
“I know I can.”
You move in closer, searching for any sign of hesitance, but Vash only holds his breath and closes his eyes. You kiss him slowly, and he kisses you back.
He’s scared of allowing himself anything kind, but you want to give Vash everything. Your masters tell you that this will end in thorn crowns and blood wounds, but his legs cross over your waist and his arms pull you down, and you fit together like split halves of Eden fruit. His thighs spread, and your shaking fingers move between his legs. He bites his knuckle, eyes squeezed shut, beautiful, beautiful. As he shudders around you, he pulls you closer to beg for you. Your jacket hits the ground, and your rosary spills out, old beads splayed over the floor.
You are scared, but you show him piety. You kiss him as you are inside him. Even the pleasure you felt beneath his hands and mouth pales compared to this. You give yourself in worship.
When he cries your name, you know what it is to be God, cupping an ear to your congregations. And you understand why God is content to stay in Heaven, soaking in hymns; you’d never have to come back down to the earth if Vash babbled for you like this.
You’ll whisper all of this into your confessional later, but for now, your heart is his. You lace your fingers and you ride him out and for once, you do not hurt.
you’re almost done. to close, say the “hail holy queen” and “final prayer”.
When it all happens exactly the way you feared it would, you are reminded of one last biblical truth: no amount of love can save you from what you are.
You allowed yourself fantasy, and it was fun to pretend that the taste of his kiss and the squirm of his pleasure would absolve you; that if you were kind enough to your mark, that if you wanted him enough, you could be reborn.
But you’ve brought Vash the Stampede to the nest of Millions Knives, and now the world splits around you.
You clench one empty fist at your side. You wish his fingers were tangling with yours. Your fingernails dig into the straps of the Punisher.
You can’t get him out of your head and you despise it. You did what you were meant to do all along. But to the last moment, there was so much trust and gentleness in his eyes that it sickened you. He had known from the beginning.
You stand here, alone, trying to keep your mind off of Vash. But there is a bruise that aches on your chest and your clothes smell like gunpowder and sun. You cannot scrub him off of you, and you don’t think you ever will.
“You did well, Nicholas.”
You squeeze your eyes shut. Your head throbs. You say, “I just did my job” no matter how the words taste like vomit.
Here comes the following laugh, familiar while disgustingly other. “That you did. And I know it was hard for you.” Millions Knives’ hand is on your shoulder. You want to snap his wrist. You bite down on your cigarette so hard that your teeth tear the paper, and the tobacco spills bitterly onto your tongue. “After all, I heard from Zazie just how much you cared for my brother.”
You are not a stupid man. You know it would be hopeless to attack him when he is an unyielding being of pure energy and you are just a man with a cross, but you want to. Your fingers twitch towards the inside of your jacket.
It is worsened when Knives says, “What are you reaching for? Your rosary? Can it still bring you comfort, when it now reeks of my brother’s throat?”
You shouldn’t have thrown the punch. Knives catches it, easily, then twists your arm hard enough to shatter bone. You scream and crumple at Knives’ feet. He looms over you with the cold, unsurprised dissatisfaction of God watching Lucifer fall.
“I need nothing more from you,” says Knives. “Leave now, and do not come back.”
He releases you. You’re left clutching at your bruising arm and fumbling for a vial. Knives glare steels, then he turns, and he is gone.
You cough up sand and mucus, and your eyes unfocus against the great barren ground. The enormity of what you have done crashes around you. It was you who delivered Knives his final weapon, it was you who will bring humanity drying to its end. If you had ran with Vash, if you had killed him, if you had been stronger than your heart’s begging—
You wince around a vial, but the pain ebbs from your arm. You pant and your head rings. Behind you, somewhere, is Livio, waiting to press the muzzle of his gun to the base of your neck on Chapel’s orders. Beyond you, somewhere, Vash the Stampede is kept by his brother, because you followed orders. You always fucking follow orders. It’s the only goddamn thing you do.
You are tired of it.
You make a severe decision; that you will change. You will right what you’ve done wrong and pull your redemption like you’d pull cracked teeth. If it’s the last fucking thing you do, you’ll save Vash, and you’ll finally belong to yourself.
It works, but you have so much heartache to go.
make the sign of the cross. be at peace.
It ends how it began: you hope you are happy.
Beads choke your wrist, and the sky is a beautiful blue. You’re imagining that the sunlight warming your throat is the universe forgiving you.
You know, at least, that your heart bears love. You are made of it, a tapestry stitched with the laughter of children and fingerprints of Livio, and the diseasing hope from Vash. It billows in your chest and bursts.
Inside, you are good, says Vash, and any God worth His salt can see that.
You think I’m still worrying about what God thinks of me, you say.
I know you are.
He’s right, so you don’t respond. You sip your liquor.
I’ve done a lot of bad things, you say. And the whole time I knew you, I lied to you.
I know, he says. You’ve let me know you anyway.
I can’t remember how many people I’ve killed, you say.
I can’t remember how many you’ve saved, he says.
There are wounds on your palms and the soles of your feet, and the wind that sticks to them renders the blood tacky. Vash’s palm is smeared with the very same red. You press your thumb into the beads hard enough to hurt— Our Father, Glory Be, you don’t have time for the mysteries, or the Hail Mary’s. You look at him. He is fire under daylight, brilliant gold and crimson, all that is worth worship.
Hey, Needle-noggin—
Still, with the name? he asks, smiling slowly.
Ya really think I could make it up there?
I do.
…That’s a nice thought. Guess we’ll know soon enough.
He is hopelessly gentle. He’ll spit blood from his mouth and rise on shaking legs to remind the world of one thing: that there is goodness, that it is deserved. He’ll put his hands on your cheeks and pull your mouth to his, then stumble backwards into a bedroom with you and put your hand on his heart, and he’ll remind you that for all your sins and the weight that you bear, you don’t exist in vain. Maybe that could be enough.
I want you to have something of me. Take my rosary.
Okay.
The rosary spills into his open palm. He closes his fingers. His hand is shaking.
You have so many things you want to say to him, and hardly the breath for any of it. You’ve saved me, I think. You could save everyone. I’m sorry. If you loved me, carry me with you, a bead with a prayer that you’ll always remember.
Here we are together, you say instead, eyes closing, at the end of the world. Who would’ve thought, huh?
Maybe there is some divine plan after all.
His fingers slide to yours.
It was only inevitable.