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He doesn’t leave.
Meryl expects to wake each morning to nothing but sand, steeling herself to glance in the rear view and see an empty seat.
That first night they had walked with the rest of the survivors they’d found, focused only on putting one foot in front of the other. Her feet ached, her ribs ached, her whole body hurt but she said nothing, only limped along beside Wolfwood while she tried to keep his pace.
The Punisher’s wrappings became bandages when he saw someone bleeding. His jacket went to a boy carrying another child. Meryl would have offered hers as well, if she wasn’t shivering from the night air. Or maybe shock. She still was not sure.
It had taken some convincing to get a ride to the Humpback to get her truck, but eventually the truck wheels hit sand again and Meryl had looked at him. The radio on the truck was not getting signal, no matter what she tried and Wolfwood hopped off the roof of the trailer when she called.
“Shit’s either broken or not getting signal,” she slammed the receiver back onto the radio. “Need a ride?”
“If you’re offering.” He’d found a pack of cigarettes under the passenger seat and lit one with a sigh before passing it to her. “Seen enough shit to pick up a vice?”
Meryl had taken one breath and coughed hard enough to retch while Wolfwood patted her back and laughed.
“Guess not.”
He’d gotten into her truck and then…didn’t leave.
Meryl wakes each morning with the fear that she would be alone, but there he is; sometimes she’ll meet his eyes in the rear view when she drives and she cannot look away.
He’s still here. He’s real, and he’s still here.
She is not alone.
They begin to rely on each other.
Meryl wake from nightmares and choked with fear. Wolfwood rages against his past and his future. Together, the hot steel and cold oil, they temper into something like beautiful, the edge of a knife made from the two of them together.
It doesn’t mean they get along.
In fact, they get along much like a city burns merrily away. Meryl shouts, Wolfwood postures and grumbles, but at night when the darkness comes they’re there for each other.
It makes no sense.
Their lives were never meant to come together, at no point was Meryl Stryfe meant to rely on Nicholas D. Wolfwood but here he is, drying her tears when she wakes from a nightmare, just as she is there when he bolts upright with a prayer on his lips.
They trust each other, even if it’s a mistake. Even if it will hurt.
“I betrayed him,” Wolfwood had screamed it at her when she’d chased him down after one of their fights. “I got him killed, I brought that city down.”
“And I drove you there!”
It had shut him up.
Meryl wonders what else would be as effective.
She does not have to wonder long.
It’s a routine stop to charge the truck battery, restock on a few basic supplies, chase rumors. Wolfwood does not seem in a rush to get anywhere and Meryl has no plans to ask him. If she asks, he might answer— and if he answers, it means he’ll leave.
They have become experts at dancing around the topic of separation.
“Outta head back to December, huh.”
Meryl closes her eyes, heart cracking open. “Yeah.”
Just after dawn her radio had crackled to life and her name had pulled them from sleep. Meryl pawed at the receiver until she’d gotten it close enough to her sleepy face to respond.
“Stryfe here.”
The sigh of relief over the airwaves came as more of a static hiss than anything, but it was there all the same. “We thought you’d died.”
Right, the last report she had given to Bernardelli was that they were headed to JuLai. She hadn’t thought about that, had only woken up each morning relieved to be alive and guilty at the relief.
“Stryfe, come in.”
“Here, sorry. I’m alive but-“ Her reply gets choked off and she pulls her thumb off the receiver to cover her mouth, stifling the sob that threatens to spill out. Wolfwood’s hand on her shoulder makes her startle but it’s a warm, steady thing. He’s alive, he’s still with her. She’s okay.
“Roberto didn’t make it.”
Bernardelli had a few follow-up questions before she’d heard the words she’d been dreading.
“Head back to HQ, ASAP.”
“Heard. Stryfe out.”
Neither she nor Wolfwood said anything when she’d straightened the back of the driver’s seat and started the engine. In fact, he’d rolled over and looked asleep until they’d pulled up at the charge station.
She misses how warm his hand had been on her bare shoulder.
And here they are, on the cusp of something strange and fragile and nameless, Meryl leaning against the truck and Wolfwood smoking a few feet away as he stares across the sand.
“You could come,” she tries. “With me, to December.”
Wolfwood shakes his head.
“I don’t belong there, shortie.”
“You belong with me!”
It’s out of her before she can think to stifle it, an impulse but a truth. She needs him, she can’t think of how to live without him. Wolfwood turns to her, slowly, sadly.
“Stryfe, I can’t. I’ve already imposed too long, you gotta go back.”
I can’t go back without you.
Why can’t he see that he’s not an imposition? Why can’t he understand that she can’t ever go back to how things were before she’d met Vash, before she’d watched cities crumble and the light bleed from Roberto’s eyes?
Why couldn’t he just understand?
Meryl rounds the front of the truck, determined and terrified all at once when she grabs him by the collar and kisses Nicholas D. Wolfwood.
It’s clumsy and desperate and both their lips are chapped but it’s also perfect. Beyond perfect, even, it’s a revelation, a settling. She is sure of this future, one where Wolfwood is by her side.
I can’t move forward without you.
The truck battery charges and when Meryl Stryfe drives toward the city of December, Nicholas D. Wolfwood is in the passenger seat.