My Beloved

My beloved

I love him sm

What a twink

Been thinking about Vashwood and Song of Achilles parallels

I'm so ill.

summer snapshot

I watched JJK..

....I may have a favorite

The fact that they're so neck and neck makes me giggle

I wrote a thing about Vash burying Wolfwood in the 1998 continuity

Twin Sized Mattress

(1.6k words)

He was dead.

Vash had to keep telling himself that as he looked at the upturned dirt, the makeshift grave. He didn’t have the resources for the burial Wolfwood deserved, who was laid gently in the hole in the ground, around the size of a twin-sized mattress.

People often recounted their loved ones looking peaceful in death. This was nothing like that. Wolfwood looked like he loathed everything about the situation. But he couldn’t.

He was dead, he reminded himself.

He looked like he was simply having a nightmare, his brows furrowed, even in rigor mortis. Vash felt heavy, ill, as he looked at him, wanting to memorize his features. He didn’t want to forget him, the way he looked, the way he talked, the way he loved. The way he cared , even when the man really didn't want to.

The reality was, Vash couldn’t forget him, even if he wanted to, even if he tried. It wasn’t possible. That didn’t stop him from being paranoid anyways. A man, involved in his life for such a short span of time compared to the 150 years Vash has been alive, had altered many things within Vash. The way he saw himself, most prominently.

Wolfwood didn’t see Vash as a monster nor as an abomination. He saw him as a person , even when Vash physically wasn’t one. Wolfwood defended Vash, even when Vash himself wouldn’t. He blocked the stones thrown at him by the townspeople, he felt anger for Vash when he refused to.

He called him an angel frequently, almost nonchalantly. As if he wasn’t aware of the words he was uttering. But Vash knew Wolfwood was aware. Aware of the impact it held on Vash, aware of the way those words pierced through him, so intimate it hurt.

He wouldn’t hear Wolfwood call him angel ever again.

He was dead, he reminded himself.

Vash sucked in a breath, painfully aware that he was the only one still able to draw in air. The nagging feeling that the man in the ground should be him ate away at his insides. His hand idly reached into his pocket, taking out the pack of cigarettes he had taken out of Wolfwood’s suit pocket before laying him in the grave.

The edges of the box had been stained dark crimson, almost brown now, with blood from Wolfwood’s wounds. Vash traced his thumb over the stains, almost reverently. Blood spilled in a human sacrifice. He took out a cigarette, placing it between his lips, trying to imitate the way Wolfwood usually held it. He didn’t want to forget that either.

He didn’t light the cigarette, as he looked down at Wolfwood. He had to finish burying him first. But even imagining it, the dirt thrown onto Wolfwood, felt innately wrong. Vash shouldn’t be burying him like this. He should have a coffin, a gravestone, not some hole in the middle of the desert. A nameless grave, known only to few.

“Well…” Vash sighed, “This is shit, isn’t it, Nico?” Vash said, his voice hoarse. He wasn’t sure why his voice was so rough. He hadn’t cried yet, not allowing it. He knew if he cried now, he would latch himself to Wolfwood’s body and never let go, opting to bury himself with him. A lump formed in his throat and he struggled to swallow it back down.

Vash stood in silence for a moment, just looking at Wolfwood, raking his gaze over his form. It was almost physically painful to look at him. It always hurt to look at Wolfwood. It was like looking directly into the sun. Vash’s sun. It hurts for a different reason now, similar to when a star dies, so do all the planets around it.

“Nico…” Vash started, not quite knowing what to say. He hoped Wolfwood could even hear him, he hoped that God, the one Wolfwood whispered prayers too when he thought no one was looking, would deliver his message. The rosary Wolfwood had given to him months ago felt like it weighed fifty pounds, hanging around his neck. It felt like a magnet, connecting him to Wolfwood, wanting to drag Vash down with him. He clutched it with his metal arm, too holy to touch with flesh.

“I always thought I was going to be the one to bite the bullet first.. It’s ironic that it’s the opposite…” He said, his voice breaking. Tears fought their way to spill, and still, Vash wouldn’t allow it. “I hope you can still protect me from up there…or wherever you are now” There was still so much to say, but he can already imagine how Wolfwood would reply. Vash wanted to apologize for not being able to help him, but he can practically hear Wolfwood scolding him.

“Stop beating yourself up. It’s not your fault, Needle-noggin’” He would say. Yet, Vash would still feel like it was. He always did. There was silence again, like Vash was waiting for Wolfwood to reply.

He was dead, he reminded himself.

How many times was he going to say it to himself until he believed it? No matter if it took centuries, millennia. He couldn’t, not after all that happened.

His subconscious rendered him useless. He felt…he didn’t know what he felt. Vash and Death were old friends. He experienced death first hand, lived and breathed it. He caused it. This was different.

The grief he felt was different .

Vash knew what grief was too. He knew it with Rem, with the people Knives had killed because of him. This feeling he felt, weighing heavy in his chest, was nothing like that.

This was deeper. He didn’t even know how to put such an emotion into words, he didn’t know how to make it tangible, for him to understand. But it was there, festering. It threatened to consume him if his guard was down, desperately trying to claw its way out of his chest. It wanted everyone to know Vash’s pain.

Vash forced it back down. He wouldn’t suffocate others with his own grief.

For him, guilt and grief usually went hand in hand. And the guilt Vash currently felt was continuously running scenarios through his head, on loop. Scenarios where he had done something. Scenarios where Wolfwood would still be alive.

He snapped out of his stupor, cutting those running thoughts off. He couldn’t let those types of thoughts take hold right now. He sighed.

“I’m sorry…” was all he said, his teeth biting into the unlit cigarette he still held in his mouth as he picked up the shovel again, preparing to cover Wolfwood’s delicate corpse—in reality it was anything but delicate, covered in scars and calluses, open wounds—with coarse sand. But before that, Vash grabbed the hem of his coat, the ends already tattered with wear, and used his metal arm to tear off a piece the size of his forearm.

It wasn’t much, but Vash needed something to shelter Wolfwood from the roughness of the world. Vash had tried to do that when Wolfwood was alive too. In those quiet moments they shared. They were nothing amazing, no grandiose professions of love or anything of the sort. Those feelings were shared in quiet, small moments. Moments when Vash watched the sunset silently next to Wolfwood, who was smoking a cigarette. Or moments when they could only afford one bed at an inn, and they lay together, backs facing each other.

They would always wake up pressed against each other in the morning. Even in sleep, they would be seeking comfort from each other. Vash knew the same thing would apply in death.

Vash began to cover Wolfwood now with shaking hands. The shovel felt heavier than it should be, the sand he lifted with it even more so. He moved like a machine, rhythmically dumping sand onto Wolfwood. This was wrong, he repeated to himself. Yet, Vash continued anyway. The sun was setting when he finished, and he let the shovel fall to the ground, scrounging through his pockets.

He pulled out Wolfwood’s lighter, holding it in his palm. There were scratches littering it, and it was obvious that Wolfwood had had this lighter for a while. It was a miracle it still even worked with how many packs the man smoked in a week.

He clicked the lighter to life, bringing it to the end of the cigarette. He inhaled deeply, the sting of the tobacco searing through his throat and nose. He coughed harshly, tears stinging his eyes. He sobbed. The sound surprised him, as if it wasn’t coming from him, as if he wasn’t expecting it at some point.

Vash rubbed furiously at his face, trying to force the tears to stop, but the relief he felt wouldn’t allow him. He took another ragged inhale, the tobacco stinging again, but this time the sting was dulled by the nicotine. The smell of the cigarettes would linger, buried in his coat, his hair, his skin. Any other time, the smell of Marlboro Reds would be comforting to Vash because it reminded him of Wolfwood. Now, it felt like he was being crushed under the weight of grief, under the tears that wouldn’t stop spilling.

He gasped between the sobs, feeling like he couldn't breathe. He had half the mind to start clawing at the sand, to dig him back up. He wanted to. Vash wanted him back, wanted to see his face. But he knew that no matter how much he looked at Wolfwood, how much he memorized, how much he reminisced, Wolfwood wouldn’t wake up. He wouldn’t come back.

He was dead , he told himself.

He is dead . His mind refused to stop repeating it.

No, Vash wouldn’t learn to accept it, even if he repeated it a million times. He inhaled the tobacco again, his tears reluctantly ebbing to stop. He was sure this feeling was going to be permanent, and for however long Vash lived, he would have a bleeding wound. A wound around the size of a twin-sized mattress.