Tumgik
#finding out wolfwood dies destroyed me I cried every morning over this for a week
peachyxin · 9 months
Text
to spend my tomorrows with you
ao3 link • 886 words
pairing: Vashwood
tags: angst, hurt no comfort, grief/mourning, coping, dead Nicholas D. Wolfwood, drabble
cw: major character death, Trigun manga spoilers
summary
Vash copes with Wolfwood's death, while the latter reaches for faith in the void of the underworld. A pseudo-katabasis and the dream of a falling star.
---
01. six feet under
Vash sits stone-still on the couch, in a daze. He toys with the weight of the Punisher and traces its contours with the pads of his fingers. The cool metal counterbalances the phantom memory of warm hands held and cherished deep beneath his skin. It still doesn’t hit him that Wolfwood is gone. There’s no way he can be. He imagines how Wolfwood would hold the gun; he remembers the cheeky grin that would accompany the confirmatory glance that they shared before charging head-first into battle. He imagines that the warmth that lingers on its handle is real and not just a desperate manifestation of his denial.
No tears fall as he buries him. Shovels full of dirt hit the casket with dull thuds. Repeat, and repeat. Soon, the ground is level, and he is truly gone. No tears, but his whole world falls. In the depths of the night, left alone with his own suffocating thoughts, Vash sobs. He sobs, the force of his anguish sending tremors through his entire being as he clutches Wolfwood’s smoke-infused blazer to his chest so hard his knuckles turn white. I love you . Vash realizes this, belatedly, in the surreal trance of his grief, and the thought shears his heart open and raw, allowing the fears stowed carefully inside to rear their ugly heads, entangled in the depths of his psyche. The ghost of cigarettes may as well be of incense, prayer, and holy reverence. He’s convinced burying the only person so dear to him — the only one who saw him for more than his cheery facade, the only one who could ever pull him out of his head whenever he floated too far — damns him to a life of perdition.
He brings the cigarette to his lips, taking a slow drag. He coughs, sputters, then collects himself and tries again. One more. The poison seeping into his lungs is his punishment and repentance, the temporary antidote for his guilt and self-loathing. He imagines how Wolfwood’s cigarettes dangled effortlessly between his lips. If he closes his eyes, he can imagine that Wolfwood exists instead of him. That he survives, instead of him. Again, again, and again, he invites the smoke into his lungs, willing it to cloud the despair within, convincing himself that the wound is not severe. He wonders if Wolfwood would laugh at him, at how pathetic he is now, destroying his body to quench his searing, parching, and utterly destroying thirst for a memory long past, that can never be relived, not in this lifetime or the next. (He imagines Wolfwood laughing. The lengths he would go just to hear him laugh again.)
---
02. fallen angel’s ode to the sun
A sinner doesn’t deserve heaven. I turn the other way, not bothering to find out if cruel destiny deems me fit to enter; I am but a pawn in its eternal game. I fight against the tide of apparitions clambering to be first at the pearly gates. The blood staining my skin cannot be so easily cleansed. I descend the steps into the dark, cold labyrinth that marks the beginning of the underworld.
I was in love with the sun, once. He burned — breaking down and recreating endlessly, selflessly radiating warmth through the destruction of his own being. In my hubris, I convinced myself that I could best Icarus. I thought I was doing quite well. 
The sun was my salvation. In his light, I believed that I had escaped the sinner’s path, that I could be reformed, born anew, and be cleansed of my wretched past. Well, that’s why I ended up here, anyway, but I wanted to believe. I still do. I have to.
But, back then, just as my fingertips were about to brush something holy, I was hurled into the unforgiving abyss of the cold sea. It wasn’t supposed to end that way. I hadn't intended to fly far in the first place. All I wanted was to have more, to be closer, to spend all my tomorrows steeped in the sacred rays of his ever-burning light.
I would burn for him a million times, over ten thousand different lifetimes, just to be his priest, his prophet, and his anchor in each one. He was so bright that I could hardly see him, and at times my unenlightened mind even found him foolish, but all that did was make me want to chase even harder, addicted to the thrill of flames licking at my fingertips, just out of reach.
As I descend, an invisible force holds me back. The selfish will of a star. Even in death, I cannot escape his self-imposed martyrdom, the pure deeds that only underline the extent of my defilement.
“Wolfwood?” an echoing and distant voice says. It’s almost a whisper, barely audible, trembling and unsteady. I wouldn’t have caught it if it weren’t for the aching familiarity in its timbre, melancholy disguised by jovial grace. I turn around. I have to believe, but I cannot.
My star burns as brightly as ever, but the farther I run, the more obscure his trembling mirage becomes.
Vash awakes with a start. The faint traces of the fading dream elude his reaching fingers. The star falls, cradled by a single tear, its outline reflecting the flickering oil lamp’s last exhalation, returning to the void of infinite nothing.
6 notes · View notes