Chapter Text
It turned out that her imagined ‘eventually’ never came, and now it never would. She would never get to ask Vash her questions, never hear his answers. Would never get to tell him what she thought about Luida’s project and how much she’d loved the flora.
The last few minutes- hours?- were a blur.
She remembered Conrad. Remembered Vash, remembered seeing Knives and the dismissive, chilling disdain in his eyes.
Remembered the horror and disgust and violation and fear.
(Her fists still hurt from pounding on the glass, her throat still hurt from calling out Vash’s name as Conrad tried to send her away despite his monologuing.
The wound of fear was already open, and the knife was twisting in.
Her gloves were ripped from pulling at vines, leather shredded and roughed by thick, dark, twisting wood- she thought she would die there, but she couldn’t stop calling out his name.)
Remembered being hoisted over a strong shoulder, remembered screaming and kicking in protest, calling out Vash’s name over and over until she was hoarse, and then calling some more.
Remembered Nick, frantically looking from her to Vash, torn on who to save in the moments he had.
Remembered sobbing and pounding her small fists into Nick’s back, her legs pinned by his arm across her thighs, holding her to him with bruising force as he ran and ran and ran, as he held her back, restraining her as she fought against him and his hold. Remembered flying through the air as he raced them out of the city.
Remembered watching two twisted angels from their position on the ridge until Nick had been forced to pick her up and run again as he realized what was about to happen, racing the debris and sand cloud that began to spread.
Remembering every gasped “I’m sorry” he said, like each one was a brand on her skin as he curled his larger frame over her, shielding them from the death cloud when it caught up with them.
Sorry to her, sorry to Vash, sorry to himself.
Roberto was dead- oh god Roberto was dead.
Vash was- Vash was…
She was numb by the time they limped to a stop, having watched JuLai vanish through her tears and a cloud of debris, and he gently set her down. “We have to go back,” she tried to stumble past him, but he blocked her, dropping to his knees and grabbing her shoulders tightly.
“Meryl, for fuck’s sake,” he fought against her attempts to dodge him, firmly keeping her in his grasp. “We cannot go back. There’s nothing to go back to. JuLai and Vash are gone.“
Fury blazed through her, and she slapped him, her own palm stinging with the force of it. Roberto’s blood had mixed with hers through her destroyed gloves and left smudges on Nick’s reddening skin; a sob rose to her lips as it occurred to her that those smears of blood were all that were likely left of the man. “You left Vash! We left him! We left him.”
“It was you or him, Meryl, I had to decide.”
Nick seemed so tired and his eyes had taken on that familiar silver sheen of unshed tears.
“You chose wrong!” She was sobbing openly, not caring anymore. “You chose wrong, Nick.”
“No, no I didn’t,” he reached out to cup her face, eyes still desperately searching her for any injuries. It felt like a mockery of the first time he’d gotten on his knees for her, all those long months ago.
How had they gone from fumbled confessions in a shootout to bloodied at the end of the world?
“If I could have saved you both, if I could have thought of a way, I’d have done it, but he was too far away- he wanted me to take you. You saw, Mer, you saw what those fuckers did to him, I know what they’d do to you, and Knives, he... come here.”
The hug was painfully tight and Meryl sank into it, exhausted by loss and defeated by reality. Roberto was dead. Vash was dead. JuLai was gone. “I couldn’t lose you too, Meryl.”
He meant it, fully, and she could feel it.
“I’m sorry,” she cried into his neck, letting him cradle her. “I’m so sorry, I shouldn’t have hit you.”
“I’ve had worse, baby. You’ve patched me up before, you’d know.” His hand slid up the base of her skull, tangling his fingers into her hair almost painfully and she was struck with the sudden realization that if Nick had not come when he did, if he had not hauled her out of town against her will, she would be dead too. She would have fallen off that roof and passed out in the descent, her body a bloody smear on the ground before the city turned to nothing. There would have been no one to tell her parents, nothing to even bury.
Like there was nothing left of Roberto to bury.
God, did he have family? Did he have anyone waiting for him? She had never asked, it had never come up in all their conversations. Meryl suddenly felt sick, pushing closer to Nick like she could take refuge under his skin, could fit herself into the cavity of his chest and make them both whole if only she could take the place of both their hearts.
Nick’s pulse thrummed near her ear; when she squeezed her eyes shut she saw the slow spread of blood…only this time it came from her. All the possibilities of things that could have gone wrong played out in rapid succession behind her eyelids, haunting her in the dark- from a whip of blades cutting into her skin, a knife point piercing through her heart, but at every turn she had been shielded.
Vash had moved with the fluidity and purpose of a ready-made weapon in a way she had only seen a few times before, and never before had he been that deadly.
Vash had saved her, she had called him back from horrors beyond her imagination and saved him, but in the end it wasn’t enough. He had heard her voice, heard her crying out for him to come back to her, to them, and he had listened. He had listened, he had come back and for those few moments, she allowed herself to dream of that ‘eventually’ again.
Dreams would never be enough.
In the end, Vash the Stampede-
She buried her face into Nick’s chest, and he cradled her impossibly tight as she sobbed through it.
Meryl felt bereft, like a part of her had been removed, like someone had pulled her heart from her chest and crushed every drop of blood from it as she watched. There was something in her that was missing, found wanting in a way she had never known before.
Three months ago, this was an easy field assignment- chase a myth, write an article, figure out the ropes under a disgruntled older mentor who knew the landscape like the back of his hand. Three months ago, she had been shining bright and excited for the future, her resumes fresh off the printer.
That was three months before she’d met Vash the Stampede, and god she had so many regrets mixed in with happiness until they were inseparable in her heart and mind. How could she regret meeting Vash, meeting Nick, how could she regret those months?
At the same time…at the same time, how could she not regret it? Roberto was dead. A man who’d been nothing but kind to her, despite the gruffness, was gone because she’d decided she couldn’t let go.
All that remained of it all was a massive crater, a scar across No Man’s Land, and she was hollow.
“Please,” she gasped, suddenly scrambling to undo Nick’s belt. “Please, I need to feel, I need to feel alive. Please-“ The unnatural stillness of Vash speared through in that tank was still seared behind her eyelids, mixed in with her own horrors, the smoke and clouds of debris rolling off the space where JuLai had just been on the horizon like clouds.
“Anything you want Mer, I’m here. I’ve got you.”
Why did she have to be wearing so many layers? She scrambled to get them all down to her knees, one hand returning to stroke Nick to hardness and the other tangling in his dusty hair as he stole the breath from her lungs, kissing her with a singular focus born of desperation as he helped her out of her clothes.
Forget, forget.
There was only the two of them left.
Nick managed to get the collar of her shirt open, and he was not gentle in leaving a mark there. His teeth sunk in and while they were not as sharp as Vash’s, she knew he’d broken skin. She whined against his neck, eyes squeezing shut against both pain and recent memory. She shifted her hips, lining him up.
“Meryl, wait-”
She didn’t, she couldn’t, bringing their hips flush in one sharp motion. The stretch was agony and tears pricked her eyes, she wasn’t near ready to take him without any preparation but there wasn’t time and she didn’t care. Nick groaned into her hair, and the involuntary upward thrust of his hips made her sob.
Forget, forget, please make me forget.
“Use me,” she begged, moving his hands to her hips as she ground down against him, tears of pain spilling unbidden from her eyes. “Please. I don’t want to think. I just want you.”
“Fuck, Meryl.” His hands gripped her so hard, she could feel his bitten-short nails dig into her skin. “You don’t know what you’re asking for.”
She ground down against him again, dragging her nails over his shoulder, the fingers of her other hand tangling in his hair and pulling. “Please. I don’t care if it hurts.”
I need to feel anything but hollow.
He answered her with a hard thrust up, pulling her down sharply to match. The breath was forced out of her lungs, and she instinctively tightened her grip. Her nails against Nick’s skin bit in and she felt the well of blood. Something in him snapped at that, at the infliction of pain, and he growled; his arms locked her in place and any previous gentleness was gone.
It was not like their previous couplings, when Vash had been there to temper the burn with his soft touches and grounding presence. It was just the two of them, and she was overwhelmed by the force with which Nick fucked into her, the savageness of it. They’d only ever played at being rough before this, she realized, both him and Vash. They were so much stronger than her, so much larger, and any show of strength was calculated for her pleasure.
This was not calculated.
This was nothing like this morning on the ship, nothing like the almost-love she’d been suspended in like honey. This was animalistic, feral, and her pulse pounded in her ears.
Nick growled, shifting his hips and sinking impossibly deeper- pain threatened to overtake pleasure in the mix as he slammed against her cervix. There had been no foreplay, no orgasms to relax her, and she knew this was the price she would pay. Meryl tried to squirm away, to get her knees under her to rise up even the smallest fraction to feel less, but Nick had her locked in place and he was not going to let go as she sobbed with each thrust.
“You can take it, baby,” he grunted into her ear; the hand that had been bruising her hip pressed against her clit and the hand in her hair yanked back until her back bowed. He bit a trail down her neck before taking a nipple into his mouth with a hint of teeth.
She sobbed again, the angle of his cock slamming home inside her suddenly feeling exquisite after the extended mix of pain. “Nick-”
“Come on, baby.” His teeth sank into the meat of her shoulder as he kept up his pace. It was both too much and not enough, painful and glorious, agony and bliss on a knife’s edge. She let her mind go completely blank as he fucked into her just as she had asked, using her to chase his own pleasure- for how long she could not say.
His hand strayed back to her clit and it was like a wire had been connected again, her whole body sparking back into life; she gasped as it felt like her mind slammed back into her body.
“Please, I’m-” a particularly hard thrust made her mind blank again. “Fill me. Please. Need to feel you, need you inside, Nick-” He increased pressure on her clit and Meryl whined, on the edge of her orgasm. “Cum inside me.”
“Fuck, fuck,” he gasped into her neck, and she was surprised to feel the warm, wet press of tears against her skin where his face was curled, hidden from both her and the world. Meryl sank her fingers into his hair and held him close, breathing him in. “Meryl.”
The angle of his hips changed slightly as he unfolded himself to kiss her, all tongue and teeth and desperation that mirrored her own, making her gasp with each thrust. “Give it to me, Nick, I want it all, need to feel you.”
“Okay, fuck, okay,” he pressed their foreheads together. “Come on, baby. With me.”
Meryl sobbed into the kiss, as he worked his fingers against her hard, and her mind went blank as she shuddered around him, the clench of her body making his last thrust almost painful as he fought against her orgasm to chase his, biting down hard when his hips finally stilled, his hand bruising her hips as he slammed her down that final time.
Both of them were gasping, panting in ragged, wet heaves of breath as they came back down slowly, slowly, reality settling over them like a funeral shroud. It was Nick that spoke first, drawing back carefully.
“Christ, Meryl.”
It wasn’t the usual tone he said her name after sex, and she did not like it, forcing herself to really look at him. His face was streaked with tears, just as she assumed hers was, and his eyes were filled with a pained regret, with sorrow deeper than she could fathom as they traced along her body.
The moonlight was so much brighter when there wasn’t light pollution from a major city, and she could see the cruel bruises, the streaks of blood and the curves of bite marks that had broken her skin. At her hips, the curl of Nick’s fingers ached and she knew that the skin there would take weeks to fade the memory of his hands.
“It’s fine,” she murmured, leaning in to kiss him and feeling her heart break when he leaned away, pressing the heel of his palm to the bite mark on her shoulder in a way that made her hiss in pain. “It’s fine, Nick.”
Meryl had no idea someone could be so distant while still physically inside her; he shook his head sadly as he reached for her jacket, thrown aside in their scramble. She rose up on trembling knees and he carefully pulled away before draping her jacket over her shoulders. It hid the worst of the marks, or would until the blood soaked through. The material of her windbreaker was a bit more resilient than the cotton of her shirt, so she didn’t let it worry her.
Nick was silent as she pulled up her leggings and underwear, turning away when he caught the grimace she couldn’t hide at the mess that smeared down her thighs. It was the least of her worries, all things considered, as she straightened her belt.
“I’ll take you wherever you wanna go, Meryl.” Nick stared out at the horizon, his back to where JuLai had once been; his cross stretched its shadow across the ground in the bright moonlight, pointing to a nowhere destination like a creeping finger.
She had finally gotten the sand out of her shoes, pulling them back on. It was hard to balance, sore and fucked out as she was, but she watched the smoke curling off the crater with a new-found, singular focus. “My roommate from college, I think she’s still in November. We could go there-”
“Not ‘we’, Meryl.” She turned to him, excruciatingly slow. Nick refused to look at her. “Vash was the glue that held us together,” he said softly. “I’m not good on my own, Meryl. I am not a good man.”
“You could be,” she whispered, trying to contain the urge to scream into the void that was taking over the light in his eyes. “You are, you could be if you tried! Vash thought you were-”
“And look where that got him!” He was trying not to shout too, voice hoarse with it. “I have fucked up more than you could ever know, Meryl. I fucked it all up with you, with him, and I-”
“So tell me, so try,” she went to grab at his sleeve, to get him to face her again.
“I did this, Mer. JuLai is my fault. I let the idiot walk into a trap that I helped make.”
She froze. Conrad had said something, Knives had said something, but she was so focused on Vash that most of it was background noise as her eyes witnessed horror after horror that she was still struggling to comprehend. “What?”
“You fucking heard me. I led Vash straight into the lion’s den, straight to his brother.”
“You wouldn’t.” She knew it was true, and the knowledge burned the back of throat, threatening to spill out in a raw, bloody scream. Roberto had been right, she knew he had been, but she and Vash had looked the other way and had believed that Nicholas D. Wolfwood was someone worth caring for. “You loved-”
“Don’t.” The whisper of his voice cut to her heart, so cold and sharp that she felt her blood freeze. “Don’t tell me what I felt.”
“What about me?”
“What about you, Meryl? You think you’re special?” The laugh he let out hurt, cut her to her core. It was dark, it was the glint of a knife just before it slipped between her ribs and lodged in what was left of her heart. “Think again. I used you as much as I used him.”
She knew it wasn’t true, but she also knew that he would never concede this point; Nick would carry the weight of it all like his damn cross and she could never unburden him no matter how much she protested or begged.
He wouldn’t look at her.
Her heart ached, she wanted more than anything to kneel in front of him, to take his face into her hands again and kiss away the tears she knew he was hiding behind his sunglasses until he was spent, until they could curl together and wait for the harsh light of day to reveal everyone’s sins to the world.
There would be no more mornings. Not with him.
Not now.
Maybe not ever again.
All stories had an ending…it seemed this was theirs.
“So that’s it then.”
She was shocked at the resolution and steel in her own voice, the calm evenness of it- later, she could scream at the sky and wail and beat at her chest later. Later she could sit behind the wheel of her truck and sob and scream and fold in on herself until she was nothing, the smallest point in the universe, fully alone in the desert of No Man’s Land in the truck with the ashtray she’d epoxied onto the dash, with the bloodstains of two gunslingers in the floor mats and upholstery. Later.
“None of it was real, and you get to walk away with no attachments, the weight of his life, and the loss of an entire city on your shoulders. I hope you’re strong, Nick, because that cross is a lot heavier than the Punisher.”
He didn’t speak, still on his knees in the sand.
Meryl pocketed Roberto’s Derringer- her Derringer, now- the handle sticky with his blood, and turned back toward the smoking ruin of JuLai. Tears burned hot tracks down her cheeks, mixing the dirt and ash into muddy streaks. The world was in chaos around her, but there was only one path forward.
“Goodbye, Wolfwood.”
She did not look back.