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Roberto’s only half-listening to the radio when the rookie takes them over a ridge hidden under the dunes just a bit too fast. The jeep takes to the air just as he wonders when they’ll hit the next town, and therefore how long the remaining contents of his flask need to last.
When the car clatters down onto the sand again with a spine-jarring rattle, Roberto hears the shitty undertaker swear softly in the back seat. The foul language is nothing new: for a man who lugs around a cross and pretends to be a man of god, Wolfwood has a mouth on him that reminds Roberto of nothing so much as the sand steamer’s cargo deckhand he saw drop a priceless crate of Lost Technology on his own foot a few years back.
No, the cussing isn’t what makes Roberto pay attention: it’s the man’s tone of voice, quiet, intense, alarmed. Very little alarms Nicholas D. Wolfwood, including a veritable hail of gunshots at extremely close range. Roberto had really been hoping he and the rookie would get away from the pair in their backseat before he had to find out what it took to really scare either of them.
Roberto doesn’t move, doesn’t even take a deeper drag on his cigarette. He does start to listen in.
The rookie, driving, seems to actually be paying attention to the desert ahead of them for once, as if she hasn’t even noticed the enormous jolt she just gave them all by sending the Jeep up into the air like that. Or maybe she did notice, and intends to glare the sand in front of them into better future behavior through sheer force of will.
Rookies, Roberto thinks. They get greener every year. Or maybe he’s just getting more cynical. Probably it’s both.
But it’s a good thing she hasn’t noticed: Meryl has a bad habit of forgetting she’s the one behind the wheel, and with her intrusive brand of overwhelming concern, she’d be halfway into the back seat by now if she’d heard, and Roberto would be lunging for the wheel.
“Shit,” the undertaker hisses.
His voice is low enough that Roberto might have missed it, if he hadn’t spent years listening to other people’s private business for a living, if he weren’t a central part of the very information network that he’d mentioned inside the worm.
“Tongari, what the fuck.”
Vash laughs, or tries to. There’s a wet wheeze to it that Roberto knows far too well. He pulls out his flask and takes a quick swig in automatic reaction, resource management be damned. The last time he heard that sound, his second-to-last rookie before this one was drowning on dry land from a perforated lung, just another casualty of a small-town duel gone wrong.
“I’m fine,” the Humanoid Typhoon says. He doesn’t sound fine. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make a mess.”
Well, that’s alarming. Roberto can hear Vash’s breathing, fast and shallow. He can’t usually hear that: the man’s too quiet, his breaths too slow and measured except when he’s putting on a show for an audience. It’s one of the things Roberto has wondered about, one of the things that started making sense after the plant room on the sand steamer, after meeting Luida and Brad.
“You—” the undertaker sounds angry, now, which would be back to his version of normal, except that it’s the kind of anger that’s covering up fear.
It’s exactly the kind of tone that means it’s time to grab his rookie and get out of town, fast. Roberto glances in the rear view mirror, but the angle is terrible. He sees the tops of their heads, blond tipped over onto a black-clad shoulder. He’d assumed Vash was sleeping, sprawling all over Wolfwood like his own personal body pillow, but it looks like he was wrong. This wasn’t just a new step in their strange, abortive, incredibly awkward courtship.
Roberto considers, quickly. If it were anyone else, that rattle would be a death warrant, especially this far from a doctor. It’s not anyone else: it’s Vash, and he heals freakishly well from frighteningly severe wounds. The only people Roberto has seen heal faster are the monstrous thing that Vash called Rollo, the sand steamer assassin Livio, and Wolfwood himself. Of them all, only Livio did it without some kind of injection or medicine.
Vash might be all right, despite the wet rattle under his words. And he clearly wants to be left alone, or he would have spoken up earlier. Whatever’s going on, he obviously wants to deal with it himself, to avoid their attention.
Roberto can respect that: he knows when to back the fuck off, or he’d be long dead by now, just another desiccated corpse in the sands of No Man’s Land.
But Wolfwood’s obviously increasing anger and fear fundamentally change the situation. Roberto doesn’t fuck around with dangerous men who sound that scared, not even when their fucking enormous laser machine guns are out of easy reach.
“Meryl,” he says, stubbing out his cigarette in the overflowing mug on the dash. “Pull over. Now. Then get the first-aid box out of the trailer.”
She hits the brakes hard enough that Wolfwood’s head slams against the back of Roberto’s seat. A normal man would have a concussion from that impact, but Wolfwood took their whole trailer to the face and walked it off. Vash, Roberto notices, has been held in place, one broad, tan hand pinning him against the back seat. The gesture looks rough, but Roberto can tell the pressure is all against Vash’s collarbones, nowhere near the seeping dark stain under the right side of his rib cage.
“What?” Meryl demands, wrenching around to stare at him, though thankfully only after the car has come to a halt. “Senpai, what’s going on?”
“Get him out of the car,” Roberto says to Wolfwood. “I don’t like the sound of his breathing.”
Meryl is still staring at him, wide eyed and shocked.
“First aid kit, rookie,” Roberto snaps. “And a tarp.”
She opens and closes her mouth, and for a moment he thinks she’s going to protest that she has a name, yet again, the reaction almost instinctive by now. Then she glances into the back seat and swallows it down.
“First aid kit and tarp,” she echoes, and scampers off.
Maybe there’s hope for her after all, Roberto thinks, but cuts that off before it can get too optimistic: rookies as green as her either end up parked at the home office, or they end up dead. It’s better not to get attached.
“What? Why are we stopping?” Vash is doing a piss-poor version of his big cute eyes, and Roberto glares at him.
“Because you sound like you’re drowning on dry land, Typhoon, and I’m not having you die in the back of my car. Get out before we drag you out.”
“I’ll be fine,” Vash says. “You know I — I heal fast, right? I’ll be fine!”
“Fucking hell, tongari,” Wolfwood says. “It’s been five hours since that last shithole’s sheriff tried to take you in. If you were gonna heal up on your own, you’d already be fine. Shitty uncle is right, get out of the car before we make you.”
Vash shoots them both a sulky glare. He looks like Roberto’s nephew did, when his sister got a new toy — and Roberto slams the door on that memory before it can go anywhere else.
“You can’t make me,” Vash says, and sounds all of five or fifteen years old, not the hundred and fifty-odd Luida and Brad asserted.
Roberto shrugs.
“Sure,” he says. “I can’t. But I bet the undertaker here could give it a damn good go, and I’d rather you two not wreck the car while he tries.”
Wolfwood is still holding Vash against the back seat, fingers splayed wide and protective against Vash’s black shirt.
In his peripheral vision, Roberto sees that Meryl has set up the tarp, some clean rags that used to be towels, and the first aid kit. Good kid. She’d probably only ever read about this kind of thing back in November, but she’s got a decent head on her shoulders when she’s not running headfirst into gunfire.
“Vash,” Wolfwood says, and it’s almost a question, almost a demand.
Roberto intentionally doesn’t read too much into the tone, doesn’t listen for whatever feelings might be lurking in that word. There’s being a reporter and a constitutionally nosy bastard, and then there’s the willful ignorance needed to live in each other’s pockets without going crazy from the forced proximity, and he knows where to draw that line. Well, sometimes he does. Seems like right now is one of those times.
“Fine,” Vash says. “But I’ll take care of it, so back off.”
Wolfwood lets him up, and Vash takes another shallow, wet breath that rattles all wrong as he tries to get up.
“Shit,” Wolfwood says, and then he’s out of the car, and has scooped up Vash the Stampede, the legendary Humanoid Typhoon, in an absurdly gentle princess carry.
Vash takes it with better grace than Roberto would himself, at least until he’s flat on his back on the tarp, Wolfwood’s hand on his left shoulder, and Meryl is reaching to pull up his shirt.
“No!” Vash gasps, and the deep breath he takes in, instinctive and scared, sounds horrifying. Roberto shuts his eyes for a bare instant, snapping them again immediately against the images that try to play across his eyelids.
“Get his feet, old man,” Wolfwood snaps before Vash can do more than writhe. Roberto full-on sits on Vash’s knees, using his full body weight to pin the injured man down.
“I’m fine,” Vash insists, gasping those horrible, ragged breaths, the right side of his shirt visibly more wet than before. There are tears running from the corners of his big blue eyes. “I’m fine, I’m fine, you don’t have to —“
He starts coughing, body trying to jackknife up, held down by Roberto’s full weight on his legs, by Wolfwood’s two hands on his shoulders. The rag Meryl presses to his lips comes away pink.
“Vash,” Meryl says, and she sounds horrified, and very scared under the determination. “Vash, you’re not okay. Let us help you!”
“I’m fine,” Vash says, and this time when he coughs, the rag is clotted red.
Five hours, Roberto thinks. Five hours bleeding into his lung, and he didn’t say a damn thing.
“You’re not!” Meryl says, and she yanks his shirt up, far enough to see a wound trying to close up around what looks like a nasty piece of shrapnel.
“No!” Vash all but screams, and Roberto hopes there aren’t any raiders around here. If the Bad Lad Gang, or even some shitty half-baked outlaws come up on them right now, they’ll be dead before the undertaker can get his cross, augmented reflexes or no.
“Vash,” Wolfwood says. “Listen to me.”
“Nick,” Vash says, and he sounds increasingly disoriented. “Nick, get me out, make them stop. I don’t want to be here. The lights are too bright.”
“I know,” he says, and there’s something aching, and old hurt, buried in Wolfwood’s voice. “The lights are always too bright, I know.”
And then Wolfwood takes off his sunglasses and swaps them for Vash’s own. Meryl stares, hand still on the end of the shrapnel, which she hasn’t removed yet.
“Get that thing out of him,” Roberto snaps.
Vash’s words are ricocheting around in his head, falling into a disturbing pattern. To have as many scars as Roberto can see just between his waistband and his lower ribcage, despite how he heals? To be this scared of anyone else’s hands on him? Maybe it’s just anxiety drilled into him by Brad, who seemed to trust outsiders not even so far as he might throw them. But Roberto has met enough so-called doctors, big city or small town, to guess what some of them would be willing to do to someone like Vash, all in the name of scientific inquiry.
Meryl hesitates, and Roberto glares at her. His tone is too sharp, but he wants — he needs — this waking nightmare they’re all experiencing to end, already.
“The faster the better, rookie.”
“Senpai,” she says, making almost frightened eye contact. “Senpai, it’s got something on the end, I can’t just — it’s like barbed wire, it’ll hurt him worse coming out!”
Wolfwood finishes gently tucking Vash’s own glasses into his inner jacket pocket with one hand, the other one still pinning Vash’s prosthetic arm to the ground, knuckles pale with strain.
“It’ll hurt worse if it stays in any longer,” Wolfwood says to her. “It’s in his lungs, and his body’s trying to heal around it. He’s getting cut open every time he breathes.”
Meryl blanches, like she’s seen an enormous cage of Worms, like she’s seen her first dead body. Roberto has a moment to worry she’s going to faint, and he’ll have to hope he and Wolfwood can figure out how to pin Vash and pull out the hook at the same time.
“Nick,” Vash says, turning his head. “Nick, where are you? I don’t want to be here anymore. You promised—“ he breaks off, coughing again, and Roberto prays to a god he hasn’t believed in for a decade that Vash won’t finish that thought.
Wolfwood locks eyes with Meryl, both of his hands braced on Vash’s shoulders. He looks serious, and he looks scared, and he looks, for the first time Roberto can remember, oddly and devastatingly young.
“It’s going to hurt,” he says. “It’s going to hurt like a bitch, and he’s gonna scream like he’s dying, and he’s gonna try to get away from us. It’s gonna suck. I’d pull it out myself, but you can’t hold him still long enough. So you have to pull it out. You have to hurt him to help him, Meryl. Because then he’ll heal, and he’ll heal properly. Knowing this idiot, he’ll probably fucking thank you for it, and apologize for being any trouble. But right now every breath he takes hurts. So get it over with already.”
Vash whines, low in his throat, breath low and shallow, like a trapped animal, like a dying man.
Meryl take a deep breath.
“Okay,” she says. “Okay. I can do this.”
She looks at Vash, and offers him a tentative, watery smile.
“On three,” she says, and Vash sobs. “Okay,” she says, and grabs the edge of the metal with a rag-wrapped hand. “One.” She adjusts her grasp. “Two—”
And she yanks with all her strength, shocking Roberto even as he puts everything he's got, and then some, borrowed from adrenaline and sheer cussed willpower, into holding Vash down.
It’s sneaky of her, pulling it out early like that. It’s exactly what he would have done — exactly what he has done, what Roberto has told her he’s done, in a long, rambling story he was sure she hadn’t paid attention to.
The end, when she has it out, is barbed. It’s hooked and serrated, easily the length of Roberto’s palm, and looks brutally, painfully lethal. Meryl drops it onto the tarp and shoves both rag-wrapped hands against the exit wound to staunch the blood, shaking, and crying, and not letting up despite her obvious distress.
That’s his rookie.
“Good job,” he says. “Keep the pressure for a count of forty at least. Count slow.”
At Vash’s head, Wolfwood is bent double, arms braced across Vash’s sternum, calves pretzeled around Vash’s outflung arms in a way Roberto doesn’t care to think about too closely.
“Hey, hey,” Wolfwood is saying, voice low and urgent, pitched for Vash’s ears only. Pity Roberto has a reporter’s hearing and curiosity at the moment. “Hey, we’ve got you. I’ve got you. It’s better now, right? It’s better. It’ll be alright. Don’t you dare even think about dying on me.”
Vash coughs, weakly, and doesn’t take another breath.
Roberto has a long moment to fear they’ve killed him, that removing the hook was the wrong call, no matter how swiftly Vash heals, no matter how sure Wolfwood seemed about it, that this is it, the end of the Humanoid Typhoon.
Roberto has seen too many men bleed out into the desert’s thirsty sands. Most of the time he doesn’t let himself care anymore. For Vash, he thinks he might have to care.
Then Vash gasps, and twitches his fingers.
“Need to—” he manages, and Wolfwood lets him go.
“Let him roll over,” he directs them. “He needs to be able to cough that shit out of his lungs. It’s easier facing down.”
Vash’s prosthetic hand closes over the rags, over Meryl’s hands. She lets go when Roberto nods, backs up, and almost falls over. Roberto catches her.
He doesn’t let himself wonder why it sounds like Wolfwood is speaking from experience.
Wolfwood helps Vash roll over onto his less injured side — the side that has metal plates in it, Roberto can see, and shit, he didn’t want to know that, either.
“Come on, rookie,” he says, pulling them both to their feet. “You deserve a drink after that.”
“Senpai,” she protests, and then slumps into his grasp, looking at the blood on her hands. “Yeah,” she says. “Okay.”
As they turn toward the car, Vash kneels up, and begins coughing, long, wracking sounds, wet and lethal-sounding. Roberto sees Wolfwood petting his back, long, soothing strokes. Vash is still wearing the undertaker’s sunglasses, and the expression on Nicholas’s face is more open than Roberto has ever seen it before, relief warring with pain warring with something that might almost be regret.
Roberto turns away: that’s none of his business, and of no profit to the news network, so he can afford to ignore it, to give the two of them what little privacy the desert can afford.
Besides, he’s got a rookie to keep tabs on. Roberto pulls his flask out, and hands it to Meryl.
“Bottoms up,” he says. “And don’t you dare tell me no. I’m driving from here.”
She looks at it, and at him, and then down at her hands, streaked red and darkening brown.
“Okay,” she says. “That was — okay.”
And she takes a long, deep swallow, not even making a face at the burn of the cheap rotgut.
“Good job,” he says, again, and tucks her into the passenger seat, turning the radio to a staticky, half-received music station to avoid the news until the other two can pack up the tarp and first aid kit, crawl into the back seat of the car, and let Roberto keep driving them all towards whatever awaits them in July.
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