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This chapter was originally going to be a lot shorter, but I decided to expand it a bit for the sake of not having two short chapters to close things out. Epilogue tomorrow maybe??? And then we'll be continuing the Vash POV fic "moments until the crash", and then the alternative July fic. Eventually. Anyways, enjoy!

the unknowable tomorrow | a tristamp fanfic part eighteen: wolfwood and meryl

cw: suicide concerns, poor coping with alcohol

It was pitch black out when they emerged. They were in the middle of a town somewhere. It was late enough that the only place still open looked like a bar. Something about the place felt familiar, though Wolfwood couldn’t quite place how. If they’d showed up in the daytime, maybe, but right now their surroundings just looked like the vague shapes of buildings…and one very wobbly figure in red.

A very wobbly figure in red who was being followed.

They both ran to Vash’s side immediately. “There you are!” Meryl said brightly. The smile in her voice didn’t match the sharpness in her eyes as she glanced over her shoulder. “We’ve been looking everywhere for you!”

Vash looked between the two of them, his nose wrinkling in confusion. He definitely smelled like he’d been drinking. “I thought you two were asleep,” he said.

“I…” Meryl locked eyes with Wolfwood. From the sudden panic there, she had the same thought he did: that sentence implied he’d seen them earlier, which meant they may have finally hit PE 104. There was another Nicholas D. Wolfwood in town, another Meryl Stryfe. Hopefully, Vash was right and they were asleep, wherever they were. “Uh…we were worried about you,” Meryl said finally.

Vash looked skeptically at Wolfwood. “Okay.” He wouldn’t meet Wolfwood’s eyes. “I’m going back. I promise…”

“Hold that thought. Hey!” Wolfwood turned around and glared at the trio of men following Vash. “You got a problem or something?”

The men stopped. “We saw him first,” said one of them. “You can’t just swoop in and take our – “

Out of the corner of his eye, Wolfwood saw Vash slump slightly. Either he was about to pass out from alcohol consumption, or he’d realized what was going on and wasn’t happy about it. “Listen, it’s too damn late for a fight,” Wolfwood said. “We just want to get back to sleep.”

“Oh, yeah?”

Wolfwood saw one of the men go to draw. Before he could even put himself between the others, Vash’s gun was in his hand, aimed right at the man. His finger was off the trigger, but Wolfwood could only tell because he was standing right next to the guy. To the men chasing him, all they knew was that the infamous Vash the Stampede had them in his sights before the other man could draw.

Wolfwood froze. Meryl froze. The other men froze. And when Wolfwood glanced at Vash he was…crying?

Ah, geez.

“Listen.” Vash’s hand didn’t shake, his aim stayed true, but there were audible tears in his voice. “I’ve had a really bad night, okay? I’d really like to not do this right now.”

Immediately, Wolfwood was torn between two conflicting impulses. The first, of course, was to try and comfort Vash. The second was to start laughing his ass off. Vash being upset, Vash crying, obviously not funny. The way the three men suddenly shrank in on themselves, baffled and a bit embarrassed looking as they watched an infamous outlaw turn into a bubbling, drunken mess in front of them? He almost wished Meryl had her camera. If he couldn’t smell the alcohol on Vash’s breath, he’d swear the man was faking it just to make them feel awkward.

I can work with this, he realized.

“Ah, geez, do you see what you did?” He reached over and carefully pushed Vash’s hand down. “You stalk my friend here, make him cry…you’d be laughed out of the sheriff’s office if you brought him in. What kind of bounty do you think he’s worth? Look at him.” He threw an arm around Vash’s shoulders. “C’mon.”

It was a bit much and he knew it, but the men seemed to be buying it. Meryl quickly jumped in. “This is why we told you to stop wearing red, Brad,” she said. Wolfwood almost, almost cracked at the name choice, but managed to keep a straight face. “You’re really going to get into trouble one day.”

“Don’t know what you do without us,” Wolfwood added. To the men, he said, “Can we wrap this up? We need to get this one to bed.”

Wolfwood wasn’t sure if they’d buy it, but Vash’s tears did a great job making him seem normal. Or maybe the speed of that quick draw had been enough to deter them. They all exchanged glances, spoke briefly among themselves—I don’t know, doesn’t seem like it’s him, do you see how he’s crying—and moved their hands away from their weapons. “You should really tell your buddy not to wear red,” one of them said. “He looks just like…”

“Yeah, trust me, we know.” Wolfwood grabbed Vash by the shoulders and started steering him away. “You folks have a good night.”

He didn’t know where he was going, just that he didn’t want to be here. They walked into the dark streets, following a pattern that would hopefully confuse any tail they might have. “The hotel’s that way,” Vash mumbled.

“Yeah, so are the guys with guns. How drunk are you right now?”

“None of your business.”

Wolfwood stopped to stare at Vash. “Okay, what happened?”

“What…happened?” Vash stared back at her just as incredulously. “It was yesterday!”

“Vash,” Meryl said softly. She pulled up the poncho to show her arm, and the burn wound on it. “Vash, look. It’s us.”

Vash stared at the injury, reached out to touch it. He really seemed to take them in, to finally notice the different clothes and hair.

“…oh.”

And once it sank in, he grabbed them both and hugged them tightly. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry…Nico, I’m not mad at you. I mean, I am mad at you, but not mad at you…”

“Hey, hey, take it easy. I’m sure I deserved it.” Wolfwood patted Vash’s back as best he could with his arm pinned. “Uh, what did I do, though?”

“Rollo…”

Oh. That.

“Why don’t we find somewhere more private to talk about this?” Meryl suggested. “I don’t think wandering around town is going to do us any good at this hour.”

“Yeah. Yeah, you’re right.” Vash sniffed noisily and pulled away from the hug. “Uh…I think the truck is this way. We can sit in there.”

That worked for Wolfwood. If he remembered right, he’d spent this particular night lying bed, trying to fight off a crisis of conscience when he wasn’t drifting in and out of sleep. Meryl had been at the hotel in the morning and Roberto had snored his way through the night despite the tension in the group. There wasn’t any risk of running into their past selves at the truck.

Just as well. Wolfwood wasn’t sure he could face the person he was back then.

It felt like years since Meryl had seen that truck. She still had the keys tucked away in her backpack. She could drive away with it right now if she wanted to. But the potential ramifications of stealing from her past self felt extremely daunting, so instead she opened the backseat so the three of them could climb in.

Once they were all safely behind a locked door, Wolfwood cleared his throat. “So,” he said. “Rollo.”

Vash seemed to shrink in on himself at the name. “I read it,” he said. “The paper you gave me. And I’ve been trying to make things better but Jeneora Rock is still gone and Rollo is still…” He buried his face in his hands. “I shouldn’t have gone into the village.”

“Oh, Vash.” Meryl trailed off as she tried to recall what had happened at Jeneora Rock. Dwelling on the details made her head hurt too much, but she could remember broad strokes. There’d been no celebration after the Nevadas were defeated. Instead, the town had…evacuated? Something about the risk of Plant radiation. Which meant fewer people in town, fewer casualties overall. But EG the Mine had still come, and Millions Knives after him. Jeneora Rock had still been torn to its foundations. More people had survived, but they were still without a home, facing a harsh journey that they might not survive.

And they still blamed Vash.

It seemed like Rollo was still dead, too, despite what she remembered as a stronger effort on Vash’s part to go into the windmill village alone. Something different must have passed between him and Wolfwood, if the queasy and guilty look on his face was anything to go by, but it hadn’t changed the outcome. And now they were in the awkward stretch of days between the windmill village and the sand steamer, when Vash and Wolfwood weren’t talking and the tension in the truck had been unbearable as a heat wave.

No wonder Vash had gotten drunk.

“Listen…” Wolfwood cleared his throat. “Vash, I…”

“You can’t leave us, okay?” Vash interrupted. “You can’t. Whatever is in you that’s saying you’re…you’re a monster and you can’t change, it’s wrong. You can. You have. So…” He grabbed Wolfwood’s hand and held it tightly. “Don’t go.”

Meryl was confused until she remembered Wolfwood’s one word answer to why he’d shot Rollo: mercy. He didn’t think Rollo would come back from what had been done to him. And considering what had been done to Wolfwood…

The sudden fear in her heart must have shown on her face because Wolfwood looked between the two of them with an off-guard expression. “I…geez, that’s what you’re…I’m not going anywhere if I can help it. I’ve got too much shit left to do.” Meryl let out a breath, releasing her fear with it. “I thought you were mad at me.”

“I am. But I’m more mad about…all of it.” He lifted his head to look between two of them. “I don’t know what to do. I know I can’t do nothing, but when I get to July…I don’t know what to do. How can you tell when someone isn’t going to change? How can you really tell?”

Meryl didn’t have an answer to that. The more she thought about it, the more convinced she was that you couldn’t really know. Maybe that was the sacrifice you made, living in a world like this. As much as she wished that question had an answer, where the potential for change had more weight…

“I can’t really afford to think about what-ifs,” Wolfwood said, pragmatic and somber as ever. “All I can do is react to what’s in front of me.”

And what was in front of them was 150 years of bad decisions, of escalating violence, of nothing deterring Knives from his path.

Vash nodded. “Yeah. I know.” He took a deep breath. “I know one thing. No matter what happens, I’ll protect you. I promise.”

“And we’ll protect you,” Meryl said. It was a bit awkward in the enclosed space, but she was just able to give Vash a hug. “We’ll all protect each other.”

She might not have had any answers, but she could give him that much, at least.

She expected Vash to stress that he’d do most of the protecting, but instead he sank into the hug. His weight was so boneless and limp, he probably would’ve squished her if Wolfwood hadn’t joined the hug, hauling Vash off her a bit. “I don’t think this is the best conversation to have when you’re drunk,” he pointed out.

“Haha…yeah…” Vash sighed. “You guys don’t have to go right now, right?”

“Don’t think so.”

“Will you stay with me?”

“Well, I’m not sleeping out there.”

“We’ll be here for you as long as we can be,” Meryl added.

Vash hummed and went silent. When Meryl looked up, he had his eyes closed, and his breathing had slowed down. “Is…is he already asleep?” she whispered, perplexed.

“Looks like it,” Wolfwood whispered back. “I’d do the arm drop test if he weren’t holding onto me.”

“The what?”

“Y’know, like with babies? If you try to put them down before they’re asleep all the way, they just wake back up. If you can drop their arm and it just kind of flops without them waking up, they’re completely asleep.” He shrugged, or tried to with how much Vash was leaning on him. “Things you pick you pick up when you have to look after the babies.”

“They had you looking after babies at twelve?”

“They had me looking after babies at eight.” Wolfwood didn’t sound resentful; he almost sounded fond. “It started with this one little girl…constantly crying her head off when she got there. She only stopped when I held her. I traded dishes duty to look after her. It was a lot of work, but…she was a good kid. She really was.”

No wonder the younger Wolfwood had seemed so mature. No wonder he felt so responsible for the others. “What happened to her?”

“She got adopted. It happens more with the babies and the really little kids. They seemed like good people. I like to imagine she’s safe, wherever she is. Comfortable, quiet life. That’s all you could ever really hope for.”

Meryl nodded in agreement. “Was it strange, living with so many other kids?”

“I got used to it. It was a hell of a lot better than what I’d left behind. Do you have any siblings?”

“No. Just me.”

“What’s that like?”

It was interesting to realize that what she’d always thought of as normal, even as the default, wasn’t for Wolfwood. It wasn’t the norm for a lot of people, if she was being honest with herself. “Quiet,” she said. “I did ask why I never had a sibling, but my parents never talked about it. They may not have been able to have more.” A pang of guilt shot through her. “I told them I’d write while I was on assignment, but…I forgot. I think I only sent one post card.”

Wolfwood somehow reached around Vash to squeeze her shoulder. “You’ll have time when you get back,” he said. “I’d leave out all the, uh…time travel, though.”

“Definitely. I didn’t even tell them I was going after Vash the Stampede. I thought they’d worry too much.” Her parents were fairly practical people, to be fair, the sort who would think the stories surrounding Vash were wild rumors meant to make him sound scarier. That would all go out the window if they knew she was involved, though. “Do you think I should still do the article? I wouldn’t say everything, but if I could just tell people about the real him…”

“Would they believe it?”

“I don’t know. I just know I want to try.” She glanced up at Vash again. His sunglasses were falling off his face, so she reached up to take them off. “Maybe I’ll ask him in the future, and when he’s more…sober.”

“Yeah, so much for processing alcohol more efficiently. Though since we’re stuck here, I’ve been wondering…how do you get into a university, anyway? It’s one of those things the older kids talked about doing, y’know, to ‘get out of here,’ but I don’t think any of us actually knew how to do that.”

And that was how Meryl ended up giving a more in-depth explanation of her journey to higher education track than she’d expected to give to Wolfwood, along with stories about what the schoolwork was actually like. Wolfwood traded with stories of what it was like being schooled at the orphanage. It sounded like they were taught more practical skills than standard book learning, though that was sometimes due to personal interest than the desire of the teachers. Not all the kids saw the point. Wolfwood himself was somewhere in the middle.

“I didn’t like all of it, like…diagramming sentences? Bullshit. But I like books. I liked learning about things. Wasn’t as crazy about it as some kids, but I tried.”

It made sense, and Meryl recognized the complaints of the others, too. There’d been kids from all walks of like at her old school, and some of them hadn’t taken to the more academic subjects, either. They had already seen a future of being a mechanic on a sand steamer, working at their family store, or maybe joining the military police in a more exciting city. What good would math theories do them?

“To be fair, I didn’t like math, either. But for the rest of it, I tried to think of it as…less about the subject and more about how I learned, if that makes sense? So for me, literature wasn’t really about old dead writers from before the Spacefaring Age. It was about understanding what words mean, how people use them, why they think the way they think, and analyzing that. It helped when I got to focus on reporting.”

They traded stories back and forth the rest of the night, stories of school, of childhood, of two very different lives. Wolfwood only hinted at his life before the orphanage—my uncle was a bastard, glad I didn’t end up the kind of rotten he did—but Meryl still felt like he was opening up. Like she could see the kind of person he might’ve been, had his childhood not been cut off so cruelly.

The kind of person he could still be, if he was only given a chance.

Maybe Meryl could help him get that chance once things were sorted with Vash.

It was a nice thought.

As Wolfwood expected, Vash was not happy when the first rays of sunlight woke him up.

“Am I dying?” he mumbled against Wolfwood’s shoulder.

“Nope. Just hungover.”

“Uggggh.” Vash rubbed his eyes. “Out…I need out…”

Wolfwood and Meryl both scrambled to get out of Vash’s way. For a moment, Wolfwood worried Vash was going to puke. Instead, he stumbled for the truck’s water reservoir, shedding his coat as he went. He turned on the nozzle and stuck his entire head under the stream. It was hard to tell if he was drinking it, soaking himself, or both. Considering how he’d coped the last time Wolfwood had seen him drunk, it was probably both. It was a good stretch of time before Vash shut off the nozzle and sank into a miserable crouch. “I’ll refill it before we leave,” he mumbled. “It’s okay. You can laugh.”

“Uh…” Well, now that Vash mentioned it, he did look pretty pathetic—sopping wet and utterly miserable as a consequence of her own decisions. But it felt mean to say that, and those decisions had been made in the wake of a pretty shitty day, so instead Wolfwood said, “Wasn’t gonna.” He patted Vash’s shoulder. “What did we learn?”

“Drinking only makes the problem worse,” Vash mumbled.

“I was actually gonna say not to mix whiskey and…whatever else you had.” Wolfwood may not have had the most sensitive nose on the planet, but he could usually pinpoint what kind of drunk someone was. Vash had smelled like the whole damn bar. “I don’t think drinking could possibly make your problem any worse.”

“It didn’t exactly make it better.” Vash finally stood up. “Sorry about last night. I really didn’t know it was you guys.”

“I mean, you did just see us a few hours before.”

Vash laughed weakly and rubbed his eyes. “Ugh, yeah. This has all gotten a lot more confusing since…” He gestured to Meryl. “…she showed up. I wasn’t sure if I’d see you again, all things considered.”

Wolfwood was a little surprised himself. Aside from that first appearance, they’d only really seemed to show up in Vash’s lives when he needed them. He had their past selves now…but that’s not enough, is it? I wouldn’t have been able to help him with this.

He wasn’t sure he’d recognize the past version of himself if he saw him. He wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or a bad one.

“Do you feel better, at least?” Meryl asked as she put Vash’s sunglasses back on his face.

“Physically, less drunk. Emotionally…” Vash looked around. No sign of a portal. “…I don’t know. Can we just sit for a little while?”

This time, they sat on the truck roof instead of inside. Vash stared at the sunrise; Wolfwood focused on scanning their surroundings for any signs of trouble. It was too early for more regular people to be up, but it was never too early for someone to start something.

At least I slept in today. Or at least, I’m pretty sure I did. Meryl’d had to practically break his door down to get him up, but she had been a disturbingly early riser the whole trip. Something about making good time.

“I keep wondering,” Vash said, “if there was any point where things could’ve been different. If there was anything anyone could’ve done to stop this. Not just me, but…anyone.” He rested his chin on his knees. “I just want to understand. I know, it’s probably a waste of time…”

Meryl shook her head. “I get it. I do. Understanding people is part of my job. For what it’s worth…I think some people just react to things differently. Two people can go through the worst things you imagine and come out the other side with different mentalities. It happens all the time.”

Wolfwood grunted in agreement. “There were other people in the Eye,” he said, “that I knew were from similar situations to me. I thought maybe some of them would be safe to talk to, but a lot of them had bought into the whole thing. Guess it was how they coped. Believing the world deserves to end is one way to make all the shit they have you do seem okay. You really never know. Your brain…does what it takes.”

“I know.” Vash’s hands gripped his sleeves. “I thought about not going, about just hiding somewhere, running from him forever. But I knew that wouldn’t stop anything…and I need to look him in the eyes, you know? I need to see, one last time…”

He didn’t finish the thought. He kept staring at the sunrise. When he spoke again, he sounded like a little kid: “Can you tell me something good? Anything good?”

Well, shit. That was a heavy ask for a guy whose life had been nonstop misery for a while. But, when Wolfwood thought about it…

“I had a bullet in my side when I got to Hopeland,” he said. “Which…not the best start, I know. But I’d been walking with that wound for I don’t even know how long. I’d already decided I wasn’t going to die…that I didn’t want to. And I prayed for the first time in a long time, that I’d get to live. People found me. Total strangers. I don’t even remember their faces, but they cared enough to save some random kid. Maybe…there’s more people like that out there than we realize.”

He was surprised how quickly the memory came back to him. It wasn’t a day he dwelled on all that often—mostly because he couldn’t remember huge chunks of it, probably on account of the blood loss and all. But it was still there, still something good. The day he was set free, if only for a little while.

“I think so, too,” Meryl said. “It’s hard to be kind in a world like this, but people still try if you give them the chance. I’ll definitely do what I can to give people more chances.” She elbowed Vash gently. “I can’t let you do all the work.”

Vash laughed. There wasn’t a hint of tears in it, and his smile was so blindingly genuine that Wolfwood couldn’t help smiling back. “Is that what I’ve been doing? Because it feels more like I’ve been a bullet magnet lately.”

“You can do both.”

“I’d really prefer it if you stopped being a bullet magnet, though,” Wolfwood added.

“Maybe one day.” Vash’s gaze grew thoughtful, wistful. “Maybe.”

It would take a lot for that to happen, Wolfwood knew. Humanity would have to change for the better. Knives would have to cut his bullshit. No Man’s Land would have to become a more peaceful place in general. He wasn’t sure what the chances were of one of those things happening, much less all three, but he didn’t have it in him to point that out. He was sure Vash already knew how daunting it was. The only question was whether or not he thought he could make some of those changes anyway, and how far he’d go to try.

“I’m really grateful for you two,” Vash said. His hands rested over theirs. Wolfwood had his flesh and blood hand; his touch was cool even with the glove in the way. “I just wanted to tell you, I…”

Vash straightened up suddenly and looked back into town. Wolfwood braced himself for trouble as he looked over his own shoulder. What he heard was almost worse.

“Vash! Where are you?!”

It was Meryl. Not the Meryl sitting next to him, but the Meryl of the past.

“Oh…” Meryl breathed.

“Shit,” Wolfwood hissed.

“Hide!” Vash added. The three of them scrambled off the roof and behind the nearest truck parked nearby. Conveniently, that was where a portal had appeared. “Listen, no matter what happens…”

“Hey!” shouted Roberto from a lot closer. “You over here?!”

“Go!” Wolfwood tried to nudge Vash away. “Tell us next time – “

“I love you both,” Vash blurted. “I do. Thank you.”

And then he was gone, leaving Wolfwood feeling like he’d just been slapped.

It wasn’t just the words that had caught him off guard. After he’d verbally included both Vash and Meryl in his circle of family, hearing them felt almost inevitable. The way he didn’t feel was more shocking. He still felt shaken, a bit unworthy, a bit overwhelmed by what hearing those words from a guy like Vash meant, but…

He didn’t feel the same low, worthless feeling that he’d felt in the past whenever Vash accepted him in some way. Or, at least, he didn’t feel it as strongly anymore. It felt like he’d pulled back the bandages of his soul and found the wounds there more healed than he’d thought.

Wolfwood still had a lot of work to do to be worthy of those words. But in that moment, his biggest regret was that he hadn’t had the chance to say it back.

Tell him in the future. Do whatever it takes to make that happen.

When Wolfwood glanced at Meryl, she was peering out from behind the truck. Wolfwood leaned in close to avoid being overheard and whispered, “We’ve got to go.”

“Give me a second,” Meryl whispered back. “I want to see.”

Despite himself, so did Wolfwood.

He only took a quick look, but he took in a lot as he did. Vash was rubbing the back of his head, trying to shake off Meryl’s questions with his placating goofball laugh. Meryl stood in front of him with her hands on her hips and concern in her eyes. Her bob was much tidier, her jacket still mostly white. Roberto was a scruffy shadow of the MP officer they’d met in July, already opening up his flask despite it barely being time for breakfast. And Wolfwood…

His past self stood in the shadows a good distance away, Punisher heavy on his shoulders, wearing a suit that was somehow too big and too small at the same time. His expression was blank, but Wolfwood could remember what lay underneath. Frustration, guilt, an increasingly queasy sense that this job was going to keep going sideways in ways he hadn’t expected.

You have no idea.

Wolfwood was surprised again by his own feelings. He didn’t feel disgust; he felt pity. Pity and…embarrassment. Past him didn’t know shit, and he was going to learn the hard way.

At least he’d be better off for it.

Wolfwood gently squeezed Meryl’s shoulder. She nodded, and they turned to the portal without a word. They’d done what they could. For now, it was in Vash’s hands.

Hopefully, that would be enough.

#my writing #my fanfic

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