#because Nightow revels in our suffering

[chuthulhu-reads]

[ID: Five panels from Trigun Maximum. The first shows Wolfwood's hand held up in front of Vash's startled face, two half-coins in Wolfwood's bloody palm. "Here," Wolfwood says, the speech bubble linking the first panel and the second, which is a close-up of one of the half-coins, the other just poking into the edge of the frame. The third panel is a tired-looking, blood-covered Wolfwood saying, "Ya see... Needle-noggin'? This is who I really am." Small side-text in one of the speech bubbles explains, "One of these is from Rai-Dei." The fourth panel is Vash looking down with a grim expression, saying nothing. The last panel shows the rows of kitchen supplies in the orphanage, including the salt and sugar jars, as Wolfwood says, "there's nothin' to say. Got it?" End ID.]

Vash is not surprised here, okay? He knew, he knew, this is just the first time they're acknowledging to each other something that they haven't been talking about, that they've both been pretending not to know. And I think it's a real gutpunch that Vash never picked up Rai-Dei's coin, that it's Wolfwood who's held onto it for all this time, because it's sort of a reminder: I'm a Gung-Ho Gun, and I'm a killer, and you know this. I've killed in front of you before. (I've killed for you before.) I think Wolfwood wants those painful reminders out there, and to leave it at that, as a last-ditch attempt at sparing Vash's feelings, because there's one more thing that they're both not talking about and pretending isn't true: Wolfwood is dying, and Wolfwood is going to die soon, and there's nothing either of them can do about it. So isn't it easier to pretend something new? That they've always been enemies, and they've never been friends, and Vash isn't about to lose someone he loves again? That Wolfwood deserves this, and to prove it, here's Vash's tokens of victory?