#ily vash

[c0ff1nn]

reunion

[rottnbrunette]

your blood, your bones, your voice, and your ghost

vash the stampede x reader

contains: angstangstangstttttt,,, implied kissing!

w/c: 3k

a/n: heyyyy.. the vash fic that's been rolling around up in this cranium.. can you tell i'm a big angst fan? anyhow, based on the six months vash is gone post-trimax... i cant get it outta my head

enjoy! —》

it’s strange how things now seem so unaccustomed to change. some time ago, it was as if change plagued your days almost every moment, you could hardly keep up. presently, the unchanging layers and layers of dust caked over the surfaces of those various bottles along the wall, both empty and full, appeared foreign to you. the same went for the many other surfaces of the establishment— if you could even call it that anymore. it had lost its suitors around the same time you lost yours. abandonment. 

though unsaid, the word felt sour on your palate. wrong. 

you also figured it strange how a boy of nearly ten would wander this far from town. however, tommy was the natural young and mischievous, this sort of thing wasn't unheard of when it came to him. yes, you knew him and his mother well, marcy was sweet and young —younger than you— when she'd lost her husband. she nonetheless strived to pursue kindness and strength and practiced it every day for her son, such features rendering her no less than admirable to you. 

even so, the little boy was like any other: rowdy, sad, spiteful, impulsive, curious. you began to call his name into the bar's interior, hoping today that he'd be sweet enough not to make you strain within the role of some bigger sister. maybe today he'd just want to talk. you didn't care, you just wanted to get back into bed.

yes, it was one of those days. 

you'd nearly wilted onto the ground at luida’s request, who'd been harboring her equally tired smile; the one she never seemed to stop wearing. she'd asked you not too long ago to go out and find the boy, told you that he didn't want to see anyone other than you when he'd supposedly run off and out of the town's outskirts to this dirty, broken down place. you wanted to question, why not his mother? why me? the boy adored you, to put it lightly; but he sure wouldn’t give up his mama for anyone.

while questionable, you found it hard to say no to luida. her eyes were too kind, too reminiscent. a pretty brown too akin to a certain shade of blue you knew all-too well.

so, here you are, actually up and about today instead of wasting away in your bed or your kitchen or your couch, even often the floor. there always seemed to be this constant tiredness within you nowadays; the worst of it had been back in that ago, but you can feel it catching up again in your messy hair and noon-mornings.

maybe luida noticed again and is doing you some good.

sweet of her.

but alas, you still really really missed your bed.

soon, you ease yourself. you'll be back as soon as you gather the little runt up.

dragging the pads of your fingers along the dirtied counter, you descend further into the barroom with admissibly blase calls of his name. beckoning and ready to leave, you even offer him a piggyback ride on the way back into town. sweet nothings like that coaxed kids well enough. 

there's a reluctant silence until something suchlike a sweep against wood flooring disturbs the static peace, flinging dust motes into the vacancy of that distant hallway just past the bar. it startles you momentarily before you realize you may have found your little troublemaker— now a step closer to your warm bedsheets. excitement fuels a sudden haste.

“tom! hey, c'mon now, you've got your poor mama all worried—” 

you're not too sure how you’d describe it, but the next movement sounds heavy, something unmistakably bigger than a boy of ten. it pulls you from your respite as you reach for the knife at your hip. it’s a little thing, no bigger than your hand with a neatly carved leather hilt, but it’d have to do. you’ve only wielded it a handful of times, but never to kill.

no, your companion at the time would never allow you such an entitlement. 

“tommy!” you ask his name into the air with a stern bark now, tone implacable, a griping anxiety grinding between your molars. two possibilities arrange themselves in your head: one, the boy’s fuckin’ around; this is a mere game to scare you. two, this was not tommy, he’s hurt and missing and these sounds are of someone ill-willed. as the latter relied mostly on speculation and worry, you still have yet to unsheath your weapon— he can poke his own eye out with somethin’ sharp one day if he likes, but today would not be the day.

only if it were him catching a giggle into his palm just past the archway.

the assumption was easycoming, but that didn’t make it true. you wonder, would anyone else have drawn their knife by now? pointed their gun? you didn’t know. you hadn’t done such a thing in so long. and to think there was once a time where this sort of thing was a frequent initiative, a time where you struggled for the opposite. the young trigger-finger. 

it could simply be an animal, too. maybe you were overreacting. it was irritating; you felt as if it were your first day alive, like you were completely unaccustomed to the way this world works all over again. had you really avoided life itself for so long? 

your nerves are on fire nonetheless, approaching that archway with an ease sort of painstaking. if anything, you had definitely become unaccustomed to this kind of nervousness. it was impertinent, prickling at the insides of your neck, up and down and near to the back of your tongue; you felt like gagging. would you have to take a life once more? after so long? 

he’d cut his eyes at you. not angrily, but guilty in lieu of whatever he’d assume you’re feeling— like that didn’t just pile onto your own preexisting guilt. necessity was no excuse. you knew that. 

and something so sickeningly familiar makes itself known just before you. there's a thick strip of bile that lines your throat. 

hidden beneath an evening-bright strip of the intruding sun, his hair amounts to that of charcoal now— you had forgotten about that change. you’d been so stuck on the early remembrances of him that the darkened strands seem unfamiliar to you now, the actual last time you’d seen him having apparently slipped your mind. it was too bitter. in the beginning, you supposed it would’ve made you feel better to dwell on the happier things, toothy smiles instead of remorseful ones. in honesty, any kind of dwelling at all lacked that sort of reputive benefit.

you weren’t too proud of the practical hole worn into your mattress from such exertions, but what else could you do?

what then becomes eerily apparent is how easily you had remembered his eyes. it stops you so abruptly that your half-drawn weapon falls from your fingertips, knocking loudly against the floor. the sound through silence does little to startle you, too caught up on the man in front of you, a sight you've been fixated on since the moment he left. you can't even begin to recall how often the figurative image haunted you.

through initial disbelief, it becomes easy to deduce that this is, in fact, vash the stampede. how he stiffens into a slight flinch at the sound of steel to hardwood floor tells you enough. 

his coat is as long as it ever was, dusty from sandy travel, the same tears and wears from various caliber bullets so long ago. he watches you, careful to spook you as if you were a wild animal. in this state, he figured you’d probably be something close enough to that. he knew you, after all. though:

six months.

six months of nothing. six months of distractions and dwelling and forgetting, all to reappear with a cotton-mouthed mumble of:

“...hi.”

silence answers his soft voice. six months of omnivorous silence. six months of empty rooms. six months wondering if that remorseful smile of departure was the last time you’d ever set your eyes upon it. the pull of his lips, the apology written all over his features, the delicate dark folds of his hair falling into his face.

but now he’s standing before you. breathing. alive. welding the same kind of apology.

you’re completely still. he tries again, hands lifting because he’s so unsure what to do with them.

“i—”

then there’s movement before he can register it, two quick steps against wooden floorboards and a loud clap of flesh to flesh, palm to cheek. he lets you and it stings, his head shifts to the side from the impact. he knows your hand must sting too, and all he wants to do is take it and hold it to his lips through an apology, he refuses to put you through anything else so painful. that’s what you deserve and he knows it. 

just as decisively, he then feels your arms around him, iron and squeezing him hard. your face is pressed into his chest— and just like that, you’re still again. stagnant save for the quivering of your tightening arms, you can do nothing but remain silent. it’s startling, but he allows himself to rope his arms around you too, gently because he doesn’t know how much you can take while his flesh hand comes to cradle your head farther into him. he talks for you.

“i’m sorry.” he murmurs first. it’s all he can think to say. twice, three more times he hums it into your hair, chin and cheek pressed into that sweet yet dust-ridden scent as he all but curls over you. he hadn’t done this in a long time. god knows how much he missed such a thing. 

and he does not beckon your words. he refuses to. he lets you lie in his chest, in your feelings, in his sorrys. 

vash all-too vividly recalls this same sort of thing after his best friend died. you’d nosed into his neck and cradled each other, you ached for consolation yet to console, and you cried with each other. oh, you both cried and cried and cried. he remembers you refusing to look livio in the eye, he remembers wanting to do the same thing and concurrently hating it. he wonders if you and his best friend’s brother had ever started to get along. where is livio these days?

he hopes you and he at least talked, a hapless attempt at half-healing each other’s untended wounds.

he starts again, “i had to take care of some things. nice people helped me and fed me, healed me. i would’ve died, but i’m alright now.” his voice is soft and punctuated by warm breath into your hair, minutely shaky because he can’t muster the strength for any different right now. frankly, he doesn’t want to. he doesn’t want to tell you about knives either right now— all he’s done and how he proved he had the gall for benevolence. maybe another time.

the sunray broken through sharded wood plays between the strands of your hair, picking apart the undertones of your dominating color so attentively— and he wants to cry. desperately, his faux hand rubs circles into the bend of your back, the flesh one tracing your nape up to thread through your tresses. he apologizes and apologizes.

you eventually take a stuttering breath into his chest, and that's all it takes for him to know you’re staving off the tenacious urge to cry. instead, you finally ask,

“you’re staying?”

your voice is the weakest now than he’s ever heard it. and before he can respond, you punctuate your implorement with a dig of your head into his chest.

“please,”

his breath catches roughly in his throat.

“please stay. p-please don’t go. i need you to stay vash- i need you to—”

he hushes you as softly as he can, like the comforting of a child.

“i’m staying, ’m staying; i’m staying as long as you want me to, ‘m here. ‘m staying here.” he’s rambling and he knows it but he needs you to know how much he resents his absence. never more than you (he would never attempt to compete with that), but he lets himself briefly wallow in his regrets nonetheless. he at least allows himself that sort of respite.

you reel in your hands from around him to instead press at his chest, curling them up into fists, nails digging into coat. your voice is clearer now, still as quiet. “i mean, why? why, vash? why again, leave again after so long—”

“i know,” he hums, cheek pressed to your head now as he feels your fist begin to knock against his chest periodically. not to hurt, you’d done that already with your palm, but he refuses to prohibit you from what you want. so, again, he lets you— knowing you've already been deprived of so much. that shouldn’t be in his power, anyway. he shouldn't have that privilege, he'd been deadset on the idea since he met you. this, this here was the very reason why he thought it'd do you good to deprive yourself of him, why he had reiterated such a thing so many times so long ago. yet in his own selfishness, he couldn’t help but want for you to stay. wound-ridden nights (both physical and undoubtedly emotional), angry nights (at each other, at oneself, at a god), desperate nights (sometimes tear-stained, sometimes warm and fulfilling); there is no physical sense appropriate to the length of how often vash the stampede, vash saverem, recounted such times. they favor that of a constant noise, even mantra, going as far as to following him into unconsciousness that it became subconscious. habitual. they were home to him.

“you're fuckin’ mean, y'know that?” 

he laughs in agreeance, a half-squinted smile finds its way onto his face and his eyes still feel hot, listening to you sniffle through the curse. you sound like you've calmed yourself down enough, unashamedly wiping your eyes into the breast of his coat. you haven’t looked up at him yet but he gives you all the room you need to do so. this was his subtle way of begging.

“this was luida’s doing?” you ask into his chest smally, another hitch of your nose following the question. at first he hikes a brow in confusion before he realizes what you mean, “yeah, she knew i was here. what did she tell you?” given how startled you are to see him, you seem to have had no idea he was here. “i assumed she would’ve just told you i was in town—”

“she told me one of the little runts ran off and i had’ta go find him,” you snarl through a playful grit of your teeth before huffing a laugh. “i figured it was just to get me out of the house.” 

vash’s smile falters. out of the house? would that mean you’d begun neglecting yourself again, after such a long while? hell, who was he kidding, he’d left you for so long; what else were you supposed to do? 

his arms circle you just a bit tighter. you feel it and begin to release his coat from your fists, bringing a hand to instead drag up his arm -his flesh one- and gently tug at it. he responds by letting his arms loosen and fall away from you, though not too far as you remain tracing the stretch of his coat. 

finally, you look at him.

your eyes are shiny and lashline wet, blinking a few more times to stave off any more unwanted leakage. and despite that, you look happy. he’s so glad you look happy. it warms him beneath your hand.

“i missed you,” he finds himself whispering, as if his lungs no longer could find oxygen. even so airy, his words sound so loud echoing in the small space between the two of you. “i missed you so much.”

“it was like you were haunting me, you know?” he whispers into the crown of your head later that night. “i mean, i hardly think there was ever a time where i wasn't haunted by… well, all of it.” 

—

mimicking earlier endeavors, his arm is draped over your side now, pulling you closer to him ever so slightly while his fingertips begin tracing the folds of your bedsheets beneath the two of you. he'd begun talking only just a moment ago. you quietly grasped his flesh hand curled between you in your gentle way of encouragement.

“how could i not see you again?” you're tired (so tired) and barely pinching yourself to stay awake as 4:04 reads on the bright clock, yet you somehow still feel all the more attuned to the words dripping from his lips. in a seeming assistance to your attempted consciousness, your throat grows chokingly tight by merely listening to him.

“how could i act on such… abandonment?

ah. there's that word. the familiar taste coats his own tongue. you almost pull yourself upward to face him and kiss the coating savor from his mouth. you find yourself thinking you'd gladly take that burden from him, even if so unpleasant.

“at one point, i even convinced myself that everything i was feeling was what you were feeling, too.” he breathes for a moment, gaze shifting to trail along the silhouette of you beneath the covers, to your cracked bedroom door, to your flowing curtains harboring a warm breeze from the mouth of your gaping window. he's surrounded by you. he inhales, “even thinking that, i don't know why i waited so long to come back to this.” his voice is so quiet, strained. apology wracks at his throat, “i'm—”

“vash,”

you hum his name finally, shifting slightly to gaze up at him. his cerulean eyes catch the moon's glare from the window so beautifully, you ache to kiss his eyelids. “sleep,” you murmur softly, finally. your pinching hand unfurls and drags over his chest to his cheek, giving a soothing rub before traveling to comb through his relieved hair.

“you’re here now— home, now. that's all i could ever ask for.”

and you swear, just as he nods and noses his way back into your hair, something soft presses to your naked shoulder with a tentative sweep. you wordlessly take the virgin feather, curling it into your palm and pressing it to your chest.

this was your salvation.

[snippydippy]

Vash!!!!

[frostmarris]

he just dances into the bar and doesnt even notice hes being shot at

vashpls