Chapter Text
Nicholas D. Wolfwood was born scarred.
He doesn't know much else of his origins; can't recall anything other than the crowded orphanage, making mischief with the other kids, hoping one day to pass the selection test and have his life mean something to God. But he knows the rumors that always float just at the edge of his earshot, at first from the older boys who were there when he arrived, eventually passed down through the many children coming and going as something of a legend. He was six when he managed to confirm it; he pretended to faint when a bruise not his own bloomed over the left side of his face, just to hear what the nurses said about him when they didn't think he was listening.
They’re worried, mostly. But a little bit scared. He’s the only baby they ever knew to have fully-healed soul-scars before he was old enough for solid food, but at least the wounds marring his infant skin weren’t own-scars. At least there’s that.
He drifts off in the infirmary cot, not having learned anything he wasn’t sure of already.
—
Nicholas knows the mystery of his own skin intimately. There's the patchwork of what he's been told are bullet grazes weaved like fabric over his torso; the pebbly texture of knees that have been skinned too many times; the awkward pull of scar tissue that prevents him from stretching his shoulders too far. There's the ring of constant infection around his left bicep, below which no soul-scars ever appear, the sign of a body fighting fruitlessly to mold itself to a companion whose form is simply too different.
He wonders, of course he does, who these scars might belong to. What kind of life must a person lead to end up in fistfights day after day, gunfights week after week? How young must it have started, for someone young enough to be Nicholas’ soulmate to have collected this many? Or are they not young at all, and the two are one of those unlucky pairs who will know each other only a few years at most after meeting before one dies and leaves the other just a little bit sickly forever?
Nicholas hopes that his soulmate is one of those elite fighters who carry out God’s orders, that one day he will be chosen to join the Eye of Michael and have something in common with his mentor.
He hopes; he hasn’t learned not to yet.
—
Vash the Stampede isn’t human.
This is something he usually keeps hidden, along with his scars. The scars, at least, aren’t strange; everyone has scars. Many people cover them. The desert is merciless, cold and sun and sand and strangers, and wrapping fabric over naked skin protects from all these dangers.
Vash isn’t human; his scars are all his own. Not that anyone would guess that, looking at the extent of them.
—
Nico isn’t a careful child, but he is a capable one. He does not often get himself hurt. Livio, on the other hand, is so clumsy that Nico sometimes can’t believe he keeps letting him tag along on these little adventures.
They’re up on the roof, smoking worm tails, calm and content. Nico, ever the showoff, is walking right along the edge, telling a story he heard from Jenna about what happened in town yesterday. Livio comes toward him to get the lighter– doesn’t see where the roof is uneven between them–
They get lucky, and Livio falls into Nico before they both fall off the roof and onto the ground.
He wraps himself around Livio to shield him and barely notices when he hits something sharp on the way down.
Later, once he’s sure Livio has really managed to put his worrying aside and fall asleep, Nico runs his fingers over the stitches and wonders if his soulmate will even notice this new scar among the web of those that already sit there.
—
Vash whines a little as he adjusts his pack for the twenty-third time since setting off across the desert this morning. He actually had time to pack it properly before leaving town for once instead of just tossing everything inside and running, but something in it had apparently shifted and was digging into his back. Still, he sees a sandstorm picking up on the horizon, and hopes to make it to the nearest fuel station, or at least a cave or something, before it hits; it’s not worth wasting a half hour to unpack and repack the thing.
Hours later, shaking sand from his coat onto a motel porch after having taken shelter behind a tiny outcropping, he realizes that setting the bag down didn’t ease the discomfort in his back. Shit, he must have aggravated the graze he got the day before. With his luck, some of the sand from the storm has probably found its way in and he’ll have to clean the damn thing again. He sighs, hangs the coat on a chair, digs through his still perfectly-packed bag for disinfectant and bandages, and makes his way to the bathroom.
Five minutes later, he blinks, staring at his back in the mirror. The cut is about three inches long, and feels deep enough to have needed stitches; definitely not something he remembers getting in the last few days, but it looks like it’s already been cleaned and cared for. He doesn’t remember doing that, and nobody in the last town had liked him enough to do such a thing for him.
There are, certainly, things Vash the Stampede doesn’t remember. But they are notable in that regard, memorable in the fact that he doesn’t remember them.
He doesn’t remember getting this wound.
This cut isn’t his.
This scar is someone else’s?
He pushes the knowledge aside, tugs his shirt and coat back on, and slips out the door to find a saloon.
—
Time passes. Nicholas D. Wolfwood grows stronger, cleverer, and more eager. And then he makes it into the Eye of Michael, and he grows stronger still, too much stronger, and it hurts and it’s wrong and it’s all for God’s sake and God please don’t take Livio next–
Nicholas D. Wolfwood is still clever, but he is much less eager, and makes no point of hiding it.
—
People always seem surprised to hear Vash swear. It’s kind of funny, actually, because he does it kind of a lot.
Not usually this much, but he thinks it’s reasonable, given the situation.
Fuck. Shit. Goddamn.
He is trying to run for his life. This is not new. Neither is the pain, really. It’s just that this pain is more distracting than usual, because it’s unexpected and unpredictable, and–
Fucking hell, he’s been putting really a lot of effort into not thinking about this and now is not a good time for it to become unavoidable.
Later. Later. He can worry about excruciating full-body throbs and what might be causing them later, when he’s away from this town and everyone in it is still alive.
(He’s made this promise to himself enough times, in less dire situations, that it’s easy enough to ignore.)
—
It takes Wolfwood longer than it should to process that the serum doesn’t just cure his own-scars.
Honestly, he’s a bit surprised that new soul-scars keep showing up the way they did before, that he’s still human enough for that. But it’s the same as it was Before; new cuts and bruises and bullet wounds almost daily.
He’s been hiding it, is the thing. He knows that the Eye doesn’t want the scars; they’re so proud of the way they make them disappear. If his soulmate is here, they won’t figure it out by comparing skin; they don’t put stock in it. So he lies to his minders, pretends all his wounds come from his own mistakes, asks for the serum to make them disappear. It’s easy to start lying to himself, too.
He can’t do it forever.
Some of his wounds are his own; more than some, actually. And to think he used to wonder how his soulmate got so many.
He hopes vaguely that he was right all those years ago, that his soulmate is just another monster, that no poor fucker out there has to deal with both their sets of scars. He quickly remembers that he’s not in Hopeland anymore, and resolves to lie to himself in more innocuous ways instead.
—
Through-and-through gunshot wounds feel strange when they appear on two disparate patches of skin without carving through the flesh in between.
Vash is starting to get used to it, and it worries him.
At some point in the course of ignoring it, his worldview had adjusted to account for the immutable truth that he has a soulmate. It shouldn't change much. It should change everything. What happens is something in between.
There are many truths Vash holds safe in the back of his mind, and most of them have to do with Nai and inevitability. This one is no different.
So he knows. He has a soulmate; one who was human, but isn't entirely anymore, like so many of the gunmen Nai sends his way.
So many of them die, despite his best efforts.
He holds it safe in the back of his mind. Soul-scars, Nai, and inevitability.