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It's a mess. They are a mess.
Neither one of them knows how to gently hold another person's heart. Not anymore.
Wolfwood nearly breaks the fragile thing that Vash surrenders at his feet, with harshness and explosive anger. Always impulsive and quick to attack, to bite the hands that try to hold him with such gentle care.
Vash wants nothing but to run and to hide away from all of it. Force Wolfwood's heart into the hands of someone less broken and dangerous like himself. Someone who isn’t a walking weapon, someone human .
Wolfwood snaps and snarls, Vash evades and redirects.
There is no balance between them, no equilibrium. Not really.
Until there comes a moment that it is Wolfwood who breaks apart. Heart torn asunder by the weight of his guilt, pain and sorrow. Until there comes a time that it is Vash who snaps. Both pushed too far and for too long, took too much shit from the man who they both so deeply wish to lay their heart bare and open for.
Neither one knows anymore who started it, or why it had escalated like that. But it did.
Rage. Fear. Sorrow.
Hurt. Guilt. Regret.
Blood and tears flowing freely between them while they are going for each other's throats.
But in that chaos, where both were so focused on their own misguided despair and fury, they ended up being too distracted to maintain the tightened seal on the true feelings in their hearts.
"WHY WON’T YOU JUST LET ME LOVE YOU?
BECAUSE I KNOW YOU WANT ME TO!"
Which one of the two it was that shouted that at the other, is unclear to both of them. The whole fight has become nothing but an anguished blur in both their memories. But the truth is plain and simply there, that one of them must have dared to say them first.
Why won't you let me love you?
Because I know that you love me too.
In the end it doesn't matter who said it first, because both their answers would have been the same either way.
Because I'm so very
scared
of being loved.
Because the thought of trusting someone and letting them close,
Terrifies me to my core.
In the silence, broken only by their gasping breaths, ragged through with quiet sobbing and soft grunts of pain, they finally dared to lay the truth bare. Even though they knew full well that they had been barely hidden from each other from the start.
"I don't deserve it"
"I’m nothing but a monster"
"Blood and death stain my hands with gore"
The silence between their words speaking louder than any words ever could.
Don't you think you deserve a second chance?
Haven't you suffered enough?
In the end it truly doesn't matter who says what and who said it first or who did so last. Their arguments and responses would not have been any different. They are a mirror to each other's souls.
The fractured pieces of one fit into cracks of the other, creating a single whole. They piece each other back together, gold dusted glitter glue lining up between the cracks. Marked by shining scars that show so clearly where they once were broken. Shattered as they had been, into pieces so small and manifold that it had reduced them to barely more than dust.
"If you think that I still deserve to be loved,
then you have to accept that you still do so too."
Neither one really wants to hear that from the other. Their bruised and charred hearts feel too damaged to still be worthy of receiving love, regardless of how they are still capable of giving it to another.
Time doesn't heal all wounds, doesn't fade all scars. There are simply ones that run too deep, that are healed too badly to ever be more than the knotted proof of survival. Twisting around their bodies and their souls like gnarled branches and choking vines.
But even those, while mistaken at first for long shriveled up and dead, can still bloom. Even those seemingly withered husks can still bear fruit. After all, it is from the ashes of the old, that the new can take root and grow.
“I don’t want you to hate me,
when you realise the breadth of my sins”
“I don’t want you to fear me,
when I inevitably lose grip on what I am”
My hands are stained in the blood of countless lives.
One day you will see me for the monster that I am.
One day you will come to hate me and my heart will not be able to bear it.
One of them reaches out first, a gentle brush of calloused fingertips over the flushed skin of a cheek, stained with blood and streaked with tears.
I don’t care about any of that, they whisper to each other without speaking a single word.
The parts that you hate within yourself,
I have already learned to love them.
The fears that you buried in the depths of your heart,
Won’t you let me help you with carrying them?
The world around them ceases to exist, reduced to nothing but a static and background noise, as they hold each other captive with their gazes. There is nothing left to hide between them anymore.
Hearts flayed open, feelings laid bare.
They sway together for a moment, as if they are being carried by a gentle breeze, moving to a melody only they can hear.
I so dearly wish to love you, even though I deserve none of this at all.
Even though my hands are rough and stained, I want to hold you close and call you mine. Selfish and greedy as it may be, I want to hide you away and stay beside you.
Just watching as the world drifts on by.
A tether pulls taut between them. Two ends of red string finally connect and tie together into a neat little bow, when they meet each other in the middle.
The kiss isn’t gentle, isn’t smooth or soft or tender.
It tastes of blood and tears, laced with desperation and long repressed desire.
Hands grabbing and holding on tight enough to bruise, as they tremble in each other’s grasp.
It sears through them like fire, sacred and scorching, searing all that remains of their doubts to naught but ash.
They will still be afraid tomorrow.
They will still have doubts and feel undeserving of something as fragile and precious as this.
Their pasts will continue to haunt them with every step they take.
Arguments and fights will still happen.
Their views on the world are simply too different for them to align all the time.
Yet, in the truth of their kiss rests a genuine promise, that they will never again deny how deeply they care for each other. A promise that they will both do the best that they can, to gently cherish their budding love. To nourish it with all that they have to offer, so that it may one day bloom like an endless field of flowers.
~*~
“Is this truly a risk worth taking?”
The brain asked of the heart.
“This is the only risk that was ever truly worth taking at all.”
The heart replied to the brain.
And they both fell silent, to listen to the singing of the soul.
As it finally met with the other half.
That they had been missing for so very, very long.
~*~