Chapter Text
Someone lets off a sound blast and glass shatters.
Everybody in the dive is moving now. Chairs are being knocked over, tables crashing to the floor, people shouting, pushing at each other to get out of the danger zone. The bartender had ducked behind the bar and the blonde joytoy was running back there, grabbing for a pistol hidden in what looked like a garter around her right thigh but was actually part of a prosthetic leg.
Wolfwood brings his whiskey glass to his lips one more time but it‘s still empty. Damn.
He sighs.
There are two ways this situation could play out.
One: he has his Desert Eagle in the holster resting just below his left armpit. That’s seven rounds. Plus the cartridge in the other holster pocket on his right. His Punisher is in his rented room and he only knows the way there through the main entrance which was currently being occupied by Orekano‘s men. They’re acting as a funnel for the fleeing patrons. Four guys with guns, plus Cyclops, plus Orekano, makes six rounds at least. If more mercs are lurking down the hallway, he‘d be hardpressed to get to his room and his big gun without getting shot up and then having to resort to taking a dose of Blue Lace.
However.
Every bullet spent here, every dose of Blue Lace taken now, will be felt tomorrow at Hopeland Orphanage.
Wolfwood clenches his jaw. He can’t afford to lose tomorrow‘s fight.
Given that the liklihood that Orekano truly only wants to talk to him—give him a friendly handshake and some cash for funeral services rendered maybe—is extremely close to zero, leaves Wolfwood only the second option.
The Stampede option.
“Okay. Some drunk guy wants to pick a fight with you in a bar,” Vash tells Wolfwood through nursing a broken nose, “one thing you could do is punch him out first, right?”
“Right,” Wolfwood says, handing the man more toiletpaper to stuff up his nose. “Punch hard, take ’em down. Everyone goes back to their drinks in peace. Situation diffused.”
“You‘d think, except the guy has friends along with him,” Vash points out. “Or neighbors sitting at the bar. And now you‘ve gone and antagonized the whole damn joint and someone calls the secunits and bounty hunters while you‘re still mopping the floor with half a dozen guys. No.
“What‘s much easier is, you let the drunk guy hit you. Let him get a nice roundhouse swing in. You can take it, right? But you go down and stay down. His knuckles are split and hurting. His mates are the ones suddenly worried about secunits and leaving before the law comes for them. Because they know what this looks like: their friend punched a harmless guy and he‘s now down on the floor, maybe even writhing a bit, you know?” Vash wiggles on his chair. “Maybe crying a bit pathetically.”
He gazes up at Wolfwood, those huge baby blues suddenly wet with unspilled tears, and tries to sniff up the trickle of blood still leaking out of his nostrils. Then he grins. “That‘s how you diffuse the situation, Wolfwood. No one gets hurt.”
Wolfwood sighs around his cigarette and doesn’t point out that Vash refering to himself as a no one makes him furious enough to want to slap the moron himself. Instead he counts silently to ten and dabs at the blood with the tip of a wet motel towel.
“Spikey, you exhaust me sometimes, you know that?” He grounds out finally and is rewarded with a fond smile.
So yeah, the Stampede option is stupid, but unfortunately efficient and bullet-saving.
He hears the click of Orekano‘s dressy shoes approaching. Behind them follow the heavy footfalls of the Cyclops.
Then Wolfwood is surrounded by fifteen gunmen.
At least the dive is empty now, except for the bartender and staff cowering behind the bar.
“Come here, Priest. Let me have a look at you, Orekano says.
Wolfwood obliges (partly) and turns around.
Orekano is a young man about Wolfwood’s age with perfect skin and perfect teeth. He’s a young man in his prime, at his peak performance of being a man, if being a man meant looking like something a sculptor had carved out of white marble or what a fashion designer or pop-idol manager wants to sell you as an ideal vision of a man. Wolfwood can see how some people might find the young crime lord attractive. This is a nepo baby who has never worked hard a day in his life but will drone on for hours about how nobody wants to work anymore. Even his sweat smells rich and his leather shoes probably cost more than Wolfwood has ever earned in his whole life.
His fingertips are dry as he lifts Wolfwood’s chin up slightly, scrutinizing his facial features with his dead fish eyes, then he hums thoughtfully, narrowing his eyes at Wolfwood while speaking over his shoulder to the Cyclops. “I thought you said he was a pretty boy.”
“Awww, you think I‘m pretty?” Wolfwood leers at the Cyclops.
The man shrugs and grins back. “Ya won’t be when I‘m done with ya.”
“I want to know why you stick your big nose into my business, Priest?” Orekano snatches his fingers away from Wolfwood’s chin with an expression as though he could contract a disease from touching the priest for more than a few seconds. He wipes his fingers on an honest-to-God linen handkerchief that he then let’s drop to the sticky floor. One of his gunmen picks it up.
This is the Cyclops’ cue, apparently. He holds up his gunarm and it folds itself into a gauntlet.
“You like to play rough, big guy?” Wolfwood winks. “Gotta warn ya. Pain play costs extra.”
The Cyclops chuckles darkly and knocks Wolfwood back with a punch to his gut so hard, he doesn’t even notice he’s fallen off of his chair, gasping for air on the floor until he sees Orekano‘s face hovering above him.
Stay down, Wolfwood hears Vash say.
He grits his teeth, stays down, and writhes a little while he waits for his body to remember how to breathe.
“I am dead,” Orekano declaims as though he were on a public feed, getting views and sponsorships for every exaggerated reaction. Snuff vids get dealt underhand for a good amount of money. Maybe he actually is live-streaming this?
“I am positively slain. I have spent months courting my precious little Maymay and then you, villain, come along and think you can undo everything I‘ve worked so hard for in less than a day?”
Orekano nods and the Cyclops steps into Wolfwood‘s view. He grabs Wolfwood by the lapels and hauls him up to a standing position. Then headbutts him.
The Cyclops must have his cranium enforced because holy shit, Wolfwood’s head snaps back so violently, he hears something in his spine crack.
You stay down, Vash says and Wolfwood groans and hates how fucking whipped he is even when Vash is iles and iles away. He rests his forehead on the Cyclops’s shoulder like they’re slowdancing and bleeds on the coat a little.
The hurt keeps coming. It’s fine, though. He‘ll heal. He knows he‘ll heal from this punishment so fast, he won’t even feel it anymore when he‘s in Hopeland tomorrow, but Christ. His ears are ringing and his fists are itching to punch back.
“What did you tell her, Priest?” Orekano hisses at him. Another blow to the face from the Cyclops.
Wolfwood goes ragdoll in the Cyclops‘ arms. His left eye swells shut.
“You planted this silly little idea into my Maymay‘s head, didn’t you? But why? Why would you do such a thing?”
Wolfwood is giving punching bag. Later on he won’t quite remember this whole sequence. Only images caught through a shutter: the Cyclops is sitting on his back, then he’s got one arm locked in a chokehold around Wolfwood‘s throat, then he‘s repeatedly ramming Wolfwood’s head into the concrete floor until something in his eye socket gives a sickening crunch.
Wolfwood feels really fucking stupid when the Cyclops lets him go for a breather and he looks down and there‘s a print of half of his face in the blood on the floor.
It makes him laugh. Look at what you‘ve done to me, Stampede.
The circle of thugs around him is strangely silent. In Wolfwood’s experience, there‘s usually a lot more shouting and cursing and grunting and noise in a bar fight. But no one dares to interrupt their asshole boss in his monologue.
Wolfwood closes his other eye tiredly. This is all fine. He heals fast even without Blue Lace thanks to all the genetic modifications they put him through as a child. This? Is nothing compared to that.
Prostrate on the cold floor, swallowing his own blood, listening to some guy drone on about the value of virginity … feels a bit like Church, actually.
He laughs again, but it’s weaker. His ribs are cracked.
The Cyclops grabs a fistful of Wolfwood‘s hair and lifts his face up so he can see Orekano through the swollen slits of his eyes.
“I really, really, really don‘t want to know this,” Orekano says, “but I have to ask you, Priest, and you should know that her life depends on your answer.”
He leans in even closer, their nosetips nearly touching, and Wolfwood can see the in-built iris camera adjust in Orekano’s right eye. Yeah, this freak is definitely recording this shit.
“Did you do it? Did you fuck her?”
Wolfwood nearly laughs, but his cheek hurts from where his teeth clamped down on the fleshy inside at one of the punches.
He hawks a mouthful of blood and saliva into Orekano‘s eye lense and grins as the young man flinches and cries out in disgust.
“Does it matter, asshole?“ Wolfwood chuckles, his own blood drooling down his chin. “Yer breath still reeks from suckling at ya daddy‘s tit. I ain’t got nothing to say to the likes of you.”
Orekano backhands him in retaliation—the first and only time he’s touched him personally since that first chin-hold hours, minutes, seconds ago, and Wolfwood feels a bit of childish glee that his taunt got to the guy. His slender, delicate hand structure hides his chrome-amplified strength. Figures.
Wolfwood’s teeth are rattling like he‘s been clobbered with a iron bar, more blood gushing into his mouth from where he‘s finally bit through the meat of his own cheek. When the Cyclops let’s go of his hair, his face hits the pool of blood covering the floor and the impact finally knocks Wolfwood out.
But sadly not for long.
His body is already knitting itself back together again when he comes to. This part is always the worst. Feels like he’s burning alive. Like fire ants are crawling under his skin. Something something muscles, something something lactic acid. Who cares. He’s alone in the bar and half of his face is healed to the extent that he can see through his right eye again.
He groans and drags his body upright.
Huh. The floor is very uneven or maybe there‘s an earthquake happening nearby. Can’t be his knees not working.
He stumbles over to the door and props himself up against the wall for a breather and not because he totally missed the entrance, fighting the nausea and general agony.
God, his head is killing him.
He gives it a tentative shake and nearly wants to throw up. His heart is hammering with the additional adrenaline. His sore spots and broken skin throb along in sympathy.
Wolfwood’s left eardrum makes a wet squelching sound and suddenly he can hear himself gasping raggedly. Yay? In the distance, people are shouting and there‘s a faraway rumble like thunder riding before a storm that he can’t quite identify. His head is still mushy. His right ear is still ringing.
He makes his way down the abandoned corridor/street towards his room with one shoulder pressed against the wall to steady himself, his tongue busy shoving and righting his loose teeth back into their proper places in his gums.
He‘s still a mess when he trudges over the threshold of his rental room to pick up his things and leans against the closed door. He hears a soft gasp from someone else in here with him and flips the light switch.
It’s Maylene.
Her eyes are wide and she flinches when she sees him. Or when he sees her? What’s she even doing here?
She’s still wearing the same outfit she had on earlier, the rifle still slung over her shoulder, but she’s also wearing a belt of ammo around her hips. That’s new.
Her hands come up to cover her lower face as she looks him over.
He doesn’t even try to push himself upright.
Let her see him. Let her see the punishment he had to take on her behalf.
“Whatcha doin‘ in ma room?” He‘s slurring. His jaw and mouth feel like he’s had dental work done without anaesthesia. Which … yeah, is kinda true.
He tongues at his wobbling teeth again. The wound inside of his cheek is closing but every spoken word stings.
”I—I‘m sorry,” Maylene says and steps forward, hands reaching toward him as though to help him. But she checks herself. “I—I asked Madame to hide me.”
“Whya hidin’?” He grins and it tears open the rip in the corner of his mouth. A trickle of blood runs out of his nose and he pinches it to make it stop. “Didya decline his offer?”
She winces and it’s all the confirmation he needs. But then she straightens, puts on a brave face, and pushes her chin up. “Your face. Did Orekano do that to—”
“Why‘d ya do that?” Wolfwood interrupts and pushes himself away from the door. “You woulda been safe, ya stupid girl. All ya had to say was yes.”
She flinches as he stalks past her and starts packing his few belongings.
“Safe? With the likes of him?” She huffs. “You really think that, Father? No offense, but ’Just roll over and take it’ is so much easier to say when you‘re a man.”
Wolfwood whips around. “Ma face look like I din’t just take it for ya?”
Maylene‘s cheeks flush a deep red. “You didn’t do much to help either, Father. You would’ve left me. Alone. With that man. And his thugs.”
They glare at each other for a heartbeat.
Then Wolfwood concedes and turns arounds to silently gather his things. It unfortunately doesn’t take long. Everything he owns fits into a tiny satchel that, in turn, fits into a hollow compartment in one of the arms of the Punisher. You come into the world with nothing. You leave the world with nothing. What do you gain? Nothing. Except a rumpled and torn mesh shirt that’s covered with your own blood.
He tosses his blazer onto the bed, followed by the gun holster, and peels himself out of the mesh. He should have a clean white button-down here somewhere. He balls the mesh together angrily, and makes to shove it into his satchel, but then freezes when he feels her arms snake around his waist.
His breath hitches.
Her brow presses between his shoulderblades.
He forces himself to breathe normally as her one hand comes to rest over his rosary crucifix, and the other just under his bellybutton, her pinky on his belt buckle.
Oh shit.
He can feel her rapid heartbeat against his back and his stomach drops.
Oh shit.
“Won‘t you stay with me, Wolfwood?” She whispers and her breath on his skin gives him goosebumps.
“I—I can’t.” He chokes on the words. “I gotta be … somewhere else tomorrow.”
Yeah. Don’t say Hopeland, idiot. That’d be a real good invitation to spend the rest of the evening explaining awkward past shit. Like listen, girl, I can’t be what you might want me to be ’cuz I used to change your diapers at the orphanage when we were both kids.
Her nose nuzzles against his shoulderblade and her hair tickles something fierce.
“Please?”
He shouldn’t have put her on that motorbike with him. Young desperate girl. Mystery man on a motorcycle. Wolfwood’s seen enough vids that he knows how that particular story goes. He should’ve known better.
“You don’t want me to stay,” he says quietly, gaze fixed on the neon purple light spilling onto the bed from the sign outside. “Not really.”
“I do. I need you. I don’t—” He feels her swallow hard. “I don’t know how to do this on my own. Please?”
And goddammit—for a moment, just for one tiny little moment he thinks about what that’d be like.
Not what she’s imagining.
But just … staying here. Helping her and the people here out against anyone who’d try and take away their home. A home. To allow himself to grow roots other than the ones he keeps alive in faltering memories of life as a kid at the orphanage.
He knows what Vash would say about this. (We’ve got to help these people.)
No debts.
No contracts.
Safe and warm and fed on more than just scraps. Watch her grow up to become a leader like that woman Luida is. Like Meryl. What if he lived long enough to see her fall in love with someone deserving of her and then walk her down the aisle. He thinks back on those kids he married, Lucy and David. What they got is what Maylene should have.
He wants it so badly.
A place in the shade to rest his tired wings.
Seconds tick away with her wrapped around him before Wolfwood finally turns and gently pries himself loose from her grip. He thumbs away the tears about to spill over her cheeks.
“I can’t,” he repeats.
He makes his voice as soft as it can go with all the emotions wanting to spill out like blood from a wound. It still comes out gruff and harsh.
She flinches again—always flinching around him—but holds his wrists in place as her watery eyes search his face. Still hopeful, still seeing something in him.
Just like Vash.
Fuck.
He lets his hands drop. Turns away so he won’t have to see her cry. Or leave. Starts buttoning up his shirt with trembling fingers. Puts his armor back on, piece by figurative piece.
He’s watched her leave before. Bawling her eyes out, wailing his name at the top of her lungs, and holding the little sandstone bird he’d carved for her. He took it all in, wrapped it up into a tight wad of emotions, and stuffed it deep into a hidden compartment in his mind, never to be looked at again.
He left Vash.
He didn’t say goodbye then. He sure isn’t gonna start now.
He grabs the straps of the Punisher when he‘s done, shoulders its familiar weight. Feels more like Nicholas D Wolfwood again instead of Nico.
The ringing in his right ear finally stops and full stereo hearing opens up in glorious surround sound.
But the first thing he hears is the screech of Orekano‘s electronically amplified voice through a loudspeaker.
“Maylene. Since you have decided to soil yourself and insult me, I cannot suffer you to live. However, out of my high regard for you, I will deal the fatal blow myself.”
Maylene has angry red blotches on her face. She gives Wolfwood a look as though this were somehow his fault.
“That assho—” she starts.
“Run!” Wolfwood orders. “Get outta here, quick!”
But it’s too late.
“FFFIRE!”
Wolfwood hears the whine of an energy weapon powering up—a big one by the sound of it—and goes through their options. There aren‘t many.
He lunges forward and grabs Maylene around the waist, the Punisher at her back so that she’s sandwiched between him and his fuck-off gun.
There’s a godawful sound blast and concrete, plastisteel and glass shatters around them as the outer wall of the room explodes. There goes his hearing. Again.
One short moment, in a storm of dust and debris, they’re suspended midair, the inner courtyard below them, and Wolfwood has just enough sense to make sure to let the Punisher gun go because it’s durable and has withstood worse falls. But Maylene hasn’t. So he pins her head tightly to his chest, curving his body around her as best he can while falling backwards, hoping for the best.
