Chapter Text
After three days of bed rest, the longest he thinks he can ever remember staying still for, Wolfwood is finally given the all-clear. It takes another day before he can reliably walk by himself, the atrophy of his muscles slow to reverse. He studies his body in the mirror in his room, scrutinising the hollowness of the skeletal figure whose hollow eyes stare back at him from his reflection. In vain he searches for a mark, a clue, which might explain his miraculous, unnatural second life. No answers present themselves. Instead, he turns to the scruff of stubble he had yet to shave and the stretch marks slashed deep into his thighs, the only scars his skin ever remembered. There had been nothing natural about him far before his death and resurrection.
The longer he stares, the more he is convinced it is something inhuman which stares back, drenched in blood that can never be washed clean.
He hides himself from the kids. A dark figure skulking the corridors when no one else is about.
The thought of leaving crosses his mind more than once. Leave, go somewhere without mirrors reminding him his body is not his – not Nicholas’s, not Wolfwood’s, not really. Leave, go somewhere where the people he’d die a thousand times to save can’t see the horror he has become.
He's a thing even the grave spat back out.
He doesn’t belong inside the orphanage’s gated sanctuary. He hadn’t since the moment the Eye took him.
But where else could he go? In his current state, he doubts he would make it more than half an ile before collapsing. Melanie and Livio would surely notice his flight and track him down before he could get far enough away, or before the sands reclaimed his bones.
No, any attempt at leaving now would only make them worry, and he’s already caused them far more grief than he deserves. Staying put is the kinder option. Until his strength returns, at least.
But staying put also means burdening the orphanage’s already strained resources. It’s the guilt from this that drives him to the kitchens early the next morning, the first rays of the apparent sun washing the sleeping orphanages in an orange glow. He might be a thing, but he could at least be useful. It’s what he was trained to become, after all.
It's bizarre being in the kitchen at first. He'd only been here once briefly, since the Eye of Michael took him as a child. It’s not a memory he lingers on. His gaze avoids the empty space on the pantry shelf that his theft months prior created. That time, he hadn’t exactly given much thought to his surroundings, so it's only now, stooping down to reach a sink that he swears used to be bigger, that he fully appreciates the change in perspective his adult height brings.
The room is both intensely familiar and utterly foreign. The random assortment of aprons hanging on the door are identical to the ones in his memories, but his favourite one, with its embroidery of a baby toma, barely reaches his thighs now. A wave of grief for something he can’t quite name passes over him as he holds it. With a sharp exhale, he shoves it somewhere in between the spare highchairs and slings the only adult sized apron over his head. It's a dull, beige thing, an odd orange circle hanging over his heart where the toma used to be.
He does not think about it as he gets to work.
He hadn’t thought to ask Melanie what needed doing the day before, but it only takes a glance through the storeroom fridge to give him a rough idea of how to make himself useful.
For a while, he’s able to lose himself in the repetitive rise and fall of his knife, gratified when he sets it down and finds his hands aren’t tainted by the crimson stain of blood. By the time he hears he first stirring of activity in the dormitories, tubs of neatly sliced vegetables fill the fridge and the industrial-sized bread maker is steadily whirring away, though something prevents him from butchering the toma meat. Hopefully Livio won’t mind picking up his slack there.
It's not until the noises of the morning grow more insistent and Wolfwood begins to clean that the prickling sensation returns. It writhes and crawls under the skin that hangs over his skeleton. The papery tissue around his knuckles cracks easily under the bleach’s touch, a rot to be purged.
He’d died. The truth settles into him in all its awful glory.
What did that make him now? A thing caught between life and death, the remnants of his soul drowning in the blood he’d spilt. The lamb on the altar and the knife at its throat.
Distantly, a child laughs.
He’d never belong here.
His presence would only taint the memories of Nico. Sweet, good Nico, the doting older brother. That boy had died the moment he took his first steps outside the orphanage gates, even if he hadn’t realised it at the time. He should have let ghosts rest.
Hands form fists at his sides as shame and revulsion forces bile to rise up his throat. The cracks in his flesh widen, blood singing under the chemical’s sting.
His body had been transformed once again, sculpted into another unnatural thing, compelled by an unknown power which forced air back into his deflated lungs.
He’d been dead. In a grave. Vash had-
The door is swung open, colliding into the wall with an echoing crack.
Nicholas jumps back, heart pounding, caught off guard in a way Wolfwood had never let himself be. He feels exposed, recoiling away from the intruder, hands scrabbling for the knife behind him.
“Nicholas? Didn’t expect you to be here so early in the morning. You feeling alright?”
Wolfwood’s eyes are wild and unseeing while his brain sluggishly processes who the voice belongs to.
He blinks, and Livio is standing in front of him, concern tugging at the corners of his expression.
“‘M fine,” he manages, willing his pulse to calm. The way his heart is pounding in his ribcage, he wouldn’t be surprised if it burst a second time.
“Hmm, sure. Here.”
He’s guided onto a stool by strong hands that disappear, then return bearing a glass of water. Livio doesn’t even bother handing him the glass, just raises it to Wolfwood’s lips and beckons him to drink. The cool liquid slides down his parched throat, more soothing than any balm or vial.
“Jeez, Nicky, you should be in bed.”
Wolfwood only grumbles unintelligibly in response, eyes sliding shut as he tries to clear his head of the static which threatens to fill it.
“You look like sh*t, ya’know.”
He cracks open an eye, fixing Livio with a squinted glare. How many times had he seen little crybaby Livio with puffy red eyes and snot streaming down his face? He wasn’t one to talk.
“Still better lookin’ than you.”
Livio snorts.
Another moment passes before Wolfwood’s able to open his eyes again, the world at last no longer spinning around him. As he blinks his surroundings back into focus, he finds Livio hovering over him looking somewhere between awkward, nervous and worried.
“‘M okay, really.”
“If that were true, that’d be the second miracle to happen to you. They’ll make a saint of you at this rate.”
“Since when were you payin’ attention at Sunday school?”
Livio shrugs. A flicker of grief passes over his features, but it’s gone just as quickly as it arrived, schooled away into a half-hearted attempt at nonchalance.
“But seriously, you look like you’re about to faint. Stay there, alright?”
Livio takes the glass from him and refills it, placing it back on the counter beside him. As Wolfwood sips, the fog slowly dissipating from his mind, he watches Livio move around the kitchen with what seems like practised ease. The stove is lit with a series of staccato clicks followed by a soft hiss, and within minutes the room is filled with the smell of cooking. Wolfwood’s stomach gives an appreciative groan. A small chuckle rings out in response.
“Here.” Livio slides him a plate piled high with scrambled egg and rashers of toma meat.
Wolfwood accepts it with appreciative hum. He takes a forkful, and the moment the food hits his tongue, his body seems to realise just how hungry he has been. He starts shovelling the rest into his mouth with gusto, his time in the grave only making him more appreciative of a hearty meal.
“You’ll give yourself a stomach ache if you don’t slow down, Nick.” Livio tuts at Wolfwood, brandishing a spatula.
“Yeah, yeah,” Wolfwood waves him off. “Yer soundin’ just like Miss Melanie.”
Livio seems to glow at that, ducking his head bashfully from Wolfwood’s not-quite compliment and turning back towards the industrial-sized platters of food starting to accrue before him. It’s nice watching him at work, Nicholas decides, resting his head against his palm and listening as the orphanage begins to come alive around them. It’s how it should have been. No all-seeing Eye hovering above them, no thankless violence performed in the name of a scornful god. Just him, in his home, surrounded by his family and with a belly full of food.
This peaceful, unassuming life, it’s what they deserved, him, Livio, and, hell, even Razlo. Especially Razlo.
Or at least, what their childhood selves had deserved, at any rate.
He catches a glimpse of his reflection in the polished metal backsplash, and his thoughts sour. Wolfwood may not have put a lot of faith in the big man upstairs, and yet he never had been able to block out the words of the old reverend droning out his catechisms from the pulpit.
Stipendium peccati mors est. The reward of sin is death.
Wolfwood feels like he had been served an injustice somewhere along the way, but what his rightful reward should be, he cannot decide.
Eventually, the time for breakfast arrives upon them, and he ushers Livio out to serve up and eat with the kids, leaving him alone in the kitchen once again. He rolls up his sleeves and gets to work on the mounds of dishes that need to be scrubbed clean. Every once in a while, he dares to peek through the crack in the door into the dining hall to where Livio sits surrounded by kids, chatting happily away in between mouthfuls of food. The crowd around him erupts into a fit of giggles at something he says, and Wolfwood can’t help but feel a twisting, nauseating sense of jealousy alongside his burst of pride. Livio makes it look so easy, out there with the kids, letting them see him without feeling the need to hide himself away, lest they might be defiled by blood-corrupted hands and a soul so heavy not even death deigned to keep it. As he watches, Livio hunches over and begins braiding a small boy’s hair, the kid practically vibrating with glee as the fingers of assassins comb their way across his scalp.
It’s not just the absence of fear among the children that strikes Wolfwood; it’s the ease of Livio, as well. He’d never been, in the hazy fog of nostalgia that Wolfwood can recall, all that great with kids, and yet in the time between his death and rebirth, Livio had somehow transformed into a bona fide child-wrangler extraordinaire. Wolfwood returns to the dishes, a confused maelstrom churning within him as the soapy water reduce stains to pristine ceramics once more.
The rest of the day unfolds around him.
From the cover of shadows, he watches Livio usher the kids out into the yard to play, pausing to help the younger ones with their shoes. As he ties up their laces, Livio explains to them how he’s doing it, showing them how to loop the bunny ears together to make the bow. Just as Nicholas had taught him less than a decade prior.
“And…there! Soon you’ll be a big boy tying your laces up by yourself!”
“Like you?”
“Hm-hmm,” Livio hums in agreement.
The boy he’s been helping looks between his shoes and Livio with a curious, critical gaze, like he’s trying to find the answer to some great mystery. Wolfwood wonders, envious, how Livio can bear the scrutiny.
“How old are you?”
A trickle of ice runs down Wolfwood’s spine. Such a simple, innocent question which had no easy answer. Not for them.
They were young. Younger than he liked to admit, even to himself.
Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Miss Melanie pause, glancing towards Livio, ready to provide back-up.
Livio’s expression never even falters.
“How old do you think I am?” he retorts, flipping the question back at the kid. Nicely done .
“Uhhh…” The boy looks Livio up and down. Wolfwood braces himself for the answer. “Fifty?”
Oof. Livio stares, incredulous, stunned into silence. From the deer-in-headlights look in his eyes, Livio appears to be speed-running the five stages of grief.
Nicholas almost laughs. Miss Melanie actually does.
“Guess that’s what I get for answering a question with another question,” Livio grumbles, rubbing a hand over the stubble on his jaw.
“Fifty-three?” the kid guesses again, eyes gleaming with enthusiasm, oblivious to the bruising he’d just inflicted to Livio’s ego.
“You hearing this sh*t, Raz?” Wolfwood thinks he hears Livio mutter, too low for the boy to hear. He looks like he’s gearing up to guess again, so Livio cuts him off, hoisting him down from the chair and ushering him towards the door.
“Okay, that’s enough of that. Out we go.”
In the courtyard outside, Livio picks up a young girl of seven or eight and swings her in his arms as if it were nothing, her giggles dancing on the breeze. He remembers holding her as an infant, Nicholas’s practised hands burping her as he walked up and down the dormitory, rocking her to sleep.
In the present, he looks down at his palms, drenched with invisible blood. He is no longer fit to hold them.
Exhaustion creeps in as Wolfwood skulks back to his room, heart straining with something almost like jealousy as the sounds of happy playing fade.
Sleep, at least, is merciful. When his head hits the pillow, his eyes slide shut immediately.
When he opens them again, it’s already midafternoon.
A knock at the door rouses him. His body is still unused to waking, still unused to having consciousness return to his sluggish mind and limbs, so he's practically half asleep as he mumbles out something that almost sounds like 'come in'.
He hoists himself upright as the door handle turns and Livio shuffles in, clearing his throat awkwardly as he spots Wolfwood still in bed.
“Oh, sorry, I didn't mean to wake y-”
“'s fine,” Wolfwood waves him away, not keen to drag themselves through pleasantries for the sake of politeness alone. He rubs the sleep from his eyes. “What's up?”
“I just wanted to check how you were doing, 's all.” Livio stares down at his from his vantage point, eyes wide with concern. It feels patronising, almost.
“'M not a f*cking baby Liv.”
“Yeah, no, yeah, ‘course not.”
There’s an awkward beat of silence. The muscle in Livio’s jaw flexes.
“I’ll be goin’ then.” He turns to leave, a new line of tension bearing down on his broad shoulders. Wolfwood feels a leaden weight settle at the bottom of his stomach at the sight of Livio looking so dejected.
“No, sh*t, wait, Liv. I… Don’ mean to be like that.”
Livio faces him once more, a glimmer of something in his eyes. Nicholas suddenly feels incredibly foolish for thinking that Livio would ever infantilise him, as if that was something Livio would do. No; Livio had come to check on him as his friend, his brother, one of the few people who could ever come close to understanding the thunderstorm of emotions currently raging inside him.
“Didn't mean to snap at ya. It's just... all been a lot.”
Livio snorts. “Understatement of the century.”
Wolfwood pauses, fingers twisting in the sheets as he tries to find the right words for what he wants to ask. There's the scrape of a chair against the floor as Livio takes a seat in one of the chairs beside him, but stay quiet as Wolfwood wages war internally.
“Howd'ya do it, Liv?” He manages at last, the question that has haunted him all day finally spilling from his lips. “With the kids... how can ya pretend it's all normal?” That we're normal.
Almost instantly, tears well up in Livio's eyes, his bottom lip beginning to tremble. Nicholas has a moment of worry that he'd offended Livio, before the man starts to speak through fat tears.
“I... I wanted to... to live my life... like you.
The words land like a sledgehammer to the gut. Nicholas swears the room has less oxygen than it did a minute ago.
“When I'm with the kids,” Livio takes a shuddering inhale, “I'm just doing what you would have done.”
He looks at Nicholas, beseeching, pleading, almost, staring at him as though he might find absolution in the haggard man before him.
“f*ckin' crybaby,” Nicholas mutters, but he hasn't a leg to stand on, because the next thing he knows the room is swimming, his vision distorted through the dampness that is falling down his cheeks in thick waves.
He feels thick arms wrap around him, crushing him into an embrace as they cry against each other, unspoken confessions that are too painful to pronounce passing between them understood among the tears.
Miss Melanie finds him some time later, once Livio had unwillingly had to extricate himself from Nicholas hold to go take care of orphanage business, leaving Nicholas to mop up the flood from his eyes in peace. The crying, though, had left him with a thunderous headache, and it’s when he's almost made it back to the confines of his room after refilling his water that she intercepts him.
Tactically, Wolfwood can only assume, she ignores the red that is sure to still linger around his eyes, instead opting to run a hand across his forehead. A telltale wrinkle between her brow disappears when she finds no temperature still lingering there. He aches to be a child again, aches to be held by the only mother he ever knew and to be told that it was all going to be okay.
Miss Melanie seems to read the conflict in his expression. Like a book, she’d used to tell him, I can read you like a book, Nico. You can’t hide from me.
“Mijo, let me tell you what I told Livio, what I tell all my kids. There will be a home here for you for as long as you want it.” Miss Melanie reaches up again to pet his cheek. Wolfwood swallows his grief heavily. “And I know you’re grown now and don’t need my fussing over you, but you’ll always be my Nicholas if you choose to be.”
Nicholas nods jerkily, not trusting himself to speak and unable to meet her warm gaze that brimmed with maternal affection. When he wipes at his eyes, he finds his hand comes back damp.
“I’d… I’d, um, like that.” His voice cracks horribly as he forces the confession past his lips. “Thank you.”
“Of course, mijo. And thank you, Nico. Thank you for coming back to us.”
When he’s able to meet Miss Melanie’s eyes once more, he discovers them to be every bit as bloodshot and watery as his own. But despite that, he’s able to match her shaky, hopeful happiness that twists her mouth into a small smile. He nods again, just as fervently as before, his resurrection feeling less like a divine punishment and more like a chance to right past wrongs.
“Now get some rest, okay.”
He goes without protest, passing LR’s unmistakable shadow as he mops the halls, and wordlessly sliding into his bed, his soul light.
The ache in his chest returns when his thoughts turn to Vash. In his dreams, he comes to Wolfwood, golden hair glowing like a halo as he gives Wolfwood a bright smile he has no right to receive. Wolfwood, or perhaps Nicholas, wakes before dawn, fresh teartracks marking his skin. It had been nothing more than an imagined fantasy, but somehow it still feels like a benediction.
