Chapter Text
Wolfwood is Dreaming.
He must be, he’s never been in a place like this outside of dreams. Tall trees that stretch above his head and bushes heavy with berries, mushrooms climbing trunks in neat little stairs as small animals scamper and scurry through the grass that tickles his feet. He watches the way the sun filters through the trees, making a kaleidoscope of shapes on the ground as he walks, bare footed but unharmed. Watches as some furry creature watches him, until he moves and it startles, vanishing into the foliage with a rustle that Wolfwood had never heard in the waking world. Vash had once rambled on, in that way of his, about the idea of ‘genetic memories’ - of memories embedded into human beings very flesh and blood and he wonders if that’s what this is, eons old memories going right back to Adam and Eve, to Eden before the snake gifted and cursed them with knowledge in equal measures.
The wind through the trees sounds like whispers and it sets Wolfwood’s hair on end, even as he marches further into the greenery, an invisible force behind his navel pulling him further and further, something calling for him to come closer and closer. The forest never seems to end, but neither does he tire, the shadows stretching over him cool but not dark, the sun warm but not burning, the birds singing sweet little songs in a kindness that had never been afforded to the planet he’d called home. He is walking, and walking, until he is not, until he is not alone and there is a woman there - who is also a young girl and an old crone and many women and all of these things yet none of them at once. She’s made of alabaster and ivory and lightning bottled in her eyes that crinkle as she smiles gently at him. She speaks in words that ebb and flow like the flow of a sea he’s only imagined, words tasting of smoke and ash as she cuts into a plum. The blade she holds is sharp, sharp as it has always been, because it’s a blade and a feather and protection all in one, and she uses it to slip through the rip flesh of the plum easily, a chunk of it resting on the blade when she offers it to a sinner. The feather drips ruby juice from the proffered slice and he wonders what choice he should make, what choice is even being offered before his hand moves of his heart’s accord without his brain’s agreement.
He takes the knife by it’s handle, fingers brushing against hers and feeling the millions of tiny feathers brush against his skin before he has a gripe on the feather. He gently takes it into his mouth, tongue darting along the edge of the blade to lap up any juice before he takes the fruit between his teeth. He licks it, not uncaring of if it harms him, but assured that the pain is worth the risk, but it does not bite into the soft flesh of his mouth, of his lips as he removes the feather and chews the fruit. The plum is sweet, juicy, tasting of sugar and salvation and cool breezes, tasting of a back to his and the feel of assuredness. The woman is offering the rest of it to him now, and he lets the feather meld from a blade to a simple pinion and merge into the flesh of his hand as he takes the fruit, now ravenous as he bites into it like a thing starved. Juice runs down his face in messy rivulets, ruby staining his jaw and the fabric of his shirt, and the woman folds her into her thousand thousand arms, gentle as a whisper; a scream; a plea for one wish; and she holds him tight, compressing him down, smaller and smaller, until he is the size of the plum’s pit. Until he is the pit, eyes closed and vision dark, but held safe and warm in her hands as she carefully – oh so carefully - plants him in the ground to sprout as a tree once more.
Nicholas doesn’t know where he is when he wakes up.
This is not the first time it’s happened. More than once, Chapel had thrown him out somewhere unknown to test out his ability to work with no prior information, to test how he could survive on his own against others and the inhospitable planet alike. It’s not even the first time he’d woken up in this situation without a weapon - a test to see if he could be resourceful in acquiring one of his own. It is, however, the first time he’d woken up butt ass naked on a cold cave floor. He’s lucky that is is a cave, the sun would have already roasted him alive for however long he’d been out, even with the augmentation they’d begun on him. The cave isn’t much better though, unfamiliar close quarters that were dim but not truly dark - dark enough to make picking out details in the distance difficult, but not dark enough for Nicholas to blend in the shadows and use his enhanced eyesight to his advantage. He hopes there isn’t anyone around for now, they’d probably die of laughter at the fact that he’s not got a shred of cloth on him before he could bludgeon them to death with the nearest rock. Then he’d probably use the rock on himself out of embarrassment.
“The fuck have you gotten me into, old man?” Nicholas grumbles as he uses the cave wall to push himself up off the ground, not noticing the dark dirt falling away from his legs as he does so. He keeps a hand on the wall - glowing gently with blue veins of something that looks almost familiar to Nicholas - as he makes his way through the cave. He’s careful of sharp rocks and of dark corners, peering around with his shoulders tensed and ears alert for any sound.
(He thinks he hears a faint ringing singing, but when he covers his ears, the sound does not go away, and he ignores what’s either a concussion or a hallucination.)
He takes it a little slower after a while, tracing the luminescent blue lines through the rock with his fingers, a little in awe at how smooth and warm they feel. It’s a childish emotion that he hadn’t let himself feel in years, even before he’d been picked up by the Eye, but there’s no one here to judge him other than himself, and he lets his fingers trail along the glass smooth veins as he walks.
Eventually, pain finds its way to his feet and exhaustion finds it’s way to his shoulders. His sense of time is fucked up without the suns or moons to judge by, but he must have been walking for at least a mind numbing couple of hours. He keeps trudging onwards though, until he finds a small alcove in the cave, just big enough for him to comfortably curl himself up and sleep in, lined with what looks like the thin moss from the basement store room of the orphanage and mushrooms that glow the same blue as the walls. He hesitantly squeezes himself into the space, surprised when his foot touches the moss and it’s not the thin craggly stuff that clung to the corners of boxes, but thick and soft. He quickly sits down, petting the moss in wonder before reaching up to the nearest shelf-like cluster of mushrooms and snaps one off. He’s surprised when it stops glowing when disconnected from the wall. It’s only the one he eats for now, despite hunger making itself known like a jilted lover looking for money. It’s one he knows how to ignore well, and he chews the single mushroom thoroughly before laying down on the soft moss, back pressed to the rough stone wall and knees drawn up to protect his vital areas. He closes his eyes and lets his mind drift, taking apart and putting back together his rifle in his mind, and then repeating the process with his newly ‘gifted’ Punisher, and then again with the Ruger he keeps under his pillow that he dreams of one day killing Chapel with.
(As he fades into sleep, he thinks he hears singing again.)
He wakes an indeterminate amount of time later, stretching and popping his back before snapping a handful of the mushrooms off the wall. Seeing as how he didn’t die in his sleep and his intestines weren’t making him wish he were dead, he’s going to bet that they’re not poisonous, only bland, which isn’t a crime wretched enough for Nicholas to turn down food. He sits and chews on the mushrooms until his handful is gone and then goes about collecting as many as he can carry before he returns to walking the cave’s corridors. He wanders aimlessly for a while, until he’s once again out of mushrooms and his stomach is no longer protesting it’s empty state, and he keeps tracing those glass like veins with an absent mind, until he trips over a rock. All at once, he’s knocked back into his body and reminded that he should be looking for a way out for the point of Chapel’s latest game - because there’s always a point to the old man’s games, even if they’re only obvious to the fucker, but there’s always a point. And Nicholas doubts it’s to wander a glowing cave, eating bland mushrooms whilst he’s butt ass naked.
But looking for the exit doesn’t seem so urgent in this place, each footstep echoing back to him hollowly, a song humming in the back of his head saying ‘stay, stay, wait, stay’ in voices sweeter than any candy. Still, he has to move, to pick himself up and make sure that there’s no blood before continuing on. He walks again, letting himself be alone but not lonely, in a way he hasn’t been since he wasn’t even old enough to be ‘Big Brother Nico’ and definitely not old enough to be ‘Nicholas’ in the way that Chapel hums his name as both a praise and insult both. His mind once again wanders off without something to leash it to, and Nicholas finds himself thinking about what Miss Melanie is doing right now. Is she feeding the kids breakfast? Is someone there to help her, or did their part timer quit again? Is Jasmine catching her summer flu she does every year? Are the kids raising hell for the town adults in the way he’d taught them to? If Nicholas hadn’t been chosen, would he have stayed? Helped raise the kids and taken over when Miss Melanie got too old? Or would he have been like the part timers that always only stay long enough for a few checks before wandering off into the sands to see the bigger cities like November or July?
It’s no use wondering over ‘what-ifs’ now though. He’d already been chosen, and was well on his way to being molded into Chapel’s perfect little weapon. Except Nicholas wouldn’t become that, not truly. He’d always hunch around the small flame in his heart that remembers being Nico, remembers the suns on his face and small hands in his. And one day, he can let that flame consume the rest of him, once he’s no longer in the process of being baptized and anointed in gunpowder and spilled blood. He’s shaken from his thoughts once more by the gurgling sound of water, glazed eyes adjusting to seeing the cave fully again and he gapes at the pool in the center of the large room he’d wandered into. It glows, in the same way the veins in the wall and the mushrooms had, the mouth of it not enough as long as Nicholas is tall and he kneels next to it to look within.
The water is the clearest he’d ever seen, the glow is the veins from the wall, reflecting all the way down the deep deep natural well, the rock taking a sharp curve at the bottom that Nicholas can’t see past. It’s at least as deep as three Punishers, stacked end to end, and blessedly cold when Nicholas dips his fingers into the water. Part of him wants to just dunk his head under the water, to drink his fill instead of breathing, but that’s a one way trip to drowning - a novel death on this dust bowl of a planet, but not one Nicholas wants for himself. He, instead, cups his hands and brings it to his face, drinking deeply. It somehow feels even cooler as it goes down his parched throat, and he dips his hands in the water to drink again and again, as much as he can, the singing in his mind ringing happily as he does. He drinks enough to become full from solely water, and he debates having a few more mouthfuls, because who knows when he’s going to see something like this again.
He doesn’t get the chance to though, the joyous singing in his head cutting out abruptly only a half second before the cave is filled with the sounds of screeching. It’s a horrible, wretched, painful, noise. Like a heard of Toma driven across hot coals, like every younger sibling scraping their knees at once, like being flayed open and sewn back up with your pieces unmatched. Nicholas jolts backwards from the pool at the sound, hastily throwing his back against the wall, not even wincing as the rock scraped the tender flesh of his back. The song in the back of Nicholas’s head kicks back up again, trying to soothe the wretched beast as it screeches again, and he’s left clutching his temple. He wants to soothe it too, but he grits his teeth against the instinct.
Whatever can make a noise like that either isn’t friendly or needs to be put out of it’s misery.
Shakily, he pulls himself to his feet once more, looking at the tunnels leading from this room and picking the one the noise - now lower, now more like sobbing and the scream of metal pushed past it’s give - seems to be coming from. He stays pressed against the wall as he creeps his way closer to the source of the noise, pausing when it lets loose the louder sounds and moving when they fade to lower howls of dismay. His first impression, as he peeks around a corner and sees it is red. A brilliant madder crimson that Nicholas only thinks is the beast for a moment before his vision clears and he can make out a mess of buttons and a single sleeve of a coat, something wriggling inside. It’s about the size of a large cat, the sort that some had around to catch pests, and Nicholas cautiously approaches it as it continues to flail. He almost laughs when it seems to give up, would have when it threw it’s body down with an air of petulance if it hadn’t made that loud shriek less than ten feet from him, sending his ears ringing.
It hisses like a nesting Tomas when he crouches next to it, all guttural clicks and Nicholas rolls his eyes as he reaches for the red coat, trying to unbutton the absurd amount of buttons before it tries to claw him through the material with a yowl.
“Christ on the cross, cut it out.” He huffs, uncoupling a handful more buttons before reaching into the coat to rescue whatever was making a terrible racket, sure it’s too small to cause any real damage.
“Hold still, imma getcha out.” He says softly this time, the same voice he’d use for a spooked Toma or a scared kid as his fingers brush against something soft within the layers of fabric. Less than a second later, there’s little claws digging into his arm and he winces, even as he carefully slides his arm out of the coat to let the thing free. It immediately bites him once it’s free of the fabric, screeching once more for good measure before scuttling to the other side of the cavern.
“Fuck! Guess that’s the thanks I get.” He curses, glaring at the creature until it begins to make his eyes and head hurt to look at it and he instead inspects the scratches and bite on his arm. They’re already scabbed over and beginning to bruise, not healing as fast as they would with serum, but faster than a normal human, certainly. Nicholas spits to the side, grumbling about ‘ungrateful bastard’s and ‘better not have rabies’ before picking up the coat. It’s gotta be the gaudiest thing he’s ever seen, an unholy amount of buttons down the front of the brilliant red leather, a single sleeve on the right side, the left one bearing a cuff that has some sort of design Nicholas can’t make out, about mid upper arm and then there’s no sleeve below it on that side. Still, the inside material is soft, and most likely some sort of bullet resistant, going from the feeling of mesh between the two layers Nicholas can feel, and besides:
Beggars can’t be choosers.
He only undoes about half the buttons and then pulls the rest of it over his head, scowling as the sleeve falls past his hand.
“What the hell was this guy, a tree?” He grumbles under his breath as he rolls up the sleeve, trying to figure out if he can do anything about the ragged tails of the coat that trail behind him like a bride’s train. It’s better than nothing though, and, he realizes, remarkably blood free. He wonders how the little mutated Toma chick had gotten so wrapped up in it as it had without tearing the fabric or killing the owner of it before getting distracted by the buttons knocking against his knees.
“Christ, who needs this much coat?” He buttons a few more of the buttons, enough that he’s not flashing every worm and potential threat the goods, not noticing that the pissed of chicken is creeping closer until it bites on one of the coat tails, tugging on it with a growl. Like this, Nicholas can see it a little better, the fractal wings that curl upon themselves and the feeler like feathers wiggling in the non existent breeze, all of them a warm cream toned white, except for the area around it’s flat little face that’s black as ink, as if the creature had fallen into something it had been eating.
“What the hell are you anyways?” He asks and it doesn’t respond except with a garbled hiss, seeming more content to chew on the leather of the coat than to answer him and Nicholas lets out a growl of his own before he scoops it up into his arms. He can deal with the mile of red coat behind him, but he won’t deal with this fucked up little bird cat thing trying to bite him everytime he moves. It’s heavier than it looks, and he grunts as he hefts it up and all its innumerable wings until he can look it in the face.
“Listen up, featherball! Either you quit biting me or you’re going… to be … dinner.” His threat trails off as he looks in the thing’s blue blue blue eyes. They’re odd, almost glowing like the walls, the pupil white in the light, like a dog’s reflecting moonlight, like a glow worm trapped in amber, and Nicholas feels something echo in his chest as he stares at it and it stares back.
I know you.
It’s a certainty. He knows this beast, he’d die and kill to protect it. He knows this fact with the same certainty that he knows the feel of his rifle in his arms, of a small hand in his own, of a knife carving away wood to reveal a misshapen bird, of his sins, of his love love love, building and breaking down a dam in his heart in the span of a heartbeat - and the strange beast knows it as well, blue eyes filling with tears as it lets out a warbling noise. It reaches strange, twisted wings to him, long feeler like feathers and little claws alike, reaching for him and he pulls it closer, burying his nose in soft yet sharp feathers. He should be afraid of this thing, that is so close to his throat with sharp teeth and claws, that doesn’t obey the laws of reality with it’s ever shifting mass. And he is. But he brings it closer, hugs it close as his heart sings safe safe ally friend friend beloved friend and it doesn’t smother the fear, not entirely. But it matters more than the fear, matters that this beast warbles and cries, its wings reaching for him still, as if they could become even closer than they already are, and Nicholas lets out a watery laugh.
“Geeze.” He says, petting at it’s prickly fluff and wings, barely audible over the deep aching noises it lets out, once so deep it rattles Nicholas’s ribs in his chest. “I have a knack for picking up crybabies, hunh?” It trills at him, as though offended and bunches all four of it’s little claws in his shirt and Nicholas can’t stop the smile that stretches across his face as the creature lifts it’s head up and bumps it gently into his cheek.
“Keep actin’ like that and I’ll think you like me or something, Spikey.” The nickname feels at home in his mouth, though he’d never said it before, and the creature trills, butting its dark head against his own once again, harmonizing with the song ringing in the back of Nicholas’s head.
‘Stay Stay Stay’