Hold Me Like a Grudge - Lenipez (2024)

Chapter 1

Chapter Text

Zazie spun around in the chair as the social worker asked her; “So have you convinced your friend to come visit us yet?”

“No he’s stubborn.”

“Free needles is free needles,” He said wisely.

“He’s stupid,” She says, like its a sexy but fatal flaw of his.

“Yeah, I get it. But you tell him anytime, a friend of yours is a friend of mine.”

She shrugs.

“Any way, Zazie, do you want to apply for housing at the women’s shelter?” He had asked her this every time she had visited at the YWCA harm reduction clinic.

“Yeah, sure,” She said, like it was no big deal.

He made a motion, like he’d clap his hands, but he's only got the one and turns it into an air pump half way through. He was definitely the kind of Labrador retriever man who would clap when he got excited if he could. He used a long leg to roll himself over to the desk, grabbed a clipboard and a pen and a couple extra forms- Held the clipboard in his teeth as he dug around the draw for a pen.

Zazie secretly liked him best of all the social workers cause she liked the way he wasn’t afraid to just do things the way he did them. Stacking things real high, using his teeth, holding things with his pinky finger. But the real reason she kept coming was the red seven pointed starburst on his only hand.

She tried to tell Wolfwood he’d like him; ‘He’s just a really funny guy.’ She’d tried everything just short of telling him that he had a matching seven point starburst on his right hand. That’d be the surest way to get Wolfwood to leave town and never come back.

Maybe that’d be good for her. The fae court had f*cked wolfwood over so bad that these days he was like a stray dog that didn’t know how to be inside. And as an indoor outdoor cat Zazie felt it was her lot to keep him fed. It would be easier if he would come and pick up his own clean needles. His own food stamps. Pick up his own magical messes. But he was stubborn and only knew how to live the hard way, busking and pick pocketing, doing odd jobs for the court. The court had him wrapped around their little finger.
Her case worker, who was too full of sunshine to know a damn thing about the fae or magic, swiveled around on the computer chair 180 with a grace that also made him look like he was about to fall down and put the paperwork in her lap.

She picked up the pen, clicked it open. Read the tittle; YWCA Woman’s Housing application.

“MM changed my mind.” She put the pen down with a clack on the clipboard. Just to f*ck with him.

He sucked in his breath through is teeth and scooted his wheelie chair in close and put his face inside her blood circle. His blue eyes super cooled behind his big round aviator style glasses.

“Zazie. Razel zazel. My rascal star, my sweet perfect veteran of life, do not play with me.” Oh the intensity was heavy on her, like the silence before magic and she wondered as she did sometimes did if she was wrong. The clinic was perfectly warded. Some one had to be keeping it so.

Zazie shrank. He never made her feel fear, only the deep burn of his personal disappointment, and that wasn’t the flavor of any magic she knew. So she pushed it out of her mind. Filled out her form. Tried to tell herself it would be good. She was an indoor/outdoor cat and she was tired of being outdoors.

“See,” He said when she handed the clipboard back, “Not so hard. If I give you a fresh cell phone will you answer it when I call you?”

She sucks in her lips and bites them. Technology liked to break when she crossed the veil. And she did it often.

“I can try.”

“Well. That’s good enough for me.” He said brightly and dug into cloth bin in a wall high shelving unit. The whole office was absolutely cluttered. Boxes of this and that were everywhere. It was a miracle he could find anything. But it was cozy in it's own way. Once of the few places she didn't mind being. There were postit notes and art prints on the wall she always considered stealing but had no where to hang them; a fat chicken with a sword and a cow staring longingly into the sea. And then enticingly there were the photos of him and his lady friend while traveling- mountain tops, beaches, old cities. In some of them he still had both hands- she still wanted to unlock that story in a selfish curious sort of way.

"Hey," She asked when he turned around with the phone. "Is this your girl friend?" She tapped the photo of the small dark haired woman with the dumb smiling face.

"Oh no not anymore," He said brightly.

"Is she, dead?" Zazie asked. This was it. The tragic backstory. Did she die in a wreck and he lost his arm? Rock climbing accident? She had to know.

"No, no I married her, she's my wife now!" He said like this was the funniest joke he'd ever told. He put the Nokia brick into her hand as he laughed and she stared in horror. He busied himself writing the number down on a a post it note.

“I can put it in sharpie on the phone if you want.”

“Yeah that’s a good idea,” She said absently, still computing that this man was married, “I'll lose it, I have too many gremlins.”

He glanced at her. It was the kind of look that made her consider plucking her words back out of his head. Which she’d done any time she’d mentioned something magical that could be conflated with being asked if she needed meds.

But he took it as a turn of phrase and chuckled, “Me too, can’t keep track of anything.” He cracked the top off the sharpie with his teeth and scribbled the number on the back of the phone and tossed it to her. She squeaked and fumbled it into a catch. “I’ll call you when I hear back. Okay. Don't disappear on me, you're so close, okay?”

“Sure. I mean- Thanks, Vash.”

“Oh!” He said, “You said my name.” He pointed at her and it pinned her in place like a spell..

“sh*t.”

He laughed and she was released from the temporary hold, “I guess we’re friends now.”

She groaned. She had told him a couple years ago, when she was still hiding that she was a runaway, that if she thought they were friends maybe she’d call him by his name. And she’d f*cked up. She worked with fairies on the daily, she should know better than to make that kind of slip. But he was Vash. He was the weird one armed social worker who actually cared. So. It was fine. She took the L with a laugh and said; “I dunno, maybe.”

She left his office with a new phone, a life plan? Man, Vash was good at making her think all of this was her own idea. At least her pockets were full of granola bars.

Wolfwood’s sigil was hidden by a tattoo of Fenrir eating the sun on his right hand, the seven pointed starburst worked into the rays of the sun. But Zazie had had the sight her whole life and it wasn’t the sort of thing that could be so simply hidden by a tattoo. How many soulmates were just lose in the world to start she wondered sometimes. She was glad she wasn’t one of them. When she found him, leaned against the rain soaked building in the shadow of the over head train trestle he was smoking a cigarette and looking wet and miserable. It had been raining since dawn in a city where it always rained and his sh*t north face was only mostly water resistant. It was the price he paid for trying to damn hard to pass himself off as the average techbro and not what he was.

The curse on him was heavy. Made the air thick around him. if she had to characterize how big it was; she'd say a couple hundred pounds of curse. Like she wasn’t sure how he walked around with it, he tended to slouch way forward like he could really feel the weight of it too.

When she reached him, before he could say anything stupid, she started unloading her pockets with her spoils of war. Granola bars, a powerade, a stolen sandwich from safeway, the goods from the clinic, a pack of cigarettes. Shoved it into his hands one at a time as he sputtered and spared her a few muttered cusses.

“That enough to keep you going?”

“You don’t need to feed me like a stray animal.”

“Pretty sure I do,” She said coldly. He scoffed. “I’m going to find you dead some day.”

She said it like a fact. Because she had dreamed it. And that was partially why she couldn’t let him be.

“Yeah.” Was all he said like he already knew. Maybe he did. Maybe that was his curse. She’d asked him before and he’d just shrugged. Most times curses were like that. She waited until he was half way through is cigarette and a granola bar and she asked him; “I know what my favor is. The one you owe me.”

He pauses.

“When you meet Vash, don’t run.”

He ashed his cigarette, “Aint that your case worker?”

She nodded and sipped her co*ke, “Trust me.”

“Sure, I mean you're the one with the oracular visions and all that.”

“And then I gotta tell you something. I’m gonna do intake at the woman’s shelter. This is your last freebie from me. For a while. Less you come and see me?”

He doesn’t look at her, knew it was coming and can’t ask her to stay. Can’t ask her to take him with her because that’s what the curse is; Nothing good lasts. Everyone leaves.

And that was the last time he saw Zazie. Didn’t even start to worry till day three when he decided to hit up the woman’s shelter and say hi. She'd invited him. Just cause good didn't stay didn't mean he couldn't visit it. "No one here by that name," the receptionist told him, earned himself a lot of suspicion and narrowed eyes. He spent the next day outside of it, across the street underneath a crab apple tree, watching folks go in and out. Then on the second day when the stake out still delivered no Zazie, he gave up. She had gone back.

Back to the court beneath the sidewalks.

He feels it in his bones.

She was a creature of both worlds and this one never treated her kindly. To celebrate her decisions he bought a bottle of wine at the corner store, used his bus card and a wave of his hand when they ask for ID, and sauntered down to the water. Out by the piers and ferry’s and the good view of the mountains. He’d been living in limbo a long time. A long long time. Every time he went back to court he’d come back and lose another five or ten years of linear time. He’d hardly recognized the city this time. If he followed Zazie he wasn’t sure he’d like the world he’d come back to. Things move so quickly now. He took a long swig off his bottle and leaned against the brick of the building he was sheltering under from the long gray rain trying to make up its mind to fall or hang in the air.

He was thinking his thoughts when a man moved from loitering around the bus stop to look at him. He had a red Patagonia on with one sleeve knotted up, big boots, black jeans and a pair of big round glasses out of the 80’s. He looked like the world Wolfwood had left behind when the fae took him as kid; very 80s.

“You might be Wolfwood?” He asked as he came towards him. The closer he got the more the hair on the back of Wolfwood's neck went up. “My name is Vash,” he said, smiled real wide and showed Wolfwood all his sharp teeth.

“Wait, isn’t that cow in french?” He asked. Tried to sound as un-f*ck-withable as humanly possible. Cause f*ck. This was definitely not just a guy, he moved like one of them as much as he tried to hide it.

“Yeah. It is. Maybe, I like milk and honey?” he said. Because sometimes advertising he was changeling was enough to make folks back down quick. “Listen, I’m looking for Zazie, I’m her case worker.” Wolfwood's adrenaline shot up, a changeling, with a face like that? His stomach sank. Every city had secrets and this one’s were dangerous and he just kept tripping face first into them. The nose, the brows, are all too similar to the lord of the sidewalks he only just escaped. "Please don't spook- I'm just hear to talk."

Wolfwood kept the fear off him. Kept the sweat in his pores. Fae could smell fear. He’d f*cked around and found out with the city’s Lord of The Sidewalks. He doesn’t need a second lesson. In fact he’s not sure this isn’t him.

“You’re not a social worker.”

“No I am.” he pulled out his lanyard with his name tag, covered in little gold stars and a couple Etsy cottage core plant pins that matched the man but the predatory smile. “I’m a changeling. I live here. Just don’t try anything with me alright. I’m here about Zazie. She’s missing. I want to help.”

Well that was nobody's business but Zazie’s certainly not a near-do-well changeling social worker. Wolfwood had half a mind to give him the what for. He opened his mouth to tell him to f*ck off, looked over the top of his sunglasses and looked directly into Vash’s soul. And drowned there.

Sucked in a deep lung full of salt water blue. Plunged head first into a stillness he couldn’t name. Felt his mind go lose and soft.

Zazie had made him promise not to run.

So he just.

Kept.

Drowning.

He was cursed.

This shouldn’t happen.

After all this time?

Now?

Vash’s face went through a journey, the pinch of the threat in his brows softening and his mouth rounding into a surprised oh and then tightening back into a thin line, eyebrows high, the muscles around his nose catching into a look of such grief Wolfwood thought he’d die.

“No,” His changeling said. Shook his head like a dog and backed away. “No.”

The curse was the heaviest it had ever been as Zazie’s case worker took a step back. Then another. And then just before bursting into tears; Fled.

Wolfwood staggered back, slumped against the slick brick wall like he’d been shot.

“I mean, that’s probably a smart choice,” He told the gutter.

Chapter 2

Chapter Text

The apartment was an explosion of color and things. The windows were full of leafy green plants and chotskis- the kind of little trinkets only tourists bought. A miniature Eiffel tower presided over a large spider plant and a space needle in another, little gnomes and whimsy goth dragons poked out of succulent pots. And the whole place was like that; floor to ceiling prints and a wooden winged mermaid hanging over the couch; tit* out.

And it was a space Meryl thought of as earned for all the weird rough times before they’d both gotten old enough to learn not to cause problems on purpose. To settle into the rhym that love could be just trying to make each other laugh. It had been a long slog of punk houses and bad DIY newspapers and non profits before things had settled. She did travel pieces. And moonlighted taking clients at the tattoo shop when she was in town, a life so unconventional she couldn’t have fathomed it seven years ago.

Couldn’t have imagined it.

Would have never guessed that watching some punk at the show with Milly get arrested would change her life.

The way he’d kicked and wiggled as the lady cop berated him for only having one hand- she wasn’t sure how to cuff him. The photo of him winking and kicking up one foot ended up being sold as a poster at the anarcho book shop- but that was a whole other adventure. The picture had been her first big break.

And she didn’t believe in love at first sight. Not at all. Even though something close had happened. She had looked at him, made eye contact- she’d meant to ask him if he needed her to call anyone, if he had a lawyer- the protest had gotten loud and scary and her nerves were jangled up to hell. And she remembered that looking at him was to imagine that she had known him her whole life. The kind of trust that only came from making a pinky promise at 8 to get married when you turned 30 if you were both still lonely. Just an easy flood of trust, still as a windless lake.

And he had said, and she’ll never forget, “ Whoah? Hi?” like he’d felt something too. But it would be two years till she saw him again, looking scruffy and beleaguered, vibing at the anarcho book shop like he had no where else to be. And he’d said, “You again? Do you want coffee?” and even though it’d been so long, and he looked so different with his hair long and down, she knew him. It was like she’d always known him. Like she’d hit her head and forgotten him and now got to read him again for the first time like she always wanted to re-read her favorite book.

And for the low prices of two iced coffee’s she’d some how secured her dream life- things had just started falling into place after that.

So when she had come home and the apartment was dim and Vash was just sitting there smoking a menthol cigarette, air as heavy as a curse, she thought maybe the spell was broken. Maybe all the good times were over.

“Vash?” She asked, one hand still taking off her shoes.

“It got dark on me- sorry,” He said and leaned across the small kitchen to flick the lights on. And when he was bathed in the harsh kitchen florescent he was the spitting imagine of the lost scruffy man she’d gone out to coffee with all those years ago. Like he just was not sure if the world was spinning or he was. Like what ever curse he’d been running from back then had caught him. It was in the way he didn’t have any expression at all. And it was in the pack of menthol's she’d only seen him smoke when out side the hospital when sh*t was bad.

“Everything alright?” She asked. And she could see it work across his face. Knows he’d been sitting there thinking about how to answer this question when she got home for god knows how long, “Have you had dinner?”

“Not yet- “

“Well step one,” She said trying to laugh it off. Trying not to act like she was a mind reader- though sometimes with him she felt like she was. It was late. Almost ten. Maybe she was imaging it. A man could smoke a cigarette and nothing bad could come of it- right? She had taken her last client late at seven and the train had ran late- it had already been a long day for her. And for a long moment of looking into the refrigerator as she hopped for the best and he let the farce that they could pretend everything's was just fine for maybe a beat too long, till she almost believed it- even though the air was thick with a curse. And Meryl was forced to remember that curses were real and so were fae- she knew all about Vash’s brother in the court below the city. She’d never been, but she had held the end of a string and watched Vash step through a wall once.

“Something happened today,” he said.

“yeah?” She said pulling out the bag of premade ceaser salad.

“I met some one you should know about.”

“Yeah? she said again on repeat- because she wanted him to spit it out.

“He’s got a mark on the back of his hand just like yours?”

“You mean just like ours?”

Chapter 3

Chapter Text

Meryl Remembered He had come home. She remembered it, she had been so certain of that, that she remembered the touch of His hand on hers. Remembered His thumb running across the mark on the meat between her thumb and forefinger. She remembered that→ His touch. And looking at the seven pointed starburst there she knew it was a witch’s thing, remembered her grandmother telling her so; That it meant someday some one would sweep into her life and change everything for the better easy as a summer breeze. She stretched her mind against the hot tang of magic in the air → focus focus focus→ He said he’d met some one. Some one with a mark like hers. But who?

And she had said in return to him-

-She didn’t know anymore? She was standing in the living room with the taste of a curse in her mouth like a wet sock, the memory of his touch fading like the warmth of a cup of forgotten coco. The weight of the curse that lingered was heavier than anything she’d ever felt, but It didn't stick to her. She almost hoped it would, something in her crying out to take her too.

“Someone else with my mark,” She said to herself like she might forget that too.

And that was how Vash ebbed out of her life. Like he was never there at all. His name on the lease was now smudged, his boots were gone, the man in all her photos was blurred out. She could see the shape that someone was missing, and when she asked about it→ subtle as she could with some one she trusts→ even Milly, her partner in crime at the tattoo parlor said; “Who? Oh are you seeing some one? Meryl!?”

And Meryl thought her heart would break right there into a hundred thousand indescribable pieces. What kind of of curse was so horrible to leave her alone with something lost that couldn't be named? What had she ever done to deserve this? She was left looking at Milly not knowing how to explain that in no small way it was like the world had ended and she and everyone she knew had forgotten it save for the hole in her it left. She loved Milly to bits and knew if she broke right there for no reason, in the sun filled waiting room of their shared parlor that Milly Thompson would scoop up all her pieces. And that almost made it worst, made it for sure that she couldn't let that happen. So back pedaled and said my “Ex?” and Milly had co*cked her head like a dog.

She looked confused and a little hurt when she asked; “I wish you’d tell me things, Meryl, you’re so secretive.”

After that she had stood in the tattoo shop’s bathroom and done her best not to cry. Something had happened and she didn’t know how to fix it. She knew it was magic. And she knew it was real. But she didn’t know what to do and worried that what had been stolen from her included the knowledge of how to fix it. Thankfully Meryl was stubborn and iron in a way that frustrated her father and made her mother so proud. So when she'd had a little cry→ not a big one, Lord no, if she had a big cry she didn't think she'd ever stop→ when the little tears had pasted she dabbed her face in the sink and fixed her mascara. She put on her best smile in the mirror, fake as her customer service voice, and finding it passing headed out to meet her next client like it had never happened, like nothing was wrong at all.

Milly had done her a solid, having already greeted her client and gotten her station disinfected. Sometimes she was so aware of all the ways she didn't deserve that woman's friendship.

“Sorry about that,” She said brightly going straight to the cupboards to get her tools and clean sharps. If he looked at her and saw through her mask she'd break again. She just needed a few moments of bustling to feel confident again. At a glance he seemed like the tech type; black shirt, black pants and nice dress shoes. He’d slung his north face over the back of the nearby guest chair along with a guitar case→

→ The guitar caught in her eye and wavered in her vision in a way that was wrong and so distracting. She breathed in deep and the magic there was light and playful, but gave her pause. She wasn’t scared of it, though she felt she should be with how new and awful encountering something magic for the first time should be? Only it clearly wasn’t the first time → she remembered with sudden clarity holding a red ball of yarn and anxiously watching the solid brick wall the string disappeared into, though she couldn’t think of why.

“S’fine, I’m patient,” Her client said. But she was distracted by this interloping thing he had brought into her tattoo parlor.

“You’re just here for a cover up right?” She asked. He clearly had a visible tattoo on his hand and as he rolled up his sleeve she could see it was a nice piece of work. Twining down his bicep was an ornate wolf eating a sun, the shading done in immaculate water color style monochrome she wasn't sure she had the skill to mimic if he asked her to.

“I know it’s nice, but I want this part covered up. Flat black. Don’t care how bad it looks- just, need it gone.”

His left hand moved to his right and pinched the starburst that lived just near his thumb. This too wavered in her vision and made her breath catch→ she knew that seven pointed starburst because it was hers too.

“Just this whole part here- If you want to make it pretty that’s fine I wont complain.”

And as she looked up the length of his arm and into his face the sensation was strangely familiar as this stranger with a sharp nose and roguish charms- that she hadn't wanted to look at in case he saw through that she'd been crying- fades into some one so well worn and familiar and beautiful, crooked teeth, shaggy hair and all. His eyes are amber like something a spider would be happy to die in.

“Hi?” She said feeling stupid and soft and close to tears. It was like the thing that’d been missing was back, but it was still somehow the wrong shape. It just wouldn't fit in her heart right. Something was still so unamably wrong.

“Oh, God,” He said in horror. “Not again.”

“Again?” She demanded. He didn't answer because he was trying to get out of the wide padded tattoo parlor chair in a hurry. But Meryl didn't hesitate to shoves his shoulders back down and his ass right back into the chair. “What do you mean again?”

“f*ck,” He said and he would not look at her. The way he bit his lip and how his fists ball make her feel fond, like she’d seen him try not to cry a hundred times. This new illusion or true insight that she knows him, right down to how he held himself and what it meant, like she’d known him her whole life settled over her so quickly and fully → He was so close to breaking and it hurt to look at him like this. Some part of her mind was screaming that she’d just met him, but it wasn't a feeling she could put down or on a high shelf.

“Hey,” She said firmly, “Look at me.”

But he shook his head like she was a thing he could ignore if he’d just be a little stronger about it.

And then as gentle as she knew how, like he was delicate as a little baby chick, like the kind her class had hatched in third grade all soft and beeping, she said, “This has happened to me before too.”

And when he looked at her again, finally looked at her again with those wonderful honey deep eyes all wet with his jaw hard set, she thought she'd fall into them if she was a little bug in amber and die there too if she could.

“Yeah well He didn’t want me-”

The anger that rose in her chest, hot and spreading, caught her of guard, “Who wouldn't want you?” She demanded. Like it was that easy. Like it was that simple. But that was how the gease had laid over her, the easy knowing of him bubbling up into a staunch protective desire. And he, helpless to the absurdity of meeting his soulmate twice, laughed so hard he started to cry in earnest, finding something in her eyes that wasn't drowning yet some how worse.

“I should go-” he said getting up. This time she didn't stop him, couldn't if she tried, something in her bones refused to let her. This she knew too, somehow was a type of magic, like the guitar case, like the marks on their hands, like the taste of the curse that still lingered in her empty bed. It didn't hurt her, this spell he'd woven into her, so she forgave it as he grabbed up his jacket and his guitar.

"I'm sorry," He said as he made it to the door.

But Meryl Stryfe was stubborn, and he hadn't accounted for that when he'd cast his quick cheap trick of a spell into her. And for his hubris he was pursued to the door as she snapped the magic coil holding her in place by will alone → so she could snatch his hand into hers. He turned in wide eyed surprise as she said: “You can stay ...I'd like you to stay.”

Looking down at the force and certainty there in Meryl's storm bright eyes Wolfwood realized it wasn't like last time, like when Vash held him in his ocean deep gaze and left him. He wasn't drowning at all this time; More like all at once he'd remembered how to breath.

Chapter 4

Chapter Text

She took Wolfwood home by the hand as the weight of the curse continued to unwind from him slowly and lay itself down slowly into Meryl’s life to erase their ocean eyed man. Wolfwood’s mind went round in round in a rabble of squealing static as they walked, as he took a hot shower in a strange bathroom, as he discovered mens clothing Meryl couldn’t see in the drawers, as Meryl kept looking at him like some one she knew.

This had to be a love spell, he thought, some new evil to invade his life. That was how the curse had worked for years and years, no rest, no quarter and it was so heavy because it was so simple- nothing good stayed. And lord, Meryl seemed so very good. As good as the ocean eyed man who’d taken one look at him and made the smart move to run. He wanted to pretend that hadn’t hurt him so bad he’d gone stumbling into a tattoo parlor wanting to get the mark covered completely. To pretend that he wasn’t afraid that it had power now. To pretend he wasn’t ashamed that the mark had just hurt too much to look at it.

Wanting things always made the curse worse.

The curse was worming it’s way into Meryl obscuring the things in her own home, sweeping the traces of Him out of her mind. First the Mens clothes she knew she should have but couldn’t find, then bit by bit by time the sunset the gease was fixed and her eyes slide over every trace of Vash in her own home.

It was the kind of curse that couldn’t be spoken.

But clean and warm and with a cup of hot tea soaking into his gnarled fingers he’d tried to assure her; “Something’s missing, you’re right, I know what it is. But I don’t know his name.”

“I think I know how magic works,” She said into her mug, “But I can’t remember.”

For the curse to have to remove her so fully from the man-who-didn’t-want-him’s life sat heavy in his gut. How much of a good thing could one person be?

“Mmm,” He said helpfully.

For Wolfwood as the curse lifted came the rebound of sensation and feeling as acute and terrible as the curse that had seeped the color out of life, dulled his taste, and his heart. The tea was so warm and the honey so sweet and the tea a burst of color in his mouth now, almost too much to bear. And without the curse to shield him from Meryl’s kindness everything about being in the same room with her hurt. Hurt the way his back hurt after he put down the Punisher after a long haul uphill- the way it only hurt once the weight was put down and then trickled down his spine and into his marrow. The weight of that curse had ground him to a fine ash, like the last drag of a cigarette, and he was only really aware of what he had been carrying now that it was gone. He’d only been able to push himself through every motion of it because while it happened he couldn’t really feel it all, not really- and even then it had still hurt so bad he’d turned to anything magical or mundane to stave it off.

“You kinda look like sh*t,” She said after a while, as the tea she wasn’t drinking got cold. “When was the last time you slept inside?”

“A long time,” He said and then; “You really want me to stay?”

“If you need a place to crash, yeah.”

Everything in him screamed at him to tell her that she didn’t know him, that she shouldn't let him in her house like this? But no small part of him wanted to catch a break so damn bad, his weakness was that he always grabbed for the good thing no matter how many times the cursed pried it out of his fingers bleeding and crying. Some logical part of him knew the curse was lifting, and some part feared it was a trick and it would only be worse than anything else it had wrought before. It all made his head spin. A near vertigo set in as they ate cheap noodles in the cozy kitchen. And he kept spinning and spinning as he took his shoes off and stretched out on the couch- Comfortable and vertical and clean and warm for the first time in so long he could cry.

He slept like the dead.

-

“Are you sick?” Meryl asked him when she woke him. The sun was pouring in the apartment windows and she sat on the edge of the couch near his hip- she was so damn small she just fit there like a puzzle piece. She had made a nest of him on the couch, tucking him in with a thick comforter that was so soft and smelled so much of lavender and chamomile. So good it hurt like nails on a chalk board. And as his sense deigned to cooperate with him he guessed he’d slept a long while, longer he thought from her face than he meant to.

“I had a curse break- takes a lot out of a guy,” he said, voice thick with sleep he hadn’t heard out of himself in a long time. He didn’t understand how it was lifted, that part still made no damn sense. Was it Meryl? Did meeting both his soul mates within forty two hours just break curses?

She reached her hand out to touch the back of her hand on his forehead as if he had a fever.

“You really look like sh*t,” She told him for the second time.

He sure felt like it now that consciousness was spilling into him along with all that sunshine.

So he told her the truth, “There’s something I’ve been taking for the curse and I don’t have anymore of it and I guess I don’t need it” he said. “I was getting ready to go back- to beg for more- after I got this damn thing covered up.”

“so your going through withdrawal,” She asked. She was familiar with that, on a sort of academic level she wasn’t sure how she knew.

“Oh that too probably,” he said miserably. And so the next three days passed while he lay on Meryl’s couch or on her bathroom floor. And though it hurt, all the feeling came back in his hands and the color came back into the world and the blanket smelling of lavender hurt him less and less. He did his level best to say as few words to Meryl as possible through it, though she tried.

-

He’d drawn the bath because Meryl had left him unattended. She’d gone to work, and she in all her perfect naivety had told him to hold down the fort and gone on with her life. As if magic hadn’t stripped part of her life and love away, as if she hadn’t brought home some stray into her house she only thought she knew. He was still quiet adamant it was a love spell- and he had told her that. Over and over. Until she laughed a little when he brought it up. But he’d drawn the bath, because she was gone and the tub was there, and he knew, he knew in his bones this could not last- and he wanted a bath. And he sat there, knees drawn up to his chest in the shallow tub, in the hot water, watching one of those ten dollar lush bath bombs unmake itself in the water in a glory of pink bubblegum between his ankles.

When the bath bomb had finished his performance he eased himself down into the warmth of it and for the first time in a long time, since he left the court for sure, since maybe before he got the fae court even- felt no pain at all. And looking up at the crooked bathroom ceiling tiles asked the dusty vent softly but with a lot of feeling, “What the f*ck is happening to me?”

He woke to to his hair being smoothed away from his face as Meryl asked; “You awake?”

He peaked his eyes open and said mmhm, because he was naked and pruny and she was so close that he’d feel something bigger than he had hands for if he looked at her too much.

“You’re not allowed to drown,” She said.

“I wont.”

She put her hand on his cheek and he didn’t even flinch. She leaned in close and he said softly before her lips found any part of him, “Don’t”

“Please?” She whispered.

And with his eye still shut just said to her, “I’ll break.”

“I don’t mind.”

“Just. Don’t.”

And she didn’t. And he waited and she still didn’t until he opened his eyes and looked at her looking at him like he made her so sad. And he’d been right the feeling welled up in him bigger than he could hold and sat in him like a toad. Something soft and awful slipping between his fingers like that one time he’d spilled his own guts in the throne room. And feeling it so soft and awful he thought for the first time since she’d asked him to stay, that maybe it wasn’t some new terrible Love spell come to fill his life with evil and regret. Because she didn’t kiss him, buck naked in a luke warm pink bubble bath. She didn’t. There was no spell that could resist the narrative power of that.

Instead she’d checked the temperature of the water and asked, “Can you at least tell me your name, yet?"

"Oh.... we don't do that where I'm from."

"And where the f*ck would that be?" She asked. She cranked the faucet back on with a bit of warm water.

"Fairy..." he began to say and then choked a little on "Land."

“Are you f*cking with me?”

“No, I mean, I’m from Cincinnati originally. I think. I mean, I had a Bengals shirt, who else is a Bengal’s fan?” He said like this was a good joke. She looked at him like she thought the idea that he was from Ohio was more outrageous than Fairy Land. And that was the joke and the joke was for his own benefit because he had in-fact been socialized by fae, so he laughed. And before she could complain that he was laughing at her he said; “Listen hot stuff, this isn’t real-” He said making the water splash as motioned between them, “I appreciate you, I do, but you don’t want what I’m bringing into your home. I was banished by the king of the faeries. That curse of mine- of yours, now, it's Your Man's now some how. It’s-” And he can’t say it. He can’t explain that it’s the King Beneath that had laid him bare and miserable, and how easily he could that and more and worst.

“You’re being stubborn.”

“You’ll thank me later. ‘sides, you’re another man’s great catch. Don’t get yourself twisted over it.”

“He told me he met you. He held my hand and he told me- He told me something so important. So you got to trust me instead, so you can thank me later.”

“Can we not have this argument while I’m in a god damn bubble bath?”

“Nope. That thing cost like twelve bucks, you did this to yourself.”

“Yep. No. changed my mind,” he said easing himself down into the bubbles and the warming water, “Drowning now,” he said in listless deadpan.

She reached her hand down and splashed him before he could make good on his threat and the retaliation came instantly. Meryl yelped as a wave of pink bubble bath spilled onto her and the floor and she never giving up so easy decided it was time to drown him herself then. She laughed and it was so contagious he thought it’d kill him like the plague, made him forget he didn't know her, made him forget he was extremely naked until the pink bubble bath. He laughed so hard he coughed and Meryl looked so annoyed as she grabbed some towels he felt certain she wouldn’t try to kiss him again after being stupid like that- until he caught her smirking in the mirror as she left.

“f*ck,” he informed the bathroom ceiling, which he considered his only ally now in these trying times.

-

When he’d gotten himself back together and dry and dressed he discovered he felt human. He walked the length of the apartment and noted it was extremely well warded while Meryl thunked around in kitchen- she said she was baking her feelings, whatever that meant. The wards were more interesting to him than baked goods because they didn’t taste the way he imagined Meryl’s handiwork might. She was straight forward like a bullet or a freight train, something that hit fast and hard. And this was wispy, evasive like a storm. It was also Milk and honey sweet, fae flavored and powerful. And the anchors of the protection were woven into the humble space ran through all the things that had faded out of Meryl’s notice and more. This was their man’s handy work and that made him nervous. Reminded him how much he had looked like the King Beneath when he’d first saw him- he was forgetting now what the man had said. Only that he had looked into him and found him lacking.

Well there it was ;The other shoe,the looming Danger, a Changling, the worst kind too, in the opposite direction as he was. A fae who thought themself a people was not the sort of thing you could predict. And Meryl couldn't tell him anything about him.

He stood in contemplation of the window, facing the bay and the soft gray smudge of islands beyond. And on the the window sill were a collection of house plants aching with thirst. Wolfwood’s tie to the court was still strong enough for growing things to reach for him like that though he wish they wouldn’t. Trees had little that interested him to say. All in all there was a collection of dark leafy specimens, a couple of orchids of the variety sold at grocery stores and a fat dangerous looking cactus. Out on the tiny deck was a little pine tree, a great pot of geraniums and deciduous bonsai- also a red bicycle. He doesn’t think too much when he obliges the thirsty things with the water from the cup he’s holding and he was giving each a little sip when he felt Meryl stop in the doorway behind him to watch.

“Yeah-” He said reluctantly like he was admitting to crimes, “Keep moving, I’m watering your plants they’re needy.”

“I don’t-” She says with a strained voice, “Keep plants?”

He lets the sharp inhale sit in his chest like he’s holding a hit. Theses were His plants. The man-that-didn’t-want-him. The guy that didn't want him so badly he left Meryl too, and he hated the plants by proxy for it with a sudden burst of intensity.

but when he turned she was crying. Really crying. And for all the new curse made her familiar to him, for all the way he knew this was was her rawest unmasked self he’d seen yet- for all that he knew what it meant- that these were His things and it was one thing missing from her life too much to bear. For all the gift of understanding her he’d been giving her, it did not come with instructions.

“I can water them for you,” He said without hesitation. But she was caught in a great heaving hiccup as he set down he half empty mason jar. “Hey,” He said like she was in trouble, and when she looked up in alarm he stepped over and wrapped his arms around her. Because like the the good smelling blanket and sunshine and the bubbles had hurt, the way all the good soft things had hurt so bad in their newest and their rawness these past few days- nothing hurt more than watching Meryl Stryfe cry.

He opened his arm and held her. If this was a love spell, well he would be sorry for the evil that would come of it, but she was crying. Big breathy sobs into her hands because there were plants in her own home she couldn’t perceive. Plants the belonged to some one that clearly loved her. And the cruelty was not lost on him.

She leaned into him and he let her cry right there into him. He silently swore when he found Him, he’d kick his ass so soundly he’d feel it for years. But right now, in the present, with Meryl he didn’t know what to do, not really, so he just stood there, just held her and learned that sometimes that was enough.

Chapter 5

Chapter Text

After Meryle had calmed and awkwardly extracted herself from him to check her cookies in the oven he decided to go digging. Because if Meryl couldn’t perceive the house plants then he was sure she also didn’t see the strange little suction cupped bowl holders, the curved rocking knife or the silicone mats scattered across the kitchen. He pondered the one handed xbox controller in the livingroom, but didn’t know enough about modern electronics to know if that was regular or not. Each little device was charged with one handed intention- not strong enough to be a spell, just an ambient aura of cooperativeness that a practitioner might imbue into his or her everyday tools. He remembered the man only had one arm, the red jacket had the left sleeve tied in a knot. He remembered it very clearly, so this was not surprising- though the number of gadgets was.

Meryl was occupied in the kitchen with what looked like a quadruple batch of cookies- baking her feelings was going to take a while he guessed.

“Can I see if any of His shirts will fit?” He asked. The apartment wasn’t big and the far end of the kitchen let out to the bedroom door just in in sight.

She looked up, stricken for a moment and then softened.

“Yeah, I guess that things kinda tattered.”

He looked down at the dress shirt like he was just noticing, he’d kind of been thinking he was telling a lie when he asked, but his shirt was filled with large tattered holes and dark unpleasant stains- each one an injury that his body had hidden all record of. Not even a recent trip through the laundromat could restore it to any kind of glory

“Let me know if you find anything weird in his stuff, since you can see it all?”

“Sure,” he said and looked at her for too long with too much eye contact. The both dithered on who was going to look away first and Wolfwood was strongest and broke away first. He paused though at the bedroom door and looked back over his shoulder, she was really going to let him in there unattended? It was trusting of her it hurt. He was legitimately snooping and she was just going to let him?

The room was big, with one of those sliding mirrored closest and he walls were painted navy with a single pop of orange on the left hand side. Covered in art, and tacked up photos and articles like a dorm room. Twinkle lights. More plants aching to be watered on the windowsills. The bed was a queen with dark blue sheets and old fashioned headboard- on it was a spray painted gold sigil that caught his eyes. Just a ward, against nightmares, against interlopers, against insomnia, against fear. Strong too. It, like all the things in the house the one armed man had left charged with intention, called to him. And the soft inviting place his two bound soulmates had been sleeping for years sang to him like a siren song.

This was not his home. This was not his room. That was not. His. Bed.

And still he looked at it a little too long with want and terror. The curse had passed away from him some how, and he feared, oh feared that it would come back only after he had grown soft and weak to all the temptation that was Meryl and the hole of her other man he could so so easily step into and fill.

Going through the closet Wolfwood discovered that Meryl was as fashionable as he’d gotten the impression and that her missing man and he were about the same height. Though all his dress shirts were neatly tailored to accommodate one arm and the jeans were all nine sizes too small for him.

“This guy’s proportions cannot be real,” He muttered folding the jeans back up.

The Man that didn’t want him had told him that he was changeling- right away. One of the first things he had said was that he liked milk honey; polite court speak to tell him he was fae changeling. And it made him worry to look at the spindly jeans that not even a photoshopped model could slip into about what was he under the glamour really? Fae came in several forms but the tall skinny kind- the high Fae, an elf it you would was the only kind he could imagine fitting into these jeans. He’d never seen one ungalmoured not completely anyway, the cool skin tone or too many teeth out of the corner of his eye, the flash of iridescent wings maybes. They liked to swap their children for changelings so that their glamours would be fixed and subconscious efforts forever.

Woflwood was himself a changeling, though the word was used for both ends of the human and fae swap. Though a fae changeling getting married and settling down and having a job was odd. Not unheard of. Just. Strange. A little further digging brought him to the the t-shirts, which fit tight and were not at all to his tastes. They were a mix of local bands he’d seen before seen on posters around town or stupid cartoon animals or botanical drawings. All black shirts at least. Well except the pink one, the most worn and sad looking on in the lot. Who would miss such a tattered old thing, Not Meryl’s missing man who had everything. So that was what he took.

He wish it didn’t say ‘donut worry’ but he changed out of his mangled dress shirt and looked at himself in the mirrored sliding door. He looked almost normal- more so than his all black techbro disguise. His hair was still damp and swept back from where he’d anxiously run his hands though it to accidentally style it. And it was just unfamiliar enough that he felt rendered a different guy in a very stupid shirt. What remained of him looking back was his tattoo- and that he liked. He’d keep that part of himself actually if he became that guy who was looking back.

Could he really ever be that though?

He didn’t want to want to be a different guy in a stupid shirt honestly. He’d wanted to be anyone but Nicholas D. Wolfwood formerly of Cincinnati since he’d been old enough to understand that he was never going to get back to Ohio. Most people would kill to get out of the state, people joked about it and he here he was having killed a lot of people yearning to go back. He still sometimes thought about crawling into it like a warm bed- like he could ever go home. Like he could ever stay here. Like he’d ever lay in that great big bed behind him.

No. There was no way the curse was going to stay gone, to stay lifted. This was new and elaborate, but nothing good stayed and everything everything everything was far too good. He shook his head like a dog and marched out of the room, shut the door a little too hard behind him and then stopped short. He’d forgotten to snoop the rest of the room, his anxieties rendering him preciously into a new more honest man he’d fled from in the mirror.

“Meryl,” he said coming to sit down at the kitchen table.

She had gone through the motions of putting herself back together and continue to bake her feelings. For all the thoroughness of the forgetting that had been cast on Meryl non of it seemed to have rubbed off on him yet. Which was suspicious, in so much that it was not how his curse usually worked. If the curse was changing, if it was mounting a new more horrible second offense he needed to test the edges of it.

“Yeah?” She said not looking up from where she was sitting on the floor in front of the oven. Her legs were tucked up under her knee length skirt and her dangly earrings were caught in her and her collar from her fidgeting with them so much. She was a wreck and every part of him wanted to scoop her up and lay her smooth, maybe fold her up into pleasure afterwords- but he was trying to focus.

“I think your Forgetting is separate from the curse.” He phrased it that way because he wanted it to be true.

“Is that good or bad?”

He shrugged. “Can you perceive this?” he asked holding up one of the little bowl stabilizing suction cups out on the table.

“Only...after you picked it up…” She said carefully.

“Mmm,” Wolfwood said to himself, “He only had one arm so there’s a lot of little gadgets all over. So if you see a little gadget, don’t panic okay?”

“I-” She said, “I’ll try not to.”

Wolfwood fumbled with the silicone bowl stabilizer like a worry stone for a minute. And then another. He watched Meryl gaze into the oven like a wizard pondering her orb until the only sounds in the kitchen were his breathing and Meryl’s and the buzz of the florescent lights, the hum of the oven and the dull chime of the apartments magic wards. He broke the silence as sound from the outside world started to creep in- the shifting of footsteps upstairs, the sound of tires outside-

“Meryl,” he said in exactly the same tone as before.

“Yeah?” she said and looked a little less wet when she looked up at him from her station down in front of the oven.

“Humor me here, do you remember what to do if you find a little gadget around the house?” he asked and waved the one in his hand.

“What kind of gadget?”

“Little accessibility doodads- like this one,” he said gently, “For cooking with one hand and stuff.”

“Oh. I haven’t seen anything like that-”

“But do you remember when I told you about them?”

“yeah-” She said sounding distant and a little confused. She looked back into the oven for a moment in thought, like she might find something in the rising dough there to steady her and the conversation died right there. He let it sit a moment. Counting to ninety in his mind, trying not to let all the soft sounds of the world bleed in.

“Meryl?”

“Yeah?” She said again. Like she had answered the two times, open and guileless and sad.

“It’s gonna be alright.”

She frowned, more of a pout, she didn’t believe him or did she know he was trying to say what he thought she wanted to hear? She looked back into the oven and asked, “How do you feel about chocolate chips, I forgot to ask?”

“I f*cking love chocolate chip, yeah,” He said dully.

The next few days found him eating an abundance of pinterest perfect chocolate chip cookies and laying on the couch feeling full of lead and laying on the floor feeling like his soul was going to float out of his body. Sometimes, when he could manage it he did the dishes with a mechanical motion because there was little else to do when he didn’t understand how the xbox worked. Or sometimes he found himself leaned against Meryl’s bedroom door listening to the muffled sound of her tears beneath the drone of Adele’s album after work.

She was still going to work everyday.

She had two damn jobs.

When his body finally cooperated with him, having worked itself out how to operate without the constant pressure and pain and substance, he set him self to chores. And it was, he thought, a couple days until Meryl noted it near the end of week two of him staying on her couch. If she wasn’t under the shadow of his curse, if she hadn’t been forced to forget, if he was still cursed himself- he would have already left. Hell he hadn’t gone outside more than the balcony to smoke since he got there.

Not that he knew what he was still doing here.

“Did you do laundry?” She asked.

“Yeah.”

She just stood and looked at him from the doorway to the bedroom he had only ever stepped foot in to snoop.

“And the dishes? And the trash? And- “

“Yeah.” he said. His time on the street after expulsion from the court had been maddeningly idle, but always with the crushing pressure of his curse, the rain, the cold, hunger, and necessity looming at all times. And now, idle, even in a strange place, he felt the familiar need to keep it all tidy and in order just so he could feel like he could breathe.

She deflated against the door jam and looked at him wistful and annoyed, “Will you let me kiss you yet?”

He froze right where he was, with the blanket up over his head seated on the couch.

“You don’t want that.”

“I have wanted you to kiss me since I looked at you in my studio- and now you do the dishes too.”

“That’s the problem, you’re not thinking about it right,” he said wisely.

She threw her hands up over here head like she grasp and strangle god.

“Come here,” he said and motioned at her. He could see it on her face, in the whole way she held herself that she was hopeful that he’d changed his mind. But he hadn’t. And she could see that also in the set of his jaw and the cool of his eyes. But she did come to him- and he was struck with a bemused blossom of wonder in his chest that she did- that he would do the same. If she ever called for him he’d come- and he felt this a man who never gave his name, whose enemies had his name in their mouths to this day.

“Look at me Meryl.”

“I am looking you and you are not kissing me,” She said standing so close to him and looking down where he sat still swaddled in his blanket. She looked down at him like not kissing her was the greatest disappointment of her life. He had to focus on looking at her hand after that, sometimes she said words or gave looks that hit like the stories about bards in the legends. So instead of looking at her and disappointing her more he took her hands in his.

“What do you think those marks of our mean?” he asked and ran his thumb over it. The marks themselves were unremarkable to his magic senses, though felt hot beneath his fingers.

“I think we’re soulmates or something like it, we’re bound- in a magic way. In a knowing you kind of way.”

“Yes,” He said in agreement, “So when I tell you that I’m not going to kiss you, but that I agree that we’re bound in the same way. What does that mean to you?”

She quirked an eyebrow, “Are you making fun of me? Don’t talk to me like I’m twelve-” but he tightened his hold on both her hands.

“I’m walking you windershins around your curses. What does that mean to you if both things are true?”

“I-” She said becoming a little distressed, the way she always did when she bumped up against the big curse or against the forgetting laid on her. “That you know something I don’t?”

“Mm,” he said neutrally. Because such an admiral of trust and not knowing was very unfae and struck a chord of second hand embarrassment in him. Despite that he thought she was so smart and so strong. The way she’d cleanly broken through only spell he’d tried to lay on her when they met, and how hard this one was wrapped around her. How he could feel that she was fighting it all the time even if she wasn’t aware of it.

He swapped his hands with hers to only have her left, and he was selfish and touched her so gently from wrist to palm. She opened her hand for him and he massaged the meat of her palm with both thumbs.

“So my next question-”

“Yeah-” She said distracted by the heat of his hand and electric pound of her own heart.

“What’s it mean when you have a ring on your left hand, on the second to last finger?” And as he asked he let his fingers curls around the fat blue gem set in a bouquet of tiny fake diamonds on her ring finger. It was pretty. The central sapphire was real and charged- she liked to kiss it when she was nervous.

“Oh, that’s where you wear a wedding ring,” She said and kept looking at him. And he brought the ring to his mouth and kissed it.

“Exactly,” he said and held her hand there to his lips still.

“Will you tell me about him?” She asked.

“You’ll just forget,” he said softly.

“But for a moment I might remember.”

So he told her what he told her last time she had asked him to kiss her and had to take her hands in his to show her the wedding ring. He said, “He has one arm, a red a jacket and looks like a dweeb.”

He left out that her husband did not want him. That he had left instead of wanting him. That he had done this to her.

“You love him very much despite this,” he said carefully and with feeling.

“Maybe because of it,” She said to the ring.

“Mm, perhaps,” Wolfwood sagely. He traced the lines of her palm, the broad sweeps of her life written there in the crinkles of it. He kissed her there and let her have her hand back.

“You look like a little babushka all burrito’d up like this,” She said and cupped his face with both hands. He was still wearing the blanket like a hood, still feeling hung over from the curse, feeling tired and soft like the insides of that one batch of under cooked cookies he’d eaten anyway.

“Meryl,” He said lowly.

“I remembered him a little, just right now- he’s blond and his eyes are like- like the baja blast soda at taco bell? And he is a dweeb and I love him so much… So I’m going to kiss you, to make a point,” She said and tilted his head up so she could lean down to kiss him. The sound he made was startled, nearly pained. It was a chaste kiss, but not against Meryl’s best efforts to persuade him.

Her hands on his face and the weight of the blanket mad for him a compelling and cozy cage. She bit his lower lip soft and playful and that was it that was just too much, so he melted, let himself kiss her back, lips parting the barest bit to accommodate her efforts- she smiled into him with a hum, proud of her handiwork, glad that it worked.

She pulls back and looked down at him, “See, not so bad,” She said tucking some of his hair behind his ear, “Did I make my point? I- I think I forgot my point- but I think I made it- Dammit,” She said to herself.

“You…” he said reaching up to pull her down into her lap, “Made your point.”

She let out a a delight sound as he opened his arms and the blanket and pulled her down into the couch with him. She couldn’t remember exactly how she’d done it but finally some one was holding her and it was all she had wanted since everything had gone wrong. He kissed her forehead her cheek and just held her there, like he had when she’d seen the plants, his stubble scratching against her neck.

“Isn’t this better?” She asked raking her hand through his secret wealth of thick soft hair.

And because of years of living with the curse, even though he knew it was gone- for now- knew another man had taken it and run. He said; “Won’t last.”

“Shush,” She said. She wished he’d stop looking at her like he was so sorry. And he wish she’d could perceive the whole picture, but it wasn’t her fault. He kept her there with him beneath the covers in the nest on the couch she’d been packing pillows and blankets onto since he’d gotten there. He kept her there, the way she’d kept him this past week in her cozy life- kept him in this space in the world he’d stolen from another man- he held her there and kissed his soulmate’s wife as deep and long as she wanted him to.

Chapter 6

Chapter Text

Meryl had seen him lift his big guitar case experimentally and put it back down about half a dozen times over the course of his stay. And since he’d gotten his strength and his brain his bake from the other things she suspected had him by the throat other than the curse he had just started to consistently have the house clean when she got home from work. when one morning both him and it are gone she assumed the worst that can be assumed of the man who wont give her a name and looked fit to cry after she’d kissed him last night.

“Oh c’mon,” She said to the couch and the neatly folded blankets and stacked pillows.

She’d tried to get him to come to bed with her last night after getting him to make out on the couch and maybe that had really been to much. They were soulmates or something, emphasis on something, it was magical, a binding she could taste even now and was good. She was so sure it was a boon, a blessing, something good- no matter how much he tried to insinuate maybe it wasn’t to be trusted. She liked to think she was stronger than a love spell and that she could trust her gut. She didn’t think anything, not even magic to fake the way she felt when he let her touch him. When she looked at him she was more home than when she stood in the middle of her empty living room.

She opened the slider to the deck in a rush and stepped out into the morning light with the little apple tree and potted plants there. Se couldn’t see the potted plants till she nearly knocked one over- and fumbled it into her hands. The bonsaied apple tree’s leaves were turning orange this time of year and it struck her how fat and gnarled it was for how small it was. She decided it must be old, even though it was so small as she set it back on the railing.

“Sorry,” She told it.

It did not answer.

She looked out at the houses below, the apartment was atop a steep hill and the rest of the neighborhood spilled down it towards the bay. Her nameless man wasn’t at the bus stop. Or down in the empty playground- she wasn’t sure why she looked for him on the swings.

“f*cking hell, my guy,” she complained and went back inside.

-

The YWCA harm reduction clinic that Zazie liked best was a place he knew well. He’d loitered outside or down the block a dozen times. And on approach he saw some of the same old timers he’d come to know from bumming cigarettes and trading food stamped for beers.

“You look good in pink, boyo~” One of them called.

Wolfwood faulted the door in his hand.

“You too,” He said on gut instinct, a rote scripted interaction response. And the other two guys with their cigarettes and back packs started cackling.

“No sh*t, you look good,” Said the other, younger, still gray. “Some one take you inside? You get a girl?”

“Maybe,” He said and slipped insider, his guitar case clacking against the glass door as he did.

He waited his turn at the front counter and the mupishly rapscallion woman with pink hair behind it smiled and said his least favorite words; “Hey friend, how can I help you?”

“I’m looking to talk with my friend's case worker. She said he’s good. He’s blond, got one arm, wears a red jacket?”

The receptionists face fell and to his surprise she said, “Oh, Vash isn’t with us anymore- I’m sorry- Oh I mean- he’s not dead-”

Apparently Wolfwood’s face had done something at the phrasing and she was backpedaling quickly.

“He just left the org! promise! Bad wording, my bad!”

“Oh,” Wolfwood said carefully.

He pulled the spell into his fingers and then into the air and then into the woman’s mind with a small flick of his fingers.

Just the smallest charm as he says; “Do you know why?”

“Oh no, not really I think he must have burned out,” She said thoughtfully, “Huge bummer. But we can still help you out-” She said passing him an intake form.

“Oh- I um, I’m good actually.”

They looked doubtful for a moment, but he had cast a charm on them, “Alright, I mean- do you wanna get coffee later?”

Oh. Too much charm. Maybe he hadn’t needed to charm them at all? All that time with the grudge he’d had to lean so hard on a little magic to make even the littlest thing go his way.

“No. Thank. You?” He said.

“Oh I don’t even know why I said that hahahahaha” They said but sort of mechanically turned and walked toward the back in growing terror.

He tapped his hands on the counter and glanced at the other staff member eyeing him as they helped some one else with their forms. He wasn’t used to people perceiving him like that. With the curse it was like he was below anyone’s attention positive or negative- well usually negative when he did attract anything to him.

“I should go,” He said just to himself before doing just that.

He walked the streets just mulling it over for a long while, letting his feet take him where they wanted to go. He’d most his life topside that way and he hadn’t considered he should change his ways now. So his feet took him to the old art district with eh brick sidewalks and narrow building and the great plaza full of sculptures and hanging lights. He’d slept here a few times but in general it was a tourist trap.

It was good for one thing though and that was busking. And as he looked around to where his feet had taken him- for a blond head, for a red jacket- his eyes found tourists in bright puffy winter jackets and locals in drab black and pastel hoodies and the lone man in shorts. Part of it was habit. Play to eat. Or steal to eat. And usually it was play to eat and have to steal anyway. It was something to do. And he had been grateful all this time that the sword was strong enough that the curse could not take the instrument from him like it liked to take everything else.

His feet were usually right and nine tenths of magic was intuition and the other nth was intention. He’d play here and think and see what came of it, see what he could call up out of the city now that he wasn’t curse and had intentions of his own to cast.

He set his guitar case down with a thunk and opened it and inside it two things were true at once;

there was a guitar/
/ there was a sword

And neither the guitar or the sword were separate from each other though neither were they the same item disguised. The two things had been bound, thought a magic he couldn’t help to find similar to what bound him to Meryl. The way the two things where linked as one into something that could turn inside out at will.

He liked to tell people who had enough magical sense to notice that yeah, sometimes he pulled a sword out of the case- that it was the case that was arcane.

He tuned it idly and sat on the edge of one of the sculptures pundits and twiddled and rolled it over in his mind.

Vash- that was his name- because the woman at the center remembered him. Which meant the spell, and was starting to think it was a spell separate from the curse, was not wide or strong enough to remove him from reality. Just Meryl maybe.

He twiddled out something intuitive and baroque on the old guitar, the kind of old world renaissance sound that had died out of this part of the world or never arrived. The kind of thing a faerie king might like as background noise while his executioner’s hands were not otherwise employed.

He cast his mind wide, into the earth and into the sky, and thought to himself where is my man? What should I do? How can I make sense of how Meryl’s storm bright eyes make him melt. How should a man with two soulmates already wed when one is missing? And these questions he pushed out his mind, where they did him no good, and into his hands and then into the strings and into the sound and bid some kind of answer come to him like a fisherman casting in the sea. Save his line was the melody and the sea was the city.

The first sound of some one walking close by to drop cash in his case catches him of guard. When he looked up from his scuffed dress shoes people were watching. People were paying attention. There was a phone trained on him. He went hot in the face with so many eyes on him. Not since he’d come up from underhill had anyone paid him that much mind. It took a sort of hazy moment to process it; That he had called and this audience had answered.
He had been casting the same spell for so long and so loud that now that the muffle of his curse was gone he had without trying exceeded his wildest expectations.

He stopped playing not because he had reached any satisfying conclusion to the song, or his thoughts or the half hearted spell- But because he just couldn’t focus with them all there and still they clapped.

“Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate it. Wow.” he said as various folks tossed him a little something.

He was hopeful as he scanned the crowd, but nowhere among them was a blond head in a red jacket. He was reluctant to play again. Not sure what he was playing for, if not him. He stood there unsure of how he felt to play to a crowd again. He should be looking for Vash- that was his name- For Meryl’s sake. Not doing this for his own sake. He had tried to cast into the world for something useful- not this- not on purpose.

He couldn’t help it though. He played until his case was full of dollars and his toes got cold. He couldn't help because he was only good at two things and the other one was bloodshed. It was nice to be listened to and maybe the city would listen, maybe the spell would take and it wouldn't just be for his own sake.

To warm his toes he walked. He walked where his feet would take him his mind still buzzing with the meditative melody of spell and they delivered him-

home

at the base of the hill Meryl’s apart presided over and with a bit of reluctance he walked on purpose back to her. He didn’t have keys and he’d left before she had so he sat on the the door mat, guitar case in his lap, like he had sat and been passed over so many times on so many streets.

But when Meryl came bobbing up the steps she looked at him like- he wasn’t sure because he didn’t think anyone had looked at him or anything like that before.

“There you are,” She lightly like she’d been looking for him, like that smile was for him, “Where did you get to this morning, I’ve been worried all day?”

“...out?” He chanced to say.

“Uh huh,” She said doubtfully and pulled out her keys, “You’re feeling better then?”

“Yeah,” he said watching her open the door above him with out moving himself out of the way. She opened the door and stepped over him to do so. “So do I need to invite you in again, or what?”

“N-no?” he said pulling himself up.

“Not a vampire then?” She ask brightly.

He bulked as he was stepping over the threshold, “You can’t just ask some one that?”

“Well?” she prompted. He whole face was set to delight and mischief, but it was a serious question and he was a formal man raised by fae-

“Not technically.”

“What?” She said all pretense of humor dropping.

Oh he’d f*cked it up. He did not shut the door behind him. He couldn’t’ bear to lie to her. He could cast charms and pay-no-abstentions so easily on others, but he couldn’t bear it with her. He’d rather be cast out of her sight and it made him feel like a beat dog now.

“I was under hill a long time. I need things that have life force, things made with intention, I have to seep the goodness out of things now and again. Is that- okay- I mean- does that count?”

Do you still want me?

She’s looking at him like she’s seeing him for the first time.

Please, not again.

“I don’t know. I don’t know much about all- that,” She said carefully, “Are you going to come in?”

They stood there, locked in the exchanged look. This clown to clown communication their binding allowed them to dance in. It did not unfortunately actually help them make words to move the conversation along.

“I was joking, please, just- shut the door,” She said looking so intently at him. Looking at him like she was so sorry, and no one had looked at him like that. Not in a long time.

“Okay?” He said and closed it with more attention to it that it strictly needed. The task let him look away from her, turn his shoulder to her, as she processed the truth that he was more changeling than human- if that even meant anything to her. And when he turned back she was unpacking her canvas bag with the Persephone print on it like it the most important task in the world.

“So- how was your day? I was worried, you were gone this morning.” She asked again, as if that last bit of conversation hadn’t happened. And he was glad of it. So glad he answered honestly.

“I went busking.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” He said.

“Do you do that on purpose or are you- just like that?” She asked looking like she was suddenly close to the edge of her temper or tears. Both.

Wolfwood bit his lip and swallowed hard. “listen” He said persuasively and then followed up with a profound awkward silence.

When he couldn't’ actually thing of anything true to tell her, she said, “So your just like that?”

“Yeah,” He admitted.

And she couldn’t help it she laughed, “Okay, sure. You went busking. Got it.”

And so the next couple of days revolved around the sun like a ballerina en pointe, symmetrical and evenly until they formed weeks. Wolfwood left the house a little before her and returned a little before her. Sometimes the laundry was mysteriously done. Sometimes they went shopping like they were normal- and she could pretend they’d been dating for a while, even if she still didn’t know his name. And so this nameless man, who only sometimes let her kiss him made himself mundane inside the shape of her life. Despite the way their conversations often struck her heart like an awkward record scratch, he still fit right there in her life.

She made him watch her shows with her, it was her couch still and she was going to use it. This included her favorite romcoms, The Thing, all of Mob Psycho 100. It also included how to play Legend of Zelda on the switch, how to use the dishwasher, how to fill a bus card- everyday a new surprise of a first to show him. Like he was an alien or a time traveler. On sundays he watched sports, whatever was on and complained “Its not like I remember it.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m not sure,” he said. But on Sundays she worked so she let him to it, it was the most normal thing about him and some how deeply concerning.

At some point, on their seventh time at the grocery store Wolf wood pushed the cart confidently though the story. He knew the route now, the exact path through grocery store Meryl hated to deviate from and stuck to it. She knew where everything was and she knew exactly what she wanted to put in the cart. She did not actually need his help and she seemed to refuse to go unless he went to.

Though by the end of each shopping trip she would start saying, “I am turning evil, we need to go soon.”

But in her defense Wolfwood thought that maybe florescent lights just had that affect on mortals above hill. Because by the end of the trip he usually needed a cigarette so he never argued.

They had just gotten started though, going down the long aisle to take them from vegetable to the deli sections. He put one foot on the under part of the grocery cart and pushed with the other and rode it down the center of the aisle past Meryl.

“You’re a menace,” She said fondly. She continued to dally in the aisle looking up and down the shelves.

There wasn’t anyone else in the aisle and he slowed to a stop by scuffing one foot and looked back like Orpheus before him.

“We don’t need anything in this aisle,” He said. Meryl had a certain way of traversing the grocery in the same pattern every time.

But Meryl was stuck.

She always got stuck in this aisle.

She moved her fingertips to her lips- not biting, just touching, just thinking about biting. The wall of spices was adjacent to the rows of jellies and jams and she stared at it forlornly with intensity and purpose. And Wolfwood watched her quietly as the aisle tunneled away from them, as each exit stretched out and loomed away into the distance and the space they were occupying was made liminal.

He kept both hands on the cart and held very still.

Meryl grappled with the spell on her like a pair of strong hands wringing out a dish cloth. He could feel it twist reality and rend space- side effects, over spill of intention. Either the spell was extremely powerful, or Meryl was extremely powerful but didn’t know exactly where or how to strike it.

He had his money on that second one.

“Hot stuff,” He said, “If you keep staring like that, you’re gonna break something with your mind I think.”

She turned and looked at him- and the intensity of their bond and the force of intent in her eyes was like a slap. Wolfwood exhaled slow through his nose and kept it completely off his face.

She stamped her foot in exasperation looking close to crying or laughing.

“Seriously. Just like that little mob psycho boy, cut it out.” He told her.

And the absurdity of it pops the well of magic intention around her like harmless soap bubble. The aisle snaps back to reality, gravity stands at attention feeling to tight for a moment- then passes.

And Meryl burst out laughing, “I- Should have never shown you anime.”

He lets her get the last word on it and shrugs. She glances back at the wall of goods and after coming to terms with her defeat asks, “Do you know what I’m looking for her?”

“Mm,” He said, “I could guess.”

“Please,” She said gesturing at it all.

He took two steps and grabbed the jar of big real honey off the top shelf and put into both of her waiting hands.

And they stood there a moment just looking at it between.

“Oh,” She said.

“He liked milk and honey.”

And her eye snap up from the honey to Wolfwood’s matching eyes, “Oh my god. He’s a faerie?”

“Yeah,” Wolfwood said and took the honey back from her and returned it to the high shelf.

“He has one arm, red jacket, dweeb, fairy.” She said to herself and then repeated it. Wolfwood let her to it. He had hopes she’d snap the memory spell in her fist if she kept at it. He’d given up completely trying to charm her to win petty arguments, she didn’t seem to notice, but broke them as easily as a kitkat bar. And it was with Meryl’s attention turned inward that they returned to pushing the cart around the predetermined path through the store that Meryl used every time. And with her mind occupied with trying to memorize a new fact about her man Wolfwood was left to do grocery crimes and quickly started slipping things into the cart that were not on the list.

Before coming to herself she said, “No- we don’t need all that?” She scolded him and he reluctantly held onto the Bulk bag of caramel popcorn back.

“Well- okay, hear me out, tastes good.” he said in his defense.

“Counter; Money.”

She leaned into the cart and made a series of tsk sounds because he has put an abundance of candies, two six packs of rockstar energy drink, a 3$ bottle of wine and a box of trix into the cart.

“Fine,” She said after a moment. And he let the sweet treat drop into the cart.

“Your sweet tooth’s gonna rot your teeth out.”

“I can’t help it, I’m craving something they don’t have up here.”

And she looked at him a moment, because they were in public, under the mundane protection of florescent light and the rolling ambient sounds of a toddler crying and a generic country song playing over head.

“Is this a jam aisle situation?” She asked.

“N-no, I just don’t’ want to talk about it-” He said and looked over at the big display of fancy cheeses like it interested him.

And she looked relieved.

“Do you remember what he is this time?” He asked. Which was cheating, he knew it was a fast way to change the subject, but he was also curious.

“Blond, bajablast eyes, one arm, red jacket, dweeb-” and she paused for a moment looking at him like what was in her head didn’t make sense but then said, “Fairy?”

Wolfwood lit up with a smile that was contagious, “Aay, now you’re cookin’!” he said.

His smile was contagious but a dark thought was cast over her mind; “We should be looking for him.” Above them Taylor Swift was singing about one of her exs, and a woman with a basket in one hand and a gallon of milk in the other was waiting to get at what was behind them.

“I have been asking around, promise.”

“Promise?”

“Cross my heart and hope to die,” He said far too seriously. He’d been asking around town every day and finding nothing. If some one knew him, they hadn’t seen him. If some one had seen him it’d been sleeping rough and asking about open doors to underhill. And Wolfwood was reluctant to follow into the land beneath the sidewalks, not when Meryl was waiting for him. Time moved differently there. Part him was growing resentful of what Vash had done to Meryl in lieu of not wanting him. But he knew that was some dark angry part of him being leveraged, he knew how the curse worked, but it didn’t stop him from feeling a way about it. If Vash went underhill, it wasn’t in his best interest, nothing in his best interest would happen while under that curse- his curse. He knew he had to fight it, the dark thought to let the man be, to let him go. But Meryl still loved him, and he was looking for Meryl and she drove it home all the more when she spoke.

“I miss him,” She said, “I miss him like he’s died.”

“Do you think he has?” He asked lowly, because bound as they are she might know better than anyone if he was. The grocery store around them was still thrumming with people and buzzing over head lights and hundred hundred intentional brightly colored marketing ploys.

“No, god, I hope not, Kitten, please-” She said suddenly full of intense dread.

“Don’t call me kitten.”

“Then don’t say things like that, don’t jinx us!”

He gave her a sour look, his annoyance and her genuine fear mismatched and sat awkward between them. It sat there like an unwelcome damp toad that neither of them were sure how to navigate as Taylor swift continued to crackle over the speakers.

So she booped his nose, “Kitten.”

He looked her dead in the eye and deadpanned a solemn and pitiable; “Don’t.”

“Well then give me a name to call you!” She said.

“Not that one,” he said heaving the cart away from her and looking for things to put in that would piss her off.

“Hey wait up, Kitten~” She called after him. He threw his hands up, still marching away from her, and grasped his fingers like he could strangle god. “That’s my line!” she called after him.

“Hurry up, lets get the f*ck out of here. I need a cigarette,” He growled.

When they got to check out she didn’t make him put anything in the cart back. And that made him feel funny in his chest the whole care ride home.

Chapter 7

Chapter Text

The days ticked by forming a new and wonderful normal; busking in the morning, chores in the afternoon, making dinner together in the evenings, until all rolled together into an awkward beautiful blur in his mind. He knew his search for Meryl’s husband had hit a dead end but he hadn’t decided what to do about it yet. he thought he had the luxury and the time. The curse was heavy, but the man had made his own choice. He'd find him eventually, of that he was sure.

It was raining too hard to busk that morning and his feet had taken him to a big box store, the local Walmart, which presided over a crowded strip mall and a sparsely filled parking lot. It was a house of Wanting, of desire, of hoarding and greed, and quiet potent if he was being honest. Shoplifting was extremely easy for a many who could redirect and hold a mortal’s attention as easily as him and he wondered what he could possibly bring home to Meryl from this venture? He felt like a cat in want of a dead mouse to present, as if any choice would be the wrong and reviled one. It felt sometimes that the little apartment had just about everything needed for good living. He knew his bar was on the floor as he strolled down the aisles, but found himself immune to imagining a home for any of the items in his life, which was how he always felt in the shops, and had always thought it was because he had no home to take them to.

He stopped short near the toy aisle; He should scry for Vash tonight

The thought bloomed in his mind as he walked down the toy aisle under the watchful gaze of a hundred smiling dolls in pink cases leering down at him. He turned the corner and down the next toy aisle, letting his feet take him in the meditative way that worked so well for his head. He would need to gather some of Vash’s things for that. Potent things he'd charged with use, Meryl's wedding band would be best, but he he couldn't imagine separating it from her while she was using it as a foci to break her memory spell. There was plenty of other things in the apartment covered with his magical fingerprints- the little kitchen gadgets sprung to mind. He’d have to walk around and touch things, he thought, so there wasn't any use thinking too hard about it now-

- and his gaze shifted outward again and Wolfwood stood in the Lego aisle. He stood beneath their shadow and fell into the yawning maw of his childhood. using little hands to put together a race car brick by brick in the early morning sun through a dirty window, a baseball announcer blaring on the tv behind him, the rug a dull scruffy brown against his knees, the sound of a beer cracking open by some one big on the couch It pulled him under by the ankles under into a cold rush of dread. The boxes lining hte shelves were not like the Lego’s he recalled, all race cars and houses, but starwars and dinosaurs and the whole other half of the aisle was packaged in tempting, girl friendly pinks. And to look at them was to make peace with a passage of time both personal and linear.

He put his hands on a blue f1 car kit like it was something sacred and held it a long moment before shaking it to hear the plastic pieces tinkle.

Its then, holding the box out with formal arms like he was handing something to a lord, that he caught movement out of the corner of his eye. His first instinct was to try to stop being weird, Not possible probably, but he still tried as he brought the box back to his chest. Then he glanced at her. It was a her, he thought, in a trench coat. He was ready to give her a polite- he’d been learning to use his face correctly like that recently. But the woman in the trench coat at the end of the aisle had a predatory gleam in her singular visible eye.

“Hello, Punisher,” She said.

“Dominique,” he said carefully. She had straight dark hair and a sharp foxy face, her most striking fature was the eye patch with the lord under the side walk's crest. She'd been promoted he guessed.

“Wheres the girl?” She demanded.

“Shes a full grown lady?” He said.

“Whatever, where is she?”

“I mean, you can’t have her. So why ask?” He said squaring his stance. He dropped the legos and slowly brought his guitar case up over his head and brought it to the floor at his feet.

“It’s like that?” She asked.

“To the blood,” He offered, because he was feeling magnanimous.

“This is Business; To the forfeit,” She said. She was cold and ridged with a husky voice. He had always rather had a soft spot the fellow changeling, but the court made of its pawns as players were want to.

“You know that not how this will go,” He said dully.

In answer she unfurled a long whip with a single fluid motion, brought it high over her head and cracked it and seven of the sharp blades at the end of it. Right in the middle of the Walmart, popping the spell of of mundanity like a thunder clap.

Wolfwood kicked open his guitar case and pulled out a sword that just kept coming. The claymore was a hulking monolithic of cold iron gleaming with cyan fae bind ruins. And brandishing it there beneath the florescent light he shouldered what it was, and what he was when he held it; The Punisher.

In the eyes of the laws in the court beneath there was no difference between the man and the sword.

They stood a long moment, the box of legos languishing near his feet. He glared at her over the top of his sunglasses and tried to beam the idea that she could not win this fight into her dense skull. But before either of them could twitch, could make a move or a false start, Dominique touched her face and it was like reality flickered and she was on him- right in his face. He heard his sunglasses hit the floor, skittering against the titles, the impact of the blow past tense and stinging- her whip in her hands around his neck like a garrote wire.

He choked out a cuss in her strangle hold. How? f*cking? How? She tightened her strangle hold on his neck as his face went red. He Slammed forward, his forehead right into hers, hard enough she went staggering back. He pivoted so the whip slithered off his shoulders as his pass back brought him around to her flank. He was just raising The Punisher to swing down on her open shoulders as she held her head- when she glanced up at him- looked up at him with both her eyes naked- one red-

Again the world shuddered out and Dominique was on top of him. The whip and its sharp flails cracked into him en media res- his jacket and shirt already flayed, his blood already drawn.

His shout was more angry than hurt. But the spike of fear that rent through him was real and rare. he tried to resist it as she pulled the feeling out of him and collected it- to what end he wasn't sure.

He brought the blade to bear and it’s invisible power like a surge, the flashy kind of magic was always direct and but brittle, but the old magic the deep curses, the great hexes and grand workings of the marvelous world around us just simply were and they ebbed into reality like a tide. and so it was now as The Punisher wanted for Dominique to die.

To unsheath The Punisher was to promise it something more than blood.

He came surging at her all motion and heavy swings. She had no blade to counter him and the quick snap of the whip, with all it sharp flails at the tip would find his flesh no matter how he tried to parry it.

So let it come.

He pushed through a flurry of her blows and she dodged and ducked around his great angry swings. His non reaction to pain unseated her- that was foci- pain. Fear. She was gathering it inside her- for however she teleported or stopped time- he wasn’t sure which it was and didn’t really care if he was being honest. He just wished she’d cut it out.

Lucky for him The Punisher had no need for either Fear or Pain. The Punisher dealt in wanting. Wolfwood pulled hard from the ambient miasma of The Walmart’s predatory marketing techniques and force feed it screaming into his blade, feeding it feeding it feeding it- yeah the sucking draw of capitalism's bad vibes the kind of wanting The Punisher dealt in. It was foolish of Dominique to challenge him here, in a place of liminal power so attuned to his own.

He pulled and pulled until the lights over head began to pop one by one.

He watched her stoic face turn to a subtle grimace as she dodged and pivoted around his blade. She was fast. She was damn fast even without that trick- where the world staggered and she escaped the edge of his blade no matter how sure and fatal he was sure it'd be. The first time made him angry. The second time he'd shouted about it, Now the seventh time he was forced into a two step pass back and into a display of slap chops. He staggered through the little boxes as they toppled and made some kind of recovery. Twice he had nearly cut her in two, or her whip only for reality to balk beneath him. Despite how he pulled her with the strong old magic to find her home on the edge of his blade she was just out of his grasp.

A couple of employees were still running past them and he rolled his shoulder and shrugged off his shredded north face jacket. It was an empty status symbol to him. Something that helped him be no one in this city. He wouldn't miss it, but it was the principle of the thing, it was his and she had ruined it.

“I don’t know when the hell you got good, but I wish you’d cut it out,” He growled.

“I do what I can~” She said lightly.

And then as if on some unspoken signal they began again. He rushed forward, she cracked her whip into his side as he lounged, tearing deep into his side. But he soon crossed the distance and she was on the defense again. She was afraid of the blade he relized, wich was smart of her, but it occured to him that she only countered the deaths that it could bring. Now, The Punisher was hungry, it was always hungry. It always wanted blood and now that she had spilt his own it roared beneath his hands for her. She had reason to fear the blade, but she was a fool not to account the myriad other ways he could pummel her.

He waited until the whip cracked and moved into it, let it wrap around his arm and pulled. And she, being an idiot, kept hold and staggered toward him and wasn’t ready when he came in close again- rammed his shoulder into her chest and brought his knee up to her diaphragm- Brought the pommel of The Punisher to her head. His blows connected one, two- and before three, before the pommel of the reverse strike landed the word stuttered out again and he staggered forward into nothing.

A wordless yell of frustration left his throat raw as the shelf of legos to his left wobbled and started to fall in slow motion.

Great, he had really wanted to get himself a kit and get on with his day after this, but now, no dice. Apparently it was destroy the Walmart O'clock. He ran toward the end of aisle and soccer slid out of the collapse as it hit its twin with a boom, then another, and a another as the store shelves started going down like dominoes.

Boom boom boom. The big chain box store was full of yelling and the lights were flickering, dismissing the illusion that the space was anything but a dark yawning cavern of greed. Shoppers yelled and the sprinkle system sprung to life with a wet his as he found his feet.

“Okay. I’m done f*cking around,” He said framed by the flickering lights of the dark downpour. His shredded pink t-shirt gave way to his minced flesh beneath, pink blooming with deeper red, dripping now as the sprinklers screamed over head. These wounds where she had flayed him had began to smoke and close, all that want in his blade going sanguine and flowing into him- permanent feedback loop.

“You could just give me the girl? It’s not like you to get attached?” Dominique said with genuine confusion. "I'll tell you how I'm doing it. We can go get beers. Have a laugh about it?"

In another life He'd love that. He had seen her in what twelve years of his relative time, who knew how long it been for her underhill. The idea that he could be attached to the woman in question seemed to allude her and he welcomed it. The less the court knew the better now. He found words difficult when The Punisher was feeding him its deadly wanting to heal him. So he opted say nothing. He felt complicated about her. He felt compelled to kill her.

He decided to make it easy for himself. He decided he wanted her dead, in the flickering dark under the hissing torrent of water in a place of power. And everything in that easy power clicked into place and it was as if his feet moved themself to bring him across the slick tiles. He came at Dominque up over the seasonal display and as he bore down on her she flipped up her eye patch- and The Punisher wanting her dead broke through the whispering spell of the basilisk eye she’d implanted there-

Clever he thought as The Punisher pierced her chest.

Dominique died badly on a blade that consumed the muchness that souls were weaved from in the dark of that ruined Walmart.

And truth be told, as he left with his box of soaked legos, past the fire engines and into the chaotic parking-lot, he felt a little bad about it. He felt the fine prick of his broken oath; to the forfeit, wriggle into him along with the hundred others he’d accumulated over the years. His duels always ended in to the death. She knew that. She'd known him longer enough- he wasn't sure why she'd tried to go soft with him.

He’d warned her.

But no one ever took him seriously, and apparently that hadn’t been the fault of the curse.

He found the tattoo parlor in good cheer, the bells on the glass door chiming brightly as he entered. There was a pair of friends in the front parlor looking at the flash samples in a big three ring binders. A quiet man with a big beard and a leather jacket waited on the other side. The young woman at the front desk smiled at him as he entered, she had mousy brown hair in a bun and two sleeves of desert plants and animals on both arms, visible under a loose black tank top.

Her name tag said Lina and when she looked up from the front desk she asked, “Oh, you must be Meryl’s Boyfriend?”

He paused.

“Yeah,” Because that seemed the easiest way through the conversation. “How did you know?”

“swagless tech bro, wolf tattoo, guitar-” She said gesturing at him.

“Oh,” he said. And realized, that having not given Meryl a name for him she had defaulted to describing him and then calling him her boyfriend.

“She’s with a client right now, but what’s up?”

“Tell her I’m hanging out till she’s ready to go home," He said.

Lina squinted at him but he shrugged. He was just here to guard her, he’d do what ever he had to make sure that happened. Some one under hill wanted her and he’d have to calm down a lot more before he could leave her unattended again. He sat with the remnants of his tattered jacket and wet cardboard box of legos and made peace with waiting. The rain and the fire sprinkle had seen most of his blood rinsed way, but not all and the puddle beneath his shoes was a little pink as it gathered. The cheap pay-no-mind charm he’d cast was working for now and he hoped it'd stay that way.

An hour later a red headed woman with a new piece of ink on her shoulder preened in the loby with Lina for a while, left a tip and headed out. Shortly after Meryl appeared to gape at him.

“Did something happen?” She asked right away.

He tensed. Maybe Meryl was getting good enough with her subconscious magics while trying to break her own curse, that she could see straight through his charms now?

“I’m good,” He chanced. Because it was true even if she could see the rips and the blood stains.

“Then where are your sunglasses?” she asked with very real concern as she sat down next to him, “I know it's raining, but you wear them everywhere? Is this an emergency?”

He had to laugh.

The devil really was in the details.

“I’m good, I’m good,” he said with as much gravitas as he could muster. “But yeah. Kinda. I’m just going to loiter here if that’s good?”

She looked around the waiting room at the pair of friends, and the new group of twenty somethings that were all a little drunk.

“C’mon,” She said pulling him up out of the chair. She lead him back to her work station and shut the door. “Brad and Milly can handle the walk ups- whats going on? Wait- Are you bleeding?” she asked and pulled at his shirt. Wolfowod sucked onhis teeth, but she was already looking him over. The charm popped completely and she sucked air in through her teeth at the mess his clothes were.

“Not anymore-” He managed.

“What does that mean?” She insisted.

“I got better.”

“Do not quote monty python at a time like this!"

“I don’t- I didn’t-” But he was chasing her hands to keep her from trying to take his shirt off to get a better look. “I’m good. I promise!”

And she stops, a promise from his mouth ringing so true and loud like a bell that she can't think. But Meryl was tough, hard to distract when she was on a mission; "Okay, then start talking."

“Some one jumped me. They were looking for you. Which means they know I’m with you. Means I got followed. Means I’ve asked around too much about things. I need you to let me sit in the lobby-”

She put her hands on either side of his face, “Why the hell would some one pick a fight over me?”

“Not sure." He said as the force of her hands on his checks made his lips go ducky for a moment, "Fae can be awful mean. It could be some who has it out for me. Maybe they found out I’m not cursed anymore, you know? Or it could be cause of him-” He said bringing her hands away from his face and bringing her attention to the ring like he had so many times before. “Hard to tell yet.”

She got stuck looking at her ring. He thought she was close to breaking through the spell Vash had cast over her before he left. But instead of Remembering Vash she was thinking hard about kissing Wolfwood. Because she felt like every time she could remember Vash a little bit she should kiss him about it. That every time she could remember all the times he’d patiently asked her to remember Vash still existed seemed worth a kiss to her. But he was ruffled. Needed a shower. Needed a change of clothes. He just wanted to sit in her parlor’s waiting room till close to make sure everything here stayed fine. And she knew this by looking at him, by the blessing of the little seven pointed stars on their hands. And she hopped, he knew how she felt- to kiss him for his efforts, just by looking at her.

She stood on tip toe and still wasn’t tall enough to kiss him, not without him bending down to meet her half way. She looked up at him trying to will him to meet her half way with just her eyes.

He looked down for a long moment looking so tired and so soft for a moment before he leaned in slowly. She was all but tippy taping her feet like a shiba in a tiktok when he bent low and kissed her. Really wrapped her up in his arms and kissed her this time. Kissed her like he wanted her. Really wanted her. Something about it made the hair on the back of her neck stand on end as she let his mouth fill hers with heat and softness and the rhythmic wanting that ricocheted around her head seeped into her body which wanted to be rhythmic in other more advanced ways of wanting.

She tried to kiss him as best she could- like it was a driver test of kisses. Sucking and licking and not letting her brain go all gooey- staying so present and so good at kissing him back. Some irrational part of mind thought she could kiss him well enough then he’d never hesitate to touch her again.

She reached her arms up around his neck and he made a noise into her mouth that was so needy it made her giggle. When he finally broke the kiss, because like hell was she going to be the first pull back, she stood on tip toe to chase his mouth- the sound he made when she ran her hand down his back was what she would best describe as a whimper- he didn't actually want to stop. He was always forcing himself away from her and it drove her mad

So Meryl choose violence; "That's what Daddy wants to hear-"

"Absolutely not." Wolfwood said just above a whisper.

She booped her finger to his beautiful nose and fake pouted back at him.

"You're going to be the death of me," He complained.

"Promise?"

He snorted so hard it almost escaped containment into a laugh, he had to look away from her.

"I’m flirting with you,” she said all charm and guile, “Just to be clear.”

"I know!" and broke away from her. She snickered and gave him the space he seemed to think he wanted. He spent the rest of the evening out in the waiting room reading magazines and she let him. Sometimes, she thought, a man needed to sit around and be wrong for a while till he saw reason.

Nothing weird happened that evening, which seemed to surprise him.

Meryl split the walk up group who wanted matching flash with Brad and Milly and they were all their way home before the busses swapped to the late night schedules.

She was surprised the next day when her knight let her go into the office at the newspaper without insisting on tailing her. He’d said something like, “They wont come after you in a place of truth, you’re too potent there, even if you don’t know it.”

So she had spent her day in meetings and pitching her next articles to her boss. All the while she had contend with the idea that truth was her place of power ringing round her head. She didn’t think anyone had ever said anything quiet so nice as that to her before. She liked to think of her tattoo’s as a kind of truth making, a way for her clients to become more themselves through symbol and art. She had never thought of it as a personal seat of power before.

Her commute home wasn’t long, just three stops on the train and a short walk up the hill, but it couldn't be over fast enough for her. She was feeling impatient yet still deeply entranced by her phone as a busker on a saxophone played a solo she thought would never end. She didn’t like saxophone but she was a little impressed. he must have had a second set of lungs

She felt some one too close to her and startled- nearly stepped on the towheaded young woman in the big over sized knit sweater.
-> green with a big embroidered dragon fly on it.

“Oh-” She said, “I’m sorry?”

“It’s alright,” they said brightly, though there was something sharp about her smile and alien in her eyes the felt odd and distant. But Meryl smiled back and watched her go.

She felt like something had just happened.

She checked her phone and peeked in her canvas bag
-> phone, keys, wallet, bullet journal accounted for.

And tried to shake off the feeling, but couldn’t. She was feeling out of sorts still as she walked up the hill to her building. She felt lopsided. Asymmetrical. She felt like there was a hole in her- she was sure something had happened. Maybe something magic?

The girl hadn’t felt dangerous.

She didn’t feel harmed.

She took a deep breath as she crested the top of the stairs and finally made it to her front door. She futzed with her keys with longer than felt fair. She was finally home and she needed to maybe lay on the floor. But, the door swung open and she was greeted with her fairy knight looming over the kitchen table with a sword in hand.

The sword was huge.

It was almost as big as she was. And he held it one handed straight out parallel with the kitchen table. The world felt wobbly, something about the sword felt acidic or sharp just to look it as it sucked in the light around it- the whole room dimmed as the table burned with a mark, embers of it embedded as if the table was on fire from deep with in. On the table were things her eyes didn’t want to see; A tiny apple tree, a pile of kitchen gadgets, a box of stale donuts, the half bottle of whiskey that had been presiding on top of the fridge and to her fright a hand gun.

“Hey Kitten,” She said in the doorway, “Daddy is a little concerned.”

But his gaze was turned inward and he said, “Busy.”

“With???” She half yelled.

“Magic.”

She waited near the open door as the sword continued to not so much glow as defeat the light around it and his amber eyes looked past her, flicking like he was reading. She decided after what felt like a perilously long time that she really aught to shut the door. She did so with a soft click before she slowly inched around the table toward the kitchen and then into the living room behind him. She then plonked on the couch he was living on and watched his broad back as he moved the sword in great broad shapes, which seemed to her an untold feat of strength.

“So um, how long are you going to be doing magic?” She ventured.

There was no answer save for the silent thrum of something in the air and eventually he said, “Nearly done.”

“Okay!” She said with more gusto than she meant to. There was a brief burp of light, she was hesitant to ascribe it as a flash because it was more like the normal lighting returned than new light being made, then heavy blade tinked against the tiles of the kitchen as he leaned on it.

“Is everything….good?” She called.

“No-” He said, “I’m fine, I mean, Hrng. Bad news, but nothing I didn’t already guess.”

“Yeah?”

He shifted and pulled out the kitchen chair, spun it around so it was facing the living room nook, and sat in it. He had the pommel of the sword in his palm and spun it on its tip, so the runes on it that still glowed trailed like a halo around itself. It captivated her. She couldn’t help it.

His eyes followed and he said by way of explanation, “This is my sword.”

“No sh*t?” She said with feigned interest, “I’ve never seen one before?”

He half chocked on a scoff or a laugh, “Sorry- I, hmm. Yeah not the weirdest part huh?”

“No, Kitten, it’s not.”

“Don’t call me Kitten-”

“Don’t change the subject and I’ll call you something else when you tell me what to call you. The ball is in your court on that one. So jump to the point and tell me what was the magic was about? I didn’t know magic could be flashy?”

“Well quiet magics more powerful, but flashy is direct,” He said like he was a repeating a lesson. “I was scrying. Your man is underhill.”

“What does that mean?”

“Fairy land. Underhill. Beneath sidewalks. What ever you want to call it; He’s gone home.”

“No. This is his home,” she said and at rang like a true name command and sat still and silent as an old well.

“How long has he lived here?” because even with the truth filling up the whole room, he needed to poke it with holes to be sure.

“We’ve been here two or three years now? We’ve been together for six?” She said. And he was sure for a woman her age, yeah that was a long time.

“And how old do you think he is?”

Meryl had the answer on the tip of her tongue and then it died and then with partial confidence she said; “My age.”

“Are you sure, princess, he’s fae. He could be hundreds of years old. We could just be a blip for him, soulmates or not. He might stay underhill till were worm food, because he thinks it’ll hurt him less that way.”

“No! He’s not like that.”

“Are you sure?” And the way he asked wasn’t accusatory, it was hopeful. It was hopeful in a way she hadn’t heard his voice be. A kind of tender that made her desperate to touch him.

“Yes.” And the truth in the room with them just sat, didn’t even sway or waiver.

“Mmm,” He said like that sealed some sort of deal. Like it had made some terrible choice a whole lot easier. And that made her nervous; deeply, deadly nervous.

The silence and truth sat there for a long beat, and Meryl still feeling out of sort from entering her home into a situation just stood there. The ritual of unpacking her purse had been interrupted. The man in her home who wouldn’t admit he loved her was about to change the subject-

“Do you want to play Zelda, after dinner?” he asked. And that made her certain he was planning something stupid. Only the what, she was certain, would be the surprise of it.

She looked at him hard for a long moment, because this was her life now, “Yeah- I just need a minute. I haven’t unpacked my stuff cause you were using the table and now I’m discombobulated-”

But he was already moving, clearing off the table and brushing off the ash. He quickly returned most things to their homes- the whiskey to the top of the fridge, the potted plant back to the deck, the donuts to the trash. When she sheepishly brought her big canvas bag with Persephone on it to the table he sat, still with the sword in his hand
-> He'd put it all back with that big sword in his hand like it was nothing
-> like he wasn’t hauling a sword bigger than her around her modern apartment

Then the ritual of Meryl taking things out of her bag after a day at the office was properly observed. This included her tuperware from lunch, locating her keys, unpacking her sketch book and her camera, fishing out all the trash and receipts and memos. She emptied it all even tho most of these things would go right back in tomorrow morning.

“So,” She said, like she could reclaim any sense of normal. “Where have you been keeping the sword?”

“Oh!” he said and pointed at the open guitar case on the living room floor.

“Oh,” she said less enthusiastically.

“You’re not taking this well?”

“No,” She told the inside of her bag.

“You’ve been a champ about everything else, but I guess you also tend to forget that stuff.”

And that made her freeze up, she knew, she couldn't’ not know that she’d forgotten something
-> forgotten some one

But it wasn't on her radar that she was forgetting conversations about those things too. And then something was on the tip of her tongue.

“Did we just argue about him a moment ago? About someone?”

“Yes...Though I wouldn't call it fighting and I wouldn't say it's actually about him.”

“And I forgot?”

“It seemed like it to me- ” He said gently.

“No, listen to me, do we fight about him a lot?”

“No.”

“You're going to find him soon right?

"I'm trying."

"...Promise?” She asked looking so off center it took him like a slap.

“Yeah, I do. I promise," He said knowing full well now that the man was underhill. He'd rather cut of his own hand than go back. But he'd just promised. And it clinked like the lock of a jail cell in his heart.

Later, when life had settled back into normal and curry and rice and all the trappings had been made for dinner and eaten, they found themselves sprawled on the couch. He laid out straight with his legs in her lap while he ran the little video game man with the sword on screen around in circles.

“You actually know how to use a sword right?”

“Yeah-”

“Then act like it-” She said gesturing at the screen like she was rooting for sports.

“Listen!!”

She couldn’t remember exactly how she had melted the ice of him- or chipped away at it more likely- but she was glad of it. She could sit here in her pajamas and pretend to pound his knees like a bongo when he died in a video game, and really that’s what she wanted, what she needed. The closeness. The normal. The casual dopamine of being touched.

And tonight he was in his boxers and that god awful ruined pink tshirt he'd darned and she thought maybe tonight was the night he let her take him to sleep in the bedroom. She was going to be so nice and gentle when she asked, she'd been working on it in her head, trying to take into account how shy he was. He was her soulmate and she wanted to kiss him and sleep in the same room, was that so much to ask? She wasn’t sure anymore.

And she was thinking over all her best laid plans for subtleness when the urge for a little self sabotage rolled into her heart instead:

“What if you let me tattoo a little kitty cat right here?” she asked looking to where her hand was on his thigh. He paused the game and looked at her.

“Meryl,” he said dropping his voice.

“Or something else,” She said easily pressing into the meat of the muscle there.

But his real concern was her hand on his naked thigh.

“Meryl,” He said again, like saying her name could control her. It couldn't though, not the way he had warned her that names could be used by the fair folk. The rest of his sentence, if it ever existed, died as she answered too quickly with;

“Yeah kitten?”

He swallowed hard, “Please be nice to me.”

“oh-” She said taking her hands off him, “I didn’t mean to be a pest I just, I’m sorry, I thought- I was just trying to be direct- You've been so shy-”

“I guess I’m that too-”

And she almost laughed, “Okay, okay- I guess sometimes I feel a little like I know what your thinking and what you want, and maybe that’s magic or maybe I’m just wrong. I’m sorry if I’ve been getting it all wrong- You do want me? Right?”

“You’re married!”

“And he’s your soulmate too?” She said softly, “I think being soul mates is a kind of being married?”

And that was a sentiment worthy of making his eyes glaze over moment. Because maybe?

“He left you because he didn’t want me too," He told her like it was a deep and terrible secret. IT felt like one. it really did. And he wondered if she'd even remember it. Or if he would have to remind her over and over.

“That’s not true.”

“It is!” he said with too much force.He was scowling up at her from the other end of the couch. Every inch of him bristled like he was mad, but she knew, she knew from looking at him and all that magic linking them together that he was hurt. Bone deep.

“And if it is, he’s wrong! I asked you to stay, that was my choice!”

“You just want me to fill the hole, cause you can't remember him. You’re not doing it purpose, but you are, and when you do remember everything, I don’t- I don’t want to have taken advantage of you!”

That hurt. That hurt and wasn't fair. She really thought this conversation was going to be about how she was being too forward, a bit of a pest maybe. Not any of what just came out of his mouth.

“If I could remember him, I’d kiss you right now, right here while I could! So you’d know it's not an issue- would that fix you?”

“...you’ve already done that,” He said very softly like it was an embarrassment to them both.

Exasperation filled her up wholly, “Then I don’t know what more I could do to spell it out to you?” she took her hands off him and made the familiar hand motion as she attempted to strange God. “If you don’t want me, that’s- that’s okay, I can do that. Just let me love on you a little, please! I- I care about you a lot- I just- I just want to make you happy!”

“Well stop trying, please stop trying!” He said. He pulled his legs out of her lap and tucked them under himself. Something in the video game was making a lot of noise as the character on screen died from neglect and the low health beep began.

“Stop trying to make you happy- or kiss you?”

“Both.”

“No,” she said, “You didn’t come into my life not to be happy about it!”

“Not like that-”

“That’s what you just said with your whole-ass dumb mouth.”

“No, I did not,” He groused. But something in the fairy knight had given way to something truer and more pliable. Petulant even. They bickered a lot. They both liked it even. And even with the intensity of the conversation she smiled a little bit as he deflated into the couch. “This is, and I mean this, the nicest thing that has ever happened to me. You don’t have to try.”

“And you don’t have to punish yourself?” She countered and leaned back down to him. “Yes. I’m married. Yes I still want you. Yes I think he’ll want you too when we figure it all out- you said you’re looking for him?”

“Yes,” he said because he wasn’t sure if she remember what he'd scried earlier- if she remembered that her man was underhill- or if she really knew what that would entail for him to keep looking. He was honestly impressed she had been able to remember that He existed. “I’ve been looking every day. And it’s only brought us trouble-”

“Okay, I believe you. Just tell me. Do you want me?” she said like it was an argument.

“What?”

“Do you want me?”

“Biblically? Or?”

“Both. All of it. Do you want me-”

“Y-yes,” He said looking like he’d die.

“Then don’t lie and say no,” She said putting her hand back on his thigh.

“Well now I’m just nervous!” He said like it was but the first point he was making in a long argument. The look on his face was dire and she broke into tinkling laughter and melted into him, her head going to his collar bone.

“Seriously?” She asked.

“I worked very hard to stay out of m’lords and ladies' chambers underhill, thank you,” He said with some bite.

“Oh I mean if you just- don’t want sex that’s fine- we can just sleep. I just- please come to bed tonight?” She said.

He looked absolutely mortified that she had laid it out but shifted so she could crawl into his lap. He wrapped his arms around her and was trapped there in the warmth of her. And it was weakness, he was sure, when he said “Okay,” Into her ear.

In the morning he woke up in that big bed that wasn’t his to sleep in, having dreamed beneath the ward against insomnia and nightmares and felt more rested than in his whole life. The sun filtered in through the window and Meryl was asleep at his side, curled with her back against him drooling into her pillow looking serene, like she’d never bully him.

He lay there swaddled in safety and warmth and felt bamboozled.

“f*ck,” He whispered to himself. Because their man was underhill and there was only one thing to be done about it. He'd have to go. He'd have to leave this. He'd have to leave this for some one who didn't even want him. And the rage of that built up in him and threatened to break into a thousand more potent less manageable emotions. The sun kept shining in on the little house plants on the sill and Meryl's breathing came soft and steady against him and he managed the age old trick of swallowing it down. He waited and let Meryl think she'd gotten up first, taking a moment to lay spread eagle in the middle of the bed while she peed and brushed her teeth.

He might not get this again.

When they’d both gotten up and the day had started he made up his mind. He knew what he wanted from her, for the first time since he’d stepped foot in her home, for the first time since she’d stepped into his heart and woke up wanting in an equal and opposite direction of The Punisher’s influence that he was always drowning in. He snagged Meryl by the hand, intent on trying to get her to remember Vash one more time, desperate to ask her what he decided he really needed to hear; Tell me something about him to make me love him like you do?

Only his hand found hers in his, familiar and slim- his big sword calloused hands eclipsing hers and felt dread.

She said, “Hey c’mon I’m gonna be late.”

He looked down at her hand in his and said, “Meryl where is your wedding ring?”

She gave him a funny look and wriggled her hand away, “Why would I have one of those?”

He let her slip out of his grasp and through feat of will alone kept the horror off his face.

*

The throne beneath sidewalks was a gnarled thorny growth like a rose bush force gown into a resplendent fan shaped tangle, thorns as big as a fist like dragons teeth, like a sharks mouth. It grew in great knots and figure eights the moved in wending patterns. The sound of its leaves rustling and thorns scrapping was the background sound of the hall now that the steward didn't employ bards.

“Ah,” Said the steward, sitting reclined on the throne, “Excellent work.”

He smiled at his peasant, all teeth and uncanny tongue flicking. He twiddled the sapphire wedding ring between his fingers. He'd wanted the owner, but he thought this would do just fine.

“My debt is paid?” asked the woman in the big green sweater, the one with the dragon fly embroidered on it. Their hair was wild like a dandelion and something about their eyes was unreadable.

“Oh Zazie, your debt is paid a hundred times over,” Said Legato.

Chapter 8

Chapter Text

Vash had had a plan at one point.

When Wolfwood’s curse had come careening into over top of his shades and made a home in his chest he knew he was f*cked. He came honestly by being a sin eater, had had it happen to him more than once by accident. He’d take on some one else curse, gone home and laid on the couch about it and whined. He would suffer with it a while and slowly, with enough time he’d naturally shred it and absorb it- it came with the territory of not having a foci. He wasn’t great at casting his own magics but he could without fail rip anyone else’s apart- and maybe it was hubris finally catching up with him to think he was immune to this curse’s thrall.

He had thought if he put himself out of Meryl’s mind and lay low for a while he could return to her once the curse had worked itself through him.He had promised Meryl to her face that he would come back soon. He had held both her hands in his, explained himself fully and left her. She’d bee furious with him later. But the curse destroyed that wich was good in the victims life and if he left her first with a clean cut the curse shouldn’t touch her.

Or so he hopped. The taste of curse and it’s caster was familiar and he worried that was why it wouldn’t quit.

He knew that first night sleeping rough out in the park he’d made several mistakes. He should not have run away from Wolfwood for starters. But the curse was very strong and being a faerie he sometimes felt things too intensely all at once- He’d always been the kind the kind to run. And if he was beign honesty what he’d felt as the curse rode across the red thread of fate had been despair, because who wanted a curse like that? He had fought for everything good he had! A soulmate was not always a lover, sometimes your killer, you rival, your- something else just as wonderful and terrible and he had been afraid.

But as he watched the faint stars struggle against the city light to shine he’d to convince himself how lucky was he to have a second soulmate?

How f*cking unlucky was he to get whammied this hard over it?

But there wasn’t much to be done of it. Only to wait till he could wrap his esoteric maw around the hex and swallow it like a little snake with an egg. It was big and mean it might hurt, he might have to actively rye- though he’d never had to before.

Days wore on into a week and he was not doing well for himself. He had been houseless before, he’d lived in punk houses and hitch hiked cross country with confidence- that felt a lifetime ago. That was before Meryl. Before he’d gotten the courage to deal with his brother. He was hungry. He was cold. And it smelt like it was going to rain when he decided to track down Luida.

She was a baptized faerie and technically a nun. Though she lived on top of her auto repair shop in the industrial district these days. It was maybe two life time ago, when he had for very silly reasons found himself at the nunnery and she, being unbearably reasonable, had taken him aside and told him what he was. He’d lived the first forty years not knowing he was fae. He’d gone underhill soon after, just to see, just to know- and that too had been a mistake. It felt always like his decisions were mistakes, machinations of his own demise no matter how well thought or logical he tried to make them. A slog of trolley problems and catch 22s. It was something he and his brother had in common.

It was a long walk to the southern neighborhood Luida’s shop resided in. He’d gotten kicked off the bus by transit authority and just managed to slip away with the help of a charm. It was almost dark and raining with gusto when he arrived, wet through, to stand in front of the empty lot where the shop should be. The smell of wet disturbed earth filled the sidewalk as he gazed into the foundation of a narrow townhouse being dug by a sad excavator in the drizzle.

And it had all snowballed from there.

He’d started doing odd jobs, promising favors for food- being asked to do things like catch cats knowing full well the sea hag living beneath the bridge was going to eat them- and so on. The more he tried the worse it got. The more kindness a stranger showed him one time the hard the other shoe dropped like instant karma. It was a vicious and effective curse.

Days turned into a couple weeks and still his natural aptitude hadn’t taken care of the magic try to strangle him alive with hard luck and wet socks.

When he had burned all his bridges and all his favors he stood outside his own apartment building and looked up he and Meryl’s unit. At his plants and little apple bonsai on the deck. He stood with his hands in his pockets down by the swings in the little common area playground, and tried to stay in the shadows.

The Deck wasn’t actually that high up. If Meryl came out he’d be able to play romeo at her easily.

Instead he did something stupid. He Asked into the darkness, “Am I close enough for you to have a conversation with me?”

“Pray tell what good doth that bring to either of us?” a familiar voice asked. The apparition of his brother was sat on the little plastic slide like it was a throne, blond as anything and still wearing his sapphire studded crown, wings unglamoured and iridescent under the streetlight. He had taken to a less auspicious look over the years since he had reduced him to ghost bound to an apple tree, he had traded his overcoat embroidered in pearls and teeth for a white track suit with saverem livery blue stripes. He’d had taste once, but Vash held his tongue- he couldn't really throw stones he’d eased from leather jackets and patches into windbreakers and lanyards. These things happened with age.

He’d get better eventually, in terms of being incorporeal, which Vash dreaded and worried about happening sooner than he’d like with the curse in play. They were both drydactic, it ran in the family. So he wasn’t really dead, just temporarily a tree- Sometimes Vash wished that was him. It wasn’t fair, Nai didn’t even pay rent ect ect.

“I’m not sure what to do,” Vash said pacing the woodchips. He had so much in his head he forgot to be evasive as a fae politeness.

“And thou art asking me?” Nai scoffed. And then paused, “Oh it’s really that bad?”

Vash didn’t answer, just kept pacing. His brother was never a comfort and he never expected him to become one, so he felt confident the curse would be infective here.

“How’s meryl,” He asked.

“Awful,” Nai said darkly, “Her taste in men is only getting worse. She’s attempting to annul thy marriage over some skinny bard of mine- thou remember the one?”

“With the guitar?” Vash asked. He had served his brother for eighty years and the only part he remembered fondly was the soft guitar in the throne room near the end. “Wolfwood?”

“Thou remember him?” Nai said surprised, “I didn’t think thou ever looked at him.”

And with a seeping dread Vash knew he hadn’t.

“Not really,” he admitted,

He’d always had his eyes on Nai or the crowd, or his boots. He had certainly looked at the bard who was also the executioner- but his existence had made him uncomfortable and he was not in the throne room often those years. He shook his head and pinched the bridge of his nose. He did not need this right now.

So what he had walked past his soul mate at least a dozen times a lifetime ago? Time moved differently under hill so it was unlikely Wolfwood would realize how embarrassing it was to go all this time having passed him by. He’d gone by Eriks then. It’d been a life time ago, before he’d come home and met Meryl again- he’d run from her then too. She was mortal. She was his soulmate. There was no story he’d ever heard where that would end well. But he’d decided it was not always about how stories ended-

“If thou gets that caught up in thy head then that curse will swallow thee whole little brother,” Nai said.

“I know,” Vash snapped in a rare show of anger.

Nai raised his eyebrows in surprise, but also like it pleased him. He always felt Vash could be a little angrier at his mundane lot in life. He was fae! He was a prince! By rights he should be king. And yet he was like this, and Nai resented him still even after the honor duel it had culminated in.

“This was Wolfwoods curse- did you cast it? Tell me?”

“I don’t think so?” Said the fairy king. He was very fond of forgetting the harm he’d cause.

“The axe forgets,” Vash muttered to himself. “ But pray tell,” he said with dripping sarcasm, “Can you break it?”

“No. It’s too funny, It suits you,” Nai said coyly. And Vash kicked the woodchips. Because of course not.

“Five hundred more years apple tree!” Vash said like he was sending the other man to his room as punishment.

“So be it,” Nai said like it did not concern him.

Vash was quiet a long moment, the lamp lights flicked and the sun was truly well and gone not behind the mountains above bay. It had been a long time since Nai had appeared like this. It took a lot of will power to do so, he was sure.

“You’ll protect her if you can?” he asked after a long while.

“She is my sister in law, it would be an embarrassment if I did not,” He said gravely. The thing about Nai was that he was lawful faerie, which often felt a lot like lawful evil or ChoaticLawful- or just maddening. His blue orange logic was the reason he was a tree now after all. But sometime Vash lucked out with it.

Vash nodded. He did not say thank you. You did not thank a fairy unless asked.

“I’m going to find Elendira underhill,” He told his brother after another long pensive moment.

Nai sucked a breath in through his teeth, “She’ll eat you alive.”

“Name a better curse breaker?”

“...Me” he muttered sourly.

“But you can’t.”

He had made light of it, tried to act like it was all a situation that he found very amusing and to his liking. His pride was like that. He looked away out at the bay and the rooftops. He rested his shin on hist fist on his knee, still sitting on the plastic slide like it was his old throne.

“She enjoys presents,” Nai said into the air, “And don’t be rude. Tell her she’s pretty if it comes up, but thou have to mean it.”

“I can do that.”

He turned to look back at him. He did not complain about who would water him. Or that Wolfwood smoked on him. Or any of the numerous complaints Vash had anticipated navigating through to have this conversation.

“Don’t die,” He Nai said with finality and vanished.

That was about as helpful as he’d ever been, which made Vash’s stomach flip and left him feeling off kilter- oh the curse was a dynamic and terrible little catch 22 wasn’t it? It’d machinate something going well just to make him feel awful about it.

He’d never made it to visit Nai’s old adviser. He’d been underhill less than two days, wandering the labyrinth of brick walls and cellars in the in between when he’d gotten in over his head. And then there had been the kelpies. And the riddle door. And he’d gotten tired and awoken to bridge trolls who intended to make him into stew- one thing after another until he found himself, arrested for treason, at the foot of his brother’s Throne.

But leering down at him was a specter he hadn’t thought about for years. There on the throne sat a human changeling with dark blue hair and bright amber eyes. He’d be handsome if looking at him didn’t make Vash feel slimy or if anything close to a personality existed beneath the static squeal of the trauma and violence he’d survived and inflicted to get on the throne.

“Oh what do we have here?” Legato asked. Vash smiled awkwardly. He was perhaps the only man in fairyland who knew his face, and that he’d usurped his brother and never shown up for duty.

“Oh, who me?” He asked, “I’m just a worm?”

This had gone over about as well as the curse could hope.

And then the passage of time had entered a geologic scale as he fell into Legato’s grasp, fully completely now laced with cold iron wires to ensure it. He became accustomed to darkness behind the cold iron mask that hid his identity from court,. To the darkness of the oubliette he slept in. Of the darkness that lurked in Legato’s hear like a ink seeping toad.

In Legato’s Mind Vash was king and could not be killed save by his brother if order was to be returned to court. So legato kept him and Vash told him nothing. Not where Nai was. Not what had become of him. And for his silence legato braided his cold iron wires into him and made of him his executioner.

The cold iron helm came off and the air hit Vash’s face like an ice wind. Where the flat interior of the mask had laid against his flesh was red like a sunburn, blistered, scabbed and smoking.

He swallowed hard as Legato held him by the chin, chased the hair plastered smooth to his face back into his hairline- dragging his fingers along his scalp as he caught his breath.

“You tremble like a leaf,” Legato said easily. He held in his off hand a canteen and when he pressed it to Vash’s lips he drank as it burned his lips anew. There was so much cold iron in his body now it had stopped having meaning.

He drank and felt the dark blue ribbon of Legoto’s will rubbed satin against his mind, his soul, braiding deeper into the cod iron wires embedded down the length of his spine.

“Oh you’re being sweet today,” He said and again ran his hand over the top of his head. Vash had never had much ego in the way of pride or shame. He was thirsty. He drank. Whatever else was Legato's problem. Not that he didn’t fight him sometimes. Just that his foci was dominion and sometimes even when he fought tooth and nail and screamed and spit, that too fueled the cold iron spell tighter.

And sometimes, like now, he was tired and he drank the water offered without fuss. And that too strengthened Legato’s grasp on him. Sometimes a soft touch from an evil hand was a comfort and there was so little of that now.

Court was being held below and they were alone high on the dias, Vash kneelt before him. No one could see that he was the wanted prince and the murmur of voices below tinkled unbothered over the sound of feet and silver bells. Legato allowed no bards- so the room felt empty and bare. There had been, when his brother was a king, a man with a guitar who filled the room with an easy sound- and now that man he knew lived in his home. He sensed it was true and thought of it often.

“No words today?” Legato teased. A murderous urge flared hot and bright and consuming through him, the way that Fae felt truly intensely one thing at a time- but it flared like an ember back into despair. He had already killed so much today. Or, as he reminded himself as oft as he could, Legato had killed with him so much today. He was not responsible for the evil situations that evil men put him in, Luida had taught him this long ago, he could only choose the action of his own hands- and it had been sometime since his hands had been his own to have.

The dark thoughts must have shown on his face as legato laughed at him, “Oh go ahead try me,” He said. “It’s always fun when you do.”

Vash held very still until Legato made a disappointed scoff. His hand still under his chin squeezed his cheeks to open Vash’s mouth. Legato pretended to inspect his teeth a moment before trading the canteen on the side table for a silver spoon piled high with large fat orange blobs of caviar and sliding one and then a second spoonful into his mouth. He protested with a whine as it filled his mouth with ocean and fish and sick umani.

“Oh you're being so very sweet today,” He crooned after the third spoonful, “Don’t tell me I’ve broken you already, that wouldn’t be any fun. Do you remember how to talk?”

“Well I’ve been thinking,” Vash said around a mouth full of slick caviar. Legato raised and eyebrow, “And, I think if there were two astronauts on the moon and one killed the other that’d be kinda f*cked up, yeah? Then the moon would be haunted? Right? Do you think we'll have to cancel NASA for putting ghosts on the moon? Would they have to contract with some kind of ghost busters team before they could go back?”

Legato stared down at him. Being an absurdist sh*t was the only way he’d found around his dominion foci. He had to not care. He had to walk a tightrope between rage and despair and there, like in all life, lay absurdity.

For his efforts Vash earned a back handed blow. It made his mouth spark with his own hot blood and when he spit he spit unchewed orange orbs of caviar onto the throne steps with it. But all pain had ceased to mean anything, having transcended recently into a loud background buzz that couldn’t hurt him anymore. Legato in a fury clenched his fist and the cold steel wrapped so tightly around Vash’s bones constricted and the air in his lungs was wrung out of him like he was a wet rag.

The world spun and he thought he’d faint or maybe he did- because legato’s face was very close to his when his eye refocused.

He said; “Hold out your hands.”

Vash hesitated

He wanted to not hold out his hands/

/ He wanted to hold his hand so this ended faster

He wanted to cut through the unwinnable glue trap of Legato’s magical foci over him. Wanted to rip his false binaries with his teeth. He hated how it didn’t matter if fought or submitted, how it made his choices mute. It made him want to scream- and sometimes behind the mask he did. Either way played him into his captors hand and he hated feeding his power most of all. His soulmate's curse churned in him like a perpetual motion machine with the situation and he knew, he knew in his bones he was in a cage without a door.

He would be right there behind the mask making choices that didn’t matter until an outside power delivered him from it. The curse he realized was not about suffering. No. Conversely he thought it was more about a denial of comfort, a denial of luck, a denial of rest. It was about having had better in the past.

Vash slowly held out his hands and experienced a physical pang in his sternum that shivered into his guts as he did. He felt as his muchness was siphoned off to his captor and tried to keep his revulsion off his face.

Legato smirked.

And with a flourish he placed a ring into Vash’s hand; petit, gold set with a real sapphire in a bouquet of lab grown diamonds. It was a humble thing in terms of wedding rings but it was Meryls. And it was real and familiar and terrible to see here.

It was Meryl’s wedding ring.

He’d purchased it with fairy gold and still felt bad about it sometimes. But she had deserved something beautiful. Something normal. He’d picked in int Saverem livery blue and white even- it matched Nai’s crown and he hated that sometimes, but Sapphire suited her.

He bit down on the wave of nausea in his gut.

“Bit small for me, Legato,” he said as he dutifully tried to slide it on his pinky. He knew from experience that his big hands had no chance. He discovered had become a powerful charm against his memory spell, super charged with the memory of himself in piecemeal. It was stupid to pretend to not know whose or what it was but he kept up the bit. The bit was all he had to stave off Legato.

“Is it?” Legato said with false concern, “That’s a shame, I acquired it just for you. Drats!”

Vash tried to hand it back to him, like it was nothing to him. It was, after all, just a ring. Meryl’s ring; Yes. Terrifying in implication in Legato’s Position; Yes. But it wasn’t her own self. It was just a thing close to her. He’d not break and play into his hand so easily.

“No no,” Legato said softly, “I insist. Something to remember her by. I am not so cruel as to deny you that. You are my executioner and perhaps when the king returns, if you learn to behave, we may find ourselves shoulder to shoulder. So I do this favor.”

Legato earnestness was the worst part of faerie culture- he meant it. He really meant it. That’s when the shaking began in earnest. He couldn’t help it. Just like he couldn’t help that he was a crier. He was looking at the ring, drinking in the sense of her- he couldn’t taste her death on it- but that may not always be the case if she died quickly. If she was dead at all. It could just be stolen. And not knowing. Not knowing was worse.

He had cast the forgetting on to Meryl to protect her from Wolfwood’s curse. And the ring was full of her attempt to break free of his meddling. He’d made things worse. She would not know what had been taken from her. She wouldn’t know he needed her now. She wouldn’t know how badly he wanted to go home.

Even if she was alive she wasn’t going to come for him.

He’d done this to himself.

He couldn’t help that he was a faerie, that he only ever felt things all at once so big it hurt. And kneeling in front of Legato’s stolen throne, his wife's ring of soft thoughts in his hands, he burst into tears. Great over dramatic sobs snuck up on him.

“Oh you like it that much, what do you say when you receive a gift?” Legato asked with dangerous gentleness. The irony was that common etiquette meant you never thanked fae, it was to acknowledge that a transaction had taken place, that what had happened was not out of friendship and must be repaid. But legato had been born in the world above hill and had particular tastes- and there was and never would be friendship in this court hall.

“Thank you,” Vash made himself say and the coils of cold iron in his spine slithered like trained serpents as he held down the wracking silent sob.

“You’re very welcome Vash Saverem, " he said, “Keep it safe.”

Vash’s hands moved on their own as legato gestured with his fingers- so that the cold iron wires in fingers contract like glass gravel strung like Christmass lights along his bones, so that his fingers moved as Legato wished and put the ring into his own mouth. He tried to find a place for it there in his cheek or under his tongue, but the edges were sharp and his mouth still tasted like fish.

His hands kept moving as Legato bid them and he was almost used to it. His hands found the helmet, smoking on contact with searing intensity, but again pain had found a home so deep and secret in him that it almost didn’t matter.

He tried to fight it. The rage and the horror and despair coming in all together in the human way- braided together so as to not be able to tell them apart. He screamed a wordless hoarse sound as he was forced to return the cold iron helmet to his face. The ring in his mouth burned a different kind of hole in his mind like a clam trying to make a pearl. Meryl had attached to it all manner of soft half remembered things he would never have again and there was no escape of them.

He sat on the dais steps at the steward’s feet and watched the rest of court played out- as much as he could say he could see behind the shapeless helm. Everything was in darkness but a knowing crept into him as figures moved about the hall. He knew there was a crowd. That they were dressed fancy. That the hall was long and narrow flanked on both sides by pillars. He also knew these things from memory. He knew the far doors were wide open currently. He knew when he inclined his head to his hands that they were still covered with old blood. But the blackness remained and into it he screamed. Screamed until he was hoarse because the sound would not escape his prison.

Legato’s hold on him was loose, as if he was a toy cast aside and forgotten, or a dare for him to try something. He had tried something what felt a million times and never gotten anywhere. He passed his tongue across the tang of the gold in his mouth and tried to find a comfortable place to put it still. But he couldn’t. It was there, metal and charmed and tasting of Meryl. He had been sitting here for less than a minute, he was sure, and he felt like he would fidget out of his body. Like his back could crack open and his soul could leave directly like a cicada.

He wondered if Legato expected him to believe that Meryl was dead and not that he’d had her ring knicked? He wasn’t born yesterday.

But he sat there five minutes as a lord brought news of the going ones in the kingdoms below but far- the glow worm harvests, the coming winter solstice tithe, the marriage of a long time bachelor- A dozen inconsequential things and usually these things flowed like water through his attention, his mind a dull buzz above the sensation of cold iron around his bones. But time had slowed to a crawl for him. Glacial.

The first ten minutes was torture.

Followed by the next hour which was in turn unbearable.

Maybe he had killed her? What if she was dead? What if Meryl was dead? What if she had died alone without even knowing him, or why they had come for her? What if he had done that to her?

He shook his head like a dog, the weight of the helm straining his neck.

It was a cheap easy trick and legato was full of cheap easy painful tricks. But rational thought was hard when he’d been here so long, when he was in so much pain it had ceased to mean anything, when he had a rolodex of soft feelings playing on repeat from the charm in his mouth. He wanted to go home. He wanted to go home he wanted to go home and the curse was grinding down on him so heavy and awful. He couldn’t make the memories in the ring a comfort, the curse wouldn’t allow it he realized- it brought his mind back around to doubt every time like a perpetual motion machine.

He was going to have to keep his mind leashed. The tightrope of his imprisonment became suddenly narrower, the path between rage and despair and grief and hope taking him to an empty place in his mind he hadn’t visited in a long time; A kind of static squeal that held him like a friend.

He wasn’t used to being left with full control of his hands anymore and wasn’t sure what to do with them. So he let them claw at his neck and his chest and his armored face.

“Is your executioner well?” Asked one of the fae lords in concern.

“Oh,” Said Legato, “Forgive him, he’s received some terrible news about his wife. She was with another man, so I had her killed, for his sake, for his honor.”

His wording struck him like lightning. His other soulmate? He’d found her? He took a deep breath through his teeth in the claustrophobia of the iron mask. In the darkness of his false solitude he didn’t dare to hope too loudly in his own mind.

Maybe he would come for him? He put Meryl out of mind because he had to. But maybe that nameless man might come for him.

[Please please please] he let himself indulge in wanting it despite the curse.

He was his soulmate. That had to count for something greater than all the things trying to rip him apart. So when his mind landed red hot on Schrödinger's question of Meryl’s safety he slid it to Wolfwood, Zazie’s friend, his brother’s exiled bard and executioner. Over and over as the hours ticked on. Until it became habit.

Until he couldn't bear it

Chapter 9

Chapter Text

When Wolfwood decided to go underhill he knew exactly where to start. He crossed town and down to the bay at low tide and made his way beneath he piers the tourists wandered in search of a witch. Her little house was built out of buoys and bones, bu she herself was slight and dressed in dance club goth best, her bright gold hair pulled back in a tight high ponytail. Marilyn, that was the name she used when she was at the club, smiled at him. She was tanning hides- all of which were recognizably having belonged to cats.

“Hello again,” Wolfwood said, tapping out a cigarette.

“Oh Mr. Cincinnati? Back again? Did you bring me cats?”

“No, Been busy, listen I’m looking for a guy. Blond. Red jacket kind of a dweeb.”

“Oh? Vash?

Wolfwood perked, “Yeah, works at one of the clinics downtown. “

“I was surprised to see him again- skinny miserable little thing when I saw him. Said he was going to go underhill.”

Wolfwood hesitated. Marilyn was a sea witch or a nymph- he wasn’t sure. She’d been here under the pier since as long as anyone knew. Her modern attire shouldn't fool anyone but sometimes it did. She might have come when the city when it was built, before it was settled even maybe.

“Do you know which entrance he used?”

“Mine,” She said brightly.

Wolfwood looked confused.

“He said he was looking for Zazie- you are too right?”

He’d forgotten, a bit, about Zazie. She had left him for the women’s shelter? Vash had claimed to be looking for her- and part of him had always assumed that was bullsh*t. He took a moment to feel guilty- but guilt was just the want of absolution and he fed the feeling to the Punisher without a second thought.

“Both of them. It’s gotten a little out of hand.”

She nodded and gestured at him to enter her shanty against the sea slick rocks. There on the largest boulder was a chalk rectangle drawn like a door.

"It's a real good door, only my friend use it," She said, and then added with her hand out stretched and waiting, "And we are friend, Punisher?"

"Of course," He said and put his pack of smoked into her hand. It was all he had on him save for his lighter and his guitar case. He traveled light. he didn't want for a lot.

She smiled, beatific almost and showed him how to press his hand and open his heart like a charm- as if he needed to be shown- like he was a child. She was f*cking with him and he let her, cause he needed to follow Vash's path step by step or he feared he never find the cursed man by word of mouth and clues alone.

He pushed through the rock of the earth that marked between light and dark and stepped fully back into limbo for the first time in years. It still smelled of liminal seaside space beneath the pier only the dripping was almost maddening in the silence and the dim of the labyrinth of cellars and abandoned shops that stretched before him. This forgotten underground that straddled the real and the truly underhill yawned before him. The tide had slipped in up around his ankles frothing with dark seafoam and cold currents seeping into his dress shoes. The old brick was sea worn, soft and rounded and the barnacles went all the way up to his shoulders.

The narrow alley of the underworld splayed before him into darkness, the waves crashing like the inside of a seashell. He held out his hand, the one with the tattoo and the soul mark and thought about making a magic. He’d needed The Punisher to scry for him last time, but he was closer now, the veil was thinner now. And they were connected weren't they? It had to count for something. A foci all it’s own?

He pressed his off hand against the mark, pinching it and the meat of his hand it lived in, and thought about pulling. He thought about the story Meryl told him of watching him walk into a wall and holding a ball of red yarn.

He needed the ball of yarn now.

He thought about the softness of her hands when he held her attention to that damned wedding ring. He thought about how it felt to drown in her husband's eyes before he left him there to die in it. He pulled hard at the idea of him- red jacket- one arm- dweeb- honey eater- Blue eyes-

He felt the spell manifest in his hand, felt the little piece of yarn in his fingers and twiddled it. Pulled it taught around his hand like cats cradle And followed it through the turns and twists, through strange low window sills leading into more flooded alley, and past graffiti of a whale fall, past a dead man head lolling hands holding a golden disc. He paused to look at the clearly stolen relic. Thought better and carried on.

The sound of braying and splashing announced the gang of Kelpies long before he saw them. Wolfwood pressed himself against a corner and tried to forget how to breathe. He kept the pay no mind spell on his fingers- sometimes casting attracted more attention than just hiding.

The Kelpies were big nag-like creatures, as if wrought from kelp and sea foam and muck, only horse-like the way borzoi were wolflike. And their braying was more like the honk of geese or the jeers of revel rousers in the wee hours of the morning after game day, almost words, slurred and loud echoing along the waves.

Wolfwood held still as a rock. Still a child hiding from faeries. held still, like it was late and chapel, that wretched old knight he’d squired with, had been drinking.

The stench of the Kelpies was what threatened to ruin him. The urge to sniffle, to cough to clear his sinus of the foul low tide smell of them. He wanted to gag. And that he fed to The Punisher and ate it gladly.

They came so close he could see their yellow teeth when they nipped one another and see the nubby pods of seaweed that were their manes close enough to touch.

And he held still for his life, guitar case clutched to his chest.

Kelpies were a nasty way to die and he knew, from experience, that the muck of their innards was sticky and cloying and no blade was sharp enough to cut it, not even the cold iron of the Punisher. His blade would snag and the Kelpie’s gloopy body would pull the sword from his hands and then the meat from his bones if he didn’t let go of it.

He listened a long time after they passed, a whole baker's dozen in total by his count, listened to them plip plop and snarl into the growing tide as they made their way to Marilyn.

He wondered what agreement they must have.

And decided he didn’t want to know.

He walked softer after that. Kept to the shadows and one side of the maze’s brick halls. Sometimes his hubris needed to be checked and Kelpies had done the trick. He made his way slower, shoes and pants soaked until he had come up out of the tide and the narrow brick maze into what at first felt like a big modern cement cellar. It was newer than the old brick, and smelt of man made things and dirt and it opened into cellar on top of cellar, the sound of merriment above seemed real enough. But some strange texture in the walls kept him vigilant; The way he could almost catch a face or a hand moving beneath it. He was careful never to touch any part of it as walked quickly through this new part of the maze.

When he heard something garbled call his name, he did not pause, he did not look. Above him he could still hear drinking and laughter. He was in some oubliette between hill and under.

He’d heard the underground all over town connected underhill, a purgatory of human miasmas, but he’d never walked the straight path that connected them like this. He caught something moved out of the corner of his eye. Ghosts were not real the way the stories said, but ghost where very real in that they remembered, they wanted, and they remained.

At least he was out of the wet.

He moved softly through haunted cellars, though old iron gates and big wooden doors, and crept down old spiral staircases into what was once a wine cellar- all the bottles smashed or gone now. There was a low moan from the farthest darkest corner, he wished it peace and moved softly ever on- He had to wriggle through a boarded up hole in the floor to follow the path his red string was taking him. He plopped down through, both wet dress shoes hit pavers like hooves in the dark and found himself besides gurgling water. It was some sort of run off pipe from the looks of it and the rush of the sea was his ears again which made him worried he’d gotten turned around.

He paused and pulled on the red thread he’d summoned, invisible now, though the yarn of it was tactile when he went searching for it. And again he pulled and followed it six or seven steps like a fisherman trying to reel the big one.

This was the right way.

The drain ended near a ladder. Or at least the walkway ended and he obliged and climbed. He was unsurprised he did not find himself in the mundane surface he’d left- though he was certain climbing down that drainage hatch above hill would be another matter. He poked his head up into a dimness that was like a fog, and like dusty bunnies in a sunny window bright dots wafted and weft like dust that could never settle.

He pulled himself up into a rocky scrawl full of ruins and firefly like sparks of mist, beyond which in the darkness the bottoms of skyscrapers intruded and fairly land lay like a mirror to the world above. Some said fairyland the human world was laid foot to foot and here, in this inversion he almost believed it. It was here in the open ruin of the city beneath that he took a moment to rest and breath after the claustrophobia of the saltwater catacombs. It smelled of cellar and crisp darkness, and the ruins gave way to industrial wrecks, parts of bridges and skyscraper cabling and viaduct concrete pillars, the caverness of it all started pressing in close and the bioluminescence that replaces the stars was slowly becoming visible to his eyes.

He navigated the reverse skyscraper graveyard with a familiar ease. It was always shifting but it could be navigated by its taste and feel. The same ruins were always around somewhere, just never the same somewhere. Most entries to underhill lead directly here, but there were other parts, other ways, and he didn’t mind coming the long way if it meant finding Vash directly at the end of the red string he’d cast.

He had his red string to follow and felt he was making good time until Big fingers of a big hand locked around him mid step. A great hand scooped him right off the ground and he articulately and with not enough fear made a very polite ‘ope?’ sound before he began to yell in earnest.

“Humans so easy to catch,” Said the booming voice. “Never look up.”

Another booming troll voice chuckled, “Bring him for soup!”

“Oh hell,” Wolfwood whispered. His hands were locked to his sides and he was left looking up at the homely troll who’d snagged him. He was maybe fifteen or twenty feet, big ears like a mouse or an elephant, shaggy hair like a lion's mane, a great scar across his bare chest and a skull painted over his face-

“Hey Rollo,” Wolfwood said dully and full of recognition, “You can put me down.”

Rollo stopped, “You know Rollo?”

“Yeah man. It’s me. It’s Wolfwood from Cincinnati- you know” and he hesitated, and used the phrasing the troll had used a long time ago to ask him to play a particular song at court again; “I play the plinky plonks.”

Rollo and Gosef looked between each other.

“The king’s Little man who play pinky plonks?” Rollo asked.

“Yes!” Wolfwood said almost falling over himself with relief, “You know me!” he kicked his feet.

“You’re a bad man, even if you play plinky plonky good,” Rollo said to him and then to Gosef, “He drinks souls.”

“We eat him,” Said Gosef.

“Okay.”

“No!” Wolfwood yelped

Rollo swung him in his fist and laughed, “What now plinky plonky Man? Nothing? You will be good stew. Not like the other one that got away.”

“Too skinny,” Gosef said and laid back down by their fire. “This one better.”

His plinky plonky case was on the ground below. There was no way to wriggle free, Rollo was huge, hulking, he’d seen the troll bash men in a single blow in the gladiator pit- seen him do it for the kings amusem*nt in his halls as a party trick up close even- heard stories of it before he saw it. He was strong, stronger than he should be, but not Rollo-strong.

You’d think he’d wiggle his way out with magic somehow, but Wolfwood was no magician, no matter how Meryl seemed to think he was.

The kingdom beneath sidewalks was full of horrible ways to die and he thought this was probably the most of them of all time. Rollo flipped him upside down and with his other great hand plucked his dress shoes off like he was shucking corn.

Wolfwood yelped and bit into the closest part of Rollo's humongous hand.

Rollo swore and dashed him against the pot so that his head rang like a bell and stars burst into his vision. He came too and protested again when the big troll tried to remove him from his shirt, a combination of pulling it up and trying to rip it.

He was good at two charms, like-me and pay-no-mind

he dug deep for it, he couldn't die here, first of all it was embarrassing. He cast the shape and taste of it through his mind to his fingers and cast the web of it like a soft snow across Rollo’s mind. Trolls weren't simple, just straight forward and he didn’t underestimate him as he cast it. His mind wandered to Meryl’s kitchen and all the times he’d forgotten to finish chopping some things because she’d smiled. She’d said something stupid. She’d stopped and turned and did a little song and dance about a thing that happened at work.

Focus. It wasn't important.

He cast Anything-but-this-task.

And Rollo paused, and asked his compatriot, “Gosef? Do we have pepper?”

Gosef grunted yes.

And Rollo, still with Wolfwood in his fist went looking for the pepper.

“Gosef?” He asked, “would you chop carrots?”

Gosef grunted no.

“Gosef,” Rollo complained.

And Gosef righted himself with a loud grumble- and set to preparing the great chopping board and the great knife. And there in a full sized shopping trolley was all matter of vegetables from the farmers market- how they managed to go there unglamoured and without disaster he’d never know.

“When you put him in the soup-” Gosef said and pointed at Wolfwood. He swallowed. This spell was not f*cking working apparently. Or maybe he should have cast it on both of them, “Remember to chop hands and feet. Or little bones will be in the broth.”

“I wont. Now chop.”

Gosef chopped and Wolfwood pretended to be out cold from being dashed against the pot. Oh this was risky. He let Rollo Peel him like an egg and then while trying not to hyperventilate, Rollo set him to the side. Like the complaint sup ingredient he was pretending to be.

“That part not edible,” Rollo complained.

“Is.” Said Gosef.

“Taint.”

And the argument was good natured and when Wolfwood squinted he saw two fellows doing a bit. He could almost like them, if they hadn’t been trying to eat him. He rolled away, slow at first until he was out of the firelight. He rose to his haunches and moved carefully to his guitar case. Rollo was eating the leafy scraps of what Gosef cut up while Gosef complained “Not for eating.”

Once he had his guitar case he retreated into the darkness, half naked and shoeless but uneaten.

He followed his red thread through the waste and over twisted barricades and under tight drain pipes he had to stoop through. He emerged for a moment in the city above and blinked. There was a bakery across the street from the musty bridge overpass he’d emerged under. It was just dawn and he watched as the bakery light flickered on. It couldn’t hurt could it? To get a coffee?

He walked in, half dressed, and ordered a black coffee with a pump of blueberry syrup in it, he only cast one pay no mind spell and they forgot to charge him or ask why he was in his boxers.

He could go home right now if he wanted to. And it caught him up in a strangle hold for a moment. And it surprised him that home was Meryl’s apartment when it flashed up in his mind. He wanted to. He really did. He wanted it so badly it ached- but he sipped his coffee until it dissipated. Until his nerves settled and he didn’t want anything at all.

He walked back to the underpass, and into the under hill entrance opposite of the one he’d emerged from. It wasn’t like the drainpipes he’d been navigating that naturally wended their way through both worlds. This one was a door like Marilyn's. The outline of it in bright yellow spray paint. He pressed his free hand to the cement there and willed it open with a force of will. He did not so much step as fall through it, spinning for a moment, but staggering to the other side without spilling his coffee.

He stepped into warm humid darkness and waited for his eyes to adjust and sipped his cup again. When the shapes began to resolve themselves he was surprised he recognized it. The great leafy shadows overhead grew flush against glass and there was a thick humid mist settled around his knees. Candles were lit in the distance on the seat of an old throne now a forgotten shrine.

He knew this place; This Dryad hall of ancestors.

The king had come here often when he was his guard. Too frequently some would gossip. He consulted with his brethren frequently and for all his flaws, his viciousness, he was good at being a fairy king, not to say Wolfwood thought fairy kings were any good. He walked the long hall with bare feet, plodding softly, between great gnarled trees and itty bitty shackled bonsai. Dryads were known for coming back and not all of them were here by choice.

He came to a stop at the end of the sacred green house and saw at the foot of the shrine a red windbreaker folded neatly among the offerings which included dried flowers and several skulls in several concerning sizes large and small. He did not disturb it. Wearing red underhill wasn’t smart. It was a color that set most fae creatures off, used to mark prey or beloved things- it was to wear a target.

There was a presence behind him and he held still, as still as he had for the Kelpies.

“You,” Said a husky dual toned elf voice.

He’d know that c*nt’s voice anywhere.

He smiled and turned around slowly. The high Elf was tall and her skin pale, almost blued with an oil slick sheen. Her long nails were curved and sharp like talon and a deep sanguine red. Her dark hair was pulled back in neat hat and she dressed, despite her narrow tapered proportions like above hill business executive in a sharp emerald pant suite all in velvet with a gem encrusted beetle leashed to a pin and crawling about her lapel.

He had never seen her unglamoured before and it took him a long moment to connect her familiar voice to her now unfamiliar face and dark hair.

“Elendira,” He said politely. She had been the king's adviser for longer than he’d been king, her ancestry and titles obscured even to him. There had been some talk of if she would someday be queen or if perhaps she was some returned dryadic royal family member who had stepped out of their tree from ancient slumber. Perhaps she was just some minor princess or cousin with talent? The truth of it would probably never be his to know.

Elendira smiled, all sharp teeth, “You’ve returned little Punisher? Hmm, for what? No curse on you now. What could you possibly want here? These are not your ancestors.”

“Here to kill things until I find something I’m looking for.”

“Oho,” She said brightly, “That sounds fun.”

“I’ve learned the king is indisposed. Is it True Legato is the throne’s steward?” This was common gossip and had been since he’d been above hill. It was a safe place to start.

“It is,” She said like she hated that, “Not against my best efforts-” She said and gestured at herself. Cold iron could strip an elf bare of their glamor, their magic, their memories, enough of it could shred them into the fabric of their souls, though that was a wives tale.

“I think it’s an improvement,” He said.

She tilted her head, because he rather meant it.

“What did you do to anger the king so badly?” She asked with less bite than he deserved. Flattery really did go miles with her.

Wolfwood shrugged, “I am not a very good adviser. He did not like when I opened my mouth unless it was to sing.”

“Be frank with me darling,” she said, “What did you say? Sending you away, I think, was his downfall. You’d have never let Legato have the throne. You’d have found the other prince-'' and her eyes wandered to the red windbreaker before the shrine. Wolfwood did his best not to follow. He was not a great liar, raised by fae and never taught how, but when it counted he could manage it being human and all.

He’s not so sure he would have, loyalty was never actually a strong suite of his. He had killed Chapel to become The Punisher because there were little other options for a changeling boy- be eaten, be used, be cast out like trash.

“He quarreled with the other prince, you know this?” he ventured.

“Yes. I was there when they dueled.”

“Do you know why?”

“For the throne-” She said.

He shook his head, “The opposite. I told him perhaps he ought to let his brother go if didn’t want to co-rule. He didn’t like that. I’ve never met the other prince, but perhaps its for the best its Legato.” He lied. Because now more than ever his soulmate having the king's face finally made sense. They had missed each other like ships in the night during the event that had shaped both of their lives since.

Elndira tch-ed. She hated Legato, in this the passage of time had changed little.

“Bootlicker, always,” She said, making a dismissive gesture at him. He’d let her think it. The silence stretched out and away between them and finally she spoke again, “My ancestors called me here. With some urgency, so tell me, what are you really doing in our halls? Everyone here is already dead.”

“I think most of them are sleeping,” Wolfwood said thoughtfully, “But you’re right. No one to murder here. Must be strange to see me? You see I’m looking for something, as I said.” He knew she’d perk up if he told her it was the other prince but then, well she’d never let him leave with him. And perhaps she already knew. His windbreaker was right there, her ancestors had bid her answer his prayer.

"Alright, well, then where are your pants?"

"Trolls."

She blinked slowly and then laughed, “Can’t even handle some trolls?”

“I am much better at the plinky plonks,” He said gravely and with a straight face.

She snorted and approached him and the shrine, “My ancestors have bid me to grant you a boon, though I do not want to. Name your desire.”

That was very frank. Startlingly warlike in fae etiquette, but Elendira had always been bellicose.

“I want for nothing,” He said, as he said so many times before. He was the Punisher and his words rang true.

“What do you need?”

He sipped his coffee, “A Cigarette maybe. Shoes. A pony?”

She raised her eyebrows at pony, knowing enough human sarcasm to know he was f*cking with her.

“I have none of those. But I do have something you may be interested in?” She pulled from the inner pocket of her rich green suit jacket a vial of sick cyan liquid.

“Coolaid? For me? You shouldn’t have.”

“If it were not for the will of my ancestors I would kill you where you stand,” She said evenly. He held out his hands and received the gift. She did not elaborate on its contents of purpose even though he waited for her to. And he did not thank her.

When the silence stretched out he merely nodded and turned to leave. He was surprised when she called after him; “Nicholas,”

That was his name and so few people knew it. So he had to pause.

How many alive still knew he was Nicholas D. Wolfwood, The Punisher, house Hopeland, Knight of the eye, from Cincinnati-above?

“Yes?”

“Don’t die. I’d like to ask you for a favor later.”

“That could be fun,” He said and didn’t look back.

He walked the long shadowed hall of the green house mausoleum and exited through the great Art Nouveau stained glass doors and into a high craggy road cut precarious into a cliff along an underground river. The roar of the river below was a nice change of pace to the eerie silence of the green house and he thought perhaps he was finally coming toward the populated areas of the kingdom.

The path widened and then gave way into paved cobblestone road. He walked along it and greeted strange men and creatures along the way. Trolls with carts. Lesser elves that only came up to his hip with bulky backpacks looking like they had places to be. A beautiful woman in a black shroud walked barefoot and wept blood while a whole profession of changeling attended her long bead train- a bride. He paused to watch the fairy wedding procession with their tinkling bells and candles high on staves over their heads. They sang an old song even though he dared not play- an auspicious wedding then. He stood aside like other travelers and kept his eyes on his bare toes until she had passed.

He soon found himself at the gates of a small town partially built into the cliff the road was worn into, from its center a waterfall cascaded down into the underground river below. Jeneora was nothing special in the grand scheme of the kingdom’s glory and treasure but it was one of closest settlements to the mundane world and was thus, almost regular by human standards. Changelings lived here freely like in Hopeland, which while on the other side of the kingdom, if the kingdom could said to have geography, was also relativity close to the surface.

He approached the great doors to the settlement and the two guards standing outside of them.

“Hold up!” Said one in a loud voice and held out his hand to Wolfwood. He supposed that was fair. He must look like surface dweller here by accident.

“Yes?” He asked.

“What business do you have here, man?” Asked the brunet man. He was fae, though glamoured nicely with a handsome face. His armor was archaic and the part piecemeal from across time part Landsknechte and part conquistador in style.

“My own?” he said like the guard was stupid, which was true.

“You can’t come in stranger.”

“Oh, for crying out loud, at least give me a riddle,” He said, feeling like he needed that cigarette more than ever.

The guards looked between each other because that was not the response of a naive surface human trying to gain entry to their fair town.

The Brunet cleared his throat and with the formal tone befit of a formally given public riddle recited; “What is it that given one, you’ll have either two or none? “

Wolfwood Feigned to think deeply, placing his hand under his chin and letting his eyes move over both guards. Neither one seemed too much of a serious threat if it came to it, each armed with a slender cavalry sword with an ivory hilt and obsidian blade.

“A choice,” He said after a moment.

“Dammit,” guard one muttered.

“I got you Dipper,” The other said defensively, “Listen here traveler, tell me what can be harbored, but few hold water? What can you nurse, but only by holding them against someone else? What can you carry, but not with your arms.?What can you bury, but not in the earth?”

Wolfwood went still and cold for a moment, wondering if this guard knew him. But meeting his eyes he found only pride and glee so he said whip fast and sharp:

“Grudges.”

The fairyman’s face fell. That was his 5$ riddle so to speak. And it was a good one. The sort he’d learned at court the hard way.

“My turn!” Wolfwood said brightly with a clap of his hands, “I have many faces, expressions, and emotions, and I am usually right at your fingertips. What am I? “

The two guards looked between each other, each one looking nervous until the one on the left finally ventured, “A mask?”

“Incorrect my friend it would be Emojis. My win, let me through.”

The man frowned and said, “Well we can’t let you in looking like that?”

He was wearing black boxers, no shoes, his pink shirt nearly ripped down the middle- he was lucky he still had it at all. The troll had shucked his clothes like he was a pesky piece of vegetable.

“No hospitality for a weary traveler?” he ventured.

The man frowned, obviously hoping he was a newcomer from the kingdom above who did not know the right words to ply him with.

“When you enter,” He said, to retain his honor, “Go to the third house and ask for Grandma, she will see you fed and clothed. Do not stay past the next morrow.”

Wolfwood granted them his stiffest court ready bow and they bristled.

“Can we have your name?” Asked the one on the left as he passed.

“I have been called many names, these days I am just a man from Cincinnati.”

“Would a man from Cincinnati have business with- with the court?”

“A Man From Cincinnati may have business wherever he pleases,” He said and stepped past him into the fortressed town.

They let him, though they were hesitant now. Wary even.

Grandma was lavish with him, seeming to have been warned he may be someone of note in a bad state. She offered him fine clothes and he refused, asked her more humbly to darn his shirt.

He left still in his boxers but with a pair of felt house shoes, pink and purple with curled toes and felted flowers. He thought that she had given them to him as a test and he had obliged. They did match his shirt after all and he didn’t have a lot in the way of style or shame. They were warm and wouldn’t hinder his footwork like heavy boots- he wore dress shoes for a reason. He left in the morning giving her his best court bow and wishing her home bounty and peace, polite as a shiny button and left.

The town was as he remembered it, a cobbling of many forgotten things. Things out of time. Little wood houses that had burned down in the fire of 1886, An old Volkswagen beetle without any wheels with an old toothless elf living inside, his wings unglamored and tattered, his great white beard braided with flowers. Great hermit crabs with crystal shells scurried down the alleys, there were Container gardens decorated with skulls and above towards the cavernous dark dotted with bioluminescence were orange and blue kites loaded with candles. A mix of the soft and horrific everywhere he looked. He’d been above long enough that some of it jarred him now.

But this was what home had been like for most of his life. Not Legos and Baseball- though those things haunted him too. Though maybe home was Meryl’s little kitchen table and that big soft bed he wanted so bad. But the feeling was fleeting, wanting it so badly and then draining through his fingers.

He followed the pull of the string on his left hand and followed it through town and to a main road. One of the great alabaster roads that ran straight to the center of the kingdom and the high looming palace set in looping brambles and thorns. He walked a long time on the straight road through the dim, past all sort of travelers pleasant and menacing and the closer he came to the palace the more uncertain he became.

If legato was on the throne.

If legato was on the throne and he had Vash.

And if Vash was the king's younger twin….

“He better be in a brothel somewhere,” He said to himself as he entered the familiar capital he had lived in for- how long he wasn’t sure? Time had little meaning down here only that it stretched and squashed, and he had been bound to the Punisher since before he was old enough to hold it- years. Years and years.

But the red yarn of his spell led him past the fun and shady parts of Fae civilization and towards the twining vines that escaped the royal grounds into the peasantry's circle. It was anathema to harm it. He found his feet taking him up the steep white stones of the stairs to the palace.

He really needed that cigarette.

At least here his reputation preceded him and he was escorted instead of stopped as he approached the throne room and the great hall where court was held. It helped that he had unsheathed The Punisher and carried it over his shoulder oozing want for the unspeakable thing that flared only when the life drained out of a body. He was not just a man in his boxers with a plinky plonk case- he was a man in his boxers with a f*ck off evil sword here to collect Meryl's man hell or high water.

Chapter 10

Chapter Text

When Wolfwood entered the throne room the crowd in all their finery, basked in their grotesque fae luxury, parted like a sea full of minnows fleeing a cormorant. He followed the pull of the connection running magically through his hand to the base of the throne as the clamor of the guards footsteps echoing after him and there on the other end of that invisible string of fate was a miserable pile of a fairy that sat at Legato’s feet.

He was afraid of this.

He stood there a long moment, The Punisher resting over his shoulder at a jaunty angle. If he was being honest he hadn’t planned this far ahead, just sort of dreaded that this was where he’d have to go to finish the quest. But also if he was being honest, he kind of thought it’d come to this.

“So uh,” the swordsman began eloquently, “How you been?”

The man in the iron helmet didn’t answer.

But legato, self centered as the sun said, “I’ve been better than you could dream. What on earth are you wearing? Why are you here?”

Wolfwood shrugged, apparently Legato hadn’t heard the wisdom that if you got good you could wear what ever you wanted.

“I was hoping you could help me Legato,” He began, “I am looking for a wedding ring.”

It was a dangerous game. But it was best, he thought, to come at this with his fairy-best logic. Legato, while also a mortal changeling, was steeped in the formality of the court like a personal shackle. It would be far easier, he thought, to usurp the thrown for himself than figure out how to get Legato’s captured prince back into Meryl’s apartment.

I could just kill legato, he thought darkly or maybe it was the Punisher.

But then, he’d have to sit the throne. Or Vash would. And something about being a social worker at the harm reduction clinic told him that would never fly.

So he was here for a ring. Not for politics.

“I don’t see how that concerns me,” Legato said, “What happened to your curse little banished changeling?”

That was ripe. Coming from another changeling even?

He shrugged, “I’m not a smart man, your honor. I’m not a subtle man. I made a promise to return it and I scried it to this room. I would like it back.”

He made eyes at the rest of the nobles in the room thinking that he was giving Legato an easy out. Legato could frame any enemy he liked as the thief and then Wolfwod could even walk away after. He could take the ring back to Meryl and when she remembered he could tell her where her man was. They could come up with something clever together- oh he wanted that. He wished she were here now, if only as a quiet presence at his side. But the want of her was fleeting as the seriousness of the situation weighed on him.

Legato’s expression darkened, his deep blue brows threatening to meet above his nose like two desperately in love caterpillars.Wolfwood had been expecting a sly smirk, for his eyes to rove the lords and ladies present. This was a gift, a fair trade. Eliminate one enemy and give him the ring and he’d leave in peace. But Legato’s machinations must be bigger than he knew. Had to be, what with keeping the real heir contained in an iron mask in plain sight? Wolfwood began to despair, he was truly not a smart man, it seemed.

“I do not grant this request,” Legato said at last.

There was a soft gasp through the court. That was not how this sort of thing should go by fairy law. A king never out right refused his subject.

“You are a banished sellsword, I refuse to take you seriously.”

The true fae around the room bristled in the silence, the sound of feet and soft bells and whispers echoing ominously. Maybe it wouldn’t be so hard to just kill him and abdicate the throne? Though the entire kings guard, The Eye they were called, were loyal to him though.

He could maybe take the members of The Eye.

One at a time.

Yeah, sure one at a time, it’d be no sweat.

He spun the tip of his great blade against the pitted red marble and co*cked his head like he was thinking deeply. He was. He wasn’t. He’d already made up his mind, he thought some where along the way.

“Well now I’m just pissed off,” he told the floor, or his sh*tty felt slippers, or his sword, “I’m not a clever man. Or a subtle one. But I am consistent-So I guess?-

And here he looked up at legato like he was about to tell a bad joke;

“I’ll kill you.”

And he launched himself at the throne.

His feet hit every third or fourth step up the dais and his blade collided not with legatos soft wet skull but a knife held by the frail miserable creature he’d come to collect. The cold iron knife was rippled with bind runes like the patterns of damscus steel and it was held with a strength he didn’t expect. He braced his own terrible blade with his off hand, the contest became not of strength, but of will. The potency of presence had hit him on impact and he could taste in the magic that none of that will was Vash’s own. Legato’s dominion over him radiated like a sick grinding sound down the length of Vash’s arm into his knife and into The Punsiher and up the bones of Wolfwood’s fingers. Legato's will was like a sick contamination, like mold, like an oil spill. The roil of it making his stomach churn.

But did not The Punisher want Legato’s life, more than Wolfwood had ever wanted anyone's? He hadn’t just decided he was going to kill him. He wanted to kill him. Had he not been feeding the damn sword every scrap of want he’d ever had for years longer than he knew? Was he not The Punisher with a will and presence of his own that could not and would not be dominated? These things all felt like they should be true, but still he struggled to hold his own against him.

Wolfwood let out a yell of frustration as Vash slid the knife against the bottom of his blade stepping down two steps, and pushing in much to closer. Wolfwood drew his blade back and held it out and away one handed, ducked a swipe of the knife then another, brought his right hook hard into Vash’s sternum hopping that’d be enough to knock the twig of a man down. But Vash was either made of tougher stuff or Legato had weighed him down with enough cold iron to counter balance a tank. His man just kept coming.

He came at him with furious swipes, his foot work a mess on the steps, but moving fast and hard enough from the high ground to keep Wolfwood at bay- only because Wolfwood could not and would not simply cut him in half. Instead he braced the flat of his great sword against his palm and used it two handed to counter the knife strikes, the ring and spark of cold iron on cold iron swelling in the hall as he retreated step by step down the dais.

The longer it went the more noticeable it became that his opponent's breathing didn’t line up with his strikes, didn’t move in tandem with the clench of his own core muscles- how every movement was mechanical in a way that made his skin crawl.

He’d heard horror stories about what Legato could do.

And apparently they were all true.

He cut his will against Legato’s and when he had the opening, just the hair breaths of a hesitation on Vash’s part on a clever strike, Wolfwood drew his blade back and struck. The heavy eyeless helm rang like a bell as the flat of his blade walloped against it with force and intention. It was the only non fatal strike Wolfwood had ever braided with power.

Vash stumbled away, going ragdoll for a moment before righting stiffer and more uncanny than ever. And with horror, Wolfwood realized he’d knocked him out but not severed Legato’s hold. He glanced beyond him at the steward, smug on his throne, both hands engaged like he had a marionette.

I’m going to kill him, I’m going to kill him as many times as I can.

Which was usually once but sometimes in fairy land you got lucky or unlucky in the number of murders one could perform on the same man.

Vash came at him again tenaciousness as an undead thing, getting in close- and again Woflwood grabbed up the far side of his blade like it was a bo staff- bleeding his own blood against the sharp of the hungry blade to do so. The wound smoking and trailing as he parried and pivoted and stepped ever closer back down to the base of the dais.

And when his foot hit the base, he felt it wick out of him like a blow- Legato’s foci robbing him of victory. He was on the defensive and some how all the wanting him dead in the world wasn’t breaking through what Legato drew power from.

His mind was reeling through his options when Vash’s little blade found him in the side- a moments indiscretion and blade work faster than he could follow- leading to a sharp exhale. And the second stab was expected and so where the third. And already the first wound was smoking as the perpetual motion feedback loop of life force for life force that was his pact with The Punisher flowed back into him like a tide the wrong way up a river. He wasn’t even blocking anymore, just taking each slice and stab, and the ocasional Jab to the jaw with Vash’s fist and the hilt of the knife. He could take it, but that wasn’t how he was going to solve legato’s wizard maze.

He could take it.

Until Vash- well Legato by proxy- hit him with a head but, with that ugly hunk of metal over Vash’s face and he went staggering back, ears ringing. He had to make a desperate bid for space by kicking Vash in the chest, which sent him limbs tumbling like a doll back onto the crimson marble floor. Wolfwood stood himself up straight and spit blood onto those same red tiles, they were red for a reason after all to hide the stains, and struck The Punisher into the floor hard enough to leave it interred and vertical.

His own Foci was weak, not worth training in Chapel or the rest of the Eye’s opinion but it was different than The Punisher’s wanting, that much he was certain and if Legato had him in a corner with a superior foci well, then it he was not so proud as to temporarily step away from the wanting to win. Not that he could so easily put The Punisher aside- the blade wanted him more than it wanted other things, and it pulled at him even now, a high pitch swan song in his mind. But he thought maybe, a bare knuckle venture with his soulmate might give better results, besides he was pissed. He stalked towards Vash pulling hard on that yarn like metaphor he’d developed for casting with their bond, like he could reel him like a fish- and instead felt him tug back. Wolfwood stopped short, his fists raised but co*cking his head like a dog- just in time for Vash to come at him all stop motion animation.

He dodged and pivoted and tripped over his pink felt slippers to avoid the knife and found quickly that even though the f*cker had left him on sight, he couldn't really bring himself to rough him up. This wasn’t even his own doing. That’s how pathetic his man was right now and that pissed him off even more. Legato was doing a good job of keeping him so busy with Vash there was no way to break past him and up the dais- Vash was just a speed demon.

Vash- or Legato’s will in him- brought the knife fast and close near his face and Wolfwood countered with his hand going into to Vash’s elbow with intent of putting him on the floor. But the touch was electric. And the bond- that metaphorical piece of string he’d been following felt wide and open and familar. And instead of pulling this time he fed into it. Like Vash was The Punisher. Fed into him with what ever he had. Which wasn’t a lot. Felt all the goodness drain out of him- and for a moment of panic he felt the claw of the curse- his curse, latched so deep and rancid into Vash that it was hard to tell where it started and Vash began. He held Vash in the struggle for the knife, one hand on his wrist the other on his elbow still feeding into him a spell he didn’t quiet understand- because he wasn’t casting it.

“What are you doing,” Wolfwood muttered. He knew the helmeted man couldn’t answer and he was almost too scared to trust. But hadn’t Elendira given him a potion, the kind that was made with the same unspeakable essence his blade drank? Would it really hurt him too badly, after all the sword did to him on the regular, to just let him take what he needed?

“This is getting a little boring,” Legato said from his throne.

Something drained out of Wolfwood like he was a cup of hot tea going cold, like all the color was being eaten out of his vision, like all the blood was draining out of his head. Even the Punisher didn’t dig into him that deep- only other people when he-

Oh this was a bad idea, he thought dully as his soulmate tore at the edges of what sparked his whole life.

Legato laughed then; “You see my gentle lord and ladies, this man is a bit of a joke, a disgrace to our halls. You’ll have to forgive and understand my harsh treatment, but I knew him for what he was when he entered...”

The Siphoning continued as the gloating went on, till he felt like an empty capri sun and his strength waned. He wanted to puke and heard something like plates breaking inside a kitchen cabinet in his head. And just when Woflwood thought his strength would fail- his strong hands keeping the blade away from his throat- that was when Vash jerked out of his grasp and went for The Punisher. And all Wolfwood could do was shout as he hit the floor- something in his chest still unspooling and spooling like he was coming apart. He watched with double vision as Vash let the knife hit the marble floor and hefted the great sword with his one good hand.

Vash heaved the weapon from where it was stabbed into the floor, trembling either from the weight or effort. He hefted it up facing vertical and forward, back over his shoulder like a javelin before takings three great strides towards the throne and launching it while Legato still spoke of his victory. The arc of Vash’s back and arm aligned with golden ration perfection with the angle of the stairs- The Punisher flying low and close to the steps to arrive full force into legato’s gut, driving him back and lodging deep into the living throne behind him.

The hall was for a moment the quietest place in the world.

Until the palace walls shuddered as the bramble throne thrashed beneath Legato as he let out a silent scream that was more blood than air- and then Vash bent in on himself like a terrible living pretzel clawing at that metal helmet like he was suddenly on fire. The nobles were doing an annoying amount of screaming. Wolfwood did not have a lot of time to think and thankfully he was awful at thinking and much better at doing. So he staggered up. Up. Up on his feet like he’d been taught over and over. Get up. Even if you die there- better to die on your feet. Up was the least you can do. So up he made his bones take him to his feet.

The great vines in the rafters writhed and the beams and the tiles began to fall and the court goers continued to scrambled along with the guards. And Wolfwood staggering forward caught Vash up by the wrist of his one good hand and heaved him up. He strung his arm over his shoulder and was thankful that fae were sort of lightwheight and spindly.

“If I pass out and we die here,” He said dully, because he felt like all ability to emote had been ripped out of him, “It is firmly. Your. Fault.”

But Vash had gone limp in his hold, even as he kept bleeding his life force into him. They couldn't both die here, Meryl would kill him! The angry vines and its sharp thorns and the panicked nobles made their escape a slow trial of endurance that made Wolfwood want to scream- he felt wretched and the Punisher was screaming for him to turn back. Every step was a little victory of its own away from it. Every step a little piece of hell.

“I. don’t. Even. Like. You.” He told his soulmate in frustration. He stood at the top of the palace steps having left the way he’d come and beheld the city below entangled in enraged seemingly entative vines. They naturally encircling the capitol and had now come loose like a great kraken, and the palace behind him made a great groaning complaint, threatening to collapse.

Wolfwood swallowed hard.

So much for not usurping fairyland.

The city was full of screaming, a small fire was burning larger by the moment, and by time he’d dragged Vash and himself down into the medieval city they were not the only ones trying to leave. The Punisher was screaming in his mind to fetch it still. To take hold of the handle and will it drink Legato’s essence. Only instead it was his own essence Vash was burning through like he was a hurricane lamp. The Punisher felt so far off that not even the feedback loop its binding could reach him- he’d never been this far away from it, not ever.

“Focus, Nicholas, focus,” He said. He willed himself to walk the path between here and the real wold without it. Needing his own name enough to dare to say it. Like he could command himself with it as Chapel had when he was young.

He needed a door to the mortal world, above hill, to the god awful city that hated him- back to Meryl’s apartment and pray it could still be something like what he wanted to maybe call home.

And in desperation, away from the crowds, on the stones of the inner wall of the fae city he drew with his own blood the shape of a door. The cut on his hand was still open when he was done, which was unfamiliar and morbidly fascinating. He could see his bones in there a little. He stood to admired his work and with tandem intent, without saying it, with out complaining- Vash reached out and made the door true. The power of old deep magic like fresh dark loam snaking out into the place that dictated the difference between here and there and killing it, binding, it shackling it- opening the door.

And when they staggered through the door and into the kaleidoscope of sensation and motion it brought them into a Deny’s parking lot, spilling out of disused phone both. The city around them was dark and its lights twinkling and the night foggy and quiet. Wolfwood didn’t mean to drop Vash, but maybe someday the metallic clank of him hitting the pavement with that horrible helmet as he went to his knees to finally vomit, would be funny.

When they entered the Deny’s, because the phone both was long out of service, he cast no spells and the hostess looked at them and said, “Happy Halloween to you too”

“Sure,” Wolfwood said, “Can I use the phone? Please? We're a little lost.”

“Oh honey,” She said sympathetically. And as he glanced around the room he realized it really must be Halloween, there were revelers in clown and zombies costumes, and a corner both of teens in smeared make up and discarded cat ears.

He left Vash with his head and heavy helmet down on the bar as he dialed. He put one hand on his back even, on the side that didn’t have wings. The more he looked at the unglamoured fae the more worried he got. He reminded himself firmly that he did not. Technically. Like. Him.

Meryl picked up with a sleep raspy; “Hullo?”

And he said, “Its me- ”

“Kitten?”

And with a great sigh he said, “Yeah, I’m at the Denny’s. I threw up, can you come get me?”

Chapter 11

Chapter Text

“Fairy land,” Meryl repeated.

“Yeah.” Wolfwood said from the back seat.

“Fairy. Land!” She she shouted, both hands coming off the wheel and slamming back against it.

“Yeah.”

She glared at him through the rear-view mirror and looked back with a look so beleaguered she softened.

“Kitten. It’s been two years- gonna give more than just Fairy land, f*cking puh-lease?”

“Oh,” He said with sudden apologetic understanding, “Times different in fairy land.”

She bit her cheek but did not murder him, as her eyes showed she was thinking about. She accelerated through the interaction with too much gas and aggressively merged lanes soon after. Wolfwood reached up and silent held the oh sh*t handle just above the back door. Meryl could drive the he little red suburu to hell and back if she set her mind on it. When she got on to the highway and could hit the cars top speed of 72 she finally took a deep breath.

“So who is this guy?” She demanded with a point.

Wolfwood let the question hang longer than he wanted to- because his brain was like a pot of boiling jello being asked algebra.

“Your husband.”

“Haha, cute. Okay, for real, who is your friend?”

“Your Husband,” He said more pointedly.

She co*cked her head and looked over at Vash, who was quiet alien with his long legs tapered that bled into narrow feet, and so did his long arms taper into delicate tapered fingers- Tapered was probably the best word for all of him. He was big for how spindly everything about him was. And he lay there Unglamoured with his petroleum on water skin and bio-luminesence pulsing weakly. He was right there in all that strangeness sin her passenger seat. The veil of Halloween had been a god disguise at the Denny’s but now in the close proximity of the car his realness was undeniable. She had seen Wolfwood do magic. Had spoken a couple times now with a potted apple tree that only responded to Your Majesty. So she was taking his return in stride.

But husband?!

She looked into the rearview mirror again to protest but Wolfwood cut her short.

“You’ve forgotten. It’s not your fault. When you remember this part later I want you to know it’s not your fault that you forgot your husband, okay?”

“Like because of magic?”

“I went to fairy land for your husband, who you forgot, so yeah, Magic,” He said struggling to make the thought into a complete sentence.

“Oh,” She said in distress and then stared out at the road about it.

He had thought at first that Vash was siphoning him personally, but if that was the case he should have dropped dead by now. The Fae had done something terribly complicated with The Punisher’s bond and the living throne. The enchantment was flowing through him like his feedback loop with The Punisher only instead of stopping in his flesh it kept going, running through him like a hot faucet set all the way open. It made him feel loose and too open and noodly- made his brain mush. Or maybe that was how hard Vash had slammed that metal helmet into his head.

When they arrived at that apartment complex on the hill, he had to rally himself to haul Vash up out of the front seat he’d slumped into. And for a moment standing over him, bent half into the car he was afraid to touch him. His breathing was so shallow that in that moment, he was still as death. But when he was brave and touched him - Vash startled.

It was then three flights of outdoor stairs up to the apartment door, and his muscles complained, even after resting in the car, now that his bond with the Punisher was redirected he felt only half cooked. He never hurt after battle, only during. He suffered quietly thought Meryl futzing with the keys at the lock until she opened the door and flicked on the lights- it was almost as he remembered it. The same art was on the walls. The same cluttered counter tops. But the Ikea kitchen table he’d carved in with runes was gone. In it’s place was a round pink marble topped table with a great big kitchen aid mixer. The book shelves were paired down and one was replaced with an antique curio cabinet. The lumpy grey couch he’d slept on for nearly two months was replaced with a great big retro velvet couch in jewel tone navy blue. It looked awful to sleep on.

It really had been two years.

He was glad Vash was hooded like a falcon for the reveal; all his things were missing. Every little thing that had sang with his intention was gone or hidden- or, he’d have to ask, try to make it right.

He didn’t wait for Meryl to invite it, or lead him there, he just took her limp husband into their bedroom and laid him down on the big bed.

Meryl followed after and said, “Is he okay?”

“No. I need you to boil some water and bring me all your towels?”

“All?”

“Yeah.”

She was reluctant a moment, but he had never sent her on a fools errand before. So after a beat of silence she left to fetch his requests. And it was then he slumped to sit on the bed himself.

His man was still breathing so shallowly looking lank and elvish. He’d never seen one ungalmoured until meeting Elendira- not completely anyway, Just the flash of cool skin tone, too many teeth out of the corner of his eye, or the flash of iridescent wings maybe. And now he had the chance to take a good look. His man lay there shaped like a sickly dorito, wide shoulders tapering to narrow hips and tapering was the best word for all of him and his long limbs and long finger and delicate feet. His skin and all of him was a blue gray parlor that shinned like gasoline. The wings he laid on were clear like a dragon fly and a kind of disappointingly drab matte, but across the top diagonal third of his body blue luminescence rippled across him in slow steady blinking waves.

But this was His man now, and he felt very strongly about him being his now fae or not; the binding marks, the wining him literally form the fae court- yeah, this guy was his even if his ass was grass for all he’d put Meryl through. He’d been socialized by the fae like that, he was possessive and knew how to hold a grudge.

“Can you see?” He asked.

No response.

“Can you hear me at all?” he asked more gently. No answer though which made him worry he was out cold. He was unsure how injured or dehydrated he was considering the amount of manna flowing through him from the throne and the Punisher and back in to Vash. His money was on a lot. Definitely more than he could see.

Wolfwood hesitated so deeply and fully to touch him, he knew the nature of the curse meant what ever he chose, no matter how good intentioned would probably not be a comfort. That was how it worked. That was how it had worked for him for years and years. He was going to startle, he was going to yelp, getting the cold iron out of him would probably be hell-

He laid his hand on his shoulder and his man flinched again followed by a series of muffled sounds beyond the hulking evil piece of iron. Just like he’d feared.

“Just me-” He said and after a moment the fairy man settled.

When he took Vash’s hand in his, the fae offered no resistance, and had been mostly limp since he’d raised his arm to open the doorway out of fairyland. What struck him now was how his hand was brimming with heat just like when The Punisher healed him- it always felt bright like hot magma. Legato had crumpled Vash and Wolfwood hadn’t really grasped how completely that must have been until he felt the jagged edges in the bones of his hands. That really should have killed of him. There was no response in the rest of Vash’s body as his fingers gingerly explored the damage- there should be though. Bad sign-there was a certain point with fae, like rabbits, when they’d just give out under pain and stress. They weren't known for being hardy. And Vash had already lost and arm. And the scars on him, either new from serving legato or old spoke for themselves.

Wolfwood hesitated and put his hand back down so gingerly.

“Sorry- really am,” He said.

He was not a man of healing. And maybe pulling the cold iron out would be worse? But cold iron dampened all aspects of most fairy creatures functions; their flesh their minds their essence. Based on the amount of spirit stuff he was pulling through him from the core of that ancient living throne into Wolfwood was going ere on the side of the cold iron preventing him from healing.

So the cold iron had to go.

Wolfwood ran his hands over his face and took a deep breath.

First he should get the helmet off. He had tried while waiting in the Deny’s parking lot but legato had locked it with an intent and he found the more obvious and evil of the options he could imagine difficult to emulate and then soon ran out of ideas.

He waited a long moment until Vash’s chest steadied and he reached out to touch him again- felt him startled again. He was going in and out of consciousness Wolfwood correctly guessed.

“If you can hear me, I don’t know how to get the Mask off, yet. So I am going to get the iron threads out of you first, and I imagine it will not be pleasant and I am so sorry. I hope you remember me. I wont ask you to trust me. But I don’t mean you any harm- though I am sure I will.” and being raised by Fae the level of pure f*cking ominous villainy in his word choice sailed over his head and landed in the pit of Vash’s stomach.

At some point Meryl returned and knocked on the door with the water and the towels and tried to joke; “What is he, having a baby?”

But Wolfwood had felt too empty for a come back and just said, “Check on us in the morning.” And shut the door with a strong charm- stronger than anything he’d ever cast before he felt. All that heart stuff of the living throne running through him bled into his will and into the door too easily. Which was good because Meryl was stubborn and a formidable witch in her own right.

When he rallied himself and set himself to manipulating the cold iron wire he found he had no talent for it. At least his hands were accustomed to the substance from his blade- though it posed him no inherent threat as a mortal. It was still not so strange to bend it to his will compared to a sword, only instead of entering flesh he was willing it leave. Even still, unraveling the long strands of cold iron beneath Vash’ flesh, braided tight a round his bones as they were, took hours. The edges of the wire were sharp and Wolfwood sliced his fingers methodically, pulling like reeling in a fish, like the familiar chore of using a drop spindle to pull wool into yarn- only Vash yielded steel and blood.

Vash complained a long string of muffled whines beneath the mask before going limp and quiet- swapping between states at erratic intervals- it was awful work. He had managed to untangle the upper quarter of Vash; his right arm and the top of his spine up into his neck. In his work’s wake he had ungracefully left little wounds on him where the end of each cold iron thread had where it had been coached up and out- and now they were smoking in familiar ways and closing up slowly.

Wolfwood sat back against the headboard and gave up on his previous promises to Meryl about smoking inside and lit a cigarette inside.

“I’d tell you we’re half way done, but, you know, that’s a lie,” he said coiling the evil metal into loops around his elbow to thumb like it was a length of rope. “Um so, why don’t you stay right there and take a break, and we’ll take a break,” he said around his cigarette. He directed his words mostly to his hands and almost, almost missed the deeply effortful trembling middle finger His Man managed to flip him off with intention.

He snorted, that was a good sign, battered not broken,“Sure. That’s fair,” he said evenly.

“On a scale of one to five, how much do you hate me right now?” He asked.

And Vash blinked his palm open and close slowly.

“A ten? Wow,” Wolfwood said dully.

The fact he could move at all before he’d unbraided some of the cold iron had been an act of sheer magical brute force. The fact that his hand had healed so quickly once it was out of him wasn’t surprising.

“Well the good news is I can skip your left arm- the bad news is I’m going to roll you over eventually to get at yer spine, so make peace with that I guess.”

And that’s how Wolfwood spent the next few hours, bent over Vash’s pale blue gray back unbraiding what felt like an impossible amount of metal. And the trouble was the more he fished out of him, the more he squirmed, the longer it took, the harder it was. He felt the curse licking at him, familiar with him, making his fingers clumsy, and his grip lax. By the end of it his hands were shredded and his back ached, and he was wasn’t used to hurting like that, even though it wasn’t so bad. Hardly worth noting. Just persistent, like his stab wounds that were still healing.

When he’d finally finished dawn was was just thinking about piercing the night, and the stars were still visible through the window and he had just one cigarette left.

“Alright- I’ll figure out your sh*tty hat latter,” he said and tapped the helm.

Vash did not answer. Just laid there. And that was fair. That was entirely fair. He couldn’t look at him anymore, after having to do that.

He put his last cigarette in his mouth and crept out into the rest of the apartment, re-charming the door behind him against Meryl as he went. Then he crept past where Meryl was asleep on the couch towards the sliding door to the deck. He opened it with intentions of stealth, but it opened with a sucking squeak despite his efforts- when he glanced though she remained still so he kept the door open behind him.

The cool air welcomed him into the predawn and the whole city was laid down at his feet in the dark, still lit up he thought, like his man in the other room who he’d put through terrible agony. He took a long drag. Because there was nothing he could do about it. It was done. He watched his smoke disappear into the dark and tried to make his brain either think coherent useful thoughts or no thoughts at all. And failed fantastically at either.

He got maybe five minutes of quiet on the little deck with the apple tree bonsai in he chill night air before Meryl put her shadow over him.

“Are you alright?”

“Fine,” He said.

“You’re shirts got a lot of blood on it-” She said touching the dark stiff patches where Vash had- well Legato really- had stabbed him.

“I heal fast,” He said. And that was usually more true than it was now. All that life-force flowing through him wasn’t staying. The wounds had scabbed but they still ached.

“What about…. My husband…. That doesn’t feel right or real- I- Is that guy okay?”

“He will be,” He said. He didn’t turn to look at her, feeling some kind of orphic impulse not to as he smoked. But because he couldn’t stand to lie to her not even by omission he added, “But making sure of that was awful.”

“Can I see him?”

“Do you remember him?”

“No,” She said sounding un-Meryl and small.

“Then no. Not like this, I’m sorry.”

“Why do you get to decide that?” She asked his back, “You leave for two years and you get to breeze in and boss me around?”

He flicked the ash off his cigarette and watched it tumbling like snow fall away in the dark below. Meryl was under the shadow of the curse and so the nature of the curse could not be spoken to her, which made this all the more difficult- but that was the design of the curse. The cruelty was by design. The design was on purpose. An ouroboros of agony all the way down. There would only be one person to blame when it was broken- but for now, he had to shoulder being the bad man.

“There are no right choices for him right now. If I keep you from him I’ll hurt him, he’ll have wanted your comfort. If I let you in then it will hurt him because he will have not wanted to be seen like that- or any other hundred things I could never even consider. so I can help us by picking what hurts you less. I don’t think you should see him like that, not without his consent, let me do this for us.”

“But you can see him?” She said, the anger hot on her tongue. He clucks because she didn’t listen. She’s human and she was raised human and she heard a human argument not a fairy explanation. He wondered if subconscious, by force of the bindings she wanted to see him so badly because some part of her, bone deep, still knew him, still loved him. But those things were so far outside his experience.

“He’s gonna hate me for it, probably forever, so yeah. Just me.”

“You’re helping him, though!”

“Sure as hell probably does not feel like it to him right now.”

He expected a harsh word, a fight, for the sliding door to slam and not for her press her forehead to his back and ask, “Then tell me what I can do, god please, please don’t make me useless- you don’t have the right to ask that of me! I think I’ll explode! I’ll throttle you!”

The laugh eases into his mouth from his chest like he’s just hit water at the bottom of well. When he tries to turn she mistakes it for him trying to shake her off and he has to say, “Whoah,” and hold her by the shoulders.

“I’m not asking that of you,” he said.

But her wet eyes reflecting all the city lights behind him said more than anything that could ever come out her mouth. To be fluent in Meryl was to be privy to a hundred well reasoned unsaid arguments.

“The curse needs some one to be the bad man, let me do it. Let me do that for you.”

“I don’t like it,” She snarled “You look miserable. You’re hurt? It’s been two years!” And it always amazed him when her well put together facade dropped out so sudden and whatever she’d been holding back like a damn poured out full force.

“I missed you too,” he said quietly. Because it was what she wasn’t saying.

“Stop, that’s cheating!” She said and the punctuation was a little half sob that snuck up and suckered punched her.

“I know,” He said like he was sorry.

He reached out, and tucked her against him. Held her. Like she was always looking at him willing him to before he’d left- that was two years ago to her. Two years. He’d never had anything to loose or miss on either side of the veil when time shifted badly between them.

When she’d steadied herself and her breathing she pulled away enough to press her fingertips to his chest and said around tears; “This thing is barely a shirt.”

The other thing she wasn’t saying, loud as jet engine with every part of her except her mouth was; let me help you. She continued picking at the fabric of the ripped pink shirt like it was the object of her dissatisfaction and not the two years of loneliness he’d inflicted on her, like they both didn’t know what the third thing both of them really didn’t want to say. He put his hands on her shoulders and let one slip around the back of her neck- and god she almost melted against his touch. She traced her hands up to his collar bones and he forgot how to breath a moment before she looped her arms around his neck. She had been missing him for two years and the intensity of that when she held his eyes, well it would have eviscerated him even without the near magical ability to always understand her unspoken intentions that came with being her soul mate. They took a mutually unsteady breath together in tandem and she half laughed into his chest where she’d tucked herself back under his chin.

He held her a long moment until his breathing steadied and her heart beat clicked into place against his like soldiers off to war.

“Hey?” He said. And he looked down at her, his own eyes were also looking wet, red rimmed and spent. Like just touching him had broken him some how. And she knew then that she’d underestimated what she meant to him, had thought he’d left cause he didn’t feel the same- breezing in and out of her life fast for the convenience.

But he trusted her, she thought, like sword trusted it’s scabbard.

She stood up on tip toes and kissed him and it was the most natural thing in the world. He let her kiss him, deep and easy and let his own mouth speak silently of want into her hers. He let her kiss him for the third time in the crisp predawn air. He just let her. Even though her husband was languishing in the other room.

She broke away first and looked up at him, eyes still shiny in the dim light and said, “I’m keeping you this time.”

she said it with intention like she was casting it out into the universe to be heard like a spell. She’d been practicing her magic while he was gone and he felt those words slide into his chest like a key into a lock and click, turn windershins in him like they were words of unspeakable power.

“Me?” He squeaked.

“Yeah you, dumbass-” and then she balked, “Hey- hey-” she said quietly because he was crying. The sort of tears where the rest of his fac hadn't realized they were coming, just spilling loose and free down his cheeks. He decided he should look anywhere other than at her as she tried to shush him- even though he wasn’t making crying sounds- “Oh don’t cry Kitten-”

“Please don’t re-name me Kitten-” He asked the weak city sky stars. He angled his head back in the vain hope the tears wouldn't be able to fight gravity.

“Okay, then tell me what to call you Mr. Knight,” She said. She still had her hands on his chest enjoying the feel of him under her hands while she had the chance.

“I’m not in the habit of giving out my name, I’m sorry,” He said still trying to discreetly tip his head back. Desperately not wanting to be crying. Not wanting to be coddled. Flabbergasted she was giving him the space to be dumb struck. Two years. And she wanted to keep him?

“Well then you’re going to be my kitten forever then, sorry I do make the rules~” She teased, but also looped her arms back up around his neck and her fingers up into his hair. He gave up on looking away and dropped his head into the crook of her neck and sighed in annoyance, or maybe something more complicated emotion he didn’t fully understand yet.

“Nicholas,” He said quietly into her ear, “Nicholas D. Wolfwood.”

“Huh,” she said, “Kinda took you for more of a Kyle honestly.”

“Kyle?!”

“I mean Nicholas isn’t much better?” she said as he pulled away. She laughed as he shoved a hand in her face and turned away to take a last drag off his ailing cigarette, the cherry having grown long with neglect. “Nick from Cincinnati, that’s you-” He made a frustrated noise as she continued to raz him for having an average Midwestern first name. The intensity of the moment between them had burst like a bubble and he was glad of it, he wasn’t sure how much more he could take.

“Listen, I’m changing the subject-” He said.

“No. No we have to talk about this Nicholas! The mysterious man from Cincinnati is named NICK.”

“Don’t call me Nick,”

“Okay Kitten-”

‘Don’t-”

“Then what do people call you? Usually?”

He paused for a long moment, “Punisher.”

She blinked her big storm bright eyes up at him in confusion, “I thought that was the sword’s name.”

“What’s the difference?” He said around the cigarette butt, making it bob, “Listen. I’m changing the subject. I think I’ve changed my mind- I need to get the helmet off your man- do you think you could do it?”

“Me? I have the magical aptitude of an oatmeal raisin cookie?”

“Who said that to you? You are innately talented,” He said flicking the butt out into the dark. She wanted to see him. She wanted to keep him? Maybe she knew best. Maybe him keeping her form him was what would serve the curse- he'd been serving his own curse and The Punisher for to long. He thought, saccharine as grenadine, that maybe he aught to server her instead, maybe if he did that he couldn't go so wrong.

“That's littering,” She reminded him- and then said, “Really? You think so?”

“I know so. C’mere. You wanna see him? Lets go see him,” He said and shooed her back into the warmth of the apartment. In the light he was still crying a little and she caught him wiping at his face with his palm. She pretended of course, not to notice, because she loved him, even when he was ridiculous and thought Punisher was a better use name than Nick.

It was when he lowered his hands in the better light of the living room that she saw that his hands were mangled with cuts.

“Nicholas, your hands,” She said in alarm.

“Absolutely not,” He said reflexively at the use of his name. His real name said out into the world like it could hold him.

She paused, “You just don’t like having a name do you?”

“No,” He muttered and then; “Here. Look a distraction-,” he said and when she gave him a dead looking glare he held his hands between them in the middle of the living room. She could sense magic, but trusted him implicitly- so she looked them over slowly, like this was a tactic to distract it her- because it was. He did not want to talk about his name anymore. But also subconsciously she’d become shy of the wedding ring interaction even two years on.

“God, I think you need stitches-” She said pulling him into the bathroom to pour hydrogen peroxide over his hands. She gave him a long intent look and asked; “That didn’t hurt?”

“I mean- sure?” He said. She had warned him at least three time it would sting, but it wasn’t that bad. All things in his philosophies considered.

“You’re impossible.” she said. He let her sit him on the toilet and bandage his hands.

“I try,” He said. At least he had mostly stopped crying- but she took the opportunity to dab his face with her hoody sleeve and he had to just take that because she’d bandaged his hands pretty thoroughly.

“You ready to let me try a magic trick on our boyfriend yet?”

“First off all, he’s still your husband and I’ve never met him proper. And I wasn’t trying to avoid that-”

She squinted at him suspiciously. The bitty charm he had cast had worked and she’d forgotten the conversation he’d distracted her from with the sight of his injured hands- the fact that he hated his name.

“Don’t worry about it.”

“New rule; Don’t do magic on me,” She said firmly, “Ever.”

He deflated like a guilty dog and did not make any excuses or promises. He should know better. Especially after Vash had done- he should know better. But some habits died hard.

“I’m gonna ask you again, are you ready to go back in there?” she asked. And by ‘in there’ she meant the bedroom. And by ‘ready’ he thought she meant done crying. So he said yes. And they went. He was not ready.

Their man had made it half way across the room before he hit the floor and the sigh of him in such bad shape still made him want to curl up and explode.

“Stupid,” Wolfwood muttered and bent to lug him back to the bed like so much potatoes. When he’d laid him out Meryl was still standing in the doorway. He looked at her and he wasn’t sure what his face was doing but she perked to attention like she’d been summoned for war and scurried in to join him.

Wolfwood said gently, “You awake? We’re gonna try and get this damned thing off you, so just sit tight.”

But his man didn’t answer, but his pulse was strong and all the little wounds where he’d fished the cold iron out of him were healing into raw pink starbursts. The gush of power in his chest was waning even, had been since he’d finished the task. He felt almost normal- not quiet- or rather The Punisher was so far away so that’d never feel normal.

“Alright, Hotstuff, here’s the thing- the helmet is locked with magic. And the key is an intent- a feeling, a design, a purpose. And I’ve tried some of the more obvious ones that a megalomaniac guy like him might use and I got nothing. So. If you wanna try- then,” and here he gestured.

“So you just try and take it off thinking certain thoughts?”

“Yea but more.”

He took her hands and put them on either side the smooth metal helm and pooled his intention to take the helmet off- which the helmet was strongly and firmly charmed against.

“You feel that?”

“Mmm, its like when you boss reality around a little to make things go your way-”

“That’s magic. That’s how magic works, Meryl.”

“I don’t think so, Magic is like- burning runes into a table with a glowing sword.”

“I told you. Flashy magic is cheap. You do the genuine article.”

She scoffed and he felt her pool her iron will into a shape and tug at the mask.

“No, see,” Wolfwood explained, “Its charmed against that. It can’t be ‘take it off’ it has to be something else other than really wanting to remove it. Does that make sense? Its like a puzzle. Like a key.”

She co*cked her head and turned Vash’s a little to get a different grip on the plain dome of metal. She was spilling her desire into the world and into the helmet when Vash jolted awake and away.

“I’m sorry!” she yelped and puled her hands away.

He clawed at the heavy mask and the muffled sound of him struggling beneath it made her terrified for a moment she’d hurt him. How many times had Wolfwood tried to show her that the curse had made all comforts bleak and it took until now to understand.

Vash reached after her with his long bony hand, banshee like, Halloween skeleton decoration like even, she thought. His fingers were long and joints knobby and the length of his arm pulsed with runes that had been so very much like the ones on Wolfwood’s sword. She shied away at first, adrenaline still pumping, still worried she’d hurt him. But she softened quickly and she took his offered hand in hers.

“You know me, right?” asked and he stilled.

She kissed his fist.

“You’re safe, I promise.”

Four words that summoned the full force and crushing weight of the curse like a cudgel to the back of her neck with instant and terrible presence.

Chapter 12

Chapter Text

The curse, brooding like a hen, sat on Meryl till it made her choke, like her mouth was full of cinnamon or charcoal. It made her eyes bulge, made her chest clench, made her ears ring. And Vash still trapped behind the metal helm grabbed at her all the more, knowing full well what had happened. He had sensed how the curse slid down across kindness and connection like electricity along their red string of fate to settle on her. He clawed at her like he could take it back from her and she had to take deep slow breath through the crushing feeling as she pried his hands back into hers. She considered a moment exact shape and taste of the curse winding through her, how it fed on comfort, pleasure and warmth. It was made to welcome niceness in and consume it in a never ending oroboros of misery.

She looked down at the man trying to pull himself into her lap sternly.

And even though she had never met him she knew he must love her, the weight of the curse strangely took the place of memory as proof. How strange that was, knowing that he loved her so much the curse had no choice but to try and consume her immediately.

She rubbed Vash’s back idly, until he stilled. The curse settled like a hungover in her soul and she needed a moment to steel herself into it’s grasp. She glanced at Wolfwood and that was a mistake because he’d noticed.

“Oh, hold up-” He said sensing the shift in the weight of the room.

“It’s okay,” Meryl said and tried to mean it. “Let me focus on this helmet a moment.”

Wolfwood had asked her to try and pry the thing off Vash’s face and a curse wasn’t going to stop her, that was for damn sure! The helmet under her fingers radiated a pervasive sort of wicked and she tried to put herself into the shoes of wickedness as she gripped it. Wolfwood said he had tried the obvious mental and magical thought keys- she tried to think what was obvious wicked that Wolfwood would overlook, then instead thought; What was something so obvious that the curse would slip into her like national threat number one?

He knew her.

They were supposed to be married.

She pulled and thought intently, that if he belonged to her enough to share a curse, she was certain he belonged to her enough to break some dumb helmet. She pressed both her hands against the seam of the iron against his skin and she pulled thought firmly to herself, even though it didn’t feel true; mine

The heavy helm slid into her hands like a mask not even attached with string. It was too heavy to properly hold though and Wolfwood had to dart forward and help, less she drop it right back on to Vash’s face. Beneath it Vash gasped, smoking like something left in an ashtray.

The man in her lap had blue eyes like a computer error screen, the pupils set to pinpricks. But he squeezed them tight against the dim of the pale morning sunlight and brought his hand to his mouth a moment.

“Hey- hey-” Wolfwood said, “Water.”

And there was an awkward shuffle as she let her fairy knight fed the stranger a big glass of water that had been keeping watch over the ordeal on the nightstand.

“Easy, easy, easy,” Wolfwood said. He had one hand on his back to help him sit up a bit and the water was going bit more onto him and into bed than in his mouth.

Wolfwood tipped the cup all the way up till he’d drunk it all and set it aside empty. And Vash laid back into Mery’s lap and was just looking right through him.

He really did keep a whole ocean of drowning affection in those too bright fairy orbs he passed off as eyes. He thought maybe he had liked the glamour better, something different and softer in the nose and cheeks than this. But the eyes. The eyes had been just the same then when he drowned in them the first time and then been left to suffer it.

They shared a long look and the understanding felt blocky, imperfect and unfamiliar. The Fae man was remorseful and Wolfwood did not understand or fathom it. Because fae did not apologize-

“I’m sorry I got kidnapped and then used your magic sword to usurp the throne and funneled a ley line through you,” He said up at Wolfwood.

“Apology not accepted,” Wolfwood said icily. But smoothed the mans hair back where it was plastered to his face, so it would not heal into his rapidly regenerating skin.

“That’s fair,” Vash said. He shut his eyes at Wolfwoods’s touch, it was the first nice touch in such a long time and feeling the relief and comfort in it redoubled back at him through the binding made Wolfwood feel a way. He pulled his hand back like he’d been bit.

When Vash opened his eyes Meryl was looking down at him with a complete lack of recognition. And that hurt, but but she was alright. It had all been a lie. A trick. He kept the ring in the palm of his hand and tried to convince his body to relax. But he hurt and he was subsisting mostly off the energy he had thread Wolfwood like he was a very sharp and useful needle. Meryl was looking down at him with such concern and curiosity though. It was suddenly mostly funny that she didn’t know him, and his own fault.

“Hi~” said he said. Meryl thought he was the most pitiable and alien looking man she could ever imagine in that moment.

“Hi,” She said back, “Does um- is your skin smoking like that bad?”

She took her hand and shooed some of it. And Vash said “No.” at the same time Wolfwood said, “yes.”

And then both of them still looking at her swapped their answers in unison.

“Hello?” Meryl said like she’d just entered the matrix and witnessed a glitch. Vash laughed and Wolfwood grumbled.

“Cold iron is bad for me, it will stop on it’s own. Stings still,” Vash said. He desperately desperately wanted to kiss her or take back the curse. One the other, both? Mostly he didn’t want to pass out. He’d been doing that a lot, but at least the cold iron was gone now. He was going to think about the cold iron never if he could help, he was sure his brain wouldn’t cooperate with his efforts, but he could live in hope.

“How are your bones?” Wolfwood asked him. His tone was dubious and reserved.

“Bad, thank you for asking~” he said politely.

An apology? And a thank you? Wolfwood solidly did not know what to do with that coming from surface humans in the grocery store never mind the rightful fairy king.

“Do you want a Tylenol?” Meryl asked him.

“Yes,” Vash said, “do we have anything stronger than a Tylenol?”

“No,” Wolfwood said sweetly.

Vash made a noncommittal sound and considered that passing out again my be his best option for pain management. At least he was healing, he could feel the ley line he was drawing down through The Punisher- sword and man, was finally nesting in him and doing what he’d asked it to. He really should have died and wondered if his brother’s bard realized it, or what he’d done. He didn’t have a clear vision for how to undo yet. But one thing at a time.

“I missed you,” He told Meryl- well both of Meryl as his vision doubled. And it was the last thing he managed before crashing like an over tiered kitten.

“And there he goes,” Wolfwood remarked as he passed out. He helped her settle him into the blankets, careful of those long wings on right side. Meryl, staid quiet as they did, looking so intently at Vash like she could wring some sort of answer out of his sleeping form. “Let’s let him sleep,” Wolfwood said. Then he shooed her out, taking the water cup with him, stopping only once they were in the kitchen. Meryl stood awkwardly in front of the frige heavy with curse and her heart careening around her mind like a pin ball. Wolfwood refill his cup in sink then drained it himself.

“You should get some sleep too,” She told him.

“I’m good.”

“You look like ass.” She said with a sigh.

“… I feel like ass,” He agreed.

“Take a shower. Take a nap,” She said like they were commands. She considered touching him, convincing him the only way she knew how to get him do anything good for himself, by forcing affection on him till it nearly broke him, but she didn’t think the curse would let her. Didn’t think she wanted to chance it. She noticed how he corrected himself from even touching her.

“If I touch you, am I gonna give this back to you?” she asked.

“I dunno,” He said, but held out his hand.

She felt awful, guilty, terrible as she took it, careful of his bandages. And when nothing happened, when the cursed staid right were it was and brought his hand to her cheek- she felt nothing. She was looking right up at him and nothing. Just nothing. He looked frustrated and she had a solid terrible moment where she thought it was with her, before realizing it was because the curse had not jumped back to him where he thought it belonged. It frustrated her anew that he valued himself so little. That he never put himself first in anything. But now she knew why. How could he when he had just felt nothing, like this, for so long?

She teared up but nothing came of it. The catharsis of a sob was robbed from her.

“f*ck-” She said and pulled away from him.

“I’m sorry, I am going to fix this,” he said like he was casting it. The intention in him like a strong base chord. There was something in him moving with power, but it did not ripple outward, just echoed inward and slowly away.

Him saying it though, only made it worse. And that was how the curse worked. It twisted good intentions into foul emotions.

“Meryl,” Wolfwood said after her.

“Stop,” She said, “Don’t. Don’t even look at me.”

She squeezed her eyes and her fist tight as she caught her breath, just made herself breath in and out and in and out. Just focused on surviving this moment with some kind of composure, because nothing was forever. Because the world was still here and gravity still worked and magic was real and curses could be broken.

Curses could be broken.

Wolfwood watched her struggle to compose herself and fought his own demons over it. He was unsure of how to be on the other end of his own curse and maybe it was sleep deprivation, maybe it was getting stabbed so many times, maybe it was having a ley line thread through him like the eye of a needle, or looking at both his soulmates in one place at the same time, or maybe it was having been told she was keeping him, or maybe it was having cried once today already, or just the helpless feeling of watching Meryl stand there with his burden- one of those things at least broke the camel’s back.

His shoulders hitched. And the tears welled up fat and fast and slid down his cheeks and this time he made crying sounds. To his credit he didn’t look at her. He wiped his face and leaned against the refrigerator.

“I’m going to fix this,” He repeated.

“No. You’re gonna lay down on the couch and sleep,” she said. He opened his mouth to argue again and she said, “It’s just a dumb f*cking curse, and apparently there's nothing in the rules about taking care of some one as stupid and stubborn as you. You need sleep.”

She grabbed him by the arm, and it brought her no joy or comfort to drag his complaining ass into the living room and put him to bed like an over chivalrous child.

She sat and touched his hair and asked him about fairy land until he was asleep. There was really nothing in the curse to keep her from touch him gently. Even if felt empty. Even if the curse kept trying to weave this or that untrue thing into her mind.

When he was asleep, and she had poked her head into the bedroom to check on the other one, and he too was asleep, and the curse was still so heavy, she snuck out on to the deck and into the midday sun. She lay her hands on the banister and stretched. Looked out at the skyline

“Alright,” She said into the bright air, “I told you he’d come back.”

And the bustling world of brightness did not answer. So she frowned and asked:

“Are you listening”

And after a long beat of car sounds she turned to the miniature apple tree and asked;

“Hey?”

The curse wrung her a little, made her doubt there had ever been a ghost in her tiny apple tree. But she knew, firmly, that magic was real and curses could be broken.

“You got lucky. I needed you to be ready for the worst.” A familiar voice said.

The ghost in the little tree rarely showed itself. Though sometimes things in the apartment moved and the spines of unread books grew creases. It wasn’t a nice ghost, but it had been inclined to assist for the right price.

“This curse? What do I have to do. What’s it going to cost me?”

None of the ghost’s help had come free. She had at its demand purchased several antiques, harlequin bodice rippers and occasionally dripped her own blood onto its roots. IT had never been anything to giver her pause, though she feared this time might be different.

There was a long silence in the early morning. Cars were starting to roar along the distant highway like the roar that lived inside a seashell. There wasn’t much magic this time of day and she thought maybe she’d have to consult it again later. But finally it spoke.

“I am not strong enough to break it for you.”

“Then tell me how.”

“The nature of the curse can not be spoken, but I’m sure your have some idea of it’s parameters.”

“Yes,” She said sharply.

“Curses are strong in one direction, and fragile in the opposite. A curse only ever wants you to think it is like a fishing hook, capable of hurting you in both directions and that there are only two directions to pull.”

“That’s not helpful. You know that’s not helpful right?”

“I am giving you my best and very real advice,” the ghost said. It sounded recalcitrant for the very first time.

“I really do have to do everything around here myself, huh?” She groaned and put her head on the banister.

The apple tree ghost didn’t answer and she was left to mope in broad daylight. She knew she should be relieved, happy, ready to do things, but she had been living with a self reliant mindset these past two years and she wasn’t sure how there was room for both men in her life- never mind the curse.

She needed to be to work in an hour.

She thought about calling out. But the curse, she felt, wasn’t something she could shoo out the door in a day or so. So she might as well get on with her life. If she believed the apple tree, that the curse was only strong in one direction, and she was pretty sure it didn’t want her to continue her life as normal. So it was either hubris or genius to go to work anyway, only one way to find out.

---

Wolfwood woke around noon with a sticky note on his forehead.

He squinted as he read:

1. Do not leave the house.
2. Do not do any magic or light any fires
3. I’m just at work don’t freak out
4. Call me if you need me
5. Do not willfully misinterpret the previous
instruction like some sort of fairy tale gotcha!

At work?” he said aloud. Because of course she was. It was November 1st and she had deadlines and schemes, or maybe just tattoo clients. She hadn’t said which work she’d gone to either. He hadn’t had a chance to actually catch up with her about how the last two years had treated her. He ran his hand over his face remembering it had been two years for her and that he was alone in the house with her husband now.

He pulled himself up off the couch and staggered throug hthe living room toward the bathroom. His legs still throbbed. The stabs wounds in his chest still ached. The cuts on his hands still pinched when he stretched his fingers. He had never had wounds last so long. He’d had worse. It wasn’t the pain, it was the stiff, the way the little pain made him move different, took his mind off the things around him. So much so that when he opened the bathroom door he jumped when he noticed it was occupied.

Vash was sitting on the bathroom floor, slumped against the wall opposite of the toilet like he was a puddle of fairy some one had spilled there. His good hand was braced on the floor and his half pair of wing were bent awkward against the angle of the floor.

“Do you need help to or away from the toilet.”

“Neither. floor time,” he said dully.

“Okay,” Wolfwood said. “It’s your house. Mind if I piss real quick?”

Vash groaned and said, “Piss away, good sir.”

So, facing away from him Wolfwood took only the third most awkward piss of his life and when he was done he popped the lid on the bowl down and sat.

Vash looked like a thing defeated, his eyes shut, his fae pallor more blue than ash, his marking pulsing dimly. This was the opposite of what Vash wanted, and Wolfwood knew it, just looking at him. But Wolfwood thought that he should have known better than expect him to leave him there.

“Tell me what’s wrong with you? What did you do, exactly?”

With his eyes still closed Vash said, “I channeled the ley line in my throne through the Punisher, through you, through being soulmates and I don’t know how to turn it off. But I don’t think that will hurt us. It just- feels.”

“Feels? Sure f*cking does, buddy,” He said in annoyance, “That why you’re on the floor?”

“A little. Great works, take a lot out of some one. And also. Legato smushed me.”

“Yeah I was there for that. How are your bones?”

“Bad. Mostly knit though.”

“Okay,” he said steepling his fingers under his nose and channeling patience, “So why are you on the floor?”

“Dizzy.”

“Yeah? You need to eat?” he ventured.

Vash made an upset little noise and Wolfwood knew he was right. Even with the curse lifted nothing above ground tasted right for a while, unless it was made with intention. And Being Fae, Vash would need food stuffs that was thick with lifeforce and intentions, like milk and honey and blood. A particular well loved and hand baked cookie might be alright in a pinch.

“Blood’s gonna be the easiest to get for you,” Wolfwood said pragmatically. They were soulmates. He felt he could offer it without too much risk.

“No never, I promised never-”

“Freely given- Listen you must be manna sick and you’ve been injured. You cannot prop a body up on magic alone. I’ve been The Punisher long enough to have tried it a couple times.”

Vash whined and said firmly, “No.”

“Please let me help you. For f*ck’s sake, don’t make be useless, don’t make me watch you burn up channeling a whole lay line cause you’re stubborn.”

“We can go to the market and get honey it will be alright.”

“I think I could funnel feed you honey like a Foie gras duck and it wouldn’t be enough. Vash, you put the damn thing through me, I know exactly how stupid you’re being-” and here he mentally tugged at their connection. It made his chest clinch and made Vash make a plaintive sound.

“Freely given?” Vash asked the ceiling vent- which needed to be dusted.

“Freely given, I’ll even put it in a little cup with wine if you want.”

Vash made a fake gag sound and Wolfwood chanced sliding off the toilet and joining him on the floor.

“Right here?” Vash mewled.

“Easier to clean up on the tile,” he said. Vash let him haul him, all dead weight into his lap. And it was then, in his grasp, that he admitted to himself how weak he really was.

“You got the teeth for it?”

“I…” he sad sounding ashamed, “I do.”

“I’ve had worse, promise,” The Punisher told him.

“Christ,” the fairy said into his wrist and then a pitiful sound.

“Freely given,” he said softly. He wondered if this counted as breaking Meryl’s Rule two as he sat their patiently. Vash finally at least opened his mouth and pressed his canines against him, but didn’t break the skin.

“C’mon now, you said you had the teeth for it,” He said.

When he bit down Wolfwood didn’t flinch. It hardly registered on his pain scale. As he began to bleed in earnest the fairy he was bound to drank slowly at first and then with more purpose. It was not, Wolfwood thought, particularly romantic or glamorous. But Vash’s mouth was hot, and the flash of his tongue against the wound hurt in a way he wasn’t used to feeling hurt. Vash made a sound into him that he was certain was stifled sob, and slowly, cautiously as if he was a viper, Wolfwood let his hand find it’s way into his thick dark hair. It had been pulled back into a long braid when he’d collected him and now it was spilled into dark pools against the tiles and his thighs.

“Easy,” Wolfwood said, “S’all good.”

By time Vash quieted and pulled away satisfied it was Wolfwood’s turn to feel woozy. For the first time wondered if his connection with The Punisher was truly severed. There was all that energy flowing through him and none of it came to him when he bid it, didn’t take any of he wants, couldn’t find the feed back loop of taking and hunger and giving and wanting that would cause his flesh to knit back together.

“So,” He said, swallowing down his fear and putting pressure on the bite, “What flavor am I?”

“Blood tastes like blood,” Vash said miserably. He tried to wipe his mouth but just smeared it.

Wolfwood felt close to panic watching himself bleed his own blood, but said nothing. It was not, all things considered, a very bad wound.

Vash unfolded himself like a lawn chair and stood. And Wolfwood didn’t track what he’d done in front of the sink until he’d returned to press a gauze pad to him.

“Hold that,” He said. “You’re not used to bleeding?”

Being connected as they were Vash knew he was experiencing something new, but the idea that the swordsman that killed by virtue of spilling enough of his own blood to charge a killing curse was afraid of bleeding a little now was a bit confusing, if charming.

Wolfwood shook his head, “I’m not used to the bleeding not stopping when I tell it.”

“Ah,” Vash said into his lap, which contained a first aid kit.

“The cuts on my hand haven’t healed either.”

“I may have….broken your sword a little,” He said apologetically. He’d pulled the first aid kit out of the same hiding place under the sink Meryl had fetched it last time. Which made it really click that this was his house too. He lived here. He knew where things were even.

They bandaged him up, with just the two spare hands between them to do it. Working quietly and in tandem in a way Wolfwood suspected only soulmated folks could, making both their hands work as a single pair.

“How are you feeling?” Wolfwood asked.

“Not dizy. Thank you,” Vash said. His eyes, despite having met them several times now, still felt like drowning.

“I don’t think I’ve ever heard a fairy say thank you as many times as you?”

“I also say please and pay taxes,” He said brightly.

He stood up again, gangly and alien in the mundane florescent, still smiling so sure and so empty. Wolfwood felt the numbness sitting inside of his soulmate as surely as he knew the other man could feel the unhelpful tide and crash of his own hidden emotions trapped under his sunglasses.

Neither of them said anything about it as Vash washed his hands and then lifted the towel to clean his face- he could feel the blood their drying and sticky. But the reflection in the miror caught him sideways.

“Oh,” Vash said darkly. There was a face he didn’t know. A creature where last he’d checked he’d mostly been a man. He moved his hand slowly to his face, and then to the mirror, just to make sure it was him. His hair was long. He’d known that. It always grew fast and he’d been in Legato’s court for a hot minute, that wasn’t the surprise. And he knew, conceptually that most elves in the royal line had dark hair, gangled, and had complexions like an overcast sky.

It was another thing altogether to see it looking back at him.

“Yeah, cold iron does a number on a glamour, I’m sorry,” Wolfwood said. He staid right where he was, sat on the toilet, even as the wave of distress rolled off Vash.

“How much time passed?” Vash asked looking at himself still.

“A few months went by before I went in after you, when we came out it’d been two years on top of that.”

Wolfwood could pin point the exact moment as he spoke his heart sank.

“You must have no idea I was trapped down there.”

“No,” Wolfwood admitted, “I thought you were just a coward.”

“No. You’re right. I’m sorry I ran. I’m not particularly brave,” he said looking at Wolfwood, looking him in the eye as he said it.

Wolfwood couldn’t hold it. There was too much big emotion- this need for absolution he felt he couldn’t and didn’t want to give. Like if he gave it he’d disappear like a curse lifted. He looked down and touched the place where he’d fed the other man beneath the new bandage, pretending he could think to say something to make this all right.

“I thought you didn’t want to deal with me, that I was that awful to you. Or that you were too coward to fight me for Meryl. Or too coward to love us both cause were mortal. But that’s not why you ran though.”

Vash looked like he’d been hit. He’d been self flagellating and Wolfwood had cut clean through it.

“You ran because you recognized your brother’s curse and knew how bad it was. You thought you’d loose everything and more. Thought you were doing us a favor staying as far away as you could. That’s not cowardly, that’s just garden variety martyrdom and stupid.”

Vash braced himself against the sink and said with gravitas, “I changed my mind, where do I get a refund on this soul mate thing. That was awful. That was worse than when Meryl does it. I hate being perceived.”

“Should have kept running, no takes backsies,” Wolfwood said. He was rewarded with the sound of Vash’s high squeaky laughter for the very first time and he thought his heart would stop.

– - -

When Meryl pushed through the front door of her apartment, weary and soft in her bones like a sad half cooked hot pocket in a cheap microwave she was greeted in stereo.

Two of them.

Wolfwood was on the couch, like he’d never left, and the new one- the strange little alien he’d brought home, the one she was supposed to be married to sat on the floor with his back against the couch and Wolfwooods knees. The TV was making link-dying noises as her arrival held their attention.

“Hey,” She said back and shut the door.

“So, how was cursed work?” Wolfwood asked her.

“Terrible,” She said. She hung her jacket on the back of the kitchen chair and then draped herself in it too and lay her head on the table. She left all her things in her bag on the floor- the ritual of unpacking it too much energy.

“Lori retired, and hanks going to be my new boss,” She told the table.

This meant nothing to Wolfwood but Vash gasped, “Not Hank.”

“Yeah- wait you know who hank is?”

“Meryl,” He said seriously, “Of course I know who Hank is? He sucks!”

“Right. Married,” She said to the table.

“Well there’s dinner,” Wolfwood said helpfully. He had a box of take out in his hands and pointed to the rest on the counter with his chop sticks.

“Where did you get money for take out?”

“Don’t worry about it-” They said in unison.

And then Vash demanded, “You need to stop doing that, It’s creepy.”

“I’m not doing anything,” Wolfwood said into his noodles.

Meryl rose slowly, went to the bath room, changed into her pajamas, grabbed a box of noodles of the counter. Everything felt mechanical. She stood idly in the middle of the no-mans land between the open concept dinning room and living room, shoving noodles into her mouth. Not sure what to do with herself or both of them. She felt trapped in her own home.

“Why don’t you come over here with us?” Vash asked her.

“Won’t that make it worse?” She asked.

“I think what ever the curse tries to do us for it can’t be as bad as being in the middle of it, so I don’t care,” Vash said.

Wolfwood patted the couch, “You can be miserable and have company.”

“… I need to be careful of good things,” Meryl said ominously.

Wolfwood co*cked his head. The curse was not supposed to be able to be spoken like that, he had tried so many times to tell some one anyone when it had been his. Which meant the curse was weaker now.

“Thank the Gods I’m wretched then, come here,” he said. He leaned off the couch and pulled her in, till she had to plonk onto the couch next to him. She sat there quietly next to the heat of him and ate her noodles, which didn’t taste like much, and watched Vash play Pokemon. It was so familiar. It was so normal. It made the curse inside her squirm like a rat on sinking ship.

“Meryl, he ruined my save,” Vash said, tilting his head back to look up at her.

“You suffer,” she said without sympathy.

“I suffer.” he intoned back grievously. And Meryl snorted. She didn’t know him. Not really, even if looking at him the soul binding made her think so.

“Listen, Riachu sucks,” Wolfwood said in his defense.

“Why do you hate my son?” Vash despaired.

“I’m glad you two are getting along,” Meryl said. She had worried about it most of the day. Being soul mates, she guessed, didn’t always mean nice things.

“Not really,” Vash said at the same Wolfwood said “I guess so.”

Meryl looked at them both and then into her box of fried rice. So that’s how the curse was going to do her? It couldn’t keep them apart, couldn’t drive her soulmates away but it could make them oblivious? She sunk back into the couch with a huff, this was going to be frustrating, it was going to drive her wild if they were going to deny it.

“Hey, whats that shiny thing over there,” Wolfwood asked pointing at the screen with his chopsticks. Vash was seated in front of him and couldn’t see where he was pointed.

“Nothing its just a part of the environment.”

“C’mon look.”

“No.”

“What if it’s something?” Wolfwood insisted.

“It’s not. Stop backseat gaming and eat your noodles!” Vash said firmly.

“They taste like dirt,” Wolfwood complained.

“At least they’re spicy,” Vash consoled him.

“Yeah- hey, hows the rice?” He asked Meryl as an after thought. “Everything tastes like ass after you go to fairy land. But it’s probably pretty alright?”

“It’s fine,” She said and tried to mean it. The curse squirmed against her, against the strong triangular shape of their binding and failed to find purchase there. She thought about kissing him, she thought about it so hard, she was sure he could tell, the way they knew things about each other just by looking. He touched her ankle where her legs were tucked beneath her and between them, just a small touch. She had missed him. And sitting here so close she had to keep wanting to be here because it made the curse writhe. Maybe the apple tree was right, maybe just being stubborn could break the curse, but she was going to hate it the whole time.

Chapter 13

Chapter Text

While Meryl was in the shower her mind presented her with many problems as the hot water ran over her. She scritched her nails into her scalp as she thought about Hank being her new boss and about what she was going to get Lori for the retirement party. She thought about how nothing good could stay, and how hard she’d worked to make a place for herself at the magazine. If she didn’t beat this curse soon she could already see her career slipping through her fingers. IF things were normal, she thought she’d be in despair; she hated hank and hank hated her. But change wasn’t always bad and she knew that, she’d push through it, make the best of it. Change meant new things and she’d always liked new things- new places new people. But the curse, god The Curse made her nervous.

She grabbed her jasmine body wash and squeezed it into her hand without thinking too hard. Squeezed it again and looked down. It was empty. Her Fairy night had been home for twenty four hours and he’d already gotten into her Lush supplies. She leaned out past the shower curtain and tossed it into the trash with a little too much force.

This was just how her had gone; death by paper cuts. Every little treat ruined. Every little inconvenience imaginable dropped into her lap. If she didn’t’ know she was cursed, and that curses where real and magic existed she’d take it for an unimaginably bad but boring day.

She wasn’t sure if was better knowing that there was a curse. Would it be better not to know? To be oblivious to why she felt so bad, why everything was going so comically wrong every moment? Knowing made her think about it too much, dwelling on every little thing, having something to be mad at about it and having the anger eat her up.

She finished washing her hair, shut off the water and went through the motions of her bed time routine. She stood in her towel at the door, hand on the knob; there were two men in her house. One was her boyfriend she’d been trying to get over for two years who wouldn’t do more than kiss her. The other was a beautiful long haired alien of a man who looked at her like she was the queen of his world.

They hadn’t talked about it.

She’d come home and eaten noodles and tried to feel like a person.

She didn’t think talking about it would go well.

But there were two men in her house as she skittered down the hall and into the bed room. She finished her bedtime routine and startled when some one knocked. Right, there were two men in her house.

She opened the door, hair wet, wearing matchy blue pajamas to look up at Wolfwood who was looking deeply apologetic.

“I lost rock paper scissors and I was wondering if I could, sleep, in, your, with you, I mean in the bed, in, the, bed, I, mean” He mumbled this so ponderously that it should have been funny.

He’d lost? He was asking because he’d lost? They had to do rock paper scissors to see who had to deal with her? She bristled like she was ready for a school yard fight. It didn’t help his case that the last time she had convinced him to sleep her, just sleep, he’d disappeared in the morning for two years.

“If you don’t want to be in my bed, I don’t want you,” She said and shut the door on him.

And that’s how she slept alone in her bed with the soft sounds of two men talking in her kitchen most of the night. It kept her up. It made her lonely. In the morning she hurried for work with out looking at either of them, Vash on the couch and Wolfwood curled on the floor under her grandmother’s afghan.

In the morning dimness, it was so dark and rainy this time of year, she could see the glow of Vash’s eyes in her peripheral as she packed her bag. She pretended she didn’t.

She knew this wasn’t how this should be going, she shouldn’t feel like this about them; This sucking nothing, This pervasive detachment. She wished it was something she could vomit up like a cat and leave on the rug.

“Have a good day,” said the thing on the other side of the room that was presumably her husband. She turned and looked. His eyes shining like a cat's blinked ominously back in the dark at her.

“I am going to try, thanks,” She said. It took all her courage to say it, because he felt more creature man, because thinking about trying felt insurmountable, because she was worried that curses couldn’t be broken or that she wasn’t strong enough to last until some one else to figure it out for her.

---

Wolfwood woke, face smushed into the carpet and to the sound of clinking and a tea kettle screaming. His first thought was a disorientating jolt of adrenalin, unsure for a moment where he was.

His second thought was that the tea kettle was very loud

and his third thought was that his everything hurt.

He sat up and stretched and behind him, in the little kitchen Vash asked him, “Do you want tea?” it was accompanied with the telltale crinkly-shlip sound of hot water tumbling out of a spout. It was a sound so specific he wonder why there wasn’t a word for it.

“Yeah,” he said through a yawn so that the word stretch out and became unlanguaged in his mouth. He hauled himself up, blanket and all, and came to sit at the table. Vash was awake-awake, showered, dressed in black jeans and red tshirt with a Ghibli kitty on the pocket. His long spindly jeans, which Wolfwood had once held in his hands and despaired and marveled at, fit him good, obviously tailored.

As he was slid a hot mug of steeping tea his mind was folding over how on earth he’d gotten his pants tailored like that if he’d never seen himself without a glamour?

He wanted to ask.

“...are you about to ask me something stupid?” Vash asked him over the top of his big over round Moomin troll mug.

“No, I have self control,” He told the pale circle of tea he was about to sip. He tried to squash the question down real deep. Vash was right it was stupid.
“Well now I’m curious?”

Wolfwood decided he was busy drinking tea- which was very good and very sweet. Vash was fae and so to Wolfwood’s tastebuds it was exquisite, as good as anything in fairyland. Blew his tit* clean off. But he didn’t say so and when he was done drinking tea he asked; “Is Meryl at work again?”

“Yeah, It was important to her.”

“Is she always like this?”

Vash made an airy consolatory smile and said, “Yep.”

Wolfwood sighed and they were left in the intimate loudness of each others company, and the understanding between them that ‘Yep’ and a sigh was the whole conversation. Not awkward just frank, unspoken. Vash leaned against the counter and feigned to be content, pretended he couldn't feel Wolfwood’s eyes still on him. Wolfwood could tell Vash was nervous over something internal, that he was thinking about Meryl, the way the guilt was creeping up along the edges like the ivy on a old school building.

Vash chanced a look at Wolfwood and knight’s expression was so tender it caught him off guard- hadn’t they just mostly had an argument?

“Stop it,” Vash said.

“What?”

“Looking at me like I’m a baby bird.”

“Maybe you need some one to look at you like you’re a little baby bird, ever think of that you baby bird looking ass?” He shot back.

Vash did a double take and then laughed at him. At him.

“What?” Wolfwood snapped.

“Do you always try to cover up being nice with pretending to be mad?”

“What?” Wolfwood asked in sincere confusion.

“Huh?” Vash mocked back.

“What do you mean?”

“I dunno, I’m just a guy,” He said sipping his tea.

“You really mess with me,” He muttered into his empty cup. He couldn’t even sip his tea at him about it.

They hadn’t talked, not really. The conversation yesterday had been about nothing at all for most of the day, Vash had napped on and off and played video games and they most exciting thing they’d done was order take out. And it had been easy to do f*ck all with him. Wolfwood wasn’t good at doing f*ck all- he hadn’t even gotten bored yesterday- that’s how easy doing f*ck all with Vash had been. But they hadn’t really talked, until after Meryl hadn’t let him into the bedroom last night. Vash had done him a solid, and hadn’t let him get in his head about it.

“If that’s what she wants, that’s what she wants, that’s how she is,” was how Vash had started, “I’m not giving you the couch though, I won roshambo fair and square.”

He’d then told Vash how things had happened for him and Meryl while he’d been gone. It had all come out natural and easy at the time. And sitting here right now, looking at him was to imagine that talking to him could always be easy and natural- except it absolutely was not right now. Being empathically bonded did not make words easier and besides there was a wall in Vash, and looking at him was always wondering what was behind it and knowing the answer was month of being in fairy land serving Legato. The wall in him was a trick that neither Meryl nor he could pull with the intensity of the soulmate connection, and he was a little jealous, he knew what sort of thing he’d put behind a wall if he knew how to build one. Its presence made him a feel a fool trying to navigate around its edges.

“Seriously,” Vash said over his shoulder, “I said stop it.”

Wolfwood shrugged and watched him do the dishes with all the extra steps to do them one handed. After a moment he made a frustrated sound and again Wolfwood felt him come to the edge of some person precipices-

“All those little kitchen things are for doing stuff one handed, right?” Wolfwood asked, taking a guess.

“Yeah, I think she got rid of them all while I was gone,” he said darkly. And by sheer will of their binding Wolfwood knew he thought he deserved it, which was silly. He did not yet have the resolve of heart to realize what a great sweeping hypocrite he was thinking that Vash was being a fool for it.

“I put them in a box. They might just be under the bed or something. I can go check,” He said needing something to do. Anything other than sitting here quietly not sure what he was supposed to do with himself for the next moment, the morning, the day, the rest of his life.

The bedroom when he entered, like last time, had this feeling of a temple. It was so heavily warded that he could taste it and he felt an interloper in the cozy space, as if the charm on the bed frame was to keep not just nightmares but him away as well.

It took only a moment of poking around and peering under the bed to find the box he’d crammed everything into. Having mystery invisible items around the house hadn’t been something Meryl had a good tolerance for. He returned to the kitchen with the box of recovered doodads and set it on the table. And then for lack of anything better to do, he poured himself a bowl of cereal, picking cheerios and a over sized bowl with koi- he didn’t know the bowl was for ramen it was just very round and pretty and so now it was for cereal.

Vash already had the fridge open when Wolfwood was in want of milk. And the other man looked over his shoulder, standing with the door in his hand asked, “Do you think I’ll get salmonella if I ate the eggs raw?”

“I mean, I don’t know what that is and science can't hurt me if I don’t believe in it,” Wolfwood said gravely.

“That’s not how- that’s not how that works,” Vash said with desperate exasperation.

Wolfwood shrugged and then watched Vash totter for a moment, hand on the refrigerator door, left foot taking a step back. Wolfwood thought he was going to step back and close the door, only instead he hit the kitchen floor. Wolfwood put down the cereal in a hurry and made a little grab for him that just wasn’t fast enough.

“I’m fine,” Vash insisted. He was already getting back up to his knees when Wolfwood offered him a hand. Only Wolfwood didn’t haul him up, made him use his own effort to get off the floor and he couldn’t.

“You’re not fine,” Wolfwood said. He was still channeling a whole ley line to no effect and it was going to waste him away.

“C’mon,” Vash complained.

“Don’t be stubborn,” Wolfwood said. Wolfwood knelt down and Vash wibbled around the mouth without making any expression at all.

“Right here?” he said. In front of your cereal?” Vash lamented.

“My good christian cereal,” Wolfwood said dead pan, “Oh no.”

Vash groaned and for the second time agreed to what promised he’d never ever do. They unwound Wolfwood’s bandages from yesterday and the wound reopened easy, and again, Wolfwood didn’t flinched as his teeth bit in. That made it all the worse.

“This would probably stop if you’d stop channeling the leyline,” Wolfwood said. He didn’t say it to be harsh, he should have waited till it was all over. But it was true. And he wished Vash would close the spell. Vash didn’t answer, maybe he hadn’t heard him, too set on his miserable life saving task. He wasn’t being gentle or clean or about it and Wolfwood had to tap him and ease his arm away when he felt light headed.

Then he just laid there, head lolled, so that Wolfwood worried that no pithy amount of blood and milk & honey could sustain him. But Vash eventually took a deep breath and put his hand over his face.

Wolfwood scooted him from his lap to the floor and got up to find paper towels, like this was the most normal thing in the world. Vash was partially thankful, laying there with the heat of his blood still on his lips and red still pooling in his teeth. On the other hand it made him red hot molten, and being a faerie his emotion were usually strong and straight forward, but this one, gods this thing in his guts he couldn’t name. It was breaking a promise, it was months under legato’s thumb, it was being rock bottom with a stranger who shouldn’t look at him like he loved him, it was Meryl being so close and so far away after all this time, it was about losing two years- it was everything all at once.

Wolfwood put pressure with paper towels onto the bite and cleaned up the floor with a dish towel by chasing the droplets around the floor with his toe. Vash laid on the kitchen floor a long while, saying nothing. Wolfwood thought to break silence, he wanted to say something, anything, but he wasn’t any good at wanting or saying things, so he swallowed the urge.

He made his way to bathroom reluctantly, leaving Vash on the floor in the kitchen to do so. He dug out the first aid kit and made himself presentable by using more tape than was probably advisable. When he returned to the kitchen it was empty, but the sound effects of the Nintendo switch were making noises in the living room. He stood there a long moment. And had feelings.

He wasn’t used to wanting. He wasn’t used to having. He wasn’t used to good things holding still.

He stood in the doorway to the kitchen and watch the faerie playing video games. Until he looked at him looking at him.

“Don’t look at me like that.”

“I’m worried. You need to close the spell. I can help?”

“I’m not sure how. I’m not strong enough right now anyway,” He told the television.

“I can help?” He repeated.

He paused the game and said, “How much of yourself are you going to keep giving away?”

There was an answer in Wolfwood that was so instantaneous and strong and stupid to say outloud. But he didn’t he kept in his mouth like a toad.

“Mm?” Vash said, “Something to say?”

“No,” he lied. He went back into the kitchen and unpacked the one handed doodads instead.

Wolfwood puttered awhile, like he had when he’d been home alone before. Only he didn’t have his guitar. He couldn’t go busk. He didn’t think it was a good idea to leave Vash alone for too long either. Wich made him feel a bit like a panther pacing his cage. Eventually Vash fell asleep on the couch playing pokemon and Wolfwood sat besides him having stolen the controller. He took his file for a joy ride as the clock pushed past noon.

Until a bell trilled plaintively. Vash sat bolt upright and Wolfwood looked confused.

It rang again shrill and high. Bring-bring. Bring-bring.

“Is that? A phone?” Wolfwood asked. He had grown up more years in the past than he looked and the sound of the old rotary phone slam dunked him back to the sound of baseball on the tv and dust mots in the pale sunshine of wood paneled room.

“Yeah,” Vash said and got up. It was muscle memory to go get the phone. It was his. He had a hard time keeping a cellphone in working order being a fairy and all. It was mounted on the kitchen wall with a long tangley cord trailing near to the floor and ringing so forcefully it looked like the receive might hop off. He paused with his hand over the old land line and glanced at Wolfwood.

The phone rang again. It was his house. It was his phone. But it felt strange some how. Being back. Doing things. Having a phone call.

“It’s your house,” Wolfwood told him.

Vash nodded and answered.

“This is Vash Stryfe?” he said into the grimly yellow receiver.

The voice on the other side of the phone sputtered something between a laugh and sob, “Really? You took my name?” Meryl asked him.

“Yeah,” He said brightly, “I didn’t like my last name, so yeah? Are you alright, where are you?”

Meryl sniffled, “I’m out side the shop. Can you come get me? Or… Um send Kitten?”

“Kitten,” He repeated and looked over at Wolfwood.

“That is not my name,” he mouthed.

“Does he have a name?” Vash asked dubiously, conspiratorially even. He knew Meryl couldn’t remember him but he had a hard time acting the part back. He missed her so much. And her voice woke him up out of doleful mood he’d resigned himself too earlier. “I’m looking at him and hes all puffed up like stray cat, so I think you’re on to something.”

‘I will kill you,’ Wolfwood mouthed and Vash smiled and twirled the chord.

“Yes, but he’s cagey about it. Please just come pick me up- with the car... can you drive, you’re a fairy? I don’t know how this works?” and this time the laugh did break into a sob and Vash’s heart broke in half with it.”

“Yes the Subaru, the machine that hates me, I can drive it. Spare keys in the coffee can still?”

She paused, “Yeah.”

“And you’re okay?”

“It wont kill me.”

“Okay. We’ll be there soon.”

“Okay,” Meryl said back.

And Vash by muscle memory said, “I love you too,” before hanging up. And then stared at the receiver realizing how much psychic damage he must have just dealt her.

“Can you drive?” Vash asked Wolfwood seriously.

“In a pinch,” He said carefully.

“So no, is what I'm hearing...Oh this will be fun,” He muttered and dug the spare keys out of the can over the stove. “I look like blue swamp thing.”

“Do you have anything with a hood?” Wolfwood asked. He was trying to stay mission focused despite Vash's jabs.

Vash paused, held up one finger then disappeared into the bedroom and began digging in the closet. He emerged struggling to get a red hoody on one handed.

“Are all your jackets and shirts red?”

“Favorite color, keep up.”

“I thought red kept fairies away?” Wolfwood asked in bewilderment.

“Protects you from faeries, actually. Red used to be a rare color so you’d give some one something red and the rest of the court knew not to touch them,” He said as he popped his head through. “But uh, it’s just my favorite color.”

Wolfwood looked at him a long moment, his dark hair frizzed and still tucked around his neck under the sweatshirt. Wolfwood popped his hood up thoughtful, standing close enough to him to do it in one naturally motion. And it felt natural to stand that close, and to reach out close enough to touch him and pull his hood up. Vash even let him do it.

Wolfwood focused on staying on the mission; the hood might be enough disguise for most Humans to glaze over his inhuman features, as Human being did not naturally want to see magic, like when no one had thought to hard about his wings on Halloween at the Deny's.

“Not gonna cut it?” Vash asked.

"Not really," Wolfwood said. He played with the strings of his hood for a moment before tugging on both and disappearing most of Vash’s face as the hood drew closed.

“Thanks,” Vash said.

“You activate my prey drive,” Wolfwood said like this confused him immensely.

“It's called cute aggression,” Vash said muffled inside of the drawn hood.

“Do you want me to go get her?” He asked seriously, “You can stay here. I really can drive. And if they pull me over I know enough magic still to get out of it.”

“Even without The Punisher?”

“Sure,” he said with easy grace. What he didn’t say was he was worried he’d pass out if he drove and he didn’t want to sit shotgun to disaster.

“She’s upset.”

“Yeah, I’m sure the curse took something.”

Vash looked away from him, “I thought I could eat it, that curse, but it was too big. I can usually break them. I’ve done it for so many people.”

“I am pretty sure that curse was made for you, so that might be why.”

Vash’s face went through the five stages of grief in rapid succession like museum display of tradgey masks and end on something blank. Wolfwood thought he'd break and stood there, stunned when he didn't. He realized he’d never actually told anyone it was the fairy king who had cursed him, just before he’d gone out to fight Vash. So how could he know? he wanted to say sorry but felt he probably didn't have to, his soul was bare to him wasn't it. he knew. They both knew now that he was sorry and Vash was hurt so deeply by the implication he felt nothing at all.

“Why don’t we talk about it once I fetch Meryl?” He said. “Just take it easy. Let me do this.”

“Are you always like this?” he demanded.

“No. It’s new,” He said and took his hand in both of his, “I met this guy and I then he ran off and I fell in love with his wife and then I went all the way back to fairy land to get him cause she was just so f*cking sad with out him, and now I’m nice.” For emphasis he kissed the back of his hand, “It's awful, I’m suffering.”

Vash laughed. The real genuine article and Wolfwood thought for a moment he’d break right there into a sob and they were both relived when he didn't. not yet. Not now. Meryl needed him and he couldn't be in two places at once.

---

Meryl sat on the curb with a box full of all the things from her studio. Her Tattoo gun, her inks, her stencils, her templates, the big binder full of flash art. Her art prints. Her fancy blue tooth speakers. Even the twinkle lights. All stacked up in the box haphazardly.

She saw the red Subaru at the red light and couldn’t tell who was in the drivers seat until it rolled to a stop at the curb. She wasn't sure suddenly who the other option than Kitten could be, and that scared her. Just for a moment. Until she remembered; her other boyfriend had a memory spell on him. Which made the fear abate, even if she couldn't remember him clearly.

The car door opened and revealed she had won the prize of being rescued by the boyfriend she could remember and that was a relief. However, this was not who had answered the phone and she could barely remember the conversation. That bothered her. Oh that really bothered her and she was already so bothered by everything happening so much.

“Hey,” Said her Fairy knight; Nick from Cincinnati. The door banged shut behind him as he joined her on the curb. It was a chill afternoon full of mist her leggings were not enough against the breeze off the bay as he sat down besides her. He looked at her like something he could break just by touching and that’s how she knew she looked a mess

“I’m okay,” she said.

She looked like some one had killed her dog.

“You get kicked out?”

She nodded and looked at her shoes; little sequenced black slip-ons that left her toes too cold in this weather.

“It’s not you. What ever happened. It’s the curse,” he said gently.

“No it was me,” She said, “I- I.... I really said some things I shouldn’t have. I don’t know if Milly will ever forgive me and that’s fair. I f*cked up. I’m just tired.”

It had only been a couple days, but it was a heavy curse like that. For its bearer to tire quickly under it was no shame in his mind. He was starting to wonder how he'd survived it at all.

“Lets get you home.”

“Wheres-” And she looked a confused a moment, “I forgot his name?”

“Vash?”

She blinked at him, her face wet, her hair windswept, “He’s blond? Blue eyes. Red jacket….dweeb.”

“Mostly yeah,” Wolfwood said. He wasn’t sure if it would help her to break that spell before lifting the curse. But if Vash could, he thought he would have by now, he missed her so bad even though were both right there in the same house.

He helped her off the pavement and stowed the box in the back. He let her drive home and it involved a lot of yelling and swearing and short stops.

“I bet you regret letting me drive now?” She said with a strained laugh. She had just laid on the horn for a solid thirty seconds at big black BMW that had cut her off. “My luck I’ll total this dumb thing.”

“I think this sh*tbox is so warded you could drive into the bay and come out the other side. Besides I don’t really know what the different colored lights mean, I just kinda guess.”

Meryl looked at him in horror and he grinned. For a moment he looked so normal. He was just. A guy. Just a guy in her car who had no respect or understanding for traffic laws.

“God, I missed you,” She said in exasperation.

“Sorry we took so long,” he said.

“Sorry I sent you away last night…” he looked at her in horror a moment, “You just, didn’t want to sleep on the floor, right?.”

“I don’t mind sleeping on the floor,” he said quickly. Too quickly. And thankfully some one was honking at Meryl for not proceeding through the green light with precognitive speed.

“OH SHUT UP!” She shouted like the other driver cold hear her and zipped through the intersection towards home.

---

Meryl shoulder opened the apartment door and Wolfwood trundled in behind her carrying her box of tattoo studio things. The both stop short. One of the book shelves had most of it’s contents spilled on the floor and there was a broken potted plant trailing potting soil across the carpet like a murder scene.

“Oh god,” Meryl said looking at her home.

Wolfwood’s eyes roamed the ceiling and the dark corners. His hand itched for his sword or his guitar strap.

“Vash?” Wolfwood called.

“Right,” Meryl said having forgotten his name again, “Vash?!”

The turned the corner and Vash was sitting on the couch

“Okay,” Meryl said carefully when the fairy man she just remembered was supposed to be her husband did not jump to say anything in his defense. He just sat their sheepishly like he’d been caught red handed in the cookie jar.

“Did you fall?” Wolfwood asked.

“Yeah” He said laughing nervously, “I knocked some stuff over.” Wolfwood stood there a moment. Fairies weren't usually good liars. That why the spoke in circles and half truths and technicalities the way they did. What came out of Vash’s mouth was not exactly the whole truth and he could taste it.

Meryl announced suddenly, “I can't handle that,” and gestured at all the things and mess on the floor. Then she marched herself into the bathroom, door slamming behind.

Vash winced.

“She’s uh, having a bad time.” Which was stupid and obvious to say. And he wasn’t sure what he’d meant to say- only that he felt the urge to bridge the gap between her extreme emotion and his wince. It wasn’t aimed at him. And he hopped they both knew.

Vash wouldn’t look at him, just sat, his arm wrapped around his left shoulder protectively, or just hugging himself. His mind was almost entirely that smooth glass wall he wish he knew how to emulate.

“Did some one break in?” Wolfwood asked after a long time of soulmate empathy Mexican standoff. His eyes were on the potting soil and the open sliding door, the evidence if you will, as he spoke.

“No,” Vash said. And it wasn’t lie. He could feel it through their binding. The steadfast truth of it. “I’m okay. Really. I’m sorry you can’t leave me alone for five minutes. What happened to Meryl?”

“I think she quit. Or got kicked out of the tattoo place. I don’t really know her deal there.”

“Oh no,” Vash said with a lot of feeling. Like he had told him some one died, or that church had burnt down. “Is Milly...alright?”

“She's fine? I think I think they had a fight. Meryl thinks she’s in the wrong, what ever it was.” Wolfwood set himself to tidying. It was something to do so that they didn’t have to look at each other so much or so intensely. The books went back on the shelf fast and he thought he’d need a vacuum for the carpet- he didn’t know how to use the vacuum.

And Vash said, “I’m not allowed to touch electronics.”

“You touch the Nintendo switch all the time.”

“Oh that thing’s idiot proof.”

Wolfwood squinted.

“I don’t know what to tell you gamboys and the switch are built different I’ve never had a problem. A cellphone? A vacuum? Cars? Instant rebellion. They just pop like I’m made of lightening.”

“Cause you’re made of magic.”

Vash shrugged, he already knew that as Wolfwood picked up bits of terracotta. And as he scrounged up the broom and the dust pan Vash had sat back on the couch and Wolfwood suspected he was stuck there, all the energy drained out of him by what ever had happened. Or maybe he really had just fallen trying to do something foolish. The plants were his after all. It’d been two years, maybe he’d just tried to move something or replant it. He thought about asking. But he looked so pathetic he let it sit in his mouth.

“Staaaaaahp,” he said in small wretched voice.

“What?”

“Looking at me like that?”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know, just stop.”

The only sound between them was the sound of Meryl shower, the shhh shhhh of the facet and the soft hu hu hu as the both pretended they hadn’t been able to hear her cry the whole time Wolfwood had been trying to clean.

“Do you want to sleep in your own bed tonight?” Wolfwood asked abruptly. Vash looked stricken.

“No, she doesn’t know me-”

“We can take the living room. It’s your house-”

“You haven't even told me your name,” Vash countered. As if that anything to do with anything? There was so much anger in him suddenly. It didn’t bubble up. There was no warning. Just a switch. A hot sharp anger facing more inward like a trap than out.

“Don’t start an argument because you don’t like how I look you when I feel soft, that’s not my problem,” Wolfwood sad flatly. It was a modicum of emotional intelligence Vash hadn’t expected form him and look away, embarrassed to be caught in his stereotypical Fae distraction tactic.

Wolfwood had cut his teeth on Fae manipulation tactics and Vash was far too nice to actually be any good at it. Wolfwood finally came to sit besides him on the couch. Vash was still wearing his red hoody, but he’s pulled his long dark hair up out of the neck and it hung around his face and shoulder in wild pools.

“Hey,” Wolfwood said, “Look at me.”

Vash turned slowly to look at him.

“I want to be your friend,” Wolfwood said. Because maybe he hadn’t made himself clear. Maybe he didn’t want to be soulmates. Maybe he didn’t want to kiss him as desperately as Wolfwood wanted to kiss him. Maybe the wall was because he was afraid that soulmates meant something other than romance and allies. And Wolfwood hated the mere idea of that. Made his stomach churn.

“What?” Vash said.

“You make me feel like-” And here Wolfwood pulled the strings around his hood again to hide his face.

“I mean we’re soulmates-”

“And I want you to be my friend. Is that too hard? Is that too forward? I’m The Punisher I don’t know how to be a person, this is the best I got. I love Meryl. I’m trying to take care of her. I really am. You too if you’ll f*cking let me.”

Vash was looking at him through the tight portal he’d created to his face trying desperately not to laugh.

“Okay,” he said. But all Wolfwood could see was his mouth until Vash finished wriggling the hood strings loose one handed. His eye were neon electric in the shadow and he looked so sad Wolfwood thought he’d die of it like a Victorian orphan.

“Okay?” Wolfwood repeated.

“Yeah,” Vash said firmly followed by “Augh, seriously, please don’t look at me like that.”

“Sorry, you’re still extremely pathetic. Skill issue.”

“Augh,” he Vash complained and threw himself into the couch cushions like a frustrated Muppet.

Chapter 14

Chapter Text

Meryl heard the door open and didn’t even move. She laid there face down, still in her towel, as familiar footsteps crossed the room. She wondered if they were actually familiar or if it was a trick their bond played on them. She remembered how the moment she’d seen him he’d felt so so familiar. Like she was dipping into a bath of warm dark honey. It mad her oozey to think about it. Or the way every time she remembered Vash was in her house and looked at him, really looked at him, it was like she was falling into deep open water.

He put his hand on her back, big and warm, and said “Hey princess.”

She tried to wonder how much more awkward he’d be without the ease of being soulmates. That almost made her laugh. Almost kept the misery off her, like a cloud of flies buzzing away, for just a moment.

“Hi,” She said into the blankets.

“Do you want me here?” It was blunt. It was deeply unromantic and he seemed tensed for rejection.

She sighed and said, “Desperately.”

His hand rubbed a circle around her back and she thought she’d cry of it. And a moment later she did. She’d spent the whole time in the shower crying, and she thought she’d gotten it out. But it was different kind of crying. The kind in the shower had been a clawing lonely thing she’d had to fight and this well this was syrupy release.

“Do you work tomorrow?”

“No,” She said. Not because she didn’t, but because she didn’t want to. She didn’t think she could brute force her way through another round of normal, even if going through the motions well enough could make the curse lift. She couldn’t handle another bad day like today. She thought about Milly being mad with her and it made the lonely clawing crying surge up her for a moment.

“Will you let me try some magic tomorrow then?” He asked.

“I don’t care,” she said, still thinking about Milly and the tattoo parlor and everything changing at the magazine.

“You do. You forbid me from doing magic while you’re away at work.”

She tensed. She forgot, how seriously he could take a rule or a simple request.

“We can try whatever you think could work,” She said instead. His hand was still on her and it felt so nice when he put a bit of pressure in between her shoulder blades where she held all her tension. “

that feels nice...” she said tentatively. She was worried by acknowledging it he’d get cagey and stop. But instead his other hand joined on her back and again she thought she’d cry of it. He knead her tense muscles and for the first time since he’d come back to her, since the curse had jumped ship to her, she could relax.

And that felt wrong.

She’d gotten used to how the curse felt, and she could feel it now cocooned in some deep place inside her. But it was still and she felt good and her knights hands where on her for the first time in a way that mattered.

“That feels too good,” She said suspiciously.

“The bed’s warded. Might make it worse tomorrow, but I figured, that’s tomorrow.”

“Mm, I don’t want to think about tomorrow.” She said.

For a long while she let him rub her back until her muscles complained of the attention and she rolled onto her side. She held on to the edge of the towel over her heart and looked at him. It was easy having him near. Even after two years. Even though she was still furious over it. She had almost- if she would indulge in lying to herself- gotten over him.

“Did going to fairy land make you less shy?”

“I’m not shy... I was just trying not to get anyone hurt,” he said instead of ‘Two very large spells have been such a part of my personality for so long I don’t really know how to function never mind romance some one.’ but the beauty or tragedy of having your soul bound to some one else’s is that he did not actually have to say it for her to have some idea of the truth.

“This has all been needlessly complicated, hasn’t it?” She said in agitation. He laid out on the bed besides her, both of them horizontal the wrong way across the covers. She reached out and touched his face and said “How did you carry this curse around for years?”

He was quiet for a long moment, “I don’t know.”

She wanted to kiss him about it. She tried to beam it into his head. To will him.

But instead he said; “I need to talk to you about something.”

“Okay,” She said and felt dread. He wasn’t nervous about it but it was bad news. He was going to tell her something bad and she thought she knew what he was going to tell her. Oh god she’d been stupid-

“Vash is Channeling a ley-line and I think it's killing him. I don’t know what to do.”

Meryl blinked in surprise, “What?… Well. That is not what I thought you'd say. But that’s bad.”

“What the hell did you think I was going to say?”

“That you’re gay?”

Wolfwood’s gaze bored a hole through her, more so than the flattest most dead pan look she’d ever gotten for calling him kitten. It was the kind of deep deep affectionate annoyance she thought she could thrive on for the rest of her life.

“Well yeah, but I’m making an exception for you and Marilyn Monroe- I’ve told you, I just didn’t want anyone to get hurt. I think you’re very pretty, Meryl. It haunts and vexes me. Vash had the curse you know? What could have happened if let you break your wedding vows while he was kidnapped by fairies? Can you imagine? I kinda did anyway, - but not in a way that magic could get at you know? We should probably talk about that”

She blinked. She had never considered that. That a marriage was a kind of oath, a kind of spell in its own right. She felt a whole lot of things at once and Wolfwood bent close and kissed the top of her head.

She frowned, because she could not argue with that. “Wait- didn’t you just tell me something important about- god what was his name-”

“Vash.”

“Right. You said he’s channeling a ley-line or something?”

“Yeah.” he said gravely. That memory spell was still going strong and it made him want to scream.

“Have you tried telling him to stop?” She asked. Wolfwood made a face and she tried and failed to look apologetic. She wiggled a little closer to him and he obliged to tuck her up against him, so that there heads were very close together.

“It's not that simple. He did something I don’t even understand. And hes too weak to undo it and he’s stubborn. And-” he squeezed his eyes shut.

She ran her finger back through his hair. He’d look handsome if he’d use a little pomade and slick it back she thought absently. He was full of more emotion than she’d ever seen him. He’d been with her without the curse for months and she’d never seen him struggle with such a kaleidoscope of intensity. She was thinking about the curse when he said;

“The curse wasn’t so bad for me Meryl, because it wouldn’t let me have anything good but I wasn’t really able to want things. And now I don’t know how to- I don’t even know what the word is but I can’t do it.”

“Self control? Moderation?”

“No? More like...I’ll pop.”

“That’s just what wanting things is like,” She said. “Tell me what you want kitten.”

And just this once he didn’t argue with the pet name, “I want... To kiss your husband. I want you to remember him. I want to fix everything. I want to kill legato again. I want to find your wedding ring. I want a new pair of shoes. I want to sleep in a bed. I want to use your last bath bomb. and I want to A cigarette...but I’m out.”

“I can help you with a bunch of those, actually,” she said softly. He looked so surprised she hardly contained a giggle. “First things first, you can have the bathbomb, thank you for asking,” she said slyly. She knew he’d been using them before he’d left, been kinda worried he was eating them or something.

“Okay.” He said. He had cringed as he made his list of grievances and her soft offer to help when she was the one with the curse made him feel stony.

She leaned over and grabbed her phone off the night table and with a few flicks brought up a shop front. “What do you like for shoes?” she asked.

Wolfwood maneuvered so he could see her screen. She had typed in men’s shoes and there was a wide variety on screen.

“Not sneakers,” He said quietly.

“Okay, so these?” she said and pointed at the dress shoes.

“Yeah. They have to have hard soles. Sneakers are squishy.”

“Yeah?” she said, and scrolled down, “Any of these then?”

He was quiet as she scrolled through a couple pages of options and then passed him the phone. And so they laid their quietly shopping for shoes. His knees hung off the edge of the bed, and she was dry enough to change out of her towel, but staid right there. She kissed his shoulder as he twirled the 3d view of a dark brown dress shoe around.

“My last pair I got from the cobbler when I was- I don’t know how old I was? I’d just been given The Punisher.”

“I can guarantee you, they don’t make them like that anymore.”

He sighed heavily.

“How old do you think you are?” She asked after a long moment in her own thoughts.

He backed out of the brown shoe listing and pulled up a lighter honeyed pair to squint at before answering. And for a moment she thought he might not.

“I don’t know. I was born in 1963. But time moves weird between above and below. I think I’m older than that by a lot.”

“What about Vash?” she asked softly.

“Well.” He said carefully, “His brother was the fairy king, and they’re twins, so I suspect that means they were born at the same time. He was born a little before the founding of the city I’m told. But you’d have to ask him if he lived above or below for longer. You can be below for a hundred years and three days pass. The other way around too...but not in my life time. It’s always been longer below, shorter above.”

“Except for when you went down this last time?”

“Yeah well, like I said he channeled a ley-line and messed with stuff.”

“You’re pretty good at using a phone for being at least 60,” She teased.

“I’ve been above for a while, it's not hard. You just... Click things.” He said and passed the phone back with his shoe decision.

“Those are nice,” she said looking more at the price tag than the shoe. “Do you like white or black socks?”

“Uhn, black?”

“And a new jacket?”

He didn’t answer so she looked over at him. Crying again. Just softly with his hand over his mouth. It made her curse squirm like a caterpillar in her gut. She pushed through it and said; “Hey. Let me do this for you.”

“Okay.”

She pulled the phone to her chest up against the soft towel she was wrapped in and turned on her side to face him.

“And then the other thing on your list; I think you could kiss my husband when ever you wanted forever if you asked him. What’s his name again?”

“Vash,” he said through a sniffled laugh- still crying still with his hand over his mouth.

“Right. That guy. And you know you can kiss me when ever you want for ever Nick,” She said.

That was his name. And even on his soulmates lips it felt limp, just weak, like a technicality. That was supposed to be his true name, that he’d kept hidden all this time.

“I don’t like when you call me that.”

“Not Kitten either, so” she said and pushed the hair out of his face, “What do you want me to call you?”

“I don’t know,” he said .

“That’s okay too,” She said and put her hand under his chin and kissed him until he made a sound into her mouth about it. And she said, “You said you wanted to sleep in a bed too. I can help you with that one too.”

--

In the morning she woke and watched him sleeping next to her. He looked so soft when he was asleep. She managed to keep her self from touching him, knowing it would wake him. He’d offered to leave at least three times as she got ready for bed and she was glad to see he’d staid where she put him. It was too early to be awake yet, it was still dark even, but she knew she wouldn’t be able to find sleep again.

She slipped out of bed and into the bathroom and then carefully out into the kitchen, not wanting to wake anyone. The curse was active under her skin and the fear of waking some one felt palpable even though she knew it was irrational. She put water into the coffee machine and clicked it on. And then put the kettle on the stove. She often put the kettle on the stove and set it aside after it whistled- preferring coffee to tea. It was a habit she hadn’t been able to break. Not even in the two years where she couldn’t remember why she did it.

She stuck her head out into the living room and stopped short. It was like a tornado had blown though, or a swat team, or a very methodical husky had done its damnedest.

“Oh god,” Meryl said looking at her home.

“What?” Wolfwood said somewhere behind her and made her jump.

“Look,” She said. Wolfwood eyes roamed the ceiling and the dark corners. His hand itched for his sword or his guitar strap.

“Vash?” Wolfwood called.

“Right,” Meryl said having forgotten his name again, “Vash?!”

She turned on the lights in a rush of motion and illuminated Vash sitting on the couch, nose bleeding, right eye bruised into a sickly yellow purple on his ashy blue skin.

“Okay,” Meryl said carefully when the fairy man she just remembered was supposed to be her husband did not jump to say anything in his defense. He just sat their sheepishly like he’d been caught red handed in the cookie jar.

“Did you win?” Wolfwood asked.

“Oh you should see the other guy,” He said laughing nervously and wiped his face.

“Did some one break in?” Meryl demanded. She strode out over the carnage and out on to the open patio deck. The plants there were undisturbed and she looked down over the dark playground and streets below. Nothing strange to be found, she turned back to see Wolf wood Hauling Vash up off the couch.

“Lets get you cleaned up,” Wolfwood said conspiratorially.

“I’m fine,” Vash insisted.

“Like hell,” he said.

“What the hell happened?” She said.

“I don’t want to talk about it, right now,” Vash told his feet.

“I told you,” Wolfwood said, “He’s stubborn.”

“You’re not going to believe me,” He muttered as Wolfwood helped him towards the bathroom.

Meryl made a sound like four hundred seagulls screaming in the wreckage of her living room.

__

Vash’s hair was long and dark and silken under Wolfwood’s fingers as he drank his least favorite breakfast. He was curled into Wolfwood’s lap like a rolly-polly, knees tucked. He hadn’t even argued as Wolfwood had settled him onto the floor, like all the fight had gone out of him. He didn’t dare to touch him on his scalp, not without asking, not while they were doing what he hated so much that he had to do; drink his blood. Take something from him.

There was something raw and desperate about him on the edges and inside him that mental wall was smooth and flat as glass against his mind. Wolfwood stroked his hair and tried not to say anything stupid this time.

He always stopped drinking him before Wolfwood had to tap out. It helped he thought, that Vash insisted blood tasted like blood and had no particular lust for it.

Vash sat back and wiped his mouth, his hair flowing out of Wolfwood touch and pooling over his shoulder. He was lovely in a terrible sort of way that Wolfwood was still coming to terms with; Bright eyes, sharp teeth, the glimpse of gossamer wings that had haunted his peripheral in the halls of the royal castle. Only here it was harmless and he could touch it.

“I hate this,” Vash said.

“I don’t mind.”

They locked eyes over it, a whole argument in silent magically augmented understanding. Wolfwood didn’t mind. He didn’t. And he was lucky that he did not have to actually convince Vash because even knowing without a doubt he still felt wretched and unmovable about his guilt of it. He looked close to breaking and Wolfwood didn’t know him well enough, not really, to know what that would mean or look like, only knew just by looking at him that he was close to a personal precipice.

Before Wolfwood could say anything though the other man pointed at him, “You need to put pressure on that.”

Wolfwood looked down and startled because he did need to put pressure on it. His mind had gotten away from him and the pain of such a small wound hadn’t fully registered as it continued to bleed. He pressed his hand into his shirt and then into his arm. They returned successfully from a near miss of emotional labor to the ritual they’d made for themselves and he was quiet as he was bandaged.

“How are your fingers?” Vash asked.

“I haven't looked,” He admitted.

“Can I?” Vash asked.

Wolfwood shrugged. He wasn’t really sure how long it should take for things to heal and Meryl hadn’t yelled at him last night so he’d left the bandages where she had put them. Vash was extremely dexterous for having one hand and only needed Wolfwood’s free hand a couple time to reveal his skin.

“Oh good,” Vash said, “I was worried you weren't healing at all. Slow, maybe too slow, but not none,” He said thumbing over one of the deeper cuts. He watched Wolfwood for a reaction as he did and didn’t get one.

“Don’t you feel pain?” Vash asked him. His mouth made it sound like a tease, but there was a bite of something perceivable only through the binding that was serious, concerned, desperate to know he’d done harm.

Wolfwood, thankfully, had grown up with sh*tty fairy trick-questions and answered a question with a question. “Do you? Do you have any idea how much cold Iron I pulled out of you?”

“Yes. I hate pain,” Vash said and dropped his hand.

“So do I,” Wolfwood said and looked at his own, “This is just... nothing.”

Vash sat back against the far wall and draped his two dragonfly wings and his elbow over and onto the edge of the tub.

“Right,” He said to no one. He tuned out of the conversation so suddenly and forcefully that Wolfwood felt it like a blow.

He waited a moment for Vash to yo-yo back or to say something but he was securely in his own thoughts.

“I don’t think we should do this again,” Vash told the tub.

“Sure,” Wolfwood said, “When I haul you down to the dryad hall of ancestors what color blanket from the linen closet do you want me to use?”

“I-” Vash sputtered. Coming out of his skin nearly, because he didn’t feel seated in his own skin anymore, not really.

“I’m serious. You’re still drawing on a whole ley line, burning yourself at both ends material and metaphysical. You’ll be like a little dried out cicada thing I have to clean up.”

Vash tch’d or at least he thought he did, but it was more rattle and wing flick, a sound that came more from his chest and the annoyed flex of his wings reverberating against the tub. It had come so naturally to him and was so foreign that Vash startled and repositioned so that the tub couldn’t bite him again with surprise sounds. It was very much like watching a kitten jump onto a counter covered in tin foil.

“I get it,” Wolfwood said helpless to argue with him the same way he was with Meryl. Knowing why made it hard for him. Made everything more frustrating. Wolfwood stood up and gave him an ultimatum; “Do you want to help me and Meryl pick up the living room and drink some tea or do you want to lay on the floor?”

He held out his hand and Vash looked up at him like he was offering him a loaded gun for a long moment before taking it. Wolfwood hauled him to his feet and they shared an uneasy moment there, breast bone to breast bone in the cramped florescent washroom. Vash was feeling so small and useless and Wolfwood’s eye was like being dropped into a big jar of honey, like he was grave good- did you know honey could preserve things for thousands of years? And all of him was so tempting and everything was so so wrong with Vash, and his life, and his house.

“Stop looking at me like that,” was all Vash managed to say.

Wolfwood took a half a step into him, and Vash took half a step back so that he bumped against the towel rack. Wolfwood leaned in, felt drawn, felt electric with wanting. He had been The Punisher so long he had no tolerance for wanting, no temperance, no moderation. And now The Punisher was out of reach and there was nothing to take all this want from him. He leaned in slow and Vash let him, let him put his hands on him, let him push him the last little half step back to be against the wall. Let him kiss him, mouth still filled with his own blood. Soft lips moving unsure, each motion uncannily familiar as the first time they made eye contact, something Déjà vu and molten the way they fit together. The way Vash’s breath hitched under his hands and the taste of blood, and the freedom to finally finally want.

Vash’s hand had fisted into Wolfwood’s shirt and he steeled himself, Wolfwood could sense it in him, for what Wolfwood wasn’t sure though. Until Vash pushed him away and took a deep breath.

“I don’t-” He said and the words came out his mouth like a punch, “-Even know your name.” Which softened it. But the fear of the first two words had already launched a fleet of adrenaline in Wolfwood’s chest.

“You know what I am,” he said and meant it.

“I’m not calling you The Punisher in my house.”

“Not into that?” he said and stepped back to lean against the sink. Pretending to play it cool badly.

“I didn’t say that. I said; I’m not calling you that in my house,” Vash said and shooed him away from the sink and out the door. And something about that broke the spell as Vash finally turned on the sink and cleaned himself up. The ritual of touching another man, while intricate was complete and over.

“Meryl’s going to want to know why the living room is busted up.”

“Oh,” he said peevishly, “It's not a big thing, the apartment’s just haunted.”

Chapter 15

Chapter Text

When they emerged from the bathroom Meryl was already a small storm of activity, broom in hand, anger radiating off her like heat.

“No stay right there!” She said holding out the broom with both hands, like she’d fight them if she had to.

On the table surrounded by a ring of salt was the apple bonsai.

“Meryl-” Wolfwood said at the same time Vash said;

“What are you-” Vash but burst into laughter.

“No, no, I know what you're thinking, it's not funny, I’m not having a nervous breakdown yet just- listen to me. Hear Me out!” She said. Her eyes were wide and Wolfwood had never seen her look more determined.

“Apartments...haunted...right?” Wolfwood said.

“YES!” Meryl said with an edge of manic relief.

“This isn’t happening,” Vash said to himself.

“I am missing something here,” Wolfwood said like he was trying to tame velociraptors, both hands out to placate Meryl and Vash as the both went on very different face journeys.

“Listen, The apple Ghost is MOSTLY helpful. I cannot stress enough the mostly. He’s good for solving problems and vacuuming.”

“He’s been vacuuming?” Vash demanded.

“It was a difficult contract to negotiate but yes.”

“Contract? You made contracts with a GHOST while I was gone?!?!” Wolfwood siad in despair.

“Oh no,” Vash said darkly.

“just stay back. I’m going to harass him until I get answers. He shouldn’t be fist fighting my f*cking house guests!”

“No- wait hold on-” Vash said but Wolfwood held him by the shoulder.

“She’s got a contract, just let her try?”

Vash gave him a wild eyed look and said nothing. But the dread passed from him into Wolfwood and Wolfwood swallowed.

“Okay but I don’t know what that means,” Wolfwood whispered.

“bad,” Vash said back, not whispering at all.

Meanwhile Meryl had raised the broom like a sword above her head.

“ALRIGHT! COME OUT. Or Ima thwak you!”

Nothing happened.

The early morning sunlight was pooling in through the windows and the chaos of the room had roused a thousand little dost mots, and Meryl stood there heroic in it all. The White and green broom was brushing the ceiling, as she held the handle in a bad imitation of Wolfwood with the punisher.

“I’m so f*cking for real right now!” she yelled at the tree.

The tea kettle began to scream.

“One!” she shouted like she was scolding a child.

“Oh my god,” Vash said head in his hand.

Wolfwood looked at him and shook his head, “You really thought she wouldn’t believe you-”

“TWO!” She roared.

“I didn’t want to make things worse-”

“-Yeah no, the curse never lets that happen.”

“TWO AND A HALF!” She said changing her stance.

“You know, I get why you married her,” Wolfwood said.

And then with out warning she beat the bonsai half to death- thwak thwak thwak thwak. Whack after whack until it tipped over and the pot rattled against the table and the last of its orange and yellow leaves went soaring off.

And then just when Wolfwood was starting to doubt that maybe Mr. And Mrs. Stryfe had collectively lost it, he sees for just moment something gossamer and pearlescent- almost man shaped on the other side of the table. The cut of the shoulders something Wolfwood feared he recognized.

“Meyl, Stop, that’s enough,” Vash said. But she didn’t listen not till he grabbed the broom and they were left to lock eyes over it. Vash looked into her and he was so profoundly sad and tired that it made all the anger in Meryl jump up and bear it’s teeth more. It didn’t help that the bruise on his pale blue grey skin was purpling mightily.

“There is a ghost in the apple tree and he hurt you-” she said so fierce and sharp it hurt him

“We had an argument. Stop. He’s just a tree,” he said. The apple bonsai was half out of the pot, branches broken and looking pathetic.

Meryl tried to yank the broom out of his grip but even one handed she couldn’t do it and let out a frustrated yell. She let him take the broom and did a lap of the room instead, arms waving over her head as she went.

Vash pressed the broom into Wolfwood’s hands like for safe keeping like it was actually a weapon before he saw to the battered potted plant.

So Wolfwood was left standing there watching, holding a broom with the taste of his own blood still lurking around his teeth. He gripped the broom tight like he might the handle of the Punisher in the same moment. He was suddenly certain the tree was Vash’s brother; a dormant dryad, the former king of the fairies. He’d been living in the same house with the lord who had cursed him so utterly and he hadn’t even known it.

Now didn’t seem to be a good time to say it outloud as Meryl paced and Vash worked quickly and one handed at his task. The room was thick was a miasma of emotion between the three of them and Wolfwood felt paralyzed with it. Vash hastily shoved the tree back into its pot and retreated to the balcony with it.

Meryl stopped and stood there and looked at Wolfwood, eye shiny and wide.

“Why don’t we,” Wolfwood said like it was a full sentence. And then swallowed. And then said, “Pick up.”

Meryl looked close to tears, but was the first to actually start picking things up. Wolfwood followed her lead. They righted the chairs and picked up the books up and stacked the frames that were broken on the table. When Vash returned, shutting the sliding door behind him with a squeaky thump they both turned.

“Oh,” He said with both of their eyes on him. He did not need to be magically bound to either of them to know they wanted answers. “I’m not taking questions at this time, thank you.”

“Yeah you are,” Wolfwood said. He was sweeping up some tinkling glass off the hardwood.

“Nope,” Vash said and laid on the couch face down.

“He hurt you,” Meryl said darkly.

“We fight. You already know this.”

She balled her fist.

“Then make me remember.”

“No.”

And the room was charged with their disagreement like the friction in the air before a lightening strike.

“I can’t feed that curse like that. Curse first. Memory second,” Vash said. It wasn’t confidence but a sort of weary assurance that filled him as spoke.

Wolfwood realized darkly that the argument with the ghost had happened because he’d told Vash it was the king that had cursed him. He hadn’t known. And what ever history had lead to his former liege lord to be contained to a terracotta pot was something that Meryl should already know. Something Vash didn’t want to talk about, never mind explain again. The Ghost- the Fairy king had been assisting Meryl- Why Wolfwood couldn't guess and she was betrayed. A potent mix. A hell of a mess. Wolfwood clicked these things into place, unsure if he was reading his two soulmates in that piercing way they all could or if he was simply not born yesterday.

“Where does bringing that tree to the hall of ancestors fall on our to do list?” Wolfwood asked pointedly.

Vash bristled.

And Meryl tensed.

“You can’t go back down there, the time flow reversed or whatever. Who knows when you’d be back?!” She said. She was already having a terrible morning. And the idea of him leaving her again was more than she could handle in the moment.

“We could all go together,” Wolfwood said like it was simple.

“And who would pay rent while we were gone?” Vash asked.

“If we bring it back, and break the curse, and get her memory back- that’ll be the first day of the rest of our lives and we can figure it out,” Wolfwood said.

“Just because you’ve got nothing to loose doesn’t mean we don’t. Two years was enough,” Vash said. “Besides, he’s a tree. He’s harmless.”

“Obviously not!” Meryl shouted. She gestured at the tornado like damage in the room.

“You now it's not fair, I wish I could hide in a tree and not get yelled out, not fair at all, tyranny even, I’m just a little guy, please Meryl.” and here Wolfwood passed her the broom. Which she accepted without thinking too hard.

“Don’t just a little guy me!” She said clutching the broom, but no longer brandishing it like a weapon.

“I’m just a little guy,” He repeated and pouted like a poorly drawn cartoon.

“No don’t you dare!” She said as he continued to give her the puppy dog eyes. “I hate this soulmate crap stop it, I get it you're tired and sad and scared and I’m stressing you out but this is serious!”

He sat on the nearby couch like a suddenly deflated dancing balloon at a care dealership and looked up at her. He made his bottom lip wible like he was an especially expressive Muppet. She had to stop short and laugh.

“Stop it!”

“I’m committed to you and the bit,” he said adoringly.

“And weaseling out of this conversation?!” She said. Here she passed to broom back to Wolfwood before rounding on him as he laid back on the couch dramatically.

“Mhmmm,” he said and played dead.

She tugged at his arm in vain to try and get him to sit up and answer questions and act like a human person. He’d gone all dead weight and insisting he didn’t have bones. When she gave up she was laughing and sitting half on top of him she asked, “Hey, handsome whats your name again?”

“Vash,” he said, all the previous playfulness draining out of him.

Wolfwood had exited the conversation by continuing to sweep. This was no good. No good at all as far as he was concerned.

---

The fight between the twins had done more than knock things over- most of the food in the house had gone bad. Which Wolfwood discovered over his bowl of late brunch cereal.

“Fairies can really sour milk?” Meryl asked.

“Some wives tales are true,” Wolfwood said.

The decision on who was going to run to the grocery store was made by Wolfwood, who nominated himself on account of Meryl being a wreck and Vash being ‘Blue as hell.’

“If he apologies again, hit him,” Wolfwood told Meryl firmly as he left.

They had mostly finish cleaning up, Vash helping in bursts, stopping to sit with a regularity that she was starting to be able to predict. And with Wolfwood gone they found themselves without a task and Meryl without a lot of answers. If she was a one she was certain she could coach the ghost out of its tree to yell at him. She only ever saw it as a kind of ripple, the idea of a voice.

After a long moment of standing in the middle of her home feeling very out of control even though everything was holding so still she said;

“I’m going to make cookies.”

“Can I help by laying on the floor?” Vash asked.

“Yes, that would be extremely helpful, actually,” She teased.

She only forgot he was on the floor twice, the first time tripping over his ankles with an egg in each hand. The second time she’d stepped backwards away from the counter and directly onto the pane of a wing- which had made him squeak like a toy. And when she was done apologizing she looked at him a long moment, looking so much herself with flour in her hair, and asked; “Dammit, what is your name again?”

“Vash,” he said forlornly.

And Meryl, feeling his melancholy, tsked.

“This is your spell,” She said.

“I’m not usually this good at magic,” He said like that some how aught to absolve him from her judgment.

“Says the bioluminouscent man on my kitchen floor.”

“I’m serious! I swear. I don’t even have a foci. I can only really do anything with it when I’m half out of my mind and something crazy is happening,” he said gesturing at the ceiling with his hand.

“That sounds scary.”

“It is.”

and that sat. The truth of it bigger than the words of it. Meryl thoughtfully spooned lumps of cookie dough out of the bowl and on to the pan.

And when the weight of all that incidentally acknowledged fear some how lessened she asked; “So a foci, whats that?”

“That’s how you cast magic. Yours is truth. That’s why you're a great at what you do.”

“Being a journalist? I write travel pieces,” She scoffed.

“Yeah, but you see the truth of things. What people and places are really like and you can write it. You do the same thing with your tattoos, you put the truth into form. And that’s a kind of magic.”

Meryl co*cked her head thoughtfully.

“And you don’t think you have one.”

“Not everyone does.”

“What about Mr. Cininatti?” She asked. She was scrapping the bowl for the last vestiges of the dough.

“Hmm, The Punisher, the sword, eats want but the man himself, his foci is bestowing. It’s a potent combination who ever paired him up with that thing.”

“Bestowing? Like gifts?”

“No more like nurturing, but like giving yourself, like paying a price, like winning by yielding. They’re usually healers.” He said. Vash didn’t need to say out loud that he had always hopped that his foci and calling would be that one, or something like it.

“More like… Oh God. Are you telling me his love language is acts of service and all he knows how to do is kill? Like the meme?” She said turning to look at Vash in horrified realization.

“Y-yeah,” He said and tried to hold back laughter.

“it is not funny!”

“No!” He agreed covering his mouth.

“God dammit,” Meryl said and had to brace her hands on the counter, “It's not funny that’s the saddest thing I’ve ever heard.”

“Yeah well, sometimes it has to be funny or the other option is too much.”

She didn’t answer that. Instead she put the pan of cookies in the oven and sat in front of it. Vash sat up to join her, to watch cookie TV as she always called it. He scooted across the tile to her side and she startled, a yip of surprise escaping her, like he was a new and sudden presence in her kitchen.

She held her hand to her collar bone and said, “Man! How long have you been there?”

“The whole time” He said. He didn’t skip a beat, instead poking the glass to point at the cookies in question, “How’d you make cookies without milk?” He asked.

She was looking at him, trying to remember him, the hard truth of him as strongly as she could. But the man she’d been working to remember was blond and a dweeb. And that hadn’t been the whole truth to start it she’d learned, but the mismatch made her head itch. This man had long dark hair and sad electric blue eyes. This man was evasive and stubborn. It made her feel like a lot of hard work she didn’t remember doing was all for nothing.

“Well I pretended to put the milk in. Then hoped the cookies wouldn’t notice I was lying. I felt silly doing it. But then… something about doing magic with truths so I thought why not lies too?”

“You can do magic with lies too,” Vash agreed with a laugh, “Can’t believe you bullied the cookies.”

She shrugged, “I do what I gotta do.”

“You really do,” And he missed her so bad even though she was sitting just right there. He thought about kissing her. About reaching out and sliding her hair behind her ear and cupping her chin and kissing her so sweetly while the cookies just started to smell like cookies.

She leaned a little towards him and he knew she’d let him. She would let him kiss her, like nothing was wrong in the world. When she looked at him she still loved him. And that was the worst part some how. She loved him like a brand new mysterious person to be in love with, with all the pulse and shock of learning him. And perhaps that’d be kind of romantic. But he couldn’t think about tipping her chin back with out being reminded of Legato tipping back his own.

She put a hand on his knee where he was sitting cross legged besides her and struggled to say something. She wanted to say something, anything, to make the sudden pitch filled hole in Vash’s chest stop drawing inward like that. But the curse surged hard enough that Vash felt it too. Made him want to grab her like she could be psychically pulled away from it. And then she couldn’t think of any comfort at all to give him. No truth that was kind. Just left looking at him uselessly.

Vash slid his hand over hers, “I’ll be alright,” he lied. And she knew it was a lie, she didn’t’ need to be his soulmate to see right through that thin paper smile. But he got away with it because she forgot him again the moment she looked bake at the cookies still warm and golden in the oven.

___

When Wolfwood returned there were cookies. The living room was tidied. And the two of them had arranged themselves on the floor looking at memes on Meryl’s phone.

It was suspiciously normal. Granted it had been three days with the three of them together, so it was hard to tell what normal was yet. Yet. The sense of future hung over him as he looked at them. Vash’s long spindly legs where up on the couch and Meryl was curled besides him phone held above them. Like they were made specifically to fit there against each other in that space in this world. Like they belonged.

He shut the door behind him and Vash looked up. And then Meryl popped up and said, “There’s cookies.”

“How did you make cookies without milk?” He asked taking the two bags to the kitchen.

Everything was so normal normal normal normal normal normal normal normal normal normal normal normal normal.

“She bullied the cookies with magic,” Vash said.

“I did. They’re still good without the milk.”

Woflwood paused and snagged one off the counter to test. He could taste the magic in them- but honestly that just made him want a second one. It was good. Good the way most food abovehill wasn’t.

“Damn,” He said, “That’s a baller cookie.”

He put the eggs, milk, butter in the fridge then brought the five pound bag of gummy sharks into the living room and plopped on the floor with them.

Everything was so normal normal normal

“Are those for me?” Vash asked. He pointed at the bag of gummy sharks hopefully. Fae liked things with life force in them, which usually meant raw foods made by animals with intention like honey and millk and eggs. But fae, like hummingbirds, also craved neon colors and sweets. The less food shaped the more they wanted it, Wolfwood found. Zazie had been particularly infected with a lust for pixie stix.

“Nope,” Wolfwood said popping them open. He put one in his own mouth and then offered one to Meryl who was sitting close by to him. She took it gently with her teeth and laughed, bringing her hand up to take a proper bite of the big candy.

Vash pouted. He was in possession of a tremendous pout.

How could everything be so normal normal normal when everything was so extremely f*cked? And sitting there wanting the normal, the fact that he didn’t know how to fix it was going to eat Wolfwood like a termite gnawing inside of an ornate pillar. But everything was fine. The sun was coming in through the window and they were together. Really together in one place.

“So,” he said around a second gummy shark, “ How are we gonna break this stupid f*cking curse?”

“Hmmm,” Vash said loudly, “I tried already.”

“I’m working on it,” Meryl said.

“You’re working on it?” Wolfwood echoed back as he was want to do.

“Yeah,” She said waning in confidence as the curse saw the opening.

“If anyone can do it, it's Meryl,” Vash said. And he believed it. No doubt. Believed it fully the way only a fairy or a child could believe things. It made Meryl blush. Just sitting here in all this normal was making the curse thrash like a spitting cat and they all knew it.

Wolfwood wanted to believe it too. But he also knew, deep in his bones, that his curse in particular could not be broken by will alone. Because he was certain he would have, could have even, but maybe that was ego on his part. But Vash was a sineater, he could tease a hex or a curse apart subconsciously by taking it on to himself and even that had only weakened it. It was a big thing to do alone and Meryl was, well she was Meryl and he didn’t doubt, but he didn’t want her to do it alone.

“Don’t look at me like that. I’m okay,” Meryl said. She leaned forward and kissed his cheek.

Her lips were hot against his stubble and everything was normal normal normal.

Vash was giving him an incredulous look, because after being so forward earlier this morning Wolfwood had the audacity to go beat red. Maybe if there wasn’t a curse hanging over them, or a memory spell, or a haunted apple tree, or everything that made him The Punisher balled up in his chest like a bear trap. Maybe he’d lean over and kiss her back and that would be so so normal in the afternoon sunshine.

“Alright. Next question then-” He said instead, because he had a mission, “You-” He pointed at Vash, “Need to stop channeling a ley line through me.”

“Well,” Vash said uselessly, “No idea. I can’t do magic.”

“What do you mean?” Wolfwood spat.

“Can’t,” he said simply.

“Well that's a lie?!” he said gesturing between the two of them to indicated everything that happened in the fae throne room and the way Vash had some how used The Punisher to thread all the power of the living throne back though it and him and back into Vash.

“I can do magic when I’m-” he made a wishy washy motion with his wrist at the ceiling, “ You know-”

Vash hoped their empathetic connection would carry his meaning but Wolfowod said, “No, I don’t.” and Vash’s expression fell.

“It’s only when I’m trying not to die. I think the magic just works me sometimes.”

“Well then we’ll get some one to undo it for you. I ran into Elendira. I think, considering the apple tree as a bargaining chip, she might be agreeable-”

“No,” Vash said and then again with ice, “No.”

“Okay, okay- sure. You must know some one.”

“I do, but I don’t know where she is. Her Name’s Luida. She’s a baptized fairy who lived here for years and years, she was the first person I tried to find after I ate your curse. Where she used to live was an empty lot.”

“Well. That’s something,” Wolfwood said. Finding things and a people was a kind of magic he knew how to do. Only. … He didn’t have a guitar. He didn’t know how to do it without playing for a crowd.

And the want of it bubbled up in him until it was so strong he didn’t know what to do.

“You good?” Vash asked.

“I just- really want my guitar back so I can try something.”

Meryl’s eyes softened as she put two and two together: the sword was the guitar was the sword. He’d shown her the trick of it a couple times even if her eyes never wanted to believe it. If The Punisher was missing, still lodged into the throne where it had killed legato, then so too was the guitar.

“We can get you a new one.”

And part of him wanted to be a child about it and tell her it would never be the same. That they don’t make instruments like that anymore and certainly not abovehill. But also how would he find this Luida without one?

“We can go tonight if you want?”

Wolfwood shook his head, “No, I can go. We cant leave him alone with the ghost so you’ll have to stay and also he’s blue.”

“I’m not afraid of him,” Vash said, “You two can run errands.”

“Maybe you should be,” Wolfwood said. The accusation was serious.

“Nope,” Vash said brightly, “You know that’s his foci right?”

And that knocked the wind out of any argument he had. Any rebuttal died in his mouth. That was a hell of a royal secret to tell him. It made sense. It was the perfect catch twenty two for a fairy king.

“Wait wait wait how do you two know my tree ghost???” Meryl demanded. She cut the tension between her men in two like a hot knife in butter. And they both looked sheepish a moment.

“well first off all he’s not your anything,” Vash said.

Meryl gave him a stern you-know-what-I-mean look and then looked at Wolfwood who was usually more forthcoming with supernatural information

“Don’t look at me, he’s the one who put you under a memory spell. I bet you should already know this stuff. You’re married to him,” Wolfwood said this like it was a deeply unfortunate but unavoidable problem.

She heaved a sigh and stared Vash down. He was strong and stubborn at first and slowly wilted under her gaze.

“He was the king of the fairies once,” he said looking anywhere but at her, “He’s my brother. We had an argument. We’re having an argument again now.”

“About what?!” She demanded. These felt like non answers and she was not letting him get away with it.

“He cast the curse on him,” Vash said and here he pointed at Wolfwood. “Then I told him to look after you when I left and he says he can’t break it. He’s a liar, though.”

“Well you can’t break it neither,” Wolfwood said cooly.

Vash tucked his chin in embarrassment.

“Huh. So my brother in law is The king of the fairies. And he’s a tree and he’s been doing my vacuuming for the last two years...Does that make you the king?”

Vash looked stricken like an animal stuck in a trap and said “No. No nonononono I abdicated.”

“That’s the first argument they had,” Wolfwood told her helpfully.

“You already know all this-” Vash said putting his hand over his face in distress.

“Yeah- whose fault is that?” She asked. But she took pity on him and rummaged around the gummy bag and leaned over to feed it to him. His teeth were very sharp and she maybe enjoyed giving him the peace offering more than she thought she would. “So if he’s not the king, and you're not the king- and I’m your wife then am I the Qu-”

“NO,” Vash and Wolfwood said at the same time.

“Damn? Fine. Don’t let a girl dream then,” She said with faux insult.

“You don’t want it. You don’t want to do what it will ask of you and it will change you. That kind of power is poisonous,” Vash said with passion.

“Says the guy currently channeling that power through me,” Woflwood said.

Vash still had his hand over his face and he kicked his feet a moment in something that was in between a bit and an honest anxiety moment, “I know I know!”

“So I need a guitar to find Luida. Easy... So you need to loan me your wallet, obviously,” He said turning to Meryl, “Cause he can’t stay here alone with the ghost… So,” Wolfwood said holding out his hand.

Meryl frowned.

“You’re really good at getting what you want, huh?” She complained.

“That’s my foci,” he said brightly.

“No it's not,” Vash told him.

Meryl was pulling herself up to get her wallet, because the two of them could keep arguing, but Wolfwood had made his point and she wanted him to have nice things. Win win. Which felt too easy. The curse was still and silent as a deep well. That made her nervous.

“What do you mean it's not. I’m The Punisher, my foci is want. It’s been wanting for years.”

“The sword’s was, sure,” Vash said impishly.

“And mine?” Wolfwood demanded.

“Mmmmm,” Vash said delighted that he didn’t know, “I would like to be bribed.”

“I thought it was freely given.”

“Oh no. I want something else! C’mon it can be a game~”

“No I am not playing fairy games-”

“I’m a fairy and I need enrichment,” Vash complained.

“I’m going to throw your husband out a window,” he told Meryl as she dug through her purse.

“Okay, but if you get rid of him you’ll have to get me a new one,” She said. He shrank because he wasn’t sure if she meant him or not and that made his stomach feel funny. “You know he just wants your gummy sharks?”

Vash was making puppy dog eyes at him when he said; “No.”

“Cruelty!” Vash cried. They were both still sitting on the floor in front of the couch like they were teens at a sleep over. Something so casual and easy that it hurt for her to look at them both just right there in one place. When she finally dug out her wallet she came over and presented it to Wolfwood.

“Here you go, don’t ruin my credit okay,” she said.

“You’re going to give him your whole wallet?” Vash asked. This was so uncommonly not Meryl he had to pause.

“Yeah at this point if something bad happens at least it might be funny,” she said.

“If I f*ck this up, I promise to make it funny,” Wolfwood swore solemnly.

__

He did not f*ck it up.

He did not even actually need her wallet. Just like he hadn’t needed it when he’d gone to the grocery store or bought cigarettes. He’d charmed some rocks, a leaf and weird piece of wire he’d fond while walking there and changed them into crisp authentic American dollars.

He’d asked for her wallet to make her feel useful. She needed that, he thought, to feel loved.

That didn’t stop him from going through her wallet like a noir detective, looking at her id which contained her full name and her birthday and nothing else that was news. There was something about wallets and IDs and all the little human scraps she had tucked inside that fascinated him. They were all things he’d never had for himself.

She had some business cards in there, some for the tattoo parlor with a bright splash of a flash piece on one side and the more boring ones with the corporate logo for the magazine. She had fifteen dollars in cash and almost a free boba tea worth of punches on a local shops punch card. She had another one for records. And another one for some book shop.

Maybe when everything was normal they’d go together?

And that burned a hole in him; That he wanted it to be normal even though he couldn't in his mind's eye summon a shape of it. Just wanted it. Wanted it wanted it wanted it.

And it was burning up with this want that he stepped off the bus and found his way to the pawn shop. Inside, picking a guitar felt empty. He didn’t want any of them. He wanted his guitar. So he picked the one that was oldest and most beat up. It had the shimmer of another man’s intentions worn into it. Some one had used it well and he thought a thing like that deserved a second chance.

He haggled a while with the pawn shop guy, who had made the mistake of saying “You sure you want that one?”

And Then Wolfwood had talked him into magic circles until he paid twenty crisp authentic American dollars. It was about the thrill of the haggle to him more than the actual cost. Later that twenty would turn back into a particularly dark round rock and the till would be short. A deal was a deal though, in fairyland, and it wasn’t his fault the man didn’t check it for charms.

It took a while for him to tune the beat up guitar and get a feeling for the strings. It was a modern guitar and it sounded different and sat in his lap different. He’d been playing the same guitar for years and years that this felt like touching a stranger.

He played in front of the big fountain near the bus stop. And he earned some ears and a couple dollars. But working the magic into the strings and the sound was eluding him. He could do this kind of magic- always had been able- and the frustration bubbled up in him. But the instrument was just different and it did not solve his problems they way he wanted it to.

When he admitted defeat and headed back to the apartment he found Meryl and Vash had torn most of the bedroom apart looking for all his old things.

“You staid out to play?” Meryl asked him when Wolfwood appeared in the bedroom doorway.

“Yeah.”

“You find anything?”

“No,” He said. He’d left the guitar case in the living room, “It’s too different. It’s going to take me some time to get used to it.”

Meryl looked soft when he said that.

“Maybe when my glamour comes back I can ask around about her, there’s no rush. Don’t mope.”

And that Wolfwood knew was a lie.

“Oh! Your packages came while you were gone,” Meryl said, apparently feeling the need to change the subject before they started to argue.

“That was fast?”

“We live in evil delivery company monopoly hell world,” she said with a shrug, “I wanna see if everything fits.”

And then he found himself unboxing amazon packages like it was Christmas while the other two watched. His new shoes fit. His new jacket was a little big. He had reassembled all his visual parts and some how he felt more incomplete than ever.

--

It would be easy. So easy for Wolfwood to take the potted tree and run for the nearest the entrance to the world beneath. But Meryl was right, he could be away again for years. And the evening continued with diner and sitting on the couch while Link made dying noises from the TV. And it was all so easy and good.

Only every wrong thing was baring down on Wolfwood. And all their troubles were going round and round his head till It kept him up as he lay on the couch to sleep.

He couldn’t tell if Vash was asleep or not on the floor besides him. He’d won rock paper scissors but he’d felt no victory in it. He wanted to be in Meryl’s bed again. But Vash insisted she didn’t know him and said he’d take the couch, which meant the ghost might get at him again. And well, Meryl’s nerves couldn’t handle that happening again, so here Wolfwood was again, on the couch again.

“Hey?” He asked the dark ceiling. And when he got no response he had to sit with the full sucking draw of the fear in him. The way he wanted a future he couldn’t imagine. They way their problems had problems. The way it all felt so nice but everything was so wrong. He laid there and just felt it, like he’d feel a stab wound.

Finally he pulled the pillow and blanket after him as he slid down on to the floor to join Vash. He pressed his back to his and finally fell asleep.

In the morning there was no sun, the day had broke cloudy and had yielded soft rain that plinked against the big sliding glass doors to the deck. Vash’s nose was tucked into Wolfwood's neck and his arm and half pair of wings all splayed across his chest.

And it was so easy, he fit there against him like there had never been a morning they didn’t wake up entangled on the living room floor.

“We should really just sleep in the bed tonight,” Wolfwood told the ceiling.

“Her not knowing me is too hard,” Vash mumbled into him.

Wolfwood frowned up at the ceiling, something had to give in this catch-22 soon, it really did.

Chapter 16

Chapter Text

Meryl woke in gauzy sunlight on her big empty bed, her limbs splayed out starfish like. She looked up at the dust motes in the sunlight and the ceiling and laid there a long moment, feeling like something was wrong, like she had very morning of the last two years. She breathed in through her nose and sighed. There were actually two men sleeping in her living room and her she was with all this real estate. She moved her hands and legs like a snow angel and then went limp.

She reluctantly checked her phone for the time, the weather, her texts- still no word from Milly- and then swung her feet over the edge of the bed and decided to face her day.

She ducked into the bathroom and brushed her teeth ignoring the messy haired girl on the other side of the mirror. When she padded out to the kitchen to put the kettle she also switched on the coffee maker. Just like she always did- at least now the kettle wouldn’t surprise her and remind her how wrong everything was because she always chose coffee and never knew who the tea was supposed to be for. The tea was for some one else. Some one she never quiet remembered until he was standing in the room with her again. There were two men in her living room now, and both of them drank tea with too much honey. So she told that to herself and the kettle, and used her best bossing tone, to ensure that all was well against the insistence of the curse that everything was wrong forever.

That morning the apartment was blissfully not ravaged by a magical whirlwind and even better it was Saturday. She didn’t have to call out or be anywhere

except that she should text Milly and just apologize.

Except she should rally the boys to find this Luida person a bit faster.

She should do any number of useful things.

Instead she was standing in the kitchen looking at Vash and Wolfwood curled up on her living floor, a warm cup of of tea in her hands a warm feeling the curse hated in her chest. Vash was tucked against him just so and for a moment everything was so serene. But her mind was saying something was off and at first she couldn’t tell if they were making out or not. She realized slowly that no, that wasn’t quite it. Her fairy knight made direct eye contact her and looked mortified, his face and mouth was unoccupied but Vash- that was his name right? Vash’s mouth was occupied. The knowing of Wolfwood's wide eyes filled her up the way their bond always made her feel stretched like a helpless balloon with fear, she’d caught him red handed, at what she wasn’t sure? And it sent a trill of adrenaline lace dread through her.

It took her another long moment of staring to figure out why Vash was pressed into his shoulder. As he shifted she saw blood at Wolfwood’s neck and then unhealed c shapes on his arms that came into view as he brought a finger to his lips.

She opened her mouth, like a fish, and Wolfwood shook his head, his face so stone faced and serious she thought she’d come out of her skin. She darted back into the kitchen and quieted the kettle just before it could scream. She tood their holding the kettle in the quiet of the kitchen and tried to remember how to breath. Tried to remember what the blond's name was. The one that was eating her kitten alive.

She chased the missing name around her head as she made a cup of coffee and two cups of tea with too much honey. It didn’t scare her, not the way casual vamapirism should. It made some kind of logic to her, in the part of her brain where all her understanding of magic lived locked away still. But Wolfwood hadn’t wanted her to see, and not knowing why it was secret, oh that scared her more than knowing. Not knowing made her chest bubble like a cold spring with fear, and the curse was gorging on it. She could feel it getting fat inside her, bloating and filling her mind. She braced her hands on the sink and braced back tears.

“No, it’s going to be alright. There’s a reason. Probably a stupid reason.”

She squeezed her eyes tight, white knuckles gripping the lip of the stainless steel sink. The whole earth spun without her beneath her feet, like she stood under the bottom of the world.

She jumped when Vash said good morning.

He was b-lining for the bathroom, as he had everyone morning since her Knight had unspooled all that cold iron out of him. She knew now it was to brush the blood out of his teeth and kept her eyes firmly at the dirty forks in the sink.

She jumped again as Wolfwood’s hand found her waist, “Are you cool?” he asked her.

“Yeah,” She lied, badly. So badly he didn’t need to be bonded soul to soul with her know. Why she tried she didn’t know. Reflex. Habit. Instinct. “-I’m just- what the f*ck?” She said lowly. She didn’t turn, only addressed him by speaking to the dishes in the sink.

“He’s sensitive about it, be cool.” She breathed out, the relief so real and palpable that his hand slid up her back, “What did you...think...I?”

“I’m cool, it’s cool,” She said quickly and turned. She wasn't sure what she thought or what she was so fearful of. Just not knowing. Just his fear at being caught multiplying in her. Her hands were still so chaste on the sink and he was so close to her. He softened looking at her, like he always did, as he saw something or that lack of something he feared to find in her. What she wasn’t sure. The curse made everything positive between them a muddle, so that what ever bond they had hardly seemed to matter anymore when she needed it most.

She took her hands back from the sink and brought his up from her hip and into hers for inspection. He let her without complaint and watched her quietly, content to let her manhandle him, until she started looking too closely at the cuts on his hands. When she started unwrapping him, he let her, she’d been the one to put them on after all. Underneath some of the wounds weren't even scabbed after all this time. And when she pushed back his sleeve she saw Vash’s handiwork in the unsympathetic fluorescent lights.

“Kitten,” She said softly, and just this once he didn’t complain that she called him Kitten, “You’re not healing right to be doing that for him.”

And he looked stricken.

“It doesn’t hurt too bad-”

“I bandaged these days ago,” She said. The cuts on his fingers were still fresh, just how she remembered them. Even the shallow ones that should have healed up over night. She poked further up his arm and he didn’t try to hide the mangled bite wounds. The one near his wrist was worst and she could see the logic in making a new one each time if he wasn’t healing right.

“We got problems, I know, I know it,” He said softly.

“No kidding,” She said darkly. And stood there with the ugly truth long enough that no amount of being soul mates could smooth over the silence.

And without discussing it further she re-bandaged his hands and tucked his sleeve back down. And when they heard Vash shut the bathroom door Wolfwood pulled away and picked up his tea just a little too fast as Vash stopped short.

“I made tea,” Meryl said. Which was true but the speed and tone was so suspicious the blond man frowned. But she persisted. She could only persist.

She pressed the big round cup into Vash’s hands and scurried to look busy with the dishes.

Vash looked at Wolfwood who shrugged. For all the binding of souls between them keeping a secret by omission was surprisingly easy or maybe the three of them were just so guilty about so much else that impossible for nuance. Vash knew something was wrong. But so much was wrong.

He was trying to piece it together. But instead of asking Vash sipped his tea and said brightly; “So what are we doing today?” which will probably not surprise the reader, but likely cause a familiar sense of despair that he is like this.

“I don’t work today it’s Saturday,” Meryl said. As if she hadn’t called out the day before and her being home would be new.

“Nothin’” Wolfwood told him, and since that wasn’t lie it settled something in Vash’s chest, “Least not till I figure out how to play right and get to finding things again. I think your fairy godmother is our best bet right now.”

Vash looked crest fallen, “I could go ask around.”

“Baby boy, you are blue,” Meryl informed him, “You can’t just go out and knock on doors like that.”

Vash had a habit of doing just that for his clients at the clinic all the time. He was good at it. It got things done. It was also how he’d gotten into all this and he felt there was a deeply unfair irony to that now.

“I-” Vash said with a lack of conviction, because he was sorta blue. His complexion was alien at best and ghastly at worst. “That’s not my fault?”

Oh that hit her like a hammer.

“I know, I know,” And she said changing her tune. She hadn’t meant to hurt him and the curse was all puffed up doing it’s worst about everything. She was looking right at him, all the love in heart surging and struggling to hold on to his name; Virgil? No. Ash? No. “But you’re going to need more than a hat if you’re going to go out.”

Vash- yes that was his name! And he usually wore red. Should be blond. She tried to hold the memory of him still and overlay it on the dark haired sallow looking man wibbling at her and struggled.

“Can’t you re illusion yourself- you could be blond before right?” She asked.

“Uhn-” Wolfwood said, trying to swoop in to help him. He could sense that Vash was again at the edge of that personal precipice and he wasn’t sure what would happen if he was pushed. Everyone had a breaking point, and he didn’t think Meryl knew how fragile he was. Didn’t know if the curse would let her know. Or if he said it out loud if that’d just make it more true and worst instead.

“I don’t think so,” Vash said and they both watched his shoulders migrate for his ears.

“Cold iron does a number on fae’s glamour. It hurts sure, but the real threat of the stuff is their vanity,” Wolfwood managed to explain to Meryl.

“Oh c’mon,” Vash pouted into his tea. “It's not that bad.”

“You look like an Startrek,” Meryl said unhelpfully. She tried no to think about vampires as she said it, as if she might accidentally beam what she knew to him. Tried to keep her mind flat. Not sure if the connection worked like that.

“Gee thanks” Vash said trying to sound offended, but he couldn’t hold back the little snort. It was at least a little funny.

Then they sat in a companionable and shared tension. Everything was wrong, but at least they were in the same room and they could all quietly agree that that was almost good enough.

____

Later when Wolfwood left to go busking Vash felt a deep pang of jealousy. Like if he didn’t bolt out the door after him and go into the outside air he’d just die of it. And it filled him up like a child that wanted something impossible off a high shelf. He sat there on the couch feeling too big in his own body looking at Wolfwood like he needed saving.

“I’ll be back,” Said his man who hated being called any part of his name. He had the guitar case strung over his shoulder and he cut a neat silhouette against the outside world in his new shoes and his new coat. He looked sharp in a way Vash hadn’t seen him look before, not at all like the thread bare man he’d run away from on that damp day so long ago now.

“I know, it’s not that,” Vash said. Funny how he could tell there was something wrong, just not what. Just by looking at him. Just by being near him. He was used to Meryl doing it but they knew each other well enough that she usually guessed right.

“Well, stop looking at me like that, gives me a bad feeling.”

Vash looked away, because he couldn’t really help how he looked at some one.

“I’ll be back,” Wolfwood said before slipping out the door. The door clicked shut and he was alone in the living room, his own house, though he felt a stranger in it. With the new couch and the new art and the new table- most of it was antiques not new at all, just new to him. He didn’t dislike it. It just made it impossible to ignore that he’d been gone for two years and that his brother had been whispering his fashion tastes into his wife’s ear.

He pulled his hands over his face, taking a moment in darkness away from the sun bright home. Feeling the contours of his own face and his own hands on it, not the ghost of legato's in his mind. He took a moment to indulge in feeling one thing very strongly all at once, the way most fairies do all the time, and sat there in the agony of it, slumped against the couch cushions.

He imagined that if he held very still, the feeling would radiate out of him like heat from a hot coal and be gone. Only it just kept coming and coming in waves. The more he indulged it the heavier it was, and even without the curse he didn’t know how to navigate the wretched tide of it.

He’d left Meryl for two years, and he’d been held there by legato for more than he could reckon.

When he took a deep breath and looked up from the darkness in his hands the room was still full of sun and jewel tone antiques. And standing on the balcony, leaned close against the glass, blond and severe as the man in his mirror was his brother.

Eyes furious with him still that he wouldn’t tell him who had done this to him.

Vash stood up quick. Like a prey animal. Unsure if he was banished unable to entry the boundary of his home, or if he was merely looming.

“I wish you’d be reasonable,” The ghost said, in a voice so much and so unlike his own.

Vash took a step back, nearly tripped over his too long legs, his ankles thin like a piece of glass art. He turned and fled, finding Meryl reading in her bedroom. And he stood there in the doorway looking wide eyed and spooked at her. And thinking this wasn’t even his room at all anymore. There was nothing of his left save the bed frame.

She startled, her hands going through a series of motions and almost throwing the book.

“Sorry,” Vash said.

“Vash? Right?” She said cautiously. And every time it happened it hurt like a blow with a baseball bat to his sternum. “It's.. alright…” She said as his expression fell. She patted the bed besides her with more kindness than he deserved; “Do you wanna...hang out?”

“If that’s okay.”

“Of course it's okay, don’t be stupid,” She said reasonably.

He came in tentatively, like a stray thing coming to her hand for a treat. He laid down on his side of the bed, face first and laid very still and tried not to feel anything at all. Until Meryl put her hand on his back and it burned like a brand, a reminder that she loved him even as she didn’t know him, even as the reason she didn’t know him was his own fault.

The curse needed to be broken. He couldn’t let her know while she was cursed the monumental blow of what had happened to him. That he had left her for two years. She knew, of course, but she didn’t understand the way she would when she remembered. And she may never forgive him. And he had accepted that. He pushed the guilt around in his gut like food on a plate that he didn’t want to eat. He sopped up the comfort of her touch now, anyway, knowing it might be gone later and that that would be his lot. Her fingers trailed lightly on his shoulder and then, gently across his remain wing, which tickled.

“I think- I don’t know what to call him still, but he’ll find your fairy godmother eventually,” Meryl said softly. “Don’t worry so much.”

He tensed his whole body tight and released it, hoping that could trick his brain into relaxing. If only to put Meryl at ease. Funny, how when she didn’t know him, she couldn’t guesses why his emotions where as they where. He let her rub his back and worried all the same.

“What if we tried calling him Wolfwood? Have you tried that yet?” Vash asked into the pillow. He needed a problem he could solve and what to call their new boyfriend seemed a safe place to store his mind for now.

“No,” She said thoughtfully. “Worth a shot though. Anything is better than Punisher.”

"I knoooow," Vash commiserated.

"We can bamboozle him when he gets home," She said like they were in cahoots.

He missed being in cahoots with her. He missed her so much he had to work hard to keep the water works on the inside.

Chapter 17

Chapter Text

Time, above hill, was linear and moved at a steady unrelenting pace. Day in. Day Out. Cups of Tea. Hours of Pokemon played. Meryl went to work at the magazine. Wolfwood started coming home in the evening with a stack of crinkled dollars as he broke in his guitar.

Sometimes Wolfwood slept on the floor with him. Sometime with Meryl. And more and more he felt the draining tug of the punisher trying to siphon the power of the fae throne into him. It was starting to ache and he still didn’t know what to do about it.

And Vash slowly thought he’d go mad trapped in the apartment. At least Nai was relegated to the outside balcony and he could only leer in since Meryl put his tree out there, like he was some kind of naughty cat and not his brother, not the king of the fairies, not a powerful ghost. As if Vash could just stare at him from the kitchen and will him to go away.

Nai wanted to know who did this to him. Wanted to know what he’d done to his kingdom. Wanted an explanation. And he knew, deep down, that these were not unresonable questions.

But Vash wasn’t sure how to tell him, that it was Legato. Didn’t want to deal with the argument that would follow. Didn’t have the strength to manage the magnitude of the fall out. He was a ghost. Shouldn’t he rest in peace? Shouldn’t he not care? Shouldn’t he not bother him with these things.

But nothing with Nai had ever been easy. Not in a hundred years.

But that made the living room unlivable during the day when he was alone, and laying in the bed he wasn’t sleeping in at night with his switch felt strange. Like he was doing something wrong. Being home felt unreal after so long at Legatos feet, after so long in that little oubliette he’d kept him in.

Being home with it all wrong made his bones itch almost as bad.

It was all his own doing, so he tried to bite it down. He left the switch on his chest making urgent pixel noises for his attention and considered the ceiling. The view out the window was apartment roofs and just a the bare sliver of the bay beyond.

If he asked Nai what to do with the magic spooling his chest, he’d have an answer. And then he’d have to live in the shadow of being in his debt for it, forever. And that made him want to come out of his skin more than anything that Legato had humiliated him with.

Later over takeout on the kitchen floor, he asked Wolfwood; “Have you found any leads on Luida?”

“No, I’m… I know I can still do magic. It’s just the guitar. It’s new. I have to break it in-” He said between bites of pad thai. He had been out busking all morning and had swung by to make sure Vash ate something. Anything. Even if it didn’t taste good. As if by persistence Wolfwood could ween him off his blood. If by pure insistence he could do something about being able to feel his every rib when they slept together on the living room floor.

“It’s okay,” Vash said. And both of them sat there knowing it really wasn’t, that time was against them.

When he went to leave again Vash made his move. Something had to give and maybe it was him.

“Take me with you,” he said sliding down the door jam

“Vash, you’re blue.”

“Oh c’mon, Please?” he asked sinking ever lower.

Wolfwood stood motionless save for his deepening frown.

“Pleaaaase,” Vash whined almost down on his knees, going noodle-limp in his limbs.

“Stop that- don’t you have some dignity, hey?” Wolfwood said trying to pull him up. But Vash had committed to the bit and had let himself go dead weight. Wolfwood was left hauling him under the armpits and he struggled to do so. He wasn’t as strong as he used to be. And he wasn’t sure if it was being separated from The Punisher, the strong spell pulling so much life force through him, or donating blood everyday. But it was probably at least one of those things, statistically.

Vash almost went to the floor with a laugh, not knowing Wolfwood well enough to think anything strange in it.

“Why are you like this?” Wolfwood complained and let him slide all the way to the floor.

“I’m deeply traumatized,” Vash said brightly.

“…. “ Wolfwood paused. He wasn’t sure that was how that worked, but he didn’t know enough to argue with him. “Well you can’t come if you're on the floor, c’mon.”

“Really?” he said bouncing up faster than Wolfwood thought was humanly possible. The motion was accompanied by the buzz and shine of his two right wings assisting.

Wolfwood caught him by the shoulders, “Slow down. I’m gonna have to try something.”

“Yeah? What are you gonna-” And Vash’s words were cut off by his mouth. The first time they had kissed it had been a heat he could have melted right into and never crawled out of, so good and sweet and needy that it scrapped the inside of his raw mind clean. It had hurt him. In a way he couldn’t explain.

But this time it caught him by surprise. And he was doing a bit, he was already trying not to laugh and the giggle bubbled up in him.

“I said hold still,” Wolfwood broke away from him long enough to grouse. He slide both his hands up around his jaw and kissed him so properly,

Until it tingled and Vash said; “wuhf?” into his mouth before pulling away from the ripple of magic.

Wolfwood put his hands on his shoulders, and held him at length. Like he was looking him over.

“I mean, not my best work, but I think it will do.”

“Did you just glamour me?”

“No, I’m not that talented I just put a pay-no-mind on you...that you're blue.”

“I’m not a smurf, I’m not actually blue,” Vash argued. His complexion was pale with ghostly blue undertones and when the bioluminescence shapes worked over his skin he darkened to almost pale grey like a nervous cuttlefish. But that, technically, was not exactly blue.

“You’re more blue than a human person should be, that’s for sure.”

“Well you shouldn’t say it,” Vash bemoaned.

“Truths the truth, you should know how to deal with it by now, you married Truth incarnate Stryfe.”

Vash deflated, that was true. He should be used to swallowing the truth whole like a snake, the way that what Meryl liked the feed it to him.

“Well,” He lamented, and wished he’d kiss him again instead of scold him, “Did it work?”

“Do you care?”

“No. Please let me out of the house, I’m going to asphyxiate on boredom and shrivel up-”

“Okay, okay, C’mon.” He said holding the door open.

Vash stepped out onto the walk way and felt giddy in the open air. He was nervous for a second that Nai would show up since he was outside. But perhaps he was confined entirely to the balcony? Oh Meryl was so talented if that was the case.

He giggled as he followed Wolfwood down the steps.

“You gonna make it pal?”

“No~” Vash said lightly. Because there were cars and birds and a big gray sky and he was wearing just his pajamas and crocs and the chill and breeze was kissing his skin through both. He hadn’t even grabbed a jacket.

Wolfwood paused and watched him do a open armed spin in the parking lot. It was a shabby gray kind of day with puddles and the clouds hovering in close above and the light was a sort of wane dishwater color. And in his eyes Vash in his red hoodie and terrible light up nascar crocs became a riveting pop of color in a drab world.

“When was...the last time you were outside?” Wolfwood asked him.

“I really don’t know,” Vash said to the sky.

There were some emotions too big to name and neither of them tried.

They walked along the sidewalk, under trees that had just about dropped all there leaves in the gray morning. Vash stopped to pet every dog, which was several. And their owners only looked at him a little uncomfortably. Wolfwood hung back, not wanting his own off putting airs to make the hard work his pay-no-mind-spell was doing harder.

Wolfwood followed after, not knowing yet that Wolfwood was his name, watching the reflection of Vash’s light up shoes in the windows and puddles. It was a long downhill walk to the historic brick plaza with the statues and the string lights. There they would find small crowds headed towards the water front and the fancy restaurants in the next neighborhood to play for. When they arrived he set his new guitar case down on the edge of a large fountain, the historic chief of the local tribe stood in the center it and from the plinth a bear head spouted water.

Wolfwood looked up at the bronze statue a moment before he cracked open the guitar case. He pulled the the second hand guitar out and held it like a surgical instrument. Holding it with both hands like it wasn’t his.

“So can you sing?” Wolfwood asked tuning it.

“Enough for babies and birthdays?” Vash said without confidence. He sat besides the guitar case on the wall of the Fountain basin.

“Good enough. Do you know the words to any songs?”

“Um,” he said sheepishly, “ABBA?”

“Like, uh, dancing queen?” Wolfwood ventured to guess. His pop culture knowledge was spotty at best. But he’d been above hill in the 80s and he at least knew who ABBA was.

“Yeah-young and sweet only seventeen- dodo do doo do~” he sang badly.

“Yeah, yeah,” He said and tried out a series of chords to backwards engineer a classic.

Vahs was right about his singing voice, it was nothing special, but he could carry a tune and he knew all the words. And the melody was easy enough on his fingers. Vash lead him through the chorus and the bridge with more do-doos than words and they laughed when they weren't exactly in sync about it.

“No, Do-do do-do dooo” And Wolfwood played it back, “Yeah, like that.”

And when they started at the top finally it was easy. It was as easy as being in the kitchen with Meryl. Didn’t even have to think about it. Wolfwood’s voice joined him for the chorus and the parts about the tambourine and the parts where they both got too excited.

And the sparse crowd of people walking slowed. Not because they were especially good, but because joy shared is a kind of magic that always attracted the eye and the ear. And when Wolfwood turned he was surprised by the little crowd he found there, his fingers stumbling over familiar chords in surprise. But he brought the song to a close and gave a little bow to a round of pleasant clapping.

Vash laughed as he moved to put the guitar case on the ground with the sign in it where it was supposed to go. He went through the motions of saying thank you and ‘you can record if you want I don’t care.’

Vash watched the easy way he had with people when he thought the interactions didn’t matter, not the same way when he tried to with Meryl. With her it was like every movement was a high stakes test.

“What other songs do you know?” Wolfwood asked, “You know how to pull a crowd.”

“Me?” Vash chirped, “You’re the man with the guitar.”

“For some one who says they don’t have foci you really put out like kilowatts of notice-me-magic.”

“No no, that’s you.”

“Nope,” Wolfwood insisted. “What else you know?”

Vash grumbled and after moment said, “Waterloo?”

“Yeah, sure,” Wolfwood agreed and they went through the same process of working through the melody and the chords until they both agreed it sounded at least mostly like the song.

They played their way through most of ABBA and then his short repertoire of karaoke go-tos. And then it was noon and they bought subway sandwiches and sat on the fountain together.

“You know this is kind of the best,” Vash said with his mouth full.

“It gets boring,” Wolfwood assured him.

“Yeah I know,” he said picking up his subtext correctly, “living rough and being public about it is mostly boring, I’ve done it. I mean this,” he said pointing between them.

“Yeah,” he agreed, “This is pretty alright.”

And that was all there was to say on it as they ate their sandwiches and watched the people go by. There wasn't much about the two of them that warranted a second look but Vash was starting to notice second glances, rubber necks turning a little too long and had to take a long deep breath to steady himself.

“ You know, I think your spell's starting to wear off, people keep looking at me,” Vash said absently, as if the anxiety of it wasn't trying to carry his sandwich back out his mouth.

“Probably, we can head back if you want.”

Vash shrugged, choosing to take bite of sandwich instead of answer. This was fun. He didn't want it to end. Not in defeat. Not like that.

“I mean what are people going to do if they do notice?” Wolfwood said nonchalantly like the agent of the fae court he was.

Vash put his sandwich down and looked at him like he was the camera.

“I look like a bug,” He said, hooking his hand into a sort of Shakespearean clawed display of agony at the sky. He then laid back on the fountains edge he was sitting on dramatically like he was Ophelia herself.

“Shut up, you’re my bug,” Wolfwood said with all the easy put down of being the eldest of thirty.

Vash sat up a little to look at him better, floored. They could be soulmates sure, that could mean anything after everything was all said and done. He hadn’t wanted to assume. Being kissed twice didn’t have to mean anything.

“You don’t actually have to shut up, you know what I meant.” Wolfwood complained and rocked his foot by the croc.

“I do know what you meant, Wolfwood,” He said with feeling and Wolfwood froze, hand still on his terrible light up shoe. Because now he knew that his name was Wolfwood. And it was like a self correcting ripple across the narrative of his life, every instance of being The Punisher crossed out like he’d just always always just been Wolfwood. A magic trick bigger than he could wrap his head around, wrapping him up so soft in the damp gray day of just being here with Vash, doing f*ck all.

And they said nothing, they both staid so shut up and knowing exactly what they both meant as the crowd passed and the low gray clouds kept steady on their journey overhead.

Chapter 18

Chapter Text

Across the street from the bus stop was a thorned bramble growing out of the drain hole at the corner, and the run off trickling down the street and into it made the boughs, purple as a bruise, sway. Vash’s gaze was pinned to it like a butterfly to a collector's wall, unable to look away, unable to move, unable to breath. The stop light was green and a patient male voice intoned “WAIT.” on repeat as the traffic went by in a dull wet roar.

“No, man c’mon I don’t have any cigarettes,” Wolfwood told the other man at the corner. He had over the course of the day, in his good humor, given most of them away to those that asked. And now this late costumer wasn’t cooperating with him.

Vash knew he should say something to smooth things over. Or tug his Wolfwood away, he had named him just today, so that made him his, this he was sure of. He should do something, at least walk up to the other bus stop-

But the flower, amethyst bright in the dull grey of the city, held him and his heart in a choke hold. He hadn’t considered what would happen if the throne outgrew fairy land. He hadn’t considered that it was looking for him. That it wanted him. That all its thrashing and destruction when he had killed Legato was in want of him- having drawn so deeply from its power.

There it was. Just blooming softly in the real world. Just trying to beckon him home.

He reached out his good hand, grasping at air twice before catching Wolfwood’s jacket and said, “Hey.”

Wolfwood stopped short, a very different sentence from a very different argument still half formed in his mouth as he looked where Vash was looking. Those words, have thought and half spoken died right out of his mouth. Because that was the black throne of fairyland growing out the sidewalk drain hole. Exactly where it couldn't and shouldn't be.

“Oh, that’s-” Said Wolfwood in alarm as a bus finally arrived.

It sent a puddle cascading up over their toes as it plowed to a stop and blocked the view of the creature- because the fairy throne of thorns was certainly more alive than not, and thus a creature. But when the bus trundled on, taking away the man in want of the cigarette, the drain was clear and empty save for the lingering glimmer of purple pollen.

“Hell of an omen,” Wolfwood said and instinctively grabbed for the pack of cigarettes in his breast pockets. His Hands dutifully supplied him the box, only to rediscover he was out. That too was an omen.

“Let’s not wait for the next one,” Vash said all quiet and hushed in his bones. Not softly, not a quality of his voice, more a sort of fae stillness a human might mistake for quietness in the rain near a loud street.

They hurried home, the long way up the hills and crooked streets. And they walked with that same stillness all around them. He was certain that Vash didn’t realize he’d inverted all his happy-notice-me magics into see-nothing-say-nothing around them. Which was probably a good thing, because the spell he’d kissed into him to keep his fae blueness unnoticed had worn out as they waited for the bus. As finally approached the apartment he had a bad feeling that even the glow of being newly named by some one he loved couldn't subdue and he was weary suddenly of his problems having problems.

---

It wasn’t nice out in the traditional sense. It was the sort of un-rainy overcast gloom the city was known for and warm for that late in the fall. So Meryl didn’t even need a jacket as she sat on the apartment balcony. She’d brought a pillow from the couch, because she knew it was going take a while of sitting to get any results. And there she had sat for most of the afternoon locked in a staring match with a bonsai.

One time she had knocked the apple tree over and it had not spoken to her for weeks.

She wasn’t sure if there was any coming back from whacking it with a broom friendship wise. Sometimes things couldn’t be fixed, she was a grown woman, she knew that- She tried not to think of all the things she’d said to Milly as she packed her things up out of the studio as she reminded herself of this fact. But the curse made it hard, it roared in her ears like a small ocean. Besides, she didn’t exactly regret her actions with the broom, this was different, but she did think it would be best to talk to him.

After a couple hours of her unruly mind and the curse chasing her around and around she was about at her limit for quiet and alone time. So she said, “You know if you just tell me whats going on, I might be able to help.”

There was no answer.

The apple tree was leafless and couldn't even rustle. The other plants on the balcony had the air of dormancy to them plants got in Novemeber- save for the still green pine. but she didn't feel alone. She could sense him there: Sulking.

“I feel like there is so much I don’t know. And I trusted you. I trusted you this whole time. We made a pact,” She said seriously.

“And you broke it.” Said a low smooth voice from nowhere.

“No. You did, first! You attacked my house guest and tore up my living room.”

“No. That was different, it doesn't count.” The deep voice said with all the usual airs of confidence she had come to associate with it.

“Yes. It. Does,” She said through her teeth.

“We are having an argument, it does not concern you, nor does it nullify the terms of our agreements. Beating me a broom however-”

“No, you are being an entitled know it all. And you know you're not allowed to talk to me like that if you want to be let in the house,” She said. They had had this argument before. When she had first let him inside and started following what felt like at the time extremely silly instructions; such as watering the apple tree with milk and honey. At the time it had been the most exciting thing her life; this strange ghost that lived her house plant and sometimes could be conjoled to vacuum or keep a foul coworker away with the bribe of a fancy piece of furniture of sip of wine. He could hold a form sometimes, enough to take a sip or a bite of something, a man half see through and mother of pearl, she had thought him beautiful and knew now it was because he looked like some one she wished he was.

“You hurt my husband,” She said darkly when there was no further answer. And while there was no way for a bare apple tree to shrink under her gaze it some how managed to look contrite.

“You only remember him when you are angry,” The voice said like this insulted him.

Meryl paused. She hadn’t noticed that. She struggled still with his name, even though he had been living with her for some time now. She’d forget he was in the house even. Or in the room. Or it was like meeting him all over again. She couldn’t remember if he was even in the apartment somewhere now or not. But she did remember him. The idea of him. Her husband. He was blonde and a dweeb and he liked to wear red.

“That's when I’m most powerful,” She replied. She wasn’t sure if it was true until she said it. Her foci was truth wasn’t it? When was she more potent than when she was outraged about the truth of the matters at hand? “If you tell me more, I might be able to do more. For you. For him.”

“I can’t break your curse.”

“I did not ask you for that,” She said easily. Dealing with the ghost was a lot like dealing with a toddler who thought itself a lawyer, and she thought she’d gotten pretty good at navigating him.

“Your husband will not tell me who bound him in cold iron below hill. I would like to know. For personal reasons,” The voice said. And on the other side of the apple tree she thought she could see the outline of a man hugging his knees. He didn’t look special. Just a barefoot blonde man in a white track suit. Like a way ward chav or slavic man that had tripped and died into a bonasi tree. He spoke with no particular accent though and she had always thought him a bit of a puzzle in this regard. He wouldn't tell her how he died. Only that he was not always a tree. And the mystery of him had kept her busy for nearly two years.

“That’s all?” she asked.

“That’s all.”

“And if I can tell you this thing, you promise to never harm him again?” She replied.

The ghost tched, “With in reason. He is my brother, you understand how these things are?”

“I don’t trust your sense of within reason, not after last time.”

“I think your editor was hit by a car a reasonable amount for what he did.”

“There is not reasonable amount to be hit by car!”

The ghost tched again and she could see him more now, as the mist was rolling up the hill from the bay and over the neighborhood. He looked pathetic. Like a child who had been sent to their room, sulking.

“If I tell you this thing, then you must not harm him.”

“He will tell me eventually,” He said stubbornly.

“Are you sure?” she asked with all the sincerity she could muster. She wasn’t acting, it was just that she knew she had to put all the truth of her implication into her mouth or she wouldn’t get the results she wanted. She wasn’t sure if this was magic or not.

The apple tree man was quiet. Not silent. Just still. In a way that only a magic thing could be still.

“Yes. He doesn’t have the time not to.”

“What does that mean?” Meryl demanded. But the ghost had already faded. And she felt alone on the balcony in a way she rarely did, even when the ghost did not make himself known. He had curled deep inside of the tree and away from the real world. And she suspected it might be the last she saw of him. She pinched bridge of nose and tried not to mutter anythign she couldn’t take back. She stood and stretched and shook out the pillow before heading in. She’d been debating since the day the living room had been blown apart to try talking to him again. But she’d been so angry and the curse so loud that she hadn’t the nerve to try.

Fat lot of good that had done, she thought.

As a reward and to subdue her mind and the curse’s rumblings she laid on the kitchen floor while trying to think about nothing and eating a sleeve of saltines. This was of course the worrying position her kitten and he husband- both nameless, but so beloved in her mind, found her. She tried to smile up at them both as they peered down at her.

"Hi boys~" She said with thick sarcasm and took a bite of saltine.

“Meryl, you- are you, good?” Her husband, what the hell was his name again, asked her.

“Yeah,” She said put another saltine her mouth, “Nothing to see here. Keep walking.”

“Yes, Ma’am” Wolfwood said and went about his regular routine of taking off his shoes and coat.

Meryl watched him for a long moment and gave an even longer double blink at him to be sure about her new and suden suspicion: She knew his name. She was looking at him and he had a name.

“Oh my god,” She said sitting straight up and pointing at him.

“What? Me?” He asked pointing at himself.

“Yes! You!?” She said.

Vash started laughing, figuring it out well before Wolfwood did.

“Kitten, please, c’mon don’t play stupid!” She said and he looked even more confused before she said, “Come here, you have a name now and I need to kiss you about it!”

“Oh!” He said. Because he always wanted to kiss her, but hadn't considered that getting named made him deserving of rewards. He looked at Vash in distress and he, still laughing shrugged.

“Her Foci is Truth, you really thought she wouldn't notice?”

“I didn’t realize-” he said looking at Vash like a terrible secret had broken containment.

“Your name is Wolfwood!” She said like a thunderbolt, like a great old word of power. She threw her hands wide as she said it, she in all the glory and power of her pjs on the kitchen floor. She aid his name because it was truth, just to say it, because she loved him. Because it was a joy to put it in her mouth.

He stood there dumbstruck until Vash scooted him forward with two fingers to the lower back. And after the first dazed step the next three to her came easy. She laughed as she tugged him down by the pant leg to join her on the floor. The saltines were completely abandoned in favor of kissing him and making him feel kissed.

Something good had happened today and the curse on her was smoking, like a bonfire was heating up inside her soul- and Vash froze. His smile faltered, the chuckle on the tip of tongue got lost en route. The miasma around Meryl’s shoulders like a halo was ominous, a harbinger, an omen that made him feel still and uneasy. Reminded him that for all his being a changeling, for being a fairy prince, for being other- he was always always on the receiving end of magic and fate and omens. The time was right. For something.

He knew, in some part of his mind, that he should be happy. That Meryl pulling Wolfwood into her lap and giggling about it on the kitchen floor was everything the future could be. And wouldn’t that be lovely? And it wasn’t jealousy that made him feel like he was suddenly standing on the outside of of a sliding glass door-

-He glanced at the balcony doors and saw Nai looming there, nearly opaque in the mist that had descended on the city as the sun set.

It was deeper than that. A sort of oncoming knowing, like he should know what came next. It was like when a teacher called on him and he hadn't been paying attention. The Question was never heard- it was just that he'd missed the context clues all together. He took a deep breath and stepped further into the kitchen so that Nai couldn't put his evil eye on him.

On the other hand, maybe this was how things were supposed to happen? He thought, looking back at how wide Meryl was smiling into giving their boyfriend kisses.

Wolfwood sat back on his knees after receiving the most kiss of his life and looking down at her with the first and biggest smile she’d ever seen wear said, “I don’t actually mind when you call me Kitten.”

“Buddy, she knew that,” Vash said like he was imparting wisdom.

“I thought it might be good to say!”

“You dork,” Meryl said with a false swoon and pulled him back down to her.

Maybe everything was just the way it needed to be.