Chapter Text
❛ The dates and times of his memories burn fiercely, with the shadow of one man remaining; he was both his beginning and his ending. ❜
Lettuce knows many things, far too many. Thanks to the lengthened history of empires that rose and fell in which he just happened to be a part of - the PrinceZam’s, the Far Lands, the Skyblock, or even the good ol’ pirates and those scattered civs that flickered and died like faulty redstone mechanics.
Lettuce was a young civilian, a fellow, a guard, a comrade - many of which were soon thieved from his very own hands due to the greed of those who never felt like they had enough. He wore different faces, held multiple identities, but no matter which tunnel he went down, it always ended with him being betrayed. Such unfortunate happened with grim regularity that Lettuce had long given up on the possibilities the word ‘hope’ once promised, as it had never granted him anything in return but disappointment. And so, the same fire that burned down his hearth became the one that toughened his logic.
When every event is carefully laid out, most circles back to the one and only person whom Lettuce singlehandedly believed he understood on a rather personal level - Wemmbu. Maybe it was a sardonic idea of fate that throughout those bygone days, no matter where Wemmbu was, for once, if he ever looked back then Lettuce had already been there, watching him come and then go, time after time.
The leader of The Law still remembered vividly the day when he and the remnants of the Skyblock Civilization were captured by The Mafia, which was a fate that would not have befallen them, had it not been for Wemmbu’s cold-blooded betrayal. In the darkest of Lettuce’s days, only the heavens knew what the little man had prayed: that sooner or later, the one and only hell Wemmbu could ever lay his bare foot on was Lettuce’s - Lettuce’s sophisticatedly curated brimstone and hellfire.
Contradictorily, it had not always been this way.
Only in remembrance did Lettuce realize how far gone they both were, when his eyes had once looked at Wemmbu with something close to admiration, and not yet hatred. Maybe it was around the PrinceZam Empire, Lettuce-the-Guard would infrequently linger on the thought of those bright purple wings, grown from the bones of the hip rather than the upper part of one’s back. It was a stark contrast compared to others of the demon kind. But what truly stood out to Lettuce back then was how Wemmbu was so full of a life that Lettuce knew he could never get a taste of its essence - the recklessness, the freedom, the unrestrained defiance, burning toward liberation without ever calculating the cost. Oh, how the man carried everything Lettuce was not.
Wemmbu was almost an untouchable figure who happened to exist so far out of one’s league - or at least that’s what Lettuce often thought of. Not to a divinity extreme, of course, but as if a blazing star that captured the gaze of all beings; one that those devoted to it would inevitably burn alongside. Lettuce, as a ground-born creature, would only dare to imagine a day when he might be able to hold that star within the small palm of his hand. Perhaps he did harbor something for Wemmbu back then, something quiet and restrained; if only Wemmbu had not been so close to PrinceZam - a man who made it painfully clear that he did not tolerate others lingering too long around the purple demon - then Lettuce would have had a chance.
Forbidden fruit is the sweetest of all; hence, mankind yearns for it. And in such a common pit of greed, here was - the sweet, sweet little Wemmbu - just as mediocre as many of his kind, no longer a figure far beyond reach as Lettuce once believed. That ill-bred wanted, after all, in ways no different from the most mundane of men; desire weighed on him plainly, so unremarkable and achingly human. That was, undisputedly, the one and only time Lettuce felt like he and Wemmbu were not so different.
Nonetheless, those memories were forever an ambrosial fever dream.
First comes devotion, then comes ruin. Envy, once disguised as admiration, crept quietly into the veins in the guise of a heavenly serpent.
It was beyond Lettuce to suppress such desire - to deprive Wemmbu of his yearning for freedom, to reduce his fire to ash, his horizon to walls. And when there is nothing left of him, Lettuce will swiftly fill the hollow inside Wemmbu.
Freedom was everything to Wemmbu, Lettuce knew that fact dearly. To control the man was to control his freedom; or perhaps, the habit of reaching for the sky above. Lettuce had seen the way Wemmbu was nearly stripped of his entirety more than once: The civilizations, the allies, the wings that could carry him farther than Lettuce could ever run on his bare feet across a lifetime. As it so often did, all Wemmbu had left were just flesh and bone and those pretty, luminous amethyst eyes in a dim box. But, oh dear, how deeply did Lettuce despise the Icarus in Wemmbu - one that always twitches toward the ever-burning sun, scorching as a desire from within.
It now disgusted Lettuce to the core to think that they shared any resemblance at all.
Of course, the sun burns however deeply you embrace its radiance. Lettuce, as a man, erstwhile envied the sun; he would not prefer Wemmbu to yield before any other sun rather than his. The sun of The Law.
Lettuce would not call what he had for Wemmbu ‘love,’ for love is sentimental, and sentimental was the very last thing he wanted to be. It was irrefutable that he planned to take over Wemmbu, starting from what he loved the most, in order to pry down that annoying attitude from the man himself. There was a certain ecstasy that ran down Lettuce’s spine to see Wemmbu kneel and crumble, until there was no other thing he could do rather than begging for mercy.
Peculiarity happened in the way Lettuce found himself savoring the sight of Wemmbu gnawing off his own legs for the sake of survival, watching the crimson field bloom where he bled before desperately crawling back to the sky of freedom. The man would be hunted, be captured, be stripped of his precious wings and still carry that arrogant smile, that stubborn refusal to bend. The intoxication was unmatched, which would soon be tenfold dearer when Lettuce finally brought Wemmbu to the breaking point.
No one knows the violence it took for Lettuce to be this gentle. But it is sooner or later that people should understand that Lettuce himself was no saint.
Fortunately, he had never sworn to be one.