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Eggchan knew this was a long time coming.
Running through Capital city was always an experience. A little because he knew he wasn’t welcome here, in streets scrubbed clean enough to pretend it had never known blood. But mostly because running through Capital city usually involved some sort of mortal danger. The — being chased by multiple law men with no Wemmbu in sight — kind of mortal danger.
He has sort of made his peace with it. Or, something like peace. This unspoken (but somehow very loud, in all the ways that weren’t verbal) agreement of his. That there was no escaping difficult situations with Wemmbu around. And that no, despite that, he would never leave him. Not soon, not ever.
Because in this small, unlikely partnership, his role had always been to run. And he didn’t hate that. Not really. Wemmbu always found him in the end, be it dangled over a pit of lava, rotting in an obsidian cell, or swallowed by the throngs of players and sparking conflict.
Always just in time. Always bursting in panting, fragile, worried.
He thinks this is how it always should be, a consequence as natural as breathing. Being tangled with the demon meant being tangled with everything that followed: his feuds, his wars, his petty, bigger-than-small scuffles.
Eggchan lived for architecture, philosophy, and quiet nights under the stars. But this adrenaline, running alongside Wemmbu, bow drawn and lungs burning, wasn't too bad. He had needed the exercise anyway, he tells himself. Wemmbu was close behind, somewhere, still there and worth the swords scraping at his armour and explosions bursting at his feet.
The road ended sooner than he wanted it to.
Stone walls rose before him, banner-draped and awful in the way that it bore the law’s symbol. Egg skids to a halt. Somewhere beside him rang the clash of metal and the popping of totems. Wemmbu’s doing, probably.
He lets himself be assured by it, allows himself to relax despite the corner he’s been backed into. Because noise meant Wemmbu, meant struggle, proof that they were still there, refusing to let go.
The enderpearl feels cold and familiar in his hands, a comfort, in the unlikely way sharp things sometimes are. Egg closes his fingers around it and throws, toward where he had last heard the Wemmbu, not so much aiming as trusting. His gut carries him where he needs to.
The world twists in a blink, and he finds himself on a rooftop. The ground reaches up to greet him, a little too eagerly. The landing rattles his bones, and something cracks along his shoulder that he felt rather than heard. Below, the law men scatter and stumble, thrown off and suddenly so, so tiny. Like ants, he thinks distantly, their banners reduced to specks of white and gold. Egg allows himself to marvel at the smallness of it, just for a moment.
This position is better, he tells himself, shrugging off the impact. Higher, quieter and away from the crunch of boots on gravel. But not safe. He was never safe.
“Safety” was not a word meant for the likes of them.
As if proving his point, an arrow flies from somewhere in the crowd. It kisses the rim of his helmet before splintering uselessly against a chimney.
They catch up too quickly. They always do. Egg is beginning to suspect the problem might just be him. There was no way every single one of LettuceK’s half-assed, half-geared troops could be this fast. How do they even read all those name tags? The thought barely finishes forming before the flat of a sword smashes into his helmet, the impact snapping his head sideways.
Something gives. Egg hisses as his vision swims. That familiar, dreadful cracking sound, accompanied by web-thin fracture lines across his armour.
“Aight.” He muttered, to no one at all. Be that way.
The spare helmet. He had one. He always had one. He kept extras, for both him and Wemmbu, because Wemmbu’s inventory was too perpetually clogged with potions, totems, and the two maces he never managed to keep at full durability to hold extra armour sets.
He reaches back for it. And finds nothing. The absence is immediate and wrong, he lets out a frustrated breath before he can stop it, and redoubles his efforts keeping the Law men at bay. Two had already made their way up to the rooftop, so he actually has to lock in, now.
Honestly he would say he is doing quite well. Sure, he was wearing an (almost) full set of enchanted netherite, but the Law men were wearing diamond which was basically the same thing. This was definitely a display of his skill and Wemmbu should pay him for his efforts.
The battle in the distance falters a little, as his attention is drawn away. The noise thins, and for a second, Egg lets himself believe it meant resolution. That Wemmbu was still alright and just wrapping things up, or has finally realised Egg was doing a little more than retrieving the exp bottles he was supposed to and was on his way.
Not that he needed the help, of course. Egg was doing fine. He allows himself the ghost of a smile, he was just aura farming.
Then the sky itself answers him.
A shadow swallows the sun, his only warning before Executioner slams down, quick and merciless, like judgement itself.
Ah. Divine punishment. Egg thinks, as the world ends in one brutal, singular motion. His confidence evaporates, along with everything else, like dew in the morning sun.
For a terrifying moment, he thinks he’s already dead. The air is ripped from his lungs. His chestplate shatters violently, the shards, shiny and blood-dusted, shimmer in the sun before vanishing. Another piece. His body suddenly, terrifyingly light, and painfully vulnerable. Distantly, he hears something pop. A shower of gold and green — his totem, he realises.
The world comes back in pieces, and Egg scrambles to gather them because he does not have enough time. Pain scorches through his lungs as he hauls his shield up, barely catching the next blow.
Why was Lettuce here? And if Lettuce was here, then where was Wemmbu?
He fires an arrow and dives into his inventory, again, faster this time. His heart pounding harder than running alongside Wemmbu has ever forced it to. Empty slot. Arrows. Empty slot. A whole lot of nothing, which was unusual for him. Usually Wemmbu was the one pestering him to sort his inventory.
Where. Where was it?
…
Right, of course.
He had handed all of it over earlier, tossed his armour and sword with nothing but a quick “here, take these”. There was no time for long words, it was simply because Wemmbu had needed them more. Because he was worried. Because Egg ran, and Wemmbu fought, and that was the shape of things.
There was no time to dwell on that now, as Executioner came crashing down again. It lands on his shoulder, and something definitely snaps this time. His wing folds in an unnatural angle and the area quickly bruising into a mosaic of purples and reds. Another totem pops.
Egg staggers, his body dangerously close to the edge. Briefly, stupidly, he considers jumping. (Could he clutch at this height? Could he?) But all the world was spinning and darkening at the edges of his vision. Out of totems and holding up his shield like a lifeline, it did not seem worth the risk.
“Whoa, whoa! Calm down dude!” He appeals instead, voice thin and breathless as LettuceK slams down again, far too close for comfort, “I’m not your guy.” There was a strange kind of terror in the way the caracal lands, too steady, smile too wide and eyes too big. Somehow, it seemed to swallow light instead of reflecting it.
It sent a shiver down Egg’s spine, and his hands tightened around his shield despite himself. The mace in Lettuce’s hands was smeared with grime, blood dripping thin and wet onto the floor below. His own, Egg realises distantly, lungs not quite recovering from being brought to the brink of death, then back.
“Oh, but you are.” The reply was silky smooth, almost pitying. And Egg gets the distinct feeling things would only be going downhill from here. “A villain’s accomplice is also a villain, don’t you know?”Because if Egg went down, so did Wemmbu. Willingly, because for some inexplicable reason, Egg meant that much.
He couldn’t decide if he hated that.
Now, Egg was no fool. He knows he’s more valuable alive than dead; even monsters understood the usefulness of leverage, and Lettuce, more than any other. In Lettuce’s eyes, he and Wemmbu were probably one and the same. Two defects, cast in the same mold and burned in the same inferno. Perhaps that wasn’t entirely wrong, that they were alike in more ways than one.
He is roughly grabbed by the wings and hauled back. The hands restraining him rough and careless, bending his feathers the wrong way. He could not help the anger that, despite it all, cut through hot and sharp.
I wish I could give him a good beating.
Pointless thoughts, backed by all the heat and none of the power, as Wemmbu would tell him.
He fights anyway, because the grip on his dislocated wing ruffled his feathers, because he could not stand idly and let himself become a liability, let Wemmbu lose his mace again. Because he was scared. Because fear, when it had no way to go, hissed and clawed its way forward. And cornered animals bare their teeth.
He swung his sword on instinct, a little shaky but earnest. The first swing releases Lettuce’s hands from his wings, and the second knocks him off the edge entirely. The swish of the Executioner as Lettuce takes to the air is quickly silenced with an arrow. Slow falling. Lettuce curses under his breath and Egg could not help as his lips twitched into a smile. A small one, for even the little victories counted.
“Why don’t you join us?” Lettuce shouts over the clang of metal, his voice carrying the absolute certainty of someone who had never once doubted himself. “the objectively right side.”
Egg wished, a little irrationally, that he would stop talking. Lettuce’s words always had the same effect; the words piling up, like sludge between his shoes, and weight on his chest. As though they had been perfectly crafted to remind him of the dryness of the air and the stinging of his joints.
But Wemmbu has never failed Egg before, and he could not fail Wemmbu now.
“Dream on.” He replies, as calmly as he can manage being pressed on all sides. His arms grow heavy despite his best efforts, so Egg takes a couple steps back. Lettuce takes a couple steps forward. And Egg knew the words before they were spoken, felt them settle into place, as lightning does before thunder.
So be it.
Then the blows rain down hard and fast after that. And for the first time, there was no neat escape in his inventory, no quiet little plan he could execute while someone else drew the line of fire.
Eggchan braced himself anyway.
Because somewhere — he knew this with as surely as he knew the rising sun, the ripples of water beneath his fingers, the stars scattered across the inky void — Wemmbu was still running towards him, reckless and blazing and almost late in the way he always was.
A certainty he had built his life around. A hope he held on to.
So until then. Until the demon came crashing through the world, with all the power and ambition that came with him, Egg would do what he has always done best.
He’d hold on.
There are things that Wemmbu never gives voice to, like how often death brushes past, its presence just light enough to make itself known. Like how every fight they barely survive fills his ears with the pounding of blood and the ring of bells. Like how all it takes is for him to be late once. Like how easily the world, everything that gave it meaning, could be pried from his fingertips.
Wemmbu never had it in him for such confessions. To name the fear was to invite it closer, to breathe it into life, will it into existence. A self fulfilling prophecy.
Someone ought to have told him prophecies did not require belief. They happen whether or not you dare speak them.
The player before him goes down too quickly, diamond caves in with a sound like paper, crushed beneath the unyielding iron of Crucible. The mace sings, as it does what it was made to do, in the hands of its rightful wielder. Fast. Easy. But as the body hits the ground, no other steps forward to take its place.
This was uncharacteristic of the Law men. The Law men were never shy about dying, in fact, Wemmbu would go as far as to say they seemed way too eager to do so. They hurl themselves blade first, guns blazing, desperate to prove they are more than pawns that slid across someone else’s board. Always dreaming of promotion, that absolute finish line.
This should have been his first sign.
“No one else?” Wemmbu mocks. He bares his fangs, lets his tail crack against the air as he lunges again, searching for a reaction. His mace connects with a sickening crunch, and what remains seemed less of a player than it seemed a pool of gore on the floor. “Is Letty really going to let you all die like this before he shows himself?”
No answer. No snarky retort, or false bravado meets his ears. The resistance thins, fracturing in an albeit slightly hesitant retreat. Without Lettuce here, the fools had no audience, and, by extension, nothing to prove.
“Cowards,” Wemmbu spits, but doesn’t give chase.
This should have been his second sign.
Wemmbu hears it before he sees it. A totem pops, somewhere distant, but the sound lands sharp and loud against his skull. Because the Law men do not recoil at the noise, as they usually do. Their steps were confident, believing themselves to be more than mere fodder.
And that was his third and final sign.
Wemmbu’s grip tightened around Crucible. There were only so many people among the Law with totems, most Law men only ever fortunate enough to scrape together one, maybe two, across an entire lifetime. And even so, he was certain he had burned through them already, watched them shatter into light beneath his hands, crushed beneath his blade.
But that could only mean—
Someone he had left behind.
Someone who had peeled away without complaint. Someone who meant only briefly to help him grab some exp bottles, to patch Gambit back up, the mace sitting on the brink of disrepair in his inventory. Somebody whom, if all had gone as planned, if the world was even a little kind, should not have encountered any Law men at all.
And all at once, LettuceK’s absence pressed on him.
A routine they had practiced a thousand times over. A rhythm worn into muscle and bone, one he knew by heart, and one beat he danced to in the heat of battle; through the humming of elytra’s, the singing of swords. A rhythm that, to this day, had never so much as faltered or paused its beat.
A second ticks by, then another, then one too many. The melody does not come back in.
In its absence, every note rang wrong, a fear Wemmbu could not put into words. “Egg—.” He begins, then stops short. No. He does not finish the thought. Worries like that have teeth.
Instead he breaks into a sprint. It is a fight he runs from, but he does not look back, does not slow. Wemmbu allows himself to lose this one, because in the way that has brought them so far in the first place, his instincts screamed at him, howling a horrible echo. One he prayed would not find to be true. That he had not missed a cue, that his beat had not come in late.
Wemmbu was late.
A windcharge to his feet, and Wemmbu tears himself away from the earth. The city blurred beneath him as he climbed, the sun hot against his back.
Hold on, he thought, a silent plea he wished would reach. Just one more bar. One more breath. If he could just reach him before the final note fell.
It was easy to find where the commotion grew thickest, the Law drawn to blood like a moth to flame they mistake for purpose. And it was in it that they burned, indiscriminately, themselves and others.
A small crowd has formed on a rooftop, the ring of bodies moving in orbit, and at the eye of the storm — Egg. Wemmbu takes a sharp breath. Blood matted his feathers, soaking into white until it was stained a gross shade of rust. Not all of it was his. That was the mercy of it. Egg’s wings spread wide, the feathers puffed up in a threatening display. It made him look larger, feral, and more like Wemmbu. A defence. A threat, and a double edged sword.
Because in the face of enemies with no fear in their eyes, all it did was paint him bigger, brighter, and impossible to miss.
“EGG!! RUN!” The words tear themselves out of Wemmbu’s chest, scraping it raw on the way up. His voice cracks through the air like a whip. By instinct, Lettuce takes two steps back.
Egg’s head snaps up, eyes locking on to him, and for the briefest of seconds, relief floods his face. A breath he had not known he was holding.
Wemmbu. You’re here. You’re safe.
But the feeling did not echo back. Wemmbu’s expression was wrong, and terribly so. A look so out of place it takes Egg a heartbeat to register, then another to pin it down.
Not anger, not fury, not even pain.
Horror.
“RUN!” Wemmbu screams, “GET AWAY—.”
It was too fast, too bright. He, the light, and Egg, a deer in headlights. Momentarily blinded and caught in that familiarity, he goes still. Muscles drawn taut from the adrenaline coiled in his body slacken, defences laid down, as they always did before Wemmbu. Because it’s Wemmbu, his light.
But now was the wrong time, wrong people. And as though the world had held on for this very moment, as though someone had been waiting —
LettuceK’s blade drives forward triumphantly. The rhythm they have known and trusted all their lives shatters mid beat.
Egg stares at the blade, eyes blown wide for one long, terrifying second. He teeters, shifting on his heels as one foot searches for a ground that was no longer there.
And then he’s falling.
Falling.
Falling.
Along with everything Wemmbu has ever known, every future he had once believed was sturdy enough to stand on. Everything he had thought would last forever.
But even the world is filled with the ruins of empires that have considered themselves eternal. Wemmbu was already moving before his mind could catch up. Yet, even as he hurled himself forward, diving through air, fingers outstretched and screaming Egg’s name until his voice broke, he had known he was too late.
Too late. Born a heartbeat behind, chasing moments that have long since passed. The runt of the litter, a lost cause with shoes too big and snapping at heels it will never catch. Wemmbu has always been too late.
Egg’s body hits the street below with a sound that tore the sky open.
Egg’s wings crumple beneath him, feathers folded in in a vain attempt to soften the impact that whips through his entire body. Blood spreads fast, too fast. It pools beneath him, bleeding into the cracks of cobblestone, spreading out like a web. Fireworks, or something devastating.
Wemmbu hits the ground hard enough to feel his own bones crack, eyes too fixed on the unmoving shape before him to bother breaking the fall. Glass was already in his hand. He smashes the health potion against the stone, the particles glossing desperately as he gathers the seraphim into his arms.
For the second time, Wemmbu runs from a fight.
He runs, heart pounding, breath breaking and tearing itself loose in his chest. He runs and does not look back.
LettuceK does not give chase. He stares at the spot Egg had been as though he himself were surprised his plan actually worked. A few start, their feet shuffling on the gravel as they contemplate pursuit. But Lettuce lifts a hand, and they freeze.
“Leave it.” He drawls. “Let him run like the rat he is.” He does not look away from the edge. (Let them recover, he meant. Because Egg has always been worth more breathing than not, the fallout of which may just be their downfall.)
Let hope do the damage, and if he truly dies—
— let wounds fester on corpses, and let guilt weigh heavier than any weight ever could.
The Law doesn’t come after him. They wouldn’t, if they knew what was good for them. Wemmbu would ensure that anyone who does is reduced into nothing but a smear on the ground.
He doesn’t run far, a small cave a little away from the main city. Tucked away and forgotten. One of the many temporary bases they had built, used then discarded like any other. Because they never settled, because Wemmbu never let them settle. Motion has always been safer than finding a place to attach himself to.
Did Egg want this? This constant breathless living, a never ending sprint between disasters?
“There’s no use.” He hears someone say distantly, voice thin and flat, “I’m at 0 hearts.” Wemmbu barrels past the words, through the pressure building behind his eyes and the blood boiling in his veins. It was worry, anger, something in between. All he knew was that he needed to do something.
He lowers Egg down onto the cold stone, hands shaking despite his efforts to still them, and for the first time he wished he had stayed longer in this place. Wished it had been built from just a little more than walls and memories. Wished it had a proper bed and proper storage, something softer and prepared. Something to rest on. But all of that was in the past now.
He looks down at the body beneath him. It was worse than he had imagined, than the picture his mind had tried to soften on the way here. Blood spilled too fast, washing over familiar contours until Egg’s features blurred beneath it. Wemmbu swallowed hard.
It’s no great matter, he told himself, it was fine and they have been through worse. (They really hadn’t. Not like this, not even close. But the lie was a handhold, all that was really grounding him. And if he kept believing that this was just another fight, some mess he could clean up, then maybe the world would stay intact longer.)
He tears a strip from his cape, muttering his apologies to brace for what came next before pressing it into place. Pack it down, slow the bleeding. His hands fumbled a little, moulded to the familiar shape of his sword hilt, used only to the heavy pressure of his mace, this careful restraint felt entirely foreign to his palms. He doesn’t think he will ever get used to it, this sickening feeling, blood seeping through fabric despite his best efforts, at the one moment he does not want it to.
Egg convulses beneath his touch. It hurts, Wemmbu knew. It hurts so much. Wemmbu knew that kind of pain, had inflicted it, endured it, and lived through it more times than he could count. But knowing didn’t make it easier, or any more bearable. So he lets Egg claw weakly at his shoulders, lets him thrash and kick in blind, panicked protest, even as he presses harder, reinforces that he was not going anywhere. This was mercy, he told himself. The only kind he could offer right now.
There were no brewing stations in the base, so Wemmbu shatters the last of his health potions. Glass breaks over stone, and for one dim, hopeful moment he believes that this might be enough. The red particles bloom over his hands, and it feels like the only real thing keeping Egg tethered to the world.
But the bleeding does not slow, and the wound does not close. The particles thin, fracture, and vanish. It takes a fraction of his breath along with it, his lungs not quite drawing in enough air to keep his vision from narrowing. Wemmbu could feel himself drowning in it, in every potion he uses, every second he wastes.
His grip tightens without him meaning to. The fragile control he had held over then slips, and he pushes harder than he’d intended. If only force alone could wrangle fate into submission. If only the world bended to strength.
The body beneath him jerks violently.
Oh. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Guilt crushes him, all at once, its vice thick and suffocating. Too rough. Always too rough. His hands were only ever good at breaking things.
He tries to ease up, to remember how to breathe, stay calm, because they both needed it. But that might have been something he had misplaced long ago, left behind in a version of himself that he’d once fought to stamp out.
He can’t do this. He’s not good enough.
Never good enough.
He—
“Dude,” Wemmbu barely catches the groan over the ringing in his ears, the pounding of his blood. Too loud, too much. It’s too much— “stop.” Egg’s voice cracks, “Just, stop.”
It takes a second for the words to process. Stop? Stop what? The Bleeding? Trying? Being here? Was Egg telling him to give up? Wemmbu almost laughs, but he doesn’t. The sound dies in his throat and comes out as a half exhale, half whine instead. Because when has Wemmbu, The Wemmbu, the strongest player (self-proclaimed), ever stopped?
(Never. Not since PrinceZam, not since Manepear, not since everyone he had tried so hard to keep. They all slip away anyway.)
You don’t stop. You don’t give up. You don’t give up when the blood is still warm and fresh under your palms. You don’t give up when the heart still beats, and the chest still rises; stuttering, slow and shallow. You don’t give up until the heartbeat stills and body cools. It was what Manepear taught him, and at times like this, it was really all he knew.
The unstoppable force. Wemmbu.
And what use was that? The thought slips in quietly — no, It had always been there. What was he, beyond being strong — beyond his orbital strikes, Crucible, and Gambit? Without the violence that made him feel solid? Wemmbu has never liked to think of such questions, to answer them was to feel himself unravel. It made him weaker, mortal, and something lesser than strong.
So Wemmbu didn’t ask. If he kept fighting, the doubt dissolved into the rush of adrenaline, and the fear cut away with the clash of blades. He burned bright; a flame that sought to outshine the sun and thought that maybe, if he could keep burning forever, he did not need to know the answers at all.
But even mountains yield to the rush of rivers, and fires gutter after exhausting their fuel. Blood spilled upon the ground, blooming like poppies. It was in this field that Wemmbu found he could no longer outrun his questions.
Who was Wemmbu?
In the storm of his thoughts, his hand had loosened its death grip on the cloth he had held desperately to Egg’s abdomen, already dark and heavy with blood. Wemmbu doesn’t want to let go, but his fingers are pried, softly, gently, away from the fabric. Egg’s hands find his, and the cold of it almost makes him pull back. Egg’s hand was cold, too cold. Sticky with sweat and slick with blood, the touches feather-light and fleeting. Sand slipping between his fingers.
But Wemmbu holds on. The longer he stays, the more warmth gathers in the space between them. Time creeps by, and the hand stops trembling, his grip grows firmer, and Wemmbu stops trying to press his world back into place, stops counting the seconds.
He could not keep fighting forever.
“It’s alright bro.” Egg finally says, like he’s the one doing the comforting. That’s wrong. It’s so backwards. He shakes his head, because he has to. Because nodding would mean he was, in a way, allowing the inevitable. “You don’t get to tell me that—“ He swallows, hard. “You don’t get to quit on me. You don’t get to give up when—“
“—When you haven’t?” Egg finishes for him, and laughs. It’s forced, choked out from holding back the blood gurgling in his throat, and so, so much more. “I’m not.” Wemmbu uses another health potion, his last one. He holds it so hard, it cracks, and shatters uselessly on the floor. The liquid shimmers over the wound, then disappears, as with every other potion that came before. Neither Egg nor Wemmbu look surprised.
“I’m asking you to sit here.” Egg’s wings extend out, nudging at him, guiding him off his knees. Wemmbu eventually obliges, for fear that he would accidentally crush the feathers and cause his friend more pain. It is only as his knees lift off the ground and he shifts to a sit that he realises they are bruised from the pressure he had put on them. Egg lets out a little noise of disapproval, but seemed too hurt and tired to say much else.
Egg. His Roman Empire. The one constant threaded through his life. His greatest folly, and quiet weakness.
For the first time, Wemmbu did not hate it. Rather, he would say it was beautiful. The white rose that he had painted red himself, held too close, its thorns biting into his heart and tearing at his lungs. Egg never pulled away. He let the colour bloom across him, never flinching as violence clung to and stained what had once been pristine white feathers.
This was Wemmbu’s undoing. Egg’s undoing. Theirs. Chosen and borne together.
Egg was still there, soft and warm, like home. Wemmbu held on until the pain dulled, the wounds closed around the thorns, and in the flood that washed away the last traces of scarlet, he wondered why he had ever doubted it at all.
Who he was, what he was. It had always been there, in white and blue and all the colours that softened his edges. In the hands that rubbed balm in his wounds, and held him on his feet when rage hollowed him out.
He was Egg’s. Everything. Just as much as Egg was his.
But the words knot around his stomach, clinch tight around his throat, a noose around his neck.
He settles Egg on his knees in lieu of speech, his movements measured and painstakingly slow, as though to prove he could be something other than what he always has been. Egg gasps at the motion anyway. The sound thin and wet, torn from him, his wings flaring out on instinct before pain steals the strength from them. The feathers, broken and bent, caught on the gravel on the ground and the cold clasps of his armour, trembling with every breath he fights for, and wins.
Despite everything, the seraphim curls into his touch. Still here. And Wemmbu dies a little more inside.
“Dude, say something.” Wemmbu asks — begs — because if Egg doesn’t, he feels as though he might. And whatever spills out then would be ugly and loud, something torrential that his fractured chest could no longer dam.
Egg smiles at that, small and fleeting and halfway to a grimace. “I had a favourite fishing spot.” He says, somehow managing to sound smug “by Manepear’s treehouse. I… I got my first enchanting book there. Mending.” A breath, “I built a dock there.”
Little things. Ordinary things. A poor imitation of conversations they were supposed to have more time for. Wemmbu wanted to hear all of it — What Egg liked to read, his research, the places he returned to when the world was gentle enough to let him.
But Egg’s voice grows quiet, falters and frays. Each word costs him a little more than the last. “…sorry.” He whispers eventually, and stops.
“Don’t be.” Wemmbu answers, his voice steadier than he feels. His hands find their way to Egg’s wings, as they have a thousand times before, and he begins to preen. He smooths the bent spines between his fingers, and picks away the clotted dirt and grit of the cave floor. This was how it was meant to be. Clean, quiet. Egg did not deserve to end like this; broken and bleeding, messy and violent in a way that was entirely Wemmbu. His palms were already soaked, stained dark and sticky in a way that sickened him, but he does not pull away. Let him drink it in. Let it mark him. Let it be the last thing he gives.
“They were wrong about you, Wemmbu. All of them.”
He barely catches it. The words arrive slurred, delirious, and meant for no one but the air between them. They drift on their mingled breath for the fraction of a second, and vanishes almost as soon as they exist. Too short, far too short. But long enough to split open something inside him, at last.
It takes everything he has to keep his hands steady. To keep moving. To keep Egg from feeling the moment he breaks apart there, knees numb and vision blurring on the cold stone floor. It was ugly, in every way that he had expected it to be. But the tears won’t stop coming. Hot and relentless, and with them everything that he had been crawling toward since he fell to rock bottom. All of it buckles and collapses, tallow to a flame, melting down into something formless and useless.
He keeps preening, calm and repetitive. From Egg’s chest comes a sound that almost mirrored a purr. It guts Wemmbu more cleanly than any blade ever could.
Time stretches between them. The world contracts until there was nothing left. Only this; his hands, Egg’s breathing, and their bodies pressed close in the dark.
(Not close enough. Never close enough.)
Eventually the rumble beneath his hands slows, then stops. A wing twitches. Once. Twice. Then nothing.
Never again.
Wemmbu’s world stops with it, but he does not stop preening. Because doing so was to end the moment. To lift his hands was to release everything that had been, and everything that could have been.
Instead he cleans until every feather lies smooth and aligned, every stray fibre coaxed back in place. He reties Egg’s tie. Removes what remains of his armour. Straightens his suit. He wipes the blood off Egg’s face and unclasps his fists, easing them open to rest on his chest. And when there is nothing left to fix, he sits back and stares. At the body so much paler than he remembered it, at the way it thins and fades, at nothing in particular at all.
To despawn — to vanish as though you had never existed at all.
It might have been hours before he moved again. Or days. Or weeks. Time had no meaning here. When he finally rises, his legs betray him, the ground no longer as solid as it used to be.
“Goodnight, Egg.” He says softly, because it was never goodbye. It never will be.
Egg has chosen Wemmbu every time.
For the last time.