Chapter Text
The courtroom is empty now, save for one person. Tai slips out of the stands as Rejoice enters, hands twisting restlessly around his mace handle. It’s a nervous habit, one Rejoice has picked up on during their time teamed together.
He schools his face into something casual as Tai explains what’s happening. Rejoice already knows, he passed a group of players talking about it on the way here, but he plays along as Tai tells him the news.
“Obviously you’re my teammate, and I trust you.” Rejoice nods along. Tai lets out a breath, glancing down at the mace in his hands. Rejoice wonders how much Tai himself believes that statement. “With this mace bro, you’ve got to get your get back.”
Tai presses the weapon into his hand, and Rejoice can’t help but grin. After all this time, he finally has it. The hours, days, weeks spent planning and failing, and now the Mace is his. But there’s still one thing left to do, and now with the Mace it becomes much easier.
Tai smiles back at him, it’s almost sad, the way he thinks he can trust Rejoice, the way he thinks they’re friends. “From the start, I’ve only ever had one goal.”
“You’ve got to get your get back.” Tai repeats, he still doesn’t see it.
Rejoice summons a wind charge in one hand. “Wait, I have an idea on how to do that.”
Tai blinks at him. “How?” Suspicion has started to creep into his voice, but it’s the lighthearted kind, the tone he uses when Rejoice is pretending he didn’t just pull a prank on him.
The smile on his face drops so beautifully fast as soon as Rejoice is in the air. Tai has quick enough reflexes to block most of the first hit with cobwebs, and is also quick to draw his sword and fight back, despite the poorly concealed anguish in his voice.
That’s fine with Rejoice. Honestly, he prefers it this way: now Tai is the one running, the one fearing, the one hurting. Tai tries to fight back, the clash of their swords against each other a welcomingly familiar sound, but Rejoice has always been stronger.
“We were teammates.” He sounds desperate, as if he wants this to be a joke, one of Rejoice’s pranks that he’s committing a little too hard to, but it’s not. “I trusted you.”
It’s the last thing he says before Rejoice drives his sword through Tai’s chest. He did, and that’s the funniest part. After everything, all the crushed skulls and failed traps and tunnel chases Tai trusted him. Despite everything. Through the lazy afternoons of spruce framed sky and laughter framed by moonlight and flowerfields Tai found a way to trust him.
As if any of those moments meant anything.
Rejoice steps back to look at the courtroom, cobwebs scattered across the ground and blood pooling on the stone, and then looks at the mace in his hands. It’s clean, he didn’t really use it beyond the first hit, and Rejoice can’t decide if that’s disappointing or gratifying.
But there’s a whole server of mace-able players out there, and he isn’t going to waste anymore time with Tai, not when he finally has the Mace.
Still Rejoice gives the courtroom one last glance as he leaves, and smiles to himself. He doesn’t regret a thing.