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The man and the slime sit in the room, but they aren’t sitting together. One could be forgiven for thinking they are, but they only sit so close because the room is so small: an unused janitor’s closet. They did not come here together, and they will not leave here together.
“Are we stuck?” the slime asks.
“We aren’t anything, Slimecicle,” the man answers.
“Okay,” Slimecicle concedes. “Are you stuck, Protesilaus?”
“No.” Protesilaus bristles. “Zephyrus is comin’ with the key any minute now. It’s all a piece of the plan.”
“You planned to get locked in a closet with an enemy?”
“Did you plan to get locked in?”
“No. What are you here to do?”
“Don’t talk to me.”
“But—”
Protesilaus turns to face Slimecicle in a way that would be very intimidating if they weren’t sitting down and already barely a foot apart. He jabs a finger at the slime as he talks. “Don’t. Speak. There is no shared enemy, there is no camaraderie, and there is no we. Shut your mouth and leave me alone.”
The silence lasts all of five seconds. “Your problem is with my boss. Why are you mad at me?”
“My problem became with you the moment I saw what you did to that kid.”
“That kid… oh!” Recognition dawns in Slimecicle’s voice. “Wilbur Ash! The boy you stole from us.”
“His name is Wilbur Soot,” Protesilaus sneers. “Don’t talk about him like he’s a thing.”
“What do you mean?”
“Sayin' we stole him sounds like he’s an object. Besides, you can’t kidnap someone who wants to go with you.”
“Did he want to?”
“I think he would’ve gone with anyone if it meant gettin’ away from you and Kingpin.”
“I’ve never understood that,” Slimecicle admits. “He didn’t have anywhere to go, but he left. We’d know if he was working for you, and he’s not. It wasn’t for ambition. It wasn’t for food or shelter. We took care of him.”
“Yeah, like a houseplant,” Protesilaus interrupts. “Human kids aren’t that hard to figure out, and you looked at that one and said, ‘yeah, he’s fine. He’s okay bein’ used as a tool.’ ”
“Do they— how are you supposed to treat a child?”
Protesilaus snorts incredulously. “How did you get any kind of influence? You listen to them. You help them figure out who they want to be when they grow up. Even I know that one. Y’don’t lock them in a room all the time. You definitely don’t gaslight them into thinking they have to work to deserve love.” His expression is hidden under his mask, but Slimecicle shrinks back at the anger in his voice.
“I don’t know much about humans. I’d never really met a kid before Wilbur Ash. Kingpin treated him like that, and I thought it was okay.”
“That doesn’t make it right.”
“Why not? I feel bad about it now.” The visible portion of Slimecicle’s face is sad and confused.
“You feel bad because I’m tellin’ you off. That’s not the same as wantin’ to fix things. And even if it was, it’s not mine to forgive. Wilbur’s the one you hurt, he’s the one you’d have to make amends to. If you were serious, which you’re not.”
There are several seconds of silence in the closet.
“How do you be forgiven?” Slimecicle asks.
Protesilaus laughs a completely humorless laugh. “If I knew that, would I have the reputation I do?”
“You know what Kingpin and I did wrong to him. You must know how I start to make amends.”
“Burn in hell.” Protesilaus lets the sentence hang in the dead air a moment before continuing. “Seriously though, you stay away from him. If it were up to me he’d never have met you, but it wasn’t. If you try to come near him again I will hurt you.”
“I wouldn’t even know where to find him.”
“Good.”
“He doesn’t work for you at all? Not even a little? His power is wonderfully useful in—”
“This is what I mean when I say you’re not serious about fixin’ things.”
“Did I say something wrong?” Slimecicle tilts his head to one side.
“Figure it out for yourself.”
“Okay.” Slimecicle thinks for a few seconds, making quiet humming noises as it considers the situation. Finally, he offers, “Was it mentioning his power? Is that what was wrong?”
Protesilaus shrugs bitterly. “That’s one way of thinkin’ about it.”
“Are you acting like this because you think I’m a bad person, Protesilaus?”
“If I had a problem with bad people I’d go into a different line of work. Farmin’ maybe.”
“But you’re mad at me for doing a bad thing.”
“Doin’ a bad thing and child abuse are two very different levels of wrong.” There’s a silence in the space, but every so often Protesilaus tilts his head like he’s listening for something. “You wanna know how to be forgiven? Get comfortable with the fact that you probably won’t be.”
“What?”
“I’m serious. You apologize and get forgiven when you accidentally take someone’s stuff, not when you’re complicit in years of scarrin’ abuse. You hurt him, and that’ll never be okay, and he will probably always hold that against you. Get real comfortable with that, if you mean what you said about makin’ right.”
“Oh.”
There’s another silence, broken by the clicking sound of a key in the door’s lock. Protesilaus stands. “That’d be Zephyrus. Have a lovely evenin’, Slimecicle.”
“Will you tell Wilbur Ash that I’m sorry?”
Protesilaus shakes dust off his cape. “No.”