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Zam isn’t standing vigil at Subz’s grave anymore. He’s only visited once after deciding to destroy the world: to apologize to Vitalasy, again, and talk about missing Subz, again, and try to convince Vitalasy to join his side, again.
It’s probably for the best that he hasn’t visited much. He’s been working with Spoke, and if they touched Subz’s grave—
—Vitalasy reminds himself of the book tucked away in his ender chest and takes a deep breath. Turning on Zam again would be more of a betrayal of Subz than whatever Zam might do to the grave, no matter what it feels like right now.
(Why did Subz’s last wish have to be so hard?)
The circle of flowers is still there, full but for the cornflower. It feels wrong to look at, but it feels more wrong to change it without Zam there. He doesn’t even know what he would change it to. A cornflower? A dead bush? An orange tulip? Instead, he avoids the room. Avoids the farm beneath it. Probably he should be staying in the end base, grinding the impossible farms, getting ready for the end of the server. That’s what Subz would be doing. And it’s where Subz actually died, not just where Zam made his stupid memorial.
But Vitalasy doesn’t think he could sit at a table set for three, not now, so he’s at the grave when he sees Zam coming up the stairs. He’s grateful that Zam is far enough away not to hear his yelp; by the time he’s reached the island, Vitalasy is composed again.
“Been doing a lot of thinking?” Vitalasy asks, when Zam’s close enough to hear him. He can’t tell from his own voice if he sounds bitter or just tired.
Zam looks appropriately embarrassed. Vitalasy can’t bring himself to feel bad. “No—I—uh—I guess? I just—wanted to see Subz. I, uh, miss him.”
Vitalasy pushes down his first reply to that and then his second. Instead he echoes Zam from the last time they had this conversation: “Don’t let me stop you.”
“Thanks.” Zam relaxes a little, a bit of tension leaving his shoulders. Not all of it. Like he was genuinely worried that Vitalasy would stop him. He keeps making little scared glances between the grave and Vitalasy and Vitalasy hates it but what can he do? Saying anything will make it worse. Zam opens his mouth and then closes it again, shifting his weight from one foot to the other, looking back and forth between the grave and Vitalasy. Vitalasy just lets the silence stretch out. He doesn’t have anything to say to Zam, and Zam doesn’t have anything to say to him, either, really. Everything there is to say has been said five times over. Zam’s the one to break the silence. “Do you—want to talk about, um, about Subz? Like I was—I was going to ask you if you wanted to, before Spoke had a recovery compass and, uh. I figured you might—I mean, you miss him too? So if you wanted to, uh. Talk.”
“I don’t—look. I know you miss Subz.” Vitalasy puts his hands out, trying for placating, and Zam jumps back, half-flinch, his eyes jumping to Vitalasy’s hands like he thinks Vitalasy would hit him. Vitalasy feels sick.
The moment passes. Zam looks back at Vitalasy’s face. When he opens his mouth again, his voice is a blend of sympathy and understanding that makes Vitalasy’s skin crawl. “But you don’t want to talk about it.”
“I don’t want to talk to you about it.” He hadn’t meant to say that out loud; he winces, half at himself and half at Zam’s reaction, which is sad but not particularly surprised. “...Sorry. I didn’t—I just… I know you miss Subz. Okay? You miss Subz. You want me to retire and forgive everyone. You want to bring Subz back. You want me to come out of retirement and destroy the whole server with you. You miss Subz. It’s… kind of all you talk about.”
“Wow. I. Um. Uh.” Zam’s hands don’t know what to do with themselves, now that he’s wearing armor and can’t pick at his sleeves. When he was in Eclipse, he kept losing the buttons on his suit jacket, and a few days later Subz would find them hidden in some corner of the base. If he was talking with Mapicc or Spoke right now, he would probably be jumping around, half-dancing. Instead he’s here, the tension in his shoulders building up again. He pulls cornflowers out of his inventory, then flicks them back in. “...I’m sorry?”
“Yeah, you’ve said that too.” Vitalasy sighs. “I don’t—you can’t fix this. Any of this.”
“I was going to kill myself,” Zam says. He’s looking at Vitalasy when he says it, which is almost surprising, until a couple moments later, when he looks at the ground, the grave, anything that isn’t Vitalasy.
Vitalasy isn’t surprised, really. He knew Zam had a plan for it while he was still in Eclipse, and that was before—before. “Why didn’t you?”
“I didn’t want to—I thought, if I killed myself, it’d be leaving you alone again. Like Subz did. I—it wouldn’t have been fair. It’s not… I wanted to. I just—”
He’s still looking at the ground. Vitalasy wants to grab his head and force it up, force him to look him in the eyes. He doesn’t; it’s what Zam would want him to do. Instead, he takes a deep breath. He’s been doing that a lot, recently. “What, exactly, am I supposed to—do—with this?”
Zam looks away, even more than he already had been looking away. Towards the grave. “I don’t know, man. I just—thought you should know, I guess. I’m not very good at this.”
“At…?”
“I don’t know. Talking? Trying to make things better? I’m—I mean, I’m good at making things worse.”
Vitalasy reminds himself of Subz’s note, again. Make up with Zam. “Well, I’m… glad you didn’t kill yourself.”
All the tension leaves Zam’s shoulders, at that, and he’s back to looking at Vitalasy the way he looked at him and Subz in the early days of the Eclipse Federation. Like they’re his saviors. Vitalasy had thought it was sweet, once. That they were helping him. That maybe he’d get higher standards, that he’d learn from them what it was like to have a team that was good, a team that cared about him. Now Vitalasy sees that look and he hates it, hates Zam for it, hates Zam more for the happy memories. Hates himself, too, because Subz is in all those happy memories, and now there’s just a grave between them.
“Oh,” Zam says, like it’s a revelation, and Vitalasy wants to scream.
“Yeah.” Vitalasy takes another deep breath. He doesn’t scream. He looks away from Zam, away from the grave. At the sky. “You can… You can put your flowers down. If you want.”
“Oh! Right, yeah, I was going to—right.”
Even without looking, Vitalasy can hear when Zam starts putting the flowers down, his ears flicking back on reflex. Vitalasy could remind him of the circle of flowers beneath them, starting to wilt in their pots. He doesn’t. Instead, he says, “I know you and Spoke are working together now.” He isn’t mad about that. He isn’t. “I know you’re—destroying everything. Just… Leave this out of it. Whatever Subz built, leave it alone. Please.” The role reversal, of asking someone with godlike powers to have mercy on him, is not lost on Vitalasy. The difference is that Zam has already used them more than Vitalasy ever did, and that he’s not trying to kill Zam. (The difference is a book in Vitalasy’s ender chest.)
The soft sound of flowers being placed on grass disappears for a moment. Zam’s voice is quiet, when he speaks again, surprisingly earnest. Almost raw. Even when he had talked about killing himself, he hadn’t been this serious. “Of course. I would never.”
Vitalasy doesn’t look back at him, just keeps staring at the sky. The sun is setting. The moon will come up soon. “Good. That’s—good. Thank you.”
“Of course,” Zam says again. Another few quiet sounds, flowers and footsteps, and then silence. “I’ll—I’ll go now.”
“Goodbye, Zam.” Vitalasy still doesn’t look back. He doesn’t want to see Zam’s face. Maybe he’s as much a coward as Zam.
He waits until Zam is definitely gone, when the island is silent again, to turn around and watch the moon rise.