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“Do you trust me?”
Derapchu stared at Zam, waiting for a response. He found her insistence to repair spawn no matter what happened to it captivating—her fervour for preserving it was just so interesting. He wanted to unpick her, to see through her outer shell, just to understand her and why she'd sacrifice so much for something that'd keep getting destroyed.
“Well— I'd think so, yeah,” she replied, after only a moment of thinking. That was… unexpected. Pleasant, but still unexpected.
He looked down at his hands for a second, before looking back at Zam and taking a breath. “Give me seven hearts—that’ll put you on ten, right?”
He winced at the expression on her face. She looked startled, but seven crystalline hearts solidified in her left hand. They glimmered from between her fingers, their iridescence catching the light emanating from her flesh. That glow was intriguing, and Derap’s eyes lingered on the tint it cast onto everything around her.
“...Yeah. Yeah it does,” she took one of Derapchu’s hands into her metal one and dropped the hearts into his open hand. The star-shaped items ‘expanded’ upon being released from Zam’s fist and nearly fell out of Derap’s hands, though he secured his grip on them when they stopped ‘growing’. He looked at the hearts, and for a good few seconds simply watched how their surface nearly glowed. When the woman released her grip on his wrist, he tilted his head back and dropped the hearts into his mouth. He bit down, and the taste of iron instantly flooded. It wasn’t the only thing he tasted, though. There was a slight sweet, citrusy taste just beneath the metal, and it reminded him of Zam. Well no wonder it reminded him of her, it was the taste of her hearts.
He looked back at her, at the woman he wanted for a teammate.
“To get your hearts back, you’ll have to be selfish, deal? You have to ask me to do something for you—not for spawn, not for anyone else. Something for you and only you.”
Zam met his gaze, her jet-black eyes staring directly into his own. The corners of her mouth turned upwards into a smile.
“Could I ask for the hearts back as my ‘selfish deed’?” Her voice was warm, her words so clearly lighthearted. She really did trust him, huh. That was nice.
Derap felt a laugh come to his lips. “No, you can’t—” he let out a small, amused scoff, “—you can’t ask me for your hearts back.”
“Awh…” Zam fell silent after that, her head tilted down. She was clearly thinking about something. She lifted her head back up, and said, “you know what, just— just follow me.”
She seemed to be somewhat nervous, and the light that radiated from her seemed to be pulsating slightly, as if it were a panicked heartbeat. It didn't matter in the moment though, and Zam already had her elytra on, and Derapchu didn't particularly want to be left behind. He pulled his elytra out from under his hoodie, the thin fabric stiffening as he got ready to take off alongside Zam. She briefly looked back at him, and upon seeing his elytra ready, looked back and lifted herself off the ground with a couple of flaps of her elytra. Derapchu followed soon after, his own more moth-like elytra pulling him off the ground.