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Flame’s entire body ached as he pushed the door to his ruined base open. He didn’t exactly know what he was doing here when he still had things to get done, still had loose ends to tie. But he couldn’t help but want just a minute to sit down after such a huge battle.
And now that the Law was defeated, his base seemed like a good place to go to do just that. The only downside was that it was still mostly ruined and covered in Law memorabilia. But, that wasn’t important at the moment. As long as he could find a bed to rest on, he could clean and fix things up later.
So, dragging himself farther into the base, Flame began searching around. Though it took him longer than it should have due to how tired his body was. It seemed like his whole being, down to his bones, wanted nothing but to rest for a year straight. And honestly, if Flame didn’t still have to beat Jaden and get Lomedy’s mace back, he would have considered doing just that. But he couldn’t, so temporary rest it was. It was better than nothing anyway.
During the entire time the Law had been in power, Flame hadn’t gotten even a second to breathe. He’d had to go from fight to fight, defeating army after army while trying to train to be the best combat master there ever was. Over the past couple weeks, he’d never been able to sleep for more than three or four hours at a time without being woken up by a goat horn, or waking up out of paranoia that he was going to hear a goat horn. And resting during the day was out of the question when he could have been using that time to train.
But now, the Law had been defeated, and none of that was an issue any more. Flame no longer had to worry about being hunted since there were no more armies, and he no longer had to rush to train as much as he could since he’d already fought the war and won. He could rest.
Unfortunately though, there wasn’t a bed in sight in his ruined base. It seemed like every single possible thing had been ransacked, leaving just empty barrels and bare rooms.
“You’ve got to be kidding me bro,” Flame muttered, tired enough to start considering just sleeping on the floor. But that probably wouldn’t help his exhaustion in the long run, so he kept himself upright for a little bit longer. Though if he didn’t find something soon, he might have no choice.
Eventually though, Flame realized the walls that the Law had put in when they took over were made out of white and yellow wool. Which meant if he grabbed some of it, he could make himself a soft area on the ground to rest on.
Because for some reason his melted brain didn’t think of grabbing wood and using the wool to make an actual bed instead.
But he made it work. He decided on grabbing the yellow wool only because if he grabbed both, he would be sleeping on Law colors and he didn’t want that. He didn’t know why he wanted yellow over white though—maybe he just liked the color yellow more.
So he grabbed a bunch of yellow wool and took it to a corner of the base that was relatively hidden. Even if he was a combat master now, he still didn’t want to get ambushed while he was sleeping, so putting himself in a little corner that was difficult to notice would hopefully stop that from happening.
Laying out a sheet of wool on the floor, Flame undid his armor and stored it in his inventory, making sure to still keep a totem out just in case before crawling onto his wool mattress. It wasn’t the most comfortable; he could kinda feel the hard floor beneath him. But he would honestly take anything at that point just to get any sort of rest, so he pulled his makeshift wool blanket over him and got as comfortable as he could.
While he was laying there in the dark and waiting for mind to succumb to sleep though, Flame’s thoughts began to wander.
He kept thinking about how nice it was that Lettuce was defeated. Like sure he wasn’t dead, but he also wasn’t in power any more, and Flame could at least somewhat understand where Parrot and Wemmbu were coming from when they spared him. And even if it wasn’t the outcome Flame had imagined, he was still glad everything worked out in the end and that the Law was over. Because that means they did it! Flame did it! Everything he worked so hard for had actually paid off and hadn’t been for nothing. For once in his life he’d actually won.
His mind began to bring him back to something he’d mentioned when everyone was gathered at Spoke’s castle base. Spoke had asked Flame what he would do after they defeated Lettuce and Flame, not really thinking about it, just said whatever first came to mind. He’d have aura, people would pat him on the head, he’d slime out Jaden… just random stuff.
But for some reason, the head pat thing was sticking out in Flame’s head. He was probably just tired, but it sounded really appealing at the moment. If someone were to come and pat his head… it would probably be really nice.
Flame shook his head a bit. That was probably his exhaustion talking. He really needed to get to sleep.
So, adjusting his position so he was a bit more comfortable, Flame cleared his head and resumed his falling asleep.
…Which only worked for a few minutes before he got the strangest feeling that he needed to open his eyes.
He tried to ignore it, getting the feeling that he was just restless and a bit paranoid after everything. But after a certain amount of time passed without Flame being able to shake the feeling that he needed to open his eyes, he figured cracking an eye open couldn’t hurt. If it got rid of the feeling then honestly it might actually help in the long run, because then he would actually be able to sleep afterwards.
After slightly opening one of his eyes though, Flame got the feeling he might not be falling asleep as soon as he thought he would be.
Something, no, someone was in front of him, crouched down and doing nothing but staring.
It took Flame a second to register what he was seeing, and when he did, his eyes shot open as he attempted to sit up. His movements weren’t as sharp due to his exhaustion though, so he barely made it up before he felt a featherlight touch on his shoulder, and he got the feeling he should lay back down.
And he didn’t know why he even listened, there was no reason he should trust the random shadow figure in front of him, or why he should listen to a command that wasn't even spoken outright, but for some reason Flame still found himself returning to his original resting position, staring up at the figure curiously. He still had his totem clutched firmly in his hand beneath the wool covers though. He may have been too tired to bother fighting the weird shadow person in front of him, but he wasn’t stupid.
After a few seconds of squinting his eyes into the darkness though, Flame found himself starting to be able to make out a few defining features of the person in front of him. First, their eyes were a nice bright yellow, and there was something around their hair…
“Wait… Lomedy?” Flame whispered, nothing but pure confusion in his words. How could… Lomedy wasn’t… huh? Didn’t Lomedy say he wanted to stay in the prison? What was he doing here so late at night? And why was he just crouched in front of Flame?
Through the darkness, Flame could see the outline of Lomedy’s lips move up into a smile at his words, and it left him feeling strange. Because… when was the last time he saw Lomedy smile? Why did it feel it had been so long? Didn’t he smile all the time when they were together? Or… used to?
“Flame…” a quiet voice sounded in the darkness, and Flame felt his heartbeat quicken as he realized it really was Lomedy. He could barely make out the movement of Lomedy’s lips as he spoke, but Flame didn’t need to see in order to know it was him. “You did it bro, you took down the Law,” Lomedy spoke again, sounding pleased.
Flame furrowed his brows at that. That was what Lomedy came here for? Not to like, talk about everything that had happened, or explain why he suddenly decided to leave the prison to come here? Just to… congratulate him? How did he even know about what had happened already?
It didn’t make the most sense to Flame, but he didn’t think he particularly wanted to be having any heavy conversations at the moment with his level of exhaustion, so even if it was strange, he would take it. He definitely couldn’t complain about just having a normal, lighthearted conversation with Lomedy after everything they’d been through lately anyway.
So, nodding his head, Flame just went along with whatever Lomedy was saying. “Yeah bro, he’s completely out of power, the Law’s done for. We’re all safe now.”
“Mhm,” Lomedy hummed happily. And through the darkness Flame could see something reaching out for him. Distantly, he figured he should probably be more wary of moving shadows in the darkness when he had no armor on, but as it stood his brain was already somewhat lagging behind anyway, and plus, it was just Lomedy. So he didn’t have any reason to worry.
And he was right anyway, as all it was was Lomedy’s hand resting on Flame’s head. Which was nice and very soothing. Though as he began to actually think about it and as his brain caught up to everything, he realized this was kind of odd. When had Lomedy ever done something like that to Flame before?
“...Lomedy?” Flame asked quietly, sleep creeping into his tone more and more as Lomedy lifted his hand and gave Flame another light pat. “What are you…?”
Lomedy didn’t reply, just continuing to pat Flame’s head gently, over and over again. It was getting harder for Flame to keep his eyes open at this point, but that didn’t stop him from trying his hardest. He didn’t want to fall asleep just yet. He didn’t know why, but he wanted to stay in the moment for a little bit longer.
“You can sleep,” Lomedy murmured as if reading his mind, “I’m not going anywhere.”
Flame hummed as he reluctantly let his eyes flutter shut. He probably should have wondered why Lomedy would choose to stay with him like that, but his whole body felt like lead and all he could really think about was how nice it was that his head was getting pat, just like he’d wanted.
And once Flame finally drifted off and his imagination was no longer active, the hand on his head began to fade away. Almost as if nothing had ever been there in the first place.