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The cell they put him in doesn't look like a cell, to the uninformed viewer. It has carpet. Furniture. Windows - unbarred windows. He can go outside, he can cook his own food - they don't even try to hide possible weapons. Maybe it's because they know he won't try to hurt them. Maybe it's because they know he won't try to escape. Or at least, they know that the guilt would drag him back to King Parrot's doorstep better than any chain around his neck ever could.
Lettuce sleeps in a bed no less comfortable than that he would have as king. He is no colder in the winter, no hungrier in the morning. His punishment isn't designed to hurt him, to deprive him, to be as vindictive to its inhabitants as is inhumanely possible. The room they put him in doesn't look like a cell. Because it isn't.
Whatever Parrot's idea of a prison is, whatever it is he decides to do with the filth and scum of the world, it isn't justice. But… the people of the server are happy. Lettuce is alive. He can hear the voices of players he imprisoned laughing with those he meant to save, light with ease, bouncing along the walls of Parrot's castle.
The cell they put him in doesn't look like one, the punishment Parrot gives to him doesn't sting like one, and the reason, the purpose, the cause that Lettuce sacrificed everything for, was… misguided. Erroneous.
A mistake.
Lettuce doesn't know what to do with mercy. Not after that. Of course, the server doesn't forgive him, and he doesn't expect them to. He can't even manage to do it himself. He continues to be surprised they hadn't killed him when he had given them the chance, offered his ruined, awful, pathetic life on a silver platter. But they kept him alive. Maybe that is the torture he had anticipated. Maybe the real mercy would be putting him out of his misery.
Or maybe the real mercy just needed time to bribe the guards.
Wemmbu descends on him in the early morning, before the sun has even peeked over the horizon. Lettuce remembers the way his heart sank watching him join Parrot's side, voting to spare his life. He remembers the look of disdain on Wemmbu's face as he did so, probably already regretting it. But maybe his mind has cleared. Maybe he has returned to finish the job.
For the first time since his death rites were denied to him, Lettuce feels his heart return to its normal position.
“Knock, knock!” Wemmbu mocks, as he shoves opens Lettuce's door. “Wakey, wakey! Get up, Letty!”
Lettuce rises from his bed where he sleeps but can't quite manage to rest, blinking in the pre-dawn light. “Wemmbu?” he asks.
“C'mon, we're burning daylight here!” Wemmbu continues, approaching to take Lettuce by the arm and drag him away. “I've got places to be, you know!”
“Where are you taking me?” Lettuce asks. But Wemmbu just laughs.
He's pulled along the walls of Parrot's fortress, the fields surrounding, until they reach a mountainside and Lettuce is pulled into a cave. Here, Wemmbu stalks behind him, pushing Lettuce deeper and deeper into the unmapped darkness.
Then they reach the dead end.
Lettuce's gaze catches on the delicate glow lichen on the walls, the last thing he'll ever see. He doesn't have a right to ask for much, but he's grateful that it's beautiful. He keeps his eyes on it as he sinks to his knees and waits.
“The hell are you doing?” Wemmbu asks. Lettuce flinches.
“I thought this was an execution?” He questions. “How else would you have me?”
Wemmbu laughs again, grating and diminishing. “No,” he scoffs. “‘His Majesty’ declared we are not to kill any prisoners.”
Lettuce frowns, glancing up and back at Wemmbu over his shoulder. “Then why…?”
“Though, he didn't say I couldn't torture you,” Wemmbu explains. “I mean, he implied it really strongly, but, you know.”
Lettuce blinks. “... Oh.”
“Yeah,” Weembu drawls, grinning as he drops a wooden pickaxe at Lettuce's feet. “Find diamond,” he commands. And then, sarcastically, “Good luck!”
It would be hypocritical to hate this, considering what he made his own prisoners do in the Ravine. Lettuce can't keep himself from doing so anyway. Though, it's not as if it matters how he feels. He picks up the tool, rises to his feet, and swings it.
He won't pretend it isn't grueling. He won't pretend his already poor stamina isn't eaten up immediately. He won't pretend he isn't trembling and sick to his stomach. That's probably what Wemmbu is looking for, anyway. Lettuce has no right to complain after what he's done to him.
“Having fun?” Wemmbu sneers from behind him, having followed Lettuce down into the space he mined. “I assume you just love strip mining, since that was what you'd force me and your other rats to do every day. What, is it less cool when you're the one forced to do it?”
Lettuce doesn't respond, sweat beading down his temple. Let Wemmbu get it out of his system, he figures.
“Hey,” Wemmbu says, death grip suddenly tight on Lettuce's shoulder. “I'm pretty sure I asked you a question.”
Lettuce sighs. “No, Wemmbu,” he concedes. “I am not having fun.”
“Wait, really?” Wemmbu gasps, facetious. “Keep going. Maybe you'll perk up when you find diamond.”
Lettuce continues.
His pickaxe splinters in his hand, and Wemmbu just tosses him a new one. He stops to breathe, at one point, and Wemmbu barks orders behind him. Lettuce's trembling grip goes slack around the handle of the pickaxe, and Wemmbu mocks him while he picks it up. Until he can't.
He kneels down to reach for the handle, and his quivering, blistered fingers won't clasp around it, no matter what he does to make it happen. Lettuce makes a pained sound before it can be prevented.
“Are you kidding me?” Wemmbu scoffs. “It's only been a couple hours. You seriously couldn't hold out that long?”
Lettuce doesn't respond, grasping in vain at the handle again. Wemmbu snatches it from underneath him.
“Get up,” he commands. “We're done.”
Lettuce slowly pulls himself to his feet, knees shaking with exhaustion. Wemmbu marches back up the path they carved, and Lettuce uses the cave walls for support as he slowly follows after.
Wemmbu waits for him every time he lags too far behind, arms crossed and foot tapping impatiently. Occasionally he berates Lettuce as he approaches, tells him how weak and pathetic and hypocritical he is. But as the tension screws up more in his face, he stops meeting Lettuce's eyes. Stops saying anything at all.
Parrot's castle is in sight when Lettuce trips.
He feels his foot tangle in a gnarled root, and knows the moment the pain lances up his leg that he's not going to be able to get up again. He yelps in agony, causing Wemmbu to stop and turn in front of him.
Lettuce expects more ridicule. But all he gets from him is, “Stand up.”
Lettuce tries. His foot screams at him the moment he puts weight on it, and he ends up collapsing on his back.
“Lettuce,” Wemmbu says, like a warning.
“I can't,” Lettuce admits.
“Oh, you can't?” Wemmbu seethes. “Did you know that when you kidnapped me, you forced me to march the entire way to the prison on a broken leg?”
Lettuce, honestly, shakes his head no. “I didn't see you limping.”
“Sure,” Wemmbu scoffs. “And if you had?”
“I'd still have made you walk.”
So why shouldn't Wemmbu do the same? He waits for the question to come, already knowing he'll be forced to stand and parade onwards. Or crawl, if his feet truly can't carry him. Lettuce knows he deserves it. It doesn't make it any less unbearable.
But the moment stretches out, and Wemmbu doesn't say anything. His face dips farther and farther from emotion, until he kneels down by Lettuce's side, scoops him into his arms, and carries him the rest of the way.
Lettuce was going to kill this man. Every day he wakes up and regrets not doing it when he had the chance. Every day he thinks of the lives lost to the wrong end of Wemmbu's mace, and the guilt eats him alive for not saving them. But Lettuce has done worse, at the end of the day, for a cause he can't even justify to himself anymore. And yet Wemmbu looked at him, lying defenseless and tired and broken on the ground, and lifted him into his arms to carry like a burden of his own.
Lettuce knows he deserves to live on, to breathe pain and agony with every passing day and suffer the world he built himself. But Wemmbu is gentle in a way Lettuce thought was simply impossible. He was going to kill this man.
“Don't cry on me,” Wemmbu mutters angrily, but he doesn't prevent Lettuce from doing it anyway.
Lettuce is laid on his bed like his comfort matters, and Wemmbu props his ankle up on a stack of pillows. He rummages around Lettuce's cell, returning with ice wrapped in wool, wrapped against Lettuce's skin where it swells.
“Why,” Lettuce asks, dully.
Wemmbu grits his teeth, glaring at Lettuce's leg. “‘Cause you deserved it,” he says. “But I guess I'm not a big enough asshole.”
“Wemmbu,” Lettuce says. “Why did you vote to spare me?”
Wemmbu looks at him. Then he glances at the floor. “I don't know,” he mumbles. Then pulls himself back to glare at Lettuce. “Wouldn't kill you to say ‘thanks’ for that, by the way.”
Lettuce sighs. “It's not too late.”
Wemmbu frowns. “To kill you?”
Lettuce nods. Wemmbu laughs, strained.
“Hey man, I'm not, like, a democracy guy, but we all agreed to keep you alive. Nobody's killing you.”
“Please.”
“What the hell?” Wemmbu flinches. “Why do you wanna die so bad?”
“I can't-” Lettuce breathes. Screws his eyes shut. “I can't live on this server after doing what I've done. I know I don't deserve mercy, but… Please.”
Wemmbu shifts at the foot of Lettuce's bed. “Dying won't… undo anything you did.”
“Nothing will,” Lettuce whispers. “I just want- I want to pay back a fraction of what I owe the world.”
“Is that why you were gonna execute me?” Wemmbu tries to laugh. It doesn't come out anything like one. “Because I had a debt?”
Lettuce nods. “And I was going to help you pay it, and then I'd be able forgive you.”
Wemmbu grimaces. “... Who's going to forgive you?”
There's no one left. Lettuce doesn't respond.
“Well, I mean, if you really want it,” Wemmbu sighs. “Sword or mace?”
“I don't mind,” Lettuce responds. “Would the mace be more cathartic for you?”
Wemmbu smirks, a strained, hostile thing. “Great point, actually.” He shifts the weight of Crucible in his hands, gazing down at the enchanted weapon. “I was about to ask if you're ready, but that's kind of a stupid question.”
“I am,” Lettuce assures him, and lets his eyes slip shut. He hears Wemmbu approach, feels the empty space of his bedside fill, lets his heart swell for one last time, with hope of all damned things.
He waits. He knows he won't feel it, won't feel anything, that's the point, but he still waits. And he waits.
And he waits.
Lettuce's soul sinks back into that cold, hard, familiar prison in his stomach. “You aren't going to do it, are you?”
“I mean-” Wemmbu blusters, and when Lettuce looks at him, he can't even meet his eyes. “I just… yeah.”
“Give me your sword,” Lettuce bargains, desperate. “I'll do it myself.”
“I- no,” Wemmbu says, backing away minutely. “I don't want you to.”
“Why?”
Wemmbu looks away, and Lettuce can see his larynx bob as he works something out in his throat. “I still don't know,” he admits. “Sorry.”
“I don't understand,” Lettuce says, to the ceiling, to the wall. “You've tried to kill me so many times. Is it because I'm asking for it? Are you punishing me?”
“No, I just-”
“What?” Lettuce interrupts. “You just sprouted a conscience in the middle of the night?”
“I voted to keep you alive back then, didn't I?”
“So you could torture me,” Lettuce says.
“I-” Wemmbu shakes his head. “I shouldn't have done that.”
“Yes! You should have!” Lettuce shouts. “I deserve it!”
“Well, I'm not you, okay?” Wemmbu snaps back.
“If you were,” Lettuce growls, “You'd have the guts to ban me off the server by now.”
“... Okay,” Wemmbu just says. “Night, Letty.”
Lettuce lets him leave. Lets himself hate him for it. Lets himself sink back into the hole he dug, the one he can't seem to climb out of, no matter who he begs to liberate him.
The prison they keep him in doesn't look like one. It doesn't have to. He's trapped all the same anyway.