Work Text:
Flame was never really the one who expressed his emotions alot, which was exactly why Wemmbu’s vibrancy fascinated him.
To Flame, Wemmbu was a living emotion, someone who wore every feeling and thought without a shred of shame.
He found himself mesmerized by the way Wemmbu could turn a simple story into a theatrical performance, his hands moving as fast as his mouth.
It wasn’t just a preference, Flame felt like he was finally seeing the world in color because Wemmbu refused to be anything less than loud.
This was the man Flame realized he couldn't live without.
a person who felt enough for the both of them.
In the heat of battle, that expressiveness turned into something beautifully terrifying: a manic, wide eyed grin.
Flame would watch as Wemmbu cackled
His face contorted in a joyous, bloodthirsty rush.
It was raw
An unfiltered brand of madness that made Flame’s own heart race in sync with the explosions.
He didn’t just respect Wemmbu’s skill.
But he worshipped the way Wemmbu let the adrenaline transform him into a force of nature.
To Flame, that expression was the most honest thing in the entire server.
Even in the quiet moments
The way Wemmbu’s eyebrows would knit together in deep thought or how his eyes would sparkle over a stupid joke
He loved the way Wemmbu’s voice would pitch higher when he was excited, trailing off into a flurry of animated gestures.
If Wemmbu was happy, the whole server knew it
Flame felt like he had been granted a pass to the most expressive soul in existence.
It was a constant stream of life that Flame drank in greedily, fearing the day the world might try to quiet him.
That was the foundation of everything
The reason Flame eventually found himself down on one knee amidst the ruins of a recent fight.
He didn't want a partner who kept secrets or masked their intent
He wanted the noise, the tears, and the laughter.
"I don't ever want you to dim yourself down," Flame had whispered, his voice uncharacteristically soft as he held out the ring.
He wanted to tie himself to that sun bright energy forever, making sure he was the one who got to catch every emotion Wemmbu threw into the world.
In Flame’s mind, proposing wasn't just about commitment
It was about claiming a front row seat to Wemmbu’s soul.
When Wemmbu saw the ring, the "expressiveness" Flame loved so much shattered into beautiful pieces.
He collapsed into a fit of heaving, ugly sobs
His entire body shaking with relief and joy.
Tears tracked through his cheeks, and he clung to Flame’s jacket like a man drowning in a sea of his own happiness.
Seeing Wemmbu that vulnerable, undone by love
made something in Flame’s chest harden
I will protect this, Flame thought, holding the weeping man close
I will never let anything stop him from feeling this much.
The shift was subtle at first
Like a slow poison
Six months into their engagement
Wemmbu began to notice
Every time he launched into a passionate retelling of his day
Flame’s reaction felt... delayed
He would be talking about something that happened, his voice rising with excitement, only to realize Flame’s eyes had gone glassy and vacant.
"Are you even listening, Flame?" he’d ask, and the response was always a distracted nod that didn't reach Flame's ears.
Maybe he’s just tired, Wemmbu thought, trying to excuse the way Flame’s gaze seemed to slide off him
He’s been fighting a lot lately; I shouldn't expect him to be 'there' all the time.
But the thought felt like a lie even as it formed
A small seed of doubt planting itself in his gut.
He noticed how Flame would start to fidget when Wemmbu spoke for too long
His fingers drumming an impatient rhythm on his sword hilt.
It felt as though the very thing Flame once proposed to was now becoming a background noise he was trying to tune out.
Is he bored of me? Wemmbu wondered, the thought sending a cold shiver down his spine.
Then, the dismissive comments started.
One afternoon, Wemmbu had come back trembling, nearly having lost Gambit in a lava accident.
He was crying
His chest tight with the near miss of losing a weapon that held so much history
Flame didn't offer a hug.
Instead
Flame just sighed
eyes rolling toward the ceiling as if Wemmbu’s tears were an exhausting chore to witness.
"You’re being overdramatic, Wemmbu. It's just a weapon, and weapons are replaceable," Flame said, his voice flat and annoyed.
Just a weapon? Wemmbu’s mind reeled, his sobs catching in his throat as he stared at his fiancé.
He knows what Gambit means to me
He knows I put my soul into this mace.
The lack of empathy felt surreal, leaving Wemmbu feeling small and foolish for showing his heart.
He looked down at his shaking hands and felt a sudden, sharp pang of embarrassment wash over him.
Was I being too much? he questioned, the first cracks appearing in his self-confidence as he wiped his eyes in a hurry.
It happened again when Egg was briefly kidnapped
A situation that had Wemmbu pacing Flame's base frantically.
He was spiraling
Imaginimg the worst case scenarios for his best friend
his voice cracking as he begged Flame to help him.
Flame didn't even look up from the armor he was polishing, merely shaking his head with a look of irritation.
"You're overthinking it, they won't hurt him, they're just using him as leverage, so quit the theatrics," Flame snapped, his tone dripping with condescension.
Wemmbu froze, the words dying in his throat as he realized Flame, was seeing a nuisance.
Confusion turned into an aching sort of survival instinct.
Wemmbu couldn't understand how the man who once worshipped his expressiveness now seemed to find them repulsive.
I have to fix this, he told himself
I have to be better, quieter, more like him.
He started to treat his own heart like a stray dog that needed to be muzzled and locked away.
If Flame wanted a partner who was stoic and "normal," then Wemmbu would simply have to kill the part of himself that felt too much.
It was a slow suicide of the spirit
Whenever anger flared in his chest
he would swallow the fire until his throat felt raw and scorched.
He practiced speaking in a measured, level tone
Stripping every bit of melody and passion from his words until they were as grey as stone.
Don't let the voice crack, don't let the hands shake, he chanted internally like a mantra.
He would watch Flame’s face for that sign of irritation, and if he saw it, he would immediately shut down.
The silence between them grew heavy
But at least Flame wasn't rolling his eyes anymore.
The excitement was even harder to kill
A bright bird that constantly tried to flutter out of his ribcage.
He would instinctively start to jump
only to catch himself and freeze mid-motion.
He began to bite his tongue to ground himself, the metallic tang of blood acting as a sharp reminder to stay still.
A mild smile is enough, he told himself, forcing his facial muscles into a mask of polite, distant interest.
He was terrified that if he let one spark of joy escape
Flame would finally walk away for good.
His sadness became a private ghost that he only allowed to haunt him when he was completely alone.
If he felt tears prickling at his eyes while they sat at dinner
He would simply blink them away with practiced precision.
He became an expert at deep breathing,
inhaling the sorrow and exhaling it as a cold, empty void.
He hates the tears, Wemmbu thought, his heart aching with the effort of holding back a flood.
If I don't cry, he'll stay. if I'm empty, he'll love me.
Even his body seemed to betray the change
His once expressive tail falling limp and lifeless behind him.
It no longer swayed with his moods or curled around Flame’s leg in a silent gesture of affection
It just dragged on the floor.
It felt like a kite that had lost the wind, a heavy, useless weight attached to his spine that refused to fly.
Wemmbu would look at it and feel a sense of mourning for the person he used to be.
I’m disappearing, he realized, and the worst part is that Flame seems to prefer me this way.
He felt trapped underwater, only allowed to surface for air when Flame wasn't looking.
The moment Flame left the room
Wemmbu would let out a choked sob of exhaustion.
He would allow his hands to shake and his face to contort
Relaeasing the emotions he’d been building up all day.
But the second he heard Flame’s footsteps returning, the mask snapped back into place, cold and unyielding.
It was a miserable, lonely existence, living as a ghost in his own skin just to keep a man who didn't seem to want him anyway.
Egg was the first one to see through the act, his head tilting in concern during one of the time 's Wemmbu visited the End.
"Wemmbu, what’s wrong with you?" he asked softly, his voice full of a gentleness that Wemmbu hadn't felt in months.
Egg looked at him like he was staring at a doppelganger
a perfect replica of his friend that was missing its soul.
It made Egg’s skin crawl with unease.
He reached out a hand, but Wemmbu instinctively flinched away, his eyes wide and vacant.
Wemmbu tried to laugh it off, but the sound was hollow and brittle, like breaking glass.
"Just stress, Egg, you know how it is" he lied, his heart twisting with a fresh layer of guilt.
He hated lying to his best friend
The one person he used to yap to for hours about how much he loved Flame.
But how could he explain that his fiancé had turned his emotions into a crime?
If I tell him the truth, it makes it real, Wemmbu thought, and if it's real, I have to leave.
The ambush happened on a Tuesday
A blur of steel and shadows that caught Wemmbu completely off guard.
He fought like a demon
But one player got too close with an enchanted blade.
He felt the cold bite of steel slice through the air, narrowly missing the bone of his wing but carving a deep, bloody furrow through the feathers.
The pain was secondary to the primal terror that surged through him at the thought of losing his flight
He managed to drive them back
But his breath was coming in ragged gasps as he took to the sky, blood trailing behind him like a broken ribbon.
He flew straight to Flame
He landed hard
Stumbling toward his base
His injured wing drooping and soaked in crimson.
He’ll understand this time, Wemmbu thought desperately, his vision blurring with the tears he could no longer hold back.
Surely, he’ll care that I almost lost a part of myself, surely he’ll hold me. He just wanted to be told he was safe
To be allowed to scream and cry until the terror left his bones.
Wemmbu waited by the entrace, his body trembling with the cold aftershock of the fight
Until Flame finally walked through the entrance
He watched Flame’s expression shift from a calm, bored neutral to a momentary flicker of concern as he saw the blood.
But as Wemmbu started to sob, trying to explain what happened through broken, frantic sentences
That concern curdled into a familiar, icy annoyance.
Flame didn't move toward him
He just stood there, crossing his arms with a heavy sigh.
"What is it now, Wemmbu?" he asked, his voice dripping with the exhaustion of a man burdened by an inconvenience.
Wemmbu spilled everything, the fight, the sword, the terrifying sound of his feathers ripping
hoping for even a shred of comfort.
He stood there, vulnerable and bleeding, but Flame only shook his head with a look of disdain.
"Stuff like this is normal in fights, Wemmbu, of course there are risks," Flame said, his tone flat and clinical.
He acted as if Wemmbu was complaining about a stubbed toe rather than a life altering injury
"You're making a scene over something every one of us deals with every single day."
The unfairness of it finally snapped something inside Wemmbu’s chest
"Am I not allowed to feel anything?!" he screamed, his voice cracking and raw as he gestured wildly to his ruined wing.
"I almost lost my wings, Flame! I was scared, I am in pain, and you're acting like I'm bothering you by having a pulse!"
He realized then that he wasn't just fighting for his right to be upset about what happened, he was fighting for his right to exist as a person.
Flame’s face darkened, his own temper finally boiling over as he stepped into Wemmbu’s space.
"It is exhausting being around you, Wemmbu!" he lashed out, his voice a low, dangerous growl that silenced the room.
"Every single little thing that happens to you becomes this massive, draining performance that I have to manage." He looked at Wemmbu with a coldness that felt worse than the sword wound on his wing.
"Normal people don't act like this! you’re a black hole that sucks the energy out of everything you touch."
Wemmbu stood frozen, the words sinking into his skin like poisoned needles.
A black hole.
Exhausting.
Not normal.
He looked at the man he had promised to marry and saw a stranger who viewed him as a chore.
Flame wasn't finished, his mouth opening to deliver the final blow
something about their relationship being a "lost cause"
but Wemmbu didn't wait to hear it. He turned and bolted, pushing past Flame and taking to the air before the tears could completely blind him.
He landed in the End with shattered pride
The sobbing starting before he even hit the ground.
Between gasping breaths, he told Egg everything
The months of masking
The dismissals
And the cruel words Flame had hurled at him.
Egg held him, swearing under his breath at Flame’s name, but Wemmbu could barely feel the comfort.
Inside his head, something had gone fundamentally quiet
A heavy door slamming shut and locking from the inside.
He wants me to be normal? Wemmbu thought, his eyes going cold and flat.
Fine. I’ll give him exactly what he asked for.
The switch flipped with a sensation of coldness.
A sudden numbing peace that washed over his mind.
He would never show Flame happiness again
Nor would he gift him with his anger or his fear.
If Flame found his emotions "draining," then Wemmbu would simply become a desert
Dry
Empty
Silent
He wouldn't even give him the satisfaction of seeing his love
He would bury that deepest of all until he couldn't remember where it was hidden.
He looked at Egg, his expression suddenly settling into neutrality.
The next two weeks different.
Wemmbu returned to their shared base, but he was no longer "there"
He moved like a ghost, performing his duties with a chilling, robotic efficiency.
He didn't greet Flame when he came home, and he didn't offer any details about his day
Answering every question with short hums.
The "loudness" was gone
Replaced by a man who seemed to have been carved out and left in a dark room.
He was the "normal" partner Flame wanted
Silent
Undemanding
Hollow
Flame started to notice the change around the ten day mark,
And to his surprise, it didn't feel like a relief
It felt haunting.
He would look across the table and see Wemmbu staring through him
his eyes like two dark pits with no light behind them.
There was no humming
No spontaneous laughter,
No manic cackles
The base was quiet,
And it began to itch at Flame’s nerves until he couldn't stand it.
He had wanted the "noise" to stop
But he hadn't realized that the noise was the only thing that made the house feel like a home.
Desperate to reignite some kind of spark
Any spark
Flame cornered him near the training grounds.
"You've been off, Wemmbu, let's have a duel, just like old times," he challenged, hoping the heat of combat would bring back that manic, beautiful grin.
Wemmbu didn't argue or protest, he simply drew a sword instead of a mace with a nod that felt entirely too formal.
Flame was caught by off guard
There was no trash talking
No playful banter
No fire in his stance.
The fight was a disaster of the heart
Wemmbu moved with precision, parrying Flame’s strikes and landing his own with clinical accuracy
But there was no joy in it
He was on autopilot, his body going through the motions of a dance he had long since memorized.
He wasn't fighting because he wanted to win, or because he loved the thrill
He was fighting because Flame had issued an order.
Every time Flame tried to engage him
To push him into a corner and force a reaction
Wemmbu simply adjusted his footing and remained silent.
Flame stopped mid swing
His sword dropping as he stared at the blank mask that used to be his fiancé's face.
"What are you doing?" Flame breathed, his chest heaving as he looked for a glimmer of the man he knew.
Wemmbu didn't lower his guard, his expression remaining flat and unreadable
"I am dueling you, as you requested," he replied, his voice devoid of any inflection whatsoever.
It was the voice of a stranger, and it made Flame’s stomach turn with a realization of what he had destroyed.
"Wemmbu, talk to me! What the hell is up with you?!" Flame snapped, his frustration finally boiling over into a desperate shout.
He wanted the screaming back
He wanted the tears
He wanted anything other than this terrifying emptiness
Wemmbu slowly lowered his sword, but his eyes stayed fixed on a point somewhere over Flame’s shoulder.
"I'm just being normal, Flame," he said softly, the words carrying a weight that made Flame flinch.
"I'm making sure I don't tire you out anymore."
Flame let out a sob, the sound of his own resolve shattering as guilt flooded his senses
He had been slowly killing the most precious thing in his life.
He reached out
His hand trembling
But Wemmbu stepped back, a flicker of something dark finally crossing his face.
"It’s suffocating being around you now," Wemmbu whispered, and for the first time in weeks
The only thing left in Wemmbu’s heart was anger
He didn't want a hug
He didn't want an apology
He wanted to destroy the person who had made him hate himself.
He lunged forward
Not as a partner
But as an enemy
His mind focused on one thing
Ending this.
Wemmbu didn't hold back
Calling down his Orbital Strike Cannons until the ground beneath them turned to soot and ash.
Flame was stunned
He didn't know Wemmbu can do that
Wemmbu never showed him this
Wemmbu never told him
Wemmbu didn't stop
Landing stab shots
Ignoring Flame’s hesitant, confused defenses
Flame was barely fighting back
His movements sluggish and heavy with the weight of his own regret
He kept trying to speak
To call Wemmbu’s name
But every word was drowned out by the roar of explosions.
In the end
Wemmbu stood over him
Ghe smoke clearing to reveal a landscape as broken as their relationship.
He looked down at Flame
Bleeding and defeated
He felt... nothing
No satisfaction
No grief
Just a hollow sense of completion.
He took off the engagement ring
The metal feeling cold and heavy in his palm for one last second before he let it drop into the dirt.
"I'm done being your black hole," he said, his voice finally returning to a normal volume
Though the warmth was gone forever.
He didn't go back to their base
He went straight to Egg
His movements purposeful and sharp.
"I’m done, Egg," he said, his eyes finally showing a spark of the old Wemmbu
But it was a hardened version.
"He wanted a ghost? He can have one."
He began to lay out the plans for his disappearance
His mind already spinning with the logistics of a fake identity.
He would leave the name Wemmbu behind in the ashes of the base
Becoming someone else entirely
Someone Flame could never touch again.
As Wemmbu vanished into the shadows as his death was announced throughout the server
Flame was left alone in the ruins of their life.
He spent his days wandering the empty rooms of their base
The silence he once craved now a deafening reminder of his failure.
He mourned the man he had smothered
Realizing too late that you can't love a sun and then complain about the heat.
Every time he saw movement in the distance
His heart would leap
Hoping for a laugh that would never come
Flame was left with exactly what he asked for
A world without Wemmbu’s noise
And it was the most miserable place he had ever known.