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It’s been a long day. It’s…honestly, it’s been a long fucking season. Zam didn’t expect to make it this far. She can take a lot, but these last few weeks have pushed her pretty far. All the betrayals and dismissals and apathy has ground her down. She’s still standing, but all this carrying the world on her shoulders is starting to make her back hurt.
Mapicc found her in her cherry-wood base in the middle of spawn. It took some damage in the final day (and someone cracked a window at some point after the actual fighting ended. She’s still deciding whether she wants to blame Jepexx, Pentar, or one of the other usual suspects.) And all the wind bursts from people playing around with their maces has scattered all the cherry blossoms of the trees. The petals, bruised and muddy, tumble around in odd patterns whenever the wind picks up.
She’s been sitting out on her balcony, legs crossed and just watching the world move past her. It’s a bit dark with her shield over spawn stretching out above, but she’s got plenty of lanterns around. Zam thinks ahead like that. And besides, the sun is already setting outside the shield. Soon the shadows will all blend together.
Mapicc sat down next to her at…some point. Zam’s lost track. All she knows is that Mapicc’s by her side and neither of them have made a move to get up. It’s peaceful, in its own way, but she’s also really looking forward to changing out of her armor and fighting clothes and maybe even doing something radical like relaxing for the first time in too-long.
Finally, she can’t help but break the silence.
“So…what do you wanna do?”
Mapicc’s long sigh is an answer in itself. “Tomorrow I’ll figure out where I wanna stay between seasons ‘nd all that.”
“And tonight?”
“I want to fucking sleep.”
“Yeah, same, honestly.” Understatement of the century.
Mapicc turns to glance at the bed shoved against the wall. He doesn’t look too impressed, which is fair. It’s pretty shitty quality because Zam had no intentions on permanently setting her spawn somewhere anyone could find. She probably can’t do what she does and call herself a genius, but she certainly isn’t stupid.
But even if the bed in this house was the peak of luxury, she’s not sure if she could relax out in the open like this. She’s not sure how to say that without sounding too paranoid, so she goes with:
“I don’t wanna stay at spawn for too much longer.”
Mapicc lets out an ugly snort-laugh, loud enough that Zam’s shoulders tense reflexively. She’s got her body-powered arm prosthetic on today and the motion makes the hook at the end click open and shut. Now that it’s between seasons, she’s gonna have to spend some time cleaning off all the potion residue that’s built up on it.
“What?” Zam continues. “What’d I say that was so funny?” Now that she’s aware of it, she can feel where the prosthetic’s harness straps are chafing her skin even through her clothes. She needs this thing off yesterday.
“Nah, sorry, it wasn’t anything funny. I was just thinking.”
“Well, you laughed, so. Something had to be funny.”
“Maybe your fa—“
“—Don’t say ‘my face’, Mapicc,” She cuts in.
“Ugh, okay, I won’t, then.”
She bravely resists the urge to tackle him. Mostly because she’s too exhausted and sore to wrestle right now, but also because she’s such a great and kind person.
Mapicc must be feeling generous too, because after a long sigh, he actually elaborates on what he was gonna say.
“It was funny because you’ve been so fucking obsessed with spawn this season. Like, you always kinda make it your business, but you really weren’t fucking around. All the pacifism shit, the Atlas, the peaceful ending…I really didn’t think you’d be able to do it. l’q kfhcr, mdq, ccgmggoc.”
FFE REIL OW LEACD, CSS EMHXO HO HPUX LRA TOSR KS TRAOXA'D NHNSXROESDCE. He’s got armor on his legs and boots still, but his helmet and chestplate are gone. His hoodie smells a bit like blood and smoke, but IE'R UONO TNCNUEU FHK FEIUB. "E DCOHX SA E ODTYT'HI IDTX OT EIVWOSE HNLIT."
She feels more than hears Mapicc’s scoff. He rolls his shoulders and Zam takes the hint, sitting back upright.
“Until literally the last second I was ruining your fucking life. Doesn’t sound helpful to me,” Mapicc deadpans.
“Yeah, well, at the end you still…y’know. You offered to come to spawn and build armor-less with me. That’s not nothing. IF ALAI PT EPES TOEI E NNBBEEUW LTEALA DVL SMKF G AILDLC IEE IMEENETS."
“It would’ve been stupid if you got banned just running around spawn naked. If you did that alone, they probably would’ve assumed you’d given up, were just trying to die. Would’ve been a lame way to go out.”
“But two idiots running around was gonna be safer, sure.”
“I mean, yeah? It would’ve made us look like we had a plan. And, well, you know.” He waves a hand, as if that’s an actual answer.
Zam has a guess what Mapicc’s thinking, but she wants to hear him say it. He knows as well as she does that it always comes back to the two of them.
But before she can press him on it, Mapicc sighs and pushes himself to his feet. And she definitely clocks that little wobble when he stands. She squints at him, but doesn’t call him out on it just yet. Instead, she offers him an out:
“We could go back to my underwater base? Y’know, the one where you hid in my walls, and placed a note block, and where you tried to jump me with Hannah and stole my valuables shulker, or when you took my potion stuff, orrr—“
“Alright, I get it, geez! I know which one you’re talking about.”
“We’d probably have to get your head checked if you didn’t. I think you spent more time there than at your own bases.”
Mapicc rolls his eyes.
“I want that auto-potion brewer back by the way. I still can’t believe you just ate that whole thing.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Mapicc shifts, face tightening the tiniest bit. Something’s hurting him, but she can’t tell what. “Isn’t that base kind of far, though?”
Zam bites her lip. It isn’t far at all, honestly. It’d only be an issue if there was some reason why Mapicc didn’t feel like a quick sprint through the nether or an elytra flight. And he wears so much red and black that it can be hard to spot blood on him. She could probably bully her way into Mapicc letting her check him over for injuries. But this isn’t the place.
“How about we go to your castle.” She doesn’t phrase it like a question, because it really isn’t one. All of her bases are compromised. And she doesn’t really feel like running into anyone else from the Chungpire right now, so any of their bases are off the table.
It’s a testament to how tired he must be that Mapicc doesn’t even try to hide his little sigh of relief. He just offers her a hand, pulls Zam to her feet, and lets her lead the way.
---
The castle is kind of gross. Which is honestly almost impressive—Mapicc never even used this place, so how the hell did he manage to track mud and soul soil all throughout the entry hall? And it almost looks like someone dumped a barrel full of dust in here on purpose. The gray carpet of it has settled over the furniture and decorations to a thickness that feels impossible without actively trying.
“Wow, so you completely abandoned this place, huh.” She bats a cobweb away from her face.
“I already told you that I only commissioned it so I could keep an eye on you.”
“Well, I did a good job on it. The least you could’ve done was use it every now and then. I dunno, maybe have your teammates over for drinks or something.”
Mapicc hmphs, but doesn’t say anything else. He knows she’s right. Last time she builds an entire fucking castle for this ungrateful bastard.
She knows the floor plan well, but she still keeps her arm out in front of her as she steps into the dark. When she reaches the storage room, she starts feeling around the wall for the switch.
“I know it’s around here somewhere…”
Finally her fingertips brush against a lever. She cheers and flips it down. It takes a few ticks longer than it should, but the redstone lamps still work. (One in the back is flickering, but she does not care enough to go check on the redstone wiring right now. It’s Mapicc’s castle—he can do it if it’s bothering him.)
Speaking of Mapicc, he’s just sort of…looming. And sure, maybe she probably knows this castle the best out of everyone in the server, but it’s still his. He usually isn’t shy about poking around and being nosy.
It’s whatever. Mapicc can keep acting weird for another couple minutes. Once she finds the second lever she’s looking for, she’ll be able to bring him somewhere where she can grill him.
For better or worse, her builds follow a predictable pattern. The secret lever is in the second place she looks and when she flicks it, pistons click and some of the bricks in the wall slide inwards. There’s a staircase leading down to a safe room, lamps already flickering to life inside.
Mapicc knows Zam’s building style just the same. He doesn’t look surprised nor impressed at the cool secret passageway in his castle. And he doesn’t seem concerned about the possibility of a trap. He just follows her down.
The safe room isn’t anything special—just some chests, a brewing stand, and some cushions and blankets in the corner that pass for a pretty decent bed.
Zam is too exhausted to pretend to look cautious. She paws off her armor, letting it clatter to the ground in a heap. Who fucking cares if it gets dented at this point, anyway? Half her sets have already been shredded.
Mapicc doffs the rest of his own armor and then shrugs off his hoodie. Underneath, he’s got all sorts of little accessories up his arms and around his neck. Zam spots a wristband in Mapicc’s old Gucci Gang colors. And there’s a few chains and charms that she recognizes as the ones he wears for luck.
But the collar around his neck is a bit too familiar.
She knows Mapicc likes having that little bit of pressure on his neck, but it’s not like he lacks options. It’s not rocket science to craft a new choker or collar. And even out of Mapicc’s sentimental ones, Zam’s more used to seeing one of the ones Mapicc was gifted by Spoke or Ro.
Zam assumed that Mapicc had burned wlz qhtznu wcs zijr kmh. After all, he burned her flower field to the fucking ground. Why should he give a shit about a little scrap of leather, compared to that? It should have been the easiest thing in the world to burn.
Mapicc undoes the clasps on his necklaces and slides off his bracelets, dropping them to the floor in a neat little pile. The collar stays on. hi hilb’jr eizb pmoelrb wm izy get, somb jkii hamm jhvz cg wdcrwdhx awqhw.
There’s a lump in Zam’s throat. Probably from all the dust, right? And anyway, there’s more pressing things to attend to. She can see the redness around where the seams of Mapicc’s binder have been digging into his skin for probably too long. And there’s an even more alarming redness—there’s a cut between his shoulder blades. It seems to have mostly clotted, but there are still streaks of dried blood making a mess of his back.
She steps forward, lightly resting a hand on his shoulder. He tenses but doesn’t move away. Emboldened, she plucks at the strap of his binder.
“It’s probably gonna re-open that wound on your back if you take this off the normal way. Can I cut this off of you?”
“I’d rather you didn’t.”
“Fine. Suffer then.”
Mapicc gives her a look that is more than enough to let her know how much he wants her to suffer right now. She just raises his eyebrows until he huffs and darts his eyes away.
“Dude. No wonder you’re acting all grouchy. I bet you’ve been wearing that for way too long.”
“I’m not—“ Mapicc bites his lip. “You’ve got me in a tricky situation here, Zam, because if I get mad at you then I prove you right. You might actually be evil after all.”
“I mean, sue me for giving a shit about your health. I don’t think you’re supposed to wear binders all day, especially not when you’re fighting.
“And what are you, the titty police?”
“Well, I dunno, that does sound kinda fun. How long do you think I have to be on E for them to let me apply?”
Mapicc rolls his eyes dramatically, but he also giggles a bit, so Zam counts it as a win.
And then the stubborn fool insists on taking his binder off the normal way. He turns around first, even though they’ve both seen each other shirtless plenty of times. With his back turned, Zam gets an unfortunately great view of the cut on his back starting to leak blood again. Mapicc swears under his breath.
Zam has her first aid shulker on the ground a tick later. It’d probably be overkill to mess with potions right now, plus she’s not even sure what she has left. So she sticks with the basics, grabbing a cloth and a water bucket to clean it.
Mapicc knows this routine. eiackm guh iqsg pof ws vgd, uoclgx’g lbscsmiu vtcfhv vbw kieomiu aqg fkspzwmff ws bwom vru fzhmmf nfgzgl bc gki rcnvr. He holds still as she wipes it clean, smooths a bandage over it. She can do a more thorough job in the morning, but this will serve for now.
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Once Mapicc’s bandaged up, she starts fiddling with the straps of her prosthetic’s harness. She can undo them on her own, but—a hand on her back makes her jump, but she settles when she realizes it’s just Mapicc. Huh. She forgot that he knew how to help get this prosthetic off. This is the first season where she’s had it, though, and the two of them were never really teamed. Maybe she showed him while they were working on that Orbital for the Empire? She’s surprised he remembered.
Once the prosthetic comes free, she slips it into a shulker box and trades her gross shirt out for something clean and softer. Her back and shoulders spark with pain at every little movement. Maybe wasn’t her best and brightest idea to try and block all those mace hits with the shield on her prosthetic arm. Or maybe just the general wearing it for days on end without breaks. Maybe less than ideal.
“Bedtime,” Zam announces, because that sounds like the perfect solution to all of her problems.
“Thank fucking god,” Mapicc says from inside his own shulker box, letting out a little cheer when he pulls out a pair of sweatpants.
Zam flops down face-first into the blankets
Mapicc lays down next to her, and gets under the blankets. But he keeps his distance, just his shoulder brushing hers. She tries to close her eyes and relax, but all at once the entire disaster of today is playing behind her eyelids. She can't relax.
If she had to guess, Mapicc’s probably in the same boat. So she doesn’t worry about waking him when she says:
“You know I messaged Spoke earlier. When we were talking over the comms. I told him you wanted me to team with you and take him down together.”
“So you were on his side, I fucking knew—“
Zam shoves her palm over Mapicc’s mouth to shut him up. It takes about half a second before he’s wiggling and getting his fangs into a better position to bite her, but he doesn’t clamp down. His canines just rest against her skin. All bark with this guy, huh?
“I was not on his side, dude. And I didn’t ask him for like, permission or anything. I just gave him a head’s up. Favor for a favor, I guess, since he could’ve killed me earlier and didn’t.”
Mapicc makes a muffled series of noises against her hand that she can pretty confidently translate as mean and hurtful language.
“You know what Spoke told me to follow my heart, okay? ANI X IDDD."
Mapicc’s cheeks darken. He lets go of her hand, “That’s lame.”
“You’re lame,” she fires back. A weak shot, but she’s tired. She lays back down again, but there’s one more question she’s gotta ask.
“So what do you think?”
“Hm? About what?”
“Is this the ending you wanted?”
“Zam, the server already ended hours ago.”
“You know what I mean.”
“…Do I?”
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