Work Text:
“Mane, I wanna train more.”
For a sixteen year old—especially Wemmbu—you’d really expect more conviction in that sentence. The innate pride of feeling ready for something more, the excitement of the idea that one could be more, the arrogance of being ‘just a kid’.
Wemmbu didn’t feel any of that.
No, he felt the blood in his veins boil and his heart pump overtime to keep it moving so it didn’t meld his veins to flesh. His hands sweat where he had them rested firmly on his hips, and he all but prayed that Mane was squinting at him now because he’d interrupted the lion’s reading and not because he noticed it all.
Which, luckily for him, seemed to be getting all the more likely with how his mentor sighed (a dramatic thing, done with more grandiose than actual annoyance). Still, he worried. Still, despite the way Mane turned his eyes back down to his book, and looked a little bit less like he was about to start fretting like a mother might. Only a little—the tapping of his fingers and slight furrow of his brow he tried desperately to hide—but really, if he wasn’t jumping to calm Wemmbu down, then he was none the wiser.
Bored, as Mane seemed at everything nowadays that pertained to training; pertained to the only reason Wemmbu was even here in the first place, “Why, bro? You’re already—”
“Already improving fast, yeah, yeah—whatever bro,” a slow shift between his feet became a pace, “I wanna defeat a diamond trim.”
“Sorry, what?”
Wemmbu stopped his pace, staring hard into Mane’s eyes—or, well, the closest he’d ever get with that forsaken, faded blindfold—and found nothing. Nothing that he’d ever be able to see because the boy was never going to see it at all, but the knowledge that it was there, behind the fabric wrapped tight, was enough. It was always going to be enough to convince him that, maybe this time, he’d understand. See, interpret, stop worrying.
And, well, If he was stronger—if he could handle himself enough to defeat a diamond trim—then surely that’d stop everything else. Maybe, it’d slow down the ticking that said it’d happen, not this time, maybe not even the hundredth time over, but it’d happen. If it was finally this time.
The metal frames of his glasses were readjusted where they slid, Wemmbu’s head tilting down slightly as he laughed. A small exhale that exuded nothing but what he must have been feeling inside, and in return, the only other noise audible became the gentle closing of a book.
“Wem, bro, c’mere,” he inched closer just enough it barely escaped him being called a ‘smartass’, “I—sure. Just, listen bro. You can’t go fighting a diamond trim. Training or not you’re…you just can’t. It’s hard for even me, and I sure as hell am not letting my—letting my student go running about to his death just because he wants to look cool. Just ‘cause he feels like being strong or whatever.”
“But it’s—”
“It’s not happening, Wemmbu.”
Inhaling deep, hands clenched against his sides and thinning the fabric of his skirt—a long thing, flowing and touching his ankles—as it pulled the fibres thin. Did Mane think he was weak? Did Mane seriously think that somebody like him, who could handle himself just fine against almost anybody and sure as hell lived to tell the tale of fighting Flamefrags, was weak?
Weak. Weak?
Wemmbu wasn’t weak.
Not…not strong, maybe—not like he was, not like his mentor was. But he wasn’t weak.
“I’m not—seriously?”, his shoulders hitched up half to his ears, a heavy scoff being let out, “Mane, why the hell would—genuinely, I can handle myself, so why can’t I train just a bit more and…”
“Wemmbu.”
“And—and,” the look in Mane’s eyes gave him pause, a thin line of patience that was so tightly strung he’d almost tripped on it completely, “I—I just…why can’t I?”
The change in tone caused his mentor’s teeth to grit slightly, face dropping from its scrunched frustration into something so painfully neutral it almost looped completely back around into complete…sadness, maybe. Pity, more likely.
Foot tapping, “Wemmbu, bro. You just—you aren’t ready, okay?”
“When am I then?”
“Don’t—don’t cut me off. You aren’t ready, and that’s end of story. I’m the teacher, so I get the final say, okay?”
‘Okay?’. Was that how it worked? Did he really not get to even suggest anything? That was…annoying. That was enough to ignite a small fire in his heart that only died down because it felt wrong to argue against it. To argue and fight and make a scene over something so small, but especially against Mane’s words when they were so firm.
“...Okay.”
But that was only ever going to last so long. So long as the day raced by and so did the next and so many others until it blurred into weeks. Weeks of not being trained to what Wemmbu knew he could handle; left to bite at his claws and tap his foot and mess up his hair from tossing and turning.
How long was he really going to sit here?
How long was Wemmbu willing to sit and let the promise he kept hold true?
Well, as long as he was too tired from fighting and missions and pointless running to hollow it out. To split open its skin and scoop its fat and viscera out to leave space for something fake and warm so only it never unstitched where it was tightly patched back together.
And, in that emptied sac of would be flesh and blood, Wemmbu placed a small little lie.
An egg shaped one—well, an eye shaped one, actually—that presented itself in the very particular form of ‘I’m going to Egg’s’. Not the small jungle temple he’d workshopped into a base, no. A lake that was just near enough Mane wouldn’t justify wandering over to it just because Wemmbu had been gone too long, but close enough he could argue that it ‘really is just a place Egg likes to fish!’.
Besides, Mane wasn’t exactly keen on them hanging out often. Not after learning how much of a weakness Eggchan apparently was, as much as Wemmbu would like to disagree. Just because he cared didn’t mean the angel was some big red target that screamed ‘kidnap me!’ or something. That’d only happened, like…twice. Or something.
Still, weekly hangouts was something his mentor seemed to begrudgingly accept, and so Wemmbu would take it. Going out more would probably be a bit risky anyway, given how much the demon loved following any one person he’d taken an interest in.
It really was all just boring nonsense that meant Wemmbu couldn’t train properly. Boring, scheduled nights with Mane, mostly. The rest of the time was spent sneaking off to ‘go to the lake with Egg’ or…well, whatever he could get his hands on. Flower crowns, baking, doing his nails (and Mane’s, much to his dismay), braiding his hair, anything. And beyond that, underneath it all—where it ached and swelled between the empty air of the promise and its insides that twisted and pulled into something much more dishonest—Wemmbu held the bitter grudge that Mane was never going to teach him. Never properly; never how he wanted.
Whether it was because he wasn’t worth it, because he was weak; because of something, somewhere, that he couldn’t ever find, it didn’t matter. All that Wemmbu cared about was the fact it never happened, and if that was the case, he would make it.
What was the big deal if he took it back into his own hands anyway?