Work Text:
No no no no no no—
Breathing was difficult. Wemmbu couldn’t breathe in fully without the sobs wracking his chest almost painfully. The deep stab wound on his arm wasn’t helping, the stupid guard got a lucky hit. He felt dizzy, hours of crying making his head hurt. His throat raw from begging, screaming, anything to keep Lettuce from doing that.
“Lettuce, bro. Let's talk about this—” His voice rose each word, his panic becoming very obvious.
“What’s wrong, Wemmbu? I promise you this won’t hurt one bit.”
He was no stranger to pain. In fact, he would prefer it, actually, compared to this nightmare.
“Please, please! Just, anything—”
Nothing worked. He could still remember the gleam of his sword lifting to meet Wemmbu’s neck. He thought he would be gone for good, that the Law leader would slit his throat and his execution would come early. Maybe Lettuce got impatient, he’d thought.
Until he felt a hand grasp a large piece of his long, lavender hair.
He felt his heart drop straight to the floor.
“Yo—yo, yo not cool man, we can work this out—” Wemmbu was speaking fast, trying desperately to keep his composure. It cracked with every inch that disappeared between the blade and his beloved hair.
He was tied tightly to a wooden chair that sat across Lettuce’s desk inside the prison, the doors closed and locked behind them. Wemmbu could do nothing but thrash his head around, trying to dislodge his hair from the other’s grasp, desperate.
It wasn’t one quick swipe, not one flick of the wrist and it would be gone. No, instead Lettuce cut away piece by piece of beautiful, long locks. Wemmbu always thought of himself as someone who didn’t get attached, he’d learned enough after years of betrayals.
But his hair—the one thing that had been with him his whole life, the length almost reaching his hips that he prided himself in— was at the hands of his enemy. And the sword that was sawing away the long hair, leaving choppy, uneven sections all around his head. Strand after strand falls to the ground.
Wemmbu tried to calm himself down, trying to inhale and exhale slowly, trying to get his heartrate down. He was sitting against the dark oak wall of Flame’s abandoned mesa base, just outside of the prison. He knew he needed to get out quickly, but one look in the cracked mirror near the entrance sent him into a full meltdown.
Restocks, he remembers, I came here for restocks. Pulling himself off the floor and trying to ignore the way the uneven strands of his hair brushed against his neck, he centered himself in the middle of the base. Wiping away his wet face with the orange jumpsuit sleeve, Wemmbu reached into one of the chests and started looking, wary of his injured arm. Flame probably won’t mind, he thought, trying to get some humor out of this situation.
The sound of half-sobs, half-screeches fill the hallways of the Law compound. Turns out, the walls aren't as soundproof as he thought they were. This has to be some method of torture, yet he doens’t feel any physical pain. The only one he feels is the tight twisting in his chest with each purple strand that falls on the floor.
He doesn't remember when Lettuce stepped back, sheathing the blade back at his hip, or when he untied Wemmbu from the chair and ordered the guards in. He can’t remember, through the haze of pure exhaustion and dizziness, the guards hauling him up, one on each arm, back to his cell.
He ended up finding a spare, half-broken armor set. Diamond didn’t look good on him, but who was he to complain? At least it hid the hideous orange of the prison uniform, and his hair so he mentally cheered at that.
Small victories.
He tried looking for an enderchest, but the base was already half destroyed and he was not going to go digging in that rubble. About half an hour later, Wemmbu had acquired some food, a first-aid kit, and an invis pot. A pretty shitty setup, but he just got out of prison so anything was great for him. He studied the potion in his hand carefully, feeling a bit nostalgic.
That arc is long gone now.
Wemmbu felt a rising sense of paranoia as he realized he’s been here for too long, very aware of how close he was to the Law base. His eyes were dry and he was breathing normally again, finally feeling like a functioning member of society once more (besides the prison uniform but he can ignore that). Packing up the rest of his gear and splashing the potion down at his feet, he set out for the End.
✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧
It was cold. And dark.
It felt like home.
Upon leaping through the portal, Wemmbu noticed that the obsidian box Minute had built to keep players from entering had…changed. It looked ten times more reinforced, obsidian replaced with ancient debris and mining fatigue III weighing him down. Along with the previous exhaustion still hanging from his bones and the stab wound, Wemmbu would say he was having a great time.
Just another day Tuesday for him.
“Yo, Minute?” He called out, “You here?”
“Wemmbu?” The deep voice of MinuteTech rang out somewhere behind the thick wall, surprised.
“Can I be let in, bro.” He wanted to sink into a cozy bed and never wake up again.
The whirring of redstone powering and pistons shifting moved his attention to the left wall—door now. Sighing in relief, he stumbled out of the box and nearly fell flat on his face right in front of where Minute was standing.
The end guardian caught him quickly, shock still heavy in his voice. “Wemmbu, where the hell have you been? Egg’s been so worried for you, dude.”
Attempting to straighten himself up and not vomit on the floor when the world started tilting, the mention of Eggchan brought his awareness back.
“Uh.” He says, intelligently. “I— yeah. Look, I’ve had a really shitty day. Can I get patched up and some sleep before we start the interrogation?” He sounds exhausted even to his own ears, and mentally grimaces at how equally shitty he must look, how fucked up his hair is hidden under the helmet armor.
After finally being released, Wemmbu makes his way to the library section of the End base. He found his best friend on the far wall, holding a few books and inspecting each carefully, lost in his own little world. The demon chuckled a little at the sight, here he was all batted up and looking like he crawled out of a bush backwards, and Egg was here just reading books. Another Tuesday, indeed.
Egg turned at the sound, and sighed loudly when he saw Wemmbu. “Dude,” he starts, placing the books down, “what on god's green earth have you been doing. What happened to your invis?”
Wemmbu just chuckled again tiredly, “The fake identity didn’t really work out the way I thought it would. I kinda… went to prison?”
Egg just stared at him blankly. “Bro, what.”
“It wasn’t my fault—! Well, I guess killing like a thousand players does sound pretty bad but I swear! It was in self—”
“You what?”
“Technically I only killed five hundred since Flame was there—”
“Why was Flame there?”
“And I didn’t think Lettuce would—” He stopped his rambling.
“Lettuce, please! I won’t try escaping again please Lettuce I didn’t think—” He is cut off by a stern hush.
Another strand falls to the ground.
Egg was still standing there, confusion evident on his angelic features. “Okay, chill. Let's patch you up and you can tell me all about it, correctly this time. Honestly, bro doesn’t even know how to tell a story.”
He leads a now silent Wemmbu down a dark hallway that takes them to the living quarters. Either he didn't pick up on his friend's sudden change of behavior or he just simply ignored it. Wemmbu focused on taking deep breaths to distract himself from his own thoughts. In, out. In, out. Fuck, he was trembling again.
The duo reached a small bedroom at the end of the hall of what Wemmbu assumed was Egg’s room. The angel told him to sit on the bed while he searched for medical supplies in the attached bathroom, rummaging through materials under the sink. From being friends with Wemmbu for so long, he was used to patching him up after long days of fighting, always prepared.
Wemmbu fidgeted on the bed, uncomfortable in all his layers and hyperaware of how dirty he was making his friend’s neatly folded bed. His arm hurt like hell and he could feel a light prick of pain coming from his temple.
Egg returned with his arms full of clean bandages, ointments, and some other materials Wemmbu was too tired to name. In, out.
“Begin, please.” His angel friend says politely, settling down beside Wemmbu and beginning to unwrap the dirty bandage on his arm.
So he did. Wemmbu spoke of his adventures on the server under his fake identity. Of working with Capital city, hunting Boosfer (which Egg found funny), finding treasure with Jaden, and Parrot eventually revealing his identity through a trap.
The talking helped. It distracted him from his thoughts and the pain in his arm when Egg stitched him up, of the tiredness he felt behind his eyes.
“Yeah, and then that's when I take a pearl cannon when I tried to get away from Theo. I swear that guy is—”
Egg halts his task, reaching a hand out to grab a cloth. “Dude, pause for a second. I can’t patch you up properly with all this armor still on, you’re not gonna get jumped in my room. Also, your head is still bleeding.”
“It is not—” Reaching a hand up and feeling warm liquid on his eyebrow, he huffed in annoyance. “...fine.”
He removed his armor slowly as he continued speaking, explaining how insistent Flame was on fighting him again and how smug Parrot looked as Egg cleans his scrapes with gentle motions.
Boots.
The cloth stings a little with each passing swipe, but he chooses to ignore it. Egg doesn’t comment on the outfit under the armor, focused on his task.
Leg armor.
“...and then lava starts pouring from the ceiling, like actual lava. I don’t know how they got that to work because I literally only threw a windcharge.”
Chestplate.
“Some Parrot-level escape room shit, I dunno. So anyway, I’m forced to land on this platform where Parrot and Flame are at, and Parrot starts yapping again—holy that guy can listen to himself talk for ages.”
Helmet.
“He’s all like, ‘I knew it was him the moment he walked into my potion—”
The cloth on his arm goes still.
Confused, Wemmbu turns to face his best friend fully and is met with an expression akin to horror. It's only when he feels the cool air of the room against his neck, he realizes.
Oh.
His helmet’s off.
“Wemmbu.”
No—nope. He doesn’t like that tone. He doesn’t like the look in Egg’s eyes, he never accepts pity. That horrible feeling in his chest starts rising again, the same one that consumed him in the mesa base. In, out.
His friend drops the cloth to slowly raise a hand to Wemmbu’s hair, of what's left of it. He forces himself not to start shaking again and swallows down the lump in his throat. He will not break down in front of Egg. In, out.
“...like the new look?”
The question takes both of them off guard. Wemmbu’s default coping mechanism is humor, of course he’s gonna try and crack a joke when he feels like falling apart. Egg knows this too. He knows Wemmbu well enough to understand he wouldn’t do this to himself willingly.
When Egg is still silent, looking away from him with a distraught look on his face, Wemmbu’s composure falls a little.
“It’ll grow back.” He whispers. It’s intended to comfort Egg, yet he feels like it's more directed towards himself. In, out.
He’s too tired at this point to cry over it anymore. He doesn’t care for another breakdown because he doesn’t think he can mentally handle it right now. He’s had a very long day and his head hurts like hell, there is dried blood on his orange uniform from his wounds and his face sticky with dried sweat and tears.
Then, Egg gets up and makes his way back to the bathroom. It takes a minute for him to find what he's looking for, and what he walks out with makes Wemmbu flinch. Hard.
His friend is carrying a pair of scissors.
“Dude, what are you—why—” Wemmbu scrambles backwards in the bed, his back hitting the wall.
Egg stays silent as he places the scissors on the nightstand and goes back to the bathroom to grab a hairbrush and a damp cloth. “Come here.” He says softly.
Wemmbu is still staring at him wide eyed, frozen in place. He splutters. “What, why did you get—”
“Wemmbu, just trust me.” His friend is holding the hairbrush and cloth out, expectant.
Hesitantly, the demon moves to slouch next to Egg, shoulders tense when he feels gentle fingers run through the choppy strands.
“What happened?” Egg’s tone is soft, like speaking to a young child, afraid that saying the wrong thing would shatter the peaceful atmosphere.
A few brush strokes pass. Then, “...Lettuce.”
Egg doesn’t respond and it takes a moment for Wemmbu to realize he probably doesn’t remember who that is. “He runs this empire called the Law, they want to bring justice or some bullshit like that to the server.” He chuckles weakly. “And he did that by…imprisoning me.”
The bristles of the brush scraped lightly on his scalp in soothing, short strokes. “So,” Egg starts, “this happened in prison?”
“Yeah, he—Lettuce—got mad when me and a few other prisoners tried escaping.”
The angel just hums thoughtfully in response, initial shock worn down. As his friend continues brushing and untangling his hair, Wemmbu starts to relax more and more, leaning into the touch and releasing a tired sigh.
Then tenses right back up when Egg leans over to retrieve the scissors. “What are you doing?”
“I’m gonna fix it.”
“Hair doesn't just grow back instantly, genius.”
“No bro—can you just let me work my amazing hairstylist magic?” Egg stares him dead in the eye, then ushers him up from the bed to sit in the chair across from the desk.
Wemmbu sinks down into it, knowing that he trusts Egg with his life and tries to relax again. He tells himself this is nothing like when Lettuce cut his hair, Egg’s movements are gentle and practiced while the Law leaders were rough and mocking.
Another strand falls to the ground. And Wemmbu doesn’t break down when he sees it. In, out.
It takes a bit, so Wemmbu decides to continue his story. “...so me and Flame decide to team up against the Law since we can’t have our rematch in peace. I challenged Lettuce to send his entire army after us,” Egg chokes a bit at that, “after he kept running away when we got too close…”
He talks and Egg is cutting his hair. He talks about defeating a thousand players while his friend measures which pieces to cut, very focused and deliberate with the snips.
When Egg runs his hands through the newly cut hair signalling he’s finished, Wemmbu rises and goes to the bathroom mirror. And stops.
Damn.
He barely recognizes himself. Wemmbu is so used to long, straight hair pulled back behind his head. What he sees in the mirror looks completely different from his usual style but…he doesn’t hate it?
The hair is still shoulder length, but where it was sliced unevenly in choppy sections, now soft layers frame his face starting from his cheekbones and fanning downwards diagonally. The ends curl a little bit naturally, bringing more definition to his features.
He looks badass.
A second later he’s crushing Egg in a tight hug. His friend just laughs in surprise and returns the gesture, “If you don’t like it, I can always chan—”
“No,” Wemmbu interrupts, face buried in the angel’s shoulder, “it’s perfect.”
Wrapped around his best friend, heart feeling lighter than it had in weeks, Wemmbu finally feels himself again. Sure—his hair had been a huge part of his person for so many years, but…maybe he could get used to this. And it was still long enough to be braided or tied back if he wanted.
Lettuce doesn’t have control over him, the leader cutting his hair didn’t break Wemmbu like he thought he did.
Wemmbu grinned, spotting an enderchest sat near the door over Egg’s shoulder, maces sat safely inside. He was going to destroy the Law. But first, he was missing something if he wanted to guarantee victory.
“Hey Egg, you up for a trip to the Farlands?”