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When Wemmbu is bought, something cold settles around his mind and wrists. The first is metaphorical; the second is brutally, awfully real.
“Ooh,” chirps Yungy. “Lookit that. Wemmbu in cuffs. Isn’t this fun?”
The metal is heavy. Pure black iron; stark against his lavender skin and dainty wrists. Wemmbu never was built like a fighter. He’s built like a ballerina, instead, a lithe, thin silhouette with pointed painted nails and massive, crushing hammers. These manacles, then, seem comically heavy on his arms.
He doesn't look at anyone; not the spot where Flame used to be, not the Invis guy in blue, not at that awful awful awful cage.
“Aww, you’re quiet,” Yungy coos.
Wemmbu looks up at him through his bangs. He stares right through Yungy’s black eyes and into his weak, cowardly soul.
Yungy flinches.
Wemmbu smiles; wide, white, carnivorous. If he just got the chance, he would sink his teeth so deep into Yungy’s hand on his shoulder that they’d have to pry him off with a crowbar. Take off a few fingers. Give him something to remember Wemmbu by. A permanent reminder of what happens when you fuck around and find out with the server’s strongest player.
But then Yungy cocks his head, and something shifts in his coal-black eyes, and the moment breaks.
“Arachnid’s gonna love you,” he says.
Wemmbu doesn't like the Underground Civ. He doesn't like being in any Civ, really, but the ones where they force him to mine are definitely top of the list of ones he really really really doesn't like. Wooden pickaxes. They give them wooden pickaxes. It's just to break the spirit, and he knows that, but Wemmbu really wishes they would stop trying. He's kinda got the most unbreakable spirit there is.
Wemmbu also doesn't like being underground. Underground is for hiding; for one-by-one holes dug into the sides of mountains to escape pursuers. It's for caving, which he hates. It's for trapping enemies-who-later-become-friends; it's for burying people who could have been your friend.
Let it be known: he also hates Wardens.
The first time they let him see Egg, it’s for “good behavior.” Egg is working at a desk. Egg looks like he hasn’t slept at all. Egg is a captive like Wemmbu is a captive, and Wemmbu can’t help but feel a little like a dog given a treat.
Wemmbu asks for some time alone. Yungy gives him a warning look, but he nods the guards away. Probably some kind of power play. Probably because he knows Wemmbu’s not gonna be able to get Egg safely out of this one.
Then there’s no one in the room.
The first time Wemmbu feels free again is when he breaks and hiccups a breath and stumbles forward and becomes whole. As Egg settles into Wemmbu’s arms and wraps his wings around the two of them, Wemmbu begins to sob. Something jittery eases under his skin; the cold heavy thing around his mind lightens. It’s normal. That’s the jitter he has when he doesn’t have Egg. And this is the ease he has when he does have Egg. Friend melatonin, is what it is— this perfect mood stabilizer outside of himself.
“This sucks,” Wemmbu nearly weeps. “Egg, Egg, this fucking sucks, this sucks so bad, this is—I can’t even—”
“Chill,” Egg sighs, petting back his hair away from his face. “S’okay, bro.”
Wemmbu just whines. Very reasonably, he whines. Here’s Egg and he’e alive and in Wemmbu’s arms but there isn’t a damn thing he can do to keep him safe. Egg is so so so important and there’s nothing he can do. He’s helpless. All that power; this shimmering purple shell of netherite. His sharp, leathery black wings, wide as an Enderman is tall; the ones people speak of in hushed whispers as an omen of death. The catastrophe in his palms; how bombs rain from the heavens when he twitches his fingers. The wide, flat, smiling face of Gambit—the last thing his enemies ever see.
You’re so cute, a ghost whispers into his ear. Her long golden nails pierce into the soft skin of his cheek. Like a little bug. I could crush you whenever I wanted.
Wemmbu could kill—has killed—with a wave of his hand. He brings down nations overnight.
Oh, Wemmbu, murmurs a mocking voice. He braces his dagger against the back of Wemmbu’s skull and he stays deathly still. That’s not prison regulation. He doesn’t breathe as Lettuce pulls the dagger up and vibrant purple covers the ground like confetti.
He’s shielded himself in layers and layers and layers of power so that nothing could touch him or look at him or betray him ever again.
I don’t understand what your issue is, sighs the stranger at the desk. He looks so small in this tower, behind those stacks of paperwork; wings folded behind his back and pupil locked in on whatever is in front of him. Your opinion doesn’t matter. Just do it.
How is it, then, that he’s managed to tear his stupid, vulnerable, idiot heart out of his chest and let it wander around in the world?
“Egg,” Wemmbu begs. He doesn’t know what he’s begging for. “Please.”
Somehow, Egg always knows. His hand—gentle, so gentle, always so so so gentle—brushes Wemmbu’s hair out of his face—it’s so much harder to handle when it’s short like this—and lands on his cheek. “It’s okay,” Egg tells him, carefully. “I promise, bro. Don’t tweak out on me now. I’m right here. So are you. S’alright. You’re in control.”
“M’not,” says Wemmbu, miserably. “Really, m’not, though, I’m, like—”
“Fine,” Egg soothes. “You’re fine.”
Then his best friend frames his face in between his palms and presses a kiss to Wemmbu’s forehead and he feels his mind melt.
“Dude,” Egg says. “It’s okay. Hey. I’ll protect you.”
It makes Wemmbu laugh, and laugh, and then cry.
Awful, heaving sobs that just make Egg hold him tighter. “You’ll–?” he stutters. “You, you’ll—? Protect me? Egg, you’ll—? You couldn’t—”
“Watch me,” murmurs his friend. “Literally, like, watch me, bro. I’ll take ‘em all.”
He sounds so serious.
“You’re not—”
“I’m not taking questions at this time,” Egg says, dryly. “You’ll have to refer your inquiries to my secretary.”
Wemmbu, strongest player on the server, scourge of kings and emperors alike, giggles, and wipes a tear from his eyes. “Who’s—who’s your secretary, bro?”
Egg looks at him like he’s stupid. “You, bro. Who else?”
“But how am I gonna ask myself—wait, how…”
“A question for the ages,” Egg murmurs, sagely. “Truly, the questions we ask of ourselves justify our lives.”
“I could be a good secretary,” Wemmbu mutters. “I could be, like, the best secretary.”
“You would not.”
“Would too. I’d never let anybody schedule a meeting.”
“I think what you’re describing is called an attack dog,” says Egg, dry. “Not a secretary.”
“Hmm,” Wemmbu considers. “I could be both. Has anybody ever tried that?”
“You’d probably be the first,” says Egg. “Innovation, bro.”
“In-no-va-tion,” Wemmbu echoes, drawing out the syllables. He sighs into Egg’s formal dress shirt. He can feel his friend’s heart beat against his chest; his breath blooming and collapsing over and over again. He can hear all the living going on inside of him; a perfect orchestra. “Right.”
“I mean it, by the way,” says Egg, after a long quiet time.
“Mean what?” asks Wemmbu, but he knows already.
“You know,” says Egg, and he does. The funny thing is that Wemmbu kinda believes him, too.