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"Why don't you just talk to him about it?"
Egg squinted to make out the shapes of Jaden's unimpressed face. "You think I haven't done that already?"
"Yes." Jaden pulled at his collar just as he was about to walk into a wall. Curse the perpetual darkness for sabotaging his extremely calculated evasion strategy! "Wemmbu would have told me if you did."
"Wemmbu airs our dirty laundry out to you?" Egg asked with pettily crossed arms as he weighed himself down to hinder Jaden's attempts at redirecting his route. If he had done this to Wemmbu, he would have just rolled his eyes and carried Egg on his shoulder. Thankfully, Jaden was not Wemmbu.
Jaden still rolled his eyes though. "Not intentionally, you know how easy he is to read. Stop pouting already. You're such a kid, bro."
"Who's pouting? Get your eyes checked."
"You of all people can't be saying that to me."
Eventually, they find their way back to the rest of the group. Yungy was the first to greet them, his voice easily distinguishable from Codmaster who followed suit. Even with the loud shouts and teasing, there was an undertone of relief at the first call of their names, which Egg only caught because of his heightened sense of hearing that he somehow obtained to compensate for his temporary blindness.
Jaden finally let go of him to join in on the fun, leaving Egg alone to navigate without his guidance. While he was silently grateful for managing to escape their earlier conversation, he kind of wished Jaden stayed.
"Why would he stay when I'm here?"
Egg blinked and looked slightly down. Wemmbu stared back at him, real and present and whole.
Suddenly, the world turned bright again. Suddenly, wheat fields surrounded them and it was a perfect sunny day.
Wemmbu placed a hand on his upper back and urged him to walk forward. His legs moved without his permission, wings twitching pathetically like his eyes that remained glued onto Wemmbu's face. Wemmbu, who faced away from him, who remained detached even when they haven't seen each other in weeks. Wemmbu, who immediately let go once they reached the furnace.
The light revealed the cuts and burns on Wemmbu's cheek, nose, and neck. Blood clung to his unkempt hair and pale skin. He looked tired and kind of hideous, but it's been so long since Egg saw him so clearly. It was embarrassing to admit, but that alone made everything suck a little less.
"Eggchan, my man." Codmaster draped an arm across his shoulders without warning. "Stop wandering off after every fight, they need us master fishermen to fish!"
"Uh huh," Egg agreed absent-mindedly.
Then Codmaster began to pull him away from Wemmbu.
An unfamiliar sense of dread bore down on him the farther he got from the light, from Wemmbu, leaving him frozen as he stared at dark water with a fishing pole gripped tightly in his hands.
His breaths turned heavy, lungs expanding without enough air to sustain it. He swallowed past a lump in his throat, willing himself to calm down. Still, his eyes strayed, searching. He doesn't reel in his catch when it began to pull at the bait. He doesn't pay attention to Codmaster complaining when he caught another useless batch of rotten flesh.
He shut his eyes and felt more dread when nothing seemed to change. There were voices and splashing water and footsteps that he couldn't see the source of, and he wondered how long its been since he's seen the sun and felt the warmth on his wings. At the reminder, his wings twitched unpleasantly, and he recoiled at the feeling of dirt and stone stuck in between every crooked feather. It aggravated his already overwhelmed mind, and the sounds kept getting louder—
A furnace lit up beside him.
"Can you see now?"
Thump-thump. Thump. Thump. Thump...thump. Gradually, his heart slowed enough for the ache in his chest to subside. Wemmbu raised an eyebrow at his silence, but Egg couldn't think past the instant relief that hit him the moment he realized Wemmbu was close enough to touch.
"Can you see now, Egg?" Wemmbu repeated.
"I can see, I can see," he assured quickly. At the same time, he thought back to the feeling of Wemmbu's shoulder against his, the ticklish strands of his hair, the subtle sound his breathing.
“Why are so close to me?” Wemmbu had asked with an awkward laugh, just before he left to go fight off another wave of people coming after their heads.
Carefully, Egg does not say: Because I'm scared. He does not say, You're a very accurate hallucination. He does not say, If I'm not, how can I watch your back?
Even more carefully, he does not say: I missed you.
"I'm trying to line myself up with where you're looking."
Wemmbu, oblivious, still letting out his stupidly loud laugh, had shuffled away. “Personal space, dawg!”
In the present, Wemmbu frowned but did not push. "Alright, then I'll just go explore with Yungy."
Egg mercilessly pushed down the immediate flare of panic that threatened to make him drop to his knees and cling onto Wemmbu until he promised never to leave him ever again.
"Okay," Egg said calmly.
A minute later, he was hyperventilating in Jaden's arms.
"He'll be back in a minute, don't worry," Codmaster attempted to soothe. It didn't work. The only cure was Wemmbu. Wemmbu could say the stupidest thing a person could ever say, like, I'm going to go to explore this extremely dangerous place with my former enemy who might kill me, and Egg would manage to at least get a breath in before spiraling again.
"We need to tell Wemmbu about this, Egg," Jaden said. "If he found out I kept this from him, he'll kill me."
Egg rapidly shook his head. "I'll defend you with my dying breath, don't worry."
"If you do that, he'll really kill me."
"Why don't you wanna tell Wemmbu?" Codmaster asked.
"Tell me what?"
The three of them froze instantly.
Egg felt sweat drip from his neck. At the same time, his head swam from the disorienting switch from intense panic to sweet relief.
"Tell me what?" Wemmbu repeated, tone dangerously low. "Jaden?"
Jaden coughed and patted Egg on the back. "It's not for me to say."
A loud whip cracked the ground. Simultaneously, their eyes landed on the pointed tail that caused it. Yungy quietly backed away.
"What happened to Egg?"
"Nothing!" Egg said quickly, leaving the safety of Jaden's hold. "Nothing happened. Calm down, yo."
"I left for two minutes and I see you crying in Jaden's arms!"
"Who was crying?!"
Damningly, a tear rolled down Egg's cheek at that exact moment.
"Woah, woah, woah!" Yungy pounced on Wemmbu's back to prevent him from landing a hit on Jaden.
"What did you say to him!"
Jaden stepped out of Wemmbu's reach, pointedly eyeing Egg. From behind, Codmaster pretended to fish to avoid the attention from shifting onto him.
Egg put his head in his hand. "Wemmbu."
Wemmbu stilled in Yungy's hold.
"I need to talk to you."
A moment later, they sat with the burning furnace against their back, their sides firmly pressed against each other. Egg allowed himself to savor the feeling.
Until Wemmbu shifted away to face him.
"Alright, bro. Talk."
"We had come from our home at Clazomenae to Athens, and met Adeimantus and Glaucon in the—"
"Egg."
His mouth clicked shut. The two of them were silent, and Egg stared at the water to avoid the stare that drilled holes on the side of his face. There was nothing to say, really. And it’s not like Wemmbu tells him whatever bothers him either. He was just being a hypocrite now.
Suddenly, a spiked lump of muscle landed on his lap. Egg blinked.
Earlier, this very same appendage had caused irreparable damage to hard stone. Another person might have trembled in fear of what it might do, but to Egg, it was nothing but another part of Wemmbu. Egg brushed a hand against the tail with familiar fondness.
"What's going on with you?" Wemmbu asked softly.
"There's nothing wrong."
The tail wrapped around his wrist.
"Was it Jaden?" Egg shook his head. "Yungy?" Another shake. "Codmaster?" Another. Wemmbu grew silent. Hesitantly, he whispered, "Was it me?"
"No," Egg bit out immediately.
"You don't have to lie," Wemmbu said. "What did I do this time? Whatever it is, it can't be as bad as the time I accidentally burned your books."
Egg shifted closer and draped a wing over Wemmbu’s head. "It's not you, Wem. It's not."
Wemmbu paused at the name. It was rare that they both got like this. Vulnerable. "Okay, it's not me. What's wrong then, hm? Tell me and I'll take care of it. You know I will."
"I know, you always do." Egg brushed the wing against Wemmbu's back. The tail on his lap wagged twice, though Wemmbu’s face remained neutral. "But this isn't for you to deal with. It's…it's my own fault."
Wemmbu snorted. "What could you have possibly done, bro?"
"What I mean is—" His wings shook uncomfortably, dropping to the ground. "I'm just being stupid. Logically, I know you leaving me would never happen, but I still—"
"You're right," Wemmbu interrupted. "That will never happen. Egg, even in a new life, I'd find my way back to you."
"That's just corny, yo."
"Why do you look so pleased then," Wemmbu deadpanned. "Was that really the only thing bothering you?"
"No," Egg said. Now that the dam broke, he was no longer responsible for whatever he said next. "You didn't look excited to see me again at all."
"I was kinda busy sliming people out."
"You keep backing away when I get close."
"Don't you see how dirty I am? You complain about everything, I was just saving myself the trouble."
"You keep hanging with that Yungy guy instead of me!"
"Bro, are you jealous for real? I'd kill him if you asked."
"…I missed you."
"I—" Wemmbu clicked his mouth shut, finally out of retorts.
Egg took the chance to move even closer, his wings moving to cocoon them both. Wemmbu does not move away, not even when Egg brought him into a firm hug.
The stress melted off of him in an overwhelming swoop. It was absurd to think that he had been anxious at all. With Wemmbu in his arms, alive and healthy and hugging him back, nothing could ever be wrong in the world.
"I missed you, Bu."
From the side of his neck, Egg felt the roll of Wemmbu's eyes.
"First it was Wem, now it's Bu. Who's the corny one now, huh? How would you feel if I suddenly called you Eggy, Eggy?"
"I'd say go for it," Egg waited for a beat, "Wemmy."
Wemmbu pushed him off with a groan. "Stop. You're actually disgusting."
But when Egg pulled him back for another hug, he does not protest.