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It’s barely a week after Flame’s first lost duel with Wemmbu, when Flame hears a knock at the door. He’s still nursing several wounds from the altercation, things that time and gapples haven’t fully fixed.
There are horribly tender spots on his skull from Wemmbu’s mace, places where he can poke at still-healing, spongy bone with his fingers. There is blood he hasn’t fully been able to get out of his dreadlocks. He scrubs and scrubs as much as he can, but in half of the points on the surface when he grazes his fingers across them he feels crushing, unbelievable pain.
There are, of course, other wounds, as well. But the main issue is that they are only going to be able to be fully healed by time and patience.
Behind the door is Wemmbu. Flame stares at him through the peep-hole. Stupid, idiotic fucking Wemmbu, with the biggest fucking smile on his face, like the cat who got the cream. He is also holding his mace, which is kind of not an amazing sign for Flame’s future well-being.
Fuck, his body hurts. He’s angry, sure, but really more in a lot of pain. He wants to sleep for a thousand years and bury himself in a pile of blankets and never see the sun again. He will get his revenge, of course, but you have to give him some time, here. He hasn’t stopped having a headache in like three days.
“Flamey!” Wemmbu sing-songs, so loud that it sends a spike of pain through his skull, “open the door or I’ll send an orbital strike!”
Flame really doesn’t want to fucking deal with this right now. He wants to go back to bed. But he wants to juggle rebuilding his house with a still-healing concussion even less, so he opens the door.
“What do you want, bro?”
“A rematch.”
“Why? You won last time, let me rest.”
“What, you don’t want to win your title back?” Of course Flame isn’t going to be able to, he has burned through even more gear since he started the last duel, and he is injured to all hell.
“No. You’re the strongest. Can you leave me alone?”
Wemmbu raises his eyebrows and steps a single step away from Flame. For a second, Flame feels hope burst through his chest that Wemmbu won’t be fighting him, actually! before it is immedieltey dashed against the rocks as Wemmbu grabs his wrist and pulls him out from under his doorframe.
Flame has only the forethought to grab a totem from his bag before there is a mace to his face. He doesn’t want Wemmbu to blow a hole in his roof, so he fights him out in his front yard. The fight ends, predictably, with Flame loosing, and Wemmbu gloating over his exhausted body.
The concussion gets worse. The wounds on his body get worse. Okkkkay. He’s not sure—he’s not sure if he can survive another battle. He doesn’t know how much longer—surely, Wemmbu is content, now?
Wemmbu is not content, now. Because he comes back, four days later, some kind of adrenaline-rush in his eyes and a huge, toothy grin stretching his mouth. It’s a hair’s breath too close to enthralled? hungry? to soothe Flame’s fear.
Flame looses worse. He ends the duel laying broken in the dust outside of his base, hacking up a lung. The world spins like a top around him, and he can’t even drag up enough energy to look up, contenting himself with staring at Wemmbu’s boots. Fuck, whatever. He wants to go to bed.
“You’re pathetic.” Wemmbu spits, “how have you kept your title this long when you’re this goddamn weak?”
Flame knows all of this. Wemmbu, in his infinite cruelty, in his infinite revenge, could never be more cruel than Flame is to himself. If anything, all Wemmbu is saying is that Flame was right. When he survives this, he’s going to train twice as hard and twice as long until he cannot loose to anyone, ever. He’s going to find Wemmbu’s cheater orbitals and remove every-other piece of redstone and burn his fucking mace, and—
Wemmbu crouches down, and tilts Flame’s head towards him with a single finger. Flame can’t force his eyes to actually focus on Wemmbu, and his vision is getting blacker and blacker with every passing moment. Is he actually going to pass out here? That would fucking suck.
Wemmbu licks his lips. Awww, hell no. Flame is not fucking doing this. With as much force as he still has inside of his exhausted body, he rips himself out of Wemmbu’s grip. His head bangs against the packed dust below him, and the rest of his body doesn’t fare much better.
He groans. Wemmbu stares down at him, although the contempt in his eyes never gets any worse, only softening and softening like melting butter. There is a beat of silence, where no one moves—Wemmbu stares at Flame’s supine form, his eyes dragging themselves across his body.
Finally, Wemmbu reaches under Flame’s knees and around his shoulders to pick him up. The curtly shoulders Flame’s front door open, marches into Flame’s bedroom, and drops him on his bed.
A couple of seconds later, Flame hears his front door slam shut. A couple of seconds after that, he is asleep.
Wemmbu—oh, who could have guessed?—is at his door again in a couple of days. The underlying current of emotion under inside of his eyes is different, probably, but Flame couldn’t care less.
Meh, okay, whatever, Wemmbu looks “interested” now, and “guilty” the next time that he cracks Flame’s skull open like a egg. That doesn’t matter, because his totem still pops over and over again, every few days. It’s like a skipping record. He should be past this. Him and Wemmbu should be past this. Wemmbu should be off flaunting his power and Flame should be off doing a second training arc (clearly, he needs one).
But neither of them are doing those things. Sometimes, Wemmbu will stand at the foot of his bed and watch him until he falls asleep. Sometimes, Wemmbu won’t even bring him inside if he passes out, and will just watch as he slowly regains enough strength to get up. Sometimes, Flame doesn’t crumble to the earth, and Wemmbu flies away when he deems the fight over, but increasingly, Wemmbu will fight him until Flame physically cannot fight anymore.
One time, Flame lying on the back and staring at the sky, asks Wemmbu, “why are you—why are—why are you fighting me to this level of—of exaustion?”
“You don’t tell me when I need to stop otherwise, Flamey.” Which, touche. Next time, he tries to tap out earlier than he physically has to, and Wemmbu raises his eyebrows before continuing to fight him.
Ok, so maybe while Flame was focusing on not dying and not passing out from exhaustion in front of Wemmbu, Wemmbu was studying his reactions/capabilities, which. Fuck, that’s going to make eventually getting his title back much harder.
Flame shouldn’t be able to fight Wemmbu for this long, this often, just supply-wise. Eventually, he realizes that Wemmbu has been stealth-restocking his gear for him. How long is this going to last? Is Wemmbu going to just keep restocking him? This has to get tiring, at some point. For Wemmbu. Flame has been tired of this for quite some time now.
Flame has never felt more like a body in stasis more, before. Like a man, stranded in space, with nothing to push off of. He fights Wemmbu, he nurses his concussions, he doesn’t move all that often so that he doesn’t hurt himself more, he tries to ignore the fact that Wemmbu is very clearly coming into his home at night to restock him on everything—food, gear, XP bottles, even occasionally taking gear and repairing it himself, for some reason, he waits for Wemmbu to come back.
Flame is not improving—in fact, he is getting worse, he’s mostly given up on trying to win any of the battles, his subconscious is basically already on the ground the second Wemmbu pops his first totem—but neither is Wemmbu. Clearly, the cockiness has gone fully to his head.
Eventually, this will end. Flame contents himself with this, as he wastes time napping on his couch and looks at the hand-made meals that appear on his counter every couple of days, and feels his complex sword-fighting skills drain out of him.
Flame ignores how Wemmbu has started to tuck him into bed after he passes out, and ignores how he has started to stare at Flame when he doesn’t think Flame is looking and ignores how one time, when Wemmbu came at him with a mace, he pressed a totem into Flame’s hand first, because Flame just…didn’t grab one.
(Flame ignores, too, that he forgot to pull a totem out of his bag that time. He ignores how he hasn’t really tried to avoid Wemmbu after the one time it didn’t work. He ignores how, in addition to getting him food and getting him gear, Wemmbu has also started cleaning some of his rooms, because Flame just…doesn’t. He doesn’t know why he doesn’t clean them.)
This is going to end. Flame doesn’t know what the fuck he is going to do if it doesn’t.