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"Rejoice... you're– you're here! You're really... here...!"
What? That wasn't right.
"Rejoice I– I'm so sorry. I'm sorry, I–"
"You're sorry?"
He sounds... off.
"I don't–... I don't know why but I mean, you're here–?"
"Well, you should be!"
What?
"...huh? What... what do you mean by that?"
"I mean, I'm still dead — but look at you... still as bright and loud as I can remember. Maybe that's why I can't seem to get rid of your face?"
What... no, no Rejoice– he... he wouldn't say that.
"Rejoice...?"
The dream... nightmare? It was over — with only the wave of nausea trembling feeling fading from what was left. What was still engrained into Wemmbu's mind.
He was... alive.
And Rejoice, wasn't.
Two separate truths that dangled by the flick of fate's twisted hand. There was no denying it, yet Wemmbu couldn't help but ask, beg, the universe silently.
Why was he the one who survived? Why couldn't it be Rejoice...
But he knew why, he'd always despised the reason. Freedom called naturally to a caged bird who'd already tasted it, after all.
Sweat trickled down, sticky and a disgusting feel, and yet Wemmbu couldn't care less. He was already filthy, horrible. Just why did he have to survive? How was he supposed to live now?
Wemmbu tasted bile — strange, he remembered Mane stuffing him with food just earlier that day when he'd been ill. He felt empty in general, though.
Days always seemed to blend in when that void came back, the bitterness a sore reminder. It was like before he met Rejoice, before he met his brothers or... anyone.
What is this... trip down memory lane?... he scoffed at the thought, humiliated by his own struggle.
Grief really did come back in strange ways. Even after months, Wemmbu still couldn't move on. Maybe he did, at one point, but was it really forgiving and forgetting reality? Or was it piling it with endless memories to get rid of what ugly truth lied beneath?
It was funny, how his mind seemed to hate him so — his brain carving a reminder into his soul.
It was funny, how fate was so care-absent and so careful in its cruelty — a gilded cage, designed just for him.
It was funny, how the sun Rejoice knew seemed to chase after sunflowers, those short-lived things that wilted delicately — as if its fate weren't pitiful ashes.
Why was he the one who got to survive? Why was he the one who got to be cured? Why, when he was the sun’s path of destruction whilst Rejoice bloomed bright as sunlight?
It was, such… a wicked, thing, that Wemmbu was deemed the one to “live”, when Rejoice deserved it so… much, more.