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Wemmbu sits by The Great Sea, trident in hand, and the sea breeze running through his purple hair. The light is reflecting perfectly, the colours are vibrant below the sunset. The blue reminds him of someone he used to know. He thinks of everyone who knows him too.
Maybe it’s the current, or maybe it’s the way the wind blows that makes that deep hole in his heart ache. It’s something so small, something he’s felt time before, but now it feels different, permanent, even. He thinks of every item that Jaden dropped that he didn’t pick up, and then he looks at the trident he so luckily grabbed. He looks at its luxury curves, and its luminescent colours, and the scratches from the last battle they fought. The one they fought together.
“Wemmbu, fly away, I’ll catch up.”
That was the last thing he heard, it was so subtle beneath the crowd of clashing armor and weapons, but he heard it. He thinks of how faded Jaden’s voice sounds in his head, how much of him he can’t remember. He’s forgetting. He’s forgetting those little moments with Egg, the jokes they shared, and all the times they’ve fought side by side.
Wemmbu thinks about Flame, about Codmaster, about Jaden’s crew, he thinks about them all, and then he feels a guilt pool in him. The thought that everyone who’s known Jaden, who’s been Jaden’s friend, they don’t know, Wemmbu hasn’t had the time to catch up with everyone. What does he say, how does he say it?
Wemmbu thinks of that day, it was a bit ago, the Null is gone, Eggchan is okay, but Jaden is gone, banned. After everything that happened, his memory is foggy, he remembers Jaden, he remembers the pirate like he’d never met another, but he doesn’t remember it all. He’s still forgetting, he’s still grieving, but staying strong is the only way to survive.
He still has to protect Eggchan.
If not him, then who? He can’t take another loss, he can’t afford to. Wemmbu rolls over every single death he hasn’t been able to avoid, and he lands on Rejoice.
He thinks of Rejoice and Jaden. How they’re probably reunited again, maybe running and frolicking in a beautiful field of sunflowers, bathing in bright rays of sunlight and fishing until they catch something shiny. He wants to do that too, tell them he’s sorry, tell them he wants to make everything right.
How much time does he have left until it all falls down? Wemmbu doesn’t expect anything from the Unstable SMP, he especially doesn’t expect his peace to last long.
Wemmbu doesn’t let the people he cares about die because he wants them to, maybe he’s just... weak. He has Eggchan, and he’ll always have Eggchan because Wemmbu would rather die himself than let anything else happen to Egg. Sometimes he wants to crack Egg’s head on a table and fry the yolk, he still cares about him.
Wemmbu looks out to the sea, the horizon shines beneath the sunset. The water reflects a beautiful shine in its waves, and maybe in that light, he remembers his friend, Jaden.
Wemmbu closes his eyes, yet a tear still falls, and then they flow. He’s not crying, he’s not sobbing, his eyes are just letting out everything that he’s kept in for this long while, and every feeling crashes down on him. He hugs the trident, he doesn’t want to rename it, it feels sacred, like he should keep it in this state.
He never got to give Jaden a proper burial, he never got to see the light fade out of his eyes, and he knows Jaden never got to give FlameFrags Lomedy’s mace back. He picked it up, it’s in his Ender Chest, he could, but he doesn’t have the heart to explain why he was the one giving it to him.
He never got to tell Jaden that he was thankful for everything he did, he never got to tell Jaden how much fun he had playing on the server with him and he never got to tell Jaden that he was one of his best friends on the server.
Wemmbu will never get there. He knows whatever paradise Jaden’s in is too far for him to reach, even with a ladder, a bridge or a rope. Wemmbu feels like he can’t quite do anything. He’s a weapon, that’s all he’s ever been, no one sees him as much more than a man who’s able to cut through empires and armies.
“Jaden, are you good?”
The last thing he ever said until he saw everything happen in the blink of an eye. Until Jaden happened in a blink of an eye, and he was gone. Wemmbu had lost so much, he lost his orbitals, he had lost so much of his loot, and then Jaden. Not Jaden, please, not Jaden.
Wemmbu reminisced on everything he and Jaden could’ve had, how they could’ve been playing with Eggchan, maybe building an ugly base, and making fun of the seraphim. He’ll never be able to do that, he’ll never be able to fight with him, and he’ll never get to see that stupid face again, and say “Oh, Jaden,” when it starts to rain.
Right on time, his tears and body felt a cool moisture pat against them, it was raining. The sky was dark, the atmosphere and droplets were heavy, and it felt so solemn.
But then Wemmbu remembers how much Jaden loved this, how many times he’d twirl in the rain with his trident so high, how happy he was to be so close and free to the water and the wind. He saw it. He saw the way Jaden’s eyes filled up with glee, how his mask would stretch a bit wider, and the way his tailcoat would wave in the breeze. For once, Wemmbu wasn’t annoyed that the rain soaked his clothes, or hair, or that it was making an annoying sound in the distance, he was remembering, remembering Jaden..
Wemmbu uncurled his position on the sand, wiping his tears, he wanted to do something, he was going to do it before the rain was up, before he could let another piece of Jaden slip away.
He stood up, holding Jaden’s trident, he positioned himself up towards the sky, blurred by the rain, and stepped back, one, two, before launching himself with the power of the trident.
The pressure rubbed his skin as he swirled further and further away from the ground, small goosebumps forming on his skin until he was met with a much better view of the sunset, clouds and rain. The colours were beautiful, hues of gold, purple, and pink shone through clouds, reigniting the light of the blue waters, with the light forming a subtle rainbow that added to the comforting atmosphere.
His body almost floated in the air, like time had paused just to let him watch this, like the server was trying to apologize for every bad thing that had ever happened to just let him have this. The colours were beautiful, Wemmbu had never seen something so jaw-dropping before, and now, he understood Jaden a little more, and he understood why Jaden loved this as much as he did. It made him feel closer to him in an indescribable way.
He landed in the sea, right next to the sand, almost even missing it and costing his life, but that didn’t matter right now. The hurtful feeling in his chest hadn’t disappeared, but it felt like it was being hugged by a soft warmth.
Maybe someday, he could learn to appreciate the world like Jaden did, and maybe he was starting to.
Eggchan sat under a tree a little bit away.
He knew how Jaden’s death affected Wemmbu, he’d seen it, the fear, the hurt he couldn’t show. Eggchan could feel the distress radiating from Wemmbu as soon as he announced Jaden was banned. Even Eggchan had barely processed it, but seeing Wemmbu like this, a little bit happier, was much more than enough, a small win for them.
With a quill in hand, he wrote something down in an enchanted book, finally signing it off with his name and the date. The page title? The Tide and The Crown.
He closed the book, leaning against the tree and smiling at Wemmbu and to himself.