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The user and abuser,
you’re a freak to try accuse her,
you excuse her fear and bruise her
‘till she’s quiet
But it’s alright
- - -
Wemmbu has been through a lot.
Not that Egg hasn’t known that, obviously, not that he hasn’t kept himself perfectly up to date on the goings on around the server even from his incarceration sanctuary in the End. As the self-appointed Lorekeeper of the world, he’s heard plenty of fantastical, outrageous, and probably exaggerated stories from players passing through the dimension. Even the things Wemmbu himself hasn’t told him about.
He knows about the fight with FlameFrags that decimated an entire mesa. The adventures of the Invisible Knight across the Great Sea and beyond. The legendary battle of two players who had fought like gods (or devils) against a thousand opponents, and come away standing tall.
When Wemmbu had arrived in the End next - harried and gearless and still wearing an orange jumpsuit he hadn’t yet thought to discard - he hadn’t looked much like a god. But that was fine, because Egg had never thought of him as such. He’s stubborn and petty and prideful, he’s powerful, but he’s no deity.
Gods don’t sprawl dramatically across his manuscripts when he isn’t paying enough attention to their complaining, or curl up beside the furnace like a cat in the sun every time they have to smelt literally anything. They don’t bombard his comm with messages and memes at all hours of the night.
He’s just Wemmbu, coming down from the adrenaline of yet another successful escape, a daring scheme succeeding by virtue of him being the main character of his own reality. One more adventure under his belt, one more victory.
Onto the next.
And this time, he’d deigned to bring Eggchan.
- - -
It had almost been deafening, going from the vast open silence of the End to the explosive chaos of Spawn. The light was too bright, searing his eye, there was motion all around, it had been impossible to keep track of Wemmbu’s particles in the mayhem. He’d swung his sword blindly to clear a path and accidentally sliced open the belly of some unsuspecting new player, a spray of red across armor which hadn’t seen battle before now, despite the months he’s worn it. And before he could process any of that, Wemmbu had been dragging him away, out of one warzone and onto the next.
- - -
He’d been out of practice with the sensation of adrenaline surging in his veins - so he hadn’t registered, at the time, the panic edging Wemmbu’s voice during the fight with Law on the beach bordering the Great Sea. Yelling at him to run was nothing new (there was a time when running away with his heart in his mouth and Wemmbu’s voice at his back had been a daily occurrence, and he’d been good at it) but running himself - running ahead of him, not standing behind to distract or defend, propelling himself over the soft sand with fumbled wind charges Egg didn’t have - if he’s honest with himself, that had kind of pissed him off. All over again, he’d found himself caught up in a fight that had nothing to do with him, only hours into breathing Overworld air for the first time in months.
So he hadn’t bothered to think deeper about the way Wemmbu’s hands had shaken as he’d choked on his argument, trapped at the shore.
“You were gonna execute me!”
It wasn’t a concern, not really, because of course Wemmbu would get out of it, had gotten out of it - but hearing his own pleas met only with “You’re associated with him!” had just stoked his frustration further.
Like he’s not spent the past several months pretty well un-associated with his best friend, actually, left forgotten and disregarded in a fucking hole in the wall when something as simple as an ender pearl could have gotten him out the entire time. In a dimension crawling with endermen.
So he may have crashed out. Just a little. And not noticed the fact that Wemmbu’s laughter came too high and too brittle, coasting on the edge of hysteria.
It hadn’t mattered anyway, when reinforcements had arrived from the Sea, riding the rain and crashing down on their opponents faster than one could say Deus Ex Machina. Jaden and his pirates - once an enemy, now apparently an ally, just another adventure he hadn’t been a part of. Following in Wemmbu’s wake like always.
He doesn’t let it get to him.
- - -
It doesn’t really click into place that anything is wrong until they’re hunting for the Collector, hopping between islands in the vast expanse of the Sea chasing whispers. It’s a small thing, really, a fleeting glimpse, a disturbance on the surface warning of the riptide surging beneath.
It’s not Wemmbu’s words, or his plans, or the usual avid determination he’s come to expect.
It’s the way his entire body goes rigid when their communicators ping with the same message.
LaserBeast3__ was slain by LettuceK using [Judge].
He freezes up, like all other thought has fled his mind. The mirth and mischief from moments before - pursuing frogs across the floor with a sword to the displeasure of the locals, cocky Wemmbu grin and arrogant demands - it all dissolves, and behind it he looks like someone else entirely. Someone far younger.
Egg glances up from his comm, and for a moment all he can see is the kid he first met all those years ago: the boy he’d found alone and hungry in a forgotten corner of the End, who he’d dragged back home with him to demand his parents feed them both and let him stay.
They’d both been children, back then, and he hadn’t understood it when he’d woken up to find that Wemmbu had left in the night. He’d simply gone out and found him again. And again. And again, until he’d stopped leaving altogether.
He’d been a wary and suspicious guest at first, slow to trust, fearful in the years before he’d grown loud and brash and chaotic. Before he’d become the man - the brother - Egg had chosen to follow onto this unstable nightmare of a server.
But stood staring at the name glowing on his screen, he looks like that scared child again.
And all Egg can think to say is “Oh, okay, we’re cooked.”
It’s like the words snap him back to reality. Wemmbu’s eyes slide upwards to land on him, widen at the sight. They’re frantic, and when he speaks, so is his voice, and he’s moving; herding him towards the stairs, nearly shoving him up them with hands at his shoulders and hissed instruction; “Yo, hide hide hide hide hide-”
And it’s wrong. Wrong, because Wemmbu rarely ever runs from a fight, but he certainly never hides from one.
He tries to make a joke of it - it’s what he does, eases the tension, lowers the stakes, that’s always been his role. So he switches out his stolen shield and hefts it on his arm as they reach the landing, raises a placating hand towards his friend and paints his tone with a lazy grin.
“I got my Lawman shield, I’m good.”
It’s the wrong thing to say. He knows it immediately, because Wemmbu’s gaze fixes on the golden sun emblazoned on the wood and he looks like he might throw up.
No sniggering laughter, no overplayed exasperation or playful sword swing, easy patterns he’s grown used to playing out - just raw revulsion. And for the first time whilst standing at his side, Egg feels the cold fingers of fear creep into his bloodstream and wrap around his spine, threatening to paralyse him. He’s been a hostage before, trapped and threatened and cornered, stood placidly at the end of a blade without flinching. Not once has he ever seen Wemmbu look so terrified.
Everything suddenly feels horribly real.
“Are we gonna die?” He asks aloud.
And the hands are on his shoulders again, forcing him back towards an alcove in the back wall which feels far too familiar.
“Yo, can you shut up so we don’t get spotted?”
It’s not a no.
When he dares to peek out from his refuge, he’s met with a wind charge to the face, knocking him painfully into the wall with a force that bruises his shoulder. It doesn’t prevent him from catching a glimpse of Wemmbu crouched on the balcony, hovering with all the intent of a cornered animal poised to strike out against a threat.
It escalates. Of course it does. In moments there are Lawmen everywhere, the clang of sword and mace against armor ringing out over repeated pings filling his comm.
“Egg, just run, get to the boat-”
It’s a blur of chaos, of carnage. He drags the boat into open water, heedless of the brine soaking into his shoes, his pants, as arrows fly his way, scrambling to balance on the smooth bamboo as he pulls himself aboard and pushes off from the shore - and waits. Waits. Stares down at his comm, at every flashing message, prays he won’t see Wemmbu’s name appear as anything other than killed by.
“Go go go go!” The boat rocks dangerously as a figure drops out of the sky and into it, and he barely has chance to exhale a breath before he takes up the oars.
The death messages don’t stop. He only allows himself a glance at each noise, each signal that another of the pirates has fallen to Law. An entire island decimated for the crime of harbouring them for less than an hour.
It makes him a little nauseous to see, among the flurry, one line carrying the name of LettuceK’s mace. His mace.
Executioner.
He doesn’t mention it to Wemmbu, though he’s fairly certain he’s already seen, if the sharply exhaled expletive from the seat behind him is any indication.
He keeps rowing. Until his arms and lungs burn, until his vision swims. He carries them both away from the slaughter.
- - -
Egg isn’t there for the fight with the Collector. He backs off at Wemmbu’s insistence, retreats to the remaining boat. If anyone comes, just run, he’d said. Of course, he has no intention of following that particular instruction.
But when the familiar howl of a horn echoes out - not from the expanse of sea, but from inside the base - and a volley of TNT erupts the sea around him, sending spray rearing into the sky and raising vicious waves, making the boat tilt and capsize and cast him into the icy water; he knows this plan has gone horribly wrong.
For a moment, everything is cold black pressure, rushing in his ears, constricting around lungs which weren’t prepared to be suddenly starved of air. He tumbles and rolls, buffeted by the worst of the explosions. Kicks his legs in what he desperately hopes is an upwards direction.
When his head breaches the surface, he gasps in a desperate breath, and he’s immediately afraid he’s been blinded, because the world is darker than before. It takes a moment of frantically looking around to realise he’s surfaced beneath his capsized ship - and a shaky hand reaching up to grasp the seat above him, holding on to steady himself in the rocking waves.
He’s lucky to have surfaced where he has. All about him, the previously placid afternoon air is suddenly cut with the whoops and hollers of people passing in rowboats, and Egg doesn’t have to look to know who they are. He knows what that horn meant.
Law have arrived.
He doesn’t fight. He’s under no illusions as to his own abilities, and holding off a dozen Lawmen with nothing but a boat and his bow fall well outside of them.
So he waits for them to pass. Struggles and battles to right his vessel once the voices fade out, drags himself dripping and panting in a puddle against the wood when it finally flips rightside-up.
He allows himself three steadying breaths, gasps of air which rasp against his throat and burn all the way down.
Then he pushes himself up, and gets to work.
- - -
There’s a crack in the sea; a void opened up by the explosion, pouring downwards in a vast rush, threatening to drag his boat down into it as he fights against the current with his oars. His hastily crafted rope is whipped out behind him, disappears into the void with only his grip on the other end to prevent it being ripped away entirely.
From the chasm below, he hears the sound of clashing metal, shattering totems. The gushing water hisses like a beast all its own, but not loud enough to drown out the sickly sweet tenor of LettuceK, calling over the violence far beneath.
“I notice that you don’t talk back as much anymore.” And he sounds so pleased about it that it makes Egg’s skin crawl. Like a plan has finally come together, like he’s got what he wanted. Like he’s tamed a vicious dog.
“Really, you’re trying to take me alive again?”Wemmbu spits back, and his voice is rough with exertion, with fighting unfair odds. “You think I’m gonna sit in a prison again, just so you can execute me later?”
“You should be grateful we’re doing this.” Is the sickening response, and Egg has never wanted to punch anyone so hard in his life.
It’s not a pretty structure, the monstrosity he erects out of leftover planks, but it’s serviceable enough to hold weight. Enough that he can be sure Wemmbu will be able to drag himself up it, as he comes into view at the base of the ravine.
Egg can do nothing but hover over his mad scramble up the rope, dragging himself up to sea level breathless and bloodied. He’s a wreck - his armor is half shattered, he stumbles on his feet as he rushes towards the boat.
Still, Lettuce pursues. They manage to get to open water, Wemmbu hits a few desperate mace strikes, and Egg plants a few satisfying arrows into the joins between his armor plates. He hopes it hurts.
Eventually, the leader of Law seems to decide he can’t win the fight alone, and retreats. Wemmbu takes up the oars, Egg rides behind with his bow at the ready, eyeing the sky for any reinforcements headed their way.
“Bro, how did you even- what was that?” Wemmbu’s sputters - he’s still breathless, though whether that’s lingering effects from the fight, or from how quickly he’s dragging the oars through the water, it’s impossible to say.
He doesn’t take his eye from the horizon.
“I heard an explosion, I figured you needed help.” It’s not a lie, even if his offhand tone feels like one. No need to mention the panic, not when they’re both still reeling from it.
He hears an exhale.
“Well… thank you, brah.” There’s a smile in his tone, the first one in a while, and while Egg is tempted to glance back and check, he doesn’t dare risk looking away from their aft.
“So what happened, did we complete our objective?”
The moment breaks. The warmth fades. Wemmbu’s voice turns cold and hard.
“No. Lettuce has the disks now.”
- - -
He manages to convince Wemmbu to stop and rest with the infallible logic that they both need food to survive, and that - more convincing than the allure of not starving to death, apparently - they can gain enough exp from fishing to begin repairing their gear.
It’s what leaves them sprawled on a beach, Egg with a rod in his hand and ruined elytra in his lap, Wemmbu leaned against the warmth of a smoker while the scent of baking cod permeates the evening air.
The rush of the distant sea spray and lapping of swells breaking against the sand are enough to fill the quiet, to mask the fact that neither of them have spoken for longer than he cares to measure. The sun sinks low and stains the sky red, casts fire over the ocean. It might be beautiful, if they weren’t both beaten and battered, caught between the sting of defeat and the dread for what comes next.
Maybe more daunting than the battle ahead; the conversation that needs to come first.
He can’t ignore it. He won’t. It’s been disconcerting to see Wemmbu so off-kilter and apprehensive, to watch him hesitate where he never would have before - to see him fight without laughter and jabs and quips, with gritted teeth instead of a grin.
Something is wrong.
“So uh. What did they do to you?” Egg keeps his eye on the bobber swaying gently in the waves, but the silence grows heavier, and he knows Wemmbu has frozen.
The bobber dips. He flicks his wrist. Reels. Something glinting and heavy with water jerks from the surface, swings neatly into his hand - swollen leather and waterlogged pages thunk wetly into his palm, humming with the magic of an enchantment. He carefully unhooks it and examines the cover.
“Mending. That’s pretty rare.” Is his quiet acknowledgement. A tiny sparkle of exp tumbles from his catch to suffuse the elytra in his lap. Some of the tears inch their way closed.
He doesn’t push. He knows better than that, when it comes to Wemmbu - the guy has heard his question, and he’ll answer if he wants to. If he doesn’t, he won’t; Egg won’t stretch the tension any thinner by commenting on it.
He sets the book aside, and shifts his grip for another cast. Swing, flick, plop. Silence.
“Nothing.” Wemmbu’s response is as quiet as it is implausible, when it finally comes. His voice rasps with disuse, and he coughs to clear it. “Just… prison, I’ve broken out of prisons before.”
He sounds more like he’s trying to convince himself.
“Pretty sure you’re better known for breaking into prisons.”
“Yeah, and then getting out again.”
“I guess.”
It falls silent. Egg waits. The bobber dips again, and the reel hisses as he pulls in a dripping nametag with little resistance.
“It’s not like it was even bad!” The eruption of his sigh is forced indifference, similar enough to the usual brand of nonchalance he wears more comfortably than his netherite. Egg sees straight through it. “It was just- the guards hated us, obviously, and solitary fucking sucked, but-” He pauses to take a breath, and his remaining armor rattles together as he shifts his weight. He hasn’t taken it off this entire time. “-the rest of it was just mundane, bro. We had to work, and they made us fight, but- but it’s not like they even got anything out of it, they were just keeping me occupied until my execution-”
He stops. The word lands heavy between them.
The bobber dips a third time, but Egg doesn’t pull it in.
“They were gonna kill you.” It isn’t a question. Just a statement of fact. Recognition.
“Yeah.” He hears the soft click of a swallow.
A pause.
“People try to kill you nigh constantly, dude.”
“I know!” Wemmbu snaps. It’s sharp and frustrated and entirely unlike him. “I know they do, it’s nothing new, I shouldn’t- it shouldn’t make me-”
He cuts himself off. They’re getting dangerously close to acknowledging this - whatever this is. The logical part of Egg’s mind whispers trauma, but something in him won’t let him ascribe that word to Wemmbu.
“If I die in a fight, that’s on me,” Wemmbu begins again, and it takes every ounce of self control in Egg not to interrupt and correct the many things wrong with that statement, “-but he doesn’t just want me dead, he wants to make me a spectacle - do you know how many people were in that crowd?”
Egg goes still. Unbidden, his mind conjures the scene, painted by the words of a chattering player passing through the End with stories of the wider world. A raised stage. A prisoner on display. Thousands of eyes staring, waiting.
“He- he paraded me in front of the entire server and promised to kill me if they made him King. And they cheered for it.” His voice fractures on the very last word.
If either of them were the type, he’d shift to put his arm around his friend, or offer reassurance, or apologies.
But they’re not. Wemmbu isn’t soft in that way, and despite what people might think of him, nor is Egg. Neither of them can take comfort like that. He’s fairly sure Wemmbu wouldn’t accept it even if he could.
They both know what he is. What he’s shaped himself into. The last year of his existence on the server has been marked by destruction, chaos, more deaths than they can count. Egg knows the stories. Knows full well what Wemmbu did while he wasn’t around.
Saw enough of what he did when he was.
So the worst part is that it makes sense. He can understand why most of the server would celebrate the idea of Wemmbu’s death, and he’s fairly sure Wemmbu can, too.
But seeing it? Watching thousands of players bay for his blood, enduring that undeniable proof of the consequences of his actions?
Maybe it’s justice. Maybe that’s what Law stands for after all.
He doesn’t know what to say. Can’t fathom how he can make this better, the words that will drag his best friend out of the pit he’s made for himself and back into the light. He doesn’t even know if that’s possible.
“They’re gonna go after the pirates now.” Is what he says instead.
From the corner of his eye, he watches his head tilt forwards. He looks exhausted.
“I know.”
“Are we gonna fight them?”
It’s ‘we’ because of course it is, because despite complaints and arguments to the contrary, despite separation, despite constantly getting caught up in conflicts he never asked for, it always has been. It’s been ‘we’ ever since they were kids.
“Obviously we are.”
“Do you want to?”
Wemmbu falls silent. It’s more answer than any verbal response could have been.
“We could just. Y’know. Not.” He offers. The silence holds, and he sets his fishing rod aside, the line still stretching out across the sand and into the sea. “This isn’t even our fight, I mean. If we just lay low-”
“And let Lettuce take over the server?”
It’s a sharp interruption, but he isn’t deterred. He turns to face Wemmbu, earnest, but he’s staring out to sea and refusing to meet his eye.
“Yes, bro. If we go, like, a million blocks out, and just start a farm or something - what’s he even gonna do? He can’t find us.”
“With what resources, bro?”
“We don’t need hella resources if we’re not fighting. Listen, if we use the pearl cannon-”
“They took down the pearl cannon.”
“Then we walk!” It comes out a frustrated shout. Wemmbu flinches like he’s been struck, and Egg hates hates hates everything that brought them to this point.
He backs down. The rising aggravation deflates as soon as it had come, and he sinks back against the sand; turning his eye on the flaming ocean and setting his hands behind himself to lean against, forcing himself to turn away.
“I’m just saying. We could.” He finishes. It sounds too much like a plea.
“Yeah. We could.” It’s flat. The decision is already made, they both know it.
He exhales.
“But we won’t.”
“No.”
And just like that, the conversation is over. There’s no argument. No point in it. He could tell Wemmbu he’ll go without him, disappear to the edges of the server to live a life free from conflict, and Wemmbu wouldn’t stop him.
But they both know he won’t leave him behind.
“I hate you sometimes, you know that?” He tells the silence, and it’s heavy with everything he can’t say aloud. I hate what you’ve done to yourself. I hate that you won’t let me help.
I hate that you’re going to get yourself killed and leave me here alone.
“I know, Egg.”
The waves continue rippling over sand. A breeze skims the sparse patches of dry grass at the shore. Somewhere further into the island, a bird chirps and whistles.
It doesn’t erase the quiet.