Chapter Text
Flamefrags is considering the sunrise of the sixth day of the Five-Day War when a nuisance disturbs his peace.
“What’s next?” an awful purple thing says. Wemmbu’s voice is grating as always; unpleasantly playful and annoyingly nonchalant.
His sidekick stands behind him. Egg is somehow even more unnerving than Wemmbu. It’s strange, given how totally harmless he is. He’s tall but lanky, like a stretched-out toy or somebody trying to recreate the proportions of a human body from memory. And when he looks at you—like he’s doing now—something about it just cuts right through.
It’s weird. He’s weird. They’re both weird. Still, seeing them standing so close together makes it feel like somebody’s squeezing his heart.
“Dunno,” says Flame. “Um. Might run around a bit. Make a new base, y’know, I think the old one’s trashed.”
“Cool,” says Wemmbu, and it’s so clear that he wants to say something more, but isn’t. Strange. Wemmbu is the last person he’d expect to restrain himself. “Cool, cool, cool.”
Eggchan is still staring at him in that way that makes him want to fight or flight or maybe freeze. His voice comes without warning, because he has no mouth, and because sound just sorta originates around him in an echo-y way. “Are you gonna go look for—”
“Egg,” Wemmbu warns. It’s too late.
“I was right about you, wasn’t I?” Flame snaps, shooting a glare at Wemmbu. “Everybody said you were dead, but I knew the truth. I knew you were alive. I was right then. I’m right now, too. He’s just… off farming somewhere.”
Wemmbu should be mad, right now. Flame knows what Wemmbu looks like when he’s mad. This isn’t it. This is pity.
“Sure,” Wemmbu says. It’s not unkind. But it’s clear he doesn’t believe him. “I’ll, uh, see you ‘round, then.”
“Bye,” Flame says, and Wemmbu is gone.
Egg lingers for a second longer, and from the ether his voice floats up and around again.
“You’re not wrong,” he says. “But not right either, bro. Say hi to Lomedy for me.”
“Whuh?” says Flame, but then Egg, too, is gone.
Flamefrags hasn’t yet had the chance to kill Jaden. He had been trying to—really trying to—the whole damn five days. ‘Cause when he sees Lomedy again he’s gonna need to give him both maces back. To apologize. When he sees Lomedy again.
The memory of the last time they saw each other is a bit like a splinter in the mind. It grates him wrong every time he thinks of it, but it’s a driving kind of shock. A useful pain. Back then, he was—where was he—yes, framed in between two blazing farmhouses; just a shadow of a silhouette, and Flame watched in snippets of flickering light how a Lawman planted his foot in the square of his friend’s back and sent him stumbling forward; how Lomedy caught himself on his elbow; how the soldier let Lomedy pull himself to his feet.
He stumbled in a circle once, and then twice, as if one side of his head was heavier than the other and weighing him down, and then he stabbed his sword into the dirt so that he could have something to lean on. The fire caught in the edges of Lomedy’s laurel crown and flickered over his face, and for just that moment the shadows gave way to one snapshot of his face, twisted in panic, blood smeared over his forehead and dripping down his cheek.
And through the collapsing frame of Lomedy’s home burning to the ground, Lomedy’s pale golden gaze caught his—and then flicked back to the Lawman, still watching.
Then the Deputy’s mace came down right next to Flame’s head and Lomedy’s name died in his mouth.
In short, Flame has had a lot of time to script his apology.
First, he’s gonna hand over the maces—both maces—to Lomedy. Plant them in front of his feet. He’ll have cleaned them up, too; wiped all the blood off the heavy faces and cleaned the debris out of the detailing on the handles. Memorials, not machines of war.
And then he’ll apologize. He’ll say I’m sorry I put you in danger. I’m sorry I took fights I didn’t need to take. I’m sorry I didn’t listen. I’m gonna do better. And I understand if you don’t want to be a part of that.
Then he’ll walk away. And maybe Lomedy will follow him and maybe not.
The maces, the apology, then walk away. Easy.
Now he just has to kill Jaden. Wherever the hell he got to.
Pushing himself up hurts a lot more than it ought to, and the consequences of five days straight of fighting make themselves known on his joints and bones and everything.
Reaping what you sow, Lomedy would say and smile and laugh. Get it?
“Whatever, bro,” Flame huffs to nobody.
He stretches his back and turns over his shoulder to enter the great, glorious, now-ruined Northern Council. Jaden might still be poking around in there. Probably for more things to steal.
The entrance is tall, vaulting, empty. A little like those old Mafia stashes, or Zam’s castle in the Empire. Dictators. They think big buildings make them look cooler, but nothing makes up for skill. That’s why all of these megabuilds and their leaders are destroyed now.
Following the hall's red carpet takes him, unfortunately, to somebody who is not Jaden.
Lettuce sits in his obsidian box, curled up in a loaf like a cat in a cat carrier, if the cat were a vicious megalomaniac and the cat carrier was an unbreakable prison. Parrot and Theo are still chattering away in the corner of the room like two birds on a wire. They barely spare him a glance before going back to whatever it is they were arguing about.
“Um,” says Flamefrags. “Have any of you guys seen Jaden?”
Parrot shoots him a curious glance, and Theo turns to glare at him over the top of his sunglasses.
“No, bro,” he warns. “And if you wanna fight, don’t do it here.”
“Whatever,” Flame groans. So no evil awful pirate here, either. This is really just his luck.
As he turns to go, though, Lettuce calls out from his cage.
“Wait.”
And, against his better judgement, Flame waits. He levels a suspicious glare at Lettuce, who looks… strange. He has a strange kind of look on his face.
“I… wanted to say, um,” the Dictator starts. His eyes are green and slitted, and he struggles to get out whatever the hell that he wants to get out. As he does, Flame rehearses his plan.
Maces, the two of them, then an apology, then he walks away. I put you in danger, he’d say. I’m—
“I’m sorry.”
“What,” says Flamefrags.
“Not about the hunting you down thing, or the bounty, or exiling you,” Lettuce continues, with a little laugh. “You totally deserved all of that, and I—I hope you prove me wrong.”
Right. What a good use of his time.
“Okay, bro,” Flame sighs, pinching his forehead in exasperation. “I feel like we’ve already done this, so can we, like, cut to the chase—”
“Lomedy, I mean. I’m sorry about Lomedy.”
Flamefrags becomes very still, very quickly. Parrot and Theo shut up.
“Ace told me about what happened,” Lettuce murmurs, quietly, from within his cage. “He was an accomplice, sure, but… he was only supposed to go to jail. And, like, I mean, there are… casualties in all missions. But they really shouldn’t have—”
It’s quiet. Lettuce waits, like he’s leaving space for Flame to speak. After it becomes clear that he will not, he continues.
“Apparently, um, a couple of those Lawmen,” Lettuce starts and stops and stutters through it with a kind of strange shame. “They had family or friends that died in yours and Wemmbu’s slaughter, and so—”
And so. And so, and so, and so. Two little words doing a lot of heavy lifting.
“I don’t regret seeking justice,” LettuceK says, before looking down. It’s as if he can’t bear to meet Flame’s blindfolded gaze. “I just—they shouldn’t have done all of that with the body.”
Across the room, he can see Theo palm an enderpearl. Parrot’s as porcelain-calm as usual, but his talons are pulling at the flyaway strings on his jeans. Nervous. They’re worried about what Flame is going to do.
He blows out a ribbon of smoke from in between his teeth—brings a hand up to ruffle through his hair.
“Jeez,” Flame says. “Is that all?”
“I—” Lettuce starts, but in the flash of a second, Flame’s right up against the bars with his fist balled up in Lettuce’s collar.
“You’re a terrible fucking liar, Lettuce,” he hisses.
And then he leaves. He leaves and he doesn’t look back and maybe there are a set of scorched footprints in the red carpet following him out but what the hell does it matter? The Northern Council’s done anyway. He spends a few minutes stalking the halls for Jaden, but no luck. He’s probably gone back to the Great Sea already.
What’s next? echoes Wemmbu’s voice. What’s next, what’s next?
They shouldn’t have done all that with the body, echoes his mind.
Say hi, say hi, say hi to Lomedy for me.
Maybe—
Maybe it’s time to go find him. Even without both maces. One will have to be enough. And Lomedy can forgive him or not forgive him, either way, he just… needs to see his friend. Right now.
He just needs to see Lomedy.
The old farm is just as ruined as he remembers.
It takes about four days of travel where it should have taken three, all on foot, which sucks, because all he really wants is to lay down and sleep for a thousand years after that battle and being on the run and all of it. All he wants is one little bit of peace and maybe somebody to pat him on the head and take watch while he sleeps. What he would do for touch from a hand that doesn’t want to kill him.
And he might get just that—if this apology goes well. And it might not. He’s got to remember that it might not. But also, it might.
The likelihood that Lomedy is still here, in the ruins of Flame’s mistakes, is very low. But there might be some clues in the ash that could help him figure out where Lomedy did go, after, and that would be good.
Under the gloominess of an overcast day, the skeletal shapes of burnt-out structures loom like gravestones. It wasn’t so long ago that he had sheltered here for just a few nights; trained with Lomedy’s farmer friends and Lomedy himself and saw a little smile break through Lomedy’s grumpy facade and thought that maybe—maybe they could work this out. Maybe still, they can work this out.
Flame runs his hand along one of the scorched beams and his fingers come away black with ash. He rubs it between his index finger and thumb. It’s smooth.
Somebody’s crying.
He didn’t notice it at first, and even now it’s faint, but—that is what that sound is. The faint, hollow sound of sobbing, echoing through the ruins. Who—?
Flame’s moving towards the sound before he even really has the chance to think it over. He’s no hero, but it’s hard to hear anyone cry and not do something about it.
Then, suddenly, framed through the black bones of two ruined farmhouses; a figure, kneeling on the ground, curled up in the earth, shuddering in place, their shoulders shaking.
Sunlight breaks through the clouds; light catches on a laurel crown; and Flame is already sprinting.
“Lomedy!”
Somehow, immediately, his whole plan is gone, right out the window. The maces, the apology, the walking away. Because poor Lomedy is right here and he’s crying—weeping, trembling, all alone here in the wreck, and Flame reaches out, like the fool he is, to comfort and hold and make it better and his hands go right fucking through him.
Lomedy looks up at him; an impossibility.
His forehead is smeared with blood; he’s covered with tiny cuts. Flame’s arm is halfway through his chest and it’s cold because there’s nothing there. There are tear tracks down his cheeks, blurring the ribbons of red that run down his face. His hand is cold. There’s nothing there.
“Flame…?” his friend asks, hoarsely. “Did you come back?”
There’s nothing there.
“Loms?” Flame’s voice echoes in this empty place.
There’s a certain disconnect from reality to it; to being elbow-deep in the ribcage of your bloodied best friend; to watch skin disappear into fabric as smoothly as if it was never there. Lomedy’s white shirt is dyed pink-red around the collar like a necklace. His body is broken in the exact same ways it was months ago when Flame last caught his gaze, seconds before he ran away from a fight he was losing; the same cuts, the same scrapes, the same freshly blooming bruises.
He reaches for his friend’s face—to wipe away the tears—to feel the blood smear slick against his fingers—and again, like a dream, he touches nothing; thumbs sinking to the knuckle in Lomedy’s smooth, bloodstained skin. There’s only air there.
“Did you come back for me?” his best friend asks, shakily, again. He doesn’t seem to notice that he doesn’t exist. In fact, he seems faintly relieved; deeply frightened.
“I—yes,” Flame echoes, if only to watch the fear fade from this nightmare. “Yes, I--yeah, bro, I—I came back. For you.”
“Are they coming after you, again?” Not-Lomedy asks, as the panic twists into frustration. It's that familiar angry tone Lomedy took with him in the later days, when they were always on the run. “Are we safe? Are they following you, Flamefrags? I can’t do this again. I thought—I thought I told you to leave. Fuck. You’re never gonna change. You never change.”
In his hands, there’s nothing. Nothing. This isn’t—
Lomedy shudders, and he wraps his arms around himself, and his gaze gets distant, like he’s forgotten Flame is there. “I’m cold,” he murmurs. “I’m so cold. I don’t…”
Flamefrags bites the inside of his cheek, hard. It aches. There’s a rush of blood. His mouth tastes like iron. It hurts—but Lomedy is still there.
He brings one knuckle to his mouth and bites down. The indentation is red and angry on his skin. Lomedy is still there.
He takes a deep breath, moves one hand to the side and braces to slap himself, but as he does—
An impossibly icy touch closes around his wrist. Lomedy’s fingers, closed around his wrist, cold as the grave. Goosebumps rise on his arms and the hair on the back of his neck stands up and all throughout his body the blood in his veins freezes. In a moment, Flamefrags is colder than he’s ever been in his entire life.
“Stop,” says the ghost of his best friend. “Don’t, I’m—I’m right here.”
Then the sensation fades and Lomedy’s touch slips right through his arm and Flame starts shaking his head.
“No,” he says. “No, this—this isn’t—I can’t—”
“Right here,” the ghost echoes, sliding once again into distance. “I’m right here. Is it over? I need to feed the chickens. They’re gonna be so hungry. I need to… I…”
It’s a hallucination. This isn’t real. Or if it is real, it’s lag or desync or something and he needs to get Lomedy help, stat.
“Lomedy,” Flame asks—no, begs. There’s no kinder way to say this; he begs. “Hold my hand. Lomedy, come on, look at me, take my hand. You just grabbed my wrist. You can do it again. Please.”
A tan, calloused hand in his. A tan, calloused hand falling through his; a brush of cold wind. Lomedy looks up at him; a flash of twisted panic.
“Am I dead?” asks his best friend, and Flame just stops breathing. He reaches again and again for Lomedy’s hand but there’s nothing there but he’s right in front of him but he’s right there and the sun is shining on him but he’s ten feet away fighting a Lawman while Flamefrags runs the fuck away like a weakling while his best friend—
dies?
“No,” he mumbles. “No, no, Loms, you’re not—you can’t—you’re my best friend,” he finishes, weakly.
Best friends don’t die.
Lomedy is so—alive. He’s the most vibrant and free person Flame has ever met. He weaves flower crowns out of dandelions and cheats when they’re competing over who can spot the most frogs in the rice paddies and likes when Flame makes breakfast for the both of them. He always picks birds that fly away when they play eye-spy on long journeys. He takes watch while Flame sleeps and gently runs his fingers through his hair. Soothing, calming, loving Lomedy. Easy and free and not fucking dead.
He’s strong willed and he has that little birthmark above the corner of his lips that jumps when he smiles and his hands are rough but warm and he’s so gentle always with the plants and the animals and with Flame, somehow, and he shines in the sunlight ‘cause that’s where he belongs. That’s where—not here—not this—never this—it just can’t—
“Please,” he prays. “Lomedy, please, take my hand. It can be cold, I don’t care, anything, god, please, Lomedy, Lomedy, Lomedy, please, buddy, please, Loms, come on, come on, come on, take my hand, Loms—”
Nothing. Nothing & nothing & nothing.
“Dead,” echoes Lomedy. There’s a strange sort of clarity in his glazed, glass eyes. “I think I get it. I’ve never died before. That’s… this is what it’s like? I feel weird. I feel cold.”
“No,” Flame swears. “No, that’s not it. That’s not it, this is just. Desync. Lag. Lag, you’re lagging, this is lag.”
“You left me behind,” Lomedy murmurs, thoughtfully. “And now I’m—what—a vengeful spirit?”
“You’re not,” Flame says. No, sobs. He’s sobbing. Weeping like a child, pawing at the place where his best friend should be. “I have—I made a whole… I was gonna—”
“Mm, but it doesn’t matter now, does it?” Lomedy muses. Flame’s hand brushes right through where his cheek should be. In return, Lomedy’s bloodstained fingers try and fail to lovingly brush a few stray locs behind Flame’s ear. “Nothing matters to the dead.”
“You’re not,” Flame promises. Maybe he’s just promising to himself. Maybe he’s alone here. But even that idea pales at the edges of possibility; he doesn’t think his mind is capable of imagining something like this; of mutilating and destroying and ripping apart the memory of his dearest and only friend. “You’re my best friend. You’re my teammate. Lomedy, you’re—”
“Gone,” his best friend finishes. “And so’s the farm, and so are the chickens, and the wheat fields, and the rice paddies, and the carrot patch; it’s all gone. Burned down. It’s just you, now, isn’t that right?”
“No, no, no, no,” he mutters. It’s all he can say; reaching over and over again for nothing. What he would give to cradle his best friend tight to his chest and make it better again; to make it all okay--anything to make it all okay--to feel that gentle warmth, that easy solid security; the reassurance that when Lomedy is close nothing will ever happen to him because Flame would never let anything happen to him because Lomedy is his best friend and he loves him so fucking much it hurts. “No, I wouldn’t—if I knew, I’d never—”
“Flame,” his best friend says, softly. “Can you do me a favor?”
The sun shimmers over the blood on Lomedy’s face and catches in his laurel crown like a halo and Flame tries to hug him but he falls right through and so instead curls up on the scorched earth in the fetal position and dreams of dying. I’m sorry I put you in danger, he thinks. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m so tired. I’m sorry.
Numbly, he nods.
“My teammate—my old teammate, not you—he died for me,” Lomedy murmurs. The way they’re positioned—it’s like Flame is taking a nap in Lomedy’s lap; like he’s brushing his hand through his hair. But he can’t and he isn’t. “He never got a grave. I wanted to give him a grave. It was way back when—in the Invis Mafia days, you remember? And when you die with invis on your corpse stays that way. There were too many dead. I couldn’t tell which was him. I picked through the bodies for days. I’d do it again. He was my teammate.”
“You’re my teammate,” Flame chokes. He loses his mind to finding his next breath. His teammate, his best friend, and Flame was his. Was somebody's something. Is, is, is, Lomedy is right here. “You’re my teammate, Loms, Lomedy, I—”
“I died for you,” Lomedy murmurs, so brutally easy, leaning over to see his face. “So do the same for me.”
For a second, Flame thinks that he means that Flame should also die, and the idea is so appealing and so antithetical to who he is that he wants to cry. Anything, anything, anything to get back to reality. Anything to get out of this hell; anything to see Lomedy smile and mean it. Anything to fix this. He has to fix this.
“Flamefrags,” the ghost of his best friend says. “Bury me.”