Chapter Text
Shit.
That’s the most coherent thought Wemmbu can form after he opens his eyes again, only to see dark, accusing eyes staring back at him.
He dumbly stands there in the downpour for a few long moments, trying to piece together his own motivation, or rather, an acceptable reason for why he did it. Trying to think before he speaks—an uncommon occurrence—as not to screw this up completely and end up dead in a puddle. Every muscle in his body is pulled taut, and for once, he is perfectly still.
The truth is, Wemmbu does regret it, but not for the reasons he knows he should. He regrets the violent stain of blood on his hands, the sea of red under his boots, the lack of satisfaction. He regrets the toll that it took on him, because executing the backstabbing tyrant shouldn’t have made him feel such an overpowering wave of guilt. Sic semper tyrannis, or something like that.
Thing is, Wemmbu doesn’t regret killing Zam. It had to be done. It was retribution, justice for his mistreatment at the hands of his former ally.
It doesn’t matter how inexplicably wrong it had felt as he thrust the knife in Zam’s throat. It doesn’t matter how his stomach turns now just thinking of the scene, of all that blood on his hands. This is what he’d wanted, right? The last word. No one betrays Wemmbu and gets away with it.
The worst part about it all is that Zam doesn’t even look remotely surprised. His jaw is clenched tightly, brows drawn. Wemmbu cannot even begin to decipher the cacophony of emotions on his face.
Wemmbu sucks in a breath. “I’m sorry—”
“No, you’re not.” The interruption is immediate, holding a sharp sense of finality.
It’s also, undeniably, true. Nevertheless, Wemmbu opens his mouth to argue, but one look at Zam’s borderline-mutinous expression shuts him up. There’s no point in denying his indifference if neither of them will believe it.
“Y’know, the funny thing,” Zam begins, bitterly. “Is that you somehow think you can lie your way out of this. You really think I don’t get how you work? I—” He cuts himself off with a scathing, humorless laugh. “Oh my fucking God.”
“Zam…” Wemmbu doesn’t know what he means to say. Maybe I’m sorry, again, even though it would be futile. Even though Zam would continue to glare daggers at him, perhaps even stab him with the aforementioned dagger.
Wemmbu is a confrontational person by nature—better to face his problems head on, run right into a brick wall, than to beat around the bush. He’s never had any trouble putting his feelings into words, or better yet, actions. Sure, those responses are impulsive and rash more often than not, but that’s besides the point.
He genuinely can’t remember the last time that he was truly, entirely, lost for words. Unable to come up with some way to express any of it. Or, in this particular situation, maybe he just can’t think of any way to both talk this out and appease Zam: because, to be clear, if he doesn’t appease Zam, he’s probably dead. Time loop or no time loop, Zam knows how to hold a grudge. It’s something he and Wemmbu have in common.
Zam continues on his spiel, though it sounds awfully like he’s talking to himself, rather than to Wemmbu. “I was so stupid not to listen to my gut. I never should have allied with you in the first place, I mean, I knew you were a loose cannon.” His voice is low, trembling with barely restrained fury. “I tried to convince myself that you seemed like someone with at least an ounce of loyalty—you only screw with people when they screw with you. Or, so you said. But I get it now. You burn whoever you want, whenever you want, without a care in the world.” Zam takes a step forward, fists clenched tightly. He looks just about ready to kill someone. “Honestly, Wemmbu, do you care about anything?”
Wemmbu swallows, his throat suddenly feeling dry. Who is he kidding? All of it is true. Zam has continuously given him chances to leave everything behind them, to start a new life far away from the empire. And yet, when given the option to wipe the slate clean, Wemmbu had not only gone back to save Egg from Zam’s clutches, but he had leveled the entire empire with no qualms. In fact, he’d relished the feeling of destroying something Zam had built, of proving that he was not weak.
“I care about Egg,” Wemmbu tries, but his voice wavers. It’s an inadequate response, even to his own ears. Noncommittal.
“Do you? Or does it make you feel less pathetic to keep him around?”
“No! I—” He stumbles over his words. Going after Egg is a low blow. “You have no right to call me pathetic when all you know how to do is hide behind your guards!”
But it does make him feel less pathetic to have someone behind him who constantly needs saving, a vicious voice in the back of his head insists, doesn’t it? Someone who couldn’t win a fight if his life depended on it. Someone who knows when to quit.
“I’m not hiding now, am I?” Zam counters. He makes a vehement gesture as if to prove it. “But you, on the other hand—you knew you couldn’t beat me, so you had to nuke my entire life’s work! You were pissed that I got the last word, so you buried thousands of innocent people in ash! I have half a mind to just… let you fucking die in this experiment. Something like you should never see the light of day again.” He spits out his words like he cannot bear to keep them back any longer, each one syncopated so violently that Wemmbu cannot act like he didn’t hear them.
This is no longer just about Wemmbu killing Zam twice—no, this runs deeper. This is Pandora’s Box, which Clownpierce opened by exposing Wemmbu, and it’s impossible to close it and act like nothing happened. All Wemmbu can do now is try to control the situation, to get out of it relatively unscathed. Which he is failing miserably at, as of right now.
He is struck with the sudden, cowardly urge to run. He could face any number of enemies with a grin on his face, he could stare death in the face and hold his head high. But he cannot face himself, the question of his own morality. He cannot allow himself to consider, for a moment, that the lives he’s taken were unnecessary. He would never cause senseless violence.
Right?
Wemmbu glances down at his traitorous, shaking hands. Why does he keep doing that? There’s no blood.
“Everything I…” He swallows. Forces more confidence into his voice. Digs his nails into his palms to keep his voice from shaking. “Everything I did was justified. An eye for an eye.”
Only one of them knows it, but Wemmbu’s words echo Zam’s from his second loop, all that time ago—‘an empire for an empire’.
Zam nods heavily, eyeing Wemmbu with an intensity that could melt steel, holding the two of them in silence for much longer than is comfortable. Wemmbu is surprised he can stand to hold that gaze. The only audible sounds are the wind and the torrential downpour—rather befitting.
Then, Zam smiles sourly. “Did you enjoy it? Watching me die, knowing it was by your hand?”
Wemmbu doesn’t expect the question, so it lands like a blow. It would be so easy to say ‘yes’. To feed into this narrative that Zam is trying to spin—painting Wemmbu as some sort of villain, when his greatest crime is simply remembering those who have harmed him and swearing to return the deed. He should just say ‘yes’, double down, because isn’t it better to be seen as cruel than weak? One instills fear, and the other does no good (unless you’re Eggchan).
But something incomprehensible in Wemmbu—for once—doesn’t let him lie. “No.”
“See? You—” Zam’s expression abruptly contorts in shock, as if only just then processing Wemmbu’s answer. It’s a little disheartening that the man who used to be his closest ally thinks so lowly of him. Unsurprising, though. “...What?”
“Contrary to popular belief, I’m not fucking insane.” Wemmbu shrugs. “No, Zam, I didn’t enjoy killing you. Believe me, I wish I could say I did. Would make the whole thing a lot easier.”
Zam’s brows knit. “Then… then why did you kill me, if not for the satisfaction?” The question is, honestly, uncharacteristic, but abnormal circumstances yield abnormal reactions. Zam has been beaten down, in mind and in spirit, more so than either of them have knowledge of.
To prove that I’m not weak. But Wemmbu doesn’t say that. He wouldn’t dare.
“Retribution.” It’s the only answer that feels right.
“So, you think that nuking my empire and everyone in it, then murdering me in cold blood twice, puts us on equal footing?”
“I think so, yeah,” Wemmbu argues. Honestly, the whole thing does sound a little overkill, when Zam puts it that way, but he doesn’t get how badly Wemmbu was scarred by the betrayal. By the relentless taunting, by how weak it all made him feel. No one gets to make him feel insignificant. “You betrayed me, tried to kill me a bunch of times, and you also blew up my empire!”
“Yeah, but only, like, five people lived there and they all turned out fine. I think.”
“It wasn’t five!” Well, wait… actually, it might have been five. But Wemmbu wants to win this argument, and he’s not going to admit to Zam that he was mistaken. “It was at least six.”
“And here I thought you couldn’t count,” Zam retorts dryly, the ghost of a smile on his face. He still looks a little pissed, of course, but then again, Zam was always the more graceful of the two. He was a diplomat… or something like that.
Which makes Wemmbu think that maybe he would be open to putting this behind them, if only so that they could both make it out of this time loop in one piece. “Listen, I know you don’t exactly want to work with the guy who killed you twice, but for now, we have to get out of here. Once this is all over, we never have to see each other again. Or you can send your goons after me, or whatever.”
Zam pauses for a long moment, his expression a contemplative one. Shit, maybe it was a long shot to ask that. Wemmbu knows for sure that if their positions were reversed, he already would have started up another fight with Zam, tried to get even the only way he knew how.
The eventual answer was a reluctant, “Fine. Fine, but you better not try to kill me again after this. We’re even.”
His relief is immediate and substantial. Holy shit, Zam is either a pushover or a reasonable guy, and Wemmbu is thankful either way. “Yeah.” He, in a moment of spontaneous lack of thought, adds, “I really am sorry, for killing you. I mean it.”
The response that he receives is an unexpected one. Zam just shakes his head, a sad smile on his face. Small droplets of rain scatter from the movement. “You don’t have to lie. I get why you did it.”
“But I’m not lying.” He does mean it this time, and he isn’t entirely sure why. Wemmbu isn’t just saying it to placate Zam, and he’s unsure why he feels so adamant that he must convince him of this.
“And why would I be different from all the other people you’ve killed?” Zam’s voice holds no judgment, for he understands better than most how it feels to have blood on his hands. There’s just a bitter sort of resignation.
“Because we were…” Wemmbu trails off. “We were friends, weren’t we?”
It feels so juvenile to say. He wishes he could take that back without making himself sound even weaker. He should have fucking thought before he spoke, but no, now he just called Zam a friend where Zam had seen Wemmbu as a threat to his empire. Keep your friends close and your enemies closer, right? No wonder Zam had drawn him in so closely; how else would he have kept an eye on the guy who was infamous for breaking alliances?
Wemmbu is so fucking stupid. It had been so obvious, in hindsight. He hates himself for having trusted Zam, even after all this time.
“Friends?” Zam sounds just about as incredulous as he ever has. And Wemmbu has no time to remedy the stupid, thoughtless thing he just said, because at the worst possible moment, a familiar voice pipes up from out of nowhere.
“Friends?” Clownpierce echoes, snickering in his typical, insufferable way. Of course. Of course, he would show up right now. Wemmbu isn’t surprised in the slightest. “My sweet, sweet Wemmbu, you think this guy’s your friend?” He gestures to Zam dismissively. “I—”
‘My sweet, sweet Wemmbu.’ The label Zam had given Wemmbu following the betrayal.
Wemmbu can’t help but rise to the obvious bait. Through clenched teeth, he grits out, “Don’t call me that.”
It makes him see red even now, that stupid, condescending nickname, even though it shouldn’t. Wemmbu claims—much too often, to the point where it feels more like he’s convincing himself than anyone else—that he’s over the whole thing, that he hasn’t given a second thought to Zam since the betrayal.
Well, if he had even the slightest hope of keeping up that pretense in front of Zam himself, he definitely blew it by responding that aggressively to something so trivial.
Clownpierce slowly turns his head to Wemmbu, blinking through his lashes, as if his statement had been completely innocuous. “What?” He asks innocently. “Have you never heard an endearing nickname before?”
“Shut up. What do you want?” Wemmbu changes the subject without an ounce of subtlety, but he doesn’t care. The escape to the time loop is right in front of him, and all he has to do is kill the guy! He’ll do it this time. This is the type of shit he’s supposed to be good at—maybe Wemmbu can’t solve an intricate escape room built for a Harvard nerd, but he can fight. In fact, he’s itching for another duel, a fight that he’ll win. After all, if there’s one thing that Wemmbu can’t stand, it’s losing.
It’s watching as someone undeserving crosses the finish line before him. It’s the rush of blood in his ears as he listens to a crowd cheer his opponent’s name.
It’s the cold-burning rage he felt after Zam told him he was ‘too pathetic to be killed’, as he’d stood amidst the ruins of the colony he’d constructed for Zam himself.
“Well, I wanted to have a civil conversation, but if you want to get right back to losing against me over and over again, then be my guest.” Clownpierce shrugs indifferently, as if fighting Wemmbu is hardly even worth the energy.
As if he’s insinuating that Wemmbu is weak.
In one impulsive, fluid motion, he has his sword unsheathed and is about to go for a blow—
But an abrupt hand on his shoulder stops him. Wemmbu—out of some subconscious instinct—eases up slightly, looks over at Zam for an explanation or an order. The movement is so second-nature to him that it’s almost concerning.
“Don’t,” Zam tells him with an elegant shake of his head, squeezing Wemmbu’s shoulder gently before letting go. His tone is that of a parent warning a young child. It is a gesture that Wemmbu should find completely imperious, after all, he is not Zam’s subject, nor his guard, least of all his friend.
But instead of snapping back, or ignoring him and attacking Clownpierce anyway, Wemmbu clenches his jaw and steps back, sheathing his sword again. “Fine.”
It surprises even him. What, is he Zam’s lapdog? Why the hell should it matter that Zam doesn’t want to take this fight? Wemmbu knows he can win. He will win.
“Clownpierce, my good pal,” Zam begins, and he sounds deceptively amiable. Well, he has always been quite the actor. “We’ve done business together before. You know how I work; I’m an up-front kind of guy. Right?”
“On the contrary. I would say you’re the biggest fraud I’ve ever offered my services to. But, please, do continue.”
Zam’s eye twitches, but his car-salesman smile does not falter for a moment. “You never ended up killing Parrot, like I asked you to. Aren’t you technically indebted to me?”
“Compelling argument, really.” Clown’s voice is flat, and he doesn’t sound inclined to negotiate in the least. He can probably tell where the conversation is headed; hell, even Wemmbu knows what Zam was trying to get at. Since Clownpierce owes Zam from that one time he was hired to kill Parrot and failed—which Wemmbu actually had a hand in, when he hid Parrot—Zam’s arguing that they would be on even footing if Clown let him out of the experiment. The only problem with that solution: where would that leave Wemmbu? Nowhere good, evidently. “But, might I remind you, you’re here to entertain me. So, either you find a way to escape, or I’ll have to kill you for my own amusement.”
Wemmbu, not unlike an excited child watching an argument, keeps glancing between Clown and Zam, anticipating the next move from either side. It’s very entertaining, that is, until Clownpierce drops something that changes everything.
“Oh, and please don’t try to kill yourself again. So miserable to watch,” Clown adds with an eye roll. Zam blanches—wait, what? Did he… did he really attempt to kill himself in another loop? Then, Clown holds a hand to his mouth dramatically—as if shocked, but really, it’s clear that he’s stifling a laugh. “Did I say that out loud? Silly me. Forget I said anything.”
“What are you talking about?” Zam’s voice shakes slightly, and his eyes are wide. The reaction makes Wemmbu think that Zam hasn’t actually tried anything like that, but he’s almost certainly thought about it.
Clown tilts his head, grinning like—you guessed it—a clown. “Do you really want to know?”
“Yes. What are you talking about?” He sounds desperate, which isn’t a descriptor that Wemmbu would have ever pictured Zam to be. There’s a first for everything, he supposes. He would probably relish seeing Zam so humbled if it was under different circumstances—not long ago, he had no qualms about murdering Zam himself, but this feels different somehow.
“Shame you don’t remember. It was a real tearjerker.” Clown shrugs. “You went through a few loops, and you lost it after no time at all. Walked up to the highest tower that was still standing and jumped off.” He says it in such a casual, callous manner that Wemmbu feels physically sick to his stomach. He braves a glance at Zam, partially to make sure that he’s still there, and immediately has to force himself to look away. Zam’s expression is at ends with itself—confusion, revelation, and a sort of frustration are on display there.
The worst part might be that he doesn’t even look that surprised. He looks like he genuinely believes that he would do something like that.
“Why don’t I remember?” Zam demands, but even though he’s trying to keep a sharp edge to his tone, it’s evident that he’s struggling to restrain himself from crying.
“You didn’t want to.”
Wemmbu watches helplessly as Clown whips out his bow and shoots Zam point-blank with an arrow—out of nowhere, mind you. Clown clearly has a flair for the dramatic, because he constantly drops some sort of sinister voiceline right before killing—
The thought is cut off by a sudden, sharp pain right in Wemmbu’s skull.
~ 𖤓 ~
Zam’s throat is impossibly tight. Every raindrop hitting his skin is its own arrow striking him, over and over. There is either an earthquake, or he is shaking violently enough for his vision to blur slightly with the movement.
No. No, Clownpierce has to be lying. Zam would remember it, if he’d killed himself to end a loop. He wouldn’t have asked to forget something like that.
But how else can he explain the vague deja vu nagging at him in previous loops? The unexplainable gaps in his memory where there should have been something there?
The logical part of Zam can’t deny that the evidence is overwhelming. Besides, and he hates to admit it, is it really so far-fetched to suggest that he would have jumped? It wouldn’t have been the first time that Zam had thought of the idea, and that is what scares him the most.
Back when Zam had been in charge of his own empire, he’d considered it, of course. The pressure would get to anyone, even someone with many more years of leadership under his belt—he’d managed more subjects than he’d known what to do with. However, his empire was a double-edged sword of sorts. It had been both the very thing that had steered Zam to the edge, and the railing that kept him from jumping.
God, it just terrifies him that he doesn’t remember it.
“So,” Wemmbu cuts in from a few feet away. He has a nervous, albeit somewhat sympathetic, smile on his face. Zam knows Wemmbu well enough—or, well, he did know him well enough—to recognize that he’s actually concerned for Zam. The thought brings him no satisfaction right now. In fact, Zam is rather mortified that he’s been humbled in such a way in front of someone who will almost certainly use it against him. “Um… you wanna talk, or…?” He trails off.
“No.” His response is immediate, too quick.
Damn, this is a horrible situation to be in. Zam would make a joke about wanting to kill himself to get out of the situation if it wouldn’t be so ill-timed.
He presses his eyes shut and imagines that everything is fine, that his empire is whole again. Yes, when he wakes up, one of his guards will tell him that this is all just a nightmare, and that he has much business to attend to.
Once Zam convinces himself of this, he opens his eyes.