Work Text:
Wemmbu gives a shout behind Zam, and he hears the close noise of someone crashing into the ground. Zam nearly breaks his neck turning around to see what had happened.
(Ambush. Danger. People people people people people and a blade lodged in my ribcage.)
It’s just Wemmbu. It’s just Wemmbu and the pressure on his chest eases, only a little, because it’s just Wemmbu, and nothing is happening. Wemmbu’s being an idiot, slipping around on the slightly damp obsidian floors and complaining about everything. Zam sighs. Of all the people that he had to be stuck in an inescapable prison with, it was the purple guy who didn’t shut up . He has half a mind to go over and stitch Wemmbu’s mouth closed, giving him maybe a few moments of silence.
There is silence, warm and fluffy and comfortable, and then there is the silence of his palace. Cold. Dark, empty hallways. Rats squeaking as they scampered through the walls and a leaky drainpipe making small drip noises every few seconds. It’s not as if Zam’s cloak can do him any good against the cold in that silence. The servants avoided him for a reason.
(Washing the red off his sword, glowing with imbued enchantments. Picking dried blood off his fingers. A specific brand of hand soap that smells of coconut shampoo and just barely fails to conceal the sharp metallic tang hanging in the air around Zam.)
His eye twitches. That same wave of pain washes over all his senses, and he’s on the edge of doubling over(in front of Wemmbu . No weaknesses. If you show the slightest bit of hesitation it will surely be exploited to some extent.) when it calms. Only a bit. It’s a locked room, a dark room, obsidian on all sides and some kind of foolish hope for escape lingering in the air. Zam doesn’t really hold well with hopes, but who is he to judge. Wemmbu takes his snarky remarks and his stupid tiny crown and his annoyingly perfect hair to the next corner. And the next and the next and the next, pawing at the walls, sighing, scratching the obsidian with an absent-minded fingernail.
Zam’s own nails are broken, their polish chipped off long ago. The edges are chewed. He doesn’t remember whether he’d done that during a stress spell or when tearing his hair out. Pain wracks his lower body– okay, he does double over this time, but Wemmbu wasn’t looking so hopefully he hadn’t seen. (Zam doesn’t really hold well with hopes. Who is he to judge. No one.)
“Are you going to sulk like that forever or help me solve this thing? We could die in here, you know.” Wemmbu says from a corner of the obsidian box. He’s flipping the trap doors, one by one, as he speaks. Nothing happens.
“And I would be so honored to die by your si–” Zam starts to quip, voice dripping with sarcasm and then nothing because he was cut off by– it. Not much of a quip if he’s going to clutch his head and grit his teeth as his temples throb because hey, he’s got to take it like the king. Zam’s crown is lopsided on his messy blond curls– which are less hair and more knots . “--side.” He finishes, a half-choked, wrangled thing. It’s pitiful, really, he knows, from the way his hands twitch with the urge to strangle Wemmbu and be fucking done with it. (He should strangle himself. The bottle of white tablets in his right pocket rattles, as if the morphine was calling to him.)
The purple figure to his right blinks. Flecks of gold line Wemmbu’s irises, and it’s pretty, in a sense, the intricate detail that his face displays oh so shamelessly. Zam tries to brush it off, reaching into his coat pocket instinctively. By muscle memory, his hands turn the bottle of pills over to check the recommended daily dose. He’s long surpassed that number, by something with a lot more zeros and digits and tears and pain. Clumsily, he shakes a few into his hand. The noise is uncomfortably loud in the deafening silence. Zam swallows the white tablets dry.
There’s nothing that can stave off his headaches and stress and weeks upon weeks of hurting, but it was nice to think that the pills could . Whatever relief they provided long ago is kinda– gone. Wemmbu’s footsteps echo off the hollow walls. Zam feels vacant and empty– well, isn’t that what the medicine’s supposed to do? Erase the feeling. Erase the heart. And Wemmbu– okay, Wemmbu’s there to see it all sort of just happen, but it’s not as if he’s paying attention. Zam couldn’t care less.
“Zam. I actually need you to wake up now. Zam .” Wemmbu’s voice is coming from the end of a long tunnel. Really, really long tunnel, because all the vowels and consonants are warped from a distance, twisted by wind, and the words don’t come out quite right.
“Zam.”
His name. Over and over and over again, scrawled in sprawling letters that cover half his throne room. The words are written in bright red.
He smudges it. His palms come off slightly crimson, smelling just a bit bitter and metallic. He brings his index finger to the tip of his tongue.
It’s sweet.
“Zam.”
(The small bottle of morphine pills slips from his grasp and clatters to the ground with finality. Zam doesn’t move to pick it up. If he didn’t know better, he’dve thought that the muffled thump somewhere nearby was the sound of a body being dropped to the floor. Dead weight, just like that. It’s not as if the pills are much of a secret anyways.)
There is something inside his chest, much like a song building to its crescendo, its climax– too loud, too heavy, too much pressure. There’s a coda, he thinks, as black swarms the edge of his vision. Not too late to fall asleep and forget about all of this. He balances his quill on the edge of the inkpot and bites the tip of his ring finger. It’s the only one Zam never adorned with his wealth, his gold rings that would’ve otherwise been displayed with pride. Blood wells up from the tiny wound he’d inflicted on himself, and he dips the quill into the newly made scarlet ink on his hand.
The feather scratches as he writes and crosses things out and writes and crosses more things out, and writes and corrects until you don’t know where one sentence ends and the other begins. You can only just make out the first two words on the page where the fading light of dusk illuminates it from the window. The red ink still shines, because it’s fresh, and you have to read them multiple times to understand the meaning that they imply .
Dear Wemmbu,
“Zam.”
Dear Wemmbu,
“ Zam.”
Dear Wemmbu–
And then his veins are on fire.
Not literally, not in that sense– but there is fire where his cells should be, and ichor where his blood should be. When he bites down on his ring finger there’s no red, just gold, gold gold gold goldgoldgoldgold
gold
, until it’s all over him and he doesn’t know what to do. Zam brings his
index finger
ring finger to the tip of his tongue and it tastes like life, like summers, like the shitty tropical fruit drinks that were
way
too diluted with water.
Where did he get that one from? It’s been a long time since Zam has drank anything. His lips are cracked. He pretends that he doesn’t know how awfully chapped they look from the outside, no matter what he does to try to conceal his own terrible self-care.
Zam screams as fire is set up his spine, climbing, and down his legs, catching flames and bursting ablaze– how? The morphine tablets. Oh, god, the morphine. Where is his medicine? It can numb it, he knows , it’ll stop the fire in his head and douse the pain over with icy water. It’ll weed out the thorns. Where the fuck is the container and how did he drop it and what is Wemmbu doing next to him–
His hands latch onto something smooth and cold and round, lying apparently innocently on the ground. So harmless. Zam picks it up, calm, serpentile. He shakes out whatever is left in the bottle, a hefty amount, and listens as they clatter around. He remembers seeing Wemmbu somewhere, no, yes, the purple figure is in the room, he’s sure. It’s not like Wemmbu would stop him from– from doing whatever shit Zam is prone to doing.
He lifts the pills up to his mouth. Too many of them to count, he thinks, and then scatters them like stars into his mouth. Someone gasps, tackles Zam to the ground, and then is forcing him to cough them up . They’re a painkiller. They’re not doing anything to him, so can he stop getting assaulted already. Wemmbu’s voice lances through the fog, it’s hard to breathe, and then Zam thinks that the medicine has done its job.
Overdose isn’t always the most unfortunate thing. He– his body falls to the ground with a thump. Dead weight.
“Hey,”
The disembodied voice floating somewhere above Zam calls out. And then he’s getting prodded in the side. His first thought is scrambled, so fucking messed up, because -where are his pills and -why is Wemmbu staring down at him like a creep.
“Get off me,” Zam starts, or– he thinks he does. It’s hard to speak around his tongue, which feels thick and heavy and his throat cramps up in pain that flares like the sun and its flames. Mockery of the crown that he wears on his head, too heavy for his own good, and the mussed up hair that splays out golden silver under moonlight. He swings his arm out, blind(to the follower and the king, blind loyalty), and in a second Wemmbu isn’t on that side of him but now the other. Curse slow reflexes and overdose apparently not killing him.
“Don’t you want to talk.” Wemmbu says, deadpan– rhetorical. He’s going to talk whether Zam likes it or not. Words clog at the back of his throat and he can’t swallow them down or let them out, either.
“I–” Zam opens his mouth. Block. The barrier that keeps him from talking slides right into place, somewhere between his heart and his lungs, obstructing his esophagus. Blood roars in his ears. Frustrating as it is that he can’t speak, can’t, Zam would rather not be able to than have to force himself to conversationalize normally with Wemmbu . It’s Wemmbu that they’re talking about, okay, not anyone else. (There isn’t anyone in his life who he could have a truthful conversation with. Zam doesn’t like exposing himself, turning himself inside out for the most raw parts of his mortality to show. People are a weakness.)
(“Your eyes are pretty,” Wemmbu had once said. Zam pretends his heart doesn’t twist at the memory. That time is long behind them.)
Wemmbu frowns at him. He blinks, and then all Zam can think about is the flecks of exquisite gold lining Wemmbu’s eyes, contrasting with all the purple. He can count the freckles on the other’s face, one after the other, and he can notice the way that a canine poked out onto Wemmbu’s bottom lip when he frowned.
Zam opens his mouth.
Block.
Zam opens his mouth.
Block.
Zam opens his mouth.
Block.
Zam–
Block .
He coughs. How come he can cough but the sentences don’t make it past his lips? It’s one thing to hold infinity in his hands and laugh at Wemmbu while the latter coughed up blood– it’s definitely another to be crouched, mute, on the floor at Wemmbu ’s knees. (Oh how the tables have turned.)
“Zam. I can’t stress this enough. Are you okay? ”
Zam opens his mouth. The barrier is gone, replaced by a burning, caustic sensation that can’t be described as anything but indignation. And maybe-not-maybe guilt. He’s never made a mistake in his life. How could he feel guilty? Sure, his body is fallible, possibly even mortal– and Zam knows that there has likely been something that he did– but (realistically, he is flawless.). Mistakes are for people who have an assured tomorrow. Zam doesn’t even know if he’ll make it through today.
Zam opens his mouth. There’s no block, so there’s also no reason to remain silent under the scrutiny of Wemmbu’s ( gold-flecked) eyes. “Of course I’m fine.” He scoffs, his voice scratchy– tone still the one of a king and not of a follower. He does not remember a single conversation with Wemmbu that wasn’t coated in six different layers of hurt and longing, not that this one was the exception. They aren’t going to talk about the pills. They aren’t going to talk about the broken white bottle lying innocently on its side, rolled off onto the other side of the room. Wemmbu will yell at him, shout at him to just help them escape already , and they will go back to normal and Zam can take his tablets again.
No one’s stopping him. So why does he feel like Wemmbu would, even after everything? He hasn’t done a single shit thing for the guy after their separation. Still there isn’t anything that he’d do for Wemmbu. Not after–
After purgatory. After hell. After ashes and blood and explosions and Wemmbu and–
“Okay,” Zam sighs. He feels older than he should, shoulders quivering from the weight of the world. Here, there isn’t anything to weigh him down except for the purple guy hovering at his side. “Okay.” He repeats, defeated.
Wemmbu raises an eyebrow. Zam tries to ignore how his long, (long) eyelashes flutter when he does that. “So are you gonna tell me something or not? Do we have to discuss that?” He points, and Zam catches sight of the bottle, his head hurts, his vision swims, and he knows the pills will be the only thing that fixes it. He’s sure .
“No.” Zam manages to choke out through the barrier already sliding into his throat. His lungs feel dry and tired and he just wants to drop dead here. It’s been a long day, a really long day, and at the end there’s no one stopping him from throwing himself at the sharp, jutting obsidian bits and bleeding out on the dark black rock. (hesitantly, he allows Wemmbu in. Maybe Wemmbu would stop him from doing that. Caring is already a first sign of danger– but when has anyone ever accused Zam of being smart?)
One olive branch at a time. The smooth obsidian is cold under Zam’s clammy palms. “I– don’t – want to talk.” He’s beginning to feel fuzzy again, he thinks, underneath the barrier that tightens the chains around his neck. Sinking under the black water, so soft, warm, and he embraces it with open arms–
“ Zam! Stop, you’re going to kill yourself, no, don’t just–” Really far away, Wemmbu sounds. Like before, but this time when Zam bites his index finger, the blood doesn’t taste so sweet anymore.
“Don’t just sit there and pretend like you don’t care! I care! I hate myself for caring!” And surprisingly, that’s what jolts Zam awake before he remembers that no one actually cares. It’s been a while since he’s felt so warm, euphoria making his soul literally bump up against the low ceiling of his prison. No one cares. His palace has never felt so empty since Wemmbu left. His portraits have all been smeared with his own blood(it doesn’t taste sweet.). Wemmbu isn’t there.
“You’re not real.” Zam points out, his voice slurred with– something. He’s not sleeping. It’s unconsciousness before he realizes that it could actually be the end . “ Real Wemmbu wouldn’t care so– so much.” Flecks of gold glint in his darkening field of sight, stars above in the endless night sky. “Besides, no one ever cared that much anyways.” He adds quietly.
“I do , and if you’re gonna fuck about it then–” Zam hears a sharp inhale as the speaker continues with a sad sigh. “I don’t know. What could I do with your dead body if you’re gone?”
The words only just register in his head. Ten seconds before, he’d been falling into fuzzy sleep, and now Zam is wide awake in the cold. His face feels weird; it doesn’t make sense until he feels the two silent tear tracks making their way down his cheekbones. (People are a weakness; it’s been too long since Zam has remembered what being around another is like.)
“I don’t know.” Zam mutters, and falls– okay, fuck it, he falls into Wemmbu’s lap. It’s too early to be thinking about dying anyway. All the fight drains out of him and he lets himself be tired--
Water drips down from that silent place in his head. It reminds him of rats and empty corridors and too many cold days. It sounds like the leaky pipes and a Zam from not long ago, telling his troops to fight .
This time, Wemmbu’s voice laces through the memories.