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It's when Flame says, in a rather audacious voice, that he's out of gear and can't take on the wave of LAW back up that approaches Lomedy's now destroyed farm that he had spent months expanding and expanding, that Lomedy decides to throw in the towel.
Without Flame, there’s really no chance that Lomedy could keep what he had — and looking around, there didn't seem to be much left anyway. Craters upon craters, his clean and organized farm he had worked upon under the harsh and unrelenting sun, and had kept alive during the ice-swept winters where Lomedy had scraped the snow away from the seeds that had not yet even begun to sprout with his bare hands, was now just holes of dirt and cobblestone that he could not bare to look at.
He turns, instead, to Flame, who is not much more of a pleasant sight, but is standing with Lomedy's mace held tightly in his grasp, fingers curled reflexively around the hilt, and Lomedy doesn't even have it in him to ask for it back.
“Just go,” he says, wings slumping achingly down in defeat, “If you're that scared of dying, just go.”
Flame doesn't seem to give him the grace of hesitance, pearling away before Lomedy's sentence is fully out of his mouth. There is no goodbye, or promises of a return, not even was there a request for Lomedy to flee with him, just the back of his former best friend, and along with him, any hope Lomedy had left. Something that wasn't his regular anger churns in his stomach as he looks at Flame's retreating figure, and he lets his sword drop, a loud clang as it connects with the ground making him flinch instinctively. He steps back, hands halfway into the air when he speaks.
“I surrender.”
When Flame leaves, a large group of Lawmen leave with him, another small group chasing after his now-retreating friends. They’ve always been better than Lomedy in this respect; knowing when to quit, when a friendship is a lost cause and trying to save it would only hurt themselves.
Of all the people that Deputy Ace brought with him, only one is left behind to hear his surrender.
And yet, even after his declaration, they charge forward, Lomedy reflexively stumbling back a few steps. Hands dropping from their raised position as they keep swinging their sword at him. Like they’re aiming to kill, even once Deputy Ace says that they’ll ‘take’ him. Just the wording alone tastes bitter in the back of his throat, demeaning and dehumanizing at once. The sole Lawman left behind to deal with him while the rest chase down his friends and Flame moves unchecked, seemingly deciding Lomedy is undeserving of the humiliation of mercy.
“I said I surrender!” He says again, louder. Hates that desperation is tinging his voice just a bit higher, more panicked than before. A wild swing, far too close to his face, sends him stumbling backwards, his retreat one full of humiliation and fear.
Lomedy scrambles back, falling backwards on the cold dirt. Feels against the cracks in his armour where his leggings are slowly breaking, boots already shredded to the point that he kicks them off. He doesn’t shriek when a sword is swung so hard that it slams into the dirt only a sliver from his leg and takes effort to tug out, but he imagines his bone cleaved through if the Lawman didn’t miss and feels so nauseous he almost throws up.
The second time the sword swings, he’s too slow to scramble away.
The blade cleaves into the side of his calf with such strength that he can barely breathe — then the white hot pain hits, burning and angry and overtaking everything else. Blood eager to stain the ground beneath him red, warmth sapping from the wound.
The sword slices through him at an angle — so when the Lawman pulls it out to swing again, it catches on more flesh and muscle on the way out. It’s agony.
Lomedy screams.
Thankfully — if there’s any narrow sliver of gratitude to be had, for people trying to kill him — this seems to be enough to grab Deputy Ace’s attention. He wonders, for a split-second, if Flame had heard him — would he have come back, or would he remain steadfast in his escape at Lomedy's expense.
In hiccups of time, where half of what Lomedy sees is white and black and there’s a ringing in his ears keeping him from understanding what’s happening to him at all, he hears distant shouting and the sound of bodies being pushed, items clattering as someone lands with a thud by his side.
When he comes back to himself, drenched in sweat while cold air licks at his skin and his panting sounds like a whimpering dog, Lomedy is lying flat on his back while Deputy Ace kneels by him.
A circle of pressure just under his knee has him looking down at his leg, finding a tourniquet wrapped around it, tight. The wound is weeping blood sluggishly, bandage slowly being wound around it by Deputy Ace. The Lawman that had been swinging at Lomedy, going after him even after his declaration of surrender, is farther away but still visible out of the corner of his eye. He doesn’t dare look their way — violently opposed to it, even, when his mind is sluggish and every animal instinct overtakes his human sense of pride.
The sun’s barely moved from behind gray-blue skies. About half-an-hour must have passed since the errant swing that landed and tore through flesh, muscle, almost nicking bone. Lomedy’s not sure about the latter, but it hurt so bad he wouldn’t be surprised if he was right.
“They weren’t supposed to do that,” Deputy Ace says matter-of-factly. Lomedy blinks with bleary eyes. The world spins lazily in response.
“What?” He mumbles. His tongue feels too large in his mouth, even simple words coming out in a slur.
“They weren’t supposed to hurt you that badly. Lettuce wants you and the rest he’s collecting untouched, save for necessary force. Makes for a prettier picture, you know. Too wounded and you turn into a martyr. Can’t really have that, right?”
Lomedy can’t piece together most of what Deputy Ace is saying, but a distant part of him seems to put together that it doesn’t matter whether or not he replies. Some people are just the rambling type, happy to find a captive audience to listen to whatever they’re thinking.
“‘Course, it’d be different with Flame, but he didn’t seem too torn up about leaving you behind,” Deputy Ace hums. The world slowly comes back into focus, pain sharper and uglier as he tightens the bandage around his wound.
“Wait—” Lomedy manages, words still half-baked and too slow as he reaches an unsteady hand up to his calf.
Deputy Ace doesn’t seem to care as he briskly ties off the bandage he was winding around the wound, tying it tight — so much so that Lomedy can’t help the wounded, pathetic noise that leaves him, vision whiting out momentarily.
He comes back to himself when Deputy Ace is speaking to his Lawmen, a bit farther away from Lomedy. Breathing slowly, in and out in a rhythm that’s steadier than the whimpering gasps he was trying to blink through, Lomedy slowly pushes himself to sit up.
Almost folds in on himself immediately, at the rush of pain from everywhere that overwhelms him at once. Closes his eyes even as a headache starts to throb at his temples through it all, unable to stop his breaths from turning shuddery again.
Eventually, after a long while spent inhaling and exhaling, he opens his eyes.
Standing by him, watching over his prone body, is the Lawman that sliced into his calf in the first place. Lomedy can’t help flinching back, hates himself for it even as he grits his teeth and tenses up despite the meagre scraps of his pride screaming at him to show no fear.
He looks over again, catches their eye, and freezes instead of tearing his gaze away. The Lawman only gazes back. They look — bored.
Lomedy lets out a shuddering exhale. His breath fogs in front of his face.
Their preparations for the journey back— because Lomedy's farm isn't particularly close to anywhere— takes a moment. His friends are nowhere to be seen, likely to have escaped and for that, Lomedy is slightly relieved if not for the rather quick self assessment of his injuries he needs to be doing right now instead.
His hand is cramped, a sting between his ligaments every time he stretches his fingers out to ease the numbness that begins to creep in, his yellow shirt is now stained orange with blood seeping from the gashes, though at this point, they had begun to clot and end up at a sluggish fall rather than the quick rush that originally had him panicking. His side feels winded, difficult to to breathe in against, and he distantly remembers Flame’s blunt sword-edge swinging into it during practice, knocking the wind from his lungs and eliciting a violent cough against the ground.
Ignorable, for the most part.
His calf took priority, a clean strike embedding itself deep inside flesh and muscle, each movement feeling like his last. Too much, too fast, even just simple cloth grazing past shoots white-hot pain through him, enough so that he has to blink away tears faster than they fall, a groan of pain escaping him despite his efforts to muffle any sign of weakness.
It's all for naught, Lomedy thinks, unable to stretch himself out of the curl he's wound himself into for fear of setting the pain off again, I am weak.
“You alright?” The Lawman to his left asks. Their tone is distinctly mocking. Lomedy takes shuddering breaths and ardently ignores them, hands curling into fists while he tries not to cry.
The other wounds — everything else that hurts too much to ignore — are on his wings.
Lomedy, aside from the regular upkeep someone should be doing with their body, doesn't particularly care for his wings, and up until he settled down as a farmer— a real one who didn't get his crops blown up every two hours— had kept them folded against his back and under his clothes. It has taken him a while to perfect the look, ensuring the weird lumps were smoothed out and that they didn't bulk against his form, and it was a testament to how well he had hid them that even Flame hadn't seemed privy to that information.
Maybe it was his fault that he had them out to begin with, and maybe he should've kept useless things out of the way because what good are clipped wings that prevent him from flying anyway, but all of that became a rather nonexistent point now. There were gashes in more places than there was not, littering against the feathers, bold against the yellow and white, and Lomedy shuddered seeing his long plumes scattered and trampled over on the ground.
Everything hurts. His wing bones, thinner than those of the rest of his body, seem bent at an odd angle, and Lomedy is certain once the adrenaline fully wears off, he'd be in a world more of pain than he already is now. Or had been certain, because despite his beaten down figure, bruised and bloodied and completely unable to stand if not for his elevated heartbeat rushing blood through his veins at disgusting speeds, it seemed LAW wasn't keen on taking a slow approach.
“Get up,” the Lawman next to him says, kicking at his side with a stray boot. Even if just to grab his attention, the weight of netherite knocks the wind out of him for a brief moment, making Lomedy’s head spin.
Deputy Ace’s voice gets louder as he hears the other Lawmen approach. “—Have to secure the prisoner.”
“It’s just one of him against all of us, what could he possibly do?” He hears one say.
“Well,” Deputy Ace says pleasantly, making a movement with his hands that seems to signal blood in the water to the handful of guards he has with him, “There is the issue of those wings.”
It’s like a gun going off to start a race.
Rough hands grab his wings, folding them violently against one another, and from the years of use in that position, they go without complaint. Lomedy, however, grits his teeth, and whirls around, staggering as his calf almost makes true on its promise to collapse, before another pair of hands grabs his wrists, pulling them together in front of him.
“What the—” he begins to say, but is forcefully interrupted by the same hands gripping his wings, this time coarse rope sliding into the existing cut at the side and looping round and round until it’s taut against his injuries. Lomedy shakes, twisting and turning in an attempt to keep their hands away, but more of them seem to join during his frenzied panic, keeping him firmly in place.
“It hurts,” he gasps out, hot tears running down his face one after the other, and his throat burns the same way his wings did, constant and heavy. He feels more rope against his skin and it makes him nauseous, the world spinning beneath his feet.“I-it hurts.”
Deputy Ace steps up beside him, leaning down to finish the knots of rope around Lomedy’s wrists and runs his hand along the free end of it, reaching the end before pulling it towards him like Lomedy was a dog on a leash.
He's screaming before he even knows it.
His calf can not support his weight, he can not move and if he did, it would kill him. Lomedy would not survive this travel, not with his bruises and shaky gasps that hurt every time he breathes inwards and his wings that are bound despite them being useless, right against the cuts and gashes and there was sure to be infection down the line and Lomedy will not survive.
“They're clipped—” he chokes out, vision blurry from the tears that keep pooling, “My wings, they—” He gasps again, his lungs contracting painfully with the cold air of night that had begun to show.
Deputy Ace seems more interested in that than anything Lomedy has to say, clicking his tongue disapprovingly, “You know how it is, Lomedy, security measures have to be followed.”
“But it—”
“Hurts?” Deputy Ace echoes, “I heard you the first time.”
Lomedy’s voice wobbles, on the verge of breaking, “But I’m not a threat, I- I surrendered!”
“You were aiding and abetting a criminal,” Deputy Ace says, not sounding very sorry at all, “I can’t take it easy on you just because you’re whining in front of me.”
“You said — you said—” Lomedy’s mind spins, trying to grasp his words from earlier out of thin air. They’re blurry, smoke that he can barely hold onto. “Lettuce — and martyrs.”
“Right, right,” Deputy Ace nods along, as if only just being reminded. A sliver of traitorous hope joins the mess in the pit of Lomedy’s stomach before he continues, “I don’t necessarily agree with all his decisions. I’m sure you understand — it didn't seem like you and Flame were on the same page when we got here.”
“That's not — I didn't—” Lomedy struggled to form the words, “I wanted him to leave.”
“So why was he still here? Why were you fighting with him?”
Deputy Ace’s statements are all calm and methodical, a stark contrast to the way Lomedy feels like he’s scrambling for anything to say, unable to piece together an explanation to absolve himself to the point that he doesn’t need to suffer to such an extent that he feels like he’ll die.
Lomedy feels his breath shorten, rapid and quick. He’s too aware of the rope cutting into his wings, of the blood seeping through the bandage around his calf, falling atop plumes of feathers that were ripped out during his measly struggle.
“Please,” he whispers, begs, “I — I can't.”
“Did you ask Flame to stick around like that, too?” Deputy Ace asks, as though genuinely curious. It’s another cut to add to his death from a thousand, one that strikes at the epicentre of his chest.
Lomedy's throat constricts, mind going back to the moment he had seen the hoards of netherite adorned players approach his farm — how Flame left after leading them here to begin with — left him behind.
“Or,” Deputy Ace says, when Lomedy doesn’t say another word, “Were you more pathetic — tell me this, how many times did you have to ask him? If you have a number, I could be convinced to match it.”
Lomedy's reply is an incoherent mumble.
“Speak up.”
“I don't… I don't remember.”
At that, Deputy Ace snorts — a genuine sound of condescending amusement that echoes in Lomedy’s head, right alongside every plea for Flame to stay and help that went unanswered.
“You know, Lettuce suggested we take you in regardless — said something about how you're his only friend, right?” It’s like pressing a thumb into a throbbing bruise, one that aches alongside everything else inflicted upon him.
“He's not my friend.” And it comes out so defeated that Lomedy hardly recognizes his voice as his own.
“I think,” Deputy Ace says, placidly, “That I don't appreciate you lying to me.”
“There's no point in taking me,” Lomedy tries to argue again, desperation creeping into the crevices of his voice, finally cracking, “He's not coming for me — he left.”
Left me here with you, to suffer through this, goes unsaid, but Deputy Ace seems to hear it anyway, if the slight upturn of the corner of his lips is any indication.
“You might be right, then,” Deputy Ace nods, as if contemplative, “I wouldn’t leave any friend I cared about to this.”
It’s a taunt in two ways — digging further into the gaping wound that Flame carved into Lomedy by leaving behind and the silent acknowledgement that nothing about this was just. If it was, Deputy Ace wouldn’t look so pleased with himself while the rope tied to Lomedy’s wrists was wrapped around his scarred hands.
“Well,” Deputy Ace says, when Lomedy can’t figure out what to say — not with every moment of the past day weighing so heavy on his chest that he can hardly breathe, “Nothing left to do but go, right?”
He tugs the rope again, turning on his heel and striding towards the hills and just over, where the Lawmen had left their horses. Deputy Ace’s was the most notable one, a large white steed twice the size and strength of Lomedy who trailed along dejectedly, flanked on all sides by soldiers who eyed his wings cautiously for the the faintest twitch to suggest flight, though Lomedy was far more concerned with how his calf screamed the moment any weight was pressed upon it, and how his vision was splotched with black dots that seemed to get larger every time he blinked.
He turns to the Lawman on his left, too exhausted to call out to Deputy Ace up ahead, and asks in an exhausted tone, “Which one do I get on?”
There is a pause, in which Deputy Ace stops to turn around to look at the rest of the gathered Lawmen, as if searching for a volunteer. When no reply comes, only averted eyes or half-hearted shrugs, Deputy Ace turns back to Lomedy and tips his head, as if to say, What can I do?
“I guess you'll have to walk,” Deputy Ace tells him, as if informing him of the weather.
“You can’t be serious,” Lomedy deadpans, and it’s the most grave he’s heard his voice go, “There’s no way I — fuck!”
He hisses, curling over as he staggers to his left, his calf burning from where he accidentally stood forward too fast instead of his slow release of weight before shifting over to his good side. His vision whitens out for a moment, and he can feel himself teetering, at the risk of falling before his shoulder connects with a chestplate. He takes a deep, shuddering breath in, promising himself not to cry before carefully righting himself.
One of the Lawmen, out of the corner of his eyes, seems to shift uncomfortably. Someone Lomedy hasn’t seen much of during the mess of a fight earlier, less apathetic than the rest of the crowd appear to be. He sees them look over to Deputy Ace and open their mouth to say something before they’re stopped — before they can even get a word out, they're silenced by Deputy Ace’s sharp glare.
He turns his full attention back to Lomedy a moment later, shrugging.
“You'll have to make do,” Deputy Ace says apologetically. It's more salt in the wound. As if he thinks Lomedy is an idiot.
“The journey will take us longer,” Lomedy says through gritted teeth, willing for the flash of pain to subside, “I can’t walk.”
Deputy Ace points to him, “You seem to be walking just fine?”
“You know I won’t last.”
“Lettuce only needs you alive enough to execute,” Deputy Ace shrugs. “I don't really care for his ‘leave the prisoners unharmed’ stance. I'm sure you'll make it in one piece. Mostly in one piece,” he amends himself, a quick addition at the end.
His eyes drift to Lomedy’s wings, and on impulse, Lomedy shifts them — a quickly realised mistake, as the rope digs, deeper into the cracks, chafing against the already sensitive and reddened areas. His promise lasts all of two minutes, as he chokes out a broken noise of pain, tears brimming his eyes and all it takes is one blink before they begin to fall. His wings twitch, trying to find an angle where the rope doesn’t keep the breath from Lomedy’s lungs and he doesn’t fail to notice how all the Lawmen around him seem to tense.
“They don't work,” he pleads, ragged and tearful, his words catching in his throat whilst he tries to take in lungfulls of air, but Deputy Ace seems bored of the interaction already, turning back towards their slow climb downhill.
LAW arranges themselves neatly around Lomedy. Deputy Ace at the forefront, still holding the end of the rope close by, attached to his saddle in his direct view. The rope itself is long enough that Lomedy can walk behind Deputy Ace without having to run, or stay pressed close, but short enough that he can’t wander about, and as if to add insult to injury, stationed to his left, right and just behind him, are three lawmen — also on horseback — keeping a watchful eye on Lomedy’s shaking figure.
Everything becomes distant after that. His pain becomes the focal point of his world, everything washing out until he's on autopilot. He lets his hands go limp, the rope taut enough to keep them suspended in front of him whilst he steps forward, again and again and again, his limp more pronounced the more they continue on their way.
Often at times, Lomedy is jolted out of his stupor by rocks in the road he stumbles over, or him naturally slowing down before he's roughly pulled forward by Deputy Ace. It's an exhausting journey, and Lomedy's pain turns to annoyance the more he hears another Lawman complain about their horse being an uncomfortable ride— so it floods him with relief when Deputy Ace comes to a halt, the rest of the soldiers following suit, to take a break.
Each Lawman clambers off their horses and disperse into setting up a make-shift camp, whilst Lomedy sinks to the floor on the spot. His knees cry with relief and his arms can finally rest from their suspended indenture for the past few hours, though he's certainly if he closes his eyes now, even just for a moment, he would not be able to open them again.
Nothing about this journey is without cruelty — the moment he’s afforded rest, his stomach starts trying to eat itself from the inside out, a clawing beast in his abdomen replacing one ache with another. Throat dry with thirst finally screaming to make itself a priority.
“Deputy,” Lomedy says, almost grinding his name out through gritted teeth. He waits until the man’s turned around to continue speaking. “I’m — thirsty. Do you have water?”
“I do.”
“Can I have some?”
“No.”
Lomedy doesn't push it.
A few seconds pass before Deputy Ace speaks up again. “Was that it?”
Lomedy's throat constricts and his voice is raspier than the last time, “I won't make it, I really won't.”
“That's what you said earlier.” He’s clearly disinterested, unwilling to entertain what he must think of as incessant complaining for the sake of it. His attention is something that seems fleeting. Lomedy doesn’t want to lose it quite yet. His throat is too dry to let his pride win, here.
“I could do something for it,” Lomedy tries. Desperate — remembering what Deputy Ace said earlier, about hearing a number and matching it — like he could barter for amenities.
Ignores the fact that water is a need more than a luxury and is something that LAW have more than an abundance of, considering how it's a free resource. That’s being withheld from him. For no reason other than a petty grudge.
“What could you possibly do for me?” Deputy Ace asks, voice tinged with amusement.
He doesn’t say anything, but for a moment it almost slips. “What do you want from me?” He asks instead, despite the both of them knowing that Lomedy has nothing of substance, nothing that would pique the interest of another.
Deputy Ace's lips curl into a smile, like it's the line he's been waiting for since all this turmoil started, and in a clear-cut voice with no hesitation, he states, “Your confession.”
“My what?”
“Confession,” he repeats, sounding it out slower — as if Lomedy was an idiot. “Just admit to what you did, and I’ll happily give you a bottle.”
“But I've done nothing wrong?” Lomedy says, voice filled with genuine confusion, “I'm a farmer.”
“I’m sure this trip will be very enlightening, if you think that’s the case,” Deputy Ace hums, not pushing the matter further. The way he says it, though — it sends a chill down Lomedy’s spine.
“If — if—” he stutters out of habit, nerves taking a hold of his natural responses, “If you want a confession so bad, why don't you track down the actual criminal instead of sticking with me.”
“Because,” Deputy Ace says, “You're just as guilty as he is.”
“I was wearing leather armour,” Lomedy argues. It’s a weak point — Deputy Ace knocks it down without missing a beat.
“Netherite. We all saw it.” He gestures to the Lawmen setting up camp, who don’t pause in their actions, but Lomedy sees one of them nod — showing that they’re listening. That his humiliation isn’t private, just on display as his wounds and all his other weaknesses.
“Okay, I normally wear leather armour.”
“Can anyone vouch for that? Besides Flame, of course,” Deputy Ace adds on, a pleasant smile on his face that is amused and mocking at once.
Lomedy lets the name die on his tongue.
“Just give me the water,” he says, a bit too sharp. Hurt from the mention of Flame overtaking common sense, a mistake he only realizes when he sees Deputy Ace’s smile drop.
He looks off in a pointed direction, and Lomedy follows his eyes to where the horses are bent over a muddy pond, and when Lomedy looks back at Deputy Ace, he finds the second-in-command already waiting.
“There's no way,” Lomedy says, shaking his head.
“Unless you want to confess…?” Deputy Ace lets his sentence trail off, shrugging as though there was no other choice available. Like Lomedy couldn’t hear the clink of bottles in his bag, this close.
“I'd rather go thirsty.”
Deputy Ace raises his eyebrows. “But I thought you wouldn't make it otherwise? That's what you said, no?”
Lomedy’s face burns with humiliation. “That’s — I’m not an animal.”
Though, it's having said that he sees the irony of it all — wings folded and clipped, tied despite all use of them void, hands tied together from the wrists, strung and pulled along at any whim except for his own.
“But you’re still thirsty,” Deputy Ace says. “And I’ve offered you two solutions and you won’t take either of them. You don’t make for a very grateful prisoner. Especially after I stopped my men from executing you back at your sorry excuse of a farm, and bandaged up your leg after it all.”
“Not much of an execution if there's no trial,” Lomedy bites out. “Unless you see the world like a four-year-old and think playing judge, jury and executioner is justice.”
Deputy Ace sighs, like Lomedy is a particularly difficult subordinate that refuses to adhere to his rules, “The crux of the matter is—”
“The crux of the matter is that you, yes you, are so impossibly stupid that you couldn't catch Flame with an entire army, let him escape and then settled with me. A farmer.”
Deputy Ace’s jaw ticks in frustration. A slight but certain sign that Lomedy’s words hit some mark. He barrels on, desperate to push that weakness, that anger, just for the sake of having some control.
“Matter of fact,” Lomedy says, adrenaline nearly making him shake, “I wouldn’t be surprised if we got all the way back to Lettuce and he thought just the same as me — would probably wonder why he picked such an idiot for a deputy, if all he’s going to get from it is wasted time and resources.”
It’s the mention of Lettuce that seems to set Deputy Ace off fully — his gaze is fixed squarely on Lomedy, the rest of his words dying in his throat, a cold chill possessing him.
“It seems,” he says slowly, “That if you refuse to pick an option, then I'll just have to pick for you.”
In barely a blink, Lomedy’s hands are yanked upward when Deputy Ace grabs the rope closer to his wrists, uncaring of how roughly he continues to drag him towards the horses. A bubble of panic lodges itself in Lomedy’s throat, until speaking no longer comes easy and every word once confident and angry turns frantic.
“Wait,” he says, trying to keep his balance but teetering to the side, “Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait!”
Deputy Ace is decidedly not waiting, and pulls Lomedy harsh enough that he tumbles onto his side, his wings folding unnaturally underneath him and simultaneously hitting his calf violently against the ground.
There is a brief moment where Lomedy feels nothing.
There is then all encompassing pain and Lomedy is screaming and crying— he can taste the salt from his tears that are flowing in rapid succession — and distantly thinks he should be preserving this liquid instead of wasting it but there's nothing left for him to do but cry.
“I'm- I'm sorry!” he screams, as Deputy Ace continues to drag him, the feathers of his wings caught on sharp pebbles and rocks whilst dust worms its way into his wounds.
“Please, please,” Lomedy sobs, as Deputy Ace holds him above the pond and shakes him forcefully. As if handling a ragged doll and not a shaking, terrified person.
“You were dying of thirst a minute ago,” he says, voice unrecognizable, “Isn’t this what you wanted?”
“I'll do it!” Lomedy gasps, eyes wide and looking straight at Deputy Ace, “I'll take responsibility for his actions or — or confess or whatever you said, I'll — I'll do it!”
“I don’t think that’s an option at the moment.”
There's fresh tears in Lomedy's eyes, either from the burning humiliation or the deeply-rooted fear that's taking control, or the pain. It's likely all three, he likes to believe it's the pain.
“Use your hands or drink like the horses. Your choice. Make it now,” Deputy Ace prompts, shaking him by the rope around his wrists again.
“Please,” Lomedy whispers, voice breaking, “Please don't make me.”
“Your actions got you here, both with Flame and me.”
“Don't — don't compare yourself to him.” It comes out completely reflexively, Flame's defence his favourite weapon to wield once upon a time. He surprises himself with it, Flame's name slipping with such a disdainful tone from Deputy Ace's mouth, like he has any idea what Lomedy's been through with him.
“What are you going to do about it? Look at you.” Deputy Ace sounds so withering and contemptuous that Lomedy nearly recoils. He can’t figure out what to say to make him less angry — every word seems like the wrong one.
“You decide,” Deputy Ace says, abruptly letting go of the rope around his wrists, holding him up. “Are you a person or are you an animal?”
He only barely catches himself from crashing face-first into the water in front of him — arms bearing the brunt of the fall, palms scraping against stone and debris. The water he stares down at feels like a line to cross, one that he doesn’t think he can come back from. Murky with mud, insects frozen into the frosty edges of the pond. It’s disgusting.
Lomedy steels himself, the mention of Flame like a splash of cold water to his face. Holds onto the anger-confusion-fear and everything to focus on anything but what he has to do now.
He cups his hands together, twisting them within the rope and ignores Deputy Ace’s murky reflection before taking a deep breath and plunging his hands in. There is the smallest of resistances, where a thin layer of ice had formed over the top of the pond, but he pushes through it easily to the grainy water below.
It feels like sludge, from the ice and mud combined, and his fingers are freezing before he even brings his shaking hands up to his mouth.
Lomedy can’t help himself — he looks up at Deputy Ace, nearly flinching when he sees the man unmoved from where he stood watching Lomedy.
“Go on,” Deputy Ace prompts.
The first sip is awful. Grainy ice and mud tastes disgusting the moment it hits his tongue, Lomedy nearly gagging as he folds over himself and tries not to move any further — keeping sharp movements to a minimum, even as tears continue to slide down his face without acknowledgement. He can barely breathe through his nose, rough throat hardly soothed by the revolting taste of pond water.
Looking up through his eyelashes, he finds himself staring at Deputy Ace’s horse, head bowed and sipping peacefully. Even when choosing to drink from his hands, like a person, he doesn’t feel any less like an animal. Like a criminal.
Most of the water seeps from the gaps in his fingers, but the small bit that Lomedy does drink makes his empty stomach churn.
“Done?” Deputy Ace asks.
Lomedy is stubbornly silent. Mud soaks into the knees of his pants, and he swallows through a dry throat to nod in response.
“I’m sure we can avoid that in the future,” Deputy Ace says, far calmer than he was a few minutes ago. Lomedy doesn’t dare agree — doesn’t know if it’s a trap, scared to say the wrong thing and ends up with his face pushed into the pond, half-drowned. He simply sits, staring down at his murky reflection even when Deputy Ace moves on, shaking violently until he hears the call for everyone to get moving again.
The question repeats itself on the hour, and each time, Lomedy is less steadfast in his refusal to answer.
“Are you ready to confess?” Deputy Ace asks, every time Lomedy dares voice a thought. When he dared ask for food, when he worked up the nerve to ask for water again, when he asked how long they would be going, when their next break would be. It’s always the same response—
“I’m tired,” Lomedy would beg, voice crackling with unshed tears, “Please, can we stop.”
When his leg was screaming to the point of involuntary tears springing to Lomedy’s eyes and he wanted just a moment to breathe, Deputy Ace greeted him with the same response.
“Are you guilty?” He always asks, “Confess to your crimes, and we will.”
Lomedy is stubborn. It takes him a long, long time to break. Even when he spends every short break they take shivering and cold and hungry and thirsty. Unwilling to say a word after the first disastrous attempt to try and get help.
The other Lawmen don’t look at him very much when he does speak up. Maybe because he’s debased himself so thoroughly, drinking mud in the middle of their makeshift camp while sobbing. It’s humiliating. Everything about this is uniquely awful in ways he can hardly verbalize.
It’s the cold that does in his will, in the end. Fingers freezing where wet hands were exposed to the elements until a chill possesses him entirely. Every step taken while he shudders so hard that he can hardly breathe without chattering teeth.
He starts giving in without really planning on it. The next time he asks for a break and Deputy Ace asks if he’s guilty, Lomedy says yes, I am, even if he doesn’t believe it. Not in the slightest — to him, these are just words with no meaning traded for a sip of water, for everything to stop just for a bit.
The five minutes he spends sitting, resting, if just for a brief and fleeting moment, is worth shedding himself of his stubborn pride.
After that, it’s like floodgates have opened, and Lomedy says it over and over — “I’m guilty, I’m guilty, I’m guilty.” — every time his leg hurts so bad that he can hardly breathe. He even gets a bottle of water, almost empty save for the last fifth of it, that he gulps down till he’s chasing droplets from its curved bottom. Lomedy finds it increasingly easy to give into Deputy Ace’s questions.
But the trip is still miserable. The brief necessities he debases himself for are still only moments set over hours of suffering. And Lomedy still feels like he’s at the edge of death.
The sun is touching the horizon, starting its slow descent below the sealine when Lomedy finally reaches the end of his rope.
“It’s c — cold,” Lomedy mumbles through numb lips. He sounds like an idiot — can guess that the Lawmen think as much, the way a low laugh runs through the small group surrounding him. His stumbling steps slow, until he can’t keep up with the already-sluggish pace of Deputy Ace’s horse, having to limp faster when the rope scratches at his wrists, line pulling taut. It’s another reminder of how he's felt like animal all day.
“Can we — can we — can,” Lomedy stammers, teeth chattering. His fingers are numb, and he barely notices the way Deputy Ace slows for a moment, nearly flinching when he notices the man’s attention on him.
“What?” Deputy Ace prompts him.
“Can we — stop,” he says. It doesn’t sound like a question, his voice trembling all the way through.
“Good question,” Deputy Ace says, “I’ll ask one in return, and whether or not we do depends on you. Make sense?”
Lomedy’s mind is hazy — almost to the point that he can’t quite grasp what Deputy Ace is saying. When the words slot into place, put together till they make sense, he nods, head tipping too far forward. He’s already half-expecting what he’ll say.
“Are you going to admit it?” Deputy Ace asks, just as Lomedy thought.
“Uh-huh,” Lomedy nods, too tired to shape the sound into anything legible.
“I have to hear you say it,” Deputy Ace reminds him. “Use your words.” Say it, Lomedy, Flame's voice echoes in his head.
He says it like he’s reprimanding an unruly child. Lomedy can’t dredge up the remnants of his weakened pride to care. He swallows past the lump in this throat, ignores the tears pricking in his eyes the longer he dwells on this, thinking about how horrible everything has been. The way his fingers are freezing, blue at the tips, the way his lips are numb and his stomach aches with hunger and his calf throbs in turn with his heartbeat and his wings haven’t stopped fucking hurting for hours.
“I’m guilty,” Lomedy says, and it comes out a sob. “I’m guilty, I’m guilty, I’m guilty.”
It’s a confession and a death sentence in one, words he’s been saying just to appease Deputy Ace for the majority of their trip, but now — at the end of his rope, mentally and physically, he truly feels the weight of the words. Can imagine the noose hanging around his neck at the gallows, the press of a blade to his throat when his head will be pressed to stone, waiting to be sliced or cut-off.
Errantly, he wonders if Flame would be in the crowd, watching his death. If he would regret leaving him behind at all. Lomedy doesn’t think he would want an answer — doesn’t think he’d be able to handle any reply he got. Being left behind hours ago feels like years in the past.
Just a day ago, everything was fine.
It makes his crying escalate to full-on sobbing. Pride is a moot point. Everything hurts. Nothing is worth this.
He can’t stop crying. Even as the tears freeze against his face and make him even colder. All his anger has frozen, fire snuffed out. Lomedy has been hollowed out until he is nothing but pain and guilt and desperation.
“Pull yourself together,” Deputy Ace says from above him. True to his word, he hasn’t moved, even as Lomedy sinks into the snow and can’t stop shaking. “You’re acting like a child.”
“I just—” Lomedy hiccups, “I just don't understand.”
“After all those questions?”
“I don't understand why you’re doing this to me.” He can only barely force the words out through chattering teeth and a throat full of tears.
Deputy Ace pauses, “You're Flamefrag's accomplice.”
Lomedy flinches.
He shakes his head, eyes wide and desperate, “I'm not — I — I—”
“Flamefrags,” Deputy Ace interrupted, “Killed one thousand people. Do you understand that number?”
Lomedy does. He remembers when he had found out the news that his best friend had committed a massacre after promising to Lomedy that he would change.
“You helped him escape, Lomedy,” Deputy Ace continues, shushing the feeble protests Lomedy tries to give, tone somehow the gentlest he’s heard it. As if he really is consoling a child by laying out all the reasons Lomedy is going to die, “I was there. I heard you tell him to run.”
“But that's not — it's not how I meant it!” Lomedy tries to insist, “I never wanted him there!”
Deputy Ace rubs his eyes as if tired, exhaustion written all over his face like he was tired of having this conversation, like Lomedy wasn't about to collapse and never get up again.
“You keep saying that, but the circumstances stay the same. He was there, protecting you. Because you asked — begged, really — and look how well that worked out for you.”
“That’s not—” Lomedy's voice comes out warbled, “That's not fair.” And even to him it sounds petulant, like an excuse. It sounds like something Flame would say.
Deputy Ace gives him a pitying look before signalling to the rest of the soldiers to set up camp.
It goes the same way all the other breaks have gone — Lomedy collapses where he stands, though this time he’s already been on the ground long enough for snow to soak through the knees of his pants. Frost covers the tips of his wings whilst everyone mills around him, sharing warm drinks and subdued laughs like this was just some other day for them and not what felt like Lomedy’s last.
Nobody bothers to check his wounds, nor untie his wrists despite his fingers turning shockingly blue against almost perfect white, though he couldn't tell if it was from the lack of blood circulation or the likely hypothermia.
“You never answered my question,” he mumbles when Deputy Ace walks past him. The man turns his head, even if just slightly, in his direction — a silent indication that he was listening, “Why am I guilty?”
And perhaps it’s Lomedy's stupidity that had worn him down, or the incessant questions, but Deputy Ace begins to laugh. He walks two steps back and crouches down in front of Lomedy, who stares emptily at the indent his hands had made in the snow.
“Because we need someone to take responsibility,” he says easily, “Because one thousand people died to your friend’s sword, and out of the two of you, guess which one's in custody?”
“And,” Deputy Ace adds, “Because you so kindly said so yourself. Multiple times during this trip, actually. Doesn’t really look great on paper, does it?”
“But—” Lomedy tries to say, gripping weakly onto Deputy Ace’s jacket to stop him from standing, though the fabric slips from between his shaking fingers as he straightens, “I only said that because — because you wanted me to.”
“All I ever asked was if you were guilty. You were the one who said that you were.”
“But I'm not,” Lomedy whispers, voice barely a rasp. He feels the smallest he’s ever been in his life.
Deputy Ace tsks, brushing off his clothes where Lomedy’s hands had only barely grabbed on for a few moments. “Should’ve thought about that before confessing.”
It shatters whatever is left of Lomedy’s fragile hope in whatever justice system the LAW had offered beforehand — if they truly are the driving force of the server, then Lomedy’s fate has been sealed for far longer than he has been hoping it could be changed.
Cold, defeated and abandoned; Lomedy shoulders the responsibility of Flame’s slaughter.
There is no fanfare about it, no ‘congratulations!’ or ‘I'm sorry,’ just a simple decision in Lomedy's mind that means that he's given up.
The rest of their trip to Lettuce is silent and thankless. No more words pass Lomedy’s lips, even as Deputy Ace seems to be waiting for another opportunity to needle a confession out of him. Not like it matters anyway. Lomedy's already sealed his fate.
Gray overarching walls of the prison in the distance, Lomedy is almost mutedly grateful, if just for the fact that he can finally, truly rest. The last dredges of his energy sap quickly, the closer he is to the finish line. Deputy Ace’s demeanour never changes from its tepid calm, but his horse’s pace picks up and Lomedy can just barely keep up with blistering feet and a mind-numbing ache in his calf that takes over everything else.
One-two. One-two. One-two, he counts, over and over, as he shuffles forward and swallows back vomit. Almost there. One-two. One-two. One-two.
“Real quiet back there,” Deputy Ace comments. Lomedy doesn’t reply. Just stares at his feet and watches the dirt path turn from gravel to round hard stones, to smooth pavement.
Lomedy shrugs. He's got nothing to say. They walk up the pavement, Lomedy feeling like a spectacle on display despite the desolate streets and empty roads. The only people awake are the night guards who nod politely to Deputy Ace, and give Lomedy weird looks of almost disgust; he's more than certain he doesn't look anything of an appealing sight. He can’t bring himself to care.
It's easy once they're in. They hand Lomedy an orange uniform, untie his wrists, and send him into the bathrooms — guarded — to get changed. It takes him longer than it should, trying to ease past his wings that twinge with every slight jolt, and the bruises that keep taking shape along his torso and side. He emerges more acutely aware of multiple injuries that are sure to become infected in the coming days and sighs in defeat.
“Ugh,” he hears a Lawman say. “We can’t hose him down, or something?” He winces at the idea.
“I wouldn’t treat a prisoner so harshly, no matter what they’re guilty of,” says a familiar voice. Lomedy freezes, mind coming to a stop alongside his slow steps.
Lettuce — clean, neat, standing tall and proud — enters his line of sight a moment later, a benevolent smile on his face that makes Lomedy’s chest ache with fear.
“Hi, Lomedy,” Lettuce greets, “Long time no see!”
Deputy Ace is standing just behind him, to his left. Lomedy sees the pair of them next to each other and can not stop shivering. It has very little to do with the cold.