Chapter Text
Schlatt wasn’t sure that, in life, he’d ever given the prospect of being a ghost any lengthy consideration. He wasn’t the sort of man to linger on what comes next, especially since he was so preoccupied with the path he carved for himself while living. The only thing that mattered to him while he could still feel the sun on his skin was the length to which he could maximise his influence and power; and sometimes, when he lost himself in thought, very rarely, he considered his legacy. No need for afterlife, he thought, if your image lives on without limit after you crumble to dust.
Whether or not this strange new existence qualified as afterlife was up for debate, and Schlatt didn’t like philosophy and unanswerable questions, so ultimately, he didn’t care- at least it’s not hell, he had reasoned, until he tried to take a drag from a cigarette he found in his translucent pocket and the pull of his lungs inhaled nothing, the smoke dancing away into the air.
He’d tried to angrily crush it out on the back of his hand, but it went right through.
Maybe it wasn’t hell in the sense that he was boiling in hellfire, he couldn’t even give himself a cigarette burn, didn’t feel it at all, but maybe the hellish aspect of this ghostly purgatory was exactly that. Not feeling.
It had taken a while to realise that he was now a ghost, a spectre, whatever; it felt like going to sleep, with a gap in the memory of when exactly it began once you woke up in the morning. He’d opened his eyes- and was surrounded by rubble. Weird, he’d thought, stepping over crumbling stones and glass, very fucking weird. Last thing he remembered, he was- oh. He was half-collapsed on the ground, drunk out of his mind, surrounded by his adoring public, who all seemed to be pointing weapons at him. He remembered a diamond sword, glinting in the light that came through the window of the van. Who was holding that sword? And why? Schlatt couldn’t remember. Strangely, he was also now completely sober. How long had he been asleep? What the fuck had happened to the van? Wait- what the fuck happened to the entire goddamn country?
Namely, it was gone. Schlatt couldn’t recall how long he had stood there in shock, feeling something akin to grief, staring at the tattered black and red flag that hung limply from the flagpole, torn nearly entirely in half and moving weakly in the breeze. Nobody was around. He thought everyone was dead.
Someone more in touch with their emotions would’ve probably screamed, or cried out, sunk to their knees at the ruins of his country, ripped out his hair, searched desperately for any survivors. Schlatt felt more dazed than anything, and then he just felt numb. The first thing he did once he’d calibrated himself was look for a liquor bottle amongst the carnage. Maybe one had stayed intact. There was no harm in looking.
What Schlatt knew now was that they hadn’t died, perished in the destruction like it was fucking pompeii, their corpses pulled into macabre freeze-frames, mockeries of life. He had died, kicked the bucket, been fucking curb-stomped by God, or more specifically, he’d been seized by a heart attack of all things, shutting down his already scarred organs, and he’d died on the floor.
Nobody helped him. He remembered now.
Death had stricken him with a temporary amnesia. Now, he remembered everything. Which was why, when the tall, cloaked figure of Wilbur had approached him a few mornings after his death, he felt the phantom pains of his untimely demise take hold of him once again, and he’d staggered backwards in both shock, anger, and buried deep down within him, relief. Wilbur could see him. Nobody else could, but Wilbur was headed straight for him, was looking him right in the eyes, was-
A ghost. Wilbur was a ghost. As he came closer, the shimmering around his form became more visible, and Schlatt exhaled, shutting his eyes tight.
“Schlatt?”
“Wilbur- Wilbur, hey.” His eyes were still closed, and his jaw clenched, even when he spoke. He hadn’t known Wilbur was dead. He hadn’t cared enough about any of the living people to listen in to their conversations, do any sort of headcount. Schlatt had been drifting, time blurring. It had been three days but the hours stretched out into eternity and without the need for food or water or sleep his existence had been empty. And painful. Schlatt was in agony. He finally opened his eyes.
“Schlatt?” Wilbur stopped, a few feet away. His face was grey and his eyes were dark, his hair curling wildly over his face until he brushed it back with a gloved hand. “What’s wrong with you? Why do you look like that?”
“Charming, Wilbur. Real charming. I know I’m not that much of a looker lately, but-“
“Schlatt.”
“What? Schlatt what, dipshit? Why are you even fucking talking to me?” The anger in his voice bursted from nowhere. As the reality of the situation dawned on him, he realised that he really didn’t want to have to break the news to Wilbur that they were both dead. He couldn’t even tell Wilbur how he had died, because he didn’t know. Schlatt was mourning the death of a man stood right in front of him and he felt the loss deep within where his heart used to be before it gave up on him. Like everything else had.
“Nobody else will talk to me.”
“Huh?” His voice was sharp, sudden, and desperate. God. What the fuck was he going to say? Stall him, stall him.
Wilbur looked away, staring off at the tattered flag. There was a haze over his face, like he couldn’t see through a thick mist. It was like he had to concentrate hard to speak. Schlatt remembered the feeling. “It’s like nobody can see me.”
Schlatt also remembered figuring out that nobody could see him, in fact, walked straight through him. Alex had strided, laughing, straight through his chest. His throat tightened.
“Not even- Tommy can’t- he can’t see me, Schlatt.”
“That’s weird,” He said, in a monotone voice, as Wilbur turned his head to meet his gaze again. “I can see you.”
“Yeah, I-“ Wilbur furrowed his brow, reached a hand up to scratch the back of his head. “You’re the only one. Seriously, why do you look like that? You’re kind of- I can kind of see through you. Am I high?”
“I don’t know, you might be,” Schlatt said, softly, and looked down at his feet. “Did you eat some gone off mushroom stew?”
There was a silence. Schlatt sighed deeply. “What do you remember?”
“I- We were climbing up the tower. Towards you, and Karl. You ran away...”
Schlatt tensed. He shoved his hands into his pockets and gripped tightly onto the fabric, twisting violently between his fingers. “Yeah.”
“And then. We all went into the van. That’s it.”
“That’s it?”
“Yeah.”
“Oh.”
“Schlatt, what’s going-“
“Wilbur, I’m dead.”
The words left him carefully, but his voice was firm, and he sought out Wilbur’s gaze. Wilbur didn’t react for a few seconds, still stuck in a haze, but then his eyes widened, and he teetered a little, shifting his weight to his back heel as he took the smallest step back, so small it seemed almost accidental.
“So are you.”
Wilbur was frozen in place. Schlatt just watched him, still clutching the inside of his pockets, his shoes dug into the ground, although when he looked down briefly, he could see that he left no footprints. It dawned on him that what he had done left no physical legacy at all. His being here as a ghost affected nothing in the living world. And now Wilbur was here with him, sharing this empty existence. He had no idea what to say to his old friend to make it any better.
For a long time, Wilbur did, said, and probably thought nothing. Schlatt thought he would’ve laughed it off, or grown irritated, or at least asked more questions. Doubted him a little. Secretly, that’s what Schlatt wanted. For Wilbur to be angry at him. As furious as Schlatt had been with Wilbur throughout his entire presidency, Wilbur had never directly cared about him. He was lost in his own little dilemma about being the villain. He couldn’t even give him the one thing he managed to draw from everyone. Schlatt thought about how they used to be, before this country even came to be- it had been the two of them together, now it was the two of them together again, this time tied together by fate, not by choice. He thought about the water, rising, and the sensation started to flood his lungs.
How long had it been since he’d told Wilbur what had happened to him? When he looked off into the horizon, the sun was rising higher, had reached its peak. After what seemed like a horrifyingly long time, Wilbur stepped back, then turned away, walked to the edge of the hill they were stood on, and sat down. Schlatt swallowed as he Wilbur drew his knees into his chest. A breeze moved the grass around him, he could see, but his hair stayed still, as did his coat. He was like a statue, the grass sprouting around him was lichen and moss, he could’ve been there for thousands of years and Schlatt wouldn’t have been able to tell the difference. Looking at the state of being of another ghost somehow made his heart heavier than the sensation of actually being one.
“What happened to us?”
“I had a fucking heart attack.”
“You were drunk,” Wilbur said, almost immediately. “I remember you being drunk.”
“I always am.” Schlatt smiled, and Wilbur looked over his shoulder and up at him, frowning. “What?”
“That’s not a good thing.”
He shrugged. “What does it matter now? I’m dead.”
“That’s probably what killed you.”
“No it fucking didn’t.” Schlatt’s voice rose, and his eyebrows leapt up dangerously. “Heart attack.”
“In the van?”
He nodded.
Wilbur looked back out over the hill. “I only remember you standing there, coughing. All of us standing around, watching.”
“Yeah, and then I died.”
Wilbur didn’t turn again, but Schlatt could see him tense up. “Right in front of me?”
“In front of everyone.”
“Nobody helped?”
Pain coursed through Schlatt, though not physical- regardless, he winced, facing strong and viciously clear images of faces around him, watching with a mix of disgust and pity and confusion as he succumbed to his heart attack. On Wilbur’s face, there was also triumph. He spoke through gritted teeth, eyes burning as he stared at the back of Wilbur’s head. He knew that Wilbur could feel his resentment. “Nobody.”
“Sorry.”
That’s all he fucking had to say? Sorry? Schlatt was furious. Why were they even speaking eachother? What difference did death make to their estrangement? What had happened while they were living was not redundant just because they had both passed on. Wilbur had always been this fucking irritating, but usually he could do something about it. And usually it was just annoyance. What Schlatt felt now was deep, bone-chilling betrayal and rejection. He remembered the water swirling around them. He felt cold, even though he knew that was impossible.
“What about me?” Wilbur asked, cutting through Schlatt’s thoughts.
“What about you.”
“How did I die?”
“I don’t know. I wasn’t there. I only gained- consciousness or whatever- like a day after I ‘passed on’, and I just. Never looked for you. It didn’t cross my mind that you might be dead. But here you are. Welcome to the fucking club. It’s ass.”
Long silence between fractions of conversation was apparently their new thing, because Wilbur didn’t respond, just drew his knees up tighter to his chest and hunched over. Schlatt looked over his own shoulder, wondering when would be the polite time to just fucking leave. This was getting kind of sad, and the more he thought about Wilbur, and the context and weird history behind them, the angrier he got, but something inside of him stopped him taking it out on Wilbur himself. And nobody else could fucking see or hear him. Maybe he’d figure out how to possess someone. Fuck with Alex. Alex...
“Where is it, Schlatt?”
He looked up.
“Where’s what, Wilbur?”
Wilbur was sat right on the edge of the hill, staring out at the horizon. When he didn’t respond, Schlatt inhaled a breath of air he didn’t need, then walked to stand by his side. The pale sun made their transparent bodies shimmer, but Schlatt didn’t feel warmth. He couldn’t feel anything at all.
“L’manberg,” Wilbur said, softly. “It’s gone.”
As he spoke, his voice cracked completely and gave way to a deep sob. Schlatt froze, alarmed by this sudden switch in emotion, and watched as Wilbur’s shoulders began to jerk, even has he curled on into himself as tightly as he could.
Holy shit. What the hell. How was he supposed to comfort someone who hated him? And why should he? At point, Schlatt would’ve relished this. He would’ve saved and framed his pain. This time, he couldn’t quite muster up the malice. Without thinking, he instead walked over and sat silently by Wilbur’s side. Wilbur almost immediately moved closer, rested his head on Schlatt’s shoulder. They could make contact. Schlatt closed his eyes tightly, blocking out the sun, as oceans swirled around in his head. Wilbur just continued to cry.