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“Eret?” says Wilbur, says Wilbur who is a ghost - Ghostbur, they call him, he calls himself, it’s kind of cute actually - “Eret? Eret is the choice?”
He does not like Eret. Doesn’t know much, but he sure as fuck knows this, something in his ears jabbering to him in sing-song, furious - fuck Eret, right? That easy. He likes it when things make sense, when it’s that easy to work out what to think. Eret likes to - waltz in and destroy things that aren’t theirs, who would do that? If something is destroyed it should be destroyed by its maker. Wilbur - Wilbur, who is a ghost - he knows this, too. Doesn’t have bones, but he knows it bone deep.
“Apparently so,” says Phil and he’s still talking, they’re always still talking, no respect for mourning periods when you’re meant to shut the fuck up for a bit and let the silence take root in you, turn you to ash like it does to all dying men - what is Wilbur mourning, again? He mouths Eret’s name to himself - it’s a traitor’s name, this is the consensus, Wilbur’s got lots of little different voices monologuing to him but they all agree on this - Eret, Eret, like an obsession.
“I gotta make sure his - castle’s all up to code,” says Phil.
It’s real? People like to lie to Wilbur. About who he was and what he did. People like to smooth it and make it prettier, but this isn’t pretty at all - Eret the traitor is stealing his fucking son, right, and that’s not pretty or funny. (Funny and fundy blur together a little, and Wilbur finds a little chuckle within himself. He likes things like that. Killza, right?)
If Wilbur’s so volatile, who would lie to him just to make him more so? To make him go boom, maybe. Like eleven and a half stacks of TNT.
“Yeah,” Wilbur says, fighting to keep his voice steady. “Yeah, so he doesn’t - stick his fingers in the socket.”
“Or burn himself on torches, yeah.”
Eret shouldn’t have a castle. Who the fuck said Eret got to be royalty? Hasn’t anyone shattered Eret’s crown yet? Hasn’t someone torn their castle down?
Kings die, Eret. Leaders burn.
Wilbur does not have a heart but he feels it beating in his ears, blood fierce rushing, something furious and horridly afraid. “I was gonna ask,” he says, hears his voice crack. How does his voice crack if he doesn’t have a throat? If he can’t even hold a fucking fishing pole? Is he imitating whoever he used to be, even subconsciously, with the volatile careening of his voice? “Phil, how bad was I? Phil - Phil, how awful of a person was I, that - cause this isn’t a normal thing that happens, is it,” and he’s hit his stride now, goddammit, feels the urge to orate swelling in his throat like the lump that appears when he’s in mourning, “when people die, they normally - you know, keep their father’s legacy alive.” He’s scrambling for words - non-fluency features populating his speech like traitors gather and cluster within the walls of special places, those goddamn walls that he fucking built - “They don’t normally look for a new one, ” he concludes, and Phil makes an mm sound, noncommittal. Because Phil doesn’t tell him anything. Anger flusters the swallow of Wilbur’s throat, makes his hands go sweaty.
He can keep going. If no one’s willing to be quiet, he can talk and laugh with the best of them.
“I was just wondering,” he adds, just a little stammer, nothing to worry about, no anger here, “how dreadful was I?”
“Will,” Phil says, and stops. There’s a pause. He’s deciding what to say, it’s so obvious. “For a good portion of your life, you were the best dad. You were great.”
Wilbur blossoms under the praise, a little pleased, like a flower turning to the sun. But his mind is so shattered, like a kaleidoscope or a funhouse mirror, and he can tell there has to be a catch. He’s waiting for it.
“But,” Phil continues, like he’s sorry to say it, and there it fucking is, “at some point, you took a turn.”
Wilbur knows this. He has gathered it.
Phil says, horridly regretful - there’s pity there, Wilbur thinks, and chafes under it - “things got messy.”
Wilbur tries to respond too hastily. Hasn’t gathered his thoughts. He says nothing much for a moment, making sounds, trying to settle on something reassuring, and finds “I don’t mind, you know? I’m not upset, I was just wondering, ” and a laugh claws its way out of his throat like a living creature. That would make one of them. Wilbur is, after all, still a ghost.
He keeps talking, has nothing to say clearly enough, doesn’t remember enough to say it - “it was, sort of, you know,” and then Phil takes pity on him again, interrupts, lets Will settle into his silence. (Ghosts should be seen and not heard, maybe. Should Wilbur not be seen either? Fade into obscurity? He knows it would make everyone more happy. Since Fundy is replacing him with someone alive, someone who lied their way back to life -)
“Do you really not remember?” Phil says softly.
Wilbur says, laughing, “I remember little bits.”
His mind is a funny thing these days. Like it’s been reconstructed. Like his ghost sprang from the point at which he broke irrevocably, rather than the point at which Phil killed him; like he’s been sewn together, his cortex stitched with thread, and the final death was just what let him go free. He remembers that.
He has this theory, see?
He says, almost proud, “I’ve figured it out. I remember the things that made me happy.”
It’s true. It is, really - they’re the pictures and the pretty things, sunlit, that sit in his head. They’re rose-tinted. They’re what he remembers. He’s not going to tell Phil about the - instructions, the jabbering, the fucking voices that have dug out little holes in his ears and set up permanent residence and they aren’t even paying taxes, when functional societies have taxes - tangents, always tangents, always music. Wilbur can’t keep his thoughts straight. Not when he doesn’t remember what Eret did but the voices keep him informed, singing, always that fucking song - like childrens’ voices, traitor, traitor.
He shakes himself to the present. “Those are the things I remember. And I’ve completely forgotten the sad parts,” and his voice jumps a little over the fib. He’s forgotten, the voices haven’t, but it’s okay to lie to Phil, all Phil does is lie to him - no one will tell him the truth - so Wilbur talks about Schlatt. The voices don’t care about Schlatt; he’s over and done with and Wilbur has nothing left for him, no energy, no hatred. Not like he has energy for the unfinished business.
Maybe that’s why he’s a ghost. He’s not here for his son, his son who’s replacing him, right - he’s here for his unfinished business, here for his traitor, here to haunt Eret. But that doesn’t sound quite right either.
It can’t be betrayal if it’s your own masterpiece that burns, he thinks, and wonders where that came from.
He has no heart but it’s beating very fast. He says “Phil thank you for filling me in,” pfft, Phil, fill, “I’ll let you go back to the funnies. I’m gonna go -” go where? - “I’m gonna go.”
“I’m glad you remember me,” Phil says.
“I remember you!” Wilbur reassures him, brightening, everything moving too fast. “I remember you very well. I also remember you killing me. That’s in my head.” For real, it’s in his head. It’s why he lets Phil lie to him - if nothing else there was a moment of honesty, of trusting Wilbur, when he said Phil, kill me, enjoying the way it sounded, and Phil did. Killza, hah. “I don’t know why you killed me, but it seems like you were a bit of a hero for it! People seem to like you for that.” He’s smiling, now. He really does like Phil a lot. Can’t fucking work out why.
“Remember when I said you went off the rails a little bit near the end?”
“Ah, yeah,” Wilbur says, palms itching suddenly, uncomfortable, and he’s got Philza killza on the brain so he finds something to rhyme with it to end the conversation. “I’m filled in now,” he says, “I’m filled in, Phil, thank you - I’m Philled in,” he feels his grin, bright and fake against the lips he can’t possibly have.
“Awww,” Phil says, and is he patronising or genuinely delighted? Wilbur can’t tell. “Funny!”
“Okay, have fun with Tommy and stuff,” Wilbur says. He has mixed memories of Tommy. “I’ll see you round - bye,” and he has to leave, has to get away, so he sinks into himself like a true ghost with his disappearing act, leaves Phil hanging, lets himself drift away with the wind.
It’s better with him gone. He thinks he might have been the villain in that story.
He is carried - drawn, almost - to a small home, an orange bed, a warm place. He does not remember it, but it feels safe, if safe was the blade between the two edges of the knife; beyond it is a spiralling stair and he descends, down, down, trancelike. This is where he needs to go. This is not coming home but it’s the closest he can get. There are buttons along the walls, which is not significant - a game, though fun is the first thing to die within a war, fun, Fundy, his son lived for the most part and now Wilbur is a shitty father who can’t even hold a fishing pole and he was happy when he died -
Maybe he was never meant to be a father.
He descends further, further, into a dark ravine. It is abandoned. It is full of monsters. He breaks to see it, even broken as he already is, Wilbur the ghost, with his mind made up of voices and sunlight and empty bits; he’s lost time. Has he? There are more buttons in the ravine, all colours, every type; it’s plastered wall to wall with them.
The signs on the wall hold a list of names - some kind of plan - he doesn’t remember the plan but he does remember the furious, vindictive satisfaction as he added EVERY FUCKIN ONE, like a child who’d stolen someone else’s toys as petty revenge, like someone who never should have been allowed to fight a war. Fundy’s name is on the wall. So is Wilbur’s own. There are others - some he remembers - some he doesn’t.
His mind is cracked and every moment it breaks further, like tendrils of spiderweb fractures whispering their way out from the epicentre, from his singularity. He breaks the torches. Better that this whole place be dark. It’s abandoned. It’s over.
He descends further, past things that should not ring true to him because he does not remember them but can almost hear them, a symphony of voices in his ears, never shutting up. They remind him he has unfinished business - forever unfinished. He should not be here. He should not be anywhere. Was he the villain? Was he a traitor? At the bottom of the stairs he finds a fox on a leash, left to die, tied up; he remembers Niki, Niki made him happy, but he is alone now. No more sunlight on a leash. This place is a cave for a reason.
He says, voice hoarse, the fallen leader orating to no subjects but this place’s ghosts, “Fundy needs a dad.”
It echoes through the empty place.
“Fundy needs a dad,” he repeats, formless, shapeless, only a ghost; his nonexistent heart is a solid diamond lump in his throat. “For sure. And I need to make up for what I did.”
If his son takes a traitor for a father, so be it. It would not be the first time, it occurs to him: Wilbur has betrayed his symphony, his family, his ghosts.
It’s fitting, then, that his family turns to each other. That his symphony forces itself upon his ears. That he is no more than a ghost himself.
Leaders fall, Wilbur. Traitors burn.