Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

17:

There is a darkness underneath the city.

There is a darkness underneath the city, and Wilbur can feel it like another heart beating in sync with his own pulse, the rhythm of a second life that he hears rushing in his ears.

He feels it thrumming beneath his feet, festering deep underground where the sun can never hope to see. 

A darkness, foul and rancid, claws sinking deep into the sewers, the ground — so deeply connected to the foundation of the city itself that sometimes Wilbur swears he can feel the heartbeats of the citizens pulsing at his fingertips.

He tries to shake away the last vestiges of his nightmare from the back of his eyelids. Dreams plagued with dark hallways and crimson eyes and whispers, whispers, that haunt him so intensely that he wakes up and forgets he has a home, a family. All he can see for a terrifying moment are the walls of a desolate sewer tunnel, but then he blinks and he’s back in his bed, with Tommy squished up against him and drooling on his pillow.

Wilbur’s hands fly up to cup his mouth before he can scream and wake his brother up. What comes out is a whimper that he manages to choke down; a strangled sound that, for a second, he hates himself for making. His eyes snap to the side, looking for any subtle signs that Tommy has picked up his movements and noise thanks to his enhanced senses, and is about to berate Wilbur for waking him up.

Tommy’s pointed ear twitches. But thankfully, he’s still fast asleep (and still drooling on Wilbur’s pillow, what is wrong with him). His long, whiplike tail is curled around Wilbur’s leg, and he’s dug his claws into the mattress —which, by the way, Prime give him strength, his little shit of a younger brother inevitably destroys every bed that he comes into contact with.

(Which also reminds him, by the way, that he's got to pester Phil in the morning and remind him to please get Tommy’s bed replaced, I’m sick of his shit, please-)

Wilbur sighs into his hands before opting instead to snake one arm around his brother's torso. Tommy shuffles in place and mumbles something, clawing at the sheets and leaving tear marks in his wake. Casting a glance at the clock on his wall (a half-broken piece of junk that Techno gifted him as a joke for his eleventh birthday, but was swiftly integrated into the family and treated as one of their own), he notes down the time — 2:45 AM — and counts how many more hours of sleep he’s got left before he has to get up for school. 

Four hours. 

That’s fine: if he falls asleep now, he won’t be miserable in the morning.

Unfortunately, sleep doesn’t come easy. Never has, not for him, and not for as long as he can remember. 

Sleep didn’t come easy when he was a kid and scrambling to get by in an orphanage that never wanted him; sleep didn’t come easy when he finally ran away and was forced to survive off stealing and inciting chaos; sleep didn’t come easy when he, 10 years old, had hellhounds sicced on him, and only survived when Phil and Techno found him hiding in an alleyway. 

And sleep won’t come easy now, with a roof over his head and a place he can call ‘home’.

Maybe it’s because whenever he closes his eyes, the dark reminds him too much of a past he can barely remember. He doesn’t like to think about it — doesn’t like to think about how he can feel the void laying dormant where, if he never sees it again, it’ll be too soon.

12:

Here’s a fact: 

The city is never silent, not for as long as he’s known it.

(It’s true; even in the quietest of nights there will always be a trickster cunt who thinks that disturbing the peace in the streets is a good idea. On nights like these, Wilbur would wake Phil up and bitch about it, until his father sighs and brings him along to banish the fucker into the next realm of existence. 

And since both of them wouldn't be able to go back to sleep — terrible sleep habits run in the family, apparently — Phil would take him out for a late-night smoothie where they’d just sit, talk, and be tired together. 

Wilbur never minded nights like these.)

He doesn’t know about everyone else, but he’s never experienced a single moment of pure silence his whole life.

Sometimes he hears voices where voices shouldn’t be, echoing in his ears like they don’t know where else to go. He knows what they are — ghosts, but not the conventional kind, no. Those kinds of ghosts don’t belong to this kind of city, not when they’re constantly threatened by the presence of entities and hunters who can yank them straight into the afterlife with a single thought or word.

Instead, he hears the ghosts of the city; moments forgotten in time that only the Earth remembers; people whose lives are marked nameless in gravestones — whose memories are only privy to them, the ground they used to walk on, and the malevolent force lurking deep beneath them.

Usually it’s fine — he can brush it off. He hears laughter echoing through the halls of his house, ethereal in that he never heard it start or end. He hears whispers behind the bus stop next to his school campus, words that escape him before he can properly grasp them and pick them apart. He hears music in the streets, haunting melodies played on instruments and voices lost to time, too stubborn to let go but too sentimental to be forgotten.

It doesn’t bother him for the most part, in fact, Wilbur finds it endearing. It reminds him that life persists, that no matter how hard the universe tries, some things will never be truly gone. He can almost see it in his mind’s eye; a family that used to live in the house where his family now lives; a group of kids who used to plan their mischievous escapades behind the bus stop; songs sung by drunken men who walked home swaying hand-in-hand with their brothers.

It’s a comfort to him, to know that these people aren’t forgotten, and that someday in the distant future they’ll remember him, too.

But sometimes, it overwhelms him. The problem with being so connected to the city’s history is that he hears the… bad stuff, too. 

Sometimes he hears screaming. 

The city has a violent history — what doesn’t, really? 

Wars were fought on this land. Blood was shed, lives were lost, and somewhere along the way the Earth remembers it, too. He hears it, all of it, everywhere he goes; innocents mauled by creatures of the night; spirits gone rogue and hellbent on vengeance; children wandering too far away from their homes and too close to fair folk territory. 

(Once, he heard a shriek tear through his house. A call for help, wet and choked and in horrible, horrible agony. It had sent him into a blubbering mess, sobbing and shaking violently at the sheer pain he’d caught in that voice. 

It has taken Phil hours to calm him down, and even then, Wilbur couldn’t sleep for days afterwards, couldn’t shake off the memory of the scream.)

14:

And sometimes when everything — the ghosts, the darkness, the fear — gets too loud, too much for him, he grabs his guitar and takes a walk down to the ocean. 

It’s a twenty minute walk if he moves at a brisk pace — enough to clear his head, put some distance between himself and the heart of the city where the darkness is most condensed. It’s enough to put himself back together where he’d previously been breaking, shimmering, fragmenting around the edges, feeling like he’s balancing on the tip of a needle, or watching a car crash in slow motion, or falling along the length of a cliffside where the sea meets the rocks below.

Here’s why the ocean calms him down so much, he thinks. Why he loves to sit on the pier with his toes dipped into the water, absently picking at his guitar and staring off into the horizon. He feels all of it; the wind brushing his curly hair like a tender caress; the gentle rippling of the water as he sways his legs; the sound of his guitar coupled with the rush of his blood in his ears. 

It reminds him that he’s human, that he’s still breathing, that his heart’s still beating, and that everything going on in the mess that is his head will eventually pass.

Today, though, today Tommy caught him halfway out the door and demanded to come with, chattering on and on about his best friend Tubbo who lives down by the docks and how it’s been a while since he’s visited him and how Tubbo’s been thinking of becoming a hunter like Techno and Wilbur stops listening as soon as Tommy starts talking about women.

It takes them almost forty-five minutes to walk to the ocean, since Tommy keeps trying to derail them, his electric blue eyes bright with excitement as he scopes out potential sources of chaos, buzzing with untamed energy all in his very nature. Wilbur would catch him every time — the moment that Tommy shuts up about whatever he’s talking about, his eyes locked on an unsuspecting victim, he’s ready to grab him by the back of his collar and keep the two of them back on track. 

Tommy would whine every time, threatening to claw Wilbur’s hands right off his scruff, moaning and bitching about how fun it would’ve been, knowing full-well that Wilbur would enjoy it too. 

He’s way too smart for his age; he’s only eleven and he knows how to read Wilbur like a fucking book. Unfortunately for the both of them, Wilbur just wants some peace and quiet, some time to enjoy the afternoon with a bit of music.

Speaking of the gremlin motherfucker, Tommy scampers off as soon as they take a turn and the ocean comes into view, a half-hearted goodbye at the tip of his tongue as he races down the street towards the general direction of Tubbo’s house. Wilbur sighs, calls out an ‘I’ll call you when I’m ready to go home’ which he hopes Tommy sharp hearing will pick up, and shakes his head at the kid. 

He saunters down the path to the docks, looking out for a secluded spot where he can play some music and have nothing but his own thoughts to accompany him. Eventually, he finds an open spot with a good view of the horizon and settles down, taking off his shoes before carefully lowering his feet into the water. 

The chill sends a shiver up his spine, and he shudders at the pleasant feeling. This far away from the city, he feels a lot, lot better.

He sets his guitar at his lap and his fingers move to pluck the strings, playing a melody he’d been practicing for the past couple days in his room. He looks out into the ocean, at the waves that crash lazily against his skin, casting his gaze upon the water where he can never quite catch sight of any fish.

Wilbur loses track of time somewhere after the fourth song, head void of any thoughts but the simple comfort that life brings him. He’s only snapped back to reality when he realises he’s got an audience, someone watching him from another branch of the pier. 

The girl — with soft, curious eyes and hair that flows like the sea — realises that he’s looking at her, and smiles as she waves at him. 

Wilbur grins back, unsure what to do, and in a sudden bout of bravery, says, “Got anything in mind you’d like me to play?”

“No, no, it’s fine I just like hearing your music,” she says, shrugging. “You’re very talented at the guitar.” She’s got a vaguely northern accent, he can tell from the way she pronounces her d’s. The compliment hits him where it hurts the most and Wilbur smiles, ignoring the way he can feel his ears heat up.

He turns to face her properly and starts strumming an upbeat tune, watching as she lights up and nods her head to the beat of the song. The more she sways along to the music, the braver and confident he grows; until he’s confident enough that he starts belting out whatever lyrics he can remember, filling in the gaps in his memory with half-hearted mumbles. She seems delighted at this and recognises the song, too, because she picks up at the chorus to sing along with him. The girl has a wonderful voice, he thinks, albeit untrained in the way she struggles to reach some notes, but neither of them care, too caught up in music and the occasional fleeting laughter.

Wilbur ends the song with a powerful shred and grins up at her, puffing his chest out proudly as she gives him a round of applause. 

“Can you teach me?” she asks. Her eyes are bright, “The guitar, I mean. I’ve always wanted to learn an instrument, but... I don’t really know where to start.”

“Yeah- yeah, of course!” Wilbur flushes even more, bewildered at the prospect of someone appreciating his skill enough to consider him a teacher. “If you could come over here, uh, I can- I’ll teach you some basic chords and- and strumming patterns!”

She smiles wider at that, if it’s even possible given how neither of them have stopped smiling for even a second. To his surprise, she stands up and takes a step into the water — but she never sinks, and she’s walking as if on solid ground until she reaches his side and sits next to him.

She’s a nymph, he realises, either a naiad or a nereid but it doesn’t really matter. He sees it more clearly now, the walking on water, the infatuation to music, the hair that never stops waving in the wind. And now that he thinks about it, her voice carries a strange weight behind it, a gentle timbre that reminds him of everything beautiful and kind about the sea, but with the potential of a storm’s power, of furious waves capable of sinking even the toughest of ships.

“I don’t think I’ve properly introduced myself,” Wilbur says. He offers her a hand and his most charming smile. “I’m Wilbur.”

She takes it. Her hand is small and cold in his and it feels almost like cupping water in his palms. “I’m Niki. Now, you wanted to teach me how to play the guitar...?”

They stay there for far too long, talking and laughing and playing music way past the two hours Wilbur had initially intended to stay for. This is how he loses time, humming songs and sharing stories with his newest friend, someone who captivates him as the sea captivates a sailor. Which is probably why, he thinks, because Niki is, at the end of the day, a water nymph, and Wilbur has always loved the sea. 

It’s a little selfish, but he doesn’t really care. 

(And during one of the songs, Niki — eyes creased from all the smiling — reaches over and loops a lock of Wilbur’s curly hair around her index finger. Wilbur stills at that, feeling heat creep up his neck, remembering stories that Phil told him of nymphs twirling their companions’ hair as a sign of friendship. He doesn’t stop blushing for a long time after that, and she doesn’t hesitate to tease him about it.)

Eventually, the sky turns a golden hue as the sun starts to set, and Wilbur checks the time on his phone. He winces at the number on his screen, and excuses himself to call Tommy.

The call never gets answered, because after five rings, Wilbur hears a yell from a little distance away and looks up to see Tommy, waving one hand in a wide arc and clutching his best friend Tubbo’s hand in the other.

“Big man!” Tommy yells, his grin wide and fanged, as he starts dragging Tubbo towards Wilbur and Niki. Tubbo looks sheepish, casting glances around. He tugs Tommy’s arm and stand on his toes to mutter something in Tommy's ear, which only serves to make Tommy laugh and dismiss it with the wave of a clawed hand.

Before Wilbur can greet the pair, Niki cuts in. “Tubbo! Hey Tommy! I didn’t know you were around,” she says, setting Wilbur’s guitar on the ground next to her. The pair answer her with matching ‘hello’s. “You guys want to join us? My new friend Wilbur’s been teaching me how to play the guitar.”

Wilbur feels his eyebrows shoot up as his brain short-circuits. “Wait- you guys know each other?”

"Well, yeah,” Tubbo answers, “she’s my sister. Wait, wait, Niki, this is Tommy’s brother- you know, the ‘Wilbur’ I told you about a couple times before.”

“Oh!” Wilbur slaps a hand over his mouth. “Oh, wow, I should’ve realised-“

Niki smiles, and laughs, and it sounds so much like Tubbo’s laughter that Wilbur’s surprised he never made the connection before. But then again, she’s a nymph and as far as he’s gathered from Tommy’s rants, Tubbo’s a human through and through. They’re probably siblings like how he and Tommy are brothers; bound by everything but blood.

Speaking of the rat child, Wilbur feels dread pooling in the bottom of his stomach as Tommy looks between them, mouth curling at the edges as his eyes glint with mischief. His tail starts bouncing, something Wilbur swears to make fun off afterwards, and he chuckles low in his throat. “Oh, big dubs, this is so awkward, big man Wil-bah, you found yourself a woman, holy shit, this must be so awkward for you-“

“We’re- I’m not- the fuck-“ Wilbur splutters, “Tommy- you- motherfucker-“

“-oh dude you must feel so awkward right now, look at you all blushing and shit. Tubbo, Tubbo look, his ears are red and all, oh big man just you wait until Phil hears about this-“

"-I hate children, I fucking hate children, Tommy, you absolute- you dickhead, shut the fuck up, Prime-“

"-you can't use that fuckin' argument against me, you're a child too, idiot-"

Even while embarrassed to shit, Wilbur can’t help but laugh along when Niki throws in a quip and comments on Tommy’s clinginess to Tubbo. And when Tubbo confirms this with a deadpan voice and a serious expression cracking at the edges, Wilbur loses it, and soon the tide of the conversation turns on its head, making Tommy the victim of his own losing battle.

And later, they settle down and sit in a circle, dangerously close to the edge of the pier. Wilbur shoots a text to Phil letting him know that they’ll be home a lot later than expected, to which Phil sends back a flurry of angry emojis, all of which are sent lightheartedly. He knows that their father doesn’t mind as long as he sends him semi-frequent updates, and in that moment he feels so fucking grateful for Phil, for the freedom that he’s bestowed on them — the freedom to live, the freedom to be.

Wilbur leans back against a pole and watches as the other three engage in an intense game of cards using the deck that Tubbo brought with him. He lost horrendously a few rounds ago (he’s never been good at strategy games) and opts instead to play his guitar while waiting for the game to be over. 

Looking around their little group, it hits him, then, a realisation that sends a lump up his throat and makes him pause his playing long enough for Tommy to shoot him a glance: he wouldn’t trade this for the world. 

This, this moment, this feeling that erupts in him; when he stretches his long legs out across the wooden boards; when he feels his fingers aching from hours of guitar-playing; when he brushes hair out of his eyes and feels the last rays of the dying sun brush against his nose, his eyelashes, his parted lips, and his hand casts a shadow over his face as he squints at the blazing horizon through the gaps between his fingers; when he breathes in and the air fills his lungs and he feels wholly, completely, and utterly human.

He wouldn’t give any of this up for the world, he thinks, he knows, he almost, almost says.

Not when Tubbo gives up playing and instead tries to sabotage the game, causing Niki to win with a holler and a victorious fist pump. 

Not when Tommy throws his cards into a pile in the centre and bitches about wanting to stab shit. 

Not when Wilbur’s smiling so widely it almost splits his face in half and laughing so hard that he cries, letting his wildest, most delirious cackle out into the world for all to hear, like he’s got no care in the world, like all of this is easy for him, like he’d do anything to make this moment last forever.

13:

“Um.”

The two figures freeze where they’re rummaging through the backroom, sifting through boxes and leaving a mess behind. They turn to look at Wilbur, and in the low light, it doesn’t even cross his mind that they might be dangerous, that his life might be in danger, because the two pairs of eyes looking into his own belong to two kids his age.

“Hello…”

Distantly, a part of him realises that he’s just walked in on two thieves, and that same part thinks that maybe he should find someone to deal with the situation. That same part is dumb and also a complete fucking loser, though, because he’s just been presented with an opportunity. An opportunity to what, exactly, he hasn’t decided.

“Nothing to see here, pal,” one of them snarls at him, their shocked gaze quickly turning into a glare meant to intimidate him. Their eyes glint a bright yellow in the dark, he notes. Unfortunately for them, Wilbur has no sense of self preservation.

“You’re stealing,” he says.

The other snorts. “Duh,” they say. “What does it look like we’re doing?”

“Stealing…”

The two kids exchange a look, and one of them makes a strange noise at the back of their throat, something between a snort and a snarl. Wilbur hears a phantom’s whisper warning him of danger and brushes it off with a slight shake of his head.

“You wanna move along, buddy?” the first one asks as they turn towards Wilbur, threat clear in the way their- his accented (pronounces his ‘o’s and his ‘g’s weirdly, probably a more western accent) voice drips with venom. “Like I said, nothing to see here.”

“Not particularly, no,” Wilbur replies. 

Tommy might be the most reckless one of their family, being so quick to pick fights with people, and Techno comes in at second with his penchant for adrenaline and violence, but Wilbur thinks that these moments are why Phil doesn’t quite trust him to take care of himself, either. 

Poor Phil, the man never catches a break with three hazards to his sanity living under the same roof as him.

“Listen, buddy,” the kid growls, moving away from the boxes to step menacingly towards Wilbur. As he straightens and walks into better lighting, Wilbur notices he’s got furred goat-like legs and a pair of grey horns jutting out his temples — a satyr, though Wilbur has no idea what one is doing this far away from the forest. “If you don’t get out right fuckin’ now, we’re gonna have a problem in our hands-“

“Schlatt!” the other kid yells (what the fuck kind of a name is Schlatt?), pointing at the doorway to the room. 

Wilbur whirls around to find someone standing there, an imposing silhouette that towers over all three of them, their hand already reaching for their pocket.

His stomach drops. 

Oh, oh no.

And then it happens. Wilbur feels a gust of wind hit his face, blowing his hair into his eyes and making him splutter and gasp. A hand yanks him by the shoulder and he flails backwards, his long legs tripping over themselves in an attempt to gain purchase on the ground, but it doesn’t matter, because he’s being pulled and light breaks into his vision and he can’t feel the ground anymore because he’s rising, rising-

“What the fuck-“ his heart leaps in his chest when he realises he’s not in the building anymore, and there are bits of broken glass stuck to his pants, “did you just break the fucking-“

He never gets to finish his sentence, because he makes the mistake of looking down and holy fuck he’s FLYING-

“Stop struggling or I’ll fucking drop you!” a voice yells out from above him and Wilbur snaps his gaze up to the shadows of a pair of avian wings (a mallard, he can tell by its feather structure and colouring), too small to be carrying one person let alone three- oh Prime the kid’s carrying the weight of three people-

“Watch out!”

They narrowly miss an obstacle — a stray telephone pole, but the sudden movement throws them off-balance and fuck he’s about to die-

“Oh motherfuck-“

“Alex!” 

Wilbur’s concern didn’t come completely out of nowhere, because suddenly the three of them are plummeting towards the ground. He hears frantic flapping, and sees a mess of tangled limbs and goat fur and there’s a horn pressing painfully into his side and-

-and he-

A force knocks into him. No, no that’s not quite right — it feels more like a force grabbing him and throwing him fuck-all through the air, and Wilbur feels breathless, weightless, flung at light speed through time and space and a few bugs along the way (this is why Phil tells him he always closes his mouth when flying) and he tries to suck in air or cry out but nothing comes out, his own voice can’t catch up to him-

It’s over as quickly as it happened.

Wilbur blinks away dust from his eyelashes and coughs once, twice, and breathes until his lungs can’t take in any more. He’s lying face-up in a small clearing in the forest, decidedly not in the middle of the city, where he’d just been a few seconds ago. Beside him, the two kids — Schlatt (?) and Alex — are wheezing, too, and Alex is already getting up, his knees trembling.

“Alex, man, please,” Schlatt coughs, “please warn me the next time you do that.” He’s kicking his goat legs in the air, brushing off bits of glass from the fur. If Wilbur ever sees these kids again, he won’t shy away from the ‘furry’ jokes.

“Wh- the fuck am I supposed to do back there, man? I can’t just- stop mid-fucking-air, I don’t even know how to fucking fly properly, Prime-“

“Oh Prime,” Wilbur gasps. He sits up abruptly and stares deep into Alex’s eyes. “You can fly and teleport?”

Schlatt and Alex exchange looks, and the former pulls his companion’s arm, tugging him closer, before he butts his head and horns against Alex’s shoulder. Now it feels awkward, as if Wilbur’s just walked in on a private moment between two friends (it must be a gesture, something special to both of them judging by the soft look in Alex’s eyes afterwards), and he feels heat creeping up his neck and flooding his face. To them, he realises, he’s a danger to their little operation, someone who can jeopardise their plans now that he knows what they look like and what they can do.

“Uh... yeah,” Alex says, shifting from leg to leg. He’s a hybrid, Wilbur notices, a duck hybrid specifically, with thick feathers flattening against the sides of his arms as he closes his wings. “Well it’s not exactly teleporting, it’s more, it’s uh, I can make things go really far and fast in the air.” 

But he’s also something else — he has to be; the air ripples and changes around him, and Wilbur can’t help but think about the gust of wind that invaded the room and swept him off his feet.

It clicks in his head. “Wind spirit?” Wilbur asks.

“I guess,” Alex replies, shrugging. “Is that what you call them? I’m not sure, but... I guess?”

“Huh,” Wilbur says, laying back down. It’s nice — the grass cushion his head and the smell of the forest is rich in his lungs. He likes it here, surrounded by trees and nature, existing alongside the critters residing among the shrubbery. A thought pops into his mind, and he voices it before thinking. “Has that always been your plan?” he asks. “I mean, you steal, and if you get caught you just… fling yourselves out to the forest?”

No one replies, which gives Wilbur all the answers he needs.

Someone shuffles closer to him. “So… you gonna rat us out?” Schlatt asks, a cautious look in place of his confrontational demeanour.

Wilbur scrunches his nose, his answer was decided the moment he walked in on them trying to steal goods. He’d been itching for a little bit of chaos for some time, and past the fear of falling that seized his bones, that was one of the most exhilarating moments of his life. 

Feeling the glass break around him as Alex flung them out the window alone was enough. The terror that seized his bones, the way the sunlight slammed into his face, the weightlessness — it was nothing but pure adrenaline, pure life.

“Nah,” he says. “You guys are great.”

“Oh,” Schlatt says. The shuffling stops. “Thank you.” 

Wilbur suspects he’s the kind of person who picks and chooses his moments of gratitude, and suddenly he’s fighting back the urge to smile, jittery at the thought that he made the right choice and also two new allies. Alex flops back down onto the ground, and the three of them simply lay on the ground and breathe the last bits of adrenaline out their system. 

“Alex, right?” Wilbur says, after a long while of silence.

“Just… call me Quackity,” comes the mumbled response, “only Schlatt calls me Alex.”

“Okay.” Wilbur nods, even though they’re all looking at the sky. It’s a nice day out — bright, a little cloudy, perfect for doing nothing at all. “You said you don’t know how to fly properly?”

“Yeah.”

“My dad’s got wings and he- he, uh, he flies sometimes. I could ask him to teach you.” 

He has no idea where this offer came from, but he’s always loved it when Phil takes him flying. Of course, nothing beats having two feet firmly on the ground where there’s no chance of falling to his death (even though he knows Phil would rather die than let him get hurt first), but sometimes it's nice to be up in the air, feeling like he’s untouchable. 

“Uhh.” Wilbur hears the sound of fluttering, as if Quackity’s messing with his feathers. “Sure?”

“Cool.”

A pause.

“What, like, now?” Quackity says.

“I mean, yeah?” Wilbur says, then backtracks. “I mean, if you guys don’t have anywhere to go right now, or, or uh, in the near future-”

“No, no, uh, we…” Schlatt interjects, voice soft but defensive, “we don’t have, uh, anywhere to go... sometime in the near future. Or- or anywhere to go at all.”

“Oh.” Oh.

“Yeah.”

“So is that a yes?”

“Hell yeah dude,” Quackity says, sitting up. He stands, stretches his feathered arms, and extends a hand to Schlatt to help him up. Wilbur follows suit, dusting off dirt and dry leaves from his clothes. “Cool, uh, let’s get going?”

“Yep,” Wilbur says, “if you could, like, just get us to the edge of the forest, I’ll lead the rest of the way there.”

Quackity nods. His feathers puff out into wings and he grabs Wilbur and Schlatt by the arm. Schlatt braces himself, bending his goat legs slightly, and Wilbur thinks that maybe he should do something like that but no, the world turns into blurry lines and he’s already being flung a hundred miles a second-

-the world stops, and Wilbur falls over, hands shooting out much too late to break his fall. He coughs once, twice, and wheezes as he tries choking down air. Above him, Schlatt and Quackity are doing the same thing, but without falling over like an absolute idiot.

After feeling like he won’t immediately collapse into a pile of gangly limbs on the floor for the second time that day, Wilbur takes them back to his house, where Phil greets them at the door, pleasantly surprised. It quickly softens, though, as soon as Wilbur starts explaining where he found them and what they’re doing with him, as soon as Schlatt takes Quackity’s hand and puffs out his chest, as soon as Phil hears ‘they have nowhere to go’. 

“Of course,” Phil says, opening the door wider to let all three of them in. “You boys are welcome to stay for dinner too, if you’d like.” 

And unspoken: you are welcome to stay forever. 

But Wilbur knows — and he suspects that Phil does, too — that neither Schlatt nor Quackity will take up an offer like that. That this is an offer a little too good to be true (though Phil would definitely follow up on his promise and then more) and neither boys are willing to risk the life they already lead.

If Wilbur was a better person, a better son, a little more selfless than he really is, he’d plead with them to consider staying. To quit their life of crime and live a comfortable life with him, with Techno and Tommy and Phil, and then they’d be the pair’s family, the one they really need. The one they really deserve. 

But Wilbur is a bad person, a bad son, too selfish for his own good, and these are all excuses he comes up with; when Quackity leaps off the roof with his wings spread wide and Phil is there to help him soar; when Tommy meets Schlatt and they immediately begin scheming; when Wilbur’s voice gets stuck and dry in his throat and he’s got the widest, wildest grin on his face. 

He’s selfish. 

He’s happy. 

What more can he ask for?

And besides, the forest is right there. He’s seen it, the way Schlatt’s eyes had lit up in the clearing, the way Quackity’s shoulders were at ease as he laid on the leaves, and Wilbur understands, he does, he’d go insane pretty quickly if he doesn’t take his usual trips down to the ocean.

There’s something so viscerally relieving to know that there exists a being much older than him, that it’s been there aeons before he was born, that it’ll be there aeons after he’s gone (or after the universe decides that it’s finally tired of him), that the waves will keep crashing and the forest will keep growing and the world will keep turning.

And they leave, afterward, after the flying lesson with Phil and a dinner with the family (which, by the way, Wilbur’s absolutely terrified of the fact that Tommy latched onto the pair so quickly, what the fuck does he see in them). 

But they’ll be back; Quackity had too much fun flying with Phil and Schlatt shared too many scamming secrets with Tommy. 

(So when they return two days later asking if Wilbur would like to come with them on an ‘adventure’, he goes without hesitation. They stay for dinner, afterward, and Wilbur ignores the fact that Tommy starts talking about drug cartels the next day.)

15:

The life of a hunter is a strange one. 

Sometimes Wilbur wanders his house in the middle of the night and hears the door slam open, two delirious hunters stumbling in and crashing into the couch; Techno and Dream — rivals to no end and inseparable friends beyond their endless competition — come staggering in, covered in blood and bruises after an intense hunt out in the city.

Sometimes a feral creature or a particularly vengeful fae manages to break into their house, looking to gut Techno for messing with them or their unit, only to be banished by Phil with a long sigh and a wave of his hand. Afterwards, he would pull Techno aside to go on a long lecture on the importance of maintaining protective wards around the property, not that Techno doesn’t already know, he just got careless for a moment, is all.

Sometimes Wilbur receives a text from Dream to fetch them salt or mountain ash or whatever fucking thing they forgot to bring, and he’ll barge in on the pair sitting cross-legged on the floor next to a rogue spirit thrashing inside a salt circle, sharing a bag of crisps and playing the audio of some Latin chanting from Techno’s phone. 

It’s strange — Wilbur won’t deny it, in fact, he’ll be the first one to make fun of them for all the hot shit they inevitably find themselves in. He respects the grind — the dedication and the ingenuity and the balls of absolute steel: of not immediately pissing themselves when confronted by a grotesque creature from the next dimension over. He respects it, but that doesn’t mean he’ll stop teasing the fact that Tubbo, as young and impressionable and stupid as Tommy is, looks up to both Techno and Dream and wants to follow in their footsteps.

(It almost came as a complete shock, when one day, Tubbo announced his desire to learn, and Wilbur immediately choked on his spit from the shock because for a moment he’s overwhelmed by the question why, why the fuck, aren’t two expert hunters in one city enough, I don’t need to worry about another person’s life, not someone else I care far too much about-

When he voiced that worry out, all Tubbo could say was, “Because I want to protect people.”

And if something swells bright and warm in his heart at young Tubbo, barely breaching thirteen and eyes shining tender with determination, Wilbur doesn’t mention it.)

Sometimes hunting involves fighting back hordes upon hordes of feral spectres to protect your city and all its people. Sometimes it involves running for your life from a particularly angry pack of hellhounds who’ve locked onto the taste of your blood. Sometimes it involves choking the warped syllables of a dead language out into the air, feeling it tear through your throat, knowing that you can’t give in or else the spell will backfire horribly.

But sometimes hunting involves lounging about the edge of the forest with Tubbo (“Tommy’s off to fuck-knows-where,” he’d said right before dragging Wilbur along, “you’ll make a great temporary partner, c’mon!”), a few feet away from a pyromancer that Tubbo’s been called to deal with, subsequently tracked down, and trapped in a circle of mountain ash. 

Sapnap has been whining the whole time, throwing a hissy fit in the confines of the circle, complaining about how it was only for fun, c’mon, it’s not like I’m going to set George’s entire forest on fire, dude let me out, please, Dream’s gonna be so mad if he finds out that I tried to mess with dear Gogy again-

In an attempt to tune out all the whining while waiting for George to get there, Wilbur pulls Tubbo aside and strikes up a conversation with him. Talking about anything that comes to mind, both desperate to bore out Sapnap and shut him up. 

And between all the small talk, Wilbur asks a question he's been meaning to ask the young hunter apprentice. for a while now. 

“Tubbo, have you considered any patron deities?”

Tubbo’s eyes light up, and he opens his mouth readily to answer. He freezes, hesitating, then deflates. “Yeah,” he says, voice unsure, “but I don’t know if… if it’s the right choice, y’know? Not that any patrons would be a bad one,” he backtracks quickly, in case any stray gods or spirits are listening. “But I’m not sure if they’d… if they’d want me.”

“Oh?”

Wilbur sidles up closer to Tubbo where they’re both sitting against a tree, hooking an arm around his shoulder. Tubbo sighs and leans his head against Wilbur's collarbone, his fluffy brown hair brushing against Wilbur's skin, tickling his neck slightly. 

“That’s stupid,” Wilbur declares, “they should feel lucky that you even considered them in the first place. Tubbo, man, you’re gonna be a great hunter and you're a cool dude, of course they’d want to be your deity, who wouldn’t?”

“Wilbur…” Tubbo mutters, a nervous smile creeping up his face. “You can’t just go around saying things like that.”

“But it’s true!”

“Prime, okay like, realistically I know they probably wouldn’t reject me but… I don’t know if they’d want to be, you know, weighed down by a hunter…” he trails off.

Wilbur is quiet for a moment. There’s only one entity who Tubbo would really consider, only one person he’d wholeheartedly trust his entire life with like that. The bond developed between a hunter and a deity has to be strong, has to be mutually loyal, and both parties have to trust the other without question for it to work — for both sides to reap the best rewards. 

Exactly like the bond shared by the unlikely pair of a chaos spirit and an aspiring hunter; inseparable through thick and thin, both too stubborn and too protective of their star-crossed friendship- brotherhood, to ever let anything get in its way.

“Okay,” Wilbur says. “That is still stupid.” He pauses. “I’m sure he would love to have you as his hunter.”

Tubbo groans. “Am I that obvious?” 

“Nope,” Wilbur smiles down at him. “I just think that it’s… it’s really sweet.”

“Oh.” 

Tubbo mulls it over in his little head. After a while, he reaches up and loops a lock of Wilbur’s fringe around his finger, effectively turning him bright red. He really needs to stop blushing every time someone does it to him — he’s only giving Niki the ammunition she needs to tease him. 

“This sucks, Tommy isn’t here to farm ‘aww’s,” Tubbo says, earning a bark of laughter out of Wilbur and a snort from Sapnap, who’s apparently quit bitching about being trapped and instead has started listening in to their conversation.

“I don’t think he likes ‘aww’s.”

“You’re right,” he says, in a completely serious tone. “PogChamp.”

“PogChamp,” Wilbur agrees earnestly.

They both look expectantly at Sapnap, who shakes his head.

“You guys are losers,” Sapnap says, “but PogChamp.”

A beat, and all three of them break into laughter, doubling over and kicking the ground with their feet, sending leaves flying everywhere.

(Later, George arrives, his expression turning sour as soon as he sees Sapnap’s smug expression, dread written all over his face at the teasing that’s bound to come with being a part of their little extended friend group. 

“Say the line, George!” Sapnap yells, elbowing his friend on the shoulder.

George sighs, and it sounds vaguely like the rustling of an animal in a bush. “I am Gogy, spirit of the forest,” he obliges, utterly defeated, “and I speak for the trees.” 

He buries his face in his hands and groans as Sapnap and Wilbur howl in laughter. Tubbo clasps his hands behind his back and bows his head solemnly at him, a gesture of condolences that he's picked up from the furry fuck he calls his brother. 

George scrunches his nose at the mock-pity. “Prime, I can’t even see the stupid colours, this sucks, you guys suck-”

“We know,” Wilbur cuts in, grinning mischievously at the sombre look on George’s face. 

This, here, laughing with friends and teasing one of them to the ends of the Earth, the day ends with warmth swelling in his chest, filling his body with a golden glow that he feels only when around certain people: friends, family, the people who he loves to no end.)

18:

There is a darkness underneath the city.

There is a darkness underneath the city, and Wilbur can feel it spark alight a fuse in him, a tic at the back of his neck or an itch in his belly he can’t scratch, a temptation of violent, empty promises he can never bat away completely.

There’s a reason why he fits in so well with Phil, with Techno, with Tommy. Any outsider would look in and turn their noses at the patchwork family they’ve scraped together out of orphans and runaways; anyone would raise an eyebrow at them, a family unit consisting of Philza the Angel of Death, Technoblade the Warrior Hunter of the Patron Blood God, Tommy Innit the Spirit of Chaos Incarnate, and Wilbur Soot… the everyday human boy.

Because he’s got a secret; he’s not human, not quite, not really.

(Well, he is, mostly, or at least he likes to convince himself that he is, completely and undoubtedly human, that is.)

Eighteen years ago, an angel descended upon the city to smite an ancient darkness hidden underneath, and a part of that darkness, terrified and unready to die, unlatched off the sewer walls and found a baby born breathless and soulless to a dying mother and an absent father. It had assumed the baby’s life in an instant and that night, Wilbur Soot was born, his pulse miraculously starting up minutes after he was pronounced stillborn.

Of course, he remembers none of this (more like he tries to convince himself these memories aren’t his). What he does remember is the fear that gripped him tight and froze him in place when he was ten, shivering in an alleyway littered with the fading bodies of hellhounds, face-to-face with the very angel that was tasked with smiting him. 

Except Phil hadn’t ended his life with a fiery death, no, all he’d seen was a human boy who stole the wrong thing from the wrong warlock, and quickly took Wilbur under his wing and care, unaware of his true nature.

And it’s days like these, when Wilbur’s sitting alone and bored in his room that he’s grateful Phil took him into this family. Because that tic, that itch, that temptation, it all grows louder and louder in his ears and soon he finds he can no longer focus on completing his schoolwork. His very nature demands it, and he’s already thumping on Techno’s door, whining about being bored and wanting some action, “-a hunt, Techno, maybe? You got any cases recently? Something, something you can take me out with you, man, c'mon, I’m bo-ored,” and he makes sure to drag out that last syllable for effect, “Techno, hey, if you don’t have anything I’ll ask Tommy instead-“

The door swings open mid-knock and Techno glares at him, bags under his dark blue eyes and wearing the usual grumpy expression. “It’s three in the goddamn mornin’, Wilbur, what the hell do you mean you want to go out on a hunt-?”

“It’s three?” Wilbur asks, perking up completely chipper, “I hadn’t noticed, oop-” he had, but this way he gets to sap up the annoyance radiating off his older brother, “look, you don’t have to if you don’t want to, but I’ve got a lot of pent-up energy tonight, man, and if you’re not gonna do it-“

“Then you’ll get Tommy instead, yeah, yeah I know,” Techno huffs, rolling his eyes. “Alright, just- stay there, gimme a moment-“

He walks back inside, picking at his tusks and muttering something semi-coherent about his piglin tusks. Wilbur can’t help but grin — Techno did, after all, ask to have meat for dinner, and now he’s gotta pay the price when he gets a shred stuck between his teeth.

(Techno has a terrible underbite, and an even worse teeth alignment until Wilbur and Phil pestered him enough to get braces — which was hilarious, by the way, the orthodontist had no idea what to do with the tusks that came with being a rare piglin hybrid, and almost pissed himself when the infamous Technoblade showed up at his clinic, which, Wilbur made sure to note that fiasco down in his Calendar of Cringe— and while Techno bitched about it for weeks, Wilbur knows that he, albeit begrudgingly, admits that he looks a lot more presentable now. And besides, Wilbur had a constant source of misery to sap up for almost three years.)

“-you ready? Let’s go.” 

Techno snaps his fingers in front of Wilbur’s face, effectively, well, snapping him out of his reverie. He’s already halfway down the hall when Wilbur composes himself and scrambles after him, trying hard to stamp down the bounce of excitement in his steps. They leave the house as quietly as they can, knowing full well that Tommy might catch them at any second and rat them out to Phil just for shits and giggles.

“Case?” Wilbur asks, as soon as they’ve both settled into Phil’s car. 

Techno fumbles with his seatbelt for a moment — which is kind of dumb, because here’s Technoblade, the famed Warrior Hunter of the Patron Blood God, worrying about some safety precautions — before tossing his phone to Wilbur. 

“Not urgent,” he says firstly, starting up the car as Wilbur looks through the details. They’re safe; if Tommy catches them now, they’d be long gone by the time Phil can wake up from his slumber. “Feral pixie infestation in an abandoned warehouse, the usual.”

“The one down by Niki’s place?” Wilbur asks. He hears a yell in the distance and can’t tell if it’s real, not tonight, not when he’s too tired to care and too awake to be completely sane.

Techno pulls the car out the driveway and squints at the windshield. After a beat, he pushes his square glasses higher up his nose. “Uh... probably? Well, to my knowledge, there’s only one abandoned warehouse that they like to infest.”

Normally, Wilbur would be down to herd some feral pixies back to the fair folk, but he’s really not in the mood to deal with all the hidden clauses and shit in the paperwork they’ll force on him and Techno after they lock up the pixies. Sometimes, only sometimes, it’s fun to find loopholes in their loopholes and engage in a battle of wits, but tonight he’s looking for something different. Something more... intense.

“Ehh, boring,” he decides. 

Techno hums an affirmation. “Swipe left.” Wilbur does. A new case appears on the screen. “Not urgent,” he starts. “Reports of a shapeshifter gone rogue up by the forest. No deaths — yet — but they’ve caught trails and CCTV video footage.” 

Now this? This looks way more attractive, what with the promise of the thrill of the hunt, of adrenaline coursing through his veins at the prospect of being mauled by the thing (not that either of them will, Techno’s too good at his job to let him or Wilbur get hurt by a single shapeshifter). Unfortunately, Wilbur doesn’t feel like going on a long-winded speech to remind the thing of its relationships and humanity and past life. 

“Pass,” he says.

“O...kay, alright, I see how it is.”

Techno stops the car at a red light, in a four way intersection. This late at night (or this early in the morning, depending on how you see it), they’re the only car in the road.

“Your pick. Ahead, Niki’s place. To the left, the forest. And to the right, semi-urgent, your average run-of-the-mill cultists tryin’ to raise the Wither again.” He taps a padded finger on the steering wheel, raising an eyebrow at Wilbur. 

Wither cultists. Wilbur’s heard of Techno dealing with them before, but he’s never tagged along on a case like that. It’s almost comical how resilient they are, how dedicated to their plot of utter world destruction they are (normally he’d perk up at the thought of some good chaos but complete annihilation of all life on Earth isn’t really the best way to go about it), and how hard they try to fight back. No contracts and negotiations, no heartfelt speech about holding onto humanity, just a good fight and a solid clean-up afterwards.

They both know the answer even before Wilbur opens his mouth to respond. “Take the right,” and Techno obliges. He almost feels bad for the cultists they’re about to send back to the Nether. 

Almost. 

Mostly, he’s just trying to contain the joy that blooms in his chest; the way his whole being sings in elation and the way he feels the darkness beneath the ground stir awake from its slumber, giddy at the thought of all the havoc he’s about to wreak. He should feel guilty, but that’ll probably come tomorrow when the weight of his existence comes barrelling back into him like a freight train.

(Tomorrow, he’ll wake up and feel emptier than he does tonight. The next day, he’ll do it again, and then he’ll feel even emptier, his insides gone silent and hung up on dread. And he’ll wake up, again and again, until one day the clock strikes zero and one day his time runs out. 

There is a darkness underneath the city, lying quiet in dormancy, watching him like he’d watch his own shadow rise and fall with his movements. 

He can’t shake the feeling that it’s waiting for something. The other shoe, he thinks, maybe it’s waiting for the other shoe to drop and break into pieces. Maybe it’s waiting to die, for the universe to decide that it’s finally allowed to rest, in the deep dark where it’ll never have to wake up again.

Or maybe it’s waiting for him.)

Wilbur rolls down the window of the car and grins out at the city lights flashing past him. Cold air hits his face, chills down his lungs, shivers down his spine. He feels alive, is the crux of the matter — alive in its rawest form, high off the realisation that he is breathing, feeling, existing.

(It’s a strange feeling, precious and terrifying, to exist. This is something that he’s had to come to terms with.)

For now, there’s only him, the ecstatic grin splitting his face in half, his leg bouncing against the floor of the passenger seat, and the night that comes alive and ablaze with the thrill of the hunt.

Chapter Text

16:

“Wil?”

Wilbur pulls his legs closer to his chest, trying to make himself as small as possible. He buries his face in his knees and presses his hands on either side of his head, blocking out his eyes and ears from the rest of the world. 

Outside, someone screams, a terrible sound that sends panic stabbing through his body. It’s not real, it’s not, but the fact that he can hear it at all-

“Go away,” he rasps, voice hoarse and throat painful. “Fuck off, Tommy.” 

He’s shaking. And in the periphery of his awareness, Tommy stops knocking on his door. His fingers are cold, clammy, and he can’t quite feel his hair around his fingers; he can’t feel it, or anything, and it, it’s like he- he’s-

“Okay, okay, Wil, I’m gonna get Phil and Techno, please hang on, please-“

He’s sobbing. Or maybe he’s screaming. He’s stopped feeling the air in his lungs, the floor under his legs, the fingers on his face, and everything spins in his head and he lets out a strangled, pathetic noise, but he knows- he’s breathing and he’s sitting and he’s gripping his hair but none of it registers and he’s tugging at his locks but none of it hurts and why can’t he fucking feel anything what happened to his body-

(Sixteen years ago an angel descended upon the city to smite an ancient darkness hidden underneath, sixteen years ago a baby was born stillborn and empty inside, sixteen years ago something that didn’t deserve to be human decided it wanted to live anyway, sixteen years ago the world turned on its head and-

Sixteen years later Wilbur can’t feel his body and thinks this is his retribution, this is where the universe decides it’s done with him-

Sixteen years ago the darkness woke up from its slumber and the first emotion it felt in centuries was a terrible fear that gripped its form tighter and colder than anything it’s felt, had, been before-

Sixteen years later Wilbur wakes up feeling sick to his stomach and stares wide-eyed up at his father, at Phil, at the person who’s supposed to raise and protect him, at the angel sent down to smite him-

Centuries ago he was nothing but a deep, incorporeal evil festering miles deep under any sign of life, alone and angry and terribly, terrifyingly empty. Half aware of his own existence, feeding off the strife above, passing time day by day and waiting to die-

Centuries later a part of Wilbur Soot will never forget not being human.)

“Wilbur?” comes a voice from the other side of the door. 

A chill runs down his spine.

It’s an ugly thing that scrapes the skin of his back and leaves ice in its wake, a pinprick quivering deep in his stomach, extinguishing any pathetic semblance of bravery he’s convinced himself he’s strong enough to muster. This isn’t fear, he’s felt fear before and this isn’t it; this is staring down the gaping maw of a beast, this is putting a foot out at the edge of a building, this is falling, and freezing, and the graceful arc of an arrow about to hit its bullseye.

Phil knocks the door, and Wilbur can hear him shuffling his feet outside. “Wil, are you okay?” 

But he’s not, he’s not, and a part of him — still hopeful and still human — wants to believe that Phil isn’t that cruel, wouldn’t smite him after all this time, but the rest of him — deathly terrified — screams:

“I said go away!”

And maybe it’s the scathing tone of his voice, scratchy and panicked and so unlike his usual passive demeanour; and maybe it’s the memories swirling in his head, the product of two lives clashing against each other like a violent car crash from which only one can come out on top; and maybe it’s the way a sob tears out his throat, way too young and way too lonely — but Phil stops. 

Wilbur hears a sigh, and can imagine the pained look on Phil’s face, knows that his father wants to insist. 

But he stops, and Wilbur is grateful.

After a few agonising seconds of pure silence, in which Wilbur is completely sure that his door is about to get blasted open, he hears another knock. 

Too soft to be Tommy’s demanding thumps and too firm to be Phil’s hesitant tapping, Technoblade raps the door with his knuckle and says in a low voice, far softer than what Wilbur’s used to from him, “Wilbur, can I come in?”

Instead of answering, Wilbur shuffles closer to a corner and clamps his mouth shut in an attempt to stifle his crying. 

“I’m gonna take that as a ‘yes’, alright?” Techno says slowly, enunciating every syllable. “I’m gonna come in alone, and if you want me to leave at any time, tell me and I’ll do it immediately.” A pause. “I’m openin’ the door now, okay?”

Wilbur doesn’t respond, and a beat later the door creaks open and he hears a shush from the other side — either Phil or Techno shutting Tommy up — before he hears the familiar tapping of hoofed feet against his floor.

Techno crouches in front of him, keeping a comfortable distance away, making sure Wilbur has enough space to scurry away if need be. It makes him feel like a rabid animal, on the edge of snapping and lashing out violently, and in a sense, he is. 

For a few moments, that’s all they do: sit, and breathe, and exist in the same space. 

“Can I touch you?” Techno asks, breaking the silence between them.

Wilbur still doesn’t say anything, doesn’t dare to make a single noise besides the sobs wrecking his body.

It’s not a no; he’d love to be touched, to feel something aside from the icy fear clawing painfully at the base of his lungs, starving him of air. 

It’s not a no, so his brother understands and takes that as a yes, because a moment later he feels Techno’s hands cupping his own, gently untangling his fingers from his hair and prying his hands away from where they were clawed around his ears. Wilbur forces his muscles to relax, and Techno guides both their hands towards himself.

Technoblade doesn’t deal in sentimental words. He doesn’t say ‘I love you’ or ‘I’m proud of you’ or ‘I enjoyed spending time with you’. He banters and he quips and he throws out the occasional one-liner that lives rent-free in Wilbur’s head for days afterwards, but Wilbur can count on one hand the number of times he’s heard Techno say a compliment and mean it. 

Fortunately for Techno, Wilbur knows his older brother like the back of his own hand. They’re brothers, two years apart, bound by everything but blood. Wilbur knows all the people he’s been; the young piglin hybrid picked fresh from the Nether, angry at the world that abandoned him; the hunter apprentice clawing his way up the ranks, loyal only to his deity and family and to his honour; the legendary Technoblade, an unstoppable force, something bright and fierce and dangerous in the eyes of all but the people who love him. 

Wilbur knows him, knows how to navigate him easily — sometimes a lot easier than he knows how to navigate himself, and he speaks enough for the both of them.

And fortunately for Wilbur, Techno knows him, too.

Technoblade doesn’t deal in sentimental words. Instead, he takes Wilbur out on car rides along the coastline and lets him roll down the window to let the salty air in. He distracts Tommy with a promise to teach him how to fight when he notices Wilbur’s about to snap at their youngest for being too pushy. He leaves food outside Wilbur’s door when he’s too caught up lamenting about his existence to go down for dinner.

So here, now, he intertwines their fingers and leans in, pressing Wilbur’s hands to his lips, his tusks. 

(A gesture passed down to him from the piglins; shared among close friends, lovers, and most importantly family. A sign of solidarity, of sympathy, an unspoken message of protectiveness, admiration, and respect of the highest, most intimate level.)

And Wilbur… he feels it all. The way Techno’s rough fingers slides between his own. The gentle tug of his arms. Techno’s tusks — and subsequently his metal braces — pressing into his skin. And Techno’s closing his eyes, hot breathing against his fingers, and Wilbur feels it, feels all these things trickling back into his nerves. 

He chokes out a sob, and squeezes his brother’s hands as tightly as he can.

(A response to the gesture — accepted, and requited.)

Techno opens his eyes — a deep blue, the colour of the sea at night — and meets Wilbur’s dark gaze. He breaks the gesture first and gives Wilbur a lopsided smile, lips curling awkwardly around his tusks. Wilbur laughs, a wet bark that hurts his chest (but at least he can feel his chest hurting) and it’s enough to make him wrench his hands out of Techno’s hold and launch himself forward, tackling his brother in a hug.

They hit the floor with a thud, and Wilbur doesn’t feel sorry at all that Techno takes the brunt of the impact because he’s laughing, and Techno’s laughing, too, they’re both laughing, and Wilbur thinks, this is it, there’s no sound more beautiful to his ears than the messy tones of two brothers wrapped together in a desperate hug.

“I take it that you’re better now?” Techno jokes after they’ve stopped rolling and wrestling on Wilbur’s rug and gathering dust on their clothes. 

Wilbur buries his head in his brother’s shoulder and nods furiously, trying his best to contain the smile on his face (which feels a little awkward — he’s a couple inches taller but that doesn’t really matter because neither of them actually care at the moment).

“Can Tommy and Phil come in now?”

Wilbur hesitates. 

This part of him won’t ever let him go. He’s always going to be afraid, always going to freeze when Phil raises his voice, always going to be cautious when Tommy tries to snoop in his business, always going to flinch away when Techno exorcises a dark spirit on a hunt. 

But the hopeful, the human part of him knows — and all of him knows, too — that his family would never hurt him, no matter what. 

He remembers how Phil would stop shouting as soon as he sees the look in Wilbur’s eyes, how Tommy would catch on to his discomfort and back away immediately, how Techno would always make sure that Wilbur’s left the room when he’s about to banish a spirit from its host. 

He remembers the feel of Techno’s lips against his fingers, and he nods.

Techno chuckles and squeezes him breathless for a second. He untangles himself from Wilbur and stands upright, offering a hand for Wilbur to take. 

“Alright, but I gotta warn you that Tommy’s a little hypers today.” Wilbur doesn’t miss how Techno rolls his eyes. “Somethin’ about that Tubbo kid, so. Just a heads up.”

“When doesn’t he bitch about Tubbo, really,” Wilbur says, and pride blooms in his chest when Techno snickers.

Techno calls out for Phil and Tommy, and Wilbur’s door immediately bursts open in a flurry of gremlin child and worried father. Tommy dives straight to tackle-hug Wilbur (this is karma, this is so much fucking karma), and when Wilbur doesn’t flinch at the sight of Phil’s wings, he counts that as a win.

“Oh Prime, big man, big dubs, I was so worried about you please don’t ever tell me to fuck off again-“

“Fuck off, dickhead.”

“-I’m sorry if I did anything wrong- okay now that’s just unwarranted and rude, is that how you repay my kindness, because if it is then that’s just fucked up, I hope you’re fine now or, or at least as fine as you can be or something, I don’t know how this shit works, do you need a distraction, I heard that talking can be a good distraction so anyway have you heard about Tubbo-“

“Tommy-“

“-he asked me to be his patron deity, dude can you believe that, I think it’s my turn to cry like a bitch except I never cry, I’m way too tough to cry like a bitch, wait, I’m not saying that you were a bitch, okay sometimes you are but not now, fuck, I’m sorry, oh Prime-“

“Tommy!” Wilbur says firmly, which effectively shuts him up. Almost by instinct, he twirls a lock of Tommy’s hair around a finger. “I’m fine, big man. You don’t have to worry about me, yeah?” 

In return, Tommy headbutts him on his chest, and Wilbur wheezes at the impact of his tiny red horns. But instead of getting annoyed, he feels his heart melting, squeezing in his chest in a way that stings, that makes his eyes sting. 

(Another gesture, which Tommy picked from Schlatt, and which Wilbur has learnt means relief, a wish for comfort, a way for satyrs to show each other that they care.)

Tommy nods into his torso. “Never,” he mumbles, “and I mean this in the best way possible: never shut me out again.”

Wilbur looks up at Phil, who’s opted to hang back with Techno. Phil smiles, and for a moment Wilbur is overtaken by the blinding certainty that his father loves him with no bounds, that his family loves him, no strings attached, no requital, nothing.

“Of course,” he chokes out. He closes his eyes. “Always.”

(And later, he spends a few hours alone with Phil, squished up against each other as they talk about everything and nothing at all. Phil wraps a large wing around Wilbur’s lanky figure. He shudders from the feel of feathers brushing against his arm, his neck, the back of his head, already half-tempted to pull away. 

Another gesture; these days he’ll start to lose track of which gesture means what, but this one specifically he’ll never forget. 

Angels are an exclusive race. No one knows how they work, why they exist, why they do the things they do and smite the creatures they smite. 

But Phil has always been an open person, and when Wilbur asks what the gesture means, his father doesn’t hesitate to say unconditional love.)

19:

There is a darkness underneath the city.

There is a darkness underneath the city, and Wilbur can feel it like a strained nerve, or a lit fuse, or a falling piece of glass, like it was only a matter of time before it- before he shatters and takes everyone down with him. Like he’s been standing on the tip of a needle for nineteen years, and he’s been able to ignore the way his feet were bleeding his whole life, brush it off without a second thought. But everyone’s got to give at some point, and it’s about time he breaks and he breaks as horrifically and beautifully too.

Like he’s reaching the end of the line. 

Like he’s finally, completely, desperately out of time. 

Like he’s been looking for a way out but there isn’t a way out and there hasn’t been a way out for as long as he can remember and for as long as he has looked and-

it’s

     time

          to

               go.

Here’s how everything goes wrong. 

Wilbur wakes up one night with a strange sense of dread pooling deep in his stomach. He sits up, looks around his dark room and at the moonlight shifting on his floor. He reaches for his phone to check the time — 3 AM sharp — and rubs his eyes with his palms. Something feels wrong, feels off — as if someone’s shifted the universe three inches to the left, as if all the colour’s been sucked out the universe, as if he woke up to an empty city and hasn’t realised it yet — and he knows he won’t be able to go back to sleep tonight.

(It takes him too long to realise what’s wrong: everything is silent.)

He hears voices downstairs and drags himself out of bed to check it out. As soon as he steps into the hallway, he’s face-to-face with Tommy, who’s trying to do the exact same thing he is from the room across his own. They share the same look of guilt before Wilbur raises a finger to his lips and Tommy nods in agreement. 

Wilbur takes a step out his door, the sound of his footsteps immediately muffled by a wave of Tommy’s hand and a whiff of magic in the air, and the pair make their way to the top of the stairs where they can listen in.

(Thinking back, he should have just gone to bed. It would’ve made things a whole lot easier, a lot less painful.)

Phil and Techno are talking downstairs, their voices muffled all the way from the kitchen. Wilbur nods at Tommy, and his younger brother takes his hand, claws digging slightly into Wilbur’s skin, a spark of electricity zapping his skin at the point of contact. The world turns a little sharper, a little brighter, and Wilbur can finally make out the words.

“-I have to warn you Techno, this isn’t something you’ve had to deal with before,” he hears Phil say in a soft voice, so low that even by sharing Tommy’s enhanced hearing, he can barely hear what he’s saying. “You really, really don’t have to be involved in this.”

“I know, Phil,” Techno answers, voice as monotonous as ever. But Wilbur doesn’t miss the graveness in his tone, the lack of his usual lighthearted indifference. 

“And, and if we- when we find it, we’ll have to prepare for the worst,” Phil says. “It’s been hiding for a long time and it’s not going to give up without a fight.”

“I know.”

“It’s- it’s going to hurt so many people, Techno, who knows what it’s been doing all this time? I’ve had nineteen years to… oh Prime, I should’ve been more careful.”

Nineteen years.

Wilbur’s heart sinks in his chest. 

A terrible shiver trickles slowly down his spine, freezing every inch of skin and every bump of his backbone that it touches. The night feels just a little bit colder, the air a little stiffer around his skin, and he shoots a hand out to grip the railing, suddenly unsure of the strength of his own legs. Tommy looks at him from the corner of his eyes. Wilbur refuses to meet his gaze, and instead he fixes his eyes on the floor and swallows a painful lump down in his throat.

(It takes nineteen years to build a family and only a few words to tear it all apart.)

“I know,” Techno insists. A long pause, a long bout of silence, then, “Tommy. Wilbur. I know you’re listenin’.” Wilbur jolts so hard he thinks he might’ve twisted a nerve somewhere. “You’re not the only one with sharp ears.”

“Ah, shit, Tommy? Wil?” Phil says, a little louder. Wilbur hears a long sigh, as if his father’s trying to pull himself back together. “Come on down, boys, it’s fine, I didn’t expect you two to be awake, but… I think this is something that you both need to hear about.”

Tommy shoots an accusatory look at Wilbur. He starts his way down the stairs, tail bouncing tautly behind him. Wilbur takes a deep breath, clenching and unclenching his fists for a moment before he follows his brother downstairs, dreading what awaits him at the bottom.

(In hindsight, he really should’ve just turned tail and fucked right off. Returned to his bedroom, sprinted out the front door, jumped out the window, anything, anything, but he’s too much of a coward to even consider leaving his family behind.)

“What’s going on?” Tommy asks, as soon as Wilbur enters the kitchen with his hands shoved deep into his pockets in a feeble attempt to keep himself from shaking.

He looks around. At Phil sitting with his head in his hands at their dinner table. At Techno leaning against the kitchen counter with his arms crossed. At Tommy standing awkwardly in the middle of the room with worry written all over his expression. And himself, hovering nervously by the doorway, half-shrouded by the shadows cast by the one lightbulb shining above them.

It feels like he’s come home from school with a shitty score on his math exam, or they’ve received a call telling them that Tommy tried to vandalise something, or Techno’s gotten into a fight with some run-of-the-mill criminals. Like all of this is normal, like they’ve just disappointed their father with some mundane mistake, like Wilbur isn’t a mere human living under the same roof as three of the most powerful beings in the whole city.

(And that’s his first mistake, isn’t it? Trying to convince himself he’s human in the first place.)

“Boys,” Phil starts, looking up at them. He’s missing his smile, Wilbur realises distantly; even in the harshest of moments Phil would always have a lilt to his lips, an air of pleasantry, of detachment, that comes with being an untouchable being of cosmic proportions. “I’ve found the thing I was sent down to smite.”

Wilbur swallows thickly, hoping that none of them can see him bristling.

It’s common knowledge within the family that nineteen years ago, Phil descended upon the city for one purpose and one purpose only: to destroy the ancient darkness that’s been lurking underneath it like a time bomb, growing stronger and more malevolent by the day until it implodes and takes the Earth down with it. It’s also common knowledge that Phil failed, that he lost its trace and couldn’t go home without finishing his task, that he started a family because he couldn’t go anywhere else.

But he never stopped looking. Never stopped scanning the city, never stopped glancing at every dark corner, never stopped looking into every one of Techno’s hunts for signs of the void he’s supposed to smite. 

(“It’s unapologetically evil, and you can’t compromise with it no matter what,” he would always tell them, “you boys have to be careful about messing with dark creatures, it might lash out and cause some real damage.” 

And his eyebrows would always furrow, the edges of his lips would always turn down. 

“Or worse, it might come back and decide that it’s time to wipe out everything.”)

(The unfortunate reality is that Wilbur only ever wanted to live, to be human.)

“Yeah?” Tommy asks, shifting from foot to foot. “Well… why haven’t you killed it yet then? What’s with all the fuss?”

Phil sighs and rubs the bridge of his nose. “Okay, so I found it but I couldn’t pin it down exactly,” he says. “I’ve come across dark traces that I’ve… identified… to be left behind by the thing — it’s been running all around the city this whole time but recently, it’s gotten too… sloppy with covering its tracks.” 

Wilbur’s blood runs cold in his veins. He hasn’t done anything, he swears, he hasn’t hurt anyone or started a riot or gotten into a fight or anything. He’s just- it’s only ever been a matter of time before Phil learns to identify all the traces he can’t wipe out (the thrumming under his skin the voices in his ears the way his lips would curl up as chaos breaks all around him), and he’s all out of time. 

“It’s not enough for me to pinpoint its location exactly, but- but I’ve narrowed down all the possibilities and... here’s the thing.” Phil pauses, looks between them, and his gaze lingers on Wilbur for a moment too long. Phil turns his eyes down once more, crossing his arms tightly. “It’s latched itself onto one of us.”

“What- what does that mean?” Tommy asks, uncharacteristically nervous.

“What Phil’s sayin’,” Techno cuts in, “is that one of us has been possessed by the darkness. We’ve narrowed it down to a specific set of people, specifically, us-“ he gestures between the four of them, “and our friends. It could be anyone.”

He gestures at Tommy. “It could be Tubbo or his siblings.”

He clenches his fists. “It could be Dream or his friends.”

He looks at Wilbur. Pauses for a second too long, too long, too fucking long. Enough to squeeze all the air out of Wilbur’s lungs. “It could even be Schlatt or Quackity.”

“It could be any one of us too,” Wilbur feels his lips move, breathless and quivering.

Phil nods grimly at him, lips pursed in a way Wilbur has never seen him do. “It could be anyone, but… I think I’d notice if a malevolent creature took over any one of my sons, right?” 

He smiles. It’s an empty expression. Empty expression, empty promises, empty lies built on a foundation that was never meant to be.

(Right?)

Wilbur doesn’t know how to feel about any of this; whether he should be more scared, more worried, more terrified of death than he really is; whether he’s putting too much faith into Phil’s unconditional love; whether he trusts his family enough to look past his nature and forgive him for existing.

(He really, really should’ve booked it right then and there. It wouldn’t have been too late.)

“Look, we’ve got to act quickly before it realises we’ve caught on, so tomorrow we’ll gather everyone and find the darkness, okay? You don’t have to look so tense — there really is nothing to be worried about.”

(Liar.)

Phil stands up from his seat and glances at the clock on the wall. “Why don’t you three go get some rest? I’ll do all the prep and contact everyone, yeah?”

Techno pushes himself off the kitchen counter and marches upstairs without so much as a 'goodbye'. His footsteps are heavy on the stairs, and he all but slams the door to his room.

“It can’t be Tubbo,” Tommy protests immediately after the house grows silent again. “I would know. It can’t be him.” 

As if by instinct, he reaches up and curls a clawed hand around the necklace around his neck — a necklace he hasn’t taken off for years now. Tommy grips its pendant gem in his hand, soft cyan light filtering through the space between his fingers (the same striking cyan as his eyes, the same cyan as Tubbo’s eyes). Somewhere out there, Tubbo should be feeling a warmth emanating from a twin gem he’s hung around his own wrist. 

A hunter’s pact to their deity. A part of Wilbur is envious.

“We can’t know for sure until we’ve cleared him, Tommy,” Phil says kindly, reaching up to ruffle Tommy’s blond hair, fingers slipping around the red horns growing over his head. “We have to be careful and we have to be thorough, okay? For what it's worth, I’m sure you know him enough to tell, but… we can’t afford any slip-ups.”

Tommy bats away Phil’s hand. “Whatever,” he says, but he’s fighting back an expression somewhere between a smile and a grimace. 

He scurries upstairs, his footsteps a silent contrast to Techno’s, and his bedroom door barely makes a sound when he closes it.

Phil sighs. Wilbur looks at him, still frozen at the doorway to their kitchen. 

It’s just the two of them now. 

(It’s just the two of them now — two mortal enemies, the soft ticking of the clock on the wall, a silent house edging on the cliff of ruin.)

“You alright Wil?” Phil asks, smiling kindly at him. “I know it’s a lot to take in. Prime, mate, I can hardly believe it — I’ve finally found what I’ve been looking for all these years-”

“Are you going to kill them?” Wilbur interrupts, his voice timid, barely a whisper that Phil catches anyway.

“The person…?”

“Yeah.”

“Mate- Wil, no, of course I won’t,” Phil says. “No, it’s all out of their control. I won’t hurt a hair on their head, they haven’t done anything to… they don’t deserve it.”

(‘And I do?’ a part of him screams — the same part that makes his hands shake in his pockets — but it’s quickly clamped down by the rest of him, the one that still has hope, the one that chooses to toss the coin over and over again until it lands on faith.)

“So what’re you going to do?”

“I’ll… I’ll read them, yeah? I’ll read their soul, see if there’s a second being in their body. And if I find it in them, I’ll just… we’ll expel the spirit and kill it. Really, I won’t hurt its vessel. You have nothing to worry about.”

“And-“ his voice breaks, breath hitching in his throat, “and what if that doesn’t work?”

A pause.

Phil opens his mouth to answer. Then closes it. Rubs his eyes, the grey bags under them mirrored on Wilbur’s own face. 

“It’ll work, Wil. And if it still refuses to leave the body, I’ll smite it in the vessel and then expel its remains. It’ll be… more… risky, but as long as I can keep the person tethered to life, everything should go smoothly.”

(And left unasked: What if it just wanted to live? What if I just wanted to be human?)

“Go to bed, Wil,” Phil says, “I’ll have everything under control, really. Things will be alright by tomorrow, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Wilbur echoes, swallowing a lump in his throat, distantly feeling his legs take him back to his room. He doesn’t go back to sleep that night.

(He can’t just leave them like that — they’re his family. They have to understand, they have to. If they love him as much as they claim to, they’ll listen to him, they’ll look past his nature, they’ll let him live. He’s their son, their brother, part of their family, they can’t just let that go.

Can they?

Will they?)

Tomorrow comes too quickly.

Wilbur doesn’t even realise it’s morning until Tommy pounds on his door and yells at him to get up. He doesn’t even notice the sunlight coming in through the windows. 

He sighs. Blinks the shock out of his heavy eyelids and does his daily reality check.

He’s stretched out on the bed, his sheets bunched up on his chest and tangled between his legs as a result of restless tossing and turning. He’s got an arm draped over a pillow and an arm hanging out the side of the bed, barely grazing the floor. He sucks in a quick breath, sneezes as his nose stings at the cold, feeling it wreck his whole body in a violent jerk. 

He feels alive, which is funny, because he dies today.

He knows what’s coming, and laying uselessly in his bedroom won’t do anyone any good. Outside, he hears Tommy yelling and Techno complaining and Phil trying to diffuse the usual morning scramble but soon giving in to the little whirlwind of chaos that is his youngest son. Wilbur can barely muster up the energy to sit up on his bed, let alone join in and make fun of Tommy like he’d usually do.

He dies today.

(He won’t. He wont. He won’t.

There is a happy ending. There has to be — Wilbur refuses to believe otherwise.)

Here’s how everything goes wrong.

Phil stretches his wings outside their front door and takes off to get some last-minute prep ready. Techno’s supposed to take his two brothers by car. Tommy complains about being able to teleport. Wilbur walks like a man on death row, feeling all empty inside.

They pull up to the abandoned warehouse by Niki’s house, where she and her three siblings are waiting. She greets Wilbur with a wave, which he returns weakly. Tommy immediately pulls Tubbo aside.

There is the sound of a harsh landing on the roof and unwarranted cursing. Schlatt and Quackity walk in butting heads with each other. The two of them greet everyone, and Schlatt tries to strike up a conversation with Wilbur, but it goes nowhere, not when the nerves are getting the better of him.

Phil walks in, followed by Dream and his two friends. The green bastard throws himself at Techno. George and Sapnap find their way to Niki, her brother Eret, and the furry fuck.

Wilbur stands alone, burying his chin in the coat that he’s wearing, arms crossed and locked together. 

It’s fitting, he thinks, though he’s not thinking a lot. He’s not thinking about his upcoming execution. He’s not thinking about his family, about his friends, about the life that’s about to be ripped away from him.

Phil catches all their attention and briefs them on their situation. He waits out their cries of fear and confusion before explaining what exactly will happen, and how he’s not going to let anyone die no matter what. 

He puts them in a line with Techno at one end and Wilbur on the other. Beside him, Tommy won’t fucking stop talking to Tubbo. Someone makes a snide remark about Tommy and everyone else laughs. Wilbur is trying very hard not to cry.

Phil starts with Techno. He puts his hands on either side of Techno’s head and looks deep into Techno’s eyes. His eyes start glowing a blinding yellow, almost like looking into the headlamp of a car, but instead of LED’s it’s the light of heaven itself. Wilbur kicks himself for trying to come up with jokes. After a moment, nothing happens, and Phil’s eyes return to their normal colour. Techno passes the test and Phil sighs in relief.

Phil moves on to Dream, who jokes about the whole situation. He laughs awkwardly, but no one else does, and Techno tells him not to be weird. Dream passes the test. Techno pulls him aside to talk shit again.

Phil moves on. George and Sapnap both pass the test, and they high-five each other afterward despite the weight of the situation at hand. 

Phil moves on. Schlatt and Quackity are both fine too. Quackity yells out something in Spanish and Schlatt elbows him.

Phil moves on. Fundy and Eret pass the test. They walk away quickly, sombrely, wordlessly.

Phil moves on. Nothing happens with Niki too. She shoots Wilbur a glance, her eyes wide.

Phil moves on. Tubbo clenches Tommy’s hand in his. He passes the test.

Phil moves on. Tommy passes. 

Phil falters.

Wilbur takes a step back.

The warehouse falls silent.

Here’s how everything goes wrong.

“Wil,” Phil says, face frozen in an unreadable expression. 

Everyone’s looking at him now, and it feels less like an execution and more like he’s standing on stage giving a big speech, or he’s performing in front of a big crowd, or he’s finished an exam first and he’s walking up to turn the paper in while his classmates stare at him. 

“Wil,” his father starts again, “come here.”

Phil extends a hand. Wilbur looks at it, looks up at his father, and takes another step back. 

“Wilbur.” Phil’s expression hardens, the lines on his face smoothed over by grim determination (he never calls him ‘Wilbur’). “Come here. Let me read your soul.”

Behind him, Techno tightens his grip around the hunter’s knife on his belt. Tubbo pulls Tommy away from him, fear and realisation dawning on the young hunter apprentice’s eyes. 

And Tommy, too smart and too ready to believe the best in people, wrenches himself away from Tubbo and interjects, “Wait- no, no way it’s Wilbur, Phil, Phil wait, maybe you made a mistake somewhere, or, or-“

“Wilbur?”

“Oh Prime-“

“Wil-“

“You’re not telling me, no way-“

“Is it really…?”

“No, no, it’s not- Wilbur, Wil please, please, tell them it’s not you,” Tommy keeps going, keeps arguing, keeps talking over everyone else in a useless attempt to deny the truth. He stumbles forward and grabs Wilbur by the coat, clenching the fabric in his clawed hands. Eyes desperate and so painfully hopeful. “Wil, tell them, tell them, man, please-“

“Tommy, get away from him-“

Tommy whirls around to face Phil. “No, Phil- Phil, look, it can’t be him, you know him, it’s not- please-“

“I said, get away from it,” Phil snaps, eyes a burning yellow, and when Tubbo yanks him away again, Tommy doesn’t try to fight back.

(Wilbur’s heart swells with a bright feeling; he swears in that moment that he can’t love his brother more than he already does. Tommy, who never gives up no matter what, who looks at him and sees a brother first and a monster second.)

Phil turns back on him. Wilbur keeps his gaze fixed on the floor, too scared (too ashamed) to meet anyone’s eyes. His hands hang uselessly by his side, fiddling with the hem of his shirt, tearing the fabric at places and chalking it up to nerves. 

“Wilbur,” Phil tries again, but he’s no longer speaking as a father. His face is scarily blank, righteous and holy anger evident in the way his lips curl, his eyes burn, his voice echoes with a hidden chorus only the two of them can truly hear. “Take a step forward. Now.”

Wilbur swallows. Opens his mouth. A moment of bravery grants him a look up, and he meets Phil’s eyes. Something in him lights up like a fuse, like the ticking of a clock, like he’s not ready to go yet despite all his talk of accepting death. He forces his voice out, says, “Please-“

Phil jerks forward, grabs him by the sides of his head, and forces their eyes to meet. 

It feels like dying.

It feels like looking into the flames of a house-fire scorching down the place around him, like staring too long and too close to the sun and paying the consequences when it stares back at you and burns all your wings. 

It feels like someone’s set fire to his chest and he’s trying to suck in air but there’s nothing to breathe and he doubles over with his hands coming up to clench around the fingers over his ears and something’s clawed its way in and something’s crawling through his veins and his vision flickers but his eyes are wide open and staring straight into his father’s eyes-

Phil releases him and Wilbur falls onto the floor on his knees, his legs too weak to support him properly. 

“It’s him,” he hears Phil says, “do it,” and then harsh footsteps, and Wilbur barely has any time to catch his breath before someone grabs him by the scruff of his neck and drags him up, and away, and slams him into a wall, drawing a cry out of him as he struggles to get away-

Technoblade pins him in place, glaring directly into his eyes, conflicted hatred in his deep blue irises. A storm, Wilbur thinks, a terrible disaster threatening to rock his ship and swallow him into its murky depths. Phil is all fire and heat but Techno’s gaze pulls him under, fills his lungs with the ghost of saltwater and taints his fond memories of the sea.

“Got it!” comes Dream’s voice as he steps up holding a small, familiar leather-bound book. He flips it open to a specific page and nods at Techno.

Wilbur’s eyes widen, and a ‘Wait’ is halfway out his mouth when Dream reads the first word of the exorcism and his breath is taken away again.

The world spins. 

His vision blacks. 

Maybe this is it, but he knows the universe isn’t kind to creatures like him. They’re trying to expel a foreign spirit, something that the body, too, is trying to reject, but this body doesn’t belong to anyone else, it’s his, and he’s the only one in it, there was never a human soul to begin with and he’s made his peace with being Wilbur Soot and he can’t go anywhere else-

He looks up and meets Niki’s eye by chance. Her hands fly up to stifle her gasp. 

A cold realisation descends on him: he’s not going anywhere. They’re going to see the person they’re trying to save die in front of them and they’ll realise their mistake and he can’t let that happen to them, he can’t do that to them-

He can’t go anywhere. So instead it tears him apart.

He falls. 

He curls up into a ball. 

He thrashes and tries to escape from the words trying to rip into him. It feels like a hook has latched onto his heart and is trying to yank him out the bars of a cage he’s too big to fit through, like someone’s gone and made him forget how to breathe and he’s clawing at his throat, like he’s trying to scream but all that comes out is a terrified whimper, like something crawled in and scooped a part of him out and he’s left as a husk of a husk of a husk of a-

Wilbur bites his tongue as his back arches, watching the world blur and fade and pressing his face onto the cold floor. It’s not painful, which is something that should probably concern him; he’s gotten paper-cuts that hurt worse than being exorcised from his own body. Maybe he’s lost the ability to feel pain and he’s about to die and this isn’t such a bad way to go, surrounded by the people he loved loves who used to care about him who still do he calls family-

“Stop it!” Tommy screams, barrelling into Dream and ending the exorcism then and there. 

The feeling stops abruptly. The pressure all over his body lifts and the room stops blurring into fuzzy shapes. Wilbur chokes, and coughs, and releases his grip around his neck. He inhales deeply once, twice, blinking his eyes as hard as he can and trying even harder not to cry.

“Stop it, Dream- please, I really don’t think it’s him.” 

“Tommy, it’s hurting Wilbur, we can’t just let it go like that-“

“You said it yourself, Phil, Phil please, you would’ve noticed it if he acted any differently-“

“But if it saves him…”

“No, no, it’s killing him, can’t you see what you’re doing-“

Their voices start blending together into an amalgamation of words, pleas thrown into the air that stop meaning anything at the face of someone hell-bent on fulfilling his heavenly duty. Wilbur clenches his fists as he stares off into nothing, still laying weak and breathless on the floor. His vision blurs with tears and his mouth hangs open trying to gasp in breaths that escape him. 

He feels empty inside. 

Something sits uncomfortably in his stomach, a sudden pit pooling where his gut should be — an ugly, writhing loss that almost feels like grief, if grief is this ravenous beast gnawing mercilessly at his insides. A hole, he thinks distantly, ever-expanding, ever-painful, a scathing hunger that was once a measly itch he could easily bat away but has now evolved, expanded, grown like a tumour and is eating at him. 

Wilbur curls into himself, wrapping his arms around his abdomen where the pit hurts the most. The hunger sinks in deeper, hollower, sapping the life out of him and demanding more, more. 

It’s like something’s gone terribly wrong. Like the exorcism failed to claw him out of his body and instead raked out something vital, twisted something deep in him into an open wound he can’t quite close. He feels it etched into him, an ache that settles into his bones, and he hates himself, for one burning moment, for whimpering at the pain.

(There is a darkness underneath the city.

There is a darkness underneath the city, and Wilbur feels it take ahold inside of him, lining the walls of the void taking shape in his gut. Trying to close the wound, trying to worm its way under his skin, trying to fill his lungs with a bitter taste he can’t escape anymore.

There is a darkness underneath him.

There is a darkness underneath him, and Wilbur feels it reaching out to him like a father would, if a father loved him enough to spare him. So blame him if he, desperate to soothe the pain in his gut, reaches back if only to find some solace among the deep-seated churning.

There is a darkness inside him.

There is a darkness inside him, and Wilbur feels it- no, him, stretching into his fingertips, filling every nook and cranny of his body, a vile sort of anger he still shies away from. He is the darkness, the darkness is him, he’s been running from the truth for far too long and now that it’s staring at him dead in the eyes, he has no choice but to embrace it like a wayward child finally coming home.)

“Wilbur-“

Someone lifts him up by the shoulders, and his back hits the wall again. A hand grips his chin, keeping his head from lolling down.

“Wilbur, look at me.”

His eyes lay dead on the floor — he can’t be bothered to focus when he’s trying to work himself through one breath at a time, trying to glue himself together crumbling piece by crumbling piece. 

“Wilbur.”

The hand forces his chin up, tearing his gaze towards a pair of glowing yellow eyes, eyes that he instinctively tries to flinch and back away from. But there’s no way out, nothing behind him to step back towards, and instead he makes a strangled noise at the back of his throat. Something that sounds like the horrible mix of threatening and terrified, a cornered animal finally ready to lash out.

The eyes burn into him again. Heat sears into his eye sockets, into his head, down his trachea and singeing the walls of his lungs. Burning through his chest until he’s certain he’s about to burst from all the heat and pressure. A flare lit at the centre of the dark void like a flame trying to cauterise the wound, trying to seal the gap, trying to fix what has been broken but only managing to leave the taste of smoke on his tongue.

Phil blinks, the light in his eyes dimming as he pulls away, never breaking the deep gaze. The heat abruptly leaves Wilbur’s body, and cold takes over, as if he’s been drenched after a house fire and left outside to freeze. He coughs out the dull ashy tang out his mouth and while he’s at it, heaves in big lungfuls of fresh, fresh air.

“Wilbur...?”

Something gathers between his fingers — like he’s bunched up solid air in his fists, light and malleable and constantly shifting against his skin. He feels it thick in the air, buzzing to life as he breathes, and breathes, and scrapes together whatever energy in his body he has left. It calls to him, like the shore waiting for the tide to return, always there, always patient, always willing to welcome him back home.

“Get away from me,” he rasps, face twisting into a painful expression. 

Phil refuses to budge, his expression something that borders conflicted between a primal hatred and genuine confusion. “Wait, but I don’t… I don’t understand...”

“I said,” he snaps, “get away from me!”

Wilbur closes his fists and the air explodes with magic, a dark force taking ahold of the room and curling around its inhabitants, throwing them far away from him. He hears the sound of bodies being flung into walls, onto the floor, the gasps of his friends and a scream at one point. 

And then he’s standing, righting himself against the wall, extending a hand in front of him. He sees it now: shadows shifting along the floor, the walls, the dark silhouettes of grotesque claws wrapped around his friends’ bodies, holding them in a tight choke as they squirm against his grip.

It’s too easy, too fun, and a part of him sings in delight as he realises he’s in control, he’s standing over them as the power imbalance has tipped; they’re the cornered animals now and he’s got their lives hung from his fingers like puppets bound together by string. A wet bark of laughter tears itself out of his mouth, morbidly victorious in the way he’s just destroyed a lifetime of carefully-built relationships in the literal wave of a hand. 

They’re scared of him.

The thought of it sends a tingling feeling tap-tapping down his back. 

Fear, he thinks, is looking at Schlatt and Niki and Tubbo and Techno and Tommy and Phil and at the horrified looks they send his way.

Fear, he thinks, is the way he falters as Schlatt drops any bravado he once had; the way his expression falls as Niki cries into her hands; the way he starts shaking as Tubbo reaches for his knife; the way he loosens the death grip as Techno stares at him, frozen in shock; the way he feels tear tracks down his own cheeks as Tommy thrashes and yells and won’t fucking give up on him.

Fear, a part of him muses, is the way Phil breaks free easily of his restraints and a blade materialises in his hand, burning and glowing and shifting in the light it emanates.

(Fear leaves a sweet aftertaste, cool against his tongue, like he’s just drunk a late-night smoothie after a night of banishing tricksters with his father. It swirls around in the air, settles on him like a second skin, and for a second the gnawing pit in his stomach stops ravaging him.)

“Wilbur,” Phil says, stern, either a father talking down to his son or a soldier holding a gun to his enemy’s head. At this point they’re one and the same. “Let them go.”

He swallows, feeling spit drag painfully down his throat. His lip twitches as he fights with himself. He so badly wants to challenge Phil, let him go through with the promise at the tip of his blade, let him finish what he started, let him watch the life drain out of his own son’s eyes. 

But he relents, lowering his hand and letting his friends go. The air buzzes again, tugging on his fingers, and he stamps it down violently with a clench of his jaw. He’s not going to- he can’t give himself completely into that part of him, not when he’s spent so long rejecting it, no matter how tempting it feels.

(Despite everything, he'd still like to convince himself he's human.)

“Wil,” Niki speaks up, eyes wide and full of terror. Either she’s too stupid or too brave or… Wilbur doesn’t want to think about the third alternative. “No, no, you’re not Wilbur-“ 

“Aren’t I?” he asks.

Once the high of control has worn off, all he’s left with is a dull emptiness that washes over him and leaves him feeling all hollow inside. There’s still a blade being pointed at him, a heavenly weapon that he knows was forged for this very reason. 

The need to live doesn’t even register until he’s eyeing the doorway and his legs are itching to move.

“Because last I checked I was the only one in here,” he spits with a venom that burns hot on his tongue, locking away the guilt beginning to bloom in his chest. And maybe he’s insane, or a masochist, or just someone who’s given up any hope of rekindling his broken life, because he continues, half truths spilling out his lips uncontrollably, “Last I checked, Wilbur died a long, long time ago.” 

He gives them his best smile, the one that crinkles his eyes and shows all his pearly teeth. He ignores the way Techno flinches. It doesn’t have the effect he wants it to because he’s fucking crying, and he wipes the wetness on his cheeks with a sleeve, trying and failing to stop the tears from falling. 

“And last I checked,” he says, voice cracking, so much for a dramatic grand reveal, “none of you actually care about me.”

(‘Run,’ a ghost whispers in his ear, clear and simple amidst the storm wreaking havoc on his very bones.)

“No, no, Wil, of course we do, we’re your family,” Tommy says, his lips trembling as he takes a step forward, “it’s why we’re doing any of this, it’s for you, we’re trying to help you because this isn’t you-“

Wilbur laughs. He hates putting up this brave front of someone terrible, something that exists only to hurt, the monster he’s always tried to avoid becoming. His throat aches with every breath, but he can’t stop until it devolves into a hysterical mess of sobs, and before he knows it he’s doubled over and wrecked through with his broken laughter. He pauses for a second to collect himself, grins up at them, and lets all the guilt come crashing back into him. 

(If he breaks, and cries, and regrets ever taking Phil’s offer to come home, let it be known that he’s grieving for them.)

“Isn’t it?”

He turns away from familiar faces, stalks towards the door while barely trusting that they’ll let him go, and he runs.

He doesn’t look back.

11:

Phil bleeds gold.

Wilbur finds this out accidentally. It all happened so quickly; one moment he’s lying half-unconscious on his bed, and the next he hears a heavy thud on the floor beside him, and then he’s lunging with nothing but fear fuelling his actions. 

Two important facts: 

One, it’s been less than a year since Phil and Techno took him in. Wilbur sleeps with a dagger under his pillow.

Two, Phil sometimes appears out of nowhere. Doors to him are a human inconvenience.

Wilbur barely has any time to consider who he’s attacking because he’s slashing his dagger in a wide arc in the air. It meets the tiniest bit of resistance, and Wilbur hears a cry of shock, and the dagger is wrenched out of his hand by some unseen force. A hand comes down to grip his shoulder and for a second, he squirms against it.

“Wil! Wil, calm down,” a familiar voice says, “hey, hey, I’m sorry for barging in without any warning, hey, calm down, you know I always forget to use the door, hey, son, hey, it’s alright-”

He throws a punch forward, his small fist meeting a steady chest. The hand pulls him closer, tighter, folds his body into a bigger, warmer one, all while a pair of strong feathery wings wrap protectively around him. Something in his brain must click, then, because he slumps over and wraps his arms around Phil’s torso. He squeezes his... father, for a second, pressing his face into the crook of Phil’s neck and letting out a pathetic little whimper.

“Hey, hey buddy,” Phil mutters as Wilbur pulls away, “you alright?”

Wilbur looks down, where Phil clenches one fist away from him. Slowly, he reaches for that hand and pries it open as gently as he can manage, revealing a fresh cut along Phil’s palm. 

His father bleeds gold. His blood comes out in an otherworldly glow, molten gold forming small droplets on his hand. Wilbur feels something like a weight dropping to the bottom of his feet, something like a breath hitching at his throat, something that reminds him of all the cold nights spent running away from the orphanage that never wanted him-

“I’m sorry,” Wilbur whispers.

Phil smiles at him, impossibly warm. “It’s fine, Wil.” 

“No, it’s not,” Wilbur insists, hot tears stinging the edges of his eyes. He throws his gaze to the side. “I hurt you. I didn’t look first and I- I shouldn’t have, why aren’t you mad, I could’ve killed you or something, I don’t- I…”

“Wil, look at me.” 

He shuts up and does.

“I’m not mad, okay?” 

Phil is too kind for his own good. If only he could see the true, horrible nature of the thing he’s brought under his roof, then maybe he wouldn’t be so kind. Maybe Wilbur would be running for his life with an angel hot on his heels instead of standing nervously in the embrace of a father. The thought claws relentlessly at him and suddenly he’s shaking in his father’s grasp.

“I’m not- look.” Phil closes his fist and his eyes glow a soft golden — the same colour as his blood. When he opens his fingers again, there is no cut, no blood, not even a scar. “You’re fine, okay?”

Wilbur sniffles and wipes his nose with the back of his hand. “You’re not mad?”

“Of course not, Wil,” Phil says, slowly. “We’re family, and family means...”

“No one... gets left behind or forgotten?”

His father chuckles heartily, reaching up to ruffle his fluffy brown hair. “That, yeah, and- and it means that sometimes we make mistakes, and we mess up, and we get mad because of it-” Wilbur opens his mouth to apologise again but Phil holds a finger to his lips and smiles, “-but we don’t stay mad. We don’t hold grudges, we forgive, we look past our mistakes, and we move on, yeah?”

(“Family,” Phil will say years later, and his eyes will crinkle as he looks kindly up at Wilbur, “are the people you choose to forgive time and time again.")

Wilbur nods. 

Phil runs a thumb under Wilbur’s eye, wiping away a stray tear. “Okay?”

“Okay.”

“Okay,” Phil says. “I’ll try my best to remember that doors exist next time, alright?”

“Alright.”

Phil ruffles his hair again, and Wilbur bats his large hand away, feeling heat rise up his neck. “Go back to bed, Wil.”

“Can I get a day off school tomorrow?” Wilbur asks, fighting back a cheeky smile.

“Nah,” Phil says, huffing as he stands. “That’s called extortion — who taught you that?” He pauses, thinking better of it. “Actually, mate, don’t tell me, I don’t wanna know. Go to bed, you little- you dirty crime boy.”

Wilbur laughs and scrambles back under his covers. His father leaves the dagger lying on the floor when he bids him goodnight. 

The next day, Wilbur tucks it deep in a drawer where he’ll eventually forget about its existence — he doesn’t need to sleep with it under his pillow anymore.

(“Family,” Phil will say, and Wilbur will never forget these words for as long as he’s alive, “are the people you choose to let hurt you in the first place.")

Chapter Text

1 - Phil:

Wilbur’s room is empty when Phil opens it for the first time in weeks.

It’s not like Phil expects any differently. Wilbur isn’t going to be lying stretched out like a cat on his bed, or curled up in his chair with his old guitar, or flipping through the books neatly slotted in his shelf. Wilbur isn’t going to do any of these; he’s not going to be here, period.

A part of him still wonders — even after being completely sure that everything is exactly how Wilbur left it — whether he’ll find something if he snoops around hard enough.

Maybe a diary hidden beneath the floorboards that might explain everything. Or a note slipped in between his sheets that would tell Phil where his son is. Something, anything, to answer all the questions scrambling in his mind, to ease the anxiety in his veins, to tell him that this is intentional, that Wilbur is still alive, that he wants to be found at all.

(Something, anything, to tell him that his son was ever his son in the first place.)

But the room is — as the more cynical part of him muses — empty, and maybe the thing in his son hates him enough to wrench away one of the most precious things in his life. Or the alternative — which he very adamantly doesn’t want to think about — in which his son harbours enough bitterness and resentment, built up over years of living in fear, that he didn’t even think of looking back when he ran out the doors of the warehouse.

Phil touches the wall and drags his fingers along the wallpaper. Dust clings to his fingers, and he tries to imagine that merely a few weeks ago, the room used to be lived in. That the guitar mounted on its stand isn’t terribly out of tune, that the clock on the wall hasn’t stopped ticking, and the house used to be filled with the sound of Wilbur’s music. 

That the memories haunting this place weren’t always just memories.

A shiver runs down his spine even though it’s not even remotely cold, and a part of him can’t help but wonder, for the umpteenth time in weeks, if he was ever wrong.

Because the thing is, Wilbur Soot constantly moves.

Phil can’t remember ever seeing him completely still. He’d always have a leg bouncing against the floor, or a hand fiddling the hem of his clothes, or his eyes flitting nervously around the room. He gestures when he talks, plays with his hair when he’s not. His fingers twitch around the ghost of guitar strings and he paces around the room as he thinks and he can’t sit in the house for more than a few hours. Even when he’s sleeping, he’d be shuffling in bed and murmuring under his breath. Sometimes in the middle of the night, he’d wake up and then he’d wake Phil up and they’d tire each other out by talking about everything and nothing at all for hours.

Wilbur moves, and he changes, and he feels like a different person than he was a month ago. Wilbur loves attention but he’ll hate being watched. Wilbur would break a vase and pin the blame on Tommy without hesitation, but once he threw himself in the line of fire to protect Tubbo during a hunt gone wrong. Wilbur is an open book but no one can tell exactly what he’s thinking. All of these are true, all at the same fucking time, and Phil isn’t sure what to make of it.

It’s almost scary to know that his son has always been an enigma; Phil thought that he’d finally learned to navigate his son, but he turned a page not ready to be read and suddenly there’s a whole new chapter he didn’t know existed.

So here, now, it feels wrong to be looking around Wilbur’s room. Untouched, stagnant, the air stale when Phil breathes in, the dust itching his skin where it settles on his arm, the way that Wilbur hasn’t performed his monthly ritual of completely changing the layout of his room. 

The bed stays unmade from the morning of the day he left.

Phil’s heart twists painfully at the sight of it.

The room seems to sway with every step he takes, every minute movement he’s afraid to make in fear of accidentally knocking something over. Phil walks slowly, terrified of stirring the dust particles hanging in the air and disturbing the ghost living in these walls. He stands over Wilbur’s bed and he doesn’t wince at the extremely human way that the sheets are all tangled up and messy.

Phil’s eyes wander and land on Wilbur’s bedside table, where there’s a small framed photo of the family taken years ago. He picks it up gingerly and looks it over, as if he’s reminiscing and not having his heart broken all over again, as if he’s still allowed to look at the world in strict blacks and whites, as if he’s not a complete hypocrite.

It makes his head spin, but he can’t seem to look away. He brushes a thumb over the photo idly, wiping the layer of dust covering Wilbur’s face — the crinkle-eyed grin that sixteen-year-old Wilbur sports in the photo, one of the only things that never changes about him.

It’s the same grin he’s had for the nine years they’ve been a family.

(It’s the same grin that he gave them right before running away.)

A part of Phil — the part that’s still terrified, still naïve, still tender from the revelation and the devastation — wants to hope. It glows in him, like a fire too timid to start burning, too weak to make a noise, too… human, to be listened to.

He closes his eyes and sets the picture down harshly.

There is a darkness underneath the city, and whether Wilbur is the victim of the crossfire or the perpetrator itself cannot stand in the way of his heavenly duty.

(That’s what he tells himself, so that’s what he’ll believe.)

Phil looks around the room again. 

He tries to imagine Wilbur shouting at his clock and laughing when it lit up. He tries to remember what his son’s voice sounded like humming the tune of a song he wrote himself. He tries not to wish for all of it back, to be able to see Wilbur one last time, see him argue why anteaters are the worst animal, the way he’d gesture and his hands would wave around frantically as if he can’t possibly convey everything he’s thinking with words alone.

Because each time, each fucking time, Phil would watch, and he’d be so intensely invested, so painfully envious of how human Wilbur feels. 

And now that it’s all been revealed to be a lie…

He tears away from the room. He’s got to stop looking, remembering, hoping, whatever, because if he keeps going, he’s not sure whether he’ll be able to take the weight in his chest. 

—

It was during a particularly rough day that a young Wilbur asked him the question for the first time.

The question came completely out of left field. Phil didn’t think that any of his sons — let alone Wilbur, the normal human person in a family of otherworldly beings — had any reason to worry about his heavenly duty, only that they needed to keep an eye out and stay safe. It was his business and his business alone, they didn’t need to be caught up in it.

But earlier that day, Wilbur came crying to him, blabbering about nightmares and voices and screaming and Phil scooped him up and talked to him until he calmed down. He held his son close, feeling his life shake under his skin like the crumbling aftermath of a bonfire — his heart ached because Phil had no idea what the first ten years of Wilbur’s life had been like, but he’ll be damned if a twelve year-old kid deserved to be haunted by such horrible memories.

So maybe he should’ve expected it, when Wilbur turned to him that night as he was tucking his son into bed and asked: 

“Why’re you still looking for it?”

Phil smiled down at his son and sat at the edge of his bed, feeling the mattress sink underneath his weight. “Why am I looking for what, sorry?”

“The… the thing… that you were sent to… uh, to kill,” Wilbur muttered, pulling his covers a little higher up to cover his chin.

(In hindsight, he should’ve seen the way Wilbur refused to look at him, or the way he tried to hide his expression of utter dismay, or the way his brown eyes were almost black in the low light, something as deep and dark as the shadows stretching out in the corners of his bedroom.)

Still, he reached a hand out to brush the curls falling over Wilbur’s face. His son shied away from the touch, and Phil felt something in him twist for the young orphan.

“I’ve gotta protect everyone in this city, Wil,” he explained, assured, believed. “I was sent down to kill something not for the sake of killing it, but to protect the people who need to be protected from it, you get me?”

Wilbur shifted in his bed, turning away from him. He didn’t answer, so Phil took it as a sign that the conversation was over. But as he stood and walked to the door to turn the lights off, he almost missed the near-inaudible whisper from his son:

“And are you sure that it’s going to hurt everyone?”

Phil pursed his lips and flicked the switch, plunging the room into darkness. “Yeah,” he said. And then, hesitantly, “Good night, Wil.”

Wilbur didn’t answer.

—

Phil can’t help but think back to that night when now, Tommy finds him exiting Wilbur’s abandoned bedroom and stops him in the hallway to ask a too-familiar question.

“Why’re you still looking for him?” 

Tommy’s a smart kid. Too smart for his own good. He’s not trying to hurt Phil, but he isn’t going to make excuses for him either, and he says it in a way that’s both soft and curt in a way that only he can manage. 

Phil feels his stomach twist into little knots, hands clenching at either side as he grimaces at the question. Tommy’s eyes flick down to study his expression and he keeps going, like he’s testing how hard he can press a bruise before the pain cuts too sharply.

“He obviously doesn’t want to be found,” he says. He crosses his arms, crimson claws pressing into his skin. “And you know that.”

His youngest son is a lot of things — chaotic (no shit), reckless, eerily self-aware — but he cannot possibly know about the cracks starting to show in Phil’s resolve, about the way Phil would stay up at night and wish that his broken family would right itself, about the hope blooming in his chest every time they find a lead.

(Tommy might be a chaos spirit, but he’s not a mind reader — just someone who wants his brother back.)

“It’s not him,” Phil replies, like he’s reading off a script he’s memorised word-for-word, and yet the syllables taste sour as he speaks them into existence. “It’s not. And… and even if it is, he still hurt us, and who knows what else, right?”

Tommy rolls his eyes at him. “You keep telling yourself that,” he scoffs, “no wonder you believe it so fuckin’ much.”

Phil wonders just what the fuck that’s supposed to mean. 

—

Wilbur Soot moves, and he changes, and he’ll always feel like a different person than he was a month prior, but to Phil, at least if to him and him alone, he’s always been the same person for years.

And it hurts, now, because Wilbur was never meant to exist as a memory. 

He doesn’t belong in the past. Not as a fond memory shared between family members, or as a frozen face in old photos framed on bedside desks, or as a name whispered in a broken home like he’s taboo. 

He doesn’t belong in the future, either. Not as a conflicted ‘what happens if’, or as a precaution that all of them have to look out for, or as the subject pinned onto a board and connected by strings to leads and theories and sightings.

To Phil, Wilbur belongs in the present. 

He belongs to the moments forever preserved in time, turning his head up to the sky and feeling the sun’s warmth on his skin. He belongs to the guitar mounted on the stand in his room, eyes closed and voice shaky from misuse but still proud of his music like he’s never been proud of anything else. He belongs to their family, to their friends, to home, and the fact that he’s not here, in the present where he’s supposed to be, hurts more than Phil can ever admit.

His absence is overwhelming, is crushing, is impossibly loud in its silence, and it makes Phil’s chest constrict at the sheer claustrophobia of all the things that his son is supposed to be and yet he’s not. 

Wilbur Soot isn’t meant to exist as a memory, and yet all Phil can do is remember. The present feels too big, too empty, too horrible, and he’s going to keep denying the situation if it means that he’ll stop wishing that time itself can be reversed.

—

(The moment repeats itself behind his eyelids like a broken record player singing its last song every time Phil tries to go to sleep. 

Wilbur’s eyes wide and wet and glinting a horrible crimson, lips pulled up in a smile that looks painful to keep up. A part of Phil — impossibly hopeful — wants to rush forward and pull him into a hug because that’s what fathers are supposed to do, but instead he’s holding a sword to his son’s neck and he has every intention to use it if Wilbur so much as moves the wrong way. It’s like — as Wilbur himself would describe it — balancing on the tip of a needle, or watching a car crash in slow motion, or falling along the length of a cliffside where the sea meets the rocks below.

But then Wilbur relents, and he speaks, and he laughs, and then he’s moving, changing, running out the door the same person he came in yet feeling like he’s adopted a whole new identity altogether.

And just like that it’s over.

Phil doesn’t sleep much anymore. He thinks about Wilbur, and he thinks about dark, evil entities, and then he’s not sure what else to think about.)

2 - Tubbo:

It’s not like no one ever talks about it. The subject hangs above their heads, a constant mockery of what should be, what could’ve been, torn away from them by a series of lies and deep, pulsing heartaches.

But these days, it’s getting harder to persevere, to keep doing what they’ve been doing this whole time and pretend like it’s not eating them all up inside. Because the elephant in the room no longer exists in words, but instead it glares at them, all apparent through the gaping hole in their daily routines that challenges them to acknowledge it. 

So instead of talking about it, they ignore that hole as best as they can and when they can’t, they turn to the three hunters tasked with tracking him down.

And the life of a hunter, Tubbo decides, is a strange one. Being an apprentice is no different.

He knows from listening to hours of Tommy’s rambling that Techno always keeps his hunter’s dagger close by. That he always has it on his person, that he always keeps it in sight and in arm’s range, that he sleeps with it clenched in a fist. 

He knows from listening to Fundy gush about his best friend Dream, that Dream has spent years upon years studying dead languages and burning incantations to memory. That he’s as likely to drop something and swear in Enochian as he is in English. That he’s intimately knowledgeable in even the most obscure of spells because who knows when I might need them, right?

Tubbo knows, and more importantly he understands. His family members no longer question it when they walk into his room to find his shelves full of case files, his walls covered in pictures and notes and red string tying each one together, the surface of his desk buried under open books and scribbled-out theories and the fact that he’s slowly going insane trying to piece together this one horrible puzzle.

“Tubbo?” Eret asks, their white eyes widening as they take in the state of the room, as they look at him half-slumped over his messy desk like he’s just a normal teenager facing a stressful finals’ week. “Are you alright?”

Tearing his eyes away from the file he’s been writing all over, he blinks blearily up at Eret and nods slowly. “Yeah? Why wouldn’t I be?”

“It’s almost three in the morning,” Eret says, pressing their mouth into a thin line, eyebrows scrunching in concern. 

“Oh. Really?” Tubbo glances at the clock on his wall. “Oh. Right. Fuck, sorry, did I wake you up?”

Eret shakes their head. They’re… not quite as affected by the situation as the rest of them are. As blindsided as they were by Wilbur’s revelation, they were never as close to Phil’s family as Tubbo and Niki are, and like Fundy, they were always preoccupied by the task of looking after the two younger siblings of their family and providing for all of them.

“I was working, don’t worry about me.” Eret sits on his bed and leans against the bed frame, eyes wandering around the room and resting on the red strings ‘decorating’ the walls. “Did you find anything from today’s hunt?”

Tubbo sighs and swivels around in his chair to face his brother. “Nope,” he says, “Just, uh… just the usual, I guess. Or, uh, not really, I think we’ve got a lead here.”

Eret smiles softly at him. “Case?”

“Um… someone came across the remains of a spectre, but… it wasn’t like, dead, or anything.” He reaches back to grab the file and skims through it even though he must’ve read its contents a thousand times over. “It’s weird — it should’ve faded away into chaos energy as soon as the vessel is killed, but this one… this one was just… lying there. Unresponsive even when provoked and prodded at. And uh… I called Tommy over to inspect it and he, uh, he confirmed what I suspected: that the vessel’s been completely sucked dry of chaos energy and that the spectre’s just… good as dead, I guess.”

His brother hums, nodding. “And you think that this might be his doing?”

Tubbo reaches up to drag a hand down his face, gritting his teeth in frustration as he throws the file onto the bed, watching it flop open to a random page. “I don’t think that it’s him,” he says, spits, his words coming out sharper than he intended, “I think that it’s the… the thing in him, no, I know it’s the thing. It’s gotta be. I mean, who the f- who else- what else could it have been, right?”

Tubbo regrets his tone as soon as he stops talking, a chill spreading from his throat to the rest of his body. He clamps his mouth shut and effectively melts into his seat. 

“Sorry.” He tears his gaze away from Eret and fixes his eyes onto the bed frame instead.

Eret shakes their head. “It’s fine, I know you’re frustrated.”

“I’m not- I’m not frustrated at you, man.”

“I know that. You wanna tell me about it?”

“I just…” he starts, “I just- it’s been like, three months. Almost four, now, since he, uh… since, the… y’know.” He gestures with a hand. “We’ve been chasing down lead after lead and- and nothing’s come of it. We’re no closer to finding h- it, than we were three months ago.”

His brother nods and presses their lips together.

“And, I don’t know, it just feels like we’re… we’re missing something. Like, we’re so close to solving it and finding its trail and- and getting him back that-“

A warmth on his arm interrupts him and Tubbo looks down to find the gem on his wrist glowing softly. A foreign trickle of annoyance seeps into his mind, and he glances at Eret. 

They shrug nonchalantly at him. 

He sighs and wraps his fingers around the gem. 

“Hey,” he says.

The gem heats up in his hand. 

“Oh, shit,” he mutters, “sorry I woke you up, I was trying to work out today’s case.”

The annoyance quickly morphs to vague curiosity and a sliver of hope that twists painfully in him.

“No, no, uh, nothing yet. Sorry. I’ll tell you about it in the morning.” 

From the corner of his eyes, he sees Eret quirking an eyebrow up. After a few seconds, he feels worry beginning to bloom at the back of his head. 

“Just… just go back to sleep, Tommy. Look, I’ll try not to get frustrated again, okay?”

A wave of warmth washes over him, making him close his eyes and shiver. It subsides quickly as Tommy hangs up on his end. Tubbo opens his palm and lets the gem dangle freely from his wrist, ending the connection.

“Well,” Eret says, breaking the short silence, “it is three in the morning.” They shrug as he shoots them a halfhearted glare, too tired to put any real heat behind it. “You should also… probably go to bed soon, y’know.”

Tubbo looks down.

“Probably.”

His eyes wander and find the case file laying on the bed.

“Eret?”

“Yes?”

“What do you think?”

“About the case?”

“Yeah, and… about everything else. Just this whole, uh, this whole mess.”

Eret reaches forward and takes the case file, leafing through the pages as they read Tubbo’s notes. They turn a page and their expression wavers, eyebrows scrunched together in deep thought, or worry, or revelation. In something, at least — it’s an invaluable asset that only a fresh pair of eyes can provide.

After a long while or silence, they look back up at Tubbo. 

“I think,” they start, “that you guys might be thinking a little too… complex.”

“What does that mean,” Tubbo mutters, tone as dead as he feels.

“Like… you guys are… you guys are looking for it, right?”

“Well, yeah, what else are we supposed to-“

“No, I mean- okay, what kind of stuff are you looking for? What trails are you… following?”

Tubbo looks behind him, at the wall of notes and pictures and string.

(He’s heard of legends of hunters working on missing persons’ cases, of hunters losing themselves the more they try to find the lost. Myths of spells that could vanish a person, erase them so cleanly off the face of the earth that not even deities can find them. Stories of spools of red thread that, when followed, would lead you straight to whoever you need to find, that sometimes you’d find them whole and sometimes you’d find your own bones scattered on the ground.

He wonders if he’s following that same path, if they all are, if one of these days one of them will dig too deeply into the case and disappear just like Wilbur did. If they’ve been running with their hands out in the dark and blindly chasing the first flash of light that they see. If they’re already lost, and they’ve been lost the moment they tried to solve the unsolvable.

He wonders if this, if any of this — the hunts, the sleepless nights, the constant wariness — is worth it at all. Maybe if he follows the red thread on his wall he’d find what he really needs to.)

“I’m not sure what to call them,” Tubbo says. “Phil calls it ‘dark energy’, but... I think it’s just, like, raw magic, at the end of the day. The pure stuff, y’know, not a lot of subtlety or mastery to it. Signs of someone only recently acquainted with magic. And according to Phil, it’s got his signature, at least.” He gestures at the file. “Whenever a case like this turns up, the site’s always… uh, thick with this energy, and that’s how we know it’s him.”

“But?”

“But it stops there.” He closes his eyes, drags a hand down his face, tries not to get too frustrated so he won’t wake Tommy up again. “And then it dissipates after a few days. It’s a lead, but it doesn’t- it doesn’t lead anywhere.”

Eret hums, nodding along. They purse their lips in sympathy, as if what all of them need right now is sympathy and not answers. 

“I just...” he mutters lowly, “okay. Fresh pair of eyes, what do you think?”

“I think,” Eret says, “that you guys are thinking a little too complex.”

“You just said that-“

“I think that you might be looking for the wrong thing,” his brother interrupts. “I was there too, Tubbo. If what he said is true, then he spent almost two decades posing as a human.” They smile at him, shrugging. “You might be looking for the wrong kind of trail here.”

Tubbo falls silent for a moment.

“Just… consider that.”

“Maybe,” he says, slowly, “maybe, I mean, that’s a possibility.” Tubbo slumps down in his seat. “And that this wouldn’t be any different from, from a normal missing person’s case, and- and that we’ve wasted months on… on a magic trail and… it amounted to nothing…”

He trails off.

Eret shrugs again. “It is a possibility. But have you tried to entertain it?”

“And if it is a possibility, then… then that would mean that- that… the, the Wilbur we knew is... has always been...”

“Yeah.” Eret nods. “It would.”

And instead of answering, Tubbo shuts his eyes and buries his face in his hands, a low whine building up at the back of his throat. He opens his mouth to speak, but what comes out is something between a strangled laugh and a sob. 

“It would,” he agrees, after a few seconds of painful silence.

“Yeah.” 

As much as he loves his brother, Eret always had a penchant for playing the devil’s advocate and realising the ugly truth only to shove it into people’s faces. Sometimes it’s needed, like in this situation, but sometimes it hurts, like in this situation, too. 

But Tubbo knows — he can’t stay in his echo chamber of ignorance forever.

“Why’d you become a hunter?” Eret asks, a little out of nowhere.

"Uh... I thought you knew-“

Eret sets down the case file and turns their full attention to him. “No, no, remind me. I want to hear you say it.”

“Uh...” he pauses, “because...”

(Because six years ago I saw a feral thing maul you half to death and leave you blind.

Because six years ago it was only because of Dream and Technoblade that you didn’t die.

Because six years ago I wanted to exact revenge over the fact that you have to rely on the shitty blessings of a deity to see.)

“...because I want to save people,” he settles. Says it like it’s a charm, like it’s part of a script he’s memorised a million times over.

“Because you want to save people,” Eret repeats, nodding. 

Eret stands, moving to stand beside him before bending down to face him eye-to-eye. They reach out with both hands, cupping his ears before leaning in and pressing their lips on the crown of his head. For comfort, for strength, a reminder for the wayward to come back home. 

He looks up at his brother, at the concern laid bare in the creases between his eyebrows, and reaches up with shaky hands to return the gesture. Affirmation, a sign of acceptance, and most importantly, reciprocation.

Eret pulls away and pats his cheek with a fond smile, sliding the case file into his hands. They turn and walk towards his door. “Remember that,” they say, “and go to bed, Tubbo, you can keep working in the morning,” and then they’re gone, closing the door behind them.

Tubbo lets out a breath he doesn’t know he’s been holding in.

As soon as the door shuts, he stands up from his chair and tosses the case file to the side, letting it fall onto the floor. He steps closer to his wall, entranced by all the pieces of paper he’s pinned and scribbled over.

He reaches up and touches the red string, sliding his finger along its length, absentmindedly tracing the intricate shapes he’d made with it. Eret’s words ring in his head, mockingly loud, telling him that the answer may have been in front of him this whole time, telling him that he’s been too focused on the trees that he missed when the forest caught on fire, telling him that all he needs to do is to open his eyes.

So he does.

He stops at a collection of pictures pinned together in one corner. They’re of Wilbur, or at least the thing wearing his face, and it makes him feel antsy just to look at. He can’t help but wonder how long or why or-

Or… who.

Who are you, he wants to ask the pictures on his wall, who have you been this whole time? What exactly is he looking at, and why can’t he seem to realise that it- that the thing-

No. 

He’s not looking at a thing, is the problem, he’s looking at Wilbur. 

Sun-kissed, wet-haired Wilbur on the beach. Wilbur, smiling until his honey eyes crinkle, an arm around Niki. Wilbur, so in love with life that Tubbo wonders whether they’ll ever get that back for him. Wilbur who has a family, who has friends, who runs a hand through his hair when he’s nervous, loves flying but is afraid of heights, asks people about their day to fill up awkward silences and who, most importantly, is their friend.

Wilbur, who they’re hunting down, who they’re trying to save, who Tubbo isn’t sure what to think of anymore.

Tubbo wonders how this all happened. It… it’s got to be a mistake, or a misunderstanding, or maybe he’s trying to convince himself of something that isn’t real in the first place. He rakes a hand through his hair, pulls at his locks, tries to compartmentalise but wants to let it all free.

Right now, there are two courses of action available: what he needs to do and what he wants to do. 

There’s what he needs to do — stop playing with the red thread and pick up his case file and continue working. Shut down this deviant train of thought and stick to what he believes in, stick to what he knows. Things would be so much fucking simpler. He wouldn’t be hovering his finger over Wilbur’s face in those damn pictures.

There’s what he wants to do — close his eyes and ignore the world and pretend like things are back the way they used to be, that he’s still deadpanning jokes at his friends and Niki’s still learning how to play the guitar and Tommy’s still losing at cards and Wilbur’s still got the golden sunlight caressing his younger, happier face. 

No one told him it’d hurt this much to choose. Yes, he became a hunter to help people and save lives, but no one told him he’d have to think for his own fucking self.

It would’ve been easier if Wilbur hadn’t been the way he was. If he hadn’t thrown himself in the line of fire to save Tubbo in one hunt gone terribly wrong and missed his sixteenth birthday because he’d wasted weeks in a coma. If he hadn’t spent so long teaching Niki how to play the guitar and encouraged her to sing and wrote songs with her. If he hadn’t been one of the only people who listened to Tommy and soaked in every word and knew exactly how to reel in his innate chaotic nature.

If his eyes didn’t crinkle when he smiled and his grins weren’t so boyish, if he didn’t tower over them and liked to sling an arm over their shoulders, if he didn’t gift Tubbo and Tommy the twin gems to congratulate Tubbo officially becoming a hunter and helped them enchant it.

(He’d been the first one to celebrate, too, when Tubbo successfully sent his first distant message to Tommy two rooms away, and he had pulled Tubbo into a hug and told him that he was proud of him and twirled his hair around a finger and Tubbo’s heart had leapt high in his chest.)

Tubbo swallows a thick block in his throat. 

His head hurts just by remembering, and he needs to keep working, and he wants to let it all go, and he doesn’t know how or why he’s still going but… but there’s something else. 

(What the legends fail to say is that you choose to find the lost, you have to want to vanish before you do. These hunters give up and they wander out and they choose to never come back and there’s no happy ending because they decide to stop and so they lose themselves.

Here’s the thing about Tubbo: he’s not going down that same path.)

There’s what he can do.

And what he can do is choose.

(He never liked legends anyway.)

He hooks a finger around a red thread and plucks it. The ensuing sound resonates like the string of a guitar.

Tubbo closes his eyes and makes the choice.

3 - Niki:

Niki knows that she should probably say something. She does. But the idea — and the reality — of Wilbur Soot, real and alive, is enough to make her thoughts run rampant around her head like a planet orbiting the Sun but never quite reaching it.

Wilbur stands right on the edge of the pier. His hair, tucked into a beanie, has grown longer, and he’s wearing a dark jumper with both hands shoved deep into his pockets, hunched over as he looks out into the sea. Even from behind, she can tell it’s him, can tell what kind of wistful expression he’s got on his face, can tell exactly what he’s thinking.

There’s something about seeing him for the first time in so long that kickstarts an odd mix of fear and rage and relief in her. She wants to say ‘where have you been’ and she wants to say ‘get out the sea does not deserve you’ and she wants to say ‘come home’ but before she can say any of that, he turns around.

And he smiles. 

The way he smiles feels foreign. 

He looks years younger and decades older at the same time, and he smiles with his whole face but there’s something in his eyes that raises her hackles. He runs his hand through his fringe and he steps back, so dangerously close to the water that she can ask it to swallow him if she really wants to.

But he’s happy, at least superficially, and Niki can’t take that away from him, from herself. 

(And he’s happy — the kind of happiness that simmers beneath your skin like a pot of water on the edge of boiling, the kind of happiness that feels like a piece of paper ready to tear, the kind of happiness that has a foot off the edge and threatens to turn into something else if you don’t reel it in.

The kind of happiness they only ever found in each other, hand-in-hand as they walked down the street leading away from the docks, light chatter between them as he took her downtown for the first time in her life. And though the sea called for her, filling her ears with the songs of conch shells, she found that drowning it out was a lot easier when she’s got her best friend cracking jokes at every turn.

The kind of happiness that, for a second, gives her hope.)

Wilbur steps closer, eyes dark and unreadable.

Niki suppresses a full-body shiver.

Half a year of dead ends upon dead ends, and here he is. She’s almost afraid of how captivated she is by the nervous curve of his smile, by how his shoulders hunch up just that tiny bit, by how he shuffles his feet as if he can’t find his centre of gravity. They’re supposed to be hunting it down, not… not looking at it and finding Wilbur in all the little things it fails to hide.

And it hurts to think that five years ago, same place, same people, he was doing the same thing, trivially nervous at the prospect of talking to a girl, a glimpse of what could’ve been when Niki wants to imagine that he’s human, that they can live a happy life.

“Niki,” he starts, voice breaking at the second syllable. 

She bites. “Wil.”

“Hey,” he says, as if they’re meeting for the first time all over again, and not standing on the fence that decides who gets to walk away. “It’s, it’s been a while.”

“Yeah.”

She closes her eyes. The sea would warn her of any dangers, and she’d half-expected it to start roaring in her ears, but today it’s quiet, waiting to hear the punchline with bated breath.

“I don’t want to fight you,” she says. “I don’t want to fight at all.”

And instead the wind shuffles up next to her, a whisper dead on its tongue. She clasps her hands behind her back, where it gathers between her fingers and slithers up her arms to circle her neck. 

'Help me,' she thinks, 'he’s here and I don’t know what to do.'

“If you came here — the docks, the… the pier — does that mean that you’re not… completely…?”

Gone is left unsaid, loud and clear for the both of them, and the wind flutters away with her words, scurrying back to its master with her warning sharp on its tongue.

“I just want to help. We… me and him, we- we used to come here all the time, and we’d, we’d hang out and talk for hours and- and I just want him back.”

She opens her eyes slowly, sunlight catching between her eyelashes. He’s still looking at her with that strange look in his eyes, with that foreign smile on his lips. She doesn’t know what to think of him, of it, of any of this, and that’s what scares her the most.

“Please,” she says.

“You talk as if I- as if your Wilbur is dead.” 

“I just, I just want him back. I just want- I don’t know, I just want to help.”

He brushes his fringe to the side, fingers lingering on his hair where she swears he tried to twirl it around his pointer. And she wants to scream, you don’t get to do that, and she wants to do it to him too, and she wants so many things but does none of it. 

“Please don’t go,” she whispers.

A brief pain flashes through his face. “I won’t,” he blurts out, melting before her very eyes, changing into the Wilbur she knows seamlessly. “I won’t. Okay. I promise, I- I think you at least deserve an, an explanation.”

“Thank you.” She exhales, letting her shoulders sag. “For, for not leaving, I mean. Wil. I… is it okay if I call you Wil?”

He blinks. Presses his lips together. “Why wouldn’t it be?”

Niki falters. “I just thought that…”

“…Oh,” he says, voice small, “no, yeah, I get it- no, it’s fine. Um. I’m. I’m sorry.” He pauses, eyes flickering between her face and her feet. “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry. I really am.”

“For disappearing?”

“Yeah.”

“And running away?”

“And- and that.”

“And for lying to us, to me, for- for the past- how many years has it been…?”

He winces. “Yeah. Niki-“

“You hurt us, back then,” she says, trying very hard not to get choked up, trying very hard not to remember how it feels like to see her best friend writhe in pain and have her world crash all around her, and failing at both miserably. “Was it a- when you, when you ran away, before that, I mean, you said- you said that you’re the only one in… in that body, and you said that Wilbur died a long time ago. What- what happened to him?”

He grimaces, closing his eyes for a few seconds. He hugs his arm close to his body, and hunches the slightest bit more as if trying to make himself as small as possible. But he doesn’t answer, and that only serves to fuel the flames in her chest.

“Or was that a lie, too?” she asks. “Was that- was all of that a lie, how much have you lied about, how much of him is you, and how much of you is him? ” 

Her voice cracks, thins out, and speaking — letting go of all that she’s been bottling up for the past few months — hurts her in ways she cannot comprehend, aches her body all over again and pulling her back to day one, sitting across a boy playing a guitar, and pulling her back to the next day one, getting her breath choked out of her by an unseen force as she tries to plead for air but nothing’s coming out. 

It’s five years past day one and six months past the next, but she doesn’t think she can ever really let go of either.

“I just want him back.” Niki inhales, looks up at him, puffs out her chest and straightens her back. “What happened to him? Where the fuck is he?”

“Niki,” he says, a little too harshly, and she flinches, clamps her mouth shut immediately. 

A pause.

“I’m scaring the shit out of you,” he says, softer.

She stays silent, and that must tell him much more than she can ever say in words because his expression falls.

“Niki.”

She meets his eyes. “Yeah?”

His eyebrows scrunch together and her eyes follow the way the skin between them folds up. Wilbur would do that all the time, when he was worried, when he was confused, when he was turning the pegs of his guitar and focusing on the sound of each string.

“Are you afraid of me?” he asks.

“Why would you lie to us?” she says, sounding a lot calmer than she feels as she takes a step forward. 

He watches her move towards him. He doesn’t move, but his shoulders are tense. “I’m not going to hurt you, you know.”

“We’re your friends, we’re not- you should have told us, we would’ve understood.”

“And I’m your friend- I don’t want to hurt you.”

“But you did,” she says. “You lied and you hurt us and- even though we’re your friends, you still did.”

Courage flares in her chest for a fleeting moment and she dares herself to take another step forward, and another, and another, and another, until they’re functionally sharing the same breath. 

He’s so tall, she realises, as if she’s never complained about it to him a million times before. He dwarfs her in size, and he could snap a hand up and strangle her to death and she could sic the water on him and make him sleep with the fishes but neither of them make a move to hurt the other. 

Part of her wants to get it over with, to give him a shove and let the sea drag him away. 

Part of her wants to wrap her arms around him and make sure he won’t disappear on her again. 

And here’s the problem: she does neither. She could never bring herself to do either.

“I’m sorry,” he repeats, “I don’t know what else to say; I’m sorry,” and Niki accepts it this time. If he ever wanted to hurt her, she would already be dead.

She holds eye contact with him, daring him to lie. “Alright.”

He sees it, and understanding dawns on his eyes. “Alright?”

“Yeah. Let’s… let’s say I trust you.”

“Okay,” he says after a pause. 

“So what happened to Wilbur…?”

“He… okay, there was never a… ’Wilbur Soot’, in here. This, this body-“ he gestures at himself, fingers brushing against his clothes, “was born without a soul. I don’t, uh, the human memory has its limits, but I remember that I needed to hide from, from Phil, and…”

He runs a hand over his mouth. She can almost believe it.

“And uh, think of it like… a homeless man living in a manless home,” he finishes lamely.

“How do I know you’re not just saying that?” How do I know you’re not lying, like you have been, all this time?

“Niki, I’m not- I’m still me,” he says, desperation showing only in his dark eyes. “There’s no evil spirit in me, I’m, okay, I guess there is, but- but it’s always been me, okay?” He takes a deep breath, fidgets with the fabric of his jumper. “I’ve always been Wilbur, Wilbur’s always been me, and, and I don’t want to hurt anyone.”

(“Aren’t I?” Wilbur asks, upending her whole world with two words. “Because last I checked I was the only one in here. Last I checked, Wilbur died a long, long time ago.” 

And then he smiles. 

The way he smiles feels foreign.

He looks five years younger and centuries older at the same time, and he smiles with his whole face but his eyes glint a crimson far too many shades brighter than his gentle brown. He wipes the tears from his cheeks and his voice cracks, so dangerously close to breaking everything she’s ever known that she isn’t sure if the answer is as easy as she wants it to be.

But he’s scared, and so is she, and Niki can’t possibly decide who deserves it more than the other.)

“That doesn’t prove anything,” she says.

He nods, carefully. “I know. But you said, uh, let’s say you trust me, right?”

Let’s say I trust you, now let’s say you trust me too.

She inhales. Nods back at him. “Right.” They’re alone, at least for now. No reason not to dig a little deeper, no reason not to be completely honest in the face of the most dangerous person in this situation. “Why didn’t you tell anyone?”

They’re going in circles, but at least they’re going somewhere.

“If I did, I’d be dead a long time ago.”

Her phone buzzes in her pocket. His eyes snap down to it.

“Why’d you run?” she asks, brushing a hand against her phone.

He looks nervously back at her. “I didn’t- I was scared, and they were hurting me too.” 

Another buzz.

“Why didn’t you come back?”

“I- Niki- did you, did you call anyone-?”

“Did you want me to?”

“The fuck- no, of course not, why would you-“

“Why did you stay in the first place?”

“No- Prime, what did you do?”

A sudden shout in the distance has him tearing away from her, eyes flicking behind her and body tensing up. She surges forward, hands shooting out to grab onto his arms as she presses on, desperate to keep him there, desperate to dig all the answers out of him, desperate to understand.

“Why would you do this to us?” she spits, tightening her grip against his struggle, trying to push him closer to the sea where he won’t escape from.

He shoves back, pulls, twists them around when that doesn’t work. “Who did you call- how, Niki, Niki let me go, please- I have to get out of here-“

He yanks, starts to move, and Niki keeps holding onto him, stumbling after him as she tries to hold him in place. Around them, the sea boils and bubbles, apprehension parting the waves as they rage around the pair, ready to strike with the flick of her finger. 

“Why’d you stay?” she shouts, voice barely heard over the crashing.

A strong wave of rushing wind hits them. His eyes widen. “Get off me, get off me, please- let go of me-“

“Why are you doing any of this?” she cries, loud and clear amidst the screaming wind, and-

“Because I want to live!” he yells. He finally tears himself out of her grip, cradling his hands close to his chest. He looks at her, horrified, betrayal etching every line of his face. 

His eyes are so, so brown. Brown and kind and gentle and hurt, and Niki’s phone buzzes again and there is another shout and suddenly they are red, crimson reflected on his fluttering eyelashes as his gaze drills into hers.

“I just want to be human,” he says, quietly, eyes still red and face still foreign, risking escape with every second that passes, “I want a family, I want a life, Niki, please, I need to go- I need to go-“

He turns, she moves, and the sleeve of his jumper barely slips through her fingers as he runs. 

Niki stumbles, falls to her knees, looks up and watches him go. For the second time in her life, Wilbur Soot turns his back on her a different man than he was when he faced her. Except here, now, she could’ve kept him from running, could’ve convinced him to stay, but does neither, ultimately.

The sea simmers down and breaks away from her, turning back to its usual meandering at the lack of a command, and she is hit with the weight of everything she could’ve done but didn’t, everything she needed to say but was too blinded by the unfamiliar fear of staring into a friend’s eyes and having a stranger look back at you. A stranger who claims to be him, who claims that he’s always been that friend, who she doesn’t know what to think of. 

His figure disappears far into the city, blocks away before two people come into view. Tubbo and Technoblade split in two directions, one booking it after Wilbur and one rushing down the pier to find her.

“Niki!” her brother yells as he drops to his knees and slides up to her. “You- are you alright? Quackity sent us here and we- we tried to come immediately and Techno’s chasing after him and Dream’s going to be contacting Philza and, oh Prime, what happened, did he hurt you-?”

“Tubbo?” she asks, out of breath and out of thought for the first time since this whole mess started to turn her life sideways. “Tubbo, Tubbo-“

Tubbo nods vigorously, hands coming out to clench her shoulders and giving her something to ground herself with. “Yeah- yeah, I’m here, I’m here-“

Niki shakes her head, grasping his hands as she looks deep into his eyes. Blue, electric, swirling with the emotions of his other half, worry that isn’t entirely his creasing the lines of his face. 

“Tubbo,” she repeats, “I think- I think we’ve got it all wrong-“

She wants to run, she wants to scream, she wants to fall and cry and sink deep into the ocean where none of this would come and plague her.

“Niki, look, we’ve found him, okay? You did so well, you did, now we’ve just gotta make sure he doesn’t get away again-“

“No, no, no, Tubbo, listen, I don’t think- look, he said- he’s-“

She wants to believe him. She wants to reject it. She wants- she... she wants to think, she needs to think, the thoughts are there and they’re circling her head a thousand miles a minute and at some point they’re going to crash and burn against each other. 

“I don’t know what he said to you, okay, but you have to remember- it’s, it’s a good liar, Niki, you can’t listen to it, it’s only going to lie to you-“

“Listen, listen-!”

Tubbo tightens his grip around her shoulders, gritting his teeth in frustration. “What?”

Time is running out, and all her choices meld together with all her wants, and everything she thought she ever knew slips out of her grasp before she can properly close her fist around a single concrete one. Half-formed thoughts scream for attention and half-wrecked beliefs come crawling out the woodwork. She’s stranded in the middle, lost in her own head, caught in a never-ending whirlpool of could’ve, would’ve, should’ve and, loudest of all, why didn’t I.

“We’ve got it all wrong,” she pleads, holding eye contact with her brother. Blue against blue. Sea against spark. Sibling against sibling, the most tragic fight of them all. “We do, please-“

But at the end of it, she closes her fist, makes a choice. The ocean stills, the waves freeze over, and the storm makes way to the voice of its daughter.

(“Last I checked,” Wilbur says, that horrible grin painfully stretched across his face, “none of you actually care about me.”

And Niki feels her entire being ache at that. She wants to scream, ‘what happened to you?’, because somewhere along the way, something crawled in and took away their Wilbur, the one who lives for kindness and loves so deeply that it hurts to watch.

The two of them meshed so well together because he is kind, and she is too, and two kind people will always gravitate towards each other. But even then she knows that the world is unfair; there are some things that no matter how hard he tries to love, no matter how much he loves, will never love him back as much.

Things like the universe. 

Things like the sea.

Things like what their family is turning out to be.)

Tubbo grimaces, pulls away, reaches for his phone and turns his back on her. Niki stays, exhales, relief flooding her senses as the world rights itself, finally.

Chapter Text

4 - Phil:

Phil dreams.

He dreams of things that don’t make any sense. 

He dreams of late night smoothies and watching empty cars pass by and disappear into smoke. 

He dreams of flying, of moving up and up and up until his wings freeze and the gates of heaven slip by the tips of his fingers and he falls and the ground morphs into sea. 

He dreams of driving a sword through someone’s gut, flames licking his hands as the world melts into debris and dust, craters yawning open beneath him.

Then he wakes up, and the dreams fade into the part of his brain he keeps carefully shut with lock and key and denial. He focuses on his life; reality over sleep, family over reality, and then work over everything.

Nowadays he finds it a little harder to stay at home so he spends more time outside, side by side with Techno and Tubbo and Dream, spearheading the hunt for his lost son. Nowadays he dreams, but he doesn’t sleep all that much, and he can’t bear to stay at home where the sound of music no longer permeates the walls, and he can’t look Tommy in the eyes without seeing Wilbur in the way he tilts his head — so yes, work above all.

And life goes on.

Phil doesn’t come home until it’s late at night and his wings are sore from hours of flying above the city trying to spot a lanky figure. 

He visits Tubbo’s family, finds Tommy hanging out with them more than he sees him at their own house. 

He doesn’t see Technoblade in days and it’s only by Dream texting him ‘he’s with me’ that he knows he hasn’t lost another son. 

He hasn’t opened Wilbur’s room in weeks and does his best to forget about the guitar mounted on the wall, untouched, unharmed, out of sight but not out of mind, does his best to pretend that dust hasn’t rendered the air unbreathable yet.

But all it takes is one call from Dream, one trip to the pier, one look at Niki who turns towards him with azure eyes blazing with determination, to shatter his naïve confidence. She looks up at him and she tells him, “We’ve got it all wrong,” and she tells him everything and he-

Phil dreams.

He dreams of things that don’t make any sense.

But he doesn’t dream of eyes — black then golden then red— and a figure moving too fast for his eyes to catch. 

In one dream he is talking to Niki about her family and red horns sprout out her head and her face morphs into Tommy’s and he’s spitting insults into his face.

In one dream Techno is missing, is running, is disappearing just like Wilbur did, hot on his heels and looking to get lost.

In one dream the world melts all around him and his head is spinning and he’s not sure how to stand upright anymore.

In his reality, all three scenarios are happening. 

Niki tells him everything and Phil falls silent at the resolve burning bright behind her eyes. Tommy pulls him aside and tells him, “I told you so,” and looks at Phil with disbelief when all he can manage out is “Okay.” 

Technoblade is gone, always the first to run, always the first to chase after the ghost. A part of him thinks 'He’s going to get hurt' and another part thinks 'Wilbur would never hurt him' and another part thinks 'But would Techno do the same to his brother' and all of him screams 'Is it really Wilbur though'.

His world melts around him and he tears away from the situation, muttering a half-hearted “I need to think,” before he’s trying to get away from Niki and Tommy and Dream and Tubbo and the idea that Wilbur wouldn’t lie to them and the idea that it’s always been Wilbur and the idea that he needs to stay true to his roots and he has to obey his orders and he wants to come home where he belongs and he’s going to have to kill his own son and he-

Everyone’s looking at him as if he’s supposed to give them the answers they need. 

As if he’s not looking for his own.

—

When Wilbur asked the question for the second time, they were sitting pressed up against each other on the couch. Phil had a wing draped over Wilbur’s body, cocooning him in feathers, and neither of them mentioned the fact that Wilbur leaned into the touch. They’ve been sat there for hours, talking about life and philosophy and history well into absurd hours of the night, insomniac and inhuman understanding each other on a level far deeper than anyone else can. 

At some point, they’d lapsed into silence, and Wilbur had asked him about his wings. Phil thought for a moment before sharing stories about angels and heaven and the capacity of his kind to show unconditional love, and Wilbur had shuddered under his wing and closed his eyes. He had this look on his face — hovering somewhere between relief and conflict — and it only made Phil pull his son closer to himself. 

Wilbur’s eyes were puffy, grey bags under them and mirrored in Phil’s own face. His hands wrapped tighter around himself, lips half-parted as he breathed through his mouth, nose all stuffed up from the breakdown he had earlier.

He looked so human, then, so vulnerable, and Phil was hit with a terrible, terrifying feeling, one that sent him breathless and reeling and- and he thought, 'I’d start a war to keep you safe forever', because this was his son and there was little he wouldn’t do for his sons.

And then, the question came. Wilbur turned his head away from Phil, eyebrows fighting not to get scrunched, and he brought his hands up to his mouth and muttered the words muffled into his skin:

“Why’re you still looking for it?”

Phil took a sharp breath, blinking quickly.

“Because… because it’s evil,” he said, his voice soft, and something inside him started hurting when Wilbur’s shoulders tensed up and he swallowed audibly. “And I’ve gotta kill it — it’s my heavenly duty, Wil, I’ve gotta finish it if I want to go home.”

Wilbur exhaled deeply, eyes fixed on the floor. His eyelids flicked down and his eyes glinted golden; it might have been a trick of the light but Phil wouldn’t be surprised if there was a little bit of inhumanity in his son. That’s just how the world works — no one is pure and there will always be a little bit of inhumanity in every human. 

“And you want to go home,” Wilbur said, looking back up at Phil with an expression that Phil wasn’t sure how to read.

“Of course I do — it’s where I belong.”

“There. Not- not here. With us.”

Phil opened his mouth, a rebuttal ready to be spat out at the tip of his tongue, but all he could do at that moment was choke on air and meet Wilbur’s perceptive eyes and clamp his mouth shut. He mulled it over in his head, fingers burning at the point of contact on Wilbur’s skin. 

He sighed. “You know that’s not what I meant. I’m sorry, mate, that came out harsh. Okay. No, of course I want to go home, but you guys are… the reason that I stayed in the first place, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Wilbur echoed. “You- you said- unconditional love.”

“I did.”

“D’you really mean that?”

He did.

(Still does.)

“Always,” Phil said, watching as Wilbur fiddled with his hands, watching as Wilbur tangled his fingers through his hair and pulled at his strands, watching as Wilbur ran his fingers through Phil’s feathers, touching them as if they were back on Day One and Wilbur had never touched the wing of an angel before. 

“And you’re going to kill it,” Wilbur muttered, his voice hollow.

Phil wondered what Wilbur was thinking, if he was thinking about dark creatures and utter destruction and things that burn in heaven’s fire. 

(Phil knows what Wilbur was thinking, now, that he was thinking of songs sung by the pier, of friends who threw themselves in the line of fire to protect friends, of fathers and wings wrapped around him and brothers and horns butted into his chest and tusks pressed against his fingers. 

He knows, now, because he’s also wishing for the same things back, of homes and families and times when Wilbur would show him songs he wrote because he trusted that Phil wouldn’t judge his skills, and not miles away where Phil isn’t sure he’ll find him, of places where they could simply exist and be a family and not have their happiest memories tinged bittersweet.)

“I have to,” Phil assured him, and ignored the way Wilbur broke eye contact and his eyes flickered back to brown.

(He looked so hurt, then, so betrayed, and looking back on that moment, Phil is hit with a terrible, terrifying feeling, one that makes him cry into his hands in the middle of the night: I’d raze the Earth to have you back, but that’d be a lie, but that’d be the truth, but he doesn’t want to kill his own son though he knows he has to, he has to, he has to.)

—

Tommy grabs his arm as Phil is turning away, fangs bared in frustration as he drills his gaze into Phil’s eyes. And when Phil tries to nudge him away, he tightens his grip on Phil, claws digging into his skin, and asks the one question he wouldn’t give up on:

“Why’re you still looking for him?”

Phil looks at him, and then he almost smiles because out of all his children, Tommy is the bravest one, the one with the kind of strength fierce enough to believe in something and never let go. Wilbur moves and changes, Techno pulls back and disappears, but Tommy is loyal, unwavering in his values.

He speaks in that blunt and kind voice — the same voice he’d use to encourage Wilbur to talk to women or to coerce Techno out of his room to eat dinner or to assure Phil that he’ll be fine going out on his own, except they’re all so far away from normal that he’s using that voice to convince Phil not to kill his brother. It’s been half a year since either of them saw Wilbur, and Tommy’s still able to see right through him, to strike where it hurts most and choose the right words to send Phil spiralling.

“I have to stop him,” Phil replies, but even as he speaks them, the words taste sour on his tongue. 

Tommy scoffs. “From doing what?”

“From, from hurting people,” Phil says, “he’s- he’s dangerous, and if we let him keep going, he’s… eventually, he’ll do some real damage.”

Tommy sees right through him, blue eyes wide and wise and all-too-clever. “And you’re going to put that above him.”

“It’s my duty to stop him.”

“He’s your son.”

Tommy steps forward, a spark between the horns on his head, a snarl threatening to break out on his expression, a challenge evident in the way he glares up at Phil. He lets go of Phil before his claws can break skin and draw blood.

“And he’s my fucking brother.” 

“I know,” Phil says, breathless, unsure, as if he didn’t spend countless hours trying to draw the line between Wilbur and the thing, as if he isn’t sure where it is, as if the conclusion he reached was that there isn’t a line at all. “I know,” he repeats, for good measure, “but I still- I still have to. I can’t- I can’t let him hurt anyone.”

“You act as if he even wants to. You know him.”

“Even if I do, I’ve still gotta save him-“

“And this isn’t how you do it!” Tommy snaps, throwing his hands up.

The gem hooked to his necklace starts glowing.

Tommy barely spares it a glance before he curls a hand around it. Eyes still fixed on Phil, his nostrils flare as he takes a deep breath. “Sorry,” he mutters, “I’ll calm down,” and lets it fall from his fingers.

Phil watches the gem’s glow fade, watches a dozen different emotions flick through Tommy’s face, knowing full well the same storm is raging through his own head. 

“I think,” his son starts, “you need to think about your priorities. Sort them out or something.” He shoves his hands into his pockets, drawing away from Phil as the heat of his emotions fade from his expression. “Techno won’t listen to me at all. I think you should, before you make a mistake you can’t fuckin’ take back.”

Tommy swivels on his heels and stalks away, grabbing Niki on the way and sauntering off to meet with the rest of their friends. Phil stays where he is, his body half-poised to run, his mind half-set on staying. 

He reaches up to touch the spot where Tommy grabbed him, gingerly running his fingers over the dent marks left by Tommy’s claws. The pain grounds him, reminds him that he may be a being of cosmic proportions but his body is all too human, his feet are still touching the ground, and his heart still yearns for his sons. 

He doesn’t even need to feel the wetness on his cheeks to know that he’s crying.

—

Phil dreams.

His memories plague his dreams and angels aren’t supposed to dream, aren’t even supposed to sleep, but he’s doing it anyway. 

He dreams of late night smoothies and feeling jealous of the mundane. 

He dreams of flying and then of falling. 

He dreams of driving a sword into someone’s guts and grieving the loss of his enemy.

Then he wakes up, he tries his best to forget that he even dreamt at all, and he convinces himself that he keeps waking up in the middle of the night because he has to piss and not because he doesn’t want to stay trapped in his own head. 

His mind whispers to him in the dead of night, a confusing mix of feelings he’s not quite human enough to decipher, constantly echoing words he’d rather forget about, words like we don’t stay mad and get away from me and unconditional love and are you going to kill them. 

He closes his eyes and Wilbur lies dead on the floor.

He opens his eyes and Wilbur is missing from their house.

He wants to go back to sleep, but there’s a heavy pain in his chest that demands more than what he can give, and it’s irrational but he’s scared of sleeping and waking up to a house more empty than it already is.

So instead he thinks. He sits on the edge of his bed and he holds his head in his hands and he thinks.

He thinks of smoothies and of flying and of swords. He thinks of things that don’t make sense, that need to be solved, that don’t want to be solved. And then he thinks of the one constant in all of them, the only thing that never changes. 

Because Wilbur is there, Prime, Wilbur is always there, has always been there since day fucking one. The empty space where he’s supposed to be won’t stop haunting Phil. Wilbur is there sharing the smoothie with him and Wilbur is there clinging onto his wings and Wilbur is there with a sword in his gut and grieving for his father’s anguish. 

The unfortunate reality is that Phil is going to have to kill his own son if he wants to go home. 

And that’s the twist, isn’t it? That this is his son, that this has always been his son. 

Because... Wilbur is not a liar. Yes, he lies, and yes, he cheats, but he is not a liar, because liars tell lies and they get caught and then they do it again, but Phil thinks back to when Niki begged him to believe her when she said Wilbur regretted lying.

And Phil... doesn’t know what to do with this information, this realisation. It’s been more than half a year and he’s barely accepted that Wilbur isn’t here anymore. The only reason he hadn’t gone mad was because he firmly stayed under the pretence that there was some malicious force out of their control, an evil spirit taking Wilbur hostage and tearing everything apart, but...

But... the reality is that there isn’t. 

It’s just Wilbur. 

Wilbur, who wormed his way into their family and their hearts, who lied through his teeth and adolescent life but never wanted to. 

Wilbur, who they almost killed and who almost killed them, who spat in their faces and upturned the world they thought they knew. 

Wilbur, who’s only ever known and shown kindness, who cannot recognise self preservation even if it slapped him across the face, who loves to sing but is nervous about his own music, who smiles with his whole face and can’t talk to women and who doesn’t want to be found.

Wilbur, who is part of their family.

Who is his son.

—

(Phil dreams of the past and the future and a hundred thousand what if’s.

He dreams of words never said and people never found. 

He dreams of his wings around Wilbur’s body, of the curve of Wilbur’s smile and every crease of his eyes, of pulling him into an embrace and telling him everything’s going to be okay. 

He dreams of a future they could’ve had, of unbroken hearts and untold lies, of ‘Get away from me’ and ‘This isn’t you’ and ‘Let them go’.

He dreams of the fear that they’ve made far too many mistakes far too late; the fear that first, they couldn’t save Wilbur from the darkness; the fear that second, they couldn’t save him from his fate; the fear that lastly, they couldn’t save him at all.)

5 - Technoblade:

The last time they were this close, they almost killed each other. 

But the last time they were, Wilbur was still family.

Wilbur, cornered into an alley, has his back to Techno. He’s staring somewhere between the wall and the ground, shoulders tense as Techno loads his crossbow with an arrow enchanted with magic strong enough to knock out a leviathan. 

“You know it’s not too late to turn back,” Wilbur says.

Techno raises his weapon and points it where Wilbur’s heart is. “And you know it’s not too late to turn yourself in, either.”

Wilbur looks over his shoulder. “Both of us know I’m not going to do that.”

“And both of us know I can’t let you go.”

Wilbur laughs, chest heaving as the sound wreaks through his whole body. A part of Techno, long buried under months of compartmentalisation and denial and crushing betrayal, yearns to join in instinctively, as if they’re still kids and they’re laughing at a stupid meme shared between their phones. But the laugh comes out unfamiliar, choked, comes out dry and scathing and cynical and everything Wilbur Soot isn’t.

“Oh, that’s funny, that’s really funny, no- what do you suggest we do then?” He swivels around, stepping backwards until his back hits the wall. “C’mon, what’re you going to do, Technoblade?” He spits the name like poison. “You know I hold all the cards here, I’ve got your dear Wilbur in my clutch and you’re not going to- you’re not going to give up on your brother, are you-?”

Techno raises the crossbow a little higher and shoots.

The arrow hits its target with deadly accuracy and a violent thwack.

He watches Wilbur’s expression change, eyes widening and mouth shutting instantaneously, the cocky façade draining out his face along with all the colour in his cheeks. Wilbur stands still and completely frozen, both hands trembling, itching to yank out the arrow stuck to the wall inches away from the tip of his left ear. 

“I think,” Techno drawls, “that you should consider comin’ with me.” He stands straighter, squares his shoulders, glares back at Wilbur with a heat that wasn’t previously there. “I’m a big fan of the rule of threes — you’ve just wasted number one.”

As soon as the words leave his mouth, a dark look flashes across Wilbur’s face. His brother the thing grits Wilbur’s teeth together, filling his face with unfamiliar rage and burning defiance, so close to yet so far from all of Techno’s memories of Wilbur, fuelled by anger and passion and the sort of stubbornness only possessed by someone who thinks that they’re in the right.

(They used to come to each other when neither wanted to be alone but neither wanted to talk. Techno would knock on Wilbur’s door and his brother would take one look at his grumpy face and let him in without question. Or alternatively, Wilbur would come unprompted into Techno’s room wearing a thick sweater and an angry expression and Techno would silently offer him a seat on the bed.

There were never that many words exchanged between them — never words, because even though Wilbur is a wordsmith bred and born, Techno always found it hard to navigate the world through speech and Wilbur- he knows that. He knows Techno all too fucking well. He knows exactly when to talk and when not to make a sound.

So Techno would sit on his chair and read a nice book and Wilbur would lay on the bed scrolling through social media. Sometimes Techno’s phone would buzz and he’d find a message from Wilbur of a link to a funny post on Reddit, and then he’d exhale out his nose and Wilbur’s eyebrows would furrow a little bit less. And if he finished a book he particularly liked while Wilbur was there, he’d toss him the book and Wilbur would read the blurb, and if he decided he was interested then he’d give Techno a thumbs up and return it in a few days.

Such was their routine, and each time, they’d leave the other’s room as wordlessly as they came in, but they’d feel infinitely better after having spent time with their other half.)

“Well you know what I think? I think- I think that you’re full of shit,” it snarls. “I think you’re a coward and, and you’re a fucking hypocrite.” 

It twitches Wilbur’s fingers by its sides, shoulders tensing as if it’s getting ready to throw a punch and play dirty. Unfortunately for it, the both of them know who would win in a fair fight. Wilbur’s eyes follow Techno’s hand slipping down to grab another arrow, faltering as Techno loads it into his crossbow.

Still, his expression deepens in resolve and he takes a threatening step forward, face scrunched up and flushed red all the way through, looking as if he has every intention to launch himself forward and claw Techno’s face right off.

Wilbur moves jerkily, like he’s not sure how to control his own body the body it has inhabited for far too long. But there’s hesitance in his movements; he cocks his head and clenches his fists and stands tall and rigid, calculated abnormality in all the ways he presents himself, as if he’s trying too hard to be as off-putting as possible. But unfortunately for him, too, Technoblade isn’t one to fall for his tricks and get unnerved by the way it puppeteers Wilbur’s body.

“You’re not going to shoot me, Technoblade,” Wilbur hisses, squinting his eyes to hide the uncertainty blooming in them, the clear doubt that Techno had honed in on as soon as it appeared. “I know you’re not going to; you’re too much of a fucking coward to do anything of the sort.” 

He barks out a laugh — too forced to be anything but a scare tactic. 

“You’re- you’re not going to hurt me,” he says, “I know you’re not going to do anything, you can’t fucking hurt me in a way that matters — not while I’m wearing the face of your brother-“

Techno shoots again.

The second arrow hits the wall with another thwack.

The arrow vibrates at the force of the impact and Wilbur cries out, eyes squeezing shut as he flinches, and flinches hard. He freezes in pure terror for the second time that day, trembling as he reaches up and runs a finger gingerly along the earlobe of his right ear, where the arrow has nicked off a bit of skin. His finger comes away with a spot of blood.

“What the fuck,” Wilbur croaks out, staring intently at the red on his hand. “What the fuck.”

“I don’t think you’re in any position to be challengin’ me,” Techno growls, baring his teeth as the tide of power shifts in his favor.

The thing exhales weakly, glued to the wall and trembling in all the places Wilbur would when he gets scared. His bottom lip, his fingers, his shoulders — hell, it’s even blinking his eyes as hard and fast as he always used to. It’s almost amusing to Techno, watching its desperation to pass off as someone it’s not, watching that furious bravado melt and morph into the terrifying realisation that Technoblade keeps every promise he makes even if it means driving an arrow between his brother’s eyes.

(But the last time they sat together in silence, Wilbur looked up and made eye contact and even though Techno hadn’t wanted to speak that day, he still tried to prompt a conversation.

“Techno,” he said, and Techno grunted in response as they looked at each other, “I think-“ he paused, mouth opening and closing and eyes clouded over in conflict, “I want to- uh, look, I think that…”

Techno watched as his brother’s expression changed, and then changed, and then changed again a thousand times a second, a million thoughts racing through his head and each one briefly flashing by in his eyes. Wilbur set his phone down on Techno’s bed and pulled his knees up close to his chest.

He broke eye contact first. “I- uh… right,” he made a distressed noise at the back of his throat, “yeah, no. Okay. Sorry- I’m… sorry.”

“You good?” Techno asked, the first words he’d said in hours.

“Yeah, I just… thought of something, I guess.” Wilbur ran a hand through his hair. “No, okay, no, it’s nothing. It’s nothing, sorry.”

Techno grunted again. “You can tell me anythin’.”

“I know.” Wilbur inhaled deeply, closing his eyes. “Okay. I’ve been thinking. About. About you, and then, uh… I guess about us?” He gestured between them. “Like how, uh, one day you’re going to go out there and you won’t come back and- and we’re going to drift apart, and…”

“Yeah?”

“And- and I don’t want us to drift apart,” he said. “I don’t- I don’t want to lose you as quickly. I just… okay, okay, right. Techno, let’s never fight.”

Techno raised an eyebrow.

“Let’s never argue again. Let’s- let’s not do that, ever.”

“Sure,” Techno said, shrugging.

And then a week later, Phil called him downstairs during an ungodly hour of the night and told him, I’ve found it. 

Technoblade keeps every promise he makes. He doesn’t like to think of all the ones he should never have tried to keep in the first place.)

“Please,” the thing says in Wilbur’s breathless voice, “look, Techno- what the fuck, you… you fucking maniac,” it laughs again, but nervously, “I- I thought- you, oh Prime, you really-“

The greater good, Techno reminds himself as he brushes away the memory. It lingers at the back of his mind, pooling together with all the doubts he’d accumulated from staring into Wilbur’s face and questioning himself. His hand flies down to grab another arrow and he sees Wilbur’s eyes widen, nothing but terror flashing behind his pupils as his gaze follows every one of Techno’s movements. 

“Techno, Techno- please, no, look,” the thing says, stuttering over each word, losing more and more of Wilbur’s inherent eloquence as Techno loads the arrow into his crossbow with a loud click. “You don’t have to do this- please, please-“

“Are you goin’ to come with me?”

“I can’t, you don’t understand, I can’t, Techno, please, let me go-“

“You’ve just wasted number two.”

“-Techno, please, listen to me, I’m not- I don’t want to fight you, I don’t want to- I don’t want to die, please, I’m still Wilbur, I’m still your brother-“

Techno pulls the trigger. 

The arrow is released.

Wilbur’s eyes widen, time freezing and the world bending around the tip of the arrow headed directly between them. 

For a fleeting second, Technoblade sees his brother in the hurt flashing in his face — he would’ve yelled out Wilbur’s name but he can’t take back an arrow once it’s flying — but the problem with a fleeting second is that it’s over too soon, and then Wilbur swipes a hand in an arc across the air and the arrow splinters and all hell breaks loose.

Raw magic rips its way through the air in a blinding flash of light and heat and noise, sending a shockwave of pure power rocking the earth in every direction. 

The force of it throws Techno backwards, spears through his skin and tears through his insides, leaving burn marks in its wake. He barely registers hitting the floor and crying out. 

(In so many ways, Wilbur had been the perfect complement to Technoblade’s story that it’s a miracle the universe brought them together in the first place. 

Where Techno is quiet and analytical and monotone, Wilbur speaks and feels and emotes. Where Wilbur bursts with passion and throws himself in danger and loses his cool in tense situations, Techno keeps them grounded and safe and level-headed. Where Wilbur refuses to fight, Techno knows what has to be done.

His brain wrecks itself thinking about it. He runs himself ragged going on hunts, remembers everything he discovered, trains himself to compartmentalise and then compartmentalises some more. He imagines the first time he ever met Wilbur, surrounded by the fading bodies of hellhounds and the promise of a home that will love him back. When he can’t sleep and he’s staring blank-eyed into the sky, he wonders what life would’ve been like if they never found Wilbur and wonders if that’d be the better alternative.

He thinks about young Wilbur, cowering from Phil and shaking violently from cold and starvation.

And because he’s a masochist — they all are — he keeps thinking of Wilbur, every person he’d been and every person Techno doesn’t want to admit are one and the same.

He imagines Wilbur Soot, lonely orphan boy; and Wilbur Soot, artistic outgoing brother; and Wilbur Soot, red-eyed and crackling with dark energy. One of which he never got the chance to know, one of which he knows as intimately as the back of his hand, and one of which he doesn’t want to know at all.

That’s how Wilbur’s story starts and ends — on the run from the life he thought he lived, except the first time over he’d been completely alone. This time they’ve intertwined their stories so tightly together that ripping them apart had sent a horrible ripple slicing through their lives. 

In so many ways, Wilbur had been the perfect foil to Technoblade’s mythos, the one person with power enough to upend his world so devastatingly.)

At the end of the alleyway, Wilbur isn’t looking too good either. His legs are barely strong enough to hold him upright, body pressed against the wall behind him and shaking all over, looking at Techno with wide eyes dark and empty and crawling with an emotion Techno can only describe as desperation.

“Technoblade,” he mutters, barely loud enough for Techno to hear even with his sharp hearing, “you… you’d really…”

Techno draws himself up to his swaying feet, gripping his crossbow close to his chest and one hand already hovering by his quiver. His mouth moves around a whispered prayer to his deity, and with every word he utters, he feels strength trickling back into his body. He glares up at Wilbur, heart freezing stone cold as whatever doubts he previously had washes away together with nausea from the impact.

Wilbur has a hand raised in front of him, the skin of his fingers stained black with… something. His expression hardens, jaw working as he swallows down the betrayal etched on his face. Techno feels it: a force building under his feet, shifting and boiling and waiting to strike up and engulf him whole. He moves a foot backward, poising himself to run or to lunge forward, keeping his centre of gravity as low as possible.

“I could kill you, right here, right now,” Wilbur says, his voice low and threatening and wavering, “you know, I could, I really could.” His lips start twitching. “You… you made it clear that you’d still- that you, you don’t care, huh.”

He inhales deeply, eyebrows furrowed and nodding to himself. Techno stays frozen in place, every one of his muscles tense and ready to spring at the first sign of action.

“Are you afraid to die, Technoblade?” Wilbur asks, looking back up at him. 

Eyes blazing red, he smiles a devilish grin, as if he can hear the way Techno’s heart thunders in his chest. 

“I think you are,” he says. “I think you’re a coward and a fucking hypocrite. I think you don’t want to die almost as much as you want to kill me.” 

He cocks his head, hair falling easily to one side. 

“So I’m going to walk away, and you’re going to let me. You’re not going to follow me either. If I so much as see you move the wrong way-“ he flicks his wrist around, electing to ignore how shaky his hand is, “you’re fucking dead.” 

“Fuck you,” Techno spits, because he’s not sure what else to do, if there’s anything else he can do.

Wilbur pushes himself away from the wall, walking towards Techno, a limp in his steps as he moves past him. Neither of them look at each other as Wilbur leaves; neither turn around until it’s way too late and Techno can no longer hear his brother’s footsteps; neither want to think about the bond they’ve left broken on the dirt.

And Techno wonders, for the umpteenth time, what the fuck he’s going to do now.

(He imagines Wilbur at the pier, in the warehouse, in the forest, back at home. He wonders if Wilbur still thinks about them, if he’s happier now that he’s shed all the lies holding him down, if he was ever happy at all. He imagines a Wilbur without a home, a brother without his family, and he’s not sure he has the capacity to comprehend any of that that while staring down the thing still so fucking adamant that its name is Wilbur Soot.

His mind feels all clouded over, nebulous thoughts racing past each other and every one screaming for attention as loudly as the next. He can’t shake off the feeling that he’s made a grave mistake, that he’s got something wrong, that they need more time but can’t afford it.

His hand itches for another arrow.)

Wilbur is gone, as he always is, and this time Techno isn’t sure where to follow or whether he even wants to. He draws himself up to his full height and puts his crossbow away, chest heaving with rapid breaths.

He’s so fucking tired. Maybe it’s time to go home.

6 - Schlatt:

They look at each other.

There’s a million things he wants to say. 

Some are teetering on the tip of his tongue, are things that spawned out of the relief clogging up the base of his throat — where have you been and are you going to hurt us and why did you come here. 

Some are less obvious, words bouncing between the walls of his brain, almost loud enough for him to hear — who are you and you almost killed all of us and I’m sorry.

The rest are locked deep in him, shoved into the darkest corners and locked up never to see the light of day again. Things like I thought you were dead and I missed you and please don’t go.

There’s a million things he wants to say and all of them die together along with whatever scraps of true courage he thought he had.

Instead, he says, “How the fuck did you get in?”, like a complete idiot, and the words float between them like a shitty ghost, hovering in the air, resonating through time and space and his echoey living room.

Beside him, Alex shoots a hand out to grab his wrist in a vice grip, breath hitching at the sight of Wilbur, alone in a room with the two of them. It’s as if time has stopped for all of them, like everything else has gone silent, and it’s just the three of them frozen solid at the same time, suffocating in the stagnant space between them and pointedly ignoring the unshakable feeling that they’re on their way to meet the end.

“Hey,” Wilbur whispers.

“How did you get in?” Schlatt repeats.

“I need a place to stay,” Wilbur says, looking between the two of them, “one night, just- just, one night, and I’ll be out of your hair tomorrow.”

“The front door was fuckin’ locked.”

“Okay- just a couple hours, please.”

“All our windows are closed too-“

“Wil,” Alex cuts in, his eyes wide, “yes- fuck, yes of course you can stay, what the fuck-“

“Oh, okay, oh Prime, thank you-“

“Did you crawl in through the cracks on the goddamn walls-“

Wilbur collapses. No other way to describe it; his knees buckle and he falls like a puppet whose strings have been sliced cleanly through, him in all his 6’5 twig-like glory crashing onto the floor. Alex makes a strangled noise at the back of his throat as Schlatt throws himself forward, catching Wilbur’s body before he can hit his head on the ground.

“Wilbur?” Schlatt mutters, cradling his head in his lap. “Hey- hey, what, what the fuck happened, buddy?”

Wilbur blinks up at him, eyes flickering between brown and red. His face is pale — too pale — and he’s clutching his hands close to his chest, hunching in on himself and shaking all over as he struggles to breathe. 

“I’m here, I’m awake- sorry,” Wilbur says, “I’m sorry, I’m just- I… let me catch my breath, I’m sorry-”

“Prime, what happened to you?” Alex asks as he sits down next to Schlatt. He reaches forward, pries Wilbur’s hands away from each other.

“I- I can’t, I’m just... I’m so sorry-“

Alex holds Wilbur’s hands in his own, gripping them as if to ground the two of them. Wilbur’s fingers are dark, less like he’s gotten frostbite and more as if he’s dipped them in black paint.

Schlatt watches as Alex swallows, his eyes drinking in Wilbur’s ragged appearance as if he’s trying to convince himself that this is real, as if Wilbur will disappear once he looks away. 

“You, uh, your skin feels cold and- and clammy.” He pauses as Wilbur clenches him back. His thumb rubs circles on Wilbur’s skin absently, just like he’d always do to Schlatt to calm him down. “You good, man?”

“No,” Wilbur grits out, squeezing his eyes shut, “it fucking hurts.”

“Are you, uh, injured…?” Schlatt asks.

“I don’t know, I don’t- I don’t think so,” Wilbur says, breathless, choked, “I just, I can’t- I can’t fucking stop it- I don’t know what to do.”

His shoulders jerk up violently as he flinches with his whole body. There are scars on his hands, on his arms, on his face, far more than the last time Schlatt’s seen him. Wilbur Soot isn’t a fighter like the rest of his family is, and these scars look relatively new, so Schlatt wonders — not for the first and certainly not for the last time — what the absolute hell he’s been up to in the six months he’s been off the grid.

Wilbur shudders the flinch away. “I don’t fucking know what to do, Prime, it hurts, you don’t understand, no one does-“

Alex, at a complete loss for ideas, looks up at Schlatt, eyebrows furrowing together and glancing at the doors to the room. “Should we… should we call Phil… ?”

“No!” Wilbur yells, suddenly. He hacks out a cough, one hand flying down to clutch his abdomen, the other clawing uselessly at the ground. “Please,” he says, “please don’t- please don’t call him, any of them, I can’t- please, I can’t do this again-“

“What the fuck happened, man?” Schlatt demands. “Look, we can’t, we don’t know how to help you if you don’t tell us-“

“It was Technoblade!” Wilbur spits, face scrunched up in pain of more levels than merely physical. “It was- he, he chased me down to an alley and he- and he…” He inhales deeply, voice dropping to a weak whisper. “He tried to kill me.” 

A laugh, broken.

“He almost did, too. I had to- I had to threaten his life to escape but-“ he reaches a hand up to the side of his head. Schlatt follows the motion, grimacing as he spots a fresh wound on his earlobe. “He still- I thought…”

They lapse into silence. Whatever horrible pain was tearing Wilbur up inside seems to have subsided after a while, because he settles, the lines on his face smoothing out and his muscles unclenching ever so slowly. Schlatt watches him as he breathes, watches him simply exist, watches and catches the exact moment the cogs in his head whir to life; a million expressions flying by his face, each warring violently with the last.

There’s nothing scarier, Schlatt decides, than watching a friend writhe in pain while he’s helpless and unable to do anything. He’d rather die than admit it, but Wilbur’s hands aren’t the only ones shaking. If he concentrates hard enough, he thinks he might hear three heartbeats drumming in sync, in anticipation, in fear for one life. 

Wilbur plants a hand flat on the ground and heaves himself up, wincing as he does. He sits up slowly, tucking his knees close to his chest, eyes fixed blankly on the floor.

“He doesn’t- he doesn’t care,” Wilbur says, his voice a thread away from breaking into a sob. “I- I thought we were brothers but… but he doesn’t- he doesn’t give a shit about that, apparently. He… he doesn’t care, none of them- none of you care enough to… oh Prime. Prime.”

“Wil,” Alex starts, mouth opening and closing as if looking for the right words to say, “You- you can’t say that shit, man, of course we care-“

Wilbur looks up at Alex for a moment, studying him. He shifts his gaze over to Schlatt, and he has to remind himself that this is his friend, this person sitting and shaking and spilling his thoughts out into the air is Wilbur. The last time Schlatt saw him, his cheeks weren’t so sallow and his hair wasn’t as long and things haven’t gone completely to shit.

He looks back at Wilbur, searches his face, searches his eyes and doesn’t know what else to search. This is why it’s so fucking frustrating, trying to read Wilbur. Everything about him is so, so intense, and his expressions have layers and his words are stacked with lies. The fucker thinks that it’s slick but he’s an open book if you know exactly how to decipher his language.

Luckily for himself, Schlatt’s always been great at picking apart his friends.

So here’s his official verdict of the case of Wilbur Soot.

“They’re going to kill me,” Wilbur says. “They’re going to keep hunting me down and they’re going to kill me and, and they won’t care that I- that we used to- that I was- I- I…”

Wilbur cares too much about his family, about his friends. It’s honestly almost pathetic to watch and Schlatt would absolutely chastise him for giving too much of a shit if he doesn’t feel the exact same way towards Alex. 

(Alex might not be his family, is definitely not his friend, but he’s... he’s Alex. 

It’s a lot more complicated than that, it goes a lot deeper than ‘We’ve known each other our whole lives’, it’s so, so much more. Because they grew up together, because they were- no, are there for each other when no one else is, because Alex is, always will be, the only one Schlatt trusts with his life and his future and his everything, and the reverse is true even though neither would admit it out loud, ever.) 

“I can’t, I can’t die, you don’t understand, I can’t die.” Wilbur folds his arms together, pressing them into his chest, trying to make himself look as small as possible. “There’s still something- if you kill me I’ll be gone but- but it will still be here and I- I won’t be around to-“

Wilbur is afraid to die. Granted, who isn’t? He’s always been the most… alive, out of all of them, the most animated person Schlatt’s ever met, and if the sight of Wilbur in pain was enough to shake him to his core, he’s not sure he’ll be able to see him dead.

(The first time he’d seen Wilbur be completely still was in a hospital bed, eyes closed and deep in a coma, looking like he’d kicked the bucket.

'Wilbur', Schlatt had thought, 'you idiot', and then he’d looked away because something in him had shattered at the sight.)

“If you, if they kill me, what happens to me will be worse than death but… but if I don’t die, it’ll grow and grow and I’ll- I’ll hurt people, I have to- I have to destroy it, I have to die, I…”

Wilbur would give his life the second someone he loves asks him to. Schlatt’s seen it before — the unyielding protectiveness intertwined with the call of the void bubbling under his skin, the impossibly selfish way he’d throw himself in danger if it meant he got to keep someone else safe.

(It comes with all the frustrations of turning the other cheek, of offering your life to someone and trusting that they wouldn’t drop it, or if they did, that they did it because they loved you.

If anything, this is the one sentiment that the both of them understand each other for; Schlatt’s seen the way Wilbur looks at Tubbo, at Niki, at Tommy, hell, even at him and Alex — the way he’s given himself up to the sort of fierce, raging protectiveness that extends far beyond possessiveness, far beyond selflessness, far beyond giving, and giving, and giving, and expecting nothing back.)

“And… and once it’s gone I’ll be… I’ll… okay- okay. Yeah. I can- okay, I need to…”

Wilbur is stubborn. Everything about him is intense and nothing about him changes once he’s set his mind in stone. It runs in his family, apparently, the lot of them would never admit to being wrong, would never dare to realise that there’s a better way, that there has to be a better way.

Schlatt exchanges a glance with Alex.

“Schlatt, Quackity,” Wilbur says, halting his rambling. His eyelashes flutter open, expression settling into hard resolve, resignation gradually replacing the devastation on his face, “Listen to me, I… Here’s what’s going to happen, okay?”

Schlatt snaps his gaze back to Wilbur, dread pooling at the bottom of his stomach as his instincts flare up and scream at him to run, to hide, to fight back. If this was any other situation, he’d be grabbing onto Alex and screaming at him to get the both of them out.

Wilbur breaks into a smile, forced and tentative. “I’m going to, I’m going to get out of here and I’m going to run. You… you have to understand, you’ve forced my hand and I have to do this-” he hesitates, his face shuttering for a moment, “I’ll destroy this entire city-“

“Wilbur,” Schlatt interjects at the same time he hears Alex’s breath hitch high in his throat, “what the fuck?”

“I’ll- I’ll plant bombs in the fucking ground and,” Wilbur says, laughs mirthlessly, drags a hand up his face and clutches the tips of his fringe, “and in one week I’m going to blow it all to kingdom come, I’ll do it- I’ll, I’ll destroy everything and I’m going to kill them all and- and you need to-“

Alex moves, hands shooting out to grab Wilbur by the shoulders. Wilbur looks at him, looking every bit the wild animal he sounds like, looking like he wants to drop dead as much as he wants to claw Alex’s face off. He does neither, keeps rambling, keeps talking out his ass and Schlatt isn’t sure whether his words hold any truth to them.

“You’re going to tell them, okay?” he says. The fog lifts from his eyes as he grabs Alex’s forearms, shaking as if he never stopped. “You need to tell them all to fucking run, you’re going to tell Phil, and Phil’s going get them all out, and, and I’ll- I…”

He closes his eyes, yanks Alex’s hands off his shoulders like he’s flicking a bug from his arm.

“Please,” he says, the corner of his lip quivering as he speaks, “please. I’m going to destroy this fucking city and you’re going to tell everyone and- and you have to, because- because they’re going to die and no one wants that, right…?”

“Wil,” Alex says, “you… you don’t have to do this shit, man, we can figure it out, we’re going to figure it out, you don’t have to, to resort to this so quickly-“ 

“-you don’t understand, Quackity, I’m sorry- I’m so sorry, there’s no other way, you don’t understand, I have to do this, I have to go-“

Between holding on to their past and pushing away the future relentlessly, Alex lets him go. Wilbur stands up swaying on his feet (he’s always been lanky but Prime, looking at him now, Schlatt wonders when the last time he ate was), still muttering nonsense, still looking like he’s about to break down crying at any moment, still in complete hysterics as he stumbles away. Back out where he came from — which is to say that Schlatt still has no fucking clue how he got into their house in the middle of the fucking woods. 

“Thank you,” Wilbur breathes, barely loud enough for Schlatt’s sharp ears to catch, looking at him earnestly, “you two should probably fucking run too.”

(What Schlatt doesn’t catch is the way Wilbur shudders, bunches up his jumper in one hand to his chest, and hesitates, trying not to want too much.)

And then he leaves the room, taking with him the buzzing of static magic in the air that Schlatt hadn’t noticed was there until it disappeared. He hears their front door open and slam close, but when he looks out the window a minute later, there is no sign of Wilbur at all. 

He turns to Alex. Alex looks destroyed. 

There’s so much more that Schlatt wants to ask; so much he wants to say, to admit, to know. He wants to chase after Wilbur and argue with him until he runs out of air and convince- no, beg him not to be a complete psycho and destroy the city, to grab him by the shoulders and shake him back to his senses and make him realise that yes, there is another way, there has to be. But he’d stayed quiet as Alex snapped, and that might have made all the difference, but hell if he knows whether his words would’ve swayed a Wilbur who’d set his mind dead on something.

In a way, he’s glad he let Wilbur go, because as much as he’d like to brag that he’s great at reading people, there is just so, so much more he knows he can never understand. And Schlatt’s not going to lose any sleep wrecking his brain on what if’s and what could’ve been’s; he takes what he can get and deals with the repercussions when they come. No point in dwelling on it any longer than he has to, not when there are lives to save and people to stop.

“C’mon,” he mutters to Alex, reaching out to grab his hand, his thumb moving instinctively to rub circles on his skin, “let’s go.”

Alex clutches onto him like a lifeline. Neither of them let go for a long time.

7 - Phil:

People have an innate fear of the unknown.

It’s part of the set of instincts that come with being a sentient being. Fear of falling, fear of death, fear of looking into the abyss a thousand times and having a different face stare back at you each time. The idea that something is completely and hopelessly out of your control terrifies even the most powerful of entities — especially the most powerful of entities.

It makes Phil’s very being quicken at the thought. He remembers times when his kids would come to him with wide eyes and terror in their faces; Techno fears the unpredictability that comes with dealing with people he can’t possibly know like he knows himself; Wilbur fears the ocean, the thought of drowning miles beneath the reach of the sun; Tommy fears the dark because all his life he’s been a creature of light, surrounded by light, raised in light. 

Most of all, impossibly, paradoxically, they all fear losing stability. The tentative family they’ve carved out over the course of a decade, relationships carefully woven between and over and under each other, people they entrust with even the most damning of secrets.

Phil knows it’s over for him when that innate fear of the unknown morphed into a horrible fear for the unknown.

He remembers looking at his children and realising that there’s nothing more human than being afraid for someone with your whole heart. Remembers thinking that he would never fear for anything more than he does his children. Remembers holding onto that idea and promising himself he’d never let go, stupidly clinging to the hope that this is enough.

And most of all, he remembers having all of that torn away from him, remembers tearing it all away from himself the moment he decided to point a sword at Wilbur.

Remembering hurts more than it ever made him happy. The kindest gift that Prime has given him is the human memory with all its flaws, and these are the moments he wants to forget: Wilbur poking at his broken clock trying to get it to light up, Wilbur trying his best not to laugh at a dumb video on the internet, Wilbur staring him down with a chaos spirit in tow and challenging him to turn the child away.

He wants to go back knowing he wouldn’t change a single thing, and it’d still end with him begging Prime up above for what could’ve been. He wants to write a different story knowing it would only be a desperate romanticisation of the original. He wants to hope that even after all of this, there would still be a son to cry for and a home to return to.

He wishes for all of it back. 

Honesty, absolution, longing, all for himself. 

Just this once.

Schlatt and Quackity break the news to them: Wilbur is going to destroy the city and everyone in it. 

For one teetering moment, Phil hesitates as he always does; but then everything in him sparks alive and ignites every last bit of doubt that’s ever dared to cross his mind.

'Please,' he thinks, 'my sons above all,' because he’s witnessed firsthand the birth of stars and hope feels exactly like that — a supernova, burning through his heart as he wishes and wishes and wishes; he may know how the threads of the universe work but he’ll never predict when he’ll next see his son. 

He wants it all back, he wants more than what’s been given to him, he wants them to go back home, and this defiance ignites in him, bright and reckless and so, so fucking terrifying.

Everything’s changed, nothing changes. Tommy steps forward, turns to him expectantly. Technoblade retreats, turns to his weapons. 

Half a year ago, if he could rewrite their story, he’d have written it like this: an angel stays in heaven, a piglin stays in the Nether, a chaos spirit stays in bedlam, and Wilbur gets to live. 

Today, if he can rewrite their story, he won’t. 

His sons above all. 

Fear eclipses his hope, but he’ll move the fucking moon if it meant that he gets to save his son.

—

Wilbur never asked the question a third time, but Phil heard it anyway. It was written all over his face; anticipation dragging down the muscles of his cheeks, haunting the perpetual bags under his eyes, making him look so… tired, that Phil wondered how the fuck one man can live with so much fear.

(Though in hindsight, he realises it wasn’t fear. They’ve moved past fear by that point; it had morphed into acceptance.)

“Are you going to kill them?”

(Phil thinks, ‘I almost killed you because I couldn’t bear the thought of losing you,' because how fucked up would that be, how disgustingly poetic would it be for a father to kill his own son to save him?)

He looked up at Wilbur. He had to, because his first instinct told him to comfort his son and his next one lit up a quiet apprehension in his chest, burning like a matchstick ready to be thrown into a drum of oil. 

“The person…?” he asked.

Wilbur shifted from foot to foot, hiding his hands behind his back. “Yeah.”

Phil levelled Wilbur’s gaze, because only one of them knows what he’s doing, only one of them knows what had to be done, only one of them was strong enough to do it. That didn’t quench the irrationality, though. 

Violence breeds violence, kindness breeds kindness, and honesty breeds honesty — Phil looked into Wilbur’s eyes, all shrouded in lies yet open, raw, honest, begging him to see the truth, and he’d stumbled on his words before settling on, “They don’t deserve it.”

One thing that was terrifyingly true was the way Wilbur’s shoulders sagged, anger and hope blooming on his face, twisting the muscles on his cheeks. His eyes were red. Phil wondered when that had happened.

Phil said, “You have nothing to worry about.”

Phil said, “It’ll work.”

Phil said, “Things will be alright by tomorrow.”

Wilbur ducked his head, looked away, said, “Yeah,” and left.

—

(And months later, when Phil can’t stop seeing Wilbur’s deranged smile at the back of his eyelids and hearing his voice break for the thousandth time, he wonders if there’s still anything salvageable, if there’s anything that hasn’t broken beyond repair and shattered when he tried to fix it. 

‘I’m home,' he thinks, 'home is here, and one day everything will be alright again-' and then, desperately, because these days he’s starting to lean into the notion that desperation can be innate, ‘I promise, I do, I do, I do.’

He’s had millennia to study human beings, and a decade to live among them, and he knows that some people are naturally apathetic, ready to drop things the second they start to doubt. So it stands to reason that the opposite must be true, too.

He thinks about Wilbur. 

He thinks, and he thinks, and then he thinks some more, and here are the things that he knows to be true. 

One: Wilbur wants to be human. Just like himself.

Two: Wilbur is afraid to die. Just like everyone else.

Three: Wilbur is going to blow up the city. Just like he promised he would.)

—

Tommy stops him for the third time, for the final time, and shit, maybe he is a mind reader. Or, the more likely alternative, that he’s given in to desperation too. He grabs Phil by the arm, forces their eyes to meet, speaks with all the conviction of someone who’s ready to fight their hopeless fate.

“Are you going to kill him?”

And Phil… Phil feels his heart swell with pride. 

Tommy has always been the bravest one of them all; the one who had been struck the hardest by the revelation, the one who still refuses to give up. 

“You didn’t turn me away,” Tommy says, “back when he first brought me home. You knew what I was, you know what I can do. I can destroy the world if I want, Phil, all of us can.” He furrows his eyebrows, eyes earnest and steely and… hopeful. 

Some people are innately apathetic. Some people are innately desperate. Others are hopeful, blinding pillars of optimism, dancing with nimble feet along the line separating them from naïvety.  

Tommy has always been the bravest one of them all. Phil admires this about him.

His son lowers his head, almost imperceptibly. Horns bent at an angle where Phil can easily snatch them. 

Trust.

“Please,” he whispers.

“He’s my son,” Phil says finally, shocked right out of his silent stupor by a jolt of relief as he makes up his mind, “no matter what. He’s my fucking son.”

—

This is what it all comes down to. 

Phil’s never going to be able to take back all the times that he told Wilbur how evil he is, how he’s going to destroy everything and hurt everyone. 

He’s never going to make up for ignorance, for being selfish all at the wrong moments. 

He’s never going to go back in time, to rewrite their story, because he can’t. The ink’s been set in paper, blotched all over and forever stained by mistakes. 

All that’s left for him is to move forward. To keep going, and write, and hope that the ending might suffice.

He thinks: Desperation is the price you pay for being human. No one’s inherently evil, just desperate enough.

He thinks: This is a story about desperation and we’ve all moved past the point of panic.

He writes: We keep going anyway.

8 - Wilbur:

Wilbur dreams.

He dreams of things that shouldn’t make any sense.

But first he sleeps; Wilbur doesn’t sleep much anymore, not when there’s the constant danger of being stationary at night, or at day, or any time at all. He can count on one hand the number of times he’s had a full night’s sleep while on the run, and today just so happens to be luckier than the others.

He dreams of fields that go on forever in all directions. Of bending down and touching the flowers, putting a name to every flower and a colour to every name. Of his feet padding against the ground, parting the grass as he runs and runs and runs.

He dreams of being stranded on a rock in the middle of the sea. Of dipping his toes into the water and feeling the ocean breeze in his hair. Of looking down and seeing an endless abyss underneath him, of looking up and realising the shore has long disappeared.

He dreams of flying. Of falling. And then he dreams of dying, of a sword impaling him and leaving him to die, or the more likely alternative where in reality, he’s working towards burning up in an inferno with the city and the darkness underneath.

(He doesn’t dream of home. 

He doesn’t dream of his father and his two brothers. 

But he thinks about them; every night when he’s sitting in a dark corner somewhere and wrapping his arms around himself to stave off the cold; every day when he gets up and finds a feral creature to neutralise and feed his perpetual hunger; every waking moment where he spots a friend in the corner of his eye and he shoves his crossed fingers into his pockets and runs.

His chest tightens and hurts whenever he thinks about them. 

He welcomes it. 

He hasn’t lived without pain for months now.)

Wilbur wakes up from his dream. He wipes the moisture from his eyes and stretches the crick in his neck. 

He’s got work to do.

Chapter Text

T-7.

Here’s a fact:

The last time he saw Wilbur, things hadn’t gone to complete shit.

Or- well, they had, but they were a little less… explosive, to put it lightly. 

Back then, Tommy had at least been able to do something, where he’d slammed horn-first into Dream and stopped him from completing the ritual that might’ve torn his brother apart. And when Wilbur revealed the existence of his weird shadow-magic-demonic-energy-power thing by holding them all in an invisible chokehold, the two of them had looked each other dead in the eyes for all the duration of a fleeting second, and all Tommy could think was: ‘Huh.’

Huh, because Wilbur’s eyes were red.

Red as the horns jutting up and outwards from Tommy’s head, or the curved claws at the end of his fingers, or the razor spade at the tip of his tail.

Red like fresh blood, or dried blood, or just plain blood — he’s not a very verbose person, bear with him — shining eerie and unnatural under the shadow casted by the hair that fell over his face. 

Red like two annoying laser pointers, the kind of lasers that can awaken some animalistic urge in Tommy and make him want to pounce forward like a fucking cat.

(Shaking hands. Fluttering eyes. Quick breathing. Poised like a rabid animal ready to lash out at the first sign of a threat.)

Phil pointed a sword at Wilbur’s throat. Niki stepped forward and denounced him. Wilbur smiled, told them he died a long time ago, released them as he stared down Phil’s sword. Tommy moved, second guessing everything whirring in his head, and-

And had no idea what to think of it.

He looked at Wilbur, tried to read him, his eyes, his face, his body; tried to prod at his mind with his actions serving as the window; tried to guess what the hell he’s thinking — and failed miserably. It’s a scary feeling to look into someone’s eyes and see a stranger, a friend, a monster, a brother, looking back, and realising that you have no idea how to decipher him.

Tommy said, ‘This isn’t you,’ because he didn’t recognise the crooked twist in Wilbur’s lips, and once the words were out of his mouth he wished he could take it all back, because Wilbur laughed, and then cried, and kept laughing like it didn’t affect him at all. Tommy stared at his brother, stricken with a horrible mixture of fear and worry and disgust and distress, mind racing back and forth and spiralling around the lanky shape of a person. 

None of it had mattered, in the end, because Wilbur was laughing, and then he wasn’t, and then he was gone.

—

(His eyes were red, so fucking red; Tommy has a hard time remembering whether they had ever been any other colour.)

—

Here’s a fact:

The last time he saw Tommy, he’d already been running.

The problem with living as a lie is that at some point, he has to realise that he’s never going to stop running. 

Some things he couldn’t escape — and it hadn’t mattered because he didn’t want to escape them — like having a family, friends, people he wanted to trust. Others — the things he could and wanted to escape — are, ironically, part of him, part of the ground he walks on, part of the city he was born in. 

And the problem with running is that Wilbur fucking hates it.

Running away means leaving everything behind — the life he had, the people he knew, the place he called home — and having to beat down every urge he gets to turn around, turn back, turn himself in. 

To him, it’s not the homelessness, or the stealing of food and clothes and money, or the paranoia haunting the edges of his consciousness, or even the perpetual hunger sinking deeper into him as the days pass. 

He’s fine with all that; he’s learnt how to live on his own before Phil took him in nine years ago, of course he can do it all again.

No, it’s the weakness that he’s forever going to be cursed with — sentimentality.

It’s the resolve he needs to hold onto when he’s holed up in a corner somewhere and shaking from the cold, and then something far deeper and far, far crueler than the cold. 

These are the moments where, despite everything, he has to grit his teeth and keep moving, because if he ever stopped to look back, then he’s not sure he’d be able to convince himself to go: passing by the street where his house sits, catching sight of a winged figure perched on a rooftop, closing his eyes and remembering what his younger brother looked like afraid of him. 

These are the moments he wants to turn back, wants to come crawling back to his family and hope that they won’t skewer him through the first chance he gets. He takes all of it in, steels himself, orders his feet to pick him off the ground and run.

But the fact remains that Wilbur never wanted to run, because everywhere he looks, he’s stricken by the memories holding him back. 

Sometimes he’d freeze, and then he wouldn’t want to keep moving, because his chest would feel all heavy and tight and he’d feel like he’s lost the ability to breathe and he wonders if he stayed frozen for any longer, he’d be rooted to the same spot until the day he dies.

Because let’s face it, he’s fucking tired of running.

—

(Unfortunately for all of them, the only other option means fighting, means having to end the fight, means blowing up the city. Sometimes he wonders how he came to that conclusion.)

—

Tommy was the last one to see Wilbur. This is a secret he’ll take to his grave.

When Wilbur dashed out that door, Tommy was the first to break from the shock, scrambling outside the warehouse to try and chase him down.

Here’s the truth:

Tommy saw his brother. He caught a glimpse of Wilbur sprinting down the street, moments away from turning a corner and disappearing forever, hair bouncing on his face and his favourite coat billowing behind him.

Tommy can teleport. He calls it ‘blinking’ because all he has to do is close his eyes, think of a place, reopen them, and he’d be there. It takes a thought, less than a second, and so little energy that he uses it to skip the stairs at home all the time. 

Tommy knew that would be the last time he saw Wilbur. He looked at his brother, his brother caught his eye, and they held eye contact for far too long. Neither of them moved, frozen in time, their words forever lost in the void between them.

Tommy didn’t move, didn’t blink. He thought, ‘Who are you?’; and then, ‘What are you?’; and then, ‘What did you mean, dead a long time ago?’. He thought these things, and then made up his mind, and then let him go because one thought came and culled everything else into silence in one fell swoop: ‘It doesn’t matter, he’s my brother.’

Tommy is a terrible liar. Well, not really, he’s bad at lying for the things that matter, but good at lying for the things that don’t. It’s in his very nature, literally what he’s born for, and so the lie slipped easily out his mouth when he told Phil that he saw nothing. They believed it because of course they did, and this is the story he sticks to when he tries to convince himself he did the right thing.

He did, he had to.

—

Wilbur hates running away, but family is a lot harder to deal with. This is the truth, bitter and suffocating.

The hardest part — out of everything that happened — was meeting the eyes of his younger brother and deciding that his own life was worth so much more than turning back.

Here’s a secret:

Wilbur froze. He isn’t exactly sure why, but he did. His mind was set on running but his heart was screaming to stay, and part of him wanted to do nothing more than turn back and grovel. Optimism never led anywhere good, unfortunately, and he really shouldn’t be trusted with the kinds of choices that dictate whether he gets to live or die.

Wilbur knows that Tommy can teleport. The fucker calls it ‘blinking’ because he thinks it sounds much cooler than ‘teleporting’. He blinks everywhere he goes, a kid light on his feet and even lighter ripping through space. It’d take a thought, less than a second, and so little energy for Tommy to drag him back to square one.

Wilbur wasted too much time. He counted the amount of time it took for him to tear his gaze away from Tommy’s and start moving again — a little less than four seconds. Nothing about the world slowed down for him because this isn’t some stupid movie; time didn’t stop for them, time doesn’t stop for anyone.

Wilbur kept staring anyway. He felt all four of those seconds in agonising panic, all of it poured into trying to read his younger brother. He stared into Tommy’s eyes, brown to blue, brother to brother. Four seconds, four seconds too long to freeze, to make a decision, to blink, and Tommy let him go at the end. Wilbur spared a thought, ‘Thank you,’ and then he was gone.

Wilbur is bad at keeping secrets. He did it anyway because his life depended on the façade that he needs to keep up everyday. It doesn’t anymore, obviously, but the important takeaway here is that it used to, it did. He is, first and foremost, afraid of death, but being read like an open book and having his secrets spilled out into the open air to be the vultures circling his life, this comes at a close second. 

Ergo, Tommy is a hazard to his entire existence. 

And yet. And yet.

—

Tommy knows he shouldn’t keep pressing, hoping, looking, but he can’t help it when he hears the news: in one week, Wilbur is going to destroy the city.

Something tells him that he’s wrong. Tommy tries to imagine Wilbur, his Wilbur, their Wilbur, all sun-kissed smiles and resonant music, juxtaposed with the Wilbur of red eyes and bloody lips marching his way towards the destruction of everything that home is supposed to be.

The image doesn’t go away when he grabs Phil by the arm and asks him, “Are you going to kill him?”, wondering whether he’s right to think that his brother can be saved at all.

Phil looks at him like he’s already regretting his words. His father raises his head, takes the brunt of Tommy’s accusations, and it’s almost like he can hear the clock ticking and chipping away at the week they have left.

Tommy thinks, ‘Hypocrite,’ and so that’s what he says, because his father is a being descended from powers he can barely comprehend, because his eldest brother is the world’s most dangerous man by raw power alone, because Tommy himself is the physical embodiment of war and destruction and chaos and-

This is the moment that decides. 

This is the moment he tilts his head down and begs his father to understand.

This is the moment where the fire in his heart quiets down in soft apprehension, warmth spreading from his chest to his fingertips, burning all his hesitation away. Where his breath stops cold in his throat and he realises that yeah, he’s far too willing to do whatever it takes, absolutely anything and everything for his family.

Tommy thinks, ‘He’s my brother,’ and Phil says, “He’s my son,” and everything in him thunders alive and ready to fight.

T-6.

There’s a series of underground tunnels beneath the city, an elaborate sewer system snaking under every street and every building in every district. Wilbur knows, because he feels it like a network of veins underneath a skin that’s underneath his skin. 

He descends into these tunnels for the first time and this is what he finds.

It’s dark, first of all. There aren’t any lights, and he can barely see a foot in front of him when he flicks on a lighter. 

There’s mould growing along the walls. His feet sink into an inch of musty water. All around him, shadows crawl over each other, watching him move deeper and deeper into the heart of his beast. 

Everything is silent, save for his own heart thundering in his ears.

He reaches out, presses his fingers on the walls, and then he reaches out, lets his senses wander and curl around the weight of the oppressive dark, a constant pressure tightening and loosening in tandem with his breathing.

There is a darkness underneath the city, and Wilbur feels all of it, all at once.

There’s a reason why he decided that everything needs to go. He feels it in the walls, in the ground, the ceiling, everywhere, clumping together with the shadows in every corner, slithering along the walls like deep cracks broken into the earth, dark claws holding up the very foundation of the city. 

Nineteen years ago (almost twenty, now), Phil wouldn’t have really killed the darkness. If he had successfully found and killed him, right then and there, he would’ve killed the part that opened its eyes and decided to live as the… higher consciousness to everything else, so to say. But the rest — a mindless sort of madness, born out of humanity’s collective hatred — would’ve survived, kept growing, until all of it decided to wake up.

The problem comes when Wilbur realises how closely bound to the city the darkness is. Taking one out means taking out the other, means having to take out the other — an idea that he understands far too intimately.

Where he stands, how he exists, what he is, all of it circles around destruction, and the fact that this — the darkness, him, all his— is the be-all-end-all to everything culminating in pain.

The voices in his ears, he realises, are the darkness’ memories. His memories. This is part of him as much as he is a part of it, as much he is part of the city. He hears, ‘you’re going to die’, and he hears, ‘they’ll hate you’, and he hears, ‘there’s no turning back’, and he can’t fucking tell whether they’re mocking or warning him.

And down here, he’s all alone. 

He stands in the eye of the storm — the epicentre of his existence — and there’s a lot to be said about walking down the hollow halls of your own making, of your own being. 

He feels every step he takes on his feet, and then in something else much deeper than his feet, and he can’t help but shudder at the thought of physically being within himself, poking through the place his heart beats the loudest. He’s surrounded by a thing that hungers, by the pounding ache residing within him, by the desperate need to be sated by fear, by chaos, by pain.

It’s a scary thought, and it’s more of a testament to his spiral that he feels more comforted than disgusted by it. 

He can almost see the surface through eyes that don’t really exist. The floor squelches beneath his feet. It feels like walking on flesh.

—

(Phil is right, Wilbur thinks, he was always bound to destroy everything. Look where he is now, look what he’s doing in the name of protecting what he loves.)

—

It’s laughably easy to scare people and convince them to run. 

But once that’s done, it’s a lot harder to make sure they don’t tear each other apart — as is the case for the mass evacuation of a city filled with people who can and probably will tear each other apart. 

It’s a weird case, living here. They live in a relatively big town, somewhat secluded from the rest of the country with only a single road out, flanked on one side by the forest and the other by the ocean. Everyone knows everyone; or at least, everyone’s aware of everyone’s existence — be it friend, acquaintance, passing recognition — because of how far away the rest of the world is.

And because of this, everyone knows about them. About the angel, his family, their little posse. Everyone steers clear of them, intimately aware of the stories of danger and death following their group; everyone’s afraid of them, treats them with apparent disdain or bootlicking respect, all too willing to ostracise them if they aren’t as dangerous as they really are.

(Something that Tommy’s always noticed about Wilbur is how much this bothers him. 

How much he cares; the desperation sitting at the back of his eyes as he tries to make friends in their community and fit in with his peers and not be seen as such an other. Maybe it has something to do with how he is, all pleasantries and pacifism, the perfect image of charisma.

It makes a lot more sense now, knowing what he is and what he’s afraid of. But looking back when they were younger, it just felt sad.)

As he said, it’s laughably easy to scare people. 

All it takes is one message from Phil, face set in a grim expression and eyes glowing an ethereal golden, mouth moving around words that come from a voice older than any of them are.

Tommy hears it along with the rest of the city — a chorus of animalistic growls, gentle music, shattering glass, low whistling, all spiralling together into a voice both guttural and melodic, a voice that barely hangs onto the thread of comprehension — a message that resonates loud in the space between his ears and his brain:

You are in danger. Evacuate.

And chaos breaks. 

Some people are thrown into a rage, demanding answers from people who can’t give them any. Some start to panic, lost in a blind, desperate haze to save their own skin. All of them are afraid — who wouldn’t be, it’s not everyday that your local angel sends a cryptic warning straight into your head. 

With his face still set in sombreness, Phil takes the brunt of everything, turns this burden into a set of instructions to whip things back into order and use every second they have left of the week. 

This is how Tommy finds himself spinning through fifty different tasks — tracking down Wilbur with the hunters, directing the chaos of evacuation with Schlatt and Quackity, setting up temporary shelters at the ocean and the forest, staring down Phil and challenging him to sway his resolve — doing as much as he can to help and yet, and yet, never once shaking off the feeling that whatever they do won’t be enough, could never be enough, was never enough in the first place.

—

(Phil is wrong, Tommy thinks, Wilbur never wanted to fight, to run, to leave his life behind him. Everything that crashes now comes back to him and his ripple effect.)

—

Wilbur hears Philza speak into the minds of the city’s residents. A voice from high above — heavenly, omniscient, burning — says, You are in danger. Evacuate, and for a second, he is stricken with fear.

But that second passes when he feels the moment they break into panic.

It’s like he’s been parched for decades wandering a desert and he’s finally found an oasis. He sighs, lips curling into a half-smile. He can pretend like he’s gong to be fine, because the pit in him closes and Prime, it feels like he’s high on the break from constant pain.

(Fear is sweet, tastes like hints of sugar and cool ice on his tongue. 

Chaos is warm, tingles down his throat and settles in his stomach like a hot bowl of soup on a sick day. It tastes savoury, tastes like salt, leaves him wanting more.)

The momentary relief only delays the inevitable. He’s left empty in the aftermath, craving another hit. This is his new addiction, and it’s a testament to how far he’s fallen from grace that he’s starting to get hooked on feeling okay.

He’s not human. This idea sinks into his skin uncomfortably.

He’s not human. Not anymore, or maybe he never was, and it was just something he came up with to pretend like he can lead a normal, happy life. The idea of ‘Wilbur Soot’ was always a human one and maybe he’s not Wilbur at all, because humanity comes with all its caveats, comes with loving, comes with being loved; what does it make him if he’s thrown away both?

He’s not human. The skin of his hands are stained, charred, frostbitten, dark flakes crawling up his arm like a disease. He touches the wall of the tunnel and he feels the heartbeats of thousands above shimmering between his fingers as if he can snap them silent. His reflection looks exhausted, pale; like he died a thousand times over and came out the other end not quite right; like he blinks and blood red leaks into the brown of his irises; like he turns his head the wrong way in the wrong light and he understands why they decided to brand him a monster-

—

Tommy is caught in the whirlwind above and can’t help but think back to Wilbur. 

Wilbur, sea salt in his hair, sunshine between his eyelashes, half-smiles and crinkled grins and the way he’d throw his head back laughing and nearly buckle from the weight of himself. 

Wilbur, fingers hovering nervously over the books slotted in his shelves, ears twitching whenever he hears music, slamming his fists on his desk whenever he gets excited and yelling just because someone asks him to and wandering the house looking for his glasses even though it’s only tucked into the collar of his shirt.

Wilbur, flitting about his days with the sort of cautious recklessness that screams volumes about how he, first and foremost, cares about life. Living carefully, absolutely, like he’s holding something fragile and precious in his palms, yet much-too-willing to throw it to the wind to save a friend from danger.

None of this makes any sense, none of Wilbur makes any sense. 

There must be something else, something important that they’re all missing, because why would their favourite pacifist go and try to blow up a city?

Why now when he had years - centuries, to do it?

Why do it at all?

—

There is something else.

There is a catch to everything. There is a darkness underneath the city. There is an impostor among a family. There is a clear end to unconditional love. No one does anything for the sake of doing it, there will always be a catch, and Wilbur thinks that it’s a little tragic how he had to learn this fact the hard way.

There is a twist to his plan, too.

Destroying the city isn’t enough. Yes, the darkness will die along with it and yes, there won’t be anything left to potentially break the world open, but this isn’t as simple as he wishes it can be.

He has to die. 

And this is how it’s going to happen: he’s going to blow the city up, burn with it, and hope that whatever bits of him are left after the explosion will be wiped out. 

There’s only one person he trusts with the job. If there’s any bit of unconditional love left for him, then surely it’ll be enough to grant this one wish.

T-5.

The thing about family is that Tommy’s never had one before.

He’s not going to go and claim that he’s any good at it. He’ll admit it himself; he’s not the best son, the best brother, the best kid to have around — some mornings he wakes up and his first instinct tells him to blink to the next city over, until it hits him that he’s got things — people — that he doesn’t want to leave behind.

Here’s a fact: There has always been something wrong with Tommy. 

It’s nothing groundbreaking, really. 

For starters, he’s obnoxious, he’s clingy, and he’s horrible at math. Sometimes he steals things before it clicks in his head that he’s not supposed to. His social circle is worryingly tiny. He’s reckless — way too reckless — and he’s stubborn to a deadly fault. 

Having a family doesn’t fix it — he can still destroy society as they know it if he really wants to — but it does make it better. It takes a while and way too many mistakes to count, yes, but at least he gets better, and nowadays he no longer tries to break things, people, just for the sake of breaking them.

(Philza took him in, welcomed him into their house with open arms and a cordial smile, if a little cautious, and leaves the window to Tommy’s bedroom unlocked even though he wouldn’t need it to escape. 

He’s nice, way too nice. And this drives Tommy up the wall, because what the fuck is he supposed to do when he shatters their television screen in a hissy fit and is met with an exasperated sigh and nothing else? When he threatens to burn down their house and his newfound father tells him a patient but firm, ‘No, you won’t’, and it fucking works.

Phil shows him kindness. 

He shows him that his words don’t have to be venomous, that he doesn’t have to resort to hostility, that it’s not a bad thing when he feels sad for other people, because this is what empathy is and it’s scary, it is, and he won’t always get to reap its rewards, but even with that in mind, that there isn’t really a point in being anything but a kind person.)

Having a family, Tommy learns, is more than just the house, more than just having a home, more than just the people. 

It’s in everything they do — everything he does for them and everything they do for him — from every meal spent together to every not-so-subtle attempt to spend time with each other, like sidling into his room without a word, or asking him to please put your phone down, this is family time, or sitting around the dinner table and ignoring each other while existing in the same space.

(Technoblade accepted him into their family, lowered his sky-high walls just enough to let Tommy in, and then lowers them a little bit more so Tommy’s exit could be easier than his entrance.

He’s strict, and he’s gruff, and his quips are lighthearted but sharp in a way only he can be. His presence is intimidating, and this is both a good and a bad thing because as much as it’s cool to have an older brother that scares off other people, it makes Tommy’s stomach drop to see Techno looming over him with a stern expression whenever he’s caught trying to cause problems on purpose.

Techno teaches him honesty.

He teaches him that honesty doesn’t stop at simply telling the truth. It’s about trust — about the fragile line holding their family together; and it’s about loyalty — about believing in others, however much they fuck up and continue to fuck up; and it’s about choice — the strength it takes to be honest with the ones closest to you, and then the rest of the world, and then yourself.)

It’s these domestic moments that, at the end of the day, Tommy yearns for. 

When he’s blinking around town trying to find his brother, he doesn’t think of the last words he said to them, or what his voice sounded like broken and choked, or the eternity spent staring at Wilbur and deciding whether to let him go.

Instead, he thinks of awkward dinners, of Techno breaking his braces while chewing his food and sighing deeply as he rubs the space between his eyebrows with two fingers. He thinks of flying, of nearly giving his father a heart attack when he blinks twenty feet into the air and being caught in an armful of Phil and feathers. He thinks of music, of stuffing his head into a pillow trying to drown out the sound of Wilbur’s loud guitar playing when he’s deliberately trying to piss Tommy off. 

He thinks of their family, is what this all amounts to. Knocking one piece out shatters the whole dynamic, and Tommy can’t help but wonder if they were never meant to be. If every possible alternative — every different choice they could’ve made, every random happenstance that the universe could’ve rolled a higher number for — will inevitably, hopelessly end in a broken home.

This is why it’s hard, having a family, because here’s Tommy — self-proclaimed alpha male, stoic and strong and so, so incredibly massive — trying to pretend like there isn’t a pounding ache deep in his heart and nostalgia burning through his whole body.

(It’s honestly embarrassing, admitting all of this to himself. Still, he finds that he doesn’t care all that much, because at the end of the day, this, them, is what drives him forward.)

—

The thing about family is that at the end of the day, Wilbur’s doing this for them, because of them.

Wilbur thinks about it at night, when he can’t sleep. He imagines a thousand different scenarios in his head, wonders whether anything would’ve changed if he came forward earlier, on his own, in a much, much calmer environment; if Phil would’ve understood and be willing to listen if he just explained.

He tries to come up with words to describe it because he’s supposed to be a wordsmith: a long-winded speech about the truth about his existence, or a heartfelt apology rooted in the dwindling warmth underneath his heart, or maybe even messages, texts, letters, begging them to let him back in. 

(Truth is that he could never have done anything more than stutter when confronted and lash out when backed into a corner. 

It happened once before, and he couldn’t come up with anything better than a whimpered ‘Please don’t kill me’ — some writer he is, embellishing things that don’t matter and failing miserably at the things that do.)

Still, as much as it comforts him to think about these things, he can’t ignore the fact that he’s about to destroy something much more than the city, much more than himself; that he’ll take their perfect perceptions of him — the one shrouded in light and sea salt — and rip it to pieces, burning the shreds as they fall away.

That he’s even able to do any of this because they taught him how.

Philza shows him what it’s like to have a purpose, to be so dedicated to something that you forgo everything else in favour of completing your mission. That you’re willing to kill your brother for the greater good, that you’re willing to abandon your children to go back home, that now, he’s willing to destroy everything if it means that he’ll stop himself from succumbing to a fate much worse than anything he can create.

Technoblade teaches him strength, the ability to look inside himself and find the spark somewhere deep in his head, or his heart, or his soul, carved out of the fear festering at the bottom of his stomach. The ability to shoot an arrow meant to kill giants at your brother, the ability to point a flaming sword at your child’s throat, the ability to look your family in the eyes, smile, and threaten to destroy everything they’ve ever known.

—

What Tommy can’t explain away is why Wilbur bothered with him in the first place.

(He’s always been a street rat his whole life, and he’s eight when he breaks — well, it’s not breaking and entering if he didn’t break anything, per se — into the wrong house belonging to the wrong family. 

Tommy was minding his own business rummaging through their fridge when he heard a creak from the stairs. He whipped his hear around, and met eye-to-eye with a kid slightly older than him. His first thought was, ‘Oh shit,’ and it was quickly followed by, ‘Oh fuck,’ when he realised he couldn’t blink away — something kept him rooted in place and he couldn’t be arsed to figure out what, exactly, because he had to move and he had to move fast.

So he slammed horn-first out the door — and this, this is what he calls breaking and fucking off — and immediately tripped on their front porch, graceful exit thrown to the fucking wind the moment he stumbled and yelped out and felt a hand curl around his nape, dragging him up to meet face to face with dark, squinted eyes.)

Wilbur gives him a home, a family, friends, and most importantly a chance — and a second one, and a third one, and a fourth one, and keeps fucking going — shows him love and teaches him how to love, and these are the things that break him out of his cycle of distrust, coaxes him out of his shell and keeps him out of it.

Wilbur gives him an identity, teaches him with bated breath and hopeful eyes what it takes to make a name and place for himself. Wilbur wanted his mark on the world to be etched in music and prose, and he’d spoken about it with such vigour that Tommy had stuttered when asked what he wanted.

(There’s no way he could properly vocalise what he’d been thinking: I want adventure, I want stability, I want both at the same time, I want this moment to last forever and I want to skip all the way to the future and never look back, I want family, I’ve only ever wanted a family, I’m happy where I am and I want more and I’d fight, I’d do whatever it takes, anything at all, if it meant that you’d look at me with pride.

At that moment, he’d said, ‘I want women, lots of women, they’ll know me as the biggest wife haver there is,’ and Wilbur had laughed, rolled his eyes. Tommy’s breath had caught in his throat as one thought sliced past every other one like a knife through butter: This is as close as it gets.)

Wilbur gives him a life. 

There was only ever one person who Tommy wanted to make proud, in its brightest, most honest form, wanted to be looked at with the sort of unbridled light in his chest and behind his eyes that would appear when he looked at the things he actually loved.

—

Tommy gives him resolve.

Wilbur is under no delusions; what he’s doing is horrible, but it’s not without reason and if that reason so happens to lean towards the noble side then… well. 

Some people, he muses, are unfortunate enough to be the victims of the crossfire. Some people have to be caught in the crossfire, is what he realises. That’s what destruction is for.

One day, Wilbur’s going to look his younger brother in the eye and find the right words to sum up ‘I was trying to protect all of you’ and ‘I never meant to hurt anyone but I didn’t have a choice’ and ‘I’d like to go back to where we started, to awkward dinners and flying with Phil and turning my speakers up to annoy you, if you’re willing, if you’d forgive me’ all in a single sentence. 

Maybe that sentence would be comprised of a simply apology — two words, seven letters, short and sweet — or maybe he’d say it all at once and go on fifteen tangents, all while gesturing wildly as he scrambles to convey everything he could never put properly into words. 

Maybe then he’d hand Tommy the blade it takes to kill him thoroughly, completely, and then he’d trust him to set it down or run him through with it, and in both scenarios he’d let it happen and even turn his back to him, laying his heart bare and his soul open as he once so loved to do.

Maybe that day would come, and the thing about ‘one day’s is that they’re possible, of course they are, but in the funniest paradox that the universe has ever come up with, they’re equally as impossible too. 

And this is what he’s doing — preparing for the inevitability of that second option. There’s just one last step to his plan, and he’ll add this to the list of things he needs to apologise to Tommy for, one day when they’re both dead, when he finds his younger brother in the grey limbo where monsters like them go to rot for all of eternity.

T-4.

There’s a bit of an added benefit with being some malevolent entity older than the very ground he walks on.

In another universe, Wilbur would call it a gift, a power, something that puts him on par with, if not higher than, everyone else. In that universe, he’d still be a child and he’d be laughing, running with a spark of black hot on his heels and dark streaks sparking between his fingertips. In that universe, Phil would be proud of him when he learns to throw a ball without once touching it-

This is not that universe. 

In this universe, Phil threatens to smite him. And to save his own skin, he throws his friends against a wall and it’s a gamble of how much is too much for someone’s neck. 

In this universe, something went wrong along the way and darkness cracks through the skin of his arms whenever he dares to tap into it and it leaves him weak, breathless, starving. 

In this universe, he walks alone along the tunnels underneath the city and toys with the energy collecting in his hands and the untapped reserve still hidden away in the walls.

Here’s what he learns:

Energy is hard to control. Energy is hot, is loud, is bright, is impatient and dynamic and wants to move, wants to make things move, has a mind of its own and slips out of his grasp whenever he tries to close his fingers around it. Energy fucking hates him, because he pushes and it pushes back, he tries to control it and it wails in his ears, it takes so much fucking strength and willpower to make it bend to his whims and it’s just not fucking worth it to try.

Matter, though, is simpler. Matter is made of atoms — neutrons, protons, electrons and the lines of string holding them together — that conform to rules, that are the things being moved, the things that want to be moved, that allow him to snake himself in between and move them how he wants. Matter obeys him.

This is what makes him think about creation.

It’s not possible to make something out of nothing, but it is possible to change what’s already there. 

He rips open the atoms (which would be a horrible idea if he’s human but fortunately, he’s fucking not), breaks it to reassemble it into something else. He holds a piece of rock in his hands, grips it tight with the black swirling around his hands, and he opens his palms to carbon, and he does it again to turn it to steel, to water, back to rock, and into air.

And then he wonders.

Surely… 

He thinks of the molecule, shapes it clear in his head — seven carbon atoms, five hydrogen, three nitrogen, six oxygen — and the yellow colour that comes with its base powder form, 2,4,6-trinitrotoluene. And then he thinks of red, and of sparks, and fire and heat bursting from an explosion cracking through the air and surely, surely-

-darkness blooms, black streaks spark around a solid shape-

-and he opens his eyes with a stick of dynamite in his hand.

His shoulders sag.

Another patch of his skin cracks open to reveal inky black underneath. 

The key to creation is repetition, though — once is an accident, twice is a coincidence, and thrice… well, thrice means it works.

So he closes his hands and concentrates, makes another with a little less thought, and another with even less, and the more he makes, the more it feels like instinct and the less it feels like conscious effort. It’s almost scary, how natural this feels, as quick and easy as walking, or breathing, or singing, or writing. 

Destruction, he thinks grimly, comes naturally to him. It’s written in stone, etched into his bones and the mouldy walls of his heart. He’ll resort back to destruction the moment he doesn’t know what to do. 

So this is what he does when he’s all out of options. 

He notes down every part of the tunnels that feels vulnerable, comes up with an estimate for how much and then doubles, triples that number. 

He plants the sticks of dynamite along the walls and wires them together radially, diverging towards the very centre of the city where he’ll first detonate a massive explosion and have the rest blow up in a series of chain explosions.

He ignores the voices, the constant chanting, pleading, threatening, memories he didn’t even know he had all coming together and telling him to turn around, turn around, turn around.

—

When Tommy was younger, he thought that being a chaos spirit really fucks.

(Still does — it’s not like anything’s changed for him particularly — and anyone who says otherwise can go suck it, imagine not being able to teleport, go cry in a hole somewhere, Tubbo.)

(He can almost hear Tubbo’s reply, every time, “Imagine being allergic to salt,” and Wilbur’s following howl of laughter, echoing in a corner of his mind where Tommy’s not sure whether he’ll ever hear it again.)

What’s cool about it is his ability to fuck with people. And this stems from an ability to manipulate things, like people’s heads, like energy.

The thing about energy is that it’s alive. It has a mind of its own, it wants to change, to make shit happen, to burn and scream and explode and electrocute and move, but it doesn’t know where to go. It depends on its surroundings to tell it what to do, and it just so happens that Tommy’s voice is the loudest, the clearest. All it takes is a small suggestion and it goes where he tells it to, eagerly. 

(Unlike matter. Fuck matter, matter sits there and asks to be moved, which he can’t be fucking arsed to scream and nag at it until it relents and moves on its own. Matter is complicated, is made of atoms and shit and is dumb, is lazy, has no mind, no will, depends on its surroundings to pick it up and move it.)

And once he can tell energy what to do, it opens up so many more opportunities for him.

(Things like setting shit on fire; well, not really, because sustaining a fire requires air and fuel and he’s not always going to have those things at hand, so more often than not it looks like he just sparked something and have it either fizzle out into smoke or explode violently, give it a 50-50 chance.

Things like nearly breaking the sound barrier when he screams, or accidentally draining the whole power grid of his block trying to charge his phone back to 100% in an instant, or being the family’s go-to flashlight to look under their sofa when 1. Phil isn’t around to make his eyes glow with the light of heaven and 2. they’re far too lazy to reach an arm’s length away for their phones, Technoblade, I haven’t forgotten nor forgiven this incident.

Or his favourite thing to do, which is rip apart the strings holding the fabric of space together and step through to reappear miles away in the blink of an eye — see what he did there — and all it takes is a little nudge, a thought in the right direction for energy to bend to his whims.)

(It’s cool, he swears it is, and he’s not going to fucking admit it but he misses Wilbur and all the times he’d shut Tommy down for bragging about whatever new thing he learns he can do.)

So maybe he’s the first one to feel that something is wrong, terribly, horribly wrong, in most and probably all senses of the word, when he wakes up one morning to millions of explosions rocking the earth far beneath his feet.

A loud ringing screeches in his ears, heat washing over his skin and light blinding his eyes, and for a moment he’s completely convinced that the world’s ended before he really wakes up and realises that no, nothing’s happening, nothing’s being exploded, or… or at least not yet.

The thing about energy is that Tommy can feel it waning and drifting all around him. Energy between every single particle in space, emanating from the lightbulbs on the ceiling, dissipating into the ground as he walks, everything, everywhere. Over time, he’d gotten used to the menial strays that fill the Earth, had learnt to ignore the potential spark hidden within every object.

But this — this isn’t something he can easily brush off. 

It feels like something’s ripped open reality altogether and unleashed a tsunami of heat just seconds away from ravaging everything around, before all of it dims and disappears like nothing ever happened. Take all of that and repeat it millions- maybe billions — that’s BILLIONS with a ‘B’ — of times a second, all of it happening deep underground, all of it pointing back to a single perpetrator, the man of the hour himself.

The problem is that as much as they know exactly what he wants to do to the city, they have no way of knowing how he’d do it.

Tommy has a creeping suspicion, call it a hunch, an educated guess, a premonition, maybe, that something dark and familiar and wrong, terribly, horribly wrong, has woken up and stretched its limbs, realising just how much destruction it can create simply by yawning. 

And it stems from the inferno underneath his feet, scars left on the earth like ugly scorch marks marring the soil, all pointing towards the very centre of the city where a red hot beast bides its time, strung together under the control of his brother.

Whatever happens next, at the end of the week, Tommy will have to be the one to stop it. He’s the only one who knows how, the only one who can.

The only one strong enough in all senses of the word.

T-3.

Tommy comes home to emptiness.

Behind him, Quackity closes the front door and sighs heavily. Tommy feels a hand on his shoulder, squeezing for a moment so quick that he barely has a chance to look at Quackity before he’s already stepping away into the living room. 

He closes his eyes, trying to compose himself by the entrance. 

He hasn’t been home in weeks, well, not really, he’s dropped in sometimes to pick his things up or side-eye Phil and he spends his time mostly in Tubbo’s house. But he hasn’t really been home in ages, hasn’t properly walked in the front door and took in his surroundings and treated it like an actual home.

It feels alien to him, now. 

Kind of like the feeling of first days back at school, or sleeping in hotel beds and noticing the foreign scent of the pillows, or like coming home from a long trip and wondering whether the sofa has been moved a little to the left.

Everything is thick with dust. A musty smell hangs in the air, sharp in its staleness. Something creaks somewhere upstairs. All the lights are off, save for the natural golden light of the sunset streaming in from the windows, casting the shadows of dust particles onto the walls. 

It feels wrong.

There’s nothing going on here anymore. They might as well have moved out and abandoned, this place might as well be haunted by how… empty it is. how thick the memories feel like as they float in the air, on the sofa, by the dining table. It feels like walking into the kinds of places Wilbur would sometimes talk about wanting to hunt ghosts in but feel too scared to actually enter.

There has never been a single moment of silence in the house. Especially for Tommy, both blessed and cursed with his sharp senses. Now the only thing he can hear is Quackity’s breathing, the sound of his own heartbeat, the whistling of wind outside.

It feels… lonely.

No other word to describe it. Tommy almost feels guilty for not being as present as he should’ve been, opting to avoid his father and oldest brother, staying mad at them as an excuse to evade the haunting absence of one particular motherfucker.

“Tommy?” Quackity asks, snapping him out of his nostalgia-fuelled daze. “Are you okay?”

Tommy shakes his head, blinking his eyes rapidly against the dust. “Yeah,” he says, sniffing. “Just. It’s so fuckin’ dusty in here. My nose is all itchy and shit.”

Quackity offers him a sympathetic look. “Want me to clean it out?”

Both of them know this offer extends a little further beyond clearing the dust off the house’s surface. 

As a wind spirit, Quackity has dominion over the air, and it’d take a wave of his hand for a gust of wind to round up all the dust particles, and the house would look good as new, as if it’s still lived in and not fallen into a frozen stasis stuck motionless in time. Part of Tommy wants to see the house that way again, the hopeful part of him that’s still fighting to get his brother back. The rest of him, shrouded in fear, thinks that it’s better this way.

At least they won’t have to pretend like things are still fine.

“No,” he says, “it’s okay.” 

At least the silence, the loneliness — at least all of it is much, much better than the alternative. 

Quackity nods at him, a hesitant furrow twitching the arch of his eyebrows. He looks around, eyes glossing over the stale intimacy gathered on the sofa, the kitchen counter, the blown light over the stairs. “What’re we looking for here, exactly?”

Tommy runs his fingers on the dining table, grimacing at the way they leave clean tracks on the surface and dust clings to his skin. 

“I don’t know,” he admits, “maybe something to tell us where he might be?” 

“Like…?”

Tommy shrugs. “Maybe, maybe he left a clue or a note, or something like that, maybe we just haven’t thought to look in… in the most obvious place?”

Quackity gives the house a once over, the two of them lapsing into a long silence, thick and bitter, like something terrible’s just came in and clogged up his throat. 

Something Tommy never stopped to consider was the fact that the whole city’s gone silent too. The more people they scared into evacuation, the less, well, people there are. He’d be lucky if he can spot a car drive down the main streets. Everything’s so fucking quiet these days, and the further into the week they go, the louder the silence gets, up until the point where Tommy can no longer seem to go anywhere without feeling like the air is screaming silence into his ears.

It’s a horrible feeling; knowing that something so full of noise has turned quiet. Like watching something die, or something get abandoned, or something get left behind, juxtaposing the memories of movement and life over its dead image.

“I don’t think that there’s anything here,” Quackity says. “Look, the-“ his eyes flicker, irises emptying out for a second before he blinks and he’s looking back at Tommy, “the dust here hasn’t been disturbed for a while. No one’s been here since… about a week or so ago?”

“I know, but… but maybe, still-“

“Tommy, there’s nothing here.”

“-no, look. I hoped that- I thought…”

Quackity looks at him — really looks at him. This shuts Tommy up, and they’re back in their loop of silence, screeching in the corners of his brain like a taunting reminder of everything he’s lost. 

Eventually when Quackity speaks again, it’s quieter. “Tommy, look, it’s fine. I think you…get to, like, miss him, I think.”

Tommy stares at the sofa, at the scratches on its cushions he made years ago. All of a sudden, it’s the only thing he can bear to look at.

“You’re allowed to… be mad about it too,” Quackity continues. “I know you’ve fought to save him since literally day fucking one, and you’re- you’re in the right, Tommy, you’re good, like, you want to save him, you still have faith in him, but… you’re also allowed to be angry at- at the fact that he’s thrown that away and…”

A pause.

“And he’s going to do something that’s so… unimaginably horrible. I don’t want to give you false hope, Tommy, if there is even a chance you can save him, it’s…it’ll be so, so incredibly low.” Quackity lets out a breath, a bridled frustration with no real target. “Literally almost- almost impossible.”

“I’m not mad,” Tommy says even as they both know it’s a lie, even as Quackity shoots him a look. “Okay, maybe I am-“ he clenches his fists in his pockets, “so maybe I’m angry, I mean, why else would I be doing any of this?”

Quackity doesn’t say anything for a long moment, but Tommy can hear what he’d say if he did, all unspoken intentions and pitying (eurgh) words: If you want to talk…

It makes Tommy’s blood boil. So yes, maybe he really is angry, but he’s not mad at Quackity because the man hasn’t done anything other than trying to help, and snapping at him now would be a complete dick move and wouldn’t really achieve anything. But he would just please want people to stop looking at him like he’s got all the answers, like he knows exactly what to do and what’ll happen just because he’s ‘been in the right’ the whole time. He’s not some sort of Messiah, he just wants his brother safe.

“Tommy,” Quackity says, quietly. “Hey, Tommy- hey.”

Tommy unclenches his fists. Around him, the house settles back into silence, back into lifelessness. The walls stop buzzing, the lights stop flickering, dust falls back into place, and Tommy takes a deep breath. 

The gem hanging from his neck flickers cyan, but he ignores it. He can’t deal with Tubbo right now, doesn’t want to open up his head more than it’s already been splayed bare.

“Sorry,” he says, voice clipped. He takes another breath, feels the musty air clog up his throat. “I’m sorry,” he repeats, softer, “I’m… I don’t know. I’m just a little frustrated.”

Quackity nods “I get it.”

“This sucks,” Tommy says. Maybe if he says it out loud — maybe he’ll see a flash of golden by the front door if he thinks it hard enough — maybe he’ll look up and hear ‘I’m sorry’ or ‘I’m back’ or ‘I’m here now’. 

“Yeah… yeah, it does.”

“He’s my brother,” Tommy grits out. “I thought it’d be enough.”

“It is.”

“I haven’t seen him in, fuck, like six months. I don’t know what he’s like now, I don’t know how he’s changed.”

“And does that scare you?”

“It pisses me off.”

“I don’t know if it’s any comfort to you, but he…” Quackity trails off. He sighs. “He seemed fine. When he, when he came back to us, I mean, I thought he still felt like himself. Just… scared. And not really human, I don’t think.”

“Not human,” Tommy echoes.

Quackity looks at him and shrugs. He’s wearing a soft smile, toeing the line between comforting and condescending, but Tommy would like to think better of his friend. “Like… you could feel it. I don’t know- like, I literally just looked at him and immediately fucking thought, oh shit, this is someone that can kill me so fucking easily.”

Tommy feels his gem flicker to life again, a burst of heat digging into his sternum where it lays against his skin. He ignores it.

“I know he’s not human,” he says. His throat feels tight. He can hear his heartbeat pulsing high at his neck. “It doesn’t matter to me.”

Quackity’s still looking at him, and the longer he keeps his gaze the more it feels like he’s studying a rabid animal. “Sure,” he says, “maybe it doesn’t. He’s your brother, sure, and he’s not human either, but… he’s not your human brother, you get me?”

Tommy clenches his teeth, works his jaw. “No,” he says flatly, “what’s that mean?”

“It means-“ Quackity crosses his arms, “it means, I think you’ve got this, like, perfect image of him in your head.” 

Tommy opens his mouth for a rebuttal, but gets stopped when Quackity holds a hand up.

“I’m not saying you think he’s perfect, Tommy. I’m saying that you might be… idealising him, or idolising him. One of the two.”

“I don’t do that,” Tommy says, though it takes effort to squeeze the words out. Something deflates inside of him, and the room feels all that much dimmer. 

“But the truth is that you do,” Quackity says, “and I think- like it’s okay, I think. You’re allowed to be mad, because… because he’s supposed to be your brother, but he’s also… also this fucking monster that wants to blow up our home and kill everyone.”

(And maybe this idea scares him, more than anything else.)

The gem lights up, a striking cyan refusing to be ignored, burning into his skin. Tommy winces, reaching a hand up to grab it. He pulls it away from his sternum, clenches it in his palm and blinks his eyes rapidly as a flood of foreign thoughts and emotions overwhelm his head.

He picks through it, wading through the wave, surrounded by bewilderment and terror and please come and it’s important and the feeling of wind lapping at his cheeks and the image of red eyes peering at him from the dark and one thought that juts out and sticks its head above the rest:

He’s here.

He pushes back, focusing his own thoughts away from the flood. I’ll be there, stay safe, be careful.

“Tommy?” Quackity asks.

Tommy drops the gem back onto his skin as its light dims. “Tubbo found him,” he says, breathless, “somehow. He needs help, I need to go help him. Big Q, get some backup, we need to go, now-“

He makes a move towards the front door, tail swishing behind him — there’s a hand around his wrist and Quackity forces their eyes to meet and says, “Wait.”

“What-?

“Tommy, listen,-“

“What?”

“Think about it,” he insists, “you’re not gonna get anywhere just… idolising him and nothing else. Think about it.”

Tommy grimaces. A stupid sort of hope blooms in his chest, filling the base of his throat with light and ice, betraying him so crassly and abruptly that he almost wants to flinch from its force.

“I know,” he says, quietly, “I know, I just. I just want things to… to go back to what they were.” He hates the way that Wilbur might have been the most expressive one out of all of them, but in the end, he’s the one they can see through the easiest. “I want things to be simple again, that’s what I want.”

“But they’re not,” Quackity says. He releases Tommy’s wrist. His eyes are downcast, face pained, and Tommy is suddenly faced by something humble and personal that leaks through Quackity’s cracks. “I’m sorry, they’re not.”

“I’m sorry, too,” Tommy says, because he’s not the only one who lost someone. 

Quackity nods, sullen. “Go. Bring him back for us, Tommy.”

Tommy looks away, looks around the house one last time. This might be the last time he sees it; it might be all blown up soon. 

He blinks. 

The world tilts, stretches, expands and shrinks and rips open all around him and he-

-he falls through. 

T-2.

All things considered, it’s laughably easy to bait a chaos spirit into walking right into his hands.

Wilbur supposes that it would’ve been easy, too, had the situations been reversed. If someone really wanted to take him and really, really tried to — if they’d take Tommy and press a gun to his temple in exchange for Wilbur, he’d make the trade far too willingly. It goes without saying that if someone’s got Tommy hooked on the bad end of a blade, Wilbur would give himself up with no hesitation whatsoever. 

It’s sort of a pity, he thinks, that they’re not going to employ that exact tactic to coerce him out of his hiding spot. 

But unfortunately for all of them, he’s not as kind.

All it takes is one hunter, one chase, a little bit of patience, a substantial amount of ingenuity (Tubbo will be fine — he’ll understand… eventually), and suddenly he’s cornered Tommy right where he needs to be.

His younger brother looks… well, furious. And understandably so, too. 

And the thing about fury is that it leads to carelessness, leads to recklessness, leads to Tommy pouncing without first looking around himself, leads to the doors slamming shut and Wilbur choking out a laugh and the shadows falling all over them.

(One day he’ll say it, one day he’ll look his younger brother in the eye and force his apology out, one day, one day, one day.)

Chapter Text

T-1.

Tommy wakes up to darkness.

To mildew, to mould, to a stench stinging his nose that he can only describe as death. 

His first instinct tells him to scream, so that’s what he does. His eyes snap open, his body jerks up to a sitting position, and he opens his mouth with his fangs bared in the air. A roar escapes his throat, rough and growly and feeling like it’s shredding through his voice box. The sound bounces off the walls, echoing back to his ears and stretching far ahead of him, as if he’s in a long tube.

(Enclosed space, possibly a tunnel of sorts, most likely underground.)

His second instinct tells him to blink. It doesn’t work. Something chains him in place, something powerful that sucks up and dampens whatever bits of energy he tries to muster, keeps the world from turning for him as it turns the world to its own whims. 

(No easy way out, he needs to fight to escape.)

Standing up, he sets one foot in front of the other and bares his claws in a defensive position, his tail poised behind him. He blinks his eyes rapidly, trying to adjust his vision to the darkness, but it does him no good — it’s almost as if the darkness itself is a tangible thing, covering the walls and floor and suffocating the air. 

It’s horribly silent. 

Even with his sharp senses, he can’t make out the sound of anything going on above, or outside, or wherever that isn’t here. He hears water dripping further down the tunnel, he hears his own heartbeat in his ears, he hears his breathing-

(And breathing that isn’t his own. Behind him.)

Tommy whirls around, tail swishing to right his balance as he leaps back.

Something moves in the thick dark, something tall, humanoid, imposing, something that reaches up to flick open a lighter, something that says, “You’re awake.”

(Wilbur.)

His face is cold, pale, head tilted back and looking at Tommy down the length of his nose. Red eyes glowing behind his unruly brown hair that sticks to his skin from blood and sweat, cheeks hollow and deep grey bags under his eyes. His mouth, chapped lips, sets itself in a thin line, his expression as dark and unreadable as the walls around them. 

He tosses the lighter to Tommy, who fumbles with it for an embarrassing second. 

“How did I get here?” Tommy asks, his throat hoarse as he speaks. He chokes and coughs on the thick, putrid air, thumping a fist against his chest. 

Wilbur stares at him impassively, waiting for his coughing fit to subside before he speaks. His voice is rough, deep, words drawn out in a way Tommy’s never heard before. 

“It’s simple,” he says, “I brought you here.”

“What- how, what the fuck, what did you do-?”

Like a tsunami yawning open and crashing onto shore, his memories come hurtling back into him. His head hurts as he thinks, as his eyes flick around, as he thinks about the chase, about Tubbo, about Wilbur’s hooded eyes and curling fingers and blacking out into a waning dream, shifting to and from consciousness as the walls get darker and death comes rotting closer. He remembers the hopeless fight, and then he remembers nothing else.

“You hurt Tubbo,” Tommy snaps, “you fucking- you hurt me! What the fuck is wrong with you?”

He thrusts the lighter in front of him like a caveman warding an animal away with a torch. Wilbur doesn’t budge, looks between the flame and Tommy’s face, his hands shoved deep into the pockets of his coat. 

“Why would you do that- why did you have to hurt him, he might be- what the fuck-“ Tommy takes a deep breath, exhaling shakily, “I thought- you, Wilbur, why the hell-?”

And Wilbur isn’t as good of an actor as both of them would prefer he is. He’s wonderful at his words and he’s wonderful with his actions, but he’s never going to deny the little flinches in the muscles of his face — his eyebrows, his cheek, his trembling lips — every time Tommy spits his contempt at him.

Some people, he can fool. Some people take him at face value and are blessed with the ignorance that comes with the simplicity he so loves to parade.

But Tommy looks through his bullshit, claws gutted deep in Wilbur’s story and refusing to let go, pays the price when he looks at his brother and finds regret in the lines marring his face.

“Why did you bring me down here?” he grits out, choking on his own words. “I don’t- I don’t understand, what do you want?”

The first sign of emotion on Wilbur’s face presents itself as a halfhearted smirk. “I want to destroy the city,” he says lightly, “I thought I’ve made that clear enough,” though it sounds practiced, words polished a thousand times over at the tip of his tongue.

As if he’s said them a million times over, perfected to the point that the intentions are written over by this tunnel-visioned belief. As if he expects Tommy to fall into the same routine that he’s managed to trick them all into.

As if he’s convinced himself, too.

“No, you don’t,” Tommy says, kicking them into a challenge, “I know you. I know who you are.” 

He steps forward, clenching his fist to keep his fingers from shaking.

His brother’s face darkens.

“You don’t.” Wilbur takes a step backward, retreats from the light. “You didn’t, and you never did. No one does.”

“I know you’re not the type of person to do this,” Tommy presses. “The worst thing you’ve destroyed was a fuckin’ guitar string, you’re not going to destroy the whole city.”

“I hid myself from you for nineteen years!” Wilbur snaps. “You don’t fucking know me, you don’t know who I am, you don’t know what I can do.”

Tommy feels his neck itch, a tickling that crawls greedily up his spine. It makes him shudder from head to toe, shivering despite the uncomfortable warmth of the sewer. Something watches him from the dark, eyes peering out from a million different angles and all focused on him in the spotlight. Something reaches out to him, like an arm trying to grab his and drag him into the abyss, muffling his cries with the weight of its emptiness.

It’s not that simple, he realises. He looks around, at the tangible darkness that crawls over itself, coming alive only to hide when he draws his lighter around himself. 

There are only two people here. The first is him, poised to fight and hopelessly outmatched. The other is Wilbur, his impassive eyes, his gritted teeth, the creature that stretches itself- himself down the length of the tunnel, deep into the crevices of the city above.

He understands, against all odds, disgust trickling down his throat.

“This is all you,” Tommy says, “this is all of you,” mouth dry as he gestures at the walls, the floor, the ceiling. “You- why didn’t you tell us? We could’ve helped you-“ he stops, brain snapping to catch up to his mouth, “we could’ve at least tried! I don’t- you’re not going to destroy the city- you’d- you-!”

Wilbur laughs. 

It’s a chilling sound to hear. It’s not the bright noise he makes when he throws his head back at a joke. It’s not even the rough cackle, a furious, breathless thing that ripped itself out his mouth when he revealed himself that first time. 

Instead, it’s quiet, steady, dark, bubbling through his lowest voice register and reeking of smugness, of condescension. The laugh reverberates through the tunnel, bouncing off the walls and echoing far ahead. The darkness lurking on the walls vibrate along with it — mirroring his voice and his jerky movements and the way he tilts his head back anyway as if this is just another throwaway joke.

“I am, though, is the thing.” He cracks a smile. Thin and strained, his lips look more like a cut on his face. “I’m going to, and you didn’t believe me when I said it but look-“

He swipes a hand through the air. Tommy catches a glimpse of his hand as he moves and they’re black. A shade of dark that draws attention to itself more than any source of light can. His fingers look less like skin and more like a cutaway from reality, a tear in the natural fabric in the universe that amounts to a suffocating nothingness.

“Look,” he repeats, voice tainted in cold pride, and as he does, the tunnel shifts, darkness retreats back into the walls and reveals-

-Tommy’s chest goes cold-

-rows upon rows upon rows of-

-all lining the walls-

-the angry colour only associated with destruction-

-there has to be thousands-

-he’s yelling, spitting, choking on air and clenching his hand to keep himself from shaking, so tightly that his claws dig into his skin and he feels the wetness dripping down the length of his fingers; it does jack shit and he’s shaking, he’s still shaking, he can’t fucking stop-

“What the fuck!” he yelps. “How the fuck- how the fuck- where did you get all of this- how-?”

It’s only now that Tommy flinches back and takes a good look at his brother. There’s an air of wrongness about him, like someone’s gone and tried to draw a full portrait of him purely through descriptions given by a blind man. 

“It’s simple,” Wilbur says, “I thought you would’ve guessed it already.”

He hones in on Tommy’s lighter, and snaps his fingers. The lighter disintegrates into ash in Tommy’s grip, vibrates, shifts between his fingers, dissipates into thin air. It feels like a mini explosion in his palm, atoms ripped apart and spilling energy out and everywhere, a chain reaction of minuscule supernovae immediately drained dry by the sheer amount of void all around them.

Tommy feels cold without his singular light source. It feels like he’s just lost some integral part of him, some light he can’t hope to regain. He looks up at Wilbur, breathing paused in time, at the foreign expression slowly infecting his brother’s face.

Pulled lips, strained eyes; there is something broken about the way his lips are trembling as he smiles, a light in him that went out ages ago and replaced by the sort of chill that they can’t fix easily. 

Tommy only registers the danger emanating from him when it’s too late, when Wilbur’s hand is trailing through the air and he’s laughing and not catching his breath, because his next words are scathing, are spiteful, are decidedly not-Wilbur:

“I’m stronger than you, Tommy Innit.”

And then he’s striding forward. 

Tommy stumbles back, instincts screeching his throat wide open, desperate to get the hell away from Wilbur whilst not giving him his unprotected back. 

“Tommy, Tommy,” Wilbur chides, as if he’s telling him off for breaking a vase and not threatening his life with the face of a stranger, “I don’t think you realise just how helpless you are in this situation.”

Wilbur’s voice seems to stretch ahead, like fingers caressing the walls and wrapping around Tommy’s throat. It feels like a nightmare, it feels like a fucking nightmare, and part of Tommy can’t wait to wake the fuck up and find himself back in bed, back among family, back with a brother that doesn’t hate him — but the rest of him, far stronger than he wishes he is, knows the deep and awful truth, pushes him to push himself.

Tommy pulls up whatever energy he can, draws it out of the sound or the heat or the movements around him, flicks his pointer finger desperately to start a spark of fire, but nothing happens. The darkness laps it up greedily, stealing away any attempt he tries at light, and Wilbur laughs again.

“You’re not going to be able to do that,” he says, voice climbing higher and louder and more dominant by the second. “I appreciate the attempt, but you are in my domain! You are here with me, surrounded by me, and I’m not letting you go that easily! Try it, Tommy Innit, try and blink away-“

Tommy does. The rift tears open behind him, warbles for a moment before snapping shut with him still on the wrong end.

“-that’s right-“

He tries again. He tries tearing rifts with every step he takes, every swipe of his arm in the air, and time and time again it fails him.

“-you fucking can’t!”

And Tommy feels so cold, so unbelievably cold, because that’s all that the darkness does; it takes, it takes, it slithers past him and it opens its maw, all razor-sharp teeth and sunlit memories, pulls the tunnel further and longer than he could’ve sworn it was. Or maybe he’s just losing it, struggling to breathe and to centre himself in the eye of the storm.

“Your magic does nothing here!” Wilbur shouts, and the world trembles with his voice, an earthquake brought to life by sheer power. “I have been here eons before you were born, I will be here eons after you are forgotten, I am centuries older than the very idea of you, do you understand- do you fucking understand? You, you insolent little child, you matter so little in my grand scheme of things, you were dead to me the moment I laid my eyes on you!”

Darker, yet darker, and crueler still, a brother pretending to be a stranger or a stranger pretending to be a brother. This is the first time in his life that Tommy thinks, without the shadow of a doubt, that he’s terrified.

In his brain, in the space between his brain and his ears, he hears, “Tommy Innit-“ from everywhere at once, “your beloved Prime feared me enough to send an angel down to smite me!

“I am here to shred this world down to its last atom! I am born from humanity’s collective fears, and hatred, and pain- I am born from war, and- and from bloodshed, and every hubris that man has known to fall into, you may be a chaos spirit but I am chaos incarnate — I’ll destroy everything I touch and I’ll kill everyone I find and I won’t fucking stop until everything is dead!”

A cold hand grips his shoulder out of the dark and Tommy yelps — but even that sound is stolen away quickly — before he’s pushed back into a wall, the air knocked out of his lungs from the impact. 

He blinks rapidly, heat searing the back of his eyelids and behind his eyes, trying to focus on his brother’s face, pulled taut and snarling, leaning in so that his mouth is right by Tommy’s ear.

“I’m a monster, Tommy Innit,” Wilbur whispers. “I hurt your beloved acolyte, your dear, dear Tubbo. I hurt you. And the worst part is that I’d do it, all of it, all over again.” He laughs, his breath hot against Tommy’s earlobe. “And again. And again. And again, until you’re convinced that nothing- nothing in me is left for you to salvage.”

Wilbur pulls back, meets him eye to eye. And it’s this moment — brother to brother, layers of skin peeled back and walls demolished into dust, honesty bare behind their pupils — that something in Tommy trembles awake.

A massive part of Tommy is full of fear, screaming, begging him to run, wants to cower and draw in on himself, wants to agree, wants to believe, wants to hide back under the covers and see the story play out how it should be — with the hero smiting the monster.

“I could kill you, right here, right now,” his brother says, “and no one would bat an eye. You wouldn’t be able to do jack shit against me, and you’ll die, alone, in the dark.”

But the puzzle pieces click into place in his brain, click, click, click; and there is this light — this shaking, terrified, uncertain light, like a halo silhouetted in white against the backdrop of void — that flickers to life in his chest, right beneath his heart. He looks at his brother, into his brother’s eyes, and either he’s lost it or neither of them have, because he’s completely sure, even for a split second, that he sees the same light mirrored in Wilbur.

And this is why, between both parts of himself fighting for the reins, both scared shitless but both wanting the same thing, he feels no true fear when he says: 

“So kill me!”

Wilbur freezes.

And there he is.

“Kill me,” Tommy repeats, gripping onto Wilbur’s arms for dear life, his voice wet with an emotion that borders between euphoria and despair. “You’re not going to scare me,” he says, tilting his head down in pure, unadulterated trust, “and there’s nothing you can do or say that will trick me anymore.”

He squeezes his eyes shut. 

This is what it’s like to trust, he thinks, no flash of dark doubt in his mind. There is nothing more honest, more vulnerable, than everything he’s giving up — everything that he’s already given up — for Wilbur.

“I’m a trickster by nature, you idiot,” he chokes out, “and I’m not scared of you; I’m scared for you!”

Tommy stays stock-still, eyes still closed and two sets of breathing loud in his ears. At some point, the claustrophobia has receded, and all that’s left is a worn apology hanging between them, tired and broken but there.

“Tommy…” 

Wilbur’s voice is soft. 

“Do it,” Tommy whispers, “kill me. I know you’re not going to. I know you don’t want to. And even if you did, I wouldn’t fight you anyway.”

Sunlight, his brain supplies meekly, streaming through their windows. Dust gathering between guitar strings. A spot on the pier left empty for months. 

“You don’t understand,” Wilbur mutters. “This isn’t as simple as you think it is.”

This is his brother, first and foremost, and this is the truth, however ugly and repulsive it may be, because far beneath the bitterness of things presented at face value, Tommy won’t ever forget being young and alone and having someone who is just like him grab him by the arm and beg him not to run and abandon his new family. 

So maybe this is his way of repaying Wilbur, by believing so strongly in him that it burns in his chest, hotter and brighter than anything his powers can muster up even in his prime.

“So explain it to me,” Tommy says, opening his eyes. Wilbur’s face is scrunched up in pain, eyebrows knitted together and eyes flickering. “I’m your brother, I want to help- that’s all I’ve ever wanted to do- and I have every right to help you, but I can’t do that if you won’t tell me!”

They lock eyes. Wilbur looks at him — nineteen year-old Wilbur Soot, orphan boy, tentative brother, a creature that’s both human, in the purest, most abstract form of the word, and something that is so, so much more — and he looks just as terrified as Tommy feels.

It’s a startling expression, open and honest, and it’s this same fear that connects the two of them, like a line ready to be snapped clean in half but holding on anyway. Two unwanted things learning to want, to be needed, both holding onto each other and both challenging the other to break off.

Wilbur’s face twists into a grimace. “You can’t help me,” he whispers, “that’s not how any of this works. You don’t get it — I’m too far gone,” and then he’s pulling Tommy into himself.

His brother is cold, is the first thing that Tommy notices. And he’s definitely lost weight. There are sharp edges that were once softened by innocence, and his arms wrap around Tommy hesitantly. But they fit perfectly right together, and for a second, Tommy can almost breathe.

But an icy hand curls around the nape of his neck, right on his scruff, and squeezes.

Tommy gasps. 

There’s a yank in his gut. There’s a surge in his bones. There’s a spark of electricity jolting him in the neck where Wilbur touches him and then-

And then he’s choking. 

He’s breathing, but the more air he laps up the worse it feels, because something’s just opened up inside him, like a tear in space that’s displaced itself into his stomach, right beneath his lungs, scratching into his heart and his spine and stretching down, down, and wider still. It burns everything it touches, and then eats up all the heat until what’s left is ice — and it’s not even ice, it’s this incomprehensible feeling of utter nothingness.

Every bit of him starts trembling, every bone and muscle in his limbs, his head, his chest, the pit in his stomach, all screaming with a raw kind of hunger that cares for nothing but the need to feed. 

His back arches and he struggles, and even that hurts, and for the first time in his life, maybe, he’s completely certain that he’s about to die.

Something screams down the tunnel, and then something else screams beside his ear, and then something else screams above him and beneath him and every-fucking-where, and there’s a cacophony of voices he doesn’t recognise, voices that insist on lingering on the border of audibility and voices that wobble dangerously on the fence surrounding his brain, voices that feel like they’re scratching into him, all full of fear and all screeching the same desperate note of denial.

His head pounds furiously with it. Part of him wants to keep clutching onto his older brother and part of him is completely and utterly repulsed, all of him shakes and hurts and wants the pit to close, wants the voices to stop, wants to come crying back to his father, wants to scurry all the way up to the surface where he can at least see the sun.

He’s barely aware of Wilbur shifting his hand, running his fingers lovingly through Tommy’s hair — and it hurts, it hurts, in so many more ways than he can name — before the icy hand is gone and so is the pit and Tommy comes back to himself, coughing and gasping in desperate breaths.

“Do you feel it?” Wilbur mutters, a note of contempt in his voice. “Do you hear it, Tommy Innit? The only things that can even come close to sating it are chaos, fear, pain. Your pain, what you feel, and at some point I’m going to go mad, give in, hurt somebody for the sake of hurting them, just to feel some sort of respite. Do you understand now? This, this, is why. This is exactly the reason why!”

Tommy feels like he’s about to collapse. His arms are shaking around Wilbur’s body, and as much as he’s relieved that the awful emptiness has left him, he can still sense it — a hole where his brother should be, a deep hunger behind Wilbur’s eyes, a hollowness in his expression that bars any genuineness from showing in his features.

And maybe he understands, just a little, but not nearly enough. “That was yours,” he breathes, his voice stretched thin, “is that what you’re feeling all the time? What are you… I felt like I was going to die… How are you still alive…?”

He swallows, spit dragging painfully down his throat.

“Am I really, though?” Wilbur smiles, harshly, sadly. “And even if I am, well,” he says, a wet sort of choking in his voice, “I won’t be — not for long anymore.”

Tommy stares at him, eyes wide. “You’re going to die,” he whispers. “Is that what this is supposed to be- is this what you’re trying to do? Are you trying to scare me, and make me hate you, so that when you’re gone, I won’t, fuckin’ hell- I won’t grieve you?” 

Wilbur studies him. There’s a dying twinkle in his eyes, something that looks a little too much like pride, so out of place among his earlier cruelty. “There we go. You’re a smart kid, Tommy.”

“But...” Tommy starts, trails off, “but you don’t want to. I know you don’t, I know you!” 

And the more he speaks, the more pieces fall into place, the more Wilbur’s plan makes sense, the more breathless he feels. 

“You want to live, you do, that’s why you… that’s why you ran in the first place!”

And this is what all of Wilbur amounts to; a desperate longing for life, ripped and mangled and turned bitter by all the wrong things, all the wrong people, at all the wrong times.

“And you don’t want to hurt anyone either, that’s why you gave us a week’s time to evacuate everyone...”

Wilbur closes his eyes.

“Wilbur...” Tommy whispers, “you don’t want to do this. You don’t want to die! I’m your brother, of course I know you, I know you better than anyone else, I can tell-!”

He surges forward again, slots himself around Wilbur’s body and embraces him as tightly as possible. He pulls his spark to the surface of his skin, lets it swirl and zap the walls of his chest, his throat, his fingers, and feels the jolt of electricity connecting Wilbur to him.

Tommy feels as much as he can. It’s all there on the tip of his tongue, a fire that only he knows how to fan; all heat and light and sound, a hope circling his ribcage and lighting him so brightly that his heart has no choice but to leap into his throat and then soar. And beneath that, white lends its spotlight to blue — sorrow, sentiment, the little trembling pieces of hurt that make up all the love he’s already lost but is still fighting for. 

He thinks of broken families. He thinks of empty houses. He thinks of dusty guitars. He remembers, ‘he’s this fucking monster that wants to blow up our home and kill everybody,’ and he makes up his mind, thoughts swirling around a humble acceptance that bleeds into, ‘he’s my brother, imperfect and inhuman, but it’s still enough, it is, it has to be.’ 

He thinks of a future, a possibility, where he’ll get to see Wilbur smile with his teeth on display and the sides of his eyes crinkled, with his arms black, his irises red, his face gaunt but still happy anyway. 

He pushes all of that into the spark, and the spark into Wilbur’s chest, keeps holding on as if this — this tender moment — is the most fragile thing he’s ever held, like he never wants to let go.

Wilbur gasps. Chokes on air. Inhales sharply. His hands claw at the back of Tommy’s shirt, gripping the fabric like a lifeline. 

“Wilbur, Wil, you don’t want to die,” Tommy says, and this is the first thing he’s said that feels right, that’s mirrored true in the desperate way Wilbur hangs onto him. “No one wants you dead, either, we can help you! You don’t need to do this, I know you don’t want to, things don’t have to end like- like how you think they have to!”

“I have to!” Wilbur says. “I have to, I can’t be allowed to live for much longer.” 

Tommy can see his face bright as day in his mind’s eye, all the creases in his pinched, pained expression, all his desperation painted over his greyed-out will to live.

“And there’s only one person who can do it — I’ll be doing him a favour too, he’ll get to go home, isn’t that what he always wanted-?”

“Phil wouldn’t- he wouldn’t, and you know it, he’s changed- he’s learnt, you’re family, he’s not going to hurt you-!”

“He has to, he will,” Wilbur promises darkly, “because if he won’t kill one of his own sons, he has to protect the other. He’ll do it — maybe, if another son is in danger, he has to- he’s got to, right-?”

And with a sinking feeling in his chest, Tommy realises exactly why Wilbur brought him down here.

“You’re not going to hurt me,” Tommy says, wants to believe.

He feels Wilbur shaking his head. “I’m not,” his brother says, “but as long as Phil believes it...”

“Wilbur,” his voice comes out in a weak whisper, “please don’t do this. You don’t have to! You don’t!”

“I’ll hurt more people, I’ll destroy so much more than I already have, and I won’t regret any of it! This hunger — the way I am, you can’t let me go on like this, this is exactly why I have to die!”

“But you don’t want to!” Tommy says. “Isn’t that enough? 

Wilbur draws in a shuddery breath, chest heaving against Tommy’s. “It doesn’t matter what I want,” he mutters, “what matters is that I need to do the right thing. Please, Tommy, please don’t make this harder than it needs to be.”

Unstoppable force, immovable object. Tommy wishes that the answer is simpler, but the thing about paradoxes is that they’re impossible to solve. 

The thing about their story is that it isn’t, and Wilbur’s the one grabbing both curtains and forcing them close, against all odds, against all of Tommy’s attempts to keep the show going.

Wilbur mutters an apology into the air, solemn and honest, and then Tommy feels his spark being pulled up again, energy spiralling all around him and tearing the world apart, time and space shifting and bending-

-two brothers clinging onto each other-

-one on his way to die, the other desperately wishing for life-

-a pair of interlopers finding belonging at the eleventh hour-

-and so they blink through.

The rift winks shut behind them and Tommy gasps in fresh surface air. He breathes deeply, lets his lungs stretch out again, shivering from the blast of cold that the night envelops him with.

They’re standing in the middle of a road, deserted and eerily silent, one that Tommy immediately recognises as one of the main streets, right at the heart of the city. Every building around them is dark, every light off save for the occasional lamppost dotting the pavement. Just looking around, trying to catch the nonexistent sound of a vehicle, seeing nothing where life should be; it does something strange to Tommy’s stomach.

Still half-wrapped around him, Wilbur sighs, lapsing into a comfortable silence that ends far too quickly, before ripping himself completely away from Tommy. He flexes his shoulders, smoothing over any trace of emotion from his expression. When Tommy meets his eyes again, they look dead.

“See that?” Wilbur says, jerking his head in the direction of a building. 

A church — the Prime Church, one that was built about nineteen years ago, not-so-coincidentally around the time Phil descended onto the Earth. 

“That’s where I’ve strung all the bombs,” he says, cracking half a pleasant smile. “All it takes is the press of a button, and-“ his smile widens, “boom.”

Tommy can see it in his mind’s eye. Wilbur with tears in his eyes, Wilbur with that broken smile on his lips, Wilbur slamming his fist down on a button and the whole city going up in flames, their favourite pariah sitting in the eye of the inferno and letting himself be eaten away — cleansed — by the flames.

“Here’s the plan, Tommy Innit,” his brother says. “This is what’s going to happen. I’m going to summon dear dad, and he’s going to come meet us here. And when he does, you’re going to blink out, and if you don’t... well, I’ll make you.” 

An involuntary flare of his spark jolts Tommy out of his horror-fuelled stupor. All of a sudden, he’s reminded exactly how much control Wilbur holds over him, his abilities.

Wilbur’s smile settles into something more neutral, all half-hidden genuineness and tentative honesty. “This means goodbye, Tommy,” he says, impossibly gentle. “You’ve been a wonderful brother.”

Tommy finally gets his mouth to work again. “Wilbur-“ he starts.

“And for what it’s worth,” Wilbur interjects, “I’m sorry you got dragged into this,” and closes a fist next to his heart, tilts his head down and closes his eyes. 

A prayer.

Tommy shouts, ‘no!’, slams into his brother, but before he can stop Wilbur from speaking, he hears it:

It’s a whisper, barely audible, Wilbur’s lips moving ever so slightly, ‘Philza, Angel of Death,’ sending a shiver of pure terror down Tommy’s spine, and then, ‘Come to me.’

There’s a flash of light. Lightning strikes in the distance, the sky splitting open to scream a thundering chorus that can only mean one thing: death is coming. Tommy hears the telltale sound of wings cutting through air, sees a shadow soar briefly above them, and then a voice behind him.

“Wilbur.”

Tommy whirls around in sync with Wilbur. His heart drops to his feet and leaps to his throat at the sight of his father, wings flaring out in agitation. Slowly, Phil folds them into his back, and a familiar figure walks out from behind him, the biggest possible wrench in Wilbur’s plans — Technoblade.

At the corner of his eye, Wilbur’s face drops. All traces of cockiness, confidence drained from his expression at the sight of hoofed feet, uneven tusks, deep blue eyes and long braided hair. His face pales more than it already has, shoulders tensing and one foot shifting behind the other.

It’s almost funny, Tommy muses, that this is how their first family reunion is, after being broken apart for six months; with death looming above them and brother cocking a weapon up against brother.

“You brought Technoblade,” Wilbur says, rage hiding behind the low timbre of his voice. “Why did you... this wasn’t supposed to happen.” He takes a step back. His stone-cold expression breaks, fear leaking through the cracks. “I thought, I thought-“

Something happened between the two of them. Something horrible, something that might have shattered their golden relationship beyond repair. Tommy’s heard about it, knows that they fought each other at some point, knows that Techno couldn’t let go of his greater good. He doesn’t know any of the details, but looking at the dark cloud over Techno’s face, at the terror marring Wilbur’s expression, he thinks that it’s telling enough.

“Wilbur?” Technoblade says, raising his crossbow to eye level, aiming right between Wilbur’s eyes. “Please make my job easier and step away from Tommy.”

The standstill breaks like a piece of string stretched too tightly. Four things happen at the same time.

Wilbur makes a grab for Tommy’s wrist, eyes wide and face twisted. 

Techno pulls the trigger of his crossbow. The arrow zips through the air, beating with a spell intent to kill.

Phil yells, throwing out a hand covered in light, blasting the space between Tommy and Wilbur.

Tommy feels himself get thrown back, and then feels something recede from him, like a weight lifting off his shoulders or a shackle breaking off his ankle, and his spark sings to life as he finally blinks away of his own accord.

The world loops around him, and then he’s standing back on solid ground, crouched next to Phil and Techno. His father shoots him a concerned look, which he answers with the curt shake of his head. 

Ahead of them, Wilbur is getting back on his feet shakily, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand and glaring up at them through his eyelashes. With his shoulders hunched over and his fringe sweeping down over his eyes, he looks downright pissed. Gone is the cold, apathetic expression; Wilbur’s face twists in rage as he snarls, as his fingers curl, as his eyes lock onto Technoblade — Tommy almost doesn’t recognise him.

And he feels it again — a horrible trickle down the back of his neck, like an oil slick, drip-dripping down his spine and brushing against his tailbone. 

It’s the feeling of being watched, the feeling of being surrounded, a helpless, panicked sort of fear that gets him grinding his teeth together in an attempt to quell it. He sees it now: a dark mist diffusing out of the ground, scrambling over itself to get into the open air, crawling up the walls of the buildings around them, gathering around Wilbur’s feet and snaking around his body and neck and reaching up to his fingers, like strings connecting him back to the rotting underground. 

The worst part is the emptiness, come up to suck all the life from the area, leaving Tommy shivering and inching a little closer to Phil’s natural warmth, the holy fire exuding from deep within him. The other worst part also happens to be seeing Wilbur’s heart break behind his eyes, a minute despair that only Tommy knows how to catch.

Phil takes a step forward. “Wil?” he says, far too gently, “please, please don’t do this, you don’t have to fight us,” and Tommy can’t help but think back to days when safety was only an arm’s reach away, under the shadow of grey wings and a father’s embrace. 

But it’s a testament to how far they’ve come, much too far for anyone’s comfort, that those days are long gone, long dead, long buried deep in the minds of the naïve children they once were and left behind. Tommy watches Wilbur’s face carefully, at the gears whirring behind his eyes and slowly clicking into place — as a horrible resolve settles in his twisted expression. His eyes lock onto Technoblade, tunnel-visioned and rage-fuelled, everything in him screaming out the same bloody intent: ‘Change of plans.’

Tommy thinks he may no longer be useful in Wilbur’s plans. 

He gets it, but only barely, because four more things happen at the same time-

Wilbur swipes a hand up.

Technoblade whispers, ‘Blood for the Blood God.’

Philza crouches and takes off flying.

Tommy leaps forward, closing his eyes.

Everything moves too fast.

He hears shouting. Tommy opens his eyes and the world rights itself with him reappearing behind Wilbur, tail swishing behind him to fix his balance. Technoblade roars, eyes burning with bloodlust and bright power, yanks his sword out its holster and rushes forward in Wilbur’s line of sight. Phil soars above, and between all three of them, they have Wilbur completely surrounded. Something in his stomach drops. Wilbur yells something out, and spikes of complete black surge up from the floor, from the buildings, turning the battlefield into a nest of traps. Tommy hears the sound of metal against metal, but he’s got no time to find out what because he’s being thrown back by a dark, unseen force, but there’s a spark between his horns and space rips all around him and he blinks, he moves, he calls electricity down to his fingertips and it comes, arc lightning slicing through the air and striking the ground beside Wilbur, forcing him to yield. Above them, light, and flames, the silhouette of a great pair of wings, and Wilbur seems worried for a moment but he’s too busy dodging, fingers dancing like crooked spiders. Something grabs Tommy by the arm, a thick shadowy tendril twice the diameter of his wrist, and it yanks, much too quickly and harshly for him to realise that he’s being thrown into Technoblade. Techno narrowly misses impaling Tommy in the stomach and the both of them get thrown to the floor — and Tommy is pretty sure he can hear someone screaming, but he doesn’t think, because Techno is already getting up and Phil is landing on the other side of Wilbur and Wilbur is turning and stepping back and there are so many shadows moving like they’ve got their own minds, and Tommy hears a shattering noise, like glass, or an explosion, or maybe it’s his world ending then and there because Wilbur doesn’t have eyes at the back of his head and he’s too busy fending off Phil and Techno is cocking an arrow into his crossbow and pressing the trigger without any fanfare left and Tommy is stupid, he’s so fucking stupid, he knows he is, and he’s not- can’t be brave because a chill runs down his spine and he doesn’t want to, he doesn’t, he can’t, but first and foremost, above all, he wants to save his brother because he blinks-

-and he’s throwing himself in the line of fire. 

The arrow hits. He barely sees Wilbur turning his head, the widening of his eyes as he sees the arrow meant for him. 

Tommy chokes. There is blood on his hands.

And that’s how it goes.

T-0.

Philza is screaming. 

Wilbur staggers back, a cry lost at the tip of his tongue. There’s an arrow sticking out of his younger brother’s chest, a little too close to the heart, and Wilbur isn’t entirely sure whether it did hit the heart, whether Tommy is going to die, or has died, whether he’s about to lose a brother right before losing himself. 

Tommy looks up at him, all bright blue eyes and flames between his horns and a light within him, flickering, as if it’s in too much pain to keep burning. He looks at his hands, slowly looks back up at Wilbur, and understanding dawns in his expression.

And then he’s falling — Wilbur only barely manages to catch him by the arms. 

His gaze snaps down to Tommy’s wound, at the two forces of magic butting heads at the arrowhead. Without the shadow of a doubt, he knows that Tommy won’t die to the magic itself; he’s powerful, he is, he has to be, if it comes down to brute force, his powers are too strong to yield to anything else. 

But this is still an arrow, and Tommy still has a body — a body with organs and a beating heart and there is an arrow stuck too close to it, and Wilbur can’t believe he never thought to learn how to heal, because he can, he should be, he’s supposed to, how hard can it be to command the cells to knit themselves back together, right-?

Another pair of arms — Technoblade — hook around Tommy’s armpits, wrenching him away from Wilbur, and Philza shoulders past him, falling to his knees beside Tommy. 

And Wilbur- Wilbur stands, frozen, a chill spreading from Tommy’s blood on his clothes into his bones and something deeper, something far more sinister than his bones, and it’s the whole song and dance again- he’s far too broken to do anything and it’s his fault; Tommy is fucking dying and it’s his fault, because the arrow was meant for him and it takes someone else’s life to protect his own. 

He should be there with his family, he should, and he should be pressing his shaking hands on Tommy’s chest and screaming at the molecules in Tommy’s stupid mortal body to knit themselves back together, but the problem is that he can’t possibly understand the body down to its most intricate levels — there are too many things happening all at once and he can’t possibly have the strength and focus that it takes to build something from the ground up, to heal someone, can’t possibly have enough good in him to fix, because only good things, pure things, have the right to heal and all he does- all he’s going to do is destroy, over and over and over again-

Philza is screaming.

Vaguely, Wilbur makes out the sound of his father’s voice, anguished, trying to keep Tommy awake and barking orders at Technoblade, and there’s a white light between Phil’s fingers and white light spreading into Tommy’s wound and something is burning- something is fucking burning, something is fucking freezing, something hurts and Wilbur can’t tell what but he knows it’s in him, and he-

His heart pounds in his ears. A grey, staticky sort of ringing fills the edges of his brain, and he needs to get out of here, needs to end it, no one should get hurt trying to protect him because can’t they see, can’t they fucking see- 

He’s not worth the effort, and if they can’t understand, if they’re still trying to save him, stop him, then he’ll show them exactly why they need to end him.

His finger twitches by his side and a part of him slithers out the ground, an intangible line that finds the brightest spark and loops itself around the light. 

Wilbur allows himself a moment to pause. This light belongs to- is Tommy. Tommy, Tommy, his younger brother, trembling from pain, trembling with wavering strength, with burning love, a bright and dying intensity flashing in his eyes as they meet Wilbur’s gaze. There’s only one emotion behind them, utter and honest, apparent in the way they fill with tears, a raw fear that makes Wilbur’s heart sink into his feet. 

I’m not scared of you; I’m scared for you!

Wilbur chokes back a strangled noise and bites his lip. I’m sorry, he wants to tell Tommy, but he’s already promised himself that one day, one day. 

So he flicks his wrist and the line snaps around the light and yanks it and Tommy cries out and he hears a zip, a rip, and the rift tears wide enough to fit two people. A single command under his breath; as far away as possible from here.

And when that’s done, he fucking runs.

There is a wrench in his plans, and he has never been good at strategy, because all of this, all his plans, it falls before him like a house of cards, like dominoes toppling down a slippery slope, like the he’s just learnt how to walk, like he’s young and stupid and still believes that he’s going to be alright. The takeaway here is that he has no fucking clue what to do, so he turns tail and he runs away, but this time he’s got a destination in mind.

Philza is screaming.

He hears his name as he throws open the doors to the Prime Church. Shadows crowd the walls, crawling up pillars and bunching up at the ceiling, a million of his own eyes peering down at him like he is his own spectator, he is his own player, he is the announcer as well as the executioner. 

It feels like it’s coming down a long corridor, like his father is yelling for him from downstairs and calling him to dinner, like his father is soaring above him and waving at him from the sky, like his father- his father- like Philza- or Phil-

Like the Angel of Death is marching towards him, dripping in gold and heavenly light. 

Something in him is burning. A little less metaphorically, a little more physically, because he makes the mistake of turning back and 

(he is Orpheus, and the button is Eurydice, and he turns back and Philza is Hades. He is Orpheus, because he turns back and everything shatters around him. Or he is Eurydice, because he feels like he’s being dragged back to hell. Or he is Hades — screaming. Maybe he’s all three; but it doesn’t fucking matter because)

he is burning.

Light in Philza’s eyes. 

His feet stumble backwards, and he almost falls, or maybe he’s already falling, and the ground feels hot to the touch and spiking cold up his legs.

Light in his own eyes.

There is a button at the end of the row of pews, right at the altar, shrouded in his shadows and wired to the heat death of his universe the city. There is a button at the altar, there is something burning in him, there is a darkness underneath the city, and there is-

Light in Philza’s hands.

The Angel lifts a hand up serenely, still strolling towards him, and there is lightning racing through his veins, burning him up from the inside, igniting the hole within him and scorching him inside out and forcing a cry out his mouth, choked up from all the heat swallowing his mind, his spirit, his body.

Light inside him.

He falls, a little too far away from the altar, from saving grace ahead of him and burning grace behind him. He hears footsteps. He needs to move. He has to move. His body hurts all over and there is still fire leaking out his mouth and eyes and chest, he can still feel himself breaking and he needs everything he can get, he reaches down and part of him reaches up and he’s using everything he has.

Light dies, sword drawn.

He feels a blade pressing at the back of his neck. He’s on his hands and knees and panting, because the fire has been taken away from him and the only thing that’s left is an all-encompassing emptiness. His throat stops bursting and starts choking up with grit, and his bones are grinding over and against each other when they’re not burning up. He flinches into himself, exhaling a cold mist like he’s letting his soul out his body, and finally, finally drops.

He’s so close. He’s so fucking close. He’s a few steps away from the button, and if he could only scrounge up the energy to throw himself into it, if he could find the power in himself to yank the molecules forward, if he could raise a part of himself and strike the button-

“Wilbur,” Philza says, his voice both commanding and pitying, “enough.”

And fuck. 

He can’t, he can’t, he’s so close and he can’t do anything about it, and everything about him hurts, from his pounding head to his empty chest to his frostbitten feet, everything about him is silent and numb to the pain and awaiting a quiet, whimpering death. 

A hand touches his shoulder and the flinch tears itself violently out of him. It’s his father, and it takes so, so much out of him, to fight off every feral urge in his nerves to rip himself away from Phil’s touch. Phil holds him by the shoulders, pulls him up easily and sets him sitting lopsidedly against the side of a pew.

“Wil?” Philza asks, gently. “Wil, please.”

There is a button. There’s a fucking button, and it’s right there, right fucking there, and he can’t seem to tear his eyes off it. 

There is a darkness. It’s underneath the fucking city, and it’s curling deep in his body, and for a moment he pictures it clear as day — years in the future, his human body dead, his mind not, subjected to a fate so much worse than death can grant him, an insatiable madness that seeks nothing but chaos, but fear, but pain, that destroys and destroys and knows, wants, nothing else.

(For a moment he is overcome by the warm, acidic wish to have it all stripped away from him, to see the world through eyes that aren’t eyes and feel things through hands that don’t exist, to escape this very human desire to live and these very human emotions that are fighting for attention all within himself. Morals and memories and families mean nothing to monsters, and that is exactly what he wants, in the span of a sudden, suffocating second: to be free and to be, just for once, nothing but raw, unbridled rage.)

There is a father. And this father is holding him with shaky hands, wearing a tear-stained face, a halo of soft light illuminating the strands of his golden hair. 

It’s a beautiful sight, he thinks, his father has always been just that — strength and beauty and every holy decision made by the universe and by Prime above.

“Wil, please, look at me,” Phil says, touching his cheek so gingerly as if he’s scared he might break something. “You don’t have to do this.”

Wilbur never believed in Prime until he met Philza. 

And it wasn’t because there’s suddenly concrete proof standing in front of him and taking him into a family, no. That definitely helped, but Wilbur remembers being young and meeting a person, a father, so kind and selfless that he felt his breath leave his chest, leaving a small, trembling hope that wants to do nothing more than believe.

Even now, he still thinks he might believe. It’s not believing in the existence of Prime, it’s more believing in their kindness. 

Wilbur tries and entertains the idea that he can die a good death. 

Maybe he’ll be accepted into Paradise, and maybe Phil will find him and he’ll just wait for the rest of his family to follow suit. Maybe he’ll be allowed into purgatory and have to fight among his kind — monsters — for the rest of eternity. Or maybe his fate has already been carved in stone, that he is cast down to Hades again, that maybe undeath and madness is hell, for him and him alone, all of forever spent becoming the thing he’s most afraid of.

It’s a shitty situation. Die or die, a lose-lose situation where one is a little less painful than the other, where even that reprieve has been stolen away from him. 

He laughs.

“Phil,” Wilbur mutters. He feels twelve again, accidentally cutting a finger on his kitchen knife and knocking on his father’s door to ask for either a bandaid or fiery healing. He smiles weakly, trying the word out on his tongue, “Dad,” and feeling venom run down his throat.

His father sucks in a breath. “Yes, Wil?” he says. “My son-” voice breaking, “my son.”

My stupid, stupid son.

“Can you feel it, Phil?” he says, his smile widening. There is a button. There is a button. “There’s a darkness underneath the city, Phil,” he recites, “and it has to die.”

“Wil-?”

He exhales. He feels it — a single moment of peace, the shadow of sunlight on his face. 

“It has to go, Phil,” Wilbur says, “and if you won’t kill it, I will.”

In a single move — a single burst of energy he had no idea he possessed, the swan song of a wretched bird — a coil of darkness strikes, snaps around Phil’s neck and yanks. Wilbur shoves against the pew, gathers every last droplet of his energy into his limbs and wills his body to fucking move-!

The button sinks under his full weight.

A click.

A hiss.

A laugh — it might have even been his own, and it might have even been unbroken, whole.

(Philza is screaming.)

The first explosion feels like relief.

Wilbur feels a part of himself ripping in half, burning up, the kind of pain that flares bright and free in him instead of gnawing at his bones.

The second one, less so.

Wilbur feels a part of himself crumbling, being buried alive, running out of air and choking on gravel, the kind of pain that whispers lonely in him, the kind that ends the world with a whimper.

The third one just fucking hurts.

Wilbur feels a part of himself freeze over, dropping into a black void, bursting when it hits the bottom, the kind of pain that goes down screaming.

The ground opens up all around him. An earthquake strikes, millions of aftershocks arriving way too early and breaking the world in half, in quarters, in eighths, into thousands of pieces. 

Wilbur is stuck in the middle. The world ends, and him with it, and it’s a horrible way to go but it’s what he asked for anyway.

(What he didn’t ask for was a father coming to save his son.)

Wilbur is pulled into an embrace, and the contact itself is enough to make him shudder, a minuscule comfort in the eye of the storm, the shattering, the splintering. Reality splitting into snapshots — the fire erupting from the ground, his father’s face stricken with horror, cracks in the earth that drown into dust and debris, buildings toppling and snapping in half. 

And here is the trick: Philza may be the Angel of Death but he chose to be human.

His body is human. His body is mortal. His body is breakable. They both are, and still, Philza throws himself over Wilbur and his wings stretch out around him, feathers sparking to life in a radiant glow that shimmers and stutters.

There’s ash on his tongue. There’s ash all over his body. It feels like he’s turning to ash, and Wilbur so badly wants to give in, but he’s sucking in a breath of pure inferno and his lungs are screaming, his chest is screaming, he, too, is screaming, but all that serves no purpose but to remind him that he is alive, that he’s being destroyed, that he is in pain but still fucking breathing.

(Fear is sweet, tastes like sugar and ice and hints of addiction. 

Chaos is warm, like bowls of soup and savoury dishes leaving him craving more.

But pain- pain is neither. Pain is bitter, clogs up his throat, sits heavily in him like it knows what he did wrong and is nothing but a constant reminder of his regrets.)

Philza is strength and beauty and his pain was supposed to be, too.

Instead, it’s drenched in something else, something coloured yellow and tasting like the ocean and feeling like innocent warmth under his eyelashes. It shakes in him, flickering and hiding, the kind of love that leaves a mark. 

And thanks to him, this dark creature will forever know what love is.

Philza may be the Angel of Death, but he is a father, a protector — he’s someone that burns up together with his son.

Wilbur closes his eyes.

And the last thing he sees before his world disappears is exactly that. His father; blinding white, flashing halo, six wings. Two over his head, two around his body, two against his legs, all in sacrifice, shielding Wilbur from his own self-made destruction.

Flight.

“Come home, my wayward children,” says the father, “for I am your keeper. I will bring you back to the place we called our home— one lost to the city and two lost to the family — from wherever you are scattered.”

Wilbur wakes up to rubble.

He’s tangled up in another person — Phil — and he’s frozen full of fear for a second before he hears a long sigh and feels his father shifting around himself.

Dust clogs the air he tries to inhale, and he feels strange. Lighter, somehow. Emptier. But a different kind of empty — gone is the void that demands and claws at him — and his shoulders sag at the quiet that finally fills him. For the first time in months, he feels fine. 

And it sucks that he does, finally, because there’s one last thing he needs to do.

“Phil,” he mutters, and breaks into a coughing fit. There’s something sharp in his throat. “Phil,” he tries again, and is a little proud of himself for the strength and conviction in his voice — strength and conviction that he doesn’t really feel for himself. “Phil, please.”

Philza unwraps himself from Wilbur and staggers back, leaning against a piece of rubble that sticks out of the ground. 

Around them: solace. 

The night’s turned into the slightest shade of day, timid rays of sunshine poking from between bits of broken building and upturned concrete. It’s beautiful — if ‘beautiful’ is allowed to describe the ash that crawled out of a fire.

His father gives him a once-over before closing his eyes, nodding to himself. “You’re okay,” Phil says. “That’s good. Fuck. Wil. You’re okay.”

“Phil,” Wilbur presses. “Phil. You have to kill me.”

“No,” Phil says, without a single moment of hesitation. His eyes are still shut. 

“Look what I’ve done,” Wilbur tries. “Look around you. The whole city is fucking gone.”

Phil nods. “I know. ‘M just glad you’re okay.”

“I’m a monster. You have to- you have to kill me. Phil, please.”

“I know you are,” his father says. He sounds tired. Tired, relieved, nothing else. No hint of hatred, no righteous anger either. “I’m not going to kill you, Wil.”

Wilbur thrusts his hands into Phil’s chest. His skin is still stained a jet black, and he feels it like a second skin, wrapping around his arms up to his shoulders, stretching down his spine, black blood pumping through his veins. 

“Phil!” he yells. “Look! Look at me!” He bunches Phil’s shirt in his hands, pulls himself closer to his father. He’s on his knees, looking hopelessly up at Phil, tears gathering at the corners of his eyes. 

Phil opens his eyes, finally, looking down kindly on Wilbur’s face. He barely glances at his inky hands, and his eyes are tired, but he’s smiling, ever-so-hesitantly, and he just looks happy, against all odds.

“I don’t care,” Philza says, “you’re my son. I’m not going to… deny you again. I’ve… I’ve made that mistake once before.”

He runs a hand through Wilbur’s hair, and Wilbur can’t suppress the full-body shiver that overtakes him. It’s been so fucking long.

“You’re going to have to lose a son today,” Wilbur spits, trying and failing miserably to summon the cruelty he’d been capable of around Tommy. “Either you kill me now or I’ll find Tommy and I’ll finish the job.” He feels so out of breath, so weak, so out of options. “And if you let me live after that I’ll- I’ll kill Technoblade. I’ll kill Tubbo, Niki, their family, Quackity, Schlatt, Dream- everyone. I’ll destroy everything, Phil, please, please.”

Phil nods, still carding his fingers in Wilbur’s hair, working out the knots Wilbur hasn’t bothered to take care of. “You’re going to need a haircut, I think,” he mutters. “It’s been more than six months since your last one.”

“Phil,” Wilbur tries again, desperate, “I’m a dark creature. You can’t let me live, you can’t.”

His father sighs. An exasperated parent; standing in his doorway at 3 am when Wilbur promised to sleep hours ago. “Do you want to kill your brothers?”

Wilbur shuts his mouth.

“Do you want to kill your friends?” Phil asks. “What about everyone else? Did you want to blow up the city just for the sake of blowing it up?” 

He pauses, studying Wilbur’s face, picking out all the minute flinches in his expression. 

“You’re a dark creature, sure, but you’re not an evil one. I know you’re not, Wil.”

“But you- but you don’t know me-!”

“Maybe not.” Phil slides down the rubble, so that he’s eye-to-eye with Wilbur. “Not unless you let me in.”

“I’m not your son,” Wilbur whispers, “I’m not.” He coughs out a bark of laughter, thin and strained and so full of pain. “Your son- your Wilbur is dead. And I killed him- I did, I fucking killed him, I took him when he was young and I killed him-!”

Wilbur buries his head between his arms. Phil doesn’t reply, just breathes slowly, deeply, in rhythm with him.

“I wasn’t meant to live in the first place,” he says, “you have to kill me, you have to.”

There are still fingers in his hair.

“Phil, please. Let me die. Please, please let me die.”

He’s shivering. Everything about him aches quietly, like a bruise being put to sleep.

Phil sighs. “Didn’t you hear me?” he asks, a little playfully. “I don’t care. Whoever ‘Wilbur’ was before you came along… I never knew him, and he’s not my son. You are though, and that- you’re enough.”

He’s pulled out all the stops, and it’s only now that he really, really realises, that his drive was born out of a need and not a want. And no one told him that somewhere along the way, wanting turned out to be enough. 

“If you don’t kill me,” he whispers, barely loud enough for Phil to hear, “you’ll be stuck here forever. You can’t go home. Don’t you- don’t you want to go back? Isn’t that why you- why you- hurt me- in the first place…?”

“It was,” Phil says. “But I don’t want to go back, not anymore.” 

There’s a smile in his voice, a light lilt that makes Wilbur close his eyes and want to remember the sound forever. This is all there is to it, really: a father, his son, their tattered family. 

“I’ve got everything I want right here.” 

A pause. Wilbur feels a pair of lips press against the crown of his head. 

“Let’s go home, Wil.”

Sunlight on his skin.

Wilbur nods.

Chapter Text

The story has a happy ending. 

And this is how that ending goes:

A baby is born the day the Angel of Death descends onto the Earth to smite an ancient evil. Ten years later, they meet, and they make a ragtag family of four beings that were never supposed to fit together: a warrior of the Nether, a spirit of chaos, Prime’s beloved angel, and a regular human boy.

When the boy turns nineteen, the angel’s past comes back to haunt him, taking the boy as a host and threatening to destroy the city. The family hunts the boy down for six months and finally corners him in the Prime Church. But after a long fight, the darkness successfully overcomes the family and destroys the city.  

The boy — broken and changed from the ordeal of possession — resurfaces at the last second and begs his father to kill him, smite him, purge the darkness while it’s still in his body. The angel refuses, of course, and Prime looks kindly down on the family and burns the darkness away for them. 

Their story has a happy ending. 

Some things deserve to have one. 

Everything does, in truth, but it is easier to say ‘some’ than ‘every’ in a world that isn’t ready to accept dark things, broken things, things with wounds that can’t be healed by time alone. 

And when they don’t get a happy ending, they make one for themselves.

So, yes.

This story is a happy ending. 

Tommy may be a master of trickery, but Wilbur is a master of deception; he’s always been shrouded head-to-toe by white lies that make him greyer than he likes to pretend he actually is. Lying is easier when there’s a reason, and that reason is easier to accept when you’ve convinced yourself that it’s a good one. This is where black turns to grey turns to white, words emblazoned in good intentions and hiding deceit underneath.

So Wilbur doesn’t feel as guilty when he tells Phil what to say, and so Phil doesn’t look as guilty when he relays the story to the citizens. They accept it — of course they do — but Wilbur doesn’t miss the way they sidestep him when he passes by, the way they look at him from the corners of their eyes like they’re expecting him to snap at any moment.

This is what oblivion looks like, superficial suspicion and merciful ignorance. It makes him feel bad, just a little, but not entirely. 

There is a happy ending.

Nowadays, he tries his best not to care about them, about what they think of him; his emotions feel weary, feel worn away, hiding just beneath the surface of his skin and fluttering like smoke in the air.

Nowadays he takes it in stride — takes all of his guilt and his anxieties and his fear of ostracisation and buries their ashes deep down where the sun can’t reach them anymore, shovels dirt on them, sticks a nice, blank headstone at one end, and then pisses on the grave.

Nowadays he feels burnt down to the bone, layers of skin peeled back and exposing the hurt underneath. His breaths come out hot, come out laced with fire, and it takes everything in him not to force bucketfuls of ice down his throat to drown out the memories of getting torched alive. 

(This is a happy ending.

It has to be. 

Wilbur refuses to believe otherwise.)

And they rebuild. 

Brick by brick, they rebuild the city. 

It’s easier done than said, fortunately, they have magic and they have brute force and they have an angel, too, like it isn’t a big deal. It takes six months to destroy a city but only a few days to rebuild it, despite the way the saying goes. 

(What hurts more: destroying one’s home or destroying oneself? Wilbur will never know the answer.)

The same cannot be said for the citizens’ lives. And despite everything, Wilbur thinks that maybe they’re all just glad the explosion didn’t claim anyone.

They’re wary of him, though, he’s sure of it. He knows it. They look at him and see a monster first, a person second, and it doesn’t matter that they believe the story he and Phil crafted for them because he comes back wrong and broken and changed and they must’ve sensed it on him — a deep-seated guilt that he can’t quite ward away.

He isn’t sure whether they want him around, whether they want him alive at all, but they stick him in solitary confinement (the evac site doesn’t really have the resources to lock him up in maximum security, so all they could do was make him stay alone in a tent and watch him, really) and every day, someone comes in and interrogates him or tries to exorcise him or makes him walk through a salt circle, but every day, he pulls through.

The problem is that he wasn’t supposed to survive the fire. And when he did, he wasn’t supposed to survive the sword. But he pulled through both, and there’s nothing they can do or say that will kill him anymore. 

(This is his body, first and foremost. He isn’t sure when he stopped feeling that way but… it’s nice to admit it again. 

It’s nice. 

This is his body, and he’s not going anywhere.)

In a month, they’ll let him out and he’ll open his eyes to a city frozen forever in time, remade and renewed. He’s going to walk its streets as a person and not a liar, for the very first time, and he’s going to find his way back to his family to say, without the shadow of a doubt: I’m home.

So here he is, and he’s proud to declare:

The end.

20.

Wilbur sinks into the passenger seat with a long sigh. In his periphery, Technoblade glares on ahead, tapping the steering wheel with a hoof, shoulders tense and arms stiff. Wilbur doesn’t blame him — he’s fidgeting with the hem of his jumper himself, one leg bouncing and feeling like it’s very, very hard to breathe in the acrid air.

“Close the door,” Technoblade says, clipped and gruff.

Wilbur obliges, and closes the passenger door with a little more force than necessary. He pretends like he doesn’t flinch at the sound.

Technoblade starts up the car and the engine coughs to life, old and weak and sputtering. He’s still tapping the steering wheel, as if waiting for something to happen, someone to say anything at all, maybe something to crash through the windshield and deck him in the face. 

The sound of his tapping does something funny to Wilbur’s stomach. It grips his insides tight, shaking his guts around, a little too reminiscent of the emptying ache that- (no, no, no no no)

“Where are we going?” Wilbur blurts out, if only to break his train of thought, if only to interrupt the silence screeching into his ears.

He fixes his eyes on the dashboard. Technoblade does the same.

“I’m going out on a hunt,” Technoblade says, extra emphasis on the singularity of the pronoun.

Wilbur swallows a thick block in his throat. He can hear his heart in his ears, can feel his pulse thudding against the walls of his brain.

“Where?”

“Edge of the city.”

And because Wilbur can’t help himself: “Case?”

From his periphery, he makes out a twitch in Technoblade’s face. Half a grimace, gone too quickly for anyone else to perceive. But Wilbur isn’t an ‘anyone else’ — he hasn’t been for a while, and he refuses to stoop back down to that level of estrangement.

After a pregnant pause, Technoblade answers him. “Loose hellhounds. A baby warlock forgot his binding spells, and the hounds are prowling around and looking to maul him.”

Wilbur nods woodenly. Something squeezes in him. “Right.” Then, a little braver, a little more hesitantly, a little quieter, he asks, “Can I come with you?”

Technoblade stops tapping the steering wheel. Wilbur holds his breath, suppresses the desire to hunch in on himself or better yet, fuck off right out the car and run until his legs can’t bear to run anymore, never look back, hide, hide, they’re coming for him, they’re going to kill him, he needs to find somewhere dark and somewhere hidden and he doesn’t care if this is the fifth night in a row that he’s going to have to sleep on the floor as long as they won’t find him-

“Why?” Technoblade asks. 

He knows. He should know. 

Technoblade is far smarter than Wilbur can really comprehend, can really admit to knowing, and he should know — by all means unspoken and unforgiven — what Wilbur is trying to do; what he’s trying to achieve here, extending an olive branch, dry and wilted and dead, but an olive branch nevertheless.

Wilbur feels his head begin to spin, begin to thump loudly with his heartbeat and feels his heart begin to churn, begin to race along with his mind. 

If Technoblade knows, then he must be staring at the olive branch, must see Wilbur’s heart worn bare and broken on his sleeves, and he’s asking why, he’s asking why, of all questions, as if why can answer the how, can answer the who and the what and the when and the where.

He looks down. His hands are shaking, balled up into fists, and he’s gripping them a little too tightly for his own comfort but he can’t say that they’re sheet white, because they’re not. And for a second he’s overtaken by the image of them drenched in blood, drenched in dirt, drenched in shadows and power and a deep, deep fear of the dark — a fear of the dark and a fear of the depths and a fear of walls closing in all around him, the way they cage and confine and claim-

Something lands on his lap and he jerks.

“Here.”

Wilbur looks up at Technoblade and he’s still not meeting his eyes. But he looks down and realises, oh, Techno’s tossed him a pair of hunting gloves, made of leather and padded at the knuckles. 

He slips them on quickly — they’re warm, a little too warm for his liking (these days he can’t help but feel like he’s burning up, like he’s carrying with him a fever he can’t hope to dispel, like he’s going to combust if he so much as breathes the wrong way), but the tradeoff is so worth it — and he feels better immediately.

He flexes his hands, feels the gloves fit perfectly around his fingers, and he is glad — just a little, just marginally — that he can no longer feel the cold sweat gathering in his palms. For good measure, he pulls the sleeves of his jumper further down. 

“Thanks,” he says quietly. 

Technoblade doesn’t acknowledge it any further. The car still isn’t moving. They’re both still staring intently ahead, trying to read each other’s minds, playing the kind of word game neither are good at.

“This is a solo hunt,” Technoblade finally says. “I’ve done this kind of stuff many times before, and on my own too. I don’t need your help.”

“I know,” Wilbur says, his heart in his throat.

“You do?” Technoblade asks. Challenging him.

And Wilbur nods, slowly, then shakes his head. “I do,” he says. “I just… I don’t know, man. I got worried.”

“I’ll be fine,” Technoblade says, almost snaps at him, and gone unspoken between them: without you. “I don’t need your help,” he repeats. “Like I said, I’ve done this before.”

Wilbur clamps his mouth shut; his stomach is suddenly, sharply in turmoil. They both know it’s true, he has to remind himself. They both know that it’d be easier without him, if they’d never known each other — that it’d be easier to shoot a stranger than it was to shoot a brother. 

They’re sat closer than they’ve been for months, now. Wilbur can’t help but wonder if he’s allowed to break the strange tension between the two of them, if he’s allowed to decide that they get to ignore the rift between them, if he can cross that distance and touch his brother’s Technoblade’s shoulder (first and foremost he isn’t sure if he’s allowed to call them brothers again), maybe, or his arm, that maybe he could take his fingers and press them to his own lips and hope that the gesture includes an apology, too.

But he can’t. He thinks of Technoblade’s crossbow, the tip of an arrow aimed right between his eyes. He thinks of Technoblade’s sword coming down towards his head. He thinks of power gathering between his fingers, and the way he’d been so close to ripping his brother’s molecules apart. 

He thinks of all that, and feels like he can’t breathe. The idea of touching Technoblade at all sickens him. So he continues to just think of it when neither of them are willing to breach the barrier.

Wilbur looks at his gloved hands in dismay. You don’t want words, you don’t want gestures, he thinks, bitterly, what the hell am I supposed to do?

“Do you want me to come with you?” he asks, softly.

A pause. “No.”

“…Do you want me to leave?”

Technoblade doesn’t answer. And this can mean- it can mean fucking anything, and Wilbur will be the first to admit that yes, he’s scared, he’s fucking terrified — Technoblade has weapons on him, weapons in the backseat, and he’s shaking because he’s weak and he’s scared of Technoblade. 

Because there are weapons in the backseat, and Wilbur won’t reach for them anymore but he isn’t sure he can say the same for his brother.

There are weapons in the backseat. Neither of them are moving.

“You were already leaving,” Wilbur presses, “but you saw me and stopped,” because he’s stupid, and he’s learnt that stupid is sometimes a fool’s way of saying brave, and it might take more than bravery to mend a broken thing but it’s always bravery that kickstarts the process. “Why’d you stop the car?”

Technoblade has the upper hand here, has the armour and the weapons and the steering wheel in both hands, gripped so tight that his knuckles are turning white, turning ashen. 

Next to him, Wilbur shakes in his long sleeves and his gloves, hiding everything and nothing at all. The words spill out of him, strength in conviction, and conviction in guilt.

He lost his powers and his bravado, lost such a huge part of himself that some days he feels too small for his own skin, like he’s completely burnt out into darkness (into void) but he’s the strongest he’s ever been, weak and quivering and so open that it hurts to be.

“I’ll park the car a block away from the active site,” Technoblade decides, after a long, long pause, and Wilbur breathes. “And I’ll call for you when I need your help for the clean-up.”

“Okay,” Wilbur says.

“If I see you out the car before then, I’ll shoot you,” Technoblade says, no bite left in his words. And then, “I don’t trust you.”

Wilbur nods. “With what?”

I don’t trust you not to listen to me. I don’t trust you not to betray me. I don’t trust you not to get in my way. I don’t trust you not to still foster your shadows deep and dark, to be a leech that craves nothing but fear, chaos, pain, because you’ve only ever used me for what I can give you and I don’t trust you when you say we’re made of family and not symbiosis. 

And most painfully, wishful thinking whispers, I don’t trust you not to get hurt.

Techno sighs, loosens his grip on the steering wheel. He turns his head away, pretending to check the wing mirror. Wilbur mirrors him, leans away from the middle and tries to get himself comfortable in his own seat.

“Yourself,” Techno finally says, and then they’re off.

The thing about burning bridges is that eventually, Wilbur wants to see the other side again.

It’s a strange feeling, creeping up his spine and skittering around the back of his neck, like a black sort of sludge that leaves a trail behind, all guilt, all regret, and every day he wakes up with tears on his cheeks, surrounded by people but feeling horribly alone.

(Nowadays he feels empty, like he’s expecting to walk out the door and find the house, the city, the world dark, deserted, and desolate.

Like sometimes the silence gets to him and he’s scrambling to find white noise or music or talking but it still doesn’t fix shit. It rings in his ears, a constant tinnitus that isn’t really tinnitus, more his brain trying to figure out how to navigate the new void he’s thrust himself into.

And these are the moments that he wishes that Phil could’ve been a little bit more cruel, could’ve seen him for the monster that he is was rather than the son he’s trying to be, because no one told him that aftermaths could feel like this — hollow and overwhelming and terribly confusing.)

(Part of him is stuck to the past, wishing there was no aftermath to survive at all. 

Part of him clings onto tomorrow like he doesn’t know how else to live. 

The rest of him is trying to get by, day by day.)

This is how he finds himself back on the doorstep of a house by the sea, fiddling with his gloved hands, waiting for the door to swing open and hanging on to a fleeting hope hitching high at the back of his throat. 

It’s a nice day out. Chilly weather. Typical Sunday morning. Winter is coming; he can tell by the way everyone else has started dressing up with bulky clothes; he’s gotten numb to extreme temperatures and instead feels a weird, constant mix of physical hot and mental cold that refuse to cancel each other out. Because memories don’t cancel each other out either, he remembers burning up into an inferno and he remembers months spent being sub-zero.

He’s not in any pain, though, and this is a relief. He doesn’t feel much of anything anymore, and he isn’t sure whether it’s because the universe has finally taken pity on him, or because he’s finally grown numb to the mortifying ordeal of existing.

There aren’t any rewards, either. It’s just him — alive, and being alive isn’t a reward as much as it is a punishment, and it isn’t either as much as it is a constant, a fleeting, fragile constant that yearns to slip between his fingers at the slightest nudge, but a constant nevertheless. 

At the crux of it, Wilbur is tired. 

He is tired, he is lost, and he has nothing left to do but pick up whatever pieces he can salvage, and he has nowhere left to go but home.

The door swings open.

Fundy looks up at him, ears twitching. His eyes narrow as soon as he realises it’s Wilbur, and he lifts his chin and works his jaw, pursing his lips as if it can make him any bigger, any taller than Wilbur is. 

“So,” Fundy starts, and his tone is icy, “to what do I owe the pleasure, Soot?”

Right. He’s an outsider, now, an outsider trying too hard to fit in, and the news has been brought up to the open. He sowed his seeds, and now he reaps them.

“I’m only here to see Tubbo and Niki,” he mutters, stepping back, shrinking into himself in a way that he’s only recently learned how to do. 

Fundy doesn’t answer. He locks them into a staring contest. He hasn’t shaved in a while — the furs on his chin have grown out into somewhat of a pre-beard. He looks good with it, but Wilbur bites his tongue on the remark.

“They know I’m here,” he adds, bristling under the heat of Fundy’s glare. A pause. Wilbur breaks eye contact first. “We- we, uh, we were planning on going out together, today.”

“And what kinds of ‘plans’ are you taking them out on,” Fundy asks flatly. Wilbur notes the shift in subject, the shift in blame, because despite the fact that things are fine- better now, they all still need someone to pile all that blame on, someone to parade around as a black sheep. This ‘someone’ so happens to be him, and Wilbur lets the burden envelop him, wearing it like a glove but not consume him whole.

Before Wilbur can answer and let his tongue run free, he hears a shout from inside the house. He peeks inside as Fundy turns. Tubbo bounds down the stairs like a hurricane and Niki follows suit, meeting Wilbur’s eyes as soon as he’s in view.

“Wilbur!” Tubbo yells, barreling into him. He wraps his arms around Wilbur’s torso and Wilbur, taken aback at the sudden affection, returns the hug, albeit a little awkwardly. 

There’s a familiar bump on Tubbo’s back, hidden underneath under a loose, dark hoodie. Wilbur feels his heart wilt a little in disappointment and hurt; Tubbo wears an ammo sling, a precaution, a clear sign of distrust, and his arms are tense around Wilbur’s torso like he knows that Wilbur would catch on, too.

“Hey, boss man,” Wilbur says as soon as they part, keeping his tone as genial as possible. His throat feels dry, all of a sudden. He looks at Niki, smiles at her and hones in on the strain in her own lips. “Niki! Hey, uh, hi,” he coughs, “it’s… it’s been a while.”

Niki plants both of her palms on his shoulders and presses her right cheek to his in greeting. “Wil,” she says curtly, kindly; the two of them are so, so much better at acting than he is, and he’s had nineteen years to learn. “It’s good to see you.”

He manages a nod.

Tubbo elbows Fundy’s forearm. “Fun-dy… were you trying to scare him off?”

“No!” Fundy yelps, jerking away from Tubbo’s elbow. “I mean. Well… maybe a little…?”

Wilbur suppresses the instinct to quip.

“Okay, dad,” Niki jokes, giggling. Her smile turns a little less strained. Wilbur misses this. He keeps silent. “We’re just going out with him, you don’t need to worry about us.”

“I know, but…” Fundy huffs, makes an aborted gesture with his arm. “You know.” He glances at Wilbur from the corner of his eyes. “He’s… y’know. Or was, but you get the… the point… right…”

Fundy trails off, and Wilbur feels like he’d rather be literally anywhere but here. A part of him, hurt and defensive and still made of jagged edges, prepares his words for him: still am, still am, would you like to see the darkness in me the darkness that I am, do you want to feel my pain my hunger my roiling emptiness that I have in me, you are a fool and you have been lied to and you believe your white lies but here is the truth, the black truth, the dark and ugly truth that even I want to reject, I am the monster under your childhood bed I am the darkness edging your nightmares I am the void that pulls you into sleep and I will be the demon that greets you awake-

The rest of him is kinder, at least, tries to be kinder to more than just the people around him, and so it takes this writhing part of him into its hands and embraces it, puts it in a box labelled ‘resentment’, and puts that box away gently. It’ll come back, eventually. But it’ll come back a little smaller, a little less bitter, and one day he’ll learn to wear it like he wears his guilt.

There’s no point in hurting anyone else, he’s decided. He loves them too much to make excuses.

So he stays silent, and he stays sad. He lets Tubbo and Niki lead him away and tries his damnedest to ignore the dirty looks sent his way. He hides as much of himself as possible — gloves and long sleeves and high collars — and he’s a master at the art of deception but he is a master at the art of hiding away, too. 

And when it comes time to open up, he finds that he’s horribly, horribly desperate to, and yet for all his wants he can’t, not really.

“Sorry about Fundy,” Niki says once they’re further down the street. The sea breeze blows in her hair, and her eyes are sparkling in the sunlight. “He’s cautious. He doesn’t want us to get hurt, you know how it is, right?”

Her tone is clipped. He shudders. All façades dropped, all pretenses forgotten — there’s little more left than the ashes of their burnt bridge, billowing in the wind.

“Right,” Wilbur mutters. He shoves his hands into his pockets. “I… I wouldn’t hurt you, though. You know that.”

“Do we?” Tubbo asks harshly, all traces of geniality gone from his expression.

Wilbur shuts the fuck up.

“Do we, really?” Tubbo presses, turning away from him.

Tubbo has weapons on him. He knows how to kill. And Wilbur isn’t as strong as he used to be, couldn’t fight back even if he wanted to — wouldn’t.

“You did hurt us,” Niki says, matter-of-factly. She says it patiently, kind in all the ways she was and always will be, but she wants answers, closure, and she isn’t taking any of his bullshit anymore. “And we know what you did to Techno, to Tommy, to Phil. And we’re-“ she gestures between the three of them, “not family. We don’t have the privilege of being your family.”

“And, you know,” Tubbo scoffs. “Not like you didn’t use me as collateral damage to get to Tommy, but-“

“You hurt my brother,” Niki says quietly. “How do you expect me to forgive you? How do you expect any of us to?”

“Because that’s all any of us are to you, right? Collateral damage.”

Sometimes he wishes that the story is true, that any and all responsibility for his actions can be piled onto a vaguely-described dark entity, but this is the price he pays when he tries to fix what he has left — he offers them honesty, they offer him responsibility, and he makes the trade with burning hands and unforgivable promises.

“I wouldn’t,” he tries. “I won’t. Not again, never again.”

“But you did,” Tubbo presses. “And we need a little more insurance coming from you than just, y’know, words. You lied to us too.” His face twists into a deep scowl. “How can you expect us to trust you after, y’know, lying to us for years on end?”

Here is a truth, because he doesn’t know how to lie without feeling like he wants to take it back the instant it’s out his mouth anymore: Wilbur has no fucking clue how to fix things. He tries, and he speaks, and they don’t trust him as far as they can throw him, and all of a sudden he’s reminded that this has been a ship sinking since day one, and Philza shouldn’t have spared him at the end, and he shouldn’t have hid from his people at all, and he shouldn’t have tried to seek a home to begin with, and he, and he, and he-

And he loves them.

He burns with it; fire in his throat and fire down his spine, and once, he fought to live, and then he fought to die, so what’s left for him now? What happens in the aftermath, what option left does he have, how in the name of Prime can he hope to mend the relationships he’d so liberally burnt away?

“I’m sorry,” Wilbur says softly. Nowadays, he’s nothing but soft, nothing but the quiet ashes at the edge of a cold wind. “I don’t know what to say, I don’t know what to do, I’m- I’m sorry. I want to make it up to you guys but… I’m sorry, I don’t- I don’t know how…”

Niki isn’t looking at him. “You hurt us. You hurt Tubbo-“ she rests a hand on Tubbo’s shoulder and squeezes him closer protectively, “and you destroyed our home. You can’t fix this with only a few apologies. You know that.”

Her tone is strong, firm, like the rest of her is.

She’s one of the bravest people he knows, and he’s surrounded by brave people, people who weren’t afraid to stand up to his darkness, people who weren’t afraid to push back, people who weren’t afraid to level a crossbow with his eyes and-

People who weren’t afraid to try and save him.

They’re kind, and he loves them. As harsh as their words are, he’s well aware that they’re giving him a second chance by agreeing to meet him, and he loves them. They’re his people, and he loves them, far more than he has any desire to turn tail and run away, hide until he can’t hide anymore, wait for death to claim him, finally.

Niki looks away as she extends an olive branch. He wants to take it, snatch it from her hands and grip it close to his chest where nothing will ever take it away from him. He wants to offer them his own olive branch and grovel at their feet if only for a chance that they’d forgive him. He wants to run, he wants to run, he wants to run.

He needs time. 

He needs to fix things. He needs to mend the things he’d lost. He needs to do it, because the alternative haunts him everytime he closes his eyes.

“I’m sorry,” he says, squeezing his eyes shut, trembling. This was never going to be easy at all. “I’m trying. I’ll make it up to you, I- I swear, I don’t want to hurt you, I- I never did, I promise-“

He pours his heart into an apology, after everything, and the aftermath hurts him like never before. 

He wants out. He wants back. He wants to run.

He wants, he wants, he wants-

He wants to try, however, needs to try, and this desire scorches him alive. It’s the least he can do, after everything.

They turn away, rightfully dissatisfied, and he tries again.

Whatever it takes, he thinks, until he is forgiven he makes things right.

“Focus,” Phil mutters.

Wilbur grunts in response, already neck-deep in concentration as he balls his right hand into a claw, fingers stiff and trembling. He furrows his eyebrows, grits his teeth, reaches deep into himself and- and he finds- 

Nothing.

He finds nothing.

He glares at the pencil laying still on the table and tries again, tries harder. He strains himself to summon that easy strength he possessed, that he used to tear molecules apart and remake objects from the ground up. He’d been able to throw around his family like ragdolls, when they fought that night, and now he can’t even make a pencil budge. 

“You need to calm down,” Phil tells him, from across the table. “Magic takes focus, Wil, magic comes from the heart. Magic comes from within. Focus on that.”

Wilbur scowls, moreso to himself. The pencil refuses to fucking move. Frustration builds inside him, and a stray train of thought wonders — perhaps if he hadn’t tried to destroy himself, destroy the darkness and the power and the sheer volume of its strength — before he shuts it down as violently as he can. 

(Because as repulsed as he’d been with his own nature, there was — and always will be — a part of him that revelled in the feeling, the feeling of immense potential and deep, dark energy all at his fingertips, rushing giddy through his body, of the knowledge that he could end someone’s life, end it all, with the mere snap of his fingers. 

Because as much as he wanted it gone, he is still human, was raised human, will always cling to his humanity, and all humans crave power and control with no exception. Or maybe they don’t. Maybe there was always something wrong with him.

Because as good as he wants to be, maybe he just… can’t.)

No. 

Never.

This is his aftermath. These are the bitter fruits of his wretched labour. He may regret hurting people but he will not, cannot, should not, regret destroying himself.

(And even then, he can’t possibly entertain the idea that the conclusion he reached, years ago as he stewed in fear and loathing, is wrong.

Dying is painful. Dying feels like getting burnt alive by the brunt of your own explosion. Dying feels like getting ripped apart, atom by atom, as he had so liberally ripped molecules apart. Dying is painful, and Wilbur is lucky to have survived it, but even then. 

Even then.)

“I’m trying,” Wilbur grits out. “I’m- I can’t, there’s nothing there.”

“Every creature is gifted with magic within,” Phil says, his voice irritatingly kind. “Even humans, pure or otherwise, can draw on the magic of the world around them.”

The pencil doesn’t budge.

“Then I don’t think I’m part of every creature,” he snaps. “This is pointless. This is going nowhere! I can’t, I can’t, there’s just- there’s fucking nothing within-!”

Phil sighs, just a little too loudly. And Wilbur flinches away from Phil instinctively, his frustration shuttering into fear, into dread, into a deeply-ingrained sense of run hide get away they’ll find you-

“Wil,” Phil says quietly. 

(Even then, he can’t help but be absolutely terrified of the people who he — once and a long time ago, when he was far too naïve for his own good — trusted to never hurt him. 

Even then, he hurt, and he got hurt, and the aftermath, the aftermath-! What the hell is he supposed to do with the aftermath?)

Things will never be the same again, Wilbur thinks. This fact is obvious and hopelessly so, and he will never live a day henceforth without feeling the constant need to check behind his back, will never sleep another night without preferring the hard, cold floor, will never look Phil in the eye again and see a father first and an angel second. 

But as scared as he is, as scared as he knows he always will be, he looks up at Phil.

And Phil isn’t angry, not one bit. 

Wilbur can tell because he knows Phil, knows what he looks like angry or irritated, and there isn’t a single trace of that on his face.

Perhaps — and he thinks this with utmost hesitance — some letting go is in order. Perhaps he isn’t strong enough to let go, but he will, one day, and he’s getting there. He’s trying to get there.

He’s trying, he’s trying, he’s trying-

“Sorry,” he mutters. “I just, it was so easy before. You said you saw what I could do, and- and it… it was just… so easy.”

He closes his fist, picturing the way he’d shred the pencil down to its last atom if only he had, if only- if he- 

Nothing happens.

“I’m not as strong as I used to be,” he says, “and, and it’s good, that I’m not, because I can’t- I can’t hurt anyone again, but…”

He trails off, looking away from Phil. 

“Wil,” his father repeats.

“I’m trying,” Wilbur says. “I’m, I’m trying, but it feels like I can’t- I can’t do anything.” His voice starts to climb as something lodges itself in his throat and spits salt onto his tongue. “I can’t fucking do anything right. I’m trying, of course I am, but I can tell it’s not enough, it’s never going to be enough, and it feels like me, just being here, just existing, it’s hurting other people and- and Phil, I was supposed to die that day, and I wish, I wish-“

Phil makes a sudden move to grab his hand. Wilbur jerks away, violently, eyes squeezing shut and muscles stiffening as he prepares for-

(Fire.)

-for… for nothing.

“Don’t say that,” Phil says. 

Slowly, Wilbur lets himself relax. He sits and tries not to squirm under his father’s gaze, and he reaches out across the table to let Phil hold his hand. 

“You can’t possibly mean that, Wil,” Phil continues, “you don’t, I know you don’t.” His voice is pained. His face is pained, when Wilbur eventually looks back at him. “I know, I know it’s hard, now, and… and I can’t give you all the answers because I’m just one person, I can’t fix everything.”

He squeezes Wilbur’s hand.

“And you’re… you’re nineteen, Wil, and you’re only one person, you can’t push yourself to fix everything, too.”

And it’s strange, because now he’s hyperaware of the way Phil squeezes his fingers, the way the touch feels desperate, a little greedy, as if his father is scared that he might disappear all of a sudden. Wilbur has never been averse to touch — but things change, people grow, people learn to be afraid, and it’s been so long since he last got to play-fight Techno or ruffle Tommy’s hair or Prime forbid, hug his father. 

Wilbur is greedy. He hurts, he destroys, and when it comes time to face the loss he caused, he wants it all back. 

“I’m technically centuries old,” Wilbur mutters, because he doesn’t know what else to say.

Phil shakes his head. “And I’ve technically been here since before Prime made the universe, and Tommy has technically been around since the conception of humanity, and Techno is technically the youngest in our family at twenty-two,” he says. 

“That’s… cursed,” Wilbur says. “I don’t like that thought at all.”

“Well yeah, ‘cause you’ve been alive, really alive, for only nineteen years,” Phil says. “My point still stands, Wil. You don’t need to fix everything.” He leans in, meets Wilbur’s eyes head-on. “You can’t. You shouldn’t have to force yourself to.”

“Easy for you to say,” Wilbur says, his voice wet. “Easier said than fucking done. What do I have, Philza, if I don’t- if I can’t fix everything, what the hell do I have left?”

He sniffs and wipes his nose with his other hand. And when that’s not enough, he pulls the front of his shirt and dabs at his eyes. This isn’t happening — he’s not crying, he can’t be crying, he hadn’t even cried the day he was meant to die — and yet the facts lay themselves out for him: he’s sitting at a table with his father across him, they’re holding hands and talking about him, and he’s starting to sob against the weight of everything pressing down on his shoulders.

The weight of everything he created and tried to shirk when he thought he could escape the consequences.

Wilbur hates this, he decides. He hates this, and he hates himself, and there will never again come a day where he is grateful for Phil’s mercy.

“Nothing,” he says. He smiles blankly up at Phil, letting the tears flow freely down his cheeks. Phil has seen him at his worst, and now he will see him at his weakest. “Nothing whatsoever, Phil, I… I had… everything, and now, and now-!” 

He rips his hand away from Phil’s grip and gestures outwards. 

“You’ve seen how they treat me, how they look at me! My friends, my own people, Phil! There is nothing left for me out there-“ he points at his chest, “and there is nothing left, in here, Phil, no matter how hard you try to convince me that I’m not too far lost, that I’ve still got some- some magic in me, that whatever is inside is dark but isn’t evil or what-have-you-!”

Wilbur stands up, heaving deep breaths in and out, in and out, emotions bursting in him, frustration and bitterness and an all-encompassing feeling of confusion coagulating into something he doesn’t know how to name anymore. 

He tears off both his gloves and slams both palms flat on the table. He leans in, glares directly into Phil’s too-kind, too-warm eyes. Let Phil be reminded of the monster, the darkness, the shade of what was once great and terrible, the shadow of shadows — his son.

“Can’t you see, Phil? Look at this. Look at me!” he yells. “You didn’t save me, you didn’t tame the monster, you could never! You only left it to starve when it clipped its own claws, and now what, now what, Phil?” He drops his voice into a low, sinister growl, as venomously as he can remember how to. “I have not changed from the man I was, I will never fucking change, and I would destroy the city again, hurt my people a thousand times over, if it meant that you- that you’d see me as the monster I am, have always been!”

Wilbur laughs. A scared, broken sound. Fitting.

“I’ll say it, I’ll fucking say it because I mean it, I do: I wish you had killed me back there, I wish you had let me burn up with the fucking city!” He leans back. “I was trying to evade the consequences of my actions, Dad, can’t you see how selfish I am? Because now, now, look at this-“

He splays his arms out wide on both sides and gives Phil his best chesire grin.

“-I have nothing!” he proclaims. 

He’s still crying. He sobs, once, and it breaks him.

And then, a little less proudly, his façade dropping like a dead fly: 

“…I have nothing.”

He wipes his nose with the back of his hand and steps back.

“…You’ve got me,” Phil says, after a pause. 

He says it with no note of hesitation whatsoever, says it with the kind of conviction that Tommy had while trying to save him, that Techno had while trying to kill him, that Wilbur had while trying to kill himself. 

Phil stands up and walks around the table slowly towards Wilbur, keeping eye contact with him as if he’ll run the moment he looks away. 

“You’ve got Techno,” Phil says. “You’ve got Tommy. We’re family, Wil, you will always have us.”

“Sure,” Wilbur says, and he no longer has the energy to pretend, “because you weren’t looking to kill me for nineteen years, and Techno doesn’t hate me and isn’t disgusted by my very presence, and Tommy- and Tommy…”

He shuts his mouth.

Phil holds him gently by the shoulders. “Techno will come around, mate, you know he will,” he says, “and Tommy’s forgiven you a long time ago. And I… Wilbur, have you forgotten?”

Phil pulls him in, and Wilbur lets it happen. His father’s embrace feels too warm, too tight, and going six months on the run has left his lanky body even skinnier so he no longer fits into Phil’s arms like he used to. Wilbur resists the urge to squirm, and instead lifts two shaking arms and wraps them around his father’s torso.

And then — the wings.

The last time Phil wrapped his wings around the both of them, Wilbur was burning alive. Now, he’s in the safety of his own home, alone with his father and his anger, and still he cannot let go of a heat wave running down his spine, phantom pains along his limbs and broken soul — where he once felt the darkness once curdle in him as a writhing mass of ice, there’s nothing left but charred walls and ash, soot, lining his insides. 

(Ash, the product of incomplete combustion; soot, the product of incomplete destruction.)

Philza holds Wilbur tight, wings settling around him and feathers brushing against his skin. 

Unconditional love. 

Unconditional love. 

Unconditional love, Wilbur reminds himself, and the more he says it the less shaky his conviction is. 

“Always,” Phil murmurs, “always, and forever, you hear me?”

Some letting go is definitely in order, he decides, and it’s about time he starts with the person he finds it easiest to hurt. 

“Your brothers love you, Wil. You know they do. You hurt them, and they’ll forgive you despite that, because, because we’re family! And family are… the people, that you choose to forgive, time and time again.”

He pulls back, eyes twinkling as he looks up at Wilbur. 

“Family are the people you choose to let hurt you, in the first place.” 

Phil smiles. Wilbur can almost believe him.

“And you-“ Phil places a hand directly over Wilbur’s heart, “will always have family. You will always have us. No matter what.”

Wilbur closes his eyes, brows furrowing as he breathes deeply. 

“You aren’t selfish, mate.” Phil cards a hand slowly through Wilbur’s hair, and Wilbur shivers, despite everything. He wants this to last forever. “You weren’t trying to evade shit, you wanted to die. You’re not selfish, you don’t deserve to die, you- you… you’re my son,” Phil says, as if it can convey everything he means, “nothing can change that anymore.”

Angels are an exclusive race. Mysterious, mirthless, impossibly powerful, impossibly beautiful, impossibly indifferent. No one knows how they work, why they exist, why they do the things they do and smite the creatures they smite and spare the ones they love — and no one will ever know. 

But Phil is his father. Phil bleeds gold and forgets to use doors. Phil wakes up at the crack of dawn to vacuum the house. Phil has been alive for millions of years, and this life is a mere blip among countless others. Phil’s body is very unfortunately allergic to fur and that’s why he refuses to enter Techno’s room. Phil is an angel. Phil chose to be human. 

He is both, at the same time, and it’s ridiculous how seamlessly he switches between them. 

(Wilbur names his father ‘hypocrite’ at his angriest moments.)

And Phil loves him, unconditionally.

“What about everything else?” Wilbur whispers, wiping a tear from his eye. “I lost… so much. I chose to lose them, and I- I don’t know how to get them back. Whether I can get them back at all.” He looks back at Phil, and hopes. “How am I supposed to-?”

“You try,” Phil says, as if Wilbur doesn’t already know. “You love them. They love you. Everything that matters will fall into place, eventually, and the things that won’t… well… you let go of them, okay?” He squeezes Wilbur’s shoulder. “You let go of them, Wil, you can’t fix everything.”

Wilbur wants to run. Wilbur will always want to run. Wilbur will never again feel safe when he isn’t running.

Wilbur stands his ground.

He melts against his father’s hold, shivering against the fingers running through his hair, feeling far too young and far too old at the same time, a puzzle piece twisted beyond recognition into noise and pain and still- and still-

“You really, really need to cut your hair,” Phil mutters, and Wilbur laughs softly.

Wilbur jerks in his seat at the sound of someone knocking on his door. He recognises it immediately; too soft to be Tommy (though a man can hope), too firm to be Phil (though a man can fear), there can only be one person standing in front of his room — and his blood runs cold out of instinct.

“Wilbur,” says Techno’s muffled voice. Another series of knocks. 

He forces down the squirming feeling in his gut and takes a deep breath. “Yeah? What do you need?” he asks as evenly as he can.

“I need to talk to you,” is the answer. Wilbur’s heart squeezes. 

He stands slowly, sways in place until he’s sure he won’t keel over after a single step, and crosses his room in three long strides. 

He can’t be killed in his own house, in the safety of his own room, by his own b- by Techno — Techno hates him, yes, but he won’t do anything that can compromise the relative peace they’ve scrounged up for themselves, he won’t, he can’t.

Wilbur is greeted by the scowling face of Techno when he opens the door. His heart thunders in his ears. His fists clench. Techno is dressed in his pajamas and there are no weapons in sight but Wilbur still has a hard time breathing. He can’t help but remember that Techno may favour his crossbows and his swords but he very well has enough strength in him to crush Wilbur’s windpipe in one fist, easily.

Techno has more strength in his little pinky than Wilbur has in his whole fucking body, now. He’d have no way of fighting back.

“What do you need to talk about?” he asks, breathlessly.

Techno grunts, gestures inside the room. “Can I come in?”

Please don’t. “Sure,” Wilbur says, and steps to the side, opens the door a little wider to let Techno in.

Techno brushes past him and takes a seat at the edge of Wilbur’s bed, looking around the room as if he hasn’t been inside a million times before. And technically, he hasn’t — Wilbur blew up the city and the house wasn’t spared, and everything was rebuilt in a few days but there was no rebuilding the scratches on his wallpaper or the books arranged messily on his bookshelf or the numberless clock or the guitar mounted on a stand in one corner or the-

The memories. 

(The ship of Theseus — can Theseus himself truly call the ship his once all the old rot on the wood had been wiped clean in a baptism by fire? Wilbur blew up his city and Theseus dismantled his ship and in the end there really is no telling whether anything had been saved from the wreckage at all.)

Wilbur swallows and takes a seat at his desk, swivels his chair around to face Techno completely. He ignores the empty bookshelves as best as he can. He ignores the way Techno looks almost affronted at the thought that Wilbur no longer bothers to stock up on reading material. He ignores the way guilt strikes his heart. 

It’s been so, so long since he last sat down and read a good book.

“What’s up?” Wilbur starts, sitting on his hands when he has no idea what to do with them. 

Technoblade isn’t looking at him. “I was speaking to Phil earlier,” he says, “about you.”

“Okay,” Wilbur says, his throat suddenly, painfully dry. 

“About me, too,” Techno says. “Like we just talked, about things. And he told me- he, he told me. You know. One thing led to another. I think we talked for hours, and at the end he said- he.” 

Technoblade growls under his breath as his lips curl around his tusks. Wilbur balls up his fists.

“Okay, so- you know how Phil — immortal being, stuff of legends, local myth — has racked up like, dozens of names through his lifetime?” Techno asks.

Wilbur nods slowly. “Like… the Angel of Death-?”

“Yes, yeah, that,” Techno agrees, “Angel of Death, Grim Reaper, Harbinger of Bad News…”

“…Messenger of End Times, Abaddon, and, uh, He Who Claims?” Wilbur continues. 

“Apollyon, Warden over Deaths’s Dominion, the Grave Visage,” Techno says, as if they’re reciting the contents of a grocery list and not all the morbid names their immortal father has received over the aeons.

“Crowfather,” Wilbur adds.

“Crowfather,” Techno repeats, rolling his eyes. “Of course. How can I forget Crowfather.” He pauses, grimacing. “And after all this fuckin’ time, how could he have conveniently forgotten to tell me about ‘Blood God’?”

Wilbur’s eyes widen at the same time he gasps his mouth into an ‘o’ shape. He raises his eyebrows and blinks once, twice, and then rapidly, almost expecting the scene to change into something he can better categorise into ‘prank’ or ‘lie’, but no, Techno is still sat across him on his bed, arms crossed and face twisted into a half-pout, eyes fixed stubbornly onto the floor. 

The Blood God. Philza. Their father. Of course, it seems too obvious, too good, too funny to be true.

Wilbur fails to suppress the bark of laughter springing out of his throat. Techno glares in his direction and Wilbur immediately slaps a hand over his mouth, remembering. 

“Sorry,” he chokes out, “bad cough,” trying to disguise his misplaced amusement.

“I’m sure,” Techno deadpans. He leans forward in his seat, eyes narrowing slightly. “Imagine my surprise, right, when I’ve been the hunter acolyte to this… this big, faceless, all-powerful deity for years, and then tonight I find out that it’s been Dad the whole time.”

Wilbur doesn’t like Techno’s tone a single bit, the way his voice has dropped in pitch and volume, as if he’s divulging a dirty, dangerous secret to Wilbur. 

“Imagine that,” Techno growls. “Every hunt I offer to my deity, every time I ask for strength, every night I sit there and I pray and I play this goddamn guessing game and try to figure out what my deity wants — and he’s- he’s fuckin’ downstairs, right now, pourin’ himself a cup of the world’s blackest fuckin’ coffee at seven in the evenin’!”

“But… I thought…” Wilbur trails off, “I thought we didn’t have a coffee maker anymore,” because he doesn’t know what to say.

Techno rolls his eyes. “No thanks to you.”

Wilbur shrinks into his chair.

“And you know what the worst part is?” Techno asks. He doesn’t wait for Wilbur’s response. “The Blood God, right, this big, faceless, all-powerful deity, very popular, up there in every apprentice’s top choices for a patron if they don’t personally know a spirit or god already, right — there are hundreds, if not thousands, of hunters all around the fuckin’ world, praying to him every single day, not to mention the churches, the cults, the normal everyday folk lookin’ to seek blessing or vengeance or whatnot-!”

Techno is breathing heavily. Wilbur’s only ever seen him as agitated and out of breath once or twice in nine years. Almost ten- that is — Techno doesn’t get agitated, Techno doesn’t run out of breath, and Techno is ranting his whole heart out like he’s learnt a lesson or two from his more… eager to speak… brothers. 

“He never thought it’d be, you know, a good idea to tell me, his son, because he’s my father and also my deity and- Prime, this is stupid. It’s so stupid.”

Wilbur nods wordlessly. Like father, like son, he thinks absently. Secrets run in the family.

“It’s stupid,” Techno repeats. “What do you think, Wilbur?”

“I don’t know,” Wilbur answers. This isn’t his business to pry into or dictate the outcome of. He’s pretty sure he lost the right to pry and/or dictate anything Technoblade-related a good few months ago. 

Still, he sits, and he listens, and sometimes he even gathers enough balls to inch over the wall separating the both of them.

“Because I think- you know what I think, Wilbur?” Technoblade says, as if Wilbur hasn’t spoken at all. “I think, I think that I’m tired of being lied to by my family.”

“I-“ 

Wilbur clamps his mouth shut. 

“I think I’m tired of having lived my whole life thinking something was true, only to have it be completely upended by someone I thought I could trust,”  Techno continues. “And it sucks knowing that I’ve been living under the same roof as people who find lying as easy as breathing.”

“I’m sorry,” Wilbur blurts out. “I’m sorry I never told you.”

“Phil said the same thing to me,” Techno says, cocking his head. “And you know what I told him? I told him: Wilbur’s gonna say the same thing.” He laughs mirthlessly. “Your secrets aren’t mine to know. I don’t need to- I don’t want to know every gritty detail on your life. But what I do know, is that you can do better than an apology.”

“Okay,” Wilbur says, nodding. He wishes he had the foresight to put on his gloves before Techno came in. He wishes so badly that he can do something, anything, with his hands — he feels at a loss for words without gesturing. “I don’t know what you want, though. I don’t know what else I can give you.”

“How about the truth?” Techno asks.

And for the first time in far, far too long, he meets Wilbur’s eyes. 

Wilbur can’t breathe, all of a terrifying sudden, and he isn’t sure whether he can comfortably call it a bad thing, in its entirety. Here they are — Techno and Wilbur, Wilbur and Techno, a hunter and his long-gone prize, a darkness and his would-be killer — foils from the beginning and brothers until the end, if Wilbur dares enough. Here they are, seeing eye-to-eye, or at least they are trying to, because Techno’s gaze wavers and Wilbur feels a little, a lot, antsy, but still they’re trying and Wilbur feels his heart warm at the prospect that Techno is willing, too.

Here they are, and Wilbur gets exactly what Techno wants.

(“Tell me how you write your songs, your melodies, your heart that you spilled into the lyrics,” Techno asks of him.

“Tell me why you loved this book, its plot, its characters, the love you put so dearly into someone else’s world,” Wilbur asks of him.

“Tell me about your day at school, at the pier, with your friends, tell me of your life and every moment you spend smiling at the sun,” Techno asks of him.

“Tell me about whatever nightmare woke you up, about whatever dreams you have from here on out, everything you are and want to be,” Wilbur asks of him. 

“Tell me, tell me, tell me, brother,” they say, and underneath that: I want to understand.)

“The truth,” Wilbur says. He shifts in his seat, pulling his legs up and tucking them against himself, quickly folding his arms to hide his hands from Techno’s gaze. “The truth is that you’ve always known me like this,” he says, “and you betrayed me as much as I betrayed you.”

Techno doesn’t break eye contact. It’s almost challenging, and Wilbur twiddles his thumbs for a moment before stepping up to the challenge.

“Couple hundred years ago,” Wilbur starts, “people built this place. The idea was simple: wherever the magical went, magic was bound to follow. A city as far away as possible from the rest of the world, flanked on one side by the forest and on the other by the sea, free of mundane interference.”

He pauses, grimacing.

“But they forgot something important: wherever people went, their demons were bound to follow.”

“You’re saying that there are more of you out there,” Techno deadpans.

“Depends what you mean by that,” Wilbur says, leaning back. “There are darknesses everywhere, no shit. But none have had the luxury of growing and festering in such a magic-saturated place. None are anywhere near as powerful as I was, and none have gotten anywhere near actual sentience, you know?” 

“And hypothetically, what if they did?” Techno asks. “If they suddenly had magic enough to grow like you.”

Wilbur blinks at him. “Techno, did you think I was always bound to destroy everything I touched?” 

He sighs, rubbing a finger against his eyes, and tries not to feel too dejected. 

“It’s okay,” he continues before Techno can rebut. “I thought so, too.”

“Thought,” Techno presses. “Past tense.”

“Well, I mean, it’s obvious? There’s not enough of me left to be a threat.” Wilbur shrugs off the weird look Techno’s sending his way. “But I digress. The point being, at some point in time, before people found out how to banish their demons, this- this mass of darkness-“ he starts gesturing around an invisible sphere in the air, “that’s been gathering for a long time, it, uh, woke up, and hid away to sleep until it died.”

He sucks in a breath. 

“Then nineteen years ago, almost twenty, now, uh, Phil came down to smite it around the same time a stillborn baby was born.” 

“And that was you,” Techno says. 

“And that was me,” Wilbur affirms.

“Okay,” Techno says. “Sure. Okay. I believe you.”

(And Wilbur has to wonder, because of course he has to, because three simple words are enough to awaken an old heartache within him: 

Is that really all it takes?)

“Why didn’t you tell us?” Techno asks, after a long pause. 

Wilbur is silent for even longer. “I was afraid,” he says, because sometimes the answer really is that simple. “I knew Phil was out to kill me. I knew you were working to be, and then became a hunter. I knew Tommy wouldn’t… he… I-I wasn’t sure whether you guys would understand.”

“Right.”

“I want to live,” Wilbur says. It melts bitter in his tongue and he doesn’t like how he falters and wonders whether the mantra’s turned into a lie, so he corrects himself, “I just wanted to be human. And, and I never wanted any of this to happen, I… I just wanted…”

A muscle in Techno’s jaw twitches. “Right.”

Wilbur sucks his teeth. Suddenly, he doesn’t feel as safe talking to Technoblade anymore, and maybe he’s lost faith in the gamble that Techno wouldn’t hurt him in their own house. 

He imagines it now: Techno’s hand slipping down to unsheath a hidden knife at his ankle, Techno surging forward and yanking Wilbur out his seat with his Piglin strength and pinning him to the floor, Techno pressing a hand against his mouth to muffle his screaming as he- as he- (no, no, he can’t, he can’t he can’t no)

But the reality goes like this: Techno sits at the edge of Wilbur’s bed and stares at him, a little uninterested, maybe even bored. The thought to kill his brother might not even have crossed his mind, and here Wilbur is, all tensed up and expecting the worst out of Technoblade. 

And with that, he thinks: Prime, is this all that’s left of us? 

“Would you?” Wilbur blurts out. “Have understood, I mean. If I had told you years back. Would you have understood?”

“No,” Techno says. No hesitation.

“Oh,” Wilbur says. And then softer, more hesitant, “Would you have killed me, if I told you then?”

“Yes,” Techno says. No hesitation, either.

“You tried to kill me,” Wilbur says, “thrice,” because out of nowhere comes this very masochistic, rather vicious, possibly insane desire to poke at the beast and see for how long and hard he can aggravate it until it inevitably snaps. So here he is, poking the beast; bruised and wounded but still — poking the fucking beast.

“You tried to kill me too,” Techno answers easily.

“It was out of self-defense. You shot first, all three times.”

“Because I was trying to protect people from you,” Techno says, firm and even, challenging; the beast flicking open an eye. “I didn’t know the monster I was supposed to hunt was my brother.”

Gone unspoken, because Techno fucking loves speaking in tongues: I didn’t know my brother was a monster.

Wilbur swallows the hurt that blooms in his chest, and so they circle back to the be-all-end-all question. “Techno,” he says, “did you think I was always bound to destroy everything?”

“Yes,” Techno says, and Wilbur, for the life of him, cannot find a single shred of hesitancy, even now.

(Wilbur. The darkness. The human. The monster. If they were one and the same, and the darkness was always bound to destroy all it touched, all it loved, then what does that say about Wilbur?)

“I can’t fucking believe you,” Wilbur says, a little lost for words. His face a mask of shock, he gathers himself and pretends it doesn’t kill him inside to be the first to break eye contact. “Technoblade,” he adds, in his strongest, calmest voice, “get out of my room.”

Techno furrows his brow. He moves, but not enough, and Wilbur-

“Get out!” Wilbur snaps. He rubs the moisture out of his eyes with the back of his hand and squares his shoulders, trying not to look too pathetic. “Get out. Get out. Get. Out-!”

Eventually, Techno leaves. But not before sending Wilbur one last look — hesitance, at last. But it’s far too little, far too fucking late, and some things cannot be taken back. 

They were getting somewhere, Wilbur knows they were — for a good few moments there it almost, almost felt like they were getting back into old banter, old ways of confiding in each other and the old feeling of not being consumed by the clawing need to stay fifty feet apart at all times. 

Techno closes the door on his way out with a soft click.

In the aftermath, Wilbur curls up into himself and cries.

“Here,” Wilbur mutters, and Schlatt and Quackity follow him into the dark. 

It’s a gamble, bringing them down into the tunnels — his tunnels, but they’re his friends, and out of everyone who isn’t in-the-know, he trusts them the most. 

How could he not? When he came to them after Techno hunted him down into an alley, they were… they were kind to him. They ignored instructions to apprehend him on sight and they let him catch his breath as he was racked through with pain and hunger, and when it came time for him to flee, they listened to him and let him go.

So yes. He trusts Schlatt and he trusts Quackity. 

He trusts them miles above Techno, or Phil during his bad days, or Tubbo when he still has weapons hidden on his person, or Niki as he keeps working to make amends with her. 

Which is sad, he thinks, because he used to give out trust like it was nobody’s business, but nowadays it feels like he can only afford to give them what they can requite. So he makes do, which is the least he can do, perhaps.

He lights the way with his phone flashlight. Quackity does the same with his while Schlatt sticks his hands deep in his pockets. 

The deeper they go, the more Wilbur feels the acidic need to turn away encroach over himself. Part of him still yearns for the dark. Part of him feels like his grand attempt at destroying himself hadn’t succeeded at all and here he was, leading his friends straight into the belly of the beast. But he’s sure, at least, if not because of his own brand of fire then because of Phil’s insistence that there really isn’t anything to worry about anymore.

(Phil’s been wrong before, though. This is the first step towards the space between dark and light, between grey and grey: he looks at an angel and thinks, ‘Liar.’)

“Have you two heard the stories?” Wilbur asks, stopping in his tracks. His voice echoes long and haunted down the tunnel. 

“The stories,” Schlatt repeats in a flat tone.

“About… whatever it was that made you blow up the city?” Quackity asks.

“Yeah.” Wilbur nods, though he doubts that either of them could see the motion. It’s terribly dark in there, and the more he walks the more he feels like the darkness could come back to life, be a tangible thing once again, turn on him for turning on it. “That I was the… the host to an ancient evil that, that sought vengeance on Phil. That I begged to die so it could die with me, but Prime intervened and… killed it before Phil could do any harm.” 

He pauses. He turns the light on the floor, on the ceiling, on the walls; he’d expected to see scorch marks everywhere, but no, the concrete tunnel looks perfectly clean, if covered in a little dust and dirt and mould — or covered in the accurate amount of dust and dirt and mould for underground tunnels, that is.

But no scorch marks. No tangible darkness. It’s like he’s never been here before, like any traces of the truth are gone — erased by their attempts at recovery. The thought makes him a little uncomfortable.

“And have you two heard the rumours?” Wilbur asks. “What they say about this whole… situation.”

He turns around and aims his phone at Schlatt, who squints at him through the glare of the flashlight. 

Schlatt looks unimpressed with his mouth set in a thin line. “What,” he says, flatly once more.

Wilbur twists his lips into a small but vicious smile. “They say that this… ancient evil, had taken the boy for longer — far, far longer,” he says. “They say that there might never have been a boy in the first place, and that there was only ever a thing.” 

He falls silent. 

“A thing, and a body,” he continues. “A very, very human body.” And then, a little bolder with his voice, “They say that when it came time for the thing to die, it… didn’t. And that it lives on, to this day, just… hiding among the citizens and masquerading as something, someone it isn’t.”

He starts walking again, hears Schlatt and Quackity’s asynchronous footsteps echo behind him. And to add a little flair to his little speech, because despite everything, Wilbur still adores his dramatics. He wouldn’t have elicited emotional reactions from Techno, Tommy, and Phil intense enough to suit his needs without going all out on his unhinged acting and his big words. 

(And even then, the part of him that revelled in his dark power also revelled in his dramatics. It was all part of the act, the charade, but still he could not resist the giddiness that welled up inside him as he swept his arm out and delivered the perfect soliloquy fit for a stage, fit for a spotlight — there would never come anything quite like the rush of slipping into the sinister role of a villain, a monster, and knowing that something within him had enjoyed it, if only for the illusion of having it all under his control.)

And when he puts that line of thought to rest, as he had for far too many other lines of thought that came out of his bitter, writhing core, he wonders whether he’d have liked a big, grand, dramatic death more than a quiet, pathetic, humiliating one. 

Maybe he would. Maybe he wouldn’t. Maybe he wouldn’t care, as long as he got to go.

But death is death, all in the end, he reminds himself; he stands on the line separating it from life and damn him if he isn’t making the choice to step forward, each day, no matter how much he finds himself teetered on the decision.

(Parts of him died burning up in a screaming inferno. Parts of him died to a blinding, cleansing light. And parts of him are living a quiet, pathetic, humiliating life.

Wilbur is dead. Wilbur is alive. Wilbur falls asleep and sees purgatory behind his eyelids. Wilbur wakes up and feels the sunlight on his skin. Wilbur is broken, and every part of him here and henceforth will never be allowed to forget what it felt like to be whole.)

“And these tunnels, the city’s underground, you know,” he says, running his free hand along the wall, “they say, they say that this place is haunted, you know, and that if you listen hard enough…”

He pauses. He listens. The dark of the tunnel carries his soft voice further than he can reach, and nothing answers back — no ghosts, no voices, no lingering memories of the city reaching out to him. 

He almost, almost misses it.

He whirls around and smiles at Schlatt and Quackity, the quirk of his lips far too foreboding for even his own liking.

“…You can hear the voices of everyone who ever lived in this city,” he continues, “screaming for help, as the thing razed their final resting place, and razed itself.” He sighs deeply, pausing. “And now the thing will never know peace as it lives a half-life, biding its time until it dies a half-death.”

His chest heaves as he finishes his speech, and he thinks idly whether he should spread his arms out for effect. But no matter what he does, there will never be applause for someone who’s done deeds as horrible as he has, someone as broken as he is, like how there will never be reprieve for violent things, angry things, things that hide in the shadows for good reason.

He wonders whether he’s scared off his friends. He wonders why the hell he’s trying so hard to scare them. He wonders whether that violent, angry part of him has always been there since the beginning, or whether he created it with his own two hands the moment he decided he doesn’t deserve to be good. He wonders whether any of it is true at all. 

And he’s almost convinced that they’re about to turn tail and run when-

Schlatt snorts. “You’re so dramatic.”

Wilbur’s shoulders sag. “I’m just telling a story,” he defends, “forgive me for wanting to add a little flair to it.”

Quackity shakes his head, a little fondly. “It’s all rumours though, right?” he asks, waving his phone around. “I mean, none of this is true, though, right?”

Wilbur feels himself deflate under his friends’ gazes. “It’s what they’re saying,” he says, “and it’s up to you whether you believe them or not.”

“I mean, it’s not like we were there at the warehouse, when Techno and Dream first tried to exorcise y- the thing from your body,” Schlatt scoffs, crossing his arms. “And it’s not like you came to us months later after complete radio silence, delirious and in pain and asking for help, or anything like that.” 

“And then made us relay your… bomb threat… to your family,” Quackity reminds. “I mean, none of this happened, right, officially, and whatever you just… said, right, it’s all rumours. It’s just hearsay.”

Wilbur nods slowly. “Just hearsay,” he repeats, feeling a little breathless. “All rumours.” 

“Like, Prime, imagine what’d happen if these rumours were true,” Schlatt says, grabbing Quackity’s arm and brushing past Wilbur, whose turn it is to keep pace with the pair. “The prison got rebuilt already, right, and I hear, rumours as always, that they’re planning on constructing a supernatural section to prevent… incidents like this from happening again.”

Quackity looks up at Wilbur, shadows cast by their flashlights shifting over his eyes and lips. “Wilbur, your life would be over by then,” he says, “but only hypothetically, of course. I mean, an act of violence, terrorism, at this scale? And you having fought a group of our most esteemed hunters, their deities, and the local Angel of Death?” The feathers folded on his arms ruffle as he shakes his head. “Not to mention the official recount… an insatiable creature of darkness that fed off fear, chaos, and pain… who had enough raw power to create objects out of thin air…”

“You’d be batshit fucking lucky if they decided not to kill you.”

“Or pick you apart and see what makes you tick,” Quackity adds.

“Hypothetically, though.”

“Hypothetically, yes.”

“…So you guys don’t think I’m avoiding the consequences?” Wilbur asks, voice small.

He stops walking, and it’s only after a few seconds that Quackity notices, stops in his tracks, and tugs at Schlatt’s arm to get him to stop, too. Wilbur shudders at the way the shadow of Schlatt’s horns twist on the wall behind him. They’re looking at him, scrutinising his guilty face, picking him apart to see what makes him tick, and for a moment he pictures it — a monster lying on an examination table, limbs bound by leather straps and binding runes, wearing his face, gaunt and haunted and lost in its own head, screaming to be let go-

He shudders again, harsher. There’s no way his friends and family would let that happen to him, right? 

Right?

“You don’t think I deserve to be locked up, or, or picked apart,” he spits out, gagging around the words, “for destroying the city? You don’t think I deserve to… to die… for what I did? For being what I am?”

For an impossible second, he can swear on all that is good and all that is holy that his friends’ faces soften into what he can only describe as pity. He almost recoils from offense, before he settles his initial affront in favour of a naked hope that clings onto his chest and reminds him that they followed him into the dark, full well knowing what he is and what he did — and then he sees that ‘pity’ for what it really is: sympathy.

“Alex and I are criminals,” Schlatt says, impossibly, “we’ve never not avoided a single consequence in our lives.”

“Don’t try to lie and say you didn’t get any consequences whatsoever, too,” Quackity says, impossibly, “because who came to us bitching about big brother Technoblade, about his daddy issues, about Tchommy-innit, about his funny little angry friends, right?” He smiles, impossibly, impossibly, impossibly. “And who was just talking about the ‘rumours’, about how you had to… to — and I quote — to raze yourself, and you’re just waiting out a half-life to die a half-death? These kind of sound like consequences to me, I don’t know.”

“But not to everyone else!” Wilbur clenches his fist around his phone. “And not to me. I got off with barely a slap on the wrist! I tried to kill my friends, my family, I destroyed thousands of peoples’ homes, I deserve to be punished for my horrible fucking actions, it’s only fair…!”

“Well, the world isn’t fuckin’ fair, is it?” Schlatt says. “Bad people go unpunished, good people get hurt, and everyone in between-“ he gestures between the three of them, “fuckin’, fuckin’ get shat on by our own morals.”

Quackity nods along. “What he’s saying is that: you want to pay the consequences, that’s good, you know what you did was wrong, you know you need to make amends, that’s good! But you don’t deserve death, you don’t deserve to suffer — being miserable isn’t permission to be horrible, but being horrible isn’t always mandate to be miserable, either.”

Wilbur swallows something both salty and bitter, his spit dragging roughly down his throat.

“You don’t need horrible, horrible consequences for your horrible, horrible actions, Wilbur,” Quackity says. “What you need now is help. Someone to be there for you, maybe.”

“And, y’know, if your hunter posse friends are being difficult…” Schlatt says, “you have us. The criminals.”

People who can’t and won’t judge, people who will help, who will be there and listen and not assume the immediate worst.

Wilbur swallows down a stupid little sob.

His relationships with his friends, with Tubbo, with Niki, are still difficult, yes. He’s still trying to relearn how to talk to them, how to act like himself around them, how to assure them he isn’t lying to them anymore. And slowly but surely, they’re letting him, yes, but it doesn’t change the fact that he still wakes up full to the brim with words that have nowhere to go and thoughts tied to anchors thrown to the bottom of the sea, and he’s drowning, drowning; he’s alive and breathing but surely, drowning.

It’s getting better. It has to be getting better. He has to, he is. Doesn’t change the fact that he wishes it hurts less, though.

They’ll never let him die, let him suffer, and he’s grateful for it, but-

But still.

The thought will forever be there.

“Why do you trust me?” Wilbur asks them, meekly, because the reverse has been true for a little too long, and the bare minimum of a drop of unasked sympathy is enough to shake him to his core.

(Because you’re my son, Phil would say.

Because who else will, Tommy would say.

Because I have to, Techno would say.

Because I want to, Niki would say.

Because you’re trying, Tubbo would say.)

Quackity shrugs. Schlatt mimics the movement. Wilbur feels that naked hope in his chest take root, and grow, and bloom into something more. Something that feels as bright as certainty.

“That’s a loaded question,” Quackity says. “And we’re just petty criminals, dude. That’s definitely not something we can answer. I think you gotta figure that one out on your own.”

“I… what?”

“I didn’t stutter, did I?” Quackity teases, nudging him with an elbow. Wilbur blinks up at him. “Besides, this is all hypothetical, right? It’s all rumours.”

“Yep,” Schlatt agrees. “All rumours.”

“…Yeah,” Wilbur says, after a long, long pause, and then he smiles hesitantly back at them. “It’s all just hearsay.”

They turn, and he follows them back into the light.

Wilbur finds himself grimacing at the mirror for the fifth time in three days.

His eyes wander down, as they always do, to his arms, the long sleeves and gloves he insists on wearing everywhere he goes, and then to his neck and face, the parts of his body where he can’t completely cover the marks. 

He’s sweating. He’s uncomfortable. The rough cloth of the gloves itch the skin of his hands. He looks at his clothes and his lanky body that sometimes feels too thin, too skinny, too bony to be anything remotely close to healthy, the skin of which stretches near-transparent over his veins and bones, and his eyes follow a bead of sweat rolling down his temple to his chin to his neck and he-

He startles with sudden recollection that it’s winter. That he’s turned up the air conditioner to its coldest setting. That Phil had lifted a concerned eyebrow the last time he poked his head in to Wilbur’s freezing cold room and found him sitting on his bed scrolling through his phone, covers thrown aside, in thin clothes, looking completely unbothered.

And this realisation sends a shock of anger up his chest, burning in him as he is burning on the outside. It’s not fair, he thinks, it’s not fair, he recalls, and all of a sudden, it feels like something’s crawling up his body, buzzing through his skin and closing his trachea when he tries to breathe.

He rips off his gloves with more force than necessary and chucks them across his room, not caring where they land, before he grips the collar of his jumper and yanks the whole thing off over his head. 

Breathing heavily, Wilbur tosses his jumper aside and looks over himself in a simmering mix of repulse, misery, irritation, anxiety, rage, fatigue, dismay, disappointment, disgust, horror, all of it- all of it.

There is no changing the past, he knows. Not when the past has been haunting his relationships for months now, not when the past plagues his dreams as he slumbers, and…

And not when the past has etched itself onto his body, carved itself into the jet black stain of his arms, the veins in his body pumping what looks like black blood, the paleness of his skin contrasting sharply with the black… stuff, and, and most strikingly his eyes — where they used to be a deep brown that he knew shone golden in the sunlight, are now a dull red colour.

He hates it. Hates it. Himself. 

He utterly, completely, with no room for doubt or arguments, despises the fact that he can’t scrub it out of his body, can’t magic it away, can only try to hide what can be physically hidden and pretend like it isn’t eating him up inside — that these marks will forever be a reminder to him, to everyone around him and everyone he loves, of the darkest and most dangerous version of himself, and of all the foul things he’d said, and done, and been.

Phil has spent the last few months trying to teach Wilbur magic, with unfortunately (fortunately) disappointing results. He’d tried to move small objects without contact, and he’d tried to summon up tangible shadows, and he’d tried to transfigure one object into another; still, nothing, and every time he failed Phil would shake his head and tell him, frustratingly patient, that he’ll get there eventually, like he’s a kid and not a failure.

He tries to reach for it now, if not the magic in himself then the magic in the air — and for a second he swears his red eyes flickers with a crimson glow before he blinks and they go back to looking like dried blood. 

He hates this. 

And he hates himself. 

There, he said it, and most of all he’s sick of having to look people in the eye and have their first instinct be flinching away from him because he looks more monster than human, before they backtrack and assure him they don’t hate him. Sometimes he believes them, but sometimes not, and now just happens to be a moment where the latter is real, and if it’s true that they don’t hate him then he knows for a fact that he can hate himself enough for the both of them.

“Wilbur?”

Wilbur startles and flinches at the sound of his name. He hadn’t locked his door before he decided to mope and pity his own existence, and now the consequence of his forgetfulness manifests itself as he twists around, frowning, and finds Tommy hovering at his doorway.

“Why did you turn your AC all the way up?” Tommy chides before Wilbur has the chance to tell him off. “It’s winter. What the fuck is wrong with you?”

Tommy squints, mouth twisted into a scowl as he takes in the sight of Wilbur shirtless in front of a mirror, in a freezing room, in winter (though he barely feels the cold, if at all), like a complete lunatic. 

His eyes widen comically. “Why are you shirtless? Are you admiring your own fuckin’ body in the mirror? Creep.” He pauses, considering his words and tone. “That came out wrong and I take it back, eurgh. What are you doing?”

Tommy steps into the room and waves a hand, raising the temperature. Wilbur wipes a hand across his forehead, already feeling uncomfortable with the rising heat, and he moves to pick up his jumper from the floor, a little embarrassed that Tommy had walked in on him standing there like a dumbass, stewing in his own self loathing.

“You didn’t bother knocking,” Wilbur remarks as he shrugs on his jumper. 

“You didn’t lock the door,” Tommy retorts, hopping onto Wilbur’s bed and laying down on his back with his legs dangling off the side. His bright cyan eyes are fixed on Wilbur, and the way he tips his head down to look at Wilbur results in a slight double chin at his neck. “What,” he says, “no ‘hello’ or ‘welcome back’ or ‘I missed you, my favourite brother and person ever’?”

Wilbur rolls his eyes as he crosses his room to look for his gloves. “Hello, welcome back, I missed you, my favourite brother and person ever,” he mocks, mimicking Tommy’s manner of speaking. “Happy?”

He finds his gloves under his curtains and straightens up, but before he can put them on, he hears:

“And I’m Wilbur Soot, I’m sad and angry and a bitch, because Technoblade is mean and Tommy is gone and Philza is scary and Tubbo hates me and Schlatt and Quackity are attached at the hip and Niki is a woman and I don’t know how to talk to women-“

Wilbur thinks better of it, balls up his gloves and launches them directly at Tommy’s face with as much force as he can. Tommy yelps, sputters, and makes a guttural sound of disgust as he bats the gloves off his face and glares at Wilbur. 

“Fuck you!” he yells, indignant, sitting up and snarling his sharp canines at Wilbur. “That was uncalled for and you have a horrible fashion taste-“

“You wear those ugly red-white shirts and khakis everywhere.”

“-and you literally will never feel the loving touch of a w- ow, fuck off — as I was saying, you stink, and are bad, and ugly as shit!” Tommy points a red claw at Wilbur. “It’s winter, you’re fucked in the head, and those gloves are stinky as shit and ugly as fuck! I bet you never get these washed, too! These are, wait-“ he grabs them off the floor and waves them in the air, “these are Techno’s! You know better than to trust Techno’s fashion sense, what the fuck, and these are hunting gloves! Why are you-“

Tommy’s eyes wander down and find Wilbur’s exposed, dark hands. Wilbur can tell the exact moment he puts two and two together — the hands, the gloves, the long sleeves, the marks he’d seen when he walked in on Wilbur — because he falls silent, and drops the stupid gloves on the bed. 

Silence. 

“Oh,” Tommy says. “Huh.”

“You came back early,” Wilbur says, instead of acknowledging the big fat fucking elephant suffocating the room, “I thought Phil said you were coming back next week. What, did you get sick of Bedlam?”

Tommy shakes his head, still a little dumbfounded. “You’re so- no. Bedlam got sick of me,” he declares, thumping a fist against his chest as if getting booted out of an alternate dimension is an honour. “So they’re making me choose either Mayhem or Pandemonium the next time I, y’know, sustain a life-threatening injury and have to, to dissociate from this fuckin’, this fuckin’ plane of existence.”

Wilbur blinks. “Those aren’t real places.”

“Yes they are. You’re stupid. Why are you wearing Techno’s hunting gloves?”

“Those are literally just synonyms of ‘chaos’.”

“Yeah, well, go complain to Phil’s wife about it, I sure as shit didn’t make or name these stupid dimensions.”

“Phil has a wife?”

“Yes. Prime. He calls her Kristin. Prime’s beloved Angel, remember? Get with the programme. Why are you trying to hide your arms?”

“What the fuck?”

“You’re fuckin’ hopeless. It’s a simple question: why are y-“

“Fuck off, why do you need to know, prick?”

“Well, I need to know how you are on the…” Tommy gestures at his torso, and then points at the ground, “the, y’know, the thing. You know.”

Wilbur frowns. The last time he saw Tommy, he had an arrow in his stomach. He was dead-set on saving Wilbur. The little fucker endured Wilbur’s attempt at intimidation to tell him he still loved him. And then he disappeared to Bedlam to heal both spirit and body for months because Techno went above and beyond in the lethality of his weapons and it was enough to pose a serious threat to Tommy despite Wilbur’s certainty in the moment that his little brother would pull through without much difficulty and Prime-fucking-damn it, Tommy had to waste months of his life just sitting there and healing because Wilbur wasn’t, isn’t good enough to have taken the arrow instead, isn’t good enough either-

“Just in case,” Tommy scoffs, “you know. Prick. Just in case I end up with yet another life-threatening injury. Who knew that those tended to suck, a lot?”

And now Tommy’s back. Tommy’s back from Bedlam, and Wilbur’s back from the edge of his homemade demise, and the two of them are employing a well-known tactic of solving their problems called ‘repeatedly stabbing the wound until something sticks and it heals’. At least they aren’t skirting around the subject, despite Wilbur’s best attempts.

Still, Wilbur can’t deny the tight feeling in his chest at Tommy’s harsh words and dismissive tone, as if Tommy aimed to hurt and not fix, to rip the bandages off all of Wilbur’s tender spots and spit at his attempts at atonement. 

It makes his blood boil. It makes his heart twist. It makes him long for the softness that Tommy had reserved for Wilbur before he made Tommy take the fucking arrow. 

Wilbur clenches his fists. 

“You’re not gonna end up with another life-threatening injury,” he snaps.

“Why not?” Tommy challenges.

“What the fuck do you mean, ‘why not’?”

“How am I supposed to know you’re not gonna pull that ‘I’m such a troubled teenager I’m gonna go fight three dudes at the same time’ bullshit again?”

“I don’t- I don’t even sound like that, wh- I’m not a fucking troubled teenager, what is that even supposed to mean-!”

“It means what it means, dipshit. Learn to take things at face value? Stop questioning me? You’re a troubled teenager and in denial?”

Wilbur levels Tommy’s glare with an incredulous look, half-offended, half-confused. “Tommy, I don’t- what?” he exclaims, stumbling over his words out of pure disbelief. “What the actual fuck are you saying? I’m not in denial, what the hell?”

“That’s exactly what someone in denial would say,” Tommy points out. “I’m just saying, big guy, I need to know that you won’t try anything anymore. It’s been like what, a week? Since I last saw you? I need to know how you’ve been, that’s it, so work with me here, alright?”

Wilbur is silent for a long moment. He feels his guts churn painfully, heart dropping to the bottom of his feet as he blinks rapidly at Tommy. His head feels like it’s started to fill with static.

“A week?” he repeats, voice soft. His fingers have started to tremble. “Tommy. It’s been four months.”

And Tommy, frustratingly, doesn’t seem bothered by this information. “So?” he asks, lifting an eyebrow. “So now we know that time moves differently in Bedlam, big deal. That doesn’t answer my question though, does it?”

“I- I mean, it’s been four months,” Wilbur sputters, “that’s a- that’s a long fucking time, right?” He grits his teeth, and then un-grits them, and then grits them again. “I don’t get what it is that you expect. I’ve had time to, to think, to fix shit, talk to people, what more do you expect?”

Tommy squints at him, his cyan eyes hardened cold and calculating. “Well I’m sorry for being a little wary around you,” he snaps. “The last time I saw you, you were trying to hurt me. And then you were trying to hurt Techno. And Phil. And yourself.”

“I thought you were pretty adamant in the fact that I didn’t want to do it. What the fuck happened to being, and I fucking quote: not scared of me, but for me?” Wilbur retorts, voice on fire.

His heart hammers against his ribcage, the sensation drumming its way up his throat until he can feel his pulse beating in his brain. He doesn’t get it. He’s pretty fucking sure that Tommy doesn’t get it, either. He isn’t sure why they’re arguing, what they’re arguing about, and the thought — that the first thing they do, reunited, is try to hurt each other —disturbs him horribly.

Wilbur thought he’s done trying to hurt people. Turns out he’s wrong. Turns out something’s still wrong with him. Turns out he’ll always turn to the sick satisfaction of toying with someone’s feelings when he gets the chance to. 

And then the thought, inevitably: Phil shouldn’t have-

“I don’t know,” Tommy says, nostrils flaring with rage. “Being scared for you didn’t stop me from turning into collateral damage, did it?” 

“That was your fucking choice,” Wilbur bites out. “You shouldn’t have to take an arrow for me. You shouldn’t have taken the arrow at all. You weren’t supposed to fucking- that wasn’t the plan. I didn’t w- I didn’t need you to get hurt, it was Techno who-“

“Don’t you dare bring Techno into this!” Tommy yells, standing up, his temper gone in the wind.

Wilbur snarls back at him. Whatever contempt he’d felt for their eldest brother for shooting the arrow had been extinguished and overwhelmed by debilitating fear and dumb, naïve hope. Still, it’s only fair — it is, it is-

“Techno did what he thought was right,” Tommy continues, his voice dripping with venom. “Phil did what he thought was right. And I did what I thought was right. I don’t know whether this is something that you will ever fucking understand-“ he steps threateningly towards Wilbur, who steps back without thinking, “but we did what we thought was right!”

Wilbur feels his back hit the wall. He’s gritting his teeth so hard that it feels like they might shatter.

“But you!” Tommy spits, jabbing a finger into Wilbur’s chest. “You. Only. Tried. To save yourself!”

The mirror cracks. 

Wilbur unclenches his fists. 

Tommy’s head turns to glance at the mirror, startled, before he looks back at Wilbur, eyes wide but still full of heat. 

“I didn’t do that,” he says.

“Get out of my fucking room,” Wilbur wheezes out. 

Tommy scowls. “No.”

Wilbur isn’t sure he’s breathing at all. “Get the fuck out of here.”

“No.”

“I said, get out!” Wilbur screams. He plants his palms against Tommy’s shoulders and shoves him away towards the bed. “Get out! Get out!”

“And I said no,” Tommy hisses, a note of defiance, finality in his voice. No room for argument.

They glare at each other for a few tense seconds, breathing heavily and challenging the other to speak up and snap. Wilbur presses his back against the wall and slides down until he’s sitting, burying his head between his knees, clenching his hair in his hands. Tommy sits on the floor, leaning against Wilbur’s bed. 

They don’t say anything.

Wilbur takes a long, deep breath. When he exhales, his whole body shivers, and it feels like he’s dying of heatstroke — cold sweat on the warm body of a burning person, and Wilbur will never forget how it feels like to be young and painless. He will never forget how it feels like to be loved, without requisite, to be chosen, without hesitation, to be himself, whole and alive, without question.

He will never forget a Tommy who looked at him with stars in his eyes instead of a Tommy who expects more than Wilbur is, more than he knows he’s capable of giving.

(How, exactly, is he supposed to break the news that he’s sorry to disappoint, kid, but your big bro Wilbur isn’t all that he’s cracked up to be?

That he isn’t Wilbur by the sea, toes dipped in water and playing music with his best friend Niki the water nymph? 

That he isn’t Wilbur the hunters’ occasional desk-boy, who flinches away from exorcisms and writes up their reports for them?

That he isn’t Wilbur, loyal friend and artistic brother, made of upbeat music and damp wood, sitting crosslegged by the hearth of their home?

Sorry to disappoint, kid, but your big bro Wilbur is made of jagged edges now.)

He sniffs. Maybe he really is bound to destroy and disappoint everything he loves. Maybe one mistake was enough to kickstart a series of failed reconciliations and knock him back to square one. Maybe Phil is wrong, and had been right, once, and Wilbur only manipulated him into sympathy.

But if so — why is he still alive? Why are they still willing to talk to him? Why, then, is he still inevitably drawn to the pipe dream of utter redemption?

“I don’t know which part of my plan to destroy my being and then have Phil finish off whatever’s left was meant to save myself,” Wilbur says, his voice gravelly as he speaks. He looks up slowly, meeting Tommy’s eyes with whatever sense of dignity he has left. “But I can promise you-“ he grits his teeth, “I tried to do what I thought was right, too.”

Tommy glares at him, but his eyes have softened considerably. “And even now none of us really know why you tried to do it,” he says. “It couldn’t have been out of revenge. If you wanted to blow us up for… betraying you, you wouldn’t have waited six months to do it.”

Wilbur nods, signalling Tommy to go on.

“And it couldn’t have been out of self defense,” Tommy says, eyes sharp and calculating, “because self-defense implies the existence of self-preservation.” 

Tommy clicks his mouth shut and raises an eyebrow. Wilbur clenches his fists and breathes through his nose slowly, focuses on the sensation of air in his lungs instead of the irritation building up in his gut.

“I did what I thought was right,” Wilbur repeats. “I wanted- needed to save all of you.”

“By killing yourself,” Tommy says flatly.

“I wasn’t lying when I told you I existed to hurt people and destroy shit,” Wilbur responds as flatly. “I am the literal physical embodiment of humanity’s hatred. Selfishness. Cruelty. I think it stands to reason that I’ll end up being the one to return all of that to where it came from.”

“But you never wanted to hurt people and destroy shit,” Tommy points out, “and I know this because I know you.” 

His tone leaves no room for argument. And Wilbur doesn’t feel like rebutting that point either — they’ve been here before, and the thought of refuting Tommy’s… attachment (?) to Wilbur all over again disgusts him. 

“So what’s the catch here?” Tommy presses. “Why… why did you try to kill yourself?”

A pause. Wilbur takes a deep breath. Tommy watches him carefully. The room is silent save for the constant whirring of Wilbur’s overworked air conditioner.

“I hated what I was,” Wilbur mutters. “And what I was… hated me right back. I needed to feed off others’ fear, chaos, and pain to survive, or else I’d go… fucking insane, probably.” He looks away. He can’t bear the weight of Tommy’s gaze anymore. “And I used to be able to ignore it, brush it off to the back of my mind, take the bare minimum when the urge grew too large to ignore, but- but the exorcism, it… it cut open this… this hole in me, and it brought all that hunger to the forefront. Magnified it a hundred fold. I needed to run.”

“That hunger…” Tommy says. “Was that what it was, back in the tunnel? When you-“ he gestures vaguely, “made me feel that horrible fucking pain in the guts. Was that it?”

Wilbur takes a moment to remember what Tommy is talking about. He’d pulled Tommy in and yanked at Tommy’s ability to share his senses, and then- 

He grimaces. He nods.

“I thought I could handle being on the run, but…” he trails off.

“But we never stopped hunting you down,” Tommy says.

“And I realised my days were fucking numbered,” Wilbur says, bitter. “If you killed me, you wouldn’t have killed all of me, and whatever’s left won’t be as… as human as I… try to be. It wouldn’t have had nineteen years to learn how to… to love people, but- but feelings persist, and the pain, the fear, the things I felt, they would’ve persisted, and… and whatever’s left would’ve felt all of it.”

“So you needed to do the job yourself,” Tommy continues, “you needed to destroy the… the it yourself, and you needed to make sure someone hated you enough to kill you, too, afterwards.”

Despite himself, Wilbur finds himself starting to smile. A sad one, surely, but a smile nevertheless, and a blooming feeling of pride for his younger brother. “See, you figured it out,” he says. “I wasn’t lying when I called you smart, either.”

“What I don’t get is why you needed someone to kill you, as you are right now,” Tommy says.

Wilbur sighs. “You people wanted me dead.” 

He glances up.

“And, well,” he says, “how do I put this lightly — so do I.”

Wilbur looks at Tommy. Tommy looks at Wilbur. Tommy looks furious. A spark of electricity gathers between his horns and his ears twitch in anticipation. His scowl deepens, but he isn’t screeching curses and buzzwords at Wilbur, so all that anger must have come from somewhere so deep within him that he can’t express it outwardly without hurting himself. It’s the kind of anger that Tommy can solve only by talking to Wilbur, but that isn’t a very viable option, currently.

(I know you, said Tommy, and so goes the price of being loved. Wilbur knows his brother inside out like the back of his own hand, but when it comes time for Tommy to know him back, the thought feels like rot eating him all the way down to his bones.)

Tommy takes a deep breath. As he exhales, Wilbur can vaguely feel the room’s temperature dropping. 

Wilbur sighs in relief.

“Is that why,” Tommy starts. “Is that why you fuckin’, Prime, I- fuck.” He growls low in his throat, but it comes out sounding like a middle schooler’s attempt at appearing intimidating. Tommy is very much not intimidating, no matter how hard he tries to be. “I don’t- look, Wil, I… I don’t want you dead.”

“Okay,” Wilbur says. “Okay. I know that. We talked about it.”

“And, and they- they don’t want you dead either.”

“Right…”

“I’m serious.”

“Sure.” Wilbur rolls his eyes. “Because that explains why Phil spent nineteen years trying to kill me. And why Techno never stopped hunting me down for the better part of six months. Not to mention, fucking, everyone else chasing me down, treating me like, like I’m a monster, and the fucking- the fucking exorcism, and all of that bullshit.”

Tommy is silent for a moment. “They don’t want you dead anymore,” he amends. “And before you start saying shit, let me remind you, see if this gets through your thick fuckin’ skull: you’re living under the same roof as the people who wanted you dead the most. And you’re still alive.” 

He leans back, rests his palms on his knees as he rolls his eyes back at Wilbur. 

“What does that say about you, and about them, huh? Prick.”

Wilbur is silent as he breathes. 

Tommy’s right. 

Tommy is, unfortunately, usually right — when he isn’t trying to be a dick about it or isn’t too stubborn to realise that his ‘right’ is purely subjective. It’s just something he does: be right, and then ruin it with callous words and the complete inability to accept his own shortcomings.

(It’s something that Wilbur does, too, except he fails horribly on the first step.)

“Thanks for cooling the room again,” Wilbur says instead, and nearly gags at the thought that he just expressed genuine gratitude to Tommy. 

And the little shit has the gall to look pleased with himself. “You’re welcome,” he says, and Wilbur wants to punch the smirk off his stupid mug so fucking bad. But thankfully, Tommy sobers up. “It’s winter. Why’s your room so cold?”

“It barely feels like winter to me,” Wilbur replies. “I’ve felt like I’ve been burning up, ever since the, uh, y’know, ever since I burnt up.”

Tommy grimaces. “Your body temp feels normal to me.”

“I don’t know,” Wilbur says, “that’s how it feels to me. Phil says it must be, uh-“ he gestures at his head, “psychosomatic, or something. It just kinda sucks a lot, y’know, since I need to wear long sleeves all the time.”

“No, you don’t,” Tommy says, stern. 

“Uh, yes I do?”

“No,” Tommy repeats, “you really don’t. Do what makes you not sweat in winter like an idiot. Fuck whatever everyone else thinks.”

“Tommy. That’s not how this works.”

“Why not? They want nothing to do with you. Why would you try and appease them? You’ve got friends who are learning to look past your bullshit, you don’t need to- to hide. To keep hiding. From the, the fuckin’ public.”

Wilbur blinks at him. “Sure. Okay. Let’s say that- that all of that is true, right, and let’s say that nothing negative whatsoever would happen to me if I stopped hiding my fucking- these fucking marks, and I wouldn’t get jumped on the street or get spat at, right-“

“What happened to you throwing us around like ragdolls? You know magic, just defend yourself-“

“-no, okay, that was then, Tommy, because part of me fucking died and now, now all that magic is gone. Poof. Dead.”

“But aren’t you learning magic again with Phil?”

“Yeah, but learning magic and being able to do magic are two very different things. The latter implies that I have any power to begin with, which I fucking don’t-“

“So you can’t do shit anymore, well, that’s good, then they know you can’t… go nuts on them anymore? I don’t see the fuckin’ issue?”

Wilbur sighs in frustration, gesturing at empty air. “You’re coming into this argument with the assumption that I’m hiding purely for their sakes,” he grits out. “This isn’t a they problem, Tommy. Not entirely. You’re assuming that me, that I don’t entirely hate this fucking, these fucking marks, the black fucking stain, my fucking eyes, because, because they’re- they remind me of- of having to run from you people for six months, of hurting you people, of being something I hate- and, and-“

He meets Tommy’s eyes. Dull red to bright cyan. Demon to demon. Brother and brother. The poetry doesn’t escape him.

“-and at times, enjoying it.”

He squeezes his eyes shut and buries his head in his hands. The problem with all of this, is that he’s the only one who will ever understand what it’s like. Tommy will never understand. Phil will never understand. Techno will never understand. Tubbo and Niki and Schlatt and Quackity and Fundy and Dream and all of them- all of them, they will never, they cannot understand, and this fact, most of all, hurts him inside. There is very little he wouldn’t give to have someone who understands him, whole and unquestioned, and who understands his pain enough to know that he’s both trying his best and tired of trying at all.

Tommy scowls, because the only two expression he knows how to make are scowling and laughing obnoxiously. 

“You’re so fucking stupid,” he says, before grabbing the hem of his shirt to lift it up to his chest.

And on his skin, across his stomach, wrapping around his torso, is a webbed network of white lines, raised scars, marks of battle and magic burns, all branching out from a horrible, angry red tear on his stomach in the shape of an arrow wound. Tommy focuses, eyes glowing, and the veins around his chest, his arms, his neck, pulse with a pale orange light. 

Wilbur feels ill in the stomach.

He did this.

He did this.

“Are yours going to be there forever too,” Wilbur asks dryly, his mouth filling up with a sickening bitter taste. 

“Yeah,” says Tommy, his voice soft, and then his lips quirk up to a half-smile, half-grimace, but his eyes are kind, and his face is kind, “and I don’t blame you at all. I think they’re cool. I think yours are, too,” and Wilbur wonders what the fuck he did in a past life to deserve his brother in this one.

Wilbur swallows down that bitter taste and chances a smile back, however hesitant it might be, however horrible he feels being allowed a second, third, fourth chance, over and over again, however desperate he feels to atone and amend and fix and beg for forgiveness and then spit at it when they offer it to him — because this is Tommy, this is his brother, his family among the four and among many others, and he thinks that it all comes back to the question behind every question, the answer to all his answers, the root of all the things he’d done to hurt, the root of all the ways he’d let himself be hurt, the root of the reason he’d destroyed himself:

He loves them.

And what a horrible time to love, he thinks, because he can’t love them in a way they understand. 

And he will choose them, over and over, even if it means hurting himself, because it means hurting himself, and he will never forget what it feels like to love and be loved. 

And Tommy has forgiven him. And Phil has forgiven him. And Techno will forgive him, eventually, if he hasn’t already. His friends, too, all the people he loves boundlessly, and perhaps Wilbur has only been ruining his own chances at redemption, and perhaps he’s only now realised this, and perhaps he’s ready to move on.

He rolls up his sleeves, slowly, and keeps his breathing even as he inspects the black of his arms. He doesn’t get it. He’ll never get it, maybe, but here he is, saying sorry to all but himself, but eventually-

And eventually.

He will.

He will.

“Feelings persist, right?” Tommy asks. “If your darkness was going to remember all the horrible shit you felt, don’t you think it would’ve remembered your love, too?”

“Maybe,” Wilbur answers, and for once he finds it easy to stamp down the rising need to run away, hide away, because Tommy is staring at him and his red eyes and his black veins and charred skin and Tommy’s forgiven him a long time ago, and Tommy will forgive him over and over again. “But if that’s the case, that means I hurt you for no reason. That means all of this was for nothing.”

Tommy shrugs. “You did what you thought was right. I think that that’s enough of a reason for me,” he says easily. “And things are getting better, right?”

Wilbur nods. When the hell will he learn to accept it? Maybe he doesn’t want to die at all. Maybe he’s only convinced himself that he deserves to. And maybe he doesn’t deserve to, at all.

Tommy seems to think so.

Tommy is usually right.

And Tommy is bowing his head, horns exposed for Wilbur to grab. 

Wilbur’s stomach twists horribly, but something else wells up inside him, and most of all he’s confused, isn’t sure what to feel or what to say or what to know — because the knowledge alone that Tommy may be right and Tommy may still trust him after all this time, is enough, is enough, and he thinks, maybe, he-

He needs to know. Needs affirmation. Needs to be sure of something that maybe was never a question in the first place:

“Tommy,” he says softly, “am I a bad guy?”

Tommy’s answer is short, is sure, is certain, leaves no room for hesitation or argument, and it all comes back to the truth that Wilbur loves Tommy, Tommy loves Wilbur, and they are learning to forgive more than just each other.

“No,” Tommy says. “Never.”

“Okay,” Wilbur says. He closes his eyes. “Okay.”

Wilbur squints out at the sky, hands in his pockets, putting all his weight on one foot as he watches Tommy and Techno talking by the car, exchanging mischievous smiles and snide words and lighthearted glares.

A twinge of jealousy rears its head in his gut. He picks it up gently, cradles it in his arms, and then smothers it to death with the overwhelming certainty that he will, one day, find that sort of reprieve, too. 

A hand rests itself on his shoulder, and Wilbur whips around to find Phil, who’s wearing an obnoxiously bright sweater and a serene look on his face, nodding up at Wilbur as if he knows exactly what’s going on inside Wilbur’s head. Phil squeezes his shoulder, once, and then releases him to clasp his hands together. 

“He’s going to be alright, mate,” Phil mutters.

Wilbur nods absently. “I know.” 

“Dream’s coming with him. He won’t be alone on the road.”

Nod. “I know.”

“He knows how to take care of himself. He’s an adult. He’s twenty-two.”

“Yeah.”

“He’s also one of the best hunters of his age.”

“Yeah.”

“And, um, I don’t know if he’s told you, but his Blood God patron? That’s uh, that’s one of my many names. I’m his patron deity, I’ll look after him. If he needs it, I’ll be there for him.”

“I know that, yeah.”

Phil looks surprised. “Oh. Okay. Well, he’s going to be alright, Wil.”

Wilbur inhales deeply. Tommy shoves at Techno, who punches him back on the shoulder. Tommy howls in mock pain and flips Techno off with a loud, indignant ‘fuck you’.

“He’s going to be alright,” Wilbur repeats. He reaches up to hug his own arms close to himself.

Phil smiles. “You’re going to miss him, aren’t you?”

And Wilbur hesitates, but- but eventually, folds. “Yeah.” He bristles. “Is he coming back?”

Tommy parts with Techno after a very brief bro-hug. 

Phil shrugs. “You should talk to him,” he says, before clasping Wilbur on the shoulder and walking over to Techno.

Tommy elbows Wilbur on his way back into the house, face scrunched up in a mocking expression and tail flicking Wilbur on the arm. Wilbur refuses to dignify the little shit with a response at all.

Techno’s talk with Phil is short and sweet, and Wilbur barely has the time to process a sudden panic welling up inside of him before Techno and Phil are hugging, Phil’s wings folded over both of them, and Phil looks meaningfully in Wilbur’s direction and whispers something in Techno’s ear and Wilbur knows exactly what the fuck they’re saying but fuck, time’s up, Phil pats Techno on the back and leaves, walking towards Wilbur and towards the house.

“What did you tell him,” Wilbur breathes out.

“That he shouldn’t take the main road out of the city-“ Phil shrugs, “they’re doing construction along that route.”

“Oh,” Wilbur says. “Oh. Okay. Right.”

“Go on,” Phil urges, nudging him towards his brother. 

Wilbur stumbles his way to Techno, every bit of his ability to operate his limbs like a normal human being completely forgotten to the void. 

Techno taps his foot expectantly, an eyebrow arched as he watches Wilbur approach him like a complete fucking idiot. His pink hair is pulled back into a loose bun, his lips pressed thin around his tusks, dark blue eyes blank and bored. He’s got a leather bag slung around one shoulder containing a suspiciously machete-shaped tool that juts out the leather. He’s also dressed appropriately for the winter, unlike Wilbur and his newfound love for political shirts.

Wilbur smiles nervously down at his brother. Techno is unimpressed.

“Hey,” Wilbur starts. 

“Hey to you too,” Techno says. “Do you need something or can I go now?”

It takes Wilbur an embarrassing amount of time to realise that Techno is joking. “I wanted to say goodbye. I think.”

“You think?”

“I- yeah. Yes. I wanted to say goodbye too.”

“Okay.” Techno shrugs nonchalantly. “Bye.”

He narrows his eyes at Wilbur in amusement. Neither of them move. The door to the car’s driver seat is open, but Techno makes no move towards it.

“Riveting conversation,” Techno remarks with dry sarcasm, at the same time that Wilbur blurts out:

“Are you coming back?”

Techno looks a little surprised.

“Me? Coming back?” Techno taps his chin, pretending to think it over. “Sure. If I really have to,” which is his way of saying yes, definitely.

“Oh. Okay.” Wilbur shifts one foot around the other, fiddling with his fingers in his pockets. “Where are you going, anyway?”

Techno is quiet as he looks past Wilbur down the road, shielding his eyes from the rising sun with one hand. “I don’t know,” he admits eventually. “Away. Just, just away, I guess. I think I need to put some space between me and, and everything that’s happened, you know. I think I need to figure some stuff out.”

“You’re trying to discover yourself,” Wilbur says flatly.

Techno snorts. “I’ll come back to share my newfound wisdom and knowledge on the meaning of life and to teach you people the benefits of- of the fucking keto diet. Don’t you worry: big brother Techno will be there before it’s cool.”

“Prime,” Wilbur says as he huffs in fond exasperation. “You never fucking change. Sure. Right. I expect nothing less.”

Techno nods. “I think, I think it’ll be good for the family, too, maybe. I need time to figure out the Phil and Blood God stuff. And Tommy — it feels like we can’t talk at all since he’s lost four months in Bedlam.” 

He meets Wilbur’s eyes again, sincerity bubbling right underneath the surface of his snark-hardened face. 

“And you, too. For our sakes.”

“Me?” Wilbur asks.

Silence. Wilbur hears a shout far down the street. A neighbour’s car passes by their house. The sun continues to rise, casting soft shadows over both their faces. 

“You. Yeah,” Techno says. He lifts his chin, meets Wilbur eye-to-eye. “I don’t regret it, you know.”

Wilbur clenches his fists and breathes in. “Regret what?” he asks quietly. “Trying to kill me?”

“Among other things, yes,” Techno says, “I don’t regret it. I can’t tell you I’m sorry if I don’t mean it-“

“Wow. Okay-“

“-but, but- shut up, but I want to be able to tell you I’m sorry and mean it, really.” Techno crosses his arms, challenging Wilbur to refute his words. “And I want to regret what I did. I think, I think that’s exactly what I need to figure out.”

Wilbur blinks. Reels in the thoughts that started to run astray around in his head. Arranges his emotions into neat little boxes and puts away the ones dead set on jumping to conclusions.

“Oh,” he says lamely, “oh. Okay. Right, okay.”

And then for good measure, for everything:

“I’m sorry,” Wilbur says.

“I know,” Techno tells him. 

He reaches for Wilbur’s hand. Wilbur lets him, his breath stuck high in his throat. 

Techno takes Wilbur’s hand in his own, slowly guides it up to his lips, and presses his fingers against his tusks. Wilbur squeezes him back shakily, tears gathering at the corners of his eyes. 

(Dear brother, I am your keeper, now and henceforth, and you shall be forgiven.)

(Dear brother, you are forgiven, now and henceforth, and I shall be your keeper.)

“I’m going to miss you,” Wilbur blurts out.

“I know,” Techno says again, and releases him.

A wave of warmth explodes out of Wilbur’s chest, followed by a wave of ice, and he sighs, as cold settles into his skin, as a soft kind of heat curls around his heart. Something melts, and something settles, as something always will — and Wilbur closes his eyes in the middle of it, giving himself up into the rush of being ground zero for everything that tries to come back for the light.

(Dear brother, so goes the saying, and I find myself circling back to you, you, you at the end of the road not taken.)

He smiles at Techno, more sure of himself, and steps away. Techno nods back at him, eyes flickering with warmth, and then ducks under the hood of his car and shuts the door, starting the engine after a moment.

Wilbur feels a little like crying.

Instead, he waves as the car pulls out the driveway and drives off. 

He shivers at a cold spring breeze.

The sun rises. 

21.

There’s a shadow curling all around him, grazing the walls of an empty tunnel, suffocating the air in pure, venomous black — a shadow of jagged edges and soft insides and streaked through with boiling hatred and morose regret.

It reaches out to him, and he reaches back. Its grasp freezes him to the point of frostbite and scorches him alive, and still he holds onto it with rock-solid determination, as it holds onto him with an old, tired sort of desperation. It hurts to be away from it — as emptiness, as loneliness, as desolation will always hurt — but it hurts to be one with it, all hunger and greed and mind-numbing power; and the reverse is true, too, because it both recoils and reaches for him, just as he does to it.

I’m sorry, he wants to tell it, as he squeezes his eyes shut at the pain and the inferno that it burns away into. 

At the end — emptiness, and silence; the dark no longer whispers to him, its power no longer tangible — the tunnel stretches far away, lone and level and reeking of Ozymandias’ putrid little dream. 

At the end — he finds his voice, finds his footing, stands dead centre in the ashes of everything he used to be, smoke and mirrors; sharp bits of glass falling from between his fingers, dust gathering at his feet, dust coating the inside of his mouth, dust in his eyes as he blinks up at the aftermath.

At the end — there is a shadow before him. A shadow, a figure, made of soft edges and jagged insides, streaked through with boiling regret and morose hatred. 

It moves as he does. Looks like he does. Feels what he does. It’s dark in all the places he’s covered in light, and yet darker in the places he’s not. Embers flicker at the edges of its clothes and hair, its eyes burning the same red that his do.

“I’m sorry,” he tells it, first and foremost, most importantly.

Its voice is hollow, deep, echoing at the back of his head. ‘I know we are,’ it says, and he shivers at the uncanny familiarity. ‘I know we needed to kill me. I know we thought I needed to die.’

“I wanted to protect them from what you could do. I… I wanted to protect… myself, from what they could do.”

‘And so we chose to destroy me,’ it says, cocking its head. ‘Tell me: do we think it was worth it?’

“They make me want to be human,” he tells it. “Like I can be human at all. They taught me how- how to love, how to feel, and it was because of them that I had the strength and the will to do what it took to save them.”

‘But we will never know if they needed saving at all.’

He closes his eyes. “And I will never know if I needed saving, either.”

Silence. 

“I don’t know if it was worth it,” he admits. “This isn’t fair at all. Not, not to me, to you, to them.”

‘So as it is.’

“They wronged you,” he says. “They needed someone to blame all their hatred, all their selfishness, their cruelty on, and you were born as a vessel for everything they couldn’t accept.” 

He breathes deeply, harshly, and it mirrors him in perfect sync.

‘So as it is inevitable, so as we are foretold the moment humanity learned to hate.’

“They wronged you. You were never supposed to exist, but you did, because- because if not you, then who?”

It smiles. His lips quirk up into its mirror. 

‘You are part of me as I am part of you,’ it tells him. ‘We are tired of hurting each other. We are tired of hating each other. But we don’t need to hurt, to hate anymore, because I am with you as you are with me, and we will never need to be alone again.’

He nods sullenly. “I’m sorry.”

It nods a beat after he does, the mirror shattering and the embers growing into a fire. Its voice echoes in his head, in his heart, up his throat and between his teeth, and it says with his mouth the one thing he wants, more than anything, to hear:

“And we are forgiven.”

(And you are forgiven.)

And he is forgiven.

Light spills into his eyes. The shadow recedes from the figure, and all he sees is fire, is lightning, is atonement riding down in waves towards him. The world explodes with colour, with noise, into colour and noise, and he goes along with it, shattered, his very being ignited with a kind of forgiveness he had never felt before — had never thought he deserved before.

He breathes. 

The universe breathes along with him, and he thinks: perhaps it never wanted him dead, perhaps it saw him — bright, insatiable him — and it saw him — weak, fragile, cowering him — and decided he was worth saving after everything, after all. Because it knows him as he knows himself; it sees him and it knows him, knows his goodness, his cruelty, his pride, his shame; and still, without hesitation, it chooses him.

The universe sees him. The universe knows him. The universe chooses him — and here he is, choosing himself.

“And I am forgiven,” he breathes into the screeching white.

The world around him flickers once, twice, brightens and blinds and screams until the screams start to sound like the noises of a city, a home.

He is thrown backwards against himself, stumbling on solid ground as light bends around him, shadows melting into the ground — until everything stops, becomes quiet, and he’s lying within the blurry image of an alleyway, somewhere, surrounded by the fading bodies of dying hellhounds.

He looks up. Someone looks down at him, lips twisted into a smirk, eyes twinkling with light and familiarity. 

He’s staring into his own face, young and bright and grinning a familiar mischievous smile; brown eyes, pale hands, ten-years old and much too innocent for what he is.

“What now?” he asks into the silence, into the sky.

‘Now we go home,’ kid-him says easily, ‘and we live as we are.’

“And- and what’s that supposed to- what am I supposed to be?” 

‘I don’t know. Human, right? Isn’t that what we’ve always wanted?’

“But that’s not what I am anymore,” he says, as the light grows brighter and brighter and threatens to blind him. “I’m not human anymore. I- I can’t be. But I was only ever taught how to be human; I don’t know how to be anything but human.”

And somewhere in the distance, he hears the sound of footsteps on hollow ground. A campfire burning away over dry ground. Waves crashing against a cliff. Three notes on a piano — a chord in C major — and then a fourth, dissonant, played with hesitation.

‘But do we? Think we’re human?’ Kid-him grins playfully. ‘What does it mean to be human, anyway? What’s it feel like?’

“I don’t know,” he says. “I guess… I guess to be human is to feel things, emotions and the like, y’know? I guess to be human is to be afraid, to be sad, to be angry, and to hate… but…”

‘But the flip side is true, has to be true, too,’ it continues for him.

“Because… to be human is to be brave, is to feel happiness, is to hope, and- and being human, I think-“ he sniffles, wipes a hand across his damp eyes, “means loving. Means being loved.”

It smiles. ‘Well?’

He blinks at it. “Well… what…?”

‘Do we think it was worth it?’

“I don’t know,” he insists, “I don’t even know what that makes me.”

‘Well, we’ve been afraid before. We’ve been so afraid that it made us sad, we’ve lashed out of anger because of it, and it made us hate ourselves so much that it consumed us for years. But we were brave, at times, too — we were brave enough to feel happy, brave enough to hope, and, well, we love them, don’t we? We were brave; brave enough to do that, and in return they learned to love us, too.’

(Some people are born afraid.

Some people have fear etched into their bones, seared onto their skin, across their chest, into the ridges of their ribcage trapping their erratic hearts inside. 

Some people are naturally cowards, but if bravery is not the absence of fear but rather the conquest of it, then it stands to reason that these people — living and breathing on fumes and spite and trembling fingers — are the bravest ones, too.)

“And what is that supposed to mean?” he asks desperately. “I don’t understand. I don’t- what are you saying? What does that make me?”

The kid levels him with an amused look. It snorts. 

‘You’re so stupid,’ it tells him. (So this is where Tommy got it from.) ‘Why are you asking me? You’re more than qualified to answer that yourself. C’mon, big guy. What are you?’

Footsteps on hollow ground. Rain on a rooftop. A campfire on dry ground. Waves against a cliff. Three notes, harmonious, and then a fourth, dissonant — a family coming home at last.

He breathes. The universe breathes, too, and they exhale at the same time, at the same pace.

“I don’t know,” he says for the last time. He closes his eyes. “I think I’m just… myself. I’m not- I’m not anything else — I’m just Wilbur.”

Wilbur opens his eyes. 

He squints at the window, at the sunlight filtering in from between the blinds. He takes a moment to enjoy the peace of waking up unprompted — one of the many, many simple joys of life — until a noise from the kitchen has him whipping around, alarmed.

It’s only Phil. Phil, who turns and notices him sitting up groggily on the couch. 

“Good morning, sleeping beauty,” Phil says, waving cheekily at him from the kitchen. “Did you have a good nap?”

“I wasn’t sleeping,” Wilbur says, yawning, “just resting my eyes. What’re you doing?”

“I am looking for my wallet because we-“ Phil grunts as he crouches and opens a low drawer, “are going out to meet the fae.”

“Oh, huh. Why?”

Phil straightens up, wallet in hand, rolling his eyes. “Because Tommy thought it’d be a good idea to piss them off, and now we need to ransom him out of Bedlam.”

“Didn’t he say he was banned out of Bedlam? Try Mayhem or Pandemonium.”

“Those aren’t real places.”

“Not according to him, they are.”

Phil stares at him, lips moving almost imperceptibly. His eyes glow a bright yellow — and for a second Wilbur swears he’s staring through him — and then he starts blinking rapidly.

“Damn. Kristin says they are.”

“Your wife… Prime…?”

Phil nods. “Wanna say hi?”

Wilbur gawks at him. “Uh. Sure. Hi, uh, Prime. Kristin. Mum- Mumza. Uh.”

Phil’s eyes flicker gold again and he chuckles to himself. “She says hi, and finds it cute when you called her mum. She thinks you’re-“ he pauses, “she thinks you’re… lovely, among other similar adjectives.” He claps, once, and points at the front door. “Anyway. I’ll wait in the car. Go freshen up, will you — and turn the lights off when you’re done, alright?”

With that, he leaves.

Wilbur watches him go for a moment, before his brain kicks into gear and he stretches his back out like a cat. 

He yawns. Sneezes. Sniffs. Scratches his neck as he makes his way to the kitchen sink. He splashes some water on his face and shivers at the cold, quickly drying himself with a towel as he shakes off the last bits of sleep from his head. 

Once he’s done, he rolls his shoulders and tries his best to straighten his clothes.

Fucking Tommy. 

Fishing his phone out of his pocket, Wilbur scrolls through his contacts and shoots a few quick messages to Niki, asking her whether Tubbo has been dragged along with Tommy’s bullshit. After a moment, she replies with a select choice of exasperated emotes, and he chuckles to himself. 

‘What if we just left them there. Peace and quiet, am I right?’ he sends back before turning off his phone and slipping on a pair of shoes by the door.

He’s halfway out the door when he remembers: the lights. Right. Phil asked him to turn the lights off.

Wilbur sighs.

He turns around, squints at the switch panel at the other end of the room. 

He raises a hand to eye level and tries his best to focus. He reaches deep within himself, inner peace and all that, and gestures with his fingers for good measure, just to see if it changes anything.

(And you are part of me as I am part of you. 

And magic comes from within, comes from the heart, and you are wholly made of it.

And you were dark, were broken, but you are strong, are overwhelming, and so goes the magic that flows from within you.)

It takes a bit of time, but-

White flashes between his dark fingers. 

The switch flicks off.

There was a darkness underneath the city.

Was.

It’s gone now, and Wilbur’s glad for it. Sometimes he thinks he might miss it, but… well, lesser of two evils, right; he can’t have both peace and power, so he chooses what he’s always chosen from the very beginning:

His family.

And things are getting better. He’s worked to amend things, atone for his mistakes, seek forgiveness where he can find it, and for the most part, he’s succeeding. He’s getting better. They all are.

And things will never be the same again, but they don’t quite need to be. Wilbur comes out of it scarred and scared and a little broken in places — different, yes, a little less human, a little more creature, but Wilbur all the same.

And things are falling into place, and the ones that aren’t, will. 

He’ll make sure of it.

So, yes. 

This is a happy ending. 

It has to be.

Wilbur refuses to believe otherwise.