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“He always loved you, you know.”
The sound of the voice makes Tommy startle where he’s sitting, nearly falling off the rock he’s perched on that overlooks the massive smoking crater. He fights off the urge to scoff, but a quiet one comes out anyways. “Yeah, right.”
Phil sits down next to him. “It’s true.”
“This really feels like love, you’re right,” Tommy practically growls back. Sarcasm and pain drip from every word in his sentence.
“I know. I know it doesn’t,” Phil says. His voice is hardly a whisper. His wings are clipped, tucked under the warmth and protection of his dark green coat, and Tommy finds himself missing the way they used to ruffle against his back and slowly wrap around his shoulders. And then he finds himself hating the fact that he misses it. “But he loves you. And he always will.”
“This isn’t love.”
“It isn’t,” Phil agrees. “Not right now. But he’s still your brother-”
“They aren’t my brothers!” Tommy erupts. He shoots to his feet and turns on Phil, pointing a finger right in his face. “Neither of those two are my brothers! I’m done with them, they’re fucking assholes, and they don’t get to be my brothers anymore, okay?”
Phil blinks at him a few times and then looks away. “Alright. If that’s what you want.”
“It is,” Tommy snarls. But the words taste like stomach bile on his lips. He swallows thickly and sits back down, his back turned almost completely to Phil. “I’m done.”
“I don’t think you were old enough to remember when you first came home to us. You were so small. And your hair was a mess,” Phil chuckles at the memory, learning down to pick up a small shard of brick. He tosses it into a small fire that’s still burning in the pit. The whole place smells like rot and death.
Tommy presses the heels of his hands into his eyes. They burn for more reasons than one.
“Techno thought you were a baby - you were almost six or so - but you were so small. And your eyes were so wide. Techno kept telling you to stop staring at him.”
Phil looks over to Tommy, who’s still hunched over and burying his face in his hands. He’s not all that old, and yet his hands are scarred with more wounds than Phil ever had at that age, and he holds himself like a soldier instead of a child, and his eyes look cloudy and distant instead of bright and defiant.
Phil wonders were that small boy he used to know went. He wonders if he’s okay.
He keeps talking. “You were cold, down in the Antarctic. I couldn’t blame you, I used to wear three pairs of socks sometimes. And the warmest room in the palace was his. He said to leave him alone because he was busy with paperwork and such, but we went in anyways.”
Phil thinks back to that room, the plush rug on the floor, the long white curtains that turned the sunlight into a golden glow, the candles that sat around the room and made the whole place smell of vanilla. The large bed with a certain boy sat in the center, paperwork all around him and a quill pen stuck behind his ear.
He remembers the raised eyebrow that he boy gave him when Phil entered the room with a child in his arms and Techno in tow. He remembers the way that the boy, after a few seconds of hesitation, cleanly moved all the papers from his bed to his bedside table, and then patted the bed for the others to sit down. He remembers the boy asking the child his name, and the child burning his face into Phil’s chest out of shyness, and Phil laughing softly and telling the child that it’s okay, that the boy is kind.
He remembers the boy insisting that the child not touch a single thing and be very quiet. He remembers the boy and the child yelling and laughing for hours. He remembers the boy telling the child to leave him alone, and the child refusing with ease. He remembers finding the three sons asleep all the time, with the boy and the child always reaching out to each other in some way.
Phil remembers it all. And it hurts.
“He loved you from the moment he met you,” Phil says quietly. “I think he loved you so much that he started to remember how to love himself.”
Phil can see his face when he closes his eyes. His blood is still on Phil’s hands. He keeps washing them, but there’s always some bit of blood beneath the surface of his skin, or under his fingernails, or burning into his bones. He has no idea what has become of that boy. He wonders if he’s okay.
Something hollow makes its home where Phil’s heart used to be.
“He loves you. He does.”
“Please just shut the fuck up,” Tommy snaps. Phil closes his mouth and looks at his feet. He had laced his boots wrong in his haste to get here before anything bad happened. Ironic.
Normally Phil would care about stuff like his laces being wrong, but he finds himself pulling the little bows loose and leaving them to hang. What does it matter, anyway? The hollowness is eating away at his lungs, making it hard to breathe.
“Shut the fuck up,” Tommy says again, even though Phil hasn’t spoken since the first time he was told. “Just shut up.” Tommy’s voice is rising to a near shout. He’s hunched over, pulling at his own hair. Phil wants to stop him. He knows that trying to would be a death wish.
“You don’t get to act like you know better,” Tommy spits. “You don’t get to act like you know us anymore.”
And doesn’t that feel like a slap to the face?
“You don’t get to just show up and- and act like you fucking know better. Like you know what I’ve been through. Or what any of us have been through.”
“I don’t,” Phil tries. “I don’t know, but you could tell me-“
“For fuck’s sake, shut up!” Tommy’s on his feet again, screaming. His eyes are watering. Phil might be crying too, maybe. He isn’t sure these days. “Just stop! Stop acting like we’re still a family! Stop acting like things are going to be okay, because they’re not! Nothing is okay, Phil! And it’s your fucking fault!”
Oh.
“I wrote to you! I wrote to you for months! Begging for help, begging for literally anything, just a fucking response so I would know you’re alive! And what did I get for it? Absolutely nothing-” Tommy’s eyes flash with something sinister and hurt. Like a wild animal with its leg caught in a trap, lashing out at anyone who gets near.
“Where were you? Where the fuck were you, Phil? I thought maybe - just maybe - for once you would actually answer me. But no, no! The one time you actually decide to show up and what happens? Your kids are gone. And it’s your fucking fault.”
It’s true. It’s true and that’s what hurts Phil the most.
“I know,” Phil whispers. Tommy pauses and then presses his eyes shut. He tilts his head up to the sky, a bitter smile crossing his face. Phil wants to bury his head in his hands, but there’s still blood on them. “I know it is.”
“It’s not- it’s-” Tommy sighs. “I’m sorry.”
“No, it’s okay, you’re right.”
“Stop, please. I’m not.”
Phil doesn’t really believe him. But he stops anyway. There are definitely tears on his face. He wants to wipe them away but there’s still blood on his hands.
“Did he... did he actually love me?”
“I would think so, yes. He was your brother.”
Tommy winces at the was, but doesn't comment on it. “And what about you?”
Phil could see him again. Standing in that small cave, looking over the smoking ruins of their home, holding out a sword. Giving the sword up. Begging, pleading, smiling. All the blood. So much fucking blood-
“I have no idea what he thought of me,” Phil admits. It’s the truth. He never knew. Phil supposed he didn’t deserve to.
“Did-“ Tommy opens his mouth and closes it again a few times like a fish out of water. He thinks for a few seconds and then- “Did you love Wilbur?"
Wilbur.
His smile. His laugh. His song. His heart of gold. The way he used to walk over and lean on Phil after a long day, and how Phil would wrap his wings around him to keep him warm.
Wilbur. His son.
Bright, happy Wilbur. Tired, paranoid Wilbur. Hurt, bleeding Wilbur.
“Yes,” Phil says. The tears are pouring down his face in earnest. He hangs his head low and puts the bloody hands on his face. What does it matter, anyway? “I loved him so much.”