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The ghost of his son is standing on the other side of the crater.
He knows that jumper. Will used to wear that for years on end, back before he moved away with Tommy in tow, out searching for adventure and power and fame. That and the beanie he’s once again taken to wearing, apparently, now that he’s dead. Things were so simple the last time Phil saw that outfit. He had all three of his sons at home and safe.
Now, Wilbur stares, wide-eyed, over the chasm at the man who killed him.
Phil’s not really sure what either of them are feeling.
But he waves, and Phil tenses, wings unfolding behind him, some part of him desperate to rush forth, to claim his son back, hold him tight like he used to do, promise him again that nothing’s gonna change, no matter what he…
No matter what he does.
Where did the coat go? Wilbur was wearing a coat in the moment - the leather hide protected him from the sword’s blow, it took two hits to finally - and the boots are gone, he’s just wearing comfortable shoes now, the boots that made the scary clicking sound with every step on the stone floor of a quiet room metres from the centre of L’Manberg while he paced and shouted for Phil to understand how he’d been feeling for so long -
The jumper’s ripped.
Riiiight in the middle. Over the heart. Red stained.
Phil covers the gap between them in seconds, a single flap of his well-trained wings enough to propel him over the chaos to the figure in the slowly fading sunlight.
And then he’s standing in front of his grey, translucent son.
“Hello! You stabbed me.”
Phil can’t really respond to that one.
The ghost is smiling, and that’s how he knows this is not the man he was talking to before the blast. He hasn’t seen Wilbur smile since he left home. Just frowns and scowls and frightened eyes and determined set brows and blank and empty nothingness and then a wide, insane glint and he was screaming KILL ME PHIL, DO IT, YOU KNOW THEY ALL WANT YOU TO, and he did, and he’ll never know why.
“Hello, Wilbur.”
“Are you my father? I think I remember you. I think we had a lot of happy memories together. But I just remember a big loud noise and then I see you stab me twice in the chest and then it’s now.”
Phil considers this. “Yes, Wilbur, I’m your dad. Do you…” Does he what? Phil doesn’t even know what he wants to say.
“Oh, no, I have no idea what happened to make this big crater. Someone should probably figure out who did that and make them clean up. Do you live here? You could ask around.”
“No, Wilbur, I don’t live here. We come from far south of here, remember?”
“Well, you see, My Father, that’s the thing - I don’t remember much of anything. I do remember that one time when I was very little I hit you in the head with a snowball and you fell over.”
Phil’s forgotten that moment. Oh, god, no, he’s forgotten a memory so precious to Wilbur that he even remembers it after death. What kind of a deadbeat father -
“And I remember more people, more kids, they used to live with us. I remember looking after a baby. I remember sparring with… Oh! Technoblade! I remember him! Is he here?”
Phil pauses.
“No. Technoblade’s in trouble. He’s gone far from here by now.”
“Oh no, what did he do?” Wilbur looks crestfallen.
“He, er… He got in a bit of a fight with Tommy and Tubbo.”
The ghost gasps, suddenly childishly excited again. “I know them! Tommy’s a child. I remember. And I remember Tubbo likes to build, and he built the city that we - that we - he built… L’Manberg. L’-”
Wilbur looks around him for what seems like the first time. Taking in the destruction. Maybe he finally remembers what used to be here.
Phil saw so little of it that he doesn’t really miss it - he came in from the back - but Wilbur will.
“Is this L’Manberg, Phil?”
“What’s left of it.” He smiles wryly. Wilbur just looks confused.
“I don’t understand. What happened?”
“You - you blew it up, Will.”
“I did?”
Phil watches his son’s expressions flicker through a string of emotions - furrowed, confused eyebrows betray the tick of his thoughts; then he looks down at his hands in horror, then he spots the stab wound and ghosts (ha!) his hand over it in contained revulsion, and then he’s doubling over and his form flickers and when Phil reaches out on instinct to comfort his son his hands can only pass through the figure like he’s nothing but a thick fog and now they’re kneeling together and he might be about to cry and the ghost definitely is and it hurts to see the thing that Wilbur has become and and and
and then the ghost straightens up, and Phil’s head lifts to see him smiling blankly, staring into the middle distance like nothing happened.
“Wilbur?”
“Hello! You’re my father, right? You stabbed me.”
“So I did.”
The ghost is not his son.