Chapter Text
Phil hated to step in.
He hated being the entity that guided his friends to the other side. He hated feeling like a vessel, a means to an end, unable to separate himself from his work.
He does, for a while. He falls to Earth. He builds an empire and has children, starts a family. He didn’t think that they would ever find out. He didn’t realize by bringing his family into his world, they would naturally flirt with the line between life and death.
Wilbur was the first. He was talking to him when he felt the pull, the knowledge that carnage was happening. That he would be involved. When he appeared to claim the dead, they were still alive.
And it was Wilbur. Somehow, Wilbur already knew. He could see it in his eyes, begging for death. He knew that only Philza could release him from his ties to the mortal world.
He kills him with his own sword. He rarely had to step in, to get his hands dirty. Often he just guided them to the other side, wherever it was for them. Helped them slip away peacefully. And when he cradled Wilbur’s body, caught in the headlights by the citizens of L’Manberg and the greater Dream SMP, he vanished. He tried to drag Wilbur’s soul to the other side, but burdened with grief and confusion, neither of them could go. He let his emotions get involved. He separated the psychopath Wilbur had become with the boy that he raised. He had never done this before, not to another soul. He split Wilbur’s in two. He left the one with the happy memories to wander the world as a ghost. He sent the broken one to the darkest corners of the afterlife, so far into the void that he didn’t think he’d see him again.
Ghostbur is loving, Ghostbur is kind, but he haunts him. His confusion reminds Phil what he did to a human being. To a mortal soul. In his millennia guiding souls he had never formed an attachment. But when he became a father, it was far too late.