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Wilbur Soot had always thought of himself as a leader. In childhood, he had commanded his younger brothers Techno and Tommy with grace, ordering that they take siege on the cookie jar or stage a coup against their father Phil so that they wouldn’t have to do household chores anymore. Silly make-believe scenarios acted out by the three of them. Wilbur fancied himself a president, Techno a warrior, and Tommy a hero, the three of them gesturing wildly and screaming at invisible enemies. Their winged father just watched them play pretend from the corner, a steaming cup of tea in hand and a content smile on his face. They were a small, happy family, just the four of them in a cottage overlooking the coast. Yes, there were bumps in the road (some more like entire obstacles), but they overcame most all of them together.
Then they got older. Of the four of them, Tommy was the first to leave, which was a shock to the rest. The youngest, barely sixteen, leaving the nest to journey off to a distant server run by some man in a porcelain mask. The absence was heavy. They never spoke openly about it, but it took on different forms- an empty seat at a kitchen table, an abandoned bedroom, no one to tease while ruffling their hair.
It took a heavy toll. Restlessness and unease. The world was shifting, they could all feel it. Change was murmuring beneath the surface of their worlds, lapping gently at first like the waves by the sea, but then rolling into riptides that pulled them all in.
And then one night something in Wilbur snapped. Phil found him in his room, moonlight peeking in from between the window curtains, shoving a few meager belongings into a burlap pack.
“You leaving me, too?” It was supposed to be a joke, but the tone fell flat and Wilbur could see it for what it was.
He averted his eyes. “I can’t stay here much longer, Phil. I’m in my twenties now. It’s time for me to finally go and find that purpose.”
A warm embrace fell upon him- it all faded away to just him and his father then- and he pressed his chin into Phil’s shoulder, squeezing his eyes shut.
“I know. I know you will, son.” Phil’s words were quiet, but they stuck with Wilbur as he finished packing and travelled to the exit portal. He didn’t disturb Techno’s sleep, never woke him up to say goodbye. As Wilbur was whisked away with the flashes of midnight and stars, he looked at their quaint seaside home that overflowed with memory and bid it an “until next time”.
How was he supposed to know that would be the last he ever saw it?
Tommy was startled by Wilbur’s arrival in the server but all the ready to be his loyal companion, a right-hand man in every antic Wil dictated. The first few days were just jesting, pulling pranks with Tommy and a new boy, Tubbo.
Then he started taking things more seriously. With his own two hands, Wilbur put stone and wood together, splintering his own flesh and pouring his soul out into a creation he was most proud of- the camarvan. Tommy lit up with laughter when he first saw it, the howl echoing through the forest. They crafted potions day in and day out, running themselves ragged but creating an empire.
This was it, Wilbur realized. He was finally becoming an actual leader.
But secrets don’t last long in worlds so small, and soon officials were at their door, knocking with fury.
“You can’t have this.”
“This isn’t allowed.”
“Fine, just you wait until Dream hears about this.”
Wilbur barked out a laugh at that last bit. The server owner. He had only talked to him a few times prior and, sure, he was powerful, but no one could ever infringe on the camarvan. Surely not some pathetic man in a mask, either.
Oh, how horribly wrong he was.
Independence. Or death.
Smoke and flame and ashes raining down. TNT blasting holes through the walls that had been so carefully raised. A traitor, the traitor, in a cramped room with empty distractions and a singular button detonating their hope to smithereens. An arrow through his brother’s heart.
But then, at last… L’Manberg.
It was his. Battle scars raced across the terrain and its people were few, but they had actually done it. Wilbur and his comrades, through their own spilt blood, had won a revolution, had carved out a territory of the server entirely their own. If only Phil could see me now, he thought, a wild smile splitting across his face as he stared down the sunset from atop the camarvan. The tail of his bloodied uniform flapped behind him in the gentle breeze.
Tommy stood below him in the grass, clutching the bandages around his torso. A victorious grin across his face, he called up to Wilbur, “Well, what now then, big man?”
---
What now? Wilbur stared blankly at the election results, the paper clutched in his fist, crinkled from the strength of his grip. If it weren’t for Schlatt and Quackity’s alliance…
Well, then the horned devil incarnate wouldn’t be beaming down from the podium, claws scratching idly against the wood as his wicked midnight gaze met Wilbur’s.
I- I founded this nation. It should be me up there, something deep within his mind whispered, barely audible over the thunderous words echoing over the seats.
“My first decree as the President of L’Manberg-,” Schlatt paused, then threw his arms open to motion to the young nation surrounding them. A crazed smile danced across his features, one that made Wilbur physically recoil. “The emperor of this great country- is to revoke the citizenship…”
Wilbur watched as, almost like slow-motion, Schlatt’s terrible claws extended to point directly at him. Dozens of eyes turned to see who was being exiled. No.
“…of Wilbur Soot and TommyInnit.”
For a moment, the world stopped spinning. His shoulders slackened and all he knew was fear, anxiety racing from his stomach into his throat. Was this how Techno felt that day Phil had rescued him from the Nether- the day that he was surrounded by those piglin-hunters who wanted him dead?
The first arrow whizzed by Wilbur’s head and he stumbled out of his frozen trance. Tommy still stood motionless beside him, and Wilbur grabbed the boy’s elbow and tugged hard.
“Tommy, run!”
Maniacal laughter raced through the seats from where Schlatt was keeled over and clutching at his stomach, tears of joy in his eyes.
More arrows soared through the air. Searing pain roared down Wilbur’s arm as he felt a shot glance across his elbow, the blood seeping through the fabric there near instantly.
Screams echoed up and down in his mind. Wilbur wasn’t sure if he could even run, a heaviness in his bones weighing his sprinting down, the thrum of blood in his ears a vicious roar.
He barely even felt the next arrow pass through his chest. He collapsed, Tommy’s wail the last thing he heard as the darkness closed around him.
Death embraced him for the second time.
---
Technoblade,
I hope this letter finds you in
As your brother, I
Me and Tommy are in trouble, but we can’t come back home. My nation L’Manberg is in the hands of a tyrant. He’s torn down the walls I’ve told you so much about and exiled us from our own country. We are trapped in a ravine with no food and no supplies. Please come help. We could really use The Blade right about now.
-Wilbur
Techno dragged a finger across the letters on the parchment. They were thick and shaky, so uncertain and nothing like the elegant, looping scrawl Techno would expect of Wilbur. Ink splattered the top half- as if written in great haste- and dried blood smeared the ripped edges.
Something had gone horribly, horribly wrong.
Immediately, he pushed his chair back and rose from the table. Phil glanced at him from the stove where he had been preparing a hearty potato and carrot stew.
“What is it? What did Wil…” Phil’s voice fell away as he caught sight of the expression on Techno’s face.
The piglin hybrid did not answer, just moved to where the coatrack stood in the foyer. His fingers moved swiftly as he donned the well-loved cloak, clasping the gold button with ease. Blood from past battles still stained the fur lining the collar.
“Techno, are you-?” The unspoken question hung in the air.
“Yes,” he replied bluntly, ignoring the disappointment that crossed his father’s eyes. “Could you bring me my axe, please?”
And just like that, his last son left, and Phil was completely and utterly alone.
---
When you live in the depths of darkness, your only light source several soul lanterns burning dim overhead, you start to lose track of the time.
Sure, a clock on the wall will tell you what you ask of it to the precise second, but the longer you go without seeing the blinding beauty of the sun, the more you feel that the tiny metal hands tick- tick- ticking mean less and less.
Wilbur hadn’t been able to sleep, but he didn’t know if he was supposed to have. Had he last woken up a few hours ago? Or had it been days? As always, he could ask Techno, the only one truly free to roam the server outside of Pogtopia, but the half-piglin’s response would mean nothing. Nothing. The pillow wrinkled under Wilbur’s fist as he rained blows on it in frustration.
In his mind, Tommy lurked in the doorway, watching him with disgust. You were my hero, the hallucination says. I looked up to you. And look at how far you’ve fallen. Then Wil blinked and the image was gone.
He dragged a hand across his forehead and through his ragged hair, his breaths coming out shaky.
Calm. Calm. He tried to assure himself, to reason that all he had to do was close his eyes and let his mind drift, to stop dwelling on these thoughts. He sank into the thin cot beneath him and pulled the tattered blankets over him.
“You remember the day I found you, mate?”
A bleary-eyed teenage version of himself blinks up at his father, barely comprehending what he’s saying. He’s so sick, his forehead burning up with fever and his every motion costing him so, so much energy.
Phil runs a hand through Wil’s curls, brushing a particularly annoying strand from his eye. The image is hazy to the young Wilbur, and everything is fleeting. Why can’t he focus?
He doesn’t respond, so Phil continues speaking, all the meanwhile staring at his son with such a fierce protection that it startles Wilbur. “You were all washed up by the shore and I could hardly believe it. Half-drowned, half- dead. I swear, I thought you were dead.”
He sighs and looks to the nearby window, staring out at those very same shores he is speaking about. Wilbur squints, trying to see if there is something unfamiliar there, but it’s the same as always. Crisp, infinite ocean and pale sandy beach.
“So frail, you were. Skin and bones, barely more than the clothes on your back. And all I could think to myself was ‘Who did this? Who cast their child out to sea? Who had enough hatred in their heart to let such a small child drown?’ It was stupid of me to assume, of course. And I know we’ll never know for sure how you got here but…”
He pauses, and his next words came out cracked, like the jagged edges of beautiful colored sea glass that washes up sometimes. “I- I thought you knew that you were welcome here entirely. I didn’t- please know that I’m just trying to understand- I didn’t think that you were upset enough about your past to… to… go to try and- and-.”
“To drown myself?” Wilbur finishes for him, the words a sickly jumble, a hush against the stillness of the room.
Phil may not know that Techno and Tommy are hidden in the closet, but Wilbur does (it’s always been their secret hiding spot) so he knows to listen in that direction. He manages to catch the sob that shudders from beneath the closed door there. He cringes, wishing that they didn’t have to be there for this.
“You know I love you more than anything. And your brothers love you, too. So, I just want to know why.”
Wil’s tongue is so very heavy in his mouth and the words are hard to form, but he decides that it is time to be honest. “I’ve been searching for answers, Phil. I’ve been looking for a purpose. And I love you all, too, but I’m meant to be more than just a speck in this timeline. What are my contributions so far? I strum my guitar and I sing my silly little songs.” He spits out the words like they’re fire, and perhaps they are since they’ve been only fueled by the existential turmoil that has been his kindling recently.
His throat gives up on him for a moment, and he nearly chokes. You would think that being entirely submerged in water would make you feel as though you would never need to drink again, but he is indescribably parched. Still, he goes on. “Look at Techno. He’s sixteen and already bested the most skilled of warriors in combat. What do I have to show for myself? Nothing.”
Self-loathing rushes to the surface and he shoves it down, buries it where he won’t see it until years later. “I’m nothing. So I figured… why not go out of this world as I came into it? The ocean, Phil, she called to me. And it was so beautiful under there…” He trails off and tears form at the corners of his eyes. His words have become no longer his, just a jabber of nonsense spewing from a part of his mind he never really touches. He doesn’t want to talk anymore.
His eyelids become heavy, so while Phil starts going on a tangent about how he is cared for, how he already has done amazing things, and how they will all help him recover from this, he drifts off into a deep slumber.
This is probably just as good, his mind murmurs to him, as what it would be like if you had drowned.
The memory ended abruptly there, and Wilbur sat up straight in his cot, throwing the blankets and storming out of his bedroom whose walls were chilly and carved from the same stone that caged him.
Hands trembling, he passed Techno and Tommy’s rooms with little trepidation of waking them (they were both heavy sleepers and he was so envious of that it made him furious sometimes), making a beeline for the main stone passage. He tore through chests and rummaged through Techno’s pack until, in a small satchel in a darkened corner, he finally found the medicine his older brother had brought from their cottage.
His hands were too shaky and he struggled for a good while with the lid. Bloody stupid child safety caps. He was a grown man, for God’s sake. At last, he managed to pry open the top and poured several into his palm, throwing his head back and swallowing them without water to wash them down. His heart finally stopped pounding and he began taking deep breaths. This was better. This was familiar. Soon, the drowsiness would kick in and his body would ease him into rest.
For some reason, as he pocketed the melatonin container and tiptoed back to his four stone walls and back-breaking wool cot, the anthem that he had crafted for L’Manberg played through his head as if it were Tommy’s discs on that jukebox he so desperately loved.
Wilbur could feel himself slipping again. But this time, he knew everyone already had their own fair share of individual pain and hardships. This time, he would not be a beggar. He would not have them come rescue him from the pit he built for himself as he had all those years ago. This time, he would swallow the pills and put up with the insomnia.
This time he would not be a burden.
---
A festival.
A celebration of democracy.
Of Manberg.
Or so he said.
Wilbur’s stare scorched holes into Schlatt’s skull from where he crouched hidden on the roof. He and Tommy were overlooking the stage with a hawk’s eye view, lurking, calculating.
Entering the sunlight from Pogtopia had nearly sent him spiraling back into the ravine. The light had actually burned. Tommy did not seem to experience the same struggle and instead had poked fun, calling him a zombie. These days, he was starting to look like one with the darkness smudged beneath his eyes and all.
Tommy had a bow trained on Schlatt’s every move, but Wilbur only watched with mild annoyance, truthfully just suppressing a yawn. Tommy was a coward. He didn’t have the guts to release the arrow, to send it straight into Schlatt’s eye and kill him where he stood. Wilbur would. That is, he would kill Schlatt, but he wouldn’t make it a shot from stories above. No, he would make it hurt.
That half-man, half-ram who took everything away from him. He sneered as his eyes followed Schlatt as the tyrant walked up the side-stage stairs and onto the platform above the citizens.
Though the devil’s mouth began moving, Wilbur heard nothing but for his own inner demons crying out for revenge.
“Do I- should I shoot him, Wil?” The bow shook in Tommy’s bruised fingers and Wilbur just cocked his head. Let Tommy make of that what he would.
Tubbo moved from where he had been cowering behind the thick velvety curtains, a few flashcards in hand, approaching the microphone atop the podium.
That was Wilbur’s cue. It was go time. Wilbur raced down the ladder propped against the back of the building and ran to the button room- to the room where everything would finally be gone and over with and the horrible country he had created would be vanquished- and then and then and then-
His mind stopped whirling.
“There’s no button,” he whispered into his communicator. Static crackled back at him, an echo in the graveyard he had made for himself. He sank to his knees, trench coat sprawling out around him like the sand dunes Phil had once taken them all to see.
He pressed his palms into his temples and squeezed, a raspy scream tearing through his lungs, ripping the muscles to bits as if Schlatt’s claws had shredded them to ribbons.
This was a pain entirely detached of him brewing with the sleep deprivation leeching every inch of sanity from him.
Within, an emptiness burbled beneath the surface. Someone was screaming about Tubbo in his ear. Hollow, he tugged the earpiece of his communicator off and cast it aside. Blood simmered. Fever burnt. He was sixteen and drowning all over again.
The monster of a nation he created would drown with him.
---
Sleepless days and nights came by, blending into murky shadows and reflections. New defectors arrived in Pogtopia, all boasting stories of the ways in which Schlatt had manipulated them, hurt them, used them. Wilbur stayed away. He didn’t care. Locked in his room, it was he, his cot, his memories, and the melatonin.
He never took more than it said to on the bottle, which surprised even himself. Perhaps it stemmed from all the concern Phil had for his safety over the years. It was basic safety procedures drilled into him. He would not disappoint his father, even now.
Speaking of, he had not heard from the old man in weeks. That was for the better, though, he supposed.
Insomnia and medicine locked in an endless waltz of control. His mind was a battlefield all on its own, ravaged by the sudden shifts from drowsiness to complete alertness. It felt like pressure on all sides, like someone was drilling holes into his skull.
It would be over soon, anyways. No one wears armor in L’Manberg. Neither would he be when he stood next to the explosives as they detonated.
Wake up. Insomnia for days (weeks?). Melatonin. Crash into a fiery abyss that barely counts as sleep.
Repeat the cycle until you feel everything you once were is slipping away, including your humanity.
Take it out on the people around you, shutting out those who once looked to you for orders in childhood games, forcing them to brawl in pits.
Leech. Leech. Leech, something in his brain hissed.
And he agreed with it. He was indeed a parasite for building the foundations of a country so poisoned and rotten. All his life, he had dreamt of creating something that would outlast him, a jewel in history, a magnum opus. A symphony, if you wanted to tie his musical background into it and top it with a shiny red bow.
More melatonin.
Sleep dragged him down, away from the thoughts and instead into the nightmares of ancient combined with the horrors of new. Familiar claws tore his eyes out while he laid on a shoreline, barely breathing, barely conscious.
The nightmare would soon be over.
---
“What are you doing?”
No.
Not now.
Don’t come now when I’m here at my lowest, when I have nothing left to give.
“Ph- Phil?” It comes out too soft. This is pain, this moment. He was so close. His scratched up fingers with those bloodied nail beds lingered so close over the button in front of him, mere centimeters from his own perfectly-crafted demise. The devil had drunk himself to death and the only thing between him and his true happiness now was a singular push of a button.
But that wasn’t true because a few sentences of nonsense pouring from his chapped lips later, he spun around and Phil was there- his father- wings poised with worry, feathers hovering above the rock beneath their feet, arms crossed.
He regarded his middle child with such worry that Wil had to tear his gaze away. Panic thrummed in his ears and, if he could ignore it, he might just have heard the explosions thundering through the stone in the distance.
Phil looked his child up and down and shoved down the overwhelming urge to tell him to come home right this instant. Months had passed now and he barely even recognized the man in front of him with his sunken-in, bloodshot eyes, the ones overflowing with hatred directed at him, at Phil.
Wilbur didn’t hate his father. He just hated that he would be the last to bear witness to what he had become.
His savior, his guardian angel.
It is a cold, autumn morning. Wilbur is six, but he does not know how he recalls this. He is unable to remember how he wound up on the rocky sand running beneath him. He cannot lift his head any higher than to perceive the cliffs in front of him and the sickening water taunting him from behind.
In retrospect, some piece of him acknowledges the struggle he went through to get here. Though he cannot remember the journey itself, he can feel the weight it left upon him. Hacking up water, he hears the disgusting echo of his coughs against the cliffs. Salt has drained his skin, leaving it dry, coarse, and painful to the touch. Grey sky, grey sand. Yes, this will be a quaint little place to die.
Sleep or something else pulls him into unconsciousness, and the next time he wakes, a man is cradling him to his chest as the wind whips against his face. He has wings, this man, and they are currently carrying the two of them into the air, up past the cliffside. The coastline shrinks beneath them. His throat hurts. He closes his eyes and returns to his sleep.
When he wakes again, a glass of water is pushed into his hand and, on instinct, he chugs it, every swallow painful. A bowl of soup is pushed into his lap and he looks up to meet the person who made it. A warm smile, blond hair, and a green-and-white bucket hat.
Navy blue sheets layered upon each other wrap Wil in a comforting squeeze.
“’S gonna be okay, mate,” the man says, and for some reason the child believes him. “I found you on the beach and brought you here. My name is Phil. What’s yours?”
Two small heads pop up from the side of the bed and Wilbur startles. One is a monster, strange and pink, while the other is a human with shockingly blue eyes.
“My name’s Wil.” His voice is little more than a quiet squeak. He shrinks back against the wooden headboard behind him, the ceramic bowl trembling in his tiny, tiny hands. “Are you gonna eat me?”
The pink thing snorts. “I think he hit his head on the rocks, Phil.”
“Techno, shh,” the man- Phil- scolds. He gives Wilbur a look of confusion but also one like he just heard a particularly funny joke. “No, son, we’re not going to eat you.”
“Oh.” It’s all Wilbur can think to say.
Suddenly, the small boy with blue eyes climbs atop the comforter and places his hands on Wilbur’s face. Crystalline blue eyes stare deep into Wil’s. “You’re my brother now, ocean boy.”
The statement rocks Wilbur to his core. Brother? What did the word even mean? But the sentiment brings him a sense of security, and he returns the kindness with an “okay”.
There, in a little house by the sea, a family is formed, one that will take nothing short of a hurricane to rip apart.
“Are you sure you really want to take that risk?” Phil was saying, and Wilbur’s mind bent back to the present moment in such a rush it dizzied him.
He was the hurricane. He was their family’s downfall. It had always been him.
At that second, it became ever-so-clear what he had to do.
“You know, there was a saying, Phil.”
He approached the button, turned his back on his father.
The anthem which had been looping in his head began once again, low and mournful.
I heard there was a special place
“By a traitor.”
Brought his trembling fingers to rest, now assured that his decision was final.
Where men could go and emancipate
“Once a part of L’Manberg.”
He was so very tired.
The tyranny and bloodlust of their rulers
“I don’t know if you ever heard of him. Eret?”
And the melatonin could not give him the type of rest he truly desired.
Well, this place is true, you needn’t fret
He heard Phil’s wings rustle behind him.
“He had a saying Phil.”
With Wilbur, Tommy, Tubbo, and Eret
A pretty big and not blown up L’Manberg
Not anymore.
The button was cold beneath his touch. He pressed it anyways, leaned into the ice.
With a smile, he turned to his father, and, in the silence before the detonation, whispered.
“It was never meant to be.”
The room exploded with color and sound and Wilbur felt himself being thrown backwards. His skin was singed, burnt, but he laughed through it all. Collapsing around him was the room, stone shuddering as the entire earth shook with fury. The explosion was deafening and the ringing it left in his ears was nothing short of torturous. He should be dead why wasn’t he dead-
He opened his eyes. Ash smothered his vision, but he saw his father in a heap on the floor beside him and-. Oh. Phil had shielded him. The once-glorious ravens wings were torn, ripped to shreds. He would never be able to fly again. Just another wrong to add to the compilation of every horrid thing Wilbur had ever caused. He shoved Phil back.
It’s L’Manberg.
“My L’Manberg, Phil!” he seethed, a dreadful grin splitting his lip. He tasted the blood. Saw the fear in his father’s emerald eyes, looking upon his son as if he were nothing short of gone already. “My unfinished symphony! If I can’t have it, no one can.”
Something shiny reflected in the corner of his vision. Phil’s precious diamond sword, discarded amidst the rubble. Wilbur kicked it towards the older man, the rattling of metal screeching across stone sending a fitful chill up his spine.
“Kill me, Phil. Stab me. Do it.”
The smoke began clearing from the cramped wreckage and light faded in from the outside. Everyone was watching, looking at him. Tommy was there, standing before Technoblade, who had a wither skull in hand. His younger brother watched upon them in confusion, with dark, dark blue.
The same blue as the sea Wilbur had twice nearly drowned in.
That was his fault, too- Tommy’s eyes going dark. He had bled every drop of confidence from Tommy over the past months, the very one who had called him “brother” first. He had ruined him, his right-hand man, the one who would follow him into battle no matter how crazed the plan was.
There was nothing more to lose.
“I- you’re my son.” Yet, Phil picked up the sword anyways, and relief sank into Wilbur’s cold, slow-beating heart.
“Look, they all want you to, so do it, Phil. Kill me!”
A pause. Then metal pierced his stomach, colder than the water of the North Sea. The ocean descended upon him and he sank to the floor. Blood pooled around him and he heard a distant sob. Someone was cradling him against their chest, exactly as how they had carried them to that cottage on the cliffs. Two worlds collided on him at once. He was in the ruins of a nation and at the bottom of the water all at once.
A hand turned his cheek so that he saw the misty green of someone else’s eyes. Someone familiar, whose name now slipped his fading mind.
Thank you, he mouthed. The water rushed up and at last consumed him. Finally, he could rest.