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The air in the void is stale.
It’s always been that way, Wilbur’s gotten used to it by now. Wilbur’s used to breathing air he’s already inhaled before, feeling like there’s nothing new left for him anymore.
In its nothingness, there’s a staining loneliness. One that makes its presence known and then sticks around, like chewy candy at the back of his throat.
The void brings about a terrifying recognition of his feeling of unbelonging. Wilbur feels like he’s never really belonged anywhere.
When he screams, it rips his lungs raw and he falls down to his knees, begging for an answer.
He doesn’t get a reply back.
It only confirms his hunch. The void brings a sense of loss.
Wilbur doesn’t scream like that too often anymore.
He continues walking down the void, feeling like he isn’t walking at all.
Sometimes, he wants to hurt himself, as painfully as is possible, to make himself feel an inch more real somehow.
Is he even real? Wilbur often feels like a character in a movie, he feels he could almost be the unfortunate main character. Every day in the void brings a touch more of disconnectivity, like he’s not a real person, but a figment of his own imagination.
Like he’s someone he’s making up as he goes.
It’s terrifying.
Wilbur scrapes the front of his shoes down on the ground hard as he walks. Anything to break the silence, make himself feel heard. His shoes don’t make a sound.
The silence screams for itself.
The void lives up to its name. It’s truly a void, a place of nothingness, then of staleness, and finally, of the impurity that breeds in such rotting moldiness.
The void swallows everything whole.
Wilbur stops walking to scrape his shoe down hard again. Nothing.
He does it again. And again. And again. He’s got all day anyway. And night, and everything in between.
The void swallows sound.
He continues walking. Wilbur thinks it’s taking away his sanity too.
~
The void changes colours, but it’s always one single colour.
Most days, however, the void is devoid of colour. Empty black precariously held up in the midst of nowhere.
The day Wilbur respawned here, it was that way.
At least he wasn’t afraid back then. He was just… confused. He spent it on the ground mostly, too tired to explore.
His chest stung, his lungs felt like they would collapse any second as he inhaled raggedy, struggling to breathe. When he swallowed, his esophagus radiated ripe shockwaves of pain up and down the gaping emptiness in his chest.
He hardly remembers it now. Memories started to fade the more time he spent in the void, and Wilbur fought to remember things he’d once loved.
It’s been months now, and everything he loved was ripped away from him long ago, but he remembers Phil.
Wilbur missed Phil.
He likes to think he still does, he would really like nothing more but to believe he still cares about what happens to him or to the people he loves— but nothing matters the way it used to.
He feels empty.
As the days passed, and rolled, collapsing into one another, starting to blur as they picked up speed, the emptiness of the void tilted Wilbur’s mild confusion to absolute discomfort.
Somedays, Wilbur would wake up screaming and writhing on the ground, tearing his hair out, not knowing how to stop.
Somedays, he would have thoughts. Thoughts he’d never had before, horrid, sick thoughts that would plague his brain and force themselves on him the way wet paper clings to hasty hands. Wilbur would try to peel them away, he would stomp back and forth down the void, but they never left.
They never left and Wilbur learnt to live with them. Just like he’d learnt to live with everything else.
~
The void changes colours and today, the void is gray.
It isn’t the worst, Wilbur thinks, as he walks. He shoves a hand in his pocket. It isn’t the worst. But it’s never the best. Wilbur can’t remember the last time he had a good day.
He supposes he could pick any day and it would be as good a guess as any. They’re all the same.
Shadows flicker in and out of his vision, and he inhales the void.
Sometimes, he feels he is the void. Like he’s become the monster he didn’t want to be.
He won’t lie, it brings him a sick sense of comfort. The way a lover finds comfort in their abuser. There’s nothing left for him anyway, and Wilbur takes anything he gets.
There’s a wretched longing in his chest, one that burns through his chest and soul, one that can’t be comforted. It never leaves, nothing that’s happened to him in the void ever left, and Wilbur knows he’s going to have to live with it for the rest of his time in the void.
The unease in his chest makes him sick.
When he swallows, shaking himself lightly to steer clear of his thoughts, he feels the pain he felt the day he spawned in hell clog up his throat. It’s his own personal hell, he thinks.
It makes him smile a little. His own personal hell, his head tells him, and he swallows back down wet saliva and coarse hurt. His feet walk on without direct orders.
He makes them stop. It’s a struggle, it takes energy to stop doing things once he’s doing them.
His own personal little hell, he muses sardonically. He’s in his own personal little hell.
Wilbur tilts his head back and laughs until two drops of tears squeeze out of the sides of his eyes.
~
It wasn’t always this bad, he supposes. He had good days some time ago.
There was one month, a couple months ago, when he had Tommy.
It was the first time the void had shifted colours. Wilbur watched, arms wrapped around his knees pulled into his chest as the void changed. Black flickered, diluting in grays, the grays buzzing static until they paled into white.
And then, the void was white.
Wilbur barks out a laugh as he walks. Everything brightens when it has Tommy in it.
The void stayed white as long as Tommy was with him. Wilbur never told Tommy the void had been any other way.
Tommy was screaming anyway.
Wilbur had held onto Tommy as he screamed, feeling slightly useless. He didn’t have words to offer, Wilbur thought he wasted words. Talking was useless, what was there to say?
And so, he didn’t say anything as Tommy cried. He pretended to ignore the way Tommy flinched when Wilbur reached out to hold him in his arms, pretended to ignore how weak Tommy felt in his arms, shuddering into the crook of his shoulder.
He determinedly ignored how weak he felt holding the empty shell of his brother. Wilbur was fucking dead. How he felt no longer mattered.
Words rose and died in his throat.
I love you. I’m sorry for whatever happened.
You’re my whole world, Tommy. Hurts to see you like this. Please don’t cry.
Is Phil okay? Fundy? Tubbo and Techno? What happened to you? Why won’t you tell me anything?
Please don’t cry.
Tommy your collarbone is sticking into my neck. When’s the last time you ate? Tommy, have you been eating? You’ve been eating, right?
I love you. My love, my world, my brother, you’re my brother, aren’t you? We were going to rule the server. You and me. Just you and me.
We were good, weren’t we? We were so good, Tommy. We were so good.
I wish I wasn’t so tired.
It’s okay, Tommy. It’ll be okay. The world would twist itself over to make it all alright for you. It would do anything for you. I know I would. And I’ve seen the world, haven’t I?
I love you. Please don’t cry.
Love you Tommy. My Tommy. Brave child.
Words rose and died in his throat. Wilbur coughed as he pulled away from Tommy, the bitter remains of unsaid words choking him, barely registering how hard Tommy rubbed balled fists into already painfully swollen eyes.
There was so much to say and Wilbur didn’t say any of it.
Wilbur thinks Tommy hated him for it.
~
The void is endless. Wilbur knows that. Or at least, that’s what he believes.
When Tommy was ripped away from him, disappearing into a suction that opened in the void, Wilbur had turned his back and walked away.
Or he’d tried to walk at least. It was only dignified.
It turned into a sprint really quickly.
He’d seen most of the void that day, and it hadn’t fucking ended.
Eventually, he broke down and fell. Knees scraped into the ground soundlessly, spurts of blood leaking out where the vessels broke and Wilbur still didn’t feel real. He still didn’t feel pain.
This was the last day the void would be that bright.
Wilbur fell to the ground that day (night?) and cried. He didn’t hold back tears the way he’d held back words the day he reunited with Tommy. Tears streamed down his face, his shoulders shaking in horrid spasms that never ended
This was the first time he’d ever cried since being dead.
He felt dead. He’d never felt this broken before.
He stayed this way until ruthless time took pity and wrung him out, guiding his sorry shoulders and stained cheeks into a restless sleep.
The anguish that he felt in every inch of his scathing skin came back to taunt him in nightmares.
An uncertain period of time later, Wilbur woke up screaming.
~
Today, the void is gray again, grim as it always was, and coarsely silent.
The void is gray, grim and silent.
In its grayness, there’s desolation. It shelters madness of the purest kind. It urges him to exist in the static, to feel black and white collide on each other, tearing themselves until it births dismal gray. Wilbur feels himself go unhinged every moment that he spends here.
In its grimness, there is destruction. One that begs him to cause hurt. To cause misery, to inflict pain and laugh— but on whom? And how?
And in its silence, there is death. Death like peace, the solitude that stems from losing it all, when anger and hurt finally settle down on wet earth and find their nirvana. It tells him to wait. To hang on.
When Wilbur squeezes his eyes shut hard enough, he’s almost home.
The void is home.
It’s been too long for it to be any other way anyway.