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1.
“Have you ever picked the skin around your nails so hard that they bled?”
“Wilbur that’s–”
Wilbur knew it was a dumb thing to say. It wasn’t a question, it was an observation, one which Wilbur would be better off keeping to himself, but it wasn’t like he ever had control over his tongue. And he did feel that way, he always felt that way, it was only around Tommy that he could be himself.
“I’m serious, Tommy. Have you? Looked into a mirror and wanted to smash your skull into the glass so hard that it permanently damaged something inside your brain?”
“Wilbur you’re–” Tommy broke off, shaking his head, and even from his spot on the ground, Wilbur could physically feel Tommy’s worry radiating off of him. He felt nauseous. God, he was so fucking selfish. “Fuck, Wilbur, you're the President! That’s so– that's so– Jesus. You’re being so fucking dumb right now, big man. Let’s not talk that way. Please.”
“But that’s exactly how I always feel like doing.” His stupid tongue was on a roll.
Of course, it wasn’t fair on Tommy. It never had been fair on his younger brother, Wilbur knew Tommy wasn’t his fucking therapist, Tommy was a kid who’d grown up too quickly, a kid with trauma of his own to last a lifetime, but Wilbur couldn’t help letting himself go around his brother. It was selfish, and Wilbur was selfish, Wilbur was a monster even, but Tommy was all Wilbur trusted, so was it really so selfish?
Tommy's bright, cautious eyes travelled from where Wilbur was picking at the bandages on his upper left arm to the trenchcoat that lay on the grass near them. The weather was too humid around this time of the year anyway, and Tommy wished Wilbur would dress better, for the sake of his own breathability.
Tommy wished for a lot of things, and none of those things ever came to life.
“It’s okay to feel that way,” Tommy begins again carefully, eyeing him picking at the bandages again. Wilbur seemed to get hurt often, but Tommy wasn’t qualified enough to help. “It’s okay–”
“It’s not really,” Wilbur cut him off, looking up from his picking. “It fucking sucks. This sucks,” he said, throwing one hand up in a general direction. "Everything sucks. Everything is shit and nothing is ever going to get better."
“It isn’t then, I am sorry. God, I– I suck at this. Everything does suck, but hey, you've still got me, yeah? And stop doing that, you’re going to get them infected.”
“Won’t be the first time.”
“Doesn’t mean you have to do it again.”
“But don’t I keep going dumb shit over and over? Why are you surprised?”
Tommy was easy to silence. All Wilbur had to do was get scathingly self critical.
He wished Tommy worrying about him would hurt him more. That it would knock sense into him to man up, to be a proper older brother, and to take control of their failing nation better. Wilbur longed, way too desperately sometimes, to feel something, to feel anything just to escape from his hurtful numbness, and he can't recall when exactly he signed the pact to stop feeling.
Existence was numbing.
Tommy’s words did the bare minimum of keeping him alive, attached to the ground he was sitting on. It kept him staying, kept him awaiting the next crumb of acknowledgement, even if they didn’t feel enough.
Perhaps the issue wasn’t in Tommy’s words not being enough. Perhaps the issue was Wilbur himself.
Wilbur wasn’t enough.
Wilbur wasn’t enough and Wilbur was also the biggest asshole around, and so he threw his head back and laughed. The laugh rang out into the still air of the hill they sat on. “If only you knew, Tommy,” he said hoarsely, voice hardly feeling like his own. He laid back on the ground, hands behind his head, staring at the sky.
There wasn’t a cloud in the sky. Only dull fucking grays, he mused sardonically. Wilbur closed his eyes, inhaling quietly. “If you only you knew how fucking shit life truly can be.”
Tommy’s voice came up again immediately, and Wilbur felt a tinge of guilt at the way Tommy rushed to comfort him. “You’ve got me, Will. You’ve got me and I’m not going to leave, I swear.”
Sometimes, Wilbur wanted to believe. Those days, there was nothing more he wanted than to hold onto Tommy, hold onto L’manberg, and believe that he mattered, that people cared and that someday, things would be better.
He raised his head off the ground to look at him, a quiet smile sliding across his lips. “Yeah? Yeah, Tommy? You’re going to stick around with me? No lying?”
Tommy blinked, his eyes containing the sparkle they always had. Fucking Tommy, Wilbur thought. Always so bright. Always so alive.
“No lies,” Tommy said reassuringly, and Wilbur knew he wasn’t lying because he knew Tommy’s lying voice. “You’ve got me, Will. We’re going to stick like glue, yeah? You and me, we’re like brothers.”
Wilbur laid back on the ground, watching wisps of broken clouds drift by on the grim canvas. His brain quieted down.
Perhaps the elections would be okay.
Perhaps it would all work out.
“We are,” he promised back, catching the light smile that sprung up on Tommy’s lips at the confirmation. Tommy was pretty when he smiled, he looked like a child again when his puffed up cheeks softened to give way to dumb giggles, and if there was one thing Wilbur was truly sorry for, it was for all the smiles he’d stolen from him. “We really are.”
“Yeah,” Tommy said, laughing slightly, dragging out the word. “Yeah, big man. It’ll be all alright. It’ll be okay. Hang in there, yeah? Hang in there, and trust me with this, yeah?”
Wilbur got back up, stretching out his leg. He held out a hand and pulled Tommy up too.
“I love you,” Tommy told him, glancing at him briefly as they started to walk back down. “Hang in there, Wilbur.”
Wilbur pressed his lips together, unable to say it back and shoved his hands into the pockets of his trenchcoat.
Tommy followed suit, shoving one hand into the pocket of Wilbur’s trenchcoat, the touch jarring Wilbur, grounding him back to life.
“Warmth,” Tommy said whiningly, because he was almost always whining and that was normal, but Wilbur recognised Tommy’s lying voice. “Need warmth, Wilby.”
Tommy ran hot. Wilbur’s cold hand immediately soaked up whatever warmth Tommy’s had.
Warmth. Wilbur let it slide, even if it made walking slightly awkward.
The sun was now sliding slowly down on the horizon, and from up here, Wilbur could look down the lonely hill to L’Manberg below. The hill wasn’t remarkable, wasn’t special like their nation was, because the hill that looked over L’Manberg had always been there while Wilbur and Tommy had fought so fucking hard for L’Manberg’s existence.
The hill had two lonely people walking down casting shadows on it. Two lonely people who weren’t in L’Manberg yet. Wilbur wondered if anyone would notice if he disappeared.
Two lonely poeple, one deathly silent, the other talking about nothing in particular, trying to fill the space in between, trying to word comfort, distraction and sympathy out loud.
Wilbur loved Tommy.
And because Wilbur loved Tommy, when Tommy said it’d be all alright, Wilbur believed him with all his heart.
~
2.
Wilbur lay sprawled out on the platform for forever, for what felt like an enterally long and shameful period of grating silence.
He should be thankful to Phil, shouldn't he? This was what he wanted, he wanted to leave.
To escape it all. To not have to deal with his internal anguish anymore. Hadn't he finally succeeded?
Shouldn't he be proud of himself?
He pushed himself up using a hand, sitting cross legged on the white tiled floor of the platform when there was a bench to sit on right behind him.
Wilbur wasn’t proud of himself.
Hang in there, Tommy had said.
If he couldn’t make himself proud, he could make Tommy, though, right?
The tiles of the platform were dirty. They should’ve been whiter, perhaps they had been whiter before, when the platform was constructed.
None of these thoughts mattered.
Nothing mattered- nothing he thought mattered, nothing he did mattered, but thinking and doing kept him staying. Kept him from harming himself, kept him safe from the monster that he’d become.
Hang in there.
Wilbur wrapped his arms around himself, the stiff trenchcoat restricting the smooth movement of his limbs. He brought his knees up to his chest, wrapping his arms around them instead, pulling them closer.
He buried his head in his knees. And rocked himself, the same way he'd taught a frightened Tommy to rock himself to sleep when they were at war.
There was a long wait until sleep arrived.
And Wilbur hung on.
~
3.
When Wilbur wakes up, the first thing he thinks is this: The limbo is too empty.
On second thought, he considers that to be wrong. The limbo is hardly empty. There’s too much white noise. But perhaps the static is just in his head. Wilbur isn't too sure.
His head is screaming again. It hurts. Wilbur wants to kill it. Wilbur wants to never think again, never have to ruminate on every bad thing he’s done in his lifetime or think of the happiness he ripped from the people he hurt.
Wilbur sits up suddenly, terrified of himself, balling his hands into fists inside his trenchcoat pockets. He's gotten into the habit of going to sleep with his hands in his pockets, trying to steal any warmth in the bitter chill of the void.
His left pocket remembers having Tommy’s hand. It must, because it’s always warmer than the one on his right. He’s not sure if that is reality or just his mind playing tricks to mock him.
Wilbur’s suicidal. It's the truth, and it’s been so long now that he almost believes he’s always been this way. That he’s never really felt happiness, never smiled once.
But Wilbur’s never suicidal enough to kill himself. Something keeps him from killing himself, and Wilbur knows it’s Tommy.
Wilbur not sure if he’ll ever see Tommy again, but Wilbur knows he can’t die. He can’t kill himself, even if he never meets Tommy again, even if Tommy forgets about him and moves on.
He’s doomed to rot in his personal hell, he’s cursed to feel every bit of excruciating pain.
No, he cautions himself, setting himself up cross legged. He shouldn’t be thinking those thoughts. He shouldn’t, because they don’t make him feel any better other than the temporary sense of relief he finds from thinking about them.
It’s another day in the limbo. He’s not sure if it’s morning or night, he just woke up.
He doesn’t have the energy to scream today.
Sometimes he does, and those are the good days. Those days give him a sense of purpose, which comes with an accomplishment. Screaming, the purpose, his ripped throat, the accomplishment. Other days, he’s too hyper. He walks the entire length of the limbo on those days, trying to find out where it ends, but mostly trying to shake off destructive energy off his legs.
But on the rarest days, he’s too broken.
Too broken to stand up, too broken to think coherently, too broken to even hurt himself.
These days are the worst, for Wilbur feels too much and too little at the same time, and everything hurts unbearably much and there is no escape. It feels like his body is giving up on himself, and he doesn’t blame it. Wilbur would give up on himself too. He thinks he has, he’s not sure why he’s still here.
He wanted to die. He didn't want to be alive, he wanted to escape reality and he really thought he did, really thought he'd made it out of ever having to experience pain again, until he realised that the limbo was just another horrifying reality.
The days he can’t scream are the worst, and today is one of those days.
Wilbur spends all of it on the floor of the limbo. The platform is just a short walk away, but he knows he doesn’t have the energy to walk. If he tried, he would fall down again.
He needs to stay. He needs to stay, needs to keep staying. He can’t leave, even though he doesn’t know what he’s staying for.
He lies back down again. The floor almost calls him in, his back crashes against the ground, sinking into hard tiles not meant for sleeping.
He needs to stay.
The floor is a good enough place to stay.
~
4.
You want to, don’t you? You really fucking want to, don’t you? So why don’t you? Why don’t you do it, Wilbur? Why are you so fucking pussy?
Wilbur claws his hands into his mousy hair, raking fingers into it. He grabs a chunk of it in both hands. He’s sitting on the platform, and it’s morning. It’s not even been ten minutes since he’s woken up and his thoughts have started again.
“Good fucking morning,” he says out loud to no one, and it comes out bitter.
There obviously isn’t a reply back.
Wilbur sits on the floor staring at his arms.
He reaches out to run the nails of his right on his left. His nails have grown out again, but Wilbur’s gotten into the habit of biting them when his anxiety peaks. As a result, they’ve grown in broken chunks with sharp edges.
Wilbur runs down his nails on his arm.
It’s light, it feels like nothing.
Wilbur does it again, harder.
This time he sees white.
He presses down all five of his nails of his right hand deep into the skin of his left arm, pulling them out when it gets just past unbearable. His fingernails make harsh crescent shapes on his skin.
It’s funny how he’s always alone in this stupid place. No matter how hard he tries to convince himself, nothing works. Nothing ever works, and no one's coming to save him, not that he'd ever admit to wanting saving and Wilbur just doesn’t... want to stay anymore.
It’s been too long since he’s heard from Tommy. He misses it. He misses it more than anything. L’Manberg’s faded to bleak memories now– Wilbur’s always been smart at recollecting and remembering things, but the noise of the void drives him insane, and it claws away at his memories.
Wilbur’s forgetting. He’s losing meaning and without meaning he doesn’t have a reason to stay.
Wilbur doesn’t dig his nails into his arm again. He doesn’t look at them either, he feels the blood trickling down his arm anyway. He’s going to have to tear a bit of his shirt out again to wrap up the wounds while they heal, but he can do that later.
He needs to stay.
He really tries his best to.
~
5.
The first sunrise is unlike anything he’s ever seen.
Wilbur’s never experienced anything as beautiful as this one particular sunrise.
He wants to keep it to himself, because it’s the first bit of true joy he’s had in ages. He knows the sunrise isn’t his, but he wants to pretend it is anyway, because he hasn’t seen anything this beautiful in forever.
The colours are vivid, too vivid even, and it’s been a very long time he’s come across something that vivid and not torn his eyes away immediately.
Wilbur inhales, twisting his aching body into a stretch, and even though it’s fresh air, it burns his lungs the way the smoke and ash of the station’s air would, but that’s because he’s not used to this.
He’s not used to feeling good. The thought itself blocks everything else out, makes him tremble in wonderment that he made it out.
Tommy walks up to him from behind, and even though Wilbur hears footsteps, even though he senses when Tommy places a hand on his shoulder, it’s too familiar, too warm, and most importantly, perhaps, too painfully comforting.
Wilbur’s shoulders feel weak. He cups his cheeks with the palms of his hands, and is surprised when they aren’t freezing cold to touch. It’s all too much to take it at once.
“This is your sunrise,” Tommy tells him and Wilbur can hear the smile in his voice.
“Mine?” Wilbur looks at him.
“Yeah. All yours. Pretty isn’t it? It rained last night. I think it rained for you, so that the sunrise today could be more beautiful. So yeah, this is your sunrise, all yours to take in.”
Tommy’s grown up now. Wilbur wants to cry in relief, he feels like the kid in this scenario. Tommy’s hand squeezes his shoulder and Wilbur falls, knees giving way to make contact with the server’s warm lands.
Things are okay. They aren’t the best, Wilbur knows he has many people to make amends to, and even more to do to make up for his wrongs, but at the very least he’s out of his hell.
He’s out of the station with no trains, out of the limbo that screams white. There’s been a sunrise, a proper sunrise, he’s been gifted a new chance at life.
He's being given a chance for recovery. Wilbur knows that the chance itself is recovery personified.
And even when he’s falling over on his knees in quiet prayer, till his face is inches away from the ground and propped up by his arms, even when he closes his eyes and expects to see numbing white, he still sees the brightest yellow, the most vivid red, and every colour in between the two, till they blur together to make up his very own sunrise.