Archive of Our Own

Right now, though, he’d settle for Wilbur leaving him alone.

He’s not there all the time, but he thinks that might be worse, because that means he pops in and out with no warning or explanation, and Tommy can’t stand not knowing when he’s going to appear, grin wide and unsettling and movements jerky, like he’s a puppet yanked around on a string, like his limbs don’t obey him quite like they should. It’s proper creepy, is what it is, and Tommy hates it, and Tommy hates him.

Another thing he hates is the fact that he just won’t stop talking.

Wilbur was never particularly quiet before, of course. He could spin out entire monologues at the drop of a hat, could go on for ages about the things that interested him. In the old days, before it all went to shit, Tommy used to like to listen to him, little though he likes to admit to himself that there is such a thing as ‘old days’ at all, days that seemed so very good at the time, before the memories became tainted by what followed.

Now, though, Wilbur just talks. And talks, and talks, and talks, about anything and everything, rambling and convoluted, and sometimes he talks about normal things and sometimes he very much does not, sometimes talks about things like—like worm anatomy, and black holes in space, and what lives at the bottom of the ocean that no one knows about, and other topics that Tommy has no desire to ever hear about, now or literally ever.

And it makes him angry, too, that Wilbur thinks he can just come up to him and talk to him, like he never hurt him, never hurt everyone. Like he’s not everything that is wrong with this server. Like every ounce of pain and terror he’s ever experienced can’t be traced back to him, him and Dream both.

“Man, do you ever shut up?” he demands, resisting the urge to clap his hands over his ears. They’re sitting on the top of his house, where he’d been relaxing, thank you very much, right up until Wilbur strolled up the path and spotted him. He shudders to think of the expression that lit up his face, that sheer delight, no doubt at the prospect of tormenting him.

“Not really, no,” Wilbur says easily, unperturbed. “I find it counterproductive. I have things to say, and you’re here to listen, so I should say them. No point in not.”

“I don’t want to be here to listen,” he says, casting his gaze to the heavens. The sky is dark, clouded, likely about to empty into the first real storm they’ve gotten since Wilbur came back.

“We can go somewhere else if you want,” Wilbur says, missing the point by a mile. “We don’t have to sit here on top of your shit house. Why do you still live here, by the way? Haven’t you found a better place yet? Or moved in with Tubbo or something?” He wrinkles his nose. “He’s got a little village or something, hasn’t he? I remembered that today. A little snowy village.”

“Yeah, yeah, he’s got a little snowy village,” he mutters, adding, “and my house isn’t shit. Except for when you’re here, you shit. Your presence brings down my property value. Why can’t you just fuck off?”

“Nah,” Wilbur says, and smiles toothily.

“I hate you,” he says. He shifts away from him a little bit. He ought to just get up and leave. He ought to, except he knows it won’t do him any good, because Wilbur will just follow after him, like the worst kind of dog, trotting at his heels, chatting his ear off, being a terrible person all around.

Wilbur lifts an eyebrow.

“You’re so fucking awful,” Tommy continues, encouraged by the brief pause in conversation, and then he remembers something. “Hey, Ranboo said he saw you put a whole flower in your mouth yesterday.”

“Oh,” Wilbur says, “he saw that, did he?”

He blinks. He was expecting a denial, he thinks. He didn’t believe Ranboo when he told him, because first of all, why was Ranboo around Wilbur to see that in the first place? And second of all, why in the entire Prime-damned fuck would Wilbur be eating flowers?

“Yes, he—he saw that,” he says. “Wilbur, what the fuck? Why are you sticking flowers in your mouth?”

“I wanted to see what it tasted like,” Wilbur says, like it’s self-evident.

“You wanted to see—that’s a plant, man, that’s not food. Why the fuck would you want to taste it?”

“To see if I could,” Wilbur says, still infuriatingly chill about it, like eating flowers is a normal thing to do or something. “I don’t know why you’re not getting this, Tommy. Don’t you remember how it felt, being there?” He sits back in the grass, stretching a bit, letting out a contented sigh. “I forgot what it was like, Tommy, to feel things. The wind in my hair, the ground under my feet, that’s all new to me. Why shouldn’t I taste flowers? Or dirt, or sand, or anything else I want? It’s there, and I can feel it in my mouth, and I can taste it, even if it doesn’t taste very good. Tasting good isn’t what matters, Tommy, that’s not the point. The point is the doing. The point is the feeling.”

He looks away. “You’re such a fucking wrong’un,” he says. “That’s disgusting. Don’t eat dirt.”

He doesn’t like it when Wilbur tells him to remember things. Remembering things is about the last thing he wants to do. He doesn’t want to remember that terrible, howling, aching void, doesn’t want to remember being torn apart and put back together every second, doesn’t want to remember the glint in Wilbur’s eyes as he asked him to play a game of cards, again and again and again, uncaring of the pain he was in. He doesn’t want to remember any of that. He also doesn’t want to remember that while he got stuck in an eldritch nightmare, Wilbur was apparently living it up in a train station. Which, true, is not exactly where Tommy would like to spend the rest of his existence either, but it’s better than nothingness.

“Hey, hey, Tommy, Tommy look,” Wilbur says, and Tommy doesn’t want to, but he does anyway. Wilbur makes direct eye contact with him, and then pulls up a blade of grass from the ground and pops it in his mouth. Makes a big show of chewing, then swallowing. Grins.

“Yum,” he says, and Tommy would leap for his throat right about now if he weren’t so averse to touching the bastard.

“Shut the fuck up,” he says, “shut the fuck up, go the fuck away, I don’t fucking want you here, I don’t—”

“If you didn’t want me here,” Wilbur says, “then maybe you should’ve considered that before you went off half-cocked. I remember that now, too, you know. I’m here to stay, Tommy. That’s that. I’m here, I’m alive, and I’m not going anywhere.”

“Shut up,” he whispers. “Shut up.” To his dismay, tears gather in his eyes, and he turns his head away, blinking ferociously to clear them. He won’t give him the satisfaction.

But, Prime, he can’t look at him. Can’t look at him when he’s spouting off bullshit like that. Can’t look at that face, once greyed-out and loved so dearly, now twisted and smirking, an expression that Ghostbur would never have worn. But Ghostbur is gone, is dead, replaced with this fucker, and it is his own fault in the end. His own fault for not coming up with a better plan. His own fault for being too quick on the draw, for bringing out the axe before the netherite blocks came down, but he thought he could get him, didn’t anticipate him moving back so quickly, and then it all went to shit.

He could’ve at least insisted that Ghostbur cross back over with him. He could’ve done that much. Maybe Sam would’ve killed him, but he had a totem on him, and Ghostbur would still be here. And death—the thought terrifies him, terrifies him more than anything, but for Ghostbur’s sake, maybe it would have been worth it.

Sam’s voice still echoes in his ears. He tries not to think about it, tries not to think of the way he shouted, of what he shouted. But it creeps back at the worst possible times.

Wilbur laughs a little bit. “I’m not going to shut up,” he says. “I don’t have to shut up, so why should I? You’d better get used to it, Tommy. I’m not going anywhere. I don’t have to go anywhere. I don’t have to do anything. I’ve got the entire world, and I can go anywhere I want to. If I want to talk to you, I can do that. If I want to chomp on some flowers, I can do that too. I can—”

Overhead, thunder rolls, crashes, loud and rumbling, stretching on for several seconds. And after the first bout ends, another begins, though slightly more distant. Tommy doesn’t think he’s ever been more grateful for a storm in all his life, because Wilbur cuts off abruptly, going blessedly, blissfully silent.

“Yeah, you’d better shut up, pussy,” he says, casting his gaze skyward once again. It’ll start pouring any second now. Wilbur still doesn’t say anything. Thunder keeps sounding, lightning crackling in quick intervals up above them, barely any space between flashes; it’s going to be a doozy of a storm. He doesn’t want to be out in it. Maybe if he’s quick about it, he can get into his house and lock the doors behind him so Wilbur has to find somewhere else to take shelter. Or maybe he’ll just stand out in the rain and get soaked. Would serve him right, that, except it’s another reminder that Ghostbur is gone because Ghostbur wouldn’t have been able to do that at all, would have melted right away.

He’s not thinking about it. He’s not.

So, he readies himself to bolt, and then casts a sideways glance at Wilbur to see what he’s doing, because he still isn’t talking, and that’s weird. And then does a double-take, because Wilbur’s just—staring. Staring out into the distance, a glazed look in his eyes, his lips slightly parted.

He should take the opportunity to run. But he can’t help but ask.

“What the fuck is wrong with you, then?” he says, and Wilbur doesn’t react at all.

And then, another boom of thunder goes off, this one the closest yet, and Wilbur flinches with his whole body. He’s not breathing, Tommy thinks, which is—good. That’s good. He should stop breathing. It’s the only decent thing for him to do, at this point, to fuck off and die. Except—

Thunder again.

“No,” Wilbur whispers, so quiet that Tommy can barely hear him at all. “No, please.”

Lightning flashes directly overhead, illuminating the hill top, and Tommy gets a good look at his face. Frozen, eyes wide in—but it can’t possibly be terror. That can’t be right. But Wilbur is staring at nothing, and he’s not breathing, and the wrongness of it hits Tommy in the chest like a physical blow.

Thunder follows the lightning, and finally, Wilbur sucks in a breath. Then another, and another, and he’s breathing too fast, now, so fast that he’s probably not getting any oxygen at all, and his hands come up and yank at his hair, hard. His eyes are still wide open, unblinking, and it’s too dark now, to tell whether the glimmer in them is tears or just some wild, overpowering emotion.

“No,” he chokes out between those too-quick breaths, “no, no, I can’t—I can’t be—I was out, I was—I don’t want—please I don’t want—”

He keeps going, and Tommy sits there and watches in horrified fascination. He’s got no clue what to do with—whatever this is. Lightning, then more thunder, and Wilbur cries out like it’s struck him, and it’s a shout and a wail all in one, a ghastly sound belonging more to the dead than to the living, a sound that hits pitches that Tommy has never, ever heard come out of Wilbur’s mouth.

“Stop,” he says, shouts, almost, “I don’t—the trains—”

And something very small and quiet inside of Tommy goes, oh.

Because how many times has he woken up from a nightmare to darkness and panicked? How many times has he flinched away from touch, certain that the slightest tap will kill him, even the smallest point of contact setting his entire body on fire? How many times has he let his mind wander back too far into bad memories, and found his breaths difficult to take in, his vision blackening around the edges until he finally manages to pull himself back together?

This is that, isn’t it?

But it shouldn’t be happening to Wilbur. Wilbur is a nightmare incarnate, the monster at the end of the book, the villain with blood-soaked footsteps and a crazed laugh and evil, maniacal plans. Wilbur is all of that. Wilbur is bad. Wilbur is nothing but bad, through and through.

Wilbur is crying.

Weeping, more like, tears falling down his face twin streams. His voice has gone silent again, and his lips mouth words even as the sound of his wheezing, gasping breaths fill the air. He keeps pulling on his hair, hard enough that it must hurt. And overhead, the thunder keeps rolling, and Tommy supposes that if he tilted his head and closed his eyes, it might sound like trains, a bit. Constantly roaring past, never stopping.

Thirteen years in a train station.

Tommy climbs to his feet. The wind has picked up, and it’s buffeting his shirt. The rain will start any moment now. He’s surprised it hasn’t already.

He should leave him here. Leave him to work through this himself, or pass out if he can’t. It would serve him right.

He doesn’t leave.

He’s not sure what he really believes, in his heart of hearts, but he doesn’t leave.

Instead, he crouches down.

“Wilbur,” he says, “can you hear me?”

Wilbur doesn’t respond. His breathing doesn’t change. He can’t be far away from unconsciousness, at the rate this is going. It would be so easy to let him. So easy to take the shot afterward. Get rid of the problem like he couldn’t with Dream. Maybe Ghostbur would come back, then.

But Wilbur makes a whimpering noise, high and animalistic, and he knows he can’t.

“Alright, come on,” he says, and then pauses. “Don’t you fucking make me regret this.” And he grabs Wilbur by the wrists, not particularly gently, and pulls him roughly to his feet, dragging him down the hill and into his home. Wilbur stumbles after him, eyes glazed and unseeing, and he’s definitely lost the whole fucking plot, but it’s fine, because he’s moving, and then they’re inside, and Tommy slams the door shut behind him. Wilbur flinches at the noise, which almost makes him regret it, but the door is closed and the thunder far less loud, so whatever. It doesn’t matter.

“Sit,” he directs, and pushes Wilbur down onto his bed, releasing him and taking a step back, wiping his hands on his shirt as if that will get rid of the sensation of touching him. “Wilbur. You’re not—you’re not at a fucking train station, got it? You’re here. I wish you fucking weren’t. But you are. So snap out of it, come on.”

Wilbur is quivering. And—but surely, surely Wilbur didn’t suffer like he did. Surely, or else he’d have come back just as much of a mess as he did, just as broken, and Wilbur is not broken. He’s evil. He’s pure evil, and when he came back, he looked right at the sunrise and declared it his, and who does that? Tries to claim the whole sun?

What kind of power-hungry bastard would try to claim the first sunrise he’s seen in thirteen years?

Thirteen years without seeing the sun. Prime.

No. No, he can’t think like that. Because if he thinks like that, he’ll have to realize—

“Tommy?” Wilbur gasps suddenly. His face is so pale. Tommy can see the veins under his skin, that’s how pale he’s gone.

“I’m here,” he says, despite his better judgment, and Wilbur’s gaze is clouded, still, but his eyes lock onto his face, landing somewhere on his forehead.

“We’re back, Tommy,” he says, his voice a harrowing rasp. He’s still not getting enough air. His hands are shaking so hard they look as though they’re convulsing. “We’re back, do you hear them? Do you hear them? They keep going and going and they don’t stop and I can’t leave, Tommy, I can’t leave, I have to watch them go by and leave me behind, just like everyone, Tommy, I can’t—” He cuts off, gasping for breath, and Tommy stares at him. Stares at the villain, at the monster, shaking to pieces on his bed, terrified of being sent back to his hell of an afterlife, terrified.

Too familiar. Too human. But Wilbur can’t be human, because if he’s human—

He clears his throat. “You’re not dead, Wilbur,” he tries, and his voice comes out as a hoarse croak. He doesn’t know why. So he tries again. “You’re not dead, Wilbur,” and this one is louder, steadier. But Wilbur doesn’t respond, and his breathing has gone back to that harsh, shallow whistle, tears still flowing down his cheeks, and Tommy doesn’t know how to stop this. Until he remembers what Wilbur said about feeling, and—

This is a gesture reserved for family only. Which Wilbur certainly is not. Not anymore, if he ever was. But gripping his wrists a moment ago didn’t do much, and if he actually wants Wilbur to not pass out, he needs to do something soon, so—

Tommy takes two steps forward and holds Wilbur’s head in his hands, one on either side of his face. He shudders at the sensation, and at the way he can feel Wilbur’s cheekbones so prominently, but he’s set his course now, and he’s not chicken enough to back down.

“Wilbur, I am about to breathe very loudly,” he says. “I need you to listen, okay? And follow me. Outside? That’s thunder, man. Just some fucking thunder. No trains. I’ve never seen a train on this server. No trains here. You’re alive, and you need to fucking calm yourself, so follow my breaths.” And he breathes, tries to find a rhythm, and it feels so fucking awkward, and he’s never had to do this before. He’s been on the receiving end once, the one time that Ranboo—Ranboo of all people—caught him while he was having a period of freaking out, and breathing is what Ranboo did to bring him down from it, and it worked pretty well. So he does it, and he keeps doing it, and very, very slowly, Wilbur’s breaths level out and deepen to match him.

Wilbur blinks.

“Tommy?” he says, and he sounds bewildered, and he sounds—

Broken. Broken in a way that Tommy knows all too well. And he doesn’t want him to sound like that, because if he sounds like that, then he can no longer deny it. Can no longer deny that Wilbur is fucked up in the same kind of way that he is. And that makes it so, so much harder to hate him, to blame him for everything, because if Wilbur is fucked up in the same kind of way that he is, then that means he is a human person, suffering. A human person who, if Tubbo and Ranboo are to be believed when it comes to him, needs help. Deserves help.

He mentally recoils from the thought. But somehow, his hands do not leave Wilbur’s face.

“That’s my name, bitch,” he says.

“I was alone,” Wilbur says, and his voice cracks on the last syllable, and he still sounds so horribly confused. “I was—all alone for so long. I shouted at the walls and they never answered, not even when I screamed my vocal cords bloody. I couldn’t get out. I clawed my fingers down to the bone, Tommy.”

Tommy does not want to hear this. He so does not want to hear this. He’s about to rip his hands away and storm off, regardless of whether it’s the good thing to do or not, but Wilbur’s next words stop him.

“Are we real?”

He swallows. “We’re real.”

“This is real?”

“This is real.”

“I’m alive?” But before Tommy can answer that one, he takes a deep breath. “Right, I—I’m alive. I’m alive.”

“Yeah,” he agrees simply.

“Oh,” Wilbur says. “Well, fuck me, then. That was fucking awful.”

Wilbur’s voice is doing a strange thing, like he’s trying too hard to sound normal, and Tommy wishes, wishes he didn’t recognize the same thing in himself. He tries to pull his hands away, but Wilbur catches them by the wrists, and his grip is far too firm for someone who wasn’t aware of his surroundings only a minute ago.

“You feel—” Wilbur says. He’s staring at Tommy’s hands like—like they’ve got some kind of secret written on them or something, wondering and oddly soft. “You feel real. That’s—that’s good. Okay, that’s good. Good. Why are you looking at me like that?”

Tommy looks at him, and doesn’t know what to say. What is he supposed to say? Yeah, Wilbur, I’ve just figured out that actually, you’re just as fucked up and broken as I am, and maybe that means you’re deserving of some kind of help after all? Because I wouldn’t wish what I went through on anybody and it turns out that actually does include you?

Because seeing you so scared scared me? And I don’t want to see you go through that again? No matter how much I hate you?

No. None of that works.

“You’re kind of fucked up,” he says instead, and Wilbur snorts.

“Oh, I’m sorry, are you just now figuring that out?” he says, and finally releases him. He immediately tucks his hands into his pockets. “I’ve been fucked up since forever, that’s not news.”

Oh, Tommy thinks again.

He hates this. He hates all of this, so much. He wants to go back to an hour ago, when he felt so secure in regarding Wilbur as something inhuman, nothing but a dangerous threat, not a person with feelings of his own. Now everything feels all complicated, and there’s not anyone there to help him work through it.

Because there’s supposed to be a line. A line between the good Wilbur, and the bad Wilbur, and he hates him because he crossed that line, became bad when he was supposed to be so very good. But what is he supposed to do if it turns out that line never really existed in the first place?

“Right,” he says aloud. “I’m going to do something else. You can either stay here and be fucked up in here, or you can go be fucked up elsewhere, I don’t really care. Maybe don’t go outside if you don’t like the thunder. Fucking—bye, then.” And he turns, grabs a pickaxe, and mines down to his old downstairs room, which is a mess since he decided to block it off, but whatever. He’ll find something to do down here, and he’ll stop thinking about the man upstairs. The man who is a man, who has done so much hurt, but who is—who is hurting, himself.

Tommy doesn’t really know where to go from here. But Wilbur lets him go, doesn’t follow him, and when a few hours have passed and he dares to venture upstairs again, he finds Wilbur asleep in his bed. Which he should be annoyed at. Which he is annoyed at. Very. Except Wilbur is all curled in on himself, and his back is to the door and his face toward him, and he looks—peaceful, in sleep. And the fact that he’s sleeping at all is—well. He’s not looking into those implications. Tossing around a word like trust would be an unwise thing to do, so he’s not doing it. He’s not ready to do it, even if he wanted to.

But he goes back downstairs and lets Wilbur sleep. Eventually, he slides down against the wall and catches a few hours himself, sitting up, and when he wakes he has a crick in his neck, and Wilbur is gone. The bed is made. There is no sign of his presence at all. He doesn’t know how he feels about that.

Outside, the sun is shining bright, and he gets the impression he isn’t far. He never is.

The idea doesn’t fill him with quite as much dread as usual. For now, that will have to be enough.