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“I want to go back.”
“I want to go back.”
“I want to go back. Please, please, please take me back.”
“He said it was going to be okay. Everything is going to be okay. Someone will come for me.”
“Please!”
“Please…”
A curled up Ghostbur clung to the cold, lifeless walls of limbo, a burning sensation trickling down his cheeks. Even after the months of continuous ennui in this barren train station, Ghostbur clung to the idea that Tommy would come to take him away. That very soon he could return to Earth and be with all his friends. And Friend… he left him at the portal without even saying a final goodbye. Perhaps he was still waiting for him? Perhaps they all were.
Why and how was he here? He couldn’t remember... He couldn’t remember how long he’d been here. Neither a day, week, nor month made any difference to him anymore. He kept forgetting the time. He remembered when Tommy and he practised lying together. That was fun. Then they walked to the prison, and Tommy turned into an axe? They’d made it all the way to Dream’s cell. Dream looked a lot different than before. Covered in scars and bruises, hair overgrown and matted. He looked very unhappy. But then he saw Ghostbur and seemed to light up, with a peculiar grin, as if he’d just won something. Then nothing.
Then he was here.
He wrapped his arms tighter around his knees, his eyes shut as tightly as he could manage. Perhaps if he just imagined hard enough he could go back and see his friends one more time.
Something bumped into him.
“Oh so this is where all the crying is coming from,” a familiar voice said.
Ghostbur was jerked forward and clung to the frigid wall to keep his balance. Looking over his shoulder, his teary eyes widened, and with a swift pivot spun around and embraced the person behind him.
“Tommy!!! Oh, I knew you’d come for me! I was so lonely, and I was so sad, and I had no friends. I kept thinking of all of you. I didn’t want to forget anyone–”
“Tommy? Do I look like Tommyinnit to you?”
Glancing down at the boy he’d just grasped, he started to notice that there were indeed differences between the two. Ghostbur pulled away to get a better look, observing the boy’s desaturated physique and discolored palette, save for the bright blue of his eyes. These two details aside, he looked exactly like Tommy. Sounded like him too.
“Ohh, you must be Ghostinnit,” Ghostbur guessed. He frowned, disappointed that it wasn’t Tommy, but thinking on the bright side, as he always did, perhaps this was a new friend.
“Obviously. What is with you today? Don’t you think you play enough tricks on me as it is?” Ghostinnit said, annoyed. Despite his tone, his expression didn’t change, and neither did his stare. He seemed fixated on something in front of him, as he refused to make eye contact with Ghostbur. Ghostbur turned to figure out what he was looking at, but he couldn’t find anything particularly worth staring at. Just a train tube leading into a pitch black void. He glanced back. Ghostinnit’s gaze was still unchanging. Ghostbur waved a hand in front of his face. Nothing. Next he made a silly face. Still nothing.
“Can you see?” Ghostbur inquired with innocent curiosity.
“No, for the last time, my limbo is just void. Jeez Wilbur, you’d think after 4 years you’d figure it out by now.”
“I’m not Wilbur,” he corrected. “I’m Ghostbur!”
“Ghostbur?”
“That’s me!”
“Then…” Ghostinnit, despite being blind, looked around, “where’s Wilbur then?”
“He’s–” Ghostbur paused, his countenance blanked, “I don’t remember. I thought I did.” he frowned.
“Well if you’re here, then he’s probably back on Earth, which means he was revived.”
“Well that’s good I suppose. Maybe now he can be the leader Dream SMP needs,” Ghostbur grinned optimistically.
“Are you kidding me? He’s insane. Not gonna lie, I didn’t know you were the one crying the whole time until I found my way over here. He used to do the exact same thing.”
“Oh…”
“Well at least he’s gone. Good riddance honestly. I don’t know what happened to him. Last time we spoke we were on good terms, I get here and he’s nothing but a jerk. Found out I couldn’t see and wouldn’t give me a day off. 4 years he either spent crying, trying to get Schlatt to play competitive solitaire with him, or f– messing with me cos I’m blind.”
“Well, that’s mean.”
“I know!”
Ghostbur noted the attempt at avoiding the word “fucking”. “You’re a lot less angry than Tommy, I think.”
“Angry?”
“Well, maybe not angry. Aggressive? Loud. You seem calmer. Not calm. But calmer.”
“Maybe I don’t have as much to be angry about. My memory’s kind of fuzzy in some places too. I know about Dream though. He made sure not to spare a single detail about this ‘exile’ I apparently went through. He isn’t the same either. Is anyone?”
Ghostbur tried to think hard about it. Then he shook his head. “No, everyone’s changed.”
“Hey Ghostbur, what was it like down there?” Ghostinnit asked. His tone uncharacteristically solemn. “I only ever saw Dream’s cell, then he sent me back. I have memories of what it’s like to live, but they don’t feel genuine. Like I really experienced them. Only Tommy did.”
“I don’t know that I could describe it either. People changed but they’re still very nice, most of them. I can’t do much. Can’t taste. Can’t feel. I can build though. I think that was the best part.”
There was a silence between the both of them. Ghostinnit’s ever unchanging countenance revealed a cracked smile. This in turn made Ghostbur glow up, and perhaps this was the happiest he’d felt since he blacked out at the prison.
“You know what I think?”
“What?” Ghostinnit asked.
“We think we’ve just met, but I think we’ve been friends for a long time. I think ghosts don’t exist until death, then the soul splits. And before that we were just asleep inside our living counterparts.”
“What? What does any of that mean?”
“We might be different than the Tommy and Wilbur living down there right now, but I think we’re just as much brothers as they are, and always have been.”
Tommy paused. “Shut up, you’re gonna make me sappy n shit.” Tommy turned from him, concealing an even bigger smile.
“You swore!”
“I said shut it.”
“I can swear too! See? FUCK!”
The curse echoed through the empty and foreboding train tube, and Ghostinnit burst out laughing.
Maybe limbo wasn’t so bad.