Work Text:
Mornings in the Arctic are cold, silent, and simple.
They are characterized by the drifting smoke of the night’s dying fire and its light, quiet pops and hisses, like the prelude to an explosive. Sometimes there is shifting, the sound of someone turning in their sleep, similar to the shuffle of a train’s passengers. There is no loud, hardly any light, and in those early mornings, it is hard to tell that you are truly alive.
There is a man who sits on the doorstep before the sun rises. His name is Wilbur Soot. He used to not be alive. In these mornings, he isn’t sure if he still is.
The inside is too cold, the stuffy, silent atmosphere a breeding ground for the memories that plague him. The simple noises he does hear do nothing but stoke the flames of trauma better left buried.
It is colder outside, that is true. And quieter, if he is being honest. Sometimes the early morning dark is almost unbearable, worse outside than it would be inside.
But he is not an honest man. The cold is bearable, bundled up first in that sorry excuse of a coat and then in borrowed clothes once he is trustworthy again. He takes comfort in the puffs of breath from his lips, like the curling smoke of a cigarette he cannot touch anymore. The silence is a false one; if he listens, the chitters of winter-white foxes and chuffs of polar bears reach his ears, even as far away as he is.
And outside, he can see his sunrise.
It is a burst of color, the dark begins to fade. Warmth reaches his face and broken feathers with the gentle touch of a comforting parent. The world wakes up in a supernova of small things like the calling of crows and fading of stars and barking of dogs and to most it is nothing but to him it is everything. And everything is the universe telling him you are alive, you are alive, you are alive.
He cries, sun-drenched and overwhelmed but alive.
He forgets to come in sometimes, and the others wake up before he can hide back in his makeshift room and pretend to sleep. He knows they know he doesn’t sleep, hasn’t, not since war and exile and endless waiting for a train. But it is easier to not see and pretend that he did than it is to face the disappointment head on.
Technoblade is gentle about it.
(You know your twin, and Technoblade is not gentle at many things. It is not in his nature. But when he is, he is effective at it. You do not deserve it.)
If he sees the Wilbur on the doorstep in the early morning, shoulders hunched and shaking, he goes back into the house and doesn’t come back until his arms are heavy with soft crocheted blankets, maybe with enchantments woven in them, and hot cocoa or coffee with a suspicious tang of what might be healing potion.
He knows of the chronic pain, the headaches, that ache in the back where wings meet skin too human to bear them. He knows this, remembers whispers half-sobbed to him in a dark ravine that sometimes felt colder than the Arctic air. Wilbur does not have the courage to tell him that there is a different ache now, one in a heart not used to beating again.
He reaches for Wilbur’s wings, sometimes, almost cringing at their dirty, sorry state. He knows how to clean them, how to make them soft and beautiful and Wilbur’s again. Wilbur bats his hands away with a glare.
Sometimes, they talk.
Or they try to at least, because Wilbur does not open up, and Techno does not give up. Wilbur snaps and yells and Techno takes it until he cannot anymore. Wilbur flinches when Techno moves like he thinks Techno will strike him, and neither of them speak as they leave the doorstep to start their day.
(You do not know how to be grateful.)
Wilbur wants to be grateful though, truly, even if he cannot show it. Techno is trying, even though he is mourning the ghost whose place Wilbur has stolen, and that is all Wilbur can ask for.
Because Philza isn’t trying.
(You don’t see him, at least. Because he is, behind closed doors, by untying the mourning braids in his hair and thanking his goddess for bringing you back at every meal. He leaves cups of tea laced with regenation at your door and admonishes you for eating too little at dinner. He burns your old coat.
He is trying, but in ways that hurt you, and maybe that is worse than not trying at all.)
If he sees Wilbur on the doorstep, he will ignore him until he has to go about his day. He tells Wilbur to go inside, to get some rest somewhere safer. He makes a remark about Wilbur catching his death, once. That does not go over well.
Other than that, Phil does not engage. He lets Wilbur sit on the doorstep when he won’t come in. He pretends not to notice the tears frozen to Wilbur’s face when he finally does. The balance is precarious and uncomfortable but it works. Phil keeps his distance.
Until he doesn’t.
One morning, as his sunrise happens, Wilbur lets out a sob. It is loud, loud enough that he worries he’s woken the house’s other inhabitants up. There is the sound of clattering, of moving around the kitchen, of the kettle being put on the stove, and his fears are confirmed.
The door opens, he knows what to expect. Techno would not touch the kettle, Techno doesn’t make tea and prefers to boil milk for hot cocoa. Wilbur prepares himself for stern words, for being told to come back inside, for a cup filled with tea he does not like to be shoved into his hands.
That does not happen.
“Hey, mate,” he hears instead. Phil stands in the doorway, still in his pajamas, a blanket wrapped tight around his shoulders, shrouding his injured wings. “Can I sit down?”
Wilbur does not know what to do. This upsets their balance. They are supposed to keep their distance aside from the usual disappointed warnings and comments, lest they wish to let memories and regrets and the reasons and way Wilbur died in the first come back to them. He finds himself nodding, though.
There is a shuffle and a sigh as his father settles down next to him, the closest they have been since Wilbur first came back and Phil hugged him and Wilbur screamed because being touched was too much. It is a heavy realization. Wilbur can tell Phil feels it too.
They are quiet, for a moment. Wilbur cannot bear it. “Did I wake you up?” He asks after a while. He watches as his sunrise makes its way up the sky. He does not look at Phil.
Phil hums, an oddly musical sound, one Wilbur associates with hesitation because he’s heard Phil use it to stall unpleasant answers to unpleasant questions before. “Yeah,” he relents finally, “yeah, you did. Was gonna wake up soon anyway though. You want a blanket?”
Wilbur usually likes the cold, but he recognizes the olive branch due to years of politics and more so years of living with people who do not compromise, so he nods and wraps it around his own shoulders, hiding his own wings from view.
They are quiet again.
(Wrapped up in the blanket, pressed to your father’s side almost instinctively, you remember your childhood. You have always been an early riser, something you get from him, apparently, because the two of you would be the first ones up. He’d make you tea because back then you still enjoyed it, and together you’d sit, both wrapped in blankets and the comfort of safety and years not yet burdened with pain.
You’d have your guitar, usually, and strum a quiet song for him, maybe sing along. You haven’t touched a guitar since your exile and haven’t sung since sob-singing the anthem the day you died. Your hands tremble too much now to strum strings. You let your lungs fill with smoke the day you died and screamed your voice raw in limbo.
You don’t think you will ever make music again, just like you will never fly again.)
Wilbur cries again, and he doesn’t know why. He cries again, waiting for Phil to tell him to stop or to leave because this is too unpleasant. Phil does not.
He does not move, letting Wilbur lean on him, letting Wilbur cry into the fabric of his shirt, not even commenting as the tears begin to freeze. He lifts his hand, slowly, gently, and Wilbur does not flinch as he carefully cards it through Wilbur’s curls.
It is like there had never been a confrontation in a room with a button. It is like they were just father and son, not separated by years of war and trauma and death. It is like they are safe.
For a moment, Wilbur lets himself believe they are, and his dirty wings relax.
Phil comes and sits with him every morning, now. Sometimes he does not come until well after Wilbur’s sunrise has happened and the tears have frozen to Wilbur’s face. Sometimes he is there before Wilbur, talking to the star-filled void of the night sky like it is a long lost lover. But he is always there now, always bringing two blankets so they can cover their wings and pretend they are safe.
They do not speak most days. That is fine with both of them, maybe preferred, because when they do speak, there is crying and shouting and broken or burnt feathers flaring. It is a step, though.
It becomes their new normal. Techno smiles a little, but he doesn’t say anything, just gives Phil a look of maybe pride that makes Wilbur almost snort because he cannot fathom Phil seeking pride when Wilbur tries so hard to get it from him.
Things change, a little. It might be called healing. Wilbur stomachs a full plate of food one morning after he and Phil talk, and Phil beams at him, the strained silence teeming with things unsaid barely an hour before forgotten.
Wilbur starts to wear the cloak Techno left in the closet of his small bedroom. It is blue, not the blue of a burnt up uniform made of delusions but the blue of the morning sky after Wilbur’s sunrise, crocheted with love and family. It covers the wings that hang too heavy on Wilbur’s back, the ones he still does not acknowledge.
Some nights, he actually sleeps. Though he usually wakes up screaming in a too dark room, if it is too early to watch his sunrise, he will creep into Techno’s and curl up beside his twin. He no longer flinches even when Techno’s hand rests on his messy feathers. He sleeps soundly, then.
(It almost feels like learning how to live again. You are too afraid to hope, though.)
Wilbur forgets his cloak one morning on the doorstep. He had gotten used to wearing it, so his feathers feel too exposed to the morning air. He does not shy away from them this time, though, extending his wings and letting the light of his sunrise warm them fully for the first time since they were hacked away from his body.
They are a sorry sight. Patchy, uneven, feathers crooked and broken. They are soot, snow, tar, and dirt stained. He does not remember how to lift them properly, so they drag behind him. The primaries, which should be majestic and beautiful and envious, are sad, pathetic things.
He cries that morning, not for the usual reasons. Instead of mourning the things he cannot control, he mounds the thing he let go, the thing he refused and is now in danger of losing all over again.
Phil is out beside him in seconds.
He does not seem worried or phased. This is a normal occurrence. That is, until he sees the wings extended behind Wilbur’s back, the ones he hasn’t truly seen since Wilbur had left all those years ago.
“Aw, mate, your wings…” Wilbur can see Phil’s own shudder under the blanket around his shoulder. Wings are not meant to look like this, as dirty and shameful as Wilbur feels inside. “What have you been doing, dragging them through the mud?”
Phil means this to be light, and Wilbur chokes on a sob-like laugh. “Yeah, really. I kind of have.” It hurts to keep them lifted for this long, keep them this extended, so he lets them fall again, looking like the broken bird he feels like.
Phil does not say anything to that. Wilbur looks up, expecting disappointment, expecting shame for the sorry excuse of an Elytrian Wilbur has become, but there are only tears and what must be regret. Wilbur’s breath catches in his throat.
(Phil should not feel regret. You should be the only one. You lost them in the first place. You cost Phil his when he shielded you from your self-destruction. You were too much of a coward to face them again so you left them in this state.)
“I’m sorry,” Wilbur says, truthfully for once. He expected shame and anger and disappointment but this hurts so much more for some unknown, brutal reason that claws at his chest where his heart is still getting used to beating again. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have— I—“
The words do not come out right. There is nothing Wilbur can do to fix this, not on his own. He cannot go back in time, cannot force himself to stop wallowing in self pity long enough to realize he wasn’t just hurting himself. He cannot do this alone.
When the words come out they are not what either of them expect. “Can you fix them, please?” Wilbur almost begs, and it is a mirror to the day he died, asking for deliverance from a self-imposed pain. “Just this once, please, and then I’ll start taking care of them myself, I promise, please, Dad—“
Phil hushes him. Wilbur expects refusal, like Phil had done in the button room, but what comes is nothing like that.
“Of course, mate. Of course. You have nothing to apologize for.” Phil seems genuine and Wilbur chokes on a laugh because that is the biggest lie he has ever heard. There is so, so much he has to apologize for, to Phil alone, not even counting everyone else.
(You are responsible for Phil’s wings being more ruined than your own. You are responsible for bringing his other sons here, for ruining Tommy’s childhood, for treating Techno like a weapon. You are responsible for your own destruction, and perhaps that is what pains your father the most.
You apologize.)
Wilbur still apologizes, over and over, as he lets his wings relax enough for Phil to begin to preen. Phil accepts them each time. Phil apologizes sometimes, too. He apologizes mostly for silly things, like being too harsh when Wilbur wouldn’t eat, or accidentally pulling on a feather too hard now, or for being too distant when Wilbur was growing up, or for being too busy to teach Wilbur how to truly preen on his own.
After smoothing the feathers down over and over again, they almost lie flat, almost looking like ones someone might be proud of. Phil murmurs a final apology as he straightens the final primary. “I’m sorry for— for killing you.”
Wilbur starts. He tries to speak up, to stop Phil. He wanted it, he craved death because even the promise of never-ending solitude seemed better than the pain of living. He didn’t know how awful limbo would be, how much it would mess him up.
“No. You needed help, Wilbur, not a sword through the chest. I’m sorry I didn’t see that then.” Phil lets his hands fall gently at the place where Wilbur’s wings meet his back and Wilbur does not flinch, leaning into the touch for the first time.
And then they hug. Wilbur does not scream this time, though it is still a little frightening, a little overwhelming. He hugs his father tightly and envelops them in his wings. His wings are clean, healthy, and whole.
(You will be too, one day. One day soon.)
Mornings in the Arctic are cold. However, there are warm blankets that have been crocheted by a twin with hands steady enough to hold a sword. The blankets are wrapped around a man on the doorstep and his father. When the blankets do not do the trick, Wilbur wraps his wings around the both of them.
Mornings in the Arctic are silent. That is until you hear the quiet conversation of father and son as wings are preened in the early morning air. It is not loud, but it is there, and so are they.
Mornings in the Arctic are simple. They are simple in the way that love is simple, in that they are not simple at all, because though they look like it from afar they are full of the complexities of the beast called healing. They are simple in the way preening wings is simple, the trust and safety and softness of it making it not so simple at all.
They are characterized by love and safety. They are filled with the sounds of laughter as feathers drift and hearts fill, similar, but not the same as a childhood spent doing much the same. Sometimes, there is the sound of shuffling as Techno comes to join them, his hands adept at crochet and combat and braiding a little bit clumsy at preening. They are bright as the sun rises, Wilbur’s sunrise, shared with two of the people he loves the most.
It is easy to feel alive, now.
(And you will always feel alive with the wind in your wings and love in your heart, and in time you will heal, and in time you will soar above the clouds feeling more alive than you had before you were killed.
For now, simply letting your father preen the feathers is enough.)