Chapter Text
Wilbur is eleven when the fever knocks on their door. It lingers in the house for weeks, drifting silently through the halls like a ghost. His baby sister goes first and his parents weep as they burn all her things. Soon, his mother goes too and his father follows only hours later.
The fever came and it went, but it didn’t take Wilbur with it, leaving him instead with a new tightness in his lungs and a scrap of paper pinned to his coat for the kind woman who collects him from the train station and takes him to his new home.
“Angels must be looking out for you, son,” she says, and Wilbur silently disagrees, thinking that angels would have stopped the fever from knocking, but the woman carries on, heedless of his frown. “We are a bit crowded at the moment, but still a sight better than the orphanages in the city. You’ll be getting your own room for now; though we may have to pair you up later. Breakfast is at seven, lunch at noon, and supper at six. Bathroom is at the end of the hall—that you do have to share, so try to be mindful. I’ll let you get settled in now, dear. If you need anything, I’ll be downstairs.”
And so life goes on, different now, in more ways than he can count, but there are birds singing in the morning and stars shining at night, so it must be life, still.
Wilbur is only just twelve when his baby sister’s first birthday brings a furious, squalling infant to his bedroom door. Matron tells him the boy’s family was taken by the same fever, that his name is Thomas and he’s a year and a half old.
She tells him that he’ll be staying in Wilbur’s room for now since he’s the oldest in the home, and Wilbur nods. His sister had strawberry curls and brown eyes, completely different from this child’s honey gold and sky blue, but the familiar look of indignant rage on his face tugs at something in his chest, so he holds out his arms and Matron quickly schools her surprise and hands the boy over.
The crying stops when he settles in Wilbur’s arms, and blue eyes blink curiously at him for a moment before little hands make a grab for his glasses.
Wilbur laughs softly and, for the first time since the fever left, he whispers a hoarse, cracked, “Hello.”
The orphanage is one of the nicer ones. Wilbur was lucky that his parents had money when they died and the foresight to set plenty aside when the fever came so that he would be sent to a place where he would be taken care of. He was lucky, too, that the firecracker boy with golden hair was placed in his room.
Tommy grew up brighter than the sun shining warm on the grass where Wilbur attempts to read while watching Tommy play. The fever swept through London and spread like bleeding ink through the rest of England, leaving behind more orphans than families to take them. Even years after the worst of it, the boy’s home settled in a nice corner of the countryside rarely sees prospective parents, which has left Tommy safely at Wilbur’s side and in the little bed opposite his own.
Wilbur is fifteen when a young couple comes looking for a little boy and Matron sends Tommy with him to the gardens instead of putting him in with the others. Wilbur is fifteen when he knocks on her door and asks why Tommy wasn’t given the chance to go with them today.
Matron fixes him with a pointed look over her glasses before handing him Tommy’s file. On it, sits Wilbur’s last name like it belongs there and a note that marks him part of a sibling pair, not to be separated.
“I assumed he would have mentioned it to you,” she says casually, and Wilbur looks at her, confused and a little desperate. “Tommy and I had a conversation a few weeks ago, and he preferred to be taken off of the list of eligible children so long as you weren’t on it.”
“He’s four,” Wilbur protests weakly.
“I’ve found,” Matron says, a faint smile coloring her words, “that four year olds often have very clear ideas of what they want and can be quite persuasive when allowed to voice those opinions. I’m sure you have some idea of what I’m talking about.”
He nods—he does, of course he does because Tommy was born into the world with opinions and has never been shy about making them known. Wilbur just didn’t know he had voiced a particular opinion about this. He swallows the fondness and fear creeping up his throat, still struggling to understand. “I’m not- It’s three more years ‘til I’m eighteen.”
“It is,” she agrees. “And were you or were you not planning on adopting Thomas the moment you were legally able?”
“I- Yes , but-”
“If it’s the rules you’re concerned about, there’s really no need. The fever left so many children without parents, Wilbur, that there’s really no way of accounting for all of them. The best we can do—the best I can do—is try to make sure that, wherever they end up, they’re happy.”
Wilbur is sixteen when, for the second time in his life, a fever comes knocking.
Just as it has been for the last three days, Tommy’s chest rises and falls with a steady metronome of soft breathy exhales. Wilbur watches in silent vigil from where he’s spent the last three days on his knees at his baby brother’s bedside.
Sweat plasters golden ringlets to a flushed forehead, and no matter how many cool washcloths Wilbur passes over it, the skin stays far too hot to the touch. There is no rasp to his breathing, not the familiar one from an eleven year old’s worst nightmare come to life, but its absence does nothing to soothe the churning nausea and terror that eats away at him.
When his parents fell ill, Wilbur prayed until the fever took him out of his own mind. He prays again now, legs alternating between fiercely aching and pricklingly numb, but he remains on his knees, dripping devotion like sweat rolling down his spine or tears down his face.
All he tastes is salt, all he does is count the steady rise and fall of the world’s chest, begging God to save him, to take Wilbur instead, in his place. He prays, over and over, until his voice cracks, and then he whispers the words for hours longer until it gives out entirely and he can only manage to mouth the words and hope they can still be heard.
Matron presses a glass of water to Wilbur’s chapped and bleeding lips, and he drinks, hardly aware of the sympathetic hand she brushes through his dirty, tangled curls. The doctor had called it a dog bite, had said it was probably a feral stray that had wandered up looking for scraps and lashed out when Tommy got too close. He had said the infection was to be expected with a bite as deep as this one, but that with plenty of rest, medicine, and prayer, he’d be up and running into trouble again soon.
For three days, Matron has tried to keep his fever down with willow bark and dull the pain with opium. For three days, Wilbur has knelt and prayed while she changed his bandages, draining the pus and applying a liberal coating of camphor to the strips of fabric wound around Tommy’s middle.
The thought circles back, over and over: Tommy knew better than to go into the woods without Wilbur there. Tommy knew better than to run up to a wild dog.
But Wilbur wasn’t there. He wasn’t there, so he sits and he prays and he can’t understand why Tommy would have even been outside in the first place.
On the fourth day since Wilbur returned to faces all twisted up in pity and sorrow, his world opens bright blue eyes and sleepily mumbles his name.
“Tommy,” he breathes, the first air in his lungs that hasn’t tasted like it was wasted on him in four days. “Oh my God, Tommy.”
He is so, so careful even as desperation burns at him, licking flames at his paper mache lungs. There are still-healing teeth marks marring Tommy’s middle and Wilbur is half convinced that even pulling at them in the slightest will unravel this miracle unfolding in their little bedroom.
“’ilby? Wha’s wrong?”
Wide eyes blink at him from the palms of his hands. Wilbur lets out a hysterical laugh that sounds more like a sob. When Tommy frowns, though, he smooths out the wrinkle in his brow with his thumb.
“Nothing,” Wilbur says softly, awe-filled and wrecked from days of endless pleading with a God he hasn’t known how to believe in since he was eleven years old, dressed in black at the foot of three graves. “Not a single thing, love.”
Tommy’s eyes slip closed for a moment before he pulls them back open. “Am I sick?” he asks, oh so quiet, but not scared, not at all, and Wilbur thanks God for it.
“Just a little,” Wilbur says, hoping that Tommy doesn’t notice the shaking, but little hands reach up to cup Wilbur’s face back and then wipe the tears that escape down his cheeks away. He thinks that Tommy must be the sun, chasing away the rain.
“It’s okay,” he whispers, like a secret, just for them. “I’m all better now. I can tell.”
“Oh yeah? Can you?” Wilbur asks instead of crying because Tommy’s alright, he’s okay, he’s right there, bright as ever, the sun and the moon and Wilbur’s whole world, tiny and golden.
Tommy nods, blue glittering like the ocean Wilbur’s mother used to love. “Yeah, ‘cause you’re here, ’n that means nothing bad can happen ever.”
He gets better. For three weeks, he gets better.
And then the full moon rises.
Terror thrums in his chest, cold and heavy, pooling in his lungs and nailing the lid of their coffin with an unforgiving, unrelenting staccato rhythm. In his arms, there is a golden-haired wolf with horribly familiar blue eyes chewing on the sleeve of his sweater. In his arms is his baby brother, who just moments before was screaming in soul rending agony as his body broke apart and pulled back together.
The bite, as it turns out, was not from a feral dog.
Water rushes in Wilbur’s ears, pulling him far away from himself as his mind spins and stalls and spins again, trying to understand, trying to plan, trying-
The room reeks of blood, sweat, fear. Tommy had been screaming, begging, and Wilbur had been so sure neither of them would make it to morning. As it stands, monster nosing at his palm and covering it with excited slobbering kisses, they both still might not. Tommy had been screaming and then he had stopped, finally, finally, and Wilbur had been hysterically, wildly grateful that it was this and not death that had its hold on his brother.
It was only moments later, after Tommy had licked the saltwater off of Wilbur’s face and whined until there was a hand scratching behind his ears, that Wilbur had even remembered to be afraid of the creature in his arms. But Tommy had sneezed and then looked so surprised at the sound that Wilbur couldn’t find it in himself to be scared. It’s Tommy. He’s Tommy.
He’s just Tommy.
But the rest of England is never going to listen to that, to Wilbur, no amount of frantic begging pleading could ever be worth the price of a wolf’s head. They need to move, need to pack whatever they can and go right now, but Wilbur is stuck, horror pinning him in place, a million different threats, many of them brand new and paralyzing, clamouring to be the one that pushes his heart out of his chest.
The minute he moves, nothing can ever be the same, and he’s so, so afraid. But Tommy had been screaming just moments ago, and someone should be at their door any second. They have to go, they have to go, they have to-
There’s a soft knock at the door and Tommy growls, low and protective, fur rising along the length of his spine, but Wilbur shushes him quietly and he obeys. It should be a wonder—and perhaps it would be were Wilbur not otherwise occupied with fear for their lives numbing his senses—that a supposedly bloodthirsty, monstrous creature listens to Wilbur’s commands and thumps its tail when he smooths down its fur.
But then again, it’s Tommy. This is Tommy, it’s Tommy—all of five years old and his, his baby brother, his sun and stars and whole entire world. How could he ever be afraid? How could he do anything but love him?
“Stay,” he whispers, and Tommy huffs, but plops down on the bed and watches him from where his head rests on his paws.
Wilbur opens the door, just a tiny peak, wide enough to find Matron’s worried eyes but still hiding the blood- Tommy’s blood staining his clothes. She looks tired, the closest to unkempt Wilbur’s ever seen her. Someone must have gone and pulled her from her bed and Wilbur is at the same time grateful and furiously annoyed. He can’t afford their concern, their worried eyes watching and searching, not now, not anymore.
The room is dim behind him, only a single oil lamp turned down low. It should be too dark to see any evidence that is not already hidden behind the door or Wilbur’s shoulders.
“Nightmare,” he whispers, hoping to God (tomorrow, Wilbur will curse His name, but for tonight, their tentative reconciliation stands so long as Tommy stays alive) that the clear exhaustion in his voice lends to his credibility. “He just fell back asleep. I’m so sorry for the noise, it was- I think it was the dog bite,” he says, voice shaking. “It must have frightened him more than I realized.”
She makes a sympathetic noise and shifts her weight, taking a small step back. “Poor thing,” she says softly. “He’s blessed to have you, Wilbur. Wake me if you need anything, alright? You are still a child too, you know.”
“I know,” he says, and the words taste like ash. “I will.”
Their room is empty long before dawn rises to cast its cruel judgement.
For the first few days, they avoid the topic of the orphanage with steady pace, boots crunching through the light frost dusting the leaf litter underfoot. Wilbur had scrubbed Tommy clean after he turned back into wind-pinked cheeks and missing front teeth, and then they’d marched into the nearest village for proper winter clothes and a tin of gingersnap biscuits because Tommy had looked at them with wide, hopeful eyes and Wilbur has wrapped around Tommy’s finger since he was twelve years old, soothing a fussy baby while the rest of the world slept on unaware.
“Did we have to leave ‘cause of me?”
Wilbur stops short, eyes going wide before crumpling at the heartbroken guilt on his baby brother’s face. As if any of this was his fault. As if Wilbur harbored a single regret.
“No,” he says, crouching down in front of watery eyes and wringing hands. His heart aches and cracks open wide, bleeding openly for the only thing it beats for. “No, Toms, not at all. We left because we needed to go on an adventure.”
Tommy sniffles, gloved hands scrubbing at glittering lashes, and Wilbur aches. He reaches out and tugs his baby into his chest, a hand cupping the back of his head, holding it safely in the crook of his shoulder.
“Really?” he asks, voice muffled by the fabric of Wilbur’s coat, but still so painfully, so tragically young.
Small hands clutch the front of Wilbur’s jumper, burrowing into his warmth as Wilbur tries to tuck him ever closer. “Really, sundrop, I promise. It was time for us to find our fairytale.”
“You can be the bard,” Tommy says, something excited just barely blooming in his voice.
Wilbur smiles into golden ringlets and tries not to cry. “And you’ll be the knight, my love. The bravest the land has ever seen.”
The weeks crawl forth on their hands and knees like beggars. Winter comes sweeping in and the first snowfall sees two boys laughing, rosy with cold in the soft light of the afternoon. They travel off the roads, spending nights in rooms where they can, but nowhere is safe for long and Wilbur feels paranoia like eyes following them from every shadow.
Tommy stops dead, sniffing at the air, and Wilbur shivers, suddenly keenly aware of how exposed they are out here. It’s quiet with the thick blanket of snow covering the ground, muffling the rest of the forest, so Tommy’s growl rings clear through the air.
For a long moment, nothing happens and Wilbur’s pulse echoes loudly in his ears, rabbit quick and frantic with the desire to run run run. He doesn’t, though, staying in place and waiting, eyes searching the darkness in vain.
Slowly, the hairs on the back of his neck begin to rise and then his fear ratchets up into a sharp, screaming crescendo in the second before a deeper, older growl carries across the clearing.
“Go,” he says, sharp and urgent even as the panicked thing in his chest cracks and shifts, yawning open and gaping. His hands shake and fumble and his tongue feels clumsy, all of it too slow. “Go, Tommy, run.”
And then the bitter wind is slicing Wilbur to the bone and the branches he can’t dodge in the dark whip lines of weeping crimson into his skin, but he can hear the growls, the pounding of heavy paws, the barking, snapping, howling of the wolves at his back, his heels, his sides, too, through the trees and shadows. He runs, half blind, stumbling, but upright and after the barely visible golden blur leading him. Tommy is, of course, faster than him—wolf or boy, he could always beat Wilbur easily, and, now, Wilbur finds himself breathlessly grateful for it. Tommy can get away. Tommy can get away. Wilbur hasn’t failed him. He hasn’t. But his lungs burn something horrible and wrong and he knows, he knows, he knows—even as fast as Tommy, he could never outrun them.
Wilbur was eleven when the fever knocked on his door. Wilbur was eleven when black-vieled pestilence took everything he had ever known and then stole the breath from his lungs too.
Wilbur is sixteen when he realizes that the fever never really left him. It lingered, scars in his lungs, and waited, patient as time, for him to finally die.
In the end, he isn’t sure if he tripped or if the flashing teeth finally caught his heel. In the end, he isn’t sure that it really matters because he’s down now, catching himself for just a moment with stinging palms. There is a single second, a there-and-gone space between beats of his rabbit heart, where his eyes catch on Tommy’s, wide and blue and Tommy even in fur, even in the dark, even at the very end of the world. He’s frozen on the edge of the clearing Wilbur is the eye of, watching with ears pinned back and a tragic, desperate whine.
There is a single second, and Wilbur takes it to softly say, “I love you.”
Then, as all seconds do, it passes, and the wolves descend.
Wilbur is sixteen when the fever greets him.