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The crater looks pretty at night, jagged like an inverted mountain in places, artfully smooth in others, sanded down in most. It could be just another quarry.
It makes Quackity angry.
All that, and not a scar to show for it. Tubbo- Mr. President, Quackity thinks with both incredulity and fondness- has his burns from Schlatt, and wears them like they’re nothing. Fundy’s cut from the bottle is healing into a neat crescent through his eyebrow.
Quackity’s only scar is a little nick he gave himself with a paring knife. He doesn’t remember how old he was- eight? Nine? But anyway, he had a knife, and he had an apple, and he had poor thumb placement. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter, and that’s what pisses him off.
His ring from Schlatt sits in a drawer. Ordinary as anything- pairs of socks, old bookmarks, the only thing that marks that once, someone maybe liked him enough to marry him. Well, he’s got the bones, too, but those are more practical than sentimental.
From Wilbur-
There’s nothing. He doesn’t have a single piece.
It makes sense, sort of. No burial, no note, no ‘hey, Quackity, I’ve decided against letting this thing grow’- of course there’s no mementos.
What was it he was trying to stop, Quackity wonders, what else was there to prove. He could’ve pulled them up by their bootstraps, been L’manberg’s saving grace just like he wanted, had a cabinet made of his siblings, his friends, lived a life worth fearing for.
Maybe he wanted to give everyone a fresh start, fresh like an open wound. Maybe he thought he’d left a few too many fingerprints on the walls.
He’ll never know. Nobody will ever know what went on in Wilbur Soot’s mind.
Prime, he wants to smoke. He wants to let it burn his lungs, wants to know it’s killing him and know it doesn’t matter. That was the thing with Pogtopia, everyone was dying. If you fell to pieces, at least there’d be company.
Quackity kicks a pebble into the crater, watches it fall into the depths. He’s still wearing his armor from the battle. It’s too heavy.
Fuck, who the hell is whistling? (heavy footsteps on tiled floors, Quackity’s breath heavy in his own ears, a flash of color from a blood-red tie as the feet passed the closet, don’t let him find me, shit, goddamn it, please, don’t let him find me, why is he still whistling)
“Oh- hello, Quackity! How are y-”
“I’m fine. ”
Quackity grits the words out, keeping his eyes fixed on the moon’s reflection in the water puddling in an outcropping across from him. His nails dig into the palm of his hand. One, two, three, breathe out, one, two, three, hold, one, two, three, breathe in. He doesn’t know who’s talking to him, and he doesn’t want to know. He doesn’t want anything other than to breathe right again.
“Okay.”
The voice is quiet, echoing across the space, and he must be hearing things, it must be the way the sound ricochets, because that- it can’t be Wilbur. It can’t.
Quackity sucks in another breath, turns to apologize.
And holy shit.
The eyes are immediately startling, like inkwells so deep you could drown in them. The hair, too, curly and gray like rainclouds, not a single mat or spot of grease or piece of debris. He thinks it’s the expression, though, open and curious and hopeful written across that pallid face, that’s the most disturbing. It’s not childlike- there’s a deliberacy to this softness, a decision of innocence, and it makes Quackity want to gag, seeing that painted over- over-
“Wilbur?”
It isn’t, it can’t be. W- the person- shakes his head, offering a hand to Quackity with a smile. The fingernails are ragged, flecks of something blue caught under them and staining the pads of the fingers, and there’s a strange similarity there. Quackity shakes the hand somewhat numbly- a feeling similar to dipping palm-first into a bucket of dry ice- and he looks so happy. Whoever this is, smiling with something that used to be Wilbur’s face, tilting Wilbur’s shoulders down and making his empty eyes flit side to side with confusion, is a sick fuck.
“I- sorry, no, that’s not quite- hm. You can call me Ghostbur, if you like! Yes, that’ll fit, Ghostbur. I- I sort of know you, don’t I?”
Quackity wipes his palms on his pants, and tries to smile back.
“You- don’t you remember me?”
Wil- Ghostbur shrugs, gesturing downwards, and oh, Quackity feels more than a little sick, that’s Wilbur’s sweater staining sanguine, sticking to his ashen skin and showing the shape of a deep gash through his stomach. Like roadkill, Quackity thinks distantly. Like Wilbur just lay down on the asphalt and waited to hear a crunch.
“I think all my memories must’ve leaked out through there or something- sorry, sorry, I should’ve warned you, pretty gross down there.” A little self-deprecating laugh, and those grayed-out hands come together in front of the wound, twisting awkwardly. “But, um, what’s your name? You look familiar, and I have, I have something of you in my brain.”
Quackity tears his eyes away, looking Ghostbur in the eyes properly for the first time. He’s met with nothing but marble-still darkness- and still, there’s a familiarity there.
He’d wanted a memento, hadn’t he. Something to remember Wilbur by.
“I’m Quackity, man. We were- well, haha- what do you know? Who else can you remember?”
Ghostbur starts talking, picking absently at the bottom of his sweater, and Quackity lets the words swill around him like murky lakewater.
He doesn’t want this. He doesn’t want Wilbur, either.
For the first time in his life, he doesn’t really want anything, and he doesn’t think there’s a problem with that.
He and Ghostbur walk away from the rubble, and they do not touch, save for a single brush of Ghostbur’s cold hand against his elbow. Quackity is not going to look back.
(But he does, for just a second, over the shoulder. As if he’s ever been content to live off glances. For just a second, he looks for a few strands of greasy brown hair, or the tattered tail of a trench coat, or perhaps a hand, limp, reaching out from beneath the stones. Just a second longer.)
Nothing besides remains. Quackity looks ahead.
Ghostbur is… a lot of things. A nuisance, for one- turning invisible and sneaking into cabinet meetings, getting lost on the way to collect materials then forgetting he was going to collect materials in the first place, bothering Fundy and Tubbo and Quackity himself when they’re doing important work rebuilding.
He’s also sad, despite what he’ll tell you. Quackity had snapped at him, just once, let the frustrations of the past three months leak out from the cracks for just a moment, and he’d looked so shocked, so guilty, for that single moment that he let himself hear it. But the walls had come back up, and his face had gone glassy and pleasant and just barely Wilbur enough for it to hurt, and Quackity had felt awful.
Ghostbur, he reminds himself later, nails digging into his forearm as he desperately tries to stay awake long enough to finish a blueprint, didn’t choose this. He doesn’t want to be dead any more than Wilbur wanted to keep living, even in a disjointed way like this.
But, anyway.
It’s close to spring, now, and warm enough that Quackity’s out in just a linen shirt and shortish pants. It’s not terribly professional for the Vice President, but Tubbo doesn’t seem to mind, and anyway, Quackity is done limiting himself to what’s expected and proper.
So it’s spring, and Quackity’s out by the docks, listening to the chatter of New L’manberg, and suddenly there are two freezing hands over his eyes. They’re translucent, turning his whole world gray and blurry, and Quackity shivers as he laughs, prying them off by the wrists.
“Hey, Ghostbur!”
The apparition, well, appears, looking put-out and pouty as he crosses his arms.
“You’re supposed to guess who, Quackity!”
But the pout is fake, clearly, and when Quackity snickers at him it melts right off. God. If he’d told the Wilbur Soot of three months ago that a laugh was all it would take for him to look alright he’d have snorted, cold air with nothing behind it, maybe blown his smoke a little more aggressively, maybe said something just sharp enough to make Quackity wince away.
That was the thing about Wilbur, he always wanted to be the dragon, the storybook villain, the charismatic antagonist to anyone and everyone. Ghostbur, Quackity thinks, wants Wilbur to be the dragon too.
(Does that make Philza the St. George, or just another monster that happened upon a sword?)
But anyway, it’s almost spring now, and Ghostbur’s lowering himself down to sit next to Quackity on the waterlogged wood with a sunny smile.
Before Icarus fell, he flew, and it was the most beautiful thing. After the fall, all that’s left is open water, and a handful of feathers, and yet.
And yet, here he is in shadow, in sun, utterly at peace and still with unfinished business, hands cold and solid but see-through as they bump against Quackity’s fingers.
“What’re you doing down here, Big Q?”
But anyway, Quackity shrugs.
“Just reflecting, man. It’s a good day for it.”
Ghostbur looks unsure. His blank eyes betray nothing, but Quackity can guess what he’s thinking. Anything that is a mirror is a threat, because it might warp and twist and show him the truth.
Ghostbur is Wilbur- he’s trying so hard to be somebody else, because nobody really knows what to do with him if he’s just him. Ghostbur is not Wilbur- he’s made himself forget all the lines and written his own, sanded his edges down and down and down until he’s soft. Half empty, half full, at the end of the day it’s just half.
And still, Quackity can guess many things about him, but he’ll never know.
“It is, I think.”
“Hm?”
“A good day for it.”
Ghostbur sighs happily, lies back on the docks and looks up at the seagulls with wonder. Quackity reaches for his hand, and isn’t sure what to make of it when he takes it.
He’s taken to bringing Quackity flowers, now that the crisp almost-spring has whirled itself into a lazy summer and Quackity’s half-drowning in bandages. Quackity’s not sure if it’s meant to be comfort or simple affection, or maybe Ghostbur really does just love his smile.
Yesterday, they appeared at his doorstep in a flurry of pure snowy white, roses and carnations and clovers with a single gardenia stuck in the middle. Quackity’s sure they have some meaning, but he doesn’t want to bother asking around for them, and asking Ghostbur himself would be at least a little weird, so he’s contented himself with putting them in a vase in his window, where the sun will hit them at midday and curious parties can see that they’ve been received from the street, rather than just walking through walls and into his house.
You’re such a fucking awful romantic, he imagines Tommy snarking. The two of you are, are gag -worthy, honestly.
The thought makes him smile, then frown, both hurting his torn-through mouth. He hasn’t spoken to him in a week or so, and the Tommy that was there, shaking, sunken-eyed, had practically begged his attention.
(Quackity shoves him out of the way of the downward-spiraling arrow, catching it in his own arm in his haste. When he turns back, Tommy’s hands are still loosely wrapped around the bow, and all he does is stare.
“Oh, sorry. That was meant for me, Big Q.”
All Quackity can do is take him by the wrists and promise him that he’ll try to make a way to make it better.
He doesn’t miss the way Tommy flinches like he’s been burned.
God, what’s been happening to this kid?)
But, well, Quackity got his face carved in two days afterwards, so he’s been kinda preoccupied with letting his body slowly, slowly, so fucking slowly- stitch itself back together.
He misses him, though. Everyone does.
Quackity steps away from the window and stretches, flexing his wings out wide as he pushes his arms the other way. He needs to get out of the house, he’s far too in his own head, his own pain.
So, he glamors his wings away, switches to an old lapis-blue sweatshirt, pulls on his most comfortable pair of jeans, changes his bandages, gets distracted by pulling faces at himself in the mirror, then finally gets out the door a few minutes later.
It’s sort of humid, and the glare of the sun combined with the thickness of the air makes Quackity quickly decide to head for the forest just outside of town. Sure, he’ll probably trip on a root or something, but at least he’ll be shaded while he does it.
There aren’t many people around as he approaches the tree line, though he thinks he sees some fresh footprints leading into the woods. Lately, his loneliness hasn’t been a choice- though his being surrounded by people rarely was either- but this is deliberate, this feels right. Quackity breathes in the last little bit of sunlight, and dives into the woods.
He wanders for maybe ten minutes, half-following paths, trying his best not to trample any flowers, when he comes to a clearing. The sun spears it through the middle, a single shaft of radiance beaming down like a spotlight through the trees. All around are stones, white and uniform in five or so rows, different names and stations carved into them.
A military graveyard. What the hell. Quackity’s stumbled into a military graveyard.
He steels himself and passes through the center row quickly, squinting at the shadowy edges for a way out- sorry to L’manberg’s honored dead, but this place is creepy as shit- and lo and behold, there’s a stone path leading away to another clearing. He hightails it to the path, ducking his head a little to avoid being swatted by branches and rushing through, kicking up leaves around him.
It’s quiet as he enters the second clearing, nothing but the wind through the trees and Quackity’s own footfalls surrounding him. This area is a little neater, with a gravel path leading to a single tomb that rises starkly white above his head. There are letters carved into the base- TOMB OF L’MANBERG’S UNKNOWN SOLDIERS, it reads, then below, A MONUMENT DEDICATED TO THOSE WHOSE BODIES WERE FOUND BUT NEVER NAMED. MAY THEY REST PEACEFULLY EVEN IN ANONYMITY.
Quackity bends down with a sigh, brushing his thumb over the letters and looking up at the monument. Strangely, tears are pricking at his eyes.
“Hello, Quackity!”
Quackity jumps, whipping his head about for a moment before his eyes land atop the monument. Ghostbur is sitting there, cross-legged with his head in his hand and giggling softly. The sound echoes around the clearing in a gentle, velvety way, like it’s encased in his laugh.
“What the hell, that was terrifying!”
But Quackity’s smiling too, though it fades as he looks back down at the monument.
“Ghostbur…why’re you here, man?”
Ghostbur shrugs, looking slightly uncomfortable.
“I- I’m not sure. I come here every week, um, well, I started doing that as soon as I learned about it- honoring the dead, and everything, though I always feel a little weird, since I’m a ghost honoring people who didn’t get to stick around and be ghosts. But. Yeah, I’m here now.”
While Ghostbur speaks, Quackity lets his wings out for a moment, flapping twice to join him atop the tomb before pulling the glamor back over them and sitting down.
“Man, that’s… if I’d known, I’d’ve come here with you.”
Ghostbur smiles weakly, bumping his shoulder into Quackity’s before continuing.
“That’s- that’s very nice of you, Big Q, but I… it’s sad, here. I don’t want you to be sad with me.”
He’s taken aback, a little, by Ghostbur’s sudden standoffishness. Wilbur- it feels wrong, somehow, to think of him now, like a loose tooth holding on by a thread, knocking into other teeth- was only open in certain ways. It makes sense that Ghostbur, bittersweet and aching like a toothache, would be the same.
“...Well, you just told me your reasons for coming initially, but- you’re not sure why you’re here now?”
Ghostbur sighs, tucking his knees up and looking out across the clearing, towards L’manberg.
“When- when Wil- Alivebur- when he died, um, did anyone get his body?”
Quackity suddenly feels a little sick.
“N-no, not that I know.”
Ghostbur sighs- not sad. Accepting.
(Quackity thinks about roadkill and Wilbur and laying stock-still on the asphalt.)
“It- it’s kind of the other way around, with me. Missing in action. The name’s all we have.”
Ghostbur looks up at Quackity, and his eyes are clear and there is so much pain there.
“I didn’t know this existed until Tubbo told me. I didn’t know where my own monument was, Quackity- and- I just-”
Ghostbur’s face crumples, and he leans his cold, small body into Quackity, like an icepack to a wound. Quackity wisps out a little shh-hh-hh, petting his hair, letting Ghostbur press closer and brush against his bandages.
He does not think about the last time he held Wilbur, the last time he saw his tears up close. He does not think about Wilbur rotting below his country.
He holds Ghostbur tightly, and he stares out at the forest, towards L’manberg.
We are all going forward. None of us are going back.
Quackity’s not sure which way is which.
Another bouquet appears at Quackity’s door the next morning. The difference with this one is that Ghostbur is still attached to it.
Quackity opens the door with a smile, a little startled- he’d been halfway through changing his bandages when the knock had arrived, and it’s early enough that he’d thought everyone else would still be at home.
But the knock comes, and Quackity answers, giggling as the flowers are abruptly thrust at him. Yellow tulips, zinnias, and some little green leaves that might be spearmint, with Ghostbur’s fingers- as well as a white ribbon- holding it all together.
“Hey, Ghostbur! What’s the special occasion?”
Ghostbur smiles, stepping back a little.
“Do we need an occasion? Hmm, how about- the occasion is you being a great friend?”
Quackity smiles again, taking the flowers and gesturing with his head for Ghostbur to follow him inside. He does, a little shyly, feet gliding soundlessly over the floors as he follows Quackity.
Quackity gets out a pitcher he doesn’t use often for a vase, and it’s while he’s filling it with water he realizes it.
Wilbur never entered his house. Any of them. It was always outside or at debate podiums or someone else’s party or the caverns of Pogtopia, where nobody was really at home. Wilbur never lay in Quackity’s bed and made a nest of his sheets, never asked him about his old oddly-patterned ties or his wing grooming supplies, never had a toothbrush next to his.
Fuck. Fuck.
“Quackity?”
The water’s spilling over Quackity’s hands. Ghostbur rushes over, making the curtains flutter with his sudden movement, turning the taps off and hissing when the water singes the tips of his fingers.
Quackity just stands there, water dripping down the drain.
“Oh, uh. Sorry, man. Just lost my train of thought a little.”
Ghostbur giggles, and Quackity does too, though he’s not sure why either do. Then he’s looking back at the sink, sighing, dumping half the water and letting it slosh away. He sets the half-emptied, or half-filled, or maybe just a vase down on the counter, going to get the flowers from the table. The flowers don’t seem to care if it’s half full or half empty, or that it’s really a pitcher, not a vase. They just need the water, one way or another.
“D’you want a house tour, Wilbur?”
Ghostbur ooh s, and Quackity beams, and they trot out of the room together, cracking jokes and matching pace as they march steadily about the rooms and up the stairs and into a closet or two. It’s only after a few minutes that Quackity realizes his mistake.
They end up in the bedroom- it’s sort of cruel, how the two of them always gravitate there. Ghostbur looks around politely, smiles at the pouch of blue dye hanging from his dresser, makes a joke about testing out the bed with Quackity sometime. It’s so awfully, torturously lovely, being with him.
Mainly because Quackity knows, somewhere deep inside him like a knife in the gut, like shrapnel in flesh, that Ghostbur remembers none of it. Not a kiss, not a scratch, not a bite, not a shared smoke or a secret. As he dutifully follows Quackity, his fingers skate over his wrist, curious, like they’re exploring new territory.
He feels cold. Quackity isn’t sure if he always has. Quackity feels like he’s going to scream.
They go out to the balcony together, sitting down in the shitty little deck chairs as Quackity lights a cigarette. Ghostbur compares the color of the box to his sweater with delight- he doesn’t remember that they were his favorite brand.
“Alivebur smoked with you, didn’t he?”
Quackity mhmm s, exhaling up to the mid-morning sun.
“Yeah, got me hooked on ‘em and everything. I’m probably gonna work towards quitting, when I’ve got the… presence, y’know?”
Ghostbur nods, a little unsurely, like he does many things.
“Can I… try? Maybe I’ll remember something if I…”
He sighs, tugging at the ends of a chunk of his raincloud hair.
“Oh, nevermind, it’s silly.”
“No, no, dude, it’s not. Hey, it’s not like they can kill you twice.”
Quackity offers it up, and Ghostbur takes it just like he used to, a little delicately, holding it with his pointer and his thumb. His eyes flutter shut as he takes a drag, sputtering a little on the exhale.
Quackity doesn’t know what he expects, but it’s certainly not for Ghostbur to blink and say, “Tastes like you.”
Quackity laughs, something beginning to bang frantically on the inside of his chest, like it’s begging to break out, as Ghostbur looks at the smoke trailing up to the sky with wonder.
They kiss on the way downstairs- of course they do. Ships in the night, only meeting by colliding, always the same, never quite learning.
Ghostbur tastes like honey and smoke, and doesn’t mind having to kiss around the bandages, and Quackity snakes his hands under his shirt, holds his ribs like Wilbur never let him. It’s tender like an open wound, like a string duet, like one man who does not know how to love right and one ghost who is learning the steps out of order, and they are both breathless within minutes.
Neither can quite bring themselves to pull away, so they stay for a while, standing on the staircase, an inch away from slipping as they breathe each other in.
“Why,” Ghostbur pants. “Why didn’t we do that sooner.”
Quackity giggles, and the knife in his gut twists.
“I dunno, man, but we’re sure as fuck started now!”
Later still, Quackity manages to maneuver them so Ghostbur’s on top of him, pressed chest to chest, missionary style. He can’t quite bear to take off his clothes yet, though, and Ghostbur makes no move to further things, so they stay there, and Quackity’s heart beats hard and fast enough for both of them.
A few days pass, soft and sweet and easy. They breathe each others' air, relearn each others' secrets, tangle hands across the bed. Right now, they're on the couch in Quackity's living room- Ghostbur's scribbling in his diary with one hand, petting Quackity's head in his lap with the other. The silence is comfortable, and Quackity sort of hates to break it.
“What… do you remember about me?”
Ghostbur hums, threading his fingers through Quackity’s hair.
“Well, it- it’s a bit difficult, since I know things about you now, as me, which I might’ve also known when I was alive, but, umm…”
Quackity busies himself with picking at his nail polish. He doesn’t want to watch Ghostbur’s face as he realizes Wilbur left him no good memories of Quackity.
But, a little startlingly, Ghostbur’s voice rings clear.
“You’re fierce. Good arguer, and determined to argue. I suppose he knew you were a good kisser-” Ghostbur pauses to cover his face a little- “or, well, I- I wasn’t surprised, when you were good, so, heh.”
Quackity nods, shifts his head a little until it’s balanced right in the middle of Ghostbur’s legs.
“And… he liked to make you laugh. Or react at all, really, but I know he liked your laugh. It’s the first thing I think of when I think of you.”
Quackity laughs quietly, more to himself than anything else.
“That dork.”
Something large and dark and profoundly lonely swells in him as he thinks about it for a moment more, and for that moment, he is suddenly, incandescently angry. But he pauses, takes Ghostbur’s hand, squeezes it gently and feels the cold, certain shape of it in his palm.
“Are you doing alright, Big Q?”
Quackity nods, looking up into Ghostbur’s concerned face and stroking over his jaw gently. Ghostbur leans into it, surprisingly. Would Wilbur have liked that? Would Wilbur have liked this- an afternoon in the sun, flowers from him blooming in Quackity’s window, hands pressed together for just the sake of touching?
“It- it’s okay that you miss him, y’know.”
Quackity sighs, sitting up and putting his hands on Ghostbur’s shoulders.
“Hey. It’s not like that, okay? You aren’t a, a placeholder. You’re you, Ghostbur.”
“I mean, yeah, I am, but… it’s okay if I remind you of him. It’s okay if that’s why you like me.”
Quackity considers this.
Ghostbur’s hair is soft where it brushes Quackity’s hand, his sweater fraying at the ends of the sleeves, his skin pallid and dye-stained, his smile electrifying. All of him hurts Quackity more than any gravestone could, and he’s still chasing it, still holding on, still loving what’s left and what isn’t.
(Wilbur never said he loved him.)
“I just- like you, okay? I like you a lot, and I like to kiss you, and now I wanna take your shirt off. Can we leave it at that?”
It’s never that simple, and they both know it. But still, Ghostbur half-smiles, and Quackity leans forward, kissing his frigid lips gently as he pushes him back onto the couch. He goes willingly, giggling as Quackity shimmies down his body, pulling at his clothing, kissing everything in sight.
(Wilbur never went down without a fight.)
The light falls on them gently through curtains, and the couch cushions are sun-warmed, and it’s a delicate moment, just like always. It’s a soft moment.
Quackity thinks he loves it. He thinks it might not be a mistake.
(As he pushes up Ghostbur’s sweater, Quackity rests on his chest, for just a moment, and listens for a pulse.
Of course, nothing. Quackity presses an apologetic kiss to the scarred skin there, and continues, pushing the thought aside.
It will come back, he knows. It always does.)