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Wilbur hasn’t eaten in months.
So he tells himself, as he wipes the remnants of vomit from his mouth with a filthy sleeve. Briefly he worries it’ll stink, and they’ll know, but the stench of cigarettes is strong enough to mask his little fuck-up.
He could stop trying to cram his fingers down his throat, and maybe it’ll hurt a little less, but he doesn’t want to. If he leaves it, it means he has eaten and done nothing about it. That’s not acceptable.
Every time he gags, he incinerates another failure; he cleanses himself with fire, purging in more ways than one. Sometimes, he cannot bring himself to do this. In this case, he lights a cigarette and paces until he forgets that he has eaten, convinced himself his slate is still clean.
He had long since given up hiding his smoking, even from Tommy. Gone were the days of furtive trips to the gash tucked deep in the ravine, discreet disposal of the ends in a crevice. Yet he can’t let him know about this … behaviour.
Put simply, eating was shameful; smoking was not.
Tommy loves him still - this he knows. Sometimes he asks Wilbur if he’s eating okay, and Wilbur knows that he is asking if he is eating at all. He does not have the heart to shatter his little brother’s perception of him, so he continues to conceal his binging; from Tommy or himself, he didn’t know.
He still wants to eat. He wonders if Technoblade will notice if he steals another half-stack of potatoes. He wonders if there is a way he can stop himself, then he wonders if there is anything he can do to save his L’manburg.
He comes up empty for both.
At times like these, he misses L’manburg, messing around with Jack and Tubbo, hearing Tommy complaining when he forced him to grind for materials, spending time with Eret and Fundy - but most of all he misses when he was hungry. Whether he was hungry for approval or for freedom seems irrelevant now; he was hungry for a future, but now he is full, unbearably full, and everything he’s ever worked for is spilling out of him.
He feels like he is gazing at another life in letters and old photographs. Determined days preparing for the election, with a perfect routine of perfect meetings and perfect debates and perfect workouts and a perfect diet. Carefree days where he rushed into battle between drafting up ideas, fueled on pure adrenaline and steak. Feverish days writing and writing, crafting his own constitution for his own country founded on freedom.
Wilbur does not feel free anymore. Wilbur is talking bullshit. Of course he has the freedom to do whatever he wants! He still has control over his country - he still has his choice. He can still destroy what he has created, and be safe again. That is a choice. That is a choice. He lay his TNT, just like he is eating his food! He is making his decisions and they are good.
Wilbur makes his way to Technoblade’s farms, trying to remain unseen. His head is pounding, and he thinks he needs to drink some water. Or stop eating so many potatoes, because he’s not quite sure if that’s something his body’s designed to do.
When did he start eating?
How did he end up like this?
The first time truly understanding the act of eating, of smoothing down sharp edges of anxiety and exhaustion with food was the night before the election. He remembers it well - it was pumpkin pie. When the guilt crept up, undeniably, pushing up on his lungs until breathing was impossible, it was no problem for Wilbur. He quickly learned how to control those kind of feelings; actually, he had multiple tools at his disposal! He’s refined them over the months, to the point where now he reaches for the safety of pacing or alcohol to keep difficult thoughts at bay.
Before his arrival on the Dream Smp, Wilbur ate junk all the time. Pogtopia may be lacking any conveniently labeled packages of sugar and fat, but where Wilbur came from, that was all he ate.
When your father is the Angel of Death, full of stories of mighty empires and renowned battles with baby zombies, one expects an exciting upbringing. A life spent in the crevices of dimensions and servers, perhaps, where one can be anyone or anything. But he ended up spending his childhood in dusty Utah, in a town with little more than a gas station (gas, not petrol) to serve his teenage desires. Phil had wanted to rest, “for a holiday”, he’d said.
What’s twenty years in a life lasting twenty decades?
He left for the SMPs when he was sixteen, scrubbing away the resentment of a mediocre upbringing, replaced with the tantalising background of sullen, sulky London. Percy Bysse Shelley had written Ozymandias, his favourite poem, so he fashioned himself British. He’d like to pretend he’d forgotten his time in America; only Europeans are allowed in L’manburg, after all, and he is an European now.
His father was pleasant enough, ruffling his hair while regaling him stories of fighting for his Antarctic Empire during the day and dancing with the Goddess of Death at night. When Wilbur blanched at the idea of hardcore, Phil reacts appropriately. He comforts him, apologising for his assumption that sons take the path of their fathers. Wilbur is his own person, he’d said. Hardcore is a commitment few players ever have the dedication to pursue. Perhaps he was blinded, Philza said, at his unusual success. After all, how many hardcore players were good enough to court Death herself?
When Wilbur was sixteen, he reminds his father he will outlive him in a burst of anger. After the argument blew over, Phil never mentioned it again, but Wilbur has known his father’s deepest fear after that day. It’s unfair, but this has always annoyed him. Phil never tells Technoblade to be careful, because he trusts him to be competent.
Wilbur is no prodigy in battle; he fights with words, not swords.
Once, he’d hoped to prove that words could keep him safe. That alliances are forged from friendship, not violence. Wilbur’s not quite sure of that anymore. Maybe it was never meant to be.
He still writes to his father about words and revolution. He even still mentions eating, whether it’s Niki’s pastries or Tommy’s abysmal cake.
Niki’s bakery has long since been taxed into oblivion and Tommy doesn’t talk to him much nowadays. Schlatt had crushed every hope of that returning. But Phil doesn’t need to know that, so Wilbur writes pretty lies, and hopes they are believed.
L’manburg was his magnum opus, his symphony (will it ever be finished?) where every person was no cog in a machine but instruments in an orchestra. In the early days, Wilbur had joked Tommy was his muse after he sung Hallelujah to the weedy crops that grew in their country. He’d hoped his father would be proud regardless.
He does not want Phil to be proud of him the same way fathers are proud of their sons when they bring home their drawings from school. No, he desires to astonish, impress, with the sheer audacity of such an accomplishment. If he cannot create an Antarctic Empire, then surely a country of his own is not too much to ask; a country noble enough for him to look Phil in his eyes, declare that it is his, and be proud.
Yet Wilbur has not achieved this. His words were not enough to defeat Schlatt; his allies have deserted him (fuck you, Eret). Most of all, he has begun to eat, and maybe that was the biggest mistake that came out of all this.
Maybe all this hiding is for nothing and everybody has abandoned him because they know his secret. Maybe Fundy is cracking a joke to Schlatt right this second, laughing at Wilbur’s inability to pull himself together and be a leader. Maybe if he has just been able to keep on not eating no one would have ever betrayed him and nothing bad would have ever happened. Maybe he’s paranoid, but maybe he’s right, and that terrifies him.
All this thinking is making Wilbur jittery.
He needs something to eat.
Fate hates him, or maybe he hates himself. Possibly, his destiny is in his hands, and he can’t make sensible choices for himself. It’s not good for the narrative. Then again, he doesn’t like eating, and he does it anyway.
If he could choose, he’d be one of those tortured artists who lose their appetite in bouts of beautiful depression. Kafka, Byron, Woolf. But currently, he’s on his knees searching for something to eat, rejoicing when he finds some forgotten mouldy bread at the bottom of a chest.
This isn’t right. Wilbur is built for glorious speeches, declaring grandiose statements - Independence or death! - Let’s be the bad guys! - not for shoving dry bread in his mouth with dirty hands.
If Wilbur is to fall from glory, at least let it be with protruding ribs and jutting hipbones, an exquisite isage of a tortured body, tortured mind, tortured soul. Let his bony fingers grasp the sublime as he tumbles down; let it be beautiful!
But he is not beautiful; he is ugly and has always been. He thinks that he’s been doomed from the beginning, yet he can remember a time when it wasn’t like this.
When on earth has Wilbur gotten so weak?
When did Wilbur start eating?
Once, he was hungry for the future. Then, he was hungry for the past. Now he is sickly full, and there is no room for ideas or revolutions or Tommy anymore. Every time he ends up mechanically chewing his way through stacks of bread, thinking up of the best ways to take damage so he can swallow another stale slice, breaks another thread tethering him to personhood. Soon, he thinks that he will lose the act of eating too.
Wilbur has no potatoes left. This is okay. He still has some rotten flesh from a zombie he killed earlier. He feels like that zombie right now, but that’s okay too. The food poisoning might even help him throw up easier!
Wilbur is having a great time and he doesn’t even care about Schlatt or L’manburg anymore. Tomorrow he will finish preparations for war, and all this will end.
Wilbur wishes he was still hungry.