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People like Wilbur are not good. The only thing they’re good at is manipulating others into thinking they are.
Wilbur knows well enough now as a dead man that people like him are always born as villains. Wolves in sheeps clothing. Maybe it’s not that villains don’t want to be good, but that they want to be good for all the wrong reasons. Thus, the inability to be anything else than the traitor, the backstabber, the liar, the madman of the narrative. Because maybe it’s not that people like him don’t want to be good, but that they can’t.
There is always a main character and there’s always a villain. The villain never wins.
He is choking on air.
Is this possible?
His body is one mass of nerves and senses, buzzing with the sensation of feeling.
Feeling ? Dead people don’t do that.
He tries to lift his head.
Searing cold travels up his spine, his fingers shivering at the feeling.
White powder. Overwhelming cold all over his hands his back his cheek his eye
He opens his eyes. Fuck that hurts.
God why is this happening god this hurts god help me and when did he start believing in god ?
Everything is on fire, his body is one undying flame. A tear rolls down his cheek.
He’s whispering something, he can’t really understand what it is. A plea of some sort.
When he was little he thought that if he prayed to god he would hear him and listen and come save him, send down an angel to come protect him.
He’s praying to something else now, something intangible, hoping for some relief, on the slim chance that chance itself could be his savior. Come down, save a wretch like me
His vision is blurry. He doesn’t know what he’s looking at. A stump, a tree. Snow. Snowflakes falling all over him, wrapping him in cold embrace. He curls into himself, arms shaking.
He prays again, to gods please help me stop feeling and for why is this happening please i dont want to die again am i alive please i dont want to die
It’s a cruel irony that for once he does not want to die. Or maybe it’s just that he wants to stop feeling pain, which would also mean death. Nothing makes sense anymore
Delirium takes him.
“Help,” He croaks.
There is light out of darkness. It reminds him of a quote he can’t remember. Darkness, living in it, someone else? Living in light? He can’t recall.
Warmth is a jumpscare. He hasn’t felt warm in a very long time. Something heavy over him. He thinks he might have finally made it to heaven. Lords, Limbo was so very lonely. Maybe his mother is here, shushing his worries, her hands rubbing his scalp. Her hands are soft, he wishes he could melt into this forever.
A bout of coughing wakes him up, his chest hurts. He wheezes loudly. He can hear the creak of his deflating breath.
His eyes hurt too much to accurately observe his surroundings.
A bed. Someone leaning over said bed. A mere shadow in Wilbur’s vision.
He thinks the person might be saying something, but it sounds like a foreign language to his ears.
Suddenly he is very very tired. He begins to close his eyes again but a hand to his cheek alerts him back to the present.
The person says something in a low calming voice. A ceramic bottle is pressed to his lips. Another hand holds up his head.
He doesn’t want to swallow it.
The thought strikes him. Someone is trying to poison him.
He finds the energy in his arms to thrash. An alarmed shout from the person holding the potion. The poisoned potion.
He pleads with his attacker, his entire body fighting to be useful through the thick, jello-like haze that encompasses his whole being. He cannot die again, please, he can’t die again.
The shadow in his blurry gaze moves over him, taking Wilbur’s arms and holding them to the side, struggling with Wilbur’s fatigued strength.
“Just stay still ,” He hears. The voice is somewhat familiar but he can’t decide who it is that reminds him. The voice is rough but slowly morphs itself into something softer.
He murmurs pleas and thinks there might be more tears flowing from his eyes.
“It’s okay, it’s okay. I promise I’m not trying to hurt you. I just need you to drink this,” The person says, slightly loosening the grip on Wilbur’s arms.
“Please, I don’t want to die,” He pleads again. He feels helpless.
“You won’t. In fact, this is going to help you not die, okay?”
Wilbur’s energy is suddenly sapped, causing him to slump back, his arms limp.
He nods weakly. He opens his eyes a little more and attempts to observe the figure.
His eyes flutter and he once again feels the potion lifted to his lips.
This time, despite his wariness and the alarm still in the back of his mind, he drinks it. Its slightly bitter aftertaste is familiar.
He finishes it and feels drowsy, a loss of strength in his body to keep himself awake.
“It’s okay,” The voice says, putting a hand on his arm, not roughly like earlier, but softly. “You can sleep.”
Wilbur doesn’t have the vigor to nod, but he closes his eyes.
Of all things Quackity had expected to see tonight, it was not a nearly hypothermic Wilbur Soot on the ground outside of Las Nevadas.
He has to blink for a moment and process that it’s indeed his supposedly-dead rival and not some lookalike.
When he looks closer, there’s no mistaking him. Same ratty old coat, same dried lips terribly in need of chapstick, same curly hair he thought he would never see again, but somehow different. His rival looks older, wrinkles pasted across his face in areas where they once never existed.
It’s like he had gone through a time machine, coming out as a worn piece of cloth of a man he once was.
He shivers like he’s having a seizure, his eyes shut tightly, his arms at his chest. He looks weak for once in his life, by himself. It’s what Quackity always knew he was, but in physical form.
Wilbur could act as strong as he liked, but Quackity always knew back then that this was him on the inside. Scared. Lonely. Wondering if he would live to survive the night. Looking at him now is like Pogtopia all over again.
He drags him over to Las Nevada's, Wilbur mumbling random pieces of thought, sometimes ‘Please, god’ or ‘I don’t want to die’. It pains him, almost. To see someone broken down to this.
Quackity had been walking around Las Nevada's, taking in a bit of winter, something he had never had the privilege of experiencing during Manburg or any other portion of his life on the SMP. It had always been surviving. Now, he’s been able to see what life is supposed to be like.
By himself.
Wilbur was a trembling stack of bones through the trees that Q, at first, hadn’t even noticed as a person on the ground, more like a tall branch. When the tall branch spoke a word, Q straightened up.
A million questions sprouted out of nothing. How could this be Wilbur being dragged by the arms? How could he be so real and solid? When Q first touched him, he almost expected his hand to go through him. But alas, painfully real.
Wilbur is freezing, perhaps to death (What a funny thing to say, as if he isn’t dead anymore. He isn’t dead anymore, is he?) when he gets him into a room at Las Nevadas. One of the 100 spare rooms that never get filled.
Q places him into the bed, marveling at how light Wilbur is. He sits in a chair next to the bed until he hears the sounds of sputtering and coughing. Wil is visibly confused, the words written on his forehead asking ‘Where am I?’. Q attempts to comfort him, but Wilbur looks around desperately with an unknowing look in his eyes as if he can’t hear Q at all.
His coughs are hoarse and dry. He sounds minutes from death. Quackity runs to his supply closet, taking a potion from one of the wooden boxes placed strategically around the cleaning supplies.
He uncaps a dark pink one of Foolish’s own creation and takes it back to Wilbur’s room.
He picks up Wilbur’s head, Wil not being strong enough to lift it himself.
Q puts the potion up to his mouth, assuming Wilbur will drink it easily. He does not.
He thrashes like someone is trying to kill him. Q’s eyes widen and he pulls back, almost spilling the potion. Wilbur, even at his lowest, is still going to fight him.
“Wil,” He says, moving to touch him.
Wilbur shrinks back as if Q just slapped him.
“No, no, no, I don’t-” His chest rises and falls in quick succession.
“Hey, hey,” He speaks slowly, as if not to spook him like a startled animal. “It’s okay.”
“No, no! I don’t want to die, please, I don’t want to die-” He pleads, voice high and pained.
“Wilbur. Wilbur.” He grabs his hands and holds them to Wilbur’s side. “Just stay still. It’s just a potion, I promise.”
“No, no, no, pleasepleaseplease -” He says, trying to raise his arms despite Q’s hold. A tear slides down his face like a streak of paint. Q has almost never seen him cry. Maybe once. Not like this.
“It’s okay, it’s okay. I promise I’m not trying to hurt you. I just need you to drink this,” Quackity says. He loosens his grip slightly, trying to show him he doesn’t mean harm.
“Please don’t kill me, please, I don’t want to die,” He says again, a pang to Q’s heart.
“You won’t. In fact, this is going to help you not die, okay?”
He relaxes, or maybe his body just doesn’t have any strength left to fight back. Q takes the potion and places it to his lips.
He drinks it and Q releases a breath.
Q sits down on the bed and watches Wilbur’s eyes open and close, relaxing his eyelids for a moment and then forcing them open again, compelling himself to stay awake.
He hesitantly puts his hand on Wil’s arm, hoping it won’t make him panic again. His heart withers when Wilbur leans into the touch whole-heartedly, even though he doesn’t seem to know who Q is at the moment and he was just fighting him with the thought that Q was going to kill him.
The fourth time Wilbur’s eyes snap open in alarm, Q whispers, “It’s okay. You can sleep.”
The words apparently make contact because he closes his eyes and drifts.
Q watches the rise and fall of his breath. He looks somewhat peaceful. He’s sure he’s exhausted by this point, so he lets him sleep.
When he wakes up, maybe he’ll be coherent enough for Quackity to ask the all-encompassing question of… ‘How are you here?’
Because there’s no question about it. He was dead, and now he’s alive. Too scarily alive. If it were any other situation, Q might question his sanity a little more than usual, but now, with the sleeping man in front of him, there’s no way it’s any hallucination.
He lets go of Wilbur’s arm and the other’s eyebrows crease slightly at the notion. Q withdraws slowly so as to not wake him.
He exits the room and walks downstairs to one of the many bar areas at the casino. He pours himself a shot and downs it in one swift motion. It burns in the back of his throat, but he doesn’t react. He had done much more drinking in Manburg than he ever had before, and becoming an alcoholic back then had its benefits. Not many, and it may have done much more harm than good, but at least now he knows how to handle his liquor.
“So,” He hears a voice behind him. “That was the Wilbur they all talk about?” Q turns around to face Foolish.
“Not exactly.”
“He didn’t look too good.”
“He looked half-dead, you mean.”
“Did you give him a potion?” Foolish asks.
“He fought it off, but in the end he took it. He’s really out of it, he thought I was trying to murder him or something. Poison him.”
“And you still don’t know how-”
“No. He didn’t even recognize who I was.” He pours a second of two shots and takes it, if not quicker, than the last.
“And now? He’s asleep?” Foolish asks, concern stretching his voice. Foolish is always concerned about something. If Quackity is getting enough sleep, if the new builds will be good enough, about how they could get more visitors to Las Nevadas. He worries about all the things Quackity is always too exhausted to be anxious about. Most days, Q is simply too numb to fret about every little thing.
“Yeah.”
“Should you really be drinking right now? I mean, y’know. You aren’t going to be out of it when Wilbur wakes up?”
“Worry about him, not me. I can handle myself. It’d be worse if I turned into a wreck than if I was a little tipsy. We already have one person on the verge of a panic attack, let’s not make it two.”
Foolish isn’t happy with his answer but doesn’t press him.
“I’m going to go get him some water,” Foolish says, walking to the mini-fridge and taking out a bottle. “He’s probably dehydrated.”
“Okay, you do that.”
Quackity takes a breath and puts the liquor back on its shelf.
He finds himself wandering back to his office, eyes turned downward. Wilbur’s terrified look, his eyes filled with terror. That isn’t the Wilbur Soot he remembers. What other things have changed since he last saw him? Where has he been? Had he ever died at all? He had… hadn’t he? Phil wouldn’t lie about killing his son, he wouldn’t. So how is it that he’s back?
He enters his office and sits down at his desk, propping his legs up on it. Schlatt would’ve killed him for doing that back when he was vice president. But Schlatt is dead, and only his powerless ghost could possibly witness Q disobeying his orders. Quackity makes a point to do it as often as he can. Sue him, it’s some sort of therapy.
He leans back, eyes suddenly heavy. He doesn’t realize he’s asleep until he’s dreaming, familiar swirling faces and meaningless plots rippling through his unconscious mind.
The way Quackity wakes up is nothing near pleasant because all he can hear is screaming.
He doesn’t have to think about it too hard to know that it’s Wilbur.
It’s a blood-curdling scream, a scream with reckless abandon. A desperate scream for help.
His heart beats quickly as he races down the hall to Wilbur’s, wondering what’s happening now .
He enters the room and finds that Foolish has beaten him to it, standing by the bed, where Wilbur is nowhere to be found.
“Where is he?” Q asks, still hearing the choked gasps of his once esteemed rival.
Foolish looks around. He points to the closet. “Maybe in there?” He almost goes to open it but stops and asks Q, “You or me?”
“Here, I’ll do it. He might recognize me this time,” Quackity says.
Foolish steps aside, watching Q as he opens the door cautiously.
Curled into a ball on the ground, is Wilbur.
He hiccups with sobs and his shoulders shake, hair covering his face. Q hadn’t seen it before, but now it’s impossible to ignore: the white streak in Wilbur’s hair.
“Please, please, please, I don’t want to go back I cant go back I cant-”
Back?
Quackity kneels down to the man's level. “It’s okay, Wilbur. You’re not going back, I promise.” It surprises him how soft he sounds at this moment. It’s odd to hear his voice bend in this way, but he’s glad he’s allowed himself to.
“It’s just trains and god it’s dark it’s so dark ,” He whispers, but Q can still hear him.
Wilbur’s hands are pressed over his ears protectively and when Quackity rubs his hand over the other’s, he tightens his fingers, digging them into his scalp.
“Hey, hey, don’t do that. You’re okay. Nothing’s happening.”
“You’re going to send me back there,” He says in a small voice, lifting his head slightly.
“I’m not going to send you anywhere.”
“You’re lying, you’re lying .”
“Where do you think I’m going to send you?”
“B-back to Limbo. But y-you already know that,” He sniffles.
“What is Limbo?” He asks softly. Maybe it’s not the best question but he finds himself so curious that he has to.
“Hell,” He responds coldly, and Quackity blinks.
“There’s trains, forever trains, and when there isn’t, there’s nothing. It’s so so dark, I don’t wanna go back,” His voice breaks, “I can’t go back there I can’t do it I don’t want to die again-”
Quackity listens to his sobs and pleads like broken records, wondering if his heart is really caving in or if it’s only in his head.
“Wilbur, can you hear me?”
A small nod.
“Just breathe, okay? Can I touch you?”
He shakes his head rapidly.
“Okay, that’s okay. I won’t. Just follow my breathing okay? In and out,” He takes a deep breath and releases it slowly. Tubbo had done this for him once, back in the old days. He never thought he’d be the one doing it, but here he is.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” He repeats. It rocks him to his core. If there was something Wilbur Soot never said, it was sorry. Never. Not when he destroyed lives, not when he hurt people. Never.
“It’s okay, I’m not upset,” He reminds him.
Quackity coaches him through deep breaths for a little longer than 15 minutes. When Wilbur has finally calmed down, he lifts his head up slightly.
“Q?” He finally asks. Finally he seems to recognize him, looking him in the eyes and not blankly to the side.
“I’m here.”
“I had a nightmare about it.”
“About..”
“Limbo. I was back there.” He looks down at the ground. “I’m alive, right? I’m not dead?”
“Wilbur, you are the most alive you can get.”
Quackity moves his arm and Wilbur watches it warily.
“Can I touch you?” He asks.
He nods this time.
Quackity puts his palm on Wilbur’s heart. It’s the only part of his body that actually feels warm. “Do you feel that? Your heart is beating.”
Wilbur looks down at his heart, taking a shaky hand and putting it over Quackity’s.
He suddenly uncurls his legs from his chest and wraps his arms around Quackity. He can feel the wetness of his tears seep through his shirt. He lets Wilbur cry.
Wilbur was dead.
And then he was revived.
Limbo is a train station he’s been sitting at for the last 13 years.
The last part might be the most jarring realization of all to Quackity. He tries not to show his surprise as Wilbur tries to talk through it, the memories obviously painful. Wilbur’s body language is vulnerable as he explains, recounting how loud everything is, how much he forgot what things sounded like. He hadn’t been touched by another person in 13 years. Quackity tries not to think about how awful it must have been, how torturing it must be to be in isolation, unable to feel anything or eat anything, left to wither away without the hope of death to take away the pain.
Like you don’t know anything about torture, his subconscious laughs maliciously. He doesn’t listen to it. He’s learned not to.
“God Wilbur, I’m so sorry,” He says, and he means it.
Shortly after, Quackity gets Wilbur something to eat. Wilbur devours the meal like he’s never eaten anything in his life, which is probably how it feels after 13 years.
“That might've been the best meal I’ve ever had in my life,” Wilbur says afterwards.
Wilbur throws up in the toilet 10 minutes later.
Q sits with him on the bathroom floor, remembering the days he would have terrible hangovers in Manburg, always ending with the smell of bile and alcohol. Those were the days where there was no one to help him as he retched into a trash bin, leaned up against the toilet.
He rubs Wilbur’s back as he slumps over against Quackity.
“I think I just threw up the 6 month-old steak that was left in my corpse,” He rasps.
Quackity sighs and puts his hand through Wilbur’s hair. Wilbur lets out a shaky breath, but not one that sounds like he wants Q to stop. In fact, anything but.
Eventually, Q helps Wilbur stand and leads him back to the bedroom. It’s nearly midnight.
Q sits at the bottom of Wilbur’s bed. “Do you… know why exactly you got revived?”
Wilbur shrugs weakly. “Lady death wanted her favorite actor back, I suppose. Ratings and such.”
Quackity doesn’t reply. It’s a grim thought, that the only thing you were put on the SMP to do is to be a player in a game, an actor in a play, a protagonist or a villain. It makes sense why Wilbur would say something like that though, he was always one for theatrics. Maybe he even viewed his last death as a finale to Act 3.
Wilbur’s eyes droop as their conversations go on, until Quackity is talking and Wilbur’s eyes slip totally closed.
“I guess this is goodnight then,” Q says to himself, imagining Wilbur is already asleep.
He leaves the light on for obvious reasons and almost leaves when Wilbur speaks a soft sentence behind him.
“Quackity?” He asks in a small voice. “Do you.. Do you think you could stay? I don’t want to be by myself. I’m sorry.”
Q blinks. “Yeah, um, of course. You don’t need to be sorry.”
He walks back and looks at the empty space on the other side of the bed. “Could I?” He asks, thinking to himself that this might be the first time he’s asked permission to do something in a very long time.
Wilbur nods. Q slips under the covers.
“It reminds me of Pogtopia,” Wilbur says after a little while of laying in silence.
“This?”
“Yeah.”
“I- I’m not sure if you’ll get mad at me for asking this…” He lingers for a moment, uncertain and apprehensive to ask what he’s thinking. “C-can we lay like we did in Pogtopia? The way you’d put your arm-” He stops when Quackity turns himself toward Wil, putting his own arm around his. He lets out a quiet gasp at the action. Quackity pretends not to feel the way Wilbur shakes in his embrace.
“Sorry, I-” His breath gets caught in his chest. When he finally relaxes, he finishes the thought. “I just forgot how it felt to be held by you.”
A few seconds later, he laughs, “I forgot how good it felt to be alive .”
“What’s your favorite part?” Q asks.
“Of being alive?” He asks, elated. “I have no idea. Breathing , maybe. My chest isn’t hollow anymore. Eating had it’s consequences, but god did it feel so fucking good. I can feel touch now. Or maybe.. The best part was seeing you again.”
Q lets the words soak into his brain.
“I thought about you everyday, probably. I would dream sometimes that I would be alive again, and I’d see you and,” He chuckles, “You’d be really happy to see me. I’m not sure how I really believed that, to be honest I’m still a bit surprised that you haven’t screamed at me since I got here…”
“Well, from the sound of it, Limbo was punishment enough.” And for some outlandish reason, Q has sympathy for the villain.
Wilbur quiets. “Yeah, it was.
“But I really missed everyone. I missed you, and Tommy…” He tenses. “Gods, Tommy. I had a long and standing agreement with Lady Death you know, in Limbo. I said, ‘Lady Death, if you let me go down there to the SMP for 5 minutes, just 5, no more, and you let me see Tommy, you can keep me in Limbo forever’. I would apologize then. I even memorized a whole apology I wrote. Of course Lady Death never did let me see him, and I can’t really remember how the apology went… but it must’ve taken at least a year to truly perfect.”
“Maybe tomorrow you could go see him.”
“You think he’d want to see me? After everything?”
“I don’t know. But I’m sure he misses you.”
“I had an apology for you too. I can’t remember it, though. I’m sorry.” Another apology Quackity had never expected to hear. He had accepted he would never get a sorry in his life, and here he is, hearing it so easily leave Wilbur Soot’s mouth.
“It’s okay.”
“I think I might go to sleep now, Quackity.”
“Makes two of us.”
“Goodnight, Big Q.” The nickname brings back memories that Quackity doesn’t know whether to yearn for or condemn. He hasn’t forgiven Wilbur yet. But slowly, he might.
“Goodnight Wilbur.”
Wilbur doesn’t wake up screaming for the rest of the night. And for once, the memories that plague Quackity’s mind during sleep are gracious.