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The world that burns is heavenly. The fire streaks like watercolor art, smudging the image of the structures that linger. There is a pain within his chest, but if he drifts far enough, he can ignore it. Floating, hazily, above his body, is preferable; it lets him revel in the beauty of the damage he has done.
Wilbur is dying. That is undeniable, but perhaps, for a moment, it can be postponed. A heavy darkness encroaches on the edges of his vision, reminding him of the fate that extends its arms to him. He is bleeding. It runs hot and thickly from his chest like a flow of lava from a fissure in the earth. He can’t breathe. The blood seeps into the waiting pockets of his lungs, rising up in his throat and cutting off his oxygen. He regrets it each time his body fights, subconsciously, for a gasp of air; every shudder of his chest stabs loose ribs into fragile meat.
He shouldn’t breathe. He’s going to leave soon anyway, it’s foolish for his body to seek a life that is so clearly fleeing him. If only there was a way to get the signal across, a nonnegotiable order to give up and calm down.
Like it’s mocking him, his body shivers violently. The arms clutching him tighten. Phil is crying, Wilbur thinks, which is hypocritical, as if it wasn’t his hand that plunged the sword in. He is crying because he has to, Wilbur decides. He has to because that’s what a father does when his son dies. It is how the cycle goes. Life and death and false regret.
Wilbur blinks. His eyelids don’t want to reopen, but he makes them because these last moments are fleeting. He is ready to die, but he isn’t about to waste his final glimpses. Over the jagged edge of the cliff, the world is burning. Water churns in newly gaping wounds, spitting foam and chunks of scorched debris. There are bodies, surely, but he’s too far away or too hazy to distinguish them.
Murderer.
His mind is fading. Vaguely, he believes that Phil’s arms have retreated, only to realize that he’s merely lost sensation in his body. The shaking worsens, again involuntarily, but it lacks the accompanying flash of pain.
Outside, the chorus of screams, fighting, and explosions slips backward, falls behind a murky, sluggish veil. Wilbur’s eyes blink shut, if they haven’t already. A hellish heat reaches from deep in his head. Sounds are drowning. Light is left behind. His skin longs for the touch that’s still fighting to be felt. In a brain that wants to rocket from hysterical euphoria to rage, there is nothing quite as tempting as an empty heaviness. And—
“Wilbur. I need you to listen to me.”
He is trying. His head tips upward, sending a wave of nausea through his frame. The weight begins to fall away from him, and he wants nothing more than to yank it back over himself like the world’s most weighted blanket, to shut off whatever nonsense is attempting to rouse him.
“Wilbur.”
“Stop it,” he mumbles. His arms rise to shield himself, which makes him all the more aware of how weightless he’s become. “Ten more minutes.”
In the void, her sigh echoes. “I’m sorry. You have to get up.”
He’s too tired. The thought seems ridiculous, considering the abstraction of his form. Oddly enough, the exhaustion that he’s grown too familiar with appears to have untangled itself from his bones. He can’t remember the last time he felt as though he could stand without swaying.
“Wilbur. Honey. At least open your eyes.”
In all honesty, he hadn’t even noticed they were shut, assuming without evidence that sight is futile here. Now he blinks easily, taking in her image.
It’s a moment. That’s all she allows for him. He is granted a moment of her blurry visage before gravity latches onto his body and his feet are yanked down to a solid, waiting ground. He collapses, body striking in dozens of unprecedented places, a definite message that this floor is hard and real and unyielding. And—
Cold. He is cold. He has always been cold. There is nothing that waits at the end of this cold. It bores into the very marrow of his bones, sucking any semblance of heat from his body. His skin cracks under the frigid conditions, then knits itself back together with resentment.
He has been here forever, and yet he’s just arrived. In a way, it feels as though he has always been here, at the station, waiting for the train. Even alive, he has always been here.
He is dead, holding no use for oxygen any longer, and yet, all of a sudden, he finds breathing difficult. Shudders push through his numb body in waves, seizing control of his muscles. He staggers, searching for stability in leaning against the wall of the platform, which is so cold that his skin falsely identifies dampness. In response, he jerks in the opposite direction, flinging himself back into the open air, gasping—
Count it, remember, don’t sit here and be useless. They’re waiting for you. Pull yourself together, Wilbur.
– for a breath, vision tunneling. Darkness threatens to consume him again, and if there is anything he yearns for less than this station, it is the darkness. At least here, there is something solid to ground him.
At that thought, his knees strike against the concrete. He’s backed away from the tracks again, leaning drowsily against the wall of the station while his body forgets that it needs no air to function. There’s a buzzing that spreads from his inner ear outward, a hum of static that has filled his silence for months now.
He told Niki, once – a bad decision. It was sometime in the days before the election, before he completely abandoned the idea of seeking help from the people that claimed to be his friends. He was sitting in his office, fighting off an exhaustion that he’d let accumulate, drowning the heaviness in enough coffee to give him a heart attack. Niki was leaning against the doorframe, watching him with a cautious yet piercing gaze, listing off solutions to his ‘stress problem’ –
It's not a problem, he had insisted, this is just what happens when you’re president.
– when Wilbur, always the most tactful, had exclaimed, “will you stop that incessant humming?”
Niki blinked, the crease in her brow furrowing. “What humming? Wilbur?”
His stomach twisted with a familiar coldness. He rose from his desk, glaring. “Get out. Now!”
He must have poured a whole month’s worth of venom in his words, because Niki did exactly that, no argument. They never spoke of it again.
He can’t think beyond the buzzing. It’s seeping throughout his body like a virus, infecting all of his decrepit organs. The world tilts around him, compounding the increasing nausea, and his head knocks against the solid wall of the station.
Don’t you dare—
He has half the mind to wonder where the words are coming from, but before they can take root within his psyche, he has drawn his head back and flung forward again, sending a satisfying crack reverberating through his eardrums. As if that wasn’t enough, his fist follows swiftly: slams into the wall, seeking blood and bruises and the inevitable snapping of his bones. The resulting burn of pain is gratifying, spreading hot and electric through the nerves in his hand and arm, but before he can examine the shattered knuckles, they are healed. His head, as well, has slowed its throbbing.
“Excellent,” he spits. “Fucking fantastic.”
He doesn’t know who he’s talking to. No one speaks here. Wildly, he wishes for even a hallucination, a mirage, a fever dream, anything.
A man who pushed away everyone who could have cared for him wants company. His fingers race through his hair, latching onto the familiar greasy texture, and a fracturing grin splits over his lips. And—
“You’re a dick, Wil.”
“Maybe. But am I wrong?”
“No.” Tommy’s looking at him, and he isn’t smiling. It’s jarring.
“I’m just trying to be practical, Tommy.”
“Out of character.”
Something heavy and cold drops into Wilbur’s stomach. His voice lowers, on the verge of breaking. “What?”
And—
Repeatedly bashing his head against the concrete floor is probably not indicative of a stable psyche. Nothing works. His eyes keep flitting to the dark, gaping tunnel that extends in both directions from the platform. He stands at the very edge, curling the ends of his boots off the ledge, waiting – hoping – for the train to fly past him, give a wind and a sound and a chance for annihilation. And—
Someday, lying in the void, they are laughing. The experience feels wholly unnatural. Death is taking his face in her hands and beaming. He is waiting upon the silent platform and reciting her words so he cannot forget them.
You are not finished yet. Life will find you again.
Wilbur isn’t sure if he wants to be found. There was nothing he wanted more than to escape it, the strangling life that burned each time it touched him, but now he is faced with the death he so longed for, and—
“Don’t be stupid, Wil,” Quackity says bitterly.
Wilbur laughs, leaning back against the cold, jagged wall of the ravine, taking a long drag from his cigarette. “Don’t be stupid,” he echoes. “Alright. Sure.”
“I mean it.”
Wilbur extends his arms in a grand gesture. “I promise I won’t be stupid.”
Quackity’s gaze is unrelenting, uncompromising. He folds his arms over his chest. “Promise me you’ll still be here tomorrow morning.”
Wilbur narrows his eyes at him, examining the way the torchlight pulls dramatic shadows from his features. “I don’t know what the hell you’re saying,” he mutters. He stubs his cigarette out with his thumb, satiating the hunger for a piercing, painful burn, and—
She’s beautiful in a way that makes him forget himself, left scrambling helplessly for a single word. He’s got a hole in the toe of his boot that hides away until he lifts his foot to step. He’s standing still.
Wilbur doesn’t know why the ocean gifted her. He’s too young, too reckless, with too much death ahead of him. He spends too many days sat aimlessly at the seaside, steady hands moving smoothly over fresh guitar strings, and now she is sitting there beside him, cackling, making every organ in his body somersault.
“You’re a mess,” she comments. He can feel his face sear. A sun-kissed hand brushes over his cheek, pushing back the loose curls that have grown wildly without his father there to cut them. Someday, in another run at life, he would have let them grow forever, way down past his shoulders, unrestrained.
Sally laughs at the way he freezes under her touch. She’s got freckles that shimmer under the sunlight, and she’d tease him for always staring at her nose.
“It’s brutish, I know,” she’d say quietly, and her tone would waver too close to sincerity.
“No,” Wilbur would argue. “It’s perfect.”
Now she smirks, as if in possession of a coy and illicit secret, and she pinches his chin between her thumb and forefinger. He searches for words to give her and finds nothing. His mind is lost somewhere in the white, fuzzy clouds, and he has no intention of retrieving it presently.
“It’s too bad,” she murmurs. “I loved this, you know.” Her face softens, laced with a sweet melancholy, and despite the fact that his brain has been replaced by cotton, Wilbur knows. She smiles sadly.
His mouth opens, his throat dry. “You could stay,” he says hoarsely.
“Oh, no,” she laughs lightly. “I’ve got to be going. But you….” She says it with such emphasis, as if that’s all that must be said. “You’ve got mythical days on the way.”
“I don’t get it.” The words fall from numb lips dumbly.
Sally tilts her head gently, her touch leaving him. “But you will. None of this will compare to your glory.”
“It will,” he retorts, reaching out for her, seeking. She slips backward, gracefully as the wind. His voice leaves him.
The numbness now feels suffocating. His body shifts out of alignment, thrumming with a heat that is beginning to scorch him. He scrabbles, futilely, for the flash of ginger hair, for the sun-kissed skin, for the lingering taste that he cannot let escape him.
She tips backward off the pier, into the ocean, and is gone. And—
“Wilbur. I need you to look at me, hun.”
I’m trying, he doesn’t say. I already am. I’ve been staring at death for years now.
“Take my hand.”
Rather than reaching out, Wilbur shrinks away from her, tucking his limbs against his body in the void he’s floating in. “Why?” he gasps. “Why did you show me that? I moved on.”
Death’s laugh echoes in his skull, all-consuming. “You? Wilbur Soot? Move on? Don’t kid me. If there is anyone you can be honest with, it’s me.”
But he can’t. It’s the sickness that rages within him, gnawing at the few truthful bones that remain. He’s a liar, thoroughly, an irreparable flaw that defines every failure he’s committed. Even back in the glory days of his country, he was spitting falsities in every stroke of his pen. And—
Somehow, in an inevitable coincidence, he met Tommy. He would have rather dove into the sun than reverse that collision. Now he’s sitting against the wall of the Camarvan, fingers stained with black ink that he smudges from the parchment – pages of it, each draft less articulate than the last, forming a small pile of crumpled rejections at his feet.
At the table, Tommy’s measuring out fabric for Tubbo’s uniform. It’s harder, he said, ‘cause he’s so tiny, yeah? Now his brow is furrowed in intense concentration, hands steady as he slides the blade over the marked chalk line.
“How ‘bout this,” Wilbur suggests. “’Dearest Dream, you green bastard, and associated cowards. It has come to the attention of my compatriots that you possess the utterly blatant self-obsession to declare yourself leader over these peaceful lands. Thus, we, a group for which subjugation is impossible, are therefore under the just obligation to declare—'”
“That we’re all just pretentious assholes,” Tommy finishes.
Wilbur scowls, scratching heavy lines over his words. “Don’t be crude.”
“Hypocrite.”
Wilbur can’t help but grin. He runs a hand through his hair to reset his brain, setting his quill on his book and placing both on the floor of the Camarvan. “This revolution stuff’s harder than it looks, y’know.”
“Did it look easy in Hamilton?”
Wilbur shrugs tiredly.
In response, Tommy lifts the uniform jacket he’s been working on. At least from Wilbur’s angle down on the floor, it looks perfect. The edges are nicely creased and sewn over. All of the chevrons are placed properly. It looks crisp and professional. And—
“Hang on. Hang on.” Tommy’s hands rattle him, dragging his half-dead body through the forest by the shoulders. Far away, he can hear the chorus of shouting, the whistle of deadly arrows driving through the air between them.
Blearily, Wilbur tries to peel Tommy’s fingers off him. “Let me go,” he mumbles.
“No shot, Wil. Don’t be stupid. Put your feet under you; I can’t keep dragging—”
“Let me go—”
“Put some effort in it, Wil. I’m not strong enough to—”
“Stop.” Somewhere, buried beneath the panic and the anchor of Tommy’s voice is a writhing, burning pain within him. He is bleeding thickly through the fabric of his uniform, staining the blue with a bright crimson that spreads from his stomach like the sea. He is losing it.
“Wilbur.” Tommy sounds like he’s on the verge of tears. “Wilbur.”
“Keep going,” Wilbur says, but his voice is fading. It’s too quiet. Everything is fuzzy, disconnected. “I’ll be fine. Let me go. I’ll meet you—”
Tommy screams, his voice shattering, too high-pitched and fragile with the youth that flees him. His touch leaves Wilbur’s shoulders; he’s following the orders his general gave him, and—
The train station swallows all the noise that he gives it. Screaming, singing, endless mindless ramblings – all of it is consumed by the nothingness.
One day, he gets it into his head that there is a way out of this. Not back, of course, not a return to the living, but a further descent. A firmer death. He considers.
For thirty-three weeks, he lies still on the rails, waiting for the arrival of a train that never comes. At some point, the restlessness becomes unbearable, and he treks as far as the tracks will allow him, lost in the dark, silent tunnel, until it inevitably wraps back around to the platform. The tunnel never turns.
He pulls teeth, cracks bones, spills so much blood that he should be nothing but a dry sack of skin and powdered calcium, but the damage doesn’t stick. And—
A set of pale, bruised blue knuckles collide with the wall, barely missing the button that taunts him mockingly. There are words escaping his lips without his permission; he can’t think behind the incessant buzzing.
Quackity is closing hands around his arms, unyielding, asking something along the lines of what are you doing? and all Wilbur can focus on his how tightly Quackity is gripping him, how his fingers dig into his skin like fire. He is burning.
“There’s TNT in here,” Tommy points out quietly. “If you push it, we’re all going down with L’Manberg.”
“I won’t,” Wilbur says. “Not with you – not with you here.” He’s lying; they’ve just witnessed how badly he is tempted, there’s no way they will grant him the slightest breath of opportunity, and—
“Us,” Tommy mutters. “That’s all that stopped you?”
They are sitting on one of the ledges in Pogtopia, right where the railing was supposed to be installed, their legs dangling over the gaping wound in rock beneath them. The air down here is suffocating, but Wilbur has learned to find comfort in the subtle agony in his lungs. Tommy hates it.
The cigarette leaves his mouth, held loosely between his fingers. “Tommy, what the hell are you talking about?”
“In the button room,” Tommy explains. “With Quackity. Would you have pushed it?”
“Tried to.”
“It would’ve killed you.”
Wilbur stares at the smoldering end of his cigarette, hypnotized by the blinking embers. This wasn’t a conversation he remembered having. No one was supposed to call him out so plainly. And—
“I wanted to die,” Wilbur tells the empty tracks. “I’m supposed to finally be happy.” And—
“What the fuck did you think happens when you kill yourself?” Tommy demands. They are somewhere and nowhere and everywhere. He’s in his uniform, stained with smeared grass and dirt and blood.
“I don’t know,” Wilbur mumbles faintly. “I just wanted to—”
“What? To abandon us? Me?”
“No, I didn’t – I wouldn’t – I was just—”
“You were what, Wil?”
He swallows thickly. “I was tired.”
It sounds weak, thin, childish. Tommy gives him a pointed look.
“I was scared,” Wilbur adds.
“Of what?” The voice rings out from every angle, leaving nowhere safe from the blinding light of exposure and scrutiny. Tommy, more than anyone else, possesses the dangerous ability to cut straight through his body.
Wilbur swallows the shame that rises like a fever within him and lets the word fall from his lips unceremoniously. Regrettably. “Everything.”
And—
Blurrily, floating in the darkness, Wilbur blinks. For the first time, her image is clear to him. Even swathed in black, her silhouette is unmistakable. Darkness rolls from her clothing in wisps, pooling in her skirt and veiling her face.
“Come on, dear,” Death says softly. “See what’s returning to you.”
There is warmth locked in ventricles deep in his flesh, still unvanquished despite countless years in the cold. His hands clench into fists, reminding his nerves of their existence, still just as responsive as the day he died, maybe more so. Gravity threatens to reintroduce itself, and it’s too bad because although the sensory deprivation is hellish, there is something heavenly about floating aimlessly in the void, and—
Someday, aeons away from this moment, Wilbur is sitting upon a neatly made bed, tracing the curves of flowers stitched into the comforter, staring transfixed at the thinness of the skin that stretches over his knuckles, adorned with freckles he does not remember acquiring. He looks up and is greeted by a dark oak dresser – a vanity, complete with a polished mirror, which sends his face back to him in perfect detail. He looks nothing like he did on the day that he died, and even less like the boy that left home way back when. His hair grows longer, near his shoulders, more grey than brown. He is wearing his glasses; his wide eyes blink owlishly back at him.
He has aged. The world has not discarded him. His gaze shifts, still locked within the mirror, and finds the shape of someone asleep beside him. Wilbur wants to turn around, to identify the stranger, to see what idiot could possibly end up choosing him, but he doesn’t.
He takes in the air steadily, relishing every ounce that expands in his lungs. In the mirror, his face is smiling, but he doesn’t believe it until he touches a hand to his lips, and it’s real. There is no smirk, no grimace, no maniacal grin, only a soft smile and a gentle exhale, and—
Fundy has the unique ability to shatter Wilbur’s heart into a thousand pieces. He utilizes this power many times in the years that they spend together. At first, it’s unintentional: he giggles uncontrollably at the stupid faces Wilbur makes for him, like there’s nothing funnier in the whole universe; he calls every animal he encounters a salmon before he learns the word kitty, and then it’s a tossup between the two with no discernible metric for deciding. Later on, he weaponizes this ability: subtle head tilts for a scoop of ice cream, purposeful silliness for help with his reading, strategic compliments to soften Wilbur up before he reveals some teenage act of defiance. Maybe some part of Wilbur recognizes this manipulation, but it’s all so kind and innocent and adorable that he can’t help but fall for it, over and over.
And then, on the day of the election, Fundy breaks Wilbur’s heart for the last time. He tears down the flag of the country he was born into, and he severs all remaining allegiance to his father. In the wake of this betrayal, Wilbur searches the recesses of his mind, the fuzzy memories of his time as president, looking desperately for the signs he must have missed, the warnings that Fundy gave that were lost in his ignorance. There had to be something, even the smallest notion, any hint that his son was going to abandon him. And—
“Someday, you’re going to be a great warrior.”
From Phil’s lap, Wilbur lifts his head up drearily. It has been a long day full of far too much excitement, and he wants nothing more than to lay his head on his father’s shoulder and let the waves of sleep wash over him. But it is not bedtime yet, and his father is speaking.
“I won’t,” Wilbur mumbles.
Phil’s hand brushes over his forehead, pushing back the curls that spill over his eyes. “Oh, yeah? And why not?”
“I’m gonna be a poet,” Wilbur declares sleepily.
“I know that,” Phil replies. “I’m certain of it. But you know warriors don’t all use swords and axes. Some of them – the best of them – use words to win their battles.”
Wilbur’s eyes widen – just like, one day, Fundy’s will – and he grins, showing off the new teeth missing. “That’s what I’m gonna do,” he decides brightly, and—
Some years in, he gives up on destroying himself. He walks casually around the empty platform, swept up in the bubbly, giddy feeling of a happiness that he finds so fleeting. The joy is unnatural, tinted with an inescapable hysteria, but it’s there. He dances. He writes songs without music. He imagines a world above that is nothing like his own, that is effortless to live in. In this world, his mind never longs for cruelty or solitude or self-destruction. He is real and tangible and gives love as easily as it is given. All he wants for is within his grasp, easily. It is bliss.
A few months later, he’s back at the wall of the station, drowning out his brain with an unceasing beating. And—
“Chin up, Tommy. They’re going to love you.”
Tommy huffs a laugh, speaks quietly to remain unheard in the backstage of the podium. “I’m not the one who needs reminding, Wilbur. I’ve got this. I’m a big man. You’re the one shaking.”
Wilbur looks down at his hands and is bewildered to find Tommy proven correct. He’s trembling. “I’m not nervous,” he mutters. “Just got too much energy.”
“Big day,” Tommy says shortly.
“The biggest,” he agrees. And—
“Wilbur. Honey. There is a train coming.”
Wilbur shakes his head like a metronome; it’s dizzying. “I don’t want to,” he whispers. “I’m meant to stay here. I chose this.”
“Yet the world choses you.”
“Tell it no.” His words scrape at his throat, sour and scalding.
“Are you happy here?” she asks him quietly. And—
No. He’s lying on the tracks again, waiting. If he’s happy here, then he is happy everywhere. In his office with eyebags and shuddering hands. In the smoke-filled caverns of a shadowed ravine. In that room, half-blown open, gazing out at the world that burns like a painting. And—
Somewhere, everywhere, everything returns to him. His life is presented from a new perspective, untethered from the chaos that rages permanently in his brain. It is given to him gently, and he falls in love with years he wrote off as nothing but misery. The world pulls into focus before him, no longer a disfigured, melting, watercolor mess, but a tapestry of threads left unfinished, awaiting the resuming of his hands weaving them, and –
“Take me,” Wilbur gasps. “Let me feel the sun again.”