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There’s no wonder why Wilbur needs therapy.
That doesn’t stop him from giving as much pushback as he can.
It’s not that Wilbur doesn’t think he needs help, because that’s the only thing he does know. However, more than anything else, he doesn’t believe it can be solved by talking , of all things.
He’s accumulated too many issues to count, and revival has amplified that without question.
“What the fuck else would you rather her do? You reckon it’d work better if Puffy just beat the shit out of you for an hour? You reckon that would work?”
Wilbur scoffs. As much as he’s tried to reason with Tommy (although never fighting back, Tommy dragging him kicking and screaming is not an option), he had been terribly adamant that Wilbur at least attend one or two sessions.
So now here he is, in a waiting room with a nice rug and a velvet chair and too many plants in vases sitting on the open window sills.
Puffy had welcomed him in and he nodded his head as she told him she would be right with him, careful not to look her in the eyes. He’s grown to dislike looking people in the eyes. It’s like they’re peering into him, studying him like a wax figure at a museum until he inevitably melts under their gaze into a puddle on the ground.
Wilbur pops his fingers anxiously, waiting for Puffy to reappear around the corner, beckoning him into that room where he’ll be forced to talk about all his problems as if he can be helped.
As if he should be helped.
He almost predicts her when she finally comes around, waving him back with a smile.
“I’m Puffy.” She sticks her hand out for him to shake. He takes her hand gingerly. His handshake used to be stronger.
“I’ve heard a lot about you,” she says, walking to another room, Wilbur following close behind. “Not to put you on the spot, but it’s good to finally meet you after getting to know Tommy.” She turns around and smiles at him again and it is off putting. Of course he has a reputation, and combined with whatever Tommy’s told her, she knows how terrible he is, yet she’s still treating him like a normal person.
Wilbur stands awkwardly in the middle of the room as Puffy takes her seat on one side of the room.
“You can sit over there, if you want. Let me know if you want a different chair. We have a few other ones in the waiting room. Tommy prefers the roll-y chair,” She laughs.
Wilbur sits down and adjusts his position before realising he will never be comfortable. “Uh, this is fine,” He replies, even though the one in the waiting room was more comfortable. He doesn’t want to make a fuss about anything. It’s just a chair.
“It’s good to meet you, Wilbur. Is that what you prefer to be called, by the way? I ask everyone, just to make sure,” She says.
“Wilbur, uhm, Wil. Either is fine.”
“Alright!” She says. “So,” She puts her notebook down on her lap, “the point of this first session is to get to know you. If you have anything specific you want to talk about, we can talk about that too, but for now, I’m just wanting to get a sense of your personality, things you like to do, stuff like that. Is that okay?”
Is that okay? Of course it’s okay, he doesn’t understand why she would ask. He doesn’t want to be here, but it’s going to happen whether he wants it or not.
He nods.
“So, very surface level questions, what do you like to do?”
Wilbur blinks. “Aren’t you supposed to… solve my problems?”
She laughs, a real laugh that makes him wary. “Well, I’m here to help you solve problems, but I wouldn’t say I’m here to solve them for you. But since this is our first session, I thought it would be good to start off with easy stuff.”
She assumed her question was easy. What does he like to do? Sometimes he writes lyrics or walks around the SMP, goes to see his father, gets pressured into staying longer, sits around while his father runs through meaningless conversation starters in an effort to beat around the bush instead of asking the simple words of ‘ how are you? ’
“Uh. Well. Not very much. I like to write, and read. Lots of literacy,” He says, coughs out a chuckle and quiets.
“Oh, that’s interesting. I wonder what kind of things you write?”
“Just songs. Lyrics. I don’t really use them but Tommy said it would be good to do something like that. He says it could be ‘therapeutic’.”
“I agree. Sometimes it’s easier to express our feelings through music. Do you think it helps?”
Helps what? His debilitating anxiety? His sleeping problems? His waking up screaming during the night? The self loathing? “I guess,” He settles on.
Puffy nods.
“Sometimes it makes things worse though,” He says. He’s not sure why he says it but it’s true (maybe he just hates the silence when neither of them are talking.) Sometimes he starts writing only to end up in a panic attack five minutes later.
“How so?”
“It makes me think about things too much.”
“What kind of things, if you don’t mind me asking?”
Jesus. “Just general things. Being alive again. You know. Past mistakes.” He takes a breath and lets it out in a fizzled out voice. “Self loathing.”
She writes something down in her notebook and the part of him that had just slightly opened up shrinks back. “I see. What do you do when that happens?”
“Usually have a panic attack and wait for my mind to start working again,” He responds bleakly.
“Is there anything that helps when that happens?”
He stirs in his seat. “If it gets too bad… I’ll call Tommy. Or Quackity. I don’t like bothering Quackity though.”
“Why do you think that is?”
“I-I don’t know,” He says, almost a snap. He forces himself to take a breath. “I feel bad. He.. took care of me when I first got revived. It was hard on him, I think. To see me like that. I don’t want to force him to take care of me again. I should be okay enough to take care of myself. It’s been 3 months.”
“I can understand why you would feel like that. You don’t want to burden anyone.”
It surprises Wilbur that she doesn’t lecture him. “It was embarrassing enough.”
Since then, he’s gotten back pieces of himself slowly. He built back muscle in his legs and walks with only a slightly noticeable limp, he can eat food and not throw up, his head doesn’t start spinning when he gets up too quickly.
The thing that hasn’t changed, however, is his mind. In some way, it’s gotten worse. His mental health has never been good, not even in the good days, but being in Limbo did things to his mental state he never could’ve dreamed of.
And so far, it hasn’t gotten better. No matter what he tries.
Sleeping has gotten to be a chore, and staying asleep with the nightmares plaguing him have made things even harder. Some days he feels like getting out of bed will kill him.
A month ago was the worst of it.
If he wanted to, he could just end it now.
He hasn’t slept well in two days. Every time he goes to sleep he wakes up thinking he’s back there, back to neverending trains and echoes and solitary confinement. When he so much as thinks of his time in Limbo he starts sobbing, unable to keep himself upright with the curse of the memories still haunting him.
He calls Tommy because he can’t do it anymore. He can’t deal with all of it, every breath he’s blessed to have and unworthy to keep. His selfish, guilty, beating heart. He can’t take it.
“Big man, you alright? It’s fuckin’ 1am, Jesus. You’ve better not rolled over on your comm or something, I’m not waking up this early for-”
“Tommy,” He croaks.
His voice turns soft. “Are you alright?”
“I don’t know,” He says, and cries harder into his sheets.
“Hey, Wilbur, breathe. Okay? I’m coming over.”
Tommy did come, and held him and shushed his cries as he begged him to stay and asked him why this was still happening, why he couldn’t just be better.
And that’s why Tommy sent him here. To talk about it.
“What’s your relationship like with Quackity?” She asks.
He has no idea how to answer that one. It would be easy to say it’s a normal one, or as normal as it can be in this climate. He could say he and Quackity were rivals turned acquaintances, pushed together on account of their shared distaste for Schlatt and their tendency of smoking during their presidencies (or vice presidencies, in Q’s case.)
But that isn’t the full extent. Now he’s alive, facing the consequences of all the things he did. Even though he wasn’t well, and everyone keeps telling him that like he doesn’t know, it wasn’t right. It was inexcusable. And now he’s making up for everything. This includes his relationship with Quackity.
He has never been a good lover, nor a person worth loving. He still finds it hard to believe he can ever be. This stretches all the way back to Pogtopia, the days where he and Quackity held hands when no one else was around, held each other when Wilbur needed someone to make his life worth living. He was selfish, even in romance.
Because in some way, Wilbur died so as to not live with his actions. And here he is now, apologising, dealing with the heartache threefold. He’s living with his actions and making a home in them.
The kiss Quackity and Wilbur shared on the day he saw Tommy had not been the first or the last.
Although he has always liked Quackity, he hasn’t always loved him. If it can be called love; Wilbur still feels he can’t tell the difference.
“Uh, it’s complex.”
“Could you try to explain it to me?”
“Well… back in Pogtopia, I wasn’t who I am now. All I could give a shit about-” He stops himself and looks at her, waiting for her to tell him something.
She blinks. “Oh, if you want to curse, it’s alright. I’ve got Tommy as a patient, it’s not going to hurt me.”
Wilbur laughs. “He learned from me, I’m sure.” Throughout all the time he’s known Tommy, to the creation of the server and so on, he’s felt the need to be a brotherly force to Tommy, something to guide him like his father never did. He failed.
He fidgets with his hands. “Well, as I said, Pogtopia Wilbur was a different man. He didn’t care about the things I care about. He didn’t care about hurting Tommy, or Quackity, or anyone. He wanted his legacy and he’d be damned if he couldn’t have it. If we couldn’t-”
“-have Manburg, no one can have Manburg!” The scene flashes behind his eyes. When he blinks he is back in the present, back in the office, and Puffy is looking at him with a slight concern in her eyes.
“You sound like you regret this time in your life.”
“It haunts me.”
“Does Quackity hold this against you?”
“No, and that’s the problem . He thinks that since I regret it now, everythings well, everythings fine . And he thinks he can love me again. And I want to love him, Puffy.”
“So what do you feel is stopping you?”
Wilbur swallows back tears. “I don’t know. My mountain of mistakes.”
“Has he said he’s forgiven you?”
“Yes. But I don’t forgive me.”
“Why do you think that is?”
“I’m not good enough to be forgiven.”
“Has Quackity ever done bad things?”
He furrows his eyebrows and thinks. “We all have.”
“Do you forgive him for things he’s done?”
“Of course, but it’s- it’s not the same. My mistakes impacted everyone. I blew up a fucking nation, Puffy. Half the people benefiting from your therapy are there because of me .”
Her softened features do not falter. He wants to convey to her that he is not good , his mistakes cannot be cosseted, he cannot be compared to Quackity. He wants to yell at her, stop being so nice to me. Put me in my place.
“Sometimes the people we are most critical of are ourselves, our own worst critics. To you, you’re unforgivable, right?”
Wilbur nods, lacing his fingers together. He realises distantly that this was supposed to be a lighthearted session.
“And you hurt Quackity with the things you did back then.”
Wilbur nods again. He can’t tell where this is going.
“But Quackity has forgiven you. Do you think that might’ve been hard for him to do?”
“Of course.”
“Do you think that effort he put into forgiving you was pointless? Did he do that for no reason?”
“He said it was for his sake.”
“Don’t you think that you should forgive yourself for your sake?”
“I don’t deserve to forgive myself.”
“But Quackity did. Do you think he deserves to forgive you?”
“He deserves everything. Of course I think he’s right to do whatever makes him feel best. If… that means forgiving me, living his life, then he deserves that. He deserves closure.”
“You deserve closure too, Wilbur.”
“You’ve just met me,” Wilbur says back, holding his hands in fists. “How do you know what I deserve?”
She doesn’t respond immediately, and she writes something down and then tilts her head up to look at him.
“Because as you said, we’ve all done bad things. You view yourself in Pogtopia as something else, a different person than what you are now, right?”
“Yes,” He says.
“That man did things you don’t find forgivable. Quackity has forgiven him, but you haven’t. But the thing is, if you want to torment yourself like this forever, you can. But if our goal is feeling better, you have to let go at some point. Do you agree?”
“I can’t just let it go.”
“You don’t have to diminish the past to make room for the future. We can acknowledge it exists and not torment ourselves over it every day. You are a new person, you are making new choices from here on out, right?”
“I suppose…”
“Then you have to let yourself be that new person.”
Wilbur doesn’t reply. The logic is twisted somehow, he just can’t accept it.
“Can we agree to do that? When we find ourselves thinking about the past, the things we did, can we agree to shift that to the new person point of view?” She asks.
“The new person?”
“I hurt someone in the past too and I thought they were stupid to forgive me. But I realized that the person that I was doesn’t exist anymore. Only in memory. The only me that exists is me in the now, and she’s trying to right her wrongs. If you do that, you might stop viewing yourself like the person you were before and let that person be accountable by themselves. Does that make sense?”
“Somewhat. I just don’t think it's right to let yourself… leave the other person like that. Act like you are faultless just because you’re pretending to be someone different.”
“Do you feel like you’re pretending?”
“Sometimes.” Always .
“Sometimes the logic of these things doesn’t make sense now, but if you trust it, it will start to.”
“It feels wrong to go on living, trying to be happy, when those things I did still lurk in the background.”
“What are you trying to do now that you’re here, Wilbur?”
The question strikes him. He supposes he hadn’t thought that far out.
“I guess I’m here to try to make things right.”
“Is dwelling on the past letting others move on? Does it help you help other people?”
“I’m- It’s-” It’s not doing anything but keep him up at night. It’s not doing anything but making him more of a burden on the people he’s trying to help. He pauses. “It… makes me feel like I’m doing something. Even if I’m not.”
“Instead of punishing yourself with those thoughts, do you think it would be better to focus your energy on something more helpful to your mental health?”
“What does that mean?”
“When you start to feel like you’re trapped in these feelings, what do you do?”
“I usually just stay in bed until it goes away. Or until Tommy comes to make sure I’m okay,” He says this last bit with a guilt that taints his voice.
“Would you feel opposed to, when you feel like that, going and seeing Tommy by yourself? Sometimes it helps to get out of the house and interact with someone.”
“I guess I could. I- Puffy. I don’t want to make it sound like I’m disregarding your work.”
“You can be straight with me, Wil. I promise that I’m not here to place my feelings at the forefront of our sessions.”
He sighs. “I don’t like the way I feel without those feelings just as much as I don’t like them when they’re with me.”
“Why do you think that?”
“I feel empty without them. A man without any substance. I’ve been stripped of everything.” What’s left?
“We can become attached to feelings like this sometimes. Have you been feeling these feelings for a long time?”
“How much do you know about Limbo?” He asks.
“I won’t lie that I do have bits and pieces, but I’d rather hear it from you.”
“I spent 13 years there.” He waits for her to wince, to make some reaction, but she doesn’t. He doesn’t know why this disappoints him. “It was a train station. Nothing else. There were a couple others that would come and go, but it was mostly just me. Better than hell, I imagine. Anyway, 13 years was a long time to think things over.”
He assumes she already knows how time in Limbo works if Tommy was anything of an example, so he doesn’t bother explaining.
“I’m sorry that happened to you, Wilbur. Sometimes, when these feelings of sadness are present with us for so long, when things start getting better, our minds don’t know how to react. It’s actually possible to feel grief for these feelings. To be happy is to be vulnerable, and we might fear being vulnerable, so we keep the bad things with us.”
“That-” Makes sense. “Might be what's happening.”
“And, if you don’t want to get better, that’s also an issue. Someone who doesn’t want to get better keeps those feelings too.”
“I want to be better. I do. I just can’t leave the past in the past, Puffy. It’s too much a part of me, it feels like betrayal, leaving it behind.”
“Leaving things in the past can be a hard thing to do. You have to work at it. But leaving it behind doesn’t make it so that it never happened. Those things are always going to be there, but the difference is that you’re making the choice to focus on what you can do now , and that’s all you can do.”
“You’re scarily good at this,” Wilbur laughs.
“I try my best.” She smiles.
“I can’t give you my word it’s going to work, Puffy. But I’m going to try.”
“Recovery and healing is never linear, unfortunately. It’s a messy damn process.”
He looks up at her with a hesitant expression. “You cuss?”
She cracks a smile. “If you don’t want me to, I won’t, but Tommy said he felt more comfortable with it, so I figured maybe you would too.”
“No, you can. Just expected you to be… a stickler for rules or something.”
“I try not to be,” She says. “We’re all human around here.” Even when he doesn’t feel like one.
He nods. He picks at his nails. Even though he’s much less nervous than before, anxiety still runs through him like caffeine, making him jumpy and jittery. He bounces his leg and thinks about what he should say next.
“So, I’m sure this might sound unnecessary to ask, but I always ask. What are you looking to get out of therapy?” She asks.
Wilbur mulls it over. It wasn’t a choice he wanted to make, but Tommy’s forcing him to attend a few sessions. He isn’t really looking to get anything out of it.
“I don’t know. I’m mostly doing this for Tommy.”
“Well, are there specific things that would lead Tommy to think you need therapy?”
“I’ve been having trouble sleeping, I guess,” He says. He could list his problems in alphabetical order, but he figures one at a time would be best. “And I have nightmares a lot. And I’m kind of jumpy. And sometimes I wake up crying or begging for my father to kill me. But it could be worse, I think.”
“That sounds like a lot to deal with, Wilbur.” Oh. That’s not the half of it.
“I suppose.”
“How have you been handling it?”
“‘Handling it’ is a bit of an overstatement.”
“How so?”
“I’m trucking along really, just trying to outrun it. Of course, I never do. That feels like too much to hope for. Every night it’s the same. And that’s just the physical symptoms.”
“It's almost like it’s all kind of built up.”
“It has. It’s-” He pauses to take a breath and let out a frustrated groan, “just so confusing . I’ll be doing something normal, brushing my teeth, talking to Tommy, anything. And then suddenly I’ll be back there . It’s terrifying. It can happen at any time and I’m helpless to it.”
She scribbles something down and nods her head.
“I slept at Quackity’s a few weeks ago just because everything felt like too much. I felt bad… he said it was no problem, but I just intruded. I was really out of it. It was like… everything was fuzzy and weird. But it was sort of nice. There wasn’t anything to think about. My emotions weren’t really there, it was like I was disconnected.”
“Does this happen a lot?”
“Define a lot.”
“Every day? Every week? Once a month?”
“Every week or so. It depends. Sometimes one week is really good and the next one is hell.”
“Does Quackity help when you’re feeling like this?”
He shrugs. Technically, he does. Quackity knows how to calm him down by now, how to hold his hands and press on them lightly until he’s in the mind space to know where he is. Technically he stays with him, even up to a couple hours, treating him kindly and not yelling at him like he thinks he will, talking to him in a hushed tone and closing the blinds when everything is too bright.
Technically, he’s the only person he really trusts to handle him when it happens.
“He helps. I’d take care of it if I could. Just sometimes, I can’t. I sit there and wait for the ground to swallow me. That’s when I call Quackity. When there’s nothing left to do but wait around until I die.”
“I do think it’s good that you have people around who are offering to help you. Even if you feel like you’d rather deal with it by yourself.”
“Tommy’s gone through it before. I just hesitate to call him when it happens. I’m supposed to be the older one, I’m supposed to take care of him .”
“And it’s a good thing that you want to. Tommy no doubt appreciates that you’re willing to be there for him, but no relationship should be one-sided. Good relationships thrive on mutual trust.”
Wilbur takes it in. He doesn’t necessarily think he or Tommy is completely trusting of the other yet. It makes sense though. They’ve still got a long way to go.
“Yeah, I guess.”
Puffy takes a break in her writing and looks up at him, waiting for him to say something. He thinks he’s waited too long to say something and she is gearing up to speak before he asks, “Puffy, can I ask you a question?”
“Of course.”
“Why are you doing this? This whole therapy thing. Surely you don’t get much out of it.”
“Ah, that’s what some people get wrong. Helping people is therapeutic for me . I think I’ve got a knack for it, and it makes me feel like I’m doing something. This server has had a lot of heartache, a lot of war. A lot of sadness. And if I can do anything to ease that, ease the pain of others, it helps me.”
Wilbur blinks. “You enjoy helping me?”
“Is this helping?”
“Maybe.”
“Then yes,” She says, closing her eyes for a moment and then opening her eyes again to look at him. Wilbur realises at this moment that this is the first person who looks at him like he can be fixed.
And maybe he can.
“How was therapy?” Tommy asks, a skip in his step as they walk down the prime path.
“Good, I think. Bit heavy for a first session,” He laughs. “But it was good.”
“You didn’t just sit in silence for an hour, did you? I did that my first time and she just sat there . She didn’t force me or anything. Can you believe that? If it were me I’d of gotten up and throttled myself in that damn chair.”
Wilbur giggles. “You’d make a fine therapist, Tommyinnit.”
“You think so?” Tommy jibes.
“Maybe lose the punching approach, but yes.”
Tommy flashes him a genuine smile and attempts to cover it with a smirk. “Hey, I think my method is fine. Great , even.”
“Yeah, you would think that,” Wilbur says.
“What the hell is that supposed to mean!” He says, running up to Wilbur who has managed to walk in front of him and slugging him lightly on the arm.
In the beginning, he didn’t like knowing there was someone behind him that he couldn’t see and usually fell behind the other person. He wouldn’t even joke with Tommy like this, too afraid Tommy would snap. Wilbur wonders if this is progress.
“It means what it sounds like,” Wilbur responds calmly.
Tommy rolls his eyes. “Whatever.” He slows his walk and looks at Wilbur from out of the corner of his eyes, looking up at the approaching sunset with surprising clarity. “So, you’re gonna go back?”
“To therapy?”
“What else,” He says, even though Wilbur knows he’s asking honestly.
Wilbur stops at the side of the path and looks up at the red and purple swirling sky. Tommy looks at it with a superior gaze, a gaze that neither marvels or disregards, something so factual and different from the way Wilbur stares in awe.
“Yes,” Wilbur says. “I think so.”
Tommy releases a breath through his nose as Wilbur sits down criss-crossed on the path, a spot with near perfect viewing of the sky.
He sits down next to him and touches him on the shoulder, a nod when Wilbur looks at him.
“Well, good. Took you long enough.” Wilbur lets a smile tug at his lips, turning to look forward.
Wilbur extends his arms behind him and leans on his hands, tilting his head back and letting the long summer breeze flow through his hair, eyes closed.
He opens his eyes and observes the open sky, realising this is the first time he’s done this in 13 years. In days long gone and behind him. Days of his dark hair, streakless, and days of his eyes, once umber.