Work Text:
Wirt woke up, what he could recall from the Unknown fading quickly behind his eyelids.
At first he was still too dazed to understand what was going on, he just knew he couldn’t breath and his sight was blurry; then a series of flashing imagines passed in front of his eyes: the police car, the wall of the graveyard, the train, Greg and him falling down the hill into the lake… GREG!
He opened his eyes, not knowing when he closed them, and tried to focus to locate his brother. Greg was near him, still unconscious and falling toward the lake bed.
That wasn’t time for him to overthink, and before he could realize it, he was swimming in his direction, moving his limbs only thanks to the adrenaline of the moment.
He somehow managed to get to Greg, picked him up in his arms and quickly tried to reach what he thought was the surface. He barely made it, the lack of oxygen and the cold that irradiated into his bones honestly made him think he would have died there, dragging Greg down with him. That was his lucky day apparently, and he managed to prop his brother and himself onto the lake’s bank.
His sight was still blurred, and he couldn’t make his surroundings out even with the other senses he had left, leaving him to only hear a voice, Sara’s maybe, asking him something he couldn’t understand.
He coughed and coughed, trying to force the water out of his lungs, until his body was too weak to keep going, blacking out.
Wirt woke up again, his body now on a more comfortable surface, with blue and red lights all around him, an ambulance he figured. He moved his head just to see that Greg and his frog were there too, then he blacked out again.
Wirt woke up a third time, now all surrounded by blinding white lights, people dressed in light blue all around him, talking to each other. “Emergency”, “Hypothermia”, “Lung failure” were the only things he heard before, once again, falling back in his pitch black slumb.
He woke up one last time, now with all his senses regained.
He was standing in the middle of a snowstorm, in front of a house he didn’t recognize. He, though, recognized the place he was in. He was back into the Unknown, this time alone.
Before he could realize, a ginger girl in blue dress jumped onto him, causing both of them to fall into the cold snow. The girl throned above him, and once she was done staring at him, she quickly got up, muttering some sort of apology, helping him to do the same.
一Sorry about that, Wirt. I just didn’t think I would ever see you again.
一Wait, Beatrice?! Is that you? Wow, you’re really… pretty.
Once he realized what he said, Wirt blushed violently, gaining a chuckle from Beatrice
一Care to come inside? My mom is making dinner, I am sure we can make another chair fit at the table.
一Really, I’d love to, but I really need to come back, check on Gregory and all.
一Oh, Wirt… you can’t really come back now, and you won’t see the kid for a long time. Now chop-chop, you’ll freeze out here.
With that, Beatrice went back inside, and Wirt followed her.
Greg woke up at the sound of someone crying, and once he casted his dizziness away, he was able to see that it was his mother who was crying; he didn’t like it when his mother cried.
He was surprised to see she wasn’t alone. There was his father, which wasn’t that surprising, but also Wirt’s! He had to tell him as fast as he could, the two didn’t hang out often, he’d be delighted by seeing him there. He tried to look around, in search of his brother, in vain. He was in a white room he didn’t recognize, in company of only his crying mother and the two men who were trying to cheer her up, despite not being too sure in doing that, with no Wirt in sight and the last memory being his brother and him exiting the Unknown.
Usually Greg was unbothered by what he got around him, anxiety and fear were Wirt’s features, not his, but this time he couldn’t help but to feel them both, he felt like something big happened, and he simply cried. It was the only thing he could do at that moment. Cry.
He gained the adults’, who were oblivious at the fact he woke up, attention on him. In a mere second he was surrounded by his parents, asking him questions and telling him how glad they were he was okay, while Wirt’s father went to call the doctors, telling them he was awake. He was now surrounded by even more people, checking on him and asking him very specifically how he felt. Yet, still no Wirt in sight.
The feeling Gregory had, the one that something major happened was real, he knew as soon as the medics told him he was fine and he got his frog back. when he was alone with his parents (and Wirt’s dad), able to move around.
Wirt died. His father was the one who told him, while Wirt’s parents cried like him before.
Greg was unfamiliar with the concept of “dying”. He knew that it was when a person falls asleep not to wake up anymore, but it happened to old people only, like grandpa, not to kids.
But Wirt did, “as a hero” too, because he died to save him, Greg, like his father remarked multiple times.
Wirt. Died.
A few days passed, but Greg couldn’t remember them. He went home from the hospital, Wirt’s dad stayed with them for a while, he got a lot of pampering from everyone, everyone wanted to hug him, to tell him how sad they were. Many visited, from neighbors to people he never saw before, also Wirt’s friends passed. Sara listened to the tape, and she told to be very pleased by it, saying how sweet Wirt had been and how blue she was that he wasn’t around anymore.
As for Greg, he didn’t care about the people around him, he just wanted his big brother back, he knew it wasn’t possible he died, he was healthy and young, everyone was just too naive to understand that. He was probably still in the Unknown, yes that was it, he simply just had to come back, just like it happened once. No one believed him, though. He checked the lake multiple times, wanting to show everyone that Wirt was there, under water, but everytime he went, his brother wasn’t there.
Greg tried and tried, until one day, while he was attempting to leave the house once more, confident he would have found him this time, he was blocked by his mom, who forced him to dress nicely and go out with her, his and Wirt’s dads.
They went to church, which was weird, it wasn’t morning nor Sunday. Basically the whole town gained there, all dressed in black and with sad faces. On the altar there was a weird wooden box, which he was allowed to approach. Inside, a sleeping Wirt, with a more serene face than he had ever seen. He ran back to his mother, trying to convince her that his brother was in fact fine, he was right. He received only a sad look, a head shaken and more tears.
A mass followed, but he didn’t know what the pastor said, too occupied to understand how to save his brother. At the end, a long car took the wooden box, and they all followed it, ending up, once again, in the graveyard. There Wirt was put into a hole in the soil, and then covered in dirt. There Greg knew it was over, that he couldn’t do anything about it.
Once at home, he went without a word to Wirt’s bedroom, the one he was forbidden to enter, and laid on his bed, breathing the scent of the brother that protected him with his body in the Unknown. The only thing that made him think that Wirt was still there.