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There were only a few scenarios Wilbur had been able to envision that would have made his death an unpleasant experience.
First of all, there was the possibility of Tommy walking in as he was about to press the button. He wanted to bring the teen down with him, but he didn’t want to see him die. He didn’t think he’d be able to take that. Thankfully, Tommy was obedient, he had always been, so just demanding he stay where he was and promising he’d be back soon had been sufficient to avoid that.
His second biggest concern was that the explosion wouldn't finish him off. That unfortunately did occur. His father did a crappy job of remedying his mistakes too, so he ended up slowly and painfully bleeding out instead of going out with a blast like he’d dreamed of. Nevertheless, he was happy as it meant that he got to see the direct result of his actions. The devastation down below. The end to his forever unfinished symphony.
Lastly, he was afraid of coming face to face with his mother and to see her disappointment. He knew she would have resented all of his decisions leading up to his grand exit, for being the Goddess of Death she was surprisingly merciful. No matter how wretched he became, she would have undoubtedly chosen to spare him.
He’d thought he considered every possibility and he thought that he was willing to embrace even the worst of outcomes with open arms.
However, Life had a way of surprising people.
Wilbur didn’t die on November Sixteenth.
Well, he kind of did. He bled out, alone, in a grime and soot-covered room. It was a rather undignified end.
But then he woke up just a few months later in the body of a ghost, lost on an island far away from his demolished country with only Tommy and Dream for company. And Dream wasn’t even there all of the time (not that Wilbur minded that, he always despised that green bastard).
To make that already bizarre turn of events even weirder, everyone referred to him as ‘Ghostbur’ and, as the name implied, he had indeed turned into a ghost. He knew because one of the very first things he’d tried to do once he noticed how badly Dream was treating his little brother was trying to strangle him, only for his hands to pass right through him. Dream even had the gall to not feel threatened at all, only slightly annoyed.
His second chance at life felt like a bad cosmic joke. Something about how he threw away his first life, so now he was stuck in a body that didn’t allow him to impact the world around him in any way, and everyone but his little brother treated him like an absolute moron because of what an airhead that body used to be inhabited by.
It fucking sucked.
It was even worse than before, as that new body couldn’t die.
He tried to kill himself again a couple of days in. Tommy yelled at him to go back to his house because a storm was brewing and reminded him that water hurt him. He didn’t stick around to make sure that ‘Ghostbur’ was following his orders (he was always busy down in the mines trying to scrounge together enough iron to avoid Dream’s rage) so he didn’t. He remained standing where he was and let the raindrops burn him to his core. It was exceedingly painful, even more so than getting stabbed in the stomach and then being left to bleed out had been, but he hoped that maybe it would be freeing.
After the sky cleared out again, it took about five minutes for his body to reform. He was sore all over, enough that he felt like crying, but he was alive. Or whatever the equivalent of ‘living’ was for ghosts.
He considered going to his father to ask for help with his peculiar situation, but he didn’t like the way the old avian looked at him the one time he decided to visit New L’Manburg. It was as if he was looking through him more than at him. It was the exact same way he looked at him in the Button Room. As if he was a mistake. Nothing but a distorted version of who Phil truly wanted to see.
With that option out of the way, he was left with no direction and no clue on what to do. Truly, he did not understand Life’s sick games.
The only thing he could think to do to occupy his time (something he desperately needed to do if he didn’t want to just stew endlessly in his misery) was to take care of Tommy.
The events between his death and rebirth weren’t clear to him. He didn’t know why Tommy had been kicked out of his home yet again (though he strongly disagreed with Tubbo’s choice to do so regardless of whatever crimes Tommy might have committed. He thought the young goat would be better than Schlatt, a kinder ruler, but, clearly, he’d been mistaken) however, he knew that he was never allowed back and that this time around he’d been assigned a jailer to make sure he wouldn’t even try to. He also knew that nobody was bothering to check in on his condition. They were all seemingly completely oblivious to the abuse he was subjected to and they were all more than happy to buy into Dream’s lies about his state.
Now, Wilbur wasn’t a stupid man, he knew that, with how they treated him, the inhabitants of New L’Manburg were unlikely to believe him over Dream if he was to just speak out about what was happening.
He had to be more subtle than that if he wanted to get rid of the green man. Which was indeed what he was planning to do. He couldn’t properly take care of Tommy when he was too scared to even eat without Dream’s permission for fear that it would get him in trouble.
Thankfully, the opportunity presented itself a few weeks after his arrival, when Tommy got permission to organize a party. He gave Wilbur the invites to distribute and, of course, Dream approached him as soon as he crossed through the main Nether portal and demanded he hand them off to him. He insisted he’d deliver them and even commented that it would have been better for ‘Ghostbur’ to take a walk in the snowy tundra (admittedly an original way to tell him to go kill himself. Little did he know that if that method worked he wouldn’t have been there plotting against him).
He happily handed off the invites and left.
He made sure to wait long enough to be sure that Dream was gone from the New L’Manburg area before crossing over yet again. And then, just to spite Dream, he invited even more people than Tommy had originally. He went up to everyone he could find and told them about the party, making sure to repeat the time and location several times so there would be no confusion. He told them all that cakes would be provided and to bring any other refreshments or small gifts they could think of. He made extra sure to get Tubbo to promise he’d go, knowing that he was the one Dream hated and feared the most (the masked man always got incredibly aggravated when the new President was mentioned. One time, Tommy had mentioned missing him, and Dream had dragged him to the Nether and threatened to drop him into the lava sea below if he didn’t start being more grateful for the one friend he had now. Him. Wilbur truly despised him).
Everybody expressed how much they were looking forward to the party.
Wilbur did a good job of keeping his bitterness in check. Because, truly, it shouldn’t have taken him running around begging them all to go visit Tommy for them to finally get off their lazy assess and go check in on him. They should have done so from the start if they really did care for the teen. But, then again, he had been planning to kill Tommy with the bombs he detonated on the Sixteenth, he didn’t have a moral high horse to stand on about that. Then again, at least he hadn’t planned to leave without him, he hadn’t planned to abandon him like they all had.
It was a confusing situation.
He preferred not to reflect too deeply on his emotions regarding the whole ordeal lest he spiraled again.
The day of the party arrived and everyone but Dream was punctual and in attendance.
Tubbo, a tall enderman kid who had introduced himself as Ranboo, Quackity, and Fundy showed up together, they were the first ones who got there, and they’d brought some cool lanterns that they had apparently learned to build from ‘Ghostbur’ (Wilbur didn’t think he would have known how to do that, so he was starting to suspect that, despite all their similarities, Ghostbur hadn’t been the ghost version of him after all). Tubbo and Tommy had been awkward around each other at first, but, eventually, with some encouragement from Quackity, they hugged it out, cried, and made up. Tubbo promised he’d visit more often and he also assured Tommy that he was working on ways to get his exile pardoned.
Philza and Techno showed up after, and that meeting was more awkward for Wilbur than Tommy. Techno gifted Tommy a totem of undying, while Phil got him a heavy winter coat, fluffy slippers, and emerald earrings. And then they both just awkwardly turned to Wilbur and tried to chat about the weather with him. It was an absolute disaster, and he was beyond relieved when the next group showed up.
Eret, a sheep lady he didn’t know but who had agreed to come over anyway, Niki, Jack Manifold, and Connoreatspants arrived together. Niki and the sheep lady were walking hand in hand, so he kind of assumed they were a thing. They brought flowers and baked goods. Eret brought a fully enchanted set of Netherite armor. Connor gave Tommy back an ID he stole from him to use his veteran discount (Tommy hadn’t even noticed it had gone missing busy as he was getting deported, so, honestly, the man could have kept it). And Jack brought a ‘Happy Birthday’ postcard with a raccoon on it.
For some reason, Tommy seemed to appreciate Jack’s present the most. He hugged him tightly and they joked around together for a while, Tubbo eventually joined them, and seeing them all laugh together finally made it sink in how young they all were. They were barely teens and they’d already gone through wars, betrayals, exiles, and who-knows-what-else.
Wilbur was helping, but he wasn’t truly doing it for Tommy. He wasn’t doing it because he thought his little brother deserved better than the hand life had dealt him. He didn’t do it because he cared. He was helping because he wanted to hide from the hopelessness of the situation he was in. Because, as always, he could think of no one but himself.
He ignored the pit that formed in his stomach as the realization set in, in favor of greeting the new arrivals.
Bad, Ant, Sam, Sapnap, and George all turned up together. They brought music discs, jukeboxes, and stuff to eat and drink. Sam went to ruffle Tommy’s hair and Tommy leaned into his touch as if he was family. As if he was a bigger source of comfort than Wilbur had ever been back when he was still living (the memory of all the times Tommy flinched away from him in Pogtopia was still so vivid in his mind).
Even Punz dropped by to check out the party. He dropped a stack of diamond blocks on Tommy and the teen’s eyes went wide. He couldn’t stop yelling about how that was more money than he’d ever seen in his life and about how he was gonna start his own nation there in exile now, and he’d pay Sam to build it even cooler than New L’Manburg. Sam even joked that he didn’t need to pay him that much, because he would get the family discount (and Wilbur wasn’t bitter and jealous at all, he just accidentally dropped a whole pitcher of grape juice on him, ice and everything. His ghost hands were just so clumsy).
Finally, a couple of hours into the party, Dream showed up too. It had started raining at some point, so the party had moved to Wilbur’s little camp (building a roof over that had been a lot easier than doing so at the beach) and everyone had calmed down significantly. The volume of the music had been lowered, and everyone was chatting amicably while eating some delicacies and enjoying the atmosphere. So, of course, none of them missed the sound of the Nether portal activating.
Before Dream even set foot into the enclosed space, Wilbur could see some judgmental stares being thrown in his direction. Everyone knew what time the party was supposed to start. And they all had seen the miserable conditions of Tommy’s camp and of his clothes. They’d seen the bruises, scars, and burn marks on him. They knew he was going through a rough patch, even if nobody had brought up the possibility of Dream being the cause of it yet. Regardless, it was obvious that they all agreed that only an unempathetic dickhead would have thought to show up so late to Tommy’s first party.
Dream stepped into the camp and froze. All eyes were on him. He, of course, hadn’t expected any of them to be there. Wilbur knew that he’d burned all of the invites to the party. He could even appreciate the idea of leaving Tommy to stew in his loneliness for a couple of hours. Had things gone his way, it would have been an effective method to make Tommy dependent on him. He just hadn’t factored in the fact that Wilbur had literally nothing better to do than to completely ruin his reputation and make Tommy’s life a little less miserable (because, regardless of his original motivation for helping, he had still accomplished that. And maybe that was enough to make him slightly less of a wretched monster, but he still wasn’t willing to think too deeply about it. He just wanted to enjoy his victory for once).
A few long moments of tense silence followed Dream’s arrival.
Dream’s eyes were on Wilbur and Wilbur had to summon all of his restraint to be able not to burst into a fit of hysteric laughter right then and there. He acted the part of the innocent, naive, little stupid ‘Ghostbur’ perfectly. Inside, however, he was cackling.
He would have given anything to be able to see Dream’s expression at that moment.
Finally, after several minutes, Techno broke the silence: “Bruh… kind cringe to come in so late, not gonna lie”. Dream didn’t respond. He turned on his heels and marched off, slamming the door on his way out. “And now he rage quit. What a guy…”.
A few people chuckled at Techno’s comments, and a few others started mumbling between themselves about how rude Dream had been and about how clearly he and Tommy weren’t as close as he always claimed if he couldn’t even be bothered to show up in time.
Nobody suspected Wilbur of having orchestrated that situation. He got to enjoy the end result of his machinations from the shadows. That had never been his style before, he usually preferred being center stage, all eyes on him as he launched into his latest monologue. But this was his second chance at life. And, sure, he hadn’t started it with the best of intentions, but maybe he could still turn it around. Maybe he could change. One step at a time.
He would not fucking allow Sam to adopt Tommy though. No way. Fuck that guy. He was next on his list.