Chapter Text
William stares at the ceiling, He doesn’t know how long he’s been glaring at the same, white painted ceiling of this room. Perhaps only minutes, maybe even hours.
The concept of time was weird.
Dakota, Vyncent and Ashe were out, probably ether shopping or helping save people by being real hero’s. William kept making the excuse of how he was just tired. When he was really just afraid of dying again.
It really hurt the last time— not that it… didn’t hurt the past times. But being torn in half? You have to admit that’s worse than falling a 50 foot drop.
His heart slips a beat and it causes him to cough. Finally sitting up and snapping his gaze from that cursed ceiling that was practically hypnotising him.
He didn’t quite understand how he could breathe, have a heart beat, but also be able to do all that ghostly stuff. He didn’t know if he should complain or not. It was clear he was still— dead. But this body was new.
This body.
William catches himself staring at the rotted parts of flesh that spread from his finger tips up to his palm. It looked like half of a glove.
Wait, that’s not what his body should look like- has he undisguised himself in that time he was glaring at that ceiling?
William steps out of bed. Stumbling towards the bathroom. Pushing the door open after fiddling with it for a moment as his hands pass through it from the sudden panic that spiked in him.
William shabbily took off his hoodie, leaving him in the skull tank top, black trousers and mismatched socks on.
He pants. Staring at his slightly blue tinted, pale, transparent body. It looks like a cross of his wisp form and his first initial death.
He traced the crooked, jagged scar that was unevenly cut down the middle of his body. His swallows harshly. His breath wavering. He notices as he glares at this scar, from a cursed, horrendous demon, that his eyes seemed to be a perching blue. His eyes are meant to be a dark brown, like rotted wood, taken away by time, termites and other bugs.
He feels tears building up in his eyes. He wipes them away harshly, grasping at his roughly medium length hair, it’s knotted, and it’s all over the place. But it’s not even black. It’s pure white, like snow. From the way the ends curl, it almost seems like it’s floating, wispy, like it has a mind of its own.
How he looks currently, pale, shattered and distraught, reminds him nothing of how he should look. Slightly less pale, no scars, normal black hair with a white streak, white roots and black and white racoon stripe dyed hair near the bottom.
But, that’s not he looks, that’s his disguise, it makes him look more human. Human, he should be human. He used to be. For sixteen ish years.
The reflection in the mirror isn’t human. It’s undead, a ghost. It isn’t real. It couldn’t be right? It’s not Will, not William Wisp. Surely!
His lip trembles, his teeth clatter against his out of fear, he’s trembling, and he doesn’t even know why.
Did he really forget what he truly looked like? Was he so desperate to forget a part of himself that he forget himself?
How could he forget himself? He’s William Wisp, just a kid from Deadwood. Or is he The Wisperer, a hero of prime, or The
Wisperer, the protector of the spirit world, or whatever, hell, he may as well be Clarence! He looks like him.
Just younger, and blue eyes instead of green, and a murderer.
He shuddered, he didn’t need to think about that, not right now.
Does he even deserve to be alive? Or… present at least?
The more he stares, the more his vision shifts, he can’t tell what he’s looking at. It doesn’t look like him, it’s an older man, white shabby hair, some cloak. He looks important. Is that him? Has he changed that much?
But then it shifts, it’s a boy, pale skinned, but not unhealthy, he’s in all black, he’s happy. That, couldn’t be him. William doesn’t look healthy, he looks ill.m The type of sick that doesn’t get better.
Then it’s what he saw before, a disguise of someone trying so desperately to fit in with humanity, and then it’s that almost wispy form, then it is the wisp form.
He rubbed his eyes, this was all too confusing. Who is he? Was he ever even a person? Is he just a wisp trying to work out how humans work?
He feels like he is in a race to win, he’s trying to win something important, he just doesn’t know what.
The word ‘Wisperer’ echoes in his ears. It’s intoxicating, first it’s one after the other, but then they overlap.
His nails dig into his scalp. Tears drop to the ground. He tries to get the words out, to argue, to stand up for himself and prove that he isn’t that man.
It was just a title. He was 16 i’m trying to be a superhero and that was the name he chose.
…
But the name chose him, didn’t it? He didn’t choose that title. It’s not his. But the name, it’s so familiar, he knows, even when he first choose that as his hero name, it was like a tingle on his tongue, something needed to roll out but, he couldn’t quite put the words down onto the page.
Why was he chosen?
Why did he have to die to be this fable ‘Wisperer’
Why HIM?
Why was Mallard Conway so set on bringing Clarence back? Why did he want to work with William so badly? Why? WHY?
Why was the Trickster so brutal when he killed The Wisperer?
Why wasn’t he stronger? Braver? Why wasn’t he better?
Williams eyes flutter, a hot liquid dripping from his white hair, down his face. He looks at the morphing reflection. Out of splotches of white, and shades of blue, you can just barely make out a few specs of crimson in that illusion in-front of him.
Was he bleeding if he was dead? He’s dead, he shouldn’t be able to bleed.
Unless he’s not dead. He doesn’t know what he is. He’s both. He’s crossing the barrier of dead and alive. He’s practically immortal.
Suddenly, things go still. The bathroom seems to disappear, it’s all black around him, like a void, like the abysses in the Spirt World.
All that remain is that taunting mirror, and the dishevelled boy, who can’t help but keep his gaze fixed onto the morphing person inside of that mirror.
He puts his hand to his cheek, the person reflects. He puts his hand down, but the person doesn’t move. The hand is still on their cheek. Then the hand moves, it reaches out, out of the mirror, out to the boy.
He steps back. Staring at the hand that just broke through the mirror with no shatters. The face of the person inside the mirror is obscured. Their mouth is just barely visible, and they open to say something.
His back hits something in this void. He looks behind him, frantically.
He sees a man, whose hair is shaped like devils horns, he has a well kept black suit with red accents, with rotting flesh just peeling off of the cheekbone.
For some reason, the boy clenches his fists in anger, he’s not sure why. That could be his friend.
But the devilish looking guy says nothing, so he looks over at the mirror again.
Both figures, at the same time, whisper a word out at the same time, same tone, it’s like a chorus.
It’s only one word, one that typically would mean nothing.
“Wisperer.”
That was it.
Just one word.
William suddenly collapses. He notices he’s in the bathroom, a few droplets of blood are on the floor, which are mixed in with tears. He wipes his face. Looking up around the bathroom.
He’s stunned, he’s shaking. But he pushes himself to his knees anyway. He hesitates for a moment, but he looks in the mirror.
He sees black hair, with white roots, a white streak and black and white racoon dyed hair on top of a pale boy with brown eyes, and a stupid skull tank top that he should probably bin sooner rather later.
He lets out a sigh of relief, messing his hair up and grabbing his hoodie from the ground.
Although he swears, once he blinked his appearance changed. But not in the mirror, his hands looked different.
He stares at them in disbelief. He grits his teeth. Throwing his hoodie on, and paying little attention to the mirror.
He goes to open the bathroom door, and he hears a sudden— click! Someone yells out.
“Heyy, Wiwi! We’re back!” Dakota yells out, in his usual cheerful voice.
Someone collapses onto the couch, most likely Vyncent. William can hear Ashe laugh.
William smiles. Pushing the door open. Acting as if nothing had happened in the time that they were gone.
He’s glad that Dakota and the others came home, he didn’t want to spiral anymore, it felt— nauseating, maybe he should start leaving the house more.
“Oh, William, I got you a gift!” Dakota exclaims, searching in his bag happily.
William smiled.
… William, hmm. It still felt strange to hear.
There was a nagging tug at the back of his head that, this wasn’t going to be the only time this would happen.