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“Morning.”
The voice in his head sounded different to usual.
Wilbur frowned, and sat up. In the afterlife. In an unfamiliar bed, certainly.
The city’s third-top villain sat beside him, costume on, mask off, and offered him a plastic bowl with supermarket porridge in. And chocolate chips.
Hands shaking, Wilbur took it, and spent half a moment staring at his own arms. There were lots of bandages. They pressed down, pressed down on his mind, and they were wrapped around his throat, too and he was choking. He couldn’t breathe.
He took the bowl, and stared at that, too. Feeling it out, under his fingertips. It was rare more than two of his senses would lie to him at once, and he could see, feel and smell it. So trustworthy.
Ace, though, he could only see and hear. Wilbur would remain doubtful.
“You can eat it. It’s nice.” Ace nodded, his hands in his lap, now, and had they moved? Wilbur frowned. “It’s what I have for breakfast.”
So Ace had a life outside of this single moment in time. That was interesting. That proved that he was self-aware, or that Wilbur had gotten more imaginative.
Either way, Wilbur was standing by his temporary conclusion that he’d died, and this was the afterlife.
The porridge was quite nice, after all. The chocolate was a good touch. The kind of thing Tommy would like, if he was real.
“What do you remember?”
“Nothing.”
His voice came thready, and not his own. Frowning, Wilbur reached for his throat, and underneath shaking fingertips, he found a collar, a box, something attached to him, changing his voice and his airway, which tightened, as he looked back up with narrowed eyes.
Ace had found his dead body. Reanimated it for his own amusement. Wilbur was dead, after all, and Ace was puppeting him through the thing on his neck.
Setting the bowl of porridge to the side, Wilbur reached into his own mind, through the strange, sprawling depths of it, and searched for things that shouldn’t be there. There were a lot of them, except there weren’t. That was Phil talking, Phil, who told him things weren’t real.
Well, Wilbur knew what was real. Phil didn’t know anything, he didn’t even believe the things Wilbur told him, and he was always right. Phil must be dead, by now. He’d been a long time without Wilbur, and Wilbur had been the only thing protecting him from things he couldn’t see.
Perhaps they’d follow Wilbur all the way here. Kill Ace, and let Wilbur die. That would feel right. Wilbur was certain it would happen, in that moment, and he wavered in what had been his brief resolve to punch Ace. Perhaps, if the monsters were coming, there was nothing for him to do.
“Is something wrong?”
Ace’s lips moved, and Wilbur couldn’t be certain that the words they formed were the same ones he heard. He concentrated, trusting the monsters to hide his strangeness, since they hadn’t killed him already, and tried to reimagine what could have been more logically said.
“What’s wrong with you?”
Ah. So Ace was like Phil. Wilbur could try to convince him, or he could accept that no one would believe him, and let the villain die before his eyes. Perhaps Ace deserved it, perhaps he didn’t, even if his porridge tasted nice, there wasn’t much reason for Wilbur to interfere either way. The voices said that all he needed to do was watch.
“Nothing.”
His voice was wrong. Ace had gotten under his skin, messed with his wiring. Wilbur curled his fingers against it, wondering if the monsters would care if he tore it off. Surely, if they had pursued Ace for the crime of his presence, they would want Wilbur to rid himself of any trace of the villain.
“What do you think I just said, Wilbur?”
Blink. There were no monsters behind Ace. Wilbur frowned, and his hand was so close to his throat. The monsters had vanished, so they must have gone inside him. He remembered that much. They’d told him to kill himself, that was it, that was why they’d spared him so long. That was how they killed people.
“You asked what was wrong with me.”
Ace wasn’t real, anyway. He must be one of them himself. Wilbur must be inside his own head, and the voices were Ace. Perhaps that was fitting, since they always seemed to love seeing the villain on the TV. Only because Wilbur did, but Ace was one of the characters in his life that the voices didn’t hiss at him to leave, for his and their safety. The monsters would chase him, and they’d already killed Phil.
“I didn’t.” Ace took a breath, and held out his hand. “Quackity. Wilbur Craft, right?”
“Soot.” Distracted, Wilbur took it, scanning over Ace’s shoulders for monsters. See, hear, feel. So Ace was real, so the monsters must be lurking elsewhere. “Why...”
His horse voice trailed off, and his hand went still, clasped in the villain’s.
In Ace’s. The villain. The city’s villain, who Wilbur had seen on news reports, who more than two of his sense were telling him was real, so-
“Wilbur?” Ace’s grip tightened, real, and Wilbur saw him lean closer, real, and his voice got a little quicker. Real. “Sorry. About this. You barely know me, and…”
“Wh- what?” Voice wavering, Wilbur stared, his vision blurring. “You- you’re real?”
“Yes. Is there a way I can prove that to you?”
“I- I can-“ Wilbur could hear, see, feel him, and yet, for once he didn’t want to believe, for once, the monsters weren’t the most immediate threat to his being. “T- three.”
“Three what?”
“Three senses. I can… I didn’t think you were…”
“Real?” Ace squeezed his hand, and leaned back, worry in his wide eyes. “Yes. Quackity. Hi. Found you outside, not-quite looking, but-“
“Where-“
“My base. House. Whatever. If why is next-“
“It was- going to be, yes-“
“Because you were bleeding out in the street.” Quackity’s grip caught again, and Wilbur watched the fingers press clean through his skin, rotting off the bone, and yet- what was real, again? “You weren’t conscious.”
“N- no-“
“Yes.”
The monsters had already been inside him. Yet- Quackity, real, pretending like he hadn’t died. Weren’t, like Wilbur was now awake. Semantics dissolved, as his head dropped, and a headache began to push at the insides of his skull.
Quackity’s hand found his other wrist too, and- he was a villain, and Wilbur was- something, he didn’t know what, hadn’t known for a long time, his world had been being eaten by monsters that lived in his head and he had a thousand ways of checking what was real and none of them worked-
“I think you were hallucinating. Wilbur, do you- have any prescriptions?”
“No..?”
His throat was sore. Quackity had carved out his throat, and now he was lying, because Wilbur could feel the grating machinery buried in his neck, animating his dead body. He was meant to be dead.
“Anyone in the family who does?”
Shaking his head, Wilbur believed, for a moment, that the movement alone would serve to shake Quackity off. Forgetting that his wrists were a long way from his head, because he’d been meant to be a mangled corpse, right now, and instead he was a corpse sitting in a villain’s house.
“I don’t- have a-“
They weren’t real. Tommy wasn’t real, that was because Wilbur couldn’t bear to see him torn apart by the monsters. So he’d written Tommy out of existence, instead, carried out his checks and concluded that his little brother was a figment of his broken imagination. Phil wasn’t real, because he must be dead.
“I think you do. Philza? Technoblade?”
“T- Tech has-“ Wilbur paused, sucking in low breaths that didn’t upset the intrusion in his throat. Techno was clear, in his mind. “Techno hears things.”
“Schizophrenia?”
There was something horrible, creeping up inside him. The monsters hated that word.
“That.”
“That’s stupid. Techno doesn’t have anything wrong with him.”
“Thought so.”
Wilbur looked up, as if he’d heard a twig crack somewhere in a dark forest, and searched for the second voice. They’d both been audible, and it had only been after the second one, that he’d remembered there was only one other person in the room with him. So another one must be hiding.
“Where-“
No one else. It had just been his hearing. One single sense was the most unreliable thing that there was so… not real? So which voice had been real? Ace sounded different on the news, Wilbur couldn’t recognise him cognitively.
“Just me.” Quackity squeezed his hand. “What just happened?”
“I heard… someone say that Techno… doesn’t have anything wrong with him.”
“Wasn’t me.”
Was that Quackity’s voice, now? Perhaps he and Ace were different people, because that would explain why Quackity was kind, when villains weren’t supposed to be kind, and why Wilbur still felt tormented.
“Although.” Quackity started softly, meeting Wilbur’s frightened eyes, and this must be real. “Schizophrenia isn’t anything wrong, either. How long have you felt like it was?”
“A- a while?” Wilbur’s felt the words scratch in his throat, bandages, or metal, his own injury, or Ace’s malice. “The… voices started a- a year ago, and… I sound crazy…”
“Not really. Philza didn’t notice?”
“They got him. He- he’s dead, if I wasn’t-“
“You weren’t protecting him from anything, Wilbur. I’m sure he’s absolutely fine, maybe worried about you. But it’s only been a day.”
“No, the-“ Shadows caught, in the corner of his eye, and Wilbur flinched, feeling psychotic. They were coming for him. Quackity was the hallucination, his mental shield from the horrible realities of the world that only he could see. “N- no-“
“There’s nothing there.” Quackity was still holding him, touching him, speaking so he could hear, and all Wilbur needed to do was wrench his eyes away from the writhing shadows, and that would be three senses, and he’d be real, and the monster’s invading his throat wouldn’t. “Nothing. This is my base, Wilbur, not even my sleep paralysis demon can get in here without tripping an alarm.”
But Wilbur was here. He’d brought the-
His eyes snapped to Quackity, and the world lost its vignette.
“…Sorry.”
He was so stupid. It was just exhaustion, and that had been creeping up on him a long time, and Wilbur was sick of embarrassing himself like this. He’d wanted it to be over. Maybe he had died, and this was just plain old hell.
“No need. I get it.”
“Like-“
“I know Techno, Wilbur. Trust me.” Quackity grinned, shaking his head to clear a little hair away from the scar tearing through his left eye. “I get it. You’re good.”
“Really?”
There was no way Quackity understood. Wilbur didn’t understand, he was barely keeping his head above water and remembering not to chase the lights below. He hadn’t had time to look around.
“Yep. Now. Breakfast?”