Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

And in the end, there were only Wilbur and Tommy.

Wilbur found himself walking towards the grave by a tower on a hill, mind silent as he let his feet and courage guide him. 

Phil once joked that he thought too much for his own good, that he was the kind of person who was at his best when he wasn’t thinking, and at the time Wilbur took it as an offence but looking back now, Phil was right. 

Phil was his father, Phil knew him best — better than he himself did, sometimes — and Phil knew what was best for him. But nowadays he felt like he wanted nothing more than to march directly up to his father and ask, with all the tired vitriol he could muster: why did you help me kill myself?

Did Phil think he was not worth saving? Did he perhaps harbour some resentment towards Wilbur? Did he believe that Wilbur would never recover, that blowing up L’manberg was proof in of itself that he would never be happy, that everyone did indeed want him dead-

Wilbur stopped by the grave. 

It was the first time he had visited it. The grave was planted in a little clearing, the grass surrounding it cut short and clean, and there were drying alliums scattered at the base of the headstone. There was a bench facing the grave, a jukebox on one side and an assortment of discs — Tommy’s discs — tucked neatly into a chest on the other. 

And the headstone itself:

Tommy Innit

Seventeen; friend, forever

Rest, you deserve it

Wilbur felt like he was going to faint. There was a reason he’d been avoiding Tommy’s grave for months; seeing it firsthand was concrete proof that Tommy was dead, his story forever incomplete. Word of mouth was one thing and believing was another — by Prime did Wilbur not want to believe — but seeing it with his own two eyes, this close where he could reach forward and feel the smooth stone under his fingers too…

Prime. He missed Tommy so, so much.

He sat himself on the bench and stared on ahead, inspecting the grave, the clearing, the horizon, and came to no conclusion of his own. He didn’t even know why he’d come here, but he knew that eventually, he needed to face the reality, one way or another.

So here he was, facing the reality. It was almost underwhelming.

A cold presence materialised beside him, and Wilbur was so used to the cold that he didn’t react at all.

He inhaled deeply, closing his eyes until he no longer felt like he would collapse under the sheer weight of dread building on his shoulders. It was then, and only then, that he opened his eyes to- to a clearing, a grave, and open skies.

“Tommy?” Wilbur said first, voice quiet.

‘Hey, Wil.’ Tommy’s voice was distant, more akin to a foreign thought that had invaded Wilbur’s mind than a spoken sound.

“You’ve been… away,” Wilbur said. 

He chanced a glance to the empty spot beside him and found… an empty spot — no smudge, no distortion in the air, no shadow at the corner of his eyes. He could barely even feel Tommy’s presence. 

And indeed, it had been a while since he last talked to Tommy. Sometimes he even managed to convince himself that he’d been talking to a figment of his imagination, that a part of him was kind enough to grace him with the fading image of his late brother. But then again, he wasn’t capable of such forgiveness, it had to have come from somewhere; it was Tommy who first forgave Sam, after all.

‘I wasn’t sure if you wanted me around.’

Wilbur pressed his lips together. “Of course I do. What makes you think otherwise?”

‘You seem… well, you seem to be doing alright,’ Tommy said, a little hesitantly. 

It felt as though he was shying away from Wilbur, a shadow retreating from light. 

How times have changed. Tommy had always been the light, the bright, Icarus iridescent and blinding, while Wilbur had been the shadow over his shoulder, Daedalus releasing his son to the sky — and the world twisted, and the world bent, and Wilbur found wax and feathers along the shores and wept.

‘You have people, now.’ Wilbur pictured Tommy smiling sadly, eyes fixed on his own grave. ‘And you’re… you’re getting better. I’m not sure you, uh, need me around anymore.’

“Need you?” Wilbur paused, swallowing. “Tommy-“ his breath hitched in his throat, “of course, of course I need you. I mean, that’s us, you know, Wilbur and Tommy, Tommy and Wilbur, the- the crime duo, the crime boys, I don’t- I don’t know what I am without you.”

Tommy laughed lightly. 'You know, I said the same thing to Tubbo, a couple months back. I asked him: what am I without you — and you know what he said?'

"...What?"

‘Yourself,’ Tommy said, a little cheekily, ‘simple as that.’

“But you’re dead,” Wilbur said, “and you died because of, because- I... Tommy, I don't know how to live with that, I don't know if I can live with that...”

He sucked in a deep breath, felt a clog in his throat. He couldn’t do this. He couldn’t do any of this. And yet, and yet he felt Tommy’s eyes on him, and when he blinked he saw Tommy’s face, forever youthful, forever hopeful, and he saw the expectant look Tommy would have on his expression. 

‘It isn’t your fault,’ Tommy told him. ‘I died for you, dumbass, not because of you.’

“Doesn’t feel like it,” Wilbur muttered. He hugged himself and looked away, as if it mattered at all. 

Tommy sighed softly. ‘And it never will, maybe,’ he said. ‘I know how these things feel, Wil, but I want you to know, in your heart, that this isn’t your fault.’

Wilbur wondered whether Tommy spoke out of wisdom or experience, whether there was a difference between the two of them anymore now that the world has bent so rentlessly. 

‘Maybe one day you’ll believe it, yeah?’

And the finality of it all didn’t sit well on Wilbur’s tongue. He could see it clear as day — Tommy sitting cross-legged on the bench beside him, Tommy with an arm slung over the backrest, Tommy looking over with the softest expression on his face, something that hovered between fondness and resignation, the way his lips would quirk up into a half-grimace whenever he needed to say something that hurt him.

It, all of it… Tommy’s words, Tommy’s tone, it could only mean one thing, and Wilbur didn't like one bit of it.

“Why does this feel like a goodbye?” Wilbur asked, voice dry, eyes wet.

Tommy hummed to himself, a single note that wavered and faded with the whistling of the wind, the crashing waves down by the shore. For a moment Wilbur could hear something else humming with him — a woman’s voice, perhaps, bordering at the edge of familiarity, a full note higher.

‘That’s because this is,’ Tommy said, after a while. 

“Oh,” was all Wilbur could say.

‘I think we deserve a proper goodbye, for once,’ his brother continued. Wilbur could hear the wistfulness bleeding into his not-quite-audible voice. ‘I wasn’t there when you died, and you weren’t here when I did. And now, well… I wish it was under better circumstances, but…’

“Yeah,” Wilbur said. He felt weak in the chest, weak everywhere. “Your, your unfinished business,” he tried, “whatever happened to it? I never got around to helping you, so, what about it?”

‘My unfinished business,’ Tommy repeated. ‘It’s finished, now. And you did help me with it, you just didn’t know.’

Wilbur felt his chest constrict. “What… what was it…?”

‘Well, you know. Some people, some people are dumb, you know, some people love so much that they’re absolutely convinced that everything is up to them.’

Tommy shrugged lightheartedly.

‘Some people are convinced that this was their fault,’ he said. ‘And, you know, that’s blatantly stealing my credit.’

“Tommy,” Wilbur breathed. “Oh, Tommy. You... you fucker.”

‘That includes you, dipshit,’ Tommy said, and Wilbur felt a gentle shove of air against his shoulder. Wilbur wished he could push back.

They lapsed into silence. 

Wilbur listened to the sounds of nature for a while. He supposed that goodbyes were inevitable, that he couldn’t forever convince himself that this state of half-death, half-undeath would last indefinitely. 

Goodbyes were one thing, because ‘goodbye’ was a word and mere words couldn’t hurt, wouldn’t hurt. But what it meant was another thing. It meant leaving, it meant losing, it meant a departure from ‘see you soon’s and ‘I’ll be back’s, and it meant that he was going to be alone. 

“Tommy?” he asked, seized with the sudden fear that Tommy had left without him realising.

But Tommy’s reply came quick. ‘Yes?’

“I wish I’d been there for you,” Wilbur said, because he needed to say something lest he let the conversation die.

‘Well, you’re here now,’ Tommy said nonchalantly. ‘You’re here, and for me too. I think that counts.’

“You’re not, though,” Wilbur said.

He wished, he wished- 

Well, Tubbo said it best.

“I wish we had more time,” he said. "I think, I think we deserve far more than a few horrible years." The words spilled out of him, and he let them, pushed them out, because they were running out of time and not long ago he held a boy in his arms who had run so desperately out of time and he couldn’t, he couldn’t bear that same pain. “We had so much to do, Tommy, we were so much, and I want to be able show you all the things we could’ve been, everything we can still be. And... and I'm so, so sorry I couldn't give you more, I'm sorry I couldn't be the person you needed, the person you deserve, I'm sorry, I-”

Tommy needed to hear the truth, Tommy needed to hear his truth, and more than anything Wilbur needed to say them, needed to make them real and tangible and true.

“I want to change things," Wilbur said. "Tommy, I- I want to make things better, I want to be better, I want to fix things, rectify my mistakes, reconnect with the people that I pushed away, and I- I just… I just wish you can see it all.”

‘It’s okay.’ Tommy smiled softly. ‘I’ll be there.’

“But you’re leaving!” Wilbur cried, burying his face in his hands in one jerky move. “How can you, how will you, how am I going to…?”

‘We’re brothers, Wilbur,’ Tommy said, his words as gentle as the touch of snow. ‘You are a part of me, forever. Nothing can change that, you know?’

Wilbur felt him move. Saw it in his mind’s eye: Tommy twisting on the bench, leaning forward and closer towards Wilbur, reaching a hand out to him.

‘And I will always be with you-’ something brushed against Wilbur’s chest, over his heart, ‘in here. I’m only here to say goodbye.’

Wilbur reached up and tried to press a palm over Tommy’s. His hand met his chest. He could feel his heart beating, thrumming with life, warmth spilling out from underneath his thick clothes. 

(You. You. You are alive-)

“That doesn’t make any sense,” he said, sniffling.

Tommy laughed. ‘No, no it doesn’t.’

A long pause.

The sun tried to set. Wilbur wanted to stand up, scream at the horizon, let his voice tear through the air until the air tore through his throat — scream at the sun to stay up, stay up, he did not want to see the night sky for all its stars, because the night sky was dark and the night sky was lonely and he did not want to meet the dark and the lonely and if he looked hard enough, if he strained hard enough-

“Tommy?” he said, desperate to fill the quiet.

He’d seen the other side, once. He’d been in the void only a few months ago, and it had tried to stretch him out to thirteen years and convince him to go back but it failed, it failed, he had frayed long and hard and had wanted to stay a sleeping speck of the universe, until he got dragged back to life by his brother’s sacrifice and had his will to live exhumed out of him. 

‘Yes, Wil?’ Tommy responded.

He’d been alone only a few months ago. He couldn’t bear to think about it.

“Are you going to be alright without me?”

(The universe, infinite as it was, had closed his eyes as he died.

The universe, infinite as it used to be, had cradled him in its arms, a mother to a sleeping son, and he had been alone and he had been lonely but he had rejected any company it tried to offer him in favour of rot.

The universe, infinite as it could be, had opened his eyes and spoken to him, and Wilbur lived, breathed, wanted, grieved, heard the words where they descended as light calling for his brother’s departure.)

‘Yeah,’ Tommy replied. 

Tommy was loved. Tommy would never be alone. Tommy was a child of creation, forever destined for failure, yet he was loved by his friends and the stars alike. Death had hooked itself around him but he wasn’t in any pain; it had managed to love him too, in the end.

‘Yeah, Wilbur, I’ll be alright,’ Tommy said, sighing. ‘I’ve got my cows with me; Harold, Harvey, Henry. I’ve… I’ve missed them, you know-‘ a note of endearment, ‘it’s good to have them back.‘

Wilbur felt the heat in his chest intensify. He could almost believe that Tommy was tangible. 

‘And I think, I think I see your mum, too, Wil.’ Wonder. Admiration. Wilbur wanted to cry. ‘She’s calling for me.’ Then quieter, more subdued, ‘I’ve never had a mother before.’

His mother. Wilbur hadn’t thought about her in forever. She and Tommy had been similar in so many ways — they loved as fiercely as they fought, and in the end they had fought for Wilbur — so if she was there, and if Tommy could see her, he was in good hands. If Wilbur could trust anything, anything at all, it would be his mother.

It was a promise, maybe, her last gift for him.

“That’s, that’s good,” Wilbur said. “…Say hi to her for me, won’t you? Tell her... tell her that I... I miss her.”

(‘Hello!’ said an arm of the universe, stars in her hair and stars in her eyes. ‘Hello,’ she called out to him, ‘I hear you,’ and waved excitedly to him, but Wilbur would never hear it.)

‘She knows, Wil.’ Tommy shifted his gaze up to look into Wilbur’s eyes intently. ‘You’ll be alright without me too, right?’

"I want to be,” Wilbur said, so easily that it surprised him. 

He looked back at the space where Tommy’s eyes would be. He almost couldn’t recognise his own voice: weak, hollow where it poured out of him, intertwined with his own heavy, ragged breathing. If he looked into a mirror now, he wouldn’t recognise his own face either; breathlessly tired, far too old and far too young at the same time, shadows folded deep over the lines around his eyes and mouth. 

“But Tommy, I don’t…” he said again, low and slow, “I don’t know if I'll get better, if I can, you know?” His hand wavered over his heart, but he could feel the way Tommy kept holding onto him. His voice started to climb. “I can’t fix all of it. I know I can't, I’ve made… far too many mistakes, pushed away too many people, destroyed too many things — my regrets, my mistakes, everything I lost, the things I never had...!”

Tommy shook his head. 

‘Well,’ Tommy said, after a moment, ‘they made way for the things you do have now, didn’t they?’ 

Wilbur was quiet. 

The warmth in his chest expanded further, crawling down his body until he felt fire on his fingertips; the kind of fire burning away in fireplaces, stoked by the hearth and not by gunpowder. 

‘And the things that you can take back, too,’ Tommy added.

He could see it, a past, maybe; there he was, surrounded by the dark, embracing the dark, shirking the universe when it tried to reach for him. Ears covered, eyes closed, curling into himself as he wallowed in his self-contained, self-evoked hatred, so blind to love that he couldn’t hear the words, the humming, the song-

(And the universe-)

He could see it too, a future, maybe; there his brother was, surrounded by light, a creature of light and creation and the sun, the sky, the moon, all of it bending around him. Tommy with his golden hair and his cyan eyes and his wide smile and everything come together like a halo around his head. Tommy standing in a wheat field stretching forever, above him white skies and warm, sunny days, beneath him peace in death and peace of death — the afterlife that kindly made way for him. Tommy who touched Wilbur’s heart and opened his mouth, speaking, humming, singing:

(And the universe said-)

‘You are not alone, Wilbur,’ said Tommy, and Wilbur loved him so much that it hurt and it burst in him, through him, like ice and glass and the art of breaking, the art of remaking, shattered porcelain welded together by gold and hope. ‘You never will be again, not as long as you try.’

(‘I promise, I promise,’ his mother sang, and she loved him too, ‘for you, anything, everything.’)

These were the facts, cold and set in stone: Wilbur wasn’t there for Tommy, Wilbur betrayed Tommy when he needed him the most, Wilbur never wanted to come back to Tommy, Wilbur hurt Tommy and revelled in it.

And these were the truths, where the facts didn’t know to be kind: Wilbur loved Tommy, Tommy loved Wilbur, and they were saying goodbye.

‘You are surrounded by people who love you,’ Tommy said, and he was life at its brightest, death at its kindest. ‘And you love them, you do.’

Wilbur closed his eyes. Love at its purest. “I…”

‘C’mon,’ Tommy teased him. Brothers, family, peas of a pod and prodigal sons that hurt and hurt for each other. ‘You can say it. You do.’

“Yeah,” Wilbur admitted, easily, “I do.” And then, from the bottom of his heart, “I wouldn’t trade them for anything.”

‘You’re going to be alright without me, aren’t you?’

“I’ll try. I will be.”

‘Good.’ Tommy sighed. He leaned away. ‘Good. That’s all I wanted to hear.’

Silence. Wilbur wasn’t ready at all. 

It was selfish of him, but he never claimed to be anything but selfish, a little possessive, cupping in his hands the things that were given to him and keeping them close to his heart, snapping at anything that tried to take them away. He folded himself over them, back scarred and limbs shaking, but he held them to the best of his ability and when it came time to part with them, he couldn’t, he couldn’t, he wouldn’t.

Despite everything, Wilbur was young, and Wilbur would never be used to loss.

“Tommy?” he called weakly.

Tommy didn’t answer for a moment.

‘They’re waiting for me, Wil,’ he said, and he sounded even further away, like he was looking elsewhere.

“I’m going to miss you, you know that?” Wilbur blurted out. “We’re brothers,” he affirmed, pouring every ounce of sincerity he had into the sentiment, “you will always be a part of me, too, no matter what,” because he needed Tommy to know, he needed Tommy to be sure, too, that he wanted to give back after everything that Tommy had done for him.

‘I’m going to miss you too, big guy,’ Tommy said, ‘be kinder to yourself, okay?’

('Be kind, be kind,' said his mother, 'because I know you, you are kind beneath everything, and you deserve so.')

Wilbur couldn’t see his brother anymore, not with his eyes, not with his mind, but he stood out in Wilbur’s memories like a beacon, like a calling, a path that pointed home.

“I… wait for me,” Wilbur said, almost desperately, “I’ll come find you someday. I’ll get there, just, just wait for me.”

He heard a laugh, a light trill at the edge of his perception, breaking through the humming that swirled all around them.

‘Take your time, Wilbur. I’ll see you when I see you.’

Then Tommy was gone.

The warmth disappeared from his whole body, and Wilbur was left alone, shivering, a hand over his chest shuddering in time with every heartbeat. He felt suddenly, horrifyingly scared to open his eyes, because he hadn’t been alone but now he was, and he couldn’t feel Tommy anymore, and he knew in his heart that if he dared to peek, he’d be greeted with-

Nothing.

“Tommy?”

Still nothing.

Wilbur opened his eyes.

He was alone, well and truly so.

He took his hand off his chest and ran it down his face. Tommy’s grave stared back, unmoving, and the cold air resumed its course all around him. The sun had set completely. The stars looked down at him. He couldn’t hear humming at all, and maybe he never did.

Tommy was gone. Wilbur knew it, and ready as he wasn’t, he still needed to face it. 

“Tommy?” he called out again, into the night sky. 

(And the universe fell silent.)

He pulled his scarf over his nose and sat there for a moment, breathing slowly, deeply, letting tears form and fall from his eyes, until the wave of misery passed and all he was left with was resignation. He stood up, rubbed at his eyes, and looked around. 

It was dark, and mobs were bound to appear soon. The thought of a zombie trampling the dirt of Tommy’s grave made him feel ill, so he took the time to light a few torches and place them around to illuminate the area. 

Then he left.

Snowchester was far too lonely, especially at night. 

Wilbur headed down the hill, towards the mansion, until he could hear Tubbo and Ranboo’s voices intermingled with Michael’s. 

He didn’t want to be alone anymore.

And in the beginning, there was only Wilbur.

He was alone — Phil had left him Southward to start the Antarctic Empire with their friend Technoblade, and although Wilbur was the admin of this server, he didn’t have many friends, or at least many friends who would visit him. And ‘alone’ wasn’t synonymous to ‘lonely’, but to Wilbur, they felt as similarly desolate.

So yes, he was alone and he was lonely, but he was an adult, he knew how to take care of himself and he knew how to take care of Newfoundland and he was fine, really. That didn't change the fact that he missed having company, though, because he missed Phil and he missed his friends and he missed having someone else to talk to that wasn’t Pee Dog.

Then came Theseus. 

Golden hair, cyan eyes, spitfire personality and timbs for shoes — the kid demanded attention everywhere he went, his charm rivalled only by Wilbur’s own charisma. He was loud, he screamed a lot, and he had several bounties on his head but still he came to Newfoundland trying to scam the ever-living shit out of Wilbur. 

Wilbur remembered Theseus vaguely, remembered finding a boisterous kid down in Hypixel and thinking that it’d be a fun idea to invite him to his SMP, that the server was open to anyone that caught his eye and caught his eye, Theseus did. 

He was only fourteen, almost fifteen, and Wilbur could tell he had a long, wonderful life ahead of him.

After a day’s work of diplomacy and bomb threats and avoiding the scamming attempts of one particular child, Wilbur started to ward away the other people gathered in his territory, and all but one of them left him alone for the night. It just so happened to be that particular kid, watching him with a curious look in his eyes.

He followed Wilbur around Newfoundland and helped him rekindle torches and fill up explosion holes with dirt. For the most part, they worked silently, and besides the occasional witty comment, Wilbur enjoyed the comfortable silence that had descended upon them. 

This was a pleasant change of pace — Theseus had been yelling over people all day, and to see him quiet felt a little jarring, a little forbidden, but nice.

“Shouldn’t you be going back to Business Bay?” Wilbur asked, turning to Theseus once they were done and Newfoundland was all good.

“No,” Theseus deadpanned, “I leave when I want to leave, bitch.”

“That’s… that’s not really how this works,” Wilbur said. “I can kick you, y’know-“

Theseus froze. Right. Homeless kid, no server to return to.

“-from Newfoundland,” Wilbur amended quickly. “This is a threat. I’ll call in an airstrike. I’ll ring up the Antarctic Empire.”

Theseus rolled his eyes. “You’re acting as if I’m scared of you and your cronies.”

“…I’ll call Tubbo,” Wilbur said, dropping his voice.

He smirked as Theseus floundered, eyes going wide at the mention of his companion.

“No, okay," Wilbur said. "Why’re you sticking around?”

“Nothing,” Theseus snapped. He opened his mouth, closed his mouth, looked around them, refused to meet Wilbur’s questioning gaze. “I… I saw you earlier,” he said eventually, “you were knitting something.”

“I was.”

“Yeah.”

Wilbur raised an eyebrow. “And what about it? I do it as a hobby, you know. I like doing things with my hands.”

“Nothing,” Theseus said again. “Nothing wrong with it. Boys can knit, too, all that, I’m not- I’m not a prick.”

They lapsed into another silence. Wilbur could feel the corner of his lip twitch upward as Theseus looked more and more uncomfortable, ears steadily turning redder by the second. He looked like a balloon ready to pop.

“Can you teach me,” he blurted out. “Sorry. Can you teach me how to knit, please?”

Wilbur laughed, shook his head. “Was that really so hard?”

“Yes,” Theseus deadpanned. “Teach me. Fuck you, bitch. I want to make clothes and shit.”

Wilbur’s eyes flickered down to his outfit. A worn business suit and slacks that fit a little too big on Theseus’ lanky form. Underneath that, his signature red and white shirt which Wilbur could swear he never saw Theseus without. All of him patched up shoddily and horribly unequipped for any weather colder than Newfoundland in the summer.

His heart squeezed in his chest. This was a child raised in independence. He never spoke about a family, about friends outside his fellow Business Bay members and Tubbo, never spoke about a home outside Hypixel and Hypixel couldn’t be a home at all, especially for a young boy. 

Wilbur remembered the way Theseus had looked, a flash of gratefulness across his face, when Wilbur extended the SMP invite to him.

“Theseus,” Wilbur started.

“Don’t,” Theseus interrupted. He flinched away. “That’s a- it’s a stupid name.”

“Okay.”

“My birth giver and sperm donor gave me that name.”

“Yeah, that’s- that’s how names work.”

Theseus never spoke of family.

Wilbur made a decision, then.

“You can choose your own name, you know,” Wilbur said. “I mean, you live for yourself, no one else. Your life, your identity, your choices. If you don’t like being called Theseus, then don’t.”

“It’s not that simple,” Theseus muttered, “what about my friends?”

“If they’re your friends, they won’t mind.”

“And everyone else?”

“Well…” Wilbur said, “do they matter?”

The kid pondered on Wilbur’s words for a solid minute or two, eyes distant as he started to think. Wilbur could almost hear the creaking of the cogs turning in his little head. 

“No,” he decided, finally, “they don’t. Okay. Right.” He paused, smacked his lips, looked to the side. “Tommy.”

“Pardon?”

“Tommy,” the kid repeated, louder, more confidently. His ears were beet red. “Call me Tommy. Or Sir. Or big man. Or wife haver. Or alpha male, or-“

“Tommy,” Wilbur tried out, and the name felt like coming home. He grinned devilishly. “Small man Tommy. Little man. Tiny little baby man. Fucking child.”

And in retaliation, Thes- Tommy threw a punch at Wilbur’s arm. 

Wilbur scream-laughed as Tommy started to curse out his bloodline and condemn him to hell, wishing misfortune upon all of Wilbur’s future offspring and a ‘you will never feel the loving touch of a woman ever’ as a cherry on top. They shoved at each other and threatened airstrikes on their countries, and Wilbur grew up an only child but this, but this-

“You suck,” Tommy said, his golden hair all tousled up from their little play-fight, “you literally suck, you’re old and fucking stinky and I hate you, I hate your guts-“

“You’re a fucking child!” Wilbur laughed. “You’re small and short and also wrong, and are bad, and I could-“ he was cut off by a jab on the side from Tommy, “ow, do you want me to throw you off an actual cliff?”

“Your country doesn’t even have cliffs! You suck, your land sucks, I’ll get Tubbo to nuke this whole place to the ground-“

“Yeah, and, and I’ll get the Antarcticans to invade and assimilate Business Bay next-“

“You’re targeting me, you’re harassing me, this is targeted harassment!” Tommy exclaimed indignantly, pressing a hand flat on his puffed-out chest. “Towards me, no less! Sir Tommy Innit of Business Bay!”

“Tommy… Innit,” Wilbur said. He raised an eyebrow. “Innit.”

“Yeah?" Tommy challenged. "And what about it?”

“Nothing,” Wilbur said as he shook his head, “just an odd surname, is all.”

“Your surname is odd,” Tommy rebutted. “What kind of motherfucker names their child ‘Wilbur Soot’? What kinda prick-?”

“Me.” Wilbur smiled toothily. “I named me.”

“More like Wilbur Shit,” Tommy scoffed as he rolled his eyes. He paused for a few moments — a few moments in which Wilbur could barely contain a fond retort of his own — before continuing, voice softer than before. “Who were you, before?”

Wilbur hummed to himself. He couldn’t remember much of his past, if he was being honest with himself — it’d always been him and Phil and his mother, and then he remembered the Sky Gods, and then nothing. Before he knew it, years had passed and his name was Wilbur Soot and he was reunited with Phil but not his mother. Still, he didn’t like to dwell on it, couldn’t, really, lost time was lost time and there was no use trying to remember.

“Does it matter?” he asked, shrugging. “I mean, the past is in the past, bygones and all that, right? Keep what you can keep, let everything else go, right? If you think a little long and hard about it, there isn't really any use in being sentimental, being... being attached.”

Tommy squinted at him. “Sentimentality,” he said firmly, “is not a weakness.” He crossed his arms, mouth twisting into a scowl. “Being attached to things, places, memories, it’s not something to be… ashamed of. If you’re so quick to give up on something, how will you fight for it?”

“Of course,” Wilbur said, nodding, “but eventually, you’re going to wear yourself out trying to keep every single thing you love. You’ve got to cut your losses at some point.”

Tommy nodded hesitantly.

“I mean, you’re right, for the record. You're absolutely correct, I think there’s merit in both giving up and... persevering,” Wilbur continued. “Your past can hurt you, but it can also make you strong, and all that. I think, I think everyone just needs to find a good balance between the two.”

“Right,” Tommy said quietly.  

His eyes were elsewhere, gazing wistfully at the horizon, at the gentle waves of the oceans around Newfoundland. They flashed silver in the moonlight and flickered amber in the torchlight, though they were really blue, cyan, bright as a clear sky in a perfect midday. 

“So who are you, now?” Tommy continued. “And what do you want to be?”

Wilbur pondered on the answer for a long while. And in that long while, Tommy casted his face down, trying to hide his own turmoil from Wilbur’s keen eyes. 

The kid wasn’t any good at hiding. Wilbur could read him like a book, fold the pages he deemed important, write a summary if he so wished to — the scariest part so happened to be that Tommy let him.

He was brave, Wilbur had to give him that, and he trusted far too much for his own good. 

It might get him killed, one day.

“Happy,” Wilbur decided. He smiled softly. “That’s what I want to be.”

There was a house by the Prison, a house made of wood walls and a stone roof, surrounded by white flowers and red vines, and the server called it Pandora’s Reprieve.

Sometimes while he was out on his errands, Wilbur would see the silhouettes of two people moving around in the house. Sometimes there would be a white dog, yellow collar, sleeping on the porch basked in golden sunlight. Sometimes the vines around the house would grow a little closer, brush the walls of the house with their tendrils, and then Ponk would come storming outside, red-eyed and pale, and talk to the vines until they receded.

Sometimes Wilbur would meet Sam on his way to work in the Prison, and Sam looked healthy despite all the vines around his house, despite everything, and he had bags under his eyes but all of them did. 

He looked happy.

“Go home, Sam,” Wilbur had said, the first time they properly met, “find the people who care about you and go back home to them.”

It looked like Sam had taken his advice to heart. He had the privilege of being loved, he had the rewards of loving, and it was now just a matter of keeping it with all he had.

And this was what changed:

Sam went to work at the brink of dawn and came out after only two hours. If anyone asked to visit, then he’d be there to guide them through the process, but otherwise he wouldn’t return to the Prison until the brink of night to lock it down until the next day. He filled up the majority of his days building, mining, studying redstone, tending to the flowers around his house. Usually, he’d have Ponk by his side, and when Ponk wasn’t around, he’d have his dog accompany him.

“I think I just needed some space,” Sam told him, when they met on the Prime Path. His smile was tired, mirrored on Wilbur’s face. “I moved out of Pandora’s Vault, took all my items with me. I think I just needed to be away from it, I mean, it’s still… work, but… I think that’s what I needed to do.”

“And what if Dream escapes?” Wilbur asked, as kindly as he could. It wasn’t a challenge.

Sam was silent for a moment, lips pressed together. “He dies,” he said lightly. “I think I’m done making excuses for him, too.”

Wilbur wouldn’t know what that meant, but he sensed that it had to be important to Sam — to Atlas, laying his world down to live. He bid his farewell, afterward, and noticed a red vine shying away from Sam as he strode past it.

There was a house by the hill overlooking L’manberg, a house and a bench and a farm tucked into the hillside, a house with dirt walls and a dirt roof and empty chests inside. 

This house had been left unattended for so long that grass had begun to grow on the roof, down the walls. This house would never be occupied, not until the inhabitants of the SMP were all dead and their descendants were free to roam and own the server.

This house was Tommy’s, once, and now it didn’t belong to him but will forever be his, both at the same time. The jukebox by his bench was broken. 

Wilbur visited Tommy’s house every other day. He cleaned the dust gathering inside, planted seeds in the farmland, cleared dirt from the branch of the Prime Path cutting through the property, rekindled the burnt out torches around the area, reminisced as he worked and kept Tommy’s memory safe. Sometimes Tubbo came with him, sometimes Ranboo came with him, sometimes both came and worked silently with him and sometimes neither did and he basked in the silence all on his own.

And when he was done with Tommy’s house, he would part ways with whoever accompanied him and follow the Prime Path further until he reached L’manberg’s crater. He ducked under the glass to try and clean up the debris before tears welled up in his eyes and he left before anyone could see him cry. 

Sometimes he found Fundy in L’manberg looking at the crater in dismay, and then they’d walk and talk their way down memory lane, before leaving to tend to their other errands with heavier hearts and lighter shoulders.

(Once, he walked aimlessly down the Prime Path and decided to enter Eret’s museum. 

He stood in the replica of his caravan with his hands in his pockets, chin tucked into Tommy’s scarf, noting smooth edges where chips were supposed to be, empty chests where he used to fill them with junk, a pressure plated door instead of an inconvenient button. The air was stagnant, uncomfortable, and it would never be anything but. 

He felt his muscles seize up as he moved on and entered the Final Control Room. Unlike the caravan, this room had many, many intentional imperfections. He wondered how long Eret had spent building it. Nothing happened when he pressed the button, nothing but a flash of blood in his mind and the distant memory of screaming in his ears. 

He opened the chest labelled with his name. There was a book inside. 

In a rather familiar cursive handwriting: 

‘I’m sorry.

-Eret’

He took the book, entered the replica of his button room, wrote ‘Me too.’ below Eret’s note, and left the book unsigned by the button. 

The next time he met Eret, he was the first, but not the only one, to say, “I forgive you.”)

And on his return trip to Snowchester, he would stop by Tommy’s house again to lock the doors, water the crops, close the fence gates. Flowers dotted the ground, nowadays; alliums from Ranboo, daffodils from Tubbo, and an assortment of many others that hadn’t been planted by any of them.

Wilbur planted cornflowers by the entrance of Tommy’s house, and he watered every flower he saw. He took a moment to enjoy the scenery, the colours, before he left the property and returned home to Snowchester. 

But he would always, always come back. Someone needed to tend to the place, after all.

There was a house in Snowchester, and Wilbur gladly called it home. 

It used to be a guest house, but over the course of a couple months, he’d filled it with clothes in the cupboards and messy junk in the chests. His workbench was worn, such that his tools sometimes came out shoddy, and he had a row of furnaces that he stocked with coal regularly and smokers that he often forgot to. The house used to be empty, but now it was lived in and homely and warm — he’d lived in it, breathed life into it, plastered his personality into its walls and stained its floor with his footsteps.

One day he made a guitar stand out of iron and wood and placed it beside his bed in the attic. He couldn’t bring himself to make a guitar, though, and the next morning he couldn’t bear the anxiety of asking Tubbo the whereabouts of his old one, so this would have to be shelved as yet another item on his list of ‘one day’s. 

Some nights he got woken up by sounds next door, thumping and screaming and arguing. Some nights he got woken up by his own nightmares, visions of wooden buttons and blackstone walls and flaming arrows. Some nights he couldn’t sleep at all, haunted by his own mind as he curled up in bed and tried to breathe through the emptiness encroaching his space.

But in the morning, he woke up. He always felt tired as he got out of bed, always felt like he couldn’t move, couldn’t live, couldn’t function without wanting to return to the dark void of sleep and death, but he woke up anyway and cooked himself a meal and showered and greeted Ranboo at the door before going to work.

He gladly called Snowchester ‘home’, which was why, when it came time to defend it, he did so without hesitation.

They called themselves the Syndicate. 

They weren’t part of Wilbur’s back-to-life crash course, because Wilbur walked out of his house one morning to find three very particular people he hadn’t expected to see that day, or perhaps ever. He wasn’t the bravest person around, especially when it came to the bridges he built, burnt, and buried. 

Tubbo had been an outlier. Ranboo hadn’t had the misfortune of knowing him before his death. Fundy he’d reconnected with on his own time and terms. 

But Phil, Niki, and Techno?

He felt faint just looking at them. He wasn’t even sure whether they knew he was alive. He didn’t even know how they’d gotten into Snowchester — Tubbo wasn’t anywhere to be seen, he hadn’t heard the gates open, and the water tunnel directly into the main area had been reconstructed deep underground, its entrance and exit hidden and kept secret between three people.

His eyes wandered towards Ranboo, standing stock-still behind the trio, decked in the same full set of armour and weapons that the others had. Ranboo caught his eyes from far away, shook his head, mouthed: ‘Where’s Tubbo?’

And Wilbur understood.

He plastered on his most confident smile, tipped his chin up and narrowed his eyes, strode towards them with his hands in his pockets and with as much nonchalance as he could possibly muster.

“Gentlemen,” he greeted, “and lady. What brings you to Snowchester?”

All three of them whipped their heads towards him. He wanted to wince.

Niki’s eyes widened, face filling with rage at the sight of him. Ranboo bit his lip, fiddling with the handle of his Netherite sword. Techno raised an eyebrow noncommittally. And Phil-

Phil looked heartbroken. 

“Wilbur,” his father said, his voice thin, high, laced with disbelief. “You’re alive.”

Wilbur widened his smile. “So I am. Hello, Phil. Niki, Technoblade.” He paused. Ranboo shook his head almost imperceptibly. “And Ranboo, I presume.”

“I’ve heard rumours, but…” Phil continued, “I wasn’t sure whether any of them were true. You never… you never reached out to me, any of us.”

Ranboo kept looking between Wilbur and the attic of his and Tubbo’s house. 

“No, I didn’t,” Wilbur agreed. He straightened his back and clasped his hands together. “I wanted to keep it quiet, a little bit on the down low. We wanted some privacy, surely you can understand, right?”

“I’m your father,” Phil said weakly. “I didn’t know you were alive,” and Wilbur-

He brushed it off. “Of course. Now, what brings you all here to Snowchester?”

Techno stepped closer to him. For all that he dressed to intimidate and seemed to tower over everyone else in his presence, Wilbur was a little amused to remember that he was taller than Techno by a few inches. 

He had never been afraid of Technoblade for as long as he lived — he was a god, the Blood God, and gods were all the same, but this one happened to be his father’s closest friend, and that meant that he was a close friend of Wilbur’s too. Used to be. A long time ago. But he encroached on a place Wilbur called home and he brought his weapons and his army with him and it had been six months, six months and thirteen years and a lifetime since Wilbur called Technoblade ‘family’. 

He smiled at Technoblade just as condescendingly. Appearances, appearances, and just a little bit of heart.

“We heard a little somethin’ down the grapevine,” Techno said. “Somethin' about Snowchester closin’ down its borders and keepin’ things a complete secret from the rest of the world. We are… a bit of an… an anarchist commune, so to speak, and now that we know you’ve teamed up with Tubbo…”

A blue-tinted memory flashed by Wilbur’s mind — bombs falling from an obsidian grid in the sky, the crater of his country, tridents and lightning and screaming teenagers. Dream strolling along the grid, Techno in the epicentre, Phil soaring high above the wreckage, Niki burning down a tree. 

(His legacy, his legacy! 

His legacy had been his nation, not the mockery of it that had risen postmortem, his legacy had been songs sung around nighttime campfires and bakeries by the sea and skirmishes fought together in the name of camaraderie — but his legacy had been his pain, the pain he wrought onto his people, had been nights spent crying into his pillow and friends betrayed without a single look back and blood shed in the name of his dreams.

His legacy was dead, and from its ashes rose a phoenix singing a funeral march, him and his Icarus dive and Apollo wrenched away from him. 

He flew, he fell, he died, he woke up — to devastation, to death, and wore it around himself in the name of a new, a kinder sort of legacy.)

“Now, who would be stupid enough to start a new government after what happened to the last one?” Wilbur said frostily, his smile curling up a little crueler. He looked at Techno down the length of his nose. “Snowchester has no government, it is not a country. I think, as a resident of this… isolationist colony, I’d be rather confident in saying that, Technoblade.”

“Right,” Techno said, “forgive us for bein’ careful. Is Tubbo keepin' you here?”

“I chose to stay.”

Unlike some people, he wanted to add, because he was a little bitter. Techno and Phil and Dream, on Doomsday, and his brain spat out more memories of Dream; Dream curling his hands around Tommy’s arm, Dream sending his ghost out to disappear, Dream laughing in Tubbo’s face, Dream, Dream, Dream — the man was mourning, yes, but since when has grief excused anyone’s actions?

Dream has done nothing, nothing, to atone. And he might never, and yet, and yet-! It wasn’t Wilbur’s right to speak on the topic of redemption and forgiveness, but Techno and Phil and Dream, what were they thinking…?

(Once, Dream had extended a hand and Wilbur had taken it. Once, they were allies, one bent on destruction and the other bent on chaos. Once, they won, and it had been an unconditional victory, and it had been the satisfying end, the ugly end, that they deserved.

But even in his lowest moments he knew, he saw, he pushed back. He saw Dream’s fixation on his country and he saw Dream’s fixation on his little brother and there had to be a line, there was a line, Wilbur was the line and refused to let Dream cross further than he needed to.)

(Before that, long before that, they had been friends. Wilbur still hadn’t taken him out for pizza.)

Techno looked completely unimpressed. Wilbur glanced at Phil, whose face had scrunched up into a grimace, and then he looked at Niki, who still hadn’t said a word, who still seethed, and then at Ranboo, who looked up and yelled:

“Tubbo!”

Sure enough, Tubbo was there, smiling and waving as he walked towards them. He came from the direction of his house, Wilbur noted.

“Guys!” Tubbo called out. He flashed them a bright grin as he neared the group. 

He looked good, if a little tired, but he seemed ready to do either some fighting or some diplomacy. 

“I hope Wilbur hasn’t been giving you a bit of a hard time,” Tubbo said, joining the group. 

Wilbur chuckled and shook his head. “I hope so too, I was just surprised to see some old pals.” He very vehemently kept his gaze away from Niki’s; he could feel her glaring daggers at him, and he was a coward.

“I didn’t know you guys were coming,” Tubbo said, “I mean, you didn’t give us any sort of heads-up whatsoever.”

“That would defeat the purpose of a… surprise visit,” Techno said. “Anywho, it doesn’t matter now, I think, we’re here in peace, we’re not lookin' to fight, we’re here to survey Snowchester, see what’s up. I’m sure it’s not too much of a problem.”

“If you aren’t here to fight, surely you wouldn’t mind putting away the weapons and armour, right?” Tubbo asked, and Prime, Wilbur could feel disdain and hostility rolling off Tubbo as he narrowed his eyes at Techno.

A pause. Technoblade narrowed his eyes back, shoulders tense.

"Surely," Tubbo sneered.

“Armour on,” Techno said.

“I’ll take it,” Tubbo replied. “We’re not looking to fight, either, of course.”

Slowly, the Syndicate’s weapons disappeared into their inventories. Wilbur felt a weight lift off his chest, felt like he could breathe again, and Tubbo’s smile felt a little less strained.

“Great!” Tubbo clapped his hands. He glanced at Wilbur. “We can tour you around if you’d like. Anything you’d like to know, you can ask away.”

“A tour,” Techno said. “Sounds great. Let’s go.”

Wilbur followed the group, Tubbo and Technoblade at the helm, as Tubbo led them around Snowchester, showing them the mansion’s construction, the walls and gate, the shorelines, the forest, the main residence area, everything. Everything but a hill, a tower, and a grave. 

Tubbo seized control of the conversation, talking his breath away as he tried to keep up appearances to his past executioner and executionee. Wilbur hung around towards the back of the group, sticking relatively close to Ranboo whilst keeping his distance away from Phil and Niki. Ranboo looked absolutely terrified. 

When Tubbo showed them the inside of his and Ranboo’s house, Wilbur was relieved to find that the ladder leading up to the attic was missing, and the trapdoor had been replaced by a hastily-placed plank of spruce wood. The usual thumping sounds coming from their attic were inconspicuously missing. Michael had to be asleep, or at least hidden away from the main house. Or maybe he just learned to be quiet in the face of danger.

Still, Technoblade lingered at the foyer of Tubbo’s house.

“You don’t happen to be hiding any government secrets here, do you?” he asked, a joke in monotone.

“Of course not,” Tubbo said lightheartedly. “We don’t have a government. I’ve only been hiding nuclear launch codes, nothing to worry about.”

“Nuclear launch codes.” Techno snorted. “Right.”

They lapsed into silence. Tubbo and Technoblade had their gazes fixed onto each other, a challenge thick and evident in the air between them.

Ranboo coughed. “I think I saw a farm, a little over there. And a quarry too, I think. Do you, would you like to, uh, take us there, maybe?”

“Of course!” Tubbo clapped his hands. “The farm, how could I forget, and the quarry too, and oh, would you look at the time — it’s getting late, we’re gonna have to go and do our routine patrols in a bit!”

“It’s midday,” Technoblade deadpanned.

“We are a colony of two people, Blade,” Tubbo said. “And we have quite a big plot of land to look after. Plus, we are… in peacetime, and we’d like to keep it that way. You must understand, we’re quite busy people.”

Tubbo bared his teeth in a half-feral smile and gestured towards the door. Wilbur opened it for the three intruders, nodding his head in agreement. 

Technoblade looked between the two of them, shrugged, and left the house. Phil and Niki followed suit. Tubbo let out a sigh, shoulders sagging for a moment before he nodded up at Wilbur, mask up and act flawless, and left, too.

(Wilbur didn’t stop to question whether Tubbo had been serious about the nukes, not until he looked up at Ranboo and saw the kid’s face utterly pale as he stared out at Tubbo and his makeshift confidence.)

And at the end of the tour, they stopped and hung out by the farm. Tubbo and Technoblade were still deep in conversation, all false pleasantries and hands hovering ready to strike by their sides. Wilbur was content sticking by Ranboo, picking at his fingernails and the frayed ends of his scarf, and waiting out the heat gathering on his neck from all the glancing at him that Phil and Niki did when-

“Wil,” his father said as he approached him, “can we talk?”

Wilbur looked down at Phil, raised an eyebrow.

“Please,” Phil added. He sounded tired. “It’s important to me.”

“Sure.” Something in him melted. “Okay. Sure, let’s talk,” he said, before he could analyse the feeling in his chest any more than he needed to. He nodded slightly to Ranboo before letting Phil pull him aside. 

Once they were out of earshot from everyone else, he turned back to Phil. He was starting to regret ever approaching the Syndicate in the first place; staying inside and holing up indefinitely sounded much, much more appealing than… whatever he was supposed to do.

Still, some things needed to be sorted out. 

“What’s up?” he asked.

Phil opened his mouth. Closed it. He looked around them, glancing from Techno to Tubbo to Niki to Ranboo and finally looking back to Wilbur. “You’re… alive,” he said slowly.

“I’m… yes. That, yes, I’m that,” Wilbur said. “Where are you going with this?”

“I just-“ Phil paused, gesturing lamely at nothing in particular, “you’re back.” He looked Wilbur up and down, eyes lingering on his chest, as if he was looking for a wound that had closed a lifetime ago. “You look… uh, you look good.”

“I’m… thanks, I think.” Wilbur shifted his weight from foot to foot. “I’ve uh, I’ve been taking care of myself, Phil.” He folded his arms, let his posture give way a little to his uncertainties.

Phil sighed and scratched the back of his ear. “Look, Wil, I… know… I said that I- that you didn’t contact me, but, but look,” he tried, “it’s fine. You’re not… like, you’re not obligated to do anything, right?”

Wilbur nodded slowly, unsure. 

“You’re allowed to have your own privacy, and-“ Phil gestured uselessly again, “and I’m sorry we didn’t let you… come to us… at your own time.”

And Wilbur-

Wilbur felt…

Here’s the thing. 

Wilbur wanted to die. Phil helped him die. But now he was back, and things had changed, and though a little part of him — remnants of his bitter past — felt grateful for his thirteen years in Limbo, every other part of him — screaming to be alive — wasn’t. He couldn’t help but be wary around four heavily-armed people when he himself stood barehanded with no protection whatsoever. He couldn’t help but be afraid of the people he once trusted.

Phil was trying. By Prime was he trying, and Wilbur could see that he was trying. Wilbur was his first and only child, however, and Wilbur only modelled his own parenting after Phil’s. Phil wasn’t a bad father, just the victim of a bad son- not… not a bad son, maybe, just a son that made too many mistakes.

(Be kinder to yourself.)

But Wilbur wanted to try, too. 

Fundy hadn’t forgiven him, yet — maybe he had, but he hadn’t said the words, and Wilbur wasn't sure whether he wanted to hope too much — and Wilbur knew all too well how it felt like to be hated by your son. 

“Fuck,” Wilbur said. 

He ran a hand through his hair and wiped it down his face. He was a wordsmith, a storyteller, a man who knew how to weave stories out of thin air and twist his narratives around and around his audience — he was great at writing and even better at talking, but now, face-to-face with his father, Wilbur could feel all his verbosity failing him. 

“Fuck, Phil, no, look. I fucked up. I’m sorry. I hadn’t thought to contact you or visit you and, and you’re worried, I know, but even when I thought to let you know…” he trailed off. 

Inhale. Exhale. 

He was talking to his father. This was Phil. This was someone who wouldn’t judge him. This was someone who wanted to accept him. He had nothing to lose — Phil wouldn’t let him — and everything to gain.

He just needed to be careful, and be honest.

“I was scared.” It was barely an excuse. It wasn’t an excuse at all. “I wasn’t sure what you’d think of me, still am, but, well. That’s- yeah. I’m sorry.”

“It’s… alright. Okay.” Phil nodded hesitantly. “That’s, yeah. It’s okay. Or, uh, thank you.”

“Yeah…”

Phil wasn’t meeting his eyes.

“Has Tubbo been good to you?”

“He, uh… he made sure I took care of myself, in the beginning,” Wilbur said. “He’s not, he’s not hurting anyone, he’s… not running governments, he’s just, he’s been… living, just. Just living." He paused, swallowing. "Things have been a little weird, lately, so…”

“And… and you?”

“…I’ll be fine,” Wilbur managed out. “We’re taking care of each other.”

He paused. 

“I’m sorry for being, uh, being all snappish, earlier,” he said. And then, “I’ll call you. Sometime. I- I promise.”

“You can’t, like, come with us?” Phil asked. He backtracked immediately. “I mean, I’m still a little… wary? Of Tubbo. You get me, right?”

“No,” Wilbur said. “Yes. I get you, I mean. Yes, I get you, but no, I don’t want to leave here, Phil, I’m home — but I don’t want to… cut you out of my life… like… yeah.”

Phil brightened up visibly at that, and Wilbur couldn’t help the kind, genuine smile that curled his lips. His father pat him awkwardly on the shoulder — not quite a hug, Wilbur thought that neither of them were ready for a hug just yet, but the same sentiments were still evident in the gesture. 

“I’m glad,” Phil said, “I just… I missed you, son.”

Wilbur buried his hands deeper into his pockets and nodded slowly, a little hunched into himself. “Yeah. Me too. I’ve… I’ve missed you, too… Phil.”

His father smiled at him, warm and hesitant — and there was nothing in the world that sounded more appealing to Wilbur than to melt into the embrace of his parent, but they weren’t there yet. He wasn’t there yet. If Phil tried to hug him now, he wouldn’t react all that well. 

(Part of this revulsion came from a phantom pain pulsing in his chest. The rest of it came from somewhere that tasted a little like self-loathing.)

“You should talk to Niki,” Phil told him, voice low, “I think there’s something between the two of you that… you need to… hash out.” He shrugged. “But what do I know, kids and their business and all, right?”

Wilbur laughed nervously. Phil squeezed his shoulder, once, and gave him a little shove in the direction of his- his ex-best friend.

This was fine, this was going well, he talked to his father and didn’t end up storming away or having a sword get stuck through him. Phil was the easy part; Phil didn’t push back, Phil bent to his challenges and let himself be steamrolled by a desire to reconnect with his son. But not everyone was like Phil — Niki, namely, Wilbur knew that she was never one to accept Wilbur’s bullshit for what he wanted it to be.

He stumbled all the way to Niki. He was terrified of her, of what she did to him, but he was ready, he was willing, and he-

“Niki,” he started.

She turned to him, an eyebrow raised, heat behind her daggered eyes.

And fucking nevermind- Prime, he wasn’t ready. 

He wasn’t ready at-fucking-all. 

He needed and he wanted to say a thousand, a million things all at once, yet at the same time he felt like he’d immediately trail off into silence if he opened his mouth again. He needed to apologise, he needed to excuse himself, he wanted to fall to his knees and beg for forgiveness as much as he wanted to snide her and have her slap him because it was what he deserved- he was a bad person, a bad son, a bad friend- and he-

He was trying. He couldn’t be the worst, ever, if he tried. 

Because trying implied that he wanted to get better, was indeed getting better, and he might forever be convinced that he was a horrible person but that thought meant nothing when his actions proved otherwise. It was a simple case of disparity between heart and mind, all confusing, all impossible.

He was trying, and part of it meant cutting himself some slack where he needed it the most. He couldn’t judge himself too harshly, or at all, when he hadn’t fucked up his second chance.

“What,” she said curtly.

“I need to talk to you,” he said. His confident, straight posture had given up on him; this wasn’t a game of diplomacy, he could take diplomacy like a fish could take water — this was nothing more than a case of two estranged friends. He was shit at estranged friends.

“What do you have to say?” Niki said. She turned her nose up at him. “Because I have nothing, nothing to say to you.”

Her hair was pink. She smelled of gunpowder and vanilla extract. When he woke up revived, his old coat had been missing its hood, and a blue-tinted memory of a lady by a burning tree clued him into where it must have gone. 

There was a crater in the forests by Snowchester, a crater deep and wide and reminiscent of another haunted by the ghost of constitutions. Tubbo said something about Jack and Niki and Tommy and explosions, when Wilbur asked.

But that wasn’t his battle to fight. She was angry at him, and rightfully so.

“I have to apologise to you,” he said quietly, as earnestly as he could without letting fear scratch the edges of his words. “No, I- I want to apologise to you. I think- I think I’ve-“

“I don’t want to hear it,” Niki snapped. “I don’t want to hear your apologies, Wil. I know you wouldn’t mean it.”

Wilbur blinked, furrowed his eyebrows. “But, but I do…”

“No, you won’t,” she cut in harshly, “because I know you’re just going to lie again.” She narrowed her eyes at him. “Because you lied- you lied to all of us! Me! You- you had a dream, and I followed it, but then you just- you ruined it!”

He’d heard those words somewhere, a long time ago, a son to a dictator and a father smiling cruelly at a dying man. He didn’t realise what Fundy had meant, not until it was too late, not until everything else had come crashing down on him at the same time and he was left with darkness and heartache in the void.

“You manipulated me, you manipulated all of us- into- into joining your impossible dream!” 

Niki shoved back against him, and he stumbled, and his eyes widened and heat gathered unfairly in his tear ducts. She jabbed a finger into his chest. 

“And then you left us the moment it was convenient for you!”

And Wilbur had-

(excuses and explanations and justifications and he didn’t lie because he believed in his lies too and his dream wasn’t impossible but only if it belonged to him and he never manipulated anyone at least not to his knowledge at least not to the best of his intentions and he tried he did but trying wasn’t enough was never enough and he was as truthful as he was deceitful and he didn’t leave he died he wanted to die he asked it of his father and his father obliged he never wanted to leave he just didn’t want to continue existing wished he never existed in the first place because he ruined and he hurt and it was all he was good for and he was wrong, wrong, wrong, he was lying to himself and he had-)

-nothing to refute her words.

“Do you have any idea- I grieved for you, Wil!” she cried. “I didn’t- I didn’t know what to do, because you betrayed me, but you died, and I didn’t eat, didn’t sleep, didn’t bake, I tried to run away, but- but nothing helped, until…”

He nodded, biting his lips together. Her outburst felt like it had been a long time coming, and as hurt as he felt, he knew that this was just something she needed to let out. He endured. Maybe he deserved it-

(Be kinder to yourself. You deserve responsibility, but you deserve kindness too.)

“Until I found these people,” she continued. “And they? They’ve done more for me than you ever did.”

He felt like glass on the verge of shattering, heart in shoddy pieces and windswept in the face of Niki’s hurricane. 

“Did you ever care? For L’manberg, for the people, for- for me…?” Niki whispered. 

(“If you’re going to kill anyone, kill me,” he had said to a dictator, a long time ago, had offered his life up in exchange for Niki’s, because as long as she was safe, as long as she wouldn’t get hurt, he was ready to die.)

“Do you want to hear the easy,” Wilbur rasped out, “or the difficult answer to- to that question?”

Niki looked at him in disbelief. “The easy answer,” she said, eyes shining, face contorted in rage. 

“No,” Wilbur said. “I never cared. For anyone, anyone at all.”

Something in him twisted, turned, screamed. He'd never know how best to handle these kinds of things.

“Not L’manberg, not my family, no one, and it- all of it, all of you-“ he couldn’t stop talking, and there were droplets of tears leaking out his eyes, “were the key and the tools to my power, and you all fell so, so easily under my control, because L’manberg was meant to divide, to fight, to go to war, and I’d do it, all of it, all over again, if it meant that I, and only I, will have- have nothing, but… but destruction, and chaos, and I’m a bad person, the bad guy, and you need to take me down. And I’m back now, and things are going to change, and this? All of this? Snowchester is nothing but a facade and Tubbo is nothing but a pawn and I am nothing but a fraud.”

He felt breathless. 

He was crying. 

"I'm going to hurt everyone, Niki," he rasped out, "and you were right, irrefutably."

The cold air stung his skin, stung his heart; he was getting rusty at fighting, both in weapons and in words. The knife of his tongue had gotten blunt, rounded into a tool that asked, a tool that helped, a tool that protected instead of jabbed. He hoped Tubbo hadn’t heard any of that.

Niki sniffed and wiped her nose, still glaring at him. “The hard answer,” she spat. “And don’t you ever lie to me again.”

He swallowed. He really shouldn’t have said anything at all — it would’ve been much, much easier then. 

“Yes,” he muttered. “Always have. Always will.”

“So why did you destroy L’manberg?” Niki asked with her voice choked, wiping at her eyes furiously. “Why did you die?”

“It went bad,” Wilbur said. He hesitated, but it needed to be said. “I went bad.”

(The smell of bread. L'Manberg. The Revolution. Bullying Tommy. Sparring with Techno. The wind. Being president. People cheering for me. Fundy growing up. The van. Tubbo building everything. Phil protecting me. Sally the Salmon. Philza stabbing me with a sword. A large explosion. The taste of salt. Air in my lungs. Winning the election. A ravine. Techno's armoury.

Books. Tunnels. Arrows.

Niki.)

“I want to apologise.” Wilbur lowered his head. “If you’ll let me. I don’t want to fight you, I don’t want to fight at all, not anymore.”

“You are not forgiven, Wilbur Soot,” Niki told him, eyes flashing with dozens upon dozens of emotions he couldn’t put names to, “and I don’t want to hear your apologies. I don’t want them now.”

He nodded, closing his eyes. “Okay,” he said. “That’s okay-“

“But,” Niki interrupted, “but. That's not okay- it's..."

She exhaled in frustration.

"It's not okay, because even after everything, I do want to forgive you," she said. "Eventually. I want you to come to me next week, and if I’ve changed my mind, I’ll forgive you.”

“…And if you haven’t?”

“Then come back to me the week after that,” she replied. Her eyes flashed with conviction. “And the week after that, and the week after, and so on, and so forth, until…”

“Until you’ve forgiven me,” he finished. His heart leapt into his throat.

Niki nodded, still glaring as heatedly at him. “I want to see you,” she said. “You were my best friend, were, and I want to believe that, that after all this time, after you died and came back, you’ve changed. For the better.”

“I like to think that I have,” he said quietly. “I think you’ve changed, too. I think, I think you look… happier.”

“I am,” Niki affirmed. “This is the happiest I’ve been in a long time since…” she trailed off. “I’ve been baking, again-“ and Wilbur understood, “and I’m not going to let anyone, especially you, take that away from me.” 

But she was kind. And maybe she cared for him, too, maybe that was the reason she’d been so angry at him. 

She asked, “And you?”

“…Me?” he asked slowly. “…Am I happy?”

He paused. He looked around, looked at Ranboo, looked at Tubbo, looked at the attic of their house and the shores of Snowchester. He looked at Phil, at Niki, thought about Fundy, all the promises he’d made, the idea that he’d banked so many of his most precious relationships on trust he hadn’t known he was still capable of giving. 

“I will be,” he decided. Yet another promise, yet another path into the unknown. “I’m trying my best, I think.”

“Good,” she said curtly, giving him a sharp nod. “That’s something I want to hear coming from you.”

He nodded back wordlessly.

“Next week, Wilbur Soot,” she said. “You know where to find me.”

And then she turned away, her back towards him as she made her way to Phil and Ranboo. 

Wilbur watched her go. His head spun. 

He found himself stumbling into his next adversary as Tubbo finished his conversation with Technoblade and rotated over to Phil.

Neither Wilbur nor Techno approached the other, but somehow they still found their way to each other. 

He didn’t have much to say to Techno, or anything at all, really; they’d been close, a long time ago, and then they weren’t close anymore, simple as that. They’d crossed paths again when Techno agreed to join Pogtopia, but by that time Wilbur had started keeping all his allies at arm’s length; Techno had been little more than Wilbur’s favourite wildcard, towards the end.

Wilbur knew what happened in Doomsday, knew the array of betrayals all branching out of Technoblade’s Achilles’ heel. But at the end, he also knew that Tommy had been fond of Techno, so there had to be more than what meets the eye. 

“Wilbur,” Techno started, nodding at him. “Nice scarf.”

Wilbur nodded back. “Thank you,” he said. “I hope you and Tubbo weren’t talking about a potential Doomsday reenactment on Snowchester.”

“Close, close, but not quite,” Techno said, shrugging, “we were talkin' about nuclear warfare.”

“…I hope that that’s a joke.”

“Of course it is.” Techno chuckled, lips twitching. Wilbur couldn’t find the joke as funny. “Calm down, Wilbur, as long as you guys aren’t goin' around and makin' governments, we’re cool.”

“I don’t think that... that’s going to be a... a problem, anytime soon, or ever, for us specifically,” Wilbur said. He felt horribly weak in the knees. “The last governments either of us made ended horribly.”

He had been sincere, straight-faced, but Techno still found it funny. 

“You know,” Techno said after a short, subdued laughing fit, “I haven’t seen much of Tommy around, lately. At all, really, any clue where he might’ve gone?”

Wilbur swallowed. “No,” he said. Tommy’s death was, had to be, as much of a secret as it could be. Tommy had a lot of enemies — and by extension, they had a lot of enemies — who knew what would happen if the news of his death became widespread? “I haven’t seen him anywhere, actually,” Wilbur continued. “Haven’t seen him since, uh, since… November. Since my death, that is.”

“Huh. That’s weird.” Techno hummed lowly and crossed his arms together. “Last I saw him, we were screamin' at each other over the crater of your country. And afterwards, things would disappear from my chests in my house, but. Huh. Well. They stopped.”

“Really,” Wilbur said dryly. 

“I kind of miss having to restock my golden apples and potions every few days,” Techno said. He was tapping a hoofed finger against his arm. “Tommy’s still got my Axe of Peace, you know that? I think I want him to return it, one day.”

(Technoblade never dies, never cries, never loses; Technoblade never mourned his losses and betrayals only added a number to the growing list of enemies he’d gathered; Technoblade owned the strongest armour and weapons on the server and none of it was strong enough to hide the beating heart he wore on his sleeve.

Technoblade spoke in jokes and jabs and riddles. Wilbur Soot was a wordsmith.

They were close, once. And then they weren’t. Simple as that.)

“Is that all that matters to you?” Wilbur asked, not unkindly. “After everything, Technoblade? Is that all you really care about?” But without patience, without any sugar left to coat his words. “Your Axe…?”

Technoblade was silent for a moment. A moment too long, in which Wilbur felt something seize up in his stomach and straighten his spine and harden a scowl on his face, because for a moment there he was ready to think differently of Technoblade, but of course, of course, he was overzealous, too hopeful, too ready to welcome someone else back into his life and rekindle something that had died a long time ago-

(Be kind. Be kind.)

“You’re not getting it, Wilbur,” Techno said, levelling his gaze. “It’s not the Axe that I want. I want Tommy to return it.”

Wilbur breathed deeply. He had to keep reminding himself — he was the type who was quick to jump to conclusions of both extremes. 

“I saw a grave, back there,” Techno muttered. “He’s not dead, is he?”

“No,” Wilbur replied, and looked away. “Of course he isn’t-“ but his voice cracking said otherwise, “you don’t know shit about what happened, Technoblade.”

“I don’t.” A pause. “I wish I did. I wish I could’ve done something about it.”

“Do you regret it?” Wilbur asked. “Doomsday.”

“No,” Techno replied. “November sixteenth, do you?”

And here was the problem: L’manberg needed to go. 

L’manberg was corrupt, was turning unrecognisable, was becoming something that people could use as leverage against one another, was starting to grow roots in violence and forgetting its legacy of peace. L’manberg was no longer his, his dream, and it died as he did — ugly, painful, in disgrace.

“Yes,” he said.

Here was the truth: he still missed it.

L’manberg was the home of many people. It was the bakery, the van, the docks, the podium, the white house, the walls, the space program, the Elton John house, the river that ran behind Jack Manifold’s house. It was life, unbridled, and for a while it had been everything he wanted, his dreams realised far above his crumbling shoulders. 

It couldn’t live without inevitably resorting to violence, was what he learnt in the Revolution. He had the idea of destroying it far too early in its lifetime. 

“I hurt people when I destroyed L’manberg,” he said softly. “I betrayed the trust of everyone around me, Techno. I would destroy the nation a second time, a third time, if I need to, but I’m not going to betray my friends ever again.” He was taller than Technoblade, and he used every inch he had on him as he straightened up and glared down on Techno. “If you expect me to do otherwise, hell, if you try anything against us… I’ve died before and I came back. There’s nothing in the world that can stop me from-“

“Wilbur,” Techno interrupted, “we are in peacetime.” He shook his head slightly. “There’s no need to threaten me, I’m not interested in harmin' people that have learned their lesson.”

“Our lesson,” Wilbur said, tasting the word as if it were a bitter pill in his mouth. “Out of fear, Technoblade? You destroyed L’manberg so that no other nation would ever be built, out of fear?”

“It worked, didn’t it?” Techno said, his voice chilly.

“I will never understand you,” Wilbur said.

“Of course you won’t. I’m me, no one understands Technoblade like I do.” Techno flashed a smirk, but it disappeared as quickly as it came. “But we’re digressing from the point, I feel like.”

“The point,” Wilbur repeated. “What was the point?”

Techno paused, meeting Wilbur’s eyes head-on. “The point,” he started, “was that Tommy hasn’t been around for months. And no one’s seen him since you returned.”

“Yeah,” Wilbur said. “We haven’t seen him around, either. We don’t know where he’s gone, Techno, no one does.”

(Wheat fields and white skies and home and peace all year round and I’ll see you when I see you.

Empty houses and flowers dotting the fields and a heart beating alongside his, almost imperceptibly soft, memories that would never fade from his mind ever again and I’ll be with you forever.

Wilbur didn’t know where Tommy had gone. No one did. He hoped that his little brother was happy, wherever he was.)

“Something tells me you know a little more than that,” Techno pressed.

He knew. He had to have known.

“But that’s whatever. Here.” He handed Wilbur an item — a bundle of flowers, yellow roses, thorns and leaves and a deep sentiment Techno couldn’t put directly into words. “If you see him anywhere, give him these, will you?”

“They’ll die before he’ll see them,” Wilbur said, clutching the bundle of flowers and refusing to wince as thorns pressed into his skin.

“I trust you not to let them,” Techno said easily. “Consider it a favour. I’ll repay it however you need me to.”

Wilbur nodded. “You should leave,” he said, without any heat whatsoever to his words. “If I see you again, I think it’ll be far too soon.”

Techno brushed off his comment with a half-shrug as he turned away. “Good to see you, Wilbur.”

“You too, Techno,” Wilbur said, and was surprised to find that he meant it.

(Wilbur planted Techno’s yellow roses by the door to Tommy’s house the next time he visited the area. 

He would never understand Technoblade like he used to, never again, but the flowers had to mean something, had to say so much more about Techno. He hadn’t regretted destroying L’manberg, but maybe he was like Wilbur. Maybe Tommy meant a little more to him, too.)

Later, he watched the Syndicate head off as Tubbo gripped his hand so tightly that he couldn’t feel his fingers. Ranboo sent them one last lingering look before the group disappeared outside the wall of Snowchester. 

Wilbur had way too many fucking promises to keep. 

And yet — he put his faith in every one of them.

(“Hey, Wilbur, sorry I wasn't there to greet them, I was, uh. I was priming the nukes, pointing them at their base… just in case, you know? Preemptive measurements, you get it.”

“…So, Tubbo, was no one going to tell me that the nukes weren’t a joke?”)

Wilbur never wanted to come back.

After dying for the third time and having a part of him break off to become a ghost, he hadn’t cared about living anymore. But now, he’d put to rest everything that ever made him angry, and he was glad to say, at last, that he was alive, and had no plans on rectifying that anytime soon, or ever. 

He couldn’t say that living was all that terrible; sure, he’d lost far too many parts of himself that he’ll never get back; sure, he never stopped wishing that things would go back to the way they were, when they were easier and he was unconditionally happy; sure, the dark still beckoned to him and he lingered on lit fires a little longer than he probably should — but all these thoughts were ones that skittered off as soon as he woke up and opened his blinds.

Every day without fail, Ranboo showed up at his door to greet him for the morning and sometimes came bearing a small gift — cookies, bread, cake.

Every day without fail, Tubbo asked about his checklist and made sure his food stock never ran out and talked to him like they were old friends — scary stories and cooking recipes and war songs they used to sing around a campfire.

Every day without fail, Wilbur woke up, looked out his window, out to the sea, and breathed in cold air that burned his lungs a little, just enough to make his nose run. 

He watched the sun rise daily, allowed himself a few minutes of silence at the break of dawn where he’d look at the colours of the sky for what they were, and be grateful, be happy, let himself listen to the universe hum down at him, hear the words for what they could be and smile back with all he had.

(And the universe looked down on him to say-)

He taught Tubbo and Ranboo Piglin until they could begin teaching Michael how to speak Common. He was there when Michael crafted his first sword, he was there chaperoning Michael on his first trip to Snowchester’s forest, he was there when Ranboo heard his son say ‘Dad’ in Common for the first time, and he was there when Michael trotted up to Tubbo and told him:

(I love you.)

He took care of the flowers in Tommy’s house, the yard of which had turned into something of a garden — well-kept grass and assorted flowers and a worn bench and a broken jukebox that Wilbur couldn’t bring himself to replace. He brought flowers back for Ranboo sometimes, made sure to include alliums in his bundles because Ranboo loved alliums, because alliums were important to Tommy, too, and Ranboo let slip one day that Tommy only warmed up to him when they started exchanging flowers as gifts.

He remembered New L’manberg, Tubbo’s L’manberg, and he remembered the way Tubbo never seemed to grieve the destruction of what was his. He knew Tubbo needed something, though, so he built a dome in Snowchester and lured a few bees in and started a bee farm, added that to his list of errands and gave it up for Tubbo when he had too many things to do in one day. Tubbo brightened when he tended to the bees — a piece of his innocence reclaimed — and it was worth the work to build the farm and so, so much more, Wilbur decided. After only a day, Wilbur came back to find it fully automated. Tubbo was an enigma.

He visited Sam by the Prison and he visited Niki in her underground city and he visited Phil in the Arctic and he ‘came across’ Fundy by the ruins of his country far too many times for it to be a coincidence. He’d been weak, once, when he was alone. And now he had people again. It was a matter of keeping what he had, and he was getting stronger by the day, strong enough to stand his ground with his arms splayed out beside him and protect everything he’d been allowed to take back.

And Tommy?

Tommy was nowhere, and everywhere at once.

(“Thanks for everything,” Wilbur wanted to say, but Tommy already knew.)

Tommy laid six feet underneath a grave in Snowchester, a grave by a tower on a hill adorned with memories and living legacies.

Tommy was gone; to the rest of the server he’d left for another server, someday to return, to the few in the know, he had left for another server, thank you, someday to return. To Wilbur, Death had come and treated his brother kindly — she had given him beauty where he deserved it, and he would have his freedom in Elysium, in Valhalla, in Eden, under endless skies and safety.

Tommy was everywhere. His memory haunted the Prime Path, L’manberg’s crater, the Community House, the Prison, Snowchester, everywhere. He lived on in the bedtime stories that Ranboo told Michael, he lived on in the walls that Tubbo fortified everyday, he lived on in every breath that Wilbur inhaled, in every step that he dared to take, in every word he spoke and every day he woke up ready to live.

Tommy was dead. 

Sometimes Wilbur cried just hearing his name. Sometimes Wilbur could go on for hours reminiscing about his shenanigans and laugh at the memory of his spitfire jokes. Sometimes he felt a whole lot of nothing, emptiness in the space beneath his heart where there’s smoke in place of an old broken hearth.

Thus was the nature of grief, he thought, he learnt. Things would never be the same again without Tommy, and this was a reality that he needed to live in, whether he liked it or not, whether he thought he could. 

("You are strong, you are strong, you are strong enough, stronger than you know. For you are the child of void and the child of darkness — love, quiet and soft, guardian of the innocent and the vulnerable, the deep space between the stars. And you are the child of fire and the child of light — love, burning and bright, precious metals and infinity screaming forever upwards.")

Still.

He lived.

(So said the universe, kind as it was, cold as it could be, a distant presence by his periphery and stars blinking awake at night as he slept.

Death swept the lands around him, promising him Paradise at the end of his road, and though he had a brother on the other side, he still had a family on this one, and damn him if he ever tried to betray them for any reason henceforth.

His mother looked down on him and smiled. 

She opened her mouth to speak-

'You are love, and you are loved, forever, forever, forever-'

-and he couldn't hear her, would never hear her again. But she promised to take care of his brother. That alone was enough.)

And one day, he would pick up a guitar and learn to sing. 

And one day, he would pick up a pen and learn to write.

And one day, he would pick up a crossbow and he would answer to the call of duty, when word of Tommy’s death would bleed out and his enemies would rear their heads at the opportunity to strike.

He would wake up to a blaring alarm, Ranboo banging on his door to tell him about a fight against, say, the Eggpire, and he would reach for his communicator to call in a favour. Tubbo would hand him armour and he would wear it without complaint, tucking his scarf underneath his chestplate to keep it from coming undone. 

He would be there, gathered in the castle of a traitor king, and he’d smile genially at Eret when they greeted him. Everyone would be there — allies, acquaintances, the enemies of their enemies — and some people would gape at Wilbur Soot, the dead back alive, but the ones that mattered wouldn’t.

He wouldn’t lead them, of course, he could lead a nation but he couldn’t lead an army, and he’d barely led L’manberg at all, back then. He would sit back, watch as the server bickered and bantered and threw jabs at one another and ignored one missing person among them, and he would smile to himself, thinking back to a time long gone. 

The server was family, after all, and he was a part of it whether he liked it or not.

When they would start to leave, Wilbur would hang towards the back of the group, a fond smile still on his face. He would reminisce, and someone would notice, perhaps Tubbo, and he would ask, “Are you coming, Wilbur?”

And when all of this would happen, he’d answer, “Of course,” and follow his family out to fight.

But until then, Wilbur was content.