Chapter Text
The air was filled with smoke and despair. Philza couldn’t even hear his own wing flaps over the explosions and screams down below, but his destination was not the horrible civil war occurring on the land. He swooped down to an unassuming building and ran across broken and derelict floorboards. He pushed through the secret door and raced down the long hallway, causing the torches on the wall to flicker as he passed. He could hear Wilbur muttering to himself before he even reached the end room.
Philza slowed and stood in the doorway, every nerve alight with anxiety. Wilbur was standing in front of the button, fingers twitching.
“What are you doing?” Philza asked. Wilbur jumped in surprise.
The fallen leader spun around, eyes wide and fanatic. His curly hair was matted, his long coat shredded, and he had dirt smudged across his face and hands.
“Phil?” Wilbur whispered, fingers twitching again.
“Uh huh,” Philza said. “What do you think you’re doing?”
Wilbur stared at him in guilty silence. It reminded Philza of when he would catch Wilbur trying to eat something he wasn’t supposed to when he was just a little Soot. “Uh.” Wilbur cut himself off, eyes dancing as he tried to think of a good way to explain himself.
“Wilbur.”
Wilbur’s face suddenly stretched in an awkward smile. As if he almost couldn’t remember how a smile was supposed to work. “I- Okay, I will admit,” he said haltingly. “Do you know what this button is?” He gestured to the little protrusion in the stone.
Of course Philza knew. “....I do.”
“Have you heard the s-song… on the walls, before? Have you heard the song?”
Philza could feel his hands shaking. He was starting to realize, as he looked around at the carved words in the walls, just how late he was in coming to help his son.
“I was just saying, I made this big point and it was poignant and it was the… it umm.. There WAS a special place where men could go, but it’s-it’s not there anymore, it’s no-”
Philza cut him off by stepping forward and grabbing Wilbur by the shoulders lovingly. He hoped Wilbur wouldn’t feel his hands shaking. “But it is there,” he said a little too brightly. “You’ve just won it back, Will.”
Something broke in Wilbur’s eyes. “PHIL, I’M ALWAYS SO CLOSE TO PRESSING THIS BUTTON, PHIL. I have been-I have BEEN here…. Like seven or eight times I have been here, seven or eight times.” His eyes spoke of pain that Philza could not understand. He looked like an addict with the way his eyes stared emptily at Philza and the twitching of his muscles and fingers. He tore at his hair with one hand and turned to pace as he muttered, “Ooohhh they’re gonna come in here I don’t want them in here I need to blo- Phil, I’ve been here so many tim- They’re fighting! They’re fighting, Phil!”
Wilbur paused where he stood, staring at the button like a starving man.
Philza took a slow breath. His heart was breaking as he tried to ignore his thoughts. Where did I go wrong where did I go wrong where did I go wrong where did I g-
“And you want to just blow it all up?” he said softly, trying to keep his voice even.
“Oh, I do… I do,” he sighed longingly. “I think-I.” He covered his mouth with his hand, trying to tear his eyes away from the button.
Philza knew he had to appeal to what Wilbur had cared about the most. “You fought so hard to get this land back-”
“I don’t know if it even works anymore,” Wilbur said, obviously not listening as his fingers brushed the stone by the button. “I don’t know if the button even works...I could…. I could press it….”
Philza saw the look in Wilbur’s eye and grabbed his son’s wrist. “Do you really want to take that risk?” he asked seriously, his hat hiding the fear in his eyes.
Wilbur just stared into the distance, an impassive look on his face.
“There is a lot of TNT,” Philza tried to reason, “potentially connected to that button.”
The pause lasted only a moment before Wilbur’s fist tightened.
“Phil. There was a saying used by a traitor, once part of L’manburg, I don’t know if you’ve heard of Erret? He had a saying, Phil.”
Philza’s eyes widened, realizing Wilbur’s other hand was on the button. Wilbur lifted his head, tears streaming down his smiling face as his voice broke a little.
“It was never meant to be.”
Philza heard the click. It was such a final sound. It filled the winged man with panic. He jumped forward, grabbing Wilbur as the air filled with dust and noise. Philza’s cries were drowned out by the explosions as he was hit in the back and shoulders with flying debris. It settled all too slowly and he could hear the explosions going off down the chain as he pushed rock and dust off of himself and Wilbur with his wings. Wilbur got to his knees from where he had been laying under Philza. Philza couldn’t see his face through his hair and the dust in the air.
Philza grabbed his son’s shoulders and shook him a little bit. “Will!” Wilbur’s shoulders heaved under his hands. “It’s all gone!”
Wilbur took several deep breaths, turning his face to the light now coming through the holes in the ceiling and walls. Tears still streamed down his face in muddy tracks, but his expression was one of reckless relief and burning insanity. Philza took a step back, nearly tripping over a beam.
Wilbur stood up, chest rising and falling as if he couldn’t get enough of the smell of dust and soot. “MY L’manbug, Phil!! MY unfinished symphony, forever unfinished.” He raised his arms as if he were praising the very idea. “If I can’t have this, Phil, no one can!” He turned to Philza, a fire in his eyes and violence in his movement. Philza took another step back, shock and fear evident in his face.
Wilbur searched his father’s face for a moment, registering the fear. The fallen leader expression turned from horrible joy to horrified guilt. He pulled out a sword from his belt so quickly he almost slashed himself across the chest. He dropped the sword in front of Philza, tearing at his hair again . “Kill me, Phil, kill me. Stab with the sword, murder me now.”
Philza stood in shock, shaking. His heart was being torn out of his chest. He could feel the heat of the tears streaming down his cheeks as he stared at the man who had once been his little boy. His baby boy who was now begging Philza to do the one thing he couldn’t possibly attempt.
“Look!” Wilbur dragged Philza to the completely open side of the building. The winged father could see the people of this broken land helping each other up. He could hear their cries of pain. His eyes landed on a small knot of people below staring up at them. “They all want you to! Do it, Phil. Kill me. Phil. Kill. Me.”
“I CAN’T!” Philza finally exclaimed, ripping his sleeve from Wilbur’s pleading hand. “Wilbur Soot, you’re my son!”
“Phil, kill me!”
Philza shook his head, putting his hands in his own hair and mantling his wings around himself as if to hide from the idea. “No matter what you do, no matter what you’ve done, I-”
Wilbur grabbed his father’s wrists, making Philza cut off with a gasp. “Phil! Look! LOOK! How much work went into this and it’s gone?!” Philza turned his eyes to look out across the ruined expanse. He felt something catch in his throat.
“Do it,” Wilbur said, placing the sword’s hilt in Philza’s hand.
Philza felt a sob rack his body as he realized what needed to be done. Wilbur wanted this now. He felt guilty now, but who knows how long that would last before caved to the insanity again.
Philza wrapped one arm around Wilbur gently and pressed the tip in Wilbur’s chest. He pulled his boy in for one last hug, shuddering as he felt the sword push through flesh and bone. Wilbur rested his head on his father’s shoulder. His breathing slowed and his body relaxed for the first time in months.
He closed his eyes one last time and died.
Philza felt another sob drag out his soul and then he wailed, burying his head in Wilbur’s broken body. There were no more words. There was only the sound of a broken father, surrounded by a broken people, trapped in a broken land.