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Wilbur’s eyes have bags under them. He’s haggard, drawn, cheekbones prominent as chicken ribs. One of his eyes has a sunburst of broken veins in it-- the kind that always makes Tommy think of allergies or sissy crying fits, or maybe of being punched in the face really hard. Wilbur looks like shit, basically. He looks like shit and he’s acting worse and he’s Tommy’s responsibility, his right hand man-- or Tommy’s his, really, has been since the revolution-- and anything he does to Manburg while he’s off his rocker will be Tommy’s fault and Tommy’s alone.
Wilbur is a bowstring drawn so taut it might snap at any moment, a structure creaking ominously in high winds. Tommy’s seen buildings like that before, in villages where there aren’t any players around with the drive to build: they wear down, wood rotting out from under their foundations and stone crumbling like stale cake, until one day they break and someone gets hurt. Gets killed, even.
You move careful when you find a house like those. You fix them up if you have time, but you do it cautiously, demolish what’s there and go from the bottom up. You make it so it’s shiny and new, someplace a person can shelter without fearing for their life. That’s not an option with Wilbur, but the care is still there. It has to still be there, because Tommy is pretty sure he’s all that Wilbur has left.
Dust coats the insides of his lungs. He breathed a lot of it in when he collapsed the tunnel. Stupid fucking idea, but Wilbur was going on about how he’s a showman and they were all gonna die soon and how Tommy should let him press the button, just let him press the button, and Tommy had--
Tommy had thought, fine. But only if it was on Tommy’s terms. Only if Wilbur had to look someone in the eye as he did it.
And Big Q is-- Quackity is collateral damage. Incentive, maybe, in case Tommy isn’t enough to tip the scales. Someone new for Wilbur to send to his death, someone he might regret killing in a mad quest for revenge.
Tommy’s chest feels tight. He lets his helmet hit the floor with a clang.
“Take off your armor, Big Q,” he says, and his voice comes out calm like he’s in the field, giving commands with his skeleton jittering under his skin. He tries to picture the dark blue of his uniform in his peripheral vision, because he always felt more capable when he was wearing it. Who knows, maybe the real fall of L’Manburg happened when they all stopped trying to be so stylish.
Quackity stares at him and doesn’t move. Tommy starts towards him-- he’ll shove him if he has to, this is not the time for hesitation-- but Quackity strips off his netherite then, face ashen as he fumbles at the clasps. His armor disappears into his inventory.
Good. Now they’re bare, the three of them, like in L’Manburg’s early days when they fought with words out in the light.
“If you press the button, we die with you.”
Quackity keeps quiet at that, grim around the eyes. He has this quality about him sometimes lately, where he sets his shoulders and his gaze goes hot and calculating, savage as a dog turning wild again, and that’s how he looks now. If Wilbur’s gone ragged, Quackity’s crystallized-- some part of him’s boiling down, leaving the hardest bits behind. “If you wanna kill all of Manburg, you’ll die with us.”
Wilbur’s been watching him all this time, still but for his hands, tense in an arrested motion sort of way. He starts toward the button, and Quackity bursts out, “No, nonono,” trying to herd him back.
“Hey, let him, let him,” Tommy blurts, putting out a hand to ward him off and praying it's not a mistake. The whole scene feels painfully immediate, too fast to second-guess his own decisions. He’s been in battles like this, where time shrank down into microseconds and all his senses got more saturated-- the stench of blood and sweat thickened in the air, the mud on people’s faces put in sharp relief-- but he wishes it wouldn’t keep happening because of Wilbur. If Wilbur wouldn’t do these things, go broody for days on end and then get high-strung and pitchy, give these crazy speeches about narratives and villainy-- if he would act normal, proper, stable-- if Wilbur wouldn’t have paranoid fits and hit him, or refuse to eat unless Tommy tastes the food first, or insist on wearing the same coat so long it gets caked in dirt--
Wilbur puts his hand beside the button and presses his forehead against the wall, ringed by TNT and smudgy lyrics. Like he’s sheltering the button from the elements, or it’s a fire he’s curling towards for warmth. His skin is so very pale.
“Oh, fuck you,” he breathes, and his fingers spasm. Tommy tenses even though he shouldn’t, he needs to keep up morale, and Quackity makes a strangled sound. The next second Wilbur jerks away, paces three steps, wrings his hands through his greasy bangs. “Why d’you have to make it so hard-- I should have just-- I’m such a fucking showman--”
He cuts off into muttering, squeezing his eyes shut. Tommy’s muscles are sore from how hard he’s fighting trembling.
They’re beneath enemy territory, close enough to the surface that any passerby could hear their shouting if they tried, but the danger feels closer than a lurking mob-- the kind of threat that holds you back from sleeping because you hear the the skeleton clattering on the other side of the wall, patrolling for weak points with its bow in hand.
That’s how talking with Wilbur feels, nowadays. Like any moment the shadowy thing behind his eyes is gonna erupt and drown them all, like he’s about to open the door and let the night flood in. Tommy knows him like the back of his hand, of course he does, but sometimes he sees bits and pieces of him at the corner of his eye-- the edge of that fucking coat, the jittery motions of his pacing, a sliver of moon from the surface drifting down and illuminating one dark iris in a strip of skin-- and drops his hand to his sword before he can think better of it.
Wilbur's breathing slows. His posture straightens a little as he meets Tommy’s eyes, and Tommy stares back, trying to impart sanity with his gaze, to keep steady so Wilbur has something to hold onto. To bring him back to shore. Slowly, slowly, Wilbur lets his hands fall to his sides. Quackity shudders, mouth curling, but Wilbur doesn’t turn and look at him. He looks at Tommy as he relaxes into himself, as the foundations creak back down. He holds his gaze, still burning with the charisma that gathered him his army, that let him serenade the troops like it was nothing. A fucking showman indeed.
“You love it, don’t you, Tommy,” he says, soft and defeated. “You love L’Manburg.”
“Yes,” Tommy promises, because a good soldier knows an opening when he sees one, but when Wilbur turns to Quackity his knees try to give out. Wilbur’s gaze has always burned, sure, but now it feels like he’s burning up the light instead of giving it off, like even darkness bends towards him-- like if he fought hard enough he could even devour the sun. He’s in a state of mind where he’d want to, even, because sunlight means nothing to him if it doesn’t fall on a free nation or some shit.
It doesn't matter. Wilbur can be as fucked up as he needs to be; it makes sense, really, what with them living in a glorified cave and scrabbling for nutrients as Schlatt destroys everything they fought and died for.
He'll come back to himself eventually. He just needs Tommy to hold him down until then, to get him to eat and sleep and stop talking nonsense. Tommy owes him too much to back out on being his friend when Wilbur needs him most.
The dust’s started to settle. It was sundown when they came in, and digging themselves out now would risk alerting mobs or Manburg to their position, maybe even get them killed or set off the bombs. They’re gonna be stuck in the bunker all night.
That’s okay. Quackity’s talking to Wilbur, and Tommy can interject soon enough, and then they can all sit down and eat potatoes until morning when they can leave. He has to be cautious till then, is all. Has to watch for signs of crumbling.
Has to steady his own breathing, and remind himself there’s plenty of air to go around, and plenty of torchlight too.
Monsters aren’t getting in on his watch.