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Wilbur’s not alright.
It’s pretty fucking obvious, if Tommy’s being honest. Wilbur can lie and say that he’s fine all he wants, but the bags under his eyes and the rattiness of his hair tell a different story. He’s teetering like a house of cards, and everyone just keeps stacking spades. Even Tommy himself, albeit unintentionally.
It’s a precarious balance of architecture, a flawed experiment - how much can one person take before it all crumbles down? How much weight can rest on Atlas’s shoulders before his bones crack and splinter and he lies pierced by knives formed from his actions? How long before he sinks to his knees and the sky slips off and the world shatters to pieces around him in a shockwave of shaking earth and darkened clouds?
Soon enough, the house of cards, the tower of Wilbur which teeters ever so dangerously, soon enough it will lean too far; the foundation will sink out from below and the precarious tilt will pass the point of no return. It’ll crash to the ground, a spectacle. A tragedy that’s been in the works for as long as Tommy has known such tragedy as Wilbur’s end is sure to be.
So, a long time then.
When Wilbur goes, it’ll be dramatic and loud. It’ll be heart-wrenching and terrible in the truest sense of the word.
And although the failing earth might be the cause of Wilbur’s collapse, his exit will bring the world out from beneath Tommy’s feet.
It already is slipping from beneath, throwing him onto his back, vulnerable.
Tommy doesn’t like being vulnerable, open. He’s always pushed his feelings to the side for Wilbur. His general, his president, his brother leads the pack and he follows at his side. Tommy wears the prey down and Wilbur goes for the kill.
Or maybe it’s the other way around, looking back.
Tommy tends to do the dirty work. He got sent to the courthouse after the drug van; he had to take the shot to win a mess of a war; he resorted to trading his most prized possessions for their shared dream - a dream Schlatt has taken a baseball bat to and left cracked on the floor like a broken vase. Wilbur would rather grind their idealistic imaginings to ash and dust than glue the sharp edges back together.
It’s a dangerous game they both play, balancing the line between brotherhood and - Tommy’s not sure what, but it’s not quite friendship and not quite leadership, either.
Either way, it’s a circus act, a tightrope, and neither of them are very graceful.
So, as the universe tends to do, it becomes about the very thing they’re not good at. Grace under pressure. Wilbur’s slipping, bit by bit. He skids with every step. His treads wear down until he eventually trips, and his falls are anything but beautiful, anything but elegant. Spectacular in the worst way.
Conversely, Tommy’s hiding on tiptoes around Wilbur. He’s walking on broken glass and there’s no avoiding the shards. Wilbur laughs and it’s loud and harsh like the scratch of a record. He yells and Tommy flinches, startled. Wilbur turns and stares at him, past him, past all of it, and his eyes go wide and unfocused and Tommy’s terrified of it all.
For him. He’s terrified for Wilbur, of course.
Not of him, never of him.
The person he’s scared of is not Wilbur. Wilbur wouldn’t shout, wouldn’t scream, wouldn’t step too close and too fast until Tommy steps back as if burned. The real Wilbur’s hands wouldn’t feel like a brand. That person isn’t Wilbur. It’s not Wilbur.
Isn’t it, though? Hasn’t Wilbur always been like this, a little too nervous, a little too volatile, a little too acidic to be kept safely. He melts the world around him, puts it in a different shape and leaves it unrecognizable. Something to be careful with. Don’t tap the glass, don’t feed the anxiety - and what had the world done but stuck its bleeding arm elbow-deep in the tank and tempted fate.
Tommy knows this isn’t right, of course he knows. He’s not fucking stupid. He shouldn’t have to - shouldn’t feel the need to watch his steps around his closest... friend.
They’re friends! They’re like brothers, in fact, and there’s no avoiding it. Wilbur’s his - his family, and they’re together, they’re always by each other’s side. Tommy follows Wilbur. That’s how it goes. Wilbur supports Tommy. Maybe there’s a bit less scaffolding around Tommy’s tower than usual, nowadays, but that’s fine! It’s fine. Wilbur’s planning something epic, he’s sure.
He was like this before, around the beginning of L’manberg - engrossed in his project beyond all notion of reality, of caution, of planning - it was all that mattered, L’manberg. It still is, in a different way.
Wilbur slips away, for a bit, but he always comes back to Tommy. He returns and Tommy is always there waiting. They are always there, waiting for the other, but now Tommy is running faster and faster and Wilbur is a mirage flickering farther and farther onto the horizon.
The heat builds and builds until Tommy lays panting on the sand. His delirious imagery fades and he’s back, lying on the rocks at the bottom of a ravine while Wilbur stands just out of reach with his back turned, oblivious to the world around him. He paces and mutters. Tommy remembers back to when Wilbur would dance and sing instead.
That Wilbur’s gone. Dead.
Tommy has watched the past die in front of him, people die in front of him, himself die slowly and drain to empty as the world lost its luster and showed its true colors.
Wilbur’s a photo left to fade in the sunlight, the rays draining the black, the red, the yellow, and slowly taking the blue, too. All he’s left with is the bright, empty white.
White flags, white flags, outside your base, at dawn -
No surrendering, that’s what they were told.
No giving up.
As guilty as it feels to even think it, Tommy’s starting to give up on the brother he used to know.
That Wilbur died from Punz’s arrow, from losing the election, from the presidency, from the war, from… all of it. He died a long time ago.
That’s why it doesn’t hurt so much when Wilbur dies again.
Tommy doesn’t miss this… other Wilbur nearly as much.