Archive of Our Own ^beta

The forest surrounding his town is Wilbur’s place. It’s where he practices and gets inspired, meets new animal friends and calms down from the stresses of school and family drama, as trivial as it may sound.

He’s always liked nature, drawn to the colourful sunsets that painted his town in bright reds and purples. In the garden, different kinds of flowers had been planted in memory of his mom, who had passed away not long after Tommy was born (Though sometimes it felt like she was still in the air around him, clinging onto his shoulder and keeping his confidence up); anemones, pink camellias, white carnations, hydrangeas. When he walked to school and passed a deer family, he would always ask them how their day was going and wish them well.

And the forest, it was the place where all of this was apparent and brought to the surface, painting an image that only he bore witness to. Imagery was as much ingrained into nature as life was, two sides of a coin that never withered. This fact helped draw him to poetry and songwriting, hands now always dirty with metaphors and similes played beside melodies of golden stars and silver streams.

Wilbur always comes back to the forest for inspiration, though, even if his talent has gotten good enough that he doesn’t really need to. The calmness of the place, the comfort of sitting beside the tree and feeling the bark against his back, it just wasn’t matched. Like a glass of water to a thirsty man, it tasted like heaven, refreshing his muscles, bringing form words hidden in his heart he never knew were there.

“I'm not a man of substance and so I'll pretend,

To be a wanderer, wandering,

Leaving ascetic belongings in hostels and restaurant bins…”

Today wasn’t really any different. There was an assignment of his overdue in school, and one of his friends hadn’t texted him back for a full week now, and Tommy was just starting to curse all the time, despite Dad’s attempts to stop it from becoming a fully integrated part of his vocabulary. Normal stresses, and there wasn’t any reason to come here except to relax and get more excited for summer break, which was set to begin soon.

Wilbur closes his eyes and leans back against the tree, basking in the warmth on his face. “Burn out, don't fight it and try to move on,

It's been sixty weeks since I saw Vienna,

A bandage and a wide smile slapped across my face…”

When the song is done, he sighs, sitting back up.

His head knocks against something, jerking him backward, hand flying up to soothe the sharp burst of pain. From the last time he looked, he had been alone in this forest, and there was no way someone could’ve snuck up on him without him knowing.

Wilbur opens his eyes, set to interrogate whoever was there, only for his words to die down on him at the sight of blue eyes.

Bright, sky-blue eyes.

Unnaturally blue eyes.

The kid in front of him—because he is a kid, there’s no doubt about that; is a good few years younger than him. The kid has copied his position, wide eyes staring back at him, mouth partially open. Pink hair, light like the cherry blossoms he sees online, curls wildly around his face, long and tangled beyond anything healthy. It looks greasy. A strand falls into his face as they stare at each other.

He wears clothes straight out of a fairy-tale, or at least a story taking place hundreds of years ago. They’re dirty, smudged with soil and smoke-like spots Wilbur thinks comes from ash. There’re no shoes, so his feet are also caked in grime, much like his hands. Metal wraps around his wrists, ankles, and even his neck, and chains dangle off the bands.

It looks like cuffs, something used to keep someone prisoner.

Wilbur cannot fathom to think of a single reason why someone would ever willingly imprison a child. Children are supposed to grow and make mistakes, not look like they’ve been confined for years, malnourished. Children are supposed to be like Tommy, chaotic and messy and loud and annoying, not like a wild animal frozen in headlights. Children are supposed to be nourished and loved, not discarded into the forest.

The kid blinks, and seems to regain his ability to think, as one moment he’s there and the next he physically vanishes in front of Wilbur’s eyes, the shadows of the tree branches moving away with him.

Unable to think of the words to explain what just happened, Wilbur gapes at the spot the kid was in. His hand falls numbly beside him, the pain forgotten. He blinks at the spot, rapidly going through reasons as to what happened (the sun blinded him, he blinked without realizing, etcetera, etcetera) before he throws the logic away because it cannot accurately explain what he just saw.

Wilbur blinks again, remembering the cuffs and the shock at seeing them on an innocent kid, and he thinks, maybe there was a reason for that. Not a justified one, but a reason. Humans usually fear the unknown, after all, and even if the unknown takes the form of a kid, nothing would stop them from imprisoning something they cannot understand, without thinking about the consequences those actions would have.

Maybe there is a reason.

And maybe Wilbur has found another reason to keep visiting this forest.

In the weeks since the first meeting with the kid, two things have happened: summer break started and Wilbur has found a name for what to call the kid, needing something to refer to him as in his head and having gone over books and websites in search of information.

The name he decided on is Cardinal, after the bird.

He also stumbled across information about eldritch beings, cryptids that spawned around humanity and existed in the shadows of their inventions. They were the beings that inspired urban legends or were inspired by the legends, or whichever came first, and there were mysteries surrounding why they existed. Some thought that they were there to do a job humans could not do, and some thought they were there only to exist. He thought that they might exist to do both and that it would explain why the kid looked straight out of a history book.

Cardinal hasn’t been seen since the first meeting, a disappointment whenever Wilbur opened his eyes once he finished his song and saw nothing but the trees, something that used to be so comforting turned into something so bland. It seems that them locking yes had startled him, making him stay out of sight, but still there, still watching and listening.

It’s hard to explain why he can feel the kid, but the eyes on him were difficult to shake off as something of his imagination. The itch just couldn’t be scratched by normal means. Cardinal was there, he just didn’t want to be noticed.

And Wilbur would respect that, if he hadn’t noticed the cuffs and the skinny posture, the face that looked younger than his, even if it was probably a hundred times older. The image was printed in his mind whenever he slept, worrying over if the kid was doing okay or not, if he needed someone to hold his hand like Tommy did when he had a nightmare. He was concerned, though he had only known Cardinal for a small number of days, like there was a hole in his chest that just filled.

(Here’s the thing: the forest wasn’t always just Wilbur’s place. He had always loved it, yes, but he hadn’t always visited it on his own.

When Mom was alive, it had been their place.

A swing had existed on that tree, tied sturdily onto the branch high above, and she used to tell him to sit while she pushed him. He had gone high above the trees, felt like he could fly off and soar above the clouds, fall back down for Mom to catch him, laughing together until their sides hurt. It was their thing, even while she was pregnant with Tommy, even when she started getting sick.

That tree is his favorite place because it feels like his mom is still there when he sits underneath the branches. Angry after her death, he had destroyed the swing, climbing up and sawing off the rope until the swing fell to the ground. Two bits of knotted rope still remain on the branch, but he never looks up anymore, unable to face the guilt of his actions.

The forest is now Wilbur’s place, it holds his grief and his anger, all the emotions he stores away, a culmination of five years’ worth of sadness. It burns, but he doesn’t face it, letting it burn in hopes it puts itself out.)

Wilbur decided to try something new. Having overheard a grandma tell her grandchild that the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach, he wondered if it was the same for making friends with something inhuman who looked the part. Everyone liked food, after all, and he did look like he hadn’t eaten in a while. Perhaps if he were to bring a snack with him the next time he goes, he can lure Cardinal out and have a conversation with him, a real one.

So with his allowance from Dad, he buys a chocolate bar, just a generic one without anything added to it. He stuffs it in his pocket, grabs his guitar, and heads to the forest without saying goodbye to his family.

He doesn’t show his plan, sitting by the tree and laying the snack beside him, in a shadow without a break from the sun. Plucking chords here and there, he licks his lips, a nervousness building in his stomach as he realizes that he needs to let Cardinal know that the chocolate is for him, not just let him assume that he’ll know.

“Hey,” he starts, stopping to cringe at himself but pressing forward anyway, “are you there? I, uh…It’s me. Again. But I think you know that. I could, um…I could feel you watching me since we met.”

Nothing tells him Cardinal is there, but he continues on anyway.

“I brought you a sack. If you want it. We can even share it, if you’re nervous.” Wilbur makes himself look at his hands, focusing on moving his fingers to play another chord. “It’s chocolate. I wasn’t sure what to get you, but everyone I know likes chocolate, so I think you’ll like it too.” With all that said, he turns away from the chocolate and starts singing another song, both to distract himself and provide Cardinal with a sense of normality.

“Oh shit, I'm doing it again, repelling any potential friend,

Revealing my innate ability to never fully comprehend,

Anything bigger than myself, but in the end I still pretend,

Condescending anyone polite enough to choose to misspend their time…”

As the song progresses, he almost forgets why he’s there, lost in the familiarity that comes with the sound of the guitar and the feeling of his voice makes vibrations in his chest. Until the song’s over and he hears the wrapping of the chocolate bar crinkle, eyes glancing beside him to see, making sure to keep his hands moving so as to not startle Cardinal.

Sure enough, Cardinal is there, sat crisscrossed on the ground next to him, having bitten a small corner of the chocolate bar. His pupils dilate, and the wonder is practically written across his face at the taste.  It’s a childlike excitement, and it suits him more than the cuffs do. At least he had the right idea to bring chocolate.

Wilbur feels a fond smile take over his face, and he doesn’t fight it. Within moments, Cardinal seems to realize that the music stopped, and he looks up at him, a chocolate smudge on his chin, the bar in his mouth mid-bite.

It’s a better meeting than last time.

“Hello there,” Wilbur says, tilting his head in an invitation to stay. “I’m Wilbur. What’s your name? Did you like the chocolate?”

“Did you do the summer reading yet, Wil?” Niki asks, sipping on her milkshake. They had planned to meet up at the café her parents owned, get something to drink and something to eat, before heading to the library for ideas for their summer essay they need to write before the next school year begins.

Wilbur hums, stuck on the barely visible trees of the forest. He only plays with the straw of his milkshake, unable to get into the mood to start drinking it.

“Wilbur?” Niki asks again, leaning forward to be in his eyesight. “Hello? Earth to Wil?”

He blinks, looking over at her. “Huh?”

Niki smiles, leaning back in her seat. “There you are. I was wondering if you did the reading yet.” She glances at the clock on the wall and frowns lightly. “And if you’re ready to go to the library yet. We should head there soon.”

“Oh. Yeah, I, I started. The reading. I started it.”

Niki looks at him, and tilts her head. He gets the feeling that she wants to ask something else, but she decided not to. “Okay then. You should get it done sooner than later. That way you don’t have to worry about it until school.”

“Yeah, I guess.” Wilbur glances at his milkshake, slowly melting under the sun. Taking a glance at the clock himself, he stands. “We should get going. You’re right.”

“But your milkshake—”

“I’m not thirsty. Never really was. Sorry.”

“That’s…a shame,” Niki stands as well, taking both their milkshake glasses to the counter for her parents, “but alright. Just be sure to apologize to my parents when we get back.”

“Will do.”

At the library, Niki heads to the right, straight to the poetry books and short story anthologies, giving him a short goodbye before se goes. He heads in the opposite direction, not really caring about where he ends up as long as books are there. Sliding his hands across the spines of the books, taking the titles in but not registering them.

This would be the first day he doesn’t visit Cardinal, unable to fit even the barest amount of time into his schedule. Between this visit to the library, going out to dinner with Dad and Tommy, and paying a visit to Mom’s grave to give her flowers before the month ends, he’s a bit busy. Cardinal had said that it was alright, that he was used to it, but Wilbur still worried it over, that answer not enough to satisfy him.

Getting to know Cardinal has shown him that the kid really needs a friend in his life, one that won’t trap him and use him for their benefit.

He hopes he’s that friend, wants to help him realize that he deserves the chance to play the kid he pretends to be, that being human is more than looking the part; if you have emotions, morality, then you are just as human as humans are. It doesn’t matter whether you were born hundreds of years ago and inherently cannot die or not. He believes this for a fact. It’s something his mom taught him, in the stories she told him before bed and when she taught him lessons after he did something wrong.

People are people not because they look like it, she had said, but because they act like it, and they give others a helping hand when they need it.

Wilbur wants to reach out his hand and help Cardinal, but he already knows that the kid won’t understand. They need to know each other better, and he needs to get some kind of backstory to know what he should hold out in his hand. Help comes in all sorts of ways, he can’t just extend his arm and let fate decide what he provides.

But how? How can he decide what to do? Cardinal isn’t a songbird; he won’t sing without some level of trust. He needs to find a way to give him something to trust. What though? What does an immortal inhuman being need to trust something beneath them?

His eyes focus on a book in front of him, the words breaking into his mind. It’s titled: Words Every Toddler Should Know Before Grade 1. The section he’s found himself in seems to be the parenting/young kid’s section.

This shouldn’t be of use to him, but yet…

Cardinal hasn’t spoken back to him since they met. He looks the part where he should know some words, but maybe he doesn’t. Maybe he can understand what people say, but doesn’t know how to replicate them. Or maybe he doesn’t know many words to start with. Either way, these shelves are full of books to help a child learn to speak and read or write.

Wilbur pulls a few books off the shelves, going row by row and reading the title carefully before taking them off.

Perhaps this could be a starting point.

Here’s a prologue: there once was a boy.

The boy wasn’t always a boy.

It was first born from the dark, a hint of sentience formed between the periods at the end of people’s prayers, their wishes. Hopes and dreams, truth and lies. People asked for everything just as often as they asked for nothing. When one stopped, another always filled its place, but somewhere along the steady flow, it started to exist, and then it started to be aware, and then it started to think.

At first, it stayed put. It listened and watched and learned and thought, but it never explored. The darkness of night was its home and all it knew; leaving wasn’t an option that presented itself as something it was able to do at all.

But the more it watched and learned, the more it saw. Kids playing together on abandoned roads, people kissing each other on the shores of a beach. Cats chasing butterflies, dogs roughhousing with their owners, deers and skunks exploring a field of flowers together. It grew to see the innocence in the dark, when a person stopped to give someone a ride home, when a wolf shared its den with an injured rabbit and her litter. The more it saw of this, the more curiosity nagged at him, the want to be part of such things sparking deep in its truth.

It was not naïve. Darkness was witness to more disastrous things than good. Oftentimes, it was a killer picking up their next victim or some teenage boys playing a dangerous trick on a teenage girl. Oftentimes, nature was vicious, and predator caught their prey, and people walked into its wood and were never seen again. It had humanity's faults written into it from the moment it was born. Its truth contained the ugliness of pride, the sins of wrath and lust, and the consequences of greed and sloth.

Innocence was not something it knew intimately, and perhaps that was what drew it into the virtue’s orbit, what caused it to desire something of which it was never supposed to understand.

Centuries into its existence, something on the wind changed. It felt like clarity, how the leave grew vibrant and the soil grew richer; purity and life consumed the air around it and the dark, carrying with it an opportunity.

A village had taken root at the base of its forest, just skimming the edges of the darkness it resided in. Only a couple of houses in the beginning, it broadened into streets of houses, shops, and farms, upgrading into a town and city until it was a capital. The humans that lived in it called the leaders ‘royalty’, with the main one on the throne called the ‘King’. Despite being someone that needs to make room for this capital to grow, the King never cut down any trees from its forest, and there were people standing guard at the baseline to steer people away.

It did not know the reason for these names nor what power they held to humans, but it felt respected in the way it was protected. The King, whoever he was, must know of its existence, though it's never directly spoken to any humans before, and he must know of its purpose. He must be someone it could trust, as he showed this level of trust towards it without knowing it.

It longed to find a way for it to talk to the King. It wanted to speak with the man who supplied this protection, get to know him and thank him, the way people thanked it when their prayers and wishes and dreams were answered. He must be familiar with the virtue of innocence if he cared this much.

Thankfully, it had begun getting prayers and wishes and hopes from the capital about a ‘festival’.

“Oh, My Elders, Beings of the Universe,” one girl whispered to the night before she went to sleep, so more than thirteen, “let me have courage during the Spring Festival to kiss the boy I like, and have the mercy that he likes me back!”

“Merciful Dark,” sang a man, in an outfit of bright colours paired with a feathered hat, carrying an instrument with him, “lend me the power to serenade these people, let my words caress their ears, and share the love I feel for life with their hearts.”

“Great Gods, major and small, good or bad,” a woman, dressed in expensive gowns, sobbed into her hands, “please let the plan work, and look the other way as I commit the greatest crime against my husband for my child’s safety, let him fall as we flee under the distraction of the festival.”

“…a kiss from my lover…”

“…the old man deserves it, you hear…”

“…kindness to be given to them…”

Simple wishes and heavier grievances, everyone in the capital seemed to want something from this Spring Festival. It struggled to understand why. Was this festival of theirs something like a ritual? Would granting their wishes make them favorable, or would not granting them be better? If the festival was to happen and they didn’t receive their wishes, would that mean it failed in doing what it was made for? Was the festival’s purpose only for wishes?

It did not know.

But it really wanted to.

This longing grew to be too much for it once the Spring Festival was in full swing. It heard the music and laughter all the way in its dark home, even felt the hope spark in the air. Like answering a call, it crept closer and closer to the edge of the forest, where its always dwelled since it was born. All the guards that stood there were gone, or at least out of sight.

It had been left alone.

It could…

It could really…

Could it really go to the festival itself?

What a wondrous thought that was. Consumed by awe as he started towards the capital, it did not notice itself transforming, shadows shaping themselves into legs and arms, forming a torso to connect them and a head on top. It did not notice when it became a boy, but he did notice the new sensations he gained.

The grass tickled his feet, and the coldness of the cobblestone path shocked him. He smelled sweetness, and when he inhaled it, it made him feel something inside of him, something that wanted that sweetness, whatever it was. Some kids passed by him, something in their hands popping as they went, startling him. He was not used to everything being so loud, and the colours took his breath away, bright fabrics that had always been dulled in the darkness.

(It was not human. It did not forget this. These sensations were a mockery of a natural thing it could never fully know. It only felt these things because it needed to blend in, some instinct telling it that if it entered that capital, its natural form would make the humans scared. This new form would not deter it from carrying out its role in the world.

Still—)

He did not understand why he hadn’t thought to do this before, why he had never given into his yearning to be among the humans instead of watching from afar. The way humans invented so many things had always astounded him, but he had never thought of it being this intriguing; he could roam these streets for days and still not be bored.

But he never got the chance to. He never got the chance to taste that sweetness that drew him out of the darkness in the first place. He never got to see what was popping in those kids’ hands. He never got to immerse himself in the wondrous things of the human world after this point, because he was instead summoned to the King's palace.

A knight had found him and escorted him to the throne room, shoving him inside, the doors closing behind him with a heavy thud that echoed through the room, absorbing any other sound. The King was on his throne, looking upon him with a smile, the corners stretched a bit too far. The room was well lit, with no shadows, so sign of any darkness in sight.

For the first time in his existence, the boy felt small.

“What’s a brother?” Cardinal asks, looking up from his book, “You say it all the time when you talk about Tommy. I don’t know the meaning of it.”

Wilbur stops his music and thinks. “It’s hard to explain, kind of.” Glancing at Cardinal’s expecting face, he sighs and leans forward to try. “Tommy and I are brothers because we were born to the same family. We share the same parents and live in the same house, so that makes us brothers.” Technically, he could stop there, but the rest flows out of his mouth without him thinking. “But other people have brothers that are only half-related to them, meaning they share only one parent. And they can share no parents and still call themselves brothers.”

“…I don’t understand the last part.”

Cardinal’s confused. Of course he is, Wilbur went and ruined the explanation by saying all that. He can feel his ears redden in embarrassment, shame building in his chest. “That’s okay. You don’t need to.”

Cardinal returns to his book, satisfied, and Wilbur returns to his music shortly after. It had almost been a month since they met, and a routine had been built between them: Wilbur would come over sometime in the afternoon, bringing with him some books and food and other things he thought Cardinal might like. They’d spend a couple of hours together, playing music and learning to read, respectfully.

Cardinal was a fast learner. He had brought picture books with him to begin with, fit for early readers, and would read them so the kid knew how to pronounce words, and then Cardinal would repeat it after him. The picture books hadn’t lasted long, as the kid flew through them, his speed picking up to a faster pace than even Wilbur could read, and he was fifteen.

They spent a lot of time talking, too. Mostly about Wilbur and his family, never anything about Cardinal and his past and what he really was if he wasn’t human. He wanted to ask about that, but it felt insensitive to outright say it, feeling too blunt. It was just a little weird, how Cardinal reminded him so much of the bird in every way except for the singing.

A songbird that doesn’t sing, either too scared or too confused to understand how.

“You know,” Wilbur says, suddenly uncomfortable with the name he picked out for Cardinal. “We really should decide on a name for you.”

Cardinal looks back up, a hint of annoyance in his voice. “What do you mean?”

“A name, like mine. I’m called Wilbur. It’d just be something people can refer to you as. Officially.”

Cardinal frowns. “The King never gave me a name. Why would I need one now?”

Wilbur purses his lips, soured at the mention of the King.

It’s not the first time he had been brought up. Cardinal had first brought it up sometime into these meetings, after being given his first book, said something about the King never giving him things before, not allowing it. He had tried to know who the King was, but the kid had only moved on like he never said anything at all, tightly sealed.

But it was easy to come to the conclusion that the King was responsible for the cuffs, the terror, the silent footsteps, the always-ready posture. The reason the King wanted Cardinal still escaped him, but he knew that it wasn’t pretty. If he ever found out, no doubt the rage he kept in check would be tested, and because the King was dead now, he’ll just have to make due with imagining revenge.

“The King was alive hundreds of years ago,” Wilbur says, trying to keep the cold out of his voice, “The world has changed. And if you still exist, shouldn’t you adapt to the changes? Maybe it’s time to start thinking of a name for yourself.” Cardinal is still looking at him blankly, and he tries to smile in reassurance. “Just think about it, okay?”

“Okay,” Cardinal says, now bored with his book. He goes back to the bag and pulls a rope out, “What’s this for?”

Wilbur blinks, only now remembering what else he had brought with him in a moment of thought. “Oh.” He crouches beside Cardinal and pulls the full rope out, revealing a swing connect to it. “There used to be a swing on this tree, one I used to play with when I was little. It got…destroyed, in an accident.” An accident was an understatement, and the hate for himself burns in his throat. “I had the thought of replacing it, but I’m not sure. I don’t want to replace it.”

Cardinal looks up at him, his head tilted, “Swing?”

“Yeah,” Wilbur says, falling silent before glancing at him. “Sorry. You sit in it and you move your legs to make you go back and forth. Kids usually get someone to push them before they learn how to do it on their own.”

Cardinal looks back down at the rope, his brow furrowed. “I think I want to try it.” He says, slowly, facing Wilbur and elaborating even if he didn’t need to. “Swinging.”

Wilbur stares at him.

He would love to say yes. He always wants to say yes when Cardinal asks something, wants to fill a silver platter and present all of his wishes to him. But this one…something deep in his chest holds him back. Something that sounds like a distraught kid when he learned his mother died, who came back to the tree and tore down a swing, who closed himself off from his dad and brother and then made friends with something people call a monster.

(Here’s the thing: getting rid of the rotting rope up there would mean getting rid of Mom for good.

That’s the only remainder of her here. Her grave is in the cemetery, her clothes had been given away, her trinkets are still displayed at home on the bookshelf; here, it was just the rope. And Wilbur. And the memory of them together that plays in the tree, their laughter that rides on the wind, Mom’s singing voice still vibrant in the back of his mind.

How can he be expected to give that up? How can anyone expect him to climb up there, cut that rope away, cut Mom away, and agree that it’s for the best?

He refuses to. He refuses.)

The dismissal almost comes out of his mouth, snapping out of him like a whip, but the pure want all over Cardinal’s face traps him, making the fire deplete. He looks like he has his heart set out on swinging, as silly as it may sound, and wouldn’t that make it Wilbur’s fault if he says no and that smile wipes away, never to come back?

Cardinal looks so much like Tommy right now; when his little brother keeps bothering him to come and play with him, come play music with him, help him with his homework, play games, anything and everything. It’s the same determination and need for companionship, displayed in very different ways. Tommy will pull on his hand and drag him into the activity, Cardinal will state that he wants to do something and wait for the decision.

And it’s already really decided for him, you know. To replace the swing and give this memory to Cardinal. It’s just like how it’s already decided he’ll play with Tommy, even before the first round of questions come. His heart is so soft for these two that it scares him sometimes, but he wouldn’t trade that for the world.

Wilbur will be selfish and keep that love with him, wrap himself in it and let it flow out of his fingers into songs, rhymes and melodies galore. He’ll let it into his voice when he speaks, and he won’t let Cardinal and Tommy ever forget just how much he loves them.

“You know what? Yeah. Sure.” Wilbur grabs the rope from the ground, looking up at the branch for the first time since he cut the swing off. “Help me set it up…” Together, they got rid of the old rope still on the branch and replaced it with the new ones, pulling on them to make sure they were tight enough.

Cardinal hesitates to sit down, but a gentle push from Wilbur helps to calm him and continue. He sits down, his feet barely touching the ground, and his hands grabbing the rope tightly enough his knuckles turn white. Wilbur tries to reassure him that there was nothing to be scared of, that he’d be there to catch him if he falls, but when Cardinal does nothing more than stare forward, prepared, he moves on, standing behind him and giving him the first push.

At first, the kid is tense. He’s stiff as the swing moves, holding his breath in fright. The chains clink against each other in the air with the movement. And gradually, every time he comes back and another gentle push sends him up, Wilbur can feel him relax, hands loosening.

And then Cardinal laughs.

Bright, joyful, he laughs, giggles bubbling over as he moves with the swing. He almost gets the pumping motion right, but he’s having too much fun to notice. Wilbur watches the awe arrive on his face and feels a stinging in his eyes, a strange mixture of happiness and bitterness taking over. He laughs too, following in the joy, chasing after it.

Cardinal’s head turns and their eyes meet, hair falling across his face, the grin telling him that he’s unbothered by it. Excitement gleams in his eyes, innocence shines off of him. “I like it!” His voice is raised, almost at a yell.

Wilbur smiles at him, swallowing the hurt. “Me too.”

It was a bit alarming how quickly Wilbur grew attached to Cardinal. They had only known each other for less than a month and already he was thinking about him with the same kind of concern he gave Tommy. He wants to annoy him until he snaps and fights with him. He wants to tell him joke after joke until he was grinning from ear to ear, and if that failed, wants to trap him in his arms and tickle him until he couldn’t breathe. He wants to wipe his tears when he skins his knee, hold his hand when he has to talk to someone, defend him when someone talks down on him.

He wants, above all, to be a brother to Cardinal. A true brother. And he wants the sentiment to be replicated, for Cardinal to want him as his older brother, to view him with awe as he tells him stories, poke fun at him when Wilbur gets a crush on a girl and doesn’t know how to act around her, beat him at Mario Kart and brag about that until they’re both old and grey.

Wilbur feels this desire fill him up, like a bandage over the cavern in his heart from when Mom died. It coils there, building into something that pricks at him with every inhale, getting stuck in his throat when he talks for too long. The longing plucks at his guitar for him and throws itself into the front of his mind whenever he goes to see Cardinal.

Dad worries about him, he can tell whenever he comes home for lunch and goes to visit Cardinal after he puts his dish in the sink, eyes watching him grab the bag full of stuff and his guitar, not going away until he’s turned off the street. Tommy doesn’t say anything or act like something’s off, but he wouldn’t be surprised if he knew and worried as well. His little brother has always been more observant than he let on.

Before he thinks about telling Cardinal how much he means to him, he needs to tell Dad about him. That’s a conversation that’s going to take some time. It’ll be long and messy, with questions that demand answers he might not be able to provide. So as much as he wants to give in to the desire, wants to take Cardinal home before the summer sun disappears behind the horizon for the last time, he cannot do it yet. He needs to wait. He hates it, but he does.

Wilbur can cry and scream and rage about the unfairness all he wants, but it won’t make the wait shorter. It won’t make Dad accept everything sooner, Tommy to stop being nosy. Hopefully, the wait won’t be too long.

Wilbur wants to take Cardinal home as soon as he can.

Cardinal is acting off.

He had greeted Wilbur silently today, asking no questions when he was usually so full of boundless questions, dancing around him, impatient to find out what he was brought. When the bag was set on the ground, he had sat next to it, but didn’t put much heart into what he pulled out, giving the book a quick skim, tossing the chocolate to the side. Then he settled to playing with the bag straps, nothing else.

Wilbur watches him. He doesn’t start playing the music yet because he thinks that would interrupt whatever was going on, push things away until they were pilled on top of one another, over and over again until things exploded. He knows what it’s like to push things down until he doesn’t feel it anymore.

It’s not healthy. Cardinal shouldn’t be doing things that aren’t healthy, not yet, not until he’s learned more things. He can’t let this go on, and an intense conviction grips him, making his hand tighten against the neck of the guitar.

“What’s wrong?” Wilbur asks, trying to catch Cardinal’s eyes. “You haven’t touched your chocolate. Something’s bothering you. What’s up?”

Cardinal glances up at him from under the hair on his face, then goes back to his hands. “I’m not sure how to say it.” His voice is quiet, hesitant.

Wilbur blinks, slightly surprised at the actual answer. To used to avoiding the questions himself, he had thought Cardinal would do the same when asked. An answer is…relieving. “That’s okay. Can you try?”

Cardinal looks up at him. “Maybe.”

He looks down again, focused on nothing. Knowing it’ll take time for an answer, Wilbur leans back against the tree, turning his head to watch the swing move in the breeze. He picks at the skin around his thumb to stop himself from playing any chords, not wanting to ruin things, not wanting to make the mood wrong.

Cardinal starts up, but goes quiet again, and he returns his gaze back over, and watches him start again, eyes pinned to the ground in front of him.

“In the stories you bring me, the friends in them know things about each other. They know how to tell when they're sad, or angry, or happy, and they know where they came from,” he pauses in the middle of his sentences, words broken up unevenly, and he looks up at Wilbur, “I haven’t told you anything about me. It’s always been about you. Are you alright with that? Do you want me to tell you about the King and the Pit?”

Oh. That’s what this is about.

He’s not sure how to respond. The truth would be an astounding ‘yes’; he wants to know everything that happened, all the bad there was and all the good that slipped in through the cracks. All of the hurt and anger, all of the happiness and awe, all of it. It all sounds so achingly wonderful, because then he would know how to further help him.

But Cardinal looks nervous, his shoulders hunched inwards and a film of fear over his eyes. If he tells his story now, it’ll be hard. He won’t have all the words to make it cohesive. It’ll be scenes of importance strung together with words that didn’t go into the emotions surrounding the events. Though it might be hard to follow, the kid would try to put it together and present it all wrapped up, with the paper tearing and sticky from tape residue.

Wilbur can’t betray how he feels about what he hears, if that’s anything at all.

He shifts, taking the guitar off his lap and resting it against the tree. “Well,” he stops to collect his thoughts before continuing, “If I’m honest, I would like to know. Then I can understand you better. We can be better friends. But I’m not going to force you to tell me. That’s not what a friend does. You can tell me when you want to.”

Cardinal stares at him and seems to read something on his face. He straightens and his eyes harden, a stubbornness taking over before he changes his mind. “I do want to.”

“Okay.”

Wilbur sets his hands in his lap and steadies himself. Wrangling his emotions into his chest, he keeps them under watch for as long as this story goes on. He lets Cardinal get comfortable, knees pulling up to his chest as he wraps his arms around himself. There’s an itch to play some music to calm them both, but he ignores it; not now, maybe after, but not during.

Cardinal needs this. The desperation is obvious on his face. Music would be of no help to him right now.

But Wilbur’s listening ears would be.

“It—” he starts and stops a few times, licking his lips before taking a deep breath and starting for good, “It starts like this…”

Here’s a story: there once lived a blade, shaped just right for the King’s hand.

The blade wasn’t always a blade. It had once been a boy, and he had roamed the streets of the kingdom’s capital for nothing more than a day. He had been lured out of the forest he called home and taken to the King’s castle, where once the doors shut behind him, he never left until he had become the weapon the kingdom needed. A weapon to be used in wars and defend their right to exist on this land, to call it home for centuries to come.

The first weeks weren’t terrible, honestly. He had been taken to a small room beneath the ground, hidden at the end of a long hallway. The door only locked from the outside, and there was a bare mattress on the floor, placed in the only spot of the room that never got light, a small washbin tucked in the corner, and a pair of shackles hanging from the wall, set right underneath a hole in the ceiling that looked to be covered with a wooden board. Was it able to move? He had not known at the time.

(It would find out when it was punished for the first time, after it refused to kill the dog, disobeying the King, who had labelled it a ‘mercy’. This mercy went against what it had learned from the humans it watched. It had thrown its sword down and never budged, making the King sigh in disappointment, waving his hand for the guard to take it away.

The guards dragged it back to its room, and clamped the shackles onto its wrists. The door locked behind them once they left, and it struggled to free itself, but these shackles had been made just for it, so they stayed stuck like glue. There was a clicking sound above it, and as it looked up in confusion, the wooden board moved, light streaming into the room, and right onto it.

As it was born in darkness, it did not do well in the light. It was not meant to be in the yang for long; it became weak and powerless, alarmingly like the humans, overwhelmed with a curse like morality. So when it had to stay in the light for days on end with no break (no matter the time of day, it seemed the sun was always right above it; it did not care how, as it did not matter), it panicked.

It screamed, it begged, it pleaded, it raged.

It lost its voice and its ability to think, muddled in the daze of heat.

And so, when the King had checked on it again, asked it if it was ready to do the right thing now, it agreed without hesitation, and the shackles were unpinned from the wall, though they stayed clamped around its wrists as a reminder, and the wooden board was pushed back into place, cutting the light off.)

He had been trained for years, starting with learning how to wield weapons, various long-ranged and short-ranged ones. All the intricacies of the sword, all the strength of an axe, all the tricks to the bow. And he was sat down in a room of books, and was taught how to strategize, how to defend himself from those that were wrong and how to prioritize the safety of the King above anyone, especially himself. And he was taught to kill anything and anyone who disagreed, no matter if they were animals, children, men, women, or something else.

He had questioned it the first months, trying to keep up the belief that he was as useful to the world, as human as the world, as the world was useful to the King. He had no reason to believe that he was anything but a weapon, whose only purpose was to be used by the King and protect this land from those that would destroy it, whose only reason to live was to fight for those that owned him. A weapon was an object, after all, and objects had no thoughts or feelings; he was clearly able to think and act for himself, so he was not an object, and therefore not a weapon. He was not a blade.

But months of training and repeated words had a way of engraining themselves onto his mind, sneaking into his thoughts when he wasn’t looking. He wanted to believe that they were wrong, but…but surely whatever forces that created him would have freed him already if this wasn’t what he was born for, right? And yet nothing had come…

(The realization that it was better off as a weapon was spurred from the first battle it won. A city on the outskirts of the kingdom was under attack by soldiers from a kingdom across the seas. Many people died, many were injured, and when the King finally had enough and deemed it time, he sent it. The soldiers who had been fighting were ordered to retreat, to be replaced with it, and only it.

It remembers the soldiers looking at it with distrust and anger and weariness and emotion it couldn’t pinpoint. Despite all the movement, it stayed standing at its post, a blade at the ready for its master’s command.

When dawn rose and the enemy moved forward, they were met with it, an imposter in human skin. The sight made them falter, deceived, trapped under the pretense that a child lay before them, unguarded and alone. Two of the men dismounted their horses, one kneeling before it, asking for what it was there for.

It debated over giving him an answer, playing with the illusion, but decided not to, simply beheading him instead, which served as an answer just fine in the long run.

The battle was over quick. Whether that was because of the training the King gave it, or if its origin played into why it was able to fight so well, the darkness strengthening it and betraying the cover of humanity, it did not care to know. All that mattered to him was going through the motions of swinging its sword, impaling a heart, slashing a chest, blocking a sword, powering through a hit.

And when the battle was over, it was so covered in red, the colour practically drowning out any darkness visible on its body, that it was able to think for a minute. Something told him it should be panicked about what it did, mourning those it killed, making graves for them. It should be crying, showing some sort of human emotion, as it can’t break character for a minute, not with the King in control.

But all it felt as it lay red-handed, was an awareness like it’d never known before.)

It did not know exactly how long it was a property of the kingdom. After the battle, it had been branded on its right shoulder blade, and it had served its use many more times in many more battles. Its kill count reached numbers it did not know.

It saw the birth of the prince, and the death of the King, and the cycle repeated for years, each monarch treating him the same; some softer, others harsher, all with the purpose as something less than human. Always standing to the left side of the throne, out of sight and out of mind during meetings and speeches. Always in the cell at the back of the dungeon, with the same decorations since the beginning. Always there to wield, listening for the cue.

Until some time in the summer season.

The kingdom was breached, enemies overtaking the king before it could kill most of them. People were cohered into houses and away from the castle, while the new leaders took residence and got used to things. The main leader took one look at it and ordered it away, and it was locked away in a regular cell, because of course these new guards didn’t know where its room was.

It stayed in that cell for a while, until the leader returned with another man, and they discussed news about different kingdoms, prices for a present, and how they thought it worked. The new man was given a key and the leader walked off. It stared at the new man, not knowing what had happened and not knowing what being sold meant anyway, and he opened his cell, motioning for him to follow.

(It lived in the Pit for a long time.

An underground fighting ring, the Pit was sweltering hot, and though it never saw sunlight while it was there, it always felt surrounded by the same heat. It was a big ring, with multiple areas for the fights to play out. There were others within the ring, too, all mostly children shivering in the corners of their cells, some with tails and horns, others without. Someone had told it at the beginning that they were only there to be “cow fodder”, not expected to live more than they needed to.

That was perhaps why the rulers of the Pit were very confused about what to do with it when it won every match it was in. It had already unknowingly broken the rules and changed the game. The people cheered for it after a while, the tickets sold out in record time, excited to see it kill its opponent without an issue, without getting hurt, without speaking. A chant grew among them, echoing in its head, burrowing itself in the darkness of its being, always there if it truly listened.

“Blood for the Blood God.”

“Blood for the Blood God.”

“Blood for the Blood God.”

Blood for the Blood God, Blood for the Blood God, Blood for the Blood God.

The cell it resided in was the same as the others, though there wasn’t a mattress. There wasn’t a window, either, just a reddish-black brick pattern all along the walls, scratched with the past tally marks of the child who lived here before; it sometimes traced the lines and counted how many days, weeks, months, or years the child survived until they weren’t able to complete the last five mark. Sometimes its chains jangled against the bricks and reminded it of its place.

They had given him new cuffs. Golden instead of silver, a short line of chains coming off of them.)

Eventually, though, the Pit was infiltrated as well, humans wearing blue costumes with badges pinned to their chests storming the arena while it was about to finish the beast it was fighting off. The rulers at the time were taken away with their hands behind their back, and it was ushered away into a white tent.

People spoke to it and asked it questions, surrounding it too much. It felt enclosed in a way it had never been while in its cells. When a woman tried to grab its arm, it moved, disappearing into the darkness of the tent and appearing somewhere quiet. It was surrounded by trees and plants, and though it didn’t feel like home, it did provide it with the same comfort as its forest used to have. The sun went down and the darkness sang to welcome it back, and it fell into a welcome sleep.

“I’m going out!” Wilbur calls out, already halfway gone, guitar hefted up on his shoulder as he opens the door. He hears clashing in the kitchen, dishes clinking against each other and his dad speaks up before the door closed.

“Hey—Wilbur, wait a second.”

Wilbur obeys, dipping his head back inside. “What is it?” Dad appears at the doorway to the kitchen, a mug clenched between his hands.

His dad gave a short laugh, smiling fondly. “I wanted to chat with you, if you don’t mind.” Nodding back to the kitchen, something in his eyes gave off a more pleading look, like the want wasn’t just a want, but rather more of a need. Not that Dad would ever say that out loud; he never admits to needing anything of his kids.

“Why?” Wilbur asks, itching to get back to Cardinal and show him new food, hear his progress in his book and sing a song together. Though he was still new to singing, the kid was getting the hang of it quickly, developing a voice that remained level throughout the lyrics, never betraying a specific emotion.

It was nice to see how far they came from the kid who had stared at him with wild eyes as his hand clutched his forehead. Now the same face laughed with his eyes closed, a bright, cheery sound that almost detracted you from the collar.

Almost.

“Just a chat. Please.”

Wilbur mulls it over, glancing towards the road. Cardinal could wait for a few more minutes than usual, he supposes. “Okay.” He steps back inside the house and follows Dad into the kitchen. Though he’s offered a seat, he denies it, rocking back on his heels as he rests his hands in his pockets. “So…what’s up?”

His dad glances away into his mug. It remains silent, and Wilbur tries to distract himself in the meantime. There’s a new stain on the table, most likely from Tommy knocking his bowl of cereal upside down. Again. For, what, the fourth time this week? It almost makes him laugh, but he confines it to a twitch of his mouth instead.

Dad still hasn’t said anything, and as the seconds' tick by, the itches grows more until he can’t fight the urge to look at the forest from the window above the sink. The trees really weren’t visible from here, but the tops peeked out and it made him wonder if Cardinal was at their spot already; it seems like so much time has passed already.

“Today marks five years since Kristen died, you know.”

Wilbur stills. The window becomes the focus of his gaze and he drops it, staring at the patterns of the hand towel. Heartbeat making its way to his ears, everything seems hyper-realistic, the lines jumping out of him. There’s a slight drip from the faucet, the tap stuck millimeters from being off.

“Oh,” The sound chokes out of his throat, caught with some emotions he couldn’t pinpoint, feeling like years since he’s felt it in full, and not knowing what else to say, he just repeats it, “oh.”

There’s a lot of texture to this towel, huh?

Dad hums in agreement. “It’s strange to think about, huh?” He hears him shift, and sees his foot cross over his other one in the corner of his eye. “It feels like yesterday she was still here, sitting at the table and goading me into helping her answer her crossword for her, though she already had most of it done. Do you remember that one night, a month before, well. You know. When you asked for help with your homework and she never complained, only pulled you beside her and started going through it as I finished dinner.”

Wilbur blinks, looking up. He meets Dad’s eyes for a minute, exchanging a vulnerable type of love he can’t face right now, making him jump down to the mug. “Yeah,” he says, caught on recalling all the times Mom held that mug; it was originally hers, after all, “She looked sick, though I didn’t notice it then. She had to stop to cough into the napkin. You looked concerned, but Mom just insisted it was nothing.”

“I was worried. It didn’t bode well.”

They fall silent, each reliving precious and bitter moments.

He remembers watching Mom play the piano, sitting on her lap as her fingers hit the notes. Her laughter when he tries to replicate her and fails, her gentle touch as she teaches him the first notes of Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star.

Remembers Mom and Dad in the kitchen doing the dishes as he ran around entertaining Tommy. Her shriek as Dad splashed her with water and his laughter as he retaliated, which became a water fight between all of them.

Remembers her humming as she helped him get dressed for school. Her coos as she looked him over in the outfit she helped pick out, the hug she gave him before he entered his classroom.

Remembers her pointing out the different birds in their backyard, all the songbirds that came to greet them. Her soothing voice a distraction from a cut on his arm.

Remembers her hair and the way it fell down, black as night.

Remembers her eyes, shining with love toward her two sons.

He remembers Mom, everything about her.

He remembers Mom, the wound of mourning open again.

Wilbur finds himself thinking about the swing again, both the old one and the new one. The memory of swinging back and forth, feeling his tiny body push against the wind, overlaps with the memory of pushing Cardinal, the same joy reflecting back at him. It’s funny, but seeing it from the outside helps him realize how Mom had felt, how much love she held for him, for Tommy.

It makes him realize how much she would’ve loved Cardinal, would have loved to teach him to read and sing and dance and give him different foods to try.

She would’ve loved that.

Wetting his lips, he swallows. “Why are you bringing her up? I know it’s the anniversary, but…”

His dad glances up at him, and that difference almost makes him laugh again, the son being taller than his father, but it’s pulled away at the last second, tugged back to be reserved for later. “It’s just…you look happy,” Dad smiles at his confusion, laughing at himself, “might not sound like much, but I’ve noticed that since she died, you’d been pulling away. You were still there, still acted like yourself, but you stayed outside all day, only coming home for dinner, out the door before the dishes were started. There was always this look on your face, like a determined type of ignorance. Deliberate. Like you were actively ignoring something.”

Wilbur comes to his own conclusion based on the words. His eyes widen and something drops down inside him, a dread overtaking him. Had he really…“I’m sorry,” he speaks, pushing the words out as he straightens, already thinking of ways to undo the damage he’s caused, “I never meant to ignore you and Tommy, really, I—”

Dad gets alarmed when he does, reaching out to hold his arms as he calms him down. “Oh, it's not that. I promise, mate, you didn’t.” A twinkle enters his eye and he laughs, “Well. Not too much, anyway.” He coughs, hands sliding down to hold Wilbur’s, thumb grazing over his knuckles. “But recently, you’ve been more…present. If that makes sense. You look more active, and you smile more. I even heard you singing the other day with Tommy, and you never sing inside the house anymore.” A film covers his eyes, glazing over with a shine that’s almost scary to watch. “I guess I’m just happy for you, happy you’re happy.”

The statement bulldozes into Wilbur, knocking all of his thoughts down into a broken mess, the puzzle pieces jagged and impossible to put together like they were before. It clears his mind for a minute, before all the emotions hiding beneath the completed set crawls out, sliding down his throat and over his eyes, making him match his dad in looks.

His voice cracks. “I miss her, Dad.” His shoulders twitch against a sob, collapsing inward as his dad turns his hands over to hold them in his. “I miss her so much. It’s like a hole in my heart that’s never healed, just there sucking away everything good and-and—I just miss her.” The last syllable draws out for a while, half a whine.

“I know. I miss her too. I miss her every day, every second. I still mourn her whenever I see where she worked, her friends, her picture beside the bed.” Dad tries to smile at him, though, besides the weight the words hold over them. He squeezes their hands together. “And that hole won’t ever be covered, it’ll still be there years from now. But you’ll have me, you’ll have Tommy, and we can help guide you out of that hole if you ever find yourself stuck. It’ll take time, but it won’t feel so big. I promise.”

Wilbur swallows, blinking back the remainder of the grief. “Why does it have to take this long?”

“I don’t know,” Dad replies, looking solemn, “I can’t answer that one.”

They look at each other, silently reassuring the worries the other holds and soothing the open wounds they both laid bare. The ticking of the clock sounds out, growing to envelop the room and make itself known. Dad blinks, inhaling shakily as he lets go of his hands, bringing his own close to his chest.

Wilbur copies him, trying to discreetly wipe away the tears in his eyes.

“Well, I won’t keep you any longer. You must have someplace to get to, you acted pretty urgently there, mate.” Dad says, voice returned back to normal. He picks his mug back up again, roaming over it greedily before looking back up. “Just make sure to let me know if I can do anything for you, okay?”

“Okay.” Wilbur doesn’t move for a minute. But his legs move before his mind catches up, retracing his steps until he’s back at the door, still open a crack as it waits for him.

Before he leaves for good, a thought takes over the forefront. This is a thought that had been steadily growing since he met Cardinal, a desire boiling underneath the surface that he’s tried to ignore, but knows it would spill over eventually and cause something like this. He wasn’t sure how to bring it up before, but this could be a segway to it.

“Actually. There might be something you can do now, Dad…”

Days later, Wilbur still hasn’t worked up the courage to ask. Dad gives him encouraging smiles when he leaves for the forest, a verbal pat on the back as he says, “He’ll say yes, you know.” And the sentiment is nice, because he knows that if he were to ask, Cardinal would probably say yes, but it’s the probability of it not happening that keeps getting in his way.

He will ask eventually, there’s no going around it, but it feels like it has to be at a specific time or in a specific way. Like he has to make the moment worth remembering for later. Though, Cardinal probably won’t care too much about how it happens as long as it happens.

Oh. Speaking of…

“Did you bring potatoes?”

Cardinal tries to glance into the bag, but Wilbur holds it out of his reach, going up further every time the kid reaches for it. It’s times like these that he’s really grateful to be over a head taller. “Hands off!” Wilbur laughs as Cardinal pouts, disappointed. “And why do you always make it sound like I’m bringing you raw potatoes? Just, nothing cooked, just fucking raw potatoes!”

Potatoes are, in Cardinal’s words, the ‘best plant he’s ever had and will ever have.’ Not quite sure how he knows he won’t like anything else if he hasn’t tried it yet, but that’s something that will be addressed later on. This doesn’t stop Wilbur from wishing he hadn’t brought the baked potatoes over that one day and introduced them to Cardinal in the first place.

The obsession was cute in the beginning, but maybe it was time to start worrying about it.

Cardinal pauses, looking thoughtful. “Maybe you should.” Wilbur looks at him with disgust as he continues, a bright smile on his face, “If every potato dish I’ve tried so far has been good, then perhaps the plain one will be great, or better.”

He says that like he’s had almost every potato dish there was; he’s only ever had them baked. Wilbur would know if he’s tried more, he brings the food. “Never. If you ever decide that raw potatoes are better than cooked potatoes, then I’m sorry, but I’m disowning you.”

“Disown me from what?”

“Being my b—” he almost says being my brother , but Wilbur catches the thought before it turns into words, and he freezes, choking them back down. “My friend. Of course. Being my friend.” He repeats it to convince both of them that that’s what he meant, the start of another word was never on his lips.

Cardinal blinks, oblivious. “Okay.” When the bag is sat on the ground, he busies himself with looking through it for the food, deflating when it’s just berries and a pastry from Niki’s parents. Wilbur sits down next to him and tries to breathe.

That was too close. That was way too close.

It’s not necessarily bad that it happened, as he very much does think of Cardinal like another brother, but the thought of telling Cardinal that now that he knows what the word means is just terrifying. He never had to tell Tommy that they were brothers, because they grew up together and were always there, it was just something that they were, nothing more. It would never be one-sided, either.

But it’s different with Cardinal. He never grew up being loved or held or anything that involved having a brother. A family. That’s heartbreaking, and it’s nervous for Wilbur to think of how he’ll react when he tells him that they can be brothers. He’ll be confused, maybe even disgusted, and it’s all up to him if he even wants to come home and meet Dad and live in the house, sleep in the bed in the room they got set up for him.

The decision is entirely his. Wilbur doesn’t want to entertain the thought that Cardinal won’t come with him, but how can he know that? How can he say with certainty when he hasn’t asked yet? What will happen to him if he says no? What then?

What then, Wilbur?

“—Wilbur?”

For a moment, he thinks that was still in his head, but it isn’t. “Hm? Yeah?”

Cardinal eyes him. “I asked you if you got me a new book.” He’s sitting with everything in the bag around him, the only thing missing is a book.

Wilbur laughs. “Did you finish the last one already? I told you to stretch it out more than a week, man! I can’t go checking books out every day because you speed through them like a demon.”

“Not a demon,” Cardinal corrects, “as inhuman.”

They should have a talk about this constant correction of turning everything he’s been called that can have feelings into something that shouldn’t. Demons aren’t human, but there are stories that show they have emotions; something just inhuman cannot. “Forgive me. You’re right. Like something…inhuman.”

“So did you get me a new book?”

“Of course I did,” Wilbur fishes around in the bag and pulls out the book. Cardinal’s eyes widen as if he’s witnessed something magic, barely catching it when it’s tossed at him. “Have at it, nerd.”

He watches Cardinal flip to the first chapter, eyes moving back and forth at rapid speed, knowing that this book won’t last long either. Reading’s a nice habit to have for someone like him, but that doesn’t mean Wilbur’s not glad there’s only a library in town and not a bookstore. Dad would be concerned will all the money he would spend.

Giving gifts isn’t his usual form of love. It’s just the easiest one to present Cardinal with, someone who doesn’t have anything to call his own and was chained for trying.

The question builds itself back up in his throat, but Wilbur clenches his teeth and forces it down.

Not yet. Not yet.

It takes a long time before the desperation boils over into his every thought, entering into his music without his permission. Desire for both his brothers to like each other, his family of four to finally be complete after being broken for years, pours out of him into lyrics and sounds. Cardinal even picks up on it, pausing in his colouring to look over and listen.

He always looks so intense when he’s trying to understand something. It’s endearing.

The colouring had only started recently. Finally growing restless with books and food, Cardinal had begged for something new, or at least something to do with his hands. Luckily, Wilbur had just been going through his room for things to get rid of and found an old art set, so he brought that with him the next time. Cardinal was ecstatic, paint smeared on his clothes and graphite leaving marks all over his hands, even a pastel left a mark on his forehead somehow.

“You have something on your mind.”

Wilbur glances up at Cardinal. His latest drawing was of a forest and village, strings of lights connecting the houses while a stick figure man played music and two children kissed. The Spring Festival , his mind fills in, remembering Cardinal telling him about it. “It’s nothing.”

Cardinal frowns, “Yes, it is.” His crayon slips from his hand as he sits up, trying to act like something to be taken very seriously. It might work on anyone else, but Wilbur only sees his little brother trying to be cute. “It gives you this weird look on your face, and it’s making you stink like bad. Almost like I did before you forced me to have a bath.”

The smelling part was Cardinal’s powers, or whatever they were, coming out of hiding. Not only could he hear the wishes whispered to the night, he had told Wilbur weeks ago now, but sometimes they gave off a smell as if they were being held in.

Wilbur’s wish was obvious to anyone that looked at him closely, but the thought of telling Cardinal still made something coil in his chest, his breath failing him for a minute. “You should have another. I’m surprised no one has smelled you in town yet, stinking up the place like you are.”

“It’s not that bad yet.” Cardinal denies, pink dusting across his cheeks. He squares his shoulders, looking at Wilbur dead in the eye, an inhuman feeling moving in the air like he was listening intently to Wilbur’s soul. It was vulnerable. “Tell me.”

He swallows, trying to hide his unease. “No.”

“Yes.”

“No!” Wilbur frowns, shifting his guitar to the side to show he was serious. “It’s nothing, I promise.”

“My job is to hear what’s wrong with people and what they wish for it to get better, then I grant those wishes.” Cardinal leans forward, never blinking. The chain on his neck mocks Wilbur, reminding him that his brother is not and will never be as human as he looks and acts. “You’re no different from the other humans I’ve served, so tell me what’s wrong.”

Wilbur knows that Cardinal isn’t trying to be mean—he’s just stating something he knows to be a fact, genuinely believing it—but the words make him look away, a shadow falling over his face as he tries to hold back the urge to snap things he won’t be able to take back.

It always comes down to this. The only reason Cardinal is here is because the King removed him from his job, and then the Pit got hold of him and by the time he escaped, he was in a different place and society had moved on. Catching up might have been easy for him, but Wilbur is the first human he’s ever hung out with so much. All the feelings, knowledge, and technology he’s been introduced to hold nothing over his job.

Pulling this card was a low move. Cardinal must know that.

And yet, it’s working. It is, because the coiling in his chest has disappeared, fizzled out by the anger and guilt the words caused, replaced by spite. He needs to prove Cardinal wrong, that he’s not like all the other humans he’s ‘served’, he can be something bigger, something greater. He can be brothers; they can be brothers.

“What if I wanted to be?” Wilbur is quiet, eyes trained on some stray dandelions flowing in the light breeze of summer. It’s time.

Cardinal sounds faintly surprised. “Wanted to be what?”

“Different.” He looks back, trying to convey the feeling through his eyes. “What if I wanted to be different than the other humans you’ve…you’ve served. What then?” Swallowing, he leans forward, fiddling with his hands. “Listen, I-I really like you. I—”

“Are you going to confess your love for me like the books you gave me and try to kiss me after I wake up from a nap?” Cardinal sounds so serious as he says this that it catches Wilbur completely off guard.

He reels back, blinking rapidly. “What? No! Ew! God!” Pinching his nose, he sighs, disappointed in only himself. “Why did I have to give you all those fairytales? They just distort your perception of reality.”

Cardinal doesn’t answer, as expected, and Wilbur takes a moment to collect his thoughts.

Exhaling through his nose, he starts again, “No. I just mean I like you, as a friend, really well. I think you’re good, and kind, and I want to keep being friends with you forever. I even…I kind of also want to be more than friends, something closer—I told you the word for what Tommy and I are, right?”

“Brothers.”

“Yeah.” Smiling softly, he continues, “I view you as a brother. I want to keep being brothers with you.” “But I also want to make it official, like have your last name be my last name, you call my dad ‘Dad’, and have Tommy be your brother too. And that can’t happen if you remain here. You’d. You’d need to come to town with me, come and meet my dad, meet Tommy.”

The more he talks, the more taken aback Cardinal looks. Something like hope flashes across his eyes before it’s replaced with apprehension, his shoulders curling inwards as he makes himself smaller. “What…what are you asking?”

Wilbur stands up and takes a couple of steps to hover over Cardinal, casting a shadow over his face. “I’m asking…” His hand raises to hang in between them. Licking his lips, the question in his chest, his wish, it finally comes out. “Do you want to come home with me? Do you want to come to my house? Do you want to come meet my dad?”

He lowers his voice, summarizing everything down to a single question. “Do you…Do you want to be part of my family with me? Forever?”

(Here’s the thing: if Cardinal accepts, this will mean ending the visits to the forest where Mom resides, where the memory resides, and where all the grief and anger resides.

Everyone says moving on is supposed to be fulfilling, something hard yet something that pays off. They say you can’t stay in the past because you’ll miss out on your future. He thinks that moving on is terrifying, because that means finally accepting the only thing remaining of his mom is in his head, nothing tangible. In his family, who share parts of her, but who are ultimately people vastly different.

At the same time, all he feels now as he surveys the tree and the clearing surrounding it is a tiredness deep in his bones. Melancholy has wrapped around this place and it will remain tainted with it as long as he keeps visiting while it’s all still so new.

Cardinal might just be something Mom sent him to help him cope. He realizes this as he waits, while he takes in the amount of love this strange little monster in his backyard has accumulated in his heart.)

It’s time.

Wilbur waits for an answer, his hands sweating as the sun bears down on him, and Cardinal stares at his hand in disbelief.

Here’s an epilogue: there is a rusted boy.

This boy wasn’t always rusted. It used to be a new blade, sharpened for war and worn with blood, shining with power, wielded by a king, and then sold to a ring. Straight back, ready stance, and moves it knew like the back of its human hand. Darkness is engraved in its handle; ‘mercy’ is engraved in its owner, no matter how cruel. When the officers brought down the Pit, it left without footprints and fell asleep in a patch of trees, another forest for its home.

When it woke up, the chains were still on its hands. There were still no shoes on its feet, covered in layers of dirt instead. The forest was still the same, if for some new rabbits making their home in the roots of a tree next to it. It was light out, sun streaming through the leaves, but never touching it in the shade of a big tree.

It felt, for the first time in its existence, a sense of what the human’s called confusion. Unease? Helplessness? It wasn’t sure the exact emotion or feeling, but it did know that it clung to the tree it woke up by, running its fingers over the bark like it was words of a book telling a story. And in some ways, the tree was, telling it how it missed a town growing by the forest, multiple generations coming and leaving and dying.

The fact left it with a sense it’d read this story before, been the main character in it.

Nonetheless, it decided to observe for itself. The town, in this stage, was rather small, with no more than a couple hundred people living in the houses. There was a school next to the forest, the edges of the property just barely touching its new home, where children played games on the equipment and in the field. Young as they were, the two playing a game of hide and seek along the first set of trees looked happy, pure.

Innocent.

It hadn’t thought of the virtue in a long time. Before the King and the Pit, it had held the virtue dear, something forbidden from its touch, and something it longed to know. But it had always remained out of its fingertips. Maybe chasing after it had brought all of this onto itself, and maybe it should come to terms with the fact that the only intimate relationship it could have was with the darkness of its birth, but it still watched the virtue’s conduits play, still knew what to watch for as it dangled in front of its eyes.

The virtue was intoxicating to it. A drug all to its own, it needed to watch for it to calm something inside of him, balance off something unstable in its chest. It needed something to dull down sharp edges and ease the bones in its body.

It might be a weapon, might have always meant to be one, but for reasons it didn’t understand, it felt like it wanted anything else than to be one, even if it’s all it knew to be.

Years into its job of observing the town and keeping the inhabitants safe, it remembered a vague time it called itself a boy. It laughs now, as it knew that it could never be a boy, not really, as it was too good being inhuman to try and be human, but the dreams of a younger version of it felt amusing when compared to the reality it knows now.

(Sometimes, if it listens well, it hears a wish in the darkness. The voice is inaudible, but the feelings are clear, and they always seem eerily familiar to it, like it knows this wish as if it were it's own. The wish kept it company in the lull of human desires, whispering a tune only it can hear, like it was spurred from its leftover feelings from when it tried to be a boy.

It never knows what to do with this wish, so it stays silent, letting it wash over it. It knows it can never be its wish, not really—its job is to fulfill wishes, not create them—but it can bask and pretend it might be.)

Then it met the human siren, as it would later nickname him.

It had been wandering in the shadows, hopping over gaps where the sun shone onto the grass, when it heard the melody he sang. Much like his mythological counterpart, the sound was sweet enough to draw its undivided attention, pulled close now that the hook had caught it. He was sitting underneath a tree, and enough shadows fell around him that it felt safe getting close; a striking change from its usual way of watching from a distance away.

The siren had his eyes closed, and an instrument lay across his lap. Dressed in a bright sweater and round glasses, he looked relaxed. His hands moved across the strings like they were lovers, knowing where things were and what to do to get the sound he desired.

His movements had it transfixed, leaning forward on its knees to watch.

Unfortunately, the siren had finished his song and leaned forward at the same time as it, leading to them hitting their heads against each other.

(For the first time in centuries, it had allowed itself to be seen by a human. They had locked eyes, sharing thoughts more powerful than words and exchanging emotions too difficult to name. The truth was laid bare—its curiosity and awe, hidden underneath an inhuman gaze of interest and his surprise and confusion, where underneath lay something that had just perked up.

The human hadn’t screamed, nor had they been hateful and mean. In all the notes it made, the one that kept coming up had always been that humans were afraid of anything they couldn’t conquer, which translated to anything that didn’t look like them and acted exactly the same. In theory, if a human were ever to be faced with it, the police should be called and the government should decide whether to imprison it, kill it, or experiment with it.

But the siren hadn’t done as predicted.

Perhaps that was what kept it coming back to visit him.)

The siren, or Wilbur as he introduced himself later, was a nice human. Very different to the King and the people at the Pit. He brought it food and books and little pieces of human inventions that it had witnessed being created, but had never seen up close; its favorite became the handheld game system the siren had called a ‘switch’, and a cute little game about blocks and survival. The guitar was always with him, and sometimes he would play mindless chords or sing a song while it explored the trinket.

Most of the time, he taught it about the human world, things it had been asleep for and things it never got to learn from the tutor provided by the King, like the names of colours and simple names for animals, actions, settings, anything. It was taught the alphabet and learned how to read fast, how to write faster. They went from Wilbur sitting it between his legs and reading a picture book to it, to it reading Greek myths in silence as melodies weaved in the air.

It grew content. There was a weight on its shoulders it had never known was lifted, relieved by the presence of someone who never treated it differently, who never thought to use it as a weapon or as something for entertainment. For the first time in its existence, it felt like it deserved to have a human companion, the captiousness in its heart be damned. For the first time, it felt truly happy, truly alive.

For the first time, it felt seen .

And what an exhilarating feeling that was.

(And when Wilbur extended his hand and explained what he wanted it to do, it took a second to fully process it. The words were all ones it knew the meaning of, but when directed towards it, at it? They felt like a foreign language. But the longer the siren stood there, with his hand outstretched, genuine kindness and all too familiar longing, that painful longing for something he dared to hope could come true one day.

“Do you want to come meet my dad?” Or the underlying question, a wish whispered only to its ears, a job it will never unlearn, do you want to come live with me forever?

Do you wish for us to be a family, like I wish?

Do you wish the same? Do you wish the same?

Do you wish?

It could only stare at the hand in thought, trapped again back in the body of a naïve thing who claimed itself a boy and was taught to be a blade, who rusted away until only bones remained and a shadow stained on the ground.

Longing, heartache, weariness; an invitation to healing, to hope, to innocence.

It He hadn’t felt this way in so long. Warmth wrapped around him, guiding back into place the connection to the human body form he took shape in, the sensations finally his again. There was a doubt in the very bottom of his heart that this was all too good to be true, but he never listened to it, leaning into the virtues in his heart and greeting chance like an old friend.

Even if this turned out bad, at least he found someone he can call brother.

He takes the hand.)

He stops and turns back to the forest, making Wilbur stop as well, their hands still tightly clutched together. They need to walk down this road and into town before they reach the Watson residence, until they reach home. But the thought of leaving the forest after living in one for so long gives him a bitter feeling.

Wilbur stays silent as he says his goodbyes.

He traces the trees, gently wishing them well, asking them to grow strong and tall, enough for him to see from all the way in the middle of town. The flowers he asks to keep guard over the trees, and to keep intruders out, leaving only the animals and anyone who respects the forest for the living entity it is. A deer watches them beside a berry bush, gazing at him with sharp eyes, and he nods his head in thanks, wishing her and her family the best.

It feels like leaving a part of himself behind, but Wilbur squeezes his hand in support and he knows that though that may be true, what’s also true is that he has a family waiting for his return. The forest will eventually become his favorite place to hang out after school, but for now, it remains his nursery and cradle he outgrew.

“Ready?” Wilbur asks, gently swinging their hands.

He blinks and turns away from the forest. “Ready.” And as they start walking again, he continues, “I also thought about what you said.”

Wilbur furrows his brow, glancing back at him. “What?”

“About a name. For me.”

“Oh. Did you think of one?”

“Yes.” He looks at the setting sun. “I think it suits me.”

“Well, aren’t you going to tell me?”

There’s a sensation as they turn onto the road that leads to town, like someone wrapping their arms around him, giving him a hug. And he just knows that it’s the essence that gave him life wishing him the best, a final gift for playing his part so well—though he’ll always hear the wishes of people, it no longer is his formal job.

He now has permission to live a human life.

“Technoblade. My name is Technoblade.”

Wilbur tilts his head, smiling. “Technoblade. I like that.”

Technoblade smiles back.

The sun smiles at them both and they go home.