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There is no light on as Wilbur approaches the van. Just the incessant and annoying flash of Las Nevadas across the water, and the streaking brightness of the moon.
He sighs, fixes his jacket on his shoulders. His fingers itch, irritated by the dull thrum of carnival noise. He wants a cigarette.
With his back, he pushes open the door to Paradise, digging absent-mindedly through the pockets of his coat. He hums vaguely beneath his breath, to fill the silence, glasses slipping down his nose. He shuffles inside.
Wilbur’s fingers catch on a spare cigarette as he shuts the door behind him, and he pulls it out and holds it neatly between two fingers. He goes to fumble for a light switch. He looks up.
He jumps.
Despite the lack of proper lighting, the van is not empty as he’d assumed. Tommy is sitting in the dark, crisscross on a countertop, staring out the window with big eyes. The blue catches all the flickering lights in a funny way, casts a layer of color over his face.
“Tommy?” He says, because even with the noise, the kid didn’t seem to notice him walk in.
Tommy jumps too. “Oh,” his chin tips up immediately, turns towards Wilbur, and they are all at once eye to eye. “Hey, Wil.”
There’s a tightness to him, the way his arms rest on his legs. There is nothing erratic, no messiness. Nothing boyish or lovely and obnoxious, not at first glance. He sits like he’s trying very hard to remain perfectly still, but he taps his fingers against his knee.
“I thought I’d find you here,” he says, inexplicably.
Wilbur is not sure what to make of that, so he doesn’t try to make of it anything, he leaves it to obscurity. “It’s late,” he says, by way of jolty avoidance.
Tommy shrugs. “Can’t sleep,” he says, something unidentifiable in his voice. (Wilbur does not like that he can’t read it, so he pretends instead that it isn’t there at all).
“So bothering me is what you went with?” He raises an eyebrow, notes the rushing of his pulse as the words fall from his mouth.
Tommy scowls, and Wil swallows a giggle. He’s ever so easy to rile up, Tommy is. He’s always just on the edge of composure. Tommy looks back towards the window, wistfully almost. He watches the light show.
“Sure,” he says, voice dipped with sarcasm. The tapping of his fingers picks up in speed. “That’s it.”
“Ooh,” he fakes a wince, elaborate and theatrical. He wants Tommy to stop looking at Las Nevadas. “Tell me how you really feel.”
Tommy shakes his head loosely. “I feel like it was a mistake to come here,” he hops off the counter and lands hard, hard enough that Wilbur feels his own bones creaking. “I just wanted to see you, asshole,” he mutters loudly, so that it’s unclear if it’s for Wilbur or just for himself. “You dropped off the map, and now with the… everything, I wanted to make sure you were okay.”
He squints. “The ‘everything’?” Tommy’s attention to careful and immersive storytelling astounds him.
Tommy’s eyes catch him strangely. The moon makes them glossy, and it fights the lights of Las Nevadas for dominance. “Yes.”
“Elaborate on that,” Wilbur says, almost a command.
(Details, Tommy, details, he would always say when Tommy was younger and brighter and rambling his way about a story like a rabbit on drugs, topic to topic to irrelevant topic. Tommy would reply that he was bossy. A lot has changed since then, but a lot hasn’t).
“Dream escaped the prison,” he says, like surely Wilbur must know. Wilbur freezes. “Ranboo is…” Tommy falters for a moment, and that is all the time he needs to falter for Wilbur to understand. He feels his fingers twitch, “you know…” he says with hesitant purpose and trails off, skirting his gaze. Wilbur’s stomach turns to stone.
(He thinks that he really ought to stop getting invested in things, because in the end they just turn bitter, they just crumble in his palms as he tries to hold them together. Ranboo wasn’t a friend, but he was a something. It shouldn’t have gotten that far.
But he does not know if grief is his to have. He does not know if he has earned the right.
Not when there are people like Tommy who loved him like Tommy does, wholly and without deterrent. People like Tubbo who Ranboo would have died for).
“What?” He aims at composure and misses the mark. It comes out soft and dry.
“You didn’t know?” Tommy looks sullen, worse than that. There is distress in the slope of his shoulders, there is a grief wracking his frame. He looks like he’s trying to find what to say. “How could you not—I was there, at your house. Phil has been helping me.”
For a moment, Wilbur doesn’t process. For a moment all he can think is Dream is out, and all he can feel is something just left of grief.
There’s a lull before he speaks, but he stutters something out. “Helping you what?” He asks, over the rushing in his ears he is trying very hard to pretend doesn’t exist.
“Hide?” Tommy says, sounding small. “Plan a funeral?” He says, sounding smaller.
“Why do you need to hide?” His head briefly clears at the notion of it. “What do you have to hide from?”
(In his mind there are things that are just out of reach, memories that sit at arm's length, grazing the tips of his fingers).
“Dream,” Tommy says slowly, as if speaking to a wild animal. “He tried to kill me, Wil,” he laughs nervously.
Wilbur scoffs, “No he didn’t,” he dismisses as soon as the words leave Tommy’s mouth. He waves a hand and rolls his eyes.
Tommy’s hands curl into fists. “Pretty fucking certain he did,” he spits back in a rush. Wilbur shakes his head, something like laughter under his ribs.
“Tommy, tell me this. Why would Dream, the most powerful man on this godforsaken server, go after you?”
Tommy doesn’t budge at the poison on his tongue, accustomed to Wilbur and his tirades, the way they were sometimes at his expense.
“I don’t know, Wilbur, why does anyone do anything?” he says, “I’m too fun.”
At that, Wilbur briefly stalls. There is something foreign in the way Tommy says that. I’m too fun. It sounds like an echo. He jerks his head. “Whatever,” he says. “I, for one, don’t believe you. You’ve always had an imagination, Toms.” The nickname slips out without his permission and Tommy flinches like he’s raised a fist.
“He said you wouldn’t” he sounds like he’s chewing on disappointment, swallowing apathy.
“You’ve spoken to him?” Wilbur urges, eager and moving into Tommy’s space.
“What part of ‘he tried to kill me’ did you not understand, prick?” Tommy jeers, moves firmly back. Wilbur stops.
“Fine,” he relents dully, falling a step away. “What happened?”
Tommy looks out the window again, for a split second. The flashing light of the city of Las Nevadas. Sand and water and stone. Wilbur takes a breath.
“I’ll tell you what fucking happened, Wilbur” Tommy starts, low. “He broke out of the prison and ran off.” Wilbur appreciates the way this more neatly slides into who he believes Tommy to be. Spitfire, loudmouth. He does not shake or wallow, his grief is his anger, and his fists his relief. “I ran to Logsteadshire to grab the axe of peace, because last time we fought, I killed him with it, and he’s a very poetically driven guy, Wil,” he says, shaky exhale, “it’s no wonder the two of you get along. So I figured he’d think it narratively satisfying or whatever the fuck to use the same weapon. Except when I got there,” he stops, chews on his lip. “When I got there it was gone, and when I turned around Dream had it to my throat.”
Wilbur blinks in surprise. He tries to imagine Tommy like that, at the mercy of steel and wood and netherite. He tries to imagine Dream casting a shadow over him, head cocked to the side and smile cocked with it.
He spares Tommy a brief and fleeting glance. He is wearing a blue sweater, and it is falling off his shoulders. His fingers are trembling, and they tap now at his elbows.
Wilbur tries to imagine him afraid.
(He has a perfect point of reference).
It makes something in him sick. He thinks of Ranboo and feels all the sicker.
There is something wrong, here. Tommy slouches when no one is looking. Tommy makes himself small.
There is something Wilbur can feel that he’s missing.
(He stretches out his arm to grab at his memory, behind a veil. He begs his mind to let him know.)
“But he saved you,” he counters, often just to be contrary. He tries to weave together something of an argument, something of an anything. Just to have, just to defend himself with. He does not like to be proven wrong. “He saved us. He brought us back.”
This seems logical enough to him. Why kill something just to revive it?
(The thrill, a voice somewhere in his head hisses. To destroy is to be alive and you understand both life and death alike. You have lived and flipped the coin).
Tommy sighs with his whole body and his weight rattles the van. “That wasn’t saving, Wilbur,” he breathes, “Maybe to you. But it’s not really saving if he’s the whole reason I was dead in the first place.”
He doesn’t like the way they find the same flaws. One person noticing, and it could all be a mistake. Two? Even while grasping at denial, Wilbur can recognize a pattern.
“What happened when I was gone?” He asks lowly. He is a man of confidence and logic. He will act without all the necessary pieces of information, of course. But he would still prefer to have them, if just for his own easy sleep. “What did I miss? This doesn’t make sense, Tommy.”
Tommy rolls his eyes, groans. “Of course it doesn’t, you massive dickhead. You still think exile was a fucking—a fucking picnic.” He cries, “Not what it—not what it was.”
“That’s not it,” he brushes him off easily. “Ghostbur was there for exile, Tommy. I saw everything I needed to see.”
Tommy huffs, curling in on himself, a flower refusing to bloom in the dark. “Yeah, okay. I’m Wilbur and I know everything,” He mocks. “You don’t know shit about what happened to me. No one does.”
Wilbur fixes his glasses on his nose. He’s still holding the spare cigarette. He thinks if it were anyone else with him, he would light it, but he doesn’t like the sight of Tommy’s puffing cheeks as he holds his breath. “Then tell me.”
Tommy leans against the counter. “I’m tired of talking Wilbur.”
“Don’t you trust me?” He prods. “You’re acting like you don’t.”
Tommy turns his nose down. When he speaks, it is soft, almost indecipherable, even in the silence. “I do trust you, Wilbur.”
Wilbur nods at him, prompts him to continue.
He doesn’t start right away, just thinks. His fingers pick up tapping again.
“Exile was shit,” he says finally.
“Eloquent, Tommy,” he smirks, because above all else, Wilbur is, admittedly, a prick.
“Fuck off, Wil. If I’m gonna talk about it, you have to shut up,” his gaze is hot. Wilbur throws up his hands in surrender.
“Fine.”
“It was—” he hums. “I guess I’ll start from the beginning.” He leans heavier against the counter, and there is an intangible sort of weight that hangs off him all of a sudden, something impossible and dragging him down. It’s like it hurts to say. Wilbur glances around, uneasy.
“Tubbo kicked me out of L’manburg, yeah?” He says, carefully. “But I didn’t live there, I couldn’t, it was still a fucking crater” (Wilbur does not wince). “So I figured I could stay home, figure it all out from there, make a plan or something.” He wets his lips. “As soon as I walked past the walls, Dream told me I wasn’t allowed to go home either. Said I was banned from anywhere of the greater Dream SMP.”
“Were those the terms he negotiated with Tubbo?” He asks immediately, because he can’t imagine sweet little Tubbo damning his best friend like that, even with the new sort of bite he carries around with him.
Tommy lets his words slide, despite the no talking rule. “Tubbo had no control over anywhere other than L’manburg,” Tommy explains. “But no. I don’t know that he would’ve exiled me if he knew that. But he didn’t really have a choice. That or Dream choked the country 'til it died. That was the deal. Me or the nation.”
Wilbur squints. “That isn’t fair.”
Tommy snorts. “No shit.”
He shrugs, uncomfortable all of a sudden. His bones ache in protest of the fact that he’s been standing for the entirety of this interaction. “Well, you should’ve argued, Tommy. You should’ve stood up for yourself. Then maybe it wouldn’t have happened.”
Those are his ideals, after all. Sticking it to the man. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of victory.
Tommy’s face goes funny, incredulous. The look is not one Wilbur is accustomed to, and he is finding it harder and harder to ignore the many things in this room that are not as he expects them to be. “Wilbur, it had been two weeks since you died,” Tommy says simply, and Wilbur goes cold. “I don’t know what you wanted me to be. I just wanted something else to happen. I wanted to feel something that wasn’t grief.”
He opens his mouth to speak, a thousand things to say. That it wasn’t Tommy’s fault, that he should have gone to someone (he twists at the thought that the person Tommy would have gone to previous would have been him). That he’s alive now, so none of it matters anymore, even it feels like it’s swallowing him up.
“Tommy—“
“Shut up.”
He relents.
Tommy continues, and the pit in Wilbur’s stomach only grows.
“Dream took me in a boat. To a beach, far away from everything else. Ghostbur was there for that.”
“Lads on tour,” he chimes, flicker of memory. He gives a small smile. “The prime log.”
Tommy points at him. “That was Logsteadshire. That was where—” he stops.
“Just say it, Tommy.”
He shakes his head. He looks like he isn’t really there, like he might flutter out any moment. “It was bad.” The bluster is gone now. Tommy’s voice is plain and detached, high. “It was… he blew up my things. He hit me. He made me worse. He made sure nobody came to my party.”
The sentences aren’t particularly comprehensible, but the tone is clear. Wilbur’s eyebrows knit together. He feels anger and concern pulling at his skin like spurs. “He?”
“Dream,” Tommy fills in, continues even as Wilbur is thrown. “He said he was my only friend. He told me it wasn’t my time to die. No freedom, even in death,” he says. “I think it’s carved into me to disagree. He told me I had to live so I didn’t want to anymore.”
Wilbur feels as if his brain is full of static. Wilbur feels confused. He exhales.
“What did he have to gain?”
That’s the only thing that makes sense, that’s the only thing logic can beg for. A reason.
“Me. Nothing,” Tommy says as if the two are one and the same.
“How’d you get out?” His own voice is softer now, Tommy glances up to meet his eyes. They are not as blue as he remembers them being. They are gray and the bags beneath them are dark.
“I kept a chest of things.” He states, placid. “I hid them from him.” He pauses. Wilbur’s stomach pools with dread.
“He found them?” He asks, without really needing an answer.
Tommy takes a deep breath. “He found them,” he echoes. “It wasn’t even anything. Pictures of L’manburg. A couple of enderpearls,” he chuckles. “And he was really mad.”
“What’d he do, Tommy?” There’s something seething in him, there is something he is missing. His voice burns at his throat. What did he do?
Tommy cards a hand through his hair and Wilbur fiddles with the unlit cigarette in his pocket. “What do you think?” Tommy asks, sounding far too young and far too bitter. “He blew it all up.”
Tommy is more aquatinted with TNT than any boy of seventeen should reasonably be. Tommy is too aquatinted with terror.
Tommy is as young as all of them tease him for. He is a child in a world of grown-ups who are overconfident and foolish, lost to their own little narratives. He is a flower on the field where war is waged. He is a trampled daisy.
“And so I built a—“ Tommy stutters around whatever it is he’s attempting to say. “I built a tower. It’s still there, everything else is gone but the tower is still there. It goes as far as the sky does. And I stood at the top of it and looked down at the world and I thought ‘this isn’t worth it,’ you know?” Wilbur does. “Because Dream was right. I was alone. Except for him. Him and his watching. And then I thought ‘I don’t want to be watched anymore.’ So I jumped and slammed into the water. I pulled myself out and I ran through the snow until I got to Techno’s house.”
Wilbur blinks, lets the end of the story fester for a moment. He sits with it.
There was a lot of accusation, in there, bundled and wrapped. But it was not a tale, it was clearly an admission. Unless Tommy is very suddenly a very good actor.
“That can’t be true,” Wilbur says, despite himself. The wind rustles the curtains on the window.
Tommy doesn’t even look angry like he’s supposed to. He just looks tired. “Why would I lie, Wilbur? Why would I lie about something like that?”
Wilbur is frustrated. “I don’t know.”
“You talk a lot about trust,” Tommy says, not accusatory, just straight. “Trust me.”
“I do,” he says, because Tommy will always be his right-hand man. “I trust you.”
“Then believe me.”
He sighs, breath thick. “I do.” He finds that it is the truth. He finds that he is full of the awful guilt of being terribly wrong, of shaking Tommy so hard that his fingers have yet to stop quivering. He feels all the muck of life, coating him. He finds that he remembers the feeling he had that day, the Sixteenth, standing over a crater, his father at his back. Helpless. Hopeless. Sick.
“Good,” Tommy nods a little, satisfied. The tension leaks from him. “You’re the first person I’ve told.” He says. “You’re the first person who’s asked.”
He’s hit all at once with swathes of memories.
Tommy with his mouth pressed into a thin line, Tommy sitting in the sand of Las Nevadas, Tommy with red-stone dust staining his arms. Tommy staying quiet.
And then the memories aren’t really his anymore.
(His hand pushes, finally finally, through the fog, grasps at something and tugs it).
He sees Tommy get thrown back by an explosion, falling to his knees and not turning away from the blast. He sees him staring into pools of lava, stretching out his fingers as if to touch it. He sees him clutching a compass, curled up and rocking in a shabby little tent. He sees him asleep in the middle of the ocean.
He sees a forest, blurred by the fall of rain. He remembers melting.
Wilbur is a fool.
“I’m—” his mouth is dry. The wind whistles outside, and suddenly the flashing lights from the country across the water are entirely inconsequential. “I’m so sorry, Tommy,” he says, passive and disoriented. Blood rushes past his ears. He feels shriveled with shame. “I didn’t know,” he promises, turns to Tommy and begs. “I’m sorry you stayed around me when I acted the way I did,” he looks Tommy over, marveled. At the boy who is just about half his own. “Tommy you should have taken off running. Nobody would have blamed you.”
He is wracked by an all-consuming loathing, for himself and every action he has taken.
“Well, I wasn’t gonna leave you,” Tommy says, like is obvious. “I didn’t before, and I’m not now.”
Wil is bewildered, he stares at Tommy, standing impossibly before the backdrop of counters and cabinets and stoves.
“Why? I’ve been—I’m awful to you,” he says. “I’m awful.”
Tommy’s shoulders rise and fall. “You’re my brother,” he puffs, “You’re not like my brother, you are my brother. And I’m always gonna love you. No matter what.”
Wilbur feels like he’s fighting a current. Tommy’s love should not be his to have, it’s a gift and Wilbur is underserving. He is a daisy and Wilbur is the soldier’s foot.
“Yeah? Well, maybe you shouldn’t, Tommy. Maybe you’ve got shit taste.”
He shakes his head. “That doesn’t matter. Should or shouldn’t. That’s all bullshit. Love’s not like that Wil, it’s… it isn’t something you can wrangle. It goes where it goes, and you follow. There’s no logic to it. It just is.”
Wilbur likes logic. Wilbur thinks of it as something of a crutch, duct tape to pull a plan together when the circumstances are uneven. Love is logic too. He loves what he is supposed to. His country, once upon a time. Liberty. Freedom. His people. His son.
He loves what is a given.
“You’re ruled by your heart, Tommy. It’s always made you foolish,” he doesn’t know if he really believes that. Tommy’s heart is what makes him Tommy. It is the puzzle piece that tugs together the mess.
“Oh yes, and you’re so wise and heartless,” Tommy taunts. “You’re a human being, Wilbur. You don’t have to pretend to be a monster to justify your mistakes.” His eyebrows knit together like he’s trying to express something he does not have the words to convey. “You can’t excuse what’s been done, because it happened, and it was awful and that’s that. But you can move on, you can move forward.”
Wilbur pauses. Wilbur sighs slowly. “I’m a stick in the mud Tommy,” he runs a hand through his hair. “I’m sinking. I can’t move anywhere other than down.”
“Of course you can,” Tommy denies, ever-defiant. “Of course you can. I’ll pull you out my damn self if I have to Wil, but I’m not gonna let you drown.”
“You’re too good for that,” he stops this. He needs to. Ranboo is gone and Wilbur is poison and he can’t let another thing die. “Don’t get caught with me, you’re too good for that.
Tommy parts his lips, “I—”
“You make people sing, Tommy, you fucking muse.” Wilbur slams a fist against the table, cigarette falling from his hand and rolling towards its center. “Don’t get stuck with me.”
“I’m not gonna let you drown!” Tommy repeats, shaking his head. “I love you and I couldn’t live with myself. So either you get off your ass and start swimming, or we die together. Your choice, Wilbur Soot.” Tommy crosses his arms.
Wilbur will not damn more innocent things to hell. He is falling and it is all he knows. He is an antagonist and he is a villain and he is a bad guy. And Tommy is a boy, Tommy is his boy and deserves so much more than he could possibly give.
They are fire. Tommy is the sun, bright and real. He makes the flowers grow. Wilbur is the click of a lighter, the blue bit. Artificial. He does nothing but burn.
“Just give it up,” he says, choosing for once to be selfless. “Tommy, I’m not worth it. Think of the pain and the anguish. Those were my hands, the same ones that played guitar and braided your hair, buttoned your uniform and tied your ties. I know what I’m capable of. You know what I’m capable of. I’m dangerous, I’m a burning fuse. Get out while you can.” His eyes fall to the floor.
“No,” Tommy says. Wilbur looks up again.
“No?”
“No! I won’t—” he tries, restarts. “I can’t—” he throws his fists down to his sides, whine in his voice. “Don’t you think I fucking tried? To quit it, to stop feeling so attached to you? Of course, I did. I tried to let it go, I tried to fucking move on. But it didn’t work. Because it doesn’t work like that. Love is unconditional and sick and sticky, and you have mine and there’s nothing we can do about it. Stop making impossible demands and be my brother again,” he says, wobbling. His whole frame is shaking and Wilbur stutters. “How many times do I have to die for you for you to be my brother again?”
Tommy falls back against a chair, heaving. There are tears at the corners of his eyes, and he brushes them off furiously with his knuckles.
Outside an owl hoots, and the dull rattling of Las Nevadas carries over the blue, and Wilbur remembers that it is late, that they have been at this a long, long time.
Strangely, he finds himself thinking about the pit, the way it’s stuck to both of them, the way it’s the worst thing he’s ever done maybe, besides damning a boy to die for a horse and a point, besides making his own father kill him.
He thinks of Technoblade on one knee next to Tommy’s crumpled form, the only universal language is violence.
He thinks of Ranboo. He thinks of Quackity.
He thinks of vengeance. He thinks of love.
He kneels down in front of Tommy, so they’re again eye to eye. Tommy’s nostrils are flared, his mouth twisted, his face flushed. Wil takes him gently by the shoulders. “I’m your brother,” he says, soft. Tommy’s face crumples. “I’m always gonna be your brother. You’re my kid.” He says, chuckling wetly. “My little muse. This isn’t—it’s not you, Tommy. You were always enough. It’s all me.”
“I just want you to stay, Wil,” a tear escapes and falls down his cheek. He sounds little. “For once. Just stay. Don’t lead me on and go again.”
“I won’t go anywhere, I promise,” he reassures, out of his depth and for once, unconfident. “Just—please stop crying. Stop mourning me when I’m right in front of you.”
“Okay,” Tommy’s voice wobbles. “Anything.”
“None of that either,” he chides, almost on instinct. “Put yourself first, kid. If I fuck up, tell me and I’ll fix it. I’ll get better. You don’t have to be alone and you don’t have to drown.”
He laughs hoarsely, “I hate the water.”
Wilbur thinks of Tommy’s back crashing into the crystal blue under the bridge where he lost his first life, his body limp.
“Me too.”
“But I love you,” he says, something like hope swimming in the words. Wilbur aches.
“I love you too, Tommy,” he feels a stray tear streak down his own cheek. “You’re my brother, and I love you.”
And Tommy throws himself crashing into Wilbur’s arms. He stumbles backward but stays upright, holding Tommy with care, as if the action alone will be proof of his words.
Wilbur feels a resolution slot its way into his grand progression, nestled in his arms. He feels an end that’s pretty this time, not the twisted pretty, but the true kind. Pretty like the blue of Tommy’s eyes. Like the meadow of L’manburg.
He feels relief.