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Technically, the puzzles end as soon as they step into the dome once again to give the new islander a proper welcome. There are no more riddles, tasks, or physical challenges to see through.
It feels like the puzzles have only begun. Phil’s mind is half-there for the most part, half-checking and double-checking and checking again for the poppy and potato in his bag.
He could’ve sworn they weren’t there before. Really, he’s almost sure.
It had all been a weird dream, the birdhouse, the book, the floatie and the beanie—none of those things had been real. Phil and Tubbo went there just to know for sure.
But he still has a potato and a poppy that he’s not sure where came from; and his hands are trembling from all the exhaustion and fear and claustrophobia a place like that would’ve made him feel… had it been real.
They keep doing that, shaking, and he and Etoiles have a stick fight—because of course they do, that’s one thing he can rely on—and his grip is too loose, his mind somewhere else, and Etoiles is none the wiser.
…
For the night.
Phil spends the late hours in his chair, watching the beds of his children with unblinking eyes. He has a bed too, upstairs, one he could very well use.
The thought of closing his eyes and letting sleep reclaim him makes his stomach clench; so he doesn’t.
He doesn’t sleep or dream that night as far as he’s aware. He wanders around a few times, checking for any sign he’s missed, some clue that he hadn’t just dreamt it all—it couldn’t have been, right?
But there were trees where a house should’ve been—
But there were birds that shouldn’t live in that environment—
There’s a potato and a poppy in his inventory; he keeps them close.
He doesn’t even realise that it’s morning until he hears rapid knocking on the trapdoor to the basement.
“Philza!” Etoiles' voice cuts through the steel; he sounds awake, readily excited for another day, but in his own sardonic brand. “There was a code after you left. It punched me and then it left. Like a coward.”
Despite himself, Phil rolls his eyes and smiles. He walks past the two secured doors, the trapdoor—
And with all that, how could someone ever get in? It doesn’t make sense —
“So nothing exciting happened?” he asks amusedly, climbing through the trapdoor to meet Etoiles face to face. In the time Phil had been asleep—???—the code infection seems to have gotten slightly worse, but Etoiles wears it as if it’s nothing.
“A giant structure appeared over Luzu’s house,” Etoiles provides absentmindedly, he appears much more focused on Phil’s cheeks than looking at his eyes. “Did you always have so many feathers there?”
Phil raises his hand and touches his cheek, finding that the skin under his eyes is rougher than before with a soft layer of black feathers which definitely weren’t there before.
“I—no,” he admits.
Etoiles can never stand still when talking to most people, but he’s standing firmly on the ground now with a furrow between his brows. “I did not get to talk to you properly yesterday—about your absence.”
Phil smiles bittersweetly. “It was only a dream, Etoiles. I was still here.”
“No,” Etoiles firmly denies. “I checked, Tubbo checked, Fit checked, Bad checked. You were nowhere to be found. I was very worried.”
“I’m guessing you weren’t the one who built my grave?” Phil muses—if he acts like it, maybe Etoiles will pretend he’s fine too. They can joke around all the time, but they won’t find any evidence that it wasn’t a dream.
It can’t have been real.
“No,” Etoiles agrees with a shake of his head. “I didn’t approve of that. You’re too great to die.”
Phil lets out a chuckle and shakes his head. “I’ve died to a kid and the code here. That hardly makes me ‘too great.’”
“Mhm.” There’s disagreement in his hum and doubt in his eyes, he crosses his arms. “Where were you?”
“Sleeping, Etoiles,” Phil explains calmly.
Etoiles shakes his head. “I don’t believe that. Say something else. Give me some details.”
“Tubbo and I already did this yesterday,” Phil says. “We checked the place I would’ve been, had it been real, and there was nothing there.”
“Tubbo is losing his mind from all his rule-breaking. He cannot figure this out.” Etoiles points his thumb at his chest. “But I can. We can.”
How can Phil even make this clear to Etoiles? He’d rather not talk about it—he doesn’t feel… sane. There’s no better way to phrase it. What else can you say about a person who can’t trust their own mind?
False memories, real feelings; there’s a potato and a poppy in his inventory, he has more feathers on his cheeks, his body was nowhere to be found—
There was no house, there was no book, there was no memories of going to and from—
His hands are unsteady, and Etoiles notices this with a concerned expression.
“Are you okay?” he asks. “You don’t seem like it.”
“I’m okay,” Phil says, letting his hands fall to his side to at least hide that reaction.
Etoiles looks doubtful. “It's another day, Philza. We don’t have to worry about any events. I want to get to the bottom of this.”
“There is no bottom of it,” Phil denies, almost harshly, it makes him feel guiltier than he should. “There was nothing there,” he repeats.
Etoiles sighs deeply and shakes his head in a very disappointed manner. “Everything was miserable without you, Philza. I met Cucurucho and it laughed at me when I asked about you. That was the worst too. I had no one to PVP with.”
“Must’ve been terrible,” Phil says amusedly. If Etoiles is gonna diverge the topic into something lighthearted, Phil will gladly take the opportunity—even if part of him, just a small one, wants Etoiles to push his original agenda; wants him to keep insisting that it was real—or fake—a dream—anything concrete would be fine. “But I’m here now. That should do it.”
“Mhm,” Etoiles hums again—oh he’s feeling very thoughtful today. “I’m not done with you, but you look ready to fall on your feet so I’m giving you another day of recovery.”
Two options; deny that he needs that and have Etoiles keep pushing today or agree to that and confirm that he needs a day of ‘recovery’. No one needs to recover from something that didn’t happen, but he doesn’t want to talk about it anymore.
“Alright,” he agrees. “I’m going to—” think, think, think, what does he usually do? Everything he’s done has been with the kids, before, and then he created the cage for a cage. “—sort out my chests.”
It’s a good idea. Maybe he’ll find something, maybe he won't, but his storage might need a little rearranging too. It’s a good idea.
Etoiles doesn’t look like he really approves of that. “You’re going to stew in your basement all day?”
“It’s my home.”
“The empty beds will make you more sad.”
He hadn’t said ‘make you sad’, he said, ‘more sad’, as if Phil’s already sad. But he’d already been there all night, what was another day, or another—
And he would do something, anything to get his children back, he’d cover every single government building with layers upon layers of cooled lava if it meant having them there again, but if he did,
What would the consequences be?
Did someone take the fall for it the first time?
Tubbo had seemed fine except for his rambles about Cucurucho stalking him—”he’s obsessed with me, Phil, I swear”—and Phil hadn’t talked with Fit yet.
So either no one had taken the fall, or there’s still trouble brewing, even though it’s been a while and the federation is prone to quick strikes.
Then, he wants it to have been real, because then at least Tubbo and Fit hadn’t been the ones to suffer the consequences.
Then, he wants it to have been fake, because then at least he hadn’t been an idiot who was trapped for weeks because of instincts he didn’t remember being that strong.
It could be either; except it could only have been fake. Because there is not a single trace of his ‘disappearance’.
“I’ll be fine, Etoiles,” Phil reassures in a calm voice, he’s always been good at acting like something’s fine, and he’s yet to meet a person on the island who questions it too much; not since Wilbur left, though Tallulah is probably the closest. “I’m not the only person who’s lost their kid.”
“No,” Etoiles agrees. “You have lost three.”
Phil scours through every chest, every backpack, every barrel, every nook and cranny of the basement and the wall and Tallulah’s house and everywhere —
Not a trace.
He flips through old books and photo albums and holds back tears when he gets to one of the oldest ones.
There’s a picture there, one by the homemade beach by the shore next to Wilbur and Tallulah’s house. It’s before they’ve built the sandcastles.
Wilbur and Chayanne are glaring at each other, Chayanne with his sword out, looking just about ready to stab Wil then and there, and Wilbur with his mouth is half-open, clearly in the middle of some kind of jab.
And Tallulah is right there in the middle, the only one aware that their picture is being taken. She smiles brightly into the camera, safe from the sibling fight happening right behind her.
Phil’s heart contorts in an uncomfortable way, like something is putting pressure on it; and his breath hitches for a moment.
It’s loneliness.
But he’s always been content with loneliness and isolation, it’s his bread and butter. The worlds he’s had where he’s been on his own are some of the most precious to him, though now he can only find them in his dreams… apparently.
He’s not content with this.
It’s not fair. Chayanne and Tallulah, missing, is what pushed him off the wall and against the federation. He’s an anarchist, but never at the risk of them.
But fuck, if he didn’t wish Wilbur was here too. He’s been away for so long and if he came back now, he’d only suffer too, but… if Phil allowed himself to be selfish, he’d wish him back.
How can the world give him so many people to take care of, to love, to protect, and then take them away? He would die a million times if it meant that they lived.
He touches his cheek again, no longer surprised to feel the different texture. His wings are sore too, they feel like they’ve been plucked in awkward places, but they’ve been wrong since the moment they arrived.
Leaving the basement is a welcoming idea for a moment, there are many people to catch up with, even though he really doesn’t want to continuously have to explain his dream to people.
Etoiles had been right about that; staying down here does make him feel ‘more sad’.
The day passes painfully slowly.
The walls feel closer than they ever have before. It’s too quiet. It’s too empty. His brain has somehow gotten used to some kind of background noise—chirps and chatters from all kinds of exotic birds, caged in a cage with the wise crow—and without it, his ears keep flickering, searching for them.
When the night comes around, he doesn’t feel like a person.
It’s in the morning that he misses whatever memories he lost coming to the island the most. He has to think that somewhere in the large gap of nothingness, there was some kind of experience with this…
Lack of feeling grounded.
It’s ironic, isn’t it? An avian wanting to feel grounded.
He’s curled up on the floor, not asleep in the chair like he’s pretty sure he was (...?)
It’s not a comfortable position. His body is sore, his wings feel too stiff, his arms weak, and his feet heavy. First thing he does is check; check if he still has the potato and the poppy, and when he finds them safely in his inventory, he drags himself outside with one last glance at the empty beds.
Etoiles is up there, sharpening the code sword absentmindedly, feet swinging back and forth from where he’s sitting on the edge of the wall. He hears the sound of the trapdoor opening and turns around.
“You look like shit,” he observes disappointedly. “It’s worse than last time I was here.”
“I need a fucking distraction,” Phil says, because it’s easier than thinking, or doubting—if he’s truly awake, or if this is a dream too.
“Dungeon?” Etoiles asks.
“Dungeon,” Phil confirms.
They ended up clearing four dungeons in a single day.
It all becomes a blur, even from the first moment; weapon in hand, mind sharp—almost too sharp, like an animalistic instinct rather than… whatever is normal—feet lighter than in the morning.
Phil slices through monsters with practised ease, maybe not quite as smoothly as Etoiles, but they’re elegant, and sometimes it feels a bit more like a dance.
Oh, and Etoiles is so fucking cracked. The code weapons make him impossible to touch; it’s fascinating to watch, as it always is. It’s fantastic to be by his side like this. Even if Phil feels like he’s let something else take the wheel while he’s watching from the passenger seat, he still enjoys this:
Their minds in tune.
They take a break at the top of the last dungeon, both practically shaking from the excitement of the day, weapons abandoned on each side.
Etoiles sits causally as he did on the wall this morning, legs swinging. While Phil perches on the same ledge, because that motion is much more familiar.
“Never leave me again, Philza,” Etoiles says with a tone that’s scarily sincere. He tosses a golden apple without much thought. It makes sense, they’ve both taken hits today, so Phil’s body catches it without much thought.
But as soon as his hand meets the smooth texture of the golden surface, his mind shuts off, his stomach churns. He drops it as if it’s burned his hand.
Etoiles clocks into it, eyes sharpening. “Is there a problem?”
“No,” Phil denies.
Etoiles hums, sounding dissatisfied. “I didn’t see you eating any golden apples in there, or the three before. Is there a reason you are avoiding them?”
There shouldn’t be, Phil almost says. He considers which option makes him sound most sane.
Oh, yeah, the only thing I had to eat in my dream was golden apples and they’re not meant to be consumed for weeks on end with no other nutrition so that kind of fucked me up.
That just wouldn’t do. He had all the golden apples when he woke up, physically, he went a week without consuming any at all. He should be fine.
And he’s been silent for too long—the apple had rolled off the edge of the dungeon, plummeting towards the ground. It feels like a bit of a jab at him—Etoiles’ dissatisfaction morphs back into concern.
“Are you ready to talk now?” he asks.
It’s weird, to be the centre of that amount of care, he’s never needed it, he doesn’t think he needs it now.
But Etoiles thinks he does, and come to think of it, Phil doesn’t really remember him showing that much blatant care towards anyone before… not like this.
“I just dropped it, mate.”
“You’ve been jittery,” Etoiles agrees solemnly. “That’s only part of the problem.”
“My kids are missing, Etoiles. That’s the main problem.”
Nothing but that matters. In the dream, he had Chayanne’s duck floaty and Tallulah’s hat to cradle in his hands, and that had been his only comfort.
It hadn’t even been real.
“We will get them back.” Etoiles has said that many times before, either wiser than the rest or completely overconfident. “And when we do, I don’t think they will be happy to see you as you are.”
“Gee, thanks,” Phil says drily.
“So we work this out,” Etoiles continues. “You said you think it was a dream. I disagree.”
Over the horizon, the sun is going down, slowly covering the rest of the land in darkness. They’re far out, thousands upon thousands of metres and even more, thanks to Etoiles.
When they’re so far away, it hardly feels like they’re on the island anymore. It feels like somewhere the Federation shouldn’t be able to reach. Like uppies—his nest, his safe place, and now he’s not even sure if it can be that.
“We checked the place,” Phil says. “It can’t have been a dream, because the birdhouse was gone.”
“Birdhouse?” Etoiles repeats with a strange sharpness to his tone. “You didn't mention anything about a birdhouse.” His brows furrow and he frowns. “They put you in a birdhouse?”
“No one put me anywhere,” Phil retorts, frustration seeping into his tone. “It was gone.”
Etoiles' head turns towards him sharply. “You say as if it was there at some point.”
Phil buries his head in his hands and glares over the top of them. “No. Gods, Etoiles, why are you pushing this so hard?”
Etoiles is unphased by his increasing hostility. “Because you’re my friend and I’m worried for you.”
“At least I’m not infected by a code sword,” Phil resorts. He feels… cornered, so he lashes out. It doesn’t feel like him. “If anything, I should be worried for you, mate.”
Binary numbers blip in and out of existence on his left side, and they’ve both gotten used to seeing it, they barely blink. Phil doesn’t think he feels pain, but with Etoiles, it’s hard to know—if it’s there and if he finds it thrilling.
He shrugs in a fluid and unbothered movement. “There is a difference, Philza, between my plight and yours.”
“And what would that be?”
Etoiles stands up—Phil remains perched by the edge, observing—and points at his left side. “My plight is here.” He moves his hand, pointing at Phil’s temple. “Yours is in there.”
Phil pushes his hand away and stands up, stretching his arms, his wings, ignoring the ache that seems to be in his whole body, a vague buzz—makes him want to curl up somewhere, to find warmth, to feel clean; to feel real.
“Unless you can get my kids back, I don’t think there’s any fixing that,” he says, glancing sideways to see Etoiles viewing him with an unreadable expression.
“What did they do to you, Philza?” he asks, curious, heartbroken.
He gets a break from Etoiles the next day, and he feels kind of bad about it.
They hadn’t left on a bad note, though they’d been less excitable as they both warped to their respective bases, so why did Phil feel like he’d let him down… a bit?
There’s no salvaging it, Etoiles is busy today.
So Phil spends some time with Fit and Tubbo, who are both hard at work with their shared project. He’s been asleep, and Tubbo had vocally complained that the ‘morning crew’ had missed him, desperately so.
He feels like the third wheel.
Those two have a routine and a plan, and they have a good dynamic going on. Fit seems to be able to reel Tubbo in slightly, which is a very very very important skill, and Tubbo seems at ease with Fit, able to act completely and unapologetically ‘Tubbo’.
The feeling doesn’t go away when Fit complains that Tubbo was impossible to control and that he’d broken a million rules even with supervision.
And it stays even when Tubbo keeps repeating how useless they are without him—as he builds another machine Phil can’t comprehend. Tubbo doesn’t see the irony in this.
But he understands that he’ll just need a few days to insert himself into this kind of activity. He used to spend every moment with his kids, of course, it’s weird to just… spend time with other people.
There’s the sound of Tubbo’s factories, the running conveyor belts, the whirring machines, the train, the ovens; it’s overwhelming—too much of an input. It makes him want to rip his ears off.
It’s when Fit starts talking about the dream that Phil really starts to wish he could jump out of his body.
“So Tubbo told me you were asleep,” he starts. His voice hints at nothing except a man wanting a little more information. “And that you had a dream?”
“Yup,” Phil agrees. “It was a pretty weird one at that.”
Fit nods. “If you’re comfortable with it, I’d like to hear it from someone who isn’t Tubbo.”
“Hey!” Tubbo complains.
Fit shoots him a Look and Tubbo relents.
Phil smiles half-heartedly and starts explaining. “In the dream, I got back from the party and there was a purple chest with flowers and a book.” Fit nods in understanding, Phil’s throat is dry as he continues. “The book—” he can’t get himself to say anything about the wise crow story. “—led me to a house far away. Chayanne and Tallulah’s belongings were in there—”
“Completely unrealistic, I’d say,” Tubbo pipes up. “Chayanne’s floatie was still in the maze when we were down there the other day.”
Phil’s heart drops to his stomach when he says that—and he doesn’t know why. “Yeah,” he chokes out, forcing his voice to sound normal. “Then Cucurucho showed up and gloated, before locking me up.”
It was just a dream, it was just a dream, it had to be; just a dream.
“Odd,” Fit says calmly. “I was worried for a while that you’d taken the fall for our little—cage situation—but I think Bad did that, right Tubbo?”
“Mhm,” Tubbo nods sharply, a smile on his face. “He barely got into trouble for it too.”
Fit rolls his eyes, then looks back at Phil. “So you must’ve been pretty tired after the party.”
Phil lets out a lighthearted chuckle, it falls flat to his own ears, but neither of them blink an eye—so maybe Wilbur gets his acting skills from somewhere. “I think I’m just missing my kids, man. The brain does weird shit when it’s coping.”
“It’s kind of fucked up that your brain made you a sad dream instead of a happy one,” Tubbo points out. “I’d be pissed at my subconscious.”
Oh Tubbo has no idea how pissed at his subconscious he can be.
“Tell us if you need something, Phil,” Fit says in a very comforting voice—but not in an Etoiles voice, it’s nowhere near as… heavy. It’s just a friend saying what a friend needs to say.
Phil places his hands in his lap, making sure his sleeves cover them—because they’re shaking again, just when he thought he’d gotten them to stop.
“Of course,” he says.
Of course, he’ll say if he needs something… that they can provide. But they can’t tell him if it was real or not.
So he asks nothing of them.
“I’m preening your wings,” Etoiles says in lieu of greeting, finding Phil on the wall, taking care of the potato farm. It’s a useless task, but it gives him something to do.
“Uh, what?” Phil says intelligently. He’s only half-awake, or half-present, he’s not sure when the last time he slept was at all. If he closes his eyes, he might get lost again, with the chirps, and the condescending laughter, and the stuff from his missing children.
Etoiles walks closer, gives Phil a weak shove towards the small starter house, and talks. “Your wings are a mess and it limits your mobility in battle. I will help straighten your feathers so you can be as dangerous as possible.”
Phil lets himself be pushed along, not sure why he’s feeling so… compliant to it. Maybe it’s the way Etoiles pushes at his back, but avoids touching his wings in the process. Maybe it’s because he can hardly connect to anything going on anymore.
They sit down in the mostly unused house, opting for the floor.
Etoiles is quiet, for the most part, focused on his task at hand. Which, admittedly, might be a bit more of a task than it should’ve been—Phil hasn’t exactly cared for his wings lately—he was busy sleeping.
For someone so violent, Etoiles movements are gentle and practised. He’s done this before, probably with Baghera, but never with Phil. This is new… but it’s welcomed, warm, safe.
With hands carding through his feathers, it’s impossible to keep a clear mind—staying upright is hard too, he wants to slump into Etoiles and fall asleep, and maybe he could, just now, close his eyes—
He blinks his eyes open and rubs them with the palms of his hands. Stupid brain, can’t sleep, sleep will send him straight back there—because it was a dream.
“Birds under stress pluck their feathers,” Etoiles speaks quietly, fixing a crooked feather—he can’t have been oblivious to the slight jolt Phil did to stay awake, but at least he doesn’t comment. Whatever, this might be worse.
“My wings were fucked the moment they clipped them,” Phil responds with a little bit of bite.
Etoiles tsks, removes a loose feather, and speaks in the same tone as before. “There’s a lot of dried blood. It’s recent, no? I saw it the other day too. I saw it the moment you came back.”
And he says ‘came back’ and not ‘woke up’ because he wants to see Phil more confused than he already is.
Phil can’t deny the presence of blood on his wings, and he can’t deny the timespan in which it appeared, but he can still say: “Must’ve plucked some when I was sleeping.”
“No,” Etoiles disagrees, simply, “You weren’t asleep.”
Phil doesn’t dignify that with a response.
If Etoiles was any less patient, he would’ve left, but he seems entirely unbothered by Phil’s disregard for his words.
But the silence that follows starts to bother Phil. It frustrates him, not that Etoiles got the last word—he’d be immature to be bothered by that—but that he seems so sure he’s right. As if he knows better than Phil.
He doesn’t mean to be aggressive about it when he pulls away and stands up, but the movement is quick, it’s sharp, it puts a calculated distance between them, it puts Phil near the exit, and it puts his wings out of reach.
“Why—” he asks, feeling slightly breathless, “Why do you keep insisting that it wasn’t a dream?”
Etoiles stands up too, doing nothing more than that. “You are stuck between two options. Real or not real. If it was real, you can blame the Federation for what they did to you. If it was not real, you would only blame yourself—”
Wrong, Phil thinks. It’s his fault in both scenarios. He fell for their obvious trick—if it was real; which it can’t have been, because all the traces are gone, nothing, never was.
“—which is what you are doing.”
“I—” he cuts himself off—not on purpose. “I’m fine.”
Etoiles doesn’t call him out on the blatant lie. “But I still think it was real. You say all the evidence is gone, I say it is right under your nose.”
“What do you mean?” Phil asks weakly, resisting the strong urge to leave—flee?
Etoiles takes a step closer, then another, before pointing at his cheek. “More feathers here.” He retreats his hand and glances over Phil’s shoulder. “Less feathers there. The Federation does not treat birds kindly—ask Baghera—they would put you in the conditions that hurt you most.”
Those words make his skin crawl, makes his ears buzz, his body feel as heavy as before, makes his mind turn back to the book and the words printed across the paper, a cage for a cage; it makes him feel brittle, and Etoiles is only one similar string of words away from making him crumble.
That can’t happen.
Before he can consider it, he’s pulled out his warpstone and let the purple sparks engulf him, a warped sound filling his ears. He hears Etoiles call his name but it’s muted, distant; and then, it’s no more.
There’s only the nest, the cold breeze against his damaged wings, his children’s signs on the side, and a large drop to the ground.
He curls up by the edge, wrapping his arms around his legs and his wings around his body, a weak excuse of a shield; he can only briefly convince himself that it’s safe and warm when it’s anything but. He can feel his nails claw into his skin, sharper than they should be, but the pain is grounding, he doesn’t mind it.
He doesn’t mind much of anything.
A hand pushes aside his wing in a gentle motion, making the space to wrangle out his tight grip on himself.
There are several voices, not just the singular one he halfway expects.
“It was this bad?” Forever’s voice asks, somewhere a bit further away than the next. He sounds distressed, very unlike how he’d sounded when Phil had returned. See, he wasn’t supposed to know.
Etoiles answers, but he’s right in front of Phil, and his hand has a tight grip on Phil’s own. “Yes. I thought I had it under control.” He pauses—which is weird, Phil doesn’t think that Etoiles is ever supposed to falter in his words. “I didn’t.”
The words confuse him even more—he can’t—what did Etoiles—had he had some kind of plan?
The hand lets go of his hand and moves up, cupping his cheek and raising his head slightly—it’s his left hand, the one buzzing with neon numbers; and it’s warm, pleasantly so—He leans into it.
“I didn’t even try looking…” Forever says, voice laced with something crushed. “After everything he did for me…”
“Save your self-blame for later,” Etoiles chides. Then his voice softens. “Philza. Can you open your eyes?”
Oh they weren’t—even though all his other senses felt like they were running in high gear. He blinks them open as if he’s just now remembering how to.
He wishes he hadn’t.
Etoiles is right in front of him, expression more worried than he’s ever seen—it doesn’t look right, not from the man who’d assured them all they’d get their kids back, who can take hundreds of consecutive hits with no issue, who’s carrying a corruption like a fucking champion—looking like everything is wrong in the world.
To avoid seeing that, he glances over his shoulder and meets Forever’s eyes—and oh, of course, that’s worse. He’s always been more expressive, but now he looks sick with a mixture of guilt and worry.
“See,” Etoiles' voice says, “that was easy.”
Phil’s eyes shift; back to him, hand still cupping his cheek, using his thumb to nuzzle the newer feathers. It’s nice, even if Phil hardly understands what’s going on.
Etoiles smiles, and it’s reassuring, somehow. “I think it is better we get out of here. It’s cold as shit. I will help you to the waystone and then we’re going to Forever’s.”
“Okay,” Phil agrees hoarsely.
Etoiles hoists him up without any hesitance, making it a rougher movement than expected. He doesn’t mind it when an arm slithers around his waist and keeps him supported, safe, comfortable—sleepy?
“I fell asleep,” Phil mutters, to himself, to them, he isn’t sure.
The waystone shimmers as Forever warps away, presumably to wait for them on the other side.
“You did,” Etoiles confirms.
Phil’s heart pounds against his chest. “But I’m not dreaming?”
“You never were.”
Forever is there to support him on the other side of the waystone, and Etoiles is there too after a single beat. He’s feeling more awake now, but not enough to disconnect from Forever—because Forever is warm and that makes him feel more real—so he doesn’t.
He lets himself be guided through Forever’s base until they finally get to a place with a bed.
And he gets what they want him to do.
But he’s not ready for that—he just slept, that was kind of enough for now, and why do it here and not in his own house?
So he stalls.
“How did you know where I was?” he asks, sitting by the edge of the bed.
Forever drags over two chairs and places them in front of him, and then it’s just the three of them, sitting there.
Etoiles looks at him as if he knows exactly what he’s up to, but he still answers Phil. “I told Tubbo what had happened and asked him if he had any idea where you could have gone—”
“Why Tubbo?” Of course, he respects and loves Tubbo a lot, but he finds it hard to imagine that the impression he has left on the islanders is anything close to ‘the one to call in a crisis’.
“Because you’re family,” Etoiles says, short and concise. “He was made the godfather of your children the moment he arrived on the island. He’s someone you trust.”
“Then why isn’t he here?” He has a hard time imagining Tubbo staying away from something like this—shit, Etoiles has him tied up somewhere.
“I gave him a task,” Etoiles says vaguely.
Phil blinks, then shakes his head. “I don’t wanna know.”
“You will,” Etoiles chirps.
Phil turns to Forever; just to gauge what his role is in this, and Forever smiles comfortingly while somehow having heavy eyes, and his role here only becomes more vague.
He doesn’t get to ask before Etoiles explains. “I messaged Forever for a different reason. You heard him being self-deprecating back there. You are two sides of the same coin. So he's here.”
He’d been so… picky. There were many people on the island who gladly would’ve helped, but very few Phil ever wanted to see him at uppies. And Etoiles had known.
“I don’t understand,” Phil admits slowly, forcing himself to not avert his gaze, despite how weird it feels to be… vulnerable—it didn’t go so well the last time he was... that.
Etoiles rolls his eyes, and the normalcy is so welcome. “You were both fucked over by the Federation, manipulated, and now you blame yourselves—which is stupid. But you won’t blame each other.”
This makes Forever shake his head, half-amused, half-sad. “I remember a voice screaming at me for taking drugs from a psychotic bear.”
Phil winces, shooting him a half-apologetic look. “You heard that?”
Forever smiles lopsidedly, reminding Phil a bit of their earlier days, so he knows what’s coming. “I heard the story about the wife too—”
“Oh, fuck off,” Phil interrupts, feeling lighter than he had since returning. “Of course, I don’t fucking blame you for getting manipulated by the Federation. You’re not an idiot, you were just grieving.”
“My point,” Etoiles pipes.
“It’s not the sa—” he shuts his mouth when he receives two disapproving looks. “I get it,” he mutters, looking at the floor.
He wonders, for the first time, what he looks like to them. He has no mirrors on the wall and no kids to make any comments on his appearance. He can see the dark feathers on his cheeks from the bottom of his eyes, can see his fingers looking sharper, not quite talon but not quite not, and he can barely sit up straight, let alone look close to someone alert.
And that’s rare for him, he’s always prided himself on his ability to keep a cool head and a steady mind, so what is he if he can’t… even distinct what’s real and what’s not?
This feels real, but that’s only a trap designed to ensnare him further unto his mind; everything he’d felt in his weeks of absence had felt real. The pain, the suffocating loneliness, the growing dissociation between his body and his mind.
But Etoiles had said it was real, so maybe it was never about figuring it out himself, somehow, maybe he should let himself be set up for disappointment and then only find good it in if it turns out:
This is real; he is awake.
But it’ll only be because Etoiles said so—not because he is even close to agreeing.
“Ah, Philza,” Etoiles says with a mockingly disappointed shake of his head. “You’re a hard man to convince.” His tone changes, then, back into the more serious voice that Phil doesn’t know what to do with — “They did so much to you for so little reason.”
“Baghera told me about what they did to her,” Phil says—he’s not sure why he’s choosing to argue, and he’s unwilling to acknowledge why she, amongst all of them, is the one who pops into his head. “That was much worse.”
“Say that to her face,” Etoiles challenges.
Phil can see how that’d go down—can hear her voice, on top of Etoiles, scolding him for careless comparisons—and presses his lips together, keeping his mouth firmly shut. He earns a vindictive look for that.
Forever shakes his head to himself. “I’m just sad that no one realised—” Etoiles coughs loudly. “Except for one person. You—you seemed to be fine.”
Phil has nothing to say about that, if he gets his wishes, the only people who will ever know about all of this are the three who already know.
But Etoiles has been talkative today, so of course he has a response to that. “You fell for his devious tricks. Philza is the greatest man to ever exist, he could fool us all if he wanted to.”
“I don’t know,” Phil says, picking up on some of the humour. “I couldn’t fool you, Etoiles.”
“That’s because you underestimated me because I’m the worst.”
This forces a small laugh out of Phil, and for the first time, it looks a lot like Etoiles has made a self-deprecating joke for him— which is a whole other odd thing to unpack—instead of for the sake of it.
It makes talking easier. Which they do, for a while. Phil still feels like he’ll only become more unsure if he closes his eyes and does what his body is begging him to do—rest, sleep, safe now with them.
At some point, he changes position, from sitting at the edge of the bed to half-lying in it, half-leaning against the bed frame. It puts his wings in an uncomfortable position but he's not sure he’s ready to leave his back open yet—and that’s an old paranoia he really shouldn’t be feeling now.
He disappears from their conversations, drifts away, his mind is taking flight somewhere else. He thinks of the dreams he’s sure he had, of a world he misses where he shaped everything from the ground up, where no one clipped his wings and took his children.
Where isolation felt safe.
“I got the things, Etoiles!” Tubbo’s voice cuts through his daze, making him jolt. Years of instincts allow him to take in everything at once—Etoiles picking at his coded arm, the binary numbers almost bending at his touch, and Forever looking at Phil with worry, still, but an almost unbearable fondness too.
Tubbo, however, looks at Phil with a sheepish expression. “Whoops, sorry, Phil. Didn’t mean to startle you! I have something for you, though!”
Cautiously, Phil nods—this is something Etoiles has set in motion, he reminds himself, that makes it a good thing. “What is it?”
“It’s your fucking reality check,” Tubbo announces, pulling out a photo album and handing it to Forever, and then, a crate, familiar chirps ringing from the inside. “I’m sorry I said it was a dream. Though, to be fair, that’s what you were saying too; and I did not know you were having a crisis.”
“It’s fine, Toby,” Phil assures, trying to keep his focus on Tubbo, failing when another chirp sounds from the crater.
Everyone notices, Etoiles stands up and kicks it open with a sharp thwack.
A colourful bird emerges with another chirp. It circles around the room, flapping frantically for a form of escape, finding none—the familiarity of the scene only makes him feel numb.
“Tubbo found this in the same spot you two went to,” Etoiles says. “It doesn’t appear naturally in the biome.”
“Meaning!” Tubbo pipes up, chasing the bird around to get it back into the crate. “That someone must’ve brought it there—and I think we all know who.” Phil feels a bit too out of it to respond, but Tubbo’s hard to shut up anyway, so he continues. “And if you’re not convinced yet, Etoiles made me investigate the whole area for other suspicious things.” He closes the empty crate around the bird and sits on top of it. “I took a shit ton of pictures. We chalked it up to weird world generation, but we should’ve stayed and taken a closer look because it was soooo much more suspicious than that.”
Forever has sorted through the pictures and starts handing some of them to Phil, softly pointing out some details. An odd amount of dirt, overturned, a half-cut tree, more birds that look out of place, a suspicious piece of wood, flowers that shouldn’t generate there either—
“Do you still think it was a dream, Philza?” Etoiles asks, once more surprisingly serious.
“No,” Phil says, nausea bubbling in his stomach.
There’s nothing triumphant about Etoiles' following attitude, he looks neither relieved nor all that happy that he’s finally earned Phil's agreement. He can sense Phil’s lingering discomfort—that might stay for a long time.
“I’m not letting you out of my sight again,” he says, it doesn’t sound like a joke. And it feels like a betrayal when Phil finds that he wants it to not be a joke. “I’ll drag you to dungeons a hundred thousand metres out and you will be happy.”
Phil snorts humorlessly. “I’ll be happy when my kids are back.”
And when it feels like his world hasn’t been knocked off its axis. He danced around the Federation before, carefully, staying mostly out of it despite his ideals, now he’s become a target of theirs—all it took was one act. A cage for a cage, turned right back against him. It’s crude and poetic.
His kids are nowhere near to be found; they feel further away than ever, but he yearns for them now more than ever, because they left him alone with their sole possessions in a cage where his instincts heightened.
There’s a potato and a poppy he still has in his inventory, a puzzle unanswered, like the thousands of others found across the island.
Etoiles picks up the crate with the bird inside and hands it to Phil. “You can give that to Tallulah when she comes back, she likes animals, no?”
Phil merely nods, eyelids heavier than he wants them to be.
“Go to sleep, Philza,” Etoiles says softly—it barely feels like Forever and Tubbo are there anymore— ”I’ll be here.”
That’s enough for now. Phil closes his eyes and lets himself fall asleep to the soft chatter of his friends.