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[Wilbur and Tommy went through the same wars, died all the same, and came back all the same. Despite this, the interwoven brothers had never felt more different.]
Everyone's body, no matter which side of the war they're on, is the same stuff. Calcium in the bones. Little phagocytes and macrophages and lymphocytes made of even smaller molecules. Naive soldiers– so eager and confident, floating around the circulatory and lymphatic systems, made mostly of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen and oxygen. Etc. What does that etc. encompass?
[Wilbur’s body, on the smallest level, was no different than the air around him. He was no different than the dirt on his shitty coat.
Between the red threads lacing around his father's diamond sword and the cloth they were seeping into, stood the materials for a person. The cosmic building blocks.]
Carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen. The better question is what does that etc. not encompass.
This fundamental truth of the world– that we are made of the same universal leftovers as everything else– is the basis for revival.
[ It wasn't fair. It wasn't fair at all. His brother died before him, the elder always goes first. This is how the story goes. It has always gone this way. Still, illogically, Tommy thought it wasn't fair. He had the name of a soldier. Soldiers die for others, not traitors.
The younger died the first of March. 105 days later. It wasn't fair. He was just a soldier, though, so it wasn't really his place to comment on justice. His brother was a poet. Poets decide what's fair and unfair, not soldiers.
They both felt weightless. They both felt like nothing at all. Two souls stretching on forever in a void. Their beings overlapped for a moment, becoming one. They played solitaire. They were a mixture, not a solution. ]
There’s a thought experiment by the philosopher Derik Parfit, about identity, the body, and sense of self. It’s essentially about a teleporter to Mars, and asks: “If your body is completely destroyed on Earth, and recreated down to the molecule on Mars, are you still the same person?”
It’s not different from the Ship of Theseus.
[Theseus.]
In the words of Heraclitus, “No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man”
[ The boy they called Theseus was ever-changing. He was destroyed by the weight of everything, by the weight of it all. He constantly built himself back from nothing. ]
If you’re not the same, if it’s not “you,” when is it not? If that construction, that fragile architectural flesh isn’t you, what is?
[ He didn’t feel like the same kid who tried to jump to his death. He hardly had a sense of self before revival, and after… he didn’t even have the security of his own body. ]
If you’re not your body, then can’t you be anything? Can’t you exist anywhere?
[ He never had the security of his own body. His hair greyed bit by bit at 17. He had blood taken from him over and over by the brutality of war. No matter what he did, he lived his life in the passive voice. ]
Can’t consciousness just be a phase of matter? Can’t everything exist as an extension of yourself?
[ He didn’t understand himself, didn’t feel at home in his body. Every seam and stitch between every atom of his body being unwoven into a neverending nothingness exasperated that dichotomy severely. He was severed. ]
So, when you die, do you just become the earth? Nothing is nothing is nothing. So, you still exist in some capacity. You don’t just cease to exist.
[ He was reconstructed by the bricks that housed his abuser. He was ripped apart by paragraph breaks– ]
Revival is the earth picking up the pieces of you. Revival is putting that symbol of you back together. All those mental pathways, all the memories.
[ –and his god was always on hiatus. He didn’t get any say in his story. It wasn’t fair. ]
But something’s missing.
[Wilbur left limbo, but it never left him.]
Something is always empty.
[ On quiet nights– when the pitch in the sky threatened to swallow him– he heard the buzz of fluorescent lights. And it was so cold. Everything he touched was that fucking linoleum.
Everything was cold… except his cheeks. They always burnt. The shadows of that facsimile’s scars invaded his skin. It wasn’t fair– he was alive! He was the one who lived for a reason. He had the memories. He didn’t understand why that ghost had to imprint itself on his skin. Wasn’t it bad enough that thing stole his place, while he was forced to watch his life go by in some sort of blur? Wasn’t it already unfair that he didn’t get peace? Every time he closed his eyes, he looked through that film. Distorted and fractured memories from that shadow.
So, there he sat, dark seeping into his bedroom. He brought himself upright and stared toward the van window. It was snowing. Through flicks of snow, the deep sky in the window reflected that stupid shadow again . He scrunched his eyes closed– but he couldn’t shake the iridescent recollection.
Wilbur let out a furious groan. The bitterness in his throat mixed with some pathetic voice crack. He raised a hand to his face. A tear. He hadn’t cried in months. He didn’t cry anymore. Only the ghost cried.
He had a dreadful realization– one that made his stomach churn. With his cheeks still burning under the weight of tears, he hesitantly turned toward the makeshift mirror once again. That shadow.
The shadow of the self.
‘ Get it the fuck together, Wil. That thing isn’t you. You’re alive, You’re alive, you’re alive, God damn it!’ He reassured himself.
As much as he tried to ignore it, a part of him knew they were one. Ghostbur (which, for the record, Wilbur thought was a stupid name) was that missing piece. It was a manifestation of the subconscious, all those parts he repressed for years. Every time he cried into his pillow in L’manberg, every time he visited the button, every time he picked up armour and it suddenly fit. The softest parts of him.
He floated over to the glass. With one shaky motion, he dove his fist into the mirror, shattering it. Bits of broken glass pierced his skin. He looked at his hand for a moment, watching cerulean blood run along the contours of his knuckles with a numb expression. A mix of shock and desensitization. A mix of cells and platelets.
With his same blank look, Wilbur grabbed a first aid kit hanging above the stove. When he went to take the glass shards out from the wounds, the blood had shifted to the standard carmine shade. He sniffled softly, not fully processing how reality seemed to shift before him over and over. He dabbed peroxide onto a bandage and wrapped his hand. The lacerations seeped through the fabric in a matter of minutes. He took his button-up off, and rewrapped the scar on his arm aswell– as had become a daily ritual. At times he thought the earth had fucked up something in the process. Not enough platelets, or whatever. He didn’t even feel the pain, but the constant bloodflow was an annoyance.
If he was religious, he might pray to some god to stop it. He didn’t care anymore. His mom couldn’t spare mercy for her own sons, why would any other power?
Wilbur put on a t-shirt over his bandages. He sat on his bed once more. He didn’t feel any better– He never felt any better. Some sort of longing hung heavy in his chest, always .
He knew why, now. He knew some part of his conscious had been stripped away. He wanted to go home, he didn’t even know what home meant. He tried to go through the motions from before his death. Food van. A rivalry with Quackity.
The void still swirled around his head. It bled into his memories, like drops of watercolor.
He closed his eyes to see one of those painted scenes. There stood… Tommy. The person most similar to him in the whole world, he supposed. Both victims to the narrative, brothers. Always brothers. Wilbur taught him card games. They both died. Surely he understood the emptiness, then.
Wilbur waited for dawn to crack through the broken glass. As light crept into the room, he quickly donned his coat– not even bothering to change out of the t-shirt. (besides, he couldn’t bring himself to wear that
thing’s
sweater.)
Weaving through the snow and sand, Wil found himself at the prime path. It seemed to creak so much more now. A lack of upkeep. Its blood was seeping out, in a way.
And finally, he arrived at the dirt shack. ‘ Does he really not have a real home by now? What the hell…’
Wilbur knocked, and listened for frantic footsteps.
The door opened with a groan. Everything in town sounded out with a groan, or creak, or whine. Even the architecture despised the SMP.
Wil cleared his throat, “Eh’m. Tommy I’ve got- I’ve got something to talk about, and it’s fucking- stupid but…”
Tommy looked at him, surveying his shirt. We will flower again It read.
“What the fuck are you wearing?”
The older brother was taken aback. “It’s a fucking T-shirt, man, what do you want me to say?”
‘I guess I’d like you to say sorry…’ The younger thought.
Wilbur squeezed past Tommy, and walked into the house. “Atleast you have some floors and a kitchen. That’s better than nothing,”
Tommy stifled a smile. “What did you want to talk about, asshole? Other than how shit my house is.”
He sighed, “Tommy, have you felt something missing? Since- Since you got revived, I mean.”
Tommy replied with a look of understanding, if only for a moment. He glanced away. “Whatever, you’re always wanting to talk about this poetic shit. I just thought you were coming over to like, ask about my day. Which, for your information, hasn’t even fully started yet. It’s too fucking early, Wil.”
“I saw Ghostbur today,” Wilbur murmured.
Tommy looked with a concerned expression. “H-How? He’s dead, or– or double dead, I watched him die!”
“I saw him in the reflection on my window. He just stared at me, like some sort of shadow. I cut my hand on the glass, and the blood was blue. I don’t… I don’t know what to do. I guess I’m just supposed to live with this thing forever? A part of me I’ll never feel, just clinging to me?” Wil let out an exasperated sigh.
“I kinda get what you mean, yeah.”
“You didn’t even have a ghost, how are you supposed to fucking know?”
“I just– Like, I still feel like I’m in that void sometimes, I don’t know. It’s just… different.”
“Different, but the same. Like brothers, or whatever.” Wilbur let out a melancholy snicker.
Tommy looked down at his brother’s bandaged hand. “Yeah, like brothers.”