Chapter Text
It was the first creeping tendrils of winter that spelled the end of Wilbur’s freedom. Wilbur and Tommy had escaped the fae hunters’ camp midspring and life had been surprisingly easy for them. Tommy was a young thing, but he was also a wild thing, and he seemed to bloom along with the flowers they trekked by in their travels through the wilderness. Tommy’s nature kept him strong and safe as spring passed even through Wilbur’s ignorance on caring for babies let alone one of fae blood.
They’d had plenty of food, more than Wilbur had been used to before or after his mother had sold him. Wilbur was unsure what was normal when living off a forest, but he suspected that the amount of fresh fruit, nuts, and mushrooms he’d been able to scavenge had something to do with Tommy and not his own abilities. Often, Tommy would reach for a bush or low hanging tree branch and there would suddenly be ripe fruit upon it that Wilbur hadn’t seen a moment before. Other times, Wilbur would set him down in an area he’d been sure to clear of nothing but soft grasses and would come back to Tommy gnawing on an edible mushroom with his baby teeth. (He would then have to wrestle the mushroom out of Tommy’s unhappy hand and tear it into small pieces so he could actually eat it.)
The nights were always warm enough for both of them to doze under the stars and, without fail, they would manage to “find” a group of thick trees with a canopy more leak proof than Wilbur’s old home’s roof whenever it rained. Despite it being summer, it was never too hot for Wilbur to walk around even while carrying Tommy and, whenever he was thirsty, they’d come across crystal clear running water. The rivers Wilbur bathed himself and Tommy in were always warm and calmer than any Wilbur had ever seen. He’d even managed to catch fish in them despite having no idea how to do so. He was pretty sure it was supposed to be a lot harder to swipe buckets of fish up in a hastily constructed, leaky wicker basket, but they all but jumped into it whenever Wilbur put it in the water.
The summer had been kinder to them than Wilbur could have expected in his humanity, but that made sense. Tommy was a summer fairy and, as Wilbur had discovered, the forest would bend to him in the warmer months. Even when the baby didn’t understand what he was doing, Tommy provided for Wilbur. Wilbur in turn made sure he didn’t choke to death on mushrooms and carried him around since he couldn’t walk well yet. It was a good deal.
Though Wilbur’s general opinion of the fae was rather poor, Tommy was different. Wilbur had loved Tommy since the first moment he’d seen him. He’d constantly smelled of blueberries and honey even if they hadn’t eaten those things in weeks. When Wilbur would hold his chubby cheeks or kiss his brow, it would leave a faintly glowing after image of gold in the wake of his touch. And he’d always been warm.
Tommy had been constantly warm, like a beam of afternoon sunlight.
And then fall had hit.
It surprised Wilbur (even if it shouldn’t have) how quickly their “luck” seemed to leave them as the leaves began to change. Food became scarcer and the water colder, but they were okay for a while. The forest’s investment in them seemed proportional to the number of leaves still on the trees.
Luckily, Wilbur now knew more about how to keep Tommy safe. They didn’t need the safety net of nature loving the summer child. They still had enough food even if it wasn’t a bounty and Wilbur had been smart enough to start stockpiling it when the air started to grow cooler.
They managed to make it almost all the way through the fall, and Tommy had been fine. He’d been a bit more sluggish and sleepy, but he’d been okay. It made sense that he’d not be as excitable on his off season. At least, Wilbur thought so. His temperature was cooler than it had been, but still warmer than Wilbur, so Wilbur didn’t worry.
Wilbur found a cave a few weeks into autumn and collected firewood for fires during the night for now and all day during the winter. He’d stockpiled a good amount of food. He had no idea if it was enough for the winter but hoped it would be. If it wasn’t, he’d chosen a place with a town within half a day’s walk. He didn’t want to risk a human settlement with Tommy on his back (even if he was still too small for most humans to easily tell his nature) if he could help it, but he’d cover the baby in blankets and beg for (or steal) bread if they needed it.
Wilbur had thought they’d make it through the winter.
Wilbur clearly didn’t understand the fae.
The first snow had shown him just how wrong he was about Tommy’s ability to make it through the winter in the human realm. It wasn’t a bad snowstorm at all; the snow melted the moment it hit the still warm ground. With the fire he built, the cold hadn’t even bothered Wilbur.
Yet, the second a flake of snow hit the ground, Tommy began to wail. Wilbur was very used to Tommy crying. He was just starting to be able to string together 2-3 word garbled phrases, but his main form of communication was still crying.
This crying communicated something new, something terrifying.
Snow fell through an entire night and Tommy was inconsolable the whole time. He sounded like he was in horrible pain, and Wilbur believed it. The baby’s skin was cold to the touch for the first time. No matter how tightly Wilbur held him in his arms or how close they sat to the fire, Tommy’s body temperature continued to plumet. His skin, usually an almost glowing golden, turned as white as the snow outside. Then it started to crack. Orangish blood appeared first from the skin of his lips and then from the backs of his hands.
It was clear that it wasn’t the cold doing this to Tommy, at least not alone. There was something Wilbur did not know or understand about the fae. There was something deeper about the changes of the seasons and winter was killing Wilbur’s summer.
He hadn’t expected this. He’d seen summers be lethargic but fine in the winter and falls be grumpy but okay in the spring, but that had been in the fae realm. Clearly something was different in the human realm.
Wilbur thought Tommy was going to die that night.
When the snow ended just before dawn, Tommy’s wailing finally stopped. Wilbur was shivering with blue tipped fingers by then. Tommy’s cold skin had leached the warmth from Wilbur’s core despite how the fire had left his face reddened from sitting too close to it all night.
Despite the snow ending, Tommy did not get fully better. He didn’t scream when ice wasn’t falling from the sky, but the colder it got the more lethargic he got until he was rarely awake long enough for Wilbur to feed him every day. His skin was always too cool, and Wilbur kept him clutched to his chest often, trying desperately to keep him warm with his own body heat. This meant Wilbur was cold almost constantly.
It became quickly apparent what Wilbur would need to do.
Wilbur did not know a lot about the fae. He understood the bare minimum he’d needed to while in Tommy’s mother’s domain, but no one had been sharing intimate details about their species with the human. He knew Tommy was a summer which, he’d figured out, meant the winter season was bad for him. It would kill him in fact. At least, it would with Wilbur.
He also knew summers could survive the winter. Obviously, they could; they were an immortal race, and winter happened every year. Wilbur was human; he did not know how, but he did know there was a way for a summer to survive the winter. Only a fae would know how.
Less than a week after the first snow, they left the cave. Every golden leaf that fell upon their path whispered of their dwindling time.
Wilbur had been careful. He’d avoided fae territory like the plague since their escape. However, this avoidance conveniently came with the knowledge of exactly where every square inch of fae territory was within miles of their cave.
He didn’t know anything about the nearest fae court who held territory in this forest, but he did know the fae treated their young with the upmost care. Even though Tommy didn’t belong to any of the nearby courts considering how the fae… were, he would belong to them the moment the decided they wanted him. And they would decide they wanted him.
Then, they would do whatever it was that needed to be done to keep Tommy alive through the winter. And they would continue to take care of him until he was grown. It was just how the fae worked. Tommy would be okay; Wilbur would be lucky if he died.
He would have liked to say he didn’t hesitate when he came upon the patch of mushrooms clearly marking fae territory, but he did.
Tommy was silent in his arms but looked up at him with dull blue eyes. Wilbur pressed their foreheads together. The ice his skin was pulled all the heat from Wilbur’s skin where they touched. “I love you, Tommy,” he said. He wished this last time holding Tommy, the baby smelled like he used to, like blueberries and honey instead of like rot and death. The world was not that kind. “You won’t remember me, but maybe you’ll remember that.”
A single leaf from the tree above them fell, landing just past the line of mushrooms. He kept his eyes on it as he took a step forward.