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nefkyo · 3 months

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This is a wip of a personal project. Please note the tags before reading:

dream smp lore, post Doomsday era, implied character death, implied suicide, necromancy, crimeboys mope around in Limbo, mild description of a panic attack, mild description of body horror, miscommunication, tntduo is real, tntduo family who cheered, avian Quackity, ram Tubbo, Quackity is trans because I believe he can do anything

this is for @werenotacoupleyesyouare.

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Faint footsteps echo towards him. He's back from his light jog in the tunnel that loops into itself. He heard him get frustrated fifteen minutes ago but didn't say anything. "Hi again" he says. Even in Limbo, Tommy comes back after arguing with him, sits down next to him and gives him the silent treatment. But at least he's sat down. Does nothing he says ever sting enough? No, never enough. Nothing is ever enough to drive him away, far away enough. Not even a kind invitation to never return. "I have to tell you something about the Overworld, Will." Tommy starts, only to be cut off as usual. "I've already told you, I don't want to know whatever you have to say when you start off like that." "It's really big." Tommy looks up at him, or at least in his general direction, and for a brief moment he sees a sort of pity gloss over those blank orbs. It irks him. "I *really* don't want to know, then." he groans.

"But- How are you not even a little bit curious?"

"With the way you're looking at me, I'd rather keep whatever dignity I have left through ignorant bliss."

"H- That's nothing like you."

"Yeah, well, maybe I've changed."

"You have."

He quickly diverts his eyes back towards the train tracks. Still, cold, unforgivingly grey and dirty. "Will you tell me anyway if I say no?" Wilbur asks, he has before, and he shakes his head, he has before. "Good. Because you told me that it's a secret you were told to take to the grave." he continues. Tommy perks up then, "See?" he says, a knowing smile "That's why I should be able to tell someone else that secret now, especially you!" "You know that's not how the saying is supposed to be interpreted. It doesn't matter how important it could be, Toms," he mumbles into the pitch black horizon, "once you tell me, what would I be left to do about it? I'm dead, we're dead. I'd just spend eternity asking you why you didn't keep your mouth shut." "Yeah, but--" "Just forget about it." Tommy makes a series of noises out of frustration and then stands up, arms crossed, as he starts wandering around again. Wilbur is starting to get tired of watching him do this every time, especially with the way he phases through the shadows of the platform like nothing. "That's such bullshit! How am I supposed to forget?" "By talking about something else?" "No! It's- If anything, it's the evil shit you've been saying lately that makes it harder to choose!" "I haven't said anything necessarily "evil" lately." Wilbur shrugs, angering the blond again. It doesn't take much. "You're constantly praising Dream!" he exclaims, "you praise him, the bastard who took our lands and killed me when I tried to avenge you!" "You weren't avenging me Tommy, we both know you were in Pandora's Box to mock him and avenge yourself." Wilbur corrects him as if he'd seen the whole scene himself. He hasn't, but he got the crude details narrowed down. "Besides, if he's got this necromancy thing down, you have to give him some credit." "Well he probably fucking doesn't, it's been three months! I feel it on my skin!" "Yeah, I know." "And he has not revived me, the green bitch, so my point still stands! A-And you wouldn't feel the same about him if I told you The Thing!" Tommy defends, but once again, Wilbur refuses to hear whatever The Thing. "I'm just saying, if Dream has all this arcane power at his fingertips, then I see him in a new light. I'd be honored to pick his brain at this time." "You would NOT." Tommy groans, but he sits back down.

"...Is The Thing going to make me angry?" he asks suddenly. Tommy nods, his eyes would light up with surprise if there was any life behind them. "Probably." "Is it going to make me hate Dream like before?" "Maybe. Not directly, at least." Wilbur thinks about it for a hard, long minute before he answers. "Fine, tell me." he sighs. Tommy seems to make some mental gymnastics beforehand, then, when he feels ready, he speaks. "I know you and Quackity were dating during Pogtopia, he told me. And... He laid an egg a few days after you died."

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Wilbur is stunned into silence, frozen in place as the information makes its way to his brain. Not the first part of the information, of course, who cares about that. "Are you..." he stammers, "...Are you serious?" "Yeah, uh... Yours, obviously. The egg." Tommy shrugs, but this is not a casual matter at all. "I promised Big Q I wouldn't tell anyone you were the father, but you should know. She was doing ok the last time I saw her, she looks like you." "She? I-It hatched, the egg hatched?" "Yeah." "Is she healthy?" he asks, his voice constricts in his throat, and Tommy just nods quietly. It takes him a long time to accept that information. He repeats it under his breath, over and over. "A daughter. I have a daughter." he whispers, and Tommy just stares ahead as usual. Tommy touches the back of his head uncomfortably, where the gash that killed him sits in its crimson glory. "Quackity told her about you, showed her pictures of L'Manberg and everything, but... Y'know, more in a symbolic way, she probably doesn't actually know anything." "So..." he hesitates. It's like someone just tossed his brain onto the train tracks. "...So that whole story you told me about Quackity starting that project, the casino, that was a lie then?" "Oh no, I didn't lie about that. He really was building a casino last I saw him." Tommy says. "He called it Las Nevadas." "Yeah, he.. He told me that's what he would've called it." his voice dies out. Wilbur thinks about Quackity, what he could look like now. Their daughter, their daughter must be a little lady now. Does he make her play in the casino? Does she deal cards with him? "When *did* you guys start dating anyway? Like, before the elections or during Pogtopia?" Tommy breaks his thought patterns suddenly. "Because I'll remind you, *you* were the one saying not to fraternize with other candidates at the votes and I will never let you live it down." "Shut up," Wilbur sighs in response, and he knows he would usually smile at this kind of tease, but he doesn't. Even if the images of those times still make something bloom in him. "We started dating *during* Pogtopia, after the festival fiasco. We'd watch over Tubbo together, console each other, as usual. It just felt different that time around." he mutters.

"Dude, ew. Tubbo was unconscious and you were kissing in there?!"

"No- No no no, what? We didn't kiss in his room, we just- we talked about it, our feelings. *Then*, after he recovered, we kissed. Completely separate occasion."

"Right. I'm gonna believe that for the sake of my sanity."

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So Tommy is now stuck answering whatever Wilbur may ask about her, about this kid nobody has ever seen more than once or twice. But when he's voluntarily about to tell him her name, Wilbur orders him not to. "Are you sure?" Tommy says, but he's already moved on to other questions.

"Does she have brown eyes?"

"I don't know, I only saw her while she was sleeping."

"So how could you tell if she was healthy if she wasn't awake?"

"Well, Quackity would've probably said if she was sick with something."

"Did she ever chirp like a duckling?"

"She did a few times."

His baby girl, nuzzled in the arms of her father, chirping in her sleep. He can't picture her, but he wants to. "Does he miss me?" he asks suddenly. "Quackity. Does he miss me?" "Well... I think he did. He was skittish of other people, he didn't really want to talk about you much. He didn't even want Phil seeing her." "Phil doesn't know about her?" Wilbur jumps up a little, and Tommy tilts his head slightly. "I think he's seen her at least once. He doesn't know that she's yours, Quackity didn't tell him." "Why?" Wilbur asks, but then he stops and thinks about it. Of course.

There's another stretch of silence. Wilbur sighs heavily and thinks on how everyone knows about a child that he can't even picture. "Do you... Do you think that I could've been a good father?" he asks with wishful thinking on his tongue. "Yeah, you wish! You couldn't even keep yourself alive, man." Tommy chimes with another tease. But after staring out into the dark for another long few minutes, he shrugs. "Maybe. Maybe you could've been." "Ouch." Wilbur smirks briefly then, only then. They're both contemplating a thousand different thoughts a minute.

"Would I have gotten to see her if I'd lived?"

"I think so, yeah."

"Did he hate me when I...?"

"Oh yeah, a lot." he nods. "He screamed a lot, then he went quiet and didn't say anything about you again." he actually turns to look at him - in his general direction at least - and with a voice below a whisper, with that same, angering pity in his eyes all over again, "Why didn't you tell him?" he asks. "I get that you didn't tell me what you were going to do, but him? Why didn't you tell him if you loved him so much?" he feels the faint taste of bile, just for a split second, before he replies with a very weak excuse. "Because I knew that if I did..." He sighs. Now he sees why he and Tommy keep secrets from each other, why they don't want to hurt each other with the truth. "...I knew that he'd never let me die. He would've done anything to keep me alive, and my brain was so set on it, so sure that I *needed* to die. He would've gotten in my way, just like you always did. And I couldn't do that to him, to you, to anyone else."

He remembers it. The night he had a breakdown so violent he almost told him his plans, thinking he was about to die from rabies anyway. In the dark, damp tunnels, pain stinging in his trembling arm, bite marks and blood and a sensory overload. Quackity held him up and looked at him with eyes of horror and repressed despair and kept telling him "It's ok, it's gonna be ok, it was just a wolf," while disinfecting the wound, pressing hard on the gauze. He looked at him and said "Q, I'm so sorry, I--" but before he could find the word that came after that "I", he froze. He couldn't tell him. So he said "I'm scared", which wasn't really a lie, and Quackity held him through that too.

Wilbur sighs as he snaps himself out of it. "Could you tell him that I'm sorry?" he mumbles. "If Dream finally decides to stop playing games and bring me back to life?" Tommy asks "Sure. But how would I let you know what he said?" "I don't need to know." Wilbur replies quickly, then, after a pause, his brother nods. "Ok."

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A week, maybe a month, maybe an hour later, a train came to the station and actually stopped. Wilbur was sleeping on the floor as usual when the screech of gears and wheels halting startled him awake. He looked up, at the opening doors, at the bright lights inside the car, and he felt this faint rise in his stomach, this feeling that told him exactly where the train was headed. And he must admit, he got excited. A tall, long figure stepped out, a blank face in a dark green cloak walked past him and grabbed Tommy, whose blind eyes darted around in confusion. "Wilbur?" he said, he spoke and Wilbur said "Toms?" with the same tone. "Wilbur, I think he's taking me back!" he exclaims, but he doesn't sound happy at all. "That's ok, I'm right behin--" he tries to stand up as he says it, but a force he can't explain, a pull keeps him seated. He can't go, of course he can't go. He doesn't deserve to go. So he starts again, trying to use that same voice of enthusiasm. "That's great Tommy, that's great! Be careful out there, don't come back here too soon!" he tries to joke, but Tommy doesn't seem glad to hear his voice so far away, to not *see* him when they're just a step from each other. The tall figure keeps a thin hand on the back of Tommy's head. "Will, I'll find a way to make you come back too!" "Don't do that, Tommy, don't try that!" he warns, but Tommy doesn't seem to be listening anymore already. The train doors start closing, one by one, now Tommy isn't even looking around anymore, he's frozen, catatonic. That's when Wilbur realizes, "TOMMY! You didn't tell me her name! Tommy! Tell me her name!" he screams, his voice rasps and the figure, the long, tall, white face in a dark green cloak puts a finger to his mouth to shush him, though it has no lips of its own. "TOMMY, HER NAME!" he begs, he feels as heavy as the day he died. Tommy mouths something, his lips quiver and make a word but the shrill of the metal doors makes it unintelligible. Then, the train departs. Wilbur feels a gust of wind, of life, trailing behind those giant tin cans that just took his brother back to the land of the living. And then it's gone.

All that's left is an empty train station. Nothing but dust on the track, and the echo of the train's wheels as it leaves the tunnel. Wilbur is alone again. That's what makes it hurt the most, really—he was right there! He had a chance, even the smallest, slimiest chance in hell, that he could've seen his own kid. That he could've kept Tommy safe with him too. Now it's gone. All that he has left is to wait, once again, for the wheels that will bring them all back together. Time is never kind to souls that refuse to move on. Wilbur has lost track, how long has he been here? That's another thing he should've asked him, isn't it ? He can think about a moment in time, remember something about himself on the surface and use it as a measurement, but those memories are all slowly fading away. Maybe that's for the best, he can't keep thinking about the people he knows, can't look back if he wants to move forward, so he waits. He waits, he waits, he waits. One day is another, and another, and another.

The train comes again. This time he's not weighed down by anything, by anyone, but he doesn't want to get on. The long, tall figure with a blank face in dark green cloak walks out, dragging from the scruff a pathetic, limp soul. He throws him out onto the pavement, a ghost that looks exactly like him. They stare at each other and they feel so terrified of the other. They can't tell who is more person, but now there's this twisted realization in both of them, that they're not the original. He tries to say anything to him, but he can't, and he doesn't either. And once they're done stalling, trading places, the figure begins to drag him in. "Wait, wait! H-he's part of me, let me get him!" he protests, but the figure doesn't let him. Some things must be sacrificed. The ghost sits in his place and looks at him with neon blue tears brimming in his eyes. As the doors close, he knows he has the other's mission now, just not what it is. He stares into the mirror image of himself, his face hollowed out from burn scars along his cheeks. It's the same in everything other than that. The way he sits, the way he slumps. He frowns, but he's not mad, really. It's just a part of him that will carry out this burden. It'll have to, whether he likes it or not. The train rumbles to a start again, he waves at himself, he waves back faintly but starts sobbing loudly soon after, almost louder than the train's screams. There's this understanding between them that they are not the same person, they could never have been, and this switch was bound to happen, whether the other thought he'd done enough up there or not. So, cheers to the other guy. Everything goes dark as they enter the tunnel, darker than death has been so far. The figure puts a thin hand on his back and he hates it, he hates it so much.

Time passes incredibly fast, all at once, faster than Limbo, faster than life. He feels vertigo pull his body in all directions, pulling his neck backwards, his chest forward, his back up, his legs down. For the first time in such a very long time, pressure enters his body. His body has depth. He sees a light, ironic, oh so ironic that he wants to go towards it but instead feels himself being pulled away from it. He fights the current, the figure stares, unaffected. He pushes through the barrier, the train shakes and rattles and screeches. He doesn't dare look.

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The cold, dewy air of an April's early morning fills his lungs. Lungs, he has those. He has to get used to that feeling again before he opens his eyes. His head spins, his whole body hurts like hell. Air shudders out of him violently, like a spring has just jumpstarted the valves in his system and now he's feeling the reebot. He tries to move his arms and legs, and he succeeds, but the pain that shoots through his body makes it hard to enjoy the discovery. Every joint and bone screams at him, every suture. Suture? He lifts his hand, tentatively, carefully to his eye. Stitches. Along his wrists, the creases of his fingers, his legs, his ankles. He's been pieced back together into a single string of flesh. By who? He knows who. He doesn't care, for now. For now he's alive. He groans, and for the first time in over a decade he hears his voice without echo, he can feel heat around him, his nerves are full of blood. His body aches in places that he didn't even know could hurt, but maybe he's never been more glad. And he's laying in front of a small altar, a memorial to his name, literally. Strangely enough he can still read, and his name is written at the bottom of the marble. There are drapes of the old L'Manberg flag hanging unceremoniously over his date of birth, flowers - mostly wilted - have been left beside pictures of him. And a single, still lit lantern sits near his boots. His boots? It's strange, but he's almost certain this isn't how he was dressed when he died. He uses the flat marble surface to hoist himself up again, the weight of his own body might make him throw up if he thinks about it too hard. He glances all around. Everything is empty, quiet—like a museum. Except it's not, this looks more like a rocky pit overgrown with nature. He groans aloud, the pain is excruciating but he tries to focus on the sights around him. His body wants to shut down once more, but despite the overwhelming weight of the world that's bearing down on him, he can't let his mind slip away again. He must keep going. He stands up, head bobbing slightly. This doesn't feel like any afterlife or secondary plane, it feels like the Overworld. It just *feels* like it. He stares up, he looks as far as he can squint, at the hills of exposed rock covered in dew and moss. These are ruins alright. He wants to laugh, but he just sneers. Someone built him a memorial over the ruins of what he destroyed, it's like making a plaque for the potted plant that fell on the pavement and made a crack, except the potted plant was him, and the crack was more of an abysmal crater. He squints at the ruins in front of him, everything is still and silent. Not one sound but the wind. Not one person but himself. It's all here in front of him, in this broken down splinter of what used to be L'Manberg. There's a sense of finality in the air, but it's not sad, it feels like an ending. He feels the air chill his breath and the cold ground underneath his feet. But it's a different feeling from what he was experiencing when he was dead.

Not anymore, apparently.

He hears those footsteps behind him, hurrying, running on stone and wood. Two, no, three people, and at least one other creature. He turns around in time to find himself smiling at a horrified Tommy, a very drained, jittery Tommy, with a blue sheep on a leash, and then Tubbo and... An Enderman in a suit. Tommy walks towards him carefully, maybe a little cathartically, like one walks up to a heaving rabbit they just shot with an arrow. "Oh, you fuck." "Hello again." he says, and he can't help laugh at his little audience. Tommy is looking *at* him, and he's cussing him out, it's just like the old times. Nothing's changed! Well, besides everything else. "Hi Wilbur!" Tubbo waves from the back of this posse - when did he get so tall?! "Is... is this real?" he asks, breaking the teethering tension. "Yeah. Where's Ghostbur?" Tommy asks back, and he can't answer that. He was expecting anything, a 'Welcome back', a clear indicator that he was anywhere near missed, but instead he's asked where the other guy is. The better version, he imagines. "Oh, he's... He took my place in Limbo." the words just sort of slip out of him. "He WHAT?? How do we get him back??" "I-I don't know, I just got here! I'm back." he shrugs as he speaks, like this was supposed to be obvious. He's still taking everything in, glancing at the blue sheep and the enderman, still mostly paying attention to the sound of his breathing and the feeling of the solid ground underneath his feet. So *real.* "You're supposed to act at least a little bit happy to see me." he mutters. "W-We are." Tommy forces out, but he doesn't want to move towards him any further. "So why aren't you coming here? Hey, it's me! It's me, man!" "I-I didn't think you'd-- trade places with him. I thought you'd be all in one piece together. I didn't even have a ghost, why'd you split?!" "I-I don't know." and Wilbur really doesn't know, but it feels weird not to lie anymore. "Tommy, we just got him back, can you guys not complain about each other already?" Tubbo chimes in, sliding past Tommy to walk over and hug Wilbur. It's an instant regret. It feels strange, uncomfortable, irritating like a stubble rash. But Tubbo's heart is in the right place, so he lets him. He instigated it anyway. Then the sheep tries to sniff his leg. "Oh god don't tell me I have to hug the sheep as well" was not a thought, or sentence in general, that Wilbur ever thought he'd hear himself saying, but thankfully he doesn't have to. "That's Friend," Tubbo says as he steps back "Ghostbur befriended it and we- we thought he'd be here, so we were gonna take it to him." he hears a faint and shy "and I'm Ranboo..." from behind Tommy. "Yeah that's Ranboo. They're here too." Tubbo nods, taking Friend's leash to hand it over to the creature. "...Charmed." Wilbur says, a little too focused on the other matters at hand and, quite frankly, a little unsure whether he can look them in the eyes or not.

"Y'know, you look like you haven't aged." he tells Tubbo as they accompany his out of the caved in rock. "Really? I reckon I actually look different, like, my horns came in, fuckin' finally. Didn't you notice?" he asks when he puts his head down to show him. A set of horns, already scratched in. "I mean, yeah, I did. Looking good." "Thanks bossman." "It's just... I thought you'd be... Older, older than... This." Tommy and Tubbo share a glance, then look back at him. "How long have I been dead?" he has to ask the two. He has to ask before he starts moving his legs in any direction and he doesn't stop, it's getting hard to sit still. "About a year and a half." Tommy says something finally. "A year?! A year and a half??" he spits out. "A fuckin' lot's happened, Will, and I need you to promise that you're not gonna say some weird shit about Dream being cool or--" but Wilbur is too busy laughing incredulously at how little time has passed since he died. "A year and a half, are you kidding?? I was dead for thirteen and a half years, Tommy!" "I- No, Will. You weren't dead that long, it's just a Limbo thing."

He stares at them both, his smile evaporating, his breath catching. "No, there's no way. I feel so... I feel jaded, jaded and stuffy, Tommy!" There's no way he was only gone for so little time, it's impossible. He could swear on his life that he was alone for so much longer, there's no way his own memory could deceive him like this. But Tommy looks almost the same as when they last saw each other in Limbo, Tubbo's just a little taller than before. It's the landscape, that's what really changed. He can feel the rushing of wind from nearby cracks in the stone, he can feel the need to look through them. "I mean, no offense, you look older than you're supposed to be..." Tubbo says, cocking his head slightly. "Did you know you've got white hair?" "I got white hair too, after I was revived." Tommy points out. Wilbur hasn't even had the chance to think about a mirror, he's just wandering off, staring out into the sky, the blooming dawn. If he's not thirteen years older, then his daughter, who's out there somewhere, isn't a teenager. She might still need him. Quackity might still need him. His soles find a step and he stares down at a sea of glass. If regret needed a preview, it would look like what's underneath it. "Is this L'Manberg?"

#mcyt #dsmp #dsmp lore #c!wilbur #c!tntduo #qsmp talullah #nefkyo can write #crimeboys #i miss them #benchtrio #mcyt ff #this was not spellchecked in advance so sorry

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