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The Three-Coat Problem

Summary:

Not many people ever noticed but there are three trench coats, each worn by Wilbur Soot, each with their own legacy and meanings and slight differences.

 

Or, Author decides which of the fandom is right about who has Wilbur's old coat.
(Spoilers, its all of them)

Notes:

Edit: This is a year old but the old one had issues and in trying to fix it I made a mess and had to redo some things! Its still my fav and hope people enjoy.

 

I always love the fandom interpretations of 'people who wore Wilbur's coat' but for the most part they're contradictory and its hard to use more then one at once in a fandom work so, I figured out how Tommy, Niki, and Wilbur after his rebirth might have his coat at the same time.

Also this one has some references to my previous work 'The Things (You) Left Behind' for anyone curious.

(See the end of the work for more notes.)

Work Text:

Not many people ever noticed but there are three trench coats, each worn by Wilbur Soot, each with their own legacy and meanings and slight differences. 

The first was the one he brought with him to the server. It was comfortable and heavy and felt like a warm hug. He shed it not long after because in a place like this, all he really needed was his sweater and a light jacket in such a calm place. 

Later, long after he has changed out his clothes for suits of war and a soldier's, a general's, a president's uniforms, he dons it again but now the weight feels suffocating and does nothing to chase out the chill of the ravine, or the people that abandoned him. 

It is packed away and changed out for something different, but similar, and the First is what Niki finds when she comes back to the underground hideout for clues or any hints of what went wrong. It is too long, too heavy for her, like the weight of the world, so she takes it apart and dons it like a shawl. 

The weight is slightly suffocating and it does nothing to chase out the chill, but it's a nice reminder. 

~X~

The second one is better. It moves easier and is lighter and somehow actually manages to hold together pretty well.  Wilbur feels like he can move in it and so he does. It's the coat that sees him through reconnaissance and plans and, later, midnight escapades into the forest to find sand and gravel when his plans, when he starts to fall apart. 

And along with those, so does the coat. It rips and tears from long nights and pacing and running through forests and deserts. From stab and arrow wounds, and even though Wilbur's little brother starts to patch it up when he can, even then you can't hold something like that together with thread, Wilbur would know really. So Wilbur, as he stares at it in his hands, thinks over it and tosses it into a chest, and goes and finds a new one. There is no place for comfort or care, not anymore. 

And it is the Second that Tommy discovers, a mere hour before the final battle, and he gathers it into his ender chest and tries to not think about how it feels like a bad omen. Later, later after a death and rebirth of a nation, but the finale of a brother his brain reminds him, Tommy holds it close and tries to chase the memories of before. It's kinda messed up and held together by string, but he knows better now and he's learned since then, he's more capable now, so he takes out some spare fabric and thread and fixes it up the best he can. 

It's not perfect and it's different then before, but it's what Tommy wears when he suddenly has nothing left and is alone, torn, exiled from the only things he had left to love and loose, and it's the one thing he won't, cant let Dream take, carefully hidden away when the masked man comes around and taken with him when he finally understood, finally saw and talked himself off that ledge, and fled away to the cold. And if that ends up to not be just about the biome's temperature, well, who's to say.

It's different now, patched and stained blue from the ghost of its past running distant hands over it thoughtfully, yet with unrecognizing eyes, but for those days? It was the only thing that offered any warmth for Tommy.

~X~

The third, the last, is an interesting one. It's not heavy but it's not light either, it doesn't offer warmth or leave Wilbur to the cold, not comfortable or irritable either. It should be the perfect coat, a perfect balance but to be honest he's not really aware of it at all for the most part. It offers nothing he notices, compares once, but it doesn't take away. It sees Wilbur through the last day and the explosions and the people, the person that followed after a nation's death. 

The Third, the last, is the coat Wilbur Soot dies in.

And it's the coat that stays with him, stuck with him, when he's in Limbo. It's the one that sees him through 13 years of hell and death and plans and breaking, being broken. It's the one that was with him as he tore up and down train platforms and through breakdowns and jumps over barriers onto the tracks for sweet seconds of bliss (but never true relief, not for long, never for long). That coat sees him through the train stopping, finally a train for him, and walking past a tear soaked doppelganger with nary a word, unseeing, uncaring. That's what he tells himself.

The last, the Third coat is Wilbur Soot is brought back to life again as he looks over at the sun and feels life on his skin and the wind on his face for the first time in forever, and declares that the sunrise is his, that life, his life is his again. 

~X~

So there are three coats of Wilbur Soot. Each with their own stories and their own legacy and meanings and slight differences. 

The First is with Niki, worn until she burned it with the rest of her life, her past. After all why not add kindling when your life is already aflame? She didn't need the reminder anymore, no point really.

The Second is with Tommy, packed in a box after he won, after they all won because it was time to let go, let go of the past and of Wilbur, and move on, because he no longer needed the comfort it longer brought. It stays in the box under his bed, and it doesn't follow him into the afterlife when Tommy's screams are unheard. When he gets back, tired beyond life and reminders burning him, it stays in the box because it would just remind him of something much darker, and later someone much darker, as a shadow wears his brother's skin in death and later in re-life. His Wilbur was dead and would never be back.

The third, the Last, stays with Wilbur as he plans and schemes and cries and enjoys being alive, and watches and waits for what his next step is. He's scrubbed every inch of it raw and patches it shoddily, but the best he can, and he holds onto it because he's had it for too long to get rid of. It's warm but not hot, and has a nice even weight to it that just reminds him he's alive. It's not stiff and Wilbur can easily move and breathe in it, but offers protection from the wind and outside. 

It's the perfect coat and Wilbur holds onto it because it's his, so why would he need another? Even if it reminds him of... back there, it is his and it's what he has, and Gods know Wilbur has always held on, perhaps a little too tightly to reminders, much like his little brother. 

Wilbur never gives thoughts to the other two coats, and nobody else does either.

Notes:

Hope you guys enjoyed it! Feel free to kudos and leave a comment, they give so much serotonin and I love hearing your thoughts <3
Its kinda weirdly written one? But im so proud of how I wrote it and all the symbolism/references.
Ah, also trying to tag this one was pretty hard for me for some reason? So let me know if I need to change/add something

As for how Wilbur got three coats that are almost identical?
...
Shhhh we just let that be a plot hole lmao

Lastly, fun fact, the title is a little reference to The Three-Body Problem, an unsolvable problem in physics and classical mechanics. I thought it was a little ironic/funny for me to use it while explaining the 'unsolved question' of Wilbur's coat and it sounded right lmao.

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