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Tommy wasn't sure why he came kept coming back here.
There was nothing left of L'manburg worth taking time to visit, not even the rubble of a stray building was there. Doomsday had destroyed everything and all that was left was an empty crater, mourned by many, forgotten by most.
There was something poetic there, Tommy was sure, but he wasn't some poet who could create words out of nothing, a silver tongue that could sway the masses into doing whatever he wanted, even when it was wrong because he made it sound so right.
That gift had been given to his older brother.
"I didn't know anyone still came out here anymore."
Speak of the devil and he will appear.
Tommy just shrugged, picking at a blade of grass. "Not much to see."
Wilbur walked over and sat besides Tommy, pulling out a cigarette and and lighting it. Tommy scrunched up his nose, scooting away further.
"Could you not? That shit stinks plus it's not good for you," he said, fighting the urge to snatch the whole damn box from his brother and throw it into the crater.
"I'm not taking health advice from a kid who got his skull caved in," Wilbur said, blowing a ring of smoke into the air. The side of Tommy's mouth twitched, but he managed to stop himself from decking Wilbur in the face.
"Touched a nerve?"
Tommy ignored the slight, turning back to look at the crater. There were little white flowers starting to grow from the dirt, the first sign of life in such a long time. Tommy and Tubbo used to pick them all the time, with him bringing Wilbur some to pin to the front of his uniform.
"I loved it, you know. It was beautiful."
"It was a faux. Doomed from day one."
Pulling his legs to his chest, Tommy rested his chin on his knees and sighed. "Maybe. But it was ours. And that's all that really mattered, isn't it?"
And it was. It was messy and unstable, but most of all it was loved. Loved by the people who poured their whole lives into a nation that they dreamed of. But sometimes love wasn't enough.
Love wasn’t permanent. It will pick and chose who received it and the rest could go fuck themselves. It couldn’t save what was already broken.
“You’re too sentimental. Holding onto things too closely never ends well,” Wilbur said, flicking the bud onto the ground and snuffing it out with the toe of his boot, “It only gets you killed in the end.”
So he said, but Tommy could hear the longing in his voice, that distant look in his eyes that meant he was lost in memories of times long past. If anyone truly understood what L’manburg meant, it was Wilbur.
It was one of the only things that the two of them still shared together.
“That’s your problem, Wilbur. You take but you never give. You never learned to love enough, never learned the importance of having something, someone, that belongs to you and only you.”
Wilbur huffed out a laugh, hitting Tommy on the shoulder a little too roughly. Tommy just glared at him, distancing himself more. Not that it mattered, the invisible distance between him and Wilbur was wide enough already.
“When did you start acting all grownup,” Wilbur asked with a slight smirk, mussing up the younger boy’s hair.
“When you stopped,” Tommy shot back, swatting his hand away.
Tension was thick between them after that, and they sat in silence. Tommy continues to stare down at the little white flowers, wondering how deep the crater was, if he would fall climbing down. If it was worth it just for something that would die as soon as he snapped it’s steam.
It reminded him of his relationship with Wilbur. Wilbur was bad for him, he knew this. He was just waiting for the time to come that he would finally fall, and Wilbur would either catch him or be the one to push him off. Their love for each other was dead before it had even began.
But that’s the thing wasn’t it? So what if the string that connected them was so frayed one wrong move would snap it completely?
Tommy is still that little boy that looks up to Wilbur like he hung the Moon and the stars. A dog that would roll over and comply to anything he asks just to receive any scraps of affection or compliments Wilbur decided to throw at him.
It was fucked up to say the least.
“You act like I don’t love you. Like I never loved you.”
“I never said that. I know you love me, Wilbur. And even though I try my hardest not to, I still love you. But that’s the difference. I think-I think you love the image you made up of me. You love the version of me you made in your mind, but I don’t think you love me.”
Tommy knew he was Wilbur’s greatest masterpiece, but he really wasn’t, couldn’t be. He was too messy. He's smart, but makes mistakes. He's loyal, but backstabs for his own gain. He's a soldier, but he stumbles more often than not. He's a leader, but he fails most of the time. He's strong, but he's still breakable.
He’s just like Wilbur.
Wilbur doesn’t answer and Tommy would have thought he had left if it wasn’t for the occasional hitched breathe from his brother.
And that’s when it hit him. He could finally ask that question that had been in the back of his mind since that fateful day. The question he didn’t want the answer to, but craved anyway. Maybe it was for closure, maybe it was to punish himself
Maybe it was the same to him.
“Why did you do it Wilbur, why did you leave me?” Tommy asked. He cursed the tremor in his voice. “I just want to know why you didn’t ask for my help, why you didn’t stay. We could have run away together, or even explained the situation to the others and you could have been there to help rebuild. You could have been our leader again.”
Wilbur was quiet for a long time and Tommy was afraid he wouldn’t answer until he finally did.
“I didn’t leave you Tommy. You were supposed to follow after me.”
“What?” Tommy’s head snapped up and he met Wilbur’s eyes, completely void of any emotion that could give away what he was feeling at the moment. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“If you had become president, you would have been standing on that podium when L’manburg blew up. You would have been caught in the cross fire. You would have been following me into death like you were always supposed to do.”
There was no guilt in Wilbur’s confession, just an honest truth. And maybe knowing that made it easier for him to withstand. There was no reason to dwell on something that happened so long ago.
Unfortunately, Tommy wasn’t Wilbur, he had always been the more emotional of the two. He stood up abruptly, hands curled up into fists and visibly shaking in anger as he glared down at his brother.
“So what? You were just going to kill me and then have yourself killed? What kind of a coward are you?!” Tommy spat. “There’s something wrong with you, Wil, that you were so willing to take me down with you because you were weak.”
It wouldn’t have been fair. If Tommy were to have died that day, Wilbur would have been able to move on, his symphony finally finished. But Tommy wouldn’t have. He knew he would still be there in Limbo. There would be no way he would be able to move on after that.
“You’re fucked up, Wilbur. Complete and utterly fucked up. Sometimes I really, truly hate you.”
“And yet, you still coming running back, don’t you, Tommy? If I would have told you, would you still have followed me?”
There Wilbur goes again with his stupid philosophical questions. Instead of continuing to argue, Tommy just slumped down again, sighing in exhaustion.
“Yeah. Yeah, I would have.”
Because in the end, Tommy did end up following Wilbur into death. Just not the way either of them intended.
“Your fatal flaw,” Wilbur said. It wasn’t an insult, just the blatant truth.
Sighing again, Tommy leaned against Wilbur, resting his head on his shoulder. In another time that was getting harder and harder to remember, they were in this same position. But they were looking in wonder at a beautiful sight, not the desolation laid out in front of them.
“Where did everything go wrong, Wil?”
Wilbur hummed thoughtfully, placing his arm around Tommy’s shoulders. It was almost nice if Tommy closed his eyes and imagined.
“I think we were the wrong ones the whole time, sunshine. We were the problem that needed to be weeded out, but refused to stop growing and placing our roots to drag everyone around us down.”
Tommy couldn’t help but laugh at Wilbur’s over complicated explanation. It was comforting in a way. Some things never changed, especially Wilbur’s love for dramatics.
And the truth.
“We’re really fucked up, aren’t we, Wilbur.”
“And there’s no fixing us.”
“I guess that’s true. You can’t fix what’s already been broken too many times.”
Wilbur didn’t say anything to that, just squeezed Tommy’s shoulders a little tighter. “Just focus on the sunset, love. At least there’s that to look forward to.”
Tommy looked back down to the crater to catch a glimpse of the white flowers before it got too dark. He blinked away tears at the sight, burying his face into Wilbur’s shoulder.
There were never any flowers. Just ash and dust and memories of a life that was never meant to be.