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I'll bet on losing dogs (I know they're losing and I'll pay for my place)

Chapter 2: Reminiscing

Notes:

why do all my plots run away from me. woe. despair, even. just take my words and leave also ignore that changed chapter count. Ignore it. You saw nothing. I CAN COMMIT TO MY FUCKING PLANS YES I CAN

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

Chapter Text

 

“I hate this.” Wilbur declares to the vast surrounding forest, his words slightly out of breath for all the futile attempts he’s made in trying to have Technoblade let go of him. 

 

So far, all he’s found is that his efforts are a bit laughable in how poorly effective they are. Techno is an unwavering force of strength, an unstoppable thing in motion, and some deep, internal part of Wilbur isn’t surprised at being reminded of it. It’s just something to be expected. 

 

“Okay.” Techno replies lightly, as he’s been doing to most of Wilbur’s sentences while trying to track down his runaway horse. Carl honestly shouldn't have been able to wander so far in so little time, but really, with how Tommy has been trying to influence all his animals for these past few weeks, Techno should’ve just tied the horse down the moment he turned his back. 

 

“I despise this with every ounce of my being.” Wilbur goes on, huffing hard with a half-hearted hit of a fist to the back of Techno’s shoulder. 

 

“Great.” Technoblade answers, nodding his head slightly in acknowledgement, stepping over a tall root. “Glad to hear that.” He wonders if Dream might’ve stolen his horse, now. That would be poor luck for Techno, and a poor choice, on Dream’s part. 

 

“The second you turn your head, I’m going to fling myself off your horse, scatter off into the winds, and then eventually, through some means, send a stack of TNT through the mail and have it detonate on your doorstep.”

 

“Considering the fact that my doorstep is also Phil’s doorstep, and thus, also your doorstep, that seems like an ill-made plot.” Technoblade hums, catching a hint of movement to the side. He follows. “But A for creativity, I guess.” 

 

Wilbur gives a growing noise of fury, a grumbling displeasure forming in the base of his throat, gathering up into a strangled, frustrated scream, his arms and legs swinging out wildly once again. He tires out pretty quickly, as he did before. Technoblade makes a sigh of relief at finally finding Carl trying to nibble moss off a tree. 

 

“Carl, now is not the time to be wandering.” Techno scolds as he comes up, taking the horse by the reins and tugging it away from the bark. “This is literally one of the least ideal times for you to wander.” 

 

“Maybe he craves freedom from your insufferable presence.” Wilbur suggests, before flailing a little as Techno puts him down, his feet landing on the ground with little warning, his legs very nearly giving out from under him. Techno’s firm hold on his arm is one of the only things keeping him standing, and Wilbur looks up and directly into his face, going still at the direct attention on him. A deer in headlights. 

 

“Sure.” Techno says, eyes taking in Wil like he’s trying to find something within his expression. “Or maybe he’s just going through an odd phase with the fascination of moss.” His lip curls in a half-made smile, arm lowering slightly in where he’s keeping Wilbur up, the weight getting heavier. “Okay, look, you have to actually stand if you want to get on the horse-”

 

“I do not want to get on the horse.” Wilbur stresses, purposefully letting his legs go entirely slack, Techno leaning forward so as to try and heave him up higher. 

 

“No, no- stop, I’m not letting you sit in the dirt-”

 

“I’m not going with you, I’m going to lay in this dirt-”

 

“Phil wants you home, so you are going home.” Techno insists, voice echoing near Wil’s ear, the sound of it making his head buzz. Wilbur winces hard and turns further away, looking to the ground, shoulders hunching tightly. 

 

“I don’t fucking care what Phil wants.” 

 

“No?” Techno asks, neutral in the tone, but Wilbur swears there’s something disbelieving right behind it. It immediately pisses him off, chest squeezing in a frustration that’s starting to become so familiar. 

 

“I don’t.” He spits, twisting his neck to glare up at Techno, feet sliding against the ground to try and yank himself away. Techno hardly even budges at the pull. “Am I meant to just- immediately listen the second Phil wants something from me? Come running to his side at the drop of a hat, because he wants me to?”

 

“I want you home too.” Technoblade simply says, the words unshaking, steady and solid, like an unmovable stone wall placed into Wil’s path. “You are coming home.” He tells Wil, very calm, very inevitable. Coolly determined in a way that promises an ideal end result, one way or another. 

 

When Technoblade sets his mind to something, failure doesn’t become an option anymore. Wil knows that. He knows this certain habit of his, knows it deep in his bones, and he just knows how unrelenting Techno can be when set upon one goal. 

 

Here is the goal. He is the goal. Wil is the prize to drag along, and he doesn’t feel as if there’s much he can do to stop it. What could he hope to try in retaliation? What could he do, against Technoblade of all people?

 

The beat of silence with Wilbur lost in thought has Techno making his own considerations as well, and he ends up speaking almost coaxingly, like offering a treat as a compromise. A bribe. 

 

“Tommy’s waiting for you, too.” He tells Wil, and there’s a funny pain that flickers under his ribs at the sentence. That name. 

 

Wil frowns towards Techno, lifting his chin higher up. “...who?”  

 

“Tommy.” Techno repeats, a subtle furrow forming in his brow. Wil watches his lips form that name, and he tries to repeat it, tries to say it with another color of confusion, to show that he still doesn’t know who that is, but then it just-

 

Something- slides sideways inside his head, and his vision blurs with an instant stinging shriek of pain. Something fits wrong, something sits wrong, all of him is wrong, every breath, every blink, every twitching limb. 

 

He opens his mouth, and a muffled cry pushes at his ears, drifting sensations touching at his face. Dirt presses up against his legs, sticks to his hands, and it’s both so cold and so warm to his fingertips. It’s almost real. It’s almost right. 

 

Or is it just the same floor as always, cracked concrete joined with smooth, off-white tile?

 

Wilbur blinks, blinks, breathes, and then the world closes back in, so much and too much to bear. He sits on his knees, head hunched over like a man in desperate prayer. Techno’s hands hold onto his wrists, keeping him together and keeping him bound. He’s always bound. To something, someone, somewhere. His ambition, his people, his l’manburg.

 

Gods, it’s hilarious, for all that Wilbur hates the idea of losing this new taste of freedom, of being put into another cage, he will admit, he can’t imagine the concept of being set free forever. He will always end up somewhere he deserves, because of what he’s done. 

 

Yeah, this might as well happen. 

 

“I can’t- I can’t-” Wilbur tries to speak, heaving hard, the air so little. He tries to clutch at his heart, hearing nothing but the screaming cry of withers in his ears. The screaming wail of a child losing his brother and his home in one fell swoop. “No, I can’t-” 

 

Tommy. Oh, Tommy. What guilt. What heavy regrets, falling over his shoulders like a thick cape, mended to his skin for eternity and then some. He forgot how this felt. To be entirely honest, he got over it after the first decade or so within limbo. 

 

It returns with a vivid violence, unforgiving and harsh. It has him wondering why he ever left that doomed train station. At least there, he didn't need to face this. At least there, the eventual silence of his mind was simple, even in how much it might’ve driven him a little mad. 

 

“Okay. Okay.” Technoblade is saying, a light hint of panic twisted in the repetition. Wil would laugh at it, if he weren’t so crushed under the more bitter aspects of being alive. “You’re okay.”

 

Wilbur looks at his hands. Compares the deathly paleness of his skin to the scar-ridden pattern of Techno’s. He’s a little surprised he doesn’t have his own scars to show, but any self-damage made within the station never did linger, even if he tried all his best. 

 

“You’re okay.” Techno says once more, not really seeming so sure of it, but it also seems like it’s the only thing he knows what to say. Wilbur breathes, wonderfully alive even with how much the air seems to stutter in his lungs, and he raises his head up with a forced scoff, teeth gritted together. 

 

“Not with your ass.” He insults, needing to be petty. If he must have one single goal amongst all this noise in his head, it will be to bother Technoblade. It is an honorable goal. 

 

“Alright.” Techno huffs, the worry on his expression dissipating into an exasperation instead. “We’re getting on the horse.” He says, taking Wil by the arms and pulling him up, Wil not having a second to even try and refuse. He lets it happen. It’s not as if there was going to be any other outcome for him here. 

 

They settle on the saddle with Wil’s hands pushing into Carl’s mane, the horse side-eyeing him with a silent type of judgment, and Wilbur determinedly does not glare back at the horse in return. He is not beginning a grudge with a horse. He’s above that. He does not start grudges with horses. But he swears it’s giving him a very intelligent type of stare, one that communicates something like “I don’t agree with giving you a ride, but if my owner insists, then I suppose I must.” 

 

Wilbur sighs hard through his nose as Techno picks up the reins, leading them out through the trees, weaving through the more open areas where the branches aren’t in their way. Wil tries to remember when was the last time he even rode a horse, and honestly, he can’t recall. They didn’t have many pets when he was younger. Just the crows that lingered around the house, Phil’s blessed birds.  

 

Wilbur’s shoulders fall in reminiscing over the sound of their calling cries, loud and insistent and ever so reminiscent of home. He used to hate the silence that would come with stepping outside when he left. Before, he couldn’t get two steps away from the door without a bird immediately making a noise. When he had left, when he came here -

 

A fluttering ache passes through his head again, Tommy’s smiling face looking up at him like he hung the stars. Looking up at him like he will protect him through it all. 

 

Wilbur didn’t. 

 

He brought them here thinking he could make something, stepped into the lands thinking they would make a name, and then they didn’t, he couldn’t, and they shouldn’t have tried at all. 

 

If they never tried at all, would he have been able to keep his little brother safe then?

 

The aching rises once more in a sharper type of hurt, Wil lowering his head with a grimacing breath. “I think I’m dying.” He says, somewhat resigned with it. “I’m going to die.” 

 

“Maybe refrain?” Techno replies from behind him, Wilbur nearly laughing from such a useless response. “Please refrain. You’ve already done that once, and personally, I didn’t care for the effects of it, so...”

 

“This hurts.” He confesses, fingers shaking as they touch the skin around his eye, his skull pounding as if someone’s taken a bat to it. “I don’t like this, it hurts .” He knows he’s whining, nearly pleading in the complaint, but such pain isn’t something he’s quite used to anymore. There was never much pain in limbo. Just more of a nothingness, after long enough. 

 

Arguably, he feels that was worse. 

 

“Lean back.” Techno suggests, arm tugging at the back of Wil’s shirt for a moment, pulling Wil to sit against him. Wil’s head lays awkwardly over the front of Techno’s shoulder, and he can feel the nudge of the metal of his armor in every movement of the horse. It’s a touch uncomfortable. It’s better than being side-eyed by a horse, though. 

 

Gently, kindly, perhaps, Techno places a palm over Wilbur’s temple, and Wil’s eyes fall shut like an ingrained habit. He swears, for second, he can hear Phil murmuring over him, worried and yet soothingly calm. 

 

“Try to rest. I’ll see what we can do when we get home.” 

 

“This is your fault.” Wilbur mumbles, forcing his eyes to try and open, pushing away faint memories of being sick in bed as a child. Home. Gods, he yearns for home. He wants to go home, more than anything. “You’re just such a headache-”

 

“Yes, blame me, and not the questionable diseases you might’ve gotten from living in the forest for a few weeks after coming back to life.” Technoblade stresses the last part like there’s something very important about that. Wilbur doesn’t get the fuss. Yes, he was given the chance to breathe again and readjust to being in a living body after so much time of being otherwise. And?

 

“I’m not diseased, nor frail.” Wilbur protests, turning his head to the side, Techno’s hand still lingering over his curls. “I’m suffering. I’m- I’m struggling.” Adapting? Is that it? He tries to think of how to word it right, but then a different revelation comes upon him. “Wait, does this count as a kidnapping? Am I being kidnapped?” He almost sits up, before deciding that’s too much effort, and he can bear with using Techno as a back to a chair. “Oh, for fuck’s sake, I got kidnapped.”

 

“I’d call it more of spontaneous retrieval, if anything.” Technoblade helpfully gives as his input. His thumb is sweeping over the edge of Wilbur’s bangs to keep them off his face, and Wil scrunches his nose at the action. 

 

“I did not willingly go with you, if I must remind you.” He says, turning his head far away, trying to avoid any more insufferably familiar gestures. Techno’s hand just ends up settling onto his arm, just above his elbow, not quite squeezing but just- holding on. It’s a decent compromise. Wilbur will take it. 

 

“I protested against it several times, in fact.” He goes on, Techno not all that interested about rehashing their current events. “Loudly. With much emphasis.”

 

“Mhm.” 

 

“I’m being kidnapped. This is awful. Help. Random bystander, someone.” Wilbur calls half-heartedly to the forest passing by them, knowing quite well there’s not much that’s going to come out of such an action. This is more for the sake of being difficult, now. 

 

“Yeah, there’s probably a squirrel or two that’ll intervene.” Technoblade says, somewhat playing along. Wilbur spits out a scoff, shifting in the saddle with an urge to genuinely just try throwing himself off the horse. 

 

“No, I refuse this, actually. I want off the horse. I want off.” He yanks his arm, Techno’s hand leaving his sleeve. It’s not enough. He’s too close. He’s too much . Wilbur doesn’t want to bear this- this- whatever Techno’s plans will promise. Whatever his home has now become. If it can even be considered his anymore. “I want you to leave me. Now.” 

 

Techno nudges Carl into a faster pace then, Wilbur’s breath hitching at the sudden speed, automatically clinging on in an effort to stay on the horse. The trees are getting scarcer now, and with the more open space, Carl is free to take them along at a neat run. 

 

“I care not for what you want, Wilbur.” Techno tells him over the noise of hooves hitting the ground. Wind flows past their faces, and Wil closes his eyes against it. He feels all too cold. “I am doing what you need. And what you need to do is to come home. And rest.” 

 

There isn’t an inch of room for argument there. Wilbur is quite sure that if he jumped off the horse right at this moment, Techno would just pick him back up and continue on. If he ran, Techno would probably just follow. 

 

That tone in his voice- this is something he’s set upon. 

 

When Technoblade becomes set upon something, failure is not an option. Right. Yes. Wil knows that. He knows this. 

 

“...How long until we’re there?” He asks quietly, words slightly hesitant in his mouth. Resistance is such an effort, and Wil has been tired for so long. He’ll go along for now. Just until- Until he can try again.

 

“A while.” Techno replies vaguely. “Try and sleep.” 

 

They leave the boundary of the forest without a glance behind, Wilbur finding a sense of grief for this little vacation being firmly over now. Back to the routine it is, then. Back to the ordeal of living, and the weight of the broken relationships he bears. 

 

“Okay.” 

 


 

Wil wakes with a cape over him. 

 

It’s warm and soft from where it sits draped over his shoulders, and the red of it is so vivid, so strikingly familiar and yet- not. He stares with half-lidded eyes at the color for a long minute, aware that he does not know enough about this cape, about who it belongs to. 

 

He is so painfully aware there’s something missing, some lost spot in his head, but just because you know you are missing something doesn’t mean you can fill it back up. It's a pathetically disappointing thing, to know he’s hindered like this, but what can he do? You cannot will memories to return. Especially if they don’t quite fit anymore. 

 

He huffs, the air of his breath wisping out into smoke before him, and he looks up to gather a wash of surprise for the change of environment he’s failed to catch.  Everything is white before him, a vast plains covered up in ice. 

 

Snow. 

 

(Home , Wilbur’s heart sings, but he knows that’s a past thing. He is mistaken.)

 

“The arctic.” He murmurs, feeling Techno shift behind him, aware of him being awake now. “The empire?”

 

“Not quite.” Technoblade answers, and there’s something so fond in his words. Wilbur breathes. “But the snow reminded me of the same era. That's partly why I hunkered down here.” He hums, the noise sounding a little like a laugh. “Phil finds it nostalgic.” 

 

Yes, he would, wouldn’t he? Wilbur scarcely remembers the empire, for the last years of its reign were his first years of childhood. He remembers more accurately the stories, the retellings Phil liked to repeat to him as he held him by the fire. The Antarctic Empire, the most ridiculously quick conquest in history. 

 

The best of it ended before he got too old, but when he was small, so very small, he remembers sitting on someone’s shoulders, looking out to the snowy land. He remembers laughing against the wind, feeling like a king. He was technically the prince, for a little while. 

 

Maybe that’s where he got his first taste of wanting something to his name. A great nation tied to his heart. 

 

Wilbur shivers, numb hands clutching the cape closer to him. 

 

“I would’ve thought you would be tired of the cold.” Wilbur mutters, turning his head to further take in the land. Technoblade is more suited for the warmth of the nether than this. It’s how he’s built.  He’s not sure who told him that. It’s just a fact. He lets it sit in his head without question.

 

“Eh. I dress warmly.” Technoblade replies, and Wilbur doesn’t doubt it, with the thick cape currently sitting over him. It’s not keeping all the chill out, but it’s very effective for the worst of it. “And the empire had good memories. More can be made here.” 

 

He sounds like he’s smiling. Wilbur can imagine it so easily, hesitant, careful curls of scarred lips. It feels misplaced to think of it now. This isn’t kindness, it’s- an odd hope. 

 

He sounds hopeful. 

 

Wilbur swallows down the dread in his chest and ignores the noise of fear in his head. They continue on. 

 

For a long while, there isn’t anything to see. Wilbur spots nothing but the snow and a few trees, a frozen patch of lake in the distance. Eventually, there comes a glimpse of something beyond the chilly fog, and Wilbur leans up in the saddle with unsteady hands supporting him up. 

 

“Is that-” He breathes out, the wind taking his air and twisting it away. He turns to look over his shoulder. “You live in a cabin?”

 

Technoblade raises his eyebrows with a mimicking type of surprise. There's snow in his hair. Wilbur wonders if he’s got snow on him too. “Did you expect a castle?” He asks Wil, and Wilbur rolls his head away, huffing with a dry tone to his throat. 

 

“I expected something at least a little more grand, considering your habits.” 

 

“Oh, there’s more to it.” Technoblade assures casually, in a light-hearted casual way that someone who is never casual about anything should not be saying. Casually. 

 

“There always is.” Wilbur mumbles under his breath, squinting harder at the building as they get close. He can see smoke lifting from the chimney. A set of stairs leading to the front door. A glint of warm light coming from the window of the second floor. 

 

“See the farms over there? And the trees? That’s also ours.” Techno puts an arm out past Wil’s shoulder, Wilbur following the direction to see a forest of pine, and more buildings of wood past the house. “There’s a village not too far. I consider it ours, too.” 

 

Ours. Wil knows Techno’s talking in relevance to himself and Phil, but the word still makes him falter. He clings to the cape over him, trying to twist it tighter to his body. 

 

They approach up by the side of the house soon enough, Carl coming to slow with a snorting huff. Technoblade climbs off with a crunch of snow under his boots, and Wilbur looks down to him with a sudden consideration on how he should go about getting down himself.  Techno reaches a hand up like he’s heard Wil’s thoughts. His other arm comes up like he’s willing to bear his weight and carry him down, and Wilbur slaps the nearest hand off to the side.

 

“I can do it.” He insists, Technoblade looking mildly thrown off at getting batted away like a fly. Wilbur takes his moment of distraction to pull his leg up, dismounting the horse with a muscle memory that feels so fuzzy. His feet stumble in coming down, and he hits the ground on his knees, the freeze of the snow soaking into his hands and pants. 

 

Technoblade makes a snort that’s poorly disguised as a cough. Wilbur glares up at him with an urge to fling snow into his face. He pushes himself to his feet instead, Techno holding his hand out, Wilbur batting it off yet again. 

 

“Want to see the basement?” Techno asks him once he’s upright, his hands taking Carl by the reins so as to not let him wander off. Wilbur frowns for that being the first thing to be given a tour of, and he has a half thought of if he’s going to get locked into said basement as Techno secures Carl over in his stable. 

 

Techno pulls open the doors on the ground level of the house, by the stone bricks, and while Wilbur expects something dark and barren, he goes down a few short steps to find something else entirely. He looks with wide eyes at a neatly organized collection of rows upon rows of chests, shelves put across the walls, warm lights hanging from the ceiling, every space of the room filled up and utilized into something efficient. Familiar. 

 

“Phil built this.” Wilbur can’t help but blurt out, standing still by the open doors, and Techno makes a laugh from where he disappears behind a stack of chests. This is his father’s doing, Wilbur knows it. It’s so distinct, of all his other projects. Of when he’d get too caught up in the rush of it, and end up burying himself amongst all his visions. 

 

“It was the compromise.” Technoblade explains, opening a lid somewhere, the creak of the hinge echoing in Wil’s ears. “He kept complaining about my organization for my storage for the longest time, until he started just bribing me to let him tackle the room. I let him have it.” 

 

Wilbur watches Techno come back around, back facing him to look into another chest. 

 

“And, I mean- the intent is here. There’s definitely a goal, but you can only keep it neat for so- why is there a saddle in here.” He pulls out a random saddle out of a chest marked for glass. “Why was Tommy even in my saddles? I better not be missing a horse.”

 

Wilbur feels like he can’t breathe at the mention of Tommy, at the thought of his antics. He looks over the room again, all the items feeling like a physical reminder of how much time has passed. Every chest, every stack, that’s a signal of time spent. Time where he was not here. 

 

Should he even dare to be here now?

 

He turns to go.

 

“Wil, don’t run off.” Techno says, without even looking, still searching through the chest for something. Wil huffs in where he’s automatically paused. He turns on his heel in a sense of spite and heads out and up the steps, through the door. He ignores Techno calling at his back, going into the snow, the cold wind whipping at his cheeks. 

 

He runs into a familiar face. 

 

“Whaaat the fucking shit.” Tommy blurts out from where he’s stopped in mid-step, lip curling into an angry, disgusted type of scowl. He moves backwards as if he’s encountered a gigantic bug in his path, head almost turning away, but eyes not leaving. 

 

“Oh-” Wilbur makes a breathy sort of laugh, the air involuntary squeezing out from his lungs. His hands grip to the fabric of Techno’s cape as a betrayal to how he tries to keep his tone level. Tries to act at ease. “Good to- Good to see you too. Afternoon.” 

 

“I was doing fucking good, man.” Tommy mutters, Wilbur’s heart falling even farther from within him, past his stomach, to the frozen depths of the dirt at his feet. He’s left sick in unease. “Why now, why fucking now?” The boy further asks, anger spreading out through each word. 

 

Wilbur tries to go, but his legs don’t take a single step. He forces the calm in his voice, forces a sense of casual, neat order. “Shall I turn around and leave?” 

 

“Yes- No.” Tommy responds, making Wilbur hesitate. “No, no, don’t- I don’t fucking know!” He snaps, Wil’s eyes going wide. “Phil!” Tommy screams, turning his back on Wil, chin raised up to the warm, lit window on the second floor. “Phil, I’m having a fucking hallucination again, or something! I don’t like this!” 

 

Wilbur blinks, head raising in surprise. “What?”

 

“You’re not hallucinating.” Techno assures then, coming out from the basement doors, Tommy’s eyes widening in seeing him without his cape on. He looks back at Wilbur with a new light over his gaze. “Poke him in the arm or something- he’s not a figment of your imagination.” 

 

“Well, I don’t know, I feel like I’ve become a sort of haunting ghost of regrets, if you will. I represent a bitter time.” Wilbur replies immediately, if only to avoid a damning silence of realization, and to justify his existence. “I’m…I’m, uh.” He falters on the end, lapsing into the dreaded quiet, words taken by Tommy’s expression made to him. 

 

“...You’re real?” Tommy says.

 

Wilbur stares at his little brother, feeling so horrible for how heartbreakingly hopeful the question is said. He feels doomed to shatter such freshly born joy. 

 

“Are you really-” Tommy comes close, and as his feet shuffle through the snow, he reaches his hand out, fingers hovering towards Wil’s arm, like needing to confirm. “Are you real?” 

 

Wilbur raises a shaking arm out to take Tommy’s hand in his palm, to carry it in a featherlight grip. It sits so warm, compared to his frigid fingers. 

 

“Hello, Tommy. It’s-” He swallows, trying to pretend that the shaking is only because of the cold. “It’s good to see you.” 

 

Tommy looks up at him, right towards his eyes. He looks at him like he hung all the stars, the blue of his eyes seeming so bright against the backdrop of snow. Wilbur’s head twitches with an odd pain, and his hand pulls away just the slightest bit, the barest half-inch. Tommy’s breath hitches, and then Wilbur’s being slammed with weight on his chest, the two of them suddenly going down. 

 

“Tommy-!” Techno calls, as Wilbur feels his head hit the soft snow. 

 

“Shit-!” He hisses, phantom aches flickering in and out with the swell of fondness in his chest. “Ow, ow, okay-” He lifts his neck, hands scrambling to get a grip on the body trying to climb into his borrowed cape, which is mostly falling off him at this point. “Okay.” He says, trembling hands settling over the back of Tommy’s back, arms holding him in a motion that feels like coming home. “Hey. Hello.” Wilbur blinks, eyes oddly wet. “Miss me much?”

 

“Shut up.” Tommy says, muffled noise in where his face is shoved away. 

 

“What a warm welcome.” Wilbur laughs, sitting up further, holding Tommy up from the snow. Pain echoes out over his skin, and he ignores it vehemently and presses his cheek onto the top of Tommy’s curls. 

 

“Yes.” Tommy tells him, arms squeezing somehow tighter. Wilbur wonders if he’s struggling to breathe because of his body acting up or if because Tommy is actively crushing his lungs. “Yes, I missed you. I missed you.”

 

Wilbur softens at the sheer honest confession. “I-” He feels like he’s shaking, moments from being held too hard and just breaking apart. “I’ve missed you too.” 

 

Tommy sits back with a loosened grip and looks up at him again, eyes so, so blue. Blue like the sky, like the colored banners Wil would stare up at when young, like the same eyes that would look down at him with a cackling, happy laugh. 

 

“Get out of snow, c’mon.” Technoblade comes in, breaking the moment and Wilbur’s focus. His hands are pulling them both up, Tommy putting his legs under him to try and stand to his feet. “I don’t trust Wil’s health right now for the cold.” 

 

“You’re sick?” Tommy asks, looking over Phil like he’s going to see a new sign of plague or something. 

 

“I’m something.” Wilbur responds, feeling awkwardly unstable in where he stands, his joints acting odd. “Where’s Phil?” He questions, Tommy brightening up at the idea of telling Phil about their new company. 

 

“Inside. He was working on a-” Tommy goes to spin around and head to the house, but he stops right in his tracks before he gets all that far. “Oh, hey, there he is.” 

 

Phil stands at the doorway, up on the front steps. He’s dressed in black, oddly enough, like a person in mourning. Wilbur is confused for a moment at it, before remembering that he is the one to be mourned. He was the one in the grave. He is Phil’s son, dead, buried, and then returned.

 

Wilbur is his son, and he is suddenly so small again, seeing his dad wait for him to get back inside after a long day of playing out in the trees. Phil’s shock on his face is nothing like the smile Wilbur would receive then, but it doesn’t really matter. 

 

“Dad.” Wilbur stumbles in moving forward, arm tearing from Techno’s supporting hold, Tommy stepping back as the cape flies off his shoulders as he lets it go. “Dad-” He calls, the word broken in his throat, and he tries to run, his legs slow and frustratingly frail. He falls before the stone steps, not quite able to make it up.

 

Phil catches him in coming down mid-way. Wilbur has to reach his arms up to hold him around the waist, and in this angle, it feels similar to clinging to him like a child all over again. Phil’s arms wrapping over his head feels like the safety of the before, the calm ease of when his mistakes hadn’t collected into something suffocating yet. 

 

Techno’s crunching footsteps come near as Phil lowers down to collapse on the cold stairs, pulling Wil closer as much as he’s able. “...where was…?” He tries to ask, not even making an attempt to move his attention off Wil.

 

“Out within the forest. Dream found him first, but- nothing much happened.” Phil’s grip tightens for a second before lightening up, his body curling down to cradle his son closer. 

 

“Oh.” He laughs, a small, soft thing. “Oh, thank you.” Phil murmurs, and then old words are being pressed to Wil’s hair, a dead language kept for an old goddess in the stars. It’s like a prayer being made, a protection put over Wil’s head. “Thank you.” 

 

Techno kneels down at the steps with a palm to Wilbur’s back. Tommy hovers behind him, one foot lifted onto a step.

 

“You’re- it was probably a bit of a trip, yeah?” Phil begins to speak, the words falling in a desperate habit that he’s almost too giddy to practice again. “Would you like some dinner? You need to warm up.” 

 

Wilbur lifts his head and looks up, feeling warm enough in the love he’s missed, in the feeling of a father wanting to care.

 

“You should- Come inside. I’ll help you up, come on.” Phil nods, taking Wil’s arm over his shoulder, lifting him with all the determination to leave the cold. “Let’s get you inside. Let’s go.” 

 

Together, they all go through the door, shutting out the chill, coming home. 

 

Notes:

don't be fooled by my poetic angsty inner monologues. this is still on crack. we still have Wilbur screaming for an emduo divorce at some point. it's gonna be hilarious. there's also an arc of him learning to be something loved again but haha ignore that look stepdad Techno bickering tee hee!!

I love this au btw the current sbi family dynamic set up is. Emduo dads. Wilbur son boy. Tommy little brother to both techno and Wil. Phil being awkward uncle figure to Tommy. Kristin being distant mother goddess who has favoritism for techno and Phil, but funnily enough, not Wilbur! That'll be explained later. mmmm love funky family dynamics. usually I'm just a dadza and three sonboys type of sbi enjoyer but hey, we love variety too in this household. anyhow. thank you for reading. happy birthday

Notes:

eyyy macarena