ch.8: borage, for bluntness and directness

                                    

                                          
A piece of paper slides under your door in the middle of the night, after everyone else has gone to sleep. Or so you had assumed, and yet...You pick it up, taking it to the window to read it without lighting a torch. The thick block capitals shimmer like gold in the moonlight. 
                          
Woman. Need to tell you some things. Meet me by the lake in five minutes. Sneak. 
                          
It's not signed, but you don't need to guess who wrote it. You think momentarily about telling Phil. As mad as you were with Tommy for sneaking off in the middle of the night, he was going to be twice that. And then you pause, read the note again. That last word haunts you, makes you unable to decide. Sneak. 
                          
You wait until you're outside to put your boots on. They would have made too much noise on the stairs if you had put them on in your room. Fastening your cloak around your neck, you jog down the path to the water, lighting a torch on the way. You weren't trying to chance any mob encounters while you were unarmed. There hadn't been time to untie your bow from your hunting pack when you'd got home, and Techno had the button for the practice weapon shed. You were unarmed and barely trained. But you couldn't leave Tommy waiting; he might already be in trouble. 
                          
The sign of a torch around the next bend calms your racing heart. Tommy's sitting at the lake's edge, with a couple of them set up around him. He stands up when he hears you approach, and you finally notice the bag at his side. 
                          
"Tommy, what are you-" you start to interrogate, but he rambles over you, getting progressively louder as he becomes more frantic. 
                          
"I found something. Oh I found something. I found something bad . Do you understand, Woman? This is some fucked up stuff!" He digs into the bag, pulling out a thick, leather-bound tome whose pages appear to be glowing slightly, that he proceeds to gesture incredibly close to your face. 
                          
"Don't swing that at me!" you chide, grabbing it from him. It feels warm in your hands. Maybe it's just your imagination, but it feels like it's pulsing, matching your heartbeat. No, you're definitely imagining that. "Calm down! What are you talking about? Why are we out here?" You put a hand on his shoulder and he stops nervously bouncing in place. He takes a deep breath, and starts over. 
                          
"My brother's dead. You know that, right? I must have told you. Or Phil did?" He doesn't wait for an answer. "There's really only one place where stories about Wilbur end up, so you must know. He's dead. And using that-" he reaches over to thump the cover of the book, "can bring him back. Got some kind of fucked up ritual in it. He's a ghost now, so we do that and it'll make him re-" 
                          
"He's a GHOST?" you blurt out, bringing Tommy out of his self-indulgent rant. 
                          
"They haven't...oh," his excitement seems to crumble to dust in an instant, the smile sliding off his face as he looks at you. "They've told you even less than I thought." A flash of what looks like rage crosses his eyes for just an instant, and then he's all smiles again. "I'll just have to introduce you, then. Ghostbur loves new friends. Especially since most of his old ones don't visit anymore. Look, he made me-" he digs in the bag again, pulls out a shining compass, needle pointing in a direction that definitely wasn't north. The lid was inscribed with the words 'Your Tubbo'. "It points at Tubbo's compass." 
                          
"A ghost made you this?" you question, looking at the ornate, beautiful, and very corporeal compass. 
                          
"I understand it as much as you do. I just don't question it." He shrugs as you hand it back to him. He holds it to his chest briefly before carefully returning it to his bag. "It's...nice. To see Wilbur again, even if he isn't quite the same anymore. It makes him feel less gone," he smiles, and then brightens up, taking the book back from you too. "But with this, I don't have to settle. I can just have the real Wilby back."
                          
"I mean this in the nicest way possible, but didn't he go crazy right before he died?" He blinks at you once, slowly. Then again. "Wouldn't it be dangerous to bring someone like that back?"
                          
"Say that again? The middle part."
                          
"He went crazy before he died?" you repeat, unsure which part of the phrase was the offending one. 
                          
"He died?" he asks, and you nod. He swallows hard, takes a deep breath, and nods again. "He died. I mean, he did. He did die. Kinda buries the lead a bit, though." 
                          
"Tommy, I-"
                          
"Phil killed Wilbur," he says, and the silence that follows cuts through the ambience of the night like a knife. "He deserved it, and he DID go a bit mad, toward the end. But Phil's sword was the one that finally did him in. You deserve to know that," he reinforces, as his fist clenches at his side. "It's ridiculous that I had to drag you out in the middle of the bloody night to tell you the truth about how my brother died." 
                          
You have a headache. You pinch the bridge of your nose, trying desperately to reconcile what you've just been told. You trusted Phil and Techno with your life, with all the life you had left. If they've been hiding this from you, what else were they hiding? 
                          
"I'm sure they have a reason why-" you start, and Tommy cuts you off. 
                          
"I'm going back to see him in three days. Ask them all the questions you want until then, and if you aren't happy with their answers then come with me." 
                          
"Tommy-"
                          
"Just meet Ghostbur. Just meet him," he begs, cheek beginning to twitch as he holds back tears. "And then you can decide." 
                          
"I...I need to ask Techno before I leave," you decide, putting your foot down. "He deserves an opportunity to defend himself." 
                          
"He does. Listen, I love him. I do. He's my brother, even after everything," Tommy agrees, putting the glowing book back in his bag and closing the flap, hiding it once more. "But he's pig-headed. Literally! Stubbornest man I've ever met. If he thinks you're better off without knowing, then you'll never know." He starts to collect the torches from the beach, and you hurried to join him in the remaining light. "Three days, and then you meet me here again. Same time, same place, but bring everything with you. If you're not here by midnight, I'll be long gone, so don't bother."
                          
"How do I know you're not hiding anything from me?" you ask, and he stops, mid-stride. "You say they're hiding things, and expect me to just trust you?" He shakes a thought off, turns back to point at you and then toward the forest. 
                          
"Meet Ghostbur. I won't beg. Men don't beg." You roll your eyes at that. "But I think it would be a good idea. Wilbur knew-" he cuts himself off, frowns, starts over. "Wilbur knew a lot of people when he was President. It would be your best shot at maybe clicking that old memory bank back in place." It comes across as a half answer, but it was better than anything else you'd been given. "Ask Techno first. And don't tell him about the book."
                          
"Is it his?" you ask, and Tommy's eyes break from yours. 
                          
"No! Are you insane? No one steals from Technoblade and lives. But he and Phil might take it from me if they find out."
                          
"Why? Wouldn't they want Wilbur back just as much as you?" He avoids your gaze again, picking up the last of the torches. 
                          
"My family has a...weird relationship with death," he says, so very cryptically, and then refuses to elaborate. You follow him back up the hill, advising him on proper sneaking technique. You're not sure if anyone hears you return, but no one speaks of it the next morning.