Chapter Text
They had lost.
Wilbur sat next to the remains of the Camarvan, trying in vain to piece his guitar back together. They had set up a small tent a little away that Tommy was currently sleeping in, with Tubbo passed out on a chair beside him. He’d refused to let Tommy out of his sight, not even to eat the small piece of bread that Wilbur had brought him.
Wilbur finally sighed, giving up on trying to reattach the pegs to his broken guitar. He put his head in his hands, feeling the weight of everything that had just happened settle on him. It wasn’t a crashing realization, but a creeping dread that found a way into his bones.
They had lost.
Wilbur couldn’t stop thinking about the moment that Tommy had fallen into the water. Hearing nothing, only his own blood in his ears, then everything all at once.
He remembered Dream’s laugh, loud and cruel in its joy.
If Wilbur had been less exhausted, he would’ve been furious. Would’ve taken up his pens, began writing and speaking with a blind fervor.
He couldn’t stop seeing the red on the sand beneath Tommy.
He was pulled back to the present as he felt the plank he was sitting on shift, saw orange out of the corner of his eye, head ducked and hands fiddling. Wilbur smiled wearily, and placed his hand gently on Fundy’s shoulder.
They sat there for a moment, watching the river run past, black with soot.
There were no fish left in the water.
“D’you think she’d be proud of us, Wil?” Fundy finally said, making Wilbur look up to him. His voice was nonchalant, but the tension in his shoulders betrayed him.
Wilbur took a deep breath, thinking back to Sally. He found, quite suddenly, that when he tried to recall the way her eyes had gleamed mischievously, the clever things she seemingly manifested from thin air, all that came to mind was his son, bright and gleeful.
He noticed how the white streaks of Fundy’s hair looked nearly gray, in the waning sunlight, with gunpowder dusting his light blue uniform.
“Fundy, this nation is still ours. When I am long gone and dead, you will inherit this land, and everything that comes with it. I won’t be here to guide you, or to tell you what to think.”
“That isn’t really an answer,” Fundy said, and Wilbur thought he saw the ghost of a glint in his eye. He ruffled Fundy’s hair, watched him scramble to cover up a smile with a disapproving glare.
They sat for a moment more, father and son. The sun was setting in earnest, and the last smoldering pieces of rubble were beginning to go out.
“Fundy, do you remember the poem I read to you when we were starting out? When you asked to be a part of the revolution. Oh, what was it. Ozymandias.”
Fundy quirked his head. “A little, why?”
“I want you to say the ending, again.”
Wilbur was met with a tired glare. He smiled.
“For your aging, elderly father? My final wish?” Wilbur made his voice exaggerated in its weariness, but found that he had to exaggerate less than he’d expected to.
Fundy rolled his eyes, but cleared his throat.
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings.
Look on my work, ye mighty, and despair.
Nothing aside remains. Round the decay
of that collosal wreck, boundless and bare,
the lone and level sands stretch far away.”
They sat a moment longer, then Wilbur moved to get up.
Wilbur, Fundy, and Tubbo all slept at Tommy’s side that night. If Fundy and Tubbo fell asleep leaning on Wilbur, it was lost to the darkness, along with the trembling of Wilbur’s hands, with the rasping noise of Tommy breathing.
They were not all lost.
Wilbur awoke to someone shaking him.
“--get up, he’s gone!”
“What?” Wilbur said, wincing as he sat bolt upright.
Tubbo was facing him, eyes wide. Wilbur noticed that Fundy was stirring beside him, too, uncurling from the tight ball he usually slept in.
“Wilbur, I just woke up, and I looked over, and Tommy’s gone.”
“What d’you mean he’s gone, he’s just had a bloody arrow in his chest,” Wilbur said, but despite his words, found himself looking to the cot.
In the place of a wounded boy, there were only blankets, strewn across the bedroll. Wilbur’s heart dropped to the floor and cracked in two; it was tugged oddly, like someone had tried to make it with one hand.
Tommy was nowhere to be found.
Tubbo said that he’d looked around, and that Tommy wasn’t near the Camarvan. In fact, he said frantically, as far as he could tell-- “He’s not in L’manburg at all, Will.”
Fundy was already up by the time Wilbur turned to shake him awake. All three of them began combing the perimeter, bodies aching from the battering they’d received the previous day. Fundy climbed up as high as he could, trying to see past the tall walls. Tubbo checked every hole in the general radius, making sure that Tommy hadn’t sleepwalked to one of his old hiding places.
Wilbur walked along the outside of the walls, trying not to think of who had built them, of what could happen if Tommy was gone. Tried not to think of a reason he could’ve left in the middle of the night.
He didn’t think at all of the look in Dream’s eye after he’d shot Tommy, the strange fixation he had on the music discs. Didn’t think about how it would be painfully simple to take a wounded teenager from a ruined van.
He especially didn’t think about how easy it would be to turn on them, beaten as they were. Tommy’s head glinting with gold.
(No, a tiny voice whispered, that’s Tommy, that’s your brother, the one who took an arrow for you, thinks you hung the stars. He would never turn on you, he couldn’t. Wilbur never would’ve doubted Tommy before the control room. He’s not sure, now, if he can even trust himself.)
The sun rose past the treeline and lost its gentle glow as they searched for Tommy, every minute that passed with him still missing putting them all further on edge. Wilbur’s feet ached from walking and re-walking the border, his head ached from the effort of thinking and re-thinking the same terrifying thoughts.
He’d begun to lose hope by the time Tubbo finally saw him, yelled for the others to come to the gate. Wilbur caught a glimpse of a figure limping into the clearing, of a torn red shirt. Tommy.
By the time Fundy and Wilbur had reached them, Tubbo had gotten an arm under Tommy’s shoulder, supporting him. Tommy looked ragged and exhausted, his eyes dark under his brow.
“Where the fuck were you, Tommy?” Wilbur began, already on his way to angrily fuss with his bandages, but he was cut off suddenly by Tommy’s rasping voice.
“Wilbur, I’ve secured our independence.”
They all went still.
“You-- you what?” Wilbur said, but something deep inside of his chest was already rising, had heard what Tommy had said.
It couldn’t be.
“Elaborate?” Tubbo said after a moment, his voice holding the shock that everyone felt.
“I gave him the discs, Will, I gave him all my discs,” Tommy said, and everyone was silent for the split second it took to register his words.
They all exploded at once.
“You gave up your discs?”
“Tommy--”
“All of them?” Fundy looked as though Tommy had grown an extra head, and it wasn’t that big a leap. Tommy willingly giving up his discs was like Tommy vowing to stop swearing or living in a nice brick house with four walls and a chimney; it was preposterous. It was not done.
Wilbur felt something close to giddy hope bubbling up inside of him, and he enthusiastically threw his arm over Tommy’s shoulders, ruffling his hair despite Tommy’s protests.
All four of them were grinning like madmen.
“My right hand man, Tommy Innit!” All of them were yelling and whooping wildly, Tubbo having left Tommy’s side and happily tackled Fundy to the ground the moment he’d realized what had happened.
They were all covered in soot and ash and scratches, Fundy’s hair still singed. They were the happiest they’d ever been, standing in what had hours before been little more than a gravesite.
Wilbur’s mind was racing. “Tommy, you still have the Declaration, yeah?”
“Yeah, I do,” Tommy said, and Wilbur’s eyes were shining bright and more earnest than they had in weeks, months.
“Bring me another piece of paper. Tubbo, see if we’ve got any ink left.”
Tubbo ran into what was left of the camarvan, Fundy close behind him, as Wilbur finally, finally let himself unwind the ball of tension in his mind. He knew this, he knew dreaming, and politics, and nations. He had his family, the parts of it that mattered, anyway. They’d done something that no one had thought possible. They’d done something great.
Tubbo stuck his head out from the ruined doorway.
“Uh, small problem, Wilbur. We haven’t got any ink. Or paper. Or soup, I checked.”
Tommy cursed beside him. “Fuck, Tubbo, they got the soup?”
“I’m afraid so, boss man,” Tubbo confirmed. Tommy groaned angrily.
“God, we’ve lost so much,” Wilbur said, then laughed slightly. “We’ve got nothing.”
“Will, listen,” Tommy started, a remarkably earnest expression on his face. “It doesn’t matter that we’ve got nothing. Y’know, cause we’ve got what is so much greater than any physical attributes, and that is freedom.”
Wilbur laughed again, then put on an expression he thought a victorious general might wear.
“Liberty. The pursuit of victory,” he said, looking to Tommy, who grinned back at him.
“And justice for all,” a voice chimed in from behind them. Wilbur felt Tommy bristle beside him.
They turned, and Dream stood there, a small group of his men behind him.
Among them was Eret.
Wilbur felt bile rise up in his throat.
(He didn’t think about the initial relief he’d felt to see his friend. He didn’t think about how L’manburg was four instead of five. Walls and birthday cake and gunpowder melted together.)
Wilbur didn’t remember much of the conversation, later. His mind had been a cocktail of emotions and adrenaline and exhaustion, thrown with a lit rag towards anything that stood still long enough. He remembered pieces.
Dream’s mask, sunlight reflecting, blindingly white. Red flecks of blood coated the edges. Wilbur shook his gloved hand, and when Dream squeezed, Wilbur squeezed back.
Papers, signed. Declarations of peace, of sovereignty, of ceasefires. Hands that had nearly killed Tommy, flourishing at the end of a signature. Wilbur’s own shaky hands, signing the line below. Words like revenue, borders, self-ruling, city-state. Words like free.
Faces, worried. Balled fists, wrapped in bandages, singed at the edges. A cracked pair of dark glasses, a crown, ill-fitting and shining.
Wilbur’s memory grew patchier still.
His throat, rasping as he yelled. White eyes, unflinching above him. Traitor. Liar. Brother. A line drawn, in the ashy remnants of L’manburg’s border. Spit in the dirt, spit in white eyes, hands holding his arms back. A laugh, muffled from behind a white mask.
When the dust settled, it was this; a small family, made smaller still by promises broken and bargains honored. It was a man, dreaming feverishly, speaking so loud he couldn’t hear the plans of those around him. A friendship broken, and a monarch crowned.
And then, Dream was gone, taking all the rest with him. Promising to leave L’manburg unharmed, to let the newborn nation take its first steps.
Wilbur faintly remembered waving him off with a forced smile, fighting the urge to collapse to the ground and scream.
They were free.
That night, they lit a fire.
‘-- Like a lean-to, Tubbo, it’ll burn better like that,’ Tommy advised, reclining as the others worked to build the bonfire. Though he’d initially fought to be allowed to help, he’d realised that he could order his family around and not be chided, and seemed quite happy with the arrangement.
Wilbur’s hands shook as he struck the flint and steel. A spark, a spark, a catch. The flame crept up the small tinder in the center of the logs. Half of the wood was already half-burned; Tubbo had pruned the dead branches off the forest around them.
Supposedly, the center of the trees would be unburnt. They would bud in the spring, then flower, then flourish.
Wilbur clung to the hope that they would.
In the following weeks, they picked up the pieces in the wake of their victory. They had won, yes, but Wilbur’s work was far from finished. There were still strides to make, vans to repair. The second day of L’manburg’s independence was spent trying to clear debris and fill in the craters that littered their land.
Tommy, of course, was still Tommy, despite the wounds, despite everything. He still ran around, stubbornly refusing to go slower, even in spite of his barely-healed lung. He appeared to have taken the war in his stride, and was back to wreaking havoc on the surrounding areas relatively quickly. He complained that, no matter how many health potions he drank, his left ear rang, “like a dumb little mosquito”.
He made himself a bell, and rang it until the ringing outside deafened the ringing inside.
Sometimes, Wilbur would catch him alone, when he thought no one could see him, sitting and staring far, far away, holding his side where Dream’s arrow had nearly killed him, clutching his shirt like he could still feel the pain.
Wilbur let him be. He knew that he’d want to be alone if he was hurting.
Slowly, they began to grow into their new freedom. Fundy had taken over making his own potions, now, and the brewing stand caught the light where it now sat in the windowsill. Their flag, miraculously unharmed by the war, flew proudly, the sturdy sound of rippling cloth mingling with the babbling river.
(The river still ran black with soot when they tried to walk in it, clouds of murky water dredged up by their feet. They had tried to clean it, but most of the salmon had left for cleaner, more peaceful waters. Wilbur tried not to think about what that meant. He found himself trying to think less and less.)
As the charred trees began to turn yellow and orange, the new citizens of L’manburg began to put down roots in earnest. They made a small, reedy garden, patched up the walls of the Camarvan. Fundy and Tubbo had devised a clever sort of system that automatically harvested their crops with flowing water, which Wilbur thought was close to magic.
Wilbur no longer felt haunted by the secrecy of his plans, didn’t hide his writing under loose floorboards or feed it to the fireplace. He was free to openly speak, free to raise his clever son and keep his brother from enthusiastically falling off of the slippery roof. In gaining this peace, however, he had lost some integral piece inside his chest, the unshakable sense that trust could be given freely as breathing. Could be relied on.
That winter, Wilbur’s tiny family sat around a fire, and laughed, and believed for a moment that things would be alright. Tommy’s discs were still gone, of course. Tubbo’s house was still burned down, he didn’t have any plans for a new one.
There was still an empty place at their hearth, like the absence of dust on a bookshelf space. Fundy jumped at loud noises, Wilbur’s hands sometimes shook so hard he couldn’t write or play guitar.
But they sat around the fire, injured and bruised and free, and it almost felt like it had in the beginning. Wilbur and his family and his terrible, revolutionary ideas, keeping the darkness at bay with their makeshift weapons and loud laughter. They’d earned their freedom, and now they were free to do with it as they pleased.
Tommy made a joke, and Fundy laughed. That was enough for Wilbur. It had to be enough.
Sleeping came even less frequently than before for Wilbur. He burned candles to their melted ends, then fashioned all the ends into another candle to illuminate the shaky scratch of his pen for just another minute, just another hour, until the sun rose and chased away the ghosts of explosions and arrows that lived in his mind. He'd developed a tremor in his hands, and had taken to dictating letters to Tommy under the guise of leadership to avoid the others catching on.
He had been a dreamer, and a father, and a general. Now, Wilbur had to learn to be a president. It was more difficult than anything he'd done before. Tears etched great dark canyons under his eyes, and he smeared balm over them to keep himself presentable.
Presidents were charismatic. Charming, solid, dependable. Wilbur was very good at pretending to be all of these. He carefully picked the tassels off the shoulders of his uniform, fixed them to a new coat, dark blue and imposing. When he saw himself in the mirror, he could almost be fooled to trust himself.
He would be the leader L'Manburg needed. He sketched out designs of parks, of streets where no one would ever be cast to the margins. Houses that would never go empty and citizens that would never be without a roof over their heads. He managed the beginnings of trade, laid out the frameworks of laws. Every line of ink felt as though it were coming from within him, draining him of energy and life, but he couldn't stop. Not when they'd gotten everything they wanted, not when he still had a family to protect and a promise to keep to a starry-eyed and youthful poet, whispering promises to his infant by candlelight.
The others couldn't catch on. Wilbur knew that well. Good leaders were without flaws, steadfast and godlike in their virtue. If they saw him falter, they would worry. More than that, word might get back to Dream or Eret that L'manburg was weaker than they thought, and their chance at success would be over before it had even started. Wilbur kept all his weakness to himself, only ever seen by the wide white eyes of the moon.
In this way, the end of summer faded into autumn, and Wilbur, President Soot, fashioned himself anew yet again.
Three months after L’manburg gained independence, Wilbur found Fundy at Eret’s old cabin.
The house looked nearly dead, now, the light that used to flicker from the windows long gone cold. The weeds around the porch had overgrown in a way they’d never quite managed when Eret had lived there. The door was locked, a fact that quickly became obvious as Fundy rattled, then pushed, then calmly and rationally used his boots to try and kick it in as Wilbur watched, stunned, from the tree line.
Wilbur had been avoiding the house, pure and simple. Traitors didn’t deserve to be mourned, to be missed. He’d made up his mind about that much somewhere in between bandaging Tommy’s punctured side and carefully trimming Fundy’s singed hair, Tubbo watching intermittently from his lookout at the window (Wilbur knew he didn’t quite believe they were free yet; Wilbur couldn’t blame him.) All of the pain and heartache; he'd expected the others to follow suit, it was only what was expected.
But then, here was Fundy, trying in vain to kick down the lock, looking for all the world like a lost dog scratching at the door, begging to be let inside.
Wilbur was frustrated, and confused, and hurting. Why was Fundy coming back here, to the house of the person who’d sold them out for a hollow title and a piece of metal? Eret didn’t get to be a part of their lives anymore, they’d chosen that for themselves. Why didn’t Fundy hate them, why was he still looking for their ghost here?
Wilbur stepped past the tree line into the cold autumn light.
“Fundy. What are you doing.” The boy turned around, nearly tripping over himself as he scrambled back from the newly dented door.
“Wilbur!” Fundy yelped, hair almost standing on end. "I, you weren’t supposed to–"
He stopped, seeing something in Wilbur’s eyes. His eyes fell to the ground, guiltily, and he chewed the inside of his cheek.
"Why are you here, Fundy?"
The wind blew, and Fundy shivered. God, he was young. Wilbur couldn’t imagine that he’d been just a little older when he’d been handed a tiny bundle of red hair and clever eyes. That had been before the smoke, and the tremor in his hands. Fundy looked to the side, and Wilbur saw his eyebrows tremble.
"... I miss them, Will."
The admission was almost carried away by the wind. The weight of it held it in place, suspended, where it could make Wilbur's stomach lurch.
"They abandoned us, Fundy," he started, confused, his voice hitching before he could snatch it back from the air. "They don’t deserve your grief."
Fundy bristled, then– "Not all of us can just– just turn it off, Will!" The frustration in Fundy’s voice shocked Wilbur. "I don’t care if they deserve it, I’ve still got it, and you won’t talk, so I’m here."
Wilbur felt frozen. "I didn’t know you felt that way, Fundy."
"Yeah, well, there’s a lot you don’t know."
Every word felt like a small wedge, lodged in the crack Eret had knocked into Wilbur. He felt like he would split in two. It felt cruel that Fundy would accuse them of apathy, cruel because Wilbur spent the better part of his time trying vainly to keep himself in one piece. He was no use to anyone if he was shrapnel in his son’s lungs, in his brother’s eyes.
Then, Fundy’s chin was wrinkling in the way it had since he was small. Wilbur sighed, letting his shoulders fall in shameful defeat. Words oozed from the crack, visceral and guilty.
"I miss them, too."
It felt traitorous to say. Eret didn’t deserve to leave a gaping wound behind them, didn’t deserve to be spoken of. But Fundy’s fists were clenched at his sides, and tears were beading in his eyes, and Wilbur willed himself to pick up the pieces they had left. Not for Eret, but for Fundy.
He opened his arms, and Fundy hesitated, then moved forwards, his breath hitching. They clung to each other, father and son, in the doorway of yet another home they’d lost.
They gutted the house.
Piece by piece, Wilbur and Fundy pulled memories from the shelves. Some books would go to other revolutionaries; the valuables would be sold, to buy food, bandages, hope. Blankets made by Wilbur were folded carefully, and blankets made by Eret were thrown onto the growing bonfire they had set.
(Whispers of a new castle stirred around the SMP, Eret wouldn't need them anyway. They could buy new memories with the money they'd traded Wilbur for, traded their friends for.)
They worked mostly in silence, items passed wordlessly for inspection to each other. Two sets of brown eyes, avoiding each other, but existing, grieving as one.
Fundy threw everything that smelled like Eret onto the fire, wrinkling his nose as tears pricked at his eyes. Wilbur looked away; he, himself, hated to be seen crying. He would give Fundy a chance to pretend it was the smoke.
As the light waned, they sat by the edge of the fire. All the memories that didn't hurt had been saved; all the ones that did had gone up in smoke. Fundy sat with his knees to his chest, the fire reflecting in his eyes.
All the words that Wilbur had once been filled with were gone. Some spark had been lost, and only a spiteful ember remained. He pressed on not because he believed what he said, but because he needed others to believe it. Flames curled around old letters as Wilbur fed them into the fire, lapping at the edges until they turned black and collapsed. It was duty that propelled him forwards, and anger that kept him back. He felt as though he would split in two.
The last of the summer frogs chirped from the woods; an owl called, from somewhere in the distance. The log they were sitting on was damp, and Wilbur's back was cold in the absence of the fire's warmth. Fundy shivered and picked at the moss on the ground.
For a moment, Wilbur felt as though he should say something. Reassure Fundy that it would be all right, that the monsters under the bed couldn't hurt him, that L'Manburg would stay a safe haven.
He couldn't bring himself to lie to his son. Not after what it had taken to get them out of the war alive, not after the scars that littered both of their bodies.
So instead, Wilbur sighed, and patted Fundy on the shoulder, shaking him gently.
"Sally would be proud of you, Fundy."
Fundy's gaze stayed on the ground.
Wilbur shook again, and Fundy looked up, exhausted and expectant.
"I'm proud of you, too." Wilbur meant it.
Fundy only nodded in response, but his shoulder relaxed under Wilbur's hand. Maybe, Wilbur let himself hope, they would be okay. Maybe it could end happily, for once.
"C'mon," Fundy, said, standing up. "It's cold, Tubbo said he would make stew."
Wilbur grimaced, his knees popping as he stood. "Not fish stew, I hope?"
"Squirrel, I think."
They walked back home, leaves crunching under their feet. Things wouldn't be the same as before; they could never unlearn the loss they'd felt. The fish would never come back to the river, and the bread would never rise the way it had when it was made in a friend's oven.
But, that spring, green buds sprouted from the trees. They kept building, despite the aches and scars, despite the frequent rests they took to accommodate their lungs. Tommy dug new holes, bees moved into Tubbo's hives. The spring brought a girl with light hair tied back in a cloth who stopped to rest for a day, then came back a week later with blueprints for a bakery and a glint in her eye. The smell of baking bread drifted through L'Manburg again.
And one day, when Wilbur sat atop a hill in the soft grass and felt the sun on his face as he watched his family laughing below, he began to sing again.