Chapter Text
The wings don’t hurt for long, but Wilbur is stuck in the jacket for an embarrassingly long time until he can coordinate his limbs to get it off. He has to wrestle with his shirt too, and he hisses as some feathers get pulled in the wrong directions.
Feathers. Holy shit, feathers. He flexes his wings gently, feeling how the muscles shift.
The only mirror in this shack is his handheld shaving glass, but he picks it up and tries to angle it to see the wings.
They’re black like Phil’s, but sleeker and perhaps shaped differently. Wilbur winces to think of the damage his explosion did to Phil.
Phil. Phil did this to him, trapped him in this fucked-up parallel reality where he’s done enough harm already.
Phil will have answers. Well, the closest things to answers that Phil ever gives.
Wilbur has to at least ask.
Wilbur realizes he has no idea how to alter his clothes to fit wings, and he ends up just tucking the whole mess under his old trench coat for now. Maybe Phil will have answers about that too.
It’s a long walk to the arctic commune, and a couple times Wilbur considers that he could probably just fly. But he isn’t sure he knows how, and if he takes off his coat he might freeze. Plus, he doesn’t want to take questions on why he suddenly has wings right now.
So he walks to his dad’s house, and by the time he gets there he’s cold and tired and even more irritated than he was when he started walking. He bangs on the door.
To Phil’s credit, he answers almost immediately. Any goodwill Wilbur might have developed based on that is eliminated when Phil sees him and smiles. “It worked,” he says, clearly relieved. He doesn’t have his wings, and that feels so viscerally wrong to Wilbur. He seems shorter without them, much less imposing.
“What the hell did you do?” Wilbur demands. He makes eye contact with Phil, trying to loom, and then falters.
It’s not quite superimposed on his vision, more a second sight that coincides with his vision. But he can see Phil’s life when they make eye contact, stretching away like a thread on a loom, and it’s so short. Death is coming to this server, Kristin had said. He swallows hard.
Phil breaks eye contact, which dims but doesn’t eliminate that thread. “Short, right?” he asks sadly.
“Short,” Wilbur agrees, managing to nod.
“Lots of people’s are,” Phil tells him.
Wilbur shakes himself. Refocuses. That’s a problem for later. “What did you do to me?”
Phil shrugs. “I let you inherit what is rightfully yours.”
“It’s not mine,” Wilbur insists. “You know I’m not really your kid, right? You know I’m from somewhere else?”
“I thought as much,” Phil says. “Your string is… tangled in a way I only rarely see. Saw. But you’re mine, Wil. Genetics, place of origin, none of that matters for something like this.”
“So why didn’t you tell me that?”
“I thought I would have time!” Phil snaps. “It hasn’t been that long you’ve been back and heir, you know. And then you go—telling people goodbye and shit, tangling up your string again. I had to do something.”
“So you hand me your goddess and call it a day? Not even a ‘hey, you might become a demigod later’ text?”
Phil gives him a wry smile. “When was the last time you read one of my texts?”
Wilbur hesitates. “Okay, fair.” There’s a moment of silence. “Can I come in?”
Phil steps away from the door. “Always. Come on in, get that coat off.”
Wilbur steps in, but keeps the coat on. “I… don’t have a shirt on, Phil.”
“Okay, and? Borrow one of mine, I don’t need the slits anymore.” He turns to dig through a chest and Wilbur sees the wing slits in his shirt just reveal the unmarked skin of his back. That brings the wrongness of this whole situation back to full power and Wilbur’s stomach twists. “Close the door behind you,” Phil calls over his shoulder. “You’ve got a lot to learn, and we can’t let all the warm air out while I teach you.”
Part of Wilbur wants to protest, get angry again, but instead he just turns to silently close the door. Phil’s right on this one count: he’s got a lot to learn.