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Wilbur, as a person who quite fond of keeping all his body parts and not contracting the fucking plague or something else equally as horrible, tends to avoid going in Tommys room. Well, at least he used to when the floors were covered in toys and clothes and whatever arts and crafts project the boy had brought home from school that week.
When the walls were bright red and had marker pen covering the lower half, when there were posters of kids shows and there was a nightlight permanently plugged in that was shaped like a moon, that stayed there long after it should have and when the bed was more stuffed animals then free space.
When he recognised the room and the boy that are strangers to him now, through the fault of his own selfish need to get away and leave the boy alone, never to be seen again despite the room still being occupied.
But now, even though the room has been white for a long time and the posters were thrown away and the toys shoved in the attic, the room is neatly packed away in poorly labeled boxes and taped up ready to be taken away.
He left first, but Tommy leaving makes his world feel like it’s crashing and burning as he stands in the centre of his baby brother's room. He’s still here, a month after Tommy’s eighteenth that they all forgot about and had him admitting that he hated his brothers and father and asking why he was unlovable.
The ache in his heart worsens at the thought, that really they brought this on themselves but, still, he feels like he might be dying. The only constant thing in his life, the only thing he’s ever really been sure of, was that Tommy would be here when he came back. That at the end of the day, when it’s all said and done, he could drive home and find his little brother in all his yelling and screaming and general loudness and know that he was loved.
Except, he did come home, and Tommy was not that person anymore.
He left for far too long, and with him left Techno and Phil leaving Tommy all alone for a house too big for one kid. Forcing him to grow before he was ready and now they have to sit and deal with the consequences of their own actions.
Wilbur hates it, he wants to leave again and pretend that things are okay, that everything is exactly the way he loved to pretend it is. God, he talked to Phil every week on the phone, did he really not talk to Tommy once? He didn’t even ask about him and yet he came home expecting things to be exactly how they were when he left.
He’s been gone for eight years, Techno’s been gone for eight years, they left their brother, who was a child, alone for eight years.
“What are you doing in here?” Tommy’s voice comes from behind him, it makes him jump and his cheeks redden in embarrassment for getting caught. He knows Tommy hadn’t wanted him in here, this space was his own and here Wilbur was, in all his glory, tainting it by being a stranger in a room he never should have forgotten.
“Where did the red go?” He asks instead of answering. “You begged dad for weeks to let you paint it.” Because while six year old Tommy thought it was the pinnacle of good design, Phil had thought a room full of bright red walls would give him a headache everytime he walked in.
But after a lot of begging, Phil agreed that if Tommy passed his next maths test, because even at six he sucked at maths, then he could paint the room red. It was the perfect deal, one that Wilbur himself had come up with. Then against all odds, Tommy passed the only math test he ever would.
Until, of course, Wilbur moved out. Only to come back to his brother being fucking smart and working hard to get A’s in all of his subjects and for it to be clear for the first time, out of many in his time being home, he no longer knows his brother at all.
“I painted over it.” He says, lifting a half empty box from the floor to his desk. He opens the draws and starts putting everything from it into the box. He’s not checking what any of it is, but he’s taking everything, like he has no plans of coming back (because he doesn’t, the terrible voice at the back of his head whispers, he never wants to be here again). “Ranboo and Tubbo helped.”
You can see the red in spots where there isn’t quite enough white and where posters or photos or whatever it was that Tommy kept on his walls were taken off and the paint came with. It’s a shoddy job but he supposes that it wasn’t really to get rid of the colour but rather, to get rid of the people who painted the room with him.
To get rid of everything that tied him to the family that abandoned him, and Wilbur, he can’t be mad, because he’s the one who did the abandoning, the one who left and never looked back, not for Christmas’, or birthdays, or finishing school with amazing grade or-
Any of it. He missed his brother growing up.
“I don’t like it.” Because it makes the room not Tommy, and sure he doesn’t exactly know Tommy anymore but he couldn’t have changed that much could he? The red was loud, but so was Tommy. The white was…
Impersonal? Boring? Subtle? Quiet?
It doesn’t matter, not really because none of those words describe Tommy. Not his Tommy anyway, the version of the boy he keeps tucked neatly in a box in his head that’s still ten years old and waiting for his brothers to get home.
“You didn’t like the red either.” He rolls his eyes, still packing away his desk into the box and in Wilburs defence, it was a really bright red, but it was still very much Tommy. “Not sure what colour you approve of then, Wilbur.”
He’s annoyed, but not in the playful way he’s used to. He seems genuinely annoyed at Wilbur and his presence and his existence too if he’s honest. God, there really is no hope is there?
“What’s that supposed to mean?” He asks, instead of backing off, letting the comment slip by with a joke or fond annoyance but Wilbur is impatient, he misses his brother and wants him back and he doesn’t know how much longer he can live if Tommy keeps hating him (he’ll have to learn to, he supposes, because Tommy hates him and he doesn’t think he’s worthy of such forgiveness).
“Nothing.” He shrugs his shoulders, it’s obviously something so Wilbur stares at him with a look that hopefully calls bullshit. He almost gives up, and maybe if he had things would be okay for just a little longer. “Maybe it’s not the room you have a problem with, you know?”
Oh.
He shouldn’t have come in here, he should have stayed in his lane and not trespassed because what if he’s right? He didn’t like the red, or the white and he wasn’t particularly happy about the baby blue before that and- Techno’s room is white, and Wilburs is the same baby blue because he had insisted the moment he found out about having a new brother that they matched but then Tommy was born and she died-
Wilbur loves his brothers.
Being a big brother is carved into his bones, he will never be anything more, anything less, he was born and a big brother within the same hour. He has always, will always be one until the day he dies and Tommy, he’s stuck with him as his brother even if this room, this house yells and screams and declares him an only child with the secrets it holds, with the sadness, pain, it holds.
(Wilbur does not deserve this title the universe bestowed upon him but he will take it with a heavy heart and fall to his knees under the weight with Techno right beside him as Tommy holds the sword that will decide their fates. One swift swing and the ties can be cut).
(It will kill him, it will kill them all, but the sword is in motion and there’s no one here to stop it).
(Maybe there had been once, but she is six feet too deep to be able to help even as her shadow looms over them and all that they do).
“I’m sorry.” He blanks, because all words have left his head and it’s all he can think to do. It’s all that’s left for him to do. All he has left is to beg for the forgiveness he will never get, but he will live, he will be fine, he will make up for it even if it takes him to his final breath.
Tommy stops packing, looks up from the box and the items Wilbur has never seen before.
“What do you want me to say?” He asks, face heartbreakingly blank. “Do you want me to say I forgive you?” Yes, yes of course, that’s all I want but you won’t mean it, I need you to mean it. “I can’t do that Will.”
“I know.” It wouldn’t be fair, but he wonders if he should ask him too anyway. It would set the miniscule amount of progress hurtling backwards but Wilbur would feel better if only for a moment.
Maybe if things were different he could, he will never have the mercy of knowing.
Wilbur didn’t know a baby could cry this much. He wished it would shut up so he could sleep, so Techno would come out of his room, so his dad wouldn’t have that look on his face that was somewhere in the middle of anger and grief and such an obscene amount of sadness and that maybe, if the crying stopped, his mum would come home.
She would know what to do, better than he does as he peaks over the crib with the crying baby staring up at him while Phils in the kitchen or the bathroom or maybe the living room looking for whatever it is that he hopes will make it stop.
”Stop crying.” He tries, in a futile, pointless attempt at getting the crying to finally stop. It doesn’t work. He’s crying like they did at the funeral, with full body sobs that wracked their bodies. That had Phil tucking them carefully into his sides even as he cried himself.
He cries like he’s grieving, though he has nothing to grieve.
He didn’t lose anything, not like Wilbur did, not like Techno or Phil did. He never even met her, he’s just a stupid baby who cries and cries and cries and-
”I said stop crying.” His brows furrow, leaning up onto the tips of his toes to see better. “Why are you crying?” He wants it to stop, he really wants it to end, he hates the crying, he hates this room, he hates that the walls match him and that the nightlight was his, he hates that his mums gone and he hates that Tommy took her away. “Stop crying.”
Tommy cries more, if that’s possible, he can hear music being blared from the room down the hall to drown it out. Why does Tommy get to scream and shout and cry as loud as he wants, to be all consumed by the feeling of sadness that he’s forced to let it out in an impossibly loud and violent way.
”Shut up.” He tries again. “You didn’t even meet her.” He didn’t get to hug her, or listen to her stories, or have her brush his hair, or hold her hand as they laugh and jump in puddles that cover them all in mud and has Phil rolling his eyes in annoyance.
He didn’t do any of that so why? Why does he get to mourn in a way Wilbur wouldn’t dare?
”Just stop crying!” He yells, and Tommy does. His cries come to a halt but he still sniffles, staring wide eyed. He looks terrified, he looks petrified but the crying has stopped and it is enough for Wilbur to not feel guilty.
And maybe he never could, maybe that mercy was never something he was blessed with, because they’ve been doomed for their very first moments. The end had begun before they ever had a chance.
“So, you’re really moving out.” He moves on, with a one deep breath and all the confidence GCSE drama instilled in him. It’s for the best, really. Tommy rolls his eyes, turns back to the box and takes the last few things out of the draws.
“Yep.” Clipped, short, he’s too far over the line then. They’re in it for the long hall. He can’t yell and make it all go away this time, because Tommy is war personified, he will fight back and leave them all bleeding out on the battlefield.
(And still, he would save them. Tend to the wounds he inflicted with a focused gaze and steady hands, but when he’s done he will still leave and the war will have been won without a single life lost).
“Are you scared?” He asks, moving over to peek into the box. Tommy slams the flaps down, picks the box up and moves it to his bed so that he can tape it shut. “I know I was, Techno too not that he would ever admit it.”
“I wouldn’t know.” He replies because Wilbur didn’t say goodbye, tape in his hand and searching for the end. “I’ve got Tubbo and Ranboo with me, that’s all I need.” He shrugs, finding the end and pulling it over the box to shut it.
“All you need?” Wilbur had thought leaving was right, and it had been for him and yet it was the start of the worst years of Tommy’s life. He was the one to cause that and he wonders how he’s going to live knowing that he’s the villain in Tommy’s story, when they had always, always been the good guys together.
Perhaps it wouldn’t be so bad, if the story was fun, if it was drug vans and countries and presidential campaigns like they had been in the make believe they played as kids, in the life that wasn’t theirs anymore, but it’s not. It’s a tragedy carved from love, it’s grief encasing a life not lived, it’s a living nightmare and Wilbur, he’s the bad guy of it all right alongside his twin brother and father.
“Wilbur,” He looks up, that same look in his eyes as when he was a baby and the crying was never ending. “Don’t do this man, not today.” He’s asking, he’s begging, but Wilbur, he can’t stop himself (he’s already the bad guy, what’s one more thing?)
“I’m not doing anything.” He holds his hands up in mock surrender, his last chance to back out, one more step and he will be irredeemable. There will be no going back he-
He doesn’t get the chance, he thinks he’ll thank the gods for that until he can no longer.
“Look if you’re just here to annoy me can you go?” He asks, the line is familiar, something he’s said a hundred times, it feels like a punch in the stomach to hear it come from Tommy. Oh, how the tables have flipped, leaving him with a mess on the floor.
“I miss you.” He dares to say, instead of all you need? again and again and again until Tommy forgives him. “Want to spend time with you before you go.” He shrugs, like he doesn’t care but he does, so, so much.
(He didn’t for a long fucking time and he is working on sowing the seed of forgiveness, Techno has always been better with the garden but he is willingly to learn if it means he can have his brother back).
Tommy looks up, stares at him for far too long, and then goes back to labelling the box.
“No, you don’t.” He says. “You feel guilty, or responsible, or whatever but look, it’s fine. You can go back to your life and I can go back to mine.” He doesn’t want to, Techno and he decided to stay home for a while, for Tommy, for this family.
She wouldn’t want it to end like this.
“Toms-”
“No.” He looks up again, caps the pen he’s holding and drops it onto his bed. He is angry, again. Wilburs to blame, again. “No, what the fuck is wrong with you?” He asks in disbelief. “You don’t get to come in here and act like you missed me and that we’re friends.”
“You didn’t talk to me for eight fucking years Wilbur, and now what? Suddenly we’re brothers again?” Wilbur wants to cry, he might still, because Tommy is right and it hurts. “I used to ask Phil about you every time you called, but you never wanted to talk to me and then Phil stopped being home.”
“I wanted too, I did I just-” He doesn’t know why he didn’t, maybe he thought talking to his ten year old brother made him lame, or maybe he just hadn’t wanted to hear about whatever hobby he had that week. He didn’t know when I’ll talk to him next time stopped being used and when everyone already knew the answer before it was asked.
(And how long did it take for Tommy to stop asking him, was it days? Weeks? Months?)
(Years?)
“So why didn’t you? You called Phil every week?” God, and when did Tommy stop calling him dad? “I have my own phone, you know? I tried calling you when I got it but you didn’t pick up. I left a message.”
Wilbur, he really does love his brother.
He doesn’t have his number.
“I’m sorry.” He repeats, there’s still nothing else for him to say. It’s all that he can do. They are too far gone.
“Why? Why did you have to come back?” Tommy’s crying, ever so slightly, he hasn’t noticed and there’s nothing Wilbur can do to comfort him. “I finally, finally found people who love me as much as I love them and then you come back.”
“They loved me when you couldn’t, when Techno and Phil couldn’t, and yet you aren’t okay with that even though you have no right.” Wilbur wants to protest, he’s frozen, stuck in time. “You only love me when it’s convenient for you but I can’t do that!”
“I’m-” He wants to apologise again. He sighs, rubbing his eyes, his glasses lifting as he does. ”I don’t know how to fix this.” He says instead.
“You can’t Wilbur.” It’s a stab in the heart with a very blunt knife, he can feel it tearing he wants to pull it out, it’s not in his control. “Why don’t you get that?” He asks, grabbing the box off his bed and leaving the room and it’s plain white walls.
He can’t lose him, is why, he doesn’t want to be in a world where his brother isn’t waiting for him to get home.
(He already has, he hasn’t been waiting for a long time now).
(The room will be empty, his brother will be gone and he will be left here alone).
(He gets why Tommy was so angry, this house is ruining them).