Chapter Text
His entire time in limbo nothing changes. Thirteen years and his body is still the same, unchanging. He wonders if this is what it feels like to rot, in some way, to stay still under the earth and slowly decompose. In his body’s refusal to rot, or to grow and grow old, Wilbur has found that breathing stale air and never changing makes him feel just as stagnant as he thinks laying still and decaying would.
Not even death granted him the permanence he so craves. His skin is as smooth as ever, neither a scar nor a gaping wound to remind him. Yes, he feels the ache right below his sternum where the sword cut through him; when he unbuttons his shirt and presses his fingers into the skin it hurts, burns, feverish and painful to the touch. It’s not enough.
In his time there he swings between anguish and quiet, bitter acceptance. He spends ages sitting on the edge of the platform and dangling his feet over the tracks. He spends even more time playing solitaire on the floor or sitting on one of the benches staring at the walls. Then he feels it building in his fingers, in his chest, desperation draped in rage, hot and heady and weighing him down.
That’s when the tide shifts and he paces back and forth on the platform, frantic like a cornered animal. He shouts in the hopes that someone or something will hear him, screams curses at life and death and any god that could be listening to him. Worst case scenario they kill him all over again, and would that really be so bad when he’s stuck here, going stir crazy, trapped between life and death?
Nothing ever replies. No righteous god comes to strike him down.
He pounds his hands against the walls, stomps and kicks at the ground, flings his body around his little personal hell. His coat flies out behind him like wings, or get’s tangled around his limbs, tripping him and he thinks of himself as a bird or a bat trapped in a building. He flutters his brown leather wings, bashes his body against every surface he finds in a futile attempt to escape.
It hurts bad, he feels the way the rough concrete cuts his knuckles, feels it when he moves too quickly, reckless, and scrapes up his arms or knees. He gets tired too. He screams and wails until his voice gives out and he runs out of steam, collapsing and burying his face in his hands. He cries it out, let’s himself feel pathetic. And every time when he’s finally empty and cold, he looks at his hands and there’s nothing there. Same old hands, no blood or dirt to show for his effort.
When he gets out, well, it’s been thirteen years of his own thoughts and screams bouncing around his head and he has nothing to show for it. No crow’s feet by his eyes, no scars where he had bashed his fists against the tile walls. Only a white streak in his hair, and he thinks that came from his resurrection. It doesn’t count. Thirteen years and he is still in the body of someone in their twenties. Maybe rightfully so; that wasn’t really living was it? Still, thirteen years.
This time around he wants to live. He desperately wants to live. He loves this world. It’s a world where broken bones stick around. Wilbur wants to live and he doesn’t know how. Nothing satisfies.
He wakes up to watch the sunrise every morning. For the first time in his life he’s a morning person. The sun and the gorgeous orange and pink sky fill him with elation. The sunlight lands soft and warm on the bags under his eyes, like a kiss or caress. Sitting on the roof, he wishes he could reach up with his hands and grab the sun out of the sky. He’d cling to it. Bright and round like a great dinner plate. He would hang it on the wall in his room.
The sun rises, and the sky turns blue, and that moment of joy fades into numbness. It should be reassuring: this is his evidence that things are ever-changing. He isn’t stuck in that awful station anymore. But a couple minutes of sunrise just isn’t enough. Could anything be enough?
When he’s not alone with the sun and the chilly mornings, he pushes people’s buttons. He talks over people, bulldozes his way through every conversation. The satisfaction is gone just as soon as he realizes that most people don’t fight back. He wants someone to call him on it, but they don’t. Phil just smiles that wry smile and “gives him his space”. Tommy argues with him, but he hates the way the kid’s face screws up when he thinks Will isn’t looking. He stops soon after that.
When he finds Big Q in Las Nevadas, he thinks he’s hit the jackpot. Quackity is furious these days, madder than Wilbur’s ever seen him. Will knows it’s not actually related to him at all, but he latches onto it anyway, pokes around where he isn’t supposed to, and crosses boundaries and borders to piss Big Q off. It works, and the joy is that Quackity gives as good as he gets. Opening the burger shop is a genius move. He flips burgers, and he practices his smug grin in the mirror, and lets the momentum of this game they have carry him.
It lasts a couple months before he realizes that it’s still not enough. It’s still not fucking enough, and he doesn’t know what will fix it. Isn’t living enough? Isn’t making his mark on this world enough? Shouldn’t being seen be enough, even if it’s not in a positive light?
Here he is, like some fucked up Descartes. I’m hated therefore I am.
Still, something has to give. He died and spent thirteen years alone stewing in his own mental illness. The people around him, or at least those closest to him who he's told about it, have a surface level understanding of his time there. Intellectually they get it, but they don't really understand what it means. Tommy might understand, but he wasn’t there as long as Wilbur was.
Wilbur is supposed to be the one with the words, but really he's just always flying by the seat of his pants. Silver-tongued, but when he opens his mouth all the words are copper. Even if he was the great speaker they made him out to be, how could he ever put something like this into words? It's unspeakable and unexplainable. He can’t think of any solution. He can’t make them understand. They look at him and see the same man that died by his fathers hands all those years ago, but there has been some great and terrible change within him since then; now he has felt that deep, aching loneliness.
He wants to live, and to do so simply. He doesn’t need a country, nor a pretty title. He just wants to entertain himself, but how can he ever settle into this second chance when his body always itches. He’ll always be looking for some evidence that it really happened, because no matter how real and terrifying it is in his memories it means nothing if no one else saw it.
Wilbur carries on as he has been; he pesters Quackity and watches sunrises and doesn’t say mean things to Tommy even though he wants, more than anything, for his little brother to be cruel right back at him. He continues on because he doesn’t know what else to do.