Chapter Text
It had started a relatively normal night for the small family.
Wilbur had been making dinner, a potato-based stew that couldn’t help but fill him with a bitter, longing, nostalgia.
He listened content, despite his feelings, as Tommy and Tubbo tease Fundy, something about how they’re still older than him, that “you should listen to your favorite uncles Fundy.”
While in human years it would be true that his son would be younger, three, but due to his hybrid type, is instead now sixteen. Much to the thirteen-year old Tommy’s chagrin. It is an odd thought, that his son will be older than him soon, him being twenty, A scary one if he were to be honest, but he elects to try his best to put that aside for now.
Instead, listening Tommy and Tubbo, mostly Tommy, go on about how he remembers when “you were so small, I could crush you like a bug beneath my shoe, fur boy.”
It makes him laugh as he can hear Fundy groan and push Tommy over.
It’s nice, seeing them like this.
While Fundy never had to experience it, the air in Phil’s home was always filled with a tension. A tension that really, came mostly from him.
The home often felt empty with the owner so often gone and Techno so sparsely seen, having moved out. Though Wilbur knows he met with Phil often, just not them.
He’s happy to have made the home he did, to have run off with Tommy and Tubbo and started a life.
He feels like he’s less listing through the days now, though it isn’t unusual to struggle getting up in the morning. It seems just slightly easier, sometimes, at least.
Though there’s always a hole in their lives, and Wilbur knows it’s more than just Sally who’s missing.
These thought spirals were not new to him, it all was relatively normal.
But then he shuddered, body jolting with an invisible shock, feeling as if he was just drenched in cold water.
He staggers, grabbing the counter with rapidly numbing fingers.
He can hear the banter stop as the three turn to face him, having heard the stumble and watching with concerned eyes.
The numb overtakes his senses at a rapid rate, crawling up his arms and legs, bowling over his chest and gripping his brain.
He wants to turn, to say he’s fine, he doesn’t feel bad, or anything at all.
Though in hindsight that would only panic them, he’s sure.
Not the most reassuring thing one could say really.
Before he can make an idiot of himself however, he falls.
World titling on its axis, taking him with it in a muddled haze.
He can hear Tommy yell at him as he falls, shrill and concerned. Can hear the sounds of hurried hoofed toes and padded, clawed feet hit the ground as Tubbo and Fundy run towards the sound.
He tries to speak, to reassure the kids that, he’s fine, he must have just moved too quickly, regardless if that were true or not. He tries, but nothing happens.
He distantly hears his head hit the tiled floor. He can tell there are hands gripping at his arms, shaking him in a panic and clawed one’s lifting his head off the ground.
He knows that Tubbo is running down the hall to get what, unfortunately little, due to cost, medical supplies they have.
He can only distantly hope that they don’t need to use any of the potions, they certainly aren’t the easiest or cheapest thing to come by. Weather you’re making them yourself or not.
The matter around him feels as if its shifting, his body phasing and changing with it.
He’s far to numb to call it painful, though, something in him tells him it should be.
Then it’s gone.
The black sea matter of the void flows gently around him, waves rising and falling in a calm wave.
It’s freezing, he can tell, despite the numb of it all.
The voids waters grab hold, and drag him down by his ankles.
A shout chokes in his throat.
He hits the void’s sea floor.
His head slams against wooden floors, body jolting at the impact.
His head is spinning, ears filled with a static and his cheek stings.
The numb has begun to fade, leaving him confused and heaving, but before he can mull over that, a watery gasp draws him out of his stupor.
He peers up with heavy lidded eyes, tears burning the corners of his eyes and blurring his vision.
As he lays prone, taking in a figure of muddles hues in front of him, he can’t stop the broken inhale of breath he takes as it comes together.
Phil stares back at him, trembling much the same as him, with cold blue eyes brimming with tears.
The man seems to curl in on himself in shock and shame. Bringing his outstretched hand to his chest and gripping the wrist, holding close the thing he just hit his son with.
The sight makes Wilbur heave, breath picking up and chest tightening as each second of fading numb is replaced by a panic.
Just not for the reasons one may think.
One, Phil is standing in front of him, eyes ashamed but figure big and imposing to his fallen, prone form.
Two, he can now hear frantic angry banging against the locked wood door behind him. Tommy’s voice clear, as he yells angrily for an answer as to what just happened, squeaky and shrill.
And three. He’s been here before. Not the home they are currently in, nor the area, but this exact moment.
This has already happened, down to each little detail. The sound of tentative, worried steps coming from behind the door shrouded by Tommy’s yelling.
The way Phil curls further in shame at each one of those yells. The way Phil’s eyes glance down at him every so often in shame. In a shame Wilbur now recognizes as shame for his own actions.
He’s seen and been here all before, for this was his last night in this house.
This was the night before he took Tommy and Tubbo, and ran away.
The night before him leaving led to him meeting Sally, a love he fell into far too fast, though he would loath to regret it, and the night that would one day lead to a bright eyed, fox son, in his life.
So why is he here?
Why did he go from cooking dinner for Tommy, Tubbo and Fundy in their own house, to being here?
He can feel himself spiraling, prone body curling inward and hands desperately grasping at his tangled hair.
Is any of this real?
Is he unconscious, and this is all just a dream, just him reliving a memory?
The red mark on his cheek stings as tears slip past his eyes.
He can hear someone trying to get him to breathe, hands ghosting just over touching him.
Each bang of the door makes him curl in tighter.
He can hear someone, Phil, his brain reminds him, yell at the door, assumingly telling Tommy to stop.
He can just hear frantic, panicked and regret filled apologies being thrown his way.
It does little to sooth him, even as the other sounds on the verge of sobbing,
For the second time in the span of minuets? Hours?
How long had it been? What was happening?
He feels himself getting drawn down by the waves, he swims down with them.
The door behind him slams open as the hands give up simply ghosting over him, and grab him, pulling up the upper half of his limp form, his head listing to the side.
The world disappears around him once more, numb relief accompanying it.
Maybe when he wakes up, it will have been a nightmare.
It wasn’t.