I've always hated when people say that it's the beginning of the end. I know what that means, every damn time. Someone is lost. Someone dies. Someone is a guilty survivor. Others have nothing to say but that they are placeholders who used to be main characters. I know who I am in that story. I watch it unfold time and time again in my head every time he calls my name. "Tommy?!" No, wait... it was never so harsh before. He's changed. So have I. "Wilbur..?" I hear myself cough out. 'Wrong' "person..." '...Phil.' "Hey to you too."

That's always been what I've remembered. What I could never remember was the next part. That is... until now.

"Oh god... Tommy!" A second face flickers into my vision briefly before it draws out again. Distantly, I hear them yelling. Philza and Niki, the two most unlikely to get along. Apparently when it comes to me though... they fight all the time. I heard a conversation they had once, brief, heated. They were talking about Niki watching me and how she "didn't have to if she didn't want to". At least, that's what Phil had been saying. The door had creaked open slightly enough for a younger Tommy to discern between the two voices: one was a lax, wisened voice, but one that could easily start yelling if need be. The other was a soft, feminine voice, one that people might overlook by default.

"[...] and that's why he can't do it! It's fucking simple mate." She had sounded upset when she responded, yelling so she wouldn't be the quiet one yet again. Yelling angry, angry words at him in something Tommy couldn't understand.

———

They tell me, "...one day, you'll rule a kingdom greater than mine, and when you do it'll be divine." I never believe them. The thing is, I'm right. I don't think anybody wanted that. I sure didn't.

I didn't even know what want was until Tubbo and Ranboo got engaged because then I wanted Ranboo to fuck off and let me have my best friend all to myself. It's selfishness, that. Wanting, to me, is just creative selfishness. Here's why:

You long for something you don't need because it benefits you and occasionally other people. I long for something simple, and that's true companionship, never wanting more. I think other people long for too much, however.

Wilbur wants community and love, so unmatched from someone so understanding. He longs for true compassion and support. He wants a nice life. One he can control. Maybe he wants someone to like his songs so that he knows it isn't just a family duty to accompany his musical talent.

Technoblade, he wants blood and war and all else that anarchy can give him. He wants constant movement, but he wants the opportunity to settle down somewhere far away with himself and a monster just as cold. He doesn't want power because he already has it. (Wilbur most definitely envies that).

To tell anyone what Philza wants is impossible. He's too mysterious, tired, and old despite being young. Well, maybe Phil isn't young, but he's not some wisened old crackpot just dawning on their seventieth year of life and dementia. I honestly don't know what he is. Maybe that's why I can't name his emotion or track down what he so dearly desires.

———

"Lupin," he begged, his eyes full of a crisp, blue sorrow as he watched those binds slowly hurt, slowly cripple him, "break free."

The next chapter, alas... It should fall when the time is without knowing, to befall a crescent bigger than its creature. If ever it came, I would cry with him at those fake names and those scarred blames, for what on earth could save the unstable?

I did not know, I thought, as I stopped reading to watch karma rue mercy.

"Wilbur, you bastard! I trusted you! How dare you run off with that woman and— when did you even— why?! You were perfectly happy before and then you decided you just couldn't be happy without a fucking son? Really?! Get out, just get the fuck out— DON'T TOUCH ME AND GET THE HELL OUT!"

I'd never seen him so angry as to yell at someone, nor to curse them out. He himself had called many who did the same premature and driven by stupidity where he just stuck to being a devoid flower of grace, elegantly putting in his final word as so. It was almost funny watching him be a hypocrite.

"You can't blame me for falling in love! If I was Leo, she was my Calypso! We were perfect and we still are! She was my angel and she still is! Don't you get that? Don't you get what it feels like to love someone and want them to be your forever? What about Tubbo, huh? He was—"

I watched his face fall perhaps further into anger than it had been prior. Whether it had been the mention of emotions or the mention of Tubbo that had brought him to this, I was uncertain, but I supposed I would find out soon.

"Don't. Fucking. Talk. About. Tubbo." He growled out like some sort of devil had just killed his dog and he was about to teach them karate on the receiving end. Wilbur's lip trembled for a minute, and it looked like he might shut up at last. Or maybe... maybe he was working up the balls to say what he would say next.

"Tubbo doesn't even care that you don't like Ranboo though. He went and married that ender-fuck and then rubbed it in your face. Now you're telling me that because you got rejected, I have to be? Well here's the news for ya, loud and clear; Sally actually loves me, and she'd never leave me whereas Tubbo went and lost you the moment he could because he hates you. Ever thought about that—"

There was a loud, resonating noise, like the snap of flipping to a new page on an exam paper but a thousand times louder. Wilbur stumbled back from him, nearly tripping over the plain wooden chair of a set of 12 that Wilbur himself had bought about three months prior. He stood glaring at the brunette, purely seething with some sort of emotion that wasn't quite anger but not yet hatred.

He stayed there, his eyes boring into Wilbur's for a long time as if daring him to speak. Finally, after a long time of that, he spoke.

"You're a heartless, self-obsessed, forever damned piece of slime that even the gnarliest slugs of our earth wouldn't touch, and I'm sorry mom and dad ever decided that they needed to have you."

His words dripped with venom that of a snakes', and he ripped his eyes away from Wilbur, at last storming out. Ah, the final word. What a thing to have. Wilbur stared after him, flabbergasted, and I watched him go too, impressed. That was probably the first time in decades that someone had told Wilbur something truly hateful and yet painfully heartfelt. It was refreshing, almost.

I didn't feel sorry for Wilbur at all.