#he notices thst wilburs not looking nearly so tense and thinks maybe todsy wilbur might start feeling better

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Pogburs posture through exile starts and remains perfect, when he knows eyes are watching. During his presidency, he practiced keeping his back straight and arms level and shoulders at perfect ease, and the habit carries through if only due to the fact that the reason he learned to stand like that was because that's what a 'good leader' does.

So he stands perfect and tall so no one thinks hes falling, because he has to be strong for the pogtopia rebellion, and for his friends still trapped in manberg.

And when his friends look away he slumps. Hes tired. He has no space to think about presentation with no one to present to, and he'll hardly be thinking about keeping himself looking nice just for his own happiness. There's too much else to do.

Pogbur slouches a lot, actually. He slouches in the farm, in the mine, when they're out on reconnaissance and when they come back late from exploring the forest above. When he forgets about the eyes always on him, he looks so much shorter. Smaller.

And, well, he knows that.

Its why he props his skeleton just so- looking broad and tall in posture whenever he realizes the eyes on him, from friend and foe alike. He has to be perfect and powerful, anything less would be pitiful.

He has to be perfect.

Eyes are on him.

He walks back to the underground ravine at night standing tall, cloak steadily following behind him as a stark black shadow. Tommy runs forward as they near, and Tubbo and Q follow if only to ensure he doesn't make off with the items their group scavenged.

Wilbur breathes slowly as they pass out of view among the trees. Its getting darker. He closes his eyes and allows his shoulders to fall, slowing his walk to an unfaltering limp at the dirt entrance of Pogtopia. When he makes his way down the spiralling stairs, his cloak drags on the steep, poorly carved steps behind him, indistinguishable from the leeching darkness surrounding him.

He limps out of the stairwell and into the main passage, where Tommy is probably yelling and Techno is probably snarking, and Niki is probably vigorously entrenching herself in any activity that will distract her from their circumstances, and then to the tunnels- those mad, crisscrossing, never-ending tunnels winding through the earth around them.

Wilbur finds himself, hours later, still moving through the sparsely lit tunnels. He notices his shoulder had been leaned against the jagged walls as he walked, so his jacket had torn through again. He'd get someone to mend that... later. Probably. His heels hurt. His spine hurts. His vertebrae wont stop pinching at the joint between neck and back.

Wilbur, of course, slowly makes his way back to Pogtopia, hoping that someone might still be up to help him make some food as a late night to early morning snack, and half-hoping everyone had left so he can let himself fall into a relaxed puddle somewhere deep within the dirt.

When he sees the faint flickering of light at the end of the tunnel, he feels a disappointment that adds another layer of rot to his bones. Someone is awake, still. He knows he can't handle anyone seei- Ex President and Rebellion Leader Wilbur Soot can't be seen dragging himself back to main base like a person in distress, so he straightens himself up like he's done some thousands of times and walks in with a confidence he's truly felt nearly twice in his life.

When he walks into the glorified hallway that is Pogtopia, his shoulders fall even farther than before when he realizes the light was from a furnace that had probably been running since before he left, fed by a continuous series of charcoal and potatos via hopper machine. There's not a single sound in the entire cavern, aside from his breathing and the crackles of the furnace. The hopper deposits a new potato to the furnace.

He takes a baked one from the chest below and nearly brings it to his teeth (what would be his first meal in 40 hours), but falters, hand shaking and setting the thing down somewhere solid before he drops it.

There's not a single sound around him. There are no eyes.

There's no one here right now to eat and talk with him, and help him cook food. He's really alone in this darkness now, so there is no point in keeping posture. There's no point in keeping health. He's safe from expectation.

Wilbur thinks he might cry if he thinks too long on that one, so he checks the hopper to see how many raw potatoes there are and clicks his tongue when he sees its nearly run out. Wilbur supposes it would probably be nice if someone actually got to work on fixing the automatic potato farm, and goes to do that for his friends. They're all out somewhere- wouldn't it be such a nice surprise, to come back to a repaired Pogtopia? A mended place, no cracks to be seen. No spiralling tunnels and mad decay. No damp corners or rotting, desolate dishes of food stacking up outside the room Wilbur never actually sleeps in.

He knows it should be an easy fix- he knows the problem, redstone dust never does well when exposed to constant damp, unchanging air. He just has to swap in dry dust and allow the wetter redstone to evaporate what it accumulated, so power can flow in an unblocked path across the machinery. Its simple, really.

So why can't he just do it? He knows the problem, the solution, and he even has a furnace already running that will help to dry the old dust. He steps into the farm and stops with his toes just in the soft soil at the edge. Why won't his body move further?

Hes tired. It's no excuse. He needs to do this, for his friends. He can't move. It's no excuse. Wilbur hurts, and can't stand only on two legs when he knows no eyes are watching. He drifts to the ground, it's no excuse. He has to clean up the wet redstone- else everyone will be disappointed by his shoddy leadership skills and terrible work ethic. He can't, he can't, he can't.

The room is dark, the furnace fire around a corner and a dozen meters down the hall. He knows the soil is damp, because his face has found its way to meet it. Its cold, here. Not as cold as he'd expect, but cold for a cave with no vents constantly lit by fire. He feels the wet of the dirt seep to his scalp and finds it comforting. Hes tired.

Its warm.

It is dark. There aren't any eyes here, so he sleeps in the comfortable soil, curled alone at the edge of the farm, as the furnace runs out of fuel and turns dark.