DRISTAAAAA TIMEEE
VOD: TommyInnit Speaks To Dream’s Sister AGAIN
(rp): Drista!! I love this chaotic child and am looking forward to seeing the children bully each other lmao. I especially love the mythos around Creative mode, and that the most benevolent god on the Dream SMP is just as likely to ban you as hand you a shulker box lol.
I do wonder how in character cc!Tommy is going to be able to stay during this stream: on one hand he’s a master at staying in character even during lh moments, and on the other Exile arc is some Dark Shit and Dristas like what, 14?? Overall I expect this to be one of the lighter streams, with a smattering of moments where we remember that, oh right, Tommy’s pretty actively suicidal at this point and he sees this as one of his last hurrahs.
Speaking of our boy Tommy: it's very clear we are getting closer and closer to the infamous pillar. He switches rapidly between Fight and Fawn reflexes and has mostly internalized Dream’s treatment and conditions at this point. The one stand out moment being him calling out Dream killing Mexican Dream last stream, and pointing out he was changing his story even when Dream tried to lie and say he died of “a drug overdose [...] or natural causes”. I’m curious if Tommy is going to bring it up again, and even more curious if he eventually believes Dream about it; something to watch out for, for sure. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that this moment of rebellion happened right after he had someone both stand up for him and spend time with him that wasn’t actively hostile or going to end (supposedly, at least by intention)
Hey we didn’t start off drowning for once!! cc!Tommy was also singing, though that could have been mostly out of character as well. Still, remarkably in a better mood, he even mentions having an appetite! You love to see it, and it's clearly because he’s looking forward to Drista’s visit
He’s building a log tower and on one hand, Tommy building Towers is a natural state of being, and on the other…. I know the pillar is coming and I am scared
A mention of the Anti-Dream hole… I still worry about when exactly and how Dream is going to find it. Still, I’m glad it exists, both for Tommy having a space for things important to him, as well as what it represents about his mental state re:not giving over completely to Dream
DRISTA!!!! LOL she was already online we didn't even see her join LOL. CHAOS GREMLIN she just flew over in creative mode and started wrecking shit, as is her right lmaoooo
“You massive jer--, (quieter) whats a nicer way…, YOU MASSIVE DICKHEAD” oh, Tommy..
I like how he tries to punch her even when shes CLEARLY IN CREATIVE MODE ADSADASD
The violence inherent in fourteen year olds,,,, adsfsadfsdfds
I hate this conversation why is this the conversation asdffdsfsd TEENAGERS
DREAM YOUR NOT EVEN A TEENAGER WHY ARE YOU FOLLOWING THE SAME LOGIC
Well SHE can destroy the obsidian asdfsdfds She just Spleefs
“What would Dream do” Probably worse lets be honest
Is he actually gonna go back to L’manburg?? I don’t believe it but I also want :(
Again with the stabbing
AND DOWN HE GOEEEESSSS
“I have the fork, but I'm also killing you” afsafsdfdsf Tommy why are you wearing your good shit omg
Lol cc!Dream trying to defend his character for mocking Tommy’s accent adsfsdfds “I would NEVER” in the totally not believable tone lmaoooo
DID SHE REALLY GO AT HIM WITH A FORK I'M FUCKING DYING DSAFDADSFDS
“I will take it from you and I’ll kill him”... I have so many thoughts about how this works in lore. Is Drista possessing Dream? He can kick her out clearly, but she still has God Powers…
Lol and now SHES mocking his accent lmaoooo (... is it bad she sounded pretty close to me? lol)
Adsfdsfswd casual chaos Drista just broke the Nether Portal
Asking Drista to stop destroying things is a big ask to be honest lmaoo. Also she seems to be at least somewhat informed that ‘Dream is not supposed to be nice to Tommy’ or at least seemed hesitant to do /weather clear
GOD THE LAVA BUCKETS AND THE POTION OF HARMING adsfsdfsdf
“Tommy [beheaded him] actually… and killed Mexican Dream” Dream you motherfucker
“How to Sex 3” THE PANIK!!!!!! From Both cc!Dream and Tommy!!! This server is Not Child Friendly lol (Doesn’t…. That not even include sex things…. afasfsd)
Honestly I can’t stop smiling this is so wholesome somehow even with all the cursing and violence
Pigstep IS a bop, Tommy is right
“Just let him, just let him this one time” :(
“Tommy I still have the Fork” Drista totally willing to stab her brother to visit L’manburg
HE TOOK THE FORK ASDASDAS
Yes, closing your eyes will totally protect you from Forks lol
“I don’t need school, I dropped out” Is this Lore Crumbs, is this Lore
HEYYYY ITS THE BEDROCK, the one piece of bedrock he has lol, I think he still has that in current day right?
Drista is writing her name in BEDROCK adsfsdfds “I’m not going to be able to get rid of that actually” “That's the Point”
LOL SHe also recognized the burrito as from Mos lmaooo
Somehow “I really want to go to the other place.. I don’t know why he won’t let you” hit hard… it was def ooc, and she doesn’t have the full context, but still… its just someone else wanting and asking for Tommy to be able see L’manburg…
Afsdfsd the Small Gasp when she spleefs herself omgg
HES THERE!!! HES THERE!!!!!! L’MANBURG!!!!!!
Punz!!! WHY!!!! Were you there bc Drista might let Tommy through, was this a safeguard for the LORE. Also he’s currently working for Dream directly right, as a merc?
Drista trying to save Tommy!!!! Punz why are you winning a fight with someone in creative adfsadfsd He’s too good lol
They have negotiated a visit… I’m so emotional I wasn’t expecting this…. No one told me we got a real L’manburg visit !
BIG Q SHES FOURTEEN!!! Omg they didn’t tell him it was Drista. BIG Q!!! BIG Q DON’T SELL HER DRUGS
“He was Naked” good for you Drista, good for you. There’s something so hilarious about Drista just stabbing Quackity over and over again cause she’s uncomfortable lol (as is her right)
LOL THE FINAL KILL WITH MAGIC WHEN HE’S ALREADY DROWNING IM
Wha --- what video was it????? What is this Tommy picture on the Technoganda???
….”are you sure I’m allowed here” Dream’s conditioning is strong :(
“At many minute I could get mugged” To be Fair Tommy, that was true before
Did Tommy just suggest spawning in a Wither asdfsdfds
DRISTA DOG ARMY!!!! Aww and Tommy has one too~
THE BENCH!! THE HOUSE!!! Aaaaaaaaa He’s sitting on the bench nature is HEALING
AAAAAAAA A BLAZE!!!! Pfffft
…. Who destroyed the front of Tommys house?
,,,,Drista what are you doing with that soULSAND
“OK we'll turn on him” adsfsdfsd
OH HEY TECHNO!!! Lol “Oh god he meant me” fucking mood big man
……. Tubbo hallucination……… fuck
LOL HE COMBAT LOGGED “YOU CALL THAT COMBAT” I'M
To be fair, logging against a /kill is probably the only way to get away lmao
…...F
“Getting thrown off a cliff is literally how Theseus died!!” lol its also hilarious to me that Tommy def does not remember being called that. Personally I don't think it fits him super well anyway, but I do like it as something Techno calls Tommy, that shows how much he misjudges Tommy's character and intentions. No heroes here, just a kid trying to do good by their friends and what they care about
Techno actually looking up how to kill someone in creative mode
…. :( I just want my actual clingyduo content this is meeeeannn
OH HEY TECHNO …. You fucker he would and it would be HILARIOUS (get mad if Drista opped Techno that is lol)
….
….
IS THIS WHY THEY’RE BEDROCK BROS????? BECAUSE THEY BOTH HAVE DRISTA BEDROCK??????????????????????????
HOW DID I NOT KNOW THIS ???
LOL TRUE DUO SUPREMACY TUBBO’S GOT TECHNO'S BEDROCK
Oh F Techno got him with the Obliterator lmaoooo
“I have 114 levels PLEASE” asdfdasfsdf
LOL Tubbo with the TNT there's our nuke boy, I'll take my crumbs where I can get them
THE SHULKER HOLY SHIT
“Don't let someone get it!!”” ADSFDSAFSDFDS they all tuRN CC REAL QUICK WHEN THE SHULKER BOXES COME OUT
Awesamdudes like: MORE PLEASE AFDASFDSF
Techno immediately snitching about Elytra and dRISTA GETTING THE ACHIEVEMENT
EVERYONE SNITCHING IN CHAT I'M!!!! DREAMS REACTION ASDFSDFDSF
Drista being the chaotic giver of illegal gifts is so fucking good I'M THRIVING
THE RUN ON PUNZ !!!! omg
Also can we just take a minute to appreciate Tommy being allowed around people <3 <3 This is so wholesome and good and chaotic as all hell
“I thought I was Tom Cruz for like a whole week” ...TOMMY??
LOL SHE BANNED TECHNO OMG
Dristas on a banning Rampage afsdfsdf
BAN GOGGY OMGGG
Omg shes actually making a wITHER DASDASDFAS
Oh no poor Tubbo I didn’t know he was liVE
319k viewers jeezus
Awwwww Techno hyping up Wilbur's song :) that's so sweet actually
…………….Fuck you Dream :( saw the chance to Twist the Knife in c! And TOOK IT
LOL THE FUCKING FORK IS THE BEST BIT LOLLLL
Lol ironically the Bedrock bros song is the oNE COPYRIGHTED ONE, god why did Minecraft ever copyright Pigstep what a shit move honestlyyy
Pigstep fucking goING TO TECHNO LOLLLLLL “this is the most powerful item on the server since it DMCA’s people”
LOL PUNZ TRYING TO STEAL ANOTHER SHULKER
Poor Sam he actually has to BUILD give this man a SHULKER
Lol Everyone wants a shulker so much
….aww he tried to toss the pigstep disc lmaooo DRISTAS LITERALLY HOLDING IT Scaaaaaammmmed
Drista “I NEED IT ON HAND” So committed to violence !!!
The fucking creepers on the way out omg fuckign PERFECT
LOL TOMMY WASN’T READY FOR THE TURN AROUND ON CURSING LMAO You can tell he's always been the youngest who people aren't sure how much they can curse around lmao He's so soft honestly he talks such a big game and then CRUMBLES when called on it lol
Asfdsfs she fell through the same hole again afsdfsdfsd
Drista has been introduced to a Weapon and she’s gotten ATTACHED lmaooo
Wait HOLD THE PHONE Dream has multiple sisters??? Lol
“Yeah I like Shit” Dream: “whAT???”
Bye Drista it’s been nice!!! I hope she had a good time, she seems like a good kid (who is definitely not a content creator lol though she keeps up admirably)
Drista’s one of the few people who can make Tommy speechless lmaooo he looks actually shocked lol
Also first mention of GhostInnit…. cc!Tommy…..
Keep preparing…. Was his original plan to rush Dream even if (maybe especially if…) he died? Fuck man
Also holy shit was this stream right before Quackitys? ? amazing
This was honestly such a BLAST and a really good time, and I can see why its viewed as one of the few breaks we get during Exile :) I feel so refreshed and it was so so nice to have Tommy hanging out in L’manburg having fun with his friends (even if Tubbo was stuck being a Hallucination and Also Banned lol) No deeper insight, I just haven’t stopped smiling for an hour and a half <3
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it’s been a long year since we last spoke (how’s your halo?)
Read on Ao3
Words: 11.5k
Tags: Hurt No comfort, Angst, No Happy Ending, No beta we die like Wilbur
Warnings: Body horror, Blood, Death, Suicidal Implications/Thoughts, Mentions Of Torture, Beating/Fighting
Author's Note: I tentatively present you all this fic as my ticket to board the Dream SMP Fandom. I took some creative liberties with this, such as hints of Niki and Wilbur being childhood friends, as well as Niki living near Techno's cabin, and making Niki respawning to restock her hunger bar during her spiraling/villain arc one of her canon deaths. Also, despite Niki wearing a new skin she has stated that her character still wears Wilbur's coat. Just adding that in here so people don't comment that I got her outfit wrong during a certain scene. And finally, even though I feel this is obvious, this is about the characters and not the streamers themselves. With that out of the way, enjoy the fic!
Summary:
"Time down here is like stars, Niki. We're dead, dead for thousands of years, but to them," he points up, "we still shine. It'll take light years for them to realize they are staring at just a memory."
She tries to take a step back, but she's rooted where she stands. "Wilbur," she weeps. "How long have you been down here?"
He laughs.
(There was a time it made Niki's heart stop. It still does, but for different reasons now)
"Eleven years."
Niki covers her mouth to stifle a broken cry.
or; Niki tries, unwillingly may she add, the whole being dead thing. Oh, and Wilbur is there to "help"
The worst part about it is that Niki's whole life doesn't flash before her eyes. It doesn't happen in slow motion and neither is there some comforting, bright light for her to walk towards. It's simply this: one second she's at Church Prime and the next she's falling into pitch blackness.
Then again, she should have known better than to expect any of that dumb cliche stuff 'cause it's not like she died or anything. Not really. Her communicator may say she did, but she knows the truth. She was teleported.
So why does this feel like dying?
foolish girl breaking at the seams from using the same stitching of a burning flag to put yourself back together again. you think the afterlife cares how you arrive? the entry fee is the same for all
She comes in screaming and doesn't stop even when that's all she is anymore. Her body is unrecognizable to her, turned inside out, muscles stretching and bending and snapping in an attempt to mimic the shape she once was.
(She wishes her muscles luck in regressing back into a memory because oh primes, oh dear primes did she try, try again to be the girl wore a white and blue uniform with pride, but that girl only exists now in dreams and sometimes nightmares)
But they can't, for her organs and bones and flesh do not know what it means to not be confined (but they should know, they really should, because she still finds it hard to breath in small spaces ever since Schlatt caged her between iron bars and dirt and Sapnap left her in a hole in the ground over a fish) and so they shake. Convulsing and spasming until she is just sound, just an echo of shrieks that are happening in the past or the present or the future depending on how fast it travels down this tight, narrowed cave she lands in.
Wait, lands in?
She finds herself laying flat on the ground. She blinks. Then does it again for good measure to make sure she's not imaging having eyelids.
She touches her face. Feels the crook of her nose, the curve of her chin, and her soft round ears.
It's all skin. No muscle, no tissue, just her.
Still her.
(For now)
Her body is back. Not whole though - never whole - for she will always be a walking empty space within a solid object, but for now, her body is right. Her body is here. She closes her eyes in relief.
Someone is staring down at her when she opens them again.
"Hello Niki," Wilbur says. "It's been a while."
(It's Doomsday. His name shows up on your communicator and so you become a lit match. The fire eats you away just like the bark of a tree, like the walls of a bakery, two things you once loved most, and you're watching them both burn with his coat over your shoulders, which doesn't help you ignore who you must look like, who you're acting like, whose footsteps you're following in; and doesn't it hurt to know that what's before you isn't just a friend but a reflection?)
She's already scrambling back before she's even fully sat up.
She doesn't get very far, not with the way her wrists twist and bend before finally buckling under the pressure, and she can't find the strength to stand up and run. So all that's left to do is hyperventilate at the way his eyes land on her face, roaming, analyzing, absorbing, trying to read her like a book, unaware she's ripped out the pages long ago. At the way his shadow covers her and maybe once it felt like a blanket, but that time has passed, now all it is is heavy, suffocating, pinning her down. At the way he wears his Pogtopia outfit, pressed and cleaned when the last she saw of it it was covered in ash and black feathers and red, so much red.
But it never comes. In fact, her lungs don't move at all. Almost as if she doesn't need to breathe. As if she hasn't been breathing since she's been down here.
Is that why it was so easy to keep screaming?
"You're not here," she whispers. "Not really."
Wilbur tilts his head to the left.
(Does it in a way a predator would while observing its prey from afar, waiting for the right moment to strike)
"Oh? Where am I then, Niki?"
"My head," Niki responds, practically blurting it out. "Yeah - yeah, that's right. This is just my head playing tricks on me again. A horrible horrible trick, but that's all it is. I - I know it."
Wilbur hums. He sits down as if this will take a while. As if she won't blink and he'll be gone. "Well, that's a damn shame. I was hoping it'd be a beach. Mexican Dream has been talking a lot about La Jolla lately. Sounds like a nice place."
He smiles, suddenly.
(No, not smiles, more like baring his teeth. His very normal teeth that give off the impression that they should be very sharp and very large and very deep in her throat right now)
"Let's hope I don't blow it up."
(Niki is shouting for Wilbur over the chaos when her communicator pings in her pocket. It gets hard to breathe as she reads what it says, and it isn't because every inhale of smoke and pulverized concrete from the tumbling buildings poison her lungs. There's a ringing in her ears, and it isn't because of the TNT that just detonated in front of her. She feels broken, and it isn't because the force of the explosion knocks her back and she skitters across the field, hitting rocks and choking on dirt until she stops on her stomach, limbs bent at weird angles. Her communicator lands right beside her, the screen shattered and static flashing, but she can still catch glimpses of what is on the screen, as clear as day, like a taunt: WilburSoot was slain by Ph1lza)
Niki scrambles to her feet, presses herself as much as she can against the walls, and maybe, just maybe, she'll glitch and go through it and suffocate in a block.
She immediately throws herself away from it when she realizes what she just thought.
Wilbur stands with her. "I'm kidding, I'm kidding," he says. "I thought it would lighten up the mood. So, how are you?"
"How am I?" Niki echoes. "I'm imagining my dead best friend even though I thought I was getting better and I could have sworn I was, I was I swear I was, and this place, this place, I don't know where this is but it, it just feels - I don't even know why - so familiar and so - "
She pauses.
She looks around.
She was so busy panicking from Wilbur's presence that she never took in her surroundings. She stares at the smooth stone walls, the occasional hanging vines, the little aquarium in the corner right next to the entrance, and, finally, the stand. The stand with two signs on the front that read -
No. It can't be. It just can't.
She won't believe it until she's seen the whole thing.
She walks further in, each step hesitant.
And she notices the way everything around her seems so devoid of life. Almost colorless. Close to numb. She thinks it's her body shutting down, the stress finally getting to her, but no. This is worse. Something's going on. She doesn't know what it is exactly, but she knows it isn't her that's wrong here.
(This time)
Wilbur follows closely behind and, as if to prove her point, his footsteps sound muffled, distant, apart from him, like in the way you hear something underwater.
Maybe she is underwater because everything is getting blurry and her face feels wet.
(Or maybe the better comparison is like hearing something behind glass. She's been tapping against the window of a caravan for months as men in suits discuss a country she bled for just as much as them, if not more, without her. The tapping turns to banging, but it is not the glass that shatters. Not the glass that breaks)
She stills as she catches sight of the small wheat farm in the back room, dried and frail and unkempt.
(Like a flower shop)
It really is her bakery.
"No," she mumbles. Then, more stern, as if it'll blow this place away, as Wilbur should have done the first time. "No no no no this can't… this can't be true. I, I shouldn't be here I - it doesn't make any sense, how how how - "
She whirls on Wilbur, the tears coming in waves now. "What are you doing to me?"
(It's his fault she's back here. It has to be, he's the reason you wanted to burn the memories why this is all gone why this should be gone why isn't this gone gone gone gone)
foolish girl who has become like the nation she despises, you are a crater, there is a hole inside of you where a soul once was and it was caused by your own hands because the only destruction you're good at is your own. you couldn't even kill a child with a nuke, so what makes you think you can end a small room on the side of some hill?
"What do you see?" Wilbur says, and the voice in her head disappears. She can't remember what it said. She shakes her head as if the words will fall out her ears.
Suddenly she can't remember why she's shaking her head.
Her next words come out frail.
"My… my bakery. But how? This shouldn't be possible I, I destroyed it - I - "
"Limbo is different for everybody," Wilbur interjects. "For me, it's a train station."
"Limbo? What are you talking about? What is going on? I was nowhere near L'manburg I was - " Niki's mind blanks.
(Smooth quartz all around her and she feels safe there, that she remembers because there is no killing here, the one place bloodshed does not haunt her, and then crushing disappointment that turns into actual crushing as her body gets shredded, mangled, undone like a ribbon except it does not look pretty)
Wilbur gives her a slicing smile. It cuts her down. "This is the afterlife, Niki."
She blinks. She tries to take a step back, but she's rooted to the spot. "What?"
"The afterlife," he continues, eyes sparkling. "Hell. The void. Eternal darkness. Whatever you wanna call it. I call it home."
"Home?" She repeats, shakily.
foolish girl with no place, no one to call home because she's an expert at finding comfort in things that don't stay, of course he sees this place as home. Although if he really wanted to surround himself in emptiness so bad then he just needed to wait a few months for you to become just that
"I'm not dead," she mutters. She attempts to laugh, because if she laughs then this will sound like a joke. Wilbur would joke about such a thing. After all, he poked fun at exploding L'manburg just a while ago. So of course this is a joke. It has to be. It is, and she will not allow her breakdown to be the punchline.
At Wilbur's unflinching smile she says it again, with more conviction. "I'm not!"
"How else do you think you're talking to me? How your bakery is still in one piece? Sorry to be your grim reaper Niki, but you're dead. And now you're here, in the afterlife, with me!" He leans in close, close enough that she should feel his breath on her.
There is nothing. He is nothing.
(And maybe, so is she)
"Isn't that great? We're together again! You and me, just like the old days. And look," His eyes glance at what she wears. It's the coat. Specifically, Wilbur's coat, wrapped around her shoulders.
"We're even matching," he coos.
She thinks she might scream.
She throws herself away from him, almost throws the coat too, but into the furnace next to her.
('I gotta burn the memories I need to destroy it I need to destroy it I need to destroy it,' she once screamed to no one but herself. History repeats itself)
How she ever found comfort in this ratty, old coat she'll never know. And she'll never care to find out. Not when Wilbur is acting like this, like before, like a loose city wire, all dangerous and unpredictable, each word an electric spark, and Niki is trying not to get stung. She remembers how that story ended.
But her's will not end. Not yet.
"I can't be dead," she argues. "I don't remember that I would remember something like that so I - I can't be dead, and I have two lives left so, no, no I can't be I'm alive I'm alive I'm alive and I'm in bed I'm alive I'm alive I'm alive and you're not real, just a nightmare. I'm alive I'm alive I'm - "
"It's really me, Niki," Wilbur says, and the fire from the furnace roars in response as if his words fan the flames. It's the first time something in this wicked place has felt alive. "In the flesh. Or, rather, a close imitation of it. I think my corpse must have liquified by now, swelling up for months before bursting open, leaving nothing but a skeleton behind. What about you? What did you leave for them to find?"
She covers her ears. "Stop! Stop it stop it stop it!"
"Remember it. Remember your last moments."
"Wilbur, please - "
"Feel your wrist," he says. No, orders.
And she does. Because she, at her core, is still his soldier.
(She says that she is loyal to him and he responds by saying he wants her to be loyal to L'manburg. She remembers being confused, for she saw them both as the same. Wilbur is L'manburg and L'manburg is Wilbur, one cannot coexist without the other. A few months later, amongst the wreckage of her nation and a father's anguished screams, she'll realize too little too late how true her statement holds)
She doesn't find her heartbeat.
For a second she thinks she made a mistake. That she has her fingers in the wrong place, but no. A soldier knows where to look for life so that they may snuff it out. She can't be making a mistake.
Still, she presses her fingers down, harder this time, nails first, that blood draws, and sobs as she's still met with nothing.
She has no heartbeat.
She is dead.
She chokes. She clutches her chest, not because it hurts to know what she lacks in her chest, but because she remembers. Remembers it so intently, remembers it happening in the snap of a finger, literally, from a smiling God (and maybe it is quite a fitting end, for she goes out the same way she lived, giving second chances to men who don't deserve it) and how the world tilted as the ground slipped away.
But what's worse is the realization that comes after.
"I didn't leave anyone anything to find," she says.
Wilbur raises an eyebrow. "What?"
"I didn't leave anyone anything to find because I didn't die," she says again, but weaker. More horrified. "I was teleported. I was on the holy lands when - "
"Teleported?' Wilbur interrupts. His features, just a second ago, eccentric and mad, turn curious. "Wait wait wait, hold on a second, are you telling me you were sent to Hell, Hell, on the fucking Holy Lands? "
Niki weakly nods.
It goes silent.
Suddenly, a snort. A snort that does not sound like it once did, back before the war for independence, before the election, before banishment, before it all, when all there was was a caravan and the worst of their worries was getting Sapnap a vegan hotdog. It's meaner, more shrill, and laced with a madness that seems to roll off his tongue so easily nowadays.
If she weren't watching how hard Wilbur's shoulders shake she'd have never guessed such a sound would come from him.
But there's something else about this snort that chills her to the core. Although she never could have imagined it coming from Wilbur doesn't mean she hasn't heard this kind of laugh before.
It's almost breathless, almost like something left on a stove, steaming, almost like the sound of -
(Dream and Wilbur worked together, both wanted L'manburg gone, both almost killed a kid, both cut off attachments, both lost trust in others, all things Niki has done too, and if Niki is like Wilbur and Wilbur is like Dream then that means - )
(No. Please, no)
"That is -," Wilbur wheezes, wiping away a tear. "That is horribly ironic."
"DreamXD!" She shouts, head tilted up. "Take me back! Take me back right now!"
Wilbur shakes his head. "Oh, no need to try that. I've been there. The whole shouting for help thing? Yeah, will do you no good. No one can hear you down here."
"DreamXD! I'm here!"
"Scream all you want, prime knows you don't need to breathe down here so nothing's stopping you from doing it for forever, but when your screams are all you hear for eternity… well, it'll drive any person mad."
"DreamXD," she shrieks. And her lungs don't shake, don't even give a small quiver, she knows it. Nothing in her does, for the gears don't need to be turning to keep this machine of a body that's been on autopilot since an explosion knocked her off her feet alive anymore. "Please!"
"You stop talking after a few years of just endless screaming for your voice becomes a reminder of your entrapment. But then the silence itself, after a few years, is unbearable. Yet you don't dare speak or make any noise, so it's just madness of a new kind."
She pushes her way past him and makes her way to the exit of her bakery. "I - I liked the magic trick, DreamXD! I really did! You - you can teleport me back now!"
"Too scared to make a noise, but too scared to keep quiet. So you stand still. Your body deteriorates, muscles numb from lack of use, and all you do is use your nails to scratch marks onto the walls to mark how many years have passed since… since absolutely nothing."
She stills. She slowly turns around.
(L'manburg is surrounded by a wall. A wall so mighty and tall she never thought she'd see the day it'd be torn down, much less by its own inhabitants. But this wall right here, the one between her and this old friend, this is a wall that will never meet the same end as its predecessor)
"Wilbur," she whispers. "What do you mean by years?"
Silence.
Wilbur has a far-away look in his eye.
(That look was born in a dirt hole on the side of a small hill and Niki doesn't learn that lesson for she builds her bakery in a similar place. Two places, so small, so cramped, started with hope, have become their worst downfalls, their unfinished symphonies. She parallels him in all the wrong ways)
"Time down here is like stars, Niki. We're dead, dead for thousands of years, but to them," he points up, "we still shine. It'll take light years for them to realize they are staring at just a memory."
She tries to take a step back, but she's rooted where she stands. "Wilbur," she weeps. "How long have you been down here?"
He laughs.
(There was a time it made Niki's heart stop. It still does, but for different reasons now)
"Eleven years."
Niki covers her mouth to stifle a broken cry. She was paralyzed before but now, with fear pumping through her veins, she runs. Fear is a more dependent motivator than strength or bravery could ever be, for fear, unlike any other heroic emotion, can't be beaten out of you. Can't be threatened out of you by a friend on your birthday as you try to stop him from pressing a button. Fear only grows, like a weed, you can try to get rid of it all you want, but it multiplies the more you struggle.
She finally gets to the exit, nearly throwing herself at it, only to find a stone wall staring back at her. It's been cemented shut.
She's trapped.
(She is in a cage, a zoo animal for Manburg citizens to point and laugh at. It is cramped, it is humiliating, and it is her home, her everything in wake of becoming nothing to people she once considered friends, Schlatt tells her. Until Quackity frees her. But there is no one to free her now. Except herself)
She pulls up her sleeves and begins mining with her bare hands.
She's been torn apart before, but at least it was quick. This, the way her flesh slowly peels off at each scratch is its own kind of torture. Not because it's painful, but the torture in knowing what you're willing to do to yourself just to see the sky again.
She keeps going.
(She does not throw up at the sight of chunks of flesh dangling where nail once was because she is a soldier and she has seen worse. Seen a child trapped in a box screaming for help and she's unfortunate enough to have a seat in the splash zone. Helped patch up Ponk's wound where his arm should be, afraid she might lose him to blood loss because whoever chopped his arm off didn't cut across the joint to avoid the bone and therefore had to hack again and again and again to get through the bone. Sewed Fundy's head back together from when Schlatt beat him over the scalp with a beer bottle before dying in the caravan; it took a couple of hours to finish because his fur made it hard to spot the bits of glass sticking out his skin. This is not the first or last time she will wash blood off her clothes, she just has to hope it will continue to be someone else's and not her own)
Wilbur comes up beside her. He doesn't even try to stop her, much less flinch at all the red on the wall. "Don't worry, you'll get used to it. Tommy did."
She snaps her head to him, her clawing ceasing. "Tommy was here?"
He nods. "Arrived a few years ago. I have to admit, when a space opened up here I thought it would be him again, not you. Not that I'm complaining. Don't get me wrong he's a good kid but, well, you know how Tommy gets."
(Everyone you've ever hated, everyone you've ever sworn to end; Schlatt, Tommy, and although you do not hate Wilbur or Jack you're relationship with them is complicated because they remind you of when you spiraled, you lot are all connected now, bound together from sharing the similar experience of death. She can never separate herself from them. Will be rever grouped in with the people she can't stand most)
"How long was Tommy here for?" She asks softly.
Wilbur clicks his tongue. "Two months I think."
She closes her eyes.
(She wanted to look deep into the crater Tubbo's nuke made and confuse Tommy's charcoal, burnt body for obsidian. She wanted to catch Tommy's choked last breaths in a bottle and get drunk on it every night. She wanted to leave spruce wood on his grave as a sort of flag marking her latest conquest. She wanted to stop thinking that if Wilbur was wrong for believing in Tommy then that means he might have been wrong for believing in her)
She doesn't want Tommy dead anymore and although they're still not friends even she wouldn't wish this on him.
"Two months," she says, and it sinks in.
Is that how long she'll have to wait until someone comes looking for her?
That is if someone even cares to look.
(Puffy doesn't respond to any of her messages after their first date. She turns Jack away when he tries to pull her back into the obsession of caving Tommy's head in. Everyone grieving L'manburg remembers her setting L'mantree aflame. Anyone in the Eggpire is too far gone to even care about themselves. She doesn't have a Tubbo. Isn't anyone's disk. She's just Niki, forgotten, ignored Niki, the first ghost of the server before Ghostbur. Why spare a glance at someone transparent? Someone, not all there?)
No one will come for her.
Wilbur cracks his fingers, and Niki winces, for her bones are still on flesh display and slowly repairing. "Well, now that we've played twenty questions let's move on to a new game. You up for some solitaire?"
She rises to her feet and numbly nods. She might as well have something to do to, to try and prevent the inevitable insanity with a card game.
Might as well accept her fate.
Wilbur reaches into his pocket and pulls out the cards. He sits down on the ground. "Sorry," he says. "I'd offer we play on a table but there are no tables in a train station and I doubt your bakery has one either." He hands her half of the deck. "Help me set it up."
But Niki doesn't take them, for she's focused on the word table because -
(There's a table, a weird table, made up of this block she's never seen before. It's sponge-like, with a hole on top decorated by a blueish-green frame, and she's about to ask where they found it when Phil suddenly apologizes for exploding her bakery. At her shocked expression, he explains he'd like to air out all possible tensions before starting their first-ever official Syndicate meeting so that no past grievances keep them from working as an effective team. Techno merely snorts, saying it's not their fault her bakery was on government land, and Phil responds by shooting him a glare fit for his title as Angel of Death. She'd have laughed, she'd have cried because such a look was once how Phil got Wil to eat his vegetables if it weren't for the fact she tells them they have nothing to apologize for. Tells them she left the oven on the day before the attack and by next sunrise, it was already burnt to the ground. Ranboo doesn't blink once from where he sits across from her as she talks. She sees in his eyes that day, how her laughs and her wails blend in with the chaos around her, as if it belongs there, as if she is one with it. And maybe she is, for the fire that consumes her bakery grows and grows and grows but Niki just gets smaller and smaller and smaller as if she has to sacrifice bits of herself to keep the fire going. Perhaps she is, for every monster requires an offering, and her bakery is that. A representative of the old her burning alive to make room for the new, merciless, unhinged her. Good. She looks down at the flint and steel in her hand and in the reflection of the metal she sees a boy with mismatched eyes standing behind her, staring. And then he takes out his book and writes. It feels like Ranboo has placed a noose around her neck. The memory fades and she holds her breath. She waits for him to say something, to call out her lie. This time, Ranboo undoes the knot. He looks away)
Because she needs to tell Ranboo she appreciated his silence that day. Needs to joke about how all this snow reminds her of an ice cream shop and watch Ranboo nervously laugh as she lightheartedly punches him on the shoulder.
Because she needs to know how that story Phil was telling her about his adventures with Techno on another server, something about an Antarctic Empire, ends. Needs to feed the crows with him to make sure he doesn't stare at their wings for too long.
Because she needs to braid Techno's hair one last time while they talk about how pink is clearly the superior hair color. Needs to thank Techno for giving her these becauses, for they wouldn't exist in the first place had he not offered her a place in the Syndicate.
Ironically enough, she always knew she'd die before she could give back all that she owed them. But only because what she owed them was too long a list, too difficult to be expressed in any way that captured what they deserved.
(Somewhere, in a snow biome, there is a family. They're different from each other, too different at times, and yet Ranboo and Techno could wear each other crowns, each fitting perfectly on their heads and no one would know of the switch, except for Phil of course. Right now they're probably looking at their comms around the dinner table, confused by the last message. 'Nihachu fell from a high place.' They aren't worried. Not yet. But in a couple of days, months for her, they'll start to pace. Phil will stand at the edge of the roof, ready to step off, only to remember he doesn't have wings, can't look for her high up in the sky like he used to when she was a kid. Ranboo will force himself through experiments, lose sleep, break himself in, trying to learn how to teleport so as to cover ground faster in the search, to do more than just let his powers go to waste when they could be what brings her home. Techno will grab her rainbow sweater and put it to Steve's snout, but the trail will go cold every time until eventually all of Niki's clothes don't smell like her anymore. They'll do this every day. Nothing will change but their hope, dwindling away each day. So will they just stare at that last message, her unintentional goodbye, looking for some sort of explanation? For some secret message? Some coordinates until they go mad? They won't think she's dead until they've found a body. Won't stop looking, won't leave a corner of the server untouched. Won't stop till they have something to bury)
She can't do that to them.
She slaps the cards out of Wilbur's hands.
"No," she growls, trying to sound tough and less like a kid throwing a tantrum. Perhaps slapping the cards away was not the best start. "I am not going to waste my time playing Solitaire when I could be spending it finding a way back home. And I will if it's the last thing I do."
Wilbur frowns. Niki has the inkling suspicion it has more to do with the cards being all scattered about than from her declaration. "There is no 'last thing I do anymore.' You dying was the last thing you'll ever do. All you have now is this. This is your forever. Our forever."
She turns away from him, just for a second. Away from the sight of his furrowed brows and the crinkles in the space between them where her index finger would go to poke as she teased him. Away from the scrunch of his nose she would joke made him and Techno finally look like twins. Because despite everything, despite all the months that have settled into their bones since the last they saw each other and the wars they've fought on land and in their minds, it's still Wilbur's face. But only in the physical sense. After that, he stops being her Wilbur.
This would be so much easier if his face had physically morphed into a stranger, to prove to her how much he's changed, what he's become over the months, is not all in her head.
Somehow, she finds a way to start.
"You know, not too long ago I'd have stayed with you here. I wouldn't have even put up a fight. I'd have just laid down, closed my eyes, and let the vines on these walls grow over my body until I was just moss. I was… I was so tired, Wilbur. A part of me always will be. I understood. I finally got why you acted the way you did. There was a time I was on half a heart and instead of eating I would - "
Her body begins to shake so hard she almost expects to look down and she cracks in the ground from an incoming earthquake. The only cracks see she's are her own.
She can't say it. Not like that. Not yet.
" - I would respawn to restock the hunger bar," Niki chokes out instead.
(She respawns with dried blood on the back of her head and bones still rattling from the fall. Along her jutting spine, in an almost perfectly straight line that could be confused for an unkempt path lost to weeds and drought, are bruises. She doesn't feel them. All she feels is the urge to do it again)
She blinks and her hand is in her hair, looking for the bump. She pulls her hand away as if it's a hot furnace. "But I can't stay. Things have changed. I've changed. This is not the first time something dark has tried to consume me, but I can't let it win this time. I can't let this place turn me numb and unhinged, or worse, content. Not when I have people to go home to. Not when - "
She looks down at her hand, the one that traced her scalp, and sees it has clenched into a fist.
(At the count of three, Niki throws rock. She groans as she notices all the other hands make paper. Ranboo and Techno exhale as if the losing sentence wasn't shoveling the front lawn, but death. Or worse, going shopping with Phil for a refrigerator to put in the Syndicate meeting room. Ranboo lost that one. Niki points at Techno's hooves and says it's cheating since they can't ever tell which shape he chooses. She demands a rematch with the same tone one uses to declare war. A few minutes later, they're shouting, going over the rules of rock, paper, scissors, and they only stop when Phil comes home and pulls out the dad voice. They begrudgingly agree to do a rematch another time, once they've cooled down. That was yesterday)
She holds her fist close to her heart. The hand was never her rock, it was always three men in a snowy cabin, handing her a mug of hot cocoa. "Not when I have a lawn to shovel."
Silence.
Then, Wilbur sighs. "You know," he says. He places his arms behind him and leans back to get a better look at her. Somehow, even on the ground, he looks to hold all the power. "Years ago your determination would have been a sight for sore eyes, but here's a reality check. I've been here for almost a dozen years. Eleven years of letting the passing train rip right through me in the hopes it would send me to another layer of hell or maybe propel, heck, even drag my body to the next station. But every time I'd wake up back in the train station as if nothing had happened. Like my body breaking under the wheels was nothing."
He is an avalanche, growing and picking up speed with each word, and Niki realizes, too little too late, she's about to be buried alive. She tries to step back, but Wilbur is up quick and approaching. "There is no escape. The limbo is our stage and we have our lines, our cues, but we do not have a curtain call. We just keep going and going, an endless loop. You can't not play your part. It won't let you."
"I have to at least try," she says.
"Why? What's the point? They'll never know you tried."
Her fear turns to disgust. "Is that why you think I'll try? For the sole reason that one day they'll know what I've done for them? That's far from the truth."
(People built statues of Tommy, for all he's done, for all the influence he had on this server. Niki knows they will not give her the same treatment. But that's fine, more than fine. All she needs is a grave in the snow, beside a little cabin)
She didn't want to look at Wilbur's face before, but now, glaring at him straight on, all she sees staring back is Phil.
The day they found out Wilbur didn't inherit Phil's immortality was the day Phil looked like he should, centuries-old instead of thirty-three, the age when angels stop physically aging. Niki will never forget how deep the lines on Phil's face ran. They might as well have been cracks. And maybe it was, for Phil was breaking as he held his dying son - not dying now, but for an immortal, every second a mortal breathes is just inevitable death - in his arms.
But what still haunts Niki the most after all these years are his eyes. They carried the weight of the world in them. She could feel it, even now, pressing down on her shoulders. All the wars, the fall of cities, the birth of them, children with big smiles and even bigger graves.
Niki was not a soldier yet. She was just a nine-year-old girl who wanted to sleep over at her best friend's house.
She threw up in their sink and they mistook it as her reaction to the news. She didn't correct them.
The only reason she slept easy that night was from the knowledge she would never see those eyes on Wilbur's face. And yet, lo and behold, here it is, like a punch to the gut.
Except now, Niki has had time to numb herself to it. It's hard to get surprised by such a dead look when it's on the face of your roommate.
(Phil's screech - no, not a screech, a caw, high pitched and grief-stricken - is like an alarm clock. Except, instead of Niki waking up to the rising sun outside her window, it's to moonlight and blinking stars. This is the fifth time this month she's met Ranboo and Techno outside Phil's cabin, armed to the teeth, ready for war. The door creaks open, loudly, but they don't wince, for they know it won't wake him. Nothing really does when he's in this state, except for one thing. Techno holds him down and it's weird, will always be weird, to see Techno use such force, such retaliation, on Phil of all people, and then Phil nearly throws Techno through the wall with just a brush of his fingers, and she remembers it's necessary. This isn't Phil they're dealing with, it's the Angel of Death. It takes a while until Techno can get all of the Angel's limbs down, but even then they know it won't last long, and that's when Niki throws a slowness potion on him. Ranboo, meanwhile, turns around all the photos of Wilbur in the room, a safe distance away. They told him it's best he handles that since he's built like a stick, putting him anywhere near a powerful avian would be an accident waiting to happen. It definitely has nothing to do with them freezing up whenever they see Wilbur's smiling face, all happy, and so very alive. Phil's movements turn sluggish as the potion kicks in and Niki holds his face, murmurs soft words, and Techno gives his own weird, but comforting, comments. Something about how Phil can't afford to lose sleeping beauty to these night terrors, what with his old age. Niki snorts. Phil's eyes open immediately. Phil sucks in a sharp breath, like he's forgotten how to breathe, his fist clenching and unclenching. The eyes are back. Based on Techno's face Niki knows then she's not the only person that has seen them. They look at each other, nod, and hold him as he cries. They don't need to ask. There's only one person that could cause such a look. They force Ranboo, who is awkwardly standing to the side, to join. Eventually, they break apart, and Techno coughs. He says he hates them for making this all emotional and bans such an awkward event from ever happening again. And yet, when Phil keeps waking up with eyes too dark around the corners, Techno is there. And so is she and Ranboo)
She will not be the reason Phil's eyes age another year.
"It's about Phil, Techno, and Ranboo deserving someone who will never stop trying to find their way back to them," she says, with conviction. "I'm sorry you're too twisted to see not all actions stem from reward or acknowledgment."
She expects a laugh, a glimpse at his forked tongue spewing words so sweet she could use them as sugar in her desserts, only to take a bite and realize it was salt all along. But what she gets is silence. The type of silence before a storm.
"Phil?" Wilbur whispers.
Niki closes her eyes.
She should have never said their names.
She also should have never opened her eyes again, because Wilbur is looking more like Phil each second. Not because of the eyes. No, worse. Because she sees a boy, a boy with his arms spread open wide and flapping about in an attempt at mimicking his father's wings, and they're both running around in circles in the backyard as he tells her how she'll never have to walk anywhere ever again. He'll carry her when she's tired, when she's not tired, whenever she wants wherever she wants. They stop running around in circles flapping their arms when too much time has passed and his wings still haven't grown in, but the acceptance that it never would did.
She blinks and the memory is gone. Slipping through her fingers like sand.
"How is he?" Wilbur says. His voice wavers a bit. He hides it quickly with a cough, but Niki catches it. Niki thought she always would.
(But then a button was pressed and she realized just how untrue that was)
Niki hesitates. She thinks about the night terrors again. She almost mentions them but falters as she remembers Ranboo telling her how it was Phil who gave him a place to stay after L'manburg was blown up for the last time. How as Technoblade hibernates there's a blanket over his shoulders that wasn't there before and a stick missing from the fireplace. How he always places Niki's plate of breakfast down before the others, as if he knows of her first canon death.
He is a kind man, but that is not why he does these things.
"He misses being a father," she settles on.
Wilbur's shoulders slump. Somewhere, in a different life, Niki's hand is there, squeezing comfortingly. "Is he… is he mad at me?"
"No." She answers quickly. "He's just tired, Wilbur. We all are."
Wilbur laughs. It sounds defeated. Mournful. "Understatement of the fucking year."
He slumps against the wall and Niki is sure it's the only thing keeping Wilbur on his feet. His head hits the smooth stone when he suddenly throws his head back and laughs. Niki doesn't know if she winces from the loud crack the impact makes or from the shrill, unhinged laugh.
"I told him to kill me," Wilbur chuckles. His eyes are blinking rapidly. "I told him to fucking kill me."
(The diamond sword has collected dust. Sometimes, everyone jokes, Phil looks like he has to. Playful teasing about how he's a walking antique that should be displayed in a museum. Phil always laughs them off. But it's moments when he stands too still, alone in his thoughts for too long, that Niki wants to put him behind glass with signs that say 'do not touch,' because all it takes is one gust of wind for an artifact to shatter. But that is no way to live and Phil is not so easily breakable. Worn down a bit, rusted from the loss throughout the eons, yes - who hasn't on this forsaken server? - but not breakable)
Niki thinks she might throw up. "I know."
Wilbur looks at her. His eyes are red, but there are no tears. "You said you understood me. You get why I had to ask him to do it."
"Wilbur - "
" - And so you also understand why you have to stay here."
"What?"
"We've changed Niki," Wilbur starts. "For the worse. Don't you feel it? How that server has destroyed every cell in our body? A slow painful death eating us from the inside out until we've just withered away into someone new, someone unrecognizable?"
(Niki feels she's in a never-ending house of mirrors. Constantly encircled by reflections that are her and not her staring back, each representing different points in her life. Some are unrecognizable, stretched, or squished beyond identification, like a fuzzy memory of a girl carrying a backpack, skipping down a path she was told by a best friend would lead to a nation with yellow and black walls. Some are too terrifying, demonizing her features, giving her slits for eyes and claws for nails holding flint and steel over TNT. All of them she wants to smash)
Wilbur either ignores the horrified expression on her face or doesn't see it. "We killed our old selves as a sacrifice, an offering, to the monster we saw lurking in the edges of our mind. And once you let the monster in there's no going back. All we know from then on is to destroy, to rip apart all we once held dear with no remorse until there's just ash and dust. We thrive, no, revel in it."
(Nemesis, she names herself. Goddess of divine retribution and revenge. Maybe that's who Niki sacrifices herself to. Why she felt such an attachment to the name. A remorseless Goddess said to have led Narcissus to a pool, knowing full well he'd be too captivated to leave his reflection for food or warmth. He died there. It's no coincidence a few weeks before she lived the story herself, leading Tommy to his death in the form of a hot blast of air at the speed of light and seeing it as justice)
"I'm not having this conversation with you," she says, voice shaking. She whirls around, nearly tripping over her feet, fully willing to ignore him as she looks for an exit.
But his next words make her go still.
"Phil didn't know what I'd become. That's why he had to be the one to do it."
She winces. "Don't."
"He didn't even pull out the sword, his arms were too busy holding me, holding me, as if the shape of me still fit against his chest even though I felt so hollow, so much thinner - "
"Wilbur - "
" - he stroked my hair too. Even though it was dirty and unkempt and a mess like everything else about me and I'm pretty sure his fingers got stuck a few times he just wouldn't stop untangling each knot with such care and precision that I remembered my last thought being - "
"Wilbur - "
" - could he have brushed away all the knots and twists in my soul like this? Cleaned me up on the inside like he's doing on the outside? I thought I went crying, Niki. Maybe I did. I'll never know because all I felt was his tears ricocheting on my face - "
"Stop - "
" - he tries to wipe them off. He's cursing at himself, apologizing profusely through hiccuping sobs and, and I don't understand why he's so sorry when it feels like, like when he'd lick his fingers and scrub the grimes of our faces after we played outside too long. Do you remember that Niki - "
"I don't wanna - "
" - because I do. We'd screech so loud, saying it was disgusting and unsanitary as we slapped his hand away and ran, but he'd always catch us a second later because of his wings.
I don't wanna run away this time. I'm relishing it, craving every stroke because I'm starting to go cold - "
"Please - "
" - and I wish you weren't teleported here. I wish you had died instead - "
"Wil - "
" - so you would know, so we could relate to what it feels like for the limbo to claim you. To mark you. It's like, it's like being mutilated over and over again. A mallet to your bones, a hole in your brain, everything from your skin to your tendons unraveling before you - "
"Wil listen - "
" - spilling out and about like confetti, and you, you are confetti! You're shredded pieces, everywhere and nowhere all at once, and just as the mangling begins it stops, replaced by the limbo trying to put you, no, force you back together again. It's the same sensation, but in reverse, almost a loop, a tunnel with no light at the end, and all you can do is scream - "
"WILBUR SHUT UP AND LISTEN TO ME!"
Something shatters
Wilbur falls silent.
Niki looks down. There is a puddle, slowly growing at her feet. She looks to her left. Her hand has punched through the aquarium. Blood trickles down her hand, some get over the glass. She doesn't pull her hand away.
"You never listen," she mumbles, but it seems so loud to her ears. "No one does. No one wants to. I talk and I talk and I talk and yet no response. Not even from the wind. I am a voice box stuck on rewind, repeating myself as life moves on without me."
Niki can hear her voice ring down the bakery, bouncing around with nowhere to settle. Until it does, in Niki's chest, rattling, crackling like a fuse has been lit, and perhaps it has, for her anger feels sizzling. "You used to always say how words were powerful. How they could stop wars, how they could build nations." She lets out a laugh. It burns her throat. "But what would I know?! You and everyone else never gave me a chance to use my voice! Always talking over me whatever chance you could. Even before Pogtopia you walked all over me! Even when I was screaming at top of my lungs you'd - "
She gasps. The glass presses deeper into her skin as her hand trembles. She does not feel it. "Oh primes, oh primes Wil, didn't you hear my screams? I came here screaming, Wil. I, I do know what it feels like for the void to take you. I still feel it, even now, why, why do I still feel it - "
Wilbur staggers to his feet, so quick he promptly falls. He catches himself halfway on Niki's wrist.
His hand scratches on the glass. He doesn't even flinch. Their blood mixes.
(They are one)
He doesn't even grip too tight, and yet it hurts. Stings. "You do understand," he grins. Wide, too wide for his face, that she almost expects his nose and eyes to sink into his skin to make more room. "You do, you do oh thank primes. I'm not alone in this. I've been alone for so long but now, now you're here and you understand! Oh, Niki, I'm so happy you're here."
"You're… happy, I'm here?" She mutters. "You're happy I'm dead?"
He nods frantically. "It's more than that Niki," he says. "DreamXD, whoever that man is, he's my hero for sending you here."
(Parallels between Wilbur and Dream and her and now Wilbur and Dream and DreamXD no no no she can't be them she can't she can't she won't she won't - )
"You don't mean it," she cries. "You don't mean that Wil. Say you don't mean it."
The grin, somehow, becomes wider. She realizes then his eyes don't have to disappear. They're already gone. Replaced by a black hole, too dark in the corners and its gravitational pull making it hard to look away even though she knows staring at it too long will get her sucked into an endless void.
He leans in close like he's sharing a secret. "I only wish he had sent you here sooner."
(Wilbur's life, Niki is realizing, is like a house of mirrors too. Except Wilbur has smashed every mirror. No, actually, not true. Niki sees, if she squints, that Wilbur has abandoned the sledgehammer and is observing a still intact mirror. He didn't keep the mirror depicting a little boy sitting on the steps of a home, their home, trying to play a song and failing because the guitar is too big for his body, but he refuses to buy a smaller one because "this is my Dad's guitar Niki! So, therefore, it's by default the best guitar in the world". Or the one of a father panting heavily on a couch, cursing his human legs while Niki is doubled over laughing because there is a baby fox is running on all fours around the house at 45 miles per hour who doesn't want to be put to bed. Nor the one of a leader, handing out purpose and meaning in the form of a blue and white uniform with a soft smile. No, it's the one of a man who's just pressed a button. Who long before L'manburg's destruction, always felt like he was breathing in smoke, but now kept warm by the ash and dust of his nation flying up to the red sky, it feels - for the first time in a long time - easier to breathe. Niki can't believe he didn't destroy it. He's… preserving it. Why is he preserving this version of himself of all things?)
foolish girl with dreams for a better nation, better server, better future, too much better somethings, you've ruined reality for no one but yourself. think for once about what is and not what was or could have been. he is different. changed for the worse. he's preserving it because he doesn't care about you. can't you see how happy he is over your death? how there's light in his eyes for the first time over yours being snuffed out? how he shows no sympathy in your entrapment here, forever away from Techno, Phil, and Ranboo because it benefits him. so give in and fight fight fight fight
She sees red.
Her fist collides with Wilbur's nose.
She doesn't even wait to hear the crack before she's already reeling back her arm for the next hit.
This time she aims for the jaw. She feels something split. It could be Wilbur's lip or bone. Maybe her mind. She doesn't know and she doesn't care.
What she does know is how familiar this is, having something break under her knuckles. It's easy, familiar even, throwing punch after punch, like some sort of autopilot response. Perhaps it is, for every punch is instinctive, out of body almost. No longer is there a before in the blows, only an after.
Except, that's not true. Not entirely. Because Niki is realizing why there is no before. Because before each blow there is always a struggle from your opponent. Flailing limbs trying to make contact with something, choked wheezes, an attempt to curl into a ball, and, sometimes, begging.
Wilbur does none of that. He's silent the whole time.
It's almost like he takes it willingly.
clever girl with hands too bruised, too scarred, too violent to ever be held so gently. a finger trained to pull the trigger is not meant to bear a promise ring. who's fault do you think that is? you've held back for so long, don't stop now. so give in and get revenge revenge revenge revenge
A swing at his eye. A swift kick to the ribs. A fistful of his hair so tight she could yank his scalp off if she twisted her wrist just so.
It's all a flurry of movements really, too fast for even her own eyes to catch. Half of the time she's lost on where the hits land, totally dependent on wherever the blood leaks the most and the bruises that weren't there a second ago to tell her. Eventually, the damage starts to blur, too much of his face has swelled up to spot any new marks and too many limbs bend at weird angles to differentiate what is and isn't broken, so she stops trying to guess.
Which is why she doesn't know which strike finally gets Wilbur to fall, all she knows is that he does. He doesn't even sway. One second he's on his feet and the next he's on his back.
It's kinda pathetic really, that this was her general.
For a second he's still, too still, and then he spits out a tooth. He licks his gums with a grimace, looking for the gap before finally speaking.
"I see Technoblade's been training you. Do you feel better now?"
clever girl who's seen her fair share of men with livewire tongues, spitting rogue sparks at your skin in the form of harsh words to quiet you down. do not be silenced once more. you let him speak before and it cost you a nation. this time silence him, and I will secure you a limbo without him. so give in and maim maim maim maim
She screams. She thinks she does. It's hard to tell over the deep reverberated banging of Wilbur's head against the stone floor.
The first slam simply causes blood to trickle down his forehead.
The second one caves in the front of his scalp.
The third one he's unrecognizable.
The fourth one there's nothing left to bash.
She keeps going anyway.
"Shut up," she pants between each crack and occasional splat. "Shut up shut up shut up shut up SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP."
Wilbur tries to say something. All that comes out is a gurgle, wet and sharp and loud. So very loud. And it keeps going, stringing along and along and along longer than the large chunks of skin and brain on the pavement. It shouldn't be possible, his mouth, along with everything else, is practically gone. Nothing but a small pit inside a bigger pit.
Yet it continues, getting increasingly louder in pitch.
And then she gets it.
He's scared.
clever girl of never-ending war zones, jumping from one horror to the next. this is the last one. and I know that's been said before but you can trust me. just end it and you can finally rest. wouldn't that be nice? so give in and kill kill kill kill kill
She smiles. It hurts her face.
She picks his head up from the ground one last time. She's humming, like a lullaby. Maybe it is. She's putting the baby to sleep. She knows he can't die again, but wherever he goes after this, if the limbo keeps its promise, it can't be pretty.
"I said," she laughs. "Shut up."
She brings his head down.
She blinks.
Her empty hand meets black stone slabs.
"Niki?"
She looks up and immediately regrets it. Everything is too bright, scorching, a burning gaze on every inch of her skin, but what really hurts are her eyes. She thinks they're sizzling, like actually sizzling, because her sclera feels as if it's bubbling and her iris is definitely melting into her brain and there are so many spots dancing behind her eyelids.
And then the voice, soft and familiar, speak's again.
"Do you have your stuff?"
It takes a while, and a lot of blinking, but her eyes eventually readjust.
She gasps.
The first thing she processes isn't that George and DreamXD stand just a few feet away or that it was George speaking. No, it was how absurdly colorful, everything was.
Here there was life. Life. It was like she poked her head through a kaleidoscope, what with how the specks of a rainbow illuminated itself in the clear blue water of the fountain and the sight of shimmering white quartz glistening under the sunbeams that poured through the purple-tinted windows. No longer was everything dulled around the corners and drained at the center like anything in her dreadful, cramped space of a bakery she shared with -
Oh primes.
Her bakery.
This isn't her bakery. This is Church Prime.
"She's back," DreamXD exclaims. He turns to George, bouncing on his heels excitedly as if expecting some sort of reward, but George pays him no mind/ He's too busy looking at Niki, or, more so, through her.
"What happened?" He asks.
She opens her mouth, then slams it shut.
She's alive. Dear primes, she's alive and she's back and she should be happy, cheering, jumping up and down to feel the livelihood ache in her bones but…
She looks back down at the floor. The floor should be covered in blood. Wilbur's blood, and his bits of flesh and tissue and muscle and -
Oh primes. What has she done?
Or better yet, what didn't she do?
"George," she whimpers. "I don't know what's going on. I, I don't know what's going on here."
She hopes it was her imagination. It had to have been. Otherwise, she hosted Wilbur's head up by the splits of his hair, pushed down as hard as she could and -
She wouldn't. She couldn't, not anymore at least. She left that side of herself in a gate full of slaughtered chickens as Jack demanded they try and kill Tommy again. That side of her is as dead as those chickens.
Right?
She prays so, for this is a church after all, and that means prayers have to be answered here. They have to come true. They have to.
There's a smile in DreamXD's voice when he speaks again as if he knows how much this torments her. "I sent her to hell and then I brought her back."
No.
She sobs. She looks down at her hands. Their bear and yet they feel so heavy. As if the ghost of Wilbur's blood and gore is still there, a new thick-coated layer of skin.
She tortured him. Broke him brick by brick again and again and again even as he tried to beg. Her best friend, her general, her family, begging at her feet, and she kept going, would have kept going too, with an ear-splitting grin, like it was some sort of game.
And it had felt so good to finally get a checkmate.
Wilbur is not a demon. He's just seen too much in too little time. Too much pressure on too little shoulders. Too tired to be all there. It's not an excuse for all the pain he's caused, far from it, but it shows his actions didn't come from a place of malice, but rather a cry for help. Niki knows this, she gets it, and she'll say it time and time again. But all she could think about at that moment, before the final strike, was how happy Wilbur was about her death. He deserved a piece of her mind, but not like that. Never like that.
What is wrong with her?
No, no it wasn't her. It was that place, that voice. It was a parasite, burrowing deep within her brain and planting itself in the center, telling her what to do and what to say. Telling her to slaughter left and right. It was so loud, rattling around in her head and echoing like war drums. She couldn't just ignore it, it was too much. So, no, she is free of guilt, free of responsibility, hands all clean.
But she knows that at the end of the day the host still needs to be somewhat conscious for the parasite to thrive.
Oh primes. Is this what Techno deals with every day?
Then, she jumps to her feet.
Techno, Phil, and Ranboo.
It's coming back now, that memory of fury in her eyes, that fire in her voice as she told Wil she had people to go back to. How she was willing to claw her fingers down to bone to make an exit. But that voice, that stupid stupid voice, it told her she could rest, could get revenge, and against her better judgment she listened. It caught her at a moment of weakness, Wilbur's words of memory lane, of Phil, of everything that came before and after his death, she was at a low point. And like a moth to a flame, she was there one moment and gone the next. Back to the old her.
She thought she had left that version of herself behind when she joined the Syndicate. She was so sure she was getting better with Techno, Phil, and Ranboo around.
But all it took was one voice to ruin all her progress.
Her chest constricts and her head feels heavy.
She needs to find them. She needs to tell them what she saw. She needs to tell Phil. She needs… she needs…
She just needs them.
"What did you see?" George says, snapping her out of her thoughts.
This time, her mouth has no problem moving. "George," she starts, voice trembling. "I have seen things. I... I... I have seen things. I don't know what's going on here but I don't know if I should - "
Niki gulps. It's getting so hard to breathe. She should feel thankful that she can breathe in the first place, but every inhale stings as her lungs try to remember to do a motion so foreign to her.
How long has she been down there?
She doesn't want to know.
She just wants to go home.
She walks away, backward, from the two, eyes fixated tightly on them and barely blinking. She remembers the last time she let her guard down around DreamXD. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry George. Good luck with him but I - "
She doesn't finish, because she's already out the door. She wants to run, but she's so sure her lungs would explode at the first push forward of her heel. So she walks.
And walks.
The world walks with her, with each rotation. As if they’re friends taking a stroll. As if it hadn’t cracked open and swallowed her whole, chewed up everything good in her and spat her out when she turned bitter. Returned her back to a world that didn’t change one bit while she was gone, despite her herself changing so much.
It’s like what happened to her didn’t happen at all.
And then she realizes a horrible thing.
Everyone on this server is going to see today as a normal day.
Is it bad that a part of Niki wishes something like the Green Festival could happen right now, so that they could all feel the monstrosity of today?
She stands still. Stationary, like this Earth wants her to be. She thinks she could do it, stay like this forever. She feels numb enough.
Somewhere above, a crow caws.
She burst into tears.
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