Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The whispers started months ago—whispers of rebels, whispers of a coup: hanging over the Empire like a brewing storm.

The first real sign—the roll of thunder, the flash of lightning promising to shatter the peace—comes in the form of a silver dagger, pressed to the plane of Wilbur’s throat.

He gasps and tries not to breathe as he’s tugged back into his assailant’s hard chest, arms down and fingers splayed uselessly at his side even though all he wants to do is shove at the blade. Wilbur doesn’t, despite the fear slamming at his skull.

He’s dizzyingly aware of how easy it would be for the dagger to slip, to slash across his jugular and paint the floor red. It would be over before the scream could finish tearing out of his throat.

That knowledge is the only reason Wilbur is able to choke back the panic and remain still—up until the moment he doesn’t.

“For the revolution!” the man screams deafeningly in his ear, jerking Wilbur harder into his chest when he nearly flinches away from the noise. “Death to the Crown!”

He lifts his other arm, a red bandana clutched tightly between his fingertips. As he does, his grip slackens, just a bit, and the blade slips clumsily down to Wilbur’s collarbone.

It happens quickly, and Wilbur hardly thinks.

He ducks, twists, and drops to the floor, shoving the arm away from his neck as his knees strike the floor. It’s graceless, barely a coherent motion, but it works. The man whips around, outraged that he’s lost his leverage— but by the time he finishes turning, he is tackled to the ground.

Techno looks furious, flanked by two of the Guard in navy-and-silver uniforms. The rebel thrashes beneath him, but Techno is unwavering in pinning him to the marble floor: eyes glinting dangerously. Strands of hair escaped from his braid hang loosely around his face, framing a set jaw and lips pressed into a hard line.

Gasping for breath, Wilbur hardly reacts as he’s tugged up into another set of arms, because these arms are cloaked in emerald green, and these arms are his father’s.

Phil holds him in a vice grip as Wilbur watches half of the Guard, plus Techno, drag his would-be assassin across the ornate tile. The red bandana he’d been holding flutters limply to the floor, abandoned.

Wilbur turns away from it, nauseous. Fear clogs his throat, lingering, and panic strums in his veins, but shock numbs most of it, and his father’s soothing blend of hushed reassurances soften the rest.

“Wilbur,” he murmurs, tugging him gently away. Wilbur can feel his hands shaking where they grip his arm, and that just makes everything feel that much more real. “Come.”

Wilbur blinks, managing some semblance of clarity, and meets his father’s gaze.

Worry consumes most of the King’s expression, but Wilbur can see the intense contemplation circling his irises, the faint pull of his lips into a grimace, and knows that even if this attack was unsuccessful, it is just the beginning.

The brewing tempest has finally hit the shore.

— ♕ —

“I’m done,” Phil all but seethes, cloak whipping around his shoulder as he paces the study. Wilbur watches him with a tangled stomach, oddly light-headed. “I’m done waiting.”

“Dad—” Wilbur tries weakly, fingers digging into the polished armrests of his chair.

But Phil just whips around, chest heaving as he sucks in a heavy breath. His face is chiseled out of marble, features sharp with worry and harsh with something like contained rage.

“No, Wilbur,” he interjects, exhaling heavily. “The risk is too high, and the Guard is stretched too thin.” For his credit, he breaks out of his anger to allow a note of apology to slip into his voice. “You need a guard—a personal one. Someone who can be at your side, who can protect you when I can’t.”

Wilbur can’t help it—he knows this is childish, this is everything he, as the Crown Prince, has been trained not to feel, yet—

“I just want a few months,” he breathes imploringly. “My coronation is soon, and then you can assign me whoever you want, just—”

“I’m sorry,” Phil interrupts, attempting to soften the words with pity, and only succeeding in making them that much more abrasive. “But I wouldn’t be doing this if I thought you’d make it that far, Wil.”

Wilbur almost flinches, throat pulsing phantomly. He can still feel the scrape of the blade against his neck, and that is enough to drain most of his protest out of him. As much as he doesn’t want a ball and chain around his ankle in the form of a guard, he doesn’t want to die.

But his father must not realise that he’s on the cusp of giving up this futile fight, because he sighs again.

“I’ve been looking into the recruits,” Phil tells him, and Wilbur blinks. “Already, I’ve seen promising—”

“You have?” Wilbur asks, unable to help the edge of accusation from slipping into his words. He’d known he’d been running from this fate on borrowed time, but to hear Phil say it so overtly… stings. Bitterness pools on his tongue as he scoffs. “Oh, great. So this has been the plan all along, then. A guard—”

“Has been a possibility all along,” Phil amends. “Most kings—”

And Wilbur can’t help but spit, lungs squeezing, “I’m not a king yet!”

Phil stops, faces him.

Wilbur swallows as he’s fixed with another look. Sympathy drips off of his father’s face like thick syrup, and Wilbur feels sick. He thinks the abstract ball of panic, sloshing in his stomach, is what makes his emotions feel nauseatingly messy.

“I know,” Phil eventually murmurs, crossing the room to lay a steady hand on the back of his neck. Wilbur tenses, then sighs, as his shoulders are rubbed comfortingly. “And I wish that that mattered to the rebels, mate. But they don’t care whose blood they spill—as long as it’s royal.”

Wilbur wishes his father wasn’t making so much sense—the pure outpour of logic stomping his emotions into dust.

“Right,” he eventually mutters, swallowing down his distaste. “I get it.”

The distaste needs to be stifled, because there is no place for it here—not in the face of the rebel attacks. He should be lucky he’s made it this far with a shred of his privacy intact.

Phil seems to sense the jagged direction of his thoughts, because he frowns again, eyes painfully earnest. “Wilbur—”

“No, you’re right,” he sighs, trying not to let the defeat spill out of him. “It’s for my safety. I just…” A humorless laugh slips past his lips. “I just wish I had a little longer.”

Phil’s hand, still rubbing circles behind his neck, stills. “What do you mean?”

To be happy, Wilbur thinks. To write poetry, and not laws.

But he can’t say that, because it’s not Phil’s fault that a bunch of elitist pricks have got it in their heads to give the royal family hell. If anything, Phil has been graceful in humoring Wilbur’s requests this long.

(Wilbur just wishes he could get his heart to believe that as readily.)

“I want a say,” Wilbur answers instead, and Phil’s face goes back to marble. “On who it is.”

“And you’ll get one,” Phil obliges, withdrawing his hands to cross his arms. “But at the end of the day, I will do what’s best for your safety.”

And Wilbur, who decidedly does want to remain safe, can’t summon too much of an argument.

“Fine,” he concedes stiffly, fingernails easing out of the polished-wood armrests they’d begun to dig into.

“Fine,” Phil echoes, looking remarkably less like a king beneath the stress lines marring his face and more like Wilbur’s father. And as he turns, soft candlelight casting most of his features into harsh shadow, “Expect a guard by the end of the week.”

— ♕ —

“Dad.”

“Yes?”

“I thought you were assigning me a guard.”

“...That is your guard.”

“Phil,” Wilbur says carefully, dark gaze locked unblinkingly ahead. “That is a child.”

Phil’s eyes, rich with amusement, swing between the pale-stone columns of the balcony, down to the courtyard, where the blonde boy is kneeling before Technoblade, navy uniform crisp on his lanky, young form.

“His name is Tommy,” Phil tells him, as Wilbur’s fingernails dig anxiously into the armrests of the seat—a bad habit, probably, but not one that he plans to kick at the moment. “He’s of age.”

Seventeen, Wilbur interprets, though the word stays sealed behind flat lips, pressed into a thin line.

“And he’s capable,” Phil continues, nodding slowly as a flicker of respect dances across his face, twitching the corner of his lips up. “He wouldn’t have made it this far if he wasn’t.”

Wilbur tries to swallow his doubt, as he watches Techno guide the boy—Tommy—onto his feet, but it’s hard. As if sensing his anxiety, Techno’s eyes flicker up to the balcony, where Wilbur is seated. Imperceptible pinpricks of reddish-brown glint beneath gentle sunlight, and even from this far, Wilbur thinks he can feel the faint look of reassurance that Techno is sending his way. So he averts his gaze, down to Tommy.

Tommy is looking at him—something which shouldn’t startle Wilbur, but does. He’s young, features softened by the watery spill of golden sunlight dappling the grass, but his posture is sharp and tense, like there’s energy there, buzzing to be released. It’s a form that Wilbur is familiar with—because it’s a perfect mirror of Techno’s. Lithe, relaxed, but poised. Prepared.

When Tommy catches his gaze, a faint smile ghosts his face. He dips his head respectfully, eyes flickering briefly to scan over Phil at Wilbur’s side, who he offers a deeper bow. Phil returns it with a kind smile, bowing his head in return, and the smile on Tommy’s face jumps into one that’s a little more opaque.

He looks back at Wilbur again, gaze lingering, before pulling it away. Wilbur looks away too, balefully staring down his own lap and only occasionally glancing up to mark Techno’s happenings.

“He’s made it through seven rounds of training,” Phil informs him over his shoulder, as Techno continues his talk with the boy—Wilbur’s knight. A solemn look overtakes Phil’s expression, and he offers it to Wilbur as he intones, voice ripe with something unidentifiable, “He hails from L’manburg.”

Ah, Wilbur thinks immediately, respect flooding him—only to be overpowered by a spike of melancholy that spears through his ribs. To think that Tommy lived in L’manburg, before the fall…

“He’s… young,” Wilbur finally gets out, as if Phil hasn’t already detected this concern of his.

But the faint tremor in his voice has Phil’s expression softening.

“He volunteered,” Phil offers, lingering sadness wrinkling the corners of his eyes. The fate of L’manburg casts a crimson shadow over the Empire’s recent history. “And he’s made it through the rounds, all but one, which means he’s qualified.”

“What else has he to do?” Wilbur asks, casting a doubtful gaze over the boy. “Before he’s appointed?”

Even despite the matter of the boy’s age being worryingly young, someone like Tommy should be more suited to the recruits, or perhaps even as a knight among the lower ranks of the Guard, not… here. Not protecting someone like Wilbur.

“There’s one last test,” Phil answers carefully after a moment, eyes flickering knowingly to the courtyard and—

Wilbur follows his gaze in time to see Tommy stop the dagger that Techno sends hurtling towards his face.

Wilbur’s breath catches, shock whipping through him, but Tommy doesn’t even flinch as he catches Techno’s wrist. Or wait, not quite. Wilbur squints as he sees silver glint beneath the sunlight, and realises that — somehow—Tommy had drawn a dagger of his own, to parry the blade.

Tension charges the air for a few more moments, as Techno grins sharply down at the kid, wind whipping loose strands of cherry blossom pink hair around his face. The blades hang, interlocked, between them. The kid tilts his chin up, and Wilbur thinks he’s grinning.

The moment ends, and Techno steps back, blade lowered. Tommy watches him before lowering his own. When Techno offers a hand, not without shooting a weighted look to the two of them, up on the balcony, Tommy shakes it.

Wilbur blinks.

“Well,” Phil finishes, an edge of breathless humor slipping into his voice. “...I think he just passed.”

Wilbur is still trying to catch his breath as Techno slips an easy arm behind Tommy’s shoulder, leading him to the columned walkways and out of sight.

Wilbur’s eyes linger where they vanish, as his thoughts churn in his skull. His mouth opens before he’s even aware of it.

“I don’t want him,” Wilbur informs Phil, breath still a little short. “Bring me someone else.”

Phil raises a curious eyebrow and rises to his feet. Wilbur swallows, settling back against his chair and keeping his gaze steadfast. But Phil shoves past his visible distaste with a gentle hand, extended from his green robes.

“Give him a chance,” is all Phil says. Then, slightly pointed, “At least meet him before you inform him that he’ll be sent back to the outer villages without reason.”

I have a reason, Wilbur almost protests, but he bites his tongue, even as more words threaten to bubble over it. He’s too young. How can I expect him to protect me?

(How can I ask him to?)

But he remains, perhaps petulantly, glued to his seat, and silent.

“Wilbur,” Phil urges, and Wilbur sighs.

It’s the last thing he wants to do—but even the Crown Prince must bend to the will of the King.

So Wilbur rises, shoves his anxieties into a neat pouch, tucks it away, and follows him.

— ♕ —

He doesn’t send Tommy away.

How can he? Once he sees him up close, his reservations seem frail, withering in his chest.

With a mess of golden-blonde hair, a smattering of faint freckles across his cheeks, and wide, sky-blue eyes, Tommy looks as young as he is—but he’s hardly shorter than Wilbur. He comes up a bit higher than his chin, and offers him a polite smile that Wilbur doesn’t return with more than a curt nod.

He knows, as Tommy straightens from his bow, that Phil is right—Wilbur doesn’t want to be the one to send Tommy away without warning, so he says nothing.

Phil seems to deliberately avoid the pleading looks Wilbur shoots him, silently begging him to send Tommy away on his behalf.

Well, until he catches one of Wilbur’s imploring looks and returns it with a pointed glance, jutting his chin towards Tommy. Wilbur swallows his glare and tries not to sigh too heavily.

“Have you seen the castle?” Wilbur asks flatly, and Tommy seems to straighten even more beneath the acknowledgement.

“I have, your Highness,” Tommy answers, clumsily slipping over the title in a way that almost gets Wilbur to snort.

Wilbur is fine, he might say to anyone else, but he doesn’t tell that to Tommy—not this time. Instead, he takes a step back, purposely ignorant of Phil’s disapproving gaze burning into the side of his face.

“Good,” he replies. “Then I’ll be in my room.”

“Wilbur—” Phil hisses, instantly exasperated, but Wilbur doesn’t listen.

He turns on his heel, pretending not to feel the guilty skip of his heart as Tommy shrinks beneath the unprovoked coldness—and then hurries to follow him.

— ♕ —

Before Tommy was assigned to him, the room connected to Wilbur’s was a study, piled with books and scrolls, journals and scraps of poetry. But with Tommy now constantly competing with his shadow as he follows him around the castle, it has been converted into a small bedroom.

Phil tells him to leave the door slightly ajar when possible, should someone assault him in his bedroom, but the first thing Wilbur does when he reaches his room—and watches Tommy silently slink into his own—is slam the connecting door in his face.

The hinges rattle, and Wilbur thinks that’s why his heart does—but he doesn’t want a shadow. And just because he’s tolerating a guard for his own safety doesn’t mean he has to like it. It will be better for the both of them if Tommy knows that early on.

Wilbur is determined to pretend he doesn’t exist. It’s slightly more difficult considering that they share a suite, but Wilbur makes it work.

Over the next few days, he doesn’t say a word to his new guard.

Tommy accompanies him to his lessons—somehow, always awake and ready before Wilbur. He accompanies him to his meals, sitting on Wilbur’s right even if it’s just Wilbur, Phil, and Techno in the dining hall. He accompanies him to the courtyard, and doesn’t falter when Wilbur reads for hours and hours, until the sun touches down on the horizon.

In short, Tommy accompanies him everywhere except his bedroom.

To his credit, he keeps his distance: always close enough to intervene should something happen, especially during small events with other people, but far enough away that Wilbur is almost lulled into a sense of privacy. The blonde blur hovering in his peripheral is too noticeable to offer him any sort of real peace though.

Especially since Tommy fidgets, a lot. He’s always moving, when he thinks Wilbur can’t see him: anxious shifting weight from foot to foot, fiddling with the grass when they’re out, biting the inside of his cheeks like he’s resisting breaking into chatter.

Wilbur leaves him to it: hardly offering more than occasional looks, and sometimes half-smiles when Phil is around.

Eventually, Tommy gets the hint. He stops shooting Wilbur hopeful looks, and seems to resign himself to being shut out of Wilbur’s life… which is good. It’s what Wilbur wanted.

(So why does the disappointment curling in Tommy’s shoulders cut him up from the inside?

He doesn’t know. But he does know that it’s getting harder to ignore.

Not that he’s giving up.)

And then, of course, everything breaks.

Ironically, it’s Techno who lectures him—in a rare moment when Tommy is somewhere else, and Wilbur has been somewhat left to his own devices because he’s with Techno.

(He finds that being with Techno isn’t that much different than being with Tommy, actually, because Techno enjoys listening—perpetually steady at his side, like an anchor, but not much more talkative than one. Just like Wilbur has sort of made Tommy be.)

“You don’t have to ice him out,” Techno informs him flatly, as they walk through the gardens.

Wilbur stills. “What?”

“Tommy,” Techno answers, turning his face to admire an unfurling rose. When Wilbur remains silent, Techno looks back over, raising an eyebrow. There’s something like disbelief etched onto his face. “Please tell me you at least learned his name.”

Wilbur doesn’t know why the edge of accusation makes him flush. “I know his name.”

At Techno’s silence, charged with doubt, Wilbur flushes deeper.

“I know his name,” he insists. “Tommy.”

“Good guess,” Techno jokes, and Wilbur scowls, jabbing his side with his elbow.

Techno grins, lips curling, and it’s equally as humorous as it is bladed. “I was just makin’ sure!” Then, taking on that edge of accusation again, “It’s not like I’ve seen you talk to him.”

Because I haven’t, Wilbur almost drawls. Because I don’t want to. He’s not sure his actual answer is any better than that though.

The faint burst of embarrassment that had surged through Wilbur doubles as he lifts his chin. He shoves it down, letting it harden like magmatic rock so that he can’t feel it.

“What’s there to talk about? He’s my guard.”

Techno stares at him, features utterly flat. “He’s a person.”

Wilbur almost winces, something jabbing at his chest, but Techno continues before it can augment into something bigger. Something that might rise through Wilbur’s shroud of stubbornness. Something that Wilbur might be forced to confront.

“And it’s not his fault that he’s here,” Techno emphasizes. “The least you can do is not treat him like a suit of armor.”

“I don’t treat him like that,” Wilbur says quickly, heart skipping. He makes himself busy with admiring a bush of flowers so he doesn’t have to meet Techno’s eyes. “I don’t— you don’t get it.”

From the corner of his eyes, he sees Techno tense, and Wilbur hunches his shoulders—in a way that any one of his tutors would abhor, not that he particularly cares.

“Maybe not,” Techno responds. “That doesn’t mean I’m not right.”

Wilbur says nothing.

Silence crawls over them, and despite the fact that they’re outside, Wilbur begins to feel suffocated.

“You don’t have to be happy about it, you know,” Techno adds, intent on continuing this pointless conversation despite the fact that all Wilbur wants to do is escape it. “Nobody’s askin’ you to.”

Wilbur stays quiet again, because if he knows Techno, and he does, then he knows he won’t pry. He’ll let Wilbur wallow if that’s what he wants to do, and if it backfires, he’ll help put him back together. That’s how they work.

Everyday except today, apparently.

“I can’t make you,” Techno eventually sighs.

You can’t, Wilbur agrees silently.

“But all I’m sayin’ is… there’s no point in making him, or yourself, miserable.”

When Wilbur’s mouth remains clamped shut, teeth digging into the inside of his cheek, Techno exhales, stepping away from the rosebush as he prepares to leave—which means that any second now, Tommy will be taking over watching him. The thought alone has frustration flaring between Wilbur’s lungs, heightened as Techno pulls away.

“Just think about it, Wilbur.”

He hands Wilbur a clipped rose as he passes, and Wilbur takes it between unfeeling fingers. He turns it, watches the petals shift, and the thorns spin. Then Techno’s gone, his last words ringing repeatedly through Wilbur’s head—as if it wasn’t enough that Wilbur had to listen to the sorry lecture in the first place.

Just think about it.

Wilbur doesn’t.

— ♕ —

Wilbur does.

He thinks, and thinks, and Techno’s words fester, pestiferous, inside of his skull—like the rose he handed Wilbur, thorns weaving in and out of his brain, stealing all of his focus—until eventually, before he’s even conscious of it, Wilbur breaks.

He doesn’t expect the library to be the place where he gives up the act, but somehow, the tall bookshelves, empty air, and the dark, polished tables seem to magnify his guilt. Or maybe that’s just the quiet, pressing in on him, until his mind’s guilty whispers echo into obtrusive screams.

The guilt gnaws at his chest as he writes, attempting to turn the mess that his head has become into a song. But all throughout the week, his lyrics have been stilted and choppy and broken—if he’d managed to get anything lyrical onto paper at all. Now is no different, and frustration bubbles relentlessly in his chest as he dips his quill into the inkpot, black ink splattering up against his pinky.

That’s when he notices Tommy, silent across the table, observing him curiously.

Wilbur glances at him, and his eyes widen, an apology written over his face as he ducks his head, curiosity vanished.

Somehow, that’s enough to extinguish Wilbur’s frustration. He sags in his chair, shoulders dipping, because Tommy’s barely-there frown is a javelin, spearing him through. Wilbur swallows.

“Are you… alright?”

He cringes at how clumsily the words fall off his tongue, more a croak than any sort of casual greeting. But he’s always relied on his words—or lack thereof—to get what he needed. And now… he supposes he needs to soothe the panging of his chest.

Tommy startles, eyes flying back up again, narrowed as he scans the room before looking at Wilbur—like someone else had wandered in, and that’s who Wilbur was talking to. Wilbur’s heart squeezes, despite itself.

He half-expects for Tommy to say nothing at all—it would be justified, surely—or to nod mutely, but Tommy surprises him. And Wilbur’s not sure if he likes how he does it.

“You don’t have to talk to me,” Tommy informs him bluntly, a fake-looking smile etched on his face. “I’m used to it.”

And damn if that doesn’t punch the air out of Wilbur’s chest.

He almost gapes before composing himself. “I— I want to.”

Tommy blinks at him, and Wilbur may be the Crown Prince, but under Tommy’s dubious expression, he could writhe in embarrassment.

“You do?” Tommy intones, too flat to be a proper question.

Wilbur runs his tongue over his teeth. “Yes.”

Then, Tommy’s lips twitch. Wilbur swears he almost scoffs before remembering himself.

“All of a sudden?” Tommy asks, the faintest glimmer of mischief contained in sky-blue irises.

Wilbur takes a second to make sure that he’s not imagining Tommy’s amusement before he sets his quill down, leaning forward with a raised eyebrow—and perhaps some amusement of his own.

“Challenging royalty?” he questions, words light and almost… playful. Wilbur has never been the type to flaunt his title—his crown does that for him. “That’s brave.”

Tommy’s mild smile never wavers, perfectly innocent. “I don’t know what you mean, your Highness.”

“Hm,” Wilbur hums, pleasantly surprised by the faintest whisper of banter. He scans him over again, before leaning back against his chair, quill and journal discarded. “Tell me about yourself. I want to know about you.”

“Is that an official command?” Tommy questions.

Wilbur tilts his head. “If it was?”

Tommy holds his gaze searchingly before answering.

“Then I’d say my name is Tommy. I’m seventeen, and I hail from L’manburg.”

A faint wrinkle creases Wilbur’s brow.

“I already know that,” Wilbur tells him, almost eager now. “Something else. Do you have any family?”

He hadn’t expected it to be a tender topic, but Tommy’s smile falters anyways before he scoops it back up.

“Not anymore,” Tommy answers plainly, eyes flickering down to the tabletop.

Oh, Wilbur thinks, with a distant pang of his heart. Then, finding that he wants to keep talking, before the air becomes too awkward to sustain a conversation, he fumbles to ask another question.

“What made you want to become a guard?”

The far-off look on Tommy’s face is traded for genuine contemplation. Wilbur doesn’t know why that makes him relax.

“I’m a knight, technically, you know,” Tommy remarks, chewing on his lip as he thinks: each thought passing openly across his face.

It’s almost fascinating—Wilbur had expected him to be more closed off.

Expected him to be? a curling voice prods at his head. Or gave him no choice but to be?

He shoves it down—it’s easier once Tommy continues talking.

“I wanted a purpose,” Tommy finally says, and Wilbur is surprised by how honest he seems. His shoulders have gone lax, losing the ever-present rigidity. “I wanted to help people. So I started training, as soon as I could pick up a sword.”

He sighs, drawing invisible circles on the polished tabletop with his fingertips. Wilbur watches, waiting. He’s always been a talker—it is almost required of a king, to be charismatic in some regard. But something about Tommy, who he’d spent days ignoring, makes him want to listen.

“L’manburg had a military outpost,” Tommy continues, storm clouds beginning to creep over his eyes. “But you know that.” Wilbur nods; Tommy keeps going. “Some of the soldiers there took me in, when my parents died. And things just sort of fell into place.” The storm completely consumes his face. “They’re, uh— they’re all gone now too.”

Wilbur is intimately familiar with tragedy. His kingdom was born from it, and had suffered it even afterwards. It suffers from it even now. L’manburg, especially, is a tragedy that Tommy doesn’t need to explain—because Wilbur knows. Everyone knows of the portside city that had become a gaping crater.

But something about the way Tommy speaks teaches Wilbur tragedy all over again. His heart aches, like there’s an iron hook tugging at it, and he wants to let it pull him forward. Anything to ease fractures arcing across Tommy’s face.

“I’m sorry,” he murmurs, throat dryer than he expects it to be.

Tommy looks up, blinking hard as he snaps back into himself. Then his face changes. There’s a twisting wryness to his expression, undercut with a faint layer of amusement.

“But that’s all there is to me, really,” he finishes, quiet—even as his voice echoes across the walls. He tilts his head. “Is that what you wanted to hear, your Highness?”

Wilbur, his mind urges—and it almost slips off his tongue before he catches it. Instead, he traces Tommy’s expression and finds that this is infinitely better than the silence that Wilbur had tried to wrap himself in.

“No,” Wilbur answers, lips twitching. “Though I think I’d like to hear more about you, if you are fine with that.”

Hesitantly, Tommy offers him a grin.

Wilbur smiles back.

— ♕ —

Things get easier after that.

Suddenly, moments that he’d fought to keep silent and detached become filled with banter and conversation and Wilbur… doesn’t mind it.

In fact, he enjoys it—enjoys Tommy trailing behind him, like a shadow. He’d expected for a guard to feel suffocating—a ball and chain—but it is almost the opposite. Even drafting proposals, something which he usually has to force himself through, becomes more tolerable when there is someone at his side to exchange jokes and complaints with.

And likewise, Tommy rapidly becomes more comfortable around him.

Now that he’d been given the chance, he seems to blossom, unfurling like a flower in the spring. He beams like it’s all he knows how to do, and laughs until his chest threatens to give out, and prods Wilbur like a little brother in a way that is verging on unseemly.

(Wilbur should demand him—sharply and swiftly—not to flick his arm when Wilbur is writing, or kick his leg when they’re eating, or slings insults at him when he’s trying to focus, but he can’t bring himself to. It’s refreshing, almost, to be regarded as less than a Crown Prince. And more than that: it’s fun.)

“You’re boring,” Tommy groans one day, when they’re in one of Wilbur’s favorite studies—the one with the large, green-stained windows—and Wilbur is flipping through a book of poetry.

Despite his relaxed posture, Wilbur doesn’t miss the way he scans the room, tracking and searching for who-knows-what. Risks to Wilbur’s life, probably. Possible entrances, even. He positions himself a little too perfectly between Wilbur and the door—angled in a way that would allow him to see both Wilbur and a potential intruder.

(Wilbur doesn’t know why that makes his skin crawl.)

Wilbur huffs a laugh, eying Tommy over the top of his book. “And why is that?”

Tommy props himself up on a clumsy elbow, eying him right back. “You have this whole castle, and all you do is read, and write, and study, and take walks. Doesn’t that ever get old?”

He looks like he’s trying to seem, well, annoying—for lack of a better word—but there is genuine curiosity there, nestled in his eyes.

But as Wilbur considers the question, the soft pages of his book suddenly feel rough beneath Wilbur’s fingertips. He frowns, mind whirling.

“In a few months, I’ll be the king, Tommy,” he reminds him lightly (though it almost feels like he’s reminding himself.) “I don’t really have time for… other things.”

And of course, there’s the issue of the rebel attacks.

Unconsciously, Wilbur’s hand creeps up to brush across his own neck as he thinks of the galas and the speeches that Phil had delayed or cancelled for the sake of safety. Days which had been packed full now stretch like laffy.

Tommy frowns, and Wilbur distantly wonders why sadness always seems so potent when it’s on Tommy’s face. Over the last few days, he’s seen glimpses of it, mixing with Tommy’s generally cheery demeanor on occasion, and now that he’s getting to know him, it tends to make his stomach flip.

“Aren’t you, like, twenty?” Tommy asks, frown unmoving. “There’s plenty you can do.” He half-laughs. “You’re barely older than me, I think. You could be my older brother.”

Wilbur huffs a laugh, ignoring the way his heart tries to latch onto that.

“And what hideous crime would I have committed to deserve that?”

Tommy’s mouth drops open, eyes flashing. “Oy! That’s—” He chokes on what doubtlessly would have been a swear of some sort and coughs out instead, “—not nice, pal.”

Wilbur laughs, and it slips easier past his ribs. “My humblest of apologies.”

Tommy’s face screws up, not appreciating his refined courtesy. “You’re the princiest prince I’ve ever met.”

“That’s not a word,” Wilbur points out, if only for the victorious grin that he knows it will provoke—and sure enough, Tommy’s lips stretch.

“Fine,” Wilbur concedes, before Tommy can offer a retort. “What would you do, then, if you lived here? If you were king?”

Tommy grins, and if the sunlight wasn’t spilling in from the large green window, Wilbur might think that his smile is what is lighting the room up.

“Well,” he begins, eyes still combing over Wilbur’s face, like he’s trying to dissect it, to pull out the shreds of stress and cauterize them with a grin. “Have you seen the banisters in this place?”

Wilbur blinks, closing his book. Somehow, this steals his attention more forcefully than the poetry.

“...The banisters?”

Tommy nods earnestly, fluffy hair bouncing. “The banisters, man. You ever slid down a banister?”

Wilbur hasn’t.

But he finds himself grinning when Tommy does—and then wondering why he’d ever tried to stifle this in the first place.

— ♕ —

Tommy is a knight.

Before anything—before a friend, before a companion—Tommy is a knight.

Tommy is his knight; his guard. But Wilbur seems to have forgotten that, over these last few days, because the first time he sees Tommy in action, it almost stops his heart.

Meetings with foreign dignitaries have never been pleasant. They tended to be a verbal war: hours and hours of ambassadors grappling for leverage over the Empire or favor from the Crown while pretending not to be. It’s easy to maneuver them, but not entertaining in the least.

Even Tommy, seated at his side, is quiet—shoulders straight, form impeccable. Though, whenever he is before the king, Tommy does seem to remember the proper decorum, so perhaps that is not out of place. Wilbur has just grown too used to banter shared behind shining eyes and quick grins.

Tommy seems to follow the conversation with some amount of ease, despite the snake pit that the room quickly devolves to, and the only time he seems distracted is when the doors at the far end of the room shove open with a violent bang.

To be fair, at that point, everyone is.

The conversation halts as a butler rushes in, gasping for breath.

“Emergency, your Majesty,” the man wheezes, almost doubled over. “The General requests your presence.”

Phil frowns, instantly standing. Wilbur straightens, instantly alert at the mention of Techno, but Phil catches his questioning gaze and shakes his head. Wilbur hesitates before sinking back into his chair.

Phil offers a tight smile to the dignitaries rounding the table, all staring curiously—and some, even dangerously, like they’re soaking in the potential advantage unfolding in front of them.

Phil notices, of course he does, but he keeps his words light and lofty, betraying nothing. “One moment, if you will.”

And because they are in a foreign kingdom, speaking with a foreign king, the dignitaries cannot do anything but obey. Phil hurries out of the room—followed by Sam, standing guard at the door—and Wilbur doesn’t have a second to breathe before the doors click shut, and then hell breaks loose.

The man across the table from him—some noble from Snowchester, or so he’d thought—rises to his feet.

The only warning that Wilbur gets that he’s in danger is a wicked grin before the man is lunging across the table. It’s not enough for him to do anything but gasp as a silver dagger comes flying at him—but it is more than enough for Tommy.

His knight is out of his chair before the man can finish drawing his weapon, and Wilbur chokes on a gasp as Tommy lunges upward, collides into his side with a fierce grimace, and sends them both crashing to the ground.

Wilbur pushes back his chair, staggering onto his feet as shouts ring out—only for something, or someone, to slam into him. Fear streaks through him, colorful and messy, as he’s tugged to face another “noble.”

Wilbur only notices the red handkerchief poking out from his tunic pocket when it’s too late to do anything but brace and throws his arms up as the man raises a dagger of his own.

Wilbur only catches a fleeting glimpse of his sweat-dampened face, carved out of potent vitriol, before Tommy is leaping up, throwing himself between Wilbur and the rebel, and—

And slicing his blade across his throat.

Tommy hardly blinks as he draws a crimson ribbon across the rebel’s jugular—not even as blood splatters over him, not even as the man’s eyes glaze over with fear, then death. He spills blood as if he’s been spilling it all his life, and then he’s tugging at Wilbur’s arm and pulling him away before the body can finish falling.

Horror squeezes tightly around his throat. His steps are uneven, the floor swaying beneath him as his mind is savaged by a nasty combination of shock and fear, but Tommy doesn’t give him the chance to stumble.

When Wilbur catches a glimpse of his face, marred by a splatter of crimson, it is totally blank—not an ounce of the sunshine, or gold, or the light that Wilbur has come to know. All that betrays his facade is the harsh grit of his jaw, but even that Wilbur can hardly see as he’s led behind a wall-length, supposedly-decorative curtain covering the far wall.

He doesn’t see what Tommy does until a hidden panel in the wall is giving away, and then they are in a cramped hallway—still running.

“This way,” Tommy breathes emotionlessly, instructing Wilbur as if he has any control over his rapidly numbing body.

Time blurs, his mind flashing with images of dead eyes rolled up like marbles, and bile stings his tongue. Tommy doesn’t let him stop—not until they’re breaking out of the service hallways and into another room, with a heavy iron door that clicks as it shuts behind them.

Tommy leads Wilbur over to a wall, easing him down against it.

Wilbur lets him, still trying not to throw up. He recognizes, distantly, that Tommy has brought him into one of the many secret safe rooms scattered across the castle—there are two cots pressed against the opposite wall, and a shelf full of jars of sealed and pickled food—and that he’d done that because someone had tried to kill him.

But then Tommy had killed them.

Wilbur feels like letting out a delirious curse, and he would if his throat would allow air to escape it.

“Are you alright, your Highness?” Tommy asks, voice filtering over Wilbur’s eardrums low and worried.

When Wilbur blinks, his vision focuses. Tommy is crouching in front of him, and Wilbur sucks in a deep breath.

It takes a minute for him to be able to reconcile the image of Tommy—bright-gold Tommy—with this Tommy: this Tommy who crouches protectively in front of him even in a sealed room, eyes two scraps of blue steel, face stony, and blood stained into his uniform.

Clarity breaks through the shroud of horror and confusion and shock enveloping him.

Now that the world is still again, Wilbur is acutely aware of the rapid pounding of his heart, the strum of panic in his veins.

Oh, he realises belatedly, I almost died.

But he hadn’t. Because Tommy had saved him.

“I’m fine,” Wilbur grits out, surprised he’d managed to emit a sound at all. “I— thank you.”

Tommy doesn’t smile, doesn’t seem to hear him. “The Guard will be here soon, okay? Just stay calm.”

Wilbur thinks he is pretty calm, even if his breaths are coming short and fast, but somehow the pressure around his lungs eases as Tommy lowers himself down to sit beside him. He doesn’t say anything, but he does reach for Wilbur’s hand, squeezing it.

It seems to shock some life back into his veins, because Wilbur actually feels it through the weird numbness crawling over him. Tommy smiles, dull and faint.

Wilbur’s lips only twitch as he tries to return it.

When the Guard finds them, Tommy has hardly spoken besides reaffirming that Wilbur is alright, and Wilbur hasn’t spoken at all. They sit, silently, shoulder to shoulder against the wall, until knocks sound against the safe room door, followed by Techno’s voice, followed by things getting very, very blurry—save for one thing that Wilbur’s mind is able to consciously grasp:

This time, when Phil pulls him into his arms, and then insists he be taken to the medical wing to be looked over, Tommy doesn’t follow him.

— ♕ —

“Where’s Tommy?” Wilbur asks, anywhere from thirty minutes to six hours later.

His mind is still split into directionless pieces.

At some point, Phil brings him to his room, and only after Wilbur has bathed and changed clothes does the panic finally start to subside. In its place, worry begins to blossom, mounting as more and more of Wilbur’s mind begins to awaken.

Phil, hands cupped around a mug of tea, offers him a gentle smile that doesn’t do much to erase the tightness straining the corner of his eyes.

“With Techno, in his study,” he answers. Then, lifting his mug, “Having tea.”

Wilbur blinks. Tommy and Techno? He hadn’t been aware that they’d gotten close. If anything, Tommy should be here, shouldn’t he? Having tea with them. The King and the Crown Prince and the crown prince’s royal bodyguard.

Phil catches his confusion and soothes it easily, with simple grace, like Wilbur is a kid with wrinkled clothing that Phil needs to smoothen.

“Tommy has a good heart,” Phil says, as if that answers Wilbur’s unspoken questions at all. He already knows that—or at least, he thinks he does. But Phil continues as Wilbur sips at his tea. “He’s qualified, but he’s still young.”

“He is,” Wilbur agrees, unsure where he’s going with this.

Phil sighs. “I could tell, when we got to you today, that both of you were a little out of it.” Wilbur nods, throat threatening to close over at the reminder. He sips tea that he can’t taste, just to stop it. “The Guard informed me of what he’d had to do to protect you.”

Wilbur shivers, eyes fluttering closed on their own as he remembers, and that’s when Phil reaches out, worry creasing his expression. Wilbur shakes his head, not wanting Phil to stop talking.

Hesitantly, he withdraws his hand and keeps going—painfully carefully, in the way that only a father, and not a king, should be.

“I think what he did today weighed on him more than he let on,” Phil finishes lightly. “So I told him to take tea with Techno for a few hours.”

Wilbur frowns at that, and it’s strange how his concern is the only clear emotion that he’s felt over the last few hours. “Is he okay?”

Phil appraises him, eyes glinting. “Are you worried?”

“...He’s my guard.”

“One that you never wanted,” Phil remarks, and Wilbur whips his head up sharply.

“Does that matter?”

It’s only after Phil raises his eyebrows at the unprecedented hostility that he realises Phil is not being cruel, but curious. Despite that, the sudden rush of defensiveness blooming in Wilbur’s chest is hardly assuaged.

“No,” Phil answers, and there’s a strange twitch to his lips and lightness to his voice, like he’s keeping a secret.

“What?” Wilbur bites out, gripping his cup so hard he wouldn’t be surprised if the china shattered in his hands.

“Nothing,” Phil says easily, in a way that implies that there is in fact something—and Wilbur could probably work it out if he wasn’t such a mess. “I’m just glad you’re warming up to him.”

Why do you care? Wilbur wants to ask, to satiate the twisting feeling in his chest, latching onto Phil’s words and weird expression with a fury.

But it’s easier to say nothing, to melt into the warmth of the room and the comfort of his father—when he’s not being peculiar—and to try to let the events of the day slip into the background of his abstract thoughts.

— ♕ —

Wilbur retires before the fire in the hearth has gnawed through the last log, and Phil lets him go.

When he gets to his room, sleep tugs at his heavy limbs, but rather than indulge it, Wilbur trods over to the door connecting his room to Tommy’s and lightly taps his knuckles against the wood. He holds his breath, listening, but there’s not an answer, which means Tommy’s not back yet.

It must be nearing midnight, as the sky looks like black velvet, and hardly any moonlight spills through the window, but he knows that if Tommy was in his room, he would’ve heard Wilbur—he’s a light sleeper, per his job.

So Wilbur changes into proper sleep clothes and drags himself onto his bed, ignoring the concerned jabbing at his chest. But even as he closes his eyes, his mind remains awake. Wilbur stares vacantly at the shadows draped across his room until, what must be at least an hour later, he hears his door knob twist.

If he’d accumulated any drowsiness, it’s gone as he sits up, blankets falling around his lap.

Tommy startles as he eases the door open to check on him, only to see him awake.

Wilbur waves lamely in the darkness.

“W— your Highness?” Tommy croaks, straightening a bit.

Tommy doesn’t cross over into his room, leaning heavily against the door, and Wilbur frowns, squinting into the abyssal shadow shrouding him.

“Come in,” Wilbur tells him.

When Tommy doesn’t move, Wilbur fumbles to light the candle on his nightstand, reaching blindly until he is able to conjure a dim orange flame. It flickers, burning away the darkness in some places and casting it down harsher in others.

“Please,” Wilbur whispers, and Tommy blinks owlishly at him from the shadowed doorway before nodding.

He ambles in, and the first thing Wilbur notices—as he steps into the flickering light—is the bandage wrapped around his lower arm. Wilbur’s heart jumps and he reaches forward as Tommy gets close.

“Were you hurt?” he asks instantly, frowning to keep his composure as worry swells in between his heart and his lungs.

It doesn’t work.

Tommy stops in front of the bed to glance down at his arm, as if he hadn’t seen the bandage yet.

When he looks up, he just shrugs with one shoulder. “Just a scratch.”

That doesn’t do anything to sate the worry gnawing at him, so Wilbur reaches out again, offering Tommy his hand. Tommy blinks at it, confusion furrowing his brow.

“Come sit,” Wilbur demands gently, then, hesitating, “You don’t have to, but—”

“It’s okay,” Tommy interjects, before he takes Wilbur’s extended hand.

He probably doesn’t need Wilbur’s help to get on a bed of all things, but he humors him, allowing Wilbur to hoist him up. Wilbur shuffles to the side, letting Tommy sit up against the headboard beside him, like he is.

“Are you okay?” Tommy asks, before Wilbur can get a word out.

As if Wilbur is the one who had gotten hurt.

“Are you?” he counters, and Tommy looks at him, confused. “Your arm.”

“My arm is fine,” Tommy tells him slowly. “It was just a scratch.” When Wilbur’s worry doesn’t ease, Tommy clears his throat. “I, uh, couldn’t get out of the way of the knife in time.”

And if that doesn’t make Wilbur’s chest seize, eyes flashing with images of the rebel, lunging across the table. Images of Tommy slamming into him before he could make it halfway. Them both hitting the ground. The dagger, glinting. Wilbur hadn’t seen any blood, but he can’t remember Tommy ever having treated his arm in the safe room, which means he’s either telling the truth about the injury being negligible, or he had hidden it for Wilbur’s sake.

Wilbur can’t decipher which one—it’s late, and he has yet to get acquainted with the guard side of Tommy. So he switches directions, indulging this shapeless worry another way.

“You were gone,” Wilbur points out. In the near-dark, it’s hard to see Tommy’s face, but Wilbur sees the way he swallows, face flickering with something panicked, and he feels him tense against his shoulder. “My father says you asked to go see Techno.”

“I didn’t ask,” Tommy corrects deliberately, eyes down towards the bed. “I told him I was fine but he insisted.”

“Because you weren’t fine?”

Tommy appraises him for a moment. “I am fine, your Highness.” He smiles humorlessly, and it’s hardly visible. “What happened today is… nothing I haven’t done before.”

It takes a moment for those words to settle in Wilbur’s brain, and when they do, a shock runs through him. He glances at Tommy, who won’t meet his eyes, and is fiddling with Wilbur’s blanket, and tries not to let his thoughts bury him.

He can’t help it. He’d known Tommy is capable—in theory. He’d known Tommy is young—in theory. He could’ve known that Tommy had killed, if he’d taken the time to think about it, but even then, he thinks it would still startle him to hear that Tommy, seventeen, has blood on his hands.

As if sensing the downward spiral of his thoughts, Tommy clears his throat. “Do you remember when the rebels attacked an outpost full of recruits? In L’manburg?”

Wilbur frowns. He doesn’t. There have been a lot of attacks, rebels pushing boundaries and leading crusades against the Kingdom’s most vulnerable. There’s too many for him to—

“The general was there,” Tommy adds.

“Techno?” Wilbur asks, frown deepening.

Tommy nods. “I remember he was visiting that week. I think he was going to assist in training us.”

“Us?” Wilbur echoes, and Tommy nods again.

“That was where I trained,” he explains. Then, eyes taking on a faroff glaze, “The rebels tried to seize it.”

“Right,” Wilbur confirms, ash coating his tongue.

Now that he’s thinking about it, he thinks he knows which direction this story is headed, can distantly recall the graveness of Techno’s face when he’d returned home to recount what had happened.

(And weeks later, that same look had returned to Techno’s face, but darker—once they’d learned that the attack had only ended up being practice: bloody practice for the cataclysm that had followed weeks later. The cataclysm that L’manburg didn’t survive.)

The thought makes him want to reach out and squeeze Tommy’s hand, but he doesn’t.

“I remember I was on my way back to the dormitories, when I was cornered. It was only one man, but he was bigger than me, and we had only just begun our training.”

He’s the only other one in the room, but Tommy’s words hold him and everything captive anyways, like even the air and the walls and the shadows have stopped to listen to his voice shake as he recounts the anecdote.

“I had a dagger in my hand,” Tommy recalls, utterly hollow. “I don’t remember lifting it. But it ended up killing him anyway, when he lunged at me.” Fingers clenching into small fists, “To this day, I don’t know if it’s my fault that it ended up buried in his ribcage.”

Wilbur freezes. He isn’t sure how to approach this, and his mind splinters with secondhand grief for the look on Tommy’s face. He’s only able to grasp onto one thought.

“It’s not,” Wilbur says immediately, an invisible hand wrapping around his throat and squeezing. “Tommy—”

“It doesn’t matter if it is,” Tommy injects, and Wilbur’s mouth snaps shut, even though Tommy hadn’t been harsh. “I don’t regret it.” A shaky exhale that has Wilbur holding his breath, “Because do you know how the general found me?”

Wilbur shakes his head—Techno hadn’t told him anything about this.

“It was after following the trail of six recruits— dead recruits. Kids like me, who hadn’t gotten so lucky.”

He says the words bluntly, and it’s almost enough to disguise the pain edging the words. Finally, he sighs, leaning heavily against the headboard. He tilts his head, eyes locking with Wilbur’s. Not even the darkness can mask the exhaustion radiating off of him.

“Do you get what I’m saying?”

Wilbur shakes his head. Tommy bumps his shoulder, lips twitching faintly.

“I’m saying that you don’t have to worry about me, your Highness. Anything I do here is for your safety. That’s all that matters.”

He sighs, fiddling with a fold in Wilbur’s blanket, before, speaking—impossibly quietly—

“I knew before I got here that I would need to do it again.” He laughs humorlessly. “I think that’s part of the reason why they chose me. If you want to serve the prince, you need to be willing to kill for the prince. And I’d already done that, for less.”

Wilbur… isn’t a sheltered prince. His best friend is a general, and his father has commanded armies. He knows bloodshed. But again: Tommy has a way of painting devastation like he’s never known it. It makes his heart ache, begging to soothe wounds he knows he can’t—knows that Tommy probably wouldn’t want him to anyway.

So he does the only thing he can—accepts, and then, distracts. Luckily, there is one thing that’s been on his mind, with every minute that they’d grown closer.

“Wilbur,” he murmurs.

Beside him, Tommy stills. “What?”

“Call me, Wilbur. That’s my name.”

Tommy blinks at him, and Wilbur almost manages a grin at the perplexion consuming his face. “Your Highness?”

Wilbur snorts, bumping his shoulder. “No, Wilbur. I think we’re passed the titles.”

Tommy just stares at him before, as stiff as can be, saying, “Okay.”

“Okay…?”

Tommy’s face scrunches, like he’s eaten a lemon. “Okay… Wilbur.”

“See, that wasn’t so hard,” Wilbur remarks lightly, unable to resist the urge to lift his hand and ruffle Tommy’s hair.

Tommy bats his hand away. “It was hard. That was weird.”

“Why?” Wilbur asks, smiling. “I call you Tommy.”

Tommy huffs a quiet laugh. “That’s different.”

“How?”

“I’m not a prince,” Tommy informs him. “I’m just… Tommy.”

Just? Wilbur thinks, brain instantly revolting before he’s aware of it. No such thing as just Tommy.

“Maybe Tommy deserves a title too.”

Tommy grins, leaning close as candlelight dances over his face. “You can call me Big Man, if you want.”

Wilbur shoves him back, infinitely gently. “I think Tommy’s fine.”

“Then so is Wilbur,” Tommy agrees, and Wilbur finds that, in this moment, he feels warmer than he has all day.

“Good.”

It grows quiet, but it’s peaceful. Wilbur could fall asleep like this, wrapped in banter that he’s hardly ever had a chance to engage in since he’d grown older, but it’s broken far too soon.

“I should be going,” Tommy says quietly. “It’s late, and I’m sure you need beauty sleep.”

Wilbur glares dully at him, unable to deny the exhaustion finally rising in his chest. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Tommy smiles. “Nothing at all, your— uh.” He stops, tries again. “Wilbur.”

Wilbur huffs, but his eyelids are drooping, so he only hums, drowsy and noncommittal. “Goodnight, Tommy.”

Tommy slides off of the bed. “Goodnight, Wilbur.” He hesitates at the end of the bed, hand brushing over the fabric of Wilbur’s bed set, before he remarks, “These sheets are so much nicer than mine.”

That’s enough to get Wilbur to crack his eyes open, a laugh slipping out of his lips. “Go to bed, child.”

He feels more than sees Tommy’s faint scowl. “Die.”

Wilbur’s eyes flutter closed again. “As if you would let that happen.”

“...You’re right,” Tommy agrees. Then, remembering his act, “I hate you.”

“Goodnight.”

“‘night Wilbur.”

And everything is simple again.

— ♕ —

(The first thing he does the next morning, after he leads Tommy down to the dining hall for breakfast, is make a note to send for better sheets, the same as his own, for Tommy’s bed.

When they are delivered later that day, the surprised smile on Tommy’s face basks everything in light.)

Chapter Text

Wilbur is still not used to the scent of blood.

He thinks he should be by now. It’s hard when the only times he sees it is flooding the marble tile or staining metal after another near-assassination, beading his skin or flecked in the creases of Tommy’s blank grimace as he pulls him to safety.

And— Tommy. Blood is prettier in the history books than it is on Tommy’s hands.

But with every passing day, the rebels seem to grow more intent to put it there. Attacks break out with a new fury. Soldiers bleed, villages burn. Phil cancels a gala; the rebels invade the next one. It’s a frenzy without an ending, a pestilence without a cure.

Wilbur’s coronation grows closer. Tommy promises him, in a way that turns Wilbur’s gut into a rolling storm, that he’ll make it there. That he’ll bring him there.

Wilbur dips his head in carefully-composed agreement, and pretends that the youth draping his words doesn’t unravel him.

— ♕ —

Tommy is asleep.

Wilbur had seen it coming, but he’d let it happen. He couldn’t help it.

His father had suggested he spend the afternoon away from studies, away from managing correspondences, away from work, really. Wilbur had proposed the idea of a hunt (he’s sure Techno would appreciate joining, and he’d been meaning to show Tommy how a hunt works) but that would involve taking the horses and leaving the castle boundaries, so Phil had softly declined it.

Wilbur had nearly protested until he’d caught a glimpse of the pale, amaranthine shadows dusting Tommy’s undereyes—less intense beneath his unwavering facade, but present nonetheless.

Clearly, he hadn’t slept as well as he’d claimed to that morning.

So Wilbur had switched courses, electing to waste the day away in the gardens, writing music on the soft grass beneath the warm sun. He doesn’t bring his guitar, but he does bring his songbook, and Tommy seems content enough to listen to him string together pieces of broken melodies, so it’s fine.

Until Wilbur catches Tommy nodding off.

It doesn’t happen right away. They’re on the grass for at least an hour before his head starts to dip, eyelashes fluttering. Wilbur tucks away a smile and silently shuffles closer.

Tommy startles, blinking sleep out of his eyes and straightening. He instantly relaxes, vigilance melting away, once he sees that it is only Wilbur at his shoulder.

From there, it’s a losing battle.

Maybe it’s the sunlight kissing their skin, or maybe it’s Wilbur’s gentle humming, or maybe it’s just Wilbur, if that’s not too wistful of a thought, but the weight against Wilbur’s shoulder grows gradually heavier… and heavier… until eventually, Tommy is asleep.

Wilbur holds his breath as Tommy drops fully against his side, not wanting to wake him up. Then, when Tommy doesn’t stir, he shifts back, and lets Tommy lay his head in Wilbur’s lap. He doesn’t stop humming.

Like this, features softened by sunlight, body cradled by the soft grass, Tommy could almost be a prince.

Like this, Tommy looks young, and Wilbur’s stomach twists when he reminds himself that this is the same boy sworn to protect him. Sworn to kill for him.

Unease that he’d been staving off pushes forward, but Wilbur shoves it back down. There’s no sense in shattering the peace. Not when things are so light.

So he doesn’t, sighing heavily and threading nimble fingertips through Tommy’s hair. He can go back to songwriting later. This is the only happy melody he cares about.

Of course, Tommy doesn’t let himself rest long.

Far sooner than he probably should, Tommy begins to stir, brows furrowing as he wakes up. Wilbur watches him approach consciousness with thinly veiled endearment.

Blonde eyelashes flutter, and then blink open. Tommy squints up at him, the cloudy sky reflected in confused eyes, before awareness seems to dawn on him.

He jerks upright so fast he nearly smashes his head into Wilbur’s chin, apologies tumbling past his lips before he’s even fully upright.

“I’m so sorry,” he begins, brushing his palm against his uniform obsessively, as if there is dust there to be cleared. “I didn’t—I didn’t mean to fall asleep—”

“Don’t be,” Wilbur interrupts blithely, waving a hand. “I let you.”

A frown crawls lethargically onto Tommy’s face. “You—what? Why didn’t you wake me up?”

Wilbur shrugs, stretching his arms now that he can adjust his horrid posture.

“You were tired,” he answers plainly.

Tommy blinks at him, then scowls. He runs an anxious hand through his sleep-rumpled hair. “I’m not tired. And it wouldn’t matter if I was.” He exhales harshly, crossing his arms over his chest like a hug—except the hug is laced with frustration. The self-disparagement is so strong that Wilbur’s eyes widen. “I’m supposed to protect you.”

Wilbur’s stomach curdles.

“A nap won’t hurt.”

Tommy glares at him, baleful. “You don’t know that.”

“Don’t I?” Wilbur counters, looking around at the distinct lack of approaching assassins. Then, when Tommy continues to appear unconvinced, glare demanding a reason, Wilbur sighs and offers him, “You looked peaceful.”

When Tommy’s glare doesn’t waver, Wilbur’s eyebrow lifts.

“Besides,” Wilbur continues lightly, absentmindedly rubbing at his wrist. It throbs with the phantom ache of a bruising grip, knocked away too soon for any real marks to form. “Yesterday was rough.”

“Yesterday was nothing,” Tommy seethes with hardly a pause, glaring at the grass. He doesn’t seem to realise the way that Wilbur has gone still. “Yesterday was— it was nothing.”

Static buzzes in Wilbur’s blood. “Tommy—”

“Don’t,” he interjects quietly, looking down. Then, a heavy sigh rattles past his lips. When he speaks next, his voice is quiet, and guilty. “Thanks for letting me sleep, Wilbur. Sorry for getting upset.”

“It’s alright,” Wilbur assures him carefully, even as his mind rings.

“It’s not,” Tommy argues weakly. “You’re the prince. I shouldn’t be—”

“We’re friends,” Wilbur counters before he can stop himself. “Aren’t we?”

Tommy raises his head, and Wilbur thinks he can make out hope, glimmering on his face. “I mean, I think— I hope? I—”

He looks too unsure for Wilbur’s taste, so Wilbur helps him out.

“We are,” he confirms. “And I haven’t cared about your repugnant behavior yet.” Wilbur’s mouth twitches and Tommy snorts. “Why stop now?”

“That’s not a real word,” Tommy mumbles, picking at the grass.

“It is,” Wilbur disagrees, and Tommy rolls his eyes, life seeping back into his limbs.

“Sure it is,” Tommy deadpans, in a way that implies he thinks that it isn’t.

But Wilbur gives him the victory, and only speaks again when Tommy begins to gnaw on his lip with worry, eyes faroff and vacant. The next question to form on his tongue is one that is not so easily resisted.

“Do you want to tell me about it?”

Tommy blinks, jerking his head up. “What? Tell you about what?”

Wilbur taps the side of Tommy’s head, grinning when Tommy blinks at each one. “About whatever is plaguing your mind.”

Tommy seems startled for a moment, lips parted as he stares at Wilbur. Then, his face closes off.

“Who says something is?” Tommy mutters, looking down.

That’s an answer, Wilbur almost says. But Tommy wasn’t trained to play the mental games that Wilbur was, so he keeps it to himself.

“Nobody,” Wilbur answers. “But if there was, you could tell me.”

He expects silence, even as his heart yearns. Is it so bad to want to be a pillar? But Tommy continues to defy his expectations, because he exhales, and then he’s speaking. Or well—as Wilbur quickly realises—he’s reminiscing.

“I remember when L’manburg fell,” Tommy begins quietly, fiddling with a blade of grass, as those words carve themselves into Wilbur’s ribcage. Tommy doesn’t look at him when he tenses. “I remember the smoke, and the flames, and the rubble.” He swallows, but he doesn’t necessarily look afraid. Just defeated. “And the blood.”

Wilbur says nothing, even though all he wants to do is soothe fractures he can’t see.

“I thought I would die,” Tommy admits, laughing humorlessly under his breath. As if those words don’t tangle Wilbur’s stomach into knots. “L’manburg was my home, and I thought I would die with her.”

Wind whistles as it breezes past the grass. Clouds break away from the sun, letting more light pour forward.

“And then the knights came,” Tommy breathes, the barest flash of a smile flickering over his lips. “Knights with silver armor and green flags and it was over.” He looks at Wilbur, and the ghost of a smile turns into half of one. “I’ve wanted to be one ever since.”

“And then you did,” Wilbur says, after he finds the words. “You’re here.”

Tommy nods. “The castle saved me, you know? I may have lost my home, but I’m still here. And now I have a purpose.” His breath hitches. “I can’t fail, even if it’s just sleeping when I’m not supposed to because I don’t— I don’t want to lose that, your– Wilbur.”

Wilbur’s chest squeezes, and he doesn’t hold back this time. He slings an arm over Tommy’s shoulder, and lets Tommy sink against his side. Tommy sighs, head dropping against his shoulder, and like this, they don’t feel like Knight and Prince, but like brother and brother.

“You won’t,” Wilbur promises, even as his lungs protest the words. Not for this. “You won’t.”

— ♕ —

It’s his first day outside of the castle limits since the attacks had begun months and months ago, and Wilbur relishes in it.

Phil is giving a speech, something about spring, something about a festival, something that Wilbur really should be paying attention to but isn’t. He’s too busy admiring the crowd, admiring the people that will soon become his, and Phil’s words sound against deaf ears.

He doesn’t get to neglect the speech for long, though, before an explosion is rocking the podium.

Before Wilbur can blink, arms are wrapping around his waist and dragging him down.

If it weren’t for Tommy’s arms, wrapping carefully around his waist, Wilbur is sure he would have lost his breath as they slam into the floor. As it is, he can only gasp and try to brace for a blast he can’t see as smoke scents the air, and shrieks and pops assault his eardrums.

Wilbur is too out of it to do anything but remain still, paralysed with fear, as Tommy keeps him down, distantly aware of the fact that Tommy has managed to curl his entire body over Wilbur’s, fingers digging into the sleeves of Wilbur’s tunic.

“I’ve got you,” Tommy whispers into his ear, voice shaking and hardly audible through the screaming and the chaos. “You’re okay.”

Please, Wilbur thinks, panic barraging his thoughts until his mind starts to melt. Not like this.

Then—it ends.

The noise dies all at once, and with it, the screams of the startled crowd. That’s when Wilbur cracks his eyes open and sees it—

Fireworks.

The firework cart, next to the stage, is in shambles, colored dye spilling out onto the dirt. Fireworks.

Not any sort of explosive, not an attack, but a mishap. Fireworks.

Tommy seems to realise at the same time that Wilbur does, because he rolls off of him, allowing Wilbur to suck in a full breath. He extends a hand as Wilbur fights to shove down his panic, and the Guard fights to restore order.

“Wilbur?” Tommy asks quietly, and when Wilbur blinks, his hand is still hovering in front of Wilbur. “Your Highness?”

For some reason, when his eyes lock onto Tommy’s extended hand, Wilbur’s vision blurs.

The last five minutes slam into him with a renewed clarity, and as fear carves out his chest, all Wilbur can think of is Tommy shoving him down, Tommy curling over him, Tommy putting his body between Wilbur and what he had thought was an explosion.

I’ve got you. You’re okay.

You you you.

Wilbur doesn’t reach for Tommy’s hand, instead pushing himself up on his elbows as his chest heaves.

The shift from panic into anger is swift and messy. The stiff wood of the podim digs into his elbows, igniting a sore ache there, but it only succeeds in riling Wilbur up further. His ears are still ringing, but that doesn’t stop him from starting to crack.

“What was that?” he hisses, heart galloping in his chest.

“Fireworks,” Tommy explains quickly, crouching worriedly when Wilbur doesn’t grab his hand. He angles himself between Wilbur and the crowd and any potential threat and Wilbur burns brighter. “I thought—”

“No,” Wilbur interjects, harsh and blunt, jerking away, and Tommy freezes. “That. You.”

Tommy’s eyes search his face, utterly confused. Somehow, it enrages Wilbur further—that Tommy could do something like that, and not even falter.

Meanwhile, Wilbur is still rattling, and he’s so disoriented that he wouldn’t be surprised if the stage had actually exploded, taking him with it. But the stage must be intact, otherwise Tommy wouldn’t be looking at him with such an unadulterated blend of concern and confusion.

“What do you mean?”

Wilbur exhales heavily, eyes flickering around the stage. He swipes his tongue across his bottom lip, feels where his teeth had sunk into it when Tommy had tackled him to the ground. Copper bursts across his tongue and he feels nauseous.

“What were you trying to do, Tommy?” he manages anyway.

Somehow, this is the only thread of clarity he is able to latch onto.

Tommy’s lips part, uncomprehending. “I— protecting you? Is that— I was making sure you were safe.”

He reaches forward again, and Wilbur jerks away again, still enraged as his heart attempts to crash through his ribcage. And Tommy flinches back again, a wounded look flashing over his face. Wilbur’s words stomp right through it.

“By sacrificing yourself?”

He tries to fling it like an accusation, but he fails, because it isn’t one. It’s just the truth.

It’s the horrible, unfolding truth, and Wilbur is becoming rapidly more and more aware of that.

Tommy just looks at him. “If that’s what it takes, yes.” Then, carefully, eyes narrowed as he leans forward, “That’s my job.”

That’s how Wilbur knows that Tommy sees it—what Wilbur has confronted. What Wilbur, stupidly, did not realise until now.

That Tommy being his guard doesn’t just mean that he will kill for him, but that he is willing to die for him.

And Wilbur—shaking, and heaving, and maybe splintering—doesn’t know if he can take that. At least not now, not like this. He has yet to reorient himself, and his brain is as unkempt and broken as an unwoven tapestry. But he doesn’t get the chance to spiral, because Tommy’s face is hardening. He reaches forward, taking Wilbur’s hand quicker than Wilbur can pull it away.

“Later, Wilbur,” Tommy half-pleads, half-insists under his breath, eyes shooting over his shoulder nervously as he yanks him up, and— oh.

It’s then when Wilbur realises that they are the only ones still on the ground, and people are already staring—his father included. If they don’t get up, Phil will likely feel the need to come over. Wilbur doesn't want that, doesn't want anyone witnessing how utterly undone he feels. So Wilbur is forced to let Tommy drag him to his unsteady feet.

“Thank you,” Tommy whispers, but Wilbur ignores him, heart roaring in his ears, drowning everything out except the panic streaking through him.

Tommy’s face is creased with concern, but Wilbur tears away from it—only offering Phil a nod that he hopes doesn’t betray his internal turmoil as he straightens, shoulders ramrod straight and eyes staring unblinkingly ahead.

And then Phil is laughing graciously for the crowd, and it’s so horribly dissonant against Wilbur’s eardrums that he wants to lose his composure and wince, but he doesn’t. He can’t afford to. He’s the prince.

He’s not sure how much time passes before Phil manages to restore some of the peace, only that it feels like an eternity. He’s hardly aware of what his father says, the shaky jokes he slips into his speech to mask the accident, and only tunes in back when Phil is doling out tense farewells to the gathered townsfolk.

Then, the Guard is closing around him, ushering all of them towards the carriages, and Wilbur piles in wordlessly, curling his limbs towards his body and leaning against the door as they begin the journey back to the castle.

As Wilbur is helped, needlessly, inside the carriage, Tommy attempts to ask him something. Wilbur turns away, gritting his jaw. He doesn’t hear what he says.

He lets the blurry landscape enrapture his focus, lest his thoughts slip back towards dangerous territory. Back towards the podium and the explosion and the way that Tommy’s hands had cradled his head as they’d fallen without hesitation.

(He doesn’t do so much as look at Tommy on the way back.

He doesn’t know how to face him when all his mind sees is a walking gravestone, inscribed with gold.)

— ♕ —

“You said I had a say.”

“I’m not sending him back, Wilbur,” Phil repeats, hard and unrelenting in a way that Wilbur can barely stand looking at. “When I said—”

“Dad, please,” Wilbur tries, as a chasm races across his heart, splitting it open. “Just—”

“No,” Phil nearly exclaims, voice pitching up with his shock. He stares at Wilbur like he’s never seen him before, like he’s crazy, and Wilbur can’t exactly decry that. He feels crazy. He’s never felt more messy, or less like a prince. “Wilbur, son— I don’t get where this is coming from.”

Wilbur’s chest heaves, trying to compensate for the fact that his heart is tearing itself apart, and he exhales harshly, desperately. How does he explain? How can rationalize the shapeless mess his mind has devolved to?

I don’t want Tommy to stay.

I don’t want Tommy to stay because I don’t want him to die.

I don’t want Tommy to stay because I need him to be safe.

But his throat closes, and he can’t bring himself to say it. So he stops trying.

“Forget it,” he mutters, backing up towards the door. “Just— forget it.”

Phil frowns, reaching out, “Wil—”

Wilbur is gone before his father can finish saying his name.

— ♕ —

It becomes as if nothing ever changed.

As if Wilbur had never caved in the library, as if he’d never known Tommy at all. As if he’d never grown to care about him.

This is how it was meant to be, he assures himself, ignoring Tommy’s hopeless expressions each time Wilbur shoulders past him silently. It’s better this way.

For who? a taunting voice wonders, curling in his skull. For you, or for him?

Wilbur, growing better at it with each passing day, ignores it.

It’s the same treatment he’d given Tommy that first week: no more affectionate touches, no more banter, no more anything. Just cold cold cold, inside and out. Except it’s worse, because Wilbur has effectively ripped it away like a limb.

But eventually, Tommy will get the hint—and hopefully, he’ll go to Phil and Phil will send him home and Wilbur will writhe beneath the guilt once he’s done accumulating it for good.

Wilbur ends up being correct in one regard—Tommy does go to someone.

The only issue is that he goes to Technoblade.

“Wilbur,” Techno begins, a week after the speech, and— crap.

Wilbur knows he’s done before Techno has even started. He may be a prince, but Techno is as good as his brother—which means he knows precisely how to get Wilbur to break. He’d done it once before, after all.

“Whatever you did,” Techno continues harshly, and Wilbur is surprised to see that he looks almost mad. “Fix it.”

Wilbur shrinks back, feeling like he’s back in the garden, rose in hand, suffocating in the open air.

He swallows. “I don’t know what you—”

“Yes, you do,” Techno interrupts dryly, crossing his arms. Wilbur’s mouth clicks shut. Techno looks immensely unimpressed. “I didn’t think you were cruel enough to flay him alive.”

Shock runs through Wilbur, who fumbles for words. “What?”

“Tommy wants to know what he did wrong,” Techno informs him, each word careful and deliberate. Nearly bladed, in the underlying sharpness. “So either you figure out what he did and tell him, or send him away yourself. Either way, don’t drag it out.”

The worst part about what Techno is saying is that he isn’t wrong. And Wilbur knows that—if he didn’t, the guilt wouldn’t threaten to cripple him with every hurt look Tommy shoots his way. That doesn’t mean he wants to face it.

“Techno, you don’t understand,” Wilbur breathes, voice dipping down into a plea—

“I think I do,” Techno counters, and there’s a new mercy to his words, just barely. “And I’m still right.”

“Tech—”

“Tell him, Wilbur.”

And then he’s gone, and he doesn’t give Wilbur a rose this time, but Wilbur feels like thorns are digging into him anyway, weaving through his lungs. The pointed pressure wrapping his lungs becomes his only company.

Wilbur only takes a moment to breathe before straightening, adjusting the crown tucked in his brown curls, and going to find Tommy.

— ♕ —

Tommy’s eyes widen, shoulders straightening in surprise, when Wilbur calls his name.

Even just a quiet call of his name is more than Wilbur’s given him all week, and they both know it, which is why Tommy’s eyes quickly narrow into suspicion as Wilbur takes a deep breath and releases it.

“Can I come in?” Wilbur asks lowly.

Tommy nods, a jerky motion that barely qualifies as one—because he’s too focused on the velvet pouch in Wilbur’s hands to do anything but say yes. He backs up, silent and studious. Standing at the end of his bed, muscles stiff and posture rigid, he looks just like he had the day Wilbur met him. Professional and detached.

(Why does the sight of it provoke his heart to ache?)

Finally, though, he has enough of the silence.

“Your Highness—” Tommy begins, voice almost a croak, and—

Wilbur steps forward, saying nothing but cutting him off anyways as he extends the velvet pouch, heaving with coins.

Tommy stares at his hand, at the pouch, but doesn’t so much as move to take it. His eyes flicker up to Wilbur’s face.

“What is this?”

Don’t make me say it, Wilbur almost pleads, resistance starting to crack. But Tommy is resolute, eyes two chips of flint in his skull, and Wilbur can’t give in. He’s the prince—he is (should be) adapted to having difficult conversations.

“Take it,” Wilbur breathes, commands, hearing the coins start to clink as his hand begins to shake. “And run.”

Tommy reels back, back pressing against the corner bedpost of his bed. He looks horrified, and Wilbur knows he provoked every ounce of it, but it doesn’t make it any easier to bear.

“What?”

Wilbur has to stop and take another breath before he loses his wavering composure.

“Take it,” he repeats, dragging out each word so that what he is asking of Tommy is unmistakable. “This can get you anywhere. Take it and go.”

It’s a strange, gutting feeling: the one that rushes through him as he watches the realisation dawn on Tommy’s face. But Tommy doesn’t let himself believe that that’s what Wilbur is asking him, because Wilbur watches the revelation get shuttered away behind a clenched jaw and steely eyes.

“I’m not going anywhere,” Tommy tells him, and his face is harsh but the words are anything but: wavering, and almost scared. “So whatever you’re doing, your Highness, stop.”

Tommy hurls the words at him like acid. Your Highness. It shouldn’t carve through him the way it does.

Wilbur closes his eyes, a shaky breath rattling past his lips. “Tommy.”

“No,” Tommy repeats, harsh and unrelenting. “I’m not leaving, not unless the king himself asks me to. So— so quit.”

He sounds terrified. He is terrified, and Wilbur wonders how he could be so afraid of this—of losing Wilbur—than of losing his own life. It slashes him to ribbons, and all Wilbur wants to do is apologize and hold Tommy and never let go. But he can’t. He can’t because if he does that and loses Tommy, it’ll hurt worse.

This is the only option.

He just wishes, desperately and violently, that Tommy would agree with him.

“Phil said no,” Wilbur grits out, and when he opens his eyes, Tommy’s expression has morphed into that of utter betrayal.

He masks it quickly, but not quickly enough. Not when Wilbur has spent the last few weeks teaching himself to care about the kid.

“Well, good,” Tommy grits out, hands curling into anxious fists at his side. “He clearly knows what he’s talking about.”

Wilbur sighs. “Tommy.”

“Is this about the speech?” Tommy blurts, words moving fast and clumsy, and only gaining more speed when he sees Wilbur flinch. “About me protecting you?”

“Tommy,” Wilbur pleads, heart palpitating against his ribs.

“Because I don’t regret it,” Tommy continues, as if his words aren’t striking knives into Wilbur’s lungs. “That’s my job.”

“Your job is to defend me,” Wilbur counters, squeezing his fist painfully tightly around the pouch in his hand. “Not—”

“My job is to make sure your princey-ass makes it to your coronation,” Tommy spits, crossing his arms—as if that’s enough to disguise the shake consuming his hands. “And if that means getting hurt—”

Wilbur breaks.

Something in his chest gives, something flashes across his vision, blurry and blinding, and all he can do is shout, loud enough to tear up his throat, to rattle the walls—

“Damn it, Tommy! I don’t want you to die for me!”

Silence falls so quickly that it rings. Tommy stares at him as the words settle like a dark, pestiferous cloud over the room, suffocating both of them. Wilbur expects that fate, and he accepts it.

He doesn’t expect for Tommy to inhale, eyes flashing, and then— to shout right back.

“That’s not your decision to make, Wilbur!”

His face is red, and he’s breathing hard—just like Wilbur. The outburst quickly fades into potent frustration, and he curls his hands back into fists.

“I don’t—” Tommy pants, breathless, “I don’t get why you care so much.”

If it were possible, Wilbur would break further.

“Because I care about you, Tommy!”

Everything goes still.

Tommy freezes and Wilbur’s lungs deflate and all he can think is, How do you not know?

How can Tommy possibly not see why Wilbur is tearing himself apart? How is it not glaringly obvious? He’s lost his grace, handed every ounce of his regality to Tommy on a silver platter to do this, and yet, it’s not enough.

It should be. He thought it had been, but clearly he is wrong, because Tommy just stops, shaking in place. He fixes Wilbur with an impossibly young look, and that’s when Wilbur realises that Tommy didn’t know.

“What?” he whispers, confirming Wilbur’s suspicions.

Wilbur exhales through his nose, scrubbing an anxious hand through his hair. The sharpest edges of his anger soften.

But not all of it. Not when he can’t get that look out of his head. That look of utter acceptance on Tommy’s face, as smoke had filled the square and he’d braced to die. Tommy hadn’t even hesitated.

That’s enough to tug the fragile words right out of Wilbur’s mouth.

“Look, I— I care about you. And— you’re so young. Young enough to be my little brother.” The words are so soft that they sting Wilbur’s tongue to say them. “I don’t want you to die. Not for me.”

Tommy just stares at him, with something like pity. “It’s what I’m meant to do.”

Wilbur shakes his head. “Nobody is meant to die.”

Tommy laughs under his breath, but there’s nothing mirthful about it. “Maybe not. Maybe in another life, I could’ve had a family. I never would’ve become a knight at all. But that’s not the case.” He shrugs half-heartedly, throat bobbing. “This is how it’s meant to be.”

How it’s meant to be. As if Wilbur’s father hadn’t chosen him. As if anything of this was supposed to happen—as if Wilbur wanted any of this.

But now he has it. And God, he wants. He wants in every way that a prince with a crown to fill shouldn’t. In every way that a soon-king whose kingdom is under fire shouldn’t.

“That’s not fair,” Wilbur whispers.

All he can do is whisper. It’s too heavy of a decree to allow his voice to rise.

“Maybe not to a prince,” Tommy offers gently. Protecting Wilbur yet again—this time, from fate and candor itself. “But life’s not fair when you’re a nobody.”

Wilbur whips his head up, because that’s enough to jolt him. His eyes are shining, but if they’re wet, Tommy doesn’t say anything.

“You’re not a nobody,” Wilbur protests weakly. “You’re—”

Everything.

Tommy scoffs, raising a tentative eyebrow. “Part of my job is not being particularly memorable, Wilbur. You can say it.”

And for some reason, Wilbur’s attention is diverted. Now all Wilbur can focus on is how easily Tommy says his name. How clear it is that he trusts him in return. And, belatedly, how stupid he is for trying to break this.

(But I have to, a desperate, shaking voice pleads in his skull. Better by choice than by the sharp edge of a dagger.)

He is a prince. He can’t afford to have weaknesses so gold and glaring. That’s why he’s getting rid of it. For both of their sakes.

But it’s as if Tommy is reading the turmoil swirling in his head, because he cuts him off again without trying.

“I think,” Tommy begins carefully, watching Wilbur’s wrecked form closely, “that you’re trying to protect me, or— or something. And I get that, Wilbur, but you can’t protect me like this. I’m not running.”

“Why not?” Wilbur asks, genuinely begging, because he doesn’t understand him.

But Tommy only smiles wryly. “This is what I want to do, Wil. If your version of protecting me is sending me out of the line of fire—” A flinch runs minutely through him, “—then mine is making sure I can get you out of it.”

He cracks a grin, and it’s almost genuine this time—almost enough to penetrate the shapeless haze of worry and anger and guilt enveloping Wilbur. Almost.

“If you didn’t want me to get attached, you shouldn’t have stopped being a dick,” Tommy drawls, shocking a wet laugh right out of Wilbur. “I’m in too deep now.”

Wilbur isn’t sure if he’s imagining the faint shine of tears in Tommy’s eyes, but he wouldn’t be surprised. Terror still clings to his face, flushed red with exertion. Terror that Wilbur put there.

God, he thinks. This is a mess.

Tommy seems to share this same wave of exhaustion, because he sinks down until he’s sitting against the bed, knees tucked loosely against his chest. Wilbur is silently, weaving through his scrambled thoughts, but Tommy seems content enough to keep talking.

“I just want a chance to live before I die, you know?” His eyes are two tempests, unseeing as he stares at the floor between his feet. “People don’t really get that, where I’m from. Too busy surviving and all that.” He lifts his head, meets Wilbur’s eyes: fractured blue on fractured brown. “At least this way, my life means something.”

He thinks of the courtyard grass and broken melodies and the way that Tommy had told the story of his life. He thinks of how badly Tommy had wanted a purpose. As if plain indulgence was unfathomable.

Wilbur holds Tommy’s gaze, grateful that he’s able to keep himself somewhat-intact. If anything betrays his composure, it’s his voice—still horribly brittle, fragile. Unable to do more than croak, in a way that sounds like a plea—

“...and you have to die to do that?”

Tommy blinks and there’s something startlingly hopeless on his face. Something like resignation. Something like grief.

“I don’t want to die, Wilbur.”

Wilbur swallows, holding his gaze steadily. He wishes he could sink down to the floor too, but he’s not convinced that he’d be able to keep going if he relaxed. Especially as Tommy continues, voice low and raspy.

“But dying to protect you, well. That would mean more than the rest of my life has so far.”

How? Wilbur’s mind screams, a hopeless chorus. How could that ever be true? Because I’m a prince? Because I have a crown?

His next words are nowhere near as passionate.

“It doesn’t have to be like that,” Wilbur tells him quietly. “I can send you anywhere.”

Tommy hums a confused sound.

“I mean it,” Wilbur stresses, straightening. This is what he does—he fixes things with declarations and signatures. Tommy just looks at him. “Anywhere you want to go, anywhere in the world— Name a place. I’ll pay. You can go, travel—you can live.”

Tommy holds his gaze for a moment, face oddly intense, before it breaks into a soft, barely-there smile as he looks away. “You and I both know that’s not possible.”

Wilbur frowns. “Why not?”

“Because I’m a knight, Wilbur. It’s my job—”

“And I’m the king,” Wilbur interjects, a touch harshly, taking a few steps forward—

Tommy blinks at him, before leaning back. “I believe his Majesty Philza is, actually. And even if you could—”

“I can—”

“I wouldn’t go. The Empire is all I’ve ever known. I don’t know if I could leave.”

Wilbur has had tutors all his life. He’s studied beneath the kingdom’s finest. He’s read the history books, the classics, the poems and ballads. He’s bantered with the elite and torn them down just the same.

He’s hardly met anything he couldn’t dissect: whether into answers or flowery words. But Tommy?

Wilbur doesn’t understand him. Doesn’t understand how someone could face his own mortality so readily. For a stranger.

“And hey,” Tommy adds, eyes shining as he wipes the side of his hand against his face. “Don’t be so… pestamissic. I’m here because I’m good at living, aren’t I? There’s no rule that says I have to die protecting you at all.”

“Pessimistic,” Wilbur murmurs, to cover up the gnawing feeling in his chest.

“You and your fancy words,” Tommy grumbles, smile stretching towards something bright. “My point still stands. You can’t get rid of me so easily. I’m like your… royally assigned problem.”

“You’re not a problem,” Wilbur retorts instantly—and that, at least, is something he doesn’t doubt the truth of.

His mind might be a jumbled, shapeless mess, but this rings true.

Tommy squints at him, looking totally thrown, before he frowns. “You’ve got to stop saying things like that, Wilbur. Otherwise I’ll start thinking you mean it.”

“Why wouldn’t I mean it?” Wilbur asks, and he manages something approaching a smile, despite the fact that he can hardly feel his face. “Did you think I did all this for nothing?”

Tommy scoffs, eyes glimmering. “I think you did all this because you were scared. And now it’s all coming back to you how much of an idiot you were.”

Wilbur blinks at him. Then blinks some more. Then some more for good measure.

“I don’t… like you.”

Tommy blinks at him right back, then laughs. “That shouldn’t make me feel better, but it does.”

Wilbur snorts, hardly audible, and his chest is suddenly so light he could collapse right there.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers. “I just—”

“I get it,” Tommy interjects, just the right amount of harsh to be firm while retaining a certain level of gentleness. “Don’t do it again though. Just because you’re a prince doesn’t mean you can just demand—”

Wilbur’s eyes widen. “It wasn’t— it wasn’t like that—”

“It felt like it,” Tommy intones, almost a drawl. “Because you didn’t tell me anything all week.” Before Wilbur’s guilt has a chance to flood out of him, likely followed by a messy chain of words, Tommy adds, “You would think for a prince, you’d have better social skills.”

Wilbur flushes. “Why do you insist on being insolent? I’m trying to apol—”

Tommy groans. “If you’re going to insult me, at least use words I understand. Prick.”

But rather than rise to the bait that Tommy is draping in front of him, all Wilbur can do is smile.

“I’ll make this up to you,” Wilbur vows, mind still churning and churning. Tommy needs to know that he is sorry, though. “I promise.”

“Starting by never asking me to leave again?” Tommy questions, and though his face isn’t overtly accusatory, there’s a certain sharpness in his voice, demanding honesty.

And Wilbur may be the Crown Prince, but he thinks he’ll give that to Tommy. He’s so unravelled that he thinks he’d give about anything.

Ask me for my kingdom, a sliver of his heart decrees. Let me give it to you.

But he thinks he has one more thing to ask of Tommy, before he can sling away the rest of his grace.

“Only,” he begins, balling his fists, “if you promise not to put yourself between me and an attack—” Tommy’s eyes flash with protest, shoulders bristling beneath stiff epaulets, but Wilbur continues, voice pitching up, “—unless it’s necessary. I mean it.” Then, wavering, “I can’t lose you.”

He wonders if anyone has ever said that to Tommy. Or if he’d lost them first. If his family, if the people who were supposed to, had never had the chance.

“Fine,” Tommy agrees softly, and then he’s tilting his head, utterly soft. “Can I have a hug now, or are you going to keep wallowing and make me stand and do it myself?”

Just like that, Wilbur’s heart remembers how to beat properly again.

And as Wilbur pulls Tommy into his arms, squeezing tighter than his stiff clothing wants to allow, he can’t help but wonder how he ever could’ve imagined letting this go.

— ♕ —

Techno was right, but Wilbur will never admit it.

Rather he sends for a maid, and asks her to clear his schedule for the rest of the day. He’s too wrung out to manage much today, and he thinks Phil will understand.

“I’m napping,” Wilbur announces, collapsing onto his bed. “Join me or don’t. But we’re not working today.”

“I’m always working,” Tommy grumbles, but he climbs up onto Wilbur’s bed anyway.

Wilbur had worried, briefly, that he’d sown an unbreachable chasm between them—on most occasions, he doesn’t tend to speak in less than grandiosity, it’s just his nature, which means he deals in extremes—but it seems that Tommy is as content to move past this as Wilbur is, because he falls easily back into his typical insufferable demeanor.

“Move your dumb leg,” he hisses, kicking at Wilbur’s duvet, tangling it around his ankle. “I’m trying to sleep.”

Wilbur shuffles to the side, but not before flashing Tommy an unimpressed scowl. “You are welcome to return to your own room, if you wish.”

Tommy snorts, shoving at his arm—as if it was even in the way.

“I don’t wish,” he informs him raptly. “And you can’t kick me out, or I’ll be sad.”

Wilbur considers that. Then, he blinks, turning fully on his side to appraise him. “Are you trying to guilt trip me?”

Tommy grins, crooked and familiar in a way that Wilbur misses even though it’s right in front of him. “Maybe. Is it working?”

Wilbur huffs, even though he almost offers an agreement. Instead, he shoves through it, because Tommy cannot continue to topple him further.

“I could probably count this as some form of treason if I wanted to, you know. Father would probably let me.”

“I thought rulers were supposed to be benevolent and just.”

“This would be just,” Wilbur remarks dryly. “A public service, even. The kingdom would shower me in gratitude.”

Tommy scowls, slapping at him. Always a shade gently, always pulling punches that Wilbur can bear, but still— Tommy.

“Yeah, yeah, whatever you say, Your Royal Priss.”

Wilbur groans, even as he feels pieces of himself click into place—the way they never quite do when he’s wearing his crown, whether alone or surrounded by nobles. He is a whole, even as Tommy pulls him in unfamiliar directions.

If Tommy is a sunbeam, then Wilbur is a broken mirror: fractured shards maneuvered around to refract the light in new ways. He doesn’t mind it. So much so, in this ephemeral moment, that he can’t summon too many complaints as Tommy’s foot connects with his shin again.

“Rest Tommy,” he tells him, tiredly. It’s a good tired, he reckons. Tired like a stretched bowstring, tired like sore, overused muscles after a good hunt. Tired like a heartbeat, finding temporary peace. “I’ll be here when you wake.”

That seems to calm him.

Eventually, Tommy stops his incessant shuffling and shifting, and Wilbur sighs, letting his eyes fall closed. They lay neatly side by side, like two estranged flowers laid over the same burial plot.

Or perhaps, less grimly, like two brothers, finally reunited.

Yes. Wilbur likes that much better.

— ♕ —

Wilbur doesn’t know why his father had sent for a special seamstress just to outfit him for one night, but he wishes he hadn’t.

Coronation or not, Niki does just fine. And she is less likely to prod him with needles, the way this woman is doing now as she dutifully takes his measurements.

He has half a mind to set his mouth into motion and dismiss her altogether, but Tommy is watching over them—as he always does—and Wilbur finds that this mounting annoyance is dampened in his presence. He doesn’t mind being subject to an uncomfortable fitting if it means that Tommy can’t make fun of him later for being uptight.

(Even if he does find himself wondering whether his seamstress has mistaken the prince for her pincushion.)

“Which one?” the seamstress asks, startling him out of his own mind.

Wilbur blinks and she’s in front of him again, holding out scraps of red fabric of different shades and textures for him to choose from. Wilbur hadn’t caught her name between the barrage of questions she’d been firing at him throughout the session, and he doesn’t have a chance to ask again as he’s presented with yet another one.

This one, however, makes him pause. Hadn’t he and Niki decided on blue? Wilbur frowns, a faint furrow scribbled between his brows as he brushes his fingers across a square of carmine velvet.

“For which part, again?” he asks—or rather, intends on asking.

But he’s barely opened his mouth before Tommy is shouting something, and then his seamstress is being tackled to the ground.

Wilbur flinches, stumbling back so quickly that he trips off of the short fitting platform, back knocking against the wall as his knight pins the woman to the floor.

He doesn’t know how Tommy had seen the knife, but Wilbur doesn’t see it until the lady is hitting the floor with a grunt, with Tommy on top of her like anger reincarnated. The dagger goes flying from her hand, skittering across the tile, and Wilbur gasps, all of the air stolen from his lungs.

Oh, he thinks distantly, as the crimson scraps of fabric he’d been offered to peruse flutter menacingly to the floor. Oh.

Then, reality slams into him with a new vigour as he watches Tommy be flung backward by a frantic kick. He rolls, and he seems no less determined when he whips his head up with a feral grimace, but Wilbur panics.

Suddenly, as the rebel manages to clasp desperate fingers over a second blade and pull herself to her feet, Wilbur’s heart yanks him forward. She swings the blade down, right at Tommy’s face—Tommy’s face, his brother’s face, so open and accepting, so earnest and hungry for death—and Wilbur reacts.

He slams clumsily into the woman’s side before the blade can strike Tommy’s skin, knocking her away. Wilbur hadn’t come up with a plan for what happens after that, because if he had, he might’ve been able to dodge the dagger when it comes slashing at him next. But he doesn’t.

All he hears is Tommy’s strangled cry as heat slices across his upper arm, a wicked gash drawn in its wake.

He hardly feels it at first—only feels his body instinctively launching him away from the weapon—and then he feels it all at once. A gasp tears from his lips and he hunches over despite all logic, fingers scrambling to press over the cut.

He should die here. Wilbur recognizes that swiftly and vacantly. He should die here and now, to the blade he’d placed himself in front of, because the seamstress is exultant and victorious and preparing to strike again, and Tommy is too far away to stop her, isn’t he?

He should be. But against all odds, as Wilbur braces for the bittersweet sting of the blade to carry him somewhere he can’t come back from, Tommy is there, lunging to his feet with a violent sort of anger that Wilbur only barely sees as his eyes fall shut and—

This time, when Tommy takes the rebel to the ground, she doesn’t get back up.

Wilbur doesn’t know whether to feel nauseated or satisfied as she hits the ground and goes horribly still. At least until he feels his arm throb and thinks of Tommy—it’s always Tommy, isn’t it?—and then the satisfaction burns any hesitance away. He exhales heavily as he takes a few steps backward, lungs rattling and convulsing as he clutches at his own arm.

His hands come away bloody the first time he draws them away from his ripped sleeve, and Wilbur blinks at the crimson coating his fingers like a glove. Then, he looks up, sees Tommy press the rebel into the tile with perhaps a little bit more force than he strictly needs to, and the pain melts to the background of his thoughts.

“Tommy,” Wilbur croaks, still reeling but needing to ground Tommy before he can shake and shake until he combusts and topples the room with the force of his potent anxieties. Wilbur has never seen him look like this. “I’m fine. She’s subdued.”

As if remembering his existence, Tommy jerks his head up. Instantly, Wilbur can tell that he is furious, eyes smoldering in his skull like two drops of blue fire and— well. Wilbur didn’t account for this. For anger.

To be fair, he hadn’t accounted for a lot when he’d moved, had only thought of keeping Tommy safe, consequences be damned.

In that moment, he had understood that look on Tommy’s face on the village podium more than he ever had before. In that moment, he understood how something so sinister as death could seem so sweet and tempting. In that moment, nothing had mattered besides the distance between Wilbur and Tommy and the knife and how long it would take to breach it.

And Tommy takes that about as well as Wilbur did.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” he tries to shout, rising to his feet so quickly he nearly trips beneath the prone form sprawled beneath him. “What were you thinking?”

“Tommy—” Wilbur tries to plead, wishing he could summon the energy to sound sincere. But how can he be? He’d saved Tommy, and he hadn’t died in the process. He’d won. How can he be repentant over that? “Don’t—”

“No,” Tommy spits, and it’s only when he’s fully upright and stalking forward does Wilbur realise he’s shaking. “No, no, you don’t get to do that.”

“Tommy—”

“That’s my job— my job to get hurt, not— not you, never you, why—”

“Tommy,” Wilbur repeats, and by now, Tommy has moved close enough for Wilbur to reach out and lay his hands across his trembling shoulders. He has to let go of his bloody upper arm to do it, but he manages. “Tommy, it’s okay. It’s okay.”

“It’s not okay,” Tommy counters swiftly, brokenly, and oh, he’s panicking. He’s panicking even as he burns the room down with how overwhelmingly angry he is. “It’s not— you’re an idiot, you know that?”

He’s yelling, but his eyes aren’t focusing. There’s a strange vacancy to them, like he’s seeing something else, something not quite here, something probably violent and macabre, and Wilbur realises that it’s his turn to aid Tommy. Now.

“I’m bleeding,” Wilbur blurts out, and Tommy freezes so quickly that he looks like he’s been struck, flame snuffed out. “Are you going to keep yelling at me, or make sure I don’t die?”

It’s a low blow, more of a punch than any sort of attempt at reeling him back down to the ground, but it works. Wilbur watches focus take over Tommy’s expression, battling back the terror-laced fury. Oddly enough, it’s a whirlpool of emotions that are familiar, and much easier to recognize on Tommy’s face than they had been when they were consuming Wilbur.

“Shit, fuck, bitch,” Tommy swears, and it’s more violent and colorful than anything Wilbur has heard from him yet. But now he’s moving quicker, practically running to Wilbur’s side and slapping a trembling palm over Wilbur’s wound. “I’ve got you, Wil. You’re fine.”

“I’m fine,” Wilbur agrees weakly, even as the barrier dampening the pain dissipates. All at once, he’s hit with the true reality of the last five minutes. His arm burns, and his head is startlingly light. His crown is nearly heavy enough against the new levity to make him tilt forward. “I’m fine.”

He doesn’t know if even he believes that all the way, because his heart is racing and with the flare of satisfaction gone, he has to confront his own panic. But as far as Tommy is concerned, he’s fine.

Tommy just grits his teeth and says nothing, dragging Wilbur close. He keeps his grip on Wilbur’s bloody bicep steady and unrelenting, like he’s attempting to fuse his palm to Wilbur’s sleeve. Wilbur lets him, if only because of the sight of Tommy looking so… rattled twists his stomach up more than he’d like to admit.

Tommy leads him to the doorway of the room with the same messy desperation of storm. He won’t look at Wilbur, eyes lasered straight ahead, and Wilbur is willing to let him rage silently, a hurricane contained, if that’s what he wants—until he hears a sniffle.

Horror whips through him, cutting over the bone-deep ache of his arm, and Wilbur turns. Tommy’s jaw—gritted and chiseled out of stone—is wobbling. Wilbur catches a single tear streaking down his chin, and suddenly, he feels gutted. Guilt sinks claws into his chest, though he hasn’t the slightest idea where it’s coming from. All he knows is that Tommy is clinging to Wilbur’s arm like a child, because he is one, and Wilbur feels sick.

“Tommy…” Wilbur begins, words cracked and brittle.

“You’re an idiot,” is all Tommy hisses out, not even looking at him. “You’re an idiot.”

They break out into the hallway, and it’s good luck on Tommy’s part (and awful misfortune on Wilbur’s, who wants a moment to talk) that there are three members of the Guard at the end of the hall: Sam, Puffy, and Techno.

When Tommy sees Technoblade, he straightens. Wilbur glances over, and it’s like a marble statue has replaced his knight.

Tommy’s eyes are red, sure, but the tears are gone. He closes his expression off startingly easily, and Wilbur is shocked at the vacancy of it. He could be made of stone, a suit of armor on Wilbur’s shoulder and a far cry from the way he’s supposed to be: light captured in the lanky, sharp-edged form of a teenage boy.

He supposes it’s unrealistic to expect that Tommy would be okay after any of this, but it’s still surprising how rapidly and absolutely he is able to lock himself away behind his typical demeanor. Shocking in the way that a lightning strike is. He could see millions and still falter at each blinding burst of light, flashing across his eyes.

Wilbur wants, in a childish way that he attributes to his general disorientation, and the amount of blood soaking his sleeve, for time to stop. He just wants a second: a second to breathe, a second to talk. A second to try to find and soothe the invisible fractures arcing over his guard.

“Wilbur?” Techno asks, some faint horror flashing over his face as he surges toward them. It’s quickly replaced with a stony sort of anger, hard like magma. “What the hell happened?”

He frets over Wilbur, but he’s asking Tommy. And Tommy, ever dutiful, obliges him.

“In there,” Tommy informs him curtly, jutting his chin toward the door. “A rebel.”

Techno doesn’t need to say a word before Sam and Puffy, flanking him with mirrored expressions of steel, are off—bounding into the other room. Wilbur, perhaps foolishly, expects for this to be the moment where things can be explained, but it’s not. Rather, Tommy is stepping away from Wilbur, and his clinging hands redirect to flatten over Wilbur’s back.

“Take him,” Tommy instructs quickly, pushing Wilbur forward. “He needs help.”

Wilbur only makes it half a step before he stumbles directly into Technoblade’s concern, but he doesn’t let Techno drag him away. He doesn’t want to be swept off to the infirmary, not just yet. Not when that means he’ll be shrouded in saccharine concern and prodded for hours. Not when that means he’ll be stuck without Tommy.

Tommy stiffens as his sleeve is seized by Wilbur’s grasping fingertips, a weak but effective attempt at keeping him in place.

“You will accompany me,” he manages to get out, locking eyes with Tommy determinedly. “Tommy, please.”

Tommy bristles, shoots a fleeting glance at Techno, but nods stiffly. “Fine.”

It’s then, when Tommy hardly protests—swallowing down the only glimpse of hesitation that Wilbur is able to catch beneath a grimace and dull eyes—that Wilbur realises he may have crossed some sort of line. Tommy is angrier than he expected, but Wilbur is dimly able to appreciate a silver lining in Tommy’s anger.

Tommy being enraged by him means that he’s alive to do so. The time that Wilbur will need to spend groveling for forgiveness is worth more to him than the time it would take to carve an epigraph into a tombstone.

And that, Wilbur thinks almost selfishly, as his arm stings with a new fury, is all that matters for now.

— ♕ —

For his credit, Tommy doesn’t ignore him.

He’d seemed angry enough to do so, to leave Wilbur in the infirmary alone with his father and Techno, and part of Wilbur had expected Tommy to do so after he’d finished explaining what had happened—

(“It was my mistake,” Tommy had admitted, voice low and dripping with sticky guilt. “I shouldn’t have—”

“I did it myself,” Wilbur interjected quickly. “Tommy tried to stop me but I got in the way. On purpose.”

“Wilbur,” Phil had hissed, utterly horrified. “Why—”

“It doesn’t matter,” Wilbur interrupted again, recognizing the panic inscribed on Tommy’s face and wanting, desperately, to get rid of it. He figured Phil could lecture him another time. For now— “Drop it. Please.”)

—but Tommy doesn’t leave him.

Rather, he drops himself into a chair in the corner of the room, folding his arms over his chest and watching the doctor wrap Wilbur’s arm. With each wince and hiss of pain that the gentle ministrations draw out of him, Tommy flinches with him. Wilbur catches him doing it and tries to cage his reactions but it’s difficult.

The injury isn’t even particularly fatal. It’s a shallow cut, hardly a gash. But the way that Tommy reacts makes it seem worse.

The guilt threatens to return then, but Wilbur swallows it down. He can’t bring himself to feel totally guilty. He’d done what he’d done for a reason, regardless of the fact that, at the time, he’d hardly taken the time to think it out.

(Wilbur doesn’t dare express that though. Not when every time he catches Tommy’s eye, the concern circling his arctic irises is swiftly replaced with thinly-veiled frustration.)

Also to his credit—Tommy waits until Wilbur is completely patched up before attacking him.

“You’re an idiot,” he breathes into Wilbur’s shoulder, losing his rigidity and scrambling onto the bed the minute that the doctor, Phil, and Techno have fled the room. Wilbur grunts as Tommy butts his head into Wilbur’s good shoulder, but he only leans back against the pillows and wraps an arm around Tommy’s shoulders, letting him take up the space at Wilbur’s side. He figures he owes him that much. “You’re an idiot.”

Wilbur cracks a hesitant grin, hand coming up to scrape his fingertips over Tommy’s scalp. He’s careful—he doesn’t want to push Tommy too far. But Tommy doesn’t stiffen. Rather, he leans into him.

“I think you’ve told me that a dozen times,” Wilbur breathes quietly.

Tommy looks up, irises fractured around his pupils. “Because you are.” Then, losing his softness and jerking back, as if reminded of why they are sitting where they are, “What the hell were you thinking?”

I wasn’t, Wilbur would answer, if he felt like facing his knight’s wrath.

“I was thinking of you,” Wilbur answers finally, and Tommy shrinks back. “You promised you—”

“That was necessary,” Tommy argues instantly, and his tone leaves no room for argument but Wilbur finds room anyways. “It was.”

“Tommy—”

“You can’t do that,” Tommy continues, and his hand finds Wilbur’s, squeezing tightly. “You can’t.”

Wilbur straightens, fully prepared to explain what he can and can’t do, and how it’s not Tommy’s choice to make, until—

“Wilbur,” Tommy snaps, and there’s a feral sort of bite to his tone that washes away Wilbur’s orotund arguments. His mouth snaps shut. “You don’t get it. You can’t do that.”

Wilbur blinks at him, ignoring the pressure around his heart. He feels it, prodding at him, a dam about to break. But he doesn’t acknowledge it. This is a flood he’s been ignoring; this is a flood he can afford to avoid. Can’t he?

“Think for a second, Wilbur,” Tommy bites out, words whipping through him. “You are a prince. You’re the Crown Prince.” Wilbur goes still, breath frosting over beneath the chill that falls over him. Tommy doesn’t waver. “You are the only claim to the throne. You have people depending on you, who need you to live. Don’t you understand that?”

Wilbur lifts his chin, shifting uncomfortably in place. “Of course I do.”

“Then you have to understand why you can’t die, and why I can.” Wilbur’s chest seizes, but Tommy just presses on, harsh and unrelenting. “It doesn’t matter how unfair it is. That is how it works. That is how it has to be.”

Tommy scoffs, running a nervous hand through his rumpled hair. “If I die tomorrow, then what happens? Nothing.” Wilbur flinches. “If you die? The kingdom will grieve like they know you. They’ll throw parades, they’ll name a festival after you. They’ll care.”

They won’t care about me, he doesn’t say, perhaps to spare Wilbur the mercy of hearing the truth put so sharply and blatantly. Wilbur hears it anyways, and his illusion of peace cuts him to pieces as it shatters around him. They need you.

“Tommy…”

“It’s not like that for me,” Tommy finishes, low and raspy. “You can dance around it all you want, but that’s the truth. I am replaceable. My death will not cripple a kingdom.” He tilts his head, eyes harsh. “Please tell me you understand.” When Wilbur says nothing, Tommy’s grip on his hand tightens into a vice. “Wilbur, please. Don’t—” And his voice breaks over his next words, “Don’t make this harder on me. Just let me do my job.”

It goes against every fiber of Wilbur’s being. To bend where he wants to push, to break where he’s supposed to remain intact. To give where he is supposed to take.

But he can’t. Because Tommy is right. And Wilbur, selfishly, wants to hate him for it.

Give me a shield, he thinks, in a flowery way that he’d never voice. Give me a brother. Give me anything but a crown.

“Okay,” he whispers, and it grates against his trachea, but he gets it out. “I get it.”

Tommy melts, tension bleeding out of him all at once.

“Thank you,” he breathes, falling into him once more. “Thank you.”

Wilbur remains quiet, because how can he let Tommy thank him for accepting his skin as a shield? He knows if he were to part his lips, the sound that would emerge would not be pleasant, and it would not be as gracious as Tommy wants. So instead, he sinks back down against the pillows, tilting his head up towards the ceiling as he exhales through his mouth.

His heart feels like an anchor, buried in his chest. It used to feel grounding—keeping him focused and aligned as he navigated his royal duties. Now, it just feels like it’s dragging him down. And he can’t stop it—any more than he can stop raging storms or the pull of gravity or the withering of an old rose.

“I’m still mad,” Tommy mumbles into his shoulder, and Wilbur thinks it’s supposed to be pointed, but it only feels soft. Maybe that’s the dim, golden lighting of the infirmary, dulling everything into calmer strokes, or maybe it’s just because he’s tired, as wrung out as Wilbur. “If you ever do something like that again—”

“I won’t,” Wilbur says. “I won’t.”

It’s not a lie, because Wilbur doesn’t really know if that’s the case. He can’t deny the fear that had surged through him when that blade had sliced through him. But he also can’t deny how badly his heart wants him to shove past it, again and again. As long as it would take. But—

He can’t afford to keep doing that. If he dies, his death will fuel fires, will stoke bloodshed. The rebels want his head on a spike for a reason. He can’t afford to treat his life like less than it is: a title and a signal of hope before a beating heart and warm blood.

But in the same breath, he can’t afford to lose Tommy.

An unstoppable object, he thinks bitterly. Meets an immovable force.

It leaves Wilbur with few choices that don’t shred him to pieces to consider. The only viable option? To go around. He’ll keep both: his position and his– and Tommy. He will.

“I’m glad you’re okay,” Tommy finishes, gentle and aureate, unaware that Wilbur’s mind has travelled galaxies away. “That’s all that matters.”

Wilbur hums something that he hopes vaguely resembles an agreement. He’s too busy promising, vowing—to the universe, Death itself—that he will keep this. He will.

(It’s the only option he has.)

— ♕ —

“Hey, Tommy,” Wilbur begins a few days later, keeping his smile tucked carefully away, pinched between his teeth, digging into his cheek.

“Yes?”

“What were you saying, a few weeks ago? About what you would do if you were me?”

Tommy perks up, losing the faint suspicion he’d summoned. “If I lived here?” Wilbur nods, stilted and indulgent. Then, anticipating with a tinge of breathlessness, “The banisters?”

“The banisters,” Wilbur agrees, honey dripping off his smile. He tilts his head, meeting Tommy’s curiosity dead-on. “You think you can show me?”

Tommy blinks. He seems to realise that Wilbur is offering both a bit of fun as well as an olive branch. Silently, he takes it. And as he does, a dangerously mischievous smile crawls across his face.

“Wilbur,” he begins, voice pitching up, nearly booming. He hardly looks like a guard, beneath that childish smile. That’s exactly what Wilbur wants. He doesn’t think they’ll have many moments like this left, as his coronation grows ever closer. “I would love to.”

His heart squeezes, thoughts buttery and honeyed and softer than his crown has ever typically allowed. But Tommy is the brightest solace Wilbur has ever found. And if he can’t do anything else, he at least intends to keep him that way.

It’s what brothers do, don’t they?

(Wilbur doesn’t really… know.

He’s an only child. His closest friend is the general of his soon-to-be army. And being the prince means he is born with another layer of isolation, isolation that is unique to airy rooms and castle bricks and grand halls that are as wide and spacious as they are suffocating.

But for Tommy, he thinks he can try to figure out what it means.

And also for himself, because he wants to.

Even despite the rebels and the attacks and the horrible shadow of death, draped between them. Even despite all of that. Wilbur wants a brother.

And call him spoiled, call him pretentious, call him all the rotten things that his crown earns him, but he always gets what he wants.

So Wilbur, revelling in the new balance he is attempting to create—pretending that it’s not as fragile and unpredicting as it is—smiles back.

Chapter Text

Wilbur has been king for thirty minutes, and the castle is falling.

Chaos consumes the throne room, an ungovernable wildfire of red bandanas and silver blades. It’s only by pure luck and Tommy that he is able to make it away from the fight breaking out. Still, he stumbles: the euphoria from finally claiming his title replaced with a marrow-deep fear that deteriorates him.

Fear that this is it, that they’ve lost. Fear because he was torn away from Technoblade’s side, from his father’s side. Fear because the rebels are attacking and his ankle had sprained during the initial spark—slowing his escape—and fear because his coronation is in flames.

Nestled in his curls, Wilbur’s new crown feels worthless. Worse than worthless, it’s as good as a target, in all its gold, emerald-encrusted glory. He doesn’t have time to toss it aside, though, because Tommy is tugging on his arm and pulling him towards safety, if such a thing exists anymore, and all Wilbur can do is run.

His shoes slap unevenly against the throne room tile as the walls shake and shake and shake. His head spins, ears ringing with echoes of explosions as smoke stings his nose and eyes. His chest aches, lungs convulsing.

Every step he takes sends a bolt of white-hot fire up his ankle to his calf, repeatedly stealing his breath, and between all of this, it’s all he can do to keep going.

(It’s almost amusing. He thought he’d have more time before his rule was baptized with blood.)

“This way!” Tommy yells over the noise, arm fit snugly around Wilbur’s shoulder. “There’s—”

Boom!

Something explodes near their feet, and the world pitches to the side.

Wilbur gasps as he’s flung into the air. His body hits the floor limply and brokenly, pain skittering up every limb as all the air is shoved from his lungs at once. He thinks his head might’ve cracked against the marble, but he loses every sense of orientation too quickly for him to tell. Exhaling out something resembling a whine, he curls his arms up near his head, blinking lethargically.

He hardly has time to comprehend the heat curling over him and receding just as quickly, sulfurous gunpowder heavy in the air, before there’s a presence at his side. Frantic hands pat over his torso, ghost over the back of his head, slide up to cup his cheek.

Wilbur blinks again.

Tommy’s face, etched with concern and streaked with soot, appears in front of him: blurry and abstract and hard for Wilbur’s unfocused eyes to grasp. He’s yelling something that Wilbur can’t hear. And though Wilbur thinks he sees his lips form the shape of his name, he can’t be sure. He’s hardly sure of anything, really.

Once Tommy realises that—that the words coming out of his mouth aren’t pervading Wilbur’s eardrums—he swallows hard, throat bobbing fearfully.

Wilbur is able to catch a flash of his frown, the way his lips tighten into a firm line, and then small, steady hands are wrapping around his arms, hoisting him up.

Wilbur gasps as a faint wash of soreness rolls through him. He slumps against Tommy’s shoulder, limbs clumsy beneath him. His ankle, particularly, smarts the moment he’s upright, and he slouches forward with his wince, ending up hanging onto Tommy, just as tall as he is. But he tries to cooperate, a desperate sort of energy allowing him to break through the haze that threatens to consume him absolutely.

Danger, his brain screams, as if Wilbur doesn’t feel it vibrating in every cell of his body, rattling his teeth even in the moments when the explosions cease. Run.

He’s trying.

Tommy is unwavering beside him, doing most of the work as they wind through the halls, and Wilbur has a few, evanescent seconds to be hopeful as they round the corner into an empty corridor before, suddenly, it’s not so empty anymore.

Three rebels stand before them: men in black outfits with red bandanas wrapped around their wrists, swords hanging menacingly from their hands.

When they see the injured prince and his guard, they grin, eyes flashing hungrily. Wilbur knows what they see. A meal and a bounty and the spark of a revolution, all at once.

Tommy’s eyes widen, and he reacts while Wilbur—thoughts on delay—is still processing.

His arm slips from around Wilbur’s shoulder, reaching for the dagger sheathed at his side. Without the support, Wilbur falls, landing hard on his knees, and he can only watch as Tommy advances forward, blade flashing as he swings it up.

If the rebels anticipate a fight, they don’t anticipate the dangerous grace with which Tommy moves.

He is moonlight and darkness, sunlight washed away, deadly and lithe. One is dead before Tommy’s blade is finished arcing through the air, clutching his throat as he crumples to the ground like a stringless puppet. Crimson waters the marble at his feet, spilling outward in a dark puddle.

The others yell, limbs puffing up, weapons rising, and suddenly there are two blades meeting Tommy’s one.

Tommy holds them off—barely. As his dagger catches another in a deadly embrace, metal crossed with metal, Wilbur sees him grimace, wrist starting to shake as he attempts to fend off two assailants at once.

Wilbur feels infinitely useless, knelt like a prisoner on the floor. His heart shakes in his chest, aching for him to do something, but the impulses don’t connect with his brain. All he can do is observe.

Somehow, Tommy manages. A well-placed kick earns him the breath he needs to stumble back—and then sink his dagger into a rebel’s chest. Blood sprays over him as he yanks it out gruesomely. As the man falls, Tommy takes the moment of reprieve to whip his head around, wild eyes finding Wilbur’s.

“Run!” he yells. “Get out of here!”

Wilbur’s chest heaves.

The words roll over him, a black hole opening up somewhere in his ribs. Tommy is already turning, expecting him to listen—waging his blood and his life on the assumption that Wilbur is listening—and that’s when Wilbur realises that Tommy had only bought himself enough time to warn him. And not to save himself.

A shout tears from Wilbur’s mouth involuntarily as Tommy is slammed back against the wall. His head bounces off of it. He is valor and he is strength as he tries to pull himself upright, but he is cornered. A blade swings down, and Wilbur nearly collapses as it approaches the pale valley of Tommy’s throat—

Except Tommy throws his arm up at the last second, catching the gash on his arm, below his elbow. It’s hardly any better, because the second that the blood is finished soaking the blade, Tommy’s arm spasms. A hoarse cry is ripped from his throat as his own blade falls from between limp fingertips, tumbling to the floor.

He slides weakly down the wall to avoid a strike that would’ve otherwise carved a chasm through his face, but then it’s over. He’s cornered, and hurt, and weaponless—and if Wilbur doesn’t do something right now, then he will die like that.

Reality melts around him as Wilbur forces himself to feet that are determined not to sustain him. His ankle doesn’t hurt anymore, and that probably has something to do with how awfully disconnected Wilbur is from the present as he lurches forward.

Through the film obscuring his vision, and the exhaustion filling his limbs with lead, Wilbur is able to catch sight of a pile of bricks—shaken from the walls by a stick of dynamite at some point. He stumbles toward it, only mildly aware of the way his fingers wrap around the closest brick, and the weight of it in his hand restores some of his lucidity.

The next time he blinks, the brick is connecting heavily with the back of the rebel’s head, and the rebel is falling. Tommy gasps as he is saved, jerking back. He slumps against the wall, relief still filtering over his face even after the rebel has fallen.

Wilbur blinks quickly, stumbling backwards. The brick falls from his hand, even though there’s a vicious, curling sense of anger, blooming inside of him to keep going—to make sure. Anger that he almost hadn’t been fast enough. That he’d almost lost Tommy anyway.

He doesn’t have time to contemplate this mounting rage much further, because the rebel is groaning, trying to stand. Fear strikes through Wilbur’s chest—he doesn’t want to keep fighting, he wants to leave. He needs this to be over. And yet, despite the way his blood sizzles in his veins, he doesn’t want to be the one to end it.

It’s Tommy who deals the final blow—protecting Wilbur yet again, in another way. This time, it’s from the weight of the dagger in his palm and the weight of ripping a human life away.

Wilbur doesn’t know if he’d regret doing it himself. He’s hardly capable of concentrating, so there’s no way for him to grapple with this now. But Tommy takes care of it for him, anyway.

“Come on,” Tommy croaks, voice broken and hoarse but no less determined. “We need to go.”

Wilbur doesn’t remember him standing, but Tommy has seemed to snap back into that automaton-like version of himself in the time it took for Wilbur to slip back to the present. Coincidentally, that’s also about the time that Wilbur’s ankle gives out on him.

Tommy catches him, and it would seem effortless if pain wasn’t inscribed tensely in every line of his body. But he takes Wilbur’s weight like it’s nothing, like he’s shrugging on a coat. Wilbur feels blood press into the back of his shoulder as Tommy slides his bloody arm behind him to keep him steady.

“Sorry about this Wil,” Tommy grunts, and then they are moving—faster than before.

Each step ignites a blistering heat in Wilbur’s ankle, but numbness begins to overtake it the longer that they run. Around them, the castle starts to lose the signs of the fight. The walls become gradually more intact, the floors steady. The explosions fade, and then stop, even as Wilbur’s ears continue to ring and ring and ring with them.

He tries to tune it out and remain vigilant, but he doesn’t have to for long.

With another quick, needless apology, Tommy deposits him in front of an unassuming hallway. Rolling his head around, Wilbur figures that they’re near to the kitchens, the typical fancy wallpaper from before having been replaced with sturdy brick.

Wilbur grunts as he’s released, fingers digging into the wall but still barely able to hold his weight. He forces himself to pay attention to the way that Tommy slides his hands over a section of the brick, face cooled into concentration. It’s hard to make out his expression, through the soot and the blood and the bruises marring his face, but Wilbur sees it.

Something clicks, and suddenly, the brick that Wilbur is leaning against swings open.

The bricks retract with a harsh, mechanical grind, forming a small door into a hidden bunker. Tommy is yanking him forward before he can fall, and Wilbur is grateful, until he’s distracted with relief.

They’ve done it. They’ve made it out of the fire and into a safe room.

It’s over.

“The door,” Wilbur croaks, as Tommy helps him limp over to the closet cot, easing him down. Taking the pressure off of his ankle is euphoric, and a shiver rolls through him as he’s able to relax. “Tommy—”

“It’s fine, Wilbur,” Tommy murmurs. His face, normally bright and open, is set and intense as he looks Wilbur over. “Are you alright? Anything that I need to treat?”

Wilbur shakes his head tiredly, leaning against the wall. He’s breathing hard, lungs intent on protesting each jagged breath, and he yearns for the chance to close his eyes. His head has begun to ache, probably from where he’d smacked it on the floor, and he just wants to rest.

But Tommy is still standing.

“Come on,” Wilbur mumbles, uncaring that he is totally unravelled.

It is jarring to think that he is a king now. No longer does his heart beat for himself, or his family. It beats for his crown, his people, his kingdom.

(It takes everything in him to tuck down the looming dread that he may not have a kingdom when the smoke settles.)

“Tommy,” Wilbur rasps, eyelids drooping. “Close the door and sit.”

But Tommy doesn’t move. Doesn’t speak. And Wilbur looks up.

He sees, instantly, what he had been too relieved to notice before: the way that Tommy has stepped back, lingering just barely in reach but still too far for comfort. His back is straight, chin tilted up, and Wilbur’s heart attempts to sink down to his stomach.

Somehow, call it intuition, Wilbur knows what he’s thinking. Dread knits a scarf out of his intestines.

He straightens as best as he can, hand shooting out to snag the bottom of Tommy’s uniform sleeve. Tommy looks at him, and his eyes are shrouded with grim storm clouds as they fall down to where Wilbur is holding onto him. Wilbur can’t see past them.

“Wilbur?”

“You’re not going back out there.”

Brief. Commanding. All that he can manage, if he wants to contain his composure—and thus the tide of fear threatening to spill out of him.

Tommy blinks at him. “What?”

Wilbur sighs, fear wrapping a hand around his heart and squeezing, an icy vice. “Stay in here, with me.”

Tommy hardly gives the words a chance to settle before he’s stepping back, Wilbur’s hand slipping forcefully away from his sleeve. Wilbur resists the urge to chase it, suddenly frozen in place beneath the face of Tommy’s serious look.

Even before he’s said a word, Wilbur feels like he’s facing a gorgon: body slowly being encased with cold stone.

Tommy shakes his head, slow and regretful, and that is the hiss of snakes he’d been expecting.

“Wilbur,” he begins quietly, gravely. “You know I can’t do that.”

His heart pounds. “Tommy—?”

But Tommy steps… away.

“The castle is falling, Wilbur. I can’t stay here. I need to help fight.”

Wilbur’s chest seizes, and he inhales harshly, desperately. “Your job is to protect me.”

Tommy’s eyes are two shards of grief. Wilbur feels a canyon start to ripple through his chest.

“This bunker is hidden and impenetrable from enemies once that door closes. You’ll be safer than anyone.”

He says it like a eulogy, like a goodbye, and a burst of helplessness skitters through Wilbur. The stone breaks and he can move again.

Heart leaping, Wilbur jerks to his feet—all of the fear and panic and rising dread combusting inside him at once. He is fast, even with his ankle, but Tommy is faster. He is out of Wilbur’s reach—outside the room, in the doorway, miles apart—before Wilbur is properly upright.

“Tommy,” Wilbur begins, fear sharpening his name. It’s all he can say. Tommy’s name, whispered like a prayer, is all his lips know how to form. “Tommy.”

“I’m sorry, Wil,” Tommy murmurs, but Wilbur hates him for it, because apologies won’t keep him alive. “I’m so sorry.”

Wilbur’s eyes flash, heart beating fiercely. It assaults his ribcage, trying to break free, and Wilbur feels dizzy.

The room is crumbling—it must be: ceiling warping in, bricks wrapping around him, crushing him, killing him. Frantic pleas pound at his skull relentlessly but he can’t summon the breath to say them, scream them. Pleas like You can’t do this to me. You can’t. Pleas he can’t voice through the ash dragging him down, down, down.

He is a sinking ship and Tommy is holding his head under the water.

Instead, he defaults to the barest of his instincts, his last hope.

“As your King,” he starts, balling his fists, relishing in the sting of his nails carving miniature trenches into his palms, “I command you to—”

“I’m sorry.”

Tommy cuts him off instantly, and Wilbur recognizes the action for what it is. A horrible, paradoxical mix of cowardice and bravery—because Tommy is throwing himself to the wolves, is throwing himself on a blade, and yet he won’t let himself face the fury of Wilbur’s terror.

“I’ll see you on the upside,” Tommy breathes, summoning a shaking smile. “Yeah? Wait for me.”

A shout gets lodged in Wilbur’s throat and he chokes on it. “Tommy, if you step out the door, you’ll die. You’ll— Don’t—”

His knees give out, toppling like his own throne, and terror drags him under. Tommy salutes, eyes scrunching wryly, smile fleeting and grim. Shadows drape over his face, and between the light spilling in behind him, he is silhouetted in black and gold.

Distantly, deliriously, he can’t tell which image Tommy resembles more: a sunrise or sunset. Does it matter? He’s losing both. Still, Wilbur kneels before the beam of sunlight, captured between darkness, too far away to bottle it, and he tries to burn the image into his memory before he loses it.

Somehow, he knows it’ll be the last image of its kind.

Tommy lowers his salute, grin fading into near-transparency, a summer whisper.

“It’s been an honor serving under you, Your Highness.”

The bricks whine, Wilbur’s mind shatters, and the door closes.

The door closes, bricks folding in over each other, stealing Wilbur’s sunrise. Sealing him inside. The grinding of the lock stops just as Wilbur manages to throw himself against the door.

He grunts as he meets hard brick, but he raises his shaky fists and hammers at it anyway. Again, and again, until crimson splits and smears his skin.

It doesn’t matter. He doesn’t feel it. He hardly feels anything at all. So he keeps going, even as all he earns himself is more blood and bruises, painting his knuckles. Even then, he keeps going. He’ll break himself for this. He will. He is.

But the brick doesn’t budge, and Wilbur’s knees barely catch him as he falls.

An impenetrable bunker, Tommy had called it. But that’s not what this is, is it? Tommy hadn’t led him to a safe room. He’d led him to a tomb. Wilbur’s grief paints the walls in bloody streaks, and safety has never looked more like a mausoleum.

Desperation raking claws across his chest, Wilbur screams. Anguish shreds against his throat, but the only thing that meets his cries is silence. Cold, oppressive, empty silence.

Tommy is gone.

— ♕ —

In the time it takes for actuality to find him, Wilbur has screamed himself hoarse.

He hardly minds it. The ache in his throat only bothers him for how it forces him to be present here, rather than allowing him to waste away in this spontaneous grave. His ankle went numb years ago. His other bruises don’t exist.

All that exists is the flickering lamplight from the metal lantern he’d barely been able to convince himself to crawl over and light, and the echo of his heartbeat, reverberating off of the walls. He’d kept quiet, as the hours had crawled by, and tried to become it.

He liked the quiet. Liked the way that the emptiness of the room made the quiet loud. There, his thoughts didn’t have the chance to spiral. There, he was safer.

Until, like most things in Wilbur’s life that he yearned to hang onto, it was broken.

Here it comes, he thinks, as a muffled blend of rapid footsteps and harsh voices filter over him. If he hadn’t grown so accustomed to the silence, he wouldn’t have heard it through the bunker walls at all. Death, or salvation.

Something scrapes against the bricks outside, and Wilbur flinches. Fiddling with his hands, his thumbnail pricks the top of his middle finger. He presses them together and holds his breath. He’s almost, deliriously, surprised he still remembers how to do that.

“King Wilbur?” a voice calls, a familiar voice calls, knuckles rapping against the outside of the door. Wilbur startles, head jerking up. “Are you here?”

That is all it takes to put him together again.

Wilbur lunges to his feet, stumbling as he forces his limbs back into use, the broken pieces he’d become fusing together to morph into something usable. Something vaguely lifelike. Something that will get him out of this room.

“I’m here,” he screams—though scream is a generous word for the pitiful rasp he is able to produce. “I’m here.”

There’s a scuffle outside the door, and each second that he waits stretches into an infinity.

Come on, he breathes, heart strumming in his chest. Come on.

The door slides open, and the first thing that Wilbur sees are the windows: lining the hall in front of the bunker, large and wide. The harsh, streaming sunlight stings his eyes. Glass is shattered in the panes, offering no protection against it.

It’s midday. The night had passed. He’s been in the bunker for hours.

And they’d won. The Guard wouldn’t be here if they hadn’t. Somehow, the knowledge barely changes anything. It should be grandiose, accompanied by a palatial fanfare, but it’s not. It is a paradox: the culmination of months of bloodshed and fire, and yet it’s nothing. It’s a hollow victory that he barely clings onto.

He still only has one goal in mind.

Wilbur stumbles back, blinking hard. If it weren’t for his heart, beating rapidly in his chest, so loud he hears it like a melody, he would think he was a corpse, reanimated.

Then, the light is snuffed out, as the Guard closes around him.

“Your Majesty,” Sam breathes, right in front of him, and the sight of his navy uniform sends a shock through Wilbur. “Are you—”

“I’m fine,” he hisses, rolling his head around until he finds a direction to set off in.

The throne room. That’s where the chaos had broken out. That’s where Tommy would’ve gone. Wilbur is sure of it, but still, Sam may know better—

So Wilbur rounds on him, chest heaving as words burst from his throat. “Have you seen Tommy? My knight? I need—” He inhales, exhales. “I need to find him.”

Confusion rages across Sam’s face, followed swiftly, by concern, but Wilbur ignores it the minute that Sam shakes his head, a sorrowful and unmistakable no. No matter. Wilbur intends to find him himself. He brushes right past his outstretched arms and hesitant protests. There’s a pulsing in his heart that tugs him forward, and Wilbur intends to follow it.

He makes it half a step before arms are wrapping around him—Jack.

Wilbur thrashes, the contact abrasive. Jack’s eyes widen, and he stumbles back, looking torn on whether or not to hold Wilbur back or let him go.

“Your Majesty, he’s not—”

“Come with me or get out of my face!” Wilbur shouts, whipping furiously around to direct that shout at all of them. He’s well aware that he seems crazy. He doesn’t care. “I have to find him.”

And the Guard has no choice but to follow.

Wilbur pretends he knows what he’s doing, or even how he’s doing, but he doesn’t. He thinks if he stops to contemplate it, he’ll unravel at the seams. So he doesn’t, only runs and runs and prays and breathes.

He’s going to be okay. Tommy will be just fine.

Wilbur refuses to accept anything else.

He follows the path of destruction all the way to the throne room, only faintly aware of how it grows both thicker and more contained. The bodies of the rebels that Tommy killed are gone from where they’d fallen, but the blood creates a crimson inkblot that Wilbur recognizes. Someone had tried to clean up—more evidence that the rebels had been defeated.

Good, a voice in Wilbur’s head hisses. Good.

But even indulging that is too much of a distraction, so Wilbur doesn’t. He directs his focus to the tile beneath him and the hallway in front of them and the doors growing closer to him—

He slams through the doors and into a graveyard.

Bodies litter the floor, most of them wrapped in white sheets, and Wilbur swallows down nausea before it has a chance to become real in his stomach. He can’t fall here. Still, it’s enough to give him pause.

He feels the Guard enter right behind him, gathering at his back. Wilbur takes a deep breath and sweeps his wild gaze around the room, searching and searching.

The room is not completely lifeless. More of the Guard, and twice as many servants, roam the room: cleaning rubble, sweeping piles of dust, covering bodies.

Wilbur doesn’t see Tommy among them, but he squashes down the flood of emotion that threatens to shatter through him. No use grieving when there isn’t a place for it. Tommy is fine.

But he’s not in front of him, which only stokes the desperation weaving between his ribs. Luckily, his eyes land on someone else before he can fall too far.

“Techno!” Wilbur shouts, taking three long strides forward the minute he sees his best friend and—

Technoblade jerks his head up, locking eyes with him.

Before Wilbur’s eyes, his expression shatters. His face morphs into something utterly grave, and cold. He swallows, and then grapples, near-imperceptibly, for composure.

It’s then that Wilbur realises what Techno is doing.

No, he thinks, as Techno finishes draping the sheet over the body he’s knelt in front of. No.

Techno sees the realisation slam into him, and pity consumes his face. He rises slowly to his feet, hands extended in front of him like a surrender. Hands that are coated in red. Red that came from the body beneath him.

The body that—

Wilbur catches a glimpse of the spill of blonde hair, the flash of a navy sleeve, before everything lurches sideways. Reality distorts. Bile shoots up his throat, stinging his tongue, and Wilbur staggers.

“Wil…” Techno begins, voice taking on an apologetic shake. Apologetic—not gruff, or commanding. Just quiet. And that’s how Wilbur knows. That’s how he knows what he is seeing is real. “Don’t…”

It’s stupid. If, this entire time, Wilbur had truly believed Tommy to be dead, if he had truly let the grief drown him, maybe it wouldn’t be so bad, so jarring, seeing him now. It wouldn’t destroy him so completely.

But Wilbur hadn’t. He hadn’t meant to, but at some point, he’d let hope carve a place for itself in his chest. As he wasted away in that bunker, some part of him had believed that Tommy would be okay, that there was a good reason Tommy hadn’t been the first to come back for him, after it had been so long.

(“Wait for me?”)

He had let himself hope.

And now that hope was breaking with him.

“Fuck,” he whispers. “Fuck.”

This is his fault. His fault for letting Tommy leave. His fault for not sending him away sooner. His fault for loving him.

His fault. His fault. His—

“Wilbur!”

That’s Techno, yelling again, and he can distantly appreciate what a sorry sight he must be. A king with a new crown, splintering, crumbling like a glacier. He’s content with falling, at least until arms wrap around him, attempting to drag him back, and that is what lends him the energy to fight.

He pulls free, trying to surge forward— needing, suddenly, to be at Tommy’s side because he owes him that much, if debts even extend past death, but—

“Keep him back!” Technoblade bellows, stepping cleanly in front of Tommy’s body as if that could ever stop Wilbur from reaching him. “Wilbur—”

Wilbur ignores him. His mind has been reduced to less than mush, and all he is capable of doing is thrashing, and flailing, and fighting. He doesn’t care that he is hemorrhaging grace, he doesn’t care that his crown finally gets knocked off of his head.

The only gold, the only treasure that matters, is broken on the ground in front of him.

And finally, Wilbur is able to break away.

Techno catches him. Techno must hate him, because he catches him, tugging him into his arms, stopping him.

Wilbur slams into his chest, and sobs are ripping out of him, before Techno can utter a word.

“Let me go to him!” Wilbur screams, slamming bruised fists against his broad chest. It feels like a wall, like a hard brick wall, in a hollow bunker, and Wilbur’s mind threatens to split. “Tommy— let me see him! Techno—”

“Wilbur, stop—”

“Techno, please—”

The pleas that want to spill out of him are too swollen and ragged for him to produce, but they shove at his brain with the same fury that he shoves at Techno’s arms.

Let me go to him. Let me hold him, one last time.

“Wil—”

“—get the fuck off—”

“It’s not him!”

Wilbur stops. Everything stops.

His mind converges on itself: equal parts unrelenting disbelief, crippling sorrow, and breathless shock. Not hope—shock. Shock enough to slow his struggling.

Breathing hard, Techno catches his wrists delicately in his callused hands. He stares down at Wilbur, worried and understanding, all at once.

“It’s not him,” Techno repeats gently. “It’s not him. That’s not Tommy.”

Wilbur doesn’t believe him. He doesn’t believe him. He hadn’t— he’d— he hadn’t seen his face but he’d thought— he’d thought—

His knees buckle as his mind tries to stitch itself back together. Techno swears as he cradles his weight, guiding him gently towards the ground. He not-so-subtly shifts to the side, so that Wilbur’s knees don’t land in a blood puddle.

“Where is he?” Wilbur croaks, fingers seizing Techno’s sleeve desperately. He’s never felt less like a king. “If he’s not— then where—”

“He’s fine,” Techno assures him, eyes combing over Wilbur’s ruined face. “He’s— Wilbur, you were the one I was worried about. Nobody knew where you were.”

“I’m here,” Wilbur rasps, because his mind has latched onto the first part of his sentence—he’s fine he’s fine he’s fine—

He chokes, a cough rattling his lungs as he hunches over himself. Lingering panic tangles his lungs, and he presses his forehead into Techno’s shoulder, endlessly grateful for the pressure it supplies.

He’s fine he’s fine he’s fine. He’s not here but he’s fine.

But then, before he has a chance to come down, a cruel voice whips through his head, weaving like thorns—

Is he? Are you sure?

An incoherent spark shooting through him, Wilbur lifts his head, displacing Techno’s hand, pressed firmly against his back. He yanks his head over Techno’s shoulder, tries to see, but Techno’s face hardens. He pulls Wilbur back.

“It’s not him,” he repeats, holding Wilbur firmly in his eyes. “You hear me? That’s not Tommy.”

Wilbur just breathes, chest rising and falling raggedly.

“Do you trust me?” Techno asks, and that’s easy for his addled mind to digest.

He hardly has to work to answer that. Wilbur nods, clipped and stiff.

“Then trust that that’s not him. Don’t make it worse on yourself by looking.”

He makes it sound easy. As if Wilbur’s mind isn’t tearing him apart, stretching him in so many directions, barraging him with so many half-formed shreds of emotion that it makes him tremble.

But Wilbur does what he wishes Tommy would’ve done in the safe room. He nods, and he lets go.

Techno’s face softens, light peeking through his otherwise firm facade.

“Jesus, Wilbur,” Techno whispers, brushing his thumb worriedly across Wilbur’s cheekbone as Wilbur sags in his arms, eyes fluttering shut. “You’re a mess.”

A laugh bubbles past Wilbur’s cracked lips before he’s aware of it. It shakes through his head, all bitterness and vitriol and painful relief.

“He left me in that fucking bunker.”

Techno’s eyes take on a knowing glint. “He protected you.”

Wilbur shakes. “He made me think he was dead.”

“He’s in the infirmary,” Techno informs him lowly. And then, before the panic that threatens to burst in Wilbur’s chest can take on any opaque form, “He’s okay, but he’s banged up. Phil hasn’t let him leave.”

Wilbur manages to frown. “Why—?”

“We wanted to find you first.” Techno cracks a wry grin. “Which is why he sent the Guard to bring you to him.”

At that, the lightest emotion yet manages to prick through Wilbur’s disorientation. It’s something like embarrassment, but it’s gone as soon as it can form. Flattened, in the face of everything else. Mostly a heady combination of relief and exhaustion.

It’s about then that his thoughts catch up with his brain.

“Dad,” Wilbur interrupts quickly, throat convulsing as his grip on lucidity strengthens. “He’s okay then?”

Techno nods. “Everyone’s okay.”

Wilbur’s shoulders slump. He feels hollow, and he can’t tell if that’s a good thing or not. All he knows is what he wants. And what he wants—

“Take me to them,” he demands quickly, because he knows—as awareness settles over him, bringing with it a myriad of aches and stings of pain—that he can’t do it alone. He thinks he’ll collapse if he even stands up too quickly. “I need—”

“Woah,” Techno says, hands coming out as Wilbur lurches unsteadily forward. “Take it easy, Wilbur.”

Wilbur is already shaking his head, feeling that wild sense of yearning return. He has to see them.

“I can’t,” he half-gasps. “I have to—”

“Okay,” Techno interjects, before Wilbur can work himself up again. His emotions feel loose and colorful and messy. He can’t contain them. “I’ll take you to him.”

Wilbur breathes out a wobbly sigh, wishing he could offer Techno the thanks he owes him.

But all he can do is sag against his best friend and send a grateful prayer to every god that will listen, because Tommy is okay.

He can deal with the rest later. For now, he has a knight to find.

— ♕ —

The infirmary is full, but the doctors seem to have been awaiting his arrival.

Techno has hardly helped him into the room before he’s being swarmed, shouts of his name going up so loud that his shoulders hike up towards his ears. But Techno is quick to tug him closer, eternally stabilizing.

“Follow us,” Techno tells the doctors, tired but commanding. “He’s not going to listen.”

On any other occasion, Wilbur probably wouldn’t let Techno get away with that, but this time is different. This time all Wilbur cares about is getting to Tommy.

“He’s in the back,” Techno informs him lowly, once the doctors have shifted back to flank them at a distance. “A secluded room. I figured you’d want to see him.”

I do, Wilbur thinks, and it feels like another plea. More than anything. When Wilbur takes a step too quickly, nearly tripping before he can snap back into focus, Techno sighs and steadies him.

“Be careful, Wilbur,” he chides, and though it’s chastising, it feels forced. Still too brittle for Wilbur’s comfort. It’s a stark reminder that nothing is even close to fixed. “Your ankle is sprained.”

Wilbur nods, hardly hanging onto the words. Because now they are approaching a door, and Wilbur knows who is behind it, and his thoughts begin to converge on each other, a whirlpool and riptide all at once, and the pain in his body is fading to a distant ache, and he’s pushing open the door, and—

“—your Grace, please,” a ragged voice pleads. “They should have found him by now, it’s been—”

Tommy.

Tommy is in front of him.

Tommy is in front of him, standing beside a medical bed—hunched over it, leaning against it for support, but seemingly intent on leaving. Blocking his path stands Wilbur’s father, arms crossed and expression hard with the kind of anger that Wilbur had only seen reserved for him, for when Wilbur was young and causing trouble.

It’s a tense standoff—the former king versus an injured knight with a stubborn streak—but it doesn’t last long.

When the door bangs open, and Wilbur staggers to a graceless halt in the doorway, their conversation ceases.

Tommy whips around, and his eyes widen.

“Wilbur,” he breathes, a blinding expression of relief shining at him. “Wilbur.”

Techno was right—Tommy is banged up.

Traces of a fight that Wilbur hadn’t gotten to see play out across his body. If Wilbur was feeling more self-destructive, he could almost try to map it out just from the marks it had left.

Bruises that he hadn’t had before tessellate his face, and a thin line slices across his soot-streaked jaw, red and angry. His hair is a mess, His right arm is in a fabric sling, and white bandages poke out from beneath the collar of his shirt.

But his ephemeral examination ends there, because all that Wilbur really sees is Tommy, whole and standing and alive, and it’s all he’d ever dare to ask for.

Looking at him, Wilbur expects to feel angry. And, oh, he is angry. His chest broils with the force of it, fury swirling like an ocean of magma beneath his skin. He is a flood of emotion, a contradiction of feelings. He could write a million poems and never come close to capturing the sensations using his heart as a battlefield.

But the sight of Tommy, smiling worriedly at him, eyes just as stormy as Wilbur feels, blue irises the exact shade of hesitance—

It punches all the bad out.

“Tommy,” he whispers, and the two-syllables fall out of his mouth like a prayer. “Tommy.”

Tommy blinks, lips curving up properly. “Hi, your Majesty.”

He doesn’t mean to make Wilbur flinch, but the words shock through him like a javelin.

“Don’t,” he manages to choke out, as his ears ring and ring and ring. It’s been an honor serving under you, your Highness. “Just— Tommy.”

“Wilbur,” Tommy amends carefully, and he tries to straighten, wincing with the motion as his eyes comb over Wilbur.

Wilbur catches the movement, even though Tommy hardly pays attention to it, and his heart performs a funny little jump in his chest, like a court jester skipping across marble tile.

“How hurt are you?” he manages, swaying in the doorway.

He can’t bring himself to make the full assessment. Partly because he doesn’t want to guess, lest his mind supply images too bloody for him to want to handle right now, and partly because his eyes are having trouble focusing. It’s like everything has melted down into just the brightest of colors, the sharpest of sounds.

But he needs to know, needs that strand of logic to stop him from falling further.

His own heartbeat throbs in his ear, sounding awfully like a clock. Waiting and waiting as the seconds tick by, as Tommy tilts his head down to appraise himself, as Wilbur gets stretched like taffy in the intermission—

“I’m okay,” Tommy answers quietly. “It’s just flesh wounds, all of it.”

Just. Just just just just. As if his skin was made to hold them, as if it’s okay because he’s standing.

But, if there’s anything good to come from his statement—

“Good,” Wilbur breathes. Tommy’s words, however mildly concerning, settle over him like a cool balm, a cold rag pressed to feverish skin. “That means I can do this.”

Tommy frowns, the bruised skin of his face scrunching into confusion.

Wilbur has only a second to see it—to burn this new image of his knight into his brain, erasing the fading sunrise he’d memorialized before—before they are colliding.

It’s a perfect collision.

He’s careful, impossibly careful—with Tommy, at least, not himself—as he pulls him into his arms. He crushes Tommy to his chest as soft as he can manage, and Tommy sighs, colliding with him just the same, clinging tightly to Wilbur with his one good arm.

Wilbur lets his eyes fall shut, face pressed into the top of Tommy’s hair, and breathes.

Breathes because he can, breathes because Tommy is breathing, breathes because he’s not etching a name into a concrete angel, breathes because he’d challenged fate and won.

Thank you, Wilbur sends up to the universe, feeling the sharpest shards of his grief flake away, for letting me keep this.

He doesn’t intend on moving, or even breaking the silence, for at least a lifetime or two, but Tommy shifts restlessly in his arms, and Wilbur can feel him start to shake.

“...This is nice,” Tommy mumbles, face muffled into Wilbur’s shoulder, good hand fisting Wilbur’s sleeve, trembling as he clings and clings.

It draws a semi-delirious laugh past his lips. If there was even an ounce of doubt left in Wilbur’s brain that he has Tommy back, it’s erased just like that.

This is nice. That’s what he has to say?

An idiot. That’s what he is, an idiotic child.

Wilbur adores him.

“Hush,” he laughs out, and it feels so strained it may not even be a laugh at all, but it’s an effort.

It’s more than Wilbur thought himself capable of.

“Am I allowed to hug the king?” Tommy wonders quietly, and there’s a smile crawling into his voice that shouldn’t slot together with Wilbur’s jagged emotions, but does. “Is this treason?”

Wilbur chokes, pulling back. “Treason? Why would this be treason?”

Tommy’s smiles crookedly up at him, unbothered by Wilbur’s strangled disbelief.

Tommy shrugs with one shoulder. “You never know.”

It’s absurd. It’s— more than absurd. It’s nonsensical. Wilbur laughs anyway, choked, and drags Tommy forward again.

“I’m the king,” Wilbur informs him tiredly. The title rings over him with a heavy weight. “I make the rules. And,” he continues, brushing a loose strand of hair out of Tommy’s eyes, “I say that you are almost obligated to hug me right now.”

“Then as your knight,” Tommy says, fingers digging into the back of Wilbur’s waistcoat as he tucks his face against Wilbur’s trembling collarbone, “I guess I have to listen.”

Wilbur’s chest seizes. He tries to push past it.

“You do,” he whispers, and then, failing to lift himself out of the spiral he is tipping towards, words no louder than a whisper, “I am so mad at you, Tommy.”

Against him, Tommy tenses.

“I know,” he rasps, just as quiet.

“I thought you were dead.”

“I know.”

“I was so scared.”

Swallowing, “Me too.” Then, looking up at him earnestly, “I’m glad you’re okay, Wil.”

The tension eases. Wilbur nods, letting the simplicity of that statement fill him up where his complicated thoughts want to cut him down.

Unfortunately, Tommy seems to catch onto the irony of his words, because his eyes land on Wilbur with a new sense of pointed focus. Wilbur sees him scan him over, the way he always does, and sees him frown, teeth worrying his lip. Of course, ever intent on protecting him, he hides it. Wilbur, too tired to tell him not to, allows it.

“Go get treated idiot,” Tommy finally says, shoving lightly at Wilbur’s chest. “You look dead on your feet.” He says it lightly, but worry continues swirling in his eyes. “I didn’t do all this for you to die on me anyway.”

When Wilbur doesn’t move, Tommy sighs. “You’re too soft. Go.” And then, face twisting into something a little bittersweet, a lot tender, he tilts his head and says, “Go, Wilbur. I’m not going anywhere.”

It’s the exact right thing to say, and Tommy knows it. Wilbur leans back, letting Techno pull him fully upright before he’s even aware that he’s stepped forward.

“Never again,” Wilbur adds, hedging on a question as he is eased backward towards the door.

“Never again,” Tommy agrees, eyes shining, and—

That’s all Wilbur needs to let himself let go.

— ♕ —

“My turn,” Phil murmurs, the minute the doctors leave them. “Let me hold you for a second, please.”

Freshly bandaged, ankle splinted, Wilbur turns. His father pulls him into his arms, and Wilbur is warm all over again. He sinks forward, sighing. Phil holds him, and Wilbur feels like a child again.

Even as a king, newly crowned, he feels small.

“Is it over?” he whispers.

It comes out quieter than it means for him to, but that’s okay. Wilbur spent what could’ve been the collapse of his kingdom locked in a crypt, tucked away like an expensive jewel. He needs to know, more than he needs to retain any sense of pride.

(His crown still lies, abandoned, in the cemetery that his throne room had become.)

“Yes,” Phil exhales. “As far as we can tell, yes.”

Wilbur squeezes his eyes shut, and the reaction that he’d missed having in front of the safe room hits him now.

“Any resistance that rises from the ashes will likely be isolated, and weak,” Phil informs him, just as gently. “With any luck—” Wilbur almost snorts, because his luck is always impeccable, “—there will be no more bloodshed. Not like this. Not ever again.”

“Good,” Wilbur breathes, stepping back and straightening as he takes his first full breath since all of this began. “Good.”

He tries to step away, siphoning any ounce of composure that he can manage, but Phil stops him, gently catching his arm.

“I’m glad you’re okay, Wil,” his father tells him, eyes scrunching with a glacial mixture of relief and exhaustion. “And I’m proud of you for getting this far. Wherever you go from here, son, I know that you will lead well.” He takes a deep breath, mustering a smile. Wilbur tries to mimic it. “The kingdom will continue to prosper under your reign.”

Wilbur dips his head. “Thank you. I will do my best.”

“You will,” Phil agrees, and his take on an amused cerulean sparkle. “And while there is still much to discuss, I see that you are distracted.” He jerks his head towards the door. “Go.”

Wilbur freezes, feeling like he’s been caught even though he’s hardly moved. “Dad?”

“I know you want to see him,” Phil tells him, just a touch dryly, as he glances at Wilbur’s jittering hands. “Go. The kingdom will be here for you when you’re ready.”

Wilbur smiles—bashful, guilty, grateful but happy.

“Thank you,” he repeats. “Thank you.”

And, acquitted by the graceful bow of his father’s head, nudging him towards the scrap of gold in the other room, Wilbur goes.

— ♕ —

It’s late by the time he makes it back to Tommy’s room.

Or well, the medical suite that he’s taken over. It’s fit for a king, because it was made for Phil, and now Wilbur, but Wilbur had offered it to Tommy and batted away his protests until he finally caved and accepted it (not without making his grumbled annoyance clear, of course.)

When he eases the door open, footfalls silent, he expects Tommy to be asleep, but he’s not.

Propped up on the bed against the pillows, exhaustion carved into his face, his right arm is extended so that Techno has room to change the bandages. Wilbur winces when he catches a glimpse of the ugly gash beneath the unwound bandages, careful sutures crossing over it.

This injury is one that he had seen Tommy earn. Even so, the concern bubbling in his stomach isn’t quelled.

“Ow,” Tommy hisses quietly, teeth sinking into the inside of his cheek. His left is tangled in the bedsheets, knuckles bleached of color. “Shit.”

“Sorry,” Techno grunts softly, ministrations impossibly gentle.

Tommy doesn’t say anything, not at first. He is so tense that Wilbur fears he’d snap in half if someone blew out the candles on the table beside the bed. But then, he sighs.

“Are you just going to stand there, Wil?” Tommy asks, not looking up. “You can come in, you know.”

Wilbur startles. Techno’s eyes flick up, and he snorts at the reaction. A faint flush colors his cheeks. How had Tommy even seen—

“Your shadow,” Tommy supplies him, turning and meeting his eyes with a faint smile. He jerks his head towards the opposite wall. “It was obvious.”

Techno huffs another laugh as Wilbur steps properly into the room.

“...Right,” he eventually says. “Obvious.”

Knights, he thinks with an amused sort of bitterness. He and Techno are too similar.

Tommy beams at him, and even though it’s dim in the room—the only light from the lantern in the corner and the candles at Tommy’s side—the room feels lit.

“All done,” Techno informs Tommy, breaking the short bout of silence. “Next time, do have the doctors tend to your wounds.”

Tommy grins at Techno. “What would be the fun in that, Technoblade?”

He says it like he’s known him all his life, and Wilbur vaguely has a chance to wonder how exactly they’d known each other before Wilbur had met Tommy before Techno is standing.

“Rest up, kid,” Techno tells him, brushing past him, but not without ghosting his hand over Tommy’s hair. “You’ve had a long day.”

“Tell me about it,” Tommy grumbles, eyes flickering down to his lap.

Wilbur remains in the doorway as Techno approaches him, preparing to be met with amicable silence, but he’s not.

“Go easy on him,” Techno tells him lowly as he passes by, stopping right before he’s out the door. “He saved dozens, coming back to the fight like he did.”

Wilbur pauses, before he clasps his hands in front of him.

“I was planning on it,” he tells him softly, truthfully.

Techno grunts a vague affirmative, and then he’s gone, presumably to resume his post at Phil’s side now that the favor Wilbur had asked of him has expired.

Wilbur blinks, watching him go before turning again. Tommy is watching him when he looks his way, the side of his face bathed in flickering orange light. It almost makes Wilbur want to wince.

Wilbur swallows hard, nearly missing the way that Tommy’s shoulders curl as he rounds the bed and places himself gently in the chair beside it.

He gets only a moment of silence to think. To wrangle his thoughts in, sifting through the messier emotions and searching for the easier ones. He doesn’t want to mess this up, doesn’t want to cave to the shreds of grief that still cling to him, needlessly, like a second skin.

But he doesn’t get the chance to break the ice, because Tommy is speaking before he has a chance to draw in a breath.

“I’m not sorry,” Tommy blurts, freezing Wilbur’s words where they sat poised on his tongue. He seems nervous, but his shoulders are squared. “If that’s what you’re here for. I did what I had to do. I don’t regret it.”

Wilbur flinches, despite himself. “Tommy—”

“I told you I would save you,” Tommy continues, breath starting to shake. “No matter what.”

Pain sears through Wilbur’s chest. “Tommy, it’s—”

“And,” he interjects quickly, “I do wish it could’ve been… prettier, but I was needed, and—”

Wilbur reaches out and grabs his hand, squeezing it. Tommy stops, eyes flicking over to him. He cuts himself off, and it looks like he’s holding his breath to do it.

Wilbur feels, overwhelmingly, sad. It’s a different tint of sadness than before, different because it’s made up of all his adoration and all his concern and all his grief, a vicious cocktail.

“Tommy,” Wilbur begins tiredly, “I’m not here to chastise you.”

Tommy swallows, staring blankly at him. Confliction rages across his face, and he lifts his left hand.

“Does,” he begins hesitantly, “Well, chastise, does that—”

Wilbur snorts. He hardly hears the noise.

“I’m not here to yell at you,” he amends. “Just, please… relax.”

Relax, he pleads internally, with more vigor, Before you shove me back onto the brink.

Tommy relaxes, or it looks like he tries to. Tries to follow Wilbur’s command, rather than listen to him. His shoulders loosen, but his eyes betray his anxiety. Heart aching endlessly, Wilbur tries to throw him a bone.

“I wish,” Wilbur forces out, “that things hadn’t happened like they had.”

It’s grossly simple for what he wants to say.

I wish you had stayed.

I wish you had been selfish.

I wish you had never made me grieve.

But Tommy doesn’t deserve to bear the burden of his broken thoughts, and Wilbur finds that he hardly has the energy to sustain them. They pile up in his lungs, making each breath sting, and all he wants is to do is cast them away.

“But,” he wavers, clearing his throat. “I’m too grateful that you’re alive to stay upset with you.” He turns to his knight. “Does that make sense?”

Tommy’s breath hitches.

“Yes,” he whispers. “It does.”

“Good,” Wilbur sighs, leaning back in the chair. Messy thoughts are always best pondered when things aren’t so brittle. “So then, I was going to ask about your arm.”

“My arm?” Tommy echoes, blinking hard. The perplexion consuming his complexion makes Wilbur want to keel over, just a little bit. “It’s— it’s fine.”

Wilbur raises an eyebrow. “Fine?”

Tommy looks down, lips parting uncomprehendingly. “I— I mean, I won’t be able to wield a dagger until it heals, if that’s what you’re saying.”

Wilbur’s heart squeezes at the way his throat threatens to close around the words. This kid.

“I’m not,” he answers carefully, watching Tommy helplessly search his face for answers. “I’m asking how it feels. If it hurts, if it’s okay.”

Tommy blinks. “Oh. You’re— oh.”

Wilbur smiles stiffly. “Yeah.” Then, when Tommy continues to stare, almost wondrously at him, Wilbur nudges his shoulder gently. “Well?”

“It hurts,” Tommy admits, looking like it takes everything in him to admit that. “But the doctor says it’ll heal just fine. I’ll be back to annoying you in no time.”

He smiles as he says it, eyes lifting into something bright. Which means that when every ounce of that faint joy slides off his face, Wilbur sees it like a falling star against black velvet sky.

“Well… I mean,” Tommy laughs out, quiet and free of mirth, “until I leave.”

Time stops.

In the space of a breath, every word, every flowery lyric, every gentle ballad, that Wilbur had prepared for this conversation is punched out of him. Horror ravages him, a self-contained tsunami, and he is sure that if he was standing, he’d be swaying on his feet.

“Leave?” he echoes, head starting to pound.

His vision narrows down to just the boy in front of him, to just the golden candlelight and smudged bruises. The sensation of his heart pounding is felt in every inch of his body. Wilbur can’t stand it.

“Yeah,” Tommy agrees quietly. “I mean, the rebellion is as good as dead. I’m not… I’m not needed here anymore.”

He says it with a rattling sort of certainty, but his eyes don’t leave Wilbur’s face. For Tommy’s sake, Wilbur swallows down every protest that threatens to rise. Every bit of hope that he’d spun into a fantasy—of Tommy staying—dissipates. It leaves him hollow, and reeling.

He cannot let Tommy see that.

“Right,” Wilbur manages. “Of course.”

He draws his hand away from Tommy’s, ignoring Tommy’s frown as he clasps them together in his lap. He’s partially convinced that his hands have been replaced with blocks of ice, because he can’t feel them.

All he feels is stupid—stupid for hoping, and more stupid for coming here so soon.

At least, if he had waited, he could’ve drawn this out. They could’ve lasted longer. But was a slow death any better? He’s not sure. He’s hardly sure of anything.

Tommy, he thinks bitterly. Always finding ways to undo him.

“Wilbur?” Tommy asks gingerly, leaning forward.

He looks concerned, on the brink of reaching out, maybe—which means that Wilbur is failing. Christ.

“My offer still stands, then,” Wilbur tells Tommy, the moment he has figured out how to restore moisture to his mouth. He sidesteps cleanly over Tommy’s worry. “You are free to travel wherever you wish. I will make sure you are taken care of.”

His heart pounds, screeching protests with each syllable that tumbles out of him. But Wilbur owes it to Tommy to stay calm. So he does.

Even as he feels himself come apart, he does.

Tommy leans back, and Wilbur tries not to be completely foolish in convincing himself that the weird expression that flies across Tommy’s face is disappointment.

“Right,” Tommy says, almost a croak. His eyes hover on Wilbur’s cheekbone, not quite meeting his eyes. “That’s— yeah.” He exhales shakily, teeth worrying his lip. “Well, Techno was telling me about a city. On the beach.”

Wilbur tries to appear interested. “Yeah?”

It’s fake. The levity in his voice is fake, his composure is fake, everything is fake and Wilbur is slipping. Tommy’s words are only accelerating his descent.

Tommy nods quickly. Too quickly?

“It’s warm there, apparently. Warmer than here.”

“Ah.”

“L’manburg didn’t really have beaches.”

“No?”

“It would be nice.”

Nails digging into his palm. “It would.”

“I could go there.”

Wilbur exhales heavily. “You could.”

The selfless thing to do, here, would be to leave it at that. To weigh down Tommy’s pockets with gold and silver, to send him off—away from blades and bloodshed and battles—and let him be happy.

But Wilbur is a selfish man. And he can’t do that.

“Or,” he adds quickly, panic tinging his words. He doesn’t look up—can’t. “You could… stay.”

Tommy tenses. Wilbur catches the motion in his peripheral and pretends it doesn’t deflate his lungs.

The pause stretches into an eternity. Wilbur writhes beneath it.

“As your knight?” Tommy asks.

“No,” Wilbur answers, perhaps a bit too harshly. He tries to soften his voice. “As yourself. As Tommy.”

Silence blares loudly over them. Wilbur keeps his head down, the picture of repentance. He gives Tommy the space he needs to answer, even though all he wants to do is beg.

He doesn’t expect for Tommy to start to waver with him.

“What are you saying, Wilbur?”

His voice shakes. His voice shakes.

That’s enough to draw Wilbur’s eyes back up. He looks at him, looks at Tommy, and that’s when he wonders if this is another moment where Tommy’s knowledge fails him.

He hadn’t known, before, that Wilbur had cared for him. Maybe that is true now.

Maybe Wilbur hasn’t made it clear enough since.

(He hopes. He prays that’s what it is.

Because if that’s the case, then Wilbur can fix it.

Easily, eternally, he can fix that.)

“I’m saying,” Wilbur begins, swallowing hard against the knives in his lungs, “that the most scared I have ever been in my life was watching that door close behind you, yesterday.”

Tommy’s breath hitches. Wilbur keeps going.

“I want you to stay, Tommy,” Wilbur confesses. “I don’t want to send you off to the beach. I want you here, with me.” He cradles Tommy’s uncertain face in his eyes. “I’m… selfish. And I don’t want you to leave.”

Tommy is still. Deathly still.

Dawning hope is frozen on his face, but his eyes continue swirling and swirling, two hurricanes of doubt. Tension is etched in every line of his frame, but it’s not the same as before.

It’s tension like a starving dog, presented with a plate of meat. Tension like a flinch, bracing endlessly for a blow. Tension like a boy who has never had the chance to be loved.

Tension like a knight before a king, who is promising the world to him.

“I—” Tommy begins, inhaling carefully. His left hand twists in the blankets on his lap. “I— I wouldn’t have a purpose. I’d be useless.”

Wilbur sees his words for what they are: a test. One last push, to see whether Wilbur will hit, or break.

Wilbur doesn’t just break—he melts. And he gives all his broken pieces to Tommy to hold.

They were always Tommy’s, since that day in the library. The same way that they are Techno’s, and his father’s.

“Is it not purpose enough to be loved?” Wilbur asks genuinely.

He sees the way that Tommy’s eyes flash with a restrained sort of desperation, with want, and has to tuck away a smile.

“Because that’s what you would be, Tommy. That’s all I’d ever ask of you.”

Tommy’s chin trembles. “I don’t know if I’d be any good at that.”

Wilbur gives his smile to Tommy too, lets it curve his lips. “Tommy, you’re already doing wonderfully. You wouldn’t have to try.”

That is what does it.

When Tommy topples forward, face crumpling as his resistance falls, Wilbur is there to catch him.

“Then please,” Tommy whispers. “Please, let me stay.”

Wilbur hooks his chin over Tommy’s head, holding him close. His eyes fall shut, and all he can do is hold and hold and hold him.

“Forever,” Wilbur promises.

It’s a dangerous promise. Forever is everything, is all of him.

Wilbur parts with forever easily.

His hands cradle the back of Tommy’s head, threading loosely through messy curls. “You’re family, now.”

Tommy laughs, and it’s wet with tears and muffled against Wilbur’s shoulders, but it’s everything. He pulls back, eyes shining as he wipes his good hand across his teary cheeks. Wilbur lets him go reluctantly, but he doesn’t protest.

He’s got all the time in the world, after all.

“I’ve always wanted a brother,” Tommy croaks, a hesitant smile pulling on his face.

“Good,” Wilbur breathes. “Because I really don’t know what I would’ve done if you had left.”

Tommy snorts, eyes taking on a spark that has Wilbur’s heart swelling.

“Probably been really miserable,” he offers cheekily.

Wilbur doesn’t even want to joke. He’d gotten a taste of it in that bunker, a glimpse of what that would mean in the throne room. He can’t imagine the rest of his life like that.

“I think it’d be easier if the sun disappeared.”

Tommy looks at him, and Wilbur is both endlessly amused and perpetually saddened by the way he recoils whenever Wilbur is good to him. Always surprised, always suspicious. Never just accepting.

No matter. He consoles himself with the knowledge that, eventually, Tommy won’t be. Wilbur will make sure of it.

The look disappears quickly anway, replaced with a playful disgust. “Yeah, yeah, go tell that to your poetry notebook, prick.”

Wilbur rolls his eyes. “Glad to see you’re already back to normal.”

Tommy’s eyes glint. “Annoying you is always the best part of my day.”

“Right,” Wilbur remarks dryly. “Well, today, the best part of your day is sleeping, so you can continue to annoy me tomorrow.”

Tommy grins drowsily as Wilbur nudges him back, slumping against the pillows. But it’d be too easy to simply close his eyes and rest, sparing Wilbur’s heart the turmoil, because he hesitates.

“Does this mean I’m a prince?”

“No.”

Tommy’s bright expression doesn’t falter. “Do I at least get a crown?” Wilbur opens his mouth to protest, but Tommy cuts him off. “Come on. A crown for my service. Seems fair.”

Jesus, Wilbur thinks.

“No jokes this soon,” he rules instantly, rubbing at his temple. “But,” he adds, before Tommy has a chance to pout, “That can… potentially, be arranged.”

Wilbur’s mind, indulgently, flashes towards his old crown… encrusted with sapphires. It would suit Tommy well.

The victorious smile on Tommy’s face rivals the sun. “Epic.”

Wilbur sighs. “Sleep, child.”

Tommy mumbles out something vaguely disagreeing, and probably vulgar, but his eyes flutter closed. Wilbur is able to ignore his protest from there, so he does, standing and stretching. He prepares to head towards his room, get some sleep himself, before he collapses on the infirmary floor, but he doesn’t make it another step before a hand shoots out, closing around his wrist.

Wilbur stops, startling when he sees that the sleepiness on Tommy’s face has been instantly replaced by sharp panic.

“Stay,” he rasps imploringly, eyes far too unsure for Wilbur’s comfort. “Please.”

Wilbur only hesitates for another second. There’s, really, only one thing he can do. And, well, the look on Tommy’s face pains him more than spending the night in a stiff chair will.

“Of course,” Wilbur murmurs, and Tommy sags against the pillows, relief radiating off of him, as Wilbur reclaims his spot in the chair. “Anything.”

And Wilbur means it. He may be a king, but he means it. For as long as time will let him, he will stay.

Anything is only the beginning.

— ♕ —

“News of the attack has reached the outer cities,” Techno informs him one day, and Wilbur freezes. Techno’s face is totally blank as Wilbur meets his heavy gaze. “They’re worried.” Exhaling roughly, “The people need their king.”

Wilbur looks down again, threading his fingers absently through Tommy’s hair as the boy naps on the grass, head pillowed on Wilbur’s lap.

Tommy needs me, he thinks in sorry justification, though he’s not sure that it’s true. Even then, Wilbur clings to the idea, because it’s easier. Because he wants it to be. Because he has another few days of solace, of serenity.

And he intends to use it.

“The people can wait.”

Techno’s heavy sigh carries over the gentle wind. “Wilbur—”

“Please.”

He wishes the small prick of shame was enough to make him change his mind. But Phil had promised Wilbur time—time to breathe, time to recuperate after the attack. He may not be the king anymore, but he is Wilbur’s father, and his words matter still. He’d offered to stand in just while the dust settles, as was customary during conflict, or the aftermath of conflict, and Wilbur had accepted.

Wilbur can’t bear to don his crown again so quickly.

His shoulders curl, anticipating a sharp reaction from Techno, but—

He doesn’t get one.

“That’s what I thought you’d say,” Techno grumbles, but when Wilbur looks up, surprised, he offers him a gentle smile. Wilbur thinks it has something to do with Tommy, because his eyes flick down and back up. “I’ll tell them to give it another week.”

Gratitude surges through him, intense and all consuming. “Techno.”

He stops, turns. “Yes?”

Wilbur smiles, barely-there but so sweet it’s syrupy. “Thank you.”

Techno nods, lips tilting up just for a second, and then he’s gone.

Wilbur sighs, looking back down. Safe with him, Tommy sleeps, face peaceful and smooth. The scar on his jaw has faded, hardly visible beneath the slowly-darkening smattering of freckles there.

His skin hasn’t seen blood for a week. It’s the least Wilbur could hope for, but he treasures it. Treasures it the way that one treasures clear skies after rain, blossoms after a fire.

There is no such thing as simple anymore. There never has been. But things are quieter.

Far from fractured, nowhere near whole, but quieter. A week from now, he’ll resume his reign. A week from now, the peace won’t be something given to him, but something he has to maintain.

But a week from now, he’ll still have his family. He’ll have Tommy. So for now, he can afford to appreciate the quiet.

He thinks, head tipped back, a fallen ray of sunlight sleeping beneath him, that that’s all Wilbur needs right now.

— ♕ —

“Wilbur, you’re going to be late,” Tommy hisses, shoving at his arm. “The gala—”

Wilbur turns, raising an eyebrow. “Are you my handmaiden now?”

Tommy’s face flattens. “No,” he drawls, “I’m just trying to be responsible. You’re a king, you can’t just—”

“Exactly,” Wilbur interjects, with a feline grin. “I’m the king. It means that I can stop the world for you, if I want to. And I want to.”

It’s not a principle he applies to any other aspect of his rule, it’s not one he can afford to indulge in frequently. But for his family? Wilbur will neglect a single gala, endlessly.

Tommy stills the minute that Wilbur’s words roll over him.

“For me?” Tommy asks, brows scrunching.

“For you,” Wilbur agrees, lifting a black box off of the vanity table.

Tommy’s eyes follow each movement, and Wilbur almost has to bite his cheek to hide his smile.

“If you insist,” Wilbur starts, eyes combing distastefully over the navy uniform that Tommy is wearing, “on remaining intent on chaperoning me—”

“It’s not chaperoning, Wilbur, I just don’t want any repeats—”

Wilbur waves a hand. The fear that comes from Tommy’s insistence is sharp, but muted. He can bear it. And for Tommy, he must.

“Then it’s only fair I reward you.”

That’s enough to snuff out Tommy’s complaints. He perks up, bouncing on the balls of his booted feet.

“Reward me? Does that mean I get my salary back?”

Wilbur tosses him a dull scowl. “You don’t have a salary because I’m not employing you anymore. I told you that if you’d like an allowance—”

But Tommy’s bluff gives out instantly. “Just give me the present.”

It speaks volumes that Wilbur is unperturbed by the demand. He just sighs, some excitement of his own strumming in his veins, and passes the box over to Tommy.

Instantly, Tommy’s peppiness dims. Replacing it is careful anticipation. He glances up at Wilbur questioningly as he takes the heavy box into his hands.

“Open it,” Wilbur instructs softly.

Tommy swallows, and nods. His fingertips brush delicately over the satin ribbon tying the box shut. He is silent as he untangles the delicate knot. The hesitance lingers, and Wilbur steps closer, his hand finding purchase on Tommy’s shoulder.

Tommy inhales, exhales. He opens the box.

Wilbur hears his hitched breath clear as day. “Is this…?”

When he looks up, his eyes are bright—glimmering like the rubies encrusted in the silver crown.

Wilbur finally lets his smile out properly. “Most people receive medals for their service to the Crown. I figured I’d go with something a little… different.”

Tommy blinks, looking between Wilbur and the crown in the box incredulously. At once, he shuts the lid, and Wilbur’s eyebrows lift a fraction.

“I can’t— Wilbur, I was joking,” Tommy stammers out. “I can’t take this.”

That gives Wilbur pause. He glances at the box in Tommy’s lap, a tiny frown playing on his lips. His heart skips once, slightly embarrassed.

“Ah,” he says, having… not considered that. But the stunned expression on Tommy’s face seems too hesitant for his comfort anyway, so he straightens, tilting his chin up. “Well, it’s too late. It’s yours.”

Custom-made, he doesn’t say, because he figures that Tommy can recognize that on his own. Wilbur has always favored sapphire and emerald, but when he had designed this with the jeweler, it was rubies that had felt the most right.

Tommy’s hands, holding the box, spasm, like he isn’t sure whether to open it or throw it to the floor. Wilbur hopes he opts for the former.

“I’m not a prince,” Tommy strains eventually, nearly imploring in the gaze he shoots at Wilbur.

Wilbur shrugs. “You’re my brother. It’s close enough.”

Tommy falters, resistance crumbling. But he looks back down, fingertips hesitating over the lid, and opens the box again. Wilbur decides to ease his uncertainty before it can keep ravaging him.

“We’re going to be late if you don’t put it on,” Wilbur reminds him in a playful drawl. “The gala, remember?”

Tommy startles, and his hand jumps forward, seizing the crown. Wilbur grins as he lifts it out of the swaths of soft fabric.

Wilbur waves his hand towards the mirror. “Come on. Once you’re done with that, we can go.”

That’s all the invitation Tommy needs. He stands, stumbling over to the mirror, and placing it atop his head. The crown nestles in his curls like it was always meant to be there. And when he turns, he’s smiling, like it’s all he knows how to do.

“Thank you,” he says, hushed and heartfelt, and Wilbur nods.

He hears what Tommy doesn’t say, everything that the quiet thank you captures. His lips curve. Wilbur tries to return that same adoration. He’ll keep trying, for the rest of their lives.

And as Tommy’s excited rambling floods his ears with noise, and the echoes of a regal fanfare from downstairs float into the room, Wilbur’s heart is full.

He has never known peace like this.