#oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

Without meaning to, Wilbur's lips tug themselves into a faint smile. "Oh. My revival."

"Don't say it like that," Tommy snaps, before quietening down again, "be fucking normal about it, Wil. I just- I wanna know. Was it like mine?"

He remembers Tommy's story of resurrection. Snatched away by a bruising, painfully thin pair of hands, ripped from blackness and tossed back into the sensory overload of the world. Where Wilbur had rejoiced, manic, in the overstimulation, Tommy had suffered. Then again, Tommy had woken in prison.

Wilbur had woken at the site of his destruction, the ending of his story.

He's grateful the TNT had destroyed that room.

"Nothing much to say." They've stepped from the border of Quackity's country into their own, and Wilbur's body eases of tension. "You know what happened. A train arrived for me. A train, the first train I'd seen pass through the station. And, when it opened..."

"Dream," Tommy says, "and Ghostbur."

Boner whinnies. Tommy pats its nose absently. Wilbur's little brother has always been an animal lover.

"Dream and Ghostbur," Wilbur confirms, "and... Ghostbur got out."

(The acrid stench of blood and smoke curling in his nonexistent nostrils. The ghost's pleading, grabbing onto Dream's arm, begging to be allowed to stay. Dream's noncommittal mask, beaten hands pushing Ghostbur onto the platform.)

"I climbed onboard the train."

("One way ticket for Wilbur Soot," Dream deadpans, and his voice is hoarse, ragged, "and a one time offer."

Wilbur's legs had almost given out in relief and sheer delight. "Well," he says, "I can't turn you down, my man. I never could.")

"...And before I knew it, the train was moving." Wilbur's smile is dreamy, fond. "And I woke in L'Manburg."

"L'Manhole," Tommy murmurs, but when he tosses a look back at his brother, it's troubled, "Did Dream say anything to you? Anything about his plans or shit?"

(Bloodied orange jumpsuit, blood caking the side of his head and his stomach. Face sticky with bruises behind the mask. Dream's smile had been just as twisted and paranoid as it had been in Pogtopia, and Wilbur had laughed, laughed at the world and at Dream and at himself, at their hopeless, beautiful, horrible situation as they'd exchanged a look.)

("I need you back alive," Dream tells him, "or, well- the server does."

Wilbur's grin is gleeful and too thin and wide on his face. "You need me back?" He teases. "Oh, there's a thought."

The look Dream gives him is two parts mangled and one part amused. "You owe me.")

You owe me.

"Nothing," Wilbur says now, and doesn't think of the heat of Dream's hand grasping at his arm or the thrum of his heart at the train rattling to salvation, "nothing at all."