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"Oh," Wilbur says. The smirk on his face tells everything. This man has a plan. He takes a step forward as he ignores the aching of his body. His entire body feels like it's still on fire, especially after he just got back from the dead. "Hello, Dream."
"I need you to help me," Dream takes a step back and tries to hide that he is unsure if he can even get Wilbur to do what he wants at all. This is a different Wilbur than the Wilbur he got to blow up L'Manburg. The twisted look in his eyes and the careful steps forward. Wilbur gets far too close for comfort and Dream takes a step back, realizing he is against the wall.
"You can't make me do shit." Wilbur's breathing is slow and steady as Dream's pace speeds up. The cell is getting warm and things are getting far too close. He is scared. He's scared of this version of Wilbur.
"Do you know how long I was in there?" Wilbur asks as he walks back, looking through the chest looking for something to eat. There are only books and several quills. Wilbur sits against the wall.
"Nine years, inside the void, with Schlatt, and then eventually after sometime Mexican Dream joined, which wasn't much better, but I've heard that was your fault," Wilbur says, a playful smile on his face. He enjoys seeing Dream frightened.
"I've been doing a lot of thinking Dream."
"About what?"
"How I'm going to ruin this entire server, your Chekov's gun was reviving me, and now you've ruined your Dream of a united Dream SMP yourself," Wilbur stands up again and walks to the lava. He gets too close to the lava, he doesn't have much to live for anyway. The orange light on his face gives a frightening shadow on his face.
"Come on Dream, Tommy warned you right?" Wilbur’s smirk turns into a bright smile as he looks at Dream again. “I hope someone comes very soon to give you food, I can’t wait to ruin the server while you have to watch from the one place that I can’t touch.”
“Is there anything I can do to stop you?”
“Dream! I have nothing to live for! I was already dead! I’ve experienced it! There’s nothing new about it anymore I’m not scared to die!” Wilbur laughs loudly and the terrifying sound fills the room. The orange light and the darkest of shadows being half of Wilbur’s face make it all too terrifying.
“Dream!” A third voice. Sam’s voice to be certain. He calls out from behind the lava and Wilbur yells. Loud.
“SAM!” And his act starts. His voice changes immediately, the laughter stops and he sounds genuinely desperate. And it almost fools Dream, if Wilbur hadn’t just talked about how he had no fears at all he would’ve believed how desperate he sounded. “SAM GET ME OUT!”
“W-Wilbur?” Sam utters out in pure surprise. “How-- Why?” He askes as he presses the buttons that lower the lava from the cell and
“Dream resurrected me, you need to get me out of here,” Wilbur begs as he drops onto his knees on the floor. He gives it his all in the act. He really sounds and looks desperate as he backs away from Dream as far as he could. The lava falls and Sam stands back. He doesn’t trust Dream, obviously.
“Dream, if you even make a move,” Sam says as he lets the bridge come forward, the loud sound of the piston fills the room and Wilbur steps forward. “Wilbur, you need to make sure you walk with the bridge as it moves.” And Dream doesn’t move, luckily. He’s still shocked by Wilbur’s words and the quick switch up in his act. The way he went from saying he was going to destroy the entire SMP to acting so desperate to get out, almost like he was afraid of Dream.
Wilbur walks with the bridge and almost jumps off as soon as he’s close. He looks at Sam and smiles. “Thanks,” he says as he lets himself fall against the wall. Sam immediately lets the lava fall again.
“Your food will have to wait a little Dream,” Sam says right before the lava drops and Dream sighs from his side of the lava.
“Hey Wilbur, you--uhm, you okay?” Sam asks as he gives him some food from his inventory. (Not the unbaked potatos.) Sam has a hard time staying collected and reserved when Wilbur just came back from the death. It’s a bit weird to handle and there is definitely no protocol for this. Sam does not know how to act in this situation so he just makes it his job to get Wilbur out as fast as possible. “Let’s get out of the prison first.”
“Yeah, yeah that’s-- that’s fine.” Wilbur says, he’s acting disorientated and he pretends like he doesn’t know where he is. Well, technically he doesn’t really know where he is. (Because when the hell did this prison get build.) They walk through the halls and the silence between them is awful. Sam is far too focused on the idea that Dream can resurrect people from inside this prison. But he had been focused on that ever since Dream had revived Tommy as well. He needs to stop Dream from doing it another time if in case Dream revives Schlatt.
And he walks down the prime path. Towards L’Manburg. Or what, he hoped, used to be L’Manburg. And slowly he walked down. He walked down the path and it was surrounded by red vines that spread all around the server, all around the path. The vines seemed to invest every space that they could invest. From Eret’s museum, to everything that wasn’t the prime path.
Wilbur walked past the many buildings he had known before he had died, but he also walked past many buildings that he hadn’t seen before. But the vines were the weirdest occurance to him. They were everywhere and came in and out of any area that they could come from.
Will walks ahead and there’s a dark looming energy coming from the location he’s headed towards. The shadows that are casted above him don’t prepare him for anything good. The obsidian grid that he can see from the distance and the prime path that stops vaguely in the air. He jumps down carefully and walks towards the big hole. It’s completely covered in the red vines and Wilbur smiles.
“Who had done this?” He wonders to himself and he needs to figure it out as he looks around him. He lets himself carefully fall down into the hole. He wants to see and check how deep it would go into the ground. Did it hit bedrock eventually?
He climbed and climbed down carefully and eventually hit the bedrock. The area was covered completely in the red vines and he doesn’t touch them. They look genuinely disgusting and he climbs up again. He doesn’t have time to bother thinking about the red vines. He needs to find someone who can help him get to somewhere safe, somewhere where he can get materials and armor and possibly notebooks and swords.
“Jack! Jack Manifold!!” Wilbur yells after him as he runs. He runs towards Jack and wraps his arm around his shoulder. “Oh god, I’m glad ur safe.” All his words are lies. There isn’t a word here true. Wilbur killed Jack that one time, Jack was the one who had stayed almost neutral during the Pogtopia Manburg war, Jack who only last-minute decided which side he really wanted to be on. And it was mostly his own side.
Wilbur was annoyed with that, Jack was someone he didn’t really like but he had to be nice. He had to lie his way through to people to gain their trust. He needed to destroy this place from the inside. And the easiest way was to gain everyone’s trust and their current stories ever since what had happened to L’Manburg.
“Wilbur!?” Jack sounded surprised and turned to him and grabbed Will by his shoulders. “You’re-- You’re back?” He pinches Wilbur softly. Somehow it is unreal and he has to make sure Wilbur is real. That this isn’t just a new version of Ghostbur. But Wilbur’s skin is firm and real and Jack smiles brightly. “You’re back!”
“Yeah, I am.” Wilbur smiles as Jack pulls him in for a reassuring embrace. Something he does not know he deserves right now. Especially not with his current plans. “Where is everyone?” He asks as he looks around. They’re standing on the Prime Path and it was weird to him that they hadn’t seen a single person walk around.
“Well, some moved up to the Antarctics, some are in the Badlands and some are in Snowchester, Tubbo’s new nation,” Jack explains as they walk down the path slowly. “I can show you Snowchester?” Jack looks up at Wilbur and Wilbur nods. Will knows he needs a place to stay. He needs somewhere he can sleep and organize his plans from. He might as well do it near people who, supposedly, trust him.
They walked past the tunnel that would be much faster to use for the trip. But neither of them had any armor with soul speed, so it would just kill them. Neither of them wanted that so they walked. And they talked. They talked about how Dream blew up New L’Manburg with Technoblade. And it made Wilbur smile.
They talked about the egg and the vines that had been spreading through the SMP. Jack said he didn’t care about the bloodvines too much, Jack hadn’t really faced any issues with them just yet.
They talked about how Jack was glad that Dream was in prison. And Wilbur noticed how much Jack talked about himself. That Jack hadn’t asked a single question as to how or why Wilbur was revived.
Maybe Jack just simply doesn’t care. And they walked into Snowchester. The walls around the commune . Jack just explaining some things, and how he ended up there, with Tubbo.
“What’s this room?” Wilbur asks as he puts his hand on the handle of the door. He tries to open it, it’s locked. The door doesn’t budge and Jack looks over his shoulder and bites the inside of his cheek.
“It’s--It’s nothing,” he dismisses the thought. Jack hopes Wilbur wouldn’t ask another question, but Wilbur notices the sign above the door.
“Nuclear Bombs?” Wilbur asks as he turns around to face Jack again, an eyebrow raised high and his lips part slightly after he finishes the question. He looks back at Snowchester and smiles. This place is going to be of use to him.
“It’s nothing to worry about,” Jack says. He diminishes the subject fast. He can’t talk about this, Wilbur notices. He does want to know more. This might make it much easier for him to destroy the SMP.
Wilbur spends his next days on the SMP planning. He tries to avoid other people that he knows but he’s fastly faced with meeting Niki as he walks through the SMP. He can smell her. He knows immediately that it’s her. The smell of fresh baked bread and cookies surrounds her like it always has.
Or at least, how it has always been to him. She scowls as she sees him. Looking him up. “You’re--” She stops as she puts her sword away in the sheath on her belt. “You’re alive,” she says. Her face is as firm as stone as she holds back. “You betrayed us all.”
“I know,” Wilbur says. He doesn’t want to lie to her. Not to Niki. He’s fine with lying to everyone else but not to her. He puts his hand in his pocket. Hiding the little notebook he’d been taking notes in. His many observatories on the server right now.
Ghostbur? Red Egg. Tubbo has Nukes.
It was a growing list of things that he was working on, he needed the info to get his plans to work. But he first had to speak to Tommy, but now Niki was in front of him. The one person he didn’t want to face.
“You’re not sorry,” she says. and she’s right. Her now pink hair frames her face and she’s wearing a cape around her shoulders. A cape he knew all too well. The burnt edges around the hem.
“You’re wearing my cape.”
“I am,” she says as she slowly puts her hand on her sword, she’s aware of his intentions. Of course she knows. She always knew more than anyone else. She was harder to mend and manipulate.
“You have to go,” Wilbur says. He turns around instantly. Not letting Niki say a word. He can’t face her. He cannot talk to her right now. He just hopes she won’t be around when his final plan takes place.
It’s another day. The list of notes grows.
Dream in an inescapable prison (built by Sam, commissioned by Dream). Totem God lives in the Desert. Bad, Ant, Ponk, Punz are supporting the Egg (Cult Like).
He walks over the prime path again. Past Punz’s tower, towards the Church of Prime. He walks past the church and he’s not actually paying attention when he runs into someone. He mumbles an apology, still writing in his notebook.
“Uhm--Will?” Tommy’s voice. Oh. Wilbur looks up and closes the notebook. “You’re here,” Tommy says and Wilbur nods, slowly.
“I am indeed.” He already knew that he was going to lie in the next four sentences he was going to speak.
“Do you--remember?” Tommy asks, carefully. He’s very aware of the things that Wilbur had told him in the void. He was well aware that he was going to have to play these cards very carefully because if he slipped up even just once before his final task he would also probably end up in that prison that Dream was stuck in.
“What?” Wilbur says.
“You don’t remember?”
“I only remember dying, to be honest, I don’t remember anything in between,” Wilbur says as he looks in his notebook again. The top note in the list underlined twice. Nukes. “I’ve been writing down what’s been going on since I left--”
“You don’t actually remember anything? You aren’t going to--” Tommy stops himself. He didn’t want to give Wilbur any ideas. Wilbur shakes his head. “Oh well, then that’s good.” Tommy looks like he really wants to leave, he’s fidgety and shifting his weight between his feet.
“I need to go,” Wilbur says. Not because he really needs to. He wants to get away from Tommy. He walks off without a goodbye and walks towards Eret’s castle. There’s no reason to visit their castle at all but Wilbur just wants to see it.
And it’s as more days pass that Wilbur’s plans become solid. Wilbur manages to steal the keys to the nukes from Snowchester. And holds it safely in his pocket close to his chest.
He plans to do it early. With the sun that rises. He hopes dearly that Dream can hear the explosion from the prison. And it’s early that one day when Wilbur wakes up. The sun has barely risen above the horizon. Wilbur carefully walks through Snowchester. The crisp snow under his feet and he has a stolen key in his pocket. He smiles to himself, knowing his plans will obviously be interrupted. And so be it. He is always going to be interrupted apparently.
He walks past the prime path and looks around him carefully and sets everything up. Simply waiting. Waiting for the interruption and right after he’s done with all that he prepared. The nuke is sitting carefully in the middle of the community house.
"I knew I couldn't trust you," Tommy says as he walks into the community house.
"Oh come on, you had been suspicious the whole time," Wilbur says, he smiles. As always. Wilbur had been smiling so much lately, everything had gone just to his plans. "But I've already done it. It's gone Tommy, there is no more Dream SMP, Dream's little Dream of a united SMP is gone. Forever."
"I will kill you!" Tommy says as he takes out his sword. He holds it up with both hands and points it at Wilbur.
"TOMMY I DON'T CARE ABOUT BEING KILLED ANYMORE! I HAVE ALREADY BEEN DEAD!" Wilbur laughs manically. He shakes his head slowly. "Tommy, it wasn't meant to be, everyone's dreams on this server are doomed."
“Wilbur, I trusted you!” Tommy yells as he slams his hand against the crafting table next to him. “We all did,” he says as he looks up at Will. He had always trusted Will, over and over again even when he thought he shouldn’t have. Why wouldn’t he trust Wilbur? Will had always led and helped him before. But he knew just as well that Wilbur had just manipulated him. Molding him to his will.
“You know what I told you in the void, Tommy! You listened to me yell about it! And yet you trusted me on earth! You really are a stupid child you know that?” Wilbur says as he walks towards the nuke. The last thing he has to do before the thing explodes, taking everything on the Dream SMP with him. The last thing to do before everything gets destroyed. Everything that most people care about. Maybe he would even get rid of some people their lives.
It seemed very possible for that to happen. And Wilbur smiles to himself. “You’re a very stupid child to trust me again and again and again. ”
“Don’t you dare move another muscle,” Tommy says. He had lowered his sword while talking but it’s high up again. “Wilbur please, don’t do this.” He begs so carefully. He really can’t do this. He really doesn’t want to do this.
“I will, it’s necessary,” Wilbur says as he looks at the nuke again. Then to the blade of the sword that’s pressed against his neck. He takes a step back, hands up in the air.
“Nothing will happen to Snowchester or anything you love, really,” Wilbur says, trying to reassure Tommy of letting him do this. But of course, he wouldn’t do that. And Wilbur takes one more step back. That one step brings him close enough to the button. One step was all it takes to be close enough. It’s in reach of his hands now and he only just has to move fast enough.
“Just you and me, we’re not good for this server Tommy.” Wilbur knows how a sword to his stomach feels now. He doesn't care about it anymore.
“Tommy, I told you time and time again, it was never meant to be .”
“DON’T!” Tommy screams as Wilbur walks closer to the nuke. But Wilbur doesn’t listen. Wilbur’s hand is already on the nuke.
“Say Goodbye to Phil for me,” Wilbur says. And Tommy takes a step back. It’s a step back that’s not going to help him because he knows the damage the nukes do. Tommy runs far from the Community house. Watching Wilbur stand in front of the ticking bomb.
And the explosion hits. It throws Tommy back feet onto the prime path and He sees everything gets pulled apart again right in front of his face.