Tw // Blood

tw // blood

    There is a quiet, fleeting, moment, when the blade sinks itself into his ribcage and just below his heart, where the world whites out at the edges. He feels his lungs rattle in his chest, feels the metallic taste of blood well up from the back of his throat. He feels Phil’s shaking hands, tremors running down the metal and into his spine and his throat and the lips he so lightly twists into a smile. 

    “Hey, Phil.” Wilbur says, feeling his father slip further down, head bowed in grief. “It’s cold.”

    Phil keens low and quiet into his chest, singed wings draping over Wilbur, trying their best to block out the cold he knows comes from somewhere within him. He appreciates the gesture nonetheless. 

    He hears fireworks in the distance, and sees blue and red through the feathers. L’manburg colors. He silently thanks his brother for the last reminder of his symphony, his unfinished verse. He wonders if his death will be a finishing bar, or perhaps a catalyst for a new measure. He wonders if Tommy knows that the mantle has been passed, and that he’s sorry for the weight that ties a noose around his younger brother’s neck. It wasn’t supposed to be like this, he wants to plead, you’re not supposed to carry the weight of my failures on your shoulders. He hopes Tommy runs away, that he leaves this unfinished song and go write for himself a new one, a happier one. 

    “Are you proud of me?” Wilbur finds himself whispering, half hoping Phil doesn’t hear, and finding himself feeling too tired to care. He supposes death did that to a person. Leaves them tired and cold and strangely light. Phil’s hands don’t stop shaking, and red paints his palms and fingers and the hem of his cloak. Wilbur huffs a laugh at his father’s silence.

    “You don’t have to answer that, I think I know what you’re gonna say anyway.” Wilbur says, swallowing back a lungful of blood and air, bringing a hand up to card through the man’s blond hair. Phil shudders. “I wouldn’t be proud of me either.”

    Phil lets out a broken sound at this, and somewhere in Wil’s bleeding chest, he feels a twinge of shame. 

    “Forget about me, Phil.” Wilbur says into the air, feeling sweat and blood and tears drip down his chin. It stains the tips of Phil’s hair. “It’ll be easier that way, I think.”

    Phil brings a hand up to clutch at Wilbur’s arm, head still burrowed in his fast reddening shirt, and Wilbur stifles a gasp at where the movement jars his wound. The elder’s breathing is shallow, he opens and closes his mouth, words caught in his throat, like he’s choking on them.

    “Don’t cry, Phil.” Wilbur hums, voice thready and thin in the ash filled air, “I don’t want that to be the last thing I hear.”

    Phil sobs, and his back shakes with the weight of his grief and his loss. It must be agonizing, Wilbur thinks, to mourn your son while he still speaks. Then again, that won’t last for much longer.

    Wilbur strokes his father’s head, though his fading strength only allows him to curl his fingers, helpless as it falls wayside to the ground. 

    “You’ll be fine, dad.” Wilbur whispers, “You did the right thing. You got rid of the big bad, like the hero in the stories you used to tell.”

    Phil wails harder, and Wilbur thinks that maybe being a hero isn’t as appealing when it causes good men to cry. 

    “I’m tired.” He sighs, feeling his eyes slip shut, “I’ve been awake too long.”

    Phil reaches out with trembling fingers, bloodstained palms cradling his cheek.

    “I l-love yo u.” He chokes, the words broken and jilted, like a song through a broken speaker. 

    Wilbur feels his smile slip a bit, and bites back a strangled laugh, because Phil doesn’t deserve this, doesn’t deserve to have to paint the floor red with his own son’s blood. Another tally on his faults, he thinks, another red name for his ledger of wrongdoings. Even on his dying breath, he hurts the people he loves. 

    “I love you too.” He says, instead, because he refuses to leave without letting his father know that he loves him. That whatever happens, whatever consequences he’s left blazing at his wake, Wilbur soot does not hate his father.  That this isn’t some sort of cruel punishment or last hurrah. He thinks that maybe he just wants to be held, and that sleep comes so much easier when he’s safe in the arms of his childhood hero and protector. “I love you so much.”

     The static in his head grow louder, and he feels his heart give a shudder, and a beat, and the dark encroaches quickly, and through the gauze he hears a broken scream. Then, nothing.