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English
Series:
Part 16 of the perpetual process of going somewhere
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Published:
2021-12-15
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1,838
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1/1
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30
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246
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in memoriam

Summary:

“You know, I fought for it,” Sapnap says. “L’Manberg. It wasn’t ever really mine, but I fought for it.”
–
Wilbur, and someone who loved L’Manberg a little too.

Notes:

i got a single line of dialogue in my head and then totally blacked out and wrote this. no proofreading either i have blurry brain
anyway this is for me and zanna's platonic rarepair of wanting wilbur and sapnap to be friends but you guys can read it too <3

(See the end of the work for more notes.)

Work Text:

Wilbur Soot keeps seeing Sapnap lurking around the woods near his burger van, and his first thought is that he’s spying on him. The second, more logical follow-up is that Sapnap is spying on someone else. It isn’t hard to guess who.

It’s been awhile since Wilbur’s seen the man; probably not since he’s been alive the first time around. Sapnap looks different now. He wears his armor differently, Wilbur thinks; it’s a little less polished, a little dented, a little worn. He wears a cloak over his shoulders and the bandanna around his forehead is tied in a bunny-eared bow in the back; soft details as if to mask the fact that he is a seasoned warrior in full netherite. His hair is longer now, tied into a ponytail at the base of his neck, and his horns are taller.

He’s gotten older. He hasn’t gotten any less vigilant.

He knows this, because Wilbur steps out of the van and Sapnap instantly whirls, sword suddenly in his hand and stance widening. Wilbur rocks back on one heel, holding up both hands.

“I surrender,” he says, lightly, a smile. Sapnap stares at him for a moment, and then his shoulders relax and the sword disappears from his hand.

“Sorry,” Sapnap apologizes. “I’m a little on-edge. You get it.”

Wilbur does indeed get it. “Looking for someone?”

“Uh,” Sapnap stutters. “Quackity? You don’t happen to–to know where he is today?”

“Casino,” Wilbur says. “If I had to wager a guess.”

And if not, then he’ll be off to wherever it is that he tends to disappear to for hours or even days at a time recently. Wilbur can wander all of Las Nevadas and never once set eyes on him, he’s discovered.

Not that he goes looking. Wilbur is fine being alone. He’s got plenty of practice with it, doesn’t he? It would be pretty sad if, after thirteen years, he didn’t know how to be alone with his own thoughts. Pretty damn sad.

“I’ll find him another time, then,” Sapnap says. Wilbur reels his mind back in, remembers who this conversation is about. Sapnap, despite his words, doesn’t make a move to leave. He stands here and fidgets with his fingers and looks up the sandy slope to the lights of Las Nevadas above them.

“What’d you need Big Q for?” Wilbur asks.

“Just wanted to talk,” Sapnap says. There’s something he isn’t quite saying, and Wilbur isn’t sure if it’s worth pushing. And then, Sapnap blurts out, “You heard about Dream?”

“What, that he’s out?”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah.” Wilbur leans against the side of the van. Hands in pockets. “Little hard to miss something like that.”

Sapnap nods. His eyes are still fixed on the sand and neon signs, and his hands flex and relax. One hand moves to the other - fingers turning two rings around the fourth finger of his left hand.

Wilbur has seen these rings before, or at least, a matching set of them. He’s seen them on a chain around one Alex Quackity’s neck.

Hm.

“Aren’t you worried, then?” Sapnap speaks up, suddenly. He turns, glances back in Wilbur’s direction, and Wilbur answers him with a lone eyebrow raised in his direction. “About Dream. About what he’ll do next.”

“Dream brought me back from the dead,” Wilbur drawls. “I think I owe him one, technically.”

“And that doesn’t worry you?”

Wilbur stops at that. He turns his head, tilted, neck creaking a little as he does. Sapnap has always stood by Dream’s side, no matter the conflict. He wonders what’s brought this on. “Should it?”

“You know what he’s capable of,” Sapnap says. “Don’t you? He destroyed L’Manberg. Your country.”

“In full fairness, I destroyed it first.”

“Yeah, but not like that.” Sapnap shifts his weight. “You weren’t there for Doomsday. I was. It wasn’t the same scale at all.”

Doomsday. Wilbur rolls that name over in his head. He’s putting it together, a little at a time, with the fragmented memories he has and what pieces others have told him. Doomsday. They didn’t name the day he blew up L’Manberg. Just called it November 16th, the day it happened, and that was it. No grim, horrific reminder; just a simple date.

It’s a little funny, as well as a little sad, that even the self-imposed destruction of his own country was beaten by someone else’s bigger and better explosion. Even his own carefully orchestrated death wasn’t the worst thing to befall that country. Even in death, he is unremarkable.

“Sit down with me, Sapnap,” Wilbur says, abruptly. “Tried a Wilburger yet?”

“I haven’t,” Sapnap says.

Wilbur leads Sapnap to the umbrella-covered table in front of the van. It’s deserted; for all his and Ranboo’s best - or, if not best, at least halfway attempted - efforts, this place was never exactly hopping with business. It’s a bad business model; there’s no scarcity. There’s a perfectly good burger place inside the city, so nobody spends the time wandering out of it to get a mediocre burger cooked by a now-dead enderman and a not-dead guy without taste buds.

Sapnap, to his credit, doesn’t comment on the taste of the food. He just eats it.

“You were talking about L’Manberg earlier,” Wilbur says. “About what Dream did to it. You know I got my tnt to blow it up the first time around from Dream?”

“Yeah,” Sapnap says. “I was helping him too back then.”

“Right,” Wilbur agrees. “So then you’ll know that I don’t actually give a shit that he blew up the place again.”

Sapnap studies him, eyes steel grey and dark. “Really?”

“Really.” Wilbur doesn’t eat his own burger. He leans an elbow on the picnic table. “I’ve talked to a lot of people who share that opinion, too. It was a–a fucking plague on the server, right? All it caused people was trauma and grief. Hurt people. Made things a nightmare, and when - when all of you blew it up, it was a good thing! Finally got it gone for good.”

Sapnap’s hands are still, for once. He holds his burger, and he looks at Wilbur with an unreadable look on his face. “People say that?”

“Plenty.” He says it easily, throwing an arm out as he speaks as if this means nothing to him. He can smile like it does, too. “And they’re all probably right. L’Manberg was something to be hated by the time she died. Everyone in that country was better off with it blown to bedrock.”

And Sapnap doesn’t say anything, so Wilbur keeps going.

“I mean, you’d agree, wouldn’t you? When you stood beside Dream blowing the place to kingdom come, what’d you think? Anyone would miss it? Good riddance? Finally, a chance to rid the SMP of this plague!”

Sapnap interrupts him before he can go any further. All he says, quiet, is, “I didn’t stand beside Dream.”

That catches Wilbur off guard. His breathing has grown difficult without his noticing, and now he stops to catch, and to try to picture Dream and Sapnap not at one another’s side. He can’t quite do either. “Isn’t he your best friend?”

“Yes,” Sapnap says. There’s not a moment of hesitation in his voice. “But I fought against him, Wilbur. We haven’t seen eye to eye on anything in a long time. When Doomsday happened, I was there in the explosions and the smoke and the–all the fucking noise. I was there trying to stop it.”

Wilbur looks at Sapnap now. He really looks at him, past the overgrown hair and grown-in horns and the rings he’s twisting on his finger. There’s something lined in his face, in his eyes; a quiet sort of depth that Wilbur wouldn’t have ever associated with him before. There’s something tired, something sad, something a little wistful.

Sapnap isn’t the person he was when Wilbur died, he thinks.

“I fought for it,” Sapnap says. “L’Manberg. It wasn’t ever really mine, but I fought for it anyway.”

And Wilbur says, breathless, “Why?”

“Because he loved it,” Sapnap says honestly. That is one thing Wilbur can still trust about Sapnap; there is not a lying bone in that man’s body. “It was his home, y’know? Like, we had El Rapids, but L’Manberg - Quackity, he loved it. He put so much into it, and to see it all go up in smoke… And so did Tommy, and so did Tubbo, and so did so many fuckin’ other people, and yeah, it felt fucked up to stand on the other side against Dream that day, but–” Sapnap cuts off with a shrug and a chuckle that doesn’t have an ounce of humor to it. “Guess I had to get into practice for that one.”

Wilbur stares straight ahead. There’s something he doesn’t have a name for in his chest. “Huh.”

“I’m not gonna pretend I get it,” Sapnap says. “The whole, blowing up L’Manberg and getting yourself killed about it thing. I don’t get it. That’s stupid as shit. But acting like you don’t give a shit about it now - I dunno. Maybe you really don’t. Whatever. That’s your call, but that’s not what everyone thinks. Plenty of people loved it. Lot of them still do.”

Sometimes, he’s not wholly sure what it was about, and he’s not about to put it all into words here for fucking Sapnap of all people. Not when his chest aches like he can’t breathe and there’s something weird and fuzzy in his head.

But this–this he gives him. “Everyone acts like it’s good it’s gone.”

“They rebuilt,” Sapnap tells him. “Would’ve just kept on rebuilding as much as it took. And I fought for it to be able to rebuild again.”

There is something in both his head and his chest that he doesn’t want to think about. He doesn’t like that there are tears pricking at his eyes and that his throat has gone tight and funny, so he looks away from Sapnap, and he blinks until it stops.

It is bright out, and there’s a shitty burger in front of him, and someone he barely knows at all is sitting at this table with him. He drags himself back into it. Back into the sun and out of his own head.

There’s nothing else to be said, so he doesn’t say it.

“You should talk to Quackity,” Wilbur says, finally.

A smile plays on Sapnap’s mouth. “I’m trying. He’s a hard man to pin down.”

“Keep trying.” Wilbur smiles at him. “Don’t tell him you bought a Wilburger, though. Won’t make things better.”

Sapnap huffs, something like a laugh. “Thanks for the advice, man.”

“Any time.” Wilbur holds out a hand, and Sapnap takes it, grip firm. It’s somewhere between a handshake and two people with desperately clasped hands.

“Yeah,” Sapnap says. He echoes it back too, a little more serious. Like it’s something for Wilbur to hold on to as well. “Any time.”

And, well. Maybe Wilbur will take him up on that.