Chapter Text
Wilbur was getting off of the bus from his job, he owned a car but he lent it to a friend who crashed it a few weeks back and he didn't have enough money to fix it so he had to take the bus. He didn't really mind the bus though, it was calming to be able to look out the window and drift off into a different fantasyland without having to worry about crashing into the car in front of him.
He was just a normal 24 year-old man walking down the street, having a normal day, and a normal life. Well that was until he saw a kid shivering violently on the side of one of the stores he was walking past. And he knows that everybody else was just walking away and not even looking in the kids direction, but he can't just leave a kid on the side of a street once he sees them! Can't sue him for being a good person.
Either way, he stops to look at the kid. They are blonde and they are curled up in a ball on the side of some sort of flower shop with a tiny sign that says, "Money Please?" with a tiny cup under it that doesn't look like it has a single dime inside it. He sighs angrily, he can't believe that people can just walk by a child that needs help on the side of a street, but he guesses that is just how some people behave.
Obviously not him though because he walks up to the kid and slightly crouches down in front of them, they don't seem to notice him because they don't move a inch from their spot curled up on the side of the shop. He tries to make his voice as gentle as he can so he doesn't scare the kid when he says,
"Hey.. You okay..?"
He knows, obviously not. But he felt like it was the most appropriate thing to ask. He feels like the kid didn't hear him because the kid just stays still except from the shivers that constantly rack their body. Normally he would just drop some dollars inside the cup and maybe get the kid something to eat before leaving, but it was almost winter and the kid had nothing but a thin jacket, a pair of jeans, and a red shirt. He didn't want to hear that the kid died on the side of the street when he knows he could've done something to help so he looks around the area he is in.
Distantly he sees a shop that looks like it has some blankets and it might have a thicker jacket or a coat inside. He decides to abandon his dreams of having a nice dinner from this restaurant he was planning to go to, to instead help this kid. He can deal with eating some crappy ramen at his flat if he knows he helped some kid survive through the night.
He looks back at the kid who still hasn't moved an inch and crouches down low enough so he can look a bit more at their face. As soon as he sees the streaks of tears on the kids face, he made up his mind and he whispers to the kid, so he doesn't startle them,
"I will be right back.. Okay..?" Surprisingly, he gets a small timid nod back, which other people would have missed if they weren't close enough. He gives the kid a warm smile even though they aren't looking at him and he gets up slowly and turns back to look at the shop.
The shop wasn't very far away from where the kid was, he runs through the crowds of people to quickly enter the shop to see lines of blankets and he briefly catches a glance of a jacket that looks way thicker than the one the kid had in the back of the shop. He makes a beeline to the blankets and grabs one that would surely cover the kid enough for the night and then walks back to grab the jacket. Sadly he couldn't spot a bigger one, but the blanket looks big enough to cover the kid good enough anyways. It's big and fluffy and it looks like the one he got for Christmas when he was a child, and he adored it so he hoped that the kid outside would love it as well.
He went to the cashier, who luckily did not have a long line, and bought the items. It was pretty much the cost of the money he made this month from his job but he didn't care, the kid needed it way more than he does right now. He runs out of the shop and looks around for the blonde kid and he spots them fairly quickly and he immediately takes off in their direction.
He has to slow his jog to a fast walk because he wants to be careful not to bump into anybody, but as soon as the crowd clears he starts jogging again until he ends up in front of the kid curled up next to the flower shop in the same position he left them in.
He crouches down to see them better again while holding out the blanket to them and whispers gently,
"Hey, I'm back.. I'm gonna put this on you, ok?" Once the kid nods he lays the blanket on top of the kid and immediately the kid curls up into it and for the first time looks up at him with his bright red eyes and smiles at him.
He smiles back and looks down at the kids hands, he realizes the kid was doing sign language, something he did not know and laughed out a kind,
"Sorry, I don't know sign language." The kid paused for a moment, staring at him before looking around and grabbing a tiny notebook and a pencil with the eraser broken off of it. He writes down a few things very slowly, he is still trembling, but Wilbur waits for him to finish writing patiently.
The kid turns the notebook to face him and Wilbur makes out the words, "Thank you." from what he sees on the notebook and smiles at the kid,
"Of course, I didn't want to just leave you here." The kid smiles before his eyes shift to the side and he looks.. Surprised..? Before turning the tiny notebook towards himself, flipping a page, and writing quickly.
Wilbur waits patiently again before the page is turned back to him for it to only say, "Tommy" with a bunch of scribbles next to it. He looks at the kid and asks him, a bit confused,
"Your name is Tommy..?" The kid nods slightly and Wilbur smiles,
"Well Tommy, my name is Wilbur. If you don't mind me asking, why are you on the side of the street?"
Tommy's face falls for a second before he turns the page back to him and writes again. When the page is turned back towards Wilbur all he can see is the word, "Lost" written out on the page. Wilbur looks at it for a bit before slowly looking up at Tommy and asking,
"You.. Got lost..?" Tommy nods and Wilbur can't help but ask,
"How..?" Tommy's face drops again and he searches around in his jacket's pockets for a bit before pulling out a stone and holding it out to Wilbur.
Wilbur can't tell if the stone is glowing or if it is just his eyes and he slowly asks,
"You want me to take it..?" Tommy nods with an odd look.
And of course..
He touches it.
Because how is he supposed to know he shouldn't touch a random stone a kid on the side of a street gave to him?
Either way he touches it and immediately his world falls black.
He feels like he is falling.. Falling further and further into the darkness and he can't get out. He falls and falls and his body feels like it is tingling.
The tingling feeling gets stronger and stronger until.. He drops onto something, and the first thing he does is groan loudly. He cannot see anything but black and he panics. He flails for a bit before he realizes the reason why he can't see anything is because his eyes are still closed.
He opens his eyes and for some reason is surrounded by an oddly tall room that has a bunch of tools on it and the whole room is wood. He hears a door slam shut and briefly catches a blonde boy running out of the room. He immediately is on his feet before he realizes..
"Why… Why the HELL am I so short..?"
"What the-"
Screams could be heard in the distance as Wilbur ran out of the room he woke up in while being chased by an oddly overgrown television man and locked himself in a closet, panting and wondering what the heck happened and what the HELL that child did with that weird stone to send him here. He briefly remembers seeing the blonde kid running out of the room and immediately thinks of catching him and almost opens the door before he hears loud footsteps from the giant TV man.
He then realizes that his voice sounded very weird and he looks down for the first time and realizes.. He is the size of a toddler, and his voice didn't sound like a 24 year old man, his voice sounded like a literal baby.
He now is seriously panicking and would be yelling if he isn't busy with trying to keep the TV man from finding him. Wilbur holds the knob to the door tightly in his hand while pressing the door shut and puts his ear up to the door while trying not to breathe. He hears the footsteps get closer and closer and he pauses in fear. He is frozen in place before he hears the footsteps slowly drift farther and farther away.
He immediately backs away and slides down the nearest wall while panting quietly. He looks around, the closet being lit up by a tiny candle in the corner. He looks down and tries to calm down and not think about how he is a literal toddler right now.
After a few seconds of panicking, his breath calms down and he opens his eyes and stares into the candle. There is only one thought in his mind, and it is to find that kid and find out what the heck he did with that stone to bring him here and to turn him into this. He gets up slowly, it takes him a while because it's harder to stand in this new body of his. He looks around before waddling to the candle and taking it and holding it out in front of him so he can see.
He takes a deep breath and tries to calm his head before slowly pushing the door open and peeking out to look into the room he was just chased out of. He doesn't see any human-like limbs or any televisions so he decides it is safe after staring out into the room for a few minutes and he slowly creeps out into the room unsteadily. The room is eerily tall and he guesses it's what babies see when they are in rooms and it is more creepy than fascinating like how he imagined babies saw the world.
He looks around and sees a pair of stairs leading up to something, he slowly creeps around the walls and bumps into something and practically screeches before covering his mouth and breathing slowly. He listens for a while and stares into the room and when he hears and sees nothing for about 3 minutes he turns around slowly to look at what he bumped into, a plant, and then sighed angrily (even though it just sounded like a baby cooing) and then started creeping towards the stairs again.
He made it to the stairs when he realized that the stairs were a little under half of his size. He sits there in shock before he remembers the size of the giant that was chasing him and then sighs again and then he starts climbing up the stairs while crawling. He contemplates his life and what he did to deserve to be put into a world with giants and then, on top of that, being turned into a literal baby. He makes it up the stairs that feel too long for it to be normal in 5 minutes. He is panting and horribly tired by the time he reaches the top and looks around the room he just entered.
It looks like the normal interior of a normal cabin but, instead of smelling clean, it smells like rotten flesh. Don't ask him how he knows how that smells, he just does, and the house reeks of it. He looks around, still pretty much tip-toeing around the room and he sees a tiny little vent and decides he could crawl through it and look for an exit in there. Because, the television man could still be inside here, and he does not want to watch the tele right now.
He crawls through the tiny vent to a very dark and closed area. He holds up his candle and looks around to see a tiny wooden opening, he slowly pushes it open to see a kitchen with a giant man who looks like he has a bag on his head. He has a giant knife in his hand and is cutting open something that he had no idea what it is, but it definitely is still bleeding. He tries to crawl out of the cabinet he just crawled into from a vent even though he has no idea why a vent was inside a cabinet and he slowly creeps his way to the exit.
While he is creeping out he catches a fast tiny blonde baby running across the room and running out of the tiny door on the side of the screen one, and it slams shut loudly. He hears a screech and freezes and looks behind him to see the giant man pulling out a shotgun and immediately he breaks out into a sprint out the same door the blonde boy used, accidentally dropping the candle behind him but he doesn't dwell on it for long when he hears a shot behind him and immediately his heart starts racing and he feels the blood rushing through his body while he tries to get used to the new size of his body while trying not to get shot.
Randomly he feels a tug on his arm and looks to see a tiny blonde boy who's face looks practically the same to the tall but small boy he helped on the side of the street but softer throwing him behind a box to cover him when he hears a loud gunshot and stares at the hole in the box that just barely missed him. He immediately breaks out into a run again and looks ahead of him to see the tiny blonde boy waving at him frantically while jumping down a steep hill and immediately Wilbur goes to follow him and accidentally trips and falls face flat down the hill and into a tiny cave-like hole.
Tommy looks at him alarmed until he gets up and looks up at the boy. Tommy then starts looking back and forth frantically and Wilbur gets out a,
"Hey! What did you-" before the boy took off and ran away from the cave and then stopped to jump up and down, facing the hill. Wilbur almost got up and started to chase him before he heard a gunshot and saw Tommy break off into a very fast sprint while a giant man chased after him, The boy looked back at him and put up a thumbs up before getting shot at again, barely dodging it, and turning back to run again.
He ducks down and looks over the grass to see him run away in the distance with the giant man chasing after him through the fields. Wilbur would have been content to just sit there until the coast was clear if that boy wasn't the whole reason why he was stuck in this mess. He got up slowly and ran into the field. He hid inside the grass and creeped through it, cautious not to get caught even if he cannot see anyone. He hears another gun shot and jumps but he continues his walking shortly after, determined to catch the kid before he gets shot.
He makes it to a little hill area with an open hole in the ground in front of a tree and he crouches down and sits there while scanning the area. He sits there for a minute before crawling out slowly and dropping into the hole. He crawls through the hole for a bit before he catches sight of a tiny limb sticking out of an opening above, he looks up to catch a quick glimpse of a blonde head before he creeps out of the hole. He quickly chases the boy, without realizing that he should have not made so much noise before he is once again thrown behind a box and he hears a gunshot beside him.
The blonde boy, after waiting out a shot, runs towards a ladder and Wilbur follows him quickly, he almost falls off of the ladder when he hears a TV get shot and it falls down onto the floor, but the blonde boy pulls him up into a house and sprints off again. He sprints after him and almost trips when he feels the floor shake from getting shot at by the giant man.
The Bag Man shoots at them a few more times before Tommy pulls him and practically shoves him out a window. He slides down while trying his best not to scream while his brain is shouting, "You are going to die, You are going to die" and then he feels his body get surrounded by water. He vaguely feels a splash next to him and feels some tiny hands grab his small ones and push him up above the water and hold him there.
He recognizes that it is Tommy and tries to say something before his mouth is covered by Tommy's small hands and he hears loud footsteps and catches what Tommy is trying to say and shuts up quickly. They listen to the footsteps as the Bag Man creeps near the docks and scans the area. Tommy waves at him quietly and then grabs his hand and starts to walk, even if he has a lot of questions to ask the boy, he knows it is not the time and decides to cooperate with him and walks slowly through the water.
As they are walking through the horribly muddy and disgusting water, randomly Tommy pushes his head down and he sputters and Tommy shushes him before going under the water as well and then after a few seconds, finally lets him up and he almost yelled before Tommy shushes him louder and points to the Bag Man creeping away but still scanning the area. He pushes down the urge to snap and just pouts and continues walking with the boy like he wasn't the exact reason why he was stuck inside this mess.
They creep in the water, pushing their heads under whenever the Bag Man scans over where they are, and stays there for an agonizing 8 minutes until they reach a tiny island in the middle of the water and Tommy lets go of his hand and climbs on top of it, and drags Wilbur with him. They creep slowly towards a tree trunk and Tommy starts to push on it and he looks at Wilbur for help, Wilbur slowly turns to look at the Bag Man and then back at Tommy, sighs, and then gets up to help. They push the tree trunk into the water and immediately Wilbur is shoved around once again into the water and they hide while the Bag Man looks around the tree trunk frantically and Tommy starts to walk out.
Wilbur tries to pull him back but somehow the smaller boy is stronger than him and he pushes him with him and forces them to walk to some planks of wood stacked up together to make ladders. Wilbur almost gets away from Tommy but Tommy drags him forcefully up the ladders and Wilbur gives up on trying to get away and just follows out of fear for his life.
They make it up the ladders and both creep between the grass on the hill they now are on and randomly he hears a loud squawk and he turns to see a bird flying away and giving away their hiding spot. Immediately Tommy drags him into a house and Tommy pushes the door shut and holds it there. Wilbur frantically looks around for something and finds a shotgun and immediately reaches for it. It takes him a few jumps to reach it before he and the gun crashes down on the floor and immediately Tommy runs over, picks up the gun, and tries to aim it. Wilbur catches on quickly and grabs the other end of the gun and they struggle with it for a while before the man almost gets inside. The Bag Man peeks his distorted head inside before Tommy scrambles widely and all Wilbur can hear next is a loud gunshot.
..
Everything went black for a few moments. Wilbur can't feel or see anything but his entire body aching. He curls up on the floor in agony and looks up briefly before immediately looking down after seeing blood. He stays there curled up until he hears footsteps and immediately his head shot up and he saw the tiny blonde boy climbing out of the shed into a window.
"Hey wait!" Wilbur screams out for the boy but he didn't even look back before jumping out, Wilbur scrambled up, even though his limbs were protesting, and shakily hoisted himself up to look into the window to just barely catch a glimpse of a tiny blonde head drifting off into sea. He tried to climb up and jump out but he ended up falling onto his head and groaning loudly.
He tried to get up but his foot decided not to work because as soon as he got onto his feet they immediately dropped him back onto the ground. He sighed loudly and just lays miserably on the ground, not caring that his face will and is becoming horribly muddy. He just wants to pretend that he is back at home, on his couch, eating some crappy ramen, and safe and having not just been shot at and chased just a few minutes ago. He sighs loudly when he thinks about the kid on the side of the street and then he shoots up when he realizes he is getting away and he might lose his chance to maybe get out of this mess.
He somehow regains his strength, pulls himself up, and quickly pushes out a random door he sees out into the ocean and looks out on the side to see the tide taking him in the same direction as the tiny blonde boy. Tommy looks back to look at him and they lock eyes and stare at each other for a while. He sees Tommy sign something with his hands but he cannot understand it so he just cocks his head at him. It looks like the kid laughs before Wilburs eyes widen and he looks up. Tommy stops laughing and looks up in the direction Wilbur does and they both sit there staring. Staring at the giant skyscraper-like buildings on a giant island. And as their two planks drift off to the giant island that has who knows what waiting for them, Wilbur thinks… Maybe interacting with a child who he did not know on the side of the street who held out a weirdly glowing stone to him, was not the best idea he had.
…
Tommy's plank hits the shore and he looks back to stare Wilbur in the eyes. After a few minutes of Wilbur drifting closer and closer the kid suddenly takes off into a sprint and Wilbur just watches as he runs away and all Wilbur can think is,
'What the hell did I get myself into…'
—
"It will be okay my dear…"
Wilbur is floating in the darkness.
"It will all be okay.."
He doesn't recognize the women's voice.
"Just follow me…"
He doesn't know what to do…
"Come on…"
He just wants to lay down.
"Mother will make it all okay…"
He wants to leave..
"Don't worry.."
He needs to leave…
"Just always remember…"
He…
"Every Nightmare Has An End."
….
—
Wilbur crashes forward into the sand and immediately gets some into his mouth. He sits there coughing up sand for about 30 seconds before he wipes off his face and sits up. He doesn't know what just happened. He doesn't know what any of this is. But he just wants to go home.. And if finding that kid is the only way out…
…
Well he guesses he better get moving then.
Wilbur runs off in Tommy's direction, determined to catch him before he gets too far away.
…
_____
In the dwindling twilight… Time is unwinding, lines are blurred…