there is only us | wilbur soot x reader

Chapter 31 - Story

Tubbo POV

I had a family once. A mom and a dad and two sisters, one younger and one older. We lived in a village on the southernmost borders of the Dream SMP. In that village, my father worked as a farmer, and he taught me how to sow a field, how to reap the harvests, the different seasons and which foods grew when. My mother stayed at home to care for my sisters and me, taught us how to read and write and cook and clean.

I was a happy kid, for a long time. My father would wake me up at dawn to help him manage the fields, and then at noon, we would head inside for lunch. After, my mother would send me to the market on different errands. That was where I met Eret. They had been peering into the window of the bakery, glancing hungrily at the freshly baked display of sweet rolls. I went inside to buy bread for our dinners for the week and grabbed a biscuit while the baker wasn't looking. On my way out, I tapped Eret on the shoulder and handed them the biscuit with a smile. "Don't thank me," I whispered, and I could hear the childish pride in my own voice. "I stole it."

A grin stretched across Eret's face, and I walked home a little less lonely. My first friend.

After dinner came my favorite part of the day. Everyone, all five of us, would gather in the living room. My father would put a couple of logs in the fireplace to keep us warm as my sisters and I curled up on the floor by our parents' chairs. Then, my mother would clear her throat and tell us a story. She didn't read from a book, though. Her stories were uniquely her own. She wanted to be a writer, I think, when she was younger. She could have been. Every night, I would go to bed with new characters and adventures and magic dancing through my head, sparking my imagination.

But you could tell from the easy rhythm that she had been planning the story for us all day, rather than making it up on the spot. I loved my mother's stories, discreetly complex and compelling, but I loved her natural conversation too. After our parents sent us off to bed, I would sit by the door with my ear pressed against the wood and listen to them talk, listen to my mother laugh and think and stumble over her words. With my father, there were no stories to tell. There were only stories, memories, to make.

•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•

As the saying goes, old habits die hard. Once an eavesdropper, always an eavesdropper. I prided myself on knowing and hearing everything. So, when (Y/n) dragged Wilbur out of bed early one morning, I sprung up after them and followed. And I heard.

"I cannot, in good conscience, leave my country behind to rot. Not with Dream still in a position of power. The SMP needs me."

So (Y/n) was thinking of leaving, again, so soon. We had just been reunited, a second family, a chosen one. I heard the practiced tone of her voice. This was something she had thought of for a long time, a story she had written well before she planned on telling it. Wilbur, on the other hand, was improvising. Terribly, too. Rushing from one sentence to the next, going silent for moments at a time, resorting back to his defense mechanism that was, essentially, 'hurt others to hide your own pain.' Unfortunately, it seemed to be working. (Y/n) and Wilbur riled each other up like nothing I had ever seen, a match and a bottle of gasoline. They were spiraling.

And then, "Kill. Dream." I almost laughed. I clamped a hand over my mouth so as to not give away my presence. I don't think they would have noticed anyways; they both sounded equally shocked by what Wilbur had said. Half of me wanted to leap out from my hiding spot and shake them both, screaming, he didn't mean it! He's insane, you should know this by now. He didn't mean it! The other half of me knew he meant it entirely. The other half of me knew Wilbur enough to recognize the growing confidence in his tone, the way his voice grew steadier with every word. The other half of me was morbidly curious. The other half of me knew he was right.