His first memory is of a sycamore, of the bright green leaves of early summer and the feeling of soft grass beneath his feet.
His second memory is of falling from said tree; the sharp pain of hitting ground too hard, the sharp snap of broken bone and the intense agony that follows.
Wilfred's third memory is of Jupiter; of seeing the then-toddler peering down at him with wide brown eyes. It's a blurry memory; one remembered through eyes blurred with tears from the pain in his arm. Jupiter stares at him a moment, then pronounces;
"Blood."
Wilfred soon learns that that is how life works; joy and then pain, life and then death, hope and then sorrow. Wound and then scar, day and then night. The dazzling beauty of living in the moment and the dreamful memories that follow that never seem to recall the beauty of being alive accurately.
But that's the last thing Wilfred remembers before the plot holes of his story take over. It sets the tone for Wilfred and Jupiter's relationship.
oOo
When the two of them are six years old, they are sent to the same boarding school. Jupiter is delighted by this, and Wilfred is glad to get away from his grandfather and the torture that is home. Of course, his older brother loves to remind them exactly how inferior they are to his one-year-older and one-grade-above status, but neither of them care much.
That's when they meet Perkin, the troublemaker of their class. And Wilfred's okay with sharing his friend because he'll always be Jupiter's best friend, his first friend, and nothing in the world can change that.
The teachers don't know what to do with them, and Wilfred thinks that Perkin's a bad influence but he's also growing on him, and he's not bad. His twin sister is nicer and has more common sense, and both Wilfred and Jupiter like her even though girls are still practically foreign creatures and Perkin thinks she's the most annoying thing to walk the earth (but Jupiter might like her just a bit more than Wilfred, and Wilfred and Perkin accuse him of having cooties).
And so they climb trees and run races (Jupiter always wins, lording it over them constantly), pull pranks and go tearing up and down the streets of the Warren like they own it (Because maybe they do, just a little bit). And it's golden and bright, a practical Eden, and Wilfred thinks 'How can this ever end? I hope it never ends'.
But there's a snake in the garden in the form of his grandfather, and Jupiter and Perkin just don't understand. Their worlds are always shining, the sun is always up and it never rains, regardless of pesky older siblings. Their gardens thrive in perpetual Spring, full and lush and bountiful. They can't fathom, yet, the darkness that can descend. Someday they will see, but they won't yet.
So Wilfred doesn't try to explain, doesn't get mad when they ask about his bruises and cuts. He always claims that they come from the wild escapades and nowhere else, and in their innocence, they accept this answer as truth.
But Wilfred's holding a terrible secret, a dark, evil secret that lies and mocks and tramples him under the weight of it.
So maybe that is why Wilfred's considered the one with common sense in the trio, the one that the adults trust to keep the other two alive and safe, because he's had plenty of practice with his brothers and sister.
And then the first leaves begin to fall.
Jupiter comes back one weekend sober and upset. It takes Wilfred and Perkin together to drag the truth out of him over lunch.
"Bleston's angry."
That's all he'll say at first, agitated and nervous.
"We know, but we don't know why." Perkin finally snaps.
Jupiter shrinks.
It's a feeling Wilfred only knows all too well.
And Jupiter did come back with a black eye.
"Did he hit you?" Wilfred demands, furious.
Jupiter nods, miserable. "I don't know why he hates me. I'm the spare-not him. Why does he care so much?"
Jupiter manages to talk Wilfred out of picking a fight with Bleston by promising to tell his parents about what happened.
It's not something Wilfred can do himself, tell others, but Jupiter can and actually get justice.
But Bleston hates him from then on, directing nasty remarks towards Wilfred and Perkin and once even threatening to 'give him something to complain about' after Wilfred finally had enough and told the teacher that Bleston was being a jerk.
But he never makes good on those threats again, and Jupiter never comes to school again with a black eye (at least not from Bleston). But it's an unforgettable turning point, and Jupiter's golden world begins to tarnish.
Perkin comes next, the first cold breeze of autumn shaking the leaves of his tree.
"Glen's sick." He comes to school wildly anxious over his twin, in a worse state than Wilfred and Jupiter have ever seen him. "The doctors-the doctors don't know if she'll live."
He himself looks sick, and barely sleeps. Jupiter worries and internalizes, until Wilfred is almost certain they'll both drop unconscious in the middle of Algebra.
Glen lives, but barely, and Perkin comes down next with whatever fever took her but is nowhere near as bad off. Soon the entire city is suffering along with him, and Wilfred's memory of the week he is sick is patchy and vague.
And so, the perfect beauty of Perkin's garden fades a little too.
oOo
It's the fire that's the first sharp torrent of autumn wind. Wilfred's house burns to the ground, leaving crumbling, scathed stone and broken wooden embers.
Jupiter and Perkin are shocked. Wilfred is resigned. That is when they start to question the lies Wilfred has told them, about the bruises and cuts.
And finally, Wilfred is unable to fall back on another lie.
"What happens to you, Wilfred?" Jupiter demands. "You're lying!"
"What am I supposed to say?!" Wilfred snaps. "You wouldn't believe me!"
"Why wouldn't I? I don't even know the truth!"
"He's right." Perkin agrees.
And so Wilfred breaks and tells them. And they are horrified. Jupiter turns green and Perkin turns white.
Then comes the anger, that Wilfred was afraid of.
Jupiter cusses out his grandfather, and Perkin demands that they be allowed to tell.
"You can't." Wilfred replies dully. "My mother wouldn't be able to go on living."
And it's true. They can do nothing. So they wait. And they watch. And the golden world fades, leaves drifting to lay on the slowly yellowing grass.
oOo
And life moves on, things begin to change. Wilfred's mother divorces his father and moves her family back to Nick Hollow, where she's from. Wilfred hates the distance-he hates having to spend summers in the Hollow, away from Jupiter and Perkin, but he puts up with it because it's so much better for his younger siblings than the city. And maybe for Garten too, but he can't tell. Garten's always been hard to read.
So Jupiter writes letters, and Perkin does too, and the distance doesn't feel so far. Wilfred tells them about a doe he met from a nearby clan named Sween, and how both Garten and Whittel seem to have fallen head-over-heels for her. Perkin finds it funny, while Jupiter swears up and down that it will only cause trouble.
He's right.
Whittel and Garten hate each other about as much as Jupiter and Bleston do, and Wilfred spends more time than he'd like playing mediator.
And he still jumps at slammed doors and can tell exactly which member of his family walked in just by the sound of their footsteps. He still hates being alone and gets called clingy by Garten for it, but life is…..better.
But home still isn't home, and Wilfred wonders if he'll spend his whole life searching for that belonging, searching for something that might not be meant for him.
Still, there is laughter in the house now, laughter about silly things, laughter that was never there in the Warren. Garten's anger settles, Whittel learns to smile, Lucy lets go of some of the back-breaking weight she carries, and, slowly, slowly, Wilfred learns to trust again.
Wilfred learns to trust himself.
When he's fifteen he's sent back to the First Warren for military training, like pretty much all bucks. Within the first week He, Jupiter, and Perkin are seated in front of their drill sergeant and Wilfred is questioning his choice in friends. But of course, because of Jupiter's position, they get barely more than a slap on the wrist and after serving their sentence of scrubbing the mess hall and locker floors until they shine, are right back to their shenanigans.
Helmer and his odd Drekker friend, Snoden, swim to Forbidden Island. Not to be out done, Jupiter convinces Perkin and Wilfred to do the same. They, however, manage to get to the pinnacle of the island, and Perkin swears up and down that he was hearing things there.
Jupiter gets into a massive amount of trouble with his father for that stunt, but it does little to deter him. He's afraid of nothing. He's unbothered by the rivalry he's started with Helmer, and his cheek gets him into more fights than Wilfred's comfortable with.
But he's Jupiter's best friend-his first friend, so he sticks with him and makes sure he gets out alive.
Somehow, Jupiter manages to befriend Helmer, moody, abrasive, loner Helmer who would as soon punch a buck as look at him. But it makes sense. Jupiter is sunshine personified, and it's impossible for anyone to truly hate sunshine. One can always pretend, but warmth is something all living things crave. So the rivalry turns friendly, and Jupiter goes on as cheerfully as ever.
And for a time the world is bright, and though Wilfred and Helmer will never like each other they can at least get along, at least for Jupiter's sake.
Then one of the worst days of Wilfred's life hits.
Though if it was awful for him, he can only imagine what it was like for Jupiter.
oOo
King Walter's dead and the Hollowers hate Jupiter. Wilfred knows that Jupiter never should have been put in charge of that battle, even if it was just a mild raid. Because it ended with an entire Hollower battalion dead, and Jupiter will never recover from that.
Hollowers have long memories.
And they hold long grudges.
But Wilfred swallows any lecture he might have for Jupiter, because the leaves of Jupiter's tree have all fallen at once, green smattering the ground like the blood of a battlefield.
Bleston, of course, rebels against the new order. Wilfred's not surprised, but he is preoccupied with keeping Garten thoroughly on Jupiter's side. It works when Jupiter gives him a powerful position.
Garten will do anything for power, Wilfred thinks. He warns Jupiter of as much, but Jupiter is doubtful. Jupiter will always see the best in people, he will always think good first rather than bad.
But Wilfred has seen Garten's tree, and the tree lost it's leaves when it was young and never regained them.
oOo
Bleston leaves. Uproots so many and takes them with him, some willingly some unwillingly. It's a blessing and a curse, and Jupiter makes every effort to help the public forget that Bleston ever existed.
Wilfred, meanwhile, allows his life to settle into a rhythm. He is half-ashamed to admit that he distances himself from his brothers and sister throughout the whole Sween debacle. But some part of him can't stand to feel the chill when he is near his family, and besides, Jupiter has always been more of a brother than either of the ones he has by blood.
Jupiter has always been there, even when he had every right not to be.
Garten and Whittle haven't, even when they had no right not to be.
So Wilfred falls away from the grove, and learns more about the garden he is planted in. It is beautiful but painfully broken, untended and unruly, with ugly weeds poking in strange spots.
But he learns to navigate through these, to identify the different trees and flowers and keep away from the ones that plan to do him harm, and defend himself when he's forced to go through regardless.
He wonders what kind his brother is, and wonders if he might find poison ivy growing if he looked deeper. But Wilfred is tired, he's tired of playing gardener to his brothers when he was never meant to be such a thing. So he turns his face away, and looks out into the wider Garden.
And life is happy, for a time, at least.
oOo
When Wilfred loses first his wife, and then his daughter, he thinks that winter has finally come. The chill seeps past his flesh and into his bones, burying a bit of ice deep inside of him that he can't let go of.
But Jupiter is there. Jupiter, Wilfred thinks, must always be there, somehow. And so the chill is not as bad as it could have been, and though Wilfred finds branches frost-bit he recovers. He grows back, bark toughening into a shield against the world's woes. He's never been bright-eyed and innocent, but he's even less so now, guarded and wary with those he doesn't know.
At this point, that includes his brothers.
Garten is foreign to him, a work colleague and nothing more. Whittel is distant and far-off, and if Wilfred could he would reach him, now. But he can't. Whittel has successfully grown bark so thick there is no hope of chipping through to the sap needed for syrup within.
So Wilfred sighs with the wind and turns away, letting the sunlight fall on his face, thin and pale as it is.
oOo
Winter truly comes the day Jupiter is killed.
And Wilfred has failed.
He has failed.
He has failed.
Just like he failed to stop Garten from growing to become the monster he now is, just like he failed to reach out to Whittel while his younger brother was still groping. Jupiter's tree has been uprooted and burned, not even chopped for use but burned.
Wilfred is not surprised that Garten betrayed them.
Garten always would do anything for power, anything. Anything. Even sell out to their enemies, enemies who hate what Garten is, who see the Garden and wish to burn it.
And they do. They do. They do.
Wilfred knows no words to describe his grief, no words to describe the terror and the misery that follows after Morbin like a cloud over the sun, cutting off life and warmth.
oOo
Wilfred is left with only a painful reminder of Jupiter's life; a boy who bears his eyes and his legacy, his actions and his hopes. Wilfred looks at the boy and finds himself struggling to trust Jupiter for the first time in his life.
This boy? This boy is a child, as ill-fit and unprepared as any of his older siblings. A sapling, as unknown to the world as the world is to him. Wilfred has no words for him, no way of explaining the weight that he bears to the boy, or of explaining the burden the boy carries to him.
Trust? Wilfred struggles to trust. But he must, and he does, and though the boy is planted in the rocky path, he does grow. Slowly, but he grows, and Wilfred wonders what he will be, an Oak like his father?
No.
The boy grows, and as the buds turn to leaves he reveals that he is a Sycamore, the same as his reluctant guardian.
He is the first green of spring, young and new to the garden, but pushing determinedly up out of the ashes.
And Wilfred can feel the first warm breeze of Spring.
.
.
.
...How in-character for me to post for the first time in months with something angsty. Sorry for falling off the face of the earth, lol.
Fun fact: An Oak symbolizes leadership and wisdom. A Sycamore symbolizes endurance and protection. I'm pretty sure everyone can draw the conclusions from there.
Yay! You made it all the way through this fic! If you liked review :)
-Dustine