The bar smelled of alcohol and grease in a way that made Wilbur scrunch up his nose.
He was vaguely queasy, but that might have as much to do with him being on his third pint while skipping dinner earlier as it had to do with the odor of this place. His finger traced the rim of the glass, the foamy residue felt unpleasant and sticky. With half-lidded eyes, he watched the door.
Every time it opened, the cold breeze from outside would cause other patrons of the bar to complain loudly. For Wilbur, it barely reached him. But goosebumps had already been raised on his skin. Being drunk made him feel oddly as if he was freezing. Wasn't booze supposed to do the opposite?
Well, nothing another mouthful couldn't fix.
Tipping the glass back, Wilbur was disappointed to find it completely empty. He choked out a noise that was half-laugh, half-cough. Damn his fucking lungs, they never got any better. Alcohol only made them worse. Wilbur cursed and slammed the glass down on the counter.
"Can I get another one, Jack?" His words were remarkably unslurred, an achievement that gave Wilbur a distant sense of pride.
A hollow, feeble thing.
"I think you've had enough. You're going to start acting like a twat if you have another one." Jack Manifold, local tavern keeper and the only person Wilbur would allow to call him a twat, said.
Jack came to town after Wilbur did. He remembered moving into such a rural community, how alienating it was at times to be seen as the odd one out. In hindsight, Wilbur probably missed the worst of it because Phil was remarkably adept at fitting in anywhere. And Wilbur himself had been so young, Tommy and he didn't care for the strange looks from their new neighbors when there were woods to explore and a house to build.
By the time Jack came around, Wilbur was old enough to really witness that paranoia aimed at outsiders inherent to small communities. And it had made him feel a certain kinship to the young man with a fiery temper that immediately opened a bar in the middle of town. Funnily enough, that bar was what made everybody warm up to Jack quickly. You'd be surprised how chummy people got with the sole provider of alcohol around.
But all that to say, Jack knew he didn't have to pull his punches with Wilbur.
"Don't be a dick," Wilbur said. "Pour me another one, I have gold to pay for it."
"It's not about your tab, Wilbur." Jack reached out to snatch his empty glass from him. Wilbur held on to it stubbornly. His knuckles turned white with the effort and Jack relented probably because he was scared Wilbur would break it otherwise.
"Then what's the issue?" Wilbur demanded.
"The issue is that the last time you got this pissed you ended up puking all over my wooden floor. I scrub those daily, you know." Almost gently, Jack held out his hand. Wilbur grumbled but shoved the glass into it.
Defeated, he slumped down. He was still buzzed, but not enough to forget. Not enough for it to matter. "You're a shitty bar owner if you're going to kick out your own customers for getting drunk."
"Not this other lot, they can get shitfaced as much as they want, I don't care." Jack dumped the glass in his bucket, then pulled it out to start wiping it off. "But you're not drinking for the right reasons."
"Oh, so you're a shrink too now?" The sarcasm fell flat. Wilbur knew he wasn't getting annoyed at the person who deserved it. He also knew he had spent one too many evenings in this bar to have the moral high ground. Jack could probably see through him like an open window.
"Sure feels like it. You'd be surprised how many people think getting a drink here is a free invitation to unload all their problems on me." Jack smiled vaguely, more amused than actually bothered.
"You should have seen that coming when you opened the only bar in town."
Jack snorted, offering him a vague nod. "Probably. But I don't need your crap piled on top of it. Go home, Wilbur."
Wilbur hesitated, glancing at the door again. The relative tension that settled over his shoulders and made him feel wired in an unpleasant way was broken by the uproarious laughter of the drunks around them. It was early, all things considered. Not even midnight.
But Jack cleared his throat and when he spoke again, it was kinder. "They're not coming, Wil. They never do."
Wilbur didn't look at him. "Fuck off."
"They're not mindreaders, you can't expect them to fix something they don't know is broken." At Wilbur's obstinate silence, Jack only sighed and continued. "You either go home now that I still believe you can get there safely, or I'll call Niki to escort you. And you know how grumpy she gets when she gets woken up this late."
The threat wasn't empty, Wilbur's past experience would tell him as much. Niki could count herself lucky that she - like Jack - had seen Wilbur at his lowest. There wasn't any dignity left for him to save. He tapped his fingers against the counter.
"Unless you'd rather have me get Sally-"
"Oh, fuck off!" He flipped Jack off and got up, almost stumbling in the process. Maybe if he cracked his head open on that polished wooden floor that would solve all his problems.
Maybe that was just the alcohol talking.
"She's also not a mind reader." Jack hummed, his attempt to lighten the mood not welcomed by Wilbur at all. He was already headed towards the door.
"I don't have time for that," he said off-handedly. More under his breath than anything. Jack heard.
"Maybe you should make time for it."
Wilbur slammed the door on him. Over the general ruckus in the bar, it definitely didn't have the dramatic effect he hoped for. Rubbing both hands over his face, he breathed in the chilly night air and hoped it would help ground him. It would be a short walk home, but it was pitch black this late. Staring at the edge of the town square there was a vague fuzziness that settled over his vision where the light shed by the lit lamppost reached. The redstone inside it flickered, the shadows moving endlessly.
Wilbur didn't like the dark.
He wasn't scared of it or anything. He'd spent too long on the road without even a match to light for darkness to be a childhood nightmare chasing him into adulthood.
But with his shoes dragging over the gravel, he found it hard not to think of his family.
A fence gate swinging in the wind, rusted hinges causing the most abysmal squealing, made him recall the sound of the cart door being pulled open. The noises that came after it were much worse though. Not because they were foreign to Wilbur. No, he wasted away plenty of hours helping his mother with her work as a midwife. He had grown up hearing the wetness of a body being cut open and blood spilling across the floor. With his hand clasped over his mouth to keep a fearful cry from forcing its way out of his throat, lying under that cart where his father had told him to hide, was the first time he actually saw the bloodshed.
Wilbur watched, terrified and trembling, while his family was murdered.
And for years after he would wonder to himself why he hadn't died. Not in the cosmic sense. Wilbur wasn't religious or anything. His mother was. She wore a Prime pendant around her neck. Wilbur had left it on her corpse. He didn't wonder if it was the gods that had ensured his survival, he didn't ascribe divine reason to it. But he wondered why he was such a coward that he had followed his father's instructions.
Why had Wilbur not grabbed the small pocketknife his uncle had given him when he turned eight and used it to fight back?
Would he have died alongside his family? Definitely. But at least he wouldn't have spent the rest of his life looking over his back whenever he had to make his way down a gravel road alone at night.
By the time the cabin was within sight, Wilbur knew his walking speed had approached more of a run. He wasn't exactly keen on staying out in the cold for long anyway, and the alcohol and adrenaline mixed in his veins had managed to bring his heart rate up to eleven. If he pretty much barged through the door shoulder first, then that was nobody's business but his own.
Or it wouldn't have been if nobody else had been awake. Wilbur never expected anybody else to be awake.
Blade stared at him, seeming for one brief moment so startled it made him look unguarded. As if for that short blink, Wilbur saw a genuine emotion on the man's face he wasn't used to. His head tilted forward a bit, long hair falling over his shoulders. Some of it was still in knots despite Phil's best attempts, because Blade didn't exactly keep up with it. He only let Phil brush it when Phil explicitly asked. And the old man had other things that kept him busy.
"Wilbur?" Blade frowned at him.
"Sorry, I didn't mean to wake you." He closed the door behind him, quietly.
"I wasn't asleep."
Wilbur smiled to himself, unsure if Blade could even see in the dimness of the room. His fingers itched to turn on the lights but he didn't. "Why not?"
"Somebody has to stay awake for guard duty," Blade said. It was such a simple answer. Blade might not speak his mind often, he did answer all questions with refreshing honesty.
Maybe Jack was right, who needed mindreaders when honesty did the trick?
Too tired to correct Blade on the guard thing - explaining to a guy who had spent centuries at war the concept of peace sounded exhausting - Wilbur nodded and dropped his shoulders. He finally flicked on the light, wincing a bit when it made his eyes burn. He was still drunk, just not enough to really get anything out of it. How disappointing.
"Well, I'll take over so you can get some shut-eye," he said. "We don't want you to fall asleep during your reading lessons with Niki tomorrow."
Blade did not at all look pleased with that. Wilbur was starting to consider the little worry line between Blade's brows a friend at this point, with how often he saw it. His old master must have never offered to take a job off his hands.
And while usually that notion was so amusing to him, tonight it left a bitter taste in Wilbur's mouth.
"It's alright," he said - hoping to chase away the lingering hesitance in Blade's expression. "You're part of our family now. That's how this works. We take care of each other. Go to bed."
Blade turned away so quickly, Wilbur might have been fooled into thinking he had flinched. Maybe that was a trick of the light. He wasn't going to mention it.
If the alcohol did its job, he wouldn't even remember this had happened at all by the time the sun rose.
It wasn't the sun that woke Wilbur, though its bright shine did fall perfectly through the undrawn curtains and into his face where he was lying on the couch. What woke him up was Tommy basically kicking one of his ribs in.
Wilbur wheezed, lungs getting squeezed to bits by approximately 150 pounds of unruly teenager. Tommy might have turned eighteen a couple of months ago, but Wilbur would refuse to consider him an adult. Especially with how Tommy was laughing his ass off.
"Oof- Tommy, get off me." He shoved fruitlessly at a shoulder that was pushing down on his sternum. "You're way too fucking heavy to do shit like this."
"I have no idea what you're talking about." Tommy then huffed as he was knocked onto the floor by one of Wilbur's knees.
"Long night?" Phil asked. He was wearing his jacket over his clothes, meaning he'd already gone outside and checked the animals. Wilbur had slept so soundly, his family hadn't even woken him up with their morning routines.
"Not long enough," Wilbur answered. Phil smiled sympathetically, though Wilbur could tell he actually wanted to laugh in his face. Prick.
"You should take me next time," Tommy said.
"I'd hate to imagine you drunk." Wilbur got up off the couch, glad to find his legs were more or less steady. He'd slept in his clothes, making them incredibly wrinkly.
"I bet I'm a delightful drunk," Tommy insisted. "One of those guys who tells all the jokes and gets all the girls."
Wilbur laughed. "You're probably a sappy drunk, like Phil."
"Hey!" Phil vaguely waved the spoon he was using to stir his tea in Wilbur's direction. "At least it's better than being a mopey drunk."
Very slowly, the door to the hallway opened. Just enough for Blade to slip through and close it behind him without a sound. He stood with his back pressed against it, hoping that his entrance would go by unnoticed. Trying not to interrupt their conversation, probably. Unseen unless called upon, silent unless a direct question was asked.
Little did Blade know the dynamics of this household.
"What kind of drunk do you think Blade is?" Tommy asked, pointing at the man. Blade looked back with not much of an expression. He still looked tired. Wilbur could relate.
"Talkative," he said sarcastically. It was as good a guess as any.
"Have you ever had alcohol before?" Phil asked. Being addressed did make the man straighten his spine, prepared to stand at attention at the drop of a dime.
"Wine is reserved for the master and their esteemed guests," Blade answered automatically.
"What about other stuff? Beer, hard liquor? Maybe you stole a sip or two."
"The soldiers drank sometimes. When a battlefield was cleared, the generals would get a flask of amber to celebrate and share among the troops." At Phil's prompting, they sat down at the table. There was fresh bread, fruits, preserved jam that Phil had made in spring. Without asking, Phil started to pick out some food and put it on Blade's plate. He would not eat unless explicitly given permission to do so.
"So you've had whiskey?" Phil guessed, basing his assumption on his own time in the military.
"It was for the troops to celebrate their victory," Blade said again. "Not the weapons. You can't reward a tool for the labor of the one who wields it." The last sentence sounded so stilted Wilbur knew it was recited from somewhere or somebody else. He reached for his coffee so he didn't need to think about it.
The awkward silence that fell over the table made him guess the others felt similar.
Tommy broke the tension after only a few seconds, talking with his mouth full as usual. "Can I have some cash?"
"What do you need money for now?" Wilbur asked - already reaching for his inner pocket. It wasn't like it mattered, they didn't really have many expenses when they weren't out on the road.
"Tubbo told me about this well in the next town over. They say if you throw coins in it, it can make your wish come true!"
"That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard," Wilbur said. He patted his other pocket. Where was his damn pouch?
"Stranger things could be true," Phil said cryptically - because he was old and dried up and saying cryptid bullshit was probably his favorite hobby or something. Wilbur rolled his eyes, finally reaching into his coat but coming up empty.
"Well, you can give him the money then because I seem to have misplaced mine."
"You lost your gold?" Phil asked, alarmed. "Are you sure you haven't left it at Jack's?"
"Maybe, I can go take a look. Or I dropped it somewhere along the way, it was dark out." Ignoring his loss for the moment, Wilbur picked up an apple to eat.
"Oh, you could retrace your steps. Like a reverse treasure hunt," Tommy suggested.
"Is there anything you won't make into a game?"
With a wide smirk, Tommy flicked a crumb at him. "Is that a challenge?"
"I Wouldn't dream of it."
When he was done eating, Wilbur had little choice but to follow Phil's advice though. He wasn't exactly the richest guy in the world and again, it's not like they needed a lot of money to live in the cabin. But living in poverty had made the loss of money a tad more painful for Wilbur. He had quite a lot saved up since he didn't spend his gold on anything aside from the bar.
He got Blade to go with him though.
Even in daylight, there was something about walking down that gravel path alone that Wilbur would prefer to avoid. And Phil said it was good for the other man to go out. He'd be stuck inside all day otherwise, sitting perfectly still and practicing his reading. About the only thing Blade did of his own volition since it was so unobtrusive and Niki had technically told him to do it. Anything else, Blade wouldn't do without getting a command to.
So Wilbur didn't see anything wrong with 'commanding' him to help look for his pouch.
Despite the lack of conversation, even the silent companionship was appreciated. He noticed Blade was observing the plants in other people's gardens with a close eye, sometimes even lagging behind so he could take a proper look. Wilbur vaguely remembered one of the books he'd been practicing with, the farmer's manual.
"Do you want to try your hand at gardening?" Wilbur asked.
Blade blinked and looked at him, so preoccupied with his studying that he needed a moment to process the question.
"Phil said it might be useful. I've never done it before." Blade looked over at the garden they were passing again. "Growing food would be functional."
Still looking for ways to serve, hm. Wilbur nodded.
"We rely mostly on what we can produce, yes. A lot of people in the village do." He smiled, seeing exactly what house they were next to. It was on the outskirts of town, the farmer who lived there was a loner and generally considered a very strange fellow. And his garden was huge. "Some people go a bit overboard with it though."
Blade nodded at the garden. "That's a lot of potato crops."
"Yeah, don't mind Squid. He's a bit of a weirdo." Wilbur waved it away. "If you want to try your hand at farming, I'll let Phil know. I'm sure he'd appreciate the help."
"I want to help," Blade agreed.
"So you said."
The road stretched out far into the village, dusty and worn thin. Their footsteps left prints in it that were blown away quicker than they could form, removing the trail of their presence. As if they were never even there to begin with. Maybe Wilbur shouldn't be making heavy-handed allegories when he was hungover though.
At least they found his coin purse before night fell again. Small mercies.