dream smp oneshots

burning hill - niki

Your hands feel strange and faraway. Like they belong to someone else entirely.
You don't even realize you've set fire to the tree until you feel the burn of the flint and steel on your twitchy fingertips as you strike the ground once, twice.
You've done it. The leafy canopy is ablaze.
This place—you'd once called it your home—reduced to ashes beneath the soles of your boots. You tuck your trembling hands into the pockets of your jacket, the one with the tattered hood that smells like gunpowder and cigarette smoke. The only thing he had left behind, besides the blazing ruins of the promises he'd broken that lay scattered all around you now in a heap of fire and smoke. It was the jacket he had worn as he'd welcomed you to this ruined place all those years ago. Though it hadn't been ruined then.
You remember narrow wooden pathways marked with tiny footprints. Walls of black concrete and glass that seemed to stretch on into the cloudless sky forever. You had watched him build those walls from the ground up with his own two hands. To protect his city, and his only son.
Later you had watched his son tear them down.
Cobblestone towers with iridescent obsidian spires that winked purple in the low light.
And the flag.
It was the flag you'd made, the one you'd slaved over day and night, sewing and stitching and ripping and sewing again, until every line of golden thread was cross-stitched and seamless.
The flag became a cherished symbol for his people. For you.
The symbol of L'manberg. The symbol of all the good things their nation was built upon, freedom and liberty and independence, a victorious revolution long gone and a brighter future waiting on the glowing horizon.

The flag.

The flag is on fire.

You remember the night when you and he had taken that flag and hoisted it into the sky overlooking the city. You'd hoped it would stay there forever. It hadn't.
You remember the way he'd carefully turned the red and blue fabric over between his fingers, pouring over the design you'd stitched across the middle like it was some ancient sacred scripture he'd found in Karl's library. He was afraid to fold the flag, as if that would somehow damage the pristine wool forever, so he'd handled the banner like it was a wounded baby bird.
He'd once held you that way, too.
You remember the gentle smile he'd worn as he took your hand in his. When he'd promised you the world and everything good in it.
It was a big promise, you'd thought. But there was no doubt in your mind then that it wasn't one he didn't intend to keep.
You were stupid back then. To fall for kind words and empty promises, bundles of wildflowers and cookies and a place you could call your own.
You hated yourself for it.
You wonder when he'd lost that gentle smile. How long had it taken for you to realize that it had been replaced with something darker? Something crazed. Like a fox backed into a corner, fur raised and bristling, teeth snapping at the throat of anything that strayed too close.
That's when you see him.
But it's not him. Not really. It can't be him.
Because he's dead, you think. He's dead. He's dead. He's dead.
You wonder how many times you'll have to repeat those words until they finally feel real enough for you to believe them.
Because he left me. Because I watched him die, and L'manberg is dead, and Wilbur died with it.
You blink once, twice. When the smoke finally clears enough for you to peer down into the crater of shattered earth you'd once called home, he's gone.
Because he was never there in the first place, you remind yourself.
You can hear shouting someplace far off in the distance, or maybe it's just in your head. It wouldn't surprise you after what you thought you saw a moment ago.
You gaze past the columns of fire and the billowing smoke that rises off of them, and you see where the noise is coming from. Two boys, one blonde and gesturing furiously at someone across the blazing remains of the country he'd helped build, the other much smaller, barely big enough to fit into his uniform so that the dark blue fabric hangs off of his tiny frame in tattered folds. Finally Tommy stops shouting. You see him clutch tighter at the other boy's shoulder. Then the two fall into each other and sink against the ground, holding onto each other as if one of them will fly to pieces if they let go.
Seventeen is too young. Wil, what were you thinking?
You finally tear your gaze away from them and your eyes rest on what little remains of the only place you'd ever been able to call home.
Watching the smoke rise is almost soothing, somehow. Fire clambers across the burnt remnants of a broken, fallen city, the nation he'd built and destroyed and chosen to die in before he could see the extent of his own cruel destruction.
You stand in the valley watching it burn.
You feel yourself smiling.
It almost feels right. Like you'd always known that this was coming, and now that the agonizing wait is finally over, you're numb with relief.
Your L'manberg is gone, Wil. And I wish you were here to see it burn.