Things That Need To Pass (passerine!Technoblade x OC) {COMPLETED}

...Or Not?

(Eryn's POV)

I felt like I was in a nightmare. They were lying on the ground, and I was fucking hidden because of some shit Techno said. It was like everything was in slow motion. I quivered a little. I was scared, true, but for good reason.

What the fuck was going on..?

(3rd person POV)

Mother tilted her head towards a distant sound that Wilbur couldn't hear.

"We don't have much time," she said firmly, her hands fluttering like paint-stained moths set aflame. "He's almost done. And then we'll have to do this all over again."

But Wilbur was still reeling, his mind going through a thousand thoughts per second and managing to understand none of them. "I was—We were fighting..."

"Always fighting, you lot," Mother said with a small smile, but her eyes were sad. "Deep breaths now, Wil. Tell me what you know."

"I was in a city in the north," Wilbur said, his mouth tasting of ash and melting snow. "Outside a—a church. With broken windows."

"Yes, you were."

"I don't play the violin."

"No, you don't."

Wilbur glanced at his mother's painting, the one with soft colors and old lines. "And Tommy will never live past fifteen."

"No," Mother replied, regret and sorrow—two of Wilbur's own restless shadows—gleaming in her eyes, "he won't."

"And you're dead, too," Wilbur continued, freefalling into the abyss, "aren't you?"

"Yes, I am."

He ran his shaking hands through his hair, clutching a handful of the brown strands and almost tearing them away in his terror. It was a fear he knew well. It had never truly left him since the night he found her gone. 

He'd been too sick to attend her funeral afterwards, spending feverish days in and out of consciousness. When he'd finally been steady enough to pull himself out of bed, they'd already buried her, and he only saw her again in painted portraits that didn't quite capture the brightness of her smile, and in the middle of the night when every hallway of the castle was haunted by her.

But now she was here, standing before him, older than she had been when he lost her, and still younger than she deserved to be. She deserved decades. She deserved infinity.

And Tommy did, too.

"I want to stay here with you," Wilbur said, still a child. Always a lost child, with her. "Because I miss you. Because you were the one person that I had nothing to prove to. Because you can make things alright. You can fix the things that I broke. Can't you?"

She looked at him. He knew her answer.

"You could stay," she said kindly. "I won't fault you for it."

He knew she meant it, so why did the pain in his chest only get worse?

A soft breeze swirled into the tower. Wilbur inhaled the scent of fresh apples.

It was so real. So real.

But then he looked at the painting again, staring at the incomplete version of him. At his father, who had aged when he could not. At Tommy, older than he ever would be in truth. At his mother, who had given him her artist's hands.

"Will you forgive me," Wilbur asked, his voice rough and small, "if I still want to live without you?"

In reply, she pulled him down gently and placed a soft kiss on his forehead. "I loved you before I even met you," she whispered against his skin. "And I loved you even more after I did. I am sorry for leaving too soon and leaving too much."