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stuck-in-the-ghost-zone · 3 months

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@intertexts BEHOLD. NEW HAVEN WARDS: THE WIBBY AND DAVID DYNAMIC ESSAY. this got way too fucking long 2 put in ur inbox so im making a post about it. ENJOY THE STICK FIGURE VIOLENCE <3

okay im just gonna start from the beginnign here and try not to get too sidetracked as i go (<< me when i lie) um. so. still not entirely clear on what williams trigger event would be so that may change how some of this works out logistics wise. but just assuming it would be SOMEWHAT similar to pd- william dies/has his near death experience and is Changed By It. in obvious ways that are impossible to hide. his parents find out because he had been missing for days and presumed dead so when he came back home covered in mud and dried blood and Different, everyone kind of broke down. they know about his powers from the start. william hates them (the powers, not his parents) but his dad especially has always been very supportive of capes and urges william to use them for something good! his mom, who has always grieved the lack of a relationship between her two sons, brings up the suggestion "hey, you know what! yeah! your older brother just so happens to live in a city with a really good cape population, maybe you can go live with him for a bit while you go to school <3" (<< this is also going off the assumption that the general public doesnt really. understand. capes much. his parents dont know theyre signing him up to be a child soldier and die before 40. they love him so much and just want the best for him- if they knew about all that they wouldve never even made the suggestion. but they see how much his powers are hurting him and theyre grieving the death of their youngest son who is still. awake and sitting in his bedroom. and i dont think any of them know how to deal with that)

william, not really having a place to argue from or another option to even consider, reluctantly agrees. hes too caught up in the fear and worry and unpredictability of his powers to even imagine himself as one of the heroes. but he goes anyway. and lives with david. its just as painfully icy as you imagine- david never signed up to be a permanent babysitter, i imagine theres a lot of. phonecalls overheard through the walls of his apartment of david on the phone with their mom asking if this was some sort of punishment. david spends all his time at his office and never takes time to even get to know william. he still takes care of him- he has the money for a penthouse apartment and keeps groceries stocked- but its not like theyre having cozy family meals every night. this does wonderful things for williams mental health obviously. which im sure makes his powers feel so much better (<< this is sarcasm). they dont talk much. obviously. william knows david works for/runs a branch of some tech company but thats about the extent of his knowledge and he never cares to ask further details than that. theres a little bit of resentment there on williams side (william wisp, known jealous petty little bitch- "i thought you were the first good thing to come out of deadwood"). david is someone who's important and has his life together and william is. in his own mind. a freak.

after joining the wards program and meeting dakota and virion and such. william IMMEDIATELY decides he is going to spend less and less and less time at davids place. and so the fucking. chasm between them grows. mutual good riddance. (they dont hate each other. theres just. not a whole lot of care there. but theyre still family, yknow?) and its just like. the BARE MINIMUM amount of contact. william stops by davids place to like. get stuff from his bedroom. uses davids apartment as storage for things he can't keep at the wards base (are teen superheroes allowed to smoke? i imagine that cant be good for their public image). so its not like they totally cut contact theres just. even less of it than there was before.

and then william learns about the SIGNIFICANT importance of keeping your cape and civilian identities separate. any villain who learns who you are behind the mask can be a threat to not only you but also your family. william, who loves his parents very much and knows they love him back, wants to protect them at all costs. conveniently, he doesn't live with his parents anymore. his current guardian just so happened to keep their mom's maiden name. so what does he do! bam. easy fix, change your last name to match with your brother. satisfies the heroes a little bit because its that extra step harder to connect william with people outside the city, AND its not suspicious on the civilian side either because. i mean he still matches surnames with his family. surely this will not come back to bite him (foreshadowing). i think it would be PERFECTLY in character and slimy for david to get a kick out of this name change btw. its been weeks since theyve spoken full sentences to each other but the next time william goes back to the apartment david is there at the kitchen table and just kind of laughs at the paperwork like "aw, little brother, i didn't realize you liked living with me that much. im flattered" etc. etc. eugh

behold! i can call him wibby now. awesome. so cool. anyway.

blahblah whatever whatever. im saying for au convenience david lives in new haven even though in pd canon he technically lives in freedom city. don't worry about it. HOWEVER. this becomes important. new haven wards are like?? vaguely sometimes in contact with the wards of the nearest settlement with a significant cape population- freedom city! this is alan, x, cantrip. I think they probably have like. fun friendly sparring matches sometimes (like the cage matches where they first met but like... legal. and mario kart!) but aren't close enough to be Friend Friends. freedom city wards uncover some shady underground company using illegal research (nhw equivalent of harttawa? dying 2 link this back to mark somehow bc im always thinking abt him but i KNOW u have plans for him already and im dying 2 know them) to give people artificial powers (connected to cauldron in some way but not obvious about it. ill explain this more in a minute) and guess who this gets linked back to. our one and only lovely wicked david bell. freedom city wards don't know williams connection to him since they wouldn't know his civ name. I don't think he would tell them. i also don't think they would actually TALK to David here like they do in canon, i think the heist goes a little more successfully and he's not actually physically THERE so all that happens is that they sneak in and see a bunch of files/papers. and william makes the connection with David's name and maybe picture. but the whole. killing a bunch of guards still happens. "its okay they're villains" etc. i don't know who would run freedom city wards program but they're more. loose about the rules than in new haven. which is why xavier and cantrip are Like That.

anyway on the way back to new haven william is REALLY shaken and dakota and virion obv pick up on that right away (i think they'd also know OF williams brother but not a lot of details bc he never talks about him.) william tells them that that was David and doesn't know what to do etc etc . I think he avoids the apartment for a looooot longer than he usually does because he doesn't want to accidentally run into David there and have to confront this. I think he's probably shell shocked by the idea a little- david is VERY MUCH against the hero program and doesn't like capes at all and is very vocal about that fact (this is pd canon too)!! why the fuck would he be working with the company that gives people powers and Makes More Capes! even though his mystery solving brain is going into overdrive thinking about the reasons and details and minutae of this discovery, william is also chronically avoidant of all his personal problems so i don't think he does any digging into it yet. until. well. the freedom city wards go missing

they on the other hand DID do a lot more digging into this. and david caught on to them and we end up with the scene in the basement . this is where I'm gonna get sidetracked bc there's a lot of information I'm thinking about at the beginning of all this

when william/vyncent/tide get there it's a very similar scene to in pd. x and cantrip are chained up, david has allen cut open on a table. william is. HORRIFIED. maybe even moreso than in pd.

x is even more immediately hostile to william when he and cantrip wake up because part of the information they uncovered in doing their own digging was the fact that david and william are related. and this pisses x off SO BAD because william never told them. and I think he uses wills secret identity against him and that's part of the reason william is SO DESPERATE to stop him. Just imagining that scene in the hallway at the beginning where they're screaming at each other and x just goes "that's your fucking *brother?* you're related to that monster and you never thought to, yknow, share that little bit of information with us?! william bell?????" and as soon as x says his name william just SNAPS and swings the axe at him .

anyway. back to the basement scene. david does his whole manipulative villain monologue with a scalpel to Allen's heart and we learn David is the head of an offshoot branch of cauldron (thinking about like maybe where they sell the vials to people under the guise of experimental medical treatment? for their own research purposes on how the vials affect people. real unethical shit! I feel like I need 2 learn more about cauldrons motivations before I set this in stone though) . anyway. we also learn here that david Has Fucking Powers. I don't know exactly what those would be right now but I think they would be pretty... inconsequential and at a really low power rating, but just that fact alone is enough for him to almost lose william completely.

this whole time william is just full of this icy dread and betrayal, but as SOON as david reveals he has powers that all just snaps to rage. comparable to that feeling where you've been bullied for something for years and then one day everyone decides that same thing is cool now. ("how long. how *long*, david? did you have these powers while you shunned me, sat on the phone with mom in the other room complaining about how much of a freak your little brother is? how *painfully sad* it is for you to share an apartment with the corpse of your baby brother, trying to get mom to pity you enough to take me back and get me out of your hair?")

and ofc david being who he is has some sort of slimy manipulation that saves his ass and gets william back on his side. tide and virion being there they immediately see right the FUCK through it but I think william would be compromised enough at that point that he wouldn't be thinking clearly enough to listen to them. (also side note . like I said I'm VERY undecided on what davids powers would actually be but the two ideas I've been bouncing back and forth are a) some kind of medical Thinker which is how he knows how to put allen back together the right way or b) some kind of Master which makes the manipulation thing worse <3. so maybe wibby is compromised bc davids using his powers on him. if it's the second option. smile!)

anyway wibby goes on his nightmare arc. right. even more fucked up bc of what x says to him about his identity. I actually think a lot of this stays the same but just with the addition of context and also the thing I said yesterday about the guards radioing to each other to evacuate.

everything happens pretty much the same with cantrip and he and virion getting back to the office only to find everything totally wiped clean already. william still does the Nightmare Thing in davids apartment afterward. still undecided in whether or not their parents will be there? I guess it depends on what we do with the trickster. (oh god I haven't even thought about the trickster irt new haven wards. fuck!) . I think actually I'm leaning more toward having them NOT being there? because I think william reigned himself in because he didn't want to scare them too much. and this is worm world i don't WANT wibby to reign himself in at all. I want him to go fucking nightmare apeshit.

btw this whole time? virion stays with him and it scares the SHIT out of him. he's still going to stay because ... this is william. this is his best friend (gay) and he HAS to trust that he knows what he's doing. I think afterward william stands up, david still unconscious on the floor, and there are silent tears streaming down his face and there's this expression of rage and betrayal and grief on his face that virion has NEVER seen on another person. so he reaches out to put a hand on his shoulder or maybe offer a hug (which in my mind is HUGE for him bc I've been imagining virion being SUPER careful and sort of avoidant about physical touch bc of his powers) but then william goes to brush his hand away as he walks out of the room and there's just the briefest moment of skin to skin contact. and it only lasts for maybe a second but virion gets this BURST of williams powers and it's terrifying. he can see and feel and hear and know *exactly* what william just did. it goes away almost immediately but the force of it is enough to throw virion off balance for a second as he processes it and when he comes to again he is just. shaking. and he doesn't say anything to william but he *knows* now and he doesn't know what to do with that information. hes scared out of his fucking mind but he's also. sad. he's REALLY fucking sad his best friend (gay) just had to do something like that. and he's not good with words so he doesn't say anything but he stays there. he stays by williams side despite everything. ughahhvhh

uhhhh final note. pain and suffering. william gets a whole Fucking Complex about sharing a name with david after this. but he still doesn't change it back to wisp because he knows x knows his identity now. which means he doesn't know how many other people could know, how many other people x will tell out of spite as a way to get back at him (<< william wisp paranoia WIN) and it's. LEAGUES better that any potential enemies would come after david and hurt david. (in fact he probably privately wishes for something like that to happen. hed never say that out loud though). using his name as a kind of shield even though it hurts like hell to be connected to his brother like that.

anyway! yeah! wisp-bell brothers torment nexus or whatever!

#TAKES A DEEP BREATH.#dude ive been tjinking about this for fucking WEEKS now. god #new haven wards #extremely EXTREMELY excited 2 get your thoughts on this. holy shit.#ASLO I THOUGHT THIS POSTED LAST NIGJT. GOD DAMN IT #anyway do you think william has nightmares about xaviers voice when he called him william bell.#the fear and betrayal jn his voice. and all he did was say his name. his NAME did that.#just changing his last name to match with his brother- something he thought was so innocuous- made x hate him that much more #aha!

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