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For all that he knew exactly how to get back, the route made no sense. According to every map he knew of, he should not have been able to get back to Utah in the time he did or with the route he took. He had taken that route though. The same one he had taken out of Utah when he left. Nothing really made sense these days though, did it? It didn’t really matter now. He was away from the SMP, going back to the regularly scheduled lack of sense he had abandoned when he’d left his home of… quite a few years.
The car was uncomfortably warm, weirdly at odds with the chill he couldn’t seem to shake after having been brought back. He rolled down the windows slightly. The drive had been rather mind numbing so far, there was very little to see out the windows and the radio of the car he’d found blasted out the sound of train horns every time he turned it on no matter what he did. He left it off since he’d found out about that. He squinted out the windscreen at the sign that was slowly growing on the horizon. The words ‘Welcome to Utah’ became clear as he drew closer, and below that the slogan ‘life elevated’. He never thought he would be glad to see those words. He kept driving.
The town he had once lived in had barely changed in his time away. Good. Too much had changed when he had returned from limbo, this was better. The streets were fairly empty, though a few people were milling around. Not one gave his passing car any more than a glance.
He turned onto a small street, in one of the sparser areas of the already sparse town. His street. His house was more or less as he’d left it. The mailbox had a few too many envelopes in it and the small garden was more unruly than he ever let it get when he lived there but it was the same house. His house.
He pulled into the driveway and turned the car off. He would have to find a better one at some point. This one he’d found, doors ajar, off the road, and with enough dirt and leaves in it to tell it hadn’t seen use in a good while. Or maybe he’d keep this one, it wasn’t like he was planning to leave anytime soon and the town was small enough that even if the car should meet its timely end he’d be willing to walk. It was more a place to pass through than a place people called home.
With a small click the door opened and he got out. He didn’t bother with the car boot, everything he had brought fit in the pockets of his coat. He stepped up to his front door and reached for the handle. He didn’t have a key. He tried it once anyway. It was locked. He turned from his front door and hopped the short gate that blocked off the side of his house. One of the bathroom windows had a tendency not to lock the whole way. He looked up at it. It stared back at him tauntingly.
He tugged one of the bins that normally sat by the gate over to the space under the window and clambered onto the top of it. He rattled the window slightly to no avail. With a sigh he dug his fingers into the bottom of the windowsill and pulled. The window stayed in place for a moment before opening with a groan. Wilbur stumbled slightly but managed to stay upright on the bin. He lifted himself up and over the sill and tumbled down into the bath below with a thud.
He lay there in the empty bath for a moment. It had been covered in a layer of dust that now found itself floating around the room. He watched as it settled on and around him. He lay for a moment before mustering the motivation to get up. He rose. Still in the bathtub, standing now, he looked at the window for a moment contemplating shutting it before turning away and climbing out of the bath. It was hot, open windows would help, besides the place could use some fresh air. (He couldn’t muster the energy to close it anyway.)
Wilbur strode out of the bathroom and looked around. The house looked the way it had when he left, nevermind that he didn’t remember much about this place these days. He made his way into the bedroom. The guitar in the corner drew his eyes immediately. He chucked his coat on top of it. He dug around in his drawers for some clean clothes, grabbing whatever was there and heading back to the bathroom.
He undid his boots and tugged them off, and stepped into his shower, shirt and pants still on. Some scars weren’t worth seeing right now. He twisted the tap and… nothing. Great. He would have to call up and have his water and power turned back on later. He flicked the light switch just in case. Yep, no power. He grabbed the clothes he had taken from his drawers and replaced the clothes he had on, ignoring the grime that clung to his skin. He turned to the mirror he had been pointedly ignoring since the moment he had entered. His own tired face started back. He eyed the tiles behind his reflection and lamented that not even a change of location this big had managed to change the constant train station setting his reflection resided in. He looked down at the sink and reached for the cupboard below it. He scanned the shelves till his eyes landed on the scissors resting between a half empty tube of toothpaste and a spare roll of toilet paper. The handle was cool against his fingers as he raised them and then, making eye contact with himself in the mirror, began chopping. Hair fell from his head to the floor around him as he removed more and more of its unwanted length.
He looked almost reminiscent of himself before the events of the past years had occurred. Sure, his skin was a slightly unnatural shade for someone alive and the scars that lined his face hadn't been there before, and sure that blasted white streak was front and center but for the first time in a very long time, a small smile graced his lips, a genuine one that didn’t feel like the result of some part of his brain that limbo and Pogtopia and all the other shit had broken. He looked ok.