Chapter Text
Tubbo’s first act as president is giving a speech about unity and togetherness with zero preparation, seconds before his nation explodes under his feet.
His second act as president is promising to rebuild, and discussing how to best create a country on stilts until long into the night, until he is the last one left awake.
Tubbo’s third act as president is taking the body of his predecessor out into the woods. He hadn’t been purposely searching for it, but he was scouting out the crater, trying to plan their approach to rebuilding, and he’d spotted a room he’d never seen before beneath Schlatt’s old podium.
He didn’t realize it was the room where they’d watched Philza stab Wilbur until he was already standing in it, staring down the body of the man he’d followed into war. Part of him was tempted to just leave it for someone else to discover, but the rest of him had heard the mutterings of what people wanted to do with Schlatt’s body when they found it. He didn’t know if they intended the same fate for Wilbur, but he didn’t particularly like the idea of finding out.
Wilbur had blown up their nation, sure, but… Tubbo had followed him into war. He’d named Tubbo his successor. Leaving him to rot or to the hands of angry citizens just didn’t feel right.
Besides. He made Tubbo the president. Presidents look after their people. Wilbur was still his people, no matter what he’d done.
So he hauled the body out of the crater, and now he’s dragging it into the woods. He’s not sure what he plans on doing with it, though. He could bury it, but he didn’t bring a shovel with him. He’s not sure he wants to bother with that, anyways, if he’s being entirely honest. There’s something that feels wrong about burying Wilbur’s body. Wilbur was his leader, his president, and Tommy’s older brother- maybe Tubbo’s, too, if he’s being generous. A man like him can’t just be buried.
A man like him goes out in a blaze of glory, collapsing like a dying star. A man like him burns.
The coat Wilbur wears is missing the cape- he’d given it to Niki that morning, when she said she was cold- but the pockets are still intact. In one pocket is an enderpearl, never thrown. In the other is a flint and steel.
Tubbo takes a deep breath, steeling his nerves. He strikes the flint to the steel, and the coat catches alight. He only stays a few moments longer before he turns to flee back to the crater he intends to make into a home. He doesn’t want to smell burning flesh again. He could go the rest of his life without smelling burning flesh after waking up after his own execution stinking of it. But he can’t leave Wilbur yet.
“I’ll look after L’Manberg for you,” he says into the empty night air, and he’s not sure if he’s promising that to Wilbur or himself.
In the end, he fails to keep that promise. L’Manberg falls for a third time in its life, and a second time under Tubbo’s guidance. It was everything he had, and he let it fall. He’s not sure what to do with that. No one ever taught Tubbo how to grieve properly. When the man he followed into war and the man that had him killed both died, he threw himself into rebuilding a nation. When he thought Tommy died, he found anything to focus on but that tower he’d found.
With L’Manberg gone, he’s not sure what he’s supposed to do. So he pulls on his boots, and he goes out searching for a new place to make his home. He finds it by an iced-over bay. He calls it Snowchester and promises himself that it will never fall, not like L’Manberg did. Not when he has people to look after, still. Tommy. Ranboo, despite the secrets he keeps. Quackity, if he ever visits. Jack Manifold, despite how often he’s away. And now Michael.
It’s that thought that drags Tubbo out of bed. Well, that and Michael crying his little lungs out. Tubbo sighs, resting his forehead against the bottom of the ladder. There is a part of him that is achingly desperate to climb back into bed and go back to sleep. But he can’t, because only bad parents do that, and Tubbo is trying very, very hard not to be a bad parent.
He climbs to the ladder, opens the trapdoor, and steps into Michael’s room to find him already sitting upright in bed. Tubbo can’t help but hesitate for just a moment before going to his side. He… Tubbo doesn’t know how to be a father. He’s terrified he’ll mess it up, traumatize Michael or hurt him or something. He wasn’t built for this.
Tubbo shakes his thoughts aside. He wasn’t built to be a soldier, either. Or a spy or a president or a nuclear scientist or any of the hundred odd assignments and roles he’s given himself on this server. If he can build a nation and invent the nuclear bomb, he can damn well take care of his own son.
That’s what he tells himself as he drops into a crouch by Michael’s bedside so he’s eye to eye with him as he cries. “Hey,” he says, voice quiet. “Bad dream?”
Michael’s gaze snaps to focus on Tubbo, eye wide. The next thing he knows, he’s got his arms full of blubbering zombie piglin.
“Hey, hey,” he tries to soothe, rubbing a hand on Michael’s back. “It’s alright. I’m here.”
Tubbo can’t tell if that was the right thing to say or not, because he presses his face harder into Tubbo’s pajama shirt as his grip tightens. Or maybe it did nothing at all, because he’s still not entirely sure if Michael understands anything other than piglin.
That part will change, though. He read once that younger children learn languages faster. Something about neuroplasticity. He prays that that applies to piglin children, too, otherwise this house is going to be a mess of garbled-together, half-learned languages soon enough.
But that’s for future-Tubbo to worry about.
(He has to remind himself of that a lot, when it comes to Michael. Not every problem can be anticipated just yet. He has to wait and let things play out sometimes, even if the chess-playing ex-president, ex-spy, ex-soldier in him shudders at that thought.)
Right now, Michael is calming down in present-Tubbo’s arms. “Feeling better?” he asks quietly.
As per usual, Michael doesn’t respond, but he slumps in his grip easily enough either way.
“Alright,” Tubbo nods. Gently, he hooks his hands under Michael’s arms so he can shift the two of them from the hug they were originally positioned in, and instead hold Michael in his lap and sit with his back against the wall. “Do you want to hear the song?”
Maybe Michael does understand him, after all. Because at the word song, he presses himself further against Tubbo, like he’s settling himself in.
Tubbo smiles. “Of course you do. It’s the only song you ever want to hear.” He doesn’t remember why he sang it the first time. Maybe he was exceptionally sleep-deprived, or maybe he was just desperate to try anything to get Michael back to sleep. But either way, the old L’Manberg anthem seems to be the only thing that can consistently knock Michael right out. No other song compares.
He thinks Wilbur would have been proud of that. As far as legacies go, Wilbur could have done a lot worse than having the anthem of his now-fallen nation turned into a lullaby. He wonders if maybe, that’s how it started, too. Maybe the tune was what Wilbur sang to Fundy, once upon a time.
Tubbo shakes the thought aside as he gets through the last few “ my L’Manberg”s, Michael’s breaths coming even and deep with sleep. Tubbo lets out a sigh of relief as he presses a kiss to his forehead, tucking him into bed.
He wonders what Wilbur would have thought of Michael. Tubbo, his spy, the one he gave his nation to, a father. Maybe he would have advice. Maybe he would be disappointed in Tubbo, settling down so young. Maybe he would be proud of him for putting down roots. Maybe he wouldn’t care at all.
He wishes he knew what was going on in Wilbur’s head, towards the end there. How he’d felt about him when he handed him a doomed country and told him to look after it. Maybe he was being set up to fail. Maybe he wasn’t, and he fucked it all up anyways.
Trying to figure out what Wilbur would have thought about anything is… weird. He was gentle and carried himself with a careful poise during the revolution and the days before the election, but that mask broke in Pogtopia. Without it, he didn’t try to put up a front or try to soften the blow of his words and he turned his sights on destruction rather than creation.
No matter how much Tommy likes to talk about him like there’s a difference between the version of Wilbur he knew in L’Manberg and the version of Wilbur he looked after in Pogtopia, it was all Wilbur, in the end. Contradictions and all. Wilbur was the man that gave Tubbo a nation and then blew it to smithereens moments later. Wilbur was also the man that taught him how to play chess. The two ideas are not mutually exclusive.
Which means it’s really, really hard to get a handle on how Wilbur actually felt about anything in the end. What he would think of anything now.
At least with Schlatt, he knows the man wouldn’t give a shit. Not unless death softened him considerably. If Tubbo were to present him with Michael, he can practically see the look Schlatt would give him. There would be a smile on his face, sharp and cutting. So you really weren’t lying about being pregnant, he would have said. You remember that one?
That was… not Tubbo’s proudest moment, he will admit.
You shown him off to all your little rebel friends yet? Schlatt would have sneered.
“Well, no,” Tubbo would respond. “Wilbur’s dead, and I haven’t talked to Eret, Niki, or Fundy in a while. Tommy’s in prison right now. There was a security issue, so he’s locked up for the week.”
So why the fuck, Schlatt would not have said, are you worrying about what I would think of your stupid kid instead of getting him out?
“Because I can’t,” Tubbo whispers aloud. “Sam’s the warden. I don’t have any authority over the prison. Building stupid shit on it isn’t going to make Sam let him go.”
But at least you’re doing something, right? he imagines Schlatt sneering, voice pitched high with mock-sympathy.
“Shut up,” Tubbo says.
You’ve been useless since L’Manberg fell. You almost let Dream kill you, you decommissioned your own goddamn nukes because you were scared of what you made, and now Tommy’s rotting in prison, and you’re just sitting here playing fucking house! Schlatt still would not have said. You’re not even good at it. What’s the point of you?
“I don’t know,” Tubbo says under his breath, hands curled into fists, eyes trained on Michael’s carpet while his son sleeps peacefully in bed. Tubbo takes a breath. And then another. And then a breath after that. He stops thinking about Schlatt.
Instead, he walks back towards the trapdoor, and some part of him notes that there’s a bookshelf by the window, but there aren’t toys strewn across the floor. Michael hasn’t been here for long, and he and Ranboo still need to find something for him to play with.
If Tubbo is going to play house, then he should at least do it right.
-
It doesn’t take Tubbo long to show up on Philza’s doorstep. The only reason he has the courage to is the time of year; Technoblade always hibernates for long periods of time around now, and the cold is certainly making it worse. So he shows up bright and early, trudging through the snow to knock on Phil’s door as he wonders why it feels so much colder here than in his own slice of snow biome.
Tubbo does his best to keep from fidgeting as he waits for Phil to answer. It’s… been a bit, since he’s seen Phil. They’ve certainly seen each other around since Doomsday, and there was that trip through the nether to get totems, but they haven’t properly talked one-on-one since maybe… since before Tubbo, Tommy, and Wilbur left home.
Phil was never quite his father, and he was never quite Phil’s son, but he looked up to him all the same, once upon a time. Phil took him in and offered him a home when no one else did, and then years later he helped Technoblade tear his nation to the ground.
But that’s okay. That’s to be expected. Phil and Technoblade were always a matched set, same as Tommy and Tubbo are. Tubbo helped execute Technoblade, and Phil held L’Manberg itself responsible for Wilbur’s death. Being upset at Phil for destroying L’Manberg and leaving Tubbo to live with the ruins of a nation would be like being mad at a rock for sinking when dropped in a lake. It’s just nature, and there’s nothing productive about being angry at nature.
And maybe right now he has the opportunity to smooth things over. Or at least to get something for Michael out of it.
The door opens, and Phil blinks down at him, confusion written all over his face. “What are you doing here?” he asks. His voice is clipped. Suspicious. Because the last time Tubbo was here, he tried to kill Technoblade. That’s fair. That’s completely and totally fair.
“I, um. I was wondering if I could ask a favor?” Tubbo asks, and he hates, despises how nervous his voice sounds. He was the president, he’s faced down death more times than he can count; he shouldn’t be so anxious standing on the porch of the man that helped raise him.
“That depends,” Phil says. “What’s the favor?”
“Do you still have any of Wilbur’s old toys from when he was a baby?” Tubbo tries to inject some confidence in his voice, the kind of confidence from when he was in charge of L’Manberg.
Phil stares at him, calculating. Tubbo knows what the answer is going to be- Phil can be a deeply sentimental man when he wants to be. He definitely has something lying around; it’s just a question of if he’s willing to share that with Tubbo. “Why do you need to know?” he eventually asks.
“I was… wondering if I could have them,” Tubbo says, and he knows that it won’t work. Not on Phil. Not like this. If he wants Phil to put any trust in him, he needs to extend an olive branch. Show him that he’s willing to take the first steps. “For Michael.”
“I don’t know any Michaels,” Phil says.
“You wouldn’t, we- I only just moved him in.” Tubbo doesn’t know how well Phil knows Ranboo. He doesn’t know if bringing him up is a good idea. “He’s my son.”
“You have a son,” Phil says, and he sounds… Tubbo thinks that’s surprise in his voice. It’s an emotion other than detached suspicion, at the very least. Tubbo will take what he can get.
“Yeah,” Tubbo says for lack of any other words. Somewhere behind him, he hears snow crunching, and he can’t help but snap his head towards the sound. There, standing in the snow between the lawns of Technoblade’s house and another home, is Ranboo.
(Suddenly, a lot of things seem to make sense. Tubbo tried to offer Ranboo a place in Snowchester, in the days following Doomsday. He’d seemed shocked that Tubbo was talking to him at all, clearly expecting Tubbo to hate him for such a miniscule betrayal in the grand scheme of things. He denied the offer of a home, saying that he was living somewhere else, but he’d never say where.
This would probably be why. Living with Technoblade is not exactly something he’d advertise to someone whose nation he blew up, either.)
Ranboo’s eyes are wide with horror. He’s probably going to have to reassure him later that it’s fine if he lives here. Tubbo isn’t… thrilled, but Ranboo doesn’t need to know that. Tubbo isn’t in charge of who Ranboo can and can’t be friends with. Ranboo isn’t a L’Manberg citizen, L’Manberg doesn’t even exist anymore. He isn’t committing treason against anyone or anything. Even if he was, Tubbo isn’t a complete and utter monster.
So he’ll tell Ranboo that it’s fine and he doesn’t care. He’ll change the topic, and spend the rest of the night making bad jokes. In the meantime, he shoots a smile at Ranboo and waves with as much enthusiasm as he can manage this early in the morning..
A moment passes, and Ranboo waves back, small and anxious. Tubbo thinks he might be smiling, too, but he can’t quite tell at the distance.
Tubbo nods and turns to face Phil again, who was evidently watching the entire interaction with interest.
“We only just moved him in?” Phil muses, something like a smile on his face. “So you and Ranboo, huh?”
“Um,” Tubbo stammers. “I don’t know if he wants you to know that.”
Phil shrugs, turning to go back inside the house. “Too late now. Come inside, I’ll show you where I keep Wilbur’s old stuff.”
Tubbo lets out a sigh, and tries not to focus on the warm feeling in his chest at Phil showing any ounce of trust in him. This isn’t burying the hatchet, it’s just… putting it aside, for a moment.
-
Later that night, Tubbo finds that he can’t sleep. There’s not even anything for him to do- he’s not a president, he’s not a spy, and there’s no war for him to worry about surviving yet- but he still can’t make himself fall asleep. So, he does what he always does on nights like this, and he finds someone else that’s still awake at this hour. He calls Ranboo.
He doesn’t entirely remember how it started, but Tubbo’s very fond of this routine they’ve settled into. Back in L’Manberg, he and Ranboo weren’t exactly friends, but they also weren’t not friends. They were fellow crewmen on a sinking ship, and that was about the extent of it.
But after L’Manberg fell, Tubbo was kind of desperate. He doesn’t regret inviting Jack Manifold to Snowchester, but he knows he wouldn’t have thought about it before Doomsday left him with nothing. That was why he sought out Ranboo: he’d lived in L’Manberg, and he was one of the last people loyal to the ideals of it.
Ranboo was nervous at first, waiting for Tubbo to turn on him at any moment, but Tubbo likes to think that he’s worn him down. Now they’re actually proper friends, and Ranboo is the only person that can make Tubbo laugh as hard as Tommy does. With Ranboo, he doesn’t have to be a soldier, a spy, or a president if he doesn’t want to be. He can just be Tubbo, who makes very, very bad jokes. Tubbo hasn’t been able to do that with anyone in a long time. It’s especially nice with Ranboo, though. Tubbo thinks he could spend the rest of his life arguing with him about whether or not they’re arguing. He wonders if Ranboo feels the same.
“This is the build-up to the third divorce,” Tubbo says with all the seriousness he can muster.
Ranboo laughs. “You know, three divorces would mean that we’ve been married three times.”
Maybe it’s how late at night it is, maybe it’s the way Ranboo says it, but Tubbo can hardly breathe with the way he’s wheezing at that notion. “Wait,” he says, catching his breath. “Did you propose to me, or did I propose to you?”
“I don’t know,” Ranboo says, and Tubbo can hear the smile in his voice. “I think we just flipped a coin.”
“Flip the coin!” Tubbo encourages.
There’s a vague sound of something metallic, and Ranboo says, “Me.”
“Okay,” Tubbo hums, grinning. “Good.”
They drag the stupid joke out for the rest of the night, and somehow it sees the light of dawn the next day when they’re working on the Bee n’ Boo- an impulse project, for sure, but an impulse project that lets them hang out somewhere that isn’t freezing- and they hear rumor of Eret instating a new tax.
Tubbo doesn’t know a lot about it: how it works, who it applies to, or any other actual relevant details. He just knows that married people get tax benefits, and Tubbo has an opportunity to drive this joke into the ground. So he informs Ranboo.
“Really?” Ranboo says, and he actually sounds… he sounds like he’s actually considering it instead of capitalizing on the joke.
“I mean, I think so, yeah,” Tubbo says. He wonders if this is going where he thinks it is. He wonders if he wants it to.
Ranboo is… he has a nice laugh. He always feeds into his dumb jokes. Tubbo can be himself around him, and he’s starting to think that Ranboo feels the same. Somewhere in the time between Dream getting locked in Pandora’s Vault and now, Ranboo has become one of the most important people in his life. They spend so much time talking with each other, working together, doting on Michael, and Tubbo doesn’t want that to end.
Tubbo doesn’t think he’d marry Tommy. But Tommy is practically his brother, and Ranboo is… Ranboo. Tubbo doesn’t think he would mind marrying Ranboo. They’re already raising a son together, after all.
(Ranboo doesn’t get on one knee when he proposes, but the sun is setting, which Tubbo proudly informs him gives him some solid romance points. Ranboo doesn’t make any declarations of undying love, and neither does Tubbo. Instead, they make awful jokes about taxes, and he thinks that suits them just fine.
Someday, Tubbo and Ranboo will both acknowledge that the taxes are more of an excuse and an inciting incident to their marriage than the reason for it, but for now, they sign legal documents as Tubbo informs Ranboo that Michael is the only thing stopping him from committing adultery.)
It’s not until later that night when he’s lying in bed that the weight of what he’s just committed to dawns on Tubbo. He’s going to spend the rest of his life with someone. He’s going to spend the rest of his life with Ranboo.
He wants to. He knows he does. But it scares him, he can’t help but admit. So many people have come and gone in his life. That’s just how things are. People don’t stay. Jack Manifold rarely comes to Snowchester these days. Sam’s busy with his prison. Eret is a king. Niki burned the tree, and Fundy laughed as L’Manberg fell. Wilbur’s dead and Ghostbur likes to wander. Tubbo’s only just repairing his bridges with Phil. Quackity said he’d visit, but Tubbo is starting to lose hope.
The only other person Tubbo was sure would stay is Tommy. But then Tubbo exiled Tommy and Tommy said the discs were worth more than him. Tommy looked at him with horrified eyes right after he said it and he took it back, but he still said it, and it was still probably true because Tommy’s always been smart like that. Tommy was supposed to stay and Tubbo was the one that broke that. Tubbo was the one that broke him. They’re trying to fix it, but it’s not easy.
Even then, he’s known Tommy practically his whole life. He’s only known Ranboo a short time. He doesn’t know why he’s so willing to put that kind of trust in him, choosing to stick together like this. Maybe this is why Quackity and his fiancés still haven’t actually gotten married. It’s terrifying, handing someone this kind of knife and trying to trust they won’t stab you with it.
But Tubbo’s always been good at that kind of thing. He knows he is; he does it all the time. Tubbo doesn’t like being suspicious of people, but somewhere after the Final Control Room and his surprise execution and Tommy’s-not-quite-death, trust stopped coming naturally to him. So he has to choose it, over and over, even if Ranboo keeps secrets and Jack Manifold makes odd comments to himself and Quackity still hasn’t come to see him and Tommy won’t tell him what Dream did in exile.
Ranboo says he’ll stay, so Tubbo is going to trust that he will. If not for him, then for Michael’s sake.
Yeah, for Michael’s sake, Tubbo will trust Ranboo. He thinks he can do that.
-
(Even then, he can’t help but wonder what Ranboo’s breaking point will be. Phil found it in L’Manberg when Tubbo tried to execute Technoblade and he realized Tubbo was a monster. He wonders if Ranboo’s figured that out yet.
He wonders if he will leave when he does.
Or maybe he already knows and is choosing to stay anyways for reasons Tubbo can’t hope to piece together. Maybe he’s staying because he thinks there’s a point to Tubbo, a purpose to his weapons and his vaults beyond the next war to come. Maybe he will leave when he realizes that he’s wrong, and that Tubbo is a president with no one to lead, a spy with no information to seek, a soldier with no war to fight. He’s a monster, and he’s not even a useful one.
He’s trying to be, though. He’s just not sure he’s succeeding. He made nukes to protect his home and his family, and then he decommissioned them because he realized exactly how much power they held. He couldn’t stop Tommy from getting locked in the same prison as the man that hurt him. He still hasn’t figured out what direction the next war is coming from yet.
He will, though. He has to. He has to protect his people, because they’re all he has left at this point. So when Tommy gets out of that prison, he will reassess his angle. He will protect his son and his best friend and his new husband and his people like he has always tried to, but this time he will succeed if it kills him.)