Archive of Our Own ^beta

The steady thunk of his axe into the bark of the tree is the one thing keeping Tubbo going. His fingers are bitten and blistered from the handle but still he goes. The rhythm is steady and mindless and that in itself is achingly foreign. 

Until Doomsday, everything required thought. L’manburg was all encompassing in his head when he was president. Every step needed to be executed to perfection. One mistake and the crater would open up again, the thin planks that kept his nation afloat would crumble to dust and leave nothing in their wake. He remembers one night, months ago, expressing these fears to Quackity; a time before that jagged scar twisted his vice’s lips into a scowl. 

“Don’t worry,” Quackity smiled, ankle deep in the beginnings of the water that would fill L’manburg. Quackity’s arms trembled as he held them towards the sky, a bucket of water in each hand, “It can only go up from here.” And the two of them laughed at the joke, a dozen feet below the surface of their new nation. 

Tubbo did worry, and his nation did dissolve into nothing but craters and bedrock, so perhaps the worrying wasn’t a waste. 

The thought of his first home pummeled into oblivion should make him cry, should make him angry, but it simply passes through his mind. It is gone by the next strike of his axe on the frozen bark. 

There is a sharp series of cracks as the tree splits from its base. Tubbo is quick to fasten rope to its trunk before lugging it back to the bank of the shore. It is hard at first, with the snow nearly causing him to lose his footing, with the rope cutting into his fingers and palms and shoulders. In the end he makes it to the water. It isn’t the heaviest thing he’s had to carry. It's only a tree, after all. 

It’ll be a sanctuary, he decides. 

Right now there is only one house, but Tubbo will build until the coast is living and breathing with friends and family and people. 

He won't force anyone to join him, but he hopes if they do they can find peace here. He wants to find peace here. 

Tubbo sits on a ledge of one of the small cliffs that surround the bay and watches the sun rise. 

“Tubbo? Why’re you out here all alone?” 

He is sitting on a rafter in his roof when he hears Tommy’s voice. It is dark out, the new moon offering no light. He knows he isn’t being efficient with his work. Tubbo can barely see his hands as he builds his house. He doesn’t want to sleep. 

“Tubbo?” Tommy calls again and Tubbo finds the boy standing stiffly with a torch in hand. Tubbo pulls a smile to his face, but he’s not sure if Tommy can see it through the darkness. He raises his hand in a wave instead and slips off the roof. 

“Tommy.” 

“Why’re you out here?” Tommy repeats and Tubbo just looks at his unfinished roof from the ground. “We were worried, you know. You walked off and never came back.”

Tubbo turns to face him then, “Everyone was gone when I woke up.” It isn’t a lie. It isn’t an answer, either. He remembers waking to a blue sky and the smell of catastrophe. Eret had offered their castle grounds as refuge to those who lost their homes. Some had the sense to build makeshift tents, more just collapsed from exhaustion. When he woke he was met with abandoned bedrolls and extinguished camp fires. He’d learn later that the L’manburg efforts were in the crater then, looking through rubble for something to save. Tubbo got up with his sleeves singed half off and a head full of ash and started walking. 

Tommy looks past him and towards the house, “Why…?” 

“I need somewhere to stay,” Tubbo’s voice is sluggish, painstakingly crawling out from his mouth. 

Tommy takes a few steps closer to the building. There is snow on the floorboards from when it snowed the night previous without a roof to protect it. “Yeah, but why now?”

“L’manburg is gone.” It's a simple fact. A statement. Tommy looks uncomfortable regardless. “I don’t have an obligation to stay there anymore.” 

“You’re still wearing your suit,” Tommy presses, like it means something. Tubbo looks down at himself and picks at the one remaining button on his chest. His suit is ripped and bloody and reeks of sulfur and he is still wearing it. He glances back up at Tommy and waits until the words click. He’s wearing the suit so he is still president. He’s still president so he should be in L’manburg. Tommy hasn’t come to stay and he’s taking Tubbo with him. 

Tubbo isn’t sure if he is still president. No one talked about it一not to him. Those who fought dragged themselves from the wreckage and dispersed, like there was nothing there to begin with. There is really only one person to discuss it with anyway. He only has a single true citizen. He hopes Ranboo is okay. He doesn’t want to ask. He’s learnt it's better not to know some things. 

Tubbo gives a weak tug to the button and it pops off. He presses it back to his chest like it will mend. “I don’t know,” he says, “It feels too soon…” 

“I reckon you’re in denial.” The words draw Tubbo’s vision into focus. Tommy’s eyes are draped with bruises of exhaustion. 

Tubbo steps away from his house and onto the ice of the shore, if only to see it from a new perspective. The soreness in his shoulders and the aches in his fingers don’t feel like denial. They feel like moving. “I’m not in denial,” he says, “I’m accepting this.” Tommy’s words make him think though, and he’s not sure if his mind ever really left the ruins to allow him to think. “Right...?”

“You’ve made a lovely little house,” Tommy says instead. 

Tommy drags him into the house for the night, refusing to let Tubbo continue working on the roof. The hole does the opposite of insulate the small space of the cabin but Tubbo had luckily built a fireplace close enough to being finished for it to be usable. It's nice in a way, how they can look up and see the stars. He can’t remember the last time the two of them sat like this and stargazed. It must have been back before his presidency. Pogtopia, perhaps. Or before then, back when Wilbur was a general and Quackity was a passing visitor. 

The light of the fire allows Tommy a glance at Tubbo’s hands and Tommy is quick to grab him by the wrists. He wraps them with fraying bandages and forces packed rations into Tubbo’s palms. It makes him feel small, but in a welcomed way. Small like bedtime stories and wearing flowers for dresses. 

Something in the fire draws Tommy’s eyes and holds him there. He blinks once, twice, then breathes out his name, “Tubbo…” 

Tubbo glances at the fire before tipping his head back to look at the stars instead. 

“Tubbo I一” Tommy begins, “I don’t think you quite understand. We一we lost,” and Tubbo isn’t sure how Tommy came to that conclusion, that he doesn’t understand. It was Tubbo who fed that starving nation everything he had. Tubbo had been losing for months. “We’ve faced serious shit these past few weeks. Do you wanna hear the catalyst of every single bad thing that’s happened?” 

He hums to keep Tommy talking, wanting to listen to the sound of his voice. “It’s not the discs, it's not L’manburg, not even Technoblade. It’s Dream. He’s the villain in the history books, Tubbo, and sometimes the villains win.”

And because Tubbo knows this too, he whispers, “Yeah.”

It’s only the villains who win. The villains won when Eret traded their lives away and the villains won when Schlatt was elected. They won when rockets tore through his stomach and they won when Wilbur lost his way. The villains won the second that button was pressed, and minutes before that when Tubbo was elected president. The withers, the smell of mushrooms roasting, the exile, all won by the villains. For all his losses, Tubbo won too: the arrest of Phil, the capture of Technoblade, the pillar, the transfer of weapons and discs. 

“Tubbo, we need to get these discs now, because we lost L’manburg and we don’t一” Tubbo catches Tommy’s eye. Tommy must see something in his expression because he’s quick to wave his hands to placate him, “It’s一It’s cool that you’re making a little area out here. A new town or whatever you’re doing. But now. Tubbo, we don’t have long一” Tommy turns back towards the fire and Tubbo can’t see his face. “I figure about a week tops. Dream left and he’s weak. He won the battle, the biggest battle we’ve had, but he hasn’t won the war. The only remaining power he has over us is those discs. And they’re the only thing we care about.” Tubbo doesn’t think he has ever felt more exhausted. There is a stone in his gut shaped like guilt and anger and foxglove. “Literally it's just the discs… and I suppose you and me, our lives, you know? While everyone hates him and while he’s weak, this is when we can take down Dream. We need to take down Dream, get the discs, or die trying. Listen we don’t have any other option now一”

“We only have one life left. Both of us.” 

The silence hangs between them. The fire pops and crackles and Tubbo longs to go back to a time where that didn’t frighten him. The lull of quiet only lasts for a moment before Tommy begins again with a stuttering start. Talks of grandeur and revenge and a need for the two discs that allowed them to be ripped apart. It's impossible not to think about that day atop those obsidian walls that killed him more times than a sword to the back or a rocket to the chest. He regretted those words once, the discs don’t matter, Tommy, after he’d seen the pillar in Logstedshire. Those weeks before the hostage situation, he had kept the discs closer than ever. They were Tommy, then; they held Tommy’s aspirations, dreams, memories. It was all he had left. But now Tommy was here and alive and he can no longer pretend that his friend can be replaced by vinyl. Still, Tommy talks on.

“You know if we die, we’re gone forever.” Tubbo cuts in. He looks at Tommy then, but Tommy is turned away still, his back a silhouette against the flames. “You’ve balanced those odds, right? I don’t think it’s worth sacrificing our lives if we lose. Everything will be for nothing.”

“Every single time I’ve sacrificed my discs for L’manburg. We put everything to the side, we even一the only time I didn’t was in exile and look how that turned out.”

The silence returns and presses down on them with tangible force. Thinking about Tommy’s exile means thinking about the dirt that stretched miles high and Tubbo’s heart leaps into his throat like it's him who’s falling, so he doesn’t think at all. He runs his nails along the grain of the wood below him. He’ll never forgive himself. Tommy shouldn’t either, despite the desperate, burning want he feels. 

“We’re friends, right?” Tubbo’s mouth forms the words before he can stop them. 

The beat of silence kills him. It has always taken Tommy a moment to switch his thoughts. Even longer when the discs were involved. It’s a silence he would have dismissed as Tommy’s one track absentmindedness before all this, but now Tubbo’s not so sure. 

“Yeah, yeah, but the thing is that tore us apart… I was manipulated.” Tommy says, “And so were you. And I don’t even know what the truth is anymore, but what I do know is that if it weren’t for the discs一”

Tubbo’s lips suddenly spill the overwhelming guilt he’s been feeling ever since Tommy walked into Snowchester, “Yeah, I honestly have no idea what happened. I thought I was just doing what I was supposed to and I’m so sorry.”

“I’m sorry, too.” Tommy whispers and he finally looks back towards Tubbo. “I thought I was doing the right thing.”

Tubbo blinks with something resembling surprise. “...Oh.” His mind immediately jumps to the night where George’s house was burnt down and tries to rationalize the rightness. 

“I mean, and so did you,” the words burst from Tommy’s chest at Tubbo’s silence. “But the thing is we gotta get rid of Dream and get back those discs. But you can’t live out here. I think you should come home.”

Tubbo’s mind goes from one home of ashes to another and he says, “What do you mean home? I haven’t had a home since it was burned down twice.” L’manburg was his country but not his home. Not since he adorned that uniform with his brothers by his side. Snowchester is supposed to be his home. This unfinished box of a cottage is supposed to be his home. 

“We only have a week. It’s not time to give up. It's our last chance. One final effort. We get the discs or we die trying. We’re in the endgame now,” Tommy says instead. 

Tommy convinces Tubbo to come back with him for a change of clothes at the very least. They’ll be roommates for the first time since the two of them made that vacation house right before the beginning of Tubbo’s presidency. Tubbo’s not sure that even counts. They never did get a chance to stay in it. He hopes this will last longer. 

The journey back is longer than usual. The two of them give L’manburg a wide berth, going the long way around to Tommy’s dirt shack instead of cutting through. Tommy keeps looking forward, frenzied talking of discs and Dream and having no time. This is easy, Tubbo thinks. Following beside Tommy has always been easy and he misses this. 

The smell of smoke grows suffocating as they reach Tommy’s house, but the land is far enough from the center of New L’manburg to be spared of any physical damages. Tubbo hasn’t been inside since the night he discovered Tommy was alive. He had made the bed and patched the windows and swept the floor, running on lack of sleep and delirious with hope. As he peers through the open doors he realizes it takes no time at all for all that to be erased. This house is doomed to fall without Tommy to live within it. Tommy’s here now, Tubbo tells himself. He’s here now and things will be better. 

Tommy reaches above the door frame and dusts off the plaque reading TommyInnit’s Home. “Tubbo, you’ve got a future ahead of you一”

“Do I?”

“一And so do I. But the thing is, we’re not gonna have any future unless we take down Dream right now, and we need to prepare.” Tommy looks at him, then. “Tubbo, please. I know you’re considering leaving everything behind一and I don't blame you一but please, just for a week tops. Move in with me, Tubbo. Stay here.” Tubbo can see Tommy swallow, see his eyes soften, hear the meaning change, “Stay here.” 

Something bubbles up from his gut, something along the lines of, it won't only be a week if we die. 

“Roomies,” Tubbo says instead. 

Tubbo learns neither of them really sleep at night. 

As much as he longs to return to the days where they slept side by side, neither of them offer. Healing takes time and Tubbo knows this well. He is familiar with the aches and pains of a battle that take days to fade and the scars that never do. The same sentiment applies to emotional wounds, Phil told him when he was much younger, when the worst things were scraped knees and unwanted bedtimes. 

Tommy shows him to Vikk’s old room. Tubbo just stands there, in the center, even after Tommy ducks out of the doorway. He didn’t know Vikk had ever stayed here. Was it while Tommy still lived here or was it after his exile? Tubbo’s not sure which is worse. How long has it been since Tommy told him everything? Or how long has it been since he lost control of what happened in his country? Perhaps the question is when had he stopped visiting? 

Tommy returns with clothes Tubbo used to keep here. He’s not surprised they still fit, even after all this time. He hasn’t grown much. 

Tommy wishes him a goodnight and Tubbo does the same. 

When Tubbo looks up from where he lays on the bed, there aren’t any stars. It doesn’t come as a shock, he didn’t expect any different. The ceiling above him is a mixture of earth and stone. The roof above him has never been incomplete, carved out of the ground itself. It isn’t as cold here, but there is a chance of a cave in. 

Sleep doesn’t come easy anymore, so he lays there unable to tell how much time has passed. Before he’d broken it, he used to sit for hours spinning his compass as a distraction, watching the needle stay stagnant in Tommy’s direction. Here, he listens. There is a constant shuffling down the hall. Something tells him it’s Tommy. 

Tubbo pulls back the covers and slips from the bed. He hangs in the doorway for a few moments before turning in the opposite direction of the pacing. His feet lead him up the stairs and they plant themselves in front of the enderchest. He doesn’t open it. He just looms there, awkwardly, staring through the lid at the empty space where a disc should be. Exhaustion tugs at his very soul. 

He rubs at his eyes and turns away only for a book to catch his eye. It’s spine is spit and worn, the book open and face down on the top of a chest. He shuffles over with bare feet and lifts it to his face. 

It’s a journal. The open page is only half filled with entries, all of which are dated within the previous month. 

i feel like ive been ruined. i catch techno looking at me with this stupid expression and hes being nice and i hate it. he is so kind and it feels like proof that ive been ruined. that dream really 

The rest of the passage is scribbled out. 

The next entry dates back a few days ago.

no one told me what its like to stop and still be moving. i dont know what to

Tubbo flips the journal over and heads back down the stairs. 

As he takes his first step down, Tommy begins ascending. They stare at each other with wide eyes until Tommy looks down, breaks the spell, and continues upwards. Tubbo presses himself against the wall as he passes. Tubbo then turns and follows him up. There will never be a time where his first instinct isn’t to fall in step with Tommy. 

Wordlessly, they go outside. 

Tommy walks towards the small gardens he has outside his hut and Tubbo goes after him. There is a pile of planks haphazardly thrown into a stack, he thinks it was meant to be built into a fence at some point. Tommy grabs a few of the boards and an axe resting nearby before walking towards what was L’manburg. Tubbo follows again, this time slower. He’s tired. 

He can hear the axe against the wood before he makes it up the stairs of the Prime Path. Tommy is chopping at the wood below him with something between rage and resigned melancholy. Tubbo stands beside him, still. If he looks past Tommy he can see where L’manburg stood days ago. He didn’t want to see it again. Tommy bends down to grab one of the planks and pulls Tubbo from his reverie. 

Tommy boards off the crater and etches Old L’manburg into the wood. 

Tubbo and Tommy stare with their vision obstructed. They stand, the space between them quiet. They don’t speak, won’t speak, not now. The feet between them are much too wide to cross. Even so, something there is mending, slowly. 

Tubbo goes down into the crater the next morning. 

Tommy had left an hour earlier with a bag on his back, his face set and determined. He said something about collecting resources and righting some wrongs. Tubbo was glad for him, underneath his tired confusion. 

Tommy slips away towards Eret’s castel and Tubbo slips down the banks of a fallen nation. Gravel tumbles down from his disturbance and he can hear its echo as it drops. It is quiet besides the crunching of rubble under his feet. There is nothing left to make a sound. The air below the surface is stagnant, reeking of sulfur and loss. When he looks across the way he can see the remains of Ranboo’s porch in the morning light. 

He stumbles over to where the row of houses used to stand. Tubbo can just make out the platform from where two large, wooden poles stick up from the earth. They are broken and snapped and charred and Tubbo turns his back to them. Right now, the same vision from months ago, he looks out at his nation bathed in mourning. He addresses it, because that's what presidents do. He doesn’t make a sound. He says it in his head. There’s no one here to listen anyway.

On an unknown winter morning, Tubbo dissolves L’manburg.

The climb out is difficult. Tubbo places his hands on a ledge to hoist himself up, but the earth crumbles away and he’s left sliding down. It's frustrating and exhausting and his body aches from the attack only days prior. Another attempt has a massive stone tumbling down in his direction and he has to stagger out of its way. He watches it drop with distant amusement. It hits the ground with a resounding thud and suddenly there is a cry that echoes out from below. 

Tubbo goes rigid in surprise. For the entirety of the time he’s spent in the crater, the only sounds have come from himself. He debates for a moment, looking up at the line where the crater meets the sky, and deflates in a sigh. He turns and follows the sound of the cry, descending. 

The climb down is easy. Gravity pulls him effortlessly towards the one place he never wanted to go again. It's cruel how doing the right thing is so hard but this is so easy. Doing what he hates has become so easy.

The cries have quieted to distressed clicks as he reaches one of the ledges near the bottom. They echo through a small dugout tunnel in the earth. Tubbo’s mind supplies a quick image of the tunnel collapsing with him in it before he steps through. Nothing happens, he doesn’t die here. The stone stays steady over his head. The sound of his boots seems to only rile up the animal inside and his ears are greeted with a series of chirps. 

There, tied to a fencepost, is Squeeks. The biggest smile blooms across Tubbo’s face. 

He is by Squeeks’ side in seconds, collapsed on his knees with his hands full of fur. All it takes is a touch and he’s gasping for air but that’s okay. It's okay. Tubbo runs his thumbs across Squeek’s brow and cuffs his ears and he’s laughing wet, horrible laughs. He can feel Squeeks purr and nuzzle into his chest and his mind is stuck on one thought.

Something survived. It repeats over and over again, something survived, something survived, something survived. No matter how long he sits there with gravel digging into his shins, it keeps looping in his brain. It means everything. It means nothing. A fox is not a country but it’s something and it survived.  

A note catches his eye as Tubbo unties Squeeks from the post. It's the familiar scrawl of his trusty minutes man. Suddenly he’s curling downwards in a wave of emotion. He envelops Squeeks and whispers frantic, choked words, “Ranboo, thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.”

Climbing out of the crater is easier on his second trip, despite the fox in his arms. There is something tethering him to the ground now, stopping him from slipping. The wind picks up as he reaches the horizon but he finds he doesn’t mind the hair whipping at his face. 

He keeps having these stupid thoughts every few seconds, like maybe I’ll build a little staircase up to my bed so Squeeks can get up easily or I wonder if I can borrow wool from Sam so I can make a little bed for him. His chest is burning with a foreign warmth and he cradles the fox in his arms a little tighter. 

It takes him a little while to reach the top. He’s still too weak to make the trek in one go, stopping periodically on ledges big enough for him to sprawl out on. It’s midday by the time he passes Tommy’s house. He stands outside it for a moment, just looking. It’s quiet inside. Tommy must still be out preparing for their fight. He puts one step in front of the other and continues down the path, past the shack. He wants to bring Squeeks home. He wants to go home. 

The walk is long. Maybe one day he will build a bridge connecting Snowchester and Tommy’s place so they’ll never be more than a road apart. Until then he’ll settle for the feeling of grass against his shins and weaving through woods for hours on end. Tubbo blinks in surprise as the sun dips below the horizon, so lost in his mindless walking he didn’t realize the shift in time. 

The whole world is golden for a moment before it’s plunged into a blue darkness. 

Tubbo’s an idiot. 

It’s only a few heartbeats before monsters start to drag themselves from their hollows. They walk unabashed in the comfort of the night. There are silhouettes at the edges of his vision and Squeeks starts to squeal and thrash in Tubbo’s arms. The fox, with vision tenfold of what Tubbo’s once was before the wars, scratches at his flesh in an attempt to escape. Tubbo only holds him closer, ducks his head, and runs. 

Tubbo can barely make his feet out under the cloak of darkness. He is half-tumbling half-sprinting, the blades of grass cutting against his calves in blurry streaks. He has nothing. He left with Squeeks and the clothes on his back and didn’t even bother to take a sword for protection. Adrenaline flares in his chest and he’s gasping giant, shuddering breaths that rattle all the way to his gut and the damn fox won't stop scratching at his arms一

Eyes up. 

Wilbur’s voice resounds through his skull, and Tubbo can almost feel his brother adjusting Tubbo’s tricorn, the press of his hand on Tubbo’s back, forcing better posture. 

Tubbo’s head snaps up and he has an instant to dodge an arrow fired in his direction. A single moment of instinctive shock keeps him alive, body reflexively throwing itself out of harm's way. The force of it has him rolling for a moment, shoulder slamming into the frozen earth below. Tremors of pain shoot up his arms but the only thing he notices is the distinct lack of something in them. Tubbo bolts up, head swimming from the sudden movement. 

“Squeeks!” Blind eyes dart across the field before him. He hears it before he sees it, the tail end of the lead darting through the grass, a snake weaving through the undergrowth. Tubbo scrambles after it, stumbling and reaching out with dirty hands. 

His foot snags in a dip hidden in the field and he pulls back with a sudden jerk to avoid the flames spitting from the rubble. Still, his eyes are trained on the lead as he darts forward. Some part of his mind manages to hear the creek of a skeleton pulling back an arrow and he twists violently to dodge, hoping the firework wont hit. 

There’s a sudden, oppressive heat that has always been there. Tubbo can feel his lungs withering in the smoke like confetti set aflame. The constant barrage of bombs makes the air feverish and if he can just get past where the camarvan roasts in shambles, if he can just get to the splinters of the podium then一

Squeeks is there in the distance, hackles raised and teeth bared. Technoblade stands in front of the fox with a rocket launcher to his head. 

Tubbo’s entire being begs for a moment, that his world won't erupt and envelop him in a spectrum of colors. He can feel his heartbeat in every inch of his body. He won’t make it. 

Everything warps as some desperate instinct throws Tubbo forward. It's dizzyingly clear, the creeper that stands in the dirt compressed with Techno’s footfalls. Tendrils of light spark across Its body as it flashes and spasms. Tommy stands a breath away, face shining in the light. 

It explodes.

The force of the blast throws Tubbo back. Rocks and dirt and something else pellet his body as he lays there, sprawled. For a moment, there is nothing, just his breath hot and smothered in the ground below him. He gets up, because he always gets up, swaying on shaking legs and staring at the spot Tommy just was, where Squeeks just was, but his vision is cloudy and he can’t see anything as he staggers further towards the crater. “No,” he breathes.

“No, no, no,” and the force of his gasps tear at his throat. Tubbo blinks rapidly, rubs his eyes to clear his vision, to shield his view, “Squeeks…” 

The smoke dissipates enough for him to spot the lead on the ground, black with char and scorched in half. He lifts his gaze to find the grass stained with blood and pieces of一

Tubbo tenses as mobs circle in the corners of his vision. The initial blast was only enough to keep them away for a moment. His legs ache with the need to escape, muscles pounding with his pulse. His body has a burning need to keep him alive, but all Tubbo can do is stare at the fraying end of a rope. The sudden touch of a cold hand of a zombie is enough to shock his body into action and he’s careening forward towards the lead. He scoops it up and ignores the lack of weight on the other end. Tubbo cradles it close like he had done just moments ago. He’s wheezing as he dodges arrows and reaching hands, shaking and coughing. 

Tubbo makes it out, somehow. He doesn’t know how long he’s run for or how far he is from Snowchester when he comes back to himself. Spruce trees replace fields of grass and oak and his clenched hands never ease around the lead. He shakes hard enough to rattle his teeth and he can see his breath in quick, short puffs. 

He is full of emptiness as he slows to a walk. The adrenaline drains from him until he is left with nothing but a building pressure behind his eyes. His lips form the words, barely a whisper: 

“We were going home,” it’s a defense. There was no need for the SMP to take any more from him. It wasn’t fair. He was leaving一he would have been gone; he wouldn’t have done anything more to the land and its people. His vacant eyes stare forward and he can smell the burning flesh imprinted within the threads of the rope, “We were going home…” 

And then home comes into view, dark and unfinished on the bank of an abandoned shore. His heart aches because he’s here, he’s made it, and his heart aches because there’s no light peaking through the windows. He’s alone. 

It's something so simple: there are no lights inside, but his vision is blurring with tears and he’s seconds from collapsing. Tubbo can’t see the steep drop of the bank and one step sends him tumbling down into the snow and frozen mud below. He lays there still for a horrible moment. His chest trembles and his heart aches and suddenly he can’t do anything but sob into the ground below him. He’s suffocating. He can’t breathe face down like this but he can’t move over the overwhelming despair that’s flooded his system. 

There is dirt in his mouth and he’s lost everything. Everything he’s ever worked for is gone and he couldn’t save anything. Techno and Dream and Phil destroyed and destroyed until there was nothing left一and then there was and Tubbo killed that too. He killed that too. 

A burning sensation fills his lungs and his body forcefully flips him to his side. Tubbo wishes it didn’t; he wants to suffocate and rot away into nothing on the shore and when they find his bones they’ll have L’manburg carved into them, and they’ll burn those too because he’s the worst president and the worst friend and the worst spy and the worst kid. 

His arms pull themselves close to his chest and his nose is suddenly flooded with ash and blood. Tubbo jerks away with a gag. His eyes are wide and glassy as they stare at the lead still clenched in his fists. 

Oh God. Oh God, oh God一

His eyes are closed so tight that the world comes to him in bursts of sound. Still, his mind supplies him with the image. Squeeks, splattered on the ground and ripped to shreds and he’s gagging again. He can taste the gore in his mouth and he vomits. 

The force of it has him kneeling. His arms quake as they brace him from crumbling into his own sick. His throat ignites in agony as another round of bile and acid is expelled. He’s coughing and bawling and he can’t breathe in between his hiccups. His head is filled with furious pounding and a damning dogmas: it’s gone, it’s gone, it’s gone. 

His heart flutters fast enough in his chest to fill the edge of his vision with shadows. He drags himself to the water with blue fingers. 

He can’t see his reflection in its inky depths. He never wants to see his reflection again. The taste of blood and vomit won't leave his mouth and he plunges his hands past the ice and brings water to his lips. The shock of salt is enough to make him sputter; his chest, already convulsing with sobs, forces the water into his lungs and onto the slush beneath him. 

He wails. He’s drowning, but not enough to kill him. He is suddenly burning with want, a greedy desire to shove his head under and inhale, to drink it in like Lethe. 

He doesn’t. Tubbo sits there, hunkers forward into his knees, and screams. 

He hopes Eret can hear him from wherever they are. He begs, not for the first time, to know what Eret knew all those years ago, when they let the ground explode from under Tubbo’s feet. 

He wakes up and nothing is better. He wakes up and nothing is healed. The grief drains into a place in his mind he doesn’t want to see. He won’t look. He will function. 

He woke up alone. 

It was a sad sight; Tubbo can see it now from where he sits under a finished roof. How he peeled his frozen skin from the muck below him and wiped his face, smearing mud across his cheeks. He’d felt sick, that hollow sort of sad filled with longing. He ached to open his eyes to Tommy or Sam with their arms outstretched. He wanted a hug. 

It was a stupid thought, and Tubbo chides himself for it like he’s embarrassed, though he’s the only one in the room, the only person for miles.

He had gone right back to work, stopping only when the cabin was complete. He didn’t furnish it. It’s full of nothing, just like his previous house in L’manburg. He visited it right after the boombings ceased, right before his loneliness dragged him back to Eret’s castle. It sat on the docks, untouched since the day he built it. 

He wonders if it's a coincidence that he built a house along the shore again. Maybe something about the sea inherently draws him in. Maybe he’s the tide and Tommy’s the moon and Wilbur’s the sun and Schlatt is the earth beneath him he’s forever chained to. And one day the sun explodes and the moon is sent off sprawling into space and he’s trapped here as the earth breaks away into nothingness. 

He’ll make a grave. 

Tubbo returns to Snowchester hours later with a flimsy sled trailing behind him. It had taken longer than he thought it would to drag the stones back from the quarry he found. They rolled off the sled and into the snow countless times. 

He pulls everything up to the place he woke this morning. Tubbo can still see his imprint in the mud. He drags his foot across it until the shape is unrecognizable. 

The grave is as tall as he is when it’s complete. It’s beautiful, decorated with poppies and primrose. He drapes the lead across it like ribbons. His hands shake as he stakes a fencepost in the ground. It’s so Squeeks can find his way home. 

Tubbo hopes he’ll come home. 

He’s back at the quarry the following day. This time he brings two sleds and enough rope to tie down any of the stone he collects. He’ll build a dock and it’ll be beautiful, too. It will keep the waters calm and his town of one safe. 

It’s grueling work. Tubbo shakes with enough force to send him stumbling if he doesn’t watch his step. The water is freezing and his body wants to finally rest but he continues on. It reminds him of L’manburg一the good one built of five. There were really only two who built the walls, or one if he’s honest with himself, but the memory makes him feel all the same. 

Tubbo imagines a different world where he and Eret built the walls just that much farther out. It would sprout from the river instead, the one Dream and Sapnap had filled until there was nothing there to begin with. In that world maybe they saved the forest. 

When Tubbo dives under the ice to arrange the stone, he pictures a riverbed instead of sand. 

His body refuses the ocean. He’s much too weak to continue the project in one fell swoop. Tubbo redirects his days elsewhere. 

He starts to build a sign in the middle of the woods. 

He etches Snowchester into the wood but he can’t remember where he learned how. It doesn’t matter much, in the end. 

It’s during projects like these where he truly relaxes. Tension bleeds out of his shoulders. The air is cold but the light that filters through the trees warms him. He decides to make plaques to hang on it, something to keep the scenery changing. 

The spruce is soft under his blade. He doesn’t cut himself once but he does end up getting a splinter as he brushes away the sawdust. Hello friends! it reads, Have you eaten yet? Come visit if you have the time! 

Tubbo steps back to admire his work and he’s filled with a fuzzy feeling. His lips curl upwards at the sight. This is beautiful, too. 

He appreciates his craft a moment longer before he’s back at work. Tubbo doesn’t think he’ll ever stop building, not until he can create everything he’s lost一everything he’s let everyone lose. For every brick of the wall he tore down under Schlatt, there would be a stone in a dock. For every podium exploded from Wilbur, there would be a sign carved with his own two hands. For every inch destroyed by Dream… 

Tubbo brushes snow from his pants and stretches. He slides another plaque onto the hooks nailed into the sign. Facing outwards, towards the unknown, it reads: Welcome home. It is a pleasure to receive you. 

He walks back to his little cabin. He feels lighter, he thinks. 

He’ll build a garden.

There was a garden outside his old house.

There was a famine before the creation of L’manburg and Tubbo had decided to help in remedying it. He had spent a while collecting every type of crop he could find in hopes of feeding as many as he could. And it worked. He’s not sure how it was destroyed, whether it was when Dream and Sapnap burnt his house down or if it just crumbled from lack of care. 

During the days of Manburg, Purpled had been the one to pick up where Tubbo had left off. Even now, Tubbo doesn’t quite know where Purpled stands. He’s been loyal to the Dream SMP, but there was a time when Tubbo was too. 

It’s odd, how after all this time, he could think fondly upon a time he stood side-by-side with Sapnap and Purpled against Wilbur and Tommy. Maybe because they were all just so much younger. Nothing was quite so serious yet. 

Maybe that’s why Tubbo finds himself digging through Purpled’s potato farm. 

With dirty hands, he takes enough to start a farm of his own. Tubbo had passed the baton once, and he’s ready to take it back. Or maybe he’ll just run beside Purpled. Or perhaps they’ll walk together instead. That’s a much nicer option. 

Tilling the frozen soil of Snowchester has him gasping in exhaustion, leaving a sheen of sweat across his face. His knees ache from the amount of time he’s spent crouching over holes, burying potatoes beneath the earth. It’s nothing like Pogtopia, with its systematic harvesting or its oppressive walls. It’s harder work, but he’s glad for it. 

In time, when Tubbo sees the beginnings of sprouts peak over the soil, it will be worth it. He doesn’t know much about peace, despite his constant push towards it every step of the way. He has never had the privilege to live in the times he tries so hard to cultivate. But some days he can see the point in doing something, growing something, even if it's just to say he cared enough. 

He wonders if Purpled feels the same. 

He returns to the quarry again. The morning is bitter with cold and a fog dances between mounds and pillars of rock. He built sides onto the sleds this time to keep any stone from falling off on the journey home. 

Tubbo starts at the top of the rock piles and works his way down, collecting loose, sizable stones. The sun has just peeked over the horizon and the shadows are much too long to safely work in the valleys between the pillars. He weaves over and around the rocks with ease. His trips usually last all day, collecting both the building materials and the mushrooms he found one afternoon after accidentally sliding into a cave. 

Clouds roll in by noon. It doesn’t rain but an odd grey sheen covers everything instead. The absence of direct light dispels the shadows and suddenly the land is flat and counterfeit. 

A fuzzy feeling fills Tubbo’s head at the lack of depth. 

He focuses on his hands, on the way they wrap around the ropes of the sleds trailing behind him. They bite and pull at the calloused flesh and it hurts. It hurts; he hones into that fact because it's real, despite how his brain feels too solid and his mind feels too airy. He bites at his lips for good measure. 

There’s someone watching him. He can feel it on his neck and a shiver spasms through his shoulders. Figures flicker at the edge of his vision, disappearing into the fog when he turns. 

He quickens his pace. Tubbo is filled with the urge to run home. He thinks Snowchester but his mind supplies the image of a camarvan in a field without any walls. 

He sees it as pillars of rock move past him, the figure of a person in the mist. Tubbo stops with a jolt and his sled slams into the back of his heels. He stares forward. The world is completely still. He raises his hand and waves feebly. The figure remains unmoving. Tubbo takes two steps forward. 

“Um, hello?” His voice does the opposite of echo. The words are snuffed out the second they leave his mouth. “Hello?”

The fog begins to dissipate as he gets closer, the figure slowly revealing itself. The silhouette warps and splits off into three parts and Tubbo gasps as buzzing fills his ears. His hand shoots to his torso to make sure he hasn’t split too, his eyes snap down to make sure his feet are still there. Tubbo’s head jolts up to look back at the figure and suddenly a hysterical laugh is bubbling out of his throat.  

It's just rocks. Three fucking collums that fit together for a moment. There’s no one there. “I’m going crazy,” he breathes and feels all the more so for saying it aloud. Tubbo shakes his head but it does little to calm his racing heart. He rearranges the rope in his hands so it loops around the sensitive bits between his fingers. 

“Tubbo?”

A yelp of surprise rips out of him and he curls down towards his knees. He presses his fingers to his neck and gasps, the racing of his heart beneath his fingertips keeping him grounded. Tubbo can hear the voice speaking again but he can’t pick out the words. 

Slowly, still crouched, still heaving, he turns towards the noise. He immediately flinches when he’s met with blue and red glowing back at him. 

“Tubbo? Tubbo, mate, open your eyes.” 

And Tubbo does because he knows that voice. He’s fought alongside that voice for years. 

Tubbo laughs as he unfolds himself, a little less hysterical this time. “You scared me.”

“I can tell,” Jack hums. 

Jack looks different. His glasses are gone, but the red and blue still remain on his face, etched into his eyes. The fog only makes them glow brighter. The lack of pupils is unnerving. 

“That’s freaky,” Tubbo says and he points to his own eyes. For all his time spent as president, Tubbo is still the least tactful person he knows. 

“What? What’s freaky?” Jack balks. 

“Your eyes. They glow. No pupils.”

Jack’s brows press together and his lips part, but he doesn't say a word. He places a hand in front of his eyes and Tubbo can see how they reflect off Jack’s skin. Jack’s shoulders sink as he presses his palms to his face and groans. 

“You’re shaking, Jack.”

Jack doesn’t even look up at his words. “Yeah, yeah, I am.” 

The two of them stand there for a silent moment and Tubbo thinks about how low the odds were of them meeting here. He finds he’s curious about where Jack has been since the battle. He finds he’s achingly lonely. He and Jack open their mouths at the same time.

“I一”

“Do you一” 

Tubbo hums with the shake of his head, “You first.” 

Jack sways as he speaks, “I think I might pass out.” The words are a high whistle. 

Tubbo straightens with surprise before rushing forward. He is quick to hold Jack by the arms and maneuver him towards the sleds. “Sit. My God, sit.”   

Jack does so with little resistance. Tubbo has never been more glad for his system of filling one sled up completely before starting on the other. Jack collapses onto the empty sled. His eyes are open but Tubbo can’t tell where his gaze lands. The solid colors make it impossible. 

“Maybe you should come back to my place?” Tubbo says as he kneels before Jack. Tubbo knows the offer is something kind, but there’s a bitter taste on his tongue. He’s trapping an injured bird with good intentions but there is a dark need for companionship Tubbo hasn’t let himself feel. He’s scared he might damn the bird to a cage forever. Tubbo blinks the thoughts away and pulls a small smile to his face. 

“Yeah, maybe.” Jack says, though Tubbo can’t see where he’s looking.

Jack squints at the state of Tubbo’s house and Tubbo has never felt more embarrassed or ill prepared to have company. 

“How long have you been staying here?” Jack asks. 

“Uh, it's been finished for a few days,” Tubbo says, already picking up stray materials scattered across the floor. He places them into chests with no real organization. 

“It's not finished,” Jack looks around with raised brows, “You don’t even have a damn bed.” 

“No, but I have a bedroll,” Tubbo points to said mat, which is inconveniently covered by the furs he plans to sew together for some new clothes. “I’ll make you a bed if you want. Then I’ll get started on your house.” 

Tubbo freezes at his words, then slowly gets back to sorting. Jack never even mentioned thinking of living here. 

Jack gives one awkward laugh, “We’re moving quite fast here big guy.”

Tubbo laughs too, trying to salvage the situation, “Well, with L’manburg. You know,” Tubbo clenches his fists before spreading his palms wide, like an explosion. He hums and drops his hands, feeling insensitive. “It’s, um, gone. And Manifold Land was right there too, so…”

“I’ll have you know Manifold Land is still standing. Just a bit of roof damage.” Despite the good news, Jack’s face is twisted in displeasure. “Fought to protect it when it wasn’t even in blast range,” he mutters. 

“Well,” Tubbo swallows, “I really did appreciate you fighting for L’manburg anyway.”

“Yeah.”

At least the floor was looking marginally cleaner than it did when they arrived. “Yeah. So, are you feeling any better?” 

Jack opens his mouth, closes it. “I’m hungry.” 

“Oh, of course.” 

The two of them move to the floor right in front of the fireplace. It doesn’t take long for Tubbo to assemble everything. Soon enough he has a broth rolling above the fire. He flashes Jack a grin as he holds up a mushroom before dropping it into the pot, “Mani-shroom.”

For the first time in a while, Jack smiles. 

They eat their stew in relative silence and Tubbo can’t pin if it's awkward or not. He glances at Jack in between sips from his bowl. Jack’s eyes are sunken and his skin is ashen in a way Tubbo couldn’t see in the quarry. When their hands brush as Tubbo collects the empty bowls, he nearly pulls away in surprise. Despite Jack’s hands cradling the soup, they never warmed like they should have.

That night, fog spills onto the shoreline. 

Tubbo is wrist-deep in the earth when Jack asks him. 

“How do you feel about Tommy?”

The question is random enough to pull him from his farming to look at Jack, “What?” 

Jack sits atop the stone fence surrounding the garden. It isn’t high above the ground but Jack’s fingers are white with the force they grip at the rocks with, like he’s scared of falling. 

“Tommy. How do you feel about him?” and when Tubbo stays silent, Jack continues, “I mean, after everything, you can’t be on good terms. He fucked with George’s and you exiled him. Not to mention the…” Jack trails off.

“Mention what?” Tubbo asks. There’s a fluttering feeling in his stomach.

“The community house.” 

“Oh.” He swallows around his nausea and thinks about the day after instead. About Doomsday. “We fought together.”

Despite his lack of pupils, Tubbo can feel Jack’s gaze on him. “Yeah, well, Sapnap fought with him too.”

They both know he’s not answering the question. Jack slowly lowers himself from the wall, hands not leaving their place until his feet are soundly on the ground. He makes his way over to where Tubbo is still kneeling in the dirt. 

“Would you die for him?” Jack asks, head framed by the sun. 

For some terrible, wonderful reason, Tubbo’s mind glances over the anger and heart-break that Tommy has caused him throughout the past few months. For brief moments, they fester. The fires, the obsidian walls, the hostage, the community house. 

Tubbo lingers on this: a random moment on an unparticular day. 

The sun was high in the sky and the two of them were so small, their pant legs too long and pooling around their ankles. There was someone Tommy wanted him to meet. Wilbur was his name, who was as clever as a fox and told the best stories in the world. But that journey would have to wait, because this day they planned to have a picnic atop a cool hill Tommy found. And Tubbo stood there outside that dirt hut with all the gear they would need for the trek, arms overflowing with snacks and blankets and a wooden sword or two. Tommy, always the unprepared, was still inside, still sorting through his things. 

He’s not sure why it comes to mind, why he remembers it at all. Tubbo standing there, his belongings pressed to his chest. It was nice, in the afternoon sun, waiting to share everything with him.

Tubbo looks away from Jack and presses his empty arms to his chest. The mud on his fingers stain his collar. “That doesn’t matter.”

Jack doesn’t say anything for a long while. Neither of them do. They just exist there, in a potato field, as the clouds drift over their heads. 

Jack’s voice breaks the silence, “I think I might stay here.”

“In Snowchester?”

“Yeah.” 

The two of them stay in Tubbo’s cabin until Jack’s house is constructed. There is a warmth thawing at Tubbo’s ribs knowing Jack chose here to make his home. 

It's something almost foreign to him, to be chosen. He aches for it desperately, for someone to choose him and stay. Eret bent to the promises of kingship. Wilbur left him for the confines of his own mind, then later in death. Quackity and El Rapids. Fundy and Dry Waters. Tubbo has Ranboo, he supposes. But Tubbo hasn’t seen him since Doomsday and isn’t sure he could face him. Not with what happened with Squeeks. 

There’s Tommy, too. 

Jack is singing again. A few of the words pop and crackle in his throat from disuse. Some nights, when Tubbo finds himself bathed in loneliness, it sounds like Wilbur. It never sounds like Tommy, and for that he’s glad. 

Jack’s song trails off and for a moment there is a lull of quiet. A soft humming of the L’manburg anthem fills the room. Tubbo pauses his stitching, closes his eyes. If he focuses enough on his throat, he can almost feel the ghost of vibrations when he sang it previous. Tubbo waits until Jack finishes before he dares to speak. There’s something fragile in the air that he can’t disturb. 

“Do you miss it?” the room cradles Tubbo’s words. 

“I don’t know.” It's honest. “Do you?”

Yes. No. Tubbo’s brow creases in thought, “Am I allowed to?” 

“What do you mean, ‘am I allowed to?’” Jack says, and it has an odd way of making him feel both better and worse. “Tubbo, I’m pretty sure you put more work into that place than anyone else combined.” 

“I ran it into the ground,” he says it like a fact, because it is. “It blew up under my watch. Twice.” 

“Really can’t blame you for the first one,” Jack says and doesn’t mention the second. “Not sure why Wilbur even gave it to you, to be honest.”

Everyone has asked that question, Tubbo included. They aren’t wrong in wondering why someone so incapable of leading was shoved to the front of the ranks. He isn’t even sure why he said yes. Sometimes, he guesses, you lie just to know how it would feel between your teeth. Just to taste what could have been, what could be. Maybe he was trying to get back what he lost on that podium months prior. That was when people still looked at him like he was guts splattered in the back of a cage, before they realized he resembled the likeness of the man who ordered the killing instead. 

“At least Tommy turned it down,” Jack continues, a thin smile on his face, “That would have been a disaster.” 

Tubbo doesn’t respond to the half-joke, just plays with the needle between his fingers. “It should have been Niki, I think.” 

Jack doesn’t even have a jab for that. He sighs, “Yeah.” 

Tubbos quiet for a moment before beginning to stitch again. “I just一” he huffs out a noise of aggravation. “I tried my best,” his voice is quiet, “I really did.” Tubbo looks to Jack to gauge his expression but he’s met with those impassive bi-colored eyes. “I promise I did.” 

Jack chuckles but nothing is really funny, “I know, Tubbo. Don’t doubt it for a second.”

“Everyone一” Tubbo groans through his teeth, “The whole Tommy thing. I thought it was what was best for the country, but the second I did it everything just fell apart. But there were the walls and Dream would have一” He cuts himself off and undoes his last few stitches. They’re sloppy. 

“I don’t really think there was a right answer, Tubbo. Well, I guess there was and一”

“Was there? Because Dream would have一have starved the nation or something. War of attrition but he was the one with everything and we had nothing. Or he would have just attacked and we would have died. I would have been the president who brought L’manburg into a war it couldn’t fight.” 

Jack’s brows raise at Tubbo’s spiel, “I was gonna say you chose right. Exiling Tommy was the right answer and you chose it.” 

“No,” The word is out of Tubbo’s mouth before he can think. “If I know anything, it's that that was wrong.” 

“So you’re telling me,” Jack straightens where he’s sitting across from Tubbo, “that what you just described was preferred?” 

“No,” Tubbo says again, and feels stupid for it. “Well… Dream attacked in the end anyway. It would have happened sooner or later.” 

Jack’s voice drips with sarcasm when he speaks, “Yeah, sure. Just you and who else against Dream? Quackity, Fundy, and Tommy? Quite the fighters you’ve got there.” 

Tubbo’s eyes meet the floor. It’s true and he’s known it since Dream placed that first batch of obsidian. The war between Manburg and Pogtopia had just ended. No one would have aided them. Everyone needed to rest. It was Tubbo’s job to douse the ashes of conflict but Tommy’s fire refused to stop burning.

“I just wanted everything to stop,” Tubbo says. 

Jack looks at him with a pitying smile, “It was never gonna happen, Tubbo. There wasn’t a place in L’manburg for your kind of vision. You wanted peace.” 

Tubbo can feel his face fall and he refuses to pick up the pieces. Jack places his hand on Tubbo’s shoulder and jostles it, “Hey, hey, that’s a good thing! Or well, an admirable one at least.”

“I don’t…” Tubbo whines and he’s so, so lost on the floor of this cabin he knows like the back of his hand. 

“L’manburg was never about peace, Tubbo. It was about freedom.” 

And that is true. Wilbur has always chased freedom since the day they met. And it dawns on Tubbo, that Wilbur got that in the end. There is a freedom in a body that refuses to collapse into dust, forever resting beneath everything it sought to create. Perhaps that is the reason bodies don’t disappear after their final lives, just to sleep in the dirt beside the things everyone loved and everyone forgot.

Tubbo would do anything to lay beneath a blue, blue sky and sink. 

They go hunting today. Jack complaines endlessly about Snowchester’s diet of potatoes and fish. Tubbo tells him he wouldn’t have lasted a day in Pogtopia. 

Tubbo is a decent-enough marksman despite one of his eyes being blurrier than the other. Jack, although apt with a sword, doesn’t know much about taking down an animal without mangeling it. The two of them decide to make traps after a few failed attempts at catching dinner. 

“I suppose we could hang a few of these up,” Tubbo says, holding out half to Jack. “I think these would do best in a tree.” 

Jack takes the traps with complaint but is quick to start searching for an apt tree to climb. Tubbo leaves Jack to it and begins to look for his own. They’ve gone out far enough from Snowchester where the trees have shifted from spruce to evergreen and oak. These, thankfully, are much easier to scale. 

Climbing is easy. It's the act of not looking down that is hard. Tubbo knows what he’ll see if he looks at the ground. Red collared shirts and the earth split with craters and the base of a pillar standing in the rain. So he raises his chin, grabs a branch, and hopes his feet find a notch to hold him. 

He’s in the canopy of his third tree when a scream echoes through the forest. It sends his shoulders tensing and he squeezes his eyes shut. He spends a moment breathing through the panic that is pulsing at his fingertips, trying to ignore how real it sounded until he realizes一

“Jack!” 

In a heartbeat, Tubbo is stumbling out of the tree and unsheathing his sword. “Jack?! Jack, where are you?!” 

He follows his footprints through the snow, trying to find where Jack’s diverged from his own. 

There, at the edge of his vision, he sees a body lying prone in the snow. 

He fumbles towards the figure and for a moment there’s a flash of blond hair beneath the snow, then Tubbo blinks and it’s gone. He’s quick to drop to his knees, hands hovering and unsure. 

It’s Jack, with his eyes squeezed shut, brow furrowed, and impossibly still. There’s a sheen of sweat over his skin, and when Tubbo touches the bare skin of Jack’s forehead, he pulls away from the surprise of the chill. The second they touch, Jack jolts to life, chest expanding and falling with great, shuddering breaths. A groan seeps through his clenched teeth. 

Tubbo is careful not to josel Jack in fear of a spine injury. “Can you hear me? Jack? It’s Tubbo.”  

It takes a beat for Jack to open his eyes, breathing out curses and digging his hands into the snow. “Tubbo?” His voice is like gravel. “Tubbo, where一” Despite Tubbo’s protests, Jack attempts to sit himself up. 

“You shouldn’t be moving like that,” Tubbo says with his hands held out, “You just fell out of a tree, Jack.”

Jack gives him a perplexed look, “A tree? No…” He looks up, almost comically slow, at the branches above him. “A tree. I could have… I could have sworn…” 

“Seriously. Are you hurt? Move your toes for me.” 

Jack kicks his feet out, spraying snow into the air. “I swear I was…”

Tubbo gets to his feet and holds a hand out for Jack, “Come on. You might have hit your head or something. We should go back.”

Jack takes the hand and pulls himself up. He doesn’t complain as they stumble back to Snowchester. They get back just as the sun begins to dip towards the horizon. 

Tubbo deposits Jack so he is leaning on a wall and digs through his chest to find a brewing stand. “Just like the old days, huh?” he calls back towards Jack, trying to keep him awake. “I used to be able to brew for hours.”

“The old days, huh?” Jack drawls back. “I joined a country, Tubbo. You’re the one who joined a drug van. We are not the same.”

Tubbo hums at Jack’s sort-of joke, “Wow. You have a way with words, Mr. Manifold.”

“Duh. I was the L’manburg Ambassador.” 

They lapse into silence and all Tubbo can do is watch the netherwart bubble in its flask. There is a chill in his spine he can’t get rid of. There is a scream bouncing around in the back of his skull. There is a boy sitting behind him with wet furs draped across his shoulders. 

Tubbo refuses to turn when he asks, “Are you alright?” 

“A bit sore,” Jack replies with little thought. “Don’t really think I’ve got a concussion, mate.” 

“No, I mean,” He adds the glistering melon, “You really scared me back there, I think.”

“Tubbo, I’m fine一” Tubbo’s shoulders tense and Jack trails off. 

“I dunno. I just heard this screaming and you were so still I just… yeah.” Tubbo has the sudden urge to take the potion off the stand with his bare hands, despite its heat. Tubbo swallows and shifts something in his chest so his voice will come off lighter, “But I’m glad you’re okay!” 

“Tubbo…” Jack’s voice falls like soot from his lips. He knows that tone from Pogtopia, the early days where Wilbur was all cracked glass but not quite shards. Tubbo knows he won't like what Jack says before it even leaves his mouth. “You know Doomsday?” Jack doesn’t wait for a response before he drops a bombshell, “I died.” 

“I’m sorry,” Tubbo blurts, because that’s what you’re supposed to do; then, “So you only have one life left?” because he needs to know something useful. He can’t deal with feelings. He needs something tangible to grasp. He knows it isn’t what Jack wants to hear, he can feel it in the other boy’s silence. Tubbo’s lips are numb. 

“I don’t know,” Jack admits, and it's enough to make Tubbo turn and face him. “That was my last life, so I don’t know.” 

“No.” Tubbo responds short and clipped, because that is not true nor is it possible. “You died in the Manburg-Pogtopia War. That isn’t two lives. And everyone knows you can’t come back from a final death.”

“Well I did!” Jack shouts from the floor, looking both enraged and pathetic. He sits there, pale and grey and seething. “I came back and it was fucking hell to do so!”

“What?” The numb tingling in Tubbo’s lips spreads behind his eyes. “How is that… what?” 

“Technoblade,” Jack scowls and Tubbo starts to understand Jack’s bubbling anger. His burns start to itch. “That fucking pig put his damn sword through me and I died. Then I一” he cuts himself off. 

“That’s only two,” Tubbo says, because he doesn’t want to think about Technoblade shoving a sword through Jack’s gut, Technoblade blowing his skull to pieces with rockets. 

“Yeah, Wilbur Soot, Technoblade, and Tommyinnit,” Jack spits the names from his mouth to watch them splatter on the ground. “Tommy-fucking-innit. I’m gonna kill ‘em for what he did to me, I’m gonna一This is all his fault, you know? I died and went to hell and it's all his fault.”

“Tommy?” Tubbo can barely whisper. “Tommy k一why would he even…? When did he…?” He is cold. He is so, so cold. 

“Exile,” Jack says. “I’m a good guy一well I’m not good but I’m decent enough, so despite our conflicts I thought, Oh, maybe I should visit the guy who just got exiled out of his own country. That must be rough.” 

“I didn’t…” Tubbo whispers but it's lost in the bubbling of the potion stand.

“You’d think he’d of learned his lesson!” Jack barks out a laugh. “He was in the Nether and I spent so long just tracking him down to see how he’s been doing. I finally get over to him and he digs the earth out from right below me. I burned to death in a lava lake! I fucking lost everything! Again!” 

There are some things that people don’t say aloud. For Tubbo, it's the sudden stabbing pain in his back, or the way his skin shreds off out of the corner of his eye. Tubbo sees Jack pulling his clothes away from his skin and wonders what it feels like to have flesh and cloth and marrow fuse from the heat of molten rock. 

There are some things that people never outgrow. Tubbo jumps to Tommy’s defense without thought. It's the least he can do, after everything. 

“No,” Tubbo says, arms limp at his side.

“No?” Jack asks. His lips curl back in rage, “No? Tubbo, he killed me and you’re gonna tell me no?!”

Tubbo blinks, rethinks. He takes a step back, feet staying planted where they stand on the floor. That’s true. He isn’t being logical. He placates: “Okay.” He reaffirms: “He killed you.”  He shifts: “But you can’t blame him.”

Jack has enough with fiddling with his wet clothes and rips off his jacket. He throws it with enough force that it makes a thud against the wall as he stands. “What do you mean I can’t blame him?! It was all him! No Wilbur, no Dream breathing down his back. No one was there with a sword to his neck. I went to go see him because I missed him, and he spits in my face and kills me!” 

“I’m not saying he was right! It's just,” Tubbo’s already fumbling with his words. He can’t believe he was ever president. “It’s just Dream. He was in exile and, well, you said it yourself. He got exiled out of his own country. It must have been rough. And we both know how terrible Dream is. Exile was bad. I don’t know a lot but I know it was bad.” 

Jack’s face morphs into a baffled expression. He shakes his head with wide eyes, “Tubbo. You don’t have to come to his defense.” He pauses, waiting for Tubbo to agree. Tubbo stays silent. “Come on. We know better than anyone that he doesn’t treat his friends right. You the most! In Old L’manburg we followed him like dogs. In New L’manburg一hell, even Old L’manburg一he fucks up and expects you to clean up his messes. Tubbo, come on.” 

“No一”

“We both know if you up and left him he’d have nothing. Tommy knows it too. He also knows you never would leave him. He’s using you. You crawl back every time.”

Tubbo finds his fists clenched at his side, “You’re wrong. I did leave him. I exiled him. I made it law.” He shakes his head. This isn’t what they should be talking about. “And he does treat his friends right! He gave up his discs for L’manburg, his family. He一he rallied everyone to fight on Doomsday, he一”

“But I wasn’t there for the L’manburg War. That wasn’t for me. I had Manifold Land; Doomsday wasn’t for me. It’s all about being a hero to him. You want to be a hero? Then die like one. But you see, Technoblade killed us, not him. We pay for all his shit and get nothing in return.” 

“I don’t need anything in return!” the volume of Tubbo’s voice surprises him, “Not in heroics! Isn’t it enough just to be there? There’s nothing like sitting on the bench with him, listening to Cat. There’s no one that makes me laugh as hard as he does, that makes me as happy as he does. You get that, don’t you?” Tubbo pauses, traces the firework scar along his hand, “There’s nothing like after the war, just you, me, and him. It was nice. Really nice.” 

“I miss it,” Jack’s voice is so fragile, “I really do.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Yeah.” 

Tubbo adds glowstone powder to the potion. 

Tubbo has never seen the water so still. The ocean ahead of him is like glass, a mirror reflecting the sky twofold. 

He sits there, at the edge of one of the docks, swinging his legs in the dark. The moon is nearly full. His eyes drag themselves across the quilt of stars and he tries to pick out a few constellations. Tubbo can’t quite remember any of the official names, but he knows the ones Fundy used to make up outside the camarvan. It was a pretty easy naming system; just above the horizon he can see Mom Swimming Upstream, and above it to the right he can see Mom and Dad. He had a constellation named after himself as well, but he can’t remember which cluster of stars is his and which is Tommy’s.

“Tubbo?” 

He turns his head towards the voice. It's Jack, standing on the porch of their house, door sliding closed behind him. He catches the door before it closes and ducks inside for a moment. He comes out with a bundle of fabric in his arms. 

“What’re you doing out here?” Jack says as he approaches. He holds out the fabric一a coat, Tubbo realizes. Tubbo takes it silently. Jack slips on his own before sitting down beside him. Tubbo thinks it's neat how Jack’s eyes reflect in the water below them. 

“Just sitting,” Tubbo hums, like his fingers aren’t blue from the cold. “What are you doing up?”

“Couldn’t sleep. I was just thinking… I dunno.” 

Tubbo lets out another hum. 

“You know what we talked about? Earlier?” Jack asks. “I wasn’t lying. I really did die.” 

Tubbo doesn’t say I believe you, because he doesn’t. It doesn’t make sense why Jack can come back but Wilbur was lost forever. It scares him, too. It scares him that one day he could press a crossbow to Technoblade’s temple and press the trigger three times and it wouldn’t do a thing. 

But what Tubbo thinks doesn’t really matter, so he says, “Alright.” 

“It's fucked up, I think,” Jack fiddles with the fur lining his cuffs. “I mean, dying and falling into nothingness was terrible, but I… I’m more upset about my second death. No, that came out wrong. My final death was terrible. Awful,” he shudders, “There’s no other way to put it. But with Tommy… No matter what, I can’t stop thinking about it. Fuck Technoblade. But he was an enemy. A terrorist. Tommy is…” 

Tubbo understands what he’s grasping at, but the vulnerability in Jack’s words makes him squirm. 

“What is it you said earlier?” Tubbo says, trying to complete Jack’s thought with a joke. A thin smile graces his face, “‘A shit friend?’ ” 

Jack sees his expression and scoffs, nudging Tubbo in the shoulder. “I’m being serious, you know.” 

Tubbo puffs out a quiet laugh, “Yeah, I know.” 

The night rids everything of its individuality. The darkness decomposes shadows into the surrounding void. Everything is pulled into one great sea. Here, Tubbo merges with the docks and the ocean and the little cabin that stands alone on the shore. There is a certain anonymity of night that causes words to float to the surface. 

“Tommy visited here, you know,” Tubbo says. Jack sends him a questioning glance. “He wanted me to go back to L’manburg with him. To go fight for the discs, once and for all.”

“You told him no?” Jack assumes.

“I didn’t really answer, I don’t think,” a bitter smile crosses Tubbo’s face. “I went back with him, then left. It’s selfish, but I didn’t want either of us to die. Still don’t.” 

“Those fucking discs,” Jack muses. “The things he’ll do for those discs. You know, I’m still surprised he had the gall to say what he did to you, back in the community house. Would’a beat the shit out of him, I think.” 

Tubbo shrinks at the words. “I mean…” He did.

“And I’m not too big a fan of Will, but if we needed him for one thing, it’d be for talking some sense into Tommy. Keeping him in line” 

“Tommy doesn’t need sense talked into him. He’s—He’s self aware.”

Jack’s grin turns sharp, “How self aware, truly? He fucks up, gives a half assed apology—if he apologizes at all—then goes back to taking and stealing from everyone—“

“We’re talking in circles—“

“So you admit it then!”

“Okay! Yes, okay!” Tubbo’s knuckles are white. “But it’s—he’s better! He’s changed! It’s not like George’s house. He, he apologized. In fact! He’s gone off making it up to people, the last time I saw him.” 

“So then why’s he trying to pull you into another war? If you’ve told him all the shit he’s put you through and apologized, then why?” 

Tubbo doesn’t answer, he just tilts himself forward and stares down into the water. For how clear it is, he still can’t make out his face. They both know what to make of his silence. 

“You didn’t tell him,” Jack states.

No, he didn’t. Tubbo lost that right the second he pulled that axe out in the ruins of the community house. He lost that right when he let Tommy walk out of L’manburg with Technoblade after all those weeks thinking he died. He lost that right when he exiled Tommy, when he accepted the presidency, when he dragged Tommy out of the pit. When Wilbur and Tommy were chased from their own home, and all Tubbo could do was stand there, he lost that right. 

There is a smaller, less just feeling that rests between Tubbo’s ribs, too. He’s afraid he’ll open his mouth and scare Tommy off forever. There isn’t anything tying the two of them together anymore. Tubbo gave away Tommy’s disc and gave away Tommy’s trust and cut every string that ever threaded them together. One wrong move and Tommy will be gone. Tubbo couldn’t survive that. 

“What am I supposed to say?” There’s a bitter edge to Tubbo’s voice. “I hate that you made me choose between L’manburg and you. My people and you. I hate that you said I was worth less than the discs and you can’t bring yourself to respect my authority for once in your life. I hate that you went to Technoblade before me, after everything he’s done.” 

Tubbo has a sudden urge to rip the stones from the dock. He wants to throw them into the ocean and watch the illusion of a night sky explode into fragments. 

“He already knows that!” Tubbo’s voice warbles, “So what am I supposed to do with all these feelings?” 

Jack just takes his shoulder and squeezes.

Tommy walks into Snowchester when the sun is at its peak. 

Tubbo is affixing lanterns to pillars atop the dock when he sees him. He catches his eye and Tommy is quick to make a beeline towards him. 

“Fuck you for leaving without saying goodbye,” Tommy starts because he’s never been one to minse his words, then says, “Dream’s back.” 

Tubbo can’t do anything but stare for a beat. He blinks away the surprise, “What? Dream’s back?”

Tommy nods, presses his lips together, frowns, “Well, sort of.” It takes him no time at all to get into the logistics. Tommy looks haggard, with a meer bag strapped to his back and a sword in hand. Tubbo wouldn’t be surprised if he took a straight trip here from L’manburg. 

“I’ve been gone for a few days, right? And I come back and my house is up in flames. And—And there’s a sign and a chest left for me,” Tommy reaches into his pocket and pulls out a compass. The glint blinds Tubbo for a moment, and then Tommy is already putting it away. “He gave me a compass and said to meet him alone—you, me, and Dream. A final fight.” 

“Dream’s back?” Tubbo repeats. Dream had felt so far away, despite how Doomsday still festers like an open wound. Snowchester’s isolation had been safe, quiet. It had been so quiet. 

“And we have to kill him!” Tommy completes his question as if it's a statement awaiting affirmation. “I told you Tubbo. I told you—”

There’s a slam and Jack stands in the door frame with a pot balanced on his hip. “Tommy?” Tubbo can tell by the way he sputters that Jack is about to spew out a rant, but Tommy cuts him off.

“Jack? What the hell’re you doing here?” Tommy turns to Tubbo, betrayal etched into his face, “I thought you wanted to be alone.”

Tubbo had spent far too much time alone to ever want to crave it again, not in its entirety. The abandoned streets of New L’manburg have found residence inside his thoughts. The back of Tommy’s head is etched into his mind, forever walking away. 

Here, now, Tubbo can see Tommy’s face. 

“I built this place for two,” he says. 

He tells Tommy to stay the night. Dream doesn’t know where they are. Stay. 

Tommy agrees and Tubbo can feel Jack’s eyes on him the whole time. 

The cabin can fit three friends easily; the close quarters have difficulty fitting three strangers though. When Tommy suggests they keep watch just in case, Jack volunteers with a huff, taking the chance to get away. Tubbo offers to take second watch and recommends Tommy sleeps. It is a hard journey to Snowchester after all. 

The closing of the front door brings nothing but silence. Tubbo is suddenly reminded of the night they spent here not too long ago, when the roof still had holes. There is a similar anxious buzzing in the air. Tubbo can tell by the crease in Tommy’s brow that he's trying to ignore it just as much as Tubbo is. Tommy pulls out his journal and the only sound in the room is the scratching of a pencil against paper. 

“You’re writing again?” Tubbo asks, voice dripping with pleasantry. 

“Yeah,” Tommy says, just as mild. “Picked it up when I was with Techno.” 

Tubbo isn’t sure if he mentions Techno as a jab or just as a statement. Regardless, Tubbo fiddles with his fingers. “Oh. Write about anything cool?”

“Just whatever.”

“Hm.” 

Tubbo spends a few more beats sitting on the floor before he rises. He tends to the fire just to keep his hands busy. 

“This place kinda reminds me of when I stayed with him,” Tommy says. He gestures to the assortment of objects littering the floor in piles. “My room kinda looked like this.”

Tubbo tastes dandelion greens, “Oh. That’s nice.” 

It is a nightly ritual to light the lamppost on the outskirts of Snowchester. Tubbo had built it for Squeeks originally, in case he didn’t come back in the direction of the sea. If he was wandering the forest he’d see the light and come home. No one ever came before today, not Quackity, not Sam, not Niki or Fundy or Ranboo. He had to drag Jack in himself.

He doesn’t light it tonight. Tubbo wears worry like an old coat and can’t help but hear Tommy’s warnings in the back of his mind. If Dream stumbles upon them it could be the end.

The walk back to the sea had never been so dark. Night bleeds from his soles. 

There is only one light in the cove. It's a single candle on the windowsill. It draws him back home. 

Tonight, there is one moment in particular where he stands on the edge of something. What it is, he is not sure. The snow at his feet cover his boots and he is trapped there in a quartz prison, looking at the space behind his house. He can almost hear fireworks in the wind. He wants to make an explosion a hundred times greater. He is L’manburg and he wants to leave a crater in his wake. His lips are blue. 

There is a creak to his right and Tommy is outside, standing on the porch. “Tubbo?” he calls. 

Tubbo blinks once, twice, swallows. He turns to face Tommy, who’s knuckles are white with the intensity he carries his sword. Tubbo’s mouth grows thick with honey, his stomach cradles the sun. 

In another world he is alone. In another world he breaks his bones and reshapes them into stone walls. Snowchester rots into machinery and weapons of mass destruction. He molds blue, white, and red into a metal shell and carves a death wish into it. 

Here, Tommy coaxes him inside and begins his own shift. Tubbo is relieved of his duty.

In this world, he gets to be relieved of his duty. 

Tubbo wakes to the sound of arguing filtering through the window. He’s surprised he managed to sleep for so long; the sun will reach its peak in a few hours. 

From the porch, Tubbo can see Tommy at the base of a tree. The bark is slashed a dozen times over, a makeshift dummy for Tommy’s blade. Jack stands a few yards away, a basket of mushrooms at his feet. The two of them are red in the face and bristling for a fight. 

“He’s not going with you!” Jack spits. “Go die and leave us alone!” 

“Who said?”

“Tubbo! Tubbo did!” 

“Oh, so what,” Tommy grins with sharp teeth, “Spend enough time with Tubbo to read his mind? Go make your fuckin’—“

“He told me himself!”

“—stew, bitch boy.” 

“You’re not even listening to me!” Jack screams. 

Tommy swings his sword around lazily, “Thinking about dual wielding for this fight. Or do you think an axe suits me better?” 

Jack spins away with an exasperated huff and spots Tubbo. It does little to quell his rage and Jack stomps past him with his basket of mushrooms in hand. “Fucking prick,” he mumbles. 

Tommy turns to watch him go. “Oh, good morning Tubbo,” he says as if he and Jack weren’t arguing moments before. 

“What the hell was that?” Tubbo asks. 

“Jack’s being a bastard. Nothing new,” Tommy says easily. “I was thinking about going mining later for some new armor, maybe. Then tomorrow I’ve gotta track Punz down. I meant to do it before I came down here to Snowchester, but I wanted to make sure you knew what was going on with Dream.” 

Tubbo feels heavy with guilt. “Tommy...” he starts, but his eyes look so much bluer than they did the last time Tubbo saw him. “Tommy, why don’t I show you the sewing pattern for this?” Tubbo says, holding out his arms in reference to his coat. “You must be at least a little cold.”

Tommy eyes it before nodding, “Alright.” 

Tommy has always been a better seamster between the two of them. Tubbo works well with the rigidness of building. Tommy thrives in the fluidity of crafts. Tubbo has loved to watch him work ever since they were young. Tubbo doesn’t think he was ever happier than when Wilbur and Tommy strode into the camarvan with bundles of uniforms. Tommy handed Tubbo a uniform of his own and said he made it himself. 

At the time Tubbo had yanked it from his grasp with a mild pout and a quiet thank you. He had been overjoyed, but he and Tommy had a rivalry at the time, and Tubbo wanted to keep up appearances. Tommy had slammed a tricorn hat over Tubbo’s eyes and stuck out his tongue too, when he heard Wilbur awing. 

“Where’s Jack gone?” Tommy asks as he looks at the fabric template.

Tubbo glances around the cabin. There is, quite obviously, a distinct lack of Jack. The basket of mushrooms he had earlier is discarded haphazardly on the floor. Tubbo notices an axe missing from where a pair of them should hang on the wall.

“He’s probably gone off getting more wood. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s getting started on another cabin for himself,” Tubbo says. “I said I’d do it when he just moved in, but I guess I never got around to it.”

Tommy hums, lets out a chuckle, “Good riddance. You know he was telling me you didn’t even want to think about going after Dream? Absolute prick.”

“Well, I mean,” Tubbo starts. “He’s… You remember what I said that one night. We’re on our last lives.” 

Tubbo must have made a point, because Tommy elects to ignore it, “We’ve fought for these discs for so long now. We can’t just give up. What will everything we’ve done up until now be worth?” 

The rest of our lives, he doesn’t say. “The last time you put the discs before everything, you got exiled.”

The fabric pattern crumples in Tommy’s hands. “Last I remember, the discs didn’t exile me. You did,” Tommy bites. “And wasn’t I justified? At least a little? I put everything aside for L’manburg back in Pogtopia. Why is it when I want something, when I want to be selfish, I’m fucking exiled for months— ”

“I wasn’t allowed to be selfish. Why’re we so different, huh? I was in Pogtopia. I was in Manburg.” I died.

“You were selfish though!” Tommy meets his gaze, eyes like glass, “You exiled me!”

“To keep you would have been selfish!” Tubbo defends. “None of you seem to get that. You stayed, Dream declares war, we all die. And whose fault would that be?” 

“You always do this,” Tommy says. “You make up the worst case scenario in your head and refuse to believe that something good could happen. We could have won!”

“No, we couldn’t have,” Tubbo says as if he’s speaking to a stubborn toddler. “When is the last time something good has happened to us?” 

“When’s the last time you had trust in anybody but yourself?” Tommy stands.

Tubbo is quick to follow, “When’s the last time you had any respect for authority? For me?!” 

“Since you rolled over like a fucking dog the second Dream asked you to! Exile Tommy, Tubbo,” his voice pitches up in mockery, “Of course, Dream. Anything for you!”

“As if I didn’t give you an out through probation,” Tubbo’s lips curl. “You could have been safe, but no,” he sings. “It’s like you were asking for it!”

Tommy’s face is red and blotchy and his voice comes out nasal with unshed tears, “Never fucking say that ever again. You asshole—you—you don’t know what the hell I went through out there! I’d never ask for any of that! Never!”

Tubbo’s face feels raw with cold. It's a sick reenactment of an arena overflowing with water, armed with words as axes. He can’t stop himself from swinging.

“Tell me,” Tommy begs, suppressing a gasp. “Tell me you’d go back and change it. If you had the chance you’d do it all over again. You’d keep me here.”

Tubbo’s lips press into a thin line until they’re white and bloodless. He can’t lie, he can’t say—

“Tubbo!”

“I’m sorry!” The words explode from his chest, “I’m so sorry and I’ll never stop being sorry.”

“But you wouldn’t change it. You wouldn’t go back.” Tommy’s eyes narrow like he’s looking at something vile and Tubbo thinks if he were to move he’d collapse right here. 

“I couldn’t. I can’t.” Tubbo’s stomach feels like it’s splitting open and he crosses his arms across his middle and holds himself together. “I wouldn’t go back. I never wanna go back to L’manburg. I never wanna be president again.” 

Tommy takes a step away from him, hands shaking, “I—Tubbo…” 

“I couldn’t do it again. It’d kill me. I’m sorry it’s selfish, I’m sorry I’m selfish.”

“But,” Tommy swallows, “I’d— I’d be there with you. You wouldn’t be alone. You wouldn’t be doing it again ‘cause it's not the same—“

A noise pushes its way out of Tubbo’s throat. It sounds like a laugh and feels like rage, “You’re not a vice president. You never could be.” Tubbo can see Tommy’s fists tighten at his side. “I mean, we both saw how your time in office was before you burned down George’s house.”

“Fuck you!” Tommy spits. “Fuck you! You and Wilbur both think you know—“

“Fuck you!” Tubbo yells back, “Don’t pretend like you didn’t just abandon your duties the second rebuilding started.”

“We agreed I wouldn’t be vice until I got the discs back!”

“You still called yourself the vice! We never re-elected!” 

Tommy shakes his head, ignores that, “It’s just the presidency, Tubbo.” His words drawl demeaningly. “You could have been—you could have been—you could have been exiled and had Dream throw everything you have into pits and blow them up. You—“

Tommy’s words are cut short as Tubbo strides forward and shoves him. “You think you know everything! You don’t know what L’manburg was even like! By the time you were back it was blown to bits. There was nothing there. So don’t go acting like it was some easy walk in the park.”

“How hard could it have been, really?” Tommy chides, face pale and eyes wide. He shoves Tubbo back, and Tubbo stumbles a few paces. Tommy’s next words are whispered out, trembling like the final note of an organ. “I wanted to die out there.” 

The urge to devolve into a fistfight suddenly melts away, leaving them both cold and breathless. Tubbo’s vision swims in and out of focus. 

“I thought you did. I really thought you did,” the words are nothing more than a whine.

“And you still won’t go back,” Tommy’s words are stone. 

Tubbo presses the heels of his hands into his eyes until stars dance in his sight, “No.” He can hear a strangled wheeze from Tommy. “But,” Tubbo tries to amend, “You’re here now. If… If we went back and you stayed, Dream would have killed you. He would have killed you.” 

“We would have been together…” and Tubbo tries to ignore the choked sound of Tommy’s words.

“This is the bravest I can be,” Tubbo’s chin wobbles as he gestures his hands around the room. As he gestures to all of Snowchester. “This is the bravest I can be and I can hardly do it. I can’t do that again, Tommy. I’m so, so sorry.”

Tubbo finishes Tommy’s coat alone.

He’s nudged awake by a gloved hand. 

“Come on Tubbo, up and at ‘em,” Jack says, face flushed with cold. Tubbo can make out a dark sky through bleary eyes. Wordlessly, he slips the jacket he slept atop of onto his shoulders and stumbles outside, weak with sleep. Only once he is seated at his vigil does he realize he is wearing Tommy’s jacket. He plays with the massive sleeves absentmindedly. 

As if breathing, the sea swells beneath his feet and crashes into the stone of the docks. He sits on the ledge with his legs swinging over the side. It’s not like that night days prior with Jack. Tonight, the ocean heaves until it vomits debris upon the shore, but the sky is still just as clear. 

Tonight, Tubbo wishes he had the will to walk to the edge of Snowchester and snuff out the light. Tonight, Tubbo hopes Dream will see the lamppost and walk straight into the heart of Snowchester, just because he can. He fantasizes about standing with his arms stretched wide, Tommy behind him, Dream with a blade to his throat. He wants his story to come to a close somewhere beautiful, surrounded by homey cabins and pristine shores. He’ll be scarred and ugly and alone in comparison, but that’s alright. New L’manburg was a beautiful coffin. Snowchester is beautiful, too. 

Tubbo gets it from Wilbur, he thinks. It's always about the image, the poetry of it all. Wilbur weaved tragedies into tales of glory and bedtime stories. How many times has Tubbo been lulled to sleep by songs of Orpheus’ wife? 

Tubbo never learned how to truly perform like Wilbur. Some things just can’t be taught, he supposes. Still, they both know how to go out with a bang. He chuckles at the thought. 

Maybe there’s another life after the third. He’ll meet Tommy there and there will be enough love to sink into his skin and muscle and the marrow of his bones and make a home and live there. Jack will be there too, and so will Wilbur and Phil and Sam and Niki and Fundy and Eret. They will all be there, the person they were the day before Tubbo met them. And he’ll get to do it all again, get to meet them for the first time. He’ll shake their hands or hug them or spin them until the grass below their feet grows flat. He will make different mistakes this time. Better ones. 

Sitting here, the only thing he can hear is the crashing of water against stone. It fills his ears like a drum. He’s lonely. Really, really lonely. 

He is nudged off the ledge by calloused fingers. It's Tommy, in his shabby, not-for-winter coat. The sight of him, here, after Tubbo thought he’d left, is enough to make his eyes burn. How many times has Tommy saved him just by being there? With sleepy haste, Tubbo unbuttons half of the buttons that line his chest before giving up. He pulls the furs over his head and shoves them into Tommy’s hands.

“I made it myself,” Tubbo’s voice is wet. They’re standing in a camarvan a million years ago. I’m sorry.

Tommy offers a small smile and his tongue pokes out between his teeth. He slips the jacket on. 

Nothing is fixed in an instant, so Tubbo isn’t surprised when Tommy skirts around him the next day. 

It reminds him of Pogtopia. There was incessant fighting within those walls. Wilbur would pick a fight with anything and anyone. He’d shove people in the pit just to have something to do. Everyone was hungry and exhausted and claustrophobic. Tubbo doesn’t think he and Tommy had gone more than a week without getting into some type of squabble there. At least in Snowchester there is fresh air. 

The only issue is that Tommy’s orbit has shifted from Tubbo to Jack. The two bicker constantly, but Tommy is never seen too far from Jack. He hates being alone, it seems. Tubbo knows it’s his fault; exile, his mind supplies. 

Tubbo watches them while he does his work around Snowchester. He is working on a bed frame, after all this time. And after that, maybe some flower pots. It will be spring soon enough. 

Sometimes, they make him smile. Jack has been hard at work on his new cabin. Earlier, he had been smelting glass for window panes and had refused to let Tommy anywhere near them. He’s much too harsh, Jack had said. Tommy will smash them to pieces. Tommy had scoffed and turned to race about the clearing, trying to catch a cardinal to prove how careful he could be with gentle things. 

He never does catch the bird. Tommy picks up a red feather from the snow and spins it between his fingers. “It matches your eye,” he says, turning to Jack, and Tubbo wonders if he knows Jack lost a life that day in the nether. 

Sometimes, they wade too deep into familiarity that isn’t there anymore. “Leave,” Jack says, voice flat. “I don’t need your help, I don’t want your help—just get the fuck out of here and leave!” Tubbo blinks at the sudden shift in the atmosphere.

For all his nonchalance, Tommy also seems taken aback. “Huh?” he says before he finds his footing, then, “What the fuck is up with you?”

“You’re picking a fight with me!” Jack stands from where he was crouched at the smelter. “Who the hell do you think you are, thinking you can talk about—” he waves his hand in front of his eyes, “—this?!” 

“I was just making an observation!” Tommy defends. “Geez, fine, your eye doesn’t look like the feather,” he tosses it to the ground.

“I hate you,” Jack says. “I hate you and you hate me and—”

“You’re a prick. When did I say I hated you?!” Tommy balks. “Its just a fucking feather—”

“When you fucking killed me, you asshole!”

Tommy stays silent. Tubbo makes his escape back inside the cabin. There are some conversations he shouldn’t be witness to. 

The house isn’t meant to keep people out. Tubbo can still hear arguing through the wall. 

It's Jack’s voice, pitched with rage and a deep, deep sadness.

“You did! Don’t deny it! Don’t say—”

“I was screaming! And you walked away—you always get to walk away—”

“I scared you? You get a little scared and then leave me to die? ”

“... I know. I know what happened was hard, but you couldn’t have done anything worse then what you did then.”

“...”

“...”

“You did? Too bad I died before you could fucking give it to me!”  

“You always expect everyone to come running to your beck and call! No one had any reason to follow you on Doomsday! And I still did! And I still did…”

“Yeah, that’s why my eyes’re… yeah.”

“Shut up. You’re not—just let me get this over with, okay?”

“...”

“...”

“...”

“It was supposed to be Be Better, you know? I don’t really know what happened. Well, I know, but—”

“I wasn’t myself for months and nobody noticed.”

“What was I supposed to do? Everyone was gone. Tubbo was trapped in the cabinet, you and Wilbur were exiled, Niki was jailed! ”

“Shut up.”

“Shut up! I don’t want to hear about Pogtopia! You live under Schlatt and then you can fucking tell me—”

“...”

“Sorry. I’m—yeah. Sorry.”

“...I hate you. I love you like a brother and I hate you.”

“I still have it, did you know? The uniform’s under the floorboards. I never wear it or anything but—”

“It’s not normal. None of that was normal, but I still miss it. L’manburg really was something, that’s for sure.”

“I’ve missed this. I’ve missed—never mind. Scratch that.”

“We’ll go on, won't we?”

Tubbo makes dinner. Halfway through adding fish stock to a pot he realizes Tommy never went to look for Punz.

Tubbo’s hands don’t sting as he finishes securing his belongings with a rope. He is kneeling on a newly constructed raft just outside the docks of Snowchester. Tommy sits across from him, doing the same to his bag. 

His senses are enveloped by the sea. There is salt in his nose and in his mouth, and in his ears is the sizzling of foam atop the water. It feels nice, with the sun on his back. 

Jack wants a checkered floor in his cabin: spruce and oak wood. There is plenty of spruce surrounding Snowchester, but oak wood is too far to simply lug back. Tommy and Tubbo are tasked with getting the oak and floating it back to Snowchester while Jack stays and works on the spruce. Tubbo accepts the work happily, guiltily. It's another few days to keep from preparing for the fight with Dream. It’s another few days to convince Tommy to stay.

“Hey, Jack!” Tubbo calls. “You gonna wish us off?”

He blinks at the two of them before jogging over. There’s a smile pulling at his lips. Today is a good day. “Of course,” Jack scoffs. He starts making quick work of the knot tying them to the dock. “Stay safe out there. Who knows how you’ll fare without the Manifold by your side.”

“I, for one, think we’ll do just fine,” Tommy grins. There is no bubbling tension that passes through the air. This, Tubbo thinks, is what Jack was talking about. This is what Jack missed. The garden is blooming and there are honeysuckles on Tubbo’s tongue. 

“But we’ll miss you anyway,” Tubbo finishes. Jack’s eyes shine before he turns his back to them. Tubbo laughs. “See you soon!” He shouts as they pull away. 

Once they’re out of earshot Tommy sighs. “He’s such a sap,” he says and Tubbo can’t help but hum in agreement. 

They head south. The journey is much easier than Tubbo expects it to be. The waters are calm and he and Tommy work in tandem naturally. Without speaking, they are able to maneuver, constantly aware of the other's weight. 

When Tubbo was younger, much much younger, he remembers being on rafts similar to this one. And boats, and great, massive ships. He’d spend hours beside someone whose face he can’t remember today and watch the sky. He remembers thinking anytime but midday is pretty. Or, perhaps not more pretty, but more interesting to look at. Dawn and dusk had long shadows and pink skies and golden lights. Even night had the stars and the moon. 

But there is something about how blue the sky is today. Tommy’s right, he thinks. 

“Hey, Tommy,” Tubbo says, already knowing what he’ll answer, “What’s your favorite time of day?”

“Afternoon,” he replies without a beat. “Come on, you know I like to cloud watch, bitch.”

Tubbo tilts his neck back and looks up at the sky, “See anything cool today?”

He can see Tommy giving him a look from the corner of his eye. “Yeah,” he says, words slow with suspicion. “Are you making fun of me?” 

“No!” Tubbo laughs. “A guy can’t ask another guy what he sees in the clouds? Shows what kinda friend you are.”

“Oh fuck off,” and Tommy’s chuckling too. “Mee mee mee,” he mocks with a smile, “Cloud watching is boring Tommy, help me make my eighth mob farm of the day instead. Was that or was that not what you said to me?”

Tubbo squawks, “What! That was so long ago! Like, Spins and Spunz long ago!” 

Tommy places a hand on his forehead as if about to faint, “And it hurt me deeply.”

“You’re terrible!” Tubbo shuffles closer to the edge of the raft. He shoves his hands into the water before splashing it across the raft at Tommy. “A man can change!” 

Tommy shrieks. “Tubbo! Tubbo, I’m wet! Pull over!”

“We’re not pulling over, it’s a boat!” 

It is nearly sunset when they find an oak forest suitable enough to dock near. Tubbo had planned to stop earlier, right outside a plains biome, but Tommy had shook with something that wasn’t the chill of a wet jacket, so Tubbo wordlessly paddled on. 

Tubbo maneuvers them easily towards the shore. Out of the two of them, Tubbo has always been more skilled at boating in open waters. Tommy goes back to writing in his journal. It feels invasive to be standing besides him. There’s something too personal about this. But with such close vicinity, it's impossible not to notice the deepening of Tommy’s breath and the slowing of his frantic chicken scratch the longer he writes.

“Does it help?” he finds himself asking. 

“Yeah,” Tommy replies. “Who knew Techno’s habits would rub off on me so much. Well, advice more so than habits, but still.”

“Techno,” Tubbo says just to say something. “I guess he’s a writer.”

“It feels weird, ‘cause of what he did to us, like I shouldn’t be doing this anymore. But it's nice. Look at me, I’m like Phil—scrapbooking and shit like an old man.” 

Tubbo abandons his job of navigating to look towards Tommy, “You have pictures in there?” 

“I mean, I usually just use this to write, but I gotta few.” Tommy flips through a few pages before spinning the journal to face Tubbo. There’s a picture of Tubbo himself, his hair done up in messy pigtails. It’s an awful photo and he chuckles in embarrassment.

“That's… That’s sweet.”

Tommy doesn’t share any of his apprehension. He rubs at a particularly worn corner of the film, discolored from wear. “Yeah,” he whispers before raising his voice in a disbelieving laugh, “This picture’s been through thick and fucking thin, Tubbo.” 

“I bet,” he says as he leans over the edge of the raft, catching them as they nearly crash into the shore. 

“It was with me during exile.”

“Oh.” 

This is new territory. Tubbo is quick to hop off the raft and begin to tie it up. If he’s moving he won’t have to answer as fast. When they talk of exile, it's always as a concept. Tubbo exiled Tommy, things happened, and now they’re here again. It’s never explored. Tubbo doesn’t want to explore it. 

“That’s why I freaked out back there,” Tommy continues. “It’s just ‘cause that's where—uh—Dream exiled me. Not there, but in a plains biome. It just—it just freaks me out. It's so open and—ugh.”

Tubbo nods along, not wanting to interrupt. He feels like he knew that, that Dream imprisoned Tommy in a plains biome. Tubbo’s visited before, but all he can remember is the one dirt anomaly stretching high into the sky. 

“And do you know what Dream would do? He’d—he’d—you know, he’d come every morning and, so, everyday I’d have to make more stuff because of the—the holes—and,” Tommy grips the journal like a vise, eyes blinking too fast. “This is hard. Why’s this so hard?”

“You don’t have to talk about it. It’s okay.”

Tommy stumbles his way off the raft and onto solid ground, “No, I—I do. We should talk about these things. The stuff that’s happened to us. Not fight about it. Not dodge it.” 

“It’s okay though, now. We’re building a house. There’s no more L’manburg. We don’t have to worry anymore,” Tubbo says because he doesn’t want to do this here, now, ever. “These things already happened. Talking about them isn’t going to make them go away.”

“We both know that’s bullshit. Besides, it hasn’t already happened if it still affects you. It's still happening, Tubbo. The both of us—”

“Who said anything’s happening to me anyway?” 

“ Who said —Tubbo, listen to yourself!” 

Tubbo slips his backpack over his shoulders and pulls out his axe. He twirls it a bit as he walks deeper into the woods, fighting for nonchalance. “Come on, we have trees to chop down.” 

It’s Tommy who apologizes first this time. 

They lay in a newly made clearing, almost empty if not for the saplings placed in the wake of oak stumps. Two bed rolls are layed out, the tents Tubbo packed still in his bag. Tommy had grimaced at the sight of them. The bright form of the moon drifts above the horizon, ascending. 

“I’m sorry,” he says, looking up at the stars. “For asking you to talk about stuff you’re not ready to. I forget sometimes, that just because I feel some way doesn’t mean everyone else does.”

Tubbo can’t help but look over at him with limbs heavy with rest. He stares for a moment, watching Tommy’s expression, “It’s okay.” 

“It’s just, I know you,” and Tubbo wonders how true that statement is. “I know you, and I don’t think you’ll ever talk if I don’t ask you to.” It's very true, it seems. Tommy looks at him with constellations reflected back in his eyes, “Can I ask you to?” 

Tubbo can feel himself sink into the earth with an added weight of dread. He laces his fingers together to stop them from shaking. “Yeah, I guess you can.”

Tommy’s brows shoot up in bewilderment. “It was that easy?” he half-laughs. Tubbo lets out a strained hum. 

“I want to say sorry. Really, really sorry.” Tommy repeats. 

Tubbo chuckles awkwardly, “You already did, bossman.” 

“Not just about earlier today, Tubbo. Like, for everything. But, specifically, for when we had seen each other for the first time after everything. With Connor.”

Tubbo blinks in shock. Out of everything, this was not what he expected to start this conversation with. 

“I was angry about this for so long, how you said you thought I’d died—”

Oh.

“And for so long I thought it was because you thought I couldn’t survive out there without help. That I’d always need someone to steal from or scrounge after. But I found—” Tommy’s voice dips off, “I know better now. It wasn’t some feeling of superiority or arrogance. You were… you were upset, really upset. I’m sorry for calling you a monster. You didn’t deserve that.” 

Tubbo is flayed, muscles and organs and all his inner workings on display for the world to see. His skin feels rubbed raw because there is no way Tommy impulsively came to that conclusion. He must have seen—

Tubbo waits a beat before his throat allows him to speak. He croaks, “How did you…?” 

He can hear the shuffling of Tommy sorting through his things. He can hear him flipping through the journal. He can hear the rustling of loose paper. There is a growing list of what is on that paper that creates a pressure in the back of his throat; he’s going to be sick. 

The fire at the ends of their bedrolls lights the area enough for him to glance at the paper in Tommy’s hands. Tubbo can tell, just by the length and the messy scrawl, what is written. He can’t grab the page. It ends up in his hands anyway. 

i dont know what to say. Can you see me from where you are? I’m on a balcony right now in the middle of L’manburg. everyones inside talking right now. A lot has happened recently. I miss you. I’m at Quackity and Fundy’s house, the one with the bridge. You remember them right? Quackity was with us in Pogtopia and Fundy has been here since the start. I’m sorry if you remember them and I’m just assuming. Wil Ghostbur forgot so I just wanted to make sure you remembered. 

Where are you please? I feel so stupid. I keep talking to everything in case you’re not a ghost. Yesterday i talked to the trees and today it was the moon and those purple circle flowers you always liked. What are you? a star? a cow? I bet you’d like to graze with henry if you could.

Im scared youre a ghost though i probably shouldnt tell you that. Dont feel bad. But if youre a ghost and havent come home yet i know its because of me. Do you not want to see me? Or did exile what i did carry over into the afterlife and you cant cross into lmanburg? Im so sorry if thats the case. Im so sorry i really am im so sorry. 

Can you give me a sign? I need one I can’t keep putting these letters in random spots hoping youll find them. Be anything say anything do anything. I swear i’m listening I promise. theres nothing I won’t believe. You can lie if you want. I won’t tell. 

Ranboo is looking for me so I have to go. if you can’t see me im three houses up from phil’s place. If you look to my left theres a giant crane. You can’t miss it. Im waving, see? Give me a sign you can see. Ill be at the bench tomorrow at noon if you want to visit. Its december please stay warm. Tell me you got the socks i left you. Please come home

“It was in the slot where the discs go, in our jukebox next to the bench. I guess you already know that, though,” Tommy says, as if Tubbo isn’t reading something so private he hid it from himself. 

He remembers writing it, a few days after his birthday. He remembers going to the bench every day at noon no matter how painful, and never sitting down. It was the least he could do for his best friend. In his nightmares he wakes up and it’s December forever. 

Tubbo’s throat is swollen shut and he can’t hear the rustling of leaves overhead. The only noise is the warbling of the paper as it trembles in his grip. His chin wobbles. All Tubbo can do is look at Tommy’s face and watch his expression crumble. 

“Oh fuck,” Tommy says, going ridged. “Oh fuck, Tubbo, I’m so sorry. Shit, here,” he gently pulls the letter from his hand. He crumbles it into the pages of his journal before discarding it completely, “I’m the biggest fucking idiot, I’m sorry. I don’t know why I thought that would even be remotely okay.” 

Tubbo jerks his hands in dismissal and Tommy pulls his own hands away from where they were creeping ever closer. 

The action makes Tubbo’s eyes burn more, how Tommy still remembers after all this time how Tubbo hated being touched in Pogtopia when he’d shake like this. It makes Tubbo’s eyes burn, thinking about how much the two of them have changed since the beginning. After the final control room, they had held each other for hours. 

“It’s okay,” Tubbo gasps around his words, “Just—just give me a second.” 

Tommy is never patient, but he is with Tubbo. He busies himself with the fire to give Tubbo a sense of privacy. It isn’t much, but Tubbo has been making the most of not much for a very long time. He tries to breathe. 

“I’m sorry,” Tubbo wheezes, “I’m sorry I never came to visit you. I should have. I should have. I was a coward. By the time I got the courage you were—” His lungs force out a cough. “You already left.” 

“You visited?” Tommy’s voice is scarcely audible. His face morphs into something between dread and embarrassment. “When?” 

“I should know,” Tubbo says, miserable, “It was the day…” The Butcher Army had gone after Technoblade. Quackity died. “It was raining. I can’t remember the date, but it was raining.” 

He knows it's unhelpful, but Tommy doesn’t press any further. He sits, quiet, letting Tubbo take his time. 

“I saw the dirt,” A sob bursts from his chest, “The tower.” He can hear Tommy take in a breath, can see him wrap his arms around himself. “I thought you killed yourself.”

There it is. The thing they danced around since Technoblade showed up that one winter morning with Tommy and Connor in tow. Tommy doesn’t deny the tower’s intentions. 

Tubbo isn’t even sure Tommy can understand him through his own blubbering, “I wanted to see you. So much happened that day and I had to see you. Then I—then I—I go through the portal and Dream wasn’t there to stop me and I get there and—” his fingertips are going numb. His limbs are slowly filling with noise. “Everythings destroyed. Then there was that pillar and I just,” Tubbo lets out the wettest, saddest, most-humorless laugh, “I fucking fainted, I think.” 

Tubbo remembers waking up, peeling himself from the ground shrouded in the shadow of the worst thing in the world. It wasn’t raining and dawn was just creeping over the ocean. He doesn’t remember getting up, but he must have, because his feet planted themselves in front of Sam some time later. He wonders what Sam must have thought, when he showed up with mud in his hair and an apron covered in blood and vomit. 

“Sorry, sorry,” Tubbo mutters. “You’re sitting here, listening to me fucking—fucking ramble and shit when it was you who… Yeah. Are you okay?”

Tommy’s lips press together until they’re bloodless, “I’ve been better. It’s—I don’t even know.”

Tubbo tries his best to shoot him a look, to wordlessly ask—

Tommy picks it up right away. They’ve always been like that. How could Tubbo have forgotten? “I don’t want to… to do that anymore. Don’t worry, Tubzo.”

“How could I not? Not worry? You just went through something so—so horrible.” 

“Yeah,” Tommy’s shoulders shake as if he’s laughing. Tubbo doesn’t find anything funny. “It messed me up. It messed me up real fucking good. I’m still messed up, if you can believe it.” 

“You’ve only just got back. You can’t just expect everything to be cured in a week or two,” Tubbo consoles as if he gives himself the same patience. 

Tommy shakes his head, “I get that, I do. But, I mean, I was living with Techno weeks before I even came to see you. I feel like that should be enough time to, I don’t know, at least make up my mind about how I feel about Dream! Look at you! Techno fucking kills you and not even a day later you’ve forgave him.”

Tubbo’s fingernails dig little crescents into his palm. “Forgave him is a choice of words, I guess.” Tubbo has to remind himself that Tommy doesn’t know the intricacies of the Butcher Army’s plan to execute him. “I still don’t get along with him. Besides, you said it yourself that I was crazy for forgiving him—especially on such a short notice.” 

“But that’s the thing: you made up your mind. You decided to forgive him, work beside him in Pogtopia, and even if you don’t like him, you know how you feel. With Dream it’s—“ Tommy lets out a frustrated huff. “He’s. He’s evil, and I hate him, and he made me want to die. But, he stopped me, did you know that? I was gonna fucking—in the Nether,” he motions across his throat, “And he stopped me. He came to my party, when no one else showed up.” 

Tommy is shaking and jaundice-looking, even in the low light of the fire. Still, he opens his mouth to speak more. Tubbo’s not sure if he’s ever had the strength to do that. Tommy, who’s been through the worst the world has to offer, still speaks unabashed. He never lost the ability to speak like a child: freely, honestly, and from the heart. It’s the same ability that sparked the exile. It’s the same ability Tubbo wishes he had for himself. 

“He—he used to just show up and make me—make me put all my stuff in a hole and he’d blow it up. I was fucking, oh my God,” Tommy curls his arms tighter around his stomach, “I was starving and so sick all the time ‘cause I had shit fucking clothes and only a tent to sleep in. And despite all that— despite all that! Sometimes I miss him, or I feel bad that I left. He was the only one—basically the only one who visited. He did so much for me and nothing at all. I feel like I should hate him and be done with it—I want to, but my stupid brain just, ugh. I don’t know what’s worse sometimes: when I miss him or when I think I might have deserved it. And I know I shouldn’t think that way—I know—but I also know that I’m not nice, Tubbo. I’m a fuckin’ shit and I cause problems and start wars. I know this. But even so. But even if I’m not nice, I’m trying to be good. I’ve always been trying to be good. I don’t want to think that I deserved it.”

Tommy refocuses on Tubbo and smiles through a grimace, “Sorry, big man. That was a lot.”

Tubbo, who feels the sensation of looking in a mirror a bit too strongly and the weight of the world’s guilt in his lungs, wipes at the tears on his face, “You’re good, bossman, don’t worry.” He has to swallow a few times before his body will allow him to speak, “That’s so awful. I’m so sorry that happened and I’m so sorry I allowed that—I made that happen. I really didn’t know—no one knew what was going on. I thought Dream was protecting you, or at the very least you could make a house and farm if you wanted or something.” 

There’s a growing horror that’s filling Tubbo’s entire being. How much has he sanctioned by not doing anything? What else has Dream strung up on puppet wire that he has no idea about? How much of this could he have stopped by just fucking visiting why the hell didn’t he just visit. He’s overwhelmed with his ever present nausea, a churning of guilt encompassing his chest. He swallows it down, down, down. 

And as if reading his mind, Tommy asks, “Why didn’t you ever come to see me?”

Because he’s selfish. It was Tubbo who scolded Tommy underneath those obsidian walls, you’re selfish, but it’s Tubbo who’s the biggest hypocrite of them all. He couldn’t face the consequences of his own actions. Look what good that did. 

“I was scared,” he starts. “I knew you’d be mad, rightfully so, but I just… I’m a coward. I was scared you’d say you hated me or never wanted to see me again, but avoiding it—avoiding you just made everything so much worse. L’manburg was already such a shit show that I thought if I heard one more piece of bad news I’d just…” Tubbo shrugs. “You didn’t deserve that.”

“No, I didn’t,” Tommy says, “And sometimes I’m still fuckin’ mad at you, but thanks, for telling me. I get it, I think.” 

“I get what you said too, about what you said about Dream. Why can’t people just be evil and leave it at that?” a sad-sounding laugh escapes his mouth. Tubbo covers his eyes with his hands and drags down, but can still feel Tommy’s questioning gaze through them. “Schlatt,” Tubbo supplies with no explanation. 

It’s such a damning syllable. It should echo and fill the woods with dread, with the suffering he brought to the land. Tubbo’s voice is lost before it has the chance to reach the trees a few yards over. It feels anticlimactic, unfair. Just a guy who died on the floor of a broken down van. 

Tommy knows about Schlatt only from his own experiences and things he’s heard from Wilbur or Niki or Quackity. Tubbo never spoke a word about their own interpersonal relationship, only politics. It was irrelevant during his spyhood, too soon after the festival, and too late in New L’manburg. 

Tommy had seen the marks on Tubbo’s shoulders and wrists. Tommy knows Schlatt isn’t a good man, which is probably why he says, “You don’t have to.” Tubbo appreciates the sentiment. “You’ve spoken more to me tonight than we have in the past I don’t know how long. I know Schlatt is… a sensitive subject.”

“You’ve also told me a lot tonight,” Tubbo says. “A lot of stuff that was hard to say. It’s only fair.”

“That isn’t how this should work. Fairness doesn’t mean you also having to do what I’ve done, or say what I’ve said. Try being fair to yourself for a change,” Tommy’s lips pull up at the corners. 

Tubbo shakes his head, “That’s not what I meant.” He pauses. “I mean that you’ve told me a lot today and I think that is really brave of you. I want to share this, because you’re my best friend and that’s what best friends do.” 

Tommy doesn’t move his hand to his face fast enough to cover his quivering lips. He takes a long, gross, deep breath in and half-laughs-half-coughs it out. “Now you’re gonna have to wait a minute for me, big man.” 

Tubbo will wait forever, if he must. He tips his head back, partly to let Tommy have a second to himself, partly so Tommy can’t see his face when he mouths, “Clingy.” 

Tommy sniffs a few times and wipes at his eyes. Tubbo reaches out his hand and rests it on Tommy’s knee. Immediately, Tommy rests his palm atop it. 

“Okay,” Tommy says, voice still watery, “Okay, I’m good.” 

“You sure?”

“Yeah.” 

They slip into an awkward semi-silence. Tubbo never talks about this, told himself he would never talk about this. But Tommy is sitting beside him, open and waiting, and he thinks maybe it won’t be so bad. 

“I just,” he mumbles, because how do you say things like this? “Schlatt was a right bastard, but sometimes he’d, you know, be nice. Sometimes it would be just me, Quackity, and Schlatt and the two of them would tell jokes and it was—was almost fun. Sometimes we’d play chess and he wasn’t bad, actually! Maybe this was before I was good at chess but,” he let out a chuckle, “Sometimes he’d even let me win.” 

Tommy is looking at him with an unreadable expression. Tubbo fiddles with his hands. It feels wrong to talk about the good parts of someone who was so bad. 

“And the day before my speech. He, you know what he did? He got me a new suit jacket. I still don’t know why he did it. Maybe he—he felt bad about what he was gonna do the next day, or maybe he was just feeling generous or just did some random shit on a whim. I don’t know. I hate him for that, I think. For making me try and understand what was going on in that fucked up head of his. For making me feel bad for ruining it.”

“He ruined it,” Tommy says, “He’s the sick bastard who burnt it. Who ordered it to be burned. And I’m sorry too, about Schlatt; I’ve told you a million times and I’ll tell you a million more. I hate him for all the shit stuff he’s done to you and I’ll hate him for all the good, too, if you want me to.” He has deep frown lines and his brows are creased in thought. He tries to collect himself a bit, “But thanks, for telling me. Look what they fucking did to us huh?” He laughs, “We’re in the middle of the woods having our first heart-to-heart. Who would’a thought. But… for real, I’m glad to know that someone else knows what I’m going through, at least a little bit.”

“Of course,” Tubbo offers him a small smile. “If you ever need anything…” he begins, mostly because that’s something you’re supposed to say. It makes him sound as though he hasn’t been completely ignoring everything that has been going wrong in the past few years. Whatever, it’s not like he can take it back now. It’s not like he didn’t mean it, either. 

It breaks his heart to talk like this. It cracks it open, peels it back. But maybe it’ll crack open and stay that way, with the soft spots on display. It has been too long since he’s bared his feelings without hesitation. He wants to be happy. Maybe he can be happy.

“You sound like an adult when you talk like that,” Tommy says without any edge to his voice. He squeezes Tubbo’s hand. “All responsible and shit.”

“That’s why they call me Mr. President,” Tubbo jokes, then, “I don’t feel very grown up.” 

The quiet lulls them onto their backs. The two of them look at the stars, bellies up. The barren trees gift a clear view of the sky. 

“You know I love you, right?” Tommy says. 

Tubbo blinks back his surprise at the sudden question, “Yeah, I know.” It hangs in the air awkwardly, waiting for an explanation. “I love you too.”

“It's just, during Doomsday. You scared me. The way you just go catatonic and stand there when all those bombs went off.” Tommy’s voice slips into something soft and pleading, “You gotta take care of yourself.”

Something pulls loose in his chest. 

Tubbo is bounded by logic. Its threads stitch him together and keep the cogs turning. Its strength is unmovable. It’s as much of a prison as it is protection. 

He wants to cut the strings, let the marionette of his body lie limp. He will believe in falsities. He will look at the world before him and believe wrongly, falsely, incorrectly, that it is only good. He will look at Tommy and know they will never grow apart again. 

He feels the distinct burning around his eyes and the tingling in his nose that foreshadow an ocean of tears.

Take care of me, his fingers say as they intertwine with Tommy’s own. Take care of me, his cheeks say as they grow full from a smile. Take care of me, take care of me, take care of me, he says when he asks Tommy to make a home out of Snowchester. 

And for a moment Tommy opens his mouth to mention Dream and Tubbo nearly presses his index finger to his lips, like a child about to share a secret. 

“I know what the discs mean to you, and they mean so much to me. They mean so much to me, but you mean even more. I don’t think I could go on if anything happened to you if we met Dream. I want the chance to find a hundred, a thousand more discs with you. Can’t we have that chance?” Tommy’s eyes shine brighter than any star, wet with tears. “You have to take care of yourself, too.” 

Tommy gets to his knees and Tubbo finds himself mirroring him unconsciously. 

Tommy does something Tubbo can only remember Wilbur doing, back before Schlatt and Quackity. Will, with his coats big enough to smother, would grab the seams and pull them wide open. Usually, it was Tommy who would walk forward and get enveloped in sheets of fabric. 

Here, now, it seems as though the practice has outgrown them. Tommy’s Snowchester coat has to be slowly unbuttoned with unfamiliar fingers. And even then, when Tubbo finds himself wrapping his arms around his brother, the coat is too small to fully encompass him. Tubbo has never felt warmer. 

In some other time and some other place, they would march off towards great cliffs that border faraway oceans. Maybe they’d do the unthinkable and slay the beast three times. Maybe they’d walk away, heads held high and discs in hand. Maybe they wouldn’t walk away at all. 

Now, the stars sink a little closer to the horizon. The fire warms the soles of their feet. 

Tubbo’s fists curl tighter around Tommy’s undershirt and the boy they left back on that icy shore makes residence in his head.

He should thank Jack when he gets back, he thinks, for being there and convincing him—in some backwards way—to get Tommy to stay, for making Snowchester more than just a house of one. 

There is a picture of him in Tubbo’s mind, of Jack kneeling in front of the fire, palms wrapped around a steaming mug. He looks so small, waiting there uselessly for his body to take in the heat it no longer creates for itself. 

Tubbo’s voice is wet with mucus and muffled in the folds of the coat, “Jack’s hands get really cold. Make him mittens?” And Tommy just holds him tighter. 

“‘Course, big man. I’ll make you some too.” A noise escapes Tubbo’s mouth. A sob or a laugh, he can’t tell.

“And some for yourself?”

“And some for myself.” 

Tubbo nudges Tommy awake. The sky is still dark with night, but the sun will rise soon. The winter air is cool, but Tubbo likes to see his laughs in puffs of clouds. 

“Up and at ‘em big man,” he says, and Tommy groans and flops the other way. “Tommy!” he stage-whispers. 

Tommy’s words slur with sleep, “‘M up, I’m up.”

Tubbo grips his wrists and pulls him to his feet, jostling his shoulders, “The sun’s gonna rise soon. All the skeletons are gonna bounce, come on.”

“Okay, okay,” Tommy sounds marginally more awake, unconsciously reaching for a weapon, “What’re we doing?” 

“Getting a disc, obviously,” Tubbo scoffs. He is much too energetic this morning. He can’t remember the last time he’s had this much energy. He’s smiling. 

Like a dog, Tommy perks up at the mention of the discs. Tubbo can’t help but chuckle. “So we’re getting right to it, huh?” Tommy says. “No rest for the weary.”

“Shove it,” Tubbo grabs his sword before walking off into the woods. Tommy wastes no time following. 

The edges of the sky are pink when they finally find the necessary conditions to get a disc. There is a clueless-looking creeper plodding between the same four trees and a skeleton with a few missing ribs a little ways away. A quick game of rock-paper-scissors decides that Tubbo will be the one luring the creeper while Tommy takes care of the skeleton, using half of a fallen log as a makeshift shield. 

Tubbo can’t even find it in himself to be afraid. There’s an exhilarated buzzing flowing in his limbs. He scoops up a decent sized rock as he jumps out from behind a tree. 

“Hey dumbass!” he cries, flinging the rock at its face. It hits with a hiss, and Tubbo runs forward with a jab of his sword before spinning in the direction of the skeleton. He makes a break for it and he can hear Tommy laughing between shrieks as the skeleton fires arrows.

“Run, Tubbo! Use those little legs of yours!” 

It only takes him a few seconds to crash into Tommy. They stand back-to-back, poised for action, feeling the electricity in the air. This is fun. 

The creeper stalks closer, and once it's in range Tubbo says, “Good to go over here.”

Tommy waits a moment, watching as the skeleton nocks its arrow and pulls back the string. Tubbo can hear him muttering under his breath, counting down. It only takes two taps on Tubbo’s side for them both to lunge out of the way and onto the undergrowth. With a dying hiss, the creeper collapses. Tommy and Tubbo make quick work of the skeleton. 

They stand, breathing as the two bodies crumble into dust. The creeper’s remains glow and shift, alive with the magic of the world. For a moment, the light shields the intricacies of creation, then it fades and leaves a disc in its wake. The center is a deep red. 

A delighted noise leaves Tubbo’s mouth, “I love Chirp!”

“Chirp?!” Tommy groans, but he’s smiling too. “You have terrible taste. And so does Will, while we’re at it. The both of you—terrible.” 

“Don’t insult your brothers like that,” Tubbo chides in mock offense. “I’ll get Ghostbur down here to scold you.” 

Tommy juts out his bottom lip, makes his eyes go wide and doe-like, “You wouldn’t.”

“Oh, I would!” Tubbo runs at him. Tommy screeches and attempts to make an escape. It only takes Tubbo a beat to catch up and jump on his back. He shoves Tommy’s head down and ruffles his hair mercelously.

“Tubbo! Tubbo, get off!”

“No! Take me back to camp, steed!”

Tubbo and Tommy cup their hands around their mouths and scream just to see Jack come running, “Jack!” 

He pops his head up from where he kneels in the potato field. He spends no time stumbling through the snow to meet them on the docks. It’s nice, knowing someone is going to come home and love you. 

“You’re back!” Jack rushes over before schooling himself into something more casual. He makes a show of looking past them, “And you’ve got all my oak. Nice work, gents.” 

“All in a few days work,” Tommy scoffs. He jumps back down onto the raft and begins messing with the logs floating in the water, “Now come help me out.” Jack carefully maneuvers himself towards the edge, creeping his way down the short drop. Tommy extends his hand out and, after a moment, Jack takes it. “I gotta talk with Jack about a thing or two,” Tommy tosses Tubbo their backpacks, “Put these inside? We’ll only be a second.” 

Tubbo slips them over his shoulders, “Sure. I’ll be right back.” 

Tubbo watches as their conversation turns to hushed whispers. He grins at their antics and heads inside the cabin. In their absence, Jack has completed building three entire beds, each with its own colored comforter. Tubbo adds it to the list of things he has to thank Jack for. 

To Tommy’s credit, he and Jack were only out there for barely a minute. The two of them meander into the cabin as Tubbo unpacks their bags. The second Tommy’s foot gets in the door Tubbo spins around. 

“Aye,” he scolds like he’s talking to a dog, “Out. My turn with Jack.” 

Tommy rolls his eyes but steps out onto the porch without complaint. Jack looks incredibly pleased with himself at the thought of being fought over. 

“So,” Jack sings, “What do you need?” He twists his foot all bashful-like. 

Tubbo can’t help but smile fondly. “I just wanted to thank you, really,” he starts, “for everything. Literally everything.”

Jack stares back, surprise etched into his features. 

“And I’m no good with words, but you being there in the quarry that day, you staying here with me, telling me that, you know, Snowchester was worth it—that I was worth it…” Tubbo looks at his hands as they fidget. “And now you’re here and Tommy’s here and I’m here. We’re living, after all this time, finally.” There is a soft swelling in his chest. Tubbo looks into Jack’s eyes and knows he’s looking at him too. “I’m sorry that you died. I’m happy you came back.”

“Well—I—” Jack sputters. “Me too. We gotta look out for each other. I…” He stares for a moment, at a loss for words. “Thank you, Tubbo. I’m glad to be back.” 

Then Jack smiles and Tubbo smiles and they’re just standing there, smiling at eachother. 

Tubbo is the first to move. He walks forward and unravels his arms and, gently, Jack meets him halfway. And when they hold each other, Tubbo can feel small, shuddering breaths beneath Jack’s ribs. 

Tubbo pulls back as he feels Jack wipe at his face. He grips Jack’s shoulders and squeezes. 

“I’m alright, I’m alright,” Jack says. 

“I’ve got one more thing to ask you,” Tubbo says. “Tommy keeps mentioning this party that no one went to. I think we should throw him another one. Just us, you know?”

Jack’s brows shoot up and he laughs, “You—never mind. Sure, sure, can I pick the date?” His grin grows sharp. 

Tubbo presses his lips together, “Why do you look like that?” 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Let's do it a week from now.” 

Tubbo, still confused by Jack’s canary-eating smile, nods. It’s nice to see him so enthusiastic. 

The next few days are fun, even if Tubbo is doing the brunt of the work. Jack usually spends the mornings with him preparing, but by the afternoon he slips away, saying something about making sure Tommy is distracted. 

He spends hours stringing up lights and staining his coat making dyes. He rewrites as many of Niki’s recipes as he remembers. This work is different from the work during the first few weeks in Snowchester. This comes easy. This keeps his chest warm all on its own. 

It’s amazing, to dream about the faces on the shore and getting to think, oh God, there’s the rest of my life standing right in front of me. 

He needs to talk to Jack. How the hell is he supposed to hide an entire cow?

It’s the day of the party and Jack is up earlier than Tubbo for the first time in his life. Jack hears him as he blinks his eyes open, muttering something to Tommy near the door. Seeing Tubbo is awake, he comes over and crouches next to the bed. 

“Morning Tubster,” he whispers. “I’m gonna finish up the prepwork outside. You keep Tommy distracted, alright?”

Tubbo nods and rubs at his eyes, “Yeah, ‘course.” 

Anticipation is quickly ridding his body of sleep. It takes him no time to get ready. He combs his hair twice. 

Tommy also seems especially antsy this morning. He fidgets with a long ribbon in his hands. Right, Tubbo has to keep him busy.

Tubbo claps his hands together. “Welp, nothing like tidying up in the morning,” he says to a clean room. Their cleaning day was yesterday. 

Tommy bolts to his feet, “Right! Nothing like cleaning!” He stands focused for a moment, folding the ribbon with great care, before fetching a broom. Tubbo settles down in front of the fireplace and grabs the shovel. Five seconds into removing the ash does he realize this is a stupid choice. He’ll be all sooty for the party. Oh well.

Tommy spends a few minutes sweeping an already dustless floor. Tubbo does his best to clean out last night’s ashes. Tommy hasn’t gone outside; Tubbo’s killing it. 

Tubbo makes an attempt to look out the window and check Jack’s progress. Tommy takes one step and blocks his view. 

“Fine morning we’re having, huh?” Tommy says, sounding just as strained as Tubbo feels. That makes two of them. 

“Yeah, very fine indeed.” Way to sound normal, Tubbo. “How’d you sleep last night?”

“Good, good,” Tommy nods. “You?”

“Yeah, good. Slept in late, even.” 

“Wish you slept in later...” Tommy mutters. Tubbo blinks.

“What was that?”

“Glad you slept well!” Tommy smiles. 

“Okay,” Tubbo says, leaning around the body in front of him, trying to get a look outside the window.

Tommy once again leans into his line of vision. He starts to turn his head, following Tubbo’s line of sight. Tubbo jumps to the balls of his feet and gives Tommy a quick shove away from the window. 

“The hell?” Tommy sputters. His arms shoot to Tubbo’s sleeve and yank him close, away from the view of the yard. “What are you doing?”

“What are you doing?” Tubbo accuses back, unable to think of anything else to say. “You know I’m,” he already knows he’s an idiot before it comes out of his mouth, “Impulsive.” He mimes pushing Tommy. 

“No,” Tommy states. “You are so fuckin’ weird.” 

Tubbo can’t help but laugh at the absurdity. Tommy smiles and joins in. He sees Tommy’s eyes flick towards the window and suddenly he’s screeching out a cackle and pressing his palms into Tommy’s eyes. In a moment he’s on the floor, Tommy’s hands around his wrists and foot on his sternum. 

“That’s it, you’ve lost your seeing privileges,” Tommy reaches his absurdly long limbs to where he left the ribbon. They’re both still laughing as Tommy tries to blindfold Tubbo, who in turn tries his best to bite a finger or two. 

“Get off!” Tubbo grins, “Get off! Get off!” 

“No, idiot,” Tommy snorts and pushes down with his foot for good measure. The pressure has Tubbo’s face going red and he cackles. They both know Tubbo could easily flip Tommy, but there’s a joy of playing into their parts, like they’re six or seven again, when Tommy had a whole foot and a half on him in height, when their limbs were flimsy with youth. 

A different voice calling out to them has Tommy distracted and Tubbo makes a quick move to push the blindfold up. It rests at his brow like a headband. 

“Ready!” Jack shouts from outside. 

The two of them stumble up, giggles trailing off. Without looking, Tommy paws the ribbon down towards Tubbo’s eyes. Tubbo slaps his hand away. 

The two of them stand in front of the door for a moment, still. Tubbo’s stomach flutters with anticipation. His cheeks are tense with the effort it takes to hide his smile. His fingers twitch with anticipation. Tommy grabs him by the shoulders and twists him so they’re facing each other. He makes one more move to lower the blindfold and Tubbo meets him in the middle, grabbing his wrist. 

“Come on,” Tommy says. “It's supposed to be a surprise.” 

“What?” Tubbo says. He lets Tommy gently tug the blindfold over his bad eye. He has yet to cover the other when Tubbo reaches out a hand and presses it over one of Tommy’s own eyes. “That’s what I’m supposed to say.” 

“What?” Tommy frowns in confusion, his words drowned out by Jack yanking the door open. An excited flush is at home on his face as he gestures for them to walk onto the porch. 

Jack’s smile is so bright as he looks at them, “Surprise!”

The space beyond the front porch flickers with light. Draped across the trees are flags of every color. Tubbo recognizes a few of the decorations as his own: the shabby-looking quilt splayed over the picnic table, a darts board stapled to a tree, a bouquet of pressed flowers, long candlesticks fashioned from old wax. There are other things he doesn’t recognize. Seat cushions line the benches, mobiles of little glass trinkets hanging from a branch, wind chimes hanging from the windowsill. 

For a moment he can’t tear his eyes from the table, set with wooden plates and cups. He can barely see the quilt through the platters of Niki’s sweets. Cake, scones, cookies, pie; he can already feel the rush of sugar to his head. It's been so long since he’s had anything but fish and mushroom stew. A lot of the food, Tubbo notices, he doesn’t remember making. Tommy has never been much of a baker, which only leaves one man. Tubbo raises his brow in Jack’s direction, and all Jack does is nod with a proud look on his face. It makes sense. Jack and Niki were nearly inseparable. 

Tubbo pulls himself from his reverie and practices again in his head. This party is all for you, Tommy. Surprise! I’m sorry for everything. I love you and I hope this makes up for your party a few months ago, even just a little bit. Me and Jack put this together. Can I hug you?

Tubbo steels his shoulders, opens his mouth, “This party is all for you—”

Tommy beats him to it, “Happy birthday, Tubbo!” 

Tubbo stands stalk-still in surprise—the wrong kind of surprise, apparently. He can barely sputter out a string of words, “Wha…? What?” He looks at Jack who has a soft little smile on his face. It’s so uncharacteristic of him that Tubbo can’t help but feel like he’s been set up. “...Jack?” 

Jack doesn’t do anything but watch as Tommy drags him down the porch, talking a mile a minute. “Yeah, me ‘n Jack set this whole thing up. Well, mostly me,” Tommy barks out a laugh when Jack makes an affronted gasp from behind them. “Kidding! Kidding, my God. It was all Jack, really. Neither of us were really here for your birthday, so we thought we’d do it now. Happy 17th!” 

“My birthday?” It seems so long ago. Celebrating a birthday is something so mundane, so normal, something he shouldn’t be able to do anymore. “My birthday?” He says it again, like he has to speak the words twice into the world to make sure that it's right, that this isn’t the best dream he’s had in years. “That was weeks ago.” What should he do now, with his hands?

“And we’re celebrating it today,” Jack says with a jostle of Tubbo’s shoulder. 

“Duh,” Tommy chimes in helpfully. 

“Okay,” because what else is there to say? A grin is blooming on his face, “Okay. I’m 17.”

“You’re 17!” they shout like it’s the best thing they’ve ever heard. Tubbo thinks, quietly, it might have been the greatest thing he’s ever done. To turn 17. To be here, now. 

There is so much joy in his stomach that he pushes past the shock and grabs Tommy’s sleeve, then Jack’s. “Well I have a surprise for you, Tommy. We,” Tubbo shakes Jack’s arm around, “Have a surprise for you. We actually put this party together for you, you know, to make up for your other one. Kinda shit for no one to show up to that one, right?” 

Tubbo wants this happiness in his veins, his bones, the whole fabric of his being, to flow through the grips of his fingers. He nods at Jack, throwing his head towards the cake they made for Tommy. He then guides Tommy to the head of the picnic table; Jack had dragged one of their kitchen chairs outside so they could all sit beside each other. Tommy falls into his seat, dazed and glassy eyed. 

Jack slides the cake in front of Tommy. In big letters it reads Welcome Home, Tommy! and a smaller, messier scrawl below it, Tubbo’s own addition, we love you! 

Tommy still sits there, shocked, but Tubbo gets it, so he continues on. This time it's Jack who directs him with a nod of his head, in the direction of wrapped presents underneath the porch. Tubbo scoops up the ones he recognizes and drops them onto the table. “Plus, gifts!” 

Tommy’s voice is thick when he speaks, “I got you gifts, too. And a cake!” He flings his arms out to point further down the table. There, in the same lettering, is Happy 17th Birthday, Tubbo! It seems Jack had done them both. That double-crosser. 

“Why don’t we eat,” Jack says, “Before the food freezes to the table.” 

From a technical standpoint, Tubbo is almost sure the food that he is putting in his mouth isn’t all that great. Jack’s cakes are by far the best and Tubbo has gotten quite a bit of practice cooking over his time in Snowchester, but he’s not sure how well fish stew transfers to pumpkin pie. Tommy tried his best with the cookies, Tubbo is sure. He’s never had a better meal. 

It’s easy again, he notices. Or maybe it has been easy for a little while now. The three of them slip back into it, being a trio, being themselves. They could have had the conversation they’re having now years ago, sitting on the side of a black and yellow wall. Their memories are timeless. He never expected them to be. 

Tommy cries.

It’s not sudden. There is a constant, steady flow of tears down his cheeks. He shudders, hiccups once, then twice, sniffs. He’s bawling but he’s grinning through his wobbling lips. 

It’s so bizarre, to be crying and smiling and laughing and sobbing at a table filled with presents and cake. When Tubbo looks between a green-wrapped box and a vase of pressed flowers he can see tears on Jack’s face. He can feel them running down his own, too. 

Wilbur was obsessed with endings, with sorrow and death. It crept up on him until he turned around to greet it. He wrapped it in his arms and sank into sadness. Wilbur mourned for a person the moment they stepped onto L’manburg’s podium, learned to say goodbye years earlier, the second someone stepped onto Phil’s front porch. 

They’re mourning too, Tubbo realizes as he watches Tommy wipe a snotty hand on Jack’s coat. They’re learning to mourn in celebration. They sift through L’manburg’s grave and pick out the shiniest tales and the hardest battles. Here is where I was finally strong enough to build a home of my own, Jack stands at the door of Ze Hauz. Tommy smiles so bright, sitting around an old fire pit, when we all used to sit here and sing and Will would play the guitar—I’ve chased that feeling ever since. Tubbo points at the camarvan, right here is the first time I’ve had a family.

Tommy is stumbling through the presents atop the table, smiling and jittery with excitement. “I, um, this ones for you, Tubbo,” and Tubbo cradles it in his hands like a bird or a baby fox.

Tommy is still stumbling as Tubbo moves to unwrap it, over his words, “It’s—well, it’s not that good—no, I mean it’s super good, ‘cause I made it, but it definitely needs some tweaking and I’ve never made anything like it before, so…” 

The wrapping isn’t so much paper as it is thick cloth. Tubbo folds it back slowly. Inside it is a neat, wooden box. 

“And did I mention it’s unfinished? It’s unfinished.”

With a soft tug, Tubbo lifts the lid. There is a sudden warmth on his lower lids, “Oh, Tommy…” 

There are two compasses resting side by side. 

The soft oak insides of the compasses are decorated beautifully, tendrils and vines of paint forming the rose and lettering. The dial and housing are a bit warped, one of the compasses appearing more elliptical than the other. Most noticeably, neither needle is pointing in a certain direction. 

“There wasn’t enough time for me to find a loadstone. Not to mention attuning it. But, you know, our thing is doing stuff together! So this can be like, a new project of ours, or something.” 

Tubbo takes the more warped of the two because he thinks it’s charming, and holds it close. “Tommy…” is all he can manage to say. 

Tommy licks his lips, looks from Tubbo to the compass and back to Tubbo again, “You won’t burn it?” 

“What?” Tubbo jerks, “No! I love it. It’s lovely.” His voice chokes up, “Thank you. I never stopped wearing my old one, you know.” 

Tommy just smiles, “Happy birthday.” 

Tubbo opens his arms for a hug, and before he can blink Tommy is enveloped in them. They hold each other and it's nice. It’s good. 

When they seperate, Jack is fiddling with the tablecloth. 

“Don’t worry,” Tommy says and points to a gift lying on the table. “Here, grab that.”

Jack lifts it carefully, with unsure hands. He inches towards Tubbo, thinking it must be for him. It's obvious what is wrapped under the cloth. It is long and weighed in Jack’s arms. To points jut out near one of the ends. 

“Go on,” Tommy urges. “Open it. It's for you.”

“Oh,” is all Jack says and his grip tightens around the cloth. The twine holding it in place is peeled off with trembling fingers. Tubbo doesn’t think he has seen anyone peel back rags with such care before. “Oh. ”

Cradled in Jack's arms is a sword. It ripples with enchantments as the sunlight glints off it. Breath catches in Jack’s throat.

“I figured you could use a new one,” Tommy starts. “I know it doesn’t fix anything, but maybe it could start to?”

Jack’s face jerks up to meet Tommy’s eyes and they are silent for a moment. Something passes between them; what it is, Tubbo isn’t sure. 

“I’m sorry,” Tommy says, “And you don’t have to forgive me.” Then, “Hug?”

Jack lets out a wet laugh with a nod. He places the sword on the table ever so gently before wrapping his arms around Tommy. “And thanks for helping plan this party, even if you’re a two-timer ‘til the end, you fucker.” Jack only laughs harder. 

Tubbo has his arms full of little cylinder shaped gifts by the time Jack turns to look at him. Jack gives him a look of disbelief. “What?” Tubbo smiles, “How could I not make something for the first resident of Snowchester?”

“You’re the first real resident of Snowchester, Tubbo,” Jack chuckles.

“One person isn’t really a town, Jack. That’s just sad.”

“And two is?”

“Are you going to take your gift or what.” 

“Okay, okay,” Jack scoffs goodnaturedly, “Hand ‘em over.” 

Jack takes such care in peeling back the wrappings that it makes Tubbo’s insides glow. He can’t help the bashful smile that grows on his face. 

“Oh!” Jack smiles, “They’re little pots!” 

Tubbo nods, enthusiastic, “Yeah! For your little mani-shrooms. I made a greenhouse too, one of the tall rolley ones. It’s in the shed where it's dark.”

Jack marvels at the pots as they clink together in his hands, “Thank you, Tubbo! Really.” 

Jack goes to hug him and Tubbo wraps his arms around his ribs and squeezes. Jack sputters out, “Christ, you’re strong—!” He rubs at his ribs once he’s able. “I got something for you, too. The both of you.” 

Tubbo and Tommy exchange a glance. “Sap,” Tommy mouths. 

“Sap,” Tubbo mouths back. They both nod their heads furiously. 

Jack reaches for a box and hands it off to Tommy, “Tried a bit of crafts for you, mate.”

“Crafts?” Tommy lifts the box to his eyes before shaking it. As soon as it stops rattling he asks, “If I shake it will it break?” 

“Too late for that,” Tubbo chirps.

“I was gentle,” Tommy defends.

“No, it’ll be fine,” Jack says, “Jackass.” 

Tommy’s eyes grow wide as he pulls the lid off, “...Where’d you even find this pattern?”

“I have my old one back at Ze Hauz. I tried my best to make a copy,” Jack says. 

An incredible wave of nostalgia overcomes Tubbo as he watches Tommy lift a tricorn hat out of the box. It’s black, just like their old ones, with a white trim along the edges. “No way,” Tubbo can’t help but gasp. 

Tommy wastes no time putting the hat atop his head. His curls squeeze out the bottom and cover his eyes in messy coils. “How do I look?” 

“Like you’re twelve,” Tubbo laughs. His chest is so light. Tommy’s grin nearly blinds him. 

“You look good!” Jack exclaims and shakes Tommy by the shoulders, “Like a proper soldier.” 

Tommy snaps into position, a fist at his back and a hand at his brow. Despite the years since L’manburg, Tommy almost looks younger than he did back then. The salute is that of a child’s: feet a bit too big, eyes a bit too wide, stance a bit too wobbly. Somehow Tommy looked older when he had fuller cheeks and narrower shoulders. Maybe it was the Tubbo from years ago who thought two boys looked like grown men. 

Jack darts off in search of Tubbo’s gift. He tells the two of them to stay put. Tommy adjusts the tricorn fondly.

“These were the ugliest fucking hats. All triangular and shit,” Tommy says. 

“Yeah,” Tubbo agrees. “I love them.” 

The expression on Tommy’s face turns soft like dough, “Me too.” 

From a distance Tubbo can hear the crunching of snow underfoot and a series of chirps. The sound makes him go ridged, shocked by the familiarity. 

There, in Jack’s arms, is a ball of white fluff. A little face untucks itself from the crook of Jack’s elbow. It’s a fox kit, he realizes. 

Squeeks, he swallows back. He shakes his head, trying to rid himself of the thought. His eyes catch on the grave by the shore regardless. He is overwhelmed by the illogical need to ask how old the kit is, to see if the dates add up between—

“Look at this little guy!” Jack holds up the kit from its underarms. He takes its wrist and wiggles it’s paw like it's waving. Tubbo waves back without thought. “You keep talking about the mice and voles eating the potatoes, so I thought this guy could help us out. Plus, he’s really cute. Here, come take him.”

Tubbo accepts the kit into his arms and he’s even softer than he looks. Tubbo can’t help the coo that comes out of his mouth at the contact. Tommy reaches out his fist, letting the kit sniff him. 

“And I know,” Jack says, “That he’s yours now, but I’ve been thinking of names. Something badass, like Godzilla.” 

“Godzilla?” Tubbo parrots as he lifts the kit so he’s eyelevel. He juts his snout out and plants a wet lick on Tubbo’s nose, “Gross.” 

Tubbo passes him off to Tommy, who has been hovering next to him with arms already outstretched. 

“Come on,” Jack whines, “The name’s not that bad.”

“That wasn’t what I meant but the name is kind of bad.”

“Tubbo!” 

“But I love him and his dumb name. Thank you, Jack.” Jack ruffles his hair and Tubbo does the same in return.

Tubbo gets close to the kit, who’s stomach is getting mercilessly rubbed by Tommy, and his lips tug up, “You made it home, buddy.” 

He then straightens with resolve and meets Tommy’s eyes, “Now it’s time for your present. Hold onto Godzilla while I go fetch it, okay?” 

Tommy gives him a nod and Tubbo tugs at the ribbon now laying limp around his neck. He throws it over Tommy’s head, “Jack, put this on him when I say.” He spins towards the woods and takes off.  

He knows the path well, having taken it multiple times a day over the past few days. He weaves through the bare shrubs until a small wooden shed comes into view. It isn’t his best work, but it isn’t like it’ll be used after today. Its shabby door creaks as he slips inside. 

There, with Tubbo’s old blanket laid over his withers, is Henry. Little knitted socks cover his ears to shield them from the cold. He barely raises his head at Tubbo’s entrance, too busy with the hay at his feet. 

He fastens a lead to his halter as he speaks, “Alright Henry, this is what we’ve been waiting for. Behave? For me?” Tubbo tries to pull the cow out of the shed. Henry refuses to budge.

“Come on, you massive lug. You wanna see Tommy, don’t you?” Miraculously, Henry lifts his head. Did Tommy seriously teach a cow to respond to his name? “Yeah, Tommy. Let's go to Tommy.” 

He hopes the trip doesn’t take too long. He doesn’t want to worry Tommy, but a normally two minute walk can stretch to incredible lengths with a cow plodding along behind you. Tubbo finds his stomach growing hot in anticipation. He can’t wait to see Tommy’s face when he sees Henry after all these months. All the trouble he and Jack faced dragging him to Snowchester would be worth it, just to see his face. He feels a laugh bubble up in his throat and it feels so bizarre, that his body can have so much joy bottled up that he has to let some out. He forgot it could do that. 

Tubbo hears Jack and Tommy before he can see them. He calls out, “Okay, Jack! Put on the blindfold!” He can hear the volume of their squabble increase before Jack shouts back to him. 

“Good to go!” 

Followed by, “Why do I have to be blindfolded for this?!” 

“Just ‘cause!” Tubbo yells as he pulls Henry into the clearing in front of their house. He hopes the cow stays quiet for the surprise. Also that the wind doesn’t change. He wouldn’t put it past Tommy to be able to smell Henry, if he’s being honest. 

He almost has to hold Henry back now that they’re so close. The cow’s ears are perked and he lets out a snort, excited to see Tommy. It’s incredibly endearing. From across the way he can see Jack swaying too, antsy. He bounces Godzilla like an infant.

“Ready?” Jack mouths. 

Tubbo nods and gives him a thumbs up. His chapped lips might split with how wide he’s grinning. Can cheeks get sore? 

“Okay, this is a sort-of-joint gift. I came up with it, but I really couldn’t have done it without Jack. Credit where credit is due. I hope you like it.” Tubbo says. He unties the lead from the halter as he says, “Take off the blindfold.” 

Tommy rips the blindfold off and his eyes nearly bug out of his head. His jaw hangs loose before he breaks out into a toothy smile. He lets out an elated screech, unable to find words. They didn’t make words for this. Henry bolts forward, throwing up snow as he bucks his hind legs. They crash into each other, Tommy only standing from his grip around Henry’s side, hands fisted into the blanket. “Henry!” 

Tubbo feels so light he wonders if he’ll float away from the next gust of wind. He wonders where that heavy feeling went, after it had shackled him to the dirt for so long. 

What he means is that his head is still above the boneyard. 

What he means is that maybe he was born to stand here next to them, his best friends. There is no greater honor, there is nothing more noble. 

What he means is maybe this is what it is to heal. The fighting and the hardship and the trauma will never go away; they’re in the ridges of the scars across his skin and within the folds of his brain. But he has room to grow around it—he has time to grow beyond it. He has friends beside him to take some of the load, just as he will take theirs. What was once the end of him doesn’t have to be. He can love another animal or write another chapter or see another sunrise, if that’s what it takes. 

The world is waiting and it's giving him time. His world is waiting, he sees, as Tommy and Jack beckon him over to where they’re feeding Henry the sweets off the table. And Tubbo steps forward to join them.