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It hurt. It hurt so bad… he… he was so… so… angry-mad-sad-hurt it… wasn’t his normal angry… his normal angry was like a firecracker, quick bright and quick to blow through, but this? This was a different kind of anger, it was simmering dimmer, and it didn’t seem like it was going away soon.
But Wilbur, Wilby was gone, dead. He wasn’t gone like Phil was for months, gone but still returning. He was truly and utterly gone.
The funeral was held a little over a week later, he got buried just outside of where the van that fueled their revolution had once sat. Phil showed up, but he and Techno simply stood a way away, quickly and quietly paying their respects before leaving as soon as they came. Fundy came with Niki as his mother paid her respects to one of her best friends.
They waited for everyone to leave before they broke down.
Tommy’s grief was loud, violent grief and denial for the first few moments before he was subdued, quiet, much like himself nowadays. Tubbo’s grief was the opposite, an uphill battle against crushing denial and acceptance that he was dead. The man that practically raised him was dead.
After all of their mourning they left and began to pack, all fragile things and essentials went into their inventories with everything else, their tools hanging at their belts and swords sheathed as they headed out.
Away from the war.
Away from the trauma.
Away from the death.
Away from everything.
And never to return if they could help it.
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They walked for days, taking occasional stops for food but often not even stopping to sleep at night, with the only goal in mind being far far away from there. Their feet were sore, but they never complained about it, at least not seriously. They filled empty days with back-and-forth banter along with comfortable silence, always careful with their words as to not send the other into an episode.
Tommy, before would have shot out jokes about booze and alcohol when asked if he wanted anything, probably have joked about Tubb having “baby horns” and would have jokingly called tubbo needy when they cuddled together on the nights they did sleep but not anymore, not after Schlatt, not until tubbo was ready. They both avoided any reference to explosions, festivals, and parties. They tried their best to keep conversations light and without reference to the past, however tonight Tubbo had something on his mind he couldn’t keep pushing down, knowing at him inside-out.
“Hey, uh… Tommy? Can I ask you something?” Tubbo asked hesitantly, climbing over a fallen tree in the middle of a spruce forest. “Huh? Yeah, sure Big-man!” Tommy said looking down at him from halfway up a tree. “Well, I was… wondering… so we’re obviously not gonna just wander for the rest of our lives, we’re obviously gonna eventually make a house, right?” “Uh-huh, we’re gonna make a HUGE house with a music box and a bee farm and uhhhh… everything else we need!”
“Well… I was wondering…” he paused, a hesitant undertone to his voice, “… I was wondering if we could make Wilbur a sort of… memorial, you know…” Tommy froze on the branch he was standing on, his hands tensing around the branch he was holding before carefully with his sudden stiff posture relaxing before saying, “I… wasn’t sure but maybe… I’ve actually been having similar thoughts, but we’ll think about that once we get there.”
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A couple weeks later they happened across a ravine and they needed some more coal to keep their lanterns going and they were just about to leave until they heard… soft crying? and went to investigate.
“Hey uh, do you hear that Tubbo?” Tommy asks Tubbo looking over his shoulder from the coal vein he was mining out. “Yeah… it almost sounds like a… kid… baby…?” Tubbo quickly dropped his pickaxe onto his belt after saying that to run towards the soft cries. As he quickly rushed towards where the sixteen-year-old thought whatever crying might be, only to stumble upon a relatively empty, open cave.
His eyes scanned across the cave as tommy caught up to him only for the both of them to see exactly what was causing the noise, what looked like a toddler that couldn’t be over three to four years old, sitting, crying softly.
.
..
...
“Well fuck.”