Work Text:
Tubbo had wanted to die in a field of flowers. Not because he was ditzy or cheerful or softened with peace. Just that even after all of it, he still liked colorful and buzzing things. But now his fate is inevitable, the walls are black and cold around him. It’s not as he'd hoped, but he’s made it to the finish line. Will there be rest on the other side? Will he go to heaven or will he see old friends?
Tommy is searching for exits. Tubbo is familiar with being trapped. He’s already more than half dead and he knows there’s no way out of the box. “Please don’t look,” he begs his friend, “it’ll be easier for both of us if you’re not looking when it happens.”
“-but...” it’s just a small sound through ugly, snotty tears.
“Seriously. This isn’t how I want you to remember me.”
“Okay” Tommy chokes out, and presses his face into his shirt.
The sword cuts cleanly through Tubbo’s heart and it hurts so much less than the fireworks.
***
He wakes up to someone beating him with an empty bottle. “W-what? Where am I?” He raises his hands to shield himself from the violence, the darkness.
“Hey, kid.” Amber-colored glass clanking off his nose and nobody’s remembered he’s a child in a really long time. “Glad you’re here. Get me a pack of cigarettes.”
“Schlatt?” The demand is as careless and gravelly as he remembered. He died and now he’s trapped in an animated nightmare. “Please don’t hit me -”
“It’s fine," says a different voice. Wilbur is here too? That’s not surprising, though, where else would he be? “There’s no pain in the afterlife. So it doesn’t matter.”
“I -” he clears his throat, he can still taste the blood in it, “I guess not.”
“Are you gonna be useful for once?” Schlatt cuts in, and despite himself, Tubbo flinches. He can’t hurt him. Can’t hurt him. Can’t harm him or cause him pain anymore. So why’s he still scared into submission? He’s always been agreeable, considerate, weak.
“I-I just got here,” he stammers, “I don’t know how to get you anything--”
Schlatt coughs loudly, and Tubbo can hear phlegm smacking the invisible ground. “Then what’s the fucking point of you?”
“Hey now,” Wilbur shushes without any conviction, “Give him a moment. He’ll learn. I’ve got a lot to teach him.” He addresses the new arrival. “This will be fun.”
Tubbo blinks repeatedly, though there’s no longer much substance to his lids or lashes. “Why can’t I see anything?”
“Give your eyes some time,” Wilbur counsels, “to adjust to the dark.”
So he waits, rocking in place, wrapped around his knees. Wilbur’s right, he’s in no real discomfort from the wound that killed him, but he doesn’t exactly feel healthy either. The ground is slick, like a wet silk sheet left out in an overnight frost. “We can - get things, you said? What things?”
“Whatever we like,” says Wilbur, “with a little practice.”
“Okay.” Tubbo’s always been diligent. He needs a project, any sort of task that will distract him from the horrible reality of his fate. “Ready when you are.”
“Let’s start,” a hand waves in front of his face, only visible as a faint motion blur, “with the cigarettes.”
He frowns. “Why can’t Schlatt get his own?”
“Because he’s a lazy fucking sod. Same reason he couldn’t fight his own wars or win his own election.”
“Heard that,” and the complaint is followed by a loud drag and a wet wheeze. “Get on with it. I’m re-lighting my stubs.”
“Gross,” Wilbur mutters, and turns his back. He’s less than a silhouette, but Tubbo no longer feels completely alone. “To get something, to manifest it, there’s sort of a trick that I can’t describe. Everyone figures it out eventually. Some people take longer than others. This guy,” he gestures over his shoulder, “not the brightest sheep in the slaughterhouse.” He pats Tubbo on the back. “Think about it. Reach for them. Go on now. I bet you’ll be a natural.”
He is nothing like Schlatt. He thinks of white smoke slipping under closed doors. Round ember-burns, on his clothing, never his skin, because Schlatt wasn’t an animal. Until he was. Tubbo has plenty of burn scars now, and the dictator is to blame. But. Focus. Schlatt holding out a lighter to his right-hand-man. “Hand-rolled, Tubbo. The very best.” Pressure. Kindness. Familiarity. Almost fatherly affection.
“Don’t those cause cancer?” he’d asked timidly, and Schlatt had laughed an uproar.
“Tubbo, exactly how long do you think you’re going to live?”
They’re standing on the balcony of a whitehouse, the city sparkling with all the decorations Tubbo could whip up on a ten-dollar budget. The banners are adorned with a pattern that Schlatt mocks for its resemblance to internal organs. “You’re the guy who made this all happen. You’re my right hand man, and you should be proud.” He takes the moistened paper from his lips. “Go on now. This nation belongs to me, and for tonight, I say we fucking enjoy ourselves.”
Burning inside his lungs. Burning.
There’s a little cardboard packet, in the afterlife, in his hand. He blinks in shock.
“Damn,” breathes Wilbur, “This is why I’ve always liked you.”
***
He spins in sock-feet on the glassy-smooth floor, his shoes long-since unnecessary. “It’s kinda boring here.”
“I’m sure,” says Wilbur, “That you’ll find something to occupy your time.” Tubbo hears a shuffling of cards. The void is inky-black as ever, but when he focuses real hard, he can make out the edges of things. But this new world is still achingly colorless.
“I’ve got some pills for you to try,” Schlatt offers, “think there’s something wrong with this batch, actually. But that’s part of the excitement.”
“I don’t want to sit around and do drugs,” he mutters, brushing a strand of hair behind his ear.
“Why not?” he coughs again, loud and obnoxious. “We’re all fucking dead. May as well turn to whatever makes us happy.”
But Tubbo’s not happy here . His emotions are as dim as the noncommittal light. And he doesn’t think that any weird chemical cocktails will give him a sense of fulfillment.
“Get yourself a nice novel to read,” Wilbur mumbles, dealing out another round of solitaire, “and stop judging us.”
He tries, but words slip off the page. “I’m a slow reader,” he admits.
“So what? You’ve got nothing but time.”
He considers asking Wilbur for help, but that’s never worked before. The man curls into his unwashed trenchcoat and returns his heavy focus to the cards.
He knows this book by heart. That’s probably why he was able to summon it in the first place. But Tubbo’s nothing if he doesn’t rise to a challenge. There was a novel on his nightstand before he died, and now he’ll never know how it ends. Unless -
“Damn,” Wilbur lets out a low whistle, “That shouldn’t even be possible.”
The last chapter is a disappointment anyways. The sidekick sacrifices himself, and it doesn’t feel like any sort of closure or resolution.
Tubbo has always cared about preserving history. The cruelest part of Doomsday was the destruction of New L’Manberg’s library: so many lessons lost to time, texts incinerated into blue smoke. He concentrates, and summons into his hand the First Decree. “No fireworks,” he reads unsteadily, “No armor worn inside city limits. Honor democracy. Hold an election in seventy days time.” He looks up at Wilbur and bites his tongue. “Is this what you would have wanted? Are you proud of me?”
The dead man just sighs and shakes his head. “Your country was never even supposed to exist. How do you still not get that?”
He thinks he can conjure up a time when his friend was not so sullen and sad. “Remember your Declaration of Independance?” He gives Wilbur a thin leaflet. “‘Suck it, Green booooiiii,’ y’know?”
His hands crumple the old document, and his face is sallow, embittered. “Green boy won.”
“Not yet,” Tubbo says cautiously, “Because Tommy’s still out there, right? Still fighting?”
“You were all he ever cared for,” says Wilbur, “And you died. Tommy is broken now.”
“No, no, I don’t believe that.” He stares at the ground. His vision is returning, but there’s very little to look at in the void. “He’ll be alright without me. Tommy will find something else to care about.” Tubbo smiles to himself. “H-he wrote something that he never let me read… I wonder if I could --”
“Tubbo,” Wilbur rubs at his eyes like he has a migraine, “It’s so very unavailable for a reason.”
***
The ram-horned man lies comatose on his stomach, eyes half-lidded. Even through the blurry particulate darkness, Tubbo can see spit and vomit dried on his chin. “Is Schlatt okay?”
Wilbur’s returned to his cards. He isn’t playing right now, just shuffling. “Who cares?” He bends the deck back in an elegant bridge.
“It’s just - he snorted something new, and now he hasn’t spoken in a week. D’you think he overdosed?”
“He’s just resting,” says Wil, cutting the cards into two even stacks. “We’re allowed to do that, you know? Rest in peace?”
His caved-in chest rises and falls, irregular, ragged. “Does he look peaceful to you?”
“Pretty much.” And the cards fold together again, rustling. “Join me for a round of solitaire?”
Tubbo frowns. “Isn’t that a game for one person?”
“Doesn’t have to be.”
He shrugs in vague consent and they lay out two parallel lines of cards. Wilbur uncovers his ace of hearts, but refuses to play it to the center. “Come on, man,” he complains, rocking on his heels, “delay of game.”
“We’ve got time,” Wil says blandly, “It’s all part of the strategy.” He rifles through his deck by threes.
“I always wanted to write a memoir,” Tubbo confesses. “Never got a chance. I was gonna wait until I got old.”
“Oops,” says Wilbur. He places his queen of spades on a red king and turns over the card underneath.
“Seventeen is too young to die, I think,” he mumbles under his breath. “But sixteen is even younger. So I’m glad it wasn’t Tommy. Better for it to have been me.” Wilbur flashes through the first five clubs, shutting him out. “Still, I wonder what kind of life I would have had.” He weakly plays a six from his deck. “Bet I could find an answer.”
Wil rolls his eyes. “Finish this game first.”
They’ve gotten stuck the last seven consecutive rounds. That’s the thing about competitive solitaire with Wilbur Soot - he’d rather fuck himself over than let his opponent take the victory. “Fine,” says Tubbo, frustration and disgust rising in his throat as the game ticks down to yet another stalemate. “I’m done. Wake Schlatt if you want to play again.”
The memoir he finds is handwritten in several colors of ink. The pages are soft and well-worn. “I adopt a son,” he murmurs, “I get married. I get to have a family. I feel loved.” His stomach feels sour with disappointment. “Dream took this away from me.”
“Why’d he kill you?” asks Wilbur, “What’d you do?”
“N-nothing,” he stutters. “He just said I was dried up.” His face is hot with an unfamiliar emotion: not guilt or dread or caution. Maybe rage. “I think I want to be interesting.”
“Blow up a country,” says Wilbur, with no inflection. He points at Schlatt’s limp body. “Kill endangered wildlife. Speak with a funny mic.”
“Is that the only way to get recognition around here?” he shakes his head. “Be destructive? Stupid? Impulsive? Evil? Cruel?”
“Maybe not the only way.” Wilbur has returned to shuffling his cards. The noise of waxed cardstock slapping together is maddening. “But definitely the easiest one.”
“I don’t want to be like Schlatt. I don’t want to be like you.” He draws himself up to his full height, though he knows it’s not impressive. “I’ll find a way, okay? No matter how difficult.”
“Sure,” says Wilbur, as a bridge collapses in his hands, spewing a few stray cards to the floor, “Be good. Go ahead and try your best.”
***
The pages stack a foot wide, even though they’re thin as onion-skin. Tubbo holds the massive volume gingerly - one wrong move and he’ll break its fragile spine. “Hey Wilbur, look what I found! It’s a summary of the fate of the universe.”
Wilbur shrugs noncommittally and flips to the very last page. “Oh,” he says softly, “Heat death. Spread too thin. Gradual loss of entropy. So that’s it, then.”
Tubbo staggers backward. “Don’t you want to read the rest?”
“Who cares?” He sniffs. “No matter what happens in the meantime, it all gets destroyed in the end. The laws of physics break down, pull apart. The universe dies cold.”
“I still think,” Tubbo says carefully, “That the rest of it matters. Matters to me. And I’m going to read.”
In the beginning, there was nothing but a singularity, a speck. Infinitely small, infinitely dense. No darkness, no light, no space. Everything that will ever be sat shoulder-to-shoulder in that bland, dimensionless, void. And when you die, you return. You return. It feels natural as a womb, you’re meant to be here. You’re used to it. The afterlife is boring. It’s nothing, but contains everything, if only you know how to look.
Schlatt blinks awake and interrupts him before he can finish the first chapter. “I dreamt I was an Egyptian Pharaoh,” he announces, “I had godly ancestry, absurd wealth, and just the biggest dick.”
“I’m tired of being scared of you,” Tubbo tells him. “You had me killed, once. But it’s not like you can do it again.”
“Not like I need to.” He pokes Tubbo’s face. “I’m one-third of the reason you’re here. You still have my scars.”
“All of us were Presidents. Now all of us are dead.” He has to go back and reread a paragraph about how clouds of hydrogen condensed into the first stars. He drags a finger down the lines to mark his place. “Wonder if that means anything.”
“Nothing means anything,” says Wilbur, “When are you gonna realize?”
“I bet you were a terrible leader,” says Schlatt. He bites the filter off his cigarette and swallows it. “Nicotine hits my brain faster this way.”
***
There’s a swirling, blinking blur appeared in the center of them and getting louder all the time. Wilbur mutters that it’s disrupting his game, and Schlatt tells him to lighten up. “--you fucking lie to me, Dream!” Quiet and metallic, like it’s coming through a tin-can telephone. “I won’t listen to you, why should I do ANYTHING you say? You killed Tubbo, you fucking KILLED TUBBO!”
“...Tommy?” his chest feels tight, he can’t inhale.
“The book’s not real… PROVE it, then. Prove it! Bring him back right here, right now. I’m not gonna believe you unless you use it --”
Tommy’s form glows with radiant light. His body is immaterial, his nose is broken, his face is discolored.
“What do you mean you have a better way to -- no, NO, stop it-stop-it-stop-it-stop-STOP--”
His light dims, then quenches fully. He goes silent and solid and collapses limp into Tubbo’s arms. “Oh no,” says Wilbur gleefully, “Fuck.”
Schlatt shrugs and coughs up spit. “Well, that was predictable.”
“Both of you, g-get away from him.” He shoots the dead men a venomous glare and drags his friend’s body a few meters distant. “Just give us some space, for god’s sake.” He sits and positions Tommy’s head tenderly in his lap, stroking his blond hair and whispering reassurances. He’ll wake up blind, and Tubbo doesn’t want him to feel alone, even for an instant. Tommy gives a wet gulp, and his breathing rattles with panic. “You’re safe. No one can hurt you. I’m here. It’s me.”
“...tubbo?” He shakes his head as if trying to clear water out of his ears. “Listen to me Tubbo I’ll save you I’ll get you back I’m getting you back I’m--”
He squeezes Tommy’s hand and blocks his own tears. “But how?”
“Why bother?” asks Wilbur.
“You’re just dead,” Schlatt laughs. “That’s not a rescue mission.”
“He hit me,” Tommy hiccups. “He beat me to death - he just kept hitting me until I died - I told him to STOP.”
“Who? Dream?”
Tommy stiffens in his arms. “Don’t say it -”
“Sorry,” Wilbur cuts in, “But he was always gonna be the one to kill you.”
“It hurt so much,” he whimpers, “H-he broke my skull...there’s a bad taste in my mouth. I felt all of it he snapped my ribs I couldn’t breathe there was blood in my brain and coming out my nose--”
“Did I ever teach you how to play competitive solitaire?”
***
Tommy folds his arms over his chest. “I hate it here. I hate it so much.”
“Did you know Tyrannosaurus Rex had feathers? I do now. They were blue and gold. Want to see a picture?”
“It’s too fucking dark,” he slaps his friend away, “to see anything.”
“I know,” says Tubbo, “I remember that part. But your eyes will adjust soon.”
“I don’t want them to,” he growls low in his throat, “I don’t accept that I’m dead. I refuse to get used to this.”
“Take all the time that you need.” He pats the back of his hand, and Tommy flinches away.
“Don’t touch me - it scares the shit out of me when you creep up like that.”
“Sorry.” Tommy is sulking. He needs space and he needs time. Tubbo returns to his book. He’s gotten as far as the Jurassic Era.
“This is bullshit.” He’s up now, and pacing. “I want Sam I want Phil I want my hotel. I want to go Home, I want to see the sun. I want I want I want --”
“Here,” says Tubbo, and an old-fashioned jukebox appears between the two of them, “Which disc should we listen to first?”
“H-” Tommy wheezes, “How the fuck did you do that?”
He hands over a vinyl that’s white and purple in the center.
“Is that the real mellohi?” He places his disc on the spindle and lowers the needle. “Was it always this easy?”
Tubbo smiles. “I thought you might like that trick.”
“I do like it. I do.” His milky eyes are filled with sincerity and longing. “But Tubbo - this is still bullshit. Neither one of us are supposed to be here. I’m never gonna forget that we should have lived.”
***
Tommy lies coiled in the fetal position. He groans. “My stomach hurts.”
“Hurts?” It’s the afterlife. Nothing hurts. That’s the whole point.
“Like someone’s got ahold of my intestines and they’re trying to pull out a knot through my belly button. Ah! FUCK.” He jerks.
Tubbo stands over him, concerned-confused-terrified. “I don’t understand what’s happening, I’m sorry, I--” The boy grunts in pain as he writhes across the floor. “Oh God, l-listen to me, it’s gonna be alright, can you hear me? Tommy, Tommy please!”
He gasps. His eyes flick rapidly about, searching or deep in a dream. His body goes crunchy around the edges, dissolves to gravel, to sand, to flour, to fine silt, and then there’s nothing left of him.
Tubbo is in shock. He can’t close his mouth. “What - what. What just happened? What the fuck.”
“I think,” says Schlatt, poisonously smug. His arms are splayed behind him, his legs crossed. “I think your buddy just got brought back to life.”
Tubbo shakes. There’s itchy sweat on his face.
“It’s for the best,” says Wilbur. “I’m happy for him, honestly. And for us. He didn’t fit in here, and he always cheated at cards.”
***
He snaps the book closed and brushes lovingly at the dust jacket. “Well, that’s it. I’m done. I read the whole story.”
“Fuckin’ straight-edge nerd.”
Wilbur smirks. “Did my spoilers ruin it for you?”
“Not at all.” Tubbo has always been able to enjoy things, even if he already knows the ending. He liked building a nation, though he wasn’t surprised when it burnt down. He’s Tubbo; he tends to fail. The meantime matters. His head is heavy with knowledge, yet he feels carefree as a cloud. “I know everything now.”
“Tell us, won’t you?” Wil’s voice drips with sarcasm. Tubbo doesn’t care.
“I can see the past and the future.”
“Yeah? We’re in a dark fucking void. Go a thousand years backwards or forwards and it looks exactly the same.” He huddles his coat around his shoulders. “Shit tourism.”
“I know what it feels like to be a honeybee.”
“An insignificant insect,” growls Schlatt, “buzzing by my ear? Oh, get swatted.”
“You get one sting. You’ll die to protect your hive. And grown men won’t admit that they’re scared of you.”
“Shut up, freak. I’m trying to sleep.”
“I know how Schlatt really died.”
“What do you mean?” There’s an edge of mockery in Wilbur’s tone, hard to tell where it’s directed. “Stroke, or heart attack, right?”
Tubbo just laughs. “That’s not a feature of Minecraft. People don’t just have heart attacks.”
“Well, I did.”
“Don’t you wanna know?” he teases. “It was Quackity. He mixed cadmium dust into your vat of protein powder and you never even noticed.”
Wilbur nudges Schlatt’s shoulder and sneers.
“I know who Fundy voted for in the first election.”
His face falls. “...how about you keep that one to yourself?”
Tubbo knows everything now. But there’s one thing he’ll never understand: his companions’ apathy. The bleakness of the void hides infinite possibility, but all the other dead men want is chemical stupor or equally mind-numbing card games.
He’s run out of things to read.
“Deal me in, Wilbur,” he sighs deeply.
“No. It’s not fun to play with you. You win every single round.” He pouts like a child. “That shouldn’t even be possible.”
He shrugs. “How could I be cheating? They’re your cards. You shuffle and you deal.”
“I don’t know.” His voice is small. “I just hate losing.”
“Oh,” he answers, laced with sympathy, “I’ll let you win a round if you like.” No response. “Wil? You still there?” A painful tug in his gut. He lets go of the ace he’s holding. It belongs to Wilbur, and Tubbo doesn’t steal from dead men. A soap bubble pops inside of his cranium, and it all goes bleary-fuzzy-black.
***
Someone prods his neck. Real heat, real pressure, Tubbo can feel his heartbeat thrum against fingertips and he would scream with joy except his mouth is so dry it might as well be glued shut. “He’s back.” Sounds like Dream’s voice if you dropped it and it shattered like a glass ornament. “Don’t say I never did anything for you.” He pries open his eyes. They’re gummy. All he can see is smears of light and color. Color!
Red blur, pink face. Someone is squeezing him way too tight. He might cry. Light blue, that’s the sky. Maybe. Hard to be sure. Green underneath him. Prickly, ticklish. Sepia-earth with subtle give. A thousand indecipherable voices twining together into a macrame of greeting. Louder than he remembers. After the festival, his ears were always dull - Are they fixed?
“Uh,” he tests, the sound almost completely lost in the cave of his mouth. “Um.”
“Give him something to drink - get a regeneration potion - he needs some fucking SPACE - he needs eyedrops--”
“I…” This is much too much. He presses his hands to the side of his head and mumbles, “quiet.”
“Everyone shut the fuck up,” calls Tommy, loud as ever, but the people listen. Now all Tubbo can hear is beetles in the grass and wind playing with his hair, a tear crawling down a cheek, his own stomach gurgling. The little sounds expand to fill the space and they’re too much anyway. “Tubbo,” says his friend in a stage whisper that’s basically just a breathier scream, “It really fucking sucks at first but you’re gonna feel almost normal in twenty-four hours.”
Tears sting in his ducts. It’s a relief. Now that his eyes are wet, they’re working better. Tommy’s hands twitch and there are green and yellow smudges all over his face. Really old bruises. His cheeks are salmon with exhilaration.
Dream has been led several meters away from them, but he’s staring at Tubbo with pure disgust and malice. Tubbo holds his gaze. The mask is gone, one of his green eyes has been scooped out. His nose is a misshapen lump of cartilage, broken so severely that each breath whistles. Half of his fingers are gone, scissored off at different joints. His wrists are cuffed, one arm attached to Sapnap and the other to Sam. “W-what…?”
Tommy winces. “I don’t like to think about it either. But, but, it had to happen. It was the only way to--” He presses his face into the crown of Tubbo’s hair and sobs.
“You…” it’s hard to get the words out, “okay?”
“I’ve-” he laughs, and his tears run so freely that Tubbo’s scalp gets wet, “had a shitty three-and-a-half months.”
Someone’s brought Tubbo a sugary drink, and he takes small sips. It coats his throat like honey-cough-syrup. “I’m sorry,” he murmurs, “if I’m not the way you remember me.”
“That’s-o-kay,” Tommy rushes “I missed you so so much and I’m glad you’re back and I don’t care if you have trauma--”
“Not quite what I meant.” There’s an inchworm dangling on a thread and he can name each one of its ancestors from mother-father to single-celled-organism. A piece of white-flecked granite rests by his feet, a thousand years from now a baby will put it in his mouth and choke to death; he tucks the stone away in his pocket. “Dream called me a pawn - life’s more complicated than chess, but I still get the feeling I could play it like a board game.”
Tommy grips his shoulders and giggles like he can’t quite process. That’s fine.
“I changed a lot. I’m not really human anymore. But I like this better.”
“Fuck,” mutters Tommy, “Everything I’ve been through, I think it’s just made me worse. I see a stupid hole in the ground and I want to start crying.”
“I used to feel that way about explosives,” says Tubbo, “Schlatt and Wilbur tormented me for it. So a couple years in, afterlife-time, I started setting off firecrackers, louder and louder, closer and closer to my face until it didn’t make me feel anything, anymore.” Took fifteen straight weeks. “I’m cured. It's great.”
“I’m… glad that worked for you, big man.” Tommy’s posture is uneasy, his hands tucked underneath his arms.
“You’ll be okay too,” he promises, “I’m still me. You’re still you.”
Tommy’s not a hero, except that he’s been to hell and back to rescue a friend, and that’s what heroes do. Classical heroes get happy endings sometimes, though Wilbur would point out that the only true ending is the heat death of the universe. That’s far away, but it’s not happy, it’s bland.
Tubbo’s not a god, but only because he’s seen every corner of time and space and realized gods don’t exist. As soon as dexterity returns to his fingers, he rigs up a perpetual motion machine to the power grid and bathes his home in light. It’s so easy to be benevolent.
He’s seen cosmic horrors beyond his wildest comprehension, but nothing broke his mind. He didn’t expect it to.
Some people can handle it.