Chapter Text
8
Tubbo’s friends are dead.
Tubbo’s friends are dead and he’s still alive.
He knew, distantly, about survivor’s guilt. He just never knew he would experience it himself.
What is there left for him? Dream won. There’s no more L’Manberg. Not when its founders are…
Why Tubbo? What did he ever do to deserve to live when everyone else…
He keeps waiting for Tommy to walk through that door again. For all of this to be some terrible nightmare that he'll finally wake up from.
But he won't. Because he's awake and this is real and they're really...
Tubbo may have been an optimist before but Tommy was the one with all the hope. The belief that things would work out in the end. The certainty that they would come out of it on top.
But they didn’t and he didn’t and Tommy is…
Tommy’s…
And Tubbo’s…
He just hopes when he goes to meet them again that they’ll forgive him for giving up.
17
Tommy was raving mad that morning.
Going off about a trap and impending betrayal and the death of them all.
It was absurd. It was crazed. How were they supposed to know that he spoke the truth?
Tubbo should have believed him. Tommy always believed him, no matter how outlandish or farfetched what he said could be.
Wilbur should have believed him. Tommy may have been one to be hyperbolic, to prank and to partake in mischief, but when it mattered, Tommy was not a liar.
Tommy had tried to disassemble the trap but was found and killed for his efforts. He tried to warn them and he died trying to save them.
They would not let Tommy die in vain. L’Manberg would get its revenge.
19
The two of them had always been clingy, but never like this. Not the way Tommy grips onto Tubbo like he’s a lifeline, trying to silence muffled sobs as he hides his face in Tubbo’s shoulder.
Tubbo tries to pry information out of Tommy, futile attempts to understand what has got his best friend in hysterics.
But he can’t get a solid answer. Just incoherent sobs as Tommy gasps for air and holds onto Tubbo.
“I don’t know if I’m alive anymore,” Tommy says, voice muffled into Tubbo’s shirt, and Tubbo’s grip tightens.
“You are,” Tubbo says. “You’re alive. You’re right here.”
Tubbo murmurs a stream of reassurances to the inconsolable boy.
When the news hits, that Eret had betrayed them and killed Wilbur in the control room, Tommy goes to confront Dream himself. Tubbo begs him not to, but Tommy has a one track mind, insisting he has to.
And then Tommy dies by Dream’s hand, just as Wilbur had just hours before.
Tubbo knows that he’s next. That there’s no chance he’ll survive the Dream Team’s wrath.
And he doesn’t know if he wants to.
25
Eret had never thought Tommy to be intimidating, let alone someone to be feared, but when the boy approaches him with a dagger and a manic gaze, they don’t know what to expect.
“Hey, Tommy,” Eret says cautiously. “You alright?”
“I will be,” Tommy says, before sending a punch into Eret’s temple, sending them falling limp onto the ground into the darkness of unconsciousness.
When they come to, they’re bound to a chair, Tommy flipping his dagger mindlessly, his fingers cut up from where the dagger’s hilt must have slipped out of his grasp and its blade grazed his skin.
“Oh good,” Tommy says, voice uncharacteristically flat. “You’re finally awake.”
“Tommy,” Eret says slowly. “What are you doing?”
“Doing what I need to survive.” He holds the dagger up to Eret’s throat. “When did you start working for Dream?”
Eret chuckles nervously. “I don’t—”
Tommy stabs into Eret’s hand, the blade meeting the wood of the chair as it digs through cleanly. Eret lets out a tortured scream. They look at Tommy with petrified, wide eyes.
“Want to try that again?” Tommy asks.
Eret tries to reply but the pain shoots through their body. Tommy pulls the dagger out and they let out another scream, feeling as the blood gushes from the wound.
“What do you want to know?”
It goes on like that for God knows how long. Eret can’t keep track of the seconds, minutes, hours, too lost in the haze of the pain. When they hesitate, Tommy slices once more into their skin.
Tommy has a one track mind, hungry for information, undeterred by Eret’s cries and shouts and pleads.
Their vision, blurry with tear, starts to grow fuzzy around the edges. They’ve said all they know, given all they can give, and they are relieved to realize that Tommy must realize it too, satisfied with the information he collected.
And as the darkness fills their vision, they catch sight of Tommy plunging his blood soaked dagger into his own throat.
40
Tommy is going to kill himself if he keeps up like this.
Wilbur watches with concern as Tommy continues to practice himself to the bone, relentless as he makes the shot over and over again.
“You need to take a break,” he tries to tell Tommy.
“I can’t,” Tommy says, eyes determined, hardened with age that Wilbur has missed him experience, as he draws back the strings once more and hits his target in the bullseye, slicing through the arrow that was in it before.
Wilbur truly believes that Tommy can make the shot. But with how much he’s pushing himself and his body, he fears that he will have the skill but not the strength.
So when the arrow hits Tommy in the heart, his exhausted body not even bringing the bow up fast enough, the grief consumes Wilbur as he screams out for the boy who died trying to save his dream.
49
How did he miss this? How could he have missed this?
Wilbur knows that the stress of the elections have taken a toll on him and Tommy both, and admittedly it has made him snap at the boy more than once, and in the moment it felt justified. Tommy had let his mouth run wild during the debates, as he always does, saying things so unprofessional and brash that Wilbur had to reprimand him for it.
But when he finds Tommy an hour later in his room, lying in a puddle of his own blood, dagger lodged deep in his throat, skin gone cold and eyes staring unblinking at the ceiling, Wilbur realizes that none of it mattered. None of it mattered if it meant Tommy would do something like this because of it. Or maybe it mattered too much. Maybe it mattered so much more to Tommy than he realized. But it doesn’t feel like it. Nothing matters now that Tommy’s gone. Now that Tommy is dead.
What was the last thing Wilbur said to Tommy? He can’t even remember, his angry words a blur in his memory. Did Tommy die thinking Wilbur hated him? Did Tommy die feeling like a disappointment? Like a failure?
Because he was none of those things. He would never be.
But he’ll never be anything now. Because he’s dead.
66
“I know I’m not going to win! Do you think I don’t know that? I’m going up against my father, the beloved general of the War for Independence and the guy that got it for us! Of course I’m not going to win! But I just want my father to be proud of me for once in my life. I just want him to care about me but all he cares about is you. He tells you how proud he is of you constantly and he never, never, says that to me the way he does to you because I know I will never be enough for him.”
When Wilbur found Tommy, dagger in his throat, long dead by his own hand, Fundy didn’t know what to think.
Wilbur, through sobs and tears, screams to a God he didn’t believe in, scrambling to understand what possibly could have led Tommy to do such a thing. To take his life when things were just looking up.
And Fundy can’t help but blame himself. Was what he said to Tommy the final push? How long had Tommy been feeling in such a way? How did Fundy not realize how much the boy was struggling? He’d been comparing himself to him for so long, thinking he was this perfect icon of his father’s adoration. But he had been teetering a danger line this entire time.
And now he’s gone. He’s gone and Fundy’s still here and it’s clear that it was never a competition to Tommy. Fundy had built it up in his mind, like Tommy had somehow stolen his father’s attention with malice. But no. It was Fundy’s own insecurity and silence that blinded him and kept him from being the son he believed to be worthy of his father’s love.
STOP
“How can I live with it? Knowing that I could change it for the better?”
“You just do. You live and you learn and you see how it plays out because of what you chose to do. And you keep making choices and those choices have their consequences and you live with whatever comes with it. You live.”
“I don’t know if I can.”
“You can. You can and you will. Tommy, what if one day you try to restart and you don’t come back? What then?”
“I… never thought about it.”
“Well I am. And I know I can’t lose you. I don’t know what I would do if I did.”
“I’m not going anywhere, Tubbo.”
“You better not.”
“I’ll live. For you.”