Chapter Text
it takes time, for forgiveness.
for tommy to forgive the cruel words. for tubbo to forgive the false hope. for niki to forgive being forgotten. for eret to forgive his hatred. for quackity to forgive the bombs under his country. for fundy to forgive his father. for technoblade to forgive his government. for his father to forgive his request.
(for wilbur to forgive himself.)
but in forgiveness, they rebuild.
niki is named president after phil vetoes placing children in positions of extreme power. from there it is self elimination -- quackity for his collaboration with schlatt, eret for his betrayal, fundy for his pain. and so there is niki.
president is a title that suits niki, as she directs their people to gather supplies, as she drafts new laws, as she signs a constitution into being, as she sits at the base of their new platform and plants flowers. president is what they call her teasingly -- tommy when he breaks a window, tubbo when he leans out his window, eret when they meet diplomatically, quackity when he knocks on the white house door, fundy when he passes her papers in the office, technoblade when he buys her bread, phil when she visits their house.
(wilbur when they sit together on his bed and reminisce about the early days of their friendship.)
quackity and fundy take their places as her right hand men, though they take no title other than that. they work together to rebuild the nation, carrying piles of wood high in their arms, laughing at each other when they trip and drop all their materials, only to do the same moments later. the pair are a common sight around the town, only traveling together meeting the other countrymen on the path -- tommy in the river by the nation, tubbo picking flowers in a field, niki checking in on their progress at lunch, eret passing through the community house, technoblade in the snowy hills to the north, phil when they ask about bird nests and what might be necessary for one.
(wilbur, when he tentatively approaches the part of the path they are working on, a hand lifted in a half wave.)
with his once promised title taken, tubbo returns to childhood, takes interest in what he once wanted again. he remembers long forgotten plans, makes machines that make matter, tinkers with redstone that stains his hands and laughs like he hasn't in a very long time when things explode. everyone has discovered him after a loud bang, covered in ash and attempting to put out the small fire, laughing his ass off. tommy in the early morning when he runs down to their basement, niki turning the corner after dropping off lunch for her right hand men, eret behind his castle where he was tinkering with the beacons, quackity when he tries to automate wall building, fundy when he attempts to trap his base, technoblade while bringing tommy back a book on greek figures, phil in the kitchen as he attempts to heat up tea.
(wilbur sees him outside his window, while he tries to make a machine that will dispense flowers into his room every morning, and he laughs so hard he cries.)
eret goes back to being king, though in these times it mostly means gifting funds to rebuilding efforts and attempting to find a way to contain dream. he has long meetings with niki where they talk about leadership, and sometimes he will bring wine and they will watch the sunset behind the flag and talk about books and paintings and his museum. he likes to gather the historical items, and he visits everyone, requesting their stories and any books or maps they can spare -- tommy regales him with the story of the disk war, tubbo hands him a red tie wordlessly, niki passes him the key to her bakery, quackity hands him one of his many beanies, fundy gives him a blanket that looks like it could barely stretch over his arm, technoblade an iron sword nearly shattered, phil a map of the world he wandered before he settled down with wilbur.
(wilbur for his part gave lots -- election documents, the declaration of independence, half completed recipes for potions, and, hesitantly, a journal filled with long passages written by lamplight.)
government is still a touchy subject for technoblade, he still feels the sting of betrayal in the flag of l’manberg, but phil had always been able to make his old friend see sense, and this time was no different. the withers were burned, he had made it a huge party, swearing himself to pacifism. he moved to the arctic, left a patch of land open for if there were ever any others who wanted to join him. he farmed, and he met with those he had hurt and the ones who hurt him -- tommy who he told the true story of theseus to, tubbo who he showed exactly how to dodge fireworks and then how to shoot them, niki who he greets as "government," eret who talks about starting a book club, quackity who asks him timidly about bloodlust, fundy who builds massive dirt walls around his house and then helps him remove them the next day, phil who has weekly lunches with him where they reminisce about their days of world domination.
(wilbur sometimes sees him during these lunches, when he will creep down from his bedroom and smile weakly at technoblade, and maybe someday they’ll speak about the time in that ravine, but for now they smile.)
phil took up home in l’manberg, now. he looked after them, like a mother hen, was constantly flitting around the land, offering a kind smile and helpful hand. his house was one of light and life, his porch covered in plants and chairs and there is always an interesting story whenever you point out one of the paintings or trinkets on his walls -- tommy hears about pirates on a vast open sea when he points out a golden lamp, tubbo about giants who lived in forests with trees taller than mountains when he finds a rug made of a massive leaf, he tells niki about the empress he met in the middle of the nether when she finds a carved blaze rod in his jewelry box, eret asks about the painting of a woman dressed in white and hears about the goddess phil met long long ago, quackity finds a fishing rod tucked in a closet and phil tells him of the ocean god, fundy spies a book embossed in golden letters that curl so much he cannot read it and phil speaks about a villager he met who wrote in the strange font, and when technoblade asks about why phil wears his broad white and green hat he tells him about the time his little boy had sewn it himself for months just for his birthday.
(wilbur has heard all these tales before, but sometimes, when phil comes up to his room and asks if he will come out that day he will ask about one of them, just to hear his father lost in a story again.)
and tommy, he is exactly as he was always meant to be. he has a home at the edge of l'manberg he shares with tubbo, and it is terrible, made of cobble and oak and diatrite, and it is the only building that quackity and fundy aren't allowed to modify. he is loud and he runs around the streets of the city screaming, and sometimes he will stand outside peoples windows and throw rocks until they entertain him. and he plays music, collects disks and will sometimes sit on his porch and just listen. and he visits everyone, as often as he can -- tubbo in their very own basement, making sure he hasn't set fire to himself, niki when it nears midnight and she still pores over a document, eret when he hears about the idea of a prison to petition it to be stopped, quackity who shows him his new house in the dream smp, fundy who tells him about visiting sally, technoblade who braids his hair and hands him a ring made of emerald, and phil who smiles softly when tommy asks after wilbur.
(it takes a long time before wilbur lets tommy visit him, before he can look his right hand man in the eyes and tell him he is sorry, but the day he does tommy holds him just as tight as he did on that terrible day.)
and they keep going, and keep living, and maybe that is enough.