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This is something true about L’Manberg: it is built from flame. In the very beginning, before their nation even had a flag, Tubbo handed Wilbur Soot a stack of blaze rods that burned stronger than the knocks on their metal door. Fire was a warning-- Sapnap, standing in front of a forest that he did not yet know the importance of-- and it was a betrayal, a death sentence time and time again.
Fire was the torches lighting Pogtopia. Fire was a flag made from wool. Fire was a rocket or a thousand, set off with a laugh.
Fire was Wilbur, one hand gripping a handwritten constitution and the other reaching for a button.
This is something true about fire: it isn’t that hard to start, as long as someone has the tools. There is flint and steel, there is lava, and there is TNT. It is very, very easy for something to be reduced to ashes, and once it is gone, it will never come back. It is permanent, in a way that not many things have the chance to be.
This is something true about Niki Nihachu: before Wilbur died, she always saw herself as a spark, emotion and passion for a fleeting second until she inevitably softened. Before she built an entire city with her own hands, she thought that there was no way for her to sustain her passion for long enough to overwhelm everything else about her.
( She was wrong, of course.)
(She shouldn’t have had to be.)
///
Wilbur is the one who first warns Niki about Eret.
“He’s not to be trusted,” he says, suddenly very serious. “He’s done… he’s done terrible things! He’s a pretentious man, and beyond that, a traitor. His voice isn’t even that attractive, and yet he managed to trick us all!”
On her other side, Tommy laughs. “Jealous much, Wilbur?”
“Absolutely fucking not! Just-- Niki, promise me. Promise me that you won’t listen to him over me.”
Five minutes later, Tommy pulls her aside halfway through her tour of L’Manberg. “Wilbur’s right, you know,” he mutters. “He may be a jealous bastard, but Eret is so much worse. He’s a liar, and he manipulates, and it would be a mistake to ever fucking trust him.”
And Niki does not listen.
She tells Eret all of her plans to help Wilbur escape exile. She trusts Eret with her bakery, with her pets, with her dreams.
When Eret loses his crown, she holds them in her arms and promises them that they are worth so much more than Dream thinks they are. She stands beside them as they fight for the nation that they were supposed to leave behind.
And it doesn’t fucking matter.
And L’Manberg becomes a crater in the ground despite the fact that, this time, Eret is not the one who does it.
Eret stays behind, to help rebuild what was lost.
Niki does not.
When she parts with the ruins of L’Manberg, nobody comes with her.
///
More than anything else that she is left with after L’Manberg is destroyed, Niki loves her city.
She makes torches to light everything with a gentle glow, and she digs each room out until it feels as open as the world that she is hiding from.
It works. The entrance room is a world unto itself, and the bridge that crosses it makes her feel like she is flying.
This is not L’Manberg, vulnerable and built on ideas that cannot stand. But it’s not Pogtopia, either. It exists for a purpose, and it is in a cavern, but this cavern is so much brighter than the one that Niki left behind.
She never wants to leave.
Niki begins to spend all of her time in her city, harvesting wheat and making pickaxes from the iron ore that she finds during her work. She refuses all help from others, although when they come visit, she is more than willing to give a tour.
One day, HBomb arrives, bringing a diamond pickaxe with him. “It’s got efficiency,” he says, “but not mending. Sorry.”
Niki laughs, her voice echoing up the cavern walls and through each room. “That is perfectly fine! Thank you so, so much, it’s more than I could ever ask for.”
“No need to thank me. It looks like your work is going well.”
“It’s so much better than I could have ever expected.”
When he leaves, Niki uses the pickaxe until it breaks, unable to stop smiling.
///
Niki has too many nightmares to sleep.
Most of them are simple. She is clinging to Karl as the sky falls, but then he leaves and stands proudly next to Dream, laughing like it means nothing. Or perhaps he transforms, becoming a zombie or a golem or nothing at all, simply a whisper in the air.
The Karl of her dreams never says much.
“Why did you do it?” she begs. “Why did you tell everyone about my one secret?”
He just smiles and uses one of her torches to burn down her bakery.
In real life, Niki does not let him speak to her anymore. She never invites him back to her city. He is the one person that she will not allow through.
(She is searching for the entrance one day when she realises-- she was stupid, so stupid, for ever letting him enter in the first place, and for jumping up and down and hugging him when he offered to join her. Compared to Dream, she is a grain of sand.)
Sometimes, when Niki wakes up from the worst nightmares of all, all that she can think about for the rest of the day is this one fact: she did not see Wilbur’s death.
She visits Tommy and Tubbo after long nights of building, when the two of them are tired of hope and she is trying not to keep any more secrets, and the three of them lean against each other. They help each other stay awake, taking turns telling stories about Wilbur until there are no stories left.
Both Tommy and Tubbo saw it happen. Neither of them talk about it.
Niki does not ask them to.
Instead, she laughs gently when she feels like crying, and she does not stop holding onto either of them.
“You know,” Tommy says one day, “I’m not sure that I liked him that much, in the end.”
Niki nods. “He didn’t… he wasn’t always the same person that he used to be. I think I’ll always remember him for who he was, though, and who he wanted to be.”
Tommy snorts. “You are too fucking nice, Niki Nihachu.”
“I don’t know,” says Tubbo, “I think she has a point. He’s. He’s gone, you know? Wouldn’t it be kind of unfair to remember the worst of him? Besides! It wasn’t all bad. Just look around us.”
(There is only an aftermath around them, an aftermath and a wooden bridge.)
(Niki does not mention it.)
“We all saw him differently,” she whispers. “I don’t see how that has to change. He was-- well, he was Wilbur, and he was always only himself.”
With that, she keeps the peace, even though Tommy’s shoulders are still clenched and Tubbo is fighting to keep his eyes open.
He should sleep, Niki knows.
They should all sleep, but they avoid it, and they do not force each other to face their dreams.
///
Even when Schlatt is gone, Niki cannot forget the dark flag of Manberg that flew for months on the pole that she built.
Fundy lets the world read his journal and swears that he was against Schlatt the whole time, and he is warmly welcomed back to the nation that he grew up in. Eret embraces him, so Niki does as well, and she tries to listen to the warmth in her heart instead of the memory of the way that she once stared at a burning thing, knowing that she could not save it.
No attention is paid to the flag that Fundy destroyed and replaced.
(No attention is paid to the woman that stitched it by hand.)
After Fungi died, Niki couldn’t even look at a torch without remembering the flames of Sapnap’s arrows.
Fundy knew that. Fundy always, always knew that. Fundy was the one who held Niki the day after she learned about Fungi’s death, and Fundy was the one who helped her go to war. The two of them spent long nights together, discussing all of their fears so that they could be prepared for a strike, and some nights he was the only reason that Niki was able to sleep.
When it suited him, though, he set another thing that she loved ablaze. He didn’t even seem to notice when he threw her to the side with it.
Niki holds a torch and calls it revolution, and she yells so loudly that she almost forgets how much she has lost.
There is only one good thing to come from Manberg, and it is that Niki is no longer afraid of fire.
///
The new L’Manberg is far more beautiful than the old.
When Niki first sees it completed, she stops and stares for several minutes.
There is the drug van, rebuilt and shining, right next to the Prime path. There is the platform for events, wiping away the memory of an old pedestal and all of the times that it destroyed the world. Rising up into the sky are houses, stacked on top of each other, identical and perfectly crafted.
More than anything, this place reminds Niki of Tubbo’s impossible city on a lake that she built her bakery next to.
“It’s lovely,” she tells Fundy and Tubbo. “You did so much!”
Tubbo grins broadly and claps his hands. He pulls Niki into a hug.
On her other side, Fundy shifts on his feet. “It’s, um… Ghostbur helped with it. That’s how it was finished so fast.”
“Ghostbur?” Niki blinks.
“You haven’t met him? He’s, um. He’s Wilbur, but… you know. Ghost.”
Niki forces her voice to be steadier than her legs. “Oh! Thank him for me, also, then.”
Tubbo gives her a tour of his new house. The circles under his eyes are darker than ever. Niki takes his hand and thinks about how long it has been since anyone has made him go to sleep.
“I haven’t been home in too long,” she says, and she ignores the way that the word home sits strangely on her tongue.
On the way back to her city, she thinks about Fundy, and how much he must have lost if he sees the memory of a father who only ever showed love to other people’s sons.
///
“I’m breaking into your world,” Ranboo tells her one day, and Niki laughs.
She hasn’t talked to Ranboo that much, but once long ago the two of them got stuck in the Nether together while trying to kill a dragon. That’s when she introduced him to Phil, and also when she last saw him.
“I’m sure that you are,” she says. “Dream will appreciate it so much, I know.”
“Oh, he’s going to love it!”
Niki doesn’t entirely believe him, but she knows how to have faith in the impossible. She is waiting at spawn when he appears, and she is the one who offers him a tour.
While they are in the SMP proper, Dream nods at her and gives Ranboo a strange look.
“Hey,” he says. He goes back to his work right afterwards, but it’s the most that he’s said to Niki in months.
Niki looks ar Ranboo, confused. “So you really hacked in? Dream’s… not that good of an actor.”
“Niki, would I lie to you?” Ranboo laughs.
He claims one of the many identical L’Manberg houses for his own, and immediately leaves Niki to talk with Tubbo.
(The new L’Manberg is far more beautiful than the old, but it feels like an entirely separate place, in a way that Niki cannot quite describe. All she knows is that, when she opens up her city, she will allow each person to make their own home.)
Later that day, Niki tries to laugh with Ranboo about the time that they once spent together.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers, “I don’t remember--”
“It’s fine, it’s fine!”
And then Ranboo is crying, and Niki is wrapping her arms around him, and he tells her about the book of memories that he only recently started keeping. She murmurs soft things to him, telling him that it’s okay and that she understands. None of them feel like the truth, but Ranboo eventually stops crying, and so Niki tells herself that they must be.
In his book, Ranboo writes that she is a friend. He shows her after he has written it.
Niki smiles and tells him that he is one, too.
///
Niki likes to visit Philza. He watched Wilbur grow up, so he has more stories than she does, and his gentle laughter always makes her feel slightly less alone.
The two of them sit at a table across from each other at his house, which is so full of warmth that it makes Niki dizzy. Phil gives her the seat that overlooks the rest of L’Manberg.
“It means more to you than to me,” he says, and neither of them mention that she is not the one who still lives here. Instead, they eat the cookies that Niki brought. It leads to a quiet conversation about all of the things that Phil missed when he was in his hardcore world. The sun is setting, but Niki knows that neither of them will sleep tonight.
“There’s the desserts, for one,” Phil says. “There was never enough time to make those. Always more to do, you know?”
Niki leans towards him. “You had projects, right?”
“Yep! Sure fuckin’ did! I put almost all of my time into them, and the rest I spent fishing.”
“Fishing?”
“Well, it was something to do, you know? Somewhere where I could be alone with my thoughts, and not worry as much about survival.”
(Niki does not ask if Phil ever missed his children. She does not ask why he only came to this world when it was too late. Instead, she smiles and collects his stories because they are beautiful and because they are hopeful and because in each of them, Phil talks about beauty in a way that she is not used to hearing.)
Phil takes his leave in the middle of the night, and he refuses to tell her where he is going, but he lets her stay in his house until morning.
Niki does not sleep. She wanders around and takes note of all of the tools that he has used to make this place a home.
Hidden in a chest, there is a picture of him and Wilbur, who is so young that he probably wouldn’t have been able to define the word revolution . Phil is ruffling Wilbur’s hair, and Wilbur is laughing too hard to pretend to be angry, and neither of them are wearing a uniform or holding a sword.
Niki puts the picture back exactly where she found it, and she leaves Phil’s home early.
///
Niki does not see Tommy standing in front of George’s house with a flint and steel in his hands, burning it to the ground for a moment of happiness.
She hears word of it, though, from almost everyone in L’Manberg.
“I’m worried about him,” Tubbo says, looking up from a stack of papers. “It was stupid, and I think Dream’ll be mad, and-- why did he do it, Niki? Why would he?”
“Fucking stupid,” Phil mutters. “Chaos child. He’s going to get what’s coming.”
Ranboo has to read off what happened from his book. “Well,” he says when he has finished, “I don’t think there’s more to say about that.”
Puffy takes Niki’s hands and pulls her closer, always closer. “This won’t be good,” she whispers. “I thought that there would be peace here-- Tubbo promised-- I shouldn’t have come.”
Fundy just shrugs. “It was funny, though. I don’t care that much, George was busy building the thing during a fucking war against tyrrany!”
Niki visits what remains of George’s house and stands among the ashes, watching the world go by. There is nobody with her. Even George has abandoned this place, where the echoes of flames make their way up her arms.
In the middle of the night, Tubbo holds a meeting that Niki is not invited to. During it, she knows, he will forgive Tommy as much as anyone can.
The next day, Dream will not.
///
Niki is clinging to Puffy when Dream begins to build the wall.
“It’s because of George,” Puffy whispers, and Niki shuts her eyes and rests her head on Puffy’s shoulder. She hears people yell as the Prime path is split in two, but she does not see the obsidian be placed.
She wants to yell. She wants to scream at Dream, call him a traitor and a psychopath and all of the things that he is, but her words get stuck in her throat. When she opens her mouth and tries to make herself heard, all that she can hear is Schlatt demanding her death.
When Ranboo yells, and Dream coldly laughs, Niki is almost glad that she was not the one to face him.
(“You are many things, Niki Nihachu,” Wilbur once whispered to her, “but you are not a coward. You always, always stand for what you believe in.”)
(For the first time, Niki knows what it means to make a liar of a dead man.)
(She feels sick to her stomach.)
Puffy gives her a ring and a promise, even though the two of them are on opposite sides now. Niki whispers her name, over and over again, until it loses all meaning.
“Please. Please don’t leave.”
It’s desperate. Niki begs and pleads for Puffy to stay and to side with her, to come with her to her city, but Puffy seems more confused by the change of tone than anything.
“I’ll be back,” she says, and it almost sounds like laughing. That’s what the ring means!”
Niki forces herself to stand tall and moves to Tubbo and Ranboo.
The three of them huddle together until Quackity arrives, all brightness, and pulls everyone but her away for a Cabinet meeting.
Until that happens, she makes sure that her voice is the steadiest of them all.
///
This is what a traitor is: it is Dream, laughing as he sides with Techno and then Schlatt and then Wilbur, more powerful than anyone else could ever imagine. He is a god, and it shows through when he passes Niki without so much as a glance, when he carelessly sets the world ablaze just so that he can have another bargaining chip.
This is what a traitor is: it is Schlatt, burning a flag and tearing down walls and taxing Niki until she cannot even bake anymore. He died with nothing but regrets, people tell Niki, but she cannot see it in the way that Tubbo flinches at the mention of his name.
This is what a traitor is: it is Technoblade, with six wither skulls and an encyclopedic knowledge of mythology. He is a sword that is never sheathed, and he uses his power to light the world around him in exactly the way that he promised he would, and Niki should have never trusted him.
Is Wilbur a traitor?
Niki cannot tell. She knows his laughter better than she knows his coldness, but she will never be able to forget the way that he threw Tommy and Tubbo and even her aside as soon as he had a greater plan. She will never forget that explosions can echo so loudly that they shake the ground itself.
This is what Niki dreams about: when she found Wilbur’s TNT underneath the podium, she did not tell anyone about it.
///
When Tubbo exiles Tommy, Niki is not there. Fundy tells her about it, though, and he is angrier than she has ever seen him.
“It wasn’t right,” he spits. “It was-- Tubbo should not have done that!”
Even Eret nods, sitting across from the two of them. “Some things are more important than power,” they say.
“You’re one to talk,” Fundy says, but he is laughing, and then Eret laughs too.
Niki doesn’t mention that Eret has been on different sides in two different wars, now. Instead, she lays her head on their lap and stares up at the sky. It’s a breathtaking, impossible blue, the sort that she never gets to see underground.
“Tommy did something bad,” she says, “but I don’t think that Tubbo should have betrayed him like that. If he was planning on exile, he should have just said.”
Fundy nods. “Tubbo was an asshole about it! Plus, Tommy was just being funny. He always does that, he always-- it’s just how he is, y’know?”
“It’s incredibly charming of him, when he isn’t going too far,” Eret says.
The rest of them have not walked through the ashes of a ruined house, Niki knows. The rest of them have not held the charred remains of a flag that they created to their chest. So she smiles, and she listens to them, and she lets them think that it is funny.
She does not yell. Her throat hurts for no reason at all.
When Fundy says that he wants to leave, L’Manberg, Niki smiles and tells him that he can join her in her city.
///
As the two of them take their leave, Tubbo seems more confused than anything.
“I want to be anywhere but here,” Fundy says, and Tubbo looks like he’s about to cry.
“What don’t you like about it?”
“Well-- you know.”
“I-- I don’t, I really don’t! Are you absolutely sure that this isn’t a joke?”
Before she leaves, Niki pulls him into a tight hug. “I love you,” she murmurs. “I think we just need some time without wars, you know? If you want to join us, you always can.”
“You know I can’t, Niki.”
Niki nods and presses a bag of cookies into his hands. With that, she is gone.
When she shows Fundy her weeks of work, her arms spread wide, she does not expect him to immediately start talking about Australia.
Fundy wants to move the city. He wants to name the city, and he wants to move it, and Niki has absolutely no idea how to tell him not to do that. For her to even entertain the thought of giving up on Dry Waters as it currently is, and taking it somewhere far away just so the rest of the world cannot touch them, feels like betrayal.
It is betrayal, Niki thinks, looking around her at the torches that keep the cavern warm and full of light.
Still, she agrees to it.
As Fundy decides where to put her nation, Niki stares into the distance.
///
The two of them are only invited back to New L’Manberg for a festival. Niki does not want to go to it, but she does want to see Ranboo and Eret, so she shows up.
Technoblade and Tommy show up, too, and as the crowd moves towards them, Niki sees a hole where the community house used to be.
Dream says that Tommy did it, and even though Niki knows that Dream is a liar, she also knows that Tommy loves to bring monuments to the ground.
Niki realises that Tommy is just as much of a liar as Dream is when she sees him standing next to Techno one minute, holding an axe and threatening everyone, and then the next minute he is calling himself part of L’Manberg again.
He gives quite an inspiring speech, really. Each word of it is a lie, though, and it makes Niki’s head hurt.
Niki is yelling again before she even fully knows what she is doing. She yells that Tommy is a liar and that she will not fight with him, and the truth of it fills her with enough energy to keep yelling, to stop herself from being a coward ever again.
She yells at Ranboo, too, even though he agrees with her more than the rest of them, mostly because she can.
The walls of L’Manberg rise above her, and they are obsidian instead of yellow and black concrete, and everything is wrong about that. Tommy calls the world around them their home and her stomach turns. He is all charm and idealism and glory, but he is not the truth.
The truth was Wilbur, whose promises shone brighter than the sun, until he destroyed himself with them.
The truth was Fundy, who smiled as he swore off his old life and turned against everything that he promised to protect.
The truth is Ranboo, refusing to take a side because he cares about everyone too much, and being destroyed for it.
(Ranboo alone cannot hold the world together.)
(Niki could not, either.)
(All that she could ever do was help a few crying children, and people will be crying tomorrow whether she prevents her own brightness or not.)
///
“I’m closing my city,” Niki says. “You have to leave.”
“I-- what? ” Fundy stares at her.
And then the door is slammed on his face, and Niki is truly alone.
She breathes and it echoes up and down the cavern walls. There is nothing here but her.
Niki likes the feeling.
One by one, Niki goes to the torches and blows them out, holding their fire within her instead.
“Welcome,” Niki whispers, “to the Library.”
///
“L’Manberg was dead the moment Wilbur was,” Niki tells Fundy. “It was always him.”
She is trying to communicate this to him, as many times as she can, but all the Fundy is doing is laughing and talking about blowing the supply chests up.
She’s glad that he is excited to blow things up, but his laughter scares her. It is maniacal, crazed, beyond logic. When she looks at Fundy in this state, all that she can see is the times that he turned his back on her.
“They’ll finally notice us,” he crows. “We’ll finally teach them a lesson!”
He’s been saying the word lesson a lot in the past few minutes, probably because the first time that he said it, Niki smiled and agreed.
“I do want to teach them a lesson,” she says quietly, “but that is not to fear us. That is to value things. They do not value anything, Fundy. They destroy it all if they think that it will help them.”
Fundy grins. “It’s because they’re too damn powerful! We’re-- we’re the little guys, and they don’t give a shit about us!”
When he blows up the chests, Niki cheers.
Niki leaves Fundy to his laughter soon after and watches the sun set over L’Manberg one final time. As it does, she sings the anthem that Wilbur taught her.
“My L’Manberg,” she whispers. “If you were real, I would give you everything.”
///
This is what L’Manberg is: two Declarations, both written by Wilbur Soot, and one call to war and a set of new uniforms. A forest burnt down and a small crater and blackstone walls, always there to defend. Peace above all else.
L’Manberg is Tubbo and Tommy, laughing together about whatever chaos they just caused, as Wilbur looks on with a smile. L’Manberg is freedom, and it is a million personalised buildings that don’t match at all, and it is children playing war who will never have to experience the real thing.
L’Manberg is a bakery by the sea.
Niki hopes that it is gone by now, forgotten by everyone but her.
///
It is the final day.
Niki is surprised by how easy it is to lie to her friends, to make her voice higher and softer and giggle about how nervous she is to fight for her freedom. She wishes that she wasn’t so good at lying, or maybe that someone cared enough to know her cues.
Tubbo gives her armour, and HBomb gives her a sword.
Before everything falls apart, Niki talks with Ranboo.
She reaches for his hands. “I’m sorry,” she whispers. “I shouldn’t have yelled, I love you, and I’m so sorry.”
Ranboo blinks at her. “What? I’m-- I lost my memory book.”
“Yesterday, I yelled at you, and I am so sorry. Ranboo, I care about you so much. No matter what you decide to do, I will stand beside you.”
She holds him until Techno, Dream, and Phil arrive.
(“Please remember this. Please.”)
(“I’m so sorry. I can’t promise anything.”)
///
“I was forced to kill my own son!” Phil yells, and Niki doesn’t know why she is still surprised.
She should have never trusted anyone here. She was warned about Eret, and Fundy showed his true self to her so many times, and all that Techno wants is to burn everything in his path. She knew all of these things. But now she learns that Philza killed Wilbur, and even though they spent hours talking together, he never thought to tell her.
“I thought I could trust you!” she wants to scream at him. “I thought that you were the only one here who cared, but you killed my best friend!”
Nothing that she says is heard.
TNT is falling from the sky. There are so many Withers that Niki is having difficulty processing it.
She tries to light TNT of her own, but it does not go off. Her fire cannot make an explosion, not in the way that Dream’s can whenever he so much as lifts a finger.
It is bright, though, and Niki cannot take her eyes off of it as she sets the Prime path ablaze.
///
L’Mantree burns.
Niki watches, the flint and steel still in one of her hands, the other held up in a salute that she does not drop until the last leaf has fallen.
“It was never meant to be,” she whispers, and there is a relief that comes when all of her hope floods away.
(When Eret said those words, proud and confident in her own victory, Niki did not even know about what Wilbur was doing in this place. When Wilbur said them, begging the world for an answer as he tried not to reach for his father, Niki was too far away to hear.)
(L’Manberg has died three times, now. Niki hopes that she is the last person who has to say that phrase.)
Techno congratulates her and it means nothing. Tubbo drops to his knees and it means nothing. All that Niki can see is fire, dancing up a flagpole and a nation and a tree in the middle of the night.
Ranboo is behind her. Niki walks past him without looking into his eyes.
L’Mantree burns, and the last of L’Manberg is finally, truly gone, and Niki feels alive for the first time in months.
///
In the aftermath, Niki sees Wilbur Soot for the first time since his death, and all of Fundy’s stories come rushing back to her.
It can’t be, she knows. She has to be imagining things. She’s back in L’Manberg, so she sees Wilbur, because Wilbur is L’Manberg.
Of course she’s imagining things. If she wasn’t, then that means that Ghostbur is real. If Ghostbur is real, that means that the last person who supported Niki is still around, and he never even once thought to visit her.
And now she's laughing -- laughing like Fundy as he blows up the chests, laughing like Techno as he makes the world his own in the name of freedom, laughing like Tommy as he finds everything that is not his and watches it burn. She's laughing and she doesn't hate it, even though she promised herself only one thing and it was to never become any of them.
Niki thinks that she is probably going insane.
Wilbur is here. Or maybe he isn't. Wilbur is here, and he isn't, and he's dead, and everything is over, and she is alone again. There is nothing left but dust, and all that Niki can do is laugh.
Behind her, the sun rises, and Niki does not turn to meet it.
Instead, she sees everything that is gone spread out before her, and thinks about how she never truly had any of it at all.
///
Niki loses everything three times.
The first time, Wilbur and Tommy run into the woods and Niki refuses to call it a good thing, so Schlatt marches into her home and takes everything that she has. She screams and begs and sends secret messages until there is nothing more to say.
The second time, the ground falls out from beneath her and her home is gone only minutes after she got it back. She runs to Tubbo, trying to hold him steady, and watches as Phil walks towards them and says the Wilbur is gone. After that, she walks away, completely alone, determined to make her own future far away from all of the things that she could not do.
The third time, she places all of her remaining TNT in her bakery, still laughing far harder than she wants to, still muttering about Wilbur and L’Manberg and how neither exists anymore because that would be a lie, and Niki is not someone who lies. When her bakery is gone, she burns the path leading to it, and then the seat that she used to watch the sea in. She does not want to watch it anymore. She wants to let the coastline reclaim what it can, and wipe the memory of her plans away.
With that, everything is gone. There is nothing left to tie Niki to the hole in the ground that she used to call home.
She does not call anywhere that, anymore.
Homes are about love, and about a fire that does not burn everything in its path, and people who listen.
Homes are a lie. There will always be something that those around her care about more than them, and Niki will always be left alone, tending to the fireplace in the dead of winter.
///
Niki and Jack Manifold stand together on a balcony.
“I just-- I tried, you know? I went up against Techno, and nobody even cared! Nobody thanked me, even Techno didn’t seem bothered in the slightest.”
Niki nods. “They don’t really do that. They’re not used to caring .”
“I’m all by myself, Niki. It’s lonely in Manifold Land, no matter how cool I make my house.”
Niki stares at him. “I think I know the reason, Jack. I think that it is because-- all these other people, everyone around us? All they care about is power. For them, it is always power. Everything they say they love could be destroyed and they would just find something new to claim and to make their own. They do not care about Manifold Land, or about you, because there is no power there.”
“So-- what do we have? We don’t have power, Niki, so what do we have?”
“To them? Nothing. And so they take everything that we have and give us empty promises in return. I have lost everything, Jack. I have lost my land, and those people who believed in me, and the reasons that I fight.”
“I have, too! I’ve lost everything and everyone. They don’t even care about me.”
“Jack, I think that we can get something back.”
Jack smiles. “What are you saying?”
Now Niki is laughing again, in that uncontrollable way that she hates, and even though Jack is staring at her she cannot stop.
“I’m saying,” she says, “that we burn it to the ground until there is nothing else for them to claim, because that is the only time that they will listen.”
Jack cheers and starts to laugh along with Niki. “Let’s do it! Let’s fucking do it!”
In front of them, there is a crater where everything that Niki loves used to stand. Now, it is filled with hundreds of small fires, ones that nobody will ever go near enough to again to put out. Everything else has been reduced to nothing.
Neither of them look at it. Instead, they look at each other. Niki’s own stare is reflected in Jack Manifold’s glasses.
When she finally stops laughing, she expects to be glad. Instead, she finds herself missing the power that it brought her.
///
Long ago, Niki and Wilbur would sit together on a hill overlooking L’Manberg. The two of them never really talked about much, since Wilbur spent all day being overwhelmed by running a country and everyone went to Niki for emotional support, and the greatest comfort of all was to spend hours simply existing alongside each other.
“What do you think is most important?” Wilbur asked Niki one day, with very little warning.
(He had always liked to ask questions.)
Niki had laughed. “Oh, I don’t know,” she had said. “I think it must be different for everyone.”
Wilbur took a strand of her hair and spun it around his finger. “For you, though, Niki Nihachu. What is most important?”
And Niki had smiled. “Love, I suppose.”
“Love? Oh, interesting! Interesting!”
“What about you?”
“I think… I think that love is a very good answer. But there’s one thing that I care about more, and it’s freedom. Not for myself, but for others. You know, if someone just really gets on your fucking nerves and you don’t want to love them, then you shouldn’t have to!”
In the distance, Tommy was yelling. Wilbur laughed. “Case in fucking point.”
“Freedom is good,” Niki had said, and wrapped her arms around Wilbur. “You should seek it for yourself, too, though.”
“Well… those are sacrifices that I make, as part of being President. I make them for Tommy, and for Tubbo, and for Fundy, and of course for you.”
“Me?”
“Always.”
The two of them watched the sunset, backs to the rest of the world, until night finally took its hold.
Back then, Niki thought that if the world was falling, Wilbur would go to her first.
Either she has gone insane, or she was wrong about that.
Now, she sits alone in her library. Soon, she will meet with Jack, and the two of them will discuss weapons and plans and goals.
In this moment, though, there is nobody near her. There are only her memories, and the promises that Wilbur always tried to keep, with nobody left to keep them.
When she burns down the world, Niki decides, she will leave some freedom behind.