Chapter Text
He could have stayed dead, easy.
After all the time that had passed, battles that had been fought, dust that had settled, his body deserved to stay in the ground. Schlatt knows this, and in the end he’d accepted it. Maybe he’d been evil, but that didn’t matter - all that had mattered in the end was that he had been weak, and he had lost. He was done, all-three-lives done, and in the end he’d been so old and weak and pathetic that his heart had simply stopped beating.
But now he sits up in the void, anticipatory, as the mad scientist with a child’s face and a scholar’s hands attaches electrodes to his slumped chest. Any minute now - the rain has turned to thunder, the trident gleams with enchantments, and Schlatt’s old book lies open on a table. A bright flash, a burnt smell, and he’s back, and his limbs stretch and jerk with horrible pain.
***
Tubbo’s not sure why he does this. He can’t justify it to any of his old friends. Out of all of them, he should have the most reason to hate the dead dictator, but he just doesn’t. He looks inside of himself for resentment, for anger, and finds a hollow place. A lot of people say it’s wrong to awaken the dead, to experiment on his friends, to build bombs. That he’s wrong to build a country again, that’s he’s foolish to think he can create something beautiful and expect it to be safe. His fists tighten. A lot of people say a lot of things.
It’s not as though he hasn’t learned. He has few successes to speak of, but he believes above all in the pursuit of knowledge. Hell, it’s strange that his friends expect any different - isn’t he always sporting bruises from his scientific adventures? - trident flight, head hunting, ravager teleportation? He knows he’ll often fail. He doesn’t see why he should decide to limit himself.
So he doesn’t feel anger as he peers into the serene, dead face of the man who once had him executed, and if he feels anything like fear, he pushes it down. Mostly he’s proud of himself, because once again he’s doing the impossible. He’s never doubted himself, even though he knows everyone else looks down on him. That doesn’t matter. In the end, he didn’t want - he’s never been able to accept that Schlatt’s dead. Not while Tubbo still has so many questions for him.
He recites the ritual - the font in which the book is written he finds surprisingly easy to read, and sprinkles the dictator’s corpse with a bit of powdered shark fin donated by his Totem friend (Foolish shares his enthusiasm for science, after all, and the cartilage will grow back). He looks up at the sky, and directs the lightning.
Tubbo blinks once, twice, holds his breath. Then he notices that the body on the table is breathing also: the deep, rapid gasps of a man in pain. Tubbo can’t believe it’s worked - he’s gotten so used to taking the full force of headbutts from angry cattle, failing to restore his dear friend’s memory problems, dropping out of the sky onto unforgiving desert sands - and so he is surprised at his success - surely that’s why his heart seems to catch in his throat. He sets his shoulders, points a weapon, keeps his distance. At the same time, he smiles warmly. Tubbo is forgiving, but he’s not stupid. As Schlatt jerks awake, his arms and legs rattle in tight cuffs.
***
Schlatt can’t move. There’s some strange machinery all around him, tight, coffin-like walls curving around his body, and he can’t move an inch. Tubbo’s standing over him, holding a loaded crossbow and looking as if he might cry. Schlatt snorts, choking on his dry throat. The posturing makes him sick. “Hey, kid. I can’t get up.”
“Oh, I know that, Mr. President.”
Schlatt knows he should feel angry, being mocked like this. Or he should be afraid, lying here so powerless with a weapon locked on his chest. But he understands. Hell, he understands everything. He understands power and how to get it. He can tell how scared Tubbo is, even as the kid sets his face into an easy scowl. He knows the laboratory in which he’s woken up is equal parts a theatrical set, the props all chosen intentionally - since when does Tubbo fight with a crossbow? And most of all, he knows he’s still the one with all the power in the room - because he may be weak, deposed, and half-dead, but Tubbo is still Tubbo, and is trembling, and has come back for him.
“Tubbo! Get these cuffs off of me, man.”
The boy’s nose wrinkles for just a moment. “Hell no.”
"What? You’re fully armed, and I’m an old man with heart problems. What the hell do you think I can do to you?”
And Tubbo obviously doesn’t want to admit he’s scared, so he smiles charitably and undoes one cuff.
It’s enough. Schlatt knows he’s winning. He reaches his freed right hand up and scratches at his collarbone. God is he itchy.
“No!” Tubbo slaps at his hand, “Don’t move that electrode, please. I’m still monitoring.”
“Always the scientist, aren’t you?”
“I’ve never brought anyone back from the dead before,” says Tubbo, face flushing, “Well, no one has. Until now. Until you.”
Schlatt grins, points around the kid’s head. “I see you used my recipe.”
“Yeah, that’s one of the things I’ve been meaning to ask -” Tubbo picks up the book, that leatherbound volume for which they’ve all given so much. “How did you even get this? Resurrecting the dead? All I remember you caring about were parties and alcohol. And, like, protein shakes.”
Schlatt shrugs simply. “I like to know things.” It’s not an answer - not a decent answer. But Tubbo startles, like he’s just realized something important. “So fill me in, little man - I’ve been out of commission for a while. Where have you been? Where are we now? What have you been doing with your life?”
Tubbo smiles shyly, and in answer to all three questions, says, “Snowchester.”
Schlatt’s never heard of the place. “That a new country?”
“Well, Manb-- L’Manberg, wasn’t salvageable, after everything…” Tubbo’s tone is friendly, but he stares at his feet, hurt, reminding Schlatt of a kicked dog. “Did you know the country blew up twice, under my Presidency?”
This kid? President? Schlatt has to laugh. That’s awful. He almost feels sorry for the young traitor. Tubbo will never have what Schlatt had.
“So tell me about this Snowchester.”
Tubbo thinks for a while. “It’s a sanctuary,” he says finally. “It’s a place where all my friends, where anyone who wants to can go and be safe.”
Schlatt seriously doubts that. There’s no sanctuary in a country that can’t defend itself, and Tubbo’s not powerful. Not terrifying. Schlatt was terrifying. And he fell anyway. “It sounds like a nice place, actually,” says Schlatt. He brushes sweat from his forehead. God, he hurts. The bolt of agony has passed on, but his whole body aches with exhaustion and disuse. “Will you show me around?”
Tubbo glares at him. “Yeah, I’m not falling for that. You stay tied.”
“Fucking hell, kid, I need to stretch my legs. Please let me up. Otherwise I’ll get a blood clot and we’ll be right back where we started.”
Tubbo’s a nice boy. He doesn’t want to be inhumane.
“What am I gonna do? Run?”
Tubbo laughs at that. He has a nice laugh, Schlatt thinks, a bit of an airhead giggle. He doesn’t understand how someone can be so smart and yet so stupid where it counts. But he’s genuinely grateful when the boy removes the cuffs from his arms and legs and helps him to stand. The crossbow is still in Tubbo’s hands, but lowered. Schlatt could grab for it. He doesn’t.
His vision goes fuzzy and he collapses against a wall.
“Easy there, Mr. President,” says Tubbo, and Schlatt can’t tell if he’s sincere. Tubbo’s exactly the kind of person to help an enemy up and address a murderer by his title, but what he’s said would also be the perfect jab. Not for the first time, he wonders if Tubbo knows more than he’s letting on. There’s deep concern on the kid’s mangled face, even through the curls of the dramatic burn scars. Schlatt winces. He hadn’t expected the wounds to scar that much. He also hadn’t expected his executioner to show up with a fucking rocket launcher.
Oh well. If Manberg is, as Tubbo says, blown to pieces, if his own reign of terror has been overshadowed, if his husband has moved on, if his evil ambitions have been forgiven, at least Tubbo will always remember that Schlatt was here, that Schlatt did great things.
“Can you walk? Do you need your wheelchair?”
“Fuck off,” says Schlatt, but he can’t step away from the wall.
Tubbo scrambles away nimbly and comes back with a cane, a beautifully carved thing, dark oak tipped with silvery metal. It’s powerful, it’s grand, it’s fancy, and it lets Schlatt heave himself upright. He remembers why he used to like Tubbo. After the festival, he’d missed that helpful kid who had followed him around like a caddy.
“Let’s go see Snowchester,” says Tubbo, and the idea sounds so pathetic that Schlatt agrees, welcoming the distraction.
***
The city is beautiful, Schlatt can’t deny that. It’s not his style, but he likes the coziness of the houses, the glare of the sun off the snow, even the berry bushes that tear at his clothes as he and Tubbo tamp down a path from the laboratory to the town square. The buildings seem mostly residential, and are all built out of spruce and gray stone, uniform in a way that tells Schlatt that Tubbo has had a hand in each one’s construction. That’s the Tubbo he remembers, energetic, diligent, creating a world for his own friends to destroy. He’d organized the festival, hadn’t he? Schlatt barely remembers. He’d been very drunk. But he seems to remember that small, slight boy enthusiastically sketching facades, hiring contractors.
“This is Captain Puffy’s cookie store,” says Tubbo happily. “-Oh. I guess you wouldn’t know who that is.”
“Not a lot of news in the afterlife.”
“Well, her name is Captain Puffy, and she owns a pastry shop. That should tell you enough.”
Tubbo points out Jack Manifold’s home, and another place belonging to someone called Foolish.
“Lot of new people,” Schlatt comments.
“It’s been a long time. But I’ll introduce you to Foolish eventually. He helped revive you.”
One person seems conspicuously missing. “Where’s Tommy? Did that idiot finally get himself killed?”
Tubbo looks so uncharacteristically angry that Schlatt half expects to get hit.
“He’s alive. He’s okay. He’s - he’s healing. But he doesn’t live here in Snowchester, for a lot of reasons.”
Schlatt throws up his hands in mock surrender and whistles merrily. “Anyway, thanks for the tour. You got anything else in the speech?”
Tubbo flinches, and Schlatt understands, then, that there will be nothing else. All Tubbo’s got is this empty shell of a country, a sanctuary that’s just going to fail like all his other projects, a million questions which no one will ever answer.
But then Schlatt looks up, and he realizes Tubbo’s started smiling. His eyes gleam, even the one that’s milky with firework scars. “Actually,” he says, “There is one more thing I’d like to show you.”