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He gets half of the idea when his hands brush the smooth wood of Dream’s old crossbow, gathering dust at the bottom of a chest tucked innocuously into a grassy hill.
He remembers the day he’d received it clearly: Schlatt had a habit of tossing whatever he was holding down into the most readily available storage the second he reached it. He never was a fan of doing any sort of heavy lifting, after all. It’s when Quackity turns up at the ravine, pledging his allegiance to whatever will fuck Schlatt up the worst, that it’s held gingerly out to him.
(“I thought you guys could use this more than he could,” Big Q tells Tubbo, tilting it to view the name carved into the crossbow’s side and snickering under his breath. “I don’t think he knows how to use this fucking thing, anyway, he must’ve just grabbed it when Tommy—..”
Tubbo blinks up at him. His jaw aches, more from the compression of the bandages wrapping his face than from the burns trailing the skin there, as he goes to speak.
“Thanks, man,” he rasps, rolling his eyes when Quackity waits a moment to release it, as if worried Tubbo’s going to drop the weapon the second he lets go. He knows better. He knows exactly what a crossbow of this caliber is capable of, now more than ever. “It’s good to see you.”
“‘Course,” he answers. Bites his lip, fails to direct his vision away from where it traces the wrapping covering his chest and face. He wonders if he’ll wear this reminder of the time he was entirely powerless for the rest of his life, and if Quackity will always see it as such. “Sorry. I thought—just, sorry, Tubbo.”)
He remembers thinking he’d put it in the archive, next to stories of old, proof of what had happened. A testament to forgiveness, or teamwork, maybe. His expression sours, fingers suddenly itching where they hold the weapon. On a whim, he spins it backward to gaze at it from the front, intending more to inspect the runes that indicate its enchantments—
He tenses, breath catching in his throat as he stares down the barrel of the weapon, still loaded with an arrow Dream himself had slipped into it months ago. He almost expects to hear the snap of a spring even though his finger is nowhere near the trigger, the back of his head screaming danger as he blinks at the crosshairs, his spine straight with the memory of blackstone cold at his back.
..Nothing happens.
It could be a minute or an hour or a day later that he lowers the bow, shifting it in his grip and giving a hesitant, startled laugh. Relief eases its way through his veins, allowing his posture to loosen and his breath to come more easily. Of course nothing had happened. He’s alone. He’s the one holding the weapon, for once, with no one to force his hand or turn it on him.
It comes to him in a half formed thought, that reasoning pinging around the back of his head before it occurs to him, shaped like a proposition from his secretary—
The execution.
Technoblade’s execution, to be more exact.
“Technoblade has robbed us,” Tubbo proclaims, throat tightening as he speaks, struggling to get the words out past the memory of just how much he’s taken from him. From—from them, he means, from the country as a whole. That was what Quackity had suggested, wasn’t it? He hurries to tack on, “of—everything that made our country special.”
There’s a derisive snort from the cage that makes Tubbo twitch. He tries his best to ignore it; he’s having a lot of difficulty doing so, with the blasé attitude seeping from the pigman in the box, the yawn he interjects at a pause in Tubbo’s speech. He’d tried to write it down, but gotten too caught up in superstition, certain that putting it down into words would leave it for someone to find, someone to expose him and tear him apart once more; he’d almost prefer that to the disdain he feels in every beat of silence.
(And maybe it bothers him, that Techno can look so much more at ease in the jerry-rigged execution chamber than Tubbo ever had in the blackstone concrete trap. Maybe deep down, while he cares about the people, Tubbo doesn’t give a fuck about Techno blowing L’manberg to bits, maybe in his moments of clarity Tubbo knows this is about flipping the festival on its head. If only to ease the hurt he carries in starburst scars all down his throat and chest and soul.)
“He stepped in where he shouldn’t have,” he hisses, and ignores the way his voice falters, ignores Schlatt’s call to action—come on up here, he’d asked, like this was just another attraction at the festival, another game only Technoblade was eligible to take part in—ringing in his ears. “He—he created chaos, where he shouldn’t have. He ruined the g—“
A snowball soars right past him, close enough the wind tickles his face. When he looks up he can see the mercenary taking aim with a potion from above.
“Punz is.. throwing fucking..” he mutters, stepping back and grappling for the diamond axe at rest beside him. He looks to Technoblade, a bolt of fear shooting through his chest as he finds he can’t read the man’s expression at all. He doesn’t know what this is, he can’t tell if Techno knows what this is—
“What is Punz doing,” he shouts more than he asks. He takes two more steps back as panic claws at his insides in a nauseatingly familiar way; the announcement on a stage interrupted by someone he knows can hurt him, knows would hurt him if the circumstances called for it, what is Punz doing this was meant to fix everything what is Punz doing, “what is Punz doing—?”
The sounds of the Butcher Army devolving into chaos go dead fucking silent in his ears at the TNT. He lunges for it, swinging with the axe and splintering the wood beneath as he scoops it up with frantic haste. Punz isn’t even looking at him as he rolls stick after stick out across the planks, dodging and weaving beneath the clumsy, inexperienced blows aimed his way by any one member of their merry band of butchers—
(And maybe he just liked the idea of solidarity, of a goal he knew was simple enough no one could ever accuse him of treason or spying or betrayal: end Technoblade because he destroyed the ground they grew up on. Put a stop to him before he can strike again because they’ve learned through the years that paranoia is not only prudent but necessary.
Or, privately: Kill Technoblade and next time you try to climb up on a stage your first thought will be of this one perfect victory. Kill Technoblade and when you scream yourself awake, at least you will have the comfort of knowing you’re capable of protecting yourself, kill Technoblade and maybe your every waking moment doesn’t have to be spent looking over your shoulder knowing how helpless he can render you.
Craft this scenario, create this scene, direct it on your own terms. Replicate the thing that destroyed you but pull the trigger this time, be the thing that hurts so your memory of this situation will not be from the victim’s perspective.)
He can hardly hear himself speak over the pounding in his ears but it’s that sudden thought that strikes him and he tries his very hardest to scream pull the lever! and he doesn’t know if he gets it out past the hysteria clogging his chest until he sees Quackity spring forward to tear it downward.
Quackity’s two for two on executions, huh?
There’s this one moment, as the anvil falls, where it feels like time slows around them. A single freeze frame. He can see Phil draw a bow backward in his periphery, Ranboo tumble awkwardly over a seat after a lunge forward, Fundy’s clawed fingers twist in the sleeve of Punz’s jacket, Big Q’s face split into a vindicated grin—
He can see Technoblade’s face turn upward, as if to the heavens. A flicker of terror in his flat expression, of genuine fear, and Tubbo’s stomach lurches in what he will later identify as regret. In this second, he knows, unequivocally, down to his bones, this is a mistake. That hurting someone else will not undo the damage of being hurt. That Technoblade is not the weapon he needs dismantled in front of him, that he’s orchestrated an execution that is nothing more than a misguided attempt to expunge the memory that haunts him to this day.
He thinks in this moment, I don’t want to kill anyone. And yet:
Techno is going to die.
It’s that thought that echoes in his head as time creeps back up to pace and it’s that thought that has him reaching helplessly out as if he stands a chance at stopping the hunk of iron dropping from the sky.
And then Technoblade meets the anvil head on in a kaleidoscope of color—there’s a cloud of green and yellow that explodes around him, so festive and bright and familiar Tubbo almost wonders if they’d rigged the lever with fireworks as well before it occurs to him Techno has, inexplicably, lived. A used totem clatters to the floor and the pigman wastes no time in scrambling out of the box and Tubbo says what and then, “What?” and “What?” until his jaw aches from asking.
Something indignant and beyond disappointed wells in his throat, forces hot tears to spring in his eyes. He shouldn’t be so torn up about this—Technoblade never dies, after all.
He should be elated. He should be praising Technoblade’s forethought to bring a totem and hide it that well, to not make Tubbo into a murderer as he almost became. He should be glad he didn’t have to die, after the despairing realization it won’t fix a thing. He’s just.. bitter. For once, just once, he’d like for Technoblade to seem even slightly fallible, to know that beneath his armor there is skin and beneath the skin there is blood.
He thinks it’s probably that line of thinking that sends his secretary down a tunnel after the Blade. He sits himself down on a chair chipped by a butcher’s axe and waits for Quackity’s return.
Quackity comes back with a righteous anger that Tubbo shrinks away from. He’s trepidatious, at first, at Big Q’s insistence he wants another fight in the wake of this massive failure. Surely he can’t be serious; what is it in Quackity that yearns so completely for demonstrable power? What is it about him that’s so much more.. resilient, than Tubbo? How has he just run face first into the unforgiving end of a pickaxe, spit blood on the ground and come up with a new target?
Maybe he’s a pushover. It’s hard to see why this will be any different than the train wreck that Techno’s execution became, when Dream’s name is the one that escapes Big Q’s viciously split lip as their next Goliath to bring down. But the longer he talks the more familiar that anger feels—
(Tommy standing in front of him, backlit by the sunset. “No matter what happens here,” he’s saying, expression tight with the kind of anger that comes from being hurt one too many times. “If this is all blown up, if, if you have a thousand men by your side, if you have all the best fighters, if Technoblade’s with them or not—“
He looks down and meets Tubbo’s eyes. And it’s not just anger, there, not like he’d expect on the day of the big fight. There’s something fiercer there, something more pointed than just the fury they both reserve for Dream, deep down.
“It’s you and me,” he swears, and that’s what it is. The promise to preserve this friendship above all else. The urge not just to fight, but to protect. “Against Dream.”)
The anger feels familiar. He knows without a doubt if Tommy were here, he’d be nodding determinedly along as Quackity speaks, interjecting to the point it’s obnoxious, swearing to be there by his side as they took on the one and only Dream.
He thinks of that awful moment he remembered how badly it hurt to die, while Technoblade was inches beneath the anvil barreling toward him. He’d thought when it came down to it that he had been wrong, that there was no catharsis in killing the one who hurt you—but.. maybe there can be in killing the right one who hurt you.
(And if he lets himself think about it too long he knows this method has proved itself a failure. He doesn’t want to hurt people the way he’s been hurt. He just wants it to stop. He doesn’t let himself think about it too long, though, he swallows around that reasonable little voice in his head and lets himself get swept up in Quackity’s biting anger and he hopes against hope this will be the thing that makes him feel right inside.)
Dream’s name on his mind at Quackity’s guidance, plan already forming as he goes to speak, he says, “...Do you remember what Schlatt did to me?”
The festival. Dream’s festival, in every sense of the phrase.
It’s a reach before it even goes wrong, he thinks. He’s a chronic workaholic and he doesn’t even manage to let Ranboo and Fundy take care of the decorations themselves, much less do much of anything without him there to make sure there’s no catch as they construct mini games and gatherings. A true imitation of the Red Festival, as Technoblade called it, once upon a time, would have him sitting atop an ivory tower watching his cabinet scramble to put the thing together under his meaningless scrutiny.
(Deep down he knows it was all for naught. Schlatt always would have killed him up on the stage, whether the streamers he and Karl painstakingly chose were yellow or red or black or any fucking color. But every once in a while he wonders if he could’ve proved himself just enough, in working on the one project Schlatt ever actually offered him, if he had done it all right and pleased him enough, if he would have reconsidered. Maybe if he’d done it just so, his death could’ve at least had a little dignity. He could’ve earned that.)
Nevertheless, they set the festival up and if word gets out to some people Tubbo didn’t want to attend, well, he’s certainly not going to find a scapegoat to blast atop the newly crafted stage.
He doesn’t know why he expects anything but the fully-armored picture of power he gets, fashionably late and unequivocally godlike. What’s worse is it’s not even a failed attempt on his life, not like with Techno—it’s the way the will of the so-called Butcher army crumples as Dream monologues about Tommy’s wrong-doing.
He tells them they haven’t cut him off entirely. He spins a tale of a connection not quite severed, as if Tubbo hasn’t spent weeks without seeing Tommy’s smile, as if he is any way responsible for the decimation of a community house everyone cared far more about than the nation he grew up in. Than the one being threatened at every turn. Than the living, breathing beings it houses. But no, the poor, empty community house and it’s meaningless walls have withered to bits.
(Haven’t we given enough? What is it with you people and pushing us until we break?)
There is—one thing about the festival. Standing in the ruins of the community house Tommy swears he didn’t touch, that Technoblade promises they didn’t go near, Dream tosses a book at his feet and spits Ranboo’s name.
(And looking back, he was thinking, hey, Ranboo really needs that book. He didn’t care what supposed secrets his friend had spilled to their supposed enemies about their supposed plans. He just remembers thinking, Dream shouldn’t have that. That isn’t his to read.)
Dream gives them a traitor, ready for slaughter, knowing for weeks that’s what he and Quackity have been searching for in their bumbling, reckless attempts at easing this deepset ache. His for retribution against a dead man and another who never dies, and Big Q’s for any sliver of power he can regain after having lost it all time and time again.
He doesn’t take the bait. Quackity takes some convincing.
“I wanna—I wanna execute Ranboo!” Quackity’s saying, eyes wild as he gestures back toward the half-ender, who Tubbo can see even from here is shaking as he tries to explain himself to Niki. He remembers trying to make excuses with his gaze turned firmly downward even as he’d thought he’d done the right thing, in front of Schlatt and then in front of Wilbur and then in front of Dream. He remembers the feeling of the blackstone at his back was so chilling because it hammered in the realization he had absolutely no one by his side on that stage, and he’s staring at Ranboo’s bunched shoulders where he, too, is alone facing off against an audience.
“This is just—this is just gonna be history repeating itself!” Tubbo hisses, pinching the bridge of his nose as Quackity steamrolls past him—
“I had no good feelings about him—!”
The resignation that’s been building steadily in between his ribs leaves no room for patience at this third order to kill he’s gotten from Quackity, and something vicious tears past his lips instead. He points a finger right at Quackity’s chest until he takes two steps back and he tells him, “He decorated the festival, he would be murdered in his own decorations—“
(Did Schlatt ever talk it through like this? Did he realize the morbidity of that, did anyone know, did anyone do what Tubbo’s doing right now? Did he have a conscious to suggest maybe, just maybe, there’s another way to right this wrong against him?)
“Does that not sound familiar? Does that not sound like, a little bit like—maybe that’s happened before? ”
(Did he know just how bad what he was doing would be, for months to come? For years, if Tubbo lives that long? Or did he just not care past proving a point? He finds himself wishing desperately that Schlatt was too thoughtless or maybe just too wasted to even consider the kind of torment he would inflict the second he asked Technoblade to take him out, hoping beyond hope that Schlatt never faced the decision Tubbo finds himself facing right now at Quackity’s insistence, praying that he didn’t look to Tubbo stepping up to the podium and think with any sort of clarity he wanted to hurt him that badly.)
“Maybe it’s just me who remembers,” he breathes, deflating, slightly. Because he can see in Quackity’s scarred face before him there’s no dawning realization of what this situation is beginning to look like, no horror at what he’s suggested; all he finds is resigned disappointment, that he wouldn’t do what Schlatt did to show his power.
(And if Schlatt had confided in Quackity before the execution, what then? Would it have changed a thing, or would Quackity have been just as eager as Schlatt to indulge in the power trip that is killing an unarmed, armorless spy in front of a live audience?
Because he remembers that mingled with the anxiety on Big Q’s face on the day of the festival, there was something like awe, beneath it. Something deeply impressed, in his gaze, as it flickered to Techno and Schlatt and Techno again, as if taking in every detail of the blatant display of sheer power he possibly could and tucking it into his mind for later. He can’t remember if Big Q said something in his defense. He wants to believe he did, but he can’t get that slack-jawed, wise-eyed expression of not just horror but wonder, too, out of his head.)
He straightens, dropping his hands to his sides and clenching them into fists. “I don’t know,” he says, “I don’t know if it’s just me who remembers under someone else’s administration, someone—someone we swore to never be like?”
Indignation flickers ever so slightly in Big Q’s eyes and Tubbo feels like he’s going crazy. They don’t want to be like Schlatt. There’s no way after all this time Quackity still wants to be like Schlatt, not after what he did to him. Not when Tubbo stands in front of the mirror every morning and fiddles with his tie until he’s certain it’s straighter than how Schlatt wore his because he can’t bear even that smallest resemblance, not when he spends every moment speaking making sure his words are distinct and never slurred, not when he spends days agonizing over every decision he faces. They don’t want to be like Schlatt.
Desperate, he adds, “You know—maybe, maybe the fact that—why don’t we blow him up with a rocket launcher, maybe that’ll get the cogs moving, in your head a little bit!”
His breath catches. He’s pushed too far expecting to see Quackity’s face scrunch in regret and horror and hurt at the accusation—because that’s what it is, actually, he wants more than anything for Big Q to be outraged at the comparison. He wants him to start screaming about how he’d never do something like that again, even if it would technically show they meant business, even if it would prove once and for all they were willing to hurt people to cling to this idea of control.
All he sees is Quackity staring right through him, pity and disappointment and dismay warring on his face that this is the chance Tubbo will not take to hurt someone.
Oh.
He realizes all at once: this is what he’s been searching for. In all his misguided murder plots backed by his power-hungry secretary, he’s been scrambling for some sort of—simulation, something to emulate that day months prior where he needed.. guidance? A way out? That day, months prior, where he needed some form of saving grace. Where he was instead met with the unforgiving echo of a microphone and the business end of a crossbow and a set of ugly, painful scars.
Of course he wasn’t going to get that in becoming the killer. What good has that ever gotten him—has revenge, has reclamation of some false image long gone, has that ever, ever worked? Did he not watch Wilbur fall to pieces searching for that very same thing? Of course he can’t feel safe, imitating the violence, making everyone else pay—
All he really needed that day was a single moment of mercy.
He can be that, now. For someone else.
“If you execute Ranboo,” he announces, making sure every single syllable comes out crisp even if he stutters, “that’ll be—that’ll be treason.”
(And isn’t that a relief, a weight off his chest words can’t really describe, to make that word work for him this time? Isn’t that the catharsis he’s been chasing for weeks of planning at a time, all wrapped up in an order that Quackity has no choice but to follow? Why did it take so long to figure that part out—does everyone else know this dizzying feeling of elation you get with the knowledge you did something right, finally, to keep someone safe?)
He did something right. He saved one. Once. A single life in the grand scheme of the dozens of respawn they will surely face come Doomsday tomorrow.
Somehow, he feels lighter than he has since October.