Work Text:
It’s quiet, the night after Tommy dies.
Jack walks down the Prime Path, hands stuck in his pockets. He watches colorful wool stack out of the corner of his eye, flashes of soft reds and yellows. Puffy is shouting somewhere in the distance, but somehow, that’s quiet too. His foot catches on a hole in the path and he trips, turning to stare at it.
Tommy always used to fix the path religiously. Keeping extra wood in his inventory for that express purpose.
“You’re slowing us down,” Jack complains, tapping his foot.
“Hold on a second, big man. It’s not like we’re in any hurry.” Tommy presses his palm down on the new wood experimentally, then nods, “There. If someone’s gonna do it, might as well be me.”
Jack always thought there were more holes after Tommy changed. Maybe he was just tripping on his own feet. Maybe all he needed was one splinter to fuel his anger.
He reaches into his inventory, but stops. He doesn’t have any wood on him. He doesn’t have anything on him.
The hole stays gaping, and Jack keeps walking.
Eret passes him, and it looks like they’re going to pause, their footsteps slowing slightly. Jack meets his eyes, as best he can with the glasses, and Eret nods. Neither of them stop.
Jack had been the one to tell him, the day before. Knocking on his castle gates because he couldn’t find a doorbell and wondering in the back of his mind if he would’ve been better off, taking Eret’s offer all that time ago. He said he wouldn’t betray his friends, that he’d fight for them, tooth and nail. He still believes he would.
He tries to, anyway.
It’s sick, he thinks, that he was the one to tell half the server. To sit Punz and Fundy and Sapnap and anyone who’d ever put themselves in danger, chosen a side against a friend, all for that little twat, and tell them he’s gone. He can’t quite remember if anyone cried. He can’t quite remember if he did, either.
Manifold Land is gone. The ashes still cling to his jacket. It’s deja vu, ash on a uniform and a burning home and a dead used-to-be-friend.
(Maybe starting over every time something terrible happens is ingrained in him. Maybe Wilbur taught them when they were young that people always matter more. Jack thinks he might’ve taught them wrong, even if the sentiment is correct.)
Somehow, Wilbur’s death seemed a lot more fulfilling than this.
And Jack isn’t jealous! He’s not! He doesn’t get jealous. He doesn’t grieve Dream for killing Tommy first. He just thinks it’s… wrong, to be killed by someone who only ever hurt you, and not by someone you hurt.
Maybe he’s just been fighting in wars for too long.
The path ends at the water tunnel, cutting off sharp and flat. Jack crouches down, pats it twice, like he’s some sort of idiot who thinks material possessions mean anything more than use.
“I’ll bring you some wood tomorrow,” he says, and then cringes, standing up and shaking his head. “You’ve gone off your rocker, Jack Manifold. Fucking lost in the head, you are.”
The sun is starting to go down, so the tunnel is dark when he pushes himself inside.
It’s still quiet.
***
“So you…” Niki pauses, tapping her thighs with her palms in a steady beat. She looks nice, or, nicer. Healthier. Jack has always thought she looked nice. Even with the bottom of her hair singed and dirt on her face. But she looks better now, her cheeks are pink and her eyes are bright. She looks warm, too, sitting in the soft coat that looks a lot like Phil’s handiwork on Jack’s jacket when he ripped the elbow way back when.
She offered it to him, when he said he was cold. He turned her down. Niki deserves warmth. Besides, Jack doesn’t think a thousand space heaters would make his hands feel any less stiff.
“So you know about Tommy,” she says finally.
Jack shrugs, looking at his hands in his lap. “Yeah. Found out straight away, really. I told most everyone Sam couldn’t.” he pauses, glancing at her and then looking away. “I would’ve told you myself but I– well I don’t actually know where you’re staying currently. So.”
“Oh yeah,” Niki says, turning to him. “I’m building a new one! A home, that is. It’s a little city underground!”
“That’s– Niki, that's really great.” He laughs, and he hates that it comes off nervous, “What do you need a whole city for?”
She tugs her coat further around herself, pulling her legs up under her. “Anyone who wants to be there, I guess. You could have a home there! Right next to mine!”
“I could?”
“Yes! Isn’t that what we always wanted? Just a safe home?”
“And Tommy dead.”
Niki blinks, looking out at the server. They’re sitting on a hill, on the opposite side of L’Manburg. Neither of them like to look at it.
(It was never a hole Tommy could fill with spare blocks from his inventory.)
“True. We really have everything now, don’t we?” She doesn’t sound happy about it.
Jack nods, “Don’t we.”
“Would you like a home in my city then, Jack?”
For a moment, he imagines it. Never having to start over again, to worry about countries who don’t care about him and getting thrown into another war he knows nothing about. Being forgotten by his friends two days after he died for them. It would be nice.
Perfect, even.
“I can’t,” he says. Niki deflates in the corner of his eye. “I’m sorry. It’s just that I’ve got a place in Snowchester now–”
“Oh.”
“–yeah, and it wouldn’t really do to leave Tubbo alone, after everything. I know we didn’t like Tommy, but Tubbo was always pretty… pretty alright, wasn’t he?”
Something flashes across Niki’s face. It’s cold with a flame in her hand and a burning tree all over again. It’s gone in a second. She nods, “He is, yes.”
“I reckon I have to stay there, then.”
“I guess so.”
“Thanks for the offer.”
“Anytime,” Niki says, she sounds sincere. Jack opens his mouth to ask her about her baking, or Puffy, or if she still wants to be Team Rocket with him, when her communicator buzzes and she jumps, pulling it out of her pocket. She scans the message, her lips quirking up at the corners before she notices he’s still sitting there. “Jack, I’m sorry. I have to go.”
“Oh!” Jack waves a hand, pretends to be surprised, pretends he doesn’t care, “That’s alright!”
“I really am sorry it’s just Phil needs– I have a meeting with some friends and–”
“It’s alright! Really, Niki, it’s okay. You go.” Jack smiles, “I’ll be here.”
Niki raises an eyebrow at him, teasing and familiar as she flicks her eyes to the setting sun and back down to the hill. “Here?’
“Well not– metaphorically, in the metaphorical sense, I’ll be here. For you. Or just, yeah. Yeah.”
“Yeah,” Niki agrees with a smile. She reaches out to fix his collar before she goes. He wishes she would stay. She doesn’t.
***
Jack has always liked Snowchester, it was part of the problem, in the beginning. He was there to get close to Tommy. To finish a job. He never meant to get attached to stupid little town where the tempature barely raises above freezing in the summer.
It’s why he distanced himself so much, one of the reasons he spent so much time on Manifold Land, on the hotel.
He got attached to Tubbo, too. It was a problem.
“I think we need to be more discrete,” he tells Niki, tapping his foot angrily.
Niki frowns at him, “Why?”
“I don’t want… I don’t think I want Tubbo to know it was me. I could still be friends with him after this, you know?”
“Okay,” she says, her eyes soft but almost pitying. “Don’t back out on me, Jack.”
“What? Never.”
It’s still a problem.
“Jack Manifold!” Tubbo greets, and he’s smiling but his eyes are red and puffy and the bags under them are dark. He looks like shit, really, but he doesn’t act like it.
“Hey, Tubbo,” Jack says, kicking the ground in front of him.
“Are you here for business?”
“No, I mean I live here, so.”
Tubbo’s face lights up, and he nods, “You do! We’ve missed you! Did you want to come inside?”
Tommy is dead, and Jack wanted that. Tubbo is still his friend. Jack wanted that too. He scans Tubbo’s sunken cheeks and the way he has his hands balled into fists, one hovering over the sword at his hip.
Maybe he didn’t want this.
“I’ve got some stuff to do at home, finish the basement.” Jack watches Tubbo’s eyes drain of any light, and it hurts him more than he thinks it should. “Why don’t you call Ranboo? I’m sure he’d be happy to come down, since you’re married and all.”
Jack was one of the first people Tubbo told, stumbling upon him on the way to Church Prime. He’d asked where Tommy was. Jack wishes now that he’d told him he was stuck in the prison. Maybe he would’ve gotten him out, rules and Sam and Dream be damned.
He’d lied, instead. He can’t decide if he feels more guilt about that, or making Tubbo feel anything less than overjoyed on his wedding day.
“He’s busy with Technoblade and Philza,” Tubbo says. “I don’t want to bother him.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah.”
“Niki too, actually. She’s hanging out with that lot as well,” Jack says.
“Makes sense.” Tubbo’s eyes widen slightly and he shakes his head, “Sorry, no. I didn’t mean it like that. I don’t blame her or Ranboo for wanting to be friends with him– them, just with her history, and how L’Manburg hurt her. It’s not a surprise.”
Jack nods, “Guess not.”
“I’m sorry about that, by the way.”
“About what?”
“You and Niki. I don’t know all of it, but Tommy… I’m sorry we put you through that.”
Jack wants to know what about Tommy, what he said and why he didn’t say it to Jack’s face.
“That’s the difference between you and him,” he says instead. “You were always aware of any pain you caused.”
He’s talking about Technoblade. Tommy. Wilbur and Quackity and Schlatt and too many people to name. Tubbo snorts, and they lapse into silence.
Eventually, Jack can’t help himself. “Are you doing okay?”
“No,” Tubbo says with a broken laugh. He scrubs at his eyes, glances up at Michael’s window. “Yeah. I’m dealing.”
“Really? You look like shit.”
“Thanks, you have a great bedside manner.”
“Sorry. Not too good at grieving.”
“Tommy neither. He always just said “cry and move on, big man!”. He said that about most things, actually.”
“Tommy told you to cry?”
“He was softer than people thought.”
“Oh,” Jack says, because he thinks he knew that once.
After a few awkward seconds, Tubbo clears his throat, “You sure you don’t want to come inside?”
“Maybe later, Tubbo,” Jack says. Then, as an afterthought, “Call Ranboo, mate. You look like you need it.”
***
“So you’ve renamed it officially,” Puffy says, crossing her arms as she watches him struggle with the hotel’s new sign.
Jack glances at her, “What? Still planning on suing me now that he’s dead?”
When he doesn’t get an answer right away, he sets his nails and hammer down and turns. Puffy’s eyes are red rimmed but she’s glaring at him like he’s a monster. She turns to walk away, and Jack thinks he’s finally won this fight.
“You know what the worst part is?” she calls over her shoulder. She sounds sad, pitying, “He probably would have wanted you to have it.”
He’s lost again, because she’s right. He goes back to his sign, but it’s heavier than it was before.
***
He stumbles upon Ranboo, pacing back and forth behind Tubbo’s house, chewing his lip. Jack watches him, looks up at the house.
“Get in a fight?”
Ranboo jumps, spinning to face him. He almost slips in the snow. “Jack! Fight— no. No, he’s just— they’re sleeping. I couldn’t.”
“Ah,” Jack says. He doesn’t say “me too”, but Ranboo scans his face and seems to know.
“You’re in Snowchester permanently then?”
“For now.”
“Ah.”
Jack’s never been good at talking with Ranboo. The few times they’ve had the chance, it was with Tommy. With Tubbo. He’s neutral and kind and cares a whole lot, and there’s something in his eyes when a mob gets just a little too close to someone he loves that makes Jack think there’s something about him no one knows yet. He’s off putting in the way he doesn’t remind Jack of anyone from his past, from L’Manburg.
He just thinks it was all about a drug van.
“How is he?” Jack asks instead of trying for personal conversation. Talking about the one thing they have in common works.
Ranboo doesn’t have to ask who he’s talking about. “He’s… dealing, I guess. If you call building walls and maxing out new weapons dealing.”
“He’s paranoid.” Jack shrugs, “I’m not surprised. This is the kid who built a huge tunnel system under L’Manburg just in case something happened. Got most of the weaponry back then too.”
“Oh,” Ranboo says slowly, his eyebrows furrowed.
“Paid off, didn’t it? He was right in the end.”
“Yeah, I guess. I guess. Uh, how are—” Ranboo pauses, pulling at his hands. “How are you, by the way? I know you and Tommy were—”
“We weren’t friends,” Jack cuts him off.
“You weren’t? But I thought… weren’t you?”
“We were, that was a long time ago. Before all this shit. Before he changed.”
“Changed,” Ranboo repeats. Jack glares, defensive.
He won’t explain this to another person who won’t ever believe him. Tommy was perfect. Tommy was kind. Tommy cared about people other than himself and his stupid discs and a dead ex-president who ruined all their lives and still managed to be missed.
“After Wilbur died. He was awful to us,” Jack says, spits, admits, laments.
Ranboo shrugs, running his fingers through the grass like Wilbur used to do with Tommy’s hair when he fell asleep making plots by the fire, Tubbo on his other side and no scars. No scars yet.
“Maybe. But he saved us, and… I don’t know, he kept my flower. After all that time. He kept it.”
“What flower?”
Tommy didn’t like flowers. Jack knows. They were friends, once.
Ranboo smiles softly, and it’s a grief ridden smile Jack has seen a thousand times on everyone he’s ever loved. “My first day on the server, I gave him an allium, as a… proposal of friendship.”
“You’re big on those, aren’t you?” Jack teases bitterly. Ranboo looks over his shoulder at the house and his smile grows.
“Yeah. I am.”
Jack scoffs and looks away, “So what good is a dumb flower?”
“The meaning, I guess. It’s why I planted them outside his house.” Ranboo tilts his head at Jack, and the tear scars on his cheeks glint in the yellow glow from Tubbo’s kitchen windows. “Did you know alliums mean unity?”
“No,” Jack says, but he knows that they used to mean that too.
***
When Jack finds Tubbo at his memorial, Tubbo doesn’t ask him not to sit on the bench, but when Jack lowers himself to the grass he looks grateful all the same.
“We’ve missed you,” Tubbo says, like a broken record.
Jack nods. “I’m back in Snowchester now, though.”
Tubbo continues like he didn’t even hear him.
“Would it be awful of me to miss the revolution?” he asks. “It would, wouldn’t it? Wars are never good. The wars are over now.”
“It’s easier to fight a war than deal with the aftermath.”
“Ranboo said the same thing.”
“Smart bloke.”
Tubbo laughs, looking down at his hands, folded neatly in his lap. Jack remembers visiting Manburg. Dragging Tubbo fishing and watching him sit, back straight as a rod, stuttering over words like he’d mess it up if he said more than two.
Jack never went to Pogtopia. He doesn’t know if Tommy would have acted the same.
“That’s the worst part” Tubbo whispers, snapping Jack out of his thoughts. “I should be happy. I have a husband and a town and a huge mansion with a fucking pool and a slide and I have— I have Michael. I have a child. But I’m not happy.”
Tommy is dead and Jack is here, friends with Tubbo, getting messages from Niki every few hours with updates on her baking or building. He should be happy.
“You lost your best friend,” Jack says. His throat is tight. “Anyone would be sad after that, no matter how much good they’ve got.”
“What about you? Are you happy?”
Jack looks up and Tubbo is watching him, his eyes piercing and his lips drawn in a thin line. He looks like an authority figure. He looks like a terrified child.
“What do you mean?”
“Tommy’s— well, you didn’t even have to get your hands dirty.”
When Jack climbs to his feet he half expects Tubbo to pull a sword. He doesn’t, just keeps staring at him blankly. His hands shake and he swallows, forcing his voice to stay steady. “Why would I need to do that?”
Tubbo sighs, tired and resigned. “I know, Jack. What you and Niki were trying to do. I didn’t put the pieces together until I was trying to figure out who bombed the prison and trapped Tommy—”
“Tubbo, I would never. Even if i wanted him dead I wouldn’t have let Dream—”
“I know. I know it wasn’t you.”
They’re stagnant. Tubbo shifts his gaze to Tommy’s jukebox and Jack stays standing, flexing his fingers and glancing back at the shore every couple of seconds. “I’m sorry,” he says eventually.
“I know,” Tubbo says again. “But do you regret it?”
“He was horrible,” Jack says.
“He was hurting.”
“So was I!”
“Yes, you were. You both were.” Tubbo does look angry now, standing and meeting Jack’s gaze even though he still has to look up. “Except no one here puts in the damn effort to work things out! You didn’t with Tommy, I didn’t— I didn’t either, the one time Tommy tries and he doesn’t come back! What kind of place do we live in where murder is the only answer to any of our problems!”
“Says the person who tried to execute a man without a trial,” Jack snaps, because Tubbo shouting reminds him of Tommy, reminds him he’s right to be angry and wrong all at once and he hates this useless feeling.
Tubbo stumbles back, blinking at him like he’s a new person. He sits down again.
“You don’t even care about Technoblade.”
“You’re right, I couldn’t give two shits, but the point still stands.”
“And if I’m sorry?”
“Do you regret it?”
Tubbo glares at him, and Jack returns it with a sharp smile that falls away when Tubbo says, “No. I think I would have if we’d succeeded.”
He thinks he would have, too.
“You don’t hate him, then?” he asks softly.
“The anger and fear was there, still is, but,” Tubbo shrugs, goes quiet.
Eret’s name is still in the national anthem. Wilbur spat it like a curse and anyone who mentioned him after got such a sharp look they didn’t dare do it again. Jack remembers stumbling into the van one night, finding Wilbur on the floor with a picture of him and Eret in his hand. He was crying.
It was the first time Jack had ever seen him break down.
“I don’t think we were ever taught how to hate people who’ve hurt us,” Jack says. “We followed Wilbur until the very end, didn’t we?”
“To be fair,” Tubbo laughs, bitter and hollow, “it’s hard to hate people when you remember being friends.”
And that’s true, isn’t it? They were all friends once.
Jack took an arrow for Tommy, back in the first war that only feels like child’s play now.
(It was. It is still. They’re young and they’re all so tired.)
It wasn’t bad enough to leave a scar, the arrowhead bouncing off his jawbone and snapping it out of place with the force of it. His jaw still pops when he thinks too hard.
Tommy offered him his hand, after. Blood in his blonde hair and a grin on his face.
“No use saving someone if you’re just gonna die like a pussy afterwards,” he said. Jack rolled his eyes. Took his hand.
“Next time I’ll let you get shot.”
He was joking. Not once did it ever cross his mind not to protect Tommy. Not back then.
“Hey, Tubbo.”
“Yeah?”
“Did you ever get an apology, for all the shit he put you through?”
“I followed him willingly, Jack.” Tubbo shrugs. “There was never a need.”
“I wanted an apology. More than I wanted him dead, I reckon.”
Tubbo huffs, and a second later he sits down on the grass next to him, leaving the bench empty.
“Hard to be a villain when you miss being the hero’s friend,” Jack admits. Tubbo rolls his eyes.
“Tommy never wanted to be a hero.”
Maybe Jack’s forgotten it all, the way they knew each other so well, once. Maybe he’s too stuck in the past. “When we get off this iceberg, do you want to find a project to work on together?”
“I’d like that.”
“Cool.” Jack nudges Tubbo’s shoulder with his own, “But while we’re here, got any stories?”
Tubbo laughs, and it almost sounds like it used— it almost sounds genuine.
“Oh, Jack Manifold. I am made of stories.”