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“I’ve been waiting for this day for a long, long time,” Technoblade says, and then he does not put his sword through Tubbo’s chest.
Tubbo expects him to, just a little, but he also figures that Techno is waiting until tomorrow, for Doomsday. So he can be buried under the salted Earth, and nothing may grow over his grave.
Go on then, Tubbo thinks, as no one looks him in the eye. Do your best.
He doesn’t waste any more thought on it. He has more important things to worry about than the death that will come tomorrow.
“Tubbo,” Tommy says, and then stops. As if his name is enough to complete anything. It hangs in the air. There’s a certainty to his voice.
He closes his eyes. He takes a deep breath. Holds it. Let's it out.
“Gather supplies,” he tells them. “Prepare yourselves. Anyone who cannot fight can leave. No one will hold it against you if you do.”
Tubbo walks into the White House, listening to the world outside, and he stands in the middle of his office.
For just a moment, he stares at the scorch-marked desk that has, miraculously, survived the New Year. And then he digs through the bottom drawer and pulls out a bottle of whiskey.
Tubbo has never hated anything more than he hates watching things go to waste.
It’d be an awful thing of him, to let this bottle of whiskey shatter into the ground like everything else will tomorrow.
“I’m saving it,” Schlatt had said, many months ago. He’d kept it around, hidden in his desk, for an occasion worth celebrating. But nothing ever came.
Tubbo is not his predecessors. His spirit is not theirs. He uncaps the bottle, takes a single drink, cringing from the taste of it, and then sets it back down on the desk.
Well, he thinks, there’s your celebration.
It’s not a very good celebration, all things considered. Wilbur could do better. The day they won L’Manberg was a tired one. They slept out in the sun, exhausted and huddled and piled on top of each other. The weeks after were full of cleanup and hard work, piling dirt back into the places it was overturned. But the day after that- that was a memory worth keeping. Fireworks and sugar glass, treats like Tubbo had never seen before. Rebirth was a beautiful thing.
Tubbo runs a hand along the desk, far overdue for a shining. There will be no rebirth after this, of course, following that old rule of three.
He stares at the desk, then stares at his hands, and finds a scarred kinship between them.
The doomed leader of a doomed nation sinks to his knees, as a disciple comes to prayer, as a sinner comes to absolution, as a heretic comes to his apotheosis.
Here are, in no particular order, the exact three things that happen before the world ends.
One: The sun shines. It is a nice day.
Two: Technoblade says “let slip the dogs of war!”
Three: Someone, as in a ghost of a friend, as in something just to the right of a god, as in a man, really, when everything is said and done, throws a stick of dynamite at the town square, and the world cries havoc.
A monster sinks its teeth into Tubbo’s bee sanctuary. He trips on a rock as he rushes towards it, clattering to the ground with all of his armour and weapons by his side.
The end of the world comes quick, and too loud, accompanied by tinnitus. In one word, Tubbo Underscore would call the end of the world graceless.
But he picks himself up, after the ham-fisted wrecking of everything he’s ever lived for. “Well,” he says, when Technoblade finally looks at him, “come on then. Make it quick.”
There’s a hiss, a bang, and the ground lurches beneath him.
Here are, in no particular order, the exact three things that happen before the world stops ending.
One: Technoblade surges forward, trident in hand, slamming into the ground, barely a foot from him.
Two: There’s the grate of stone on stone, just as Techno raises his sword.
Three: The building looming above them tilts, screeches, teeters and then collapses onto their heads.
Then, inexplicably, it stops. Everything does. Somewhere behind Tubbo is Tommy, too far away and yet far too close. There’s a dog, still leaping through the air, maw open and spilling slobber.
And there’s Technoblade, sword raised, jaw grit, close enough to kill but utterly frozen in time.
Tubbo takes a step back.
“There you go,” says a voice from behind him. “Took you long enough.”
Tubbo stiffens, pounding heart leaping up to his throat. Nausea slips around in his stomach. He turns around and comes face to face with a woman.
She’s about the size of him, a bit taller, and probably older than Wilbur. Her hair is split off into many different dreadlocks, trailing down to her knees. She wears a yellow sundress as a young farm girl would.
“Who are you?”
She smiles. It is not cruel, but Tubbo would not go nearly so far as to call it kind. “I’ve gone by a lot of names.”
Tubbo lifts up a hand, unable to help the tremors running up and down his arms. “What can I call you?” he asks, instead of saying any of the things he wants to say. It’s like he’s being controlled by something outside of himself. He can’t ask any question but this. He stares at his own hand, half-wonder, half-fear.
The woman, who Tubbo very distinctly suspects is not a woman, not a human, at all, takes a step closer to him. “I,” she says, “am the river that runs through your country. I am the ground you stand on. I am him,” she points to Technoblade, “and I am you.” She reaches a hand up, hovering it next to Tubbo’s cheek.
She pulls back just before she touches. “Take a walk with me,” she says, and the ground falls out from under them.
For only a second, everything is dark. Then, the world reforms, older and younger, with no black smoke. Tubbo teeters, struggling to keep his balance.
He turns and finds the beginning of his country. There’s a shallow lake. Black and yellow walls all around him.
Tubbo’s heart aches, looking at it. It’s been so little time. He’s aged so much.
He brings a hand up to his hair, pushing it away from his eyes, tucking it behind his ears. The air smells like cool water and petrichor. He looks to his side and finds the woman again.
“I’ve been called a lot of names, little one,” she says again. “Your brother called me fate.” Tubbo flinches at the mention of Wilbur, something heavy and swollen in his stomach he doesn’t know what to do with. “I never liked that one,” she confesses. “I’ve never agreed with the idea that this is inevitable.”
She turns to him. “What’s wrong? Do you not like this place?”
Tubbo shakes his head vehemently. “No, no, I love it. But it’s hard. It’s gone.”
She chuckles, placing a hand on his shoulder. Tubbo chokes on his own tongue, overwhelmed by the pure feeling coming from the contact. It’s fire, it’s ice, it’s every burn and scar and pain he’s ever felt, all in the shape of a handprint. It punches the air from his lungs, sucks the breath from his lips. “Oh, Aeneas,” she says softly, so soft Tubbo almost doesn’t hear it over the roaring in his ears. “You and your love. Can’t you just let it go?”
She takes her hand off and Tubbo crumples to his knees. As a disciple, as a sinner, as a heretic.
He can’t help the tears that pour down his cheeks, the echo of the pain heavy in his chest. He holds onto his shirt, gripping tight, desperate for air. His whole body moves as he breathes, desperate and surging.
The woman kneels down beside him. “Come on, Aeneas. Back to your feet.”
“Who are you?” he gasps again. “Who is Aeneas?”
“You are Aeneas. Or, you were, many lifetimes ago. I imagine that you will be again, one day.”
Tubbo holds back any more tears, swallowing and sitting back. “Are you god?”
She shakes her head. “Oh, no. Not any that you worship, at least. No, I’m no Prime. And I’m no kind of singular.” She reaches out a hand and Tubbo scrambles back from the touch. She glares at him. “Scared, little one?” she asks, but her voice has a mocking tone to it.
Tubbo sees no use in lying. “It hurts. Your touch.”
The woman rolls her eyes. She plucks a flower from the ground beneath them, bright yellow against her dark skin, and tucks it behind her ear. Tubbo swallows nervously.
“Oh, it always hurts. Everything hurts. But I won’t touch you again, not unless you ask.”
Tubbo slowly brings himself to his feet. “Thank you. Now, can- can you tell me what I’m doing here?”
The woman tears up a handful of grass then stands, and they both watch as it’s carried away by the wind. “Oh, lots of reasons. But the most important one means we have to go back to our original places.” She snaps her fingers. The moment of darkness is a little less jarring the second time, but it still makes Tubbo’s stomach turn. He comes to, standing in the rubble and the dust, Technoblade in front of him.
“A lot of things are happening, in this one half-second of time, here.” She puts a hand on Technoblade’s forearm, but he remains a statue. “He’ll kill you, once he comes to. The building will fall. The dogs come next.”
“So-”
The woman shushes him. “I’m getting to it. I have a lot of names, little Aeneas. Your father, and his father, and a long line of men, all related to you, as far back as time goes, have called me a crossroads.”
Tubbo is stuck on one thing. “You know my father?”
The woman waves a hand. “Not in this life. But in others.”
“Oh.”
“They called me a crossroads. And you are facing one now.” She moves her head to gesture to Technoblade. “So is he, though I don’t doubt he has already made up his mind. So, you have two choices.”
“What is Technoblade-”
“Shush. You’ll find out. You have two choices, little one. You stay here, where you stand. If your enemy there decides not to flee, he’ll die too. Maybe you hold him back, maybe you don’t. But you die together. Or, I do for you as I did for Aeneas, the real Aeneas, many years ago, and carry you to safety. Your enemy flees. Your home dies. But you live.”
Tubbo stands, caught in silence, for so long that he almost worries he’s just as frozen as the rest of the world.
The woman sighs, soft and weary. “You wanted to know who I was?”
Tubbo nods, a hard lump in his throat.
“I am love, Aeneas. And, by extension of that, I am pain. I am the ground you stand on, the sword in your scabbard. I am heaven and perdition. And, once, I was your mother.”
A strangled laugh pulls itself from the depths of his throat. “We don’t look much alike.”
But his mother does not laugh, just looks at him sadly. “We did. In your other life.”
Tubbo swallows and does not respond.
“I miss that life,” she continues nonetheless. “You were a leader, just as here. But it’s less painful in that life. I did not give you so much, back then.”
Tubbo stares up at his executioner. At the man he has failed to stop, over and over and over again. He has a chance to stop him now.
All it will cost is his life.
“I don’t know if I’d let you save me,” he confesses, and it’s like a weight off his chest, “even if I couldn’t kill him, too.”
The woman sighs. “Oh, I know. I wouldn’t fault you for it.” Tubbo darts his gaze towards her, shocked and hurt and a little vindicated, maybe. “Life- your life, this life. It hurts, doesn’t it? I wouldn’t blame you.” She holds out a hand, palms up as if offering him to take it. “I’d hold you while you died if that’d make it any better. I’d bring you up somewhere else, somewhere peaceful. This world is so cruel, my dear. Come rest with me.”
Tubbo looks back up, towards the stone that he knows, instinctually, will come crashing down when the woman wills it so. “What do I call you?” he asks once more.
“Whatever you want. I’ve known many names. Aphrodite, Ishtar, Milda. I could go on. I have no real name. The only name I’ve heard come from your mouth is mother.”
“Can I call you that, then?” he asks timidly. “Mother?”
She smiles at him. “Of course, darling one. Are you ready yet?”
“How does his story end? Aeneas’s?”
His mothers face twists, but he just closes his eyes. “Does it matter?”
“Yes.” He pauses, then- “please.”
“He found a new home, then. Brought his people to Italy. He died, as all of you do. Come, son. Just come with me. You will sleep in my arms forevermore. Leave the cities to Romulus and Remus.”
Tubbo puts a hand on his own chest. “What happens if I stay?”
His mother sounds frustrated now. “I don’t know, Aeneas. I know nothing of your future other than my own domain.”
“So? What of your domain, then?”
“Do you really want to know?”
Despite the warning clear in her voice, Tubbo nods. And then she wraps her hands around his wrists. The pain that flooded through him before is back, but somehow hotter, sharper, than before. It’s overwhelming. It’s agonizing. It thrums through his bones, up to his flesh, punches through his stomach and his lungs.
His mother’s eyes are bright, empty white. Somehow, through the tears blurring his own vision, he can see the hurt on her face. “Do you feel it now? I don’t give this choice often, Tubbo, but I’m giving it to you. I let all of my children live. But I’m giving you a choice now. Love is painful. Love is an awful thing, my son.”
But as her grip grows tighter, as his bones grind together, Tubbo feels something else.
Deep in his stomach, there is warmth. It’s not separate from the pain, but an extension of it, a nebula around the star. Like a bright light, it swallows him whole. The pain is violent, burning, but the warmth is what really makes him cry. It’s Tommy and a hand in his when he’s scared, a compass that points towards his heart. It’s L’Manberg, the day after independence and the weeks after and the day after the weeks. It’s fireworks and spun sugar glass.
And, in his heart, he knows that the future will bring more of it.
His mother does not look angry when his eyes find her again. When she speaks, she sounds resigned. “You’ve felt it, haven’t you?”
Tubbo nods. Despite the pain, a small smile breaks across his lips.
His mother sighs and drops her hands. “You and Aeneas both. I can never have a happy child, can I?”
Tubbo falls to his knees. Apotheosis, he thinks, and it certainly feels so. “It’s worth it. A whole lifetime of suffering is worth it, for that.”
She kneels in front of him, taking his hands in hers, and he cries because it hurts- because it doesn’t. “I'll take you back, then?”
“Please.”
Here are, in no particular order, the exact three things that happen when the world stops ending, ends, and comes back together all at the same time.
One: It hurts. The wind whistles past his ears as Technoblade flies to safety.
Two: It doesn’t. He blinks and he is standing on top of a hill, away from the crumbling building and any evidence that something wrong stood here at all.
Three: He breathes. He lives.