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L’Manberg was quiet.
The silence was to be expected, honestly. Nothing could have survived the terrors of Doomsday, least of all a nation that was already halfway down the road to ruin. Like the first president of the nation, L’Manberg had lost its third and final life. There was not much left to be making noise.
Maybe if Tommy was still here, it wouldn’t be so quiet.
Despite it having been a couple of months since Doomsday, the quietness still felt unnatural to Tubbo. It draped over his skin like the too-big presidential suit that was never his, that should never have been his. He shivered as if the summer afternoon had grown cold and in the air lingered something sinister deserving of his nerves. The silence was almost suffocating, like a weight pressing down on his chest, filling his lungs with doubt.
Tubbo hated the silence.
Michael, who didn’t know where they were or why they were heading there, paid the silence little attention. At this stage, he was probably used to it. Hours at a time alone in the house with nothing but a chicken for company will do that to a child, Tubbo supposed. Even so, Michael wouldn’t know of the history of the land to be unnerved by the current state of it.
News regarding L’Manberg spread far and wide, even to the Nether and other servers, but if Michael had heard it he was likely too young to understand, much less put a place to the name. Tubbo wouldn’t fault Michael for that – if anything, he was glad that Michael didn’t know.
Tubbo paused at the edge of the crater that used to be their his nation, peering into the grave of what could have been. Not noticing his sudden stop, Michael almost continued walking. He would likely have fallen into the crater if it weren’t for the railings that had been installed to prevent exactly that.
Fall damage wasn’t the most pleasant death.
To think that Tommy had considered it during exile–
Taking his child’s hand, Tubbo led Michael to the staircase built into the side of the crater and down into the depths of what was once L’Manberg.
To Michael, the path would have been unfamiliar, but to Tubbo, walking the stairs was something that he could do in his sleep, if he ever slept. Not a day passed where Tubbo didn’t find himself walking down the stairs. Ever since what had happened in the prison, Tubbo had spent most of his days in the crater. These days, a lot of his time was taken by the project he’d been working on.
Tubbo was doing what Tommy had always wanted to do, but never had the time to.
The crater was silent, which Tubbo would later come to realise was as common as it was stifling.
All that the silence did was remind him of absence, of Tommy’s absence.
Usually, if he felt this uncomfortable in the quiet, Tubbo would track down Tommy and let his best friend fill the silence.
He couldn’t do that now.
And he’d never be able to do it again.
Sam cleared his throat, and Tubbo felt like screaming at the creeper hybrid. It was Sam’s fault.
No, that wasn’t right; it was Dream’s fault. Dream was the one who did it, not Sam. Sam wasn’t the guilty party, he had done nothing wrong.
But Sam had done nothing, and that was the problem. He could have done something to stop Dream, but he didn’t. Tubbo didn’t know if he could ever forgive him for his lack of action.
(A bitter part of him chants about exile. He ignores it. The silence, sometimes, is his saviour.)
“Let me tell you what I wish I’d known, when I’d taken the deal with Dream to build the prison,” Sam began quietly. Tubbo didn’t know if he was talking to the small group that had gathered in the crater to remember Tommy or to himself. “I had no control: who lived, who died, who told their story.”
Well.
Dream lived. Tommy died.
It should have been the other way around. It wasn’t.
The silence that lingered after Sam’s remark felt less heavy than before, but still hung over Tubbo’s shoulders as if it were the world and he were Atlas, cursed with an eternal burden. He bowed his head with the weight of the silence, with the weight of his mistakes, with the weight of his grief.
It came as somewhat of a surprise to Tubbo that, after a few moments of stewing in their regrets, it was Jack that broke through the shroud of silence like a stone through a glass window.
“I’ll give him this,” Jack started, pretending not to flinch under the glares hurled his way by Puffy and Quackity. “His involvement, his influence on the server could never be forgotten. Dream couldn’t undo it if he tried, and he tried.”
Conflicted, Tubbo again chose to say nothing. He and Tommy had known about Jack and Niki’s plot to assassinate the latter – how could they not, after what had happened the day of the nuke testing – but Tommy had never wanted to confront them. He had claimed that Jack and Niki were harmless, and that they deserved a second chance to learn from their mistakes.
Tubbo never told him that he thought Tommy’s unwillingness to do something about the assassination attempts may have had something to do with the dirt pillar that he’d seen in Logstedshire.
“He took L’Manberg from revolution to independence,” Niki murmured, absentmindedly picking at the hem of her sweater. She’d seemed the most nervous to walk down into the crater. Her shoulders were not pulled down by the weight of burdens like Tubbo’s were, but there was something in her eyes that Tubbo had not seen for a long time and couldn’t care to name. “I hate to admit it, but he didn’t get credit for all the credit he gave us.”
And wasn’t that the bitter truth? Tommy had said it himself, he believed that Jack and Niki deserves a second chance to learn from their mistakes. Jack and Niki themselves, however, never once afforded Tommy the same second chance that he was willing to give them.
They hated Tommy, but Tommy had never once hated them. He’d only ever hated how they got to that stage.
From beside Tubbo, there was an angry vwoop. Tubbo didn’t have to turn his head to see that Ranboo was shaking in rage next to him, not when he could see the purple particles swarming around them like bees. Niki and Jack refused to look at him and were almost turning away in fear. Puffy and Sam had politely averted their gaze from the agitated enderhybrid, and Tubbo didn’t think he had seen Quackity once look up from the Uno deck that he was shuffling nervously, except when glaring at Jack and Niki.
Tears burned racetracks down Ranboo’s cheeks as he swallowed the anxiety collecting somewhere in his throat. “Every other one of our stories gets told. Every other one of us gets to grow old. And when we’re gone, who’s going to remember his name? Who tells his story?”
The silence that tailed Ranboo’s question was the heaviest yet.
After a moment, Tubbo stepped forward and put himself back in the narrative.
In the end, they decided to build a community garden.
The idea arose as the group started to pull apart the ruins of L’Manberg in search of anything worth salvaging. Sam confided in them that Tommy planned to start a community garden after the construction of his hotel had been finalised and business was up and running.
Tommy thought that something like a community garden could make up for the damage done to L’Manberg, the damage that he wrongly believed was his fault. He had wanted something that they could all cultivate in the hopes that it would grow into something beautiful, like what L’Manberg could have been.
Puffy threw up into a pile of dirt. Tubbo felt like doing the same.
To fill the silence that threatened to sink into the crater once more, the small group discussed their plans for the community garden, talking about how they would divide up the various responsibilities to make sure that no one person had too much on their plate.
Quackity admitted that he wouldn’t be around often as he was preoccupied with projects of his own, but that he would still try to be there as much as he could. Puffy confessed that she too had projects to work on, such as starting her therapy business – said with pointed glances directed at each of them – and trying to destroy the Egg, but she would still be there most days.
Jack, Niki and Sam planned to be there as much as they possibly could, thinking they had a lot to make up for.
Tubbo and Ranboo didn’t even need to discuss it, already committed to working on the community garden every day.
The group tossed around ideas long into the afternoon, coming up with things that they would like or that they thought Tommy would have wanted. The conversation was long and emotionally draining, and throughout it they all pretended to ignore the tears and cracked voices.
As the sun crept down over the horizon – and wasn’t that a cruel reminder of more simple times, of sitting on a bench watching the sun set in a backdrop of yellows, oranges, and music discs – the conversation faded out and the group split up with promises to return the next day.
Tubbo and Ranboo returned to Snowchester that night and silently dragged Michael into a hug, holding him and each other close.
The next couple of weeks were filled with excavating the crater, creating a suitable environment for plants and flowers to flourish, and beginning to care for the community garden. Such a job would likely have taken the small group months of work to complete on their own, but with the help of friends ( and a few enemies ) it had only taken half a dozen weeks.
The grass inside of the crater was greener than it had ever been in the time when L’Manberg was still standing. Flowers had been planted in garden beds boxed in by spruce trapdoors or poking up through the grass, with the most common flowers being alliums, courtesy of Ranboo. Beehives hung from oak trees, and Tubbo ensured only the best flowers were planted near them. Cobblestone paths wound through the garden, and stone staircases crawled up the edges of the crater, lined by railings to ensure that no one would fall.
Surprisingly enough, the railings were built by Technoblade.
Tubbo never spoke to Technoblade once throughout his visits, which he thought was fair enough given their past, but Ranboo told him that Technoblade hadn’t believed that Tommy was dead. Neither had Phil, who apparently had been staying with Technoblade since Doomsday. This information didn’t surprise Tubbo at all, as Phil always seemed to treasure Technoblade before anyone or anything else. The two had thought the alleged death was another one of Tommy’s practical jokes, shooting down the idea that he was actually dead.
They believed it, eventually.
Technoblade wasn’t the only person not a part of the original small group that ended up making a contribution to the community garden.
Karl and Sapnap brought red mushrooms and flowers from the Kinoko Kingdom, and an apology for Quackity, who accepted it with opened arms and narrowed eyes. Ponk planted lemon trees, and George hung hammocks between them that he could often be found sleeping in. Foolish brought with him incredible building skills, helping to tidy up the community garden and make it look more complete. Eret donated a beacon and was more often in the gardens helping out than not. Hannah planted crimson rose bushes and started the tradition of a weekly community picnic by bringing cake once a week. Fundy hadn’t yet visited, but a few of his favourite garden flamingos had, so he must have approved. Connor and Purpled seldom contributed materials, but would stop by every now and then to help out.
The community gardens became somewhat of a sacred place on the server. Not once since it had started had it been griefed. The only threat to it was the Egg, which learned to stop growing into the crater soon after Sapnap started setting the vines on fire when they appeared. There was an unspoken but unanimous decision among the citizens to not harm the community garden.
It took some time for Tubbo to reach the point where he felt as if he could trust that the community garden wouldn’t be griefed or destroyed, but he got there eventually. Tubbo hadn’t felt that kind of trust for a long while, least of all on this server. The feeling of safety felt like it had taken the weight off of his chest, telling him that he could finally breathe.
But the breath of fresh air was as suffocating as it was relieving.
Tommy never got to feel the exoneration that came with knowing that you were finally safe. Sure, Tommy’s hands definitely weren’t clean of grieving other people’s builds or bases ( again, that bitter part of him chants about exile ), but L’Manberg was Tommy’s as well. Tommy was one of the more devastated when L’Manberg was blown up, and when it was blown up again, and when it was blown up again.
Tubbo couldn’t bring Tommy back and let him experience the feeling of finally being safe. However, that didn’t mean that there wasn’t anything that he could do. Thus, with the help of a few others, Tubbo made the decision to build a memorial for Tommy in the community garden.
There wasn’t a body for them to bury, as Dream had kicked Tommy’s corpse into the lava in a final act of spite, and therefore no grave had been built. Where better to build a grave for Tommy, even one lacking a corpse, than in the community garden created in his name?
Tommy may have already had a few memorials scattered around the server, but that wasn’t going to stop Tubbo from building another. The memorial was made out of cobblestone, of course, and was surrounded by more of Ranboo’s alliums. Although Foolish was the one that actually built the tombstone, Tubbo was the one who engraved it. After the memorial was erected, a wooden bench appeared next to it, where people could sit and pay their respects.
No one actually knew who had built the bench, but privately, Tubbo thought that it was Phil.
Most of the server members had donated something to the growth of the community garden, whether that contribution be flowers or supplies or manual labour. The only person, if you could even call him that, who hadn’t made any kind of contribution was Dream. But, Tubbo wouldn’t dare complain about that. Deep down, he hoped that Dream would rot in that prison for what he had done to Tommy, so long as it meant that he could never set foot in the community garden.
Tubbo had let Dream destroy enough already. He wouldn’t let him destroy this.
The community garden a place built to honour Tommy, a place where all of them could be safe, and Tubbo could not be more proud of it. Slowly, but surely, the garden had flourished into something beautiful, something that rivalled L’Manberg in its however many iterations. Tubbo hoped that Tommy, wherever he was now, would be proud of it too.
Thinking of Tommy was painful. It stung like a firework straight to the heart – trust him, Tubbo would know – except never anywhere near as colourful or bright. In the dead of night, under a blanket of darkness and of too-expensive cotton, Tubbo would think about Tommy more than he wanted to. Puffy had told him in one therapy session that he was processing the trauma of losing his best friend, and that it was normal. Tubbo wasn’t sure if he fully believed her, but Puffy seemed to know what she was talking about.
Tubbo hopes, kind of, maybe, that Tommy would at least be with Wilbur. The last few months with Wilbur may have been some of the worst, but Tommy deserved to be with someone that he loved.
Tubbo could say this for sure, as he was with someone that he loved. Ranboo had become something of a lifeline for him, someone that he knew he could rely on. He understood when he needed space and understood when he needed him there. They were both grieving, and in their grief latched onto the other. There were afternoons where the two would sit at Tommy’s memorial, curled up together on the wooden bench and talking softly to the headstone. There was never a response, of course, but at least there wasn’t silence.
The silence may have been the worst part of it all.
Tommy had always been the louder one in their little duo. It had always been easy to tell whether or not Tommy was around simply by listening for more than three seconds at a time. Wherever he went, noise was sure to follow, whether it be by his making or someone else’s. There was never a dull moment with Tommy around, and there was never any silence.
Tubbo hated the silence, just like he hated Dream.
Despite everything, Tubbo had never really been a hateful person. He forgave, often too easily and when he shouldn’t have. Not once did he ever hate Technoblade, despite what happened at the Festival and during his time as president of New L’Manberg. Not once did he ever hate Wilbur, despite the man having blown up the country that he’d just handed over to Tubbo. Not once did he ever hate Niki and Jack, or Sam, or Phil, or even Schlatt.
But Tubbo really fucking hated Dream.
Which, according to Puffy, was completely fair. After all, Dream had not only murdered his best friend in cold blood, but had also threatened his life a countless number of times, held him hostage during the confrontation for Tommy’s discs, and had spent months before that pushing Tubbo around while he was the president. Tubbo was allowed to hate Dream, and anyone that dared say otherwise could meet the business end of his nukes.
Tubbo, in the quiet of the night while Ranboo slept soundly next to him, had briefly considered taking Dream’s last life. An eye for an eye, as the old saying went. In the end, he hadn’t gone through with it. There had been too much blood on his hands already ( exile, exile, exile ) and he was still scrubbing it out from under his nails. That, and there was a chance, however small, that Dream would end up wherever Tommy was. There was no way in Prime that Tubbo would ever willingly subject his best friend to such a fate.
Either way, his thoughts of murder were cut short by Ranboo rolling over in bed and smacking him in the face.
It wasn’t uncommon that Ranboo would sleep through the night, not knowing that Tubbo was still wide awake beside him. On the mornings where Ranboo mentioned his lack of sleep, Tubbo would make a quip about not being able to sleep with monsters nearby that would make Ranboo’s tail whip around to swat him on the arm. Puffy dubbed Tubbo as having in-som-nee-a, whatever that was, and recommended he try using reverse psychology on his sleepless brain in order to catch a few z’s. She’d called it something like paradoxical intention, but Tubbo preferred to call it pulling an Uno reverse card on his brain.
The ways where Tubbo was struggling to get to sleep to the point of it becoming a problem would find him wandering into Michael’s bedroom and curling up in bed around the piglin toddler. In his sleep, Michael would burrow into his arms, which never failed to make Tubbo feel better. When Tubbo awoke the morning after those nights, he’d discover Ranboo enveloping them both in his stupidly long enderhybrid arms. It was awkward, with too many limbs in a bed designed for a toddler, but it was safe and that was enough.
It probably should have felt a little weirder, being married with an adopted zombified piglin child at the mere age of 17. However, Tubbo was nothing if not too young for his life experiences, as proved by pretty much anything that had ever happened to him on this server.
He wasn’t the only one, either. After all, Tommy was younger at him at 16, and. Well.
Their lives kind of fucking sucked, Tubbo had decided. The cards they had been dealt were all pretty shit, but they were forced to play those very hands anyway. And for what?
At the end of the day, L’Manberg was gone, Wilbur and Tommy were dead, and Dream was still smiling. What was the point?
Tubbo watched Michael stepping foot into the community garden for the first time and answered his own question.
Michael’s face showed the awestruck confusion that only a child could feel. As a nether mob, he’d seldom seen flowers in his life, let alone as many flowers as were planted in the community garden. Tubbo watched with a soft smile as Michael bounced around from the flower beds to the lemon trees and to everything in between, before coming to a stop in front of Tommy’s memorial.
“Da? Wha’ h’is?” Michael called to him in his rugged common-speak.
Tubbo walked over and pulled Michael into his arms, perching him on his hip as they looked down at Tommy’s grave from the foot of the memorial. “Do you remember the stories I told you about my adventures with Uncle Tommy?” Michael enthusiastically nodded. “Well, Uncle Tommy is– gone, now, and this is a place where we can visit him.”
“Wh’re he go?” Michael asked, squirming around in Tubbo’s arms. “Unc’ come b’ck?”
“No, Michael.” Tubbo stared down at the plaque he’d engraved himself. “Tommy isn’t coming back.”
“Oh.” Michael said simply, before sliding out of Tubbo’s arms and running over to the rose bushes. Normally, Tubbo would follow after him, but this time he couldn’t bring himself to. It was almost as if he had been frozen where he stood in front of Tommy’s grave. His eyes would not move from Tommy’s headstone, despite becoming heavy with tears.
Eventually, Tubbo managed to rip his gaze away from Tommy’s memorial to watch as Michael ran around in the grass. The toddler almost went crashing into Hannah’s rose bushes, so captivated by a red similar to the netherrack he had grown surrounded by that he wasn’t watching where he was going, but stopped himself before he fell. Michael pointed an accusing finger at the ground he tripped on and snorted something in the piglin language that could not have been nice.
Tubbo chuckled to himself, turning back to Tommy’s memorial. “He reminds me of you, you know. In his eye, I see you, Tommy. I see you every time.” Michael’s eye wasn’t blue, instead fully white, but it always held the mischievous glint that Tommy had been known for.
Tubbo’s laughter died out, and his eyes filled with tears once more. “Are you proud of this, Tommy? Are you proud of me?” Michael ran back over, tugging incessantly at Tubbo’s coat. Tubbo ignored him, eyes fixated again on the engraving on Tommy’s headstone. “Have I done enough?”
Silence followed his question, of course.
As Tubbo debated whether or not to say something else, Michael continued to tug at his Snowchester coat. There was something that Michael desperately wanted to show Tubbo, apparently. Tubbo sighed, not wanting to turn away from Tommy but not wanting to ignore his son.
Tubbo turned around and let out a shattering gasp.