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This is the legacy of the Soot Administration: Five books, one son, and a country that has never learned how to stop fighting.
You put the books on an archive shelf, deep beneath the ground. It feels like a bunker. It feels like premonition.
His son helps you build. You name him the foreman. He tries to cover the crater in dirt, fill up the hole, build it like it used to be. You tell him not to. You don't want what it used to be. Really, you don't think he does, either.
Your schools wear army uniforms. Men, who mere years ago wouldn't have been caught dead with jewelry, never take off their watches. A woman you worked with on recon back in the war comes to your house one day. She puts her gun in your hands and tells you not to give it back.
You almost tell her about the cyanide pill in the secret pocket of your president's jacket.
You do not.
(This is the legacy of Wilbur Soot: Tommy does not trust you anymore.
Tommy has kneeled before one authority in his life and one only. You do not think he ever stopped believing that he was the executive officer, no matter how many years have gone by.
You have never quite stopped being a soldier, either.
"This is what he wanted!' Tommy yells. "He made you president to tear us apart!"
He goes against your wishes. He pours all of himself in all the wrong directions.
"You don't respect me," you tell him, and he stutters over a denial.
Wilbur lied to him. Wilbur hurt him. Wilbur held you both after nightmares, no matter how far he drifted. He is the only authority Tommy has ever respected, and maybe it is a betrayal on its own to expect him to give that right to anyone else.
This is the legacy of Wilbur Soot: Fundy's teeth are sharper. His pride smarts easier every day. You do not think he ever stopped feeling like an outsider.
He does charity work. He visits hospitals. "It's not enough," he tells you. "Why can't we ever stop it?"
You ask yourself the same, sometimes. You think about the day Wilbur died, about Janus's shadow, cast over you all. How many considered leaving that day? How many would have been happier for it?
You don't like to think about it. You can't imagine the life you would have led as a deserter.
It could have been a better one. It certainly would have been a guiltier one.
You wonder if Fundy ever thinks about leaving. For his sake, you hope he does.
"We couldn't have done anything," you say passively, and your friend cries until his voice is sandpaper and the shoulder of your suit is soaking wet.
This is the legacy of Wilbur Soot: Niki does not bake anymore.
She does not seem to enjoy, or do, much of anything these days. You remember when she first came to your country, signed up for military training as soon as she was settled.
Wilbur used to ramble about her skill for hours on end. "Simply incredible," he'd say, barely having swallowed his grits. "She has so much potential. I'm telling Tommy she'd make a good vice, but he's being sexist."
"I'm not sexist!" Tommy protested. "I just don't know why you think she's so good."
First, Wilbur flicked a spoonful of gritz at Tommy's face. Second, you smiled, because Tommy looked like a right ass with grits on his nose. Third, Wilbur said "people love her. People listen. She makes good choices. She'd be a wonderful president, you're just thick in the head."
You wonder if she ever believed in herself that much. You wonder if she's eating well. You wonder if she will ever learn to forgive herself for things that are not her fault.
She wears Wilbur's trench coat. You don't think she will.
You don't think any of you can.
This is the legacy of Wilbur Soot: You are president of a crater.
New L'Manberg is scorched earth, no matter how pretty you make it. Your city is a graveyard, no matter how hidden the corpses.
There is a chest in a tunnel that no one has opened in months. It holds the last pieces of the children you were, the last gift the gods ever gave you. Black and yellow concrete, the world you used to see.
You set up a Veteran's Counselling Center but do not attend the meetings. You tear down old propaganda and put up it's advertisements.
You are captain and carpenter of Theseus's ship. The hand that guides, no matter how lost you still are. You rebuild. You make new laws. You accept that you are thesis and antithesis of your forerunners, and there is no correct answer to any of it.
You hate the comparisons. You treasure the history.
Home is a crater. Your hands are a weapon. Remember.)
Here is the legacy of the Schlatt administration: A city that does not trust you, a mountain of policies to reverse, and a very angry cartoonist.
Schlatt kept up your decorations for weeks. People still forget.
Someone paints the word traitor on your door with red paint. You sigh, and paint it over.
Horror and time, you suppose, are natural enemies.
Your minutes man helps you with paperwork. His handwriting is nice; pretty and cursive, more like a president's than yours.
"I don't think I'm cut out for this," you say one day, freezing hands squeezed between your thighs. Followed, then, by "don't write that down."
There is a very angry cartoonist sending death threats to your house. He wanted to keep his job. You wanted him off the state's payroll.
You told him to stop drawing you with horns.
Theseus's ship, you remind yourself on bad days. One board at a time.
It never feels like enough.
(Here is the legacy of J. Schlatt: Quackity jumps when you knock.
You've never had the heart to point it out, even when you see it. You do it too.
They were both drunk, one night, and Schlatt threw a bottle at the wall. You stitched up the cut on Quackity's forehead as he drank wine like water. "Fuckin' good at that, Two-bo," he'd said with a dreary smile.
"Mhm," you'd hummed.
"I'm sorry," he'd said next.
You said nothing back.
Here is the legacy of J. Schlatt: Jack Manifold has a poster on his wall.
You recognize it the second you see it. It's the mural, from the funeral, and your hands go cold and clammy as it's eyes meet with your own.
"It's a reminder," Jack tells you, and you finally notice the writing on the bottom.
Be better.
"Yeah," you say distantly. "You do that."
Jack received military training, but arrived too late for war. He had a stake in affairs, but never settled in. Everyone knows him, but no one ever notices.
There's something about Schrodinger in your friend. Be better, his sign says, and yet it doesn't feel like anyone has taught him how.
This is the legacy of J. Schlatt: There are no mirrors in the White House.
It's not that you hate yourself. It's that, sometimes, the reflection doesn't look like you.
For reasons you cannot explain, the scars always felt like something temporary. A feature that would fade with time. It is clear, by now, that they are not. And yet you still never expect them.
It's like adjusting to a buzz cut after years with a ponytail. You feel the weight off your head every day and you know, objectively, the hair is gone. And yet when you see yourself, it always takes a moment to recognize.
You still weren't the one to take the mirrors down. Ranboo did it.
You consider once, telling him the secrets of your office. Pulling loose the hidden drawer to reveal stacks of notes. Prying up the floorboards and pulling out the radio, explaining all the history behind it.
You daydream about it, sometimes. Construct the whole story in your head. "This," you'd say, "is my radio. I got it during the war so my information from recon could be properly encrypted. We'd crawl through the jungle, searching for traps and monitoring the outpost, reporting back if anyone moved."
You could tell great stories about that. Awful mosquitoes, humid weather, rattlesnakes bigger than your body.
"Used it for similar as a spy. I used to hide out in my bathroom with it, drawing a bath and pretending to be in it while I sent all my notes to Wilbur. Funny story is that we only had my one copy of the codebreaker, so Will and I had to spend hours writing a copy by hand."
You like to think about that future. Where you settle into your history, and stop pretending that you are the only one allowed to see it.
But you have never fit into that soldier's template. Every tragedy is supposed to be a war story, but you can't see it like that anymore.
You were a fine soldier. A competent president.
But no role has ever fit you quite like spy.
You tell Ranboo nothing. Your old notes are stapled together and shoved in an archive. The radio stays beneath the floorboards.
The truth is treason. Your past is a crime scene.
Remember.)
This is the legacy of the Tubbo administration: A crater.
You exile your best friend. You plan his funeral. He comes back weary and skittish and a shallow performance of the boy he used to be.
He comes back, and you spend the night evacuating your citizens. You spend the morning fighting, and the afternoon watching the desecration of a graveyard.
You are tired. This is what your effort adds up to. This is what you are worth.
It still feels like too much.
But then your brother grabs your hand. He steadies your feet. You friend puts his head on your shoulder and, despite his insistence that no one here can be trusted, you feel as a physical sensation the way he puts his faith in your hands.
You sing the national anthem together. Theseus's ship goes up in flames.
You are the only president of L'manberg who has outlived the position.
You make a new country, full of refugees. You recognize the cartoonist. He has a daughter. You never thought he'd have a daughter.
You build weapons. A step up from the locks on the windows, one you are happy to make.
You nearly die for your best friend. Somehow, you don't.
You grow into a new coat. You swallow down the instinctual anxieties, and tell Tommy a war story. He was there to see it. It is not much of a secret. It is progress.
What you have lost is not the end of you. What you have done is not all you are. Your story is not over yet.
You get married. You never thought you'd get to do that.
(Your legacy is named Michael. He is three years old, his favourite food is cinnamon oatmeal, and he thinks the best animal in the whole wide world is the lightning bug.
You tell your son he shouldn't be ashamed of his scars. Your husband tells you to lead by example.
You hang mirrors in the bathroom again.
Your hands build his toys. Your president's jacket stays on the coat hanger.
Remember.)