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"What's the first time you saw a dead body?" he asks Ranboo one day. He's still in awe at the novelty of someone who has never seen battle. He met Ranboo a few weeks ago and has hardly paused in his marvelling since.
"I don't remember," Ranboo replies. "I mean- I probably have, but I don't really… I don't have the best memory."
"I know."
"Sorry."
"It's alright." Tubbo folds his hands behind his back, staring down at the small lake growing beneath New L'Manberg. "How do you plan to be president if you've never been to war before?"
"Have you been to war?" he asks, and Tubbo realizes, a little belatedly, that he's spent all this time asking questions and never told Ranboo a damn thing.
Not his fault, really. He is unaccustomed to those unaccustomed with war. "Yes. Twice."
"That's a lot," Ranboo points out.
"Not really."
"Maybe you need a president who's never been to war."
He told Quackity a war story once, on a camping trip. This feels like that, a little.
"We're crawling through the jungle," he'd said, hands hovering over the campfire between them, "and this recruit taps me on the shoulder and says how do you know where the landmines are?"
Fundy, sitting on the ground and sewing up his uniform, had barked a pre-emptive laugh. Quackity had just looked confused.
"So I said, why do you think you're going first?"
Quackity had looked a little horrified. "But- not really, though, right?"
Tubbo stared and bit on his tongue. "No, 'course not."
Tubbo likes his war stories. Or, at least, he used to. It's hard to tell them, now. He's gotten so used to keeping secrets that he cannot give them up when he wants to.
"Maybe it's better," he tells Ranboo, "to know war. To know what you're preventing."
"Or," Ranboo offers, his voice tentative and wary, "maybe it's better to know peace. To know what you want to preserve."
Tubbo looks up at him, feeling a strange weariness settle over him. Ranboo's posture is hunched, though his shoulders are straight and tensed. There's an old instinct rearing its head that wants to correct the stance.
He doesn't give into it. He knows how much it hurts to spend your life standing like a soldier.
"Question for the debate floor," he decides, pulling at the sleeves of his coat.
"I suppose," Ranboo replies, though it sounds less like agreement and more like acquiescence.
Tubbo doesn't want acquiescence.
He sighs, resting a hand on his stomach, tracing the old scar through his shirt. It is better for your people to obey you reluctantly than to have no love for you at all.
—
"What's your rank?" he asks Technoblade, that first day in Pogtopia.
"Rank?" Techno echoes.
"Military rank." Tubbo pours down redstone dust behind the back wall of the potato farm. He missed working with redstone.
Techno chuckles. "Not part of the military."
"Thought you would've been. I'm a Brigadier General, if you care for it."
He can't see Techno's face, but he hears the silence as he stops shoveling dirt. "Aren't you a little young for that?"
Tubbo huffs. "I'm sixteen."
"I know. That's why I'm asking."
Schlatt says the same thing. Hand wrapped around a cold can of beer, eyes blurry. "Too young for this shit. Wilbur… Wilbur don't get it."
Tubbo, muscles aching from tenseness, had only nodded. "Yessir."
Schlatt's voice is genuine, is the scary part. He sounds so honest. "You and- and that blond brat. You're fucking infants."
Tubbo glares down at his paperwork, a deep and festered anger inside him. He does not speak.
He tells Tommy about that, much later. His skin is scorched and red, buried under bandages. Tommy fumes. "So you're old enough to die, but not to fight?"
Tubbo lets Tommy work himself out. It's better to stand by when he gets angry like that. Tommy's like a tea kettle, Tubbo thinks. He boils and boils and boils, and sometimes Tubbo just has to let him scream.
He doesn't need to add fuel to the fire. But if he could've, he'd tell Tommy that death without battle is exactly what people like Schlatt prefer.
Tommy goes out that night, still irate. So Tubbo is stuck inside.
He avoids Wilbur. Not because he's scared- he could never be scared of Wilbur.
Wilbur just… he makes Tubbo sad.
That's how he ends up asking Technoblade to change his bandages.
Techno looks up from his sword. "Can't you… do it yourself?" He sounds awkward. Uncertain.
"No." Tubbo cannot find it in himself to elaborate.
"Okay."
Tubbo is silent while the bandages are pulled off, but finds himself talking as the burn cream is pressed into his skin. There is something too disturbing for words about the numbness in his body where feeling should be.
"Have I ever told you any war stories?" he asks.
"You have not."
Tubbo swallows dryly. "I knew these guys who played chicken with a flash grenade."
"Sounds stupid."
"Yeah. It was. One time one of 'em grabbed a real grenade and killed himself."
"How do you mix them up? They look completely different."
Tubbo nods. "They do. Guess he wasn't looking."
Techno looks at him odd. He tries to think of a better story.
He outsmarted three generals once, at a jungle base. He won a medal for that. It's on his old uniform, hanging up in his closet. He could tell that story.
He doesn't like to tell that story.
There is a feeling about war that cannot be captured by individual heroics. He knew two men who played chicken with flash grenades at camp. They ate lunch together. One of them always gave the other his biscuits.
That's a true war story. That's one he believes.
—
"We can kill Dream," Quackity says.
"I don't think you understand what you're getting into," Tubbo replies.
Quackity grits his teeth, and Tubbo almost takes it back. He loves Quackity. He trusts Quackity, which is even more dangerous.
But he's seen too much death to make himself apologize for this.
"You don't want to go to war with Dream."
Fundy is quiet at the other side of the caravan. Quackity holds his head in his hands.
Tubbo rubs at his collarbone. "Trust me, Big Q. You- you haven't been to war before."
"The fuck do you call the 16th, then?"
Tubbo bites on something bitter inside him that wants to laugh. "Not a war. That was a battle. You don't- Dream isn't a good man to fight, Quackity. He's… he's cruel."
Tubbo's hand drifts, unconsciously, down to that scar. He's still never known how many were to blame for that night. Eret, for leading them in? Sapnap, for putting the sword through him? But he does know one person, at least, who has never regretted it.
Dream bragged to him about it, once. Talked about how clever the design was.
That's what he has dreams about, these days. Small boxes, rabid dogs, and that saccharine excitement in Dream's voice as he explained how the redstone worked.
"We can't go to war again."
Quackity sighs, and says they can discuss it at the exile meeting.
—
The first time Tubbo saw a dead body, he was fifteen years old. An adult by law, but small for his age, and with a baby face that got him a lot of leeway when he snatched an extra piece of cornbread at dinner.
And he was fifteen when Dream's army set the forest on fire, and everyone was turned into medics. He was fifteen when he poured water on a man's burning skin and then watched him die.
Tubbo sat back on his heels. He picked up his helmet, stumbled over to the lake, and scooped up more water with it.
He put someone else out. They did not die.
That was his first war story. Beginning to end.
He doesn't like to tell it.
—
It takes three years after the war is done, but Sapnap invites him on a hunting trip.
The invitation comes in the mail. Tubbo thinks it's a letter bomb.
Tubbo, Fundy, and Sapnap meet at their old campsite. Tubbo smiles when he sees Sapnap, fighting back the instinctual twitch. Fundy does not look as happy to be there.
Sapnap looks nervous.
"Hey, Tubbo," he says, with a smile that looks like it's trying to fight it's way off his face. "Good to see you."
"Good to see you, too." Tubbo looks around, the nostalgia that hits him heavy and sad. "Old group back together. That's fun, isn't it?"
Fundy takes in an audible, shaky breath, and then steps back. "I think I'm gonna go."
Sapnap's face is downcast, but not surprised. "Oh. Okay. Bye, Fundy."
Before Tubbo can say the name, Fundy is over the hill and out of sight.
Tubbo and Sapnap turn to each other. Neither of them are in their old gear. The air smells different, full of sulfur instead of pine.
Or maybe that's just Tubbo.
He wants peace. He wants something better.
He holds out a hand, and takes Sapnap's in a shake. "It's good to see you again."
Sapnap's smile finally reaches his eyes. "You too, Tubbo. I'm glad you came."
—
"I think it's better," Tubbo muses, staring at the dripping honey, "to know what war is. It makes you wiser."
Ranboo wrings his hands. "Maybe. I don't know. I don't think bad experiences make you like- more prepared, or- or better. I think it just makes you sad."
"It didn't do that to me."
"Are you sure?"
Tubbo stares at him. Ranboo's eyes are down, the white side of his face bright purple.
"Yes," Tubbo affirms. But even he can hear the lack of surety in his voice. "It helped me. I wouldn't be who I am today without it."
"Is that a good thing?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
Tubbo rolls his eyes. "It helped me stay alive, Ranboo."
"It shouldn't have had to."
Tubbo throws his hands up. "But it did! I don't know why you don't get this. The war didn't- none of this hurt me! I'm not damaged by it, I'm not sad. Don't look at me like that."
Ranboo's eyes dart away. "Like what?"
Tubbo sighs, and lowers his voice. "Like I'm someone you have to feel bad for. I get enough of that because of–" Tubbo gestures to the scars on his face– "this. I don't need it for anything else. I don't need it from you."
"I'm sorry," Ranboo says, and it sounds genuine enough. "I'll respect your wishes. Even if I don't agree."
"Thank you, Ranboo."
"Of course."
"I'm fine."
"I know, Tubbo."
"Yeah. I'm… fine."