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quackity never thought much about death.
leaving and losing everything was different from death, he knew once he played his cards whatever was dealt was up to luck, and fate. when the decks were distributed and the chips collected, quackity would either own the pot or fold. he never cared much for what happened after that.
there was probably a large part of himself that knew the past would catch up to him, that even if he stopped picking at every open wound he could find that they wouldn’t just scab over and heal. no, he knew that if and when his enemies caught up to him, there was little chance of him getting out of it.
in the end, quackity doesn’t really know (or care) who it is that takes the last canonical breath from his lungs, who takes the final slash that ends quackity’s time on the server. it doesn’t matter, because there’s no one left who loves or cares for him enough to see it through to bring him back. so when quackity falls into an endless pit of nothing, his first thought is fuck , and then after a lifetime or maybe just a second later he follows it with a oh well.
quackity dies, and then lands face first into his next eternity, into his very own personal hell.
-
purgatory is a funny thing, if quackity remembered to laugh he’d have a riot over it, truly. except it wasn’t funny, nothing was when your life was over and the only company you got was an alcoholic ram and a drug addict, and sometimes the memory of a boy nothing like the one he remembered, but with a voice so heartbreakingly similar that it made his frozen empty chest ache.
sometimes quackity’s purgatory was sitting in a white room as schlatt screamed at him for hours. quackity used to argue back, but after the fourth year of it he realized the noises leaving his mouth were not words, and he made no sense at all, he spent the next month having to hear schlatt’s taunting laughter, and no amount of pressing of palms against his ears could tune him out.
sometimes he’d be in a dirty convenience store uniform, a polo shirt with oil stains with the air thick with smoke from an unknown source, having to listen to mexican dream sing tunes about a love he left behind. he pretends he can’t understand him, but mexican dream talks to him like he knows that he does, and the words sink into his brain until the songs are imbedded in his mind, and can’t hear anything but the tapping of a beat against the counter and a distant guitar neither of them have.
the train station is the worst. ghostbur wasn’t someone quackity knew, but he wasn’t a stranger. in some ways he was much like the man he grew from, in other ways he couldn’t be more different. they never spoke, but ghostbur would occasionally turn to him like he wished to, but changed his mind. quackity had lots of words he wished he could’ve shared to the living boy somewhere above their heads, truths he never allowed himself to have, but sharing them with ghostbur felt wrong. he wasn’t wilbur. wilbur was still up there, doing god knows what, ghostbur was here, stuck, and quackity doesn’t wish to bring the sad creature anymore blue tears. the bricks were leaking with enough of it already.
sometimes quackity is alone, the murmuring of words hovering above his head. they whisper things about him, words he can’t hear but loud enough to make out that they’re looking at him, judging him. they talk about his broken wings, the scar on his face, the way his hair falls flat and no beanie for him to cover it up in sight. they talk about lovers lost and forgotten him, they mention weddings and eiffel towers and casinos burned to the ground. they never get loud enough for quackity to process what they’re saying until the voice is fading away, gone for him to worry over.
quackity assumed when he died purgatory would be one singular place, one hell scape. instead purgatory took even that solace from him. quackity from nowhere, belonging nowhere. his soul lingering from place to place, the only thing in common were the walls towering over him. he learned pretty early on that the others he sometimes stayed with could not see them. he was alone in his thoughts, hidden behind walls no one knew were there.
alone, boxed in, with nowhere to go. quackity’s personal hell.
-
time passing is different in hell, but quackity has always been intuitive, and smart. a significant amount of time in hell isn’t much up there, but he feels time moving in a way that means more, and he knows it’s been decades up there before he even realizes it.
he recalls an old story, a story of in death how those who have no one to remember them eventually fade away into nothing as their only existence is carried by the thoughts of their love ones. quackity feels as those who once loved him either learn to forget him, or die with the thought of him in their heads.
he pretends he’s too far out in death to notice, but he carries two identical flames in his empty void of a chest, and while the purple flame had burnt out to a dud a century ago, the orange one was strong. quackity pretends he doesn’t feel it when the orange flame sinks down until barely any light is left, pretends the only parts left of his soul doesn’t leave him completely when the light goes out. but he feels it, he feels the very moment the orange flame dies, and pretends that the lover that left him behind simply forgot about him, because now in death that is a sweeter feat than the alternative.
and oh how ironic that is...
-
quackity doesn’t know what the creator of worlds wanted when they created an afterlife. maybe people kinder than quackity found paradise, maybe they are in their own purgatory despite their kindness, maybe their fate is sweeter as they simply disappear as their time ended. quackity doesn’t know, never learns, as no one comes to this section to hell but those who were already here.
eventually they too start to fade. he only notices schlatt’s gone when he looks up one day in the white room to find he is the only one there, with nothing but silence greeting. he’s the first to go.
with mexican dream, the humming of an old song stops mid sentence, and quackity looks up at the interruption quick enough to see mexican dream’s eyes go wide, and the convenience store is suddenly gone and quackity is back in the room he occupies alone. he never sees the store or mexican dream again.
ghostbur finally speaks on his last day, he stands in front of quackity on the train station platform and tilts his head politely.
“my train should be here soon.” he tells him in a voice too sweet and too lovely, and quackity lets himself fall into the sound of an old friend, even if the friend could never hold a tone so kind.
quackity doesn’t ask where he’s going, doesn’t know, and it does not matter, but he stands up, and he sees ghostbur’s eyes well up as he sees him off.
they stare each other in the eye as the train leaves, quackity staring at it until it disappears behind the walls that close in on him, hand posed up in a forgotten motion as he waved goodbye.
time continues to pass, and quackity continues on with his death, somehow still holding some idea of who he once was. it feels exhausting, if anything. he had hoped after the first few decades he’d lose himself to death like he’s seen schlatt do, and how ghostbur gained a simplistic ideology to living. but no, he continued to live( die ) with the memory of himself, despite never having spoken to another in more than centuries.
it’s maybe because of this that quackity takes notice of something coming, he doesn’t know what it is, but he can feel it coming closer.
at first he thinks it might be his own leaving like what the others did, one day just disappearing from their own hell and into nothing. but it feels different, instead of him going towards the thing , it’s almost like it’s being pulled towards him .
each day passes and quackity could feel it getting closer, until one day it’s like his skin is itching with the anxiety of it reaching near. quackity hasn’t felt excitement or anxiousness in so long, and he stares it straight in the eye as it approaches.
a beam of light is finally visible almost five years after quackity first takes notice of the change coming, and after another few months, quackity can see it growing.
when it finally reaches him, he’s engulfed in it, bright white light filling him all around, blinding him and surrounding him. he takes one last breath like he’s about to jump into a lake of water, but the second he’s pulled through he gasps and loses it all at once.
the light overwhelms him, and he closes his eyes, and then, again for the first time since his death, darkness.
-
quackity is floating.
it’s different from the fall in the void like when he died, that sucked the air right out of him and he knew a floor was waiting for him at the bottom. this was not like that, this was like being surrounded completely by water, but he could breathe.
there are countless stars around him, faraway stars, stars close enough to touch, dim stars and stars he has to shut his eyes at from being too bright. he doesn’t pay them much attention, simply enjoys the lack of walls surrounding him.
maybe this is heaven, he thinks to himself, smiling in spite of himself, knowing he’s done little to deserve heaven. but what other reprieve could he have been granted?
the more he floats, the more he understands. he doesn’t feel anyone talking to him or communicating, but it’s almost like the creator of What Is is letting him know, letting him work it out on his own. and quackity comes to the conclusion The One behind it all, everything, everywhere, has allowed him here.
except he wasn’t allowed here at all, because quackity should’ve been gone ages ago, faded to nothing, no one. but quackity is stubborn as hell, and managed to keep some of his sanity, his humanity of all things with him in hell, all the way to the point when it ends.
because that’s what this is, the ending of time. no one was supposed to reach it, but as quackity grew close it seemed like there was little to do but to let him see it, or force him away. and just like quackity grew bored, it seemed like the maker of everything gave up on trying to keep him from it.
quackity should be scared, should be terrified that his soul has lived long enough to see the end of it. his past lovers and friends have been gone for millennia, maybe more, he was truly alone.
a sad little voice reminds him that he was used to that feeling, and maybe that’s why his soul has survived it for as long as it did.
he floats and floats, gliding past galaxies of stars. he doesn’t know what’s meant to happen at the ending of time, supposed when the Maker gets tired of him he’ll cease to exist, and is content with it. quackity has waited too long to finally rest, can still feel the stiff bones he gained from living, always stretched too thin.
as time continued, quackity doesn’t know why he’s still floating, time is different at the end. rather than moving, it’s like it’s still, quackity the one shifting through it. and it hits him with a sudden realization that he could stop.
he straightens his legs, and stops gliding.
he pauses there in the middle of nothing as if he was hovering, and blinks in the sight of stars all seemingly looking at him.
when he had just got here, the Maker would allow him to simply know things, never speaking, he would think of an answer before he even had the question, and quackity knew the Maker was there.
he tries to think of a question, but comes up short, like his mind has nothing more to wonder, because what is there to wonder at the end of time?
that must’ve been the right question, because suddenly quackity is being pulled towards one of the stars. he’s not being dragged towards it, like the decision to see it is entirely his own. and quackity hasn’t had the choice for anything since he was still building a mexican version of a land he wasn’t a part of, so he tilted his head and sped toward the light.
it grew bright much like the light did when he was taken here, from his hell, except it was different. while that light surrounded him, this one seemed to clear as he grew closer. and all at once he was seeing.
-
quackity saw himself, a younger him, a blue beanie on his head much like the one he had on when he stumbled onto the server and was greeted by an innocent enthusiastic tommy. except this wasn’t the smp, this wasn’t like anything quackity was used to.
he laughed just as loud as he always did, big bulky headphones on his head, and quackity the one peaking through time felt his chest ache as he heard familiar voices come from the ear pieces.
the boy he saw threw his head back as laughter filled the small room, basic white walls, a messy bed and a computer lighting up his features. he was careless with joy, and quackity could hear his friends there with him, even though they weren’t there .
-
in an instant, quackity pulled away, breathing heavy as he pushed the scene away and grabbed hold of another, ducking head first into the light and taking in another world.
in this one, he sees himself in old traditional style clothing, women in gowns around him, a collared shirt buttoned up to his neck. the scene starts out boring, the him of this world looks distracted, but quackity watches him as he escapes the packed ballroom and into a courtyard. quackity wonders if this version of him is about to do something criminally like he was ought to do, but then again hears the faint sound of familiar voices, and knows what’s coming.
seeing their faces is so much different than hearing their voices. sapnap and karl are dressed similarly to quackity, and they brighten up at the sight of him. they keep their voices hushed, and they drag him along to a secluded corner. quackity watches as karl paws at his jacket, sapnap laughing at the two as he takes it off of him. the himself of this time seems to relish at the fabric being discarded, and sinks into the hug sapnap pulls him into. the three talk over each other in excitement, but quackity hears nothing as he keeps his eyes on the way their hands are intertwined together.
-
he pulls away again and gasps, pushing into another one immediately, and another. and another. and another.
each one, each world. he’s there, and they’re there. sometimes george is there, sometimes dream is there, sometimes wilbur.
sometimes they marry, sometimes quackity is standing next to them as they marry others, one time he marries one, as the other never shows up in time to find them.
every lifetime, every world, they find each other, they live with each other, for each other. quackity watches each life and realizes the him of those worlds is never alone.
he aches with the knowledge, and before he can mourn the life the him of this life had, he knows he died with them in his heart, and that the obstacles that kept them from each other were just that, just little walls that kept them from being together. but in another world the quackity of that time is waking up and loving and living with them, for them. and he can’t fault that quackity for having that.
somehow he’s guided back to the first world he found, the one with him alone in a small white room. it reminds him of his purgatory. voices he can’t hear clearly, empty walls and loneliness. but the quackity he can see is still laughing too hard he can barely breathe, and the voices sound like sapnap and karl and even george and dream of all people. so perhaps an empty white walled room for him is hell, maybe every minute spent there was so that the him of that world could never find fear or worry in a white walled room.
he watches the him of this world wish his friends goodnight, hears an i love you and a i’ll talk to you tomorrow that is reciprocated, and quackity aches at the sight of his own content.
how does this one end? he manages to think before the Maker could have an answer for him. and he realizes easily that that’s the answer itself. the ending for this world is not here yet, so quackity both dead and living could not know.
does it matter? the quackity of the dead thinks again, and the only reason he’s able to think that one clearly is because it’s not for the Maker at all, but for himself.
quackity never thought much about death. but living? now that’s something quackity can look forward to.
even if it’s not him that gets to live.
quackity takes one last look at the resting smile on the him of the living, and lets the light dim away from him.
he’s pulled back to the void, and notices the light going out.
he says goodbye to the Maker, and to life and love and to death. the light fades away from him at once, and quackity greets his final end.
he hears a familiar pair of giggles, and opens his eyes to the flashing of an orange and purple flame intertwined, waiting.
and thus, lived on.