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“I’m leaving, Quackity,” Wilbur’s voice feels far off, even though he’s stood in front of him. His mouth continues to move but any words he speaks are lost to the wind as they stand on top of the needle overlooking the empire they’d built. He doesn’t remember when things between he and Wilbur had shifted, when the fighting and looking over one another’s shoulders had turned to finding comfort in one another, both physical and emotional. It was decades ago, after all. Back when they could still be considered young. He feels the warmth of Wilbur’s palm against the back of his own and then the cool metal of a ring pressed into his own palm. The contrast brings him back and he blinks up at the man he could easily say now that he loves.
“It doesn’t have to end like this, y’know,” Quackity says quietly. His own voice feels foreign, vulnerable in a way he rarely lets himself be. But it feels all too familiar. All too telling. The cool metal of his rings from a relationship long ago burn against his chest as he stares down at the new ring places in his palm. “You’ll find him, and you can come back.”
“My love,” Wilbur’s voice is gentle now, a tone he only remembers hearing the day they’d wed, nearly four decades prior. “We both know I’m too old to make the trip there and back. I’ll write you. But this is where we end, okay?”
He doesn’t feel the tears, but he knows they’re tracking down the side of his face by the way Wilbur’s expression softens. It’s pitiful, how his heart aches with the longing for this to last. For Wilbur to stay in Las Nevadas and live out their lives with him or at least to promise a return. “I can come with you?” he offers, as one last plea. But even he knows it’s a stupid offer. He’s half blind with a bad hip that even regen potions can’t seem to heal.
“I love you, Quackity,” Wilbur says, and Quackity feels the press of his lips against his forehead as his fingers close around his hand, securing the ring in his fist. “Take care of this place. I’ll see to it that Fundy visits you every week.”
Quackity lets out a sound that’s halfway between a laugh and a sob, it catches in his throat as Wilbur steps back. He wants to make a mocking comment about how he doesn’t care for Fundy’s visits. But they both know he does. Wounds from the past had been healed between them and eventually, as his relationship with Wilbur solidified, they’d managed to find somewhat of a middle ground the two of them with his partners son. Las Nevadas would be Fundy’s after they both passed on and after that Quackity could only hope that Fundy would find someone who could care for their city as much as he did.
Quackity watches as Wilbur walks to the elevator, letting out a trembling breath as he watches the doors close on them for the last time. He’d known it was coming. From the moment the letter had arrived almost a week ago from Tubbo and Ranboo. It felt unreal seeing Ranboo’s handwriting. Part of him had feared that that an old friend had passed. They didn’t hear from people often anymore; everyone had gone their separate ways nearing fifty years ago.
Dream had escaped prison and he’d taken Sapnap’s final life in their fight. He and George had disappeared after that. Nobody heard from them. There were whispers, rumoured sightings of the pair but after a decade any fear of Dream’s return had resided to the haunting memory left in those who had fought in the wars of the SMP. Most people allowed themselves a chance at life after the fear of Dream’s return had left. Pursued long forgotten dreams and made homes and families for themselves. Not Tommy though. Tommy took it personally and after a series of heated discussions with Wilbur and what he bid to be a final goodbye to Tubbo and Ranboo he had disappeared into the night in search of Dream and his own closure on the matter. Quackity knew that Wilbur blamed himself for the loss of Tommy, he never spoke about it, but he knew. So when the letter had arrived from Tubbo and Ranboo saying that Tommy had sent them a message through the End-Folk that he had found where Dream and George had spent their years hiding, it had been only natural for Quackity to expect Wilbur to go find him.
With trembling fingers Quackity unclasps the chain from around his neck, pulling it down just enough to slide Wilbur’s ring to settle in it next to Sapnap and Karl’s old bands. He traces his thumb over the bands a moment letting out a sad breath before reattaching the chain around his neck, letting the rings rest heavy over his heart. Three now.
He goes to bed that night with tears in his eyes, the familiar sound of his city beneath him, the only thing he’s ever loved to not leave.
***
He’s not sure what draws him to the cemetery. It’s been years since he’s visited. Decades since he found his way to Sapnap’s grave. It’s big and gaudy with a statue of him in his full netherite armour and a stern look on his face. Everything Sapnap would’ve hated. But people deemed him a hero. Lost too young at the hands of someone he’d once considered a best friend. And heroes deserved to be remembered. The only redeeming factor is it’s further towards the back now. The cemetery was the final resting place for everyone on the SMP. He remembers it being built up, just outside of L’Manberg. Originally for the bodies of their dead soldiers. But as the years went by it became a place for everyone. Everyone who ever lived would rest there, as a sign of community or some shit. Quackity didn’t want to be buried there.
He hesitates as he makes the first few steps into the cemetery, his eyes darting over headstones carved with names both familiar and unfamiliar, making his way slowly down the beaten path. He stops at the statue of Technoblade. Unlike Sapnap’s statue, Techno had wanted the memory there. The Syndicate had had it built before he had even died, erected it in what had then been the centre of the graveyard. He looks up at the statue a moment, bittersweet memories of his old foe sparking to life in his mind. The scar that runs down his face aches. Tucking his head down he continues towards Sapnap’s plot. As he approaches he sees a young man crouched in front of it. It’s not unusual to see people there. Paying their respects to the fallen hero. It was why Quackity had stopped visiting. He hated seeing people talk about him like they knew him. Hated the memory that they’d never found closure before Dream had taken his life. What isn’t usual is for the people to be crying, and Quackity can see by the way their shoulders shake that this person mourns for him.
Once upon a time. When he was younger, stronger…more bitter with the world, Quackity might have grabbed the boy by his collar, pulled him up and told him to stop crying for someone he didn’t know. But he’s not those things anymore. And even if he were, as he approaches, he can’t help but find something oddly familiar in the sound. He doesn’t intrude. Instead takes his leave, moving to the plot beside Sapnap’s. It’s an empty grave. A marker, rather than a resting place.
IN LOVING MEMORY
KARL JACOBS
1998 - ???
FIANCÉ , SON , FRIEND
He’d had it put in place shortly after he and Wilbur had gotten married. Nobody had heard from him since long before Sapnap had been killed almost fifteen years prior and despite there being no body to bury, Quackity had felt it safe to assume that Karl had passed away too. It felt only right to let them be together, even if it wasn’t physically. Despite the protest of his body, Quackity crouches before the stone, reaching to trace the lines of his once love’s name. He hadn’t visited since he’d had it placed. It was the last time he allowed himself to properly mourn them. He still wore the rings. Would always wear them, until the day he died and even after still he’d had it written that they were to be buried with him. But allowing himself to mourn what he’d lost. It felt wrong. Like he didn’t deserve it. He drops his head against the stone, squeezing his eyes closed against the tears that threaten to spill, and lets out a shaky breath.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers into the space between him and the marker. “I’m so sorry.”
He’s not sure how long he sits there, but as he pulls himself to his feet he notices the boy still crouched in front of Sapnap’s grave.
“Young man,” he says, hesitant as he crosses the space between himself and the boy, “May I ask why he is so important to you?”
The boy doesn’t look up, doesn’t make any sign of having heard him even speak for a series of long seconds. The acknowledgement comes almost a full minute later, Quackity’s question going unanswered in exchange for a hushed question.
“How did he die?”
Quackity sighs out a breath, pushing his hands into the pockets of his coat. “You’re sitting here crying over a man who died before you were even alive…and you don’t know the stories? The history?” he doesn’t mean for it to come out as bitter as it does.
“I’m sorry, sir. I don’t,” the boy says, standing to his feet and turning.
Quackity freezes. It can’t be. But it is.
“Karl?”
He knows it is. Despite the impossibilities of it all. Particularly him being as young as the last time Quackity saw him. He knows it’s him. He can see the burn scar on the side of his neck from where Sapnap had accidentally lit his collar on fire.
“Do I know you?” The words sting more than they should. Because of course Karl doesn’t recognise him. He hasn’t seem him in years.
He contemplates telling him. It would be so easy to say ‘it’s Quackity’. But he doesn’t know how Karl feels about him, felt about him. He knows he’d had bitter thoughts towards his ex-fiancé when they’d parted ways. He can only imagine how they’d felt about him. He pulls a tight lipped smile and shakes his head, his hair falling in front of his eyes as he does.
“No, sorry. Sorry.”
He makes it all of three steps backwards before recognition flashes across Karl’s face, followed quickly by a pained expression.
“How…how long have I been gone?”
“I don’t know exactly when you left,” Quackity starts, his brows knitting together, or where you went, “But Sapnap died fifty-six years ago.”
The colour drains from Karl’s face and Quackity barely manages to close the space between them before he’s crumpling into his chest, legs giving out in the shock of the information. A sob tears its way from Karl’s throat and Quackity helps his steady, instinctively wrapping an arm around him in attempt of comfort. He doesn’t remember the last time he was needed to give comfort. Maybe with Slime. Or one of Foolish’s children when they would still visit Las Nevadas. Certainly not in any recent years. He and Wilbur weren’t that type of couple. They loved one another. But affection was hardly the forefront of their relationship.
He smooths a hand down Karl’s spine and back up it again, silent as he feels hot tears soak through his coat and the shirt under it, wet against his skin. He doesn’t let go, waiting for Karl to calm himself. He knows him. Even after all these years he knows him, and despite Sapnap being moreso the one to calm him in his darker moments, Quackity knew not to let go until Karl is read to.
When Karl eventually pulls back he reaches up, slender fingers curling gentle against the side of Quackity’s face. He wants to shy away from the touch, to take Karl’s hand and push it out of reach. But he doesn’t. He just watches, old eyes staring into young until Karl frowns and steps back.
“Quackity,” His name sounds like liquid sugar, spilling from Karl’s lips with all the familiarity that their history together could hold. “I know you.”
***
“He would’ve hated that statue, y’know,” Karl mumbles over the rim of his mug, watching Quackity. He hasn’t stopped watching him since they made it Las Nevadas, probably since they left the cemetery, though Quackity had been too lost in his own thoughts to notice then. Even now he was struggling calm his beating heart.
They’d spent the better part of the last two hours discussing what had happened, Quackity filling in the best he could the blanks of the major events Karl had missed. About Sapnap’s death, Dream and George’s escape, about the end of the wars and Tommy’s disappearance. He caught him up on old friends who were still alive and briefly touched on those who had passed. Karl seemed to take it all with a grain of salt, having cried any tears he had in the cemetery.
Quackity nods slowly, his own eyes trailing over Karl’s movements. He hasn’t stopped watching either. “I tried telling them not to build it.”
Karl looks up, meeting his eye with a sad smile, “I bet if he was able to see it he would’ve torn it to shreds a thousand times over by now.”
“Without a doubt,” Quackity agrees, bringing his hand up to rest over the rings on his chest, squeezing them in his fist.
A part of him still can’t believe that Karl is really sitting in front of him. He’d wanted to ask, he had asked. When they were leaving the cemetery he had asked, and Karl’s response was a half-hearted shrug and mumbled, ‘time travel’. Time travel. As if that really answered the questions. But he knew better than to ask. If Karl wanted to tell him he would.
“I’m glad you found someone to grow old with,” Karl says after a few moments of silence, “Even if it was Wilbur.” He doesn’t judge the sour tone on Karl’s tongue, knows that what Karl remembers of him isn’t the same man he’d become.
“He’s not half bad now…” Quackity muses, letting out a slow breath. “If only you’d come back a few days earlier. I think you would’ve liked him.”
“I might’ve been jealous of him,” Karl admits, fingers dropping to twist the rings that lay nestled on his finger. That had been one thing to shock him when he’d seen Sapnap in the casket at his funeral. He was still wearing his rings. Both of them. He hadn’t expected it. Hadn’t thought he’d deserved it.
“He probably would’ve been jealous of you too,” Quackity shrugs, shifting in his seat. “I never stopped loving you two, and I think he was aware of that, but…what was he going to say? Sapnap was dead and as far as we knew you were too. It’s not like he ever had real competition.”
“Do you think if I had come back earlier…that we would’ve ended up together again? Me and you…and Sapnap?” The question almost takes him by surprise. He’d long since allowed himself to think upon that particular what if. Spending the better half of his life living very much under the belief that no they wouldn’t.
It surprises him even more when he starts to nod, “I think we would’ve found our ways back to one another eventually.”
He wants to feel bad, as Karl slides into the bed beside him that night. It’s been only a couple of days since Wilbur had left and he’s already got another man in his bed. But as Karl’s arms find their way around him he can’t bring himself to care. Allowing himself to drift off with the forgotten memory of his youth playing one replay on his old mind.
When Quackity wakes he’s not in his bed in Las Nevadas. And it’s not Karl’s arms that are wrapped around him but Sapnap’s, holding him close against his chest in a field he doesn’t recognise. They’re young again. Their skin smooth, free of scars, bodies and minds free from the eternal pains of war. And while his chest aches with the longing for the people he’d left behind, for the first time in his life Quackity finally feels at peace.