Work Text:
In a word, in a phrase; it’s making an example. It’s an execution. It’s a murder.
The sky is blank and blue and it’s a beautiful day. They’re in the square and Quackity is angry, vindictive, he’s got that voice going on — the politician voice, the president voice, the voice that makes Tubbo go mellow and quiet, makes Tubbo fall into line. The voice that makes him a coward. That made the words stick to the back of his throat in the war room, in Schlatt’s cabinet, in the Camarvan way back when.
(And it’s strange to think of those days, strange to think there was ever a time, not so long ago, when his skin didn’t feel like it was stretched taut over him. When he could still hear evenly. When smiling came as easy as breathing.)
Quackity is above everyone on the podium and he’s screaming at them, he’s waving his arms in the sky. He’s talking fast, he’s talking loud, he’s motioning with his hands and everyone’s watching, everyone’s curious, everyone’s holding their breaths.
And someone’s pulling a lever, and Tubbo watches the curtains sweep apart. It’s dramatic. It’s beautiful. It’s blood-curdling. Behind the curtains is a glass box. A cubicle, really — barely enough room to stand in, near impossible to sit in.
But Ranboo has managed it.
He’s been stripped of his armour and he’s trapped. He’s on his knees. He’s screaming. Even from way back here, up at the top of the road, even from behind the glass walls, it’s clear as day: eyes wide and frantic, staring wildly, at everyone, at everything. And he’s desperate — it’s painted plainly on his face. Utter abject terror stretching his features, screwing them up, some horrid distortion of what it should be because above him — Tubbo follows the walls up, eyes tracing the edges, eyes tearing past the buckling form of his most beloved — there is a lid on the box. And it is fastened to a pipe. And the pipe — he follows it, he follows it even as his lungs shrivel, even as his ribs are suddenly too small for his chest — it leads to the water tower.
Acid rises to the back of his throat.
And Ranboo is still in his box, still beating against the walls, still clawing at them, still throwing his whole weight against the glass like he’d rather be reduced to a bloody pulp than remain captive for a single second longer.
He’s having a panic attack, and there’s nothing Tubbo can do.
It’s not supposed to be like this.
Tubbo and Ranboo are Tubbo&Ranboo; they’re joint, they’re together, they’re a game of hopscotch in the snow, they’re racing to see who can slide down the banisters the quickest, they’re a waltz in the halls that are too big for them. They’re him and he and Michael in the middle.
They’re Ranboo dissolving into panic and Tubbo running to him. They’re Tubbo sitting down by Ranboo’s side and holding him with steady hands and talking to him about anything and everything. Because Ranboo falls apart, and he falls apart hard — and what he needs when he does is to be brought back, be made whole, made solid, and Tubbo — Tubbo, he’s good at that. It’s a pride he keeps quiet, keeps soft and warm in the crevice of his heart amidst all the jagged things. He’s good at calming Ranboo down.
He’s not anymore. Because Tubbo is frozen to the sand beneath his feet, because Ranboo is trapped in a reinforced glass box. Because they’re going to kill him. And the terrible distance between them is only made worse when, in the midst of his frantic panic, across the crowd and across the stretch of dusty street, Ranboo locks onto Tubbo.
His thrashing comes to a still. His eyes are still wide — not angry, not accusatory, just… scared. Terrified. Tubbo can’t stomach it. His husband’s mouth moves around soundless words. A hand, those long fingers with the metal band glinting in the sunlight, those fingers that belong curled around Tubbo’s — they come to a rest against the glass. Palm flat.
He’s looking. He’s looking straight at Tubbo. And Tubbo can do nothing but look back.
The sky is blank, and blue, and it’s a beautiful day for an execution.
He didn’t think it’d feel this way.
Quackity is quiet now. His hands are in fists, his face is stone, and his gnarled lip is curled in a revulsion so raw it takes Tubbo a second, at first, to match it to the rest of Quackity’s face.
(They used to play Go Fish in the White House. Quackity told him he had to learn to keep his cards close to his chest if he ever wanted to win. Tubbo laughed in his face.)
He’s not laughing now. Quackity’s not even looking at him. He’s looking at Fundy. He’s looking at the lever in Fundy’s hands.
Tubbo barely has the time to think Fundy’s our friend before the lever is pulled down — before the pipe rumbles — before the hatch slides open — before water is cascading down over Ranboo and before — before — before —
The box is flooding. The sound that is ripped from Ranboo is —
It’s not human. It’s not possible. It’s not physically possible for him to make that noise.
But it is. And he is. And Tubbo watches what cannot be real because it is too terrible to be real, because he has been forged through countless tragedies but this by far may be the cruellest. Because, in the back of his head where all ugly little thoughts were locked away, he always thought water would burn.
It doesn’t.
It melts.
A small, quiet part of him that still has the sense to form any sort of thought is grateful that he is so far away. He does not have to see, in any more close-up detail, the skin sloughing off Ranboo’s flesh, deforming and stretching like wax, dripping off of him, because he’s lopsided now, because his features are liquefying, because the sounds he makes are no longer screams because screams require lungs and a throat and a brain.
And Tubbo is watching.
There is no denial for what is happening right in front of you. He is watching it he is watching it happen he is watching his best friend the love of his life and he is seeing it happen right now he is seeing he is seeing so why doesn’t it feel real?
Ranboo is dying. Feel something.
It feels like breaking. It feels like splitting apart. It feels like being torn out from himself. It is a snake winding itself up his throat, constricting, too big to fit. He feels like he’s bursting at the seams. He feels like he’s already gone. He feels like he’s already dead.
And then he’s rushing forwards — fucking finally — he’s sprinting, he’s going, he’s moving, legs burning beneath him, and he’s screaming and he’s reaching and Quackity turns, turns to look down at him and his eyes are small and cold and hard. He raises a hand midway, a signal. Tubbo doesn’t fucking care — he runs forward, he swings with his axe, he collides with the glass with a reverbrating CLANG, the axe is sent flying out of his grip. He fumbles for it, goes again, again, again, it won’t break, it won’t give, and Ranboo is writhing before him and he’s dying and he’s dying and he’s dying and all Tubbo can do is collapse against the box. Press his hands against it, forehead against the glass.
And, jerkily, Ranboo’s hand comes up to meet it on the other side.
And Tubbo folds, and he tells him — he tells him with all he has, and it's small and breaking and he can’t speak, but God he’s trying, but God he’s willing for Ranboo to hear, he’s wishing it, he’s pleading it;
This is not how it ends. This is not how we end.
And then there are hands on him, shaking and pulling and taking him away — and he’s being held back, and no one else is doing anything, why is no one doing anything?
He is dragged up the road. The glass box and the thing inside that was a boy not a minute ago become small. Become distant.
Tubbo closes his eyes. Locks himself to that darkness behind his eyelids, lets himself believe he is elsewhere, that it is last night and he is still loved and still has someone to love and he still has something to hold onto. But his bed in Snowchester is cosy, the duvet thick, the room itself haunted by a sharp chill from the eternal winter outside, and always a little damp.
Las Nevadas is too hot and too cold and, above all, dry. It is chills and hot flushes, the land itself having a way of making you feverish, of turning you around till you have no choice but to follow the bright flashing lights.
Tubbo feels sick. All he tastes is bile.
I want to go home, he thinks. Absurdly. I want to go home.
But he is standing in a desert that is not a desert and he opens his eyes and he is alone. Las Nevadas is empty. Quackity has disappeared. The sky is still blue and the day is still bright and Tubbo is never going home again.
Down the road is a glass box. It is —
Tubbo turns away.
Tubbo turns away, and he leaves, and he doesn’t look back.
“You can always come home,” Ranboo says.
They’re at the outpost. Tubbo’s hands are stained in oil and grease — he’s on his knees, head stuck under the counter, hands in the machinery. He nearly bumps his head on the way out.
“Sorry?”
It’s one of the smaller rooms. It doesn’t have any heating yet, so cold sweeps across the stone floors, curls around Tubbo’s ankles and breathes against his skin. Comes with the location; the weather outside lies snug between not quite rain, not quite snow, which is all you can expect for an outpost on the edge of a desert that shouldn’t be.
He sits back to pay attention to what Ranboo is saying. His husband crouches down, all-too-long limbs folding strangely over themselves, folding in too many places, folding in ways that are not quite human. He swipes a thumb over his cheek.
“Missed a spot,” he says. Tubbo sticks his tongue out at him.
He turns back to his work, looks over the machines, looks through the arrow-slit window to where Las Nevadas stands in all its impersonal glossy extravagance.
This… rivalry? It’s escalating. Quickly. Too quickly. But Tubbo knows war and he knows how this goes, and this time, he won’t be a yes-man. He won’t let anyone steamroll over him.
He failed Tommy. He won’t do the same to Ranboo.
So, “No, I’m okay,” he waves off, spanner in hand. “I’ll be back in a few days, big man. Don’t worry about it.”
And his back is turned so he doesn’t see Ranboo leave the cookies and the warm cup of tea on the counter beside him. He doesn’t see Ranboo look back when he’s about to disappear round the doorway. He doesn’t see Ranboo look at him with that sad look on his face.
“Okay,” Ranboo says. “I’ll wait for you.”
His legs carry him somewhere, but where can he go? Where can he go. He has no home because home was a life with Ranboo, and now there is no more Ranboo and with no more Ranboo there is no more Tubbo.
He’s walking. He’s walking and he’s not crying. He should be crying. His eyes are burning, his throat shrunk to a pinhole. He can’t hold his axe, his hands are shaking so.
Why isn’t he crying?
It’s an impossible grief. Who can fault him? They were going to live. His mouth twists at that. They were going to live. Shaking. He’s shaking. Why is he shaking?
Ranboo is dead. Ranboo is dead. Ranboo died and he died in agony and he didn’t deserve it.
He’s walking. He’s crossing the water. The sky is darkening, the blue is muddying, the bright day is slipping away and all Tubbo can do is laugh. Break, laughter trembling from his seams, and then he’s shaking, he’s dying, he’s falling apart because there is a split forming through all that he is, because how else is he supposed to grieve his life? How else is he supposed to carry on? How else is he supposed to — how else?
What a miserable, cruel joke.
He falls. Snow crunches beneath his boot. He’s cold. He’s dead. He’s numbed to the bone. It’s a blizzard; it picked up midway the tunnel, and he’s in Snowchester now, he knows it because it doesn’t snow like this anywhere else.
It’s dark, but he can still make out the amber lights of the mansion through the snowfall.
He can only stare. His eyes burn. His head hurts.
Before he knows it, he’s face to face with the warheads.
The room is dim. He sees the outline of it, the nuke vessel, the acid yellow of its body. He sees it. He sees it. The room is dim and if there were anyone else here they would not see his face, because the room has made dark pits of his eyes. But there is nobody else here because Tubbo is alone.
He is not new to war. He is not new to war and he is not new to loss, he is a soldier and he is a veteran and he is a survivor and he is a victim. He is all of these things and none of them matter because in the end the punchlines just keep on coming. He is the butt of the joke, don’t you see?
And in the wreckage of himself, he gathers his resentment. Forges it into hatred, because his misery is power and he knows how to wield his soul like an axe. The wind whistles outside. It’s a mournful tune, and it echoes in the otherwise quiet of this miserable room.
Tubbo feels the walls close in on him. He feels the dark waver, feels its static buzz around him, wondering, questioning, ever-curious; what are you going to do?
Tubbo’s sick of being the punchline. His hand hovers over the launch button.
He sees the nuke. He sees his hand, the skin stretched across sinew and bone, his nails bitten and blue. He’s stopped shaking. A terrible stillness has overcome him. A still, still certainty that he was a fool to ever hope this world had anything more to offer him than cruel jokes.
My move.
If he isn’t allowed a happy ending — well, why should anyone else be?