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“You’re fuckin’ dogshit at this, kiddo.”
Wilbur glares at him from across the board. “He’s playing perfectly well, Schlatt, you’re just an asshole who doesn’t know how to play chess.”
Tubbo tunes out their banter, and settles his gaze over the board with a frown.
Chess, Wilbur says, is a game of war. With the way his pieces are lonely and scattered across the board (chalk-white, because Wilbur always lends him the advantage), he can see why - his bishop is pinned under enemy fire, his knight is blocked by his own rook, and a too-long line of pieces stands a little disappointedly on Wilbur’s side of the table. If chess is a war, he’s losing badly - but there’s no terms of surrender, no duels, nothing to exchange besides another one of his people. He slides a knight across the board, where it is swiftly taken by a bishop black as coal. It joins the pawns, staring at him with accusing eyes.
Chess, Schlatt says, is a game for power-trip-chasing losers who didn’t have enough friends growing up. He still hovers over Tubbo’s shoulder whenever they play - he’s too tired to shove him away these days - and offers his advice, even if he stubbornly turns down Wilbur’s invitations for a match. From Tubbo’s guess, he doesn’t want to give Wilbur the satisfaction of an easy loss.
L’Manberg’s president spends his evenings holed up in his office playing board games with a couple of ghosts as the country rips itself to ruin outside. Schlatt might think himself a loser, but Tubbo is unconvinced.
They don’t have enough food. This isn’t news to Tubbo - obviously. You don’t forget the taste of spider eyes that quickly - but actually dealing with it, that is. Plant more crops seems the obvious takeaway, but the weather is heating up and it cooks their seedlings under the sun. Summer is coming too early, and it wraps its fingers around his pressed-white collar in a sweaty chokehold. If they had planted more crops in the spring, if the ground wasn’t still laced with gunpowder, maybe their chances would be better - but if Tubbo spent all his time dwelling on the what ifs, instead of the hungry eyes of his people, he wouldn’t be a very good president, would he?
The board still looks like a puzzle upended to him. He moves a pawn for the sake of it.
His cabinet, they don’t trust him. He can see it in Quackity’s eyes, hear it in Fundy’s not-so-quiet whispers.
He doesn’t miss the Manberg cabinet, because he’s not out of his fucking mind, but - if there is one thing Schlatt can do, one thing he is good at, it’s giving people a flashing neon sign to look at labelled common enemy. It brought a pack of writers and politicians and bakers and teenagers to a dingy ravine, and handed them swords and netherite and potato pancakes and potions that glittered under the hot sun and sent them straight to the heart of Manberg. It brought the Blood God across tundra and ocean to their shitty little backwater country. For better or for worse.
“Move the castle,” Schlatt suggests. Tubbo shifts it forward a couple spaces. Wilbur frowns, leaning back in his chair, surveying the board like it were a map of battle. The epaulettes on his suit jacket squish weirdly against the back of the chair, like they don’t quite fit together.
Tommy doesn’t talk much about Pogtopia before the festival, but the place sounds lonely - it’s not a small ravine, and three people don’t take up much space. Manberg, though, was always cramped and too busy and Tubbo never had a fucking second to think. But lonely, it was never lonely - because whether you liked it or not, there was always Ponk rushing between rooms with potions in their arms and warnings muttered under her breath, or Fundy squirreling away his notebook and baring his teeth at anyone who dared look too closely, or Quackity wrapping bandages around the the glass-shard slices in his forearms, or any other diplomat or visitor or citizen roped into the Whitehouse chores. That was the quiet understanding of the cabinet, sans the head. They were a raft adrift, steered by a madman, and they could snap and argue all they wanted but the agreement was that when someone stumbles too close to the edge - well, the others are always two steps too close already, up in each other’s space, and it’s in everyone’s best interest to haul them back by the shoulders and hang on tight as the captain reels them in another sharp turn.
So Tubbo learned to treat wounds properly, not in the slap-dash way he’d been taught during the war - and when Quackity winced as his forearms brush his desk, Tubbo pulled him away to stitch them up and Fundy slipped the tall stacks of paperwork back to his own poor excuse of an office, returning them forged and signed by midday. When Fundy left his diary on the conference table, Tubbo swept it underneath the files he carried and deposited it into his mailbox as the sun set. When Tubbo disappeared for a few hours too long, Quackity took Schlatt by the arm and gushed about the wide plains cleared by the burnoffs he ordered, ready for… well, Tubbo doesn’t know, because there is no fucking food.
They didn’t talk, because they didn’t need to. No need to alarm the captain. If this shitty raft came with sirens, they’d have been ringing already.
Now, though, everyone expects Tubbo to talk and talk and make speeches and negotiate with a deft hand and Tubbo’s hands have never moved that smoothly since the festival anyway - Technoblade fried more than the skin, apparently, because they twitch and knock over inkwells and chess pieces. This time, it’s another white pawn - but Wilbur knows not to prod. Schlatt just snorts out half a laugh, and Tubbo’s ears burn.
He’s too fucking tired for this.
“What’s your strategy, Tubbo?” Wilbur asks.
He shifts a pawn forward, and waits until Wilbur moves his knight to speak.
“The pawns,” he says, knocking one of Wilbur’s pawns down with his own. He only has a handful left, along with a knight over by Wilbur’s side of the board, and his lonely king. “Move them to the end of the board, get as many queens as possible.”
It’s not a very elegant strategy. Stubborn and foolhardy. He doesn’t win often, just enough to keep his self-esteem up, he thinks, but Wilbur’s lessons slip off of his brain like water off of mangled duck feathers. All slip-dripping every which way. It’s the kind of way Tommy would have played, but Tommy never took to chess back in L’Manberg - maybe if Tubbo hadn’t exiled him, he would be playing with his best friend instead of a pair of ghosts.
Wilbur’s brow creases, and Tubbo can tell it’s over more than just the game - his eyes flicker, ever so minutely, towards the window that overlooks their village on stilts. You pick up on these things, as a spy. He drops his queen in the centre of the board, and - Tubbo’s king is pinned. He sucks in a breath. Checkmate.
“Congratulations,” Tubbo says flatly.
“It was a good game,” Wilbur says, sweeping his pieces off the board. Schlatt snorts derisively, and Wilbur shoots him another glare. “Up for a round, Schlatt?”
“Fuck, no,” Schlatt says. He’s wandered a safe distance from the board before the question even fully left Wilbur’s mouth, tension lining his shoulders as he inspects the portraits on the wall. Lined up in a neat row - Wilbur’s mellow smile, darkened by the still-fresh scars across his neck and the bags already tracing their way under his eyes, sitting next to Schlatt’s already-exhausted, already-entirely-fucking-gone grin, sitting next to the scarred face and blank stare Tubbo can’t look at for too long without wanting to scream. But he can’t, because he can’t be a weak president, so he doesn’t - not even into a pillow, the way Ghostbur advises him to.
It’s a weird kind of impostor syndrome - because Tubbo knows, deep in his bones and sure as the scars across his face, that the bar set for New L’Manberg’s presidency is low. But he still doesn’t feel worthy of the job anyways.
“Then stop talking shit,” Wilbur grumbles, and sets down the pieces with military-sharp precision. Four neat lines, casting long shadows across the board. It hangs high in the sky - too high. He’s not sure what time it is, but it’s gotta be early morning by now. “Have I told you about the Scotch opening, Tubbo?”
“Sounds lame,” Schlatt comments. “You got any actual scotch around here, kid?”
“You want to shut the fuck up?” Wilbur asks sweetly. Tubbo shakes his head - he and Quackity spent an evening after the funeral ditching the leftover bottles into a ravine, whooping with delight every time they exploded on impact - and Schlatt groans loudly.
“The Scotch opening,” Wilbur continues, a little pointedly loud (Schlatt just complains louder), “is more aggressive. Start with your pawn to the centre, and move your knight over as well,” he pauses expectantly, and Tubbo follows, “and then - this is the key part, this is the key part of the opening - you move your second pawn straight forward as well.”
A few pieces felled later, and Tubbo’s white pieces stand in the middle of the board.
“The advantage of the Scotch opening is that you develop your pieces quickly,” Wilbur says. He’s gotten excited, now - there’s that way he’d always talk when he was excited about some new book or play or speech creeping back into his voice, all warm and familiar. “It’s a risky play, but white gains control of the centre board.”
Tubbo casts a skeptical look towards the throng of black pieces surrounding his.
“It’s a dangerous gambit,” Wilbur admits, moving his bishop into play. “But taking risks, acting quickly - that’s how you control the board, Tubbo.”
It took Tubbo by surprise, to begin with, how much of - of chess, how much of it comes down to moving swiftly. Catch your opponent off-guard, strike before they can strike against you. It doesn’t really fit how he pictured it in his head, all old guys in cardigans spending ten minutes thinking about their next move.
“What if - ” his voice cracks a bit, and he flushes. Talking this much fucking sucks. “What if you miss your shot?”
Wilbur makes a confused kind of hrm noise, chin resting on steepled fingers.
“What happens if you,” he waves his hand around a bit, “if you miss your chance to - to do the gambit properly at the beginning? How do you win then?”
Wilbur goes quiet for a moment, but his expression says more than Tubbo needs to know - the bags under his eyes, though perpetual now, are even darker in the moonlight. He’s got that worried-disappointed-scheming slant to his frown, and his cheeks are puffed slightly in thought.
“If you miss the opening,” he muses, and stops himself. Thinks for another moment. “Without the opening, you’re at the whims of your opponent. You can’t plan until they play their turn.”
Tubbo tucks his chin against his chest, and studies the board.
Twenty days. Twenty days, and then Tommy was gone. A safe play. The safest play, for the people who live in those little houses on stilts and the gasping, heaving corpse of the country they’d handed to him and stuck on life support.
Sacrificing the pieces is just part of chess. It’s just part of the game. It’s why you’re not supposed to get attached to them.
Tubbo’s pretty shit at chess.
“I don’t think I’m particularly good at this,” he says.
Sympathy, now, with a bit of stress weighing down Wilbur’s shoulders. “You’ll learn.”
“Not talking about the game, boss man.”
“Neither am I.”
And he shifts his queen into play.
“The thing about being president,” Wilbur muses, “is that you learn because you don’t have any other choice. You sink, and people die, and then you swim because if you don’t more people will die. And sometimes, that means you have to sacrifice what you’re most willing to lose. Even if that - even if it’s your morals, if it’s what you believed in before, if it’s your most valuable things or what you love or your everything - you have to be ready to give that up. Because that's what they chose you for.”
Interesting take.
Somehow, he highly doubts Wilbur chose him for presidency (second choice, but still) hoping he would exile Tommy - toss him out like he was nothing - and that’s when it hits him. Not unlike a freight train, all firework-bright and heavy against his chest, punching the breath out of his lungs before he resteadies himself.
“You’re not actually here, are you?” Tubbo asks. “Not him, either. You’re not real. I made you up.”
Wilbur freezes - properly freezes, not pretending to, he can see the whites of his eyes go just a little wider. Or maybe Tubbo’s brain just trips out for a second, then? He’s not really sure anymore.
“You wouldn’t be on about all this, you wouldn’t just be okay with me exiling Tommy, if you were real,” he continues. “I just - I just made you up, to feel better about myself.”
Wilbur takes a breath, and then another (which is funny, because he is not real, and does not need to breathe), before just letting it all out in a big sigh.
“I’m not not real,” he insists, putting down his piece.
“You’re dead.”
“That doesn’t make me not real,” Wilbur says, a little quickly. Desperately. “I don’t just go away because I’m not alive. I’m - part of me, it’s out there in limbo, and part of me is here, and part of me is Ghostbur or whatever, and part of me is in here.” He reaches out, and pokes Tubbo in the centre of his forehead. The touch leaves an icy smear against his skin. “That’s important too.”
Tubbo raises an eyebrow. “Pretty deep, coming from the guy who blew himself up.”
“Yeah, well, dying gives you a little perspective.”
“...does it actually?”
“Nope,” Wilbur says immediately. His smile slips, somewhere between reassuring and stressed, pulled tight and taut, gripped from edge to edge. “Word of advice, Tubbo, don’t kill yourself - I can promise, I fucking promise you, it doesn’t fucking live up to the hype.”
“Thanks, boss man.” He files that one away for his next breakdown - whichever one is supposed to follow hallucinating two dead ex-presidents playing games with him. “Still don’t believe you, though.”
Wilbur settles his elbows onto his knees, concern still written deep across his face. “This is about Tommy, isn’t it?”
Tubbo stops, surveys him properly - the way he was trained to, not how he half-asses it now. Concern, yes, that’s written into his brow - but something burns deeper, fiercer, in his dark eyes. His lip pushes into a grimace, eyes narrow slightly, and he shifts his weight forward - ready to pounce, instead of dead weight. Ha. “You’re angry, aren’t you?”
“I am,” Wilbur says, carefully measured. “Not at you, though.”
“Really, though.”
“Not fully,” Wilbur amends. “Not more than I am at some people.” He tosses a dirty look at Schlatt, who flips him off.
“You’re being a pussy,” Schlatt points out. “You want your dumb fucking friend back, go get him back. Stop being a fucking wuss about it.”
Tubbo still shrinks under his gaze - and immediately wants to fucking slap himself for it, you stupid motherfucker, you’re the president now - and Wilbur narrows his eyes, hunches further forward on his elbows. Shoulder to shoulder, the two of them are. “It’s a little more complicated than that. Not that you’d give a shit.”
“Yeah, I don’t,” Schlatt concedes. “You’re the man in charge, who gives a fuck. Do what you want.”
“You know jack shit about running a country,” Wilbur snaps. Schlatt shrugs.
“I wasn’t the one who blew the joint up, loverboy.”
Wilbur’s face goes grey, and he scowls.
“The point is,” he says, “is Dream, isn’t it? Because of the walls. If it weren’t for Dream, you wouldn’t have to exile Tommy.”
Tubbo hums quietly - shows he’s listening, shows he’s paying due attention - but his thoughts are adrift. Quackity’s words hover in his mind - just extra confirmation that he’s an idiot, then, a stupid fucking idiot, and that’s why he was put in charge, wasn’t it?
“You don’t play nice with tyrants, Tubbo,” Wilbur says - soft, but stern. Solid, like he could reach out and grab it, and it would cut his hands open like a blade. “And if I - if I were there, if I could - if I could come back, I’d rend him limb from limb. Limb from fucking limb, Tubbo, for Tommy. For the both of you.”
Schlatt bursts out in a wheezing laugh - the horrible one like a piano being stepped on, sending the same feelings of run hide wrong down Tubbo’s spine with a violent shudder despite the fact that he’s dead, and he can’t fucking hurt him from six feet under.
“What’s so funny?” Wilbur snipes.
“Don’t worry about it,” Schlatt says, heaving in another half-breath, half-chuckle. “Don’t even fuckin’ worry about it.”
Wilbur glares harder. Tubbo takes the moment to catch his breath - Wilbur’s weight by his side is cold, it’s not warm and nice and comforting anymore, but it’s there. “You’re from up here, though,” he says, pointing to his temple. “That’s why you’re not mad. Because you’re - you’re some projection of me, and I wouldn’t make up some fake version of somebody to get mad at myself.”
It makes perfect sense, when you think about it.
Wilbur just raises an eyebrow. “You wouldn’t?”
“I wouldn’t,” he echoes.
“You wouldn’t.”
“Yes you fucking would,” Schlatt cuts in.
“If you’re real,” Tubbo says, “which - you’re not, which is whatever - then. Tell me.” Because the question has been sitting on his mind, weighing him down worse than the summer heat, grabbing at his throat and ripping his scars back and reweaving them across his face - every moment from Schlatt’s inauguration through to the TNT going off beneath his feet at his own, flashing past his eyes every time he sees the crater, the portraits with eyes that follow him around his office, the backs of his eyes for the few hours he bothers trying to sleep. He won’t sleep, he can’t sleep, because he’s holding this country together with nothing but his hands and if he slips, they’re all fucking dead. “You made - you put me in charge of this place, and then you blew it to hell. What the fuck am I supposed to do with this?”
Wilbur - he flickers. “Tubbo - ”
“Tell me,” he demands, and it’s like the words won’t stop falling out of his mouth, pulled by gravity or ghost bullshit or something, and he can’t just know his place shut the fuck up - and he grabs Wilbur’s arm, and he flickers but he can feel the fabric under his hands, thick and coarse like the uniform coats always were, “tell me - why? Why did you - why did you just fucking hand it off ? Why me?”
And Wilbur looks - Wilbur looks like he’s seen a ghost (it’s not funny anymore), all wide-eyed and breathing funny and he can’t do this, not when his brain is running on overdrive already and Tubbo just fucking slumps over, still gripping the man’s forearm like a lifeline, starburst scars catching on the looping thread that sticks out of the fabric.
Because he’s not real, and he can’t hurt him anymore.
He’s just so fucking tired.
A hand settles uncomfortably on his head - cautious, light, like he might go off at any moment. Which is fucking ironic, considering who it belongs to.
And then it just... sits there, for a moment. Which is, if Tubbo looks at it objectively, takes the birds-eye view, fucking insane. Because Wilbur is dead and Tubbo is president and he's still just sitting here with either a ghost or a fucked-up figment of his imagination, and he might be the only friend he has left - he's certainly the only person who would let him cling to his jacket like he's six and skinned his knees again - and he's not even real anymore. He can feel the weight of his hand resting against his head, the arm his cheek is pressed into, but it's - cold. Not even freezing, just cold.
It's soothing, on the scars. Compared to the summer heat, anyway.
“You might wanna get some sleep, kiddo.” When Tubbo peeks an eye open, Schlatt’s shifted off to a few feet away, staring down at him with familiar disdain. He decides that his silent footsteps must be down to more ghost bullshit, because if he’s losing his touch, if he’s losing the one thing he was actually good at until he got blown halfway to hell with a firework launcher, he might start screaming. For real, this time. Wilbur wraps an arm around his shoulder, pulling him closer away from the other man - his free hand still cards softly through his hair, like he's worried he'll mess it up if he does it wrong.
“Why do you care.” he snaps flatly.
“I don’t, you look fuckin’ pathetic.”
“You probably should get some rest,” Wilbur says. All detached, all cautious. It crawls under his skin, from Wilbur’s cool hand resting on his head underneath the scars curling around his cheekbone. Either he can’t answer the question, because it’s all in Tubbo’s head, or he just won’t, because - because it's Wilbur, and fuck knows what Tubbo is expecting here.
“Nah,” Tubbo shrugs him off, and Wilbur retreats back to his seat - a safe distance, one that keeps his mirage solid and sturdy-looking. “I want a rematch. But I’m playing black this time.”
“No advantage,” Wilbur says, half a question. Inflection goes up, worried little knit of the brow.
“Not like I have the advantage here, boss man,” Tubbo points out.
Wilbur spares another glance towards the window, towards the houses it frames, and hands him the black king.
Tubbo loses.