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Phil finds Ranboo in the ash.
That’s where this all begins, depending on how you look at it. Phil arrives, a flaming angel of judgment, fire and brimstone and bedrock. And when the dust begins to settle, there is a tall boy sitting on the edge of the crater, staring at the shattered remains of the first home he can remember.
Phil thinks people forget he isn’t kind. He’s an angel of death, not one of mercy. They know that now.
Still, crouches down in the soot-blackened grass beside the kid, and says, “you need a place to stay, mate?”
Ranboo startles, and says, very hesitantly, “yeah, I-- I think I do.”
On the walk back Ranboo makes Phil laugh, and Phil watches as he slowly uncurls, like a flower billowing gently outwards. Phil thinks, a little ruefully, I like this kid.
Techno will give him such a hard time. Phil is bad about bringing home strays.
♢♢♢♢♢♢♢♢♢
They didn’t mean to make a family. Maybe they needed it though. That’s the little song and dance they all seem to do, isn’t it? They make a home and then it all falls apart. Phil and Wilbur, Phil and L’manburg, Technoblade and the racoon kid in his basement, Techno and the weird neighbor, Tubbo and a husband, Tubbo and a best friend. Syndicates and nations and spies, father and sons, little pockets of people clinging to one another before something shows up to tear them apart again.
It’s a little pattern; Techno, Tubbo and Philza know it well.
They don’t mean to start the song and dance again. But the music plays on.
♢♢♢♢♢♢♢♢♢
There are three houses in the arctic. Two little cabins, and a square-like, awkward thing, built against the rock.
When Technoblade builds his cabin, his hands still smell like gunpowder. Most things do, after that week.
Out in the snow, though, things are untouched. The weather is unforgiving, but well, so is Techno. It’s a partnership: him and the cold, and him and the stone and wood he uses to build his cabin, the clay he packs against the walls for insulation. He builds a stall for the horses, piles up hay, carves out a fireplace, and straightens out strips of pine for the roof and flooring.
It’s not big, or fancy, but it is perfectly his. That’s all he needs.
Well, he could think of something (someone) else he needs, but he won’t say it out loud. Not yet. Still, he sets up the loadstone in the corner, in the empty house. So everything is ready.
♢♢♢♢♢♢♢♢
There are two houses in the arctic. Phil builds the second to match Techno’s. The place looks more alive with two of them, mostly because Phil can’t sit still. He mobproofs the place, puts up fences and lays down snow. He coaxes the fish to stay alive even in the cold weather, and builds the little bridge, tying their cottages into one unit.
His wings ache, out here. In L’manburg it was easy to feel tied down, heavy with grief and ash. Out in Techno’s little haven, the stars are closer. He hears them singing down to him and he combs through feathers and scar tissue and realizes he may never return to them again.
Phil wants to scream.
He doesn’t, though. He builds his house, and then starts a more ambitious project: a training room. He helps rain down hellfire on L’manburg then returns, makes Techno supper, feeds the dogs, sweeps the snow off the porch, and thinks about Wilbur’s chest buried in his sword, and the sword in his hand, and wonders where he fucked up.
There are two houses, and they are in the middle of nowhere, and there is a wasteland where there once might have been something more or something warm.
Phil wants to scream.
♢♢♢♢♢♢♢♢♢
The day after Techno comes knocking, Tubbo wanders out into the cold. He has his coat. He buttoned it up carefully by the door, but now that he’s out here, he thinks he should have left it behind. Ranboo is dead.
How can he be so good about buttoning up his coat when Ranboo is dead, and their son gone? How can he even stand on his two feet and remember his gloves (next to Michael’s little mittens in the basket by the front door) after everything that just happened?
The door of the mansion looms up in front of him. Tubbo has the key, but they don’t lock this place up anyway. He shoulders his way through, and lets the snow from his boots melt on the floorboards. It will ruin the wood. Oh well. It doesn’t matter anymore, does it?
He wanders through the hallways and rooms, swipes a layer of dust off the dining room table with his finger and leaves his jacket hanging over the back of a chair even though it’s almost as cold in here as it is outside.
He feels…broken. Not in a sobbing, screaming, emotional way; Ranboo could have done that. If it had been Tubbo who had died, Ranboo would have cried beautifully. He did it when Tommy died. Tubbo didn’t, even though Tommy was his best friend. He just couldn’t. It didn’t feel real. It feels real now. The emptiness where his family’s voices had once been is too loud to ignore. But Tubbo is broken, so he doesn't cry— just wanders into the room that should have been Michael’s nursery and stares.
They’d never moved into this place, he realizes. They’d never turned this big empty mansion into a home. So there’s the fancy nursery, with a bed and a fireplace lying empty and cold. The mansion doesn’t feel like a home, it feels like a tomb. It’s for a future Tubbo knows that he’ll never be allowed.
Tubbo has spent so many waking minutes trying to feel safe and secure since the day Wilbur put up black and yellow walls around them. He’d thought he’d succeeded.
He thinks, I will burn this whole world down if it hurts me again, and knows that’s a threat he’ll never go through with. So he turns away, leaving the mansion behind, and walks back into the snow, leaving his jacket behind in the empty house.
♢♢♢♢♢♢♢♢♢
Techno looks out the window one morning, and sees that Ranboo has built a house. In his backyard. And it’s hideous. The property value. Oh gods.
Listen, he doesn’t have anything against…people. He’s just kind of tired of children moving onto his land and befriending him and then brutally betraying him. Phil really should have known better than to bring home another. Even if Techno does think Ranboo is a little bit funny.
“I don’t trust him, Phil.” he says, for the thousandth time, peering out the window as Ranboo shuffles around the yard, stomping awkwardly through the snow with those long legs.
Phil only laughs. “Give him time, mate. Give him time. You’ll like him, I know it.”
Easy for Phil to say. Phil knows how to do small talk.
“Is he an orphan? Philza, you know how I feel about orphans.”
“You’ll have to ask him yourself.”
♢♢♢♢♢♢♢♢♢
“I’ll kill him with my bare hands,” Tubbo says.
Techno hasn’t looked Tubbo in the face since he released a bundle of rockets between the two of them. Now that he’s looking, though, he finds a very different kid. “I’ll kill him,” Tubbo repeats and Techno finds that he very much believes it. There’s something about him that’s unnerving, like a screaming geiger counter. Some instinct that makes Techno think this kid is dangerous even though he’s a full head shorter and his coat is embroidered with flowers.
The more you have to lose, the more you’ll inevitably hurt. Wilbur taught Techno that, once, in Pogtopia, and Tommy did it again, when he walked away and took the axe of peace with him. And then--
Tubbo should know that rule too; but he kept trying. They both did, finding new things to love and get ripped away. The same person taught them that. They same person wormed his way into their calcified hearts and forced their walls down again, and it has bound them together in some strange fellowship.
“I have an axe I can loan you,” Technoblade says, before he knows what he’s doing. “I mean, you gotta give it back.” He unstrappeds it from his back with reverence, the netherite blade glinting in the wan sunlight of the overcast Snowchester sky.
Tubbo goes to interrupt, and then stops himself. “What is the axe?” he asks, head cocked to the side, almost birdlike.
“It’s the one Ranboo gave me,” Techno says, and finds the name almost chokes him. Tubbo reaches out for it, gliding a thumb over the edge of the blade, expression impossible to interpret.
♢♢♢♢♢♢♢♢♢
The wash of blue-white light beneath his eyelids makes Tubbo think he’s in Snowchester. Moonlight and lantern light reflect off snow a specific, chilled brightness. But when he opens his eyes, they catch on the outlines of cabins and the sheen of a beacon. He can feel the magic of the beacon thrumming beneath his skin, warm as a blanket. All around him, he can hear animals: the quiet yips of the dogs, and the huff of a bear, the soft footfalls of a cat somewhere in the house. Some quiet intuition tells him it’s early morning; maybe two or three— those hours before dawn, between the end of one day and the beginning of the next.
Beneath his arm, Michael stirs, snorting gently. Right. Tubbo lets the panic of the unknown fade. He’s at Ranboo’s house, in the Arctic. The cabins in the distance belong to Technoblade and Philza. He’s curled up in Ranboo’s bed, Michael tucked against him, stirring softly in his sleep.
Suddenly his eyes catch a silhouette at the end of the bed, freakishly tall and faceless, and for a moment the panicked jolt sends his hands scrambling for a weapon. Then, the next second, he sees who it is.
“Oh my gods,” he says, whispering sharply, trying not to wake up the baby. “You scared the shit out of me.”
“Sorry!” Ranboo-- Ghostboo-- says meekly. “I didn’t mean to.”
“Were you watching me sleep? Fucking weirdo.” There’s no heat to the ribbing, but Ghostboo shrinks back a little anyway. In the half light of the wintery moon, he does look frightening: faceless and veiled, with a gash through him that seems suspended in a state of dripping unreality.
“Sorry,” he says again. “I heard you wake up and I wanted to make sure you were okay. I’ll go now.”
Tubbo tries to make himself relax. Deep breaths, let your breathing even out, let your heart rate return to normal. “It’s okay. I’m gonna get up.” He’s not gonna be able to fall asleep again, he doesn’t think.
“Oh!” Ghostboo waffles by the stairs a moment. “Do you want hot chocolate?”
“...Sure,” Tubbo says. “Why not, boss man.”
He follows Ghostboo down the stairs. The house is small, but not uncomfortable. There’s a kitchen, a couch, and windows overlooking the rest of the Commune. There are no lights on in Techno’s cabin, and Phil’s is quiet as well. Peace reigns over the tundra. It feels…safe. Genuinely safe. The wind sighs across the snow as he sinks into the couch, listening to Ghostboo rattle around in the kitchen. A black cat hops over the back of the couch, and with a little prompting, curls up in a circle on his lap, purring as he strokes its silky fur.
The scrape of a whisk in the pan makes him look over. Ghostboo is stirring a saucepan with vigor and he-- he moves just like Ranboo does, same awkward motions, like the world wasn’t built with him in mind. Same enthusiasm. It makes something ache in his chest, as he watches the ghost pour the steaming chocolate into a mug and carry it over with a whispered “careful, it’s hot.”
“Thanks.” Tubbo accepts the mug. Ghostboo hangs back, hovering between the kitchen and the couch until Tubbo says, “come sit down, boss man, you’re making me nervous,” and laughs awkwardly into his mug. He doesn’t know what to do with this. He doesn’t know what to think.
In his pocket, a tulip wilts.
Ghostboo drifts over and settles lightly on the cushion. “I wasn’t sure if you wanted me…uh…yeah.”
The hot chocolate burns at his throat, the mug gently searing his hands. He balances it on his knee. “Why didn’t you come sooner? To Snowchester?”
Ghostboo hesitates. Tubbo stares out the window. If he doesn’t look, it sounds just like Ranboo. He can’t even tell the difference. “I don’t know,” he says finally. “I’ve been…floating, for a while. Like ghosts do! And then I looked out the window, and there was Michael! And you!”
“Do you remember things?” Tubbo asks. “You remembered us?”
“Oh,” Ranboo’s voice grows conspiratorial, “I remember everything.”
“Oh man, everything? Getting cocky, aren’t we?” Tubbo teases. Don’t look, don’t look, don't look.
“Mm-hmm!”
“Ranboo,” he hesitates, and then plows onward stubbornly. “Ghostboo. Is-- is he in limbo, now?”
Ghostboo hums noncommittally. Either he doesn’t want to think about it, or he doesn't know. Tubbo doesn’t know which one is worse. Tommy had talked about limbo: blank, eternal nothingness, a pack of playing cards. For Wilbur, a scratched-up underground station drenched in red. Tubbo wonders, with a disattached brokenness, what Ranboo’s version of a personal hell is. He can’t let himself think on it too long, or it will break him, so instead he says. “So this is where you’ve been staying this whole time?”
“Ever since doomsday. Phil invited me here,” Ghostboo shifts awkwardly. “I’ve been part of Techno’s…book club.”
“Was he good to you?”
“The best. Except you, of course.”
That’s all Tubbo had needed to hear, really. “I think I get why you came. It's really nice here, y’know. Peaceful, kind of. Besides, I think it will be good for Michael to be around Techno. Piglins and all that. Tomorrow, I’m gonna go back to Snowchester and pick up some of our things. And stay here, until…yeah. If you don’t mind. We kinda took your bed and all that. Do you even sleep anymore?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think so.” he looks down at Tubbo. His eyes are visible, now, somehow— in holes in the sheet Tubbo is almost certain weren’t there a minute before. “You can stay as long as you want. Forever. Tubbo, stay with me forever?”
Tubbo snorts. “You’ve already proposed, bro, you don’t need to do it again.” he leans back. “I’ll stay. Are we still married then? I was getting all excited about being a widower. Inheriting all your stuff, y'know. I married you for the money, after all.”
“Til death do us part is kind of a dumb rule anyway.” Ranboo says. “But… promise me you’re gonna try and get him back, okay?”
“M‘kay,” Tubbo says, a little distracted. He’s sleepy and complacent, and for the first time in so long, he feels genuinely safe. He knows he shouldn’t. The ghost sitting next to him isn’t really his husband, Dream is out, he’s deep in what is technically enemy territory, but he feels safe. “I will.” He feels his head lolling back on the couch cushions, sleep pulling at his eyelids.
“Can I?” Ghostboo asks, and when Tubbo nods, Michael upstairs and the winter wind knocking at the door, Ranboo wraps a ghostly arm around him, and Tubbo sleeps.
♢♢♢♢♢♢♢♢♢
Phil doesn't find out Tubbo moved in until the day he knocks on the door of the cabin.
“Hey Phil,” Tubbo says, with a great deal of forced nonchalance that shows. “Can you babysit for me? I’ve gotta run to work and all that, y’know, and I can’t find Ghostboo, and anyway, you know stuff about kids right?”
Tubbo is wearing a brightly colored Tubburger shirt and a greasy hat, his jacket unzipped. He’s bouncing a tiny piglin kid, almost a circle in his oversized coat with a white fur collar. He looks nothing like the teenaged president in an oversized blue suit who sent an arrow through Phil’s shoulder once upon a time. Maybe that’s why Philza, instead of pointing out that they’re not friends, or asking why the fuck Tubbo is here, or even mentioning that the last bit of parenting he did included filicide, says “Sure mate. Bring him in.”
♢♢♢♢♢♢♢♢♢
Babysitting Michael becomes part of the routine. Tubbo drops him off with a muttered thank you, and Philza restructures his day to include a pair of tiny feet.
He finds he likes it more than he thought he would.
Sometimes Tommy drops by and helps out. Every once in a while, Wilbur comes too, a little paler than he used to be. He doesn’t smile as much as Philza thinks he should, but Tommy still makes him laugh.
The house has life in it, and spring is coming in starts and stops, little bits of grass poking through the snow. By some miraculous gift, the windowboxes of Ranboo’s house are sprouting flowers; alliums, daffodils and tulips in pale colors. Sometimes, Phil looks out and sees the silhouette of Ghostboo tending them.
One morning, Philza wakes up before the sun and hikes up the hill, using his cane for the crevices in the rocks. There is no sun, not out here, but the watery morning light slips its way through the cracks and casts a ghostly glow as he looks down on their haunted plot: three houses and four residents, a ghost and guests. The barns and farms and cows, the fences and secret entrances. Home.
Phil’s been haunted for a long time; he sees Her forest and remembers Ghostbur and his living, haunted son, and wonders when Techno is going to figure out how to bring Ranboo back.
He sits on the stones and pulls his mangled wing across his lap, pruning the feathers left behind, preening away the loose ones, cleaning the dirt and dust and soot.
There is no new life here, and he doesn’t think there ever will be. He misses the sky like an ache in his bones. But on the ground, his son is alive, and Tommy is alive, and Michael will be there in an hour, and Techno will make Phil a cup of tea if he asks.
He descends, on two feet and leaves the discarded feathers on the hilltop.
♢♢♢♢♢♢♢♢♢
Tubbo isn’t sure what he is, anymore.
There’s always been a word for him. A role to play. Soldier, spy, rebel. President. Scientist. Those were clear, concise and complete. There were the other words, too: best friend, and husband and Bo, the guy who tucks Michael in at night and lets Tommy stitch flowers and good luck charms into the linings of his coats and the sleeves of his shirts.
He’s lost them all now. L’Manburg is gone, Snowchester a shell. Ranboo is gone, and in the morning light, his ghost only flickers in the edges of Tubbo’s vision, leaving him alone and empty. Tommy has drifted away, and every time Tubbo watches him startle when someone reaches for his hand, he remembers that he’s failed to protect Tommy every time his friend really needed him.
He makes burgers in Las Nevadas, but instead of giving him anything like a purpose, the daily routine only helps to numb him. Quackity comes by, million-dollar-smiles and promises, and Tubbo thinks that perhaps Quackity wants to have Tubbo the way Wilbur has Tommy. But Tubbo doesn’t know how to do that anymore— how to sign himself and his soul and his scars up for a cause. He just is. He hates it.
Eventually, he stops showing up for shifts at Tubberger, and Quackity never brings it up. He finds Eryn, Tommy’s twin in chaos. Fresh-faced enough to believe in building up something new, but wise enough to refrain from asking stupid questions about horns and sideways eyes and scars, and they go out, far away from everything touched by hands, human or otherwise.
Tubbo builds and he tries to find a new name for himself, and comes up with nothing but a blank page and titles that don’t fit right anymore.
♢♢♢♢♢♢♢♢♢
Techno reaches his hands into an unexplored world, and begins to build.
In the aftermath of destruction, he creates. He sets aside cape and crown, wipes sweat off his brow, teases chat and when he comes home for a cup of tea, feeling the cold seep in, he thinks this is what it means to still hope, and he calls it very good.
♢♢♢♢♢♢♢♢♢
Tubbo gets his first kill. It’s halfway calculated, halfway instinct. Heartless. A sprint, a shove and then--
He’s killed before, but this is the first time it counts. He wonders if she’ll have scars.
There are the crumbling remains of a long-dead tulip in his pocket.
Little angel of death, he’d called her. It’s a title, at least. Don’t they all need one now? Doesn’t he need to be something again, instead of being this monstrous puppet fueled by the dregs of grief and anger?
When Wilbur lost L’Manburg, he’d decided to become the bad guy. Tubbo was a good little soldier, but he couldn’t help but wonder when he got a turn to be selfish. To be the treasures the wall protects, instead of being the wall.
He is an angel of death and he has no wings, but he flies back to the base where Erin is fiddling with the storage system and says, “are we the bad guys?”
And he sits in the ocean with his legs in the cold surf, and laughs until he cries and the saltwater washes him away.
He has had so many monsters in his life. Now it’s his turn to haunt someone else.
♢♢♢♢♢♢♢♢♢
There are three houses in the arctic, and Tubbo is gone. Ranboo’s home stands empty. There is rarely even a ghost there anymore.
Tubbo still comes by to see Michael, but it’s mostly just Phil there now. Tommy is coming around more often, too. Sometimes he helps to make dinner, or entertains Michael. Once, Phil wanders into the kitchen and finds Tommy and Techno, standing shoulder to shoulder peeling potatoes. They don’t speak much, but there is something amicable about the scene, blissfully domestic.
Philza remembers that Tubbo is still out there, somewhere, and hopes he finds his way home soon.
♢♢♢♢♢♢♢♢♢
It takes Tubbo too long to realize it’s a game.
He’s too caught up in the heart-pounding adrenaline of it, sick to his stomach. He can swear he hears fireworks in his ruined ear, but that’s implausible, so he doesn’t mention it— just keeps a white-knuckled hand on his sword and wonders why he never quite learned how to tell Wilbur Soot no.
It’s not until he’s blocking off the windows that he realizes that they’re in a ghost town. He comes back into his own body and feels the dust tickling his nose, the silence in the collection of buildings almost oppressive. They’re conquering an empty room. It’s a game. It’s make-believe, a silly recreation of the days when they were both bitterly happy and blissfully afraid. Those hours between advancement and defeat. The days where Tommy and Tubbo had matching uniforms and names that fit.
The hours between giving their home a name and dying for it. The happiest, Tubbo thinks, he’s ever been on this server. The happiest he’d probably ever be. Even with all the beautiful things that float his way, he’s drunk his cup now, and it will sit in his stomach forever to spoil any good morsels left.
And that was Wilbur Soot, and now Wilbur Soot is leading him to victory.
He wants to hate it, but instead it feels like a redemption, and he can’t shake off the feeling.
They climb onto the roof together, Wilbur giving him a hand up. His arm, Tubbo thinks, is weak. Wilbur was always built like a twig, and he’s been dead while Tubbo learned to be strong.
He wonders why Wilbur still doesn’t wear armor.
Above them, stars swing out, and the nights are just beginning to feel like summer, humming with the smells of dirt and wheat and old pine. Out of the corner of his eye, Tubbo can see the shape of L’Manbug’s ruins. On the roof, they sit in its shadow, acting out its history. They’ll always be in the shadow, he thinks. He died for that ruin. There’s a dozen Tubbos somewhere under that lake.
He turns away, to look at Wilbur.
“See?” Wilbur says, “this has been fun?”
“Yeah. This has been…quite the throwback.” He’s choosing his words diplomatically, but there’s a smile beneath them. He doesn’t know if it’s forced or not.
“I don’t mind-- you know--” Wilbur hops down from their little platform and strides to the roof’s edge, looking out over the ruins “You’ve been such a good part of my--” he turns back, stuttering for words. It’s a strange mix, Wilbur the confident orator and Wilbur the anxious friend. “You know, I’ve had a great time here. Before L’Manburg, before everything, you were a part of my story. You were a part of my history, and I thank you.”
Wilbur bounces nervously on his toes and he says it and Tubbo thinks, almost awe-stuck he means it.
Before Tubbo was Wilbur’s spy or his soldier or sacrificial lamb, he was Wilbur’s…well, a part of his history. He and Wilbur and Tommy, traveling to L’Manburg, finding each other and sleeping in fields with sandwich crumbs and summer air and the lazy hum of grasshoppers. Just…Tubbo. Nothing extra. No one more. And that had meant something.
He says something light and thankful, meaningless except for the awe sinking through his voice.
Wilbur swings himself up on their ugly little pedestal again. “If you don’t mind,” he says, “I want to make my first decree as president.”
“Oh.” Tubbo says. “Okay.”
For my first decree as president…as Emperor of L’Manburg…
Something in him shrinks inwards, afraid despite the netherite he’s wearing and the scars he holds up like a shield.
“Ladies and Gentlemen,” Wilbur says in his best President Voice, even though the rooftop is empty and what’s left of their server is asleep, “my last decree as president of a nation-- of any nation-- was to make Tubbo president of L’manburg.”
“I remember that,” Tubbo says flatly. He resists the urge to curl in on himself and stands still.
Wilbur continues, in the same tone, like he’s speaking to an audience, not a friend. “Now this decision was made out of spite. I- I did this because I wanted to blow it up and I-- I wanted to be sure I wasn’t going to be president when I blew it up.”
His voice softens and cracks around the edges. In the torchlight, he doesn’t look anything like the Wilbur that Tubbo remembers; there is no smartly jacketed president, or tattered madman. No fire left in his eyes. There’s just Wilbur, and just Tubbo, standing on a rooftop. “I didn’t think it would go well. Because of me making you president, you were forced to exile your friend, you were manipulated, you--” Wilbur’s voice breaks. “I’ve read the books. You didn’t have a great time.”
“Mm.” Tubbo says.
“Your time as president meant you had to run away. You ran away and-- and honestly a lot of people haven’t heard from you since.”
You have no clue what you’re talking about, something vicious and well nourished and brutally angry in Tubbo hums. But there’s something else too— something that says he cares.
“Since the day L’Manburg was destroyed,” Wilbur’s attention drifts out to the ruins, behind Tubbo’s back, just out of sight. It feels like eyes boring into the back of Tubbo’s neck. He fights the urge to turn and look. “You haven’t had a single person tell you ‘hey man, you did a good job.’ and I just want to let you know that-- Tubbo I think if it was better circumstances you would have been the best president L’Manburg ever had.”
Tubbo’s got something caught in his throat. He does his best to ignore it.
“And that’s why my first act of presidency in Boomerville is to,” his voice returns to its announcer's cadence, all performance, “Step down from the presidency and elect Tubbo the new President of Boomerville.”
♢♢♢♢♢♢♢♢♢
Wilbur goes. Tubbo turns and walks the opposite way.
“President of Boomerville,” he says out loud to himself. It’s a dumb title really. An empty one, for an empty nation. He’ll never use it.
But it feels like Wilbur has given something back to him. He can’t quite name it. But it’s there.
He takes the long way to the tundra, even though the Nether is far more practical, and Tubbo usually likes things done practically. But tonight, he moves slowly. He needs the time to think.
He misses Ranboo. And Tommy. He misses L’Manburg, Niki’s bakery and the redwoods. He misses sitting cross legged in the pews of church prime and watching Tommy pray. He misses following Wilbur before he knew fear. He misses Snowchester.
Tubbo misses them all so much it feels like his heart will explode, and in little fits and starts, he feels the anger leeching away. He follows the river and finds a boat on the shore, and hikes across the snowy plane until he sees the yellow glow of the Commune in the distance.
He stomps his boots free of snow on Philza’s porch. Inside the little cabin, he hears voices: Technoblade’s low cadence, Philza’s laugh, the pounding of feet that sound like Tommy, and a delighted squeal. He must be playing with Michael.
From the doorway of the house across the snow, Ghostboo watches, but Tubbo doesn’t see him.
Later, he will. But tonight, he knocks on Phil's door, waits for it to swing open, and says, “I’m home.”