Chapter Text
When the world burned, he stood there, watching.
Jack watched through red-blue glasses as the world fell around him. The ground beneath his feet was on fire and he didn't care, just stared at the prison as the explosion rocked the very foundations of the world. Bedrock flew up in the air as the building sank into the ground, the obsidian crumbling.
After it, he crawled out of the wreckage, body shifting back into place. His bones were on fire- his jaw split, unhinging in a way that he didn't know it could. Hell released it’s grip on him, and he crawled back into the world, afraid of the things he’d seen.
Jack crawled out of the piles of earth, rock, and wood, and screamed.
He found Punz about halfway in. The only thing recognizable was his golden pendant- the rest, crushed and burnt by the obsidian piled around him. Jack pulled at the obsidian until his fingers broke.
Cursing, he looked at the situation again. The crushed body only lifted part of the way up, and Tubbo was in here somewhere.
It pained him to leave Punz there.
He’d come back for him. He would.
He made a silent promise to the dead man that he would receive a proper burial.
When he found Tubbo, it took everything in him not to lay down next to him and WISH.
His best friend’s body was covering Tommy’s. Protecting him until the very end.
Jack ignored the burning jealousy in his heart and dug.
He dug with broken hands until he could reach Tubbo- and oh, god , he didn’t want to. He didn’t want to see what the end of the world had done to that sweet kid; didn’t want to see what HE had done.
It was all his fault, after all.
And he owed it to Tubbo.
Jack buried his face in the half-burn- away collar of Tubbo’s snow jacket. The burnt polar bear fur smelled horrible, but underneath there was a smell of honey, of honey and tulip and peony, of home-cooked meals and the couch they sat on in front of the fire- of home .
Jack broke down quietly, clutching Tubbo’s limp body close, letting the ram’s horns that had never fit his friend quite right jab into his head and leave their imprint on his forehead like a brand.
He stayed like that for a long time.
Eventually, he has to get up.
The prison is still unstable, after all. And it isn’t like he could stay here.
He has to find somewhere he can bury his friends.
Jack hefts the bodies out of the prison one by one.
Six in all.
Punz. Sam. Quackity. Dream. Tommy.
And Tubbo.
He’s careful with them, with those that he loves.
Even though the pain and the heartache they’d caused… He’d give anything to have one more conversation with any of them.
Anything.
Hell could reclaim him if they would let him smile at Tubbo one more time.
He piles them onto a makeshift cart, lugging the thing up the prime path as he looks for a place to go.
Everything around him is destroyed- the buildings, the houses- the path wasn’t even smooth. Jack sighs, knowing that no one was there to fix it any longer.
He certainly isn’t going to.
He has to bury his friends.
Eventually, he reaches a field of flowers, just outside Las Nevadas.
That was gone, too, the fake desert’s sand and cacti nearly the only things remaining intact after the nuke was detonated.
Pieces of the huge structures lay, smoldering on the sand. What was once a grand palace is now unrecognizable rubbish.
Jack cringes.
There has to be some other survivors. There has to be.
It can’t be just him again, right ?
Surely not again.
He unloads, taking care to be extra careful with what was left of them. It isn’t easy work- his hands can’t quite grab, and his fingers hang limply from his palms.
It’s not the cleanest work either, Punz and Dream are both in pieces and it’s not very hygienic to dump what he thinks are parts of Dream into the grave he manages to dig.
He does it anyway.
These people deserve to be at rest.
Even if they had done some horrible things.
Jack carefully lays them both into the ground, quickly shooting up a prayer to the universe and Mother Death to keep them both safe.
Quackity is next; his body is curled into Jack’s chest and for a second, he can’t let the man go.
His arms can’t let Quackity fall into the dirt- it wasn’t like they had known each other very well.
He’s sorry he never spoke to him, never knew him.
He wondered what gods protected Quackity in the end. Were they kind? Loving?
He hoped the man was at rest.
Jack places his limp, pale body into the ground, tears staining the pallor of Quackity’s face. He rubs at them, the skin under his hands stiff and cold.
He stands, looking back at the two he has yet to bury.
They’d like it here, he thinks, a sob crawling its way out of his throat.
They’d really like it here.
Tommy is first, while digging the hole for him the shovel slips and so does Jack, falling into the early grave and lying there with his face in the dirt. He’s stunned for a moment.
It’s not often he finds himself in the earth’s grasp.
Usually when Jack dies it’s quick, and painful, and there are things that he can’t and won’t explain.
This feeling is simple-- he has fallen into the dirt and is laying in it. A spark of anguish flares in his chest.
He can’t have this.
This simple death, laying in the ground of the SMP he called home, painless and gentle and soft.
This was never meant for him.
So he gets up, brushes the dirt off best he can, and keeps digging.
The body isn’t heavy at all.
Jack looks into the still face, and his eyes swim with tears.
Tommy looks so young in death. He’s still holding the sixteen-year-old version of his friend-- the one that hadn’t done anything, the small boy that hid in the corner while Wilbur spat and cursed and yelled.
Jack remembers when Tommy was smaller. He’d had begged Niki to make cookies with him. He remembers the pride on the boy’s face when he held out a lumpy, misshapen cookie and insisted that Jack taste-test.
He remembers the joy in the small child’s voice when he rode around on Wilbur’s shoulders in the yard, Fundy chasing after them and giggling as Wilbur zipped through the grass. Tommy was whooping and hollering, so loudly that it scared the lightning bugs up from the ground.
That Tommy is lying here with a small grin on his face. His blue eyes are still open- Jack closes them, desperately trying not to weep at the child in his arms.
That child had never deserved any of this.
Jack lays Tommy in his shallow grave, placing the golden curls he used to style in the mornings down into the gentle earth. He presses his forehead to the boy’s and promises to forget everything that has happened between them.
He shovels the dirt back onto his friend, earth calming on his swollen, broken hands. It’s uncanny how like Wilbur the boy looks when his hair is dirty-- Jack pushes the final clump down and sits there for a moment.
He can’t turn around, can’t bear to look at what’s left.
It’s still there when he does.
When he’d found Tubbo, his body had been lying across Tommy’s chest, blocking most of the other child from the falling obsidian blocks. Tubbo’s spine had taken most of the damage- all of it, practically.
His burn scars have opened, and the blood leaks into the inside of the cart. It pools at the end of it and makes a smaller rivulet slosh over the side and drip its way onto the ground.
Tubbo was practically squished; blood oozing out of jagged tears in his sides and back. Ripped skin and exposed bone poke out of the brown leather jacket that has just barely survived. Jack chokes back a wail as he stares at the last body on the cart-
It’s not a body, it’s Tubbo , and his only friend… is dead.
The grave is harder to dig now that he knows who is going in it. Jack tears his eyes away from the cart and pushes the shovel into the soft earth. It’s not like Tubbo is going to come back, no.
Not like he did.
Jack wouldn’t wish that on anyone.
The grave takes him hours to finish. His shovel gives out by the second inch and he’s digging with his hands by the fifth; using his palms like shovels.
His wrists hurt- badly, the pain shoots through his arms like bullets traveling through his muscles. Shrapnel digs itself into his shoulders and burns holes through his skin. He’s back in the village, he’s back in the village and he’s burning up-
Jack falls, his forearms hit the dirt and he’s burning, he’s falling through the floor in flames, he’s plummeting through the floor and the ground and he’s back there in that place-
He takes a deep breath through his nose and bangs a fist on the ground.
They would not take him again. They couldn’t.
Tubbo’s blood drips from the cart. The stream reaches the pit he’s dug. Jack scrambles away from it, his shoes now soaked in blood.
It’s not even six feet deep.
But he can’t do any more.
Jack takes the shovel up in his arms and climbs weakly out of the grave. It’s not pretty, but he manages to flip the cart so Tubbo rolls in.
He can’t even manage to cover up the body.
He’s that weak.
Staggering away from Tubbo, he throws up, the spit coming from his mouth nearly all blood. He needs to get some healing, fast- nothing is still standing, where would he get healing?
Jack pulls himself up on the side of the cart and manages to stagger to a tree nearby. He breathes in deep.
It’s not supposed to be like this. It’s not supposed to be this way. This place was supposed to last- his friends were supposed to be okay. They were supposed to be alive.
He pulls himself up, huffing as his hands flop uselessly at his sides. Healing would be in Techno’s place- far from the destruction- just a short trip through the nether and a pop up to the arctic-
He headed back towards the swirling nether portal, dragging his feet. Techno’s wasn’t that far- it wasn’t that far…
he blacked out halfway there and woke up in Techno’s room, sat on the man’s bed and wrapped clumsily in bandages.
He lifts his hands, unsure of how he got here.
But he feels a lot better, definitely.
Outside, the snow drifts softly in the breeze, the Arctic untouched by the destruction on the mainland. It’s quiet here- no noise but Techno’s beloved animals outside and the tinkling bells on the roof.
Soothing.
It’s the only thing on Jack’s mind as he sits in his friend and mentor’s bed, leaning into the fluffy pillows. This place was so soothing. It had always been.
He’s glad this little part of the world survived.
Jack gets up, woozily, his world spinning a bit before going steady.
He’d make tea in Techno’s kitchen and eat something, yeah. That would be good, that would be fine.
He stumbles down the stairs and into the empty kitchen.
The fire usually roaring behind the gate was quiet, no crackling embers in the chimney.
He tosses a blaze rod in there, the wood igniting immediately and cheerfully crackling away. He puts a pan on, sitting to rest on the small bench Techno had kept by the fireplace.
Butter sizzles, and he takes some potatoes from the basket next to the stove and cuts them up.
His hands shake on the knife. He hates the way they look- god, he hates the way they feel.
He remembered a time where he didn’t have them- the hands. He flexes his fingers.
These had been ripped off, where he’d been.
The potatoes sizzle in the pan- he tosses salt in, curling his hands up into his lap.
It wasn’t like he didn’t remember hell.
It was more like… he didn’t want to.
It wasn’t a very nice place to remember.
Fire crackles along his ribs for a moment and he bends over, hugging his middle.
Hell was… it was-
Jack sniffs the air, confused for a moment- The potatoes were burning.
He yelps, pulling the pan out of the stove with a bare hand and settling it on the bench.
He ignores the molten shape of the handle that was now scarring his left hand. It was normal.
But the potatoes were cooked through and their charred skin melted on his tongue, the burnt, savory flavor a welcome distraction from the pain.
He glances outside, the snow falling clumping and gathering on the windowsill, the plants outside now dead and frozen. The snow pushed the glass closed- Jack snorts as he watches a bug attempt to crawl a path through the thick stuff.
Outside, something moves.
He jumps, confused. This world was supposed to be empty-
Outside, a black blur toddles away from Ranboo’s house. Its gait is awkward- for a second, he thinks- he hopes - it’s Ran.
But Ranboo has died- he’s gone with Phil and Niki, yes. His family is all safe, with Mother in the Endworld…
Jack scowls, watching the black moving object roll over in the snow- it wasn’t an enderman, they didn’t do this.
What… what was that?
He gets up and limps over to the window, pushing it open. The snow thunked on the porch, Jack cringes as he thinks about what he'll definitely have to clean up later- he’d have to re-lacquer the porch… Techno had JUST done that, too…
Jack refocuses on the thing in the snow.
It was falling off of the hill now- Ranboo’s house had always sat on that steep slope, he didn’t know WHY the man had built there but it wasn’t-
The thing sits up.
Jack blinks in surprise as it manages to waddle its way to Phil’s, the closer house, and pull itself up on the bannister.
He remembers that he was supposed to be protecting this place.
Shit.
“OI!” He screams. “THE FUCK’RE YE DOIN’?!”
The thing’s ‘head’ turned his way- pink tufted hair poked up from the coat collar.
He froze.
Shit.
Jack bolts as quickly as he can towards the ladder, ignoring the flaming pain in his chest. He’s down the ladder and out the door as quickly as he can, into the cold, harsh snow.
It’s freezing, he’s not surprised, but it jarrs his bones- the bundle is so far away and he’s not fast enough…
It stumbles towards him clumsily, hoofed feet skidding over the slick porch- Jack sweeps the bundle up in weak arms and holds it tight.
Michael.
He presses his nose to matted pink fur.
The piglin babe shivers in his arms. He takes a deep breath- Michael is freezing cold, his wet fur smells horrible. Jack murmurs into the kidd’s forehead.
It’s going to be okay. It’s all going to be okay.
He’s trying his best to believe it.
Michael’s claws grip into his arms and Jack realizes that the child is sobbing, sniffling into his ruined shirt.
He manages to stumble his way into Phil’s. There’s a cinnamon-scented fire in the grate, just like always. Phil’s coat hangs on the coat rack- Jack plops Michael down next to it and struggles the huge black thing off.
it’s a coat, he discovers soon. He puts it aside for later. Michael stands there, shivering, tiny arms wrapped around Jack’s leg.
He manages to pry the boy off and place him down by the fire- Michael’s claws don’t let him go, though, holding Jack in place.
He’s got no choice, so he sits down, and Michael clambers into his lap like nothing has changed between them.
Like their family isn’t dead.
Like it isn't his fault.
Jack tucks his arms around his nephew’s middle and sobs.