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When Tubbo's is seven (or maybe he's six? The details are blurry) his grandfather is diagnosed with cancer. Not for the first time, apparently, but it's the first time in Tubbo's memory. He will never forget the sadness on his mother's face when she tells him. Tubbo doesn't understand, obviously, he's a child, and scrunches up his face in his confusion. He doesn't understand what "prostate cancer" means. He doesn't understand why his grandad has lost all his hair the next time they go to visit.
He doesn't understand anything.
His grandad survives, luckily. Tubbo will learn that that was the fourth time the man had ever had cancer, and the fourth time he'd beaten it. He does not know it at the time, but one day Tubbo will understand how incredibly lucky that is. He doesn’t yet realise that not every story has a happy ending.
Tubbo is seven, and does not understand the word "genetic", or "inherited", or "non-commutable". In a few years, when he does, he will feel awful for avoiding his grandad for fear of somehow catching this mysterious "cancer" when he was seven. He will feel fear, not for himself but for the rest of his family, knowing that his family has a long history of the disease.
*--*--*
Tubbo has known Tommy since they started school, their friendship beginning right in those first few weeks of reception. Tubbo was sitting on a bench. He was lonely. He didn't mind. Tommy came over, sitting down beside him. Tommy, so clever and kind, witty and caring, with his blonde hair and blue eyes that sometimes flash green in the sunlight. They promised that they'd be best friends forever.
Tommy was the person to introduce him to Minecraft. He had an Xbox, and they played almost religiously every time Tubbo was over at his house. Which was very frequently, practically every other day. The days they weren't at Tommy's house, they were usually at Tubbo's. Inseparable, as everyone called them.
They were inseparable, best friends, despite being almost opposite. Tommy is tall and blonde and loud, and Tubbo is short and brunette and quiet. Tommy is an only child, and complains constantly of how lucky Tubbo is to have a little sibling. Tubbo has Michael, his younger brother, and complains regularly of how lucky Tommy is to be an only child and not have to listen to Michael’s crying. Tommy is sporty. He loves running, always running. Tubbo... Tubbo doesn't mind sports, he enjoys swimming and climbing, but Tommy is always running. He loves running.
They are in Year Six when Tommy stops running. He hates it, complaining of a strange pain in his leg. Tubbo will comfort him, tell him that he's sure it'll go away soon and Tommy'll be able to get back to sports soon enough. Tubbo knows that not every story has a happy ending, but Tommy’s won’t be one of them.
Tubbo doesn't remember the exact date, his exact age, when his parents get the email. He's eleven, he thinks, likely just a few weeks after his birthday. Tommy is eleven too. The email is from Tommy's parents. His parents sit him down, show him the email. The pain in Tommy's leg wasn't going away. It wasn't normal.
It was cancer.
His parents comforted him, but Tubbo didn't get upset. Tommy would be okay. Yeah, it sucked, but the doctors would make the cancer go away, just like they had for Tubbo's grandad. They would fix it. They would make sure that Tommy got the happy ending that he deserved.
And he's right. Almost a year passes, a year full of Tubbo googling things like "chemotherapy definition" and "cancer survival rates children", a year of finding comfort in the internet and YouTubers and Twitch streamers, a year full of Tommy slowly deteriorating right before his eyes, a year of watching his blonde hair vanish and his blue eyes turn slowly grey, before he got the news. The cancer was gone. Tommy was going to be okay.
It didn't last. Barely two months went by, and Tommy was back in hospital. It only got worse from there. Tubbo did his best to keep up, messaging Tommy as best he could, but Tommy grew steadily distant. Not on purpose, Tubbo was sure, it was just... He was busy. Well, not busy, but preoccupied. With chemo.
More googling occurred, long and sleepless nights being spent trying to find numbers and statistics that would tell him whether Tommy would survive. He sank slowly further into the world of YouTube, finding comfort in a select few people who could, without fail, make him laugh even on the worst days. Tommy doesn't care about YouTube so much, but he still loves Minecraft, and that's enough.
His parents sit him down once more, and this time Tubbo feels a distinct pit in his stomach. Again, the tears arrive. Tommy is going to have to have his leg amputated. He might not ever be able to run again, at least not in the same way that he used to.
Tommy calls him as soon as he can after the amputation, and they talk for hours about everything and nothing. It's summertime, nearing the end of the school year, and Tubbo arranges a hang out with Tommy in his garden on the day that school breaks up.
Tommy has a doctor's appointment four days before the agreed meetup. He doesn't tell Tubbo how it went. They spend the day having fun. Even with just one leg, Tommy managed to pull himself up onto the spider web swing. Tubbo pushes him gently, and they laugh. Tommy coughs more than usual, and Tubbo asks if he's okay.
Tommy says yes. He smiles. He is twelve years old. He has spent the last year in and out of hospital. He is missing a leg. He still smiles.
Tubbo finds out nearly a month later that he wasn't okay. That he'd been informed that his cancer had returned when he went to the appointment, four days before their meeting. That he hadn't told Tubbo, hadn't wanted to ruin the day. That not only had the cancer returned, but that it was now in his lungs.
Tubbo knew what that meant. It was worse.
The first time Tubbo ever prays, he is in the bathroom. It's stupid. He's mumbling to himself, just as he usually would. And then he finds himself to be mumbling to someone else. So he decides, fuck it, might as well. He closes his eyes, tilting his head upwards at the ceiling and even holding his hands together. ' Please, God, if you exist, then please make Tommy's cancer go away. He's just a kid, and he's the kindest person I know. Please make sure he's okay. I know I've never prayed to you before, but I promise I'll believe in you forever if you make sure Tommy's okay. If you make sure he gets the happy ending that he deserves. '
Then, he blinks his eyes open, hoping that something has heard his words, and finishes washing his hands.
His prayer is not answered immediately. Tommy does not text him, speaking of a miraculous recovery, of his cancer inexplicably and completely vanishing. His cancer remains, and it remains bad. And yet Tommy still smiled. And as long as Tommy smiled, Tubbo knew that it was okay.
He relies on the internet just as heavily as he did before, and it is mid-August that his world once again is set on its head. A YouTuber, one of the people he looked up to most in the world, one of the only people who had made him laugh and given him hope as he attempted to get through life, had been diagnosed with cancer. His search history was once again filled with things related to the illness, this time for both the YouTuber and his best friend. "Sarcoma definition", "lung cancer survival rates", "cancer spreading danger", "cancer survival rates twelve-year-old".
He couldn't even escape the cancer online, his pages suddenly flooded with charities and videos and all sorts of things that made him want to both laugh and cry.
Then school started again, and Tubbo was swamped with work. Tommy was still important to him, but he almost stopped communicating. Tubbo didn't understand why.
It was the Christmas holidays. He'd sent Tommy a message saying merry Christmas five days earlier, on the morning of the 25th. Tommy had sent one back, complete with a ':D' and an array of present and tree emojis.
It was the thirtieth of December. Tubbo was in a bad mood, having been woken up at eight in the morning to go and get a vaccine. He thought his day couldn't get any worse.
He was a fucking idiot.
As soon as he returned home, grumbling loudly about needles and attempting to disappear into his room, his mother knocked on his bedroom door.
He should've known something was wrong by her face. He didn't. He should've known something was wrong by her hesitance. He didn't. He should've known something was wrong when she told him to take a seat, kneeling beside him. He did.
A number of worst-case scenarios flashed through his mind. He hadn't heard Michael say anything as he came into the house, maybe something had happened to him? Maybe one of his grandparents had died? They were all in their mid-eighties, it wouldn't exactly be a surprise.
He didn't even think of Tommy. Tommy couldn't die. He was thirteen. Barely. He couldn't die. It wouldn't be fair. It wouldn’t fit his happy ending.
He didn't cry. Not immediately. His mother did. He asked for her to leave him alone. She left.
He didn't cry then, either.
Only once he'd crawled into bed some hours later did he allow himself to cry. He was scrolling through his phone, scrolling through his and Tommy's old messages, when he started. He didn't stop for some hours. He didn't even remember when he did stop, and assumed that he'd managed to cry himself to sleep.
Tommy had been thirteen. Barely. Tubbo was still twelve. His world crumbled.
The next month's of school passed numbly, and Tubbo cried more than he ever had. Up until then, he'd prided himself on never crying in school. Then he broke that streak about eight times in two weeks alone.
Tommy's funeral was in January, almost a month after he'd died, and it was there that Tubbo found out that he'd known he was going to die for months. Almost since he'd found out about the cancer moving to his lungs. At first, Tubbo was angry. Why hadn't Tommy just fucking told him? He wasn't a child, he didn’t need to be protected, he could've handled it. He could've made more of the time he actually had with his best friend. For a while, he hated that Tommy had clearly thought him too childish, too innocent, too weak , to tell him the truth.
He never really stopped hating it. But he grew to understand that Tommy had just been trying to help him. That he was just thirteen, and struggling with something much bigger than Tubbo could ever understand.
Tommy was cremated. Tommy didn’t get his happy ending.
*--*--*
Almost a month went by, two since his best friend's death and almost one since his funeral, and Tubbo slowly got better. His mental health was still in the gutter, and he was still spending a concerning amount of time watching videos online, but he was slowly working through it. He was slowly regaining a grip on his life.
And then came the February half term. He was still twelve, though soon to be thirteen, and Michael was just ten. They were with their grandparents for a couple of days. The four of them -- Tubbo, Michael, and their mother and father -- had just returned from blackberry picking. Michael had hit himself in the face with a stick, so they headed back early to get him a plaster.
It was a good day.
Until it wasn't.
They were only back at the house for a couple of hours, all watching some shitty quiz show, when it happened. His grandmother started coughing, and then collapsed. The room devolved into chaos. Tubbo helped his grandfather and mum carry his grandmother over to the sofa as his dad clutched Michael to his chest, trying to comfort the distressed and confused child. No one was comforting Tubbo. He held his grandmother's hand, dialling the number for the ambulance before handing the phone to his mother and helping his grandfather give his grandmother some meds.
Then he was hurried out of the room, sent upstairs with Michael to distract him.
They played fireboy and watergirl until the ambulance arrived.
His grandmother survived, thankfully. She'd always been quite sickly, and they visited her in the hospital a few times. It was soon discovered that she had a cancerous tumour on her leg. She would need to have it amputated. Tubbo was transported back to the day he'd got the email, and spent the evening crying. Never in front of people, but he no doubt it was obvious enough. His parents asked what was wrong, assuring him that she was going to be okay. He smiled sardonically back at them, the bags under his eyes darker than they had been the previous week. ' You know what happened to the last person I know who had their leg amputated '.
His parents didn't ask if he was okay again.
Much to his surprise and joy, his grandmother did survive. She wasn't doing well, but she was alive and that was what mattered. She was alive. She couldn't walk, she couldn't even get out of bed, but she was alive. It wasn't for another year, when Tubbo watched his grandmother sob into his mum's arms that she was a disappointment, a burden, when Tubbo was ushered out of the room so that his grandfather could change his grandmothers nappy, when Tubbo's mum said to him that if she ever ended up like his grandmother he'd shoot her, that Tubbo realised that death wasn't always the worst option. That some stories would never get a happy ending, no matter how much you tried.
*--*--*
He delved deep into the world of YouTube, trying to find a wider variety of content but always returning to the same few people. Which really sucked, considering one of them had a basically non-existent upload schedule. But he loved it all the same. They still made him laugh, which was an event that had become rare. The content creator was similar to a lifeline, and Tubbo realised with certainty that he had saved his life. He knew that his favourite YouTuber was also battling cancer, but he knew that he was going to get better. He said he was doing better, just as Tommy had. And Tubbo was fearful at first, fearful that the same would happen, but he had faith.
He was still a fucking idiot.
June 30th rolled around, and he elected to not get out of bed. Exactly six months had passed since his best friend had died. Tommy had been gone for six entire months.
He checked his phone, and immediately smiled. A notification from his favourite YouTuber. He couldn't have picked a better day to upload, Tubbo thought as he clicked on the notification, barely even registering its contents.
A black thumbnail was what greeted him. Then a face and a voice, neither of which belonged to his favourite YouTuber. And a line that he was certain he would never forget. " If you are watching this, then I am dead ."
Tubbo didn't finish the video. He tried, god, he tried. But he couldn't.
He cried. He cried, for the YouTuber. For the YouTubers family. For Tommy. For Tommy's family. For his grandmother. For himself. For every unlucky fuck who had the misfortune of having cancer, or knowing someone with cancer. He cried for almost every human on earth.
There was no good explanation for his family. How did he tell them that he was mourning a person he'd never known, never even interacted with, and yet who had somehow saved his life? He didn't. He didn't tell them anything.
*--*--*
There was a lump on his lower back. It had been there as long as he could remember. He had what he could only describe as an anxiety attack as his hand ran over it one day, and he was struck with the horrifying realisation that it might not be as benign as it seemed. It was, of course, but Tubbo still spent far too long googling symptoms and concerns. Which, of course, didn't help. Google only told him that he was dying, which didn't exactly help the situation. He only managed to calm down after sitting on call with Ranboo for hours, all the way until four in the morning.
His grandad went into the hospital. A routine check-up, he was told. He didn't believe them. Why wouldn't they lie? People always lied, trying to protect him or make it easier or act as if everything was perfectly okay when it obviously fucking wasn't. He lingered outside doorways, beside stairs, listening in on conversations and hoping to catch even the slightest hint that there was something they weren't telling him. There wasn't, at least not that he could find.
His grandfather was fine in the end.
Ranboo complained of a painful shoulder on call. Tubbo tried to brush it off. It was nothing, of course it was nothing, but... Ranboo mentioned it again. And a third time. Tubbo didn't sleep for two days, frantically googling and doing his best to stop himself from fully breaking down on call. He told Ranboo, practically insisting, that he go and get it checked.
It was fine. Ranboo had just been sitting at their desk in a weird position.
Tubbo's mother has always had problems with her back. That wasn't anything new, she'd had problems with it for years. But Tubbo couldn't help worrying when she bought it up, mentioning that it was worse than usual. He freaked out. He refused to let it go until his father drove them all down to the hospital, sending his mother inside so she could get an assessment, or an x-ray, or just something to assuage his concerns.
She came out with a slight smile. She was okay. Just a slipped disc, she said. Tubbo didn't believe her. He hid outside his parents room, listening to every word they said, listening for anything that might prove that she'd been lying in an attempt to protect him and Michael.
He found nothing.
*--*--*
Tommy's mother died nearly two years after Tommy. It wasn't cancer, but it was unexpected. Tommy's father returned home one day, and there she was. Dead. She'd always had health issues, but no one knew that this would happen. She'd come round to Tubbo's house just three weeks earlier, giving the family some baked goods and talking about books with Tubbo and his mother. And now she was dead.
He had a day off school to attend the funeral. He went around to his teachers, asking them to put any work that he'd need to catch up on online. When his teacher asked why he wouldn't be in, he couldn't be bothered to come up with an acceptable lie. "I'm going to the funeral of my best friend's mum." Was what came out of his mouth. His teacher looked vaguely horrified. She gave him her condolences, and asked if his friend was doing okay. "Oh, he died nearly two years ago." Tubbo snorted, almost feeling bad as his teacher looked genuinely upset.
*--*--*
Time passed. Time would continue to pass. The world wouldn’t stop for Tubbo, for Tommy, for Tommy’s mum, for any of the millions of people who had lost someone. For any of the millions of people who hadn’t gotten their happy ending. The world wouldn’t stop spinning to allow him to get back on his feet.
He survived, in the end. After everything. He still thought of Tommy at every cross-country, every birthday that his friend would never see and every school achievement that he'd never get. His favourite YouTuber remained in the back of his mind, motivating him to keep going, to put something out into the world. To help someone, to do something, to be good. Even if just one person found comfort in his content, if one person saw themself in the things he posted. It was worth it.
And for a while, he even started getting better. The anxiety slowly subsided, and he became able to joke again. He could look at the colour red without being reminded of Tommy, look at penguins and play Minecraft and watch YouTube and eat haribos without being reminded of how much had been lost, stolen so long before its time. But it didn’t last. Nothing ever lasted.
Even after years, it came back. Tubbo realised that it would never go away, not fully. Maybe it never even went away in the first place.
Michael had been complaining of a pain in his knee for a few weeks. At first, Tubbo thought his brother was exaggerating. It wouldn't exactly be out of character. But the weeks slipped by, and Tubbo felt his old fears resurfacing. He went back to sleepless nights and long googling, fearful research and anxiety attacks.
Michael was refusing to visit a doctor. Tubbo was close to tearing his hair out in worry.
It was soon after that moment, that horrifying time of stress, of submerging himself in what-ifs and searching for symptoms, that he realised that it didn’t matter what he did. That he could run as far as he liked, hide behind the internet, behind statistics and jokes, but the problem was never going to go away. It was like a creeping disease, like a cancer even, he made the comparison with a humorous snort, always lurking within and emerging randomly to bite him in the arse. After all, not everything has a happy ending.