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Schlatt’s glare is so heavy that Tubbo is surprised he hasn’t collapsed under the weight of it yet.
He stands in front of his desk, arms crossed loosely behind his back. Tubbo adopts a similar position, even though he itches to pace, itches to move at least in some capacity.
He’s been avoiding eye contact with Schlatt – as much as he can. He’s so nervous and flighty he feels like Schlatt could read the treachery in his eyes if only he gives him a long enough opportunity to.
Schlatt snaps his fingers in front of his eyes and Tubbo startles, like a cat, every inch of his body on edge.
“Are you listening?” Schlatt asks, but he may as well be saying it through a layer of thick glass; his words are muffled, somewhat garbled.
Tubbo strains to hear even as his brain feels like it’s floating away into the clouds; he grasps for it with the tips of his fingers, tries to wrangle it down close enough to the ground again.
“Yes, Schlatt,” he eventually manages to say, “I’m listening. You mentioned a festival?”
“I didn’t just mention a festival, Tubbo,” Schlatt starts, acidic, and Tubbo swallows in an effort to soothe his dry throat, “I talked at length ‘bout it. Don’t tell me you didn’t listen to any of it?”
“No, sir, I did. You wanted me to do a speech?”
“Write it, present it, the whole deal,” Schlatt counts the list off his fingers, before waving his hand through the air, for emphasis, “I want my Secretary of State up there on stage before the whole country.”
Tubbo hangs onto those little points. Write it, get up on stage, say a speech. He can do that, surely. It isn’t too hard. And it’s a great opportunity, too; especially coming from Schlatt, who tends to treat him as if he has the usefulness of a lump of dirt.
“I’ve got big plans for you, kid,” Schlatt tells him, “so don’t go fucking them up, alright?”
When Tubbo doesn’t reply immediately, Schlatt frowns at him. He takes a step closer, and Tubbo stifles a flinch.
“Did ya fucking hear me, Tubbster?” Schlatt asks, his voice raw, laced with something that makes Tubbo’s heart retreat into the corners of his ribcage, “do you get it?”
“Yes, Schlatt,” he nods.
“Yes, Schlatt, what?” Schlatt presses.
“Yes, Schlatt, I won’t fu— fuck up your plans,” Tubbo echoes.
Schlatt stares at him; eyes narrowed, breath stinking. Tubbo vaguely thinks about deers caught in the headlights; of prey freezing before predators.
Schlatt eventually backs off, dipping his head a little as if he’s satisfied with what he’s seen. His scowl is still etched into his face, though, like some inflexible statue, so it’s hard to tell. “Great. Awesome.”
He waves a clumsy hand in the direction of his office door. “Now get the fuck out of my sight.”
Tubbo doesn’t hesitate a second in executing.
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There’s a shard of ice lodged into the pit of his stomach. Every new step away from Manberg, as he runs off through the tunnels to rejoin Pogtopia, is another that twists the ice deeper into his guts, making his fear bleed heavier and heavier.
Schlatt’s just screamed at him to not fuck up his plans – whatever they are. But being a spy is definitely cause for fucking them up. Every time he ventures beneath the earth is another opportunity for Schlatt to discover just how disloyal he’s truly been.
He’s committed to what he’s doing, honest, his mind is constantly alight with new plans and useful information to bring to Tommy and Wilbur – but he can’t help the way Schlatt makes him feel like some pinned rabbit, wriggling between the claws of a hawk. Every new fearful second he spends playing double agent is another peck of its sharp keratin beak into his soft flesh.
He can’t help the way his whole body freezes when someone raises their voice at him, either, can’t help the way he instinctively becomes smaller, unthreatening, malleable.
Sometimes he likes comparing Schlatt to a shark. As if he’d been able to smell the blood in the water, back on Election Day, or maybe even before that during their brief encounters, and had singled out Tubbo as the easiest prey.
He’s not like Tommy; and usually he enjoyed that, enjoyed being the cool-headed rational to Tommy’s fiery passion, but now, under Schlatt’s reign, it just frustrates him. When conflict rears its head, all he can reasonably manage to do is bury his own into the sand and wait it out.
When he’s in a situation where fear threatens to overwhelm his senses, render him dumb and unthinking, he thinks of how he’s just a cog in the wheel, someone with a singular part to play, and how it’s not that serious, really. If he shuts himself off from anything that hurts, it can’t hurt as much.
As much as he dislikes Manberg, though, he finds that Pogtopia isn’t much better. The only saving grace is Tommy; and he gets the feeling that he’s Tommy’s only saving grace, too.
Wilbur looks at him with open scorn, whenever they bump into each other, even when he’s actively doing what has been asked of him. At some point, he’d stopped trying to hide his distaste for Tubbo. Maybe he just thinks he’s too naive to notice, too trusting to think anything more of it.
Tubbo has a lot buzzing around in his brain, even if everyone else thinks he’s a brainless yes-man. Ideas, schemes, strategies, interesting concepts he’s sure he could shape into world-altering plans if only people would hear him out. Both major camps tend to dismiss him without bothering, though.
Schlatt is, well, Schlatt; he’s lucky if he can escape his presence without him raising his voice at him, without a half-empty glass of wine lobbed his way.
But Wilbur is frustratingly, disappointingly single-minded; and he’d always been set in his ways, almost dangerously so, preferring to stick to their morals (whatever those were, Tubbo thinks, mind drifting to the drugs and their haphazard Camarvan) and nationalistic idealism rather than choose the easier, safer option. Wilbur acts the calm, poised and rational man, but sometimes, Tubbo reasons, logic and common sense seem to escape him. And now, in the days of exile and that dingy, oppressive ravine, even more so.
He likes L’Manberg, sure. Loves it, even, loves it enough to let himself be wrapped up in these forever-conflicts, love the sense of home it ignites within him, and he wouldn’t be here now risking a life to play the spy if he didn’t care.
But he can’t ignore the persistent, logical edge to his brain that lays out just how – silly, this all is. That whispers to him that it’d be better to just cut their losses, be thankful for what they’ve managed to hang onto so far, leave everything behind to go rebuild elsewhere. If he gets down to the nitty gritty of it then Manberg is just a lump of land people fight over, in the end, the stage where the people he cares for act out their play. He’d be fine simply exiting the theatre if only his friends — if only Tommy — just cared a little less.
But there’s an emotional attachment to Manberg – L’Manberg – he knows, one he feels himself, even, or he wouldn’t be investing himself so heavily in the fight to get it back in the first place. He can handle a lot of shit and he’s died once already for the cause, so he may as well give himself over to the sunk cost fallacy.
Logical brain, stuck in a body which bleeds. He curses himself for it, a little.
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Schlatt is not a fool. Every little thing Tubbo has learned about him, has brought back as information to Wilbur and Tommy, has assured him of this.
Tubbo isn’t a fool, either. He knew there was a basis to his fears about being found out; his anxieties did not come from nowhere. He knew just how much danger his status as a spy brought him.
When Quackity and Schlatt box him into that cage, some part of him is surprised. Instinctual, base, animalistic fear takes over, digs into his heart, has him begging for his life. Another part of him, the larger part that analyses everything, that same part that had always screamed at him to stay safe, already accepts the inevitable of what is about to happen.
Techno stands before him, loads up his crossbow that shines a multitude of colours, and Tubbo stares it down, facing it off like he’d face Schlatt off; steeling himself, letting his brain float away, waiting for the moment to pass, telling himself he’ll be okay. Wilbur said he’d be okay, too; there’s nothing more he can do.
Schlatt’s voice thunders across the stage. The crowd yells indistinctly. Techno’s eyes are wide and nervous.
He pulls the trigger, anyway.
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He respawns somewhere outside Manberg, mind a daze, his limbs screaming with pain.
It feels like a thousand beetles are crawling over his face; it feels like miniscule fireworks are still burning beneath ragged skin, tearing their way to the surface of his visage in a blinding array of colours.
He can’t see anything, and he screams when someone grabs onto his shoulder, roughly, and he thinks Techno’s come to finish him off for good. And it takes at least a few seconds and a lot more shouting before he realises he hears Tommy’s voice beside him, through that horrendous cacophony of pain and noise. Loud, brash, pleading Tommy.
He’s dragged away from his respawn point by a hand he’s held enough times to recognise, now that he feels the scarred shape of its palm against his own. He can’t see where he’s going — the world exists only in flashes of white and a dazzling scheme of RBG — but his body still trusts his best friend unquestionably, even when his brain is wailing, every one of his nerves on fire.
The world blurs; time flattens into a single point. He can’t see anything out of his right eye, and barely a thing with his left. His soul feels like it’s floating ten paces behind his body, connected only by the anchorpoint of held hands.
Before he knows it, they’re back in Pogtopia, back in that dark, damp ravine. Tommy huddles him into one of the enclaves in the stone wall, hovers before him nervously, flighty and on the precipice of panic. Tubbo’s whole world swims, and all he feels is numbness.
The redstone farm he’d helped create ticks loudly, somewhere off in the distance, like the countdown of a clock. The sound of dripping water ricochets like fireworks.
There are approaching voices, familiar though indistinct. He feels Tommy tense in front of him, suddenly on alert, and then his own voice is yelling out. Time passes again as his vision blackens, his consciousness slipping away from him as if he’s tripped somehow, and he only manages to focus on what’s before him again when he feels a gentle weight on his cheek.
He opens his eyes. Niki stares back at him, eyes wide, mouth downturned. “Are you okay?” she whispers to him.
His ears are ringing. He opens his mouth to speak, then thinks better of it, nodding mutely instead.
Niki frowns, and Tubbo instinctively wants to curl up into a ball; even though it’s Niki.
She doesn’t comment any further, doesn’t yell at him for the obvious lie; she just hands him a cup of something warm, makes sure his trembling hands manage to hold onto it without letting it drop.
She stands in front of him, strands of hair falling into her face as she chews on her lip, nervous. She’s positioned herself in a way where she stands between him and whatever noise is going on behind her, but after a moment she twists her head around, throwing a wary look that way. Tubbo follows her gaze.
Techno is hovering awkwardly in the corner as Tommy, heads shorter than him, is berating him with reckless abandon, seemingly uncaring of the way Techno could kill him in less than a few blows.
Tommy is openly, overwhelmingly angry for Tubbo, eyes wide and mouth agape, his indignation written in every single line of his face. The sheer supportiveness would make Tubbo cry if he hadn’t learned how to screw those pipes shut indefinitely.
Man up, Schlatt would shout. Stand up straight and stiffen your shoulders, Wilbur would say. Hide your feelings, hide your fear, his own mind would whisper. And here he was now, staring impassively before him with his hands around a mug of tea, listening in a dull stupor as Tommy screams out his lungs at Technoblade.
“Get out,” Tommy screeches, “get the fuck out of here, Technoblade–”
“I don’t think you want that, Tommy,” Techno huffs, a little nonplussed but otherwise aloof, or perhaps pretending to be, “I’m really your only hope, at this point.”
“We could do without you any day, we don’t fucken need you–”
Wilbur steps in, at that point, saunters in between the two of them and holds up his hands.
“Boys,” he begins in a theatrical tone, smiling wide, and Tubbo sees Niki’s shoulders stiffen out of the corner of his eye, “there’s an easy way to put your differences to bed.”
Tommy hesitates. “What, Wilbur?”
“Well, to simply fight it out! To have at it, some sparring, one on one like ye gladiators of olde,” he answers, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “We can carve out a space, easy, it’ll be done in a minute tops.”
Techno gives Tommy a once-over, doubtful. Tommy glares back at him. “I dunno, Wilbur. Doesn’t seem like it’ll be very fair.”
“Oh, like you care what fair is,” Tommy seethes.
“Come on, Technoblade!” Wilbur exclaims, ignoring Tommy completely, eyes gleaming with a fever-hot passion. The torches that hang on the ravine’s walls cast an eerie glow across his face. “A fight’s the easiest way to settle your– your little disagreement, don’t you think?”
Tommy blanches, a little. Techno looks conflicted, at the very least.
Wilbur has properly lost it, Tubbo thinks, and he knows the other two are coming to the same realisation – if they haven’t already. They’re the ones who’ve been holed up in this decrepit pit with him, after all.
Wilbur wrinkles his nose, disappointed, at their lack of further reaction.
His eyes land on Tubbo; dark eyes, eyes of shining soot, eyes that make him feel like a pinned rabbit. He feels like he’s back in that unnecessarily enormous office, polished wooden desk, Schlatt’s onerous gaze staring down at him.
Niki’s hand curls around his shoulder, firm and protective. Her fear seems to have hardened into some sort of resolve.
“Tubbo,” Wilbur begins, and Tubbo swallows past the lump in his throat, resists the urge to throw up, “aren’t you angry at Techno? Like, real fucking angry?”
“I– why would I be, Wilbur?”
Wilbur looks at him like he’s an idiot. If he weren’t used to that look by now, whether from him or from Schlatt, he’d probably be shrinking away. “Because he killed you,” he hisses.
Tubbo looks down at his lap, at his newly-scarred hands that lie there. It takes a lot for wounds to carry over into one’s next life, even the fatal ones – but his death had been particularly explosive. If it weren’t for the pain, though, pulsating like a steady, hot hum beneath his raw skin, he wouldn’t have thought much of it.
“I forgive him. It’s– we have bigger issues at hand, I think.”
Maybe there’s an issue, there, though. That he’s so quick to let things go; that he’d rather let his problems slip away into the wind than confront them in any material way. That even when life then confronts him – trips him up, hurts him, kills him – he’d rather look the other way.
His answer must take Wilbur aback, somewhat, because he doesn’t answer straight-away. He only stares at Tubbo like he doesn’t know what he’s seeing. Like he’s a pawn placed astray on the chessboard.
“I think,” Niki speaks up, softly, “that our focus should be on taking care of ourselves, first. Starting fights isn’t going to help anyone. It’s not going to help Tubbo.”
“Infighting doesn’t seem conducive to our ultimate goal of taking down Manberg’s government,” Techno agrees.
Tommy turns on him at once, eyes flashing. “What do you mean, Technoblade, you’re the one who started the infighting in the first place by killing Tubbo–”
Techno raises his large, cloven paws. “Hey, I was put in a precarious position, Tommy! Schlatt’s a persuasive guy!”
Tommy scoffs. “That doesn’t mean you can just cede to peer pressure so easily! What the hell, man!”
Techno answers back with something, and Tommy makes some outraged noise in response, but Tubbo tunes them out, almost automatically. He barely even feels Niki’s hand on his shoulder anymore, but does suddenly feel it suddenly tense up a little.
Tubbo raises his head to see Wilbur staring at him again.
“Come on,” Wilbur hassles him, far more intensely this time, and for nearly the first time in his life all his attention is for Tubbo alone, “come on, rile him up. Technoblade fucking murdered you in cold blood, Tubbo, don’t you realise that?”
He stares at Wilbur, blankly. He’s aware, at the back of my mind, that Wilbur is reading off a script that he’s created for himself to follow; that he’s decided he has a role to play, that the rest of them have one too. Tubbo is an afterthought in whatever story Wilbur’s created, and he’s expected to bend to his will in order for it to unfold smoothly. Every second Tubbo lets the silence hang, where he doesn’t give Wilbur the answer he wants to hear, is another where his frown deepens, his irritation grows.
His heart clenches, closing in on itself like a shrivelling flower. He feels the weight of Tommy and Niki’s gazes on him; heavy, as expectant as Wilbur’s, as if he has the answer to their problems.
But no matter what he says, it doesn’t matter; it doesn’t matter because his word has barely counted before, and it certainly doesn’t now.
“Oh, fine, Wilbur,” he says, resigned, his face throbbing like it’s still on fire, “let them fight in the pit, if you want.”
Wilbur’s face splits into a bright grin, like a moonbeam shining down into the depths of the earth. He uses Tubbo’s words as extra ammo to fuel a gun he already had prepared and loaded; a justification that he hopes to Tommy’s eyes must seem more credible.
Tubbo does cross eyes with Tommy, and he hopes the tiredness in his communicates how little his concession matters, how Wilbur has a concrete plan in mind and no one but Tommy himself can refuse to play into it. That Tommy is the valiant hero to Wilbur’s flowering villain, and that the rest of them are fodder, side-characters in his grand tragedy.
Anger sparks to life in his chest, briefly, so very briefly; he doesn’t have the necessary fuel to feed it. He just doesn’t care enough. His brain begins to float away again.
Tommy does meet his eye, he notices before he drifts off; but Tommy’d rather put his life on the line than not defend Tubbo, so that’s exactly what he does for him there, in that hastily mined pit, Techno’s hands slick with blood as he beats Tommy to the ground over and over.
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Sometime later, they find themselves outside Tommy’s house, at the bench. Niki looks sullen, and Tommy’s lip is quivering. Tubbo stares off into the distance.
It’s dangerous to be out here, so close to Manberg, but at some point the shape of that danger had atrophied, melted down into vague semblances of worry. Tubbo’s already died, already felt the most excruciating pain he’ll ever feel in his life, and some part of him doesn’t think he could ever feel any worse.
Everything in his chest feels empty; like someone had taken a scoop to it and carved out any semblance of care that had once inhabited it.
“Tubbo,” Tommy says, softer than he usually sounds, than he should sound. The incongruity of it drags Tubbo out from his reverie somewhat; he glances at his best friend out of the corner of his eye.
“It’s— it’s not over, y’know?” He continues, faltering somewhat, like he’s reciting words from a script he doesn’t quite believe in. “It’s not over ‘til it’s fucking over.”
Tommy looks at him, expectantly. Tubbo hums, a rough sound that scratches against his throat and stalls right before exiting his lips.
Niki brings her legs closer to her chest, tucks her chin into the little nest the dip of her interlocked knees create. She breathes out, slowly, and she looks far more troubled than she’d ever openly shown back in Manberg. Like a doused bonfire.
Something about the sight shocks some sense into Tubbo, forces him to breach the surface of his murky thoughts. He blinks, shakes his head a little to dispel the cobwebs that linger.
“It’s not over until it’s over,” he echoes. “Schlatt isn’t dead yet.”
And it’s not much but it’s like the immediate flicker of a switch; Tommy’s eyes brighten, and a smile begins to climb his face, sitting perched upon his lips like a newfound king upon his throne.
Tommy shoves at him, squeezes his hand tightly. Tubbo can feel every inch of every bump and scar tissue in his skin as Tommy presses their palms together.
It’s a reminder of everything he’s lost in such a short time; of everything he’s failed to achieve, the weight he’d balanced on his shoulders and that he’d let crash down onto the floor.
But Tommy’s hand in his, his boney shoulder against his, their bodies present and warm and interwoven; it’s a comfort, nonetheless.