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The island had always been a place of translation.
Not just of language, though that was its miracle, but of people. Of identities. Of pasts that didn’t quite belong anywhere else. Twenty years from now, there were stories built from its ancestors. Some survived, some not. Some wandered to faraway lands to search for something that wasn't as horrible as it once before. Twenty years later, there were no dragon eggs. No children to look after and somehow, it made things better. And that was enough. You could arrive there as one version of yourself and, somehow, become another
The Federation called it unity.
The Regime called it control.
And somewhere in between, people like Tommy got lost.
⋆⋆⋆
The war did not begin with a battle. It first began with disappearance.
No alarms were raised at first. On the island, people vanished all the time, into forests, into arguments, into themselves. It was the usual thing but when people who are loud just disappear, it makes you look back thrice to see what you missed. Or who you missed. But Tommy wasn’t the kind to disappear quietly. He was loud, defiant, stubborn in the way that made absence feel wrong, like a missing note in a familiar song.
Wichtiger noticed first. Of course he did.
Tommy had a way of orbiting him, of filling space without asking permission. His remarks that even made Wichtiger laugh besides the differences between them. His laugh lingered in the air even after he’d left, his voice echoing in Wichtiger’s head hours later. So when that presence vanished, it wasn’t subtle. It was violent.
Like something had been ripped out.
He searched the usual places first. The beach where Tommy liked to throw rocks at nothing, the center of QSMP, the half-built structures they both insisted were “works in progress,” the paths they’d carved together through the Everyone Island… nothing.
No footprints. No signs of struggle. Just… absence.
And then the message came.
A white bear.
A mask.
The Census Bureau.
“They took him.”
Wichtiger’s voice was steady when he said it, but his hands betrayed him. Knuckles white, fingers curled tight enough to hurt. And the room went quiet as he announced it. His wings would stutter everytime. He wants it to stop but it doesn't. As if it was aware of what had happened and was being anxious like he was as well.
Across from him, Tubbo didn’t look surprised.
“That’s not confirmation,” Tubbo replied carefully, Ashswag looking at him, as if he didn't expect him to be one to say it as the dragon hybrid paused, carefully picking out his words. “That’s speculation.”
Wichtiger's eyes widened at the answer. “It’s them!” He insisted, slamming his palm against the wooden table as he stood up, the chair scraping against the polished diorite floor, making other people flinch at the sudden outburst. “Es sind immer sie! Menschen verschwinden nicht einfach so, es sei unless—” (It's always them! People don't just disappear out of the blue, unless—)
“Unless they choose to,” Tubbo cut in, his eyes narrowing. Others turned their heads towards him, the expression of being doubtful. His eyes threatened the fearful blue eyes. Silence stretched between them.
Outside, the camp of The Regime buzzed with quiet urgency. Weapons being checked. Orders being murmured. Ashswag’s influence had turned unrest into structure, fear into direction. They were preparing for war whether they admitted it or not. The fire in the torches nailed to the wall flinched like a wounded pup. The chandelier above them shakes slowly like the waves in the ocean, as if warning them about the danger of what could possibly happen.
Wichtiger stepped closer. “You don’t believe that.”
Tubbo hesitated.
That answer was already enough.
“They’ve been watching us,” Wichtiger pressed. “Alles wird aufgezeichnet. Sie behandeln uns wie nummern, nicht wie menschen. Glaubst du, sie würden ihn nicht aufnehmen? You think they wouldn’t use him?” (Everything is being recorded. They treat us like numbers, not like people. Do you think they wouldn't take him in?)
The tension of the room gets heavier every second. Ashswag looks at him, expecting to throw another hit at the man in front of them begging like a commoner outside their dictatorship land. Tubbo exhaled slowly, aware of the expectation the supreme leader had given them as he rubbed his temples. “Even if they did, rushing in isn’t going to—”
“I’m not rushing,” Wichtiger snapped. “I’m going.”
“What?” The rest of the Regime’s members yelled in sync, the others disagreeing and the others agreeing, leaving the room to be in a mess of people screaming to each other at the top of their lungs, cursing each other in the languages that they speak, and pointing fingers at the accusations. “SILENCE!” Ashswag's voice echoed through the hall. The room went quiet again. You could hear a pin drop if you want.
Tubbo's eyes avoided Wichtiger's. “No, you’re not.”
The words landed like a blow. Wichtiger stared at him, “What?”
“You’re one of us,” Tubbo said, firmer now. “The Regime needs you. Ashswag needs—”
“I don’t care what Ashswag needs,” Wichtiger interrupted, looking straight at the supreme leader. Ashswag's eyes narrowed at him. Then Wichtiger’s eyes left Ashswag's. He didn't need to look at him long enough to know what the man was thinking. “Tommy is—” He stopped. Because saying it out loud made it real. Made it fragile. Made everything he stood for The Regime seem like a faux.
“…He’s mine,” he finished, quieter.
Tubbo’s expression softened for a fraction of a second… and then hardened again. “And if you go after him now,” Tubbo said, “you’ll lose more than just him.”
“I’ve already lost him.”
“You know that’s not what I meant, Wichtiger.”
But Wichtiger wasn’t listening anymore. He was already turning, already moving, already chasing the image burned into his mind: a white bear disappearing into the trees, carrying something, someone away. He didn’t make it far.
Tubbo was faster.
⋆⋆⋆
The ground hit him hard.
It was already raining but he didn't remember when it first happened. Tubbo wanted to flinch by the raindrops falling down on him but his passion to please the supreme leader. Air knocked from his lungs, vision flashing white for a split second. By the time it cleared, Tubbo was above him, hand gripping his collar, expression twisted with something dangerously close to desperation.
“Don’t.” Tubbo said, his voice sharp. If it were an object, it would be a knife. It wasn’t an order. It was a plea. “It’s too dangerous, Mike.”
“Get off me,” Wichtiger growled, struggling against him.
“I can’t.”
“Tubbo—”
“I can’t let you go!” He repeated, voice cracking. “Not for this. Not whatever you have with my best friend! Not when everything’s about to—”
“Everything’s always about to happen, Tubbo!” Wichtiger shot back and then the shorter one flinched. “There’s always a war, always a reason to wait, always something more important than the people we’re supposed to care about—”
“That’s not fair.”
“No,” Wichtiger said bitterly. “What’s not fair is that he’s out there, and you’re asking me to stay.”
Tubbo’s grip tightened. “For once,” he said quietly, “I’m asking you to survive.” The words lingered. It was personal, yet Wichtiger only felt anger. Heavy. Ugly. Yet true. For a moment, just a moment, Wichtiger faltered. And at that moment, Tubbo made the choice for both of them. That night he could sleep. The fairy did everything to go back to sleep but nothing worked when his heart was beating faster, cold sweat in his forehead and a head that kept interrogating him with answers that were lost in him.
He just wanted Tommy back in his arms.
⋆⋆⋆
The war began the next day. The Regime moved first. Efficient, calculated, relentless. Ashswag’s strategies were brutal in their simplicity: divide, isolate, overwhelm. The Federation responded in kind, their unity fracturing under pressure, alliances bending and breaking in real time. This time the white bear showed. The Regime only saw him as a threat, not the proclaimed census bureau.
Friends turned on friends. Trusted friends couldn't be trusted anymore. Members spying for others. Lovers made deals.
Survival became a currency, and everyone was paying.
Wichtiger fought like someone with nothing left to lose. Because, in his mind, he didn’t. Because in every clash, every strike, every scream, it all blurred together into a single, driving thought:
Find him.
But the battlefield offered no answers. Only bodies. Friends that was once a family. A lover that was once a home. A bloodshed of what was once greenery place. Only loud noises of screaming, explosions and arrows been shot in the air of where voices used to be. Only the growing, unbearable realization that Tommy might already be—
No. He refused to finish that thought.
Refused to let it exist.
⋆⋆⋆
It ended the way most wars do.
Not with victory.
With exhaustion.
The island didn’t belong to anyone when the fighting stopped. Not the Regime. Not the Federation. Just ruins and ghosts and the quiet, creeping understanding that whatever they’d been fighting for had been lost somewhere along the way. Voices that was trapped inside someone's lifeless body. Wichtiger didn’t wait. The moment the last weapon fell silent, he left.
Not alone.
⋆⋆⋆
Phil read the letter three times before saying anything, rain drops tapping on their windows. It hasn't stopped raining for three days. The paper was crumpled at the edges, ink slightly smudged in places, as if it had been written with unsteady hands.
Phil,
If you’re reading this, I didn’t make it in time.
Or maybe I did, and it didn’t matter.
They took him. The Census Bureau. The white bear—you’ve seen it, you know what it is. You hate it with a burning passion. I can’t get to him alone; I tried but Tubbo stopped me before, and I hate him for it, but maybe he was right. Maybe I would’ve died before I even got close. But the war’s over now. There’s nothing left stopping us. The reason why I'm sending you this out of all people is because I trust you. You're his father. He's your son. I'm not up to the challenge of what deadly shit might be hiding in the wilderness.
Find Foolish. You’ll need him.
Find Tommy for me. Please.
Wichtiger.
Phil folded the letter carefully. Across from him, Foolish leaned against the wall, arms crossed, expression unreadable.
“We’re going,” Foolish said. It wasn’t a question.
Phil nodded once.
⋆⋆⋆
It took at least five days. Cucurucho knew that they were coming for little ol’ Tommy. The white bear managed to give them clues to where he was hidden. Yet the laboratory wasn’t hidden.
That was the worst part.
He made sure to leave out hints, something easy that Phil and Foolish wouldn't have to struggle. It knows. It fucking knows. It sat at the edge of the island like a wound—abandoned, decaying, its purpose lingering in the air like a bad smell. Whatever the bear had done there, they hadn’t bothered to erase it.
Why would they? No one was supposed to come looking.
Phil pushed the door open. The metal door creaked. Too loud. Everything felt too loud.
Their footsteps echoed as they moved inside, the silence pressing in from all sides. Equipment lay scattered, screens dark, wires hanging like exposed veins.
And then—
“Phil.” Foolish’s voice was different, breaking slightly as the color in his face disappeared. Quieter. Eerily terrified.
Phil turned.
And saw.
Tommy looked smaller than he remembered. That was the first thought. Not because he was. Because something about him had been… diminished. Stripped down to something fragile, something breakable. He was sitting down in a metal chair. Still. Too still.
The color in his son's body was gone. Pale. Too pale. For a moment, Phil let himself believe that he was just sleeping despite how his heart was beating fast and his mind screaming to kill the bear. “Tommy,” he said, stepping closer. “Hey—” Foolish caught his arm.
“Phil.”
Three days. They would find that out later.
Three days since Cucurucho had finished whatever it started.
Three days since Tommy had stopped being someone they could save.
Laughter filled the room. It felt bitter. Angry. Maybe even sarcasm. But it didn't feel like it belonged there. It belonged to something else. Someone else. And it mocked both of them. Foolish for being the first one to see him, Phil for being too late. Too late to be saved, too late to survive.
⋆⋆⋆
Micheal didn’t cry when they told him. He didn’t speak, either. Refused to talk to anyone because he just couldn't handle the pain that was stabbing him in the chest. He just stood there frozen, the letter still in his hand, as if the words might rearrange themselves into something better if he waited long enough. They didn’t.
“They said…” Phil started, then stopped.
What was there to say? That Tommy had suffered? That he’d been forced to relive things no one should have to face again? That Cucurucho kidnapped him so he could torture him? That in the end, there had been no one there to hold his hand?
Wichtiger didn’t need details. The absence was enough.
“We were too late,” Foolish finished quietly.
Wichtiger nodded.
Once.
Slow.
Deliberate.
Foolish and Phil walked away, closing the door behind them, leaving Wichtiger to be alone. Yet it's in these moments where he could hear Tommy's voice, but he's not there. As if he was accepting something inevitable. But he isn't. Because he knows he could never move on. Then he laughed. Loudly, his voice echoed through the empty room and no one was there to stop him when the things he sought to be sacred fell through the floor. Broken. Fragile.
And that was worse.
In the weeks that followed, the island changed. Or maybe it just stopped pretending.
People who had once sworn loyalty turned on each other without hesitation. Old bonds dissolved under the weight of what they’d done to survive. There were whispers, of deals made in the dark, of names traded for safety, of love sacrificed like it had ever been optional.
Tubbo avoided Wichtiger. At first.
But then, one day, he didn’t.
“I didn’t know,” Tubbo said, his voice still breaking after he cried for thirty minutes when hearing the news. Wichtiger didn’t look at him. “I thought…” He swallowed. “I thought there would be time.”
“There’s never time,” Wichtiger replied.
“I was trying to protect you.”
“You were protecting the wrong thing.” The words landed clean.
Tubbo flinched. “I would’ve gone with you,” he said, almost pleading. “If I’d known it would end like this—”
“But you didn’t,” Wichtiger interrupted. “And now it has.”
Silence.
“…I’m sorry,” Tubbo whispered.
Wichtiger finally looked at him. Tubbo noticed the dark marks underneath his eyes, what was once a sky blue now turned into grey. No sparkle of life in his eyes. Vacant. There was no anger left. That was the worst part. Just emptiness.
“I know,” he said.
And walked away.
The island kept translating. People into survivors. Survivors into strangers. And love—
Love into something that didn’t last long enough to matter. But sometimes, late at night, when the wind was just right, you could almost hear it. A laugh. Bright, defiant.
Refusing to disappear completely.
And somewhere, deep in the ruins of a laboratory no one wanted to remember, a ghost lingered, not in the walls, not in the machines, but in the spaces between people who had arrived just a little too late.
Three days too late.
Always three days too late.