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Tubbo stares down at the ruins of what was for all of about five minutes his nation, and somehow the first thought he has is at least we don’t have to finish taking down the decorations from the festival . He almost says it aloud, but then he looks at the faces of his friends. His citizens. They’re all beaten and bruised and bloody and horrified. Their home is gone. Everything they’ve worked for and loved just went up in flames, gone in an instant.
Instead he says, “We’ve got a lot of work to do.”
Tommy barks out a laugh, sharp and loud. “You can say that again, big man.”
The rest of the day is a whirlwind of planning and negotiation and trying to figure out where they’re even meant to go from here. The dust settles, and Tubbo assembles his cabinet, and they start discussing plans for how best to assess the damage so they can rebuild. The longest day of his life ends with Tommy sighing dramatically and admitting that he’s too fucking tired to think straight, I’m heading to bed . The rest aren’t far behind, all ending up in the tower overlooking the crater. It’s as good a base of operations as any, really.
Quackity is the last to go. It reminds Tubbo of late nights back… back in Manberg. Before the festival. Schlatt always went to bed early, leaving all the actually important paperwork to the two of them, and they’d have to pull an all-nighter to finish it. Except now Schlatt is dead, and Tubbo is in charge.
Quackity yawns as he stares out over the crater. “We can get started tomorrow,” he says. “It’s too late to get anything done now.”
Tubbo nods as Quackity turns around and starts walking inside. He considers following, but… there’s just so much to do. They need to start assessing the crater. They need to start sketching up plans for their reconstruction efforts. They need to remove the rubble and debris from the ruins. They need to sort the rubble and debris, and figure out what can be repurposed and what can’t. They need to get new resources to replace what’s beyond recycling. All that to even start construction.
And Tubbo is in charge of… all of it. It still hasn’t sunk in, really. He’s president. L’Manberg’s gone, and so is Schlatt.
Tubbo isn’t sure if he’s supposed to mourn him, really. He was awful to Quackity. Tubbo, too, what with the whole execution thing. But Tubbo had still known him. And he’d just stood by and watched as he keeled over in front of everyone, and hadn’t gotten back up again. He can’t believe that Schlatt’s actually, really dead. A man like Schlatt can’t just… die, can he? He was always so much larger than life, even when he had to lean on Tubbo for support while he staggered back to the White House, slurring out some drunken speech to Quackity. He was frail, but dying just wasn’t something men like Schlatt did. Tubbo had always thought that if he ever actually met Death face to face, one of them would end up walking away with a split lip- and it wouldn’t be Schlatt. Right up until the end, he’d believed that.
But now he’s just… gone.
And Tubbo is left to clean up his mess. Again . He always was, back in Manberg. But now it’s his mess, too, a little bit. The nation was his when it’d blown up. Not Schlatt’s.
Tubbo shakes himself out of his thoughts, and looks to the moon. He could go to bed, but it’s not actually that late. And there’s so much work to do. Maybe he can get a head start on assessing the damage before he, Fundy, and Quackity get to work on it tomorrow, or something. That’s what a responsible president would do, right?
Yeah, that sounds right, he decides as he starts climbing down into the crater. A responsible president should put his people first. Probably. He’s not entirely sure what being a responsible president actually… means? Tubbo has never been the leader before. When he was younger, he was just kind of trying his best not to get noticed or picked on or anything. And then Philza and Tommy found him, and from then on Tommy was the one always starting fights that Tubbo got dragged into. That’s what the revolution was in the beginning, even. It was always Tommy and Wilbur’s. Tubbo was just along for the ride.
But L’Manberg is his now. Wilbur had given it to him, minutes before blowing it to smithereens. And he wants to lead it right this time, as soon as he can just figure out how. He assumes he’ll have to be making most of it up as he goes, though. Schlatt is far from a good role model here, and Wilbur… hasn’t been seen since the explosion.
(Tommy was mad about that. Really, properly mad. He’s pretty sure he remembers something about Tommy and Techno and a pit, in the immediate aftermath of the festival. Tommy is scary when he’s angry like that. He doesn’t think he wants to be there when Wilbur finally shows back up.)
But he doesn’t have to worry about that right now. Because right now he’s not leading. He’s planning a project, and he’s always been good at that. It’s why Schlatt put him in charge of the festival. Well, that and because it was his execution to begin with.
His feet finally hit the ground, and water immediately starts soaking into his shoes. He screws up his face at that. Gross .
Alright, so that lake is first on his list. The explosion has turned it into more of a waterfall than anything, and rebuilding will be impossible until those leaks can be plugged up. And even then, he’s pretty sure wet shoes should be considered a war crime, so dealing with that is priority one either way.
What else… right. There are bits of pathway that could probably be salvaged for wood as soon as they can get someone on that. Some of the podium could work if they need blackstone, he thinks. But he wants to check first before he says anything to the others. He starts heading in that direction, sloshing through the water that he really needs to do something about at this point .
He finally reaches the base of where the podium is, and he’s surprised at how much of it is still standing. Schlatt would have liked that. Wilbur wouldn’t have. He starts climbing up to get a closer look, but after a few minutes of scaling the crater’s side, Tubbo finds something he’d missed in the chaos of everything. It’s… a room?
There’s a room beneath the podium. Schlatt never told him about that. Tubbo starts wondering what it was even for as he hauls himself up the rest of the way inside.
As soon as he actually gets a good look at it, he immediately finds the answer to his question. Schlatt never told him because it wasn’t his to begin with. There’s writing on the walls. Mad ramblings. Schlatt wasn’t well, but he was never like this. Never… scrawling L’Manberg’s national anthem on the walls.
There is a dread at the pit of Tubbo’s stomach that he can’t place. Not until out of the corner of his eye, he sees red . There’s blood on the wall. Something is slumped against it. Moonlight washes the room in pale light, and Tubbo can make out brown hair, and a brown coat. It takes him far too long to realize that the figure is Wilbur .
Well. At least that explains why he hadn’t come back to gloat after the explosion.
(Philza’s sword had been stained red as a sunset, when he’d first found them during Technoblade’s betrayal. Tubbo had forgotten about that in the chaos of the next few hours.)
Tubbo isn’t sure what to do. What to feel. He and Wilbur had never been close. To Wilbur, Tubbo was kind of just the kid his father had dragged home one day and never left. He was less a part of the family and more Tommy’s best friend that lived with them. That was all he had ever been- the right hand to Wilbur’s right hand.
And yet Wilbur had given it all to him anyways. Part of him knew it was because Tommy had turned it down, but out of everyone else he could entrust the ruins to his life’s work to, why him? Fundy was right there. So was Nikki. Quackity was practically chomping at the bit to take L’Manberg and make it whole again. But he didn’t choose any of them. Instead, he chose Tubbo. And now he’ll never even get the chance to ask him why.
He shouldn’t be here, he realizes abruptly. He shouldn’t have been the one to find this. He half-considers going back to the tower and telling someone else. But he’s not sure who he would even get. Quackity had always hated Wilbur, even before he started diving off the deep end like it was a competitive sport. Philza, Tommy, and Fundy were his family. Nikki might as well have been. And everyone else was already asleep, anyways. Tubbo didn’t want to wake anyone up, especially not to help dispose of a body. They needed the rest.
But he can’t just leave the body here. There’s no peace to be found in a place like this, and he’s not sure he wants to see it in the morning light. So as always, the responsibility falls to Tubbo.
He takes a deep breath. Wilbur was a citizen of L’Manberg, right? It’s the president’s responsibility to look after his people. Or it should be, at least.
Even if they were violent and angry and blew up their own nations. It’s still Tubbo’s job to take care of them.
-
It takes far too long for Tubbo to get them out of the crater and into the woods. His chest heaves as he lowers the body off his back and onto the ground. For a second he considers starting to dig, but a shudder goes through his body at the thought. He doesn’t want to dig a grave for his best friend’s brother.
But what else can he do? If he’s not burying him, he’d need… he’d need… a thought occurs to him with all the intensity and illumination of a sparked torch, and he reaches into the pocket of Wilbur’s coat. There. He clicks the flint and steel together, and starts the fire.
He thinks Wilbur would have liked this better, anyways. He hopes blowing up L’Manberg was a relief. He knows the place was eating at him, and someone should get something out of the complete and total destruction of everything Tubbo holds dear.
He hopes Wilbur went in peace. They hadn’t spoken much, towards the end- Tommy had always made an effort to keep Wilbur and Tubbo separate, after the festival- but he’d seen enough to know how badly Wilbur’s composure was slipping. Everyone else had talked about him like he was a monster they’d never seen the shape of before. They were so sure that he wasn’t the man they’d known, the man they’d followed into war.
Tubbo’s not sure he agrees. He’d never seen that side of Wilbur before, but… he’d always known that he couldn’t naturally be that calm and charismatic all the time. It takes a liar to spot a lie, and Wilbur had called him a good kid and an even better spy.
He’d done a brilliant job at holding it together at the start, of course. But that’s what had tipped him off. No one’s actually that calm under that kind of pressure. Not really. Some people are just better at hiding it than others.
Wilbur was scarily good at it when he had a job to do or people to perform for. After the election, it almost started to remind Tubbo of Schlatt. They were both leaders under unimaginable amounts of pressure, showing their people a brave face, right up until their composure cracked in half and the people around them were left trying to hold things together.
Tubbo turns away and starts walking towards L’Manberg before he can smell the scorched flesh, and he wonders if this is how it’s always going to end. The presidency had driven Schlatt to ruin, until he’d died choking on his own mistakes and poor health, surrounded by everyone he’d ever wronged. Wilbur wasn’t driven mad by power, though. It was the lack of it that’d done him in. He’d been married to his nation, in a way. ‘Till death do us part, he had vowed, and he was faithful to his word to the bitter end.
Tubbo doesn’t want to be like either of them. He doesn’t want power. He just wants his friends to be happy, and to rebuild what’s broken. He doesn’t think that’s so much to ask for.
-
The next morning, he, Fundy, and Quackity are meant to be going down to the crater and finish assessing the damage and get a start on dealing with the rubble if they can, but first Tubbo gathers everyone he can. He needs what’s left of L’Manberg to know what happened to Wilbur. They deserve to know what became of the man that took everything from them.
Everyone is shocked. Fundy and Tommy are angry, and Nikki looks like she’s about to break down into tears right then and there. Philza just looks… tired. Tubbo can’t blame any of them, really. But after the news is delivered, there’s work to be done. He tells Fundy he can stay behind if he needs to, but he’s adamant that he wants to help.
The next few days are hard. Quackity and Fundy won’t stop needling each other, particularly about Wilbur and Fundy’s new status as an orphan, for one. A few times Tubbo almost thinks he’s going to need to step in, but it always fizzles out before it can go anywhere truly hostile.
And Quackity won’t stop talking about taking the fight to Technoblade. Tubbo understands it, he really does. Technoblade set two withers on their country, and Quackity is scared and angry and wants to protect what’s left, so of course he thinks they should strike back before Technoblade returns.
He even drags Fundy into it. Fighting Technoblade is the only thing the two of them have agreed on this whole time, no matter how many times Tubbo spells out that it’s not worth it. This is never going to be a fight they can win. Technoblade already proved that yesterday.
And whenever Tubbo tries to explain it, Quackity starts reminding him that they can’t do anything without his say-so. That he’s in charge. But that doesn’t stop Quackity from trying to convince him of his point of view anyways. Tubbo is exhausted already, even without having to argue with Fundy over something as small as the placement of a chair on a podium.
He doesn’t understand how Wilbur did it. He wishes he could ask him. But it feels selfish, really. He had barely known him. But he was Fundy’s father, Phil’s son, and Tommy’s brother. The only real connection between the two of them is the people they cared about and the nation in ruins at their feet.
That’s why when he can’t sleep and ends up back at the bottom of Wilbur’s crater, he tells himself he’s doing it for everyone else’s sake. He still finds it kind of hard to believe the button room he’d heard so much about was under the podium the whole time, but it makes sense. The podium was always supposed to blow.
It’s not any less haunting the second time he looks at it, but that’s for the best. Tubbo could use some haunting right now.
Ghosts were never his area of expertise, honestly. His teacher had always been more focused on dreamons, and Tubbo’s education had heavily favored them as a result. That’s never been much of a problem for him, though- it’s not hard to pick up on the rest. The different schools of the occult aren’t as different as most people think. And when you really get down to it, summoning a ghost is… fairly similar to summoning a dreamon. Sort of. Not really. But that doesn’t matter. Tubbo’s always been a quick study.
The summoning doesn’t take as long as it feels like it should, in the end. It should take more than a bloodstained control room, some chalk, and a handful of candles to speak to the man you followed into war. The man that shattered your world in an instant.
For a moment, all is quiet. The only sound Tubbo hears is the wind whistling through the crater, like the world taking a breath. And then there is humming. It’s a song Tubbo knows well- L’Manberg’s anthem.
“Wilbur,” he breathes.
The man looks different than he did in life. The bloodstained coat is gone, and instead Wilbur sets next to him in a bright yellow sweater. It’s a color like the sun, or like a star imploding in on itself. The bags are gone from his eyes, and the manic energy that possessed him in his last days seems to have drained out of him. He catches Tubbo’s eye, and smiles. “Didn’t think I’d be seeing this place again,” he admits. Tubbo winces, but there’s nothing bitter about his tone. If anything, he sounds like he’s pleasantly surprised.
“You did kind of die,” Tubbo says without thinking.
Wilbur only blinks. “That I did, Tubbo. That I did.” He continues humming, surveying the start of New L’Manberg. It leaves Tubbo’s hands shaking and a weight in his chest, like whenever Schlatt called him into his office or when he stood with Tommy and Wilbur on the roof of the White House during the festival. “I like what you’ve done with the place,” he finally says. “But I don’t see what you need me for.”
“You died,” Tubbo says again. “Your family deserves some closure.”
Wilbur laughs. It’s not cruel and gloating. It’s soft and light, like Tubbo just said something funny. “No, I don’t think that’s it. If it were, they’d actually be here right now, wouldn’t they?”
“I needed to test it first,” Tubbo explains. “I’ve never tried a summoning like this before.”
In life, he thinks Wilbur would question that. He’d never told any of them about dreamons- his training was long before Tommy and Philza brought him into the fold. At first it just hadn’t occurred to him to tell them, and at some point afterwards there was just never a good time. It was never relevant. But this Wilbur doesn’t pay it any mind. “What do you really want, Tubbo?”
Tubbo sighs, and thinks about the way Quackity and Fundy bicker, and thinks about how much work there’s left to be done, and how Technoblade is still out there, and all the little things he didn’t know he had to worry about two weeks ago. “How did you cope with being president?”
Wilbur thinks for a minute before he says anything. “My brain has blocked out most of my time alive,” he starts. “I just remember that I was in power. When I wasn’t on stage, I would cry a lot and I would scream into my pillow until I felt better. I don’t remember why I would do that.” He smiles as he says it, like he’s telling an old favorite joke, not admitting to vulnerability for the first time in all the years Tubbo has known him.
“This is gonna be fun,” Tubbo says, trying to keep his voice light and optimistic.
“Tubbo, I recommend you buy a pillow,” Wilbur informs him, face serious. Back in the revolution, maybe it would be a joke. But not now. Not after the limelight finally shattered Wilbur’s mask beyond repair.
Shakily, he nods.
Wilbur lets that sit before a moment, before he asks, “Who’s your vice president? Is it Tommy?”
“Yeah,” Tubbo says.
Wilbur nods at that, like it makes perfect sense. “He’s always vice president.”
Tubbo hates the way that grates at him. Tommy could be president. Wilbur had wanted him to be. Maybe he wouldn’t have blown up L’Manberg if Tommy had accepted the position. “Why did you do it?” Tubbo finally brings himself to ask.
“Because my L’Manberg was gone from the moment Schlatt won the election, and there was no getting it back.” He stares off for a moment, and then adds, “You know, I actually wasn’t intending to blow up Tubbo’s L’Manberg. I wanted to blow up Tommy’s L’Manberg, but then he gave it to you. ”
Tubbo tries to process that. He was in charge of a nation for all of five minutes before it went up in flames, and it wasn’t even about him. It never is. Maybe he should be mad about that, but he… he just isn’t. It’s about what he expected, honestly.
“I think you’ll be a good leader, though,” Wilbur says, breaking the silence. “I think you’ll be fine.”
Tubbo wishes he could say the same.
“Hey, Tubbo?”
“What?” Tubbo doesn’t look at him. Instead he keeps his eyes on the horizon, and on the podium he hopefully won’t get executed on again. He’s not sure whether or not to get his hopes up.
“Build something better, here. Don’t make my mistakes.”
“Of course,” Tubbo promises, watching the moon set over the start of New L’Manberg. “That was always the plan.”