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When Tubbo was young, the worst day of his life was when he got stung by a bee. It's funny, looking back at it now, but it makes sense. That was before everything. Before he exiled his best friend, before he was made president of a crater, before the execution, and before even the Final Control Room. It was also before many of the bumps and scrapes of youth, like when he broke his arm racing Tommy up a tree or when he fell down the side of a creeper hole and twisted his ankle. Without any of that to compare it to… it genuinely felt like the worst thing that had ever happened to him.
Wilbur was the one that had to carry him home while he cried and cried the way he never has time to these days, sobbing like his best friend was dead and his nation was crumbling to dust in his hands.
He’d been fine by the evening, of course. It was only a bee sting. But it’d hurt. It was scary for little Tubbo. Scary enough that for weeks afterward he’d frozen up at the sound of buzzing, no matter how many times Phil tried to explain that they wouldn’t bother him if he didn’t bother them, or Wilbur pointed out that they were more scared of him than he was of them. Not even Tommy tugging on his arm and telling him to keep up would stop that anxiety thrumming under his skin, that understanding that being stung had hurt and he didn’t want it to happen again.
It was Phil’s colleague who found a solution. He’d been dragged home for a family dinner after a long day of running an empire. Tubbo had been the first to Phil’s side, hand white-knuckled in his cape. Phil just sighed and ruffled his hair. “Bee in the back garden again?”
Tubbo nodded mutely, eyes trained on the ground. He missed the look that Phil exchanged with Techno- an apologetic shrug from Phil, and a furrowing of the brows from Technoblade.
He’d come home for dinner again the next day. Willingly. And he pressed a book into Tubbo’s hands. A guide to biology and behavior of honeybees. Tubbo looked from the book to Techno. “What?” he asked.
Techno made a sound at the back of his throat, low and uncomfortable. “You don’t like bees. Why?”
“Because I got stung,” Tubbo reminded him.
Techno nodded. “Thought so. Do you know why it stung you?”
“No,” he admitted. Wilbur had said something about it being scared, but Tubbo didn’t get it. Why would it be scared of him? He wasn’t doing anything. It just stung him out of nowhere.
“This book explains why,” Technoblade explained. “And a lot of other stuff, too. Read it. It gets easier to stop being scared when you understand what you’re afraid of.”
In the end, Techno was right. He spent the rest of the evening curled by the window, book in his hands. He learned about why bees build in hexagons and where queen bees come from and how most bees die after stinging so they only do it to protect their hive.
The only time he looked up from the book the entire night was when Techno left. He glanced at the door at the sound of it opening to see Techno watching him. Tubbo smiled when he caught his eye, small and shy. Techno didn’t smile back. He just nodded, and turned to leave.
The next time Tubbo found a bee, he froze. He always froze. But then he took a deep breath, and thought about his book. How bees didn’t sting unless provoked, and how the bee is hovering by a lavender bush. That made sense. Bees liked purples and blues, the book had said.
He stood perfectly still for a moment, watching it buzz happily as it helps pollinate the flowers- that’s important, that helps flowers reproduce and helps the bees make honey for their hive, he’d learned- and at some point he realized that he liked watching it. Now that he knew more about them, bees were interesting. And fuzzy. Part of him wondered if they were really as soft as they looked. He decided that he wanted to find out.
-
Tubbo tried to give the book back at some point, but Techno told him to keep it. It was a gift. That’s why he took it with him when they left Phil’s house for that life of adventure they always dreamed of. It almost burned with the rest of his house during the revolution, but he managed to save it.
During his time at Schlatt’s right hand, it was one of the only things he had left of home. Of how things used to be. His uniform was gone, Fundy had burned the flag, and he’d helped take down the walls. But he still had the book. The one he’d consulted when building his first bee farm, the one he’d read because it was late at night and his wounds hurt too much to sleep and he needed to concentrate on something other than the war. The book’s cover was singed at the edges, but the spine was well-worn and loved.
He doesn’t get the chance to take it with him to Pogtopia. Of course he doesn’t. He didn’t bring it with him to the festival. Didn’t think he’d need to take everything and run because Technoblade is leveling a crossbow between his eyes and when Schlatt says jump, Techno sighs and asks how high.
(The book is tucked away in the archives Tubbo never gets the chance to go back for, forgotten and abandoned in the chaos of a brewing war. It’s only after presidency is thrust on his shoulders that he finds it, standing up to his knees in water from where the bunker had started to flood. The book is waterlogged beyond repair and the cover is still burnt at the edges and he tries not to think about it too hard.
Unfortunately, Tubbo has always been good with metaphors, and the book was all he had left of home. The book had been a gift from Technoblade. Home is gone, and he is so, so scared of the man that helped destroy his nation.)
After the festival, trying to talk to Techno leaves Tubbo’s hands shaking and his heart fluttering in his chest. He tries to stamp it down. That’s just an emotional response. That’s just his body, burned and broken and irrational, reacting to an instinctual, perceived threat. It doesn’t really mean anything, and Tubbo can’t afford to be irrational now. The festival marked a change in the winds, and tension is building. Something is going to have to give sooner or later. When that happens, Tubbo needs to be able to look Technoblade in the eye without freezing.
So he does what he was taught, and he takes a step back. Looks at things logically. “If you know your enemy and you know yourself-” Tubbo hears Technoblade tell Wilbur, “-you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.”
But Technoblade is not their enemy ( he won’t hurt you, Wilbur had promised, and Tubbo trusted Wilbur) and it’s easier to stop being scared when you understand what you’re afraid of. He lays it all out on the table, and looks at it from every angle.
Technoblade hadn’t wanted to kill him. He’d stalled for time up there on the podium. Objectively, it’s impressive he managed to draw things out for as long as he did. Techno has never done well with peer pressure, and he’d had both Schlatt urging him on and every eye in Manberg trained on his back.
More than that, he didn’t have any other options. If he’d disobeyed, Schlatt would have turned on him instead. They’d both have been screwed.
But there’s the part of him that can’t help but doubt that. Technoblade is stronger than all of Manberg and Pogtopia put together, and he was armed. If he’d wanted, he could have at least tried. He could have turned the crossbow on Schlatt then and there.
And then a voice that sounds remarkably like Wilbur reminds him that killing Schlatt wouldn’t do anything. The man had still had all three lives at the start of the festival, and even then, Quackity was still next in line for the presidency. It would change nothing, and fireworks were messy. The explosion would probably have done him in anyways. There was no way Tubbo was making it off that stage alive, and that’s not Techno’s fault. At least this way he’s not an enemy of the state like Wilbur, Tommy, and Tubbo. That makes preparing for war so much easier.
At some point in all of this, it occurs to Tubbo that Technoblade hates government. Not the government; not Schlatt and Manberg. Government as a whole. Technoblade came to a festival armed to the teeth with weapons Tubbbo hadn’t even known he’d owned before that day. And that was a festival. He probably has more stashed away somewhere. There’s nothing that could stop him from destroying them the second it dawns on him that their goals don’t align anymore. He wonders if Wilbur had thought of that.
(He wonders if that’s what he’s counting on.)
-
He stands on a tower, overlooking a nation on the verge of war. “I have your back and you’ll have mine,” Quackity promises, and Tubbo believes him. Wilbur is scared and desperate for power and he wants to destroy everything they’ve worked for. Technoblade has always put principles over loyalty. Tommy is a wildcard and Tubbo honestly doesn’t know if he’d take a deal from Dream to get his discs back in exchange for betraying Pogtopia. Who knows where Philza is.
Tubbo wonders what happens if they lose L’Manberg. The thought of leaving crosses Quackity and Tubbo’s minds, but when it comes down to it, they both choose to stay. They’ve put so much into this country. They can’t give up now. Not after everything they’ve been through. Not after everything they’ve done. Quackity brought Schlatt into power. Tubbo helped tear down the walls. Tubbo left Quackity with him, and Quackity let Tubbo get shot with a firework. If they leave now, all of that will have been for nothing.
It can’t have been for nothing. Tommy can’t have given up his discs, way back in the revolution, for nothing. Tubbo can’t let that happen.
-
Wilbur gives the presidency to Tubbo of all people. He’ll never understand why, and he’ll never get the chance to ask. Because in the end, he was right: Wilbur presses the button, and Technoblade asks Tommy if he wants to be a hero.
Somewhere in the chaos of it all, Philza appears. His sword is red with blood and his voice is desperate as he tells them to get away from Technoblade. But he never tells him to stand down. It wouldn’t have worked anyways. Not even Phil is more important to Techno than the point he’s making- that good things don’t happen to heroes, Tommy.
(Techno was a warlord, back in the day. He was Phil’s right hand long before he was Tommy and Wilbur’s brother. They built an empire together. It finally occurs to Tubbo to wonder what happened to it.)
L’Manberg is left in ruins, but it is theirs, and Tubbo can work with that. He’s had nothing before, he jokes at some point, and he thinks of a box on the side of the road, of a house in the jungle, and of standing around a table in the middle of a war as Wilbur asks what they have at their disposal for one last stand.
Tubbo has had nothing before, and he is well-practiced in the art of turning that into something. He throws himself into the work of making L’Manberg something worth being proud of again. It was entrusted to him by the man he followed into war, and Tubbo wants to write a worthwhile reprise to his symphony.
He keeps Quackity and Fundy from charging into a war that will kill them, he welcomes Puffy and Connor and Ranboo to the lands, and he builds a podium he hopes will never see bloodshed.
Things go well for a while, his cabinet’s bickering aside. L’Manberg looks better than it ever did under Schlatt’s reign, and Tubbo thinks he might be doing an alright job as president. Those beliefs are shattered the instant George’s house burns down, though. Dream jumps on the opening it gives him, and he holds the entire nation hostage behind obsidian walls. The ransom is simple. Easy. It feels like a physical weight in Tubbo’s chest.
-
Tommy gives him Mellohi, and Tubbo exiles him anyway. It was an act of trust- out of everything in all the world, this is what Tommy holds dearest. ( The one thing he wants is the only thing I care about, he says, and Tubbo reminds himself that there are bigger things to worry about than his own hurt feelings.) Tommy would go to war all over again for these discs, and he gives Mellohi to Tubbo.
That’s important. It’s every reason that Tubbo loves Tommy, condensed into a single moment. He is reckless and wild and everything that Tubbo is not in all the best of ways. He charges into things without thought, and he comes out on top over and over again. He’s loud and smiles with all his teeth and he makes friends wherever he goes. Tommy likes building roads, and giving Tubbo his disc is just that. It’s a connection. A show of trust. Everything Tommy cares about, held in his hands.
But Tommy has never been good at dealing in anything but absolutes, and he’s never been good at listening. Tubbo asked him if he burned down George’s house, and Tommy denied the truth up and down until he’d dug himself a hole so deep Tubbo could scarcely drag him back out. Tubbo asked him to be calm, to be peaceful, to let Tubbo do the talking, and Tommy picked a fight with the closest thing they’ve ever had to a god.
Tubbo tried to make a plan to avoid an exile, and Tommy tried to lead his cabinet to war. We had an agreement, they protest after Tubbo makes his decision. But Tubbo’s not sure if that counts, seeing as how every objection or concern he had was dismissed out of hand in favor of Tommy’s half-formed plan to team up with the man that has already destroyed their nation once and could very well do so again.
Back at the beginning of everything, when Wilbur still had something left to lose and an audience to perform for, he used to talk about the greater good. It sounded simple, the way he spoke of it. Obvious. The greater good was always the only option, anything less would be dangerously irresponsible and downright selfish.
Philza, on the other hand, once told Tubbo that being a leader is hard, you know. It was back in the old days. Back during the empire, when people called Phil the Angel of Death with fear in their eyes. Being a leader means making sacrifices that no one else can make. That no one else should make.
Tubbo loves Tommy. He loves the closest thing he’s ever had to his brother with all his heart, and it breaks him to watch Dream force him off the wall. But his plan would have killed them all, including himself. Being the president means protecting his people, and Tommy is a part of that. If this pain in his chest is the price he has to pay to keep his best friend alive, then Tubbo will make the hard choice. No matter how much his cabinet hates him for it. No matter how much Tommy hates him for it.
-
Sometimes Tubbo lies awake at night and thinks about the festival. Not the execution. Before that. Wilbur had grabbed him by the shoulders when they were standing on the roof of the White House, crouching so they were eye to eye. There was so much desperation in his voice as he demanded that Tubbo think for yourself, please- what do you think?
He’d given the decision to Tubbo. No one had ever done that before. During the revolution, he had followed Tommy and Wilbur without question. He’d followed them to war, like a lamb to slaughter in the Final Control Room, and eventually to victory.
After the election, he’d had no choice but to bend to Schlatt’s whims. If he didn’t, he’d end up exiled or imprisoned or dead. So he’d done the paperwork, he’d collected the taxes, and he’d organized an entire festival that ended in his own public execution.
Even now, he tried to make his own decision up on that obsidian wall for the good of their nation, and his cabinet took it as a personal betrayal.
The festival was the most important thing he’d ever been in charge of, and Wilbur still handed him the decision of whether to blow it all up. He wonders why. He wonders if the answer is the same reason that Wilbur gave the presidency to him when Tommy turned it down.
He wonders if it’s because he still cared, beneath all the poetry and gunpowder. If maybe, just maybe, he really did see all that potential in Tubbo. Or maybe he gave it to him because Wilbur knew that he would play right into his hands no matter what, and at least this way he could deny some of the responsibility.
-
Dream tells Tubbo that he did a good thing by exiling Tommy. He disagrees. He knows it was the right thing to do, but it wasn’t good. There’s nothing good about throwing your best friend out of the country he’s given everything for, over and over again.
Dream tells Tubbo that he’s a good president. Dream respects his laws, and takes off his armor in New L’Manberg. Dream tells him that under him the nation will thrive.
Dream is next on the hitlist, and the two of them are playing chess. Dream and Tubbo are playing chess, and Tubbo doesn’t think he’s ever played against an opponent that genuinely respects him before.
(Is Dream really his opponent?)
-
Ghostbur smiles as he presses the compass into Tubbo’s hands. My Tommy, it’s called. It brings him a relief he doesn’t deserve. Lifts some of the weight from his chest. It’s not the real thing. It will never be the real thing, living and breathing and spitting curses and insults with an arm thrown around his shoulders, but at least it can point him in the right direction. It’s a reminder that Tommy is out there, that Tommy is alive. Even if he hates Tubbo. Even if he’s alone- he’s alive.
-
By exiling Tommy, Tubbo went directly against his cabinet. Quackity and Fundy don’t let him forget that. As they shouldn’t. Being compared to Schlatt makes his collar feel tight and leaves him wanting to run for the hills to avoid the fireworks exploding in his chest, but he forces himself to take a deep breath and remember that he promised that the cabinet makes their decisions together. He went against that, up on the wall. He did it for their own good- maybe one day they’ll understand- but it doesn’t change the betrayal they feel.
So he compromises. Hears out their point of view now that their nation isn’t being held at swordpoint and they have room to actually prepare for what comes next instead of rushing into a fight they are nowhere near capable of winning. Quackity rants and raves about how they’ve given up political power by bowing to Dream, how they’re a joke on the political stage and anyone could take advantage of that, they’re not safe- and Fundy offers an itemized list of ways to claw back their way up from rock bottom.
Tubbo supposes he can see their point of view. L’Manberg can be independent, Dream had said. But L’Manberg can never be free. He was right. Dream could build those walls back at any time. Technoblade could return. For as long as the two of them remain standing, L’Manberg will always be at risk. There’s no way to guarantee safety like this. Technoblade will never stand for a government, and nothing is stopping him from emerging from his “retirement” and reducing them to a crater all over again. Dream has gotten what he wants, but they aren’t prepared to deal with the fallout if he changes his mind and demands something new. Quackity and Fundy are right. Dream and Technoblade are a threat to the nation.
At the same time, though, Tubbo is hesitant. This isn’t peace. This isn’t what he wanted for the nation. But… it’s not up to him. The majority rules. That was the deal. He promised that the cabinet makes their decisions together, and he doesn’t want to betray Fundy and Quackity again. With Niki and Sam and everyone else all off working on their own projects so often, they’re maybe the only people he has left.
Well, except Ranboo. But Ranboo is different. He’s new. They’d nearly been done rebuilding by the time he got here, and the only calamity he’s witnessed was the exile. He wasn’t here for the crater, or the war, or the festival, or the election, or the revolution, or the hundred other small disasters that happened in between. He’ll never be able to understand what it means to have lived through them. Not like Quackity and Fundy do.
There’s also Phil, but… Phil and his boys had a system, when Tubbo was younger. He knew they all liked their independence, and he left them to it. He let them do their own things, work on their own projects, and if they ever needed help he would come running. Tubbo flourished under that. He’s always been mature for his age, and he thinks he can count on both hands the number of times he’s asked for Phil’s help since the age of ten. Tubbo has always been able to handle himself, and Phil knows that.
At this point, it’s only a matter of time before Phil goes off to join Technoblade wherever he’s retired to.
Because that’s the thing, Tubbo thinks as the Butcher Army stands around a table. Phil has always favored Techno. Brutally honest, painfully consistent Technoblade. He says he hates the government, so of course he destroyed a nation. You can’t blame the rain for being wet. It’s just nature. Technoblade never betrayed L’Manberg, Phil believes, because he wasn’t there. Sure, he saw the explosions and the withers, but he wasn’t there for the cold nights in Pogtopia and fireworks in his lungs and for Tubbo physically forcing himself to look away from Techno’s hands- to stop waiting for them to tighten around the trigger of a rocket launcher he was not holding.
Tubbo doesn’t think he hates Technoblade. Phil is right- it was always going to end the way it did. But that doesn’t mean he isn’t scared. He understands Technoblade, and what it means to be loyal to an ideal; that is exactly why Tubbo is so afraid of him. He understands him, and he understands that he is always going to be a threat.
A threat that the cabinet wants to deal with. Tubbo needs his cabinet to trust him just the same as he needs his friends alive. It’s just a matter of finding him, and there’s no way Techno hasn’t told Phil where he’s staying. Their loyalty runs deep. Almost as deep as his and Tommy’s is supposed to.
He explains as much to the cabinet, and explains that Phil won’t want to give him up, either. “Family,” he smiles. “You know how it is.”
(He was supposed to be a part of that, once upon a time. But Tommy is gone and Wilbur is dead and Technoblade is a threat and Phil hasn’t looked him in the eyes since the exile. Even before that, he’s not sure he was ever really their brother. Not like Wilbur and Tommy. No, those two were family. Phil and Techno are family. Tubbo was Tommy’s best friend first and foremost, and everything else came after.
Tubbo wonders if Phil would stay, if he asked. He’s not sure he wants to risk trying.)
-
Quackity takes the lead with the interrogation. It’s his project- of course he does. He stands nose-to-nose with Phil, and tells him that you are a citizen of L’Manberg. “We are trying to get justice for our country,” he says. “You should care about this as much as we care about it. Phil, tell us where Technoblade is.”
“I’m not gonna tell you. That’s just…” Phil takes a breath. “He’s changed his ways.”
Maybe Phil is right. Maybe he has, but he still- he- “Phil, he’s spawned withers where your house currently stands!” Tubbo tries. He shot me, he does not say. That would be asking Phil to play favorites, and everyone knows how that ends.
Phil has faced down death so many times- on the battlefield, in the eyes of monsters, on the edge of an infinite void- but he will never be able to understand what the festival was like. Death at the hands of a friend (an almost-brother) in front of everyone he’s ever trusted, while the man he followed into war stands on the roof of the White House and watches, and his best friend screams his name.
No, Phil arrived at the very end of the story, and he will always, always take Techno’s word over Tubbo’s. That’s just how it works. So when Phil looks into Tubbo’s eyes and sees no trace of the boy that had hidden in his cloak because he was scared of the sound of buzzing wings, the boy he’d listened to gush about potions and magic, and no trace of the son he’d waved off as he set out for greener pastures with his brothers, it does not occur to him to wonder how that happened.
Tubbo was always mature for his age. Phil has never looked at him and seen a child- he’s only ever seen Tubbo . And now, he looks at him and sees the leader of a nation trying to hunt down his family.
It makes sense, when Tubbo thinks about it like that. But the rest of the cabinet isn’t going to like how things go as a result.
“Philza, just tell us. It’s for the country,” Quackity pleads.
Fundy nods, ears pressed back. “Do it for the country.”
“Where do you think this loyalty that I have for this country exists?” Phil and Techno have a lot in common, when it comes down to it. They’re both ex-warlords, they’re both dangerous when provoked, and they are both honest to a fault. Phil holds his chin high, defiant and impassive all in the same breath. “I am not loyal to this country at all. I am pretty new here, and if anything you should prove to me why I should care.”
Phil doesn’t comply. He doesn’t listen to reason, doesn’t listen to Tubbo- no one listens to Tubbo- and there’s something heavy in his chest as he looks through Phil’s things. But he doesn’t speak up. He promised Quackity the lead on this, and the cabinet called him another Schlatt the last time he went against an agreement. He cannot be another Schlatt, not if he wants this country to survive to the next election.
And more than that, he needs Quackity and Fundy to- no, that’s a lie. That’s not it. He doesn’t actually need them to trust him. He just needs them. He just needs them alive and here with him.
So he doesn’t speak up, not until he finds the compass. “Hey, Big Q!” he calls. “Look what I found.”
The house is so silent you could hear a pin drop. “Shit,” Phil hisses as Quackity takes the compass from Tubbo’s hands.
“Philza Minecraft,” Quackity laughs. “What the fuck is this?”
Fundy and Ranboo crowd Quackity, staring over his shoulder. “What is it?” Fundy asks.
Ranboo nods. “That’s my question, too.”
Quackity’s grip tightens on the compass as he flips open the lid, reading the label. “Techno’s Compass,” he reads, teeth grit. His eyes flicker back to Phil. “Philza, never forget that you weren’t cooperative with us today. Mister President, I think that deserves some sort of punishment.”
At some point in all of this, it occurs to Tubbo that if he is scared of Technoblade, then Quackity is absolutely petrified. Tubbo’s panic response has always been to freeze; to keep from rocking the boat. But that’s not how Quackity does things. No, when Quackity is backed into a corner, he has always chosen fight over flight. And right now, Quackity is putting up one hell of a fight.
(It’s easier to be pissed off than scared, Tommy once told him. It was dark that night, back during their very first war. When it was just them against the world. Being all afraid and shit is no fun. But anger- you can do something with that, you know?)
Tubbo doesn’t meet anyone’s eyes. “This could be considered treason,” he admits.
“Philza, you didn’t want to help us. We told you we were willing to do this the easy way!” Quackity explains.
“You’re really not selling this government very well,” Phil says, and Tubbo knows he’ll be gone by the end of the week, house arrest or no.
-
Technoblade doesn’t go willingly. It’s only natural. Fire burns, compasses point north, and Technoblade never goes down without a fight. At some point in the chaos, Tubbo takes a bad fall. Between the yelling and the clashing of weapons and the sound of Quackity taking a horse by the reins, Tubbo completely misses the sound of a compass being broken. If there’s a click as the needle stalls in place and the glass cracks, he doesn’t hear it.
He’s got bigger fish to fry, after all. Quackity is holding his axe to the horse’s throat, and the victory in that curl of his lip almost enough to hide the fear in his eyes. Technoblade’s weapons drop from his hands.
Tubbo has an execution to attend, it seems.
-
Here’s the thing about all this: Technoblade has gotten away with everything he’s done to L’Manberg. He burned a nation to the ground, and then left. He hurt so many people, and he wants going into retirement to just make it all okay. That’s not how it works. He needs to be held accountable. And if they just let him get away with it, they’re never going to be taken seriously as a nation. Especially after the exile.
This is about justice. This is about not getting taken advantage of or hurt ever again.
That’s how Quackity explained it, at least. Tubbo isn’t going to pretend that it doesn’t make sense. He would, however, like to pretend that there isn’t something deep down that’s okay with it. Technoblade hurt all of them, yes. But he shot Tubbo first.
Tubbo doesn’t hate him for it. Not for the festival, and not for anything that came after it. He doesn’t have the time to hate Technoblade. But all the same, Tubbo is tired. He’s tired from staying up every night to finish paperwork and from spending every waking hour working to make his nation happier, safer, better, and a worthy successor to what Wilbur had created. Most of all, though, he is so, so tired of being scared all the time.
He’s scared that his country is going to burn, and that he won’t be able to do anything about it. He’s scared that he’s going to get sick of it all and he’ll be the one to light the match. He’s scared of becoming a monster. He’s scared of everyone he cares about dying. He’s scared that they’ll all leave him, or that they’re going to turn on him and he is going to face oblivion once and for all with another firework between his eyes.
Technoblade is responsible for half those fears, and sometimes he can feel Schlatt’s hand on his shoulder telling him that if there is a problem, then he should just have it taken care of.
(You want me to get him some breakfast? To get him a nice coat? Techno had asked, panic in his eyes. What- what do you mean by take care?)
“I really am sorry about this, Technoblade,” he says, quiet enough that the rest of the cabinet doesn’t hear. Just because there is a part of Tubbo that is actually, horribly looking forward to bringing Technoblade to justice, that doesn’t mean he has to like it.
-
The execution itself doesn’t go much better than actually trying to capture Technoblade did. Punz attacks, and everything goes to hell for just a little too long for comfort. In the end, though, Punz is driven away just as Quackity pulls the lever.
The anvil falls, but as the old saying goes… Technoblade never dies.
He jumps the bars, and through the blood rushing in his ears, Tubbo distantly notes Phil’s laughter, victorious and vindicated. Quackity turns to run after Techno, to give chase. But Tubbo is too busy staring at the podium to follow.
There is an awful, twisted part of him that almost feels cheated. He shouldn’t feel jealous that Technoblade survived an execution, but he manages it anyways. The worst thing that ever happened to Tubbo, and Technoblade escapes it without breaking a sweat.
There’s blood on the podium. Someone should clean that up, before it soaks into the wood.
Phil is still laughing.
-
“It’s always been Dream,” Quackity says, chest heaving. There’s still blood on his face, and he really shouldn’t be moving around so much so soon after dying. Dream gave Technoblade supplies. Dream helped him escape. “It’s always goddamn Dream! He is always getting fucking involved with all these people and all these matters that don’t even concern him!”
“But… he’s on our side,” Tubbo says before he can think better of it.
“ Dream? ” Quackity asks, and there it is- that mixture of fear and anger that Tubbo remembers from when Quackity would talk about Schlatt, in the days between the festival and the war.
“No, no- he’s been nice to us, Big Q!” Tubbo tries to defend. Dream takes off his armor in New L’Manberg. Dream plays chess with him. Dream is maybe the only person that has told Tubbo he’s doing right by his people and that peace is even an option.
Quackity takes Tubbo by the shoulders so he can look him dead in the face. “Open your goddamn eyes, Tubbo! Dream has never been on our side! He has always been against us at every moment he gets! He involves fucking himself in situations that don’t concern him at all, Tubbo!”
(Back before the war against Schlatt, Dream had said, voice even, as if he were simply stating a fact: I have never been on your side, Tommy. Tubbo is on Tommy’s side, not Dream’s. At least, he’s supposed to be. Wants to be.)
“I guess you’re right,” he admits.
“It’s always Dream. It’s always Dream involving himself in these fucking matters-” his hands tighten around Tubbo’s shoulders, realization in his eyes. “Where did Punz come from, Tubbo? Where do you think Punz came from?”
Oh.
Once again, Quackity is making sense. He is angry, and he is scared, and he wants to protect what’s his, and he is right. Tommy wouldn’t have been exiled if it weren’t for Dream building his obsidian walls. Technoblade wouldn’t have escaped if it weren’t for Dream. L’Manberg could have been free without Tommy ever having to give up his discs in the first place if it weren’t for Dream.
“What do we do, Big Q?” Tubbo asks.
Quackity sighs, and he turns their sights to the future. He tears down the posters from their wall with gritted teeth, and he asks- “Who’s next on the hitlist? It’s fucking Dream, Tubbo.”
Quackity is angry. The posters are in shreds in his hands and he’s ranting about how it’s always been Dream, how Dream is the root of the power, the root of their problems, how he needs to be taken out and Tubbo can see in his eyes that he is so, so fucking scared. He doesn’t want to be taken advantage of ever again, and Dream is the apex predator. He is ready to rush into this, to do something rash and stupid just like up on that obsidian wall, and it is going to get him killed if Tubbo doesn’t remember his place.
Tubbo is the president. It is his job to take care of his citizens, and to keep the people he cares about from dying because they made a bad call. “Hear me out, Big Q,” he pleads. “If you want to get Dream, we can’t just go around stabbing him, okay? We have to be smart about it.”
“I’m gonna fucking get him, Tubbo! That’s what I’m gonna do!” Quackity snarls.
“Okay, okay! We need to make some kind of plan, okay?” Tubbo wracks his brain for a plan. Something, anything that could actually get one over on a god. It needs to catch him off guard. If Dream has time to prepare, or to come armed, they’re as good as dead. It needs to be a surprise. It needs to be something they think will actually work, it needs to be something that already has worked. Maybe… “Do you have any ideas? No?” he tries one last time. Just in case.
“No. I have no fucking ideas,” Quackity says. Some of the anger is gone from his face, and the way his hands are gripped on the diamond axe doesn’t quite hide their shaking.
“Okay,” Tubbo breathes. Here goes something. Nothing. Everything. “Here’s what I suggest: do you remember what Schlatt did to me?”
He looks around the room. Fundy’s expression is closed off. Calculating. Quackity’s mouth is agape, eyes wide. Ranboo’s eyebrows are drawn together in confusion. Right. He wasn’t there.
“He made me decorate my own execution,” he explains. “He had a festival.”
That’s the thing that Tommy, Phil, Techno, and everyone else will never be able to understand about working under Schlatt. It does things to your head. There’s always going to be a little part of Tubbo, for the rest of his life, that is going to look at a problem and wonder how Schlatt would deal with it. A part of him that’s always going to think Schlatt would- if only so he can make the call that Schlatt wouldn’t. For the first time since becoming president, it’s an asset. Because Schlatt was… a lot of things, when he was alive.
He was a monster and a tyrant. He hurt everyone Tubbo loves, and nearly destroyed the nation that so many people have given everything they have for. But at the same time, he was maybe the smartest man that Tubbo has ever met. He managed to con his way into winning a presidency he’d been the last to join the running for, and he made an anarchist listen to him long enough to shoot his own inside man. He was brilliant, when it really came down to it. Horrible, megalomaniacal, and unpredictable in all the worst ways, but brilliant.
Right now, they could use something brilliant. “I say we have our own festival. Our own L’Manberg festival, to celebrate the friendship between our nation and Dream,” he outlines, and ignores the sinking feeling in his gut. “But really it’s just a plot to kill him.”
“That might work,” Fundy admits, quiet and tentative.
Tubbo nods, and turns to the other member of his cabinet. Majority rules. “What do you think, Big Q? Are you in?”
Quackity’s gaze is fixed on one of the torn posters on the opposite wall. “I just want him dead, Tubbo. I want him gone.”
Tubbo takes a deep breath. He can work with that. He doesn’t want more blood on that podium or on his own hands, but being a leader means making sacrifices. He can do what needs to be done, and right now what they need is for Dream to be gone and done interfering.
This isn’t what L’Manberg was supposed to be.
(Have you changed, Tubbo? Ghostbur had asked at the sight of his armor. He’d said that he hadn’t, but he thinks they both know he was lying through his teeth. He has given up so much for this nation, and he’s not sure how much of the Tubbo that Ghostbur is talking about is even left.)
But if Tubbo wants to keep the people he cares about safe, this is how it has to be.
-
After the meeting, Tubbo goes to see Tommy. Dream said that Tommy was mad at him. Maybe it was a lie. Maybe it wasn’t. Tubbo doesn’t care. What he does care about is the realization that he hasn’t seen his best friend in weeks, and the man he’s currently helping to plot the death of has.
He needs to see Tommy for himself. So much has happened… he just needs to see Tommy. He hopes he’s alright.
Tubbo races down the path through the nether as fast as he dares. His heart pounds in his chest, because he’s going to see Tommy he needs to see Tommy is he okay-
His base is barely more than a crater. Tubbo’s been here before, when Tommy was gone because Dream said he was mad and that he didn’t want to see Tubbo, and no part of it is left standing. Tubbo can’t even find the tent.
What happened?
Tubbo stands on the edge of a crater, and he sees the tower. It stretches into the sky, so high it touches the stars. A fall from that height would…
“No,” he breathes. “Surely not.”
He makes a desperate grab for the compass, the metal practically burning a hole in his pocket. The glass is cracked and the needle-
The needle is perfectly still.
-
He throws himself into his work. They should have a funeral- Tommy deserves as much. But anytime he considers trying to schedule it, or trying to find a coffin or choose flowers or the hundred little details that made up Schlatt’s funeral, his heart breaks all over again and he feels sick to his stomach. That would be too final. It would maybe even be enough to shatter him entirely, admitting that Tommy is actually gone.
He spends hours hunched at his desk, thinking about nothing except for the papers he’s signing. When Quackity looks at him pityingly and tells him to go get some fresh air, he finds something to build. The new apiary is a wonderful addition to L’Manberg, he thinks, and he and Sam make leaps and bounds in progress on the guardian farm.
(At some point he asks Sam if he wants help with that project he’s working on. The one he doesn’t like to talk about.
Sam laughs and tells him not to worry about it.)
It’s not enough to fill the hole in his chest, but at least it’s enough to distract him from it. Tubbo cannot afford to fall apart. Not like the last two presidents. The country still needs him, and he’s not sure it will survive if he breaks down. No, he needs to hold himself steady. He can’t think about Tommy. He has too much work to do, and a festival to plan.
-
Phil leaves a few days after the execution. He’s not entirely sure how it happens, but the empty house and the ankle monitor lying abandoned on the floor speak for themselves. Phil went to Techno. Tubbo can’t find it in him to be surprised.
With Techno officially an enemy of the state, Ghostbur living with said fugitive, and Tommy… gone, there’s nothing left to hold Phil here except for Tubbo himself. Tubbo would be fine on his own. He always had been, before now. If that changed, he would let Phil know. That was the deal.
He’s not even sure Phil would stay for him, if he wasn’t fine. Phil thinks he’s corrupt. It’s obvious in the way he heckled and resisted, back during the execution. Phil doesn’t understand that Tubbo is stuck between a rock in a hard place ( a box, he’s in a box, Tubbo is always in a fucking box ), and instead he looked at Tubbo and accepted that maybe Techno was right about L’Manberg.
He accepted that Tubbo has been a lost cause from the moment the presidency was passed unwillingly into his hands, and he left.
-
He dreams, that night. He dreams that he’s standing on the podium. Not New L’Manberg’s podium, made out of spruce wood he’d spent hours cleaning blood out of. He’s on the podium. His back is pressed up against concrete, and Technoblade is standing across from him, rocket launcher in hands. But something’s wrong. He’s not stalling for time. Schlatt isn’t goading him on. Schlatt isn’t there at all. No, it’s just Tubbo and Technoblade up here, and Techno’s hands are steady. His eyes are narrowed, and his jaw is set.
Tubbo’s heart hammers in his chest. He’s down to his last life. He doesn’t want to die. He looks to the crowd for help, but-
Every seat is empty. There’s no one there. He’s completely and utterly alone, about to be executed at the hands of Technoblade for the second time. Tubbo tries to catch his breath, tries to think his way out of here. No one’s going to save him, he needs to- he can-
He catches movement out of the corner of his eye, and he tears his gaze away from the firework. There- on the top of the White House, where Tommy and Wilbur had been standing, is Phil.
Tubbo opens his mouth to shout for help- because that was how it worked, if Tubbo asked for help, Phil would come running, he’d promised, Phil had promised- but he turns away. He doesn’t even have the decency to watch as he is executed for the second and final time all in the same breath.
Tubbo chokes on a sob building in the back of his throat, and the world explodes into blue, white, and red. So much red, on his hands, on his suit, on the podium, in his lungs. He sobs and hacks and screams for Phil, for Tommy, for someone, anyone-
There are hands on his face and someone is brushing his hair out of his eyes. He blinks away the smoke and the tears, and there’s Wilbur. There’s no hole through his chest, and his hands are warm. He’s wearing the L’Manberg colors, and he’s… he’s alive. The way he was before the crater, before the war for Manberg, before the election. Before his calm, collected facade was shattered and the pieces abandoned in pursuit of something more final than victory.
Wilbur smiles at him, gentle and so, so proud. “Thank you, Tubbo,” he says. “You did what I never could.”
“What?” Tubbo asks. It hurts, trying to speak.
Wilbur laughs. “You destroyed L’Manberg.”
-
Ranboo alerts him to a hostage situation. Technoblade wanted his weapons in exchange for Connor. The weapons that destroyed a nation in exchange for someone that isn’t even a part of L’Manberg.
He’s not sure what he was expecting, but this was not it. “How?” he chokes, eyes wide. He’s dreaming. He has to be. There’s no way that that’s actually-
Tommy. Tommy is here, he’s alive, he’s teaming with Technoblade, he isn’t dead, and he is so, so angry. He snaps and snarls about how Tubbo didn’t visit him once-
(“I actually did,” Tubbo pleads. “Twice!”
“I was never there! And you never- Dream told me- even though I know that- you didn’t come and visit me, alright?”
“I did. Twice,” Tubbo says it again, in hopes that maybe this time Tommy will listen, that maybe Tommy will let him explain himself.
“Stop lying, man!” Tommy shouts, raising his weapon- since when did he have a trident?)
Tubbo tries so hard to get a word in edgewise. To explain that he visited, that he thought Tommy was dead, that he’s so happy that he’s not, but Tommy doesn’t listen. No one listens.
He’s not even here for Tubbo anyways. He’s here with Technoblade for his gear. (“It’s a temporary team-up,” Technblade explains, hands shifting around the pickaxe he killed Quackity with. “Mutual interests and all.”)
Tommy calls him a monster, when he finds out about the execution. He’s never been the forgiving type, and he’s throwing his lot in with Technoblade. Tubbo has wronged Technoblade, and he has exiled Tommy, and no one cares to let him explain why. Tommy is all loyalty, all fire, all anger, and he is with Technoblade.
Tubbo takes a deep breath. Blinks the tears out of his eyes while Technoblade and Tommy chatter back and forth. There’s an easy camaraderie to the two of them that Tubbo can’t understand the origin of. Tommy had been so angry with him, after the festival. Tubbo doesn’t know what changed, and he don’t think Tommy would give him an answer if he asked.
-
The irony isn’t lost on him, when he tells Ranboo to press the rocket launcher into Techno’s hands. Technoblade and the president. Technoblade, Tubbo, and a rocket launcher. It’s not loaded, but his fingers find the trigger without thought all the same. Tubbo clenches his fists and forces back the sound of Schlatt’s voice- spy, traitor, do you know what happens to traitors- so he can focus on the matter at hand and finish the hostage negotiations.
Connor bolts the second he’s released. Technoblade and Tommy aren’t far behind. Tubbo watches them go. Distantly, he notes the sound of Ranboo’s voice asking, Mr. President, but he doesn’t respond. That requires more brainpower than he has at his disposal right now, when all he can think about is the fact that Tommy is alive.
Tommy is alive, and that is all that matters. Tubbo doesn’t care if he’s working with Technoblade. He’ll take anything over that cold certainty that had washed over him at the sight of the tower.
Tommy is alive, and thinks that he’s a monster. That’s okay. Everyone else seems to think so, too. Tubbo doesn’t know if he agrees with that. All he knows is that if he is a monster, then at least he is one that puts his nation first. He just needs this place to survive to the next election, and then they can find someone better than him. Someone who won’t throw everyone they’ve ever loved under the bus and who will actually be listened to when they speak. Someone who can truly build something better, here.
Tubbo hopes the next president lets him stay when they take over, despite everything that’s happened. He’s terrified that they won’t. He doesn’t know what he’ll do if that happens. Where he’ll go. Techno is plotting something. Phil and Tommy hate him. Everyone else has their own projects, their own families and friends, and their own homes. L’Manberg is all Tubbo has left, at this point.
Tubbo has had nothing before. He understands exactly what it means to be alone and abandoned, and he doesn’t want to go back to that.
-
(Maybe Phil was right to think Tubbo is a lost cause. The presidency has had a one hundred percent mortality rate so far, and it’s twisted anyone that held the position before him beyond recognition. Wilbur had been a hero and a revolutionary before the presidency slipped through his fingers, and Schlatt was a con artist and a businessman long before he declared himself an emperor.
Wilbur died in the ruins of the nation he both built and destroyed with his own hands, cradled in his father’s arms. That was more than Schlatt had gotten. No one had the decency to put him out of his misery, during the war. He’d died surrounded and alone in equal measure, every poor decision he’d ever made laid out in a tableau for all the world to see while he snapped like a cornered animal that knew it wasn’t getting out of that room alive. It had been horrifying. It had been pathetic.
Tubbo is terrified of ending up like that, and he can’t help but wonder if Phil still loves him enough to kill him, if ( when? ) he finally becomes the monster that everyone is convinced he already is.)