Chapter Text
After Doomsday, Quackity settles in the desert, putting kilometers of distance between himself and the corpse of the nation he’d once tried to lead. He misses lakes, even manmade ponds, and his short wings get itchy from the blowing sands, but he needs the isolation. He’s gotten rid of his doorbell, and so when he hears hollow knocking on his sandstone wall, he startles to greet the unexpected visitor.
Dream. Masked bastard still found him all the way out here. His greatest enemy, his rival, the foiler of his plans. Who somehow shows up where he’s least wanted and most unhelpful. The duck man considers spitting in his face. No, he decides, he’s not looking for a fight, and it’s bad strategy to anger a god. “Come in.”
Dream stoops through the low doorway. “You have a lovely home.”
“Villagers built it,” says Quackity, “but they were all gone by the time I moved in. I guess the husks got ‘em.”
Dream runs a gloved finger along the ornamental carvings on a brick of chiseled sandstone. “It’s amazing, isn’t it, what those creatures can create, even with their inferior brains?”
“Why are you here?”
“I have news for you. Terrible news.” He gestures for Quackity to sit down, but the man defies him, staring back in disgust and anger.
“Suit yourself.” The masked man sinks down onto the bed, as casual as if he were at home. “Tubbo is dead.”
“No... He’s -- no.” Quackity blinks fiercely, refusing to let Dream see him in a moment of weakness.
“I’m sorry, but it’s the truth.”
“How did he die?” he asks as his voice breaks.
“Tommy brought him along to fight for the discs. The boys failed, and the items were destroyed. Tommy snapped, and in a fit of rage, he murdered his friend. Again, my condolences, Quackity.”
“Would Tommy do that?”
“He did. I couldn’t believe it either.”
Quackity’s eyes narrow. “Can I see Tommy? May I see the body?”
Dream reaches up to his mask and spins it thirty degrees. “I’ve had Tommy locked away for everyone’s safety. He can’t have visitors just yet, as he’s still half-crazed.”
Quackity’s tear ducts sting. “Leave my house.”
Dream shrugs, as though he doesn’t care one way or another. “As you wish.”
Tommy killed Tubbo, Quackity thinks, shaking his head in disbelief. Tommy’s finally snapped, Dream broke him, and he -- would he do that? Would he really? He waits until Dream is far out of earshot before uttering his retort. “Bullshit.”
***
Tubbo kneels on the polished blackstone floor and prays it won’t hurt too much. He smiles, keeps smiling. He’s done everything he can to make this okay for Tommy. He closes his eyes, but he’s still aware of his best friend’s desperate sobs, and Dream’s eerie, catlike silence as he stalks his victim. He hopes Dream will kill him with an arrow or even a sword. An axe is such a brutal, barbaric weapon to use on a person. Almost as bad as a firework. His fists are closed tightly, identically, but both still tremble. “Please, don’t cry, it’s alright, it’s going to be alright. Tommy, I--” And whatever he might say next is cut off by the wedge-shaped blade that buries itself in his spine.
Tommy wails in guttural horror.
“That’s enough. Come on.”
He doesn’t even glance up from the broken body that he’s cradling in his arms. “No, no, no…” he chokes through snot and tears. “Fix him! I know you can do it. Fucking fix him.”
“He’s gone, Tommy.” Dream’s voice is tight, unsympathetic as he grabs the boy by the back of his neck. “I said come on.”
“I, I, I’m not leaving him.”
“You don’t have a choice.” Dream yanks Tommy upright by his overgrown hair. “He’s already left you.” Tommy thrashes and fights but he’s too weak to change his fate as the devil drags him roughly along the cold floor. “When will you learn, Tommy? You can kick and scream and swear, but when you fight against me you will always lose. I told you, I’ll lock you in my vault and you will never, ever escape.”
Dream puts cuffs on his wrists and a gag in his mouth, then ties him up with a tight cord that digs into his unprotected arms and stomach. He’s hefted up like a sack of potatoes and carried into a dark corridor.
Neither he nor his captor see the small body left behind flare in a burst of green and yellow sparks.
***
Tubbo wakes up alone in the dim and blood-soaked room. All of the blood is his, at least, and that’s almost reassuring. He shakes with adrenaline and the even more artificial rush of regenerative magic. He’s in agony, his back a deep, unhealed wound that should be fatal. Hell, it was. And will be, again, if he doesn’t get help before the effects of the totem wear off.
Tubbo tries to get up, but he’s woozy with bloodloss. The underground room swims in his vision and cuts away, and he finds himself on the ground again. He’s still bleeding, the hot fluid trickling down from his upper back and saturating the fabric of his trousers. Gritting his teeth against the pain, he crawls slowly towards the Hall of Attachments.
Yes! The Axe of Peace still sits in its frame where Dream had left it on display. Tubbo reaches for the weapon. It’s huge and heavy. It would take two hands for someone as small as him to wield properly, and he only has the one spare. But even if he can’t fight with it, it’s still useful. He limps across the hall to the softly humming portal, leaning on Technoblade’s battleaxe as a makeshift crutch.
The trek across the nether will be near-impossible in his current state: he’s vulnerable, unable to defend himself, and his wounds force him to travel slowly. He gags as the purple swirls take over his field of vision: Tubbo is especially susceptible to portal nausea, which is one of the reasons he hasn’t visited the nether in months.
He stumbles out onto a bank of porous red stone. The netherrack is sharp through his socks. Dream has taken away his boots, all of his armor. He gazes across the lava lake in the direction he must cross and laughs with joy and disbelief.
Cobblestone paths, wide enough to accommodate even a casual traveller, criss-cross every level of the hellscape. This is familiar handiwork. Tommy builds bridges, connects people and places, makes what is rugged accessible and inviting. Even from the dark belly of Pandora’s Vault, he’s saving Tubbo’s life one more time.
Tommy said there was a portal at his exile base, and surely that’s where all these paths must lead. Tubbo’s stomach clenches to think of his friend, abandoned and alone, reaching out silently for help and receiving no response. The blood Tubbo leaves on the stones behind him quickly boils and scorches away to nothing in the stifling nether heat. He’s relieved that he won’t leave an easy track to follow. A small herd of zombified piglins are the only monsters he comes across. They snuffle blankly at him, and he stares into their decaying faces and realizes he’s sort of a zombie, now, as well.
He emerges from the nether in Logsteadshire. The totem in his hand still hums, but more faintly, like the fading vibrations of a gong. Tubbo can’t rely on it for much longer, so he’ll need to find a simpler solution to stop the bleeding if he wants to stay alive. He wanders the beach of the distant island, desperately searching for useful supplies in the wreckage as the blade of the axe sinks into the sand. Bandages, healing potions, even just food or fresh water would help, but Dream of course took everything that Tommy ever made. The hateful tower splits the humble skyline.
At last he finds the tent. His friend had kept these rough quarters out of hope, that exile would be brief and he’d soon be back home and reunited with the people who loved him. Now the poles are snapped, the tethers cut, Tommy’s flimsy mattress slit open and soaked through with rain. Tubbo slices off a thick strip of tough sailcloth fabric and fastens it tightly around his midsection. The wound is too central to tourniquet, but even moderate pressure will slow the hemorrhage. Please let that be enough. He can’t die here.
His eyes dull as he leaves the broken camp. His hands feel cold and numb in spite of mild weather. His lifeblood drips from him like sand leaking into the bottom bulb of an hourglass. This is a race against time. The pain takes him over, and he fantasizes about giving up, falling asleep.
***
Tubbo is dead. Quackity sits stiffly at his table, head in his hands. Tommy - maybe not Tommy, has stolen his final life from him.
Quackity has known Tubbo a long time: first as Schlatt’s Right Hand Man, the timid lackey who ran errands for the Dictator and lived in a secret underground library. Second as the enemy spy whose explosive execution had cost Quackity his first life and all of his allegiances.
They’d talked strategy together on the eve of the battle for Manberg, Tubbo trusting even a late defector utterly. He’d been such a clever kid, and Quackity wondered if the bastard who’d murdered him had any idea what he’d taken from the world.
During his presidency, Quackity, as Vice, had tried desperately to make Tubbo act with authority. He saw so much potential in the boy that everyone, himself included, had trampled down. So much wasted potential, now that Tubbo was gone from the world at only seventeen. All he could have been, all he could have accomplished… the duck man buries his face in his wing and weeps in eulogy.
For the second time that day, he hears a knock on his door. Is Dream back? He won’t even try to hide his tears. Tubbo deserves to be mourned.
But the knocking isn’t the same as the confident taps he’s heard earlier. Instead he detects the dull sound of wood against wood, as though someone has struck his door with the handle of a weapon. Quackity brandishes his shield in a defensive stance as he opens the door to reveal a small, bloody figure slumped over an axe.
“Tubbo? What happened?”
The boy opens his left fist to reveal a broken enamel doll about the size of a chess piece. The spent totem rattles against the floor as Tubbo collapses wordlessly into his friend’s arms.