#where Niki is the only one who knows after Wilbur dies

[peninkwrites]

Lines Drawn in Sand & Concrete - Ch 6 of ?

Niki feels like she's in a tea kettle. Wilbur is alive out of reluctant obligation.

[CW: description of injuries, dead bodies, discussion of suicidal thoughts.]

crossposted to ao3

Ch 1

Ch 5

Ch 7

Mafia AU

~ Niki & Wilbur ~

Niki doesn’t like the way things are heading.  She would have thought after Schlatt’s death there would be some peace, instead, she has new reasons to worry.  It’s like she can measure the health of the city by the attendance at the Secret City. She rarely sees any of the Badlanders, Puffy only on rare occasion, and always busy and absentminded.  Even more worrying to her, Tommy and Tubbo don’t come to the Secret City very much anymore, and never together.  Ranboo, already quiet, has gotten quieter.

Niki’s business worries have at least declined.  In Schlatt’s absence, her profits have nearly doubled, or rather, she’s kept the other half of her income she’d been making before.  She doesn’t have to reorder alcohol from Puffy as often, which is another good thing considering Puffy seems to be dealing with her own troubles at present.  In theory, Niki should be doing better than ever.  She’s not.

The bloodiest parts of this mess are probably what should scare her the most, but she isn’t sure.  Bodies are turning up in the streets, and since Tubbo has apparently taken on the mantle of controlling the streets, she’d expected the violence to die down, but it hasn’t.  The Badlanders are more aggressive, territorial and secretive, and Tubbo’s lot––she doesn’t really know what to call them, they’re certainly not Schlatt’s dogs anymore––are too bold, bold in the way a cat puffs up to scare away a bigger animal.  Attendance at the speakeasy has died down in part due to that.  People are nervous to go out at night, because if it’s not the gangs getting into petty scuffles around the block, it’s other dead.  Someone is attacking people deemed undesirable.  Niki’s speakeasy caters to no one but the undesirable.  She doesn’t know what worries her more, the dead bodies, often times faces she recognizes as local common criminals, and those she doesn’t recognize, she can guess also share similar records, or the ones who aren’t murdered. 

It seems there is one person behind this threat, or maybe a group sharing the same mask.  People will ask to spend the night at the Secret City, skittish and bruised.  They’re not hardened criminals––largely because it seems this person doesn’t like to let hardened criminals live––the people that come to her for help, injured but alive, they’re the homeless, they’re fences who work on the street, people like Karl doing something harmless like selling stolen watches, and whoever is out there, lurking like a ghost, thinks that warrants bloody retribution?  This is wrong.  All of it, whatever is happening out there, she feels like she’s trapped in the bottom of a kettle, waiting for the pressure to build and finally boil over.  She’s considered on more than one occasion moving the bakery, finding property deep in Puffy’s territory, Puffy had offered her help more than once, but she can’t bring herself to do it.  This is where she’s always been, it’s where people know to go, and changing that now, it feels unfair.  She won’t abandon any of them.  Tubbo still keeps her bakery safe, actually safe, not in any manner like Schlatt’s so-called protection, and he does so perhaps viciously, but at least for now, there’s no reason for her to move.  Not really.

Trouble does not keep itself neatly contained in the streets away from her and her family, nor is it always something so blunt as violence.  Her little brother doesn’t talk to her.  He doesn’t go out with Tommy and Tubbo.  He just works.  Niki will tell him he doesn’t have to, that she’s fine on her own and he can go see friends, but Ranboo just shrugs and says “they’re busy.  I’d rather just hang out with you right now.”  Niki isn’t used to Ranboo not telling her things, nor Tubbo and Tommy.  She prefers when they had stumbled home after getting into trouble and immediately babbled a confession at her, like her knowing was important somehow, like she could always make things right.  It doesn’t feel that long ago.  Where Tubbo had learned he could tell her when something had gone wrong and there wouldn’t be harsh consequences, where Tommy trusted her enough to not act like a guarded, hunted dog, all bark and no bite, and instead had talked to her like her help wasn’t a threat.  And Ranboo, who did things for himself and not for her for once in his life; he’d run around with his friends and had come home late sometimes and had finally had something to actually apologize to her for. 

Niki doesn’t know why that has slipped away.  Tubbo had acted oddly, cutting off Quackity and arguing in her speakeasy––Niki cannot remember Tubbo ever raising his voice like that, let alone in front of an audience––and he never looks open to conversation when he does still turn up, he just sits quietly in the corner with Jack, the two of them talking in hushed tones and Niki knows they stop talking whenever she walks too close.  It hurts, and worse than hurt, it’s wrong.  Her boys don’t sneak around her unless it’s for shoplifting from a sweet shop or trying to smuggle an injured squirrel into Ranboo’s bedroom.

The nights Tommy still turns up––rarely on the nights Tubbo is there, and never together, and if someone is there, whoever was there first will find some excuse to leave, which is profoundly wrong––if Tommy is there it’s usually to heckle Wilbur.  Tommy seems unchanged, he’s still loud and a bit rude and always ready for a good joke, but Niki knows him better.  There’s the more surface-level changes, he’s a bit scruffier than usual, and there’s this strange duality of him being more quick to refuse her offers of help and more inclined to ask for it.  She’ll ask if he wants to spend the night and he jumps to say no, but that same day he’ll ask her if she has anything leftover from the bakery that she needs to toss.  Always with a joking tone, like he’s just a teenager with a sweet tooth, but Niki knows it’s different now.  She buries the urge to ask him, “are you not eating enough?” because she knows doing so will make Tommy not accept anything. 

There are deeper changes too, ones she has to look more carefully for.  Tommy comes to the Secret City alone.  He will still talk with Ranboo, he’ll talk with her, and oddly enough he’d talk quite a bit with Wilbur, but in the pauses in between his usual rough banter, when he’s stopped taunting Wilbur, he looks tense.  He looks tense like he did before he realized the speakeasy was for people like him.  Tommy views strangers as threats or targets or often both.  He moves through the world like a prey animal and a scavenger, but Niki hasn’t seen that tension cross her doorstep in a long time.  He looks tired too.  Maybe as tired as Tubbo does.

She can’t read Ranboo anymore.  She thinks he might know more about what’s going on than she does, but she’s not sure.  She’s never not sure.  When she asks, Ranboo is always neutral and avoidant in reply, and it’s hard to decide if he looks more worried when she asks about them or if that’s just the persisting, quiet anxiety he’s worn for weeks now.

Niki is good at not prying, to a point.  She’s been perhaps too lenient with Wilbur, who had turned up so mysteriously.  She’d done the basics, told him he should look for a job, that he can’t live on their couch forever, but that doesn’t tell her much.  Wilbur had once been her best friend.  That was a long time ago.  Still, between the two of them, Niki finds it easier to dig a little more at a man she hasn’t seen in years than at her little brother about his friends who might be her little brothers too.

“Morning, Wil,” Niki says.  It’s Monday.  The Bakery closes on Mondays, it gives them time to rest from the weekend rush.  Hence, this is one of the few times she’s still in the apartment when Wilbur stirs.

Wilbur sits up blearily from the couch, curls askew.  “Morning…” He rubs his eyes.

“How are you so tired?” Niki asks.  “You don’t have a job, what is it you stay up late to do?”

Wilbur smiles halfheartedly.  “Find trouble.”  He adds more insistently, “and play for your speakeasy sometimes.”

“Could you work on finding a job before you find trouble?” She teases.  “And play at my speakeasy.  I need you there to keep me company, but maybe a proper job too.”

Wilbur wakes up a bit more in his embarrassment, sheepish.  “Er, yeah.  Probably should do that.”

“Yeah,” Niki says pointedly.

Wilbur gets up, pulling on the same wrinkled white button up he wore yesterday over his undershirt.  “You… didn’t happen to make enough coffee I could have some, perchance?”

She rolls her eyes at him and nods to the pot.

“Ah, you’re a saint,” he mumbles.

There is a brief calm, Wilbur getting himself a cup, and Niki content to lean against the counter and drink hers, thinking.  Wilbur is freshly awake.  He is not a morning person.  Niki knows he is weak and however much he’ll loathe it, it’s the perfect time to push.

“So, we haven’t had much time to talk, Wil.  Feels like you’re always running around doing something, or I’m running around doing something.”

“Oh?” Wilbur says mildly.  “Yeah, yeah guess so,” he sips coffee.

“How’s home?”

Wilbur seems to almost choke, quickly lowering his mug.  “Home?”

“You know, where you came from?  Where you’ve been living?  For the past eight years?” Niki raises her eyebrows at him.

Wilbur almost winces.  “That, uh.  That didn’t really feel like home.”

Niki laughs.  “Okay, you’re very dramatic, do you know that?”  She’s unfazed, continuing on.  She knows some, she knows quite a bit, actually.  Niki can be quiet, but she listens.  There’s something wrong with Phil and Wilbur, and while that’s not new, maybe she’d imagined he’d have grown out of it when he grew up into a proper adult.  “How’s Phil?  How’s…”  She tries to remember other things she’s learned from their brief conversations over the last months and her even briefer amount of contact with Phil over the last eight years.  “How’s your… step-mom?  Do you get along okay?”

“Kristin?” Wilbur seems surprised, as if he hadn’t imagined she was an option for a subject of conversation.  “She’s great. Like, professionally she sort of scares me, but she’s really fun and she makes my dad happy, so.”  He shrugs.  “Can’t hold her choice in business against her, really.”

Niki notes he had skipped over her question about Phil.  “She’s great, but she sort of scares you?  Professionally?”

“She’s, you know,” Wilbur sets down his mug and waves his hands mysteriously, “the Lady Death of Salt Lake City.”

“Oh.”  Niki had not heard that name before, but then again, she already knows more than she wants to about the criminals that can touch her life, let alone keeping up with the ones that don’t.  “So. When you said Phil is more working in the background..?”

“Working for her,” Wilbur nods.  “He’s got a new––well, not really new now––reputation. Angel of Death,” Wilbur says mildly like his father has done something as simple as getting a promotion at the bank.

Niki nods, processing this.  That reputation truly isn’t new to her.  She can’t imagine Wilbur hadn’t heard it before, but Wilbur seems to be under the impression the title came from Kristin.  Phil had chosen the Crowfather as his title, but the City comes up with their own names for their Gods.  It was here that label started.  Phil was a complex man.  He could be, and often had been, ruthless.  He had rules, though.  If he kills someone who still has family to leave behind, he pays for the funeral.  The payments are anonymous, but connections were made regardless.  Phil would murder someone and then lay them to rest, sometimes to the horror of and other times to the relief of their families.  Phil was an Angel of Death long before he found a Death to follow.  Niki continues carefully, nudging the subject.  “Bit of a change from the Crowfather.”

“Not really,” Wilbur says gloomily, and Niki thinks perhaps he did know that title.  “Same business.”  That blasé addition makes her reconsider.  It seems Wilbur is just as unsettled by his father’s work as before.  Niki doesn’t blame him for it.  Of course, she has a bit of a soft spot for Phil.  He’d been good to her and Ranboo.  She’s not so picky as to scorn that even if he’s done things she cannot consider as anything but awful.

Niki continues quickly, before her own line of thinking strays any more grim.  “And is Techno still around?”

“Yeah, as long as Phil is.”

“Yeah, I thought so,” she smiles.  “How is he, then?  Well, how do you think he is?”

Wilbur shrugs.  “They’re the same, Niki.  Alright?  I don’t have anything to tell you, because they’re the same as they always were,” he says coldly.  “You don’t need to bother asking anymore.”

“Wil, I’m asking because I care about them.  You’re really going to be weird about it?” Niki says almost gently, because she knows that way will get Wilbur to actually care.

He wilts.  “Sorry, I’m sorry, Niki,” he presses against his forehead, eyes closed as if warding off a headache.  “You’re right, that was… that was a bit dick-ish of me.”

“Yep.  It was a bit dick-ish,” she laughs.  “I know I’ve said it before, but I’ve missed you, Wil.”

Wilbur, as always, looks surprised.  “Yeah?  What’d you do that for?” He teases.

That gets another laugh out of her and Wilbur looks so proud of himself.  Niki doesn’t know what help this will bring, but knowing a shred more about what’s going on with Wilbur at least feels like progress of some sort.  It doesn’t touch the bigger issues haunting her life or her business, but she wants to know her best friend again, she wants him to be her best friend again.  One day.

“I do have a request for you today, Wilbur.”

Wilbur shifts, sitting up straighter.  “Oh?”

“When you’re out… finding trouble, could you also find a few job applications?  For me?”

Wilbur nods, slouching in his shame.  “I will.  I can for sure do that, Niki.”

“Okay.  I’m going to hold you to that, Wil,” she says warningly, because she knows him, and even with the best of intentions, she knows he’s just as likely to turn up with zero job applications and some grand story about what happened that day instead.

“It was… it was good talking, Niki.  Really,” Wilbur is eager to get out of this conversation.  “Um, I’m gonna… I’m gonna get a start on my day, yeah?”  He smiles awkwardly and side steps past her out of the kitchen.

She smiles.  It’s a little fun to make Wilbur nervous, and quite warranted considering his slacking on his side of their friendship.  “Bye, Wil.”

“Bye!”  The front door shuts, and Niki is once more alone.  She’d let Ranboo sleep in.  She doesn’t have especially high hopes for Wilbur, but somehow he still seems like the problem she has the best understanding of and therefore the best chance of fixing.  Niki sighs, regretting her own line of thought.  She shouldn’t have to fix any of them.

~

Wilbur had told Niki while wandering today he’d grab a few job applications.  Thus far he had not done so.  Wilbur had never had an actual job in his fucking life, and he wasn’t enthused by the thought of starting now.  He hadn’t planned on sticking around long enough to have to pay rent, but here he’s remained.  Thus far he’s just wandered the streets as per usual.  He’d deny it if asked, but right now he’s waiting for Tommy to come barreling into him.  That kid always manages to find him in this city, it’s almost impressive, if not also a bit concerning.  Thus far, the kid hasn’t showed.  Wilbur doesn’t know why that makes him nervous.  Last he saw him, Tommy had complained about the new management at the hotel giving him grief, bad enough his hands were all bloody.  It doesn’t bode well.

Wilbur also wants to go back down into the subway tunnels.  It’s not a logical draw, more it feels like a morbid compulsion, l’appel du vide and all that.  He knows there’s nothing down there for him, except maybe rats and tetanus, but nonetheless.  He’s not scared, but also he sort of doesn’t want to go without Tommy, for no reason in particular.

It’s like Wilbur summons him into being.

“Hello, you stupid swiss cheese of a man!” Tommy appears beside him, making him jump.  “Thrown yourself at any more local mob patrols lately?”

Wilbur has one hand over his racing heart.  “No.  Haven’t found the time,” he says irritably.  “The fuck d’you mean swiss cheese?”

“Oh, ‘cause you were almost full of bullet holes.”  Tommy makes finger guns.

“Right, of course,” Wilbur scoffs. “Where did you even come from?”

“The shadows,” Tommy says with a dramatic whisper.  “Actually, if you don’t mind I’d like it if you joined me in the shadows,” he’s staring at something over Wilbur’s shoulder.

“What?  Why?”

“‘Cause that man––the one across the street obviously looking for me––I currently have his wallet,” Tommy nods at an irritable man wandering in a suit and ducks back into an alley, Wilbur finding himself quick to follow.

“So, still hard at work, I see?” Wilbur says dryly.

“More so than you, I see,” Tommy says mockingly.  “Not an especially productive day, though.  I’m… I’m not tired, but I’m a bit bored of the daily grind, so!” Tommy nods like that settles the matter, excusing some weariness that Wilbur hadn’t even noticed.  Wilbur had noticed that Tommy clearly has some hangups about being seen as weak, so he doesn’t question it.

“Yeah, yeah fair enough.  I told Niki I’d pick up some job applications,” Wilbur says gloomily.

“Ha!  Have fun with that!  Chaining yourself to the Machine, huh?”  Tommy tuts him.  “Poor thing.”

Wilbur glances at Tommy’s hands, which are currently perusing his stolen wallet.  He can see cloth stained a rusted red.  “How’re your… battle wounds, then?”  He nods to them.

Tommy snaps the wallet shut, burying his hands in his pockets.  “Fine, thank you very much.  I heal like, super fast.”

“Really?  Looks like you could use some actual bandages.”

“These are basically the same thing,” Tommy pouts.  “But…” he glances at his hands in his pockets.  “If you’re buying?”

Wilbur is not as broke as he was previously, as he’s gotten at least some tips playing at the Secret City.  He gives some of it to Niki, a feeble approximation of rent, but it’s still something.  It’s definitely not much.  Not enough he should be blowing it on getting some gauze and anti-infectant for some random kid.  Wilbur sighs.

“Come on.  There’s a drugstore around the corner.”

“I know there is.  This is my city.”

“It’s mine too!  I’ve lived here longer than you have.”

“Yeah, but it’s changed since you were here, old man,” Tommy nods wisely.  He stops outside the drugstore.  “I’ll wait here.  I’ve definitely nicked shit from here before and they won’t want to see me.”

“Haven’t you nicked shit from everywhere?”

“Yeah, but here I got caught.”

“Touché,” Wilbur smiles, amused before entering the shop.  He grabs gauze and neomycin before heading up to the counter.  “A pack of Marlboros too.”

The man behind the counter nods, grabbing a pack.  Wilbur glances at the register and what it rings up to.  He stares doubtfully at his own wallet, hesitating over his lineup.  He grabs the neomycin, intending on putting it back, but as he turns he sees movement out of the corner of his eye and glances over to see Tommy pressing against the glass and making faces at him.  Wilbur buries a laugh.

“Actually, scrap the Marlboros.  This is it for me,” he puts the antibiotic back on the counter, only processing his own choice after the fact.  It unsettles him. This wasn’t supposed to happen.

Nonetheless, he returns to the street.  “Here,” he shoves the gauze and neosporin into his hands.

“Thanks, man!” Tommy sits down right there on the window ledge and begins peeling the scraps of sheets off his cut up hands.

“Wait, you’re not gonna wash them first?” Wilbur reaches out to stop him.

Tommy looks amused, glancing around the street.  “You see a bath anywhere?  Trust me, the river will do way more harm than good.”

“No, that’s not what I–” Wilbur sighs.  “Come on,” he nods toward the store.

Tommy shakes his head.  “No, it’s like I said, they won’t want me in there–”

“Who gives a shit?  I’ll go with you, we’ll go to the bathroom, and I’ll help you dress them,” Wilbur says more insistently.  He’s more surprised when Tommy doesn’t continue to protest, just stands to follow.  Tommy looks surprised as well.

Tommy very deliberately stays behind Wilbur, whistling and scanning the shelves in the most conspicuous way possible, until Wilbur drags him into a vaguely horrifying bathroom.

“Honestly, this feels worse than the street,” Tommy crinkles his nose.

Wilbur gives him a look.  “Wash your hands.”

Tommy rolls his eyes but obliges, wincing all the while.  Wilbur stares disapprovingly at the crusted blood and cracked scabbing of the cut across either hand.  Tommy’s hands are also filthy.  Wilbur is also trying to bottle every screaming warning about infection; he knows Tommy isn’t exactly in a place to take good care of himself.

“This fuckin’ sucks,” Tommy mutters.  “Do you have any idea how hard it is to pick pockets in these conditions?”

“It’s not like I did that, why’re you complaining to me?”

“Because you’re here.”

Wilbur rolls his eyes.  “Fine.”  He shoves a wad of paper towels at him.  “Dry them.”

“I know how to dress a wound, dickhead!  Just ‘cause I’m not rich enough to buy all this fancy shit doesn’t mean I don’t know how to dress a wound,” Tommy snaps.  “And I don’t need your help!” He says when Wilbur reaches toward him.

“Your hands are hurt!  You need hands to dress a wound!  Come on, man, stop being a little bitch and just let me,” Wilbur snaps back.

“Fine!  Fine, go for it!  If you want to play doctor, fine!” Tommy rolls his eyes, muttering, half under his breath, “call me a little bitch… from the king of little bitches…”

Wilbur ruefully does so, pasting antibiotic cream onto the cuts, Tommy flinching and pulling away as it burns.

“Ow!  Careful!” Tommy whines.

“It’s so it doesn’t get infected!” Wilbur snaps.

Tommy grumbles wordlessly before trailing off grumpily.

It’s quiet for a time, for once Tommy without anything snarky to say.  Wilbur gets nervous when the silence continues by the time he starts wrapping one hand in gauze.  He glances up, but Tommy is just watching him work with a solemn frown, wary and unsure, like he’s expecting Wilbur to do some harm.  Wilbur deigns not to think on that too hard, instead he refocuses, finishing wrapping Tommy’s other hand.

“Oooh, look at me, I’m Wilbur I can wrap cuts like an expert, I’m so smart,” Tommy says in a high voice, staring at his wrapped hands with clear satisfaction.

“Is that supposed to be a thank you?” Wilbur says dryly.  “Take this, okay?  Just… Don’t let your hands get so grubby,” Wilbur shoves the rest of the roll of gauze and antibiotics into his hands.

“Right, I got a choice in that, do I?” Tommy scoffs.

“Come on.  This place is fucking rank,” Wilbur heads back out the door.

“My hands still hurt.”

“Tough luck.”  They return outside, Wilbur rummaging in his pockets.  “Actually, I’ve got something else for you.  You still got that torch on you?”

“What?  Yeah, why?” Tommy asks suspiciously.

Wilbur offers Tommy two batteries.  He’d been holding onto them for a few days now, having scrounged them from Niki and Ranboo’s junk drawer.  “Fancy another trip into the tunnels?”

“Oh, I knew there was a catch!  What, you think ‘cause you buy a guy a bandage that he has to follow you around and obey your every whim?!” Tommy scowls, genuinely reproachful.

“What?  No!  No, that’s not why I got you a fucking bandage, are you joking?  If you don’t wanna go, I don’t care, I just thought…” Wilbur doesn’t know what he just thought.  “I dunno.  Might be another adventure.”

“I don’t need more adventure.  I’m fuckin’ made of adventure.  I’ve got oodles of adventure.”

“Okay, then don’t come,” Wilbur shrugs, still walking in the general direction of the maintenance entrance they had fled through before.

Tommy keeps pace.  “Wait, wait but that doesn’t mean I want you to go alone!  You’ll get eaten by rats, remember?”

Wilbur laughs.  “I knew you’d want to come.”

“You knew I’d what?  You knew I’d fucking want to what?”

“Shut up!” Wilbur cackles.  “You’re the most annoying fucking child!”

“And you want me to follow you into some fuckin’ dark-ass tunnels?  Hm?  You’re fucking bonkers.  I’m not about to get serialed by a man talking about come–”

“Get what?  Get cerealed?”

“Yeah!  Yeah, serialed!  As in serial fuckin’ murdered!” Tommy snaps.  He does stop in the alleyway, staring at the old maintenance door they had fled through last time.

“Wait, wait go back, you would get serial murdered?  Doesn’t that imply plural?  How the fuck would you get murdered multiple times?” Wilbur scoffs.

“You don’t know me.  You don’t know my murder history,” Tommy says aloofly.  Tommy puts the batteries in his torch, glancing up at the door on occasion like it might bite him.  “No, no but really, why the fuck do you want to go down there again?”

“Aren’t you curious?  That banging noise, look, it was probably just like… pipes settling or old machinery, but I bet we could… we could find other sneaky entrances over the city or something!” Wilbur says.

Tommy looks unenthused, but nonetheless, he’s put batteries in his torch and looks grimly prepared.  “Fine, fine I will go with you, but after this you’re buying me food, got it?”

“That… that sounds like worse bribery than me just getting you some gauze, what the fuck?” Wilbur gives him look.  “What, am I like, dangling cheese on a string down there for you?”

“Now you’ve just made it weird,” Tommy glowers at him before opening the door.  “Surprised no one else has gone down here if it’s that easy.”

“Um, that lock looks like it’s not busted and normal people obey big danger signs,” Wilbur points out as he enters the stairwell.

“Ah, psh.  Cowards!” Tommy scoffs, striding into the dark behind him before flicking on his torch.  “Oh, this is loads better!  I can actually see shit.”

“Don’t shine it in my eyes!” Wilbur hisses, batting his torch away.

“Don’t put your eyes by my torch!”

Wilbur gives him a look.

“Fine, fine, sorry,” Tommy says reluctantly.  “So, mole-man, what are we doing in the tunnels today?”

“I am…” Wilbur hesitates.  “I’m looking for this one platform.  It’s… for nostalgia reasons.”

“You’re nostalgic for a grubby ass train platform?” Tommy raises an eyebrow, striding ahead along the tracks.  They’ve been out of operation for years, but both of them keep off the actual rails.

“Yeah,” Wilbur tries to think of a reason he can give.  “Just…”

He’s saved from replying by Tommy shouting into the dark.  “HELLO?!”

Echoing back, “HELLO?!”

“HI, TOMMY!” Tommy shouts.

“HI, TOMMY!”

Tommy looks over at Wilbur, grinning.  “This tunnel is very polite.”

“Is it?  Are you and the tunnel making friends?” Wilbur says sarcastically, but he can’t resist a smile.

“SHUT UP, WILBUR!” Tommy shouts.

“SHUT UP, WILBUR!”

“See, we’re in agreement.”

“I’m not the one shouting, why do I need to shut up?”

“You were giving me sass, mister.  Tunnel and I don’t like that disrespect,” Tommy tuts him haughtily.

“And stop going ahead!  You don’t know where we’re going,” Wilbur quickens his pace to catch up.

“Oh, like you do?  Last I checked, you didn’t wander from platform to platform this way back in the olden days,” Tommy points out.

“Yeah, but I still know the direction–” Wilbur goes quiet.  There’s another noise, and it is not an echo.  It’s that same sound of metal banging together they had heard the last time.  It sounds about as close as it had the last time, that is, concerningly close.  Wilbur looks over at Tommy, to find him already staring back with wide, nervous eyes.  They listen.  There is silence for a time, the echo of the banging noise fading off, but then it resumes rapidly, three sharp bangs that echo off.  It stops for a moment, then three more, slow, measured.  Wilbur is quickly starting to doubt is “old machinery” theory from last time.

“It’s down that way, right?” Tommy whispers in the next pause, pointing down the tunnel.  He jumps when there are once more three sharp bangs.

“M-Maybe?” Wilbur says.  “The echo– I’m not sure which way.”

“I think it’s that one,” Tommy nods ahead.

Neither of them move.  The banging has yet to resume.  Knowing the direction doesn’t dictate what they do now.  Neither of them really want to see what it is, or more probable, who it is.  Tommy looks forward, shining his torch straight ahead.  The tunnel goes straight longer than the light reaches, so it shows only more blackness.

“What kind of nutcase goes banging around tunnels?” Tommy mutters.

“I mean, us kinds of nutcases,” Wilbur points out, but still he doesn’t move down the tunnel.  It’s Wilbur’s turn to jump when the banging returns without warning, three sharp clangs of metal, and a pause.

“I wanna check it out,” Tommy says, but he already looks like he regret the thought.

Wilbur waits for the next three slow bangs to fade out to reply.  “Okay.  Okay, fine, but the moment we see anything weird, we bail, alright?”

Three sharp bangs.

“Yeah, alright,” Tommy nods and seems to muster some bravery.  He starts off down the tunnel first, stopping often to look back and make sure Wilbur is close behind him, even as he can see Wilbur’s torch shining ahead alongside his.

The banging continues on like clockwork.  Three sharp knocks, whoever is responsible seems to take a break, and then continues slowly, before trying rapid knocks again.  Always in sets of three.  Wilbur feels like he’s missing something; he’s already deeply uneasy, and then his torch glances off of a shape splayed out across the tracks.  Wilbur fumbles forward, reaching out to stop Tommy, his torch refocusing on it.  It’s definitely a body.  He has a feeling they’re not merely unconscious.  Wilbur can’t see their face, they’re laid out on their stomach, head turned the other way, so all he can see is what looks like a red cloth tied around a head of short, dark hair.  There’s definitely blood, covering the arm visible to them.

Tommy spots what his torch is shining on, and to Wilbur’s shock, starts running forward.

“Oh fuck, no, nononononono, hold on a fucking second, it can’t– no, oh my fucking god, no fucking way, it can’t be, it can’t be– f-fuck–” Tommy babbles frantically, voice high and hoarse, words almost overlapping.  Wilbur lunges forward to stop him when he runs toward the strange corpse in the dark, but Tommy is too quick.  Tommy falls to his knees by the body, and before Wilbur can warn him of the hundred reasons why it’s a bad idea, Tommy touches it, rolling it over onto its side.  Tommy falls back, face buried in his hands, and it takes a moment for Wilbur to process that he’s relieved.

“Fuck… fuck, it’s not him… it’s not him…” Tommy’s knees are tucked up into his chest, rocking slightly, sounding breathless.

“Tommy?” Wilbur says cautiously.  “Are you… are you okay?”  He asks a rather stupid question, but he doesn’t know what else to do.

Tommy sniffs loudly, wiping his nose on his sleeve, and Wilbur pretends he can’t see Tommy’s cheeks are shiny and damp in the torchlight.  Tommy stares at the corpse again, without any apparent squeamishness at the sight, he still pores over it, like he’s trying to make sure.  “It’s not him,” Tommy croaks, reassuring himself more than informing Wilbur of anything.  Wilbur dares to stare at the body’s face.  The corpse it seems had been blindfolded by a strip of red cloth, but Wilbur can still see the lower half of his face, it’s a man with a patchy beard, a narrow, crooked nose, he seems to be just a few years older than Wilbur.

“Not who?” Wilbur asks gently.

Tommy blinks, and seems to come back to himself in some way, clambering to his feet.  “Nothing,” he’s still staring at the corpse.  “Thought it was… no one.  Just, one of my mates.  An old friend.  I don’t… I don’t see him as much anymore, and he’s… he gets dragged into some shit.  Doesn’t stay out of it like I do, and I always warned him, I always told him…” Tommy trails off, moving on.  “And wears a fuckin’ red headband, and from behind, it…” Tommy nods to the blindfold, trailing off again, his thoughts disconnected.  “A-And the blood on his arm, thought maybe it was… Just from behind and a ways back, not… not the face at all, just…” Tommy shakes his head.  “It’s… it’s not him,” he repeats.

Wilbur still feels almost sick with nerves.  This exchange had happened over the course of a lull in the banging, Wilbur isn’t sure if this pause has lasted longer than the last, but he’s not sure he wants to wait around for it to continue.  “We should go, Tommy.”

“What-?” Tommy glances up at him.  “Yeah,” Tommy takes one step back the direction they had come before pausing.  “What about the… the noise?” Tommy looks both ways, as if inviting it to continue.

“Tommy, that man, he didn’t die from natural causes,” Wilbur says softly.  “And if whoever did that to him is prowling around down here…” Wilbur hesitates.  He doesn’t want to scare the kid.  “I mean, the noise hasn’t gotten any closer.  We’ve gotten closer to it.  Like…” Wilbur looks back toward the stairwell he knows is somewhere in the dark behind them.  “Like they’re trying to draw us deeper in.”  Wilbur looks back at Tommy and sees he’s certainly failed to not scare the kid.

“We… we can’t tell anyone.  We can’t tell anyone about this, about the…” Tommy doesn’t even look at the corpse now, but Wilbur understands.  “Can’t go to the cops, least I can’t.  We… we can’t explain how we were down here a-and–”

“I know, Tommy.  We should go.”  Wilbur doesn’t know why he does it, he doesn’t think, he just does, but he offers Tommy his hand.  Wilbur almost doesn’t realize he’s done it until Tommy accepts.

Tommy’s expression doesn’t indicate confusion on his side of things, but he still seems sort of hazy, so Wilbur just starts walking, guiding them back to the street.  They emerge just as the surviving streetlights kick on, but it’s still far preferable to the dark underground.

“Right, I think… I think we should get out of here,” Wilbur starts walking.  “Don’t… don’t get all defensive if I offer, but d’you want me to walk you back to the hotel?”

“Nah, I’m… I’m good,” Tommy shrugs.

“Don’t do that, man, just… let me do it, alright?  It’ll make me feel better–”

“Not everything is about you, ay?” Tommy scoffs.  “I’m not going to the hotel no more.”

“Are you still having a hard time getting inside?  I thought you figured out a way around the… the stuff,” Wilbur stops when he realizes Tommy isn’t following, instead scuffing his feet and leaning against the wall of the alley.

“No, not just that…” Tommy trails off gloomily.  “The nutter that replaced Jack, y’know the one that put razors on the windows?  Now he’s checking the empty rooms with a fucking golf club.  Thought he was gonna crack my fuckin’ ‘ead open…”

Wilbur steps closer to Tommy, immediately finding himself bottling rage and horror in equal measure.  “He came at you with a golf club?!”

Tommy steps back on impulse, scowling.  “No, he asked if I wanted to go a round and I told him I only did crazy golf- yes he swung at me, dumbass…”

“Holy shit, Tommy, you– Don’t tell me you’re going back there!  I mean, where are you gonna go?”  Wilbur doesn’t know why he feels panicked.

“Obviously not!  That’s what I just said.   I’ll…” Tommy’s feeble excuse of saying he’ll find somewhere else to crash dies with a shiver.  After the night they’ve had, he’s a little more vulnerable.  “Can I… Can I walk to Niki’s with you?  And… And I’ll figure something out on the way there.”

“Yeah, something like sleeping there.”

Tommy frowns, but he doesn’t say no this time.

~

Niki wants to talk to Ranboo.  She doesn’t know what to do with herself on her days off anymore.  Puffy doesn’t have time to go boxing with her anymore, and Eret is busy with the museum and some fancy new investments she’s made so she rarely has time to come over for their usual chats, and if Eret is busy HBomb is busy too, Karl even seems to be busy nowadays.  Ranboo is in the same boat, not that Niki really understands why.  Even if Tubbo has something going on, Tommy is always available.  Niki also has a feeling that Ranboo knows she wants to talk to him, because he’s been finding excuses to go back to his room, before realizing there’s nothing to do in there, coming back out, realizing his sister clearly having some sort of emotion towards him, and finds an excuse again.

“Aren’t you going to help me with dinner?” Niki asks as Ranboo is halfway down the hall back to his room.  He turns on his heels, looking a shred less anxious than someone walking to the gallows and nods.

“Yep!”

“Okay,” Niki can’t help but be amused.  Even if she were actually mad at Ranboo, which isn’t the word she would use for whatever she’s feeling at present, Ranboo is well past the age where she could attempt to ground him, at this point what he’s dreading is her saying she’s disappointed in him.  Which, to be fair, tends to be viewed as a death sentence by all three of them, Ranboo and Tommy and Tubbo.

Ranboo hums to fill the quiet, glancing at her often, and to her surprise, he speaks up first, methodically chopping vegetables so he doesn’t have to look over at her.  “You doin’ okay?”

“What?” She looks over at him, thrown off.  “Yeah.  I think so.  Are you?”

Ranboo doesn’t seem to believe her.  “Yeah!”

Niki doesn’t really believe him either.  Quiet for a bit, neither quite sure of how to proceed.

“How’s Tubbo?  And Tommy?”

“Huh?  Oh, I think…” He falters, "I think okay.”

“Have you not seen them much?”  She already knows the answer.  She asks anyway.

“No,” he sounds amused.  “I mean, I’ve been with you.  When would I have seen them?  I mean, you haven’t seen your friends much.”

“Well, they’re busy with criminal things,” Niki says teasingly.

“Yeah, well, mine too.” Ranboo says, his humor sharper, bitter.

“But even before, you all made time for each other, didn’t you?  Do you know why Tubbo hasn’t come to the Secret City with Tommy at all?  It doesn’t seem like them.”

“I don’t know everything they do, Niki,” Ranboo snaps.

“Ranboo,” Niki can’t help the hint of hurt in her voice.

“Sorry,” he mutters.

“It’s… it’s fine,” she sighs.  “You don’t talk to me anymore, Ranboo.  I just… I just want to know what’s happening.”

“Maybe I just don’t have much to say,” Ranboo shrugs.

“Are you… are you guys not friends anymore?”

“No,” Ranboo says quickly.  His face scrunches up, and he doesn’t even look upset really, more so worried.  “Do we have to talk about this right now?”

“When else are we going to?!” Niki snaps.  “Sorry.  I’m sorry, Ranboo, I’m just… I don’t want you to lose them.”

“You say that like I have a choice.”

“You always have a choice!” Niki grows emphatic.

“Really?” Ranboo is defensive.  “Did you have a choice when you lost Wilbur?”

Icy silence.  Niki is taken aback, a lump in her throat, because it wasn’t just harsh or startling, coming from Ranboo, saying that to her, it’s almost cruel.  Worse when he continues.

“He left you, Niki, and now you’re… you’re letting him live here…”

“You agreed!”

“I thought it was gonna be for a couple days!  Not a couple months!”

“He left everyone, Ranboo. He didn’t just leave me.”

“I don’t care about everyone!  I care about you.  And he hurt you!  And– And it’s like you’re not even mad at him!” Ranboo’s voice breaks slightly, choked up rage that isn’t just meant for Wilbur.

“It sounds like you are.”

“Because you should be,” he says accusingly.  “A-And it’s not fair that he stopped talking to you, he just… he just moved on.  He didn’t… he didn’t think about it.  Like he didn’t even care.”

“Ranboo…” Niki reaches out to him, he pulls away.  “You know it’s okay if you’re hurting right now, right?”

“This isn’t about me. Not right now, okay?  I know I– I know–” Ranboo cuts himself off, frustrated by his own emotions.  “Let’s– Let’s just pick one, and right now I… I wanna talk about Wilbur, and–”

The front door of their apartment opens.  Wilbur and Tommy enter, and immediately read the tension of whatever they have just interrupted.

“Uh.  Ayup?” Tommy gives the two of them a nod.  “Well, I’ve got you home safe, Wilbur, I ought to be going–” he turns back to the door and Wilbur grabs his sleeve.

“Tommy needs somewhere to stay.”

“Do not–”

“The new hotel manager came at him with a golf club.”

“He what?!” Ranboo is snapped out of his own brooding.

“And I kicked his ass and left!  It’s not a problem,” Tommy whines.

“Yeah, but you can’t go back, and you shouldn’t be just sleeping outside, Tommy,” Wilbur says pointedly.

“I’ve done it before!”

“No,” Niki says sharply.  Tommy stares at her, startled.  “Tommy that is in no way safe.  Not right now, okay?  You’re staying here.”

Tommy quickly realizes he no longer has a choice.  “Right… fine, but just for tonight, alright?”

Niki turns to Wilbur, just as piercing.  “Did you get any job applications?”

If Wilbur could sink into the floor, he would.  “W-Well, I… I meant to, it’s just… some things came up…”

“What?  What things?”

“Sorry, sorry, nothing, it was… it was stupid of me.  Never mind,” Wilbur winces, knowing how useless his excuses are.

Ranboo gives Niki a weighted glance that Wilbur is at a loss to understand, and Niki is resolutely ignoring it.

“Tommy, I’m sorry, but if you’re staying here, you’ve got to take a shower,” Niki nods Tommy down the hall.

“Okay, rude, not my fault that I haven’t been able to use the hotel showers in a… in a little while…” he grumbles, following her.

For a dangerous, brief amount of time, Wilbur and Ranboo are alone.

“What came up?” Ranboo asks.

Wilbur notes the hint of ice in his tone and hesitates.  “It was… it was a cheap excuse, I… I got distracted with Tommy.  That’s all.  No good reason.”

“So… so why’d you say you did?” Ranboo says quietly.

“I don’t… I don’t know.  Felt bad about it, really,” Wilbur shrugs.

“Right,” Ranboo is cool and unfeeling.  “Niki and I were making dinner.  Do you think you could help?”

Wilbur knows it’s not a request.

“Right, right, let me… let me wash my hands,” Wilbur nods, going to the sink.  “What’re you making?”

“Um, baked rutabaga and parmesan chicken?”

“Rutabaga…” Wilbur laughs fondly.  “Right.”

Silence until Niki returns.

“Thanks, Wil,” Niki says, reentering the kitchen.

“Sure!  Sure, it’s the… it’s the least I can do.”

“Yep,” Ranboo agrees quietly.

Niki gives him a warning look, before proceeding as if she hadn’t heard him.  “Ranboo, Tommy is going to borrow some of your clothes.”

“Fine with me,” Ranboo says.

Wilbur looks between the two of them, eyes wide.  He focuses on his assigned task.  A terse half hour passes before Tommy returns, hair still dripping wet, dampening the collar of one of Ranboo’s shirts.  Tommy’s had to roll up the pant legs of his jeans substantially.

Wilbur laughs.  “You look like a wet dog.”

“Do I?” Tommy strides over to him and shakes his head so water flies everywhere, largely into Wilbur’s face.

“Tommy!  Come on, man, not… not in the kitchen,” Ranboo says helplessly.

“Sorry,” Tommy rolls his eyes, before catching sight of Niki and offering with more sincerity, “sorry!”

“Ranboo, can you get your desk chair?  We need one more.”

“Yeah, sure.”

Their tiny dining table is typically only used for two, a third chair is there for a guest, but it’s rare for them to have more than that company in the apartment.  It’s far easier to host in the speakeasy.  Niki has dragged the table out from the wall so a chair can be put on the fourth side.  Wilbur helps set the table and Tommy gathers drinks and despite the lingering tension, it feels almost cozy.  The four of them have settled in, Tommy eating with a disconcerting amount of enthusiasm, but no one at the table has the heart to scold him for it.  Once Tommy has cleared a plate and gone back for seconds, he begins to peer around the table.

“Brrr. Bit chilly in here, eh?  What’s got you all up in a huff?”  Tommy is quite good and prodding the one issue everyone else is still avoiding.

Wilbur doesn’t feel like he knows what’s going on, so he doesn’t speak, Ranboo loathes the thought of being the one to speak up first, especially about confrontation, and Niki neither wants to lie to Tommy nor get into things.  Tommy waits.

“Well I think whatever has gotten you lot in a mood, you should do some soul searching, reevaluate your pri-or-i-tees,” he enunciates every syllable around a mouthful of rutabaga.  “Like, Ranboo, handsome lad like you, what on earth could be troubling that brain of yours?  You’re a baker, you’re a looker, you’re all… like, sensitive and shit, you’re a catch!  Niki, if you’ve got problems, you should just… y’know, kick their asses like you always do.  In what fuckin’ world does Niki Nihachu feel troubled by something she can’t wreck shop over?  You’ve got a badass speakeasy and everything!  You don’t fear no pigs, the state should fear you!”  Tommy nods once like that settles the matter, before refocusing on his plate.  The tension doesn’t break, but it does crack a little.

“No grand input for me?” Wilbur says dryly.

“Nah, I know why you’ve got troubles, and it’s your own fault,” Tommy shrugs.

Ranboo laughs.

“Hey!” Wilbur says, indignant.

“You gonna tell me I’m wrong?  Hm?” Tommy gives him a look.

“Yeah, are you, Wil?” Niki smiles.  “I mean, you couldn’t pick up one job application?”

Wilbur is flushing red.  “Look, maybe I… I’m not thrilled at the thought of scrounging together some shitty nine-to-five with a dickhead boss…”

“How do you know what job shit is like?  You’ve never worked a day in your fuckin’ life,” Tommy jeers.

“Have you had a job before, Tommy?” Wilbur says pointedly.

“More than you.”

“I’d say both of you don’t know anything about having a real job,” Ranboo points out.

“And I’d say you don’t know much about having shitty nine-to-five and a dickhead boss,” Niki adds.  “You got lucky too, Ranboo.”

“I mean, maybe I do–”

Niki gasps, dramatically acting offended, throwing her napkin at him.

“Hey!  Hey, I’m kidding,” Ranboo hunches down which does very little to make himself a smaller target.

“I dunno, Ranbus, she’s a tough egg to crack, y’know?  She runs a tight ship.  She hasn’t put up with any nonsense as long as I’ve known her.  She’s been immovable since she was twelve, probably longer,” Wilbur teases.  Niki rolls her eyes at him, poorly masking a laugh.  Wilbur glances back over at Ranboo, startled to find Ranboo staring at him, eyebrows slightly raised, mouth open slightly like he’s unsure of how to say something, to describe whatever unreadable expression he’s currently stabbing into Wilbur’s chest.  “What?” Wilbur shifts uncomfortably.

“You haven’t called me that since I was little.”

“Well, I– I haven’t been here a lot, have I?” Wilbur stammers.

“Yeah.  Guess not.”

Tommy snorts.  “Ranbus?  That’s fucking adorable, aw, little Ranbus!”

“No, nuh uh, you’re not starting with that,” Ranboo breaks his gaze, turning sharply to Tommy.  “Not allowed!  Not for you!”  He says it like he’s trying to get a dog to drop a sock.  “I’d prefer when you call me Ranboob to you calling me that.”

Tommy grins, “aw, good to hear it, Ranboob!  I shall only respect your proper title.”

Ranboo sighs head in his hands as realizes what he’s done.  “Oh no…”

Tommy continues his teasing, and Wilbur plays along, but he’s wrapped up in deeper thoughts right now, so many old aches and pains mingling with new ones, and he doesn’t know where to put it all down.

Dinner finishes in better spirits than it had started, Tommy offering to help clean up after with the same heroics of a soldier offering to dive on a grenade, but nonetheless, he does it.

“Right, then, good night, lads– and Niki,” Tommy settles in on the floor with ease, stealing a pillow from the couch.

“Tommy, you take the couch, man. I’ve had it for ages, I should shake things up and sleep on the floor for a change,” Wilbur offers.

“What’ve you got against floors?  I got nothin’ against ‘em!  Me and floors are old friends!” Is Tommy’s attempt at a defense.

“Mhm, Tommy, where did you sleep last night?” Niki asks pointedly before she goes to her own room.

“On a bench over on 30th until one of the pigs woke me up, why?”

Niki and Wilbur exchange a look.  “Take the couch, Tommy.”

“Tommy can stay with me in my room for the night!” Ranboo says perhaps too excitedly.

Tommy raises an eyebrow at him.  “Look, Ranboob, I did admit, you’re a handsome lad, but me?  I’m shy, I’m not ready for this step in our relationship–”

“Tommy,” Ranboo cuts him off exasperatedly.  “Come on, it’ll be like when we’d have sleepovers and stuff!  It’ll be fun,” Ranboo claps and points to his bedroom door.  “Come on!  Let’s go!”

“What, are we gonna braid each other’s hair and talk about girls?” Tommy rolls his eyes but clambers off the ground to follow.

“I mean, you can talk about girls.  I don’t think I will.”

Niki smiles, fond and relieved.  Ranboo had missed having company.  None of them are acknowledging the hole, the absence once occupied for so many years by Tubbo.  He should be here.  

Even as Tommy is grateful to have a bed, as he’s missed Ranboo’s company just as Ranboo had missed his, he’s trying really hard not to get weak right now.  He refuses to cry over something as ridiculous as the idea of his best friend––his former best friend?––not being in the place he is meant to.  Tubbo has changed.  Tommy knows this, Tommy knows he should be able to let go, because that’s not his best friend anymore, in more ways than one.  At the same time, Tommy knows if Tubbo showed up right now, no matter the state, no matter the blood on his hands, Tommy would only be able to hug him, to bring him back into the fold and say “Where have you been, Bee Boy?  You’re late.  And you missed dinner.”

Instead, he just follows Ranboo, and even as neither of them say it, he can read Ranboo’s silence for the same thought.  They miss him.

~

Wilbur has a difficult time falling asleep.  He’s perturbed by troubling thoughts, thoughts he hadn’t been prepared for.  It’s a peculiar list that’s been growing.  Only looking at today, not even the past months, and it’s enough to make his head spin.  He’d forgone cigarettes to get that scrappy kid some medicine he probably won’t even use.  And when Tommy had run to the body, he hadn’t felt scared like that in a long time.  Probably in as long a time since he called Ranboo Ranbus.

“Fuck…” Wilbur mutters into the dark.  He rolls over and almost screams.  Niki is currently making her way silently across the living room, he sits up sharply.  “Niki?”

“Sh!” She presses a finger to his lips.  She motions for him to follow.  “Come on the roof with me,” she whispers.  In her other hand, she has a bottle.

“The roof-? Right, fine,” Wilbur clambers to his feet.

“Take that blanket too.”

He does so, following her to door in the back of the kitchen, within it is a pantry, and on the opposite wall, a ladder.  He does not ask questions.

Niki unlocks a trapdoor, wincing when it creaks loudly, but as far as they can tell the boys haven’t been woken.

The roof isn’t quiet.  It’s well past midnight, but there’s the wind through the buildings and cars still making their way across the city.  Niki shuts the hatch behind him, gesturing to the roof.

“Put the blanket down.  Over here so we can look out,” she nods to the front of the building.  At this angle to the street, Wilbur can see all the way to the river, to the distant lights of the bridge.  They can’t see a single star in the sky here, but there’s something beautiful about it anyway.

Niki sits on the blanket, patting the spot beside her.  She rips the cork out of the bottle with her teeth, spitting it over the edge of the roof.  She spots Wilbur’s expression out of the corner of her eye and giggles.

“I run a speakeasy, Wilbur,” she says by way of explanation.

“I don’t think most bartenders are comfortable ripping a cork out with their teeth.”

Niki shrugs.  “How would I know?  I can’t exactly meet up with other bartenders in a prohibition state.”  She takes a swig, wincing.

“Touché,” Wilbur sits beside her.  “What’re we drinking tonight?”

“Um,” she takes another swig.  “Gin.”

“Gin?”

She nods.  “It’s popular.  I thought we might as well,” she offers him the bottle.

“Might as well…” Wilbur mutters.  He takes a drink, shuddering.  “That’s… that’s some strong gin, shit.”

“Feels…” Niki mulls it over, “appropriate?”

“What’s the occasion?” Wilbur smiles, still puzzled, but also oddly delighted.  He’s missed this.

“Um, not really an occasion, more like… a goal,” she takes back the bottle, takes a swig, and passes it back, nodding at him.  He obliges and takes another drink.

“Goal?”

“To get you, Wilbur Soot, drunk enough to… to spill your guts to me.”

Wilbur had been halfway through another swig when he chokes.  “Pardon?”

Niki smiles, all mischief.  “To be fair, I am drinking too.”

“Feels like I’ve been brought here under false pretenses.”

“What pretenses?” She laughs.

“Fine.  I dunno,” Wilbur smiles, offering her the bottle.  “Okay, if we’re… if we’re spilling guts, lets do it tit-for-tat, quid pro quo.”

She nods, “wie du mir, so ich dir.”

“Wie du mir, so ich dir,” Wilbur attempts to copy her pronunciation and he can’t tell from her smile if he succeeded or failed.  “So,” Wilbur asks the first thing that comes into his head.  “Is Ranboo… is he mad at me?  He seems… well, about as pissed off as Ranboo can be, if I’m honest.”

Niki nods, like it’s an easy truth.

“He is?”

“Yeah, it’s ‘cause he knows you leaving hurt me.”

“Oh,” Wilbur feels like a weight has just pressed down harder on his shoulders.

Niki nods amicably.  “And now you’re back.  And he thinks you have a lot to prove.”

“Yeah.  I… I think I do,” Wilbur takes another swig.

“Do you have anything to do with the…” Niki gestures vaguely to the streets below.

“The what?” He’s puzzled out of his melancholy.

“The changes.  A lot of little things.  I don’t know,” she shrugs.  “It all sort of started when you turned up, and, sorry, Wil, you…” she almost looks pitying.  “You break things.  Sometimes.”

Wilbur nods, staring out at the patchy trail of streetlights, some lit, some not.  “I break things,” he agrees softly.

“Sometimes,” Niki reminds him pointedly.

He laughs, half under his breath, “sometimes.”

“There’s something wrong, Wil.  Schlatt is dead, and I thought…” Niki frowns.  “I don’t know what I thought.  When I first found out, I was mostly worried about Tubbo, but then I… I thought it was gonna fix things.”

Wilbur once more thinks of his father, and it’s hard to resist the bitterness curdling in his stomach.  “It was bad, then?”  Quiet.  He glances over at Niki, who is looking with the same thoughtfulness out at the city.  Wilbur continues, “Schlatt, I mean.”

She glances at him, clearly measuring up how little he knows.  “It’s like I said, Wil.  You’ve been gone a long time.”

“I have,” Wilbur says like it’s an apology.  It isn’t an apology.

“Drink more.  You’re bigger than me, you need to catch up,” she presses the bottle into his hands.  He obliges.

“I didn’t want to, you know.  To leave you, to leave the city,” Wilbur knows it’s a feeble defense, but it’s all he can think to say.

She still look like she knows something, something she isn’t saying, not directly at least.  “Didn’t you?”

“I…” Wilbur feels very vulnerable.  He can’t imagine Niki knowing, knowing the whole of it, but it’s clear she understands him in a lot of ways.  Which makes sense.  Niki had once been his best friend.  “I don’t know,” is what he settles on.  It’s a safe answer, maybe too safe.

Niki sighs, sitting up, legs folded beneath her.  Wilbur offers her the bottle once more and she pushes it back.  “You first, then me.”

He takes a drink.  She follows.

“You all left, you and Phil and Techno, and… and Phil leaving was hard.  He… he sent money until I asked him to stop.  He called until I… I got too busy to pick up,” she shrugs.  “I don’t know,” she echoes his sentiment, staring down at the roof.  “Techno said goodbye.  A… a pretty good goodbye, I think.  And I was… I was mostly okay for a while.  Schlatt… Schlatt didn’t get involved until I was eighteen.  That’s when I opened the Secret City, ‘cause before I was worried if I got caught while underage it would fall back on Eret’s family, so…”

Wilbur knows it’s far from important, but on impulse he asks her, almost defensive, like a childish teen rivalry has resurfaced.  “Eret?”

“Yeah.  Her family helped look after us.  You… you can’t own a business at sixteen, Wil,” Niki says wryly.  “I mean, we were on our own, really.  Me and Ranboo.  They didn’t really interfere, it just made sure no one was like, trying to take Ranboo away from me or anything like that.”

“Oh,” Wilbur feels almost embarrassed now.  “I… I understand.  Got it.”  He takes another drink.

“You said you were coming back, Wil,” Niki says softly.

“I meant to,” he says hoarsely.  He means it.

“Okay, but when you weren’t anymore, when you didn’t,” she looks over at him, eyes too shiny.  “Why didn’t you call?  Why didn’t you… why didn’t you write?  Why didn’t you say anything to me?”

Wilbur feels like that look in her eyes, grief and broken trust and wounds still unhealed, like it might burn him up from the inside.  He can’t bring himself to look away.

“I don’t have any good answers for you.”

“Give me a bad one, then.”

"Fuck, I'm just a mess," Wilbur wipes his eyes.

"Yeah, you are," she says teasingly.  "Give me an answer."

Wilbur swallows thickly, a lump forming in his throat, finally tearing his gaze from hers to stare at the way the bottle in his hand gleams in the streetlight.  “It was supposed to be a clean break.”  He gives the wrong excuse, but it’s the only one he has.

Niki feels an ache in her chest grow sharp.  She had expected a bad answer, but that one stings, especially when she knows what festers underneath.  “Clean…” she scoffs.  A pause, Wilbur with nothing to say in his own defense, and Niki thinking.  “I was... I was okay on my own.  Really.  Schlatt wasn't a problem until I opened the Secret City and... and when he first started showing up and taking money and... and then alcohol, I didn't... I didn't know what he was gonna do to us.  I'd never... Phil kept us away from that stuff, you know?  I... I made sure they didn't know about Ranboo," Niki nods once, as if reassuring herself, proud and certain she did right by him.  "They wouldn't fucking touch him, I made sure.  I couldn't stop them from knowing he worked there, but... they didn't know he was my family.  So, that was... a bit safer?  I think?  And... I hate this," she says vehemently.  "I hate that this is the truth, but when I stopped fighting, it got easier.  I gave them the money, my supplies, whatever they asked for.  I only fought back when... when I thought it would actually sink us, and before I got brave enough to do that I had to ask Eret for help sometimes and I hated doing that, because I knew I shouldn't have had to.  Once I gave up, his men stopped coming and threatening to break things, and instead it was just Tubbo.  It felt... it felt easier that way.  I gave up so much of what we earned, and that just became normal," she says that word like it's something vulgar.  "But I did it.  I did it.  I kept everyone safe, everyone.  I looked after them all.  Homeless kids, and Schlatt's kid, and Schlatt's boyfriend, and Schlatt's boyfriend's boyfriend, and Schlatt's doctor, and... and Badlanders and ex-Badlanders, and ex-Empire kids, because... because they were gone.  You were gone.  The Empire left us, and I wasn't gonna let that hurt us.  No way.  Maybe I didn't have Phil's authority or Techno's reputation or... or anything like that.  But I kept them all safe.  All of them," she looks at Wilbur, and he is almost in awe of the fire burning behind her eyes.  Wilbur feels so sure that if Niki wanted to burn this city down, she could and she'd probably have the right to.  The fire drains out of her, and once more she looks so tired.  "The earlier years were the hardest.  The ones where I missed you the most, Wil."  Niki takes a shaky breath.  She looks away.  "When I say Schlatt was bad, I don’t say it because I think you could’ve fixed things.  Maybe if Phil had stuck around, he could’ve made it better, but that’s different.  That’s not you.”  A pause.  Wilbur almost feels like he can’t breathe.  Niki continues, “even with the bad parts of it, really I just wanted you to be there, Wil.  You were– you were supposed to be there,” Niki says it with the certainty of a girl who had been eighteen, and alone, and scared, and trying to defend herself from threats so much bigger than her, and waiting for her brother to get taken away, and all the while wishing she could cry on her best friend’s shoulder.

“I am… I am so sorry, Niki.  I don’t expect forgiveness, I don’t, I just need you to know how sorry I am.”  A strange apology for someone utterly certain his father had dragged him out of this city kicking and screaming, but maybe he’s not talking about that kind of leaving.  Maybe Niki knows that.

Niki does not forgive him.  “I believe you, Wil.”  That counts for something too.

Wilbur has felt something building in his chest for weeks, discontent forever rising as his plans never turn out quite right and he has been unable to do the one thing he came to this city for.  A lot has changed in the past months.  His discontent finally spills over.

“I came here, I came back to the city two months ago,” Wilbur stops, taking a deep breath to stop his lip from trembling.  He quickly wipes his cheek.  He doesn’t look at her.  “I came back here to kill myself.”

Niki doesn’t say a word.  She doesn’t know what she could say, but she isn't really surprised.  She takes his hand.

“N-Not here, here.  I wasn’t… I wasn’t gonna do it in your house,” Wilbur continues to spill over, a rambling defense for something he knows cannot be defended.  “I was… I had a plan, it was… it wasn’t supposed to take this long, but I had to– It had to be– Someone else has to do it,” he says forcefully.  “I wanted it to be Schlatt.  Or Schlatt’s dogs, whatever.  If not him, any gunfire would do.  I tried prodding the Badlands, I tried going down the wrong streets and… and spraying stupid graffiti on claimed territory, and none of it worked.  Closest I got was that stupid fucking car bomb, and all it did was almost kill Tommy…”

Now Niki can think of a reply, not to the matter on the whole, but to this piece of it.  “Why?”  Wilbur glances at her, burden evident at the thought of answering that sort of question, Niki corrects.  “Why… why did it have to be someone else, I mean.”

Wilbur laughs bitterly.  “It was supposed to be for Phil?  I thought… I thought it might be nice for it to mean something, so, I thought if I got myself killed in the crossfire of some petty street violence, maybe…” Wilbur trails off, as if by voicing it aloud he’d realized the childishness of his plots.  “Maybe it would make him want to change.  To do better.  Something like that,” he sighs.

“For Phil,” Niki repeats, processing.

“Yeah,” Wilbur says wearily.

“Don’t… don’t take this the wrong way, Wilbur, but… but once all that didn’t work, why didn’t you… you know, try something else?” Niki asks carefully.

Wilbur had forgotten how direct Niki could be.  “Um, well, lots of… of little reasons, I guess.”

“Little reasons?”

Wilbur huffs, almost annoyed with the idea.  “It was… it was that stupid fucking kid, alright?  It was Tommy.”

Niki smiles, almost amused.  “Tommy?”

“Not… not for lovely sentimental reasons, not at first at least, but he just… he kept showing up.  Every day, I’d be wandering around, debating between the river and a highrise, and there he’d fucking be!  Calling me a layabout and following me and hounding me until I’d decide it was worth trying a few more schemes to see if I could get myself killed that way, and even then!  Even then, he’d find a way to get in the way.  Like, I tried to get out in front of a Badlands patrol, when they were first starting to get all nervous, and this kid latches onto me like a furious fucking koala, and he won’t let me out of the alleyway without him, so I gave up that time.  And shit like that just kept happening,” Wilbur sighs, shaking his head, almost amazed.  “He just… by accident, he just kept me out of it.”

“That sounds like Tommy.”

Wilbur laughs dryly.  “Does it?”  Wilbur broods, once more returning to the thoughts that had been circling his sleepless brain earlier.  “And he’s… he needs help, right?  He obviously needs help, and needs it worse than any of us first thought, apparently, and I…” Wilbur sighs.  “And I can’t.  Okay?”

“You… you don’t think you can help him?  Wil, no one would expect that of you.”

“No, not that, and it’s not a matter of expectation, it’s–” Wilbur runs a hand through his hair, tugging at his curls as he feels like Niki and all her love for him is digging a confession out of his chest, but he wants this, he wants to tell her, because he loves her too.  “I can’t kill myself.  Not until… not until he’s better.  ‘Cause I… I almost forgot about Ranbus.”

“You… what do you mean you almost forgot Ranboo?” Now Niki is properly confused.

“Not Ranboo– Ranbus.  I… I said it so effortlessly, I didn’t even think about it, but before tonight, I almost forgot what I called that kid, that I… I was something to him,” Wilbur sighs.

“You still are something to him.”

Wilbur smiles weakly, grateful for her kindness even if he doesn’t think he deserves it.  “Maybe.  I… you’re good to him, Niki.  You were still a kid yourself, and you took care of him.  He’s lucky, and I think he knows how lucky he is, to have you for a big sister, and…” Wilbur trails off, words coming together slowly.  “And Tommy’s not lucky.  In more than one way, because he had no one, and instead of someone like you, Niki, he gets stuck with me instead,” Wilbur laughs.  “So, I can’t kill myself.  Because he needs… he needs someone.  That’s all.”

Niki scoots closer, resting her head on his shoulder.  “I’m sorry, Wilbur.  For… for a lot of things you’ve had to go through, but I’m really glad you’re here now.  And I’m really glad you’re not going anywhere.”

Wilbur takes a shaky breath, no longer trying to ward off tears or the tremor in his voice.  “Thanks, Niki.”

“Maybe Tommy isn’t as lucky as Ranboo, but he’s still lucky to have you.”

Wilbur nods.  “Thank you.  For a lot of things, but Niki,” Wilbur looks over at her, looking her in the eye for once without fear or guilt or shame.  “Thank you for being my best friend.”

Niki smiles, reaching out to mess up his hair.  “You’re welcome.  Thank you for… for trying to bring my best friend back.”

Wilbur understands.  “I’ll be him again.  I promise.”

Niki gets to her feet, unsteady and offering him a hand off the ground.  “I’ll hold you to that, Wilbur Soot.  Don’t think I won’t.”

Niki doesn’t like the way things are heading.  She would have thought after Schlatt’s death there would be some peace, instead, she has new reasons to worry.  It’s like she can measure the health of the city by the attendance at the Secret City. She rarely sees any of the Badlanders, Puffy only on rare occasion, and always busy and absentminded.  Even more worrying to her, Tommy and Tubbo don’t come to the Secret City very much anymore, and never together.  Ranboo, already quiet, has gotten quieter.

Niki’s business worries have at least declined.  In Schlatt’s absence, her profits have nearly doubled, or rather, she’s kept the other half of her income she’d been making before.  She doesn’t have to reorder alcohol from Puffy as often, which is another good thing considering Puffy seems to be dealing with her own troubles at present.  In theory, Niki should be doing better than ever.  She’s not.

The bloodiest parts of this mess are probably what should scare her the most, but she isn’t sure.  Bodies are turning up in the streets, and since Tubbo has apparently taken on the mantle of controlling the streets, she’d expected the violence to die down, but it hasn’t.  The Badlanders are more aggressive, territorial and secretive, and Tubbo’s lot––she doesn’t really know what to call them, they’re certainly not Schlatt’s dogs anymore––are too bold, bold in the way a cat puffs up to scare away a bigger animal.  Attendance at the speakeasy has died down in part due to that.  People are nervous to go out at night, because if it’s not the gangs getting into petty scuffles around the block, it’s other dead.  Someone is attacking people deemed undesirable.  Niki’s speakeasy caters to no one but the undesirable.  She doesn’t know what worries her more, the dead bodies, often times faces she recognizes as local common criminals, and those she doesn’t recognize, she can guess also share similar records, or the ones who aren’t murdered.  It seems there is one person behind this threat, or maybe a group sharing the same mask.  People will ask to spend the night at the Secret City, skittish and bruised.  They’re not hardened criminals––largely because it seems this person doesn’t like to let hardened criminals live––the people that come to her for help, injured but alive, they’re the homeless, they’re fences who work on the street, people like Karl doing something harmless like selling stolen watches, and whoever is out there, lurking like a ghost, thinks that warrants bloody retribution?  This is wrong.  All of it, whatever is happening out there, she feels like she’s trapped in the bottom of a kettle, waiting for the pressure to build and finally boil over.  She’s considered on more than one occasion moving the bakery, finding property deep in Puffy’s territory, Puffy had offered her help more than once, but she can’t bring herself to do it.  This is where she’s always been, it’s where people know to go, and changing that now, it feels unfair.  She won’t abandon any of them.  Tubbo still keeps her bakery safe, actually safe, not in any manner like Schlatt’s so-called protection, and he does so perhaps viciously, but at least for now, there’s no reason for her to move.  Not really.

Trouble does not keep itself neatly contained in the streets away from her and her family, nor is it always something so blunt as violence.  Her little brother doesn’t talk to her.  He doesn’t go out with Tommy and Tubbo.  He just works.  Niki will tell him he doesn’t have to, that she’s fine on her own and he can go see friends, but Ranboo just shrugs and says “they’re busy.  I’d rather just hang out with you right now.”  Niki isn’t used to Ranboo not telling her things, nor Tubbo and Tommy.  She prefers when they had stumbled home after getting into trouble and immediately babbled a confession at her, like her knowing was important somehow, like she could always make things right.  It doesn’t feel that long ago.  Where Tubbo had learned he could tell her when something had gone wrong and there wouldn’t be harsh consequences, where Tommy trusted her enough to not act like a guarded, hunted dog, all bark and no bite, and instead had talked to her like her help wasn’t a threat.  And Ranboo, who did things for himself and not for her for once in his life; he’d run around with his friends and had come home late sometimes and had finally had something to actually apologize to her for.  Niki doesn’t know why that has slipped away.  Tubbo had acted oddly, cutting off Quackity and arguing in her speakeasy––Niki cannot remember Tubbo ever raising his voice like that, let alone in front of an audience––and he never looks open to conversation when he does still turn up, he just sits quietly in the corner with Jack, the two of them talking in hushed tones and Niki knows they stop talking whenever she walks too close.  It hurts, and worse than hurt, it’s wrong.  Her boys don’t sneak around her unless it’s for shoplifting from a sweet shop or trying to smuggle an injured squirrel into Ranboo’s bedroom.

The nights Tommy still turns up––rarely on the nights Tubbo is there, and never together, and if someone is there, whoever was there first will find some excuse to leave, which is profoundly wrong––if Tommy is there it’s usually to heckle Wilbur.  Tommy seems unchanged, he’s still loud and a bit rude and always ready for a good joke, but Niki knows him better.  There’s the more surface-level changes, he’s a bit scruffier than usual, and there’s this strange duality of him being more quick to refuse her offers of help and more inclined to ask for it.  She’ll ask if he wants to spend the night and he jumps to say no, but that same day he’ll ask her if she has anything leftover from the bakery that she needs to toss.  Always with a joking tone, like he’s just a teenager with a sweet tooth, but Niki knows it’s different now.  She buries the urge to ask him, “are you not eating enough?” because she knows doing so will make Tommy not accept anything.  There are deeper changes too, ones she has to look more carefully for.  Tommy comes to the Secret City alone.  He will still talk with Ranboo, he’ll talk with her, and oddly enough he’d talk quite a bit with Wilbur, but in the pauses in between his usual rough banter, when he’s stopped taunting Wilbur, he looks tense.  He looks tense like he did before he realized the speakeasy was for people like him.  Tommy views strangers as threats or targets or often both.  He moves through the world like a prey animal and a scavenger, but Niki hasn’t seen that tension cross her doorstep in a long time.  He looks tired too.  Maybe as tired as Tubbo does.

She can’t read Ranboo anymore.  She thinks he might know more about what’s going on than she does, but she’s not sure.  She’s never not sure.  When she asks, Ranboo is always neutral and avoidant in reply, and it’s hard to decide if he looks more worried when she asks about them or if that’s just the persisting, quiet anxiety he’s worn for weeks now.

Niki is good at not prying, to a point.  She’s been perhaps too lenient with Wilbur, who had turned up so mysteriously.  She’d done the basics, told him he should look for a job, that he can’t live on their couch forever, but that doesn’t tell her much.  Wilbur had once been her best friend.  That was a long time ago.  Still, between the two of them, Niki finds it easier to dig a little more at a man she hasn’t seen in years than at her little brother about his friends who might be her little brothers too.

“Morning, Wil,” Niki says.  It’s Monday.  The Bakery closes on Mondays, it gives them time to rest from the weekend rush.  Hence, this is one of the few times she’s still in the apartment when Wilbur stirs.

Wilbur sits up blearily from the couch, curls askew.  “Morning…” He rubs his eyes.

“How are you so tired?” Niki asks.  “You don’t have a job, what is it you stay up late to do?”

Wilbur smiles halfheartedly.  “Find trouble.”  He adds more insistently, “and play for your speakeasy sometimes.”

“Could you work on finding a job before you find trouble?” She teases.  “And play at my speakeasy.  I need you there to keep me company, but maybe a proper job too.”

Wilbur wakes up a bit more in his embarrassment, sheepish.  “Er, yeah.  Probably should do that.”

“Yeah,” Niki says pointedly.

Wilbur gets up, pulling on the same wrinkled white button up he wore yesterday over his undershirt.  “You… didn’t happen to make enough coffee I could have some, perchance?”

She rolls her eyes at him and nods to the pot.

“Ah, you’re a saint,” he mumbles.

There is a brief calm, Wilbur getting himself a cup, and Niki content to lean against the counter and drink hers, thinking.  Wilbur is freshly awake.  He is not a morning person.  Niki knows he is weak and however much he’ll loathe it, it’s the perfect time to push.

“So, we haven’t had much time to talk, Wil.  Feels like you’re always running around doing something, or I’m running around doing something.”

“Oh?” Wilbur says mildly.  “Yeah, yeah guess so,” he sips coffee.

“How’s home?”

Wilbur seems to almost choke, quickly lowering his mug.  “Home?”

“You know, where you came from?  Where you’ve been living?  For the past eight years?” Niki raises her eyebrows at him.

Wilbur almost winces.  “That, uh.  That didn’t really feel like home.”

Niki laughs.  “Okay, you’re very dramatic, do you know that?”  She’s unfazed, continuing on.  She knows some, she knows quite a bit, actually.  Niki can be quiet, but she listens.  There’s something wrong with Phil and Wilbur, and while that’s not new, maybe she’d imagined he’d have grown out of it when he grew up into a proper adult.  “How’s Phil?  How’s…”  She tries to remember other things she’s learned from their brief conversations over the last months and her even briefer amount of contact with Phil over the last eight years.  “How’s your… step-mom?  Do you get along okay?”

“Kristin?” Wilbur seems surprised, as if he hadn’t imagined she was an option for a subject of conversation.  “She’s great. Like, professionally she sort of scares me, but she’s really fun and she makes my dad happy, so.”  He shrugs.  “Can’t hold her choice in business against her, really.”

Niki notes he had skipped over her question about Phil.  “She’s great, but she sort of scares you?  Professionally?”

“She’s, you know,” Wilbur sets down his mug and waves his hands mysteriously, “the Lady Death of Salt Lake City.”

“Oh.”  Niki had not heard that name before, but then again, she already knows more than she wants to about the criminals that can touch her life, let alone keeping up with the ones that don’t.  “So. When you said Phil is more working in the background..?”

“Working for her,” Wilbur nods.  “He’s got a new––well, not really new now––reputation. Angel of Death,” Wilbur says mildly like his father has done something as simple as getting a promotion at the bank.

Niki nods, processing this.  That reputation truly isn’t new to her.  She can’t imagine Wilbur hadn’t heard it before, but Wilbur seems to be under the impression the title came from Kristin.  Phil had chosen the Crowfather as his title, but the City comes up with their own names for their Gods.  It was here that label started.  Phil was a complex man.  He could be, and often had been, ruthless.  He had rules, though.  If he kills someone who still has family to leave behind, he pays for the funeral.  The payments are anonymous, but connections were made regardless.  Phil would murder someone and then lay them to rest, sometimes to the horror of and other times to the relief of their families.  Phil was an Angel of Death long before he found a Death to follow.  Niki continues carefully, nudging the subject.  “Bit of a change from the Crowfather.”

“Not really,” Wilbur says gloomily, and Niki thinks perhaps he did know that title.  “Same business.”  That blasé addition makes her reconsider.  It seems Wilbur is just as unsettled by his father’s work as before.  Niki doesn’t blame him for it.  Of course, she has a bit of a soft spot for Phil.  He’d been good to her and Ranboo.  She’s not so picky as to scorn that even if he’s done things she cannot consider as anything but awful.

Niki continues quickly, before her own line of thinking strays any more grim.  “And is Techno still around?”

“Yeah, as long as Phil is.”

“Yeah, I thought so,” she smiles.  “How is he, then?  Well, how do you think he is?”

Wilbur shrugs.  “They’re the same, Niki.  Alright?  I don’t have anything to tell you, because they’re the same as they always were,” he says coldly.  “You don’t need to bother asking anymore.”

“Wil, I’m asking because I care about them.  You’re really going to be weird about it?” Niki says almost gently, because she knows that way will get Wilbur to actually care.

He wilts.  “Sorry, I’m sorry, Niki,” he presses against his forehead, eyes closed as if warding off a headache.  “You’re right, that was… that was a bit dick-ish of me.”

“Yep.  It was a bit dick-ish,” she laughs.  “I know I’ve said it before, but I’ve missed you, Wil.”

Wilbur, as always, looks surprised.  “Yeah?  What’d you do that for?” He teases.

That gets another laugh out of her and Wilbur looks so proud of himself.  Niki doesn’t know what help this will bring, but knowing a shred more about what’s going on with Wilbur at least feels like progress of some sort.  It doesn’t touch the bigger issues haunting her life or her business, but she wants to know her best friend again, she wants him to be her best friend again.  One day.

“I do have a request for you today, Wilbur.”

Wilbur shifts, sitting up straighter.  “Oh?”

“When you’re out… finding trouble, could you also find a few job applications?  For me?”

Wilbur nods, slouching in his shame.  “I will.  I can for sure do that, Niki.”

“Okay.  I’m going to hold you to that, Wil,” she says warningly, because she knows him, and even with the best of intentions, she knows he’s just as likely to turn up with zero job applications and some grand story about what happened that day instead.

“It was… it was good talking, Niki.  Really,” Wilbur is eager to get out of this conversation.  “Um, I’m gonna… I’m gonna get a start on my day, yeah?”  He smiles awkwardly and side steps past her out of the kitchen.

She smiles.  It’s a little fun to make Wilbur nervous, and quite warranted considering his slacking on his side of their friendship.  “Bye, Wil.”

“Bye!”  The front door shuts, and Niki is once more alone.  She’d let Ranboo sleep in.  She doesn’t have especially high hopes for Wilbur, but somehow he still seems like the problem she has the best understanding of and therefore the best chance of fixing.  Niki sighs, regretting her own line of thought.  She shouldn’t have to fix any of them.

~

Wilbur had told Niki while wandering today he’d grab a few job applications.  Thus far he had not done so.  Wilbur had never had an actual job in his fucking life, and he wasn’t enthused by the thought of starting now.  He hadn’t planned on sticking around long enough to have to pay rent, but here he’s remained.  Thus far he’s just wandered the streets as per usual.  He’d deny it if asked, but right now he’s waiting for Tommy to come barreling into him.  That kid always manages to find him in this city, it’s almost impressive, if not also a bit concerning.  Thus far, the kid hasn’t showed.  Wilbur doesn’t know why that makes him nervous.  Last he saw him, Tommy had complained about the new management at the hotel giving him grief, bad enough his hands were all bloody.  It doesn’t bode well.

Wilbur also wants to go back down into the subway tunnels.  It’s not a logical draw, more it feels like a morbid compulsion, l’appel du vide and all that.  He knows there’s nothing down there for him, except maybe rats and tetanus, but nonetheless.  He’s not scared, but also he sort of doesn’t want to go without Tommy, for no reason in particular.

It’s like Wilbur summons him into being.

“Hello, you stupid swiss cheese of a man!” Tommy appears beside him, making him jump.  “Thrown yourself at any more local mob patrols lately?”

Wilbur has one hand over his racing heart.  “No.  Haven’t found the time,” he says irritably.  “The fuck d’you mean swiss cheese?”

“Oh, ‘cause you were almost full of bullet holes.”  Tommy makes finger guns.

“Right, of course,” Wilbur scoffs. “Where did you even come from?”

“The shadows,” Tommy says with a dramatic whisper.  “Actually, if you don’t mind I’d like it if you joined me in the shadows,” he’s staring at something over Wilbur’s shoulder.

“What?  Why?”

“‘Cause that man––the one across the street obviously looking for me––I currently have his wallet,” Tommy nods at an irritable man wandering in a suit and ducks back into an alley, Wilbur finding himself quick to follow.

“So, still hard at work, I see?” Wilbur says dryly.

“More so than you, I see,” Tommy says mockingly.  “Not an especially productive day, though.  I’m… I’m not tired, but I’m a bit bored of the daily grind, so!” Tommy nods like that settles the matter, excusing some weariness that Wilbur hadn’t even noticed.  Wilbur had noticed that Tommy clearly has some hangups about being seen as weak, so he doesn’t question it.

“Yeah, yeah fair enough.  I told Niki I’d pick up some job applications,” Wilbur says gloomily.

“Ha!  Have fun with that!  Chaining yourself to the Machine, huh?”  Tommy tuts him.  “Poor thing.”

Wilbur glances at Tommy’s hands, which are currently perusing his stolen wallet.  He can see cloth stained a rusted red.  “How’re your… battle wounds, then?”  He nods to them.

Tommy snaps the wallet shut, burying his hands in his pockets.  “Fine, thank you very much.  I heal like, super fast.”

“Really?  Looks like you could use some actual bandages.”

“These are basically the same thing,” Tommy pouts.  “But…” he glances at his hands in his pockets.  “If you’re buying?”

Wilbur is not as broke as he was previously, as he’s gotten at least some tips playing at the Secret City.  He gives some of it to Niki, a feeble approximation of rent, but it’s still something.  It’s definitely not much.  Not enough he should be blowing it on getting some gauze and anti-infectant for some random kid.  Wilbur sighs.

“Come on.  There’s a drugstore around the corner.”

“I know there is.  This is my city.”

“It’s mine too!  I’ve lived here longer than you have.”

“Yeah, but it’s changed since you were here, old man,” Tommy nods wisely.  He stops outside the drugstore.  “I’ll wait here.  I’ve definitely nicked shit from here before and they won’t want to see me.”

“Haven’t you nicked shit from everywhere?”

“Yeah, but here I got caught.”

“Touché,” Wilbur smiles, amused before entering the shop.  He grabs gauze and neomycin before heading up to the counter.  “A pack of Marlboros too.”

The man behind the counter nods, grabbing a pack.  Wilbur glances at the register and what it rings up to.  He stares doubtfully at his own wallet, hesitating over his lineup.  He grabs the neomycin, intending on putting it back, but as he turns he sees movement out of the corner of his eye and glances over to see Tommy pressing against the glass and making faces at him.  Wilbur buries a laugh.

“Actually, scrap the Marlboros.  This is it for me,” he puts the antibiotic back on the counter, only processing his own choice after the fact.  It unsettles him. This wasn’t supposed to happen.

Nonetheless, he returns to the street.  “Here,” he shoves the gauze and neosporin into his hands.

“Thanks, man!” Tommy sits down right there on the window ledge and begins peeling the scraps of sheets off his cut up hands.

“Wait, you’re not gonna wash them first?” Wilbur reaches out to stop him.

Tommy looks amused, glancing around the street.  “You see a bath anywhere?  Trust me, the river will do way more harm than good.”

“No, that’s not what I–” Wilbur sighs.  “Come on,” he nods toward the store.

Tommy shakes his head.  “No, it’s like I said, they won’t want me in there–”

“Who gives a shit?  I’ll go with you, we’ll go to the bathroom, and I’ll help you dress them,” Wilbur says more insistently.  He’s more surprised when Tommy doesn’t continue to protest, just stands to follow.  Tommy looks surprised as well.

Tommy very deliberately stays behind Wilbur, whistling and scanning the shelves in the most conspicuous way possible, until Wilbur drags him into a vaguely horrifying bathroom.

“Honestly, this feels worse than the street,” Tommy crinkles his nose.

Wilbur gives him a look.  “Wash your hands.”

Tommy rolls his eyes but obliges, wincing all the while.  Wilbur stares disapprovingly at the crusted blood and cracked scabbing of the cut across either hand.  Tommy’s hands are also filthy.  Wilbur is also trying to bottle every screaming warning about infection; he knows Tommy isn’t exactly in a place to take good care of himself.

“This fuckin’ sucks,” Tommy mutters.  “Do you have any idea how hard it is to pick pockets in these conditions?”

“It’s not like I did that, why’re you complaining to me?”

“Because you’re here.”

Wilbur rolls his eyes.  “Fine.”  He shoves a wad of paper towels at him.  “Dry them.”

“I know how to dress a wound, dickhead!  Just ‘cause I’m not rich enough to buy all this fancy shit doesn’t mean I don’t know how to dress a wound,” Tommy snaps.  “And I don’t need your help!” He says when Wilbur reaches toward him.

“Your hands are hurt!  You need hands to dress a wound!  Come on, man, stop being a little bitch and just let me,” Wilbur snaps back.

“Fine!  Fine, go for it!  If you want to play doctor, fine!” Tommy rolls his eyes, muttering, half under his breath, “call me a little bitch… from the king of little bitches…”

Wilbur ruefully does so, pasting antibiotic cream onto the cuts, Tommy flinching and pulling away as it burns.

“Ow!  Careful!” Tommy whines.

“It’s so it doesn’t get infected!” Wilbur snaps.

Tommy grumbles wordlessly before trailing off grumpily.

It’s quiet for a time, for once Tommy without anything snarky to say.  Wilbur gets nervous when the silence continues by the time he starts wrapping one hand in gauze.  He glances up, but Tommy is just watching him work with a solemn frown, wary and unsure, like he’s expecting Wilbur to do some harm.  Wilbur deigns not to think on that too hard, instead he refocuses, finishing wrapping Tommy’s other hand.

“Oooh, look at me, I’m Wilbur I can wrap cuts like an expert, I’m so smart,” Tommy says in a high voice, staring at his wrapped hands with clear satisfaction.

“Is that supposed to be a thank you?” Wilbur says dryly.  “Take this, okay?  Just… Don’t let your hands get so grubby,” Wilbur shoves the rest of the roll of gauze and antibiotics into his hands.

“Right, I got a choice in that, do I?” Tommy scoffs.

“Come on.  This place is fucking rank,” Wilbur heads back out the door.

“My hands still hurt.”

“Tough luck.”  They return outside, Wilbur rummaging in his pockets.  “Actually, I’ve got something else for you.  You still got that torch on you?”

“What?  Yeah, why?” Tommy asks suspiciously.

Wilbur offers Tommy two batteries.  He’d been holding onto them for a few days now, having scrounged them from Niki and Ranboo’s junk drawer.  “Fancy another trip into the tunnels?”

“Oh, I knew there was a catch!  What, you think ‘cause you buy a guy a bandage that he has to follow you around and obey your every whim?!” Tommy scowls, genuinely reproachful.

“What?  No!  No, that’s not why I got you a fucking bandage, are you joking?  If you don’t wanna go, I don’t care, I just thought…” Wilbur doesn’t know what he just thought.  “I dunno.  Might be another adventure.”

“I don’t need more adventure.  I’m fuckin’ made of adventure.  I’ve got oodles of adventure.”

“Okay, then don’t come,” Wilbur shrugs, still walking in the general direction of the maintenance entrance they had fled through before.

Tommy keeps pace.  “Wait, wait but that doesn’t mean I want you to go alone!  You’ll get eaten by rats, remember?”

Wilbur laughs.  “I knew you’d want to come.”

“You knew I’d what?  You knew I’d fucking want to what?”

“Shut up!” Wilbur cackles.  “You’re the most annoying fucking child!”

“And you want me to follow you into some fuckin’ dark-ass tunnels?  Hm?  You’re fucking bonkers.  I’m not about to get serialed by a man talking about come–”

“Get what?  Get cerealed?”

“Yeah!  Yeah, serialed!  As in serial fuckin’ murdered!” Tommy snaps.  He does stop in the alleyway, staring at the old maintenance door they had fled through last time.

“Wait, wait go back, you would get serial murdered?  Doesn’t that imply plural?  How the fuck would you get murdered multiple times?” Wilbur scoffs.

“You don’t know me.  You don’t know my murder history,” Tommy says aloofly.  Tommy puts the batteries in his torch, glancing up at the door on occasion like it might bite him.  “No, no but really, why the fuck do you want to go down there again?”

“Aren’t you curious?  That banging noise, look, it was probably just like… pipes settling or old machinery, but I bet we could… we could find other sneaky entrances over the city or something!” Wilbur says.

Tommy looks unenthused, but nonetheless, he’s put batteries in his torch and looks grimly prepared.  “Fine, fine I will go with you, but after this you’re buying me food, got it?”

“That… that sounds like worse bribery than me just getting you some gauze, what the fuck?” Wilbur gives him look.  “What, am I like, dangling cheese on a string down there for you?”

“Now you’ve just made it weird,” Tommy glowers at him before opening the door.  “Surprised no one else has gone down here if it’s that easy.”

“Um, that lock looks like it’s not busted and normal people obey big danger signs,” Wilbur points out as he enters the stairwell.

“Ah, psh.  Cowards!” Tommy scoffs, striding into the dark behind him before flicking on his torch.  “Oh, this is loads better!  I can actually see shit.”

“Don’t shine it in my eyes!” Wilbur hisses, batting his torch away.

“Don’t put your eyes by my torch!”

Wilbur gives him a look.

“Fine, fine, sorry,” Tommy says reluctantly.  “So, mole-man, what are we doing in the tunnels today?”

“I am…” Wilbur hesitates.  “I’m looking for this one platform.  It’s… for nostalgia reasons.”

“You’re nostalgic for a grubby ass train platform?” Tommy raises an eyebrow, striding ahead along the tracks.  They’ve been out of operation for years, but both of them keep off the actual rails.

“Yeah,” Wilbur tries to think of a reason he can give.  “Just…”

He’s saved from replying by Tommy shouting into the dark.  “HELLO?!”

Echoing back, “HELLO?!”

“HI, TOMMY!” Tommy shouts.

“HI, TOMMY!”

Tommy looks over at Wilbur, grinning.  “This tunnel is very polite.”

“Is it?  Are you and the tunnel making friends?” Wilbur says sarcastically, but he can’t resist a smile.

“SHUT UP, WILBUR!” Tommy shouts.

“SHUT UP, WILBUR!”

“See, we’re in agreement.”

“I’m not the one shouting, why do I need to shut up?”

“You were giving me sass, mister.  Tunnel and I don’t like that disrespect,” Tommy tuts him haughtily.

“And stop going ahead!  You don’t know where we’re going,” Wilbur quickens his pace to catch up.

“Oh, like you do?  Last I checked, you didn’t wander from platform to platform this way back in the olden days,” Tommy points out.

“Yeah, but I still know the direction–” Wilbur goes quiet.  There’s another noise, and it is not an echo.  It’s that same sound of metal banging together they had heard the last time.  It sounds about as close as it had the last time, that is, concerningly close.  Wilbur looks over at Tommy, to find him already staring back with wide, nervous eyes.  They listen.  There is silence for a time, the echo of the banging noise fading off, but then it resumes rapidly, three sharp bangs that echo off.  It stops for a moment, then three more, slow, measured.  Wilbur is quickly starting to doubt is “old machinery” theory from last time.

“It’s down that way, right?” Tommy whispers in the next pause, pointing down the tunnel.  He jumps when there are once more three sharp bangs.

“M-Maybe?” Wilbur says.  “The echo– I’m not sure which way.”

“I think it’s that one,” Tommy nods ahead.

Neither of them move.  The banging has yet to resume.  Knowing the direction doesn’t dictate what they do now.  Neither of them really want to see what it is, or more probable, who it is.  Tommy looks forward, shining his torch straight ahead.  The tunnel goes straight longer than the light reaches, so it shows only more blackness.

“What kind of nutcase goes banging around tunnels?” Tommy mutters.

“I mean, us kinds of nutcases,” Wilbur points out, but still he doesn’t move down the tunnel.  It’s Wilbur’s turn to jump when the banging returns without warning, three sharp clangs of metal, and a pause.

“I wanna check it out,” Tommy says, but he already looks like he regret the thought.

Wilbur waits for the next three slow bangs to fade out to reply.  “Okay.  Okay, fine, but the moment we see anything weird, we bail, alright?”

Three sharp bangs.

“Yeah, alright,” Tommy nods and seems to muster some bravery.  He starts off down the tunnel first, stopping often to look back and make sure Wilbur is close behind him, even as he can see Wilbur’s torch shining ahead alongside his.

The banging continues on like clockwork.  Three sharp knocks, whoever is responsible seems to take a break, and then continues slowly, before trying rapid knocks again.  Always in sets of three.  Wilbur feels like he’s missing something; he’s already deeply uneasy, and then his torch glances off of a shape splayed out across the tracks.  Wilbur fumbles forward, reaching out to stop Tommy, his torch refocusing on it.  It’s definitely a body.  He has a feeling they’re not merely unconscious.  Wilbur can’t see their face, they’re laid out on their stomach, head turned the other way, so all he can see is what looks like a red cloth tied around a head of short, dark hair.  There’s definitely blood, covering the arm visible to them.

Tommy spots what his torch is shining on, and to Wilbur’s shock, starts running forward.

“Oh fuck, no, nononononono, hold on a fucking second, it can’t– no, oh my fucking god, no fucking way, it can’t be, it can’t be– f-fuck–” Tommy babbles frantically, voice high and hoarse, words almost overlapping.  Wilbur lunges forward to stop him when he runs toward the strange corpse in the dark, but Tommy is too quick.  Tommy falls to his knees by the body, and before Wilbur can warn him of the hundred reasons why it’s a bad idea, Tommy touches it, rolling it over onto its side.  Tommy falls back, face buried in his hands, and it takes a moment for Wilbur to process that he’s relieved.

“Fuck… fuck, it’s not him… it’s not him…” Tommy’s knees are tucked up into his chest, rocking slightly, sounding breathless.

“Tommy?” Wilbur says cautiously.  “Are you… are you okay?”  He asks a rather stupid question, but he doesn’t know what else to do.

Tommy sniffs loudly, wiping his nose on his sleeve, and Wilbur pretends he can’t see Tommy’s cheeks are shiny and damp in the torchlight.  Tommy stares at the corpse again, without any apparent squeamishness at the sight, he still pores over it, like he’s trying to make sure.  “It’s not him,” Tommy croaks, reassuring himself more than informing Wilbur of anything.  Wilbur dares to stare at the body’s face.  The corpse it seems had been blindfolded by a strip of red cloth, but Wilbur can still see the lower half of his face, it’s a man with a patchy beard, a narrow, crooked nose, he seems to be just a few years older than Wilbur.

“Not who?” Wilbur asks gently.

Tommy blinks, and seems to come back to himself in some way, clambering to his feet.  “Nothing,” he’s still staring at the corpse.  “Thought it was… no one.  Just, one of my mates.  An old friend.  I don’t… I don’t see him as much anymore, and he’s… he gets dragged into some shit.  Doesn’t stay out of it like I do, and I always warned him, I always told him…” Tommy trails off, moving on.  “And wears a fuckin’ red headband, and from behind, it…” Tommy nods to the blindfold, trailing off again, his thoughts disconnected.  “A-And the blood on his arm, thought maybe it was… Just from behind and a ways back, not… not the face at all, just…” Tommy shakes his head.  “It’s… it’s not him,” he repeats.

Wilbur still feels almost sick with nerves.  This exchange had happened over the course of a lull in the banging, Wilbur isn’t sure if this pause has lasted longer than the last, but he’s not sure he wants to wait around for it to continue.  “We should go, Tommy.”

“What-?” Tommy glances up at him.  “Yeah,” Tommy takes one step back the direction they had come before pausing.  “What about the… the noise?” Tommy looks both ways, as if inviting it to continue.

“Tommy, that man, he didn’t die from natural causes,” Wilbur says softly.  “And if whoever did that to him is prowling around down here…” Wilbur hesitates.  He doesn’t want to scare the kid.  “I mean, the noise hasn’t gotten any closer.  We’ve gotten closer to it.  Like…” Wilbur looks back toward the stairwell he knows is somewhere in the dark behind them.  “Like they’re trying to draw us deeper in.”  Wilbur looks back at Tommy and sees he’s certainly failed to not scare the kid.

“We… we can’t tell anyone.  We can’t tell anyone about this, about the…” Tommy doesn’t even look at the corpse now, but Wilbur understands.  “Can’t go to the cops, least I can’t.  We… we can’t explain how we were down here a-and–”

“I know, Tommy.  We should go.”  Wilbur doesn’t know why he does it, he doesn’t think, he just does, but he offers Tommy his hand.  Wilbur almost doesn’t realize he’s done it until Tommy accepts.

Tommy’s expression doesn’t indicate confusion on his side of things, but he still seems sort of hazy, so Wilbur just starts walking, guiding them back to the street.  They emerge just as the surviving streetlights kick on, but it’s still far preferable to the dark underground.

“Right, I think… I think we should get out of here,” Wilbur starts walking.  “Don’t… don’t get all defensive if I offer, but d’you want me to walk you back to the hotel?”

“Nah, I’m… I’m good,” Tommy shrugs.

“Don’t do that, man, just… let me do it, alright?  It’ll make me feel better–”

“Not everything is about you, ay?” Tommy scoffs.  “I’m not going to the hotel no more.”

“Are you still having a hard time getting inside?  I thought you figured out a way around the… the stuff,” Wilbur stops when he realizes Tommy isn’t following, instead scuffing his feet and leaning against the wall of the alley.

“No, not just that…” Tommy trails off gloomily.  “The nutter that replaced Jack, y’know the one that put razors on the windows?  Now he’s checking the empty rooms with a fucking golf club.  Thought he was gonna crack my fuckin’ ‘ead open…”

Wilbur steps closer to Tommy, immediately finding himself bottling rage and horror in equal measure.  “He came at you with a golf club?!”

Tommy steps back on impulse, scowling.  “No, he asked if I wanted to go a round and I told him I only did crazy golf- yes he swung at me, dumbass…”

“Holy shit, Tommy, you– Don’t tell me you’re going back there!  I mean, where are you gonna go?”  Wilbur doesn’t know why he feels panicked.

“Obviously not!  That’s what I just said.   I’ll…” Tommy’s feeble excuse of saying he’ll find somewhere else to crash dies with a shiver.  After the night they’ve had, he’s a little more vulnerable.  “Can I… Can I walk to Niki’s with you?  And… And I’ll figure something out on the way there.”

“Yeah, something like sleeping there.”

Tommy frowns, but he doesn’t say no this time.

~

Niki wants to talk to Ranboo.  She doesn’t know what to do with herself on her days off anymore.  Puffy doesn’t have time to go boxing with her anymore, and Eret is busy with the museum and some fancy new investments she’s made so she rarely has time to come over for their usual chats, and if Eret is busy HBomb is busy too, Karl even seems to be busy nowadays.  Ranboo is in the same boat, not that Niki really understands why.  Even if Tubbo has something going on, Tommy is always available.  Niki also has a feeling that Ranboo knows she wants to talk to him, because he’s been finding excuses to go back to his room, before realizing there’s nothing to do in there, coming back out, realizing his sister clearly having some sort of emotion towards him, and finds an excuse again.

“Aren’t you going to help me with dinner?” Niki asks as Ranboo is halfway down the hall back to his room.  He turns on his heels, looking a shred less anxious than someone walking to the gallows and nods.

“Yep!”

“Okay,” Niki can’t help but be amused.  Even if she were actually mad at Ranboo, which isn’t the word she would use for whatever she’s feeling at present, Ranboo is well past the age where she could attempt to ground him, at this point what he’s dreading is her saying she’s disappointed in him.  Which, to be fair, tends to be viewed as a death sentence by all three of them, Ranboo and Tommy and Tubbo.

Ranboo hums to fill the quiet, glancing at her often, and to her surprise, he speaks up first, methodically chopping vegetables so he doesn’t have to look over at her.  “You doin’ okay?”

“What?” She looks over at him, thrown off.  “Yeah.  I think so.  Are you?”

Ranboo doesn’t seem to believe her.  “Yeah!”

Niki doesn’t really believe him either.  Quiet for a bit, neither quite sure of how to proceed.

“How’s Tubbo?  And Tommy?”

“Huh?  Oh, I think…” He falters, "I think okay.”

“Have you not seen them much?”  She already knows the answer.  She asks anyway.

“No,” he sounds amused.  “I mean, I’ve been with you.  When would I have seen them?  I mean, you haven’t seen your friends much.”

“Well, they’re busy with criminal things,” Niki says teasingly.

“Yeah, well, mine too.” Ranboo says, his humor sharper, bitter.

“But even before, you all made time for each other, didn’t you?  Do you know why Tubbo hasn’t come to the Secret City with Tommy at all?  It doesn’t seem like them.”

“I don’t know everything they do, Niki,” Ranboo snaps.

“Ranboo,” Niki can’t help the hint of hurt in her voice.

“Sorry,” he mutters.

“It’s… it’s fine,” she sighs.  “You don’t talk to me anymore, Ranboo.  I just… I just want to know what’s happening.”

“Maybe I just don’t have much to say,” Ranboo shrugs.

“Are you… are you guys not friends anymore?”

“No,” Ranboo says quickly.  His face scrunches up, and he doesn’t even look upset really, more so worried.  “Do we have to talk about this right now?”

“When else are we going to?!” Niki snaps.  “Sorry.  I’m sorry, Ranboo, I’m just… I don’t want you to lose them.”

“You say that like I have a choice.”

“You always have a choice!” Niki grows emphatic.

“Really?” Ranboo is defensive.  “Did you have a choice when you lost Wilbur?”

Icy silence.  Niki is taken aback, a lump in her throat, because it wasn’t just harsh or startling, coming from Ranboo, saying that to her, it’s almost cruel.  Worse when he continues.

“He left you, Niki, and now you’re… you’re letting him live here…”

“You agreed!”

“I thought it was gonna be for a couple days!  Not a couple months!”

“He left everyone, Ranboo. He didn’t just leave me.”

“I don’t care about everyone!  I care about you.  And he hurt you!  And– And it’s like you’re not even mad at him!” Ranboo’s voice breaks slightly, choked up rage that isn’t just meant for Wilbur.

“It sounds like you are.”

“Because you should be,” he says accusingly.  “A-And it’s not fair that he stopped talking to you, he just… he just moved on.  He didn’t… he didn’t think about it.  Like he didn’t even care.”

“Ranboo…” Niki reaches out to him, he pulls away.  “You know it’s okay if you’re hurting right now, right?”

“This isn’t about me. Not right now, okay?  I know I– I know–” Ranboo cuts himself off, frustrated by his own emotions.  “Let’s– Let’s just pick one, and right now I… I wanna talk about Wilbur, and–”

The front door of their apartment opens.  Wilbur and Tommy enter, and immediately read the tension of whatever they have just interrupted.

“Uh.  Ayup?” Tommy gives the two of them a nod.  “Well, I’ve got you home safe, Wilbur, I ought to be going–” he turns back to the door and Wilbur grabs his sleeve.

“Tommy needs somewhere to stay.”

“Do not–”

“The new hotel manager came at him with a golf club.”

“He what?!” Ranboo is snapped out of his own brooding.

“And I kicked his ass and left!  It’s not a problem,” Tommy whines.

“Yeah, but you can’t go back, and you shouldn’t be just sleeping outside, Tommy,” Wilbur says pointedly.

“I’ve done it before!”

“No,” Niki says sharply.  Tommy stares at her, startled.  “Tommy that is in no way safe.  Not right now, okay?  You’re staying here.”

Tommy quickly realizes he no longer has a choice.  “Right… fine, but just for tonight, alright?”

Niki turns to Wilbur, just as piercing.  “Did you get any job applications?”

If Wilbur could sink into the floor, he would.  “W-Well, I… I meant to, it’s just… some things came up…”

“What?  What things?”

“Sorry, sorry, nothing, it was… it was stupid of me.  Never mind,” Wilbur winces, knowing how useless his excuses are.

Ranboo gives Niki a weighted glance that Wilbur is at a loss to understand, and Niki is resolutely ignoring it.

“Tommy, I’m sorry, but if you’re staying here, you’ve got to take a shower,” Niki nods Tommy down the hall.

“Okay, rude, not my fault that I haven’t been able to use the hotel showers in a… in a little while…” he grumbles, following her.

For a dangerous, brief amount of time, Wilbur and Ranboo are alone.

“What came up?” Ranboo asks.

Wilbur notes the hint of ice in his tone and hesitates.  “It was… it was a cheap excuse, I… I got distracted with Tommy.  That’s all.  No good reason.”

“So… so why’d you say you did?” Ranboo says quietly.

“I don’t… I don’t know.  Felt bad about it, really,” Wilbur shrugs.

“Right,” Ranboo is cool and unfeeling.  “Niki and I were making dinner.  Do you think you could help?”

Wilbur knows it’s not a request.

“Right, right, let me… let me wash my hands,” Wilbur nods, going to the sink.  “What’re you making?”

“Um, baked rutabaga and parmesan chicken?”

“Rutabaga…” Wilbur laughs fondly.  “Right.”

Silence until Niki returns.

“Thanks, Wil,” Niki says, reentering the kitchen.

“Sure!  Sure, it’s the… it’s the least I can do.”

“Yep,” Ranboo agrees quietly.

Niki gives him a warning look, before proceeding as if she hadn’t heard him.  “Ranboo, Tommy is going to borrow some of your clothes.”

“Fine with me,” Ranboo says.

Wilbur looks between the two of them, eyes wide.  He focuses on his assigned task.  A terse half hour passes before Tommy returns, hair still dripping wet, dampening the collar of one of Ranboo’s shirts.  Tommy’s had to roll up the pant legs of his jeans substantially.

Wilbur laughs.  “You look like a wet dog.”

“Do I?” Tommy strides over to him and shakes his head so water flies everywhere, largely into Wilbur’s face.

“Tommy!  Come on, man, not… not in the kitchen,” Ranboo says helplessly.

“Sorry,” Tommy rolls his eyes, before catching sight of Niki and offering with more sincerity, “sorry!”

“Ranboo, can you get your desk chair?  We need one more.”

“Yeah, sure.”

Their tiny dining table is typically only used for two, a third chair is there for a guest, but it’s rare for them to have more than that company in the apartment.  It’s far easier to host in the speakeasy.  Niki has dragged the table out from the wall so a chair can be put on the fourth side.  Wilbur helps set the table and Tommy gathers drinks and despite the lingering tension, it feels almost cozy.  The four of them have settled in, Tommy eating with a disconcerting amount of enthusiasm, but no one at the table has the heart to scold him for it.  Once Tommy has cleared a plate and gone back for seconds, he begins to peer around the table.

“Brrr. Bit chilly in here, eh?  What’s got you all up in a huff?”  Tommy is quite good and prodding the one issue everyone else is still avoiding.

Wilbur doesn’t feel like he knows what’s going on, so he doesn’t speak, Ranboo loathes the thought of being the one to speak up first, especially about confrontation, and Niki neither wants to lie to Tommy nor get into things.  Tommy waits.

“Well I think whatever has gotten you lot in a mood, you should do some soul searching, reevaluate your pri-or-i-tees,” he enunciates every syllable around a mouthful of rutabaga.  “Like, Ranboo, handsome lad like you, what on earth could be troubling that brain of yours?  You’re a baker, you’re a looker, you’re all… like, sensitive and shit, you’re a catch!  Niki, if you’ve got problems, you should just… y’know, kick their asses like you always do.  In what fuckin’ world does Niki Nihachu feel troubled by something she can’t wreck shop over?  You’ve got a badass speakeasy and everything!  You don’t fear no pigs, the state should fear you!”  Tommy nods once like that settles the matter, before refocusing on his plate.  The tension doesn’t break, but it does crack a little.

“No grand input for me?” Wilbur says dryly.

“Nah, I know why you’ve got troubles, and it’s your own fault,” Tommy shrugs.

Ranboo laughs.

“Hey!” Wilbur says, indignant.

“You gonna tell me I’m wrong?  Hm?” Tommy gives him a look.

“Yeah, are you, Wil?” Niki smiles.  “I mean, you couldn’t pick up one job application?”

Wilbur is flushing red.  “Look, maybe I… I’m not thrilled at the thought of scrounging together some shitty nine-to-five with a dickhead boss…”

“How do you know what job shit is like?  You’ve never worked a day in your fuckin’ life,” Tommy jeers.

“Have you had a job before, Tommy?” Wilbur says pointedly.

“More than you.”

“I’d say both of you don’t know anything about having a real job,” Ranboo points out.

“And I’d say you don’t know much about having shitty nine-to-five and a dickhead boss,” Niki adds.  “You got lucky too, Ranboo.”

“I mean, maybe I do–”

Niki gasps, dramatically acting offended, throwing her napkin at him.

“Hey!  Hey, I’m kidding,” Ranboo hunches down which does very little to make himself a smaller target.

“I dunno, Ranbus, she’s a tough egg to crack, y’know?  She runs a tight ship.  She hasn’t put up with any nonsense as long as I’ve known her.  She’s been immovable since she was twelve, probably longer,” Wilbur teases.  Niki rolls her eyes at him, poorly masking a laugh.  Wilbur glances back over at Ranboo, startled to find Ranboo staring at him, eyebrows slightly raised, mouth open slightly like he’s unsure of how to say something, to describe whatever unreadable expression he’s currently stabbing into Wilbur’s chest.  “What?” Wilbur shifts uncomfortably.

“You haven’t called me that since I was little.”

“Well, I– I haven’t been here a lot, have I?” Wilbur stammers.

“Yeah.  Guess not.”

Tommy snorts.  “Ranbus?  That’s fucking adorable, aw, little Ranbus!”

“No, nuh uh, you’re not starting with that,” Ranboo breaks his gaze, turning sharply to Tommy.  “Not allowed!  Not for you!”  He says it like he’s trying to get a dog to drop a sock.  “I’d prefer when you call me Ranboob to you calling me that.”

Tommy grins, “aw, good to hear it, Ranboob!  I shall only respect your proper title.”

Ranboo sighs head in his hands as realizes what he’s done.  “Oh no…”

Tommy continues his teasing, and Wilbur plays along, but he’s wrapped up in deeper thoughts right now, so many old aches and pains mingling with new ones, and he doesn’t know where to put it all down.

Dinner finishes in better spirits than it had started, Tommy offering to help clean up after with the same heroics of a soldier offering to dive on a grenade, but nonetheless, he does it.

“Right, then, good night, lads– and Niki,” Tommy settles in on the floor with ease, stealing a pillow from the couch.

“Tommy, you take the couch, man. I’ve had it for ages, I should shake things up and sleep on the floor for a change,” Wilbur offers.

“What’ve you got against floors?  I got nothin’ against ‘em!  Me and floors are old friends!” Is Tommy’s attempt at a defense.

“Mhm, Tommy, where did you sleep last night?” Niki asks pointedly before she goes to her own room.

“On a bench over on 30th until one of the pigs woke me up, why?”

Niki and Wilbur exchange a look.  “Take the couch, Tommy.”

“Tommy can stay with me in my room for the night!” Ranboo says perhaps too excitedly.

Tommy raises an eyebrow at him.  “Look, Ranboob, I did admit, you’re a handsome lad, but me?  I’m shy, I’m not ready for this step in our relationship–”

“Tommy,” Ranboo cuts him off exasperatedly.  “Come on, it’ll be like when we’d have sleepovers and stuff!  It’ll be fun,” Ranboo claps and points to his bedroom door.  “Come on!  Let’s go!”

“What, are we gonna braid each other’s hair and talk about girls?” Tommy rolls his eyes but clambers off the ground to follow.

“I mean, you can talk about girls.  I don’t think I will.”

Niki smiles, fond and relieved.  Ranboo had missed having company.  None of them are acknowledging the hole, the absence once occupied for so many years by Tubbo.  He should be here.  

Even as Tommy is grateful to have a bed, as he’s missed Ranboo’s company just as Ranboo had missed his, he’s trying really hard not to get weak right now.  He refuses to cry over something as ridiculous as the idea of his best friend––his former best friend?––not being in the place he is meant to.  Tubbo has changed.  Tommy knows this, Tommy knows he should be able to let go, because that’s not his best friend anymore, in more ways than one.  At the same time, Tommy knows if Tubbo showed up right now, no matter the state, no matter the blood on his hands, Tommy would only be able to hug him, to bring him back into the fold and say “Where have you been, Bee Boy?  You’re late.  And you missed dinner.”

Instead, he just follows Ranboo, and even as neither of them say it, he can read Ranboo’s silence for the same thought.  They miss him.

~

Wilbur has a difficult time falling asleep.  He’s perturbed by troubling thoughts, thoughts he hadn’t been prepared for.  It’s a peculiar list that’s been growing.  Only looking at today, not even the past months, and it’s enough to make his head spin.  He’d forgone cigarettes to get that scrappy kid some medicine he probably won’t even use.  And when Tommy had run to the body, he hadn’t felt scared like that in a long time.  Probably in as long a time since he called Ranboo Ranbus.

“Fuck…” Wilbur mutters into the dark.  He rolls over and almost screams.  Niki is currently making her way silently across the living room, he sits up sharply.  “Niki?”

“Sh!” She presses a finger to his lips.  She motions for him to follow.  “Come on the roof with me,” she whispers.  In her other hand, she has a bottle.

“The roof-? Right, fine,” Wilbur clambers to his feet.

“Take that blanket too.”

He does so, following her to door in the back of the kitchen, within it is a pantry, and on the opposite wall, a ladder.  He does not ask questions.

Niki unlocks a trapdoor, wincing when it creaks loudly, but as far as they can tell the boys haven’t been woken.

The roof isn’t quiet.  It’s well past midnight, but there’s the wind through the buildings and cars still making their way across the city.  Niki shuts the hatch behind him, gesturing to the roof.

“Put the blanket down.  Over here so we can look out,” she nods to the front of the building.  At this angle to the street, Wilbur can see all the way to the river, to the distant lights of the bridge.  They can’t see a single star in the sky here, but there’s something beautiful about it anyway.

Niki sits on the blanket, patting the spot beside her.  She rips the cork out of the bottle with her teeth, spitting it over the edge of the roof.  She spots Wilbur’s expression out of the corner of her eye and giggles.

“I run a speakeasy, Wilbur,” she says by way of explanation.

“I don’t think most bartenders are comfortable ripping a cork out with their teeth.”

Niki shrugs.  “How would I know?  I can’t exactly meet up with other bartenders in a prohibition state.”  She takes a swig, wincing.

“Touché,” Wilbur sits beside her.  “What’re we drinking tonight?”

“Um,” she takes another swig.  “Gin.”

“Gin?”

She nods.  “It’s popular.  I thought we might as well,” she offers him the bottle.

“Might as well…” Wilbur mutters.  He takes a drink, shuddering.  “That’s… that’s some strong gin, shit.”

“Feels…” Niki mulls it over, “appropriate?”

“What’s the occasion?” Wilbur smiles, still puzzled, but also oddly delighted.  He’s missed this.

“Um, not really an occasion, more like… a goal,” she takes back the bottle, takes a swig, and passes it back, nodding at him.  He obliges and takes another drink.

“Goal?”

“To get you, Wilbur Soot, drunk enough to… to spill your guts to me.”

Wilbur had been halfway through another swig when he chokes.  “Pardon?”

Niki smiles, all mischief.  “To be fair, I am drinking too.”

“Feels like I’ve been brought here under false pretenses.”

“What pretenses?” She laughs.

“Fine.  I dunno,” Wilbur smiles, offering her the bottle.  “Okay, if we’re… if we’re spilling guts, lets do it tit-for-tat, quid pro quo.”

She nods, “wie du mir, so ich dir.”

“Wie du mir, so ich dir,” Wilbur attempts to copy her pronunciation and he can’t tell from her smile if he succeeded or failed.  “So,” Wilbur asks the first thing that comes into his head.  “Is Ranboo… is he mad at me?  He seems… well, about as pissed off as Ranboo can be, if I’m honest.”

Niki nods, like it’s an easy truth.

“He is?”

“Yeah, it’s ‘cause he knows you leaving hurt me.”

“Oh,” Wilbur feels like a weight has just pressed down harder on his shoulders.

Niki nods amicably.  “And now you’re back.  And he thinks you have a lot to prove.”

“Yeah.  I… I think I do,” Wilbur takes another swig.

“Do you have anything to do with the…” Niki gestures vaguely to the streets below.

“The what?” He’s puzzled out of his melancholy.

“The changes.  A lot of little things.  I don’t know,” she shrugs.  “It all sort of started when you turned up, and, sorry, Wil, you…” she almost looks pitying.  “You break things.  Sometimes.”

Wilbur nods, staring out at the patchy trail of streetlights, some lit, some not.  “I break things,” he agrees softly.

“Sometimes,” Niki reminds him pointedly.

He laughs, half under his breath, “sometimes.”

“There’s something wrong, Wil.  Schlatt is dead, and I thought…” Niki frowns.  “I don’t know what I thought.  When I first found out, I was mostly worried about Tubbo, but then I… I thought it was gonna fix things.”

Wilbur once more thinks of his father, and it’s hard to resist the bitterness curdling in his stomach.  “It was bad, then?”  Quiet.  He glances over at Niki, who is looking with the same thoughtfulness out at the city.  Wilbur continues, “Schlatt, I mean.”

She glances at him, clearly measuring up how little he knows.  “It’s like I said, Wil.  You’ve been gone a long time.”

“I have,” Wilbur says like it’s an apology.  It isn’t an apology.

“Drink more.  You’re bigger than me, you need to catch up,” she presses the bottle into his hands.  He obliges.

“I didn’t want to, you know.  To leave you, to leave the city,” Wilbur knows it’s a feeble defense, but it’s all he can think to say.

She still look like she knows something, something she isn’t saying, not directly at least.  “Didn’t you?”

“I…” Wilbur feels very vulnerable.  He can’t imagine Niki knowing, knowing the whole of it, but it’s clear she understands him in a lot of ways.  Which makes sense.  Niki had once been his best friend.  “I don’t know,” is what he settles on.  It’s a safe answer, maybe too safe.

Niki sighs, sitting up, legs folded beneath her.  Wilbur offers her the bottle once more and she pushes it back.  “You first, then me.”

He takes a drink.  She follows.

“You all left, you and Phil and Techno, and… and Phil leaving was hard.  He… he sent money until I asked him to stop.  He called until I… I got too busy to pick up,” she shrugs.  “I don’t know,” she echoes his sentiment, staring down at the roof.  “Techno said goodbye.  A… a pretty good goodbye, I think.  And I was… I was mostly okay for a while.  Schlatt… Schlatt didn’t get involved until I was eighteen.  That’s when I opened the Secret City, ‘cause before I was worried if I got caught while underage it would fall back on Eret’s family, so…”

Wilbur knows it’s far from important, but on impulse he asks her, almost defensive, like a childish teen rivalry has resurfaced.  “Eret?”

“Yeah.  Her family helped look after us.  You… you can’t own a business at sixteen, Wil,” Niki says wryly.  “I mean, we were on our own, really.  Me and Ranboo.  They didn’t really interfere, it just made sure no one was like, trying to take Ranboo away from me or anything like that.”

“Oh,” Wilbur feels almost embarrassed now.  “I… I understand.  Got it.”  He takes another drink.

“You said you were coming back, Wil,” Niki says softly.

“I meant to,” he says hoarsely.  He means it.

“Okay, but when you weren’t anymore, when you didn’t,” she looks over at him, eyes too shiny.  “Why didn’t you call?  Why didn’t you… why didn’t you write?  Why didn’t you say anything to me?”

Wilbur feels like that look in her eyes, grief and broken trust and wounds still unhealed, like it might burn him up from the inside.  He can’t bring himself to look away.

“I don’t have any good answers for you.”

“Give me a bad one, then.”

"Fuck, I'm just a mess," Wilbur wipes his eyes.

"Yeah, you are," she says teasingly.  "Give me an answer."

Wilbur swallows thickly, a lump forming in his throat, finally tearing his gaze from hers to stare at the way the bottle in his hand gleams in the streetlight.  “It was supposed to be a clean break.”  He gives the wrong excuse, but it’s the only one he has.

Niki feels an ache in her chest grow sharp.  She had expected a bad answer, but that one stings, especially when she knows what festers underneath.  “Clean…” she scoffs.  A pause, Wilbur with nothing to say in his own defense, and Niki thinking.  “I was... I was okay on my own.  Really.  Schlatt wasn't a problem until I opened the Secret City and... and when he first started showing up and taking money and... and then alcohol, I didn't... I didn't know what he was gonna do to us.  I'd never... Phil kept us away from that stuff, you know?  I... I made sure they didn't know about Ranboo," Niki nods once, as if reassuring herself, proud and certain she did right by him.  "They wouldn't fucking touch him, I made sure.  I couldn't stop them from knowing he worked there, but... they didn't know he was my family.  So, that was... a bit safer?  I think?  And... I hate this," she says vehemently.  "I hate that this is the truth, but when I stopped fighting, it got easier.  I gave them the money, my supplies, whatever they asked for.  I only fought back when... when I thought it would actually sink us, and before I got brave enough to do that I had to ask Eret for help sometimes and I hated doing that, because I knew I shouldn't have had to.  Once I gave up, his men stopped coming and threatening to break things, and instead it was just Tubbo.  It felt... it felt easier that way.  I gave up so much of what we earned, and that just became normal," she says that word like it's something vulgar.  "But I did it.  I did it.  I kept everyone safe, everyone.  I looked after them all.  Homeless kids, and Schlatt's kid, and Schlatt's boyfriend, and Schlatt's boyfriend's boyfriend, and Schlatt's doctor, and... and Badlanders and ex-Badlanders, and ex-Empire kids, because... because they were gone.  You were gone.  The Empire left us, and I wasn't gonna let that hurt us.  No way.  Maybe I didn't have Phil's authority or Techno's reputation or... or anything like that.  But I kept them all safe.  All of them," she looks at Wilbur, and he is almost in awe of the fire burning behind her eyes.  Wilbur feels so sure that if Niki wanted to burn this city down, she could and she'd probably have the right to.  The fire drains out of her, and once more she looks so tired.  "The earlier years were the hardest.  The ones where I missed you the most, Wil."  Niki takes a shaky breath.  She looks away.  "When I say Schlatt was bad, I don’t say it because I think you could’ve fixed things.  Maybe if Phil had stuck around, he could’ve made it better, but that’s different.  That’s not you.”  A pause.  Wilbur almost feels like he can’t breathe.  Niki continues, “even with the bad parts of it, really I just wanted you to be there, Wil.  You were– you were supposed to be there,” Niki says it with the certainty of a girl who had been eighteen, and alone, and scared, and trying to defend herself from threats so much bigger than her, and waiting for her brother to get taken away, and all the while wishing she could cry on her best friend’s shoulder.

“I am… I am so sorry, Niki.  I don’t expect forgiveness, I don’t, I just need you to know how sorry I am.”  A strange apology for someone utterly certain his father had dragged him out of this city kicking and screaming, but maybe he’s not talking about that kind of leaving.  Maybe Niki knows that.

Niki does not forgive him.  “I believe you, Wil.”  That counts for something too.

Wilbur has felt something building in his chest for weeks, discontent forever rising as his plans never turn out quite right and he has been unable to do the one thing he came to this city for.  A lot has changed in the past months.  His discontent finally spills over.

“I came here, I came back to the city two months ago,” Wilbur stops, taking a deep breath to stop his lip from trembling.  He quickly wipes his cheek.  He doesn’t look at her.  “I came back here to kill myself.”

Niki doesn’t say a word.  She doesn’t know what she could say, but she isn't really surprised.  She takes his hand.

“N-Not here, here.  I wasn’t… I wasn’t gonna do it in your house,” Wilbur continues to spill over, a rambling defense for something he knows cannot be defended.  “I was… I had a plan, it was… it wasn’t supposed to take this long, but I had to– It had to be– Someone else has to do it,” he says forcefully.  “I wanted it to be Schlatt.  Or Schlatt’s dogs, whatever.  If not him, any gunfire would do.  I tried prodding the Badlands, I tried going down the wrong streets and… and spraying stupid graffiti on claimed territory, and none of it worked.  Closest I got was that stupid fucking car bomb, and all it did was almost kill Tommy…”

Now Niki can think of a reply, not to the matter on the whole, but to this piece of it.  “Why?”  Wilbur glances at her, burden evident at the thought of answering that sort of question, Niki corrects.  “Why… why did it have to be someone else, I mean.”

Wilbur laughs bitterly.  “It was supposed to be for Phil?  I thought… I thought it might be nice for it to mean something, so, I thought if I got myself killed in the crossfire of some petty street violence, maybe…” Wilbur trails off, as if by voicing it aloud he’d realized the childishness of his plots.  “Maybe it would make him want to change.  To do better.  Something like that,” he sighs.

“For Phil,” Niki repeats, processing.

“Yeah,” Wilbur says wearily.

“Don’t… don’t take this the wrong way, Wilbur, but… but once all that didn’t work, why didn’t you… you know, try something else?” Niki asks carefully.

Wilbur had forgotten how direct Niki could be.  “Um, well, lots of… of little reasons, I guess.”

“Little reasons?”

Wilbur huffs, almost annoyed with the idea.  “It was… it was that stupid fucking kid, alright?  It was Tommy.”

Niki smiles, almost amused.  “Tommy?”

“Not… not for lovely sentimental reasons, not at first at least, but he just… he kept showing up.  Every day, I’d be wandering around, debating between the river and a highrise, and there he’d fucking be!  Calling me a layabout and following me and hounding me until I’d decide it was worth trying a few more schemes to see if I could get myself killed that way, and even then!  Even then, he’d find a way to get in the way.  Like, I tried to get out in front of a Badlands patrol, when they were first starting to get all nervous, and this kid latches onto me like a furious fucking koala, and he won’t let me out of the alleyway without him, so I gave up that time.  And shit like that just kept happening,” Wilbur sighs, shaking his head, almost amazed.  “He just… by accident, he just kept me out of it.”

“That sounds like Tommy.”

Wilbur laughs dryly.  “Does it?”  Wilbur broods, once more returning to the thoughts that had been circling his sleepless brain earlier.  “And he’s… he needs help, right?  He obviously needs help, and needs it worse than any of us first thought, apparently, and I…” Wilbur sighs.  “And I can’t.  Okay?”

“You… you don’t think you can help him?  Wil, no one would expect that of you.”

“No, not that, and it’s not a matter of expectation, it’s–” Wilbur runs a hand through his hair, tugging at his curls as he feels like Niki and all her love for him is digging a confession out of his chest, but he wants this, he wants to tell her, because he loves her too.  “I can’t kill myself.  Not until… not until he’s better.  ‘Cause I… I almost forgot about Ranbus.”

“You… what do you mean you almost forgot Ranboo?” Now Niki is properly confused.

“Not Ranboo– Ranbus.  I… I said it so effortlessly, I didn’t even think about it, but before tonight, I almost forgot what I called that kid, that I… I was something to him,” Wilbur sighs.

“You still are something to him.”

Wilbur smiles weakly, grateful for her kindness even if he doesn’t think he deserves it.  “Maybe.  I… you’re good to him, Niki.  You were still a kid yourself, and you took care of him.  He’s lucky, and I think he knows how lucky he is, to have you for a big sister, and…” Wilbur trails off, words coming together slowly.  “And Tommy’s not lucky.  In more than one way, because he had no one, and instead of someone like you, Niki, he gets stuck with me instead,” Wilbur laughs.  “So, I can’t kill myself.  Because he needs… he needs someone.  That’s all.”

Niki scoots closer, resting her head on his shoulder.  “I’m sorry, Wilbur.  For… for a lot of things you’ve had to go through, but I’m really glad you’re here now.  And I’m really glad you’re not going anywhere.”

Wilbur takes a shaky breath, no longer trying to ward off tears or the tremor in his voice.  “Thanks, Niki.”

“Maybe Tommy isn’t as lucky as Ranboo, but he’s still lucky to have you.”

Wilbur nods.  “Thank you.  For a lot of things, but Niki,” Wilbur looks over at her, looking her in the eye for once without fear or guilt or shame.  “Thank you for being my best friend.”

Niki smiles, reaching out to mess up his hair.  “You’re welcome.  Thank you for… for trying to bring my best friend back.”

Wilbur understands.  “I’ll be him again.  I promise.”

Niki gets to her feet, unsteady and offering him a hand off the ground.  “I’ll hold you to that, Wilbur Soot.  Don’t think I won’t.”

#ALSO: Song recs for this chapter include Kill All Your Friends by mcr for Niki #and Mess by noah kahan for Wilbur <3 #my writing #mafia au #aaaaa been waiting to get to this one!! #back with a 12k chapter babey! #c!wilbur #wilbur soot #c!Niki #Niki Nihachu #rainduo

[locus-p0cus]

//suicidal ideation, hallucinations, implied/referenced child neglect, Tommyinnit's Exile Arc In General, Major Character Death (?)

(A Character Study With Far Too Much Metaphor)

(Aka, Tommy becomes a Match Girl™)



It was snowing when Tommy died.

For someone who had been supposedly born in the Antarctic wastes of Earth SMP, he certainly wasn't used to the cold. Not like he was used to sunburns and blisters, from explosions or just exposure only Prime knows. Even what little of his memories left to comfort him blistered with heat, something closer to burning than anything safe.

Sometimes he wishes he could go back. Even if it sets him aflame, he wishes he could bask in that warm glow just a little longer. Just to know it was real.

He can't go back. Technoblade's house doesn't count, Techno isn't real warmth. He’s embers at best- burning to the touch, but drawing Tommy ever closer in hope of something gentle- at worst he’s raging, a forest fire raining hell down on anyone unlucky enough to stand in his path.

No, Techno didn't count. Even if on the day Tommy found his cabin, when the snow hadn't yet graced the surrounding wastes, his house had reminded him of the fire that used to be there. The hearth they all used to sit around, safe, protected, comforted.

The hearth is only embers now, and Tommy is running through frozen plains, ready to be burned picking them up.

He trudges through the snow, limbs aching and foot completely numb. He's used to a slight loss of feeling in his toes, nerves damaged from standing at the edge of the holes Dream made- standing too close to explosions must run in the family- but this was something new. Where the ball of his foot usually feels tingly, as if poked with a needle just enough to feel it, now it's his whole left foot, hollowed out and filled with static that penetrates the skin and sends the cold slithering deeper into his bones.

He remembers the first snow after the Antarctic Empire had disbanded, Wilbur struggling to fit a giants gloves on his tiny hands, frustration growing quickly as they fell off every time he looked away. Tommy would squirm, eager to play out in the fluff with no regard for the aftermath. Eventually he ran off, forgoing the gloves altogether, much to Wilbur's dismay.

'Now look what you've done,' Wilbur said, plucking Tommy out of a snow bank like a lost puppy to hold close to his chest. 'This is why we need the gloves, Tommy. I bet your hands burn, huh?'

Tommy, teary eyed and red in the face, nodded. 'Make it better!'

Wilbur snorted out his nose, fogging up his glasses. 'I can't just make it better Toms. I'm not magic. You have to wear the gloves to keep your hands from going all weird. If you had listened to me you'd be fine!'

Tommy whined, attempting to bury his face in Wilbur's neck as best he could around Wilbur's scarf. 'Sorry. It hurts.'

Wilbur just hummed sympathetically. 'Here, let's go inside. We can thaw you out in there, and then maybe we can come back out with gloves on this time.' Tommy was whisked away, back into the cabin, and sat in front of the fire where his hands protested the violent difference in temperature. He'd stayed there all the same, so eager to make Wilbur proud.

It was always like that with Wilbur, he mused as he felt the familiar burn in his fingertips spread to his ears and feet, dancing up his leg dangerously. Keeping him happy had been like trying to herd a cloud of smoke from one room to another without breathing it in. At least when he was young the smoke had been a sign of the cabin's hearth, a place to run to rather than from. It was only later, when Pogtopia turned the Hearth's smoke to an ugly blackened thing, one of paranoia and cigar ash and the hiss of a lit fuse, that Tommy noticed just how much had got into his lungs. Secondhand smoke was a serious issue, Niki had always reminded him when Wilbur was just within earshot, close enough to hear but far enough to feel unnoticed.

It never mattered. Pogtopia held smoke like a tank held water, letting it fester and seep into every breath, and Wilbur's bad habits never died. It made Tommy's job easy, just keep the smoke from smothering the fire, from putting out the last of the flame. Such a simple job, with such an overwhelming consequence. He'd thought, at the 16th, that maybe in L'manburg the air would clear up a bit, be drained of its rot and hate until it was just the call of the fire again.

And then Philza, summer breeze that he was, elusive and barely there, came and blew Wilbur away. He drifted in, unaware and unwelcome, and sent black smoke into the burning sky. And then Wilbur was gone.

Ghostbur is hardly a wisp of what the smoke used to be, safer to breath but thin as paper. Wilbur had been a promise, if a broken promise, of fire. Ghostbur is the drifting remains of a snuffed candle.

Tommy doesn't know if he will ever get the soot out of his lungs.

He's stopped shivering now. Something like Techno's voice, or maybe Phil's or even Niki's, tells him that's very bad. That if he doesn't get inside soon, he'll-

He'll what?

Tommy stares blankly at his hands through the whispered beginnings of a blizzard. The tips, normally grey from soot or dirt, are an elegant lavender-blue. He can't feel his nose, or his ears or his hands. Through his, soaked, stained, tattered excuse for trousers, he can see frost crawling up his leg like a magnificent frozen spiderweb.

If he makes it to Techno's cabin, maybe the man will share his potions, and maybe it'll save his final life, and then maybe he'll be allowed to stay and then maybe Dream won't find him and then- what?

He hides in a house of embers forever, until it inevitably burns down? He never sees his home, his nation, ever again? He leaves his disks, his only solid reminder of the early days of L'manburg, in the hands of his abuser? He lives being burned and burned, and burned, never finding a hearth to lie down next to?

He never sees Wilbur again, and just- accepts this fate?

He reaches the edges of a forest, spiraling aspen trees blending into the snow as it starts to fall. He puts one hand against the nearest trunk, and feels nothing but static.

His head is hazy, limbs weak. His skin is dotted with bruises and burns and frostbite, like someone took the prettiest shades of blue and raked them across their ugliest red canvas. What had seemed so hard, nearly inconceivable mere hours ago at the top of that tower, feels so easy now. And it is.

It is so easy to collapse against an aspen tree, slide to the ground and lean back against the bark. It is so easy to watch the snow build up around him, covering him in a fresh blanket like the storm is tucking him in. It is so easy, to let go, to finally, finally, give in. Give up. Let his spark dwindle and dim.

There are tears frozen to his cheeks. He would wipe them away if he had the energy, if he cared what some fox or wolf found while looking for a winter snack in these woods.

The burning is nearly gone now. He can't feel the aching scars left by so many ruined hearths, he can't feel the wind that bit at his cheeks and arms, he can't feel the blaze of hurt the snow and the world had pierced through his core, drowning out the last of his spark.

Tommy giggles deliriously. The snow has built past his elbows, now. After this blizzard, he won't be found til spring, if anyone ever bothers to look for his body. They would probably be searching around the tower, if they did, and it would be quite the mystery as to how he ended up here if they ever found him.

Maybe he'd be on one of those true crime shows. Maybe someone would finally investigate Dream, and he would be falsely accused for Tommy's murder, or for trying to frame it as suicide.

He croaks out a laugh. Wilbur used to be obsessed with those shows. He'd make up the wildest stories for how the killer did it, or got away with it, or whatever the mystery part was. This seemed like something he'd come up with.

'Tommy,' he'd say, smiling in that way he did when he was about to spout bullshit, 'I bet you the kid just really wanted to die. Didn't go through with it at the tower- most jumpers want to back out as soon as they leap, did you know - but couldn't make it to safety through the blizzard, and sort of gave up.'

"That's stupid," Tommy says, the wind whipping his words away from even his own ears, "It was clearly the green guy's fault. Killed him at the tower and tried to hide the body in the blizzard, huh? Rightfully put away, I'd say."

'It was definitely his fault,' Wilbur agrees, the smoke billowing off him, 'But he wasn't killed. He was abused, right? Driven near out of his mind? He goes up to the tower, takes the step off, and has that moment of 'ah fuck, I was wrong- I gotta live to spite this guy-' but once he's in the snowstorm, he's almost to the cabin but gets sad again and gives up. Lies down, leaves himself to become one with the snow.'

Tommy snickers, floating hazily just inside his body as the snow builds ever higher. "That's so fucked, man," He huffed, "You need professional help. Why would you put him right next to the cabin? You coulda said he was too far away to get help."

Wilbur's voice grows quieter. 'He was almost there,' the wind breathes, 'If he had screamed, they would have heard him. He could have made it.'

He sniffles. "Don’t say that. Please.”

“Tommy?”

Tommy turns his face away, neck creaking from the cold. “Say he couldn't have made it. Say it was too late. He was too far gone."

The smoke churns, the snow builds, and Wilbur just smiles. 'You were so close. You almost did it, Tommy.'

"Stop,"

"Tommy, please-"

"Leave me alone." He breathes, shutting his eyes. The snowflakes on his eyelashes don't melt against his skin. "Go away."

Something barely there, like a ghostly slime, presses urgently against his face. "Tommy I'm sorry, you have to wake up- please, please-"

The pleading fades to buzzing in his ears, only a few words picked up through the cotton in his ears. "Technoblade- friend- hold on- I'll get- stay- please-"

'Tommy? Did you forget your gloves again?' A voice beckons from somewhere in the white. "I bet your hands are burning, huh?'

Tommy blinks down at his hands. They're covered in unmelted snow, blue and grey and blazing through his nerves. He sobs. "Please," he breathes. "Make it better."

Wilbur's hands, smoky white and pleasantly cool, curl around his with a gentle squeeze. 'Of course, Toms. Let's go thaw you out, okay? We'll be careful, take our time with it.'

Tommy nods incoherently, and he's picked up out of the snowbank and held to a broad chest, trenchcoat dusted with snow instead of ash. 'I've got you, sunshine,' He says, and Tommy lets himself drift off in his arms, ready to be carried to the Hearth.



A wail rips through the forest, and the blizzard flurries onward, past the final spark it has snuffed out.

#so uh #yeah #have this i guess #did I write this during the last few hours of christmas #yes #why #only prime knows #dsmp #mcyt #tommyinnit #tommyinnit centric #fanfic #dsmpblr #dsmp fanfic #fanfiction #tws for: #suicidal ideation #suicidal thoughts #hallucinations #frostbite #mentions of burns and injuries #injuries #Tomminnit Exile Arc #major character death #death

[daandyli0n]

Trampled Dandelions Random Facts

@hopalongfairywren enjoy some interesting fun facts!

most of these are just my regular dsmp hcs, but some of them are TD specific

(this is about the characters)

~~~~~~~~~~~

-sam once said to tubbo “I can’t believe that you’re the only cis member of your family!” and then tubbo just had to sit there awkwardly and say “Um...about that-”

-c!beeduo actually had a wedding in this au. it happened sometime like maybe a week after c!wilbur came back

-after getting killed in prison, sam didn’t just feel sympathy for tommy, he felt empathy for him

-tommy, tubbo, wilbur, and fundy are widely known on the server as the L’man Fam.

-tubbo actually really likes singing and playing the guitar and piano (he’s also pretty good at it), but it’s one of those situations where he feels insecure about it. tommy, ranboo, quackity, wilbur, and michael enjoy it though :]

-quackity is a therapist. and nonbinary.

-quackity has also been clingyduo’s therapist since the aftermath of nov. 16th

-speaking of the 16th, that actually goes quite a bit differently in TD! basically, to put it one way, instead of completely blowing up l’manberg (although there was still damage cause wil didn’t like. insulate the walls well enough), wilbur made the decision to instead use the tnt to...blow himself up. ho16 style. phil still stabs him, and that’s actually what makes wil step off the pressure plate, and causes the explosion

-wilbur becomes a zombie piglin after he’s revived

-one of the biggest what ifs for this au is like. what if fundy became president of new l’manberg and niki became vp (in-universe explanation is because the server members are actually smart enough to not make a 16 year old a president. like, after the 16th they could’ve just. Picked An Actual Adult to do it)

-because phil didn’t view tommy and tubbo as his kids, responsibility of the kids was passed onto fundy cause he was closest adult family member those two had

-fundy signed those two up for therapy immediately post-16th

-so, fun fact! while dream would very reluctantly tell people they could visit tommy (stuff along the lines of what’s in canon like “Oh, Tommy doesn’t want visitors right now, but you can go if you want to”), quackity is the only person that he’d outright say wasn’t allowed to visit tommy.

hmmm...surely it can’t be because they’re tommy’s therapist

...right?

-tubbo really got into f**king around with redstone and science during the exile arc of this au (definitely not because he was struggling through some serious mental health issues and also dealing with the fact his brother was exiled and, you know, had supposedly jumped to his death, and he was desperately trying to cope in any way he could...nope, definitely not that)

-tubbo and fundy were the ones to discover logstedshire after tommy left. while fundy freaked out, tubbo just stood there, staring at the pillar in disbelief, while he just quietly whispered, mostly to himself, “Surely not.”

-benchtrio were vibing together in the mansion after tommy got out of prison

-quackity in this au looks great in some simple gothic makeup. also in those sparkly kinds of makeup too. and red and gold. y’know what, i’m sure they could look fabulous in anything-

-quackity and eret have both, at different times in this au, assisted ranboo with things like makeup and style. ranboo appreciates it. they still help out whenever ranboo needs it

-ranboo was one of the few people besides quackity and fundy who checked in on tubbo regularly during the exile arc of this au. especially after tommy “died”/went missing

that’s all for now! i think y’all can tell which arc i’m obsessing over in this au-

#dsmp au #Trampled Dandelions au #dsmp headcanons #(kinda)

[hopalongfairywren]

Whumptober2022- Will they tell your story?

(This was requested by @p0psycle; c!Tommy healing. I kinda strayed from the original prompt, but never the less here you go.)

Their is an old man who likes to sit on an old bench, by the old church of Prime. He sighs as the aroma of blooming flowers and fresh earth fills the air, hanging in a low mist over the dew soaked grass.

If you see him on a morning like this one, you might notice he talks. A lot. Even without another person present, like now. He talks to the birds, the trees, the cows and the sky. If you come up to him, he will smile and make pleasant conversation. He will show you the Polaroid pictures of his family, of his garden, of his cow.

But not today. He is alone today, with his thoughts and memories.

Today he has decided to wake up before them, and head down to the graveyard by Church Prime. He smiles, his old and wrinkled face lined and dimpled.

He sighs, and tucks a wispy strand of snow-white hair back from his eyes. Today is a beautiful day after all, even if his eyesight was not what it used to be.

And then, the old man with white streaked silver hair stands up, and begins to talk.

"It's been a while innit? I haven't been feeling as well these past few weeks, but the doctor said these walks might be improving my health. I dunno if he's right, but I feel better." He says, rambling to nobody in particular.

He gets up stiffly, and crosses over to the graveyard. Dozens of headstones, ranging in size, appearance and date, scatter the plot of land. The man stops at one of the newer ones, it's soil still upturned. His gaze grows soft.

"I guess it's sort of poetic, in away. Now that you're gone, I'm all that's left here. Of the original server anyways." He paused thoughtfully. "Well Purpled, I'm sure you're getting plenty of money and glory where ever you are."

After he had become Admin, he decided to close off server invites for a while. He was glad he relaxed his - if he hadn't he wouldn't have met his wife.

But in a way it was also quietly heartbreaking to see everyone die or move on.

If you were listening to him, and you asked what he, Tommyinnit, the only living member of the Dream SMP still alive, had to show for it, he would have smiled brightly. Echos of his youth ghosting his grinning face.

"Well..."

But currently, he is by himself. It doesn't stop him from talking though.

He turns around to another, older tombstone. "Eret. Oh Eret. It's been nearly eight decades since we all-" He pauses, taking a breath. "Since we followed you to the Final Control Room. And twenty-two years since you've died." Tommy swallows, as memories flit through his mind. Softer and blurrier now with age, but painful all the same.

"I know I told you back then, but I forgive you. You were stupid, but we were all, stupid. And you really tried, to make amends, y'know. That was cool." Tommy smiles as a tear runs down his cheek. "I've taken over the mueseum now, it's so much bigger and fancier. You would have loved the room dedicated to the history of the Palace."

Bitter-sweetness flashes through Tommy's mind. He turns walks towards another row of headstones. "That isn't all. I wrote down everything, for everyone in L'manberg. He paused by one of the stones, straightening a flower vase left their.

"The good, the bad, the all of it. Jack, Niki, Fundy, Even Wilbur and Eret." One face Tommy would never forget flashed through Tommy's mind.

"Especially Wilbur. And I've told anyone who'd listen too about the fish-fucking. They all know. Hell, they even know you're bald, man!" Tommy finished adjusting the flower vase on Jack Manifold's grave, smiling. His smile fades as a more somber expression crosses his face.

"I raised money for the statue of Technoblade and Philza, at the center of the server portal hub." His heart aches at the memory.

"I spoke out against tyranny, all forms, across all sorts of servers. I wish I had done more." Tommy said, sighing. Another smile tugs at his lips as he makes his way down the row of tombstones.

"Ranboob, my man. You have two gravestones now, you mad-lad. The first death one, and the second death one! I can't say everything you did I was a fan of..." Tommy winced.

"But really, I miss you. Your journals too. I'm still trying to understand what kinda drugs you were on when you wrote in your diary." Tommy snickered. "Tubbo helped me. He's buried right next to you. I made sure of it." He bent down, wincing as his back protested, but smiling as he ran a wrinkled hand over the smooth marble of Tubbo's gravestone.

"The best fucking friend I could have asked for. And I mean it. You were their for me when I needed you, all the time. Love you, king." Tommy said, straightening back up.

He breathed deeply, enjoying the breeze as another thought came to him. "Oh!" He clapped his hands together, and made his way out of the graveyard, down the street to a large, brick building.

"I opened the first ever free-of-cost center for abused children and teens in any server, right here. It took a lot of work, and so much patience, but, thanks to this, no other kid around here will have to go through what I went through. I'll make sure of it." Tommy clenched his fist, as a now hazier image of a masked man came to mind.

Tommy paused to cough, frowning. "Huh. I guess early morning walks don't help with coughs." His vision begins to swim, and in his heart, Tommy knows. But he shakes his head, determination filling his veins.

"I hope it's helped, at least." Tommy sighed, as tiredness crept up on him. Despite the sun being fully up, he wasn't hungry for breakfast yet. So he crossed back over to the church once again, even as exhaustion made itself apparent .

"I've done a lot. Big man and all, but..." Tommy's breath grew hoarser and shorter, as the birds began to sing.

"...Have I done enough? For everyone?"

Tommy closed his eyes, and saw them. His friends, his family, all watching him, starlight glimmering off of their see-through bodies, smiles on their faces. A wave of peace washed over Tommy as he sank down onto the bench, feeling two starry bodies on either side of him.

Tommy kept his eyes shut as several tears began to drip down his face. "Oh I can't wait to see you all again..." He murmured, opening his eyes.

His view of the graveyard was getting foggy, as his vision swirled with bright light, and breaths left his throat in tiny wisps.

"It's only a matter of time." He whispered, closing his eyes once again.

#whumptober2022 #no.31 #comfort #fic #dsmp #c!tommy #past character death #refrenced child abuse #dying process #who lives who dies who tells your story

[justarandomsideblog]

In that AU I mentioned sometime before, where Fundy is the personification of L'Manberg...

The anthem would basically be his funeral march, after people realized what was happening...

The kids (Tommy and Tubbo and Ranboo too maybe?) start the song and their broken voices rising over the sound of explosions and withers, and the adults of L'Manberg join in and it's just a chorus of broken, defeated civilians mourning the loss of their country and their friend.

And they sing until he's gone.

#tw death #tw implied suicide #(for the AU overall not necessarily this post) #Fundy is L'Manberg AU #it's past midnight and im tired i should probably sleep but #I was just imagining this AU #where Niki is the only one who knows after Wilbur dies #that Fundy is L'Manberg #and she burns the L'Mantree because Fundy asked her not to try and save him #and she's more loyal to her friend Fundy than she is to L'Manberg and would do anything to make him happy #especially since they both know he won't survive Doomsday #but Fundy loving all his people and his people loving him (that is- Fundy and not just L'Manberg) #and when they realize he's dying Tommy Niki Eret and Ranboo hold him while he fades #and Tommy begins to sing the first verse and the other kids and Niki and Eret join in #and the other adults around them join in too #and it's just a broken chorus rising over the chaos and destruction as the people who are destroying L'Manberg just watch #because there's nothing else they can do #Eret's museum becomes less an attempt to atone for their past mistakes and more a desperate attempt to try and bring Fundy back #a place filled with the history and culture of the land.... it's a longshot but they try

[thesmpisonfire]

Ok so

Quackity lore! And, with it, we FINALLY got an answer we've been waiting for weeks now.

Who was the hooded figure?

After yesterday, it was practically confirmed it was Quackity who was chasing Fundy in his dream, wasn't it?

But, oh, wait....

There's 3 of them! Which one was following Fundy? Who are the other 2?

One question was supposedly answered, but now we have other two to be solved.

Setting the scenario here, the first part where we see the 3 hooded figures was right at the beginning, before we saw the flashbacks and technically even before we saw the present time

One of the tease images was this one:

Which we all immediately thought it was the Grim Reaper, turns out this was Quackity, or a representation of him

Quackity was being represented as the Grim Reaper, or the Death itself.

And Death is part of a bigger group that has 4 individuals:

Death

Famine

Conquest

and War

The four horsemen of the apocalypse, the ones that will bring the end of the world

But, wait...

There was only 3 of them, wasn't it?

Well...

Here's the fourth

Fundy wasn't chased by any of the 3, he was chased by the 4th.

Fundy was chased by himself

Fundy is the 4th horsemen

This is what Fundy will become if he doesn't follow what the books, what his own conscience, warned about. This is what waits for him. A future self that he is scared and can't even recognize.

Now, you look at me saying "Des, stop all this stretch. Anyway who are the other two horsemen then, you absolutely brain rotted clown?"

First: ow, i roasted myself

Now, the 2 other horsemen.

You remember how I said we didnt even know if the first segment was set in present day? Yeah. Remember how, in the actual present segment of the stream, Quackity was alone riding Ossium? You see how all 3 horsemen have enchanted netherite swords, but Quackity only has a diamond sword during both past and present time?

The horsemen aren't together yet.

Quackity will get the revive book, and he will have the power to bring back the dead...

Wilbur and Schlatt.

Quackity is Death

Wilbur is Conquest, he was the one conquering L'manberg and that fought for it. He was the one that had the self proclaimed right to explode it, because it was HIS. If he can't have it, no one can.

Schlatt is Famine, he made Manburg starve by both shutting Niki's bakery down and letting the crops die to the point some of the inhabitants had to eat spider eyes, which are poisonous. He died sick due to only drinking and not eating at all

And, the last one...

Fundy is War.

He was the one raised in it, that had an entire life surrounded by fighting and chaos. He went into a war against Sapnap due to his love (/p) for Niki. Wars are fought with passion, and Fundy certainly has it. He fights and fights, that's all he had ever done. Doomsday? He knew it wasn't a war, it was a massacre. Also, war is not only the blood bath. Its strategy, its planning. Fundy is a smart guy, planning ahead so he complete his objectives.

Fundy's actions always are part of a domino effect that brings war. Even if its unrelated, its a important piece that starts the fall.

Now, the air horns. Nuke alarms.

A nuke is a war weapon. The power that it handles helps you conquest lands. When a nuke lands, it poisons the water and the land, bringing famine to the citizens.

A nuke causes death.

There's how the nuke connects to the 4 horsemen.

The egg?

Well, the 4 horsemen aren't the only ones that cause the apocalypse, they always have some company.

Also, Quackity trying to destroy it only made it angry. It will be more aggressive. It was just the beginning of something bigger.

Remember how Fundy dreamed about a desert, and a crater?

The time is coming, and they'll slowly meet each other again.

Wilbur, Schlatt, Fundy, Quackity

Conquest, Famine, War, Death

#if one day i dont start an analysis with 'ok so' is bc im fucken dead and someone stole my blog #dsmp analysis #Man this one is GOOD OK #dream smp #mcyt #fundy #wilbur soot #Quackity #Jschlatt #Well its more of a theory than analysis but shut up #It has some analysis ok??? #Also this theory gave me a good AU idea and i loved it so much #Anyway they are the 4 horsemen and the end is near #We love to see it

[redorich]

to those who carried on

A fic for @petrichormeraki​ and their Hermit!Tommy AU.

-------

The hermits know Tommy as a quiet young man who is very sad and contemplative. The more time they spend with him (against his will, but they know he needs the company) the more they learn of the little details. His favorite block is cobblestone, he likes building towers, and apparently his favorite woman is the Queen. They don’t ask why he wears a smiley mask even though he never seems happy. They don’t ask why he hides important things in his ender chest. They don’t ask why he wears a shattered compass on a chain about his neck.

(Once, he died in lava and lost his absolute mind. He was so upset about the compass that he didn’t even mention the stack and a half of diamond ore he had on him. Xisuma ended up manually rolling back the server just so Tommy could have it back.)

As time goes on, the tremors in Tommy's hands grow lesser. His dull blond hair seems a bit brighter, his bruises fade quicker, he doesn’t look quite so skinny-- he spends his time serenely building, resource gathering instead of running and fighting. He has a sense of humor under all that trauma, which the hermits unfortunately find out after another massive-scale prank war thought to be instigated by Grian actually turns out to be Tommy's fault.

Tommy starts swearing more. Doc gets the stink eye from Stress for this, but Doc insists he’s never once sworn around the young man. (That’s an absolute lie, but it wasn’t anything Tommy hadn’t heard before. Tommy thinks Doc is remarkably unoriginal in his cursing. He does take note of the German ones, though.)

Inviting Tommy to PvP minigames can be touchy, they learn. He likes to fight, but he fights like an animal with nothing to lose. Grian once chanted, “It stays in the pit!” and everyone present had to spend the next five minutes wrangling Tommy’s soul back into his body from wherever it’d floated off to.

Tommy likes to glide with his elytra. He claims he’s never had one before, but he flies like such a natural that a few people have their doubts. On a dark desert night, with dark blue eyes watching the night sky, he confides to Cub that it reminds him of the way his dad used to fly. He hates rockets, though. He does not confide to Cub that it reminds him of what his brother did to his best friend. He says enough that Cub can guess, though.

Scar gets fed up with Tommy’s creeper holes and makes Tommy help him fix them. At first, Tommy has no clue why Scar is breaking out things like coarse dirt and birch leaves and making the ground all fancy, but he’s not afraid of a little hard work and Scar makes it fun. He learns a lot about terraforming that day, and awkwardly comes back a few days later asking if Scar needs any more help terraforming. Tommy still hasn’t built a real base, not by Hermitcraft standards, but the small hill he’s built his dirt hut near now has a very beautiful, if amateurish, waterfall. He doesn’t tell Scar about this, but Scar finds out anyway. Tommy wakes up one morning to find that someone has left a shulker box in his house. Instead of iron-gripped paranoia, he just feels wonder that someone would give him a gift-- to the hermits, a single shulker box is nothing. To Tommy, it’s everything.

The shulker box contains coarse dirt, birch leaves, and a silk touch shovel.

Tommy helps Xisuma mine a giant hole in the ground near bedrock, because he realizes that he’s never thanked the admin for getting him his compass back. Well, that and the fact that instamining with a haste two beacon and an efficiency five pickaxe is a novelty. Xisuma lets him keep the cobble, since everyone knows it’s Tommy’s favorite block, but also insists he keep some of the other blocks like andesite and diorite. He pats Tommy on the head and tells him to talk to Bdubs about building a house some time. Tommy nods. He's taken aback by how tall Xisuma is, completely contrasting his mild nature. He reminds Tommy of Wilbur, on one of his good days before... Before. Not Ghostbur, though-- the admin is much too alive.

Tommy waits too long, so eventually Bdubs comes to him. The man is silly and outrageous, playing everything for laughs and unexpectedly tender. Bdubs plays up how beautiful he thinks Tommy’s hideous dirt shack is, then offers to help him build a house that’s better. For Tommy, building a house means settling down, accepting that this is his home now. Bdubs doesn’t know this. Tommy builds cobblestone dicks while Bdubs tries to lecture him about depth and block variation. Nothing gets done and Bdubs feels like he might have failed, but come next week Bdubs is flying over the area and sees the dicks are gone; so is the dirt house. In its place is a spruce-and-cobble cottage nestled near the tiny waterfall. Off to the side, he’s made a cozy doghouse for his fox, Theo. Bdubs doesn’t know how close that fox came to being named Fundy.

He spars with False, and she very pointedly does not mention how his stances are uniquely suited to a piglin. There’s only one renowned fighter who’s a piglin, after all. It's Tommy’s story to tell, if he ever does, why he’s seen enough of the legendary Technoblade’s fights to pick up on his stances, yet he’s not experienced enough to know that they don’t suit him. Instead, False gives him different stances suited more for tall, skinny people like the two of them. She’s got blond hair and blue eyes just like him. (Not that she’d know. She’s never seen his eyes, hidden behind his mask as they are.) Every now and then, he imagines her as an older sister, and the one time he says so, she smiles. When Tommy’s at home, looking at his own distorted reflection in his waterfall (he’s improved it since he built it), he muses that their eyes aren’t the same, their hair colors are subtly off. It’s close enough, he thinks.

Stress dies from fall damage and Tommy goes out of his way to pick up her stuff, because the hermits do these things out of the kindness of their hearts. The thought never even crosses their minds to steal. It crosses his mind. He doesn’t do it. Stealing from Stress would be like stealing from Niki.

He shows up at Cleo’s base unannounced and demands to see the “cool shit”. He is appropriately enthused by the giant armor-stand-bugs. She tries teaching him her armor stand magic, but it doesn’t really sink in. It’s okay, she assures him, most people don’t have the knack for it. He does, however, learn that buttons make excellent decorations. He also learns how to braid hair, bribed by ice cream. He is terrible at it, to the point where Joe has to come by to help the two untangle her hair so Tommy can start again. Watching the two bicker over capitalism and six million armor stands and a whole host of other inside jokes he doesn’t get, he thinks he’s starting to understand what friendship is supposed to be like. Joe and Cleo don’t see him clutching his compass. He and Tubbo weren’t too far off from this, given their circumstances. Maybe...

Maybe Tubbo can be forgiven.

Tommy makes minigames of his own, ones that don’t just kill you and steal your stuff. He builds things that are pretty instead of just functional, brews potions with Stress and only calls them drugs once (again, upsetting her is like upsetting Niki. Best not done), and sets up chicken bombs above people’s bases instead of just lavacasting them. (As Grian saw the hundreds of chickens slowly raining down upon his mansion, he got such a peculiar look on his face that Tommy feared he’d fucked up. The shorter, stronger (much stronger oh god why is he so strong despite being so small) man nearly crushed Tommy’s lungs in a hug, proclaiming how proud he was of Tommy. Tommy was proud of himself for not accidentally murdering Grian out of reflex. Was this what healing was like?)

Yes. It is what healing is like. Tommy knows this because that wound gets ripped open again. Tango shows him how to build the most obnoxious redstone-powered noise machine the two can think of. Tango digs a small pit, and asks Tommy to throw down his axe. Suddenly, Tommy’s in Logstedshire again; it’s not Tango asking, it’s Dream. His hands don’t shake when he tosses his axe into the pit, followed by his sword and his armor. It isn't until he’s placed the TNT down that Tango grabs his wrist and asks him what he’s doing. Tommy’s eyes clear enough that he can see past the blond hair and freckles. Tango isn’t green, he’s red. He's shorter than Dream, and his worried eyes are unhidden. Tommy shudders, then tells Tango everything.

Tango has no pity for Tommy, just understanding and sympathy. He doesn’t push Tommy to talk about it, but when Tommy’s done telling his story, Impulse and Zedaph show up. They all pretend that Tommy’s voice isn’t hoarse, that they all didn’t conveniently happen to look away when Tommy took off his mask just long enough to wipe his eyes. The men bake a cake together, fool around with honey blocks, and don’t talk about it.

Tommy knows very little about redstone, considers himself more of a builder and a fighter than an engineer. Still, Mumbo’s living base is inspiring, and Tommy often hangs around the man’s industrial district just to watch Mumbo work. Mumbo knows that Tommy hasn’t purchased a day pass, but it’s nice having someone around to talk to while he works. It’s not like Tommy is stealing anything. (Tommy totally steals from Mumbo’s industrial district storage system. The man’s farms are so efficient that he doesn’t even notice, so Tommy assumes it’s fine. What Mumbo doesn’t know won’t hurt him.)

Lava still isn’t his favorite thing in the world. He stays far away from it, instead of imagining what it would be like to hurtle towards it. Ren doesn’t really notice this, but he does notice that Tommy doesn’t seem to like his mustafarian base. On a spur-of-the-moment whim, Ren whips up some absurd plotline in which he is a lone weary traveller seeking refuge at Tommy’s base from strange alien overlords. The two have fun together, and the young man cracks more absurd jokes about it than the hermits have ever seen him do. When Ren leaves a week later to return to his own base, Tommy keeps being absurd, if a bit more subdued without someone to play off of. He builds a shrine to the “prime log”, which grows more elaborate each day. Beef and xB pretend to be his acolytes, despite having no clue what a “twitch prime” is.

They can’t see his face, but the smile in his voice is a far cry from the despondency he once wore like a heavy cloak. He is so much more animated and alive, full of motivation. He builds an entire island in three days, and hand-delivers an invitation to each and every hermit for his beach party. Everyone shows up, even those with packed schedules (Iskall) and those with introverted tendencies (Etho). Tommy is nearly moved to tears when they show up in groups of twos and threes, as though he hadn’t expected anyone to come. There aren’t enough chairs for everyone, but there is more than enough cake to go around. Tango brings drinks, Impulse brings meat to barbecue, and Zedaph makes an elaborate jump-powered grill. Keralis brings way too much confetti and several handfuls of cheap, obnoxious party noisemakers. Stress brings Tommy a crown made out of alliums. It shines far less than his brother’s gold crown, and it’ll die in a few days, but he wears it all night and keeps it in his ender chest until it withers away.

He spends five days teaching himself to make flower crowns. Even his best attempt is awful, nowhere near as pretty as the crowns Stress makes, but when he gives it to her, she takes off the one she was wearing and wears his until it falls apart.

He dies fighting a creeper on Grian’s behalf, and doesn’t even panic, because he trusts that however many times he dies, no matter how stupid or ignominious or revolutionary or important, Xisuma will always let him respawn.

He spends a grand total of nine diamonds to buy a single plot of land in the shopping district. He builds a cute little bench facing the sunset, with warmly glowing street lights on either side and a small garden. At the end of the bench he places a jukebox, and buys every single disc that Beef’s music shop sells, including Pigstep. He sits on the bench while Mellohi plays and watches the tiny silhouettes of his friends flying in the evening sky. Tommy looks alone on that bench, even if he seems happy, so sometimes other people stop by to sit with him. Scar declares the bench area a public park, since everyone likes it so much, and refunds Tommy his nine diamonds straight from the throne.

#mcyt #hc x dsmp #hermit!tommy au #tommyinnit #xisumavoid #grian #docm77 #stressmonster101 #cubfan135 #tubbo #technoblade #goodtimeswithscar #wilbur soot #ghostbur #bdubs #fundy #itsfundy #falsesymmetry #zombiecleo #joe hills #nihachu #tango tek #impulsesv #zedaph #dreamwastaken #mumbo jumbo #rendog #vintagebeef #xbcrafted

[unfoundhoney]

a sister’s sacrifice ; part three ↠

↠ platonic!c!sleepy bois inc x fem!reader , platonic!c!tubbo x fem!reader ; angst just angst

↠ masterlist

↠ part one ; part two ; part three ;

↠ @leafyturtle @basheverythingyesterday @terribletoothbat @bestioe @junoblad3 @machiebach @ok-honey

when considering the deaths of the people on the dream smp server, yours is the hardest

schlatt was detested by all when he’d died

few people still truly cared for wilbur when he met his end; the man he once was was long gone by then

but you

you never changed

you were a constant for so many & immovably kind to the rest

selfless, giving, caring

even when you just wanted an escape, you came to the aid of your brothers

you gave the ultimate sacrifice & paid the price

everyone mourns you

when the battle is won & dream locked away indefinitely

once everyone has come down from the high of freeing themselves from dream’s reign, the server goes into a state of grieving

there’s no denying your death

they all saw the message in chat

you’re dead

those that were close to you took it hard

niki was narrowly stopped from burning down the bakery you encouraged her to open and helped build

eret put her emotions into work on a memorial in their museum for you

even under the egg’s control, bad & ant put the eggpire aside for you

of course, those who took it the hardest is your family

when ghostbur learns of your death, he’s distraught

he doesn’t quite know how to handle the information

he protects your home & only allows people to enter when he supervises them

tommy took a while to move past his anger & deal with the fact that you’re gone

tubbo ran off to start snowchester

he chose to distract himself rather than truly process his emotions, even if you’d always done your best to break that habit of his

now that you’re not around, who’s to stop him from letting himself be numb to it all?

techno is another one of your family members who chose to barely acknowledge your passing

he became somehow more monotonous & emotionless

and phil

...

there’s no word for a parent who loses a child

wilbur was gone & of course it messed phil up to be the one to take will’s last life but by that point his son was gone

but you

you’d always been such a genuinely good person

phil did so little for you as a father

he was so absent

he never apologized to you for that

he never told you how much he loves & appreciates you & everything you’ve done to keep their family together when he couldn’t be bothered

it’s a few hours after he received the news from ranboo that all the guilt for everything he had ever put you through hit him

he broke down in his kitchen while trying to distract himself by organizing his cupboards

but all he could think about was you

you & your never ending kindness & compassion

he was never a father to you

yet you never hated him

why couldn’t you have hated him?

it would hurt less to lose you if you hated him; it’s what he deserves

he’s unworthy of your love

but he can only dwell so long on you

you are given a proper funeral

you’re buried by the seashore, somewhere between l’manberg and tommy’s abandoned vacation homes in an open field

the sever members plant so many flowers, your gravesite becomes a flower field

but soon, life goes on

it will only hurt for longer to draw out the mourning period

it would do no good for anyone

besides, you wouldn’t want the server to be sad for your sake

techno supposes it’s for the best that you died

he does his best to move on, filling his days with resource gathering and upgrading his tools, weapons, and armor while trying to think through his emotions logically

as much as he liked you

as much as everyone liked you, you were too good

you were the best of them

fate is not kind to heroes

“hello!”

technoblade is not an easy man to sneak up on, let alone scare

the greeting itself isn’t want startles him

it’s turning toward the voice to lock eyes with you

you who is dead

techno is not proud of the sound he made when he saw you but you of all people wouldn’t make fun of him for it

he just stares at you, slowly realizing what’s happened

you look desaturated, the color drained from your clothes

your skin is grey & almost translucent

you’re a ghost

“y/n.”

“hello! who are you?”

techno tells no on one of your ghost form

he even keeps the rest of the server a secret from you

he leads you to your old home & leaves you there w/ ghostbur

he hopes your and ghostbur’s combined amnesia will keep you out of harm’s way i.e. the rest of the server

he visits you occasionally but mostly leaves you be

you live happily with ghostbur for a while

he is very glad to have you back

his memory is nearly as bad as yours, so the story of the server & what happened to you when you were alive is only given to you in bits & pieces that are near impossible to fit together

it was only a matter of time before someone came to visit your house

“...y/n?”

it’s tubbo who finds you first

or he finds your ghost

(tubbo) y/n! oh my god! you’re a ghost! you’ve come back!

(you) hello! *whispers* ghostbur, who is this?

(ghostbur, whispering obviously) that’s tubbo, one of your other brothers i’ve told you about

(you, whispering) oh, right

(tubbo) how long have you- oh, this is incredible! i have to tell tommy! he’s been so sad since you died; he’ll be so glad to see you!

tubbo messages tommy, who is skeptical but reluctantly comes to your house anyway

but there you are

your ghost anyway

which is good enough, honestly

(tommy) y/n!

you catch him in a hug easily, even if you’ve never met him before

(tommy) you’re alive!

(you) no i’m not. i’m a ghost!

techno happens to check in on you when tubbo & tommy are there

bad news for technoblade: you’d told them about techno leading you here

meaning: tommy knows techno hid you from him & everyone else

needless to say, he is not too happy about that

(tommy) you hid her! you kept her away from us!

(techno) tommy, you have to understand-

(tommy) i don’t have to understand shit! you hid her from us! you lied to us!

(techno) tommy-

(tommy) you kept her from everyone! you’re selfish and you’re a liar and you’re horrible and-

(techno) i did it to protect her! she’s been hurt enough protecting others; it’s our turn to protect her. the only way we can do that is by leaving her alone

(tommy) she’s my sister

(techno) your sister is dead, tommy. for once in her life, let her have peace

tommy gives up on techno & goes to you instead

(tommy) y/n! y/n, we can bring you back. we can revive you. well, dream can revive you but he’s in prison so he has to do what we say so we can bring you back. we can be a family again. don’t you want to come back?

(you) ...no

that

...

that isn’t what tommy was expecting

(tommy) what?

(you) if alive y/n comes back, i won’t exist anymore. and i’ve only just got here. i don’t want to go yet

(tommy) don’t you understand how much y/n means to me? y/n has to come back. she has to. she’s so important. not just to me but to, um... tubbo as well! right, tubbo? don’t you want y/n back?

tommy looks to tubbo for some backup but the shorter boy looks away

(tubbo) i think we need to let y/n go, tommy

the betrayal that fills tommy’s chest is soon gone as he locks eyes with techno

tommy knows techno is right

you’re too much of a good person

you’re too willing to sacrifice yourself for others

even as a ghost your kindness is blinding

this server will only drain you of everything you have yet again

he will drain you of everything you are

he’s just tried to convince you to cease to exist to bring back the former version of yourself

(you) i’m sorry. it’s just- i’ve heard there are these really pretty blue flowers in the swamp biome that i haven’t got to see yet-

(tommy) no. it’s fine. i’m sorry. i-... i should go.

tommy leaves your house & tubbo goes with him

even if tubbo caught on a bit sooner to techno’s reasoning, he’s still concerned at his friend’s sudden change in character

(tubbo) tommy... are you alright?

(tommy) ...i really want her back

(tubbo) i do, too. but she’s gone

(tommy) she doesn’t have to be

tubbo can’t argue with that

(tommy) but... maybe it’s for the best

(tubbo) really?

(tommy) yeah.

(tubbo) but just earlier you were telling me about your plan to get the revive book from dream

(tommy) techno’s right, tubbo. all everyone- myself included- has ever done to y/n is take. and she’s given everything

(tubbo) because she loved us

(tommy) as much as she loved us and as much as we loved her... the only thing we’ve ever brought her is pain. i think now... now is her time to rest.

(tubbo) ...that’s very pog champ of you, big man

tommy had planned to visit dream as many times as it took to get the revive book location off of him so he could revive you, but now he’s accepted that he needs to move on

he needs to move on from you & dream & everything dream has put him through

he decides to pay one last visit to dream, put him behind him, & never look back

he’s ready to start a new chapter in his life, one without dream

and the first one without you

but then he’s locked in the prison

two weeks pass

nearing three weeks & tommy still isn’t allowed out of dream’s cell

he’s irritated and annoyed and most of all he’s scared

but he can’t let dream know he’s still afraid of him, that’s why he pisses dream off enough to the point of being beat to death

tommy begs him to stop

but then he’s gone

everything is dark

black

empty

nothing

is this what death is?

conscious in absolute nothingness?

tommy’s feet feel the ground beneath him

his senses come back to him

it’s still dark but he feels as though he can see again

where is he?

heaven?

no, probably hell

or maybe neither?

both...?

what the hell happened?

the first thing to break the silence is the voice tommy has known since he was an infant

the voice of the person who raised him

the voice of the person who has always been there for him

the voice of the person who he has finally let go of

your voice

saying one simple word

“tommy?”

#mcyt #mcyt x reader #dream smp #dsmp #minecraft youtubers #dream smp x reader #mcyt fanfic #mcyt fanfiction #mcyt imagine #tommyinnit #tommyinnit x reader #technoblade #technoblade x reader #philza #philza x reader #wilbur soot #wilbur soot x reader #tubbo #tubbo x reader #sleepy bois inc #sleepy bois x reader #tommyinnit fanfic #tommyinnit fanfiction #technoblade fanfic #technoblade fanfiction #philza fanfic #philza fanfiction #tubbo fanfic #tubbo fanfiction #wilbur soot fanfic

[kateis-cakeis]

Alivebur Has A Crush Analysis

Alivebur is a character who has been through the highs and lows of life. We have seen him lead, we have seen him fall, and we have seen him come back and try his best. What we have not previously seen, however, is Alivebur in love. In the last few streams from his POV, his interactions with Quackity have stepped into the realm of possibility that to Alivebur, this is more than a simple rivalry. Therefore, this analysis will explore Alivebur's possible crush on Quackity by going through the streams to show development, and looking in depth at expressions.

The Book

When Alivebur takes the Project Nevadas book from the chest, he regards it and Quackity's name softly, sounding emotional, almost like he's on the verge of tears - especially as he says 'my kinsman':

“Quackity… My, my old rival! My… my kinsman. We’ve been through a lot, we went through a lot together. And I- And I-” - (Wilbur’s resurrected gentleman of L'manburg: 1:02:11, 5th May)

It's a very emotional line, and truly the first time during the 5th May stream that Alivebur seems genuinely comfortable, suggesting that this is the first time he realises that Quackity is the only one (from his perspective) who isn't afraid of who he was before he died.

Furthermore, it suggests this is where he first gets the hope that Quackity sees him as human.

He even reads the book with a gentle tone, suggesting that he thinks Quackity wrote it with a softness.

In the 31st May stream, Alivebur still has the book on him, and keeps the contents to himself, at first, stopping midsentence as he begins to read it to Tommy.

“Let me read you the book, let me read you the book. ‘My dearest friend, Wilbur’. Uh. And then there’s just some other stuff.” – (Wilbur’s A Deck of Cards with a Green Smile on them: 14:53, 31st May)

Due to him having no idea he was going to be up against Quackity yet, it is likely he kept it to himself because it was too personal to share - only later showing it to Tommy as a plea to why he shouldn't join Quackity.

In between reading the first part and uttering 'uh', Alivebur opens his mouth to say more, but no words come out. As if he couldn't physically read it.

Then he goes on to 'read' Tommy the book, except he makes up the contents. What is interesting here, is how he seems to slip:

“It says: ‘My dearest friend, Wilbur. I’ve really missed seeing you. Come to Project Nevadas. Your best friend, Quackity.’ He’s not my best friend, Tommy, don’t worry, that would be you.” – (Wilbur’s A Deck of Cards with a Green Smile on them: 16:28, 31st May)

Tommy has pushed him for what's inside the book, so Alivebur 'gives in' and starts to read it, coming up with what he's saying on the fly. The slip? 'Your best friend', we know in the 25th July stream that one of Alivebur's goals seems to be Quackity being his friend, making this line all the more obvious that this is something Alivebur wants, to be Quackity's friend, and to be on his side.

When he gets rejected from Las Nevadas, he opens up the book like he's trying to make sense of it:

Because Alivebur took it as a call, took it as an invitation to join Quackity and be on his side - something that Alivebur seems to want. Perhaps because it would be a place to belong, a side to stand with, someone to stand alongside who isn't afraid of him.

Hence why he was petty and challenged Quackity, because he was rejected by the only person who Alivebur thinks regards him as a human.

Alivebur keeps the book on him in the following stream, Healthy Competition. Where, in the middle of talking to Phil, while looking in his inventory, he gets distracted by the book, losing track of what he was saying as he looks at it:

This suggests that Alivebur is keeping the book on him because it's precious, and because he's yearning. It isn't something he's keeping safe in an Ender chest like he used to do with history books, but rather something he's keeping on him, almost like he's keeping it close to his heart.

It's personal, enough to distract him in the middle of a conversation in a way we haven't seen from Alivebur before.

When he's making plans, he doesn't get distracted easily, usually sticking to the point, but here, he trails off in the middle of a sentence, pulls the book into his hand, struggles to open it, and looks for just a second before putting it away.

It's definitely not something that Alivebur would do at all, and is certainly new. Which, in turn, heavily suggests a crush because it is something we've never seen before.

Later in the stream, as Alivebur tosses the named steaks over to Ranboo, Alivebur pulls the book into his hand again. His expression drops almost, he stops in a sense, eyes dipping down. There's a sadness this time:

Like a sad longing. Perhaps the book is a reminder too, of what he truly wants, to be alongside Quackity, to be his dearest friend like it says.

While Alivebur doesn't look at the book in the 3rd and 4th Aug streams, he does still have it on him, showing that he does indeed keep it on him at all times. Evidently, the book is very important to him.

Therefore, due to all this, it can be heavily suggested from the book alone that Alivebur has a crush. Keeping it on him at all times, regarding it softly, being unable to share the contents at first, looking at it with a longing or a sad yeaning, all show that the book is precious to him in a way that proves feelings.

The Crush Question

More under the cut

When Alivebur talks about how Quackity challenged him, calling the look in his eyes cool - before then admitting that he almost called it hot, Tommy proceeds to ask if Alivebur has a crush, to which Alivebur says:

“I have a complicated relationship with Big Q, but I don’t think it’s at that level yet.” – (Wilbur’s A Deck of Cards with a Green Smile on them: 44:55, 31st May)

There is a lot to this line, for example, 'complicated relationship' suggests, within this context, that he's referring to their very colourful past, where they were political rivals, allies, perhaps friends, and also almost lovers.

Considering that Alivebur says he doesn't think it's at the level of a crush yet does indeed suggest that he is aware of his attraction and/or feelings for Quackity.

We know from Niki's birthday party that Alivebur had feelings for Quackity then:

“Sometimes, uh, you know, my, my, my feelings towards some people... in this room get the better of me.” - (Karl's Dream SMP with Niki: 1:46:37, 2nd Nov)

During that pause, that ellipsis, Alivebur looks straight at Quackity before continuing. It is clear that at this point he did have feelings, hence why he kissed Quackity, and why later in that stream he sang songs of love and hate to him. Complicated relationship indeed.

So, 'complicated relationship' possibly does refer to all their past, to everything they've been, or almost been. That paired with him thinking his feelings aren't at the level of a crush yet - at this point - does heavily suggest that this is something that is progressing.

Either he will later realise his feelings have gotten to the level of a crush, or that it's been a crush for a while, but the important part here, is the use of 'yet', he's expecting it.

In turn, Alivebur's answer to Tommy's question does suggest the existence of feelings already, as well as Alivebur acknowledging it can become a crush.

Crush Behaviour

In recent streams it has become increasingly evident that Alivebur is behaving like he has a crush already. Even in the first stream where this becomes evident - the 31st May one - he displays signs of a crush.

To begin, one of the most evident signs of a crush from the 31st May stream are the longing sighs:

It's the way he sighs with his whole chest. The way he's trying to speak but sighs instead, as if that's all he can say, as if it conveys everything he feels.

The lines the sighs coincide with are interesting to note too:

“He’s, he’s um, he’s, I guess my, my yang. He’s the yang.” – (Wilbur’s A Deck of Cards with a Green Smile on them: 47:56, 31st May)

The first sigh takes place between 'he's um' and 'he's', and only then gets out what he wants to say, that Quackity's his yang. Which, from that, it can be suggested that the sigh comes from thinking about Quackity as his light, his other half, as something he can't exist without, something like a soulmate. Because that's what 'his yang' suggests on its own, but paired with the sigh, it shows how he's thinking about it, and from the tone, he's also longing for it.

And then there's the line for the second sigh:

“Because when you’ve got people like Quackity over there, who are just- You know, he said it best, I’m not gonna talk shit about him behind his back.” – (Wilbur’s A Deck of Cards with a Green Smile on them: 1:10:00, 31st May)

Here the sigh takes place when Alivebur cuts himself off after the 'just'. It's more of a breathed sigh, and it has a 'aw' sound to it. There is a feeling of more attraction here than longing. He's thinking about Quackity again and then sighs like this, almost in a happy way. It's almost got an amazed feel to it, as if that's how he feels when thinking of Quackity here.

Then he goes on to say he's not gonna talk shit about him behind his back, which also indicates a crush type behaviour, because while he's setting himself up to be Quackity's rival, he stops himself from doing what most would when they're against someone.

The sighs aren't the only part of the 31st May stream that have a crush behaviour feeling to them. This is also clear when Tommy asks if Alivebur and Quackity were kissing.

He nervously laughs after Tommy asks, and stares at Quackity, with his hand over his mouth. The nervous laugh suggests that Alivebur does feel something towards this question, something positive but guarded, hence his hand over his mouth, and why he stares at Quackity.

And then he deflects. He doesn't answer Tommy's question, he just changes the subject. It's clear from this that he's hiding his true feelings here.

“No, I don’t think I wanna kiss him. It’s um…” – (Wilbur’s A Deck of Cards with a Green Smile on them: 50:29, 31st May)

This is backed up by him saying he doesn't think he wants to kiss Quackity. He clearly has some complicated feelings about it, hence the use of 'think' instead of just leaving it as no.

Evidentially, there is some guarded part of Alivebur that isn't sure what to feel about kissing Quackity, but judging by the use of 'think', and nervously laughing while staring at Quackity after being asked if they were kissing, it seems like he's thought about it.

The next blatant crush behaviour happens in the 25th July stream as Alivebur is talking about how he met up with Quackity:

The body language here, the way he seems to fiddle with his arms, it's a very nervous thing to do, and since he's talking to Phil here, it suggests he's nervously talking about his crush to his dad.

The full line shows this even more:

“Yeah! I met up with him, and I hadn’t seen him in ages. It was, I’m gonna say it, it was nice. It was a nice time. I- I- It felt good, it felt, uh, you know, he didn’t, he didn’t seem afraid of me, which is cool.” - (Wilbur’s Healthy Competition: 7:38, 25th July)

He begins with that he hadn't seen him in ages, which is especially interesting because this is true of everyone, it's been 13 years for Alivebur, but the way he says it here makes it sound so casual, like it had just been a little while. Perhaps it suggests how human and alive he feels around Quackity.

He goes on to say it was nice, that it felt good, and how it's cool Quackity didn't seem afraid of him. Which suggests even more so of just how human and alive Quackity makes him feel, that he simply had a nice time. Especially with him saying it felt good, which shows how this isn't just an intense rivalry for Alivebur, it's something that makes him feel more positive emotions.

The most damning evidence for Alivebur's crush behaviour, however, comes from when he's waiting for Quackity on the 4th Aug stream.

“Wait here, look, I promise you, just you wait. Just you wait. Ready? Ready? Are you ready? Are- Are you- Are you ready? Um… Uh…” - (Wilbur’s Unhealthy Competition: 11:06, 4th Aug)

He expects Quackity to be there as soon as he is, but when he's not there, Alivebur begins to get nervous, um-ing and uh-ing. After two minutes of waiting around, Alivebur then proceeds to proclaim that he thinks he understands Quackity, and how his brain works, only for him to prove he doesn't give a shit:

“This guy. Ranboo, I swear to god, like I, I feel like I understand him, I feel like I know how his brain works, you know, how his- how the- how the cogs in his mind go. And then he just, and then he just goes and proves that he doesn’t give a shit.” - (Wilbur’s Unhealthy Competition: 12:56, 4th Aug)

The reason this is evident crush behaviour is because Alivebur starts getting self-conscious about how Quackity feels about him after waiting two minutes. He assumes that as soon as he arrives on the border, Quackity will be there instantly.

It's very reminiscent of real life, where some people may get self-conscious if their crush doesn't text them back immediately. Except with Alivebur, instead of a text, he turns up on Las Nevadas's doorstep and expects Quackity to drop anything he's doing to tell him to fuck off.

However, the most blatant part of this piece of evidence is when Quackity asks if they've been waiting long, to which Alivebur replies with:

“Uh, I’ve just arrived, you know, I just arri- I, I haven’t been long for you. I, I wouldn’t- Quackity, you think, you think I’d wait for you?” - (Wilbur’s Unhealthy Competition: 14:35, 4th Aug)

He pretends he's just arrived, trying to act suave, that he wouldn't wait for Quackity, just like how Quackity didn't instantly greet him the minute he turned up. He's brushing it off here, but even he himself knows that he isn't acting as smooth as he would like:

He glances away as he drinks from the bottle, then closes his eyes, scrunching up his face. It's an embarrassed 'oh god did I really just say that?' type expression. It's the type of expression you would expect to see from someone who feels like they've just embarrassed themself in front of their crush.

That's what is evident here when everything from this scene is put together, that Alivebur is acting like he has a crush.

Finally, the last bit of evidence we have right now that indicates Alivebur is expressing crush behaviour is when he says he feels alive after interacting with Quackity:

“I feel alive, Ranboo, I feel alive. Someone’s looking at me and talking to me! I’m alive, I’m alive! This is great.” - (Wilbur’s Unhealthy Competition: 27:22, 4th Aug)

You may notice here that the 'someone's looking at me' is similar to what cc!Wilbur said from Alivebur's perspective in the recent reddit comment about him (here), that 'no-one even looked at him' before he died. Alivebur is excited, even seeming to be happy, that someone is actually paying attention to him, looking at him, even if it's in a rivalry sense.

And it's only Quackity that makes him feel this way, despite Ranboo being there, talking to him. It suggests that what Alivebur is feeling with Quackity is unique, and makes him feel more than the friendship he has with Ranboo.

Most of all, the excited and stressed 'I feel alive' and 'I'm alive!' not only suggests that just talking to Quackity makes him feel alive, but that it could be making his heart beat faster every time he sees him and interacts with him.

This is implied through the line because to feel alive in this excited sense induces a reaction, and that probable reaction of feeling alive - being excited, suggests his heart is beating faster. This links back to Alivebur having a crush because when a person is around someone they have feelings for, their heart beats faster.

Lastly, in the latter half of the quote, when he says 'I'm alive!', he looks towards Las Nevadas, and sighs in what sounds like a happy tone. This shows that it is indeed Quackity that is making him feel this way.

All in all, everything from the sighs to the way Quackity makes him feel alive, does indeed suggest that Alivebur is displaying crush behaviour towards Quackity, and therefore, indicates that he has a crush.

Homoerotic Tension

Another factor that ties into the evidence that Alivebur has a crush, is the homoerotic tension he has towards and with Quackity.

The most obvious occurrence of this is when Alivebur bites his lip at the idea that Quackity won't like the burger van:

“So he didn’t like it? He didn’t like you setting up the cookie stand? … Okay. Okay. No, no, no, that’s good.” - (Wilbur’s Healthy Competition: 21:33, 25th July)

As soon as Ranboo says Quackity didn't like it, Alivebur smiles, licks his lips, and then bites his lip.

In this context, there's no anxiousness here, so the only reason he could be biting his lip is because of his attraction to Quackity. A lip bite in this sense means that Alivebur is restraining himself, as well as experiencing desire.

It's a very clear attraction to Quackity, which further shows that he is attracted to him in all senses. This is also a foundation for where his feelings are coming from, and because we know Alivebur's type (he likes a challenge and thought the look in Quackity's eyes was hot when he challenged him), it becomes evident that the lip bite is a reaction to the idea of Quackity being angry at him.

And in the 4th Aug stream, this is explicitly said:

“When you smashed the window and blew up the wall? I’d be pissed, and I bet he is, dude.” - (Wilbur’s Unhealthy Competition: 7:20, 4th Aug)

--

“Ohh boy! Ha ha ha ha, ha! Oh, this is good, this is- this is exactly what I want. Did you see how- Dude, dude, Ranboo, he was trying act like I didn’t get to him.” - (Wilbur’s Unhealthy Competition: 26:47, 4th Aug)

Therefore, due to Alivebur expecting Quackity to be pissed, and him saying it's exactly what he wants after interacting with him, it's clear that him smiling and biting his lip after hearing that Quackity didn't like the cookie stand, comes from wanting Quackity to be angry with him, and so, links into his type, proving his attraction to him.

This links back to his possible crush because a lip bite like this definitely isn't an expression someone would make about a friend or just a rival. Which means it's explicitly attraction to Quackity, and further suggests that him having a crush on him is very possible.

Another notable moment that shows tension in this sense is when Alivebur says Quackity is a hard man to refuse.

“But I get it, I get it, you know, Quackity… He’s a, he’s a hard man to refuse.” - (Wilbur’s Unhealthy Competition: 24:09, 4th Aug)

The reason this suggests homoerotic tension and attraction is because of what 'he's a hard man to refuse' suggests. It's as if Alivebur is saying to Quackity that he can't say no to him, which shows how he is drawn to him. It also suggests that if Quackity were to ask something of Alivebur, he would do it, as he can't refuse him easily/can't say no.

The most interesting part about this is how Alivebur has never been manipulated or persuaded by Quackity, and therefore, in Alivebur's case, this sentiment is coming from their history, and possibly refers to the rivalry they have always had. Alivebur didn't refuse Quackity from running against him during the election era, and he eagerly gunned for a rivalry once he was rejected from Las Nevadas.

All of this indicates that Alivebur saying Quackity is a hard man to refuse has romantic connotations to it and suggests attraction to him.

Overall, the homoerotic tension, and Alivebur's attraction shows how it's very likely a crush has built off this foundation, and suggests why Alivebur is so drawn to Quackity.

Conclusion

In conclusion, Alivebur has a crush due to the way he talks about and interacts with Quackity. It is clear in the way he holds the book close and regards it softly and with a longing, and how he doesn't think his feelings are at the level of a crush yet, as if he fully expects it to happen. Additionally, his yearning sighs, the way he nervously laughs as Tommy asks if they kissed, his body language when he talks to Phil about him, and how he attempts to act smooth in front of Quackity only to be embarrassed by what he said, all suggest he's behaving like he has a crush. Furthermore, biting his lip when thinking of Quackity and saying he's a hard man to refuse show his attraction, and therefore, his likely crush. Overall, Alivebur has a crush due to all these factors.

#dream smp #alivebur #wilbur soot #quackbur #tntduo #dream smp analysis #i could have added more evidence but that would have easily made this over 4000 words #it's 3700 words but still #it's definitely long enough to show enough proof i think

[tarosin]

the great adventures of y/n tommy tubbo jack and ranboo - how y/n made friends with everyone

this is an extra to the great adventures series

requested: yes/no

warnings: cursing

tommy

you were actually friends with tommy when he was streaming to a few viewers, and you even watched as his channel grew. eventually he asked you to mod for him, as he knew he could trust you and because had experience being a twitch mod. he was also the reason you began streaming. as for how you met, you were in the same classes as him in highschool, and since you were the ‘quiet’ person in the class, they sat tommy next to you. honestly, you hated him when you first met him and the feeling was mutual. you didn’t want to sit next to the rather loud teenager and he had no one to talk to anymore as his friends were on the other side of the room.

“do you ever talk?”

“heh?”

“i said do you ever talk...do you always do that”

“do what”

“that fucking HeH.”

“are you mocking me simons?”

“noooo why would i do that...”

“it’s y/n.”

“right, yeah, yeah, i totally knew that.”

“great now please leave me alone i’m trying to work.”

“loser.”

“the fuck did you just say?”

“nothing.”

it was that moment tommy decided he was going to make you just like him, and a few years later that’s exactly what he did. by year 11 you and tommy had grown extremely close. the last day of school arrived a lot earlier than expected, everyone was extremely stressed, no one knew what to expect or what was going to happen. you found yourself hanging around with tommy a lot more as you had no idea if you would both be going to the same college, in september you received a text message that made your night:

tommy: college sent out emails telling you if you were accepted go check

*2 minutes later*

tommy: well?

y/n: i got accepted

tommy: me too

y/n: call me right now

tommy: i’m about to stream..have you ever considered streaming?

y/n: absolutely not

tommy: make an account and stream after me i’ll raid you..make me mod you know how people can be

once college started up, you were slightly nervous the two of you would drift away from each other. however this was far from the case, although you both did different subjects and he was only in on wednesdays, the pair of you would hang out together a lot more. he would be in your streams and vice versa, you would either be in his tiktoks, or you would be the one filming them.

“y/n make a tiktok we can be mutuals.”

“please god no.”

you spent so much time at his house either talking about random things, playing whatever game you could find, or streaming. he dragged you to every meet up he went on, allowing you to meet people such as niki, phil, and, wilbur. you didn’t know this, but he would constantly bring you up in conversations with dream, which eventually lead to you joining the smp in october where you would later be able to meet the likes of jack, technoblade and jschlatt. the only person you didn’t seem to see on the server was his other friend tubbo.

ranboo

you had become friends with scott after being his first twitch mod and when he noticed you started streaming, he was extremely supportive, always raiding your stream once he ended his. today you found yourself bickering with scott because he wouldn’t let you in mcc despite the fact you were ‘the best minecraft player.’

“y/n, i watched you die in minecraft 7 times last night within 5 minutes.”

“oh i’m sorry mr perfect, let me in mcc.”

“no.”

“fine i’ll make my own.”

and that’s exactly what you did..well you tried your best.

you started your stream as soon as scott ended and had him call you on discord after explaining to your chat what you were about to do.

“scott final chance let me in mcc, i’ll settle for access to the practice server.”

“fine.”

“REALLY?!”

“absolutely not!”

“fuck you, ill be in it one day!”

you left the call telling chat you didn’t need that negative energy in your life.

you really have scott to thank for you making friends with ranboo, scott made a tweet explaining what you were doing on stream which caught ranboos eye.

Smajor1995: after not making it into mcc again my good friend @y/n has decided to take it upon themselves to make their own on stream!! ill also be in the stream (if they answer my calls) *twitch link*

ranboo joined your stream and was instantly met with you yelling at scott (again) to let you in mcc.

“IM YOUR TWITCH MOD!”

“i will ban you from mcc!”

“you don’t have the nerve... so he left the call this is bullshit watch me land this water bucket clutch down this ravine so we can find axolotls and build an army.”

*you died*

you pulled your hood over your face before sinking down your chair taking a deep breath.

“FUCK!”

you calmly got back up and looked into your camera.

“i was so close, so very close.. HEY CHAT SCOTT SENT ME A LINK TO THE SERVER!”

a few minutes later you were able to get onto the server, only to be kicked less than a minute later. the reason you were banned being ‘i watched you fail the water bucket clutch down a ravine.’

you continued your build on your server and just spent the rest of the stream talking about anything that crossed your mind, that was until you decided to copy ace race. once finished, you looked into your camera and pulled your microphone closer to you.

“so this is race ace, so scott doesn’t sue me, and basically it’s going to be this course, but i’m going to change a random section practice it every day, not tell anyone it changed. of course i’m going to tell my team we have to win, oh fuck i forgot scott was watching my stream..it’s okay he didn’t hear me he’s too busy planning how he can rig the next mcc.”

ranboo found himself enjoying your content and even noticed you in his chat multiple times.

“just a minute chat i’m just sending an important dm to my mods.”

that’s when you noticed chat paused for a minute after you sent a message, it confused you for a minute before realising ranboo made you a vip on his channel and you decided to do the same for him on your channel, from there you added each other on discord. the pair of you made friends extremely quickly, you were constantly part of his streams as you would call him on discord not realising that he was streaming.

“hi y/n, by the way i’m streaming”

“i just wanted to ask if you knew how to break into a house?”

“....why”

“i locked myself out by accident and my parents are asleep come help me.”

“you are in the uk.”

“okay? catch a flight.”

chat honestly loved you and your friendship with ranboo. the pair of you only met a few weeks ago and you were already acting as though you had known each other for years.

jack

you and jack met for the first time on the smp, which would have been fine, however you met during lore and your characters weren’t exactly the best of friends. once lore had ended, everyone said their goodbyes and left the call. a few moments later you received a discord message from jack asking if you were available to call any time soon. since you were back in lockdown, you had plenty of free time. you arranged a time and date a few days later you called jack, where you had your first proper interaction out of character.

“hello jack!!”

“oh hi y/n i just thought it may be a good idea to get to know each other, well you know considering we’re both on the dream smp.”

“yeah, yeah, i understand what you mean.”

the pair of you ended up getting along with each other, it was slightly awkward for the first 5 minutes of the call, but that was expected since you hadn’t really met jack before and were anxious to call him. however, after that the conversation started to flow and you found out the pair of you had a lot in common making it easy to come up with things to talk about. it ended up feeling as though you were catching up with a friend you hadn’t spoken to for a while.

“has anyone told you your accent is really strong.”

“so is yours, y/n, what the fuck is that supposed to mean.”

“it means your accent is strong, duh.”

jack asked if you’d like to stay in call and join him on the smp whilst he streamed, and you gladly accepted the offer as you really didn’t want to do your college work, and you were enjoying your time with him. a few minutes into the stream jack had killed you several times.

“JACK STOP KILLING ME!”

rather than answering you he just sat laughing. he then went on to attempt to mute him microphone, he failed. however he didn’t realise this, so you sat listening to his plan on how he was going to kill you again. this time you were prepared, you sent a message to tommy telling him to log on along with your location. few minutes later tommy was by your side and helped you kill jack several times for revenge.

“Y/N...TOMMY!!”

“you didn’t mute your mic, so i told tommy you were bullying me.”

“im gonna go...BYE JACK, BYE Y/N, ILL SEE YOU SOON!”

“i can’t believe you.”

“hey you’re the one who didn’t turn your mic off.”

“how did you know?”

“i had your stream on my other monitor.”

“ayeee you watch my streams?”

“...i’ve been a sub for 4 months.”

the two of you stayed chatting and playing for another hour. the pair of you were already so close and you had only met each other the other day. this was just the start of your friendship, soon enough you were in a laugh and the stream ends challenge on his stream, however due to lockdown rules this was done over discord leading to you accidentally leaving the call several times.

“and they’re gone again!”

*4 minutes later*

“SORRY JACK IM BACK!”

“stop leaving y/n!”

“oh i’m sorry, let me just go yell at my wifi to stop cutting out!”

a few seconds later you could be heard faintly in the background screaming at your wifi as it would continue to buffer. as soon as restrictions were over one of the first things you decided to do was go to jacks and stream a laugh you lose where there was a punishment if you were responsible for losing the last heart. however everything was apparently hilarious in person as you would constantly laugh, meaning you were responsible for losing the last heart.

“y/n give me your phone.”

“no.”

“you lost let me tweet from your account”

“fine..”

soon enough your fans and friends with your notifications on received this twitter notification

“y/n: jack is so cool and funny he is also really tall i am not”

tubbo

tubbo was actually the last person you met and made friends with, your community were convinced for some reason that you both didn’t like each other and that’s why the pair of you didn’t talk to each other. this was far from the case you were both waiting for the right time, tubbo was an extremely busy teenager and you didn’t want to interrupt him, and tubbo knew you were currently in a stressful position since you had recently joined the dream smp, also you were still meeting people so he didn’t want to stress you out. this doesn’t mean he didn’t want to be your friend, he actually asked tommy since he had been your friend for at least 4 years what would be the best way of getting to know you.

“mate they hated me when we first met, just talk to them or something. you could have met them the last time i went up to visit you, but they ended up not feeling too good and went back to the hotel room.”

“when are you next coming up?”

“how about next week, and i’ll bring y/n, i really don’t understand why you’re nervous tubbo, it’s y/n they wouldn’t hurt a fly..well hmm.”

“see you next week then!”

a week later tommy dragged you to the train station.

“uh tommy where are we going?”

“...on a train.”

“no way, really? oh my god!”

a few hours later you finally got off the train.

“ill go with my dad to check into the hotel room, do you want to come with us or?”

“i think i’ll go for a walk and stretch my legs.”

“right okay, meet you at the beach later”

you spent a few minutes walking around the beach picking up any rocks and shells that caught your eye, little did you know it would result in you meeting tubbo. once you finished putting your new collection in your pockets you noticed a small crowd of people walk up to someone asking for pictures assuming it was tommy you walked over to the boy, it wasn’t tommy it was in fact tubbo. at first you stayed silent not wanting to really cause attention to yourself. you only spoke up when some people started to make inappropriate comments towards him.

“oh sorry to be a pain guys me and tubbo have plans with tommy in a few minutes, we should go so we’re not late. bye guys.”

you smiled and waved as they walked away. you looked over to tubbo, you could tell he was still pretty anxious about what just happened and honestly if you was in his position, you would react the same way.

“we should probably move from here incase they come back and see you’re still here, are you okay?”

“im feeling better now it’s over..thank you”

“oh it’s no problem i’m, y/n btw.”

“wait you and tommy were still meant to be on the train.”

“the train was actually on time, tommy went to check into the hotel i wanted to stretch my legs, i also wanted to collect some rocks.”

“did you collect enough or did you want more?”

“im not going to say no if you wanna go collect some with me.”

the pair of you walked around keeping each other close incase the people from before returned. half an hour later, the pair of you sat on a bench close to the beach so you could show tubbo everything you decided to pick up, he ended up keeping a rock he liked to have as a memory. tubbo wrapped an arm around you as it was getting cold whilst you watched the sunset.

“tubbo i think tommy forgot about me.”

“you can spend the night at mine, i’ll send him a message to let him know.”

“are you sure?”

“of course!”

“this has to be the most unsafe thing either of us will ever do, we hardly know each other and now i’m staying at yours.”

tommy sent you a message explaining that he didn’t forget, there was a problem at the other hotel and they had to go find another one, but you’ll be fine to stay at tubbos for the night. the pair of you spent the entire night learning as much as you can about the other person. it had only been an evening but you already knew the pair of you would be great friends.

taglist:

@dumb-chaotic-bi-energy @uselesssapphickitten @l0ver0fj0y @etheriaaly @xx-smiley-xx @hawarun @kylobensgirl @cawcaw-pretty-thing @reverse-iak @renleicrashed @c1loudee

#mcyt x reader #mcyt fanfiction #mcyt writing #mcyt imagines #mcyt imagine #mcyt reader insert #mcyt fluff #mcyt x platonic reader #mcyt x y/n #mcyt x you #tubbo x y/n #tubbo x you #tubbo x reader #tubbo imagine #tubbo fluff #tommyinnit x y/n #tommyinnit x you #tommyinnit x reader #tommyinnit fluff #tommyinnit imagine #jack manifold x y/n #jack manifold x you #jack manifold x reader #jack manifold fluff #jack manifold imagine #ranboo x y/n #ranboo x you #ranboo x reader #ranboo fluff #ranboo imagine

[onecanonlife]

Tommy is dead. The server reacts.

(word count: 1,732)

---------------

“What have you done?”

His voice is a reedy whisper, thin with horror and the realization that he is too little, too late. He doesn’t expect the sound to carry over the lava, but a response comes soon enough.

“He wouldn’t stop talking. And he killed the cat.”

Dream’s voice is even, calm, almost a bit defensive, as if he truly believes that he is justified in his actions. Sam swallows down his mounting nausea, places his trident against the floor to steady himself. The lava crackles, hisses, bubbles, orange and glowing, and he can’t cross it. Not now. Not when the security threat remains unresolved. Not when any wrong move on his part could very well mean Dream’s escape.

But he’s already made the wrong move, hasn’t he? Made the wrong move, and Tommy has paid for it. Has been paying for it, this whole last week. He kept him in there, kept him locked in a box with Dream even though he knows very well how it would effect him, kept him locked in with the reasoning that it was temporary, that he would let him out as soon as he could, that he couldn’t risk Dream’s release for anyone, even for Tommy.

But it’s not temporary.

Tommy was sixteen and loud-mouthed and bright-eyed when Sam last saw him, when he said that this would be the last time, that he was going to put his past behind him and look to a new start. Tommy will always be sixteen and loud-mouthed and bright-eyed, and locked in a box. There will be no new start. No seventeenth birthday. No triumphant return, no shining hotel. No tricks, no scams, no pranks.

Tommy was sixteen and loud-mouthed and bright-eyed. Tommy is dead.

He can’t even get his body.

He can’t even get his body.

Sam stands on the edge of a curtain of lava, staring into the orange glow that hides a monster in a room that is now a child’s pre-made coffin, and he wonders if he is a monster himself.

***

“He’s fine.”

It’s the only thing to say. The only truth. The only possibility. Sure, the message is there, glaring up from his communicator in bright yellow letters, but it’s not real. It’s a joke of some kind, a trick. Something to fake everyone out. Maybe Sam’s in on it, too. Tommy must be going crazy in there, to think that this would actually be funny, but it sounds like something he would do.

“Tubbo,” Ranboo says, and then stops. Nothing else. His face is pale, though things like that are hard to tell, with him, considering that half his face is always pale. But he’s gone an ashy-grey sort of color, and it doesn’t look great.

“He’s not dead,” he says, and laughs a bit. “Tommy wouldn’t just die like that. That’d be ridiculous.”

Tommy’s death would never be so meek. Tommy’s death, when it happens, will be a spectacle, a dramatic showing with speeches and explosions and the sun rising at just the right time and haloing his hair, because TommyInnit deserves nothing less than the best death scene. Women wailing and the like. So Tommy is not dead, because if Tommy were dead, that would mean that he died alone, in the company of no one but his murderer, that he died scared, trapped in a small space with no way out, that he died without Tubbo by his side.

“Right,” Ranboo says, and his voice is doing a peculiar thing that Tubbo can’t quite work out. “Yeah, of course. Do you wanna—do you think we should go check it out? Go stop by the prison?”

“What for?” he asks. “Sam’s not going to let us in. He didn’t even when I built a dick on top of it.”

And here is another thing: Tommy can’t be dead because it was never supposed to be Tommy first. Tubbo has tried to live without him, and he found it very hard. So Tommy is not allowed to die before Tubbo does. That is the rule that he keeps locked up in his heart, because Tommy would be upset if he knew about it. But it’s a rule that Tubbo intends to follow, so Tommy can’t be dead.

That would be against the rules.

“Just to see?” Ranboo tries. Tubbo’s not sure why he’s being so insistent about this.

“Nah, we’ve got a hotel to build,” he says. “C’mon.”

Ranboo follows along behind him. His feet drag, like he’s reluctant. But Tubbo has long since given up on understanding why Ranboo does the things that he does.

***

He’s dead.

She should be glad about it. This is what she wanted. Tommy dead, punished for all the pain and suffering he’s caused everyone else. No longer able to start wars, to cause harm, to blaze his way through the server and leave a path of destruction in his wake.

Tommy is dead. She should be glad about it. She is glad about it. She’s even smiling.

There is a message from Jack. She doesn’t check it.

Tommy is dead, that blue-eyed, wide-grinned boy who followed along on his brother’s coattails. Tommy is dead, that fiery spirit crushed and his overbearing, fast-talking voice silent. Tommy is dead, that loyal friend, the protector and defender of all that he called his, the fighter, the scammer, the boy who loved with all of his heart and then some.

Tommy is dead. Dead, dead, dead. There is no coming back from dead. Dead is final. Dead is an ending. Dead means it’s all over. Tommy is over. Tommy is gone. Tommy will never grow old.

It’s what she wanted. She should be glad about it. She is glad about it. She’s even smiling.

Niki brings her hand to her mouth to check. It’s a smile. A smile, for sure.

Her fingers come away from her face wet.

***

It was an empty castle already, but it feels emptier now. The different between a possibility and its lack, they suppose.

Tommy was never supposed to die. They can’t fathom it, somehow. Can’t fathom that it’s real, that Tommy will never grace these halls again. They’d finally begun to fix things, begun to work toward redemption, well and truly. And now Tommy is gone.

Eret grips their communicator tightly in their hand.

“I’m sorry,” they murmur to no one at all.

It was never meant to be echoes in their head, over and over and over again, an apology that means nothing but so much scattered dust.

***

He closes his eyes. Breathes. In and out.

This happens. People die. They die, and they leave, and he’s left behind. That’s his life. That’s how it is.

It still hurts, when it happens. He’s still learning how to make it not hurt. Still learning how not to be angry, that people find it so easy to abandon him. That people find it so easy to go where he can’t follow. Wilbur first, now Tommy, and he doesn’t have anyone left, really.

But it’s fine. It’s alright. He can manage on his own. He always has.

Fundy decides to go to bed early.

***

He takes a moment to breathe. To process. To absorb.

To regret, for what might have been.

The voices in his head call for blood, as they always do, but he will not give them the satisfaction. Not this time. The blood he wants most is not readily accessible, and he will not put himself in the position of confronting the favor owed. Not now. Not like this. Not ever, if he can help it, though he knows that these sorts of things always take their due, always steal their pound of flesh.

“I know, chat,” he says. “You can all shut up, I know.”

It doesn’t appease them. He wasn’t expecting it to.

Tommy is dead. Tommy is dead, and their relationship with it. Any tentative attempts toward repairs have been left to rot, to burn on the funeral pyre. Theseus, fallen from the cliff at long last.

The story was always going to end this way. No one can stop the Fates from severing the string.

He stands with a groan. He is not built for this weather, for this cold, and it is a wonder that he keeps being drawn to it, time and time again. It is a balm, he thinks, but for what, he doesn’t know. For nothing, at the moment, as the voices threaten to crowd out all the rest. But he can’t deal with them right now.

Phil has his own house, now, and a bridge to connect the two. A bridge over still water, such that Tommy will never cross. He should not feel the way he does. Tommy betrayed him. Tommy used him. Tommy discarded him, so he tossed him aside in turn.

But once they were called brothers. Does it mean anything, in the end?

Phil is standing in the middle of the floor, ruined wings on full display. His face is blank, his communicator held loosely in one hand.

“Phil,” he says.

“I failed him,” Phil says. “I should’ve been there for him, and I wasn’t.”

Technoblade has no comfort for the truth.

But he has comfort for his friend, for his friend who is perhaps his father but is definitely family, so he stretches out his arms and catches Phil as he falls, falls and falls and screams, and it is good, he thinks, that the wings are already ruined, because Daedalus tried to catch his son and failed. It is good, he thinks, that the wings are already ruined, so he cannot try again and ruin the rest of himself, too.

***

He nudges the body with his foot.

“You shouldn’t have killed that cat,” he murmurs. The body does not reply, and he sighs.

Tommy’s face is beyond recognition. The blood coats his knuckles. He hopes that there’s enough water in the sink to wash it out before it sets. He hates it when the blood sets.

He didn’t mean to go as far as he did. That doesn’t mean much, in the end. This will work just as well.

He is a god, after all. He is a god, and he will have what he deserves, and more besides.

“Don’t worry, Tommy,” he says. “I’ll make a believer out of you yet.”

#mcyt #dsmp #dream smp #dsmp fic #tommyinnit #awesamdude #dreamwastaken #tubbo #technoblade #philza #niki nihachu #eret #ranboo #fundy #dsmp spoilers #/rp #once again i speedran writing this so it's not edited #forgive any typos or weird wording i just have too many feelings #cat writes fic

[lacystar]

When Tommy died, it was void. It was the flaring, heated hurt all over his body and nothingness. Unable to see, unable to feel anything but pain. Screaming and getting nothing back; not even an echo. Feeling Wilbur and the cards in his hand, and the feeling of the other moving around him, and hearing him painfully close, but being unable to see him. Alone yet trapped.

When Wilbur died, he was shoved rudely off a metro and into a station. He paced it up and down for years, yet the stairs to the outside were firmly blocked off. Trains would pass, but none stopped. Only when Schlatt visited, which wasn't often, and only that time when Tommy came. And only when it came to take him back, of course. But it was close to agony to be passed by so many times. Alone. The world moving without him. His world moving without him.

Schlatt... has no idea what's going on. He's in the gym, but he's corporeal enough for Quackity to visit him. Sometimes he goes to see Wilbur, Sometimes he catches glimpses of the outside. He really, truly has no fucking idea what's up with him and why Wilbur is stuck in a whole other realm while's stuck all Ghostbusters'-future-victim. He knows it hurts though; heart palpitations, killer headaches... his voice has gone so rough on some days he sounds like a scratching record. His lungs are full of lead, and if he doesn't want Quackity to bring him back for the chance to taste power again, he at the very least wants it so he can stop feeling the burn in his throat.

When Ranboo dies...

When Ranboo dies he's dunked in water that's freezing, yet still burns his skin to the point of peeling in a terrible icy-hot hell. The ocean stretches to never-ending horizons without land in sight, and below him the ocean stretches to void, and all he sees is a thousand eyes staring up at him, almost unblinking. Expecting. Their stares burn almost more than the water, and his fear to keep his head above the waves to avoid seeing them is more compelling than the yell of his limbs to quit swimming, accept the burn, and sink. But after enough years... where is he? Why is he swimming? Why does he bother? Who is he, anyways?

When Tubbo dies, he wakes up in a yellow concrete box. It's not quite pitch black, but the walls give him no chance to move as his arms are pressed close to his sides. There isn't room enough to sit or do much more than turn around in place, and he can hear nothing but his own frantic, shallowed breaths as he gulps in air he feels as if he's constantly losing. He spends a few years wondering if this is his coffin and they didn't realize he was still alive when they buried him.

When Sam dies, he wakes up in an obsidian prison cell he's walked past one too many times. Theres a lectern, a clock, a pot of water, and occasionally potatoes drop down for him to eat. He stares at the wall of lava, praying for a visitor, and almost dares to empathize with the man he imprisoned when none arrive. He wonders for years if he regrets building the prison, and can never come up with an answer that doesn't make him feel ashamed of himself.

When Bad dies, he wakes up with his limbs wrapped in red vines, restraining him in a way he used to find comforting but now sees only as the torture it is as thorns dig into his skin. His vision is tinted blood red. Occasionally, a flash of blue teases his vision, but when he turns to call its name, it vanishes. He takes up swearing again; there's nobody there to hear, anyways.

When Eret dies, they wake up in their castle and left to wander the halls. Wander, but barely more than a few minutes at a time; the crown on their head weighs more than the world on Atlas' shoulders, so heavy that they often must return to their throne just to get the chance to rest their head back and let the weight off their shoulders. They wonder if the sacrifice was worth the weight.

When Niki dies, she wakes up in a crowd of people whose faces she can't quite make out. A sea of people, most taller than her, that stretches out for miles. Most smile and laugh, and she's relieved she's not alone. But when she taps on one of them and politely asks for directions to where she can get help, they stare through her. She isn't a ghost; they bump into her all the time as they shove her to walk past, but they don't see her. They don't hear. She screams and not a single head turns. When she collapses against an unlucky stranger to sob, they flick her off like she's a fly. There's not even an excuse she can tell herself to say she's alone.

When Quackity dies he finds himself falling. There is no ground in sight, only sky and clouds as his wings refuse to work and he plummets constantly into nothing. He reflects on the casino and L'manberg and El Rapids and wanting more. His stomach gets used to the lurching as the cold wind burns his cheeks. Maybe his ambition was a little pointless. Maybe he flew too close to the sun.

When Karl dies he awakes to colors that hurt his eyes and a million doorways, each in different shapes and angles. He spends years pacing and stepping through doors he hopes might lead home, that ultimately lead to only more doors. Some are too high up to reach and he stares at them and cries at the fact that he'll never know what's behind them (despite knowing its probably nothing). He doesn't remember everything; just enough to know that anywhere is better than being lost here.

When Phil dies it's a long time coming. Cursed with only one life, the universe goes easy on him. There's a field of rich grass and flowers and trees and skies that beg to be flown through. If only his wings worked. If only he could show Wilbur.

When Puffy dies she finds herself in an endless graveyard. She paces through it for seemingly decades, reading the engravings of her closest friends on each one and spending no less than year knelt at each in mourning, apologizing for her shortcomings. Maybe if she'd been a touch stronger, this wouldn't have happened. Worst of all is when the headstones are blank and she doesn't know who she's mourning at all, forever unsure of the poor soul she let down.

When Hannah dies she awakes to a world rotted away, the air polluted with smog and the seas full of plastic and sludge. Sometimes she sees a rosebush or sapling, tiny and thriving in the distance. Yet whenever she rushes over to coddle and nurture, it dies underneath her fingers. The ground wilts and cracks wherever she steps. She feels as if she's wilting with it.

When Sapnap dies, he wakes up in some sort of cage. A zoo. Figures come and stare at him and laugh as birds pick at his skin until he bleeds, wolves sink teeth into his calves to hit bone, and cows crush his ribs beneath powerful hooves. Each day a new round of animals come to have their way with him. And yeah, he thinks, that's probably fair.

When Dream dies, he's almost relieved to wake up in his SMP. Great, he can get back to business, he thinks. But the more he walks, the more he notices... how quiet it is. It doesn't take him long into his afterlife to realize the people have all disappeared. Vanished. Leaving him alone. No animals or Monsters even appear. Not a friend nor foe, not even a silverfish. The world is his to do anything with without repercussion, yet all he can do for years is sit at an old bench at a cliffside and play discs over and over until the melody burns into his head and makes him want to tear his hair out. All that over a stupid disc. He laughs until he cries.

When George dies... well, it might as well be like any other dream, he supposes.

#dream smp #mcyt #Wilbur soot #tommyinnit #jschlatt #ranboo #tubbo #awesamdude #bbh #the eret #nihachu #quackity #karl jacobs #philza #captain puffy #Hannahxxrose #sapnap #dreamwastaken #georgenotfound #lacydoesherbest #why is it whenever Inspo to write strikes me bad shit happens and I lose motivation halfway through #im surprised I even finished this #blood tw

[koopa-arts]

MCYT Yōkai AU

Wilbur, Tommy and Tubbo are lost, travelling humans, who unexpectedly find themselves in the spirit world. With the help and guidance from supernatural creatures known as yōkai, they’ve got to find their way back before it’s too late.

[I’ve been working on this au for a few days now, inspired by Spirited Away, Yokai Watch and things like that. It isn’t very detailed right now, and I’ll likely change things along the way, but I like where this story so far :-)

More character info under the ‘Read More’]

[REBLOGS >>> LIKES]

Wilbur, Tommy and Tubbo: Three humans on a journey of self-fulfilment. Wilbur had been traveling for the longest but along the way was trusted with the responsibility to take care of Tubbo and Tommy as he took them on his travels.

Philza: A tengu- humanoid creature with avian features. He took it upon himself to protect Wilbur, Tommy and Tubbo from harm when they entered the spirit world and help them find a way back to the living world.

Technoblade: A bakemono- can transform from a giant boar to a human. A feared and respected swordsman, Dream’s rival. Mostly hangs out with Philza.

Dream: A tsukumogami- a mask who, after 100 years, had obtained a spirit and a humanoid form. Technoblade’s rival and only match when it comes to sword fighting. Isn’t as feared as technoblade is, and is mostly seen as a bit of a celebrity.

Georgenotfound: A noppera-bō- a human-like spirit with no face. Spends most of his time with Sapnap and Dream. Practically inseparable from Dream as he was the owner of the mask before it gained a spirit.

Sapnap: An Onibi- a ghost light. Used to be human a long time ago, but has since died and became a vengeful spirit. Has incredible fire powers but doesn’t use them unless seriously angered.

Badboyhalo: A yurei- a ghost. A headless, shadowy demon who despite the hard life he had endured, is far kinder than he looks. Quite protective of children and enjoys their company.

Fundy: An obake- can transform from a kitsune to a human. Very creative and intelligent. An inventor who enjoys building interesting, random and even useless creations. Despite his talent, he isn’t respected nearly as much as he wishes he was. He is also quite mischievous, and enjoys pulling pranks on humans and yokai alike.

Nihachu: A futakuchi-onna- a woman with a second mouth in the back of her head. Very sweet and caring. She owns a bakery and loves giving people her treats, though much of the food is always eaten by her second mouth.

Eret: A rokurokubi- a human-like creature with a super stretchy neck. A very laidback, friendly individual that gives great advice. Often found in Niki’s bakery, smoking a strange concoction from his pipe.

Quackity: A Kappa- a turtle-like demon. Chaotic and slightly conniving. He offers to help row people across rivers for a negotiable price. Despite being small and relatively weak, is one of the few people who can stand up to Schlatt and isn’t scared of him.

Jschlatt: A dragon spirit. Feared by most and disliked by others. He was an old, powerful emperor who had drowned in a sacred river, causing him to become the spirit of that river. Can transform into a massive dragon to a human. He’s infamous for a terrible natural disaster he had caused on earth as a spirit. Due to his power, he is seen an almost ruler of the spirit world. He is somewhat friendly with Quackity and is fond of Wilbur, having secretly known him before Wilbur even entered the spirit world.

[EDIT: These characters pictured in this post]:

Purpled: A regular human who ended up in the spirit world, just like Wilbur, Tommy and Tubbo. However, he stayed in the spirit world for too long, causing him to forget his past and his identity, and also become a spirit himself, meaning he could no longer return to his life in the living world. He usually sticks around Ponk.

Ponk: A kodama- tree spirit. The spirit of a giant, sacred, lemon-bearing tree that grows in the living world. A number of people living world worship his tree, as whenever they were cut down, he would curse the perpetrator before growing a new one in it’s place. He is an alchemist and a healer, but is also unpredictable and a bit scary.

Awesamdude: An Oni- an ogre. Lives in far off mountains and is known for tinkering and making interesting contraptions. Despite his scary appearance he is very friendly and incredibly resourceful.

Karl: A nukekubi- a human-like creature with the ability to make his head float around. He tends to stay out of conflict and enjoys relaxing in other people’s places or making tiny model buildings. Tends to hang around Eret.

[I also want to include Antfrost andd Skeppy. But I don’t know enough about them to know what else to do with them. 

Anyway, I hope you like what I’ve got so far. I’ll keep developing this AU and maybe do something with it once I’ve created a decent (coherent) story.]

#koopa art #dream smp #mcyt #mcyt au #dream team #dreamnotfound #dream #sapnap #sleepy boys inc #philza #ph1lza #technoblade #wilbur soot #tommyinnit #tubbo #nihachu #eret #jschlatt #schlatt #quackity #quackityhq #badboyhalo #fundy #purpled #ponk #dropsbyponk #awesamdude #karl jacobs #yokai au #dreamwastaken

[griffintail]

Hi I'm so so sorry for bothering you! I absolutely love your child reader x parent dreamsmp series, it's amazing!! I had an idea for the lost ones though, or a seperate scenario if that's okay!!! What if the baby was a witch? Witches exist in minecraft, so what if as the child gets older, their powers grow. Windows breaking when they cry, things floating mid air, sparks and fires from their hands, things like that?? I think it'd be really interesting if you want to write it!! If not all the lost ones, then just tge sbi seperate please! Thank you so so very much, i love this series and i cant wait till the next part!!!!!

Magical Born

Pairings: Tommy, Technoblade, Wilbur, Philza, and Ghostbur x F! Child! Reader

Warnings: Mentions of raids, mentions of death, light blood, light violence

A/N: It’s based on Lost Ones Canon, all over the timeline, but it is NOT canon. I didn’t write all of Lost Ones because it’s already a lot to write Lost Ones as its own entity :P I added Ghostbur though for fun because I just really like Ghostbur. Technically he’s part of the SBI!

I went further than planned though so enjoy. ♥

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

TommyInnit

        Tommy screamed as he ran from Fundy, who had caught him stealing from his house, (Y/N) sitting on his shoulders as she laughed. He was making for the sewers as (Y/N) waved at Fundy.

        “Bye, bye furry.” She smiled.

        “YOU’RE SO DEAD TOMMY!” Fundy shouted.

        But now Tommy was laughing hysterically as he quickly turned a corner and made for Tubbo’s entrance into the sewer. Tubbo startled when his door opened.

        “What the—” Tubbo questioned.

        “No time, good luck big man.” Tommy saluted, (Y/N) waving her hand before Tommy held (Y/N) and jumped into the entrance.

        “WHERE IS HE!” Fundy came in a moment later.

        “Damn it, Tommy,” Tubbo muttered under his breath.

        Tommy laughed as he pushed his wet hair back, (Y/N) clapping her hands.

        “Big score for us little (F/L). And extra disc time for calling him furry.” Tommy grinned. “Let’s get home with it all.” Tommy walked along the pathway, letting (Y/N) walk behind him.

        (Y/N) clapped excitedly hearing extra disc time. She bounced slightly behind him as Tommy was bragging about this adventure.

        “The furry may be an easy target to take, but we managed to escape successfully, becoming richer!” Tommy said to the little girl, who continued to bounce, announcing as she did.

        “Boing!” She giggled.

        Tommy chuckled, not looking back at her. She had a lot of energy like him and always had to find easy solutions to let it out.

        “Boing!” She squealed with delight and Tommy froze where he was walking as she…float over and past him??

        “…What the fuck?!” He shouted, dropping the bag of stolen loot.

        “Boing!” She jumped over to the other walkway of the sewer water.

        Tommy put his hands through his hair as he watched his child fucking float.

        “What the fuck is going on?” He muttered, looking around.

        She jumped over to him, and he yelped as he caught her, staring at her.

        “Hi, big man.” She giggled.

        “We’re going back to Tubbo.” Tommy nodded, picking the bag and walking back down the tunnel. “No jumping.”

        (Y/N) gave a pout but didn’t jump as she followed after Tommy. He had her go up the ladder first before following after. Luckily, Tubbo had gotten rid of Fundy, looking rather miffed as he went back to sorting his chests.

        “I already got rid of Fundy, what are you doing?” Tubbo groaned, seeing the pair.

        “Dude, you got to see this, I don’t get it,” Tommy told him. “Ok, (Y/N) jump.”

        She smiled again before bouncing around. Tubbo raised an eyebrow as she bounced around like normal and Tommy was concerned for his mental health for a moment when she started to take large leaps again.

        “What the hell!” Tubbo freaked out.

        “Exactly!” Tommy motioned to the girl, who was making her own sound effects as she jumped.

        “Could…has she always done this?”

        “NO! You think I wouldn’t say if she always did this?!”

        “What the hell?” Tubbo put a hand on his head.

        “I know!”

        Then (Y/N) jumped too high and hit her head on the ceiling, crashing on the ground.

        “Shit!” Tommy flailed his arms for a moment before rushing over to the little girl.

        He made sure she had no serious injuries as she started to tear up then cry.

        “Hey, it’s ok.” Tommy tried to assure her, gently rubbing where she hit her head.

        But she only cried harder and Tommy and Tubbo both screamed as the windows in the room exploded. Tommy was hugging (Y/N) to him, looking at Tubbo with wide eyes as Tubbo was looking around wildly at the shattered glass.

        “What’s going on?” Tubbo gestured wildly to the windows.

        “I don’t know!” Tommy said exasperated, still gently rubbing his hand on her head, the effect doing good now.

        The little girl died down to sniffles as Tommy connected the dots.

        “Wait, she cried and the windows broke. I think that was her.”

        “What?”

        “I-I don’t get how it works but she’s doing these crazy things.”

        “Do-Do you think she’s magic or some crap?” Tubbo threw out whatever he could.

        Tommy’s eyes went wide as he nodded. “That has to be it! I mean…I don’t know where she came from after all.” He muttered now, looking at the little girl.

        “So, what, she’s a witch?” Tubbo huffed.

        “I guess…” Then Tommy’s eyes sparkled with mischief. “Tubbo, can you imagine all the things we could get away with?”

        Tubbo frowned as Tommy now, as Tommy put (Y/N) down as she had calmed down.

        “This could be great! We’ll need to figure out how to teach her of course…”

        “We don’t even know what we’re doing with her as a normal kid!” Tubbo flailed his arms.

        “But she’s still alive.” Tommy pointed at his friend and Tubbo put his head in his hands. “We’ll be the greatest, richest crime trio!”

        “She’s a child!” Tubbo protested but Tommy picked (Y/N) up.

        “You can help me out now little (F/L).”

        The chaos they could cause once they figured out exactly (Y/N)’s powers were. Tommy couldn’t wait.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Wilbur

        “Alright little star, we have to go talk with a few people today but after, we’ll play together, just you and me,” Wilbur promised the little girl as he held her hand.

        They were wearing their matching L’Manberg uniforms and (Y/N) was humming as she walked beside him, their first stop at Niki’s bakery.

        “Ok.” She nodded with a smile.

        “Thank you, little star. Why don’t we get some cookies from Niki to make sure we’re not hungry while we walk?” Wilbur offered with a smile.

        “Yes pwease!” (Y/N) grinned.

        “Please.” Wilbur corrected gently.

        “Hello!” Niki greeted the pair as they came in. “How are you two?”

        “We’re well Niki, I hope you are as well.” Niki nodded and Wilbur went on. “I’ve come to talk to a few the citizens around L’Manberg,” Wilbur told her. “And we were also hoping to have some of your best cookies while we’re working.”

        “Your very best.” (Y/N) agreed.

        “Of course, I just finished a new batch. Would you like to see?”

        (Y/N) looked up at Wilbur with puppy dog eyes and he chuckled. “Alright, but you have to stay away from the furnaces, they’re going to be hot.”

        “Ok!” She nodded before the two went around back into Niki’s area.

        As (Y/N) watched the woman in infatuation put a new batch into the oven as she was taking the other out, putting them up to cool for the few minutes Wilbur was talking with her about how her life in L’Manberg was. The adults continued to talk as (Y/N) was now looking at the furnaces curiously, wondering how the fire worked to make the cookies.  While she was, Niki suddenly screamed, making the little girl jump as Wilbur looked around in a panic to see why she screamed.

        Wilbur saw after a moment, (Y/N)’s hands had little fires on them! (Y/N) spotted them as well and gave a shriek as his reactions kicked in as he spotted a bucket of water. He snatched it up before quickly throwing it on his little girl. The fire was gone as the girl stood soaking wet, Wilbur bolting over to check her hands.

        “I told you not to go near the furnaces!” Wilbur scolded as he carefully took her hands.

        “I-I didn’t daddy.”

        Wilbur looked at her hands confused though. She didn’t have a single burn.

        “How…” He muttered.

        “I stayed away. Just like you said.” (Y/N) shifted uncomfortably in her wet clothes.

        Wilbur looked at Niki, who had run and came back with a health potion.

        “She’s not hurt,” Wilbur told her.

        “What?” Niki looked at him with wide eyes.

        “I-I don’t know how,” Wilbur said, looking back at the little girl, freezing up as he did.

        All of the sudden…her clothes and hair were completely dry! He hesitated before touching her jacket, indeed finding it free of water.

        “Niki…I have no clue what’s going on.” Wilbur gently pulled (Y/N) to him. “Sweetie, how did you do that?”

        “Do what?” She asked confused.

        “You don’t have any water on you anymore.” Wilbur pointed out to her and she looked at her clothes, before shrugging.

        “I don’t know.”

        “Have…you ever done that before?” He questioned and she shrugged again.

        “How…how do you think it happened,” Niki asked him.

        “I’m not sure,” Wilbur muttered. “I need to send a letter to Phil or Techno; they’ve seen a lot more things in their time. I appreciate it if you didn’t mention this to anyone Niki.”

        “Of course.” The soft-spoken woman nodded.

        “Thank you, we’re going to go home early little star.” Wilbur stood up.

        Niki still gave them a few cookies and Wilbur brought (Y/N) home, making a bird call outside first.

        “Whoa, that was cool!” (Y/N) grinned as a crow landed on Wilbur’s shoulder.

        “It’s one of my father’s crows, they’re usually all around,” Wilbur told her as they went inside.

        “Your dad?”

        “I guess I’ve never told you about him.” Wilbur chuckled quietly as he sat, writing a letter to both Techno and Phil. “My father, Philza Mine Craft, is pretty old but he’s a great dad. He taught me a lot and he’s been through a lot. I’ve told him about you a few times, I suppose I forgot to tell you about him in return.” Wilbur ruffled her hair lightly, making her giggle. “I don’t talk to my brother Techno as much though…we had some arguments in the past. I’m hoping maybe we’ll put that aside to see what be happening with you.”

        He signed off the letters and let the crow have them before they flew off.

        “We’ll know in a few days though I suppose. Now, let’s play some music while we eat these cookies.” Wilbur offered out.

        Waiting for a return letter became a little more desperate the next few days. Not only had Wilbur found his daughter’s hands liked to spontaneously combust with flames sometimes, through some careful observing, but he also found if she was particularly happy she’d find herself being able to jump to his height; and thanks to Tommy, when the boy had come to visit to get instructions from Wilbur, he decided to scare the little girl, causing her to scream and Tommy, in turn, screamed when all the windows shattered.

        “Not a word!” Wilbur immediately demanded as he made sure (Y/N) wouldn’t step on any glass. “To anyone.”

        “What the fuck?!” Tommy screeched.

        Wilbur was tempted to force the boy to stay at the house to ensure word didn’t get out but after a bit of time, he got Tommy to promise him. Finally, two separate letters came in to tell him the same thing.

        (Y/N) might be a witch.

        Techno was a bit blunter about it, proceeding to tell Wilbur off a bit for just taking some orphan, but Wilbur knew it was just his brother’s ways and didn’t hold it against him. Phil’s letter had a bit more useful information and he had once researched witches. Wilbur kept that letter safe as he came out to find (Y/N) jumping around with her powers. She was smart and figured out how to activate it, she often liked to play with her floating power.

        Wilbur wondered what else she might be able to do…It was a rather terrifying thought but he’d learn regardless. She was still his little star, witch or not.

        “You’re getting good at that little star.” Wilbur praised as he came over.

        He also let the thought cross his mind if that’s why she was abandoned but pushed it away. That didn’t matter, she was his little girl now and they’d figure it out together.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Technoblade

        Techno watched from the porch with crossed arms as (Y/N) laughed while running from Tommy, who was armed with two snowballs. Tommy did know how to bring the energy out of his kid. (Y/N) stumbled and fell, Tommy, grinning with victory as he stood over her but the little girl reacted fast and threw snow at him before running again with a giggle at Tommy’s temporary blindness.

        Tommy shouted profanities as Techno smirked, the voices praising his child. That’s his little girl.

        “How much longer are you two going to be out here?” Techno called now.

        “Not much longer!” Tommy shouted before swearing again as (Y/N) managed to hit with a snowball while he was distracted. “THAT’S CHEATING!”

        “All is fair in war!” She demanded.

        “Don’t track snow in the house,” Techno told them before going back into the house.

        Phil was tending to one of his crows as Techno came back in.

        “They alright?” Phil asked.

        “They’re fine.” Techno nodded, going over to his enchanting equipment.

        “I’m proud of you, mate. For taking in that little girl and making sure she’s happy.”

        Techno simply shrugged as he was glad, he had taken in the little girl as well. Life would be nearly the same. He often thought about how things might have been different if she wasn’t around, he probably would have already taken out L’Manberg but he held back for her. He didn’t need people hunting him down again right now and find out about her…

        He was taking off his pick to put a new enchantment on it when his world slowed hearing a scream and Tommy shouting loudly. Running out with his pick in hand, Phil grabbing his sword off a chest as he ran after, he found (Y/N) shaking on the ground as a wolf stalked towards her as Tommy had a bloody arm. Techno dropped his pick as he ran over, taking off his crossbow, a bolt already loaded.

        He took a shot at the wolf but his panic made him sloppy and he missed! It went over the wolf, it not noticing until…

        The bolt turned around all of the sudden and hit the wolf right in the front leg. It gave a yelp, snarling as it backed away from the little girl now, who was scrambling back.

        “B-Bad wolf!” She shouted as she shook.

        The wolf noticed the approaching pissed off man and cut its losses, running off with a limp. Techno was most certainly confused about the bolt but he had other worries. Phil was already going over, tending to Tommy as Techno came next to (Y/N), putting a hand on her shoulder.

        “You, ok? It didn’t hurt you, did it?” He asked as he quickly checked the little girl.

        “No.” She shook her head before hugging him. “It hurt Tommy.”

        “I know, Phil’s got him though.” Techno hugged her before picking her up. “Let’s get inside.”

        Phil was helping Tommy inside as Techno followed, picking up his pick.

        “If it hurt Tommy, is it ok it got hurt?” (Y/N) asked Techno.

        “Yes, because it was about to hurt you too. So, it’s ok. That’s defense.” Techno told her but he wasn’t sure what happened.

        The bolt had certainly missed and then flew back, striking it in the leg.

        “I didn’t want to hurt it.” She mumbled. “But it’s right.”

        Techno was confused by her words, but maybe she had gotten confused with her own words. He put it to the side for now as he spent a bit of time with her for the rest of the day to make sure she was alright. After he put her down to sleep, he came down into the main room where Phil was sitting by the fire. Techno sat across from him and brought up the thought he had put aside.

        “(Y/N) said something weird today.”

        “What was that?” Phil looked at him.

        “She said she didn’t want to hurt that wolf. Like she was the one who fired the crossbow.”

        Phil hummed, looking out the window. “Something was weird, I saw that bolt move on it’s on.”

        “Good, I’m not losing my mind.”

        Phil gave a quiet laugh. “Not yet my son. But something odd did happen. Have you ever seen anything like that?”

        “No…Not around here at least. I’ve seen witches do stuff like that though. That’s why they’re difficult to kill sometimes.” Techno took off his mask for the day, putting it down safely on the fireplace mantle. “If there had been a good witch around, I’d say it was them.”

        “I haven’t seen a witch in some time. Pretty rare these days, some people don’t like their power with magic and hunt them down. They’ve pretty much gone into hiding.” Phil nodded.

        “Sounds about right,” Techno grumbled, leaning against the stone of the fireplace, closing his eyes.

        “Mate, you don’t think…(Y/N) might be a witch?”

        “Doubt it. Would have meant she was magic born; they wouldn’t have just left her on someone’s doorstep for them to die.”

        “It’s rare but she could have been naturally born, with normal parents, and we’re now just finding out.”

        “Even then, when she was born, she shows signs. A magical birth has effects while they’re born. The parents would have known.”

        That made Techno frown now at the thought as he looked over at quiet Phil, who had the same frown. They were both thinking the same thing; what if they left her because of the magical birth?

        “It would explain why she said she hurt the wolf.” Phil leaned back as well on the other side of the fireplace.

        “Yeah…I’ll find out more in the mor—”

        Both Phil and Techno jumped up with muscle memory at the sound of (Y/N) screaming. Phil’s crows cried out in panic as Techno was first up the ladder to find (Y/N) whimpering as she hugged herself as a few objects floated around the room. Techno went to her side as Phil came up, Tommy shouting up as he had been startled awake by the noise.

        “Hey, it’s ok little goddess,” Techno muttered to her, putting a hand on her side.

        “T-The wo-wolf.” She whimpered.

        “It can’t hurt you. I won’t let it.” Techno told her, sitting next to her and pulling her into him. “And neither will Phil or Tommy.”

        She gave a few more soft whimpers before everything in the room slowly floated down, Tommy standing on the ladder, watching amazement.

        “You’re alright,” Techno promised, looking at Phil, the two sharing a meaningful look. “We won’t let anything or one hurt you.”

        There was just more of a reason to keep (Y/N) their secret. He’d have to brush up on his knowledge about witches as well.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Phil

        “Alright, it’s been a while since I’ve done this,” Phil told the little girl. “So, I got to do a bit of practice.”

        “Ok.” The little girl tried to have patience as she was taught but couldn’t help but bounce in excitement.

        Phil chuckled, ruffling her hair, before spreading his wings. “Ok, let’s see if I still remember this…”

        He took a deep breath before taking flight; he grinned as he felt the wind flying by, enjoying the wonderful memories that came to him. Flying had been something he had really missed. From the ground, (Y/N) cheered in the snow as she jumped, clapping. Phil chuckled at his little girl’s reaction as he took a few warm-up laps to make sure his wings were truly back in shape.

        Techno looked up from his work at the commotion, coming out as he took off his glasses. Going out, he looked to see Phil snapping by in flight and he smiled watching his father flying again. He had seen how it affected him to be trapped on the ground. Across the field, he spotted his little sister running after their father rather uselessly but she jumped as she followed after the older man, cheering as she did.

        The older brother shook his head as he watched his father again as he leaned his back on the railing, a few of Phil’s crows flying beside him as they were going over the roof. Techno was watching when another figure went over his head, giving a shriek.

        “Techno!” (Y/N) said and Techno fell backward off the railing of the steps, his cape over his face, but he shouted out.

        “PHIL!”

        Phil looked over to find his daughter now falling to the ground?! With practiced ease, he turned and caught the girl before she hit the ground. He took a bit of a crash into the snow as his crows gave out a few cries in panic but he was alright. It wasn’t the first time he had crashed after a flight.

        (Y/N) looked around a bit of daze before grinning and throwing up her arms. “Again!”

        “Did you throw her?!” Phil exclaimed as Techno threw his cape off his face.

        “What!? No!” Techno huffed as he stood up, brushing snow off himself. “I was watching you and all of the sudden she was over my head!”

        “That makes no sense, mate.”

        “I didn’t throw her; I actually like her more than my brothers.”

        Phil looked at the little girl, who was still grinning even though she could have gotten hurt. “What happened?”

        “I jumped and I flew like you! It was a bit scary and I almost fell.” She told him animatedly. “But then you caught me and it was like Whoosh!”

        Phil looked at Techno as Techno was raising an eyebrow at the explanation.

        “Y-You jumped and flew?” Phil turned his attention back to her.

        She nodded. “I was jumping after you because I was excited.”

        “Why…don’t we go inside and then I’ll take you on a flight, alright?” Phil asked her.

        She gave a little pout but nodded. He nodded as well before standing up, letting her walk on her own. Techno followed the pair in and they let (Y/N) be before Phil spoke to Techno alone.

        “I…have a feeling (Y/N) might have magic.”

        “You think?” Techno snorted. “Where’d you find her again?”

        “A village during a raid,” Phil muttered, glancing over at (Y/N) as she was playing with a few of her toys as one of his crows kept an eye on her as a few of them were just as protective of her as he was.

        “They could have been there to get her family. Pillagers tend to like magic and hearing about magic users, they probably were there for them.”

        Phil nodded. It made sense; the village he had found was a pretty small farming village it had seemed. It had been odd to him how they were raided but now it made a bit of sense…

        “Guess I’ll have to brush up a bit on my witch knowledge. It’s been a few years since I’ve run across one, good or bad.”

        “Yeah, it’s been some time. Heard around the arctic that a few of them were going into hiding. Probably because of the pillagers.” Techno nodded, as he went over to his potions to do a bit of work.

        “Dadza! Your crows talk?!” (Y/N) exclaimed in excitement.

        Phil paled as Techno snorted into his potion ingredients chest.

        “You need to learn what the hell they can do too,” Techno said.

        That was going to take a bit of time to learn.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Ghostbur

        “No one else was in the room where it happened. The room where it happened. The room where it happened.”

        Ghostbur clapped as he sat on nothing as he floated above the ground as he watched his daughter sing and do her own little dance. Tommy had taught her all about his favorite musical and taught her a few of the songs. She now wanted to show off what she learned to her father and Ghostbur was more than happy to sit and watch his little blue. He even made sure Friend was there to give her a proper little audience.

        She stumbled over a few words occasionally but he loved watching and listening to her regardless. Once she finished the song, she gave a little curtsy with her hoodie and Ghostbur clapped, giving a joking call of an encore as Friend gave a baa. She giggled, coming over and hugging him. He gladly returned the hug, nuzzling the top of her hoodie.

        “That was wonderful little blue! I can teach you a few more songs and you can sing more for Friend and me!” He smiled.

        “Please.” She nodded eagerly.

        “I’ll have to get a few of my books from L’Manberg, so we can do it tomorrow,” Ghostbur promised her. “We can all go visit Phil as well and you can show him how wonderful you are. Wasn’t it wonderful Friend?”

        The sheep gave another noise and (Y/N) giggled, letting go of Ghostbur and hugged Friend now.

        “Thank you, Friend. You’re a very good friend.”

        “We should get inside, it’s almost time for dinner.” Ghostbur stood now.

        “Ok, can I ride on you, Friend?” She asked the sheep and the sheep didn’t make a noise of acceptance or protest. “He said yes.”

        “Thank you, Friend,” Ghostbur told their sheep friend before putting (Y/N) on top of the sheep.

        After, he took the lead and took the pair to their home in Logstedshire. (Y/N) gently petted Friend’s wool as Ghostbur brought the pair inside, not seeing Tommy, which meant he was downstairs in his chest room.

        “What do you want to eat today little blue?” Ghostbur asked the girl as he helped her off Friend.

        “Carrots and potatoes.”

        “Ok.” Ghostbur nodded, petting Friend before going to cook.

        He made food for (Y/N) and set her up at the table before brewing a few potions he was low on. He hummed as he brewed, (Y/N) happily enjoying her meal as she talked to Friend. Ghostbur occasionally glanced over with a smile at his little blue and the last time he glanced over, he saw Tommy had come up and snuck up behind the little girl. Ghostbur was about to speak as he held a potion bottle but Tommy moved first.

        “BOO!” Tommy gave (Y/N) a scare as he took her shoulders.

        The little girl shrieked…before disappearing.

        Ghostbur and Tommy both stood there for a moment before (Y/N) spoke, gasping.

        “Daddy! I’m like you!”

        Tommy screamed at that, jumping back as Ghostbur dropped his potion bottle, shattering it on the floor. He floated as he went towards the table.

        “(Y/N)? Are you…invisible?” Ghostbur asked, unsure how to process this

        “I can’t see me.” She spoke.

        “HOW?!” Tommy flailed at the empty spot.

        It was another moment before the little girl appeared in the chair again, grinning. Tommy put his hands through his hair as Ghostbur feet touched the ground again as he stood in front of the little girl. There were a few beats of silence before he grinned.

        “You are like me!” He picked her up, hugging her. “This is a very fantastic day!”

        “You found her Ghostbur! She’s not supposed to be like you!” Tommy protested.

        Ghostbur pouted at that as he nuzzled the top of her head. “She can still be like me if I found her.”

        “I…I’m getting Phil. This is not normal and he’ll know.” Tommy pointed at the pair before leaving the house, too freaked out to stay inside.

        “He doesn’t understand yet,” Ghostbur whispered to the little girl before grinning. “Maybe I can teach you to do it on your own like me!”

        Ghostbur had cleaned up the glass quickly as he made (Y/N) stay on Friend just to be safe before he sat with her on the floor, trying to teach her to go invisible excitedly. The moon was a good bit into the sky when Tommy came back, a worried-looking Phil coming in.

        “Phil! We were going to see you tomorrow!” Ghostbur grinned. “(Y/N) wanted to show you a few things.”

        “Like…what?” Phil questioned carefully.

        “She learned a lot of songs and we were going to learn more. Then at dinner, she turned invisible like me! Isn’t that wonderful?”

        “See? I wasn’t lying!” Tommy motioned.

        “Calm down Tommy,” Phil told the younger boy before sitting on the floor with Ghostbur and (Y/N). “Is that true (Y/N)? You did that?”

        She nodded, smiling widely. “I learned a lot of songs and I disappeared like daddy.”

        “Have…you ever done that before? Disappear like that?”

        She hummed before shaking her head. “No.”

        “It’s new?”

        She and Ghostbur nodded.

        “Well…She could be magical born.” Phil threw out, looking at Ghostbur and Tommy.

        “What the hell does that mean?” Tommy asked as he stood next to Phil.

        “She’s a witch. Her parents would have probably been too. It’s extremely rare to have a magical born in a non-magical family. And as the house that Ghostbur found (Y/N) was the way…it was.” Phil avoided the details but Ghostbur floated off the ground as he remembered. “It would make sense; some people aren’t keen on witches.”

        Tommy frowned at the thought with Phil as Ghostbur tried to just ignore the bad images. As Ghostbur looked away from Phil, he looked at (Y/N) to see her sticking her tongue out slightly as she had her eyes closed as well, looking to be concentrating. What she was concentrating on doing made Ghostbur grin widely.

        “(Y/N) can float too!” Ghostbur cheered, making the little girl open her eyes and grin herself.

        “I’m like daddy!”

        Ghostbur laughed as he scooped her into his arms, cuddling with her. Tommy and Phil shared a look though. They had to make sure Ghostbur wasn’t vocal about this…They couldn’t let little blue lose another life just for being a witch after all…

        But Ghostbur didn’t think about that as he was simply ecstatic about his special little blue.

#mcyt x reader #mcyt imagine #mcyt fanfiction #tommyinnit x reader #ghostbur x reader #wilbur soot x reader #technoblade x reader #philza x reader #dreamsmp x reader

[findingjoynweirdstuff]

Dream SMP Recap (June 1/2021) - All Roads Lead to Rome

Ponk tears down one of the towers of L’Llamaburg for overshadowing his supreme fridge.

Tubbo creates a new outpost just outside Las Nevadas to overlook the country.

Techno has a birthday party with the Syndicate and Quackity comes over to bring a message. 

Quackity speaks with Foolish in Las Nevadas about his future plans for the country and roads.

Niki finds out about Wilbur’s revival. 

Bad asks for Techno’s help with destroying his enemies, as he’s upset about L’Llamaburg violating the buffer zone agreement. Puffy confronts Bad about the brewing war.

---

VOD LINKS:

Ponk

Foolish

Tubbo

Technoblade

Nihachu

BadBoyHalo

Captain Puffy

---

- Ponk tears down one of the towers of L’Llamaburg

- Ponk sends Foolish through the labyrinth he built

- Afterwards, they visit the turtle sanctuary

- Ponk shows Foolish that he tore down the tower for overshadowing his supreme fridge. Foolish points out that he and Puffy don’t have the best history. Ponk is still bitter over Puffy destroying Sacrifice’s shrine

- Tubbo creates an outpost on a mountain just outside of Las Nevadas to keep an eye on the country

- Quackity comes over and asks what Tubbo is doing. He says he’ll speak with Tubbo later

- If anyone asks, Tubbo will say it’s just a cookie outpost from Snowchester

- Foolish comes over as well and tells Tubbo that he sent Punz on the mission to find the nuke

- Tubbo asks why Foolish has left Snowchester. Foolish says he’s trying something new -- he’s joining Las Nevadas, actually

- Foolish takes Tubbo on a tour through Las Nevadas. He asks if Tubbo would want to join Las Nevadas, but Tubbo declines

- Techno starts off in his house. He walks outside to find Niki, Phil and Ranboo launching fireworks for his birthday! They also set up a table outside the house with some cake

- After they eat some cake, Techno asks what he’s missed. He’s gone off into the wild to train, while Phil thought he was hibernating. Techno asks if they found out Tommy actually died. Phil tells him he did, but Dream brought him back

- Speaking of things brought back...Wilbur is back too. Niki and Techno are both shocked. Phil tells them that he’s actually living in Phil’s house currently. He tells Niki Wilbur’s changed for the better

- Techno brings Steve out

- He notices the new forest, which the others say sprouted up. It just appeared

- The subject returns to the revival book. Niki says, if Wilbur and Tommy have been brought back, there’s one person left that can be brought back that they don’t want back: Schlatt

- Niki asks if there are any new governments. Phil says no, Snowchester is still there but nothing much has happened that they need to step in on

- They solved the government issue with brute force. Techno says it was “mild property damage,” but Phil disagrees, saying it was mass destruction. They agree to just blame everything on Dream

- While he was away, Techno studied the blade. He suggests a training session for Niki and Ranboo

- Techno has something to do. He leaves, noticing Quackity standing on a hill nearby

- Quackity says hello. Techno tells him it’s his birthday (he’s not sure how old he is, though) and Quackity thanks him for helping with the Egg. He asks if Techno has visited Dream (Techno hasn’t)

- Techno went to the Dream SMP equivalent of Italy on vacation

- Quackity tells Techno he’s been visiting Dream, and that while in prison Dream seems to be a completely different person. Techno asks if Dream’s been treated well, and Quackity says he’s fine 

- Just a few days ago, Dream told Quackity that he wanted Techno to visit, that he finally wanted to call in a “favor”

- Techno explains that the “favor” is that he has to get Dream his favorite meal at some point, since they were at a restaurant once and Techno forgot his wallet

Quackity: “He’s changed a lot. If you walk in there, he doesn’t seem like the person he’s always been, which is weird, how a person can change just like that.”

Techno: “It’s strange what five months of near total isolation can do to a person...as we know, it’s always a positive effect.”

- Sometime during this weekend, Techno will visit. Techno asks if Quackity has any written message from Dream, and Quackity says he can probably get one. He only has notes right now

- Techno asks if Quackity is telling the truth. He would hate to be lied to on his birthday...Quackity says he’s not lying, and as he said, he’s glad they set aside their differences

Quackity: “At the end of the day, scars fade away, Techno...”

- Quackity says goodbye and leaves. Techno wonders if he can trust him

- He returns to the others and they celebrate some more

- Phil takes them all down to show off the training arena he made in the basement

- They go back up and talk some more

- Meanwhile, Quackity meets Foolish at Las Nevadas. He asks about Tubbo’s outpost, and Foolish says it’s a cookie outpost. Quackity tells Foolish not to trust it, realizing he actually hasn’t talked to Tubbo recently

- Quackity is bothered by how clear the view of Las Nevadas is from the outpost and questions why Foolish didn’t stop Tubbo from building it

- He asks the last thing Foolish did in Las Nevadas as they walk over there, and then whether or not he’s already discussed the possibility of a “contract” of formal citizenship

- Quackity wants to get to know Foolish better. He makes sure that he can trust Foolish, confide in him certain information

- Foolish remarks that Quackity seems like the kind of guy who would make a lot of enemies, and gives him a set of Netherite armor

- Speaking of making enemies, Quackity takes Foolish over to the lake to look out at Wilbur and Tommy’s headquarters. Someone paid them a visit

Quackity: “Have you ever met...Wilbur?”

- Foolish hasn’t. Tommy told him a bit. Quackity points out an empty spot in Las Nevadas where he wants something done. He tells Foolish he just paid a visit to an old friend and he went unprotected, so the Netherite is a good idea

- Only two people have just given Quackity armor, and one of them is Quackity’s “right hand man” at the moment: Sam. Foolish mentions Sam screwed him over with L’Sandburg

- Quackity points out Eret’s cobblestone ocean pyramid. This country needs more citizens, more things built

- He shows Foolish the gambling machine and gives him diamonds to try out. Foolish wins Linda! 

- Their objective with Las Nevadas is to build the biggest, most powerful country, and Quackity’s read his fair share of Sun Tzu. He’s actually helped run a country before, which Foolish is surprised to learn (countries are before Foolish’s time)

- Quackity says he’ll talk to Foolish soon and leaves for a couple minutes before returning. He asks for PVP lessons, but Foolish hasn’t done much fighting for a while

Quackity: “I do all my fighting through dialogue, if you haven’t noticed...That’s my biggest weapon, Foolish, it’s the way I say things, everything, all that. But I think, you know, given what could come of all this...”

Foolish: “I was gonna say, I don’t know if that will work forever...unless you’re very, very good with your words, eventually you’ll say the wrong words.”

- Quackity suggests they make their own lookout outpost 

- Quackity has some plans to show Foolish, a project he thought of when he was thinking about making Las Nevadas. His first plan was to build a highway system

Quackity: “They say all roads lead to Rome...in this case, all roads lead to Las Nevadas.”

- He shows Foolish some sign ideas and Foolish says it would be no problem to build up some roads

- Quackity shows Foolish an old idea for a path with rail lines on both sides, layouts for advertisements

- The first place Quackity thinks the road should go is the Spawn area, for when someone joins or dies. Quackity is annoyed that Tubbo blocked the route, but they can go around it

- They plan out the path of the road. Foolish asks if Quackity wants the road to go to Kinoko Kingdom. Quackity goes silent before saying he wants to focus on the main attractions right now

- Quackity leaves again to go check some things

Foolish: “When you choose a side, there’s always other sides...which means I can’t be buddy-buddy with everyone forever.”

- Foolish does the boat slime jump. Quackity comes back with food and continues to discuss plans. Besides connecting everyone, they also need to make cash off of this highway, so he wants to make sure there’s plenty of advertisement

- L’manburg is destroyed, but it also has a lot of history. Quackity’s noticed no one’s really claimed that area. Wilbur and Tommy are neighboring them now. Foolish asks if they’re enemies...Quackity says he’ll explain that in a bit

Quackity: “We can make L’manburg a main tourist area.”

- Foolish knows a few people might be against that. Anyone from L’manburg, maybe. Quackity reminds him he was in the cabinet, and proceeds to tell him the story of Wilbur:

---

When Quackity joined the server, L’manburg was the biggest nation. Quackity asked to join, and he was declined because he wasn’t British -- the one requirement. He didn’t like this, he felt left out, he wanted to be a part of something.The election rolled around, it was SWAG vs. POG.

(They walk over to the ruins of L’manburg)

Wilbur was going to run a “democratic” election with only one option available to vote for, which Quackity didn’t think was very democratic.

(Quackity gets interrupted by George calling him)

Each party had a Vice President. Foolish assumes that Wilbur’s was Tommy...and Quackity’s was George. Quackity points out King’s Court to Foolish in the sky, the place they had their debate. After their debate, Quackity and Wilbur had a talk, a conversation that stuck with him for a very long time.

Then it was Election Day. What happened was, each party had sponsors. Who endorsed Tommy and Wilbur?

Vikkstar.

Tommy accidentally posted the Vikkstar endorsement video in the Discord before deleting it seven seconds later, but that was still enough time for George to get the link and send it to Quackity, and Quackity needed the one person who could match that endorsement: KSI.

Unfortunately, KSI never replied, as it was quite last-minute. 

That’s when the turning point happened, and Quackity calls it the worst day of his life. George slept through the event. Quackity had no endorsements, no Vice President. The other party was going strong -- but they made a mistake. Their second endorsement was Schlatt. However, Schlatt arrived drunk, and instead of endorsing Wilbur and Tommy, he made his own party on the spot. SCHLATT2020. Not only this, but Niki and Fundy also made their own party too: COCONUT2020. 

The votes go out. POG2020 wins. But, Quackity had an idea, to pool votes with Schlatt. They ended up with 1% more votes than POG, and that’s how Quackity ended up as Vice President of the country. However, this was a big mistake. The policies Schlatt enacted were to exile Tommy and Wilbur, took down the walls, changed up things -- and to be fair, Quackity did join him on this. He was down with taking down the walls. Everything started going downhill. Schlatt would constantly undermine Quackity’s Vice Presidency, his policy ideas, and he did the worst thing to Quackity -- took down the White House that Quackity, Wilbur and Tommy built together. 

Schlatt didn’t care. He started teaming up with bad folks like Dream, other people, and the rest is history. Imagine everything that had to happen to lead to this...

(he gestures to L’manhole)

Foolish: “Do you regret it all?”

Quackity: “...No.”

Foolish: “So, you would’ve let it all go the exact same way, down to Wilbur blowing it all up?”

Quackity: “I wouldn’t have changed a damn thing, Foolish...And let me tell you why...All these mistakes, all these things, have made me the person I am now, Foolish. All these experiences, all these bad moments in my life, have made me the man I am today.”

“And you never...you never mess with history. Because everything happens for a reason, Foolish. Everything happens for a reason. You don’t ever pander with history, you don’t ever try to turn it around or change it, because the way things happen are the way things happen at the end of the day. And that’s how we build character. I wouldn’t have Las Nevadas if not for all these...for all these...mistakes, maybe.”

After that, something happened with Wilbur. Quackity didn’t know much about it, but he changed. He was so obsessed with his country that if he couldn’t have it, no one could. He blew up the entire thing, and in that process he ended up dying, and that’s when Ghostbur came to be.

So many more things happened (Foolish finds out that this crater isn’t just from Wilbur), but...it is what it is.

“And if you dwell in the past, you’ll live in suffering your entire life. So take it from me, Foolish. Take in all the experiences you’ve ever had, and apply them to something greater than what you used to be. Take one last gander at...the country that never was.”

---

- Quackity shows Foolish his old house under Karl’s. He’s not seen Karl in a while. He sees that it’s been blown up, and there’s an old message to him from Sam. He’s not sure what happened.

- Quackity shows Foolish the message. Just as he’d said, Sam had given him Netherite armor once. Sam has a good heart. It’s in the right place, he just needs some guidance.

- He leads Foolish down the Prime Path, showing him the other buildings. He takes Foolish over to the museum. 

- They look at the maps and discuss routes again. Foolish asks about a road to the prison, and Quackity says improving his “commutes” would be nice 

- Quackity is glad Foolish is taking the chance on Las Nevadas. Quackity has to leave to address some business, but he’ll get on to help Foolish build the roads later. 

- Foolish goes back to Las Nevadas, looking out over at Wilbur and Tommy’s headquarters.

Foolish: “It’s kinda been a while since I’ve really had enemies enemies...but I have the feeling that is gonna change soon enough...Maybe not even enemies, but certainly not friends. Kind of a shame, though, I’ve yet to really meet Wilbur...”

- He gets out his shulker box from an Ender Chest and looks inside. There is a stack of TNT.

“It’s been a while...”

- Niki is at the Arctic. Wilbur is back. She thought she got rid of him and doesn’t know why he’s back now, in the only place she feels safe

Niki: “Who are you going to manipulate next, huh? Because it’s not gonna be me this time! It’s not gonna be me this time.”

- Tommy? Tubbo? Jack? Jack wouldn’t fall for it. Niki is upset that Wilbur didn’t check up on her. Why would he change? He never changes or cares

- Why would Dream revive him? Dream was his enemy, but at the end he was pretty fond of him

- Niki heads back through the Nether to her secret city. Now the world revolves around Wilbur again

- She still hasn’t finished her city and hasn’t been able to sleep. She goes to a chest to find the diamonds Wilbur once gave her

- Niki saw the TNT when she broke the wall, but she didn’t tell anyone, covered it back up. But Wilbur still blew it up anyway

- Niki puts the diamonds in a chest buried deep in the wall and covers it back up

- She goes back to the main area, to L’manburg. When she was in Manberg, Wilbur promised that he would get her out of there, and she waited weeks. And then Wilbur wasn’t the same person anymore

- Niki thought maybe while Wilbur was still alive, he could still be rescued, could still be happy

Niki: “But you will never be happy, because all you want is what you can’t have. And when you have everything...what will you fight for?”

- Niki wants to see him, ask why he never came back to her. She walks back to the Nether portal and the stream ends

- Bad shows up to L’Sandburg and notices L’Llamaburg next door. He’s upset about the new castle and wonders why Foolish would allow this, as it violates the agreement

- He reads the purpose of L’Llamaburg and is enraged. There’s only one option, and that’s war. He sets fire to the walls of L’Llamaburg, builds an extension on top of his tower to make it taller than Puffy’s build, and builds a giant sign saying “LIAR” 

- After visiting the main area to get some resources, he meets Antfrost on the Prime Path, who has a new skin for pride month! 

- Bad goes to the Arctic to bake a cake for Technoblade’s birthday. After finishing it, he leaves a letter requesting Techno’s assistance:

---

Dear Technoblade,

Greetings on this fine evening. I hope this letter finds you well and I hope your polar bears are doing excellent. It is with my sincerest apoligies that I disturb your peace but I must inquire about possibly obtaining your services. 

Important matters aside I have built a delicious giant cake for you in honor of your birthday. I hope this cake finds you well and may you have many excellent birthdays to follow. If you would be interested in possibly destroying my enemies for me and salting the earth they call home so that they never find happiness again that would be most kind. If you would like to discuss this matter further you know where to find me.

Kindest Regards BBH

---

- Later, Captain Puffy hears of this brewing war and comes online. She confronts Bad about the missing tower from her castle. Bad insists it wasn’t him, it was Ponk

- Puffy reminds Bad of Puffy and Ponk’s conflict from a while ago in which they destroyed each others builds, and says it’s only fair that, if Ponk really did destroy the tower, then she should destroy Ponk’s fridge

- Bad tries to reason with Puffy to not retaliate, while Puffy thinks tearing down the fridge would be doing the place a favor

- Bad brings up the buffer zone violation and they start arguing with each other over Foolish’s land, the turtles, Puffy blames Bad for killing her son, one thing leads to another and soon enough Puffy tells Bad that his L’Sandburg llama citizens are all into BDSM

- They go to the turtle enclosure and see Ponk’s ransom note. Bad says Ponk has to die. Puffy points out they could start with the fridge, and Bad says they should take his other arm. Ponk stole Shelly, they have to kill him

- Puffy gets angry at Bad not wanting to take down the fridge and brings up the death of her son again, how she thought Bad was going to turn over a new leaf at the Banquet and then that leaf ended up covered in blood instead

Puffy: “I should have taken your goddamn arm, Bad!”

- After talking more, the two finally work together to take down the supreme fridge

- Once finished, the two write a return note to Ponk. Bad wants to discuss things with Ponk, and there’s a place in Las Nevadas that he thinks would be good to meet

The note reads:

---

Dear Ponk,

It has come to our attention that you’ve been responsible for some heinous crimes!

Not only did you completely demolish Puffy’s original mushroom house which she let slide. You now have destroyed a tower of her sand castle. BUT IT DOESN’T STOP THERE!

WHERE IS SHELLY PONK!? You’ve not only commited crimes against Puffy but Bad as well! You’ve kidnapped Bad & Sheldon’s dearest Shelly for ransom!

So me and Bad decided to return the favor and give you a taste of your own disgusting medicine!

YOU’RE FRIDGE NO LONGER SUPREME! YOU’VE MESSED WITH THE WRONG MUFFINS AND TAKEN OUR KINDNESS FOR WEAKNESS TOO MANY TIMES!

We all need to talk immediately before this escalates more then it already has.

Leave a book back giving us a time and a place and we will try to attend.

You’ve been warned!

With love, BBH & PuffDaddy

---

- Bad still wants Puffy to move L’Llamaburg, but Puffy wants to stay and protect her son. Bad suggests an alliance: what if L’Sandburg and L’Llamaburg simply combine their territories? It would be beneficial for both nations

- Puffy is skeptical about Bad’s idea and decides that relocating is probably the smartest idea, as Ponk will probably retaliate against her

---

Upcoming Events:

- The final Egg lore stream

- Technoblade’s visit (this weekend)

- Puffy’s lore

- Tales From the SMP: “Space Race”

- Ponk’s lore stream

- Dream’s lore video

- Sapnap’s possible lore stream

- Awesamdude lore stream

#what a day huh #dream smp recaps #dream smp #long posts #hhhahfdsjajhdfja #sorry if I missed any details with this one it was A Lot

[nightferns]

The Third Variant to the SootCraft Fundy and Wilbur family drama that Maybe Accidentally Started it

So yesterday me and @bigbraveboop came to the conclusion that C!fundy had an arc in early early L'manburg that we were kinda unaware of. And it cracks the case of... how the family drama started. And also is why is this exists

C!Tommy was the catalyst of the c!Fundy | c!Wilbur family drama in S1 and i promise i have proof

all /rp

So what does Fundy repeatedly say is his biggest gripe with Wilbur currently and multiple times after his death? Well:

“You were there for me for a very very long time and then when i needed you the most, you skedaddled fuck the out of my life and died. Because of what? L’manberg’s causes, huh? You thought that was- You thought that was justice? You thought that was good for me? You left me, man.’

“The dad that- my dad that exploded himself for the sake of a country, just for that country to be demolished in future hands?-"

“He put me to priority number 2, man. He put me in the second place.”

So its about L’manburg being more important than him to Wilbur.

Now lets dig deep, where did that insecurity start? Why did Fundy arrive at this conclusion? Why did he feel like this in the first place about his position in L’manburg and his Father?

We kinda assume it was always there or was because of Wilbur actually prioritizing L’manburg over his son/being negectfull. But no! Fundy was very confident in his realtionship with Wilbur and his position in L’manburg at the Start and we see tha change so!

I want to argue that this insecurity... didn't come from Wilbur or any of his actions or lack thereof. Not directly.

“Wilbur? I dunno, Wilbur’s a man of chaos, alright- due to the lore of the server, Wilbur may or may not have been the father of our nation, but- that doesn’t mean he’s for everything I do. That doesn’t mean he stands behind me, alright? Not necessarily...not necessarily.”

This is the first instance of Fundy doubting his connection to Wilbur helping things, i'd argue it still was a part of a lighhearted bit that isn’t to be taken too seriously in the context of the larger story but i realized something that made me change my mind, i mean it is still a lighthearted bit but it connects to a certain quote from uncle Innit:

“What would father think?”

And then that got me thinking and:

Part 1 aka Early L'manburg Fundy had different feelings towards Wilbur than Civil War Fundy

So how did Fundy act towars Wilbur early on?

Fundy: "Don't speak to me ma- hey that's fucked up don't talk about that. That's-"

Tommy: "Listen Th- you gotta kn- you gotta know you don't speak to the boss's son like that. Nevermind about- about the boss's wife to the boss's son in front of the boss's right hand man! You really gotta- You really gotta read the room Thunder."

Fundy: "Yea you don't. You don't."

JM: "fine ok let him do what he wants to do, i just don't wanna hear about it [..]"

Tommy: "Listen to me Fundy- Listen to me Fundy- he didn't mean that- he's just a bold man- he had- he had a little-"

Fundy [turning to JM]: "I will tell on you."

Tommy: " NO no no no Fundy- Fundy He had a little flirt with Dream- he had a little flirt with dream, he's- he's a- he's really new, he's learing his boundaries, he's over stepped them, alright, listen, but you don't have to tell Will, you don't have to tell no-one. "

[To JM] "Thunder you need to to calm your fucking- holy shit."

"-Please, please give him a rest."

JM: "no i- im sorry, im sorry, i'm sorry Fundy"

Fundy: 'I don't want this behavior again, alright."

JM: "no i wont- i wont-"

Fundy: 'Don't talk to my Dad OR my salmon Mother like that ever again, i will tell on you, keep it in mind. I have privilege to speak up against-"

JM: "i understand."

I will come back to the i have a privilege line later but first, from this we see Fundy being confident that Wilbur would take his side because he is his son. He is the “i will tell my parents about this” kid, alongside that he doesn’t feel like he has no imput in decisions, he doesnt feel insecure here he is in the position of power. 

So again when did it appear?

Well,

Fundy: “I may or may not have scammed a bunch of people, including all of L’manburg people, um…”

Tommy: “You scammed L’manburg members?!”

Fundy: “But here’s the thing – I’m willing to pay you a part of the profit if you help me out here!”

Tommy: “Fundy…okay, can I tell you what’s happened from my point of view? The son of the President has gone around scamming the other presidential members, and as the Vice President whilst the President’s not on, this is my duty to make sure that this doesn’t pull apart L’manburg. And what you’re saying – what you’ve essentially just said is, ‘hey, can I bribe you?’“

Fundy: “…Can I?”

Tommy: “Jesus Christ…No, okay, we need to settle this now, ‘cause I mean if this happens on my turf, I’m gonna fucking take the blame from this from Wilbur, alright…so listen, Fundy, under no circumstances can you bribe anyone!”

Fundy: “I got two Netherite scraps?”

Tommy: “Okay, okay – explain to me what’s happened, please.”

[Fundy explains the conflict]

Tommy: “What would father think?”

Fundy: “Well, he always – he always sides…by me…obviously.”

Tommy: “Would he though? I mean, you’ve gone against the other members of the nation he fought to build.”

Fundy: “Well only because my loot has been stolen! Alright?”

Tommy: “This sounds petty, Fundy.”

Fundy: “Okay, okay, I can word this differently in my favor.”

Tommy: “No, okay, no – you’re not meant to say that out loud! Okay, I’m gonna ask Tubbo what’s happened, and then from there on we’ll – but please do not do any – we can’t have L’manburg falling out over this, alright?” 

So here we see Fundy the president’s son being put in comparison to L’manburg the nation the president built for what Wilbur would prioritize for the first time, and Tommy sows the seeds that maybe L’manburg matters more to Wilbur than him, that Wilbur would choose the nation. this is also first time Fundy has been sort of excluded from the Whole of L’manburg.

and we see Tommy’s words affect Fundy,

Fundy: “We gotta list everyone who’s against me:”

“I killed Tubbo twice, I stole his bow. Tubbo’s probably against me.”

“Tommy has always been against me from the start.”

“Sapnap is against me because I killed his animals and stole them.”

“Punz is against me ‘cause I stole his bees.”

“Eret is against me ‘cause I went after Karl.”

“Karl’s against me ‘cause -- I just realized I’ve made a lot of enemies...I just realized I don’t have many -- I don’t have many allies on the server. There’s not many allies.”

“Who’s neutral? Niki! Niki is with me! Niki is friendly.”

“Wilbur? I dunno, Wilbur’s a man of chaos, alright...due to the lore of the server, Wilbur may or may not have been the father of our nation, but...that doesn’t mean he’s for everything I do. That doesn’t mean he stands behind me, alright? Not necessarily...not necessarily.”

“Quackity? Quackity’s definitely not -- no, listen, Quackity’s definitely not for me, okay. I called him a whore. There’s definitely -- there’s definitely many things Quackity has against me.”

so here is my argument... Fundy’s insecurity started with Tommy.

Part 2 Development Of Those Feelings (Uncle Tommy you’re not Helping)

Fundy, growing disillusioned with Wilbur and L’manburg, lead to this one coversation between Fundy and Wilbur,

Wilbur: Well the uh- the ballot entries have closed now.

Fundy: Who's in it?

Wilbur: Well it originally was just gonna be me and Tommy, me and Tommy tired to do it so- tried to do it so we will be the only ones running, then suddenly out of nowhere Quackity joins and enters himself on the ballot-

Fundy: Ok.

Wilbur: -so it's me and Tommy against Quackity and someone else.

Fundy: Who's someone else?

Wilbur: We don't know yet, he hasn't announced,

Fundy: Wait then- oh, so it's just a random… sneaky person who put himself in the ballot not announced who he is.

Wilbur: yeah, yeah. I mean if you wanna try and convince Quackity that you wanna run against your father.

Fundy: Yeah ok.

Wilbur: Wait, you- you wouldn't though. 

Fundy: What if i win? What are- what are you gonna do?

Wilbur: Well then you'd be Vice President.

Fundy: but-What if i win?

Wilbur: Why do you want power in L'manburg so much?

Fundy: Why do you want power?

Wilbur: Because- i led the revolution, i'm your…  i'm your president.

Fundy: That's history.

Wilbur: Wh- d- Do you not think i-  i'm suitable to run for president?

Fundy: I think you are, but i think I am as well.

Wilbur: I don't know man. I don't- i think- i think you- i think you'd be s- i think you'd be getting into a fight you wouldn't want to start with me. You've only been on the positive side of me, you've only seen my nice side, because y'know? being my son you get- you get special- y'know? You won't ever see me going against you.

Fundy: Wait so you're a biased person going for presidency.

Wilbur: Biased to my son? Yes. But, if you're gonna run against me then i'm changing, i'll- i'll go guns blazing.

Fundy: I'll have a word with Quackity.

Wilbur: Fundy i…  i've got- i've got- i've got a bad feeling about this. I think you're just gonna… you're just gonna get hurt.

Fundy: That will happen-

.

Wilbur: Fundy yeah- Yeah someone in my chat just pointed out, Fundy you started the civil war.

Niki: I mean technically Sapnap started the civil war.

Fundy: I mean- i mean technically- Yeah y' know, technically- and i'm gonna win it! It's fine! I mean what does he have on me, really?

Wilbur: I thought it was you fighting Tubbo?

Fundy: what?

Wilbur: I thought civil war was you and Tubbo?

Fundy: No, Tubbo's just a prick.

Wilbur: Sapnap's not even- not even part of L’manburg how is it a civil war?

Fundy: I don't know you brought it up!

Wilbur: Tommy told me- Tommy told me it was Tubbo and Fundy.

Fundy: Yeah no Tommy is a little bit delusional.

Wilbur: I think i've spoiled you.

Fundy: How?

Wilbur: I think you need to learn some manners.

Fundy: I dunno- power seems nice.

Wilbur: Fine, you can run against me, it won't end well for you but you can give it a go.

Fundy: Like i said i'll- i'll have a word with Quackity i'll think of my actions, see what will happen, i'm not saying necessarily that i'll go against you, then again i'm not standing beside you because you may or may not be the father of L'manburg 

Wilbur: And you! The father of you!

Fundy: That's irrelevant. To-

Wilbur: No it's not irrelevant! It's very relevant to this!

Fundy: I don't-  i don't think that's relevant to presidency

I’ll talk over Wilburs pov here in a little bit but focusing on Fundy, 

He wants to run, other than everything we established before here Fundy wants to run to prove himself to himself, and we see the other part of this conflict more internally is,  

(“[..] may or may not be the father of L'manburg- “ , “ That's irrelevant.” )

 Well, here is the insecurity about Wilbur choosing L’manburg (here his position as president) over Fundy, the being second place to L’manburg part matters here becasue i think this is where Wilbur and Fundy fundamentally clash, so Fundy doesn’t want for it to matter to Wilbur, he doesn’t want for his position as son to have any influence over Wilbur here beacuse of this fear that that’s why he may be in the second place.

now let’s move on to,

Uncle Tommy ‘helps’

Fundy: “I’m wearing glasses…are you making fun of my eyesight?!”

Tommy: “Yes.”

Sapnap: “Your father would be very disappointed.”

Fundy: “Wh – disappointed for wearing glasses?!”

Tommy: “You got glasses, like what are you wearing…”

Fundy: “What do you mean?”

Tommy: “Sapnap, Sapnap, over here. Fundy, Fundy, Fundy, I’m really sorry to say this – I’m just here to publicly denounce you.”

Fundy: “…What?”

Tommy: “I just, I – yeah. You’re stinky, you’re shitty, the fur that’s sewn onto your skin, I look at it and I go (retching sounds) And whilst you’re a lovely guy, you’re actually not, you’re really…and all the viewers are like ‘oh no!’ But they can’t smell you. I can! Holy shit, you know? I mean you know, Sapnap…”

Fundy: “I showered two hours before the stream…”

Tommy: “I know, and that’s what makes it so remarkable, how you smell that terrible.”

Fundy: “I used coconut oil…it smells good…”

…

Tommy: “Fundy, I’m just here to kinda let you know that I – if you weren’t Wilbur’s son, you would be out of L’manburg, alright? Just remember – you need to keep that relationship with your father. I saw how asshole-y and bratty you were acting in the courtroom the other night. You need to pull your shit together young man.”

Fundy: “Being neutral is – is asshole?”

Tommy: “Yes. Come with me, Sapnap. Yeah, I’ve denounced you – well no no no, you were challenging him. You were challenging him.”

Fundy: “Denounced to what?”

Tommy: “I just – it’s just a formal way of saying you suck.”

(Tommy and Sapnap leave)

Fundy: “…They are mean…They are mean! Why are they so mean? That is so mean…”

Fundy: “Listen, it is one thing making fun of a person’s appearance…it is one thing making fun of a person’s blindness, but hey – don’t fucking make fun of my coconut oil! Listen dude…that shit smells tasty! That smells good! Man…that’s…god…coconut oil, man…dude.“

…

Fundy: “TNT their houses? That will just prove their point, chat. That will just prove their point. That will just prove their point…they’re just mean. They’re so mean. But it is okay, chat. It is okay. The reason why it’s okay…that’s actually true. Why is he talking to the enemy? Wait…wait a minute. Wait a minute! So let me get the story straight real quick.”

 “Chat…just hold up a second here! Hold on a second! So Tommy is demoting me, right? And he’s saying you’re only in L’manburg because of Wil. So Tommy says…in theory, he would kick me out if he had the chance. But considering that, while he’s together with Sapnap…it leads me to believe…Tommy wants to destroy L’manburg!”

“Why would he do that? Why would he team up with Sapnap? He had no correlation with this conversation at all. What was the reason for that?”

“…Do we have another traitor in our midst?”

…

Fundy: “Listen, Tommy, here’s a really interesting theory, alright…here’s an interesting theory, Tommy. I got a little theory on my mind! Listen, boy, we’re part of L’manburg, you and me. Wil as well, Tubbo, all of us, alright? And we’re supposed to be a union! Now here’s the thing! Here’s the thing. If you said, due to Wilbur I’m still basically part of L’manburg – in other terms saying that if it was on your hands you would get me out of there, right, why would you excessively bring Sapnap, out of all people, for that conversation alone?”

Tommy: “Shall I explain to you? It’s because, Fundy, we fucking need votes, Fundy. We need votes! This Quack City guy, son of BadBoyHalo? He’s just – he’s just, like, oh my god. We needed votes. And listen, Fundy–”

Fundy: “You basically just lost my vote, and I feel like that’s your purpose!”

Tommy: “You’re in L’manburg! You vote for us already – you vote for your own father, don’t be an idiot!”

Fundy: “I feel like you’re trying to bring us apart, Tommy. I feel like your goals are not supportive towards L’manburg at the moment…”

Tommy: “From my perspective, Sapnap hates you, Fundy. Sapnap hates you. And if I go listen, if I had to tier list all of the members of L’manburg, Fundy would be in D tier. He needs to hear that.”

Fundy: “…Tommy, are you Eret?”

Post the court debate Fundy was more decided on running on his own,

“Honestly, I feel like everything just needs to change. Honestly, I feel like neither of the parties have done enough right to deserve leadership, to deserve presidency in the first place. I feel like a lot of shit needs to change.”

Fundy didnt want to endorse any of the parties, SWAG2020 was endorsed by Dream, and he belived POG2020 to be corrupt because of the bribing Karl situation, so he was more keen on running on his own, and then came the public denouncing situaion.

Obviously Fundy was hurt by this, especially considering Sapnap was his enemy, and Tommy’s words didnt do Fundy’s and Wilburs already shaky relationship many favours, but his behaviour both pushed Fundy futher away from the POG party, and started Fundy’s ‘traitor Tommy’ theory that he shared with Niki after which the Coconut2020 party was formed.

Part 3 Wilbur is a oblivious dumbass but it makes sense now.

now lets look at Wilburs pov of things, which means we are coming back to the privilege line,

Wilbur: I don't know man. I don't- i think- i think you- i think you'd be s- i think you'd be getting into a fight you wouldn't want to start with me. You've only been on the positive side of me, you've only seen my nice side, because y'know? being my son you get- you get special- y'know? You won't ever see me going against you.

-----

JM: "no i- im sorry, im sorry, i'm sorry Fundy"

Fundy: 'I don't want this behavior again, alright."

JM: "no i wont- i wont-"

Fundy: 'Don't talk to my Dad OR my salmon Mother like that ever again, i will tell on you, keep it in mind. I have privilege to speak up against-"

JM: "i understand."

So coming back to this quote, i belive Wilbur didnt realize Fundy had these doubts about thier relationship, because he was used to Fundy sharing his problems with him, and he was left kinda drifting in an ‘why is my son suddenly against me now??’

Wilbur didnt realize Fundy’s feelings about him had changed, as in Fundy no longer WOULD come to him if he had any probems, because Fundy used to come to him with problems, ("I will tell on you.") But Tommy’s first comment knocked him down and the debate and the Sapnap-Tommy situation had as well and the denouncement, (which Wilbur also knew shit about) because he was already insecure about his place in L’manburg and Wilbur. AND he wouldn't come to Wilbur like he used to because Wilbur was the point of his insecurity even if he wasnt the couse of it.

So we see Wilbur kinda be sad and confused and misstepping becasue of that,

Wilbur: I don't know man. I don't- i think- i think you- i think you'd be s- i think you'd be getting into a fight you wouldn't want to start with me. You've only been on the positive side of me, you've only seen my nice side, because y'know? being my son you get- you get special- y'know? You won't ever see me going against you.

Fundy: Wait so you're a biased person going for presidency.

Wilbur: Biased to my son? Yes. But, if you're gonna run against me then i'm changing, i'll- i'll go guns blazing.

Fundy: I'll have a word with Quackity.

Wilbur: Fundy i…  i've got- i've got- i've got a bad feeling about this. I think you're just gonna… you're just gonna get hurt.

------

Wilbur: Tommy told me- Tommy told me it was Tubbo and Fundy.

Fundy: Yeah no Tommy is a little bit delusional.

Wilbur: I think i've spoiled you.

Fundy: How?

Wilbur: I think you need to learn some manners.

Fundy: I dunno- power seems nice.

Wilbur: Fine, you can run against me, it won't end well for you but you can give it a go.

-----

Wilbur: Wait, look who’s coming, look who’s coming.

Tommy: Uh oh!

Wilbur: My son. My boy.

Tommy: Your ex-son.

Wilbur: Yeah. Well, I mean, he’s still my son in blood, but, he’s just…

Tommy: You should put him up.

Wilbur: What d’you mean, put him up? What, for adoption?

Tubbo: For adoption.

Tommy: Yeah. You should see if Big Q will adopt him.

[They discuss Fundy’s Twitch Prime cape. He runs up on stage, to the microphone, and starts punching the air. He’s not in the same vc as them.]

Wilbur: What’s he doing, what’s he doing- what is this? What is this bit? What is he doing?

Tommy: What the fuck are you- no.

Wilbur: He’s just not- he’s not- he’s really upsetting me.

Tommy: Just- just- he’s not President is he? He’s got no manners, he has no manners. No etiquette.

Wilbur: Look, he’s supposed to be my son.

[Wilbur types in chat: “fundy talk to me” and Fundy immediately leaves the game.]

Tubbo: He is trying.

Tommy: Tubbo, you’re gonna get murdered, my friend.

Wilbutr: He said, he said, “I am here for the Presidencialcy-” He just left.

Tommy: And then he- [sighs] I’m so sorry you have to deal with him.

W: I don’t- I- It’s really sad, like I… Honestly, I- when he turned around to me and he said he wasn’t gonna vote for me, and then he decided he was gonna vote for the opposition, and then he decided he was gonna run against me, that was- one of those was the straw that broke my back. I’m not sure which one- I’m still contemplating which one was the- are you listening?

[Tommy has jumped off the podium to join Tubbo in the audience.]

Tpmmy: Yeah, I’m going down to Tubbo, I just- I’m just letting you vent, Wilbur, I want you to have time to vent.

Wilbur: Yeah I just- I miss me son! I miss me son! I miss when he was my boy! Do you remember when he was my boy?

Tommy: Yeah, I’m not really good at handling… People who are emotional.

Wilbur also didn’t know anything about the denouncement situation,

Sapnap: “Will you continue to have your son banished from L’Manberg if I vote for you?” 

Wilbur: “My son. My- My son. Look, we’re talking about politics here, I don’t want to talk about my family, if that’s alright. … I would like to say, thank you, Sapnap, for the question, I very much appreciate it, but I’m not gonna be fielding responses about my family situation, thank you.” (Alivebur)

*Wilbur proceeds to step off the podium and cry*

Wilbur: “Fundy...!” 

Besides that  fundamenatally Fundys and Wilburs views about the presidency oppose eachother,

“Tommy, I’m- I’m- I’m- I don’t know what to do, Tommy, I’ve never not been President.”

Fundy sees Wilbur and L'manburg as two separate things that he has to unfiairly contest with and for 

1. for Wilbur because of his fears, for a place among L’manburg members

2. Because He wants to prove himself to himself. he needs to know what Tommy said, isn’t true/he can thrive regardless without his fathers support he can still be a  great member of L’manburg and even a president

Wilbur sees himself as inherently connected trough L’manburg with everyone to the point that he thinks that without his position he cant do anything for his loved ones/ he wont be usefull. he thinks of l’manburg as something he does FOR all of them including Fundy.

“My son… My son is tearing down the walls, in front of me! My son is tearing down the walls in front of me! The walls I built to keep him safe! I promised him this world, Tommy, I promised him this world.”

----

 “Fundy was the closest thing I had to something I cared about in L’Manberg, when it all began. You know, when it started, the closest thing to anything I cared about was Fundy. Fundy was my, he was my, he was my boy! My rock!”

----

Ranboo: "I don't know if they actually needed me, but I was there.(about his work in the NLM cabinet)" 

Wilbur:"I know that feel." 

This why Fundy and Wilbur clash fundamentally here,

Fundy: Like i said i'll- i'll have a word with Quackity i'll think of my actions, see what will happen, i'm not saying necessarily that i'll go against you, then again i'm not standing beside you because you may or may not be the father of L'manburg 

Wilbur: And you! The father of you!

Fundy: That's irrelevant. To-

Wilbur: No it's not irrelevant! It's very relevant to this!

Fundy: I don't-  i don't think that's relevant to presidency

Part 4 Tommy WHY? (he is propably protective and and a tiny bit jealous )

----

Tommy: “Hey, you know about Fundy’s little rebellious stage he’s going through?”

Tommy: “Fundy, I’m just here to kinda let you know that I – if you weren’t Wilbur’s son, you would be out of L’manburg, alright? Just remember – you need to keep that relationship with your father. I saw how asshole-y and bratty you were acting in the courtroom the other night. You need to pull your shit together young man.”

----

Tommy: “Shall I explain to you? It’s because, Fundy, we fucking need votes, Fundy. We need votes! This Quack City guy, son of BadBoyHalo? He’s just – he’s just, like, oh my god. We needed votes. And listen, Fundy–”

Fundy: “You basically just lost my vote, and I feel like that’s your purpose!”

Tommy: “You’re in L’manburg! You vote for us already – you vote for your own father, don’t be an idiot!”

Fundy: “I feel like you’re trying to bring us apart, Tommy. I feel like your goals are not supportive towards L’manburg at the moment…”

Tommy: “From my perspective, Sapnap hates you, Fundy. Sapnap hates you. And if I go listen, if I had to tier list all of the members of L’manburg, Fundy would be in D tier. He needs to hear that.”

----

Wilbur: Wait, look who’s coming, look who’s coming.

Tommy: Uh oh!

Wilbur: My son. My boy.

Tommy: Your ex-son.

Wilbur: Yeah. Well, I mean, he’s still my son in blood, but, he’s just…

Tommy: You should put him up.

Wilbur: What d’you mean, put him up? What, for adoption?

Tubbo: For adoption

---

Wilbur: He said, he said, “I am here for the Presidencialcy-” He just left.

Tommy: And then he- [sighs] I’m so sorry you have to deal with him.

W: I don’t- I- It’s really sad, like I… Honestly, I- when he turned around to me and he said he wasn’t gonna vote for me, and then he decided he was gonna vote for the opposition, and then he decided he was gonna run against me, that was- one of those was the straw that broke my back. I’m not sure which one- I’m still contemplating which one was the- are you listening?

[Tommy has jumped off the podium to join Tubbo in the audience.]

Tommy: Yeah, I’m going down to Tubbo, I just- I’m just letting you vent, Wilbur, I want you to have time to vent.

Wilbur: Yeah I just- I miss me son! I miss me son! I miss when he was my boy! Do you remember when he was my boy?

Tommy: Yeah, I’m not really good at handling… People who are emotional.

Besides Tommy genuinely wanting to get more votes during the dennoucemnt situation, his seconddary motive was well, he was protective over Wilbur, he noticed that what Fundy did during the debate hurt Wilbur, and kept acting bitter towards him from then on. ( “ I saw how asshole-y and bratty you were acting in the courtroom the other night.” / And then he- [sighs] I’m so sorry you have to deal with him.”  )

the he a was tiny bit jealous point IS more up in the air but we can compare this to how Tommy acted towards Ranboo just after leaving prison, when he learned of the c!beeduo marriage.

Quotes from @/kateis-cakeis, @/findingjoynweirdstuff, @/ace-enderchest and my own transcripts, thank you guys!

#dream smp #dsmp #wilbur soot #fundy #tommyinnit #night's talk tag #dsmp analysis #night's meta tag