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It is a calm winter's day in Snowchester, and Jack Manifold is falling apart. This is not a rare occurrence. He's stuck in that dark squalor between sleeping and waking, barely aware enough to hear sounds of life outside even as old scars crackle with phantom pain. It's the thrashing, and the yelling, and the childishness of these things, that rends him in two.
When Tubbo barges into his squat cabin, it feels less like an invasion than like solace. Some people simply have a presence that grounds. Wilbur was one of those people. Schlatt, in his own unctuous way, was one of those people. Tubbo is, now, or maybe he always was and nobody noticed. However his gravitas came about, it readily bundles the wisps of Jack's night terrors back into the shape of a person. Too easily. Too practiced.
"It's just a nightmare," says Tubbo dogmatically into his collarbone, still bleary himself, hair twisted up in all directions. His own scars stretch and contort as he yawns - he doesn't bother to cover them up the way Jack does. If Wilbur was still here, he'd tell everyone to wear them with dignity and pride. "You're fine, Jack. You're okay."
It's not the first or even tenth time one of them has done this, but it's the first time it's happened in the unforgiving clarity of midday. Sunlight skitters over the snow, a limpid chorus behind the morning that makes everything appear outlined and contrasting and crisp. Realer.
Nobody has come to Snowchester because they want things to be realer, so they are still the only ones outside. He is almost painfully relieved.
"Where'd you learn how to do that, then?" Jack asks this time. They've migrated from his living room to Squeeks' grave, bundled up in furs against the biting cold. Neither of them had mentioned the suit folded neatly in the corner of Jack's bedroom, the chequered tie, the starched white collar. Probably for the best, like.
In lieu of an answer, Tubbo sweeps slush from the headstone and relights its torches robotically. Their brackets are already almost rusted through. Almost every poppy has been touched by frost and shrivelled into a blotch of dead beige. It is not, in Jack's opinion, a brilliant backdrop to Tubbo's recent malaise.
"Tommy," he says finally, through a strained chuckle. It is a final kind of laugh.
"Of course." Mindful of his tone, Jack tries to make it sound more respectful and less utterly miserable. Everything always comes back to Tommy, that's the entire fucking problem, but with Tubbo it's almost okay. The two of them have always orbited each other. Tommy and Tubbo, a binary star system drawn together by platonic devotion, with satellites like Jack permitted the occasional perigee.
Unlike almost all of their allies, the three of them have been friends for a very long time. This truth only makes Tommy's treachery sting more.
"I'm gonna go into town later; Puffy wants a hand investigating the egg again," Tubbo is chattering on over the blood rushing in Jack's ears, "and all it does to me is make me cry so I'm like, uh, the third best person she could have asked. You coming?" Town. Such an unassuming little word, for the patchwork community they've all ripped up from the ruins of battle again and again and again. Jack much prefers the rough-hewn simplicity that is Snowchester.
"Fuck if I know anythin' about the egg," he points out, synthetically cheerful. "I know don't touch it, I know get clean if you do."
"Get clean if you do," echoes Tubbo. Eyes glazing over somewhat, he tears himself from the gravestone to lead Jack away from the town square. "Yeah." He scales the border wall mid-sentence, easy as breathing.
Jack scrambles over the slick wood after him, praying against splinters, and thinks about installing a proper gate. It's never going to happen. The wind nips belligerently at his nose, his fingers, anything it can reach. He's still half in his own head when Tubbo continues his thought quietly. "It's cruel to me. The egg. It knows what hurts."
Briefly, weakly, Jack aches to talk it out with him. Work through the horror. It is an odd instinct, one that neither Old L'Manberg nor its successors would tolerate - there is no wider gulf than that between quelling someone's nightmares and speaking of them. Comfort is a concept that lives behind closed doors. Sometimes he forgets, is all.
"Then I won't try my luck with it," he says instead, "but I'll tag along. Sam might be on his weird capitalist bit again, and then it's all looking up for Jack Manifold. Money money money, mon ami."
"You know, you could just ask me for stuff. I always have plenty to spare." Without the others around, Tubbo is even more nakedly unimpressed by his swagger. It doesn't falter. Jack draws deep furrows in the snow with his bootheel as they hike, tries to draw a smiley face. It looks too much like Dream's mask and he scuffs it out before anything escalates.
"I'm well aware," he bites out after a long while of nothing but crunching ice and their own shallow breathing. "Maybe I just don't want your help all the time, Tubbo." He's kind of kidding, and he chuckles to soften the words, but they still come out all jagged and rude. They wordlessly choose to ignore it, and Tubbo's ebullience carries them both to the mainland.
The way he prefers to parkour over the arches of their path rather than actually sprint down it is endearing, to a degree. At times Jack is pretty humanly jealous of the ability to leap over huge rocks like it's nothing. Though, occasionally Tubbo's horns jut out of his hair further than usual and his muscles bunch up just so in the instant before the jump, and Jack has to look away before he starts cowering from Schlatt's silhouette. Prime, but Jack can be a little bitch sometimes. Tubbo and Quackity went through so much worse in that fucking cabinet, everyone knows. Fundy too, if rumours are to be believed. In the face of that shit? A couple months of isolation, a routine of intimidation, is nothing. He keeps running, and does not turn to see if the little craghopper catches up.
Awesamdude is nice to be around because he is predictable in his neutrality. It's functionally a little fucked up, to be comforted by someone's presence because them stabbing the shit out of you is never anything personal, but it's a comfort Jack holds onto anyway as he picks his way through the encroaching crimson bloodvines, up towards the build site. They whisper. None of what they say is true, probably, but damn if it's not alluring.
He's just a little lonely, that's all. The egg isn't cruel about this, but it lets him know, rather insistently, that its disciples are never alone. It isn't cruel to him. That's always nice. Jack warily promises to consider its offer, and the answering chirr is content enough.
Then again, about half an hour down the muddy old Prime Path he groans in exasperation and cordially expresses his desire to torch the annoying bloody shits to kingdom come. Instead of laughing Tubbo just nods jerkily over his shoulder and grabs at Jack's hand. The kid's face is sallow and haunted, and not for lack of trying to stay upbeat and leaderly. He looks exhausted. From then on Jack goes first, by unspoken edict, and takes short enough strides for Tubbo to hop between his footprints.
At the rate they're coming in Sam must see them a mile off. When they arrive at the hotel foundations, however, he babbles happily to Tubbo as his stupid character and offers Jack a single civil nod as if they'd both appeared from nowhere. He nods back and stands there uselessly, a hard hat jammed onto his head at Sam's request, until the nuke-wielding de facto leader of Snowchester skips away to pick flowers for dye. He looks like a much, much younger child. The old worry creeps back in.
Jack gets this dumbass building charade. He does. It gives the real kids structure now that the wars are technically over, gives them something to do. But as he watches Tubbo crouch in a patch of daffodils, mere metres from one of the grisly scarlet tendrils, something not entirely unlike concern thickens in the back of his throat. Because he always fucking does, Sam notices the shift.
"TUBBO UNDERSCORE IS A FRIEND OF TOMMY INNIT.." he punches into his communicator, the ghost of a smile tugging at his masked jaw as the device burbles. His goggles consist of a single tinted panel, behind which his dark eyes stare unblinking at Jack's trembling hands. "NO HARM WILL COME TO HIM UNDER MY JURISDICTION JACK MANIFOLD..."
"Better not," he shoots back. Dour, still unsettled by the buzzing whisper just down the hill from the hotel foundations, he leans into the joke of being as smarmy as physically possible. He has his reasons; the way Sam tilts his head at Jack when he's being serious is prying and kind of rude. "You got work for me too, Samuel my boy? Running a few round little zeroes on the old emeralds, if you know what I mean."
A baffled pause.
"WE DO NOT KNOW WHAT YOU MEAN...."
"Okay, prick." The snort that escapes him is involuntary and ugly. They make eye contact for perhaps the first time since Dream went to prison. Sam's proper smiley around his eyes now, a sharp and rare thing, but it fades as he keeps typing. The effect is immediate. As well as feeling that he's disappointed someone, Jack is surprised to register that he wants to apologise. It's an illogical urge - Sam has done nothing for him, excepting repeated and brutally efficient acts of murder. And yet. All additional retorts die on his tongue.
"I MUST NOW ASK YOU TO LEAVE THE BUILD SITE... ALTHOUGH IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO ASK AWESAMDUDE IF HE HAS ANY TASKS FOR YOU TO COMPLETE, WE ARE TOLD HE IS HARD AT WORK AT THE COMMUNITY HOUSE..." Jack tenses. All these layers of cloth and hide are getting far too warm. He just wants to go home. Yeah, Tubbo will be fine by himself, and the villagers can wait. Jack's going back to Snowchester, right now, and leaving this pretence of a ceasefire to rot under the egg. Right now.
For fuck's sake, Jack Manifold.
By the time he gets up the courage to unwieldily trident himself over to the rebuilt community house, Sam is already standing there. He's polishing his own tools over a workbench thick with what looks to be sawdust. There's a pair of axes, a bundle of blades trussed up with twine, even a spare trident. Almost all of it is netherite. To a boy - shit, a man - coveting a single diamond sword the hoard is an intoxicating, intimidating sight.
"Whaddayou want doin', then?" he asks neutrally, almost rhetorically, trying and failing not to sneeze. It raises the dust, and he panics for a moment that there'll be shouting, but Sam seems downright at home as it settles in his shock of forest-green hair. Weirdo.
"THERE IS NO NEED TO BE CONFRONTATIONAL... NO HARM WILL COME TO YOU UNDER MY JURISDICTION JACK MANIFOLD.." He snorts unhappily. It's patronising; he's not another child to placate. Sam - Nook? - doesn't even deign to look up from his work at the sound.
"I feel," Jack says in as level a tone as he can muster, "like you're makin' fun of me."
"I am not." Sam says that much out loud, rasp modulated somewhat by his mask, a sound that hurts to hear even though it's what he wanted. Is he sick? "I still don't trust you around Tommy, mind. He's seen how you look at him. I'm not happy about it." For a moment Jack revs up to an affronted response, but Sam silences him with a single withering glance. He doesn't know that much. He can't know. Jack'd be back in hell, if Sam knew. No third chances.
Clawed hands tighten around their trident, the enchantments down its handle layered so thick that the purple sheen seems almost a solid substance, a shimmering gel of pure staying power. The sonorous, firm voice of its owner is perfectly controlled as Sam leans down to look Jack in the eye and then murmur, "But you die rather often, don't you?"
It isn't even close to any one of the many scathing remarks or cool insults Jack had braced himself for. Does he, particularly, die?
A trident slamming into the earth. The moment of relaxation, in the middle of the fall. A trident impaled in the cliffside. The comfort of knowing you did all you could. A trident bouncing haphazardly over someone's roof. The unspoken affirmation that to bleed is to give, that to be of agony is to fail acceptably.
He bites his lip hard enough to ground himself, because nobody else better is here to do it, and laughs once.
"Ha! I, uh, um, I-Yeah! Yeah, I do. S'funny, innit?"
"Not really, no," comes the dispassionate reply. Sam's gaze flickers in passing to the bead of blood. On a second look, his eyebrows are drawn together inscrutably.
"Mm. Yeah." Viscerally discomfited, Jack finds himself gripping the edge of the nearest bench. When he pulls his hands away they stink of fireworks and ash. "So," he very carefully does not look up from his palms, "what was that about tasks to complete?"
As Sam goes back to typing, Jack picks up the netherite axe and a whetstone and starts the gruelling process of sharpening out an old chip. The looming creeper hybrid looks torn between snatching it from him and glaring disapprovingly. Jack stares back, without malice, and wonders how exactly Sam earned a crown.
"Where exactly did you learn to do that?" Awesamdude asks sedately through what looks like the top half of a frown, Sam Nook fully abandoned. The question catches Jack off guard, so he drops the weapon and backs away from it in surrender. He's not stupid enough to half-inch netherite right in front of its owner, he's really not. The gas mask doesn't do any legwork in helping him figure out if there's anger in the asking.
"Dunno," he settles on, genuine and vigilant, half his attention on the doorway or maybe even the still-gaping hole in the roof. He can't outrun Sam, but he can damn well try. If not for Puffy's meddling, it would still have looked more like a community pavilion after whatever temper tantrum Dream had enacted on this whole place, and perhaps he could have gotten a headstart.
Ah, well. At least the repairs are pretty. "Jus' habit, innit? Don't think there's ever been a time where I didn't need a sword, Sammy." He twirls the battleaxe around his wrist frivolously, a make-believe conqueror. It's a marvel of blacksmithing. "May as well know how to look after them, am I right? Call that transferable skills, I'm mad employable."
It's a joke, but for a split-second Sam looks terribly sad. Maybe he's had a 'bad experience' with bloody sharpening stones; hell if Jack knows. That's Puffy getting in his head yet again, talking about shit like trauma and triggers and yeah, bad experiences, as if she's ever bothered to learn about what's gone down here. It's not weird that he's capable and responsible and useful. It's not. She'd know that if she was an actual knight and not trying to be everyone's mum all the time-
"How old are you, again?"
"Eighteen, I think. 'Til t'summer, but it's hard to tell that here."
"You think." Sam promises him half a stack of emeralds and asks him to bring back a stack of iron ingots. Neither of them miss the way his fingers itch towards the communicator again when he says it. What an odd, odd man.
Underground, Jack finds his eyes are still watering from all that sawdust. Gunpowder. Whatever. When he makes it back to the valley, however, the situation has shifted from mildly irritating to an absolute puerile fuckfest. Who should be taking the piss out of Sam but one Theseus Careful Danger Serious Kraken Innit-Minecraft, as if his life's purpose truly is to ruin Jack's with every single breath.
Obligingly enough, he manages to insult Sam's height, haircut, love life and general nerve to exist around him by the time Jack has conquered the bloodvines once more. He can't be fucked to deal with Tommy today, all told. He dithers, and wonders where Tubbo is, and waits for the asshole child to scramble off in search of oak planks before closing the gate behind him.
He's not scared of Tommy. He's not. Just doesn't want to talk to him, is all. He's his own guy.
"HELLO JACK MANIFOLD.. YOU GOT THAT DONE FAST!" Jack's heart thumps against his ribcage as Sam claps him on the back. Despite himself, he offers a sullen thumbs up at the praise. "I WILL PASS ON THESE MATERIALS TO AWESAMDUDE...."
Jack rolls his eyes, leans over the railing to admire the foundations. Distantly, Tommy is yelling at one of the vines to give back his sword. Sam shifts beside him as Jack had done watching Tubbo. The contrast does not go over his head, even if Sam's shoulder does as he grips the planks.
"Reckon I could jaw the egg, to be honest," he says, to upset the weird contemplative quiet. "All this messing about when we could just clart it into next week. Make omelettes." He nearly goes to elbow Sam in the ribs, but between the gold chestplate and Sam being a foot taller than him it doesn't feel like the best idea. For Prime's sake; the difference is starting to feel threatening. "You feel me, fella?"
"It's not that bad," Sam returns gruffly under his breath as he counts out the payment. "Really. You learn to like it."
Jack wrinkles up his nose in disbelief, e-chests his emeralds and starts walking. There are many, many more than Sam had said. To express his boundless gratitude, he decides to leave for real this time - before Tommy comes back and another useless shouting match kicks off.
He's so overtly cautious about not running into Tommy, in fact, that he staggers full pelt into someone else wandering up the path and finds himself on his arse in the mud. Par for the course, really. For a moment he can afford to be winded; then he looks up and has to hold back a groan. Backlit by the afternoon sunshine, a pale beacon against the rolling hills just north of Old L'Manberg, it's her.
"Puffy." He grimaces as pleasantly as he can.
"Jack!" She hauls him effortlessly to his feet.
As of recent, Jack finds himself bonding with more and more boring, standoffish people over the singular common interest of Tubbo's wellbeing. For a long time, they'd been natural equals - two teenage boys, two rank and file soldiers during L'Manberg's prime, two architects who had looked to the stars and seen the glimmer of progress looking back. The only thing Tubbo had had over on him back then was knowing what real death felt like, and that was never something to be envious of. How the tables have turned.
When did this chasm grow so deep and so wide? When did the natural charisma of Jack's best friend - Jack's, because he is not so naive as to think Tubbo values him half as much as Tommy, that's always been the way of it and it's unironically perfectly alright - balloon into presidencies and authority and undeniable power?
Pisses him off. He loves Tubbo, in the way that one loves a leader and a friend and yeah, at this point, something adjacent to a brother, but it pisses him right off. And now he has to talk to the resident stick-in-the-mud. Brilliant.
"I am so sorry, Puffy, really. Holy shit. Uh, wotcha doin' out here?" he tacks on hastily.
"Don't worry about it," she reassures him, stance relaxing. "And, I...live, here? Sometimes?"
Shit. She has a rock-solid point. He knows this, because he's yoinked enough coal from her Snowchester house to be very aware of how empty it is. "Plus, I've been looking at the egg. Your-that is, Tubbo gave up a couple hours ago, which is fair enough. You've not gone near it, have you?"
"No! I mean, absolutely not, ma'am. Would never." There's a gratified, almost amused undertone to the way her ears twitch in response. Tubbo's already in earshot, so he grasps for the one other thing they have in common to round off the conversation. "Look. Be nice to her, alright? Niki?"
The change in tone is immediate. Puffy's bovine features cycle impressively through shock, outrage and skepticism before settling on a kind of mellow exasperation.
"Jack Manifold," she articulates coolly, "we're both grown women. We can look after our own affairs, thank you very much. I'm not getting the shovel talk from some teenager because he finds it odd."
"I don't mean because you're girls," Jack snaps back, "come the fuck on. I mean because she's a teenager too, Puffy, and she's been through more than you ever have."
It might or might not be coincidence that Sam's head jerks up, that he guides Tubbo further downhill to a cluster of lilacs. As Jack looks back down at Puffy he realises her ears are twitching again. This time it's with barely constrained rage. When she speaks it is dangerous and quiet, as if her violence isn't performative and sloppy and fake. It's fucking terrifying nonetheless.
"Please don't profess to know my life."
"I-You're sick, you are, all superior," he says anyway. This is familiar, this is safe, this is the real fire under Puffy's simpering demeanour. Nobody would be that kind without getting something out of it, and digging down into the truth of it is immensely satisfying. Like proving something so obvious, you shouldn't even have to try. But he does. He needs to see her stoop to their level. "You call yourself a captain, you play at being a knight," the words fall over each other in a sputtering waterfall, "you have no primedamn clue what she's been through! What almost all of us have been through." He pokes her in the chest, and she doesn't even have the decency to stumble back or snarl.
It only makes him angrier. Give and take, attack and defend, none of it works if the opponent just...stands there. "You'd never wear that stupid fuckin' hat if you had the foggiest of what a war is like. You'd go see your girlfriend, once in a while, and give up on all this touchy-feely self-aware bullshit. Alright?" And oh, how Puffy's eyes flash at that.
Too far. Way too fuckin' far. For a long second he legitimately thinks she's going to kill him. It would be fitting to take out her stupid, uselessly blunt cutlass and cut him down anyway in front of everyone. It's what he would do, though he's not proud of it. It's what anyone would do, given the chance. That's just the way things are.
So he isn't truly scared, not until Puffy's hands slip from her scabbard and grab him by the shoulders. Then he panics, flinches, because a fancy sword is predictable, but she has been far stronger than him since the moment they met and that is terrifying. What's the big idea? Is she going to headbutt him the way Schlatt could, or slap him, or pull back her fist and...
"Prime." She says it so softly. Not in a religious way, not as a prayer. Puffy lets the holy word drift away on the breeze, an expression of nothing less than pure grief. He flinches back wholesale, hoping that'll convince her to go easy and knowing it won't. "You all need so much more help than I can give. I'm so sorry, Jack."
What?
It is the strangest hug he's ever received. As he pats her awkwardly on the back, Tubbo wheezing silently from the opposite meadow, Jack solidifies one thing in his mind. He will never bloody understand old people.
"We're going home now." It's Tubbo's hands prying Puffy's from his torso, and his firm tone leaves no room for argument. "C'mon, Jack." The captain looks like she wants to continue, but Tubbo shakes his head at her with something approaching imperiousness. More out of shock than anything else, it looks like, she ducks her head and strides away with a pointed look at Sam.
"What were you two arguing about? I didn't even know it was possible to have beef with Captain Puffy."
"Therapy," he pulls from nowhere, which isn't quite a lie if you squint, and Tubbo jostles him benevolently.
"Therapy?" he parrots in disgust. "Jeez. What is she expecting? Hello Miss Madame Captain Dearest, my name is Tubbo Underscore, I would like to pay you copious amounts of diamonds to whine about my childhood. Like, okay, sure thing. It's the shittiest scam since that whole premium bonds fearscow."
"Fiasco, Tubbo. It's fiasco."
"Okay, well, now we're walking back in silence."
"That's a bit excessive!"
Now they're walking back in silence. But it's a nice, funny kind of quiet. It's not a kind of peace Jack had ever thought would settle, not with Tommy still alive.
He's still testing the fragile surface of that peace when they arrive home. They take shelter on Tubbo's porch, watching the daily flurry of white kick up from under the overhang. Senses forever dulled somewhat by the great immateriality of void, Jack is relatively certain he could sleep in it and wake up fine if he ever tried. But he doesn't. The kid would worry. Speaking of which.
"Do you...know how I died?" Tubbo doesn't even bat an eye as he perches on the bottom step.
"Fighting, mainly, I'd imagine. Trident misuse, just," he takes his own out and jabs it indicatively into the snow, "absolutely horrible negligence of the tool." They chuckle until Jack remembers himself, sobers.
"No, like. Died. Capital D. For real."
"Oh. Gosh," he begins gingerly, "I try not to think about that shit. Still not sure I would have believed half of it, if not for the-"
Jack takes off his glasses and Tubbo's illuminated face stares back up at him unbothered, a presidential portrait bisected by colour. "Yeah. If not for that. Anyway, I know Technoblade killed you third. We couldn't really miss it. What was the first?"
"Manberg versus Pogtopia, baby. Wilbur," the name tastes strange in his mouth nowadays, "ran me through, even though I fought for you guys. Guess he got tired of independence when someone else tried to do it." Manifoldland had been his one respite, his corner of the world to stake claim to, even if it began as a joke. A poor man's El Rapids. Now it stands just as empty and scorned, having survived every war more out of careless negligence than any inherent quality. Jack can relate.
Something very childish tinges Tubbo's voice as he jumps to the defence of a long-dead despot. "He, uh. He said that was an accident."
"Well, if it was an accident, I wouldn't have these, would I, Tubbo?!"
He doesn't mean to be so loud. His eyes flare up like Eret's when he is, something he only notices from the colourful glint of new fear in Tubbo's eyes. The kid pulls back visibly against the stone, and Jack slips his shades back on before they lose this opportunity to talk for another awkward month. "Look, Tubbo, I'm sorry. I know he was all crazy at the end. I'm sure he wouldn't have done that beforehand. It was still cruel, alright?"
That's an understatement and a half. It's the most insult Jack has ever been paid by anyone, except the bastard blond himself. Before anything else, he had jolted out of bed gasping with rage at the sheer audacity of it. The man who had taught him that going down fighting was the only choice, the only path to redemption, hadn't even given him that option. He'd been dispatched like an animal and ignored once more. For fucking fun.
"It was," the boy concedes grimly, feet shuffling. "Look, Jack, how'd you die the second time? You're kind of dancing around it, big man. Kinda suspicious."
"When the impostor is sus-" Tubbo punches him in the arm. "Ow! Okay! Okay, bitch, fine. I was visiting Tommy," he starts, and Tubbo's gaze goes all distant and sad and very slightly violent. For most of their lives, he'd been a bone-deep pacifist. How far away that seems now.
"Oh."
"Yeah, oh. Like I said, I was visiting Tommy in the Nether, 'cause he'd been so quiet and I figured he wasn't getting much attention?" Everyone and their aunt knows what happens when Tommy stops being the centre of attention. At least back when they were toddlers it was endearing. "And he saw me, and the lava-"
"Dream melted you, didn't he? Oh my Prime, Jack, I'm so sorry."
The look Tubbo gives him then is harrowing. It's not pity, not quite, but the devastating commiseration of someone who has been taken apart and hastily reconstructed, with some of the pieces broken or misplaced, and knows you have been too.
"What?" Bafflement snakes its way around his wrists as he tries to rub out the chilblains and not meet the kid's all-too-knowing gaze. "No, dumbass. It wasn't Dream."
Moment of truth. This could incriminate him in everything. But Jack, in the moment, doesn't give a shit. Everyone needs to know that their precious little tragic hero isn't whatever saviour he's been built up to be, Tubbo most of all. "It was Tommy."
"No it wasn't," Tubbo retorts automatically, almost comically.
"It was."
"He wouldn't."
"Well, he did."
"I think," says Tubbo stiltedly after a beat, still absolutely reeling, "that he was in a very bad place. He still wouldn't do that, I'm sure."
"Oh, are you now? At least I visited him enough to know!"
The sympathy drains from his eyes. And that's all it takes, to lose someone to Tommy fucking Innit. Tubbo's mouth flaps uselessly a few times before he twists a handful of Jack's collar in his fist and pulls them to eye level.
"Now hold on, you know nothing about what we went through-"
Jack sees red. He says, this time around, what he had wanted to say to Puffy. No matter how soft and rounded her words are, she isn't the one who's been slaughtered and robbed again and again and again. When she implies those deaths meant nothing, it hurts because of her ignorance. When it comes from Tubbo, of all people, the focus of so much torment, it is just downright insane.
"I know enough, Tubbo! I You think I haven't been through the fuckin' wringer? You think Manberg was a picnic for the rest of us, eh, you-you think we all just stopped existing whilst you were playing at being a spy?" The kid's not even looking at him, rheumy eyes flickering towards the forest. He snaps his fingers impatiently in front of his nose to drag back his focus. His accent thickens as he lets it all out, the horror, the misery. "It, it was shit, is what I'm saying, it was utter shit. So when we were free an' it was me who went to see him-"
"Shut up."
"- an' it was me, who said, hey, Tommy, I heard things are going downhill for you, big man, I've come to cheer you up-"
"Stop talking, right now, I mean it."
"-but he just flinched, fell back like I was gonna stab him and he stomped the netherrack right out from under my feet, he laughed an' just watched, he just watched it rip me apart. It wasn't like a normal lava death, promise, I have never been in more shittin' pain, and he had a fire res pot in his hands, in his hands in front of me, Tubbo-"
"Fucking be quiet, Jack Manifold!" Tubbo hisses, and something invisible snaps.
Their scuffle is quick and unexpectedly balanced, to the point where it's unclear who throws the first punch. It's been a long time since L'Manberg combat training, and both of them are ropey with muscle that wasn't there before. Jack is still taller and stronger, but there's a lean dexterity to Tubbo's movements that he just doesn't have. It's not until the kid has a hand clamped over his mouth, pulling him up against the wall in distracted terror, that Jack realises they are no longer alone.
"Am I interrupting?" Leaning on the border wall, a familiar cape drawn about her shoulders as poor protection from the cold, Niki stands out against the treeline like a sore thumb. Fading pink hair bounces over her shoulders as she walks over with stiffness in every joint, clearly exhausted and cold.
"Did anyone follow you here?" says Tubbo, leaping to his feet.
"Is everything alright?" says Jack, cocking his head to the side.
This is the first time the three of them have been alone together in months. Everyone is taller, and decidedly more haunted, and none of them will ever wear a L'Manbergian uniform again.
"Just me, and I'm fine," she asserts, taken aback, eyes as wide as dinner plates. Tubbo stumbles over himself to apologise for his abruptness and invite her inside. As he brushes dirt and slush from his knees, slowly uprights himself, Jack can't even blame him. He does, however, mourn the opportunity for closure.
"To what do we owe the pleasure?" Tubbo potters around in his chests, coming up with cake and honey, resolutely not making eye contact with anyone except Niki. No matter how long it takes, he'll come to accept that Tommy is a murderer and a treasonous bastard who uses everyone he claims to love and ruins everything he dares to touch. He'll come around to reason. Just not tonight, apparently.
"I really only came to visit Jack."
All of them wince. Tubbo's eyes flicker to the ring on Niki's finger and his eyebrows raise minutely as if of their own accord.
"That's for Puffy, dipshit." Jack rolls his eyes, and Tubbo almost chokes on his mouthful of sugared berries. "People can just be friends."
"R-right. 'Course. It's good to see you, Niki, really. Feels like we haven't spoken much recently. Sorry again about the nukes, by the way, I just felt so horrible-"
"It's no big deal," Niki grinds out before he can get any further. "I'm okay, Tommy's okay, there is nothing to worry about." Everyone goes dismally quiet. She has never been a brilliant liar, but in this case there are enough reasons to be upset that the mention of Tommy seems to direct more contempt at Tubbo's leadership than anything else. And that means a fight, or it means silence.
Over the ridge there's the comforting, rhythmic crash of seawater lapping hungrily at rock. In the distance Foolish and Charlie bicker good-naturedly and assault each other with yesterday's snowfall. It's more tranquillity, less apprehension, than Jack has felt in nearly half a year. So why does he still feel so tense, like a string held taut and tested?
"Right. Uh. I'll leave you two to it." Tubbo stands, claps his hands together awkwardly, and takes out his communicator. Ranboo's nervous, throaty tones erupt from it as he closes the front door of his own house just to let them be alone. Even as he appreciates this privilege, Jack chafes against it.
"He seems happier. More himself." Not for long, Niki doesn't add, but she may as well have.
"Mans is doing his best. We're decommissioning the nukes soon, so he's...yeah. He's kinda going through it," Jack affixes, looking up from the worried skin around his knuckles. Her eyes are less concerned than they should be, until he clarifies, "Worried that Tommy's radiation poisoning's gonna come back to bite him in the arse."
"Well, is he less sick?"
"Well, are you?"
She doesn't answer. There must be a reason her jacket cuffs are blood-spattered, unless it's all Wilbur's, but Jack's not entirely sure how to word 'hopefully you're dying, because that means he is too, and at least you'll come back'. So he doesn't. He just stares at Tubbo's bedroom, a soldier's bunk, bare of toys and posters and the childishness of these things. It's all functional and practical for him, as much as it is for Jack. It must fucking kill him, to be seventeen after everything he's suffered.
"Sometimes I wonder why we're all still here."
"Huh?" says Jack without thinking, startled. He turns to face Niki and is unsure what to do with her welling tears. They aren't like Tubbo's easy bawling tracks of silver, or Ranboo's silent sobs that burn into his cheeks, and Jack just doesn't cry.
Curling around the blade. Toothmarks on your fist when you wrench open your eyes, deep and bloody and a perfect match to the clasp of your own chapped lips. Pain, pain so acute and intense it's like there was never anything else, so the only option is falling and burning and falling and tearing apart and falling and melting and-
"Existing this way," Niki clarifies from her spot at the window. She hasn't noticed the spasms of his wrists by the time he buries his arms in furs. It's not quite his old balcony, but even now she cranes her neck through the shutters as if to get right at the stars. "Totally vanilla. Some of us go to the MC Championships, y'know, and it's like...it's like most people live. Like, modded to the moon and back. There's this hotel outside the arena, and it has coffee machines, and toasters, and videogames." Jack nods, though it seems unrelated.
Sounds like early childhood, really, like the hazy period before Hypixel and Innit Inc. and the everything that came after. Like being a kid, and he is a man, so it bears no thinking about. "Last time we went," she continues, "Tubbo knew the season was ending and he just sat playing this stupid kids' game for hours on end. That's where Sam Nook comes from. Whereas here, Dream barely even lets himself mod anything, you see?"
He does see. But he's also not sure he likes where this is going. The appeal of the server has always been the idea of doing anything one wants unfettered. Back to the roots of civilisation. Going anywhere, building anything, being anyone but the kid with the oversized headphones who tagged after Tommy Minecraft and Tubbo Underscore. Now the headset is a relic, a reminder of everything he'd given up just by joining, and of every such souvenir on Jack's body it hurts the least. He slips it down around his neck and listens, really listens, without a buffer, to Niki speak.
"I'm so tired, Jack. Every time I see another terrible thing happen I think, wow, you know what? I want to leave, and sleep in a bed someone else made, and eat food that isn't built into the fabric of reality, and visit a city that wasn't built by a bunch of amateurs to fall in months."
At that he purses his lips. It's been a long time since he's considered appliances, industry, the comforts of modern life. Losing them was supposed to make life simple. "I want to bake a cake, Jack, and not know how it'll turn out. That would be nice."
"I was on SMPEarth?" he proffers weakly. "They had guns and planes and stuff. It was pretty cool."
"No, I mean-Do you not think it a little sad," challenges Niki, all of a sudden right up in his face, and they're practically the same height so he can't just look away as if she was Tubbo, "that the only things in all of this world that exist past base redstone are a handful of communicators and some hacked-in nuclear fucking bombs?"
"Oh." A beat. Charlie's distant laugh continues. "Are you going, then?" It's all he can think of to say. It comes out dry and cold, like a resignation. Like stepping down from a stage.
She slumps against him in response like it's late summer, like it's the height of L'Manberg's independence and the six of them are snatching an hour of rest in a pile of limbs and thick coats, like it's still socially appropriate to treat him as her fellow soldier. And yet, there is no army on its way. There is only a boy, and his villainy, and his ever-growing twin leagues of protectors and detractors, and Niki, and Jack.
Without any warning, he stumbles back trying to keep her from falling. They are so, so fucked. This time the hug is not out of a feeling of safety; rather the opposite, as she mulls over his words, as he holds her all worried at arm's length. Wilbur is dead. Tommy soon will be. Fundy is a grief-soaked shell of his former self. Tubbo soon will be. The two of them constitute all that is left of L'Manberg and its ideology, no matter how vocally Niki despises that idea. At least they both agree that moving on is too selfish to consider.
"No. No, I'm not. I can hardly go when Tommy's still alive, can I?" Then Niki jerks back in realisation, horror weighing down the lines of her shoulders as she straightens and shakes her head. The movement is staticky, animalistic, automatic. He frets silently. "I mean, when Puffy's still waiting for me."
Jack still doesn't say anything, for once in his primedamn life, but he looks at her blankly through the insurmountable barrier of his glasses and hopes the order of those sentences worries her as much as it does him.
Nausea crackles around his skull, indecisive, investigating. Of course he wants Tommy dead, at some indefinable point, but it's not, like...he didn't crawl his way out of hell just to beat the shit out of a horrible teenager. There are more important things. He adores his few remaining friends and spending time with them, and after everything it's enough to simply be alive. Whereas Niki has no concept of the true death, and it shows. Distrust filters every conversation they have even as they come to rely more and more on each other. What she sees in Captain Cara Puffy he has no idea, but it's becoming bizarrely superceded by her rage. That rage is powerful, but it also makes it impossible to trust her anymore.
It'll all be okay, he reminds himself mulishly. They'll get Tommy somehow, and it will be a painless tragic accident, and the remnants of L'Manberg will finally stop trying in vain to move on. Niki and Jack can collect up their loved ones, and stay in the moment as it's granted, and stop trying to bury L'Manberg in the distant past, and simply live.
That sure would be nice. Thing is, he's known from the start that they have different goals. Jack wants Tommy to be scared. To know what it's like, realising slowly that nobody is going to save you, that nobody cares if you live or you fucking die. Or, for that matter, if you live again against all the odds. Something that he is certain, down to the unplumbed depths of whatever had seen fit to wrench him bodily back to living, Tommy has never experienced.
But the woman at his side, pale and brutalised, stinking of smoke and of Wilbur? She's hurting because of that boy. She's still in terrible pain a month later, the anguish spilling over every time she opens her mouth, and she wants Tommy to hurt too. Unlike Niki, Jack's been there. And he is not sure, to be at the very least honest in the grip of his easy hypocrisy, if he's totally okay with it.
Fucking hell, man. It's an impossible puzzle. Neither of them have the training or licence to make a new world. Apart from Phil and Dream, he doesn't think they even know anyone who does. To escape this fucked world is unimaginable, and creating an escape route to begin with is an even more impossible goal. But he settles down with Niki anyway, staring at identical perfect cakes drizzled with Tubbo's best honey. He doesn't quite understand what about them she finds lacking.
So Jack chews and swallows, and he pretends it's late summer, and as he falls asleep on Niki's shoulder, he dreams. It's a nice, syrupy imagining of cottages in the woods, and sparring over rivers, and only shooting monsters in videogames, and being okay, and being fine, and being safe. For the first time in a long time, he is not thinking about Tommy.