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Unlike Tubbo, Quackity doesn’t mind the silence.
To Quackity, the silence is often refreshing, a pleasant palette cleanser to the usual noise. Quackity has always been loud by nature, and the same can be said of his life and surrounding environment. Sure, he generally prefers to be talking with someone or listening to music or whatever, but there are some times when all he wants is the tranquil silence.
After all, it has never been the silence that he hates, but the loneliness.
Project Nevadas, as he had been calling it in his head, was never quiet. Between the constant noise of construction, slots machines that never seemed to turn off, rushing water from the various fountains, and the neon buzz from the glaring lights, it was lucky if Quackity ever got a moment of quiet in the manmade desert. It had gotten to the stage where, particularly if he had had a long day hard at work, he would seek out the silence elsewhere.
That was the reason that he was, in the middle of the night, sitting cross-legged in the growing community garden.
It had been a painstaking few weeks since the decision to start a community garden in the crater that once was L’Manberg, and since then a surprising amount of progress had been made. Admittedly, Quackity hadn’t actually contributed a lot, as he was more than often preoccupied with Las Nevadas; especially now that Sam had dedicated most of his time to working on the community garden. Still, he made sure to visit and help out as much as he could, and he was proud of what they had achieved in such a short time frame.
The dirt had been levelled, and cobblestone paths wound through the ground in a style reminiscent of a spider’s web. The sides of the crater were nicely terraformed and there were plans to fit a stone staircase into at least one of the sides. Spruce trapdoor flower boxes had been built and alliums were finally peeking up through the soil. Saplings poked their branches out of where Ponk had planted them. But, most importantly, the grass was starting to grow.
Life was returning to the crater.
It was in the grass that Quackity was seated, basking in the silence and allowing the cool night breeze to ruffle his feathers. The garden was quiet, as was to be expected with the late hour, but the quiet wasn’t unwelcome. There was no one else to be seen, but Quackity didn’t mind. If there had been someone, it was unlikely that he would have paid any mind, as his entire attention was captured by the treasured deck of Uno cards laid out in front of him.
In the last couple of weeks, there had not been a single moment where Quackity didn’t have the Uno deck either in his hand, in his inventory, or close by. The few times he’d parted with them were usually if he was doing something dangerous, and even then they were never far. If the others had noticed it, and it wouldn’t surprise him at all if they had, they hadn’t bothered to mention it. With so many traumatised people living on one server, it was uncommon to point out the unusual behaviours one might have. Besides, it wasn’t as if Quackity was the only person with a grave attachment to some kind of object.
A compass. Leather-wrapped diaries. The tattered coat of an ex-president. A futuristic metal headset. A netherite ingot and a pirate hat. A spare yellow dog collar.
Discs.
Though of little concern to almost anyone else, the deck of Uno cards held a lot of importance to Quackity – hence the unwillingness to part with them for long. Even before all of this mess, he had still kept them with him most of the time. The edges of the cards were bent and crinkled with use, bearing witness to how well-loved the deck was. Quackity hadn’t actually used them in a while, though. The Uno deck had been an anniversary present from Karl and Sapnap, and served as one of the few reminders of them that he had left.
Prime, that made it sound like they were dead.
They weren’t dead. Just, gone.
If he was completely honest, Quackity had been expecting it for quite some time. The life that he got to live with his fiances was far too good to be true, and nothing that good could last on a server like this. The entire relationship was just a cruel waiting game to see when they would get sick of him and abandon him, and the one thing keeping him afloat would plunge him into the dark depths. Quackity had been waiting for the day to come, and it had.
The ones he loved more than he could describe finally left him.
Quackity had spent several days on end screaming into the noise of Las Nevadas, asking a country that could never respond where he had gone wrong. His pleas and begs and grievances were drowned out by the sounds of a nation he built with his fiances in mind, a nation never seen by his muses. The loves of his life had left him to rot in the sand of a manmade desert, and he couldn’t help but think that somehow it was all his fault.
Perhaps he hadn’t been there enough, or perhaps he hadn’t been good enough. Either way, Quackity had known that it was coming, even since their first date. He had a long history of rejection and failed relationships – two failed engagements with Schlatt and Eret, the offer of a date turned down by Technoblade, and now, two fiances that had abandoned him.
Sure, it was easy to argue that it was in Quackity’s nature to flirt with almost anyone. He had a habit of making a move on others, whether that happened to be one or both of the now-dead presidents of L’Manberg or his future father-in-law. But, at the end of the day, Quackity always made sure that Karl and Sapnap knew he loved them more than anyone else.
He guessed that that devotion wasn’t reciprocated.
Well, que sera, sera. In the end, none of it actually mattered. Quackity didn’t care that much. If it was going to happen anyway, it might as well have happened before they had the chance to tie the knot. And hey, ultimately, his long laundry list of failed relationships only meant that rejection, abandonment, and unrequited feelings were nothing new to him.
That was a lie. He cared more than he should, and more than he would ever admit.
Quackity was still sorting the Uno cards into separate piles based on colour when he heard soft footsteps crunching over the grass behind him. He may have been partially blind after what happened at the failed execution – Thanks a lot, Technoblade. Geez, you try to get justice for your country and all you get is a netherite pickaxe through your teeth – but his hearing was probably better than it had ever been. And even if that wasn’t the case, the two sets of footsteps were too familiar for him to not recognise them.
The footsteps paused briefly, before Karl and Sapnap wordlessly sat down in the grass in front of him. Quackity chose to say nothing, instead continuing to organise his Uno cards while pointedly keeping his eyes down. The three forlorn lovers stewed in the awkwardness of not wanting to be the first to speak, with none more reluctant than Quackity himself. The silence had kept him company for far too long for him to break it now.
The moment drags out for a little longer, hanging in between them like a sheet of glass poised to shatter. Quackity feels the eyes that were on him drift downward, and Sapnap cleared his throat. “Six month anniversary. That was when you and Karl got me the soul fire lighter, right?”
Still keeping his eyes fixed on the cards he was sorting, Quackity remained silent once again. Even if he did have something to say to them, he wouldn’t have said it. It may have been petty of him to give them the silent treatment, but he thought that it was fair enough. They had ignored him for weeks on end, and now it was his time to turn the cold shoulder.
“We stayed up all night playing games with the cards,” Karl reminisced, “We were so tired the next morning that Sap fell asleep in his pancakes and we spent ages cleaning syrup out of his hair.”
“I’m surprised that you remember.” Quackity responded without lifting his eyes from the Uno cards. There was an audible wince, followed by a disheartened silence. Quackity pretended not to feel bad about his snark, telling himself that he wasn’t being too harsh on them, that even if them leaving him behind was inevitable they still deserved his standoffishness.
He didn’t believe that, but he’d keep telling himself until he did.
“Don’t be such an asshole, Q.” Sapnap muttered. Quackity raised an eyebrow, still not looking at them.
“Or what, you’ll leave me again?” Quackity regretted the response as soon as he said it, but there was no chance in Prime of him taking it back. He could feel the frustration wafting off of Karl and Sapnap, and though it made his heart twinge with guilt, it wasn’t enough to make him relent. He wasn’t going to give them the attention that they clearly wanted from him, not after they hadn’t given him any attention for months on end with no explanation.
“Can-” Sapnap bit his tongue. “Quackity, can you please just fucking look at us?”
As light as the golden feathers of his wings, Quackity placed the last cards into their piles and craned his neck to stare at Karl and Sapnap. His sharp gaze burned holes in them, and he hoped that somehow they could sense the fire lit behind his eyes that definitely was not tears. “Neither of you look different from the last time I saw you. What was that, months ago?”
Karl flinched, and Quackity pretended not to feel worse for it.
“That’s not fair.” Sapnap replied, but Quackity could tell from the way he averted his eyes that there was little weight behind it. They both were feeling some sense of guilt, Quackity supposed. If not for the fire still lingering behind his eyes, he may have been more understanding. It was going to happen anyway, there was no need for them to feel bad for it.
“Isn’t it?” Quackity blinked owlishly at his fiances, as if challenging them to contest his perspective. The ensuing silence only served to prove his point and to further highlight their apparent guilt.
Karl and Sapnap exchanged hesitant glances, before Karl sighed. “Quackity, we’re really sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry!” Quackity grinned, forcing himself to act more cheerful than he had been in the months since they had abandoned him. Maybe if Karl and Sapnap thought that nothing was wrong, they would leave and he could have the moment of silence to grieve alone. Don’t get him wrong, Quackity didn’t want them to leave in the slightest, but he didn’t want to have his heart broken any more. “Who am I to fault you for the inevitable?”
The glances Karl and Sapnap shared then were more confused than anything else. “Uh, what?”
“Let’s be real, you were going to leave me eventually.” Quackity picked at the edge of one of the Uno cards. “There’s no need to apologise when we’ve always been waiting for the other shoe to drop. Really, you don’t have to say sorry! Just, save yourselves the trouble of coming here to break it to me and go back to Kinoko Kingdom to live out your lives in happiness.”
Sapnap frowned. “Quackity, what are you talking about?”
Quackity looked down at the cards he had sorted into piles, wondering how the deck was more organised than his life. Gently, he gathered them into his hands and began shuffling them. “Oh, come on, don’t act like you don’t know. There was no way that this was going to last forever. I’m just surprised that it took you this long to realise that you didn’t actually love me.”
“Of course we love you-”
“ SO WHY DID YOU LEAVE? ”
The silence suddenly returned, this time less a friend and more of bitter poison. The wind brushing through his feathers now felt bitter and stinging, a drastic difference from the chill breeze it had been before. Quackity’s throat felt hoarse, and he wasn’t sure if it was from screaming at his fiances or from the tears threatening to fall. Karl and Sapnap sat there stunned into silence, with eyes that glistened like the community garden pond in the moonlight.
Maybe Quackity didn’t like the silence as much as he thought he did.
“Quackity…” Karl trailed off, picking at the faded navy polish on his nails. “We didn’t mean to leave.”
“You didn’t mean to.” Quackity let out an astounded laugh that, in the worst possible way, reminded him of his former fiance’s signature cackle. There was a grin tugging at the corners of his mouth that he did his best to suppress. “Well, that makes it all better. Who could blame you for leaving me behind and creating a new nation without me? After all, you didn’t mean to!”
His laughter burned his throat. Resentful, he hoped that it burned them too.
“Well, when you say it like that,” Sapnap rubbed the back of his neck. “Makes it sound like we’re assholes, huh?”
“We are assholes.” Karl chimed in before Quackity had the chance to retaliate with a retort. His eyes were filled with both guilt and tears, and Quackity wasn’t sure which one made him feel worse. “Or, I’m an asshole, I guess. I think I owe you an explanation, Quackity.”
There was another lull in the conversation, a pause less dramatic but not any less heavy. “Go on,” Quackity said, biting his tongue to hold himself from assuring Karl that he wasn’t an asshole.
Karl halfheartedly picked and pulled at the grass he was sitting on, mind racing off elsewhere. “There’s been a lot of gaps in my memory recently, and, uh- we aren’t sure about what’s been causing it. I’ve been losing track of time, forgetting names, forgetting places, forgetting-”
“Me?” Quackity tried to smile at him, but even without consulting his reflection he could already tell that it didn’t reach his eyes in the slightest. Whatever, he’d just blame it on the scar.
“Yeah.” Karl’s response was a mere word, but there was enough meaning and emotion behind it for it to have been an entire speech. It wasn’t uncommon for the three fiances to have issues with communication, especially given that they led such different lives and spent copious amounts of time apart, so each had learned to read between the lines when it came to the more serious discussions. Here, he read remorse and regret and grief.
The Kübler-Ross grief model posits that there are five emotional stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. The model suggests that these stages happen in a consequent progression. What the Kübler-Ross model fails to understand is that often, a person will experience these stages concurrently at any given moment during the grieving process.
Kübler-Ross may not have understood that, but Quackity, angry and depressed and accepting, did.
“I thought that you forgetting to tell me about Kinoko Kingdom just meant that you didn’t care enough to remember.” Quackity admitted with a sad smile, hands still shuffling the Uno cards.
“What?” Karl gasped. “Of course not!”
Quackity’s hands and heart filtered for a split second, and the cards slipped from his fingers. He said nothing, this time not out of vengeful spite but instead out of pure bewilderment.
“We care about you, Quackity.” Sapnap’s eyes sparkled with tears reminiscent of the stars twinkling in the sky above them. Quackity didn’t need to look at Karl to know his eyes were the same. “We care so much .”
“So why did you leave?” Quackity repeated in a whisper much unlike his scream from before.
The silence returned, solemnly hanging over them like a shadow. Sapnap reached across the scattered Uno cards and took one of Quackity’s trembling hands in his. He didn’t speak, but said more than he could have with words.
And, like his heart had been for weeks, Quackity broke.
The only warning he received was a flash of movement before Sapnap and Karl were either side of him, enveloping him in a warm embrace he hadn’t realised he’d missed so much during the past months. Quackity could feel the tears streaming down his face, but he paid them no mind. The three of them were a mess of tangled limbs and tears, and there was a sharp elbow digging into one of Quackity’s wings, but still it felt like home.
Karl was wailing that he was sorry and Sapnap was reassuring Quackity that they did in fact love him, but both were drowned out by Quackity’s laughter – this time, more his own than it had been in so long. Quackity knew that even if he tried, he wouldn’t be able to say anything, so he let his laughter speak for him. There was so much in the laughter that could never be understood through words: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance.
The tender embrace they were in said more than whatever the three fiances could have in conversation. It told a story of betrayal, a story that had been told many times on the server before them and would likely be told many times after. However, the embrace changed an old narrative, speaking of exoneration and forgiveness, of hurt now with comfort.
Forgiving them didn’t mean that everything would be fixed, of course, and the three of them knew that.
In the following weeks to come, Quackity would be brittle, prepared to snap at almost any given moment if provoked. His fiances would be patient, though. They would rarely leave his side of their own regard, and if they did it was never without reminding him of how much they loved him. There was an unspoken agreement between Sapnap and Karl to make sure that not only did Quackity know that he was dearly loved, but he would also believe it.
But, all that was to come later.
It wasn’t long before Quackity pulled back from the embrace, untangling himself from the mess of limbs that had been wrapped together. Karl and Sapnap seemed to almost chase after him, both leaning closer before they realised what Quackity had pulled away to do.
Quackity picked up the Uno deck and started dealing three hands.