I wake to the sounds of piercing bird calls, the poignant melodies that carry in the air, lifting high above shadowed trees, drifting through dawn-blue sky. The sun hasn't come up yet, just the faintest hazy glow warming the horizon. I look around, at Niki beside me with rosy cheeks from sleep, and crease lines on her arm, and blonde hair that's escaped from the plait she had it in to go to sleep.
I look down and see Tommy, curled up on the floor next to us, draped in a heavy wooden blanket. He must have come up during the night, after we both fell asleep. I smile as I tip toe past him, trying not to wake either of them, still deep in sleep.
It's a gift, to be able to still be asleep, still unaware of the horrors you will have to face, prolonging the inevitable awfulness of remembering those that have been. I almost couldn't bare having to watch them realise that Quackity is dead. It's hard enough having to do it myself.
I follow the staircase down, ignoring the stabbing pain in my hip, spiralling around jagged cobblestone and lit by lamps affixed to the wall. It leads down to a huge cavern, and I can now see why they didn't want me down here. It's completely enclosed, no natural light, no air, just encased in thick stone and lit by the orange light of lanterns strung around.
They've built bridges, and farms, and even workspaces, but there is no escaping the undeniable fact that this is underground.
I would feel trapped.
I'm too tired to care anymore.
Not after Quackity, not after the festival, not after every stupid little thing in this whole goddamn world, not now.
And I'm not naive enough to believe I'm cured, float around with invulnerable numbness and that armour of delusion invincibility that comes from not caring at all, nerve endings scorched with grief and heartbreak, old love and new loss. I am however, grateful enough to let it be.
It's cold down here, despite the warm light, and the open, still smouldering fire pits. I guess that those rock walls will always be frozen at their core, impenetrable in every sense of the word. It's why I hate it so much. It's why I would probably rather be anywhere but here.
If it wasn't for my family.
Straggled breaths, amplified by the stone cocoon we are buried in, ricochet through the cave, and I follow the noise, filled with desperation and pain, of restless discomfort.
The sound leads me to Tubbo, covered in bandages and weeping sores, bloodstained burnt clothes, the white shirt, or what's left of it rather, a brown and black mess, burn marks and congealed blood, straggled pieces of hair plastered to his almost unrecognisable face with sweat.
"Ro-sie." He croaks out, voice cracking.
"Tubbo." The words falls from my mouth with a gasp, and I rush toward him, shaking on a half-cobbled cot, creaky wood and threadbare blankets, twisted face aghast in shivering orange glow. "I'm here."
I sink to my knees beside the bed, clutching his hand, the left one, left untouched by the blazing ruin that has destroyed half of his body, stolen his face, and sight, taken peace and rest and humanity from him in a brilliant, beautiful, horrible burst.
His hand squeezes mine, fingers tightening painfully, but neither of us want to let go. I look over him, the hastily strewn bandages, the blisters and red boiled skin, tight and swollen, unnaturally shiny against the lamp light, the way his brow dips in pain.
"I'm gonna fix this okay?" I murmur, giving his hand another squeeze. "I'm not going anywhere, I just need supplies."
The medical supplies are stored in a chest I find near the bed, and I pull out everything I can, fresh bandages, topical ointments, antiseptics. It's not what I need, it's not what he needs, and staring at this threadbare collection of medical supplies in making me fucking nervous.
I come back to him, still wavering in and out of consciousness, face screwed up in agony, shivering despite the fact half is body is still burning itself from the inside out. I gently peel off the bandages I can, trying not to cause him any more pain. When I've removed what I can, I grab a pair of angled scissors, snipping away the last bits of his clothing, soaked bandages stuck to his weeping wounds.
I grab some gauze, finding bottles of drinking water stacked behind a collection of broken pickaxes and dirt hoes and drench it. Thankfully, the freezing temperatures of the underground hell-hole we're trapped in has its advantages, and I'm able to use the water and gauze as cold compresses while I prepare everything else.
He's fluttered back into consciousness, agonised lines creased into his face loosening, as the coolness of the compresses leech the irritating heat from his wounds. Bubbling fissures skin runs down his right thigh, all the way up and around his side, his stomach, his ribs, coasting over his collarbone to tear at his face. One eye is milky and swollen, the usually bright blue clouded and unseeing, I flush it out with water, gently tilting his head to the side, but I know it's too late.
I take off the gauze, now warm from the heat radiating from his body, and let the wounds breathe in the air. It would be better to get him outside, away from coal dust and smoky embers, floating ash and recycled oxygen, but there's no way we could move him.
I'm surprised they even were able to get him down here in the first place.
"Q-Quackity?" He rasps, and I would barely be able to hear it if not for the cascading downpour of complete and utter silence through the dark. The name makes me pause, freezes my hands of scissors and bandages and every little task I use to distract myself from what happened yesterday.
I bite down on my lip, before looking up with a wobbly sigh. "He- he didn't make it Tubs."
He flinches at the nickname I haven't used in years, and I can tell the words haven't really sunk it yet. Not properly, not fully.
Because you don't just flinch at death, when you lose someone you love. It rips you apart from the inside out, tearing at your organs and shredding your skin, snapping those fragile bones as it claws its way out, born in your heart and set loose on the whole big, awful world.
"What?"
"He's dead." I say, and I can't make it nice, and I can't deliver it wrapped in a pretty bow, coated in sugar that rots my teeth from the lies, because no matter what, no matter how I say it, or the words I use to try and soften the blow, the truth is that he's dead.
And that's the only thing that you really feel, in the end. That loss and that pain, and the open, empty, unfillable hole they leave behind in your life, carved out of memories and dreams and the chair next to you, the laughter they won't hear, the love they won't feel anymore.
He's gone, and that's all Tubbo's really going to hear. May as well not waste words I don't think I have the energy to say.
"No- no." He whimpers, through the pain of his burns and the shock of the news and everything that is piling on top of him, this fucking kid, that I can't stop, that I can't save him from.
I should've gotten there earlier, should have started running the moment Schlatt had people put their hands on him, should have known that it was Schlatt and he will kill, again and again, without regard, without care, should have known that he was going to fire the moment he had a target in his grasp.
Should have known because we're more similar than we think.
Should have known because I've done the same.
Fundy may not have been innocent, and he may not have been Tubbo, but he was a traitor who died the moment I had an opportunity to get my hands on him.
So were the guards, names I didn't even know, faces I didn't see, men who fell at my hand, people I never met.
I stoke limp strands of hair off his forehead gingerly. "I'm so sorry."
"It's my fault." He voice comes out cracked, like it was ripped straight from a sandpaper throat and a broken heart.
"No." I clutch his uninjured hand again, pulling it my chest, cupping the left side of his face. "This is not your fault, none of this is your fault okay? None of this."
"If I hadn't been spying for Tommy-"
"You were doing the right thing, Tubbo, you were fighting against a horrible piece of abusive shit that was hurting you, and Quackity," I tuck his hand underneath my chin, squeezing the bones in his fingers underneath my own. "How could any of this possibly be your fault?"
"If I hadn't- he wouldn't have had to save me. He died to save me." A lonely tear rolls down his cheek, from the left eye, and I don't know if his face is twisted in the pain from half his body being seared off or from losing someone he loves, or just all of it, at once, insurmountable pain that I know oh so well.
We go way back, that pain and I, dark nights and sunny days, cupboards and closets and great open plains, gripping me so fiercely I used to think there was no escape.
Well, I still think that, the difference is I've stopped trying to fight for one.
"He loved you so so much, and he wanted to give his life for you Tubs, he wanted to do that, he chose to do that. You don't deserve to feel guilty, you know that? That is on Schlatt, only on Schlatt, not on you, not on anyone else."
"He died for me." Tubbo repeats, one good eye fixated on the ceiling, shrouded in creeping shadows and the odd flicker of warm dull light from the swinging lamps.
"He knew what would happen, and he wasn't going to let you die. He made that choice, this isn't on you, this isn't your fault."
"Why?"
That turns out to be the word that breaks my heart.
"Why did he have to die for me?"
"Because you are worth dying for Tubbo, and I know, I know damn well that if we gave him the opportunity, he'd do it again." I press his knuckles to my lips, wanting so desperately to wrap him up in my arms, keep him hidden, keep him protected from the world and its evil men, power hungry tyrants and their greedy hands.
"I didn't want him to."
"He would've either way." I smile sadly, tilting my head to rest my cheek on the hand I'm gripping like a lifeline, like if I let go he'll slip away from me forever. "You know what he told me, before he died? He wanted me to fight, to fight and to know that you were okay. That's all he cared about, even though he was going to die."
"I didn't want him to die." Tubbo's face crumples with the sob that escapes his throat.
"I know, I know." I murmur soothingly. "But that was the choice he made. He wasn't scared, or in pain, he was just happy that you were alive, that's all he cared about."
"I want him back."
"Me too." I think I'm crying, but my cheeks are too numb to really know, my throat is all clogged up like I've swallowed a mixture of sandpaper and glue. "I miss him already." I laugh, even though it's not funny, even though it's stupid, even though this is the beginning of a life of missing him, of the hole I won't be able to fill. "I really do."
"I wish it had been me."
I have to hold in the sobs that are bubbling in my chest, the rage that curls like a thrashing, blazing snack underneath my skin, sticks the vein out in my temple, that turns my eyes bloodshot, that anger at the world, at them, at Schlatt, at Fundy, at me, at every single fucking thing that hurt him, that didn't protect him.
"He would have never let that happen." I squeeze his hand even tighter. "He loved you so much, that's what he wanted, not for you to die. I would have done the same thing."
"You- I'm not worth that. I'm not worth you dying."
"I would die in a heartbeat for you, I would do it every fucking opportunity I got, and if it had been me on that podium, I would have done the exact same thing. I love you so fucking much, of course you're worth that. I would pay that price every single time. Every time."
"I don't deserve that, I never deserved that, he shouldn't have died for me."
"You have always deserved that Tubs, and he believed that too." I wipe a stray tear from his cheek with my thumb. "It's not fair that he had to die, but he wanted to save you, because he loves you and he wants you to have a chance at living you life. You deserve that, so fucking much, so much more than you know."
"You do too." His voice is fainter, fight and grief dying inside of him as the alludes of that blissful nothingness of unconscious call his name, pulling him back under. I let him go.
"Thanks." I whisper, moving my other hand from his cheek to tangle with his slackening fingers. "It's okay, go back to sleep Tubs, I've got you."
"You- you'll stay?" He asks, eyes half lidded.
"Of course." I smile, even though it hurts. "I'm not going anywhere."
I manage to bandage him up while he rests, cleaning out debris and ash, scorched skin and pebbles clinging to open sores, treat what I need to with antibiotic ointments, wrap up the rest from the dirt and dust of the cave.
He'll survive, but I don't know if he'll be okay, and I think that's what scares me the most.
"How is he?" Wilbur's voice accompanies a skittering of loose stone across smooth granite, bouncing off the jagged carved walls that loom over us.
I sigh, looking over the sleeping boy, worry lines smoothed in sleep. "Doing his best."
"How bad?" Wilbur asks, and his voice is so cold and detached, like it isn't a boy that's like his goddamn son lying in front of him, so clinical I want to stand up and slap him as hard has I can, smack sense back into his thick skull, scream and yell and pound my fists on his chest because he is slipping away from us, just like last time, and I just want him, just once, to fucking fight.
"He'll end up blind in one eye, but thankfully the burns he got aren't that deep. Scorched some skin off but no major nerve or other damage underneath it. He'll heal, physically."
Wilbur hums flatly under his breath, crossing his arms. "Physically?"
"I mean you don't just go back to being the same when the one person who was there for you in some of the most terrifying moments of your life is blown up in front of you. We know what happens when people go through too much, more than their humanity can handle."
"Yeah, we do." Wilbur sniffs, eyes boring into me.
"Oh we do." I agree, returning his unnerving gaze.
"Gonna be as bad as you?"
"Hand him back over to Schlatt and then we'll see." I respond flatly, and I almost want to roll my eyes. Ah Wilbur, you insecure neurotic little man, with your fragile individuality, those delicate little dreams, how you can never seem to wrap you head around the fact that this world is designed to crush them.
The second time round doesn't even hurt anymore, it's getting predictable.
"How's Dream?"
I shrug. "How am I supposed to know? I escaped from him like four days ago."
"You escaped?"
"Wilbur go talk about your feelings to a goddamn fucking wall or something, because I am not in the fucking mood to deal with your shit right now." I snap, standing up. "We've been over this, and I am not going to tolerate you questioning my loyalty, after everything I have done for this country, after everything I have been through. Get the fuck over yourself"
"Everyone turned their backs on us, you did and Tubbo did, and Niki too, and Tommy wants to forgive you, but I know, I know! You are here to destroy me!" The feral, untamed glint in his eyes would have been scary, but it just makes me sad.
"Not everything is about you."
"I am the leader of L'manburg, I am-"
"That's the thing Wilbur, you're not! You're not the leader! Half the country thinks you're dead, and the other half voted you out, no one fucking cares about that anymore Wilbur, you are not as important as you think you are." I'm still stuck by Tubbo's bed, screaming at a deranged man in his basement. "I am not here for you, I am here because my family is here, the people I love are here."
Finally, the man has seemed to be rendered speechless.
"And I love you, and you are my family too, and I am so glad to know you're alive. But you know Wilbur, I have proven beyond anything I should have had to, that I will not betray this country, or our family, and you fucking know that. Don't you dare, don't you dare sit here and pretend like that's not true."
The silence passes in steady beats, the thump of my heart in my head, stretching between us while Wilbur looks at me, eyes a muddled mess of confusion and hurt and reflection, shoulders slumped in defeat.
"I'm glad he's going to be okay."
"Yeah, me too."
"Thank you Rose."
"Don't thank me Wil, just get your shit together, for him, and for all of us."
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A/N Are we a fan of these longer 3000 word chapters? Or do we prefer around the 1000 mark? Let me know if these are too long and drawn out.
We are beginning to see a genuine reflection in Rosie, she has been shut off from the old parts of her that let her get hurt, but Quackity's death has been a cause for some very deep reflection which is pushing her journey along. Will she get there? Or will she shut herself off to protect herself again? That's the big question.
I hope you enjoyed,
Oopsies x