"Rosie? Rosie, what are you doing here? You need to go." Punz's swollen eyes widen as I enter the hospital wing, and his face screws up in pain when he goes to sit up. "You need to go before he-"
He looks awful. The bruising has already started to set in, the skin on the bridge of his nose has split open, the trails of blood wiped away, but it's beyond crooked. His neck is the worst of it, the deep purple already blooming underneath his skin, matching the ones of his cheeks and jaw.
"He knows." I know my face is red and swollen from crying, as the tears still run down my cheeks. "He knows everything."
He can't sit up, but he reaches out for me, his hand warm and solid against mine, safe, secure. I hold on so tightly I probably add new bruises to his collection.
"Rosie." Punz's voice is breathless, soft as I kneel down by his bed. His other hand comes over to wipe away my tears. "What happened?"
"I told him everything." I bite down hard on my bottom lip to stop ugly sobs tear from my throat. I held everything in, held it together, but the moment I'm with him, my defences seem to give, and dam almost bursting. "I don't- I don't know what he's going to do. He might let me go or he might kill us both."
"Well it's better than certain death." Punz gives me a roguish grin that rewards him with a choked laugh. I lean my forehead against our entwined hands.
"I love you." I sit back on my heels, letting go and furiously wiping the tears off my face, tucking my hair back behind my ears. He watches me, his stare and half-lidded eyes a smouldering weight.
"I love you too." He says it with a smile, he says it like it isn't the reason for him lying in a hospital bed.
"I'm so sorry."
"I knew what I was signing up for." He still doesn't stop smiling, like me being there with him could make him the happiest man on the planet, like he wasn't almost strangled to death by Dream.
"No-"
"Rosie, it's not your fault. He does this so you feel guilty for loving people and for getting close to someone, this is his fault."
"I knew the risks, I knew-"
"I would go through it all over again knowing that you'd be okay on the other side." He says simply.
I lean forward, kissing him softly. "You love me too much." It's half a joke, and it's half not. He just shrugs.
"It's not possible."
Dream left, left for the front, left without answers, without anything. It doesn't help, the paranoia and the fear he was so desperate to in-still in me, is still stuck under my skin, still beat into my bones. He taught me to be afraid, and I have been scared ever since.
"Stop tapping." Sam barks at me, snapping me out of my stupor. I look up at him, taking my fingers away from the wooden armrest of my chair.
"Sorry." I grumble, lacing them together in my lap. The look Sam gives me isn't annoyed, but slightly pitying, which is a thousand times worse.
"The resistance have a faction demanding Dream's head." He continues on. "And of course, the rest of our army is Dream's, so it's becoming a problem."
Danny lets out an exasperated sigh. "Most of us are shocked at Dream's display, but we're still committed to the war before anything else. A small but vocal minority-"
"Rick and Cheryl." Ebony nudges me, whispering in my ear. I let out a snort of laughter, which earns me another pointed glare from Sam.
"-have made themselves known." Danny continues over us. "They wished Wilbur would take over as leader of L'manburg. It also poses another problem, what are we going to do if we take L'manburg back?"
"We can hold an election, but we'll have an emergency council in place until then, some people from the resistance and the original L'manburg leadership." I say. "It's not important right now, we need to hold this shit together until the war is over."
"Schlatt's issued more demands." Sam sighs, rubbing a spot over his eyebrow with the side of his thumb, and in that split-second, he looks so much like our Dad. I blink, and then it's Sam again, standing in a war room with the leader of an almost futile resistance.
Punz rolls his eyes. "What does he want this time?"
Sam pulls a piece of paper from his pocket and unfolds it so painfully you'd think it physically exhausts him to have to do this. "Our unconditional surrender, rescission of taken land, apologies, leaders and commanding officers handed over for justice yada, yada, yada, Rosemary immediately turned over as an escaped convict, blah, blah, blah."
"Seriously? Me?" I groan. "I thought when he left me off the list last time that he'd finally gotten over this."
"Apparently not, considering you were on top of his list of demands. He had it specially slotted in."
"He wants an immediate release to him as proof of good faith." Danny takes the paper out of Sam's hands, brow creasing. "Considering you are still a convicted fugitive under the current system."
"We reject the legitimacy of his system and consider me a political refugee." I wave my hand exasperatedly. "I mean seriously, the heads of this operation are my brother, my boyfriend and a man so in love with me he started this entire war, does he really think this is the hill to die on?"
I don't mention that my unwavering faith in Dream may have faltered a little, but Schlatt doesn't know that.
"Great, we've re-established that Schlatt is stupid, this has been such a valuable use of our time." Ebony sneers from her seat next to me. "We've stalled on our attack, we're now putting pressure on a man so unstable we don't know what's going to happen when he explodes, and now we're about to break out in infighting. We need to do something."
"We need time, to solve the Wilbur problem." Danny tries to add.
"We don't have time, we're fighting a war." Sam snaps at him.
"Ceasefire then!"
"Oh, because Schlatt can be trusted with a fucking ceasefire can he?"
"He needs it too, he can't afford to keep fighting a stalemate."
"He's insane, he just had a bunch of his generals killed because he's so paranoid!"
"Wait-" The news dawns on me, but they ignore my slow realisation.
"We can't-"
"Wait!" I raise my voice over the top of whoever was trying to get their point out. "Schlatt lost most of his high ranked military?"
"Yes." Sam looks at me incredulously.
"You know how we scrapped the whole 'kill Schlatt instantly' plan at the beginning, because he was only the catalyst, and not the whole operation, right?" I look around the room, the degree of confusion on some of the faces. Some are nodding, some staring blankly at me. "Well he's just kind of collapsed the support system for his whole regime, hasn't he?"
"We don't know a lot about the internal politics, but we believe that the few remaining generals, and other commanding positions are alive because they're all loyalist to Schlatt." Danny tells me.
"So more likely than not, they're a bunch of cowards who'll cling to him even as the ship goes down because they're so afraid of his outbursts." I raise my eyebrows, going over the rest my palms on the table.
"Because the one's he killed were the ones who cared enough to risk speaking out against him and his insane plans." Sam clues in.
"So chances are, we kill Schlatt, we crumble this operation. His armies will scatter, and the true loyalists will be easy enough to pick off." I look up at Sam, on the other side of the table. "He cut of the other heads for us, we just take out one snake-"
"And everything else falls." Sam finishes for me.
"We need to get Dream and Sapnap back from the front and plan this out." Danny says. "Before we commit we need to make sure there isn't a chance the army will prop itself up without Schlatt."
"I'll get a message sent, work on getting some more information." Sam nods tersely.
When the meeting ends I leave the building, walking unsteadily across the open air, ignoring the eyes on me, ignoring the heartbeat in my ears. I want to curl up in a ball next to Punz and never leave. I want to walk into the woods and never come out.
Niki's waiting for me outside the little bunk area we share. I give her a brief hug and fill her in on our new developments, but she barely reacts. She's long given up on strategising and putting effort into fighting the war, and I don't blame her. She spends all her days in the hospital, just trying to stem the bleeding of life this thing has created, trying to stop the loss. It's enough to focus on, without bringing violence into her life as well.
"Tommy's still not speaking to anyone." She sighs, sitting on her cot.
He hasn't spoken to anyone since Wilbur died. I think he wasn't as bloodthirsty as his anger had him believe.
"How's Tubbo?" I shrug off my jacket and fold into into the pile of the rest of my clothes.
"Like you." She looks at me pointedly. "Acting like he's better than he is."
"I'm fine." I roll my eyes at her. "In fact, I'm not dead, and neither is Punz, so I'm actually better than ever."
"You don't believe that, I can see the fear in your face." Niki snaps, but doesn't push it any further.
"They're hurting." I lie down, folding my hands across my stomach and looking at the rafters of the hastily constructed ceiling. "The betrayal, him dying, Dream, it was too much. They couldn't even properly confront him for what he did, he just died with all of that."
"The resistance put up a grave."
"Did they bury him here?"
"No, they're preserving the body to bury him in L'manburg."
An ungainly snort escapes me. "Sorry- it's just- oh wow. He'd love that."
"Do you think we should stop them?"
"Maybe." I don't know. I don't want to think about it.
"They should just bury him here. He fought his battle here, he died here."
He lost here. Bury him like a soldier, where they fall, at their last stand. Somehow, it doesn't feel right.
"Maybe we should put him with Jack and Quackity, for Tommy and Tubbo."
Mourn the man he was, as well as the man that just died, the two of them, the different memories, mourn the love, and the anger, the betrayal and the comfort and the man that was a father and the man that tried to bring the world down on their heads.
The man that built a country to keep them safe and the man that tried to destroy it.
I turn my head to Niki, who's clutching the edge of her cot, tears slipping silently from her cheeks, dropping off her chin. I reach one of my hands out, grabbing one of hers and squeezing it tightly.
"I'm sorry." I whisper, while she squeezes her hand back. "I'm so sorry Niki."
"I shouldn't have loved hi-m" Her breath hitches, sobs wracking her chest.
"It's not that easy." I tell her, no uncertainty, no gentle let down. I say it with all the knowledge in the world. It's never that easy. "It's not your fault."
"Everything he did to them, to you, to us, and I still- I couldn't let go."
"We all thought we could save him." I roll onto my side to face her properly. "We all thought we could get him back. It's not- you didn't do something wrong by still loving him Niki. You didn't do anything wrong."
"I miss him." She sobs. "I d-don't understand."
"It's okay. It's okay."
She pulls her hand out of mine, holding her face in her hands. "I'm so stupid."
I sit next to her, arm around her shoulders. "You're not Niki."
She's quiet for a while, and we just sit together in silence. Two heartbroken messes in love with terrible people.
"I want him to be buried there." She says eventually. "But I don't think he should be."
"There's a part of him that deserves it, the person he was."
She pulls back slowly, lifting her head, her blotchy, puffy face downturned with concern. Her warm palm gently cups my face. I lean into it.
"We always talk about who he was before, even though he was that person when he turned you over to Dream." She lets go, grabbing my hand instead. "We just forget you."
I tap my thumb against the back her hand. I can't meet her eyes. "They need to remember him like that. They're going to crumble if they lose that idea of him being good before."
"So we don't remember you?"
"I'll be fine."
"That's your sacrifice, isn't it? You go through all of this pain to get us where we are, and you let them forget it to make it easier for them."
"They don't need to feel the burden of that." I shake my head. "That's not their guilt."
"It's Wilburs!"
"Tommy wanted it too." I say it so quietly I don't know if she hears it. She's gone deathly silent. "Wilbur manipulated him, just like he did for Fundy, and when it happened, he wanted me to be traded over, and I don't think he remembers and I think it'll crush him if he does."
Niki doesn't say anything, but I don't think there's any words that can really be said.
"He was just a kid." I stare at my boots, wringing my hands. "It's my crap to shoulder and deal with. I don't want them lugging around this shit, I just want them to be able to move on."
"That's not fair for you."
I give her a tired, dead-eyed smile. "I've given everything I had left for them, this isn't the worst I've sacrificed, and it probably won't be the last thing. I'll be okay."
"They can't lose you too."
"I want to be there." I tell her. "I want to watch them grow up without this, I want to have the home I fought for, I want to spend a lifetime with Punz. I want it."
The look in her eyes is heartbreaking. "But it's not enough, is it? You'll still die for this fight."
"Yeah, if it comes to that."
"I would miss you a lot." Her lips are pressed together like she's trying to stop herself from crying. I wait for her to continue, to admonish me, to say anything. She doesn't. We sit like this, hand in hand, for a while, a few minutes, an eternity.
"I don't have a lot left." I speak into the rest of the empty room like she's not sitting next to me, like she can't see straight through me. "I'm scared, I'm scared that I've given everything I possibly could have and we'll still lose, that I'll lose them, that's its not going to be enough."
"You can't do it alone." Niki's looking at me, I can feel it, searing into my neck. "You can't win a war on your own, even if you give everything, even if you die."
It's the truth of the world. You could give everything, make the ultimate, ultimate sacrifice, and it'll change nothing, do nothing, mean nothing. You could die and there wouldn't be a second that stops, that wavers at your body falling on the floor.
I'm so terrified of it, of the inevitability, of the indifference, of the might of a turning world against my family and my home.
So much loss, so much pain, lives and lives and lives and nothing to show for it.
I sniff, quickly wiping a tear away with the back of my hand. "Ugh I'm just- I'm tired. I don't care about half of this anymore, I don't care if we win L'manburg back, I don't care who's in charge at the end of it, I don't care about the resistance. I don't want any of it."
"It's not just our fight anymore." She shrugs, like I'm not a coward, like I'm not just a sad, faded girl who had so much promise for her country, like I didn't used to be stupid and brave. Like I didn't use to care so much that I can't tell if it's better than not caring at all. "You don't have to care about it."
Despite it all, I laugh, at myself, at the world. "This is fucking Punz's fault, he's got me filled with all these ideas of life and afters."
Showed me something more, gave me peace, and unconditional love and life and enough to let me see through the violence. Asshole.
Niki laughs too. "What a dick."
We both fall into an uneasy, restless sleep, too physically exhausted by the day to keep awake, but our minds unsettled by the week.
It doesn't last long.
I jolt awake, eyes still blurred with sleep, squinting through the dusky haze of early morning, the beginning of light, still dark enough to confuse my sleep addled brain. I vaguely register someone banging on the door.
Niki's already out of bed, stumbling towards the door, and wrenching it open to reveal Sam standing in our doorway.
"What?" I groan, heaving myself up to sit on the edge of the bed.
Sam looks at me, and I suddenly register how wrong something is, the fear and urgency flashing in his eyes, the vein in his neck. "Sam what's going on?"
"It's Tommy."
"What?" Both me and Niki almost yell, horrified. She's pulling on shoes and I've rocketed to standing, rifling through my things for clothes.
"He's gone to try hand himself over to Schlatt."
I freeze halfway through wrestling my jacket over my shoulders. "He wh- why didn't anyone stop him?"
"We didn't even know he left!"
"Why did he go?" Niki's voice is shrill. "What do you mean he handed himself over to Schlatt?"
"He knows about the new plan, and he's- we think he's trying to end this."
I whirl around. "Who is telling him this? Why the fuck are people letting him know about secret tactical information? He's a fucking kid!"
"I-"
"I told you to keep him out of it! I told you!"
"I don't know how he found out!"
"Wh- when did this happen? Is Tubbo okay? When did you realise he was missing?"
"Tubbo's fine, he's still here. We found out from Dream when he fucking turned up five minutes ago!"
I don't even hear anything after that sentence, the blood boiling, pounding in my head. I push past Sam and march, barefoot and pretty much in my pyjamas across the base, hands balled. Sam and Niki are caught up in a heated conversation, but all I can think of is how much I want to punch Dream.
I hoped, I hoped that he'd have learnt anything from us, that maybe, somewhere down in his selfish, stupid, non-existent heart, that he could have the fucking desire to at least try and let me go.
But no, he was probably smiling as he let Tommy walk to his own fucking death.
I fling open the doors to the meeting rooms I know he'll be in, bursting into the only room with a light on. I spot Dream instantly, standing against a wall. The injuries from the fight with Punz have faded, but there's a bandage on his arm and across his chest, underneath and blood stained shirt, which I would've given a second of thought if I wasn't almost inebriated with rage.
He sees me and instantly stands up straighter. "Ros-"
"What the fuck is wrong with you?" I snarl, shoving one of the chairs of the way so harshly it clatters against the floor. There's some soldiers from the front here, probably some resistance, but I don't even register them. "You just can't stop, can you?"
"No-"
"I didn't even give you the benefit of the doubt and you still found a fucking way to disappoint me, you fucking asshole!"
"Sir, I think we should go." One of the soldiers nervously.
"No, you're staying. You can watch this train wreck." I snap, not even looking at him. "Someone should be a witness in case he goes completely off the rails and finally kills me."
"Rosie what the fuck?" Dream, to his credit, looks relatively shocked.
"What the fuck? What the fuck? You let Tommy hand himself over to Schlatt! You knew and you let him do it! You should have stopped him before he did something stupid and got himself killed!" I scream, trying not to choke on the rising wave of terror as I realise what's happening.
"I didn't let him! The little shit snuck away from the main base and did it himself, I didn't have anything to do with it!"
"He had to pass through your camp to get to L'manburg! You would have caught him in the patrols! I bet you were so fucking excited to throw him to Schlatt to punish me, weren't you?"
"No!" Dream says it as Sam slams the door open, Niki following behind him.
"No? So what, Tommy managed to escape from your trained soldiers?"
Sam steps in between us, facing me, hands raised, palms out. "Rosie it's not Dream's fault, he was trying to do the right thing."
I scoff. "Trying? I'm sure he tried very hard to make sure Tommy didn't get hurt."
"He stabbed me!" Dream's voice is filled with indignation. "When he realised I was going to send him back to you!"
I'm taken aback for a moment, while I finally connect the fresh blood and the story.
"Wh-" I blink, looking over his arm, his chest, both wounds still bleeding. "What?"
"I didn't- I didn't let him go. I was serious Rosie, when I told you that I was trying, that I was listening. I don't care if he wants to hand himself over to Schlatt but I know- I tried to stop him and he wasn't expecting it, so he ambushed me and got me with a knife." He explains.
I'm stunned into silence, staring in shock at Dream.
"Fuck." I breathe out to myself, running my hand over my head. My knees almost give way, and I sink to a squat, holding my head in my hands. "Fuck."
"I'm sorry." Dream says, quietly.
"He's- he- Schlatt's going to kill him." I'm trembling, unable to stop the shaking in my voice. "Schlatt's going to fucking kill him."
Sam crouches down next to me. "No, Rosie, come on, Schlatt's going to use him as leverage, he's not going to hurt him when he can use him."
"He's going to say something, he's going to piss him off in some way and Schlatt's going to kill him." I can't breathe, tucking my head into the ball of my body to try and escape the facts.
"No, no he's not." Sam says firmly. "You know Schlatt, you know he's going to do whatever he can to use Tommy against us, he's too valuable to kill."
I don't look up at him, I can't. "You know what he's going to want."
"We will find a way to get him back, he's weak now, we can find a way in."
"You know what he wants Sam." I lift my head, finally, shakily rising to standing. Sam rises with me, face full of apprehension, even though he already knows.
"It's not an option, Rosie, it's not an option."
"Sam." I grab his arm, trying to bruise it into his skin, trying to get him to understand. "There's no way I'm leaving him with Schlatt."
"You're just playing into his hands! We should be smart about this!"
"I'm not leaving Tommy in there for weeks while we play it smart! I don't give a shit about playing into his hands, he has Tommy and I can get him out!"
"Tommy doesn't want this, c'mon, he didn't do this just for you to throw yourself to Schlatt instead."
"I don't care." I shake my head. "He's not staying there, we're getting him out regardless of what it takes."
"No. It's not happening." Sam snaps, looking over at Dream and Niki. "It's not happening."
Niki looks at me, completely white, like all the blood has drained out of her, and I know, she's just as scared as I am, just as aware of Schlatt and his vengeful rage. Her eyes are knowing, boring straight into mine with the weight of the knowledge that I will give everything for this kid and his life.
She doesn't say anything, but neither of us need to hear the words aloud.
Dream's jaw clenches, almost unnaturally, skin taut against his throat, sinews bulging, like he's going to explode. I bristle, waiting for the inevitable, the control he's used to exerting.
But there's just silence, because nothing ever comes.
Sam throws his hands in the air, pain palpable in his face. "I can't- I'm not watching this. I'm not watching you die."
"You know I can't just stay here and abandon him." I tell him, and I don't know if he can hear me because I can't even tell if the words are coming out.
He looks at me, strangely, hurt and desperation leeching from everything, before he storms out of the room, slamming the door behind him.
I look over to Dream, so tired. He doesn't speak, not for a moment.
"This is- this is me trying." He clears his throat. "To let you go. I'm trying."
It brings a sad, smile-like curve to my lips. I tell him the words, even though he might not deserve them.
"Thank you."
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A/N For some reason this was a pain in the ass to write, just with all the transitioning between scenes, but we power through.
Ah Tommy and Tubbo, always a problem, but it was always the three of them, wasn't it?
I know I say this a ton but fingers crossed I get the next chapter out a lot quicker because it's much more of an interesting write than this one!
I hope you enjoyed!
Oopsies x