Time has always been a fucked up fickle thing for Tubbo.
Sometimes he would spend hours and hours just grinding away, mining and building to expand and fully immerse herself on the server. Sometimes she'd dissassociate, stare into the nothingness in the air whilst feeling chills crawl up on his wings and back.
Growing up was hard. Being put into a death game for almost all of his teenaged life, to being finally fucking free to explore servers and hop across worlds to meet everyone and anyone, then to end up in a facility one morning to be put to sleep for mule knows fuckin' long. He never knew where he came from. He only knew Tom, and the fucking ever-changing harsh world.
Some time has certainly passed ever since Tubbo started re-experiencing hallucinations accompanied by thrice as many breakdowns than he has ever had in his life. Usually, he'd keep it to himself. When the recording ended and Tom stopped having the world be riddled with mods, he'd find himself in the aftermaths clung onto a tree or something stable. He isn't the type to cry, just lash out or revel in another's stupidity.
He does both, in times like these.
It's been .... (Days? Weeks? Months?) ...a while, since he'd seen his kids. Tubbo doesn't know where they all ran off to. He doesn't know if it was his fault or if it was just nature. If it was the Federation, or the world simply screaming at Tubbo that this isn't his life. That he wasn't made to be a father, or a fully functioning adult to persue his passions and potentials.
That he wasn't meant to be here at all.
Around and around the narrative goes, and Tubbo follows in parallel. His throat sore, with a strained voice calling out her kids' names over and over like a prayer, echoes through out the long stretching woods with the crunching of leaves, dirt, and stray branches. Sometimes silence would be in place instead, with Tubbo taking a short break to rest her voice or to reattach his leg.
Run, scream, run, rest, scream, run, repeat.
It's foolish to keep going, in all fucking honesty. They're gone, there's nothing he could do now. What she could've done, what she did. Tubbo tried his fucking best, but is that really enough? Was it ever enough? Were they happy here? Was Tubbo enough, were they happy with him? They were assigned other parents, sure, Sunny was still his, but she still had other parents out there. Empanada and Pepito were never his, and yet - they still stayed. At least... when they did.
These thoughts are exhausting. Shit, sorry. Where are we?
Tubbo collapses at the entrance of his factory, too tired to pull himself up to a bed or to even crawl inside. Heavy pants exhale from his mouth, voice too dead to even audibly gasp for breath. He'd gone over another area of the forests surrounding the chunks of his base and personal drilling project. There's so much a dragonfly can do alone, and in a headspace not suited for clear observation. He doesn't even know if they're even around anymore.
They could be tons of blocks away from him now. They could be home, they could be where they truly fucking deserve to be. But there's a small hopeful side in her, a selfish hope that they're nearby, that they could never truly part with an isolated and confused hermit clinging onto the last bits of interaction she's ever had in the last five years of her awakening from the ice.
She's never even fully met all of the prisoners. She's never met anyone outside of the prison.
Nobody even knows that he exists.
His eyes drift off in a blurry haze, conciousness fleeting faster than the exhaustion settling in her body. Tubbo could die here. He could die never knowing anyone ever again, or ever finding family and friends in this large server-wide world. He could've spent his time meeting new people, continuing his life long exploration of worlds and to just get by. But he clings, he clings onto figures who stay and who need him to stay.
Now that they're gone, shouldn't she get up to explore then? Shouldn't she leave for the sake of her life than theirs?
No, that's not something a parent would do.
He hasn't slept in days. The silver glow of the night passes through her windows and basks her in the light. Tubbo feels like passing away rather than out. He's so tired, he's so lonely, he's so vulnerable. Her scarred fingers, used to holding metal and soft tiny hands, brush against bricks and dirt. He could barely see the blocks he used to build. Her wings twitch, and he breathes softly, holding herself for warmth, for comfort.
She falls asleep then and there, body away from a comfortable bed and in sight for any phantoms to have picked upon if she stayed awake any further. Would it count if she wasn't in bed? Does her sleep draw them in or does her proximity to a bed? Tubbo doesn't care.
Her wings twitch again, like a dead animal, alerting predators to feast upon her. Alerting protection, to finally awaken. Soft breaths are heard at the edge of an empty factory, while metal and crackling are heard from a distant facility. She lays, while it creaks.
