#jo's fic

[daff-the-butch-beamer]

a bit late but i have at last finished chapter three of my fic 'planting echoes' for @itafushi-week

might post chapter four later today then post 5 and 6 tomorrow

hope everyone is enjoying the week! 🩷💚

[lasnevadaslaborunion]

The first time Wilbur showered after being brought back to life, he cried.

He'd forgotten what running water felt like. The air underground - if there was air at all, after all, there were days when he forgot he had to breathe at all, and he'd never once passed out - always felt dry and dusty, with a faint chill that never quite cut deep enough to justify the coat pulled tightly around his shoulders. The temperature was always just a few degrees shy of comfortable, no matter what he did to adjust himself.

He breathes in, and reaches to adjust the shower knob. The water warms in tiny increments. He breathes in again, drinking in the humidity. He puts his hands against the wall. Slippery white tile, gentle against his nail-marked palms. He closes his eyes, tilts his face toward the downpour, and tries to forget the texture of rough gray stone.

When he can no longer feel pollution in his lungs, he picks up a bottle. The cap clicks open, and he cradles something cold in his hand.

Fingers tangle through his curls, first hesitant, then frantically scrubbing the dirt and smog and train station stench out of hair and skin. The flowery-fruit smell of the hair products he'd borrowed an hour before fills his nose, his mouth, coats his ears in a film that blurs the trickling sound around him. He scrubs harder, until his scalp stings and there are strands clinging to the back of his hands when he pulls them away. He keeps scrubbing, keeps breathing, deeper and heavier with each inhale until all he's aware of is the smell of citrus and jasmine and lavender soap, like a garden sprouting in his stomach and growing upward into his throat.

One last shaky inhale, a whiff of something too-sweet and faintly chemical beneath the blossoms, and memory blooms behind his eyes. Tommy, bringing a bouquet of dandelions from a field, dirt smeared across his sun-kissed and smile-speckled cheeks. His father, ruffling his hair and picking out burrs with careful, tender hands. Fundy, little Fundy, fur slicked back with water and soap bubbles, ignoring the offered towel and giggling as he shook droplets everywhere.

Wilbur's back meets the cold tile wall. He melts into the downpour, and lets the flowers in his lungs escape.

When he climbs out and pulls his clothes back on - how rough that old coat felt now, against his newly softened skin - his cheeks and eyes are still red. He jokes to Tommy about getting shampoo in his eyes. Tommy jokes about how he can still see the crusty clumps of hair where the shampoo hasn't fully washed out. Wilbur runs his hand over his forehead again, letting it linger on the sticky silk. When he pulls away, he can still feel petals between his fingers.

[daff-the-butch-beamer]

what if there was some fancy gala or whatever... and jayce was off jaycing around... and mel goes over to vik bc you can't tell me she's not fascinated by her... and then mel has to go and she's like "it was a pleasure getting to know you" and kisses vik's hand... and jayce comes back like AM I MISSING SOMETHING

[lasnevadaslaborunion]

Okay, memes aside, my deep and enduring bias toward c!Quackity and sympathy for his abandonment issues aside, the entire situation in Las Nevadas 4 must have been so fucking scary for c!Karl and if you think about it from his perspective, he didn't really do anything wrong.

The poor dude just came back from a stressful time traveling trip, met god, learned that he's getting tossed between two supernatural realms like a hot potato, and that he might have to choose between protecting the people he cares about and keeping his memories of them intact. Next thing he knows, he's climbing out of his basement and there's his fiancé, standing next to a guest who... wait...

No, yeah. The last time he saw this person was just before he died in a fiery explosion. And here he is again, acting like an old friend back from a long trip, chatting with Sapnap like nothing is wrong, then looking at Karl in shock, like he's done something wrong.

And he still decides to give the guy a tour, waits for a quiet moment to pull his head of security (his fiancé, who loves and adores him, and who he's pretty sure was there when it happened, too, and isn't that confusing...?) aside to explain his nervousness and resolve everything as peacefully as he can.

But Sapnap looks confused, then stunned, then guilty, and Karl is even more worried.

Then this other guy bursts in and starts yelling at him, and yeah, Karl is properly frightened now.

And Sapnap... wait, why is Sapnap taking his side? What did this weirdo say to manipulate him, before he returned to his library? What else doesn't Karl know now? What is he missing?

He has to leave, he has to get away from this man, but he's on the top floor of his house, cornered by the open air, and he has this terrible sensory memory that it wasn't the blast that killed him, but the fall - or was that a different time he died? And now he's descending the ladder as fast as he can, but this man is still chasing him, and his head is going fuzzy again, and... no. No. This is his home, he's not going to let anything happen to it. That's the one thing he knows for sure, and it's the one thing he's clinging to. He's not going anywhere. This murderer has to go, at least until he can think straight again.

Karl doesn't draw a weapon. He doesn't ask Sapnap to kill the intruder. He's seen enough people die lately, and he sure as hell won't see another death on Kinoko's soil.

Sapnap follows the screaming stranger to the edge of their kingdom, and starts looking at Karl like he's the stranger, and for some reason Karl feels a little bit like he's dying all over again.

[lasnevadaslaborunion]

Hey!! What are your thoughts on pogtopia calling c!quackity Schlatt’s bitch? This is very important. (Also I hope you had a good vacation!!)

(Thank you, it was fantastic!) What have you done. Why would you remind me of - yes, yes, I have many thoughts.

Wilbur speaks to Quackity a few days after the election, while the wounds from the arrows that stole his second life are still healing. Quackity gushes about romantic walks and gloats about broken walls, and Wilbur can't take it anymore. He snaps at him to go back to being Schlatt's useless lackey. Quackity laughs, the same shrill cadence Wilbur remembers following a deeper, harsher cackle. He thinks of the bright, naive young man who challenged him, the precocious politician he would have graciously accepted defeat from, and can't reconcile it with this petty, simpering lapdog. He thinks of those two, the President and his b... vice, laughing together - at him - in the home that he and Tommy built. It makes his stomach churn. He says as much, then says it again in private, in the echoing ravine where it lingers for days. It feels like triumph. (It tastes like poison.)

Tommy picks it up quickly. It's a joke, it makes him feel better - more importantly, it seems to make Wilbur feel better. And it's not much different from the playful insults they bandied about during the elections and even earlier. But when he runs into Quackity on the Prime Path below the city, when he hastily tosses him a small bag of drugs to keep him quiet about what he's sniffed out, he catches a glimpse of his old friend from the cartel days, squeezed back into a suit that's loose and tight in all the wrong places. Tommy doesn't remember the circles under Quackity's eyes being quite so dark, not even after he did one too many lines and went on a pranking rampage that left them both exhausted from laughing. Something about Pogtopia's favorite joke feels a little bit... wrong now. He doesn't dwell too long on what that is.

Tubbo hears it too, from two different angles. One by day, casual and dismissive and always chased by nervous laughter; one by night, bitter and mocking and falsely lighthearted. When he hears it from Tommy's mouth, he stops cold. He has to remind himself that these are his friends, they're not cruel for no reason, they have the right to be upset. Still, he quietly gives thanks that Quackity isn't here to hear it; god knows, he hears it enough already. Tubbo never says the words aloud. But when he remembers those blank eyes behind the sunglasses, the halfhearted "are you sure," the trembling steps backward as Technoblade loomed over them all, the agony of his skin melting and lights bursting against his eyes, and the twenty-four hours afterward that Quackity still stood by his master, some tiny vicious part of him can't help but think them.

And when Quackity hears it, he's fresh from a fight, caked in sawdust and spattered with blood, an escaped pet who's no longer worth the trouble to find. Tommy says it under his breath, looks around like it's a shameful secret, lets Quackity expect the worst. But the word itself is all too familiar, and all too casual from his old friend's mouth. Half his blood boils; the other half freezes solid. It's awful, it's sickening, it's humiliating, it's infuriating, it tastes like sweat, blood, and tears, like alcohol and Hawaiian punch, like lilies in an empty church and ink stains on his fingers and gunpowder that won't wash out of his clothes.

And worst of all, it feels true.

He swallows his shame, reforges it into anger, strikes a deal to help free them all because making deals is what he does best (and it's never worked out badly for him before, right?). He paints himself as a dog beaten one too many times, who barked out one too many warnings, who finally decided to bite and would bite again in a heartbeat. He counterfeits documents, gathers seeds, trains with his weapons, contributes to the cause and fantasizes openly about dancing on the tyrant's grave. He convinces himself that he's safer here, no matter what anyone says, that at least he can earn back more respect than he ever had in Manberg.

But Pogtopia remembers, and so does he. There are too many ghosts here, winding through the shadowy ravine and dragging their fingers across his back when he least expects it. There's resentment and pain and grief, weeks and months of it, seeping into the stone. He can sense the eyes on him, he can smell the hate in the air, he can hear "traitor" and "murderer" and "weakling" in their voices. And if he closes his eyes, this treacherous, murderous weakling can picture the cobbled roof closing in above him, see the flickering of glowstone in the corners and moonlight through glass windows, and taste sour, wheezing breath mingling with his own. Schlatt's bitch - it tastes too much like home.

They didn't know. They don't know. They'll never know.

[lasnevadaslaborunion]

Quackity visits Kinoko Kingdom and insists that all of the wildflowers must be fake.

"If these are real flowers, then where are the real bees attacking me with their real stingers?" he laughs, before walking back toward the cobble path. And there's no way real cherry trees would look that full and lush. Or that the grass could be so green. Or that the mushrooms could be so full and firm and colorful. Sure, it's a pretty country, but they can tone down the fake stuff. It doesn't make that much difference, really.

Later, as they're walking back home from an awkwardly quiet dinner date, Sapnap takes a few fallen petals and starts putting them on Karl's head. They laugh, chase each other around a bit.

Then Sapnap starts tossing them at Quackity, too. And for just a moment, when the silky softness touches his cheek and the smell of cherry blossoms and dew hangs over them, Quackity lets himself believe again.

[lasnevadaslaborunion]

🙃

C! Purpled

"He blew up my UFO, you know."

Punz's eyebrows were already furrowed, his mouth was already set in a thin line, but Purpled could see his expression tighten even more. "Really."

Purpled shrugged and took another loud, whistling sip of McDonald's sprite. "Yeah. He was trying to get me to join his country, and for some reason, he thought that would work. That's why it's been gone." He thought of his other home, of smoking wood chips flying into the air and crops left untended and refusing to look back at the wreckage as he and Dogchamp walked away, and frowned harder. "And... why I was in a cave. I wondered when somebody would ask."

"Wow."

"Yeah."

"Wish I could say that's the worst thing he's done."

"He's a fucking asshole."

"You don't have to tell me twice. I spoke to him months ago and didn't even know..."

Purpled twirled a french fry between his fingers, then used it to mop up the last few drops of his soda in his cup. "You get it, though, right?"

"What... what does that mean?"

"Eh, bosses are shitty. No offense meant, since I'm apparently working with yours soon."

Punz still hadn't touched his chicken nuggets, Purpled noticed. His hands remained tucked into the pocket of his hoodie. "He's not really my boss."

"He pays you, right?"

"Oh, he pays me plenty."

"For doing messenger duty."

"We..." Punz had a good poker face, but Purpled - a fellow mercenary from a nation of gamblers - still knew one when he saw it. He waited for Punz to finish. "I do anything Dream pays me well enough to do," he finished evenly.

"Gross. I'm still eating, dude." Purpled reached across the table, snatched one of Punz's untouched chicken nuggets, and dunked it in his ice cream.

Punz, halfway through a lighthearted protest, paused with his mouth agape. "What the..."

"So. We were discussing payment."

[lasnevadaslaborunion]

Sometimes, there are no happy endings.

~~~

The sound Quackity makes when the blade sinks into his chest is far too quiet. So unlike the boisterous, confident man Sapnap followed and fell in love with, and so much more like the soft sobs he remembered from the earliest days of their relationship. If it weren't for the blood dripping onto Sapnap's shoulder, the wet rasp in the final breath, he could almost pretend that they were cuddled in bed together, Karl smiling at them from its other side, all of them soaking up the sunrise.

He and Dream step away at the same time, and let the corpse fall between them. Sapnap reaches out to catch him, at the same time that Dream shoves him away. Their pulses are both racing, their heads are both spinning, both of their swords are stained ruby. They will never know who struck the final blow.

Either way, Sapnap understood that it didn't matter which sword did it; either way, he slew his lover while trying to slay his best friend. Yet another horror that could never, ever be forgiven.

~~~

Dream dies with Sapnap's sword through his heart, head cradled against his chest, fists clenching and releasing the fabric of his shirt as his eyes go dark. The descent is quiet, solemn, undramatic. For a moment, there is utter silence.

Quackity, watching breathlessly, doesn't have enough time to feel joy or relief before he watches his love sway on his feet and turn to him, sword clattering on the stone and tear tracks on his cheeks and the color draining from - no, no, too fast, it can't be that stupid fucking book again, he can't leave, not again, not like this...

Sapnap is gone, crumpled atop his fallen brother, fading away before Quackity can stop him, before he can give comfort, before he can touch him one last time.

The world around him fades away, too, and then it's burning, burning, burning.

~~~

When Sapnap falls, Dream feels nothing. Nothing at all. He feels so much nothing that his limbs and his face and the air caged inside his ribs go freezing cold with how much nothing he feels.

And then, a scream shatters the ice.

Quackity lunges forward, stumbling gracelessly, and Dream flinches back on instinct. But Quackity misses him completely, instead sinking to his knees and crawling on the ground until he reaches the place where Sapnap lies staring blankly up at them both. He takes his face in his hands, drapes himself over it, and screams again. It's a high, hoarse, helpless, sickening sound, one that shouldn't leave the same mouth that could laugh at this same pain before.

Dream says nothing. He takes his enemy's grief as an opportunity to slip away, as far as he can. Then he pulls off his mask with bloody, shivering fingers and finally lets himself succumb to his own.

~~~

Somewhere, in a field of flowers guarded by a statue of a dragon, a knight who watched his kingdom drift away piece by piece sheathes his sword and returns home to a silent, empty bedroom.

Somewhere, at the top of a needle that scrapes the sky, a gambler whose foolishness cost him all that he loved looks over the smoldering wreckage of a wedding chapel that will never open.

Somewhere, in an obsidian fortress, a god who is anything but godly sits with his thoughts, learns all he can about life and death, and waits all alone for perfection at last.

~~~

There is no such thing as perfection.