Chapter Text
The test launch was a complete success. Project Dreamcatcher could not only fulfill its purpose, but do so with flying colors. Tubbo cannot deny the giddy relief this brings. Although, that joy had briefly wavered when he saw Niki and Tommy come waltzing out of the woods unprotected.
“Well done, Tubbo! Well done!” Tommy seems delighted rather than ill.
“Thank you, Tommy! How insane is this?!” Tubbo gestures down into the chasm. His heart is beating very fast. He did it. He actually did it. He can keep them all safe. If they don’t die of radiation poisoning first. “Tommy, you do have to be careful. You are gonna get like, radiation poisoning if you stay for too long.”
Tommy gives him a look. “Tubbo, do I look like someone who gets radiated?”
Oddly enough, Tubbo doesn’t have a hard time believing him.
“No. Clearly not,” Jack says, just as stilted and off as he’s been all day. If he won’t celebrate, Tubbo certainly will.
“Oh my god.” Tubbo is in awe of his reckoning. He knows he shouldn’t compare this to a crime, but it makes L’Manberg’s doom feel almost small. “Do you want to go in the crater, guys? Let’s go in!”
“This is so cool!” Tommy gushes. “Niki, you didn’t even tell me we were this close to it!”
“I– I didn’t know! I didn’t know we were this close,” Niki says quickly.
“Oh my god, it is so lucky you guys didn’t show up– if you guys had gotten here literally thirty seconds earlier this would have been a very different day!” Tubbo laughs, fear forgotten in his mania as he stares around the crater.
He’s reached the bottom now, the last pit in the earth until it was finally stopped by bedrock. The scale feels no less colossal down here than it did up there. He wonders if the radiation might be starting to eat through their suits, as there’s this curious sort of pressure in the air, one which raises the hairs on the back of his neck. Tubbo glances to Tommy, who crinkles his nose, staring around the hole.
“Okay, Tubbo. I’m just gonna go explore,” Jack calls down flatly.
“I’m gonna go with him!” Niki follows.
“Alright– bye guys!” Tubbo stares at Tommy. That feeling has gotten worse. Beyond the physical warning, it’s almost like dread is permeating the air.
Tommy glances back at him. “Sorta… sorta itchy, innit?” He mutters.
Tubbo doesn’t think radiation should make him feel like he’s being watched, like something is digging into his amygdala and leaking cortisol until he feels weak in the knees. Radiation is a suitable excuse, though. If only to get them out of there and fast. “That… that might actually be radiation poisoning, okay. Come on, we are getting out of here!” Tubbo, despite his enthusiasm, knows when to call it quits.
Tommy seems equally eager to leave. Their climb out is harder than the climb in. Tommy gets short of breath quickly. He keeps looking back over his shoulder at the center of the crater. Tubbo grabs Tommy’s hand, pulling him up the next ledge.
“Come on. After this, we’re going right to Church Prime, alright?” Tubbo says.
Tommy nods, still fighting for breath, and doesn’t bother to question why they might need the church. One last time, he looks back at the center of that crater.
“Tommy?” Tubbo asks cautiously.
Tommy doesn’t reply. He’s staring down into that yawning pit like he’s waiting for something.
“Come on, we should go,” Tubbo tugs on Tommy’s arm.
“What-?” Tommy jumps, as if jolted awake, finally turning away from the abyss to face him. “What?!”
“We should go,” Tubbo says again, slowly, carefully.
“Y-Yeah, yeah we should,” Tommy nods. He doesn’t start moving. Tubbo puts a hand on his shoulder, forcefully steering him out into the snowy woods, and only then does Tommy walk away from the edge.
Jack feels like he might explode and not from the nuke.
“This thing is like a mile long!” Jack gestures furiously from the top of the crater. “How could you not get him close enough to blow him up?!”
“I tried! He just kept talking and talking and talking!” Niki’s voice trembles, half anger, half upset, and Jack is struggling to bottle his rage.
Jack watches as Tubbo and Tommy leave the crater. Tommy keeps pausing and looking back. “Look at him! He’s having fun in the crater that was supposed to kill him!”
“I’m sorry, Jack! I am so so sorry! I really tried. I was nice to him. I was so nice to him, and at one point he got suspicious and I had to tell him, oh no, I’m trying to help you!” Niki sighs.
Finally, Tubbo and Tommy leave the crater. Jack wanders further in, Niki close behind.
“All this… all this and we couldn’t even kill him. It hit fucking bedrock but no it couldn’t kill one prick in a hardhat!” Jack’s voice echoes off the rock and he cannot bring himself to care.
“I’m sorry, Jack, I–”
“I know! I know,” Jack snaps. “Sorry,” he says grudgingly. “I know Tommy is… a nightmare to handle. Dunno if I could’ve put up with him that long myself, so.” Jack kicks a rock over the edge, it clatters against the pillars of bedrock.
Niki hops down further, looking up at the crater, and then back at him, seeming moments away from a breakdown. “I was– I was so nice to him,” she says again, as if by doing so it could somehow mean their plan had worked. She continues to stare around the wreckage, fixated on something he can’t see. Jack doesn’t think she plans on moving any time soon.
Jack clambers down to at least join her in her melancholy, and while Niki had just seen him, she jumps like a firework has gone off when he puts a hand on her shoulder. “Jesus, Niki!” Jack manages not to fall back off the pillar when she turns like she’s about to swing her axe at him. “You– You okay?”
“Y-Yeah, I just…” Niki still holds onto her axe, knuckles white, her pale eyes scan the pit. “I know why I’m angry, Jack,” she says softly. “I don’t know why I’m scared.”
“What?” Jack is properly unnerved now. Worse, now that she’s said it, he can’t avoid it either. He’d gotten a brief jolt of panic when he’d started to tip back toward the edge, but the panic hasn’t gone away. It’s clawing up his throat and Jack can only compare it to the panic of clawing his way up a pillar of lava. “We… we should go. Come on, this isn’t–” Jack looks around the pit and no longer sees failure there. He doesn’t know what he sees, but he certainly doesn’t trust it. “Come on.”
Tommy is accustomed to nightmares, but this one isn’t like the others. It’s not based in memory––awful, awful memory––but something new.
Tommy is in exile again. This part isn’t new. This is the default backdrop for almost every nightmare he’s had since, disregarding the occasional stint in Pogtopia to keep things interesting. He sits on the edge of his cot in his tent by the sea. Cold wind blows in off the water and is hardly kept at bay by canvas, and it’s so quiet. He cannot hear himself. His own breathing, his own body, it doesn’t react. He cannot speak, he cannot break that silence, and he cannot decide if he is calm or if he is terrified because he doesn’t know if his heart is pounding at all. There’s enough dim torchlight there aren’t any mobs to sneak up on him, yellow light cast from one side, leaving the beach in shadow, so he can only hear the waves, and the gentle ripple of the tent tugged on in the breeze.
Until he hears something else. Something different. Tommy hears the sound of bone, not breaking, but groaning, shifting, creaking, and then his back begins to burn.
Not burning like fire, not like lava nor an explosion he stood too close to, no. It burns like his muscles burn, the awful ache of running too hard and for too long and still not getting away unscathed. The burning sharpens, a terrible yawning pain like his ribcage is being torn apart like a fucking wishbone, lungs and all, and Tommy falls from his cot onto the floor of dead grass, clutching at fistfuls of it, holding onto anything, as he feels like something is tearing his shoulderblades out from under his skin, tugging and tugging until Tommy has to hold onto the grass to ensure some part of his skeleton remains anchored to the ground and–
Then the grass isn’t dead anymore. Tommy can finally hear his own gasping, wheezing breaths, he is on his knees, and the grass is wet with dew and very much alive and the breeze smells different. It doesn’t smell as strongly of salt or if it does it’s different salt and it’s brighter now, lit by torches far closer to him. Tommy looks up.
He is collapsed alongside the Prime Path, just off of it, generally in the direction of the beach past Bad and Skeppy’s mansion. But he hadn’t made it to the water. His back still aches.
Tommy has had nightmares. He’s also sleep walked before. Never like this, though, and certainly not since exile. Tommy sits up shakily, one hand stretching over his shoulder, the other twisting underneath, doing whatever he can to reach his own shoulder blades, to test that pain, but even that hurts but it shouldn’t hurt because he hasn’t done anything to warrant hurting because it was a dream–
Tommy stops. His skin, while covered in goosebumps and damp with sweat, is undamaged. He doesn’t know why he’d expected to touch bone. His worries are not yet assuaged, because there is a hole in his shirt. There are two holes, actually. One behind either shoulder blade.
Tommy staggers to his feet. He doesn’t know why, but he looks past the white mansion by the sea, to that monstrous island of obsidian. Tommy knows Dream is in there. He knows he’s trapped and he’s not coming out. But if not him, Tommy doesn’t know what could have done this. He doesn’t know when dawn is coming. He’s still so fucking tired. He steps back onto the prime path and starts toward home.
Jack must have fallen asleep in the lab. That’s where he wakes up, at least. He doesn’t remember falling asleep here, though. He sits up blearily from his workbench, irritably batting away a sheet of paper stuck to his cheek. Jack rubs his eyes, frowning, looking around the warehouse for some indicator of time. There isn’t one. He doesn’t know where Tubbo is, so it could be the dead of night for all he knows, but again, he doesn’t remember falling asleep here.
The last thing he remembers, actually, was saying good night to Tubbo as they parted for their opposing cabins. He remembers one thing being a bit off. He thought the water of the bay, always half frozen, he thought it had been moving. Tiny shining specks all writhing up from the water, and he’d taken a step closer, and then he’d woken up. After that, blank. Maybe he just had a fucking weird dream last night, partied too hard. It had been their test launch day too. So why the hell would he be in the lab if they’d already finished the test?
Jack gets to his feet, unsteady and disoriented. He almost feels like he’s been drugged, or that he’s ill, feverish and shaky. None of this feels normal. He intended on leaving the lab, eager to figure out if it’s night or day or to ask Tubbo if maybe they got really fucking hammered last night to celebrate the launch and he’d somehow… forgotten?
He doesn’t leave the lab yet, though. He looks down and realizes he has redstone staining his fingertips, digging underneath his nails. “What?” Jack says exasperatedly. “I… I don’t…” Jack turns, looking around the lab for the source, but nothing is jumping out at him. He returns to his own workbench, but most of the wiring had been done on the bomb itself, not at his fucking desk, so none of this makes sense. Jack hesitates, before going over to Tubbo’s side of the warehouse.
His lab bench is as eclectic as Jack’s, but Tubbo always said there was a method to the madness, so he doesn’t want to move around too many papers. He hates when his hunches are right. They rarely lead to the result he’s hoping for. Still, undeniably, there is redstone residue left on the edge of the workbench, vaguely hand-print shaped, like someone had been holding onto the edge of the table to look under it. Jack is about to step forward to do the same, before he notices a shift in the stone flooring.
“Oh, no fucking way,” Jack says wearily. He crouches down still a few feet back, and undeniably, there is a stone pressure plate underneath the workbench. Jack breaks it carefully, and he knows what he’s going to find, he just doesn’t know why.
TNT had been laid underneath Tubbo’s station, set to blow up the moment he returned there. Jack has redstone underneath his fingernails.
“I w-wouldn’t–” Jack blusters. Even their attempts to murder Tommy had been far more subtle than this, always trying to position things to be blamed on accident. And it’s Tubbo. In what fucking universe would Jack hurt Tubbo? He feels almost like he’s being pranked. Jack quickly takes the TNT, replacing the flooring.
Maybe he’s just been working too hard.
That’s not working too hard. That is blacking out and plotting to murder one of your only friends.
Jack eerily realizes that, despite the blacking out, that isn’t especially different to what he already had been doing. But he and Tommy aren’t friends anymore. They can’t be.
Jack feels ill, he’s hot and clammy and a little shaky. He doesn’t remember what he did last night–– was it last night? He doesn’t know the time either––and he feels like he has a fever and he apparently planned to do something awful.
Jack needs to get the hell out of here. The walls are closing in, the air feels thicker, he feels like moving through it is like clawing through honey, but he has to get out. Jack stumbles toward the doors, shoving them open before stopping with a yelp.
“Jack!” Tubbo looks at him with raised eyebrows. “What’re you doing in here so early?”
“M-Me?” Jack glances frantically around Snowchester, early morning sun battling snow-laden clouds. “What’re you doing in here?”
“Oh, I was gonna get one of the geigers and take it down by the water,” Tubbo nods back to the bay.
“Why?” Jack pushes forward, still desperate to get outside, and the cold air helps, but he still feels too hot. He resists the urge to take off his coat.
“Come on, I’ll show you.”
Jack turns back and feels his heart beating in his throat as Tubbo goes to his workbench, but he grabs the Geiger counter and leaves unscathed. “W-What… Did we…?” Jack doesn’t know what to ask.
“What’s up, Jack?” Tubbo gives him a curious look. “You look a little…” Tubbo scans his face carefully.
“What?!” Jack is hoping there’s some physical tell, that he looks clearly unwell, and maybe that is why he also feels like he’s losing it.
“Nervous?” Tubbo shrugs.
“Nervous? Me? Why would– Why would I be nervous?” Jack laughs weakly.
“Wow. And you haven’t even seen the fish yet!” Tubbo says brightly.
“Fish?”
Jack follows Tubbo down to the bayside, and the smell greets him first. Hundreds of dead fish float amidst the ice floes.
“Look, guys, this wasn’t me,” Foolish sits along the shoreline, looking bored, fishing pole useless at his side.
“Didn’t think so, Foolish,” Tubbo replies, fiddling with the Geiger counter.
“Hey, Jack! You’re up early,” Foolish greets him.
“I am?” Jack feels like a startled deer. “How– How early? How do you mean?”
Foolish looks puzzled. “Like, last night, you–”
“What the hell?” Tubbo interrupts, frowning down at the Geiger counter.
“What is it?” Jack is already on edge.
“The… the fish, I don’t know if they’re irradiated or not, because I think it’s busted. It says we’re both irradiated,” Tubbo turns, holding the counter between them. He holds it away from his body, the intensity briefly goes down, and then ramps right back up when it gets close to Jack. “We were definitely not irradiated yesterday. Foolish, come over here.”
Foolish joins them gladly, intrigued. “What’s up?”
“Hold this for me.” Tubbo passes the Geiger to Foolish, which falls silent upon exchanging hands. “Weird. It’s definitely just you and me, Jack. Foolish, can you go down by the fish for me?”
“Gross, but sure!” Foolish does so, and unsurprisingly, the Geiger starts whining again as it gets close to the fish.
Tubbo frowns. “Polluted… polluted water maybe? But that doesn’t make sense, it’s not like we get our drinking water from the bay,” Tubbo scoffs. “How are you feeling, Jack?”
“Fine! Great!” Jack is fucking burning up. He couldn’t stand it anymore, and despite knowing it looks odd amidst the snow, he starts to take off his coat, letting it hang loosely off his shoulders.
Tubbo looks skeptical. “Right.” He heads back up the hillside. “Well, if it’s somehow some… latent effect from yesterday, somehow,” he scoffs at the thought, “that would mean Niki and Tommy would be irradiated too, surely. Come on.”
Tommy is right where they expected he’d be this early in the morning, but he’s already awake. In fact, he’s hunched over a chest in his back bedroom and jumps like someone just set off TNT when Tubbo calls his name.
“What the fuck, Tubbo?!” Tommy whines. “Give a man a heart attack, sneaking up like that!”
Tubbo laughs. “I did announce myself.”
Jack’s impulse at the sight of Tommy skittish and haggard is to feel relieved; at least he knows it isn’t just him. Alternatively, he doesn’t like having something in common with Tommy right now, especially when he’s freaking himself out. Jack had abandoned his coat before they’d even left the snow biome, and now standing in the sun of a green plains he feels woozy from the heat.
“What’s–” Tommy clearly tries to compose himself with great effort. “What’s got you two out of the tundra, then? Need something from Tommyinnit enterprises?”
“Yeah! Actually, can you come’re for a second?” Tubbo nods Tommy over.
Tommy doesn’t move, he stares at him, pale and strained. “Why?”
“Just a second,” Tubbo laughs. “I won’t bite.”
“Yeah, he might, though,” Jack adds irritably.
Tommy, still very clearly reluctant, comes closer to Tubbo, still lingering a few feet back, arms folded defensively across his chest.
“Okay. You’re both acting right weird today, d’you know that?” Tubbo gives them both a curious look. He holds out the Geiger counter, turning it on to immediate whining as it detects his own radiation. “Tommy?”
“The fuck is that?” Tommy stares at the device like it might bite him instead.
“It’s a Geiger counter. It looks for radiation. Jack and I, we’re irradiated at the moment, and I wanted to see if you are too.”
Tommy stares at him, mouth hanging open slightly, before he snaps out of it. “Why would– Why would I be– Maybe it’s just you two! You lot are the ones fucking about with nukes and shit!”
“Because, you and Niki were at the test sight too.”
“Tubbo, you are… shockingly calm about all this,” Jack frowns. Somehow being paired up beside Tommy’s fidgety panic, it’s made him realize Tubbo’s mild interest must be a severe under-reaction to finding out they’re all fucked up on radiation. The whine of the Geiger counter continues as Tubbo stands between them impatiently.
“Well, the levels aren’t enough to kill us immediately, and I just think it’s strange considering we definitely weren’t irradiated yesterday,” he gestures with his hands as he talks, the whining beeps shifting in pitch as his hand moves further and then closer to his body. “We checked after we got out of our suits, and then there’s the fish cropping up, which happened in Snowchester, not near the blast sight.”
“Maybe… maybe you’ve got a leak. In Snowchester,” Tommy tries.
“I thought that as well, but Foolish was perfectly fine.”
“The man is a demi-god arguably made of gold. He’s sorta an exception to most things,” Jack points out flatly.
“Gold can still get irradiated, Jack,” Tubbo says patronizingly. “Either way, that’s why we came out here, Tommy. See if you had it too! So, please, just take the Geiger.” Tubbo offers it.
Tommy winces, as if expecting something awful to happen, but he takes the device. The beeping slows briefly as it changes hands, before rapidly increasing as Tommy holds it closer to himself.
“Well! That’s all the proof I needed,” Tubbo takes it back, turning it off so finally blissful silence falls instead. “Since it got you as well–”
“Got me? What fucking got me-?”
“–my theory is somehow the radiation came out of the blast sight, but remained… I dunno, dormant until today!” Tubbo finishes brightly.
“And that doesn’t…” Jack trails off, staring at Tubbo like he’s gone mad, and once more, irritatingly, it looks like Tommy is in agreement. “Bother you?” He asks Tubbo carefully.
“Well, sure, it is concerning, but I’d say it’s also interesting, y’know?” Tubbo shrugs. “Actually, since you’re both acting all weird, are you two alright? Had any strange symptoms?”
Jack and Tommy exchange a look, something awfully like solidarity between them.
“Bad night’s sleep,” Jack shrugs just as Tommy shakes his head and says, “nightmares were a bit worse, is all.”
Tubbo looks between the two of them, clearly doubtful.
“Right… Well, I think it would be good, be prudent, if we run some tests just to be safe, alright?” Tubbo turns back onto the prime path and glances back to make sure they’re both listening. “Jack, could you find Niki for us? She might be getting sick as well.”
“Find– Oh! Yeah, right. I can… I can check,” Jack nods quickly, before what Tubbo is asking catches up with him. “Right. I’ll just… just go and find her Secret City. Yeah, sure. Easy,” Jack says sullenly.
“Thanks, Jack!” Tubbo smiles, definitely aware of what he’s asking. He irritates Jack further by tossing him the Geiger counter, Jack fumbling to catch it. “To see if she’s got it too, right? I’ll see you back in Snowchester.”
Niki is starting fires again, but this time she doesn’t remember doing it.
Niki stands alone in the entrance to her city, a flint and steel loose at her side. She watches helplessly as the wildflowers turn to ash around her. For the second time in far too few days, she watches an oak tree burn.
Why would I do this. Why would I do this?!
That thought has been dizzying her head for hours.
She’d given up trying to stop it. Every time she tried, she’d notice a different patch of grass had started to burn instead. It was almost like Niki was lighting fires faster than she could put them out and just couldn’t remember, but that doesn’t make any sense.
Not remembering doesn’t make sense either.
So she’d given up. She waits in the entryway, just to make sure it doesn’t spread inside, even as the smoke clogs her throat. Waves of it, thick and dark, billowing up into the skyline.
It’s not Secret anymore, then. This isn’t fair.
“Fuck– Fuck! This isn’t fair!” Niki shouts out into the flames. She hurtles the flint and steel into the fire. If she’s the one doing this, she’ll make it so she can’t anymore. Niki takes a few gasping breaths, half frustration, probably half smoke inhalation, and then she realizes she’s holding something. Niki freezes. The metal is still warm. Hot, even. Her hand hurts.
Niki looks down. Clutched in a hand shining with a fresh burn, she’s holding the flint and steel. Niki cannot stop her lip from trembling, but she’s alone out here. There’s no one to see when she lets herself slide to the floor, knees tucked into her chest, still holding the flint and steel. She doesn’t try to get rid of it again. She doesn’t want any more proof that she’s not in control, that she’s losing her mind. She’s had enough of that for a lifetime.
“Niki?! What the fuck is going on?!”
She’s startled by Jack’s voice echoing down through the smoke, scrambling to her feet. “Jack?! Where are you?”
“Hell if I know! Can’t see through the smoke! Are you okay?!” He sounds utterly panicked but somehow the sound of his voice calms her anyway.
“I– I think so! I can’t stop it!”
“Stop it?! Wait– Did you start it?!”
“I… I don’t know!”
Far more baffled, echoing louder. “You don’t know?!”
“Jack, don’t try to come down! Do you know how to find my portal in the Nether?” Niki calls up.
“No! I’ve been running around trying to find you in the Overworld, actually, and then I saw the smoke and I– I don’t know!”
“Meet me in the Nether! My portal is the one with grass around it!”
“Okay?!”
Niki turns away from the blaze. She knows it won’t spread across the stone. She’d just needed a reason to stay there and watch. She heads underground toward the Nether portal. She’s startled to find it’s unlit. She cannot possibly fathom why it would be unlit. The frame itself is unbroken, and it’s not like there have been any explosions down here. She can’t remember walking past it this morning. She can’t actually remember waking up at all. She’d just already been there, surrounded by flames.
Niki stares up at that empty, yawning arch, and the flint and steel in her hand feels warm and sticky with her sweat. Somehow numbed, she steps forward and hits flint to steel, and with a spark, a wave of rippling purple spreads up it. She goes to bury the flint and steel in her inventory, its presence still unnerving to her, and once more she doesn’t know what to do with what she’s seeing. There’s an entire stack of TNT in her inventory.
Why would you need TNT?
Niki, fleetingly, thinks of her dead best friend, and decides she would rather be fully aware of whether or not she was holding something that could ignite it, and apparently she’s not allowed to throw it away, so instead the flint and steel remains clutched in her fist instead.
Niki takes a deep, shuddering breath, trying to compose herself, and steps through it. The world warps and bends around her as it has a thousand times before and she waits for the sharp whoosh of arrival and the rush of heat from the Nether. The world warps and bends around her. It doesn’t stop. Split by purple light, she feels untethered. It’s difficult to see, the room––the world–– shifting far too fast and she was supposed to have crossed over by now. She doesn’t know what will happen if she steps off, she doesn’t know where people go between the Nether and the Overworld, if they go anywhere at all or if instead there is some ceaseless nothing waiting to sink into her. Maybe it’s already happening. There is a nothing which is already soaking into her, or maybe she is pouring into it. She’s falling apart; she must be. Her limbs tugged away from her body, rippling, disintegrating into particles and it is pain, but it’s also something beyond pain, as she is unwound like a frayed thread from a flag.
Niki wants to get off the portal. Everything she knows has been condensed down to a ring of obsidian. It’s the only solid thing left. She wants to take a step forward. She doesn’t know if her legs are hers anymore. They don’t feel like hers, none of her feels like her at all. Her blood is spread in some vast, thin sheet, rippling in a wave on top of the portal’s sea and it tastes of iron and she knows this but she doesn’t know how she’s tasting because her tongue must surely be gone because she cannot scream and her skin is breaking off, not blistering, but parting as gently as snowflakes, or ash from the sky. Despite her best efforts, her muscles do not strain to pull herself forward, instead tendons break like an old rubber band. She feels like she’s drifting, formless in the pool of particles, the line between worlds, and she just wants to take a step forward. She doesn’t know if that’s her choice to make. The portal won’t stop rippling and shifting and taking her with it.
Niki doesn’t feel her hand reaching out to pull something from her inventory. She cannot distinguish her hands from any of the other atoms bathed in shimmering purple, but she knows she’s trying to hold on to something.
She still feels the flint and steel though. In her other hand––in what had once been her other hand––she still holds onto it tightly. How she holds on she has no idea but the cold of that metal is the only thing left that feels like it’s hers. All she has to do is light it.
You’re going to get blown to pieces.
The thought would have made her laugh, she thinks; if she’d still had a voice. Lighting the TNT is as easy as breathing, which is to say, incomprehensible in her scattered mind but happening anyway.
A hiss. Then, the sound of glass shattering.
Niki hits the ground hard, her knees ache against the netherrack, surely scraped as she had thrown herself forward as hard as she could and she wraps her arms around her stomach, hunched over, and in her newly reformed lungs this awful, keening sob rises against her bidding.
“Niki?!” Jack’s voice is high and panicked. He’s beside her, a hesitant arm wrapping around her shoulders, “what– what’s happened?! Are you… are you injured?!”
Niki’s vision is still blurred, no longer by the portal or perhaps a lack of eyes; instead, the tears as she looks up at Jack leave his worried face distorted. Are you injured?
She doesn’t know how to begin to answer that question.
“I… I don’t know,” Niki says softly, her voice is so much calmer than she feels, for a moment she’s afraid it still doesn’t belong to her. “I don’t– I don’t know.” She buries the tempting urge to scream.
“What’s… what’s happened, Niki?” Jack asks carefully. “The… the smoke, the fire, what was…” Jack stops his questions, embarrassed. “Sorry. I’ll… I’ll give you a moment.”
“Is the portal lit?” Niki whispers.
“Is it-?” Jack looks back behind her. “Yeah, it’s lit. You just came through?”
Niki nods shakily and for a brief, desperate moment she hopes maybe she’s only gone mad. She fumbles for her inventory, and pulls up the TNT. 63 blocks. She thinks she might throw up. She wonders if all of her organs have reassembled correctly inside of her. “I don’t… I don’t know how to…”
“Wait, Niki, can you look at me? Just real quick,” Jack’s eyebrows are furrowed together as he scans Niki’s face. He takes one of her hands, assessing it like he’s looking for clues, holding up their hands flat against each other, frowning.
“Jack, what?”
“No, it’ll sound– It’ll sound crazy–”
An unnerving, shaky laugh bubbles up. “Just tell me, Jack.”
Jack frowns, clearly still reluctant. “You look… smaller?”
“What the fuck?!” That is not what Niki was expecting.
Jack shakes his head. “Sorry, I know that doesn’t– Look, maybe I… maybe I needed glasses or all this weird shit has got my depth perception going all funny, it was just a stupid thought.”
Niki fumbles for her sword.
“Whoa, I said sorry!” Jack jumps back.
She wraps her hand around the hilt. Maybe she’s just imagining things, now that Jack has pointed it out, but she’s held this sword a hundred times before, and her grip feels different. Almost imperceptibly so, but she feels it. The sword feels bigger. If her body were ripped apart atom by atom, and then it were hit by an explosion… maybe some of her did burn back there, just a little. Niki barely feels attached to her body as is. She puts the sword away.
“Um, Niki,” Jack starts, slow and burying his worry, deigning it safe to come back over to her. “Tubbo seems to think–– know, well, I guess he knows–– that we’re all…” There’s no gentle way to put it. “Irradiated?”
Niki stares up at him, looking almost exasperated. “He thinks…” Niki does not think whatever the fuck just happened to her was from radiation, but how would she know?
“He sent me with, ah,” Jack scrambles in his inventory, pulling out some sort of scanner. “This thing. Checks for… rads. Me, Tubbo, and Tommy have all got it, and, well, you were there too,” he says more hesitantly.
Niki reaches out for the device, pressing the first button she sees. Instantly, rapid clicking and several red lights glow. “That’s not good, I’m guessing?” Niki laughs a little hysterically.
“Yeah, but um, maybe it’s just ‘cause I’m standing too close,” Jack seems to be hoping to comfort her as he steps back, but the machine keeps clicking.
“I guess not, Jack,” Niki drops the machine, not bothering to turn it off, face buried in her hands. Her hands, tangible and real and fully under her control. She hopes.
Jack fumbles to switch it off. “So, I’m… I’m guessing some really weird shit has been happening with you.”
Niki looks up at him sharply. “Why? Did something happen to you?”
“Um,” Jack looks awfully guilty. “I… I think I did some shit last night that I do not remember doing and, um,” Jack glances around the nether, wincing in the bright light of the lava. “I guess I have a fever?”
Niki is disappointed. She didn’t want to find out that anyone had been through whatever she had just been through, but she cannot deny the thought of someone understanding brought some relief. “Oh.”
“Why, er, what happened with you? All the… all the fire and shit.”
Niki lets out another whimpering, hysterical laugh, before she covers her mouth with her hand, still hunched forward, rocking slightly.
“...Niki?” Jack asks delicately. He’s not used to her being like this and really doesn’t know what to do.
“I think…” Niki shuts her eyes tightly, speaking so softly it’s like she’s afraid something else will overhear. “I think I started those fires. And I wouldn’t let myself put them out. And…” She pauses, bile rising in her throat before she can pull herself back. She points vaguely behind her and gives the biggest understatement of her life, “I think there’s something wrong with the portal.”
Jack isn’t sure what to make of Niki’s breakdown, he certainly hadn’t expected it from her and at this point he feels like Tubbo has a better shot of helping her than he does.
“Right. Tubbo wants to run some tests or something back in Snowchester,” Jack offers her a hand off the ground and she accepts it. Her hand feels ice cold in his.
“Back… back in Snowchester?” Niki asks warily.
“Er, yeah, is that a problem?”
Niki looks deathly pale. “I don’t think I can…” She looks back over her shoulder to the Nether portal behind her.
“What? Look, if you’re worried your portal is messed up, we should probably go back and use the main one anyway,” Jack offers.
Niki slowly shakes her head. “Just go, Jack. I don’t think I… I don’t think I can go that far. To the… to the portal. I think something’s wrong with me,” Niki looks almost dazed. It’s clear she means something beyond broken portals and fevers.
“Me too,” Jack doesn’t elaborate. Nor does she. “I don’t feel good leaving you like this. Do you want me to go with you, take you back home first?”
Niki shakes her head. “I’m gonna stay here, I think.”
“What, here? As in, right here? In the Nether?”
“Yeah. I think so.”
Jack’s eyes are wide, but he tries not to sound accusing. “That’s… that’s probably not the smartest thing to do, you know that, right?”
Niki seems to focus up, giving Jack a hard look. “I think I can handle it, Jack. Don’t you have somewhere to be?”
“Oh, right. Er, sorry.” Jack doesn’t want to leave Niki, he doesn’t quite believe her that she wants to be left alone, but he can’t make her change her mind. He gestures to the Geiger counter. “I… I gotta get this back, then. I’ll see you later?”
Niki nods.
It’s dismissal enough for Jack to turn back onto the Nether highways and make towards Snowchester. He turns back to look at her, still with this awful feeling in his gut, and Niki has turned back to the portal. She’s just staring at it, though. She has yet to go through it. Jack shivers. He realizes, somehow, being in the Nether is the coldest he’s felt all day. Maybe he really does have a fever.
Fevers don’t make people try to blow up their loved ones.
Jack crosses back into the overworld, the trek back to Snowchester just long enough to be irritating. The trip to find Niki and then back has taken him long enough that the sun has touched down on the opposite horizon so, logically, it should be cooler outside. It’s surreal. The moment he’s back in the overworld, he feels like the temperature has been turned up about a hundred degrees. It’s not in the air, it’s him. The breeze is trying to cool him but it’s like blowing on a pot of boiling water, it does nothing.
Jack doesn’t know if he’s imagining it, but he feels like his boots make deeper footprints on his return, like the snow is melting underfoot. He crests the hill and sees Tommy and Tubbo talking by the bay. It seems that they’ve been gathering the fish from the water, which he’s sure was fun and not completely disgusting, but the bay is largely cleared out, nets of dead fish are instead piled on the shore. Tubbo was smart enough to wear protective gloves, Tommy less so. Tommy is, like Jack, also not wearing a coat, but he’s bouncing from foot to foot antsily, arms folded over his chest, so Jack knows it’s just Tommy being too stupid to bring a jacket.
“Why couldn’t you have just blown up?” Jack mutters irritably. There is no way for him to logically blame any of this on Tommy, but it does make him feel a bit better. He should head over there so he can return the Geiger counter, then maybe grab a thermometer before he spontaneously bursts into flames.
But Jack isn’t holding the Geiger counter anymore. He hadn’t noticed it, he cannot remember at any point slipping it back into his inventory and taking something else out, no. He thought about the Geiger counter, and he realized whatever he’s holding right now isn’t it. Jack looks down. He’s gotten his crossbow out, for no fucking reason, and it’s loaded.
Jack is patient. He’s waited, and watched, and latched onto every opportunity. He’s had to be to get this far, but eventually his patience must be rewarded. Not like this, though. Not when it isn’t his choice.
But it had to have been his choice. There’s no one else here, and how out of place is it really, for Jack to be aiming his crossbow at Tommy right now? That’s what he’s doing. No longer at his side, the crossbow is instead raised, resting and steadied on a branch of spruce across his path.
It’s getting dark outside. No one can see him right now. No one would ever have to know it was him. He has enough time to disappear, surely. Tubbo will be distracted with trying to help Tommy, and Jack can just turn around. His footprints don’t even look like his own anymore, melted into strange, wide shapes. Jack’s vision feels fuzzy around the edges, until it isn’t anymore, and he focuses in on the sight, and Tommy’s head resting perfectly above it. Tommy, for once in his life, has chosen to stand still, listening to whatever Tubbo is telling him.
He does feel bad for Tubbo. He hadn’t wanted Tubbo to actually see it. If the nuke had succeeded, there wouldn’t have even been a body.
Jack had thought he was still debating over whether or not he should pull the trigger, but apparently not, because he fires. And in the milliseconds it takes for the arrow to cross this distance, he sees Tommy lean back, just a bit, and Tubbo takes a step closer, barely half a step. Then, there is a spray of blood.
Tommy screams Tubbo’s name, and then he catches him, and Jack drops to the ground and he doesn’t know if Tommy has seen him and he doesn’t know what the fuck just happened and he doesn’t remember raising his crossbow at all. He does remember firing, though.
Jack listens.
“Tubbo! Just look at me, just look at me, man, come on, let’s– let’s get you a health pot, oh fucking hell, man, why couldn’t you just wear your armor–”
“Hey, you never wear armor either!”
“AND I’M BUILT DIFFERENT, MAN!” Tommy bellows back.
And Jack could’ve wept with relief. Tubbo sounds lucid. There had been so much blood and he’d shot him in the fucking head, but somehow, impossibly, Tubbo must be okay. He has to be okay. Jack curls in on himself, pressed back against the tree, his heart beating so hard it almost hurts.
Jack wants to run down that hillside, to know for sure that Tubbo will be alright, but he doesn’t know if that will incriminate him or not, because in what fucking world would Tubbo suspect Jack of trying to kill him? Maybe he could just take a look, just a quick peak to see if Tubbo is upright, walking on his own, make sure that Tommy is taking care of him.
And when they see your suspicious bald head pop up out of the snow right from where you fired, they’ll be chill with that, will they?
“This is so fucked,” Jack hisses under his breath. He can’t stay here much longer, mobs will be out and about soon enough.
Jack feels pine needles underneath his hand. Pine needles all around him, actually. They’re very damp. Jack looks down. He must be completely hidden from view, because the snow has melted around him, and in his right hand, he’s holding the Geiger counter. He distinctly remembers turning it off after checking on Niki, just like he distinctly doesn’t remember putting it away to get out his crossbow or taking it back out, but staring at it now, it’s definitely on. It glows red against the evening dusk, and its sound, that annoying, whining beep, or perhaps it was more like a series of clicks? No. Now, Jack thinks it almost sounds like some strange, awful animal is growling. The red light continues to pulse with each sound every time Jack moves. That’s not it either. Not a growl, not quite. It sounds like it’s purring.
Tubbo feels a bit out of it. Which, to be fair, makes sense considering he has a head injury. That he has no clue what to do with. One moment he was explaining the tests he wanted to do on the fish to Tommy and then the next there was an arrow grazing the side of his head, slicing through already brutal scar tissue and bleeding quite a lot.
“Probably just… probably a skeleton under the trees that spawned in a little early,” Tubbo says wearily. He doesn’t know what the alternative could be.
Tommy sputters wordlessly in offense. “Just a fucking skeleton?! That was– That was a fucking assassination attempt, man! That was– That was insane–”
“I’m alright, Tommy, really. It’s not like I don’t already have a scar over there,” Tubbo gestures offhandedly to the burn running up the left side of his face.
Tommy isn’t settling down. He’s been pacing the warehouse since treating Tubbo’s injuries. “Two inches to the right, man, and you would be a fuckin’ Tubbo-kabab!”
“Fine, if you think someone tried to kill me, go out there and chase them down, then!” Tubbo snaps irritably.
Tommy stops his pacing, now sulking more moodily. “I mean I certainly don’t wanna be a Tommy-kabab…” he mutters. He starts to fidget with something on one of the workbenches.
Exasperated, Tubbo once more says, “Tommy, please. Do I have to say it again? Do not touch anything in here; you might blow us all up or poison us or–”
“Fine!” Tommy snaps back, sitting back on one of the stools with a huff.
“And if you don’t want to actually do something about it, stay here, then! And stop shouting, because I do not need another headache!” Tubbo once more gestures to the bandage Tommy had wrapped around the wound.
“Fine! Sorry I was con-cerned.”
Tubbo stands up on relatively steady legs and heads over to one of the less used lab tables. “Right, not that this isn’t fun, but I’ve already bled today. So, Tommy, give me some of your blood,” Tubbo unpacks a sterile syringe and turns around but Tommy has already bolted to the other side of the room.
“Tommy!” Tubbo whines. “You’re really gonna make me use my own blood for this? After everything I’ve been through?”
“You know I don’t do needles, Tubbo!” Tommy keeps his arms folded across his chest, defensive and hostile. “No labcoat type shit, no test tubes, none of it! I’m not a fuckin’ labrat, I’ve got ‘uman rights!”
“But it’s just me, your bestest friend in the whole world! You know me! I’m not gonna do a… a freaking experiment on you! Not without asking first, at least,” Tubbo pouts.
Tommy shifts from foot to foot, grumbling wordlessly. “Fine! Ugh, you’re so demanding, Tubbo, I dunno why I put up with you! But fine, if you need my help that badly!” He returns to the lab bench with residual reluctance, arms still folded tightly across his chest.
“Tommy, to get your blood, I will need a vein.”
“Get a vein yourself, you fuckin’ vampire.”
“Tommy.”
Tommy scrunches up his face, trying to mask fear with disgust. “Alright, fine!” He sticks his arm out and quickly looks away. “You sure you know how to do this?”
“Sure!” Tubbo says brightly.
“Wait, sure as in sure or as in not sure enough to actually say yes?”
“Doesn’t matter! Hold still.”
Tommy shuts his eyes tightly, biting his tongue to hold back a whine as he feels the pinch of a needle. He can fucking feel the thing under his skin. If he doesn’t distract himself he’s going to flip out. “I must trust you a fuckin’ lot to let you stick a needle in me arm. Because this shit is so fucked up. Makes me all skin-crawly and shit and thinkin’ about… about bad things, y’know?”
“Not really, Tommy. You tend to keep that stuff to yourself. What the bad things are, at least. You do tell us when you get freaked out, though, like you complaining right now, so I guess that’s good.”
“Are you almost done?”
“Almost.”
“It really hurts,” Tommy whines.
“It’s one little needle, man. You’ve been through worse.”
“How much blood are you taking?”
“Not a lot! Just takes a second.”
Tommy feels nauseous, this heavy weight of anxiety in his stomach, and maybe it’s just the fucking latent trauma or whatever, but he feels like this is taking too long. His arm is burning now, and Tubbo is holding onto it really tightly. Tommy doesn’t want to look.
“Y’know, you’re right,” Tubbo continues, far too blasé. “You must trust me a whole lot, especially to not even look. I could be injecting you with anything right now.”
Tommy turns around sharply, yanking his arm back, stumbling off of the stool and onto the floor, every instinct telling him to just get away. Tommy clutches his stinging arm, and he can feel the pulse of blood fighting to get out from that one spot, and standing over him, looking startled, Tubbo holds a single syringe of Tommy’s blood.
“You… you didn’t think I was serious, did you?” Tubbo stares at him with wide eyes. “That was crazy of you, man! What if you’d yanked out the needle at a bad angle and ripped open your arm?!”
“Don’t… don’t make jokes about that stuff,” Tommy mutters, clambering to his feet. “You got a bandaid, then?”
“Gauze, tape,” Tubbo points to two different shelves, still focused on the blood sample.
“No spider-man bandaids or nothing? Lame.”
“We are a serious research facility! And no, we ran out of those last week. Jack kept hurting his hands trying to fix the welding.”
Tommy stops the tiny spot of bleeding and shuffles back over to Tubbo’s side. “What’re you… what’re you looking for?”
“Weird shit in your red blood cells,” Tubbo says, more focused on his microscope. “I’ll probably need more blood from you in a few days, see if anything changes.”
“Can’t you use your blood by then?”
“No, because I have to be consistent. It’s the scientific method, Tommy. It’s got to be your blood.”
Tommy grumbles irritably, pacing the lab. He’s patient for all of two minutes before he returns to Tubbo’s side. “Find anything?”
“Not yet.”
“Does that mean I’m not all radioactive and shit?”
“Nope. The Geiger worked on you too. Sorry, bossman, you’re in this one with us.” Tubbo frowns, finally looking up from the scope.
“What?! Why’re you looking like that?! Are there like, little worms? Little radiation worms?!”
“Where is Jack, anyway? How long does it take for him to get Niki over here? He’s been gone all day,” Tubbo asks.
“Oh, of course,” Tommy scoffs. “Why’re you asking me, how should I know?”
“Can you ask where he is?”
“Fine!”
<TommyInnit> JACK MANIFOLD
<TommyInnit> YOU ARE LATE TUBBO IS GOING TO FIRE YOU
<JackManifoldTV> why couldn’t he tell me that himself
<JackManifoldTV> is he ok??
<TommyInnit> COME ASK HIM YOURSELF
Jack returns shockingly fast. He stumbles into the warehouse with wide, worried eyes which seem to relax the moment he spots Tubbo working at the lab bench.
“Oh thank god,” Jack sighs.
“You alright, man? Where’s your coat?” Tubbo gives him a look.
“I think I have a fever,” Jack says flatly. “And… and Niki didn’t want to come. She… wasn’t feeling well.”
“Oh, like, radiation poisoning?” Tubbo asks far too enthusiastically.
“I don’t… I don’t know. The thing beeped at her, though,” Jack tosses the Geiger counter onto the table, giving it a reproachful look. “Oh, um,” Jack blinks, as if remembering something. “What, what happened? Why d’you have a bandage on your head?”
“Why do you want to know, Jack? That’s sorta odd of you, hm? What’s got you so interested in Tubbo’s head?” Tommy steps closer to him, arms folded over his chest. “You ever heard of Operation Jay–Eff–Kay,” he says each letter like its own word, patronizing and dramatic.
“I– What– I don’t– I don’t know– What the fuck are you talking about?!” Jack looks panicked.
“Sorry, Jack. Tommy is convinced I was almost assassinated today,” Tubbo rolls his eyes. “Just a skeleton or something. I should’ve been wearing a helmet, it’s not the end of the world.”
Jack visibly relaxes. “Okay, good. So you’re not hurt bad, then.”
“Yeah, not from that! Radiation poisoning is still a possibility, though,” Tubbo says brightly.
“What’re you looking at?”
“My blood!” Tommy says proudly.
“Nothing weird so far, though. How about you, have you checked your temperature?”
“No, I… I can do that now,” Jack goes over to the same bins Tommy got his gauze from, fumbling with a thermometer.
“You know, Jack, you can stick that thing in multiple places to get a good read on the situation–”
“Tommy, I am going to kill you.”
“Fine! Fine, only trying to help. I’m not allowed to touch anything,” Tommy grumbles.
Tommy and Tubbo jump at the sound of glass breaking. Jack stares at the thermometer on the floor, broken into pieces.
“Must’ve… must’ve dropped it,” he says hoarsely.
“Keep it together, Jack. Are you having other symptoms, then? Increased anxiety, perhaps?”
“N-No, I don’t… I don’t think so,” Jack sweeps the thermometer into a bin. “I think I’m gonna turn in early for the night, good luck with your blood, don’t forget to lock your doors at night, and I will see you in the morning!” With that, Jack flees.
“He was actin’ weirder than normal, even for Jack Manifold.”
“To be fair, so were you,” Tubbo points out.
“Maybe I got… I got reasons, you dunno…” Tommy mutters.
“Do you?”
“Fuck off, you stole my blood!”
“I asked!” Tubbo says exasperatedly, putting away the blood sample. “My head hurts. I’m going to bed too.”
“What, now?” Tommy asks, looking hurt, following him closely outside.
“Yeah, why? If you don’t wanna walk back in the dark, you can always stay here, Tommy.”
“No, no I’m–” Tommy glances back toward his home. “Nah, I think staying out here in the cold and shit might be worse for… my whole situation. I dunno.”
“Suit yourself. Just get home safe, then. And have fun with your… hole situation?”
“You made it weird, Tubbo. It’s all weird now,” Tommy whines.
Tubbo laughs. “Good night, bossman.” He gives Tommy a wave before heading toward his own cabin.
Tubbo has found today to be quite interesting, really. He doesn’t know why everyone is freaking out already. He can understand some general concern, but nothing is that serious just yet.
Tubbo thinks he’ll just focus on getting some rest tonight, as he takes off his coat followed by his gloves. He thinks it’s most practical to just sort it out in the morning, as he unlaces his winter boots and peels off his socks. He thinks about how tired he actually is, as he opens his front door and steps barefoot out into the snow. He thinks once he goes to bed, sleeps on it, hopefully his head won’t hurt as much in the morning, as he goes down the icy steps of his porch and his feet begin to burn in the snow. His cabin is so much warmer than outside, even without a fire. Tubbo is shivering immediately. He should make a fire. He’s walking towards the water. The smell of dead fish wafts over to him. Maybe he should take a hot bath first, to get rid of the smell, and then he’ll go to bed. He’s going to bed. He’s supposed to be going to bed. Tubbo begins to walk across the ice. His head still hurts. Maybe he should change the bandages after he washes up. The ice is cracking under his feet.
Tubbo doesn’t understand why he isn’t frightened.
The ice breaks, and Tubbo doesn’t get the chance to scream, merely one lucky gasp for air as he disappears into the blackened water. The water stills. The night is silent.