Chapter Text
fundy soot has not seen his mother in ten years. not since his name was still theodosia and l’manburg was still starting out. sally had left on a quiet sunday afternoon, all of her things packed in a wagon, a set of papers left on the table, and a final hug to her (at the time) daughter.
her leaving had not been a surprise.
wilbur and sally soot had been having loud arguments for a long time. their fights never seemed to get resolved no matter how much either of them tried. fundy had once asked his mom why they couldn't just get along and be happy, with all the naivete of a nine year old who didn't know what she was talking about. sally had sat him down and explained that she and wilbur didnt fit together the way they used to. she talked of growing apart, of jagged edges and self destructiveness, trying to explain in a way that fundy would understand. fundy didn't quite get it then, but he does now. prime does he get it now.
sally had left to another server to stay with her cousin, with other kingdoms and other people. no l’manburg, no wilbur, and no fundy. she had held her son close and promised that she still loved him so, so much. she wrote down her comm id, told him she would call whenever she could, and he was always, always allowed to come visit her.
she promised that if he called, she would drop everything to listen.
she kept her promise for the first couple years. they called weekly, fundy updating her on schooling, telling her about animals he saw, letting tommy excitedly yell at her whenever he came around. the first completed embroidery project he ever did was photographed and sent to her the second wilbur was done with his comm.
(wilbur and sally still argued sometimes, about how visits would work and if she had a place to keep him on her new server and how fundy would travel when he didn’t have a comm, and all of it somehow ended up in no visits at all.)
it wasn't really sally's fault that she broke her promise. after all, a random woman several servers away had no control over the admin’s decision to close the borders, which in turn severed the comm-lines and rendered out of server communications nearly impossible.
it still felt like a betrayal to twelve year old theodosia soot, who was caught in brewing conflict between her dad’s new nation and the greater smp.
it still hurt thirteen year old fundy soot, who wasn't even able to tell his mom that theodosia didn't fit right anymore, and her daughter was actually her son.
it felt like a slap in the face to fourteen year old fundy, who finally had a comm of his own and no one to call but the people he lived with.
it didn't make sixteen year fundy soot feel better when the tensions finally came to a head and the revolution started and he just wanted his mom.
(he still had her comm id scribbled on a torn scrap of paper, and he entered it into his comm the night after dream declared war, praying to any god that would listen to let it connect.
he was met with an error message. we’re sorry, we are unable to connect with this comm at this time. please contact your admin for assistance.)
(he lay on a matress on the floor of the van with tommy and tubbo curled up against him, all three shaken from losing their first lives.
(he died, he died and there was so much blood soaking his shirt when he woke up, tubbo and tommy appearing seconds after him, and he watched the hole in tommy’s chest knit itself together, and eret said they could trust him-)
wilbur sat up front in the drivers seat, smoking a cigarette for the first time in years.
fundy punched sally_the_salmon into his comm so many times he lost count.
“you can come visit me anytime you want darling, okay?”
yeah fucking right.
fundy tucked his face into tommy’s hair and held back tears.
fundy is the oldest of the three, and big kids don’t cry.)
when fundy is eighteen and waking up screaming every time he tries to sleep, he grabs his comm and stares at the new chat button. it’s not gonna work, he knows. he slowly types the letters. his talon hovers over the enter button.
after a minute, he deletes it and turns his comm off. it hasn’t worked before, it won’t work now. what’s the fucking point.
by the time fundy is nineteen and dream is arrested, with the admin position handed over to callahan and the server borders finally reopened, fundy doesn’t even think about calling her.
(a lie, of course. he thought about it the second it was announced over the server chat. he got all the way to entering the l in salmon when his brain caught up to him.
sally would not recognize the id itsfundy. sally did not even know that she had a son. and anyway, what would he even say to her? its been ten fucking years since she’s seen him in person, seven since they’ve called. they’re strangers now.
he deletes the id and holds down the off button til it restarts.)
fundy soot pushes all thoughts of his mother to the chest in the dark corner of his mind where he hides the things he doesn’t want to think about. “sally soot” is slotted neatly between “the nightmares (because that’s all the are)” and “seeing his grandpa clutching his father’s cold bloody corpse to his chest and sobbing”. the chest’s lid is locked, and it is pushed back into the darkness.
(his nightmares are full of salmon and a deeper ocean than any that exist on the dream smp. there is something very big and very powerful in the ocean's dark trenches, and it is watching him. the dream is staticky the way they are when his grandma visits.)
two weeks after the borders reopen, phil shows up at the gates to las nevadas asking to talk.
after her divorce, sally soot moved in with her cousin anna, who lived in the kingdom of the grimmlands on the empires smp server. the country was a nice place to live.
she wishes she could’ve taken theo with her.
it had been decided that theo would stay with her father, at least until sally was more secure in her housing and job. and then, when theo was older, she could decide who she wanted to live with. that would have to be enough for now.
sally called as often as possible. everything had to be done through wilbur’s comm, as theo wasn’t old enough to have her own yet. it frustrates her, having to deal with him every time she wants to speak to her daughter, but that's just how things had to be.
she hoped theo didn’t hear their arguments. she’d had to deal with that enough already.
she’s forever grateful to phil for keeping an eye on them. he doesn’t live on the server, but his world is much closer than empires, and he can tell her things that wilbur won’t and theo doesn’t know about.
her calls from theo were full of animals and books she’d read, tommy shouting hello’s in the background.
(sally’s glad that theo has tommy. the boy is very rough and tumble, but he’s got a good heart. he’s a good friend for her.)
her calls from phil speak of everything from growing tensions from the server admin to the color of theo’s new feathers.
that was how it went for several years.
excited calls with theo, stilted conversations with wilbur, and friendly chats with phil.
when her daughter was twelve years old, sally tried to call and was met with an error message. her first thought was that wilbur had blocked her. she called phil in a panic only to find that he had the same result. every comm they called on the server was disconnected. when they contacted hub admins, they were told that the dream smp was closed until further notice, and there was nothing anyone could do about it.
in the weeks after, sally barely did anything. she felt numb. sally had had many days that she considered to be the worst in her life. this was worse by every conceivable metric.
it felt like she had left her daughter behind all over again, but this time there were no phone calls, no potential visits, and no chance of her ever coming to live with sally full time.
she’d stayed with phil for the first week. neither of them were up to feeling alone. he kept going through the weird books in his library, muttering about world borders and firewalls. she didn’t have the capacity to ask what he was talking about, and he didn't explain.
eventually, sally returned to anna’s. she was fussed over constantly, anna dutifully making sure she ate, pulling her out of her room and taking her out on walks to the gardens. sally didn’t know what she would've done if they weren't here.
one year after the dream smp closed it’s borders, phil called her and let her know that he’d be out of contact for a while, and he didn’t know when he’d be back. she asked if this had something to do with the smp, and his silence was all the answer she needed. when she tried to call him the next week, his number came up disconnected.
one year and four months after the dream smp closed its borders, anna came home and let her know that there was an opening at the castle for people who worked with money. sally was more than qualified for the position. it would be a definite upgrade from laying in bed staring at her comm.
one year and five months after the dream smp closed its borders, sally finally finished the last of the rigorous paperwork and background checks necessary to hold a position with the government and was officially hired as an accountant at the grimmlands keep.
four years and seven months after the dream smp closed its borders, sally was promoted to a managerial position.
five years and one month after the dream smp closed its borders, sally moved out of anna’s apartment so she could be closer to her place of work.
six years and nine months after the dream smp closed its borders, the conflicts with the codlands escalated past the cold war they'd been in since before theo was born.
six years and eleven months after the dream smp closed it borders, the demon appeared for the first time. with them came the corruption. anna made the difficult decision to leave for gilded helianthia.
seven years and one month after the dream smp closed its borders, sally was abruptly promoted to new head of the accounting department after the previous head left the country. she no longer did any of the computing herself, and worked directly with the count’s council.
seven years and two months after the dream smp closed its borders, the demon was defeated. celebrations lasted for days, people gleefully destroyed any last hints of the corruption still lingering in the streets, and it felt as though a weight was lifted off of the city.
sally became incredibly busy. trade reopened with the lost empire and mythland once all corruption was cleared. while this was a very good thing, it meant meetings happening nearly every day to try and rebuild the economy after everything that happened. there were trade agreements to be updated, compensation to be decided, so many papers to be reviewed and signed. sally spent her nights hunched over paperwork triplechecking numbers for any flawed calculations.
seven years, two months, and three weeks after the dream smp closed its borders, the codlands and the grimmlands begin peace talks for the first time in decades.
seven years, three months, two weeks, and four days after the dream smp closed its borders, sally the salmon is running late to a meeting, and runs right into queen lizzie of the ocean empire.
literally.