Chapter Text
Tubbo always wanted to be an astronaut.
It’s all Tommy would hear about.
They’re sending a rover up to Mars, Tommy. The astronauts are living on Mars now, Tommy. I want to visit the International Space Station, Tommy.
And while Tubbo has always found solace in the stars, Tommy has found solace in knowing that his feet are on solid ground. He, unlike his friend, has always been content with living on their tiny, irrelevant planet, even in the scenarios Tubbo creates in which there are thousands of planets, thousands of new species and places to live and all Tommy needs to do is take his pick.
Tubbo joins the Junior Space Program for Gifted Individuals when they are fourteen.
This means that Tubbo no longer goes to the dirty, low-budget public school system they have grown up in. No, he goes to one of the top schools in the country, top schools in the world; he sends pictures of fancy computers and a real life space shuttle and simulators and calculus and-
Tommy has never missed his best friend more.
He misses whispering him the readings in their Literature classes. He misses hopelessly copying Tubbo’s answers in precalculus when he gets too lost to even attempt a problem.
He misses being able to sit out on his roof and look at the stars with him for hours. He misses going to the treehouse they built with Tubbo’s dad in the forest down the street.
He misses Tubbo, and then Tubbo tells him he’s going to space.
Tommy has always been content with the fact that one day, his best friend will leave him behind. His friend belongs to the stars and Tommy belongs to the ground, and that is alright. His friend was always going to go some far out galaxy and meet the aliens he imagined as a kid, pave the pathway of humanity into the world of space.
And instead of pictures of simulators, Tubbo is sending him pictures of the control room of a spaceship, because he’s in charge of that. It’s been three years of training and they’re all seventeen right now, so they’re perfectly capable of running a spaceship on their own.
Tommy misses his friend, and he knows he’s running out of time with him.
He doesn’t ask if Tubbo’s going to come home before he leaves Earth; why would he? He has his dad there, and he has all his new, genius friends who will be on the shuttle with him. They will be travelling to far out galaxies together and Tommy will be here, because Tommy belongs to the ground and Tubbo has always belonged to the stars.
And it’s three weeks out until launch and Tommy gets about three hundred photos a day of equations and screens and flight suits and space rations and Tubbo’s room all packed up and-
His friend is never coming back.
Because they are going to the farthest galaxy ever discovered by humans and they are going to try to go even farther, because they are humans and humans discover.
Tommy is going to miss his best friend and he is never going to get him back.
It’s two weeks out and Tubbo is taking his final exams even though it’s the middle of September and Tommy’s just started school, and he’s worked up about calculus and physics and astrophysics and how was Tommy ever able to keep up with his genius of a friend?
Tommy aches every night and he climbs onto his roof because he knows he will never ever see his best friend again. One day Tubbo may be as far as the stars he’s staring at at this very moment, but he knows from Tubbo’s teachings that most of these stars could have gone out and he won’t know until hundreds of thousands of years from now.
And then Tubbo comes back.
And for a second Tommy is ecstatic. Tubbo has come back, and he has come back to say goodbye.
But he has not come back to say goodbye, he has come back with a shaved head and scans and a diagnosis of terminal brain cancer.
And Tubbo no longer belongs to the stars, because he is sick and he will not get better and now he is stuck on the ground just like Tommy is, but the difference between them is Tommy wants to be there and he doesn’t.
And when he finds Tubbo alone for the first time Tubbo begins to beg. He begs Tommy to go where he couldn’t.
Tubbo can’t go up to the stars, but Tommy can.
The dean of the Junior Space Program for Gifted Individuals loved Tubbo; he calls him a second son at some points, even when his own son is already part of the program and just as smart as Tubbo.
Tommy has heard all about Sam, and Sam is willing to let him go on this shuttle instead of Tubbo.
Sam loves Tubbo and he is willing to love Tommy for that too.
And Tommy… Tommy doesn’t know anything about space, besides the stuff Tubbo has told him when they were kids. But that was three years ago, and Tommy has not been taking calculus and astrophysics and engineering and-
Sam says it’s okay, and he doesn’t have to know calculus and physics and engineering. They have a new engineering officer, they just need a new Tubbo.
They need a new Tubbo, and Tubbo wants Tommy to be just that. And Tubbo pleads and begs and makes those eyes that always made Tommy put glue on the seats in the teachers lounge, just because Tubbo asked and-
How can Tommy say no?
Tubbo can’t touch the stars, but Tommy can, so he says yes because maybe this means that if Tommy touches a star, Tubbo will be touching one too.
Because they have always been half of each other and Tommy is not the same without Tubbo, so he says yes and two days later he is meeting the crew that Tubbo has spent the last three years of his life with.
There is Ranboo, and Tommy knows all about Ranboo because he has even found himself a little jealous of Ranboo at times. Because Ranboo is Tubbo’s other best friend, has been for three years and he has gotten to spend every minute with Tubbo and Tommy has missed all of it except for the selfies and the pictures Tubbo sent every minute, and as much as Tommy reassured himself, he knew that a second snapshot is not enough for him to be apart of Tubbo’s life as much as Ranboo has been in the past three years.
And there is Quackity, Sam’s son, and Michael, the kid a year younger who’s only here because Tubbo’s not, and Foolish and Hannah and and a kid named Boomer who is almost as loud as Tommy is.
And they welcome Tommy as best as they can but it is not the same, because he is not Tubbo, and he is not as smart as Tubbo or as witty or friends with any of them, he is Tubbo’s last wish to touch the stars but he is not their crewmate.
But they welcome him nonetheless and teach him the safety procedures and give him tours and invite him to movie nights where they keep a list of movies they want brought up with them to space and add Up to the list when Tommy suggests it.
It’s one week out until launch and suddenly Tommy is no longer the one receiving the photos, instead he is the one sending them; he sends a thousand photos a day of his lunch and of Quackity’s stupid beanie and the book they gave him- they give him a Harry Potter book to fill in his days because they aren’t sure what the normal intelligence level is for a normal seventeen year old.
Because Tommy is a normal seventeen year old, and he is not supposed to be the one touching the stars, Tubbo is.
But Tubbo can’t anymore, and half of Tommy is Tubbo, so this is the next best thing.
And a week later Tommy is in a flight suit while on a video call with Tubbo, because he has insisted on bringing his phone and calling Tubbo until it disconnects, even if the phone will be rendered useless after they leave the atmosphere.
Tommy knows he will cling to his friend until the moment he is forced to let go.
Because he is here, he is in space, and he is going to touch the stars and Tubbo is on the ground and will remain on the ground forever.
Tommy always thought he was destined to be buried on Earth, but now his fate is to live with the stars.
There is three weeks of careful piloting and just staying out of everyone’s way before Quackity declares that they have made it out of any planetary orbits. There’s a lot of cheering and Tommy joins in, even though he thought they were out of Earth’s orbit days ago and doesn’t really understand.
He is not Tubbo, but he knows Tubbo would understand.
A month passes and Tommy takes hundreds and hundreds of pictures for Tubbo. He charges his phone every night just as he did on Earth and even though Tubbo will never see these pictures he likes to imagine the boy’s reaction to each one.
Tommy has never seen such a pretty sky, and somehow he understands why Tubbo has wanted to touch the stars for so long.
Two months pass and then three, and they celebrate Christmas by giving each other wrenches and tools and stolen belongings as a joke, because how are they going to give presents when there’s nowhere to buy them?
And after their Christmas celebration Tommy decides to celebrate Tubbo’s birthday on his own, even though he knows it was technically two days before Christmas. But they’re no longer on Earth time; none of them have any idea how time has warped as they have travelled through galaxies and Tommy decides that this means that Tubbo’s birthday is any day he makes it.
They don’t have candles up in space, nor do they have ingredients for a cake, so instead Tommy makes a little video of himself saying happy birthday to Tubbo, and he points out constellations he’s made up on his own because he is not seeing the same stars Tubbo is seeing.
He talks for hours and hours and eventually stops the video to save storage but keeps talking, and Ranboo joins him at one point and the conversation turns to Tommy’s childhood and the nights they spent out on his roof and the treehouse they built with Tubbo’s dad in the forest down the road.
And then they get hit by a rock.
Tommy isn’t sure if he should call it an asteroid or a meteor or a comet because he can’t remember what Tubbo’s said about them in his rants, but it doesn’t really matter in this moment because Tommy knows the red flashing lights mean emergency and that he should get to the control room in about three seconds ago.
The clock says it’s four in the morning and he just knows that this is the time Purpled chooses to put the sensors offline every morning to recalibrate and repair each day.
It is the forty-five minutes that their line of defenses are down that they get him.
And the lights start flashing yellow and Tommy knows that this means that he needs to get to the control room now, because the ship is separating and abandoning the damaged parts, and that must mean the damaged parts are bad because it only ever does that automatically and-
Tommy gets to the control room as the door slides shut and the room detaches from the rest of the ship when he realizes their fatal mistake.
There is no one else in the control room.
There is no one else in the control room but the panel in front of him is telling him that the control room is fine. So that means that no one has made it to the safe part of the ship in time and it is only him and he doesn’t know how to run the ship and-
He presses his face to the glass and he can see the gaping hole that the space rock has made in the section of the ship that houses the trees and the plants and the part that supplies the oxygen to the rest of the ship.
And he can see Purpled floating away from the other side of the ship where his tether has snapped, because of course the collision has caused his connection to snap and this is the one week a month he goes out on a spacewalk to do manual repairs.
And he can see Quackity and Foolish pressed up against the glass and they look as scared as he feels, because he knows that they know they only have twenty-four hours of oxygen left as the oxygen farm has no doubt automatically sealed itself off by now, and Tommy is alone and the rest of his crew- Tubbo’s crew- is dying and Tommy, Tommy-
Tommy has never missed his best friend more.
Because now he turns back to the control room because the emergency thrusters have turned on, and he is floating away from the rest of the crew and he can’t bear to watch their faces as they float away. A spike of hysterics pass through him and he stumbles to the control panel- maybe he can turn this around, maybe he can turn back to them-
And he has no idea how to work this because they have never taught him.
Because he is not the same as him, he is not as smart as Tubbo or Michel or Ranboo and he is the only one left because even as he presses every single button and turns every single wheel.
This ship is going only one way, and it is going to the farthest galaxy ever discovered by humans and they are going to try to go even farther, because they are humans and humans discover.
Except Tommy was a human who was always meant to stay on the ground, and he is leaving behind Tubbo’s crew to die and no amount of random button pressing can save them.
Tommy gives up after the tenth hour of reading screens and trying to figure something out, but there are no manuals or directions because why would there be any when this was supposed to be a sip run by gifted individuals. This wasn’t a ship meant to be run by Tommy because Tommy is a normal seventeen year old with normal seventeen year old intelligence.
And eventually he pries open the floor compartments where he knows there are eight bedrolls, and this just serves as a reminder that Tommy does not belong here, he does not belong in the control room or in the space shuttle or in space because he is the ninth crewmember.
He was made to walk on Earth but he was also Tubbo’s last wish so now he is walking among the stars.
He knows in the other compartments there are rations and tools and everything they could need just in case, because the plan was to always get to the control room because it would have everything they need, unless of course the control room was the one that got smashed to pieces.
But that isn’t the case, the control room is the only room left intact and Tommy is the only one who got there in time, probably because he wasn’t the only one preoccupied with the important jobs that kept the ship running.
Because he is just half of Tubbo, and he is the dumber half, the louder half, the more annoying half. But he is half of Tubbo and right now half of Tubbo is touching the stars, and even if Tommy dies Tubbo will have touched the stars in some way.
Tommy drifts for three more weeks before he makes another video. He tells Tubbo of this disaster and he cries for the first time and he just misses his best friend. He wants to hug Tubbo and go to the treehouse they built with Tubbo’s dad in the forest down the street. But he does not want to look at the stars.
He tells Tubbo he is sick of the stars, just like Tubbo is sick back on Earth, because the stars are not his home, they are Tubbo’s, and they are killing him, just like the Earth must be killing Tubbo.
Three more weeks pass and then three more and Tommy is grateful for the emergency gardens they have in the top of the control room section but also at the same time he’s not because he’s still alive and Tubbo’s crew is surely, surely, dead by now.
He doesn’t make videos anymore because the phone has run out of storage and there is no point in recording when there is no one to look at him weirdly when he talks to Tubbo out loud. His stream of thoughts is made up of the same stuff that comes out of his mouth, because why censor yourself when you’re the last goddamn human left in space?
He decides he’s eighteen after the seventh week of being alone because why the hell not? He is not on Earth anymore, he is in the stars and the stars don’t care about Earth years anymore, so Tommy is eighteen years old because there is no one to tell him no.
And on the eve of his eighteenth birthday he is sitting on top of the control panel because he regarded it as useless after it wouldn’t listen to any of his commands in the first week and the red lights he regards as the sort of hazard lights that light up in a car have started flashing, because why the hell would he look at them when he can’t do anything to fix them?
He is sitting on top of the control panel and he is staring out at the stars and there is just the black-purple-blue of space and-
And then there is a ship in front of him and- and- there is a ship in front of him and it is definitely not human and not Tubbo’s ship because it is sleeker and newer and there are two sticks that are pointing out of the front of it.
There is a ship in front of him and Tommy has been stranded for seven weeks. There is a ship in front of him and it is not human. There is a ship in front of him and it is made from aliens and Tommy is going to be the first human to make contact with aliens.
He slides off of the control panel and his knees almost buckle as he rushes to remember the radio frequencies in this ship- he never really learned about it, but he learned the layout of the control room well enough- and if they have the right frequencies maybe he can get in contact with them.
And they probably won’t speak English, or Italian, or Irish or German or Spanish but who the hell cares because although Tommy isn’t a gifted individual he’s sure he can figure out some way to communicate with these people and-
He looks back to the ship to make sure this is real , this is not just part of his imagination because maybe he’s just hallucinating something and-
The two sticks are turning red at the ends, and this makes Tommy pause and he realizes too late that these are not just sticks-
They are guns, or at least, weapons or some sort-
And these aliens are not friendly, they are going to shoot him out of the sky-
But it is not the sky, because this is space.
And-
And-
Tommy has always been content with the fact that one day, his best friend would leave him behind. Except, his best friend did not leave him behind, he left his best friend behind, because his best friend was dying and it was his last wish for Tommy to go to space instead of him.
It was Tubbo’s last wish for Tommy to go live in the stars where he should’ve been, and Tommy is being shot down by the very things that Tubbo has been searching for all of his life.
Tommy was always content with belonging to the ground, but that is not the case anymore. He belongs to Tubbo, and he is half of Tubbo.
So that means that Tubbo belongs to the stars, and that is alright, even if Tommy has to belong to the stars too.