Archive of Our Own

“Uhh,” Fundy manages to blurt out, standing underneath the pouring rain. “What the fuck, Quackity.”

It’s storming still, from the light drizzle that had started that same afternoon; behind his friend, lightning strikes. They’re both drenched and Quackity, covered with only a labcoat, is trembling like a leaf. 

Fundy’s first big mistake of that night was opening the door at all. His second mistake was letting Quackity drag him around in the middle of the night, for Prime knows what; now, standing before Schlatt’s grave, Fundy takes notice of how desecrated it is: the paintings are mostly torn except for a couple of them, the delicate marble carvings painted over with graffiti. They track mud and water as they walk deeper into the tomb and closer to the altar. Fundy shivers: the casket itself has been opened, bits of bone and gore and red dust left over, and next to it, a small bundle lies, covered in a shitty blanket. He can’t catch a damn break. First, the ghost of his father. Then, whatever the hell this is. 

“I need you to keep an open mind, okay?” Quackity is saying. “He’s a little, uh, a little ugly—“ He kicks towards the bundle, and Fundy squints at it, “—but you have to understand that this isn’t my fault at all.”

Fundy sighs; he needs a vacation for real. “What the hell did you do, man.”

Quackity steels himself, and then, with a single hard pull, the soaked blanket flops to the floor. 

Fundy feels the air as it is sucked right out of his lungs. 

“Dude,” he says. “What the fuck. ”

Before him, unconscious and battered, sits Jschlatt himself—or something like it. Little shorter, a lot skinnier; its horns, which used to curl around the President’s ears, are now shorter, just barely beginning their spiral. It wears nothing but Schlatt’s now-oversized suit, torn from when everyone assaulted his casket during the funeral. It is barely breathing. 

This—just a boy, injured and alone—is definitely not the Schlatt Fundy knew. And that’s scarier than he’d like to admit. 

“I know what this looks like,” Quackity starts. “But in my defense, I didn’t know he was gonna come back like this .”

Fundy needs a vacation on God. 

He’s been awake for less than a day, and yet he already is painfully aware of just how much everyone here hates him. And when he says here he doesn’t mean his very own tomb, next to Quackity (the stranger that had brought him back to life, apparently, breaking into the depths of the Code and ripping him from its comfortable, all-encompassing darkness); no, he means here as in this whole ass country.

He’s not too sure why, to be honest, besides the whole being an undead abomination thing. Last he remembers he was hanging out with Wilbur and he thinks maybe Connor? The details are so fuzzy. He’s just so fucking tired. His whole body still feels numb, but at least he can move; when he’d first woken up he wasn’t even able to tilt his head without screaming in agony, until the one fox dude had typed some nerd lingo into his comm’s console and it had all abruptly stopped. He now sits on top of the altar, right next to his own desecrated grave, and stares at the defiled photograph of an evil man bearing his face, too exhausted to actually listen to the others’ shouting.

It seems only a single person is defending him. There’s Quackity, who admittedly he doesn’t know too well. The tall, unnerving guy in the white mask keeps calling him shit, saying he’s just desperate for power, and everyone seems to agree to varying degrees.

But he doesn’t get it. Isn’t everyone desperate for power?

He doesn’t get these people at all, all pretending like they wouldn’t stab each other in the back at the slightest chance to climb to the top. At least, back in Live (back home, his mind supplies, and his heart aches) at least back then people had the decency to just admit it. Here it’s all fake politeness and biting smiles.

He huffs. “Excuse me,” he tries, but no one seems to want to listen to him. He doesn’t know if that’s because he’s so young or because of who he was. He doesn’t remember, anyway, it might as well just be a lie they told him. He stares at his hands: he feels exactly as he’s always felt. He looks up when the shouting intensifies—Quackity is screaming back, now.

“You guys just hate him, but he’s not the same guy anymore!” This guy is so loud, honestly. He can’t be too much older than Schlatt himself, but he looks exhausted, stressed to hell and back. “None of you had what we had, I know… I know he can be better.” His voice, a little frantic, echoes through the grave. To be completely fair, he thinks, I don’t know what we had, either. 

A guy wearing 3D glasses snaps back, “motherfucker, you revived him to hurt him, what are you on about?!”

“He’s just a kid, man! He doesn’t fucking remember anything!”

“He’s saying that,” the fox guy says, “but you don’t know if he’s lying or not.”

“Of course he’s not fucking lying! You know what he looks like when he lies.”

“He’s Schlatt, ” the masked dude says, “lying is his whole thing!”

“To be fair that is my thing,” he mumbles, and of course that’s the moment everyone decides to pay attention to him. “Oh, come on.”

“ Dude, I’m trying to save your ass here, ” Quackity hisses.

“You said you ate my heart! That’s creepy as fuck!”

“He’s already going evil,” someone whispers. 

“We need to put him down!” Someone else shouts. 

He recoils. “I’m not a fuckin’ dog, ” he tries to defend himself, “the fuck you mean put down?! ” Oh Prime, he doesn’t want to die. He doesn’t remember shit about his supposed time here, but he does remember glimpses of something else— a small cramped room, an elaborate neon sign being the only source of light, a birthday cake that he can never dig into. If that’s what hell looks like, as he suspects, then fuck that noise, he is not going back there. “You can’t do that,” he insists, and he’s not blind to the panic leaking into his words.

“I think,” a new voice speaks. It’s a boy his age, it seems, dressed in a formal suit with shoulder pads. He’s got horns, just like his own (if a lot smaller) poking out of his blur of brown hair, and he avoids meeting his gaze. His face is horribly scarred, but it doesn’t seem to bother him that much; mostly he looks tired, Schlatt thinks. “I think we should sleep on this and make a decision tomorrow.”

For some reason, he sighs in relief. They’re not savages, like back home. They’re not… They won’t kill him unfairly, they won’t. “You’re going to regret this,” the masked dude warns the boy. “You exiled Tommy for far less.”

This is the wrong thing to say, for the boy glares at the dude and reaffirms himself: “And I haven’t stopped regretting that .” He turns to look at Quackity for a moment, then at him, and asks him, “do you have a place to stay?”

Before he can reply, Quackity speaks up: “I’ll take him back to mine,” he says. 

“No,” the boy says. “I’m not leaving him with you, you’ll probably sneak him out or something. Or, you know. Hurt him, like you planned to do?”

“Dude, I’m not that delusional either. He’s a kid.”

“He can stay with me,” the fox dude says. “If there’s no other choice.”

The boy looks at him, then; he shrinks under his steel gaze. “Are you okay with that?”

Why is he asking me? He thinks. “Does it matter if I say no?”

“Not really,” the boy says. “It’s just manners.”

He wants to deck him. Noah would deck him if he asked him to. Noah would deck anyone, if given the chance. Man, he misses his home.

“It’s settled then,” the boy finishes. “Schlatt will stay with Fundy tonight and tomorrow morning we will come to a decision on what to do with him. For now: if anything happens to him you’ll have to deal with me.” He stands between the crowd and himself, and in that moment he sees what everyone must be seeing, too: this is no common teenager, but a leader. Their leader.

And the people listen to their leader.

The fox guy, Fundy, lets him crash on the couch. He gives him a change of clothes—he sheds the torn, ill-fitting suit and trades it for an old sweatshirt, too-big jeans, and sneakers with soles that are almost worn through. He also gives him a blanket, and he melts into the warmth of the old, wooly thing.

“Thank you,” he mumbles. Fundy doesn’t reply. Schlatt won’t kid himself; he knows he’s not welcome here, either.

It’s a cold night. He’s not sure what month it is, let alone day, but he guesses it must be winter or close to it. Outside, when they first revived him, it wasn’t snowing, but the sky was cold and steely, like it had just rained; now the clouds have parted, but the chill remains. He drinks from the mug of warm milk Fundy gives him (a courtesy, he realizes) and sits by the window, watching the stars.

They’re not the same as they were back home.

Gods, he must be so far away. He wonders if everyone’s alright. Life back home could be tough, but it still was home.

Fundy sits next to him, but not too close. Schlatt thinks, humorlessly, that his past villainy must be contagious, given how no one seems to want to touch him. 

“What’s gonna happen to me?” Schlatt asks.

Fundy’s whole body tenses, which is wild, in his opinion. The fox fidgets in place for a moment before resigning himself to his fate. “I genuinely don’t know,” he says, and to Schlatt he seems honest. “The cabinet will probably vote on what to do with you, to be honest, but I can’t really say anything else.”

Schlatt shrugs. “That’s politics, I guess,” he says. 

“How do you know?” Fundy asks. He barely looks older than Schlatt, now that he can get a closer look. “You’re, what, fifteen?”

“ Eighteen. ” Schlatt tries not to be offended. He goes back to staring at the night sky. “I was running for mayor back home. The first mayoral election of Live,” he explains. “Ugh, Michael probably won. I must’ve missed it.”

Had Schlatt paid more attention, he would’ve noticed Fundy’s palling expression. But he didn’t. He had nothing to look for. 

But it is common knowledge what happened to SMPLive. A cautionary tale.

“…s-so you’ve always been a politician?” He asks instead. The ram probably notices his stutter, but says nothing of it. 

“Not really, more of a businessman,” he says. “Ted roped me into this, t’be honest. I’ve already got a lot goin’ on.”

“Then why?”

Schlatt pauses. “Why what?”

“Why’d you run for mayor?”

“Dunno.” He shrugs. “I got bored, I guess.”

Being mayor of Live brought benefits, of course. Protection from hits, a nice comfortable life. And it’s not like he wouldn’t have done his job. He likes to think he would’ve made the city a bit nicer, a bit safer. Even at his age.

Fundy doesn’t say anything else. Schlatt doesn’t know what else to ask—he knows the other merely tolerates him. So in an attempt to both cut the tension and calm down, he says, “well, thank you, for, well, for letting me stay here. I don’t know what I did, but knowing me it probably wasn’t great, considering everyone hates me. So I really appreciate this.”

“Right,” Fundy mutters, not looking at him. “Don’t worry about it.”

The fox stands up then. Something about him gives Schlatt pause, though. He can’t quite put his finger on it. 

“You look familiar,” Schlatt comments. “Like— the eyes, I think. It’s the eyes.”

Fundy doesn’t comment on it; if anything, he looks spooked by his words. “Get some sleep,” he says instead. “Tomorrow’s gonna be a long day.”

“Goodnight, I guess,” Schlatt tells him. But he gets no response; Fundy’s already scurried upstairs. It’s just Schlatt alone in a stranger’s living room. 

He doesn’t turn off the oil lamp he’d been given, even when he manages to fall asleep. 

The next day isn’t any better. Fuck, Schlatt wishes they hadn’t brought him to this world; first he’d had to wake up at the literal asscrack of dawn, given only a stale flatbread and a bottle of water for breakfast—and his annoyance at this lasts for a little while, like, seriously? Even Live has at least butter and juice. But then he sees everyone else having proper meals, like that Quackity fella giving all his friends freshly-baked conchas, straight from the nearby bakery, and then he’d realized they just didn’t like him enough to actually feed him anything but scraps. 

Which, ouch. Even back home, his ‘enemies’ at least treated him with some dignity. Just before waking up here, before the Big Dark, he’d shared a meal with fucking Michael at the Rainforest Café. Michael Mc-Fucking-Chill!!!!

He pretends it doesn’t hurt him; that is, after all, the very first rule of politics. He lets them lead him into the Courthouse at swordpoint, lets them manhandle him into the podium, and he stays silent and calm, even if his heart is hammering in his chest. To make matters worse, the coat Fundy had given him that morning had a lot of holes, and the ratty sneakers had allowed water to soak into his socks when he’d stepped into a puddle on the way there. So he’s grumpy, sleep-deprived, wet from the rain and very very cold. His horns tend to be very sensitive to temperature, and they really are not helping his mood at all. But he maintains his poker face. 

At least he thinks he does a good job at it, until they put him in handcuffs.

He’s not… nervous, or anything like that. No. He shoots a glance towards Fundy, the only one to have shown him some kindness, but the fox is avoiding his stare, engrossed in a heated conversation with Quackity in a corner of the Courthouse. It’s fine, it’s just handcuffs. Just a safety measure, to be sure.

But Schlatt’s never been a good fighter. 

It’s fine. He’s fine. It’s just handcuffs.

The boy from yesterday, the one with the horns, enters the room. Immediately everyone else falls into silence, and Schlatt swallows dry. He’s really not liking where this is going.

Fuck. He shouldn’t have eaten that edible with the Misfits. This is probably— the worst drug trip of his life, yeah. It’s probably that. He’ll wake up any moment now. He’ll wake up, and Connor and Wil will make fun of him for letting himself get so wasted, and everything will go back to normal; he’ll get to hang out with Ted and Charlie and the boys again, maybe annoy Antvenom for a little while. Behind the podium, he wrings his hands together, trying to settle his nerves.

The boy takes his seat at the judge bench. He remains stern, even as he glares down Schlatt. “Good morning,” he greets everyone else. “We’re here today to make a decision on what to do about J. Schlatt. For anyone out of the loop, he was revived yesterday afternoon by Quackity, but he made a mistake and now Schlatt is younger, as you all can see.”

All the eyes possible in the world settle over Schlatt, and he struggles to remain still. Don’t show any weakness, he tells himself, or they’ll lunge for his neck.

“We will begin by making sure we’re all on the same page regarding his character,” the boy continues. “We will ask Mr. Schlatt a series of questions in order to confirm his version of events. Fundy, if you may.”

And so begins the most stressful, exhausting five hours of Schlatt’s life. Purposefully repetitive questions, one after the other, digging deep and getting too personal, but the threat of death makes him answer most of them. He realizes halfway through that they probably got him there in such bad shape just so he’d be worn down and he’d answer everything easier. Even worse is the realization that he’s doing exactly that.

“How old are you?” Is a frequent question. Fundy asks it at least thrice, and then Quackity asks it, and then Monarch Eret, Badboyhalo of the Badlands. Everyone who goes up to interrogate him inevitably makes that question, to which he replies, “eighteen.” Fundy asks a lot of questions about his job, what he does for a living, but when he begins to explain what Schlattcoin is he’s cut short by the judge, and when he talks about his odd jobs (like being a part-time ‘cop’ or reselling potions) everyone seems just so disinterested. Quackity focuses on his past, where he comes from, and he tries his best to describe Live: the dangerous but beautiful city, his little house on a cliff, his fishing spot. He talks about the Fallen Kingdom recreation, talks about their own Prime Church and how it was the safest place to be in his SMP.

The judge ponders over this, but says nothing. The room is filled with murmurs.

When Eret gets up Schlatt is a bit intimidated. They’re so tall, and their clothes are the stuff of royalty, made from fabrics so expensive it must’ve cost diamond blocks to even touch. And yet Eret is the kindest of them. They introduce themselves, and ask of Schlatt only his opinions on the people he’s met so far.

“I know this all must seem very daunting,” they say. They speak gently towards him, and it’s inevitable that Schlatt relaxes a bit at this, after two hours of straight-up stress. “I’m more interested in how you’ve been doing here so far, in the Dream SMP. As monarch it’s important that I know.”

Schlatt only hesitates a moment. “It’s fine,” he says, sparing a glance towards Fundy. “Fundy gave me clothes. They’re nice.”

Eret hums. “Are they?”

“It’s better than nothin’,” he says. “Better than a lot of things back home, too.”

“Well, that’s a relief. And everyone else?”

 And it’s not like Schlatt’s stupid. He knows what this is: Eret is trying to figure out if he remembers anything from his older self’s life, if he remembers any of these people. But the truth is so fucking simple: he doesn’t. He doesn’t know any of these people.

“They’re okay too,” he settles on answering. His head hurts. He’s so damn hungry. “I’m still not convinced this isn’t a prank, Prime knows the boys back home love ‘em. Last time Wilbur started this vending machine thing, except it only gave out fake whale facts. He made like five diamond blocks just doing that. Scamming idiots. He’s so cool,” he tells Eret, who has gone strangely pale, though that could just be the clouds overhead, casting shadows through the skylights. “Wilbur is cool, I mean. A cool guy.”

“We’ll…” Eret inhales sharply. “We’ll come back to that.”

“...Okay?”

Ponk questions his medical history. “That’s a little invasive,” he comments, but relents once he sees the doctor’s frankly terrifying expression: he’s got a few bone fractures from when he was a kid (he pins the blame onto Ted Nivison, not like anyone here will know any better), a couple allergies. Sometimes his hands get too shaky, achy, like when you leave them out in the cold for too long. His legs too. He does drugs sometimes, with the Misfits, but they look after him, and it helps with the pain. His mom had muscular atrophy, he says offhandedly, like he doesn’t still wake up screaming her name sometimes, even though he was ten when she passed. There’s no free healthcare in Live, he jokes, aside from whatever shady potions Ted’s got mixed into the milk that week. It feels weird exposing all his weaknesses in front of a bunch of strangers who despise him, but he has no other choice. Ponk simply nods sagely at this and ends their round of questions.

Badboyhalo goes next, asking what he knows about the SMP they’re at (read: absolutely nothing), so that goes great. Then a ram hybrid woman who introduces herself as Puffy approaches.

“I’m a knight of Eret’s,” she explains. That’s cool. He’s never met a real knight before. “He’s like family to me, in a sense.” From where he’s sitting, Schlatt can see Monarch Eret smile to themselves— gross, sentimentality! “Do you have friends like that?”

“I guess,” he says. He doesn’t wanna talk about them anymore, not after Eret’s weird reaction to the mention of Wilbur, but one of the guards, a woman with a blonde bob cut, nearby places her hand on the handle of her sword and shoots him a mean glare, so he complies. “Wilbur is my friend, I think. We hang out. And Connor is like my brother. Ted, and Charlie.” He shrugs. “I don’t know.”

“That’s okay. Can you tell me more about them?”

He spares another glance at the angry guard before speaking. “Can I ask why?”

“Why do you need to know?” He turns his head towards the judge. It’s the first time he speaks to Schlatt directly in a while, and it startles him, but not enough to psyche him out. His head is starting to pound.

“Listen, I don’t even know why I’m here,” he says, “I don’t know what I did wrong, and if you’re gonna go after my friends because of it I’m not gonna say shit.”

“We won’t hurt your friends,” the knight says, “you have my word.”

The judge goes, “Puffy—”

“Tubbo, let me do this.”

Tubbo. That’s a weird name.

“We won’t hurt your friends,” Puffy repeats herself. “We just want to know who they are, because some of them might be here already.”

At this, Schlatt perks up. “Really?”

“How about this,” she proposes. “I’ll describe one of them and you tell me if it matches. How’s that sound?”

It’s a better proposal than him just giving up his buddies to some strange authoritarian government. He knows he’s not gonna get a better deal. “Sounds like a square deal,” he relents. He’d kill for some water right now.

Puffy describes Wilbur as a bright man. He describes him as someone who hasn’t met him would: a charming guy who somehow led a country into revolution. A pretty face with the brains to back it up. Everyone in the room looks mournful, exhausted by the rhetoric.

When his turn arrives, and Puffy is looking at him, awaiting a response, Schlatt goes, “Wilbur wrote a song about squids once.” He tells them about Wilbur being a chaotic little bastard. He tells them about the drugs they share, about the godlike games they play sometimes.

He doesn’t tell them about half-jokes in a pitch-black auditorium; that one’s going to the grave with him. It’s too raw, too vulnerable. He thinks of Wilbur’s gleeful laughter and his smile in the dark and he can’t help but feel viciously protective of the memory. 

“We’re friends,” he says instead. “I think, at least.”

“Okay,” Puffy concedes. “And what about your other friend? Connor? A Connor lives here, doesn’t he?” 

“I can go get him,” a boy in a purple hoodie says, standing up.

“Go do that,” Puffy agrees. “Let’s wait for him to come by.”

“What about Wilbur?” Schlatt has to ask. “Is he gonna come too? He can vouch for me.” Puffy grimaces and oh, Schlatt does not like that. “He’s coming, right?”

“He can’t come at the moment,” Tubbo says. “He’s not around.”

“Oh.”

But that’s not all of it, is it?

They wait for the purple boy to come back. It’s about half an hour of more questions, some from a creeper hybrid that goes by Sam and some by Puffy herself, but by the time the boy returns, Schlatt has finally been allowed to sit down. His feet are so sore, and everything hurts, but he still stands back up when he sees the person following Purple Boy.

“Connor!” He shrieks. “Connor, I’ve been arrested!”

He looks similar from afar, but as his best friend approaches Schlatt sees how vastly different he is now. He’s got stubble. Finally he’s changed from the ugly ass Wario costume, traded it in for a Sonic onesie, stained with grass and dirt. But even then—that’s Connor. Older, the tiniest bit taller, but Connor nonetheless.

His brother.

“What the fuck, man,” Connor groans. “Why’d you arrest him? What’d he do this time?”

Fundy blinks at this. “...be resurrected?” 

“Fair, I guess.” Connor walks to the podium, and carefully (while pointedly ignoring the guard’s warnings about Schlatt) he helps his brother come down. “You look like shit.”

“Thanks, man.” It feels so nice to see a familiar face again. He leans against Connor, he can’t help it, he’s so relieved, and just buries his face into the older one’s chest. Bap. His horns thunk against it. 

“Thanks for coming, Connor,” Tubbo says. He’s gone down from his seat too, and Schlatt is slightly amused at, a, how short the guy is, and b, how Connor is still shorter. “We were hoping you could validate his claims. You two were friends before?”

“He’s my best friend,” Connor confirms without much hassle. Once more, whispering fills the room, but unlike Schlatt, Connor doesn’t have to just take it. “What? D’you have a problem with it?”

“Your best friend is a fucking dictator,” Quackity snaps, and he is acutely reminded of how he’d wanted to hurt him, of how ready he’d been for that. “Or was. ”

“You were gonna marry him,” Fundy points out.

“What?” Schlatt blurts out, but it goes ignored.

Connor shrugs, indifferent to all of it. “I don’t care. The worst we did as kids was scam a few people. He’s fine.”

“I’m not a kid,” Schlatt corrects him, offended. This is where his hubris comes in, because he follows it up with, “I’m eighteen.”

Connor stares at him for like a solid eight seconds. “Yeah, no, there’s no fucking way you’re eighteen.”

Everyone in the whole room straightens up at this. 

“What!” This motherfucker is gonna expose me! “Connor, you bitch! No, no! Tell them— Tell them!”

“Dude, no, you’re like twelve, I’m not covering your ass. You’re a kid.”

The betrayal stings. Fuck, he’s mad. He glares at Connor and goes, petulantly, “how would you even know? I’m eighteen! I’m so eighteen! I’m running for mayor back home, I’m eighteen! Connor, come on!”

“You cracked your horn when you turned seventeen,” Connor says, calm as ever. “Because Cooper was challenging you to a skating competition even though you don’t know how to skate and then you hit your head like a dumbass. You cried all day about it. So you can’t be older than sixteen.”

FUCK, bro, he’s so fucking mortified. He can just feel his face heating up. Everyone’s staring, everyone. The handcuffs suddenly feel much more restricting. “Asshole,” he snaps. “You suck.”

“Yeah, okay,” Connor says, completely unbothered. 

“You suck, Connor! Eat Pant!”

“Ugh, that bit is so old, dude.” He looks at the rest of the crowd, adjusting his onesie. “If it’s okay with you guys, I can take care of him. I already know him and I’ll keep him out of trouble.”

“Like hell you will!” Schlatt butts in. Connor shoots a deadly serious glare in his direction, and it’s amazing how Schlatt can still read exactly what it means, even when his best friend is years older: stop digging your own grave.

“I’m not a citizen of L’manberg,” Connor continues, “so he doesn’t even have to set foot here. It’s fine, right?”

“Fuck off,” Quackity snaps. “Are you joking? There’s no fucking way we could—”

“Do you think you can protect him?” Tubbo interrupts.

Schlatt locks eyes with the president of L’manberg. The older boy doesn’t falter; he only regards him for a moment before looking back at Connor. Connor, who’s now the adult, who’s the one looking after him for once. Fuck, this is weird.

“People will come for him,” Tubbo elaborates. “Dream wanted him… like Tommy. I’m still not sure I don’t want him dead,” he admits. Schlatt doesn’t know who this Tommy guy is, but whatever happened to him can’t have been good, taking Tubbo’s darkening expression into account. “The only reason he’s even here is because he fucked up so badly people wanted to hurt him back. So can you protect him? Even if they… even if we come for him?”

Quackity looks at him like he wants to rip him apart and eat his insides. Fundy looks at him with pity and disgust. Tubbo hides his fear behind apathy and annoyance. Everyone here has been hurt by Schlatt’s older self—and he doesn’t know what he did that was so bad, but he shoots a glance at Connor and knows he’s still wimpy, and as bad of a fighter as he himself is. They’re like brothers, but not because one could ever protect the other from a stronger fighter, but because they’d always, always take the beating together.

Schlatt wonders, did I hurt him too?

Connor looks at Tubbo, and doesn’t even hesitate. “I will.”

Tubbo nods gravely. He straightens his posture, and then says, “then leave. Take him and leave.”

Immediately the room erupts into protests. But Tubbo heeds them no mind as he unlocks Schlatt’s handcuffs; the boy rubs at his sore wrists, before feeling the other’s hand wrapping against one of them. He’s examining his hand, he notes. 

“You don’t have the scar anymore,” Tubbo says over the uproar of the people. 

Schlatt frowns. “What scar?”

“Don’t worry about it. I hope I don’t have to see you again.”

Schlatt has been up for hours, standing under endless interrogation. Schlatt is hungry, exhausted, and freezing, that without mentioning the cold he can feel coming, with the way he can’t stop shivering and his nose has filled up with snot. His ears twitch at the slightest of sounds and there’s screaming all around him; his horns haven’t stopped aching since yesterday. His legs are in terrible numbing pain, and his hands won’t stop shaking. 

Schlatt says, a little pettily, “honestly? Same.”

He leaves with Connor. They elbow their way through the crowd, and Schlatt almost collapses, but when they get outside the clouds have started to part. 

The noon sky is just the same as back home. 

Connor’s house is a hole in the dirt. Schlatt doesn’t complain (much), not when Connor actually gives him warm bread, iced tea and painkillers. He starts a fire to warm up the hobbit hole, lends Schlatt proper pajamas, and then drags him to bed. 

“I feel like a baby,” Schlatt protests. “I don’t need to sleep. I’m fine.”

Connor smiles at him and that feels so comforting, so safe. “Your legs are acting up,” he says, “and there isn’t stuff stronger than weakness potions here. You have to rest, dude.”

“That’s bullshit.” He’s grumbling, he knows. But he just can’t help it. He hates feeling helpless, and ever since he woke up in this place that’s all he’s been. 

Connor puts a hand over his shoulder. “It’ll be alright,” he tells him, and Schlatt believes him, even if it’s a little painful. “Go to sleep now, dumbass.”

“Fine, fine. Alright, mom.”

He lets Connor tuck him in. Truth be told, he can’t even handle moving too much. At this point he just lets himself go. 

“Goodnight, man,” he mumbles. He doesn’t see Connor’s softening eyes or his sorrowful expression. 

He just barely catches this, as he falls asleep: “at least you don’t have the fucking chops yet.”

Chops? He wonders vaguely. What was that about? His future self surely was full of bad ideas, it looks like. 

He doesn’t linger on it, entering a dreamless sleep.