[over the palisade]

chapter twenty

"When I was a child, I didn't hear a single word you said.

The things I was afraid of, they were all confined beneath my bed.

But the years have been long and you have taught me well to hide away

The things that I believed in, you've taught me well to call them escapes.

I know who you are now, I know who you are. I know who you are now.

There before the threshold I saw a brighter world beyond myself,

And in my hour of weakness you were there to see my courage fail.

For the years have been long and you have taught me well to sit and wait,

Planning without acting, steadily becoming what I hate.

I know who you are now, I know who you are. I know who you are now.

I have always known you, you have always been there in my mind

But now I understand you and will not be part of your design.

I know who I am now, and all that you've made me.

I know who you are now, and I name you my enemy.

I know who I am now, I know who I want to be.

I want to be more than this devil inside of me."

Twelve days and eleven nights is how long Phil'za, the high king of the fae world, the most powerful man in their plane, stood with his dead child in his arms. Not even the mosses and fungus dared to touch the young corpse. Tommy laid in his fathers' arms, cold and dead, for eleven days. And with each passing day he looked the exact same. Vultures never took to the sky, bugs never crawled into his hair, nothing. There was a perfect serenity and quiet around him and his father and all the rest who stood vigil with him.

Technoblade, the most violent and bloodthirsty warrior the plane had seen in millennia, kneeled beside his brother and father's side for the entirety of the eleven days, never moving an inch except to clear the weepiness from his own eyes.

And Wilbur, who had only ever known the boy for three long weeks of travel, stood with them too. He was one of them now. He had eaten with them, sung with them, marched with them, fought for them, and now grieved with them too. For the loss of his young brother.

And Tubbo, who had been there since before the beginning. Tubbo who wore a red bandanna around his neck that matched Tommy's green one; gifts from Kristen way back at home, still eagerly awaiting her son's return. The gifts however could only keep the kids safe from the outside world, not from one another. Because known only to Tubbo and the gods above, it was he who felled Tommy, not the reanimated corpse's sword that he had used and blamed. But still, he sat in the grass weeping.

And that was the end of the journey. They had accomplished what they had set out to do, they had banished the evil once again as all good heroes do, but at a cost that they would only ever say in private. That the cost was not worth the reward.

On the fifth day of vigil, the fifth sunrise after Tommy's last, groups started to break off. The armies went home to their intact families in their intact homes, others started counting their losses, and members of the once good king Jordan's court scrambled to find someone to fill the now empty throne.

The rest of their party, their family, all those who had truly felt the loss of the young mortal prince stayed for some time after that, but by the eleventh day, it was just the four. Phil'za, high king. Techno, the great warrior. Wilbur, the poet, and Tubbo, three men's pity and one dead boy's pain.