Final chapter!

Enjoy. *sniffles and looks around for a tissue*

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Tommy could see from Dream's gaze, his expression, what his answer was, and he stumbled back, hardly listening to Dream repeating the same phrase, over and over again.

I'm sorry, I failed him. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

The world blurred, the truth sitting in his chest, cold as ice. Nothing felt real anymore, and he wondered if jumping off the edge of the island and into the eternal darkness would be so terrible of a thing.

At least he would be unable to feel the emotions that felt like a knife shattering his heart, over and over again, more painful than any physical wound he could have been inflicted with.

Tubbo was gone.

There was no Respawn, no second chances. The finality of this death was jarring, yet numb, and he didn't believe it. Didn't want to.

If he accepted, he would be letting Tubbo down.

Tubbo, gone.

He wondered if time would make it better. Smooth over his ruined heart, encase it in ice so that he would never have to experience such turmoil again. He didn't want to feel the pain, didn't want to feel anything.

He soon found out that time did little for the grief.

It never truly melted, only grew to be a part of him. He preferred nightmares over sweet dreams, because at least he would wake up and feel better. When he dreamed of Tubbo, his eyes were never dry when he opened them in the morning.

He was lost and broken, a boat with snapped oars drifting out at sea.

Then on one fine morning, in hazy golden light, Dream had come and told him everything they had experienced, everything Tubbo had done. He had explained to Tommy that Tubbo had been captured alongside them, a victim as the rest of them were, and that he had sacrificed himself to allow the rest to escape.

Tommy had screamed at him, then cursed and swore, then cried, and Dream had let him cry. And then he had opened his palm, and handed him the charm he had given to Tubbo all those years ago when they had first met. It was a token of friendship from one innocent heart to another.

The tiny golden bee that rested gently in his hand, a weight that anchored him to the world. It was a symbol of Tubbo, the single item that brought him back whenever he felt like the world was too much to bear. He never let go of it now, holding it forever, the way he and Tubbo were meant to be.

Time didn't fix things, only threw them together and moved onwards. And slowly Tommy let himself be carried with the flow.

He looked out into the wonderful blue sky one day, and felt as if an old fire had been rekindled. The grief that weighed in his chest shifted slightly, and he found that he had friends who were willing to connect with him, he only had to let them in.

He was alive, but only then did he really live. He had found a reason to: for Tubbo. He had to live twice as hard, to make up for the loss that had taught him of his own mortality, and sometimes he still had bad days when a familiar face plagued his dreams, and he would awake in a cold sweat. Sometimes he didn't feel like doing anything, and just mustering enough willpower to open his eyes and get dressed was a milestone. And sometimes he would cry, cry for the friend, the brother, that the world had taken all too soon.

But those days came fewer, and farther in between. And the remaining days he didn't forget, but rather let his past shape his future. He would never let go of the memories of Tubbo, they were the most precious things he owned, but he learned to celebrate them, to love them and embrace them.

And he waited, alive and living, for the day they would reunite.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Dream felt like he was living with ghosts.

Everything he saw or heard was an echo of something before it, a reminder of the past, a window to the times he yearned for ceaselessly.

He no longer wore his mask. He had nothing to hide, and it made him feel too closed off. He craved human contact and sunshine, and hated the cold.

He avoided mirrors, because he loathed the scar, the new scar, and it brought him back in time, to that helpless moment in those icy chains. He learned not to stare into puddles, or at lakes on a windless day.

It was insulting, in the strangest way. He had always wanted to build something permanent, an empire so great it would never fall, a name for himself so important that it would never be lost in time. But all his attempts were torn down by the cruel claws of fate, the only true permanence they left were his scars, marks of his failure for all of eternity.

He had given Tubbo's charm to Tommy, watched as he broke like a dam of floodwater, and he had lied. He couldn't bring himself to tell Tommy what Tubbo had chosen, what he had done, so he told him that that Tubbo was simply another victim.

He hated himself for that lie, and he didn't know if he had made things better or worse. He feared the day that Tommy might find out, worried that he would break.

Xisuma had asked him at noon one cloudless day, if he wanted to go back. The code had been fixed, and if he chose to, he could return safely to his old world.

He had refused.

There were too many memories, too many reminders of a moment in time he no longer had. Even thinking about it, listening to Tubbo's bright laugh in his mind felt like a knife twisting into his heart.

He had failed, after all. Failed miserably.

He didn't forgive himself - he wouldn't ever forgive himself, but he watched out for Tommy, determined to honour Tubbo by making sure that his best friend never slipped too far. Tommy was recovering, but Dream was not.

He felt so empty, so useless, so haunted. It was like an illusion, a mirage shimmering just about of his reach, the gold at the end of the rainbow shifting farther away every step he took took in attempts to get closer.

There were days when he wanted to give up. Everything he had built had crumbled to dust. The great empire he had raised and nursed, the little family he had fortified in his world, gone. Everything he had loved had turned grey and changed. There was nothing holding him down, nothing he cared about enough to try and keep going.

Until there was.

His friends were struggling too, trying to make sense of the curve in their story, yet one day, they saw him about to fade, and they brought him back.

And slowly, he learned to forgive, although he refused to forget, and sometimes his heart would shatter all over again when he thought of Tubbo, of what his friends did for him that he couldn't do.

He was broken, it was plain to see, but he was being rebuilt. The cracks in his heart mended slowly, and while he knew that they would never truly vanish, they softened and blended and grew.

And somewhere along the way he knew, with an odd sense of certainty, that things would never be the same, but that they could still be alright.

And that was good enough for him.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Techno didn't feel victorious.

He felt nothing.

He shut out his feelings, refusing to let them into his heart. He was a warrior. And warriors didn't cry. So what was the heaviness that he felt pressing urgently against his chest?

Warriors mourn silently, and then strike back twice as hard for their fallen comrades.

But he didn't know who to attack. He was familier with fighting, with swinging a sword and cutting and stabbing and taking the life of something that had one. But he didn't know who his enemy was now. Certainly not a physical thing, so how was he meant to conquer it?

He was a king, after all, and he ruled. He could win a fight with anything. He was friends with death - he didn't fear it the slightest. He knew pain. He had perhaps the strongest willpower most others had ever seen.

Yet he had no idea how to beat this awful feeling that ate at his heart.

And one fine afternoon, watching fluffy white clouds drift across a clear blue sky, he suddenly understood.

He was fighting himself. He couldn't forgive, and this was the one fight he could not win.

So he fixed it the only way he knew how. By fighting, by training, by becoming a warrior so thoroughly that he didn't have time to think, or to feel the heaviness in his heart and allow his eyes to blur with tears. He refused to talk to others, shut and locked his door. It wasn't their burden to carry.

He started to hate where his future was going, despise the path he had laid out for himself. It was so heart-wrenchingly lonely, a road of ice and snow, that he had to stop and finally he admitted something to himself that he had never dared to do.

He didn't want to be a alone.

He was overwhelmed by social situations sometimes, and he liked to have times when he was alone to think. But he craved friendship, family, yet didn't know how to achieve them.

He had fought so hard, discovered his limits and pushed past them, trained endlessly, all for one single goal. To protect those he loved. And now that they were safe, he had shut himself away, and he didn't know how to get back.

He was lost, lost in an ocean he had made himself.

But then, on the horizon of that endless sea, he saw Wilbur one fine afternoon, and Wilbur had a map.

Wilbur didn't understand him - no one did - but Wilbur tried to understand him, and Wilbur was the one who brought him back, back to shore, and at last he was anchored.

He discovered that his friends had missed him every bit as much as he had missed them, and despite one less smiling face than the last time he had seen them all together, he lowered his walls, ever so slightly, as he felt the ice he had built around his heart begin to thaw.

He still trained though. But not for himself. He was done with being alone.

He trained the hermits, laughing mercilessly at them as they messed over and over again, trained Tommy, their bond growing stronger than ever before, and trained himself, to let his friends in.

And on one morning, watching the clouds drift across a crystal clear sky, it occurred to him that he was finally fighting a battle he knew he could win.

The forever uphill war of self improvement didn't seem to ever end, and he knew it wouldn't, but he could taste the glimmer of hope in his future, and he knew, with absolutely certainty, that if he put his heart to it, he would emerge victorious.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Xisuma couldn't remember the last time he had slept.

To sleep meant the nightmares, and the pain of seeing Tubbo, the venomous fangs that would stab into his heart as he relived that single moment, over and over and over again.

He was afraid, so he avoided it.

The heaviness in his chest never seemed to go away, and he found that he cared less and less about it. His singular motivation became for his friends, to repair the code so that their lives could go back to normal as quickly as possible, despite knowing that nothing would ever be the same again.

He fixed the glitches Jschlatt and Ex and Tubbo had inflicted upon the codes of the two worlds, and he picked at them so finely that by the time he was finished, both were stronger than they had ever been.

He had talked to Dream, told him that he could return to his old world if he wanted to, and just from his expression Xisuma could tell that his answer would be no.

Neither of them wore their masks anymore. Xisuma simply didn't care enough for it. Before, there was a sort of giddy amusement at people not knowing his face, and a slight embarrassment at his oddly coloured eyes, but now it was just another heavy object to carry around, so he didn't bother with it.

With the codes fixed, he had too much time to think, so he scoured through them again, ceaselessly, days and nights blending together.

He found working with the code to be oddly satisfying - it was something he could understand, something predictable and natural for him, and with the code, every problem had a solution - something he knew from experience wasn't always true in his life.

It was a distraction that stopped him from thinking about the tears that would threaten to fall if he dove into his memories for too long.

Keralis found him one day half awake, typing furiously on his keyboard, and dragged him away, pushed him firmly onto a bed insisting that he sleep. It was then that he couldn't hold himself together anymore, and he told his best friend everything he had seen and felt and thought, and then he had cried, Keralis awkwardly hugging him, and the only thing he could think of was how lonely he had been.

And so he started heading up again, his path curving closer to the light. He learned to let his past fears guide his future, learned to ask for help when he needed it. And he needed help a lot. But all of his hermits, his friends, his family were there, and he had reason to hope again.

It wasn't an easy road to walk, and he knew from the moment he took the first step, but there was something relieving about letting himself lean on others after supporting them for so long, and he grew to understand that sometimes, it was necessary to share the burden that he carried.

He made sure Dream understood that too, talking with Sapnap and George to ensure that they kept an eye out for their friend.

Some days he and Dream and Techno would come together in some quiet spot in the forest and talk about the things they had seen. There was always a reserved sort of understanding they shared after what they had been through.

Sometimes the entire server would take a day to relax, sit around and have fun, telling stories and remembering old friends. When a day like this was through, there would never be a dry eye.

And sometimes they thought of the days they had before, the present that was ceaselessly becoming the past, and the past that was slipping farther and farther away into the depths of their memories, yet refusing to be forgotten.

The future loomed ahead, an unavoidable truth that slipped closer with every heartbeat, bringing an unknown tide.

But they were ready for it, for whatever was thrown their way.

And with that, Two Worlds

Became

One.

==============================

And that's the end! 

Congratulate yourself for just reading 42,398 words about people playing a block game, and that isn't even counting all the author's notes such as this one :D

Also, the chapters put together spell out "Gone but impossible to ever forget" - I spent an embarrassing amount of time just trying to find a meaningful phrase with exactly 29 letters. I think it fits quite nicely though.

Here is some fanart that amazing people have drawn for this story: (Will be updated if more people somehow decide that this story is worth drawing for, like what? This is crazy, thank y'all so much for this!)

This one is from Silbarz!

This is the scene where Tubbo is held hostage by Ex. Amazing. Next one is also from Silbarz :D

Tommy against the enderdragon. Just look at the way that sword glows *starts making excited noises*

This one is from snapGar, they have it posted on their Deviant Art page, here's a link. Beautiful drawing of Tommy thinking about Tubbo, it's just so good. If you have a Deviant art account, maybe leave them nice comment? 

The comment left here is from me, as links work in the comments.

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Milestones (Thank y'all so much :D)

1k Reads on Dec. 09, 2020

5k Reads on Jan. 03, 2021

10k Reads on Jan. 23, 2021

More than 45k Reads by Sept., 2021

Y'all are crazy, thank you so much  and I do hope you all enjoyed this fic :D

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Thank you, every single one of you, for sticking with this story up until the end. When I started it, three weeks ago, I never would have imagined it would get this much attention, or that I would love writing it so, so much.

And now that it's over, the only thing left is to move forwards.

"Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened."

~ Dr Seuss

I do hope you enjoyed that - I'm working on a re-write right now that will be out sometime in 2021, because my writing has improved A LOT over just the course of this story (I'm sure you could tell haha), and I'm growing to dislike the work I've done here, especially the earlier chapters. So keep a lookout for that if you're interested :D

Edit (Sept, 2021): upon further reflection, I don't think this deserves to be rewritten. True, it was my first work in the fandom and the first piece of non-school writing I've ever finished, but overall the magic was in the plot, in meeting the people who read it, in updating and holding my breath and waking up in the morning to comments. As far as stories go, this one isn't one I'm too proud of, so perhaps I'll change my mind and make a rewrite, but honestly I think pursuing new stories is the path I want to go down.

I hope that we'll meet again, and until then, you have a wonderful day/night.

Thank you.