Chapter Text
When Tommy had first woken up feeling like he had slept on a cloud, he almost screamed. Instead, he settled for leaping off the foreign bed and falling onto the ground beside it. He sat there starfished, groaning, and had been met with a full view of the room. And holy shit the room.
It hadn’t been the golden sunlight which flooded the room that had swept him off his feet, (figuratively, even if he had still been on the floor) it had been the golden embellishments head to toe. The rich red walls with elegant white detailing. The floor he had been laid across which had a carpet he practically sunk into, and it had to have been more comfortable than every bed he’d had combined. He craned his neck over to the side, running his hands over the soft carpet and noticing the graceful floral pattern dyed into it. Like dancing flames.
He shot up, leaning forward where he sat to get a better look. Over the top of the bed—which had been covered in piles of pillows and thick blankets he couldn’t believe existed—he had been able to see the windows and the walls.
If the ceiling was a masterpiece than the large windows which curated melting sunlight and poured it into the room managed to top it. The giant panels of glass stretched almost the entire left wall, not to be outdone by the actual walls themselves. If the intricately decorated wall panels weren’t enough, or the painted gold curls to match the thin shapes weaving into each other on the carpet, then all the pieces adorning the wall were.
A large, carved mantlepiece framed a fireplace, and everywhere along there were delicate golden candelabras cradling candles waiting to be lit once it became dark.
Tommy could have gone on about the room, there had been the furniture which was just as extravagant, or the flooring under the carpet. Except, how in the fuck had he ended up here?
Tommy leant back and stared at the roof, trying to claw up the latest memory from his brain. The last thing he could vividly remember was chasing after his runaway homework, which had rudely been picked up by the wind. He had spent at least three hours straight on that damned worksheet because his Maths teacher didn’t believe in sleep, apparently. So he ran after it, heard an ear-piercing horn blare and…
He wracked his brain for more information, for more of the memory, but it stopped there abruptly. Clawing for shards of anything, he had rerun the last memory again. Nothing new. So then again, he went back over it.
It was all for nought. There had only been that horn blaring in his ear, so loud he was reminded of when a student from a lower year level had gotten their hands on an airhorn and had made it their mission to blow out everyone’s eardrums. That bloody kid had made sure to get as close as possible, right up to some people’s ears and have at it with the horn.
That sound had been all that separated his normal memories from the all-consuming black which came after it. Like falling asleep during the day and waking up with your sense of time thrown off balance completely, except it was as if he had fallen asleep moments after the deafening noise, which was stupid because he was wide awake all leading up to that.
The pieces slotted into place, fitting with a gentle click.
He had died, hadn’t he?
It had been a car’s horn that he had heard, no doubt. But it had come from nearby, enough to rattle him and drown out the rest of the world before the unending black. The ringing, and sudden silence. He hadn’t been able remember anything from then on not because he had forgotten but because he hadn’t been alive to experience it.
Tommy’s head dropped. His gaze moved from the ceiling to the floor, unseeing. Unless that car somehow belonged to a rich person from hundreds of years ago who had decided on a whim to kidnap him, he really was dead. Tears welled in the corners of Tommy’s eyes, and his knees had crept up to his chest where he caught them with his arms.
The only sound he could get out had been a small whine, and he sniffled, valiantly trying to force the tears back in. He was Tommy Innit, and he wasn’t going to cry over something as inconsequential as dying at sixteen! He was just going to… stay there for a bit, hunched over in a feeble attempt at shielding himself from the reality he had fallen into.
The grandfather clock in the corner ticked, and shoes clicked past the door. Outside the window, leaves had swayed and snatched up bursts of the light which gradually dimmed as the day passed. They cast their own shadow puppets into the room, jagged shapes like thunder with clusters of dots attached onto them, holding a half-hearted performance for him alone to witness through eyes which had glazed over. As time consumed the day, and the sun had gotten lower in the sky, those shadow puppets walked further into the room.
Just like the light slowly losing its intensity outside and the emerging shadows, Tommy’s legs steadily extended back onto the carpet. He had shifted, crawling out from the side of the bed, and had stood on shaky feet as he ambled over to the closest chair to then fall back into it and curl up there. His head had rested on the arm and been angled towards the windows displaying the afternoon’s finale. His eyes traced the outline of the windows, the arching tops and smooth finish.
Inching his hand out, he had reached over and pulled a blanket over him, burying himself up to his nose in it. Tommy’s eyes crept closed, calling the curtains on the image of trees rocking idly.
Dying wasn’t at the top of Tommy’s favourite things in life list. It kind of contradicted the whole life part of the list, after all. Except he was still alive because he had been reincarnated and who in the ever-loving hell decided that was a good idea?
However, Tommy had thought to look on the bright side. He figured if he was dead, then he could try to at least enjoy whatever kind of afterlife this was. He got to kick back and do nothing but lay around in his curtained four poster bed. Watch the painted ceiling and dine like the prince he was reborn as.
And had he mentioned that? He was a prince now. Obviously, a man as great as him would be a prince in his second life, but still.
He even got a fancy name to go with it. Prince Theseus. Pretty awesome if you asked him. It didn’t make up for the whole getting hit by a car and dying while still in high school thing, but it was a minor improvement. He did also find it a bit weird that he didn’t have any lessons, but he wasn’t complaining.
Tommy had barely left his room and he was already living it big. He hadn’t had much need to, no one ever came by besides maids dropping off his meals, so he wasn’t needed anywhere. Another win for team rebirth. And he thus spent his days around his room which was big enough to be a whole house itself. It did get boring every now and then, and he would be hanging limply off his furniture by the time the afternoon had arrived, but it was still heavenly. He could confidently state he would never be able to forget the fine velvety feeling of the couches after a whole week passed that way, drifting from one end of his room to the other as day would descend into night.
But the garden outside had taunted him long enough, and he was going to see it if it was the last thing he fucking did. Tommy knew that he would have to find a way through whatever his room was in (probably a castle) to get to the garden. He didn’t exactly expect how confusing the halls were, though.
Rich people disgusted him. Every rich person except his new self, of course.
It was a never-ending labyrinth of gold ornaments, white trims, and so many wooden double doors which towered over him. Did he mention how everywhere was drowning in doors? Every two steps, boom, another door. Tommy wanted to throw something like paint at those doors as revenge, a big man like himself never got lost or confused, obviously, the doors were just irritating. And all looked the same.
He would hypothetically ask for directions if he was lost, but there was no one around. It was kind of weird. He knew for a fact there were staff running around the place, who else had brought him his food the past week? You could often hear their shoes clacking against whatever fancy surface was used—he now knew it was marble—for the floor during the day.
Tommy stopped in his tracks, the utter lack of people truly hitting him, and he swung his head from one side of the hallway to the other. Both were completely devoid of people.
Huh. A bit strange, but whatever. He chose to continue on to the left, good old left would never do him dirty.
Somehow, the lot of giant wood doors he walked by had the exact same carvings from top to bottom, which made it fun for Tommy to run his hands along as he went. The wood’s vivid colour was captured by a subtle glossy polish which made the surface even more of a delight to the touch. Cold, unfailingly smooth and unyielding under the pressure of his hand. It was regal in every sense.
He strained his ears for any sign of life besides himself, hell, he even kept an eye out for a portrait. Haunted houses of all things at least had the decency to have a spooky painting or two, help a Tommy Innit out here. The absence of the maids wasn’t the only thing that made the place devoid of life either, it was the lack of anything with personality. Nothing to show that people, say royalty, lived there. Screw paintings or personal touches, nothing there was out of order and it was unnatural. It was as if he was the only person there.
Man, who knew heaven could be so lonely, or so off-putting because of that fact.
Wandering through the halls like a lost ghost, Tommy was dazed by the endless halls this castle was able to throw his way. The great conspiracy against Tommy Innit, led by the forces of heaven. He would beat them, however, with his unbeatable determination and stubbornness. Mostly stubbornness if he were being honest. He begrudgingly backtracked enough times to remind him of a particular field trip involving a wooden maze, but it wasn’t his fault so many halls were dead ends.
Every time he thought of simply returning to his room and giving up for the day, he would remind himself of the view from his window, all cool colours illuminated by warm ones, nature finished with a fine layer of yellows, pinks or oranges depending on the time of the day. The blue of the sky being tucked away for safe keeping, for the next day, while the sun spread the last of its light which was turning to deeper colours.
Yeah, he was finding that damn garden. Another factor may or may not have been the fact that finding his way back would be just as difficult at this point, but that would mean Tommy was lost which as he had already established, never happened.
It did get to the point that Tommy’s legs began aching, and his eyes were beginning to droop. He contemplated throwing himself into one of the chairs sitting in the hallway. There was a lot of furniture meaninglessly strewn about for the sake of design, something to fill space and add more rich spice to the air. As if more was needed. Sleeping on one of the couches was slowly becoming an option for him, it certainly wasn’t dark out, but he had been going on for ages in presumably circles and wasn’t making any progress.
That was when the garden decided to show itself to him. While he was deep in thought about chairs and napping on them, even potentially resorting to staying the night on one.
The garden beat out his elaborate room in every possible way, and every headache inducing door clone was worth its magic.
The moment he spied the arches leading out into the sunlight, he was hit by the fresh breeze. It carried the thick scent of flowers all the way down the entrance, reminding him of perfume. Yet it was somehow different from the clean, detergent like version of floral smell which pervaded the hallways he had been trudging through. He drank in that new, refreshing aroma and skidded down the hallway.
Where the marble turned to grass the extravagant palace made way for the vibrant green all around. Trees whos’ branches grasped at the sky, coated with full leaves. Flowers sprouting as far as the eye could see, a mosaic of every colour that could possibly be captured by nature. And grass, grass as plush as the bed he had first woken on; or the carpet which had caught him.
And Tommy adored every bit of it.
He didn’t know what he had done in his past life to deserve this—actually, he did know, he was the biggest man—but he was cheering and hopping about inside, the little Tommy in his brain was cracking out a pair of pom-poms.
Tommy’s first course of action was beelining for the flower bushes, brimming with blooms he couldn’t name. He zipped from bush to bush, beaming at the wide range of flowers as he ran up to each new one he could find. And when his feet began to ache, he abandoned his wild exploration and flopped onto the grass where he stood, throwing his arms out.
The sun met his face without the separation of glass for the first time in a week, and his smile grew in size. Wind swept the nature surrounding him into a slow waltz, everything rustling softly. He closed his eyes, his eyelids burning pink as light pushed into them, and only rolling over and opening them back up when it irritated him enough.
Propping himself up on his elbows, he rested his chin in the heel of his hands as he caught sight of a tall oak he had strayed near. Patches of sunlight dripped through from between the leaves above, and he floated over and onto the grass blanket underneath which the pattern was projected onto. There he was unimpeded in drifting off.
Almost.
The crunching of grass crept closer, and Tommy cracked an eye open to spot a figure at the edge of his vision.
“Your Highness?”
He was, unfortunately, awake now. Pulling himself up and resting on his forearms, he groaned out in reply, “Yeah?”
“Y-You’re outside,” she said. She spoke with widened eyes, shifting on her feet and tugging at her uniform.
“Uh, yeah,” said Tommy. Great, now it felt impossible to meet her gaze. What was so bad about going outside, anyway?
The maid pulled harder at the cuff of her sleeve, fumbling for words she forced out while scrunching her eyes shut. “Would you- if you’re- um. Are you expecting to accompany His Majesty and His Highnesses, King Philza, Prince Technoblade and Prince Wilbur for lunch?”
Huh? Wait, what the fuck!?
Shoving aside the fact he had always been served lunch in his room, Tommy bulldozed on to the matter of the names. He tore through his memory, knowing for a fucking fact he hadn’t heard them spoken by the maids before this moment. Hell, he hadn’t even known there were two whole other princes. Which meant he had brothers in this weird afterlife place.
That wasn’t important, though. What was were those bloody names.
And then he realized. Oh. Oh no. He was Theseus Theseus. He was that absolute prick of a character he had loathed when reading Lovely Commoner.
The one who’s killed.