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It’s normal to not like dying.
Dying, death, the end, whatever you want to call it.
A human instinct, one would say, because without the fear of death why would anyone keep on living?
Tommy is... far, far too familiar with death.
Death is soft, wrapping around him like a cool blanket, fingers running through his hair and arms holding him tight to what should be comfort. It’s close enough to it that when he closes his eyes for the final (Millionth) time, he pretends it feels exactly like it.
Death is… a break.
In his first life, his original life, where he grew up knowing exactly how the universe worked and the rules it played by, he had been scared of death. Home had the rule of three, where one could die three times, and only three times, before the third death resulted in the ‘void’. The end. He had lost two before he had even turned 17. And after months of living on the precipice, he knew. He knew the moment he was locked in a too hot prison with his tormenter that his third was upon him. And he also knew that it wasn’t worth fighting anymore.
Lifetimes later, he offhandedly wonders whether his lack of care for dying was a precursor to what came next, his mind getting ready for the multiverse that lay beyond his body.
Beaten to death by bony fists and magma bubbling at his back, Tommy Innit, 17 years old, child soldier, just a fucking kid, he dies.
And-
He wakes up.
The void had only been a whisper that first death, fingers brushing over his broken spine before he had been shoved into a body far too young to be his own. That second chance was quick, he took one look at his childlike body and decided he wasn’t doing this again, drowning himself in the nearby river within the hour.
And-
He wakes up, again.
This time he cries, he screams, he punches a wall, and his body, this time far too old, crumbles into itself. It feels wrong, like he’d been shoved into a puzzle where his shape doesn’t fit, just close enough to take up the space, not enough to make the picture.
This time he shrugs on the Tommy he knows, like an old dirty trench coat of a persona that he had lost sometime during exile, or sometime during Pogtopia… maybe… maybe even further back than that.
He doesn’t actually know.
But he does know how to play the part.
This life wasn’t very memorable in the grand scheme of the endless future. All he knows is that he’s an adult in an old western type town, and he recognises no-one.
Unfortunately, the first familiar face he sees is days later, when it reflects off the metal of the gun pointing him down. It’s- It’s-
He lurches back against the force of the bullet tearing through his brain, the whisper of Wilbur on his lips, they never get the chance to join that universe, he’s officially dead before he even hits the ground.
And-
He wakes.
Again, again and again.
A routine.
He falls into place, like a puzzle piece that never fit, no matter how much he tried to. The puzzle around him holds him hostage, and it makes him fit, regardless of the nausea that was homesickness in his gut. Regardless of his wants and his needs, he dies regardless.
He learns quickly, Tommy’s good at that, he’s ‘adaptive’, ‘resilient’ or whatever else the people of the multiverse whisper when he turns his back to them. There are other words as well, ‘annoying’ one whispers when his Tommy coat is pulled tight over his heart, ‘Cold’ is another, when he keeps it folded up in the void, too exhausted to do anything but the motions of living through that lifetime.
‘Strange’
‘Haunted’
‘Wrong’
His first life is what haunts him endlessly, his mind fraying at the edges is what makes him strange, his body is always wrong, and that’s what makes him wrong.
He stops counting how many lives he’s lived before he even hits a hundred, too exhausted to bother, especially when he just starts… starts killing himself, over and over, mind distant as he goes through the motions like it's a nostalgic melody.
And that's when one death pauses everything- because when he dies that time, the void pulls him into arms of faux comfort. They hold him, the stars twinkling and spinning around him, a song and dance that draws his mind back to his… well, not his body, that was left in his first life.
But the void holds him, and when the dying stars in his eyes drip tears, he’s only held tighter. It’s not a voice that comforts him, but words still drift by all the same.
‘I’m sorry’ The void whispers, both as high as a young girls and as deep as an old mans, a million and one voices coming together in solidarity, like they all held the answer to why he has been thrown across the multiverse body-less and soul-bound to grief.
And-
He wakes into his next life burning molten fury. How dare it? How dare it apologise? Like that could come anywhere close to doing anything about his newly immortal lifetimes.
This new life is similar to his first, so similar in fact, that it only makes him angrier. The familiar faces, his family, his friends, his tormentors, his home. He spends this lifetime hissing and spitting, fighting and biting, cackling and sobbing until he burns out like a candle melted into a puddle on the nightstand. And with the flick of a lighter and a twist of his fingers in his hair the candle burns bright the next day, as if it never had melted at all.
This version of home burns under his rage, it crumbles under his grief, it struggles against his determination.
Deep in a dusty ravine, Tommy’s (fake) body is pulled against another, his brother's arms pulling him close with a shuddering sob. It’s not him, he’s been burnt out of tears lifetimes ago (or at least that what he tells himself), and it makes him tilt his head to look up at his brother. He should flinch, because this version of Wilbur is akin to the one back in Pogtopia, in both looks and circumstances (because he refuses to accept he’s back there, even if the ravine looks almost the same). (it’snotpogtopiaitcan’tbe)
“I-I don’t know what I did wrong!” His not brother cries, looking into his eyes and coming up desperate, like he’s drowning in whatever he see’s in Tommy’s tattered soul, and as his chest heaves in his breathes, words accompany it, “Why are you so- so- so angry at the world? What did I do wrong?”
Tommy doesn’t have an answer worth saying, he shudders and bares his teeth, making his brother flinch away from his clenched fists. The sight chips at the gnawing hole in his heart, and he rips himself away from the comfort in favour of running far away.
Or- not far at all, he instead had found a high part of the ravine and jumped, ignoring the screams of horror in the distance as his body and soul crumbles against the rock.
And-
He wakes.
Laying in a bed that should be his own, he closes his eyes against the reality around him, breathing in, and out, the lingering cold of the void begging him to just listen-
Lifetimes pass in the blink of an eye, not through dissociation this time, but through fury unbridled, through grief and through desperation. He tries to prove his destiny wrong, he tries to live his life as long as possible, but somehow every fucking time, he dies younger than he’d like. He made it to a whopping thirty, one time, before he got hit by a train, for no fucking reason, RIGHT when he was settling into the possibility of staying for a full lifetime this time.
Maybe it's his slowly ageing soul, maybe it's the nostalgia of waking up in another lifetime and coming face to face with his father. But something urges him forward one night, fresh and a stranger in this world, the lingering void parting his cracked lips.
“Hey Phil…” He whispers, and the man startles across from the campfire.
He’s not sure why the two of them are out camping in this lifetime, or why his not father was sharpening his sword across from him, but all he knew is that he wanted to say… something.
“Yea kid?” Phil blinks at him, replying slowly, disbelief colouring his face pale in the flicking firelight.
Maybe his Tommy hadn’t talked before, the thought makes Tommy’s lip curl into something resembling a smile, though it came across empty. He couldn’t bother trying to find the right actor to play this time, he just wanted to… to be... him. Just him. Just Tommy. The Tommy shoved into an aching body, shivering and exhausted as he holds his bony hands out to the warmth of the campfire.
There are scars crisscrossing his fingers.
He doesn’t recognise them.
“Can…” His throat burned with the effort it took to speak, and for a moment he wonders if the universe will let him say this at all, “Can I… ask you something?”
The avian across from him slides his sword down into the dirt next to him, eyes dark, studying him intensely, trying to string him apart with just his darting eyes and thrumming fingers on his clothed knee, “Sure…?”
The stars above twinkling their encouragement, or horror, or apprehension, or something darker as Tommy whispers, “Do you believe in the multiverse?”
Phil blinks a few times before he cocks his head, wings dark as the void behind him ruffling momentarily as if unsettled, “I… I guess? It makes sense, right? Given how we already have ‘server’s’ that we can travel between, I haven’t really thought about it to be honest with you mate.”
Tommy hums his response, eyes hooded as he stares at his once father across from him. And when he speaks, his voice comes out barely a whisper “If you… could travel the multiverse… what would you do?”
The older man lets out a startled laugh, “Travel the multiverse?” he echoes, and the beginnings of a smile make his lip quirk upwards, “How fantastical.” But he tilts his head up to the stars regardless, “I guess.. it would be pretty fun to explore, see how different the other universes could be.”
“Really?” Tommy whispers his response without thought nor care, staring at the flickering flames and ignoring the echoed explosions within the sparks. He lowers his hands down to his own legs, wrapping around his knees and drawing them up, pressing himself tight against the log he’s sat up against. Fun is… not the word he would use, and maybe that had something to do with dying so many times. Or perhaps it was just because Tommy was broken, so he asks instead, “Have you ever died Phil?”
The man across from him startles, almost sliding off the stump he was sat on in his surprise. His wings beat a few times to right himself, and when his mouth opens an awkward laugh is ripped from his throat, “O-Of course not! That’s not possible kid, what kind of question is that?”
The broken child squints across the fire, at the baffled expression on the others face, and he almost laughs at what he see’s, “Is it because you’re immortal?”
“How did you-”
“Phil.” Tommy cuts off his response with a biting tone, one that makes the older man’s jaw snap shut in an instant. He’s staring at him, wide eyed, and there's something dark edging into his azure eyes, an almost… realisation. The feathers of his wings ruffle behind him as goosebumps run down the visible skin of his arm. His fingers twitch towards where his sword lay reflecting the firelight at his side. He doesn’t take it just yet.
The teenager blinks slowly, watching every harsh rise and fall of the other's chest, the speed of it betraying how unsettled he seemed to be.
“You…” Phil murmurs slowly “You’re not a… kid… are you?”
Tommy tilts his head, “Am I not?”
“You’re something else...” The blonde man continues slowly, like he’s testing the waters, but fearing its depths, “Something… older… perhaps even older them me...”
Older then Phil?
He wants to laugh at that, an old joke between them almost bubbling past his lips, but it falls short and dies on his tongue, bitter and cold. But he’s not wrong, is he? Tommy has already lived many lifetimes, sets of a few decades max, going upwards of a thousand by now. Maybe if he had kept track, he’d know how old he really is. He chuckles, hollow and performative as he lets his piercing gaze drop to the fire again, “I… I don’t know how old I am Phil… I lost track a long time ago.”
“How do you know my name?”
Phil’s question causes his eyes to flutter closed, and a small bitter smile quirks onto his cracked lips, “How do you know me?” he answers with a question instead, and it causes the man across from him to huff.
“I...I don’t know you kid-” And then he pauses, and if Tommy had dared to look he’d see the deep frown on the others face, “Or- not kid I guess- We only met a couple of weeks ago, you haven’t even told me your name yet… this is the first time you’ve spoken...”
Tommy lets his eye peek open, meeting the other’s gaze, in which was both human caution and curiosity in equal bounds, a testament to his strength in the face of the unknown. To award his bravery, or perhaps to pass on a bit of himself for safekeeping, he replies softly, far too soft for the crackling tension in the air, “I… I’m Tommy, and there’s a good chance this body is as well.”
The avian across from him flinches at his words, and there's a bit more tremble in his voice when he replies, “This body?”
It must be horrifying, to think that across from him lay something not human at all. And a shiver runs up Tommy’s spine at the thought that maybe he’s right.
Tommy pulls his knees closer into his chest, holding himself so tight like he’d fall apart at any second, so tight he could barely breathe as he whispers, “I’m going to explain my life to you Phil, and I want you to listen closely alright?” He stares down his not father across the flames, watching the myriad of emotions that spring through his flickering gaze. But the man nods eventually, and that’s good enough for Tommy.
He sucks in a breath of frigid air, and lets out the lava in his lungs as he drops his tight hold on his own body, dropping his arms to his sides and letting his knees drop into a crisscross position. He tilts his head up to the stars above, resting his golden locks on the log behind him.
“My name is Tommy Innit, I am- was- 16 years old” The boy says, and it pierces through the silence of the night louder than before, a bubbling emotion unnamed rising to his lips, “I was a child soldier born in a universe far away from here,” and the words taste like ash on his tongue, “And I thought death would be something I’d relish, a break from such an exhausting life,” And his fingers dug into the dirt beneath him, “But its not- death- I don’t get to see her,” and he heaves in a breath, and the words tumble faster and faster past his lips, he screws his eyes shut against the judging stars above, “I get kicked out, into different universes, over and over and over-”
He shudders and his shoulders hunch up, curling his whole body inwards as his eyes burst open to glare across at the man frozen across from him.
“Over and over-” Tommy finds himself snarling, emotions bubbling over and hissing past his lips in curses unsaid, “I die- I live- I die- and it won’t fucking stop!” He throws his hands up, and ignores the way the man grabs his sword in an instant, instead wrapping his own bony fingers around his hair, pulling at the mats he never knew were there, “It won’t fucking stop Phil!” He hisses, he spits, and the man across from him shrinks back from his fury, “I don’t know who I am here!” He drags his head to the side by his scalp, kinking his neck and shooting pain up his spine, “I just get dropped into a body that’s still Tommy! But not me!” He spits the word as he curls his fingers through the strands of his hair, the sensitive skin of old scars stinging as they pull against the fine hairs there.
Phil looks like he wants to speak, his jaw opening and closing in the resemblance of words, but all that comes out is a shaky breath that chokes in his throat. His hand wrapped around the hilt of his sword, clenching and unclenching, but before he can attempt again to respond, Tommy is stumbling to his feet.
“Who was this Tommy before me?!” Tommy snarls, throwing his hands out into the night air, to the flames just out of reach, familiar and warm. “What is this universe?!” He howls into the night, a broken, wretched thing ripped from his burning throat, “Why am I here?! Just to kill him?! Just to kill this version of me?!” He shoots one scarred hand out towards the adult across from him, ignoring the way the man flinches, “Look at me! Is this a mercy?! Do I exist just to die, Phil?! Tell me!"
A shuddering breath and Phil looks on the verge of tears as he hikes his shoulders higher, trying not to let his eyes stray from the boy but failing miserably. There's a moment of silence except for the broken pants of Tommy, heaving in air that fail to quite settle in his lungs before he’s hissing them out into the night. It's there that the teenager notices the burning behind his eyes and the cool liquid dripping down his taught cheeks.
He’s crying.
He shudders, a mix of disgust and relief making his head spin as he sways on his feet. He can’t remember the last time he’d cried. It must have been lifetimes ago, maybe in the voids clutches.
“Why…” Phil’s whisper forces his attention back to the man across the fire, lifetimes of distance between them but only a wingspan away, “Why tell me this?” He asks, and it’s almost like he’s begging, “Why me?”
Tommy shudders, and his hands pull close to wrap around his own arms, there’s an ache in his very soul as he whispers back, “You… you were my father, once upon a time.”
The man startles, and his skin takes on a new hue of pale, like the thought made him sick, “So you… trust me?”
The boy laughs, and the laughter tears from his throat, flaying the edges from emotions burning bitter, “Trust you? What does it matter? I’m just going to die anyway! Who cares if you betray me!” And as tears drip slowly down his scared cheeks he whispers, “Wouldn’t be the first time…” Though he’s not sure if Phil could pick it up over the crackling of the fire between them.
Phil, as surefooted as he had always seemed to Tommy, just looks lost now, eyes drifting between the boy’s eyes and his shaking hands. He wets his lips and slowly lowers his wings down, pulling them to his back from where they had raised subconsciously in self defence. Even so, he can’t quite let go of the hilt of his sword.
“Tommy...” He starts, and the name sounds softer than anything else said tonight, it makes the boy shudder under its familiarity, “Do you… want a hug?”
At first, all Tommy can do is stare, even when Phil winces at his own words, even when he opens his shaking arm up in offering, even when he frowns as if he is questioning why he even asked at all. All Tommy can do… is blink at him.
The immortal boy is leaping across the fire before he even decides whether he really wants it, shooting across with a ferocity that makes them both flinch in shock. Phil goes as if to swing his sword, but Tommy shoots into his chest with a thump and knocks them both to the ground. He narrowly misses the blade that slices a thin line up his wrist, a narrow brush with amputation that makes the man beneath him flinch again, guilt painting his skin paler. But with a chest full of lanky teenager and now pinned to the dirt, all he can do is push one hand into the boy's shoulder.
“Tommy-”
Said teenager pulls the man's robes closer, burying his face in to the warmth of his chest and heaving out a cry, a sob, and a wail, cutting off any attempt at conversation the man could try. Like a dam raging in a summer storm, the walls crumble and flood over them both, emotions once buried bubbling across the valley between them. And Tommy finds himself screaming. High pitched, piercing, and filled with grief from lifetimes remembered and forgotten.
The winged adventurer still can’t quite let go of his sword, but he does awkwardly wrap one arm around the boy and squeeze.
And Tommy falls apart.
With his eyes closed and his memories bursting at the seams, as Tommy wails he can almost feel the brush of wings on his back, of all enveloping warmth, of familiarity, of family. Of a father long gone and a brother long dead, of friends and foes and of a home never to be seen again. He heaves in a breath, cut off by a sob and a low drawn-out wail, but it's enough to breathe in the not quite right smell of nostalgia.
It’s not the same. Never the same, but for just a moment, under the flicking firelight and the onlooking stars, he can close his eyes and pretend.
He spends the night in his father's arms, like a small boy crying after a nightmare who crawls into their parents' bed to sleep the memory away within their arms. And when dawn rises, he’s standing at the clearing away from Phil, they stare at each-other from across the way, the hot coals of the campfire dying with the rising light. A baby robin calls out to its parents nearby and there's a singsong as they return to the nest for one last goodbye for the day. The forest lights up around them in the flickering dawn light passing between the leaves. The forest lights up, and Tommy can’t bear to look at it.
“Why not stay?” Phil asks from his place, once again on the stump, watching him with weary eyes and bloodshot sclera, like he’d cried as hard as Tommy, though they both know that could never really be true. His sword is still in his hand, and there's mud caked between the ruffled feathers on his wings from where he had laid in the dirt for the hours now passed.
Tommy laughs, and it's not as bitter as before, a bit lighter as he shakes his head, “You know... I’ve never told anyone about my life before Phil.” He says in lieu of an answer, but it seems enough, because the avian tilts his head with something knowing in his eyes, “Are you afraid to find out what living with that would be like?”
The boy, scared and broken and a smashed puzzle piece in this universe, turns away from the clearing, eyes closed and shoulders slumped, “I’m not ready.” He replies simply, “But… for what its worth, I appreciate the ear.”
“And the shoulder,” Phil replies dryly. As if it weren’t more than that, his robe soaked from tears and snot and emotions beyond even his immortal comprehension, “I’ll remember you... kid.”
Even knowing what he was, he still called him kid huh?
Tommy glances back as he starts his walk away to God knows where, and as the trees start to close between them he catches the gaze of his father. The sight makes him cock his aching hand up in a soft wave goodbye, and he finds a smile rising to his lips unbidden. There's warmth in his chest, barely recognisable with how long it had been missing. It makes him want to cry again. It makes him weak.
The end of that universe comes as a sharp cliff only half a day’s walk from there.
And though he dies to spiky rocks and broken bones, he finds his heart was lighter than it has been in years. And that can’t be a bad thing, right?
And-
He’s rewarded by awaking again. In the body of a child looking up at the bloody wingspan of his father, coated in blood as an empire crumbles around him. It’s a mercy that he doesn’t die to the man that day. It manages to keep their soft campfire memory untainted for just a lifetime more.
And the cycle continues.
He doesn’t see his family every lifetime, but he swears he’s seeing them more and more often nowadays. Sometimes when he’s in the void between deaths, he tries to ask why?
Why them?
Is it a mercy?
A gift?
It doesn’t feel like one when he is run through by a sword, his best friend on the other end cold and unseeing, as if Tommy never mattered in the first place. Which, in that universe, was maybe the truth. He never got to stay long enough to find out.
It’s only a couple dozen short lifetimes later when he remembers talking actually helps with processing everything. He could do it with Phil, so why not someone else?
The opportunity comes in the form of a dark pit, steel bars, and a dirty ditch of a cell he shares with one other. Tubbo is a name he wishes he had the pleasure of saying more often, but in the expanse of lifetimes, he’s not as common of a character as he’d like. Maybe that was gonna change, he can only cross his fingers and blindly hope that it was so.
Tommy is curled up against the wall, his friend by his side leaning on his shoulder. Tommy has been in this multiverse for days, and this Tubbo keeps looking at him like he’s seeing a stranger. It clenches at his heart and threatens to rip it from his corpse for a body, now young and small. Tommy has little round ears on his head in this lifetime, and his fluffy brown striped tail trembling around them betrays the emotions welling in his chest. It was the unfortunate truth of animal attributes, it was so much harder to lie with their blatant body language. He curses it, now and forever.
The sight of said twitching tail makes his brown-haired friend tilt his head to look up at him, searching his eyes for a moment. His little goat ears flick thoughtfully, and he frowns at whatever he see’s in Tommy’s eyes, “What’s wrong, big man?” he whispers, still far too loud in the silence of their cage. The only sound accompanying it is the dripping of what should be water from the stalagmites above.
Tommy flinches at its pitch, and he draws his knees closer to his chest. They feel too small, too bony, too weak to be his, even if he knew it to be true. This universe wasn’t a kind one from the get-go, he had been shoved straight into a fight to the death with a teenager older than him and expected to survive while still choking on the void. It was only when he subconsciously shoved the sword in his hands between the other's ribs that he realises where he was. The roaring of the crowd explodes in his ears, and the rumbling of the earth encases him on all sides, a prison carved from the earth, just for them. He doesn’t quite throw up, his child stomach too shrivelled and empty for that, but the realisation makes him so nauseous his head doesn’t stop spinning for his first few hours.
He’s still looking down at his younger best friend, and the words leave him before he can stop them, in a voice too high to truly feel like his, “You know something's wrong with me… don’t you?”
Big blue eyes blink at him, and Tubbo grins shakily up at him, “Of course I do, you’re my best friend man, you didn’t come back from that fight the same, something obviously happened.”
Something did happen.
He had killed Tubbo’s best friend.
Tommy shudders, and for a moment the thought of speaking was so overwhelmingly awful it stole his breath away.
But when he looks down at this younger version of his friend, he finds his lips moving before he knows it, “I...I am so scared Tubbo.”
His best friend's eyes shudder closed, and a breath leaves his tiny lungs, letting his head rest back on Tommy’s taller shoulder, “Me too Tommy,” he whispers, “What are you scared of today? For me, it's the dark."
They both don't mention the fact that the only light was a flickering lantern several cells down, the darkness swallowing them both in the corner of their room.
“I’m scared of you hating me,” Tommy whispers, leaning his matted head on his friends, relishing in the warmth even if the sharp little horn under his friends' hair digs into his cheek, “I killed your best friend.”
Tubbo doesn’t move, but he does stiffen up in place, his small dirty hands, which were holding onto Tommy’s arm, clenching in his surprise. Even so, he doesn’t lift his head, his eyes horrifyingly out of view beneath his head of curls, “How could you kill yourself, Tommy? That doesn’t make sense.”
“I killed-” The blonde swallows down the terror rising up, hating every step he was taking, closer and closer to that horrifying cliff he was building up in-front of him, “I killed your Tommy, I’m not him…I-I replaced him days ago.” And yet he still takes it, like watching a car-crash in slow motion, unable to tear his eyes away.
There's a silence, where the tension drags on, and for a moment Tommy thinks that maybe it’ll stay like that for the rest of his stay in this lifetime. But instead, Tubbo runs his nails over the skin of his arm and whispers hoarsely, “You seem like Tommy to me, boss man, are you sure?”
This startles a laugh out of the younger boy, and he coughs around the sudden inhaling of musty air, his body shakes as he covers his mouth with the back of his hand. When he’s able to breathe again, he doesn’t hesitate to reply, “Well- I guess technically I am Tommy, just not the one from your universe.”
This time, Tubbo draws his head back, bumping him up and sending a shrill panic shooting through him, soft scared chatters ripped from his throat before he can stop them. He flushes at the noise, but freezes under the stare of his friend, eyes wide and so blatantly curious it makes his empty stomach lurch. “My universe? You’re from another universe?” Tubbo asks, something sparking behind his dull ocean eyes, “What’s your universe like?”
The innocent question takes his breath away, and Tommy’s eyes snap shut to avoid the innocence of his friend. He could answer, could describe his home to him, the rolling hills, the walls and the flag and the country he fought tooth and nail to build, but-
But-
But first he asks softly, “You believe me?” And his cracking voice lays his emotions bare between them. He opens his eyes and looks down again, breath stolen away again in an instant.
Tubbo smiles, and there’s a missing tooth, another blemish on a scarred face, baby fat still clinging to his cheeks even if his bony body betrayed their starvation. The sight burns through Tommy’s heart, leaving a chasm of grief in its wake. “Of course I do,” his friend, far too young, replies, “It sounds cool, Have you been to many universes before?”
Tommy shudders, eyes closing again as he rolls the answer around in his head. Is it worth being honest? Is it really? And then he thinks of kind eyes and twitching feathers of void, and the answer is decided before he can even process that he’s speaking, “A lot, I’ve lost count Tubbo, You would love them.”
“Tell me about them!” Tubbo’s hands tug at his arm, insistent and curious, like the boy before the wars, like the Tubbo that lay dead and buried in Tommy’s endless memories. Like the man with a forgotten gravestone.
His lip quirks up, and the blonde launches into a tale he didn’t quite know the end of. He speaks of the lives spent living, where he was a superhero flying through the skies. Where he was a dragon roaring flames across the forests abound, where freedom lay at his fingertips and living was just that- living. He speaks, even though he stumbles over his words, memories of being slain and beat and tortured fluttering to life under his musing. Deaths long hidden play behind his eyelids, but he never lets them go, holding them tight to his chest in favour of telling Tubbo about all the things good in the multiverse. He tells tales of battles untold, of tending to a garden with his family, of a festival of colours of life, he tells tales upon tales of lives lived and died in. Until… until…
“What does the sky look like?” Tubbo whispers.
And Tommy’s heart seizes in his chest, staring down at his friend, his hands, which had been gesturing wildly into the darkness to accompany his stories of sailing boats through the sky, shudder and he snatches them back to his chest. There's a moment's pause, and his ears pop, the sound of seagulls and laughter are replaced by the drip drip drip of stalagmites.
“The sky…” Tommy whispers, “Is vast and open, it can be so many colours, blue as your eyes, or as pink as Techno’s-” He pauses and shakes his head, “Or as pink as the skin of our lips. When the sun sets, it lights up into a rainbow of colours, of golds and oranges and pinks and purples… It’s beautiful,” He breathes, and his eyes flutter closed, “And when night falls, the sky is a galaxy of blue and purples, stars twinkle above, bright and beautiful, millions and millions of them make up the sky, you can find shapes called constellations between them.”
When he opens his eyes again, he can see the galaxy reflected in his friend's eyes, and Tubbo’s skin looks brighter than it had ever been in this universe, flushed and excited.
“Will you show me one day? Are you going to come with me when we get out?”
The answer is immediate, firm, unquestionably the truth.
“Yes.” he replies, and even though his Tommy coat has been set aside in the darkness, Tommy still say’s his part, more him than he’d been in years, “You can’t get rid of me, big T, you’re my best friend.”
Tubbo giggles, placing his head back on his shoulder and rubbing his cheek into his scratchy shirt, a satisfied sigh leaving him as he whispers, “Tell me more? What other universes have you been to?”
And Tommy, the real, breathing Tommy, gets up on stage and performs for his best friend, a wide smile on his face as he regales tales untold. For days on end, he sings, like a canary in the mines, sings for lives out of reach, and those once buried. In the few moments of pause between, he once asks Tubbo a question, soft and hesitant as Tubbo splits their rations, a single potato, for the day.
“Do you miss your Tommy?”
And Tubbo just smiles, something soft and sad and far too old for his youthful eyes and stubby limbs, “I do” he admits, and it causes Tommy’s heart to seize, “But he’s somewhere better now, I’d like to think he’s taking part in your stories now, he’d be pretty cool with wings.”
And that was that.
One day, in between the stories, Tubbo is taken away into one of his fights, a daily occurrence which usually left him mute and begging for tales harder than before. An escape from their daily routine easily grasped with Tommy’s appearance in this universe.
But this time.
This time he doesn’t return.
And it doesn’t take a genius to figure out why.
It’s not the first time a Tubbo has died, far from it, but he still crumbles in his cage. He wails and screams and begs to trade his life for his, to give him time just to- just to show him the fucking sky. His only answer is some faceless guard banging on his bars to shut him up.
The next time someone attempts to drag him out of his cage, he takes one look at them and knows exactly what he was born to do.
Like a clarity born from grief, for the first time in many lifetimes he knows what he is here for.
He leaps, wrapping his jaw snapped tight against the man's throat and pulling, his fangs ripping through flesh and tissue and splattering blood over his vision. And that's all he can see from then forth, red bloody red. He’s not sure how it goes, all he knows is he has a mission here. And by the gods was he going to complete it.
Switches flicked, bodies dropped, wounds acquired, until all he can see was blood, all he can smell was blood, all he can feel was blood.
There’s screaming, crying, and children of all ages rush out past the dozens of bodies dropped in his wake. They run, and run, and run and Tommy wishes them to never stop. To continue running and leave, to escape and be free, because far above him is now the dark sky, the twinkling stars, and… There's a far too big sword in his hand, and there are eyes above on him, burning through his soul and flaying him bare beneath its otherworldly owner.
He knows who that is, or at least he knows the counterpart for this god.
So he bares his teeth, licking the copper coating his teeth, and whispers with a smile far too wide for a little boy such as him.
“Blood for the Blood God.”
An electric shock shoots straight through his brain and down into the earth between his bloody toes. There’s a question in its spark, in its pain, a question he doesn’t hesitate to answer as his knees give out, blood loss dripping his conscious down into the dirt alongside his blood.
“Keep them safe...”
And as he falls to the ground, he heaves in one last breath.
“Or I’ll fucking kill you.”
Amusement, the barest twitches of scared lips on a god not easily entertained. And it makes him crack his own.
The void brushes the blood from his eyelids, and when he opens his eyes, it's to the endless expanse of the in between. It gives him just enough time to think- Would Tubbo be proud of him for what he did? Or would he hate the monster he’d become? Could Tommy handle it, If he did?
And-
He wakes. With a heaving breath and a jerk of his new body, he is shoved upright from where the Tommy he had replaced had been laying on the grass. Far above, the rising sun meets him, stars fading beneath a painting of beautiful golds and pinks. The wind rustles through the trees and his hair in equal measure, fields of gold wheat whistling down in the valley before him. And… it was a moment where, just for a moment, Tommy could picture a little Tubbo by his side.
“Wow...” The boy would whisper, eyes glimmering as he stares in awe up at the sight above them, “It’s… beautiful...”
And Tommy would say, with his heart heavy and fat globs of tears dripping down his cheeks, “I told you so.”
But there would be no response, because that Tubbo was gone.
Except, and the immortal boy clenches his fists in the fabric on his chest as he thinks, except for his memory of him. He still existed within him. In his heart, in his mind, in his grief.
He wakes in a field of gold, in a lifetime far removed from home, and for the first time ever he might have an idea of why he’d been sent on this endless journey. Tommy has a newfound appreciation for the sky from then on, and as he steps through the lifetimes that follow, he swears to enjoy it enough for that little boy left in that bloody pit.
He dies, but he lives as well.
A dance of life and death that burn the curtains to ash, useless beneath its eternal symphony, a stage never to be closed. He thinks of that little Tubbo again one day, many lifetimes later, and he finds himself smiling softly even if it digs out grief once left buried.
“What are you smiling about?” someone asks to his left, and he tilts his head to look their way.
Technoblade… was an interesting character, regardless of the lifetime he was in. Very few versions of this brother had a perfect category assigned to him, the perfect villain or perfect hero. It was one of the things that made Tommy fond of him, and it made it easier to reply as he murmurs, “Just thinking of a friend.”
They’re in Techno's apartment, a broken shack of an abode with no warm water and broken floorboards. His not brother skips over them with practised ease and approaches to settle down on the other end of the couch from him. He has a cup of hot cocoa in his hand, and Tommy’s fingers tingle as a newfound awareness of the cup in his own warms his heart. He had almost forgotten about the sweet treat, too lost in the endless memories within his mind to care.
The longing look on his face must capture his the other's attention because he scrunches his nose and grumbles, “You’re not having friends over kid, it’s too dangerous.”
Ah, that's right. This life, he was staying at ‘The Blade’s’ apartment because he was getting targeted by heroes. It had been such a measly thing, just healing the man beside him in the dead of night in a dirty little alleyway, but someone had seen, and after a few close calls, Techno had borderline kidnapped him into his empty apartment. ‘For his safety’ the villain had said, and Tommy had just rolled his eyes and let it happen.
Rather than retorting immediately like he wanted to, Tommy lifted his cup of chocolate to his lips and sipped, the explosion of flavour on his tongue making his eyes flutter shut. When he pulls it back, his voice comes out a bit hoarse as he whispers, “It’s not like he can visit, anyway.”
“Oh...”
The tone in his voice must have betrayed him, because Techno shuffles in his place, his far too large form curling inwards like he cringed at the thought of the boy next to him having emotions, “Sorry… for your loss… I guess...”
Tommy giggles, peeking one eye open to look at the hulking form of his brother beside him. With his pink braided hair over his shoulder, his ruffled shirt and brown cotton pants, he was achingly close to his original brother. Tusks, pointed ears, gold piercings, and all. His scars were different, and he didn’t act the same way around Tommy, but it’s not like they knew each-other that well, so it was only fair. He thought they were getting closer though, in the few months the Immortal had been in this universe. So maybe that relationship was possible, far, far into the future of this lifetime, if he got to stick around long enough without dying.
When Techno turns to look at him again, his bloody red eyes come up almost concerned, though he was frowning uncomfortably at their extended silence. It makes Tommy giggle again, dropping his eyes to his drink and staring into the depths of his chocolate goodness. The void stares back, and he finds himself whispering, “It’s fine… it was a long, long time ago, I’d processed it years ago”
Techno eyes him for another moment, taking a sip of his drink, before drawling slowly, “Do you… want to talk about it?
A bubbly laugh, and Tommy barks out a, “Fuck no!” And it causes the pink-haired man to relax in his seat to let out a relieved, “Oh thank god, I thought I was gonna have to- you know-” and he gestures Tommy’s way like that explained it all.
“Be nice?” The blonde tilts his head with a shit-eating grin shot the others' way, and he only gets a dirty look in response, “Don’t worry Blade, you’re lucky, if I told you about him, I’d just have to kill myself you see.”
And that… was a joke far too dark for this universe, because Techno jerks in place with wide eyes. “Heh?” He exclaims, skin paling in the flickering light of the broken light bulb above, “That's- That’s not how it usually goes kid” And he uses one hand to mimic a puppet speaking as he raises his voice almost mockingly, “It’s supposed to be, uh, ‘If I told you that I’d have to kill you!’ Right?”
Tommy stifles his laugh behind his mug, and chokes on the grief bubbling in his throat as he shakes his head, “No… Not with me, that's not how it goes.”
Techno goes quiet, lowering his hand and staring at him for a moment longer, like he could puzzle out his complex expression with just a look. Which he might, Technoblade’s always seemed to know something they shouldn’t. It was uncanny how Technos always seemed to just know things, even without being told, like some higher power whispered it in his ear. That he had answers to impossible questions.
Which he might, he did have those voices, right? Did they always know the answer?
Actually, as Tommy watches, something pained pulls across the man’s face, ear flicking and expression pulling into a grimace as his eyes dart to the ground. Like thinking was painful, like the voices were yelling something in his ears. He rubs between his eyes, and lets out a deep sigh, exhausted and irritated all in one. Pitying the pain in his expression, Tommy clears his throat and says, “I’m not going to kill myself, big man, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
Techno winces, but shakes his head, Like the thought hadn’t even occurred to him, “No its not- It’s not that” And he sounds just as pained as he grumbles and huffs through his words, like it hurt to say, “Its just- The voices want me to tell you about them.”
Tommy blinks and stares into Techno’s ruby eyes, though Techno had fixed them firmly on the ground. He doesn't break his eye-contact as he takes a loud sip of his drink, the obnoxious noise causing the pink haired mans lip to curl against his tusks and for a newfound glare to shoot towards him, irritation bleeding onto his face. Just as quickly as the glare appears, it falls to one of disbelief, “What is up with you?” He asks, a bit breathless, “You.. You don’t care- why aren’t you reacting? I just said I had voices!”
He’s agitated, if the bouncing of his cloven hooves on the ground was any sign, and maybe it's time for Tommy to speak, but he just closes his eyes and drinks the warm comfort in his hands. Drawing out the moment for just a little more, just because he can. Is this a Tommy thing? Or is it a Tommy Coat thing? He wasn’t sure.
“Seriously? What is wrong with you?” Techno snarls, and it prickles goosebumps up the boy’s spine, a long deep memory of getting sliced two ways sideways by the man across from him swimming murky in his ocean of memories.
“A lot,” Tommy hums, and he opens his eyes again, “Why do… the voices want you to talk to me? They love me that much?” He curls a lip into a cocky smirk, the Tommy coat slipping subconsciously onto his shoulders, but it falls off just as quickly when Techno grinds his teeth together to respond.
“They… seem to know you.”
Well that’s weird. Maybe they know about the Tommy he’d replaced?
They must be loud, because Techno’s shoulders go up and he groans against the cacophony of noise unheard in his head, “Chat- no chat shut up, one at a time-”
“Yea Chat.” Tommy sings, “If you want to talk to me, you gotta be quiet, make a cue or something, one question at a time”
The villain, for a moment, looks even more pained them before, but then the tension in his broad shoulders loosens and he lets out a relieved sigh, though his eyebrow still twitches. And then his frown deepens, confusion making his eyebrows shoot to his hairline, “You- They’re saying-”
Something in his gaze now fixed on Tommy makes his skin prickle, and he clenches his fingers around the cup in his hands. “They’re saying you… made a deal with the Blood God?!” And Techno’s face pulls open in shock before it sharpens, glaring daggers at the teen, “You made a deal with the Blood God? Tommy, tell me they’re joking!”
He must take too long to respond, or he makes an expression that comes off too much as an answer, because Techno surges forward and grabs his shoulders, “What the hell?! When did this happen?! What did you do?!”
Hot chocolate drips down his fingers, and he stares wide eyed at his faux brother, because… what? What were they even talking about? Did that happen in this previous Tommy’s life? He doesn’t feel the blood god's eyes on him here, so it doesn't make sense- Then, as if he had been placed on the cutting board, looking up at the knife, a realisation trickled through him. Horrifyingly clear. And the blade comes down with a snap of bone and wood.
“Are they…” he whispers, and a shudder runs up his spine, close enough to fear that Techno jerks his hands away in an instant, guilt painting his pink skin pale, “Are they talking about me? Or...or Tommy?”
And there’s a distinction there, in the way that only he could understand, but maybe, just maybe, Chat could too.
The confusion in Techno’s eyes makes Tommy’s heart ache, and it only gets worse when he seems to hear his answer. He wets his lips with his tongue before slowly replying, “They’re saying… You… They’re calling you Theseus.”
The name startles a bark of laughter from Tommy’s throat, and just as quick it morphs into a snarl of, “Don’t- Don’t fucking call me that!”
“Is that your-”
“It’s a nickname.” Tommy spits before Techno can get the words out, and he feels bitter memories well up in the space behind his eyelids, “You- Chat- Chat doesn’t get to call me that”
Techno winces, drawing back and staring at the floorboards again, where he murmurs, “They-They’re sorry- I think…” And then later, when moments have passed just to breathe, to ride out the storm of rage that had brewed in Tommy’s chest, Techno speaks again, “They’re not making much sense, but… What deal did you make, Tommy?”
His blue eyes flutter closed, and his eyebrows draw close as he places his cup down on the coffee table in-front of them, his fingers ached for its warmth, but it was starting to feel far too close to flames for comfort now.
He finds a lazy shrug pushes his shoulders up as he replies simply, “I just took the opportunity… since he was watching, to ensure their safety once I was gone.”
There's a silence, and it draws on long enough for Tommy to open his eyes to spy Techno’s expression. Pulled taught and something almost like horror in his eyes, “What… did you do? He only watches when-” and he snaps his jaws shut with a click of his tusks.
“...When you shed blood,” Tommy finishes his sentence bitterly, “Lots,” and he closes his eyes again, crimson greets him behind his eyelids, “And Lots,” there's the weight of a sword in his hand, a ghost of a memory, “of blood.” and it touches his throat, his teeth once fangs, his eyes once bloody. The memory washes over him in a cacophony of sensations that force a shiver down his spine.
Another silence, there’s a lot of those happening now, and it makes Tommy wonder if this was going to be the end of this lifetime, with this horrifying realisation.
But his brother speaks again, “What did you do?” He whispers hoarsely.
“What did you?” Tommy finds himself asking instead, and it makes the man flinch back, before his eyes narrow and he grits out his response, “I- I don’t know- I’ve always had his… favour, as long as I can remember.”
The blonde boy doesn’t bother opening his eyes, settled in the dripping scarlet beyond his eyelids, comforted by the familiarity of the veins in the darkness, “Maybe it wasn’t you then, maybe it was whoever came before you.”
“Like… a previous reincarnation?”
“Maybe.” Tommy shrugs.
Another pause, and it was getting irritating how long Techno was taking to think, he just wanted this conversation to be over with, to go back to normal, to ignore the way his brother was on the edge of exposing his bloody pulsing insides to the world.
“You’re avoiding the question Tommy.”
“I did what I had to.” The teenager didn’t hesitate to reply, “They killed him-” And his voice chokes for the first time this conversation, whole body convulsing against the sudden wildfire that sweeps through him, grief making his voice break at the seams and bleed molten fury, “They hurt so many people- It had to end- It was-” and his voice drops, down, down, down into the void he was torn from, “It was what I was made for.”
This time, he opens his eyes, and Techno is closer than before, a pained look in his eyes as he raised his hands towards him, awkward and unsure.
He was never good at this stuff, emotions, serious discussions, all that kind of stuff. It made Tommy want to laugh, but all that comes out is a hiss through his clenched teeth.
“Why do you not want to tell me about it? Is it so bad? You know I’m a villain, I’ve killed hundreds, thousands even, It can’t be worse than that, right?” His brother whispers, and Tommy shudders, the line in the sand blurs alongside his vision as tears well in his waterline. He swallows them back, but the pink-haired man across from him still gives him this horrible pitying look that makes anger bubble and pop like lava in his chest.
Tommy’s lip trembles as he replies a soft, “I’m not- I’m not ready- I-I-I’m not sure how to live in a world that knows what I am.”
“You’re not a monster, Tommy.” Techno admonished, almost like he’s reading his mind, but coming up short, just a bit too close to the truth for his liking.
“I’m not,” Tommy agrees easily, finding his fists have settled around his own arms, digging nails into his skin, holding himself together as he unravels and whispers, “I’m just Tommy… and somehow that’s worse.”
When he looks at the big bad villain across from him, there’s something broken for an expression, confused and lost, like a young boy who had yet to see the expanse of the world, only a touch of knowledge to know that he was missing something big. A twitch of his eyebrow betrays the voices in his head, and it makes Tommy speak again without question.
“I’m not telling him anything else Chat.” and that snaps Techno’s gaze back to him from where it had drifted, “I’m not ready, maybe in another lifetime… alright?”
Just for a moment, it's almost like he can hear them, whispers in the wind, in the cocoa smell from his drink, in the twinkling of the stars out of reach.
We’ll hold you to that!
Hell yea!
Why is this fanfiction edging us?! What did we doooooooo
Technosoft!! Yay!!
Ugh Fine
Blood for the Blood God!
E
E
E
Damnit!! Right when we're getting the juicy stuff!!
E
See you there!
He lets out a startled laugh at the sudden noise, wet and shuddering as he curls in on himself on the couch, leaning against the armrest and holding his lanky body close. Like it could ground him together, like it could hold him in place, just for a lifetime longer.
“Do you…”
Techno’s uncertain voice makes Tommy look up again, and the grimace on the man's face is telling of his next words, “Do you… want a hug?”
Tommy considers this, really, really considers this, but deep down Tommy is a weak little boy. Dead at 16, even if he knows he’s far far older than that now. So when his once brother opens his arms, he finds himself edging closer even as he battles with the embarrassment that this was sure to come later.
The large arms of his brother wrap around him, pulling him to comforting heat, and within his home, he shudders away the tears. Not quite the same without a crackling campfire and wings brushing against his back, but home nonetheless.
“We do not speak of this.” Techno grumbles, and with his whole body tense as he awkwardly pats at Tommy’s back, it only serves to make the blonde boy laugh, “Of course not big m-man!” He exclaims, trying to grab his Tommy coat once more, but his voice cracks and dies as he loses his grip on the boy he was supposed to be, another almost sob shaking his shoulders as he buries into his brother's chest.
Leaving behind Tommy… just Tommy.
And true to his word, they never speak of the things they had said that night. They never speak of those things in the following months, nor in the short lifetime he spends with Techno.
They’re almost like brothers by the end of it, and Tommy doesn’t hesitate to say so, with blood bubbling over his lips as Techno screams his desperation, his begging, his curses, holding him together as more blood is bled for the Blood God above. The villain curses its name and begs for its help in the same sentence. A mess of a man who pretends he’s the weapon they try to make him be. Tommy knows better, He knows the beating heart that lay beneath.
It's watching now, interest peaked far too late for Tommy’s liking.
Techno had only cried harder. Like the admission was the last thing he wanted to hear. Like the word ‘Brother’ physically pained him to hear.
“You never told me!” he had sobbed that day, whole body trembling in place, “You never told me who you are!”
Who he was?
Tommy just grinned red, and with one shaky hand he gripped Techno’s cape, soft, crimson and soaking up his blood where it was wrapped around him, cradling him softly, and he pulls. His brother lets himself get pulled closer, a wounded noise leaving his throat as he heaves another panicky breath. The blonde tilts his head up, and closes his eyes against the picture of his brother undone.
“Just ask Chat Tech,” He whispers around the bubbling blood in his throat, “I’ll allow them to talk about me, just this once, don’t waste it-” And when his hand gives out, caught by one far larger, his voice drifts off, “-and see you next time, Blood god.”
And-
He wakes.
He can feel his new body is made for this life, scaley and slimy, in the dark with water all around him. When he breathes, his lungs fill as easily as if he were breathing air. A mermaid in a cave. What a strange world he’s found himself in; But all he can focus on are the phantom hands in his hair and the bloody eyes far above.
The Blood God was still watching, or- no, another version of the god had sensed the bloodshed that had followed his death, his connection to it, just out of reach from its grasping, all-encompassing hands. This god feels almost… frustrated, bubbling the surrounding water, rising goosebumps up his spine. Tommy grins with jagged teeth into the dark, opening his arms up into the water, the cool feeling relaxing the phantom pains of death and void, “What’s wrong?” he asks into the expansive universe laid before him, “Can’t see the bloodshed in your name? Too far out of reach for you?”
There’s a hand, larger than life, redder than red, reaching through the expanse of time and space, and before he can even process its presence, it wraps around his fishy little body and squeezes until he goes pop. A smear of blood in the water is the only thing left behind.
And-
He wakes.
Guess he shouldn’t really piss off a god like that, let alone one like the Blood God. He laughs, in a bed not his own, curling into the soft down comforter and closing his eyes away from darkness to void. Tommy tucks away the memory of his brother for safekeeping, praying to any god that would hear him that he won’t ever forget. He can’t help that eventually, far far in the future, he won’t even remember that he was once human. That he’d lose all that made him human.
Tommy was scared. So very scared. Although he became desensitised to the typical things that scared people, he still had his fears. He was, at least originally, human after all.
He was scared of Dream for one.
A villain haunting his narrative, a villain who has no idea how much of a villain he truly was to Tommy. Not until...
Not until...
It was a universe like any other, magic and forests and adventures to be had, it was one where he had woken up in a little cottage and sung his praises for the feeling of magic caressing his soul. It was supposed to be a wonderful world, one where he could tuck fantastical stories in for safekeeping, to tell another Tubbo in his endless future.
But no.
Dream had found him, and this Dream- this fucking Dream- had taken one look at him and laughed.
“Well, would you look at that” He had drawled, his floating ball for a head dancing in delight, “You’ve got memories of other worlds!”
And all that he had built, the resilience, the apathy, the courage, and the joy; It crumbles to ash beneath a Dream who could read his mind.
This lifetime lasted far too many years, regressed into a space he hadn’t been in since the first, since exile. He could barely tell which way the sky was anymore, waiting for Dream to point it out for him, because he had forgotten he could look for himself. It was- and he realises this lifetimes later- torture to be in that house, in that little cottage in the woods that should have been a haven.
It was hard to tell what was real in the lifetimes that followed that dreaded cottage, an installed fear through Dream’s twisted manipulation. After all, he had promised that that life would be the last, that’d he’d live and die under his friend's thumb.
He had died accidentally in that life, Dream panicking as he bleeds out from a wound that refused to close under the magic twisting around him, protecting him, urging him closer to death, promising him a future outside of this little cottage. It was almost like the universe wanted him gone.
And-
He wakes, but when he opens his eyes, all he can see is that there isn’t a Dream here, and he cries. Like a little child, terrified and lonely and repulsed and disgusted and horrified and relieved and angry and-
And-
It takes many lifetimes for him to quit searching for Dream, like a lost puppy dog at the pound, whining for its dead owner and refusing the homes that are offered to him.
And when he finally, finally, awakes from that terrible dream, that haze of needs and wants and fears, he wakes up angry.
He takes to drinking and drugs, and every time he thinks of the irony of this, given L’manburg’s origins, he laughs hysterically until he passes out. The band aid on the gaping hole in his soul does nothing but prevent his agony for a single night, a single dose, a single drink. But it’s something, and when he passes out delirious, he knows he’s too drunk to be coherent. It’s a comfort, knowing that way no-one could find out what he truly was this way. Most lifetimes he’s underage though, and that makes it a bit tricky, because sourcing drugs and alcohol as a minor was such a bloody pain.
He was lucky this time, he had managed to find some vodka in a cupboard, hidden away by Phil years before he’d even arrived. He had taken one look at the dusty old bottle and praised his foster father, sneaking it back to his room to drink straight from the bottle.
As the feeling of burning lava runs down his throat, he can’t help but feel a bit guilty, and that makes him tilt his head back to drink faster. When he comes up for air, his thoughts of Phil and how disappointed he’d be fade beneath the buzz of the band-aid.
Unfortunately for him, there’s a soft knock on his door at that exact moment.
“Hey Tommy,” Wilbur, his foster brother, his not brother, whatever he was to him, whispers through the door, “Wanna go to the roof?”
Ever since he had arrived at their house a year and a half ago, he and his brother had taken to connecting beneath the stars. Wilbur had found him once, stargazing on the roof near his bedroom window, almost startling him off his perch, and laughed at his predicament. Tommy had grumbled and spat his insults, Tommy coat wrapped around his soul tight, but his brother had only joined him, a guitar in hand and a song for his troubles.
Ever since then, the rooftop has been their sanctuary, just between then, two brothers against the universe. He had yet to turn down an offer to join him beneath the stars.
And so, when Wilbur came to his room at such an inconvenient time, he knows he can’t just say no.
“Sure.” he replies softly, tucking the bottle under his bed, hidden from prying eyes.
The stars are twinkling tonight, and Tommy finds himself on his back, staring up at their dances with a frown on his face.
Wilbur is beside him, fiddling with his guitar, tuning it to perfection as he hums under his breath. Tommy tilts his head to look at him, relishing in the healthy flush to his cheeks and his thoughtful gaze as he goes about his task. The distant streetlights were reflecting in his umber eyes, and there's a sanity there that the blonde boy can’t help but search for, deep in his soul, every time he looks at his brother in this lifetime. And when he finds it, its like another weight is lifted from his shoulders.
As if sensing his gaze, the brown-haired man flicks those eyes to him, a small smile cracking his lips open, “You good Tom’s?” he whispers, quiet with the knowledge of how late it was. 3am was the best time for their bonding, but it sure made it difficult to not wake up the rest of the household. Tommy stares at him for a moment longer before turning his eyes upwards to the stars again, counting the constellations as he hums his affirmative. A Canis Major here, an Orion there, and a few more constellations later, the blonde boy’s eyes start to burn.
Maybe it was the alcohol in his system, or maybe it was the fact Wilbur was starting to play a tune, uncoordinated and experimental, but a tune nonetheless, but there was something growing in his chest.
The tune, so very familiar, unfinished but undeniably the same as within his memory. He tilts his head back to look at his brother, who is frowning at his guitar, humming under his breath as he flicks through a few chords. He hits gold with a certain combination, and when he plays the melody it rips memories straight from the depths of Tommy’s eternal soul.
Memories of a little van, of laughing friends and of late nights with his original brother, of sparing with Tubbo and of raising Fundy with his little crew. Memories of a country founded on freedom. Just them against the world.
He must have been staring for far too long, because he is jerked out of his memories when Wilbur lowers his guitar, staring at him with such sadness in his eyes it makes Tommy flinch away from it’s familiarity.
“Tommy,” he murmurs, “you know… you seem so… distant sometimes.”
The blonde winces, scrunching his face up and grumbling, “Do not, you’re imagining things, big man.”
“You do.” Wilbur insists, “You… It’s like you’re so much older than you seem.”
Breath punched from his lungs, all Tommy can do is snap his gaze back to his brother, wide eyed and horrified.
Did he know? Did he know? Did he know?
Oh, gods, what if he knows-
“It’s- It’s okay,” His brother whispers quickly, shuffling closer even when Tommy shuffles back in his horror, “It’s not a bad thing- i- um,” He scratches at the base of his neck awkwardly, gripping his old guitar tight, “Has Phil not told you yet?”
Tommy, tongue stuck behind his teeth, can only stare wide eyed at him. It’s enough of an answer, because Wilbur winces and barrels on, “Well, um, you see,” He pulls a face, so awkward and unsure and so unlike his brother it makes the boy cringe, “Phil is immortal?”
...What?
“What?” Tommy breathes, and Wilbur perks up at the response, quickly replying with a hesitant smile, “Phil and Techno, they’re both immortal, they must have been waiting to tell you or something,” And there's a flash of frustration in his eyes as he grits his teeth, “I told them to tell you ages ago.” He offers, like that could explain all the questions Tommy had spiralling in his head.
Through the rush of thoughts and panic in his chest, one particular question rose to the forefront.
There’s magic in this world?
How had he missed it? How had he not sensed it? How had he fucked up so fucking bad-
“Tommy?” Wilbur whispers hesitantly, and it breaks him from his newfound spiral enough to suck in much needed air. He coughs on the sudden oxygen, head spinning as he realises he had definitely just held his breath far too long in his shock. But now, breathing in the cold air of the night, he still couldn’t feel the magic. How could he not feel it?
Phil was immortal? And Techno? And Tommy was-
“Why-” Tommy croaks, and he hates the way the words are tasting, “W-Why are you telling me this?”
Wilbur smiles a lopsided grin, and it takes Tommy’s breath away once again, “Because Tommy, you… you act like them,” He replies softly, as if it was nothing at all, “I… I was wondering if that’s because you’re also Immortal?”
He could say no. He could laugh it off, he could cry, he could get angry, he could punch Wilbur in the face, he could push him off the rooftop, he could kill himself.
But instead, the measly speck in the endless multiverse that was Tommy whispers, “Is it that obvious?”
Wilbur laughs, high and tinkling, muffled with the back of his hand as it comes off far too loud for 3am, “You’re a bad liar Toms.” He giggles as he fiddles with his guitar again, and the nickname builds warmth alongside the warmth of the alcohol in his system, “I know you.”
“We met a year ago.” Tommy replies breathlessly, a lie to only him, and it almost makes his brother laugh again, “Sure, sure, but maybe we met in a previous life or something, because I just feel like I know you a lot more than that.”
Tommy stares up at the sky, and the stars stay silent, mocking him with their little twinkles and dances, once comforting, now cold as he is confronted with the decision of a lifetime, of this lifetime.
“What do you know about Immortals, Tommy?”
Although the question is anticipated, he still hesitates before responding, the words choking in his throat, "Nothing."
‘Liar’ the stars whisper, but he’s long since learnt how to tune them out.
“Nothing?” Wilbur echoes, surprise colouring his features a bit paler, “Have you never met another Immortal?”
The boy can’t bring himself to reply, the ‘Yes’ on the tip of his tongue, but unable to make it past his clenched teeth.
“You must be a younger one then… apparently most of the immortals are familiar with each-other, having met in previous lives.” Wilbur breathes, and he sounds sad enough that when Tommy tilts his head to look at him, the man's eyes are upturned in disgusting pity, “Do you want me to tell you about how it works? Phil explained it to be a while ago.”
Tommy’s eyes dart back to the stars, and he shrugs, because did it really matter? With his lips loose from alcohol, who knew how much he’d be telling his foster brother tonight. He’s still not sure if he’s going to make it out of this conversation wanting to die or not.
“Okay so,” Wilbur takes his wishy-washy answer in stride, running his fingers over his guitar strings and producing a comforting sound that make Tommy’s eyes flutter closed, “There are two types, there are the True Immortals, like Phil and Techno, they are the ones that can’t die,” He strums a few notes, tilting his head up to the stars, “And there are one's like you, The ones that are reincarnated with their memories intact, they call the Lifetime Immortals.”
“Lifetime Immortals…” Tommy tastes the words on his tongue bitterly, picturing his endless soul with the label and cringing at how accurate yet measly it felt in his skin
“Lifetime Immortals, they can-” and Wilbur hesitates, his fingers pausing and when the boy peeks on eye open to spot his expression, it comes across distraught, “They can die,” his brother whispers, and the words physically seem to pain him to say, his lip curling in disdain for the way they sound, “While True Immortals can not… that’s the difference”
There's a moment pause, where Wilbur is searching his eyes, and Tommy can’t tear his eyes away from the way he is looking at him, “You’ve died before Tommy?” Wilbur asks, voice cracking, hands still and letting the quiet sound of crickets nearby fill the space between them.
“You’re the one who says I’m a Lifetime Immortal” Tommy replies simply, and he knows there's something bitter there, because his brother flinches, Pulling his guitar up to rest on his shoulder, hugging around the base and closing his eyes with a pained pinch between his eyebrows. “I...I didn’t think about it… I was kind of… hoping you would correct me, say you were a True immortal.” The brown-haired man whispers, and his voice lowers in defeat as he asks simply, “How many times have you died, Tommy?”
There is no answer that isn’t a lie. Because Tommy lost count a long, long, long time ago.
Tommy stays silent.
“Phil has forgotten his age apparently,” Wilbur replies drily, “And Techno keeps giving me different numbers, so I’m not sure if he remembers how long he’s been alive, but Phil tells me they first met shortly after the fall of Rome.”
His brother is watching his expression, and Tommy still can’t tear away from the way Wilbur is slowly putting little puzzle pieces in place. But he knows it would never be a full picture, an entire lifetime worth of talking wouldn’t even touch on the extent of his truth.
“You can’t be older than Phil,” Wilbur grins shakily “I mean, he’s old as fuck, I’m pretty sure he was there in the caveman days!”
Tommy tilts his head, and a terrible grin pulls across his face unbidden. His brother flinches back as if he’d been slapped, his face rapidly draining of its colour. It wasn’t- it wasn’t a grin he was familiar with, and Tommy knows that, and yet he could help but give in to the complex emotions boiling under his skin. A bit of sick glee bubbling alongside him at the idea of scaring the little… this little baby compared to him, barely even a fetus, or a concept, or anything compared to the existence of him.
“Can’t I be?” Tommy asks, and Wilbur withers, “Who decided that?”
There’s a long drawn out silence, his brother frozen like prey beneath the predator, and for a sick, horrifyingly long moment, Tommy stares him down, grin unwavering. Then there’s a bit of birdsong in the distance, singing its morning song, even if it was far too early in the morning for it, and the sound of it breaks Tommy out of his trance enough to drop his head back down to the rooftop. He lets out a long, drawn-out sigh and closes his eyes.
His brother, too brave for a soul so young, whispers, “I-If you are… that old, how have you not met another Immortal?”
“Luck?” Tommy offers tersely, “Or maybe the- this universe just hates me. I don't know.”
‘Multiverse’ was on the tip of his tongue, but he couldn’t bring himself to break this, he couldn’t- he wouldn’t break his brother like that, no matter how satisfying his fear was.
There's more silence, and this time Tommy opens his eyes to look at Wilbur again. His brother flinches at the newfound attention, but when they make eye-contact all Tommy can see is blind trust among the fear.
It made him sick.
“Did you lie?” Wilbur suddenly asks, and it makes him flinch back, “Did you lie when you said… that you see us as your family?”
Tommy didn’t even need to hesitate, his lip quirked up in a soft smile, so far removed from his previous that it makes Wilbur relax even before the words were out of his mouth, “Of course not. You’re my Family.”
And upon seeing Wilbur’s relieved posture, he adds with bared teeth, a tad more unhinged, “Whether you like it or not, I’m here to stay.”
‘Liar’ the stars repeat, and this time he can’t help but the way his face falls under their truth. His brother, upon noticing this, quickly shuffles closer, sliding his butt out until he’s laying on his back, guitar on his chest with their shoulders bumping together. Together, they face the star's torment head on.
“I’m glad.” Wilbur whispers, “Do you think you’d find us in your next lifetime? I’m sure Phil and Techno would be happy to have you back.”
Tommy wants to cry, and maybe he does, he can feel tears well in his waterline as he whispers, “I’ll try.” And though he had intended to lie, it comes off far more truthful. A promise to a Wilbur he was bound to forget in the infinity of the multiverse.
And as they lay beneath the stars, a home beneath them and between them, Tommy closes his eyes.
Wilbur continues to strum on his guitar, though a bit awkward because of their position, but when Tommy had tilted his head to lean it onto his shoulder, he had been doomed to the struggle. It’s not like he could escape his brother’s affection after such an emotional conversation, that’d just be rude!
He strums, and the melody plays again, L’manburg’s symphony washing over them both, and Tommy’s lips part to fill in the blanks left behind.
I heard there was a special place,
Where men could go and emancipate
The tyranny and blood lust of their rulers
Well, this place is true, you needn't fret
With Wilbur, Tommy, Tubbo, and Eret
A pretty big and n-not blown up L'Manburg.
Not blown up L’manburg? Tommy shudders at the thought, an image of a crater deeper than the stars coming to mind, and before he knows it, Wilbur is throwing his precious guitar to the side and bundling him up in his arms. He hadn’t even realised he’d been crying, a homesickness so vicious it makes him shudder beneath its approach, tears falling into his brother's sweater and soaking up into the familiar gold fabric.
He shouldn’t be crying, it had happened so long ago, he should be used to this. He can barely remember the details of his first life, the broad strokes the only thing remaining in his memory. He hadn’t even remembered the lyrics to their damn anthem before this night, where Wilbur had once again come up with that familiar melody.
“Oh Toms,” Wilbur whispers, and he knows right there his fight against his own tears were useless, “I’ve got you, I’ve got you, cry it out.”
And for the millionth time within the expanse of the multiverse, Tommy crumbles within his brother's arms.
He cries and cries and cries.
He dies and dies and dies.
And when the sun starts to rise, and the tears start to slow, Wilbur awkwardly asks “Do I smell alcohol on you?”
Which prompted Tommy to throw hands, the bubbling laughter of them both joining the sun on the horizon as their familiar dynamic falls into place. With just Tommy and Wilbur. His little Tommy coat, old and worn, set aside for now, in a universe far from home.
It doesn’t get… well, better, or worse really, he makes it a few more months with this brother of his, and then he dies a horrible death.
He… actually can’t remember how he died, just that it was Dream again, and that made him shudder, but he relished in the untainted memory of that universe now. Him and his family, his friends, his home, and the truth bare between them. (or as close as it could be)
He remembers his promise, that he would try to find them in every lifetime, and he takes it to heart, even if it was made with the impression of finding them, not a version of them. He can’t bring himself to care about the difference, following his family and friends across the multiverse, seeking them out in every lifetime, and relishing in every moment between them. Even if it didn’t end up-
Even if it-
…
…
Sorry, what was he saying?
And-
He wakes in another universe, on a dirty, torn mattress, alone and still reeling from his previous death, and sets himself to this task once again. It was a superhero universe again, something that he was both relieved and despaired by, it was hard to explain the complex emotions that rose with lifetimes like these. He hates picking sides, and when there were things like government funded heroes and people labelled villains against their will, it made it all the more complicated. A fight of ‘Good VS Evil’ that almost always ended with being far more morally grey than the universe pretended to be.
No matter. As he wakes into this universe, stretching his arms above his head and feeling his golden wings twitch to attention behind him, he’d just be siding with his family anyway. No need to get stressed about it. Except it turned out to be stressful, regardless. Because the existence of vigilantes always made things complicated, especially when the vigilante was HIM. His family, the Heroes, him, the Vigilante they were supposed to be catching, the villains...
Ugh, never mind, they didn’t matter here, it was just between him and his family from another universe.
When he first saw one of them under the guise of ‘Phoenix’ and ‘Siren’ he had genuinely debated just ripping off the band-aid and falling into his awaiting arms. But lifetimes of conditioning prevented him from releasing himself from the bounds of his character, and as he raced away from the Hero he couldn’t help but look back longingly at the figure of his brother disappearing into the distance behind him.
And as he curled up on that ratty mattress that night, he promised he’d be with them soon. Soon he’d be by his family’s side, no matter the cost. Thankfully he didn’t even need to do anything, because Dream had made himself known, throwing himself headfirst into Tommy’s life and announcing his presence like they knew each other. And Tommy had frozen under his familiar mask, unable to do anything but follow in his old footsteps, worn holes in the floor of his life as old conditioning settles something fuzzy and confused on his shoulders.
Everything snowballed from there, he ended up in his family's house, close but still with an entire mountain of distance between them. And though this mattress was softer now, he still cried as he heard his family arguing about whether he was even worth trusting.
There was an aching chasm in his chest waiting to be filled, and God was it so hard to just wait.
One simple sunny day, soft and comforting as he and Wilbur visit the local park, and that was when things were thrown on its head again. Dream and his team attack them head on, and Wilbur was overpowered quickly, crumbling beneath the gas of the villain known as 404, Tommy knows him better as George.
“I’LL FUCKING KILL YOU!” He had snarled, powering straight into the brown-haired villain, scuffling in the dirt and howling as he slams his fists into the others face, “DON’T YOU DARE TOUCH MY BROTHER YOU FUCKING-” And it was only Dreams power throwing him across the park and into a tree that had stopped him from ripping the villains throat out with his bare teeth.
Thankfully, heroes were nearby to save them, but Wilbur was still down for the count. Apparently, George’s power in this universe was the ability to put people to sleep, and to induce nightmares and dreams alike. And judging by Wilbur’s tense face as they wheel him into hospital for monitoring, he had a feeling it wasn’t the latter this time.
He spends his time by his brother's bedside stewing, and he isn’t the only one, the whole family was tense and furious beyond comprehension. It was something that Tommy would like to think brought them together in that moment, that fury, that protectiveness. When he looks at Techno across from him, sitting in the corner of the room, he can feel the craving for violence bubbling in the air.
Techno had bared his tusks into a dangerous smile as their eyes met, a promise unsaid, and Tommy doesn’t hesitate to meet it with one of his own, startling his not brother at its viciousness.
And then there’s a mutual understanding.
Tommy closes his eyes. By Wilbur’s bedside, holding his hand as he cries in his sleep, as he fights his own demons, Tommy stays, throughout the night, for as long as he could stay awake. And he could stay awake for days if needed.
Techno had left to go to the bathroom, torn away by the worrying avian for a father for just a moment. And that was where Wilbur finally awoke.
“T-Toms?” His brother had whispered, and that had jerked Tommy forward until he was up in his face, nose to nose, making the brown haired man flinch away, “Tommy? What-” His voice cracks and he trembles, “What happened?”
Tommy stares into his eyes, and he see’s the way memories haunt over him, flayed and raw like a fresh cut through his abdomen. For a moment, he can almost see the blood, red then blue, seeping from under the sweater he wasn’t even wearing. But his eyes, his eyes are still full, no insanity lay beneath their memorising colour. The relief was palatable in the way his shoulders slumped, but he still couldn’t tear his eyes away from the sight.
“We were attacked big man,” Tommy whispers, and it comes off sharp, “It’s okay, you’re safe now Will, I won’t let them have you.”
Wilbur’s eyes still dart around fearfully for a moment, but his shoulders start to drop in relief as he falls into Tommy’s awaiting arms and curls his taller form around him. He doesn’t need to say a thing, because the blonde-haired boy holds him as tight as his mortal arms would allow, holding him together at the seams.
And then-
And fucking then-
A sickly sweet smell, a bluish tint to his vision, and he snaps to attention. Far too late, he shoves Wilbur back onto the bed and leaps to his feet, but his vision swims. Shit shit shit- George sits on the windowsill, a picture perfect villain as he swings his legs in place.
“No!” Wilbur screams, but it cuts off into a cough and he starts to sway, eyes fluttering open then closed then open again, fighting it desperately as he tries to hold his breath, “T-Tommy-”
Tommy’s knees give out right when he lunges for the villain, all molten fury, but he ends up down on the linoleum, sliding across the ground as his limbs relax against his will.
“It’s okay, Siren,” 404 says blankly. Crouching beside the blonde boy and starting to life him by his shoulders, “I’m not here for you.”
“N-No-”
Tommy doesn’t get the opportunity to hear Wilbur’s response, because his consciousness falls into the void at the gas’s prompting. He only hopes Wilbur had also fallen to it, he’d hate to have the memory of Tommy getting dragged away to weigh his brother down, to join him in his nightmares. He might just have to kill George for real if that happens.
And-
He wakes, not to the void, but to the harsh slap of a palm against his cheek and a ringing in his ears. He startles awake and then startles back again as that horrifyingly familiar mask stares emotionlessly down at him. His hands are tied behind to the chair he’d found himself on, but he couldn’t move anyway, frozen beneath the power he’d placed on his tormentor's shoulders. Face to face with Dream, he know that this was the end of this lifetime. And he hadn’t even told his family he’d loved them yet.
Dream’s always liked killing him.
“Tommy!’” Dream greets him, high and singsong as he opens his arms wide, “It’s good to see you again!”
Still reeling from the effects of being jerked awake, Tommy fumbles on his ability to speak, so the villain beats him to it, “I have a lot of questions for you, you know.” He hums, and when he walks to the side Tommy catches side of George in the corner. He catches his eye beneath his white goggles, and the man’s gaze immediately darts away. Whether it was fear or guilt, it brought joy to Tommy’s dead little heart in his chest.
“You do?” He rasps, eyes flicking back to Dream to give the primary threat his full attention, “Kinda cringe man, you can’t just kidnap a minor without being labelled a nonce ya know?”
His attempt at joking, or insulting, or something, falls flat, because Dream tilts his head, much like a little bird, peering into his soul as he doesn’t give his response any mind, “You see, I quite like you Tommy,” Dream continues, “You’re my little pet project, I’ve put a lot of work into you for you to just be taken away from me.”
Tommy mirrors the tilt of his head, and he hates the way he feels a phantom mask on his face, he’s not sure what lifetime that was from, but it makes him shudder, regardless. Dream must take this response as a positive, because he straightens up and nods, “Exactly, exactly, I’ve put a lot of work into Tommy” And he takes a step forward to lean one hand on the back of his chair, leaning in close, close enough that he’d feel his breath if the mask wasn’t in the way, “So why… have you replaced my Tommy?”
The blonde boy holds his breath, and he begs the universe to give him the strength not to break under what comes next.
“Are you a shape-shifter?” Dream asks, soft and curious, “Is this your power? Are you just really good at pretending to be Tommy?” And the normalcy of the way he speaks, like its an offhanded conversation in the break room, makes Tommy want to throw up, “Do you inherit his memories then? After all, you recognise me, don’t you? You have a very… Tommy-like reaction.”
And when Tommy still can’t get his tongue working, Dream draws back quick as a whip, kicking his chair with a snarl as he throws his hands in the air, “You’re not very good at pretending” he snarls, frustration curling his shoulders high, “Tommy would be talking my ear off right now! That annoying child would never shut up like you have!”
Well, anger was an excellent motivator to speak apparently, even if it comes off shaky, he replies far too loud for the empty warehouse, “W-What are you talking about big man?” He laughs, and it pitches high, making them all wince, “Y-You sound insane!”
When Dream lunges, all Tommy can do is screw his eyes shut as a fist collides with his cheek, sending his head snapping to the side and his chair almost goes spinning with the force of the punch. But Dream grabs it at the last moment, spinning it back his way to lean over him. One knee up on the seat, his hands gripping the chair on either side of Tommy’s neck, and he leans over him, taking up the entirety of his vision as he snarls, “Insane?! What’s insane is your existence?! Who the fuck are you? What have you done with my Tommy?!”
Tommy presses himself tight against the back of the chair, chasing an escape as he can’t tear his eyes away from the empty holes of darkness on the villain's mask. His chest heaved against the panic that made his breathing rapid, and his heartbeat was pounding from between his ribs, wanting to be exposed beyond the flesh that held it captive. And Tommy- God Tommy didn't want to do this.
He was too exhausted to stop as the Tommy Coat of his slipped off his shoulders. Instead, it was replaced with… him.
Whether it was the softening of his shoulders, the drying of his tears, his expression dropping off his face, whatever it was, it caused Dream to freeze in place. And when Tommy sighs, low and exhausted, the villain takes a step back.
“Oh Dream,” Tommy drawls, almost mockingly, “You have no idea what you are dealing with, do you?”
He can feel eyes on him, not from the villains beside him, no not them, these eyes were far, far above.
The Blood God whispers in his ears, a question unanswered.
Another God, picked up across lifetimes, name forgotten, presses a hand between his shoulder blades, right where his wings would be sitting if they were out.
Prime, her hands in his hair, her comfort in his heart.
And others, others that had given him gifts, gifts that though they can never reach, their counterparts feel all the same. Gods may not travel the multiverse, but they know their own power when they see it, and with the object of their supposed affections in danger, they come to his call in an instant.
The Void watches on.
And yet, Dream can’t see them, can’t hear them, can’t feel them, and though he momentarily freezes under the indescribable look on Tommy’s face, he shrugs it off as a one time thing and is confident again in the next moment.
“You don’t have any power here!” Dream hisses, and though Tommy can’t see his face, he can almost feel the sweat dripping down his temple, the villain’s face pale beneath the anonymity.
“You think?” Tommy hums, and it only serves to poke the coals of the man’s rage, because he snarls and clenches his fists shakily at his sides. Instead of responding, Dream spins to his partner, who startles to attention, “Just put him under, we can go through his memories that way, since he’s not too keen on talking”
“Go through my memories?” Tommy echoes, and it sounds a bit too mocking compared to how anxiety presses a knife to his throat, “How does that work?”
Dream steps towards him, silent and deadly, as he leans over him again, “Well…” he hums, practically shaking with the excitement of getting to attempt to scare the boy again, “404 here has this little ability to put you to sleep, as you know,” And he thumps one knuckle again Tommy’s temple, causing him to flinch momentarily, though he curses it a moment later, “Did you know the dreams he manifests are actually memories? He gets to watch them with you, he’ll be telling me all the juicy details of your worst nightmares for me.” And Dream leans down, “And they will be nightmares this time, I think your fears have a lot more value to me then those silly happy memories.”
Tommy...
Doesn’t know how to feel about this.
He’s so, so, so, so fucking scared, but when he looks over at George, who is now standing awkwardly behind his partner in crime, his fear turns outward.
He mustn’t be showing this fear on his face, he’s good at pretending to be apathetic, because Dream growls under his breath, and it prompts Tommy to snap his mouth open, “You’re going to watch?” he echoes his own words, staring straight at George and watching as he grimaces.
He’s going to watch… his memories? The bad ones? What were the bad ones?
They were… his…
“O-Oh.” Tommy laughs, and its tilted wrong, “Oh… dude that’s...” he swallows and when he grins it comes off unhinged enough to make George flinch, “That’s not a good idea, I don’t think mortal minds are made for my memories,” he explains, and given the circumstances it’s no surprise they don’t seem to take his words seriously, “I’m special like that big man, my m-memories are special like that.”
Dream scoffs, but George is staring at him frozen, and for a long horrifying moment Tommy’s heart soars at the thought that maybe he had convinced him not to do it.
“Oh, come on, 404, hurry it up, he’s all bark and no bite.” Dream waves him off, and to the boy's horror George takes a few steps towards him. Close now, hands up, ready to produce the gas, but the villains hands start to shake.
A thrum of fear, not for him, but for George, makes him lean toward him, tilting his head back to stare at the man standing in-front of him. The nauseating smell of sweet drifts past him, and though his limbs start to droop, his eyes stay wide eyed and hollow, staring into the villains eyes.
“Don’t kill yourself George,” he whispers, startling the man back a few steps, “You’re in this with me now.”
And when George splutters and panics, he tilts his head back to say, “May Prime protect your mortal mind.”
Said God, fingers in his hair, pause in their comfort, a question on the tip of their otherworldly tongue. He nods his response right as he starts to slouch, head tilting and eyes fluttering shut.
“How do you know my name?!” George shouts shrilly in panic.
“He knows your name?” Dreams shocked response makes Tommy huff out one last breath, shoulders shaking with the beginnings of a laugh.
“Of course I do,” He giggles, the world caving in around him, abandoning him to the void “You’re a reoccurring character silly.”
“What-”
And-
He wakes. He’s in a cage, there’s a weight on his shoulder, and there’s a musty smell in the air. As he tilts his head to look around, he wonders in how lifelike it feels to be here.
“Tommy?” The weight next to him whispers, and when he looks down, it's to wide blue eyes of wonder, “Tell me another story?”
The pit.
He was in the fucking pit.
The cold dark pit, where his stomach was hollow and his body was little and broken. Where his best friend was by his side, but at what fucking cost.
“Who’s that?” George questions softly, and Tommy felt the distinct impression that he was sitting down now, even though he couldn’t see him.
He tilts his head up to the ceiling, the sound of the villain's voice joining him in this cage, a reminder of it being an imitation. He doesn’t get to reply, whether snarky or truthful, because the image is shifting and suddenly Tubbo is being dragged away by a guard.
He leaps to his feet with a snarl. The expression of Tubbo’s face familiar and raw, scared and resigned, and it's the exact steps he takes, the same noises, the same feelings, the same-
It’s the last time he saw this Tubbo. Tommy doesn’t hesitate to leap, a scream on the tip of his tongue, “NO-” But he gets dragged down by weights unseen, sludge and void coming up to drag him down.
“What happened to him?” George wonders offhandedly, and curiosity is not cruel, but it comes across as such, regardless.
And-
He wakes.
He’s standing in a house unfamiliar and eerily quiet. Tommy, chest heaving and rage bubbling fresh in reality, spins around to try to spy a clue for where he is. The first thing he sees is the bodies.
There's so much blood, splattered, dripping, pooling, coating, it’s everywhere in this living room. It’s on his pristine dress shoes, its on his gloved hands, its splattered on his face. And there, right before him, was the bodies of a young family. Father, mother and child. Dead together.
“Oh god-” George hisses, “That's… huh, you killed them?”
“He killed people?” Dream echoes, almost surprised in the way his voice pitches high, and then he pouts, “I never got him to kill anyone before he left… what a shame...”
The bloody dagger in his hand would present the truth, but as his eyes stutter over their mutilated corpses, he meets the mirror across the room.
A Tommy far too old stares back at him, a solid 25 years under his belt at that point, and his scruffy beard and tired eyes, grey and exhausted beneath the weight of his sins. He remembers this life now. And he smiles, one of his front teeth gleams in the dim lighting, gold and bright. He had plenty of money for things like that in this life, being an assassin paid well after all.
“Huh? Who the hell is-” George stutters out his surprise, but he doesn’t get the privilege of an answer.
And-
He wakes. And Tommy’s coughing, bundled up under blankets and simultaneously feeling too hot and too cold, lungs filled with jelly and hands too numb to feel. There's someone sobbing next to him, and he tilts his stiff neck to spy a friend of his. Ranboo’s miss matched red and green eyes meet him, and the boy is sobbing, younger than he was, freshly 14, and watching his best friend die.
“P-Please!” Ranboo sobs, and he curls around Tommy, pulling him into a week hug, whole body trembling “Please Prime! Save him! I- I can’t-”
Save him? Tommy’s breath stutters in his lungs, and his vision blurs, the memory already starting to end, the colour of the void creeping at the edges of his vision.
Oh this was a death, not that it was easy to tell, only Tommy could recognise the void pulling at this limbs, pulling him over the precipice and into the numb void of twinkling stars.
“Huh?” George vocalises his confusion with a naivety that makes Tommy want to laugh.
And-
He wakes.
He’s flying, he’s soaring, far far above the clouds, the air is crisp and he sucks it in desperately after just suffocating on his own fluids. And then- A shooting pain makes him gasp, golden wings stuttering and curling inwards against the pain, but without their wingspan to hold him up, he falls, tumbling down, down, down, down past the clouds, down closer to earth. And he only has time to peek one eye open to spot the arrow in his wing to know why this had happened at all. The ground rushes to meet him, and his body crumbles with a snap, crackle, splat as he is slingshot'd to the void in record time.
George gasps, horrified and high, “What the fuck? Did you just- that wasn’t- Dream, he just-”
“What happened?” Dream asks, curious and childlike, and Tommy could picture him crouched in-front of George, like a kid waiting for storytime, “What is it?”
And-
He wakes.
The first thing he does is laugh, the shocked tone of George’s voice pulling giggles out of his throat that quickly get swallowed by the roaring cheers of the thousands of onlookers. There's sand between his toes, and when he tilts his head up he spies the foreboding coliseum blocking him in, blocking them in.
Across from him is The Blade.
The champion of the ring.
And Tommy was just Tommy, scared broken little Tommy, with stunted wings and fury in his veins the only thing keeping him going.
This Techno is the face of bloodlust, panting into the air, black scleras and bloody red pupils boring into his opponents old soul. Though he’s young, barely even 16, he’s not as young as Tommy is here, and so when he leaps, blade in hand, the blonde knows he never had a chance.
“BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD!” the crowd chants, over and over as the young boy attempts to dodge the slice up his arm, his sword clanking down into the sand. Tommy jerks backwards away from the attempt to slice off his head, and his tiny, feather torn wings rise to try to catch him as he stumbles, but a blade catches him instead.
Right through the chest, parting his ribs like butter and coming out the other side in a spray of crimson.
The crowd roars.
The Blood God watches, both within the memory and outside it, the gods above watch as he experiences this death once more, an understanding from them rumbling through his body as they see.
“Dream!” George cries, “Oh god Dream he’s-”
He leans in close to his brother, never met in this universe, but as the blood lust fades from his now golden eyes, Techno’s eyes upturn all the same, “Oh gods-” He whispers, broken and confused, “I-I-I’m so sorry.”
Tommy wants to laugh, and he almost does, blood bubbling past his lips, but as his body slumps, he can’t get the noise out past the void eating at his vision. All he hears is one last, “I’m so sorry kid.” before the void eats him up.
“He’s died! He’s died twice! What the fuck?! This can’t be real!” George starts to sob, heaving in panicky breaths even as Dream tries to calm him, “Oh, it's okay, George, it's just a dream, remember?”
“No it isn’t! It’s real Dream! He’s really-”
And-
He wakes, and it’s to the feeling of teeth in his flesh.
He hears a gag, and he knows it’s George as he is affronted with the sight before him, because there’s no-one else here. More teeth, dozens of sets, grab and pull and tear and Tommy throws his head back against the pain of his body being pulled apart, struggling subconsciously even as the wolves rip him apart, He screams, and it bubbles into laughter, hysterical, high and unheard in the empty snowed in forest around him. The wolves howl and snarl and yip, high and excited as he feeds the starving pack with his flesh.
There's a gagging noise again, and this time Tommy hears something splatter as George gasps for air against the sobs wracking through his chest.
“What is wrong with you? Get up.” Dream sounds genuinely confused, and it only makes the other villain gag again.
A chunk out of an arm here, a mouthful from his stomach there, a leg ripped from its sockets. It’s a mess of blood and gore, and it's a miracle he hadn’t died sooner, a cruel miracle as he faces the teeth of an animal starving. And when they finally clasp around his neck and pull, he can’t hold it against them as they kill him, wild animals just doing their due. Feeding on the prey, on the little boy they did not know the name of.
“D-Dream!” George cries in between his gagging, holding onto his stomach as he tries to hold in the remains of his dinner, “W-We gotta wake him up- oh god we gotta wake him up- please-”
“No we can’t George.” Dream holds firm, sounding just a little bit guilty as he shakes his head, “No. We need to do this, we need to figure out who-”
“Are you fucking serious!?” George surges forwards, grasping onto the pants of his friend from his place at his feet, “No, no, no, NO! We have to stop this! Oh my god, Please please please-”
And-
He wakes.
He feels bad for giggling, and he opens his mouth perhaps to say something, to mock the man witnessing the tragedy that was his eternal life, but he sucks in a breath as a knife is held to his throat. He’s on his back, there’s dirt and ash on his cheek, and above him is Niki. With windswept hair, pink at the ends and having not been dyed in years. She’s screaming at him, and with a pop he can suddenly hear her, noise flooding his brain with overstimulation in an instant.
“YOU ARE THE REASON FOR ALL THAT WENT WRONG!” She screams into the howling wind, and there's spit and tears splattering down on his face, the knife on his throat cutting a thin line as her hands shake in her rage, “YOU ARE THE PROBLEM! YOU HAVE GOT TO DIE!! THIS HAS TO END!”
He remembers the fear in this memory, the guilt and the sadness upon seeing his friend like this. And when he spoke, he remembers tasting warm, freshly baked, sourdough, “I’m… just a kid Niki.” And he whispers it like a curse, a lie easily said, and a truth not ready for the person barring down on him. He also remembers, when she withdraws the knife from his throat, that he had felt this huge swell of relief. But he knows better.
He knows better.
And yet he still gasps as the knife is plunged between his ribs, stabbed down like a bullet as she howls her rage. The air punched out of his lungs, he can only cry as he feels the familiar feeling of his heart bleeding at the seams, the cool metal a welcome relief from the flickering fire at the edges of his body. The battlefield around them fights on, burning and bleeding and bodies continue to pile high, but Tommy has his eyes only for Niki. Her expression twists to one of satisfaction, a sneer on her beautiful face, and stupid fucking Tommy opens his mouth.
“I’ll see you soon.” he had whispered, and the words taste bitter outside the memory, he mouths them almost mockingly as he watches that horrifying moment her face crumbles. As he watches the moment he’s doomed her to a lifetime of horrors within her nightmares.
“F-Fuck! This isn’t- this isn’t right! I need to wake him- I need to-”
“George. Don’t you dare.”
And as he fades, she stumbles away from his body to heave into the bloody dirt, horror twisting her face unrecognisable as she gags on the terror washing through her system.
And-
He wakes, and he’s laying on his back, a puddle of bones and blood as he bleeds sluggishly from the cuts on his wrist. There’s a crow peering down at him, an all knowing look in its eyes.
“I told you, George,” Tommy whispers, and there’s a crow pecking at the edge of one of the cuts on his wrists “I told you, you don’t want to do this.”
George gags again, and he stumbles when he tries to stand, “D-Dream- you- you’ve changed-”
“What?”
“I can’t do this- I can’t-Oh god he can’t be human this is-”
There's the sound of rapid footsteps, and Dream's call of the villain’s name fades into the distance.
He’s fading slowly but surely, but the pecking of the crows keeps him awake, and it bleeds irritation into the weak frown on his face as he stares up at the cloudy sky. “Not human?” He echoes, and the crows startle, as if they hear his raspy unused voice, but it was only a memory, and he knows he was silent here, “Really George? Taking to insulting me now? How-"
And-
He wakes. And he doesn’t get the words out, water fills his lungs in the next instance and sends him reeling. He barely has time to process before he is being yanked out of the water by his hair and held above a bucket, vomiting out blood and water and heaving in much needed oxygen. He’s on his knees, arms tied behind him, and when the hand in his hair pulls, he bares his throat to the mask above him.
“Oh no,” George whispers, and he stumbles as he runs, “Oh no no no no it can’t be-”
But it is. Because Dream is staring down at him through the beady eyes of his mask, “Ready to cooperate, Tommy?”
The blonde is still heaving in air, dusty metallic air as his eyes dart around to the surrounding room. Brick and blood is all he can see, and he knows he’s lucky. Because this memory doesn’t include what came before this, the metal tools and cuts and broken bones and-
“Where is your family?!” Dream hisses, shaking his head, ripping hair out of his scalp, “Where have they run off to?!”
Tommy doesn’t even need to play the part, the disdain on his face visible for all as he sucks in a breath and spits on the face of his worst nightmare. It hits front and centre, and there's a moment's pause like Dream is processing, before the fist in his hair clenches tighter and tighter. Tommy laughs hysterically, much like he had back then.
“You’re a fucking waste of a prince!” Is the last thing he hears before he is jerked back into the bucket, his head shoved under the water and stinging his eyes with salt and blood. He struggles, he thrashes, and when his lungs threaten to burst, the water flood them full.
He doesn’t have the privilege of feeling the void's soft hands, he’s in the next memory before he knows it.
And-
He wakes.
“He… He really did that.” George whispers.
“Of course he did. It’s Dream.” Tommy scoffs, curled up on a beach, watching the waves flap onto shore, though there's some sugary smell in the air. Its familiar, like… like cake, or a pastry. And as he recognises the view before him a shock through his spine and rips a strangled noise from his throat. He spins around, and Dream is beside him.
It’s exile.
It’s THE exile.
From his first life.
“Oh Tommy,” Dream drawls, all pitiful and sad, “I told you no-one would come to your party.” And there's a ringing in his ears, loud enough to drown out even George, but not Dream, never Dream.
“They all hate you, you know, No-one cares about you.”
George bites his tongue, a strangled noise leaving his throat before he falls silent, save for the sound of him sprinting and the distant sound of cars beeping.
Tommy can’t remember what words he spoke here, but his tormentor laughs at whatever he says, “Even Ghostbur,” And the reminder of the ghost makes him flinch, “I’m the only one here after all, I’m the only one who cares about you.”
Tommy avoids his mask with all his power, but it still trickles back, and there in its porcelain depths he finds himself within a fresh memory. Or really the same memory, just a few hours later.
The wind is howling around him, rain has soaked his clothes to his shivering skin, and there's cobblestone beneath his feet. He’s standing far above on a little stone tower, in the eye of the storm yet all he can feel is that horrible tearing sensation in his chest. A hollow kind of loneliness that pulls his eyes downwards. The sight of the sand and craters below beckon him. His toes curl around the edge of the sheer drop.
“No-” George chokes on the other end, but Tommy can’t hear him, he’s too busy drowning.
Would this end it? Is this what they wanted when they exiled him? For him to die alone and hollow like this?
“No! Don’t-”
The memory ends there, cutting off so abruptly that Tommy is left reeling in its wake.
And-
He wakes, and he’s moving on autopilot, ducking under a swinging sword and stabbing out with his own. It plunges into someone's arm, and they scream, the howling wind and rain replaced by screams and battle cries; replaced with the clanging of swords and the crackling of armour as bodies drop to the floor. His surroundings are a blur of colour as he spins, slashing out someone's throat and laughing as blood splatters on his face, he can taste the metal on his tongue. The battlefield is pure chaos, and as he dodges another swipe, he runs into another, not hesitating to stab that guy too, too disoriented to tell what was friend or foe within this memory.
His arms go out, and he lets out another bubbly laugh, “What’s wrong Gogy?!” He howls into the setting sky, the colour of amber and matching the red below, “Can’t handle a little suicide?”
“T-Tommy this isn’t normal- You can’t just-
“It’s my normal George!” He sings, kicking one leg out and tripping someone as they pass, he stabs them in the throat, decapitating them with a sickening crack of metal parting flesh and spine, “You’ve gotta get used to it big man! There’s a lot more to come!”
“N-No-” George chokes on his answer.
And-
He wakes. It's so quick, by the time his eyes focus on the image before him, he’s fallen silent. The smell of ash and gunpowder filling his senses, the ringing in his ears, the distant screams, the otherwordly wailing of withers. All of it points for him to lift his head to face the hill across from him.
He knows what this was, even before he could actually see.
“Oh… oh my god-”
A wingspan of tattered void greets him, and there in his father's arms lay his brother, sword through his chest and a smile on his face.
Tommy screams.
And-
He wakes. He’s still screaming, screaming into the now howling wind, he screams, and for a moment he can feel the ash still on his skin. It’s like he’s back there, grief swallowing him whole, a million and one lifetimes ago, where he had one chance. Where he’d wasted it, watching his family tear apart before his very eyes.
Tommy’s staring at the edge of the rooftop, and the concrete under his feet is what draws him back to the present, staring down at a fall too tall to survive. With parched lips and a burning throat, the boy whispers, “I think I’ve killed myself far more than any other cause of death George.” He says, and its all the warning the man gets before he’s plunging off the edge.
He hears George’s cry, and so he continues to murmur, just for the two to of them and the rushing wind, “Though maybe you’ll be spared from them, they aren’t usually terrible memories, so maybe it doesn’t-”
His voice cut off with a choke as he slams down onto something, the air punched from his lungs before he goes tumbling down further. He hits the ground again with a sickening smack.
This memory wasn’t here because it was him killing himself, no, no it was here because he’d fucking failed. Bleeding out in some back alley, disorientated and confused, he had been easy pickings for the people chasing him. Thankfully, the memory cuts off before then, only sparing the faint sound of boots clicking towards him before it’s done.
And-
He wakes.
“George” He doesn’t hesitate to keep speaking, even as he’s tied upright to some pole, even when cold gasoline is thrown over his body and tipped at his feet. The hay prickles between his toes and his body shivers at the feeling. “George, where are you going?”
“H-Huh?”
“I can hear you running, I’m not stupid, weren’t you going to wake me up?”
People call for his head around him, he tunes them out to tilt his head towards the sky. It’s a beautiful sunset of golds and pinks, it blooms grief in its wake. The image of a little Tubbo makes him want to cry, and maybe a few tears slip out, because in the rapid fire memories he was weak to the feelings starting to overflow in their wake.
“I-I-I’m getting help Tommy!” George snaps, “Dream is-” And he heaves out a sob, “He’s not letting me wake you up! And I can’t fight him! So I- So I- I’m going to get the Heroes!”
“Oh.” There's a snap of the matchstick and the fire engulfs him in an instant, the distinct feeling of his nerves crumbling beneath the agony of being burnt alive so achingly familiar. He doesn’t quite scream, but the choked cry he lets out still makes George gag on the other side.
“Shit shit- don’t worry kid, I'm almost there!”
And-
He wakes. He’s running in the dark, the smell of dirt, stone, and rotting wood making him hiss out a curse as it awakens a long buried memory, “Go get Siren-” and as he runs into a wall of jagged stone he grunts and snaps his head back up to shout, “If he cuts you off with his voice you won’t have to see this!”
“What?! Kid you won’t wake up from that! People still need to-”
There's a rumbling noise, and he knows what it is before it happens, closing his eyes and tensing his body in preparation as he snaps, “You are going to break George! You weren’t made for this!” And with a thump and a crack a stone slams down onto him, the rest of the mine crumbling around him, the force of it splattering his organs and snapping his spine in an instant. It’s a shame that first stone hadn’t hit his head, because it means he's awake enough to gasp out a, “I was! Don’t you understand?! I was made to die-” A stone finally crumbles in his skull, cutting off whatever he was going to say next.
George gags, stumbles as he’s running, “Oh No, no, that’s not- that’s so fucked up Tommy”
And,
He wakes.
And there’s lava at his back, dripping down the walls and heating up the obsidian beneath his bare feet. He stares at the prisoner across from him, and his blood run cold at the familiar face.
No mask, nothing. It’s an actual face staring back at him.
But its still Dream.
“No- No it can’t be him- not again!”
Freckled skin and gaunt cheeks, fury as molten as the lava as he stands with bony fists clenched. His green eyes glow eerily as he stalks up to him. Tommy stares up at him, and the multiverse fades away. It's just him and his last and final life, a void awaiting after him and nothing else. No travelling, no living again, no nothing.
He tries to run, he tries to dodge, but even with months in prison living off a single potato, Dream is still faster. Before long, Tommy is on his back again, desperately trying to block the fists with his arms, crying and sobbing for him to stop as the pain rains down. He can’t breathe, one particularly bad punch lands on his face wrong, and a tooth goes shooting through his cheek, dripping blood down his throat and making him choke on his cries. He thrashes and sobs and begs and it never fucking stops.
“I don’t want to die!” He had cried then, and he cries it now.
Punch after punch after punch, and this was the one and only time he had seen Dream’s face.
Twisted and deadly as it was, some sick little trained part of Tommy still relishes in it, because he's been trusted! He's been trusted with his friends face!
“D-Dream-”
His head snaps back from a punch to the nose, blood splattering over them both as it breaks instantly, and when the back of his head collides with the obsidian wrong, the world goes dark.
And-
He wakes. Just like that first time.
“He… he killed you, again, oh my god-” George gags on his own words, and then the footsteps stutter to a stop and there's a splattering noise again as he heaves in an alleyway.
Tommy is laid bare on an obsidian pedestal, and the texture makes him cringe away, an echo of the fists on his face and lava at his back. Tied face up, he just closes his eyes and gives in to what comes next, even if it prickles fear up his spine.
“I’ll get them to wake you up T-Tommy!” George heaves himself to his feet, and he shudders at what he sees in this one.
The knife glimmering in the lava-light, hooded figures around him, the obsidian knife is held to the sky as they chant something that Tommy couldn’t be bothered to figure out. But it piques the interest of The Blood God above, both within the memory and outside. A thoughtful hum in the air under its scrutiny.
“You can try,” Tommy murmurs, and he’s just a little boy in this one, so it comes out in a voice a lot higher than he remembers, “But it means you have to watch this longer… and I…” he hesitates, flinching away from the knife as it plunges down, deep into the top of his chest, right between his collar bones. And it slices, down, down his sternum and to his navel, spraying blood into the open air. “I don’t think you can handle much more of this!” he gasps around the feeling, barely able to get the words out before blood fills his mouth and chokes his voice.
George gags before he can reply, a full body shudder almost making him trip and fall. There's a distant sound of sirens as he manages to cry, “There can’t be much more right? You can only die so many-”
And-
He wakes.
“George.” He whispers, and he’s floating in the void, separate from body, barely even a soul, its a sweet relief that makes the villain relax, but Tommy knows better. He knows what comes next. “George, do you really think a Multiverse Traveller would have a normal human lifespan?” and the stars mock his words, dancing around him in a flurry of colours and taunts. Of comfort’s and cries.
And-
He wakes. The silence persists on George's end, but on Tommy’s he’s jumping out of the way of a speeding truck, only to be hit by a car in the next lane, crumbling against its metal and being flung like a rag-doll across the pavement. He’d been lucky in this one, his spine shattering spared him from the pain as he slowly bled out on the roadside. The harsh desert sun beating down at him, cooking him alive as he chokes on the void rising to meet him.
“You… you can’t be serious!” George gasps out, he’s panting now. He’s running again, faster then before, more desperate, an instinctive need for survival urging him forward.
And,
He wakes.
“Deadly,” Tommy replies, before he even registers where he is. His hands are getting strapped to a chair behind him, and when he glances around, he can only see darkness, the light-bulb flickering above only lighting him and him alone. A chill runs up his spine, and he hates the fact he doesn't recognise this one.
And then, from the darkness behind him, three figures spin his chair around.
His jaw drops breathlessly, and a soft little noise of protest spills from his throat. Because there was his family.
Wilbur, Techno, and Phil.
It was them.
It was them.
And they… they weren’t looking at him right. Their face’s borderline unrecognisable.
He still didn’t recognise the scene he was in, and when he snaps his gaze this way and that, nothing seemed to prompt his memory. Not until Techno stepped forward, pink hair askew and a single little scalpel in his scarred hands.
“Oh no,” Tommy whispers, and his brain digs, and digs and digs, pulling out a crumpled mess of memories that had been buried deep below. An attempt to keep him sane perhaps, but now, beneath George's fucking powers, he has to relive it, “Oh fuck no!” he cries, And George shudders on the other end, “No no no- not you guys- please no!”
“I don't want to see this!” he begs his own memory, “Cut it off! I don't want to taint them! Stop tainting them!” And he bares his teeth in defiance, thrashing against his bonds. Desperate anger bubbling and dying under the fear of the situation infront of him.
“Are they- Aren’t they your- your family?” George whispers, horror coating his shaky voice.
“Not in this one!” Tommy hisses, stamping his feet against his restraints and leaning away from where Techno was bringing the knife in close. He’s desperately blocking out their voices, focusing entirely on the pants of George, on the sound of him running. But when the first cut falls, he still throws his head back and keens against the feeling.
“Fuck fuck fuck- kid hang in there- god I thought you were- you weren’t reacting before, and now you’re-” George gasps on his breathes, heaving in breathes as he gags at the sight of the bloodbath just for him.
“Stop!” He begs the memory, and it falls on empty ears, the only one listening was the man on the other end, unable to help his pleas, “God no- please stop- I-I-” Another cut and he screams, high pitched and terrified, “I can’t, I can’t, I can’t, I can’t-” and when the pain continues, he screws his eyes shut to scream, “I was Human!” He screams into the nothingness of the void, into the room he begs to be empty, trying to not catch sight of their furious eyes, lest he associate those familiar faces with his tormentors. He wants to come out of this still able to look them in the eyes again.
“I was just a fucking kid!” he howls as a finger snaps, “I lived a kid and I died a kid! I have emotions!”
One by one, agony at his fingertips, faces flashing beyond his eyelids, but he refuses to acknowledge them, he can’t- “I don't get the privilege of being apathetic!” He cries into the flashing lights behind his eyelids, “I pretend! God, fuck, I pretend! But I can't escape it!” And when a too large hand grips his jaw and drags him upright again to face them, he almost opens his eyes on instinct. Their voices sound like they’re underwater, muffled and unreadable, and he chokes on the relief when he can’t hear them.
Bury it, bury this memory, bury it deeper, deeper, deeper, deeper-
He’s slapped for whatever he had said in that original lifetime, and his ears ring from the way his head snaps to the side. He heaves in a breath and sobs out a, “I can’t oh god- oh god- George please-” And he cries when another finger snaps, a fingernail ripped from its bed.
What did he even do to deserve this?
He’s not sure if he’s referring to the torture, or being trapped under the memory he’s now drowning in.
“I’m so sorry- oh fuck- oh fuck- oh god I’m so fucking sorry-” George cries, he’s pumping his arms harder as he runs, but he stumbles when he gags around the smell of metal, “I-I-I-I’m almost there kid- just- just hang in there god damnit!”
“Not a kid!” Tommy thrashes in his bonds, sobbing hysterically as he tries to picture its Dream doing this to him. Three Dreams, its just Dream, just Dream, just Dream, just Dream, just Dream.
George lets out a bark of laughter, and the sound of sirens are close now, “Fuck no you aren’t!” He cries, and there's the smell of antiseptic and a wash of cold from George's end, just barely felt by the Tommy trapped on the other side.
And-
He wakes, mercifully ripped from his worst nightmare and plunged into the frigid cold of the untamed ocean. It howls and spits him out, the waves crashing over his head and the tide throwing him this way and that. There's a flash of lightning, and his muscles burn with the effort it took to stay above water, but the relief of being anywhere but there made the pain immensely worth it. He can’t bring himself to care, not about the burning in his lungs or the aching in his limbs, not the stinging eyes or the feeling of a broken arm at his side. Because he’s free- he’s free and he’s not going back there- he can bury it, bury that memory out of reach-
“Shit” George curses, and he keeps cursing, “Shit shit shit, which room was Siren in again?” And there's a shout in the distance, the man flinching, “FUCK, where is he Tommy?!”
And-
He wakes. And he’s sinking, body half melted in the lava as he spits up the salt in his throat, an all-encompassing burning replacing it as he throws his head back and screams, “Top Floor!”, right before it reaches his throat, “Last one on the left!” he howls, crumbling beneath the molten rock.
“Oh fuck-” George gags, hand clasping over his mouth as he’s racing upstairs, the barest flash of his panicked pale face making Tommy want to laugh at how disarrayed he was. Someone tries to grab him, a security guard trying to tackle him down the stairs, and he stumbles and slams into a wall, a broken cry ripped from his heaving lungs. “Fuck FUCK- No no NO, let me go you fucking-” He snarls and struggles against the grasping hands.
And-
He wakes, Tommy’s on his stomach, crawling away as fast as he can. And for a moment he’s puzzled, why doesn’t he run? But when he tilts his head back to look at what was wrong, he spies the problem in his missing legs and bloody trail behind him. At the other end lay Dream, head tilted and netherite axe in hand.
“Tommmyy!” His tormentor sings, the scraping noise of his axe dragging through the dirt punctuating his chilling voice “Come back here friend! Don’t you want me to help you?”
Like he hadn’t just cut off Tommy’s legs. Like he wasn’t the reason for his suffering.
And-
With a burst of adrenaline born from the image of bloody stumps for legs, George punches the guard in the throat and books it up the last few flights of stairs, heaving in breaths and gagging at the images passing behind his eyelids. There’s a slam of the door as he bursts into the hallway, and a scream from an onlooker upon seeing the villain’s arrival.
He wakes. Sinking into the thorns, a moment reprise as he starves, Tommy’s bony broken body left to rot among the roses and crows. Someone’s singing nearby, and he hums out a melody of his own as he relaxes into death's soft grip. He’s too tired to speak now, holding onto this memory as long as he can, praying it doesn’t stop, praying it won’t give way to something worse.
A slam, and George hits the ground with a thud, he doesn’t hesitate to start thrashing beneath the hands. Slamming his forehead into the floor and screaming at the top of his lungs, “NO! NO! NO! NO! SIREN! WHERE ARE YOU?!”
“Wilbur.” Tommy’s lip curls up, a soft little smile on his dying face.
“WILBUR!” George howls into the hospital, a rabid animal cornered, “WILBUR PLEASE- I NEED YOU- HE NEEDS YOU- PLEASE WAKE TOMMY UP! PLEASE PLEASE PLEASEPLEASEPLEASEPLEASE-”
The blonde boy giggles at his desperate screams, but he’s too tired to move, and so when the next memory hits he doesn’t bother opening his eyes to witness the switch.
And-
He wakes to hands shaking his shoulders and someone screaming in his face. He can’t hear them over the ringing in his ears, but when he manages to pry his eyes open he recognises Wilbur’s crazed face.
His cracked lips make the shape of Tommy’s name as he screams his paranoia into the boy’s face, accusing him of something or another if the ravine walls had anything to say about it. The outside world falls beneath its power, the ravine closing in on them both, and when Tommy starts to cry again, trembling as his ears ring and he shakes his head, he wonders why? Why is his brother yelling at him? What did he even do?
A palm slaps across his cheek, and his head snaps to the side, the ringing increasing as he stared wide eyed at his broken shell of an older brother.
He hit him?
He hit him?
He-
“404!” Someone snarls nearby, and then there's a thud and a scramble as George races towards the noise, he doesn’t get far before a large form slams into him, heaving him back down to the ground with a crack of the tiles beneath his body. “Why are you here?! Here to take away my other brother?!” the voice snaps and snarls, and Tommy recognises its tone, Techno’s rage almost as familiar as his joy.
“No!” George screams, far too loud, thrashing in the mans grip, “Let me go let me go let me go- I need to get Wilbur! Not you-” And he chokes as a hand wraps around his throat, “Fucking- fucking let me go-”
And-
He wakes. And it takes a moment to pick out the cotton stuffed in his ears in order to register the fight on the other side, a questioning hum leaving his throat as he tilts his head towards the noise. He’s stuck under some rubble, his leg is crushed beneath concrete, but when he hears that familiar voice he can’t help but whisper across the void, “T-Techno?”
“TECHNO!” George echoes breathlessly, high pitched and terrified, and there’s a hiss of surprise from the hero, “Please-please let me go! You need to help him! Save him! Wake him up oh fuck- oh fuck your leg Tommy-” “What?!” Techno snarls, slamming the villain into the ground again, trying to catch his darting bloodshot eyes, “Where the hell is my little brother?!”
Tommy knows the role in this lifetime, and he resists, trying to relax into deaths hold to avoid it. But his body doesn’t listen to him, it's too intent on playing out the memory in its full. So, his body struggles against the rubble, the smell of gunpowder and ash filling his lungs and forcing bloody coughs from his throat. There's a ringing in his ears from the after explosion and he spins his head around to try to locate his family. They’re missing. He has to find them. They are all he has left-
He spots the crumpled body of his older brother, long pink braid spread in a halo around him, too far out of reach for him to get to. Especially not with this fucking leg-
He thrashes and pulls and tears and something falls away. He cries out at the agony it rips through him, but when he can drag himself by his elbow forward, all he can feel now is desperate hope.
“Techno!” he cries out, ash strangling his tounge, but the body doesn’t move. And when he hauls himself over, a bloody trail in his wake, he knows, deep down, that it is also, far too late. He sobs over the corpse of his brother, and he wails up to the gods above, the carnage around him making way for the easy silence of the void.
And-
He wakes.
“Dream isn’t letting me wake him up!” George heaves out a cry, thrashing this way and that even when he seems to be trying to cooperate, “Fuck- you need to wake him up-” and then there's a heave and a choke as vomit splatters on the ground once again.
His brother must have rolled him over in time to avoid the back-splash, because he mostly sounds horrified rather than disgusted as he hisses, “What is wrong with you?!”
Gagging at the image of a grieving soldier, the villain sobs out a shrill “I’m watching! His dreams! They’re-” and there's another gag, “They’re his memories and oh god- oh fuck man you gotta save him!”
Tommy only gets time to register what he’s about to say next before dirt is shovelled onto his face, he tries to spit it out, but his hands and legs are tied and all he can do is thrash. His measly attempt to speak doing nothing as he tastes metallic dirt and desperation running down his throat.
More dirt piles up on top of him, and he can’t even breathe, let alone speak, but he tries regardless, limbs failing him as the weight of the rocks and dirt above press down on top of him. It’s not as heavy as the weight of George’s next words.
“He keeps dying!” George cries, and the sound of it shoots ice through Tommy’s dying veins, “Over and over and over-” the villain shudders, “I-I-I can’t do this- you need to get him” And he thrashes his head this way and that as his volume rises again “At the warehouse by the hero tower! Get him out of there! Pleasepleaseplease!’ And his whole body trembles in place as he arches his back, “Take my phone, in my pocket, its got the address- just fucking take it please-”
And-
He wakes, and the moment his mouth isn’t full of dirt, Tommy howls at the top of his lungs, DON’T FUCKING TELL HIM!”
George flinches back on the other side, freezing in place beneath Tommy’s fury.
“THEY CAN’T KNOW! THEY CAN’T!”
His shouts are swallowed by the sound of an audience, the coliseum erupting into bloodthirsty cries around him. He stumbles in place, suddenly hyper aware of the sword in his hand and the lack of a brother across from him. Instead, in his place was a lion, far bigger than him, creeping towards him with an ancient fury to match his. The sight makes Tommy bare his teeth, zeroing in on the fight before him right as it kicks off.
“Does no-one know?” George whispers, attention captured as horror keeps him watching the sight before him. “oh god how have you not told anyone?”
“I’ve told people before.” Tommy hisses, eyes fixed on his opponent, “It’s none of your fucking business! Don’t you fucking dare tell-”
“I don't care!” George snaps back with a hysterical laugh, “I-I’m telling them! Fuck you! Y-Y-You’re a shit immortal idiot who needs to-”
The lion leaps first, attempting to snap at his neck, but he ducks under its lunge, throwing himself under it and spinning around to follow. The animal is fast, but Tommy is faster as he plunges the sword into the lion's stomach, spilling its guts out into the sad and tearing a strangled growl from its throat. It’s dying breath lost to the sand it collapses into.
“Wilbur. Keep an eye on him, Me and Phil will go get Tommy.” Techno’s voice bites over the connection, and there's a hum of icy affirmation that sends the boy on the other end’s skin prickling.
“Don’t worry, I’ve got this handled.” Wilbur, his beloved brother Wilbur, agrees smoothly, something dark in his voice. But it still brings Tommy to tears, because he’s okay! He’s okay! He’s not hurt! He’s awake! Unlike Tommy.
As he stumbles back, he distinctly hears gagging from the villains' end, but his ears are all for the audience's chant. And on instinct, he shoots his sword up to match their energy.
“BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD!” he howls into the packed arena, and the world erupts into cheers of praise. He can almost taste the way the Blood God smiles his appreciation.
“oh fuck, that’s gross- fuck- at least you didn’t die that time-” George sobs. And there are footsteps nearby, and his brother's voice is closer than before this time, “Die?” and it's so sickeningly curious it makes Tommy stumble and gag against the overwhelming fear that rises up.
He curses, but he’s already falling into the next memory, unable to stop the train wreck bearing down the tracks.
And-
He wakes. But when he opens his mouth, he can’t speak against the way his neck snaps as he hits the ground, just the flash of an image of stone before he’s thrown into the next memory.
And-
He wakes. This time he’s in his childhood bedroom, the same one in the original, and he darts his head around to try to get his bearing, the snap of his spine still echoing in his ears. When he looks down, his hands are held in front of him, knife one one, wrist up on the other. He’s sawing down into his flesh, the steak knife in his hand cutting through his wrist like butter, blood splattering and pooling on the floorboards at his feet.
“Oh fuck-” George gags, affronted by the bloody image as he dry heaves, “Oh fuck dude- your brother is so fucked up- God Tommy how can you die so many times and still-”
Tommy presses the blade deeper, he can feel it hit bone as he whispers hollowly, “Stay sane?”
“Yes that!” The villain agrees hysterically, a bubbly laugh torn from his throat before a gag follows, “Fuck- how are- how the fuck are you talking to me so casually while you-”
His wrist falls to the floor with a sickening splat, bone sawed off with little effort before blood gushes out from his stump of an arm.
George gags again, and he doesn’t get the chance to continue before Wilbur is murmuring, “Is it really so bad?” and George’s head spins as he rights himself just to get up in the Hero’s face to hiss, “He just cut off his own fucking arm!” And he chokes before he can get out the insults he’d been raring up for.
Tommy looks down at his little body, head spinning as he registers the strangeness of this being a memory worth showing. He’d killed himself hundreds of thousands of times, why was this different?
“Oh god- he’s just a kid in this one- Oh fuck Tommy-”
And then he hears footsteps, a knock at the door, and he instantly knows why. It’s not because he died, its because-
“Tommy?”
The door creaks open, and he doesn’t get to see his brother's horrified face before the boy crumbles from the blood-loss, but he does hear the bone-chilling scream as he hits the ground.
And-
He wakes.
“What?” Wilbur’s voice is breathless, and Tommy can almost picture the dawning horror on his face, “What the… fuck do you mean?”
George snaps his teeth the hero's way as he throws his head back and forth, “Don’t ask me!” He snarls, high and hysterical, “Ask the fucking kid that keeps fucking dying-
Tommy is being dragged through the dirt, staring up at the dimming sky, bound and helpless and dragged by the rope attached to his feet. “Please-” He manages to sob as he is thrown forward, before someone is lifting him up with one giant arm, manhandling him face down onto a stone cutting board, he doesn’t see their face, but he hopes it isn’t anyone he recognises. He struggles regardless, “Please- Don’t- don’t tell him! I-I’m not ready!”
He thrashes in his bounds, and he barely manages to get one leg out before there's a butcher knife slamming down on it with a sickening crack. Limb cut from body, all he can do is scream, trying hard to get his desperation across to the villain on the other end.
“Oh fuck fuck fuck fuck- no no no no no-” Georges curses rapid-fire before being cut off with a loud gurgling noise, and suddenly Wilbur’s the one cursing, “Fuck he’s seizing! Doctor?! Anyone!? I need a little help over here!”
“George?” Tommy sobs, small and confused, but there lay no response except for another leg carved from body.
“George?!” he repeats, high and hysterical, an arm peels away to the knife,“No, No- George! Where are you?!”
There's a lot of noises on the other end, of people talking, muffled and underwater, and of the sound of beeping and doctors doing their work. But above it all, “Tommy?”
“Wilbur!” He shrieks, blood pooling under his thrashing body, splattering the crimson this way and that.
“Tommy? Can you hear me?”
“I can hear you Wil!” He heaves out his cries even as his vision darkens at the edges “Oh god Wil don’t watch- don’t- you can’t-”
“I… we have a lot to talk about don’t we?”
“No we don’t!” He heaves out one last breath before the knife cracks down straight through his neck, his head sent rolling off the table.
And-
He wakes. Tommy’s so cold in this one, there's a weight on his back, and where he is lying in the dirt, he can tell its snow by the crackle it lets out when he shifts.
“I know you’re scared, Toms, I know-” And Wilbur hesitates, voice coming out so soft and confused, “I know you’re… dying... a lot, if 404 isn’t lying about this of course.”
Tommy giggles hysterically, relaxing deeper into the cool, wet embrace of this death.
“You’re so strong Toms, you can do this.” Wilbur whispers, and the dying boy can almost feel his fingers carding through his hair, “Once you… get back, we will work through it together? You, me, Phil and Techno, just the four of us.”
“The four of us?” Tommy echoes, voice barely a whisper, high and childlike. He can’t feel his lips now, and there's a warmth starting to spread through him, creeping up from his fingers and coating his skin as he croaks, “A family again?” He’s almost too hot beneath the layers of clothes he’d been bundled into, and he hates that he knows what it means.
“I-I don't know if you’re listening Tommy…”
“I am!” Tommy cries as the void draws him down into its clutches.
And-
He wakes.
“But… I see you as a brother Tommy, my little brother, so, so please-” Wilbur’s voice is cracking as he whispers to him, blind trust urging him forward, or maybe he’s secretly hoping the boy wasn’t listening, “Please … let us in.”
“I can’t!” Tommy heaves in a sob, the wind howls around him, and gunpowder fills his lungs. There's a steady stream of explosions assaulting his hears, leaving behind this ungodly ringing that he knows never really left. He closes his eyes to that dreaded obsidian grid in the sky, curling in with his hands over his head, protecting himself from the sight of his hopes and dreams being turned to dust before him.
“Let us in sunshine,” Wilbur coos sadly, oblivious to the boy on the other side, “We’ll be here waiting alright?”
“I can’t!” Tommy wails, and he tastes the unique taste of wither on his tongue, his arm rotting at his side.
There's a moment pause, and then Wilbur sighs, a defeated, exhausted sound that makes fear shoot Tommy upright harder than even the surrounding explosions, “I… This feels stupid” His brother grumbles, “I don't even know if you can hear me….”
Tommy howls as the world caves in around him, “I can hear you! I can hear you Wilbur!”
And-
He wakes, and any attempt at begging for his brother is strangled by red vines around his throat and his body thrashing against its binds.
“Is 404 okay?” Wilbur’s voice fades a tad, as if turning to the doctors nearby. There's a response, too far away to hear, but when his brother speaks again, it sounds almost relieved, “That’s good I guess, don’t want him dead before I can get to him.” And he laughs, but it's all twisted, pained and confused.
He’s not talking to Tommy.
“F-uck- W-W-Wil-” Tommy bubbles out his words, red seeping into his vision as little voices filled with tempting promises stuff his ears full. And yet, even so, they don’t hesitate to finally put him out of his misery, snapping his neck in the next instance.
And-
He wakes, and he’s sitting upright in a moment, hands ripping at his dishevelled clothes as he cries around the sudden oxygen in his lungs, “”I can hear you!!” He screams, A trembling puddle of tears as he sobs, “D-Don’t leave me! Oh god- oh god Wil- Please keep talking! I can’t- I can’t do this without you! Please- please-” and he heaves in a sob, almost gagging on the terror swallowing him hole. “Don’t leave me again!” He begs, like a little kid again, scared and confused.
There is no reply. The rapid beeping of a heart monitor is all that remains.
And without the words of his brother, words cease to exist, and all Tommy can do is scream.
And-
He wakes.
He screams. And-
He wakes.
He screams. And-
And-
And-
And-
He wakes?
He’s standing on grass, dirt between his toes. He’s stopped screaming in the space between conciousness. His throat was burning. He watches as all that he’s worked so hard for is dug into a hole, and he watches as something red and sparking is flung to follow.
Tommy closes his eyes.
The ensuring explosion hisses by his teeth, gunpowder and shrapnel raining down on his skin, prickling tiny cuts and bruises over his battered flesh.
It's him and his friend across from him. It’s him and the howling wind, It’s him and the salty spray of the ocean nearby. It’s him and the taste of blood on his tongue.
It’s him. Only him.
Him and the hand shaking his shoulder.
Hand on his shoulder?
He opens his eyes, and when he spies his friend still safely on the other side of the pit, he frowns.
Who was touching him?
But when he tilts his head to look, no-one was there.
Was he hallucinating again?
He closes his eyes again, only meaning to blink, but when he tries to open his eyes, they feel far too heavy to open again. Tommy shakes his head, trying to rid this strange feeling of sleep from his eyelids, but all it does it causes the ringing in his ears to get louder.
“Tommy?” Dream calls his name.
“Tommy!” another joins in, panicked and worried, and far too deep to be his friend “Tommy wake up!”
Tommy’s knee’s give in and he crumbles into the dirt. What do they mean? Wake up? Tommy is- Tommy is awake already!
Right?
And-
He wakes. With a jerk and a gasp his eyes fly open, rolling back in his head as he coughs on the clean oxygen in his lungs. His body was aching horribly, and he shudders at the feeling, but without the dirt between his toes and the explosion ringing in his ears, it’s like he’d been doused in icy water with how suddenly his mind explodes into overstimulation.
He is-
He was-
He is sitting on a chair, his hands weren’t bound, not anymore, and the memory of where he was makes him gag. The hands on his shoulders draw back, and he almost slouches straight off the chair with how hard it was to keep upright. But the calloused hands return to catch him, and the warmth of them smooth out the kinks in his brain, quieting the noise until all that remains was an awareness that he could handle.
He had been captured by Dream. He had been showing George his memories, and now- now his brother was holding him.
“Let’s get you out of here kid.” Techno murmurs under his breath, and when Tommy’s eyes focus on him, there's a pinch in his brow and his jaw is clenched tight. He maneuvers the boneless boy with gentle hands, hands made for fighting, but with his brother in his arms they pick him up and slide him into place with the gentleness of a father. His legs go around his brothers waist, and Tommy’s head is settled on the hero's shoulder, tucked into place like it was made just for him. One hand rubbing circles into his back, the other holding him upright, Tommy let out a sigh, slouching into his hold and relishing in its warmth.
There’s shouting, and it makes his brother tense under him, though it takes a second for Tommy to hear the words, but he regrets it as soon as he does.
“YOU CAN’T HAVE HIM!” His tormentor screams, “HE’S MINE! GIVE HIM BACK!”
Tommy lifts his head, ignoring Techno’s chuffs of protest in favour of tilting his head this way and that in search of his friend.
Dream is on the ground further in the warehouse, feathers stabbed through his clothes and holding him to the ground, Phil was on top of him, holding his hands behind his back with icy determination. As if sensing his gaze, the blonde raises his head to look their way, and his eyes crinkle at the edges when they make eye contact, “Hey Mate,” he greets softly, as if the thrashing body beneath him didn’t exist, “I’m glad you’re awake.”
Tommy blinks, and for a moment he just sits in the feeling, a feeling so complex that he doesn’t recognise it for once.
And when he does, it its accompanied by a single sentence.
They know.
Like a bang from a shotgun, quick as a whip, Tommy is moving, curling in, snatching a dagger from his brother's belt, and with the power of his collective lifetimes, wiggling out of Techno’s arms.
“What-” Techno hisses his surprise.
“Good boy!” Dream purrs from his place on the ground.
It makes him sick.
He hits the floor running, sliding out of his brother's reach and ducking under his attempt to grab him. The dagger in his hand calls to him, a symphony of metal and moonlight as Tommy doesn’t hesitate to jerk it up to stab himself. Two scared hands grab at his arms, wrapping around his wrists and halting the movement millimetres from the smooth expanse of the flesh of his throat.
He tilts his head back, and as he continues to urge his hands towards himself, he spots the man wrapped around him, his brother's eyes wide eyed and horrified as he fights against the boy’s desperate attempt to kill himself.
“Tommy!” He hisses through his grit teeth, red eyes flickering between the knife and the blonde’s eyes, “Tommy what- what the hell are you doing?!”
The boy’s trembling, but even as weak and confused as he was, he inches the knife closer. He watches as panic flashes through his brothers face, before the man is spluttering again, “W-We can work through this- stop- please-” he lets out this sad little sound, terrified and low, more Piglin than human, “-let go of the knife”
“I can’t,” Tommy rasps, wide eyed as his gaze never leaves his brother's broken raw expression, “I need to die.”
“No you don’t!” Techno hisses, almost cutting him off with how quickly he shoots his response back, “You can’t die!”
“You know.” The boy chokes on his own words, hands starting to sweat around the daggers hilt in his hands, “You know about me. And I can’t- I can’t live with that!”
Once again, His pink haired brother his replying as quick as a whip, “Yes you can!” And he shudders, eyes upturned and unable to turn his gaze away from his brother and the knife, “We- We’re a family aren’t we?”
“We are!” Phil calls from nearby, and it causes Tommy’s eyes to flick to him, and Techno’s expression is mirrored by the blonde, terrified and desperate, “We- We can help you- we will help you, just let us!”
“You have to let us in Theseus.” Techno begs, and the name causes a fall body shudder to run through him. His arms burn, and they shake, and the unrelenting force of his brother trying to stop him freezes him in place. But they were at a standstill, and Tommy had the will of a million lifetimes. He would break his bones if it meant keeping his family away from his reality.
“Tommy!” Dream calls, and it causes his eyes to flutter shut against it, “Tommy, I trained you better than this, you won’t do it! You’ve still got to help me get out of here!”
Phil hisses, and there's a sharp slap and a thud like he had backhanded the man, but Dream was spluttering out his manipulations in the next moment, “Y-You wouldn’t leave your only friend right? You still have a use here, remember?’
Friend?
Tommy’s arms are weakening against his will, and the barest hint of that weakness causes Techno to surge forward and jerk the knife away from him, tearing it from his grip and throwing it as far away as possible. It is sent clattering into the darkness of the warehouse, forgotten quickly as Techno heaves in a breath like he’d been suffocating.
The blonde boy’s hands are shaking, and when he returns his arms to his sides, hands upturned, he doesn’t recognise the scars between his fingers.
Friend?
There’s the crackle of fire, deep, deep within him. It simmers, and it snaps, and it pops, and suddenly the fire is raging, fury burns through him so fast his head spins and his fists snap shut with an audible noise. He snarls, spinning around, and he feels his shirt ripping out the back as his wings explode out from him, feathers and spite thrown outwards in a cacophony of rage. It causes his brother to be sent reeling, but Tommy pays him no mind as he’s already hurtling towards his tormentor.
“YOU FUCKING-”
He throws his arm out, and fire sprays off like a rapid series of bullets towards his father. He glimpses the reflection of his own twisted face in Phil’s wide eyes before the man escapes with an instinctive beat of his wings. The fire misses him barely, but he had always known it was going to, because Tommy is leaping for the masked man on the ground.
“That's my-” Dream’s praise as he starts to sit up, but is cut off by a choke as the boy slams into him, grabbing at his clothes, at his throat, and shoving him back down to the ground with an audible crack of skull on concrete. The man cries out his shock, trying to grab at the hands holding him down, but the too hot skin of Tommy thwarts his attempts. He hisses, palms sizzling from his attempt, and when he looks up at him, Tommy hopes he doesn’t recognise the face he’s making for him.
“Tommy?” Dream laughs, high and confused, the very idea of being in danger incomprehensible to the maniac, “What are you doing?”
Tommy clenches his hands tighter where they are now wrapped around the villain's throat, and the fire sizzles under his skin, writhing in wait.
His tongue was bubbling lava in his mouth, his heart was hissing steam, his teeth sucked in ash and blood and his lungs blew out gunpowder and torment. And here, above the man he’d both loved and hated and admired and despised and- and- and all those other fucking things he’s lost to memories buried away, here, he knew exactly what he was going to say.
“I’m going to kill you Dream.” He says, and it's far too chilly for the molten fury pumping through his veins. Behind him his wings rise to encompass them, gold and amber blocking out the light until only the flames twisting around him remained. They bubble like lava, pliant under his rage, ready at a moment's notice, and maybe this, this was where Dream realised he’d fucked up.
“What-” His protest, higher than before, is cut off by Tommy hissing and slamming the man up and back into the ground again.
“I’m going to kill you Dream.” He repeats, and before he can continue spitting out words a long time coming, he hears footsteps rushing towards him. His wings duck down and he snaps his head around to make eye-contact with the two others in the room. His fire spits out like bullets, shooting lava at their feet and melting the concrete by their boots. They both skid to a stop, ducking back from the cooling concrete with wide eyes. The heroes exchange a glance, and Techno grimaces, Holding his hands arm in surrender, but Phil turns back to him as if to take another step forward.
“Tommy, Mate-”
Fire shoots off again, he doesn’t even need to move his hands from his tormentors throat, the flames shoots off and slices a clean line through the concrete in-front of his fathers feet, halting his movement and making him suck in a startled breath.
There’s a silence between them, and it’s only when Phil holds his hands up, face distraught, but resigned, that Tommy turns his attention back to the man beneath him, frozen in terror.
“I am going to kill you,” he repeats, like its a mantra, and he hisses smoke from between his clenched teeth as he snarls, “And I’m going to keep fucking killing you, over and over and over-” His wings rise higher and higher, flames twisting and licking at the feathers as he pushes the man down flush to the concrete, “I will find you, in every lifetime, until my mind gives in and my memories cease to exist, until I am but a fucking HUSK of a being, left forgotten in the depths of the multiverse.”
It’s a promise. A promise carved into his very soul, and when he speaks it echoes against the versions of him that lay broken at Dream’s feet, “I will hunt you, for the rest of my existence,” and when he sucks in a breath, he can taste the blood of the endless bodies of him on his tongue, “You will never touch me again, you will never hurt me again, you will never speak to me again without me carving out your fucking throat,” and when he looks deep into the beady eyes of the villains mask, he relishes in the muted terror he spies beneath the porcelain, “You will never own me again” he states, final and hissed between chipped teeth, “Not me, not any Tommy, You will not hurt any of us ever again.”
There’s a moment left behind, a silence saved for the hissing of the concrete nearby melting beneath his flames and the panting of the trembling boy left behind.
And then, Dream, whispers, “What-”
And its all it takes. Because Tommy snaps his fist back and punches with a crack of fist on porcelain. It cuts at the flesh of his knuckles, but the mask cracks beneath its force, and Dreams head snaps sideways.
“T-Tommy-” Another fist cuts the villain off, this time his left, and when it hits, a chip cracks off the mask, leaving terrified green eyes in its wake. Another crack of his fists and they’re snapped away, shadowed beneath blonde hair and the splatter of Tommy’s blood on the mans face. The eye-contact causes the man to lift his arms, trying to cover his face, and it makes the boy let out a bark of laughter.
“I’ve already seen your ugly fucking mug Dream! When you beat me to death in that fucking prison!” Tommy snarls, and this time when he punches again he can feel the impact shoot up his arm, the phantom feeling of fists on his face springing tears to his eyes. “Just-” He slams his knuckles down again, “Like-” he grabs at the man's hair, dragging his head up before he punches him again in the jaw, “This!” And when he slams the man's head back down to the ground, he relishes in the audible crack of bone.
Mercifully, depending on your perspective, Dream is still alive and kicking, trying to shove the boy off him, protecting his face from the rain of fists and crying out his protests. “T-Tommy!” He cries out, coughing against the blood dripping into his throat, “S-Stop! You-” His head snaps to the side, and he barely manages to get his mouth open to continue speaking, “You wouldn’t h-hurt your- “ he spits out blood onto the concrete, barely managing to grab one of Tommy’s wrists, stopping a punch in its tracks, “Your f-friend? Right?”
Tommy pauses, only momentarily, to look his tormentor in the eye and smile, “How does it feel Dream? To be on the other end for once?” And though he’s smiling down at him, he’s screaming his words now, the sound of them cracking and breaking in the heated air surrounding the two of them, “HOW DOES IT FUCKING FEEL?!”
Dream doesn’t get to answer, as his hand drops from the boy’s wrist, Tommy slams a fist down, and with another crack of skull on pavement, the body below falls limp.
The blonde sucks in a breath with a snarl, and the sweet silence lacking his tormentor's voice sends shivers down his spine, but then-
“Tommy!” Phil’s voice pierces through the silence, and his wings shoot high defensively as he raises his fire to hold him back, but the blonde is pointing upwards, “Your wings!” he cries, Techno is holding onto his robes, holding him in place, the only thing holding him back from his son.
It’s only when the boy tilts his head back to look that he notices the fire razing across his wingspan. Feathers fading to ash and twisting around him among the fire. The pain doesn’t even register, he just bares his teeth and beats his wings once, shoving off the flames in favour of settling the licking fire to the concrete.
Who knew if he would ever fly again.
He doesn’t fucking care.
And when he looks down at the man beneath him, still breathing, unconscious, vulnerable, an icy version of his rage takes its place. There’s no point of screaming his fury any longer, no point of telling the body beneath him how badly he had fucked up by existing, because he could no longer hear him.
He raises his fist again.
But he longs to scream for longer. To tell him of how he has ripped off his wings, how he had tortured him for years, decades, centuries, how he had raised him as a child, how he had hunted him down, how he had cut off his legs and burnt through his things and body, how he had done everything and anything-
How he was the reason he was here at all.
Maybe, maybe, if that man hadn’t killed him in order to attempt to revive him, way back in his first life; In a prison with only a potato shared between them. Maybe if he had never been trapped with him in the first place. Maybe, his attempt to take him under his thumb with the threat of the void was the very fucking reason he was locked into this endless agony in the first place.
Maybe he’d be safe at home, if Dream hadn’t gotten a fucking god complex.
And so when his fists shoot down for a final time, its with all the grief and loss etched into the depths of his soul. It hits true with a sickening crack and a splat as Dream's head caves in on the concrete.
He’d never killed a Dream before.
It's like a breath of fresh air.
The fire in his heart is snuffed out in an instant, an empty feeling washing chills through him as he heaves in breaths he didn't know he was needing. The world slowed down around him, and as his wings lowered, the burns along the edges prickled pain through his consciousness. His arms come to rest by his side, and he tilts his head back to avoid the sight of brains splattered on concrete, familiar, but unwanted all the same. He breathes, his heartbeat slows in its cage of ribs and flesh, and the body he’s found himself in trembles and cries. Tears dripping silently down his cheeks as the only sound left behind is his breathing.
“Well,” Techno’s voice abruptly brings him out from the safety between his ribs, “I guess that’s better than killing yourself, huh?”
Phil lets out a strangled noise by his side, and there's a thud as he slaps his shoulder, “Techno!” he admonishes, and the sound of their interaction makes Tommy laugh, high and hysterical. He tilts his head to spy their faces, worried and exhausted and relieved all in one, and the words tumble from his lips before he can stop them, “Oh, no, that's next.”
The relief is wiped from their pale faces in an instant, and guilt settles itself into Tommy’s throat. The two of them quickly start shuffling towards him, closing into him with hands outstretched in worry.
“Tommy, please,” Phil begs this time, “You don’t have to do that, we can help you, remember?”
The blonde boy looks down at the body beneath him, not quite seeing the mess of gore beneath him, and huffs, cracking his neck and raising up from his knees, stumbling to his feet to face his father and brother head on. “I can’t.” Tommy hums, and it's coated with exhaustion, the wildfire of rage leaving behind nothing but ash and grief, “I’m not ready.” They’re so close, only a few metres away, but they could see the chasm between them. And then as if talking to a deer about to spook, Techno murmurs softly, “What are you so afraid of Theseus?”
Tommy bites his tongue around the answer of ‘Everything’, because that wasn’t relevant, as much as he wished it to be, instead he answers with a, “I don't want to live with you knowing what I am.”
“No.” Techno insists, and the weirdly blunt protest makes the boy flinch, “No. I didn’t ask what you want, I asked what you’re afraid of.”
“Tech-” Phil’s protest, whispered in his son's direction, was cut off by a wave of the pink haired mans hand. Tommy’s eyes couldn’t stray away from his brother's own, red meeting blue and bleeding together in a puddle of purple mess.
“What are you afraid of Tommy?” Techno asks, pressing forward with arms outstretched, “What do you think will happen?”
“I-” Tommy chokes, and for the first time in a long, long, time he doesn’t know what he’s supposed to say, “You-You won’t-” And he trembles against the weight of his own words unsaid.
“Are you afraid...” His brother offers softly, close enough to tilt his head down to meet his eyes, yet his hands hover over touching the immortal boy in-front of him, “...that we’d leave you?”
Tommy flinches back like he’d been slapped, but Techno grabs him by the arm and holds him tight, unwavering as he continues, “That we’d hate you?” he continues, the words punching straight into the blonde’s heart, and within the depths of red eyes emotions are bubbling hot, “That we’d not understand you?”
And when Tommy trembles and cries, he can’t bring himself to try to escape his hold, even if he could, shoulders hunching with the shuddering sobs torn from his throat, “You- I don’t-” And he can barely talk around the blubbering emotions filling his mouth.
“What are you afraid of?” His brother, from lifetimes ago, yet here before him now, whispers.
“I- I want to be a family again!” Tommy manages to cry, shuddering and sobbing as the words are torn hissing and spitting from where he had trapped them, “I can’t be a family if I’m this! You want Tommy! Not me!” and with one last shudder he sobs, “I’m afraid you won’t accept me for me!”
There should be a pause to process Tommy’s admission, but instead his brother falls to one knee instantly, putting his other arm on Tommy’s shoulder, holding him in place as he looks up into his teary eyes.
In prompts confusion in the mess that was the boy’s brain, but when he meets Techno’s eyes again his breath is stolen from his lungs.
“Tommy,” Techno says, soft as his bloody red cape and with a small curl of his lips upwards, “We have already accepted you.”
The world slows to a halt behind his words, and Tommy’s immortal heart stutters in his chest. Holding his breath, all he can think to do is tilt his head up to look at his father.
Phil was standing right behind Techno now, hand on his son's shoulder, and when the boy meets his eyes, there's only pure love to be found. He smiles, and his eyes crinkle at the edges in that familiar way as he nods his agreement.
His legs give in, and Tommy falls into his brother's arms with a shuddering cry. He’s caught instantly, and he flops boneless into his hug, sucking in a breath and burying his face into his shoulder. And when his lungs deflate, it's accompanied by a wail as he collapses inwards like a dying star. He sobs and he wails and Techno’s arms wrap so tight around him he can barely get in a breath, and when Phil’s arms and wings surround them both he can’t help but only wail louder.
“It’s okay Toms.” Techno hums, and Tommy can’t ignore the way his voice shakes, “Let it out, we got you”
“We’ve got you son,” Phil repeats, pressing his cheek to the back of the boy's head, an inaudible sigh leaving his throat as he coo’s his comforts, “We’re not leaving you.”
Encased in wings and family, Tommy crumbles, the weight of the truth lifted from his shoulders by calloused hands and familiar voices. And for the first time in a millennium, The Tommy Coat is left forgotten in that grimy warehouse, burnt and bloody beside the body of his tormentor.
The only thing as good as this moment comes hours later, when they make it back to the hospital. Tommy’s in a haze of exhaustion, but when he see’s his last family member sitting in the hallway of the hospital awaiting his arrival, he doesn’t hesitate to run towards him.
Wilbur spots him quickly. And he lights up like a glimmering galaxy of stars filled with relief and joy, “Tommy!” he cries and he rushes to meet him, and when they collide in a mess of lanky limbs that wrap around each other he laughs, high and happy, “Oh thank god you’re okay!” He wraps his arms around Tommy’s shoulder, dragging him down to the floor as their knees give out in solidarity. The boy shudders on a fresh sob, but he manages to smother it with a high-pitched giggle, “Why so worried, Wilby?” He sings, lopsided and messy as tears soak into the mans sweater, “You said I was strong! No nightmares were a match for big man Tommy Innit! Didn’t you know?”
Wilbur shudders in his arms, and though he doesn't draw back, he does murmur a soft, “You heard me?”
“Of course.” Tommy whispers back, and he hates the way his voice trembles, “Thank you… for being there.”
Wilbur just holds him closer, and when his arms brush against the base of his wings he whispers hoarsely, “Wings huh?”
The boy shudders, “There’s a lot you don’t know about me Wil.”
And after a pause, his brother lets out a breath, “We have a lot to talk about… don’t we?”
The instinctive answer of ‘No, we don’t’ is nowhere to be seen, buried beneath burning hope, and in its wake Tommy replies simply, “Yeah, we do.”