Chapter Text
As Tommy took his first steps out of the cell, his first steps away from Dream, he felt like he could finally breathe. He was free.
It was exhilarating to walk away from the man that had ruined his life, that had taken everything from him. There was a bitter victory in the fact that good would triumph over evil.
A bitter victory that Wilbur had been right.
As he took the last step to the edge of the platform, he took one final glance behind him before reaching for his communicator to call Sam. His fingers hovered over the send button, but something made him hesitate. Something made him wait a single second, but that was all that it took to fall apart.
When the first explosion happened, Tommy flinched. When the second came, he was suddenly back.
He was back in L’manberg.
It was the middle of the night, and he was standing on a field. All around him, there were silhouettes fighting, painful reminders of a past that Tommy would rather forget. The sky was blocked out with obsidian, explosions raining down onto the place that he had once called a home. Tommy fell to his knees, trying to drown out the static that was drowning out his brain, but it was too loud and there was too much and the panic was starting to fill up his brain.
But suddenly there was a hand on his back, rubbing in gentle circles as the gentle hum of a familiar melody filled his ears. He leaned into the touch, into the soft hands and for a moment he thought that he was dead. As the static slowly faded away, they were gone, and when his eyes opened again he was still in the vault.
He froze as he saw the obsidian walls, saw the masked figure in the corner, gently rocking as he hummed something far too quiet for Tommy to hear. He had been alone with Dream. He had been unconscious with the man who wanted to kill him.
And that was when the panic set in. When this started to feel real. Because Dream was going to escape. He was going to get out. And Tommy had to stop that. Had to get out. Had to make sure that his monsters would never see the light. He turned towards dream, anger mixing with fear as he yelled asking Dream, “What the fuck was that?”
Dream responded quickly, saying that “It sounded like tnt,” and Tommy hated how he was so casual about it. Hated how his voice didn’t even shake. It wasn’t fair that Dream was still fine after all he had done to them. It wasn’t fair that he got to walk away.
Because Dream had ruined Tommy. Ruined him and then left broken pieces lying on the ground.
It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair and even though they would forever tell him that life wasn’t supposed to be, that did nothing to stop him from waking up screaming at night.
He ignored the fact that Dream wasn’t the only one in his nightmares, that he wasn’t even in the worst of them .
As the explosions kept going, Tommy screamed Sam’s name, his voice drowned out by the noises that echoed on obsidian walls.
The final set of explosions rocked the prison to its core, water sloshing out of the cauldron and mixing with the purple puddles on the floor. The lights flickered for a moment, before going out and plunging the cell into an eerie twilight, the lava’s dull glow being the only source of light.
As Tommy turned to face Dream, his hands shook. The shadows only made the scene more sinister, oily blood dripping down Dream’s mask as he tossed a potato between his hands. His expression was blank, blanker than it normally was as he stared into the molten glow.
“SAM!” Tommy begged, “I WANT TO LEAVE!”
He jumped as Dream spoke, his back hitting the wall of the cell, “He would have heard you the first time. He’s not there.” Dream’s words only made him scream harder, begging and pleading for the warden to come back and save him as he slammed his hands into the wall
Because Sam was kind. Sam was good. Sam would find him.
Dream was wrong.
“Dream, what the fuck is going on here?” Tommy asked, his voice shaking. As much as he didn’t want to admit it, he was scared. Terrified even. He just wanted to get out of the prison, get away from Dream and be done.
He just wanted to leave.
Dream didn’t move as he responded, his voice barely more than a whisper “I don’t know. How would I know?” He still hadn’t moved, hadn’t even blinked since Tommy saw him, and the blood from his nose had started to pool on the ground. “Tommy, I have no idea what’s going on.”
If someone had asked Tommy what did it, what finally made him snap, he wouldn’t have been able to tell them. Maybe it was the sound of Dream’s voice, maybe the tilt of his head, maybe the way that damn smile seemed to move on its own. In the end it didn’t matter, because suddenly the fear was gone.
As Tommy stepped closer to dream his hands were clenched into fists. He didn’t know what he planned to do, what he planned to say, but he knew that Dream needed to pay. Dream needed to be learned. As Dream tried to speak again, he struck. “Shut up! You haven’t changed. You are the fucking monster of this server, alright! Not anything else. You are!”
And maybe, he should have regretted it. Maybe he should have stopped there, but Tommy had never been smart. It took two steps for him to reach Dream, two steps and one breath. It only took a second for his fist to swing, for it to dig into Dream’s chest.
For a moment, the world seemed to freeze. Because even in exile, even through the worst of it, Dream had never hit him. Because their roles were reversed, because Dream wasn’t supposed to be weak. But it was only a moment, a second in time, before Tommy was once again swallowed by the rage
Dream was still on the floor, still gasping for air and Phil had told Tommy not to kick someone when they were down, but that had been before. As Tommy looked down at his abuser, his monster, Phils words were drowned out in a sea of red.
Peace had never been an option. Not for him.
For a second, all he saw was a haze, a sort of emptiness that never quite filled him. An emptiness that scared him more than death.
A second later he was back. Tommy was back and Dream looked far too pale. Tommy was back, and Dream was crawling away from him. Tommy was back, and Dream was shaking as he cowered behind the chest.
Tommy was numb and his knuckles were dirty with someone else’s blood. He didn’t feel very strong. Dream had just taken it, never even fighting back or flinching, and yet he had kept going, and now he regretted it, but he didn’t know how to put that into words. How to say that he had been wrong.
And so instead he buried it, buried it away in the farthest corners of his mind. Instead, he convinced himself that he had been right.
By the time Dream came out from behind the chest, Tommy’s voice was hoarse from screaming. There was no way for him to tell the time, but he knew that it must have been hours by the way that the blood on his knuckles had turned brown.
When Dream came out from behind the chest, something had changed. He never met Tommy’s eyes, never spoke, other than the words he quietly whispered as he walked by. “I’m trying,” Dream had said, and for the second before they broke his world, Tommy was confused.
Tommy watched Dream from across the cell as he propped himself up against a wall. He ignored the bruises that were painted on Dream’s body, and ignored the little grunts of pain that he made when he moved. At first he tried to ignore Dream’s arm as well, but when he saw the way that the bone pushed against his skin, he felt nausea burn against his throat.
Because he had done that. He, Tommy. There was no one else to blame. And for one second, he let himself doubt, but then he remembered Wilbur. Then he remembered that he was the hero, that he was good. This had just been a mistake, that was all.
Wilbur would still be proud.
Dream would be fine, Tommy reminded himself. He could take care of himself.