Chapter Text
For the first time in his life, Tommy found himself waking up before sunrise. Something in the back of his head telling him that he needed to be up and about right now did not please the sixteen-year-old, but he followed that feeling and climbed out of the makeshift bed in his tent.
Tnret as he liked to call it.
He walked over to the shore and watched the waves silently crashing into the land, the crisp morning chill sending shivers down his spine. The child blew air into his hands and rubbed them against each other, hoping that it was enough to keep the cold at bay.
His torn clothes said so otherwise.
A sigh escaped his chapped lips and he made his way to the cabin his ghost of a brother built. Wilbur (or Ghostbur as everyone referred to) hasn't even visited his kid brother in three days, which left Tommy wondering if he had left him too.
Just like the others... He thought bitterly, opening the door to the cabin called Logstedshire as his stomach growled for food. Tommy opened a barrel and found some cured pork left for him. Ranboo probably brought it for him when he visited, but the teen couldn't remember when it was given to him.
And seeing the slab of cured pork reminded him of his piglin brother.
That caused a feeble chuckle to escape him. "Must be crazy and shit to think of that one." He mused, but placed the pork back inside the barrel and settled for an apple for breakfast.
Tommy let out a sigh that was visible in the early morning and sat down on the awkward bench he built himself, munching away on his apple.
Though, he hated to admit it, the teen missed his older brother. Why wouldn't he? Technoblade was the idol he looked up to when they were growing up together, he used to boast about how the great fighter was his brother to his friends in the village that was near their home.
Home... That word left him wondering if he could ever say that again without thinking of his brothers, his dad, L'manberg, Tubbo...
He clenched his fist and wolfed down the apple to its core, reminding himself that he had every right to be angry at his friend for exiling him over one mistake.
Dream said he was better off without him anyway.
However, Tommy couldn't help a nagging feeling that came whenever the masked man visited. He had chalked it up before and told himself that the reason he was feeling that way to Dream was because of their past. Now he was helping him and being his friend, that surely earned the man enough right to not be wary of, right?
Shaking his head, the teen threw the apple core to the ground and began to walk across the meadow. He still had his iron sword in a sheath that was strapped to his hip because it was early morning, and the monsters still roamed around.
Half an hour passed, he decided to head to the nearby village and finally talk to the locals. He would have probably done it before if Dream wasn't always tailing after him for the first few days in his exile.
As he neared the village, he noticed that a large horde of zombies surrounded the house on the outskirts of the village. Tommy wondered if they were trying to avoid the break of dawn or if they were trying to get their rotten hands on an innocent villager.
If it was the former, Tommy would have paid it no mind. But he soon found out that they were surrounding someone when one of the undead creatures fell to ground, joining the other fallen monsters there.
Just wait it out and let the sun deal with the rest. His mind told him, so he sat down on the ground and watched the scene before him.
His mind began to wander to the past. The smell of home cooked meals by their dad, to Wilbur strumming away at his guitar, and him watching Techno hack away at the training dummies in the yard.
And spending time with Tubbo...
But ever since he was in exile, memories of his family were becoming a blur to him. He didn't even remember what his dad looked like until he paid him a short visit when he still had his shit together.
Tommy slapped himself back to reality and saw that all the zombies were dead and slowly burning in daylight. He stood up and brushed the dirt from his ruined pants, not that it mattered anyway, they were always soiled.
The teen made his way to the house to see if the person killing the zombies survived.
What he found himself looking at was the slumped body of man with a trident sticking out his side. There was fresh and dried blood surrounding the pink-haired man. Tommy swore he knew someone with pink hair. He looked at the man's face and saw that his skin was clammy, his hair sticking to his face and had a pained expression on his features.
He also noticed that the man's mouth had teeth poking out from the bottom. Tommy wondered if the man was a piglin like his brother--
His eyes widened when he finally realized who this man was.
Tommy's hands shook as he stood there in shock, the image burning into his eyes. This was his brother! This..This was Techno!
He quickly knelt beside his brother and checked for any signs of life. The quick rise and fall of his chest giving him little relief, but knew that his breathing was too fast.
No, no, no, no.... He panicked, looking around for anything to keep his brother alive.
Should he try calling Dream on his communicator? But the man probably wouldn't like finding him with his brother so he stopped himself.
Tommy thought of calling his dad, but remembered that the older man wouldn't like being woken up by his disappointment of a son.
He bit his lip as he tore a strip of cloth from his shirt, wishing it was cleaner to avoid infection. The teen couldn't pull the trident out without immediate medical attention, something his brother needed badly.
His mind went back to the moment where he chose to watch the zombies surround his brother, leaving him to fight them off on his own with the threat of dying.
When he opened his eyes without realizing he had closed them, he saw Techno's dull eyes staring at him. Full of pain and emptiness which broke him.
A sob escaped his lips as he desperately tried to keep the blood from flowing out. The sound of doors opening made him cry harder.
"Help! Someone! Please!" He shouted and heard fast footsteps approaching them both.
Tommy was pulled away from his brother and watched as three men hoisted the piglin hybrid up and carried him to the healer.
"TECHNO!"
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The teen didn't know exactly how long he waited for the healer to come out from operating on his brother, but the sheer dread that came when he saw even more blood on the healer's coat nearly sent him to another crying fit.
"Before anything else, are you alright? No wounds, no broken bones?" He asked.
Tommy shook his head. "Just give it to me straight, is my brother okay?"
He pursed his lips and placed a hand on his shoulder. "Your brother, he lost a lot of blood. The trident also managed to damage one of his kidneys. I've done everything I can to give him a fighting chance, but with a wound like that, we can only pray to Notch that he makes it through this week." The healer explained to him.
The teen stood there shell-shocked. What did he mean this week? Was he going to lose the only living brother he had? Tommy couldn't feel the tears running down his cheeks, couldn't hear the healer's worried words as he struggled to believe that he was dying.
Techno, the brother he looked up to the most even after the events of the festival and the revolution, Tommy couldn't help the feeling of missing his brother mixing in with the anger he felt then.
He was only angry at him, angry for hurting Tubbo, for trying to blow up the nation they had just taken back. Why was the universe trying to take another brother away from him so soon?
Tommy fell to his knees and cried. Sobs raking his form as he held himself in an attempt to keep himself from breaking.