Chapter Text
Wilbur was the one to find him in the end. Well - find him, ha, they had already figured out where he was, they'd had his location pinned down to a single, exact spot thanks to expert trackers and early, very early, news reports flashing around here and there. They'd known where his body would lay, crumpled and curled, broken and shattered, ruined beyond even the most competent of repair.
Wilbur was the one to pull his frail body from the wreckage, then.
Wilbur was the one to shout at a frantic, crazed, weeping - "He's here! I found him! I found him!" , he was the one to begin shoving at clumped pieces of broken metal and ruined concrete slabs, Technoblade soon coming to help shift the heaviest fragments out of the way. He was the one, in the end, to shove a hand down into an exposed crevice, gripping and gripping, pulling and pulling.
Wilbur was gentle. He was gentle, but he was also hasty. They didn't have the time to be completely careful and overly mindful, too cautious of what might rip, not when the body could still be breathing, could still be hanging on by a bare, shivering thread - the clinging key to all hope, the clinging key to their salvation, the clinging key to their distant futures.
Wilbur let out a breath, sharp and aching, and then another. He leapt from the creaking remains of a destroyed building, feet landing gracefully, not a single falter in his precarious step. (A deadly ballerina, a venomous dancer, a man with so much to lose and so little time to save all that he knows and will ever know.)
"He's here; he's here, he's here," Wilbur choked out, sounding so undignified, so ruined and broken, for one of the first times in his life. Gone are the melodious tones; gone are the lulling hums and soothing manipulations; gone are the key components that made him so outlandishly remarkable to those beneath him.
Now, he appeared so disgustingly human.
"He's not breathing," Technoblade remarked. Quiet but truthful. Regretful but truthful.
No. No, no, no. "Don't say that." Wilbur shook his head, again and again.
"Will…"
"No."
"Wilbur, he's not breathing."
"He is. He is. He is."
He had to be. He had to be, for if he wasn't… Wilbur doesn't know what he'd do. He can't go on without- without him, he can't function, he can't breathe, he can't- his mind is spinning, hands shaking. He held onto the body tighter, but it didn't help. It didn’t help. Why wasn't it helping?
Why did Wilbur feel as if everything was crashing down around him with not a single thought about stopping? Not even for a moment - not a single breath.
"Wilbur. Give him to me."
"I can't." Wilbur's voice was choked, gasping, a tone that'd been ripped and torn and stabbed through more times than one could ever begin to recount. "I can't."
"You can."
"I can't! We need, we need a hospital- we need, we need our doctor, our- the- the"
"Wilbur! Give him to me!"
Technoblade is shouting now, too; his own voice was tight, thick with an underlying theme of an achingly melancholy emotion - so unlike the typically stoic hero, so unlike his toughened and thick exterior, that it almost hurts. Almost. (Wilbur is lost and lost and lost. He doesn't know where he is. Who he is. Where to go. What to do. What to feel.)
"I can't! Please, Techno," a gasp, a hiccuping sob, a daunting realisation that crashes and it burns, and it ruins, "I can't- we can still save him, we can still-"
It snapped. It all snapped. (Their red strings of fate were gone, torn, disintegrated into nothing - not anything, not without their anchor and their tether and the one thing that had kept them sane over all of these years.)
"He's dead, Wilbur! He's dead! Tommy is dead!"
And then the body in Wilbur's arms appeared so disgustingly human.
Because it's...Tommy.
It's Tommy; that much is obvious. It's Tommy, with his wisps of blonde curls that bob against his scarred forehead, even with the splatters of blood, dust and gore in the way; It's Tommy, with his pale complexions and light, light freckles underneath all of that added grime and dirt; It's Tommy, even as his eyes reflect such a dull, and lifeless colour - staring right up at Wilbur, there, but unseeing. Without recognition or light or life.
Tommy is there, and he is dead.
"Dad," Wilbur cried out in wretched despair, and Phil was suddenly there too - he was swooping down in a single burst, hands gentle but firm as they slowly pry Wilbur's shaking fingers away from a lifeless, drooping body. Tommy was like a rotting flower, the petals drifting away, the stems collapsing in on themselves with the slightest of a breeze. Wilbur doesn't want to let go.
He does, though, and Phil takes Tommy's body - his little brother's body - away. Away, away, away.
He's crying too, maybe. His eyes are blue - bluer than they've ever been before, shining in a dark, morning hue of orange and red and so much misery. There's grief, regret, a wash of disbelief clouding his vision. Tommy is dead. Phil is crying. Wilbur doesn't know what to think.
Technoblade gripped at his brother's shoulder; it's grounding - for him, or Wilbur, neither really know, nor do they care enough to begin to dissect it. He lets out a breath and then another. Technoblade doesn't cry. He can't cry, not anymore, and yet he wants to.
He really, really wants to, as he stares up - up, and up, and up.
Wilbur wasn't looking anymore, too lost within his own anguished spiral of disconnect, but Techno was. He can see as a small, soft hand rolls out from where it'd been tucked against a still chest. Phil was flying, soaring, and Tommy's hand swayed limply within an array of colours.
He was pale against the backdrop of a young sky. Pale, ghostly, a lick of snow-white skin besides the heat of a new beginning. His fingers were swarmed by tendrils of red, a dried crimson that had leaked from beneath his once sheltered interior - broken fingers and cracked skin, torn muscles and ripped nails.
Technoblade vaguely remembers the time's that he'd held that hand, letting the small warmth of his baby brother fill up his cold, cold heart; letting the bright laugh of a boy so young, so ambitious and kind, dance within his ears; letting the sparkle of a captivatingly crystal gaze, all wide and unwaveringly determined, reflect his own ambitious ways.
Technoblade remembers.
Technoblade remembers how Tommy's body has looked as Wilbur had pulled it from the collapse; how shattered he had appeared, all bloodied and broken, ripped to shreds; how much trauma he had been covered in, split apart at the seams and dripping a vile crimson all over a rocky floor; how- how small Tommy had looked, so small and fragmented - like a puppet whose strings had been carelessly cut.
A hero in the making.
A fallen lionheart.
A little boy, with the entire world at the tips of his fingers.
Gone, like the last brushes of Winter clinging to the trees, the ground, the Christmas hearts, as Spring gently rolls across the land, bringing joy and new life wherever it goes. Gone, like the twinge of a memory that's been slipping from your mind over the years and has finally taken its fall over the edge. Gone, as so many before him had been.
Wilbur was crying; he was sobbing, breaking down, unable to string together even a single sentence amidst his incoherent wailing. Technoblade was staring, stuck, frozen, lost within tumbling memories of a brighter angel he'd cruelly lost too soon. Phil was mourning, all dark and quiet, holding a still body so close to his chest - reminiscent of a wife he'd let go of and a son he had failed to protect.
And Tommy?
Tommy is resting. Free from the shackles of the world, away, away, away, unrestrained, uncontrolled, unconfined. His eyes are shut, his fingers are limp, his mind is closed off to the world around him.
"You've done so well, sweetheart." She smiles, her hands smoothing over his back every so often. His body is small against hers, like a trembling babe once more. She wants to cradle him close for years to come, but she can't.
She can't, and they both know it.
"But it's not your time yet. You have to go back. For them, for me, for yourself. My sweet little boy."
.
.
Tommy's eyes opened up to a blaring of white, and he thinks- he thinks 'wow' because this really must be, well, up there and not deep down below. He must've made it to the pearly gates of an encompassing bliss, must've done enough to be recognised as somebody good - not evil, never evil. (Tommy was good. He did well. He was enough.)
He carefully asked as much as he blinked, swallowed, let a dryness fill his veins and the back of his metallic-tasting throat. "Is this heaven?" He questioned, croaky, ruined, torn, but wondering, forever curious. He didn't know who he was asking - but the inquiry was there, out and open.
Somebody was listening. They always were.
"No," an angel - an angel? - laughed, bitter, resentful, but so, so relieved. "No," they repeated, "this isn't heaven, Tommy. But you sure as hell tried your hardest to get there. Thanks for that, by the way."
Oh?
'Hell' was that not some sort of taboo word within paradise? Should Tommy be hearing that? Should an angel be using that? No, probably not. Probably not, right- so that- so- well-
Tommy's brows furrowed, his fingers - stitched and bandaged, rubbed in a salve and protective creams - twitched where they lay against white, white, white sheets. He swallowed again, blinked once more, tilted his head to the side to greet deep, green eyes, half n' half hair, and a vaguely sardonic smile.
Ranboo.
Ranboo?
"Ranboo?"
"Sleeping beauty has finally woken up, huh?"
He was confused.
"I'm- I'm confused."
He'd been in heaven. Or- well, Tommy had died. He'd died, he'd crumbled, his body had given up, his heart had stopped. He had stopped. Stopped breathing, stopped existing, stopped it all ...So what- what was happening? What was going on? Where-
"I mean- I'm not really surprised, man, you… you took a beating."
"I- I did?"
"Yeah. Got beat right to, uh, death and then back again."
“...But I’m alive.”
Ranboo laughed, though it sounded strained and vaguely wrong - warped and abnormal. "You are now, you weren't- Tommy, you weren't when they found you." He gestured, then, around the room, around the hospital room.
Tommy was in a bed. He was in a bed, in a hospital room, in a hospital. He was alive; his heart was beating, his lungs were working, his eyes were seeing. Tommy was alive, and his family surrounded him from every angle.
Wilbur, curled against the bed, head pressed against Tommy's covered thigh, fingers gripping onto white sheets. Techno slumped beside Wilbur, hand gripping onto Tommy's own - though it wasn't tight, nor was it restricting, just there, soft. Phil, his dad, was resting in a seat beside the bed - his wings were flared out, face looking worn and tired, all wrinkled and aching.
Tommy swallowed. He glanced back to Ranboo. "I don't understand."
"You- you died."
It's there; it's blunt, it's truthful.
"I died."
"You came back to life."
"I… came back to life." Tommy tilted his head as much as it ached for him to do so. "How?" His tongue felt thick; his throat felt taut.
Ranboo picked at his cuticles, glanced around, glanced back at Tommy. "I probably shouldn't be telling you. Like, it's not exactly my place to do so, man, I…"
"But you will anyway, right?"
"Genetics."
"...Genetics?"
"Your mother."
Tommy paused then, as he's hit with memories - memories of dark waves of hair, of warm, inviting smiles, of kind words and even kinder touches. He was hit with memories of a time when he'd been but a young boy, still bright-eyed and bushy-tailed in the big, wild world, in a place that hadn't been ready for him, for what he was going to bring.
(He thinks of his mother, how much she had meant to him, and how much it had hurt when she'd been ruthlessly - carelessly - tugged away from his reaching grasp.)
"My mother." Tommy let the world roll off of his tongue. He was still confused, still unsure, but- "She had the touch of death. She was… she couldn't have-"
"And you have the touch of life, apparently. Opposites attract, right?"
Tommy laughed, then, as scratchy and ruined as it was. "You're an- an idiot. I don't think it works like that."
"No?" Ranboo's brow arched upwards. "Crap. I could have sworn that it would-"
"Ranboo."
"...Mhm?"
"I'm still confused."
He groaned. "You're gonna make me recite a whole story for you, aren't you?"
Tommy tried to smile.
Ranboo rolled his eyes, though it wasn't a bitter or angry act - it was fond, really, exasperatedly so. "Gosh, I knew that I shouldn't have come, I should have tried to catch up on a few hours of sleep that your reckless, dangerous moves made me lose out on, y'know, I-"
"Please?"
Ranboo slowly leaned back in his own seat, one leg crossed neatly over the other. He looked a little out of place where he was, still in lego pyjamas and weird, fluffy slippers that looked a bit like faulty bunnies. He also looked familiar, though, something that Tommy could remember and hold onto - like an unwavering lifeline in a realm of confusion and uncertainty.
Ranboo was his world at that moment, and Tommy would listen to all that he had to say.
"You- you, you picked up my call," Ranboo started slowly, and Tommy nodded - he had. "You picked up my call, and then you died." Oh. "You, heh, you died on the call, man, after asking me to tell everyone that you're sorry. You died. The building collapsed even more - I heard it fall down. I heard it all, actually."
(Blunt as ever, so it seemed.)
Ranboo dragged a hand over his face. He looked tired, too. Worn-out. Tommy's heart twinged painfully at the sight. "I, uhm, stayed on the line for a while, even as I contacted your family, though I think they'd already known. I heard them shouting, searching for you. Heard the moment they'd found you, too." Ranboo sighed. "It was awful, dude, I- it was so, so awful. You gotta promise to not pull something like that again, alright?"
"Promise," Tommy said in response with a shaky nod - sure, certain, even if he knows that heroes can never make true promises. (Are never allowed to, out of fear of the unknown.)
"Right. So, so, uhm- they found you. They found you, the building - the villain had already left, by the way - and you were dead, pretty much. Not breathing, not moving, completely gone. Wilbur was crying, Techno was-... Phil carried you back home. He carried you home so that you could be…" he shrugged, shoulders lifting upwards and then falling down.
(Tommy sort of wanted to hug his friend, wanted to wrap him up in a tight, warm embrace, even if that was so, so unlike his usual self. He didn't.)
"Apparently, you just started breathing again, on the way back, as if some sort of spark of life had been ignited within you. Phil hadn't even been doing chest compressions or anything, because you really had been dead, but then you just… weren't anymore."
"I wasn't?"
Ranboo shook his head again. "No, no- no. Sorry, look, you just… they think it has something to do with your mother's powers, right? Like you- hers was death, yours is life, but it couldn't be activated until you, y'know… conked out for the first time."
Ignore the severity of what had happened, ignore the change in his body, the change of his powers and his curses, focus on the jokes, on the humour and the escaping glee. Get away from the guilt and the pain, the misery and the regret.
"'Conked out'." Tommy's brow raised sceptically.
"Look, man, I've talked about death way too much, alright!? It's gonna jinx me or something!"
It was Tommy's turn to roll his eyes that time. "I doubt you're gonna be the one to get 'jinxed'."
"I could be! What- do you suddenly have omniscient powers now, too? Quick, tell me the lottery numbers for next week-"
"You don't even play the lottery!"
"I could!"
Ranboo flapped his hands about in a rather dramatic display, all squawking and indignant with his words and choices. He looked a bit like a flustered chicken, or something equally as stupid as that. Tommy couldn't help but to let out a short laugh, as croaky and broken as it came out.
Ranboo paused, letting his hands drop. He blinked. "What're you laughing about?"
"Just.. you. You look, uhm, happier. You kinda looked like- like you were pissed off at me earlier. I was getting worried."
Ranboo scoffed. "Oh, no, I'm still really annoyed at you."
"Huh?"
Ah, and the dams broke, the floodgates setting free their emotions, the severity of what had happened sinking hard and fast.
"Tommy- you, you- you snuck out in the middle of the night, to go and fight a villain that nobody's ever really heard of before, by yourself, without telling anyone! And then- and then you- you were stuck under a whole building, and didn't even tell me when I rang you! You said nothing!"
Tommy blinked for a moment. He swallowed, letting his tongue run over his raw lips. "No hard feelings?" He offered up alongside a tight smile.
There was guilt simmering within his gut. He knew that he'd made some bad choices, taken the wrong path, attempted a challenging course, but… But he'd assumed that he was in the right. He'd just wanted to prove himself. He'd just wanted to be better. He'd just wanted to be good enough. Was that so wrong? Was that so undesirable?
"You're awful," Ranboo sighed. "I just… man, I'm so happy that you're alive. That you're back with us, but I can't- I can't understand why you'd just… why you'd do that?"
Ah, there it is. Tommy let the corners of his lips pull upwards - sardonic and saccharine.
"I, uhm- this is going to sound so fuckin' stupid, but I just wanted to… prove myself."
Ranboo stared. He stared, and he stared, and he-
"... You're right; that does sound incredibly stupid."
"Ranboo!"
"What?! You're- that's the worst thing I think you've ever said in your entire life."
"Really? You want to bet on that?"
"Not at all, thank you." Ranboo shook his head and then gripped onto an air of something more serious again. "But, Tommy, I'm not really… you're you why would you need to prove yourself? To that much of an extreme?"
“I’m- Ranboo, I’m useless, c'mon, man. You don't need to lie. I'm not-"
"Tommy-"
"No, no," and god, did it hurt to speak, it hurt to move, to breathe, to think, but Tommy had to. He'd had his brush with death, with hell and heaven and a bleak purgatory; he needed to speak before it was one day too late. "I'm nothing compared to my family. You've seen how powerful they are, how many people they've saved, and I've done… nothing compared to that."
"I'm just… useless. I didn't get- I didn't have anything special about me. So I had to do something to prove myself, right? To show everyone that I wasn't just… useless Tommy- that I wasn't just dragging everyone down with me. I wanted to be seen."
That's all he wanted. Tommy had just wanted to feel respected, to feel known, to feel as if he'd done something worthy for once in his life. He'd wanted to be a hero that everyone could look up to - one that children could adore and adults could stare at in disbelieving awe.
He wanted to be somebody good. And he was now, wasn't he?
Wasn't he?
Ranboo stared for a few beats, head tilted to the side and brows furrowed into a very prominent frown. He sighed a little, leaned forwards, hands clasping onto Tommy's free one.
"Man," he started quietly, softly, oh-so-gently, as if trying not to spook a skittish animal. "You're going to need some serious therapy."
"...Oh my god. I hate you."
"I know, I know," Ranboo laughed, "but seriously, Tommy- you, you didn't need to do that. You were a hero- you are a hero, no matter what some horrible media outlets might've said or what some jealous civilians might've spewed. You're a hero, and there's no changing that."
Tommy swallowed, throat congested and aching. He swallowed, glanced down, glanced up again.
(It's not enough, not really. It'll take time, take therapy sessions and plentiful reassurance - it'll take a lot of patience and effort and care for Tommy to recover, both mentally and physically, but for now, it works. For now, it will be fine, and Tommy will thrive within its gentle security.)
"You think?"
"Yeah. And I'm sure that they do, too," Ranboo gestured around the room, at his family, at their sleeping bodies and fatigued forms. They were probably exhausted, wearied and spent. Tommy's heart twinged again.
"I'm going to have to apologise, aren't I?"
("I'm sorry, I didn't mean to- I just wanted to be good, I just wanted to make you guys proud and- and-" "Tommy, Tommy, we don't- we're always going to be proud of you, no matter what, okay? We love you." "We're just glad that you're alive-" "I don't know what I would have done with you, you little shit-")
"For stressing them to hell and back and then dying on them? Probably. But not right now, alright? Right now, you just need to rest. To try and… fix yourself up a little bit. You're a mess."
"Right," Tommy agreed easily, letting himself sink further into his pillows a tad more and allowing the insult to slide. "Sorry again, though. For… all of it. I know it must've been hard."
"It's fine."
"Is it?"
Ranboo smiled. "I'll talk to you when you wake up, alright?"
"Ranboo."
"Hm?"
"Tell me more about the show you watched when I wake up, okay?"
"Okay, Tommy."
"...And could you get me a drink for when I wake up again, too? My throat hurts."
"I'm not your slave."
"That's what you think."
And then Tommy smiled back, even as his eyes closed, even as his bandaged hand was given a gentle squeeze, even as there was a phantom touch against his shoulder and a regretful murmur of a woman's voice within his ear. He smiled, and he slept.
For what more could a young hero do?
...Tommy hadn't thought about it back then, when he'd first woken up in the hospital room, on that hospital bed, in those borrowed clothes and those wrapped bandages. He'd been distracted, preoccupied, ignorant of what changes that his body had truly gone through when he'd died and then been reborn once more.
He'd been… distant to it all, to his new abilities and talents.
(Distracted by his family, by explanations and apologies, by the help that he'd needed and the friends he'd made.)
His mother's detested curse had been death - anything she touched, anything she laid her fingers upon, would rot, it would rot and decay and tumble deep into the natural openings of the Earth's core, never to be remembered of again.
Tommy's curse had been life, but not a life that bubbled from his hands just as his mother's had, no, his curse was deep inside of him, a lifeline that kept him going, even with the direst of wounds, even with the most aching of injuries and scars. A permanent reminder. A permanent fixture.
Tommy's curse was that of immortality, an ever-lasting beat to his heart, breath to his lungs, and shudder to his skin. A permeance that he couldn't rid himself of, no matter how hard that he tried. (How many deaths he'd suffered through, how many lives he'd tried to take.)
He'd been forced to watch, with empty eyes and broken smiles, as his family had aged, as his friends had grown, as the world had changed around him without a single pause for him to catch up.
Tommy had stayed perfectly still - a statue in that of a growing Earth. A statue of blonde and blue, of fair skin and eternal features of a young boy, once so ambitious, once so determined.
Cursed to forever live, to forever reside and inhabit and dwell. To forever be reminded of everything that he'd lost and once yearned for.
All Tommy had really wanted - so many years ago, now - was to be a hero.
Now, as he traced over worn graves, over the cracks in the stone, over the spreading moss and the deteriorated letters.
'Loving father,'
'Loving brothers,'
'Loving friend,'
'Our love for them will forever prevail, never to be forgotten, never to be ignored.'
Now, he felt anything but.