Chapter Text
Once Wilbur reached ten, two arrows were fired simultaneously and both missed. Dream, being the better shot with a bow, managed to nick Tommy’s ear as he dove to the right, off the boardwalk and beneath the water’s surface.
For maybe the first time in his life, Tommy was grateful for his smaller wings, as an eagle like Dream would sink under the weight of his feathers.
Tommy used his wings to propel himself up the the surface and drew his bow, cursing under his breath as his second shot only ripped a hole in Dream’s hoodie as the man rolled to avoid it.
Dream’s second shot, however, did not miss.
Tommy heard the arrow whistling, and Sapnap’s shout of “YES!” before he realized what had happened. He drew back his bow, a fierce throbbing in his side as he did so, but his third arrow sank into Dream’s thigh and the masked man fell onto his knee, cursing.
While his opponent was down, Tommy grabbed hold of the boardwalk and tried to haul himself back up.
Agony suddenly flared in his side and torso as he tried to pull himself back onto the wooden platform, and he cried out in shock. He almost slipped and fell back into the water, but somehow one of his hands latched onto one of the wooden slabs. His other immediately went to the spot of pain, and his eyes followed it.
There was an arrow, on his right side, stuck in between his ribs. The blood coming from the wound was staining the water around him purple.
Tommy’s ears were ringing, but he could make out Tubbo screaming. When he looked up, he saw an arrow, pointed right between his eyes. It hadn’t yet been released, but he met the eyes of the one who wielded the bow. The smiling, deadpan mask covered Dream’s eyes and nose, but Tommy could see the way his teeth gritted from the pain of his own wound.
“Do you yield?” The eagle said sharply, a soft gasp of pain coming from him at the end of the sentence. Dream’s knuckles were white from his death grip on the bow.
I’m going to die, Tommy thought, terror striking in an instant. He’s going to kill me.
The finch’s gaze shifted right, and he saw Wilbur. The harrier was shaking, the feathers on his hawk wings were poofed up, signaling he was angry and terrified. Tommy knew that Wil wanted so badly to come and help him. And when he met his older brother’s eyes, he knew exactly what he’d been thinking, almost as clear as his own thoughts.
“Don’t make me take you home in a box, Tommy,” Wilbur was thinking. “Don’t make me deliver your dead body to our father and brother.”
In that moment, with Tommy barely clinging to the boardwalk and his wings dangling uselessly as the water saturated his feathers, Tommy knew that his life was not worth this. There were other ways to win the war. He did not have to die like this.
Tommy was not afraid to admit that he was a proud man (man, not boy, like everyone says). In his head, he would have shouted NO defiantly in Dream’s face, the bastard. But in truth? He was scared. He was only sixteen. He was young, he didn’t want to die.
So, he regretfully swallowed his pride. Tommy coughed, specks of blood coming out of his throat, and met the dead eyes of Dream’s mask.
“I yield,” he rasped, so quietly that he could barely even hear it.
For a second, when the eagle didn’t move, Tommy panicked. Dream had no honor, he was going to kill him anyway! Right as Tommy was going to shout out the words “I yield” again, Dream shakily stood up. The masked man was favoring his right leg considerably, and he threw the bow and notched arrow on the boardwalk, nearly hitting Tommy with it.
“Tommy!” Tubbo yelled, and the thumping of boots shook the boardwalk. Tommy’s grip was slipping again, and he scrabbled for a hold, tearing at his fingernails and causing some to break and start bleeding. Just before Tommy fell into the water again, two pairs of hands grabbed him, one pair under each arm. He was hauled up with no particular gracefulness.
Tommy shrieked (a noise that he would later be embarrassed about making), accompanied by several colorful swears as he was pulled up and laid on his wings and back on the boardwalk. He could feel the vibrations of Dream hobbling away with the help of George.
“I’m sorry I’m sorry!” Tubbo’s voice was high, and his small tan and brown wings flapped incessantly, indicating his stress.
“Tommy, Tommy listen to me!” Wilbur’s voice was loud, and Tommy nearly flinched away from it, but looked his older brother in the eye anyway. His dark brown and white wings were also flapping like Tubbo’s. Fundy’s reddish-brown ones were similarly active as he applied pressure to Tommy’s wound “You are not allowed to die, do you understand me? That’s an order! Don’t you dare make me take your body back to Techno and Phil. You are not allowed to die, Tommy!”
Tommy gave Wilbur a cheeky grin. “Sir yes sir,” he huffed. The words were followed a second later by a yelp (another embarrassing noise) because he was suddenly pulled into a sitting position.
“We can’t help him here,” Fundy explained as Wilbur glared daggers at him for moving Tommy. “We need to get him back to L’manburg. I salvaged some medical supplies before the fight. It’d be easier to treat him there.”
“I can’t exactly fly or walk right now Fundy,” Tommy was leaning against Tubbo for support, feeling like he was about to pass out from the intense pain. “I can barely stay awake,”
“Don’t close your eyes,” Tubbo begged.
“Trying my best here,” Tommy muttered.
“I’ll carry him,” Wilbur immediately stood up. “My wings are the strongest and he is my responsibility.”
“General, it’s a long flight,” Fundy started to protest. “We can make something for him to lay in-”
“My little brother is dying, Fundy!” Wilbur yelled. “This is my fault, I should have never let him do this in the first place! He is my responsibility!”
“You couldn’t have stopped me,” Tommy retorted. “I challenged Dream, not you. It would have looked bad for you to take my place. The revolution needs you more than it needs me-”
“Don’t say that Tommy!” Tubbo said sharply, his voice getting slightly higher. “We need to get him home, now! Who the fuck cares who’s carrying him?”
For once, they were all shocked into silence. Then, Fundy and Tubbo gently stood Tommy up, the younger man cursing the whole way. Wilbur got behind him and wrapped both of his arms around Tommy’s stomach and with a lot of pained profanity, they finally got in the air.
Wilbur was flying low, and slowly, due to not being used to Tommy’s weight. Fundy and Tubbo flew slightly behind him, letting him set the pace. Tommy was barely keeping his eyes open at this point, and he was pretty sure that he was dribbling blood all over Wilbur’s arms and coat.
The wind was cold for an early fall night. Or maybe that was just Tommy.
This could be the last time I’m in the air, he thought slowly. And despite the pain, he stretched out his wings from where they had pinned between Tommy’s back and Wilbur’s chest. No one acknowledged the strange move, thought Tommy knew they all had seen it. He knew that they were thinking the same thing he was, that if he was going to die he wanted to kind of fly one more time.
As the wind whistled through Tommy’s feathers, he let his eyes fall shut, briefly. The arrow in his ribs throbbed and pulsed, and it was more painful with his wings out like this, but the sharp night air felt good against his wings.
It was peaceful like this way. Tommy felt himself drifting, and drifting. Is this what death felt like? It felt nice, in a way. Tommy felt like he should be concerned that he couldn’t feel Wilbur against him, that the cold air no longer nipped at him, that the arrow in his chest seemed to be a distant memory. But he wasn’t concerned, he just wanted to rest, and wake up with none of this ever having happened.
“Tommy!”
The teen jerked awake, his eyes snapping open as his senses came back in a rush. They were on the ground. When did they land? Wilbur no longer was carrying him, and Tommy was half laid out in the grass, with Wilbur supporting his upper body.
“What did I tell you about not dying?!” Wilbur shouted, and Tommy finally looked at his older brother. There were tear tracks down his cheeks, and blood stained the front of his blue coat.
“My bad,” Tommy grunted. “I was just going to take a nap.”
“No naps,” Fundy snapped. “It’s crucial that you stay awake, Tommy.”
“I thought we lost you,” Tubbo whispered, and Tommy glanced at his best friend. Tears were still running down the other teen’s cheeks. “When you didn’t wake up, we thought you were gone.”
“Can’t get rid of me that easy,” Tommy cracked a smile, revealing blood teeth. He quickly turned his head to the side and coughed violently, splatters of more blood getting on Wilbur’s coat. “Sorry,” he mumbled. He felt like he was drifting off again.
“Tommy!” Somebody stomped on his wing, Tommy suspected it might have been Fundy, and the teen yelped, his eyes blinking rapidly.
“Sorry,”
“Bring him here, Wilbur,” Fundy stepped into the door of the damaged caravan. “Lay him on the counter,”
Tommy hissed a quiet “fuck” as Wilbur stood up, but didn’t say another word. He could tell the others were worried about him, just for the fact that he was being quiet.
He didn’t complain as he was laid out on the counter of the caravan, though it did jolt his wound again. A sharp breath came out from between his gritted teeth, but nothing else.
“I don’t want to take it out,” Fundy said softly. “But we need to. It might make you bleed out if we don’t have a Health or Regeneration potion.”
“We don’t have anything,” Wilbur muttered bitterly. He was standing by Tommy’s head, softly stroking his hair. Normally, Tommy would slap at him and yell at him to go away, but he didn’t. He knew that Wilbur was trying to comfort Tommy, and himself, in a way.
“We had backup chests! We still have some brewing stands, we can make one!” Tubbo sounded desperate, and his wings were flapping nervously.
“Do you have a melon? Or gold? Or nether wart? Or glass bottles?” Fundy asked, suddenly seeming very tired. “We may have the brewing stands but we don’t have the ingredients. Even if we had everything we needed, it would take an hour to break down the gold enough to shape them into nuggets, and then we’d have to cook the melon and the gold for another three hours to get it to fuse. We’d have to shape the bottles from molten glass and let them cool, which would take a day and a half, and the potion itself would take another four hours to brew fully. That’s all time that we don’t have.”
Everyone was silent for a few moments, and Tommy felt a tear roll down his face at what he realized was going to happen.
“I can take the arrow out and stitch him up, but, I’m sorry. I can’t do anything else. Even with the stitches, he’d bleed out without a blood transfusion, and we don’t have anything sterile,” Fundy refused to meet anyone’s eyes.
“I’m a dead man,” Tommy broke the silence with the news that everyone in the caravan now knew.
The next sound was of Tubbo crying out, and then the door slamming shut as the wren ran out of the caravan, sobbing.
Tommy could hear Wilbur crying too, and felt little plops of tears against his shirt while the General was applying pressure to his wound. Breathing was becoming harder and harder, and his hand was wrapped around the arrow embedded in his chest.
I just want this damn thing out, Tommy grumbled in his head. No more crying goddamnit. If I’m going to die, I’m going to die laughing.
But before he could close his fist and yank the bastard arrow out of him, the caravan door opened. Tommy glanced at who was coming in, expecting Tubbo, but who he saw there made him slam a hand down on the counter next to him to alert Wilbur to the sudden intruder.
Wilbur jerked his head around, and Fundy drew his sword.
It was George, unarmored and unarmed, with nothing but a glass bottle, topped with a cork. Inside was a reddish-pink liquid, filling the bottle almost to the top. His small blue jay’s wings were folded behind his back. Not stiffly, but as if he was relaxed. His feathers twitched every few seconds, signaling his unease with being in close proximity to his enemies.
“What do you want?!” Wilbur spat venomously. “Haven’t you and Dream done enough?”
“Wilbur,” Tubbo’s shaky voice emerged from the doorway to the caravan as he also stepped inside. “He’s- he’s got a-”
“Potion of regeneration,” George finished smoothly, spreading his hands in a surrendering manner. “Dream has a deal for you,”