Chapter Text
“I’ll be back,” Ghostbur claims eagerly, making eye contact with Tommy. He seems so happy to be doing this for him. Not that he ever asked for it.
Tommy really doesn’t want a picture of the fucking tree.
“Actually, I wanna see the Christmas tree too,” Dream interjects, quite unfortunately. He wishes that man stopped speaking. Especially to him. “I’m going through.”
“I wanna— yeah, Tommy, stay here,” Sapnap chimes in as well. Ever the fucking sheep at the green bastard’s heels.
He’d rather not stay. He’d rather see the tree in person — see all his friends again. His home.
Are they still his friends? Would they even still want to be, after everything?
“We’ll be back in a minute,” Dream adds on teasingly, just before their forms vanish completely into the portal. His voice is sickening. He can almost imagine the nasty little smirk beneath that stupid mask.
Then there’s just Tommy and the silence.
He’s never hated silence so much before this damn exile. Even listening to Dream ramble on about his stupid fucking Manhunt game is better than having nobody.
Tommy smiles bitterly to himself, eyebrows knitting into a pained expression. He really does have nobody. His shoulders sag. Tubbo hates him, surely; Dream is a psychopath, Sapnap can never decide whose side he's on, his family has all betrayed him, and Wil… Ghostbur doesn’t count for much anyways. Tommy’s just a vacation destination to him. Wil can’t even properly be there for his own brother, when he needs him the most.
He’s all alone.
But that’s how it ought to be, isn’t it? He chose the discs over L’Manberg. Over Tubbo. And now he’s left without all three. He got greedy, and he’s paying for it.
The usually obnoxious din of the lava feels strangely soothing to him right about now. Now that he’s noticed it, it’s not so deafeningly quiet after all. For a man who’s lost everything, who can no longer stand the silence, at least he has this. The rumble and pops of the molten stone beneath him offers a constant white noise that’s helping to take his mind off his troubles. He’d like to see Dream try and rob this from him, too.
Actually, he wouldn’t like that. The neon prick would manage to find a way, and Tommy would be more miserable than ever.
Tommy steps closer to the edge of the blackstone path, one hand on the wall of the hub as he peeks over the ledge. Despite the blistering heat the nether’s atmosphere is constantly radiating, the rolling waves of warmth that rise and caress his face from below are quite comforting. It’s a nice change from the suffocating, stagnant air along the paths.
As he keeps staring downward, his eyes long unbothered by the dryness brought from the temperature, he finds the sight entrancing. Like a painting come to life, the vibrant oranges and reds shift gently among one another, blending into an infinite pool of colour. It’s the same shade as the sunset.
He’s missed watching the sunset, with Tubbo and his discs and not a care in the world. He wants to go back.
Tommy’s attention is forcefully dragged away from the lava as he hears the telltale whoosh from the nether portal a few meters away. The moment his eyes land on that half-materialized, ever-smiling mask, a tidal wave of despair washes over his body.
He’ll never be able to go back.
Dream can do nothing but stare at the empty space where Tommy was standing just moments ago. His feet are frozen in place where they had only half stepped out of the portal frame, the nausea from dimension travel being the very last thing on his mind.
His thoughts are racing. He doesn’t want to believe what he just saw, he wants to believe it was a trick of the light, the heatwaves creating illusions.
But Dream knows better.
He knows, seconds later, when he hears the sizzles and pops of agitated lava far below him, that he can’t pretend.
He knows that if he looks over the edge of the bridge, the most he’ll see is a couple of Magma Cubes dancing on the lava’s surface.
He knows that he just watched Tommy lose his last life.
Somehow, he understands deep down that this was no accident. And he wonders, bitterly, how much of this was his own damn fault.
Dream feels nauseous.
“Yo, Dream, move your fat ass out of the way.”
Dream snaps out of his trance as he’s brought back to the present with a playful shove on the shoulder. The present where his friend — could he call himself Tommy’s friend? — just jumped from the path in front of him, and his other two companions are coming back from the SMP. Blissfully unaware.
He wonders how long he stood there, staring at that glaringly empty, jagged edge of blackstone.
“You’re the one with the fat ass, AssNap,” he retorts halfheartedly, stepping fully out of the portal frame to make room. He isn’t ready to tell them. He’s still getting over the shock. This just happened, what is he meant to say? To feel? Maybe the banter can distract him from the inevitable truth, if even for a moment longer.
“Nuh uh, not as fat as George’s.”
”You would know,” he bites back, forcing a weak laugh that dies in his chest just as quickly as the boy falling into la—
Dream clears his throat, interrupting his brain’s very unwelcome downward spiral. He can feel Sapnap’s eyes on him, but he doesn’t meet his gaze. He knows he’s acting weird. A few seconds tick by, and the awkward pause that’s starting to build under Dream’s silent panic is thankfully interrupted by the return of their other tag-along warping into the nether hub.
”Hey, Dream, Sapnap. Where’s Tommy?” Count on Wilbur to get straight to the point. Death hasn’t changed him much.
Dream glances towards the edge of the bridge for just a moment, dread and regret hitting him full force again, before shoving the emotions down and staring out into the fog like it could give him answers.
”Tommy, he, uhh, he went on without us,” he offers, punctuating with a light cough. Not a total lie. ”He– he’s probably back at Logsted by now.” Definitely a lie. But Ghostbur seems to buy into it, and Dream isn’t sure if he should be nervous or relieved.
He chooses to feel nothing instead.
“Oh, alright! Let’s go meet him then, I have the picture of the tree for him,” Ghostbur cheerfully announces, waving the polaroid image proudly as he leads the way back towards the Logstedshire portal.
Dream moves to follow, his footsteps somber, but is soon stopped by someone grabbing onto his arm.
“Dream.”
He looks over his shoulder at Sapnap, turning his body slightly in a silent invitation to continue. He knows where this is going, if the uneasy look on his friend’s face is anything to judge off of. He can’t avoid the elephant in the room forever. He shouldn’t avoid it, as much as he wants to.
“What happened?” He has no reason to cover anything up, though the thought of being... pretty much entirely responsible for this, it terrifies him. But Sapnap’s giving him this look, and he knows he needs to have this conversation. “Tommy’s not at Logsted, is he.”
Dream breaks eye contact with his friend — not that he’d be able to tell under the mask— but makes no move to pull away from the vice grip on his bicep. He doesn’t respond, knowing the man’s already piecing together the puzzle.
“Where’s Tommy?” There is an almost unnoticeable tremble in his voice. He knows, Dream thinks. He’s just afraid to hear it.
Swallowing the lump in his throat, Dream steels his voice and reasons, “We were never good friends to him anyway.”
Sapnap yanks on his arm. “Dream, where is Tommy? ”
“I’m pretty sure he actually hated me. Hated most of us.” They don’t have the right to mourn.
“DREAM!”
“He’s gone, Sapnap.” Dream measures his breaths carefully, refusing to let his emotions slip through his unbreakable facade. He almost immediately fails when he looks back to see the absolutely wretched expression on his companion’s face. “He’s dead. Don’t act like you haven’t already figured that out.”
“You—” Sapnap abruptly lets go of Dream's arm, as if it burned him, shaking his head as he takes a couple steps backward. “No, he— he’s just a kid, Dream, h-he—”
“He wasn’t that much younger than us, Sapnap,” he reminds, a bitter tone leaking into his voice. Bitterness at himself. There are a lot of things he shouldn’t have done to Tommy. A lot of things he shouldn’t have said. He got too carried away in his little game of cops and robbers, and now he won’t even have the chance to say sorry.
He watches as Sapnap’s expression twists from shock and grief into something more sharp. “How does that change anything?! You— Tommy just—” The man fumbles with his words, still trying to wrap his head around the situation. “Maybe he caused a little bit of trouble in town, but he didn’t deserve this!”
Dream turns away from the other man. “I know,” he agrees, voice strained. He should have checked on Tommy sooner, maybe he could have stopped him.
“You know? What the hell, Dream, how could you actually do this? It was his last life, you knew that!”
Dream lets out a sour chuckle. His eyes sting. “Yeah. But Tommy made his choice.” It’s Dream’s fault. He caused this, and he never took the chance to fix it. “Why didn’t you try to stop me sooner?”
He hears a scoff followed by a quiet sniffle behind him. “You didn’t have to do it. It didn’t have to be like this.”
He’s right. Was the exile necessary? He could have solved this peacefully a long time ago. Dream doesn’t respond. He doesn’t need to.
“Fuck you, Dream.”
Dream isn’t given a chance to reply, as he listens to Sapnap’s quickly retreating footsteps. Probably to spread the news. At least it saves him the trouble.
He doesn’t want to have to see Tubbo’s face when he finds out.
Sapnap overreacted a bit, he thinks, but he understands. He was closer to Tommy than Dream ever was; He actually fought with him, in some of the ‘wars’, as Tommy dubbed them. He can’t even fathom how the others will feel.
He still can’t fucking believe it. They were just teasing him, having some laughs. He never meant any harm. He thought Tommy was in on the joke. Thought he was having fun too, even if he was exiled from his home. It’s not like they were going to lock him out forever.
They were friends, right?
He supposes it was hurting the boy more than he realized. He was hurting him.
“Dream?”
His head snaps up and his body tenses as he's brought out of his rumination, not even noticing Ghostbur’s approach. He’d let himself forget the man was even with them.
“Hey, I noticed you guys stopped following. Didn’t you want to come visit Tommy again? He’ll be so happy to see the tree!” The ghost holds the picture out again for emphasis. “And where's Sapnap run off to? I saw him go back through the portal. Did he forget something?”
He almost can’t handle the innocent smile on Ghostbur’s face.
“Yeah, uhhh, no. Sapnap... isn’t going to be joining us. Let’s just go,” he replies, walking past the friendly apparition, heading for Logstedshire again.
He could practically hear Ghostbur’s face falling. “Oh... That’s too bad, then. But that’s alright, he can come visit later!” Dream can’t really tell if the ghost is following, per lack of any accompanying footfalls, but he can probably assume.
Not that it matters. He plans to stay far away from L’Manberg, at least for a while. Whether Wilbur’s ghost accompanies him or not. Dream isn’t a coward, but he knows his guilt will cloud his judgement. He wants a clear head before facing the rest of the SMP.
He doesn’t want to ruin anyone else before then.