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tommy is tired. he’s so fucking tired, but dream won’t let him die yet. everything feels cold and hot at the same time and everything hurts.
seeing tubbo standing outside his nether portal hurts even more. the compass around his neck hangs heavier than normal. tubbo is clutching his own compass in both hands.
“what do you want?” tommy tries to sneer, but he knows it comes out tired. tubbo has tears in his eyes and looks like he’s going to break, but he sets his shoulders back and hardens his gaze.
“you’re exiled from new l’manberg,” tubbo starts. he obviously isn’t done, but the statement still stings.
“way to rub it in,” tommy mutters.
“that doesn’t mean you’re exiled from anywhere else.”
the two stare at each other for a moment. tommy feels like his mind should be going, going, going, but it’s just shut down. tubbo is still staring at him. his knuckles are white from gripping his compass.
“what?” tommy says. his voice is hoarse. the only people he’s talked to recently are dream and wilbur, a god and a ghost, and he wants nothing more than what tubbo is clearly implying. to go with him, to find somewhere else to stay, to not be alone.
“i’ve been talking to people,” tubbo says. “and- i don’t know if you’ve heard about el rapids, but they’re willing to let you in if you do their weird citizenship ritual. originally bad and i were negotiating him letting you into the badlands as a refugee, but now he’s siding with dream and they’re just going for chaos, so-”
“you were talking to bad?” he doesn’t know why this is so surprising, maybe the fact that he assumed tubbo would be happy he was gone. negotiating? to get him- well, not back in new l’manberg, but closer?
“yeah,” tubbo says quietly. he’s lowered the compass, but he’s still gripping it tightly. “in secret. but- but quackity said he’d be more than happy to let you into el rapids! dream recognized them as an official country, so technically he can’t be mad about them letting you in, and half of their government is our government, so i’d be able to visit you and-”
he cuts himself off. tommy hasn’t moved and tubbo clearly thinks something is wrong, and yeah, something is wrong, they’re supposed to be best friends but tubbo exiled him and now he wants him back and-
and maybe tubbo always wanted him back. maybe it was just tommy, thinking that his exile meant tubbo was mad, rather than both of them just being scared and confused kids that have been fighting in wars as long as they’ve been in this world.
“or i could not visit you,” tubbo cuts himself off. “if you don’t want me to, i mean.”
tommy is not going to apologize. tubbo isn’t going to apologize either. they were both just doing what they thought was best. but neither of them can hold it over the other’s head, the lack of apologies, when it’s something they’re both refusing to do.
and damn it, tommy misses his best friend.
“i want you to,” he says. “of course i want you to.”
tubbo smiles, barely, the corners of his eyes crinkling up, and then they’re both barreling forward into a massive hug. tommy can practically hear the compasses screaming, pointing towards each other, a force to be reckoned with, and he hugs his best friend tighter.
“i missed you,” tubbo chokes out, and tommy is not crying, he is a big man, he doesn’t cry. “i’m so sorry.” he’s not sorry for exiling tommy. tommy knows he isn’t. he’s sorry for the pain that they’ve both been put through, and tommy gets it, tommy understands.
“i’m sorry, too,” he mutters. he’s not sorry for all the things he did wrong, for the things that got him exiled. he’s sorry for ever implying that he didn’t care about tubbo and l’manberg and everything they’ve worked for, and he knows that tubbo gets it, tubbo understands.
tubbo pulls away after a moment and turns around, clearly wiping the tears from his eyes, and when he turns back he’s the picture-perfect president. tommy doesn’t know how he does it.
“so,” tommy says, clearing his throat. “what’s this about a weird citizenship ritual?”
and tommy grabs his stuff, anything he has that’s important. he scribbles a hasty note for ghostbur as tubbo rambles about spider eyes and string, and then tells him about everything that’s been going on. they step through the nether portal together and they walk back together and their compasses are still pointing directly at each other.
he tells tubbo about dream, about the lava pit, and he sees the way tubbo’s eyes darken. tubbo tells him about arguments and chaos and tommy can’t help but feel angry, because this is his best friend and his best friend is leading a nation and everyone else is making it so difficult. he thinks that they both want to punch dream, for multiple reasons each.
sapnap and quackity are both waiting for them when they make it to el rapids. sapnap surprises him by hugging him tightly, and tommy freezes for a moment before hugging him back.
“good to see you’re okay,” sapnap says, and tommy’s going to make a joke but his voice catches in his throat at how genuine sapnap looks.
“welcome back, man,” quackity says, shaking his hand. “and welcome to el rapids!”
tommy does their stupid citizenship thing and they tell him he’s welcome to whatever he wants. quackity’s the president, george is the vice, tubbo is the secretary of state. sapnap, punz, and karl are all citizens, and now so is tommy.
“thank you,” tubbo is saying sincerely to quackity and sapnap, as if they wouldn’t have let tommy in anyways. tommy is just marveling at the fact that they don’t hate him, that they want him here, that they immediately include him in conversations and give him materials and help him start building a house.
tubbo claims he’s taken a day off to get tommy back, that he left fundy and niki in charge, and he brings loads of building materials and food and eventually the other members of el rapids join them and they have a picnic overlooking the rest of the world.
the house is nowhere near finished enough, and tommy’s entire body hurts from everything that’s happened over the past few days, so tubbo offers up the small home he built in el rapids.
“why’d you build a house here?” tommy asks. tubbo just shrugs.
“it’s small,” he replies. “everywhere else feels too lonely. here feels lonely, too.”
“does it still?”
“no.”
tommy smiles. they sleep smashed together in one bed, limbs tangled. tubbo hogs all the space and in exchange tommy steals all the blankets, just like they did during the revolution, and after the revolution, and when they were both in pogtopia, and for the brief amount of time they were in new l’manberg before tommy’s exile. they were child soldiers, and the nightmares plague them more harshly than anything.
it’s ironic, tommy thinks, that the two things that haunt him most are nightmares and dream.
and his brother. he hasn’t seen ghostbur in a bit, but that’s not uncommon.
it takes dream a surprisingly long time to find out that tommy is no longer living in exile- nearly a week. in that time, they finish building tommy’s house and add a garden in the backyard. in that time, tubbo and tommy continue messaging constantly; tommy’s compass can’t point down, and tubbo’s can’t point up, but they each know that the other is there. in that time, phil stops by three times, wilbur stops by five, niki stops by four, and tubbo leaves his presidential duties and joins him for dinner and general messing around every single night.
the first time phil visits, they both cry. they sit in tommy’s newly-finished house and tommy lets himself cry for the first time in who knows how long and his father hugs him as tightly as he possibly can. phil continues stopping by, bringing odd things that he thinks tommy might like, and tommy saves every single weird thing that his father gives him.
the first time wilbur visits, he’s beaming. he looks so happy that tommy is happy, and tommy’s heart is so full and he stamps it down because he does not get sappy, he is a big man.
tubbo jokingly tells him that he needs to stop repressing his emotions. he pretends to be mad and tubbo pretends to be upset and then they both laugh and it feels like old times. but tubbo is right, he does need to stop repressing his emotions, so he asks tubbo if he could ask niki to visit.
the first time niki visits, she brings a basket full of freshly-baked goods and her usual attitude. she pretends to be upset with tommy as she checks him over for injuries and then she hugs him so tightly that his ribs practically crack and they sit on his roof and talk for hours.
eventually, everyone else in new l’manberg finds out that tommy is back, or as close to back as he can be. they all make the trip up to el rapids and they all seem thrilled to see him and he’s surprised, almost, at how excited they are.
“i told you, tommy,” tubbo says stubbornly on the sixth night. “nobody hates you.”
“i know,” tommy mutters, and maybe, just maybe, it’s finally starting to get through to his head.
dream finds out- well, tommy doesn’t really know how dream finds out. but on the morning of his seventh day in el rapids, the masked man is standing outside his house with his arms crossed.
“what the hell are you doing here?” he asks, and he sounds pissed. tommy is only slightly afraid, because he knows they found a loophole, he knows they technically did nothing wrong (they being him and tubbo, because he knows dream will rip into tubbo for this too and he will not let that happen).
“i could ask you the same thing.”
oh, that’s george, standing behind dream, and tubbo and sapnap are both sprinting towards them.
“tommy’s a citizen here,” george continues, and he’s glaring at dream, and ender, tommy really does not want to be dragged into the dream team drama, but it looks like that’s how this is going to go. “you aren’t.”
tubbo runs directly to tommy’s side, grabbing his arm and shoving him back, like he’s trying to protect him from dream. sapnap stops halfway between tommy and george, like he doesn’t know who to go to, and he draws his sword.
“whoa, whoa, whoa,” dream says, axe already in hand. “you’re all ganging up on me now? tommy’s the exiled one, and he’s here-”
“tommy is only exiled from new l’manberg,” tubbo says, and his voice is dripping with poison like tommy doesn’t think he’s ever heard it before. the compass around his neck is spinning as tubbo steps further in front of tommy, his own sword drawn. “he’s not exiled from anywhere else.”
dream is glaring, and tommy knows that tubbo is glaring back, and he does his damn best to keep the smirk off his face. sapnap is standing next to george now, also in a defensive position, because they all know if it comes down to it george won’t be able to stab dream. sapnap will.
“do you know what this means?” dream asks, turning back to george and sapnap. “you’re harboring an enemy of the dream smp-”
“if you really want to declare war on us,” george says, his voice low. “then do it.”
“war on el rapids is war on l’manberg,” tubbo says. “my country was built on war, dream. you really think we’re not prepared to go back?”
“not to mention,” sapnap adds. “that what you would be doing might be considered an abuse of power. and we all know who in this world hates the government more than anything.”
they’ve backed dream into a corner, and every single one of them knows it. dream scowls and puts his axe away.
“fine,” he mutters. “fine. but if he so much as steps foot in l’manberg-”
“then that’s l’manberg’s problem, not yours,” tubbo snarls.
“we’re sick of you using us, dream,” sapnap cuts in. “all of us. if you try to fight us-”
“your fight’s with me,” tommy snaps. “so if you’re going to fight them because of it, i’m going to do everything in my power to take you down.”
dream turns from george and sapnap to tommy and tubbo. he stares tommy directly in the eyes and grins, a malicious, predatory thing, reminiscent almost of schlatt.
“what about your discs, tommy?” dream asks, and oh, he’s got that tone of voice again, the one that tubbo and phil and sapnap and niki called manipulative, the one that he heard right before he almost died, almost spent his third life.
tommy looks down at tubbo, still standing protectively in front of him.
“i care about my discs,” tommy says. “but not more than my friends.”
the tension in tubbo’s body drops for a moment as he turns back, looking at tommy in surprise. tommy grins, as heartfelt as he can manage. tubbo turns back and dream looks shocked.
“oh, tommy,” the masked god says, regaining his composure almost instantly. “you really think that? you really think they matter to you? you’re kidding yourself. all i have to do is say the word and your discs-”
“shut the fuck up dream,” tubbo snarls, and dream freezes again. “before i kill you.”
“you wouldn’t,” dream replies, his grin no longer predatory, almost nervous.
“watch me,” tubbo says.
and they do. they watch as tubbo steps forward and stabs dream in the gut, a quick and easy and painless kill.
“holy shit,” sapnap says.
“you shouldn’t have done that,” tommy says, slightly panicked, but tubbo still looks pissed.
“i want to do it again,” he growls, and tommy just hugs him tightly. ten minutes later, quackity comes running up yelling that dream is requesting a meeting and demanding to know what’s going on.
in the end, dream agrees (at eret’s very, very strong insistence) that he took things a step too far and tubbo was merely defending his best friend against what he perceived as a direct threat. eret, king of the smp, loudly tells dream in no uncertain terms are they to go to war again.
“we just left a period of war,” they say. “we’re not going back. you don’t like it, dethrone me.”
dream could do it, and they all know it. but he doesn’t.
quackity isn’t necessarily pleased about the whole situation, but tubbo puts on his big law face and they actually have a civil discussion about self-defense and manipulation and tommy isn’t really following, he’s playing rock-paper-scissors with sapnap under the table.
“dream's not gonna do shit,” tubbo says to phil that night at dinner as they recount the day’s events. “he’s trying to keep up the peaceful act, so he can’t declare war. the most he’s gonna do is add more trade restrictions and build the walls up higher, but we’ve been living with the walls for so long now that it doesn’t matter. and there are plenty of other nations for us to trade with.”
and phil and tubbo start talking about trade, and tommy thinks. about how a week ago he was alone, his compass always pointing to something that was so far away, about how he didn’t know if he’d ever have a real home again.
and now the compass is pointing directly across from him and after phil leaves the compass is still pointing directly across from him.
and when they both set the compasses down to sit in the garden the compasses point in the same direction, the compasses are pointing towards them, sitting in the garden and laughing, and tommy thinks that yeah, the compasses are pointing towards home.