Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“I never wanted you to see me like this,” Tommy admits.

Tubbo is quiet above him.

“I’m sorry Tubbo,” He murmurs.

“Ah shit,” Tubbo says, sounding particularly not like Tubbo, “I am not Tubbo.”

Tommy frowns, “Can you pretend to be?”

Not-Tubbo sighs heavily, “That’s uh- that’s not really how it works.”

“Oh…”

“Yeah,” A hand pushes Tommy’s hair back, away from his face, “Try to get some sleep and maybe you’ll be coherent in the morning.”

Tommy obligingly closes his eyes. His little mattress on the floor is heavenly, he feels like he’s sinking through it, into a different place, like his body is untethered to the world.

He keeps his eyes closed when he says, “Well, at least if you won’t let me die then I can sleep and pretend I don’t exist.”

“Holy shit,” Not-Tubbo warbles out, “Holy shit, you need help.”

Tommy frowns and thinks of something to say, but it is washed away from his tongue as sleep claims him.

***

Sometimes Tommy fantasizes about becoming a ghost. He stares at Ghostbur and thinks about it; what if he just… didn’t exist.

Thinks about how Ghostbur is so happy now, even though he can never really be sad anymore. He forgets about the sad things before he can experience the emotions, Tommy’s learned. No matter how many times Tommy has half-way explained Alive-bur’s life, Ghostbur simply cannot recall more than what seems to be his intrinsic memories.

Tommy longs for that, the fog of knowing only what you want to.

He stares at the swirling pattern of lava. Thinks about what his ghost form would look like.

What if he dies and doesn’t come back?

He smiles, a spark of glee shoots through him, oh, to simply be nothing, to return to the core of the universe where you began.

And then he frowns and feels a deep shame wash through him. He shouldn’t be thinking these things. What would all of his friends say?

What would his family— no. Nevermind.

***

“Tommy,” Tommy blinks open his eyes, Ranboo hovers over him, “Hey, good to see you awake, man. Are you feeling better?”

“Where’s Tubbo?” He grumbles. He distinctly remembers something about Tubbo being here, or maybe something about him definitely not being here?

“I don’t know, I saw him in L’Manberg yesterday, so…” He shrugs and Tommy frowns. So his second guess was right.

“Okay.” He says, Ranboo continues to hover, “Get out,”

“Wait, I don’t think— I don’t think you should be alone right now-“

“Get out!” Tommy sits up and screams in his face. He jolts back and lands on his butt in the sand.

Tommy glares at him, eyes glinting dangerously and Ranboo looks all doe eyed and scared.

“I don’t want your pity,” Tommy growls.

I don’t want to be embarrassed! His mind wails.

“I’m not— I’m not pitying you,” He argues weakly.

“Get out,” Tommy reiterates a third time, quieter and more broken than the last.

“Okay,”

And he’s alone.

He hates it. He yearns for Ranboo to come back. He yearns to see Tubbo, his best friend, again. He longs for literally anyone to come see him. Anyone but—

“Tommy! Hello,” Dream greets with enthusiasm, “How are you doing today?”

Tommy thinks about how his hands itch with the need to throw himself off a cliff.

“Great,” He lies.

***

“What’s dying like,” Tommy asks for the upteenth time.

Ghostbur shrugs, “Well it’s like… imagine you’re swimming in a river and sometimes the river is shallow and you can walk in it, and other times the current is so strong, the most you can do is keep your head above water, and then sometimes the salmon in the river flirt with you and you raise a child with one of them, and then, all of the sudden everything explodes and your father pulls an assisted suicide with you.”

Tommy regrets asking, if only for the salmon and flirting part. As great as Fundy is, Tommy is just immensely uncomfortable with the idea that he’s Wilbur’s biological kid. And of course the whole salmon aspect of that affair.

“What do you think dying will be like?” Ghostbur asks cheerily, like this is a regular conversation that regular people have.

Tommy thinks about it for a moment, stares at the little chunk of wood in his hands. He’s been learning how to whittle, and by learning its more like, trying to leave the wood in a vaguely different shape than he found it.

“I think dying would be like,” He pauses, looks at the mooshroom tied to a fence in the corner of their little camp, “It would be like riding a horse into battle and sometimes you win the battle and sometimes you get injured and can’t get back on the horse for a while, and other times, you give up everything you have so the people you lo— so. I- shit. So the other people don’t have to risk getting back on their horse injured.”

He pauses, consults the compass hanging from a chain around his neck.

“And then, even though you gave everything you had, they send you away with no food or money and you and your horse start starving until you rebuild civilization— and then one day you fall off a cliff and into a lava lake and the world doesn’t exist anymore. And not even your horse cares because it’s just a horse.”

Ghostbur nods serenely, “That’s a very nice death story. Oh, here have some blue, you look a bit down.”

Tommy cups his hands together and the strange substance, transparent to the eye at the moment, drops into his hand. Slowly, it begins saturating as he holds it in his hands.

He doesn’t move for a while, just stares at the colors changing in his palms. Ghostbur doesn’t seem to mind, just flits around doing whatever tasks catch his eye.

Tommy wonders, what would it be like to die?

And he indulges that fantasy quietly for a while. Thinks about his body, cold and detached from his soul, wonders how he would do it. The ocean could be easy, less guilt to deal with, could easily blame it on an accident; it isn’t easy work to escape the ocean’s pull once it has its grip on you.

Then, thinks about how beautiful falling feels. He’s been practicing flying with Dream’s trident, and sometimes he’ll shoot himself so high into the atmosphere, the air will thin and the rain will turn to snow and he will be torn from the magic of flight. Perhaps if he fell from high enough, he wouldn’t feel the impact.

Then, he thinks about his body, thinks about Ghostbur finding his waterlogged body washed ashore, or a body filled with broken bones and crowned with glassy eyes, somewhere on the island with a trident still gripped in his hand.

Thinks about Phil learning about it, wonders whether he will read it in a letter. If he will be alone in his home, secluded from everyone else. If he will care. If he will cry.

Will I be missed? Tommy thinks.

He watches Ghostbur wanders around, and Tommy looks at the blue in his hands.

Yes, he blinks at Ghostbur, and the spectre smiles brightly when their gazes meet, At least I think so.

He watches as the compass’ needle twitches and shivers in its little metal cage, thinks about his best friend on the other side of the world with a twin compass.

At least I hope so.

***

He wakes up drowning.

He fights his way to the water’s surface and shrieks into the star freckled night.

“Wilbur!” He screams, his head bobs under as the waves grab hold of him, he breaks surface again, choking and hacking up salt water, “Wilbur!” He screams again.

He has never, ever, wanted his brother more than now.

But no one shows. The world stays silent around him other than his weak attempts at fighting the moon-strengthened tide. He could give up.

It would be so easy. Much easier than fighting to what— survive? Live another day completely alone other than the literal departed spirit of his brother, a crazy tyrant infatuated with neon green and some half enderman guy barely a few years older than him?

He could give up.

It would be so easy.

He imagines floating above, outside of his drowned little body, finally free, or whatever happens when someone finally dies their final time. He’s died before. But he knows this will be his last time.

He could give up.

It would be so, so easy.

So, he does.

***

Sometimes he thinks about what would happen if he made an attempt and it failed. Thinks about bones jutting out of skin and flowers of pain blooming up and down his spine, frazzling his nervous system.

Thinks about being saved, being taken to a hospital of some sort, of having friends and family gather around him to show their support and concern. He wonders if that is the only way to win at this point; if this is the only way to make a fresh start is through trying to cut an untimely end.

If he were to go through with it, and if he were to fail, they would have no choice but to never leave him alone. Maybe then, he would have a physical reminder of his pain and then, maybe then, he would be able to live with himself and the others would be able to live with him and they would know, and he wouldn’t have to tell.

None of those fantasies really go like this though.

He wakes up, washed up on the beach.

No hospital rooms, no weeping guests. No suicide attempt, because he knows deep down it wasn’t an attempt, it was… planned? An accident?

He doesn't know.

(Doesn’t want to know.)

At least not yet. Maybe once he’s well rested again, he’ll find the fight in himself once again.

Maybe. He shrugs, rolls over, curls in on himself and tries to sleep. Maybe.

***

He survives the whole ocean thing. Ghostbur seems more worried about his well-being than normal, Tommy can’t bring himself to care.

The world goes on, turns round, or square, or whatever the fuck.

He wishes that the world was turning grey or some shit, so he could be all poetic about how dull his life is. But the world is just as vibrant as ever. The sand turns gold in the early morning sun, the ocean is a crystalline blue at noon, the forest on his little island home is lush and green, brown, red and pink. Everything is so pretty.

It makes Ghostbur happier, it makes Tommy angrier.

“Tommy?” An airy voice interrupts his thoughts, Ghostbur, of course.

He sighs heavily and drops his head onto his knee, “Yeah?”

“I don’t uh—“ Ghostbur wrings his hands together, “I don’t think you should be here.”

Tommy narrows his eyes, he kicks his left leg slightly and watches as it dangles over the edge. His screaming point has been fairly useless as a point for screaming, lately.

But, it is a beautiful place if he wants to watch the lava swirl and twist and imagine what it would be like to fall, to plummet into its burning heat. Would he feel relief before his nerves could transfer the sensation of pain to his brain? Would he have to dive a certain way, as one does into water as to reduce the resistance of the surface?

What if lava just picked a day every year to stop being hot and today was that day. What if he fell by accident, getting up to walk back?

“I think you should go away,” Tommy growls. Ghostbur looks dejected.

“Oh, okay…” He mutters and floats away, all sad and hunched in on himself.

It irritates him, a little bit. That the world does not revolve around him. That Wilbur doesn’t drop everything to try and save him.

Why won't anyone save him?

***

Later, when he's particularly lucid and ghostbur is gone and his lovely little campsite is a crater in the ground, he will sigh and realize, everyone has been trying to save him— or, well… everyone, save a certain someone. He grimaces, he can’t shake the hollow eyed smile that haunts his mind’s eye.

Ranboo has tried to save him, has held him and cared for him and hovered over him, willing to do anything, anything, anything to help. He glance forlornly at the crater hole, mourns the loss of the familiar grip of a netherite pickaxe. (Anything to help him.)

Ghostbur doesn’t know what he’s doing and that’s not exactly his fault; the man is literally a ghost of his past self. He doesn’t breath or eat or sleep. And this small separation from the living experience has perhaps made him estranged from his humanity.

Tommy sighs and throws a chest open. He gathers the building materials inside; mostly dirt and oak planks. He passes by the crater, and settles on the hill next to what had been the quaint little Logstedshire.

He’s thought about this at length; hasn’t really stopped thinking about it.

So, he follows his minds whims and begins to construct an unsteady tower. He works nonstop, works without feeling pain or hunger or thirst even as his hands cramp and his stomach twists and his tongue grows heavy and dry in his mouth.

When he’s reached the clouds, and his breath is heaving —a demand of the thin air at such a high altitude— he decides that’s good enough and flops down on his precarious little platform.

He pulls a pen and paper from his back pocket, and balances it on his thigh as he scratches ink into semi-coherent sentences.

I’m sorry, Tubbo. I never wanted you to see me like this.

Ranboo— I respect you for being honest with me. Thank you.

Ghostbur— I was a little wrong about dying. See you soon.

Philza— I don’t know what to say. Sorry, dad. Love you.

Techno— I think

Tommy stares at the paper in his trembling grip, watches in fascination as it doubles in his vision and then blurs completely together.

He tears off the top half of the paper, crumples it, tosses it carelessly to the unforgiving ground below and starts anew.

Father, your honor
May I explain,
My brain has claimed
It’s glory over me
I’ve a good heart,
Albeit

He frowns at this one as well. Cannot bring himself to finish it.

It’s not good. He doesn't like it at all, really. He wishes he could retrieve the other he tossed away, that one at least made sense. But, what’s done is done.

He shrugs, allows himself to fake indifference.

Then, folding it neatly and placing a pebble over it to weigh it down, he stands and leans over the edge.

The world looks small below him a nearby pond the size of his thumb. This is obvious though, simply a matter of perspective based on his physical location.

He feels like there should be some significant thought or theme that runs through his head. Something to complete some sort of cycle, something that would provide a satisfying or meaningful end to his life— to his story.

There isn’t.

There’s just emptiness and apathy. And, that’s why he’s doing all this, right?

Right.

He jumps.

Chapter Text

Tubbo doesn’t want to believe it when he discovers Tommy’s ruined campsite and treacherous tower.

There’s no body, for one, but their world works in strange ways, and Tommy may not have left a body if no one was around to preserve it.

He walks in circles around the tower, glowering at it and all that it stands for. A physical monument to his own sins; a monument to his best friend’s suffering.

He pictures for a moment, Tommy at the top of the tower. Wonders what it would feel like to know that he was going to end his own life.

Tubbo crumples to the ground and kneels in front of the great pillar of dirt and wood. He prays for a moment, to the stars and the trees and the earth and the clouds. Please. Please, please, please. Do not let Tommy be dead. Please.

He cradles his compass —Your Tommy— in his cupped hands, the glass face mirroring the sky above. The needle points vaguely over his right shoulder; a small wonder. Compasses start spinning listlessly once their target is eliminated.

The needle shivers and then, painfully slowly drifts left, at one point pausing for minutes at a time perfectly aligned with his right eye, as he holds it in front of him. Then, it dances farther left and settles, needle pointing straight through his heart.

Tubbo closes his eyes. When he opens them, the compass remains unwavering, needle directly in line with his beating heart. He stands and turns in that direction, the needle is true, and now it points straight ahead, into the distance.

Compasses stop working once their target is eliminated.