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The rain lashed down as the sky thundered in anger, tens of thousands of droplets splashing against the cold and uniform obsidian grid that hung over L'manberg like a looming angel of death.
Tommy's hands were cold, fingers frost-burn red with the same numbness that he felt in his chest as he gazed down, down, down into the gaping crater that was once his country, a gaping wound scorched into the earth all the way down to the monotonous grey-tones of bedrock. It screamed, the maw that was L'manberg, it screamed at him that this could have been avoided, that he could have done something, why didn't he do something? Soaked to the skin with his shirt clinging to his bony limbs, Tommy didn't answer.
He felt nothing. Not apathy, not rage, the roaring fire that had been a nigh-uncontrollable constant in him for his entire life was absent, what little embers that had been left in his chest had been choked to death by the black rose of grief, of shock, that grew out of his heart and cut him deeply with thorns.
The thunder broke the monotonous downfall of rain with scorn-filled cracks, and Tommy could feel his communicator device lodged firmly around his ear still despite the fact he couldn't feel the pointed ear itself, the small machine vibrating slightly against his pounding skull. Wil-
Ghostbur was speaking to him.
"Tommy, I- I take it back. I take it all back." The spirit whispered, voice as broken and as mournful as he could manage as a half-shade of the person he used to be.
Tommy swallowed. "Dream is the worst," he said to himself idly, noting how thinking of the masked friend brought no emotion to his shocked and empty chest. He didn't feel anything about L'manberg, watching it with a detached grief like he was standing in a fishbowl, isolated from the world. He didn't feel anything, so why did his guts twist in trepid anticipation, as he tried to stall-not-stall ghostbur from speaking. Coward. "What do you want to take back, Wilbur?"
The ghost sighed, a far cry from his usual upbeat and cheerful and ignorant attitude. Tommy idly gripped his wrist, circling discoloured green patches of skin with his index finger in a nervous habit he had had for as long as he could remember, his soaked shoes deftly manoeuvring over the rain-slicked black glass. "I'm- I'm burning in the rain right now, Tommy, and I just-" Wilbur told him, hitch in his words conveying something Tommy couldn't decipher. The blond teen leapt onto a towering metre-wide pillar of sand, wobbling slightly as his feet sunk into it but quickly regaining his balance. He began to dig his way down to what little ground hadn't been consumed by the doomsday war. "Tommy I want you to bring me back to life."
The boy who grew up far too fast paused, green mottled hand frozen just as it was scooping up soaked and clumped-together sand below him. That was- he twitched at the vicious burst of surprise that had been inspired in him, he could feel it swirl around the ash that had been the flame in his chest. Above him, the black sky roiled as thunder cracked. "What?" He whispered, voice cautious and barely strong enough to carry into the communicator over the harsh winds, the screaming sky.
The mourning ghost may have responded, may have sat silent on call for Tommy to process, he may have done a number of things, but Tommy didn't notice. The air split, the scent of ozone gathering for a split second as the hairs on the back of his neck stood straight to attention, and then all Tommy knew was that he was falling, every nerve shrieking with unimaginable pain as his heart beat thrice the speed, muscles twitching as blue fire coiled its way around his limbs, his torso, his neck like it was a hangman's noose. The fire inside him, deadened and cooled, roared back to life with heat uncontrollable and scorching burning him inside out in a wild blaze.
Something cracked as he slammed against the earth, but whether it was the ground or Tommy himself he didn't know. An inhuman shriek built up in his chest, feral and terrifying but Tommy couldn't release it, couldn't do anything but hiss through his constricted throat, snakes coiled around his vocal cords as his body twitched on the floor.
People were yelling. Who was yelling? The device nestled closely against his burning ear sparked, he could feel the broken metal dig into his skin but he felt no pain, every sensation was overwhelmed by the rage-rage-rage that boiled in his chest like a frothing poisonous brew. He wanted to scream. He wanted to scream. He choked in air through his locked jaw, his convulsing airway.
Faintly, through the red haze that had overtaken his vision, Tommy could see people. Figures. He wanted nothing more than to kill them kill them destroy them, the fire in his chest demanding to be satiated before it burnt him from the inside out, his ears twitched as he tried to lock onto individual voices, was anyone near? He couldn't move, muscles seized tight.
A figure approached his seizing body, but Tommy didn't care. The fire didn't scream as it approached, and Tommy kept his wide-eyed gaze locked onto his observers, neck stiff as he slowly craned it under the pressure of blue sparks. Step closer. Step closer. Burn.
Gentle hands gripped him, muscled forearms pulling him close to a broad chest and bringing him near. Tommy was numb to any feeling, loops of electricity circling his limbs, crawling in and out of his paralyzed form. A hand softly dug its way through the stood-on-end blond hair on the back of his head, and ever so slowly Tommy's gaze was forcefully pulled away from the fuel, towards a green and plack patterned gas mask, two air filters jutting out of the bottom. He could see himself in the reflection of the black glass, eyes dilated to inhuman levels as green patches of almost scale-like skin crawled out of the corners of his eyes, his mouth, making their way over the bridge of his nose like an overgrown pathway. Everything was fuzzy, dull, Tommy realized he couldn't see anything outside of the mask, of his own reflection in the eye sockets, of the blue sparks his skin was still emitting. Was someone talking?
"You need to stay back." Sam warned over his sluggish and halting and vicious thoughts, who was he speaking to? "You'll set him off."
Someone responded, an incoherent thing that made Tommy's blood boil and the fire roar, he wished it was dead again, why was it so large?- he was pulled in tighter to the one holding him, bridal carry as his twitching form curled up into a ball, knuckles white as his hands half-clenched angrily around thin air.
"No." The friend spoke. "I can take him back home with me, but if he gets close to any of you the consequences could be dire." Tommy's spiraling brain caught maybe one word from that.
"H'me." He repeated, mumbling and slurring his words as his tongue barely responded to him. Sam glanced down at him, head tilting to the semi-conscious and charged teen in his arms.
"Yeah, Tommy." He said, gesturing for the other at the L'manberg crater to give him a wide, wide berth, slowly beginning the long trek back to his base. "Home."