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The worst thing about the Antarctic Empire was that it was fuckin' cold.
Not that Tommy wasn't used to the cold - he was born in it, raised amid it, molded by it, as he might say on his more dramatic days. It surrounded them, in their giant castle atop the mountain, fearsome and powerful and respected. It permeated every wall of every room, every hallway, every secret corridor he would sneak down in the middle of the night for adventures and snacks. It was a fact of life this far south.
Didn't mean he couldn't complain about it, though.
"I'm cold," he announced, waltzing into the common room where Techno sat reading, previously undisturbed. He was wearing the glasses that made him look like a wizard, or at least a massive nerd, and the book was something weighty (like a cinderblock of knowledge) and utterly incomprehensible to Tommy, who was freshly eleven.
"What do you want me to do about that?"
"I don't know, help me?" He adjusted the pale blue cloak that wrapped around his shoulders - uniform, of course, because they didn't own anything that didn't come in the royal colours (Wilbur's old, ratty red beanie a notable exception). It was thick sheep's wool from their allies in Newfoundland's trade connections, dyed with precious crushed lapis; only the best for the Emperor and his heirs.
"You know how to light a fire."
"Yeah, but I'm not allowed."
"You could go to the kitchens."
"I don't like the basement. It's too crowded."
"What am I supposed to do about you feelin' cold, Tommy?"
Tommy sighed, letting his irritation scratch up his voice so that anyone listening could tell he was frustrated. "Help me!"
"Go away."
"No."
"Talk to Dad."
"He's out."
"Go away, Tommy, I'm busy."
So Tommy left Techno to his massive book (probably something dumb and stupid and boring anyway) and went back to wandering the hallways of the Antarctic Empire.
The place was comfortably huge - easy to get lost in if you hadn't lived here all your life and committed to memory every twist and turn of its corridors, every doorway that held a ladder down to private quarters, every statue whose base opened up to store valuables in case of a siege, every bookcase where the fourth work on the third shelf (which Tommy was tall enough to reach on his tiptoes now!) pulled back to reveal a secret route to the other side of the castle.
Down the hall, take a right, pass the servants' dorm, pull back the hatch on the second left column to flip the lever that unlocked Wilbur's room, straight on and the PRIVATE - NO ENTRY door that loomed faux-aggressively before you would click shut on your back and let you up the spiral staircase to your other brother, who would hopefully be less aggressive.
The faint strumming of a guitar was Tommy's first sign that Wilbur was actually in his room - this was good; there was only one way in and one way out of the tower bedroom, unless you counted scaling from the window and sliding down the roof into the courtyard. No escaping Tommy in the cards today.
"I'm dreaming of a life unlived," Wilbur sang, pretentiously, and Tommy withheld his usual scoffing as he approached and saw Wilbur perched on the edge of his fancy golden poster-bed, candles flickering on the end table beside him. Perfect! Warmth! "Respect unwon, a heart to give… uh… something, something, people kneel before me. No, beside me. No… The men from my battalion around me? My nation… The future I will manifest -"
"What is that? Sounds boring," Tommy declared, making his presence well known in the room. Wilbur's fingers paused on his strings and he fixed Tommy with a death glare.
"I'm writing."
"Yeah, and I think it sounds shit."
"It's not done. You're interrupting my creative process."
"I'll process you in a minute," he muttered, not really knowing what it meant.
"What do you want?"
"I was cold."
"And this concerns me how, exactly?"
"Techno wouldn't help me. Dad's out. You were the only one left."
"Left to do what?"
"Help me!" Tommy threw his arms up in frustration and let them collapse heavily against his sides. Wilbur set the guitar aside.
"Can't you go to the kitchens?"
"Techno said that too. I don't want to."
"What do you want?"
"I don't know. To be warm."
"And how do we get warm out here?"
"I don't know," he repeated, "cloaks. Blankets. Fire."
"All of which I assume you've tried?"
He nodded, remembering that it was a lie. He hadn't actually tried blankets.
"So why are you still cold?"
Tommy shrugged and took another step into Wilbur's room.
"What, you want company?"
"No."
Yeah, actually, he did.
"So get lost then."
"No."
"You're fucking insufferable, you know that, right, Tommy?"
"I don't know what that means."
"Good, you're too young to be swearing."
"No, the other one!"
"What, insufferable? It means I can't even manage being near you for very long. I can't suffer your presence."
"That's so rude."
"Rude sentiments for a rude child who interrupted me while I was brainstorming."
"Come downstairs."
"Why?"
"Come with me."
Wilbur stood up, reaching for his hat which hung off the corner of his bed and fixing it over his wildly messy hair. Somehow Tommy's brother had never quite developed a handle on what a brush was, it seemed, because his hair was always absolutely crazy and could only be managed by the application of the beanie. Or maybe the beanie was causing the terrible hair. Tommy wasn't quite sure.
"What are we doing?"
And Tommy wasn't really sure of that either - sometimes plans would formulate in the back of his brain and he wouldn't work out what they were until he was halfway through executing them. Still, he knew that this one involved dragging Wilbur downstairs, and probably heading back to Techno. "Come on."
"I hate this family," Wilbur grumbled, but he blew out his candles and followed on dutifully.
Back down the spiral stairs, left handed because so was Wilbur - click went the door behind them, locked to any outsider that might happen to pass. Back past the hatch and the dorms and take a left to reach the common room again. This was the one that overlooked the west edge of the courtyard - this one was the one where, if you opened the window properly, you could drop eggs on the scholars when they stood outside. Not that Tommy had been the one who dropped eggs on the scholars last summer. Those were special visitors, an Antarctic heir would never disrespect his guests in such a manner.
(That was when he'd met his cool friend Tubbo. They'd promised to reunite if Tommy ever moved servers. He wasn't planning to, of course, but if he ever did, he knew who to call so he'd have someone to make progress with.)
"Oh, so now there's two of you?" Technoblade monotoned, peering over his stupid round glasses at the pair.
"Hello," Tommy replied, still catching up with what his brain had intended to do.
"He's not told me what we're here for," explained Wilbur, shooting Techno a look that read I think he's as weird as you do. Tommy knew both of his brothers found him weird and annoying because they never stopped telling him. It didn't stop him from acting the way he wanted, and it never seemed to stop them from going along with whatever he wanted, either.
"Tommy, why have the council adjourned on this particular day?"
"Because," Tommy pushed past the words he didn't understand, "I was cold. And I'm not allowed to light the fire."
Wilbur made a face. "Is that it?"
"Yes."
"Tommy, I can light a fire for you, you don't have to be all cryptic about it."
"Good." It wasn't his fault he had never been good at telling people what he wanted! It was just difficult to get the words right. Wilbur had always been the writer, the speech-maker, the wordsmith. Tommy let his actions speak for him. (Techno let his sword.)
Wilbur set himself to sparking a flame in the fireplace on the far wall as Techno watched, looking pointedly disinterested.
"Good book?"
"Pretty good. It's the Iliad."
"The Lilypad?"
Techno rolled his eyes and returned to the pages.
He did look very comfortable, Techno did. All snuggled up on the massive sofa. All on his own with all that space and all those pillows. He was in his pyjamas, if Tommy was observing correctly - the lanterns on each wall of the room had been magically dimmed with spells that Phil commissioned from much more distant lands, and they gave a far steadier light than any torch, or than the fire's flame that suddenly flickered forth in the corner of his eye.
"There you go! Happy, Tom?"
"Yeah," he replied, smiling faintly, eyes wandering to watch the window. It was starting to snow. That meant tomorrow was going to be a snow day, which meant they'd all get the afternoon off lessons to play!
"What are you lookin' at?"
Tommy blinked. The window was directly above the head of one disgruntled Technoblade.
"Snow," he responded simply, pointing out into the darkness.
"Aw, crap, I was gonna go out tomorrow."
"Tough luck," Wilbur replied, standing back to admire his handiwork, "you're stuck with us."
The three brothers shared the room in silence, as the air inside slowly warmed and the glass outside frosted up with cold. It wasn't even that late, but coming into the winter months their sense of time always got fucked up, and in the runup to the Polar Night that spanned from May to the end of July when all was dark for weeks on end, they found themselves fatigued at increasingly stranger times. Wilbur was hit the hardest of the three - that might have had something to do with his existing conditions, but it left him practically nocturnal as far as normal clocks were concerned. He'd always wanted to move north. More sunlight.
Tommy made himself at home on the other end of Techno's couch.
"What are you doin'?"
"What, is a man not allowed to sit down in his own home?"
"I was already sittin' here. And you're not a man, you're ten."
"Eleven! Hey! I am so very massive, Technoblade, you do not get to call me a child, nobody does."
"I'm literally still a teenager, Tommy, I can call you a child if you're younger than me."
"I hate you. I would stab you in the neck if I was allowed."
"You'd be dead before you got the knife anywhere near me. I have six years of trainin' on your sorry excuse for a fightin' style."
"Yeah, but I would just evade. And then I'd strike!"
Techno yawned. "Try me."
"I will!"
Wilbur, who by this time had grown tired of watching the fire and turned around to see the more interesting show that was his brothers' bickering, took this moment to seat himself directly inbetween them, filling up the last of the space on the sofa while Techno still had his legs up and was sprawling across a good half of the thing. "Well," Wilbur teased, "aren't we a happy family!"
"No portrait could capture our magic," Techno deadpanned.
Wilbur's arm stretched up, as he emitted a yawn of his own, and settled squarely around Tommy's outside shoulder. "Hey, what the fuck?"
"I'm comfortable," was Wilbur's only explanation.
Techno looked mildly perturbed by Wilbur's other hand coming to rest on his knee, but he said nothing, going back to the book about the lilypad.
Eventually, Tommy settled into the hold. The pair of them leaned slowly further into Techno's legs, thoroughly encroaching on his personal space, on a joint mission to get as comfortable as possible at his expense. Tommy wasn't quite sure when they'd ended up on the same page about annoying Techno with their settling in, but his brain was subtly slowing its processing speed as he adjusted to their collective state of tiredness, so he didn't worry too hard about it. It was just nice to lean on Wilbur, and for Wilbur to lean on Techno, and for Techno to study his book ever more closely and more spitefully until he finally surrendered and flipped the blanket up so that the other two could join him in comfort.
Yeah. Nice.
And the fire was warm, and Wilbur's shoulder pulsed with his heartbeat in a familiar rhythm, and the fabric surrounding him was soft, and his hand kneaded the fabric of his cloak as his eyelids slipped ever closer to each other, his blinks becoming longer and more measured, his focus drifting until he finally…
woke up to Phil, Emperor Philza Minecraft Watson, his father, standing in the doorway and overlooking all three of them.
The fire was dead in its hearth.
He glanced over at his brothers, the twins. Techno was fast asleep, his glasses threatening to slip off of his nose and his mouth half-open for his sleeping form to breathe. Wilbur's arms had shifted to make a pillow against Techno's legs, and he was sleeping too, nestled comfortably in his crook between Techno and the sofa, soft and unburdened by his usual dreams of the future, lax like an untuned string. Tommy was also pressed up to Wilbur, his eyes sticking together with sleep and his lips crusting slightly, but he was the only one who had woken up to the sound of Phil opening the door to see them.
"Alright?" Phil asked softly.
"Yeah," Tommy rasped out, his voice still sticking to itself, making it come out equally quiet.
Phil's eyes flicked over the forms of his sons. There was a pause - and then his shoulders relaxed, and he pushed his hair out of his face.
"Love you."
Tommy smiled.
Dim lantern light was all that served to illuminate the way that Philza's head tilted gently in affection and he turned to go, the door closing with a solid thunk behind him.
Tommy looked back over at his brothers.
There were a lot of things Tommy didn't like about the Antarctic Empire. The way it stifled Wilbur, the way it kept him locked up in his tower all day, writing his dreams of a more impactful future into futile song, but never able to fulfil them through emperorship as technically the middle child. The way it hardened Techno, the way it trained him to swing a blade ice cold as the air around them, becoming their father's perfect soldier, but never offered a chance to flex his flawless skills in the face of the Empire's ultimate authority. The way it stunted Tommy, the way it kept him in lessons and studies as nothing more than an heir, letting him make friends for only as long as other children were allowed on the castle grounds, but never allowing him to be a normal kid like the rest of the world outside the royal properties.
But on nights like these? Warm, inside, protected, snuggled up against his sleeping brothers, cloaked in soft sheepskin and wool, and with the love of his father?
He definitely didn't mind the cold.