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There are two little spiders spinning a web in the far corner of Tommy’s room.
They dance along to the rhythm of Mellohi, which plays on a soft loop that keeps the blonde sane unlike everything else begging him to be the opposite. Tommy stares at them, vaguely wondering what it would be like to be one. Small, with no cares in the world; Probably no thoughts either aside from 'Make web' and 'Eat bug' .
His body ached from misuse, wings slumped over him like a deadweight blanket as he lay motionless on his stomach. He wanted a better distraction, something that took away from the pain in his eyes, his head, his wings. But alas, he was too tired to get up and find one.
Tommy shifted for the first time in what felt like hours, turning from his stomach to his side. In the low light of the lantern sitting near the jukebox, he looked from the spiders to his large feathered-appendages; The once obsidian colored wings were now a murky grey, the purples faded and stained with unwashed blood and dust. They ached from misuse, from the ingrown and bent feathers. He hasn't bothered to clean them since before he stumbled into Techno’s cabin.
If he was being totally honest with himself, he's been scared to even touch them; A little voice whispered in the back of his head, warning him 'Dream will be mad. Dream will know.' Dream told him he was the only one who was allowed to clean Tommy’s wings.
At first, he tried to retaliate; Preening was an intimate practice Tommy took very seriously. It was something he only allowed his family (and Tubbo) to do, as a sign of trust. Papa taught him not everyone deserved the privilege of taking care of such delicate things.
But Dream --Dream didn’t care about any of that. He forced himself into the role of caretaker, threatened Tommy both physically and verbally whenever he tried to retaliate. ‘Don’t be stupid, Tommy.’ Dream would say, gripping his wings hard enough to bruise, working a rough hand through dark feathers, ‘I’m the only one here who can help you do this. You need me. Don’t be so selfish’
More than once he found himself pleading, twisted awkwardly as Dream bent his wings to the edge of snapping, listening to his sickeningly-soft voice whisper threats of pulling his feathers out by the handful, of tearing the appendages out slowly and leaving him to rot in the dirt.
( So different from Phil, who'd patiently work his way from scapular to primaries with the softest hands and hum his favorite songs and didn't care if Tommy wiggled around.
He missed Papa. The man upstairs with the same warm smile and donned the same powerful wings wasn’t him. Not anymore.)
In the dim light of his room, Tommy rubbed the moisture from his eyes and tried to shove away any thoughts on Dream or his time in exile. His body a deadweight, Tommy let his arms drop to the mattress, his eyes finding their way back to the spiders in the corner. No sleep graces him, his body wired, his mind a forever loop of static. Tommy lets himself drift off into the very back corners of his mind for the rest of the night.
By the time he finds his way back to reality, he can hear steady hooves tapping against the wood floor somewhere upstairs, signifying the presence of his piglin brother. He blinks. Once, twice, three times until his eyes burn and become less blurry. Not that he could see anything anyways –the lantern had gone out sometime throughout the night, leaving his cave-room pitch dark. Tommy doesn't do well in the dark. Which is why he slowly peeled himself off the bed, his wings filled with pins and needles from lying awkwardly.
The main floor of the house is so much warmer than the basement, but it still takes a while for Tommy’s shiver to fully go away. He stands near the fireplace, watches the two figures in the kitchen silently. There’s Techno, who idly stands near the stove with his back turned to the rest of the house. Sitting in the only wing-friendly kitchen chair is Phil, a cup of coffee gripped gently in his hands. Tommy feels out of place.
He steps on a squeaky board and cringes. Techno’s piglin ears twitch at the sound.
"Mornin'." Techno greets the same time Phil turns and gives him a gentle smile. When Tommy doesn't say anything in return, he says, “There’s a plate on the table, all yours.”
The blond hesitates. Slowly, he stands near the chair which the plate of food has been placed in front of and counts to thirty. One, two, three; He waits. Waits for what? He's not sure. When nothing happens, he slides into the chair, hissing when a sore spot on his bulky wings brushes against the back of the chair. He ends up hunched, his wings taking up most of the space on the chair. He never used to have this problem at home; There, the backs of all the chairs were made to accommodate his and Phil’s extra appendages.
Stiffly hunched over his plate –which held a steady portion of scrambled eggs, toast and pancakes, Tommy counted another thirty seconds.
"How did you sleep, Toms?" Phil asks softly, bringing the mug to his lips.
Tommy watches him for a moment, quietly cuts off a piece of pancake and puts it in his mouth. When nothing happens, he quickly eats the piece with silent relief.
"Fine." He says quietly. A simple lie, one that could easily be debunked by the glaring dark circles beneath his eyes. If Phil notices, he doesn't say anything; Something he's both grateful and pissed about.
His father hums in response, his eyes holding a strange look. Tommy scarfs down his food and pretends not to feel nervous.
Techno, ever the silent presence, dishes out his own plate and sits down across from Phil. There’s an awkwardness in the air; One that makes Tommy yearn for the past. When Phil would make big breakfasts for him, Techno and Wilbur, and they'd sit bickering and laughing and stealing food from one another's plates until eventually they were scraped clean.
Why did everything have to change? How did everything go so wrong?
"I was wondering," Techno started, pulling Tommy out of his thoughts, "If you'd help me gather wood later, Tommy."
Tommy scrunches his nose. His first instinct is to say no, followed by a signature fuck you . Yet, something in the back of his mind whispers 'Don't make him mad. Don't give him a reason to send you away.'
He frowns, pushes his empty plate away, and stands. He almost doubles over when his wings bump into the corner of the chair. "Yes sir," he mutters.
He misses the concerned glances between his brother and father as he disappears down the ladder.
Later in the day, dressed in fur boots and heavily-lined clothes (specifically tailored to him by the village seamster), Tommy drags himself behind Techno, a netherite axe lazily dragging a line behind him. He’s tired, and his wings ache more than before due to the cold. He tried taking a nap during the time he was downstairs, but after the second time jumping awake with a scream stuck in his throat, he decided against it.
Another yawn, and before he knows it, the two of them are surrounded by tall spruce trees, not a single thing making a sound other than their boots crunching snow. Techno weighs his own axe in his palms with a quiet sigh, “Well, better get started. We don't need many, so stop at three and we'll work from there.”
Tommy wanders further into the trees when Techno begins to hack away at a tree. He starts doing the same, the repetitive motion letting his tired brain slip away and turn on autodrive.
He thinks back to all the time he spent in Logstedshire, tearing down trees and stripping the trunks of their bark. He thinks about how torn up his hands were every night, with cuts and splinters and blisters. How eventually they calloused over, became rough and strong and too similar to a certain masked man's.
Tommy swings at the tree a little harder, relishing in the way the swing shocks through his arms. Now wasn't the time to think about green bitch boy; Not when he's in the middle of a forest away from Technoblade, with nothing but an axe to keep him safe.
As the first tree topples down, Tommy looks around him, feeling more than a little paranoid.
He can't hear or see Techno anymore, and the fact that it's started to snow definitely doesn't help. His vision blurs, he blinks, blinks again, and suddenly everything feels a lot more heavy.
"There you are."
Tommy whips around to face the quiet voice, and his blood runs cold. Someone stands a few feet away from him, and he watches as it flickers between soft reds and blues to bright green.
No, that’s not right.
“Tommy.”
That’s not right at all. The voice is distorted and unclear. Tommy shudders, wraps his wings around him in defence and blinks harshly. This time when he opens his eyes, he’s met with a bright green hoodie, and a porcelain smiley mask.
A noise of distress weasels its way up his throat.
“I’ve been looking for you for a while, Tommy.” Dream says, but it doesn’t quite sound like Dream, and it makes Tommy’s head swim. He takes a few steps back, shaking; Dream follows him, clearly unhappy.
“N--No, Dream please. It’s all a misunderstanding, I swear--”
“You call this a misunderstanding!?” A hand, rough and angry, clasps around his wrist and tugs. Tommy pulls at it, frantically trying to pull away. His wings flap in panic, hitting nearby trunks and branches, scaring the wildlife; It hurts, and the pain causes him to double over on his knees, wrist suspended above him as he shakes.
Unknown to Tommy, Techno stands in front of him, struggling to hold his brother steady as he shakes and shakes and cracks apart at the seams. He keeps a gentle hold on his arms and wonders what in the ever-living hell he’s supposed to do.
“Tommy,” he says. Even with a gentle tone, the blonde flinches, cowers away.
‘Hallucinating’ the voices whisper. Techno hums in thought, brow furrowed. ‘Ground him.’
“How the hell am I gonna do that?” He mutters. When there’s no clear response, he sighs.
Techno decides all of this might be easier at Tommy’s level, so he gracefully sits himself in front of the shaking teen and thinks. Tommy used to deal with breakdowns when he was younger –something about his wild hybrid-genes sending him into overstimulation. Techno vaguely remembers how the only thing that’d calm him down was soft things.
‘Cape!’ ‘Give him the cape.’ Techno would be surprised at how helpful the voices were being if this was anyone other than Tommy in this situation. (He almost forgot how protective they were over his young brother.)
Quietly, the piglin pulls off his cape, ears flattening as chirps of distress spill from Tommy, mixed with incoherent pleads with an invisible Dream. He wipes snow from it, takes his brothers hand in his, and presses cold fingers to soft fabric.
There’s a quick flash of panic, fiery blue eyes widening, before Tommy takes the cloak from his hands and pulls it close. Blue eyes soften to a watery amethyst, and before he knows it his little brother has fat tears rolling down his cheeks.
“Tech?”
“I’m here, Toms.”
Tommy sticks a free hand out and fumbles around before he eventually finds Techno’s. The piglin doesn't question it when fingers are being intertwined with his own.
"Don't let him take me away."
Techno’s heart breaks. The voices demand Dream's head on a pike. He gives Tommy’s fingers a gentle squeeze, says, “You’re okay bubba. No one can hurt you here, not while I’m with you.”
Tommy knows it would be stupid to trust anything Techno tells him. The last time he put trust into the piglin, it ended with them standing on either sides of a crater, with Tommy watching his older brother weigh wither skeleton skulls in his hands. " You want to be a hero, Tommy?" he’d said.
And yet, when he looks into his brother’s ruby eyes (that eerily flicker to the cold, dead stare of a smiley mask), he sees the remnants of his fourteen year old brother --the one who always kept his door cracked open just in case the monsters plaguing Tommy’s dreams followed him to the waking world. The one who would calm him from his panic, open his blankets and hide them both underneath, claiming “The monsters can’t get you when you’re underneath a blanket, they’re too stupid.”
And maybe that’s why when the haze clears, when it’s evident there’s no masked man there to take him away, he collapses into the piglin’s arms. Why he doesn’t protest when he is picked up, when Techno begins their trek back home. Why he lets his eyes slowly shut without much protest.
On the way home, his sleep is the most peaceful it’s been in a long, long time.
He awakes an hour later with a hand in his hair, something soft thrown over him.
At first, he tenses. Unaware of his surroundings; He opens his eyes and finds himself staring at the back of a familiar couch. And a scarred wing.
The hand in his hair continues, undoing little knots and lightly scratching his scalp. Tommy curls further into the soft weight above him (Which he learns is Techno’s cape) and lets the growing rumble in his chest grow into a comforting coo.
He gets one back in response, one far deeper and more pronounced than his, but lovely all the same.
"You awake, little bird?"
Tommy doesn't want to answer, but knows he needs to. In compromise he simply looks up, the light blaring through the windows enough to make him squint. He still feels tired. He has to force his eyes to stay open.
"How are you feeling?" Phil asks. Tommy wishes he would ask easier questions. He shrugs in response.
And Phil is patient. He nods, silent, and he does not push. Instead, he returns his hand to Tommy's hair to brush it out further. The teen in question forces himself to relax into the touch, trusting that Phil won't hurt him when he closes his eyes.
He doesn't mean to fall asleep again. Yet, when he glances upwards the next time he wakes up, catching the sight of a fast-asleep Phil, he can't find it in himself to feel guilty.
"Have your wings been bothering you, mate?" Phil asks one afternoon, between sips of honeyed-tea.
To be fair, Tommy knew someone was bound to ask this eventually; It was no secret how sensitive the appendages had become with the lack of proper care. However, it didn't stop him from immediately tensing, wings folding against his back as if they were begging not to be seen.
"No." He says.
Where Tommy is expecting the hard, cold eyes of a smiley mask, all he finds is two amethyst eyes just like his own staring at him with concern.
"Toms, have you been taking proper care of them? You know the dangers of not keeping your wings clean."
"Mind your own fucking business for once, will you?" Tommy snaps back. He feels guilty after, but he does not say anything else.
Phil quiets, sighs and puts down his cup, turns to face his son. The teen is half expecting punishment, but his father simply opens his arms in invitation. And there's a pause; Another moment of thirty seconds slowly ticking down in Tommy’s head, making him hesitant.
He leans into his father's arms anyways, because Dad's hugs always felt safe. They remind him of a simpler time, when he could hug him any time of the day, and listen to stories of old adventures and drink hot cocoa by the fire. It reminds him of when Phil was still Dad; When Dad was still Papa. Before Papa had changed.
Then again, he supposes Papa isn't the only one out of them who's changed. Tommy’s no longer the annoying little boy he once was, who'd ask for hugs and beg to play with his older brothers in the same breath. Tommy was forced to change more times than he could count; Forced to grow up even more. The him that was full of spite and loud laughter and love for his friends has long-since been buried. Even before his exile, the love he had for the world around him had been shattered, taking a piece of him, which in turn took his love for his friends. Exile was just the cherry on the cake.
Tommy buries himself further into safe arms and presses his face against a warm shoulder so he can't feel the tears welling up in his eyes anymore.
"Let's get you cleaned up, mate. It's all going to be okay."
Tommy wants to believe him.
Several buckets of melted snow later, Tommy is comfortably curled in a warm bath. He lets himself relax into the water, head resting on the edge of the bath sleepily as Philza works honey-scented shampoo into his hair. His wings are only a little cramped, but they're comfortably weighted down by water. The same water that was clear at the beginning, now dirtied from the copious layers of dirt and crime that had been washed from his wings. He does not let Philza touch them, but he sleepily obliges to letting the man slowly pour water over them.
He leaves the bath feeling lighter than he's felt in a while. He lets himself shake his wings of excess water without fear, even when the walls are dripping wet and there's a huge puddle on the floor. They're still sensitive, but his feathers are shiny and Tommy can't help but smile.
(And the way Phil smiles at him proudly when he exits the bathroom, standing tall in fresh clothes dyed the colors of the Arctic, makes it all that much better.
He thinks, for a quiet moment, maybe Papa isn't really gone.)
It's a long, messy process before Tommy is comfortable with the idea of letting another person touch his wings again.
The first attempts were, to say the least, a train wreck. They ended one of two ways; Tommy begging and cowering, using his wings as a shield; Or stiff and unmoving like mannequin, eyes filled with fear and sullen acceptance, mouth sealed shut. Both were equally as terrifying, and both usually ended with Tommy fleeing to his room, not seen for the rest of the day.
It got better with time and patience. It wasn't easier , but it was better. Philza figured the disdain Tommy felt for someone touching his wings stemmed from lack of trust. It was evident in the way he did not allow Techno near his wings; how he still hesitated when Phil reached out to ruffle his hair.
But eventually, Tommy loses the shake in his hands and allows himself to actually relax. It's a breath of fresh air, when he really allows himself to melt in his fathers presence, when he actually takes a moment to feel the difference between calloused hands that did nothing but hurt, and the soft, gentle fingers of his father carding delicately through ruffled feathers. It is terrifying, the difference. But it is good, it is freeing.
Tommy falls apart when Papa starts humming an old tune, one he could immediately recognize as his favorite song from his childhood. His chest feels so much lighter with every sniffle, every wipe at stray tears.
Papa stops more than once to ask, "Are you okay?"
And Tommy nods every time, laughing through choked sobs. "Yeah. I am, big man."
For once he actually believes it.
(And if two months later, Tommy sits in front of Techno, wings spread out in trust, and lets his piglin brother brush out his feathers with clumsy hands while mumbling soft coos; If it ends with both of them in tears and apologies for a brotherhood long lost, well, no one but them need to know.)
"Why the hell didn't we just chop up these logs before moving them? That would've been so much easier." Tommy whines, looking at his red hands in disdain.
"Because we need the logs, idiot. This is for building, not firewood."
"What are you building?"
Techno pauses, thinks for a moment, then shakes his head, "You'll find out soon enough."
The teen groans, wings fluttering. "You bitch."
"Yup."
Tommy can't help the little laugh that forces its way from his throat; Nothing like his old laugh, but a laugh all the same. Techno’s heart warms.
He finds out after dinner, between cups of sweet hot cocoa. He’s standing near the table, because chairs just aren't his friends anymore, when Phil asks him a question.
"Tommy, how do you feel about moving up to the ground floor?"
The blond in question looks up skeptically over his mug. He takes a sip. "There's no room up here. I wouldn't have anywhere to sleep other than the fucking couch."
"Why do you think we went and got supplies?" Pipes up Techno. Suddenly, it clicks together.
"You want to build a room for me?" He doesn't mean to sound so hesitant about it, but nausea settles into the pit of his stomach. He grips his mug tighter.
"Yeah, that's the plan."
Phil gives him a smile, "It's only if you want it."
Tommy thinks. A room upstairs means warmer nights; It means being closer to his family. Yet, it's also one more thing that could be taken away from him.
"What's the catch?" He asks, eyes narrowed in suspicion. Techno and Phil give him a weird look.
"Nothing. Just thought it'd be warmer up here than in your cave room. Better ventilation, too."
"Can –Can I play my disks?"
"At a reasonable volume, yes."
Tommy thinks long and hard until he's done with his hot cocoa. Hesitantly, but also giddily, he says, "Okay, yeah. That’s –that's cool. Yeah."
It's not a revolutionary decision, but Tommy knows it's a step in the right direction. A step towards healing. One step at a time, next to his family, Tommy feels like anything is possible.
On the road to healing, Tommy looks up at the sky and smiles.