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There is nothing left of Tommy. His house has been taken over by Connor, his towers and his coaster have been torn down.
He’s supposed to stay away from L’Manburg, he knows that. He’s supposed to stay in Techno’s house unless the Blood God sends him out or comes with him, but Techno is mad at him right now. Techno had shouted and thrown his arms out, eyes alight with rage, and Tommy had fled. He keeps- messing everything up. He keeps ruining things.
Maybe he’s here so Dream will kill him. It’s been a month and a half since he left exile, so Dream has to be mad enough to kill him now. They’re supposed to be friends, or Tommy kind of thought they were, but he also knows they weren’t. Dream doesn’t care about him. Dream will kill him if he finds him here.
Maybe that’s what he wants.
There’s nothing left inside of Tommy’s chest, either.
It’s- he’d put up a front with Techno. He’d built a tower as soon as he was able, doing things he was supposed to to convince Techno he was okay. Because he was okay. Nothing could be wrong with him because if he acknowledged that things were wrong, they would keep being wrong, and he couldn’t stop them being wrong once they started.
He’d started trying to build a house with Ghostbur out front of Techno’s house in hopes it would make the Blood God less mad at him all the time. It needed to be close enough that if Dream came back, Tommy could still hide with Techno and hope he’d protect him. It had to be far enough that he could stay out of Techno’s hair.
But Ghostbur couldn’t build like Wilbur could. Ghostbur had pictures of Wilbur and Tommy, and he showed them to him, and nothing was alright anymore. Because Ghostbur wasn’t Wilbur, and even though he laughed like he was, he wasn’t. No matter how much Tommy wanted him to be, he couldn’t be.
Tubbo doesn’t want him anymore- he has Ranboo now. They’re friends. Best friends, from what Tommy’s seen. Tubbo exiled him and Ranboo filled in the place by Tubbo’s side that Tommy left, and he’s okay with that. He wants Tubbo to be happy. If he can be happier without Tommy there, then that’s how things have to be. Dream will kill him soon, anyway.
It still- hurts. Sits wrong on his tongue, twisting up his lungs until he can’t get enough air. He just wanted to keep one person. Just one. It didn’t matter who. It wasn’t Wilbur, or Tubbo, or Dream, and he had kind of hoped that, despite everything, it could be Techno.
But Technoblade is always mad at him, now. Tommy’s waiting for him to leave.
Maybe coming here without him will be a good enough reason for Techno to go, too.
The hours tick by slowly as Tommy sits on the bench by his Connor’s house, and the sun slowly starts to rise. He can just see its rays on the tops of the trees in the distance. Dream still hasn’t come to kill him. He could stay here and wait, but he doesn’t want anyone else to find him. No one else really matters all that much. He doesn’t want-
“Tommy?”
Oh. He looks over his shoulder and watches a woman he hasn’t met before approach him. Maybe he has met her before. He can’t quite remember much of who he did and didn’t know before they’d made him leave. His memories are all covered in Logsted’s ashes, Wilbur’s blood, Ghostbur’s blue.
“Tommy, are you alright?” She has her hand on her sword, but she’s not wearing armor. Maybe she’ll be the one to kill him.
“I’m all alright,” he answers easily, shrugging once and turning back to watch the treetops slowly light up. The sun is rising behind him. “It’s all alright.”
He doesn’t have any weapons on him, just his two hands and a golden apple he ate a while ago to make his hands stop shaking. They haven’t stopped shaking since Dream blew up his tent. They’re shaking again.
She comes to sit down beside him, and when he looks closer, he remembers.
“Hello, Captain,” he murmurs, voice going soft. He remembers her- he does. He does.
“Hi, Tommy,” she says back, voice just as soft, and she doesn’t take her eyes off of him. Her horns have little flowers wrapped around them. “You, um, what’re you doing here?”
Tommy shrugs again, kicking his feet in the snow that covers the ground. A puff of white powder follows his foot, sparkling when it gets high enough to catch sunbeams. “Just- waiting, I guess.”
“Oh?” She pauses, studying the side of his face. Then she speaks again, tone careful. “We all thought you were dead, Tommy. How- well, how aren’t you?”
“I will be,” he answers without thinking, and he only realizes he’s said something wrong when Puffy inhales sharply. He doesn’t bother to correct himself, though. He doesn’t want to lie anymore.
“How will you be dead, exactly?”
A bird chirps in the tree to their right, feathers all puffed up to keep it warm from the cold. Tommy watches it for a little bit as it flits around the branches, and then he shrugs again. He still feels all empty inside.
“M’ not supposed to be here.”
“Like exile?” Puffy asks after a moment, seeming to taste the words on her tongue before she says them, soft in her hesitance.
“Yeah. Like exile.”
They sit in silence for a while longer, just two people on a bench- kind of like how he and Tubbo used to do. Except there isn’t any music, and the snow makes everything else even quieter. The bird isn’t chirping anymore.
Puffy’s arm is pressed up against his, radiating heat while he shivers. She still hasn’t looked away.
“You should probably go back wherever you’re staying, Tommy. So you don’t catch a cold.”
He would go back, but- “Techno’s mad at me.”
“Is he… still going to be mad at you? If you go back?” She murmurs, and she hesitantly places one of her hands over his own balled fists. They stop shaking at her touch.
“I don’t know.”
And he doesn’t know. He’s- if he goes back, Techno might finally tell him to leave again. He knows the Blood God doesn’t like him, and this might be the final straw that makes Techno leave.
“Would you feel better if I walked you back?”
No one is supposed to know where Techno lives. It’s supposed to be a secret- only Phil knows, and he has to have a compass to get there. Tommy only remembers out of necessity.
“Yes,” he says, instead of ‘no’ like he’s supposed to, gripping Puffy’s hand tightly between his own. Her hand is warm, too. “Please.”
“Okay,” she whispers, soft like she’s speaking to a child, and then she stands. She pulls him up slowly, almost like she’s afraid she’ll break him. “Let’s go, then. Get you home.”
Home. Tommy hopes he still has one of those when he gets back.
Puffy leads him down the Prime Path, humming quietly under her breath as they go. Tommy vaguely recognizes the tune, but he probably couldn’t place it even if he’d tried. He mostly just absorbs the decorations that everyone has put up, stumbling every so often when his foot catches on something hidden in the snow. Maybe he trips over himself- he doesn’t really know.
They walk through the Community house in silence, and then up the blackstone stairs to the Nether portal much the same. Puffy stops once they’ve made it through, turning to him in question when he simply comes to a stop as well. They have to cross the bridge to Logstedshire in order to get to Techno’s portal.
Tommy doesn’t want to do that. Tommy hates Logstedshire.
“Hey, Tommy, look at me,” Puffy says, sounding like she’s far away. Tommy looks down at her -she’s so short- and she smiles kindly up at him, patting the hand she’s still holding. “There you go, kiddo. Good job. What’s going on in that head of yours, hm?”
The words are caught in his throat, stealing his breath away. He doesn’t want to go back to Logstedshire- he wants to stay here, where it’s warm, where Puffy is nice to him and no one hates him yet.
“You’re alright, sweetheart, no one can hurt you here.”
“Tommy!”
This shout is loud, and it sounds distinctly like Technoblade, and Tommy flinches before he can stop himself. Techno is thundering across the bridge that leads to Logsted, eyes ablaze and sword drawn.
“Get away from him,” Techno snarls, tusks gleaming. The heat of the Nether makes his crown steam- he must’ve just been in the snow. Somehow it makes him look even more intimidating.
Puffy moves to let go of his hand and Tommy panics, grabbing it with his other one, too, and holding on for dear life. His chest is on fire, no longer empty as he struggles to hold on to this one nice thing he has now. Just one nice thing, that’s all he wants. Please.
“Hey, breathe, kiddo, you’re okay,” Puffy abandons whatever she’d been about to say to Techno in favor of turning to him, sinking to the heated stone floor as he does. She squeezes the hand she’s holding and rubs her other hand on his arm, smiling kindly as his vision blurs. “That’s it, Tommy, just keep breathing. Like me, yeah? You’re doing great, Tommy, I’m so proud of you.”
There’s a wall of pink and red and blue beside her as Techno lowers himself to the ground as well, sword back in its place at his side. The Blood God hesitates before slowly reaching out, and Tommy unlatches one of his hands from Puffy to grab at Techno’s hand instead.
It’s- funny, honestly, the things you choose to focus on when you’re panicking. Tommy focuses mostly on what he can feel. The Nether portal against the ridges of his spine, Puffy and Techno’s hands in his. Puffy’s hand is so much smaller than his, yet Techno’s is so much bigger. Where he can hold all of Puffy’s hand, he can’t quite get all of Techno’s. He squeezes them tighter.
“Come on, Tommy,” Techno encourages as quietly as he can, voice barely more than a rumble in the pit of his chest. “You’ve got this. There ya go.”
He comes back slowly, heart thundering in his suddenly too full chest. He doesn’t want to be anywhere near L’Manburg anymore- he doesn’t want Dream to kill him anymore. He wants to live.
“Can we go home?” He asks Techno, eyes downcast as he waits for the denial. Techno is still mad at him, after all.
“Yeah, kid, we can,” the Blood God gruffs, standing back to his full height and pulling Tommy with him. He places himself in between Tommy’s line of sight and the bridge. “Been waitin on you for hours.”
He’d- been waiting. Techno had been waiting for him. He wasn’t mad anymore.
“Be safe,” Puffy says gently, squeezing his hand before slowly letting go. His heart jumps back into his throat, but he doesn’t reach out to lock her in place again.
“Prom-promise you won’t tell Dream I was here,” Tommy hisses suddenly, desperation crawling up the back of his throat like bile. “You have to promise! Puffy, he- he can’t know. He can’t!”
“I won’t say a thing, Tommy,” she tells him, looking for all the world like Tommy thinks a mother might. Then she cranes her neck up to look at Techno, face going serious. “You have my word.”
“Good,” Techno responds evenly. There’s a bit of a standoff for a moment, and then Techno is pulling him under his arm and blocking out a majority of the world from Tommy’s view with his cape. “We’ve got ground to cover, Tommy. Let’s get moving.”
Tommy only looks back once they’re across the thin wooden part of the bridge, and Puffy looks right back. She smiles sweetly, waving at him one last time before she disappears back through the portal.
On the other side of the portal, Puffy presses the heels of her hands against her eyes to stave off frustrated tears.
What had her duckling done to that poor boy?