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The sky was gray, the air was cold, and Tommy was walking down the Prime Path with boots of shining leather. They chafed horribly against his bare feet, already blistered from a month of pacing around an obsidian floor which cried tears of lava.
Tubbo was still eyeing him from behind a nearby bush. Tommy wanted to scoff at the furtive way he kept darting between hiding spots, frantically ducking out of sight when there was any sign he might be spotted.
Tommy didn’t need to see to know what he was doing. A long time ago, he would have made some joke about how they knew each other better than this.
Now, he wasn’t sure if that would be much of a joke at all.
His heart took another loud thump against thinned ribs. The sound pounded like a hammer in his ears, like a fist-
No, don’t think about that.
Tommy wanted to laugh. Maybe he was more cut out for this whole ghost thing than he initially thought.
Tubbo yelped as his foot caught on something, cursing behind him. Tommy felt, for a moment, a flash of seething irritation - at least Quackity and Jack had the decency to say their thoughts to his face.
When did they become like this? Two planets separated from their orbits in entirety. The star that was Ranboo drawing Tubbo away, maybe.
Well, it made sense. Ranboo wasn’t troublesome, wasn’t broken, wasn’t dead.
Because if everyone else decided he still was - well, he might as well be. Just a bothersome ghost that, given the chance, they’d choose to never see again.
And Tommy had no delusions about how welcoming the rest of the server would receive the news of his return.
It didn’t really matter, at the end of the day.
Because it was still Tommy, alone against the world. Just like the exile. No friends, a few maybe allies that he could never count on to turn up when he needed them the most. At least this time, the comforting presence of his discs sat forever like forgotten dolls in his ender chest.
“Tubbo,” he said, stopping on the path.
“What the fuck - I mean, yes Tommy?”
“What do you want?”
Tubbo's footsteps quieted, and Tommy turned around, and finally - they met at eye level again. His former best friend stood pressed against a bush, leaning so hard he would fall into its thorny embrace with just a slight nudge.
“Nothing,” Tubbo said, voice high. The end of the word tapered off into a squeak.
His eyes were disbelieving, still. As though Tommy wasn’t standing as flesh and blood before him, in all his ragged defectiveness. As though Tommy was actually just some figment of his imagination he should chase down for answers, before conversation was never exchanged between them again.
“Alright,” Tommy said tightly. “Alright.”
A pearl appeared in his hands, and he tested the weight of the rounded orb. The Nether portal was just within throwing reach.
Tubbo’s strangled shout ripped away from his hearing as Tommy suddenly found himself staggering against an obsidian frame. When he drew his hands away, they were coated in the ashen dust of long dead creatures.
Clearly, the last of their bond had snapped with that fatal punch. Dream really did achieve that particular goal, after all.
“Halloween was a long time ago," Quackity had spat, like Tommy was some idiot playing dress up of his previous self.
Jack had simply sneered and carried on like Tommy coming back changed absolutely nothing. Maybe it didn't, for him.
The Nether swirled into view, and Tommy limped deeper into the trenches of hell.
If they were so determined to make him a ghost, and if he had nothing left tethering him to this mortal plane than the deep, thrumming fear of that cursed existence in death, back to Wilbur and Schlatt and the most horrible thing he’d ever been forced through - then Tommy might as well be a ghost.
But ghosts had unfinished business, didn’t they? Dream might have achieved one goal, but Tommy will try his damndest to make sure he didn't achieve another.
“Tommy, what are you-”
“When I said you weren’t fit to guard this prison, Sam,” Tommy said slowly. “I fucking meant it. Don't get in my way.”
He had the Axe of Peace pressing grooves along Sam’s neck, its purpose finally living up to its name. Nightmare, the trident, hung around his belt and so did a fully enchanted pickaxe. A water bucket as well. Gapples and potions lined every empty space of his inventory, freshly made from the Nether's harvest. Netherite armor fits tightly around his entire frame, gleaming with every enchantment possible.
“What are you doing?” Sam asked again, eyes whitened so much his pupils were twin dots of gunpowder gray. “Please, put the axe down-”
Tommy’s free hand reached out and, slowly, began plucking every keycard and identification from Sam’s warden outfit.
“You let me die,” he said, turning a card between his fingers, voice quivering. “You let me die. You left me in there with Dream, and then you let me die.”
And so I died.
Tommy’s lips quirked upwards, teeth two rows of pale dullness scraped down by a month of eating nothing but chalky spuds. He must look almost animalistic, in the spluttering torchlight. Shadows burned as forever a haunting memory.
“Dream will fucking escape this shithole under your watch. So I’m the warden now, bitch.”
He grasped the hilt of Warden’s Will and slid it free from the scabbard on Sam’s belt. Sheathed it into the empty space of his own. When Sam made a movement of protest, Axe of Peace dug a little further into his neck.
Sam stilled.
And so I died.
And so I came back.
"That's fucking great, keep being a pussy. Now, unless the green bitch is out of his cell and you’re trying to help me kill him, I don’t ever want to see you back around here again.”
“You - you can’t just do this,” Sam said. His tone was faint - he looked about to faint, actually, a cowering figure pressed against the cold, polished floor. Staring at Tommy like he would wake up from this nightmare any minute.
Nightmares never end, Tommy wanted to tell him, and laugh to his face. I would know, Sam. I would know.
“I can and I have,” he said instead, pulling his snarl back even further.
With a slow, methodical preciseness, as an axe threatened Sam's neck and a crossbow loaded with fireworks sat ready to be triggered a little ways away, Tommy then stripped the netherite armor off the former warden.
Sam didn’t protest anymore, and when Tommy allowed him to stagger up with his hands finally free he moved over to the portal he was pointed to without protest.
Physical protest, anyway.
“Tommy, think about this,” Sam said, a step away from the portal. “Please, I made this prison-”
“Dream made this world,” Tommy sneered. His expression held no more life or love than the blackstone walls around them. “And yet his prison sentence was important enough for me to die for.”
Sam stood, mouth agape, posture frozen, for a few more minutes.
Finally, Tommy raised an axe.
“So I died for it. I fucking died, and now I’m here to make sure that death wasn’t for nothing, Sam. So don’t ever get in my way, and tell everyone else to fuck off too.”
Silence, for just a fleeting moment. For Sam it must've felt like an eternity, but Tommy had stared eternity in its face and spat at the soles of its feet. For him, it was nothing,
Without another word, Sam stepped back into the portal. And disappeared into screaming purple mist.
Tommy clipped Axe of Peace against his belt and turned to the lava wall, where behind the bubbling curtains the sulking figure of Dream still stands. They were too quiet for him to hear the exchange, Tommy had made sure of it.
If the world was determined to treat Tommy like a ghost, cut off from every relationship - then he might as well be one. And he did have unfinished business. He had endured the endless void of death and he had come back, broken into a million pieces that could never be put right again.
There was no point in trying to, then. Tommy supposed everyone did have a point, treating him the way they did. He wasn’t dead, but he no longer moved with the same vivacity as before. Necromancy always had its victims come back wrong in some way, didn’t it? Missing that vital component which made the living alive.
A ghost, truly.
Tommy strode across the room, and took a seat on a chest. Surveyed the empty space of his new home.
Killing Dream was a work in progress. He wasn't even sure that the man - the god - could even be killed.
But he sure as high fucking hell could be contained. And as long as Dream was alive, Tommy’s business was unfinished. Maybe it’ll never be finished.
That's fine. He could wait forever. It's what ghosts were for.
And so, the Warden of Pandora’s Vault sharpened his axe against a screeching whetstone and made his peace with an eternity devoid of life.