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Glass thumps hollow below the soles of oversized, stolen boots.
It echoes and it bounces, thrumming trapped between shrill clarity and thick, running mud caked to the sides of crater. Vines that once trailed up like freshly dripped blood blossoming along a thin redwood-shaded stream are long burnt away, and the charred, flaking remains sit piled wide under the prime path.
He doesn’t spare it a glance. Hell, he doesn’t spare anything a quick one-over with his graying, stinging eyes. His head feels hollowed out with carving knife and stuffed full of salt damp wool, residue of fluff and dye dragging alongside the aged bone paused in its rot veining from the inside. It settles in dried, freckled streaks rising from temple to front, jaw to nose.
With it, the mind trapped inside feels distant, floaty. His eyes sit as dead weight in his sockets, unable to focus on any detail around him. The thin talons hanging onto the cliff of his mind mimicking those around him struggle to hang on, struggle in their processing of blurred, bare colors. The dense grey of the sky, the dried yellow grass below him, charred with grey and black. His internal sense of direction and mapping is all that keeps his steps even, the thin tap tap tap of boots against glass the only solid ground he can steady himself on among the scrambling static pounding in his ears.
His talons grasp onto the cliff tight despite the white noise, clenching onto the crevices in the rock until his knuckles are white. Not a puff of dust manages to slip through the nooks of his fingers. It’s something full, something present and solid. It’s pathetic how much he feels the slow hardening in his gut melt at the sound.
Tap tap tap.
He does a full spin on one heel, the limb burning hot at the sudden shift. Wind runs through his hair, her calloused fingers dragging the salt of nearby ocean to sit along his face and ears, burning them a mottled flush of red and layering it with hot sweat. It almost mimics the burn spreading above his ankle, albeit more gentle, more constricted in its free, high flow.
He relishes in it, curling his arms around his chest in a cruel mockery of a hug, fisting painfully at the thin brown leather that hangs baggy from his sharpened ends. His cuticles burn, nail ends beading with newly drawn crimson, but it’s hardly noticed alongside the burn now shooting up his spine in a pleasured trill. She draws the leather to billow around his knees like a flag flowing dried from coppery heat, the shift uncomfortable due to the pins keeping it from dragging up dust yet somehow even more satisfying than a form-fit.
They close their eyes.
“Have you ever gotten tetanus?”
Tap tap tap.
He sits in the heart of the glass. His hair fizzes from a colorless ink to rusted brown at the ends, streaked with white flame and spotting with static, sharp and potent. It stains harsh on the back of his tongue. His back faces his front, a rich blue dripping from the wound slicing his body in two. The poignant glare of it sends a chill to strike like icicle through his ribs, a cold, intimate copy of an arrow shot over hill.
There’s less fizzing, less of his internal organs boiling over and burning hot with charged lick, this time. It's just cold.
“Can’t say I have, big man.” His eyes lid slightly, feeling the thick drag of calm drape over him. They’re dry, he can feel it, retinas branching pink and red, their talons reaching out to trace the outline of the grey marble sat miles away. Their hisses ring in his ears, a faint sizzle buried deep under his feet and the taste of gunpowder building like ash with it. He smiles, “‘bit of an odd question, innit? Thought you couldn’t get hurt, being fuckin’ dead ‘in all.”
“He can’t,” he glances over his shoulder, the hollowed nothing of what should be his eyes pinning him in place. Not that he’d move anyways. He’s always pulled to the man nowadays, by the pulse beating steady from his ribs; a thick rope tying them together. A noose curled in a constraining knot, clogging his chest. One wrong step and the stool dangling them between life and death could go kicking from beneath them. They’d be left hanging, hearts snapping together like rubbed raw neck and blackened eyes and clotting red stomachs. They’re one in the same, in that sense. “I got it once, when I was a kid.”
“Do you mean, like, a kid, or an us-aged ‘kid’?” He moves his hands to sit in the pockets of the coat, chest grossly exposed without the tight warmth shielding it from his gaze. The beat of his heart is too prominent. Eyes trained on the flickering form in front of him, he can see its pulse from under his skin, under the bandage wrap and sweater a certain enderman dickhead had foolishly offered up.
“A kid,” he stands, then, feet firmly planted and hands crossed loosely behind his back. His hair fizzes with stains of rust and snow, shaking uncomfortably as his body moves, like thin liquid moving in a bowl. “I tried to build a chicken coop for Phil whilst he was out on some… trip,” he spits the word out like venom, nose scrunching. The utter disgust is something foreign, face twisted oddly as if the body he is in weren’t constructed for such emotion. “Needed to use some rusted parts piled back in one of his storage sheds and got a nasty infection on my hand. Almost had to amputate it.” A pause. He feels his gaze meet his own once more, “I think you’d like it. Having tetanus, I mean.”
He doesn’t say anything for a beat, humming, almost dismissive, had they not known better.
“How so?”
It takes him two strides to stand an inch from chest-to-chest with him. His eyes begin to burn, the claws scratching along the white of them, leaving thin lines of beading red in their wake. His nose and throat follow. He frowns, almost pitying, shifting and moving a hand from behind his back, tracing the top of his nail along the bag hanging in the wind, tied to a nail in the inner corner of his eye.
He starts to tear up. His lips tighten, curling in disdain. “Must be those pesticides. That pirate lady did a shit job getting rid of ‘em once the vines were gone.”
He hums in agreement, though the tightness of his jaw strains with betrayal. The nail traces down a salt-trail, pushing back to the far end of his jaw and stopping to press down against the tension.
“Tight jaws are a sign of tetanus, did you know?” His snarl eases dizzyingly into a small smile, hollow chill of his eyes almost sparking with an old warmth--like a white flame from a black-and-white film, meant to seem hot yet chilling the thin layer of frost caking your bones in subtle scratch. The white and flecks of grey at the center, so bright and cold compared to the dulled greys and blacks around it. “So are fevers, seizures and an overall stiffness in the body. I couldn’t move for weeks when I got it. It’s a good thing I’m not an orphan like you, had someone to make sure I didn’t suffocate.”
“Fuck off man. I don’t have fuckin’ tetris, and I sure as hell don’t want it either, sicko. Unlike you, I’m not into weird shit.”
Tap tap tap. He steps back, smacking the hand away with the back of his own. Mid-air, it’s seized by cold, gripping tight and feeling vaguely calloused despite the thin wind chilling the skin it touches. He stumbles wrist-first, smacking into a cold, sticky torso, eyes peeking over a loose shoulder. A free hand guides his limp hand to a lower back, before moving to rest between his shoulder blades.
“Waltz with me, yeah?”
“The fuck is your deal?”
“C’mon. Consider it a final dance for your president.”
“My president died with his second life, prick. We had our final dance with him day before the ballot closed.”
“Well, maybe,” his smile loosens, almost real if not for the way the corners of his cheeks tear a bit too far into his cheeks, “but we shouldn’t act as if he were a different person. Hell, we shouldn’t act as if I was a different person post-election, or pre-election, or dead or now. No, no that was all me. It was all us.”
He’s urged into dance. He fights it, digs the heels of thick leather boots into the creaseless glass as well as possible. But there’s an odd pull against it, a non-physical one, tugging from under his ribs and loosening the tension in his body. He’s moved into a small spin, switching perspectives. It all looks the same, and that fact makes his mouth go dry.
It all looks the same.
“We weren’t the same person then, dickhead. If we were the same person, I wouldn’t have been trying to save L’manburg. Or you wouldn’t have been trying to blow it up. Either way.”
The grip on his upper-back tenses comically. He barks out a small laugh, eyebrows furrowing. Continues.
“We may be ‘the same’ now, in the sense there’s this fuckin’--this weird pull in me’ chest telling each of your steps before you take them, but we were far from the same then.”
He’s spun a few times, air punching from his lungs at the swirl of watery dilution around him. Something burns hot in his chest--it isn’t painful, it isn’t good. It’s uncomfortable, it's tight, beating against his skin, screaming to be let out. His fingers instinctually twitch with the urge to pull away and rip his chest open with those bleeding nail beds, but he doesn’t. His body doesn’t let him. He grips the hand a bit tighter and clenches a fistful of murky honeycomb, sticky and thick like hot blood between his fingers.
“Oh, Mr. Vice President,” there’s a boiling howl of air in his ear. He can hear the way his flesh sizzles, but it doesn’t burn, it doesn’t hurt and he hates it. Even the pain sprouting from his nails doesn’t satisfy, the hot blood pouring into the webbing of his hands, “we’ve always been one in the same. Have you ever heard of the privation theory of evil?”
He knows he’s close enough to feel it, so he carefully shakes his head, head suddenly pounding with the strain it takes to keep his breathing even.
“It’s a theological doctrine we learnt of years back. Techno and Phil were obsessed with that stuff, and brought us all sorts of books on philosophy and deeper morality,” he doesn’t need to be told where to move. He’s given up fighting, allowing his feet to instinctively move in time with his own. He takes two steps forward, he takes two steps back. It’s almost funny. That’s how it's always been with them. “To summarize, it says that there is no evil. Evil is but the absence of good.”
“I don’t see what that has to do with me.”
“It has nothing to do with you ,” he spits out the word like it's something disgusting, lips curling in a long, sharpened snarl before settling back, “but it has everything to do with us. It’s always been us.”
Tap tap tap. He blinks, air suddenly leaving him. “You’re good,” he breathes out, “you have good in you, I’ve seen it. Your love for L’manburg, for Fundy, for--for Sally and Phil and Niki and Tubbo and--”
“I don’t love,” and it’s so sudden, so sure and certain and solid. His mouth goes dry. “I don’t feel love--I don’t feel real love, not anymore. Not since that sword sliced me down. My time in the nothing and that beyond it has taught me more than we could ever comprehend, brother, and yet we know so much more than anyone else who walks this Earth. We know more than those time-travelers, or that self-titled god trapped in a box of his own creation. We know more than my own father, or his demigod of a penpal. We know more than anyone behind us. And yet,” a twirl. He stumbles, feet suddenly feeling like dead weight under his legs, shaking, “despite it all, you love so much more potently than any of them, because you’re filled with good. And I’m filled with nothing.”
“What, you’re saying you’re nothing?” He raises an eyebrow, barking out a bite of laughter. “I know it can be hard to have self-confidence but come on man, you’re not--”
“No, no you don’t understand,” a spin, “I’m nothing . I lost my ability to feel, to be. I have no good, I’m the absence of good. You know your ol’ pal Dream,” he shudders, tongue pressing harshly against the top of his mouth as he swallows, “or Schlatt or Techno or Eret or hell, that demon fellow, Bad? They all--” an exhale, light and airy, “they all have good. They all care for something, whether it be their friends, or loyalty to their ideals, or power. Even Dream. That green motherfucker cares for power, he cares to keep and increase that power and to make sure everyone is aware of its rise. On my own, I care for nothing. Not power, not destruction. I’m a complete neutral ground.”
“Ambition for power isn’t, it’s not--that isn’t good,” his words leave in a sharp exhale, head pounding at the sudden emptiness caking his lungs. “And you have good, you care. You cared for L’manburg, for Fundy and Sally and Phil and Techno, for freedom and independence and--”
“Not anymore.” His jaw snaps shut. He can’t breathe. His palm suddenly itches from its spot, hot with sweat and intertwined with another covered in thin leather. “We’ve been dead for years. We’ve spent so long in the emptiness that we’re one with it, we understand it in a way nobody does, except maybe MD. Schlatt could, maybe, if the fucker stayed awake long enough to even consider his thoughts. Rotten bastard.”
His face curls once more into a snarl, eyes crinkling and flashing with a dangerous glint, curled ends of his bangs falling over his eyes at a particularly harsh spin.
“When I was alive, I was still me. I know the reasoning behind what I did and I know what drove me to each change in my development. But what drove me then, what fueled each step in the complicated waltz of my life, they don’t fuel me now. No, nothing really fuels me. It’s as I said. I’m nothing."
“Why are you here,” he can’t breathe.
“Because of you,” he laughs, loud and cackling and mean.
Tap tap tap.
He pushes away, stumbling back on his feet as he fights for balance before eventually settling even on his soles, weight solid. His hair lashes at the tops of his eyes, dragging sweat with their ends, and his fingers ball and unball uselessly at his sides, nailends digging into his flesh and dragging streaks of blood along his palms to mimic the blue that drags on his face as he runs his hands down it.
He cackles once more, high and spitty and rasping sharp at the edges. His eyes dance wildly and his hair flays at its split, glitching ends. His shoulders heave as his nails dig into the sickly pale skin on his face, beads of hot blue spilling from the crescents.
“You’re good! You have so much good rushing through those veins. You love and forgive and protect so much more loyally, so much stronger than anyone else to walk this Earth. My time in the nothing made me a husk but you, you ,” his voice wavers painfully and he steps forward in two long, shaking strides, standing hunched and raising his hands to hold his face, gentle, as if he’d shatter at too harsh of a jerk. The skin feels like chalk, dry and damp. “Your time in the nothingness, your time spent with nothing but your thoughts and the screams of those passed before you, it somehow made you more good. How, how--”
Despite everything, he leans into the hands. Weariness pulls at his joints and he suddenly feels so, so heavy. He wants to disappear into a puddle of tar and lead and never dig himself up. Never wants to get anymore dirt or blood under his fingernails. Never again.
Something in his eyes softens, then. It’s sharp with runny, crimson detachment, but there’s something almost soothing in the deranged, distant look in his pupils--like the pit of a peach buried thick under layers of fruit and fuzz. “You have more good than anyone else. And I have less than anyone else. I have nothing. It’s why we’re brothers--it’s why we’re one in the same. It’s why it’s we.”
The hands raise his head up by the ends of his jaw. Though his eyes are lidded, he looks up at him, and through the haziness edging his vision he can make out the warm, buttery affection pooling in that hollow emptiness swirling where his eyes should be.
“All evil needs its good,” a smile.
“I hate you, you know,” he can’t find it in him to smile back.
The smile somehow becomes even softer, if that's possible. A loose thread on a tied-tight rope of silk and wool. Soft and cold. Void.
“Self-deprecation isn’t something you should make a habit of.”
The hands leave his face. He steps away, arms outstretched, hands shaking in their balled form. His pupils dilate, cold, corners straining red and raw.
“Come give us a hug, yeah?”
Chest first. A tug, insistent. He steps forward, strides shorter than they should be. Another, and another. Almost hesitant. His face drops to a scowl, sending a molten shot of cold and boil down to his gut and back up within the span of a second, leaving hot, clogging mucus in the pit of his throat, in his adams apple. His hands are clammy and his feet are sore and his back feels tight and he blinks.
There’s nobody there.
Tap tap tap.
“Tommy?”
The sky’s bright. Veining streaks of baby blue branch across and between the puffs of cloud, like a paintress streaking an early sketch of color along a canvas. The grass is ever the sickly yellow it's been for weeks, soot and ash long cleaned away by the hooves of a captain and the gentle breeze that sings it’s posh melodies through the redwood. His face stings with the gentle mottle of pink and red, nose and ears burning, hair lashing at the tops of his eyes and sending needle pricks along the flesh under bitten down nails that are just in the beginning stages of growing back to a healthy length. They hang limply at his side, like dead, frost-bitten limbs.
At the top of the prime path, a few inches from where it leads into glass, is an unfamiliar mob. Tall, tail lashing, ears pinned back and mismatched eyes squinted in concern.
He frowns. “Hello?”
“Tommy, are you alright? You’ve been out here for awhile. Micheal’s missing you.”
“W--do we know you?”
The figures eyebrows furrow more, if that's even possible, talon-like fingers fiddling with each other nervously, claws picking at the tough flesh. A shorter figure from behind them peeks his head out from their side, the fluffy butterscotch limbs either side of his head twitching.
He perks up, “Oh, Tubbo!”
Tubbo smiles, though it’s weak, shaky, “Tommy, I think the colds getting to your head. You know Ranboo. Do you want to take a nap?”
His head aches. He presses the backs of his teeth against his tongue, not really biting, but sitting on the precipice of doing so. Swallows. He doesn’t miss the way Ranboo’s eyebrows furrow from the corners of his vision, but tries to ignore it.
“Ah,” he turns around, briefly, eyes scanning the terrain. The tight-lipped frown building in his jaw loosens at the sudden increase of ringing in his ears, turning back around within a few seconds. “Yeah, I think--a nap would be nice. You said someone was missing me?”
“I--I said that--”
He pads over to them, stuffing his hands into the jacket pockets. Tubbo begins to walk up the path. He follows suit, only to be stopped by a gentle grip on his bicep. He frowns once more, though loose and more confusion-driven, squinting up at the figure.
“There, uh, there’s something on your face?” The figure reaches up, slowly, watching carefully before reaching his jaw, quickly scratching the side of their claw against his cheek and pulling back to show a small line of blue residue.
Tubbo’s at their side, frowning, “Blue?” Pauses, “that sort of looks like the stuff Ghostbur used to carry around. Why’s it on your claw?”
“It was on Tommy’s cheek.”
Two pairs of eyes meet him. He blinks evenly, frown softening to a resting scowl and furrowed eyebrows.
“We--’m tired, Tub. Can we take a nap?”
Tubbo loosens, “I don’t know about we , but,” he scoffs out a small laugh, eyes crinkling, “but yousure can. C’mon.”
An arm hooks under his own, and he’s led, shaky, down the path.
Tap tap tap.
Only the next morning will he think to question whether the eyes on his back were his own, or those of a concerned, unfamiliar figure.