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Tommy doesn’t dream, when he does it’s of L’manburg before everything, Pogtopia, then it’s of L’manberg after it got blown up. He doesn’t have pleasant dreams, not the silly ones he used to have before coming to this server, now he just relives every traumatic moment he had experienced.
It must have shown, the fact that he's trying his hardest to avoid sleeping, the eyebags under his eyes are trying darker and he’s been acting more sluggish. Tommy thought he was doing a good job hiding it.
“Tommy, have you been sleeping?” Tubbo asks, arms gripping his elbow to keep him in place. His eyes are full of worry and Tommy feels guilt stab him violently.
“I’m fine, big man, sleepin’ and all.” He gives him the most reassuring smile he can muster, which isn’t much with his eyes a dull blue.
Tubbo hums, obviously not buying it. “Let’s have a sleepover then, it’s been a while since our last.”
That night they huddle up in Snowchester, the mansion is still underway and Tommy honestly didn’t want to be alone if he was going to sleep. Tubbo put Micheal to bed in the upstairs bedroom so the two can stay up in the living room.
Tommy curls up on the couch, arms hugging his knees tightly, staring blankly at the fireplace. He can hear Tubbo slowly descend from the ladder but he doesn’t pay his friend any mind. Tubbo’s footsteps make their way farther from him, probably going into the kitchen.
He loses track of time staring at the fire, because not soon after he’s jolted back into awareness when a soft blanket falls on his shoulders and he makes a surprised noise.
“Here, I made some chamomile tea, it helps me sleep sometimes.” Tubbo says softly, a cup of tea outstretched towards Tommy and his other hand holding another cup.
“Thanks.” Tommy takes the cup and tightens the blanket around his frame. He lets out a sigh at the warmth of the cup then takes a slow sip. Tubbo sits next to him and Tommy raises the blanket so his friend can slip under too.
It stays quiet like that for a while, just the two of them cuddling under a blanket drinking warm tea, Tommy nearly doses off multiple times. At some point, when he is on the edge of sleep, he feels the cup get taken out of his hand and someone shifts his weight from the couch’s arm to the person next to him.
He mumbles something incoherently quietly, and the person’s chest vibrates with silent giggles, he lets out a content sigh when a hand starts carding through his hair. For once, he lets himself drift to sleep.
“You deserve to heal.”
Tommy opens his eyes slowly, he doesn’t remember falling asleep in the grass but it still prickles at his body. He sits up and looks around, the place is breathtaking but not somewhere he knows of.
The grass underneath him is soft, and littered with flowers of all kinds, yet a single allium sits just slightly off the centre of his circle. He looks out at the place in front of him, soft hills, a forest of spruce, and then large mountains that block most of his view.
This is the first time in a long time he hadn’t dreamt of death and destruction. The bone deep feeling of fear and pain is non-existent when he feels content in the way the sun softly hits his skin, and he smiles, a small soft smile.
“You deserve to heal, Tommy Innit.”
He doesn’t do anything, content with laying back down and watching the clouds go by.
“Do you have dreams, Tommy?” Puffy asks during one of their therapy sessions. He thinks about it for a bit, considers telling her about the nightmares of L’manburg but that’s a different can of worms he wasn’t ready to open.
He thinks about the soft flower field and the cotton candy clouds. “…No, I don’t think I do.”
He wakes up in the flower field again, and he nearly cries from relief. He's been afraid that going to bed the next day would bring him back to his horrible cycle but he’s glad it didn’t.
Tommy’s day hasn’t been the best, it was one of his bad days, where every scar throbs, his ears ring, and he can smell gunpowder wherever he goes. He had to force himself to get out of bed and then ran into Phil during his walk, all in all, a horrible day.
This time he wants to make a flower crown, busy his hands with something so he doesn’t spiral again. He starts pulling flowers before pausing, why was he in the L’manburg uniform? It itches but it seems translucent, everything that wasn't his head or uncovered forearms seems to let in light.
He chews the inside of his mouth for a moment, and then decides to ignore the outfit. His original goal was a flower crown and he will make himself a flower crown even if it kills him.
Preferably without the dying part, though.
The flowers bend easier than they do in real life and he couldn’t find it in himself to be upset about the little detail that highlights the fact that this isn’t real, he wishes it was but life is never kind or soft.
He weaves them into flower crowns of different colours, doing his best to be mindful of where the allium is so he doesn’t crush it or pull it out. The sun starts to set, that's something he didn’t know could happen in his dream world but golden orange light starts to paint the mountain and his face, somehow he knows he’ll wake up sometime during night fall.
On his third flower crown, his back hurts. Not actually, it’s a dream but his brain understands that it’s supposed to hurt so it tells him it is hurting. He drops the half finished crown to go scratch at his back only to be met with soft feathers.
Tommy’s breath hitches. Feathers? He quickly cranes his neck around trying to see the wings he assumes sprouted from his back, trying to put the weird feeling of a different set of appendages aside to stretch them out.
He knows why he has them, its obvious his brain is trying to get him to confront many things in his dreams but he is a stubborn person so he ignores it for the sake of looking at the wings.
The wings are more transparent than the uniform, and they are long, they span out probably as far as Phil’s if not longer. The wings itself starts off as a deep orange that slowly turns into a soft yellow, it looks like a sunset. He ruffled the feathers and they start to glimmer softly in the dying light of the sun.
“You deserve to heal.”