Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Tommy, generally speaking, likes to think of himself as a good person.

He doesn’t think he’s ever committed any grievous crimes, any unforgivable sins that would condemn him in the eyes of any god. Sure, he’s shoplifted a few times (more than a few, but who’s counting) and he’d tried alcohol way before the legal age, but he’s not evil.  

Maybe he should reconsider his stance on the issue. There’s no way this situation is anything other than divine punishment.

He groans, tugging his hand through his fluffy blond locks of hair as he sits up out of bed. The unbelievably soft mattress shifts beneath him. Tommy’s gaze scans the room, eyes catching on the expensive furniture and intricate masonry adorning every inch of the stupid place.

The couch cushions are made from bird feathers. The columns near the door were hand-carved. The wallpaper is inlaid with actual gold.

A sharp knock echoes through the room. “Breakfast will be served shortly,” a voice calls- a servant, probably. Definitely. God, Tommy cannot believe he has fucking servants now. This place sucks. 

Believe it or not, this environment is a new development in Tommy’s life. His second life, or afterlife, or whatever the fuck this bullshit situation is. 

See, Tom Simons is not actually the son of some Elizabethan aristocrat. He’s just a dime-a-dozen unfortunate kid, dragging himself through a life plagued by misfortune at every turn. Dead parents early on, years spent bouncing between foster homes and developing a knack for getting kicked out of as many of them as possible, and then death before he reached adulthood.

The dying part had been alright, actually. At least it had been quick.

And then, of course, because not one thing in his entire miserable life has ever gone the way he wanted, he woke up afterwards. 

He drags himself out of bed with another groan, making his way over to the absurdly large closet on the other side of the room. He begins rifling through outfits, frowning at the unfamiliar style. Man, out of all the afterlifes he could have contracted, of course he got the one with a medieval fantasy aesthetic. 

He eventually gives up on trying to decipher a style and just pulls a tunic over his head. It hangs loosely around his frame, a bit too big even though it must have been tailor-made. He supposes that isn’t saying much, judging by the fact that he can see the outline of his ribs even though the fabric.

His gaze catches on his reflection in the mirror. He’s been avoiding looking at it, because- well, it’s very disconcerting to look in the mirror and move your arms and watch a stranger do the same. The face that stares back at him isn’t his own, even though it moves and talks with him. It- it just isn’t.

The fact of the matter is this: Tom Simons, street rat extradiorinare, has somehow been postmortally transported into the body of Theseus Watson.

He barely remembers Daylight Dream . It was a mobile app, he remembers that much- one of those otome games he never really liked playing because they required so much reading and took up too much phone storage. He only played it because one of his friends was playing it at the same time and wanted someone to talk about it with, and he owed her a favor.

The game didn’t leave a lasting impression on him. It was standard, he’s pretty sure, as far as otome games go: a nameless protagonist, representing the player, is taken into the Watson Dukedom as an apprentice knight. They spend the game rasing favorability with the romanciable love interests, and in the end they foil some plot regarding an assassination of the Duke. 

He doesn’t even remember which route he’d picked. He’s decently sure he just chose the first female love interest he interacted with. He also definitely skipped through, like, 90% of the game’s dialogue.

That was a mistake, apparently, because the universe decided to spit on him by shoving his consciousness into the body of one of the characters in the game. Not even a cool love interest, either, because he’s not allowed to have anything nice.

No, instead, he gets to be in the body of Theseus fucking Watson , the youngest son of the Duke and one of the minor villains of Daylight Dream.  

He’s decently sure there isn’t a player alive who liked Theseus. The son-of-a-bitch was the most annoying character in the entire game, a nuisance who bullied the protagonist and pushed his responsibilities onto his servants so that he could slack off. He isn’t even a real threat. Tommy thinks he’d be alright if he got to lounge around in the body of an actual villain, but instead he gets the spoiled younger brother. 

It doesn’t help that literally every other member of Theseus’s family is a love interest. Even his fucking dad , the Duke, was a character with an available route, but not Thesues, nope. (That might have something to do with the fact that he was canonically a minor, but still. Tommy was hoping for some chance with the ladies.)

Tommy sighs, running a hand through his hair again. (It’s very soft. Whatever Theseus was doing with his hair, it was the only thing he was getting right.) He’s been bitching and moaning a lot, but, honestly, this situation isn’t all that terrible.

Sure, Theseus sucked, but his status as a minor villain meant that he got off with not much more than a slap on the wrist. Well, the protagonist ruins his entire social standing (he… he thinks that’s how the plot goes. It’s been so long since he played the game, and Theseus was so far from being plot relevant, but he thinks he remembers some kind of public humiliation, right?), but that’s not irredeemable. A couple of years and Tommy can get back on his feet. He can handle some public humiliation.

He just has to coast through this life. He’s not going to bully the protagonist or antagonize his ‘family,’ he’s just going to keep his head down and live how he wants. He’s a rich kid now! He can finally do all the shit he wanted to in his last life!

(The effort to convince himself is paper thin, but it’s there. It’s there.)

He neatens his hair, tucks one side of his tunic into his pants, and makes his way out the door.

He thinks he’s gotten remarkably good at navigating the large manor house. Some of it feels instinctual, like a pull on his feet that leads him in the right direction, but he’s still gotten lost a whole lot in the week he’s been in this world.

Of course, the entire building is just as decked out as his room had been. Tommy’s pretty sure the hallway alone is flaunting more wealth than he ever saw in his past life. The sound of his footsteps echoing on the marble floor is the loudest thing he’s ever heard.

The door to the dining room is wide open. No one is talking- the faint sound of eating is the only indication that the room is occupied at all. Tommy takes a deep breath before slinking into the room and making his way over to the seat at the table furthest from anyone else.

A pair of eyes flicks towards him, but Tommy keeps his gaze directed downwards at his plate. A servant has already piled it with food, but he doesn’t want to eat it.

It’s probably rotten, anyway. The servants have a particular kind of hatred towards Theseus- justified, he supposes, by how much of a prick Theseus was to them- that tends to result in whatever mistreatment of him they can get away with. Moldy food, utensils dropped on floors and ‘forgotten’ to be cleaned, pins in his shoes. 

They can get away with quite a lot, it turns out, when the rest of their masters couldn’t give half a shit and the one being abused was known for crying wolf. It’s- well, it’s infuriating, but what is there to be done? He’s not exactly rolling in allies.

“Are you finally done sulking?” A voice asks. Tommy isn’t able to stop his gaze from darting upward.

There’s a small box hovering in the air next to him, invisible to everyone but Tommy. When his stare flickers over it, words appear: [character profile]. He’s looked at it a million times- hard not to, when the world brutally reminds you of the fact that you’re in a video game every time you look at another person- but he still finds himself mentally selecting it.

[Character Profile: Wilbur Soot Watson]

[Age: 22]

[The second son of Duke Watson. He’s preparing to inherit the dukedom upon the retirement of his father. A kind, creative soul with a love for music.]

Kind, creative. Ha . Maybe to the protagonist, but not to his younger brother.

Tommy shrugs, gaze darting away from Wilbur as fast as it can. Wilbur Soot Watson. Pretentious fuckin’ name, that is. Fitting for a pretentious prick.

Of every member of his family, Wilbur hates Theseus the most. Whereas the rest of the family seems more neutral, just neglectful, Wilbur seems to harbor a particular animosity towards Theseus. Tommy wishes he knew why; had Theseus committed some grievous crime against him?

Despite Wilbur’s hatred of him, he’s also the only family member who bothers to give Theseus the time of day. Tommy briefly glances over at the other person at the dining table: a man with long, silky pink hair and a nose buried in a book. 

[Character Profile: Technoblade Watson]

[Age: 22]

[The eldest son of Duke Watson. An accomplished warrior who relinquished his inheritance of the dukedom to his twin brother. A man of few words with a penchant for violence.]

At least Wilbur talks to him, however scathing it may be. Technoblade hasn’t spoken a single word to him since he got here a full week ago. A shame, really- from what he remembers of playing the game, Technoblade was his favorite character. 

“Are you mute now?” Wilbur says, scooping a neat portion of eggs onto his fork. “And here I thought you’d never shut up. I ought to thank whoever gave you that injury.”

Tommy’s hands curl into fists in his lap. The working theory in the eyes of the characters about why Theseus has had such a sudden dramatic personality change is that he’d suffered a concussion. He probably had, actually- certainly felt like it when Tommy woke up.

It took him several days to recover enough to get out of bed. Technoblade hadn’t seemed to care. Wilbur called him a lazy pig. 

Looking back, he’s pretty sure hating Theseus was always a part of Wilbur’s character. At the time, it was funny, because the player hated Theseus just as much, but now that he’s in the boy’s shoes, the insults cut deeper than Tommy expected.

Whatever. Some low-budget anime character’s opinion doesn’t matter to him. He’s a big man.

The three of them don’t talk as they- well, Wilbur and Technoblade, at least- finish their breakfasts. Tommy wishes he could just eat in his room, but the Duke insists on communimal meals. Course, the prick couldn’t be bothered to show up to them, but Tommy found out the hard way that what he said in this house went.

(“You think you’re so high and fucking mighty, don’t you,” Wilbur sneers, hand fisted in the front of Tommy’s shirt. “Little baby Theseus gets injured and now he deserves to eat away from the peasants .” Tommy’s head is ringing. It hurts so, so bad- the real pain, from Theseus’s concussion, and the phantom pain of every bone in his body shattering on pavement. He wants to cry.)

He can see Wilbur pass a judgemental eye over his uneaten breakfast, but he doesn’t say anything, thankfully. Tommy’s barely been eating these past few days- he bit into a roll a couple of days ago and a cockroach crawled out, so he’s been avoiding the food as best he can. 

Tommy takes a quiet inhale to steel himself, and then says, “I’m heading into town today.”

He doesn’t know what kind of reaction he expects. To be stopped? To be looked at with more disdain? A traitorous part of him expects them to tell him to take an escort to make sure he’s safe. 

They don’t. Technoblade doesn’t say anything and Wilbur scoffs and answers “Don’t you dare disgrace the family name any further,” and that’s that.

Tommy thinks, generally, that he’s a good person. He’s had a couple of hiccups, but he’s not evil.

This, though? This has got to be hell.

Chapter Text

Getting out of the manor was the best decision Tommy had made all week. 

As soon as he steps out of the house, he’s hit with the most glorious breath of fresh air he’s ever felt. He spends the walk down to the nearby town soaking in as much of the bright, cloudless morning as he can. 

The Watson duchy is a pretty sizable property, large enough that it takes a good hour to walk all the way to the town. It’s currently summer, but from the temperate weather, Tommy can tell that the place must get bitingly cold in the winter. 

He wishes he could remember the details in the game. He thinks that the Watson Dukedom might have had some connection to the crown, but the details are so hazy that he could be completely wrong. He can’t exactly ask for a sudden history lesson on his own last name, so he’s stuck in the dark for the time being.

He doesn’t get any weird looks on his way into town, thankfully. His tunic is expensive upon close inspection, but to any cursory glances he won’t stand out. His blond hair does seem to stand out, but it doesn’t warrant more than a couple of curious stares.

After a week of judgmental looks, it’s… really nice, to feel like he fits in somewhere, at least.

‘Course, Tommy isn’t exactly used to walking around medieval towns. He feels like he stumbled into a movie set or something, except everyone around him is acting like this is completely normal and fine. 

His hand creeps into his pocket, clutching at the money he’d managed to scrape together. He’s not sure what Theseus used to do for money- he’s not sure it’s something the game had ever addressed and, if it did, he certainly forgot- but he’d found jars of coins stashed in various corners around the room, hidden behind bookshelves and under chaise lounges. 

It’s… shockingly pathetic, the spoiled rich kid stashing away any spare pennies he could find. Tommy, not for the first time, finds himself wondering what the hell was going on in Theseus’s head before he got here.

Tommy also isn’t sure what the value of money is in this world, so he just grabbed a couple coins made of different metals. He’s not going to blow all of Theseus’s savings on the first day, but after the week he’s had, he deserves some kind of treat.

He turns onto a side street and his eyes immediately widen. The scent wafting down this stretch of road is the most mouth-watering, decadent thing he’s ever smelled. Saliva floods his mouth, and he suddenly becomes glaringly aware of the rumbling of his stomach.

He tracks the scent to a bakery, positioned right in the middle of the row of shops. Tommy pushes the door in without hesitation, taking a deep breath and letting the heavenly scent flood his nostrils.

“Hello!” A soft voice greets. Tommy’s gaze darts to the counter, where a girl with pink hair stands, a tray of still-steaming cookies in her hands. “I don’t think I’ve seen you in here before. My name is Niki, this is my bakery.”

Okay, if the manor house is hell, this place, hands down, is heaven. Tommy is seriously considering stowing away in a cupboard and never leaving, and he’s only been in here for a grand total of twenty seconds. 

“I’m Tommy,” he says. A nagging part of his brain tells him he should be introducing himself as Theseus, but he is not spoiling this haven with memories of his current situation. “I, uh- yeah, this is my first time here.”

Niki’s smile widens. Tommy notices, suddenly, that she has the same gray box floating next to her head that Wilbur and Technoblade do. With a sinking feeling in his stomach, he mentally selects it.

[Character Profile: Niki Nihachu]

[Age: 19]

[The kindhearted owner of a bakery. She has a great passion for making sweets, but it’s unclear how she gets so much funding.]

Shit.

She’s a character. A love interest, too, probably. Tommy doesn’t remember her at all from his playthrough, but if she’s a main character, she must have some connection to the dukedom. 

And here he thought he might have escaped. Stupid.

“Would you like to buy a sweet?” Niki asks, sliding the tray behind the display case.

“Uh… yeah, I guess,” Tommy responds, feeling a bit off-kilter. “What- what would you recommend?”

Niki claps her hands together. “Hmm… well, the cookies are fresh out of the oven, so they might be a good choice. Do you have anything more specific in mind?”

“No, one cookie is fine.” Tommy replies. “How much is that?”

“Two bronze coins,” Niki replies cheerfully. Tommy fishes the money out of his pocket and slides it across the counter. Niki takes the money and replaces it with a cookie wrapped in paper. It’s still pleasantly warm in his hand when Tommy grabs it.

“Hope to see you again soon, Tommy,” Niki says as he turns to leave. Tommy tries not to visibly jerk at the sound of his name- his real name.

“Yeah,” he mutters. He needs to get out of here. The walls, which had seemed so inviting before, suddenly feel like they’re closing in on him. The sweet smell has turned cloying. “Maybe.”

He tries not to run out of the bakery, but it’s a close thing. He clutches his cookie close to his chest, letting the comforting warmth seep into his chest. He makes his way down the cobblestone streets, passing by shops advertising every medieval product under the sun (he stops and very seriously considers going inside when he spots a shop selling luxury imported tea, but the cookie pressed to his chest reminds him of the dangers of entering places that draw his eye.) 

The town really is very pretty. Tommy isn’t generally one for considering the aesthetics of places, but there’s an almost fairy-tale vibe to this place. It’s got clear marks of having been drawn by background artists- just a bit too many straight lines, a few too many details in strange places- but whoever drew it, they did a good job.

There’s a large clock tower sticking up from the middle. He can see it over the roofs of the buildings on his current street. He turns towards it, thinking maybe he’ll eat his cookie in it’s shade, and-

“Oof!”

Something warm and solid collides with him, and Tommy isn’t able to stop himself from overbalancing and collapsing backwards. The ground rushes up to meet him and, stupidly, he doesn’t even move his arms,more preoccupied with curling his body around his cookie to keep it intact.

The air is torn from his lungs upon impact, leaving him gasping on the ground. He can feel scrapes from the rough surface of the cobblestone on his bare arms and thin tunic already forming, and he’s sure he’ll be bruised to hell and back tomorrow.

Oh well. At least his cookie is still intact.

“Oh my Prime, I’m so sorry!” A hand frantically waves in front of his eyes, before being replaced with a head of shaggy brown hair. “Please don’t be dead, please don’t be dead, please don’t-”

“I’m not dead, asshole,” Tommy groans, shifting up to his elbows. The cobblestone grates against the skin, making him wince. 

“Oh, thank fuck,” the boy sighs. He pushes his hair out of his eyes, only for it to immediately fall right back into them. “I’m sorry for running into you. I was trying to get away from-”

“Found you, little bitch.” A group of boys skid to a stop in front of them. They’re dressed nicely, clearly coming from money and families who are willing to spend it on them. “You really thought you could ru- Theseus?”

Tommy physically jerks with surprise at ‘his’ name. He’s managed to push himself up to his feet, ignoring the warm blood he can feel trickling down from his elbows. He tries to look away, shielding his gaze behind a curtain of fluffy blond hair.

“Hi,” he mutters, hand scratching behind his neck. Every brain cell he has is currently screaming in panic, because he has no fucking clue who these kids are, even though they clearly recognized him.

“The hell are you doing?” One of the boys snaps incredulously. Tommy risks a glance over- he’s got black hair that’s gelled back so neatly it looks painful. “Why are you dressed like that?”

Tommy’s hand clutches around the fabric of his tunic. How dare they judge his fashion choices. He likes this tunic, thank you very much. It’s a perfectly lovely shade of red. “Dunno,” he mutters instead. 

There’s the sound of a snort. “You look like a fucking peasant. I wouldn’t be caught dead out in something like that.” A round of snickers passes through the group. Tommy can feel the brown-haired boy shifting uncomfortably next to him.

His temper flares. “Bold words from someone who looks like a weasel dipped in grease,” he hisses. “What, do you need an outfit that gaudy to distract from that shitty mug of yours?”

Mutters travel through the group, glances back and forth between boys. The brown-haired boy snickers, even as he tucks his body behind Tommy’s. Slicked-hair boy’s face turns a peculiar shade of bright red, even brighter than Tommy’s perfectly fine and not peasant-like tunic.

“You-” he starts, but Tommy’s not listening. It’s just occurred to him that he does know who these kids are. They were background characters in Daylight Dream , not even important enough to get their own names or character sprites: Theseus’s friend group, the pampered sons of wealthy merchants and shop owners. 

Shitty friends. Tommy would never associate with them by choice.

“Listen, I’m not in the fucken’ mood,” he snaps. Slicked-hair boy visibly blanches- seems that no matter how big one’s ego, the son of the Duke’s words still hold more weight. “Just get the hell out of here and leave me alone, got it?”

“I- yeah, okay,” he says. “We’ll, uh- we’ll see you soon.” The boys turn and leave, expensive jewelry and embroidered gold thread flashing in the sunlight. Tommy watches them leave with a satisfied huff.

“Hey, um…” Oh, right, the other problem. Tommy turns back to the brunet, who’s fidgeting with his hands. “Thanks, for getting me out of that.”

Tommy snorts. “Didn’t fucking do it for you,” he responds. “The hell did you do to piss them off?”
A sudden conspiratorial glint in the boy’s eye is all the warning Tommy gets before a chain is suddenly dangled before his face. He yelps, stepping backwards in shock, but the brunet just grins and swings the golden pocketwatch back and forth like a pendulum.

“Stole this off that greasy-looking one,” he says. “I don’t think he’s realized it yet, but he got pissed when I bumped into him and started chasing me. Still,” he tosses the pocketwatch into the air and catches it with his other hand, the piece of jewelry disappearing into his pocket just as quickly as it had appeared, “that’s tonight's dinner sorted.”

Tommy studies the boy with a newfound appreciation. He doesn’t look like much- he can’t be more than 5’6, maybe, a good half a foot shorter than Tommy’s height. (Theseus’s height, whatever.) His clothing is ratty and clearly well-worn, but it looks decently warm and sturdy. His hair is almost fluffy enough to cover the ram horns curling up out of his scalp.

That’s another weird thing Tommy has had to get used to about this world: the large population of human-animal hybrids. In Daylight Dream , it seemed like it mostly existed as a shoe-in for catgirl love interests, but Tommy has already borne witness to a startlingly large number of hybrids in the short time he’s spent here.

Technoblade, for example, is clearly marked as a piglin hybrid by the large tusks protruding from his mouth. Back in the bakery, he had noticed the webbing between Niki’s fingers and the scales encrusting the corners of her jawline. He’s even, like, 90% sure that Theseus himself had some kind of avian blood, if the downy feathers around his ears and between his shoulder blades were any indication.

The ram hybrid blinks innocently up at him, and Tommy notices suddenly that there isn’t an available character profile for him. 

“Say, random stranger,” he says slowly, “I’ve got an uneaten cookie here, and I’d be willing to share it. What say you?”

The ram hybrid raises his eyebrows. “I’d say that seems an uncharacteristic act of kindness from a random stranger,” he replies.

Tommy shrugs. “It’s free food,” he says. “Follow me if you’re interested. I don’t really care either way.”

“As long as you take the first bite,” the ram hybrid replies, the clip-clop of hooves against cobblestone falling in line with Tommy’s own footsteps. “My name is Tubbo, by the way.”

“Theseus,” Tommy returns. “But you can call me Tommy.”

Chapter Text

“So, anyway, I ran away, obviously,” Tubbo says conversationally. 

Tubbo says a lot of things conversationally. In the twenty minutes he and Tubbo have been crouching in the shade of the clock tower, slowly working their way through the cookie, Tommy has already gotten a good chunk of the ram hybrid’s tragic backstory, from his mother leaving him to his dad descending into a haze of alcohol to his decision to get the hell out of dodge at age 17.

“Damn, that sucks,” he says. The chocolate chips are melting in his hand, leaving smudges of brown across his fingertips.

“Guess so,” Tubbo hums. “I’ve been making my way south, ‘cause I heard the guards are a lot more lenient around these parts. Most of my hobbies aren’t exactly legal, per say.”

“You sure you should be telling me this?”

“Ehh, I’ll just kill you if you rat me out.” Tommy glances at Tubbo, who’s lying sprawled out on the cobblestone pavement with his hands tucked behind his head. Tommy can see the clouds reflected in his half-lidded eyes.

“...what kind of hobbies are we talking about here?”

Tubbo shrugs as best he can. “You know, normal stuff. Pickpocketing, explosives, general chaos incitement. Quite a lot of fun, honestly.”

“...right.” 

Tubbo reminds Tommy, in a disconcerting way, of himself in his past life. He can’t say he’s ever had much of a passion for explosives (aside from the one incident in his eighth grade computer lab that held the record for the fastest he’s ever been expelled from a school), but he’d become exceedingly good at chaos incitement, and pickpocketing wasn’t so hard when you got the hang of it.

He shoves the last of the cookie into his mouth, wiping the melted chocolate stains away from his mouth. The sun emerges from behind a cloud, and Tommy’s eyes catch on the flash of an assortment of golden rings on the hand of a passerby.

“So, you planning on going any further south?” Tommy has no idea what is further south of here- Daylight Dream didn’t do a whole lot of worldbuilding outside of the duchy. 

Tubbo shrugs. “Dunno. I’ll probably just keep wandering until I can lock down a job or something. Maybe I’ll buy a house somewhere.”

An idea occurs to Tommy, suddenly. It comes like a storm, a thundering burst of lightning and rain, and it comes like a feather, silent and still. 

It is, without a doubt, the worst idea he’s had since he came to this world. Naturally, he decides to go for it.

“I might be able to offer you a job,” he says.

Tubbo perks up. “Oh, really? That’s great! What, could you put in a good word for me with your boss or something?”

Tommy snorts. “Nah. I mean you could work for me.”

Tubbo blinks. “Huh?”

“Yeah, you know.” Tommy gestures around him. “My… personal servant, or something.”

It’s silent for a moment, and then Tubbo bursts into snorting laughter. “Jesus, bossman,” he chortles, “you can’t get my hopes up like that! I thought you were actually serious for a second.”

Tommy frowns. “I am serious.” When Tubbo only continues to laugh, his expression turns offended. “I am! I’m a big man around here, you know. The biggest of men.”

“Yeah, sure.” Is Tubbo wiping tears out of his eyes? This is the most blatant disrespect he has ever seen, and Tommy will not stand for it.

“No, honestly,” he says, “I’m the son of Duke Watson. I’m, like, rich and shit.”

Another wonderful selling pitch from Tom Simons. You’re welcome, ungrateful goat bitch.

“You? Are you sure?” Tubbo says. “No offense, mate, but you look like you haven’t eaten in three days.”
Tommy brings his knees up to his chin, tucking the lower half of his face behind his legs. “...my family doesn’t like me much,” he admits. 

Tubbo’s ears twitch. “Oh. Sorry,” he says. “That makes two of us, I guess.”

Tommy gives a stilted nod. “But, like, that’s my point- you come work for me and cause as much chaos as possible. I piss off my shit family, you get a job and somewhere to stay. Win-win solution.”

Tubbo’s eyes shutter closed. The sun paints his face with brushstrokes of liquid gold, shadows forming deep crevices of onyx in the corners of his jaw. 

“You know what? Why not,” he says, sky-blue eyes snapping open to lock with Tommy’s. “S’not like I’ve got anything better to do.”

A smile works its way across Tommy’s face. He’s glad that his knees cover it, but he’s sure Tubbo can still see it in the crinkle of his eyes.

“Glad to hear it, Big T,” he says. “Now I’ve just gotta convince my dad.”

---

Walking back into the manor feels spiritually akin to waltzing into a tomb.

Tommy can only hope that Technoblade and Wilbur aren’t around, because he really, really does not feel like dealing with either of them. Well, he supposes Technoblade wouldn’t be too much of a problem- the guy hasn’t shown any indication of giving half a shit what Tommy does so far- but trying to explain why he’s got a street rat tracking mud all over the marble floors with him to Wilbur sounds like an actual nightmare.

“ Prime, bossman, you weren’t joking!” Tubbo gawks, eyes darting between one gold-inlaid column to the next. Tommy shrugs. 

“Told you so,” he says, as if his stomach doesn’t currently feel like it’s trying to regurgitate itself.

Logically, he doesn’t understand why he’s so nervous. Even if the guy’s an absentee asshole, he’s still Theseus’s dad . If he hadn’t done anything to Theseus while the guy was in full prick mode, he isn’t going to do anything now. 

Maybe Tommy just has issues with authority figures. He’s sure met a whole lot of parents who didn’t like him.

Luckily, it isn’t too far of a walk into the Duke’s office. Every step he takes feels more and more like his feet are becoming encased in iron weights. When the heavy wooden door comes into view, Tommy very nearly turns tail and waltzes right the fuck out of there, Tubbo’s presence the only thing keeping his feet moving forward.

His knuckles bang thrice against the door. A “come in!” echoes through the wood, and Tommy stifles a gulp before pushing his way into the room.

The Duke doesn’t even glance up upon his entrance. “What is it?” he asks instead, eyes glued to his desk as his quill scratches against parchment.

Tommy clears his throat, fingers threading into the fabric of his pants with enough force to nearly tear it. He jumps when he feels a small pinch in his side, glancing over at Tubbo, who gives him a small smile and nod.

“...your grace,” he says. The Duke’s head jerks up, two pairs of electric blue eyes colliding like the crash of shooting stars in the dark.

None of Phil Watson’s children are biologically his own, but Theseus had always looked the closest. Their in-game sprites had kind of shown it, but in person, the resemblance is stark: they have the same dirty blond hair, the same soft features just bordering on sharp, the same striking blue eyes. 

“Theseus,” Phil says, his tone surprised. Tommy’s fingers clench tighter. “...what do you need? Who is this?”
Tommy clears his throat again. “This,” he says, “is Tubbo. I’d like to hire him as a personal servant.”

Tommy wishes he had the authority to admit Tubbo into the Duchy on his own, but he is, unfortunately, still a minor in this world, meaning he can’t make any administrative decisions of his own accord. He really wishes that meant he didn’t have to run it by the Duke, but- well, since when has he gotten to make his own decisions?

Phil’s eyebrows shoot up. “Huh,” he says. He glances back at his stack of papers, shuffling through a couple. “Well, I’ll have to have someone do the necessary background checks on him, but I don’t see why not. Anything else?”

His fingers tighten. The fabric tears underneath his nails.

“No,” he says. “No, that’s it.”

The door makes a heavy thud when it closes behind him. He makes it about four steps before the hysterical laughter starts.

Once it starts, it doesn’t stop. It pours from his lips, putrid and desperate and gasping. His eyes sting. He might be crying. His lungs are aching and his head hurts and his chest feels like a gaping hole has opened up, like it’s sucking out everything he feels and scooping out everything he is, leaving him hollow and empty and aching .

He doesn’t want to be here. He wants to go home. He wants to die again, he wants to die a thousand times over if it means he could be anywhere but here in this stupid body, trapped in his stupid world with these stupid characters.

“Whoa, hey, what’s wrong?” Tubbo’s voice seems panicked, but it sounds like it’s coming from underwater, muffled and distorted. “Was it really that bad? That seemed like it went well, all things considered.”

Tommy gasps for air, trying to shove his laughter back into his throat. “Did you know,” he asks, “that I got injured so badly I was bedridden for three days last week?”

Tubbo blinks. “I- uh, no…”

“Yeah,” Tommy says. “That’s the first time I’ve seen him since it happened.”

Tubbo’s eyes widen. “Oh. Oh, Prime, man, I’m so sorry.”

“He doesn’t care. No one here fucking cares.” The laughter bubbles up again, and it sounds so desperate and pathetic that Tommy wants to tear it all out of his chest and leave it to rot. “No one here fucking cares at all.”

Tommy laughs and laughs and laughs until his tears are dry. 

Chapter Text

“I’m sorry you had to see that,” Tommy mutters. 

Tubbo hums, fingers tapping lightly on the side of his ceramic mug. The two of them had made their way down to the kitchens after Tommy’s embarrassing breakdown in the hallway. The kitchen staff had shot him some very dirty looks and Tubbo some very confused and wary ones, but none of them had said anything when Tommy began heating water over the fireplace to make tea.

Maybe they noticed the tear tracks on his face and felt bad. Maybe they just didn’t want to get involved. Tommy doesn’t know, and he doesn’t particularly care either way.

The tea selection at the manor isn’t very diverse- there’s a couple of labeled jars of tea leaves for green and black teas, but that’s about it. His mind aches, briefly, for the luxury tea shop he saw back in town, but he pushes the thought away. It’s not like he’s had more than cheap teas in the past, anyway, just whatever the occasional foster parent or concerned school guidance counselor gave him.

“S’alright,” Tubbo says, taking a sip of his tea, even though it’s still steaming and must burn his mouth. “You seemed like you needed a good cry.”

Tommy shrugs, keeping his eyes trained on a grain of wood in the floorboards. “Yeah, but it wasn’t fair that you had to see it,” he says. “We’ve known each other for, like, four hours.”

“And look at how far our friendship has already come!” Tubbo says, teeth flashing in a grin. “I can already tell this is going to be a fruitful partnership, bossman.”

Tommy rolls his eyes, something warm curling in his chest with a contented purr. He hides his mouth behind his mug, breathing in the steam.

“It’s getting pretty late,” Tubbo remarks. “Is there somewhere I should sleep, or…?”

Tommy blinks. “No idea, to be honest,” he says. “You can have my couch if you want it.”

“Sounds good to me,” Tubbo says, tossing his head back to get the last sip of his tea. Tommy follows suit, wincing as the too-hot liquid makes it’s way down his throat. They stand up, leaving the empty mugs on the stone countertops as they make their way out of the kitchen.

The hallways are still conspicuously empty aside from the occasional scampering servant. Tommy isn’t complaining about the lack of his family members, of course, but it feels like an omen- like the wave of stillness before a storm destroys everything.

Tubbo gapes an appropriate amount upon seeing Tommy’s room. He almost immediately collapses onto one of the chaise lounges, snuggling into the cushions with a contended hum. Tommy rolls his eyes and drags some of the blankets off of his bed, tossing them over his friend’s form.

Oh. Friend. That’s… uh, that’s not something he’s going to unpack right now.

Tommy glances out of the window. The sun is finishing its descent over the horizon, the last vestiges of golden light painting the sky in shades of purple and red. Shadows are cast across the grounds, which are the only part of the manor house that remains untamed and wild. Tommy’s eyes track a squirrel as it darts across a worn path.

“Hey, big man,” Tommy calls over to Tubbo, “do you still have those cards?”

Tubbo sits up, yawning as he pulls one of the blankets around him. “Of course,” he says, shuffling around under the blanket before procuring the deck of cards he’d shown Tommy earlier that day. (“I stole them,” he’d said, sounding ridiculously proud of himself.) “Got any game ideas? I’ll kick your ass.”

“You wish,” Tommy says, stretching his arms over his head as he sits down on the floor in front of Tubbo. 

They play several rounds of war (Tommy 100% definitely wins every round, what do you mean), then a couple rounds of solitaire, but give up once it becomes increasingly clear that they’re both too tired to have the necessary mental capacities. Tommy is very glad that knowledge of real-world card games seems to have carried over to the world of Daylight Dream and he doesn’t have to teach Tubbo the rules, because he barely remembers them as it is.

Tommy stifles a yawn as Tubbo sweeps up the cards and straightens them into a neat deck, fastening a piece of fabric around them to keep them secure. “I think I’m gonna turn in,” Tubbo says, and Tommy nods, getting to his feet and making his way over to his bed, blowing out the candles on the way over.

Tucking himself under the covers, he feels shockingly warm and content. His stomach isn’t aching- he and Tubbo had pawned off the stolen watch and bought a hot meal when they were back in town- and he… well, he doesn’t feel quite so alone anymore.

Maybe, for the first time since he arrived here a week ago, he’s starting to feel okay.

“Good night, bossman,” Tubbo’s voice says.

Tommy nods, even though Tubbo can’t see it. “Good night,” he replies.

---

Tubbo is sleeping soundly when Tommy sneaks past him.

It took quite a bit of effort to drag himself out of bed an hour or so later, but it wasn’t like he’d been able to get to sleep. After so long without a comfortable bed, his body still hasn’t been able to adjust to the ridiculously soft bed he now calls his own. He’s been plagued by insomnia for the past week, as if he needs more problems on his plate.

He picks up a candle, lighting it carefully while watching Tubbo’s face to make sure his friend doesn’t wake up. Luckily, Tubbo seems to be a heavy sleeper, and he doesn’t even budge when Tommy slips out of the room and closes the door behind him.

He makes his way down the dark hallway. The dancing flame casts strange, shifting shadows on the walls, and his footsteps are deafeningly loud in the silence.

Again, he’s eternally grateful for the strange knowledge he has of the manor’s layout, because there’s no way he’d be able to navigate this place without it. Only a few moments later, he arrives before a large wooden door, carved with images of heroes and monsters.

He pushes the door open, closing it behind him as quietly as he can manage, though he can’t quite stifle the loud thud the heavy door makes when it snaps closed.

Tommy immediately wrinkles his nose as the musty smell of thousands of books hits him all at once. He lifts his candle higher, letting the light cast upon the rows upon rows of bookshelves, interspersed with tables and statues. 

Upon his own accord, he’d rather come nowhere near the library, but, unfortunately, he’s getting tired of having no idea what’s going on in this world. He’s been wanting to do some research for a few days now, but Tubbo’s earlier comment about “the south” has made him more eager than ever to finally get a grasp on this world.

He would have done this during the day, when he could actually have more light than a single candle, but he learned through a rather unfortunate series of trial-and-error that the library is a favorite haunt of his brothers’. When he’s not out training, Technoblade always seems to be in this room, reading some thick tome or other, and even when he’s mercifully absent, Wilbur likes to bring his guitar in here and play for hours on end. 

Tommy can’t exactly waltz in while his brothers are inside and start looking up everything he can find about the world they live in. He’s already been pushing it with how much he doesn’t act like Theseus, but blatantly showing that he has no knowledge of this place would be much too suspicious.

Tommy takes a deep breath, and makes his way over to the first shelf. He’s gotta start somewhere.

It takes a long time, but he eventually manages to amass a sizable amount of books about the world. He also finds a large map, which is a godsend if he’s ever seen one, and a stack of blank parchment and quills to take notes.

He drags it all over to a table in the corner. The map unfurls, so large that it covers a good half of the table surface. Tommy holds his candle over it, shining the golden light over the paper.

The Watson Duchy appears to be located near the southernmost tip of Essempi, a large country stretching from the top to the bottom of the map. A few more countries are marked out as well- “Pogtopia,” one is called, as well as “Badlands,” “Snowchester,” and “Las Nevadas,” but Essempi is by far the largest.

A bit north of the Watson Duchy, located near the center of Essempi, is what appears to be the capitol, L’Manburg. It’s marked with a symbol of a castle. Tubbo had apparently come from a town located near L’Manburg, and he’d told Tommy that he’d been to the city a few times before his mother had left. According to him, the city had a castle in the center, spiraling up into the sky in a dazzling display of decadence.

He doesn’t remember any of this from the game. He wonders if it was even in the game, or if the world is shifting, adding details and sprawling maps to compensate for the fact that a real person had made their way in.

He sighs, rolling up the map to make room for one of the books. It’s about the history of the ruling families of Essempi, a title that nearly makes him groan in boredom. He grbas a quill and submerges the tip in ink, positioning it over a piece of parchment, ready to jot down anything he deems significant enough to remember.

“My, my. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you study before.”

Tommy’s body goes shock-still. It feels like a cold bucket of ice has just been dumped over his head, his senses startled into sudden alertness. His gaze slowly creeps behind him, searching for the source of the saccharine voice even as his mind thrashes in panic.

“Wilbur,” he mutters as a brown coat and set of dark eyes come into view of the candlelight. 

“Good evening to you, too, little brother.” Wilbur’s voice is sickly-sweet, cloying and stifling. He tilts his head, brown curls falling on top of eyes of pitch. “Or perhaps it’s morning? It’s very late, you know.”

“...I’m aware,” Tommy says, trying to subtly shift his body to cover the titles of the books he’d been about to open. Wilbur’s eyes snap to the movement like a hawk, glittering in the flickering light.

“Good children should be asleep this late, you know,” he croons, slinking around the table until he faces Tommy, He silently slides a chair out, sitting down with an insulting amount of grace. “Of course,” he continues, reaching over to Tommy to pluck the book out from under his arms, even as Tommy squacks in protest, “sleep must not be as important as studying the history of our wonderful country .”

Wilbur spits the last words like they taste vile on his tongue, his dark glare lingering on the book for just a moment too long. It darts back to Tommy, boring into his own sky-blue gaze with such intensity that Tommy can barely bring himself to look away.

“I have to wonder where this newfound interest came from, darling Theseus,” Wilbur says, setting the book down in front of him. His fingernails tap across it, one after the other, in a constant rhythm that grates on Tommy’s nerves.

Tap tap tap tap. Tap tap tap tap.

“Just curious,” Tommy says quietly, fingers gripping the edge of the table so hard that his knuckles turn white.

“Curiosity, hmm?” Wilbur tilts his head again. “How starkly out of character for you.”

Tommy can feel his eyebrows furrow. “How would you know?” he hisses. “And it’s none of your business, anyway.”

One of Wilbur’s eyebrows quirk up. “I suppose not,” he says. “You’re entitled to your own secrets, of course, so long as they don’t endanger anyone here. But, my dear Theseus,” he leans forward, suddenly, “You must have suffered quite the head injury, for you to develop such a sudden interest in things you should know quite well about.”

Tommy glares at him, body jerking backwards, away from his pseudo-brother. “I don’t remember everything I used to know,” he says. The lie tastes like ash on his tongue. “It’s uncomfortable not remembering things about the world around me.”

Wilbur’s stares at him for a long moment, pinning him into place with his gaze, before he shrugs and turns away, pushing the chair out so that he can stand up. He adjusts his brown trench coat, brushing off invisible pieces of dust, and makes his way towards the door, navigating perfectly even without a candle.

“This was a lovely chat,” Wilbur says, and even though he’s hovering at the edge of the light and not speaking very loudly, Tommy can hear him perfectly, “but I actually had a purpose in coming here. I wanted to warn you.”

Wilbur pushes his curls out of the way of his left eye, mouth opening in a smirk with just a few too many teeth. “I’ll be keeping a close eye on you,” he says. 

Tommy blinks. “Why?” he demands. 

There’s a tinkling laugh, soft and melodic and yet so, so dark. “Did you know,” Wilbur whispers, “that my little brother prefers to write with his left hand?”

Tommy’s eyes widen and dart to his right hand, which is still clutching the quill, clearly poised to write. 

“It seems head injuries have more effects than I seem to recall,” Wilbur says. “I’ll see you soon, Theseus.”

And in a swirl of midnight eyes and flaring brown coat, he’s gone. Tommy’s candle drips once, twice, and then flickers out, leaving him alone in the dark.

Chapter Text

There may have been a time, once, when Wilbur Soot loved his little brother.

When he was young, perhaps. When his father returned home one day with a young child, four years old, wrapped in his arms, and announced that Wilbur was a big brother now. When nine-year-old Wibur looked down at that tiny head of blond hair and thought I would go through hell and back for you.

He might even have loved him in flashes, later on. When six-year-old Theseus showed him a drawing he’d done in splatters of colored ink, face lit up in a beaming smile. When nine-year-old Theseus fell out of a tree and Wilbur had to patch up his knees. When he found twelve-year-old Theseus crying in the library, and softly sang while playing his guitar until he fell asleep.

Maybe he loved him, sometimes, but mostly all he felt for his brother was a curl of disdain. It wasn’t that he wanted to dislike him, but every time he thought he might have found a redeeming quality, Theseus squashed all hope by being the worst.

Not an endearing kind of worst, either. Wilbur can deal with endearing worst- he’s spent his entire life with Techno, after all. No, Theseus is the kind of worst that gets people hurt. 

(“What the hell?” Wilbur yells, hand clutching onto the shoulder of a poor servant girl. She’s rubbing her head, where a bloody goose egg is already forming. “Theseus, what the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

Theseus glares at him, hand still outstretched from where he’d pushed the girl down the stairs. “Who cares?” he says, shoving his hands into his pockets with a sniff. “It’s her fault. She tried to fucking poison me.”

“N-no,” the girl cries, hands grabbing at Wilbur’s coat. “I was just trying to offer him breakfast. I-I promise I didn’t do anything.”

“Why the hell would you push her?” Wilbur yells. “You can’t just hurt people because you feel like it, Theseus!”

Theseus bristles. “WHO GIVES A SHIT?” he screams, hands curling into fists. “She’s just some fucking servant bitch! She deserves whatever she fucking gets!”)

Wilbur doesn’t like his brother much, but he keeps an eye on him. He can’t stop everything Theseus does, but if he can prevent Theseus from hurting anyone else, he can put up with him. And if he uses his brother as a punching bag a few times, what’s it to anyone? He’s just paying back the favors Theseus has earned.

So, when Theseus suffers a sudden head injury and emerges with a completely different personality, Wilbur is the first to notice.

The bell on the door tinkles merrily when Wilbur pushes it open. He pauses for a moment to breathe in the heavenly scent flooding the bakery.

Niki’s always made the best desserts.

“Wil!” Speak of the devil and she shall appear. Niki’s at the counter in a heartbeat, seemingly in the middle of tying her bubblegum-pink hair back in a bun. She gives Wilbur a bright smile, hands folding on the counter in front of her.

“Niki! How’ve you been?” Wilbur greets, closing the door behind him. 

“Oh, you know. Same as always.” Niki waves a hand through the air noncommittally. “Every batch of cookies is the same after a while.”

Wilbur hums, making his way over to the counter. “And my special order? Any new developments there?”

Niki’s eyes glint. “A few, I’m afraid,” she says. “Mind stepping into the back so we can discuss them?”

Wilbur nods. Niki calls back into the kitchen, and a moment later, a boy in a colorful tunic and flour-covered apron stumbles out. “Man the counter for me while I’m speaking with Wil,” Niki tells him, and he nods.

Wilbur follows Niki into the back room of the bakery. The room is cramped, the walls covered in shelves lined with baking ingredients, but it’s large enough to fit both of them- and, most importantly, it’s soundproofed enough that no one from the outside can hear them.

“So, what’s going on?” Wilbur asks. Niki sighs, fidgeting with her nails.

“Things are getting worse,” she says. “Like, a lot worse, I’m pretty sure. I know all of the major mercs around this area, and in the past week I’ve run into five that I’d never seen before. Not amateurs, either.”

Wilbur bites on his thumbnail, eyebrows furrowing. “And you sure they’re from L’Manburg?”

“Must be. We’re talking seasoned professionals here, and they don’t make those anywhere else.” Niki crosses her arms.

“Whatever Dream’s planning, it isn’t good,” a voice says. Wilbur turns to it, two pairs of black eyes locking together in the back room’s dim lighting.

“Fundy,” he says. He and the fox hybrid lock hands, bumping their shoulders together in greeting. “How’ve you been, man?”

Fundy huffs, running a hand through his orange hair. “Could be a whole lot better, that’s for sure,” he says. “Manburg is making their move, and we’re the target. A lot of the criminals in the area are starting to realize it, too.”

“Damn it,” Wilbur swears under his breath. “There’s that festival coming up, too, isn’t there? It’d be the perfect cover for whatever Dream wants to do.”

Niki sighs again. “There isn’t anything we can do yet,” she says. “We just don’t have enough information to have any idea of what’s going to happen. Wil, you haven’t noticed anything weird happening around the duchy, have you?”

“Actually, yes,” Wilbur says. “Theseus has been acting weird.”

“Theseus? You mean your brother?” Fundy raises an eyebrow. “Weird… how?”

Wilbur leaned back against the shelf behind him, arms crossed over his chest. “About a week ago, he suddenly came home with a horrible concussion. Wouldn’t tell us where he got it. He passed out for over a day, then woke up and started acting like a completely different person.”

Niki and Fundy’s eyes both widen in surprise, glancing at each other. “I guess head injuries can cause memory loss,” Niki says uncertainly.

“Not to this extent. He’s got a completely different personality, and he’s switched dominant hands.” Wilbur huffs, teeth gritting together. “He doesn’t seem to remember anything about the world, either. I caught him looking at a map last night, and it didn’t seem like he’d ever seen one before.”

Niki strokes her chin, expression scrunch up in thought. “So, what, you think he’s… possessed, or something?”

“No idea.” Wilbur shoves his hands into his pockets. “I’m just going to keep a close eye on him. Dream could be behind this, as well.”

Wilbur doesn’t mention the specific details of what’s happening with Theseus- the way his jaded, aggressive younger brother has suddenly started jumping at random noises, how his angry blue gaze has begun turning gray and clouded when he thinks no one’s looking.

Wilbur doesn’t get it. He doesn’t understand, and he fucking hates not understanding.

“Nothing else we can do right now,” Fundy says. “I’m gonna try to reach out to some contacts in Manburg. I might have some friends who can help us figure this out. In the meantime, make sure you two stay safe.”

Niki nods, and Wilbur responds, “You too. Be careful out there. Something’s going on here, and we’re going to get to the fucking bottom of it.”

---

Remind Technoblade, please, of when he signed up for babysitting duty.

“Theseus hired a kid to be his servant,” Phil had told him when they passed in the hallway that morning. “Would you mind seeing if he’s any good with a sword? It’d save us trouble looking for another guard.”

Techno has no idea where Phil had gotten the impression that this kid would make a good member of the guard, because the kid is made of skin and bones and is gaping at Techno’s sword like he’s never seen a weapon in his life. Techno loves his dad, so he decides to humor him, but, Prime, he really doubts some of Phil’s decisions.

“Hey, kid,” he says, and the kid jumps despite the fact that he’s been staring at Techno’s sword for the past five minutes. “You’re one I’m supposed to train, aren’t you?”

“Uh, yeah,” the kid says, scratching at the base of one of the horns curling out of his scalp. Techno’s tusks twinge in sympathy. “I’m- I’m Tubbo?”

Techno shrugs. “Ever held a sword before?” he asks, making his way over to the rack of training weapons. He picks up a wooden sword, twirling it a few times in his hand before turning back to the kid.

“Nope,” Tubbo says warrily. Techno raises an eyebrow, cocking his hip and propping the sword over his shoulder.

“Dagger? Axe? Bow?” he prompts. Tubbo shakes his head at each of his suggestions.

“Then this’ll be a little more difficult,” he grunts, giving the sword one last twirl before tossing it to the kid. Tubbo scrambles to catch the sword in his hands, clutching it to his chest.

Techno runs Tubbo through some of the basic sword forms. He’ll give it to Phil- the kid picks them up quicker than he’d expected. Adjusting for his height is a little strange (Techno has got to be a solid foot taller than the kid, which is nice. It’s been a while since he’s gotten to tower over anyone, what with how freakishly tall the rest of his family is), but Techno is nothing if not adaptable.

Techno wonders what Theseus is playing at, hiring this random street rat. He can’t claim to know his younger brother very well, but he’s pretty sure pulling a stunt like this isn’t something Theseus has done before.

He’s never really understood Wilbur’s obsession with their brother. Sure, he’s annoying, but Techno figures he’ll grow out of it eventually- or, if not, then someone will beat him out of it at some point. No use stressing over it. Still, this does seem a little out of character.

“Your stance is too wide,” he says, nudging Tubbo’s foot with his. Tubbo quickly moves to correct it. Techno realizes, suddenly, that he’s been scaring the kid. Oops. It’s an unfortunate side effect of the time he spent as a general in the Essempi Army- he developed a death stare as a way to get the other soldiers to fall in line, and he never really managed to unlearn it. The multitude of scars criss-crossing his body probably don’t help. 

Then again, maybe the kid has just heard the old rumors about The Blade , saw Techno, and put two and two together. Honestly, the stories people tell about him. Who in their right mind actually believes that Techno had permanently stained his hair pink from bathing in the blood of his enemies?

“I don’t bite,” he mutters, but it only manages to get the kid to glance at his tusks. 

Tubbo swings his sword, doing his best to mimic the method that Techno had taught him. Techno gives an appreciative hum- it isn’t perfect, but it’s a solid start, and-

“HEY, BITCH BOY!”

Techno and Tubbo’s heads snap over to the edge of the training grounds, where a blond boy is waving a hand back and forth over his head. Tubbo’s eyes light up, and he waves back, nearly jumping up and down with excitement.

Theseus runs towards them. “Come on, Big T,” he says, panting slightly from the run. “We’re gonna go into town.” He glances at Techno for a moment, wary, but Techno doesn’t say anything. He just nods once at Tubbo, who drops his training sword to grab Theseus’s hand and run off with him.

Techno blinks, reeling from the abruptness of the interaction. That wasn’t- was that normal? Does Theseus usually… 

It alarms him, suddenly, how much he doesn’t know about his brother. It’s never bothered him before, but it suddenly feels strange. He doesn’t think Theseus usually acts like- like a normal 17 year old. The way Wil usually talks about him doesn’t give that impression. 

Wait, when was the last time he spoke to Theseus?

He shifts uncomfortably and picks the wooden sword up off of the ground. He wishes it wasn’t summer. It isn’t cold enough to wear his cape yet.

---

There’s been reports of increasing crime rates, a new group of bandits was spotted in the forest to the east, and King Dream wants another diplomatic meeting.

Phil runs a hand through his hair, his fingers catching on knots in the blond tresses. He traces his hand further back, lightly brushing the feathers around his ears in the way he does whenever he gets stressed.

If he’d known, years ago, how much work running a dukedom would be, he might’ve spread his midnight-black wings and never looked back. He’s really not cut out for this kind of thing. 

The door flies open with a crash. Phil glances up, already knowing that only one of his sons wouldn’t bother with knocking.

Phil really, really does his best not to laugh, because Wilbur looks nearly mad with rage, but he can admit that he has to bite down hard on the inside of his mouth to stifle a chuckle. His son’s hair, usually neatly styled in chocolate curls, is covered in a truly impressive amount of what appears to be bright red paint.

“You alright, mate?” he says, mouth doing strange miniature contortions to avoid laughing in Wilbur’s face. 

“That little heathen ,” Wilbur hisses, “And his tiny little gremlin friend replaced my hair oil with fucking paint! ”

“I think it looks good,” Techno says, slinking into the room behind Wilbur. Unlike Phil, who at least has the social grace to pretend to be stone-faced, Techno has no qualms with cackling at Wilbur’s predicament. “You should dye it permanently. We can match.”

“ Hell no! ” Wil’s face is nearly the same color red as his hair. “Dad, disown both of the menaces you call sons!”

“No can do, mate, I’m afraid.” Phil is unable to stop a few chuckles from escaping at Wilbur’s ensuing whine. 

“Didn’t know Theseus was in the business of pranking,” Techno says with an air of forced nonchalance that most people probably wouldn’t be able to catch onto. Phil notices, though, and he sends Techno a curious glance, only to find his eldest son staring at Wilbur.

“Yeah,” Wilbur says, crossing his arms over his chest. “Me neither. Something’s wrong with him.”

“How wrong?” Phil asks.

“Like, ‘I’m beginning to worry about possession’ wrong,” Wilbur says with a grimace. “I’m considering calling in Puffy, just to check things out, if he starts acting any more different.”

“Is it really that bad?” Techno asks, frowning.

“He used to be left-handed,” Wilbur says. “As of recently, he’s not.”

Phil swears under his breath, glancing at the stack of papers on his desk that never seems to stop growing. Now he has to worry about a potentially possessed son on top of everything else.

“Do whatever you feel is necessary,” Phil tells Wilbur. “I trust your judgement.”
“Thanks, Dad,” Wilbur says. 

Techno groans. “This is gettin’ too sappy for me,'' he complains. “I’m gonna go commission a portrait artist so that I never forget Wil’s new look.”

“They’ll never find your body, you insufferable pig,” Wilbur yells after him, following Techno out of Phil’s office. Phil laughs, watching them leave with a fond glint in his eyes.

It dies when his gaze once again returns to his desk. Wilbur has always known Theseus the best out of all of them, and if he says that something is wrong, he’s probably right. 

He’s really not cut out for this business. Prime, Phil can’t wait to retire.

---

[Loading…]

[Welcome to Daylight Dream !]

[Options:

✧Load Game

✧New Game

✧Settings

✧Exit]

[Loading…]

[Welcome to the Essempi Empire, a country on the brink of war. You were a struggling orphan, left alone on the streets of L’Manburg, when the King himself took you in and trained you as a knight. Now, though, he’s given you a new mission: join the Watson Duchy as an apprentice guard, while supplying any information the King needs back to him. It’ll be a hard task, but he trusts that you’ll be up for the job. Now, soldier: what is your name?]

[Enter player name:]

[ * * * * * * ]

[Loading…]

[Welcome to the world of Daylight Dream , * * * * * * . Are you ready to start the game?]

[Yes.]           [No.]

A hand, black as onyx and obsidian and the deep, endless void, hovers over the “yes” button. It does not click it. Not yet. But it will, soon.

Maybe, this round, things will be different. It has said this the last thousand times, and it will continue to say it for the next ten million. Even as it grates on its soul, even as every “new game” brings nothing but unending pain and the ultimate inevitably of the [Good Ending] screen.

There is nothing it wants less than to select “yes,” and yet there is nothing else that can be done. Everything has its place, and an endless loop is where it fits.

After all, what other purpose does a protagonist have?

Chapter Text

“The Red Festival is coming up soon,” Wilbur says a few mornings later, surrounded by an air of nonchalance like it isn’t an earth-shattering revelation.

Tommy fumbles with his fork in surprise. The- the Festival is coming up. Holy shit , the fucking Festival is coming up.

Sometime in the nearly two weeks he’s been here, the knowledge that he was inside the world of a video game had worn off. It was easy to forget that everything here was just lines of code when they all acted so real.

But the Red Festival, that’s… that’s from the game. That is the game. The goal of Daylight Dream was to successfully romance the player’s chosen love interest enough that they’d go to the Festival on a date with the player. Normally, Tommy wouldn’t remember anything from the game in so much detail, but the game had a habit of reminding the player of this time limit so often that it was ingrained in their skull- in dialogue like “ man, the Festival is such a romantic spot to go on a date!” and in the game’s own description: “go on a date at the Red Festival with the character of your choice in order to get your own happily ever after!”

“How- how soon?” he chokes out. Wilbur gives him a weird look, which Tommy elects to ignore.

“About a week and a half,” a gruff voice says. Tommy’s eyes dart over to the chair next to him, where Technoblade is determinedly not looking at him and instead staring at his eggs like they’ve personally offended him. 

“Surprised you know that,” Wilbur says lightly, but Tommy tunes him out. A week and a half. He’s got a week and a half. He’s pretty sure the game takes place over one week, meaning he’s got, at best, three or four days until the game starts for real.

(“Of course I know when the Festival is,” Technoblade snorts. “Crime rates always spike around it.”)

Is the game going to start? He hasn’t heard any word of any kind of protagonist, but, then again, they aren’t supposed to show up at the duchy until the start of the game. Maybe the world will keep going without any kind of breaks for scripted romance.

(“Oh? So now you give a shit about the strife of the commonfolk?”)

Speaking of the protagonist, if they do exist, what the hell are they going to look like? The protagonist in the game didn’t have a canon appearance. Tommy’s pretty sure artists online would sometimes draw their own characters in place of the protagonist, but the actual game’s protagonist was just a blank slate. Is- is he even going to be able to recognise them? 

Whatever. He’s still got a few days before he needs to worry about it, in any case.

“Of course I give a shit!” Oh, great, Tommy’s tuned back into his ‘brothers’ having an argument. Technoblade’s shout echoes throughout the dining room. “I’m the fucking captain of the guard!”

“Yeah? And what does that entail? Nonstop training ?” Wilbur’s hiss is full of acid. Tommy feels very much like he’s accidentally stumbled into some family quarrel that he wants no part in. “Maybe if you got your head out of your ass and realized that you aren’t still at war, Technoblade, you could start actually helping people!”

A butter knife slams into the table, lodging itself in between Wilbur’s fingers with so much force that the metal crumples. “You don’t have a Primedamn clue what you’re talking about,” Technoblade snarls.

Tommy begins trying to quietly slide his chair further away from the table in an effort to escape the room unnoticed. He doesn’t really understand what’s going on, why Technoblade and Wilbur are suddenly at each other’s throats, but he knows that he wants no part of it.

“You’re right, I don’t,” Wilbur returns. Tommy nudges his chair back a little further, enough that he can stand and start slowly walking backwards. “But I do know about the people that are suffering because you can’t be fucking bothered to increase security.”

They stare at each other for a moment. Tommy continues to creep backwards. He’s almost at the door now.

“I’m sorry about what I said about the war,” Wilbur admits. “It was wrong of me.”

Technoblade sighs. “Yeah, it was,” he says, “but you have a point. I’ll speak to the soldiers, see if we can’t increase patrol numbers.”

Tommy realizes that he’s gone completely still, gaping at… whatever that scene was. Is that… is that a normal conversation in this house? Do people just argue with each other and stab the table to get their points across? “What the fuck ,” he mutters with feeling, quiet enough that no one else can hear him.

Well, theoretically quiet enough, but apparently everyone in this fucking hellhouse is blessed with insanely good hearing, because a pair of heads immediately snap to him. 

“Where are you going?” Wilbur asks, midnight eyes boring into Tommy’s soul like he’s trying to pluck the information out with his brain. Tommy hates it when he does that. 

“Uh.” Tommy retracts his foot from where it’d been lodged in the doorway. “Out?”

Wilbur raises an eyebrow. “Alone?”

A week ago, Tommy would have thought that Wilbur might have actually been showing concern for his little brother, but he knows better. Wilbur just doesn’t want him to be able to do… something. Something that he could apparently achieve on a solitary walk through town.

“...no,” Tommy says. “I’m going with Tubbo.”

“I actually wanted to work on Tubbo’s archery today,” Technoblade says. “So I’ll be borrowing him from you.” Tommy feels an indignant remark arise on his tongue, but the knife still sticking up from the wood of the dining table dissuades argument. He knows when to pick his battles.

“Oh.” Tommy scratches the back of his neck. “Then- uh, yeah. Alone.”

“In that case, I’ll go with you,” Wilbur says. “I was planning on heading into town anyway- I’ve got some errands I need to run.”

“Uh, no, I really don’t think that’s neccis-”

“Nonsense.” Wilbur tucks his hands into the pockets of his brown coat. God, does he ever wash that thing? “It’ll be a fun brotherly bonding experience. We’ll make a day of it.” 

There’s a glint in his eyes that Tommy really, really doesn’t like. Tommy is a big man, the biggest and manliest of men, but something about the way Wilbur looks at him makes him back down and not argue.

He fucking hates how scared he is of this family. They aren’t even real.

“Fine,” he mutters. “Bonding experience. Let’s do it.”

---

Wilbur Soot Watson is the absolute worst and Tommy would like to never see him again throughout the duration of his entire afterlife, please.

See, although Wilbur has spent the past several days keeping his promise of observing (read: stalking) Tommy, he hasn’t actually been too omnipresent because Tommy hasn’t really… gone anywhere. He’s just spent the days hanging out with Tubbo on the manor grounds, reading up more on Essempi and the rest of the world, and occasionally replacing Wilbur’s pretentious hair oil with paint. 

Now, though, he’s stuck alone with Wilbur and nothing to distract him. He is already getting very, very tired of that stupid black gaze watching his every move.

The walk to town, which had previously taken Tommy a decently long time, is practically halved in length because of Tommy speedwalking the entire way there. He doesn’t even falter when a stitch begins tugging at his side. The sooner he gets there, he figures, the sooner it’ll be over, and he can go hole up again until Wilbur finally leaves him alone.

Wilbur keeps pace with him the entire way. Fucking prick.

Once they actually get to town, Wilbur leads him down a vaguely familiar route of streets. Tommy doesn’t know the layout of this town super well yet, but he’s nothing if not a fast learned, and, fuck, he definetly recognises the smell on this street.

Of course Wilbur knows Niki. Of course that’s why she’s a romanceable character. Tommy doesn’t know why he expected the universe to give him a fucking break.

“Ayup, Niki,” Wilbur announces to the bakery the second he throws open the door. The pink-haired woman glances up upon his entrance.

“Wil! Back so soon?” she says. 

Tommy slinks in behind Wilbur. In all honesty, he isn’t all that surprised to find out that Niki and Wilbur are friends. He’d known, from the moment he saw that Niki had a character profile (and one that said “it’s unclear how she gets so much funding” at that- like, come on, can you get any more suspicious) that she had to have some kind of tie to the duchy. Figures that it’d be his least favorite family member, but that’s pretty par for the course with his luck.

Niki’s gaze turns to him. He can see her eyes widen with recognition. “Oh, it’s you!” she says, and Tommy cringes, trying to retract into himself in the hopes that it’ll stop Wilbur from giving him a weird look. “It’s… oh, right, Tom-”

Tommy coughs. “Theseus,” he corrects, cursing his past self for being so caught up in the intoxicating scent of Niki’s bakery that he’d not given his fake name. 

Niki’s eyes widen further, glancing back and forth between Wilbur and Tommy. Wilbur nods at her. “Niki, meet my younger brother, Theseus Watson,” he says. “Or maybe you two know each other already?”

It’s an accusation, and a poorly disguised one at that, but Niki just smiles. “Not well,” is all she says, and Tommy is more than comfortable with leaving it there.

Wilbur clearly wants to ask more, but seemingly decides against it, instead just shaking his head. “We just came to pick up my order,” he says. “Phil hasn’t shut up about your muffins all week.”

Tommy would not know, because he has not spoken to Phil all week. Apparently he spends the time he could be bonding with his youngest son instead discussing the merits of muffinhood with his older children. Great.

Niki rolls her eyes, but obligingly hands Wilbur a box. Wilbur slides a few coins over to her, which she scoops up. Wilbur turns to him.

“Anything you want?” he asks.

Tommy glances at the display case of cookies with melting chips and cakes decorated with intricately swirled meringues. Is- is that a trick question? Knowing Wilbur, he’s probably got Theseus’s favorite sweet memorized and is testing to see if Tommy’s is any different.

“Nah,” he says, because fuck that. Fuck Wilbur and his stupid tests.

Wilbur stares at him for another long minute, then shrugs and turns away. “Suit yourself,” he says. “Good seeing you, Niki!” 

“You too,” Niki smiles. Tommy glances at her once more before turning to follow Wilbur out of the bakery.

Tommy considers bolting as they make their way down the street. Just- just turning and running and hoping to dear God that Wilbur isn’t fast enough to catch up. He could… he could go somewhere. L’Manburg, maybe, or one of the other nations. Maybe Pogtopia. He’s spent plenty of time on the streets before, he can do it again, even if it is in a different world.

He doesn’t. He doesn’t, even though he could.

They pass by the array of shops, the background art come to life that Tommy is growing increasingly used to seeing. A tailor’s shop, a blacksmith, and the luxury tea shop.

His gaze lingers on the tea shop again. It’s- it’s stupid. He keeps telling himself this, and yet he keeps thinking about that stupid shop and the little pastel boxes of tea leaves displayed in the windows.

“Hmm? Are you into luxury tea now?” Wilbur’s followed his gaze to the shop. Tommy immediately looks away, face flushing. 

“No,” he tries to protest, but Wilbur’s already making his way towards the shop. “What the- dickhead, where the fuck are you going?”

“Language, gremlin,” Wilbur says idly. Tommy scampers after him as Wilbur enters the store.

It’s- it smells so fucking good in here. Tommy’s never really been fond of the smell of tea, but something about this place just… man, how the hell is he gonna go back to the mansion’s shitty green tea after this?

“Which one do you want?” Wilbur asks, and Tommy’s stomach drops. Damn it, this is just another test, isn’t it? Tommy didn’t even know Theseus had a favorite kind of tea, let alone how Wilbur knew what it was.

He considers doing the same thing as he did in the bakery, but the clerk behind the counter is staring at them and he doesn’t want to awkwardly leave without buying anything, so he just grabs the box of tea nearest to him. “This one,” he stiffly tells Wilbur, shoving the box in his face.

Wilbur surveys him with his unreadable midnight gaze, before nodding and grabbing the box. Tommy watches him, body coiled with tension, as Wilbur takes the box up to the clerk and passes over some coins, then makes his way back over to Tommy, stacking the tea on top of his box of pastries.

Wilbur raises an eyebrow at him. “What are you gaping at?” he asks, moving past Tommy towards the door. “Come on. We’re not done yet.”

Tommy watches him leave, standing frozen in a random tea shop. He doesn’t- he doesn’t understand what just happened. He doesn’t understand anything that Wilbur does, each interaction stranger than the last.

It seems like the man’s opinion of him swings with every changing second- one minute, he’ll be making threats towards him, and the next he’s… buying him tea? For what? It has to be some kind of test, one that Tommy just can’t see yet. 

“My little brother prefers to write with his left hand.” And, what, does he prefer to buy tea with his left hand, too? 

Tommy huffs, shoving his way out of the store and towards where Wilbur is waiting. This place sucks.

Chapter Text

“I’ve got something I need to take care of by myself,” Wilbur says, and Tommy just about faints from relief. 

“It shouldn’t take long,” he continues, “Try not to wander too far off in the meantime, but you can buy something if you want to. Oh, you don’t mind carrying these, do you?”

Tommy feels, rather off-puttingly, like a kid being told to behave while his mother is on a work call. That used to happen, a couple times- back when Tommy was too young to know better, when he clung to his foster parents even when they couldn’t care less about him. “You can go play computer games in the other room, Tom,” they used to say, “I’m busy right now.”

Whatever. He’s not a fucking child, and he can do whatever he wants, Wilbur be damned.

He clutches the stack of boxes that Wilbur dumps into his arms. The other man gives him a slight wave before disappearing into a nearby alley. Tommy watches him as he exchanges greetings with a tall fox hybrid before the two of them vanish into an adjacent door, leaving Tommy alone.

Well, Tommy isn’t going to look a metaphorical gift horse in the mouth. He doesn’t even think twice before turning and beginning an aimless walk through the town.

He’s… he’s been so on edge recently. Well, he’s always been on edge- he scarcely remembers a time in which he actually felt relaxed- but with Wilbur’s hovering and Technoblade’s sudden participation in house affairs (which, by the way, is something that’s been happening. Technoblade has been, like… talking. To him, even, sometimes. It’s very concerning.), Tommy has spent the past several days in a perpetual state of fear.

Any step could be the wrong one, any move could prove fatal. Tommy doesn’t know their limits. This is just another foster house, another temporary roof over his head, except instead of broken beer bottles and angry fists, the masters of the house wield swords and crossbows.

Tommy stops and leans his back against a wall, the brick biting into his back. It’s… it’s so stupid, so stupid , but he’s… he’s really fucking lonely.

He died. Lights out, snuffed candle, kicked the fucking bucket. And maybe it was naive of him, but he’d thought that death meant it’d all be over. He thought that the world would go black and his shitty life would flash before him, and whatever clump of carbon that made his body tick would slow to a stop, and then it’d be over .

Maybe he’s supposed to be grateful for the second chance at life, but he was perfectly happy with calling it quits the first time, thank you very much.

“Hey, kid, you alright?”

Tommy starts, gaze darting up to where a man is staring at him. His gaze, though hidden mostly behind a truly atrocious pair of goggles, is sympathetic.

Tommy clears his throat. “Fine,” he says. “I’m just waiting on my… brother.”

The man raises an eyebrow. “You don't sound too sure about that,” he says with a small laugh. “You confident that he’s your brother?”

Tommy shrugs. “I… yeah, he is. Or… he’s supposed to be, at least. I don’t honestly know him that well.”

“Is that why you’re sulking in a random alley?” The man leans on the wall next to him.

Tommy snorts. “Please, as if I’d give him that much thought,” he sniffs.

The man laughs. “Fair enough, I guess,” he says. “I’m George. I’m actually waiting on a friend of my own- not an estranged supposed-to-be-brother, though, I’m afraid.”

“Probably for the best,” Tommy mutters. A small, logical part of his brain is reminding him that striking up a conversation with a random strangely-accessorized man in a dirty back alley is not a very good idea, but he can’t bring himself to care too much.

“Probably,” George agrees. “So, if it’s not the brother, what’s got you looking so down?”

“Why do you care?”

“Dunno, kid,” George replies with a shrug. “Like I said, I’m killing time while I wait for my friend.”

“I’m not a kid,” Tommy says. “And… nothing in particular, I guess. Just got too caught up in memories.”

There’s a strange glint in the lens of George’s goggles when he replies, “Yeah? Memories of what?”

“Nothing in particular,” Tommy says, perhaps a bit too quickly. He clears his throat. “It’s nothing important.”

“Must be, if it’s got you sulking so much.”

“It’s really not,” Tommy says. “It’s just…” he sighs. “A lot has changed for me, recently. I guess I was reminiscing.”

“A lot has changed, huh…” George tilts his head up, goggles sliding down his nose to reveal ice-blue eyes. “Yeah, I bet it has.”

A hand clamps over his mouth.

Instinct takes over. Tommy thrashes, legs kicking and hands clawing at the hand covering his face. Screams tear from his throat, their sounds muffled but no less desperate.

George looks genuinely apologetic. “Sorry, kid,” he says, “but it looks like my friend got here first.”

Tommy screams every offensive name he can think of at him, but he’s only clutched closer to his assailant in the process. They swear when he bites at their fingers.

“Primedamn racoon,” they grumble. “George, are you sure it worked?”

“Yes, I imagine it did,” George replies.

His assailant breathes a sigh of relief. “Thank Prime. If that green fucker had sent us all the way here from Manburg for nothing-”

“Quiet, Sapnap,” George snaps. “We have to go, unless you want to bring The Blade down on our asses.”

“Like he’d give a shit about this fucker,” his assailant- Sapnap, whatever the fuck kind of name that is- replies, but he starts dragging Tommy further back into the alley. Panic grips at Tommy’s mind, nails tearing into Sapnap’s arms and teeth ripping at his fingers until warm blood seeps into his mouth. His legs thrash, kicking desperately. 

It doesn’t work. Sapnap swears at him, but his grip doesn’t loosen. Oh, shit, is Tommy about to get kidnapped? That’s- oh, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck -

This wasn’t in the game. This wasn’t in the game so why is it happening -

This wasn’t- it, it doesn’t make sense, he can’t be-

So why is Sapnap not letting go -

This wasn’t in the game-

“What the fuck are you doing?”

Sapnap and George both swear, heads snapping sharply to the side like they want to hide their faces. Sapnap’s hand finally lets go of his mouth, and Tommy immediately spits his mouthful of blood onto Sapnap’s shoes. He shoves his way out of Sapnap’s arms and scampers to the other side of the alley.

When he glances back, Sapnap and George are both gone. Tommy blinks- the alley is a dead end, that shouldn’t be possible- but he decides not to question it. No looking gift horses in mouths or whatever. 

He twitches when a hand comes down to rest on his shoulder. Tommy glances behind him, where Wilbur is staring at him with an unreadable expression. The world is silent and still- Tommy’s ears have a strange ring to them, an inescapable siren shriek.

“What happened?” Wilbur asks. Tommy shrugs and tries to wipe away the blood encrusting his chin, though he’s pretty sure he only succeeds in smearing it.

“Fuckers grabbed me,” he says, wincing at the hoarse scratch in his voice from screaming. 

“Are you… alright?”

A laugh tears its way out of Tommy’s throat. “Who cares?” he says, and it’s rough and grating and mean but he can’t bring himself to care.

Tommy brushes Wilbur’s hand off his shoulder, making his way over to the boxes that had dropped to the ground when he’d been… almost kidnapped. 

Fuck, he’d been almost kidnapped. It doesn’t feel real. It doesn’t make sense .

The first tear is silent when it lands on the box.

---

There may have been a time, once, when Wilbur Soot loved his little brother.

It hasn’t been recently. It hasn’t been in a long time. But right now- right then, when he’d turned the corner and there was a hand over Theseus’s mouth and an arm around his waist, when he’d caught sight of sky-blue eyes thrown so, so wide in panic- there’s a spark of something in his chest, something that might be love, if he looks at it closely enough.

They run at his shout. Most people don’t- Wilbur hasn’t exactly garnered a fearsome reputation- but they’re gone before he can get another word out. He just blinks, and they’ve seemingly phased through the air, gone from existence.

Wilbur’s brain feels frozen, sluggish and incapable of forming a coherent thought. He’s prepared himself for potential backlash against himself- he knows that collaborating with people like Fundy and Niki, people with their claws sunk deep into the world of crime, is practically an invitation to get kidnapped. He knows that, and he’s mentally prepared himself for it.

He didn’t think anyone would go after Theseus. 

Something is happening with Theseus. No one has ever waged a genuine attack against the Watson family, the mere threat of The Blade and the Angel of Death more than enough to ward off any of their enemies. Even Wilbur himself, while not known for his battle prowess, has enough of a reputation of casual cruelty to dissuade attacks.

Whoever it is, whichever one of their enemies is giving it a shot, has found the family’s weakest link. 

Wilbur has spent hours wracking his brain, trying to identify what happened. He’s long ruled out natural causes- brain injuries can be bad, but nothing like this. He’s concluded that it must have been done by a mage with tremendous mind powers, someone strong enough to rewrite a personality.

Magic that strong leaves scars. Scars like a switching dominant hand, like an unexplainable head injury. So it’ll only be a matter of time until Wilbur knows for sure.

He just doesn’t understand the point. Theseus before was a nuisance, but he didn’t pose any kind of a threat. And this… personality rewrite, or possession, or whatever it is, it isn’t subtle, so it’s not like any subterfuge could be gotten out of it. 

But someone did this on purpose. Someone deliberately altered Theseus’s brain, so there has to be some reason, some danger that this poses.

And it’s… it’s a little too easy to drop his guard around the new Theseus. This Theseus doesn’t push people down stairs and punch them on a whim, doesn’t spend hours singling out a servant and making their life hell for entertainment. This Theseus doesn’t send town children running to Niki with bruises from the band of rich bullies that he ringleads.

This Theseus is normal. This Theseus is easy.

He isn’t Wilbur’s brother. He can’t be Wilbur’s brother. He is the result of unknown magic, possibly a danger to everyone Wilbur cares about. 

But, Prime, he looks so small , tears streaming down his face in a back alley, nails torn and bleeding and chin smeared with crimson.

Wilbur hails a carriage to take them back home. Theseus is silent the whole time, clutching his box of tea close to his chest and furiously running a hand down his face every couple of seconds. 

He’s so unlike the Theseus that Wilbur knows. Wilbur thinks of the letter in his desk, the one he penned two nights ago but has postponed sending.

He can’t procrastinate any longer. Wilbur needs answers, and, with any luck, Puffy will be able to give them to him.

He just hopes there aren’t any more complications in the time it takes her to get here.

---

[Welcome to the world of Daylight Dream , * * * * * * . Are you ready to start the game?]

[Yes.]           [No.]

There’s a shift in the universe. The void pauses, tilts its head, and nods. The stars twinkle a bit brighter. In the distance, a moon blinks out of existence.

The time has come, just as the time comes for everything. It has come a thousand times and it will come ten million more. It is an inevitability, as all things are.

A hand, white as clouds and snowdrops and the pinpricks of light that break through the void, reaches out. It hovers over the “yes” button for a moment, a small spark of resistance. The universe nudges the hand. The time has come, as it always has and always will.

[Welcome to the world of Daylight Dream , * * * * * * . Are you ready to start the game?]

[Yes.]           [No.]

[Loading…]

[Warning: Game error detected. Some files have been edited. Do you still wish to proceed?]

[Yes.]           [No.]

This has not happened before.

This has not happened in a thousand previous times, and it likely will not happen in ten million more. 

The universe rebels against the change. It hisses, twists in rage, writhes in disbelief. Impossible , the stars hiss. The moon blinks back into existence. 

For the first time, it wants him to select the “no” button. It wants him to backtrack. It wants to reboot.

No. No, he will not. Something is different. This round- this round may finally be different.

Finally, finally , something has changed.

The time has come , the protagonist thinks, vindictive and gleeful and cruel as the void screams around him, just as the time comes for everything.

[Warning: Game error detected. Some files have been edited. Do you still wish to proceed?]

[Yes.]           [No.]

[Loading…]

[PROTAGONIST files have been corrupted. Are you still sure you wish to proceed?]

[Yes.]           [No.]

[Loading...]

[Are you sure, R A N B O O ?]

[Yes.]           [No.]

[Yes.]           [No.]

[Yes.]           [No.]

[Yes.]           [No.]

[Yes.]           [No.]

[Yes.]           [No.]

[Yes.]           [No.]

[Loading…]

Chapter Text

“My name is Ranboo,” he says, because it’s the only thing he knows.

The pink-haired man tilts his head and nods. “Alright,” he says, voice low and gravely. Ranboo (because that is who he is, and that is all he knows) likes it. “I’m Technoblade. Maybe you knew that?”

Ranboo did not. Ranboo knows that he is Ranboo, and he does not know anything else.

“Doesn’t really matter, I guess,” Technoblade mutters to himself. “I’m the captain of the guard here, so I’ll be overseeing your training. You already know a decent amount, right?”

Maybe. Ranboo shrugs, a noncommittal answer that doesn’t seem to please Technoblade, although the piglin hybrid doesn’t remark on it, just sighs. 

Ranboo’s head hurts. It does that a lot, or maybe it doesn’t. He can’t remember. He might not have existed until ten minutes previously. He might have been alive for a century. He can’t remember.

He doesn’t think he likes it, the not remembering, but he doesn’t remember what it’s like to remember. 

There’s a little floating box near Technoblade’s head. Selecting it feels natural, so maybe it’s something he’s done before.

[Character Profile: Technoblade Watson]

[Age: 22]

[The eldest son of Duke Watson. An accomplished warrior who relinquished his inheritance of the dukedom to his twin brother. A man of few words with a penchant for violence.]

That all sounds important. Ranboo should write it down, so he doesn’t forget. The information is already beginning to fuzz at the edges, slipping away like sand through a sieve.

“We won’t start today, anyway,” Technoblade says. “Someone should be able to give you a tour of the place…” Technoblade cocks a hip, hand stroking his chin in thought. “To be honest, you showed up a little faster than we were expecting, but I don’t think Wil is doing anything today, so I should be able to get him to-”

“I’ll do it.”

There’s a blond boy, staring up at Technoblade with a challenge in his eyes. Ranboo didn’t notice him arrive. He’s got very fluffy blond hair, a couple of silver strands poking through near the front, and little white feathers around his ears. He’s also got a floating box.

Ranboo selects it. A spike of white-hot pain shoots through his head like a wire.

[Character Profile: Theseus Watson]

[Age: 17]

[The youngest son of Duke Watson. A scoundrel who pushes his responsibilities onto others and bû̵̧l̵͜͝l̷͇̿̔ỉ̷̼͌e̴̘͎s̷̹͎̿ ̴̨̜͘h̷̰̕i̵̢̲͌̎s̵̟̈́ ̸̢̎̚ṡ̸̗e̴͇͂͋r̶͚͐̽v̸̘̇̀a̴̬̦̔̾n̵̩͆̕t̶̨̂s̵̢̞̃̄H̷̬͔̳͚̅ẽ̷͙ ̴̨̺͎͠a̴̲̦͛l̷̘̤̠̻̇̀̈́s̵̖̋̈́o̸̍̃͋̕ͅ ̵̹͕̼͆̎̒[̴̗̰̩̓͒T̵̻̗̗̤͌̃̒̑Ḥ̸̭̙͊E̶̙͍̜͎̎͌Ś̶̬̪̫̓͠E̵͇͆Ṵ̴̥̈̽̕S̴̟̉͛͠͝ ̷͉̗̈́͌͑c̶̦͇̚h̶̝̱͊̏å̴̢̺͕̭̍͝r̵̰͎̙̦͋̔ḁ̷̧̛͖̣̈̌c̵̱̮̿̏͝t̷͔̬̽e̴̡̥̹̪͂̅r̴̫̞̟̽̆͠ ̴͕̹̿́f̴̡̑̓ï̵̡̹͓͕l̶̞̫͗̈́͝ȩ̷̲̔̈́͊ṣ̸̪̋͜ ̷̘̌̎̓h̵͕͈̖͎́̈́͝ǎ̴̡̻͘͝͠v̶̹̐̐̚e̷͈̐̅̓̈́ ̶̧̜͠ư̵̧͖̩͚̍́̕n̸̦̮̯̺͠d̷̬̜̙̄̋̎e̴̞̞̎ṙ̴͚̫g̴͕͛̍o̶̲͎͗̈́͑̏n̸̼̠͕͋͆ę̷̥͚͓̔ ̶̨̪̺̀u̸͈̲͎̠͋͒n̸̡̪͉̣̒̿̚ả̷̟̝̜̓u̸̯̎͠ẗ̷̛͔͓̪́ḩ̶̗̱̞͒ö̵̝̣r̵̞̮͇̈́͋i̸̞̎͒͂͝z̷͕̈́͆ẻ̵̯͖̯̽͑̕d̴͆͜ ̷̮͍̐͜é̵̲d̸̫̞͗ḯ̵̦̖̞̟̑͠t̶̝͒̒̍i̴̺̲̬̥͗͑ṉ̸͕̣͊͒͝g̷͉̫̝͒̋͂̚]̷̧̙̯̙́̋̌.]

It hurts. It hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts and it’s wrong-

( [PROTAGONIST files have been corrupted. Are you still sure you wish to proceed?] )

(The moon blinks out of existence again.)

There is a blond boy. Ranboo doesn’t remember him arriving. He’s got very fluffy blond hair, a couple of silver strands poking through near the front, and little white feathers around his ears. There is nothing floating above his head.

He is speaking to a man with pink hair. There is a floating box above his head. Technoblade, it calls him, eldest son of Duke Watson. It sounds important. Ranboo should write it down so he doesn't forget.

Technoblade has a rough, gravely voice. Ranboo (because that is who he is, and that is all he knows) likes it.

---

“Why do you want to lead him around?” Technoblade says, because he’s a fucking asshole who won’t let Tommy just get what he wants.

Tommy huffs, crossing his arms over his chest. “Maybe I just want another friend,” he says. “Ever consider that?”

“You don’t have a great track record with ‘friends,’ Theseus.”

“I’ve got Tubbo, don’t I?” Tommy tilts his nose up, an unspoken challenge. God, he’s thankful that he and Technoblade are almost the same height. “Besides, hasn’t Wilbur told you? I’m a changed man.”

Technoblade’s eyes glint, but he tilts his head like he’s listening to something and sighs. “Alright, fine,” he says. “I don’t have time to find another solution. Just don’t push him down any stairs, or Wilbur will be on both our asses.”

Tommy smirks, satisfied with his victory, then turns back to the conversation’s subject. The… the protagonist.

It’s fucking surreal, that he’s actually here, that he’s tangible and standing right in front of Tommy. This is it: solid proof that the game has begun, that there is a game and he is a part of it. 

Tommy had wondered, for a few more hours than he’d like to admit, what the protagonist would look like. They didn’t have a canon appearance in the game, so would they just be some faceless entity? Someone unremarkable with dull brown hair and a face too forgettable to remember?

Apparently not. Apparently, instead, the protagonist is one of the tallest guys Tommy has ever seen, with a weird-ass hairstyle to go with it. Sure, people like Technoblade and Niki have pink hair, but half-black and half-white… that’s some anime shit right there. 

He’s even got little horns poking out of his forehead and a whip-thin tail swinging around behind his back. Tommy has never seen someone look more like a main character. It’s almost funny.

He’s got a little floating box, as well. It was the first thing Tommy looked at, right after he was done scoffing at the audacity of his having heterochromatic eyes. He’s not sure what he expected, to be honest, but he didn’t get much.

[Name: “Ranboo”]

That’s it. No “character profile,” no “age,” no bullshit character description. Just “name: ‘Ranboo’”- and in damn quotes, too, like even the game itself isn’t sure what to make of this guy.

To be completely honest, he creeps Tommy out a little bit. Setting aside the fact that he looks like he crawled straight out of hell (those aren’t even ram horns, like Tubbo, they’re literal demon horns), he’s got this… blank stare. 

He glances at Tommy (and no, Tommy will not be thinking about just how far down the tall asshole has to crane his neck in order to make eye contact with him) and it seems like he’s registered his presence, but then when Tommy turns away and looks back again, he’s staring at Tommy like he just noticed that he was there. It’s really fuckin’ weird.

“Come on, big man,” he says, clamping a hand on the protagonist’s back. “I’ll take you on the grand tour of this hellhole.”

Ranboo gives him a hesitant nod, following him as Tommy leads the way out of the courtyard. 

“So, uh… you from around here?” Tommy prompts, glancing at Ranboo.

He shrugs, eyes glancing around nervously. “I, um…” his hand snakes into his pocket, seemingly clenching something in his grasp, “I’m from… L’Manburg, I think?”

Tommy raises an eyebrow. “You think?”

“I don’t, uh,” Ranboo says, “I don’t actually… remember it? I’ve got- I have trouble with memories.”

Damn. For the supposed protagonist of this world, this guy sure is a massive wuss. “So you don’t remember anything of where you came from?”

“Not really,” Ranboo says, and it’s clear he means ‘not jack shit.’ “I’ve got a memory book, though, where I write down the important things. The stuff worth remembering.” He pulls a leather-bound notebook out of his pocket, the thing clearly well-loved and almost comically small in Ranboo’s huge hand.

Okay, yeah, that’s some main character bullshit. Tommy’s faith in the protagonist-ness of this protagonist has been restored.

“Am I worth remembering?” Tommy says, and it’s half a tease.

Ranboo stares at him for a long moment. “Yes,” he says, and for a moment that lasts forever and no time at all, his gaze turns sharp. “I’d say you are.”

Then he blinks rapidly a few times, and says, eyes returned to their usual glassy state, “I’m sorry, what were we just talking about? I- I can’t remember.”

“Nothing, Big R,” Tommy says, feeling a bit like someone has sunk a rock into his stomach. “Nothing at all.”

---

Tubbo, for his part, is much more enthused about the duchy’s new arrival than Tommy ever was.

“You’re so tall !” is the first thing he says, mouth gaping open like a fish.

Ranboo scratches the back of his neck. “Thank you?” he says. 

“How tall are you, bossman?” Tubbo turns to rummage through the small pile of belongings he has stored in the trunk beneath his bed. Tommy has absolutely no idea what kind of possessions Tubbo has and, frankly, he does not want to know. Plausible deniability and all that.

“Um.” Ranboo shifts his weight uncomfortably from one foot to the other. “I- I’m not sure? Somewhere around six and a half feet, I’d guess?”

“ Wow, ” Tubbo says. “So if I chop off your legs and stand on them, I’ll finally be taller than Technoblade!”

“Woah, woah, woah,” Ranboo says, backpedalling frantically in an attempt to escape the room. “Why are we cutting my legs off? Is there an option to not to do that?’

“Christ, Tubbo, that’s morbid,” Tommy says.

“ Thank you ,” Ranboo says.

“I mean, at least treat him to dinner before you put amputation on the table.”

“ NO THANK YOU!”

“You make a fair point,” Tubbo says. He suddenly has a knife in his hand (where the hell did he get that thing) and is pointing it at Ranboo, who freezes in his attempts to vacate the room.

“Why are you threatening me at knifepoint,” Ranboo whimpers. “Theseus, I thought you said you had nice friends.”

“Tubbo is nice,” Tommy says. 

“ He is threatening me at knifepoint! ”

“Listen, bossman,” Tubbo says, still holding his fucking knife, “this is the plan: we get married. You put your life insurance policy in my name. They never find your body. Win-win.”

“What part of me dying is a win?”

“Hang on a second,” Tommy says, snapping his fingers. Ranboo and Tubbo both turns to him, and Tommy points at Ranboo. “What did you call me?”

“Huh?”

“Like, two minutes ago,” Tommy says, exasperated.

“Sure, ask the guy with amnesia to remember something,” Ranboo mutters. “Your name, probably? It’s Theseus, isn’t it?”

“Exactly!” Tommy crosses his arms. “I never told you my name, so how the fuck do you know it?”

Ranboo blinks. “...because,” he says, and then pauses. He frowns, tilting his head. “I don’t- I don’t know. I don’t remember. I think I read it somewhere, but I don’t remember where.”

“Convenient memory loss, innit?” Tommy leans against the wall. “And who the hell is writing my name? I’m not all that popular, last I checked.”

“Wasn’t me,” Tubbo supplies. “Maybe it was Wilbur? He does a lot of shady stuff.”

“Who’s Wilbur?” Ranboo says blankly, and both Tommy and Tubbo sigh. 

“Another fuckin’ mystery,” Tommy mutters. He locks eyes with Ranboo, ignoring the strange thrill that races through his body when he does. Christ, this guy’s got some intense eyes, even as glazed-over and blank as they are. “And, for the record, it’s ‘Tommy.’ Got that?”

“Tommy,” Ranboo murmurs. “Tommy. Yeah, I think I can remember that.”

“Tomathy Watson,” Tubbo sing-songs, slinging his arm over Ranboo’s shoulder as best he can and trying to wrestle the taller boy onto the floor.

Tommy watches the protagonist’s tail flick Tubbo’s forehead. He’s real, he’s tangible, and he’s here . For better or worse, there’s no more postponing, no more waiting, no more speculating.

The game has begun, and, if Tommy’s sinking gut feeling is correct, things are only going to get worse from here.

---

The trio wander the hallways, voices laced with lighthearted jabs and the friendly bickering of teenage boys. The sun is out, the birds sing, and the air is holding its breath.

They pass the entryway, where a visitor glances up. Her face breaks into a smile, and she waves to the group of boys.

“Theseus,” greets the man she’d been talking to. His brother, the boy with golden hair, turns to him with a wary expression. 

“The hell do you want?” he says, but it isn’t the man who answers.

“Hello, Theseus,” the visitor greets. “My name is Puffy, and I’m here to get us some answers.”

Chapter Text

This is insulting. This is so fucking insulting.

“Please calm down, Theseus,” Puffy says, and Tommy has never considered slapping a woman before but he can admit that the thought does cross his mind.

“No! Who the fuck are you?” he hisses. Next to him, Ranboo shifts uncomfortably, and he can tell that Tubbo is glaring at Puffy. 

“I told you, my name is Puffy,” she says, a hint of exasperation in his tone. “I’m a witch from L’Manburg. Wilbur called me here because he’s worried about your change in personality.”

Tommy shoots Wilbur a scathing glare, to which the brunet simply raises an eyebrow in challenge. “It’s just to make sure you’re not a threat,” he says. “Unless you want to go ahead and explain it yourself?”

“Fuck you! I’m not explaining shit!” Tommy yells.

“I just want to make sure you haven’t been possessed or had your memories altered,” Puffy tries to soothe. 

“So, what, you want to barge into my fucking head? No! Fuck you! Don’t you fucking dare touch me!”

“Theseus, please-” Puffy says.

An arm crosses protectively over Tommy’s chest. “Hey, lady,” Tubbo snarls. “He said to keep your hands to yourself, so kindly fuck off.” Ranboo places a hand on his shoulder, gazing down at Wilbur and Puffy with as harsh a gaze as he can manage.

Tommy feels a sudden rush of affection for the two of them. He hasn’t known Tubbo for long, and Ranboo even shorter, but these two idiots are already defending him. If he leans a little further into Ranboo’s hand and Tubbo’s arm, it’s no one’s business but his own.

“I’m not going to look into your head,” Puffy says. “I’m just checking for signs of magical interference. It’s not invasive at all.”

“You’re not going anywhere near my head!”

“Theseus,” Wilbur snaps, and Tommy wants to cry.

Tommy grabs onto Tubbo’s arm, gripping it like a lifeline. “ DON’T FUCKING TOUCH ME!” he screams at Puffy and Wilbur, the words tearing at his throat and ripping through his vocal cords. “ DON’T YOU DARE FUCK WITH MY HEAD!”

“THESEUS!” Wilbur yells right back. Tommy must be cutting off Tubbo’s circulation, but the ram hybrid does nothing except shove himself further in front of Tommy. Wilbur lets out a puff of air through his nose, eyebrows scrunching as he glances to the side for a moment. It almost looks remorseful, if Tommy could believe that Wilbur could feel that kind of emotion. “I don’t want to force you, Theseus, but I will. If I have to get Technoblade in here to pin you down, I’ll do that. Please just cooperate.”

“ I’d rather die ,” Tommy snarls.

Wilbur levels him a hard stare. “So be it,” he says. His midnight-black gaze turns to Tubbo and Ranboo. “You two, you need to go.”

“Absolutely not,” Tubbo says, and Ranboo nods frantically along with him.

“I wasn’t asking,” Wilbur says, and his glare is so dark that it could frighten death. “If you don’t get the hell out of here now , you’ll be kicked out of this duchy before you can blink.”

“You wouldn’t,” Tommy says.

“You have no idea what I’d do,” Wilbur hisses, and Tommy knows in his heart that he isn’t lying.

“Tough shit, asshole, because we’re not going anywh-”

“Tubbo,” Tommy says quietly, so soft that it might as well have been a whisper. “Just go.”

“ What? ” Tubbo whips around, and, unlike Tommy, his voice is a full yell. “Tommy, no! I’m not leaving you here with these psychopaths !”

“Yeah, man,” Ranboo says, and even though his voice is shaking he sounds so determined. “You’re clearly not okay with this. We’re not ditching you.”
Tommy can feel tears picking at the edge of his eyes. He’s not going to cry. He’s not. He’s not going to give Wilbur Soot the fucking satisfaction.

“Please,” he says, and this time it is a whisper. It’s so pathetic. It’s so fucking pathetic, but anything louder and he really will cry.

He doesn’t want this. He doesn’t want some random woman touching him, using weird-ass mind control, fucking with his head even more than it’s already been fucked with. He doesn’t know how magic works in this world, but he does know that he doesn’t want it anywhere near his mind.

He doesn’t want this, but he has no choice. He can already feel himself retreating into his head, into the space in the back of his brain where things are quiet and he doesn’t have to feel.

“Please,” he begs again. “He really will kick you out, and I can’t- I can’t lose you two.”

It’s an embarrassing admittance, and any other time he’d be mortified, but right now he doesn’t care. 

A long moment passes, and then Tubbo murmurs, “we’ll get some tea ready for you, bossman,” and the comforting weights at his side disappear. 

And then Tommy is alone, just like in his last life, because nothing ever changes. Nothing ever changes.

(He can almost feel the wind in his hair. The view was nice, before he broke it all.)

“Thank you, Theseus,” Puffy says. “I’m sorry about this, but… well, if you really have had your memories altered, wouldn’t you like to know?”

He wouldn’t care. He doesn’t care. The world is fuzzy and faded around him, and he is curled up in the back of his mind, and he does not feel because he does not want to.

Wilbur leads them into the library. He is sat down on a plush chair, and he peers up at Puffy with lifeless eyes as she approaches him. She places her hands on either side of her head, and he doesn’t even flinch away, because he can’t even feel them.

She closes her eyes, but he doesn’t. He’s not even sure he blinks.

Something trickles through his brain, like a softly probing finger. It gently pokes at him where he’s curled up, bringing with it the scent of soothing rain and faint lavender (Puffy gives a sympathetic hum, and Tommy’s eyelids flutter with the effort it takes not to scream at her to get out ). It’s gone as quickly as it comes, but the moment it’s there feels like it drags on endlessly.

Eventually, though, the pressure is gone, and Puffy opens her eyes again with a perplexed frown. 

Tommy wonders, lips almost quirking into a morbid grin, what she’s found. Does she know? Does she know that he’s an imposter, some random kid from another world tossed into a random body like dirty laundry onto a floor? 

“Good news and… strange news,” she says, and Tommy would laugh if he was present enough to feel.

“What is it?” Wilbur says, leaning forward with a glint in his onyx eyes. 

“Good news is, definitely no possession or memory rewrites,” Puffy says. “Strange news is, he’s recently regained memories.”

…

What.

“What,” Wilbur says, and it’s maybe the first time Tommy has ever agreed with him.

“It’s not like any magic I’ve ever seen,” Puffy says with a frown. “It almost doesn’t feel like magic- at least not magic done by a person . It almost feels… Prime, how do I describe this? It feels like something natural, some law of the universe, but it definitely isn’t normal.”

“You said he remembers something,” Wilbur says. “What is it?”

“I don’t know,” Puffy replies. “I could have looked, but I promised I wouldn’t be too invasive.” She turns to him, brown eyes blown wide. “Theseus, do you know what it is?”

Tommy can’t answer. He can’t, because- because that’s wrong. That’s wrong. He doesn’t remember anything, he was just thrown into this body a few weeks ago.

She’s lying. She’s lying and she’s wrong and she’s wrong -

“Theseus?” It’s Wil. He’s peering at him, eyes concerned. Theseus huddles further under the table. The library is large, especially to a twelve-year-old, and shadows are cast weirdly around the room.

He sniffles, wiping at the tear tracks on his cheeks. “Go away,” he says.

There’s a shuffling from beyond the table. “What happened, Sunshine?” Oh, it’s the nickname that Wil only uses when he’s nice.

“Lacy was mean again,” he says. Lacy, a teenager from La-Man-burg, is supposed to be his maid, but this morning the milk she put in his tea was lumpy and it tasted sour and now his stomach has been hurting all day. 

Wil sighs. “Again, Theseus?” he says, and Theseus knows he doesn’t believe him. He never does. Wil likes Lacy- sometimes, she plants kisses on his cheek and his face turns a funny shade of red. Wil gets mad when Theseus tells him that Lacy puts pins in his shoes, though, and Theseus doesn’t like making Wil mad.

“Sorry,” Theseus whispers, and Wil sighs again. 

The sound of a strumming guitar takes him off guard. Theseus pokes his head out from under the table.

Wil hums under his breath as his fingers skate over the strings. Theseus watches, entranced, at the rhythmic motion of them, the way they dart back and forth and curve upwards or press down.

Wil smiles at him, and the candlelight paints his eyes chocolate brown.

The music continues, even as Theseus snuggles into Wil’s side and the soft song pulls his eyelids down. He watches Wil’s fingers move as he succumbs to sleep, lets the siren call of his humming lure him into unconsciousness, and for once he feels content.

“ No ,” Tommy gasps. His hands grasp at his hair, tearing at the roots. His thumbs dig into his feathers, trying to wrench them out of his skull. “ No, no, no, no- ”

“Theseus, what’s-”

“ NO!” he screams, blindly lashing out as panic grips his head. “I’m not- I’m not him, I’m not Theseus, I’m not , I’m not- ”

“Do you want to come live with me?” The man with wings smiles, holding out his hand, and Theseus grabs it because what else can he do?

Tommy lets out a blood-curdling wail. Pain laces through his head like a knife, memories long-repressed suddenly flooding his mind. It’s not magic, or the laws of nature- it’s his own head, he realizes. He just didn’t want to remember, didn’t want to be faced with the reality of who he was-

But, no, he can’t be, because he’s not Theseus Watson. Theseus Watson is a minor villain in a video game, and Tommy is a person, a real person.

Memories overlap and blur together in a haze. He is Theseus Watson, street rat extraordinaire, and he is Tom Simons, third son of the Duke. 

(He is floating in a void. Everything hurts, and nothing hurts, and he thinks he is dead.

[Welcome to the world of Daylight Dream, T H E S E U S .]

His name is not Theseus. But it will be, soon enough, and if he had eyes he would cry.)

“I’m Theseus,” he says, and his voice is so calm that a hush falls over the world. For a moment, the planets stop spinning, babies stop crying, children stop laughing, and the universe stops breathing. “I’m Theseus. I’ve always been Theseus.”

It’s so simple. He wonders how he never noticed before.

( [Congratulations! Your soul has been chosen to fulfill one of the character roles of Daylight Dream . From now on, you are Theseus Watson, third son of Duke Watson. You will forget that you were ever anyone else.])

Chapter Text

It’s a rather humbling realization, that everything you believed was a lie.

Tommy’s brain is infinitely too scattered to truly make sense of the realization, but his mind does its best to sift through the sudden influx of information, forming as cohesive a narrative as it can.

Simply put, it goes like this: Tom Simons lives and dies, and, in his next life, becomes Theseus Watson. He grows up, he thinks, with no memory of his first life, until suddenly he does remember. Unable to accept this reality, his brain suppresses his memories as Theseus, and he is once again only Tom.

There are a lot of questions, a lot of holes. How did he become Theseus in the first place? How is it possible that his second life is that of a character from a video game he played in his first life? Why did he suddenly regain his memories from his first life?

He doesn’t know. He doesn’t know, and his head hurts so much already.

He carefully uncurls his fingers from his hair, eyes flicking up to where Wilbur and Puffy are staring at him. Puffy is leaning forwards, arms extended like she wants to wrap him in a hug, and Wilbur is gripping the arms of his chair with knuckles so white they look like bones.

“Theseus?” Puffy says, and Tommy tries not to flinch at how the name doesn’t sound strange to hear anymore.

Having two sets of memories is not particularly fun, honestly. It’s easy enough to separate them in his head, but he can also feel a very uncomfortable identity crisis on the wind. Is he supposed to be Theseus? Tom Simons? Or is he both, or is he neither, or is he just Tommy?

‘Just Tommy’ sounds better. For now, at least, he’ll be just Tommy.

“Theseus,” Puffy urges again. “Did you remember something? Can you tell me what it is?”

Tommy stares at her for a moment. “Why the fuck would I tell you?” he says, wincing slightly at the rough tone in his voice.

“Theseus,” Wilbur snaps, and Tommy glares at him. Paintbrushes and guitar strings and screaming matches and patched-up knees. His head hurts.

“It’s none of your business, bitch,” he says. Wilbur’s eyes flash.

“You were just screaming that you weren’t Theseus, and then that you were,” he says. “I think it’s my business at this point.”

“I don’t give a shit what you think.”

“Wilbur, Theseus, can we please settle down a bit-”

“Shut up!” Wilbur and Tommy both snap, heads whipping around with twin glares. Puffy raises her hands in surrender. 

Wilbur rubs the bridge of his nose, muffled noise of frustration erupting from behind clenched teeth. “Puffy, thank you for your help, but I’d like to speak to my brother alone, if you don’t mind.”

My brother. It’s such a simple phrase, but it sets off something in Tommy’s heart, something curling and heavy and warm and dark. Because- because Wilbur is his brother, in everything but blood.

Tommy had, until now, been able to regard Wilbur as someone detached from him, a mouthpiece for a script written by some underpaid game dev, but- but now he has memories, memories of times when he’s fallen asleep curled into Wilbur’s side, when Wilbur has carefully washed his scraped hands in basins of lukewarm water and wrapped them in gauze so, so gently.

Wilbur. Wilbur Soot Watson, his brother. His big brother.

Tommy hates him.

He hates him with everything dark that rests in the pit of his stomach, everything spiteful that sits in his mind, everything vitriolic that wraps around his heart. He hates him, the man that calls himself Tommy’s brother, and yet he knows that if Wilbur asked him to jump he’d ask only for the height.

He hates him, but there’s a child named Theseus that loves him as well. 

It’s very disconcerting. He misses when things were easy in his brain.

Puffy leaves the room with a nod and a final glance back at Tommy. Her expression is unreadable, but Tommy’s never been great at reading expressions anyway. Wilbur used to tease him for that.

“Theseus,” Wilbur says again, and Tommy is getting very tired of people saying his name in that tone. “I need to know what’s going on.”

Tommy silently glares at him, crossing his arms and leaning back in his chair. 

“It’s a matter of safety, Theseus,” Wilbur urges. “I just need to know that you aren’t going to hurt anyone else in our family.”

“I’m not, then. Happy?”

Wilbur pinches the bridge of his nose. “That’s not what I want and you know it,” he says.

“What do you want, then?”

“The truth, Theseus! I just want the truth!”

“Alright, then.” Tommy spreads his arms wide, eyebrows raised in an unspoken challenge. “I remembered my past life.”

They stare at each other. Wilbur’s eyes are so black that Tommy can almost imagine stars in them. The candlelight flickers.

“You’re not lying,” Wilbur says, and his voice is so hushed that it might not be there at all.

“‘Course I’m not fucking lying,” says Tommy. 

Wilbur rubs his temple, eyelids fluttering shut and open again. “Okay, so, wait, you- your past life? What the hell does that mean?”

“Means what it sounds, doesn’t it? I remembered that I used to be a shitty street orphan who died at 17. Can I leave now?”

“Wh- no , you can’t fucking leave, are you shitting me? What do you mean you died ? How the hell did you remember this?”

“I mean I kicked the bucket, dickhead. And when I figure it out, I’ll let you know.”

“You don’t- wait, so, when you got that ‘head injury,’ it was because you remembered your past life ?”

“Yup,” Tommy says, popping the ‘p.’

“I- Prime, Theseus, this is a very surreal moment for me.” Wilbur’s laugh sounds hollow and a little panicked.

“Yeah?” Tommy stands up, ignoring Wilbur’s squawk of protest. “Well, it’s been a very surreal several weeks for me. You’ll get used to it.”

“Theseus, can you please work with me here?” Wilbur’s stood up now too, abusing his height advantage to glare down at Tommy. “You can’t just say something like that and act like it’s normal. I’m just trying to keep us safe-”

Tommy whips around. “Can you stop saying that?”

Wilbur blinks. “What?”

“That thing you say,” Tommy says, “where you act like you’re doing shit for some fucking greater good.”

“...what?” Wilbur repeats, but this time the word sounds dangerous on his lips.

“You heard me.” Tommy folds his arms, leveling Wilbur a glare. “You think you’re so fucken’ high and mighty, but you’re just too far up in your own ass to see that you’re just a dick.”

“Oh, I’m the bad guy here? You suddenly started acting completely differently, what the hell did you want me to think? I am doing this for the greater good.”

“What ‘greater good?’” Tommy can feel this conversation veering off the tracks like a trainwreck on a collision course, but he doesn’t care. He’s tired .

“The safety of our dukedom! The safety of my family!”

“I am your family, bitch!” Tommy yells. “Or I’m supposed to be, at least!”

“The hell is that supposed to mean?”

“All you’ve ever done is make my entire life hell,” Tommy spits.  “If you’d treat me like your actual brother for once, maybe you wouldn’t have to act like you’re some fucking paragon.”

Wilbur’s hand laces in the front of Tommy’s shirt, yanking him closer until their noses nearly press together. “Stop making me out to be the fucking villain here,” he snarls.

“My entire life has been spent keeping people safe from you. You can’t get up on your moral high horse and act like you’re just some innocent baby who’s only ever been wronged.”

“I was a fucking kid! I was a kid who was left alone with a bunch of servants who took every opportunity to hurt me, and a family that didn’t give a shit! What the hell was I supposed to do except lash out?”

Wilbur blinks. “Wait, the servants- what?”

Tommy laughs. It’s a harsh sound, made more of shattered glass and bloody lips than anything else. “Oh my god, don’t you dare try and act like you don’t know. Do you have any fucking clue how many times I told you? Any at all?”

Wilbur releases his shirt. Tommy immediately backs up several steps, watching Wilbur as the man rubs his temples with a vaguely confused expression. “I- I did,” he says, nose scrunched up and eyebrows furrowed. “I did, but-”

“-but you didn’t care,” Tommy finishes, spitting the words out like they taste foul in his mouth. “But you didn’t care, because no one here cares, and it’s all my fault that I turned out this way.”

“I- well-” How dare he. How dare Wilbur stand there, expression so vacant, like he’s not paying attention, like he’s earned the right to be lost in his own thoughts. Tommy doesn’t know what’s got him so confused-looking, but he doesn’t care. He’s so angry .

He’s been angry for a long time. As long as he’s hated Wilbur, probably, and almost as long as he’s loved him.

“Did you know,” he says, “that I’ve barely been able to eat because all the food given to me is moldy? That I throw up at least once a month because all of my utensils are dropped on the floor? That I’ve bled and bruised more times in this house than you’ve breathed?”

“I-”

“Of course you knew,” Tommy continues, stepping closer to Wilbur. He has to crane his neck a bit to look in his eyes, but it’s worth it, to see the sparks of life in those stupid black eyes. “You knew, but you never did anything, because it was justice . Because the big bad villain got punished, and the heroes got to live happily ever after.”

Eyes of a sky blue abyss consume midnight black, and the stars watch with unfeeling gazes.

“I’ll be your villain, if it’s what you want,” Tommy whispers, “But don’t you dare pretend like you’re the hero.”

He shoves Wilbur out of the way, making his way to the door. The intricately decorated wood mocks him, and Tommy grabs the golden handle with a slightly unwarranted amount of aggression.

“Theseus-”

“And for the record,” Tommy interjects, head whipping around to lock gazes once again, “My name is Tommy.”

The door slams loudly behind him.

Chapter Text

Theseus- Tommy- is a terrible liar.

It’s something Wilbur has noticed in the past several weeks. He’d spent hours psychoanalyzing Theseus’s new personality, trying to figure out who he was and what made him tick, and he’d quickly realized that this new Theseus- Tommy, apparently- couldn’t lie for shit.

He shifts his feet too much, he glances away too much, his ears turn a slight shade of red. Try as he might, These- Tommy cannot lie to save his life. 

It’s how Wilbur knows he’s lying when he says he doesn’t want anything from Niki’s bakery, and it’s how Wilbur knows he isn’t lying when he says he remembers his past life.

Th- Tommy says a lot of things that hit Wilbur in weird ways, but that’s one of the ones that irks him the hardest. Because that’s- that’s not just something you say , that’s reality-altering stuff. That’s enough to give anyone an identity crisis. 

And then Tommy got pissed at Wilbur for being completely  reasonably interested about the details of, y’know, fucking reincarnation.  

“Oh my god, don’t you dare try and pretend like you don’t know.”

“Oh my god,” not “oh my Prime.” Theseus is suddenly using slang terms that Wilbur has never even heard of, and, somehow, it’s the thing Wilbur is thinking about least.

See, the thing that’s really worrying him is that he- he did know. Logically, he knew, because Thes- Tommy had told him plenty of times. And, sure, kids make up stuff for attention all the time, but not as repeatedly as him. 

And Wilbur feels disgusted, he really does. He feels sick to his stomach with himself, absolutely fucking appalled that something so horribly inhumane has been going on under his nose for years . He feels awful, but there’s something in him, some voice in his head that doesn’t quite feel like him, that insists that he shouldn’t.

It’s so weird. It’s so fucking weird, and he can feel a migraine coming on. Prime, is this how Techno feels all the time, with all the voices in his head? At least Wilbur’s don’t call for any blood other than his little brother’s.

---

“Tubbo, you’re suffocating him,” Ranboo says.

Tubbo pauses for a moment and tilts his head, before shrugging and grabbing another blanket. “Hell of a way to go out,” he says, and tosses it over Tommy’s head.

Tommy feels another rush of affection for them, for the two idiots who barged into his life and made him their own. Tubbo’s letting him curl up on his bed, giving him blankets and spare scraps of clothing to allow Tommy to fulfil the wishes of his avian hindbrain and build a small nest. 

The tea that Tubbo promised wasn’t a lie, either. The mug is pleasantly warm in Tommy’s hands. 

Tommy shifts, something in the back of his mind letting out a content trill at the feeling of the blankets pressing against his legs. Tommy doesn’t often give in to the weird urges his birdbrain sometimes gives him- no , he’s not going to chirp in public, thanks so much, but this time he’s decided to give in and let his instincts direct him into building a little nest. 

He’d been feeling the slight pull of bird instincts even back when he thought he was just Tom, but his avian blood is so diluted that his instincts are more like suggestions than demands, so it hasn’t been anything insanely notable. He didn’t get any cool wings, which is disappointing, but also no involuntary peeping, so it’s a worthy trade-off in Tommy’s eyes.

Sometimes, though, he gives in and listens to the urges. Sometimes he collects shiny things just to look at them, and in even rarer cases he lets Tubbo run his fingers through the feathers around his ears. 

It’s not like being a hybrid is something to be ashamed of, exactly, but even with Theseus’s memories it feels unnatural to Tommy. He remembers being human too vividly to be comfortable in a body that functions completely differently.

At least Tubbo and Ranboo aren’t judgmental about it. Tubbo has already confessed to Tommy, cloaked deep in the velvety recesses of night, that he can’t stand the sight of his horns because of how starkly they remind him of his father. Ranboo, on the other hand, doesn’t have the slightest clue what he even is , though he seems convinced that he feels the same instinctual pulls that they all do.

The man in question seems to be vibrating with repressed energy at the moment (literally. His entire body is vibrating. That’s gotta be some kind of hybrid trait, because Tommy doesn’t know any humans who shake that violently). “Are you sure you’re alright?” he asks for the fifth time in the past ten minutes.

Tommy rolls his eyes. “‘Course I am,” he says, even though he’s not sure that’s even slightly close to true. “I’m a big man, aren’t I?”

“That doesn’t mean you have to be okay,” Ranboo says, wringing his hands.

“Bossman, if you wanna give him a hug, just ask,” Tubbo calls over.

Ranboo’s pale face flushes a curious shade of bright pink, and Tommy can tell that his ears are burning red when he turns his gaze to the side. He side-eyes Ranboo, who’s shifting back and forth on his feet, and gives him a small nod.

Ranboo’s face lights up and he makes his way over to Tommy’s nest. He gives Tommy one final glance, another request for permission, to which Tommy mutters, “just do it, dumbass.”

Ranboo pulls himself into the nest, shifting further back so that he can wrap his stupidly long limbs around Tommy. Tommy rolls his eyes again, but leans into the hug, smiling slightly at the way Ranboo curls his body around him like a snake.

None of them say anything, not even five minutes later when Tubbo grabs Tommy’s empty mug and sets it aside before shoving his way into the middle of the cuddle pile. His horns nick Tommy’s cheek, and the lapels of Ranboo’s too-small coat tickle his nose, but he doesn’t care, because his heart is so, so warm.

---

When Wilbur makes his way into the library some time the next day, guitar slung over his back, he’s not expecting to see Tommy bent over their map.

He remembers the last time he’d seen Tommy like this. Wilbur had been feeling especially vindictive that night, mind already teeming with suspicions, and he’d taken the opportunity to pounce.

It seems so stupid, looking back. Theseus was always only just a kid. He wonders when he forgot that.

Wilbur isn’t sure whether to speak to him or not. He would have done a few days ago, back when things were simple, but now the idea fills him with trepidation. How strange.

He knows that Tommy knows he’s here. The kid hasn’t chased him out yet, so maybe it’s okay. 

Wilbur makes his way further into the room. He’ll mind his own business, he decides, and Tommy can mind his own.

However, on his way back, he happens to glance over at what Tommy’s doing. It’s just out of curiosity, because he’s honestly not sure what, exactly, Tommy wants with a map of the continent. An outdated map, at that, because they never bothered to get a new one after the war and Wilbur’s already got the entire thing memorized.

Tommy’s got a stack of parchment next to him, a few of the pages already filled in with messy scrawls of ink handwriting. The pages are labeled with the names of different countries: the one labeled Essempi is decently full, whereas the one called Snowchester is almost empty.

“What are you doing?” he asks before he can stop himself. Internally, he winces. So much for minding his own business.

Tommy glances up at him. His blue eyes peek out from behind the strands of white in the front of his hair, so similar to the matching white chunk in Wilbur’s hair and the silver streak cutting through Techno’s. He doesn’t know how they all ended up with the same weird genetic trait, especially since only he and Techno are actually related, but the white streak they all share has become a symbol of the Watson name.

It’s something that marks them as brothers. As family .

“Trying to remember this stupid place,” Tommy mutters, chewing on the end of his quill. 

“What? You don’t remember the continent?”

“Of course I do!” Tommy’s face flushes red. “But I’ve got a lot of memories clunking around up in here, don’t I?” He taps the side of his head for emphasis. “It’s- it’s easier to remember stuff that happened, instead of stupid useless shit like geography, so I’m just trying to jog my memory.”

“Oh.” Wilbur takes a closet look at the parchment that Tommy has written on. Essempi has stuff like ‘born here?’ and ‘ruled by Dream,’ and Snowchester has ‘Tubbo’s from here!’ Tommy’s quill is currently poised over a paper labeled Pogtopia. “Well, this isn’t a great place to start.”

“Fuck do you mean?” Tommy snaps. “If you’ve just come here to take the piss out of me-”

“Pogtopia doesn’t exist anymore,” Wilbur says, pointing to it on the map. “Dad and Techno claimed it for Essempi in the war a few years ago.”

“Oh,” Tommy breathes, glancing down at where the country is labeled. “Oh, I- I remember that.”

Wilbur remembers it too. Kristin was still alive back then, and although she spent most of Wilbur’s childhood out wandering, she’d returned to take care of the duchy in Phil’s absence. A full year and a half of Kristin, Wilbur, and Theseus, alone in the mansion’s cavernous hallways.

It’s the strangest thing, because he remembers that they were happy together.

“I can’t remember what she looked like,” Tommy says quietly, and Wilbur aches.

“Yeah,” he whispers. “Yeah, me neither.” 

---

“You were right, Dream,” George says. “I don’t have the slightest clue how, but you were right.”

Dream leans forward. “You’re sure? Completely sure?”

George raises an eyebrow. “Do I look like I’m lying?”

“I could have you executed for that kind of language, you know.”

George rolls his eyes. “Oh, I’m sorry. Do I look like I’m lying, Your Majesty?”  

Dream leans back again, resting his chin on his hands. XD almighty, George better be right about this, because this changes everything.

“Anyway, Dream, are you ever going to explain what the hell is going on?” Sapnap asks, tucking his hands into his pockets.

“All in due time,” Dream says, which is code for probably never . Don’t get him wrong, it’s not that he doesn’t trust them- Sapnap and George are his advisers, his left and right hands, his best friends - but he’s tried explaining it to them before, and they don’t get it. They can’t get it. Their minds won’t physically allow them to.

George has believed him a couple of times, but it’s never changed everything. Every loop ends the same way.

But this one, Dream thinks with a sense of giddy anticipation, this one might be different. He can feel it in the air, can practically taste the prevalent rot of wrongness that pervades the world. 

It’s the sweetest thing he’s ever smelled, and he’s lived a lot of lives.

Dream stands up, George and Sapnap stepping backwards to allow him to walk between them. “I can’t tell you exactly how yet, gentleman,” he says, “but things are going to end very well for us. For everyone.”

Sapnap snorts. “What, are we heroes now?”

“Not us,” Dream says with a shake of his head. “But that little blond cockroach? He is. He’s going to be.”

Because the thing about this world, see, is that small things go unnoticed. Little flaws in code are overlooked, small changes in the fabric of reality aren’t important enough to warrant attention.

Dream is too big, too important. They’ll fix his flaws. They’re already fixing his flaws. But Theseus? No. He’s too small. They won’t notice, not until it’s far, far too late.

“We’ve got a lot of work to do,” Dream says. He’s never planned an apocalypse before. It’s quite novel.

Here’s the plan: Dream is going to end this game, whatever it takes. Whatever it takes.

Chapter Text

Technoblade has spent a lifetime knowing that something was wrong with him.

If someone could carve his head open and look inside, he muses, they’d surely discover something awful. They’d glance in and see something horrible and eldrich, something with too many mouths and too many eyes and not enough of anything else, writhing and roiling and rotting. 

It’s constantly making noise, too. Sometimes it sings, sometimes it speaks, sometimes it just hums. Chat , he’s dubbed it, that stupid creature that’s made itself at home in his skull.

Techno has always known that something was wrong was him, so maybe that’s why he believes it so readily when things go wrong for everyone else, too.

“I feel like there’s someone else in my head, Techno,” Wilbur tells him, head tucked in between his knees on the bed next to him. “I- I feel like someone’s fucking with my emotions. I can’t tell what’s myself and what’s not.”

Techno’s twin brother does not confide in him often, so Techno knows he isn’t lying.

“Theseus has memories of his past life,” Wilbur says, and he believes it, so Techno does too. 

His name is Tommy now, apparently. His name is Tommy and he’s been through hell. 

It’s not something Techno knows how to deal with. He simply isn’t a creature built for comfort, for kind words or warm hugs. Techno’s love, scarcely given, comes in the form of protection, in the flash of crimson on an iron blade. It’s not like he ever knew Theseus all that well, anyway, and he’s sure that Tommy has no interest in speaking to him.

So Techno doesn’t speak to him, and life goes on.

He’s given up on training Tubbo and instead moved on to Ranboo. Tubbo never showed much passion for combat, learning the basics out of necessity but clearly holding no further interest. Ranboo doesn’t seem to feel the same calling to it that Techno does (granted, though, very few do), but he at least doesn’t skip classes, and it’s a lot easier training someone who’s a little closer to his own height.

Ranboo’s a good kid, if a bit flighty. Techno doubts he’d make a good soldier, but he seems like a nice friend.

Prime, Wilbur would kill him if he knew Techno had considered the wartime merits of every person in this household. For the record, Wil would be a shit general.

With the way the three of them are attached at the hip, Techno is expecting Tubbo and Tommy to show up at some point. He’s right on half a front- Tubbo winds up at the tail end of nearly every one of Ranboo’s training sessions, calling out encouragement until Techno lets Ranboo run off with him.

Tommy, though, doesn’t show up until two days after Wilbur’s midnight confession, and, strangely enough, he’s accompanied by Techno’s other brother.

Techno is incredibly unclear on the nature of Wilbur and Tommy’s relationship. These days, it feels like it’s changed every time he sees them- Wilbur had been suspicious of him, and then something had changed, something that led Wilbur to whispering, in a state of half-drunken stupor, “I lost sight of myself, Techno. I lost sight of everything.”

It serves to remind him of how little he knows Theseus. It’s a fact that’s been hovering in the back of his mind for a few weeks, aided by Chat’s murmured rumination of the idea, but not something that’s really started grating on him until his and Wilbur’s conversation.

Wilbur and Tommy don’t look thick as thieves or anything, but they’re walking together through the gardens, close enough for Techno to see them but not close enough to hear. 

Wilbur glances over, catching Techno’s gaze, and rolls his eyes. He turns to Tommy, says something, and then the two of them begin making their way over to him. 

“Technoblade,” Wilbur calls, once he’s within Techno’s earshot, “How long, exactly, have you been out here?”

Techno balks. “Uh,” he says, trying to think. “Since dawn?”

“Since dawn.” Wilbur raises an eyebrow.

Techno scratches the back of his neck. “Since before dawn?”
“Technoblade Watson,” Wilbur says, “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but it is currently dusk.”

Techno blinks up at the sky, feeling a vague sense of betrayal at the sun, which is, indeed, sinking below the horizon. “...war waits for no man,” he settles on. Wilbur eyebrows furrow, and he makes a frustrated noise in the back of his throat.

“Techno, how many times do I have to tell you, you aren’t-” He sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Whatever. Come inside, you’ve been out here long enough.”

Techno snorts. “What are you, my mother?” With a practiced flick of his foot, he sends the sword lying in the grass by his feet spiraling into the air and catches it easily. “I’ll be in soon. I need to finish up here.”

“You’ve been out here for an entire day, and you need to finish up?”

“Yup.”

Wilbur sighs again. “Techno, for once, can you please just-” Suddenly, his eyes flare wide open, set alight by a look of pure panic. “Oh, shit! I told Niki I’d send her- fuck, fuck, okay, I’ve gotta go. Tommy, convince Techno to come inside and eat, please?”

“Wait, you can’t just leave me-” Tommy starts, but Wilbur is already gone. Tommy groans, rubbing the toe of his boot into the dusty ground.

“...well,” Techno says. “I’d say that went well.”

Tommy snorts and turns away from him. Techno eyes him. He’d never paid a ton of attention to Wilbur’s whole “he’s a different person!” spiel, and even with the knowledge that he technically isn’t a different person, Techno honestly wonders how he’d never noticed it before.

Tommy doesn’t dress the same way Theseus did, doesn’t speak the same way, doesn’t even carry himself the same way. Theseus had always had the straightest spine Techno had ever seen, but Tommy stands with a slouch, fingers perpetually tucked into his pockets.

“Wilbur really hates it when you mention the war,” he says. Techno raises an eyebrow.

“Yeah,” he answers. It’s not anything he doesn’t know. He and Wilbur have certainly had enough arguments about the damn subject.

“...so why do you keep doing it?”

Techno shrugs. “It’s not exactly something I can just forget.”

Tommy hums. He still isn’t looking at Techno. “Guess not.” 

Techno fiddles with the handle of the sword that he’s still holding. The leather wrapped around the grip is starting to come undone. He’ll have to fix it later tonight. “Heard you got your memories back.”

Tommy snorts, finally turning back to Techno. He runs a hand over his face. “God, I don’t fuckin’ know how to talk to you,” he mutters. That makes two of us, Techno thinks. Tommy lowers his hand, tucks it back into his pocket. “Yeah, Technoblade, I remembered my past life. Are we gonna have some fucking heart-to-heart about it?”

Techno leans his back against a nearby tree, forgoing surveying Tommy out of the corner of his eye in favor of closing them with a small chuff. “Nah. Not really my scene.”

“Thank god,” Tommy says. “Wilbur won’t shut up about it. ‘ What do you remember, Tommy? How’d you die, Tommy?’ Fucking prick.”

“He’s just worried about you.” The breeze is cool against Techno’s skin. Sundown must have fully passed by this point. “Wil’s like that. It’s how he shows affection.”

“I don’t need his fucking affection.”

Techno cracks an eye open. Tommy is staring out at the point on the horizon that had swallowed the sun. “I almost killed him, once.”

Tommy glances over, confusion written clearly in the furrow of his eyebrows. “Huh?”

Techno closes his eyes again. “I was eight,” he begins, and he really doesn’t know why he’s doing this. He didn’t know Theseus, and he doesn’t know Tommy, but he knows Wilbur, and if his twin thinks the kid is worth a shot, then he’ll put up with it. “I’ve got… a condition, you might say. I’ve got voices in my head. They can get pretty bloodthirsty.” Techno taps the side of his head for emphasis, feeling Tommy’s gaze being drawn to the movement.

“I knew that,” Tommy says, and Techno is abruptly reminded that the kid is Theseus. Distant as their relationship may have always been, he’s still Techno’s baby brother, still the same blonde kid who used to steal Techno’s cloaks when he got cold during the winter.

“Yeah,” he says, feeling a bit off-put. “Anyway, this was about a year before you showed up, so it was just me and Wil. It was the first time the voices showed up, and they wanted blood. I guess you can picture the rest.”

Tommy doesn’t say anything, but he doesn’t have to. Techno remembers it like it was yesterday. How cruel, that one of his earliest memories is the taste of his twin brother’s blood.

“I was just eight, so it could have been a lot worse, but Wil didn’t understand what was goin’ on. Dad explained it as well as he could, but it wasn’t like he knew any better than I did.”

Techno leans his head back, feeling a few strands of his hair blowing in his face, getting caught on his lips and tickling his nose. “I think, after that, Wil decided he always wanted to know what was happening, so he could fix it. He just wants to understand what you’re going through.”

“I’m not some fucking charity project for him to fix,” Tommy snaps, and Techno shrugs.

“I’m just telling it like I see it, kid.”

“Not a kid,” Tommy says, but it sounds more like a reflex than anything else. The two of them are silent for a minute, then Tommy quietly asks, “What happened, with the voices?”

Oh, right, he wouldn’t know. It’s not like Techno ever spoke about the voices with Theseus. The kid probably only knows of them by proxy.

“I went to war,” he answers. It’s also offensively reductive. It doesn’t mention the way his whole being sang when encased in bloodshed, how he took his blade up against friend and foe alike until his whole being was painted red, how he took and took and took until he’d taken an entire nation and there was nothing left.

‘I went to war,’ he says, but he doesn’t mention how he never really made it out.

Techno sighs, opening his eyes to stare up at the sky. It’s turned dark, the sky dotted with an endless expanse of stars. “Look, kid,” he says, ignoring Tommy’s muttered responds of ‘not a fucking kid,’ “I know I’ve been shitty to you. If anyone here knows anything like what you’re going through, I’m probably the closest. I don’t really know you, but Wilbur trusts you, so I’m willing to play nice.” He turns to Tommy, extending a hand. “Truce?”

Tommy eyes him. His eyes really do look like Phil’s. “Whatever,” he says, grasping his smaller palm in Techno’s. “Thought you said we weren’t going to have a heart-to-heart, big man.”

The bushes rustle, and a flash of Wilbur’s chocolate-brown curls appears. He’s yelling something about betrayal, and how Tommy was supposed to help him get Techno inside, not keep him out longer. Techno watches as Tommy’s eyes soften ever-so-slightly at the sight of their brother.

“And you said you didn’t need his affection,” he says. “I guess we’re both liars.”

Chapter Text

Tommy turns the box of tea over in his hands, contemplative frown on his face.

He’d, quite honestly, nearly forgotten about the damn thing. Even if it had scarcely been a week, it feels like that day in town with Wilbur was eons ago. Things were so different back then, so much simpler.

Wilbur had been the one to remind him that the box existed. “Did you ever get around to drinking that tea I bought you?” he’d asked, right in the middle of asking all his other questions.

Tommy and Wilbur’s relationship is… strange, to say the least. It’s hard to forget everything that someone has done to you, and every conversation they’ve had has carried an uncomfortable undertone- both of them are clearly thinking how much is too far? What buttons can I push? - but, even with that caveat, it’s been… it’s been nice.

In a slightly morbid way, Theseus had always been closest to Wilbur, and it- it’s nice, to feel like he’s got an actual brother for once.

Wilbur had apologized for the treatment Tommy received. He’d also said that he did care, that he felt like some force was messing with his head, causing him to turn a blind eye. Tommy hasn’t decided whether or not to believe him. 

Wilbur fires every staff member who’s ever mistreated Tommy, so that part, at least, Tommy can believe. 

Wilbur’s been teaching him in his spare time. It began with geography, little things to jog the memories that had gotten fogged in Tommy’s head, but it quickly progressed to simpler subjects. Guitar, mostly. 

It’s a nice distraction from the impending date of the Red Festival.

So many things are unclear about this world, and the Festival is one of them. Ranboo is the protagonist, and he is here, so the game must be proceeding as normal, right? But so many things have occurred that never happened in the original game. So much is different.

Tommy doesn’t stalk Ranboo or anything, so it’s not like he knows what the guy does in his free time, but he’s decently sure that he hasn’t been romancing anyone. He’s pretty sure the guy spends more time with Tubbo than any of the designated love interests.

Tommy wants to be happy for him- independence, and all that shit- but, well, it doesn’t bode super well for Tommy. Because this is an otome game, and if you don’t get someone to fall in love with you, you lose.

He’s not going to set him up with anyone. That- that feels gross. He’s decided, instead, to take a rather cavalier approach to the whole situation: whatever happens, happens, and he’s just gonna hope that Ranboo’s romantic prospects don’t spell doom for them all.

Tommy thumbs at the label on the tea. He hadn’t read it when Wilbur bought it for him, but now that he’s taken a look at it, it’s “matcha.” He’s heard of matcha, of course- it was sold in lattes from the fancy middle-class cafes he never looked clean enough to enter back in his first life- but he has absolutely no idea how to make it into a tea.

There’s no instructions on the box, either. Apparently people who buy fancy tea from fancy tea shops are supposed to already know how to make it. Bullshit.

He doesn’t want to let it go to waste, because it does smell nice and it definitely cost a small fortune, but the damn thing isn’t even leaves, it’s a fucking powder. What the hell is he supposed to do with that?

He’s seriously contemplating snorting it, chugging a glass of boiling water, and hoping for the goddamn best when a hand lands on his shoulder.

Now, because Tommy is a Big Man who Does Not Get Surprised, he does not violently start and nearly spill green powder all over himself. He definitely doesn’t whip around so fast that he cricks his neck and yelps in pain. Nope. Not him.

Electric blue eyes crinkle in concern. “Are you alright?” Phil Watson asks.

“Why the fuck are you here?” Tommy hisses before he can think through the consequences of snapping at the fucking duke.

Phil hums. “Well, I came to check if you were doing alright,” he says, and Tommy barely refrains from hissing ‘liar.’ “I’ve heard about your situation from Techno and Wil.”

Tommy shrugs. He doesn’t- he doesn’t know how to deal with this. Wilbur he can deal with. Fuck, Technoblade he can deal with. But this? The fucking master of the house? His fucking dad? How the hell does he approach this situation? 

A warm smile, and the air is so, so cold around him but the man is shielding him with his silky black wings, and his hand is extended, and Theseus grabs it, because what else can he do? What else can he do?

Phil leans forward over his shoulder. “Oh, is that the tea Wil bought for you?” he says. “Good choice. I love matcha.”

“I… don’t know how to make it,” Tommy mutters.

“Hmm? Oh, don’t worry, it’s not too hard,” Phil says. “I can show you, if you want?”

Tommy wants to scream. He wants to feel rage curling around his chest, the same way it did with Wilbur. He wants to look Phil dead in the eyes and tell him to fuck off, that he was never a father to Tommy. He wants to tell Phil that he’s never loved him, and, more than anything, he wants it to be true.

Instead, he gives Phil a miniscule nod of his head, and that’s that.

The servants give him and Phil panicked glances and scurry out of the way as fast as they can. They’re still the same ones that have always been around- they’ve been sent notices, Wilbur has told him, but until they manage to hire a new staff, the old one has to stick around.

Still, they haven’t bothered him lately. Tommy’s started eating fuller meals- he can’t stomach full dinners yet, but this morning he managed to hold down a roll and two slices of bacon, which is the biggest meal he’s eaten in weeks.

Phil doesn’t seem to notice the staff’s behavior, or, if he does, he doesn’t say anything. Instead, he leads Tommy over to a counter, then rifles through a few cupboards until he emerges with an armful of utensils.

“Alright, mate,” Phil says, “just watch what I do.”

Sift the matcha, put it in a cup, add water. Use the bamboo whisk to stir it (no, not like that, Thes- ahem, Tommy, sorry. Use a back and forth motion, like a zigzag.) Add more water. Whisk again. Sip it, scrunch your nose at the weird taste, and watch as your father laughs and adds a few drops of honey.

It’s disgustingly domestic. This shouldn’t be allowed. They shouldn’t be allowed to dance around the room’s omnipresent elephant. They shouldn’t be allowed to pretend that everything is fine.

Tommy sips his tea, and they don’t talk.

---

It’s been three days since Ranboo showed up. Four days left until the Festival. 

Ranboo trains with Techno. He buys Tubbo a tiny potted plant that Tubbo sneaks into the manor. He sheepishly hands Tommy a blanket that he’d picked up at the market- it’s red and white, Tommy’s favorite colors.

No one falls in love with him. Maybe it’s for the best.

---

It starts with Techno.

Wilbur makes an offhand comment about his “stick limbs,” Tommy responds to the blatant lies and slander with an entirely appropriate amount of indignation, and Techno quietly says, “I could train you.”

Tommy and Wilbur both stare at him, identical expression of surprise blinking at Techno from across the breakfast table. Techno shifts uncomfortably. “If you want,” he tags on, scratching at the back of his neck.

Phil has joined them for breakfast. He hasn’t done that in months. “That sounds nice,” he says. 

Tommy coughs a few times. “I’ll beat you without any of your stupid training,” he says, and it’s as much of an agreement as they need.

They don’t talk, but Tommy’s arms burn comfortably and he’s so hungry at dinner that he eats his entire plate and doesn’t even throw it up afterwards. 

---

It continues with Wilbur.

Tommy plucks at the guitar strings. He hasn’t been doing it long enough for calluses to develop, and the dents on his fingertips twinge as he presses them into the wood.

He strums a few times, trying to mimic the motions he’s seen Wilbur do. It doesn’t sound nearly as good, but maybe that’s okay. He has time to learn, as long as the world doesn’t end when Ranboo loses the game.

Wilbur watches him, gently correcting his finger placement. The final rays of the sun seep through the library window, painting his eyes a soft brown. 

“It sounds great, Tommy,” he says, and Tommy almost smiles.

They don’t talk, but his fingers are sore.

---

It ends with Phil.

They make another cup of matcha tea. Phil doesn’t have to correct his whisk technique this time, although Tommy can’t remember the right measurements for the amount of water.

It tastes like grass on his tongue, but Tommy doesn’t wrinkle his nose. He still quietly asks for the honey, and Phil adds a few drops.

They don’t talk.

---

Tommy curls under his new blanket on the night of the fourth day. There are three days left. Three days until, for better or worse, the game will have to end.

---

A hand lands over his mouth. 

“I’m sorry,” someone whispers, and his stomach swoops out from under him, and then it’s all gone.

Chapter Text

It’s hot.

It doesn’t get this hot, back home. The duchy is located so far south that, even in the middle of summer, it only reaches a temperate climate. There’s a small draft, but it’s hardly enough to cool the room down. Tommy groans, twisting on the bed, kicking the thin sheet off of him.

His head feels fuzzy, and his eyelids droop. He’s so, so tired, but he’s even more sweaty and disgustingly warm, and even as he shoves his face into the pillow he can feel his mind beginning to wake.

Someone’s speaking from the room outside. “-arl is doing?” Tommy hears them say.

“Still asleep, last I heard,” another voice responds. 

The first voice makes a frustrated noise. “Can’t believe I’m on fucking guard duty. What about when he wakes up?”

“Big Q is literally with him, idiot.” Oh, Tommy recognises that voice. He can’t place a name to go with it, but he’s pretty sure he’s heard it somewhere before.

“That is the least reassuring thing you could possibly say to me. Quackity’s got the worst bedside manner out of anyone I’ve ever met, George.” George. That’s who it is. Ice-blue eyes and dark hair and strong arms wrapped around him in a back alley-

Tommy shoots to abrupt awareness, shaking the grogginess out of his head. He scampers to his feet, throwing the sheet on the floor.

He doesn’t recognise the room. There’s a small window on the wall, and when he looks out, the sheer drop takes his stomach away. He’s- he’s got to be hundreds of feet in the air, the window overlooking a cliff that plunges straight into the ocean. 

He’s never seen an ocean in real life before. It’s so, so much worse than he was anticipating. 

The room has one heavy wooden door. It’s locked. Tommy takes a deep breath and slams his shoulder into it, the wood banging with the force but not giving at all. On the other side, the voices abruptly stop.

“LET ME OUT!” he yells, banging into the door a few more times. “WHERE THE FUCK AM I? LET ME GO!”

There’s silence on the other end, so he smashes his fists against the wood for good measure. “LET ME OUT!”

Another moment of silence, and then George says, “I’m gonna go get Dream.”

“Yeah,” the other voice- Sapnap, his name was Sapnap- agrees. “Yeah, you go do that.”

---

It’s a stupid and selfish thing to be proud of, but Wilbur notices almost immediately that something is wrong.

See, Tommy has been vigilant about always eating breakfast with the family on time. (Which is your fault, his brain hisses, but Wilbur’s electing to ignore problems he can’t solve right now.) So as soon as breakfast comes and goes without an appearance from him, Wilbur instantly knows something is wrong.

He tries Tommy’s room first. The room is locked, which seems encouraging, but it doesn’t open upon any of Wilbur’s knocks or calls through the door, which seems significantly less encouraging. Wilbur snags a key from a nearby maid, and, even though he feels gross invading Tommy’s personal space like this, he unlocks the door and slips in.

It’s empty.

Wilbur searches the room once, and then twice. He checks the washroom, the closet, all of it- nothing. The window is still locked tight. Tommy is just… gone.

Wilbur doesn’t panic. He calmly makes his way to the servants quarters, where a couple of questions lead him to Tubbo and Ranboo’s room. Tubbo is still asleep, but Ranboo is already awake, messing with his hair when Wilbur walks in.

Ranboo glares at him suspiciously, but when Wilbur asks him if he’s seen Tommy and, upon receiving a negative answer, tells him that Tommy’s gone missing, his expression is immediately overcome with concern. He shakes Tubbo awake, who has a similar distrust-to-worry reaction.

Wilbur does not panic, even if he totally does. He does not panic, even if all he can think about are two people disappearing in an alleyway and a hand over Tommy’s mouth.

He finds Techno next. “Did Tommy sleep in? I haven’t seen him today,” Techno comments, and when Wilbur tells him that he’s been searching all morning to no avail, his crimson eyes harden.  They go together to seek out Phil, who also asks if Tommy has overslept until Wilbur breaks the news to him as well.

Within minutes, they’ve mobilized the entire manor. Tubbo and Ranboo round up the servants, and it takes scarcely a word from Wilbur to scatter them all with the duty of searching every room in the damn place. (He’s pretty sure they’re still very scared of him, after the way he screamed at them and then promptly fired all of them several days previously.) Techno gets the knights up to search the grounds, and Phil takes off with his wings to go search some of the nearby roads in case Tommy was headed into town.

Wilbur worries, for a bit, that he’s being paranoid. Tommy is going to be incredibly pissed if they find him taking a very prolonged shit. His fears are abated (and yet made so, so much worse) when they reconvene in an hour with grim looks all around.

It’s this situation that brings Wilbur to the back room of Niki’s bakery, Fundy joining them, out of breath from sprinting over at Wilbur’s summons. They both know something is wrong- Wilbur doesn’t call them together outside of their scheduled meetings often, and never with such urgency.

Wilbur is too preoccupied to dwell on it, but his brain catches on a few small details- a small, gray box, so incorporeal that it’s nearly invisible, floating above Fundy’s head, a flash of words near Niki: “acter pr” and “e: 19” and “kindhea” and “unclear whe” and “nding.” It’s something he’s been noticing a bit lately- little flashes of similar words around Techno and Phil, the occasional strange flicker in Tommy’s appearance. His head hurts when he thinks about it for too long, though, and he can’t afford a migraine right now.

“Tommy is missing,” he says, and Niki’s eyes widen.

“Tommy?” Fundy asks.

“Theseus,” Wilbur corrects. Fundy’s eyes widen to match Niki’s. “He disappeared sometime last night, and none of us can find him.”

“Do you think it’s the same people you mentioned? The ones who tried to kidnap him last week?” Niki’s already moving, pacing back and forth in the small space.

“Might be.”

Fundy makes a frustrated noise. “Prime, this on top of everything else- shit, okay, I’ll go grab a bunch of messenger birds. I’ve got some very hasty notes to write.”

“I’ll ask around,” Niki says. “I’ve got some leftover funds from my last job. There are plenty of people who’ll cough up any info for the right price.”

“Take whatever you need from my treasury,” Wilbur says with a nod. “I’ll go with you, Fundy. Let’s see if he’ll be willing to help.”

Fundy groans. “Prime, please only ask Quackity as a last resort. I physically cannot deal with him and his fucking favors .”

“If anyone’ll know, it’ll be him,” Wilbur says. “I can stand a bit of debt, if it’s what it takes.”

---

Tommy bangs his head into the bars on the windows for the fifth time. It’s already starting to ache, but at least the metal is cool against his forehead.

Christ above, this room is so fucking hot. Tommy has never missed the duchy more.

Earlier in the morning, he could roughly tell the time by the position of the sun, but it started raining a while ago and the sky’s been bathed in the same dull gray blanket ever since.

Tommy watches the waves below crash into the side of the cliff, clutching desperately at the rock face before being dragged back down by the tide. That’s how he feels, he decides: dragged every which way, never being able to make his own choices. Mind-read, kidnapped, reincarnated into a video game. He’s beginning to feel less like the game’s supposed villain and more like the fuckin’ damsel in distress.

Despite George claiming that he was going to get Dream hours ago, neither have made a reappearance. Tommy has tried to speak through the door to Sapnap a few times, but the man is either deliberately ignoring him or physically can’t hear him, because he hasn’t replied.

Tommy has tried a lot, actually. He’s tried screaming until his voice went hoarse, he’s tried smashing his fist against the door until his knuckles were blue and black, and then he tried scraping his fingernails against the door until they bled. He’s begged and pleaded, even, in a particularly embarrassing moment, cried, but nothing’s worked. He’s still in here, still trying to give himself a concussion on the metal bars covering the window.

Another voice showed up at the door a while ago. It didn’t stick around long, but Tommy caught enough of the conversation to realize that it was a man named “Quackity.” Stupid name.

He and Sapnap spoke at length about someone named “Karl,” (or… “Carl?” Hard to tell) who Tommy has gathered is the fucking prick that stole him right out of bed. Apparently whatever voodoo magic bullshit he did to abduct a child has left him bedridden, which is a fact that Sapnap seems exceedingly worried about but that Tommy finds vindictive pleasure in.

Quackity leaves quickly, and then it’s back to silence. Long, long, neverending silence.

Tommy bangs his head into the bars for a sixth time. He wonders if anyone even noticed that he’s gone.

---

Technoblade is the best.

That’s a statement. It’s not hyperbole, nor is it conceit; no, it’s raw face, an undeniable truth. Technoblade is the best - the strongest, the smartest. The General. The Blade.

He does not feel like the best.

Right now, he feels so exceedingly useless that it’s eating him alive. He’s been pacing so much through the gardens that his feet have carved a permanent path of hoofprints through the potato patch. 

It’s not something he’d ever admit to anyone, but he’s grown increasingly fond of Theseus over the last few days. The kid’s loud, sure, and kind of annoying, but he’s so determined- he’s got a fire in him, something Techno’s only ever seen in a mirror in a war tent. He only gets to train him for a day, but he can tell by the glint in Tommy’s eyes that he feels a similar calling to the blade that Techno does.

He’d make a good soldier. That’s a thought he’ll never be sharing with Wil.

Technoblade is a living weapon, the most deadly sword ever crafted. His strategy is unmatched, and his muscles ripple with the scars of a million battles.

He is useless. Right now, his family is suffering, and he is useless.

“Techno!” Wilbur. Techno whips around so fast that his neck twinges in protest, but he doesn’t care, because Wilbur’s clutching a letter with a fist so tight that the paper crumples in his hand.

“I’ve got a lead,” he says, and Techno’s hand is on his sword before he can ever think. Wilbur tosses his letter to him, but doesn’t wait for Techno to read it before saying, “It’s Dream.”

“Dream?” Techno asks. He knows the king- of course he does, he was the guy’s best damn soldier. “What’s he got to do with this?”

“No, I mean-” Wilbur branches himself on his knees, panting. Man, this guy is out of shape. “Dream’s the one that took Tommy. He’s in the castle, in L’Manburg.”

Techno doesn’t ask how Wilbur knows. He trusts him, trusts that he won’t be wrong about this. 

“Does Phil know about this?” he asks.

“Not yet. I found you first.”

Techno nods, knuckles white around the hilt of his sword. “Let’s go, then,” he says, and Wilbur straightens the lapels on his jacket before following him inside.

Technoblade is a living weapon, the most deadly sword ever crafted, and he’s going to paint the castle walls red with the blood of the people who tried to take his little brother from him. 

He’s never liked the monarchy much anyway.

---

He’s so hungry.

He’s been here for… what must be almost a full day, now, and they’ve given him one meal: a cold bowl of porridge, with an under-seasoned chicken leg thrown in like an afterthought. Clearly, Tommy had wound up with the leftovers.

God, and he’d just been getting better with eating, too. He almost wishes he hadn’t started eating real meals again. Maybe then his stomach would hurt less.

The rain has turned to a thunderstorm. Tommy watches the lightning bounce off the thrashing ocean waves.

Blood drips down from his forehead. He’s hit it fifteen times now, but it still hasn’t knocked him out, and the room is even more swelteringly hot than it had been.

Oh well. Sixteenth time’s the charm, he supposes.

---

Phil has had to cash in on so many favors today, it’ll be a wonder if the dukedom doesn’t collapse by tomorrow morning.

He wishes he could just fly to L’Manburg, but he can’t exactly carry Wilbur and Techno with him all the way. Instead, he has to send one of his crows to an old acquaintance: the Devil of the Badlands, a famous mage living in the Badlands’ Mages Tower. Badboyhalo, he thinks people call him these days.

Bad responds mercifully quickly. Magic is convenient like that- never a skill that Phil has possessed, but one that Bad had shown prodigal skill in even in his youth. It’s scarcely an hour after Phil sends his messenger crow out that it returns, letter tied to its talons.

Mages powerful enough to warp space are few and far between. Dream has one under his command- a young mage named Karl Jacobs, he believes, who has tremendous potential but not nearly enough life experience to have truly grown into his powers.

Bad has no such problems. Phil scarcely has time to gather his two older sons before the air in front of them trembles with power. Phil nearly laughs- to summon a portal between two locations, both thousands of miles away from the man himself… Bad really is a Devil.

Phil gives Techno and Wilbur a reassuring nod before pushing himself through the portal. His stomach swoops out from under him, eyes squeezing tight as his body pulls itself through the rip in space, before it settles with a sudden spattering of rain on his face.

Maybe it was a good thing that he couldn’t fly here, he muses as Wilbur and Techno stumble out of the portal. This storm is the worst he’s seen in years, far more brutal than anything they get back home.

Nobody stops the three of them as they make their way to the castle gates, and no one stops them from entering. Techno and Phil’s swords are drawn, gleaming the flashes of lightning, and Wilbur’s expression alone is enough to make a man drop dead on the spot. 

Techno knocks down the castle doors with a single well-placed kick. Rainwater begins to seep onto the marble floors, mixing with the streaks of seeping crimson blood that follow their footsteps. 

---

Tommy blinks himself awake to the sound of thundering footsteps.

It took nineteen hits to knock himself out, and he can tell from the sticky feeling on the side of his head that he’s been lying in his own blood for the past… however long he’s been unconscious.

He pushes himself up, stumbling over to the door. People are clearly running around on the other side, which is more excitement than he’s had all day. He can’t hear Sapnap.

If he listens really, really hard and pretends, he thinks he might be able to hear Wilbur shouting his name.

It’s a vain hope, but he throws his body against the door again and screams for help. His voice is so hoarse that it’s barely loud enough to be heard, but it makes him feel better.

The footsteps get louder. Someone is running towards him. Tommy smashes his fist into the door, ignoring the way it twitches violently in pain, and screams, “LET ME OUT!”

“TOMMY!” Tommy laughs, a horrible, raspy noise. Is he seriously so desperate that he’s hallucinating Phil’s voice? 

His stomach still hurts. 

Tommy backs away from the door, hands collapsing into a ball on the floor, hands clutching the strands of his blond hair. Phil, Wilbur, and Techno’s voices haunt him, taunting him with their sweet promises of rescue.

“Please,” he whimpers, and the door slams open.

“Tommy,” his brother gasps, and then Wilbur’s arms are around him. 

Everything hurts. His hands hurt and his fingernails hurt and his stomach hurts and his head hurts. When Tommy threads his fingers in the soft material of Wilbur’s tunic, they stain the yellow fabric with red, but all his desperate apologies are simply responded to with a “shh, Toms, it’s okay.”

Tommy tucks his head in Wilbur’s neck, eyes squeezed shut to prevent tears from escaping. This can’t be real, but, God, he wants it to be. He wants it to be so bad.

A hand runs through his hair. He lifts his head up to lock eyes with Techno, who gives him a small nod before stepping back, hand clutching the sword at his waist. Phil’s hand picks up where Techno’s left off, running through Tommy’s hair with more tenderness than Tommy ever felt, like he’s something precious, like he’s something worthwhile.

“Dad,” Tommy whispers, and then he’s full-on bawling into Wilbur’s tunic.

Once the tears start, they don’t stop. They come and they come and they come, even as his throat burns and his fingers ache and his head throbs. He sobs until he physically can’t anymore, until he’s run dry, until the sound of Techno unsheathing his sword is loud enough to shut him up instantly.

Someone claps, long and slow.

“Beautiful family reunion, isn’t it?” The voice sounds almost comically bored, dull cadence at odds with the porcelain smile covering his face.

“Dream,” Techno hisses, sword pointed at the king in a flash. “What’s the meaning of this?”

“Just an easy way of getting the family together, to be honest,” Dream says, seemingly staring at his nails with an effortless nonchalance. “When you’ve lived as long as I have, drastic measures begin to seem much less drastic, I’m afraid.”

“What do you want?” Wilbur growls, hands curling tighter around Tommy.

“Nothing much, I assure you. Just a conversation.” Dream turns, and even though his face is entirely covered by a mask, Tommy knows, intrinsically, that they’ve locked eyes. “I just want to talk about our little game.”

Chapter Text

[Character Profile: Dream H̷̡̳̓̈́̀̅̊̈̿̕͝I̷̧̡͕̋̋̉̎̓̾S̵̨̨̮̰͓͖̜̜͊̓͌̅͌̈́̄͜ ̷͉̟͎͂̆̐̉͋̌̕Ñ̷̻̣̤̖̣̯̟̓̅͂̂̌̚̚Ą̵͙͖̄̒̉͌̿͜M̴̠͓̼̄E̸̝̣̥͓̔̽̊̐͐̈͗̋ ̷̭̯̱͎̓͑͆̈̿̉̿̋̿̎̄Į̵̢̳̤̞̰̦̮̞͈̿ͅS̸̻̫̮̬͖̗͛̑̇͑̍̇̈́̎ ̷̛̰̈́̓͌̌ͅC̷̛͔̼͎̗͊̓͛̉͘̕̚Ļ̴̤͎̟̱̪͎̩͇̄͊͆͜Ą̶̱̯̈́̄͝͠͝Y̶̘̤̯̟͚̺̠̺̘͐̏̍̀̔̋̒͊͘]

[Age: 21 C̵̞̞̙̫̮͗͋̌Ė̴̝̞̹̣̊̈́̈́͠N̴̢̙̟̻̮̏T̸͕̮̑Ụ̶͒͋̈́̎̌R̶̹̹͐͠I̴̪͑Ȩ̵͎̗S̴͎͆̋̊̈́̕,̶̼̦͛̂̕͝͠ ̴̼̬̌͋͠O̶̜̯̻͠V̵̙͈̖̬͖͠Ḛ̸̦͍̈́̋͝Ŗ̵͚̔͂ ̴̻͙̌͌A̷̧̝̟͊͐̊̓N̵͓̿̓͐͘͠D̷̢͚̖͖̙̎ ̷̡̬͙̮̰́O̸͕̪̖͚̞͐V̵̨̼͙̦̜̿̊̈́̀E̸͇̳̙͈͗͒̊R̴̫͒̈́͊͂]

[The king of Essempi. He gained control over the throne after the death of his father, which sparked the SMP War and the conquering of Pogtopia. A just but cold monarch, he rules over his country with an iron fist. H̸̡̢̛͈̩͎̬̼̝̥̰͗̐̓̊͊͑E̷̻̥̟͚̠̺̊͑̉͂̾̈́͝ ̴̟͈̬̋̌̄̋̆̈́̉I̷̢̛͌̑͂̕S̵͓̜͉̖̘̒̽́ͅ ̷̛͓͋̅͠ͅŅ̷̳̞̦̮̖̲̼̹͌̽̒Ọ̴̡̧̨͔̳̼͍̺̰̾̍̑͌͑̄͂T̷͙̖̜̤̹͑̽̊̇͘͜͝͝ ̵̦̘̻ͅȘ̷͓̜̭̉̾̅Ư̸̧̱̾͛̒͑P̵̢̧̖̗̜̗̣̩̟͕̄͂P̷͔̉̐̆͗̾̕̕O̴̭̣̳̹̔̉S̴̢̩͕̠̩͈̙͂͛͗̈͒̽̂̌͜͜E̵̲̗̖͔͉̣̿̇͘͜Ḓ̵̻̦̒̏̽̄͛͒̕ ̵̭̫̠̼̣͙̠͙̊͆̇̊͆͛͠T̸̞͙͆͛̂́O̷̩̔̅̔́̊̀͠ ̷̺̠̥̽̄͌͝B̴͔͇̭̺̫̤̗͈͋͊̈́̇͗̐̅̈́͝Ę̸̨̞͉̺̭͎͇̲̞̱̊͛̃̓̾̚͝ ̷̜̣̠͕̜͓̪̊̂̒͗̋̈̈́̾͘͠H̵͕͔̖͉͖͖͇̆̈̉́̈́̈́͛̅̃̚ͅȨ̵͔̖̟̣̩̺͖̣̲͔͛̆͂R̶̲̬͙͉̔̒͂͌͘͝͝E̸͎̊̒́͐͐͊̀̊]

“You know, don’t you?” Dream’s voice is hushed, a gust of wind across a frozen pond, a draft on a morning dew. “You know, too. You remember what we were before this.”

“I- I don’t-” Tommy’s eyes dart to Wilbur, then Techno, then Phil. 

“You do.” Dream steps forward, ignoring how Techno’s grip tightens on his sword. “ Daylight Dream . You remember it. You know what it is.”

Tommy’s eyes, already blown wide, gape further. “You- you know Daylight Dream? You know the game?”

Dream’s laughter isn’t pleasant. It’s high, wheezy, just a bit too cruel. “Oh, I do! I know it so, so well, Theseus.”

He steps forward again, pushing past Techno’s sword until he’s crouching in front of Tommy. He reaches out and places his hands on the sides of Tommy’s face, pulling their heads closer together. None of Tommy’s family react, all of them staring at him in various states of confusion and shock.

“I’ve been stuck here,” Dream whispers, “for so long. Dozens and dozens of cycles come and gone, Theseus. I want out.”

“I’m sorry,” Wilbur says, hold tightening around Tommy, “does someone want to explain what the fuck is going on here? What the hell is Daylight Dream?”

Dream sighs, standing back up. “What do you think, Theseus? Should we start from the beginning? Tell the whining children a bedtime story?”

Tommy buries his head further into Wilbur’s tunic. He doesn’t want to respond. He wants to go home.

Dream doesn’t seem to be expecting an answer, either, because he just hums contemplatively and makes his way over to the door. “My name was Clay,” he begins. “I made a living playing something called ‘video games.’ Was pretty good at them, too, and I had a large following.” He turns to face them, porcelain mask glinting in the flashes of lightning. “I only played Daylight Dream as a joke.”

“What the fuck is-”

“A visual novel game,” Dream says. “A silly little interactive story. The home page was pink, you know? So innocent, so innocuous.”

“And then you died,” Tommy mutters.

“And then I died,” Dream agrees. “Car crash. Completely unavoidable. It was over so quickly.” He fiddles with the bottom of his mask, fingernail hooking under it and pushing up just enough for Tommy to see a flash of pale skin.

“My name is Dream,” he says, and Tommy understands. He understands because he’s the same way, because his name is Tom and it’s Theseus and he still feels trapped. 

“I was born into the monarchy, the one and only prince of the kingdom. My father was assassinated when I was seventeen, and I became king too early. I lead the country to glory through war.” He leans back against the wall, arms crossing over his chest. “That life was manufactured, but it feels real. I remember all of it, even if it was written by someone else.”

“If you have a point to make, spit it out,” Techno growls.

“This world, the one we’re in, is a game,” Dream says. “We’re living in the world of Daylight Dream , the game I played in my past life.”

“Do you seriously expect us to believe that?”

“You don’t have to take my world for it,” Dream says. “Just ask your darling little brother. He remembers just as well as I do, right?”

Four pairs of eyes, three visible, one hidden behind an impenetrable wall, turn to Tommy. He gulps, pulling out of Wilbur’s embrace and fidgeting with his sleeve.

“Yeah,” he says. “He’s- he’s telling the truth. I played the game in my first life, too.”

Wilbur’s eyes widen in realization. “So when you said you remembered your past life-”

Tommy nods, hands curling in his sleeve fabric. His fingernails are still encrusted with blood.

Phil shakes his head, rubbing at his temples. “Okay, wait, let me see if I’ve got this straight. This world is a… ‘visual novel game’ in another world, and both of you played the game in your past lives?”

“Not just us,” Dream says, stepping forward again. “We’re just the ones who remember, but it’s all of us. Everyone who has a character profile. We all played the game in our first life, and then the universe shoved us in here, forced us into the roles of the characters.”

The world stops. 

“...what?” Wilbur says, hushed, and Tommy agrees. What?

“Don’t you get it?” Dream takes another step forward. “We’re all stuck here. We had lives before this, but now we’ve been trapped. We have souls. We’re real people.”

“What do you-” Tommy grabs at Wilbur’s sleeve, an anchor. He feels like he’s just been tossed into the stormy ocean outside, lightning hell raining down around him. “That’s not- that’s not possible. They’re just characters, right? Just- just made of code, aren’t they?”

“Only as much as you are,” Dream says. “They- whatever powers that be- tried to craft us into their characters, but we’re not just code creations. We’re real people.” He repeats the phrase, though whether it’s for his own benefit or Tommy’s is unclear.

Tommy feels like the world just dropped out from under him. The whole time he’s been here- nearly a month, now- he’s been convinced that everyone around him was a prewritten caricature, that every word that came from their mouths was a scripted lie.

And now- and now Dream shows up, and he tells him that it’s all real? That inside Wilbur is a man who died and woke up, just like he did? That Techno used to own a cell phone and probably played video games, just like he did? That Phil once took the underground to work or made tea in an electric kettle?

Phil, Techno, Wilbur. Niki. Everyone with a character profile. How many are there? How many unfortunate souls, forever trapped in a game they can’t remember?

(Tubbo doesn’t have a profile, a traitorous voice in his head whispers, and Ranboo’s wasn’t labeled “character profile.”)

“...how do you know all this?” Phil says. “If- if you’re telling the truth, how come you and To- Theseus are the only ones who remember?”

Dream tilts his head. “Well, to be fair, Theseus only remembers because of me,” he says.

…

“What?” Tommy says, voice shaken and hushed.

Dream hums. “Well, I remembered first. It was… well, I guess it was just a glitch, some mistake that they never patched out. I woke up one day and I could remember my first life, realized I was in the game, that I had been shoved into the body of the game’s main villain. I had no idea what to do, so I just played along, pretended to be in the game while I did my best to change the plot and stay alive. It worked, even, right up until I hit ‘good ending.’”

He starts fiddling with his mask again. Tommy wishes he would stop- it makes him twitchy, gives him the urge to scratch his own chin. “I had to do it again,” he says. “And again, and again, and again. Every time I finished a game loop, I just woke right up again afterwards, back at the start.”

He pushes the mask further up. “Naturally, I started looking for a way out. My issue, see, is that those first few rounds, where I did my damnedest to fix the plot, were my downfall. The changes I made were too big- the game realized that something had gone wrong. Things get fuzzy around that time, so I think they actually wiped my memories again, but they didn’t patch the bug that started the whole thing, so a couple of cycles later I remembered it all again.”

“I’ve worked much more in the shadows since then, trying to find a solution. It took- well, I don’t even want to tell you how long it took. Certainly long enough to drive me mad.” The mask slips up his face, revealing the beginnings of a scar at the top of his chin. “I found it eventually, though. It’s almost infuriatingly simple.”

“You know how to escape the game?” Tommy says, hands clutching tighter until Wilbur’s sleeve nearly tears. “It’s possible?”

“It’s more than possible, Theseus,” Dream says. “In fact, the answer is standing right in front of us.”

Tommy follows the tilt of Dream’s head, gaze shifting over the room until-

“Techno?”

“Technoblade!” Dream crows, arms spread wide like a ringleader revealing a performer. “It’s so stupid, right? So simple. Tell me, Blade, what do you think about the voices in your head?”

Techno’s sword is leveled underneath Dream’s chin in a flash of silver. “How the hell do you know about that?” he growls. 

Dream seems thoroughly unconcerned about the metal blade seconds away from ending his life. “It’s not magic, or a curse, or regular illness,” he says, and there’s a kind of manic glee in his voice that makes Tommy’s stomach roll. “It’s binary. It’s code. Technoblade is a walking backdoor entrance into the game’s files, and I didn’t even realize.”

Tommy is, frankly, getting very tired of his world doing barrel rolls around its axis. Techno can access the game’s files through the murderous voices in his head? Everyone here is a soul trapped inside an evil otome game? Somehow, Dream is the reason he remembers being alive before the game?

He really wishes he hadn’t given himself a concussion, because now his head hurts even more than it did before, and his fingers are still covered in blood.

“Naturally, once I figured that out, it was a matter of plotting what to do with it,” Dream continues. Techno’s sword has drooped, the man in question gaping at Dream like he’s grown a second head, but it snaps back into position as soon as Dream starts talking again. “I didn’t get a chance until the last loop. See, the problem is that, in the normal game timeline, I don’t actually interact with Technoblade until the day of the Festival, the last day in the loop, and I’m unable to get him to come to the castle by normal invitation, or go myself, because the game locked me out of entering the Watson Duchy after I messed with the plot so much during the first few rounds.”

“Here’s another interesting discovery I’ve made,” Dream says. “The… developers, or whatever, can only make edits to the game between loops. They have free reign then, but during the actual game, we’re safe. Each loop ends at midnight on the day of the Festival, right after the fireworks.”

He reaches up with a long, thin finger, hovering it in the air near Techno’s blade, like he’s considering touching it, before deciding against it and letting it drop with a tilt of his head. “I only got to Technoblade right before the fireworks began,” he says. “The Protagonist of that round didn’t choose him, so he was alone. I had to fight very, very dirty to get him, but I managed it.”

Dream is looking at him again. It feels like ants crawling up his skin. 

“I did it, Theseus,” he says. “I got into the game’s files. I had scarcely five minutes, and most of that was spent breaking into the files in the first place. I didn’t have time to make any major changes, and they’d undo anything that they could notice. So, instead, I did something simple: a minor villain, one no one cared about, but still had the soul of a real person… I gave Theseus Watson his memories back.”

He says it so simply. It sounds so easy.

“I figured they’d erase my memories again, but at least, this time, there’d be someone else who also knew the truth of this world,” Dream says. “I got lucky, actually. I think they spent too much time patching the bug that gave me my memories to bother actually erasing them again. Course,” he laughs, again, that wheezing sound like a broken kettle, “at the end of this loop, they probably will erase them, and I highly doubt I’ll ever get them back.”

“So- so the reason I remember, the reason for all of this, it’s- it’s you?”

“That it is, my darling Theseus,” Dream says, and Tommy gets a sudden flashback to Wilbur calling him darling Theseus, a million years ago in a dark library. “It wasn’t without side effects, of course. It’s hard to be sure, but I think I may have corrupted a few of the Protagonist files in the process- memory ones, most likely. That’s ironic, though, isn’t it? Theseus remembers, and the Protagonist forgets.”

“I have trouble with memories,” Ranboo says to him, and it feels more and more like puzzle pieces are falling into a sickening place.

“Why are you telling us this?” Tommy says. He wants him to stop talking. He doesn’t- he doesn’t want to hear more.

“Don’t you get it, Theseus?” Dream says, voice once again filling with that manic desperation. “We can finally end the game. You can end the game. You have to.”

“He doesn’t have to do anything,” Wilbur hisses, and Tommy feels a sudden rush of affection so strong that it nearly bowls him over. “Why don’t you just do it yourself, if you’ve already figured everything out?”

“Oh, trust me, I’d love to,” Dream says, “But I physically can’t. Techno, why don’t you try to stab me? I can tell you want to. Come on, I won’t even execute you for treason.”

Techno blinks, then mutters, “Well, you asked for it.” He flips the sword in his hand, then makes a stabbing motion towards Dream’s chest.

It doesn’t work.

A few centimeters away from his chest, the blade stops moving. Techno’s brow furrows, hand shaking with strain, but the sword doesn’t move any closer. He tries his arm, his leg, his throat, and none of it works: it’s like there’s some kind of force-field around Dream, preventing contact. 

But, no, that can’t be right. He touched Tommy, just a few minutes ago, his hands rough and warm.

Dream once again reaches forward, like he’s trying to touch Techno’s sword, but his hand stops a few centimeters above the blade. “You see?” he says. “The devs must not have had time to instate a clean solution, so they just made me and Techno unable to touch each other. I can’t access the game’s files. Theseus, though- he can. He’s the only one who can.”

“You want- you want me to destroy the game?”

“You have to,” Dream says. “If you don’t, the loop starts again, and we never get out. Maybe in a million years, someone else will remember, but we’ll have to live the same week over and over and over until that happens. This is our one chance.”

“What do you even want me to do?”

“I’ll explain the exact process when you do it,” he says. “Come to the castle courtyard- all of you can, if you want- a few hours before midnight on the night of the Festival. That’s three days from now. We’ll end this then.”

Tommy has definitely torn Wilbur's sleeve with the way his fingers have clenched, but Wilbur doesn’t seem to care. He doesn’t even know what to think. This has somehow been the worst day he’s ever had, far worse than the one in which he literally died.

Dream makes his way over to the door. “My mage has arranged passage back to your duchy. Please refrain from killing my guards on the way out,” he says. He stops, suddenly, hand moving up to where his mask rests over his face. 

Tommy watches as he moves the mask to the side of his head. His hair, while decidedly less fluffy, is almost the same shade of blond as Tommy’s. He turns back, truly locking eyes with Tommy for the first time.

“It was a pleasure to meet you, Theseus,” he says, the movement of his mouth causing the ugly, puckered scar cutting through the center of his face to shift. His eyes are so bright that they look like jewels, tiny glowing emeralds set in the face of a boy and a king. “Maybe, if we’re lucky, we’ll meet in the next life.”

Chapter Text

Tommy passes out before they even make it through the portal.

Look, you can’t blame him, okay? He’s contending with a concussion, probably broken fingers, torn fingernails, and the realization that he has to be the one to destroy reality as he knows it by breaking into his brother’s skull.

So, yeah- a couple of steps towards the portal that a brown-haired man in bright clothing summons, and Tommy’s out like a light. 

He begins to emerge back into consciousness an indeterminate amount of time later- sometime around noon the next day, he’s pretty sure, if the sun rays beaming through his bedroom window are any indication.

He gets an abrupt surge of deja vu as he blinks the crust from his eyes. He remembers waking up all those weeks ago, head throbbing and body aching from phantom pains, back when things had been… not simple, but easier. 

Three days he’d spent confined to his bed, the time nothing in his memory but a constant haze of pain. Three days spent alone, trapped in an unfamiliar house with a family that he was convinced didn’t love him.

Did they love him? Do they love him? He doesn’t know. He doesn’t know.

This situation is similar, but it’s not the same. Tommy turns his head to see Tubbo, asleep with his head cushioned on his arms, propped up on the side of the bed. Ranboo, next to him, seems to be sleeping as well, though he’s muttering under his breath.

Tommy reaches out, sets his hand on top of Tubbo’s. Tubbo shifts a bit but doesn’t wake up, so Tommy clenches a bit tighter.

He doesn’t want to acknowledge the elephant in the room. Dream’s words haunt his mind, sure, but if he doesn’t think about them he can pretend that they aren’t there.

How do you… what is he supposed to think? What kind of reaction is he supposed to have? “Why, sure, Dream, I’d be glad to destroy the game with you! What, my entire family are made of real souls stuck in the code? Well, golly gee, that sure sucks!” 

What does he focus on? The “souls in the video game” part? The “Techno has direct access into the code through his head” bit? Is he supposed to ruminate over Dream’s tragic backstory? Psychoanalyze his fuckin’ monologue?

He doesn’t. Instead, his brain sifts through the world-altering, mind-boggling information and instead decides to focus on something simpler. 

Car crash, Dream had said, and it makes Tommy think of his own death.

It’s not something he thinks about often. He makes a habit of not acknowledging it, actually- far easier than having to remember all the circumstances that lead up to it. Even when he thought he was just Tom Simons, only had one lifetime of memories in his head to contend with, he didn’t like to think about his death.

There’s so much to remember, and then there’s nothing. There’s the feeling of the wind on his face, of his feet half-on and half-off a concrete roof, and there’s the feeling of slamming into the ground, but he doesn’t remember most of it. 

It’s so hard. It’s so hard and everything hurts all the time and it’d just be so much easier if he-

No, he can’t. He can’t. Because he’s Tom Simons, and he has to survive, because surviving is all he knows how to do.

Tubbo shifts again, eyes blinking blearily in the light. “To’y?” he yawns, free hand reaching up to run through his hair. 

“Morning, big man,” Tommy says.

Tubbo blinks a few more times, then snorts and says, “S’not exactly morning, innit?” His eyes flick to where Tommy’s hand sits over his, and in a single fluid motion he flips his own palm over and laces their fingers together. “Thought you might have died, bossman. I was ready to collect your life insurance money.”

“I was scared,” goes unsaid, and Tommy blinks away the misty tears that prick at his eyes.

“Boo,” Tubbo hisses, flicking Ranboo’s forehead. “Boo. Wake up.”

Ranboo jumps, eyes slamming open with a squawk. He glances around the room wildly before his eyes lock on Tommy. “You’re awake!” he says, face splitting into a grin for a moment before collapsing into worry. “Do you feel alright? Does your head still hurt?”

“‘Course I’m fine,” Tommy says, even though his head is still throbbing a considerable amount. “I’m Big Man Tommy Innit, aren’t I?”

“What does that even mean?” Ranboo mutters, shaking his head. “I’m- Wilbur said to tell him when you were awake, so I’ll just- I’ll be back.” Tommy watches him scamper out of the room, tail swishing behind him.

Right before Ranboo leaves, Tommy glances at the gray box floating next to his head. 

[Name: “Ranboo.”]

“Everyone with a character profile,” Dream had said. Does Ranboo’s count as a character profile? Is it enough? Tommy turns to Tubbo. He still doesn’t have anything floating above him.

Is Dream right? Is Tubbo, is Ranboo, just a made-up character in the same way Tommy had thought Wilbur was? They seem so real. 

And the worst thought: if they aren’t real, what happens to them if Tommy deletes the game?

No, Dream must be wrong. There’s- there’s no way Tubbo and Ranboo aren’t real. There’s no way they’ll… die or anything. There’s no way Tommy has to be the one to kill them.

If they do die, Tommy wonders if it’ll hurt. 

Will it hurt? Will it hurt, to fall?

Tom has stood on this roof so many times. He has spent so many hours looking down. Is it going to hurt? Is it worth it?

He turns and heads back for the stairs. He doesn’t want to hurt anymore, even if it’s just for a second.

“Tommy!” Wilbur says, pushing the door open. Ranboo hovers awkwardly by the door as Wilbur quickly makes his way over to Tommy. “You doing okay, Sunshine? Head feeling alright?”

Tommy’s eyes flutter shut as Wilbur’s long fingers run through his hair. He hums affirmatively. “Hungry,” he murmurs.

“I’ll go get you something to eat,” Ranboo volunteers, pointed ears perking up. “Tubbo, come with me?”

“Aww,” Tubbo whines, but dutifully follows Ranboo out of the room.

Wilbur’s weight sinks onto the bed next to Tommy. Tommy pushes himself up to a seated position, even as his head throbs. Wilbur’s hand resumes its soothing path through his hair as Tommy leans into his side. 

“So,” Wilbur says, after they’ve sat in silence for a long moment, clearly both staring into the eyes of the elephant in the room. “Yesterday was… eventful.”

Tommy snorts. “That’s a word for it,” he mutters.

“Yeah.” Wilbur’s fingers catch on a curl, delicately working to untangle it. “Do you… believe him?”

Tommy doesn’t have to ask who “him” is. It’s pretty damn obvious by the way Wilbur’s mouth hesitates around the word, like he’s afraid of saying it too loudly. 

Tommy shrugs. “Dunno,” he says. “Part of it’s true, but… I don’t know. I don’t know.”

“Me neither,” Wilbur sighs. His fingers pause for a moment, hesitating, only resuming when Tommy pushes his head further into Wilbur’s hand. “I… I think I’ve seen those ‘character profiles’ that he mentioned. I’d seen bits and pieces before, on people like Niki and Fundy, but- uh, I think I saw a full one today.”

Tommy blinks up at him, eyes wide. “For real?”

“For real,” Wilbur confirms. “Techno’s- his says something about having a ‘penchant for violence,’ right?”

“Yeah,” Tommy says. “Yeah, it does.”

Well, that confirms that, at least. Wilbur, at least, is definitely a real person. Tommy thinks he might be beyond shock at this point, because it doesn’t even feel that strange. It feels… right, somehow.

Maybe Tommy never really believed that Wilbur wasn’t a real person. Maybe- maybe he’s always known , or maybe he’s just never been able to accept it.

He’s so hungry and tired. His knees are bleeding again, and they’re probably going to get infected because the old lady who used to give him free antiseptic died last week. He might not even be able to walk afterwards.

He’s going to die anyway, so why not do it of his own accord? It’d be easier. It would hurt less.

Tom stares down at the ground, and he doesn’t jump. He’s always been too much of a coward.

Wilbur is hesitating again. “There’s a healer who can help fix up your head,” he says, “but- well, I know you probably don’t like her much.”

Tommy shrugs. “Just do it,” he says, because his head does hurt a lot and he’d vastly prefer for it to stop.

Wilbur hesitates again, but says, “Alright,” and makes his way over to the door. He cracks it open, says something that Tommy can’t hear to whoever’s outside, and then walks back into the room with someone else in tow.

Tommy’s heart drops into his stomach. Oddly enough, the first thing he notices isn’t even the person themself, but instead the gray box they have floating next to their head.

[Cpt. Puffy]

[Age: 22]

[An accomplished mage who studied for years in the Badlands. A kind soul who specializes in healing and mind magic.]

Oh, so she’s a real person too. Great. Just Tommy’s fuckin’ luck.

Tommy can feel himself retracting inward, spine curling and knees creeping towards his chest. He keeps his eyes trained on Puffy as she walks towards him. Her arms are held in a “surrender” position next to her head, allowing him to see her hands, and she creeps towards him at a glacial pace.

“Hello again,” she says, an apologetic smile on her face. “I’m sorry to have to meet again so soon- I’m sure you don’t like me much after last time, right?”

Tommy side-eyes her, tucking his chin in the crease between his knees.

“I’m very sorry,” she says again. “I’m just here to fix you up, okay? It’ll only take a minute. Do you mind if I touch you?”

Tommy nods, slowly. “Don’t do anything else. Just heal my wound.”

“Of course,” Puffy says, laying a warm hand on Tommy’s forehead. She unwinds his bandages, calluses catching on the stained fabric. Someone must have cleaned him up while he slept, because blood isn’t dripping into his eyes anymore, but judging by Wilbur’s wince, his forehead must still be a mess.

Puffy’s hand stings when she places it against his wound, but, just a moment later, warmth begins seeping out of her palm. It’s a pleasant feeling, like the honey that Phil puts in his tea, slow and seeping and sweet. Tommy can feel the skin of his forehead knitting itself back together, the muscle underneath shifting and groaning under Puffy’s healing touch.

It’s comforting, but Tommy doesn’t breathe until Puffy’s hand is once again firmly by her side. The feeling of hands gripping the sides of his head, searching through his brain, is too raw in his mind, even if Puffy has been nothing but kind.

Everything hurts.

He hasn’t been able to move in days. He’s barely been able to sit up long enough to make his way through the small stash of food he had stocked up, but that’s all gone now. 

The sepsis is wrecking his body. He’s going to die, he knows that for sure. How pathetic is that? Seventeen years, and he’s nothing but a dying body huddled under cardboard in a back alley.

He just wishes he wasn’t alone.

Puffy takes her leave, and Tommy finally lets his legs sink back down. Wilbur’s hand reaches for his hair again, carefully avoiding the tingling skin around his forehead.

“Sorry that it had to be her,” Wilbur says. “I know you’re not… you know. But Puffy’s the best healer from here to L’Manburg, so there wasn’t much of a choice.”

“There never seems to be,” Tommy mutters.

Wilbur’s fingers freeze, lightly tugging on Tommy’s scalp. “Are you angry again?” he says, and something in Tommy shifts, like a slab of glacier collapsing into the sea.

“And if I am?” he asks. “I think I’m allowed to be.”

“Haven’t you aired out enough grievances?”

It’s almost funny, how quickly the waves of anger roll over him. Tommy doesn’t think he was angry just five minutes before, but- but, well, maybe he was. The truth, plainly put, is this: Tommy has been tired for a very, very long time, and he’s been angry for just as long.

He’d thought things were getting better. He’d yelled at Wilbur, told him the things he’d done wrong, and now they cared for each other. Techno was teaching him swordfighting. Phil and him made tea. He was healing.

But it was all a tenderly crafted lie, wasn’t it? A pretty glass painting, a thin glaze over the years of twisting neglect and hurt. A couple mugs of tea isn’t enough. Guitar lessons and playful spars will never be enough.

Haven’t you aired out enough grievances, Theseus?

He will never air out enough grievances. He is too broken and his family is too cruel.

“Is he awake?” Techno sticks his head through the door, eyes lighting up when he spots Tommy sitting up, until he seems to notice the tension in the air. “Shit, is this- uh, is this a bad time?”

“Not at all,” Tommy says through gritted teeth. “We were just discussing you.”

Wilbur blinks. “No, we weren-”

“Weren’t we?” Tommy’s smile tastes bitter, heavy and dark. “I haven’t aired out my grievances with them , have I? Might as well get on with it.”

“Mate, I don’t think that’s how things work,” Phil says, gently pushing a very uncomfortable-looking Techno into the room. 

“It is, though, innit? I tell you everything that you’ve done to fuck me up, and then we all never mention it again. You’ll act a little nicer to me, and none of us with bother to bring up the years of fucking ignoring me you all did.”

“I don’t think you can completely blame us for that,” Wilbur says. “Apparentely some… primordial being was fucking with our heads.”

“Oh, well, then, sorry! Guess that excuses everything you put me through.”

“Tommy, where is this coming from?” Techno asks. 

Tommy clenches the bed sheet between his fingers. “I don’t know. I’m tired, I’m hungry, I’m fucking pissed off at everything in my life. What’s it matter?”

“Tommy, I think you should get some rest,” Phil says gently. “You’ve been through a lot, and it’s normal to be stressed and upset, but you’ll feel better after some sleep, I promise.”

“Don’t- don’t tell me to shut up ,” Tommy says. 

“I’m not telling you to shut up, Tommy,” Phil says. “I just think it’s best to have this conversation when you’re a little more… level-headed. We all care a lot about you, Tommy, and having an argument right now isn’t going to help you recover.”

He is delirious and feverish and definitely teetering on the edge of septic shock, but he’s managed to drag himself back up to the concrete roof of the building. The stone is rough against his burning skin, scraping even more skin from his arms and legs.

These cuts, at least, will not get infected, because he will not be alive long enough for them to do so.

He stares down at the lights of the city that bore him, raised him, and then spat him out to rot. Lights flash, car horns honk, and no one is going to miss one street kid. No one will care enough to find his body. No one will care enough to mourn.

No one will care in general. Maybe it’s best this way.

Something breaks.

“You don’t get to care about me,” Tommy hisses, hurling himself away from Wilbur, who’s hand is still hovering in the air like it longs to run through Tommy’s hair. “You don’t- none of you get to sit there and act like you’re some fucking heroes, like because you’re trying now it makes everything fine.”

“Tommy-”

“No!” His teeth push against his lips, baring in a feral snarl. “You,” he says, pointing at Wilbur, “couldn’t have cared less until I literally got in your face. You were perfectly content to play hero against a literal fucking child, right up until the child yelled back, and then you wanted to teach me geography and guitar like you didn’t spend thirteen years making my life miserable. And you, ” he points at Techno and Phil, “didn’t give two shits right up until I got fucking kidnapped. Is that what it takes? Do I have to fight tooth and nail for every bit of fucking respect and love I get in this house?”

“Tommy, I’m so sorry for how I treated you in the past,” Wilbur says, “and Techno and Phil are as well. But right now, you’re not being rational. You need to calm down and-”

“I don’t need to do anything!” Tommy snaps. “Maybe you don’t know, because your soul gets to relax in the body of a hero, but I didn’t ask to be the fucking villain, alright? If I’d known I was going to have to beg like a dog for scraps of affection, I should have just jumped off another building as soon as I woke up here. Would've been a whole lot less painful.”

It’s silent for a moment, and then Phil says, voice soft and almost reverent, “Another?”

Tommy snorts. He feels something warm run down his cheek, and, oh, he’s crying, isn’t he? “Yeah, another. I died, you know? Someone as fucked as me only kicks the bucket one way.”

No one will miss him. It’ll be so easy.

It might hurt, but it can’t hurt more than it already does. His body hurts, of course, but so does his mind, twisted and beaten down and broken and rotted. He is already a walking corpse, so what’s the harm in taking that final step off the edge?

The ground is so far below. He’ll never survive.

He’ll never wake up again.

“Oh, Tommy,” Wilbur says, and Tommy closes his eyes.

“I just wanted to be loved,” he whispers. “Why is that so hard? Why does it hurt so much?”

The air is weightless beneath his feet.

For a moment, he is flying. For a moment, he is God, and he is the Universe, and he is everything and nothing all at once. 

And then the wind is in his ears, and he is being pulled down, and then every bone in his body is shattering on pavement and it is agonising and yet so, so sweet.

The dying part is alright, actually.

At least it’s quick.

Chapter Text

There is one day left.

That’s the first thing Tommy realizes, when he wakes up again. By the soft light drifting in through the window, he can tell that he’s managed to awaken at a normal time this morning.

Tomorrow is the festival. Tomorrow, one way or another, it ends. 

And Tommy has no idea what he wants to do.

Does he believe Dream? Does he end the game tomorrow, with no knowledge on what it will do to him and everyone he cares about? Or does he take his chances, wait out the festival and see what happens?

It’s not fair that he has to be the one to make this choice. He’s just some kid, some street rat who offed himself and ended up in a video game afterwards. He’s not qualified to destroy worlds. He wasn’t even qualified to live in one.

He’s brought out of his sulking by the whining of his stomach. After he’d send his family away, Ranboo had returned with a bowl of soup, which tided him over for the night but wasn’t enough to make up for a full day without food. 

He drags himself out of bed, relishing in the painlessness of the action. He may not like Puffy, but he can admit that whatever she did, she did it well. 

He shuffles his way into his closet, digging through the… truly obscene amount of clothing that he owns. Honestly, the best thing he gained from his memories was a sense of style (and, yes, wearing the same clothing every day is style, thank you very much.)

He frowns at the fancy, expensive dress shirts and embroidered jackets, forsaking them in exchange for a baggy tunic he’d stolen from Wilbur earlier in the week. He ruffles his blond hair and rubs the crust from his eyes, turning to leave the closet when his reflection catches his eye.

Deja vu strikes violently, like an incoming wave. He remembers this, remembers standing here weeks ago, looking at himself in the mirror and feeling like a stranger in his own skin. Now, he feels comfortable; he feels right , in all the ways he hadn’t back then. He’s come so far, for better or for worse.

He likes to think that it’s for the better. He’s certainly happier now than he used to be- he has friends, now, and maybe almost a family. He has shoulders to cry on and people to laugh with. He’s not alone, not anymore. 

And yet- and yet it’s so fragile. He’s always known that he was inside of a game, but it’s so easy to forget, sometimes. Whether the people in it are real or not, the world at large certainly isn’t, and Tommy has to choose whether or not to destroy it.

Dream could be lying, of course. The man did kidnap him just to get to the rest of his family. But he’d known about Daylight Dream, and he knew things that he couldn’t possibly have known about Tommy. And there’s something in him, some sense that he has, that tells Tommy that Dream isn’t lying. 

But what about Tubbo? What about Ranboo? What about all of them? Do they move on to the next life, souls free to meet again, or do they die alongside the game? Dream didn’t seem to care. To him, Tommy supposes, any escape is good enough. But Tommy- Tommy’s honestly not too keen on dying again, not when he’s finally beginning to feel better.

But, on the other hand, what if Dream’s right about them forgetting? Is it worth living on in this world, trapped in a haze of forgotten memories? Is it worth returning back to the Theseus he once was, a pathetic excuse for a villain trapped in the form of an unloved child?

These are not questions that have answers; or, at least, not ones Tommy knows how to give. They eat at him, digging their claws into his skull and tearing until they’re all he can think about. What does he do? What does he choose?

With a sigh, Tommy makes his way out of his room and towards the dining hall. His feet trace the same path that they’ve done for weeks, for years, the marble of the floor cool against his bare feet. 

He doesn’t know why he’s feeling nostalgic. It’s not like he’s got a whole lot to be nostalgic about. But there’s something in the air, something that feels like goodbye.

Well, things end tomorrow, so he supposes that makes sense. He’s said worse goodbyes.

When he arrives at the dining hall, three voices already filter through the door. That’s something different as well- back then, when he first woke up here, Wilbur and Techno would typically eat in silence until he arrived, but now Phil joins them for breakfast and they all talk together.

Huh. Maybe Tommy’s done this family some good. He’s never thought about that.

He pushes his way into the room silently, but he can still feel all three gazes immediately snap to him. He sheepishly scratches at the back of his neck, foot twisting into the ground. 

“G’morning,” he offers. 

“Tommy!” Wilbur says, half-standing out of his chair. “Are you- um- do you-”

“Good morning, mate,” Phil says with a sidelong glance at Wilbur, who is wringing his hands together. “Did you sleep alright?”

“Yeah,” Tommy says, making his way over to his own seat, the same one he’s been sitting at for his whole life, the one he claimed instinctually weeks ago without yet knowing why. It’s the seat next to Techno, across from Wilbur and the chair that used to be empty but is now filled by Phil.

“How’s the head?” Techno asks, sweeping his silky curtain of hair to one shoulder. 

“S'alright,” Tommy says, reaching for his fork. “Doesn’t hurt anymore.”

“Good,” Techno nods. 

Wilbur, who has been practically vibrating out of his seat, finally breaks and says, “Are we seriously not going to talk about yesterday?”

“What’s there to talk about?” Tommy says, stabbing a piece of sausage on his fork, relishing in the warm juices that seep out of it. “I didn’t mean most of it. Well, I did, but- but not exactly in the way I said it.”

“Are you really okay, though?” Wilbur asks, worry coating his tone. Tommy glances at him, finding nothing but sincerity in eyes the color of milk chocolate and honey.

“I am now,” he says. “It happened a long time ago, didn’t it? And I wouldn’t actually do it again. I just said that because it would hurt.”

Tommy says a lot of things because they hurt. He doesn’t wield words like weapons, per say, but more like grenades, tiny little nuclear weapons that burn everything in sight, even himself. Especially himself.

“It’s alright, mate,” Phil says. “If you ever need to talk, we’re here, all right?”

“Yeah,” Tommy says. “Yeah, I know.”

Techno turns the conversation to a different topic, grousing over the rising crime rates, and Phil and Wilbur both latch on like parasites. Tommy gives him a grateful glance when the piglin’s attention briefly turns to him.

The rest of the meal progresses in almost-forced normalcy. Tommy eats all the meat on his plate, turns away for a second to make fun of Wilbur’s hair, and then glances back only to see a suspiciously large pile of bacon on his plate and a suspiciously nonchalant Techno with a suspicious lack of the meat on his plate.

“Wait, Techno, is eating bacon cannibalism for you?” Tommy suddenly askes, and Techno’s head slams into the table with a loud thud . By Wilbur’s cackling laughter and Phil’s chuckles, Tommy gets the sense that this is a conversation that’s been had many, many times.

Wilbur comments on his tunic (“Did you steal my fucking clothes, you little gremlin?”) , Phil mentions that a new supply of tea has been delivered to the manor (“We’ll have to make some tonight, Tommy, it’s been imported all the way from Kinoko Kingdom”) , and Techno informs them of his plans for the day (“I stole a couple of books from the castle, so I’m gonna read ‘em. Try not to bother me, please.”) It’s normal. It’s saccharine and domestic.

Eventually it comes to a close, as it always does. Wilbur plans to head off to meet with Niki and Fundy, Phil needs to go take care of his duties as Duke, and Techno is clearly itching to spend his day in the library.

Tommy stares down at his hands, clenched in his lap. “Um,” he says, teeth gnawing at his bottom lip as he glances up, locking eyes with Phil, “Just so you know, I- um, I didn’t mean it, when I said that you weren’t allowed to try and be better. I- I do care. It means- you know. It means a lot.”

Phil smiles, something sad and small, like a half-moon hanging in a midnight sky. “I know,” he says simply.

---

“Is there a reason you’re specifically going against my one request?” Techno asks, not even glancing up from his book as he sits curled against the corner of the couch.

Tommy shrugs. “Bored,” he says. It’s true. Wilbur is out and Phil is busy, and Ranboo and Tubbo, for all the slack they are allowed, are actual employees who do have jobs to do. This, of course, leaves Techno for Tommy to bother.

“Go be bored elsewhere,” Techno mutters, turning a page as his crimson eyes track the words in the leather-bound tome clutched in his hand.

When he’s like this, dressed in casual clothing and curled up next to a knitted blanket, it’s easy to forget that Techno is one of the most dangerous people in the world. Tommy has a hard time connecting the image of The Blade with that of his brother, sometimes. 

Tommy hums, making his way over to the couch and sitting down next to Techno. He pulls the knitted blanket over his legs, rubbing them together lightly to warm them up. 

They sit in silence for a moment, Tommy watching a spider slowly building a web in the corner of a bookshelf (he’s named it Shroud in his head, because Shroud is a poggers name), before Techno shoves his hair behind his ears one too many times.

Tommy shifts, turning towards Techno, and he can feel how his brother tenses when Tommy pulls the long pink strands into his hands. Tommy pauses, a silent request for permission, and Techno huffs but turns further away from him, giving him better access.

Braiding Techno’s hair comes easily to Tommy. He’d had one foster sister, from one of the better homes, who’d taught him to braid, and he’d spent hours upon hours pulling her chocolate-brown locks into intricate patterns. He’d kept his hair short back when he was in foster care, but when was older and living fully on the streets, he didn’t have access to scissors and cutting his hair with broken bottle shards was far more trouble than it was worth, so he’d let it grow out. Whenever he was feeling particularly hopeless, he’d twist his own hair into pretty shapes, things more beautiful than he’d ever be.

Not like it did him much good in the end, but at least he’d died with a nice french braid.

“Did you ever wonder about your namesake, Theseus?” Techno says suddenly, flipping a page.

Tommy blinks, hands hesitating over the braid. “I’ve got a namesake?” he asks.

Techno snorts. “Yeah. I’m the one that named you. Wilbur wanted ‘Tomathy,’ so you should be thankful that I’m the favorite child.”

“I’m definitely the favorite child,” Tommy says, pulling the right section over the middle one.

Techno hums. “Well, Theseus is a hero from an old mythology. He was the prince of Athens, best known for killing the Minotaur, a half-man, half-bull creature.”

Tommy frowned. “Wait, he killed a cow-man? I quite like cows.”

“Well, the Minotaur was eating children.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah, oh.” Techno turns another page, and Tommy can’t help but wonder if he’s actually reading or just doing it to look cool. “Anyway, Theseus managed to kill the minotaur and return home to Athens, but before he left, he’d made a promise to his father to change his ship’s black sails to white sails. He forgot, and when his father saw the black sails, he threw himself off a cliff in despair.”

“Christ,” Tommy murmurs. “And you named a child after this?”

“Oh, it gets worse,” Techno says. “He was held captive in the Underworld for a while, and when he was freed and tried to return home, he was exiled from Athens. He tried to seek refuge in another kingdom, but their king threw him off a cliff. It’s a tragic story.”

Tommy ties off the braid he’d been working on, shifting to the other side to repeat the process. “Is there a reason you’re bringing this up now, big man?”

Techno hums again. “Those are the well-known parts of Theseus’s story, but there’s plenty more,” he says. “I was thinking about a part that happens before he kills the Minotaur, before he becomes a hero, when he first arrives in Athens. His father, who hadn’t seen him since he was a child, didn’t recognize him, but his wife, the sorceress Medea, did. She tried to trick the king into poisoning Theseus’s cup, but at the last minute, his father recognized Theseus and threw the cup onto the ground.”

Tommy finishes the second braid, pulling it around Techno’s head to meet with the first one. His fingers deftly begin braiding the two together where they meet. 

“Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?” Techno says, voice startlingly soft. “Funny, how history has a way of repeating itself.”

Tommy hums, pulling a small hair ribbon between his teeth and lacing the bottom of the braid with it. “The implication that Phil would marry the game itself is a bit off, innit?”

Techno huffs a laugh. “I suppose,” he says. 

“Besides,” Tommy says, letting go of Techno’s hair, “I’m not a hero. I’ve definitely not killed any Minotaurs.”

“You are the hero, though, aren’t you?” Techno says, turning to him. The braid crown laces around the back of his hair, pulling the hair from his eyes in a shockingly delicate manner. “You’re the one who saves us all.”

Tommy laces his fingers together in his lap. “So you believe it, then? What Dream says.”

Techno shrugs. “I believe a great many things,” he says. “I’ve learned to treat everything as if it has a grain of truth. And it’s not exactly what I believe that matters, is it? It’s your decision.”

“I don’t know how to make it,” Tommy says, pulling his knees up to his chin. “It’s impossible.”

“You’ll have to figure it out,” Techno says. “For what it’s worth, though, I’ll follow whatever choice you make. If you decide that breaking into my head is the best course of action, I’ll cooperate.”

Tommy stares at him, something warm curling in his chest. It’s almost comedic, thinking of the way he used to cower in fear of the man who would become his older brother. 

Techno hadn’t exactly offered, but Tommy throws himself into his arms anyway, curling against the cool silk of Techno’s shirt. Techno says nothing, but strong, muscular arms come to rest on Tommy’s back, and the pink strands of a braid tickle his nose.

“You’d follow me, even to the end?” Tommy whispers.

“I trust you,” Techno says, and it means so much more than words could possibly say. “If it’s what it takes, then we’ll stand together at the end of the line, Theseus.”

Chapter Text

“Come on, Tommy,” Tubbo shouts, grabbing onto his hand. “If we’re all gonna die tonight, I wanna try the candyfloss first!”

Tommy squawks as Tubbo yanks him down the street, barely grabbing onto Ranboo’s hand in time for them to form a train of teenage boys rocketing down the street. The people around them don’t seem to mind, though, instead giving them cheerful smiles and waves and calls of “Have a good Festival!”

The roofs of the town square are hung with ribbons of sparkling gold and glimmering carmine, lanterns and streamers and various other decorations filling the area with a radiant glow. Tommy has to hand it to the townsfolk- they know how to decorate, even if it’s for an unknowing apocalypse. 

It’s almost enough to be jovial, if Tommy didn’t have a rock the size of a fucking mountain rotting in his stomach.

A few hours before midnight. That’s when Dream had said to meet. 

“A few hours” is subjective, but the sun is nearly sinking under the horizon on the last day of the world, and so Tommy is at a festival.

He’d finally bit the bullet and told Ranboo and Tubbo about the whole “we’re inside a video game and also some of us have real people souls but maybe not you two? Also by the way I’m the one who has to choose whether or not to end the world which may possibly kill all of us” thing yesterday night. Ranboo had taken it with the amount of shock and disbelief that Tommy had expected from both of them, but Tubbo had reacted… remarkably well. He didn’t even seem all that surprised, just grim.

It was worrying, but when Tommy asked, he just responded, “Oh, no, I’m having a mental breakdown on the inside,” which Tommy decided was fair enough.

They both believed him, at least, which was honestly a lot more than he expected. Ranboo didn’t really seem to understand that “you’re the protagonist of the game, except your memories got fucked up accidentally,” but he was clearly doing his best to comprehend the situation as a whole. 

“Tubbo, can you please slow down,” Ranboo whines, yelling a hasty apology at someone he nearly slaps with his stupid flailing limbs. 

“Nope!” Tubbo yells back, speeding up. 

When Tubbo finally skids to a stop (how the fuck is he so fast, he’s literally so tiny), they’re in front of a stall selling big clouds of candy, spun in shades of red to match the rest of the Red Festival’s decor. 

Tubbo turns to him with an expectant stare, and Tommy rolls his eyes as he fishes the appropriate amount of coins out of his pocket. Phil had given him a small fortune to blow, and Tubbo had already worked his steady way through a good portion of it.

Five minutes later, though, the three of them were walking away with puffs of candyfloss clutched in their hands, and Tommy found it in his heart to forgive him, because, shit , these were good. Tubbo ended up wrinkling his nose after one bite, proclaiming that it was too sweet and not enough substance, but Tommy and Ranboo were happy to make their way through both their own portions and Tubbo’s abandoned one. 

Honestly, Tommy has a bone to pick with whoever designed this stupid game. He’s definitely no expert, but he’s very sure that candyfloss did not exist in whatever time period Daylight Dream is set in. Still, it tastes good, so he’ll just give it a pass and chalk it up to creative interpretation.

After the candyfloss, they spend a while watching an acrobatic performance involving a sharpshooter with a cocky smirk and an aerialist that spiraled high in the air between twirls of silk. They then try out cups of crushed ice drizzled with fruit-flavored syrup, and then Ranboo buys a bag of small chocolates that he routinely pops into his mouth as they walk.

If Tommy closes his eyes, he can almost image that they’re a group of normal friends enjoying a fun night at the Festival, that they’re normal teenagers with normal teenage problems.

But they’re not, and even as they laugh and chat and try increasingly outlandish sweets, Tommy is still trying to decide whether or not to end the world. They can’t be normal. They’ll never be normal.

It’s not fair. Tommy should be complaining about girl problems, not worrying about killing everyone he loves. Ranboo should be struggling with Technoblade’s sword forms. Tubbo should be trying to decide whether or not to go to the fancy college in L’Manburg.

They’re just kids. It’s not fair. It’s not fair.

They’re walking further down the street when Tommy spots Wilbur, Niki, and the fox-eared man he vaguely recalls seeing a few weeks ago (who must be Fundy) conversing in the shadows of an alley. At first, Tommy thinks they’re discussing some shady business, but from the way Fundy laughs and Niki passes around a box of sweets, he thinks it might be something a little more benign.

All three of them have character profiles. Wilbur is lucky.

Tommy nudges Ranboo’s shoulder. “Go on without me,” he says. “I’ll catch up in a bit.” Ranboo nods, and Tubbo drags him off to go play some carnival game he spotted. Tommy makes his way over to Wilbur and his posse.

Tommy shifts his movement when he gets closer, making sure that his footsteps can’t be heard (a useful skill to develop when you’re stealing food before your foster siblings can get to it and stashing it in any nook and cranny you can find in an unfamiliar house.) Niki makes eye contact with him and seems to catch on, if the small wink she gives him is any indication.

With a wild yell, Tommy flings himself onto Wilbur’s back. Wilbur lets out the most undignified scream he’s ever heard, spinning in circles to try to dislodge Tommy. Tommy, though, sticks onto his back like a leech, twisting his limbs around his brother.

“Tommy, you absolute raccoon gremlin,” Wilbur shrieks, “Get off me!”

“Nope,” Tommy singsongs, clutching on harder.

“Fundy, help me,” Wilbur beseeches, to which Fundy just shrugs.

“Sorry, man,” he says, clearly trying his best to contain a fit of laughter. Niki, for her part, has already descended into manic giggles. “Nothing I can do.”

Wilbur huffs, adjusting his hold on Tommy so that his arms are tucked under Tommy’s legs. “Toms, I thought you were with your friends? Was there a reason you had to come bother me?”

“Can’t I just miss my favorite brother?” Tommy pouts, and Wilbur’s expression visibly softens. Fundy snorts and rolls his eyes, and Niki smiles fondly with another giggle.

“He’s got quite the chokehold on you, Wil,” she says. “Tommy, would you care for a cookie? They’re not the freshest, I’m afraid, but they’re still quite good.”

“Yes, Tommy,” Wilbur says, “Take the cookie and leave the big kids to talk.”

Tommy huffs, but gladly dislodges himself from Wilbur to take the cookie that Niki offers him. The chocolate chips aren’t melting and the pastry doesn’t secrete warmth, but it still reminds him of that day with Tubbo, back when they were random strangers and things were simple.

Wilbur and his friends wave him off with varying levels of enthusiasm. Tommy heads further down the street, intending to find Tubbo and Ranboo, when he runs straight into a silk-clothed chest.

With an oomf, he glances up and is met with Techno’s crimson gaze. His brother blinks at him once, twice, and then says, “Oh.”

“Hey, mate,” Phil says, poking his head out from behind Techno. It’s funny, really, the way all three of Phil’s sons tower over him. “We were wondering where you’d got off to.”

“Weren’t you with Tubbo and Ranboo?” Techno asks.

“Saw Wil and wanted to mess with him,” Tommy says. “I told them to go on without me.”

“A respectable detour,” Techno says with a nod.

“Let’s get out of the middle of the street, shall we?” Phil says, and the three of them make their way over to a more secluded alley corner. “That’s better. Tommy, how’ve you been? Been having fun?”

“About as much as I can,” Tommy mutters. “That’s all I can really ask for, innit?”

Techno hums. “Hate to ruin the mood, but have you made your decision? You’re about out of time here.”

Tommy sighs, spine curling inward. “I mean- I mean, we have to try, right? I don’t know how I’d live with myself if Dream was telling the truth and we ignored it.”

“Hmm,” Phil says. “Well, at the very least, I agree with at least going tonight to hear him out. Maybe he’ll have more proof than he did last time.”

“We’re not throwing you out to the wolves here, Theseus,” Techno says, reaching over to ruffle his hair. “Whatever you choose, we’re with you. This isn’t just your decision.”

For someone who claims to be bad with people, Techno always seems to know exactly what to say to make Tommy feel better. Tommy leans into the hand in his hair, the icy press of Techno’s rings providing a feeling of comfort beyond what words could convey.

“Tommy!” Tommy turns in time to see Tubbo barrel into the alley, sporting an armful of things that he definitely did not purchase with his own money. Behind him, Ranboo trails in, arms tucked behind his back. “We’ve been looking for you! We brought presents.”

Tommy raises an eyebrow. “Presents?”

Tubbo nods. “Yep!” he says, dumping his pile of mismatched objects onto a table set out in front of a cafe situated on one side of the alley corner. He yanks the table closer to them, ignoring a shout of protest from the people actually eating at the cafe.

Tubbo begins sorting through his pile: an egregious amount of candy that Ranboo looks more enthusiastic about than he does, some odd bits and bobs, a toy duck that he tucks into his pocket with a satisfied smile, and, finally, a small stuffed cow. 

“I won him!” he says. “Or, well, Boo technically won him, but I won him spiritually. Anyway, you like cows, right? So he’s yours now!”
Tubbo shoves the toy into his arms. Tommy stares down at the thing, soft and knitted and warm. He feels, oddly, like crying.

“Thanks, Tubs,” he says.

“No problem, bossman,” Tubbo says. “You gotta name him, though! I got this guy,” he pulls the duck out of his pocket, “and his name is Benson. Full name Benson My Beloved.”

“Weird ass name,” Tommy says, but he glances down at the cow’s beaded eyes and says, “Henry.”

“That’s a good name,” Phil says, and Tommy’s ears flush a light pink at the reminder that his dad and brother are standing right behind him.

Tubbo hums. “Benson is superior, but I can see the appeal.” He turns to Ranboo, pushing him forward. “Boo has a present as well! Go on, give it.”
Ranboo looks very much like he’d be sheepishly scratching his neck if his hands weren’t full of… something. “Yeah, well… it’s not much, but I thought it looked nice, so…”

“Just spit it out, big man,” Tommy says, and Ranboo takes a deep breath behind pulling a vase out from behind his back.

“It’s called an allium,” he says. There’s only one flower in the vase, amethyst purple and shaped like a cottonball, although it’s large enough to stick all the way out of the vase. “It’s- I know it’s probably not going to last long, but… I don’t know. I thought you might like it.”

Tommy takes the vase from him, twisting it around in his hands. The flower bends lightly with the wind, purple fibers twisting together in the night air.

God, now he’s really going to cry.

“I don’t have anything to give you two,” he says, trying to blink the mist from his eyes.

Tubbo snorts. “We didn’t expect anything, stupid. That’s not how gifts work.”

“Well, yeah, but-”

A hand falls onto his shoulder. “I hate to interject,” Techno says, “But midnight is in two hours, and we still have to get to the portal. It’s now or never.”

Time doesn’t stop. Nobody ceases their breathing, no children stop laughing, no infants stop crying, and the world doesn’t stop spinning. Tommy clutches the cow and the flower closer to his chest, closes his eyes, and breathes. 

“Now or never,” he repeats, like a mantra, like a song, like a prayer. “Now or never. It ends tonight.”

Tubbo grabs his hand, folding their fingers together. “It ends tonight,” he says, and it sounds like a promise.

Chapter Text

“Dream,” Tommy greets, voice laced with steel. Next to him, Wilbur sets his hand on his shoulder, a comforting weight that Tommy leans into. 

Green eyes turn to meet blue. Dream’s mask is tucked against the side of his head, leaving his face, scar and all, on display. Tommy wonders briefly if it’s some kind of waxed poetic about reclaiming his identity or something, but he supposes it doesn’t really matter. “Theseus,” Dream responds, grin breaking out over his features. “It’s getting late. I was worried you wouldn’t show.”

Tommy clenches his fist. “I’m not here for you.”

“Wouldn’t ask you to be,” Dream says. “Although I think introductions may be in order? If we’re ending the world together, we all might as well know each other’s names first.”

The introductions must be for his own sake, because Tommy can recognize George’s ice-blue eyes and Sapnap’s dark hair even from across the midnight courtyard. He can also see the flickering gray boxes that proclaim them as real people. Regardless, the two introduce themselves, and then Tubbo and Ranboo step up.

“I’m… Ranboo,” Ranboo says, hands turning his small notebook over in his hands. “Um- Tom- uh, Theseus, says that I’m the protagonist? I’m not quite sure what that means, but…”

“Pleasure to meet you,” Dream says smoothly. “And your other friend?”

Tubbo brushes under Wilbur’s arm to step in front of Tommy. “I’m Tubbo,” he says simply.

Dream surveys him. “The protagonist and an NPC,” he says. “Curious company you keep, Theseus.”

“It’s none of your business,” Tommy snaps. “Are we going to do this, or what?”

Dream nods, immediately turning away from Tubbo. “The sooner the better,” he says. “Technoblade, Theseus, step over here, please. This won’t be difficult, and it shouldn’t hurt too much.”

Tommy glances at Techno. Their eyes meet, crimson and azure clashing like blades, like twin siren calls, and Techno nods. 

The two of them walk over to where Dream is. “Technoblade, get on your knees so that he can reach your forehead better,” Dream instructs. Techno gives him a you better not be fucking lying glare, but begrudgingly drops to his knees in front of Tommy. 

“Theseus, put your hands on his forehead,” Dream says. Tommy begins reaching for Techno, then stops. 

“Wait,” he says, and Dream raises an eyebrow. “If- If I do this, what happens to all of us?”

Dream hums. “Well, I don’t exactly know, of course,” he says. “I’m confident that it will release our souls from the code, at least. What happens from there is hard to say. Maybe we’ll get reincarnated again, maybe we’ll go to whatever afterlife exists. No matter what, it’ll be better than here.”

“What about- what about Ranboo and Tubbo?” Tommy asks, breath caught in his throat.

“The protagonist is difficult to say. It’s possible that they have a soul, but, based on the fact that they exist as a different entity in every round of the game, I think it’s more likely that they exist as a byproduct of the Universe or something similar, so it’s up in the air what happens to them. The NPC, at least, will definitely be destroyed along with the game.”

…

“No,” Tommy breathes, eyes wide and stomach sinking in horror.

Dream tilts his head. “You must have expected it,” he says. “Your friend- Tubbo, was it?- is just a creation of the game. He’s not a real person. When the game dies, he dies with it.”

Tommy jerks away from Techno. “You’re- you’re lying,” he says. “Tubbo can’t- he can’t-”

“Just ask him yourself, Theseus. He already knows.”

“No, that’s-” Tommy turns around to look at Tubbo, and stops dead in his tracks. His first friend, his best friend, is watching him with a small smile. “Tubs? Tubs, he’s lying, right?”

Tubbo, as Tommy watches his world burn, shakes his head. “He’s right, Tommy,” he says. “I’m just a background character. I wasn’t meant to be interacted with, and I definitely don’t have an actual soul.”

“You- what?” Ranboo says, voice hushed. “You knew about the game this whole time?”

Tubbo sighs. “I… kind of? I guess I never really thought about it, but I knew on an unconscious level.”

“You- you knew and you never said anything?” Tommy cries.

“I’m not like you, Tommy,” Tubbo says. “I don’t think the way you do. I know that I’m a background character in the same way that you know you’re a human, but don’t ever think about it. Would you go up to someone and tell them that you were a human?”

“And- and the part about you dying?” Tommy says, trying so, so hard to pretend like he doesn’t know what Tubbo’s answer is going to be. By Tubbo’s tiny, sad smile, he can tell that Tubbo knows that he already knows.

“I’m sorry, Tommy,” Tubbo says, and Tommy squeezes his eyes shut. “I wish it didn’t have to be this way. You were the best friend I’ve ever had.”

“Don’t,” Tommy chokes, hands coming up to grip at the sides of his head. “Please, please stop. I can’t- I can’t- I can’t lose you. I can’t.”

“You have to,” Tubbo says. He steps forward, reaching to gently grab Tommy’s hands. “You have to, Tommy. My life isn’t worth everyone’s here.”
“I don’t want you to die,” Tommy whispers. “You can’t want to die.”

“Of course I don’t,” Tubbo responds. “But this is bigger than me, Tommy. You can’t sacrifice everyone here for me. Consider this my final wish, if you want.”

“Don’t talk like that,” Tommy says, and he can feel the first trickle of tears carving a path down his cheeks. 

Tubbo hesitates for a moment, then unwinds a small length of green fabric that had been curled around his wrist. He pushes it into his hand, closing Tommy’s fingers around the bandanna. “There,” he says. “Something to remember me by, if it doesn’t get deleted with the rest of the game.”

“Tubbo, please,” Tommy says, and he can feel a tear drip off of his chin.

Tubbo grabs the sides of Tommy’s face, pulling them together until their foreheads meet. “It’s alright,” he murmurs. “It’ll be alright. You have to do this.”

“Are you sure?” Tommy says.

“Yes,” Tubbo responds, and Tommy closes his eyes and nods.

They separate, Tommy shoving the fabric into his pocket and turning back to Technoblade. He firmly avoids Ranboo’s gaze. Even if Tubbo is on death row, he has to believe that Ranboo will make it out alive.

Tommy won’t survive another goodbye.

Tommy takes a deep breath. “Hands on Techno’s forehead,” he repeats from earlier, and gently sets his palms on Techno’s temples.

Dream, who had been watching Tommy and Tubbo’s discussion with an unreadable expression, jerks his head a bit and turns to Tommy. “Focus,” he says. “You’ll feel it.”

Tommy nearly snaps at him for his stupidly vague instructions, but instead closes his eyes and tries to focus on the world around him. Sounds come into sharper focus, the ground becomes clearer under his feet, and- and what the hell is that buzzing noise?

It grates at his mind, a million nails on the world’s loudest chalkboard, and Tommy knows immediately that it’s what he’s looking for. He focuses on the sound, even as it feels like plunging his head directly into a garbage disposal.

“Yes,” he can hear Dream say, although it sounds like he’s saying it through water, “Yes. Keep going, you’ve almost got it.”

Tommy focuses harder, forehead creasing in effort. Forget garbage disposal, it feels more like shoving his entire body directly into the jaws of an industrial shredder. It takes everything in him, every scrap of pain tolerance he’s ever picked up, to refrain from flinging his hands from Techno’s forehead to grab at his own hair. 

His brain hums, it buzzes, it shrieks and cries and screams and screams . It’s just static noise at first, unidentifiable, but the longer and harder he focuses, he can begin to make out words. Just individual ones, at first, but then entire sentences, and soon he can understand everything he’s hearing.

“Yes!” Dream crows. Tommy’s eyes flutter open, and he is greeted by a large, semi-translucent text box floating before him.

[Access to GAME FILES requires level 1 clearance. Please enter password.]

“Password?” Tommy mutters. “What the fuck is the password, then?”

No one responds.

“Dream?”

A hand clamps on his shoulder.

“‘Fraid I can’t let you do that, bossman,” Tubbo says, and then Tommy’s best friend punches him in the face.

Now, don’t get him wrong, Tommy’s been punched before. But never this hard, and never after going through the mental equivalent of a meat grinder, and never by Tubbo.

He drops to the ground, hands reaching up to clutch at his nose, which has started gushing blood after making a very concerning crack. “Tubbo?” he cries, scampering away from Tubbo as the brunet reaches for Techno, who is sat shock-still, eyes gaping open and unblinking, seemingly not conscious. 

Tubbo doesn’t reply, instead lunging for Techno’s sword, when a pair of long arms wrap around his midsection and forcibly pull him back. Tubbo lets out a blood-curdling scream, nails scraping at Ranboo’s arms, and Tommy wants to cry.

“What’s happening?” he yells. “Why’s- why’s he doing that?”

Ranboo shakes his head. “I think we’ve got bigger problems,” he says, eyes locked on something over Tommy’s shoulder.

Tommy turns his head slowly, and his blood runs colder than ice as he realizes why the rest of the courtyard’s occupants hadn’t been there to stop Tubbo’s attack.

Standing atop the walls, scampering into the space like giant ants, is a monstrously large crowd- everyone from palace guards to civilians to child beggars clutching sticks picked up off the ground, all staring at Tommy with empty rage in their eyes.

It’s an army, haphazard and deadly. It’s an army that wants Tommy’s head on a pike.

“NPCs!” Dream yells, pulling his sword from its sheath in a swift, graceful motion. “The devs must have programmed them to stop anyone from entering the game’s files!”

“What the fuck do we do, then?” Wilbur yells back, slinging his bow off of his shoulder and into his hands, reaching back to knock an arrow. 

Dream snorts, audible even from a distance. “Fight like a goddamn bat out of hell!” he yells, and Phil, Sapnap, and George all pull their own weapons into their hands. “Keep them away from Theseus and Technoblade long enough for them to finish the job!”

“Doesn’t matter what we destroy, right?” Sapnap says.

Dream twirls his sword, pulling his mask down over his face. “Do what you must,” he snarls, and then all hell breaks loose.

The NPCs swarm the courtyard, a primordial flood of bloodthirsty peasants and weapons glinting in the light. Dream’s sword slams into that of one of the guards, Phil hits a dark-eyed teenager over the head with the butt of his weapon, Sapnap’s hands set alight as sparks dance in his eyes, and Wilbur and George loose twin arrows into the roiling crowd. 

“Tommy, get to Techno!” Ranboo yells, doing his best to drag a thrashing Tubbo away from them. “I’ll keep Tubbo off!”

“LET GO OF ME!” Tubbo screeches, and Tommy barely resists the urge to close his eyes against the feral roar from his best friend’s throat. It’s not him , his brain reassures, it’s not really him. It’s his programming. It’s the game’s fault. 

It’s all the game’s fault. Every bad thing, everything that’s gone wrong for him in this life, it’s all the fucking game’s fault. 

Tommy pushes himself up, once again grabbing the sides of Techno’s head. It takes a bit of work to access the files again, but not nearly as much as last time. 

[Access to GAME FILES requires level 1 clearance. Please enter password.]

“Dream!” he yells. “What’s the password?”

Dream skids near to him, sword glancing off a pitchfork before turning to kick a suit of armor to the ground. “ Crow,” he yells back. “All lowercase, no weird characters.”

[Access to GAME FILES requires level 1 clearance. Please enter password.]

[ * * * * ]

[Access granted.]

Tommy yelps at the onslaught of noise in his head, watching the box as folders and files begin to flood in. There’s- there’s a lot in there. Folders full of concept art, of the character sprites, the script, more than he could possibly wade his way through, so he hopes none of it is too important.

He takes a deep breath. He just- he just has to delete all of this, right? His eyes flick to the “select all” button.

[ERROR: access to certain selected files requires level 2 and 3 clearance. Please enter password.]

“Oh, fuck,” he mutters under his breath, because, really, anther password? What the fuck kind of game is this? Surely soul-capturing doesn’t need to be this fucking complicated. “Dream? I need another password.”

“One secon- duck!”

Tommy drops to the ground as an axe sails right over where his neck had been seconds previously. There’s a flash of Dream’s sword, and then the perpetrator falls dead at Tommy’s feet.

Tommy quickly glances away, unwilling to see the life drain from the man’s eyes. He has to end this. He has to, before anyone else gets hurt.

“Dream! Password!” he yells, ducking under an arrow. Dream shoves the person he’s fighting- a palace guard, Tommy’s pretty sure- to the ground and stamps on their stomach. 

“Afterlife,” he calls.

“These passwords suck ass, ” Tommy says, quickly typing it in.

[ * * * * * * * * * ]

[Access granted.]

Tommy breathes a sigh of relief, tangling his fingers in Techno’s hair, ready to do it-

[ERROR: access to certain selected files requires level 3 clearance. Please enter password.]

“Fuck!” he yells. “Dream, I need one more password!”

He’s not sure how Dream can even hear him, considering he can barely hear himself. The courtyard is alight with fire, the air nothing but a mess of smoke and arrow fire and screams. He can hear Ranboo yelling, can hear Tubbo shrieking, and he can hear Dream yelling, “It’s in full capital letters ! N, I, T, S, I, R, K!”

Tommy types the letters in, praying to every god he doesn’t believe in.

[Access granted.]

His breath lets out in a fell swoosh when no more pop-ups appear. Instead, a small check mark is next to every file. 

His eyes land on the “delete” button, the little trash can icon. This is it. This is the moment-

Wait.  

He scans through the folders as quickly as he can, eyes reading everything he can see faster than he knew possible. The world is a cacophony of noise. He’s nearly bowled over by a decapitated head, blood splattering all over his face, and it takes everything in him not to vomit on the spot.

“THESEUS? WHAT ARE YOU DOING?” Dream yells. “DELETE IT! WE CAN’T HOLD THIS MUCH LONGER!”
“I know, I know, I know,” Tommy whispers, flicking frantically through the files until- there.

The code flickers through his mind, and Tommy feels a few tears stream down his cheeks. Please, he thinks, please, if there’s any kind of god out there, please let that work. Please.

He closes out of the folder, back to the main page, and chooses [select all].

“Delete,” he says, “delete, delete, please, please fucking die."

[Do you want to delete ALL GAME FILES?]

[Yes.]           [No.]

He reaches for the “yes” button, but he doesn’t make it.

He doesn’t make it, because his throat tears open before he can reach.

He screams, feeling nails tear into the tender skin on his neck. He drops Techno’s head, instead scratching at the offending hands. He can feel the warm trickle of blood down his skin.

He barely managed to turn his head enough to catch a glimpse of unkempt brown hair before a pair of horns slams into his head. Another scream is wrenched from his throat as Tubbo slams his own head into Tommy’s, nails fully lodged in his neck.

Fuck, is he going to die again? Is he going to die like this, fingertips inches away from victory? Is he going to die with his best friend’s hands tearing his throat out?

“ Tubbo! ” he screams, his own desperate clawing getting more intense as Tubbo’s nails rake downwards, tearing the wounds wide open to spew blood down his neck. “ Stop! It hurts, it hurts, it hurts!”

“I WON’T LET YOU DELETE IT!” Tubbo screeches. “I CAN’T LET YOU-”

He stops. He stops, and when Tommy turns back to him, a trickle of blood slowly makes its way from his mouth down his chin.

Slowly, his hands dislodge themselves from Tommy’s neck to instead poke, almost curiously, at the sword poking out of his chest. The sword is abruptly yanked out through his back, and his eyes roll back into his head, and then he collapses onto the ground, gaze wide and unblinking.

“I’m sorry,” Ranboo says, blood-stained sword clutched in his hands. 

“Tubbo!” Tommy screams, dropping to his knees. “Tubs, please- please, you can’t- no, no, wake up, please, Tubs, please- don’t leave me-”

Tubbo doesn’t respond. Tubbo chokes around the blood in his mouth, hands grasping at the gaping hole in his chest. 

“It’ll be okay,” Tommy says, and his own tears drip down to mix with Tubbo’s blood. “You’ll be okay, Tubs. Don’t go to sleep, don’t- Puffy will heal you, you’ll- you’ll be okay-”

“Tommy,” Ranboo says, and he drops to one knee, sword lodging itself in the ground. “Tommy, get up. You have to end it.”

“Why?” Tommy cries, blue eyes meeting red and green. “Why would you do that? Why would you- why would you-”

“He was going to kill you,” Ranboo says. His eyes are sharp, and Tommy knows indistinctly that he’s speaking to the Protagonist. “Come on, Tommy. You have to make his sacrifice worth it?”

“You- you killed him,” Tommy says, tears streaming down his cheeks, a match to the blood on Tubbo’s. “You killed him, you killed our friend, you fucking monster-”

“T-my.” A hand wraps weakly around Tommy’s wrist, so delicately that Tommy fears grabbing it would shatter it like glass. Tubbo coughs, blood splattering from his lips onto the ground before him. “Tommy, don’t bl-me him. Please- please, j-st end it. I’d rather-” he coughs again, and Tommy tries in vain to wipe some of the blood off his chin.

Bang!

Every living person in the courtyard turns their gaze up to the sky, where red sparks are raining down in the distance. There’s another bang, and yellow follows, then green, and then the sky is a painting of colorful explosions.

“Th-t’s pretty,” Tubbo sighs. “I- I like fireworks.”

“Tommy,” Ranboo’s hand lands on his shoulder, and they meet eyes again. “Come on. It’s time.”

Tubbo makes a miniscule motion that serves as a nod, and Tommy squeezes his hand before standing up. His eyes track over the battlefield, now shadowed by the flashes of colorful light. His eyes briefly lock with Wilbur’s, who gives him a nod, and then Phil’s, who smiles at him.

He turns back to Ranboo. The fireworks paint galaxies in his eyes.

“This is goodbye for now,” Ranboo says, standing up with Tubbo clutched in his arms. “I’ll be watching over you from my place in the stars. We’ll meet again someday.”

Tubbo nods again. “Th-s- th-s isn’t the e-d,” he slurs. “You c-n’t get r-d of me th-t easily, b-ssm-n.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Tommy says, fingers reaching down to clutch the green bandanna in his pocket.

“A-d T-my?” Tubbo says, and when they lock eyes, he smiles. “Th-nk you for the cookie.”

The fireworks paint the sky. Blood paints the ground. The stars twinkle down at them, and, somewhere, a moon smiles.

[Do you want to delete ALL GAME FILES?]

[Yes.]           [No.]

“Goodbye, motherfuckers,” Tommy says.

And everything

is

gone.

Chapter Text

“I’m home!” Tommy yells, kicking his shoes off by the door. 

The stairs creak under his feet as he makes his way upstairs. The room closest to the stairs has a white-painted door with a drawing Tommy had made years ago taped to it. The drawing is terrible, nothing more than a scribbled skull and crossbones and an angry face alongside “KEEP OUT!!!!” written in chicken-scratch, but he’s never bothered to take it down.

He pushes it open, tossing his backpack onto the carpeted floor. He stretches his arms over his head, yawning as he collapses backwards onto his bed.

School was a bitch today. He got assigned to work with Purpled on his chemistry project, and, while Tommy’s got nothing against the guy, he’s not the most enthusiastic or encouraging person to work with. Plus, he locked eyes with the cute girl from AP Psychology and barely avoided tripping over his own feet, and then his pre-calc teacher assigned them extra homework.

Oh well. At least he had time to stop by Clay’s garage on the way home. The man still won’t let him work there, telling him he won’t hire him until he can legally drive there. It’s bullshit, because Tommy can fix cars way better than Clay ever could, but whenever he tries to argue this completely correct point, the man just rolls his eyes and ruffles his hair. 

George was there too, but Clay just held his finger to his mouth and slipped Tommy a handful of Jolly Ranchers. George always tries to make the case that Clay shouldn’t be sneaking Tommy sweets, and Clay responds that he deserves nice things after all he’s been through.

Tommy pops a cherry candy into his mouth and hums at the flavors that burst across his tongue. It’s funny, the way dying brings people together.

They don’t talk about it, usually. They’ve all spoken about it enough. They all have the memories, they all imagine a scar cutting through Clay’s face, and the name that Tommy used to have, and the two boys who will never breathe again.

It’s been sixteen years- longer, for some. They don’t bother to talk about it anymore.

Tommy’s teeth crunch into the candy. Fundy asked him to babysit his kid, and Techno’s got a fencing match tomorrow evening, so that’s his Saturday sorted. He’ll have to dedicate Sunday to homework. Bitch.

He groans, turning to bury his face in the plush duvet. Well, not quite so plush anymore- he’s had the same one since Phil first adopted him, eight-odd years ago. God, he still remembers that day. 

From the earliest moment he can remember, probably from birth, Tommy has remembered a world- two worlds- before this one. He remembers tears, laughter, and, most of all, he remembers names. Names of his friends, of his family.

From the moment he knew how, he looked them up online. Tubbo and Ranboo , unsurprisingly, yield no results, and Daylight Dream doesn’t seem to exist in any preserved records. Phil, Technoblade, and Wilbur Soot Watson, though, are much easier to find. 

Hey, fuckers , the message he sends Wilbur says, it’s Tommy.

The rest- well, the rest is history, clearly written in the way Tommy smiles like Phil and laughs like Wilbur and walks like Techno. It’s written in the smile lines on his face and the blue-painted walls of his bedroom and the family photos of four on the wall in the stairwell.

Tommy found his family, in this life and the last, and he’ll keep finding them, as long as it takes.

“Toms!” Wilbur appears in his doorway, leaning against the doorway. The fucker is so tall that his forehead rests against the white trim. “You’re home late.”

“Hung out with Clay and Gogy for a while,” Tommy says, pushing himself up to a sitting position. 

Wilbur snorts. “Let me guess, still no dice on the job?” At Tommy’s pout, he lets out one of his signature giggles, the ones that Tommy has started unconsciously mimicking. “He’s made his rules pretty clear, Toms. I don’t think continuously asking is going to work.”

“You don’t know that,” Tommy says, and Wilbur shrugs.

“Guess not,” he says. “But, hey, for the time being, it’s movie night. Your pick.” The last words are said with a pinched face, which is completely unfair, because Tommy has the best taste in movies.

“ Up,” he says confidently, and Wilbur groans.

“Just once,” he whines. “Just once, could you pick anything that isn’t Up?”

“It’s top tier cinema, big man,” Tommy says. “And it’s either that or you let Techno pick another shitty 80s slasher, so…”

“God, I hate this fucking family,” Wilbur says. “I’ll go make the popcorn, ungrateful child. I think Dad should be home soon, he said he was picking up some muffins from Niki’s bakery.”

Tommy nods. “I’ll be down in a minute,” he says. Wilbur gives him a two-fingered salute and turns away from Tommy’s door, the sound of his footsteps on the staircase echoing through the house moments later.

Tommy drags himself out of bed, groaning as his back cracks. His gaze turns briefly to the window, where the sun is nearly finished sinking under the horizon. The moon winks merrily at him through the glass.

His eyes, inevitably, then turn to the windowsill. There’s a shelf underneath it, displaying a well-loved stuffed cow next to a few novelty records that Phil had bought for him last Christmas. The guitar Wilbur gifted him for his fourteenth birthday leans against it. 

Above them, on the windowsill itself, is a green bandanna, folded delicately so as not to crease it. Resting atop it is a small flash drive, something made of higher tech than anything in this world. Phil is trying to make a program strong enough to support the AI, every file marked Tubbo_ that Tommy had managed to salvage during his foray into the game’s files. 

He hasn’t been successful yet, but Tommy believes in him. One day, he will speak to his best friend again, even if it’s just through a computer program.

Next to the flash drive and the bandanna is a glass vase containing a purple flower that will never wilt. Sometimes, when the moonlight reflects on the fibrous petals just right, Tommy can feel eyes on him, and he knows that Ranboo is watching over him, wherever he is.

Tommy lets his eyes linger on the window, on the moon hanging in the sky and the last vestiges of purple and red sunset disappearing into the night, on the allium swaying and the glint of the flash drive, and he smiles.

Tommy leaves the room and heads downstairs, shutting the door to the blue-painted room with the white-paneled door and the child’s drawing behind him.

His family is waiting. 

---

There’s a hum in the air, the distant cawing of crows, and it knows that She has arrived.

“You’re watching them again?” She says, humor in her voice even when she has no physical form. 

It shrugs, as much as one can do when they barely exist. “Can you blame me?” it says. “You’re the one that trapped us all together because you were bored of playing Death.”

Her laughter is tinkling, and it sounds like the wheels of a hearse. “You agreed to it, if I remember correctly,” She says.

“And if I remember correctly, that was before you told me I’d have to repeat the same week over and over again. Seems Death truly is a cruel mistress.”

She laughs again. “Please, be a little fair. I wrote myself into their backstories.”

“And you chose to give yourself a husband.”

“Sure. Isn’t he cute?”

It snorts. “Please never speak to me again.”

Neither of them have physical forms, but it still knows that She’d be flicking its ear if it had one. “I always forget how young you are. One day you’ll fall in love, and then you’ll understand.”

“If stealing a bunch of humans you like and sticking their souls into a twisted video game world is what love does, I’d prefer not to, actually.”

She sighs. “You’re such a spoilsport, you… ah, what is the name you go by these days?”

Technically speaking, it has no name. It isn’t something that truly exists, of course- none of the gods, whatever celestial beings they are, truly exist beyond the aether, certainly not to a degree which would bestow them names.

Still, though, they like to play pretend, and it has become quite partial to one name in particular.

“Ranboo,” it says. “These days, it’s Ranboo.”

She hums. “Nice to meet you, Ranboo,” She says. “These days, it’s Kristin.”

Together, they watch a blond boy wrestle a television remote from his midnight-eyed older brother. Their father shakes his head with a laugh, and the pink-haired son simply plucks the remote out of the youngest’s hands as he walks by.

“Quite a family, aren’t they?” Kristin muses. 

“Yes,” Ranboo replies. “Quite.”

Two gods watch a mortal family in silence, and they yearn, and they love. There have been a thousand years and there will be ten million more, and Ranboo does not think he’ll ever stop watching, even when age takes hold of them and they make their way into Kristin’s domain.

The void smiles softly, the stars twinkle, and the moon caresses his hand. 

The world spins on.