Archive of Our Own ^beta

His tattered boots slam against the earth, his blood thrums in his ears and pounds a war drum in his head, and all Tommy can hear is his and Wilbur’s breathing: short, panting gasps as they flee through the forest. The distant shouts of ‘this way!’ and ‘crossbows ready!’ filter in through the din, but he tries his fucking hardest not to listen, to just focus on darting around trees and keeping Wilbur in his sights, keeping Wilbur at his side, he has to stay with Wilbur, his brother is all he’s got, oh Prime above, L’Manburg has cast them out, his brother is all he’s got - 

He hears a bowstring release somewhere out in the woods, and suddenly, Wilbur - who has been running alongside him, just visible through the corner of his eye - is gone. 

Tommy comes to a screeching halt, boots sending up wood chips and flecks of dirt as he whirls around. He spots Wilbur in a heap on the ground a few feet behind him, just barely visible in the faint moonlight that slips past the thick woodland canopy. His eyes land on the shaft protruding from Wilbur’s back adorned in red, white, and blue fletching, and the sight of the L’Manburgian colors driving a crossbow bolt into the shoulder blade of one of its founding fathers - the founding father, as far as most are concerned - is enough to make Tommy’s lungs spasm in a choking, disbelieving gasp.

But a soft groan from Wilbur and approaching shouts are enough to pull Tommy out of his stupor. He scrambles to Wilbur’s side and drops to the ground beside him, forcing his hands under Wilbur’s shoulders and hauling him upwards. 

Wilbur stifles the worst of his discomfort behind a curt grunt, and he fumbles a resisting hand onto Tommy’s wrist. “No, Tommy… T-Toms - ” He cuts himself off with a pained groan - “you...you have t’go, they’re c-c-coming - “

“Not gonna happen, big man,” Tommy grits out as he drives a flat foot beneath himself and starts to lift them both up, taking the brunt of Wilbur’s weight onto his shoulders. His knees wobble from nerves and exhaustion, but he pushes through regardless. “C’mon, we gotta move.”

Wilbur releases a heavy breath and what sounds like an aborted whine, but he nods. Together, they stumble their way through the night-infested forest as soundless as hunted prey. 

It’s quiet in the ravine, and Tommy fucking hates it. Silence permeates every single nook and cranny of the place, making just about every little sound echo with maddening acuteness - a shift of fabric, a squeak of a boot, a sniff, a cough, a sigh. Over and over and over. Tommy is pretty sure he could shout at the walls and hold a full on conversation with himself like some fucking loony, talking to the distorted repetition of his own thoughts. Sure, it’s currently hiding them from Schlatt’s search party and offering shelter from the night mobs, so Tommy supposes that it’s not as bad as it could be, but Prime , this place sucks dicks. 

Wilbur isn’t really helping on the whole ‘this place is fucking creepy and I hate every second I’m in here’ front, either. Ever since they arrived, he’s been quiet. Too quiet. Quiet in a way that tells Tommy that he’s trying very, very hard to not make any noise as Tommy bandages his wound, that he’s in far more pain than he lets on. Any sounds he makes as a response to the bullshit medical treatment that Tommy is struggling through (look, first aid is fucking hard, okay?) are swallowed behind a gulp of a small regeneration potion that was fished out of Wilbur’s ender chest. 

And the silence - that fucking terrible, traitorous silence - leaves his mind to swirl the day’s events in his head like a soup gone wrong. Schlatt and Quackity won the election by a slim margin, and without skipping a beat, Schlatt drove them out - exiled them from their own country. They are currently on the run from essentially the whole of L’Manburg’s guard with no plan and all potential allies either turning on them or stuck behind those blackstone walls. Tubbo is stuck behind those blackstone walls. Is he alright? Did Schlatt hurt him? Oh-ho-ho, if that drunken motherfucker lays a single hand on Tubbo, Tommy is going to march right into the White House office and punch him in his dumb fucking mug so hard that his horns come flying off - fuck , he hopes Tubbo is alright. 

Tommy stews in his anger, bouncing his knee and muttering curses under his breath, as he finishes off the one-hundred percent not scuffed-as-hell bandage job over Wilbur’s crossbow bolt wound. Tommy opens his mouth to tell Wilbur it’s all finished, but the moment he pulls his hands away, Wilbur stands from where they’d been seated on a little elevated portion of stone and paces away a few steps. He comes to a halt a moment later, his back to Tommy as he stares out at seemingly nothing. In his hand, he clutches the now empty regen potion bottle, a finger tapping rapidly on the cloudy glass.

The tapping stops. Wilbur goes rigid as a board. 

…Then, he spins around and fucking hurls the empty bottle at a wall with a shout, quite literally shattering the wire-tight silence of the ravine. 

(Tommy doesn’t flinch. He doesn’t.)

The deafening quiet that follows is punctuated by Wilbur’s labored breathing, chest heaving like he hasn’t tasted air in years, stuttering each time the stretch of his muscles catches on his fresh wound.

Tommy doesn’t think he’s seen Wilbur lose his cool like this since - well, since that bastard Eret showed their true colors. Wilbur doesn’t come undone easily, it’s simply not like him. Calm and collected is what he shows to everyone, and while Tommy knows him well enough to understand that it’s often a mask that he wears, it doesn’t change the fact that Wilbur still tries to keep face around him , his own brother.

But he loses it, on occasion. And this is one of those occasions. (Fucking hell, this really is the Control Room all over again, isn’t it? Just when they think that everything is going to be alright, some grinning dickhead comes crashing through like a meteor strike and blasts their hopes to kingdom come.) 

Wilbur draws in one last breath, shoulders rising and sagging with the motion. Though his back is still to Tommy, he sees in the slight twitch of Wilbur’s head that his brother has cast a glance at the freshly scratched wall where bits of glass lay exploded on the ground below. He brings his hand - the same one that hurled the bottle - and wrings it over the back of his neck, fingernails worrying at the hairs of his nape. 

The hand slides off a moment later. “...He has no right to do that.”

Tommy blinks, not having expected Wilbur to speak after how quiet he’s been for the past…however long they’ve been holed up down here. (Prime, time is fucking fake when you’re underground.) “What?”

“Schlatt. He has no right to do that, to - to cast us out of L’Manburg like we’re nothing.” Wilbur barely turns around, though his rusty brown eyes flicker towards him. “Tommy, you and I are the founders of that nation. We fought and killed and bled for L’Manburg, raised that flag with our own two hands. Were it not for us, that place wouldn’t even fucking exist! And then that ram ,” Wilbur continues, gesticulating with his one unaffected arm as he paces to the side, “all high and mighty comes along and kicks us to the curb like we’re unwanted guests. In the few hours he’s been president, he’s already undermined - no, tainted L’Manburg’s ideals! He’s trampling our legacy as we speak!”

Wilbur runs a hand through his wind-swept curls, lets a burdened breath slip past his lips. “Niki is still there, and so is Tubbo and Jack and - gods, Fundy, my son. They’re all stuck there with that bastard at the helm.”

“...Schlatt is going to run our country into the ground, Tommy,” Wilbur realizes with a beat of silence. He turns a little more, and in the faint flicker of their singular lantern, the shadows cast upon his expression look more haunted than Tommy thinks he’s ever seen them, even after all they went through during the war. “He’s steering our nation towards destruction while all our friends, our family is still there…”

“We have to do something,” Tommy provides, standing. He keeps his voice firm and his stance sure-footed, doing what he can to drown out the feeble tint to Wilbur’s words because Wilbur is never feeble, it is not in his nature to be feeble. He is confident and square-shouldered and wields words with deadly precision. 

Wilbur, at last, turns wholly towards him, and Tommy tries his hardest not to think about how small his brother looks without his L’Manburgian coat on, torso bare and chest swathed in sloppy bandages. Instead, he looks at the way Wilbur tilts his chin up to match Tommy’s resolve. “You’re right, Tommy.”

“Of course I am, I’m always right,” Tommy snarks back.

Wilbur chuckles before he continues, “We can’t sit around and let Schlatt nullify our life’s work. I say…if Schlatt is so hellbent on taking L’Manburg from us, then we have to take it right back. Reclaim it before he can warp our ideals anymore than he already has. We’ll gather whatever supplies we’ve got, get into contact with potential allies on the inside, build a resistance.” Determination worms its way onto Wilbur’s face in the form of a grin. “I’ve built a nation once, I’ll fucking do it again!”

Though his expression softens a second later, Tommy can still see that telltale fire in his eyes: the very same spark that gave birth to L’Manburg, the flames that ravaged Dream’s forces time and time again. “Tommy… I know things look grim right now - “

“It’s fucking shit, is what it is,” corrects Tommy, folding his arms. 

Wilbur snorts. “Yeah, it is. But as shit as they might seem, I’ve got grit and half a plan on my side. Only thing is…”

He takes a few steps forward, closing the gap between them like the little rift was never there. Then, he lifts a hand to Tommy. 

“…Are you with me? And before you jump to answer,” he adds, just as Tommy opens his mouth, “just know that this won’t be easy by any means. We’ve got far more enemies than friends this time, Toms. We’re being hunted as we speak.” He falters before he continues, “I’ll…understand if this isn’t a war you’re willing to fight.”

But Tommy doesn’t hesitate. He doesn’t give himself the option to. The moment Wilbur is done saying his piece, he takes his brother’s outstretched hand tight, as if he can squeeze the so un-Wilbur-like doubt out of him.

“Wilbur,” he says, “L’Manburg is my home just as much as it is yours. You don’t have to ask me twice if I want to take back L’Manburg, of fucking course I want to take back L’Manburg. 

“No matter what, you’ll always have me, big man. For better or worse.”

Wilbur takes a moment to let Tommy’s words settle before something like a teasing smirk pulls his lips. “‘For better or worse’?” he echoes. “I’m asking you if you want to stage a revolution, Toms, not if you wanna get fucking married.”

“Then the hell do y’want me to say?!” Tommy squawks. 

“Well, I believe the next line is ‘in sickness and in health’ - “

“Oh fuck off, I’m trying to be serious!” he complains, letting his hand drop as Wilbur laughs (giggles, more like - the prick). 

“Alright, alright,” Wilbur sing-songs with a welcoming twirl of his wrist. “Come on, then, Mister Serious, say your bit.”

“But you’ve ruined the moment, Wil - ”

“No no, I want to hear this.”

“Well, now you don’t get to. Tough fuckin’ luck, bitch.”

“Prick.”

“Moron.”

“Child - ”

“Hey!!”

Wilbur, still chuckling, just throws his good arm over Tommy’s shoulders and draws him into a casual sideways hug. Together, they stare up at the tall, narrow ceiling of the ravine, and Tommy finds himself imagining low-flickering lanterns dangling from iron chains, little hidey holes and ledges stacked with chests of supplies, secret underground tunnels leading into enemy territory.

“We’re gonna do this, Toms,” Wilbur vows. “We’re gonna take L’Manburg back before Schlatt can fuck it up any more than he already has.” He looks at Tommy, his wicked grin as inviting as an embrace. “Are you ready?”

“So fucking ready,” Tommy answers immediately, giving his brother a grin of his own as sparks of hope catch on Wilbur’s words. Being careful as to not exacerbate the injury, Tommy slings his arm around Wilbur’s lower back. “I’m all in.”

“Wilbur, just - just listen to yourself, you’ve gone fucking mental!”

Tommy races after his brother as they descend into Pogtopia, trailing a hand along the wall to keep himself from slipping. Wilbur, meanwhile, trots down the stairs like he has no fucks to give. 

“Seriously, blowing up L’Manburg? And with Dream’s help? He’s unhinged , Wilbur, you’ve said so yourself! Fucking hell, you went to war against him just a year ago! Just think for one goddamn second - ”

“No,” Wilbur snaps, whirling around on him as they arrive at the bottom of the ravine, “ you think for a second, Tommy. You think about that administration, democratically elected - we weren’t kicked out, we were voted out! They didn’t want us anymore, we’re ‘unneeded’, ‘obsolete’.”

He lifts the hand clutching the bag of gifted gunpowder and extends a finger towards the southern wall. “That place past the forest and over those hills? That’s no longer L’Manburg, and not just because of the stupid fucking name change. The L’Manburg - the country , the beating heart you and I built doesn’t exist anymore, don’t you see?”

“Then what about Tubbo?” Tommy cuts in, stepping off the foot of the stairs. “And Niki? And Jack? They’re all still in there! They still believe in us, Wil, we can’t just give up on them now!”

Wilbur tips his head back in a groan and ambles away, arm dropping to his side. He lets the bag clutched in his white-knuckle grasp bounce against his leg like it doesn’t hold enough gunpowder to blast him to oblivion. “Oh, do you ever fucking listen to me? There’s nothing - no one - left to give up on.” He tosses the bag among their other supplies. “They’re all either traitors or soon-to-be back-stabbers.”

Tommy bristles, the memory of Tubbo stumbling into Pogtopia late last night to give them the latest intel on the Schlatt administration - enduring the dictator’s bouts of alcoholic rage as an abused secretary just to gather bits and pieces of information for their ragtag revolution - fresh in his mind. “You don’t know that,” he growls. “You can’t say that - you have no fucking right to say that, Wilbur.”

Wilbur gives a chuckle, low like a distant rumble of thunder. “I can, and I will - you know why?” He turns around then and stalks towards Tommy, boots clicking against the stone. The sound bounces around in the lurking silence of the ravine. Tommy takes a step back in response. “Because it’s the truth, Toms. That fucking ram turned my own son against me. No one over there knows the meaning of loyalty anymore.”

He presses forward once more, and Tommy takes yet another step back, heart beginning to gallop in his chest at the sight of the all-consuming wildfire in Wilbur’s eyes. “L’Manburg is gone. It doesn’t matter if we take it back or not. We’ve lost and Schlatt knows it, he knows we’ve lost.” 

A grin splits his face, too much, too wide, too many teeth. The ice cold walls of Pogtopia press into Tommy, sapping the warmth from his back through his tattered shirt. 

“But now,” Wilbur carries on with far too much glee - too much too much too much, Tommy can barely stand it - “we have a man on our side who can rig that…that mockery of our sacrifices with TNT. We can kill them all, Tommy, turn the whole place to ash, burn those two-faced bastards. 

“That ‘nation’ parades around with our legacy, but it’s rotten at its core. You know what it is? It’s a lie, it’s all an elaborate lie. Our so-called ‘allies’ stand beneath that bastardized flag knowing full well their every breath within those borders is a betrayal, and yet they remain.”

Tommy glowers at the implications of Wilbur’s words, and his brother scrutinizes him. 

“…It’s Tubbo, isn’t it?” 

Tommy’s glare melts away, leaving him feeling very exposed and very cold. How did he - ?

“It is ,” Wilbur murmurs, like it’s a cute little secret, and that grin returns. “‘Oh, but what about Tubbo, Wilbur, what about Tubbo - ’ you really are a naïve, tiny fucking child .” He spits the last word like a curse. (Tommy doesn’t flinch. He doesn’t , he doesn’t - ) “It’s all horseshit, Toms. He’s lying to us, he’s lying to you .” 

He isn’t - 

“He doesn’t care about our cause like we do.” 

He does - 

“Good gods, he will drop us the second he finds out we aren’t in the lead anymore - !”

No he won’t, HE WON'T, WILBUR, STOP STOP -  

“ STOP IT! ”

Tommy doesn’t register that he’s punched Wilbur until his vision finally clears of red and he sees his brother with his back against the opposite wall a couple paces away, one hand cradling his jaw and the other pressed to the surface behind him. Wilbur blinks at the ground with wide eyes, wildfires reduced to billows of ashy smoke. He scarcely seems to breathe.

Tommy finds himself struggling for air too. The ravine is suffocating on the best of days, and his heart being in his throat sure as hell isn’t helping things.

A moment later, Tommy manages to draw in a full breath. “You… You need to fucking cool it, Wilbur,” he says. “Just - actually listen to yourself. Do you even realize how delusional you sound right now?”

“I-I,” Wilbur starts - his voice cracks miserably - but Tommy doesn’t let him finish: “I know the whole situation is shit, but you can’t lose sight of it all, man. You’ve gotta keep it together because…”

A breath rattles out of him, and it sounds exhausted even to his own ears.

“...because what’s the point...if you’ve lost all hope?”

The invasive silence settles between them like a wedge shoved under a door. Thoughts echo noiselessly as the seconds tick by, and Tommy can’t be bothered to make sense of them.

Eventually, the sound of shifting fabric - deafening in this gods-awful quiet - brings him back to the present. He looks up in time to see Wilbur slide down onto the floor, back pressed to the wall, arms propped up on his knees, head hung between his elbows. His brick brown trench coat spills around him, fraying ends reaching for his bootheels. His hair is an unkempt mess atop his head, draped over his eyes.

Tommy swallows. Not because his mouth is dry. Not because there’s a lump rising in his throat. Not because something feels...feels like that bottle Wilbur hurled into the wall during their first night here. Shattered into a million tiny pieces. Broken.

Because everything is fine. (It’s not. It’s really, really not.)

“Wilbur,” Tommy begins with a sigh, stepping away from his spot against his own wall. “This plan of yours is...well, I’ve said it before, it’s fucking mental.” He crouches and ducks his head in the hopes of catching Wilbur’s eye from behind his bangs; he doesn’t quite hit the mark. “But if you think that rigging L’Manburg with TNT - not blowing it up but rigging it with TNT will give us an upper hand, then - then - look at me, Wil.”

Jerkily, Wilbur lifts his head, and Tommy sees purple bruises pressed beneath drained eyes and sunken cheeks and a ghostly pallor. He sees the face of a man who has lost his home, his son, his position. He sees his brother’s gaze fragmented, hazy - marooned in his own mind. Alone.

Tommy’s heart twists painfully at the sight. His brother is not supposed to look like that.

“...Then I’ll go through with it.” 

Tommy forces a hand into one of Wilbur’s limp ones, tries to squeeze that defeat out of him. 

“I’m all in, remember? You can trust me. I’m not leaving you.”

He leans forward and tucks himself under Wilbur’s chin, pushes his arms around his back. He settles a hand on the spot where he knows Wilbur’s old crossbow bolt scar lies and presses his ear to Wilbur’s chest, listening to the weary thrum of his heart. (Maybe if he breathes the right way, their chests will beat in sync again.)

And as Wilbur returns the embrace with trembling hands, Tommy repeats the single remaining truth between them.

“I’m not leaving you. I’m not leaving you. I’m all in , Wil, I’m not leaving you...”

“On that note, let the Festival begin!”

It’s chaos within seconds. Wilbur has run off to go press that stupid fucking button and Tommy is chasing after him, doing all that he can to get his brother to stop and actually think about this for a minute. And then Schlatt is chuckling over the PA system, demanding that walls be erected around the center podium where Tubbo stands. And then Technoblade is being summoned up to the stage, and Schlatt is throwing around accusations of espionage and treason, and he’s stepping aside, and Technoblade is loading up his crossbow, and the weapon is being leveled at Tubbo, and - 

A flash, a boom, a scream drowned out by festival rockets and fire -

Tommy chucks a pearl before he can even think and darts across the stage, shoving past Quackity to get to the box at the center. The iron bars have been blasted through, and there he sees blood and soot and glassy eyes and red, white, and blue - 

A cloven fist comes around and socks him in the face. Tommy blinks up through the unbidden tears, and there is Technoblade, towering over him like the absolute fucking unit he is. He can see the ash still sprinkled in the warrior’s mane from the Festival.

Tommy runs the side of his hand under his blood-gushing nose and pushes himself off the cobblestone floor, planting his feet firm on the ground as he throws a wide, arcing swing. It’s easily sidestepped and caught by an iron-clad grip, and he’s thrown against a wall, slamming the air out of his lungs. Before he can even consider moving, a hand fists into the collar of his worn shirt and lifts him off the ground, and he’s flailing his legs, and he’s clawing at the red-splattered tunic sleeve, and another fist is coming around, and

it all

goes 

dark. 

...Tommy comes to an unknown amount of time later, but what he does know is that his head is ringing and his face is throbbing . “Oh, f’ckn’ ‘ell…”

“Try not to move,” a gentle voice urges, muffled by the cotton Tommy is convinced is stuffed in his ears. “You’ll only make it worse.” Dainty, smooth fingers settle on either side of his nose. “Now, deep breath.”

Tommy blinks slowly, eyes refusing to focus. “Wha’?”

“Deep breath, Tommy.”

“Now why shoul’ I do tha’ - ?”

The fingers twist , something crunches, and white hot fire explodes over his face. “ Guh - OW! The fuck was that for?!”

“Just resetting your nose. Techno offset it when he punched you earlier. Didn’t want it to heal wrong and have to rebreak it later.”

When Tommy blinks his eyes open this time, he can see that it’s Niki crouched in front of him. Her hair has been pulled up into a messy bun and she looks like she just took a tumble through a campfire, but otherwise, she seems okay. Ish.

...Look, no one has been fairing all too well lately, so it’s a fucking miracle that Niki has managed to look marginally put together. 

She hands him a watery potion of healing and starts to wind bandages around his wounds. Niki explains that he was knocked out during his fight with Technoblade (“Does that mean I lost?” “Yes.” “Bullshit, I don’t believe it.”) and has been unconscious for about half an hour now. She’d already checked him for a concussion but thankfully found no symptoms.

Then she mentions, off-hand, that Tubbo respawned while he was out and that Wilbur is looking after him in their makeshift infirmary, and Tommy is on his feet in a heartbeat, even as Niki is in the middle of wrapping gauze around his bloody knuckles. She orders him to sit back down and let her finish, but there’s no heat in it. She knows better than to try to stop him as he hurries through the twisting corridors of Pogtopia, tripping and stumbling but desperate to get to his friend all the same.

When he finally arrives at the infirmary, he spots the back of Wilbur standing in the threshold, hunched inward as he talks sotto voce with none other than Technoblade.

Tommy feels anger - sharp as ever even though he and the Blade had ‘settled’ their dispute in the Pit - curl like a fanged serpent in his gut. Hands clutched at his sides, he clears his throat: “A- hem .”

Wilbur and Technoblade turn around.

And Tommy stares lethal, soul-seeking daggers into the warrior’s eyes, hoping the seething hatred in his glare hurts him just as much as the sense of betrayal that burns bright in Tommy’s own chest.

If Technoblade is startled or afraid or guilty or experiencing any human emotion, good fucking Prime, he doesn’t show it. All Tommy gets in response is a hogish snort and a slight incline of his head, whatever the fuck that’s supposed to mean. Then, Technoblade leaves, striding past Tommy as the lacklustre clack of his hooves echo his indifference down the corridor.

So all who remains is Wilbur. He’s still wearing his trench coat (like he ever takes it off, the fucking nutter) and Tommy can see light splashes of soot across his once-white shirt from the chaos of the Festival. More of it is smeared on his cheeks, and Tommy elects not to think about how he can scarcely recall a time where Wilbur had a face clean of ash or gunpowder. 

When their eyes meet - baby blues finding their way to rusty reds, just as they always do - Wilbur cracks a mirthless smile. “You look like shit.”

“Yeah, well, you’re not exactly easy on the eyes either, big man,” Tommy retorts in a mutter. He shoves past Wilbur. “Now let me through, I need to see - ”

The rest of his words die in his throat at the sight laid out on the infirmary cot in the back corner. Tubbo, laid out on his back, is utterly covered in bandages, like he’d tried to mummify himself and failed miserably. His hair is singed at every end, his ram ears burned of nearly all their wool, leaving pinkish, raw flesh exposed. Of what Tommy can see around the layers upon layers of bandage, his skin is marred with blasts of scar tissue lightly tinted with hues of red, white, and blue. 

And he’s pale. So, so pale. Tommy thinks he’s seen sheets of paper with more color than him. The only thing to suggest that he’s alive is the slow, shallow rise and fall of his wrapped chest. The IV dripping diluted regen potion into his veins is probably the only thing keeping him from - 

A hand settles on Tommy’s shoulder; he does his best not to flinch. “Respawn took the brunt of it,” Wilbur murmurs beside him, “but he’s still in pretty rough shape regardless.”

“No fucking shit,” breathes Tommy, eyes never leaving his friend’s slumbering form. He staggers forward, legs moving of their own volition to carry him to the bedside. His knees bring him down so he can look at Tubbo more clearly. For all the medical tape slapped across his face, he looks...peaceful, almost. Like he’s really just sleeping. Like he’s not clinging to his last life after a very, very violent death. It’s easier to imagine if Tommy ignores the slight whistling stutter to his every inhale.

Tommy reaches out with a shaky hand to take Tubbo’s own, thinks better of it - you shouldn’t touch bandages unless you have clean hands, and his are still stained with blood - and instead lets it rest on the sheets beside Tubbo’s arm. He taps the thin, scratchy fabric with a finger, just in case Tubbo can hear it. He wants his friend to know that he’s here but can’t seem to find his voice. 

The thought makes him grin sardonically. Tommy Innit, speechless . Someone call the fucking press. 

But he doesn’t need words, oh no. In fact, there are no words to describe the feeling of the venomous serpent coiled in the pit of his gut that’s yet to unwind since the Blade left the infirmary, since the chaos of the Festival, since Schlatt grabbed the mic out of Tubbo’s hand and redirected the festivities. It seeps into his veins like a poison, runs under his skin like a firework fuse. His fingers have stopped their tapping and have instead curled into the bedsheets like he can squeeze squeeze squeeze the tremble out of them, jaw taut with the pressure. The daggers in his gaze have betrayed him, hot pin pricks in his eyes that threaten to sear his cheeks on the way down.

He wants to cry and he wants to scream and he wants to punch someone and he wants to rip his hair out and he wants to hold Tubbo so tight that neither of them ever has to be alone again and he wants he wants -

He doesn’t know what he wants.

Tommy feels more than hears Wilbur shift and crouch next to him, filling the void beside him that has been more like a gaping wound as of late. Once more, a hand rests on Tommy’s shoulder.

“You’re still angry.”

Wilbur makes it all sound so simple when he says it like that. Rest assured, the jumble in Tommy’s head seems infinitely far from simple. Calling it simple is like trying to draw a connection from fish to...fucking blazes or something, he doesn’t know.

But Wilbur’s right. (He sounds right. Tommy’s pretty certain he’s right.)

“You’re still angry,” Wilbur repeats, “even after you got to settle your score with Techno.”

“More like, ‘after I let myself get ground to a pulp,’” Tommy grumbles in reply, scratching idly at the bandages around his knuckles. 

Wilbur makes a dissatisfied sound in the back of his throat. “Techno got carried away, is what happened. I asked you guys to let out your aggression towards each other, not fucking kill each other. Gods - when he clocked you in the head and you went limp, I thought that was it.”

The realization that he could have died in the Pit - could have lost his last life at the hands of the Blade - sends a small chill down his spine. 

The coiled serpent in his stomach doesn’t loosen, though.

“... Are you still angry with Technoblade?” Wilbur questions.

He wants to say yes, but it gets caught in his throat, muddled by his disconnected thoughts and barred by truth. He releases it as a sigh. “I don’t know, Wil.”

“Then you’re not. You would know if you were.”

“Would I?”

“ I think so.” The hand on his shoulder runs down to his back. Tommy knows it’s meant to be familiar and comforting, though it just feels a little...a little like Wilbur put his hand too far to the right. “...But you’re still angry, Toms, I can tell. You’re angry about this .” Wilbur motions to Tubbo’s slumbering form. 

For a second, all he can hear is the soft wheeze of Tubbo’s breath and the drip-drop of the IV, amplified in Pogtopia’s typical near-silence.

“You need someone to blame,” Wilbur continues softly, “someone to pay for the damages and the bloodshed. Someone’s neck to wring out, someone’s nose to bash in. Someone to feel the same pain you’re feeling right now. That right?”

Yes, hisses the serpent in his gut. Yes yes yes yesyesyesyesyes - 

“Someone has to pay,” Tommy agrees. 

“Someone has to pay,” echoes Wilbur. “So that’s what I’m trying to do. I’m trying to make them pay, hold Manburg accountable for what they’ve done. Tommy - ” He turns his head, and Tommy’s gaze gravitates towards his like magnets - “you know the ideals that we founded L’Manburg on. You know that I never - ever - would have let this happen under my administration. Not in a million years.”

And part of Tommy - some quiet, traitorous, shit little part of him that quakes in its boots at the sight of the ravenous inferno that has made its home in Wilbur’s eyes - murmurs that it’s a lie, even if neither of them know it (even if both of them know it).

Wilbur leans in, crowding out his thoughts. “That,” he whispers, chillingly reverent, “ that is why it has to go. Because of atrocities like this. ”

Tommy draws in a breath (a shakey, pitiful breath) and suddenly looking at Tubbo is leagues easier than meeting his own brother’s gaze.

“Hey,” Wilbur soothes. The hand on Tommy’s back rubs up and down (it feels like a lie, it feels like a lie - ). “All in, right?”

He...hesitates. (Grapples with it. Grabs the traitorous voice in the back of his head and wrestles it to the ground, gags it.) 

(It doesn’t matter if he’s getting cold feet; he’s in too deep to back out now.)

“All in,” he says, lips numb and heart denying the truth. 

It was a tenuous agreement to begin with, in hindsight: if they don’t successfully take back L’Manburg, Wilbur blows the place sky high. Great fucking plan, Tommy Innit, that can’t backfire at all.

But he isn’t thinking about the agreement when he and Pogtopia’s allies scale the tower and rain fire down upon Schlatt and Dream’s forces. And he isn’t thinking about the agreement as he and his friends rush the enemies on the ground. No, instead he’s throwing himself into the conflict, sword cutting wide, lethal arcs at battered netherite. He embodies what the Blade has taught him, and as much as he despises the warrior, it works: as a collective unit, they’re pushing Manburg back. 

And in the end, Dream surrenders, Schlatt dies of a fucking heart attack before anyone even gets the chance to put a crossbow bolt between his eyes, and Manburg - now restored to L’Manburg - is liberated. 

They’ve...they’ve done it! They’ve won! And Prime, Wilbur looks at Tommy like he’s the sun after centuries of darkness, and Tommy swells with pride. He’s saved his home from destruction on two fronts. He’s given it his all and made Wilbur proud! For once, their hopes and dreams rise and aren’t blasted to kingdom come - they are meant to be!

...

...Then how did it come to this?

The waves of confusion spinning Tommy’s mind in a tizzy are almost as disorienting as the ringing in his ears and the pounding in his head. He hacks on soot and smoke as he pushes himself off his back and stands, swaying violently like the ground has turned into the sea beneath his feet. Copper and iron coats his tongue, bitter as ash, as something warm dribbles down the side of his head. 

What’s happened? What the fuck is going on? Where’s Tubbo, where’s Niki, where’s…?

Oh.

Oh, no.  

Fifty meters down the field, there is a crater bored into the earth. Fifty meters down the field, roaring flames consume the blasted wooden posts and damned black-red banners with an unholy hunger. Fifty meters down the field, Tommy’s heart has been ripped from his chest and all that remains is a gaping hole where L’Manburg once stood.

And from fifty meters down the field comes a shout. 

“MY L’MANBURG, PHIL!”

And it gouges the raw flesh of Tommy’s chest.

“MY UNFINISHED SYMPHONY, FOREVER UNFINISHED!”

And it belts a madman’s victorious melody, a lament. 

“IF I CAN’T HAVE IT, NO ONE CAN! ”

And all Tommy has ever defended, ever loved, is consigned to oblivion. 

They cremate him, in the end, trenchcoat and all. You could call it poetic, if you wanted to, say that it’s fitting since all he wanted in the end was to be consumed by the very same flames that consumed his once-magnum opus. In reality, it’s just a means of not having to deal with a body, not having to put special protective charms over his corpse so that he won’t raise with the dead come nightfall. That’s far more effort than anyone is willing to put in, not after the events of the day. 

So they turn him to ash, scatter it over the ‘button room’, and seal it up: the perfect tomb for a far-from-perfect man. 

There is supposed to be a service today, but Techno is nowhere to be seen (and good riddance), Phil is too wrapped up in his own grief to do much of anything, Fundy scoffed at the invitation when he received it, and Tubbo is busy helping everyone else erect temporary homes and treat wounds from the battle. 

Therefore, it’s just Tommy left standing at the freshly sealed wall with a colorful bouquet of hydrangeas that he picked that morning clutched at his side. 

Tommy had expected to have thought of something to say by now, but as he awkwardly shifts from foot-to-foot in front of Wilbur’s slipshod memorial, the words don’t come out. There are no words - nothing that hasn’t already been said, anyway. 

So Tommy stands there, and the breeze coming off the mountains ruffles his hair, and he’s pretty sure the hydrangeas are wilting but he can’t be fucked to get them any water. 

Eventually, he heaves a sigh. “Alright, Wil.” He ambles over, drops the flowers at the foot of what had once been a hidden door, and takes a step back. “It was nice knowing you. I think. Prime, you’re a bitch.”

He pauses, though he’s not entirely sure why. 

...It takes him a moment to realize he’s waiting for a retort, and he runs a hand down his face. “Oh- kay! I’m leaving. See you never.”

He turns and walks away. 

Or he tries to, at least, but his feet won’t move. Something has grabbed him by the ankles and rooted him to the spot just in front of the wall where the name ‘WILBUR SOOT MINECRAFT’ can stare him in the face. 

His eyes burn at the memory of billowing smoke and his throat aches with words unsaid. 

Tommy swallows. Hard. 

Then, he draws in a shaky breath.

“...I gave you all, Wilbur,” he swears, because it’s the single truth remaining between them. Because it’s the single thing that keeps him up at night, swirled in the miasma of how could this happen? What went wrong? Did I do something wrong? Was I not enough? Was I not enough?  

Tommy lifts a hand, taps his fingers to the name engraved in the stone, closes his eyes, and tries to imagine his brother’s smile, warm and true. I gave you all.