Chapter Text
There are no flowers in Tommy’s lungs. There have never been, and there will never be.
You’d think this would be reassuring. You’d think this would be a fact that brings him more joy than anything in the entire world, but it does the exact opposite. It instills a kind of dread in him that he won’t be rid of no matter how hard he tries. It keeps him up at night and brings poisonous tears to his eyes, but no matter how much he may wish for it, no flowers sprout in his lungs.
They love him. Every single person he loves with his entire heart loves him back. That’s supposed to be good. It’s supposed to be the happiest, sweetest feeling in the entire world.
But it’s not.
Because that means that this meaningless existence is reciprocated love. That means that each moment he spends alone is also spent being loved by the people he loves most, even as they ignore him. Even as they belittle him, manipulate him, attack him, abuse him.
He knows he shouldn’t love them, but he also knows he does. His loyalty, once won, is hardly ever lost. No matter where he goes, no matter what choices he makes, his love is hard-won and even harder lost. He loves with every piece of him; every ounce of his very soul poured into loving in ways he wishes he could be loved back. In ways he thinks nobody should love him back.
And yet, there are no flowers in his lungs. The love he gives is returned much the same, but it shouldn’t be. He wishes it wasn’t. This doesn’t feel like love.
When he was young -so young he still thought his family held the keys to the very universe- Phil and Technoblade left. And they never came back. That should mean, in some sense, that they didn’t love him. That should mean that the love he poured into every millisecond they used to spend together wasn’t returned. But-
there are no flowers in Tommy’s lungs. It’d been reassuring, back then.
It wasn’t very reassuring after a while. After a while, it became a reminder of how twisted everything truly was.
When Tommy was young -he’d never really stopped being young, had he?- he went to war. A child soldier with too many battle scars and too few moments of comfort, he devoted himself to his biggest brother’s dream. He gave his lives for a nation that his brother loved, and he did so without question. Because he loved Wilbur with all he had, and there were no flowers in Tommy’s lungs. Wilbur loved him back just as fiercely. It was a fact.
Wilbur tended to his wounds, Wilbur kissed his scars, Wilbur sang him songs and made him food and loved him so wholly that there was no room in Tommy’s mind for doubt. This was reciprocated love. This was all he had ever needed.
And when it all fell apart, when Wilbur began to whisper venomous words and spout accusations of betrayal and hate, Tommy still loved him with all he had. His entire soul was devoted to loving his biggest brother because Wilbur was all he had ever known. Even when Wilbur would lock him in the smallest spaces and hit him for misbehaving, Tommy still loved him.
You’d think, after being hit and screamed at and hated and locked away, Wilbur wouldn’t love him. But-
There are no flowers in Tommy’s lungs. At the very least, that means his Wilbur is still in there somewhere. Somewhere inside of him, Wilbur loves him with all he has. Because there are no flowers in Tommy’s lungs. There have never been, and there will never be.
Technoblade comes back eventually. His second biggest brother, his hero, whom Tommy loves with the entirety of his soul. Techno comes to them in that ravine, and for all his social ineptness and struggle with emotions, he helps them as best he can. He makes up for the years he was gone with awkward expressions of genuine love and stilted words. He is as he has always been, and Tommy loves him to the fullest.
And then. And then.
His second biggest brother murders his best friend and blames it on peer pressure. Tommy hates that he still loves Techno, hates himself so much for not being able to hate his brother. He challenges him, and Techno says no. He doesn’t want to hurt Tommy physically, yet he cares not for the emotional damage he’s caused.
Wilbur encourages it, peer pressures their middle brother until he caves, and Techno beats him in the Pit. Truly and honestly, without remorse, beats him. Leaves Tommy bloody and alone on the floor of that stone pit, sparing but a glance as Wilbur cackles in glee from above. Sequesters himself away as Tommy is laid in a makeshift cot beside Tubbo in the cramped corner that Niki uses as a medical area.
Even still, his brothers love him. Even after he’s beaten by two sets of hands that have promised again and again to never harm him, his brothers love him.
There are no flowers in Tommy’s lungs. That’s the only way he knows they love him anymore. There are no soft words at night after dreams that leave him shaking, no praise when he has done something well. The only indication that his brothers love him at all is the fact that there are no flowers in Tommy’s lungs. There have never been, and there will never be.
Wilbur dies by the blade of their father, and a ghost takes his place. The ghost loves Tommy as much as Tommy loves him.
Technoblade tells him to die on that same day, and he releases demons on all he has left. Somehow, someway, Techno still loves Tommy as much as Tommy loves him. Tommy wishes he didn’t love his brother anymore, but Techno is still his brother. Techno will always be his brother.
Not long after they’ve rebuilt Wilbur’s nation as something new -the Ship of Theseus, Techno would have said- Tubbo exiles him. Tubbo sends him away with the enemy, a ghost, and a distinct lack of flowers in his lungs. It was still reassuring, then. It was still everything he ever wanted and more. Even through these circumstances, Tubbo still loved Tommy as much as Tommy loved him.
No one visited, though. It was only Tommy, the enemy, a ghost, and a distinct lack of flowers in his lungs. It stopped being reassuring. It started to feel more like a curse.
(Ranboo visited. Tommy attached to him just as he had so many others, and Ranboo loved Tommy as much as Tommy loved him.)
He waited day in and day out for months, staring at the portal until he started to hallucinate. Tubbo never came. No one Tommy loved ever came. He waited and waited, but they never showed up. He choked on the love he felt for these people who simply couldn’t love him back, and yet-
there are no flowers in Tommy’s lungs.
Tubbo still loves him. It doesn’t feel like it, though, even if the proof is there.
It is only the lack of flowers in his lungs that spurs him to find Technoblade. His second biggest only brother still loves Tommy just as much as Tommy loves him. This is the only reason he seeks his brother out.
He’d considered reaching for his father, at first. Phil still loved him, too, but Phil was in the place Tommy couldn’t be. Even if there were no flowers in Tommy’s lungs, Phil couldn’t be trusted. Phil wasn’t safe.
Even if Phil did love Tommy as much as Tommy loves him.
So he lives in Techno’s house, and he takes Techno’s things because his brother keeps letting him, and he becomes someone he never wanted to be. He will do anything to keep the flowers out of his lungs. He will do anything to make sure his brother loves him. He’d done so with Wilbur, and he will do so again.
Until he can’t anymore, that is. Until he terrifies his nephew to tears and still loves him, until he realizes that he’s now the person who loves someone and still chooses to hurt them. It doesn’t sit right with him. Nothing is right about being the terrible person who doesn’t put flowers in another’s lungs no matter how much they should be there.
So Tommy chooses all he has left of Wilbur, he chooses his nephew and his best friends and the people who have shown him no love yet have put no flowers in his lungs over the brother and father who almost have. Almost but not quite, as they team up with the enemy who drove him near suicide and blow all he has left of Wilbur away. Until his father spawns demons and his only brother aims a rocket at his head and fires.
But he sits at the edge of the crater in the rain, new scars from lightning strikes and demons alike scattered across his already ruined skin, and he listens to the ringing in his ears. He breathes freely, deeply, and he thinks that maybe this is nothing like what he wished it could be.
There are no flowers in Tommy’s lungs. There have never been, and there will never be.
But there should be. He knows that. He isn’t stupid.
He dies, just as all mortal things do. He is crushed beneath the fist of the enemy, calling for a father who never comes. A father who somehow still loves him -as there are no flowers in his lungs- even when his father has never saved him time and time again. How can Phil love Tommy as much as Tommy loves him when he pleads with his dying breath for a father who will never save him? In what world does that make any sense? It doesn’t. It doesn’t, and yet it is this world. Tommy’s lungs are as clear as they have always been.
When he is alone in the Void, when his oldest brother is absent, when Jschlatt and MD are gone, Tommy breathes the cold non-air and he thinks about what kinds of flowers he could have grown. His blood would be good water. He’d give them plenty of oxygen until they swallowed him whole; they could feed on the sunlight of his soul.
For Phil, for his father, he thinks of yellow carnations. They are meant to mean things like disdain, disappointment, and rejection. Tommy disdains his father. He knows that Phil is a shit dad, knows that Phil feels no regret for abandoning both Tommy and Wilbur to adventure with Technoblade when they were young. The disappointment, maybe, would take its place as a feeling Phil feels for him. It’s not hard to realize that his father is disappointed in him for all he has done and all he never managed to do.
And then, well. Rejection. There’s a reason Phil teamed up with the enemy who beat Tommy into the ground -and later to death- to destroy all that was left of Wilbur. There’s a reason Phil did not come save him when he called out for his father with the last of his breath.
Still, Phil had loved Tommy as much as Tommy loved him. Until his dying breath, his father had loved him. He wishes the yellow carnations would have grown, wishes they’d filled his lungs with golden petals to soak up the space he should be using to breathe. Wishes they’d killed him before the enemy could.
For Wilbur, for his oldest brother, he thinks of heliotropes. They are meant to mean things like eternal love and devotion. There is no doubt, no question, that Tommy loves Wilbur until the end of all unending time. There is no question that Tommy is hopelessly, helplessly devoted to Wilbur and all his brother could ever think of. He had been adrift without him, and that had led to him getting himself killed.
He knows, though, that Wilbur wasn’t a good person either. No amount of devotion would make up for the way his oldest brother treated him. No amount of eternal love would wipe away the battle scars and backhands and panic attacks. In a normal world, this would have been a sure sign that Tommy’s love, his devotion, remained unreturned.
Yet, Wilbur had loved Tommy as much as Tommy loved him. No matter how long he craved for a heliotrope to grow so tall the purple petals blocked his airways and sprouted from his mouth and nose, he kept breathing. His lungs remained clear. He’d had all the air in the world to scream for a father who would never come for him.
For Technoblade, for his final brother, he thinks of marigolds. The darker ones that lean more toward red, but still have a hint of gold toward the inside of their petals. His brother loves gold. They are meant to mean things like grief and jealousy. It doesn’t take a genius to look into Tommy’s eyes and see that he grieves what he’s lost. To see that he wishes it could have gone differently, that their family could have stayed whole. The grief which filled his lungs like flowers should but never did was all-encompassing; an ever-present reminder of the brother who would never look at him the same.
The jealousy is as easy to see as the grief. Techno got to have Phil. Techno stole their father away and left him alone with Wilbur, left him locked in the closet and screaming for help that would never come. Techno was Phil’s golden child, and he always would be, and Tommy wanted that. He craved to be loved the way Techno was. is. But he was a disappointment, and he was jealous, and he would never not be.
Still, somehow, Technoblade had loved Tommy as much as Tommy loved him. Because no matter how long he waited, no matter how often he breathed in and expected to choke on the crimson marigold’s petals, nothing ever came. There was no interruption to the way he breathed, no indication that Techno had stopped loving him. He should have stopped loving him.
Tommy wishes he’d stopped loving Techno, that’s for sure. But he doesn’t, and he can’t.
For Tubbo, his best friend and the only other person Tommy has ever loved enough to sprout a garden in his lungs, he thinks of zinnias. The pink ones, specifically. They symbolize the thought of absent friends and lasting affection. Lifelong friendship so rarely undone. Tommy wishes it had been undone, though. It would be easier to accept the fact that Tubbo had distanced himself, had exiled him, if Tubbo never loved him. If their friendship no longer meant to Tubbo what it meant to Tommy.
But it did. It had to, otherwise, there would be pink zinnias sprouting inside of Tommy’s lungs. If Tubbo didn’t love Tommy as much as Tommy loved him, Tommy would have been dead by now.
Hanahaki kills within a few months at the latest, a few weeks if it’s bad. Tommy’s would have been terrible, he knows that. It would have been virulent, what, with all the different flowers leeching off his blood and taking up precious space in his lungs. Four different kinds, each eating away at him until there’s nothing left.
He spends his time in the Void craving it. He wishes the flowers had grown, wishes he could have nurtured them with his own lifeblood until they left him unable to get out of his bed. He wishes someone had found his corpse, and he wishes he’d been dead long enough that his corpse had turned into a garden of yellows and purples and reds and pinks. This is the only good dream he has in the Void. And then the enemy brings him back to life, and-
there are no flowers in Tommy’s lungs. There have never been, and there will never be.
Flowers are supposed to grow in your lungs when someone you love dies. They are no longer there to return your love, so the flowers grow. They’ll die, eventually. maybe. They’re not as aggressive as the ones that feed on the connection of knowing the one who doesn’t love you is alive, so you have time to grieve and slowly fall out of love with whoever it was you lost.
Tommy wonders if Phil and Techno and Tubbo had any flowers in their lungs. He wonders if the ghost can even grow flowers in his lungs. Does he even have lungs? Tommy isn’t sure.
(He never doubts that Ranboo loves him, even throughout it all. It’s strange.)
No flowers can grow for Wilbur because Wilbur isn’t quite dead. The ghost is still there, wearing his face, loving as innocently and wholly as Wilbur once had. And when the ghost dies, no flowers can grow for him, either. Because Wilbur is back. Wilbur is worse. Wilbur is back.
When it’s late and Tommy’s alone, he huddles in the corner of his room and forces himself to cough until his throat is raw, until his eyes are watering with the effort of it all. He makes himself throw up with the force of it, yet no flowers come out. Not a single petal emerges from his throat.
Wilbur still loves Tommy as much as Tommy loves him. There’s no question, no doubt. How can Tommy doubt when there is such solid proof with every breath he takes? It doesn’t matter that it feels like Wilbur doesn’t love him. It doesn’t matter that Tommy knows Wilbur shouldn’t love him.
It’s a simple fact that Wilbur does, and so does Tommy. It is as it has always been, and as it will always be.
He hadn’t thought about Sam while he was in the Void because Sam was still supposed to love him then. Sam did love Tommy as much as Tommy loved him. Now, though, with Wilbur back, Tommy has to think about what flowers he would get from Sam. An anemone, maybe. Sam had forsaken him. Aloe doesn’t quite have a flower, but Tommy has heard of people who cough it up. It means affection, but also grief.
Sam loves Tommy as much as Tommy loves him, even after everything. The affection and grief tangle together into something that should choke him, should clog his lungs and leave him gasping for his final breaths, but he doesn’t die. His breathing remains unhindered by plant life- just as it always has.
There are no flowers in Tommy’s lungs. There have never been, and there will never be.
He keeps making himself cough, goes until he vomits what he hasn’t eaten, but no flowers come out. There must be something wrong with him to want to be unloved so badly. He’s always felt unlovable, but everyone he loves continues to prove him wrong. It isn’t fair.
The disease is supposed to hurt, not the love that keeps the disease away. Love is supposed to be soft and kind, sweet words and gentle smiles and easy laughs and genuine affection. Love isn’t supposed to be so lonely. Love isn’t supposed to be something he wishes he didn’t have.
This isn’t love. And if it is, Tommy doesn’t want it.
After he’s coughed until he can barely breathe, after no petals come out again and again and again, Tommy wonders what flowers would have grown inside of those who loved him when he died. It’d only been for two days, but that was enough time for the roots to sink in. That was enough time for them to feel a new heaviness in their lungs.
What flowers would they have grown for him?
It’d be cliche to say Ranboo would have grown alliums for him. Although this is the flower Ranboo gave to him when they first met, an allium signifies good fortune and patience. Tommy would pick an arborvitae flower to grow in Ranboo’s lungs. They mean unchanging friendship, and no matter how Tommy had grouched and pretended, his friendship with Ranboo had never changed.
He doesn’t know what anyone else thinks of him. He doesn’t know how they could love him and treat him this way -except maybe Tubbo. Their flowers might match- so he’s going in blind. The flowers that would have grown in their lungs would be how they felt about him, but he wants the flowers that almost grew to be how he wishes he felt about them.
He wants them to be orange lilies. He wants them to know he hates them.
Even though he doesn’t.
And they don’t hate him either, which might make it even worse.
Maybe he's sick for wishing flowers into the lungs of those who love for him. Maybe he's sick for wishing flowers would grow in his own lungs. None of it really matters, though, because-
there are no flowers in Tommy’s lungs. There have never been, and there will never be.