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The night is quiet.
Most nights are quiet, out here.
Not far away is the sand of a desert the server did not create. Atop this false desert are gleaming white buildings, each one lit with a hundred colorful lights. Neon colors flash from the windows, the pools glow bright with sea lanterns, and above it all is the soft din of drunken laughter and ringing slot machines. It is sleek, modern, and loud.
But the noise does not carry far past the man-made dunes. By the time you cross a small, smooth-watered lake, shallow and alive with little, darting fish, and stumble onto the soft grass on the other side, you’ll be bathed in silence.
The server has driven away all groaning zombies and rattling bones, tonight. There are no hissing creepers nor spiders, not even the gurgle of drowned men bubbling up from the lake.
There is only gentle wind, rustling oak leaves, and the breathy sobs of a boy.
Tommy does not cry often. This, the server knows well.
It has seen him cry three times in all the time he has lived on its surface.
First, the night he lost his second life. Waking with a start, a fresh scar through his chest and an even fresher scar through his forehead. The feeling of an arrow through his skull and water in his lungs and, more pressing than either of those, the crushing weight of failure, brought him to tears.
He cried again in the nether, while trapped with that man the server never should have been so hospitatable to. The tears evaporated off his face before they had the chance to fall, and his hiccups were so quiet they may as well have never existed at all.
Finally, he cried on Doomsday. His country fallen by a brother’s hands for the second time, fresh wither scars crawling up his arms and a lightning strike singed into his chest. They were wretched, heart-breaking wails, echoing out over the crater of his home.
And each time, he was alone, alone, alone.
He cried in his bed after his brother had left him to rest (hands shaking, guilt resting on his shoulders like the fine gold epaulettes of his General’s coat). He cried after Dream destroyed his things and disappeared (gleeful, almost, that Tommy had become so pliable). He cried after his friends had left his side, gone to lick their wounds and mourn their home (a swarm of different emotions, each more complex than the last).
And here, leaning against the cool metal of a food truck, he is alone again.
The server knows his pain. It saw the birth of his country too, it saw the van. It remembers the press of its tires against the grass, the promise of change it brought. The server remembers urging creepers away from its fragile walls, herding skeletons’ arrows far from its wheels.
He remembers a boy and a man.
This truck was also built by a boy and a man.
This boy is, at least in part, one of the server’s own. The server is wary of him— it knows he is more than he appears, it knows what he has found deep below the server’s grass and dirt and stone. It knows . The server is wary of the man as well, if only because it has suffered under his hands before.
So a boy and a man and a truck.
What could go wrong?
Many things. Many, many things. And the server watched as its favorite boy, its golden child, stumbled upon the van as he searched for his brother. And it watched as the memories hit him like a nightmare you thought had been forgotten. And it watched as he sank to his knees, slowly, slowly, wondering aloud if he was really doomed to live his entire life making the same mistakes. And it watched as tears broke to the surface after so long.
He bit his fist in that prison and did not weep. He did not cry when he was ripped from this world and he did not cry as he was forced back into it. He did not cry as he thought he’d been replaced and he did not cry as the ghost of a softer, kinder version of his brother died and he did not cry when his real brother came back, cigarette in hand and he did not cry when two men screamed at him from upon their walls.
He cries now.
Soft, sort of desperate sobs. Breathy and cracked, interspersed with gasping, shaking breaths he quickly tries to bring back under control. He does not cry prettily. The server cannot find any disgust within itself, though. Even as the soft cries turn into hacking coughs and the gasps grow louder, rougher.
The server has no answer. It has no gifts, this time.
Except.
Except, Tommy has always loved its flowers.
Or, at the very least, appreciated them. He smiles at its alliums and presses his fingers against the tulips in his front yard and gasps when he spots a particularly large patch of dandelions, brighter than gold beneath the sun and far more valuable.
The server makes an effort to not have itself be known. Not that it can do much directly , anyway— it can spawn monsters and it can guide animals but, at the end of the day, that’s all it can really do with living creatures.
Flowers, though.Those are different.
Flowers are easy. And Tommy loves flowers, and the server loves Tommy, and so—
The first dandelion pops up beside his shoe. Tommy does not notice, one palm pressed to his eyes and the other curled in the grass. So the server sends another, and another. They are short, stout things, not given time to grow naturally, but they appear anyway. And it is draining, but the server does not mind. Next, a bundle of tiny white-blue flowers, azure bluets , at the base of the van where he sits. A tulip by his thumb, another by his knee. And finally, an allium, tall and healthy, between his fingers.
That, at last, gets his attention.
He tilts his head to the side, blinking at the ground through tears. He squints.
“What the fuck?”
If the server could laugh, it would.
Instead, it sends another bunch of dandelions beneath that same hand. He brings it up from the grass quickly. “What the fuck.” He rubs his eyes and looks down again. “Am I seeing shit again?”
A few more tiny white flowers, Another red tulip, this one closer to his hip. He stares down at it like he’s afraid it will bite him. And then, with that wonderfully familiar bravado the server knows so well, he scowls at the empty air around him. He’s probably looking for some villain with a bag of bonemeal, or maybe a certain chaos goddess floating in the air above him.
The server sends up another bunch of flowers beneath each wheel of the truck.
And Tommy laughs.
It’s a sort of delirious laugh, probably from the insanity of the situation and the sheer exhaustion sobbing can bring. High and breathy, and achingly genuine. He sounds so confused . “This is so fucking weird. Has someone got invis?” There’s a pause. When he speaks again, his voice is far smaller than before. “Are you… a ghost? Ghostbur?”
Tentatively, gently, the server sprouts a delicate blue cornflower before him.
Tears well in his eyes again, but he rubs them away before they fall. “Fuck,” He chokes out, laughing again. It’s a watery laugh. “This is— this is insane. I’ve lost it. Genuinely. I hope it’s you, man, I hope— Prime. I hope it’s someone and I’m not just hallucinating again.” Gently, carefully, he scoops the cornflower into his hands. He glances at the flowers surrounding the truck, the server’s only way of trying to promise that this will be a new beginning, and sighs. Shakey, but steadier than before.
“Thank you,” He murmurs. “Ghostbur, whoever. And if you're really just a creep with an invis pot, keep this to yourself.”
He stands on unsteady legs, rubbing at his eyes one last time, and walks home. The server tracks him the whole way, urging monsters out of his path,
He falls into bed half an hour later, Shroud curled up and docile above him.
When he wakes up the next morning, there will be flowers outside his home. Tonight, though, he is asleep, and as long as the server is with him, he is not alone. Not really.
Even if he doesn’t know it (yet).