Chapter Text
He wasn’t cold anymore.
He couldn’t see anything, but he was warm, so warm, and all of his pain had dissipated from his limbs completely, leaving behind a nice, loose, fuzzy feeling in all of his body that made him smile.
It reminded him of the beginning of L’manburg, when he and Wilbur would make potions all day in the cramped space of the Camarvan, from the moment they woke up to sunset.
He hadn’t felt that way in a long time, and he was glad that the afterlife seemed like a merciful place instead of a desolate, miserable plane, so far, at least.
It smelled like it, too, and he was sure he was hallucinating it - or the equivalent of it for dead people. He couldn’t have erased the smell of blaze powder from his mind even if he tried to scrub it way forcefully, the fresh, golden smoke becoming an integral part of him, just as much as his name, or the color of his own eyes or the scrapes on his bony knees that seemed to have taken a permanent place on him.
It was bittersweet, in a way, and he kind of wanted to cry, but there wasn’t much he could do about it, suspended in the dark and unable to move at all like he was. (And if sometimes the scent of potions muted into something closer to the metallic lavender scent of Technoblade’s clothes, he pretended not to notice, and he welcomed it all the same)
He hadn’t met Wilbur yet. He didn’t know whether that was a good or a bad thing. Maybe, though, the whole see-you-on-the-other-side phrase was bullshit, and people didn’t actually share an afterlife; or maybe Tommy simply hadn’t died.
He definitely had, though, because how the fuck could he have possibly survived that? He had been bleeding out in below freezing weather, injured like he had never been in the entirety of his sixteen and a half years of life - hell, he had fought in more wars than what he could count on one hand and he had never even seen anyone be that hurt and be alive and moving around. He didn’t even know how he had gotten so injured without dying in the first place, but he supposed that Dream was just that good at fucking people up slowly enough not to make them die.
He didn’t want to think about Dream though, the tangled mess of feelings he made him feel too much to handle for Tommy, and he preferred to avoid that shit instead of getting a dead people headache.
He wasn’t even sure if he could even feel pain while dead, but he wasn’t about to check. He had felt enough of it in his life to last him the entirety of eternity and then some.
He still didn’t have much to do, though, and he wasn’t about to start thinking about his abuser, so he closed his eyes and prayed to whatever god out there that he could fall asleep even as a dead man.
(And if he thought about simpler times and clean, unmarked skin and grassy fields again, that was only for him to know.)
---
When he awoke, he wasn’t in the afterlife anymore.
He hissed at the faint light that suddenly invaded his vision, squinting, but before he could wonder where the fuck he had ended up, he heard the quiet squeak of a door opening and the noise of somewhat heavy footsteps coming closer.
“Shit” he whispered, and started to kick off the blankets that had been laid over him, ignoring the hellish pull of his wounded shoulder, the need to run - and run fast, at that, and as far as possible - giving him an adrenaline rush so strong it almost made him dizzy, but before he could step out of the bed someone had put him in, a warm, rough hand was gently pushing him back into the pale blue sheets.
(He noted the lack of pain anywhere on his body outside of his shoulder, though, and he thanked whatever god was out there for blessing him.)
“Don’t exert yourself, if you rip any of my stitches I’m not sewing you up again” a low voice spoke softly, with a slight edge to it. Tommy couldn’t understand if it was a threat, a joke, or if he was concerned about him, even.
He didn’t dwell on it. He hoped it wasn’t the first option.
“Techno?” Tommy spoke, this time louder, his throat burning as he tried to push out sound.
Prime, he was fucking thirsty.
“Tommy.” The person, Technoblade, replied.
How the fuck had he ended up here? Why was he in a bed? Where the hell even was “here” in the first place? How did he not die? Many questions rattled around his skull, but he could only voice a couple.
“Why the fuck am I here? Is this your bed?”
“No, it’s not, and you were like, dying or something in my backyard and well, you looked pretty rough. I brought you here. Healed you up the best I could.”
Tommy settled himself back into bed properly.
“You were barely breathing when I brought you inside. Cold, too.” Techno continued, quieter than he usually would, so quiet it resembled a whisper more than actual speech, a sense of somber laced through each word. It reminded Tommy of the voice he would use towards him or Wilbur when they got sick as kids.
Something inside of him shattered at that. He wasn’t even sure about how he still had something to break, but he did, and by Prime, did it fucking hurt.
(Because of course, he went and fucked everything up by being disgustingly loud and taking up space in other people’s lives and making it all about him, and now he was rightfully broken. He didn’t deserve any of the soft words his big brother had directed at him.)
“How am I not dead? I thought- No, I’m sure I died, I don’t know how, how-”
“I don’t know.” Technoblade said, kneeling beside Tommy’s bed, and pale blue eyes met earthy red ones. “I just know that you scared me. I thought I had accidentally killed you, and that would’ve looked bad on my records, you know?. I wouldn’t want more people after me.” His tone was flat, a familiar monotone, but Tommy didn’t miss the awkward attempt at a joke in his words.
He couldn’t help but notice how much his brother had changed. His hair was even longer than what it was during the revolution, if only by a bit, and much better kept, shinier. His face had stopped bearing the weight of little to no sleep, the dark circles under his eyes almost fully gone. His cheeks had filled out, and he looked like he had gained a fair bit of weight.
He was healthier. The freckles on his face stayed the same, though, he noted, a light dusting of darker pink-brown that maybe, in another life, he would’ve compared to the soft light of night stars.
“Tommy Innit does it again, ladies and gentlemen! I scared The Blade! Women will-” Tommy started, a rough coughing fit cutting him off midway through his sentence, and his ribs ached sharply at that, protesting against the sudden movement, his body lurching forward and away from the sheets.
Techno grabbed one of Tommy's hands loosely, in what Tommy knew to be an honest attempt at comfort - Techno wasn't much for physical contact, and Tommy wasn't even sure if he even wanted to be touched, so it worked out somewhat well.
(He did want to be touched, but he couldn’t even remember the last time anyone touched him without hurting him, and he didn’t want to take any more chances with it.) (And if in that moment he thought about Wilbur again, that was only for him to know.)
Tommy noticed that his hands and arms had been bandaged, and by the feeling of it, most of his body probably had, as well. He didn’t want to think about the implications of it.
(He would just add yet another person to the list of the people that didn’t give even half a shit about the too-neat scars that slithered across his inner arms and thighs. Hopefully, at least.)
Once he was done coughing, a tall glass, filled with water almost to the brim was pushed into his hand - his good hand, he briefly noted. It was startlingly cold, and he tried his best not to spill anything. He debated whether or not to accept it, but he figured that if Techno wanted him dead he could've just left him outside to rot. He took a small sip.
"Try to drink it all. You're dehydrated."
He tensed slightly at the order, and started to drink more, still in small, calculated sips, but drink nonetheless, until it was half empty, and as his throat started to open up and the dryness kind of subsided, a question rose in his mind.
"How long was I out for?"
"A couple of days. I haven't really been keeping count to be honest. Probably three or four." Techno replied, still softly, his face scrunching up slightly in the way that Tommy knew as him genuinely trying to remember something - and a regular person would’ve probably missed the slight expression, but Tommy still knew Techno like the back of his hand, and he supposed that things like that never really change after all.
He had been out for half a week. Sleeping, comatose, maybe even dead. He pretended not to dwell on it too much, but he knew that this wasn’t one of those things he could never forget, even with how much his mind had pushed him to just end it, or to cut a little deeper, so many times in the past.
He was dizzy.
Tommy greedily gulped down the rest of his water.
He was still thirsty, but he didn't dare ask for more. He had learned to take what he was given and never, ever ask for more. He had at least one bruise on his face - and multiple on his body - as proof.
He pushed the empty glass into Techno's waiting hands, and sat up on the bed properly, his back resting against the dark, firm wood of the headboard. He could finally appreciate the tender silk of the sheets against what little skin he had exposed - he had been dressed in slightly too big pyjamas, probably belonging to Technoblade himself.
"Do you want any more? I can go get a bottle for you"
Tommy debated it for a moment, a fraction of a second, before nodding, his head hung low. "Please, and thank you big man. For the clothes, too, I, I appreciate it.”
A large hand came up to ruffle his hair just a bit, even though it was still disgusting, greasy and matted, with dried blood and sea salt and Prime knows whatever else stuck in it, but he flinched away before he could touch him, everything in his body telling him to stay as far away as possible, the memory of gloved hands wrapping around his throat and a ceramic face smiling down at him resurfacing to the front of his mind violently, sweeping away any other thought, a violent tide of emotion crashing down on the little raft he had built himself after being stuck at sea for so long.
Techno didn’t seem phased. He simply took his hand back, turned away, and walked out of the room, just after setting the empty glass back on the wooden nightstand by the bed.
Tommy’s hands trembled. He tried to still them.
He couldn’t.
He took a quick glance around the room, trying to absorb as much information about it as possible. It appeared to be a bedroom - fairly empty, but clean, the wooden floors and pale blue curtains easy on the eyes, and it would’ve easily passed off as a simple spare room hadn’t it been for the brewing stands and red-pink potions neatly lined on a dresser opposite to the bed he had been shoved in and the extremely worn wooden chair by the nightstand.
If you had asked him where he thought he would end up after exile just a couple of weeks before that moment, Technoblade’s guest bedroom would’ve been the last place he would’ve thought about.
He noticed a large, dark green armchair, stood next to a thin bookcase, where a couple of books and what appeared to be little golden trinkets - jewelry, perhaps? Techno liked his rings and chains quite a lot - sadly rested.
A full length mirror had been placed in the opposite corner to it, and he looked at himself, for the first time in months.
He hated what he saw.
His face was sunken in, and ugly yellow-purple bruises littered his face and the naked patch of collarbones exposed by his too-big clothes, still carrying the proof of all of his physical pain, and his body was thin, so much thinner than before, even thinner than what he was in Pogtopia, his skin oily and grey, his hair much longer than what he remembered it being.
He didn’t have the tools to cut it in exile, and even before, he hadn’t trusted himself or Tubbo to do it. The last person to have ever cut his hair had been Wilbur, and oh, how he fucking missed him and his stupid ghost haunting him.
He wondered where Ghostbur had ended up. Where his brother had ended up, and his chest tightened at the image of Dream hurting him too, his hands wrapped around the ghost’s neck, or him getting pushed into a body of water and the blood curdling screams that would follow, or the ghost getting stabbed through his body cleanly in a sick recreation of his original death, Dream’s stupid netherite stained bright, fluorescent blue, instead of blood red or this, or that, a million scenarios running wild through the teen’s head.
(He wondered if being dead would’ve been easier on him. It probably would have been. He already looked the part anyway.)
He heard footsteps approaching the door once more, so he straightened himself out, his arms resting straight down his sides, fists clenched to mask the slight shaking of his hands, his head going back to staring straight ahead of him. His shoulder burned slightly at the movement.
When Techno came back into the room, he was holding two things: a glass bottle and a medium sized, steaming ceramic bowl with a spoon carefully balanced on its edge. The smell of food it brought made his mouth water and his empty stomach rumble, but he didn’t dare say anything, once again.
He was only a guest anyway, he wouldn’t want to be any more of a nuisance than he had already been.
(Techno probably didn’t even want to have to deal with a loud, messy child. No one had ever wanted to deal with him in general, really.)
“I, uh, I made some soup a couple of hours ago, I figured you’d be hungry.”
“You didn’t have to.”
“Come on man, I’m just trying to be kind here, I also don’t want you dying on me after all you’ve been through.” Techno laughed slightly, just the smallest amount of hilarity catching on the end of his words, and Tommy felt something in his soul get mended, just a bit.
“Thank you” Tommy replied, his voice small and pathetically pitiful even to his own ears. “Is it mushroom? I can’t eat those.”
“Careful, it’s hot.” Techno handed him the sunshine yellow bowl, and he took it with shaky hands, putting most of its weight on his good arm, and he looked at it wearily, for a moment, before his question got answered “And no, it’s just vegetables and some chicken. I didn’t know you had a mushroom allergy, though.”
“I don’t have a mushroom allergy. They’re just gross little fellows, aren’t they?”
They both knew that was a small lie. Neither of them commented on it.
Techno sat down on the worn chair Tommy had noticed earlier, and for some reason, he was sure that it hadn’t been his first time sitting down there in the past couple of days.
Tommy started to eat. Slowly, slowly, the spoon slipped from the grip of his bandaged hands, his stomach curling in a way that threatened to make him throw everything back up. Techno watched him carefully, making sure that he wouldn’t spill anything on the sheets.
He felt like he was all the way back in exile, when Dream would carefully watch every bite he took to make sure that he was only eating what he gave him, nothing more, nothing less. He felt even sicker at the thought.
A spoonful at a time, the bowl was soon half empty. He couldn’t eat anymore, his stomach rolling uncomfortably once more, and he wondered what Techno would say if he voiced that complaint. He knew that he wouldn’t get hit (Probably, a small voice said in the back of his mind. He pushed it aside).
They were still brothers, and even as kids Techno never complained about what he ate or seriously hit him, but then again, he had intruded into his life, and this was Techno’s food, not his own, and he didn’t want to seem rude for not finishing everything and then of course there was Pogtopia and the pit and blood and his rocket launcher and Tubbo-
“Are you done? You’ve been staring at that bowl for a bit” Techno said, cutting through his thoughts
Tommy nodded.
“Can I take it away?” he asked, but he didn’t move, waiting for Tommy to say something. He nodded again - it was his, after all, he could’ve taken it by force and he wouldn’t have even batted an eye at it.
Techno took the now slightly cooler sunshine yellow bowl away from Tommy, and set it on the nightstand next to his water, his hands just as slow and kind as they had been that day.
“Thank you.”
Techno only huffed in response, placing his hands in his lap, dark, black-brown nails contrasting starkly with the flowy red bottoms he wore.
They stared at each other for a moment, unsure of what to do or say. Tommy could hear the faint clicking of a nearby clock - in another room, possibly? Or maybe he just hadn’t spotted one in this room - quietly counting the moments of awkward, fumbling silence between them.
“So, uh, do you wanna like, rest…? Or we can talk about why you were basically dead on my doorstep.” Techno started, monotone, but still as gentle as ever.
Tommy froze, his throbbing body going stiff, his eyes wide. “I don’t know. I don’t really want to talk about it. I was exiled, again, shit happened and I, uh, I couldn’t take it anymore so I just decided to, uh, I escaped. That’s it.”
“Alright, I’m not gonna push you. I’m glad you’re alive, though.”
Tommy didn’t know if he agreed.
“Thank you. I’m sorry for being such a nuisance, though.” He started, fidgeting slightly with the sleeve of his - Technoblade’s - sweater. “You know, I was trying to escape from my many wives, like they were all over me like fucking wiggly little worms or some shit, I needed to get away.”
“Of course you did.” Techno smiled slightly, a slight upward twitch of the corners of his mouth. “How are you feeling, though, like, physically?”
“Like a truck ran me over, and then the driver decided to be an asshole and a bitch and ran me over again like 4 times.”
“I thought you would.” Techno paused for a moment. “Uh, can I?” He started again, slowly inching his hand closer to Tommy’s face.
Tommy nodded, bracing himself for a potential hit, or for his hand to worm itself around his throat, but neither of those things ever came. He simply pushed back his hair a bit, and rested the back of his hand against his forehead lightly. His touch lasted nothing more than a few seconds.
Tommy craved more of it. He didn’t voice his feelings.
“You’re a bit warm, but I think you’re okay to sleep if you want, I’ll wake you up to give you some health and regen potions later. And uh, to actually measure you with a thermometer, I guess.”
Tommy, in any other situation, wouldn’t have complied, and would’ve spouted some nonsense about being too big of a man to take naps, but he was getting cold, and his ribs had started aching again, and he could feel the beginning of a headache forming, so he decided to bury himself into Techno’s blankets, and fall back onto the pillows as he had suggested.
(If Techno was going to take all of this away, he might as well enjoy it for as long as he could.) (Because he knew that he would take it away, He just didn’t know when, and he knew that he would end up paying for it, too.)(he just hoped that he could at least eat a bit more this time around.)
“Thank you, Techno. I appreciate it.” Tommy mumbled, instant relief coursing through him when his head hit the pillow and he was horizontal again. “I don’t, I don’t know how I’m going to repay you, though, I kinda, you know, I kinda don’t have anything. I can work for you though, if you want, you know, to get away from all my wives and shit.”
“Tommy.” Techno sighed, in the way that Tommy knew to be barely contained annoyance.
He was very familiar with that tone. He kind of wished he wasn’t.
“Yeah?”
“You don’t owe me anything, okay? I mean it.”
Tommy really wished that hadn’t been a lie. He wondered when Techno would realise that he wasn’t worth all of this effort, that he could just say stuff right to his face, without trying to lull him into a false sense of security.
Techno leaned forward in his chair once more, and took one of Tommy’s hands into both of his hands loosely. They were warm, so warm, and despite the calloused fingertips and scarred palms the familiar weight was comforting (He pretended that it wasn’t.). Tommy could easily slip his hand away if he wanted to.
He didn’t. He didn’t want to upset him.
“Of course I do. I mean, you saved my fucking life.”
“Listen man, we can talk about it later. I have a lot to apologize for, too. You should rest, though.” He said, voice firm, but not harsh. It reminded Tommy of their father - the gold of his hair and his ever present smile. He missed him.
“I will.”
“Good.” Techno replied, and slipped his hands away from Tommy’s, standing up from his seat. “I’ll be in the room over, if you need anything just shout for me, okay? If you can’t sleep there should be books in the nightstand drawers.”
After that, he turned, and just as his hand was about to turn the doorknob to walk out, he was interrupted.
“Techno?” Tommy called out, voice smaller than his usual loud, boisterous tone, and Techno turned, a small noise of acknowledgement making its way out of his throat.
“Thank you, again, for uh. For saving my life and shit.”
Techno smiled, this time much wider, his tusks coming into view fully. Tommy couldn’t help but to send him a weak smile back.
He tucked himself into the bed properly, warmth finally encasing him once again, and as the door closed shut with a solid thump, he wondered what he had gotten himself into.
At least he wasn’t cold anymore, right?