Chapter Text
Tommy opens his eyes and everything is dark. It looks to be late and a part of him is frustrated that he hasn’t dropped his habit of waking up at obscur times of the day. He raises a hand to his face, rubbing his eyes and looking around for Ranboo, noting how the enderman was no longer beside him, but then his surroundings register and his stomach drops.
The tent he’d spent the last few months in looks the same as it had the day they left down to red and green blood staining the sleeping bag he slept in.
Sitting up quickly, he scrambles to his feet and narrowly misses slamming his head against the supports keeping the tent standing. There’s no sound outside, not even the sound of water lapping at the shores, and he can’t stay in this tent anymore, the smell of blood in the air suffocating. Throwing the flaps of the tent open, he ducks out and is hit by a wave of heat that surrounds him.
Fire consumes the entirety of Logstedshire.
Everywhere he looks, fire is blazing, and how hadn’t he been able to see it from inside his tent?! How couldn’t he feel it?! His tent is the only thing still standing and even it doesn't last long against the spreading fire. As soon as he steps completely out, he hears the sound of fabric catching ablaze and spins around to see the tent - his tent - bursting into flames, falling to pieces in mere seconds in the face of the blaze.
“No..” He murmurs, voice catching as he watches everything he’d known for months burn to ash around him.
“ You shouldn’t have left me, Tommy. ”
His heart drops and he spins to the source of the noise, but there’s no one there. All he sees is the fire consuming everything, spreading further and faster, faster than any fire he’s ever seen, and a part of him pleads with the gods to make it rain so the flames would just stop -
“ No god can help you now, Tommy. ”
He spins around, but there’s still no one in sight. His lips part to yell, scream and beg for them to stop destroying his home , he can’t lose another home again, he’s already lost his real home twice, he can’t lose this one too -
And then he feels a hand curl around his neck.
Breath catching in his throat, he freezes in the hold around his throat and he can’t move. The grip is tight, nearly suffocatingly so, but it’s just loose enough for him to drag in short, panicked breaths through his nose. A low hum sounds behind him and his body feels cold despite the flames dancing around them, the noise so familiar to the one person he’d been trapped with for so long.
“ I don’t know why you ran, Tommy ,” Dream hums, a sad lilt to his voice that feels like a punch to the gut. “ I was trying to help you, we were friends , and then you left me, you let Ranboo kill me. ”
“No,” he rushes out, but the hand tightens around his throat and his words are cut off.
“ I didn’t say you could speak yet, ” Dream growls, voice dangerous, and Tommy’s mouth snaps shut. The grip loosens once more and he drags in a gasping breath, barely able to hold it before it rushes out of him in a panicked wheeze.
“ I was trying to do what was best for you and you let Ranboo warp your mind. I told you not to talk to the others, that they didn’t want you to make the development that you needed to, but you just didn’t listen ,” the admin drags on, the hand not holding his neck waving around dismissively. It takes a moment for Tommy to notice what was in the man’s hand, but when he does, his heart drops, unable to look away from the sword that gleamed in the light of the fires.
There’s a low sigh next to his head and suddenly he’s been shoved to the ground, the brief spike of pain that shoots up his knees nothing compared to the buzzing in his brain. Spinning around, he looks up to see Dream staring down at him, that damned mask boring holes into his head, but he can’t look away. It’s like some invisible force was making him look the white mask in the eyes and he feels sick the longer he looks.
“ You should have just told Ranboo to leave you alone the first time he visited ,” Dream scolded, shaking his head like one would their own child or something. “ Now he’s dead and it’s because you didn’t listen to me. I guess he deserved it, though, since he killed me, but he never would have done that if you had just listened to me, would he have? ”
Tommy doesn’t think he can breathe.
“What..?” He asks, voice cracking. Dream sighs and waves a hand in the direction of the flames, causing them to part and since when could Dream do that?
He looks in the direction the admin motioned and it feels like the world stops when he sees just what the man was motioning towards.
Laying on the ground only a few feet away is Ranboo. The enderman is unmoving, once bright red and green eyes dull and unseeing. Blood is pooled around him, red and green and muddy brown staining the grass and when he notes where the blood is coming from, he feels like he’s going to be sick. A large cut going down the center of his back still leaked blood, the injury so deep he could almost see into it, and he can’t hold it back anymore.
Turning his face away from his friend’s body, he hurls. He doesn’t remember the last time he got sick, but he doesn’t remember it hurting this bad. His entire body convulses with each rise of bile, throat burning as acid mixes with the little food he had in his stomach, splattering across the ground with each harsh expulsion. It hurts, it hurts so bad , but he can’t stop and it feels like he’s dying.
A hand touches between his wings and he flinches, but it doesn’t move away as it begins rubbing soothing circles into his back. He knows who it is, he knows , but he can’t help but lean into it, a pained whine rising from his throat.
“ I know, Tommy, I know ,” Dream soothes, crouching next to him, “ Let it all out. ”
Gaze flickering to the side, he meets Ranboo’s lifeless gaze and he sobs as his body convulses once again.
This was his fault. Ranboo was dead and it was all his fault, he should have just listened to Dream and done as he said, but no, he talked to Ranboo consistently and now he’s dead and it’s his fault . He made Dream kill the only person who seemed to care about him during exile-
Except that wasn’t true, Dream cared, right? He was his friend, he’s been there for him every day. He can only imagine the pain he put him through, what with letting him die and then making him kill someone else.
“ Now Tommy ,” Dream speaks up. The sobs break off into a choked noise and he bites his tongue to keep himself from saying something stupid. He looks up to the admin and his breath catches in his throat when he sees him standing. “ I will have to punish you for disobeying me. ”
Tears build in his eyes once more.
“ You know I’m doing this because I care about you, right?”
No.
“I just want what’s best for you, so you have to be punished when you step out of line.”
No..
“This way you will be disciplined and be let back into L’Manburg!”
“ NO- ”
Tommy wakes up with a scream on his tongue and he lets it out. Everything is too hot and the heat pressed into his side shifts, making him scramble away from it. Hands brush his shoulders when he moves and a choked whine rises from his throat, shoving the touch away from him.
“Don’t touch me!” He yells, voice cracking. There’s a displeased growl and his heart leaps to his throat when he looks down to see a large cat fluffing up on the couch, growling at the terrified blonde. Another fearful noise rises in his throat and then he sees hands grabbing the ocelot and ushering it to the floor.
Following the hands up, he sees concerned green and red eyes staring at him and flashes of the teen’s corpse flash through his mind.
He barely has time to scramble to the floor before bile rises once more, this time much more real and much more painful. The food he and Ranboo had eaten only hours prior forces its way up his throat and he lets out a choked noise as vomit forces its way past his lips. He can feel drool pooling in his mouth with each wave of bile that forces its way up and a broken noise leaves him, wings curling around him in a protective shield.
He can hear Ranboo shifting around behind him, but he can’t look at him, he can’t, he’s dead, he saw his body, he smelled his blood, he knows he kn ows he knows he knows, he’s DEAD -
Knees drop to the ground beside him and he flinches, bile catching in his throat and causing him to cough harshly.
“Can I touch you, Tommy?” Ranboo asks, voice gentle yet concerned as he holds a hand out. A small voice in the back of Tommy’s head whispers about how no one has ever asked before touching him and a broken whine rises from his chest. Ranboo was so good compared to him and he was going to get the older teen killed . “Is that a no?”
The hand he could see from the corner of his eyes starts moving away and panic rises in his chest. He quickly latches onto it and pulls it to his chest, a sob leaving him from the heat of Ranboo’s hand.
“You were dead ,” he manages to get out, voice rising in distress. The hand he’s gripping onto curls around his hands and he holds it closer, curling around it as if Ranboo would disappear if he let go. He can feel two tails curl around his legs and he knows it’s his friend, but he still can’t help but jump slightly. He’s so grateful when the twin tails don’t move away, however, pressing Ranboo’s hand against his heart. “I saw your body , you were dead , you were, I saw it-”
“Tommy,” Ranboo murmurs, shuffling a bit closer. The air is thick with the smell of vomit and sweat, but it doesn't deter the enderman as he raises his free hand to Tommy’s face. The blonde jerks away from it briefly before pressing into it immediately after, squeezing his eyes shut so he wouldn’t have to look at him. “Please open your eyes, Tommy,” Ranboo pleads and a part of Tommy wonders why Ranboo of all people is begging him to do something.
He listens despite his better judgement, however, cracking his eyes open and meeting bright, heterochromic eyes. Flashes of Ranboo’s dead, lifeless eyes flash through his mind, but then he’s brought back to the present by the thumb rubbing beneath his eye.
“I’m alive, Tommy,” Ranboo mutters, holding his gaze. “I’m alive and I’m not going anywhere. I’m not leaving you. I swear to you.”
And suddenly, for just a moment, Tommy is in early L’Manburg, Wilbur crouched in front of a younger Tommy with the same promise being whispered to him.
And suddenly, Tommy breaks. Tommy breaks and a sob rises from his throat, tears falling rapidly as he allows his guard to fall, throwing himself into the chest of the taller teen. Ranboo grunts, but doesn’t hesitate to wrap his arms around the blonde, holding him close to himself even as tears burn their way into his chest.
Meanwhile, Tommy, for the first time in months, allows himself to sob, clinging onto fur covered skin and letting it out until he couldn’t cry anymore.