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“You failed,” Dream hisses, turning on his heel.
There is anger in his eyes and fury in his veins. For a world so cold, he looks to be aflame.
Tommy flexes his toes in a vain effort to thaw them. He is trained to be lethal and disciplined into being quiet, and yet, for some naïve, idiotic reason, he speaks.
“We’re too high up. He couldn’t have survived that fall—”
There is no time to brace for the slap, so it rocks Tommy’s entire world, sending him crashing into the snow. It burns like the lashing of wind, like the snap of the Tether. It will leave a mark, at the very least.
Dream snarls. “You have no idea what he can and cannot do.”
Tommy clenches his jaw but does not bring a hand up to soothe his stinging cheek. Dream doesn’t like it when he tries to lessen the punishments.
An eerie quiet settles over the two of them. Somewhere nearby, a phantom lurks and holds his tongue. If he intervenes, Tommy dies permanently. If he doesn’t, all of this continues. There is no safe choice, but Wilbur takes the lesser of two evils. For Tommy’s sake.
It is snowing, and soon the white powder will conceal the crimson blood staining the ground. The fight was long. It ruined Tommy’s stamina, his speed, his strength. He is meant to be the best at everything, a one-man army, but the Blood God has left him with bruised knuckles and blackened eyes.
That is weakness, and Tommy knows it.
He also knows that Dream will do everything in his power to correct it.
Every time Tommy is revived, he comes back a little stronger.
For now, though, before the pain begins again, Tommy just stares at the ground. The fresh snow is already beginning to hide the Blood God’s footprints, but the memory of him lingers.
Here—he hit Tommy’s nose so hard it broke. There—he delivered a blow to Tommy’s knees.
Admittedly, Tommy did manage to get some good hits in, but he was fighting a man five years his elder and twice as versed in military battle. The Blood God was using techniques that Tommy couldn’t have dreamed up in his darkest nightmares.
Those gloves, though…
Tommy thinks of them for just a moment. Black satin, elbow-length. They doubtlessly weakened the God, and yet he had worn them anyways. It throws Tommy for a loop.
Perhaps they were enchanted. Perhaps they were sentimental to the God. Whatever the reason, what did it matter? Tommy was bested all the same.
“It took three weeks to even get this far in our plan,” Dream is saying when Tommy bothers to listen again. “Now we have to make up for all that time lost.”
Tommy’s eyes widen. He’s just been reunited with his sort-of brother, but…
“Wilbur,” Dream calls. Not ten feet away, the air wavers as if a squall has come up the mountainside. But there is no wind. (It has died down since the God took half the cliffside down with him.) Wilbur materializes into existence, then stoops to one knee. He and Tommy learned what happens if he does not bow the difficult way.
“Yes, Dream?” he asks through gritted teeth. He is not pleased with the course of today’s events.
He and Tommy were promised freedom. And now they’re going in loops, chasing a wolf through its own domain, running themselves into circles. There is no end in sight, and day by day, Tommy’s eyes only grow greyer.
“Track him down the river,” Dream says. “Find him, and then return him here.”
There is only a split second of hesitation. “And if I cannot?”
“You know.”
Wilbur’s nails dig crescent moons into his palms. He knows.
He nods once and promptly vanishes again. He moves light enough that Tommy and Dream barely notice the footprints that form behind him as he begins the walk back down the mountain. Halfheartedly, Tommy wonders if it is even possible to return the Blood God here. Surely he will not trust Wilbur as he did before. A wolf like that, once cornered by a traitorous hunter, will not follow him again.
“What a mess,” Dream says, though it must be directed at himself, because he is staring into that great cloudy sky. The snow speckles his cloak. Somehow, he looks like a statue, old and worn and at last frozen.
Tommy picks himself up off the earth—cautiously, so as not to disturb the masked beast in front of him. He limps to the cliff, to the point where the entire ice formation has splintered off from it. Tommy has seen avalanches before, but none can even compare to what he saw today.
The river far, far below is shadowed by the mountain, but Tommy can still see the many sheets of ice floating in it, travelling downstream, flowing towards the kingdom he is exiled from.
The kingdom of snow and death and plague and cold.
But no monsters.
The monsters have all fled.
Either they fled, or they were killed, that is.
And he had once considered himself lucky to escape with Wilbur before they were caught, but now he thinks of the shattering that comes with resurrection and considers that maybe things could have been better if only they had stayed. Wilbur would not have had that difficult of a time hiding; he can become completely invisible to the eye. There were plenty of places for him to hide in a capital city like that.
Tommy, on the other hand—well, it is hard to hide his presence.
He has always been a force to be reckoned with, bold and loud and limitless. Boisterous, needy, annoying, Dream had said. Since then, Tommy has tried to speak less, to act less impertinently. He watches his tongue, for the most part, and faces the consequences when he does not.
There is, though, the ever-present doubt humming beneath the surface of his skin.
“Why do I die?” Tommy had asked Dream one night in summer. The question was not why do you kill me, and Dream had understood that.
“So that you can rise that much higher, my little bird,” Dream had murmured back.
“But,” Tommy had said slowly, only continuing when Dream nodded, “why the Blood God as my prey?”
Dream’s expression had soured, and the hands he ran through Tommy’s hair suddenly became a bit more violent, tugging without gentleness.
“You don’t know him as I did. You don’t understand.”
Dream and the Blood God’s feuds are personal and—as Dream has reminded Tommy so many times—Tommy is not a person. He and Wilbur are merely the creatures caught in the crossfire.
Distantly, Tommy registers that Dream is approaching. The wild, animalistic part of him tells him to run, but it would be of no use. He is bound by the Tether.
Dream steps closer and slowly lifts a bandaged hand up to trace circles on Tommy’s back, in the space right between his shoulder blades, and then over to the spot where joint used to meet feather. Where only scars remain. Tommy holds his breath steady, trying not to work himself into a panic. The pressure of Dream’s thumb aches against the bruises and cuts freshly plastering his skin, but it is better to not flinch in the long run.
“Wilbur will return with the Blood God,” Dream says, and it is not a question at all. He is too confident. His arrogance deceives him. “You will fight again, but this time you will be stronger. You will win.”
Tommy swallows the whimper that rises in his throat as Dream’s hand moves upwards, towards his spine, towards his neck. All he would have to do is squeeze and Tommy would asphyxiate. The man leans in close, so that the mask is not two inches from Tommy’s ear.
“You’ll kill him,” Dream finishes.
But there is more. There must be. There is a bargain. Victory for freedom, yes, but one more thing.
“And then I get my wings back,” Tommy says softly, barely audible. He is tentatively testing the waters.
A beat. He can’t bear to quite let his gaze stray towards the mask, so he fixes it on the river. He braces, but—
“And then you get your wings back,” Dream whispers in affirmation. It makes Tommy shudder. Even with the mask distorting some of the sound, every syllable is enunciated with something low and dangerous.
Dream backs away first. When his hands fall from Tommy’s back, the boy breathes a sigh of relief, his first in a very long time.
But then Dream says, “We’ll resume your training immediately,” and all the calm is gone. Tommy’s breath hitches into his throat and he is choking, gasping, but the air up here is thin, not to mention that his lungs are against him.
“Wait, but we just—”
“You failed your one mission,” Dream snaps. So the anger has not faded, then. It’s just been masked. “If we don’t repair you now, then what are we meant to do when the Blood God arrives?”
He says when and not if so confidently. Tommy stifles the urge to point out his mistake, instead opting for the pleading route.
He pushes as much desperation as he can into his voice. “Dream, please, you can’t. We just—I just—I’m not ready to go back and—”
“Weakness,” Dream singsongs, effectively cutting Tommy off.
The boy grimaces. Weakness. It’s what lost him his family, his home, and his wings. In the face of it, he cowers, though he’s supposed to overcome it.
Dream is human, and Tommy is painfully not.
That is weakness, but it can become a strength.
Dream falls back, starting to follow Wilbur’s footsteps down through the stone and snow.
For a single, blissful minute, Tommy is alone. He exhales, letting his breath huff out warm and slow enough so that he can see it in the frigid mountain air. Again, he stares down into the winding river.
He knows that he should be wishing that the Blood God is down there somewhere, dead in the freezing water amidst the ice, but for some reason, he prays he is not. Tommy cannot quite stomach the thought of killing a human. To kill is his purpose, but he is a useless thing after all. It’s no surprise that he can’t even follow through with this one resolution. His heart betrays him. He is too soft.
For a moment, he thinks of following the God and taking the leap himself. Without his wings, it would be a quick fall. Relatively painless, save for a fraction of a second at the point of contact. He hesitates, staring over the ledge.
But then Dream pulls on the Tether, and Tommy has no choice but to follow him away.