Chapter Text
For as long as Tommy could remember, he had always regarded Phil’s wings as magnificent.
It was hard not to; with the way, they could almost blot out the sun with their span and shake the sky with the force of their movements. They were awe-inspiring, the manifestation of legend, and the personification of power.
Tommy had always wanted wings, too.
As a child, he would beg Phil to take him flying – tugging on robes and feathers and sprinting between his father’s legs in a desperate attempt to draw his attention. On the good days, the rare ones when Techno did not need Phil’s undivided care, Tommy would be allowed to cling to his father’s neck and wrap his legs around his waist. His smiling face would peek over narrow shoulders and watch in rapture as wings as large as the tree branches above would beat and flap in effort to hoist the additional weight, and father and son would slowly lift off the ground, and swoop through sloping meadows and along flowing streams. They would dive through forest and field, past the shadow of the Blade, stooped over his plants, or hacking at tree stumps with an old woodcutter’s ax. They would circle over the small cottage that housed them, lingering long enough to catch the faintest echo of guitar strings and gentle humming from the porch, where Wilbur would sit on a swing and compose.
When Tommy would ask if he one day could fly on his own, (a question repeated more than others) Phil would let loose a peal of delighted laughter and ruffle the untamed mountain of hair on top of his youngest’s head.
“Maybe one day, Toms, if you believe enough.”
But the good days were few and far between, and the small family would not stay a family for long.
It all ended in the twilight hours of a warm summer evening. Tommy knew (in the abstract way that many children understand complicated, important adult things), that Techno had been sick lately. He would stay in his room much longer than was the norm and began refusing Tommy’s requests to play practice his fighting in the garden. It had been weeks since Tommy had properly spoken to his brother – the only time he heard his rumbling voice was when woken in the middle of the night to urgent tones from down the hall.
Tommy missed Technoblade. He hoped he would feel better soon.
Wilbur had helped him make a get well soon card and promised that if Tommy made it well enough that Techno would heal from whatever mystery sickness he had. (Tommy didn’t know what was wrong, Phil said it wasn’t like the stomach flu Tommy caught last winter but that was the only sickness Tommy could think of unless it was something serious like the plague.) Tommy slid the card he had spent hours on under the forever-closed bedroom door, and secretly prayed to the moon and the sky that his brother would come out soon.
The next morning, the door was open, but the bed was empty.
Tommy woke up to one less family member and barely got to say goodbye to Phil before he rushed out the door in pursuit of Technoblade. Tommy stood on the worn wooden steps, gripping tightly to Wilbur’s pant leg, lest he decide to follow and leave Tommy on his own. (Tommy knew what being alone felt like, and never wanted to feel that way again but Phil had promised that this was forever, that this was family.) Wilbur said Techno was sick with “voices”, and Tommy didn’t know what that meant but it must have been serious because they had to go far away to fix it.
With Phil gone, Tommy lamented the loss of the euphoric freedom of the sky, and would often explode in misplaced anger at Wilbur and his stupid stupid lack of wings. (He wasn’t Phil he wasn’t Phil why wasn’t Phil there?) And Wilbur would try his best, he would lift Tommy into his arms and swing him in circles, up and down and tossed gently – but it was only a few inches, and it wasn’t nearly as high as he wished to be.
Once, when Phil had been gone for several months and Tommy had begun to lose hope that he was ever coming back, Tommy climbed to the top of the highest tree he could see and wished as hard as he could for wings. He believed with all of his might and ignored Wilbur’s panicked shouts from far below. Tommy jumped, and for a moment, he was flying. The feeling was as addictive as it had always been to Tommy, but it ended in a spectacular crash and incredible pain. He broke his arm and nearly sent Wilbur into a panic attack in the process.
(He didn’t understand, he had believed so much, did his faith let him down, or did he not have enough?)
Wilbur made him promise to stop jumping. And Tommy didn’t want to be like Phil and every other broken promise, so he did. He got used to the sky being far above his head and no longer within his reach. He stayed on the ground with Wilbur, he kept his oath and shoved his dreams of flight deeper and deeper until they were almost forgotten. He followed Will through the mud and the rain, away from their home and on to new lands. (Better lands, Wilbur promised, where they could start over and forget about Phil and Techno and the love they must have lost, because why else would they be gone for so long?)
Tommy did his best to forget about Philza’s wings. As Tommy grew, he redirected his focus onto the only family he had left. Will couldn’t hoist Tommy into the stars, but he held Tommy close, tucked his head under his chin, and hummed lullabies when he would awake in fear, certain that his brother had abandoned him too. Wilbur didn’t have wings that could shade the sun, but he had a smile that could draw Tommy’s eyes all the same, and his love made the ground almost as welcoming as the sky.
Eventually, as all children do, Tommy grew up, and his devotion to the sky faded as he spent his years on the ground. His devotion was forgotten as he and Wilbur continued their “Big Adventure” as they affectionately named it, as they crossed borders into new SMPs and as they met a similar group of travelers, and as Tommy met a boy his age whose friendship built clouds and gave Tommy a sky of his own.
After a few weeks as a group, the three vagabonds followed rumors of a new SMP for loners and wanders just like them, and it was in this way they met the ones who would convince them to settle. The sky became secondary behind the family that they created out of dirt and tears and work. Tommy forgot the sky in the face of war and sacrifice and even more loss – through betrayal and paranoia and pain. The sky was a distant memory, as far away as the concept of his lost family, only remembered in faded ink and muddled dreams. The sky was forgotten, delegated to nothing but a recollection.
Until Technoblade returned, and Tommy was thrust into a swirling gale of emotion and spit out in free fall as the ground rushed up to meet him, with the promise of pain the only reliable outcome.