Chapter Text
To be honest, Tommy was having a shit day.
It was colder than the arctic in L’manburg, making him shiver and struggle to stay warm even in his favorite thick sweater and scarf. Customers were unforgiving and unrelenting, worse than usual for Bad’s shop, and it was so frustrating having to keep up a front while dealing with idiots who treated him like he knew nothing but he hates to break it to those folks, that’s not how coffee is made! But each of those could be forgiven. Winter in the country was always a bit harsh, the air always bit at your skin. Rude customers were just a given — that’s the customer service industry, but the worst of all the things that could have happened?
Dream calling him nonstop, making his phone buzz off the hook. Now, don’t get Tommy wrong, he’s totally popular with everyone at school that everyone wants his attention, but this is the first time Bad gave him a warning look about his phone, a look that needed no words—Turn off your phone or I’ll confiscate it and frankly, that’s the last thing he wanted. He would rather be fired than let Bad handle his phone. Knowing him, he’d try and make it PG-13, something Tommy loathed. He was always trying to act like his dad, he pestered Tommy all the time.
How’s school going? How are your grades? Do you have any friends? How are they? Are you studying? Did you eat before you clocked in? Do you need a new sweater? You shouldn’t be out in the cold like that, you’ll get sick, here take my sweater! It’s going to rain, please take my umbrella.
But even that would be better compared to his stupid shitface of a brother calling, who he loathed.
Finally, after his disgustingly long shift ended and he exited the backdoor of the shop, he let himself answer it. Despite Tommy turning his phone on silent, he didn’t stop at all, he was acting like it was an emergency!
Nothing good ever comes out of answering Dream’s calls and he knows that, yet a part of him makes him do anyways. Maybe it’s the fact that Dream is the only family he has left, his mother’s memory fading from his mind sooner than he would like. Maybe it’s because the number one hero will find him anyways, so why try avoiding the inevitable? Maybe it’s because he’s self-destructive and wants to give in to that horrid pain that haunts him like a ghost, following him around and reminding him of the misery he’ll never escape.
Nevertheless, he doesn’t get a chance to speak first.
“Tommy, where are you? When are you coming home?”
The same annoying questions that they both already know the answers to.
“I’m not coming ‘home’, I don’t live with you anymore! I’m fine on my own, I don’t need you to be a shit guardian! I’m doing fine at college and fine on my own, I even work, so stop calling and asking - you nearly got me in trouble with Bad!”
“Tommy, I’m your brother — I - I care about you okay? Please I just want you to be safe, I don’t want you to struggle…” That faux concern, he’s heard it a million times over and fallen for it every single time. Every time, he was abandoned inside that large mansion where silence rang through the halls. Solitude was a lonely, miserable experience and he’d rather struggle everyday of his life than ever go through that again. On his own, he has friends at college, like Ranboo and Tubbo, and he has a boss that cares for him like he’s his own family, things are good , even if they’re tough.
He spent all those years waiting and needing Dream to be his brother, his guardian that’ll guide him because it was just them. It was supposed to be them versus the world and nothing would come between them, that’s what it meant to be brothers right? So why did Tommy have to sit at home with his hands covered in burn scars, watching as Dream, as the number one hero, proclaim on live television that he didn’t have any family left, that they had all died in a villain attack. A child with no one on his side who decided to take his strength and use it for good so no one else would have to suffer like he did, like his family did.
“I’m going to train,” Dream had said with a smile that burned brighter than the sun and was blinding in its truth. “This way I can protect you Tommy. I’ll be able to make sure no one hurts us, Mum will be so proud of us.”
Everyday, in the darkness of the silence, he clung to those words. He had lost his mother who had been an unwilling bystander in the midst of a hero and villain fight that wreaked havoc throughout their hometown. She was a doctor, she loved helping people, and she gave her all to her studies. She had so much to do, to learn, to see, only to be taken away from her by battle. He believed Dream, once upon a time, but he’s wiser. He knows better.
This faux concern is nothing but a load of shit, just him being the perfect actor that heroing requires you to be. He’s frankly tired of it.
“Why do you care? You didn’t before,” Tommy hisses. “You were never home!”
“I was doing my best, okay? I was new, I needed to put the work in!”
Tommy can feel the anger burning up inside him, rushing through his veins. It always comes back during their arguments (but then again, when do they not argue?), reminding him of all the hurt and the pain he went through. The sting of betrayal has not faded with time, only two years since he watched Dream lie to the world about his family and about who he was. He’s a person too, sure, he’s not a hero like Dream and sure, maybe this society doesn’t appreciate Piglin-hybrid’s the best, but he’s still a person, just like Dream and the rest of them!
Stupid myths saying they’re from hell.
“It doesn’t change the fact you neglected me, okay?” Tommy whispers into the phone, willing himself to not break down and run back to his brother. “I’m — I’m doing fine, okay? My teachers like me, I have good friends, a safe job, and my rent lady adores me, okay! So, just, leave it.”
“You’re being selfish!” Dream screams into his ear, reminding him who has the power here. “You ran away from home! Look, I’m sorry I wasn’t there always to hold your hand but you were capable of handling yourself! I had to help the city, they needed me.”
“I needed you!” Tommy curses, clutching onto his sweater. “I was fourteen, burning my hand on the stove because you didn’t teach me how to cook. I was fourteen, staining the cutting board with blood because you never taught me how to cut vegetables! I was fourteen, failing classes because I hated that house and I hated the silence but at least then you would yell at me!”
He hears a scoff on the other line.
“Well, you certainly got what you wanted.”
He can feel the bags underneath his eyes.
“So, yeah, I ran away and I’m doing fine without you. I don’t need your help.” He reminds him, “Remember? You don’t have a little brother according to the media. You’re a lone orphan who crawled your way from the bottom of the barrel all on your own to the top, loved that media piece.”
“You’re still whining about that?”
“Just quit it,” Tommy warns. “Stop calling me like you need me when you clearly don’t.”
“You’re always like this —!”
It’s then when he sees red on the gravel ground, seeping into the gray floor. Red that leads up to a pale, heaving body slumped against the brick wall of a building. Alone and shivering in the cold air sits a muscular frame in a bloodied, fancy shirt with long, pink hair drenched against his form.
He gapes and stares with wide eyes.
It’s a Piglin-hybrid, by the way red eyes jump up at him and glare, baring his tusks in a frightening manner, but Tommy doesn’t budge. Dream is far scarier.
It’s someone just like him.
Someone just like him with a dagger lodged into their lower abdomen. The dagger's hilt is wrapped in a black cloth tightly, the cross-guard is dark green, like mountain forests, and it's one he knows well. He's sure if he took the blade out and wiped it down, he could see the metal black blade with an edge that is painted green. These aren't any daggers either, these are sharp and they are painful. He knows them because he remembers the prototypes and the revisions of it, he remembers when he finally saw the finished product and how cool he thought they were. He even remembers the owner saying he thought about seeing if he could combine them with his power, poison, but decided against it because he doesn't want to be a violent hero, he wants his blades to be his last resort. He even wants to use them to stop or pin somewhere so he doesn't have to use them as weapons, as a device to hurt others, but that seems a bit ironic now, seeing them covered in the blood of someone.
He knows this person. He read countless articles on him since his youth, ever since the villain started popping up all over the place. He goes by, 'The Blade' now but he remembers back when he was nameless and his followers called him, 'The Blood God'. He's dangerous, swiftly merciless, and he is a callous man, say the journalists. That was back when he cared about villains and heroes, back when he thought maybe he could be a sidekick and he needed to know everything about everything if he wanted to be of any use, if he wanted him to be proud of him. He remembers the guilt and shame that settled in his gut upon hearing he's a Piglin-hybrid, just like Tommy, and thinking, Wow, he's just like me! before remembering he was a villain who hurt and took advantage of people.
He knows why that dagger is in Techno's stomach. There's only been a deadly rivalry between the hero and villain going on ever since the two started popping up a little over two years ago, becoming big names in the industry.
He's on the phone with Dream. Clearly, Techno ran off to escape Dream and this fight must have occurred recently, sometime today. Dream must have found some time in between his relentless calls and harassment of Tommy to hunt him down, but clearly he didn't have enough time away from his phone if Techno managed to escape. He should telling him that the villain is right here, just by his work on his pathway home, but instead, he doesn't see the villain that they warn kids about and the villain that's given Dream countless scars and filled him to the brim with fury over the two years.
Instead, he sees a dying man and the human in him cries out for him to help.
Just like his mother, kind and sweet, he wants to help and save people, in anyway possible.
“I’m going to need to call you back — !”
“What? What do you think — ?” He doesn’t care about the lecture he’ll get when he finally gives in and calls as he tosses his phone into his bag and races towards the bleeding figure.
“Get away from me,” He warns with deadly serious eyes, but Tommy doesn’t flinch.
“You’re injured,”
“Yeah, I can tell.”
“By Smiles’s daggers…”
“Oh what? You’re a fanboy?”
“No,” Tommy bends down and examines closer, it’s not like the stranger can exactly run. His shirt is torn, right above where the dagger is pierced into his lower abdomen.
“Do you know who I am?” He growls.
“Yeah,” Tommy peers up at him. “You’re that Piglin guy, the Blade dude or whatever.”
“Blood God.” He corrects. Tommy doesn’t care. "That's an old name..."
“Are you stupid?” The stranger coughs, chokes on his own words, and Tommy thinks it serves him right for insulting him, when he’s the one trying to help him out here!
“Yeah, yeah, you’re the bad Blood Freak or some shit — I’m so scared!” Tommy huffs, letting his anger slip through more than he probably should. The moment Techno could move again, he’d be dead for sure, but he’s never been one to think about a future, a future he’s not even sure belongs to him. “Look, I don’t care about your morals or your super-villain code or — whatever! All I see is an idiot in front of me bleeding out, so sue me for wanting him to not die! You’re still a person, aren’t you?”
He’s sure Dream would kill him if he ever found out Tommy saved his arch-nemesis, the person he faces in a death-to-death battle everyday of his life. The person he chases after obsessively, searching for clues hidden in blood baths and pale fingerprints. The person he vowed he would be the one to take him down, no matter what it took, no matter what it cost.
He knows Dream means that.
It’s one thing to openly doubt the Hero Committee. It’s one thing to hate Dream’s day job. It’s one thing to hate Dream, but to help an enemy he faces constantly on the front-lines, putting his life on the line for mere strangers who are naive to the war they face?
Dream would kill him, he knows it.
Yet he can’t bring himself to stop looking at the wound, taking in the damage the blade has taken on the man’s lower stomach - a dangerous region. If he takes it out now, he could bleed to death. If he doesn’t, that’s every second closer to someone finding them and killing them. He needs to do something.
He could care less about heroes or villains. He knows there’s blood on this man’s hands, he knows this man has probably seen death far more times than Tommy has breathed, but he’s never been the pinnacle of moral code. He threw that away when he was abandoned by the one person he thought would protect him the most, when the word family became tainted with hatred and misery by the world’s number one hero.
“This might hurt,” Tommy swallows and it sets in - he’s doing this. He’s barely a high school graduate with only passion and textbook instructions to guide him, but he has to at least try. “I need to see the wound, I need to know how deep it goes. If it’s deeper to where it’s reached the organs, you’re going to have to go to a doctor, Big man, but I don’t think you want that.”
He hears an annoyed groan from above.
“But if it’s not, if I don’t see that, then - then I might be able to stitch you up but I’m not a real doc. I’m only fifteen, I don’t have those fancy pills. The best I got is ibuprofen.”
“You talk a lot of big talk for a kid.” Techno peers his eyes open at him and he glares back.
“Says the dumbass getting saved by a kid, you’re welcome by the way!”
Techno doesn’t respond, merely rolls his eyes, and huffs. An action he appears to regret by the hiss of pain he lets release between his tusks.
Without thinking, Tommy intertwines his tail with Techno. He’s not sure what makes him do it. Maybe it’s sympathy, maybe it’s because this is the first time he’s ever met someone like him, he doesn’t know, but the man doesn’t say a word.
“You’re — you’re gonna be okay, I won’t let you die,” He breathes in and his chest aches. “I won’t.”
He opens up his bag and pulls out the aid kit he carries with him all the time. Really, it’s just part of training to be a paramedic, be ready at all times you know? It’s more than your typical first aid kit, considering he uses this stuff to practice on when the lesson calls for it, but that only makes his odds better. He takes out antiseptic wipes and wipes around the area trying to be as gentle as he can be, but it doesn’t change the fact there’s a dagger lodged in the guy’s stomach.
‘Okay, that isn’t a bad sign…’ Tommy thinks, blinking at the wound. He knows the size of Dream’s dagger very well, everyone practically does, and he knows this is not that deep. He’s not sure if it’s on purpose or it’s just Lady Lucky preferring him rather than Dream, but Tommy will take it.
“I’m not going to die,” Techno breathes, clutching onto the ground. “Phil will be here, he knows where I am, I can’t die.”
“You can’t die because I’m not going to let you, get that straight, you pussy.” He huffs and grabs hold of the hilt of the dagger. He breathes in deeply and holds it there. “It — it doesn’t look like it was able to reach your stomach or whatnot…I’m going to pull it and I’m going to have to stitch it, that’s the best I can do without ‘proper’ equipment.”
“So?” Techno stares at him, as if asking him, what are you waiting for then?
“I — I need you to help me out,” Tommy says shakily. “In order to stitch it properly, I need help keeping it together okay? The bleeding looks like it’s slowed, I hope that’s a good sign…”
“You’re not making me have a lot of faith in you, kid.”
“I’m in training! It can’t be helped!”
“Yeah, yeah,” Techno chuckles and then he smiles. He smiles and if Tommy wasn’t so distracted by the smell of blood on his hands and the shaking in his fingers as he holds onto the dagger, he’d think it was the most astounding thing he’s ever seen. “It’s okay, you... you got this.”
At that, he flushes and does his best to ignore the way it comforts his racing nerves.
Stupid Piglin side.
With his consent now, he pulls out the blade as quickly as he can, without worsening it or making the bleeding pick up at a faster pace again. He tries to ignore the pained sounds coming from the pinkette, the way it makes his heart race in worry, and focus on the task at hand - stitching!
He grabs one of his needles, quickly wiping it with an antiseptic wipe, and ties thread to it. The wound itself isn’t long or thick, thankfully. It’s small and thin, thank god, so it won’t take much. Much to his credit, Techno puts pressure on the wound as much as he can to keep it together and limit the bleeding.
He presses the tip of the needle against the skin and pushes it through the skin. Despite how he winces at Techno’s gritting tusks, he continues it until he quickly reaches the bottom of the wound. He ties it off and wipes the wound clean with another antiseptic wipe before placing a bandage over it.
“You’ll need to wash it daily and use ointment on it. Don’t soak this area in water for the first twenty-four hours, but washing will be fine. Once it closes up and the stitches aren’t holding it together, you can remove the thread.” Tommy instructs and can’t help but notice the way Techno’s tail clings onto his own. He doesn’t say a word and sits there with him, watching him breathe in and out. It hurts to watch.
He doesn’t even know the guy, but it hurts . It hurts even more knowing his brother’s dagger is the thing that did this to the guy.
‘I mean, he doesn’t seem that bad…’ Tommy thinks, almost wistfully before he crushes this rising feeling in his chest. This was just his Piglin instincts going into overdrive after meeting one for the first time, someone who was stronger and older than him, someone he could watch in awe and aim to please.
Protector, his mind supplies and he burns it.
“There you are!” An older, calmer voice calls out to them, worry drenched in their tone as he hears racing feet coming towards him. He looks up from his blooded, stained hands, and sees a man covered in loose, green clothing with golden hair and bright blue eyes race towards them. Immediately, as if by second nature, he falls to his knees beside Techno’s side and takes his arm, scanning him for injury. “You’re hurt — !”
“I’m okay, Phil,” Techno hisses, “I’m patched up, I just — I need a lot of pain pills right now. It hurts like hell man.”
“You’re patched…?” Phil gapes, staring at the bandage on his abdomen and turns to Tommy, finally noticing he’s there. “Who are you? Did you…?”
“I want to be a paramedic,” is the only answer he spits out before feeling himself flush. “I — I just saw he was bleeding and tried my best. It doesn’t look like the dagger reached any internal organs so it was safe to clean up and stitch, I did the best I could, my, uh, aid kit is better than the ones you get in stores but it’s no doctor’s office…”
Amazement sparkles in blue eyes, ones that remind him of the shimmering shore him and Dream used to live at, before they’re washed in gratitude. He smiles so genuinely, relief flooding over him as he closes his eyes. “Thank you, oh thank you, mate…”
He blinks before smiling and scratching his cheek.
“It — it was nothing, besides, I don’t really…” Tommy swallows, “I didn’t want to just let him bleed out.”
“Thank you, thank you, I’ll take him home now,” Phil assures, smiling so bright that it challenges the sun.
At that announcement, Tommy smiles and pulls his tail away only to be yanked back down by Techno’s, a growl emitting from his chest.
The order is clear, Stay.
“Techno,” Phil says soft and weak. “Techno, we can’t stay here with the kid. They’ll find us sooner or later. We have to go, we’ve already been out in the open for long enough today as it is.”
Techno shakes his head and holds on tighter.
Come, it calls him and he almost wants to relent.
He barely knows these people, they’re super villains, what if they hurt him?
But then again, when did he ever believe that? His own brother is the top hero, one who saves countless lives and protects the innocent, yet he constantly fails to keep him safe. If anything, he constantly hurts Tommy, more than any super villain could. His daggers are sharp and dangerous to any foe who it lands on, but they’re nothing compared to his words and constant disappointment in Tommy.
They’re super villains yet Techno is clinging to him, as if they’re family, as if he belongs in something for once, as if he isn’t the biggest freak the city has seen yet. They’re super villains but Phil has only looked at him with gratitude and relief, his smile blinding and Tommy thinks he might be okay with losing his sight if he gets to hold onto that memory forever.
“I... could go with you…” Tommy offers, as a compromise. “It’s - it’s probably just because we’re both Piglins. Instincts….are hard. His body is still in fight or flight mode, the sooner we get to wherever you guys are going and get meds in him, the better.”
Phil seems to hesitate for a second, glancing in between the two before he shakes his head with a sigh.
“Kid, I hate to say it but I think you’re Tech’s favorite right now,” He laughs, light and airy. It’s music to Tommy’s ears. “Techno isn’t that weak to his instincts, but if there’s one thing I know about him is that he’s stubborn, mate, c’mon let’s go.”
Certainly wasn’t the answer he was expecting, but he gives in nonetheless. He turns to pack up his things in his bag and stands up to face Phil who carries Techno in his arms. It’s a bit hilarious considering it seems Techno is actually taller than Phil, but it works nonetheless.
They walk through the shadows where the air is the coldest. Tommy barely recognizes his own home this way, never going down these paths before but he follows dutifully. Not for a second does he stop and wonder, even as his eyes dart everywhere, taking in the new colors and the grime that covers the ground. He doesn’t let his tail slip from Techno’s demanding grip.
When he walks with them, it almost feels comfy, like the days Dream used to walk him home from school and listen to babble on about what kind of day he had.