Chapter Text
“Tommy!” Wilbur screams. “Tommy, run!”
Tommy blinks, dizzy, spinning about. His gaze lands on the bomb in front of his feet, nestled snugly against the iron toe of one boot. It’s small. Seemingly insignificant. Almost cute.
He hears Wilbur’s voice as if through a distant barrier, and knows it’s Wilbur screaming in his head now: TOMMY! GET THE FUCK AWAY FROM THERE! I WON’T GO BACK TO JAIL, I FUCKING REFUSE—GET AWAY, TOMMY!
He swallows with effort, clinging to the smudging thickness of frozen time as it slips through his hands. Tubbo’s presence rolls off his back, dripping down his shoulder blades. He stares down at his palms.
Flame flickers to life, though his power has always been earth. That’s the bomb, then.
He’s always scoffed at accounts of accidents—the corny ones, at least, the “I remember it in blinks” and the “I felt like I was out of my body” and of course the heart beat-beat-beating out of their chest.
The bomb explodes in a burst of hot air and shrapnel, and Tommy thinks that perhaps they were right.
He slams upward, stomach twisting, a wave of heat slapping him in the face. One, two, blistering palms; three, four, Wilbur’s twin screams, one slamming through his eardrums, one bursting in his skull; five, six.
Crack.
A bursting, skull-crushing pain as Tommy’s limp body hits the concrete wall of the warehouse. He flops, blind and blurry with pain, to the gravelly ground.
A face looms over him. Tommy blinks. “Will?” he croaks.
Wilbur swallows, throat bobbing, eyes wide. His pupils are bare slits, sunlight slanting over his face from the hole the bomb made in the ceiling. “Tommy,” he gasps. “Tommy, Tommy, fuck—”
“Mm,” Tommy says. He lifts a hand; it falls weakly to his side, scraping against the rough rock of the ground. Wilbur doesn’t seem to notice, too narrowed-in on his face, gaze fixed on the throbbing back of Tommy’s head. It’s not even that bad, probably. Wilbur just worries too much.
“What happened?” Tommy says honestly. “Why’re you like this now?”
Wilbur jolts. “What— What? Tommy, you don’t know what you’re saying. You hit your head. I can’t—let me just—”
He attempts to lift Tommy’s unwieldy body. Tommy’s head hurts, enough that it makes him want to vomit; he squeezes his eyes shut, but a tear still slips out, and Wilbur swipes it away. His hands are rough.
“You were a good big brother,” Tommy mumbles. “Why’d you … why’d you stop?”
Wilbur takes a shuddering breath. “Shit, Tommy, I don’t—”
Tommy’s always had a better grasp on the cacophony of Wilbur’s thoughts—always been better at that two-way connection, where others might just see a teenager with blazing dark eyes hurling all your worst insecurities at your throat. So he hears, the whole way through, Wilbur’s raw screams.
“Get clear! Containment Unit 2A!”
Wilbur’s head whips up.
Tommy’s head hurts.
Wilbur drops him to the concrete without a second thought and bolts down the alleyway.
A couple shots ring out, but they won’t hit him. They never do.
Tommy tries to croak “Wilbur,” but he just flops back to the concrete. Blood smears across his cheek, oozing in tiny rivets across the cracks in the asphalt.
“We’ve got another one,” says the Containment officer into his radio. “Rank C, it looks like—maybe even D. We’ve got a surefire E on the loose, too—same one we’ve been chasing.” He narrows his eyes down at Tommy, who blinks dazedly back up at him. “Get medical attention. And a pair of handcuffs.”