Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

What defines a good person? Someone who does good deeds, ask anyone and they will tell you that a hero is a good person. The villains that destroyed the city were bad people. But what were vigilantes? The gray area? Some ended up getting offered jobs at the Hero’s Corporation, people like The Blade, the number one hero. But some only wanted bad things for the people, Schlatt went mad with power after creating a truce with the villains whilst he was a vigilante. Tommy was, in short, a bad person. Morally corrupt, evil, any other synonym that you could think of, Tommy fits the definition. All of his friends didn’t believe him, they thought he was selfless, reckless even, but that he was good. Tommy thought about the morals of being a good person often. His job as a vigilante was illegal, he was stopping crimes and committing one by doing so, he called it a corrupt system. Tubbo and Ranboo were his roommates, they thought he was good. They also thought he needed a job other than going out at night and fighting crime. Tommy was scrolling through his phone when Ranboo came home.

“Tommy! I found a job for you!” He shouted, putting his shoes at the door, ten feet in front of where Tommy sat on the couch. Their apartment wasn’t made for three people, one bedroom, one bath, but they made it work. It was the only available thing in the outskirts of L’Manburg. They could barely afford groceries let alone an apartment anywhere near the city. Their landlord had been working on paying a good half of their rent but after he moved away their new one was one them about all the unpaid fees, they had already lost heat and electricity, luckily it was autumn and they didn’t need those to survive at the moment. However, winter was approaching and they were going to need heat sometime soon. 

“When is it? Can I still go out patrolling tonight?” Tommy needed to patrol tonight, he hadn’t gone out last night because Tubbo needed help with his job but Tommy was the only vigilante in the area around their apartment complex, and missing more than one night of patrol in a row leads to major criminals thinking they can make their move. 

“It’s at eleven tomorrow morning, you could try but you’d have to cut it short,” Ranboo answered with a slight smile on his face. Tommy had time to patrol, that was good. But he had to be home at a reasonable hour which he was not very good at doing. 

“Tubbo’s going to be home late today, his boss wants him to finish his project you guys were working on last night in the office,” Tommy and Ranboo don’t know much about Tubbo’s job. He didn’t tell them where he worked or what he did, all they knew was that he worked with technology and needed another set of eyes sometimes. Ranboo worked in a local cafe run by their friend Niki, she allowed him to help bake stuff and work in the back, not forcing him to do any front counter work seeing as he had pretty extreme social anxiety. Tommy checked his phone and then remembered what Ranboo said when he walked through the door. 

“What job am I interviewing for? Do I need to forge some documents?” Tommy asked, he wasn’t a legal person so if he needed an ID he would need to get a fake sometime in the next, Tommy checked the time, seventeen and a half hours. Ranboo checked the paper he was holding in hand. 

“Tomorrow at eleven AM, Sleepy Boi’s Inc is holding an open house interview for the position of their assistant. Anyone who wanted to interview must be at the Hero’s Tower and checked in before eleven. Dress as you please, there will be a second round of interviews scheduled for a later date, you will be notified before midnight if you are coming to the second round of interviews. From there, someone will be hired. The first round of interviews will be held on the bottom floor of Manburg Hotel,” Ranboo read from the paper. Tommy was going to kill Ranboo, a position at the Hero’s Tower? He barely had one fancy outfit for this interview let alone a second one, god forbid they don’t have a staff uniform at the tower. 

“Ok, so no documents needed, you think the heroes would have higher security?” Tommy thought aloud. “I might not patrol tonight, I hear that SBI has been known to arrest citizens on the bias that they might be vigilantes,” Tommy continued, Ranboo nodded. 

“If you’re going into the city tomorrow you’ll need to eat dinner tonight,” Ranboo stated. Tommy tended to avoid eating but he needed energy for tomorrow plus the heroes learn everything about someone and Tommy was scarily skinny. He was tall, no doubt about it, but he barely ate a meal a day, he was skin and bones. At first, Tubbo and Ranboo thought not to push it, seeing as Tommy was found on the streets and that he would put on weight now that he had a consistent supply of food. They were quick to realize they were wrong seeing as Tommy never joined them for meals. He was an active person seeing as fighting crime was his favorite pastime, he needed food, but no matter what Tubbo and Ranboo did Tommy wouldn’t eat more than one or two bites of a meal in front of others. 

“What is there to eat? Dry pasta? Oatmeal?” Tommy asked with a dark undertone to his voice. He was quick to pick up on the fact that Ranboo was trying to get him to eat. Tommy didn’t like food, he didn’t need much to survive, he wasn’t pulling his weight on the apartment anyway, he didn't deserve it. Tommy could eat once he had done this interview. “I’m not hungry anyway,” He said, avoiding this meal would be difficult but it could be done.

“Tommy, you can’t avoid this. Tubbo’s going to be pissed if I send you to bed without dinner,” Tubbo would be mad but Tommy didn’t care. He walked towards the door to their bedroom, turning away from Ranboo.

“I’m going to bed, I have an interview tomorrow,” Tommy said, he closed the door behind him. He hoped he got this job, he wanted to help Tubbo and Ranboo. If he didn’t he would probably have to move out.

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Tubbo came home from work an hour and a half later than usual. He was exhausted and went to lay down in bed when Ranboo stopped him.

“Boo, I know you’re excited about something but can I nap for half an hour first? I'm tired,” Tubbo tried to push into the bedroom once more but Ranboo’s grip was firm. 

“Tommy’s sleeping in there you’ll have to nap on the couch,” Ranboo said, a smirk spreading across his face. Tubbo froze, Tommy never slept unless he passed out and got a few hours of rest from there. 

“Why? He never sleeps,” Tubbo asked. He needed to know if Tommy was beaten up or something. He had a habit of leaving wounds untreated.

“He went into the room to get out of dinner,” Ranboo said with a sad undertone to his voice, “But then I check again ten minutes later and he’s out like a light,” Ranboo cracked open the door just enough to allow Tubbo to see a head of blond hair passed out on the bed.

“I’m taking blackmail photos,” Tubbo said, pulling out his phone and giggling.

“He’s so cute, send me the nice ones,” Ranboo said, letting Tubbo into the room to take pictures. This might have been the best night they’ve had in a while.

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Phil, Techno, and Wilbur were doing paperwork, a lot of paperwork. Tomorrow they were going to hold the first round of interviews for an assistant position. Since they were holding an open house they expected a bunch of unqualified people to show up hence the two rounds of interviews. Wilbur didn’t like the idea of an assistant.

“Why do we need an assistant anyways?” Wilbur asked, annoyance seeping into his tone. He didn’t like the idea of someone new joining the team, he was fine with it as it is.

“Because you and I both know that we hate paperwork and who better to do it than someone else,” Phil replied, his tone soothing. They needed an assistant, they worked too often for his liking but maybe he was just getting old.

“Fine, but just know I’m going to be picky,” Wilbur said, the annoyance in his voice dropping slightly.

“We figured Wil, you’re picky anyways,” Techno said, his voice as monotone as ever.

“Like you’re one to talk,” Wilbur replied in a joking tone, replacing his annoyed one.

“Wilbur, don’t talk to your brother like that,” Phil said, not paying attention to the bickering but rather just sorting through some files. “Wilbur, you need an assistant, look at that pile of work,” Phil pointed at Wilbur's pile of papers nearly twice as tall as Techno’s.

“Fine, maybe I need a little more time in the office, but no one needs to be going through my stuff,” Wilbur said, rolling his eyes as he grabbed the top paper from the stack. An unfiled fight report. He probably had a stack of over 75 of them, maybe he could use some help.

Chapter Text

Tommy woke up in the bedroom, alone. Maybe it was the fact that he just had a nightmare. Maybe it was the fact that he had an interview with the heroes in four hours. Maybe it was the fact that he hadn’t eaten in over a day, but he felt like he was going to throw up. Tommy had two hours before he had to leave the house to go to his interview, his day started with him dry heaving over a toilet. Disgusting. Tommy returned from his thoughts to the sensation of someone rubbing his back, he didn’t need to look to know it was Ranboo. Ranboo was the only one of the three of them that could withstand puke.

“Tommy? Are you alright? Are you sick?” Tubbo asked through the bathroom door, he hated puke and often left the house as much as possible when someone was sick. Tommy shook his head, his vision centering and nausea clearing.

“All good Tubs just had a nightmare, got to me,” Truthfully, Tommy couldn’t remember the contents of his dream. But his nightmares were pretty bad, it was a believable lie. He had to get ready to go, he’d rather reach the city early than late.

“Tommy, where are you going? You just threw up, take a breath,” Ranboo said as Tommy got up and paced. Tommy started flapping his hands, he needed to get ready for this interview, he couldn’t mess this up. What would he do? They wouldn’t be able to afford the apartment, they would hate him, they would-

“Tommy, look at me, eyes, lookup, it’s Tubbo, it’s just after seven, you have an interview in four hours, you’re here, you’re real, he's not here, it’s just me and Ranboo. Tommy looked me in the eyes, you’re scaring me.” Tubbo said a bit of his desperation seeping into his voice. Tommy reluctantly looked up. He didn’t want to scare Tubbo.

“There we go, what’s going on in that head of yours?” Tubbo asked, his voice leaking a comforting chill that set into Tommy’s bones. Tommy stopped pacing, his hands still shaking. He just wanted to get this over with. He shook his head and started going to get dressed, Ranboo grabbed his wrist.

“Tommy, before you get ready you need to eat, you need the energy,” he said in the most comforting voice he could muster. Tommy sometimes went into this mode in which the outside world could not affect him. It was like he tuned out any outside stimuli and just thought. The only thing he was aware of was his thoughts and sometimes they couldn’t pull him out of his head. Sometimes the moments would last only a few minutes like the one they had just watched but sometimes they lasted hours. Most of the time his hands flapped but every once in a while during a big shut down they would turn from little movements to violet ones. One time they left him alone while he was stuck, just to talk, figure out what to do. They came back to him hitting himself in the head, hard. It was one of those times when even when Tubbo whispered comforting words into Tommy’s ear and Ranboo held his hands Tommy wouldn’t come back to reality until he had answered the question in his head.

“Nothing…nothing,” Tommy said, his voice quiet.

“Sure and I’m two meters tall,” Tubbo replied, a snort covering his words. Ranboo slapped him on the head. The innocent bickering was turning violent and Tommy needed to get dressed so he started to go through the closet looking for his only big city-appropriate outfit. Tommy found what he was looking for and went into the bathroom, Tubbo and Ranboo still fighting about… something, Tommy wasn’t listening.

It was cold outside, Tommy loved the cold. His arms were more scared than not and he didn't like the stares he got in the warmer season. He grabbed the nicest red sweater he had, it wasn’t the fanciest thing he owned but it was the only one void of stains. From there Tommy grabbed his khaki pants, he hated jeans so these were the next appropriate substitute. Walking to the bathroom he reveled in the fact that Tubbo and Ranboo’s voices got quieter, Tommy wanted as much calm as he could get He contemplated wearing a dress shirt under his sweater for effect but then he would look more casual like he was wearing the sweater over top of a more professional outfit, which he wasn’t.

Tommy pulled his shirt over his head and looked at his torso, every scar creating a map of unforgotten memories. His forearm was the worst part, it was his own doing, Tubbo says it was influenced, Tommy said he only did it when his brain was clearest. His thoughts all zeroed in on one specific scar, a vertical cut from his inner elbow to his wrist, covered over with horizontal scars of the same manner, Tommy looked under the sink. He couldn’t do it now but he just needed to know it was there if he didn’t get this job he’d probably do it later. Tommy stopped staring and finished putting on clothes, he rolled his shoulders, he could do this. 

Tommy exited the bathroom and walked in on Tubbo and Ranboo shouting at each other, Tommy checked the clock, ten minutes later. Tommy had to leave in an hour and needed to kill time, he left early. He walked around town waiting for time to pass when he ran into someone, literally.

“Oh my goodness, I’m so sorry sweetie, I was in such a hurry I wasn’t watching where I was going!” The woman said. Her hair was pink, it looked cool.

“Oh, I’m sorry ma’am I was in my head. Down in the lower districts you’d think I’d learn not to daydream while walking but here we are!” Tommy said, getting a laugh out of the woman. He grabbed her hand and pulled her up, she dusted her pants off. “I like your hair,” Tommy said, his mouth moving without much thought. The girl looked surprised for a second like she expected Tommy to be mad at her. She turned her head and smiled.

“What’s someone like you dressed up all fancy doing down here? You’re obviously from here so where are you going?” The lady asked, her voice sweet.

“I’m going to go to the open house up in L’manburg and interview to work the Heroes Tower, I’m not gonna get the job but at least I’ll please my roommate's crazy dreams.” He said his voice was laced with humor, Tommy was an anxious person but he was particularly good at small talk. 

“A man from the lower working at the Heroes Tower? It would be a dream, if you smile real nice you’ll charm them maybe you’ll get a different job up there. They all pay good and you could get the lowers a voice in the council,” The woman said, nudging Tommy on the shoulder.

“I’ve got to run if I’m going to catch my train, it was nice meeting you ma’am,” Tommy said, starting to walk away. As he was about to round the corner the lady spoke.

“My name is Niki,” She said while waving her arm in the air, Tommy turned around.

“Tommy, nice to meet you,” He replied, waving back and turning around the corner. He checked his phone, his train left in twenty minutes, he had just enough time to catch it.

The train ride was surprisingly boring. Sure there were your few train weirdos but other than that nothing big happened, Tommy couldn’t tell if it was a bad or a good omen. Of course the second he got off the train in the big city everything went downhill. Tommy’s shoes were untied, he was in such a hurry to leave his house and he had yet to notice. The second he stepped onto the platform he tripped over his shoelace and fell on top of some guy standing outside the door.

“Oh, I’m so sorry sir!” Tommy said standing up quickly, lending a hand to the man he had tripped. Two people in one house, maybe the calm train was a bad omen. Once he rounded the corner he bent down to tie his shoes, his hands were incredibly shaky. Tommy sat there for a solid minute until he gave up stuffing his laces into his shoes, his hands weren’t cooperating. He hoped the interview wouldn’t require too much writing and his handwriting would be illegible.

He checked his phone for the time, fifteen minutes till his interview, just enough time to walk to the tower. The Hero’s Tower was the coolest place in the city, with fourteen floors of people who work for the most powerful people in the city, it scared Tommy out of his mind. People say that there are fifteen floors and that there’s a secret basement to the Tower, if Tommy got the job he’d look for it just to see if they were right. Tommy’s daydreaming was interrupted by the arrival of the Tower in front of him, he took a deep breath, shaking out his hands. He grabbed the handle to the door and pulled it open.

Tommy walked into an empty lobby and panicked, he saw the lady at the front desk and ran up to her.

“Hi,” Tommy started, the lady jumping and looking up at him. “Oh, sorry didn’t mean to scare you, but I was told there was an open house for the position as SBI’s intern. Did I have the wrong day? Am I late? I know I’m cutting it down to the wire, it said check-in by 11:00 and it’s 10:58 but I’m still within the time, right? I thought it said tomorrow on the flyer. Don’t tell me I ran up here just to have the wrong day-” The lady held her hand up stopping Tommy’s anxious rambling.

“Don't worry sweetie, you're all good. You have the right date, why don’t you give me your name and I’ll check you in,” She said, her voice gently reliving some of Tommy's anxiety. “I‘m gonna need your name, first and last, your age, and your favorite color,” Tommy tilted his head in question at the last credential. The lady must have gotten this question a lot because she continued as if Tommy hadn’t asked. “It’s a safety check so that we know whoever gets the visitor’s pass was the person who went upstairs, the question changes every day. It’s funny to see people try to switch IDs anyways but then get the question wrong,” The lady said snickering to herself as she pulled out a visitor's pass to write on,” She looked up at Tommy waiting for him to speak.

“Thomas Innit, 19, red,” Tommy replied, fidgeting with his hands, his nerves were back up he realized he was going to meet the hero’s a few moments, it was terrifying.

“Thomas does suit you. I’m Puffy, I’m going to message Philza to let him know you’re here, you're going to go to the elevators, floor seven, and take a right, there’s a door with a sign that says interview on it. You’ll see it. You can head on up whenever,” She said, handing him his visitor's pass, “It’s a sticker but you can hold it if you want,” Puffy said, noting that his hands were shaking. Tommy turned and clicked the up button on the elevator, and got it, he noted the absence of a lower level button, if there was a secret basement they were trying to hide.

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Phil, Techno, and Wilbur were waiting for people to arrive at the Hero’s Tower. It was 10:50 and no one had shown up for their interview, they thought that people would show up for a chance to meet the heroes. 

“I thought people would show up,” Wilbur said, looking mildly disappointed.

“I thought you were against having an assistant,” Phil said with a smirk on his face.

“I was against it and then I had 75 incident reports last night and now I want someone else to do them for me, also you never let me meet anyone, I was going to talk to people,” Wilbur replied with mild sadness filling his tone, his words flowing out as one continuous sentence.

Phil checked the clock, 10:55, they went back to staring at the time, watching minutes tick mindlessly was almost satisfying. Techno stood up,

“I have things to do, if no one’s gonna show up I’m leaving,” He said in a monotone voice. As he was walking out the door Phil received a text, Puffy had messaged him. Some kid was heading up to an interview.

“Techno, someone is coming up to interview, don’t leave,” he shouted and Techno turned around.

“Whoever it is better be perfect for this job, I wanted to go train,” Techno said, a hint of annoyance in his voice.

“Oh calm down, whoever it is we’ll probably hire, seeing as they’re the only person who dared to show up,” Phil spoke, they heard the elevator door open. Techno sat down with a huff, Wilbur sat forward in his seat, Phil spoke again. “Kids favorite color is red, says he’s nineteen, but Puffy doesn’t buy it, name’s Thomas. Puffy said he got scared out of his mind when he saw that no one else was in the lobby, though he got here the wrong day,” Techno chuckled, “be nice, both of you, we need him to want to work here. Got it?” Phil asked using his ‘dad’ voice. Techno and Wilbur nodded.

Chapter Text

Tommy stepped out of the elevator, visitor’s pass in hand, and almost passed out. He put a hand on the wall and slid to his knees. Someone came up to him but he couldn’t hear what was coming out of their mouth, he looked up at the person. They were wearing a purple hoodie with a spiral design on it, and speaking frantically, their head turned away, probably shouting for someone, Tommy couldn’t feel his hands anymore, vision darkening. His head dropped down as the person grabbed their shoulders. Tommy wished he could hear what the person was yelling as his eyes closed.

Tommy woke up in someone's lap. The person was wearing purple, the front of the shirt had other colors in some sort of design but Tommy’s vision was blurry. He saw the person’s mouth moving quickly and Tommy realized the only thing he could hear was a high-pitched ringing. Tommy went to sit up and the person moved so he could do so. He was handed a glass of water by someone wearing green, Tommy took a sip and slowly his hearing returned.

“...kid? Kid? Kid you ok?” The man in green spoke. Tommy realized at that moment that he wasn’t with anyone he knew and panicked. Tommy dropped the glass of water as he scooched out of the purple guy's lap. His breathing increased as he backed into a wall, where was he? Who were these people? Someone's hands grabbed his wrists and Tommy zoned back into the moment.

“Kid, I need you to breathe for me, with me, ready? In, out, c’mon kid, with me here, in, out,” This time Tommy listened and took a deep breath. The man in green spoke again, “good, let's do it again, with me, in, out, in, out,” Tommy took deep breaths with the man calming his nerves and he remembered where he was. He was at the Hero’s Tower, for an interview, and he had just passed out, in front of two heroes. Tommy had passed out in front of Awesam Dude, a behind-the-scenes hero, and Timescape. Tommy stopped panicking abruptly, making Awesam give him a confused look. Tommy grabbed his visitor’s pass from off the floor and stood up, dusting his knees off. Tommy looked around the room for a clock, seeing the time he went to walk away when he felt someone grab his wrist.

“Kid where are you going?” Timescape asked.

“Call me Tommy, I had an interview with SBI ten minutes ago, I really have to go I’m sure they’re busy,” Tommy stated quickly, he headed for a door labeled ‘interview’ just as Puffy had said it would be.

“Tommy, you just passed out in front of an elevator, they already know you’re going to be late, just take a breath” Timescape replied. Tommy ignored him in favor of going into the interview room. His head was still spinning, Tommy would really have to eat when he got home, if he had water on him he wouldn’t have passed out. That was the rule if he didn’t eat he had to drink lots of water. He continued opening the door and spoke.

“Hi, I’m Thomas Innit, I’m here for the interview? Sorry for being late,” Tommy said hesitantly. In front of him was the number one hero, The Blade, sitting next to him was Siren, and beside him sat Tommy’s all-time favorite hero, Philza Minecraft. Tommy was sitting in awe when Philza spoke.

“It’s all good mate, we can just get started now if that’s alright with you,” Philza said, pulling out a paper from underneath the table. Tommy sat down in one chair opposite the other three. Philza extended his hand, “Ok Thomas, I’m Philza, you can call me Phil, you’re interviewing for the position of assistant correct?” Tommy shook Philza’s hand, he was asked to call Philza by his real name. Tommy was about to fanboy during an interview. Tommy then remembered he had to respond, Philza had asked him a question.

“Yes sir, Oh it is such an honor to meet you, Mr. Philza Minecraft. You two Blade and Siren,” Tommy was a hero fanboy who was kidding, this was surreal. He put his hands together and silently thanked Prime for this opportunity.

“Well Thomas, I’m going to be honest with you, we haven’t had anyone else interview for this position, would you like to work for the heroes?” Philza asked and Tommy froze. He wasn’t intending to do more than mess up an interview but not only had he met the top three heroes but he had passed out in Timescapes arms and now he was getting offered a job with the heroes, the heroes. It went against everything that Tommy was raised to believe, that heroes were bad people, they wouldn’t like people like him, that he was evil. Tommy was defying himself and it felt amazing.

“Yes Mr. Philza Minecraft sir, it would be an honor and a pleasure to work with you,” Tommy spoke in a rush. That sentence set him free, he was free. Maybe this was his fresh start from before. It felt nice.

“Please just call me Phil,” Philza said, the number two hero was asking Tommy to call him by his real name, Tommy was going to explode.

“Not,” Tommy said, and Siren chuckled. Tommy had made Siren laugh and he was going to die, this was death, maybe he was already dead.

“Would you like to start working tomorrow? Just show you the ropes, your hours would be eight to eight but you would have access to free food in the cafe,” Phil proposed. Tommy shook his head and Phil started speaking again, “You can have a few days if you need to sort something out but we would-” Tommy cut him off.

“No sorry I was just checking that I wasn’t dead, I would very much like to start working here tomorrow, eight to eight you said? That would work, I could catch the 7:30 train and make it just on time. Thank you Mr. Philza,” Tommy was giddy, he was going to work for the heroes. He was almost ready to forget that the reason he passed out before this interview was severe dehydration.

“Please mate just call me Phil-” Phil spoke but before he could reason Siren interjected.

“Where do you live? Why are you catching a 7:30 train?” He asked and Tommy’s happy expression fell off his face.

“Why are you asking, are you a stalker?” Tommy asked suddenly and rightfully defensive. The Blade turned to hit Siren on the head and Tommy caught an almost offended look on his face. He could have laughed, The Blade was known for being emotionless and here he was showing affection over someone he hadn’t even talked to before. Maybe it was something that only Tommy noticed, he hoped he could keep it that way.

“Wilbur!” Phil shouted. That was Siren's real name, Wilbur? Tommy barked out a laugh. He laughed so hard he couldn’t breathe. He was doubled over in his chair, wheezing, he was crying. Oh my Prime, he had to tell Tubbo, he would die if he knew. Tommy laughed for a solid minute before he regained his composure. He sat back up, wiping his tears, to see the three heroes staring at him with confusion.

“I’m so sorry but you're telling me his name is Wilbur?” Tommy started laughing again, “Is his full name William?” Tommy jokes, he looked at Siren’s face and realized he might have guessed correctly. “Oh my Prime, your name is William, I’m going to cry, that is the most normal name you could have, William,” Tommy was hysterical. Sire- Wilbur was staring at Tommy with the most offended face someone could have and Tommy bent over in his chair again. Tommy laughed until he started coughing and once again tried to gain his composure. Sitting back up he noted the look on The Blade’s face he looked almost amused. Tommy hoped he wouldn’t hate him, he was probably only showing emotion because he didn’t want to scare Tommy.

Phil looked at Tommy with concern, confusion, for a kid who was scared of Puffy he sure had a lot more confidence once he was in the interview. He also talked with the other staff before walking in, Sam’s assistant walked in and told them that Tommy would be late and five minutes later he walked in. He wondered what happened.

“I was told you were conversing with hero’s before you came in, is that true?” Phil asked and Tommy froze. His explosive personality left as he answered the question, wringing his hands together.

“I step out of your elevator and trip someone, for the third time today, and I’ve got manners so I helped them up, you know? They stand up and I realize I just tripped Timescape and once he was back on his feet Awesam Dude walked over to ask if he was alright. I took the opportunity to meet them because I didn’t think I would get this job and then I remembered why I was here and walked in,” Tommy said in a rush, he didn't need heroes knowing he had passed out because he can’t take care of himself, why would they care. Tommy lied about what happened and hoped that the heroes wouldn’t sell him out. Phil took note of what Tommy said and got ready to dismiss him.

“Well that sounds eventful, I think we're done here. Eight to eight tomorrow? That’s what we agreed upon?” Phil asked, Tommy nodded. They all stood up and Tommy reached out his hand.

“Thank you for letting me on the team,” Tommy said, shaking each of the hero's hands. He checked the clock. That only took fifteen minutes, perfectly he could catch the noon train back home. Tommy walked out of the office door and back into the main hall making a beeline for the elevator, he didn’t want to run into anyone else, just as the door was closing a hand grabbed it and pushed it open.

“Sorry, about that I’m in a, oh, it's you again,” Tommy looked at the person that had just walked on, Timescape. Tommy moved to apologize.

“Sir, I’m so sorry about earlier I didn’t know I was gonna pass out until I was against the wall and you were in front of me,” Tommy rushed out of his mouth, Timescape looked worried.

“Kid, I don’t care that you passed out on me, I care that you passed out, do you have a fear of elevators or something? Press the three for me please,” Timescape asked Tommy to press the button and the elevator started moving, he pressed the lobby for himself. THey stood in awkward silence for a few seconds before Timescape spoke again. “Did you get the job? With SBI?” The question was hesitant as if he wasn’t sure that he was supposed to ask. Tommy responded with equal anxiety.

“I did actually, start tomorrow,” he said, his voice small. The elevator beeped, floor three. Timescape held out his hand and Tommy shook it.

“I’ve got to go but it’ll be fun working with you, Tommy?” He asked to step out of the elevator. Tommy nodded. The doors closed again and the elevator moved. Tommy got out on the lobby floor and walked up to Puffy’s desk, holding his visitors pass in hand.

“Excuse me, what should I do with this? Just throw it out?” He asked hesitantly, Puffy looked up at him and the pass in his hand.

“Yeah,” she grabbed the trash from beside her desk, “just throw it in here,” Tommy threw out his pass and spoke.

“I work here now, I got the job,” Puffy looked up with a smile on her face.

“Well that’s amazing! We have tons of fun here you know?” She was trying to sell the place, Tommy already had the job so it didn’t matter but he appreciated it. He smiled a little and nodded. He opened the door to exit the building and remembered he had a train to catch, his stomach aches as he ran and he thought about how he was going to tell Tubbo and Ranboo that he had got the job. He was giddy, he would be working for the heroes.

Chapter Text

Tommy would be working for the heroes. His only thought the entire train ride home was that he would be working for the heroes. He, a low-life vigilante with knowledge worse than Tubbo could think of, would be working for the nicest, kindest institution in the world. He was so deep in thought he almost missed his stop. Walking home was peaceful he decided to get breakfast for tomorrow seeing as he would be going to work. He walked into a bakery he saw on his walk into the city earlier. The door opened with the chime of an automatic bell and a high-pitched voice yelled from the back of the shop.

“Coming!” After a minute a girl with pink hair walked out the door to the back dusting her hands on an apron. Tommy thought she looked vaguely familiar, he wondered where he had met her before. “Hi! What can I get for you? Do I know you? You seem familiar,” She said, her head tilting to the right, her face still pleasant but with an undertone of confusion.

“I was thinking just the same thing,” Tommy replied. He read the names of the pastries in the case and realized he didn’t know a thing about them. He looked back up at the girl and it clicked, this was the girl he had tripped on his way to the train station. He spoke hesitantly, “Were you the girl that I tripped on the sidewalk earlier?” Tommy asked and the girl’s face changed into one of realization.

 “ You’re the boy that was going to go interview the heroes, how'd that go?” She asked, putting her hands on her hips.

“ Against all odds, I got the job, honestly I still don’t believe it, came here to buy a victory breakfast for me and my roommates for tomorrow,” Tommy spoke a bit of disbelief still filling his tone. The girl clapped for him, doing an overly dramatic bow. Tommy laughed and the girl spoke again.

“So, what can I get you then?” She asked and Tommy panicked a little, he didn’t know what most of the things on display were and he wanted to get something good for Tubbo and Ranboo.

“I'm going to be honest, miss, I haven’t had the money to buy something like this in a while, you tell me what's good, I’m serving three people including me.” His voice was a little shaky, he hoped the girl wouldn’t think too much of it.

“Just pastries?” She asked moving to get a bag from off the wall.

“A hot chocolate as well, I need a drink,” Tommy said with confidence returning to his voice.

“Ok, you like sweets?” She asked Tommy, nodded, “How about lemon?” Tommy nodded again, “Chocolate?” Tommy nodded for the third time and she stopped asking questions, putting five items in the bag. Setting the bag on the counter and turning around to make Tommy’s drink the girl spoke again.

“I gave you two chocolate croissants, a lemon bar, and two glazed honey buns, does that sound alright?” Tommy nodded again and the girl seemed to see him even with her back turned. “Perfect,” She turned around and handed Tommy his hot chocolate, “my name’s Niki, you?” Tommy to the drink and the bag.

 “ Tommy,” He replied, his voice quiet again.

“ Alright, have a nice day Tommy! Good luck!” She half shouted as Tommy walked out the door, he waved through the window before continuing his walk home. Arriving at the apartment he was met with the sound of shouting through closed doors, Tommy checked his phone, Tubbo came home early.

“You had to get him a job that gives him an excuse?” a voice shouted, it was angry so it must have been Tubbo.

“ We need money, he’ll eat if he doesn’t feel guilty and he won’t feel guilty if we have the money to eat!” Ranboo shouted back. Tommy froze, they were yelling about him. He knocked on the door and heard the voices quite quickly. Tommy walked in and set the bag down on the counter, his excitement for telling his roommates he got the job was gone.

“Hey, Toms, what did you get?” Ranboo asked Tubbo, still fuming. Tommy turned the bag so that Ranboo could read it and walked into the bedroom, he needed to charge his phone. He was scrolling through Twitter when he saw a post about a local vigilante, Theseus. Tommy was reading a post about himself. He went to his app settings and changed his name, that was going to be funny. His new name set he reposted the article, talked about how vigilantes aren’t all that bad and about how one was becoming a local hero. A few minutes later Tubbo and Ranboo’s shouting match started up again and Tommy put a pillow over his head trying to drown out his roommate's yelling with the calming voice of sleep.

A few hours later Tommy awoke, it was dark out and he went on his phone to check the time. Opening his lock screen he saw his notification, he had over 100 from Twitter, he was screwed. Ignoring his original purpose for opening his phone he loaded twitter and saw hundreds of comments asking if he was the real Theseus. Tommy wondered how he was going to prove it. Checking the time he saw that it was eleven pm, he could go out and patrol, post a photo of it, but it was risky. Putting on his vigilante outfit and going out the window, he opened Twitter again. He took the most unflattering selfie he could and posted it. Maybe that was the worst decision he had ever made but it was funny. He laughed to himself as he started walking across the street. Crime would be hard to come by, it was only ten pm and he was just walking across the street but Tubbo would probably connect to his comm once he got home.

-----------

Phil wondered what he was going to do. His new intern had walked out of the elevator, passed out, and then just walked into his interview as if nothing had happened. Techno and Wilbur both looked about as deep in thought as he was. What was this kid's issue? Puffy says he’s timid, he walks into an interview with the country's top hero’s like it's a normal Tuesday, Karl says he passed out, and he shows up to an interview as if nothing happened. 

“ Ok, what was up with that kid? Should he be working? Do we even know why he passed out?” Techno spoke. Wilbur shook himself from his thoughts.

“I told you we didn’t need an intern, look at what happens when we get one,” Phil tilted his head to the left, his face changing from one of curiosity to concern. What happened to this kid? Why would anyone not just stop after showing up and passing out? He was an enigma. Phil wanted to know the answers to this kid.

“ No, stop,” Techno said and Phil looked up at him, “You’re making your dad face, this is some kid who is going to work for us, you can’t Dadza him,” Techno spoke, his voice tainted with mild sarcasm. Phil looked to Wilbur then back to Techno.

“We’re letting him work here right? At least until we get some answers,” Phil spoke his voice with a tone of finality. Wilbur didn’t like the idea of a mysterious intern, Techno looked almost intrigued by the kid, Phil looked like he wanted to adopt him. Wilbur's concern for his family was interrupted by a notification on his phone. It was from Fundy, Theseus was out patrolling, Techno read the text from Wilbur's shoulder and stood up.

“It’s my turn to try to catch him, you went out last time,” He said while walking out of the room.

“If it makes you feel any better I’ll try not to adopt the new intern, even if he passes out outside of elevators,” Phil spoke quietly and Wilbur laughed, it didn’t help but god did he wish he had a recording of Phil saying that it would be the funniest piece of karma ever.

Chapter Text

Tommy’s knuckles were bruised, local gangs had finally learned that Tommy only ever fought with his hands and put on some type of armor. It was nearing three am, Tommy was about to head inside, and crime was pretty lousy tonight. Tommy didn’t want to go home knowing Tubbo would be on him about not telling anyone he was going home but he was tired and he did have work in five and a half hours.  Deciding to face Tubbo’s half-asleep wrath rather than a more awake version Tommy went to head towards his house. About halfway there he heard a whooshing sound, one he was familiar with, The Blades cape.

“Ah, Blade, how are ya’ man? Doing good these days? I know I haven’t been outside in a while. Did ya miss me?” Tommy asked thankful for the basic voice changer he’d sewn into a bandana as part of his vigilante outfit, now Tommy could live his double life without any hassle. The Blade ran in and out of Tommy's vision once more before stopping in front of him.

“Theseus, I’ve missed you,” This statement made Tommy freeze, he and The Blade have never gotten along, it was always one-sided jokes and apathetic side eyes in return never a welcome.

“What do you want? To turn me in? You’ve never been able to catch me before, why now?” Tommy asked to keep up his nonchalant figure rather than showing fear although he was sure The Blade could smell the uncertainty of his statement. Tommy made a move to start running away, knowing he was cornered in an alley with The Blade was not helping his ‘first day of work’ nerves.

“I require a bit of your assistance,” The Blade continued slowly and Tommy turned around, what for the love of Prime would The Blade want some lowlife vigilantes to help with?

“What can I do for ya’ man?” His vigilante's speech quirk was based heavily on the fact that Tommy used to get tired when on shift and his accent from years in the lab would get heavy, Tommy kept the idea, it allowed him to remain unidentified.

“We’re gonna go do a drug bust, you in?” The Blade asked, The Blade wanted Tommy to help him with a little drug bust, something he had done single-handedly a thousand times before, why? Tommy didn’t understand the whole situation, why was The Blade coming to him? Why did he need help? What was going on? Tommy’s confused thoughts didn’t allow him to form a complete sentence as he scrambled to give The Blade an answer.

“Er, yes, why? Me? Yes,” Tommy took a breath, “Yes, but why me? Some vigilante you’ve been chasing for months, why get along with me now? We have a public hatred,” Tommy stated matter-a-factly. The Blade simply nodded his head and motioned for Tommy to follow him as if that explained anything, but Tommy was going to do anything to learn more about The Blade, how he worked. Tommy had never interacted with him other than on a basis fueled by mutual hatred, one that Tommy didn’t feel. The Blade was the number one hero, which automatically made him better than everyone else in Tommy’s head, excluding Tubbo by request. 

“Siren is annoying,” The Blade answered walking out of the alley, if he wanted Tommy could run away right now, go home and get a good night's rest, and eat so that he wouldn’t pass out again. Walking behind The Blade was so much better than that. They were going through the dingy part of town when The Blade stopped walking.

“Is this your spot?” Tommy asked, pointing to the warehouse on his left. The Blade nodded and Tommy went to head inside but someone grabbed his arm.

“We have to listen, this isn’t just a drug trade,” Tommy froze, the biggest dealer in the city was Schlatt, he was Tubbo’s biological father but they didn’t talk about it. The only person who gave out information at trade was him, it’s how Tubbo got out. Listening in they heard details of the trade, they were trading weed, not a big thing, why was Schlatt there? They were bargaining prices when Schlatt let the information slip.

“Listen, I don’t care how much you pay for this but I ain’t gonna go cheap. I’m looking for a kid, about fifteen, he’s Dream’s kid, blonde, we don't know where he is but Dream’s worried about him. He went missing a little over two years ago, tried to keep it on the down-low but we’ve exhausted our resources.” The Blade busted down the door but Tommy was frozen, Dream was looking for him. Walking away from the building Tommy wandered home, it only took fifteen minutes after he started panicking. Dream was looking for him, Tommy was going to be a public face and now Dream was looking for him. He had made it two years without a hitch, why did it all have to crash and burn now? Coming back from his head Tommy realized he was outside his apartment and he didn’t have a key. He knocked on the door, he didn’t care that his roommates were asleep, he was freaking out. 

---------

Ranboo opened the door at four am, someone had knocked. Tommy was standing there, blood on his knuckles, a terrified look on his face. His disheveled hair, the vacant look in his eyes, his hands were shaking, his hands never shook. Ranboo was panicking, Tommy had never crashed before, it was scary. He grabbed Tommy’s hands and led him inside, they both sat down on the couch. Tommy was still out of it so Ranboo left to go wake up Tubbo. 

Tubbo was a pain to wake up,  he slept like a rock, Ranboo shook his shoulder and started talking.

“Tubbo, Tommy came back, he’s being weird. I need help, I don’t know what to do,” Tubbo didn’t move. Ranboo shook him a little harder. “Wake up, please, we need him to go to bed,” Tubbo blinked his eyes open and looked at Ranboo, still half asleep.

“What do you need?” He asked, Ranboo never woke him up.

“Tommy came home and I don’t know what happened but he’s being weird and I need your help getting him to bed,” Ranboo said and Tubbo seemed to jolt fully awake. They had never dealt with an unresponsive Tommy before. They had dealt with panic attacks but he could at least nod and shake his head then. 

They both walked into the living room and sat beside Tommy, he looked the same as when Ranboo left him to go awaken Tubbo. Tubbo shook Tommy’s shoulder, a look of concern on his face.

“Tommy? Can you hear us?” Tubbo asked quietly, Tommy gave no response. Tubbo stood up grabbing Tommy’s fingers, pulling them both to a standing position. Tommy followed Tubbo, a vacant look still in his eyes as they both walked into the bedroom and lay down. Tommy lay in bed for a split second before wrapping his arms around Tubbo. Rambo smiled at the moment. If it weren’t for the morbid backstory this would have been cute, the concern lacing Tubbo’s face changed his opinion. Ranboo left the room and went into the kitchen, on the counter was a bag of pastries, Tommy must have picked them up because neither Ranboo nor Tubbo had picked them up. Tommy soon closed his eyes and fell asleep, Tubbo wiggled himself free from the former's tight hold.

“What happened?” Tubbo asked. Ranboo stopped staring at the bag on the counter.

“I don't know, he just knocked on the door about ten minutes before I woke you up, walked in completely unresponsive, you saw him” Ranboo replied, his voice wavering with unshed tears.

“Hey, don't be upset, whatever happened when he was out sent him into a spiral, it wasn’t your fault,” Tubbo said, lacing the taller one into a hug, he felt his shoulder get wet.

“I just,” Ranboo let out a gasping breath, “I just don’t know what to do, he’s not eating, he’s angry, and now he comes home from doing Prime knows what like this,” Ranboo hugs Tubbo tighter and lets tears turn to quiet sobs. For as much concern the roommates felt for Tommy they really couldn’t help him unless he wanted to be helped, and he didn’t. Tubbo pulled Ranboo out from his shoulder, tears tracking his face too.

“Well, he wouldn’t buy treats unless something good happened, let’s just find out what went well about today tomorrow. Let’s go to bed.” Tubbo said, ushering them both into the shared room. Tommy was still asleep on the bed, he looked almost calm but his eyebrows were slightly pushed together, maybe he was having an uncomfortable dream rather than a full-fledged nightmare.

Chapter Text

Tommy jolted awake from a nightmare by his phone's alarm. He didn’t remember much from yesterday other than the fact that he had to arrive at the hero’s tower by eight. He got out of bed, Tubbo and Ranboo barely stirring, he wondered what happened after he got home. He knew he had gone out, and that Dream was after him but at this point, he couldn’t afford to care, frankly, he couldn’t afford anything. He went into the kitchen and saw the bag from the bakery yesterday. He grabbed one of the pastries, he ate it while quietly sneaking back into the bedroom to grab some clothes. He put on the same outfit as when he went in for his interview and wrote a note.

I work at the hero’s tower now, bag is for you two, be home after nine.
-Tommy

He set it down on the table and hoped they wouldn’t spam his phone. He drank some water straight from the tap before checking the time, 7:30. He headed out the door making sure to lock up and be as quiet as possible. He ran onto the train in record time and got a good seat. The ride into the city wasn’t anything special, just the normal people with coffee riding into work. They arrived at his station and he got off, walking toward the heroes tower. He took a deep breath. The last time he was here it hadn’t gone very well, between passing out on a hero, then somehow getting a job there, and running out after someone asked where he lived it wasn’t exactly a smooth interaction. But as he stepped in from the outside he knew that he was prepared for whatever was to come now that he worked there.

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Phil was anxious, he wanted to properly meet the new intern. Techno didn’t trust the new kid, Wilbur didn’t even want him in the first place, so he had to play good cop. There was something about a kid willing to lie to top heroes that intrigued him. The willingness to lie in general was interesting, but the fact that he lied about passing out, being sick, made him wonder what was going on with this kid from an outer district. He had sent Wilbur out to help him, it was probably a poor choice but it was better than him or Techno. The kid was jittery. They all knew that but perhaps sending someone with a nicer reputation would help calm him. He was just about to go do some work when he got a text.

Text from: Wilbur

New kid’s weird, taking him on a tour of the building, be up in an hour.

Ok, so the kid made it in, good to know. It was nice that Wilbur gave him a tour, he wouldn’t have known his way around and that was pretty crucial. Phil wondered how it had slipped his mind. Techno walked into Phil’s office ten minutes later.

“When’s the new kid coming up?” he asked, his boredom showing.

“What’s got you wanting the kid to come up here?'' Phil asked, Techno had seemed utterly uninterested in the kid until now.

“I want to mess with him,” he said, his voice whining slightly.

“Well, you can’t mess with him while he’s still getting his bearings so no pranks or practical jokes for at least three days,” Phil responded, his voice stern.

“I want to mess with Will then,” Techno said, his voice taking on the slightest tone of mischief.

“Don’t hurt him too badly now that there is someone other than your father watching you, the kids all eyes, he’ll report things,” Phil said with a voice of warning. Techno didn’t like change and adding a new member to their work-family was a very big change, it wasn’t something that was going to happen easily.

--------

Tommy walked up to the front desk towards the nice lady, he didn’t remember her name, but upon a closer look, he saw her name tag. Puffy, it read, it was a cool name better than Tommy would have come up with in his head as a placeholder. Tommy took another deep breath and gained the courage to speak.

“Hi, I’m Thomas Innit, the intern from yesterday.” He spoke quietly but loud enough for Puffy to look up and start opening something on her computer.

“Hi Thomas, how has your day been?” She asked while grabbing something from under her desk.

“Good, what are you doing?” He asked, she was grabbing random things from around her desk and he couldn’t contain his curiosity.

“That’s good to hear, I’m making you an ID, if I had known you were coming here today I would have made one already but I thought you would start working next week.” She grabbed a cord from under her desk and plugged it into the wall, turning on something that looked similar to a shredder but as soon as she pressed a button it started printing something. She grabbed a lanyard from beside her, that’s what she reached across her desk to grab earlier, and held it up.

“Try this on,” she said, grabbing the printed ID from the machine. Tommy put the lanyard on and she turned around and smiled to herself. “It’s the perfect size, I have just over fifteen different lanyard sizes and I don’t organize them at all so I took a wild guess that I had grabbed the correct one,” She spoke, smiling sheepishly. Tommy smiled back, then spoke.

“Do you know where I’m supposed to go?” he asked quietly, he had no instruction from the heroes other than show up at eight, which he was going to miss. He was a little upset that he couldn’t be on time to meet some of the most famous people in the country, Tubbo would be disappointed. Puffy grabbed her phone and started typing.

“I have less idea than you buddy, I can message them if you want,” she said, already sending the message. Tommy stood there awkwardly for about two minutes before the elevator dinged and someone stepped out, Siren. Tommy had kind of forgotten that working for the heroes meant interacting with them. His continuous stream of slightly panicked thoughts was interrupted by Siren’s voice.

“Thomas?” He asked, stepping away from the open elevator doors. Siren reached forward a hand, and Tommy shook it.

“It’s a pleasure to work under you,” Tommy paused for dramatic effect, “William,” Siren scoffed, putting a hand over his heart, faking an offended face.

“We’re going on a tour of the tower, you work here now so I’m required to show you around,” He said, turning towards a door Tommy had never noticed before. Tommy was beginning to regret making fun of Siren the second he walked through the door, he was going to get in trouble with his new boss, he was so dumb.

“Ok,” Tommy said, his voice much quieter and more polite. Siren tilted his head slightly but continued to open the door. He walked into a hallway with terrible fluorescent lighting and doors lining either side of the hall, he turned around and held up one finger to Tommy as he typed something out on his phone. He then put his phone in his pocket and began speaking.

“I know it looks creepy but I promise it’s only for show, this is just where we have to start the tour legally seeing as it is a fire exit. These doors all connect to other rooms around the floor, but you won’t be doing much here, it’s mostly training rooms,” Tommy nodded and turned around, following behind Siren out the door. Siren then walked past Puffy and towards the elevator, speaking again. “Floors two and three are offices for our HR people so we won’t be visiting those, you won’t ever interact with those people, they mostly just deal with people complaining about ‘hero damage’,” Soren said, earning a snigger out of Tommy as he pressed the floor four button.

“Um… What’s on the fourth floor?” Tommy asked, still timid.

“You’ll see when we get there,” Siren’s cryptic answer did nothing on Tommy’s first day nerves. Five extremely awkward seconds later the elevator dinged and the doors opened revealing the coolest thing Tommy had ever seen, heroes. The floor was running with heroes milling and talking to each other without suits on and Tommy recognized most of them. Siren turned to face Tommy with a proud smirk but upon seeing the boy’s astonished face changed his plan.

“Since you work here now you get free autographed merch, there’s no worker uniform so you could wear it whenever you want,” Siren said shrugging, Tommy turned to him, his eyes impossibly wide.

“With the highest respect sir, can we close the elevator door so that I can scream,” Tommy said, his face completely straight. Siren pressed the button deciding to comment on the ‘sir’ until after Tommy was done fanboying. The elevator doors closed and Tommy jumped in a circle squealing like a little kid, in front of one of his idols. He quickly regained his composure and clicked the open door again, turning to Siren with an expectant face. “Can I talk to them? Just for a minute?” Tommy asked, his eyes pleading and Siren nodded.

“You work here now, these are your co-workers, go at it,” and Tommy bursts with excitement, walking out of the elevator he spots Timescape and decides he should go apologize considering he appears to be talking to no one at the moment. Siren goes off to talk to Quackity, one of the lower level heroes, his power consisted of a magic deck of cards, Tommy used to think he was lame until he saw him beat Schlatt in a one on one battle with a just a deck of cards, he had gained his respect. Pulling himself from his thoughts Tommy looked up to see himself a few feet from Timescape. Taking a deep breath he spoke.

“Hi, Timescape, I’m Thomas, I just wanted to apologize for yesterday, I got the job so I wanted a clean slate,” Tommy said, the hero looked surprised.

”Oh, it’s no problem.” He said waving a hand, it relieved a third of Tommy’s guilt, “So, what do you do in the tower now?” he asked, trying to start meaningless conversation, Tommy was willing to indulge.

“I have no clue.” Tommy said with a bit of a breathless chuckle, “I know that I'm SBI’s assistant but beyond that, I don’t know what it entails, those three are a bit wild.” Tommy says, Timescape chuckles. Tommy looks around for a second and sees Siren approaching him. Tommy holds out a hand. “Well Timescape it was a pleasure meeting you,” Timescape shook Tommy’s hand.

“It was nice meeting you properly, and please, call me Karl,” Tommy nodded and turned around to meet Siren, who waved his head and led Tommy back to the elevator. Once they were both on Siren pressed the button for the sixth floor and began explaining.

“That floor is kind of the mixer floor, it’s just where we all meet to talk about one thing or another, big meetings are held there. There are also little conference rooms on the walls, we use those all the time. The fifth floor is the cafe, we’ll give you a tour of that later,” Siren spoke as the elevator doors opened. Tommy turned to them but they didn’t open. “This is our lab floor, which means that there are fragile things on here, you have to promise to be safe because right now you are a legal liability,” Siren spoke with a bit of a chuckle and Tommy nodded. Siren released the door button revealing Awesam Dude and a man dressed in purple, he looked familiar. Tommy wracked his brain for a second as Siren and Awesam conversed, he and the purple man were in a staredown until it clicked.

Tommy doesn’t remember much of his childhood but he does know that he wasn’t born in The Lab. Tommy’s childhood was set in The Lab where he would get experimented upon for his abilities. He was probably only seven when he first met someone other than doctors. A kid, about his age, wearing only purple, rather than the white uniform of the other workers, he spoke only in a voice that screamed arrogance but nonetheless, he and Tommy became quick friends. His name was Purpled, or at least that was what he called himself, and six years later when they both broke out of the lab they came up with a code, to make sure they were who they appeared to be. Tommy was about to speak when Siren grabbed his shoulder and guided him back towards the elevator, Tommy had taken too long thinking, he couldn’t check, and from how serious Siren was about safety Tommy assumed he wouldn’t get to visit the lab often.

“Sam has a new assistant, Nathaniel, who just joined recently, he seems to be a bit closed off, but apparently he works well,” Tommy nodded, that was his new name? Nathaniel? Siren pressed the seventh-floor button. Tommy knew what was on this floor, his new boss, and his new job.

Chapter Text

The elevators opened on floor seven and the first thing Tommy did was look at the clock, he remembered where it was from his last visit. It was 9:15, he was an hour into his workday and he had yet to do work, but they weren’t done with the tour and Siren appeared to have little intention of stopping. He opened his arms wide and spoke in a voice comparable to a sports announcer.

“Welcome to SBI’s home and your new main place of work. You’ll probably go on the other floors kind of often but we mainly stay up here so you probably will too,” He said walking into the main hall, Tommy saw the office he was interviewed in had a new sign on the door. He couldn’t read the print from a distance but it appeared to be a name. Siren pulled out his phone and texted someone and began pointing around the room. “This is Phil’s office, the door is always closed but you can walk in whenever, he doesn’t care. This is my office, come in whenever, but I’m not in there often. This is Techno’s office, he’s in there or in the training rooms, the first floor, be careful when you see him in the training rooms, he can kind of get into a mood,” His voice lowered when he said the last sentence, The Blade had always scared Tommy so it wasn’t reassuring.

“This is my office, I’m usually wandering around other places though so you’ll probably have to find me via text, you have a phone?” Siren asked and Tommy nodded, “Perfect, we’ll get you set up later,” Siren turned towards the room Tommy was interviewed in, putting his hand over the sign on the door, a smile covering his face. Tommy shrunk back slightly, he was only slightly frightened of what was on the door. Siren removed his hand and Tommy gasped. “This is your office.” Tommy was in genuine shock, he thought he was an assistant? What is going on? Tommy pinches his arm, it's not a dream, good, this is amazing. Tommy zones back into the moment to Siren rambling. “...we didn’t know if you’d actually use it but it’s yours anyway, if anything you can keep the nameplate,” The nameplate on the door read, ‘Thomas Innit, SBI Assistant’. It was surreal. Tommy interrupted Siren's words.

“Thank you, seriously, this is amazing,” Tommy’s voice was genuine, Siren looked surprised.

“Of course, I reacted about the same when I started working here, although I didn’t scream in the elevators,” Tommy’s face flushed with embarrassment at the comment.

“You try meeting, like, fifty of your idols in a five-minute span, you’d freak out a little too,” Tommy tried to reason as Siren opened the door and walked into Tommy’s office, Tommy’s office . There wasn’t much to it, it was mostly empty besides a desk, a chair, and a computer. Tommy’s hand fiddled with his ID while Siren pulled out his phone again. 

“Since we’ve finished with our tour and Phil and Techno are training, would you like to set up your phone? With some chats. We have like five different work chats that’ll probably be useful, if anything you can ask where people are,” Siren spoke while Tommy pulled out his phone. Siren took it and began typing, it appeared he was sending contacts from his phone to Tommy’s and adding him into some chats. “All you have to do is text your name in the one called ‘everyone’ and then they’ll all know who you are. Tommy did just that and his phone started blowing up with greetings. It was insane how happy people were to know that SBI had finally gotten an assistant, apparently, they didn’t do a ton of their work. Tommy was catching up on who was who when The Blade and Philza walked into the room.

“Hey kid, how was the tour?” Phila said.

“It was so cool Mr. Philza Minecraft, I got to meet Timescape, and you three, a-a-and- '' Tommy took a deep breath, he was stuttering and Philza had a smile on his face that said he was uncomfortable. “Sorry, I’m just-” Tommy’s apology was cut off by Philza’s face dropping.

“Nothing to be sorry about kid,” and Tommy’s face flushed again. The Blade had yet to speak but he looked skeptical, Tommy wondered if he could ever grow on him, probably not, his is The Blade.

“I have a question,” Tommy stated, breaking the awkward silence that was starting to encase the four.

“What’s up?” The Blade spoke, his voice still wasn’t ‘monotone’ Tommy wondered if he was just hearing things.

“What do I do? I know I’m an assistant but what does that entail?” Tommy asked and the other three started laughing, they were laughing at him. It was perfect, wasn’t it? He was having an amazing time and then they were all laughing at him. What did he mess up?

“We aren’t laughing at you kid, you probably won’t do too much, some paperwork and maybe sometimes some things for the others,” Philza spoke, Tommy was put to ease, there was something about how Philza called him ‘kid’ that reassured him more than anything. “Since you are going to be working here, I would prefer if you called me by my legal name, Phil,” Tommy nodded, if Phil insisted that he was called that who was Tommy to disobey Philza Minecraft. 

“I prefer to go by Wilbur, Will, just don’t call me William anymore,” Tommy nodded but a mischievous grin spread across his face that said otherwise.

“I go Techno, The Blade is too formal,” That state was said with a truly monotone voice, Tommy could see the stereotype he guesses. Phil was staring at him expectantly and he realized it was his turn to share.

“Tommy, Thomas is fine though,” Tommy said, it felt weird to tell the hero’s his real name, it went against the things he was taught. Wilbur looked at his phone and then spoke.

“Sam’s assistant wants to speak to Tommy for some reason, needs us to come down too for other stuff,” He says while walking towards the stairwell. Tommy knew why ‘Nathaniel’ wanted to meet him, it was the same reason Tommy wanted to head down the flight of stairs. 

Tommy was unsure as to whether the kid he was looking at was the same kid who broke him out for his childhood prison but he sure as Prime wanted to meet him. Thoughts rean around his head as he scrambled to figure out how to explain himself, how to confirm it was him.

They opened the stairwell door to the fourth floor and found themselves looking at an array of scientific experiments. There were plants in jars, hero suits half made, and a blackboard with a chemical formula written on it. In front of Tommy was Nathaniel, behind him was Awesam. He didn’t know how to go about the situation he was in.

When Tommy ran from the lab he couldn’t get out without help. There were security measures in place to make sure that he couldn’t leave unless he had inside help, and Dream made sure he never truly had inside help. Until, Purpled came. He was at first just like the others aside from the fact that instead of wearing the ugly white suit the other doctors wore he wore a purple hoodie, claiming it was his favorite color. It took a little over two years of planning for the boys to escape but when they did it didn’t end well. Purpled never made it out as far as Tommy knew but looking at the kid in front of him he was pretty sure that he did.

“Is your favorite color purple?” Tommy asks, his voice nonchalant. Nathaniel nodded and pointed to Tommy’s lanyard.

“Least favorites always been green, so I-” Purpled never got to finish his sentence as Tommy slammed into him. It was strange finding the kid you escaped with after six years, it was so relieving.

Phil and Sam looked at each other with confusion, first Nathaniel, the quietest person ever asks to meet someone, and next, he’s hugging them after a quick exchange of unconnected sentences. What was going on?

“They’re crying,” Techno noted, his voice quiet. They all looked over to see the boys still hugging and crying as well, it made no sense. They almost turned back when they heard one of the boys speak. 

“I thought you were dead,” Tommy spoke, his voice thick with tears, “I thought that you didn’t make it out, I never saw you leave,” he said trying his best to keep his sentences cryptic, he knew that Purpled was a closed-off person so he could assume that he didn’t reveal much about his past. 

“I knew you were dead, he told me you were dead,” Purpled said, Tommy scoffed into his shoulder.

“You spoke to him?” Tommy asked, pulling away, “After?” Purpled nodded.

“I had to get Punz out, the only way was to lie about your location but I got caught, and made it out three hours later.” Tommy had forgotten about Punz, Purpled’s brother, he was a strong supporter of Dream but if Purpled made it out then he must have changed.

“He’s after me again,” Tommy whispered and Purpled’s eyes widened slightly. “I’m going to fight him, and I’m going to win,” Tommy said and Purpled smiled, he knew that Tommy would get his revenge, he deserved it. Tommy looked at the heroes and smiled awkwardly, they were watching them. Purpled had long since let go of their hug but Tommy was holding on, what was he going to do? The top villain in the country was after him, knew all his secrets, raised him. Tommy pulled away from the hug and walked over to the heroes who had started talking about someone’s suit in the time Tommy had zoned out.

“What are you going to do?” Purpled asked. Tommy said he was going to fight him earlier but there was more to it, there was always more to it.

“I’m going to do what we did last time, do what we needed to to get out,” Tommy said. The other heroes were walking back towards the stairwell, he had to go.

“Don’t die,” Purpled said, it was the closest thing to good luck you could get out of him. Tommy smiled and made his way back upstairs.

Chapter Text

Tommy stopped paying attention after he arrived back on the seventh floor. He learned how to forge Siren's signature for paperwork, went down to the cafe, ate lunch, and signed papers until eight pm rolled around. He knew that he did all that but didn’t regain a connection with his body until he was on the train. He checked his phone to see over thirty missed calls and messages from Tubbo and Ranboo. The train arrived at his stop shortly after, he would talk to them when he got home. Upon arriving at his apartment he was bombarded with questions.

“Where have you been?” Tubbo asked, “You work for the heroes? Do you know how insane you are? Since when?” Tommy held up a hand pausing Tubbo’s questionnaire.

“Yes, I work for the heroes. It’s going fine actually, I just met an old friend there. I work eight to eight, days are undetermined, and it pays very well so I got us some victory desserts which I see have been eaten,” Tommy stated calmly heading towards the kitchen, his speech vocalizing the lack of pastries on the counter.

“Next time tell us before you go, we got scared. When we woke up, the only indicator that you were alive was a scrappy note next to a paper bag!” Tubbo shouted, Tommy stepped backward, he could just go out on patrol again, avoiding problems as kind of his only skill. He started to walk away when Ranboo grabbed his arm.

“What do you want,” Tommy stated, annoyance in his tone.

“Which old friend did you meet?” Ranboo asked.

“Someone from The Lab, he works for Awesam,” Tommy replied. His hands started to move to pick up his vigilante suit. It mainly was poorly sewn polyester on the outside, the interior made of different materials so that Tubbo could use tech scraps. He also sported a trashy voice changer in his mask and a surprisingly well-made earpiece. His suit didn’t contain many pieces of padding due to Tommy’s powers not requiring him to need it. His powers were, in his words, similar to a deck of cards, but each card contained a power. Over time due to Dream’s experiments, Tommy was mostly immune to pain, and he gained the powers of people through touch. It wasn’t an exciting feeling or anything, merely just the production of a ‘card’. His deck was quite large due to the number of people he interacted with, it made him unpredictable. Tommy went to head out of the house when Ranboo spoke for the final time.

“Let us know if you need anything, and leave a note each morning so that we know you aren’t dead,” He said with a slight chuckle. Tommy nodded as he headed out the door, if Dream was after him he was going to need to start to make allies now before things went poorly. 

Jumping between roofs, he ran into The Blade again, Techno he guesses. He was fighting the air, training, Tommy could correct his form but he needed allies, and he and Techno were currently in need of each other's assistance.

“Blade, how’ve you been?” Tommy asked, putting a hand up and caching Techno’s punch mid-strike. The Blade looked surprised, then annoyed.

“Around,” He replied easily.

“Me too,” Tommy said quickly, letting go of Techno’s hand. “I am in need of your assistance,” Tommy stated, an easy echo of his and Techno’s last interaction. Techno nodded and Tommy continued. “Someone dangerous is after me,” Tommy said, an aura of caution surrounding him, “and I am in need of some allies. I came to you because recently you have been kind to me, and you hold power over the city.” Techno looked confused, then he nodded.

“You’re the kid Dream’s after, aren’t you?” Techno asked, his speech slow as he put together the idea. Tommy nodded.

“You have seen how he can be, would you be interested in helping me?” Tommy asked, he really needed Techno to be on board, otherwise he’s kind of screwed.

“The whole hero team is putting together a search party for the kid, to try to protect him,” Tommy started panicking. Was Techno going to make him reveal his identity? He’d been trying so hard to avoid anyone knowing who the famous vigilante is. “But, if I tell them that you confessed to being the kid then maybe they’ll stop looking, they’d be on your side,” Techno said. Tommy nodded, it made sense? But where was the catch? 

“What’s the catch?” He asked.

“You’d technically work for the heroes, but you already do good around town so it couldn't be more than a formal title,” Techno states, and Tommy nodded.

“I’m in,” Tommy said, he was desperate. Techno looked at him, then his wrist, then back to Tommy.

“Do you want to train together?” Techno asked, Tommy smiled beneath his mask, it was an enticing offer.

“One of us has to protect the city,” Tommy said, he wasn’t going to turn down the offer just yet, it was too intriguing.

“They can wait five minutes, if you win I’ll owe you a favor,” Techno stated. Tommy couldn’t turn down an offer from The Blade, a favor was all you needed to get the hero to do just about anything, heroes were stupidly loyal, Tommy was one he supposes. Tommy got into a stance and stated his rules.

“Last one standing, I still have to fight actual criminals tonight so I’m not getting my hands too dirty, no head hits either.” Techno agreed, he probably had to patrol too. Techno took the first swing, to Tommy’s right rib, it was easily dodged. Tommy analyzed Techno’s stace, due to hybrid traits he only stood on the fronts of his feet, the only reason he wasn’t falling forward was due to his ridiculous cape that was probably heavier than two times Tommy’s weight. All he had to do was get one good hit from behind and he would win. It would be hard to get behind him however, his hybrid traits made it impossible to get into his blind spot. Techno kept throwing punches and Tommy kept dodging them, a familiar interaction, albeit in much better circumstances than usual. 

Tommy played defense until Techno started getting tired, a little slip was all he needed. The slip happened in the course of a misplaced punch, two punches on the left, both dodged. Tommy went under Techno’s arms getting on his side, he quickly took Techno’s power, and hit him on the back of the head, lightly, Techno’s power gave him advanced strength and he didn’t want to deal with an unconscious hero. Techno fell down quickly, Tommy returned his power once he was down, Tommy had won.

“Watch your blind spot,” Tommy said as Techno stood up, he walked to the edge of the roof.

“Do not succumb to your fate Theseus,” Techno said, his voice hinting at sarcasm.

“I’m sorry Lycomedes, but our story is already written,” Tommy says, lifting himself onto his toes and falling backward, taking Philza’s power in order to float down the side of the building rather than break his legs. His night consisted of a surprisingly easy patrol, some random muggings, one break-in, and a car jack, all of which were dealt with before two am, Tommy was lucky. He headed back to the house, taking off his suit and getting into bed.

It had been two hours since he came home, making it four am. Tommy hadn’t gotten a lick of sleep and felt guilty tossing and turning in bed. Now walking outside on the streets he found himself at the bakery again. Just sitting outside, the bakery was long closed, it was nearing four-thirty then somebody landed in front of him. 

“Hi Tommy, what are you doing out late?” Siren asked. He must have been on patrol and seen some kid sitting on a bench in the middle of the night.

“Just taking a walk,” Tommy said, standing up and walking further into the city, he didn’t want Siren to know where he lived.

“You were sitting there for an awfully long time for just a walk,” Siren said, his voice filled with fake sweetness, he followed Tommy into town. They walked in awkward silence for fifteen minutes before Siren spoke again. “Where do you live? You need to be getting home. You have work in the morning,” Tommy nodded.

“You will not learn the location of my home, please leave me alone so that I can go get some sleep,” Tommy stated, he didn’t want to deal with a hero stalking him, especially when he was interacting with them in both of his persona’s. Siren turned to walk towards the city.

“Get home safe,” He called from behind his back. Tommy walked a little faster, just to see if he was still going to be followed. He wasn’t. Tommy got home around five-thirty in the morning and laid down on the couch. He was dead on his feet, he decided he could go into work late tomorrow, Siren had seen him and could vouch if needed. It wasn’t the smartest idea but the heroes seemed to like him enough that he thought he could swing it. He canceled his alarm and fell asleep in a matter of seconds.

Chapter Text

Tommy awoke to the sound of someone cooking in the kitchen. Checking his phone he saw the time to be just after nine am, he quickly sat up and walked to see who else was up. He saw Ranboo cooking in the kitchen and Tubbo sleeping in bed.

“Why are you wandering around?” Ranboo asked, causing Tommy to jump.

“Just seeing who's awake,” Tommy replied, moving to grab clothes from the closet, he was going to try to catch the nine-thirty train if he could. He took his clothes and walked into the bathroom quickly changing. He avoided looking at himself in the mirror, he was going to have a good day. Yesterday he ate all three meals, the point of working insane hours was so that he could skip without anyone catching on. He took a deep breath and walked out of the bathroom, he was going to have a good day. He went out of the bathroom and grabbed his phone off the couch. He said goodbye to Ranboo and ran out into the street, maybe a good run would distract him, it was nice out anyways. 

He just barely made the nine-thirty train. Once he was on it, however, he began to feel the effects of staying out until five am hit. He almost fell asleep multiple times but the train ride was only fifteen minutes and he couldn’t afford to miss his stop. He thought about last night, he had probably pissed off Siren, he had fought The Blade, he owes him a favor. What was he thinking? He gets this job and everything falls apart, now he’s revealing his identity left and right. What was he doing?! Tommy was jumped from his thoughts by the train arriving at his station. He got off and ran towards the heroes tower, he was two hours late to work.

He thought about what he was going to do. He was two hours late, Siren was probably mad at him, it was his second day there and he had already made a fool of himself. Tommy walked into the building, grabbing his id from his pocket, he wondered when he put it there, he couldn’t remember. He waved at Puffy while he ran to the elevator and was lucky to find it on the first floor. He rode up, anxiety filling his bones about the fact he decided to be late for his second day of work with the most famous people in the city. The elevator doors opened on the seventh floor revealing Philza making a cup of coffee. Tommy stepped outside the elevator and started to walk toward his office, maybe he could get by without getting in trouble.

“Hey, don’t worry about being late, Wilbur told us that you two talked early this morning,” Phil said. Tommy was off the hook just like that? These heroes must really have some savior complexes. Tommy didn’t say anything other than a quick thank you to Phil though, he was his boss after all. He continued into his office, pulling out some test paperwork that he needed to practice signing for Wilbur, it wasn’t exactly legal but it got the job done. Tommy finally logged onto the computer in his office. He began checking the news for articles on himself, well Theseus. Only finding small articles on how he had been patrolling more he felt relieved, the press had yet to pick up on his and Techno’s alliance. Although it had only been to outings it was more than enough for some cover story to ruin the ‘friendship’. Tommy was rereading an article when someone knocked on his door.

“Tommy?” Wilbur asked. If he was knocking that meant that he wasn’t as angry as Tommy thought. Tommy got up and opened the door, Wilbur’s face changed into a smile. “Do you want to come out to lunch? We’re getting fast food, something simple,” Wilbur asked. Tommy was hungry, but he had eaten all three meals yesterday, it was only fair.

“No, I’m not hungry,” He replied simply then he had a stroke of genius. Tommy knew that Theseus was vaguely popular in the lower cities and no one there did anything but look at their phones. “Can I make a Twitter account? For the team? Just to deal with the news, they are kind of at a loss on information about you three,” Tommy asked. It honestly would just be fun to answer questions that the internet had, like a constant Q+A. What he said wasn’t a lie, it would give the news something to read but it would mostly be a way for Tommy to bully the heroes online, and maybe give Theseus a bit of internet fame as well.

It took Tommy an hour to make his first tweet, fifty-five minutes of which were spent deciding on a username. He had to think of something that said his role in the tower but still stood for the whole floor, SBI. The name he landed on was kind of dumb, intern4SBI. After creating the account he posted a photo of Phil's nameplate on his door with a caption of ‘he may not be #1 hero but he is the #1 boss’. Tommy laughed to himself as he posted it. It was perfect. Just enough insult for people to interact with it but also enough positivity to give SBI a good presence. He looked at the clock on his wall finding it to be just about four in the afternoon. Although he felt guilty about yesterday he didn’t want to pass out again. He left his office and headed down to the cafe.

His run downstairs to the cafe and back went surprisingly smooth. He grabbed a salad, nothing much but enough to get him through the rest of the day. He smiled at the lady who checked his worker ID and then went back upstairs without running into anyone he interacted with. The rest of his day was spent filling out paperwork, following back famous people on Twitter, and avoiding anyone who knocked on his door. When he packed up to leave at eight he was worried that Wilbur might be mad at him, so he had shut him out on his second day in the office. He doubted that he would get in too much trouble seeing as he was doing his job. He went to walk out the front door, he still had to catch the train at eight-thirty. 

“Tommy!” Puffy yelled from behind him, he turned around his hand still on the door in case he really was in trouble. “Phil said you didn’t talk to anyone today, can I ask why?” She said her head tilted to the left in a way that only means pity. Tommy turned and walked out the door without another word. If these people were going to pretend to care he wasn’t going to tolerate it, it was annoying. Along his walk to the train, he began to regret his decision of being rude to the heroes. If he really did need connections he was doing a shoddy job of it. Tommy arrived home in a huff. He was angry at the world, he grabbed his vigilante suit and went out for the third night in a row, it probably wouldn’t end well. 

It was dark out and Tommy had just run his rounds around the city checking all the high-crime places and stopping a mugging at one of the local parks. He was successfully avoiding his terms with the heroes, not committing any crimes but not stopping much either. He was about to head in when he heard a voice in his ear.

“Tommy, Tommy? Tommy!” Tommy pulled his earpiece attached to his mask into his ear, slightly refreshed to hear Tubbo’s voice.

“Yes, Tubbo?” Tommy asked, what did his friend want? He wouldn’t contact unless he needed to, especially since they were fighting.

“Why am I getting messages from the heroes about the number one villain Dream?” Tubbo asked and Tommy froze, how did they get in communication with Tubbo?! He wasn’t even on speaking terms with him when he found out about Dreams manhunt. Tommy took a deep breath, reigning in his thoughts to answer Tubbo, he was gonna be pissed.

“You have to promise not to yell through, I don’t want to lose an ear,” Tommy said hesitantly, this would require a lot of explaining.

“Ok?” Tubbo replied he didn’t know what to expect.

“Remember how I said that I grew up in not the best conditions?” Tommy asked. He had never told anyone about this, what would Tubbo think? Was telling him a mistake? What would he do? His silence lasted just too long. Tubbo started talking.

“Toms? Are you good?” Tommy shook the thoughts from his head as he prepared to continue, maybe it wouldn’t be as bad as he thought? He hoped Tubbo wouldn’t freak out.

“I… was raised...” Tommy paused, “by the villain Dream,”

“...what?”

Chapter Text

“Tommy what do you mean you grew up with number one supervillain Dream ,” Tubbo asked, his voice wavering in panic, this news was greatly unexpected.

“I was kidnapped long before I remember, or I was born in his lab but I grew up with him, and he was…” Tommy took a deep breath, before continuing, “awful, and so I ran away, and now he’s after me because Prime knows he can’t live with himself knowing I’ll be spreading the truth behind that mask,” Tubbo exhaled on the other end of the line, Tommy looked to the sky. Tubbo took one more shaky breath before speaking. Tommy’s hand shook, out of fear or desperation he would never know but his hands were shaking and he was going to focus on it until his best friend realized that Tommy knew a supervillain, surprisingly personally, and that villain was currently pursuing him. Tubbo took note that Tommy’s explanation was vague. Merely describing what was a year's worth of trauma as ‘awful’. Tommy was never one to talk about why he flinched a loud noise or apologies in his sleep, however. It did make sense though, it explained more than enough for Tubbo to know that either Tommy was currently planning on running for his life, or his connection with the heroes was more valuable than Prime herself. 

“Are you planning on fighting him?” Tubbo asked, he was silent for nearly two minutes before the question registered in Tommy’s head. Not only was Tubbo not losing it, but he would also probably support Tommy’s decision.

“I have more than enough power to fight him, and I’m going to make sure it hurts,” Tommy said, malice in his voice that had long gone unheard. Tubbo was almost relieved that he was fighting, even if he was probably going to die in the process, it was nice to know that Tommy wasn’t giving up yet, and probably never would. Tommy down at the ground below him and spoke again, if Tubbo knew one of his secrets he could be trusted with more.

“You know how I have invulnerability?” Tommy asked. Tubbo nodded before remembering that Tommy couldn’t see him and speaking a quick yes. “I lied about my power,” Tommy said and Tubbo’s breath hitched, how was Tommy alive if he could feel pain? If he could heal quickly what other power was there that involved healing? Tubbo wracked his brain for answers as Tommy continued. “It-it’s like a deck of cards, I collect other people's powers, and I can use them but I, like, steal them from the person,” Tubbo blinked. What? How does it work? Does Tommy have access to his power? Had he used his power without him knowing? “Tubbo, you know how you can hack into virtually anything?” Tommy asked and Tubbo didn’t answer, where was this going? “Look into the software of your PC, using your power,” Tubbo looked at the data, it was all in a language he could decipher, like usual. He was staring at the code when his mind went blank, he was seeing the numbers, letters, semicolons, but it didn’t make sense.

“What did you…?” Tubbo asked under his breath

 “I’ve never taken yours before, that was wacky, no wonder you can’t read,” Tommy said with a laugh and Tubbo spoke.

“Who all’s powers do you have?” He asked and Tommy replied quickly.

“I gain a person's power through touch,” Tommy answered simply. He returned Tubbo’s power much to both of their relief. The fact that he gained power through touch wasn’t complicated and it meant that he had over a hundred people's powers, which although terrifying to realize was an amazing power, and also extremely illegal. Tubbo wondered how a person got that power, how they gained the power of others without going mad or killing themselves by accident. 

“Do you have the hero's powers?”  Tubbo asked hesitantly, he almost didn’t want to know whose power he had but it was crucial information.

“...yes,” Tommy answered, still slightly scared of Tubbo’s reply. He obviously didn’t think he was that dangerous seeing as he didn’t scream at him when he first told him of his power. Maybe he could trust people again, he could at least try.

“So you can do the voice control thing?” Tubbo asked in a voice more curious than scared now. He was just interested in how the powers worked, no harm no foul.

“Yes?” Tommy replied slightly more confidently. He was good at Sirens power, although rarely used it came naturally to him and was kind of fun. He couldn’t do it often however seeing as it took away Siren’s whole voice, he viewed this on patrol once.

“Can you do it?” Tubbo asked, getting to the point. It took him a while to come to terms with the facts but overall having Sirens power made Tommy cooler than anyone else they knew.

Tommy jumped off the roof of the building he was on, landing smoothly on the sidewalk. It was late enough at night that he didn’t run into anyone on his walk which was unfortunate. He was wandering when Tubbo’s voice sounded in his ear again.

“If you’re looking for someone, The Blade is out training again,” Tommy paused his walk and waited for Tubbo to continue. “He’s two ally’s behind you, on the left.” Tommy turned around and started to walk towards the allies looking for any sign of the hero. 

“Me and the heroes have an alliance now because Dream is after me,” Tommy said. He looked to his left on the third ally seeing the hero he was looking for. Tubbo turned off his comm, Tommy heard the disconnecting beep.

“Hello Theseus,” The Blade stopped, turning around from the wall he was attacking. Tommy took his chance to speak.

“Hello Blade, spar?” Tommy asked, pulling his sword from his pocket, a sword engineered by Tubbo. The sword was ‘pocket sized’ meaning that it folded down but was still metal and still fought surprisingly well, Tommy often wondered how his friend came up with these things. 

The Blade nodded, pulling out his sword and the delicate dance began. It was similar to their last fight, swings were thrown, insults were shot, and Tommy was losing but that was to be expected. Tubbo was listening in on the fight. They were just shooting words at each other along with the occasional grunt when an attack was blocked, it was like Tommy didn't have to try to be The Blade's equal, maybe he didn’t. Tommy sped up his attacks, Techno didn’t have time to adjust to the new pace and was quickly hit down. Tommy had a blade to Techno’s neck, he had beat him. Tommy leaned into The Blade's face, to taunt him.

“ Get up, ” words spoken with a strange underlying tone, Tubbo recognized it as Sirens power, and Techno rose, almost robotically before coming back to his senses as Tommy walked away.

“Was that enough for you?” Tommy asked, his voice cocky again.

“Yes,” Tubbo replied, his voice content.

-----------------------

Wilbur was awake in the early hours of the morning. It wasn’t unusual for him but tonight instead of distracting himself with a petrol or a guitar he just laid in bed thinking. When the time reached two am he got out of bed to eat. He came downstairs to the kitchen to Phil sitting at the table. 

“What are you still doing up?” Wilbur asked, he moved to the fridge to look and see what they had.

“I was working but I can’t sleep if I’m honest,” Phil replied putting his head down on the counter as Wilbur grabbed three eggs out of the fridge, a wonderful early morning breakfast.

“Eggs?” Wilbur asked moving to make Phil one anyways. If he was working late that meant he missed dinner and was probably hungry.

They worked in mutual silence, Wilbur not even humming as he got out a pan and put toast in the toaster. It took him a while but he didn’t burn the eggs and gave Phil some. Wilbur tried to start up a conversation, if they were both awake they might as well stay awake at this point.

“What were you up to?” Wilbur asked and Phil blinked, bringing his attention to the boy.

“Figuring out what to do with Tommy, he was weird today you know? Rude?” Phil said. Wilbur nodded.

“Yes, he-” Wilbur's voice cracked and he went to speak again but all he felt was pain. He grabbed his throat and Phil stood up to help.

“Wilbur, what’s going on?” Phil asked to move to the sink to get water.

Wilbur continued to choke on air, his throat burning something impossible. He started coughing and couldn’t stop. He was coughing up blood by the time he calmed down. Phil looked thoroughly concerned at the fact that his son started choking up blood. Wilbur had tears streaming down his face as he looked at Phil with pleading eyes. Phil grabbed the cup of water off the counter and gave it to him. Wilbur drank it greedily. They both made eye contact again.

What just happened?

Chapter Text

Tommy went to work the next day. It probably was avoidance that drove him to show up early but it worked out anyway. He was grabbing a coffee from the cafe, running on three hours of sleep requiring the assistance of caffeine, before walking up to the seventh floor of the building. The stairwell was almost calming as the rhythmic tapping of his foot against the concrete guided him up. It was nice to walk onto the floor and see no one there. He posted on Twitter a photo of the empty office, and people started to reply asking for a tour. Tommy ignored them in turn, walking into his office and forging more signatures on Wilburs paperwork, he was about three months behind on incident reports and they took forever to write out. Tommy understood why he didn’t do it. At about nine thirty someone knocked on his office door. Tommy had been at the tower for around an hour and a half and was looking for better company than a pen and a steadily growing stack of paperwork.

“Hello?” Tommy asked moving to open the office door, he couldn’t remember if he had locked it. Tommy opened the door and was met with Techno standing there, waiting. “Do you need something?” Tommy asked. Techno looked defeated almost, he wondered if it was about last night.

“Something happened to Siren, we need another person's opinion on it, would you like to come look?” Tommy rushed out the door, he had an idea what happened but he asked anyways.

“What happened?” Tommy asked as he and Techno walked down the hall to Sirens office before barging in. Tommy’s question remained unanswered.

“Long story short, he lost his voice.” Techno said, Tommy took in a sharp breath, he knew what happened then, he was staring at the side effects of taking Siren’s power. The man sat there, pale, his lips stained red with blood, and his phone in his hand, a speaking app open. Tommy tilted his head in fake confusion. Phil sent a pitying look in Tommy’s direction before elaborating.

“Early this morning, me and him were both up talking about Prime knows what, when he starts coughing, the fit lasts twenty minutes and he was coughing up blood, now he can’t talk without pain, it’s like he overused his powers ut he was just talking normally,” Tommy thought about what he was saying, so he had overused Sirens power, he would have to ask about how it works next, just to see what he had done, if it was reversible. “Things like this happen, and he heals himself but it was sudden and terrifying, all of a sudden my son was on the floor coughing up blood for no reason! I know you study people. Do you know anyone who could have done something like this, or any idea what happened?” Tommy was confused, how did they know so much about how he ran, how his brain worked. Tommy realized they were waiting for him to talk so he made up an answer, one that wouldn’t reveal what he had done.

“What if he was poisoned,” Tommy said and Phil looked offended, Tommy quickly continued, “not that you did it but what if it was a long waiting poison, someone snuck in, poised his lunch yesterday and it was meant to kill him in his sleep but he was awake so he lived because you were there to help him rather than him just dying,” Tommy said. For a made up excuse it was actually pretty plausible. Phil looked as if he was considering it until he looked frightened. Techno gave Tommy an accusatory look, as if he was the one who’d done it, Tommy sent back a glare. “I didn’t do it!” Tommy said betrayal, filling his tone as he turned to walk out the door.

“Don’t go! Your idea,” Phil said, “Was actually pretty good,” Tommy nodded, still standing in the doorway.

“Would you guys ever do a Q and A?” Tommy asked, effectively changing the topic of conversation. Wilbur looked confused so Tommy elaborated. “I made a twitter account, and the people have questions,” He said, pulling out his phone and showing them the posts he made and the comments. “Give the people what they want,” Tommy said, his voice demanding, turning his face into a frown. Phil looked guilty until he rolled his eyes.

“Those eyes aren’t gonna get me,” He said, turning away. Tommy took a step back whipping an imaginary tear.

“Well, I could just rip up all the paperwork I filled out, I got through about half the stack,” Wilburs eyes widened and he shook Phil’s arm, pleadinging silently. Techno turned to Tommy while Wilbur begged.

“What do people want to know?” Techno asked, his voice sarcastic.

“Everything,” Tommy said, pulling his phone up to take a photo of Wilbur and Phil. Techno smirked as he noticed Tommy’s intention. He snapped a photo and posted it to twitter with the caption ‘the boss won’t let Siren get fruit snacks for the office’. He turned his phone to Techno who started laughing. Tommy felt proud of himself, he had made The Blade, known for his emotionless stance, laugh, at a Twitter post! Wilbur and Phil stopped their silent fight to look over and see the two others laughing. 

“What is going on over there?” Phil asked, his voice amused at the scene in front of him.

“Twitter,” was Tommy’s only reply as he composed himself and walked out of the office. He wondered why they asked him what had happened. Probably because they thought that he did it. It was a little sad but at least he didn’t have to do any other work for the day, he could go exploring. Tommy went down the stairs to the first floor of the building, he wanted to ask Puffy about places he couldn’t go first, getting in trouble this early in his job here world be fatal.

“Puffy?” Tommy asked and the woman looked up from her computer screen, “I’m bored,” Tommy stated and the lady turned her desk chair to meet him.

“Would you like something to do? I have a few errands that I need to run you could come with?” She offered and although Tommy had intentions of staying in the tower, going out into the world wasn’t a bad idea either. Plus, he trusted Puffy. 

That was how Tommy found himself in a car on the outskirts of town four hours later, three bags of paint supplies in the truck along with two bottles of paint so that they could redo Tommy’s office. It wasn’t the smartest of ideas but Tommy was bored and Puffy offered. They were sitting outside a diner that was open 24 hours a day and were contemplating going in.

“Are you hungry?” Puffy asked and the mood was broken.

“Yea, sure,” Tommy replied, his leftovers would be eaten by Ranboo and tubbo they would do anything for some proper breakfast food. Puffy tilted her head slightly to the right, a condescending tone filling her voice one akin to pity.

“We don’t have to eat if you aren’t hungry,” she said and although her face remained neutral Tommy could feel the waves of sadness waving off of her, guilting him into entering the little diner.

“No, food is food, let's go eat.” Tommy said unbuckling his seatbelt and moving to get out of the car. “I wonder if they have chocolate chip pancakes, they’re my favorite,” Puffy smiled and got out of the car with him. They both walked in and found themselves to be the only people there. It was a quaint place, one with blue and yellow walls and cheap oak doors, it felt homey. Tommy found himself laughing at Puffy’s jokes and when the waitress came up she ordered him chocolate chip pancakes. It was almost enjoyable. If Tommy’s mood wasn’t constantly upset by the looming threat of a supervillain hunting him it would have been perfect. 

-------------

Honestly, it wasn’t a pretty picture, a boy too skinny for his own good and the woman obviously only taking him to a run down restaurant to distract him and get him to eat. There were cobwebs on the ceiling and Puffy was pretty sure that she saw a rat in the corner but that didn’t matter when half of the pancakes on Tommy’s plate were gone and he didn’t even notice it. They were talking about what would happen if a real rat king were to ever exist, how they got to the nutcracker was beyond her but she was willing to follow the conversation as long as Tommy was distracted. It was almost like when he wasn’t paying attention he remembered that he was a kid, that he was eighteen and he could afford to eat out once a week rather than scavenging for food. She watches him talk about things he likes, dogs, cars, and for some reason the nutcracker. It was fascinating she watched him create his own world out of a trashy run down diner in the middle of nowhere but it was beautiful nonetheless. She would do this seven days a week if she could see the smile on Tommy’s face as he spoke about how dogs actually understand English rather than just associating sounds.

“Tommy?” she asked and Tommy turned to face her again rather than looking out upon the diner and it’s emptiness as he spoke.

“Yes?” He asked, head tilting in confusion.

“Do you want a box?” she asked and Tommy’s face dropped when he looked down at hia plate. She tried to recover but it seemed like the damage had been done. He shook his head, the mood killed. 

“I’m good actually, let's get going,” Tommy said while standing and moving towards the door. Puffy stood up and walked towards the door as well, putting two twenty’s on the table as she left, leaving a nice tip.

Their trip back to the hero’s tower was taken in comfortable silence. Tommy sat staring out the window as Puffy wondered what to do, the kid almost had two different personalities. It was disturbing how much of a facade the boy could wear. They arrived back at the tower just after five pm, Tommy quickly making his way upstairs leaving Puffy at her desk again. She just hoped that she could help Tommy in some way, and preferably soon.

Chapter Text

It took three weeks after Tommy’s dinner with Puffy for something interesting to happen. Everything in Tommy’s life was normal for three weeks. He went to work and did his job, no hitches, he fought muggers and robbers in the night, no heroes in sight, no word of Dreams search, Tubbo and Ranboo even backed off. It was a normal Thursday afternoon when everything started going wrong. 

Tommy walked into work late, the trains were running behind and now he was. Puffy wasn’t at her desk when he walked in which is unusual. He walked up to the fifth floor to grab some food, he was having a bad morning, he saw everyone buzzing with excitement. The floor was packed, every hero in sight, he was pretty sure he even saw Techno smiling as they all chatted. He pushed his way though the crowd until he ran into Sam.

“Sam,” Tommy said in hopes of getting the hero’s attention, “Sam!” he spoke a little louder. Sam turned around to see Tommy’s confused face. 

“What’s up kid?” Sam asked and Tommy looked around the room.

“What’s going on? Why is everyone here?” Tommy asked and Sam remembered that it was still Tommy’s first month here. It was hard to remember how little the heroes knew about Tommy, he fit right into the dynamic of the office without trying, they knew nothing about him.

“You know how we have that big training room?” he asked and Tommy nodded. “Once a month all the hero’s get together to see who can beat Techno for his spot as number one hero, we don't really change the standings considering that they are based on the people's choice,” Tommy nodded as well, the people vote for top heroes once a year, Tommy always votes for Techno, he was the coolest. “Basically it’s bragging rights. This month is happening today, that’s why everyone’s excited,” Tommy looked up at Sam. Tommy knew that all the heroes thought he was weak, they struggled to get him to eat, let alone hold a fight against the number one hero. Tommy knew he could beat Techno, he’d done that before, it would be a chance to show the heroes that he has what it takes.

“Who all fights him?” Tommy asked. Sam looked intrigued.

“Anyone who wants to,” Sam's voice filled with interest as he looked at Tommy, his face showing mild concern. “Why? Do you want to fight him?” Tommy smiled over his shoulder as he walked away. He wandered through the crowd for another few seconds searching for anyone else he knew, he wanted to stand by them at least. Just as he found Purpled someone yelled from the front of the room. Clapping her hands Puffy spoke to the room.

“All right! Are we ready?” She asked her volume lowering with the question Timescape, Karl as Tommy had come to learn, held up a thumbs up and Puffy nodded. As people began to file out of the room and down the stairs Tommy grabbed onto Purpled’s sleeve causing the latter to turn around.  Upon noticing that Tommy was one tailing him he turned back forward. Everyone was in the training room, absent of all equipment, in the center was Puffy standing next to Techno, it was overwhelming. Puffy started speaking.

“As we all know we are here to attempt to beat The Blade, in a fight,” Her voice loud and dynamic, lowering as she spoke the number one’s hero’s name. “Hand to hand combat, no head hits, don’t be too rough, we all have work to do when this is over,” She said Techno standing on her left wearing his full hero suit, you could tell who was going to fight him because they were wearing their suits too. Not many people were, Phil, Wilbur, Karl, and a few others we decked out, Puffy appeared to hold the spot of announcer. “I would like to call up our first contestant,” she paused for dramatic effect, “Siren,”

-------------

Tubbo and Ranboo didn’t know what to do. Tommy wasn’t staying at home anymore, he was always out doing one thing or another. He told them about his past, just enough for them to know that the number one villain in the country was following him, nothing beyond. He was more closed off than even when he first moved into the apartment. It was scary to watch him kill himself slowly as he outran his past. They couldn’t help him, not if he didn’t want help it wasn’t one of the things that you could just fix like a leaky faucet or the oven. 

------------

After Wilbur five lower level hero’s had fought Techno, all getting defeated in less than five minutes. Tommy watched them fight, they fought like heroes, they posed, did it for show rather than to win. It was getting boring he turned around to Phil to complain.

“How many people are going to fight him,” Tommy whined, it wasn’t really boring but it was really sad to watch people get beat down over and over again.

“Usually like ten people do it, the next few are when things start getting good,” Tommy turned back around to see Sam going up next. Although he lasted longer Tommy had to turn around a part of him was disgusted at their form.

“Who does Techno train under?” Tommy asks and Phil tilted his head, interested.

“No one, he’s self taught,” Phil replied, confidence filling in his voice.

“He’s really bad, like, laughably bad,” Tommy said and Phil turned around offended.

“You should watch what you say,” Tommy quirked an eyebrow.

“I could beat him one handed,” Phil flinched as whoever was fighting Techno went down with an unsettling squelch.

Tommy wanted to fight Techno, he was bored and it would be an easy win. It would prove his place at the heroes tower but it would be risky. With about five different bounties on his head going up and fighting the number one hero in the city, even though it was confined within the heroes tower. Tommy didn’t really care as he walked out onto the training field, most of the people who were watching earlier had already left.

“What are you doing kid?” Tommy made a split second decision to stop being scared instead he got cocky. He could afford to be rude, he was about to beat the number one hero in the area.

“Fight me,” Tommy said in a confident tone. Techno looked all the more confused.

“I’m not gonna beat you up Tommy, that’s like fifty shades of illegal,” Techno said and Tommy took a step forward.

“Fight me, I’ll win,” Tommy spoke his words short and laced with a slight venom. Techno looked as if he was going to consider it.

“You gonna cry when you lose?” Techno asked and Tommy looked offended.

“Prime no,” Tommy said and got into a fight stance, he could feel the eyes of the remaining people in the room on him, he felt Techno’s confusion waving off him, he wasn’t scared however, he knew he could do this. Techno bent down to fight when Tommy spoke again, “How heavy is your cape?” He asked and Techno looked shocked.

“I don't know, heavy?” He replied and Tommy swung his first punch, easily dodged.

“What vegetable are you most afraid of?” Tommy asked, swinging his next punch, upward.

“What is that question?” Techno asked, looking horrified taking his first swipe Tommy quickly moved his arm out of the way just enough to avoid the hit.

“Just curious,” Tommy said and he dodged another punch.

“We aren’t going to play twenty questions if we're fighting,” Techno said and Tommy sighed, lowering his arms momentarily.

“But fighting is boring without conversation, I barely know you!” Tommy spoke and Techno went to swing while Tommy’s arms were down making him quickly move out of the way. Tommy braught his arms up again. “You play dirty, I like it,” Techno huffed.

The quick meaningless questions from Tommy continued as Techno threw punch after punch, Tommy rarely switching off defence even if he had the time. The fight lasted about two more minutes before Tommy started getting annoyed.

“You’re slowing down, ready to quit yet?” Tommy asked, his remark angering his opponent.

“Play offence kid, give me something to do,” Tommy looked Techno in the eye before shrugging.

“If you want me to,” Tommy quickly threw three punches in succession, the last two hitting. Techno took a step back and Tommy started again. He landed three more punches before going on Techno’s right and hooking his foot around Techno’s ankle. He then grabbed Techno’s hand mid-punch as he yanked his foot back from underneath him knocking the hero onto his back. He leaned down on top of Techno’s chest. “Your cape’s heavy, you lean forward to change your weight, but you have hooves instead of feet. So, your top-heavy, lean back and stop relying on your brute strength to win it’s not going to last you much longer.” Tommy said dusting his hands on his pants and looking down. Techno’s exasperated face had yet to fade and Tommy held out a hand to help him up. Techno took it and stood.

“Walk with me,”

Chapter Text

To say Tommy was thoroughly disturbed was an understatement, The Blade asked him to walk with him after Tommy beat him in a fight. He knew it was a bad idea to put eyes on himself, he heard the whispers when he walked past, Techno was silent as they walked across the first floor of the building to a hallway Tommy hadn’t been in before.

“Listen here kid, I don’t know what stunt you pulled there but you don’t call a top-class hero out on his fighting style while the rest of the heroes are watching,” Techno said with undertones in his voice leading past his fury and further into his fear. Tommy felt regret pool in his stomach, he realized what he had done, he had made a fool of the number one hero, a fool of his boss, and now he was going to pay for it. “Follow up question, how in the name of Prime did you beat me?” Techno leaned in as Tommy stepped backward finding a wall and putting his hand against it.

“The first thing you said was a statement, so you didn’t say a follow up question,” Tommy said and Techno glared at Tommy until the anger left his face and was replaced by recognition then terror.

“There is only one other person in this city that can beat me in a fight, and I sincerely doubt that there are two of you,” Everything clicked for Tommy, Techno knew who he was, he was so screwed.

“Listen, can we just forget that you ever had that idea because it is wrong,” Tommy stumbles over his words. “There must be two of us then,” The terror seeping into his tone as he backed further into the wall.

“You're a decent liar Theseus, but all the evidence points to you,” Techno stated and Tommy’s blood ran cold. This was really the end of his escapades? All this time he worked to protect the city that saved him all for it to go down the drain once he actually tried to help? Tommy suddenly came back to his senses, if Techno knew then he knew but there was probably a way he could swing this and keep his secret safe, a compromise if you will.

“Listen, you know who I am, I know who you are, let's keep this a secret, ay? I'll teach you how to fight, better than a villain, and you just don’t tell my boss that I’m the vigilante he’s trying to catch. Alright?” Tommy’s panicked voice spoke the agreement as he held out one of his hands. Techno looked him up and down before holding out his own hand.

“Who trained you?” He asked. Tommy grasped their hands pulling them together in a handshake and making Techno’s face meet his.

“Dream,”

---------------

Tubbo was pretty sure that Tommy was high out of his mind when he came home. He was talking to himself about something that happened at work, he kept on talking about his vigilante persona. He was mostly unresponsive to questions only answering himself. After coxing him into bed where he lay staring at the ceiling did Tubbo start to wonder what had just happened. Tommy must have read his mind, or run off his high because he was very much coherent again in his response.

“Techno knows I’m Theseus, and that I worked for Dream, or at least trained under him, and now I’m going to lose my job,” He said, a wet giggle escaping his mouth, and Tubbo laid down beside him.

“How did he find out?” He asked and Tommy started giggling again. What did this kid take?

“I fought him, beat him to the ground in five seconds,” Tubbo turned his head to look at Tommy, seeing tears streaming down his face. “I don't know what to do,” He said with a sigh and Tubbo interlinked their pinkies, silently asking for permission to touch him. Tommy pulled his hand out from underneath Tubbo’s.

“I know what you’re going to do,” Tubbo said. “You’re going to go to work and do your job and keep your head down for once,” a joking bite entered his tone. Tommy laughed.

“Okay, okay,” Tommy wiped his tears as he sat up.

“Where are you going?” Tommy turned around to give Tubbo a look. “You are not avoiding your problems by beating people up!” Tubbo exclaimed, throwing his hands in the air. Tommy put on his vigilante outfit in the bathroom and sat on the window sill before waving to Tubbo as he jumped out.

------------

Ranboo came home to a silent house, one completely devoid of sound, it was terrifying. Upon walking around he saw Tubbo sitting on the couch, a vacant stare in his eyes.

“What happened? Where’s Tommy? Did he get off of work yet?” Ranboo’s voice was calm and kept Tubbo afloat as his eyes filled with tears. “Hey? What happened?” Putting his head in his hands Tubbo leaned onto Ranboo’s shoulder skin hissing as tears fell in just the right places, sizzling into nothing.

“He’s killing himself, and he knows it. I don’t know what to do,” Tubbo answered after several minutes of silence only quieted by sobs, his voice was scratchy but Ranboo could care less.

“What do you mean?”

“The Blade found out he works for Dream, Dream. I didn’t even know that after I lived with him for two years. Which means that he knows the Theseus thing and now Tommy’s going to get captured by the heroes, or worse Dream finds him again and all of that goes so downhill,” he said, mostly voicing his thoughts but words getting more and more heated as the statement drew on. What were they going to do? Tommy had never been one to have the best self preservation skills but this was new, revealing one of his secret lives was an issue that made things messy; Tommy was never messy.

————

Techno didn’t know what in the name of Prime just happened but he does know what was off about Tommy, Dream raised him. Although Theseus was much whittier and more uncanny in his actions Techno couldn’t help but see the similarities between them. He knew that the kid Dream was looking for was Theseus, he knew that Tommy was Theseus so logically Tommy was on the run from Dream. Why didn’t he act like it? He acted nonchalant and calm whenever the villain was brought up and now Techno knew that the man had raised him and done Prime knows what.

Everyone knew that Dream only ever trained protégés from birth, or as young as he could get them legally. He worked with them every day and abused them to get them to listen as they went through their terrible twos and teenage years. It took a long time before Dream became aware that he could just kill the kids that were bad at their training, he could hide a body no problem. The only issue was that he had become attached, breaking his own rule, he had become attached to the 34th kid brought in, nicknamed “T” seeing as the only thing they could get out of the three year old child’s mouth.

The fact that Tommy was standing in front of him meant the kid fought for his life and then some to just live in the streets. Techno didn’t know what to do with his newfound information. What do you do when you find out someone was abused for the entirety of their childhood, when they're your work friend at best, possibly only an acquaintance. It’s not like he could talk this out with his father, his brother, he was sworn to secrecy by some nineteen year old kid who had knocked him to the ground twice. Today was more than weird.

———-

Tommy was fighting out on the streets, no heroes in sight, only lonely pickpockets and the occasional pervert. He was avoiding home, where people cared and tried to feed him pity food. Perhaps they just loved him, in some stupid, familial, late night drive through the darkness type of way. It hurt him more and more to leave and go do his own thing because some rebellious part of him wanted to be hugged on a random Tuesday afternoon. Some dumb portion of him longed to take a nap on a bony shoulder with a fuzzy blanket and a Pixar movie playing in the background.

As he punched a final gang member in the nose, effectively knocking him to the ground, that same selfish part of him longed to go home and have hands wrapped around his waist as he fell asleep in someone’s arms. The warmth of the blanket they shared was not too warm, but rather just right for intertwined legs and soft calming breaths in his ear.

He came back from his thoughts to the room of his shared bedroom in front of him. He found his hands and feet to be sat upon the window sill as he robotically opened the window and headed in. The feeling of numbness taking over his body as he quietly closed the window again, he wondered to feel. Days upon days of reckless decisions left him standing alone in the bathroom, his pajamas sitting on the sink as he took off the mask he wore to protect his identity as well as the other two thirds of his stuff. He stood in front of the mirror, numbness still in his limbs heading towards his torso and brain as he analyzed every curve of his obscene figure. Scars wrapping his torso, arms, and legs leaving his gut in a twist. Disfigured little white lines along his hips where self inflicted wounds longed to be touched, traced. He looked underneath the sink, searching for a forbidden piece of silver untouched by any of the three boys in the house. A razor, the blade attached. Tommy broke the small piece of plastic apart revealing the real treasure.

Chapter Text

Tommy woke up in the bathroom, his back pressed against the wall and his knees tucked to his chest. He couldn’t feel his feet and whenever he moved his thighs burned something fierce. Cuts of various lengths adorned them, he wondered where the implement he had used to scar them went. He stood up, noting the blood underneath his fingernails, he turned to face the mirror. He didn’t look at himself long if at all, he checked to see if any notes of his late-night escapades could be seen. He only ever appeared tired. 

It was one of those days where Tommy wondered if anyone actually cared about him, even though he knew he did. It was one of those days where he showed up to work a half an hour early in avoidance of home and frankly, he didn’t care. He stayed in his office all day, he didn’t even do anything besides to reply to a few Twitter comments about what the heroes do while at work. He didn’t even go home at ten pm, he slept in his office, he didn’t even know why the heroes let him do that, he wondered if they even knew he showed up to work that day. 

When he woke up the next day his back was stiff and his thighs no longer burned. His hands were cold along with his nose. He wondered where he was for a quick second before remembering that he fell asleep in his office. He felt loneliness pool in his stomach, although it was probably hunger, he hadn’t eaten in twenty four hours. He remembered days like this, days where he wouldn’t have eaten sufficient meals the entire month and he would be asked to train, for ten, twelve hours he would fight villains twice his size and win. He checked the clock placed on the wall and found it to be six am. He was pretty sure that no one else was even in the building let alone the training rooms at this time. He knew that there were cameras everywhere in this building but all he had to do was long into Puffy’s camera system and he would be able to disable them. He took the stairs down a subconscious fear of enclosed spaces setting in when he clicked on the elevator door’s button. 

Upon walking behind Puffy’s desk Tommy found that she hadn’t logged out of the computer system the night before, giving him as much access to the camera’s. It took him a while to figure out which buttons on her app did what but eventually he was able to turn off the camera in the training room and finally have some Prime forsaken alone time. He ran down the hall and entered the room finding the supplies rather than holograms or people to fight. He looked down at his knuckles finding them only mildly bruised after doing only light vigilante work for the last few days. He wiped the sweat that had accumulated throughout the journey off on his pants. He took note of the supplies in the room, two dummy’s, five beanbags, and three actual targets were scattered around the room. He looked into what he assumed was a supply closet and found different weapons scattered around the room. He took a semi-automatic pistol off the wall and checked to see if it had six bullets. It was loaded. He looked around the room planning his course of action. He only had enough bullets to shoot the dummy’s and the actual targets but he was pretty sure he’d get in trouble for shooting the bean bags anyways so it didn’t matter. He determined that it would take five hits to kill on the dummy’s, a rule completely made up for the challenge. He looked up at the clock. He noted that an hour had passed since he started this plan, it was seven am meaning that people were going to start showing up, he had to hurry. 

He started by putting the gun in his back pocket and cracking his knuckles. He started counting seconds. A round like this should take him no longer than five minutes, this was easy, he needed actual targets to give himself a proper challenge. He punched the first bean bag, two, three, four, five. He moved on, bean bag two, three, four, five. No more than a minute elapses. He pulls the gun out from his back pocket and he aims he shoots the target in front of him, He twists on his left hill just enough to hit the target on his right side before swiveling and hitting the target located behind him. He then turns to the dummy’s shooting both of them in the heart, or where it would be if they weren’t made out of some sort of foam and metal. He had one more bullet in his gun. He heard a door creak open, the door connecting him to the outside world, popping his little bubble. He cocked the gun a final time and aimed his hand straight out from his shoulder, he didn’t need to look to know who it was, Wilbur. 

--------

Philza was not expecting to check the motion cameras at his office at six am, mostly because there was nothing within the heroes tower worth stealing during the night. The only things of value within it were the heroes themselves. Upon checking his phone he found that the so called perpetrator was his intern. Who was slipping out of his office with messy hair and the same outfit he was wearing the day before. He thought that the kid went home because he was quiet all day but he mush have fallen asleep in his office, Phil had done it a number of times more than he was willing to admit. The kid pressed the elevator button before taking the stairs down, Phil continued to track him on his phone as he came out on the first floor and went behind Puffy’s desk. What was he doing? There was extremely confidential information on those computers yet all he seemed to be doing was opening the cameras and clicking random buttons. After about fifteen minutes of watching the kid struggle he mush have done what he wanted because he walked away from the front counter and down the hall, towards the training rooms as Phil went to follow what he was doing rather than being able to view camera footage he instead saw a photo broadcast of wilbur eating sand, one they set years ago as a joke that would play when the cameras were diabled. What in the name of Prime was that kid doing that required him to turn off the cameras.

Ten minutes later Wilbur and Techno woke up to Phil pacing the room in his pajamas. 

“C’mon we have to get into work early,” They both sat up instantly, Phil only ever wanted to go in early when something bad was happening. The last time they woke up like this was when Schlatt blew up his son ten years ago.

“What's going on?” Techno asked.

“Tommy stayed at work overnight, must have fallen asleep at his desk without us realizing. I don’t know what he’s doing but he turned off the cameras in the training rooms and is in the building alone, you know that kids lesser than stable in the head,”

“You think he’s going to kill himself?” Wilbur asked with a hint of amusement under his tone.

“In the office?” Techno elaborated. Both of the brothers had growing smirks on their faces and Phil turned around to face them.

“Yes,”

------------

Tommy was about to shoot his boss in the head. Prime what was he thinking sneaking around the building before he was even supposed to be there. He lowered the gun and dropped it and began spewing apologies out of his mouth at the speed of light. Wilbur walked into the room and moved the gun away from Tommy. He grabbed the blonde's wrists as incoherent pleas continued to wrack his body.

“Hey, hey, Toms. What’s going on?” He asked. Tommy didn’t reply as he went up on his knees and grabbed the gun from out behind Wilbur. He pointed it right at the heroes chest. “Listen, I don’t know what’s gotten into you but I'm going to ask that you put that gun down,” Tommy stared at the hero down and lowered the gun, why he brought it up in the first place was purely instinct. “Do you even know how to shoot a gun?” Wilbur asked. Tommy tensed, of course he knew how to shoot a gun and honestly that comment offended him more than he was willing to admit. He went through all that work only to get caught and be told he doesn’t know how to handle a gun? 

Tommy kept the gun in hand as he scooched towards Wilbur putting his hand absent of the gun around Wilbur’s middle pulling him into some sort of lack luster gun point half hug. He tucked his head into Wilbur’s shoulder taking his hand with his gun and putting it against the back of Wilbur’s head. Wilbur wrapped his arms around Tommy’s middle hands shaking and breath shallow as the gun behind his head clicked, Tommy turned his head ever so slightly to speak into Wilbur’s ear. His voice sweet and condescending and he whispered.

“If you think I am any less competent than yourself, you’re sorely mistaken,”

He shot.

Chapter Text

Wilbur's hands tightened around Tommy as the final bullet in the small hand pistol was fired. The bullet curved, rather than going into Wilbur's skull but rather the target to their left. Tommy stood up, dusting his knees off, and held out his hand. Wilbur stood up still in shock.

“Tell Techno that if he wants to meet with me he can find me in my office,” Tommy said and he left the room leaving Wilbur alone to wonder what had just happened. There were more and more things that Tommy did that made no sense. This was the final straw, he was getting answers. He ran out of the room heading towards the stairwell, passing his father and brother still sitting at Puffy’s desk in shock at what they had just seen. Wilbur ran quickly through the seventh floor until he stood in front of Tommy’s door. His hand moved for the doorknob but before he could twist it he stopped. Did he really want to know? Is this his curiosity getting the better of him? He took a deep breath and opened the door. Tommy sat at his desk, staring at his computer.

“What was that?” Wilbur asked and Tommy glanced up from his computer screen before going back to typing.

“I was using the training room, anything against it?” Tommy asked. His tone was annoyed, his eyes still on his computer.

“ Why do you want to talk to Techno? ” Wilbur used his power and Tommy looked up from his computer, his whole head moving not just his eyes this time. He took his hands off his keyboard and folded them in his lap. A smug smile spread across his face.

“We were going to talk about nunya’ business,”

--------------

Tubbo was freaking out. Tommy hadn’t come home last night and the last thing he needed was for his friend to have been kidnapped. Ranboo went out last night teleporting around the city in a mad search for him, no signs of him were found. Now, Ranboo’s asleep and Tubbo’s pacing the room, and Tommy hasn’t been home in almost thirty hours. He didn’t know what to do. He decided to call the heroes tower in hopes that they would tell him if he came into work but the lady who answered the phone refused to give out that information. He didn’t know where his friend went but he was really hoping that he was safe, Prime knows Tubbo wouldn’t live with himself if Tommy was hurt.

--------------

Tommy didn’t know what he was doing. He had ruined his job at the heroes tower. Not only did he threaten to shoot his boss, twice, but he also ignored Wilbur's powers meaning that he now knew that Tommy wasn’t powerless, it was a major issue. Techno was standing outside his office, pacing, He didn’t think Techno knew that Tommy could see through the window. It took fifteen minutes before Techno knocked on his door. 

“Kid? You in there?” Techno asked.

“Yeah, what do you want?” Tommy asked back, moving to go to the door.

“You told me to come to knock on your door if I wanted to train with you?” Tommy had forgotten all about their deal in the insanity that was his and Wilbur’s incident.

“Umm, why don’t you go to the training rooms, I’ll be there in a sec,” Tommy’s voice was uncertain in his reply but he saw Techno's feet shuffle away in the window out of his office and he knew he had time to come to a plan in the time it took him to go down the stairs. 

Tommy was downstairs, outside the training room, in particular, he wasn’t sure what to do. When he had signed on to train the hero sitting in that room he didn’t recall that he actually had no idea how to train someone. He entered the room uncertain of himself, hands shaking slightly at his sides.

“Are you ready?” Tommy asked, walking towards one of the dummies sitting in the corners of the room. The one he standing next to contains a bullet hole in its chest, near its imaginary heart.

“Yes?” Techno replied unsure as to what he was doing in the room. 

“Listen, I don’t really know what I’m doing here,” Tommy starts and Techno looks slightly amused. “So, you're going to throw a punch at the dummy and then I’ll help you fix up your form, yeah?” Tommy asked, Techno nodded. Tommy waved his hand vaguely at the dummy and Techno got into his stance. “Your weights too far forward,” he spoke and Techno rolled his shoulders back, making the problem worse. Tommy shook his head and got into a stance identical to Technos and showed the man what he was doing wrong, pointing and shifting things on himself as Techno copied. It took them half an hour before the punch that Techno threw was deemed ‘fixed enough’. They then worked for another half an hour on maintaining that form while doing different things, he had Techno kick things and try going from a normal standing position to the stance they practiced. Techno looked intrigued for the first ten minutes but thereafter losing his spark, Tommy slowly fell into a routine, correcting the same things over and over again until the words stuck. He was pretty sure that he wasn’t going to ever be able to say the word spine one more time without crying. 

“We can stop, you look tired. What did you learn?” Tommy asked mostly out of curiosity, he wanted to know if any of the things he was saying stuck. 

“That it takes me a half an hour to learn how to throw a ‘Tommy standard’ punch,” Techno replied, his voice showing the pain he had endured in his training session.

“Perfect, well meet here once a week? When we're both free?” Tommy offered and The Blade nodded. It was surprising to actually be training a hero. 

Tommy took an extra long time on his walk home he did not want to deal with Tubbo when he got home, he saw the fifteen voicemails the man had left him, and he bet none of them were kind. He also noted that he hadn’t made a Twitter appearance in a long time, taking a stock image of Siren off the internet and posting it saying that that was the image on Sirens ID, people thought it was funny. He walked towards his apartment door and found it devoid of yelling from the other side, it was surprising that Tubbo wasn’t full-on freaking out right now. Tommy opened the door.

“Where in the name of Prime have you been?” Tubbo asked and Tommy flinched. He really didn’t know how to tell his best friend that he was avoiding work so much he actually stayed in his office there.

“I was at work,” Tommy replied carefully and Tubbo’s eyes widened.

“Oh, that makes sense, yeah, you were at work for over thirty hours,” Tubbo replied sarcastically and Tommy didn’t know how to explain himself so he didn’t say anything, a crucial mistake. Tubbo stood there impatiently as Tommy wiggled his fingers and looked nervously around. “Explain yourself, because from my point of view my friend falls asleep in the bathroom and then goes to work and doesn’t come back home for over thirty hours ,” Tommy leans back as Tubbo starts to walk around the room. He doesn’t know what to say, he doesn’t know what to do with the knowledge that he almost shot the number three hero in the area and then trained the number one hero how to throw a punch. He doesn’t know how to explain that he slept at his desk in order to avoid coming back home, but no because of Tubbo because he simply couldn’t face himself. 

“I’m sorry,” Tommy says, his voice coming out quiet and unsure. Tubbo’s pacing comes to an abrupt halt when he hears the words leave his friends mouth.

“What happened Tommy?” Tubbo asked, his voice gentle and Tommy looked him in the eye.

“I held Siren at gunpoint and then spent a half an hour teaching The Blade how to throw a proper punch,” Tommy rushed out, confessing his sins. 

“You wha-” Tubbo asked but Tommy began explaining himself.

“I mean how does it take the number one hero thirty whole minutes to learn to throw a punch, wasn’t he already throwing them?” Tommy asked rhetorically, continuing his babbling letting words overflow out of his mouth. “He stood so weird Tubbo, I got a backache just looking at his spine for five minutes, and he refused to shift from the worst stance I had ever seen, it was a nightmare,” Tommy noticed that Tubbo was wearing a face of amusement and stopped his talking.

“You had a crazy day?” Tubbo finally choked out before breaking down into laughter.

“Yeah,” Tommy said. He went off towards the back of the house to grab his vigilante suit, he hadn’t gone out last night seeing as he was sleeping within the heroes tower. Tubbo grabbed his hands as he walked past.

“Next time call, yeah?” He asked and Tommy nodded shaking off the hand as he shut the bedroom door and changed. He was sitting on the windowsill when he heard the sound of static in his ear, Tubbo must have finally turned on the comm channels.

“Theseus this is Homeland do you copy?” Tubbo’s voice asks.

“Homeland, any heroes around?” Tommy replied.

Chapter Text

Tommy was running through the city, the wind against the small portion of his face that was visible freeing him. It took a little over three hours for Tommy to run into a hero, specifically Timescape.

“Tommy? Timescapes behind you,” Tubbo spoke in his ear.

“I know,” Tommy said, continuing to jump between rooftops and ignoring the hero tailing him. 

Timescape was harmless in a hand to hand battle, he was skinny and not good at it, normally he was fighting alongside someone physically strong. His power was cool though, he could freeze time, or rather slow it down. It was interesting to see it in action, to see the man jump from one end of the room to the other in a split second, to see him change the direction of a bullet to avoid dodging. He was still a sidekick to the heroes. Tommy knew Timescape, he knew Karl, the kind man who got everyone in the office cookies every Tuesday, what Tommy didn’t know is if Timescape knew of Theseus’s deal with the heroes.

Tommy stopped running, slowing down on the roof. He turned around to meet the hero's eyes and noted that they looked almost sympathetic.

“Listen, I don’t know what you want but I’m under The Blades protection so you can’t harm me,” Tommy said.

“I was informed,” Timescape replied, his voice robotic under the use of a voice modifier. “I’ve been told you are a friend, and I’ve been told you need help,” Tommy tilted his head away from the conversation, he knew the severity of having the number one villain go after you.

“Dream has yet to show his face. We have nothing to worry about,” Tommy said, his voice calm. Timescape nodded.

“I’ll relay the information,” Timescape said and instead of leaving, he hesitated. Tommy moved to grab a knife he kept in the lining of his pants. “I’ve been in the future, and I’ve been in the past. Don’t let time escape you Theseus,” Timescape speaks, his voice taking an ethereal tone. Tommy nodded.

“Time passes without change, for now I sit in the illusion of safety,” Tommy says and Timescape pauses.

“He’s already after you, you know that right?” Karl asks and Tommy nods.

“He was after me the second I escaped,” Tommy says and he turns around, looking out at the city from the roof they were on. The city was alive at night, street lights illuminating people walking, couples kissing in dead end alleyways, a few criminals running away from their past. Although the people roaming the road were destined to be hit by cars, it was alive, alive as a painting done with oil paints, not yet dried. It was perfect, too perfect, everything in Tommy’s life was good at the moment, and he didn’t know when that would change but he knew that soon he would have to let go of the hallucination of safety, it was crafted by a dream.

----------

It took a long time for anything interesting to happen in Tommy’s life. After Timescapes warned him that Dream was around the corner he didn’t quite know what to do with himself, he honestly just made a routine. He went to work, came home, ate dinner, patrolled, went to bed, and repeated. He didn’t like how normal it was, he didn’t like how nice it felt to finally settle down. After that incident at the heroe tower he had yet to go back into the training rooms alone although his and Techno’s sessions continued. They both got better together using youtube to try different fighting styles, minimal harm ever happened to either party. 

Tommy was doing good, he was eating more, still not enough for Phil to not feed him a snack each day but enough that he didn’t pass out anymore. He still cut sometimes, more often than before but bleeding a little bit wasn’t as bad and starving himself for days at a time. His Twitter account hit almost ten thousand followers. He often did interviews with the heroes just asking dumb questions, people loved it. His hands started shaking again. It was a problem he only ever ran into when he felt comfortable enough to let his guard down. His hands never shook in combat, ever vigilant. 

He didn’t know how to feel about it, how to feel knowing that he actually thought of these people as family. He didn’t like the fact that he felt safe in the hands of people he was raised to hate, and for the love of Prime he actually thought that maybe they weren’t that bad. 

He was allowed to go to meetings with the heroes. He was allowed to be there and take notes on whatever boring presentation they were giving. They always used the same google slides theme and broadcasted it on a tv that looked to be older than the building. Today was a boring day, his routine the same as always, all the heroes minus the ones patrolling found themselves in the meeting room. They were going through some presentation about how heroes should behave when interacting with civilians, something they legally had to do, merely just running through the presentation when Timescape stood up.

“Karl, are you ok?” Phil asks and Karl looks Tommy in the eyes, fear evident as he speaks.

“Can I steal Tommy for a second?” He asks and Phil nods as the two exit the room together.

“What do you want?” Tommy asks his voice genuine, he needs to know if these heroes are going to fire him, they are his main source of income.

“Your time is coming to a close Theseus,” Karl spoke and Tommy jumped back. Tommy was sure he never told Karl anything about his other job. The warning itself implied that Tommy had little time left in his bubble of safety. He didn’t want to let it go.

“How long do I have?” Tommy asked and Karl's face turned grim.

“Not long enough,” Karl says and Tommy feels disconnected. His hands do not feel like his own, he is outside his body looking down at the look of betrayal on his own face as he hears laughter coming from the meeting he was supposed to be in. At that moment it felt so unfair. It wasn’t fair that he couldn’t get his freedom for more than a year or two at a time, he was angry. Tommy returned to his body, the sounds around him all too loud, his outfit scratchy. He blinked.

“Thank you. Let’s head back inside,” Tommy said. He opened the door to the meeting, seeing the screen was scrolling through his Twitter account rather than the slideshow they were supposed to be watching.

“Kid, this is funny stuff,” Awesam said and a ghost of a smile traced Purpled’s face, the two sat next to each other. Tommy sat back down next to Phil, thoughts of his and Karl’s conversat swirling his head as he paid little attention to the world around him. He was pulled from his thoughts as the screen from the TV in front of them turned to static and a beeping sound filled the room. The screen flickered a few times before turning on to a live broadcast of a blank room. There was nothing more than a pale bed in the corner and a mirror on the left wall. The door to the room opened and in stepped a face Tommy never thought he’d see again. In front of him was Dreams porcelain mask.

“Thomas Innit, we meet again,” Dream speaks and rather than Tommy letting his mind wander he zones in on the moment ignoring the terrified looks on the heroes faces, he ignored the pained look on Karl and in turn focused harder on the TV. His face was stone cold, he did not show weakness. He did not show fear.

“Dream, what an unpleasant surprise,” Tommy says and Dream remains unmoving.

“You still have that pesky little attitude don’t you? That’s a shame, you used to be so sweet,” Dream says, his tone condescending and sweet. It had been a long time since Tommy had heard that voice other than nightmares.

“Listen, cut to the chase, why are you after me?” Tommy’s voice is angry, he hopes it covers the fear on his face. The heroes around him finally coming back from the surprise that Dream was on their TV, they realize that the intern they hired three months ago was the kid that Dream was after, and they were about to learn why.

“Thomas, or Tommy? Is it? I think it’s about time you come home, you’ve made attachments,” Dream’s voice makes everyone in the room uneasy. It's terrifying. It took a long time for Tommy to process the fact that in this moment he had to be present, he had to follow the rules and pay attention. For the love of Prime, get back in the moment.

“I have made attachments, I am allowed to have them, I am not yours anymore,” Tommy is veering on disrespectfully, he's going to make Dream mad. Dream was already upset, Tommy ran away. “I’m not going back home, that lab is not my home anymore,”

“But it is? You grew up there, your best friend is there, and I have a gift for you,” Dream’s voice gains a manic inconsistency, the volume inconsistent and the words overly emphasized. Dreams hand raises into the screen's view, a tuft of black and white hair comes into view followed by a gore covered face followed by a neck dripping blood and then, nothing. It was the decapitated head of his best friend, one of the heroes turned around to vomit, Tommy heard the sound but didn’t move, didn't flinch, didn’t break eye contact.

“You removed my attachments?” Tommy asked in his voice, gaining the unbearable innocence of a child from a broken home.

“I removed one of your attachments, a warning,” Dream speaks and Tommy nods. “You have two weeks to come home Thomas, otherwise all of the other friends you’ve made of these last couple years will suffer a similar fate,” Tommy knows what he has to do, he doesn’t need two weeks to do it but by Prime he might need two weeks to process this video call. “Do you understand Thomas?” Tommy nods again, his voice would fail him. “Bye!” Dream’s voice sings as he disconnects from the tv leaving a static filled screen. 

Tommy finds himself reaching into his pocket before he can think of Tubbo’s number on impulse. He can hear himself hyperventilating, he can hear Phil whispering in his ear that everything is going to be okay, he can hear everything. He can only see, however, the word ringing on his phone screen begging for Tubbo to pick up. His words slip from incoherent pleading to words of his youth a prayer to Prime. 

“Please forgive me, Prime, lady above. I know not how to forgive but I know I must repent my sins…” Tommy chants the prayer over and over again as the phone screen suddenly changes from ringing to connecting and Tommy pulls his phone to his ear.

“Hello?” A robotic voice speaks in his ear, Tubbos robotic voice speaks in his ear. His pleads cut off instantly as he felt his breath hitch.

“Is… is Ranboo home?” Tommy asks and his hands are shaking again, his hands never shake in the moment but his hands are shaking and he can’t hear anything over the ringing in his ears and Ranboo is dead.

“No? He’s at work. Why?” Tubbo asks and his voice claims innocence, Tommy doesn’t know how long Dreams have been onto him for a long time but in this moment he was terrified.

“He’s, he’s. Tubbo? Ranboo’s, Ranboo’s dead, Dream got to him and-” Tommy gets cut off by his breath hitching his voice cut off by the intake of air he’s crying. Tears are falling from his eyes and he's crying and Tubbo’s speaking in pleads that Tommy is lying but they both know he’s not and neither can hear the other on the other end of the phone. Hands are still all over Tommy, one’s rubbing his back and one is in his hair. One is holding the phone to his ear, he realizes, his hands are sitting in his lap. “Tubbo?” Tommy asks and the sound on the other end of the call stops. “Tubbo, I’m going to hang up now. I have two weeks to figure this out, I need every second I get. I need you to come into the heroes tower, you can catch the train in. It’ll take you a half an hour at most, yeah?” Tommy asks and a sound of apprehension in head on the other end of the phone call. “Tubbo? Can you do that?” Tommy asks and Tubbo says yes and then hangs up the call.

What was he going to do?

Chapter Text

Phil was running through a slide show presentation, well more like he was scrolling through Twitter looking at dumb tweets about himself when the TV remote stopped responding. He started slapping it against his wrist and tried again, but it still didn’t work. He didn’t want to say anything about it and went to reset the remote when the screen turned to static. He froze, as did everyone in the office as the screen turned to a security camera's point of view. There was nothing in the room beside a mirror located on the back wall. It wasn’t that concerning until Dream, the number one villain, walked into frame. He began speaking.

“Thomas Innit,” could be heard from the tv and all eyes turned to Tommy who was frozen still as a statue. There was this look of disgust on his face like he was talking to an old enemy, he was, Phil assumed. Their conversation continues, Phil only ever listening to Dream as he watches Tommy whose eyes show fear but his voice shows anger, and his hands are shaking. Dream says he brought Tommy a gift and a blood-covered head comes into view, nothing else. Purpled dashes off to throw up and Tommy obviously knows the owner of the skull in Dream's hands but he doesn’t show it, his facade unbreakable. After the call that brave face came crashing down as Tommy’s breaths got shorter and shorter. He was obviously panicking. He pulled out his phone and whispered a prayer as someone's number rang out. Everyone else in the office was silent as the two spoke only in panicked conversation. When the call hung up Tommy took a deep breath and stood up, his voice clear and concise.

“I’m sure you're wondering what just happened, and I would love to explain, but I have just found out that I have two weeks to kill Dream or all of you die so if you’ll excuse me I need to go plan,” Tommy speaks. He moves to walk out the door but Techno stops him.

“What do you mean?” He asks and Tommy shakes the hand off his shoulder.

“I mean I'm going to go cry in the bathroom until Tubbo gets here,” The younger one walked out the door.

“What are we gonna do?” Techno asks, surprisingly vocal for the situation.

“See what Tommy’s plan is and go from there,” Wilbur replies, and everyone in the office perks up, it wasn’t like Wilbur to not be planning the next seventeen courses of action. Phil tilts his head in confusion and Wilbur must get the gist of the silent question because he replies.

“Dream called whatever warehouse he was in a home, for Tommy, the kid obviously gets along with Dream well enough to be buddy-buddy with him. The kids gotta be powerful, he can hold his own. We have to trust him on this one because I’m pretty sure he just found out his best friend is dead, let him grieve,”

---------

Tommy was on the floor of the bathroom, his hands were shaking and he couldn’t get a coherent breath out of his mouth. He hated waiting, and now not only did he have to wait in the direst of circumstances but he had to wait to see if he was going to die. He didn’t know how long he sat there panicking but time was of the essence. He shook out his shoulders, took a few deep breaths, and walked out the door. 

The sight in front of Tommy was one to behold, not only were the heroes arguing with each other but it was loud, like filling up the whole floor of the hero’s building with shouts loud. He walked in to find all eyes on him, he looked at the clock, ten minutes had passed.

“Everyone, I’ll explain my predicament once Tubbo gets here, for now, let’s all just keep it to small talk. Yeah?” Tommy asks jokingly, he did not wait for an answer as he walked back out the door again, slowly working his way down to the bottom floor of the hero’s tower. He met Tubbo at the door.

Grief was a strange thing, something both boys had experienced before but it was different, when it was their friend, when it was their fault. There were no tears shed, there were no hugs shared, there was no comfort, merely a look of business. They walked in silence to the seventh floor. Tommy opened the door to the meeting room again, eyes tracing his shaking hands and tear-stained face. 

“This is Tubbo. He’s a friend. He’s here to help,” Tommy’s voice is monotone as he speaks, Phil's eyebrows furrow slightly.

“What's the plan, Tommy?” Phil asks and a slight grin spreads across Tommy’s face.

“I’m going to kill him, and I’m going to make it sting,”

---------

Tubbo wasn’t sure what to do with himself. Tommy has gained the trust of every hero in the city and they are just listening to him. He was standing in a meeting room on the top floor of the heroes tower where Tommy looked as if he was one second away from burning the whole building down.

“Look, kid, what are you actually going to do because it seems like all you have for a plan is to kill him,” Fundy, a hero in training asks.

“Simple, we need to bait him,” Tommy speaks and Tubbo’s head whips around. Tommy holds his hands up in fake surrender. “Not in that way, we need to hunt down George Davidson,” Tommy speaks and the room erupts with noise.

“Why?!” Philza yells over the crowd's voices, although it was really only ten people in a crowded room.

“Dream was in love with him, still is,” Tommy speaks and Philza’s head turns slightly to the left a look of concern crossing his eyebrows, Tommy mentioned that this was Philza’s dad-like way of doing puppy dog eyes. He claimed it was a look of pity, that he hated it but Tubbo found it looked much more of curiosity rather than condescension. 

“Why a civilian?” Philza asks and a wave of nostalgia comes over Tommy’s face as he takes a breath, his mouth turns sour as he drops his eye contact with the hero. Tubbo feels out of place all over again, whatever moment he is watching is supposed to be between Tommy and himself, and not only is Philza watching but Tubbo is and it doesn’t even matter that the other heroes are there because Tubbo’s not supposed to be and Tubbo is Tommy’s best friend.

“I never quite understood what he saw in him but his status as number two hero was for sure a help and the fact that he was more head over heels for Dream than Dream was for him,” Tommy speaks and Tubbo watches as Philza’s face turns from ‘pity’ to a look of understanding.

“Were finding 404 without the mask?” He asks and Tommy nods.

“Hopefully he still hates Dream as much as I do,” Tommy replies.

“Tommy?” Tubbo finds himself asking and he isn’t quite sure what is going to come out of his mouth next whether it be an apology or an insult or a question about the next mission but the look on Tommy’s face when he meets his eyes makes him forget his next work as tears begin to flow down his face.

“Tubbo, Tubbo. It'll be ok? Yeah? Ranboo will come back I’m sure of that,” Tommy says.

“How do you know?” Tubbo asks his voice thick.

“Know what?” Tommy asks and Tubbo sniffles as he responds.

“That he’ll come back?” Tommy brings a hand up to Tubbo eyes and wipes his tears.

“Because it’s in my deck, I always came back otherwise I wouldn’t be here,” Tommy gestures to himself, and Tubbo realized what that means. It means that not only had Tommy died before, multiple times, but he was angry enough that the second he came back he grabbed onto whoever was healing him whilst they were still reviving him. The realization made Tubbo’s knees give out Tommy grabbed his arms he fell to the floor.

“How are we going to find George?” Tubbo asks and Tommy wipes his tears again.

“That’s why we brought you here, my little human GPS,” Tommy says and Tubbo lets out a chuckle swiping at Tommy who laughs as well.

“I do much more than find people's addresses, however, I am very good at that,” Tubbo says as he continued gathering his bearings.

“I know Tubs but for right now let's just track him down yeah?” Tommy asks and he does Philza’s little head tilt and Tubbo sees why it’s condescending.

“You're doing Philza’s little head tilt thingy,” He stated his voice cautious and Tommy looks scared before turning around to meet Philza’s eyes.

“It’s contagious,” a fake fear fills Tommy’s voice.

Chapter Text

Tommy had never been a violent person, sure he wanted to hit an annoying person in the street every once in a while or throw hands at a mouthy mugger but he wasn’t violent. He knew what vioence was and he know it effects. He knew that being a violent peson would do him no favors but in this moment Tommy was angry. Perhaps this is what makes him a bad person, his ability to get so angry that he puts dents in peoples skulls. Tommy was seething, his best friend was dead and he was finally, finally , out for revenge. He was out on patrol when this thought came to him. That losing his cool would make him a bad person. It wasn’t on his top list of priorities.

“Theseus? There’s a robbery up by the tower, a bank, want to go check it out?” Tubbo’s voice feeds into his ear. Promptly after learning that Tommy only had two weeks to get his act together and find Dream he found himself on patrol, working alongside the heroes. They searched for George Davidson and found nothing more than a solem obituary note, apparently the man had killed himself, Tommy wasn’t suprised. Tommy continued his trek up to the heroes tower, finding cops stationed all around the bank on the left of it. Tommy walks in and find himself face to face with Techno.

“I’m a little late aren’t I?” Tommy asks and Techno scoffs. He looks around the room to see a robber still wearing his mask up against the wall, held up by a rope tied around him; he fell to his knees when Tommy looked over. “So, is there anything you know about finding Dream?” Tommy asks, seeing as Techno had their other situation covered. The robber was loudly struggling against his ties, Tommy sent him a look, he didn’t quiet.

“I know less about him than you do, you have two weeks still yeah?” Tommy nods and the robber struggles louder, Tommy was a bad person, he found himself growing annoyed. Tommy sent him another look. The robber noticed his annoyance and struggled louder once again.

“I do, but the sooner I know where he is, the better,” Tommy states and the robber screams against his ties Tommy sends an annoyed look to Techno who looks unbothered.

“What else do you need to do to prepare, while we search for him?” Techno asks and Tommy’s eye twitches his hand moves instinctively over the gun in his pocket. After the heros found out that the number one villian was after him they offered their upmost protection and against Tommy’s instincts he agreed.

“I need to train, I need to make allies and-” The robber screams. Tommy cuts himself off, cocking the gun and shooting it into the bothersomes robber's arm. “Shut up!” he says. Techno looks frightened for a split second before his cool facade slips back over his face, maybe Tommy really was losing it. “Look, I’ve been up for over thirty-two hours. I need to sleep,” Tommy speaks and he leaves the bank. Tubbo’s voice feeds into his ear once again.

The walk home is quiet, it leaves room for Tommy to think. He does not like thinking in times like this. Times where his life is on the line and he will have no choice but to make a decision that hurts someone.

“Tommy?” He asks.

“Yeah Tubs?” Tommy finds himself asking, thoughts of self hatred fill his mind he brushes them aside in favor of hanging his hopes on Tubbo’s words.

“Are you really going to fight Dream?” He asks and Tommy freezes in place, was he really not going to fight the one man who single-handedly ruined his life? Absolutely not, he was going to beat that man to death with his bare hands.

“Yes, I am,” Tommy says and his voice is seething as he speaks.

“Ok,” Tubbo speaks, backing off, Tommy clicks off his ear piece as he comes into view of his home. Now with one empty couch each night seeing as Tubbo and Tommy permanently share the bed made for two. He changes out of his vigilante fit and puts it into the pile of laundry, he needs to wash it and he doesn’t think he'll be needing it for a minute now. 

Tommy goes to the bathroom and stares at himself. He doesn’t like what he sees because for the first time he sees not just muscle and bone but something else and he hates the fact that he was lazy enough to let the fat cover his body. He opens the cabinet under the sink and thinks about what he’s doing. He was a bad person, he couldn’t keep his friends safe, he couldn’t punish himself properly, he couldn’t do anything. Rather than letting the silver in his hands control him he found himself digging under the sink for painkillers, he found the bottle and downed it. He let himself recover for a second before turning back to the remnants of the razor bald in his hand. He never could grow a beard.

He took the blade into the scarred area, harder than necessary and relished in the beauty that he saw when the blood sripped down. He swiped the balde over and over again in different areas each time until an entire section of his thigh was more blood than skin. He switched sides. He kept on going digging deeper for a while before backing off, blood staining the white tile underneath his feet. He looks in the mirror at the massacre he has created and feels his vision start to spot out. He feels himself start to pass out, he feels himself unlock the door, he feels himself shout for Tubbo to help him, the last thing he feels is his head hitting the floor as the blood loss catches up to him.

---------

Tubbo hears Tommy shout his name from the bathroom, unnecessarily loud and he hears a following thud. He knows that Tommy doesn’t have the best mentality about himself but he wasn’t sure what to expect when opened the door to their little bathroom. He hesitantly turns the handle and openes the door. The first thign he sees is the blood. He sees Tommy’s hand covered in blood and he sees a pool of it on the floor. The second thing he sees is a flash of silver next to Tommy’s hand and and empty orange bottle of long expired painkillers and he puts it together. He was staring at the remains of his friends suicide attempt.

His first insinct was to call for Ranboo, but he was dead, and he needs Tommy’s powers to revive him so he acts fast. He grabs the blade from beside Tommy’s hand and throws it in the trash, he grabs a towel he was folding prior to Tommy’s scream and starts applying pressure to Tommy’s thighs. He wraps the towel around his friends lower half so that he can apply pressure with one hand while he grabs his hand from his pocket, instead of calling the emergency number he finds himself dialing Techno’s, he hopes the man is still awake after his patrol tonight. As a part of Tommy’s agreement with the heroes Tubbo now knows their patrol schedule, he used that to the highest extent. His phone was on the seventh ring when Techno picked up.

“Tubbo? Why are you calling at this hour?” He asks, his voice groggy, he must have woken the man up.

“Tommy tried to kill himself and I need another set of hands,” He says simply. There is a pause, a breath, then the sound of feet shuffling.

“What?” It’s a simple question, one that probably should have been answered quickly. Tubbo doesn’t answer.

“Can you just come over?” Tubbo’s voice cracks.

“Should I bring the others?” Techno asks and Tubbo thinks for a moment.

“No, I just need another set of hands please,” and Tubbo’s voice gets quiet with tears as he speaks because his best friend just tried to kill himself. He feels tears gether in his eyes as he sniffles the sound of a car dinging is heard from Techno’s side of the call.

“I’ll be there in five minutes,” He says and hangs up the phone. Tubbo knows that it takes at least twenty minutes to get from the heroes tower to his and Tommy’s house by car and he knows Techno lives beyond the heroes tower further north seeing as he is top hero so he must be breaking fifty traffic laws to get to their house in time but Tubbo could care less. Tommy was bleeding less, but he ended up getting a new towel and Tubbo wasn’t sure that he could stand up right now. A knock was heard at the door.

“It’s locked, just break the handel and hurry up,” Tubbo says and a crack is heard. He hears their old door creak against the floor and the shuffle of feet. “Grab a towel please, they’re on the table,” In this moment Tubbo adjusts his legs so he can replace the towel around Tommy’s hips when he sees a flash of orange peek out from under his legs, he finds himself eye to eye with an empty pill bottle. Techno comes into view and Tubbo throws him the pill bottle as tears fill his eyes again.

“Let’s sit him up and see how much of that we can get out of his system,” Techno says his voice ever calm. He grabs Tommy from behind his neck keeping his thighs covered upson seeing the red stains on the towel currently covering him he quickly replaces it and looks at Tubbo. “You did a good job, I know this isn’t a pleasant situation,” He says and he opens the toilet, leaning Tommy’s unresponsive head over the bowl. “I’m going to make him throw up and it’s not gonna be pretty so turn away if you're squeamish,” Tubbo turns away as Techno takes his long fingers and shoves them down Tommy’s throat. The following few moments make both boys want to leave the bathroom. Techno made sure that there wasn’t much else in Tommy’s body besides what was already in his system, getting the boy to take a few sips if sink water in his sleep. He bandaged his thighs and Tubbo found himself sitting on the bathroom floor for a really long time. 

Techno took it upon himself to look around the house and find some loose fitting pants for Tommy, putting them on along with a pajama shirt that had found itself on the sink edge, somehow unaffected in the bathroom's chaos. He put Tommy over his shoulder and held out a hand to Tubbo.

“C’mon lets go back to my house, your not fit to be alone fight now, plus Tommy will be safer,” Tubbo nods and grabs Techno’s hand letting the man pull him up.

---------

Phil finds himself receiving a phonecall from his eldest son at five in the morning the location of which Phil assumed to be in his bed. He picks up.

“Techno?” He asks. There is the humming of a car engine the sound of shuddering breaths hear from the other line for a second before Techno speaks.

“Hey Phil, I’m bringing home Tommy and Tubbo. Tommy had,” there was a pause that spoke volumes as Phil moved to put his slippers on. “An incident,” Techno finishes and Phil understands. He had used those exact words when this had happened a few years prior with Wilbur.

“What should I do?” Phil asks moving quickly towards Wilburs door.

“Set up the guest bed, Tubbo needs sleep, and run a check of the house,” it was surprising how little Techno was saying and how much Phil understood what he was supposed to be doing. He opened Wilburs door and shook the boy awake. 

“Wh-” he asks but Phil is awake his eyes frantic as he hold a finger to his lips. Wilbur doesn’t know what happened but he puts his glasses on as Phil speaks into his phone.

“We’ll talk when you get home yeah?” he asks. “When will you get here,” 

“We’ve got a ten minute ETA but I’m going to take a little detour to grab some medical supplies, probably a half an hour,” He speaks and Phil looks at Wlibur motioning him to stand up.

“Ok, see you then,” He speaks into the phone and he hangs up.

“Phil, what’s going on?” Wilbur asks and Phil find himself in the kitchen taking the knife block they had out and unlocking their liquor cabinet, putting the block inside before locking it again.

“You have to help me put away the sharp objects and put you and Techno’s meds into your rooms okay?” he finds himself speaking and Wilbur looks scared.

“Phil, whats going on?!” Wilbur pleads, his voice desperate. He grabs Phil’s arms and his father wears a solem face. When he answers his voice is stern and heavy.

“Tommy,” Phil takes a deep breath, “Tommy tried to kill himself,”

Chapter Text

When Tommy awoke he was aware of his unfamiliar surroundings. He was aware of the bandages around his thighs and he was aware of the fact that he was very much alive. He never really wanted to die but for a moment in that bathroom he hoped he wouldn’t wake up. He’s glad that he woke up though. He still doesn’t know where he is and in fact is becoming increasingly panicked by that fact but he ignored it in favor of staring at his hands. They weren’t shaking.

“Tommy?” Techno’s voice jumped Tommy from his thoughts. Tommy moves to sit up and respond to the man but a headache registers behind his eyes and he pauses. “Are you ok?” Tommy pauses. Techno was talking about feelings, something the hero never mentioned or appeared to be aware of.

“Yeah I’m fine,” Tommy replies and a sharp pain runs through his head. In his compromised state he wishes that he could just go back to sleep.

“What goes through that head of yours?” Techno asks to himself. He stands up and moved to check the bandages around Tommy’s waist. 

“Hey man! Invading the personal space here!” Tommy says loudly. 

“I’ve already seen the worst of it,” Tommy pauses. What? It suddenly returns to Tommy that he doesn’t know why he’s in the heroes home, or why Techno is near him at all, through his pounding headache he pulls away.

“What happened?” He finds himself asking and Technos eyes widen momentarily.

“That’s something I should be asking you kid, Tubbo calls me at three in the morning because he finds you bleeding out on the bathroom floor. I think you owe both of us an explanation,” Technos voice gains a sick sort of anger as he replies and Tommy thinks about last night. 

He thinks about coming home, about changing, about being halfway through when a wave of disgust travels through him. He thinks about grabbing blade and digging it into his thigh, running it across the scarred skin over and over again. He thinks about looking at a bottle of painkillers from when he first broke out of The Lab. He thinks about downing the pills with a twisted sense of glory. He thinks about killing himself in the past tense and wishes it was present. He rmebers he has company, he keeps forgetting things.

“Oh,” Tommy says and Techno looks apologetic as he smirks and replies.

“I think ‘Oh’ is an understatement,” Tommy nods in agreement. Techno appears to have checked Tommy’s bandages whilst he was zoning out and he moves to leave the room. “I’m going to send Tubbo in, he’s been waiting,” and with that Techno leaves. 

Tubbo walked in the room and stood in the doorway and Tommy realized that he might have messed up. He looks and sees the tears in his friends eyes and feels the tears gathering in his own, an apology gathering in his throat.

“Why, for the love of Prime, would you do that?” Tubbo’s voice is stern and his words filled with malice. Tommy thinks back to the night before and finds himself wondering the same thing, although he could care less because Tubbo is angry and Tommy only has less than two weeks to kill Dream. “You know you are our only chance of bringing him back, so why? Why?! Would you do that?!” Tubbo is shouting and Tommy flinches back.

“I-I don’t know, I just hated myself and then I was passing out,” Tommy says, his voice hesitant. 

“I hope you know the only reason that I even thought about saving you when you put my life in unbelievable danger is because you can bring him back. I will kill you with my bare hands if you don’t bring him back!” Tubbo’s voice is wild as he speaks but it makes sense, he lost the one person he could rely on. He didn’t care about Tommy. He didn’t care that his best friend was in danger, not at all. He only cared about getting the one person who was there for him back, because Tommy messed up and was never there, too busy saving himself from himself.

“I know I haven’t been there but I will be now, I swear!” Tommy tries to reason but Tubbo is having none of it.

“You are dead to me, got it?” Tommy nods. “You are nothing more than some ticking time bomb waiting to go off. You want to know who’s holding the detonator?!” Tubbos pauses as he goes to leave the room. 

“Dream,”

—————

Tommy only had one week to make sure that everyone he loves doesn’t die. He has one week. He knows where Dream is now, through a small amount of reaserch he finds that the room Dream called him from was a room in The Lab. This fact came with the stranger realization that none of the heroes that he was staying with knew of his childhood home. He still hasn’t worked up the nerve to tell them. Tubbo is still mad at him.

Tommy wasn’t aloud out of the house, he wasn’t allowed to skip a meal, he wasn’t allowed to go to the bathroom alone. He hated the lack of freedom but he welcomed the distraction because Tubbos anger was contagious and Tommy was one step away from the deep end. He struggled to eat, he always had but now this was a particular issue. Phil would sit with him while he ate slowly or Wilbur would talk to him and he would eat a little quicker seeing as he was distracted. Techno just made the meals that Tommy threw up, they also had yet to find out that when he goes to the bathroom after every meal he throws up what he ate. The dizziness that followed was welcome and Tommy found himself almost grounded for the first time in his life. His and Tubbos conversations were filled with hateful words and cryptic undertones. He found himself praying again, a habit that rarely ended in anything other than another self hate spiral. 

“You only have four days now you know?” Wilbur asks him. Tommy’s thighs are healed enough now that he can walk, he often finds himself wandering the house at random hours now. Tonight he ran into Wilbur, he appeared to be extremely interested in asking personal questions.

“Yeah, you and your father won’t let me go out anywhere,” Tommy’s voice is angry as he speaks and he can’t find it in himself to care, he doesn’t care about anything anymore. He hasn’t cared about anything in a long time. Longer than he’d ever care to admit. He hasn’t cared for years and honestly he’s fine that. He didn’t care about it.

“You tried to kill yourself, why should we trust you?” Wilbur asks and his voice was filled with concern. Why was he concerned? Tommy was fine. Tommy was fine!

“Because I am the only person who can make sure that you don’t die,” Tommy says and something clicks behind Wilbur’s eyes.

“Tubbo told me that the only reason he saved you was for Ranboo, why did you do it?” Wilbur’s eyes gain anger in their stew of emotions and Tommy feels guilty. He doesn’t reply to the question because he doesn’t know. He felt angry, so incredibly angry, at himself and the world and his situation, he wanted it all to stop. He should have just handled it like he always does, there was no need to go to drastic measures. Wilbur must have left the room at some point because Tommy finds himself alone, again. He finds himself alone in this Prime forsaken world for the final time.

He stands up, he grabs his shoes, and he leaves. He heads towards The Lab at what must be three days early at this point and he runs. He does not care about the family he left behind, the friends, he does not want to remember his childhood but he finds himself reminiscing as he moves. He remembers days where he was tested on, days where he couldn’t move because of whatever drug they put into his system. He thinks about times where he met new people only to never see them again, just another card in his deck. He remembers George and calling him Gogy. He remembers Dream, back before he was insane, or rather just less psychotic.

He doesn’t care to reminisce anymore as he come to the front of the building. He finds the doors he remembers running from them all those years ago. He does not remember the code to open them,m and he finds himself buzzing in. He could use his powers, override the whole system with one simple shock. instead he rings the heel located outside the door and looks into the camera above it, he has no doubt Dream will recognize him. He hears clicking from the other side of the small speaker and he then hears the doors unlock, no questions asked.

“Welcome home Thomas,”

Chapter Text

Tommy was in his childhood home, he found himself looking around ignoring Dream’s mindless rambling. He was more worried about the fact that he was stuck here. He didn’t bring his phone, he doubts Dream had any way of contacting people on Tommy’s behalf. He doubts he would do it anyways, Tommy was more of a prisoner than a friend. He doesn’t understand why Tubbo hates him so much. He knew he was a handful, Prime, he had heard it more than half a dozen times but there was something more painful about your best friend not minding if you died than some random stranger.

“Tommy?” Dream asks and Tommy is snapped back into the moment.

“Yeah?” Tommy replied. He doesn’t know what to do. He is stuck here and doesn’t quite like that his childhood home is more a ruin than a house.

“Why are you here early? You asked, begged for two weeks, and here you are, sixty-eight hours early,” Dream’s voice appeared condescending but he doesn’t show anything on his face. Just how Tommy remembers. Tommy moved to reply but Dream beat him to it. “I have a theory. You tried to kill yourself, and now your friends hate you and you don't know what to do. You don't know what you’re doing because you’ve never been alone, you’ve always had Tubbo to me but now you’re all alone and you’re scared. You know what Tommy? I think you know exactly why you killed yourself. Deep down inside of that brain of yours, you realized that no one will miss you. You realized that I’m the only one who could ever love you. You realized that no matter what you do you will never be what they want. A son, a brother, a friend , you will never. NEVER! Be what they want.” Dream pauses and Tommy thinks, maybe he was right, he shook his head to physically remove the thought. What was he doing? What was he doing?! He had worked for years to get rid of these thought processes and here he was with the same old habits.

“You know though, that with me you can be whatever you want, you just have to be the best version of yourself and I’ll love you, we’re best friends right?” Tommy finds himself responding on instinct.

“Yeah, we are Dream,” He felt himself lose his grip on reality as he slipped into his habits. Dream keeps talking, asking Tommy if he knows the rules, and the consequences for his actions and Tommy responds each time until he finds himself stationed in front of his old room.  The door was opened and he saw the same white walls as always. He sees the same blanket, the same terrible view of the ground through the window, he sees Dream's hand on his shoulder. He sees more versions of Dream appear around the room, his powers in full effect. His power includes making holograms, ones that looked surprisingly realistic, it was a power Tommy had yet to obtain. The hand on his shoulder is removed as Dream speaks again.

“You know the drill,” Tommy does. He knows that in order to get into his room he has to fight the versions of Dream with different powers and weaknesses, he knows that he has to do that to get to be alone. With a shaking hand, Tommy finds himself calling on powers gone unused. He knows that he has to do this. He knows that doing this will hurt people and he can’t find it in himself to care because now it was life or death again and he doesn’t want to relive that. 

He moves on instinct, barely thinking as he takes down the versions of Dream one by one, using a different power each time, the process happens quickly. Dream hums.

“You’re rusty,”

-------------

Tubbo hasn’t talked to Tommy in three days. He doesn’t want to hate his friends, he doesn’t! But he’s so high matinence and he doesn't have time to deal with that when his other best friend was dead, he was dead and he almost permanently lost him. It took a while for him to be able to say that he hated Tommy, but he hated him. Why would he think that he could just quit after all the time was beyond Tubbo. He doesn’t understand why he would just try to leave Tubbo high and dry, and now he hasn’t talked to his best friend in three days.

Phil had been welcoming, and Techno and Wilbur. They took him in with open arms that night he showed up with Tommy but he knew that they care more for his friend than for him. He doesn’t quite understand why they are still letting him stay but who is he to deny free food. He doesn’t want to admit that he would much rather talk to Tommy than to Wilbur on any given day but he has yet to do it. 

He walks to Tommy's room. He originally thought he was just going to talk to his friend again but upon finding the bed empty and the window open his mind changed. Where was his friend and why did he leave?

------------

“You’ve made attachments, you’ve gone soft,” Dream says. Tommy is panting, his arms hurt, his legs hurt, his heart is pounding, and he feels alive . His brain does not wander as he fights, He is at home again and by Prime he loves it. He can ignore the fact that Dream hurt him, that Dream was abusive and manipulative, that he was more likely to die than make it out of here. He was so screwed and he couldn’t find it in himself to care. 

“Remember your attachment?” Tommy asks and Dream pauses.

“What do you mean?” He asks and Tommy realizes he has the upper hand.

“George, you loved him, don't think I’d forget the only other person to break out of here,” Tommy says and the silence in the room turns sour.

“I never loved him, he was no more than a friend and barely that,” Dream reasons and Tommy isn’t hearing it.

“He loved you, sang your parises. He talked to me day in and day out about how aside from what you were dong to me he was the ‘most amazing person ever’. He mad me trust you ecause I thought he wouldn’t see past my damage and into your good unless you were truly good,” Tommy pauses and takes the moment to pull a knife out from his pocket, snapping it open. “When he left you got worse, much worse, and until I let I didn’t know what had happened to him,” Tommmy jarks the knife toward Dreams mask.

“What happened to him?” Dream asks, his voice suddely quiet, Tommy was winning.

“He killed himself. He killed himself because yo were nothing more than an abusive boyfriend and he couldn’t live without you. He had a family, a support system, and yet the loss of you shocked him so hard he couldn’t let himself live,”

------------

“Techno we have to leave!” Tubbo yells. It had been thrity minutes since he found Tommy’s bed empty, they have since assumed he went to the lab, alone, without weapons, and were heading ni that direction to go save him.

“Let’s go!” Phil is yelling too, something Tubbo had found was very hard for him to do unless in extremely stressful situations. “We can go, they’ll catch up,” Phil told him and they lef thte house, they were running the second the door closed. Phil was incharge of making sure that thye were headed the right direction seeing as he was the only one who knew where the lab was, Tubbo was just following. “It should be here,” Phil said. They were stopped in a clearing of the woods, a place where the lab should be. “This thing can be broken can it?” Phil talks to himself as he starting looking at the divce in his hand that lead them there. They hear stomping coming up from behind them.

“You’re lucky Techno can follow you based on scent alone otherwise we would have been lost!” Wilbur says, he was out of breath. “Wait? Where are we?” Wilbur follows up his heavy breathing ausing to look around at hte empty place in front of them. Techno nodded in agreement.

“The lab is supposed to be here,” Phil saysthinks about where he is. What was he doing? He could beat Dream with one finger. Why was he letting himself get treated like a child?

Tommy stops.

“Do you remember George Davidson?” Tommy asks.

“What?” Dream pauses.

————

Tubbo is running frantically, he is searching for his friend when he remembers. Tommy had tried to kill himself, where would someone with no self preservation skills go? Straight into the danger.

“I know where he is,” He announces and the others pause.

“How?” Phil asks and Tubbo glares slightly.

“He’s dumb and he’s at the lab,”

————

“George Davidson, Gogy, remember him?” Tommy asks, he feels himself getting cocky.

“Of course, I knew everybody who worked here,” Dream stated and his tone was almost frightened, Tommy wished he could see his face.

“You didn’t just know him, you loved him,” Tommy states it and it’s completely true. Dream had a conscience at one point and it all went to his unrequited love of George Davidson. He never got over himself when George left, maybe it was his last grip on reality slipping because after that he was much worse to Tommy.

“I didn’t love him,” Dream defends and Tommy pulls his best pitying face he can because he was about to destroy his best friend.

“You did and you broke him. He made it three months after he got out of here before your lessons sunk into his head and he killed himself.” Tommy finds his voice getting angrier and he falls out of his fighting stance, Dream follows. “He couldn’t stand the things you did, to me, to him and so he killed himself. But you didn’t know because you couldn’t do anything but hunt after me, some scared eleven year old kid.”

———

Tubbo and the others were out of the house in five minutes. They didn’t exactly know where the lab was but they had enough resources to find it once they got there. Phil was flying above them all to see if he could spot it first. They all piled into a car that was on the driveway and they were on the road. 

The lab was located in the woods just along the outskirts of town, beyond that they didn’t have any directions. It took them ten minutes to arrive outside the woods and Phil yelled that he spotted the lab from where he was flying. They ran.

Tubbo hoped that they would make it before Tommy did anything that would hurt himself.

————

Dream was cracking, Tommy could tell. His voice was getting more and more pleasing as Tommy told the tragedies that made up his childhood. At the time it had seemed reasonable but Tommy described it with the terror in the situation that could only been seen like the five year old who was training to be the next major villain.

“Remember the first time I tried to run from the lab?” Tommy asked and Dream nodded. “Do try remember the punishment?” Dream didn’t move. Tommy pulled a knife out from under the waistband of his pants. “I do, sit down ,”

————

They were getting ready to go in when Wilbur choked. Phil seemed to know what was going on seeing as he moved quickly and started talking in a hushed voice. 

Tubbo remembered when Tommy took his power once, and he could no longer read code; maybe he was winning against Dream and he was using Wilbur’s power.

“We need to go in, I think we’ll be ok, this place looks like it’s seen better days,” Tubbo says and Techno nods, they head in the building.

Chapter Text

Tommy had a knife in his hand, it wasn’t a new addition and a rather welcome one, and he found himself standing above Dream. He cuts Dream's mask off first revealing a face that haunts his nightmares more often than not. 

“You ruin everything you touch, you ruined me, George, you ruined yourself. Look at yourself Clay, this isn’t who you are!” Dream has the humanity in him to look guilty. 

“You do realize that we look quite similar,” Dream says and Tommy smiles, it is a manic gesture that appears to fill Dream's eyes with fear, the man's emotions are so convoluted one can never be sure. 

“I understand that we may not get along, but you need to understand that you made me. You made me to destroy the world and I’m going to do it. I’m going to fulfill my purpose and I'm starting with you. I’m starting by destroying the very thing that holds my world together, you!” Dream looks unaffected by the yelling, gaining a smile of his own at the praise. “George couldn’t keep himself alive without you, I wonder how I’ll fare,”

“Let’s not make this personal,” Dream says while putting his hands up, a sign of surrender.

“This is personal Dream, this is between me and you, creator and creation,” Tommy says and holds the knife closer to Dreams face as the man lowers his arms. 

“Thomas, you can’t kill me, you need me,” Dream says and Tommy steps forward.

“What do you mean?” Tommy asks, his voice feigning innocence.

“You need me,” Dream said again and Tommy blinked, silently asking for an explanation.

“I made you. I taught you to fight, to read, to speak. I taught you your manners.” Dream rambles and Tommy holds his hand up higher, effectively pausing the man. He’s heard enough.

“I have a knife to your throat and you have the audacity to say you taught me manners?!” Tommy asks and Dream winces, there’s a bit of blood running down his face, the knife must’ve slipped. Tommy takes the back of the hand with the blade in it and swipes the blood away. 

“Oops,”

—————

Tubbo finds himself agreeing with Tommy’s description of the building he is standing in. It is creepy, all the white walls now water damaged, random blood stains are splattered across the floor and he glances back to Techno to see if he agrees. Technos eyes are focused on the hallway from which they can hear talking. Phil and Wilbur are still outside. 

They travel forward together, their footsteps in sync. They go towards the voices making a few wrong turns into rooms with unsettling scenes, beds unmade for years, childish drawings along walls, a spilt crayon box lying next to a loaded gun, Tubbo picks it up as they walk past, just in case. 

They first see Tommy standing over Dream with a knife in his hand, a position of power. Technos eyebrows furrow and he opens his mouth to speak Tubbo covers his mouth with a hand, a smile covering his face. They hear a voice from the room, Tommy’s.

“Oops,”

—————

“Thomas we can talk this out, surely. You can come back home, no hard feelings,” Dream is half begging and Tommy steps forward.

“Shut up you liar,” Tommy’s voice is angry and his hands no longer shake. He moves the knife down Dream's throat.

“You won’t do it, you won’t kill me!” Dream shouts and Tommy tilts his head in question. “They’re outside watching, you won’t do it if they’re watching-“ Dream cuts himself off as the knife presses into his neck. A new drop of blood flows down, Tommy does not clean it.

“I would do it, I’d do it in a heartbeat. However, I want you to suffer.” Tommy says, his voice low.

“They’ll think you're a monster, they won’t trust you, they won’t love you. I’ll love you Thomas, I’ll love you no matter what.” Dream reasons his words hurried and Tommy relents, he moves the knife down to his side. Dream smiles.

“I love you too, but I am going to kill you,” Tommy says and the knife in his hand plunges into Dream's stomach.

—————

Tubbo watches the blood begin to stain Dreams shirt, he watches Tommy remove the knife and stab it in again. He watches the blood coat Dream's teeth as he begs Tommy to stop. 

“Thomas, Thomas please!” Dream yells and Tubbo can’t help but stare, his body locked in place. 

“Stop talking. You ruined my life, and I am going to ruin yours.” Tommy’s voice rises in volume and the knife continues to go in and out. “You took everything from me! My friends, my family, my freedom. I hate you!” Tommy’s screaming and there’s blood everywhere and Tubbo is frozen still. 

Tubbo watches as Tommy’s grip on the knife falters, he watches as Dream smiles and whispers something in Tommy’s ear.

—————

“This is what I made you for,”

—————

He watches as Dream's eyes lose their color and he leans against the wall limply, he watches Dream die. 

Techno moves first he opens the door and sits down beside Tommy. 

“Hey, it’s alright, you did what was best,” He says, his voice ever consistent. Tommy is still holding the knife and Techno places his hand on top of Tommy’s causing the blade to fall with a click. 

Wilbur and Phil choose this moment to walk in and the scene is not pretty. Dream's mauled body is leaning against the wall, lifeless. Tommy is sitting on the floor, Techno in front of him, the front half of his body covered in blood. Tubbo is standing by the door, frozen. 

“What happened here?” Wilbur asks and Tommy flinches picking up the knife from the ground again. 

“Hey, hey, it’s fine, just Wilbur,” Techno whispers and Tommy’s grip does not relent.

“I killed him, I-I- I killed him,” Tommy breathes like he’s confessing his long lost love. His grip does not relent and the knife is pointed at himself. Techno continues to try pushing Tommy’s hand down to no avail. “He’s my best friend, why? Why would I do that?” Tommy asks and Tubbo unfreezes, finally reanimating. 

“Because he tried to kill you. He was going to force you back here and you would have rotted away. You don’t want that. I don’t want that,” Tubbo reasons crouching beside Techno.

“He was right,” Tommy says and Tubbo meets his eyes.

“About what?” Tubbo asks as afraid of the answer as Tommy appears to be.

“I need him,” Tommy says and this time is truly is a confession because Tommy is saying he needs help and that thought is terrifying.

“No you don’t, you got along just fine without him for all the time you were with me. We'll be okay,” Tubbo says but it’s like talking to a brick wall, nothing gets through. 

The knife moves down and Techno’s hand applies enough force to keep it away from Tommy’s skin but it’s getting dangerously close

“I can’t do it again, I can’t,” Tommy claims and his hand presses against Techno’s more. His voice is borderline delirious as he pleads Techno, his eyes are glossed over and he’s not really there, Tubbo is helpless.

Wilbur sees what’s going on because he and Techno nod to each other and move at the same time. In one fluid motion the knife is pushed away from Tommy's torso and onto the floor, Techno grabs Tommy’s arms and holds the boy back as Wilbur guides Tubbo back. Tommy begins resisting Techno. He starts screeching and kicking and Tubbo is glad that Wilbur moved him because he would have been hit.

“You don’t understand, I can’t do it! I can’t! Please! Please!” Tommy’s begging against Techno and his voice cracks with each word. Phil bends down in front of them Tommy has tears running down his face and he’s sobbing at Phil to let him die. “Let me go! Please! Let me do it!” The mindless babbling calms down when Phil wipes his tears. The flaming touch works wonders as Tommy quiets and Technos grip releases. 

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Tommy’s pleading for forgiveness and it is easily given.

“It’s just fine, we’ll figure this out? Alright?” Phil says and it must get through to Tommy that he can shut up because he does. “Do you want to go home?” Phil asks nicely and Tommy doesn’t respond, his eyes are clearer and there is an underlying fear that reveals itself. “Buddy?”

“Tommy?” Tubbo finds himself asking and Tommy’s eyes flicker over and settle on the wall just over his shoulder. “Hey, I have an idea yeah?” Tubbo states and Tommy meets him. “Let’s find Ranboo?” Tommy jumps into action at the statement wiggling out of Technos hold. He shakes his head and hands out before smiling.

“Let’s go,” He says and Tubbos doesn't expect that dramatic of a difference but he enjoyed it. I couldn’t be healthy but that didn’t matter when they could bring Ranboo back.

Chapter Text

Tommy was hoping he wouldn’t have to attach Ranboo head onto his body. It was a gross and draining process and he was willing to do it if need be but he really doesn’t want to.

It seems after all the stuff he had been through the universe had granted him this wish as when he found Ranboo’s body, although slightly rotten from the week and a half he had spent dead, it was in one piece. 

The process was hard. First he had to heal Ranboo’s gore covered complexion which was surprisingly easy considering the damage he had to reverse. Second he worked on bringing him back, he was aware of his hand glowing, of what was going on around him, he was aware that if he didn’t nail this right now Ranboo was going to be dead forever. So he breathes, in for four and out for eight, and pours his energy into Ranboo, he watches the color return to his cheeks, and huffs a sigh of relief.

His eyes do not open, this is expected, Tommy recovers for a moment, his head spinning. Tubbo is still freaking out but tommy elects to ignore it in favor of watching Ranboos chest rise and fall, a proper breath. His eyes flickered open before he jolted up.

————

He woke up with a start, his head pounding and his eyesight blurry. He could vaguely hear voices around him and figure in front of him. A voice was repeating itself over and over again.

“Breathe, I need you to breathe,” The blonde one said. He was gaining his vision quickly but was still unsure of his whereabouts. The words were registered in his head, he needed to breathe. He takes in a gasping breath.

“Where am I?” Ranboo asks and for the first time he is aware of who he is. Tommy is asking him to breathe. Tubbo is sitting there, sobbing.

“The lab, we are here to save you. Do you remember where you were before you woke up?” Tommy asks and his mind is filled with images of water, a tank around him, his skin on fire and a desperate need for air. “Hey, hey it’s okay, just tell me where you went,” Tommy reassures. His voice is calm and consistent, there are tear tracks on his face, dried, Ranboo wonders what they are from.

“A-A- tank, I was in a tank of water. It was awful I couldn’t breathe and, and, and-“ Ranboo cuts himself off with a sob. It was a nightmare, he was in living hell beachside no matter how much air he took in it wasn’t enough.

“Hey! Hey, follow me ready? In,” A pause. “Out. Yeah good job! Again.” A voice is speaking in front of him, although his breaths do not follow pace he gets praised for each one he takes as his breathing slows, his lungs couldn’t catch a break could they.

His memory is fading in and out, he knows Tommy is there, he knows who he is.  

He doesn’t. 

He sees Tubbo.  

Who? 

They’re both crying although it appears to be for different reasons as Tubbo wraps his arms around him, it was comforting.

I don’t want to be touched. Where am I?

He is mildly aware of his surroundings he knows the walls are white and that wherever he is not designed for a person to live. It appears to be more akin to a warehouse. 

Let go of me. I need to get out.

There is this hum under his skin, some part of him is angry. He shakes Tubbo off and stands Tommy has an arm around him in an instant. He is stable and standing and he is ready to leave this place, it was beginning to creep him out.

Don’t touch me. It hurts.

“Tommy,” He gasps as the thoughts get more and more insistent, they don’t feel connected to him anymore.

You remember what it was like. The cold, the loneliness.

“Tommy what did you do!” Tubbo is yelling and Tommy in panicking. What was happening. Ranboo was shaking his head vigerously. 

You were drowning, and no one was there to save you.

“I remember, I remember everything, make it stop,” Ranboo squeaks out and he becomes suddenly aware of people around him. The eyes. Three people are there. The heroes. They couldn’t help him now. His head hurts and he can feel hands on him, comfort.

————

Purpled is upset. The top three heroes are missing, as well as Tommy, and now he has to clean up their mess. He was doing paperwork. Paperwork! He was supposed to be in the lab but the two floors of employees suddenly wasn’t enough and now Purpled was seated in the cafeteria doing paperwork.

“Nathaniel?” Sam asks.

“Yeah?” He replied his words quipped.

“You should come look at this.” Sam says and guides him down the stairs into the lab. “Someone broke into Dream’s layer. I think we might have located our missing personnel,”

They pack their bags, medical supplies and sam hero gear, and begin their treck. It wasn’t that far of a walk, they just had to go straight into the woods behind the hero complex. it seemed to take much longer when there were in the creepy woods.

“It appears we’re here,” Sam says and looks at the old, rundown building in front of them.

“It’s gross,” Purpled’s face contains a vague disgust.

“Yeah, let’s go look for them,”

————

“What was that!” Tubbo yells and Tommy is shaking Ranboos shoulders.

“I don’t know! It’s like,” Tommy cuts himself off. He freezes.

“Like what?” Tubbo asks. Tommy’s hands start shaking.

“Ranboo, Ranboo I’m sorry but you can’t listen to him,” Tommy begs and nothing happens Ranboo is still frozen in time, his eyes are still green. “This is going to hurt but it’s going to help okay?” Tommy continues to move despite the lack of response. 

“What are you going to do?” Tubbos voice is hesitant. 

“You four are going to leave, go wait in the hall. I’ll tell you when he’s back to normal. This process isn’t pretty,” Tommy looks scared, like he’s never done this before, and a haunting thought comes to Tubbo’s head that perhaps he’s only been on the receiving end of the future interaction.

Tommy finds himself alone with Ranboo and he know what he has to do. He’s done this before and it always was to someone didn’t care about, a terrifying truth of the situation at hand was that if he didn’t do this he would have bigger problems.

When someone is revived they come back from their personal limbo, this process leaves the mind susceptible to many different form of torture. I’m most cases the revived find themself a body for the spirit of death. A wonderful woman in practice but more often than not her actions were violent and unforgiving as she just wanted the moral who’s body she had taken over.

There was one way to solve this problem. Although Tommy had done it before it never got any easier. He brought his hand foreward and slowly drew the life out of lady death. It hurt his head, heart, arms, it hurt Ranboo to have half of his mind ripped out. He kept pulling searching for traces of her, any hints that she was buried deep in ranboos brain. 

He found the final but of her. He grabs at it but she resists gripping the matter around her, making a balck hole in Ranboo’s head. Ranboo convulses against the floor and Tommy let’s go. She gets away.

————

Ranboo feels terrible. His mouth rates of blood and vomit and his face is covered in tear related burns but he is alive, he is aware of the things around him. 

Tommy is beside him panting and staring at his hands like he had jsut down the impossible. There are tears on his face too.

“I’m sorry, I’m so so sorry.” Tommy says and he hugs Ranboo. The touch burns violently but it is welcoming and there are emotions flowing through the room and Tommy is gripping the back of his shirt like it’s a lifeline. It might as well be. 

At some point everyone else ont shut rescue mission joined the hug pairs on pairs of arms wrapped around each other until they are jsut a hug mess of limbs and tears. Phil speaks first, breaking the ambiance.

“Ranboo?” A hum replies. “I was wondering if you would comes stay with Tubbo and Tommy at my house.” Silence responds. “Just an idea, Tommy and Tubbo will be staying with us for a while and we don’t want you to feel alone,” 

“Listen Phil, you’re like to a father to me but me Tubbo and Ranboo are going home,” Tommy says. His head appears to be in the middle of the pile as his voice is muffled.

“Tommy, why don’t you stay with Phil for a while, it’ll be good for you,” Tubbo says and Ranboo can feel the tension in the room building. He doesn’t want to deal with whatever happened while he was gone.

“Listen, can you two bicker at Phil's house later, it is where we will all be staying for the time being seeing as I am the most injured and get to make the final decision,” Ranboo says and Tommy groans. 

Staying at Phils?

Gross.

Chapter Text

Everyone was standing around. The air was stifled and eye contact was uncomfortable. Tommy and Techno still had a fair amount of blood on themselves. The silence was palpable, the only thing breaking it's touch is the slight shuffling of feet against the floor.

“So,” Phil started. His voice containing a fake undertone. “What are we going to do?” He asks. No one responds. “We can’t just stand here for forever.” Techno grunts in opposal and Wilbur huffs out a laugh. “Why don’t you two go and get cleaned up while we fill Ranboo in on what he’s missed,” He guest urges in Tommy and Techno’s direction. In a strange turn of events Tommy finds himself speaking up next.

“I’m tired,” He states.

“I figured you would be but I would prefer it if you didn’t ruin your sheets by falling asleep covered in blood,” Phil’s gates and his tone leaves little discussion. 

“It’s not mine,” Tommy retorts and for some reason he finds himself allowing his misguided anger to show. 

“It might as well have been,” Tubbo interjects and the tension in the room builds again. Perhaps it hurt his heart more than he was willing to admit that Tubbo didn’t trust him. Out of all the reasons he was even talking to Dream, to keep his friends alive, to keep his family alive, he thought that Tommy was nothing but selfish.

“Why do you think I left?” Tommy’s voice is quiet but menacing, his eyes narrow.

“Because you have a death wish,” Tubbo’s eyes follow suit as their words build up pressure in the air. The silence between clipped sentences bordering on unbearable.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, I was going to save us,” Tommy's hands turn to fists.

“You were going to turn yourself in,” Tubbo says and Tommy nods.

“I changed my mind halfway through,” Tommy gestures to the blood on his torso. As if that made it better, the fact that he had murdered someone. His best friend. The guilt was setting in. It was a pool of regret in his stomach that was only growing from Tubbos responses His thoughts were growing louder.

“You got angry, you always get angry,” Tubbo retorts and Phil decides that this is the time to interject.

“Boys, let’s calm down, Tommy go shower, Tubbo deep breath,” He says and Tommy leaves. The argument is long from unfinished and both sides know it.

“It’s going to be okay. He’s just angry because he’s overwhelmed, he’s even through a lot today,” Phil’s all knowing tone pisses off Tubbo even more.

“He thinks he’s invincible, he could take on the world and would come out without a scratch, I swear he’s actually going to die one fo these days,” Tubbos tone then sour, as much as he hates Tommy stupid impulsive decisions he wants his freind back. He wants Tommy to live no matter how much it appears he opposes it. He doesn’t care about anyone else as tears come to his eyes and he lets them fall. 

“Did something happen with Tommy when I was dead?” Ranboo asks and Tubbo can’t find it in himself to reply with words.

A nod is all it takes.

“Wh- what happened?” Ranboo whispers and Tubbo sobs. Ranboos breathing picks up pace. “What happened?” His voice is desperate and Tubbo pulls him close. 

The hug is confusion and comfort and tears and breaths. It has wet necklines and sopping eyelashes. It is filled with unspoken words and a deep longing for things to return to the way that they were. It is full to the brim with emotion and for a moment it is safe. Safety from splinters, shallow paper cuts, minor inconveniences, and each other. It is a silent understanding that it will never, ever, be the same. It is mourning, loss, joy, and home. It is home in fresh baked muffins and hand knitted sweaters. It is home in the sense of long lost toys and cold noses. The hug is all it will ever be, just a hug, a moment in time. They let go as soon as they grab on because they do not want to feel, to know, to understand, that it has changed. That they’ve changed. Everything is different now, and it shouldn’t have to be. Perhaps that is what they mourned.

————

Tommy doesn’t look at himself in the mirror. It is for the best. He wipes the blood off that he can see and hopes that there isn’t any on his face that he can’t feel because he isn’t dealing with himself today. He can hear crying outside the door.

He’s wearing a change of clothes he found sitting on the counter, probably Wilbur’s, it’s comfortable. He walks into the hall to see Ranboos tear stains on his face, they must have caught him up on the recent incidents. 

“You are an idiot,” Ranboo says and it is as close to an insult as the boy will ever get. 

“Yes, yes I am,” Tommy replies and his voice contains nothing but defeat as he leans against the wall. He is tired, the bone deep aching tired that leaves you trashed for a week afterwards.

“Why would you do that?” Ranboo asks and Tubbo grimaces. 

“Do what?” Tommy’s impatient and at this moment he doesn’t care for decency and he finds them retiring to their prior argument.

“Try to leave Tubbo alone,” A pause, a deep breath. “Try to kill yourself,” He rephrases.

“I don’t know,” Tommy says and it’s honest, as honest as he can stand  to be right now. He knows that he was angry at himself but people keep asking him the same questions, and he really doesn’t know. 

“You were always one foot out the door, what changed? Was it a build up over time? A heated moment? What made you commit Tommy?” Tubbo jumps in and Tommy takes the time to see that they are alone now. He’s sure that the other three are listening in, just in case, but he’s okay with that, our do sight out of mind. 

“I don’t know,” Tommy’s voice is cold in his reply. He can tell that it angers Tubbo to say that but it’s the truth and Tubbo deserves that.

Tubbo deserves nothing but the truth and Tommy can’t bear to lie. His heart hurt more than his head, his hands, his knees, all three of which were more bruised than skin and bone. It’s a terrible thing to admit, the fact that even as mean as they are to each other right now Tommy and Tubbos will always be inseparable. 

“If Ranboo was there, would I have found your body?” Tubbo asks and the air stops moving.

Perhaps it was the fact that he phrased it like a question. The understanding was obvious and it felt as if Tommy didn’t need to give an answer.

Tommy is frozen. The question they fire at him hurts . It’s the gut wrenching pain that you only ever feel when someone stands your diaphragm. The pain you get when you find out your mom died on your birthday. The kind of pain nothing but more pain can heal. It was the understanding that at this point nothing is going to go back to normal.

The question is more than just a question. More than he’s willing to say aloud it was a statement. A truth of the world. It’s the idea that if Tubbo were to have a friend, someone to grieve with, would Tommy have tried harder. Actually did it. If he knew that he could be at peace would he have cut a little deeper, taken more pills, assured his fate.

Maybe he would’ve.

Maybe he would have taken the time to think the park  through and not do it. He wouldn’t try to leave anyone, he would get help. Maybe he would do what’s best for himself rather than everyone else, he would take the chance to grow rather than wither into himself like a dying plant.

Truthfully, he would have killed himself, there is little doubt in his mind now.

“I-I don’t know, I don’t remember much from that night really,” It’s a lie, he remembers every moment he can and it burns. He remembers taking each pill, he remembers feeling fuzzy, he remembers-

“Sure,” Tubbo says and Tommy realizes that they are holding hands. It clicks that in the five minutes it took him to shower they reunited, still as strong as ever. No room for Tommy.

Ranboo knows what happened. He knew what lengths he would go to to try to help beyond and he still thinks that Tommy can be saved. It is long beyond that now. He is better for Tubbo than Tommy could ever even think of being and he needs to understand that so that he can do Tommy’s job when he leaves.

Why isn’t it if?

He doesn’t quite know, his head is blanking out.

The air is sticky and frankly Tommy can feel the exhaustion in the joints of his fingers.

“I’m going to bed,” He says. 

There is no reply beyond a glance in his direction.

Who would want to talk to him anyways.

Chapter Text

Tommy knew he was being selfish. The whole world was mourning Dream's death and here he was wallowing in his own self pity, over what? His friend moving on? He wasn’t a good friend anyways. He should have seen this coming.

“Tommy? You still asleep?” Techno asked. He was the only one who really seemed to care anymore. It wasn’t that no one else visited him, he could just leave his room if he really cared to see them but he didn’t find himself making any move to respond, let alone get up. “I can see your eyes. You need to move at least a little, you’ll get sore.” Techno moves closer to the bed and Tommy becomes a ghost. He can see himself and Techno, he can see Techno sit him up and sit down next to him. He can hear an incessant buzzing in the back of his head and he feels himself coming bck to the real world. This little zoning out thing had been happening a lot lately.

“Tommy?” Tecno keeps talking at him, to him. None of it is going through his head, in one ear and out the other. There is a pressure on his back, a hand gripping his, and TEchnos voice is still going, one monotone drawl. “Tommy I need to listen here, you have to snap out of this. We need you, Tubbo needs you, Ranboo needs you,” Techno insists in a reply and Tommy can’t find the energy to speak and even if he did try he would find himself frozen, mouth unable to move. “There are rumors that now that Dream’s gone, old villains are rising up. I know you might not want to talk about your personal problems but right now we have a PR disaster and we need you to stay on top of it. It’s your job,” Tommy is faced with a dilemma. He doesn’t want to move, he is so tired and everything hurts, on the other hand he doesn’t want to lose his job, his standing with the heroes. The debate must've taken too long because Techno is almost gone now and Tommy is still frozen. He slumps down onto the bed again and pulls the covers up.

“Will used to get like this,” Techno says and there is something in the undertone of his voice that speaks paragraphs over his stilted sentence. “He would lay in bed for days, he would cry and sit there and whenever we tried to make him move, do something, anything. He would say that we were killing him,” Techno pauses and takes in something sounds like a breath but couldn't be because Techno doesn’t show emotion. “Phil’s worried about you,”

Techno’s worried about you, he cares, get up. He doesn’t need someone to sit there in bed and ruin his home. He needs a PR manager, a trainer, he needs your help. The villains are rising up again.

“Wake up Tommy,” He says and it’s a last ditch effort if Tommy’s ever heard one. If he had any control over his body he would get up, help, get over himself, cry, and then make sure no one messed with his family again. But he doesn’t have control so intestead he closes his eyes and makes a silent vow to wake up when he can.

--------

At first Tubbo thought that Tommy was just tired, emotionally and physically exhausted. He had used so much power in bringing Ranboo back it was just taking a few days for his body to recover. Then he visited him. It was like talking to a corpse. His eyes were open, unmoving, he looked so pale and in the back of his head he wondered how they were feeding him if he was this unresponsive. That was four days ago.

It had been over a week since Ranboo got back and besides a few sleep walking incidents, nightmares, and general confusion over what was going on in the time he was gone he was mostly oriented back to the world. It had been over a week since Tommy had functioned normally. Wilbur sat there and fed him, made sure he wasn’t actually dying, walked him to the bathroom in the morning and the night, Wilbur appeared to have infinite patience with the boy. Phil kept Ranboo and Tubbo moving, not just waiting for Tommy, gave them chores, safety, played games with them when they asked and offered to be there if they needed him. Techno was just around. It was nice to have his presence sitting there in a chair while you read. He talked to Tommy every once in a while and it didn’t seem to do anything. He appeared the only one still checking the media, making sure nothing too major was happening. He was making sure that the villain attacks were only minor. He would go out on patrol at night. It was nice to have his normalcy.

“There was a villain attack this morning,” Techno voices scaring Tubbo out of his own head. He closed the room to Tommy’s door behind him.

“There was? Anyhting major?” Tubbo asks, just making polite conversation.

“Schlatt’s back,”

--------

Tommy was almost asleep when he heard a scream. Techno had just left. The scream was filled with terror and he had only ever heard it once before.

Tubbo.

Tommy’s limbs responded when he tried getting up this time. He wasn’t sure how long he had been lying in bed but it sure made his legs tired just standing. That didn’t matter though because Tubbo was hurt. Tubbo was in trouble. He opened the door, hissing from the light, and walked towards the end of the hallway, Tubbo was there, hand over his mouth and tears in his eyes, he made eye contact with Tommy. There was a moment where they were just looking at each other. Time pausing in favor of elongating the moment Tubbo realized that Tommy was there for him, always. Time resumes to a hug. The boys in each other's embrace falling to the floor. There is a look of surprise upon Techno’s face but Tommy could care that he was there because Tubbo was upset, he never gets upset.

“Wh- what happened?” Tommy’s voice is more rasp than a voice but Tubbo must get the idea because his breathing hitches and a new wave of tears flows into Tommy’s shirt. “Why are you upset? Was it me? I swear I was trying I just couldn’t-” Tubbo speaks something a quiet murmur under his breath. “What was that?” Tommy cuts himself off.
“He’s back,” Tubbo says and Tommy rifles through his brain for who it could be. It was probably a villain, Techno had mentioned them returning. It didn’t make sense.

“Who’s back?” Tommy questions.

“Schlatt,” Techno replies and it all clicks.

Tubbo’s father was a mean man, one who turned to the bottle rather than to his son for comfort. It made for a strange set of circumstances. A boy whose father didn’t love him, ran away from home, meeting a boy opposite looks of his own. With striking blonde hair compared to his dark brown, the boy claimed to have a creator, not a father, he found it a strange euphemism. In the long run neither boy learned much about the other’s past but Tommy knew that Tubbo was raised by Schlatt before he was a villain, before he got clean just enough to run the city into the ground with him. Everybody was under the impression he had drunk himself to death. It appeared not.

“Hey, we’ve talked about this, we won’t let him get you,” Tommy says and Techno’s face blanks out, perhaps he realises that Tommy can see the fear on his face, or he finds himself not wanting to get judged for being intrigued by the situation.

“Yeah,” Tubbo squeaks out and Tommy rubs his back.

“I’ll kill him, and it won’t be painless, I’ll make him pay, and you won’t ever have to see him again,” Tommy says and Techno wonders what brought him straight to the conclusion that they had to kill him. There was a past here he must have been missing.

--------

It took longer than Tubbo would ever admit for him to calm down. He was almost more upset that Tommy was awake than about his father. Tommy looked more dead than he did when he was lying still. When Tubbo hugged him he could feel the bones in his spine and he wondered how long Tommy had been suffering before all of this happened.

“Tommy?” Tubbo asks and Tommy looks down at him. “Can we get up? My legs are falling asleep,” His voice is quiet and Tommy doesn’t speak in favor of just standing up, helping Tubbo. Techno had walked out of the hallway about mid breakdown, probably uncomfortable.

“Let’s go sit in the kitchen, yeah?” Tommy asks and it’s like Tubbo is the one who functioned for the first time in days and not the other way around. Techno was whispering with Phil in there, Ranboo sat at the table listening in. All eyes were on Tommy as he entered. Tubbo was grateful, he didn’t need any extra people staring at him and his disheveled ahri after a breakdown like that. Tommy held his hand as they sat down at the table. “Water?” Tommy asks getting two cups down anyways. Tubbo nods.

--------

Tommy has always had terrible impulse control and the next words he speaks are a bit out of place for the situation.

“Does anyone have my phone?” He speaks, Techno pulls it out of his pocket.

“How do you think ive been keeping up to date?” Techno states and Phil is still staring at Tommy like he has cured cancer.

“I think Phil’s broken,” Tommy states and Tubbo spits water out of his nose laughing. It was like a chain reaction first Tubbo then Tommy quickly after, Techno chuckles a few times before Phil exhales in amusement himself.

“Just a little surprised mate, you were in bed for a week there,” He says and Tommy pauses.

“A week?” Tommy asks and he looks to Tubbo.

“Yeah, Ranboo’s almost all back to normal now,” Tubbo says and Tommy nods. This was a lot of information.

“Almost?” Tommy’s eyebrows cinch together in confusion.

“Just a few nightmares here and there,” That was perfect, nothing like when Tommy was revived.

“Okay good,” Is all he can stand to say the week of laying bed was really setting in now, his hands were shaking again. He didn’t even try to pick up his glass of water seeing as he would just spill it.

“Where’s Wilbur?” Techno asks. This feels like a time where Wilbur would chime in with some weird comment about anteaters.

“Patrol,” Phil answers. The scene was almost domestic but Tommy wouldn’t let it be. He felt a pounding growing in the back of his head, movin so much so suddenly must really be doing a number on him. He sets his head on the counter.

“You okay there mate?” Phil asks and Tommy goes to respond when his vision goes black.

“I-” He passes out.

Chapter Text

“Did he just pass out?” Ranboo asks and Tubbo nods, moving to rub Tommy’s back. Tommy’s chest is still rising and falling, Tubbo doesn’t panic too much.

“He’s always had issues with fainting, you knew this,” Tubbo’s eyes are concerned.

“I guess I keep forgetting things lately,” Ranboo answers, Tommy’s eyes blink open. His hands are shaking again and his eyes won’t focus.

Tubbo’s hands move with practices efficiency, grabbing the water cup and moving to hand it to Tommy. He makes no move to grab it.

“You need water,” Tubbo insists bring the cup closer to Tommy’s mouth. No response.

“Is he always like this after?” Phil asks, his concern evident. Tubbo wonders how Tommy got all these people wrapped around his finger.

“Sometimes,” Tubbo says and grabs Tommys hands. “C’mon Toms, you’re safe, we’re here, do you want water?” Tubbo repeats the montra a few times before standing up.

“It isn’t working,” Techno states and Tubbo glares at him.

“I know,” He moves to the freezer locating an ice tray. He takes the ice and puts it in Tommy’s outstretched palm. “Toms, you’re in Phils house, I need you to talk to me someway, please?” Tubbo’s voice is careful, quiet, and reassuring. It is similar to the tone one would use when talking to a child and it seems to be working along with the ice because Tommy’s eyes clear and he looks around.

“I hate that,” He says and Tubbo nods.

“I know, do you know why you passed out?” Tubbo asks the question is genuine, Tommy can tell.

“I’m tired,” Tommy states instead of a reply.

“You’re lucky you had your hand on the table otherwise you probably would have hit your head pretty hard,” Techno interjects from the look on his face it seems he was speaking from experience.

Tommy picked up the water with shaking hands, and took a sip, it seemed to calm him.

“Have you really had problems with fainting Tommy?” Phil asks and the question goes down his throat like a sharp rock. For varius problems, blood loss, not eating, headaches, Tommy had passed out all the time for a while but since working at the heroes tower it had gotten better.

“A while back yes,” Tommy says and Tubbo’s eyes squint at him.

“I can’t remember it,” Ranboo states.

“Remember what?” Tommy asks, the only one not present for the earlier lapse in memory.

“You, passing out, ever, it’s lke there are chucks of our past just, blip, gone,” Ranboo says like that offers any comfort. Tubbo gives Tommy a look, one that says that Tommy better fix Ranboo’s memory issues before he loses it on him.

“I had memory issues after I was revived too, it’s fine,” He reasons and although his weren’t this bad it was better than the other options.

“You were revived?” Phil asks and it’s like he's one strange side comment away from a stroke. His hands were gripping the counter harder than necessary and he kept shooting Techno glances.

“You better have a good explanation for that one otherwise old man here’s gonna lose it,” Techno says and Tommy backtracks.

“I think I’m gonna go lay down again,”

--------

Wilbur wasn’t quite sure what he walked home to. Phil and Techno are arguing, an uncommon sight but not one never seen. Tubbo, Ranboo, and Tommy were nowhere to be found, perhaps that is for the better. Phil and Techno are shouting now.

“We need to use him, I understand how bad that sounds but we need him!” Phil said and Techno’s eyes widened, he was pissed.

“He’s a kid! You can’t do that to him! We know where he came from, it’s the same idea just with the illusion of freedom!” His voice is desperate and Wilbur is scared to enter through the front door. He doesn’t even know who they’re talking about.

“What else are we going to do?” Phil questions and Techno flinches back.

“Fight him, like we did last time, Prime knows he’s not much different,” Techno’s voice is somehow filled with reason even though his eyes are angry. Wilbur never understood how he had such control over his tone, his thoughts always logical, never unreasonable.

“What do we do about Tommy? Tubbo? They’re freaking out over this,” Phil says and Techno scoffs.

“They’re doing fine, you’re the one freaking out over this,” Techno states and Wilbur starts to realize he’s eavesdropping.

“I’m worried! I don’t want any of you involved in this at all! But we need to deal with this and Tubbo and Tommy are obviously involved and they’re struggling right now!” Phil rambles and Techno turns around, making Wilbur’s prescience known.

“Why don’t we ask Wil?” Techno points out.

“Ask me what?” Wilbur says, zen feigning innocence.

“Do you think we should use Tommy for his power or go fight Schlatt with our own hands?” Techno says his eyes are the angriest Wilbur has ever seen. His arms are crossed over his chest and his tone is losing its calm demeanor.

“I don’t think we should use a child for his power, but we could use his help with this, he seems willing,” Wilbur’s voice is meant to placate the situation. Appease both parties. It does the opposite.

“‘He seems willing,’” Techno mocks. “He has a death wish! Have you met him? That kid tries to kill himself every time we blink!” He is shouting now. Wilbur hopes that Tommy can sleep like the dead, he doesn’t need to hear this.

“Shush! They’re asleep,” Phil says.

Techno huffs.

“We can not let this tear us apart,” Wilbur says. “We have to get into the tower tomorrow, read reports, strategize, and as a last resort ask Tommy for help,” Phil rolls his eyes as Techno nods.

“It's late, we should sleep,” Wilbur says, beginning to escort the three of them towards their respective bedrooms.

“Alright,” Phil says.

————

Tommy awoke in the middle of the night in a pile of limbs. It was warm there, his arms and legs in mildly uncomfortable positions but the feeling of familiarity made it worth it. He moved his way out of the cluster carefully, closing the door behind him and walking towards the kitchen.

“Theseus,” Techno speaks, Tommy is not alone.

“I just came to get a glass of water, no need to bring out the fancy names,” He says pulling a cup out of a cabinet by the fridge.

“Phil wants to have you help us kill Schlatt, use your powers,” He states. It doesn’t suprise Tommy. He isn’t even all that against it. He turns on the tap.

“So?” Tommy asks.

“I can’t let them use you like that kid, it’s unjust,” Techno says and it really does seem to bother him, the fact that Tommy would be used for his power even if jsut for a few seconds.

“Hey man, I don’t care as king as Sclatts gone,” Tommy says and Techno grimaces.

“But you don’t, you don’t want to be used,” He insists.

“Not particularly but in this case it’s different, it would be voluntary,” Water is spilling down Tommy’s hand, his glass long overfilled, the conversation too capturing to care.

“What about when Phil and Wilbur put together that you’re theseus? What then? They’re not dumb, they know you have powers, what are you going to say?” Techno begs and Tommy’s answer is rehearsed, it’s not like he hasn’t thought of this before, he’s thought of this every day since he landed his job at the heroes tower.

“Then they’ll know, and they’ll treat me differently, and you will have to tell them you’ve known for a long time,” Tommy responds and the answer is a question, what would Techno say, how would he explain himself. What was he thinking when he was sworn to secrecy in that hallway.

Tommy turns off the tap. His fingers slightly numb from the freezing water running over them for several minutes. It was almost welcome, the loss of sensation. He takes a sip from the glass and relishes in it's slightly metallic taste. Techno thinks.

“You and Tubbo have talked, about Schlatt before, what did you say? Why?” Techno asks and tommy can’t help but pause.

“That’s not for me to say,”

————

“That boy better still be out there,” Schlatt says, nobody is around, he’s been alone for far too long.

His fingernails are unkempt, his hair in a permanent state of disarray, his breath containing the lingering stench of alcohol. There is a scar over his heart from before, when he went into hiding. His hands type of a crimean computer and he reaserches. He knows his son is out there, he knows where he lives, and he knows that he’ll be paying him a visit soon. The bottle of whisky near his ahem is calling his name, the accomplishment of locating his son is brought to warrnt a drink fo two right? Yeah.

“I’ll find you Tubbo, and I’ll make sure you get home safe,”

Chapter Text

The plan was quite simple: locate Schlatt, arrest him, put him in Pandora, profit. It used the logic that Schlatt didn’t know of Tubbo’s exsustance and Tommy was a suprise element. It would work. It became apparent that locating Schlatt would be the hardest part of this plan. They had checked every crime record for the city, had looked in his old lair, he was nowhere to be found. Tension grew in the heroes home.

“What are we supposed to do if we can’t even find him!” Tommy yelled, he was most stressed out by the situation. He was getting out of bed again and was responsive when he was lying down. The only issue is he’s paranoid. 

“It’ll be fine Tom, we’ll figure it out,” Tubbo replied. Despite the initial incident he was by far the most nonchalant about the situation.

“I just, I don’t like not knowing what he’s doing, I hate this!” Tommy’s voice cracks as he shouts, his eyes get wet and he stand from the table. “We need to find him,” Tubbo looks up at him. “I’m going out,”

————

Against everyone else’s will, Tommy went out of the house under the guise that he just needed some fresh air. Tubbo and Techno shared a knowing look when he grabbed his bag subtly on the way out.

Donning his mask and jumping up onto a local fire escape he made his way to the skies. He knew where the three heroes were, in their home, they didn’t matter anyway. He was on a mission.

He looked all over the city, checking abandoned buildings and hideouts. Nothing. He was walking back towards home when he heard footsteps behind him, he ran. It didn’t matter who was chasing him, it probably wasn’t good.

There was no conversation exchange, just panting and quick footsteps. The perpetrator was catching up quickly. Tommy was too tired to use a power he hoped adrenaline would keep him out of harm's way.

He thought he had lost them. It took longer than he ever would have liked, but there was no second set of steps as he slowed his pace. He took a breath, swearing on the exhale.

There was a set of arms around him, a hand over where his eyes would be if not for his mask. It was only on person it appeared because they let go of his middle as they grabbed his hands. There was the smell of sulfur in the air as he was dragged backwards. He fought all that he could, he was too out of practice to use his power, he really needed to work on that. 

His hands are tied behind his back, he’s being held in the air, and his kicking seems to be of no avail. The person below him walked a little too slow for him taste, a leisure pace for the situation. He doesn’t know where he is, his vision being obscured by a piece of cloth being placed over his mask.

He was yelling at first, he couldn’t tell if anyone was hearing him, and considering nothing about his situation changed he quested they were alone. They walked for a while before he heard the telltale sign of a door.

His attacker set him down on a chair, he tried running only to run into what appeared to be another person.

“Sit down ,” A voice smooth talks him. Tommy knows that voice anywhere; he thought they were taking a day off. 

“I’m surprised you think that ever works,” Tommy says as he kicks whatever figure is in front of him. 

“Don’t fight now Theseus, just sit down, make it easier for yourself,” Wilbur’s voice says and Tommy walks backward until he finds the chair again. He sits.

“Now let’s begin. What do you know about Schlatt's return?” Wilbur says.

“I know nothing, I haven’t been out for weeks, why would you think I know anything?” Tommy reasons.

“Lair,” Wilbur sneers. This is moment that Tommy begins to panic. He doesn’t know what Wilbur has in store for him, if he knows it’s Tommy under the mask, what will happen. He doesn’t know what he’s going to say if Wilbur finds out, and he certainly doesn’t know any of Schlatt’s plans. 

“I-I- I’m not lying I swear!” Tommy reasons, begs. He watches Wilbur’s eyes go soft for a second, like he believes Tommy. Like he would ever believe theseus.

“What are Schlatts plans? ” Wilbur tries again. “Don’t lie again. I’d be rather tempted to take off your mask if you choose to fight this.” 

“I don’t know! I don’t know! I don’t work for him!” Tommy yells. He doesn’t want to face the concquences of his actions. He really should have thought about this moment long ago so he would have a good reason for what Wilbur’s about to find out.

“I’ll give you one more chance, the benefit of the doubt, if you will.” Wilbur’s hand snakes up from his side to behind Tommy’s head. “What are Schlatt’s plans,” 

“I. Don’t. Know.” Tommy pushes, his voice finally gaining the fear he feels.

It all happens in a split second. Wilbur’s hand undos the clasp on the back of Tommy’s head, his mask falling to the ground. Tommy fights to keep his face stoic. He watches as Wilbur flashes through a series of emotions. Anger, confusion, realization, and finally betrayal.

“Wil, Wil I can explain,” Tommy begins to say but Wilbur interrupts him.

“No, don't say anything, we’re going home.” His tone is final as he walks around Tommy's interrogation chair. “We’re going home and you will explain yourself in front of everyone you know. Tubbo, Ranboo, Phil, all of them,” once Tommy’s hands are free Wilbur ties them together again, just off the chair. “You’re telling them how you betrayed us, who you are, and what you did,” Tommy stands up once Wilbur seems like he’s finished.

“Do I get to walk or are you going to carry me again?” Tommy jokes hoping to lighten the mood. It doesn’t work. 

“Shut up,” is all Wilbur replies.

————

Wilbur knocks on the front door, saying Tommy should have some shame as he walks through the house. Techno is the one who answers.

“Oh, this is,” He really seems like he’s at a loss for words, “This is interesting,” He finishes. “Come in,”

Wilbur’s hand on Tommy shoulder guides them to the kitchen. 

“Get everyone else, there’s some explaning to do,” Wilbur says and Tommy has the decency to look guilty as he looks to Techno. This is probably the first time Tommy has ever seen Techno with a proper expression on his face. It’s not just a twist of his eyebrows or a tilt of his head, his whole face is scrunched up as he makes eye contact with Tommy. 

“Okay Wil,” Techno says as they walk away.

This is the second time Tommy panics. His worry overarching any other possible emotion he could feel right now. The other file into the kitchen one by one, Techno last. 

“Alright Theseus, explain,” Wilbur starts and three out of five sets of eyes have the decency to look worried.

“Undo my hands,” Tommy says, he doesn’t want to have this conversation and he could stall for a thousand years if he wanted.

“No, talk,” Wilbur resists and Tommy does something he absolutely should not do.

“Untie my hands, ” Tommy says and Wilbur’s eyes widen as he does so.

“You are vile,” Wilbur spits out the words like they are poison. 

“Wil maybe you should clam down a little,” Tehcno interjects, a savior.

“Absolutely not, he has been lying to us about who he is for months! How do we just move on?!” Wilbur yells and Technos face must say something Tommy doesn’t read because he calms almost instantly. “You already knew, didn’t you.” He states, and there is no arguing the truth.

“I did,” Techbo admits and Tubbo and Ranboo stand up.

“Where are you two going?! He lied to you too!” Wilbur shouts, he’s begging for someone to be on his side.

“No he didn’t,” Is all Tubbo says as he walks away, Ranboo following with a worried expression.

“Tommy, did you ever have any bad intent or connections while at working as a vigilante?” Phil’s asks, it’s the first he’s spoken since this whole ordeal started.

“No, never, I wouldn't do that to you,” Tommy states and Wilbur gasps.

“You liar,” Wilbur says and Tommy flares.

“I’m no lair, I haven’t ever worked with Schlatt do you think I would do that to Tubbo?” He asks and Wilbur only gets angrier. 

“I don’t care! You betrayed us! First Dream now this! Who are you!” Wilbur asks, begs.

Tommy stands and goes to walk away, he doesn’t know anymore.

“Come back and explain yourself!” Wilbur says and Phil has moved into the seat Tommy previously occupied trying to calm him down. “You can’t do this to me!”

“I’m sorry,” Tommy admits. He turns to walk away again. “I really am,”

Chapter Text

Schlatt had begun to be quite a bit of contention in the heroes home. Tommy and Wilbur still weren’t talking. There were moments in which Tommy looked just sad enough to be worrisome, but never enough to say anything. Tubbo was now sure that Schlatt would come for him, becoming more scared with each passing day.

“I just don’t know him, I don’t know anything about him besides old hero records and those suck! They don’t say anything about how he acted other than he’s evil!” Tubbo shouts, Ranboo has become the receiving end for most of these rants. Their fear based rambles that led to Tubbo in tears or more confused than he started with. “I just wish Tommy would get over himself and use his power again, we could locate him in a second,” Tubbo mumbles under his breath, it was meant to be just a passing statement but Tommy chose just that minute to walk into the room.

“If I ‘get over myself’ and we find him then that’s worse, he’d know that I’m around, he’s got to know about me,” Tommy says, he looks a little more angry than his voice lets on.

“I just, I guess, I just, I don’t understand why you would want to just get it over with I guess, I want him dead,” Tubbo says and Ranboo realizes it’s going to be one of those passive aggressive arguments he and Tommy get into sometimes. Ones where they just say passing comments to get under each other’s skin, and try to figure out what they were going to do since the heroes appeared to be content doing nothing.

“I understand that but we can’t lose our privacy,” Tommy reasons, it’s almost the same three points with him, they’ll be safer where they are, if Schlatt finds them they’re screwed, and if Tubbo goes over there and Schlatt captures him they don’t know how they’re going to get him back. It was getting annoying.

“I know, you say that every time, I’m just tired of waiting,” Tubbo says like it solves any of their problems to just complain.

“We’ll I think I finally found a solution for you Tubs, that’s why I popped in to visit,” Tommy says with a sly smile on his face, his eyes uncharacteristically bright.

“What’s you idea Toms?” Tubbo asks, his eyes uncharacteristically alive.

“We do a set up,”

————

The plan went into action almost immediately after the idea was said. Tubbo was to walk around if the streets, Tommy not far behind, posing as his stalker. There was a point at which Tommy wondered if anyone around them would try to speak to Tubbo about his ‘stalkers’ actions but it didn’t seem to be much of a problem beyond some strange glances.

Tubbo was walking past a dingy alleyway for the fifth time, glancing down it for anything that’s as remotely suspicious, Tommy trailing him about ten paces back. His movements were precise. An older man approached him, his arms crossed in front of his chest, his breath stank of alcohol just as he breathed, bingo.

Tubbo made sure to put a thumbs up behind his back when he started speaking.

“Sir are you alright? Is there anything I can do for you?“ He asked, his voice innocent.

“No, it just seems that kid is there behind you stalking you. He seems to be untrustworthy,” Tubbo finally got a good look at his father, his teeth were yellow with age, his beard was the most atrocious thing he had ever seen, his father disgusted him.

Tommy was catching up with the couple but Schlatt seemed just as on edge as Tubbo was.

“Sir are you sure you aren’t seeing things? There isn’t anyone there?” Tubbo asks trying to cover up Tommy’s obvious failure at a capture attempt.

“There’s a blonde kid there, isn’t there Tubbo?” Schlatt says and he must realize his mistake the same time Tubbo does because he freezes.

“How do you know my name?” Tubbos asks, his voice filled with fear.

The knife in Tommy’s hand burned something fierce, he just wanted this man dead but there were too many people on this street they needed to move.

Tubbo has the same idea as he side steps Schlatt into a dingy looking ally, they enter together through their staring contest.

“Listen, I know it’s been a while but I’m your-“

“Father,” Tubbo cuts off. He knows who Schlatt is like the back of his hand.

“How did you know that?”

Tommy better move faster, Tubbo’s done talking.

————

Tommy is currently stuck in a predicament, stab Schlatt and get arrested or let Tubbo get kidnapped, neither are good options but he has no other choices.

“How did you know that Tubbo? I did my best to let you live a free life, one without my-“ Schlatt is cut off by the feeling of a knife being stabbed in his back, literally.

Tommy feels hands on his shoulders, the heroes had to be here. They were tailing him and had seen what he had done. He felt this strange feeling in his stomach, perhaps he was more upset about this than he thought, it really hurt.

He looked down.

There was a knife in Schlatts hand, going straight through his skin, all the way to the hilt.

Tommy moves on instinct he peels Schlatts hand off the knife, shakes the hereros hand off his shoulder. He takes the knife out of Schlatt’s back and plunges it into the body beside him, moving out of the way for the bodies to collapse into each other.

“Tommy?” Tubbo asks. “You- you have a-“ He can’t seem to form a sentence and Tommy can’t blame him he must look a little strange right now.

“I’ll be fine, just grab Schlatt,” Tommy says.

“Sure,” Tubbo says and he moves to get him but the hero speaks, Wilbur he notes, he had stabbed Wilbur.

“Shut up and get this knife out of me, Tommy,” He doesn’t sound pissed, the knife sticking out of Tommy is really starting to hurt.

“I have a bit of an issue right now Wil,” Tommy is trying not to pass out. Schlatt appears to not be dead but must have just passed out, his chest rising and falling. Tommy feels an adrenaline surge as he grabs the knife sticking out of him and yanks. White spots cover his vision, the pain blinding him, he stops for a second.

“Tommy? what are you doing!” Tubbo yells.

Tommy can’t stop now, he takes the knife he had removed from himself and moves forward leaning into Schlatt’s ear much as Dream had done to him.

“Never mess with my friends; you’re lucky you lived this long,” He says, stabbing the knife into what he hopes is Schlatt’s lung.

The blood loss is really staring to catch up to
him, he’s glad he only stabbed Wilbur in the shoulder because he is going to pass out soon.

“Tommy?” Wilbur asks and Tommy nods.

“Yeah Wil?” Tommy asks.

“Can you make it home?” He asks, it’s mostly a question that answered itself, no, no he can’t.

“Yeah I think so Wil,” Tommy says laying down on the ground. Maybe this is what he wanted. A death by his friends, his family, his brothers. He didn’t want to be a nobody, he wanted to be remembered. He wanted someone to cry at his funeral and he wanted someone to come and hold his dead body. Perhaps he was selfish in his request to die early surrounded by friends and family. He briefly wondered where the rest of the heroes were: why they weren’t coming to save him.

“Where’s?” Tommy coughs, coating his teeth in blood. “Where’s Techno?” He asks.

“They’re on their way do you think you can make it home Tommy?” Wilbur asks.

“I-“ The answer changes, a moment of weakness. His eyes are getting darker now, his vision is closing in. “I don’t know,” Tommy says. He must look as bad as he feels because Wilbur panics.

“I need you to make it home Tommy, for Tubbo,” He reasons and Tubbo speaks up, there are tears streaming down his face.

“You’ll make it home? Right Tommy?” Tubbo asks and Tommy is sure he won’t make it another full minute before passing out.

“Yeah, anything for you Tubs,” He blinks and closes his eyes for a second, it felt nice.

“Open your eyes for me Toms, hold on,” Wilbur says, his voice calm, an eye in the storm.

“I don’t think I can Wil,” He says, a brutal honesty.

“Just for a second?” Wilbur asks.

Tommy doesn’t respond. Tubbo freaks out.

“C’mon Tommy don’t be shy, open your eyes a little. You don’t have to talk, just show me you’re okay, I need you Toms, don’t give up!” He shouts, he can’t lose Tommy, not when they are so close to freedom.

His eyes do not open. He does not respond.

The first time Tommys breathing hitches, Wilbur scrambles to make sure he can breathe okay. Just until help arrives, they should be here soon. Tommy’s breathing returned to normal after a second, he exhaled.

It felt like getting gutted the second time Tommy’s breathing stops because it won’t pick up again. They try their best to bring him back, giving their best shot at CPR, anything. But Tommy’s breath has stopped and it won’t start again. The tears are falling and they won’t stop.

“Toms, Toms, please don’t do this,” Tubbo begs.

It felt like losing a piece of himself. Perhaps that’s what it was, the quick rise and fall of a hero, a brother, a friend, Tommy. Tommy was dead and there was nothing anyone could do. Techno arrives at the scene first.

“Tommy?” He asks.

Tubbo sobs louder. Wilbur is coated in blood, little of which appears to be his. His face is blank.

“Wilbur what happened?” Techno asks, he doesn’t want to believe it’s what it looks like.

“Tommy,” a pause, a breath. “Tommy is dead,”

Thomas Innit was not a good person, and perhaps with his final dying breath, he wished he was.