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Techno found Tommy lying on the floor in a pool of his own blood.
“Tommy?” He forced out. Quickly, he ran to Tommy’s side. The young man was staring up at the sky above him. His breathing was coming in quick and short bursts. Tear tracks stained his cheeks, coming from the corners of his eyes. There were still tears, too. Mouth part open, he sucked in a sort of odd, sobbing wheeze. “Hey, Tommy. Tommy.” Leaning over him, Techno gently shook his shoulder. There was a soft groan, and Techno glanced down. “Oh my gosh.”
The source of the blood was Tommy’s arm.
Right where his soulmate mark should have been, there was a giant, gaping wound. It stretched all over his forearm, going from the crook of his elbow all the way down to his wrist. Fumbling, Techno pulled his phone out. Quickly, he dialed the emergency number, ripped off his jacket, and then quickly wrapped Tommy’s arm and applied pressure.
“Hello? What is your emergency?” Gasping, Techno closed his eyes. Focused. This wasn’t the time to panic.
“My name is Technoblade Skyblock. My soulmate Tommy—platonic, we’re one of four—just got attacked or something. He has a wound over his soulmate mark and it’s from his elbow to his wrist. I don’t know how long he’s been bleeding for but there’s a pool of blood around him.”
“Okay. Where are you?” Quickly, Techno glanced around. Repeated the address. “Alright. I’ll send an ambulance over now. Is he conscious?”
“His eyes are open but I don’t think he’s responsive.” Turning, Techno looked at Tommy. “Tommy? Tommy, can you hear me?”
Tommy let out another groan. Blinking slowly, he tipped his head to the side. His eyes turned to Techno. They didn’t quite focus, though. He had bruises and scrapes all over his face. Some more struck across his neck. Swallowing, Techno took a breath.
“He’s nonresponsive. He’s looking at me, though. Tommy?” Techno swallowed. “Tommy, you’re going to be alright, I promise. Do we have an estimate on when that ambulance will get there?”
“Two minutes.”
“Oh thank everything,” Closing his eyes, Techno looked down at Tommy. “You hear that, Tommy?” There was a long moment. Tommy didn’t move. He was still sucking in ragged-sounded breaths. On top of that, he seemed to be losing consciousness.
Those two minutes were the longest of Techno’s life before the ambulance finally arrived. They sprinted up to Techno’s side. One of them turned to Techno, “What blood type is he?”
“Take mine.” Techno said, yanking his sleeve back. “I’m his soulmate, our blood types will work no matter what.” Nodding, the paramedics pulled him and Tommy towards the ambulance. Started doing whatever it was they did. As soon as Tommy had been settled on the gurney and Techno was hooked up to the blood transfusion thing, he leaned forwards and rested his head on the gurney beside Tommy’s head. “You’re going to be alright, Toms.” He whispered under his breath. “I promise.” Tommy didn’t react. Techno didn’t even know if Tommy could hear him, in all honesty.
The ambulance ride crawled by. Techno didn’t remember a chunk of it, he had the needle in his arm and watched as some of his blood was drawn to give to his soulmate. Tommy’s face had gone icily pale, he was barely moving. Who did this? He wondered. Glanced down at the marks on Tommy’s neck, the ones on his wrist. He’d watched enough true crime shows and done research of his own, dreaming of being a crime scene forensic scientist before realizing he would need to deal with murder victims and suicides and too many dead bodies. He knew what those marks meant. Someone had attacked Tommy—thankfully not…not that way, just physically. He’d fought back, tried to block the hits to his face with his arms and gotten strangled at some point.
Judging by the deep slash on his wrist over Tommy’s soulmate mark, then there was a definite MO already there. Whoever this was had done so discriminatorily, with the intent to hurt Tommy as a hate crime. They had that part of it down, at least. Why someone would want to hate crime Tommy, though, Techno wasn’t sure. Tommy kept his mark status a secret, kept how many platonic soulmates he had hidden away. Sometimes romantic pursuits could see platonic soulmates as a threat of some sort. A ridiculous thought, but not an uncommon one. Other than the recorded number of murdered soulmates because of a romantic pursuit—not a romantic soulmate, a pursuit, so not even someone with a mark relationship with the person—perceiving platonics as a threat, Techno and his group had already had their own unfortunate experience with a romantic pursuit turning violent.
That would be Sally, whose name Techno remembered because he wanted to know when she died and because Wilbur referred to her in such a way and thus she could keep her name.
Currently, thankfully, Sally was in prison. The amount of attacks on those with platonic soulmates to the point of hate crimes vastly outweighed any argument Sally could come up with. There was no record of Wilbur abusing her, in fact the opposite. He had never slept with her despite her claims that she was pregnant with his child (she was not, Wilbur was asexual, Phil had sat with him in the hospital as he had night terrors after collapsing down the steps from exhaustion due to her abuse the night that she claimed that she had been beaten into a pulp by him).
Holding onto Tommy’s hand, Techno looked at the young man’s face. There was a bag attached to his face that one of the paramedics was squeezing, using to force air into Tommy’s chest. Eventually, there was a low whine. Tommy’s eyes cracked open again. Wandered over to Techno. “Hey, Toms.” He whispered softly, smiling as best as he could. Inhaling hoarsely, moving to try and grab at his chest, Tommy whimpered. “Someone hurt your ribs?”
Tommy opened his mouth. Shuddered and then tried to touch his chest again. Gently, one of the paramedics started to palpate Tommy’s stomach, apparently picking up on the fact Tommy was in a lot of pain. A frown darkened their face, pinching their brows together. “Hmm.” They gently pulled Tommy’s shirt up. Around his stomach, there was massive, dark purplish-red bruising. Techno hissed in a breath.
“That’s not good, is it?”
“He might be bleeding internally.” The paramedic explained calmly. Nodding, Techno looked down at Tommy again. Inhaled.
“We’re so going to get him McDonalds’ after this. He needs a McFlurry so much.” Techno whispered softly, smiling and squeezing Tommy’s hand. There was a light squeeze back. The paramedics glanced over, then looked back to their patient.
Tommy was going to be okay. He was one tough bastard. Techno knew it.
He’d pull through just fine.
+++
Tommy literally could not make his way to the court in order to testify, so he was attending it via Zoom in the comfort of his room.
Thankfully, Kristin was friends with a nurse, who was currently checking over Tommy and attaching an IV to his arm. He was bandaged to the gills, white gauze wrapped on his other arm, where his soulmark had been slashed away (or really, had been attempted to slash away). The gauze swathed his neck, his head, his stomach and chest. He was wearing a button-up, both to look nice and also because over the past three weeks he had been able to wear button-ups and button-ups only. He couldn’t lift his arms over his head. There had been multiple surgeries he needed to have in order to be able to recover properly, plus multiple to just survive. Internal bleeding in his stomach and chest, blood pooling in the gap in between his organs and then his hip. There had been a nick that nearly severed his femoral artery and almost killed him.
Techno was sitting with Tommy, holding his hand as he faced down the people who had beaten him to a pulp, nearly killed him, and tried to slash out his soul mark. He still had a nasal cannula because a shattered sternum and ribs meant he struggled to inhale and they needed to make sure he got the right amount of oxygen. On top of that, he also still had pneumonia. Walking pneumonia, thankfully. But also. Pneumonia.
“Alright, Tommy.” The defense lawyer began, shuffling her papers, “What did you do on the day of the attack?”
Techno squeezed Tommy’s hand. Phil, Kristin, and Wilbur were all actively in the court system with their lawyer, Ian. Swallowing, Tommy started talking, “I woke up, went to school, was walking home and I decided to take a scenic route home. While I was walking along the path, because there’s a park there like you can see in the video—“ They had a CCTV video, that was how they had managed to catch Tommy’s attackers, a group of girls who went to his school, “and I wanted to take my time, I got jumped.”
“Did you have any sort of contact with the defendants beforehand?”
“Uh, Jessica and I have the same biology class.”
“So you talked with her beforehand?”
“Yes.”
“What were you doing?”
“We were doing the same biology project with some other classmates. We got an A on the project, we really didn’t talk much and just sent across information.”
“What was your role in the project?”
“I was doing the experiment.”
“What was the experiment?”
“Uh…” Frowning, Tommy paused. “I’m sorry, I’m afraid I don’t remember that.”
“You don’t remember?” The defense lawyer asked, arching one of her finely manicured eyebrows.
“Objection!” Ian began. “Your Honor, she’s acting as though Tommy is lying, he’s been recorded to have a concussion.”
“Carried.”
“Alright. Do you remember what role she played in the project?”
“She was…” Tommy inhaled slowly. “She was the one who put together the presentation. All I did was send her the information that I gathered. We didn’t have any other contact.”
“Was this because you hated her for some reason?”
“No.” Tommy swallowed again nervously. “The first thing she texted me once I had her number was just that she had a boyfriend and if I contacted her again then she would have him beat me up. I think she was joking? Thought she was joking, I guess.”
“That’s not what I asked you.” There was another short pause. “So you continued to text her after she said not to?”
“I only gave her the information to do our biology project. Nothing more.”
The questioning continued, and Techno shifted a few times before glancing at the screen. Rolled his eyes. The defense lawyer was actually trying to convince everyone that the girls had been doing what they did out of self-defense. Claimed that the video could easily have been edited, that Tommy was a bad kid and he had to make some sort of suspicious comments in the past.
Of course, that was when Ian came in. Sure, he asked the usual questions. He cross-examined Tommy gently. And then he called the girls to the stand.
Techno never thought that Ian could willingly make a girl cry, but he was wrong and Ian made six girls cry within the first thirty seconds of questioning each of them.
And when he got to the ringleader of the group, Ashleigh…hoo boy. Techno was not expecting Ian’s first response.
Grabbing the heel that had been used to nearly break Tommy’s skull and gave him the concussion, Ian snapped, “Does this look familiar, Ashleigh? Hmm?” He turned the heel over in his hands, then turned to the girl again. “Were you wearing this heel on the day of the attack?”
“Yes.”
“And were you wearing these shoes when you were walking home?”
“No.”
“What were you wearing?”
“I was wearing a pair of sneakers. It’s not comfortable to walk home in heels.”
“Right.” Holding the heel like a weapon, Ian added, “So where were you keeping this heel? In your backpack, zipped up in a pocket?”
“Yes.”
“And you’ve taken self-defense classes?”
“Yes.”
“So why is it that, as someone with a self-defense class’ worth of training, you decided to go to a heel kept in your backpack?” He continued on. Why did Ashleigh continue to attack as soon as Tommy was on the ground, instead of running? Why did Ashleigh have texts that planned the attack if Tommy was the one who had assaulted them?
It was sort of cut and dry, but eventually Tommy ended up hacking. The judge dismissed him, clearly seeing that he was having a medical episode of sorts as Kristin’s friend was checking in on him. So they turned off the Zoom, Techno kept checking his messages religiously as Tommy kept trying to do some breathing exercises.
“Alright, Toms. No matter how this turns out, I’ll get you some McDonalds. Feel like your usual?” There was a nod, and Techno started the order. He didn’t trust anyone, but also that way if anyone ever accused Kristin’s friend of inappropriate bedside manner Techno could speak for himself and tell them to back off.
Tommy coughed again, wheezed a bit.
+++
They won the case.
Of course they did. And so, they were sitting in Tommy’s room, chowing down on McDonalds even though that was not even close to healthy. But the ice cream would probably help Tommy’s throat with whatever ache there was. Besides, he was happy. That was good enough.
Ian and the nurse both toasted one another with their McFlurrys. Snickering, Techno looked to Tommy. Ruffled the young man’s hair. Grinning, Tommy nudged him as best he could. Techno grinned right back at him. Shoved some ice cream in his mouth.
At least this way he didn’t have to destroy anyone.