Chapter Text
Tommyinnit was followed by misfortune. Anything that had ever happened to him ended in disaster. At first in his life, it was minor inconveniences, like when he was four and his mother made him a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. He was walking through the kitchen, toward the dining room, nearly reaching his seat right next to the window. Before he could reach it though, the family cat walked right in front of him and he tripped, dropping his sandwich which painted the previously white tile with the orangey brown tint of peanut butter and the ripe purple color of jelly. His mom had made him clean up the mess, and in the end, he didn’t get lunch that day.
Then when he was seven, he’d gotten into a disagreement with the principal’s son about what was the best insect. Tommy had said it was a moth, but the other kid disagreed saying stinkbugs were cooler than moths. By the end of the altercation, Tommy was seeing red, and the principal’s son seemed just as upset. So, it wasn’t relatively surprising when Tommy was called into the principal’s office the next day. What was surprising was Tommy immediately being yelled at for “endangering” the other kids.
Tommy had skimmed through his memory to find where he did something that could’ve gotten anyone hurt, but he came up empty-handed. So, when he asked her what he did, her response just made him even more confused. She said that he had brought a knife to school and was showing it off to all the other boys. Tommy was unsure of what to say exactly because he hadn’t done that, so he asked her who had told her that.
“My son and his friends came crying to me after school saying you brought a knife to the school and were bragging about it to your friends, then when they tried to tell you that was against the rules you threatened them.” The principal had believed her son and his friends and Tommy had to switch homerooms to the “troubled kids” homeroom, Tommy had gotten “possibly violent” written on his record.
However inconvenient, those occurrences were minuscule compared to what happened when he was nine. His family was going on a road trip, and at first, it started fun with waterparks and fancy hotel rooms. Then when his dad was driving down the highway late at night with him in the back seat and his mom playing on her phone in the front, Tommy had seen bright lights in front of their car and heard a very loud honk, before the pain had spread across his body like a million tiny bugs. He could recall hearing someone screaming, and he still has no idea whether that screaming was his own. Then it suddenly went quiet as if every living being on this earth had decided to play the quiet game.
After a second, however, the silence stopped and was replaced by a wide array of sounds Tommy hadn’t even heard before. The cool darkness that came along with the silence was replaced by an unbearable heat, that made it hard to breathe.
When he opened his eyes, his environment was completely different. It looked like he was underground with geysers littered across the floor. There seemed to be a palace to left with lovely lanterns and gardens that seemed to be bigger than his school, but most importantly he was in a line, that seemed to span the same amount of distance that is between the earth and the moon.
Tommy couldn’t even see what everyone was waiting for because the other people seemed to tower over him. He remembers his parents getting in the line right behind him and he knows that they were sobbing. His parents went to church a lot and had told him a few myths of the Afterlife that seemed pretty bad so if Tommy had to assume he’d guess that’s why they were crying. Before he could get a proper answer, however, he was yanked back into the peaceful silence. He couldn’t appreciate that for too long though because after a short second the silence disappeared and was substituted with his body feeling like it was on fire. Although he didn’t know whether that first scream was his, he knew the rest were.
After the crash everything was a blur, he remembers being in the hospital for a few weeks and two days after arriving at the hospital he was told that his parents had passed away, Tommy wasn’t shocked, he had assumed the weird ass place he appeared in though briefly was the Afterlife and if his parents were there it meant they weren’t here anymore. It still hurt, having the small hope that the place he saw wasn’t just a dream or something odd like that, knowing that he’d never see his mother’s warm smile or watch another shitty television show with his dad.
Once he was discharged, he was bounced around in the foster system for a couple of years before he was eventually put into a group home where he met a boy named Tubbo. He and Tubbo were both at the bottom of the social hierarchy of their group home, they were both picked on a lot by the other boys, and they both liked to go outside in the garden to look for insects even though Tubbo looked for bees and Tommy looked for butterflies, they still got along better than anyone else Tommy had ever talked too.
Tubbo didn’t mind him loudly calling him a bitch and Tommy didn’t mind Tubbo’s chaos, hell Tommy joined in on his random pranks on the other boys in the home, no matter the trouble he’d get in after. Tommy hadn’t had a best friend until Tubbo, and he finally understood why everyone spent so long glued to their best friend’s side. It was no longer just Tommy or just Tubbo, if you want to talk to one of them, you end up talking to both of them.
So, Tommy grew up, and though many things changed about him one thing stayed the same, he was a misfortune magnet. He found himself in dangerous situations daily and didn’t always have Tubbo by his side to save him. After dying for the first time, death seemed to follow him and test him to see if he’d come back when he went to the Afterlife. So far, the answer was yes, he would survive the bullshit life threw at him. Tubbo liked to remind him that he shouldn’t try to test it because one day he might not come back, Tommy wasn’t really worried but because he was a good best friend (and not because he was scared of Tubbo) he listened and tried to stay out of danger. That didn’t usually work, because danger clung to him like glitter.
Like right now, the fact that he has a gun to his head isn’t his fault, sure he called the guy who’s currently holding the gun to his head a bitch, but he was just being honest.
“Give me all the money in your wallet, pal and we won’t have any trouble.” The guy angrily said through gritted teeth. He was wearing a mask covering the bottom part of his face so Tommy could only see his eyes, they were a shade of dark brown that almost blended in with his pupils.
“I don’t know big man; it seems like you are already making trouble,” Tommy replied casually. He’s going to get shot either way might as well piss the man off as much as possible before he dies.
Looking the man up and down, Tommy reckons he could take him in a fight. A plan starts forming in the back of his head because even if he does come back, dying isn’t very fun. Tubbo would also be less pissed if Tommy doesn’t die.
"Don’t be an idiot, kid just hand me your wallet” The bitch tells him.
“I’m not a fucking kid!” Tommy exclaimed now getting a stronger urge to punch the man in the face. Before the wrong’un could reply, however, Tommy swiftly grabbed his arm holding the gun, and twists it in a way that the gun is aimed away from him.
The absolute wrong’un goes to punch but Tommy ducks just in time so rather than his face, the man’s fist hits the brick wall behind Tommy. Then Tommy maneuvers his way to where his back is to the street and the wrong’un has his back to the wall. So then like the big man Tommy is, he kicks the guy in the leg causing him to fall backward, hitting his head and Tommy is sure he saw some blood.
Taking the opportunity to escape, he bolts away from the man and turns down a few alleys just to make sure that he lost the man in case he followed. Once he’s far away enough he looks around and recognizes the streets around him, he’s not too far from the apartment, he could probably make it there in around fifteen minutes.
Well, at least Tubbo’s not going to be too mad.