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The cold was such a fickle thing.
Tommy lied on the white blanket of snow, a hand half obscuring his vision to block out the sun rays that managed to peek through the clouds.
It was a good day - his bones and limbs always seemed to creak and shake when the weather gets cold, but it wasn’t so bad today. It was the perfect temperature to wear his favourite blue sweater, he liked the way the long, large sleeves ran past his fingers.
It was a good day, that was, until Tommy fell.
Maybe it was a misstep, maybe his feet just somehow stumbled over each other, or maybe it was on purpose because the view of the white, unbroken snow seemed too pure and just had to be ruined by Tommy (Dream always used to tell him that Tommy just had the tendency to ruin everything).
He doesn’t really know.
But now he is here. Wet, freezing, lying in midst of the snow.
The sensation of the cold seeping slowly into his fingers was not an unfamiliar one.
Tommy closed his eyes.
(Flashes of the dark obsidian walls, the sound of his skull bouncing against the prison floor. The view of a white white white white white mask that obscured his view. The sensation of his body jolting against the floor, punch after punch.)
He opened his eyes.
Tommy had always hoped his death would be a quick one. He had long given up praying for a painless death - something like old age, or illness. The world wasn’t so kind to soldiers like him, to kids like him. The idea of death was always faint but a steady presence in his mind.
(Memories of an explosion. Of an older brother. Of a sword piercing through a fragile chest. Of bright white wings covering the view of a living man. Of the faint remnants of a smile across the face of a corpse.)
You can say Tommy was familiar with death. An old friend, if you must. And so, it wasn’t uncommon for his mind to drift towards theories of how he would eventually pass. Perhaps an arrow through the chest or a sword stabbed through the back? There were many, many cruel possibilities. But when Tommy remained motionless against the prison floor, arms sprawled like broken wings beside him, he didn’t really suspect that he would die by a potato .
To be honest, there came a point where he could no longer tell the difference between Dream’s fist and the potato. His memories and vision were blurred at that point, and the pain had all felt the same. Yet, what he could vividly recall was the experience leading up to death.
It was cold.
It was like he was hyperaware of every single sensation across his body.
Tommy could hear, well, feel the blood gushing from his broken head. He could feel the tingling in his fingers, growing into eventual numbness. He could feel himself freeze and tremor, just like he was in the snow now, inch by inch. Like his body’s warmth was sapped away. The once overbearing suffocating air in the room had quickly turned into an overwhelming cold. It was as if a ghost of his breath was escaping from each stuttered gasp of pain, like how one would see the condensation of their breath on a snowy day.
One blink, he watched Dream’s fist descend towards him, the dark obsidian walls a backdrop in this ongoing nightmare. The next blink, a flash of white, before darkness.
And then a sound of a voice, the sound of a hero family brother brother brother soldier leader musician love home familiar friend echoing, ‘Tommy?’
Tommy, alive and breathing in the snow, hadn’t realised when his eyelids had closed.
And so, coldness and death walked hand in hand. Tommy was well-acquainted with both.
When he opens his eyes once again, his arms were now stiff and aching from lying in the snow. For a brief ephemeral moment, he felt like he wasn’t there.
He felt like he was back in a colourless void, with a familiar stranger of a family, holding a deck of cards.
But that moment too had passed as quickly as it came, while Tommy found himself blearily staring up at the sun once again.
With a stretch of his arms, straightening like how a bird will to its wings, Tommy’s fingers brushed off the remnants of snow dust on his damp clothing, and walked back home.
What Tommy wouldn’t tell a single soul was that before the cold, he remembered the heat. The blistering feverish air from the black-bricked prison lava, the warmth of the blood that dripped from his nose, the heat from Dream’s hands that were tight around his neck.
Perhaps that was why the white, cold snow was welcomed so openly in Tommy’s arms.
It felt like death, but it was so foreign. Tommy could do with some change.