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The tinnitus of the explosion is still ricocheting in Dream’s ears when the over-proud smile is struck from his face like he’s been slapped. The cut-short screams of Tommy and Tubbo have died out, Wilbur has taken off out of the burst explosion hole in the side of the Final Control Room after a bloodied Eret.
“Dream!” A scream. Pained. He does not like the sound of pain in this voice. It doesn’t feel good, it doesn’t thrill him with adrenaline the same way the fire of rage in Wilbur’s eyes did, the same way Tommy’s angry raised voice flooded him with flame and excitement.
It feels like clarity. Sharp, cold, painful clarity with the silver background wire of tinnitus cutting through the edges of his consciousness.
“Dream, what the fuck did you do?” Sapnap is screaming at him. It is rage and hurt, not excitement and victory. He’s fully armoured, knelt on the ground spattered with shrapnel scrapes and soot, he clutched Tommy’s mangled body to him like holding him tight enough will reverse the past minute and a half and bring him back.
“Dream, he’s dead! He’s fucking dead, Dream, what did you do? This was too far! He’s a kid, what the fuck-”
The smoke-shape of Ranboo eases in to the side, flitting toward Tubbo, solidifying and gently picking him from the ground, pressing fingers to his throat and visibly relaxing at the pulse. He was lucky, and by lucky, it means that Tommy threw himself between Tubbo and the explosion, enough to save one of them, at least.
Sapnap’s fingers dig into the bloodied, charred remains of Tommy, blond hair stained rough sooty by dust and sprays of blood.
“This is your fucking fault, Dream,” Sapnap sneers, standing uneasily, holding Tommy’s limp body. Ranboo makes a distressed noise, reaches for him, but can’t move where he’s cradling Tubbo’s broken form too.
“We did this. We killed him. We went too far. You killed him, Dream,”
He takes a step. Blood drips from the tips of Tommy’s fingers.
“Fix him.” Sapnap demands shakily. “I- you- fix this. Fix him. FIX HIM.”
Dream has not moved. There’s a cold rush of memory, like this has happened before, a little differently last time. Last time, there was no Ranboo. Last time, there was no explosion. It was swords and potions and gritted teeth and-
It overlays. The memory of Wilbur, once, long ago in another world. Maybe that’s where he got the idea, when he convinced Eret to join forces with them and crush out the kids with no idea what they were doing. After all, Eret has seen the rise of the Greater Kingdom, they’ve seen what disparate pieces can do to a community. Children fighting for power, Dream had told them. There is only one way to stop belligerent children, the same way to gain the respect of wolves- a show of power. A threat, intimidation, show them who the strongest is, and how not to fuck with them.
All Eret wanted was peace. All Dream wanted was control. He’d reasoned with himself, not aloud, that they do not need to live for him to have control.
Sapnap is crying. In that moment of control, he had forgotten that the world is bigger than just him, just his desires.
He has to fix this.
“George!“ he turns, shouts.
“Dream-” says Sapnap, and Dream shakes his head.
“I’m- I can’t fix anything. Not without him, he’s the one that knows-“
Flame burns up the back of Sapnap’s plate armour. It’ll be a couple of years before he’s truly able to understand and control the phoenix within him, longer before he’ll realise what he can truly do.
“George!” Dream shouts again, louder this time. From down the hill, clutching the moss cloak around himself and spattered with soot up one side, glasses cracked, George staggers.
“What was that?” He coughs, crawling. Dream offers a hand out to him, takes his wrist when he’s given it. “Dream- what was that explosion?”
“He lied to us,” Sapnap spits, “It wasn’t a show of power. It was an attempted massacre.”
“What- Tommy,” George says, horrified, pushing past Dream to Sapnap’s side where he holds the body, shaking, trembling. From Tommy’s body, he looks back to Dream, eyes wide where he’s pushed the glasses up, horrified. He takes a half-step back. Dream thinks he’s been punched in the chest for a moment before he realises that the pain isn’t physical.
“Get him outside,” George says, snapping into focus, “Up on the green. I’ll follow you in a minute- Dream- Dream, get- go. Go out. There.” He does not look at Dream, who nods, and clambers out. In the distance, he can see Wilbur, a blaze of brown trenchcoat, stood on a crumbling wall. He can hear the echoes of his called spell, sung notes into the autumn day, sees Eret stood still- frozen, fighting the magic- and then he sees them drawn down to their knees like gravity becomes too much. He looks away.
In the ruins of the control room, George drops beside Ranboo and Tubbo.
“How hurt is he?” George asks Ranboo, who swallows.
“I don’t know. I can’t tell. He’s alive, but his pulse is weak.”
George pulls a pouch from the inside of his cloak, riffles within.
“Find the worst wound, I’m going to need as much as I can for Tommy.”
Ranboo’s hands roam immediately, pressing over patches of blood, fingers digging into tears before he finds what’s making Tubbo’s breath so weak.
“Here,” he says, hands shaking over a puncture in his chest. He’s covered in shrapnel scrapes, but this is a piercing wound, probably caught his lungs.
George grimaces as he tips a little red peat moss into his palm, drags a little bottle out to put it in. A couple of mistletoe berries join it, and with shaking hands, a tiny amount of holy water. Just a couple of drops, so he can crush it to a slurry with a glass rod. Back in the pouch, he pulls a thick, dry green chunk out and murmurs the words to revive it, thickening it back to gel and bright green. A knife, he slices the top and bottom to leave just the gel behind, manages to force that into the jar and hands half of the aloe leaf to Ranboo to hold whilst he tears Tubbo’s shirt around the wound and slathers the liquid over the worst of the wounds. He murmurs a few words as he does, watches it tinge with blue-green light, and sets the empty bottle down to take the leaf. With his fingernail, he writes out the simplified runes he needs for healing. It’s not a hard spell, not really, but he worries so much and Tubbo is so hurt and Tommy is dead and-
He slaps the green of the leaf over the wound and pushes, blue-green light spilling down his arms and into the goop. Tubbo’s breathing eases, and though the light dims, it does not die.
“It’s- that’ll- that’ll take a bit to properly kick in,” George straightens, tucking the pouch back in the moss cloak. “If you have a home left to take him to, you should.”
“Right,” Ranboo gathers Tubbo up, knows there’s worse to come. No thought passes in his head. He simply does as he’s told, bursting into purple glitter and light and dust and disappearing.
George climbs to the top of the hill, overlooking the river. Wilbur, distant, is stood over Eret. George doesn’t have the space to think about it, ducks and snags a wilted dandelion leaf from the floor and wraps it around the ring of copper on his finger, presses until it leaves a darkened line of crushed plant cells.
“Wilbur,” he whispers into it, “You’re needed on the hill. Revenge can wait, Tommy can’t.”
A whisper of magic follows it, he watches the leaf shift and shape itself like a bird and coast on the breeze across the town. It can’t be more than a hundred feet, a hundred and ten at most. George doesn’t stop to watch the message hit him.
At the top of the hill in the autumn breeze, Dream is sat ten feet from the spot where Sapnap has laid Tommy out on his own cloak. Hands shaking, chest seizing, refusing to look away from Tommy to shoot Dream venomous looks. George kneels beside him, lays a hand over Sapnap’s on Tommy’s side, curls his fingers around his palm.
“We’re going to fix this,” he says, quiet. Sapnap leans into him. There is no banter, no competition, nothing like they usually are. He is afraid. George doesn’t blame him.
“Where’s Wilbur? Quackity? Tubbo?”
“Tubbo can’t do this.” George shakes his head, “I don’t know how long before he’s conscious. I haven’t seen Quackity today. Sam?”
“He’s out at the Badlands,” Sapnap says, with bite, “Dream didn’t want the Badlands coming to help L’Manberg. I understand why, now.”
George sighs, and it catches on the faint burns of the healing spell from below. It was minor, compared to other healing spells he has done, will do, but it still burns when it pours from him. He coughs, and Sapnap turns to him almost sharply.
“Did you get hurt in the explosion?”
“No, I was too low,” George grimaces, “I’m fine, it’s just the magic.”
Sapnap, Wilbur if he comes. They need a third. They needed Tubbo, but he can’t make it. George has barely seen Fundy, chasing Punz through the streets.
“Techno?” George asks Sapnap, “Is he here? What about Niki?”
“Techno was warring it out with- someone. I don’t know. Niki- Niki-” Sapnap stands, glancing around. The position they’re in is pretty good, up here. He has a good view of the mangled road where the explosives had been laid, of the boys’ house, of the foundations of the watch tower. Purpled is there, now, bow drawn back and firing at someone below. Probably Punz.
Distant, he spies a flash of pink hair between buildings, rushing after Wilbur as he begins the trek up the hill.
“She’s here,” he says, “She’s coming.”
George sheds the moss cloak. Pulls out his pouches and begins to mix.
Diamond dust- he’s running low- a staple for resurrections. Ancient strength mixed with something quicker, brighter- sugar. Sugar is good for a burst of energy, but two powders, he needs a liquid. Honey would serve the same purpose as honey, but he thinks the holy water would add more depth. It’s blessed by Niki under the ideal of peace, after all, and it has a personal aspect alongside protection of a soul. A fruit would help, a little representative of life- he has blueberries, wild strawberries, blackcurrants, but he selects a raspberry. The color, closer to red, but tart, not sweet- a little bite, like Tommy has behind him.
He mixes it, frowns at the paste. He needs something else. Something grounding, something to tie it to the earth. A flower, something floral. He considers borage. Courage and power, two things that Tommy has always had in droves. He has never known when to quit, or if he does, he refuses to. Even in the bleakest of fights, he does not surrender, he stands and he raises his sword and he’s brave and loyal and borage isn’t enough.
He selects red freesias. They have similar undertones of courage, but they hold ideals of trust, of freedom, of friendship, and that loyalty and bravery for his friends is something that encompasses all that Tommy holds dear. The core of himself that blazes like a fire. George mixes them into the paste as Wilbur and Niki come over the hill. Dream is still sat aside, frozen.
“I’m going to fucking kill you,” Wilbur snarls at Dream, “When this is done. I’m going to kill you.”
“Enough,” Niki shoulders him, face twisted, “Enough death. Enough killing. Enough, for today.”
“Revenge can wait,” George agrees, not taking his eyes from his supplies. He adds a pinch of silver dust, a pinch of gold. He hopes that Tommy’s mind isn’t too fucked up from the death.
He needs a scatter. Something different to the freesias, something new, something stronger. To mix with the lightning charcoal, he needs… something personal. What could be that for Tommy?
“Wilbur,” he says, sharp, “What’s your favourite flower?”
“What?”
“For the scatter. Your favourite, or- or something, a memory with Tommy.”
There’s a few seconds of pause as Wilbur visibly focuses, hands clenched into fists at Tommy’s side.
“Not mine,” he says at last, “Ranboo’s. Alliums.”
“Alliums?” George asks, already reaching in his bag. He knows he doesn’t have alliums, but he might be able to transmute the chives he has.
“When Ranboo first turned up, he gave Tommy an allium. Like a peace offering.” Wilbur shakes his head, “That’s as close as I can get.”
“I can help,” Niki tells George, “With the resurrection.”
“I need you to make an offering for him,” George replies, strained, as he pulls the chives out and sets them down, withdraws the tiny bottle of truffle oil and dabs the tiniest amount on one finger, screws the cap closed again with the free hand. Pulls the pouch of saffron and takes a pinch with the oiled finger and thumb, crinkles and crushes it over the chives with a quiet murmur, focusing on the big purple puffs of the allium. It’s easier to transmute flowers in similar families, though it’s hardly easy, but he manages it. Eventually, or maybe only a few seconds later, the saffron burns into the stems and the flowers glow blue-green as they swell and grow into puffballs of lilac, and George exhales the last of the spell over the alliums. There is almost certainly burns by his eyes now, but that can wait.
He looses the individual blooms from the main stem with a small paring knife that he’d usually use for meat. It’s the first to hand, and he doesn’t care, he scatters them across Tommy’s body with the lightning charcoal and an additional pinch of diamond dust. Then, he begins to write out his runes with the paste, urging Sapnap, Wilbur, and Niki back. The fact that Niki is sat between Sapnap and Wilbur is likely the only thing stopping Wilbur from punching Sapnap in the jaw.
The wind whistles quietly. It feels wrong to be doing this in the daylight, like nothing this aching or tragic should be seen by the sunlight. Niki is holding Wilbur’s hand so tight, both their knuckles are white. Sapnap’s hands clench and unclench against his thighs. Dream is silent.
The runes are written, the northmark scrawled onto Tommy’s forehead and he straightens.
“I’m ready,” he says, quiet, “Are you?”
Niki nods. Wilbur doesn’t reply.
“Who’s first?” Sapnap says, instead of answering. When there is silence for a few seconds, he exhales. “Fine. I’ll do it.”
“You?” Wilbur snaps, bitter, and Sapnap sneers at him.
“Me.”
No logic, no reasoning, he just pushes to his feet and steps over toward Tommy’s body.
“Cast, George.”
George nods, and begins to recite. Blue-green light spills from his eyes, his mouth, casts down to the lines of the paste and across, around Tommy’s body. The wounds begin to close over, sewn in strings of bright light, and Sapnap stands over him, armor abandoned, shield pulled up beside him.
He takes a breath. This is not his strong suit. Fighting, that kind of loyalty, that’s what Sapnap is good at. This kind of vulnerability-
“Tommy,” his voice sounds rough, “This wasn’t fair. This wasn’t a fair fight. You didn’t deserve this, and- and you’re still needed, here. There’s people that love you. People that’d miss you. I’d miss you- I dunno, man, I know we’ve been on opposite sides but I didn’t think it’d go this far. So how’s this-”
He sets the shield down. It bears the symbol of the Dream Team, and the blue-green flames flicker around it.
“I don’t wanna be opposite you anymore. I think you’d like it, havin’ his best friend defect to your side ‘cause he likes you so much- and I do. You’re a little shit, but you’re brave, and I have a lot of respect for you. So come back, and we can rub it in his face just how important you are. Come back, because- because I don’t wanna go through whatever life we’ve left without you bein’ a menace.”
There is a flare of light as he steps back, eating at the shield until it turns to dust. The offering has taken, and Sapnap, shaking, returns to the lines of waiting. Wilbur does not glare at him anymore, at least.
Niki moves up next.
Niki is among the newer residents of L’Manberg, she has little to give in terms of physical possessions. She’s no stranger to performing resurrections, exactly- really, even one means you’re not a stranger, but she’s done a couple of them. She crouches at Tommy’s side, then kneels, then sets a hand on his shoulder.
“I don’t know what I could give you,” it’s said like a laugh, “I know you wouldn’t want to take anything from me. Do you remember when I first arrived, and you and I spent days out planning and building the roads? Do you remember picking the trees we wanted for the edges of the town? Do you remember that every time I’ve felt like I don’t belong, I turn around and you’re there to remind me this is my home?”
She leans closer, her voice drops.
“Don’t tell Wilbur, but I think he thinks he’s the hero, and you’re his sidekick. I think he has it the wrong way around- I think he’s the sidekick. I don’t have anything I can give to you, nothing physical, but I can give you a promise, maybe?”
Unsure. But she must offer, must give something.
“Anything you want, really. I can bake you a cake, we can go hunting together- even if Wilbur says no- we could plant some flowers, some trees, I could make you a new bow. Whatever you want, when you come home. Not if.”
No begging. She knows better than to beg- to beg Tommy is to bait his reluctance. He responds with the promise of treats, responds to bribery and loyalty. The fire under her burns, raises a good two feet, taking the words like an offering despite the lack of physicality.
She drops back. Sapnap presses his shoulder to hers, and she returns the gesture. The two of them don’t get along, not all the time, too many terrorised pets- but they still like each other. Sapnap has always thought he’d have their backs. He didn’t have their backs this time, and he’ll repent for that for years to come.
Wilbur sweeps his jacket off as he steps up.
“This just isn’t right,” It’s meant to come out joking, but it just sounds bitter, “You shouldn’t’ve died before me, Tommy. We have to fix that.”
A pause. He kneels. The flames flicker at the edge of his jacket as he sets it on Tommy’s middle.
“I can blame Dream for this until the day I die,” he says, quiet, “But it’s just as much my fault. This whole thing, L’Manberg, Schlatt- I lost sight of you. Of my brother, the most important thing, you have always been the most important thing and I forgot in all my bluster to make sure that before everything else, you were happy and safe. It’s not fair. It’s not right. I don’t have the right to ask you for a second chance, but I’ve always been one to push my limits a bit, right?”
Wilbur shakes his head.
“I’m asking you to come back to give me a second chance. And I’m asking you to come back because I can’t handle Tubbo crying. And I’m asking you to come back because Phil isn’t here right now, and he deserves to get to say goodbye to you, too. Give me a second chance, Tommy?”
He swallows.
“Please?”
A few long seconds. The fires flicker, George recites in the daylight. Wilbur thinks that somewhere, Phil feels the knell of Tommy’s death and is rushing home.
The fire takes to the jacket and bursts into a pyre, sending Wilbur scattering backwards. Niki catches him by the shoulder and holds and waits as the flames only grow, George’s voice swells with volume and he takes hold of the threads of light, the anchors to life they’ve left behind in the body, and he jumps into the starlight.
A step. Two, tracing pathways through the stars above him, clutching the thread. The fog bank of death looms ahead, but he pauses, hearing an echo of a voice.
“...Finally struck him. Oh, Prime, I was worried that we would fall here like we had long before.”
“This already happened, ” A second voice, “This was years ago.”
“And it hasn’t happened yet,” the first agrees, “But this moment saved him, saved them all. It is the closest that XD has come to prevailing yet. But-”
“Quiet” the second voice snaps, “We have company.”
Then silence. The words swim in George’s head, but he pushes on toward death.
He crosses the fog bank and feels the swell of cold water, ice against his ankles, he listens and looks across the grey horizon.
He sees it. He doesn’t know how far, but he walks, careful, on the slick pebbles and rocks of the riverbed toward the glow of pale-red flame. It’s a flicker, sputtering in the water as the gentle current pulls at it.
“Tommy,” he calls, and the flame twists, flickers as though in his direction. George reaches out as he grows closer, and the flame spills into his hand, singes the edges of the thread to itself. It burns when George holds it, but it’s comforting, warm against all of the cold. If Tommy did not want to come back, he would not have been found, and so George does not waste time asking. He straightens and makes for the fog bank, traces his path back through Orion, around Scorpius, and plunges back through the doorway.
The runes and the marks burn in the daylight, like the sun has been pressed into them. George shouts the final words over the whistle of the wind, screams them so loud he can barely hear himself for the burning and the pyre grows-
Grows-
Overtakes all vision-
And fades, slowly. George slumps, unconscious. Tommy sits up, gasping for breath, one hand going to his chest and throat to feel for wounds that aren’t there anymore.
Niki cries.
Sapnap cries.
“What the fuuuuuuck!?” Tommy yells, voice rough, “Was I fucking dead?”