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Chapter Text

The Anywhere key works with any door to create a passage to wherever you wish to go, someone had written, in a journal hidden somewhere in Key House.

---

“Remind me, why is this place called Key House?” Techno asked, surveying his family’s new home with skepticism. It had been a long drive from Essempi to this rural area on the outskirts of Manberg over the last three days, and his first glimpse of Key House in the evening light was both impressive and unsettling.  

The massive, stately old mansion rose imposingly above the woods and fields surrounding it. It was the only house visible in any direction, due to both the sheer size of the grounds and the lush foliage of waning summer. The building was not exactly … moldering, but it also could not be said to be in pristine condition. 

“I’m not completely sure,” his father admitted as he pulled another suitcase out of the dark green SUV.

“I remember hearing that it’s actually a corruption of Quay, on account of the dock on the river bordering the far side of the property,” Phil continued. “Back when Key House was built, oh, in your great-great- - maybe I’m missing one great? - grandparents’ time, having a private quay was quite unusual, so the name probably got attached to the house.”

“Is Aunt Puffy still here?” Wilbur asked as he came to stand next to his twin, squinting up at the building with trepidation. 

“Not anymore,” Phil replied, retrieving the last suitcase and shutting the SUV’s hatch door. “She was just staying here for a while to oversee the renovations, but she moved back to her home in the suburbs after they wrapped up last month. This place is big even for us, mate. It’s just way too large for one person.”

“Renovations?” Techno drawled.

“Wow, what did the place look like before?” Wilbur said, his voice aghast as he struggled to keep a straight face. 

“Oh hush, both of you,” Phil cuffed Wilbur’s head lightly, since he was nearest. “The house still needs some TLC, it’s true, but Puffy said the contractors did a really nice job updating the living spaces. Now that we’re here, it will be much easier to get additional work done rather than asking poor Puffy to keep commuting all this way. Now come on, help me grab these suitcases. Let’s get inside and join your mom and brother before it gets dark.”

---

The insides of Key House were a lot nicer than the rickety-looking exterior had suggested, Tommy grudgingly admitted to himself. There were a huge number of rooms arranged in a rather confusing maze, but the renovated main living and dining area were done up with warm lighting and soft furnishings, making it seem cozy and welcoming. 

But it could never be as nice and homey as their old, ordinary suburban house back in Essempi had been, Tommy thought sourly. 

It was only cold consolation that his older brothers didn’t seem that enthused by their new home, either. After all, it was Wilbur and Techno’s fault that the family had to move out here, away from the peaceful, tree-lined neighborhood where they had all grown up, away from all of Tommy’s friends, and away from the high school that he had always expected to attend as part of the gang. 

But Phil and Kristin seemed determined to be happy about the move and, even more annoyingly, to spin everything in a positive light. 

“This place hasn’t been a working farm since my great-grandparents lived here,” Phil said, his face bright with enthusiasm as he passed a serving platter across the huge oak table in the kitchen. “My parents always wanted to bring the farm back to life, but their jobs never allowed them the time. I thought it would be the same story for me, but now we have the chance to make it reality.”

Techno hummed noncommittally, and Wilbur eyed their father skeptically. “But would you still have decided to do that if we’d decided to go to university in Essempi instead of here in Manberg?” 

Phil’s smile dimmed at his words, and Tommy frowned fiercely down at his dinner plate.

“Boys, we’ve talked about this,” Kristin said, her tone pleasant but the underlying steel audible to all. “We don’t need to start our first night at our new home by arguing again. We need to look at the move to Key House from the right perspective, as a fresh start for all of us. It’s going to give us all peace of mind when Wilbur and Techno are at college, since Manberg University is just an hour’s drive away from Key House instead of a six-hour flight from Essempi. And moving into the Crafts’ ancestral home gives us a really lovely and unique opportunity to be closer to the family’s heritage.”

“My thoughts exactly,” Phil said, smiling softly at his wife. 

Neither Wilbur or Techno ventured any further comments. Tommy resumed pushing his dinner around on his plate, half-listening as his parents started talking about opportunities in small-scale organic farming.

---

“This used to be my room, you know.” 

Tommy looked up at where his father stood, leaning against the door frame, watching him unpack with a small smile. 

“Really?” Tommy frowned. “I thought you didn’t live here before.”

“Not permanently, no,” Phil said, straightening and making his way into the room. “But my grandparents did. They were the last in our family to live here full-time. So your Aunt Puffy and I had our own rooms here, where we’d stay whenever we came to visit them. We used to spend most of our summer holidays here when we were growing up.”

“So all this stuff on the shelves and closets, that’s your old stuff?” Tommy asked, interested despite himself. 

“Yeah,” Phil pulled a random book off the shelf and grinned as he flipped through it. “Oh, I’d forgotten about these novels! I used to love them. You should go through this stuff over the summer, mate, you might find something you like.” 

“Did you have any games?” 

“There should be some board games and cards in the closet here –” Phil pulled open the closet door and coughed, waving his hand to dissipate the cloud of dust bunnies that emerged. “Now that brings back some memories.”

“Board games?” Tommy said scornfully.

“Sorry, no consoles from back then,” Phil said with a laugh. He sidestepped Tommy’s open suitcase and sat down on the edge of the bed. Tommy looked up at him from where he sat on the carpet, cross-legged by the suitcase. 

“Listen, Toms … I know you’re not thrilled about moving here,” Phil said after a moment, “but I really hope you give it a chance. I loved it here when I was your age, and I think you will as well, after we get settled in.”

Tommy stared into his half-emptied suitcase and said nothing, his hands clenching around the shirt he held. 

“Tomorrow I’ll take you out to the grounds and show you some of the cool stuff on the property, like the party tree and the dock. Does that sound good?”

Tommy sighed and mumbled, “Okay.”

Phil leaned forward to press a kiss to Tommy’s hair before standing up with a stretch. “Well, I’m going to go see if I can help your mom unpack a few more things before wrapping up for the day. We’ll be back up to say goodnight.” 

“Okay,” Tommy said as Phil knocked on the door frame before heading down the hallway. His gaze turned thoughtfully to the packed and dusty bookshelves. 

---

Half an hour later, Tommy headed downstairs with his most interesting find from the first bookshelf. It was actually an old journal or notebook of some sort that had belonged to Phil. From the dates on some of the pages, it looked like his father had written it when he had been maybe 17 or 18 – the twins’ age or a little younger. It was filled with interesting-looking sketches and snippets, but Tommy wanted to confirm with Phil that it was okay for him to read it. 

He barreled down the stairs and into the living room, where his brothers were lounging on the sofas, and took a seat on an open armchair. He had just opened his mouth to ask where Phil was when their mother walked in and Wilbur spoke up, clearly continuing an earlier conversation. 

“Listen to this, Mom – ‘the Manberg University dorms are organized into enrichment communities’,” Wilbur said, sounding as if he was reading from promotional material, “‘that are focused on different areas of interest including linguistics, theater and performing arts, robotics, and political science.’”

“Oh, that sounds perfect for you,” Kristin agreed as she carried an unopened moving box past them into the kitchen. “Are those activities only for on-campus students?”

“Well, no, but there are events in the evening that make more sense for people in the dorms,” Wilbur said, annoyance creeping into his tone.

“I’m sure those aren’t every day, though, right?” Kristin called as she vanished into the kitchen. 

“Sure, Mom,” Wilbur said with a huffed sigh. Techno rolled his eyes and half-smiled, but didn’t look up from his phone. 

Tommy hunched his shoulders as long-simmering irritation came back to the surface. Ever since the move had been decided, Phil and Kristin – but Kristin especially – had been dropping non-stop hints that the twins didn’t have to stay at the university dorms, that they could live at Key House and commute into campus if they wanted. The twins, intent on experiencing dorm life, had been pushing back firmly every time. 

Tommy was sick of it. 

“You know,” Tommy said acerbically after Kristin was out of earshot, “the only reason Mom and Dad moved us all out here to the middle of freaking nowhere was so you could go to your stupid Manberg University and not have to move out. You don’t need to keep throwing your stupid dorms back into their faces."

In his peripheral vision, he saw the twins shift in surprise at his tone and exchange a glance.

Wilbur sighed and put down his phone, rubbing his face with his hands. "Toms, we've talked about this before. It's perfectly normal for people to move out for college, and eventually get their own places. Mom and Dad are just … resisting change."

“Resisting change?” Tommy snorted incredulously. “Are you serious? They literally sold our house and moved thousands of miles, and it was 100% for you. This farm and ancestral heritage stuff is just them trying to put a spin on it. Just be honest, at least. You just don’t care about our family enough to even bother trying to stay here and commute like they want."

"That’s not fair, Tommy,” Techno interjected, looking annoyed, while Wilbur sputtered. “We love all of you. You know that.”

“Of course we love you, but that doesn't mean that family need to live together always,” Wilbur added, his voice caught between offense and dismay. “We have our own interests, our own dreams –"

“So what, your big dream is to go to Manberg U, right? Well, you’re doing it, big whoop. And you could have done it while living at Key House."

Techno sighed. 

"Okay, now just –" Wilbur snapped, frustrated, falling back against the sofa with an audible thump. "You’re not even trying to understand, or be fair. I'm not going to talk to you when you're like this."

"Fine,” Tommy said shortly. “Then just leave. That’s what you’ve been dying to do anyway.” 

But it was Tommy who stood, grabbing the journal, and stomped up the stairs back to his bedroom. 

—

The tension between Tommy and the twins had not eased by the morning of campus Move-In Day, that weekend. 

Tommy did not join the others in the kitchen for breakfast, instead sneaking in to grab a couple of muffins while Phil’s back was turned, and then out, to eat by himself in the mansion’s massive library. 

He also didn’t go outside to help the others load Wilbur and Techno’s luggage into the SUV.

Eventually, as they were tossing a few last items into the car and getting ready to go, Kristin had hunted him down in the library and forced him outside. 

At that point, Tommy dug in his heels. 

"Tommy, please get in the car," Phil said wearily from the driver’s seat. "We have to be there in time for registration, and we’re already running late."

"Aren't you looking forward to seeing your brothers' dorms?" Kristin asked coaxingly. She opened the rear door and gave Tommy a meaningful look, so that he could slide into the seat next to Techno. After waiting a beat, she climbed into the front passenger’s seat and shut the door, smiling at Tommy expectantly through the open window. 

“Just get in, runt,” Techno added, scowling. From his seat in the back row, Wilbur didn’t look up from his phone. 

And suddenly, all of it – the stupid phone, his brother’s tone, his mother’s expression – it was too much. His anger and frustration sparked, arcing to wither a fuse inside Tommy. "No, I’m not. I don’t care about seeing your stupid dorms!" he shouted. “And I’m not going!” 

He turned heel and sprinted up the drive, away from the house and out towards the fields. 

“Tommy!” 

“TOM!” 

“Tommy !”

His family’s voices melded into a single angry shout as they called after him, but Tommy didn’t stop. He heard the car door open and slam shut again, but didn’t hear any footsteps following behind him. 

Eventually, the voices faded, replaced by the heavy thud of his shoes on the dirt path and the sound of his own harsh breathing. 

Tommy didn’t stop running until he reached the massive oak tree by the barn – the one with the treehouse that his dad had pointed out during the tour of the grounds on their second day here. He collapsed at its base, clutching at the stitch in his side. His phone had been buzzing angrily in his pocket for several minutes. After a minute to catch his breath, he pulled it out, bracing for the flood of messages. 

Mom [8:55am]: Pls come back to car. We r late.

Mom [8:55am]: Tommy

Mom [8:56am]: Come back now

Mom [8:56am]: U r being so rude

Wilby [8:56am]: Toms, come back 2 car, we need to go

Wilby [8:56am]: Toms

Wilby [8:56am]: Toms

TechNO [8:57am]: Tommy, come back here. 

Wilby [8:57am]: Tommy

Mom [9:02am]: We r leaving now. Back in evening. 

Wilby [9:02am]: Tommy

Mom [9:04am]: Txted neighbor Sam that u r staying here. Go to their house if u need anything. 

Mom [9:05am]: Dsppntd in u, missing a big day for yr brothers

Mom [9:05am]: We will talk later

Tommy let his head fall back against the oak’s massive trunk, wincing as pieces of bark scraped against his skin.

Great. Now everyone was mad at him on top of everything else. 

None of them understood. Everyone else was excited to be here, for one reason or the other. The twins had their fucking college and their new life in their stupid fucking dorms; his parents had their ‘fresh start’ and their weird organic farming stuff. Not a single one of them seemed to understand that Tommy had absolutely no reason to want to be here. 

There was literally nothing. He had no friends, and nothing to do or even to look forward to in this shitty podunk town. No one – not his parents, not his brothers, not his aunt and cousins – had made any effort to try to understand his perspective. They were all just busy with their own stuff, as usual, and they just got angry when he wasn’t a perfectly cooperative little kid and his so-called bad attitude soured their plans. 

Well, let them. Tommy would find his own way, somehow. 

After a while, he walked slowly back towards the front of Key House, and stared out at the empty circular drive. 

Even though he had known what he would find, he still felt a stab of disappointment. There was no SUV, and no one in sight. It was mid-morning by then. The only sounds were the rustle of the wind through the trees and chirping of birds. 

He was alone.

Tommy turned and looked back at Key House. It had never looked so huge and creaky and ominous before. 

He couldn’t even go anywhere. The nearest house was almost a mile down the road. It belonged to that random neighbor guy who had stopped by with housewarming cookies a few days ago – what was his name again? Oh, right, Sam. Yeah, no, Tommy was not about to go visit him. 

And it was another 5 miles down the road to get into town. 

He squared his shoulders and walked back into the house, locking the front door behind him. He trudged back upstairs and into his room, where he collapsed onto the bed with a sigh. His hand hit something firm, and he turned to look. 

It was Phil’s old journal.  

With all the tension and activity in the past few days, Tommy had never gotten a chance to talk to his father and confirm he could read the old journal. Right now, filled with an unpleasant mixture of anger, resentment, and guilt, he found he no longer cared. He opened the book and settled in to read. 

After the first few pages, it was obvious that it was not a personal diary, which loosened the guilty knot in his stomach. Instead, it read like a traveler’s journal, filled with sketches of trees, buildings, random objects, and people. Each of the sketches was accompanied by notes – some just a few words, some whole paragraphs – about what or who it was, where Phil had seen it or them, and so on. Nothing too interesting, Tommy thought as he skimmed through the pages, except – 

A detailed drawing caught his eye, and he paused, turning to read the accompanying text.  

It was a description of a … magical key. 

Tommy frowned. His father worked as a professional writer, and Tommy knew from experience that Phil was a clever and gifted storyteller. But the way that this was written … it didn’t feel like ideas for a fantasy story, especially juxtaposed with all the very matter-of-fact notes about trees and old buildings and the crotchety town librarian. It felt real .

The Anywhere key works with any door to create a passage to wherever you wish to go, read the note next to a detailed, colored sketch of a golden key with a globe etched on the handle.

Create a passage? Tommy crinkled his nose. Didn’t all doors do that, like, by definition? Or … maybe it was one of those universal skeleton keys that could open any door?

To discover its secrets, look under the floor of Barbra’s house by the kitchen.

Barbra’s house? Who the hell was Barbra?

Maybe some old family friend or neighbor from when his dad was a kid. 

Tommy let out a frustrated sigh, the book dropping from his hand as he slumped back against the headboard. It must just be part of some story Phil had been drafting. 

It was a little funny that his dad would name a character Barbra though, he reflected. He remembered the name from stories Phil used to tell him about Key House when he was little – Phil and his grandmother had liked to name the birds who returned to Key House every season after famous singers: Diana and Aretha, Celine and Barbra. Tommy remembered, as a child, wrinkling his nose and asking Phil who those people all were and why they deserved to have birds named after them, while Kristin laughed and Wilbur feigned horror. 

Wait – Barbra’s house. Could it be a birdhouse ?

Tommy sat up, his interest piqued. Was there even a birdhouse by the kitchen? 

There was only one way to find out.

Tommy rolled off the bed and padded downstairs, his footsteps echoing loudly in the cavernous foyer and softening as he entered the kitchen. Compared to the rest of the house, the kitchen was open, bright, and sunny. Tommy liked it. There was no door to the outside in the kitchen proper, but there was one down through the mudroom. 

He went through that door, blinking in the brightness of the near-noontime sun. The wind had picked up a little since he went inside, and the shrubs and creepers near the door were swaying and rustling gently. He looked around, bracing himself for disappointment. After all, it might just be a story that Phil had been drafting – that was really the most likely explanation. And even if it wasn’t, a birdhouse his father had written about decades ago, when he was a teenager, might not still be here.

But … there was a birdhouse. Tommy gazed at it with a mixture of delight and trepidation. It was old, with faded and peeling paint – blue on the walls and red on the awning and trim. It was nestled under a window eave near the mudroom door. 

Could this be Barbra’s house? It was the only birdhouse Tommy could see … 

Look under the floor of Barbra’s house , the journal had said. That should mean inside the birdhouse, right? Not under it on the ground, he thought. 

The birdhouse was a little high up, so Tommy dragged a small step-ladder over and peered inside. Luckily it was unoccupied at the moment – there was an empty nest inside, though. Gingerly, Tommy reached under the nest and felt around the floor of the birdhouse. 

There was just wood. Tommy sighed and began to pull his hand out, careful not to disturb the nest.

And then - 

His fingers touched what felt like a metal hinge. Tommy frowned. A hinge should mean a door, right? He traced by the hinge until he felt a corner, and then pried open a wooden panel.

Holding his breath, he tentatively reached inside the panel, and Tommy’s fingers brushed against cold metal. His eyes widened in astonishment. He reached in further and his hand closed around the object – a key!

He carefully pulled it out, closed the panel underneath the nest, and stared at what he had found. 

The key was a pleasantly heavy weight in his hand. It had an unblemished golden sheen, despite what must have been years tucked into a birdhouse. The end of the key had an ornate small globe on its handle, just like in the sketch. 

Cheered by his find, Tommy headed back inside to his room.

Once there, he turned the key over in his hands, examining it carefully. If it was a skeleton key, where could he test it? Maybe he should have tried it on the mudroom door before coming back upstairs ….

But then, by chance, he stepped closer to his closet door. 

And a keyhole appeared.

Tommy startled. “What the fuck …?” he murmured. 

There had definitely not been a keyhole in the closet door a moment ago. Experimentally, Tommy pulled the key further away from the door …

… and the keyhole vanished, leaving a smooth, unmarred wooden finish. 

Tommy breathed in deeply and shut his eyes. He was imagining things.  He must be imagining things. Or maybe he was getting sick, and, and hallucinating or something. 

Except – 

He opened his eyes and moved the key towards the closet again, and the keyhole reappeared. 

This time, Tommy hesitantly inserted the key into the newly-reappeared keyhole. It fit smoothly, like it was made for it. 

“Here goes nothing,” he whispered, and turned the key. 

It clicked, the lock opening. 

Tommy took a deep breath, reached out, and opened the closet door. 

On the other side was not his closet but … a completely different room. 

Eyes wide with disbelief, Tommy opened the door wide and poked his head through to get a better look. 

The room on the other side was – thankfully – unoccupied, and it was definitely somewhere Tommy had never seen before. Stunned, he took another step inside, looking around. It was a compact, modern-looking bedroom with light gray walls. There was a single window with plastic blinds on the far side, and a wooden door – in a light color completely unlike those in Key House – opposite it. The room was about the same size as his own bedroom, but had two metal loft beds set up against opposite walls. Each bed had a small desk with built-in charging ports underneath. One of the beds was neatly made and uncluttered, while the other had a pile of books and clothes on it. 

Tommy jumped as someone entered the room, the door bouncing off the wall with a thud. It was a guy he had never seen before, who looked about the twins’ age. He wore a graphic band tee with jeans, and a red beanie was pulled over his longish black hair. He was carrying an overflowing cardboard moving box, which he dropped with a thump on the bed already covered with things. He then seemed to notice Tommy and turned. 

“Oh, hey man,” he said with a cheerful grin. “I’m Quackity, your new roommate! You’re Wilbur, right? Or do you go by Wil?” He blinked as he took in Tommy’s appearance. “No offense, bro, but you look kind of young for college. Did you graduate super early or something?”

“Um, no,” Tommy said, backing away. “I think … I’m in the wrong place. Sorry, I’ll just be going.”

“Hey, wait, that’s the closet –!”

Tommy backed hastily through the closet door, grabbed the key from the lock, and slammed the door shut. 

Silence. 

He was back in his bedroom at Key House. 

Cautiously, he opened the closet door a crack and peered in. No strange room, no beanie guy. It was just his closet again now, with the same pile of old board games and dust bunnies. 

Tommy stared at the key in his hand. The Anywhere key, the journal had called it. Wherever you wish to go. 

He turned back to the closet, concentrated hard on his room in the old Essempi house, and inserted the key again. 

The door opened, revealing the room where he had slept his entire life until the move a week ago. It was empty now, of course, but it smelled the same. And he could still see the indents on the carpet where his furniture had been and the outlines on the walls where his posters had once hung.

Tommy’s eyes filled with tears. 

This was incredible. 

Chapter Text

The Identity key will let you physically become whomever you choose, his father had written. The effect does not wear off until reversed by the key.  

---

Tommy poked his head out the mudroom door. 

It was a bright and sunny day, but the breeze now had a cool bite and the green foliage was interspersed with splashes of red and gold. Autumn had finally arrived at Key House.

His parents were already out in the fields, attempting to do something with a tractor. Tommy could hear the distant sound of their laughter filtering back to the house. 

Part of him was tempted to go join them. With the twins away at college for almost two weeks now, the house was very quiet and Tommy longed for company, despite his lingering determination to be angry and distant. 

However, he knew that he would be set to work as soon as his parents caught sight of him. After his ‘stunt,’ as Phil had termed it, on the twins’ Move-In day, Tommy had been grounded for a week. This had been harder for his parents to enforce than usual, since Tommy wasn’t able to do any of his usual activities, like going out with friends, here anyway. Instead, he had been forced to spend most of the week helping Phil and Kristin with weeding and preparing the fields for winter planting in their new organic garden. 

He would rather not repeat the experience today. No, today was a nice day to explore other parts of the Key House grounds by himself. 

After some thought, Tommy had decided not to show his parents the Anywhere key – for now. Even if he hadn’t been in trouble, he was sure they would confiscate the key. Or, if they were very generous, they would insist on supervising his usage of it. But Tommy was enjoying his newfound freedom, and didn’t want to jeopardize it. 

Consequently, he had to be very circumspect in when he used the Anywhere key, and how long he was gone. It wouldn’t do to find his parents waiting for him in his room one day when he returned through the closet.

A small hexagonal shed-like structure by the side of the house, near the kitchen, caught his eye. According to the map of Key House grounds Phil had shown them, that was the old well-house. It was no longer in use, since (a) Key House had gotten indoor plumbing in the centuries since it was built and (b) the well had apparently run dry and been filled in anyway. 

Could be worth checking it out. It’s not like Tommy had much else to do.

The well-house, Tommy reflected a few minutes later, was pretty boring. There was a finely-wrought metal gate to enter the place, which he had found unlocked. And yup, that was definitely a well in the center, old-fashioned with a decayed wooden bucket hanging from a spool of rope, attached to a pulley and handle. Tommy peered over the edge, but couldn’t see to the bottom in the darkness to tell if it was really dry or not. There was a decrepit cabinet on one side of the hexagon that contained some very aged looking burlap sacks. Tommy didn’t feel like disturbing them to check out the contents. And … that was pretty much it. 

He had just turned to leave when an unfamiliar voice behind him suddenly said, “Hello!”

Tommy spun around. 

A man he had never seen before stood on the opposite side of the well. He had definitely not been there a minute ago, Tommy thought, alarmed. The man had blond hair a few shades darker than Tommy’s and vivid leaf-green eyes, and he was wearing an old-fashioned beige tunic with dark cropped pants, almost like colonial leggings. He looked oddly … hazy around the edges, even though the air outside had been clear and crisp.  

“Who the fuck are you?!” Tommy demanded, backing up hastily, his hand closing around the grill of the gate.

“My name is Dream,” the man said cheerfully. “What’s your name?”

“My name – what the fuck are you doing in here? This is private property, asshole! This place belongs to my family. You’d better –”

“Oh, are you a Craft?” Dream asked, regarding him with keen interest. 

“What’s it to you?” Tommy retorted. “You didn’t tell me what you’re doing here. You’re trespassing. You’d better get out now or I’ll – I’ll call the police.”

“I can’t get out,” Dream said apologetically. “Sorry. I’m kind of stuck in here. See …” Dream walked directly through the bricks forming the wall of the well, stopping to hover a few feet away from Tommy, who was pressed up against the gate.  

Tommy stared, speechless. First a magical key, and now this? What the hell was going on at Key House? 

“You – you’re a … ghost?” he managed. “You’re haunting the well?”

“Not exactly,” Dream replied, his smile twisting into something a little more sad. “I’m trapped here in the well-house, in spirit form.” 

“That literally tells me nothing more than what I just said, big man,” Tommy said, alarm beginning to give way to annoyance. 

“Well, I’m not a ghost, because I’m not dead,” Dream said earnestly. “But I’m not human either. I’m a trapped spirit.”

“I’m sorry I scared you,” he added after a pause, looking chagrined. “I was just excited to see someone here. It’s been a really long time since anyone visited the well-house.”

“You didn’t scare me,” Tommy lied. “That’s okay.”

Dream smiled, cheer seemingly restored. “Could you tell me your name?” he asked again.

“I’m Tommy,” Tommy said, still suspicious. This wasn’t one of those weird things where telling a magical spirit your name gave them some kind of hold over you, was it...? No, that was faeries, right?

“Hi Tommy,” Dream said with a soft smile. “It’s nice to meet you. Sorry again for startling you. It’s just ….”

“So you’re trapped?” Tommy interrupted, still trying to process the information he had received so far. “Here, in the well-house?”

“Yes,” Dream said simply. He walked away from the well, tracing his hand along the hexagonal wall opposite to Tommy. “Even though I don’t have my physical body anymore, I can’t go through these walls.” 

“Wait, what do you mean you don’t have it ‘anymore’?” Oh shit, was this guy’s body buried somewhere around here? “So the well-house is kind of like … limbo for you?” Tommy asked, with growing dismay. “It’s stopping your spirit from being able to, like, move on?”

“Not quite!” Dream said with a laugh. “I told you, I’m not dead , Tommy. I’m just stuck.”

“I’m not a corporeal being like yourself,” he continued, his eyes scrunching up in amusement at Tommy’s expression. “Basically, I’m not human. I’m magical. But if I wasn’t trapped in the well-house, I could project a physical body for myself. And as a non-corporeal being, I could normally just walk out through physical walls. But because of the nature of the well-house … the magical wall, I guess you could say, that’s locked in place around it … I’m trapped.”

“Oh,” Tommy said doubtfully. He thought he understood that. “How’d you get trapped in here, then?”

Silence.

Tommy narrowed his eyes at Dream, who was frowning pensively. 

“Someone locked me in here,” Dream said in a low voice. “A long time ago. I don’t remember exactly what happened, or why, but … it was to punish me. It wasn’t supposed to be for this long, though.”

“That sucks, man,” Tommy said, releasing his grip on the gate to lean against the wall of the well-house. “How long have you been in here?”

“I’m …. not sure. In the spirit world, things can get … confused, after a while. I don’t remember a lot of things clearly, and sometimes I remember them in the wrong order.” 

Dream paused for a minute, clearly in thought. “The last Craft I remember before you was Hannah Craft,” Dream said finally. “She was a young woman when I met her.”

Tommy perked up with interest. “My great-grandmother was named Hannah. Were you friends with her? I know she lived here at Key House, but that was like, a century ago.” His eyes widened at the thought. “You’ve been in here that long?”

“I don’t remember,” Dream confessed, looking upset.

“Hey, no worries, it’s okay, man,” Tommy said, feeling alarmed and a bit guilty at the spirit’s obvious distress. He tried to change the subject. “But you said you were trapped … how does that work, exactly? You can’t go through the walls, but why can’t you just walk out the gate?” 

“It’s because of the magic of Key House.” 

Tommy’s eyes snapped up to regard Dream. Now this was something he definitely wanted to hear more about. 

“As a Craft, you’re probably already aware, but Key House is so named because, due to its location, over the centuries it has been the spawning point for many different magical keys. There’s one called the Well-house key. It basically locks and unlocks the magical wall I mentioned, that surrounds the well-house. Now that the Well-house key has locked the wall in place, I can’t pass through the gate or the walls. If it was unlocked, I could.”

“Oh,” Tommy said doubtfully, wondering fleetingly if he should pretend he had no idea about magical keys. But why should he? “I’ve … heard about the keys. My dad had this old journal where he wrote about some of them. So what happened to the Well-house key, then?”

“I don’t know,” Dream said, his voice disheartened. “That’s one problem.”

“There’s also another key,” Dream added, “called the Anywhere key.” Tommy went rigid with shock but Dream continued on, oblivious to his reaction. “The Anywhere key … it opens a door to anywhere you want to go. That one could also release me from the well-house, since I could just open the door to somewhere outside the well-house, outside the magical wall. But I don’t know where that key is either.”

That key was currently hidden in Tommy’s sock drawer. Tommy shifted uncomfortably, wondering if he should say something. 

But something inside him – some deep, almost primal instinct – was murmuring to him urgently, insisting that he should keep the knowledge of the Anywhere key private. 

So instead, Tommy asked, “What’s the other problem?”

“Well, obviously I can’t go out and look for either of those keys myself,” Dream said slowly. “But also, since I’m not human … I can’t just use the keys. Someone needs to gift me a key in order for me to use it.”

“But no one’s been around to help you, right?” Tommy said, leaning back, sympathy beginning to overtake suspicion. 

Dream laughed lightly, looking sad. “No, Tommy. You’re the first person to come in here and talk to me in a long, long time.”

Tommy’s chest tightened. Even though he wasn’t actually alone, he had felt so alone since arriving at Key House. He couldn’t imagine being trapped here, being truly alone, for so many years. Based on the mention of Hannah Craft, Dream might have been trapped here since before Phil was even born.

“It’s okay,” Tommy said, some of his usual brash confidence returning. “I’m here now, and I might be able to help you. If you can try to remember more about the Well-house key – what it looked like, where it might be now – I can try and find it and unlock the magical wall.”

Dream stared at him, looking astonished. A glimmer of hope flickered in his striking green eyes. “You would do that?”

Tommy felt a shiver of doubt at the back of his mind. Was it really a good idea to make promises to someone he’d just met? In a situation that was … unusual, to say the least? 

But Dream seemed nice. And no one really deserved to be locked up in this shitty well-house for so long, right ?

(Tommy felt like he had been locked up here at Key House...)

“Sure, big man,” Tommy grinned. 

---

Weeks passed. The autumn air turned crisper. Tommy’s new school started, and he determinedly hated everything about it.  

Tommy was spending a good chunk of his afternoon with Dream every day now, even during weekdays after school. Sometimes he would even do his homework sitting there – Dream was very interested in Tommy’s assignments (“It’s so boring here, Tommy, you have no idea. I would love to hear about what happened in history and all the new scientific findings –”) – and sometimes Tommy would just sit and they would talk for hours. On weekends, he lingered in the well-house for even longer. 

He had a system worked out now. First, he would use the Anywhere key to go to the old barn in the woods, where his parents never went and had warned him to stay out of because it wasn’t that stable. Then, he would loop around to walk the short distance to the well-house through the trees, carefully keeping out of sight of the kitchen windows. 

This way, his parents thought he was in his room the whole time, and Dream didn’t realize that he wasn’t coming from the house or that he had the Anywhere key. 

(Tommy still felt a little guilty about that part...)

On one hand, Tommy was aware that it was more than a little fucked up that he was quickly becoming best friends with a magical spirit who had been trapped in an outbuilding on his family’s property for more than a century. 

But on the other hand, Tommy didn’t really care. Dream was cool. He knew a lot about the history of Key House and the surrounding outskirts of Manberg, and he was good at telling funny little anecdotes that made that history come alive in a way that school definitely didn’t , and that even his father’s stories failed to do. Dream was also a good listener – he listened with sympathy when Tommy talked about his parents and how oblivious they were being, about his brothers and what jerks they had become, and about how hard it had been to move away from Essempi and all his friends. Dream never told Tommy he was being childish or selfish or that he had a bad attitude. He understood.

Dream also shared his own story – how hard it had been for him to move away from his own childhood home, which had apparently been somewhere “so far away it was like another world”; his adventures during his first job on a trade ship along the Manberg coast, back before Manberg was a huge metropolis; his old friends (some of whom were magical like him, and might still be out there, according to Dream) and some weird sports they used to play together; and his vaguer memories of the circumstances around his arrival at Key House and eventual entrapment. 

Tommy was fascinated. 

But despite everything, Tommy still hadn’t told Dream – or anyone else – about the Anywhere key. 

One element of Dream’s description of the keys which bothered him, Tommy admitted to himself, was this notion that a living human person needed to ‘gift’ Dream with a key in order for him to use it. Assuming gifts worked the normal way, that meant that any key Tommy might give to him would become Dream’s property, permanently. And … that meant that Tommy might not ever get it back.

Tommy wasn’t ready to lose the Anywhere key. After finding it because of Phil’s old journal, in a way he felt like his father had given it to him – a gift from his father’s past self even as Tommy felt he was growing more and more distant from Phil in the present. The idea of losing it filled him with an anxiety that he couldn’t explain. 

He wouldn’t do it. He couldn’t do it. 

The other element which was worrisome was Dream’s brief mention of Tommy’s great-grandmother, Hannah Craft. Dream hadn’t said much about her afterwards, even after Tommy pressed, claiming he didn’t remember much. But Dream remembered other things … why couldn’t he remember more about Hannah, and their friendship? Had Dream asked Hannah for help, too? Had she tried to find the Well-house key as well?

Lost in thought, Tommy used the Anywhere key on the supply closet door inside the old barn, opening it into his own bedroom as usual and stepping through. 

“Dude, where did you come from?”

Oh shit. 

Tommy spun around. 

Two boys about his own age were standing in his open doorway, staring at him openly. One was shorter than Tommy and blond, and the other taller than him and lanky, with a spiky black and white hairstyle.

It was the kids from school, Tommy thought with dismay. Brothers, or cousins, maybe? He recognized them from a few of his classes, but he had been resolutely avoiding interacting with them – or anyone else. 

And they had definitely just seen him walk out of his closet. 

… But maybe they didn’t realize that door led to a closet? It could be a bathroom, right? Yeah, that worked. Tommy would say it was his bathroom. 

“I thought that door led to a closet,” the tall one said doubtfully.

“Me too,” the blond one said, looking at Tommy with sharp curiosity. “What were you doing in there?”

“Who are you, anyway?” Tommy demanded, changing gears – the best defense was a good offense, after all. “What are you doing in my room?”

“Oh, sorry man,” the blond one said, looking sheepish. “My name’s Tubbo, and this is Ranboo. We live next door.”

Next door? Tommy blinked at them. Key House and its massive grounds were set back from an isolated rural road, with the nearest similar estate being nearly a mile away. But he supposed that next door technically just meant the next one over. 

“Our parents, Sam and Ponk, came over to chat with your parents,” the tall one – Ranboo – chimed in. “Sorry to barge in like this. Your mom couldn’t find you, so she told us to come up to your room and meet you here to say hi.” 

“Yeah, sorry,” Tubbo echoed. “The door was open, we thought you’d just gone to the bathroom or something, so we were just waiting here.” 

“Oh,” Tommy said. “Well, I’m Tommy. Come in, then.” 

To Tommy’s dismay, Tubbo marched straight past him to the closet door and opened it. 

“Yup, that’s a closet,” he said, turning back to survey Tommy with interest. “It doesn’t really look big enough for a person to be comfy in there. What were you doing?”

Later on, Tommy would blame the still-heady excitement of having the Anywhere key for how quickly he spilled the secret to Tubbo and Ranboo, while he had been hesitating about whether to reveal it to Dream for weeks. Ranboo would insist it was because he instinctively trusted them (“As he should have,” Tubbo would add with a sniff).

So somehow, Tommy found himself pulling the Anywhere key out of his pocket and opening his closet door into the barn, stepping aside for Tubbo and Ranboo to see.

“Oh my god,” Ranboo breathed, staring through the door. 

“Holy shit!” Tubbo exclaimed, squeezing past him to step into the barn. Tommy and Ranboo piled in after him. 

“I’ve used this key to go to different places on the grounds a lot. Like the … other barn,” Tommy said, censoring himself just in time. “And I’ve gone to a few other places.”

“Are you restricted to going to places on your family’s land?” Tubbo asked, wide-eyed with interest. “Have you tested how far can you go?”

“It’s definitely not restricted. I’ve been to Manberg three times now,” Tommy said with a grin as the other boy’s eyes grew even wider in shock. “And back to our old house in Essempi twice.”

“Essempi?” Ranboo said incredulously, while Tubbo grinned back at him in amazement. 

“Can you show us?” 

Tommy proceeded to use the key to open the barn door into the downtown Manberg subway station. 

“This is incredible,” Tubbo breathed, looking at the bustling crowd and the giant displays showing train schedules and tracks. 

After that Tubbo had insisted Tommy do an experiment; he asked Tommy to open a door to some mountain town he’d heard of, to see how the different air pressures interacted. Tommy, who both wanted to make Tubbo like him and also know the answer to that suddenly, obliged: as soon as he turned the key, all three of their ears popped. Tubbo figured there was a bubble of equalized air pressure, and when they left the gift shop they’d spilled into their ears all popped again. “Better a few sudden shifts than one complete change,” Tubbo said. “Could rupture something if it worked like that. Like an air tank exploding, except our whole bodies.” He looked slightly too interested in that as he said it, but Tommy wasn’t about to judge, his best friend was a not-technically-a-ghost. “And I don’t even wanna think about depressurizing a town.”

“So how did you get the key?” Ranboo asked, wide-eyed, after they had returned to Tommy’s bedroom. “Your parents let you keep it?” 

“Sort of,” Tommy replied, indicating the book on his desk. “There’s this journal – it’s my dad’s old journal. It told me what the key does and how to find it.” 

“This is wicked cool,” Tubbo said admiringly. 

“So then your dad knows about the key, but he doesn’t know you have it?” Ranboo asked, frowning in confusion. 

“Yeah, no. So … I haven’t actually told my parents that I have the key,” Tommy said, narrowing his eyes at them both. “They wouldn’t let me use it if they knew, for sure. You won’t tell, will you?”

“Nope,” Tubbo said with a grin, popping the ‘p’. 

Ranboo nodded his head vigorously as he peered down at the journal. “There’s a lot of stuff in here,” he said interestedly, flipping through it. “Do you have any more keys?”

“No,” Tommy admitted. “This is the only one I’ve found. The journal says there are more, but I haven’t really looked hard for any others yet.”

“Do you want to?” Tubbo asked, staring at him intensely.

“Definitely!”

“Tubbo! Ranboo!” a man’s voice called from downstairs. “Will you come down, lads? We’re heading home.”

“We could come back,” Tubbo offered hopefully, “and help you look?”

Tommy shrugged, smiling. “That would be cool.”

---

Tubbo and Ranboo came back to Key House the very next day, getting off the school bus with Tommy instead of continuing on to their own house further up the road. 

After some deliberation, the trio had decided to search for what the journal called the Identity key next, because Ranboo was fascinated by the description: The Identity key will let you physically become whomever you choose.

The instructions on how to find it were less helpful: Find me where you reaffirm your identity .

“'Where you reaffirm your identity',” Tubbo read aloud, frowning. “What does that mean?”

“It’s a riddle,” Tommy observed. “The clue to find the Anywhere key was a riddle too, I needed to figure out that I had to look in the birdhouse.”

“Your own identity,” Ranboo echoed thoughtfully. “Maybe they mean somewhere with a mirror?”

Tommy and Tubbo looked at Ranboo, and then at each other. “That’s a good idea,” Tommy admitted. “But which mirror? There must be dozens in the house.”

“Let’s get started then,” Tubbo said with a grin.

To Tommy’s dismay, it was much harder than finding the Anywhere key had been. They looked at all of the mirrors on the second and third floors, but none of them had a key nearby or any secret compartments that they could find. 

Eventually, Phil found them in the guest bathroom, pausing in confusion when he saw the three of them huddled around the vanity.

“Hey kids,” he said cheerfully. “Tubbo, Ranboo, I just had a call from Ponk asking if you’d be home for dinner soon. How about I give you a ride?”

“Oh! Whoops, I definitely missed his text … we should be going. Sorry, Mr. Craft. We can walk, it’s no bother.”

“No worries at all, and call me Phil, please. And I insist, let me just drop you off. I don’t want you boys walking down the road by yourselves, it’s already started to get dark.”

“Sure, thanks, Mr. … Phil. We’ll see you tomorrow then, Tommy?”

---

Tubbo and Ranboo came back as promised the next day, but couldn’t the day after. 

“Homework, big man,” Tubbo said apologetically as they got on the bus, and Tommy grimaced in agreement. He had the same assignment. 

“We can pick it up on the weekend?” Ranboo asked hopefully. “We have a long weekend, anyway.”

“Sounds good,” Tommy replied. “I’ll let you know if I find anything in the meantime.”

After he got home, Tommy made a bee-line to the well-house. 

Dream was initially miffed when he arrived – after all, Tommy had missed their regular afternoon meeting two days in a row now, without any explanation. 

But he brightened, and then grinned with excitement when Tommy told him about meeting Tubbo and Ranboo and their plan to search for the Identity key. Tommy had to wordsmith things very carefully to describe the circumstances of meeting them without mentioning the Anywhere key. 

“The Identity key! That’s a fun one, I remember hearing about it. It will let you change your appearance into literally anyone. Come show me once you find it!”

“Do you know any more about it?” Tommy asked hopefully. “Actually, do you know where it’s hidden?” he added with a laugh. 

“Sorry, no,” Dream said apologetically. “What did the clue in your dad’s journal say?”

Tommy told him, and Dream furrowed his brow. “I agree that mirrors are a good guess … let me think about it. I’ll let you know if I think of anything else.”

“And Tommy –” Dream hesitated. “I’m glad to hear you’re making friends. Tubbo and Ranboo sound nice.”

“They’re pretty cool,” Tommy admitted.

“It’s just – don’t mention me to them, okay?” 

Tommy frowned in confusion. “What? How come?”

“It’s not easy for me to … meet people,” Dream said distantly, pacing to the other side of the well-house. “It’s been a long time since I’ve interacted with people, really. I’d prefer to just keep things between you and me, at least for now.”

“Oh, okay,” Tommy said, disappointed. He had been hoping to bring Tubbo and Ranboo to the well-house soon, and have them meet Dream too. 

Dream changed the subject with a smile, turning around to pace back towards where Tommy was sitting, cross-legged. “So you’re going to look for the Identity key with them this weekend? Wait, didn’t you say your brothers are coming back to Key House this weekend? Will you have time?” 

Tommy paused. This weekend was the first long weekend since the fall term at university had begun. The twins were going to be coming home for the first time. 

“Yeah, we might have some family shit to do,” Tommy allowed, “but we’ll probably still have some time to search.”

---

It turned out to be much less trouble than Tommy had anticipated to dodge his brothers, a fact that was simultaneously satisfying and disheartening. He didn’t want to spend time with them, he thought to himself fiercely. 

The twins arrived back at Key House on Friday night with two of their old friends from Essempi in tow. Tommy had known them both all his life – Niki had grown up down the street from their old house in Essempi, and Jack just one street over. They had been the twins’ classmates from grade school through high school, and were now also attending Manberg University with them. 

“Thank you so much for hosting us,” Niki said earnestly to Kristin and Phil. “Since it’s just a three-day weekend, we couldn’t really make the trip all the way home.”

“Oh, of course, love,” Kristin said, hugging her warmly and then turning to hug Jack. “We’re so happy to have you over! It’s just like old times.”

“You know you’re both welcome to come stay with us anytime,” Phil added, taking his turn to hug them both. 

“This house – it’s just amazing,” Niki said as Jack nodded in agreement. “The twins described it to us but it really doesn’t do it justice. The architecture is so innovative for its time period.”

“Mom will be happy to give you the grand tour, right?” Wilbur said with a grin. Kristin, an architect by trade, had loved the design of Key House from the first time she had seen it. Her eyes gleamed at the chance to talk more about one of her favorite topics. Phil cheerfully beckoned for them all to follow, and the lecture began. Tommy waited as Kristin talked about interesting period features of the foyer, sitting room, and then the library before ducking out to run back upstairs. 

As it turned out, the twins, Niki, and Jack had plans to spend Saturday in town. They invited Tommy – as an afterthought, clearly, Tommy thought with resentment – and he bluntly refused to join them. Instead, he resumed the hunt for the Identity key with Tubbo and Ranboo. 

On his parents’ insistence, Tommy joined everyone for a family-and-friends late luncheon on Sunday. Afterwards, Phil and the twins drove Niki and Jack to the nearby station to catch the evening train back into Manberg, so Tommy was able to easily evade them for the rest of the day. 

So all in all, it wasn’t until Monday morning that Wilbur and Techno finally cornered him in the library. 

Tommy slammed Phil’s journal shut and held it under his forearms, obscuring the cover, as his older brothers wandered into the room. 

“Hey Toms, what are you reading?” Wilbur asked curiously, eyeing the partially hidden book.

“Just an old book I found,” Tommy said neutrally.

“What’s it about?” Techno asked, eyes alight with interest. The massive library was undoubtedly his favorite part of Key House. 

“Just some local history.”

Wilbur pursed his lips at Tommy’s less-than-welcoming tone, but then rallied and said brightly, “Do you want to go out to the movies? We can drive into town and then go for ice cream. We found this really nice place on Saturday, you’ll like it –”

“No. No thanks. I’m busy.”

There was a pause. 

“You’re busy?” Techno echoed flatly. 

“With what, reading that book?” Wilbur asked, narrowing his eyes. 

Tommy’s eyes flashed indignantly. “What, you think that you’re the only ones who can be busy? The rest of us have things to do, too. We’re not just waiting around for you to come home and grace us with your presence.”

Techno seemed to recoil. 

“Tommy –” Wilbur made an aborted gesture in frustration, and then closed his eyes briefly before trying again. “Toms, it’s not that we think you can’t be busy. We just don’t understand what you’re busy with right now . I thought, since we’re heading back to campus this evening, that we could spend some time together like we used to –”

“Nothing’s like it used to be,” Tommy muttered, barely audible.

“What?” 

“I have to go meet Tubbo and Ranboo right now,” Tommy said, tucking the book under his arm and heading for the front door. It closed behind him with a thud before either of the twins could say another word.

---

Later, Tommy lounged in the nest of old pillows in the old treehouse next to Ranboo, and resolutely pushed down a niggling sense of guilt. 

It wasn’t his fault. It wasn’t him who had moved away and distanced himself, he thought resentfully. He was the same as he had always been. He was still the twins’ brother, even if they thought they had better things to do than spend time with him. 

“Your family owns a shit ton of mirrors,” Tubbo complained, from where he was rifling through a small wooden box stuck with a faded post-it reading ‘treasure chest.’ 

“Maybe I was wrong about it being about mirrors,” Ranboo said doubtfully. 

Are you really the same? Tommy thought absently. Who are you? Reaffirm your identity … tell me who you are now, not who you were or will be. 

“You guys,” Tommy said, sitting bolt upright. 

“What?” 

“Wait – did you just figure something out?” Ranboo asked, his eyes narrowing. 

“The clue – what did it say, exactly?”

“'Find me where you reaffirm your own identity,’” Tubbo recited. 

Tommy stepped out onto the treehouse balcony and pointed up at the doorway. Tubbo and Ranboo poked their heads out and stared.  

Speak friend and enter , read the roughly carved inscription above the doorway.

“Seriously?” Tubbo muttered while Ranboo snorted in laughter.

Tommy reached up onto the treehouse’s doorframe on top of the inscription, and gingerly felt around.

Then he grinned. 

---

“I don’t know what to do,” Wilbur said miserably, staring out the window of the SUV as Phil merged on to the highway into Manberg. The long-anticipated first long weekend was over, but Wilbur felt drained instead of re-energized. “It’s like he hates me now.”

Techno snorted and said wryly, “Us, Wil. He hates us now. The kid barely said two words to me the entire weekend.”

“Tommy doesn’t hate either of you,” Kristin said reprovingly from the front passenger’s seat, turning slightly to frown at her older sons. 

“He doesn’t, mate,” Phil agreed, glancing back at them through the rearview mirror. “He’s just … going through a tough time right now. He’s a teenager now, you know, and that’s hard in and of itself. And moving up here, and then having the two of you move out – well. It’s all been hard on him.”

“I knew he was pissed before, what with him not coming with us on Move-In day. But I thought …” Wilbur shrugged. “I guess I thought he would have cooled off by now. I thought he would be glad to see us when we came home! I thought that we could explore Key House together, and that eventually he would come over and visit us in Manberg on some weekends and we could show him all our favorite places in the city …” Wilbur’s voice trailed off on a miserable note.

“Those things will happen,” Kristin said firmly. “You just need to be patient. It’s been tougher on him than we thought it would be,” she continued in a quieter tone. “Your dad and I have been trying too, love, but he’s not that happy with us either, you know.”

“We haven’t been able to spend as much quality time as we used to, back in Essempi,” Phil said with a sigh. “Things have just been so busy with settling in and then with work picking up, and on top of that, trying to get something going with the farm … it’s been so much harder than we thought. Even with all that your Aunt Puffy’s been helping us out, it’s just been overwhelming.”

“Tommy has been doing better though,” Kristin said resolutely. “He’s made friends with the neighbor kids, Tubbo and Ranboo, who go to his school. They’ve been having fun together lately – it’s much better than how he was moping around the house before. Things will keep getting better, you’ll see. He’ll come around.”

“He seems to be spending a lot of time with them,” Wilbur said, in what he hoped was a neutral tone. 

Apparently it wasn’t neutral enough, since Techno snorted again and his parents exchanged a glance. 

“At the end of the day, they’re his friends but you’re still his big brothers,” Phil said with a smile. “You don’t need to be jealous, mate.”

“Jealous –!” Wilbur sputtered. “I am not jealous. They’re a bunch of 14-year-olds.”

“You’re totally jealous,” Techno replied in a bored monotone. “L.”

“You –” Wilbur reached over to shove his twin, and Techno easily held him off with one hand.

“Boys, please,” Phil said with a sigh.

Kristin rolled her eyes at Phil. “14, 18, same difference.”

---

Tommy startled when Kristin suddenly walked into the kitchen; she and Phil must have just returned from dropping the twins off at their dorm. 

“Hi Mo – ma’am,” Tommy hastily corrected himself. 

“Oh, hello Ranboo!” she said, smiling at him. “Are you guys hungry? Do you want any snacks?”

Tommy hunched slightly in amazement. The transformation – or disguise – had indeed been total and complete when he had looked in the mirror, but it still boggled him that his own mother didn’t recognize him. 

“Yes, thank you!” he chirped, accepting a tray with some fruits and cookies from Kristin before racing back upstairs. 

“This is so weird,” Ranboo said in uneasy astonishment as Tommy entered the room, his carbon copy in every sense. 

“I ran into my mom,” Tommy said excitedly. “And she definitely thought I was you!”

“This is so awesome,” Tubbo said gleefully, reaching for the snack tray, while Ranboo was still shaking his head in incredulous amazement. 

“Here, let me turn back,” Tommy muttered, taking the Identity key from Ranboo and quickly turning it in the keyhole that appeared on his neck. He patted his face and hair urgently, walking towards his mirror. “Am I back?”

“Yup.”

“Can I try?” Tubbo asked eagerly. 

“Don’t turn into me,” Tommy warned as he handed over the key. “It’ll be weird if you talk to my parents as me!”

“Oh no, I’m turning into –” Tubbo turned the Identity key with a click , and Tommy and Ranboo both burst into laughter.

---

There wasn’t much to unpack. With a sigh, Wilbur tossed his empty duffel bag onto his loft bed. It narrowly missed Techno, who had decided to lounge there, reading, instead of going back to his own dorm room. 

“Hey Wil! How was the long weekend?” Quackity asked cheerfully, walking into their dorm. “Oh, hey Techno!”

“Hello,” Techno droned. 

Wilbur stared at the small picture frame in his hand, the last item to be pulled from his duffel. Their parents had given identical ones to him and Techno to take back to their dorms. It held a casual family photo, with the five of them crowded onto a picnic blanket at the Essempi seashore. Everyone was smiling. Wilbur remembered the day well. 

He swallowed the lingering bitterness over spending the entire weekend being rebuffed by Tommy and turned to his roommate with a smile. “It was good, Big Q. How about yours?”

“It was great! It was a fun time. Oh nice pic, man,” Quackity said as Wilbur placed the frame on his desk. “That’s your parents and little brother, right? It was nice to meet him, you should bring him over again during Family Week. I’m bringing my little cousins.” 

Wilbur jerked in surprise, the frame slipping at the motion. “What? When did you meet Tommy?”

“On Move-In day, bro,” Quackity said with a shrug, sitting down at his desk and pulling out his phone. “He was checking out the dorm before you showed up – I thought he was you at first. It was funny, I asked him if he was some sort of kid genius, starting college so young.”

“That’s impossible,” Techno said, lowering his book and fixing Quackity with a quelling stare. “Tommy didn’t come to campus with us on Move-In day. He stayed at home.”

“Nope, he was definitely here,” Quackity said matter-of-factly. “I remember, it was the weirdest thing,” he continued in a musing tone, as Techno opened his mouth to object. “I could have sworn he walked into the closet when trying to leave before realizing. Or maybe I mixed up the doors.”

Wilbur barked a laugh. “Big Q, you’re not making any sense, man.”

“Seriously, Tommy has never been here,” Techno repeated flatly. 

Quackity gave them both a weird look. “I’m telling you the truth, bro. The kid in the photo? That was the kid I saw. He was definitely here.”

Wilbur and Techno exchanged a glance. Wilbur opened his mouth to argue but before he could speak, there was a knock at the door. Without waiting for an answer, it was flung open and Jack stuck his head into the room.

“Hey! We’re starting a new round, do you guys want to join?”

“Hell yeah!” Quackity cheered. They all piled out of the room after him, and the conversation was forgotten. 

Chapter Text

The Mending key goes with the Mending cabinet, which is in the study of the Key House, his father had written. It can repair most physical objects. Place the broken object inside the cabinet and use the key.

---

Tommy crept into the softly-lit library, where his father was seated in an over-sized armchair, reading a novel. Phil looked up and smiled when he saw him.

“How are you doing, Toms?” Phil said softly, adding “Oof,” as the boy squeezed into the narrow space next to him in the armchair. He shifted to tuck Tommy under his arm, and smiled down at him. “Hi.”

“Hi,” Tommy smiled.

“You’ve been pretty quiet lately,” Phil observed lightly, combing his fingers through Tommy’s curls. 

“Hmm,” Tommy murmured noncommittally, relaxing into his hold. 

A few minutes passed in comfortable calm. Phil turned a few pages in his book with one hand while continuing to stroke Tommy’s hair with the other. 

“I think your brothers were disappointed that they couldn’t spend more time with you last weekend,” Phil said quietly, breaking the silence. 

Tommy shrugged, tensing and hunching resentfully. “Niki and Jack were here. The twins just wanted to hang out with them.”

“Now, you know that’s not true. Besides, you also used to like spending time with Niki and Jack, back in Essempi. They’re your friends, too,” Phil said softly, shifting to rub Tommy’s arm. “You could have gone out with them on Saturday. I know Techno and Wil were hoping you would join them.”

Tommy huffed and said nothing. 

Phil sighed as he pulled Tommy in closer. “I’m glad that you’re making friends here, Toms,” he whispered into his son’s hair. “But you used to be so close to your brothers. I don’t want you to lose that.”

Tommy grumbled wordlessly and wiggled free of Phil’s grasp to rise from the chair. “It’s not me, Dad, you know that they only – wait, I don’t want to talk about this right now. I actually came here to show you something.”

Disappointed, Phil nodded, letting it go for now. He knew it wouldn’t be that easy to fix the rift that had been growing all summer between his sons – or even since last year, if he was honest. Ever since the twins had picked Manberg University as their top choice. But he had to keep trying.

Distracted by his thoughts, Phil was taken completely aback when his youngest child suddenly picked up an antique-looking glass vase from the mantle, lifted it above his head, and threw it onto the hardwood floor with a thud . It cracked audibly and then broke into several large shards around Tommy’s feet. 

“Tommy!” Phil exclaimed, flabbergasted, gripping the chair arms in shock. He jolted up from the chair, concern warring with exasperation. “What on earth has gotten into you? Why did you do that? Hang on – don’t move, don’t touch the shards! – you’ll cut yourself. I’ll go get the broom.”

“No, wait! Dad, listen to me, please.” Tommy held up his hand, forestalling him. “Listen. Please, wait just one minute. Please. ”

Phil stared at him, and after a beat, nodded. 

He made an aborted movement to reach out and stop Tommy as his son carefully picked up the three largest pieces of the vase, placed them into a nearby empty cabinet, and closed the door. 

“Dad, look at this,” Tommy urged. He pulled a large, dark metal key out of his pocket and said carefully, “I know this is hard to believe, but you need to watch. This is a magical key.” 

“A … magical key,” Phil repeated cautiously, as he approached the cabinet. He had thought Tommy had grown out of these kinds of imaginary games, but his son’s face was so open and earnest that he thought, what the heck, let’s play along.

“Yes!” Tommy’s face brightened when Phil didn’t immediately scoff and turn away. “Look,” he continued, “this key – it’s called the Mending key. It fixes things when you put them in this cabinet. Look, watch.”

He turned the key until a lock clicked, and then opened the cabinet door again.

Phil stared. 

Where a moment ago there had been three large pieces of the broken vase, now stood the entire vase in the cabinet, whole and unblemished. 

“Wow, Toms,” Phil said, impressed despite himself. “That’s amazing. How long have you been practicing this trick?” 

This was honestly some of the best sleight-of-hand Phil had ever seen. Was this what Tommy had been occupying himself with when he would vanish into his room for hours on end these days – teaching himself magic tricks? 

“No!” Tommy exclaimed. “Well, yes. I mean, it is magic, but it’s not a trick. The Mending key will fix things when you put into the cabinet. Try it yourself, Dad. Break something, and then put it in. Here, you can turn the key too,” he added, shoving the heavy metal key at Phil. It was very dark brown, with an oily feel in his hand. 

“Break something?” Phil echoed. He looked around for something that was breakable, that he was willing to break. His eye fell on a pencil on the side table. He picked it up and snapped it in half. “Here.”

Tommy grinned. He pulled the intact vase out of the cabinet and motioned for Phil to put the two pieces of the pencil into the cabinet. “Try it, turn the key,” he urged.

Dubiously, Phil inserted the key into the lock below the cabinet knob and turned it. After it clicked, he pulled it open and peered inside.

The pencil was whole, without even a crack. 

“Holy shit,” he muttered. 

He looked up at Tommy in alarm. His son grinned at him, excited. 

“Isn’t it cool?” Tommy exclaimed. “I’ve tested it a bunch of times, it fixes loads of things. Here, try something else, anything else.”

Phil tore a piece of paper into shreds and they repeated the experiment. 

“How …” Phil shook his head, delight bubbling in his heart as he pulled out the intact sheet. “This is amazing! I have so many questions, Toms. How did you even find out about this?”

Tommy beamed back at him. “It was in your journal!”

“My journal?” Phil repeated, taken aback.

“Yes! I found it in my room –” Tommy reached for the book on the coffee table, to show him, but Phil said abruptly, “Wait.”

Phil grabbed Tommy’s right hand and pulled it towards him, running a thumb softly over a sluggishly bleeding scratch on his palm. “See, you did cut yourself on that vase glass after all. Hang on, I’ll get the first aid kit and we’ll put a bandage on, and then we can look at the journal.”

He straightened and walked into the kitchen, returning a minute later with a small metal first aid kid. 

“Alright mate, let’s get you fixed up.” 

Tommy fidgeted as Phil carefully sanitized the cut and then wrapped a gauze around his palm, tying it off in a neat knot. 

“Mate, you really need to be more careful. Your being so accident-prone makes me really worry about you when you’re off exploring the grounds by yourself.”

“Dad,” Tommy groaned, smiling despite his tone. “I’m fine, really. Can we talk about the key now, and your journal?”

Phil placed the gauze roll back into its spot in the first aid kit and snapped the lid shut. “Sure Toms. What key?”

Tommy’s smile faded.

---

“Hey Mom?” Tommy peered into Kristin’s office, later in the evening. 

It was fairly late on Friday, but his mother was going through a busy period at work; Tommy had been waiting a while for her to hang up from a teleconference call before coming in. 

“Yeah, baby?” Kristin looked up from her computer. “Did you need something?” 

“I wanted to show you something …”

“Can it wait a little, Toms? I’m in the middle of some work right now, just finishing up some draft sketches. Once I email these out, I’ll come find you, okay?”

“Okay.”

---

Tommy lay in bed, blinking back tears.

Everything he tried had failed.

His dad didn’t remember the Mending key – even after being shown twice – or the notes on the keys he had written in his own journal. 

His mom didn’t remember the Anywhere key, just minutes after being absolutely delighted by it. 

He couldn’t tell Dream about his parents’ incomprehensible memory issues around the keys, because he couldn’t tell Dream that he had the Anywhere key. 

He couldn’t tell Tubbo or Ranboo about Dream, if he was to keep his promise.  

He couldn’t tell his brothers anything, since they were now distant from his life in every sense.

Tommy had never felt so alone. 

---

In the end, something had to give way. 

“I have to tell you something,” Tommy said quietly, his voice hoarse. 

Ranboo sat down next to Tommy on his bed and jostled his shoulder.  

“What is it, boss man?” Tubbo asked, frowning, as he perched on the desk. It was mid-morning on Saturday. Tommy had sounded really upset on the phone when he had called, quite early, prompting him and Ranboo to bike over to Key House after barely having any breakfast, much to Sam and Ponk’s surprise and exasperation. 

Tommy sniffled. “There’s two things, really, I guess. The first one … I tried to show my parents the keys last night.” 

Ranboo startled. “Oh! But I thought … you didn’t want to tell anyone about them yet?”

“I didn’t,” Tommy confessed, “but it just … I really felt I needed to tell my parents. I can’t explain it.”

“Makes sense,” Tubbo said reassuringly, and Ranboo nodded, reaching out to squeeze Tommy’s shoulder. “So what did your parents say? They took all the keys away, I guess? Were they mad?”

“No, that’s the problem,” Tommy said, wiping angrily at his face. “They forgot.”

Ranboo and Tubbo paused, looking at each other in startlement. 

“What do you mean, they forgot ?” Ranboo asked cautiously.

“OK, so first I showed my dad the Mending key, right?” Tommy said, his voice growing strained. “I broke a vase, like, right in front of him. He got upset, but I told him to wait … I put it in the Mending cabinet and fixed it, while he watched. He didn’t believe it at first, just like we didn’t. So then he broke a pencil and some other stuff and we put it in to test it. Everything got fixed, obviously.”

“And he still didn’t believe it?” 

“No, he did,” Tommy’s voice wobbled. “He was really excited. But then – I had cut my hand a bit on the vase glass, and he went to get some bandages. He came back like a minute or two later and fixed up my hand. And then he just … he didn’t remember what had happened.”

“What?” Tubbo said, flabbergasted.

“He didn’t remember the Mending key, the vase, the pencil, or anything,” Tommy continued. “He just thought I’d had an accident and told me to be more careful. So then I did the whole thing again.”

“ You … broke the vase again?”

“I did everything again! And the same thing happened – he saw it, he believed it. But then he sat down to think about it for a bit. And after a few minutes, he looked at me and started asking what I wanted to have for dinner. I asked him what he thought about the key, and he was like, ‘What key?’”

“What?” Tubbo repeated, confounded. 

“Oh man,” Ranboo’s voice was tight with distress. 

“I even brought out his journal and showed him the sections about the keys,” Tommy continued, fighting to keep his voice steady. “He just smiled and said he was glad I found that old book, he said it was where he drafted some of his story ideas.”

“This is crazy,” Tubbo muttered, while Ranboo shook his head in disbelief. 

“I tried showing my mom the Anywhere key after that,” Tommy continued, and Ranboo drew in a sharp breath, exchanging a glance with Tubbo. “I took her through to the barn just like I showed you guys. But it was the same thing – she was so amazed and excited at first … and then when we came back to my room, she said she was going to go get my dad and we could show him the key together. And then … she didn’t come back up.”

“She forgot, too?” Ranboo said quietly.

Tommy nodded miserably. “I went downstairs looking for her after a bit, and she was sitting in the kitchen with my dad, talking. At first I thought she was telling him about the key, but they were talking about other stuff. And they were both surprised to see me, they said that they thought I’d gone to sleep. And I said no, I had been waiting for her to bring dad up like she said she would, to show him the key. And she didn’t know what I meant. They were looking at me like I’d had a bad dream or something.” 

“Oh shit,” Tubbo muttered.

Tommy laughed wetly. “I mean – all this time, I was so worried about them finding out, sneaking around and all that, you know? But now – this is so much worse.”

“You know,” Tubbo said after a moment of pensive silence, “I don’t think this is about your parents in particular.” 

Tommy blinked at him. “What do you mean?” 

“I think it might be some kind of rule that got made, or something.”

At Tommy and Ranboo’s skeptical looks, Tubbo flushed. “Look, I’ve been doing a lot of research lately, okay? Looking for references to magic keys through history. I mean, they’d be pretty fucking important, wouldn’t they?” The others nodded, so Tubbo took a deep breath and continued. “Well, sifting through historical records is a nightmare and separating fact from fiction is worse, even on the internet, which I so don’t wanna talk about right now. And I found out that people have been telling stories about Key House and weird unexplainable shit since the place was built. Before, even,” he waved his hand, “but ignore that for now. The weird thing is, the stories just. Stopped. Pretty much exactly a hundred years ago.”

“What?” Tommy ignored the nagging thought in his head about how that was also how long Dream has been trapped. “What do you mean they stopped?”

“It’s not like people didn’t still know the stories, but people stopped talking about new ones. There’s tons of journals and diaries on record,” Tubbo said grimly, “and I read through a lot of them so I’ve seen… weird shit. Rich men complaining about your ancestors, wives jealous of inexplicable Craft windfalls, like half the town thought your ancestors were witches or something but they contributed so much to the community that they didn’t do anything. I read through years of convictions about this, and then… Well, it stopped.”

“That makes even less sense,” Ranboo frowned. “You mean, like, they just didn’t write about the Crafts anymore?”

“No!” Tubbo shouted. “That’s the scary part! All these different people just suddenly changed their minds, and most of them specifically wrote about how they’d read through their own older entries and think themselves stupid.”

“Wait a minute,” Tommy said, shuffling and reaching for Phil’s journal. “Wait. I remember – I read something that dad wrote in here. I didn’t realize what it meant before, but now that you’re saying it –”

He fumbled through the pages and stopped, pointing. “Yes, here – look –”

Tubbo and Ranboo crowded closer to read the section he was indicating. “… it’s tough to not be able to talk to Puffy about the keys anymore. Even her own journal, written in her own hand-writing, doesn’t help. I expect one day soon I’ll be in the same boat.”

“Puffy’s my aunt, my dad’s older sister,” Tommy explained. “When I first read that bit,” he continued with difficulty, “I thought it was about how she moved away to college or something and my dad couldn’t talk to her about stuff anymore. But … maybe that’s not what he meant.”

“I think you’re both right,” Ranboo said quietly. “There’s definitely something odd going on here. And look, Tommy – it sounds like your aunt had her own journal, just like your dad. But even seeing that didn’t make her believe in the keys again. Isn’t that what your dad said now, too? He recognized his journal but he doesn’t remember that what he wrote about the keys in there is true.”

There was a moment of silence.

“So what do I do now?” Tommy asked. “About my parents, I mean.”

“I don’t know, boss man,” Tubbo said finally.

“If you’re right, this means we’ll also forget about the keys in a few years,” Ranboo said with a frown.

“Well, at least now we know that we don’t need to bother writing anything down,” Tommy said sardonically. “We won’t believe it anyway.”

Tubbo frowned, running a hand agitatedly through his blond hair. 

“What was the other thing, Tommy?” Ranboo asked. 

“What?”

“You said you wanted to talk to us about two things,” Ranboo prompted. 

Tommy sighed, leaning back against the headboard. “Yeah. I need to tell to you both about Dream.”

“A dream?” Tubbo asked, frowning. 

“No, Dream. He’s … a sort of disembodied spirit who’s haunting our well-house.”

Tubbo and Ranboo stared at Tommy, and then at each other. 

“WHAT.”

“Yeah, that was my reaction, too, when I first met him,” Tommy said ruefully, managing a shaky smile. “He’s … I don’t know how else to explain it. Like I said, he’s some kind of magical spirit. Based on what he explained to me, he’s been physically trapped in the well-house for like … decades now. Maybe even centuries.”

Ranboo let out a low whistle while Tubbo looked on, speechless. 

“He knows a lot about the history of Key House, and the magical keys,” Tommy said carefully. “He’s … been a good friend.”

“A friend,” Tubbo repeated flatly. “You’re friends with a disembodied spirit who’s been squatting in your well-house for a century.”

“… yeah?”

Ranboo laughed aloud, breaking the tension, making them both look at him. “Tommy, this is insane.” 

“I would take you to meet him,” Tommy said apologetically, “but he said he doesn’t want to meet people right now.”

“If I hadn’t seen the magical keys myself, I would be 100% convinced you’re pulling our legs,” Tubbo said, shaking his head. 

“He might still be,” Ranboo said with amusement.

“Hey!”

Chapter Text

The Head key provides a gateway into your own mind, someone had written, in a journal hidden somewhere in Key House. It allows you to explore, to wander, and to understand your inner self separately from your physical self. 

---

“I found a new key,” Tommy said, sitting cross-legged on the floor of the well-house.

“Really,” Dream said, his tone a mixture of fascination and satisfaction. “Which one is it? Let me see.”

“I don’t know what it is,” Tommy confessed, pulling the key out of his pocket and holding it by the middle part so that Dream could take a close look at the end, which was shaped like a human skull. “I actually found this one … a little by accident.”

“Seriously?”

“Last week we – Ranboo, Tubbo and me, that is – started looking for the Hercules key. My dad wrote about that one in his journal, apparently it gives you super-strength,” Tommy continued. “But we didn’t find anything yet, and then they left to go to one of their relatives’ houses for Thanksgiving. They’ll be gone all week, can you believe it? So I kept on looking, and then I found this key instead yesterday. I checked my dad’s journal, but I didn’t see any key sketches that look like this one.”

Dream laughed, delighted. “This is amazing, Tommy. Only you would find one of the most powerful keys by accident.”

“Most powerful?” Tommy repeated, intrigued. “So you know what this is?”

“I’m pretty sure this is the Head key,” Dream replied, peering at the key closely.

Tommy laughed. “I guess that explains the skull. What does it do?”

“The Head key is very powerful not for what it does externally,” Dream said musingly, “but what it enables you to do internally. It allows you to access your mind – every nook and cranny, every memory, things you already know, things you knew but have forgotten, things you never knew that you know.”

Tommy crinkled his nose at this description. So it was like … super memory?

“For example – if you take a book with you when you enter your mind using the Head key,” Dream continued, “it will be added to your store of knowledge, same as if you’d taken the time to read it. Similarly, if you take something out with you when you leave … well, it will be like you never knew it at all.”

“Wait, so you’re saying I can use this to study ?”

“If you so wish!”

---

It was a sunny Saturday, and the air was now a bit beyond brisk; the late-Autumn weather was finally turning cold. 

It meant Phil’s fingers were chilled and stiff, even after just a few minutes outside. He sighed and transferred all of the grocery bags to one hand, fumbling with his keychain as he searched for the key to the mudroom door. 

Kristin had driven to Manberg early in the morning to meet some friends who were visiting the city, and she was planning to swing by the university on the way back to pick up the twins and bring them home for Thanksgiving week. That had left Phil to start the pre-holiday shopping. He had hoped to take Tommy with him, but the teen had been absorbed in a video game after breakfast and had refused to budge. 

“Tommy?” he called as he entered the mudroom, setting the bags on the bench as he pulled off his boots. “Are you down here, mate?”

There was no response. Phil brought the bags into the kitchen and began emptying them onto the island. “Toms, want to come help me with the groceries? I bought those cookies you like.” 

Silence. 

Phil frowned. Tommy had been spending a lot of time in his room these days, so maybe he was still in there. Or maybe … he walked out into the living room and through to the library, where he caught a flash of blond hair on the corner of the sofa. 

“There you are,” Phil said with a smile. “I just got home from the grocery store, are you hungry? I can make us some sandwiches if you’d like. Or are you in the mood for something else?” 

Tommy didn’t respond … or even shift. Phil frowned, reaching out to stroke Tommy’s hair, observing that his eyes were mostly closed, but not completely. “Are you taking a nap, mate? It’s not even noon.” 

Nothing. 

Concern rising, Phil sat down next Tommy, pulling him up from the sofa arm against which he was slumped and touching a hand to his forehead to feel for a temperature. “Tommy? Are you feeling okay? Time to wake up, sleepyhead.”

Tommy didn’t respond, nearly falling back against the sofa arm as he began to slide out of Phil’s loose grip. 

Phil felt the first stirrings of fear.

“Tommy! Tommy, wake up, mate,” Phil said, urgency seeping into his voice. He pulled Tommy upright again and shook him gently, and stroked his thumbs firmly over his cheeks. Nothing. Tommy slumped sideways against him, eyes half-closed, breathing shallowly. He felt completely boneless.

“Tommy!” he shouted, panic spearing deep into his heart. 

With one hand, Phil pulled his youngest child tight against his chest. Tommy’s head dropped limply to settle into the crook of his neck. Distantly, he heard a thump, as if the remote or some similar heavy object had fallen down into the sofa. In his growing terror, the sound barely registered. Phil was focused solely on what reassurance he could draw from feeling Tommy’s heart beating steadily, his chest moving evenly with his shallow breaths. 

With his other hand, Phil pulled his cell phone from his pocket and shakily dialed emergency services.

“Hello? I need an ambulance right away ….”

---

Two days after Thanksgiving, Tubbo and Ranboo slowly made their way up the road towards Key House, dodging around icy patches. 

“We should have waited til he texted back, Boo,” Tubbo said grumpily. “They might still be busy with Thanksgiving stuff, you know.”

“Then we’ll leave,” Ranboo said, unperturbed. “Tommy hasn’t messaged in almost a week, that’s not like him. I just want to check in.”

Both boys paused as they turned the corner into the drive. There was an unfamiliar dark sedan parked out front behind Phil’s dark green SUV.  

“See,” Tubbo said, exasperated. “They probably have guests.”

“Tubbo,” Ranboo sighed.

“I’m just saying,” the blond teenager objected.

Before they reached the paved walkway, the front door flew open and a frazzled-looking woman with curly light blond hair stepped out, wrestling two medium-sized suitcases out the entryway. 

“Puffy?” Tubbo called, surprised as he recognized Tommy’s aunt. “Are you okay?”

Puffy jumped and spun around, sagging slightly when she saw them. “Oh, Tubbo, Ranboo,” she sighed. “I’m sorry, you just startled me.”

“Is everything alright?” Ranboo asked, taking in her appearance with concern. 

Puffy blinked. “What – oh, you don’t know. I’m so sorry, boys. It’s Tommy – he’s in the hospital.” 

“What?” Tubbo asked, shocked, while Ranboo paled. “What happened?” 

“It’s … oh, I don’t know what to tell you,” Puffy said, looking on the verge of tears. “Tommy had been doing just fine, I thought, but nearly a week ago his dad found him unresponsive in the library. We admitted him right away, but he’s been unconscious ever since. The doctors don’t know what’s going on. I’m just here to pick up some fresh clothes and essentials for Phil and Kristin and the boys, and bring them over to the hospital in Manberg.”

“A week?” Tubbo echoed numbly. 

“Oh my god,” Ranboo said faintly, reaching out to grab Tubbo’s arm. 

Tubbo squared his shoulders. “Is there anything we can do to help?”

“Oh – thank you boys, that’s so sweet. Actually – if you could help me get these suitcases into the car, while I lock up? Then I’ll get going.”

A few minutes later, Puffy’s car was zooming down the drive and turned left onto the main road, quickly vanishing from sight. 

“What do you think happened?” Ranboo whispered, despite the pair being alone on the drive in front of an empty, ominous-looking Key House. 

“Do you think it was a key?” Tubbo stared at him intensely. 

“Tommy wouldn’t …” Ranboo began, then trailed off as he reconsidered.

Tubbo snorted. “Tommy would definitely try out a new key without us.”

He abruptly turned and started walking rapidly along the side of Key House. 

“What are you doing?” Ranboo hissed as he followed Tubbo down the path past the well-house, towards the side door by the kitchen. 

“We need to get the Anywhere key,” Tubbo replied in a hushed voice. “It should still be in Tommy’s room. If we’re right and what happened to him is because of some new key, we’ll need a way to get to him in the hospital to reverse the effect once we figure it out. Do you fancy explaining to Sam and Ponk that they’ve got to drive us over to Manberg so we can cure Tommy?”

Ranboo huffed. “Okay, I see your point. But … I just feel weird taking keys from Tommy’s room without asking.”

“I know, Boo, but it’s for his own good. We’ll give it back to him as soon as we can.”

“Why are we going this way, anyhow?”

“Don’t you remember? Tommy showed us where the spare key to the mudroom is hidden. It’s better than trying to pick the lock to the front door.”

---

Seven days. 

It had been seven days.

Techno leaned forward, his elbows on his knees and his chin propped up on his wrist, staring at the still figure of his little brother, small and frail-looking on the hospital bed.

Tommy was breathing just fine now. His vitals were all normal, the doctors had said. His brain scan didn’t show any physical damage. The machines he was hooked up to were making soft, occasional beeps, no alarms, and all the lights were green. Techno assumed that meant things were good.

But he just wasn’t waking up.

And not a single one of the hospital’s doctors or the specialists they had brought in to consult could explain why.

Techno leaned his head forward onto his clenched fists and breathed a silent prayer.

---

“Tubbo.”

Ranboo frowned when there was no response; Tubbo was determinedly up-ending Tommy’s sock drawer. 

“Tubbo.”

“What?” Tubbo asked, annoyed.

“I saw him put it in the desk drawer last time. Try there.”

Tubbo sighed and shut the thoroughly disarranged sock drawer with a thud, and then reached for the desk drawer. After a few seconds, he let out a shout of triumph and pulled out the Anywhere key.

“Let’s go, Boo,” he said, pulling the twine cord over his head and tucking the key under his shirt. 

“Wait,” Ranboo said, holding up his hand with a frown.

“Now what?” Tubbo asked, exasperated.

“How do we figure out what key it is that’s causing this?”

Tubbo hesitated. “I think we should go and see him. That might give us an idea.”

“Puffy said he’s unconscious,” Ranboo objected. “How will that help?”

“The new key might still be with him,” Tubbo said slowly. “Maybe his family has it, but they just don’t know what it is.”

Ranboo paused as he considered this. It would be great if it were true, but – 

“But what if it’s not ?”

“Then it could be anywhere,” Tubbo said, his voice rising. “Boo, we’ve got to start somewhere .”

“I know – and I think we should start here. I think we should ask Dream.”

Tubbo stared at him like he had suddenly sprouted antlers. “ Dream ?”

“Tommy said Dream is his friend, right? And that he knows a lot about Key House and the keys? Maybe he knows what key it was that affected Tommy.”

Tubbo frowned. “I don’t know …”

“It’s worth a try,” Ranboo pressed. “That way we might get some information on how to reverse the effect – and if the key is still here, we can get it right away and take it with us to the hospital. And if it’s not , then we can focus on finding it at the hospital in with Tommy’s stuff. It’s more efficient this way.”

“Puffy said that Phil found Tommy in the library,” Tubbo said slowly. “Maybe we should just look there first for any key laying around?”

Ranboo hesitated. “The only thing I worry about is whether we find the right key – you know, there’s a chance that we’ll find some other ridiculous key around here instead., and that might cause more problems. And also, we should try to find out whether there’s any other steps besides the key, just in case. Like what if, for some weird reason, Tommy needs to be back here to reverse it?”

“Okay, you’re right,” Tubbo agreed after a pause. “Let’s go talk to Dream.”

---

Ten minutes and a very tense introduction and explanation later, and Dream certainly didn’t look happy. 

“This is absolutely ridiculous and I see absolutely no reason to help you.”

“No reason?” Ranboo blinked, confused, staring at the man- ghost?- disembodied spirit. Ranboo had believed Tommy immediately, a hundred percent, but believing some non-ghost spirit entity existed was very different from seeing it. Dream looked like a colonial ghost so intensely that Ranboo was genuinely at a loss, it felt like he was in a movie. 

“The reason is to help Tommy!” Tubbo’s frustrated words echoed not only in the well-house but also down the well, forming a haunting warped harmony of his own words. 

“Tommy isn’t here,” Dream narrowed his translucent eyes, “and I’m not exactly inclined to trust you two considering Tommy promised not to tell you about me. And if he broke that promise of his own free will…” For someone who claimed not to be a ghost, he sure did a lot of ghost-like things, evidenced by how the well-house suddenly got quite a bit colder. “Then he’s gotta pay for it, no matter how much I like him. Rules are rules.”

“Breaking rules to save your friends is a good thing,” Ranboo insisted. “And Tommy only told us so we would still have someone to ask about all this if- if he forgot. Like his dad.” Ranboo balled up his fists. “You’re the only one who knows what’s going on, we have to save him!”

Dream chuckled, but there was something very wrong about it. “I can save him myself, you know.”

Tubbo scowled. “You’re trapped here. If you want to save Tommy, we’re your only option. And you’re OUR only option.”

“My only option…” Dream’s eyes seemed dangerous, then. “That’s just not true, is it? You could set me free.” His frown turned into a glare. “I’ve been trapped here for decades, so learning my ‘friend’ had the key to my freedom this whole time wasn’t exactly PLEASANT!” Dream’s face shattered into raw, cataclysmic fury as he screamed with a desperate, violent rage.

Then it was over, and Tubbo and Ranboo exchanged a furtive glance as they realized Dream must have heard them talking about the Anywhere Key as they had cut past the well-house towards the house to find it. 

“But that’s for Tommy and I to discuss.” Dream’s voice was soft, almost sweet. “You two, however, are knowingly contributing to my continued torture and are also demanding I trust you with a large part of the precious little leverage I have to earn my freedom. For all I know the reason Tommy hasn’t freed me is because you’ve been convincing him not to.” 

“We don’t have time for this!” Tubbo growled. “Just- what do you want us to do, other than free you because we aren’t going to do that for a variety of reasons, not least of which is because we don’t trust you any more than you trust us. What do you want for whatever information you’re hiding?”

Dream fixed them with a blank but intense stare. “Show me the Anywhere Key. I’m not asking you to use it or give it to me: take it out of your pocket, hold it out, and let me look at it.”

Tubbo glanced at Ranboo again, and Ranboo just shrugged. It was a pretty weird request, but ultimately harmless. So Tubbo shrugged back and took out the key. 

It was warm in his hand, warmer than Tubbo thought it should be. Maybe being inside the well-house made it heat up? The golden sheen of the key practically sparkled in Dream’s eyes as he stared at it intently from the other side of the well. Dream looked so focused and intent, as if he was trying to unravel the secrets of the universe, before he suddenly frowned and scoffed. 

“Great,” he said bitterly. “Just great. Alright,” he sighed and looked back at Tubbo who’d already slipped the key back into his pocket, “I’ll tell you what key is responsible. After you two left, Tommy kept up his search for the Hercules key but didn’t find it. He found the Head Key instead, and asked me what it did. I told him, and can only assume he used it. There you go.”

“But what does the Head Key do? Where is it? How do we save Tommy with it?” Ranboo pleaded. “We need more information!”

“Then you’ll need to do me a second favor.” Dream ground out. Then he scoffed at Tubbo’s furious expression. “Oh don’t look at me like that, it’s nothing big. You don’t even have to do it right now; just come back within a month. Fail to do so and I will never speak to you again, no matter what’s at stake. Do not. Break a promise with me.”

“Fine,” Tubbo hissed. “Just tell us!”

“The Head Key allows the user to open a gateway into their mind. It creates an avatar of your identity, a physical replication, as your body goes inert. It also creates a door. Tommy must have used the key and entered his head, and then the key must have fallen out while he was inside.” His face was passive as he spoke, matter-of-fact and professional. “If you put the key back in and turn it, Tommy can leave through the door again. Once he’s out, which knowing Tommy will be nearly immediately, removing the key will automatically restore him back to his body. Insert key, turn, wait five seconds, remove key, and he should wake up.”

“Well where’s the key?” Ranboo asked gently. 

“How should I know?” Dream- wow, he actually pouted. “You said his dad found him and freaked out? Odds are good he dislodged the key when he grabbed him, just look around wherever that happened. It’s a key; magical or not, it isn’t gonna go anywhere.”

“The library,” Tubbo muttered, “Ranboo the key has to be in the library! Let’s go!” Tubbo grabbed Ranboo's hand and all but dragged him out of the well-house. 

“You’re welcome!” Dream called out behind them, but they didn’t even hear it.

---

Wilbur stared blearily at the sight in front of him. 

“What are you doing here?” he demanded. His head swiveled between the clock that hung in the hospital corridor, which read 11:40pm, and back at them. “Are you here by yourselves? How did you even get here?” 

“We took the bus,” Tubbo said resolutely. 

Ranboo, who had opened his mouth to think of a plausible lie, shut it with an audible snap. 

“The bus,” Wilbur repeated. “On your own? At this hour? From your house? What bus even goes all that way?”

“Yes, the bus, Wilbur,” Tubbo said exasperatedly. “It’s a large vehicle used for public transport that runs at all hours – maybe you can try it sometime. But we’re here because we need to see Tommy.”

“Please,” Ranboo added. 

Wilbur was shaking his head even before Tubbo finished speaking. “It’s only immediate family allowed in there, my mom’s sitting with him now.”

“We’re just really worried,” Ranboo said, his voice small and pleading. “Please Wilbur, we just want to see him and … and talk to him for a few minutes. Just a few minutes. Please?”

Wilbur looked ready to make an angry retort, but then deflated. He sighed, running a hand through his already disheveled dark curls. “Fine. I’ll bring you in when Mom takes a break. But just for five minutes, okay? Then you have to leave. And not by the bus, okay?”

Both boys immediately nodded in agreement. 

---

About half an hour later, they got their chance. 

An exhausted-looking Kristin stepped slowly out of the room, clasped Wilbur’s hands tightly before releasing him, and walked dazedly down the hallway towards the cafeteria.

Wilbur poked his head around the corner and beckoned Tubbo and Ranboo into the room before quickly, quietly shutting the door behind them. 

Ranboo stared at the slight figure laying on the hospital bed, hooked up to numerous machines. He had never seen anyone look so pale and still. It was so hard to reconcile with his normally bright and vivacious friend. Behind him, he heard Tubbo draw in a sharp breath when he caught sight of Tommy. 

“It’s been a week,” Wilbur said bleakly. “They don’t know what’s wrong. Nothing they’ve tried has worked. He’s just … unconscious.” 

Wilbur’s throat caught, and he coughed slightly to clear it. He was so tired. After all these days he was too exhausted to even speak. 

Instead, he watched, as if from a distance, as his little brother’s friends moved closer to Tommy’s still form. Ranboo walked to the bedside and reached for Tommy’s hand. Tubbo was still standing in front of Wilbur, a barrier between him and Ranboo. 

Tubbo glanced back at him. “Do it now, Boo,” he said, keeping his eyes on Wilbur.

Wilbur blinked. Do what? 

Ranboo was now standing very close to Tommy and was gently tilting the unconscious teenager’s head to the side. 

“Hey, stop that,” Wilbur said, annoyed. “Don’t move him –”

And then suddenly, Ranboo was holding some kind of metal thing up to Tommy’s neck, like he was about to poke or stab him with it. Wilbur startled, dodging around Tubbo to reach Ranboo and stop him, but Tubbo got in his way. He grabbed Tubbo’s arms, making to push the shorter teen out of the way and get back to Tommy’s side. Tubbo shoved back surprisingly hard, blocking him, and Wilbur cursed. 

From this angle, Wilbur got a better look at the metal object in Ranboo’s hand. It looked like … a key?  

To Wilbur’s horror, Ranboo lowered his hand towards the back of Tommy’s neck, appearing to insert the key into a dark HOLE that had suddenly appeared in Tommy’s SKIN oh my god what the fuck was happening –?! 

And then Ranboo turned the key with an audible click .

A few seconds later, as Wilbur stared dumbfounded, Ranboo turned the key back.

And Tommy’s eyes shot open and he took a sharp, gasping breath. 

Wilbur froze, still holding Tubbo’s arms in a vice-like grip – Tommy hadn’t made a sound in days – and finally managed to muscle Tubbo out of the way as he lunged for Tommy’s bedside. 

Ranboo backed away immediately, the key still in his hand. 

“Tommy? Toms, can you hear me?” Wilbur asked frantically, reaching out with one hand to feel Tommy’s neck by the hole he had just seen, checking for a wound, for blood, while stroking his hair gently back from his face with the other.

Tommy blinked up at him blearily. “Wil?” he murmured. 

“Oh, Toms,” Wilbur was weeping in relief. “You’re awake! Oh, thank God. Thank God! Stay awake for me, bubba, do you hear me? Stay awake. We’ll get a doctor in to take a look at you.” 

He turned to Tubbo, who still stood by the foot of the hospital bed. The teenager was gazing down at Tommy with a startling expression of manic, gleeful satisfaction on his face. “Can you get help – go call the doctor?” 

Tubbo snapped to attention and nodded, hurrying out the door. Wilbur gripped Tommy’s left hand tightly and continued to stroke his hair with his right, talking softly all the while. Ranboo slowly lowered himself into the chair on the other side of Tommy’s bed and reached out to take his right hand. 

Chapter Text

Key House, someone had written in a journal found somewhere in Key House, is so named because it is a nursery for the newborn physical manifestations of pure, insubstantial magic …

---

The Crafts were overjoyed.

As Phil recounted later, he nearly had a heart attack when he, Kristin, and Techno had returned from the cafeteria to find a bevy of doctors and nurses milling around outside Tommy’s room. They had frantically pushed their way inside to find Wilbur in tears, sitting next to a groggy and confused, but awake, Tommy. 

The bewildered but pleased medical staff had insisted on keeping Tommy overnight for observation. In the morning after breakfast, his release papers were signed. 

Wilbur had never seen his parents look so happy and relieved as in that moment when, after another panel of scans and tests, the doctor issued Tommy a clean bill of health and cleared him to go home. It looked like decades of weariness had lifted from them. He could read the same relief and joy on his twin’s normally reserved face as well, so Wilbur suspected it was also readily apparent on his own. 

“Ready to get out of here, mate?” Phil asked, smiling down at Tommy. 

“Let’s blow this popsicle stand,” Tommy replied with a grin as he swung his bare feet off the edge of the hospital bed, startling a laugh out of Phil.

Kristin came up behind the chairs where Wilbur and Techno were seated and wrapped an arm around each of them. 

“My babies,” she murmured happily, watching as Phil gently lifted Tommy into the wheelchair. “We’re taking you all home now.”

Techno rumbled a laugh, and Wilbur pointed out cheekily, “We’re both quite a bit taller than you, Mom.”

“Irrelevant,” she replied with a grin.

“Mom,” Techno said quietly a few minutes later, as the three of them trailed behind Phil, who was pushing Tommy in the wheelchair down the hallway, chattering all the while with his youngest. “Did the doctors finally say … what happened? What caused this, and what fixed it?”

Kristin’s smile dipped, and Techno ignored the glare that Wilbur shot him. 

“No, sweetheart,” she said quietly. “They said it was idiopathic, which basically means they don’t know what caused it. Or what ended up curing it.”

What cured it. Wilbur’s mind flashed back to the scene in Tommy’s room the previous day, and the starkly satisfied look on Tubbo’s face. “Do it,” Tubbo had said to Ranboo. And Ranboo had done … something. What? Wilbur couldn’t quite remember.

Wilbur looked up and saw his twin giving him a penetrating look. Wilbur knew that look – oh yes, they would be having words later.  

---

“Tommy’s coming home today,” Ranboo said cheerfully.

“Oh, really?” Sam said, turning away from the stove where morning oats and eggs were cooking, and wiping his hands on a dishcloth. “That’s such a relief.”

“That’s terrific news,” Ponk agreed, looked up from the morning newspaper. “The poor kid. I can’t believe he was hospitalized for so long, that’s terrible.”

“Listen, I don’t want you two rushing over there and bothering the Crafts, alright?” Sam said, fixing Tubbo and Ranboo with a stern look. “Tommy needs time to rest and recover, and his parents also need time to recover from this scare.”

“We’re not going to bother them,” Tubbo said indignantly, scowling at their parents. 

“Tommy needs company though,” Ranboo chimed in, as Ponk snorted in amusement. “We’ll just keep him company.” 

“We should make them something, maybe a casserole,” Sam murmured, mentally planning the ingredients list. 

“Good idea,” Ponk nodded in agreement. “These two can take it over when they inevitably invade.”

“Hey!”

---

“Wil, think,” Techno said fiercely. “Tubbo and Ranboo arrived – and then what happened? Did they have anything with them? What did they do?”

They were all finally at home. Phil and Kristin were upstairs in Tommy’s room, helping him get settled. Puffy had called and said she, her partner, and son were all driving over, and would arrive within the hour. 

Meanwhile, the twins were in the kitchen, making everyone sandwiches for lunch. 

As Wilbur had expected, his twin had taken the first available opportunity for a private discussion to grill him about what had happened in between their mother leaving for the cafeteria and Tommy waking up.

Wilbur screwed up his face in thought. “They had something with them … Ranboo was holding it. Tubbo got in my way. I was trying to get around him and get back to Tommy. Tubbo said something like ‘Do it’ to Ranboo … and then Tommy woke up.”

“What was Ranboo holding? Think, Wil, this is really important. Was it a needle? Did they inject Tommy with something?”

“No, it wasn’t a needle or syringe. It was some kind of metal – wait, it was a key.” Wilbur opened his eyes and looked up at his twin, confusion in his face.

“It was a key,” he repeated as the memory solidified in his mind. “A big metal key, like made of brass or something. But … why did they have a key?”

“A key,” Techno repeated. He sat down on one of the island bar-stools and stared at the spread of sandwich ingredients before him, thinking hard. “Like … a key to a door?  But wait, the hospital doors all had electronic locks. Was it the key to some kind of medical cabinet?” 

“It was bigger than normal keys, and old-looking,” Wilbur replied, grasping at the memory for details. “Like for an old-timey door or something.” He wrinkled his nose. Why was it so hard to remember exactly what had happened?

“We have many old-timey doors here. They probably do at their house, too, it’s the same period as Key House.. And they … touched Tommy with the key?”

“Yes.”

“The key could have been hiding a needle in it,” Techno said, staring at Wilbur intensely.

“No …” Wilbur frowned fiercely as he struggled to pull the memory back to himself. “I heard it click. Like the sound of a lock unlocking.”

“They touched Tommy with a key, and something clicked.”

“I think so … yes, it definitely clicked.”

“And then he woke up?”

“Like literally that instant, he made a sound and opened his eyes.”

“Doesn’t that seem a little weird to you?”

“Of course it does,” Wilbur replied, irritated, taking a seat himself. “But that’s just what happened. I didn’t see anything else. Do you think the metal somehow … shocked him, or something?”

“Maybe.” 

There was a moment of pensive silence.

“This is going to sound crazy,” Techno said slowly. “But during my ethnography lecture, there was this section on folklore in the rural counties surrounding Manberg. And they talked about these weird magical keys that spontaneously spawn along this so-called ley line.”

“Magical keys,” Wilbur repeated, his voice dripping with disbelief. “What the hell, Tech.”

“I know,” Techno grimaced. “It’s just some bullshit. The only reason I even remembered it was because according to their map, Key House is on the ley line. But I’m just – look. I can buy Tubbo and Ranboo sneaking out to come see Tommy. They’re friends. Okay, maybe they even did it in the middle of the night, without their parents noticing. Possible. But they just happen to bring a fancy old key with them? And then Tommy just happens to wake up straightaway after they come near him with the thing, after the doctors had been trying all sorts of state-of-the-art treatments to wake him up for more than a week? Are you sure it was a key?”

“It was definitely a key.”

The twins stared at each other in consternation. 

“I think,” Wilbur said, “that we need to have a talk with Tubbo and Ranboo.”

Techno nodded in agreement. 

Chapter Text

The Memory key is said to counteract the natural forgetfulness, his father had written. It locks the memory of magic and the keys into people through adulthood. 

---

“Are you insane?” Wilbur hissed, looming over Tommy, who sat cross-legged on his bed. Techno sat next to him, propped up against the headboard, looking lost in thought. 

It was the day after Tommy came home from the hospital. Tubbo and Ranboo had just left. Along with Tommy, they had just finished explaining the existence of the magical keys to the twins. 

Their discussion had included a live demonstration of what the three of them called the ‘Identity’ key. It … had been a lot. 

A different key, Tubbo had explained, shooting a squirming Tommy an unimpressed look, had been responsible for Tommy’s extended unconsciousness. He and Ranboo had found and then brought that key – called the ‘Head’ key – with them to the hospital that night, he explained, and used it to awaken Tommy. 

Techno was astonished and pensive, and hadn’t found words to speak yet. 

Wilbur was scared and furious , and was only too ready to talk. 

Tommy said defensively, “I didn’t know that was going to happen. We usually test any new keys together, to be safe. I know it was a mistake to try the Head key out myself, but it was an accident –”

“An accident!” Wilbur’s voice rose to a shout. Techno hastily motioned at him to keep his voice down, and he stopped, leaning his palms on the bed and staring down at his little brother. 

Wilbur closed his eyes for a moment and gathered himself before continuing. He was calm. He was mindful. He was grateful to see those beloved, obstinate blue eyes glaring back at him, instead of that horrific stillness he had watched for days and days and days. And yet – 

“Tommy. Toms. You were in a fucking coma for nearly a week,” Wilbur said through gritted teeth. “Mom and Dad were going crazy! Tech and I were going crazy! Nothing the doctors tried was working. We were afraid you would never wake up. We were afraid you might be brain dead . And all this was because you were fucking around with these goddamn keys?”

Tommy flinched and opened his mouth to respond, but Techno cut him off, sitting upright and letting his hand fall heavily on his little brother’s shoulder. 

“Yeah, that’s it, hand them over,” Techno said, his tone flat and humorless. 

“What?” 

“The keys,” Techno repeated impatiently. “All of them. Hand them over now.”

“Why?” Tommy said, aghast. “We’ve been keeping them safe.”

Wilbur laughed shortly as he straightened. “Yeah, no, sunshine, this isn’t about keeping the keys safe. If it were up to me, I’d melt them all to scrap. This is about keeping you safe. They’re clearly dangerous, and you and your friends have been way too loosey-goosey about using them.”

“That’s not fair,” Tommy said angrily. “The keys saved me –”

“The keys put you in the hospital. They’re the reason you needed to be saved –”

“Wil’s right,” Techno said, voice flat and ominous. “Hand the keys over now, runt. We’re putting them all away somewhere safe until we can figure things out. You or your friends aren’t playing with them, or testing them, or whatever, any longer.”

Tommy grumbled, but began to comply. He pulled the two keys Ranboo had returned to him out from under his shirt, struggling a bit as the twine band tangled in his hair, and dropped them into Techno’s outstretched hand. “Here are the Anywhere key and the Head key.”

“The ‘Anywhere’ key?” Techno repeated questioningly, as he closed his palm around them. 

Tommy nodded as he hopped off the bed and headed for his chest of drawers. “Yeah, if you use it in any door, it will open out to anywhere you want to go.” 

His brothers stared at him, and then at each other. 

“So it’s like teleportation?” Techno asked carefully, his tone incredulous.

“Sort of,” Tommy said. “It’s not like on-the-spot, you still need to open the door and walk through it. Here, I’ll show you.”

Tommy took the key back and inserted it into a keyhole that Techno was fairly sure hadn’t been in the closet door before, and opened the door wide. 

Wilbur and Techno stared at the view beyond – instead of the inside of the closet, it was a subway station. A recorded message about timings began to play as a train rattled by with a thunderous noise. 

Tommy shut the door on the sight nonchalantly, and handed the key back to Techno. “You can open a door to anywhere using this,” he explained. “That’s why it’s called the Anywhere key.”

“Tommy,” Wilbur said after a moment where he struggled to process what he had just seen, looking down at the keys his twin held. “Did you ever use this key to visit our dorms?”

“Yeah, once,” Tommy muttered, shooting them a sheepish look as he continued to rifle through the drawer. “On your Move-In day. It was an accident.”

Wilbur and Techno exchanged a glance. So … Quackity hadn’t been seeing things. Techno’s face remained bland while the corner of Wilbur’s mouth crooked into a weak smile. 

Tommy shuffled back towards the bed and unceremoniously dropped two more keys onto the bedspread. 

“That’s it,” he said, looking downtrodden. “We only have the four of them right now – the Anywhere key, the Head key, the Identity key, and the Mending key. But there are supposed to be more, hidden somewhere in the house.”

“How do you know that?” Wilbur demanded. 

Techno carefully placed the keys he held next to the others, and then hesitated, looking up at his twin. “Maybe we should wrap them up individually before putting them away?” he muttered, uncertain. 

“Don’t bother, you’ll forget about all this soon,” Tommy said sourly. He quailed when his brothers both turned to stare at him.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Wilbur demanded.

Tommy shifted, looking slightly guilty. “Well … older people don’t remember about magic. So after you forget, me and Tubbo and Ranboo will go back to looking after the keys ourselves anyway.”

“Older people?” Techno drawled. 

“We’re in college, Toms, not a senior facility,” Wilbur asked exasperatedly. 

“No, you don’t understand,” Tommy said earnestly. “I’ve shown you the keys and you remember now, but soon – maybe in a couple of hours – you’ll forget again. I’m totally serious. You won’t remember the keys or what they do, or even that we talked about them.”

Wilbur and Techno frowned at each other, and spoke with overlapping voices.

“What?”

“Why would that happen?”

“I don’t know,” Tommy said with a shrug. “That’s just what always seems to happen. I’ve tried to talk to Mom and Dad about the keys a bunch of times, they always forget afterwards. See, Dad even writes about the forgetting process here in his old journal.” 

Tommy pulled an aged looking book with a brown leather cover out from the drawer and turned back towards the bed. Wilbur recognized it as the book Tommy had been reading in the living room when he and Techno had come home for the first long weekend after the semester had started. His stomach dropped unpleasantly as he thought about Tommy handling these dangerous keys alone for months, while the entire family was completely oblivious. 

Tommy flopped onto the bed next to Techno, narrowly avoiding the pile of keys. Sprawled on his stomach, he opened the book and flipped pages rapidly. Wilbur sat down on his other side to look. 

“This is Dad’s old journal?” Techno asked, reaching out to touch the battered cover.

“Yup, see, here’s his name,” Tommy showed them before turning back to his search. “It’s from when he lived here as a teenager.”

Tommy found the page he was looking for and pointed. “See, look. Dad wrote about how it was the same way with Aunt Puffy. She’s older than him by like two or three years, yeah? He wrote that they used to use the keys together when they were both kids, but then she just … forgot. She even had her own journal where she wrote about the keys, but she didn’t even believe that was real later. We think it’s because she became an adult. And now it’s the same with Mom and Dad. I showed Dad the Mending key and Mom the Anywhere key. They were both all shocked and interested, but then just a few minutes after seeing them, neither of them remembered anything about them. And when I showed Dad this journal, he recognized that it was his, but he said the stuff about the keys was all just stories he made up as a kid.”

Wilbur and Techno exchanged a troubled glance. 

“Well, that might explain why I had such a hard time remembering what exactly happened when Tubbo and Ranboo used the – the Head key? – on Tommy in the hospital,” Wilbur said finally. He absently reached out to bury his fingers in Tommy’s curls. “But what do we do now? We can’t just forget – this is too important. What if something else happens?”

Techno looked thoughtful. “We need to make ourselves remember, somehow. Maybe we should write ourselves a letter, something very clear?” 

“Would you believe it?” Tommy asked skeptically. “Dad had this whole journal that he wrote himself, and he didn’t believe it. And the same thing happened with Aunt Puffy.” 

“You have a point,” Techno sighed, frowning. “But maybe that was because it was longer ago?”

“I have a better idea,” Wilbur said after a moment, clapping his hands. “Let’s record a video of the three of us, with proof of how the keys work. We can prove it to ourselves, and see that we’re not joking.” He pulled out his cell phone and motioned at Tommy to pick up one of the keys. 

---

“Heh, I think I’ve got something,” Techno said suddenly from his seat on the massive sofa in the mansion’s library a few hours later. He had borrowed Phil’s journal from Tommy and was making a careful perusal, taking notes in his own notebook. 

“What?” Wilbur asked, looking up from his morose review of yet another dusty old book in the mansion’s library for any mention of the keys. 

“Come look at this,” Techno said, smoothing out the page of Phil’s journal. “I think this is what we need. It’s called the ‘Memory’ key.”

Wilbur peered over his twin’s shoulder at the page, squinting at the marginalia as he tried to decipher their father’s teenage handwriting. “The Memory key … is said to lock the memory of magic and the keys into people through adulthood!” His voice rose in excitement as he read the final words. “Yes! This is it. But wait …”

“If Dad knew what this key did, why didn’t he use it on himself?” Techno murmured, meeting Wilbur’s eyes knowingly, as if reading his twin’s mind. “Tommy said he didn’t remember anything about the keys.”

Wilbur plopped down on the couch next to his twin, deflated. “Maybe he never had it.”

Techno’s eyes narrowed. “If he never had it, how did he know about it to write about it?”

---

“So my brothers found this note in our dad’s old journal,” Tommy whispered. He was supposed to be asleep – his blankets were tented over his head, hiding the light from his phone from anyone passing by in the hallway. Ever since he got home from the hospital, his family had been sneaking into his room multiple times each night to check on him.

“It’s about another key, called the Memory key,” he continued softly. “It says that if you use it on someone, they won’t forget about magic and the keys once they grow up.”

“That’s awesome,” Tubbo’s tinny voice came through the speaker, Ranboo murmuring in agreement. “That’s exactly what we need. Why didn’t we see that?”

“The thing is, Wil and Tech both think that Dad never found the key – otherwise he would have used it on himself, right?”

There was a pause on the other line. “That … makes sense,” Tubbo allowed. 

“But then how did he find out about it?” Ranboo asked reasonably. “Or wait – do you think there could be something about it in your aunt’s journal? We never found that.”

“Yeah, we’re looking through other books in the attic and library to see,” Tommy replied, “but there’s nothing so far.”

“Or maybe your dad did find it, but he decided that he’d rather forget,” Ranboo said thoughtfully. 

Tommy frowned. Why would anyone want to forget about the keys?

“That doesn’t make any sense, Boo,” Tubbo said before he could speak. “Why would he want to forget magic ?”

“Then if there’s not another reference book … wait, Tommy, do you think your dad knew Dream? Maybe Dream told him about the Memory key, and that’s how he knew about it without having it.”

Tommy gripped his phone tightly. For some reason, the thought of his father, as a teenager, conversing with Dream in the well-house decades ago made him feel very uneasy. If Dream had known Phil, he had certainly never mentioned it. And Dream had never told Tommy about the Memory key. That was weird, right? 

But wait, no, Dream was his friend. He was kind and cheerful and had shared a lot of information with Tommy. And Tommy knew Dream had memory problems – if he had known Phil, maybe he had just forgotten about talking to him.  

“Maybe,” Tommy allowed, still whispering. “I can ask Dream about it.”

There was another pause, while Tommy clutched his phone and listened. 

“I don’t know,” Tubbo said quietly. “Tommy – you know, Dream did help by telling us about the Head key while you were in the hospital. But the thing is … he would only tell us in exchange for a favor.”

“A favor?” Tommy echoed. “For telling you about the Head key? But … why would he do that? What kind of favor?”

“Yeah, and he was pretty nasty about it, to be honest,” Tubbo said, his tone serious, making Tommy blink in surprise.

“And he didn’t say exactly what he wanted for the favor,” Tubbo continued. “We didn’t have much choice at the time so we just agreed. So … I’d kind of like to see what he asks for before we go asking him for anything else, you know?”

“Tubbo’s right,” Ranboo said gravely. “Dream was actually kind of creepy about it. Tommy – what do your brothers think about him?”

Creepy?

“They don’t know about Dream yet,” Tommy admitted slowly. “I explained more about the keys to them, but I haven’t told them about Dream.”

There was silence on the other end of the line for a moment. 

“I think you ought to tell them,” Tubbo said finally. “And soon.”

“Is there any particular reason you haven’t?” Ranboo asked cautiously.

“I don’t know,” Tommy said, twisting the edge of his blanket. “I guess … it just wasn’t the right time. And they’re already pretty upset just about the keys. Plus they would want to talk to Dream, and I don’t think Dream would be happy if I brought anyone to the well-house. You know he had asked me not to even tell you guys about him. Was he mad?”

Tubbo scoffed. “Yeah, and he wasn’t exactly nice about it. In fact he was pretty goddamned unhinged.” Tubbo clenched his jaw. “I don’t think you should be trusting him as much as you are.”

“Tubbo-” Tommy started, but his friend cut him off.

“Look I’m not saying he’s evil or some shit,” Tubbo sighed, “but he’s a lot more unstable than you think. He flew off the handle pretty violently out of nowhere and then just went right back to being calm. He even said you deserved to be punished.”

“What? Why would he say that? That’s not-” Tommy was getting an entire rant going, but he got cut off by his friend again. At least it was a different friend this time.

“He takes broken promises really seriously,” Ranboo said, “like to a scary degree. He acted like you owed him some kind of debt that we had to pay just to get him to agree to help.” Ranboo paused briefly. “He told us to show him the Anywhere Key.”

“What?!” Tommy nearly shouted, but he kept it a strangled whisper. 

Tubbo clearly seemed unhappy with Ranboo for saying that, which was a whole other issue, but he clarified. “He heard us talking about it when we were walking to the manor, which was actually what he screamed about. We told him we didn’t trust him, which he seemed to understand, so he just asked to see it. Then he stared at it for a while before getting pissy about something,” Tubbo’s voice hardened. “He was doing something, Tommy. He knows things that he isn’t telling you, and you shouldn’t trust him to be telling you the whole truth. He only told us what the key was at first, he made us make a promise for the rest.”

“What kind of promise?” If Dream had been that upset that Tommy told them… 

“He wants us to do him a favor,” Ranboo said quietly, “although he didn’t specify what it was. We’ll take care of it, although if it’s too big then we swear we’ll tell you. We just… we really don’t want you getting involved, he seems. Unhappy with you.”

“I-” Tommy bit his lip. “I mean, you can’t exactly blame him for that.” 

“You shouldn’t make excuses for him,” Tubbo said flatly. 

Tommy, however, wasn’t letting that shit slide. “There’s a difference between excusing shitty behavior and acknowledging the fact I chose to let him stay trapped. He was upset, Tubbo, and he had a right to be! I’ll have to talk to him about that too.” Tommy hadn’t wanted Dream to find out like this, but part of him hadn’t wanted Dream to find out at all. It was selfish and shitty of him, but a huge part of it was that Tommy didn’t know why he was so reluctant. Something just felt wrong about the idea of giving him the Anywhere Key, and something else told him that opening a door with it wouldn’t work for some reason. 

“It’s also not his fault that he doesn’t tell me everything, either,” Tommy continued. “There’s something seriously wrong with his memory.”

“Oh yeah, that’s not suspicious,” Tubbo snarked. “What, he forgets things sometimes and remembers them other times? Seems pretty fuckin’ convenient.”

Tommy swallowed beneath his stuffy covers. “He forgets my name sometimes.”

Silence rang from his phone.

“He gives different answers to the same questions from day to day, but he never contradicts himself, he just. He remembers different parts of his answer.”

“Have you ever asked him who locked him up? Or why?” Tubbo asked pointedly. 

“Of course I have!” Tommy scowled. “But like I said, his memory is inconsistent, and that stuff especially he has trouble working through. Whatever happened to him was pretty traumatic and all he’s been able to tell me is that he knew my ancestors and worked with them sometimes but something went really wrong. Sometimes he’ll mention that he doesn’t blame them, but forgets he even said it as soon as I ask about it. He seems pretty convinced that he wasn’t supposed to be trapped this long, which implies he knew how long it was supposed to be.”

“This is just all really shady,” Tubbo huffed, “and it sounds even more complicated. You should probably just get some rest, it’s not like we’re gonna untangle all this tonight.”

“Yeah,” Tommy sighed. “I guess I should. Goodnight, guys.”

---

“Tommy…” Dream sighed, and Tommy’s insides squirmed. It had been three days since he’d returned home from the hospital, and it had taken all three of them to fight his family into letting him outside again so he could slip into the well-house to talk to Dream about… a lot of things, honestly. 

Looking at Dream’s very unhappy face, Tommy was starting to wonder if he should have just snuck out sooner. 

“I’m glad you’re okay,” Dream said gently with all the air of someone using sweets to make an extremely bitter pill go down easier. “I am. And I’m glad to see you on your feet again. But we need to talk.” Dream was better at the ‘disappointed lecture for your own good’ voice than his dad was. “We need to talk about a lot of things, starting with why you lied to me. I don’t like being lied to.”

Tommy squirmed on the outside, too. “I just-” he avoided Dream’s gaze. “I didn’t tell you I had the Anywhere Key because- I-” Tommy hissed in discomfort before throwing his hands up. “I don’t know! Okay?” He locked eyes with Dream and ignored how empty Dream’s expression was. “As soon as you asked me about it, there was just this, I dunno, some instinct or something. Some voice way in the back of my head that told me giving it to you would be a really, really bad idea. And after that, well.” Tommy ducked his head. “It just felt worse and worse. I couldn’t even explain it to you, so I didn’t want to have to, and I’m sorry.”

After several tense moments, Tommy looked up when he heard Dream sigh. “I actually have the answer for that,” and Tommy’s jaw dropped, “but we could have talked about this. Before I tell you why you got that feeling, though, there’s something more serious.” Dream’s previously somewhat patient, if disappointed, expression hardened into one of admonishment. “You broke your promise.”

“I’m sorry about that too,” Tommy admitted, “but I was. Really, really upset. I’d just found out that nothing would stop my parents from forgetting anything magical I showed them, and I only really found out about it thanks to Tubbo and Ranboo. Mostly Tubbo,” he admitted. “I felt like I needed to tell them about you because my parents couldn’t help me find the Well-house Key so I thought they could. When Tubbo told me about everything he figured out all on his own, it kind of confirmed it to me, I guess. But I should have talked to you first.”

Dream seemed a little less stern after hearing that, but his gaze still didn’t let up. “I understand, Tommy, but you broke a promise. You went back on your word. Your friends paid that debt for you by showing me the Anywhere Key, but it doesn’t change the fact that your words mean less now.”

“What?” Tommy frowned in confusion. “What does that mean, you just don’t trust me anymore? Everything I say is worthless now?” He couldn’t hide the hurt in his voice, but if anything it only made Dream more serious. 

“It means I can’t trust you to keep your promises. I want to, Tommy,” and here a sliver of desperation entered the spirit’s voice, “I so badly want to believe that you’ll honor your promise to save me, but that’s not how it works. You’re still my friend, but until you honor that larger promise I can’t accept any smaller ones from you.”

Dream’s fixation on promises had already been weird, but now it was just confusing. “What do you mean that’s ‘not how it works’?”

“Those are the rules, Tommy,” Dream stated. “That’s how deals work.”

Tommy frowned. “I wasn’t making a deal with you, Dream, I was just reassuring you that I would keep you a secret because you wanted me to, and I didn’t want to upset you. You’re my friend, not my business partner. What rules are you even talking about??”

Dream’s face… stuttered, for lack of a better word. “What?”

“What rules are you talking about? How can I follow them if I don’t know them?”

Another strange stutter, a flickering range of expressions. “I don’t- they’re the rules. The. I…” Dream frowned. “I don’t… know. I’m- I’m sorry, we were, we were talking about promises?” At Tommy’s nod, Dream seemed relieved. “Okay. Okay, uh, so the rules- they’re like. Don’t break promises, because…” He trailed off, eyes drifting away from Tommy to look somewhere very far away. “Because promises are laws set up inside a relationship, and breaking them causes damage.” While his words sort of made sense, Dream said them with a sort of finality or purpose that made Tommy feel like he was missing something vital. 

“Well, then… Since I broke that promise, I won’t ask you to make any.” He didn’t yelp when Dream’s gaze laser-focused on him in an instant, but it was a near thing. “It’s only fair, right? I can’t ask you to promise something when I broke my own. Not until I come through with your freedom. So… after I free you, what would I have to do for you to help me find the Memory Key?”

“Deals and promises are different, but connected,” Dream said softly. His form seemed a little more hazy than usual. “If you really do manage to free me, I’ll help you find the Memory Key, because I was already going to do something for you in exchange. That you were willing to give up a boon as repayment for a broken promise… that means a lot.”

Tommy had no fucking idea what was going on right now, but Dream clearly wasn’t fully put together at the moment. “Thank you,” he said it more like a question but Dream seemed to accept it so he just moved on. “Can I ask, um. Tubbo said they owed you a favor, can I ask what it’s gonna be?”

Some manner of clarity seemed to return to Dream at that. “Oh, I’m going to have them write and mail a letter for me. My friends and I have several methods of long-term contact set up, and the post office is the most reliable. We may be magical, but the post? That can’t be beat.”

Not for the first time, Tommy was incredibly curious about Dream’s ‘friends’, but he knew now wasn’t the time to push about that, especially because Dream struggled to remember them at the best of times. At least he still remembered them enough to want to write them a letter. 

Hearing that made Tommy feel even worse, though. It was one thing, talking to Dream about history he’d lived through, knowing that Dream used to be a physical, living person before he’d been trapped as a spirit. But knowing there were at least two people waiting for him to come back after a hundred years made it all feel a lot more real and horrible. He wasn’t just some wandering spirit being kept from moving on: he had people waiting for him. Even after all this time.

“Moving on,” Dream said suddenly, “you said you felt that giving me the Anywhere Key would be bad. Like some part of you just knew not to.”

“Yeah?” Tommy hadn’t really expected Dream to remember the beginning of their conversation; he tended to lose track of things like that. 

“Well, you already know the keys are magical.” Dream raised a brow at Tommy’s blank face. “What’s a common characteristic shared by all the different types of magical artifacts?”

“There’s other types of magic objects?”

What the fuck, how had that never come up before?!

Dream blinked. “Yeah. Ask your friend Tubbo to look into the magic swords of the Isles, or the sacred horns of Pogtopia, or- there’s a lot, is the point. Here, magic takes the form of keys. My point is, magical items of great power tend to choose people.”

What the fuck. “You’re saying the Anywhere Key chose me for something?”

“Not for something in particular,” Dream shook his head. “But the keys are all alive, in a very loose sense of the word, and they tend to pick favorites. Sometimes. Whoever a key chooses has a special hold over it, and it will give them… not so much more power, but their magic will function a bit differently. The Anywhere Key specifically will let you, Tommy, and only you, activate a door without having to turn it. You can just slide it in and out and it’ll still work, because the Anywhere Key imprinted on you. That’s the term for it.”

“Is that… Tubbo said you almost seemed to be talking to the key when he showed it to you. How did you do that?”

Dream grimaced. “I don’t want to tell you that, because it’s personal, but yes, I found this out by inspecting the key. If it thinks being given to me is dangerous, then I unfortunately have to believe that. But if you can’t find the Well-house key…” Something dangerous glimmered in Dream’s eyes. “There is nothing that could be worse than being trapped here any longer than absolutely necessary.” 

“I’ll find it, Dream,” Tommy said firmly. “I promised you I would, and I will. I just need more time.”

“I know, Tommy,” Dream said gently. “I just don’t know how much time I have left.”

---

Later that night, Tommy lay in bed, his mind racing. His stomach was twisted with guilt, making his dinner sit uneasily. Dream’s words echoed in his mind: “You broke your promise… …I don’t know how much time I have left.”

Tommy didn’t know what Dream meant by that, exactly, but he could tell it was the truth. Dream was getting closer to the end of his rope, one way or another, and if Tubbo had been telling the truth about Dream’s outburst then Tommy wasn’t even seeing a good chunk of the problems. How long that would last was anyone’s guess. 

But there was just so much going on: a key imprinted on him, there were apparently other types of magic in the world, the key itself was telling Tommy not to give it to Dream, and Dream fucking agreed with it. But if he didn’t have any other options, Dream was still willing to risk it.

Tommy wasn’t, though. He didn’t know exactly what would happen, but he knew that gifting the Anywhere Key to Dream would be cataclysmic. 

Underneath all of that, though, was a very simple question: should Tommy free Dream?

He didn’t know why Dream had been trapped, or by who. He didn’t know what was wrong with Dream, nor what he was willing to do to obtain his freedom. But he knew that nobody deserved to be locked up all alone for a hundred years, and he knew that he and Dream had spoken more than he had with Tubbo and Ranboo combined, more than he’d spoken with his own family for the better half of a year. They’d shared so much, connected so deeply.

Tommy knew that Dream was his friend, no matter what else was going on. So, yes. Yes, Tommy should free Dream. But he also knew that the Anywhere Key wasn’t an option.

He had to find the Well-house key, somehow. He had to do it. 

---

Kristin stepped out of Tommy’s bedroom into the hallway, closing the door softly behind her, and looked up at Phil. 

“He was tossing and turning a lot, talking in his sleep about a dream,” Kristin whispered, pulling her robe snugly around her. “Do you think he’s been having nightmares?” 

Phil’s face was tight with worry. He put an arm around her shoulders and tugged her close. “He never used to have them. Has he said anything to you?”

“No,” Kristin murmured. “Sometimes he seems back to his old self, but then –”

Phil laughed, humorlessly. “I know. It’s hard to tell what’s normal teenage stuff and what might be related to … whatever happened, medically.”

They continued to stand quietly outside their youngest child’s door, holding each other for comfort, for some time. 

Chapter Text

The Journal key is for hiding books. It guards your secrets, their father had written, by creating an impenetrable disguise and unbreakable cipher. 

---

It was a week before Christmas, and Wilbur stretched luxuriously on the living room sofa. “Finally done! One semester down, an unmentionable number to go.” 

Phil smiled down at him and reached out to ruffle his hair as he walked by into the kitchen. “And a very well-deserved break! So what’s on the agenda?”

“A whole lot of nothing,” Wilbur replied with a grin. 

“Nothing, eh? Then your calendar is free to help with picking up the Christmas tree? We were thinking of going today so that we can get started decorating it, and then finish up after Puffy and her crew arrive.”

“Breakfast first!”

Phil laughed. “I think we can manage that. Any special requests?”

“Pancakes?” Wilbur said hopefully. 

“Coming right up … with sand, right?” 

“Of course,” Wilbur said with a grin, settling back into the sofa and reaching for his phone. 

“Psst!” Wilbur turned his head and to see his little brother’s wide eyes and sleep-tousled hair poking up from behind the sofa. 

He grinned. “Good morning, gremlin! You’re just in time for pancakes.”

“Wil, don’t forget …” Tommy murmured, and then rapidly swiveled his head nearly 180 degrees in each direction as he confirmed that they were alone. It made Wilbur’s neck twinge just to watch. “You need to help look for the Memory key. You promised you would as soon as your finals were done,” he whispered. 

“The memory key,” Wilbur repeated blankly. That sounded familiar …

“Look at the video,” Tommy hissed, pawing at Wilbur’s phone. 

“Hey!” Wilbur said, grabbing to get it back as Tommy stuck the phone, showing a video, in his face. 

“What’s this?” Wilbur asked, taking the phone as the video began to play. It was of the three of them, and had clearly been filmed in Tommy’s room …

Wilbur blinked, and the memories came flooding back: the keys, the journal, and the video they had made to re-remind the twins about the existence of magic every day. 

Oh. 

Wilbur grimaced and rubbed his forehead, noting that the video had been watched nearly two dozen times so far. 

“Right, the Memory key. Okay. We can start looking today for sure.”

---

“At this rate, we’re never going to find the Memory key,” Tommy said unhappily, folding himself into the sofa in the library. They had just gotten home from picking out a Christmas tree, and to Tommy’s dismay, he hadn’t been able to enjoy it like he used to. His mind had kept slipping back to Key House, and the millions of nooks and crannies where the Memory key might be hidden.

Techno shook his head as he followed Tommy into the room, trailed by Wilbur. “Don’t worry about it, runt. We’ll get there. We need to look for Aunt Puffy’s journal too, remember?”

 “But we just don’t have time to even look properly for anything,” Tommy said, frustrated. “Things keep happening.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Wilbur echoed his twin’s words bracingly. “Let’s just enjoy Christmas, and we can keep looking after everyone leaves. We have plenty of time to get things sorted.”

Tommy jerked in surprise. “What do you mean? Aren’t you going back to campus after next week?”

“Ah … no,” Techno said. He slid down to sit next to Tommy and looped an arm around his younger brother’s shoulders. “We’re going to be living at home and commuting to campus for spring term. Then we’ll see how things are next year.”

Tommy stared at him, stunned. 

Wide-eyed, he then glanced at Wilbur, who nodded in confirmation.. That … was not something he had been expecting to hear, at all. 

“But you hated the idea of commuting,” Tommy said slowly. “You guys were looking forward to living in the dorms so much.” 

“That was then,” Techno said briefly, meeting Wilbur’s eyes. “Things are different now.”

Tommy blinked back dampness in his eyes. “Are you staying for me? You don’t have to, I’m okay now. The Head key – it’s totally reversed. Things are okay now.”

“They’re not. Things aren’t okay. You gave us a big scare, sunshine,” Wilbur said, his voice soft and serious. He took a seat on the coffee table facing them, so that his knees knocked against Tommy’s. “A really big scare.”

“We can go to Manberg anytime,” Techno confirmed, pulling Tommy closer. “Your health and safety – and that includes sorting out all this key business once and for all – is more important.”

Tommy felt overwhelmed, and at a total loss for words. Finally, he whispered, “Thank you.” 

Techno hummed in wordless acknowledgment, and Wilbur reached out to squeeze Tommy’s knee. 

---

It was two days before Christmas, and Tommy squirmed slightly as he received an almost painfully tight hug from his aunt. 

“Stop wiggling,” Puffy scolded. “I’ve got to hug you extra hard to make up for all the hugs I missed during Thanksgiving.” 

Tommy heard his father laugh behind them, and smiled up at his aunt as she released him. 

“Hi Aunt Puffy,” Wilbur said, breezing into the room. “We need hugs too, not just the gremlin.”

As Puffy laughed and turned to oblige, Tommy ducked out of the living room and into the kitchen, where his mother was cursing under her breath as she pulled a tray of slightly burnt … somethings out of the oven.

---

“Aunt Puffy,” Techno began, as the family lounged in the living room with tea and snacks a little later. “You know, Tommy found this interesting journal that dad had kept when you guys were living here as teenagers. It had a lot of … trivia … about Key House in it.”

Phil looked up at Techno from where he was pouring tea for everyone. “Oh yes, Tommy showed me that. He found that old journal in his room, didn’t you, Toms? I used to do some sketches and story drafts in there. I guess I included some notes about Key House as well?” he mused. “I don’t really remember, to be honest.”

Tommy tensed from where he was sitting on the sofa between Kristin and Wilbur. He shot Wilbur a wide-eyed look as if to say ‘SEE?’

Puffy blinked and then smiled. “Oh, I do remember that, Phil. You were carrying that journal around everywhere the summer after you got it. Oh wow, that was a while ago, wasn’t it?”

“The reason I’m asking,” Techno continued smoothly, “is because dad’s journal actually had a reference to your journal in it. And since I’m getting really interested in the history of Key House and things our family members wrote about it over the years, I was wondering if it would be okay with you if I looked at your journal as well?”

“My journal?” Puffy echoed, putting her tea cup down in the saucer. “Hmm … now that you mention it, Techno, I did keep a journal around that period, up until I left for college. Oh Lord, I barely remember that. I don’t know that I wrote anything pertinent to the history of Key House in it, though,” she said,  her mouth curving into a puzzled frown. 

“Would you mind if I looked through it anyway?” 

“Not at all. Mind you, it’s probably just meditations on classmates who annoyed me, teachers who annoyed me, my little brother who annoyed me, and so on,” Puffy said with a laugh. Phil glared at her in mock affront while Kristin nudged Tommy and they both giggled.

“Do you happen to remember where that journal is?” Techno asked, his voice carefully even, and Wilbur held his breath. 

“Oh, when you said that, I thought you already had found it. Hmm,” Puffy took another sip of tea and thought. “If it’s not in my old room, I might have put it in the library. I would have wanted it in with the real books, you know.” 

Wilbur let out his breath and hunched his shoulders in dismay. Their aunt’s old room was empty of books, and they had already looked through every single book in that library. The next steps were the attic and the basement, both of which he was dreading. 

“Thanks, Aunt Puffy. Oh, speaking of, are there any other books that you recommend? Since Wil and I will be living here for spring semester, I thought I should take the opportunity to get to know the library a bit better.”

“Well, if you’re focused on things our other relatives wrote about Key House, you know, our grandmother, Hannah Craft, was a prolific writer,” Puffy said earnestly. 

Wilbur felt Tommy tense under his arm, and glanced down at him questioningly. 

“Some of her books and personal journals are actually in the Manberg University collection,” Puffy continued, her eyes alight with interest. “They were donated by our parents as part of a scholarly research effort on local history. But I think there should still be some of her works here, right Phil?”

“Definitely,” Phil agreed. “I think it’s great that you’re taking an interest in this, Techno, mate. You know, if we can take some time to bring the library catalog up-to-date, that will be really useful …”

---

It was past midnight when Techno said, “I’ve made a list.”

Tubbo blinked up at him blearily. They had all crowded into Tommy’s bedroom for what they told the adults was an impromptu sleepover. In reality, it was for what Techno described as a key hackathon. Only Tommy and Ranboo were taking part in the ‘sleep’ portion of the event – both were passed out on top of the covers, with Ranboo sprawled half across Tommy’s legs. Neither so much as twitched at Techno’s words.  

“A list of what,” Wilbur asked exhaustedly, giving voice to Tubbo’s thoughts. He, too, did not care to give the response the inflection of a real question. 

“A spreadsheet, rather,” Techno said, looking wide awake and very pleased with himself. He rotated his laptop so that the populated rows and columns of the spreadsheet software were visible. 

Wilbur blinked at it while Tubbo groaned and dropped his head in his hands. Whatever it was, he didn’t care. 

“It includes every reference to a key that I’ve found in dad’s journal,” Techno explained. “The key’s name, its description, the clue for finding it, and its current status – we have it, still missing, etc.”

“But we only have four keys,” Tubbo said, lifting his head fractionally. “How many keys do you have in the list?”

“11.” 

That woke Tubbo up quickly. 

“Oh shit,” Wilbur said faintly, again somehow voicing Tubbo’s exact thought before he could manage it. Tubbo frowned. 

“Yeah,” Techno said ruefully. “One good thing about having them cataloged this way is that we can prioritize which ones we want to search for first, next, and so on.”

“Which ones do you think?” Wilbur and Tubbo both crowded closer to peer at the screen.  

“I think we need to focus on finding these two,” Techno pointed at specific rows and highlighted them as he spoke. “The Memory key, of course. But also the Journal key.”

Tubbo frowned at the screen. The Well-house key that Tommy said Dream wanted so much was not on Techno’s list. But … that just meant that it wasn’t in Phil’s journal, he supposed. 

“Why is the Journal key your top pick?” Wilbur asked, frowning as well. “What does it do?”

“There isn’t much written about it here, to be honest. But Dad’s note was interesting – he describes it as being ‘for hiding books.’ So that got me thinking – maybe the reason we haven’t found Aunt Puffy’s journal is because it’s been hidden. Using this key.”

“It could be hidden anywhere, then,” Tubbo said in dismay.

“Ah, but what if it’s hidden among the other books?”

Wilbur paused. “You mean the Journal key could make her journal look like another book entirely?”

“Maybe. That would explain a lot, right?”

“But there are other reasons we may not have found it,” Tubbo pointed out. 

“Yes,” Techno grimaced. “But this is what we have to go on for now.” 

“So if we find the Journal key,” Wilbur said thoughtfully, “that will ideally reveal Aunt Puffy’s journal, which in turn will hopefully tell us where to find the Memory key.”

“Exactly.”

“What’s the clue Dad wrote for it?”

Techno’s shoulders drooped. “It’s one of the less helpful ones. It says: Find it among the papers.”

Wilbur groaned, dropping his head into his hands. “Dad thinking he was being funny.”

“Yup.”

---

It was the morning of Christmas eve, and Techno decided to take the direct approach. He found his father in the kitchen, standing by the stove, making breakfast. 

“Good morning!” Phil said cheerfully. “You’re up early, mate. I’m making french toast – Puffy said your uncle and cousin should be arriving soon, so I wanted to have some warm food ready for them. What do you want on yours?”

“Um, strawberries,” Techno said distractedly. “Dad, if someone told you to look for something ‘among the papers,’ what would you think that meant?” 

“‘Among the papers’?” Phil echoed, giving his son an odd glance as he flipped a few done toast pieces off of the skillet and onto a waiting cooling tray. “Hmm … maybe in a filing cabinet somewhere?”

A filing cabinet. Techno frowned. That was a good idea. “Do we have one of those here?” he asked.

“I don’t know, mate,” Phil replied, clearly amused. “Why don’t you tell me what you’re actually looking for?”

“It’s just … sort of a riddle that I’m trying to figure out,” Techno said carefully.

“‘Among the papers’,” Phil repeated thoughtfully. The sound of sizzling filling the kitchen as he tossed a few more slices of bread onto the skillet and pressed them down with the spatula. 

“Well, my Grandpa always used to keep a lot of papers on his desk in the library. It was always a big mess, with old newspapers and journals and mail and everything. Grandma was always scolding him about losing things, and he would just say ‘it’s not lost, it’s just among the papers’.”

Techno snorted a laugh. “Sounds like Wil’s organizational system for sure.”

Phil shot him a grin. “That it does. Here, have some warm toast. The strawberries are in the bowl right over there.”

---

“Merry Christmas, Dream,” Tommy said, beaming as he poked his head into the well-house.

Dream materialized by the cabinet, looking startled, and then his face relaxed into a smile. “Merry Christmas, Tommy,” he said with a laugh. “Wow, it’s been a long time since I’ve been able to say that to anyone.”

“I wish I had the Well-house key to give you as a present,” Tommy said, grimacing slightly and pulling a few books out of his backpack. “But I brought some novels … I thought, maybe I could read to you?” 

A strange look passed over Dream’s face, but then it softened. “I … thank you, Tommy. I would like that. That’s very thoughtful.” 

“I actually have something for you as well,” Dream continued, clearing his throat. “Not a physical gift, of course, but a story I’ve been waiting to tell you.”

Tommy excitedly sat down on a fancy metal bench that was only half rust by volume, since the well-house’s other two sitting alcoves only had dust and mold left over from long-rotted wooden benches. Dream’s stories weren’t always the best constructed, but they were always interesting.

The sight of Tommy sitting there looking up at him like an excited schoolboy seemed to amuse Dream greatly, and he started his story with a smile. “Key House is a nursery,” he said calmly, “a nursery for magic. This is an old saying, as old as your family’s manor itself. It’s true, too, but this story isn’t really about your house; it’s about the keys.”

Since Dream clearly paused for feedback, Tommy gave it to him, in no small part because he was already completely hooked. “So Key House has something to do with them? Like, it’s not just where the keys are collected?” 

“Oh no,” Dream grinned, “Key House is quite a lot more than that. Key House is where the keys are born.”

“What?!” Tommy was now officially invested, because what in the ever loving fuck. Was Dream seriously going to tell him, finally, where the keys came from? In all the time they’d been talking, Dream had never seemed to be able to piece together enough coherent memories to talk about that. Although, now that Tommy was rapidly thinking through past interactions, Dream had gotten a bit more awkward about it a couple months ago. The only explanation was that he’d started remembering, but wanted to remember the rest before he told him. Or something. 

“Magic is a powerful thing, Tommy, and the keys are made of magic more than they are of matter. A key isn’t made, it’s just kind of… born.” He chuckled. “Although humans usually refer to it as ‘spawning’.” Interesting way to phrase that. Tommy already knew Dream wasn’t exactly human, but the spirit rarely talked about his nature in any capacity. “See, the keys aren’t just, well, keys: that’s just the shape they take here.”

“Here? I get the feeling you’re not referring to the manor when you say that.” Mostly because Dream was clearly putting more weight behind his words than he ever used when talking about Tommy’s ancestors. 

“Why do you think, Tommy,” Dream said with passion in his eyes, “your ancestors called it Key House?”

“Dad said it might have been a play on the word ‘quay’,” Tommy mumbled because ninety seven percent of his attention was whirling around the implications. Somehow he’d never thought to ask Dream about the mansion’s name, which nobody remembered the origin of anymore (and that had some sinister new context now didn’t it?) even though from Dream’s stories of his past he’d obviously been around back when it was much, much newer. “You’re saying the keys were, uh, spawning, before the manor was built?”

Dream nodded with a satisfied smile. Tommy ignored the little spark of joy he felt that his logical conclusions were satisfying to the spirit. That Dream was, at least a tiny bit, proud of him.

“Indeed. You see, Key House is a nursery for magic, and it’s very important, but before Key House there was another nursery built much lower down, near the shore line. And before that one there was a nursery half a mile away, between here and your neighbor’s place.” Tommy was paying more attention to this story than he’d ever paid anything in his life. “Before that things get hazy in terms of history because it was before I left home and even when I was free there weren’t many records dating that far back, but I know the very first nursery around here was the caves beneath your manor. And when I say it was the first nursery, I mean ever. I’m talking caveman era. Which fits, I guess.” 

“You keep saying ‘around here’,” Tommy pointed out. “If Key House is just the current in a long line of nurseries, and keys spawn in nurseries, what makes them spawn?”

Dream grinned. “That’s exactly the question to ask, Tommy.” Tommy beamed. “The answer is pretty simple, but also complex. Keys are spawned by the concentration and crystallization of magic into a physical form, generating an artifact which can be used to impart the specific magical concept into reality. The Anywhere Key, the Head Key, all of them, they’re basically just bodies for what humans sometimes call a ‘spell’ in certain contexts. They’re pieces of magic itself. So the answer to ‘where do keys come from’ is ‘a nursery for magic’, but the real question people mean when they say that is: where does magic come from.”

“Well,” Tommy’s gaze was locked to Dream’s, “where does magic come from?”

“Magic comes from ley-lines,” Dream said dramatically, with a sweeping gesture of both his arms. “They’re like rivers, invisible rivers of magic that flow below the ground and through the seas and sometimes even into the sky. They form a grand network of vital magic throughout the entire planet, the veins of the world. Once you get far enough out, the ley-lines are all essentially the same thing and contribute to the power of nature, but individual ley-lines can be identified and tracked near their sources.”

“Their sources?”

Dream beamed. “Yup! In fact, although you probably guessed this by now, your manor was built directly on top of one of them! A nursery doesn’t have to be smack on top of one to work, obviously, but your ancestors figured it would work a lot more efficiently.”

“So what are these sources? Are they just, like, springs? Of magic?” Maybe even more important was the question of why there weren’t like a billion books about them. 

“It’s really hard to describe,” Dream’s smile softened into something apologetic (and maybe the tiniest bit guiltily if Tommy wanted to be suspicious which Tubbo had basically shouted into the back of his head permanently by now), “especially because it’s been such a long time since I’ve seen it and magic changes things a lot, but you could call them a sort of spring. Or a fountain. Or a sky-crevice, or a star-fissure, or a breach, or even just a portal. Just like a mountain spring is a spot where ground-water leaks out of the earth, ley-lines pour magic from somewhere else.”

Man, Tommy was getting a bit dizzy now. “The hell does that mean? Where is it coming from?”

Dream’s grin was practically blinding. “It comes from the place I left behind!”

Okay Tommy was very dizzy. “You said your hometown was somewhere far away…” So far away that it was- “Practically another world.”

“Got it in one!” Dream praised him. “Truth be told that was the hardest part for me to remember, and if you want a description of the place, well, so would I. But, there you have it! The keys aren’t made, they’re spawned by magic in the magic’s nursery, also known as Key House, and they are physical embodiments of magical effects. The nursery is built atop the ley-line that spawns keys, and different ley-lines around the world form different kinds of artifacts. The magic flows into the world through a sort of hole, as it flows out of the world magic comes from. And, the final tidbit I was able to remember, if a key is destroyed then its magical effect can’t be produced on earth since it’s, you know, gone. BUT,” Dream performed a classic rallying cry arm gesture, “it only removes it HERE. Back where the magic comes from it still exists, and will flow right back into the world as a new key eventually.”

“This is incredible!” Tommy leapt up from the bench. “Thank you so much, Dream, that answers so many questions!” 

Overwhelmed by joy and gratitude and appreciation for his friend, Tommy acted on instinct, which was a mistake. He just wasn’t thinking, is all; he didn’t mean anything by it. He was just so happy, so thankful. 

Tommy practically leapt into Dream’s arms to hug him, and stumbled straight through his incorporeal form and nearly fell on the stone floor. 

They didn’t end up going through any of Dream’s new books that day. 

---

The day after Christmas, Wilbur found himself on the phone with his roommate. 

“No worries, man,” Quackity said earnestly. “I’m really glad to hear your brother’s doing better now, we all are. If you want, once I get back to campus I’ll pack up your stuff so you can just swing by and pick it up when you have time.” 

“Thanks, Big Q,” Wilbur breathed. “I’m really sorry to bail on you like this mid-year – are they going to make you move rooms?”

“Eh, no worries. Totally understand that you want to stick close to home for now. I talked to the RA yesterday and it seems like they’re good with both me and Eret staying put in our rooms by ourselves for next semester, so it worked out just fine. But listen, Wil – a bunch of us were talking about renting a house off-campus together for next year, getting out of the dorms. What do you think, would you and Techno be down to join?”

“Really? Yeah … that sounds great, actually,” Wilbur said in surprise. “Let me talk to Techno, and my parents I guess –” he broke off as his twin suddenly burst into his bedroom, eyes gleaming with excitement.

“– and I’ll get back to you. Thanks for the offer, man!” 

“No problem. See you soon!”

“Tech, what the hell?” Wilbur demanded, annoyed. “At least knock before barging in. That was Quackity. He wanted to know if we’d be interested in going in with the others for an off-campus house next term –”

“Never mind that, Wil,” Techno said. His voice was tight with barely-contained excitement. “I finally found it!” He held out his right hand towards his twin.

Wilbur blinked. Laying in Techno’s palm was a small, silvery-looking key. It looked like any ordinary key, except the end was shaped like a book. Was it some kind of novelty item? What on earth did his twin want that for?

“Um, that’s … nice, Tech,” he said, dryness creeping into his tone. “Really interesting.”

“It’s the Journal key,” Techno said slowly, giving him an odd look. “I just found it.” 

“The what?”

Techno sighed, sitting down heavily on the foot of Wilbur’s bed. “Wil, you need to watch the video again. Give me your phone.”

“What, why?”

“Just hand it over, you’ll understand in a minute.”

Chapter Text

The Well-house key is a vital part of the defenses of Key House, someone had written in a journal hidden somewhere in Key House. It protects us from Evil. 

---

It was the day after Christmas, and Tommy had come over to Tubbo and Ranboo’s house, bearing a tray of garishly decorated cookies on Kristin’s orders. 

“Thank you, Tommy,” Sam said with a smile as he accepted the box and peeked inside. “These look amazing!”

“How are you feeling now, Tommy?” Ponk asked, peering at him closely. “Are you completely recovered?”

“I’m fine, really,” Tommy said, feeling slightly embarrassed by the scrutiny. His eyes flicked over to Tubbo and Ranboo, a silent appeal for rescue. 

“A week-long hospital stay, though, that’s very serious,” Ponk continued gravely. “We were all very worried. If anything else comes up, or you need any help, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us, okay?”

“Ponk’s a doctor,” Ranboo chimed in. 

“Seriously,” Ponk smiled. “We’re here for you anytime.”

“Thank you,” Tommy murmured with a shy smile, and quickly followed Tubbo and Ranboo upstairs. 

“I talked to Dream again yesterday,” Tommy began, after they were settled in Ranboo’s room. Tubbo had flopped onto the bed while Ranboo sat down at his desk and Tommy decided to try out the giant beanbag.  

Tubbo gave Tommy a very analytical look and Ranboo wasn’t much better. “What did he say?”

Tommy returned Tubbo’s words and skeptical air with a huff. “He said a lot of things, actually, including lots of magic knowledge. Turned out he was hiding stuff,” Tubbo smirked, which fell into a pout when Tommy continued with “because he’d been working on a whole formal lecture about it to surprise me with for Christmas.” Well, it might have always been intended as a holiday gift, but Tommy thought Dream had mostly been doing it so he had a big reward to give Tommy if he felt one was necessary. But he wasn’t going to tell Tubbo that, because at the end of the day Dream had decided that Tommy remembering he existed on Christmas was worth it. And that was way too personal to just talk about.

“Sure,” Tubbo rolled his eyes, “but what kind of information are we talking about?”

Excited to finally share this, Tommy practically lit up. “Oh man there was so much! First of fuckin’ all, the keys come from a ley-line spring underneath Key House, and second of fuckin’ all, there are more of them, all around the world, and the other ones DON’T MAKE KEYS!” 

As suspicious as Tubbo was, nothing got him excited quite like the opportunity to learn new cool weird shit, so the enthusiasm was spreading. “Get the fuck out of here,” he whispered, “are you SERIOUS?”

“Yeah! He told me to tell you to look up magic swords in the Isles, or into ‘sacred horns of Pogtopia’, whatever those are. I’m pretty sure any region with a lot of stories of magic artifacts that are all kind of similar all have some truth to them.” Honestly once Dream had outright told him it made an embarrassing amount of sense. Almost all stories of magic throughout history revolved around items one way or another. Witches had brooms or cauldrons, wizards had staffs and magic hats, heroes had magic swords, oracles had crystal balls- the vast majority of magic was tied to objects. 

Sure most of it was probably coincidence and bullshit but if so many stories all had a single underlying commonality, it made sense that there’d be a reason for that. 

“Another big part of it, apparently, is that these things aren’t made,” Tommy explained. Ranboo seemed especially interested in that part. “They just kind of, manifest, I guess? He said humans call it ‘spawning’ which makes sense, but he didn’t go into much detail about the process. He said that they’re like, I dunno, crystals of magic? The magic from the ley-line physically forms a key, so the keys are magic. Like, physically, and whatever they do is tied to it.”

“Tied to it how?” Ranboo asked.

“Like, he phrased it as ‘the artifacts are conduits for their magical effects’, so when I use the Identity Key, I’m letting the magical effect of shapeshifting exist in reality. If the key was destroyed, then there’s not only no means of changing identity with magic but that kind of magic in general is just. Gone.”

“Do you think it would undo any altered forms, then?” Tubbo wondered. “I also wonder if it’s possible to do magic without the keys, so long as a key exists that can do it…” He looked expectantly at Tommy, who shrugged.

“No idea, boss man. He did say, though, that if a key is destroyed, the magic only vanishes from earth. It’s still around on the other side of the ley-line, wherever the fuck THAT is, and it’ll flow right back into the world and spawn a new key.”

“So, the first of the many terrifying implications there I wanna talk about,” Tubbo drawled, “is the implication that destroying keys to erase magic straight up won’t work. Period. Which means if someone wanted to get rid of a key-”

“Their only option would be to hide it,” Ranboo breathed. “So we don’t actually have to worry that a key might not exist; even if it was destroyed, we just have to find where the new one spawned.”

“Moving back to those implications, though,” Tubbo narrowed his eyes, “what exactly did you mean ‘the other side’ of the ley-line?”

Tommy shifted in the admittedly awesome beanbag chair. “Apparently wherever magic comes from isn’t really, like. A place. Like, it’s real, whatever it is, but it’s not on earth or in space somewhere, it’s like. I dunno. Somewhere else.”

“As in another reality?” Tubbo’s eyes were so wide Tommy was afraid they were gonna fall out. “There’s a fucking extradimensional portal under your house?!” 

“I guess?” Tommy shrugged. “It’s apparently where Dream came from, too, which I guess makes sense since he’s a magical something or other.”

“And what else did he tell you about that other place?” Tubbo’s voice was a hell of a lot sharper now and Tommy fixed his friend a glare of his own. 

“Just that was never able to piece together any memories of it and that if we find any information he’d like to hear about it, and yes, Tubbo,” he talked over his friend’s imminent interjection, “I believe him when he says that so don’t even start.”

“Fine,” Tubbo crossed his arms, “I won’t start, but I’ll definitely point out that he has the habit of omitting things when it suits him. We still don’t know what favor he wants from us!”

“Oh yeah,” Tommy blinked, “he told me what he wanted from you.”

“Are you fucking kidding me,” Tubbo deadpanned. 

“Nope. He wants you two to bring paper and pens and shit so he can tell you what to write in a letter and then mail it. Apparently he’s been trying to remember more about his friends and he was able to remember some kind of P.O. box or something.” Tommy shrugged again. “He says they should still be around somewhere. Either way, it’s nothing to raise a fuss about, right?”

Ranboo tilted his head. “That sounds pretty reasonable, to a suspicious degree: why didn’t he just tell us that?”

As Tubbo nodded in agreement, Tommy just snorted. “Probably because he hadn’t been able to actually think about it until long after you guys left. He’s not great when he’s put on the spot like that.”

“Don’t I know it,” Tubbo shook his head. “Like I said, he’s unstable as shit, and you need to be careful. If for anything,” he glared at Tommy, “then for both yours’ sakes. I don’t like him and I think he’s lying to you a lot, but you know him better so I’ll concede on that; but he’s not. Stable. I mean, we know literally nothing about why he was locked up or by who.”

“So?” Tommy demanded. 

“So,” Tubbo emphasized, “we have to consider the possibility that it was almost certainly one of your ancestors, and since that’s most likely the case, what if he forgets more than your name one day?” A chill went down Tommy’s spine. “What if he forgets you’re not whoever locked him up? Hell, with the way he screamed at us like that, what if he thinks you betrayed him or something? You can’t rely on his logic, Tommy, because he doesn’t really have any, not in the way that matters.”

“Dream’s my friend,” Tommy stated. “Even if something happened, I’m not going to abandon him just because he literally lost his senses. I’ll just be more careful.”

“That’s my whole POINT!” Tubbo growled. “I want you to be more careful before you get hurt!”

“Well how the hell is he gonna hurt me, Tubbo? Dream literally can’t touch me, he just phases right through everything except the Well-house walls. Plus I already told you we patched over the broken promise thing; Dream’s gonna help us find the Memory Key, he promised, and we all know how seriously he takes those.”

“Well,” Ranboo said slowly, “I do have a stamp book, and plenty of stationery… We should probably keep ours, right, Tubbo?”

Tubbo grunted. “Fine, we’ll do it sometime this week. But Tommy, I am deadly fucking serious: watch your back around Dream.”

“Fine, whatever,” Tommy huffed. “Let’s move on, yeah? Maybe start looking into those swords or whatever?”

Thankfully Tubbo took the bait immediately, and Ranboo was more than happy to let him, but something lingered in the back of Tommy’s mind.

‘I just don’t know how much time I have left.’

---

It was more than a week after New Years, and a few days before spring semester was to begin at Manberg University. It was still fairly early in the morning, so Tommy was surprised when he poked his head into the kitchen and saw Niki sitting at the island, her laptop open next to a plate and mug.

Niki and Jack had both returned to Essempi to spend winter break with their families, but Niki’s parents had some kind of business trip scheduled early into the new year and she had needed to return to Manberg a few days before the dorms re-opened. When the Crafts had learned about this, Phil and Kristin had insisted that she spend the gap days with them at Key House. 

“Good morning, Tommy!” she said cheerfully when she caught sight of him. “Do you want to join me for an early breakfast? No one else was up, so I thought I’d get the coffee started … and don’t tell, but these scones are just too tempting.”

Tommy grinned. “Yeah, Dad’s scones are the best. Did you try the chocolate one?”

“I tried the chocolate one and the orange one,” she said, giving him a conspiratorial wink. 

“Then you have to try the blueberry one as well,” Tommy declared, and she laughed. Tommy grabbed his own plate, placed a few of the mini scones on it, and joined her at the island. 

A few minutes of companionable silence followed, broken only by the sound of crunching pastry and Niki tapping occasionally on her laptop’s keyboard. Architecture, Tommy remembered Niki was studying. Suddenly inspired, he ventured, “Niki, do you know anything about the well-house?” 

Niki paused from carefully spreading butter on a blueberry scone, and looked over at him. “The one here at Key House, or well-houses in general?”

“The one over here.”

“Well, I don’t know any specifics beyond what your mom said, but the one here seems pretty typical for houses of the period that Key House was built,” Niki said thoughtfully. “A small covered structure out by the kitchen for easy access to fresh water for cooking. And usually there would be a gate that could be locked, for safety and to keep animals out.” 

“Yes,” Tommy said eagerly. “The gate is what I’m interested in. But for our well-house, the key to lock it is missing.”

“Oh, a key, that’s an easy thing to misplace,” Niki agreed. “But the well-house has been out of use for ages though, Tommy. The key was probably lost a long time ago. I wouldn’t get your hopes up about finding the original.”

Tommy grimaced in acknowledgment. “But if it was around here somewhere, where do you think it might be?”

“Well, usually keys to nearby outbuildings would be stored in or around the kitchen,” Niki replied. “Especially the well-house, since the well water would be brought directly in here for boiling first.” 

“So it could be anywhere in here?” Tommy’s head swiveled around as he looked at all of the possible nooks and crannies in the kitchen.

“We can probably narrow it down a bit. It probably wouldn’t be in any of these sections,” Niki gestured towards the newer cabinets and appliances, “since they’re more modern. It would be in an area that hasn’t been altered much in several decades, at least, since most houses in this area got indoor plumbing only around a century ago.”

“Really?”

“Yes. And remember, rural mansions like Key House still need to have their own water supply,” Niki explained. “It’s too far from town to connect to municipal water. But Key House wouldn’t use the well that’s in the well-house anymore, it’s too old and small. It’s more likely that there’s piping that’s been run in from the river, and that water then goes through a filtration system in the basement.”

“So would the key to the old one be near the key to the new one?”

“Maybe. I think the filtration system might have a shut-off valve here in the kitchen, and maybe they just put the old key in there too. Let’s take a look …”

Together, they poked around the kitchen. Niki searched for hidden panels while Tommy looked in cabinets, underneath old jars, and even under the huge old-fashioned stove.

“Tommy, come look at this,” Niki said about fifteen minutes later, her voice muffled. She was leaning halfway inside a narrow, old-fashioned cupboard. It was so tiny that she could only poke her head in. 

She stepped back, a few dust bunnies clinging to her bright pink hair – about a year ago, she and Techno had decided to dye their hair the same shade – and gestured for Tommy to look inside. 

There, hanging on the side next to the door – invisible unless one shoved their shoulders inside the narrow space and then twisted like Niki had done – was a decrepit wooden key rack. On it hung around a dozen dust-coated metal keys.

Tommy’s stomach swooped in excitement. Maybe one of these was the Well-house key! And maybe even some of these other old keys were interesting keys. 

“This might be it!” he exclaimed, carefully lifting the entire key rack off of its metal hook and maneuvering it out of the cupboard. 

About half of the keys were small, much too tiny for the well-house gate. But then one key in particular caught Tommy’s eye. It could have been an ordinary key, maybe, but centuries-old keys didn’t really tend to look like ornate pieces of art. His heart raced as he grabbed it, only for his face to fall.

It was a magical key, alright; but it looked nothing like the Well-house, its gate, or any other key they’d been able to find descriptions of. 

Frowning to hide what he didn’t know was a brief adrenaline crash, as well as the more ephemeral sensation of his heart crumbling to bits in his stomach after it sank straight down like a two-ton dumbbell, he grabbed the key and hid it in his closed hand as he pulled himself free.

“Didn’t find it?” Niki asked gently. She could probably tell already since she was so smart and Tommy looked like someone had kicked his pet to death. 

Tommy used that as a distraction to slip the unknown key into his back pocket. Ranboo had recently decided to teach him some basic sleight-of-hand for some reason, but since Tubbo knew how to pick locks (and wasn’t that just the fucking height of irony) Tommy assumed it was for pickpocketing. 

“No,” he answered with a sullen pout, which was much more honest. He was really fucking bummed. “I thought for sure you were right, you’re so smart about this!” His tone was tinged with awe, because it was awesome! “How’d you know all that other stuff, anyways? I thought architecture was just, like, buildings and sh-” Tommy blinked, “and stuff.” So smooth.

Luckily for Tommy’s ungrounded freedom, Niki seemed to appreciate his interest enough not to call him on it. “It is, Tommy, but buildings are, well, built.” She smiled warmly. “Built by people. And people have to have reasons to build things; buildings cost a lot of money and time, especially back when Key House was built. Part of historical architecture is just about learning what kinds of things people were building, but an equally big part of it all is why. After all, at the same time your ancestors were building Key House, there were hundreds of thousands of commoner homes being built, and they were completely different. Even today, buildings are built differently not only because a different design was wanted but because it doesn’t make sense to build a mansion to be a fire station.”

“Well, sure,” Tommy said, “but you were talkin’ about, like. Rivers and municipals and kitchen cupboards.” 

“Municipalities,” Niki corrected which Tommy immediately forgot ever hearing, “and that’s because those are important things about houses.” She sat back down where she was, and Tommy followed and sat across from her. The new key dug into his butt. “It’s all about context, you see? I’ve been told it’s the same in archaeology, which I suppose makes sense. Ancient ruins were normal buildings too, before they were ruins.” She chuckled. “I already explained my thought process for the key you were looking for, but I’m afraid that’s where it ends. I was mostly guessing, based on the context I had.”

Huh.

Ohhhh, that gave him an idea.

“Well, you were talking about the water bit,” he said thoughtfully, “and that all makes sense. But the key is for the gate. Sure, you need it to get to the water, but it’s more about security, right?” Niki’s eyes widened a bit. “The swords up on the wall in the library are just decoration, but a house this big and fancy and rich must’ve had to be defended, right? Where would they have kept their security?” 

There was a passion in Niki’s eyes. “You’re right. Usually mansions from this house’s time period had live-in servants, which would include a guard house, where their paid guards would stay when they weren’t actively protecting the mansion. But Key House is smaller; much of the country’s resources were being funneled into expansion, and personal fortunes can’t compensate for a national industry being redirected. So they chose a more isolated location that’s easily defended by the terrain,” Niki was more focused than she’d been on whatever she’d been working on, a state Tommy could relate to. 

“But they still locked the well-house,” Tommy pointed out, “and the cliffs are all weird and stuff and there’s tons of paths up them, not to mention that only removes half of the angles of whatever.” 

“Angles of approach,” Niki seemed to say automatically. “But yes, they’d have to have security beyond hoping nobody showed up. If they relied on the locks heavily enough to consider the key a security risk, it’d have been somewhere secure. And no place in any home is as secure as where you keep your weapons.” 

Niki stood up so fast her chair almost fell over. “Does Key House have an armory?” Oh no. Oh, she looked a lot like Tubbo right now, this was bad. “It would probably be some sort of storage room now, with the rise in personal gun lockers and fortified safes. They would have kept it on the first floor, near the center of the house, away from any windows.”

Tommy frowned. “Uh. I’ve searched through the whole house. The only room like that on the first floor is the utility room.” Before Niki could finish slumping in defeat, Tommy shot up to his feet and did knock his chair over. “Which is where great grandpa put the electric security alarm!” Tommy tended to tune out his dad’s stories about Key House, at least before he found out about the fucking magic, but Phil had tried pretty much everything to make Tommy more excited about the move and his curdled dad-brain more or less defaulted to boring stories about his youth. Sans all the magic, thanks to whatever the hell, but he talked a lot about his grandparents and one of his favorite stories to tell was how Key House was one of the first homes in the world to get an electronic burglar alarm. 

His dad especially liked to mention how much his grandmother hated it, forcing him to put the control panel in the utility room, and eventually shutting it down completely shortly after her husband passed away. From what Tommy had heard from his dad, his great-grandmother had been a very traditionalist woman, and stern as hell. Loving, but stern.

The look on Dream’s face whenever he said her name painted a very different picture, though. 

Before Niki could say a word, Tommy bolted out of the kitchen like a bat out of hell straight to the utility room, which was honestly bigger than it had to be but not by much. Tommy didn’t really spend much time in here, since there was nothing much to do or search through. There was a workbench of some horribly stained kind with most of its drawers missing, a truly ancient looking tool box nearly as tall as Tommy was and rusted into one giant block, a shelf groaning with boxes stuffed full of what amounted to garbage, the circuit box on a wall, the water heater which terrified Tommy greatly, and a very yellowed plastic burglar alarm opposite the circuit breaker. 

Thing was, Tommy had already searched in here. There was nowhere for a key to hide, and nothing in plain sight. Phil spent a lot more time in here than Tommy did, working on the circuit breaker and the water heater and somehow using that massive tool box without getting a billion doses of tetanus. With all of Tommy’s endearing pestering, Phil would have told him if he found a big shiny key even if he didn’t know it was magic. 

Tommy just made it over to the workbench to look through its remaining drawers again when Niki burst through the door, gasping for air. “Wow you can run fast,” she wheezed. “Where are we looking?”

“I dunno,” Tommy sighed as he looked sullenly at only technically useable lengths of wire stuffed into a drawer probably meant for screws. “I’ve looked in here too, y’know?” 

“Well you looked in the kitchen,” Niki reminded him, “but we still found something new. Let’s just look a little deeper.” 

“True,” Tommy admitted. “But I even checked the boxes on the shelf! Mostly.” They were entirely spare parts and supplies for presumably generations of easily distracted and eccentric Crafts. Apparently Wilbur’s ‘sorting system’ was genetic. 

Niki rolled her eyes and pulled a box down to rummage through it, while Tommy gave up on the workbench and decided to risk the tool box. Part of why he hadn’t touched it was because, again, tetanus, but the other was that his dad used it nearly every day. 

So of course the first drawer he opened on the tall-ass pile of rust was full of junk. “Who needs this many screws?” he complained. “They’re not even all one size!” 

“Your dad, apparently,” Niki quipped as she fished out a victorian era wrench, the kind you could use to kill an elephant. “I might keep this.”

Tommy didn’t even look at her. “Go ahead.” He had no idea if it was okay but he truly and genuinely did not care. He opened another drawer, this one at least containing a few actual hammers, before… well, he didn’t slide it closed, it was more of a screeching grinding kind of action, but he closed it.

The next one he opened was one of the larger ones and Tommy stared furiously at the hundreds of shitty old keys inside it. A lot were modern, like, a lot, but even those were stained and worn and clearly old. Visible here and there under the surface layer were larger, older keys, from simpler times. 

And right near the front, under a tiny bike lock key and a truly bizarre looking cylindrical key, was a large and elegant iron key with a beautifully carved bow resembling the well-house gate and exactly the strange half circular and half star shaped bit to match the weird-ass hole in its lock.

“I’m gonna fucking kill my dad.”

Niki gave him a Look that promised a talking-to, but was interrupted when his mom knocked on the door frame before stepping in. 

“Good morning, you two!” Kristin said cheerfully. “You’re up early. Are you looking for something?”

---

The skin of Wilbur’s palm tingled against the metal of the Journal Key. Whether it was magic or psychosomatic wonder didn’t matter: they’d finally found the literal key to progress in finding the Memory Key, and he was excited. Now that he remembered. Techno was being very smug about the entire situation but standing in the manor’s library, all Wilbur could think was ‘This is so fucking cool.’

“Alright, time to get Aunt Puffy’s journal!” Wilbur stepped confidently forwards, only to immediately pause and turn to look at his twin. “Quick question; how are we going to do that?”

Techno snorted at him and went towards a shelf. “The nice thing about having logic is the ability to think things.” Wilbur sullenly followed him, since he did have to admit (privately, where nobody could hear it) that Techno was definitely the better logical planner out of the two of them. “Such as experiments. Tests. Touching books with the key to see if you’ll feel anything.”

Wilbur rolled his eyes and did just that, tapping the bit against a book spine. When nothing happened, he raised a brow at his twin. The wordless ‘now what, smart-ass?’ was something he was very good at. 

This time Techno rolled his eyes at him before pulling out a book at random. A cursory glance revealed it to be a book about beavers. “If that doesn’t work, we figure out how to use it to change a book. Once we know that, we’ll have a better idea how to undo it.”

“Reasonable enough,” Wilbur said. With no other ideas, he just lowered the key to the book’s cover and was delighted to see a lock matching the general style of the book cover manifest out of nowhere, on the middle right, where a diary’s lock would be. Wilbur inserted the key and gasped.

“What is it?” Techno demanded. He held the book steady as stone but Wilbur could tell he was anxious. Thankfully this was one situation where it wasn’t necessary.

“It’s bizarre,” Wilbur breathed as he stared at the key sitting flush inside the lock, ready to be turned. “It’s like… oh man I can’t even describe it, really. It’s in my head, kind of, asking me what I want to change it into, and I’m also getting the distinct sense that I don’t have to choose a direct title, I can just choose a basic idea of a book. Although I can pick a book I know.”

“Well, pick something.” 

Idea in mind, and holding it in his head like the key seemed to be telling him to, Wilbur turned the key with a sharp click, and the entire book shimmered where it sat in Techno’s hands. Wilbur pulled the key out immediately and watched the lock vanish just as the book finished changing. “Wow.”

“Wilbur,” his twin sighed defeatedly, “what the hell is this?”

“A non-fiction epic about how great I am,” Wilbur beamed. The cover was soft, supple leather with a colored impression carved into the front of him on a stage, hand raised to accept a rose thrown from the audience. “A glimpse into the future, I’m sure.”

Techno silently opened the book and read a random page, before snapping it shut violently and flushing. Then he shoved it into Wilbur’s arms. “Next time you do that try thinking more about your projects and less about your exes. I can never unread that.”

Wilbur felt his own face redden. “So, um…” He shuffled his feet awkwardly. “What page-”

“Turn it back,” Techno ordered, and Wilbur sighed before sliding the key back into a newly materialized lock, approving of the new design for it; it was shaped like a heart now. However, when he did, the feeling the key gave him was completely different. 

“It’s not letting me choose anything,” he said, “it’s only giving me the option to restore it to the original.”

“That’s fantastic news,” Techno sighed with relief. “That means we don’t have to worry about telling which specific book was changed, we just have to find the one that can’t be altered immediately.”

A single turn of the key had the book morphing back into an uninvolved book about beaver behaviors which Wilbur slid back onto the shelf. “Great, we only have to check every single book in the entire library one at a time, so easy.”

“Aunt Puffy said she would’ve wanted it ‘in with the real books’ so, since she always liked to write fiction, we should probably start in that section.” Techno didn’t wait for Wilbur to respond and simply headed over there before pulling out an entire stack of books and plopping the whole stack on the table. By the time Wilbur walked over to it, Techno plopped a second stack down by the first. “Thirty to start. Shouldn’t take that much time, right?”

“We’ll see about that,” Wilbur grumbled. He sat down, grabbed the first book, and used the key. It felt the same as the beaver book, so he moved it to the side. “Alright fine I guess it’s not that tedious.”

Each book took like five seconds to check, so it wasn’t long before he was halfway through the second stack. That’s when it happened, though: “That’s it!” It was a book that had already been changed, so Wilbur turned the key and they both watched with bated breath as it began to melt into a different form.

When it was done and the key was removed (since the lock kept the book closed and only vanished after taking the key away) the book was unadorned, untitled, and relatively plain. 

“You open it,” Techno said, and Wilbur rolled his eyes.

“What’s the pr-” Wilbur cut himself off as he stared at the first page of the book, which was covered in a large illustration of a random teenage girl from, judging by her clothes, at least a hundred years ago.

The both of them stared at it for a moment, then Techno stood next to him and started flipping the pages. It was nothing but drawings, and nearly all of them were what appeared to be classmates of whoever drew them. 

“Great,” Techno sighed, “we found the awkward photo book of an ancestor’s crush list.”

“Yeah I don’t wanna see any more of this, thanks,” Wilbur quipped, closing the book with a soft thump. But when he slid the key back in, “Oh, I have a second choice this time: I can turn it back into its previous alteration.”

“This key seems pretty much designed for espionage and counter-espionage,” Techno mused. “Even if it seems to be meant for childish shenanigans rather than actual spycraft.” 

“Kids have shit to hide,” Wilbur shrugged as he put the book aside to his left, starting a new category of pile. “Ask Tommy,” he grunted, “or, hell, just ask me. You didn’t do much,” Wilbur looked up at his unamused brother, “but Tommy’s a hellion and I was running school politics since I got there.”

“You were throwing things at boys you liked because you didn’t know thinking they were cute was an option,” Techno corrected, “and when you did find out you turned into a con-man to trick them into liking you.”

“I apologized for my crimes already,” Wilbur sniffed dismissively. “My conscience is clear.”

“Well thank goodness you can sleep at night.” 

Another stack of books was checked before they found another one that had been changed, but this one went to the ‘random Craft nonsense’ pile too after they opened it and saw a business ledger instead. Which, sure, makes sense to hide that, but come on.

Eventually Techno had to start moving the pile of unchanged books over to the other table in the library, but they did find a few more hidden books before emptying the fiction section. Two were, in fact, personal journals, but not their aunt’s: they were both from Craft ancestors they’d never heard of. A third was some kind of work-book full of blacksmithing projects, a fourth was crammed full of very lackluster poetry, and the other two they’d found were actual published books someone had hidden as something else for whatever reason, a dictionary and a crime solving novel respectively.

“So what next? We technically have all day but it’s been nearly an hour, and I don’t wanna explain this to dad,” Wilbur complained. “He might actually start thinking I want to be a writer like him and then he’ll get all emotional and we definitely don’t have time for that.”  

“I went through it,” Techno shrugged, “it’s not that bad. It did take a while, though…” Wilbur didn’t need Techno to tell him that; when his twin had told their dad he was thinking of becoming an author, the whole family had heard Phil wail in joy for so long they went out for lunch.

“Anyways,” Techno looked over the remaining bookshelves contemplatively, “we have to keep in mind that aunt Puffy had a lot of knowledge we don’t. For her, ‘real books’ might have meant something entirely different. I mean, if there was a family tradition of hiding journals in here, she’d put them there. But she could have slipped it into the non fiction section of whatever subject she was interested in. We just don’t know.”

“Then I suggest history books, of any kind, because why not at this point?” If they had to go through the entire library, Wilbur was going to start causing problems. 

Techno shrugged and swept a stack off a shelf and gently slammed it down in front of him, and Wilbur went to work. He hoped they’d get what they came for this time.

What he wasn’t expecting was for eight out of ten of the history books in their family library to be hidden histories of the family, the house, and magic as they understood it through the generations. It was a fucking treasure trove, but… none of the ancestors who’d written them had personal experience. They were all just talking about other family members, and what they’d picked up over time. Useful, in a way, and valuable as hell. But by the time he’d found the twentieth one with no direct information, he was getting the sneaking suspicion that those books had been intentionally removed. 

A sinking feeling settled in his chest. “Techno… what did dad say about great-grandma and books?”

Techno looked up from where he was moving books around; he’d taken to reshelving the discarded books. “Uh… she donated a lot of her books and old journals and stuff to the Manberg University collection, right?” Techno paled. “Wait, you don’t think-”

“That dear old great-grandmama might have used the key to make a whole lot of ‘personal books’ to hide a ton of shit she didn’t want dad and aunt Puffy to find?” Wilbur snorted in frustration. “It’s certainly what I’m afraid of, but I don’t think aunt Puffy’s journal would be one of them. Let’s just keep looking.”

Six minutes later, Wilbur stared at a book he’d just reverted. It had his aunt’s name on it, in her handwriting, and it didn’t take a genius to figure out he’d found it. But before he opened it or let Techno know, he quickly turned the key again to return it to its previous state. He hadn’t actually been looking at any of the covers for a while now and was curious what his teenage aunt had chosen.

It was a book on the history of locks. 

“So aunt Puffy thought she was funny, too,” Wilbur grumbled sourly. 

---

Dusk was settling on the Key House grounds when Tommy was finally able to go to the well-house. 

Dream was deathly still, staring at the iron key in Tommy’s upright palm. 

“How …” he began, and then stopped to take a wheezing breath. “How did you find it?”

“I had some help from a friend!” Tommy said happily. “This is it, right?” 

“That’s it. That’s the Well-house key,” Dream said dazedly. 

“I told you I would find it,” Tommy said, bursting with pride and bravado. “Now, how do I use it? I just turn the key in the lock, right?”

Dream nodded, wordlessly, and could only stare as Tommy stepped out to the gate and hovered the key near it, looking for the keyhole.

“Ah, here it is –”

And the well-house seemed to shudder , a wave of pressure that resonated outwards through the Key House grounds, shocking all living things into silence.  

Shaken, Tommy turned to look behind him, out into the sudden stillness of the trees and the sudden muting of evening birdsong. 

And in that hush, Dream stepped outside, onto the grass, into the fading sunlight.

“Yes!” Tommy cheered. “We did it. You’re free, Dream. You’re free!”

Dream turned, slowly, and stared back at the structure that had been his prison for decades. 

Watching him, Tommy’s smile faded. 

“Dream? Are you okay?” 

His friend stood there, still and silent as a statue. “I’m fine, Tommy.” Dream’s voice was… it was wrong, flat and empty and cold. The hair on the back of Tommy’s neck rose. 

“Um. Okay…” Tommy fidgeted nervously. “So, now what? Do you- should I get you our notes on the Memory Key? Or do you wanna wait a bit before helping, just enjoy your freedom for a while?”

Suddenly Dream turned around to face him again, and Tommy realized that the setting sun wasn’t illuminating him anymore, not like it used to: because it wasn’t shining through him. Dream smiled, and without the haze of translucence Tommy could see the slight trembling in his face. 

A smile that had long forgotten how to exist with muscles beneath it instead of memory. 

“I can tell you, now.” Dream smiled through the tremors and slight spasms. He spoke like a broken man. Something was more wrong than ever. “Yes…” His eyes were gazing far, far past Tommy, staring into history. “Your great grandmother, Hannah Craft, she came here once, all alone, as an adult. The last of her line…” Dream’s smile twitched harshly in a single, full-facial spasm. “She threw the Memory Key into the well beneath me. Staring hatefully into my eyes. When it passed through my incorporeal form it burned like moonfire.”

“You-” Tommy swallowed. “You knew where it was the whole time?”

Dream’s vacant gaze snapped into focus on Tommy, and his smile vanished in a blink. “Not the whole time. But a while, yes. I’m sorry, Tommy, but I had to.” He frowned sharply. “It was the only chip I had left to bargain. A last resort. You broke a promise once, and you made up for it, make no mistake: we’re completely even, a clean slate. But what if, Tommy?” Dream’s eyes literally flashed for a brief moment, a sickening green light flaring in his irises for half of a second. “What if you betrayed me?”

“I would never!” Tommy shouted. 

Then Dream’s stony, aggressive expression shattered and he looked downright despondent. “Knowing and feeling are different things. I’m sorry. But I never could have given that up until I was free. But I am!” Dream shifted to blinding joy in an instant. “Thank you, Tommy!”

Maybe Tubbo had a point when he said Dream was unstable. Tommy knew, in the abstract, that his friend was in pieces mentally, but he’d always seemed more disjointed than unhinged. Maybe he was just getting overwhelmed emotionally and falling apart. With joy this time, instead of betrayal like with Tubbo and Ranboo. 

Either way, Dream was starting to unnerve him deeply. “You’re welcome,” Tommy said softly. “How do we get it up from the well?” 

Dream just shrugged. “You’ll figure it out. I gotta go now.”

“Wait, what?” Tommy stared up at his friend. The first friend he made here, after his life was torn apart against all his wishes. He could admit, now, that the reasons they moved were valid and reasonable, but- it was just a fact that what Tommy wanted his life to be was deemed less important than what the rest of his family agreed on and they took him from the place he belonged. And that hurt. And for weeks, months even, Dream had been the only person who cared about that.

He was the only one to at least acknowledge what had happened to him. His brothers made his pain all about them, framed it as jealousy and possessiveness. Only saw it through the lens of their own brighter futures as Tommy’s crumbled to dust. There was a corner store near their old home in Manberg Tommy had wanted to work at for his very first summer job as a teenager. He’d wanted to do it since he was seven because it was where Wilbur and Techno had both started. Not anymore. And his parents, well, they mostly did the same thing, but they were just a little bit worse because they also felt guilt. And they channeled that guilt into working on the manor and grounds instead of comforting him.

Tommy understood. Mostly. He knew they loved him. His brothers had finally started showing it again, but his parents seemed to want to just push it all off for later. He had Tubbo and Ranboo now, too. They, too, understood.

But Dream was there first. 

“When will you come back?” Tommy’s voice was small. It was so small and he hated it more than anything. 

Until Dream shrugged again with a fond, condescending smile. The same smile he saw every time his complaints were brushed off by his family as temporary childish spite. “When I have time. Be good, Tommy.”

Then he was gone.

Normally he would have reacted to fucking teleportation, which he had no idea Dream could even do, but Tommy was busy dealing with what felt like a hole in his chest, a chunk of him missing along with Dream and leaving him cold in the twilight.

---

“Wait – stop! Look at this –” 

Wilbur paused his rapid flipping through the pages and began to read where Techno was pointing. 

Grandma said the Memory key is “lost to time,” Puffy had written. Very poetic! She said she was the last Craft it was used on, but that it was for the best. Some things, she said, are meant to be forgotten. 

I don’t agree, of course. But without the Memory key, there’s nothing that can be done … unless a new one spawns. 

So the Memory key was gone.

It was over. Their last option was closed to them. 

Stunned, Wilbur read the page a second, then a third time, but the message was the same. He looked up, meeting Techno’s grave stare. 

“What do we do now?” 

“I don’t know,” Techno said, his eyes troubled.

“Look at this though – spawns,” Wilbur said urgently, pointing at the line. “A new one spawns. What does that mean?”

“I don’t know.”

“Is this … what you were saying that day, about the ley line and Key House?” Wilbur asked, his voice more hesitant as he took in his twin’s expression. “Does this have anything to do with that?”

“I don’t know, Wil,” Techno replied, sitting back with a sigh. “I just don’t know.” 

---

It was strange, being alone in the well-house.

Tommy held his phone up, flashlight mode on, and peered over the edge of the well. In the dim light it was hard to see, but he thought could make out the bottom about 10 feet below. And it did seem like Dream had been telling the truth when he said the well was dry – Tommy had dropped a small-ish rock over the edge and listened, and he had heard a faint thump rather than a splash.  

How was he ever going to get down there to retrieve the Memory key? Asking his family to lower him down the well was certainly out of the question … 

He would talk to Tubbo and Ranboo about it tomorrow morning, Tommy thought, stepping away from the side of the well. Tubbo would almost certainly have some ideas. 

Tommy took another step back, and then startled as a hand grabbed his shoulder in a bruising grip and spun him around. 

He had never seen Dream this furious.

“You just gave me a larger prison,” Dream snarled, looming over him like a cobra about to strike. “Why is there another barrier around the grounds? WHY? Why can’t I leave?!” 

The bruising grip on his shoulder vanished as Dream wrenched his hand free to clutch his head in agony, hunched over and screaming. “Was that THERE? IS IT NEW? HOW LONG HAS IT BEEN THERE?!” His eyes snapped up, and Tommy’s blood ran cold. “You knew.”

“No I-”

Before Tommy could argue Dream grabbed both of his shoulders and bent forwards, his face filling Tommy’s vision, twisted with rage. “I DID EVERYTHING YOU WANTED!” He screamed. “YOU PROMISED YOU’D FREE ME!” Dream shook Tommy violently before his face went utterly pale. “The Well-house.”

“W-what?” Tommy panicked. 

Dream’s face contorted with much worse than rage; he stared at Tommy with hate. “You fucking brat,” he hissed, “you promised to free me from the Well-house. You KNEW!” Dream shoved him away, and Tommy’s back slammed into the well. “Oh, you really are a Craft, Tommy,” Dream said dangerously. “I should’ve known. Very clever!” He clapped slowly as he stepped, ever so menacingly, towards him. “You knew I’d only help you find the Memory Key after I was free. Truly inspired, tricking me into giving up the only card I had left right at the very end, when I needed it most!” 

“Dream I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Tommy rushed, hands raised in surrender. “Please, I would never do that to you, you know-”

“I KNOW YOU’RE A FUCKING CRAFT!” Dream had his hands on Tommy’s shoulders again. “Your entire line is poison, Tommy, down to the last,” he hissed quietly. “From the day this nursery was built, your family has been a blight on this world and the next. You hid it at first but the rot came through, it always does Tommy, the core rots first long before the branches wither but the entire time that rot spreads. Infecting the ground, ruining the water.” His grip tightened. “Let me out. Now. You give me the Anywhere Key this instant and I’ll never bother you again. I’ll go to the other end of the WORLD!” Dream shouted, blowing Tommy’s bangs back. “GIVE ME THE KEY!”

“I can’t!” Tommy tried to reason. He did. “You agreed it was too dangerous, you did!”

“I’d rather die, Tommy,” Dream scoffed. “It imprinted on you. You’re the only one who can give it to me now. Do it. Do it or I swear you will face the consequences for what you’ve done.” His eyes went blank. “Oathbreaker.” Dream murmured the word like a curse. Something about it made Tommy shiver from toe to tip. “You will pay, if you do not free me.” 

“I can’t,” Tommy sobbed. That whisper of instinct was screaming in the back of his mind as he so desperately wished to give Dream the freedom he deserved, screaming that it would- it would kill him? What did it mean it would kill him?

“Alright then.” Dream’s face went blank, before he smiled in a way Tommy had never seen him do. It was oily and cruel, alien and wrong on the face of his friend. Even now- even now, Tommy felt Dream was his friend. Dream was shocked and angry and confused and irrational, this wasn’t really him-

“You told me about a human saying I find myself quite fond of, Tommy.” That wretched smile widened, and Dream’s hands tightened on his shoulders. “‘Payback’s a bitch.’”

A shove, far more violent than the last, sent Tommy over the edge of the well. Flailing in the air as gravity’s pull tugged him down, down, all the way down. Tommy grabbed for the bucket while he could, barely latching on, but his weight just made the rope unspool from the wench above him. Faster and faster, the bucket fell in his desperate grasp, until-

A crunch of rotten wood shattering. 

A painful jerk in his arm, momentum arrested.

The burn of torn skin in his palm.

Dream’s poisoned hum of satisfaction, and a dreadful impact.

And then-

Nothing.

---

Phil opened the kitchen door and stepped outside, frowning. He had just been starting dinner when he thought he had heard raised voices. It was already past dusk. Who could be out here?

“Hello?” he called.

“ Help!” a voice called, faintly. 

Concern deepening, Phil grabbed the heavy-duty torch from the mudroom shelf and stepped outside. It had sounded like the voice was coming from near the abandoned well-house. “Hello?” he repeated. “Who’s out here?”

“Dad!” he heard the voice call, with a strange wavering echo, and Phil tensed in alarm. 

“ Tommy ?” he shouted. He rushed towards the well-house. The metal gate was loosely pulled shut, and he roughly forced it open with a grating clang and stumbled inside. The place was dark and musty, long-abandoned. Electrical lighting had never been installed in here. He cast the torch around wildly – had Tommy fallen somewhere in here? But no, the place was empty. 

“Tommy!” he shouted again, turning back to the gate. “Where are you?” 

“ Dad?! ” 

Phil’s stomach dropped in horror. He rushed towards the well in the center of the structure. 

“ Tommy? ” he shouted, leaning over the wall of the well and shining the torch down. “Are you down there? Answer me!” 

“Dad, help, please!” Tommy’s voice was wavering, sounding near tears. “I’m down here –”

“ Shit! Hang on, Tommy, I’ll pull you up –”

Phil swallowed all of the comments and questions racing through his head – thank God you’re okay or at least well enough to talk please don’t be hurt what the fuck were you doing – and cast the torch around the well-house, looking for something he could use to pull Tommy back up – 

– and he shone his torch directly into the face of a man he had never seen before in his life.

Phil swore, but didn’t drop the torch or let it waver. “Who the fuck are you?” he demanded. The man was almost his height, with a solid build, dark blond hair, and vivid green eyes. 

“ Dad?” he heard Tommy call, voice high and frightened. “ Is that –? Get away from him!”

“Phil,” the man purred familiarly. The sound made the hairs on the back of Phil’s neck stand up. “Phil Craft. It’s so nice to see you again.”

Phil’s eyes widened in shock. “Who –”

“It’s a good thing you came. You can keep Tommy company,” the man said, shooting him a dark grin. “It gets lonely in here – trust me, I know.”

And the next thing Phil knew, his arms and legs were banging, scraping painfully against the rough stone surface as he grasped for purchase. He was weightless, falling into darkness. 

He heard Tommy scream.

Chapter Text

Some things, someone had written in a journal hidden somewhere in Key House, are meant to be forgotten. 

---

Someone was crying.

It sounded like one of his children. 

Phil blinked, blearily, and forced his eyes open. 

He was lying on a hard, uneven surface, with what felt like pebbles digging into his back. He felt like he was about to throw up. It was pitch black, except for a single circle of light illuminating what appeared to be a brick wall. He frowned. Where the hell was he? 

There was a shuddering weight on his chest, and he shifted his head slightly to see a mop of curly blond hair on top of him, shaking with sobs. 

Tommy. 

“Toms?” he whispered, alarmed. He gingerly lifted his right arm to stroke his son’s head, fingers trembling. It was like he was moving underwater. 

“Dad?!” Tommy’s head jolted up. “Dad! You’re awake! Are you okay? Are you hurt?”

“I’m okay,” Phil said automatically, and then decided to re-evaluate that as he slowly tried to move. “I’m okay – I think,” he said with a wince as he levered himself into a sitting position and carefully moved his arms and legs. He was definitely bruised everywhere , but at least it didn’t feel like anything was actually broken. Probably. He couldn’t see very well in the dim, dark light, and what he could see was blurry and wobbly. That… probably wasn’t good. Right?

“Be careful!” Tommy said, his voice tight with fear. “You fell –”

Fell?

The stone wall. 

Realization jolted him. Phil looked up and saw the cylindrical stone walls fade into a perfect circle of darkness above. 

He and Tommy were at the bottom of the goddamn well. 

Shit . 

“You kind of fell on me,” Tommy said, his tone somewhere between relieved, reproachful, and sheepish. 

At that, Phil paused. “Are you okay?” he slurred. He reached out one arm to wrap around Tommy’s shoulders and gently tug his son towards him, and grabbed for the torch with the other. 

“I’m okay.” Tommy’s voice was subdued. shaky. “I didn’t fall as far as you did, just a few feet.”

Phil angled the torch and inspected his youngest child with a critical eye. Tommy’s face, hair, and clothes were liberally coated with dirt and grime, and his eyes were red-rimmed from dust and tears. But aside from his bedraggled appearance, he otherwise looked … alright. 

Something was wrong. 

As parental wrath surged forth, summoned by fear as it often was, Phil clutched at his baby boy and opened his mouth to yell, to demand, to- something. Instead, he pitched to the side and coughed up a burning mouthful of bile.

“Dad!”

In any other situation, Phil would have reacted to the fear in his son’s voice, but it was really, really difficult to think right now. 

“I’m alright,” Phil mumbled once he caught his breath. “You’re- Tommy, what?” He blinked, trying to force the haze away. “What the hell happened? Were you playing in here?! This isn’t a jungle gym, Tommy, you could have died!” There was that old parental wrath, yes, very good. Mission accomplished. “How did I get down here?” He tried to think about it, to remember, but his head hurt. His head hurt so bad.

“Dream pushed you,” Tommy said sadly. “I’m so sorry dad-”

“Dream?” Phil mumbled. “The hell were you talking to him for? Grandma said he was evil, remember?” Huh. He’d just kinda said it on autopilot, but, she did say that, didn’t she? 

Fear flooded him.

“Tommy, what did you do? Did you use a key?” Foggy memories blurred drunkenly through his bruised and aching brain. “Y-yeah, you did, you- the cabinet?” Phil laughed. “You wouldn’t believe how many times we got out of trouble thanks to that thing.” He blinked at his son, who looked very scared and confused. “Wait, what?” The fog was so thick in his head. “I fell? You fell too?”

“Pushed,” Tommy corrected, which made him frown. 

“That’s not right.” It wasn’t. “Wait, someone’s here!” He remembered now, blonde hair and green eyes, they were so green it hurt to think about. “Tommy, Tommy get my phone, it’s in my pocket,” Phil was trying to get his fingers to cooperate but they kept ignoring him. 

When body-warmed plastic slid into his hand, Phil fumbled at the lock-screen and immediately called his wife. “Need to tell Kristin,” he coughed. “Get us out of here, stay in the house. Key House will keep us safe.” 

The phone rang, like church bells smashing against his skull, before the concerned voice of his darling cut through all the fog. “Phil? Where are you? I thought you were making dinner tonight.”

“Tommy and I were pushed into the well,” he groaned as Kristin gasped in fear and a lot more than a little anger. “I, I dunno who it was,” didn’t he? “Stay in the house, get- get the kids, the big ones, I have the small one. Get them and keep them inside. Don’t know where he is.”

“I’m coming to get you,” oh hell that was her determined voice this was going to be difficult, “and then I’ll call the cops. I’ll get the boys stashed away, don’t worry,” Kristin liked to take command sometimes and he loved it when she did but now was the exact worst time for it. She didn’t know the full reality of the situation.

Did he?

“Kristin,” he forced his voice to harden as his heart trembled, “your safety, and the boys, are more important than my comfort. Tommy is in much better condition than I am, seems hardly bothered,” he kept from slurring, bolstered by Tommy’s shaky but supportive smile. “You can’t get either of us out, and I know,” his voice broke, “I know you want to comfort us. I know. But being outside the house only endangers you. Comfort us by being safe.” If he splattered some drool when he said that last word, well, that was between him and Tommy. 

He heard, barely, as his wife muttered to herself, figuring out what to do. He heard something about the cops, about their boys, about an ambulance-

“Ambulance!” He shouted too loudly, “Yes, call an ambulance! Maybe even the firemen? They’re the ones who pull people from stuff right?” 

“Yes, honey,” Kristin laughed shakily through the phone, “they’re on their way too. We’ll get you out in thirty minutes, hour tops. Are you- will you be okay that long?”

“I’ll be fine,” Phil nodded briefly but stopped when he felt like the world dissolved and he nearly threw up across the phone and all over Tommy, who was- who was holding something. A matter for later. “Just stay in the house. You have to. Hide, too. Away from the windows. The basement,” he breathed, “the basement is the most secure, it’s the closest.”

“Closest to what?” Kristin asked, but Phil didn’t hear her.

“I’ll talk to you later, Tommy needs me,” and he hung up before he noticed his wife’s protests. Tommy did, in fact, need him. He was holding something, something that glimmered like gold in the light of the torch. It was gold.

No. It was more than gold.

“Tommy, what is that?”

Tommy shook his head as he looked at his father, concussed and delirious. “It’s nothing, dad,” he said softly. “It’s just a little something to help you.” The metal was hot against his skin. Eager to work. So eager, after being so alone. Almost as alone as Dream.

Tommy was going to deal with that later, though.

“Help me? Help me to do what?” Phil slurred.

Tommy pressed the key to his dad’s chest, over a keyhole that had opened in his shirt, in his flesh. He slid the key flush, bow touching his dad’s doofy old shirt, and he turned it with a click he felt in his bones.

“To remember.” 

---

Wilbur turned the page in Puffy’s journal, and read, One last thing that needs to be written about the Memory key is the matter of Dream. Grandma told me multiple times, in the strongest possible terms, never to go to the abandoned well-house and never to engage with the Entity – you could just hear the capitalization in her voice – who lives there. 

Who lives there? Wilbur’s eyebrows drew down into a frown, and he continued to read.

I, of course, was curious and didn’t listen. Dream is quite interesting, but also highly suspicious. He tried to bargain with me – one of two keys he desperately wanted in exchange for the Memory key. Grandma had told me before that the Memory key was lost, but Dream claimed otherwise. Even if I didn’t believe Grandma about the Memory key, the key that Dream wanted in exchange is too powerful. It’s too high a price to pay. I left the well-house after our conversation and have never returned there. I know Grandma warned Phil about Dream as well, and I’ve warned him also … I can only hope that he has better sense than I did and listens for once. 

Wilbur shifted uneasily, and said, “Techno, come look at this.”

“What?” Techno said absently, absorbed in his own book. 

“Come look at what Aunt Puffy wrote about the well-house, it’s weird –”

“Techno! Wil!”

Wilbur’s head snapped up in alarm. That was their mother. She sounded extremely upset. 

The last time she had sounded like that, it was right before they went to the hospital for Tommy – 

“What is it?” Techno demanded, shooting to his feet as their mother hurried into the library, cellphone in white-knuckled hand and looking, somehow, impossibly, more upset than when Tommy was comatose for a week with no explanation.

Then she explained, and Wilbur snatched the phone out of her hand to call the various authorities, and Techno had to admit: it actually was worse, knowing what had happened when two loved ones, one of which had already been traumatically hospitalized, were stuck wounded somewhere very nearby that they couldn’t get to.

Techno was glad adults couldn’t remember magic. It meant he didn’t have to worry her with just how bad this really was.

“Excuse me?” Wilbur’s acidic tone snapped Techno back to attention. “My father has what sounds like a serious concussion, a brain injury, along with my previously comatose brother, at the bottom of a well!” Wilbur looked more furious than either of them had ever seen, and they’d seen him at his absolute worst. “What do you MEAN it’s going to be at LEAST HALF AN HOUR?”

“Honey,” Kristin laid a hand on Wilbur’s shoulder, jerking his attention away from the apologetic tone coming from the phone now held to the side, “we live around an hour away from town. That anybody could make it in half would be a miracle.” Whether she was convincing Wilbur or herself, Techno couldn’t tell. “Plus they have to mobilize three different organizations, and two of them are using massive vehicles. They’re bringing a crane. It’ll be alright.”

“You don’t know that,” Wilbur stated, eyes wild with terror and anger that Techno understood perfectly. “We should be helping.”

Kristin’s face went tight. “We are helping. By staying safe. If you try and run out there I will stop you, don’t think I won’t let alone can’t. I am your mother.”

Yeah, that was why Techno was leaning against a bookshelf trying to breathe evenly: their mother gave birth twice to three kids and handled twin teenagers for years. Techno may have a full foot of height on her and at least a hundred pounds but he wasn’t stupid. 

“Fine,” Wilbur deflated. He gently pushed away and got back on the phone. “Sorry,” he mumbled as he began to pace. “Yeah, the well-house is a closed structure, but the well has been dry for years.”

As Wilbur continued answering questions, Techno walked over to his mother who was clearly chewing her own mouth in worry. “It’s like you said, mom,” Techno murmured as he wrapped her in a hug, “it’ll be alright.”

God, Techno hoped he wasn’t lying.

---

Tommy was nauseous, and unlike his dad it wasn’t because of a concussion (although the Memory Key somehow seemed to actually be helping with that.) He felt like throwing up because of the sheer emotional conflict going on in his heart.

He’d trusted Dream. Tommy had never for a single moment thought something like this would ever happen; Dream was one of his best friends, and even though the spirit (something more than that, although he didn’t know what) had always been clearly unwell mentally this was- this was different.

If he hadn’t tried to catch his dad and end up bodily bruised for the trouble, Phil’s skull would have shattered against the stone instead of just slamming into it. If Tommy hadn’t managed to grab the bucket, he would have shattered his rib cage when he landed on his back instead of just blacking out for a minute at most. 

If he’d just listened to Tubbo and been cautious, maybe neither of them would be down here in the first place. 

Tommy glanced up from the key in his hand to check on his dad. After he’d turned it, his dad had jerked up so strongly Tommy’s hand yanked the key out on accident. After a tense few seconds of silence, his dad told him he was okay, he just needed time to process. 

Something about his tone told Tommy he was going to be hearing a very long lecture after all this. 

So for the past few minutes, Tommy had been sitting there staring at the key, thinking. Thinking oh so many things, none of them very good. Perhaps most important was whether or not he should use the key on himself.

Another glance at his dad proved Phil was still lost in reconnecting memories. Judging by the look on his face, that inevitable lecture was going to be harsh, and he had a sneaking suspicion that his dad was going to confiscate every key he could.

When Tommy slid the Memory Key into his own chest, it felt like nothing, and when he turned the key and locked magic into his mind forever it felt like everything. A moment later and it felt like nothing all over again.

Made sense. He hadn’t lost any memories to begin with, while his dad had at least half a childhood coming back all at once. At least now his dad couldn’t just push him out of his own life this time. At least now he couldn’t be ignored. At least now, finally, his dad would have to listen to him.

And if Tommy shed a tear or three at the realization of just how bad things had gotten regarding his feelings for his father, well- at least his dad couldn’t see them right now.

God, how did it come to this? Had Dream really been this unstable the entire time? Yeah, Tommy knew he was falling apart, but he didn’t know Dream was one traumatic reveal away from trying to kill the only person who cared about him.

Although if he really believed Tommy had been lying… Fucking hell he really should have listened to Tubbo. Irrationality was a hell of a drug and when paired with a crumbling sense of self and an inability to remember most of who he was, it was hardly a surprise now that Tommy had the benefit of hindsight. 

Maybe there was a key for that, somewhere, or something else in other parts of the world. Something to give you the clarity of hindsight in the present. Tommy wondered if that would count as seeing the future. Tommy wondered why the Well-house of all places was the apparent lynchpin of his family’s magical security system. 

“Tommy?” His dad’s voice, so beautifully clear, jolted him out of his thoughts. When he looked into his dad’s eyes, concern so bright inside them, he nearly started crying for real. “Oh, Tommy,” and then his dad was hugging him, clinging to him, pulling him into his lap like Tommy was a little kid again, and Tommy let him. He clung right back and buried his face in his dad’s shoulder and just breathed.

Phil’s fingers brushed through his hair and he felt himself calming down, an instinctive recognition soothing some of his fear. His dad had him; it was okay now. 

It wasn’t, really, and they both knew it, but they were together. 

“How long?” Tommy didn’t know you could hear heartbreak, but there it was in his dad’s voice. “How long have you been surviving all this by yourself?”

“Since I stayed home when you all went to the college,” Tommy mumbled into his dad’s shirt. Phil’s grip tightened desperately in time with his dad’s shuddering exhale. 

“Do-” Phil coughed. “Do you- should we wait? To talk about it?” It was pretty clear even his dad didn’t know the answer to that question, which Tommy figured probably meant the answer was yes. So that’s what he said.

“Not now. Not here.” Tommy wasn’t crying. It was close, closer than he was to his dad right now, but he was managing, barely, to suppress it. “Could you-” he swallowed. “Could you sing for me, like you used to? When we were stuck in traffic and stuff?” It had been the only thing his dad could do to keep his four year old brain from going ballistic at being still for so long. 

“Of course, sunshine,” his dad pressed a kiss to the top of his head. “Always.” Phil leaned back, resting his head against the well wall, and began to sing for him. His singing voice was terrible, warbly and off tune and grating in many places. 

Phil felt Tommy’s tears soak his shirt and kept singing until the firemen came for them half an hour later.