Chapter Text
Tom couldn’t tell if he was alive or dead.
He’d always imagined when it happened for there to have been a little more fanfare. Specifically, a parade of half-dressed women with bird wings cheering him through the archway as he entered on a float shaped like Tord’s dismembered head.
But there was no cheering here. If he hadn’t crossed over into death just yet, Tom could only assume he was trapped in some plain of existence between - somewhere where gravity and his body itself were merely suggestions as his mind roamed freely, through the walls of this cold, dank cell, out into the cool night and back through the winding streets of London. Back down that familiar old lane, where he could open the door, float through that hallway and collapse into those tattered old sheets. Feel them bundle around his soul.
But never his body. There was a great deal of confusion in Tom’s wandering mind about this. The scarred purple beast that lay chained in that dank cell, its cries of pain reduced to tired gurgles as men in hazmats rubbed antiseptic into its open wounds? That wasn’t Tom. It couldn’t be. It was too full of rage, too blinded by bloodlust… not that Tom didn’t have his moments. But he was, or always had been, at least something close to a human.
But that thing? It couldn’t have been farther from it.
Yet when Tom tried to open his eyes, cough or shuffle his feet, the monster would do the same.
Time passed differently in his cell. With no natural light to indicate the days passing, Tom spent most of his time asleep to let his mind wander to better places. Masked men would push bowls of what looked like dog food through the grates in his door, which he ignored, but soon sharp pangs of hunger were cutting into his peacefully numb consciousness.
Like this, for days, or weeks or perhaps an eternity, Tom floated through this half-life.
Until he heard that voice.
‘Tom,’ It roused him from a shallow slumber. Unrecognisable, yet infuriatingly familiar. Like he could reach out and grab it and it would still slip through his fingers;
‘Tom,’ he didn’t open his eyes, but he knew where he was now. Tom could feel the cool tiles beneath him. It was a typical Friday night. He’d had too much to drink and he’d passed out in front of a bar.
‘Tom,’ Edd’s voice was right above him. Soon, he’d be hoisted over his and Matt’s shoulders, they’d carry him home and unceremoniously dump him on the couch where he’d be chewed out for letting himself get to this point again , but then they’d bundle him in blankets and bring him hot tea, and Matt would cuddle up against him and they’d pop on the telly and he’d be able to slip into a deep slumber to drive off the rest of this drunken haze, knowing he was warm and safe and loved.
He was going home.
‘Tom!’
He felt someone, no, some thing grab him by the chin and yank him to his feet. Or, as far as the chains allowed him to stand, because as soon as he was pulled up the chains went taut and Tom’s knees buckled under him. He collapsed back onto all fours, hacking and coughing while his vision blurred, struggling to adjust to the sudden movement. He could see his hands, his real, human hands pressed against the prison tiles, whilst a stream of dark purple liquid from his mouth formed a puddle at his fingertips. Tom willed himself to look up at his attacker.
The man standing over him was not Edd.
He looked older than Tom had ever seen him. Perhaps it was due to his near-full lack of a right side. An ugly, blood-red burn scar blistered half his face and he’d covered whatever remained of his right eye with an eyepatch- probably a wise decision. It looked like he’d been melted, put through a human-sized paper shredder then melted again. Even beyond that, though, there were a few extra wrinkles on his left side that Tom was sure hadn’t been there the last time he’d seen him.
Behind him, there was no Matt with a pile of extra jackets to swaddle Tom in. Instead, a man in a ridiculous uniform with even more ridiculous eyebrows scribbled something undoubtedly about Tom on a clipboard.
‘You,’ he tried to hiss, but the voice that came out of him was closer to the first mewl of a kitten whose mother had been a heavy cat-smoker all throughout her cat-pregnancy.
‘Traitor.’
Tord just smiled. A sickening, twisted smile that warped the ruined side of his face in all the wrong ways, and dug the claws of his metallic right arm deeper into Tom’s face.
‘That’s Red Leader to you, puppy.’
Tom spat on him.
Tord tightened his grip and Tom cried out in pain.
‘Oh, Thomas,’ he purred, tilting Tom’s chin upwards to inspect him,
‘You were such a promising candidate.’
Tom wrenched his face free.
‘Where are Edd and Matt?’ he barked, lunging forward against his restraints, ‘What did you do to them?’
‘What did I do?’ Tord drawled, bringing his good hand to his chest in mock-surprise. ‘Oh, Thomas, you don’t recall?’
‘No?!’ Tom could hear his voice rise in panic, but he had other things to worry about than being embarrassed about it.
‘I don’t- You wanker, I’m not playing games with you!’
Tord shook his head. Gave a sad little ‘tut, tut, tut.’
‘Such a shame. Really. They were such good friends.’
‘What did you do?!’ Tom was shrieking now. ‘Did you KILL them?! Did you blow them to bits like you did to the house?!’ He gasped, a horrible, violent sob sending shudders through his body.
‘My friends!’
Another involuntarily sob had him grasping his sides to shut himself up as his bloody, beaten little body broke down. As he curled into the fetal position, his body twitching in odd, rhythmic spasms, Tord stepped back and watched with cold, scientific detachment. Like watching bacteria squirm in a petri dish.
Eventually, those dramatic wails had quieted to sad, snivelling whimpers. The sounds of a boy who had nothing left to give.
‘Tom,’ Tord finally broke the relative silence. His single intact eye shone with a sadness Tom had never known him to be capable of, let alone seen.
And he knew. And it made his heart shatter.
‘Tom, it was you.’