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Tommy had known fear before, no matter what he might’ve claimed about big men and their qualities if you had asked him at the time, and there was plenty early on that would terrify him with the clarity of hindsight, but the first time he felt actual terror was in the cramped space of the Control Room.
Could he have seen it coming? Was there dread as they made their way down steps too big to comfortably walk down - too big to easily run up?
Was that why they joked, to drown out the gnawing sense that something wasn’t right? Could he have seen it in the way she held herself?
Or was there nothing they could have done, no chance at prediction?
Did it matter? It didn’t change the outcome. In the end, he still looked up at that face he thought he knew and saw him smile as he hammered the last nail in.
All it took were a few words spoken, a button pressed, for the mask to shatter, the facade to crumble, leaving Tommy uncomprehending and terribly hurt.
It wasn’t the last time this would happen, but there was no way to know that.
As his allies, his brothers-in-arms, his friends – whatever you might call their little band, that the newly crowned traitor king had still belonged to in the morning – asked the question that swirled just as nauseatingly through his head, all he could allow
himself to do was lean on a facade of his own. He made himself bigger, louder as he shouted his recriminations.
The anger may have helped to keep him going, but Tommy had the unfortunate tendency to go just a bit too far before he realised he’d done so. Most of the time he tried to back out at that point, though often enough it would be too late for that.
Challenging Dream was a bad idea, he knew that even before they stood back-to-back on the wooden walkway, but in the moment he hadn’t cared – what kind of justification was “sometimes you just gotta kill some people sometimes yaknow” for a war
anyway – and there was no backing out this time, just a last fleeting chance at victory.
One… he held his head high as they took their first shared step.
Two… his heart thundered in his ears, pounding into his skull.
Three… he tried to focus on the security that the voice, now steadily counting what might be his last steps, usually brought.
Four… still his throat remained as tight as the bunker that was more for show than actual use.
Five… Maybe one day he’ll stop picking fights he knows he can’t win.
Six… no, wishful thinking won’t prevent him from going into the pit for Tubbo’s sake.
Seven… or lashing out in a cell too hot and too cramped and too shared with him to think clearly.
Eight… his knuckles are white from his death-grip on the bow.
Nine… “Do I shoot him, Wil? or do I aim for the skies?”
Ten paces, fire! In the end it doesn’t matter. The arrow hits him and he falls into the water.
There was… something akin to happy times after that, for a while at least. Before Schlatt’s voice rang out through the speaker, over the crowd.
It wasn’t fair. Just a few moments ago they had been standing on that stage.
He had been sure they’d won. They should have won.
Instead they stood in the crowd.
Every word of Schlatt’s speech, his ‘declaration’, his condemnation, shot uncertainty into his bones.
Tommy looked to Wilbur. He couldn’t find any reassurance there.
He looked to the crowd. Surely not, they wouldn’t actually listen, right?
He saw weapons being drawn; He couldn’t tell how many.
Wilbur looked grim…
and told him to “run, don’t look back, just run!”
So he did.
He ran to the tunnel – another last resort they never intended to use.
He had no idea who followed.
He could hear laughter over the commotion.
He had no idea when Wilbur fell.
He could hear the words echo into the tunnels.
Hearing them made him feel nauseous, but he had to know at least some of what was after him; He had to know if Tubbo would be one of them, a thought that would have never crossed his mind before.
They made it out, although not unscathed. Tubbo agreed to be their ‘spy on the inside’ and they actually managed to get The Blade on their side!
Hope bubbled up in his chest as they started to set up a resistance. Another of Schlatt’s speeches soured it quickly. Tommy didn’t see the thoughtful doubt in Wilbur’s eyes at first.
Sue him, it was dark in that forest and he was walking behind him. So they walked and talked; He made a joke about always being right.
Only when Wilbur turned around with a grand, sweeping, overdramatic gesture, could he start to see. It quickly turned from thoughtful to manic, feverish even.
The proposal “let’s be the bad guys” sounded utterly nonsensical to Tommy, so how was he supposed to argue? It twisted in his gut.
He still tried, over and over, to convince his brother, to stay by his side.
Even when he brought up leaving to Tubbo; when he himself suggested they could get out and leave all this behind, Tommy already knew he would stay.
Even though Wilbur retreated into the corners of the tunnels and warrens they now lived in, Tommy tried to reach out to him.
Even when, slowly, others arrived, seemingly took one look at Wilbur’s state, and labelled him a lost cause, he stubbornly stayed.
Even though a sick sense of futility burrowed under his skin, he desperately stayed.
What else could he do? He was his brother.
Their eventual victory was short lived.; All the relief that had flooded his chest burning away in an instant.
He had experienced loss before, of course he had! Not the least of which had been Henry, but those could not compare to the utter devastation brought upon within those minutes.
He had only just got his home back and now all that remained of it was a smouldering crater. He was finally free to hang out with his friends again and now one of them had in no uncertain terms told him to die.
Most off all, he had proved to his brother that not all was lost and now all he could do was watch from across a freshly made gorge as his father put a sword through his heart.
What followed was a series of bad decisions, there is no other way to describe it, but he just wanted to have one nice thing for once, dammit. His discs were his only real option for that.
So he might have grieved a house and accidentally set it on fire. It was only a little burned, nothing too out of the norm as far as griefing goes and certainly nothing that couldn’t be fixed!
He hadn’t even been the only one who did it – though he would never tell them that, no need to throw Ranboo under the bus.
All in all, this whole trial and demand for his exile was complete bullshit. A dumb charade orchestrated by a dumber dickhead.
He wasn’t even being subtle! The bastard kept sending him smily-faces and trying to rile him up, but Tubbo just nodded along, trying to bargain for some better deal that Dream would never take.
It was frustrating is what it was. You won’t get rid of marionette strings by moving along to their push and pull, you have to cut them.
So Tommy pushed back, he took the bait and was uncooperative. He tried to turn it back on Dream, hold something over his head for once.
Maybe he was just making his own bed, but at least the endless pretence would finally stop when he snapped, right?
So why did he feel the strings tighten as Dream declared Tommy’s discs his own?
Had his struggling just entangled him further? Had he danced along just as easily with steps he only thought were out of sync?
He looked up at the figures standing on the wall as the hand on his shoulder guided him away; Along a path he had been walking since this whole shit-show had begun.
Tommy isn’t allowed to leave Logstedshire. He isn’t allowed a lot of things. He isn’t allowed to do a lot of things. He isn’t allowed to have a lot of things. He isn’t allowed to keep a lot of things.
As a result, what remains in abundance, is time to think.
One of the things he unfortunately is trying to avoid, because there are only so many possible things for him to think about and they all suck in one way or another.
Because he can’t wrap his head around them or they simply hurt or they hurt to wrap his head around or they hurt because he can’t wrap his head around them.
Is there truly a difference there?
It doesn’t matter.
He is trying to avoid them anyway.
He works to fill that awful space where thoughts can grow. He gathers and chops and hacks and builds. He just has to make progress. If he makes progress, it proves it matters, that he isn’t just wasting away in the empty hours.
He’ll just have to gather enough together to get back on his feet.
Only he can’t.
He can’t gather enough in one day and it all goes up in smoke with a hiss and a flash and a bang at the start of the next day, all for nothing.
It stings and singes and rings in his ears. It doesn’t matter.
He isn’t allowed to even see a Christmas tree.
So he stays behind, staring into the shifting heat that glows beneath him, thinking too many things that don’t matter or mean anything.
One such meaningless thought is of the negligible amount of space between where he stands and the edge.
How much of a difference does that one step really make?
Just move a few inches forward and he is gone.
How much of a difference does that make in the grand scheme of it all?
It’s not like they care in L’Manburg whether he is there.
So they probably won’t care if he is nowhere anymore.
He is harshly pulled out of his thoughts by his collar and thrown to the middle of the precarious path.
There stands Dream, looming over him.
Tommy can’t see his expression, but based on the crossed arms and the tone of his voice, he guesses at a frown.
“It is not your time to die yet, Tommy,”
“It is never my time to die.”
The time alone sucks, but he prefers it over the time spent with Dream. He gets the notification that he is on his way and shudders. Then remembers himself and tells himself he wasn’t shuddering, he was shaking in anger.
There is nobody around who believes him.
Tommy could tell Dream to leave him alone – and he did, in the beginning – but with Dream he at least knows what he wants, what he’s dealing with.
Not like the other occasional visitors who only grant pity and platitudes and other bullshit. They don’t care, not really.
They’re just there to laugh at his misery; or they just want to be able to say they tried and wash their hands off him.
Not Dream, Dream is honest, reliable. He doesn’t pretend or try to sugar coat how much of a burden Tommy really is.
He actually visits regularly, takes time of from whatever he would rather be doing to make sure Tommy doesn’t make things any worse for anybody, including Tommy himself.
Dream is the closest thing he can have to a friend.
He tells Tommy what is real and what he makes up; Which is something Tommy desperately needs, because he’s been seeing Tubbo and that doesn’t make any sense.
Why would Tubbo come to see him? He made it clear he didn’t care and it was for the better anyway, because Tommy only ever dragged him down.
No, it didn’t make sense. Which is why it was good that Dream was here, to tell him what right and wrong, true and false.
“They don’t care about you” that makes sense. “You don’t hate me.” Of course not, why would he? Dream was his only true friend.
He’s tired, but sleep does little to lessen that. It won’t when his dreams are made of explosions, distant figures turning away, cackling laughter echoing with feedback, rambling somewhere around the corner in these cramped tunnels, reaching out in vain, tears in his eyes and he can’t breathe.
When he wakes and is surrounded on all sides, his mind disorientated, his body sluggish, his heart racing and his lungs full .
He. Can’t. Breathe.
He should get out. He should let the tide take him away. He doesn’t want to struggle to the surface again. Every time it takes more effort. He is farther away from the shore.
He doesn’t want to drown. So he pulls himself up, clawing to the surface, then off to the shore. He drags himself onto the sand, hacking up saltwater and heaving for breaths. Whether it is the sea or his tears that burn his eyes, he doesn’t know. He just lay there, on the beach, shivering as coughs rack his lungs.
He can’t do that for too long though. He needs to pull himself together before his friend arrives. He needs to gather things for the pit, or else Dream will be disappointed. That won’t do. His body aches with the bruises, burns and cuts he’s gathered during his stay here.
He’s convinced that, one of these days, Dream won’t be satisfied with the meagre amount he’s managed to scrape together and will just throw Tommy in the pit with them for good measure. Tommy pushes himself up, takes a moment to regain his balance, and makes his way to his chests.
No-one's here.
He shouldn’t be surprised, but it still stung.
He had even tried to give them the benefit of the doubt, taken it as some extra time to prepare, clean everything up, make it look somewhat presentable.
He had hyped himself up; any minute, they would be here any minute now and they would have fun. Maybe Tubbo would come.
Then as the minutes ticked past the time he’d written on every individual invite – carefully, so carefully to compensate for the way his hands wouldn’t stop trembling – he checked the portal, he reasoned they were just running late. Besides, nobody ever arrived on the dot.
It was fine. It would just be a few more minutes. Just ignore the cold seeping into your chest, solidifying heavy at its centre.
Dream’s arrival helped… a little.
Tommy still tensed the moment he saw him, but that was his friend, it was someone at least, even if he was late, he was here. He even let him keep his stuff for once.
Though he looked at Tommy with a slight tilt to his head: confusion, maybe? Or pity? Tommy wasn’t sure.
The cold spot in his chest sank with the sun.
Why is no-one here? The table was too big and the seats too empty.
The cake was too much for two people – it would have been far too little for the amount of invites sent. His stomach was already churning with the little he had managed to eat today.
The waves crashing against the shore were loud in the empty. They couldn’t fill it though, nothing could.
He tried to get an explanation – any explanation – from Dream. Asking quickly turned to begging;
Why? Why had no-one shown up? They got their invites, right? So why weren’t they here?
With every answer something climbed higher and higher in his throat. It burned like the cold in his chest.
He managed to choke it back for a bit, but he felt it gather behind his teeth, knew he wouldn’t be able to keep it in.
He didn’t want to break down, not in front the only person left, so he set his face in a scowl and reached for an ember that somehow still sat in his gut.
He threw the cake off the table to fan it back into a flame, desperately hoping it would be enough to melt.
He tore down the path in the nether, as if a burning bridge would bring comforting warmth, as long as you were the one who lit the flame.
Then Dream mentioned Tubbo’s compass and the flames flared up and burned out, leaving plenty of space for the cold to continue creeping.
Tommy gave a final plea to Dream, asked him if he could just go home.
He'd known that the answer would be ‘no’; Though it came out as “it’s not like they want you anyway.”
Dream sounded exasperated, like he was explaining something he’d expected Tommy to know by this point.
He did. Of course he did.
Back out the portal, in the dark with the pouring rain, he flew up and up with the trident Dream had lent him.
There, where the rain turned to snow and the cold sat from skin to bone, where he was as far as he could get from the last shred of companionship, he uttered what he’d know before even waking up that morning.
“I’m alone”
He fell.
“He was just here to watch me.”
The truth hit him like falling flat into water. The initial impact coursed through his body and took his breath away.
Afterwards, he began to sink into it, still aching from that shock, he ran through all their interactions with newfound clarity, a new perspective.
Looking down from his precarious tower, he drowned in the realisation that the watchful habits of his tormentor spanned further back than this damn beach.
He had been there from the beginning, literally hiding in his walls. Tommy had brushed it off, then. He’d thought it was fine. they were friends or at the very least friendly rivals.
He was still sinking, motionless, breathless. He had to get up for air, decide what to do now; What to do with this knowledge, this horrible knowledge he could never unlearn.
He braced himself, got of his tower, pulled himself out of the water and ran.
He ran to Techno’s, to relative safety.
He knew now, though. He knew those eyes would not leave him.
He knew that Dream knew where he was, no matter how much he pretended he didn’t.
Dream came to visit and Tommy tried to hide: in a box and with an invisibility potion.
Still he could feel it. He knew his gaze lingered on where Tommy was. He knew when Dream left he let him stay, though he didn’t know why.
It was probably because he would be watching him anyway.
There was a crater where his home used to be.
It wasn’t the first time, but it would undeniably be the last. There was no coming back this time.
There were no people rummaging around the rubble to salvage or scavenge. There was nothing to salvage.
Well, maybe at the edges, where some ruins stood crumbling, but no-one bothered, so we’ll never know.
Tommy looked down from the rafters, where doom had rained down from.
He looked upon destruction, still smoking: A cavern where once the beating heart sat. It had already been bleeding out, struggling to recover from past hardships.
If he looked to the sea he’d see the only intact buildings: soul less structures that had never been lived in, never been a home.
The beating had slowed, but maybe it could have recovered, they could have recovered. There was no way of knowing, now that the heart was ripped out.
Would anything grow here ever again?
He knew no-one would live here, but the gap might fill with rain, the edges might support plants, birds and fish might find their way down there, either on purpose or by accident.
It was difficult to imagine, not just because of the way it looked, but because he could never imagine anything could fill the matching hole in his chest.
There is a crater where his home used to be.
“Say your goodbyes.”
NO, fuck that! He wasn’t gonna. This wasn’t-,
It couldn’t be-, It wouldn’t be-
They’ll get out, somehow. They always do. So why-?
“it’s alright. We had some laughs. It was- It was fun while it lasted.”
What? No, that- why would he-? Tommy took a step towards Tubbo.
“Why have you just accepted it?” Tommy’s voice sounded so fragile in his own ears. “Don’t just accept it now.”
The next step devolved into stumbling. “Don’t- no. We don’t just- We-” His hands land on Tubbo’s shoulders. “Tubbo, we never accept defeat, alright? We never do.”
He holds on tight, looking into his face, searching for anything that isn’t that godawful acceptance.
He leans forward, shifts his hands to grab onto his shirt. As Tubbo sums up with utter certainty how trapped they are, how impossible escape is.
Tommy tries to counter, but gets cut off.
“It’s over.” the words, so calm, wrap around his chest. He lets his head hang low enough to rest his forehead against his chest.
“We had some laughs.” he could feel the words now, vibrating against his forehead.
“We had some laughs. It was fun.” He felt a hand rest at the back of his head.
It’s a weird dichotomy; How Tubbo stands solid and steady in his defeat. How he sounds more reassuring than Tommy.
“Ya know, all good things must come to an end eventually.”
Tommy’s head shot up “What am I-, Tubbo-” He splutters, desperation crawling up his throat.
“What am I without you?”
Tubbo looks caught off guard. His mouth moves without sound for a moment, then he replies.
“Yourself”
He says it like it’s the most obvious thing in the world.
Tommy just sobs and falls into his arms, clings to him.
What else could he do?
Limbo was nothing. It wasn’t black or cold or empty. It was absence.
Black needed the concept of white. Cold needed the feeling on his skin or deep in his bones. Empty needed a space that could be filled, but wasn’t.
Limbo was like only being a consciousness. Any semblance of a body felt like it was rent, molecule from molecule. It felt eternal, because it could never really be torn apart. That would require space for the pieces to scatter.
He couldn’t see Wilbur. He knew he was there, somehow. It wasn’t like feeling his presence. There was nothing to feel, nowhere to feel it.
Still, he was somehow there. Which didn’t make sense, because there was no there for him to be.
Tommy stopped trying to understand it. It was too tiring. So instead he ignored how it didn’t fit.
He sat in the black, occasionally talking to Wilbur, trying to ignore the fact that he couldn’t actually hear the words, but understood them anyway.
He felt the time stretch on. Dream had said he could revive him. Surely if he could he would have done so by now, right?
Tommy wasn’t sure. He didn’t know what he rather wanted.
Did he want Dream to have lied? Did he want to stay here, like this? Had Dream left him this long on purpose?
Did he want to go back?
It’s not like it would be his choice, but the uncertainty was- well, not killing him, but it certainly didn’t help.
At any moment, he could be pulled back. He just didn’t know when or if it would happen.
He tried to curl in on himself, insofar as that was possible.
As the air hit his face for the first time in too long, he knew he was nothing but a walking corpse.
A breeze tickled dead skin. The sun shone into dead eyes. Words fell on dead ears.
It was too much. A corpse wasn’t supposed to feel, see or hear. It couldn’t handle that.
He was sure they could see it. Those faces looked at him with such grief, clearly mourning.
They only cared enough to mourn him, not enough to help, to prevent his death in the first place. No, only enough to build tombstones and memorials afterwards.
He shivered. He wasn’t sure why. Corpses were cold, sure, but they didn’t feel it.
As he walked away from the prison, he was much too aware of the way the bones shifted against each-other at the joints.
Every step reverberated up through the muscles and sinews that made him move.
Every breath rung loud in the lungs.
He made his way to his base, as every part of this body squished and shifted and pumped and shook and whistled and roiled.
At some point he found himself in front of a mirror.
He examined the face, sunken and hollow.
He had taken the time to wash the worst of the grime and blood of, though he couldn’t remember doing so.
Now he just stared, a new shock of white in his hair.
Wait. He narrow the eyes, looked closer.
He moved back and started to frantically look over the rest of the skin.
His scars where gone.
He couldn’t find the one he got from messing around in a creek, slipping and accidentally slicing open his forearm;
or when he jumped out of a tree, because he claimed it wasn’t that high, landed flat on his face and got a cut above his eyebrow.
The one he got from hitting his shin on the edge of a stone step was similarly absent.
He could only find one.
His fingers rested on a raised lump in his hair, where the back of his head met the obsidian wall.
He felt light-headed. His breath coming quicker as he searched past bruises and scratches.
At some point, he ended up on the floor, curled in on himself, pulling on hair and trapped in a body that was nothing but a breathing corpse.
So yes, Tommy knew fear. He had lived it and lived in it.
The biggest source of it might’ve been locked away, but there was no telling how long that would last. Besides, that had clearly not been enough to keep him from hurting Tommy.
For now though, he was gonna go to Snowchester and hang out with his friends.