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Tommy flew through the sky, he couldn’t stop, wouldn’t stop now.
He needed to get to the next checkpoint, needed to get to the ‘safe’ place he knew was there. He flew past Las Nevadas, as much as it pained him to. He knew that Quackity meant well and would try to keep him safe, but Dream would just go through him first.
He had vaguely heard about the torture, he knew that Dream would have no problem killing Quackity to get to Tommy.
He couldn’t put a target on his friend’s back like that, set Dream after him faster.
So he flew past, he knew where he needed to go, but he wondered if he would be brave enough to reach it. To walk up as a traitor.
He wondered if he would even survive this encounter.
Part of him wanted to say ‘yes’, the part that still thought of his brother as safe, the part that still associated them with protection and care.
The more rational part of him told him no.
He hoped that even if Techno killed him, that they would make it quick. He also hoped that they would at least keep his body or put it in the forest for creatures to devour.
Then Dream wouldn’t be able to revive him.
Whatever happened he hoped that he wouldn’t end up in Dream’s hands. He wanted to believe that Dream wouldn’t bother to continuously kill and revive him, but the bastard was a psychopath and he seemed to have a weird fixation on Tommy that just couldn’t be fixed.
He looked up at the clouds, not quite high enough to reach them just yet. It was cold, up near the atmosphere. Was it warmer closer to the sun? It must be right? He figured that Icarus had been so desperate to find out that he had climbed too high.
Maybe Tommy had flown too close to the sun, had been burned again and again. It only made sense that eventually he would fall, and the water would rise up to meet him.
Who was the water in this scenario? It must be a person. At first he had thought it could’ve been Dream, but the man was far too interested in Tommy’s life to snuff it out completely. Dream had plenty of opportunities to do so and chose against it far too many times to be a coincidence.
Maybe Wilbur was supposed to take up that role, before the water had swallowed him first. Philza, the calm waves that gently pulled you under, the sword a release instead of a rush.
There was smoke in the distance, and Tommy resigned himself to his fate.
All he could hope for was that Techno could make it quick.
Honestly, Tommy had no idea how he had gone from hoping that Techno would leave him alive, to practically wishing for death, but it was to be expected. Tommy knew what the hybrid thought of traitors. He knew that this trip would be his last.
He knocked on the door, expecting a clean slice as soon as it opened. He swallowed nervously when the expected movement didn’t happen.
Techno stood inside, staring at Tommy with an unreadable expression, a netherite pickaxe in his hands.
“Theseus,” Techno said, and Tommy winced at the snarl in his voice.
“Techno,” Tommy didn’t try to put on a false persona, nor did he attempt to cover up any nervousness with brusque, rude swears. He didn’t need to put on an act today, he wouldn’t need to ever again.
Of course he would prefer not to die, but in the end, Techno or Dream? The lesser evil was obvious. The person who would make the inevitable come the soonest was obvious.
In the flight he had made his peace with death. Though as they stood there staring at each other, he really felt the need to know why it hadn’t arrived yet.
Techno broke the silence, one of them had too. “I thought I made you well aware that I would kill you if you stepped foot near here ever again.”
“I know.”
“So you understand the consequences, yet you come here anyway?”
“I do.”
“Alright.”
Silence prevailed, a long one. Techno furrowed his brow and Tommy played with the fabric of his pockets. He really needed a stress ball right now. Could Techno make up his mind? Why were they just standing there?
Techno leaned against the doorway, putting his pickaxe back inside his inventory with a sigh.
Tommy muttered, though he wasn’t fully aware of it. “Why don’t you just kill me already?”
Everything stood still.
__________________
Don’t get Techno wrong, when Tommy had arrived on his doorstep he had been prepared to kill him, really.
Tommmyyyyy!
OMG It’s the gremlin chiiilldd!
Bedrock bros reconciliation arc part 2?
And if you thought chat was bad his instincts were worse. In fact, they were absolutely delighted at the fact that the runt, the child was with them again.
He was sure that if Theseus was truly running from something, as Techno was starting to suspect, that care would change to a vengeful anger.
Something inside him still cared, he could barely even think that, even in the safety of his own mind. Something inside him couldn’t ever kill his baby brother, no matter how many times they had betrayed him.
So he just let the silence hang between them like a poisonous fog, ready to corrode them and strangle them and choke them.
Then Theseus had the audacity to wonder when Techno would kill him, and all Techno could think of was how he had failed. His instincts screamed at him, chat screamed at him, and Techno was frozen still.
He had no idea Theseus was suicidal, no idea that Tommy would follow Wilbur’s footsteps even in this.
How long? How long.
Had it started after exile? What had Techno missed?
He stared, practically open mouthed at the form of his little brother, his runt. He stared and he finally began to process the person in front of him. Not a hero, not a traitor, the person.
And he almost broke down, then and there.
He knew that exile was bad, knew it instinctively and logically. Knew the half-starved frame of his brother was not a normal state to be in.
But he had been too focussed on his thoughts of bloody vengeance to actually look too hard. He had diminished his brother’s trauma in his own mind and ignored it.
Because what was past was past right? He was out of whatever situation it was and he was still swearing, still calling Techno a… b-word and still jumping around. Stealing like the raccoon that seemed to be his spirit animal.
Yet what was happening now? Where had that spitfire actually gone? He reached into the recesses of his mind and pulled out memories, comparing the two Tommy’s in his mind.
Why did all hope seem to be lost for the boy in front of him? He was sure it wasn’t like that even after the second exile.
Theseus had a white strip of hair interrupting the usual gold. One of the first things Techno’s piglin instincts latched onto.
His wings, which he faintly remembered were yellow and red, had dulled and once bright feathers had lost their shine due to a clear lack of preening.
Another thing Techno noticed was that although he seemed to have gained a bit of weight, and oh wasn’t that another thing past Techno had dismissed, he was still quite a bit skinnier than Techno remembered from Pogtopia.
He was fairly clean all things considered, though he clearly hadn’t thought to brush out his hair or clean it too thoroughly.
He had dark eyebags, Techno could envision Tommy, waking up in a screaming fit, desperately reaching for comfort but not able to find any.
He was still a little bit bitter over the betrayal, but was he really, fully in the right?
He shook his head, leave it to Theseus to appear and shake up Techno’s entire worldview with a single sentence.
He didn’t say anything, realising that he had left Tommy standing there for a long time. The idiot child had forgotten to put on a coat and was shivering in the cold of the snow.
With a barely hidden chuff that pleased Techno’s instincts he grabbed Tommy and tossed him over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes.
He would make sure that Tommy was safe, he would make sure that he wouldn’t lose another to suicide.
He had failed once, there wasn’t a single doubt, but he would not do it again.
Sure they had both failed each other, something had turned Tommy against Techno, and it hurt him to think that he had failed Theseus so badly that they would turn to betrayal. But Techno could never bring himself to fully hate Tommy.
He could pretend, could laugh at syndicate meetings all he wanted.
But the hate was fake.
The love though? That was all real.