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“I built these sewers.”
Techno hums, not looking at him as he clicks down the tunnel.
Tommy’s cold. Really cold. A faint, numbing chill burrows under his fingertips, stinging the skin and cuticles and leaving a faint frost settling like thin sandpaper on his bones. The stone surrounding the brothers is similarly flaked. Not visibly, but Tommy can feel it, crawling up his spine and resting as music in the roof of his throat. His head is a guitar strum of gentle pain, drumsticks beating a gentle melody against his temples and leaving pinpricks in the peachpit of his skull.
Water rides up the sides of the bottom of the tunnel as they pad down echoing cold halls. Bricks chip against wool-lined winter boots, Tommy narrowly shifting to avoid having the bitter liquid stain Phil’s oversized cloak.
“Small world then. These sewers helped me escape when the butchers tried to execute me.”
“Hey, you’re welcome , asshole.” Tommy speeds up a few steps and narrowly hops over the water so he can pad in-sync with Techno.
Techno has to lean down to avoid banging his head on the roof of the tunnel. Fucker’s huge, for some reason. Tommy just reaches the middle of his chest, and he isn’t even that short. Techno’s just massive.
“Where’d you even escape from?”
Techno shifts to face Tommy’s side of the tunnel. Tommy can’t see his eyes under that fucking boar skull, shaded and glistening a faint spotted under the occasional torch keeping the tunnel alight. Small pinpricks of gold in dark obsidian.
He juts his chin opposite of Tommy.
A small opening in the wall to Tommy’s left, bricks half-hazardly moved aside and dust long settled on the dried stone and concrete.
They stop as a tunnel heads left, stretching into a separate branch looming outward. It’s a welcome break from the tightening grip of the main tunnel, loosening the slow building knot in Tommy’s chest, aching and churning, unbroken even with comb and weighted shear.
“What is this?”
Techno shrugs. “Didn’t you build this?”
“Prime, it was so long ago.” Tommy swallows, burrowing a bit further into his cape, ever-so-faint puffs of smoke swirling from chapped lips as his lungs scrabble to stay steady. “Must’ve been… before the election? Maybe even during the war. It was during the cartel, maybe a bit before.”
“Cartel?” There’s a few clicks against stone. Tommy looks up to his side towards Techno, expression blank as he looms over Tommy. He looks a bit warmer than Tommy, breath seemingly non-existent and face less paled than Tommy feels his own is. He stands tall, back straight and weight even along heeled boots; the comparison is almost sad compared to Tommy’s hunched posture and cold-nipped skin, oversized robes and bandages stretching skin over thin, sharpened bones.
“It’s dead now. Quackity led it, before he joined L’manburg, with me and Tubbo and Jack.”
Techno hums once more, deep in his gut. Tommy can practically feel the vibrations echoing through his own ribs.
Sometimes, Tommy thinks that Techno's presence should scare him. It scares everyone else- his looming height of around eight feet, strongly-built heeled boots heavy and weighted, broad and heavy and solid, visible weaknesses absent to naked eye. Even to someone who’s known the man since birth, there’s very few visible. Not physically, at least.
“D’ya wanna see the room?”
Tommy raises his eyebrows. He hunches in a bit further to hide the shivering of his body, the shaking of his shoulders. “ The room ?”
“When I escaped. Dream left me supplies in this abandoned room, covered in cobwebs and dust and abandoned chests. One of them had your name on it, I figured you may recognize it. I don’t think I was here when it was important.”
Tommy's breath briefly hitches at the mention of Dream.
He always feels a runny mix of emotions at the mention of Dream- crudely drawn sharpie smile taunting him, even in his sleep, fuzzy mismatch of blurry dust heckling him, burning holes into his skin and sending sick fear into the hole dug deep in his gut and infesting his brain.
Dream’s his- Dream was his friend, was his only friend.
Is his only friend , a voice that sounds so unlike his own helpfully supplies.
Dream accompanied him. Dream was his only friend through exile- at least, his original exile, the one filled with loneliness and the gentle starry notes of chirp, Clara’s night-warmed thumb grazing gentle tracks along tear-stained cheek as he sobbed into frost-bitten night. The exile he sat alone and cold in Ghostburs uninsulated cabin of terracotta and birch, in his patchwork tent sending tufts of blistering cold through the bottom flaps and swirling around his painfully thin ankles and bare, bandage covered feet freckled with scabs and bruises from twigs and stone.
Dream was his friend- Dream is his friend. He’d bring him armor and discs, he gave him a trident and dove up rainy skies by his side, kneeled with him on muddy grass under narrow birch trees as the white-dotted night sobbed in agony alongside a scruffy blond teen, wind acting for the sky as the gentle hand rubbing small circles and lines into the space in between Tommy’s bruised shoulder blades.
But.
Dream lied. Dream made him blow up his fairly-earned armor and tools, wood chopped by hand and dirt dug with copper-stained palms and bandage, fingers callusing from days in forests and fields, skin weighted against shotty tool handles that would probably give him splinters if not for the bandages covering his fingers and pit of his palms, the torn leather just barely covering small spots for him to grip.
Dream gave him armor, but Dream’s the reason he needed that armor in the first place. Hell, Dream’s the reason he was exiled at all. Dream sabotaged his party invites, Dream sent Ghostbur away to wander the tundra knowing it could easily melt his wavering presence. Dream blew up everything he worked for, Dream pulled him away from the lava that taunted him, danced like tendrils of bubbling lava in the corners of his mind, lapping and pulling, a gentle crescendo of voices chanting do it, fall, jump, they don't care, jump, they won't notice, you'll be at peace, do it, jump, jump, COWARD, JUMP-
Dream held him in the palm of his hand like a puppet, blood red pulling against his joints and dangling him like some fucking toy- a plaything that could be thrown away at any moment.
Tommy still isn’t sure he’s managed to snip away at all the strings.
“Tommy.”
Tommy jostles slightly as a hand is placed on his shoulder, briefly blinking at the ground before glancing back up at Techno. The color in his eyes is just visible under the popping of torchlight next to them, coppery-russet glistening striped and ember-gold, freckled sun-kissed skin.
“Dream helped you escape?”
Techno considers him for a moment, before he relaxes, Tommy not having noted he’d been tense in the first place.
That fact scares him. He’s too comfortable around Techno- around his brother .
“Yeah. I did the running but he helped block off the tunnel and gave me supplies- iron armor and tools and a lead for Carl.”
Tommy hums questionably under his breath, swallowing the lump that had formed in his throat. “Oh. That’s… nice of him.”
“Yeah. Iunno why, really. He says it’s ‘not in his favor’ for me to die. Helped me get the totems that kept me from dying.”
“Was that… you said the room had chests? A chest with my name on it?”
Techno nods, finally pulling his hand back to sit under his cape with the rest of him. Tommy almost chases after it, feeling cold where the limb sat. He holds back, however- doesn’t need shit from Techno, affection or otherwise.
Techno’s silent as he moves. He brushes past Tommy, touch almost careful as to not jostle him too much. Tommy wants to scowl at it, but he doesn’t, something fuzzy buzzing through his grazed side as he watches Techno move, stepping over the water and looking back, jutting his chin.
“Cmon. Tunnels up this way.”
The stone is hastily dug. Cobble’s crumbled around them, dust caking the ground and filtering through the air, thankfully too faint to sting or feel like a risk to chill-nipped lungs. Dirt kicks against the soles of wool-lined boots, rubber staining dusty brown that’ll probably come off with a quick scrub or two. Not that Tommy minds, but he knows Techno will. Fuckers all about formality and shit, emerald piercings and sharp, russet eyes, somehow managing to glisten still in the dim tunnel light.
They quickly reach the end of the tunnel before it starts to close in on him, thank Prime. Claustrophobia’s a bitch.
The room’s dark. Techno doesn’t seem to notice right away, stepping to the other side and kneeling down, shuffling with small clacks of heel and something sharp.
“Techno, I can’t-”
And then there’s light.
Tommy blinks at the sudden shift, squinting as his eyes refocus on blackstone brick and oak log lining closed-in walls.
For a brief moment- a calm, gentle moment- there’s peace as his eyes adjust. A moment when he feels relaxed in the presence of one of the only characters he feels he can trust, the calm of tunnels built long before the pain of war and explosions and ash and rebellions and fire and blood, so much fucking blood-
And then his mind snaps forward. His eyes focus, lines sharpened and thin against his soles and hollowing around his sides.
“What is-”
He sees the sign.
Final Control Room.
“You recognize this place? I’m pretty sure it’s one of those older things from before the rebellion. It has a chest with your name so I figured you’d recognize it. Has Tubbo and Fundy too.”
There’s something missing, there, but Tommy doesn’t say anything. He can’t focus on anything other than the tightening of his skin, squeezing his bones tight until they bruise and crack, pinpricks fuzzy in the outer layers lining blood. The roots of his eyes sting, wool dampening and static fuzz around the edges.
His face flushes. Why the fuck is he so cold?
“Tommy?”
He burrows a bit further into his coat, wool just edging against the cold sheen of glistening purple, fabrics of grey and red and gold chains connecting it all. He can taste ash and metal on the flat of his tongue, iron and copper intermixing into a sharp pang buried deep under muscle.
Screams echo in his ears. Screams of pain and betrayal, yells of joy and victory, mixing into a painful symphony in his head, beating back and forth between his temples like hard plastic against paddle.
He can still see the fear in his best friends eyes. The way something broke in his elder brothers, the way screams echoed in a trusted ally, yelps and hissing a gentle strum under his skin.
“Hey, Toms, you good?”
Tommy vaguely registers the hand on his shoulder and he shoots back, pressing against the chilled blackstone and sinking, sinking down small into closed in corner, arms stretched out beside him and fingers spread into weak fists, nails pressing into the pit of his palms in a weak attempt to ground himself.
“Don’t fucking- don’t fucking touch me!” His throat burns as he practically screams , ash rising as bile in his throat as dark dots his vision.
Everything’s blurry. Purple and black and brown all blur together in a shitty stained watercolor, pink and blue barely registering as a new paint smearing the canvas, intermixing with early dark fog and ending as a gross mismatch of colors and paints. It feels like a child got a big box of random art supplies for christmas and threw their cheap watercolor pack and a cup of lukewarm sink water onto printer paper and hoped for the best. His eyes sting, his skin burns and his bones freeze and his face flushes, pin needles digging under his skin and flesh and grazing his bones and swift beating heart and his shoulders tremble and fingers grip and release shakily against air and he cant fucking breathe why cant he breathe-
“Toms, Toms, I need you to listen to me, okay?”
Tommy swallows, eyes widening as he stares into nothing, everything’s too fucking blurry , black and white and mismatched grey dots the corners of his vision. Everything burns, he’s so fucking cold, he misses Wilbur, why is he so cold -
“I need you to close your eyes, okay? Can you do that for me, bubs?”
Tommy swallows. He can’t tell who's talking to him. His head’s starting to hurt as his eyes scramble to focus on something, anything, so he relents and shuts them tight, eyelids straining with sharp jolts that shudder through the center and echo to the corners and roots, salt digging up from the puddle underneath.
“Focus on my voice, okay?” The voice is closer now, gentle and soft, sending small buzzes of warmth down his spine to settle in his gut. “Okay, I need you to try and breathe with me. Is it okay for me to touch you?”
Tommy’s so fucking cold. “P-Please- please.”
He’s quickly wrapped up in heat, thick velvet and wool weighing around his body, arms wrapping around his back and holding him against a larger chest, steady and firm. Tommy trembles in the grip, clinging to the body like a lifeline, pressing his face into fuzzy velvet shoulder and gasping for breath, hot salt pouring down and smearing against his eyelashes and the cloth below him.
A hand runs through his hair from the neck and moving upward, petting gentle, nails scratching against the scalp and gently tugging knots loose.
“Follow my breathing, okay bubba? Try to match my breathing. Can you do that for me?”
Tommy tightens his eyes shut, doing his best to ignore the closing of walls around him. Everything feels too warm, too cold, he’s so fucking cold why is he so cold-
“Toms, hey, stay with me, okay? I’m here, I’m not going anywhere.” The body doesn’t try to pull away- something that Tommy can appreciate even in his panic-haze. Despite the walls closing in on him, Tommy feels safe in the arms, warmth buzzing around him from both the body he clings to and soft weight surrounding him.
He focuses in on the breathing in front of him. Inhale through the nose for four seconds, hold for seven, exhale through the mouth for eight. It’s shaky and shallow at first, watery and runny and desperate, but it calms. Slows into steady honey, weighted yet soft as his fingers begin to steady and shoulders fall onto the chest he's buried next to, body relaxed and limp.
Gentle coos and hums mumble through his scalp, nose pressed against overgrown hair and running through his skull, settling gentle in the pit of his throat as thick honey, warm and fuzzy and sugar-coated. His face burns with heated flush, fingers gripping handfuls of velvet. He presses his face a bit further into the shoulder, eyes drooping slightly in content.
“You alright?”
Tommy hums affirmatively. There's a beat of silence as they sit there in cold and dust, dancing to the gentle hum of the figure above him. The torchlight pops and flickers next to them, casting the room ahead of the shoulder he’s buried in a gentle gold-and-amber glow, shadows curling in on the edges like fuzzy monochrome static.
“We need to get out of here. Do you have any more invis-pots?”
The figure helps Tommy stand, resting his weight against the others side, arm gripping around his chest and gripping the fabric below glistening pink.
His head pounds, beating against temples and frontal lobe. It beats a steady melody of pressure, gentle strum of drum vibrato echoing through his chest and throat. His eyes feel sticky with salt even as he rubs them dry, tingling pinpricks of wool-tugged roots, fogging his mind even as he shakes to clear it.
“I-I don’t… I don’t think so.”
“Can you hand me your bag?”
Tommy weakly nods and slides one strap off his left shoulder, the other gently maunerving him to take the bag in his arm. Tommy flops back against his side, burrowing his face into the fabric stretching across his chest just tucked under his arm, body drumming with energy draining from every pore.
He glances up, recognition bubbling in his chest as the skull mask his gaze meets, tracing the outline of bone with fuzzy watercolor. The grey-white and yellow tinting blur together with water, eyes beady and dark under the shadows cast by it, black and grey a stark contrast to popping embers and smoking coals lining the walls.
His body is relaxed. Shoulders loose and body language gentle. He seems worried, hands rushed and pointed ears attent, but he’s soft all the same.
It’s an odd look on him. It’s not everyday you can describe The Blade as soft .
“Okay, you’re definitely out of invis-pots. Thankfully, I still have one left. It won’t last as long if we share it between the two of us, but if we hurry it’ll last us until we get out of SMP boundaries.”
Tommy’s handed back his bag, gingerly maneuvering it over his shoulder and being tugged up so he’s standing straight with weight leaning on Techno’s side.
They walk.
Words aren’t shared between them. Techno doesn’t ask about the room, about Tommy’s past or his trauma— bile builds in the pit of his throat at that thought, Tommy hates that word, the idea he’s been through trauma.
Trauma is something soldiers go through. It’s something veterans on the frontlines have, memories of guns and explosions and death and blood and so much fucking blood echoing through their minds at night.
It isn’t something a sixteen year old boy has, even if that sixteen year old boy has been through hell and back.
Even if that sixteen year old boy is a soldier.
Techno doesn’t ask questions, and Tommy doesn’t say anything at all. Somehow, it says more than words could ever do.