Chapter Text
Dream, Tommy decided, was a dickhead— and Tommy didn't listen to dickheads anymore. Not after Wilbur and his promises of grandeur, not after Schlatt and his stupid fucking decree, and especially not after Technoblade and his egotistical stories.
So instead of jumping off his tower and watching his brains go splat on the ground by Logstedshire, Tommy let himself fall into the water.
Dream was a dickhead, a dickhead who kept blowing up his stuff, and Tommy was fucking sick of it. So, he left.
And now Tommy was wandering through a forest with barely any sunlight poking through the trees, wishing he had stepped off the other side of that Prime forsaken tower.
In hindsight, it might have been smart to stay in Logstedshire for a bit. Dream said he wasn't coming back for a week, Tommy could have planned and prepared his escape. But no, he just had to be dramatic and stomp off into the horizon with nothing but a jukebox and six torches.
Tommy registered the sound of a bow being drawn behind him, and his body turned into panic mode. Cursing under his breath, he ducked behind a tree and watched an arrow fly by his face. Shit. Shit. Had Dream come back and followed him? Or was it Technoblade finishing the job Tommy had been too scared to go through with?
The bow was drawn again, and Tommy hated how his brain tried to bring him back to the prime path where he'd lost his second life. If his survival instincts weren't honed by multiple wars, he might have let himself get lost in the flashback, but Tommy was too used to shoving his panic away in the face of danger.
What did he have on him? His inventory was practically empty thanks to respawning in a crater. He could use the torches to burn his opponent in a pinch…
Another arrow flew by, this one closer than the last, and Tommy could see where it embedded itself into a tree trunk.
Bingo. Whoever was attacking him wasn't a good shot, or they were giving him a warning and didn't expect him to fight back.
Tommy sucked in a breath and lunged for the arrow. With a tug, he ripped out the point and whirled around, already swinging at his attacker. As easy as breathing, Tommy shoved the arrowhead into a ribcage before he could even see who had shot at him.
The skeleton in front of him turned to a pile of bones once Tommy had the clarity to pull the arrow out of its sternum. He could feel his heartbeat in his fingertips, and for what, a measly skeleton? Tommy missed the days where he wore netherite armor and could ignore the annoying mobs that plagued the dark. He shivered and pushed Dream's words out of his mind. No time for panic.
Tommy grabbed the largest of the bones and the skeleton’s bow. If the mob had managed to spawn, it meant the sun was going down, and Tommy was about to run into a few more monsters. He considered stopping and building a shelter for the night, but his skin itched just thinking about it. The further from Logstedshire, the better.
Checking the coordinates on his communicator, Tommy pointed himself away from L'manburg. He briefly considered trying to find Techno’s “hidden” cabin in the tundra, but he quickly pushed the thought away. Techno might have retired from his thirst for blood, but it didn’t mean he would even consider helping Tommy. The best he would get would be a monotone laugh and a door in his face, and the worst would be a visit from Dream to take him back to Logstedshire. Tommy shivered. No way in hell was he going back to that place; they’d have to drag his dead body.
Without shoes or armor on, Tommy’s steps were quiet enough to escape notice from most of the mobs. He knew, however, that a zombie could smell him from hundreds of feet away, and a fight would attract others. So, he creeped through the brush at an agonizingly slow rate.
A bat flew through the leaves overhead, startling Tommy. He’d been on edge for hours, and it felt like he was a fly trapped in honey. Furiously beating his wings, never further than where he started.
With a deep breath, Tommy shoved the riding panic down as best he could, storing the pressure somewhere behind a sternum. He’d deal with it later. For now, he took his steps through the forest one at a time. The grass was cold under his bare feet, but he’d take it over the burn of obsidian in the nether any day.
A tiny ray of moonlight hit the ground in front of him, illuminating a few mushrooms growing by a tree trunk. Tommy glanced up and noticed a few other patches in the canopy. Praying it wasn’t just a clearing, Tommy moved on.
Someone above must have been looking out for him. Tommy stepped out from under the last line of trees onto a barren plain. Somehow, he got through that whole forest without dying. Glancing back at the trees, Tommy noticed they’d grown much thicker and closer together than what he’d seen in the daylight. In fact, if he squinted, he could see the tops of giant mushrooms in the distance. A dark forest.
Tommy elected to completely ignore how close he was to death for the past few hours and instead focused on the terrain ahead of him. Thankfully, it was a grassy plain barren of any trees, and the sun was starting to come up. With some luck, he could avoid the first few mobs in his path and let the rest burn.
Tommy crouched in the grass, letting it cover his whole body, and started to crawl through the stalks. There were no more trees to catch the wind, and Tommy felt himself start to shiver from the cold. Whatever. He’d just have to suck it up and find a coat later.
Time seemed to blend together. A spider on his right. Pause. Coast clear. Keep going. A creeper ahead. Make your way around. Rest. A zombie behind. Let it burn.
Once the sunlight had cleared away the mobs it could, Tommy stood shakily and stretched out his legs. He was going to be so sore tomorrow.
Tomorrow.
The thought seemed a little impossible. He could go anywhere, do anything. If he wanted to sleep away tomorrow, the only thing stopping him would be a hungry stomach, and Tommy had learned to ignore the hunger pains. There were no more vice president duties, no more weapons to craft for war, no more people to put up with.
For the first time since leaving, his mind drifted to Tubbo. Tommy knew there was a compass shoved deep in his inventory, hidden somewhere underneath a stack of planks. He knew if he wanted to go home, he had an arrow pointing directly to it. But Tubbo had exiled him, and if leaving was the best thing Tommy could do for his country, prime-dammit he was going to be the best at it. Fuck Schlatt, fuck Dream, fuck Tubbo. He was leaving and never, ever coming back.
With the warm sun on his arms again, Tommy set off at a brisk pace. Hopefully he could find a village before dark, or he would have to set up a temporary base. How long had it been since he’d slept? But a base would leave tracks, and villagers would talk, and Dream would have something just as good as a compass leading to Tommy.
When Wilbur and he had fled Manburg, they’d gone underground to avoid detection. But Tommy had enough torches to barely light up a hole, and no weapons to defend himself. He could craft a wooden sword, but he’d have to make a crafting table first, and a sword wasn’t worth much without a shield, and for that he’d need iron… Tommy groaned.
He stopped in front of a small river that ran through the plains. His arms and face were still covered in soot from the explosions, and his feet were covered in mud and leaves. A quick rinse wouldn’t hurt, and if Dream was somehow tracking his scent, it might throw him off.
Tommy splashed the water over his face and almost slapped himself in shock. The water was warm. Unusually warm. He stuck his hand back in the stream and let himself feel the temperature this time. It felt like a potion that’d been left out in the sun for too long, not a cold creek like it should have. Tommy glanced around, searching the bank for something unusual.
Following the river upstream, Tommy kept his eyes peeled for… something. He wasn’t sure what could cause something like this. Eventually, the river widened into a lake, and Tommy stopped at a tiny beach. His stomach rolled, partially from hunger and partially from the feeling of sand under his toes.
The lake seemed to stretch on for miles, and Tommy suspected it might actually be a bay that connected to an ocean further away. How far had he travelled to have reached a new ocean? What caught his eye, however, were the stone brick buildings rising from the water.
Tommy had been exploring for years before settling down in L'manburg, and he had never seen a structure quite like this one. He’d seen his fair share of ocean ruins, of course, but they were all hidden deep in the ocean, tucked away behind coral reefs and icebergs.
He waded across the river to the other shore, relishing the warm water around his tired muscles. The magma that was normally trapped under ruins must have heated the shallow water. Whatever it was, Tommy was grateful.
While a majority of the ruins were still underwater, Tommy counted three buildings that were at least partially on solid ground. He approached the first and scanned the area for a chest. Nothing. Tommy sighed— this was going to be a lot harder without a shovel.
He started scooping sand and gravel away with his hands, searching for something harder underneath. Even though the biome was still cold, the warm water around him heated up the area and made him sweat. Just another layer of grime he’d have to wash off.
Tommy’s knuckles hit wood, and he scrambled to clear away the spot he was digging at. There, in all its wonderful glory, was a heavily rotting chest. Flinging the top open, Tommy’s eyes searched the contents hungrily. There, sitting at the top, was a stone axe. He could have cried from happiness if he wasn’t so dehydrated.
Tommy pulled the axe out and inspected the quality. Somehow, the chest had protected everything inside, so the handle was barely worn. The blade had a few nicks in it, like someone had used it to cut down a single tree and left it abandoned in a chest for hundreds of years. Whoever had used it was long dead, and it was Tommy’s to keep.
The bottom of the chest was filled with scattered coal and wheat. Somehow, the wheat was as fresh as if it had been harvested minutes ago. Tommy grabbed the bundles and inspected them for mold or rot, but some magic had been placed on them to keep them fresh. He wasn’t exactly happy to eat old-as-dirt bread, but it was better than starving to death.
Crafting some of the coal into torches before he forgot, Tommy searched the other two ruins. They were mostly a repeat of the first, excluding the iron axe. He almost missed a scattering of golden nuggets underneath everything else. Tommy almost left them there, gold wasn’t going to do him much good, but he grabbed them anyway.
Tommy took a moment to splash some water over his arms and legs, watching the dirt swirl around his knees in little spirals. It would have been mesmerizing if it hadn’t been red with blood.
With a stone axe in his hotbar, and wheat ready to be crafted into bread, Tommy readied himself for another long day of travel. He kicked the sand and gravel around to cover his tracks, and headed away from L'manburg.
He let his thoughts wander as his feet moved him across the world. Tommy would need to put another few days of travel between Dream and himself before he felt comfortable leaving any sort of permanent mark. No villages, no shelters, no nothing. He hadn’t made it this far just to get dragged back to Logstedshire like a fucking runaway kid. No fucking way.
By the time the sun had started to set, Tommy had reached the edge of the plains biome and was looking at a desert void of anything but cacti and dead bushes. Working quickly, he built a crafting table in the sand and worked his wheat into loaves of bread. Once he was done, Tommy picked up the crafting table and shifted the evidence of his work under the sand. After a few minutes, it blended into the other dunes. Tommy sighed with relief. Thank Prime for sand and gravity.
Tommy took a chunk of a loaf with his teeth and set off again, feeling more energized than ever, even though the food hadn’t hit his stomach yet. The feeling of satisfaction, knowing that he could get away from Dream without a trace, that kept him going.
Whoever described deserts as hot, Tommy decided, was a fucking liar. The dunes gave less protection from the wind than the plains did, and the biome seemed to suck all the heat out of the air as soon as the sun set.
Tommy tucked his arms around his torso and pressed on. He might have been able to get away with hiding some sawdust and splinters in the sand, but there was no way he could cover up his tracks if he built a base. Tommy couldn’t even tell if he was being over-paranoid anymore, Dream had done a lot crazier things than tracking a teenager into the wilderness. He thought back to the stories Sapnap used to tell him about the team’s adventures, back when he and Tommy were still friends. How Dream would make it all the way to the End while avoiding them, his crazy strategies that seemed to come out of nowhere. That was Tommy’s enemy, the smartest person on the server. If Tommy was going to survive, just being paranoid wouldn’t be enough.
With those thoughts racing through his head, Tommy hadn’t realized he’d been clenching his hands until he felt his forearm spasm. He relaxed his arm and tried to shake himself out of it. Tommy needed to be on alert for the nighttime.
There were plenty of husks scattered around his view, but they seemed to have a worse sense of smell than normal zombies. It was almost too easy for him to slip by unseen. To be fair, Tommy was covered in enough dust and sand that he probably blended in.
The monotony of walking was only broken up by Tommy periodically checking the compass to make sure he was walking in the right direction. He felt almost detached from the item he used to consider his most prized possession. The engraving on the side seemed to mock him— Tubbo wasn’t his anymore, and Tommy certainly wasn’t his. Whatever claim he had on their friendship ended when Tubbo exiled him. Dream might have been a lying, manipulative bitch, but he couldn’t fake the fact that Tubbo hadn’t visited him once.
The sun slowly crept up the horizon, turning the once cold desert into what felt almost like the Nether. Thankfully, there were no pits of lava for Tommy to throw himself into. If it had made his aching feet hurt less, he may have considered it.
Whatever desperation Tommy had felt on that tower was gone now, replaced by burning spite. He didn’t exactly want to live, but it felt like everyone on the server wanted him dead, so Prime dammit he’d prove them wrong. Even if he suffered through this desert for days on end, he wasn’t going to give them the satisfaction.
Tommy shoved the compass back in his pocket and kept trudging through the desert. By now, the sun was high in the sky, and he could feel the water being sucked out of his body. Tommy was certain he had never sweat more, and he regretted not taking that bath earlier in the river. Without it, his sweat and the dirt caked on his skin were mixing into a sticky slosh that was not comfortable. He remembered Techno talking about pigs when they were younger, how they would roll in mud to protect their skin from the sun, and wondered if it was actually helping him.
While his bare feet had been helpful in the dark forest, Tommy was really regretting not having shoes now. The sand had heated up to an unprimely temperature, and the soles of his feet were blistered and burned, not to mention extremely sore from walking for days. He glanced down and noticed a few spots of blood by his ankle. That couldn’t be good.
With nothing to do but keep going, Tommy ignored the pain and kept walking. He must have been awake for over a day now, right? Tommy remembered pulling all-nighters with Tubbo, joking and talking for hours until they realized the sun was coming up. It was a far cry from the sleepless nights he’d had since Pogtopia. He didn’t feel tired, really. Maybe staying up was better in the long run.
The desert slowly turned into rolling hills, sand to gravel, sandstone to andesite and granite. Tommy was eternally grateful for the cool stone on his feet, but after a few steps, noticed a problem. His feet were bleeding enough to leave prints.
Shit.
Tommy crouched and rubbed away as much of the blood as he could, ripping a piece of his shirt off to help. The red sleeve blended too well. After removing as much of the prints as he could, Tommy crawled over to a lone tree, careful of his feet.
He had a few string in his inventory from dead spiders he’d met along the way and was able to grab a few leaves from one of the tree’s lower hanging branches. Tommy would have preferred leather or wool, but beggars couldn’t be choosers, and the rotting corpse of an animal would have been a dead giveaway. He would have to make do.
Wrapping the leaves around his feet, he wound the string to keep them in place. It was crude and would probably only last for a day, but he had no other options.
Tommy hopped to his feet and tested out his new shoes on the stone. No more blood. He would just have to hope Dream never found the prints.
Just to be safe, Tommy abandoned his straight path away from L'manburg and headed slightly diagonally. In the long run, he’d lose some distance, but he couldn’t be predictable if Dream was chasing him.
Ender, Tommy was tired.
The high elevation seemed to pull the air out of his lungs, and every step felt like he couldn’t take another. Would it be so bad to find somewhere to sleep?
The thin atmosphere cooled quickly as the sun started to dip in the sky. Was this Tommy’s third night without sleep?
His vision swam. He could close his eyes and keep walking, right? Blind people could do it— he just needed a few minutes to rest.
Tommy felt the ground drop from below his feet. Somewhere deep in his mind, he thought he should be worried, but his limbs felt heavy, and his head felt filled with cotton.
Just a few minutes…