Chapter Text
Blood slid down his throat, blonde hair whisked with dirt that seemed to permanently stay there. He could taste the iron, his teeth feeling sore. He knew he'd have a nasty bruise in the morning, but it wasn't like anything new. Seeing the other countless purple and yellow bruises covering his torso wasn't abnormal for the teen.
Tommy, that was his name no matter how many times He said that he was Tomathy, simply lay out in the cold of the basement of wherever the hell he was.
He'd been here since he was 9 and he was 16 now. Trapped in this unwelcome darkness, used as the bastard's punching bag, and he'd long since lost his will to fight against his captor. Seven years of being trapped with someone in complete control of every bit of his life (except his thoughts, Tommy would always have control over that) made him quiet and docile.
Sometimes, though, He would be nice to Tommy and allow him to come upstairs. Whenever that happened, Tommy was allowed to do anything he wanted except leave the house.
Tommy knew, theoretically, he could escape. Sometimes, He left Tommy alone for 30 minutes upstairs next to the sunny windows that showed actual light, but it was as if He knew that the teenager was too scared, too trained, to leave Him of his own volition.
Maybe he knew that Tommy had started to trust him, opting to connect with the bastard instead of living here in fear every day. Maybe, just maybe, Tommy had started to care about his captor in some sick, twisted way.
"Ey," Tommy greeted, the basement door opening with a creak. "To what do I owe the pleasure, big man."
His captor never attempted to fix Tommy's way of addressing him, finding the kid amusing instead of disrespectful. Tommy ignored the thought in his brain that told him that maybe this was why he wasn't dead yet; maybe he entertained his captor. Who cared? All he knew was that he started to care about his frien- his captor.
The line was blurring.
"Hi, Tomathy," the normal looking bastard walked in, dirty blonde hair and green eyes staring into Tommy's soul. "You need an ice pack?"
Maybe this was another reason why Tommy hadn't run away yet. No matter how cruel the bastard could be, He was still nice sometimes. Sometimes, he cared, nursed Tommy to health when the blonde was sick, and fussed over him every once in a while. Sure, it didn't excuse the fact that this was not… this was not normal but to Tommy, it was as normal as it could be.
"I'll take you up on that offer, big man."
They both climbed up the stairs.
---
Tommy didn't know why he was having thoughts of running away after years of being perfectly okay with his normal. He knew, he knew he wasn't supposed to have these thoughts of fleeing from his frien- his captor. Still, he watched a cartoon on the couch with the ice pack resting against his face, wrapped in his favorite blanket whenever he was allowed upstairs. Nowadays, he'd been allowed upstairs much more often because He trusted him.
Why, why in the world, was Tommy feeling happy (so happy and content and loved ) at the prospect that his captor trusted him enough to sit upstairs alone (He wasn't there, He wasn't watching him) and watch TV, a house phone only steps away from Tommy's grasp.
He only looked a smidge to his left to see a fully armed man, in SWAT gear (whatever the fuck that meant) with a gun trained on him. Tommy knew what guns were, even if he had no fucking clue what SWAT was. Instinctively needing to hide (He would save Tommy, He would come for him), Tommy curled in on himself, not looking at anyone or anything. He glanced up for a moment to see another one of the SWAT intruders (some part of him whispered that they were here to help) hushing him, approaching the teen like he was some stray animal.
Where was He? Where was He? Where was He? Why isn't He helping me? Help me. Help me. Help me. GET AWAY. GET AWAY.
Tommy started to hyperventilate, swatting the SWAT member away from him in desperation and the person eventually got the hint. Tommy curled up in the corner, hating how he was hiding in his own home (it wasn't his home, but it was his home; why is his brain confusing him?). He was scared; he didn't feel safe. He was confused.
"Suspect has an unidentified blonde teenager in the living room; how do I proceed?" the man whispered. Tommy only vaguely registered the walkie talkie (he ignored how the last time he used- saw one of them was when he played with his older broth- Tommy doesn't have older brothers).
"Suspect isn't in the house," another voice suggested, their voice crackled and hazy through the walkie talkie.
A final voice said, "Intel suggests no blonde teenagers are acquainted with the suspect. Bring the teenager in; they may know where the suspect is."
"Yes, sir."
That is how Tommy's normal life, or at least the definition of Tommy's normal, was completely destroyed in less than an hour.
---
Tommy was eventually taken into a police car (he'd only ever seen them in cartoons, but he didn't know they were real; He said they weren't real). Almost in awe, Tommy stared at the outside world. It was beautiful, large, but overwhelming. He hadn't been in a car (since he was taken) ever.
"Big man," Tommy asked, "is everything outside like this?"
The SWAT member only clenched his fingers around the steering wheel. Tommy was scared he made the man mad, quickly shutting up. Because Tommy knew that nothing good came out when He was mad, so that must apply to everything else too, right? Right?
Tommy stayed awake, looking out the window. He didn't want to make the man any more mad.
---
They escorted him into this new building (it looked, smelled, and felt different; there was so many people, so many people) with the words "POLICE STATION" etched outside of it on a sign. Tommy only saw these places in cartoons. Everyone who went to one of these were bad people, was Tommy a bad person? Of course he was a bad person; He said Tommy was a bad person, so it must be true.
They dipped Tommy's fingers in this blank inky shit.
Tommy snarled at the camera when it flashed in his face, covering his eyes from the foreign object.
(He ignored the fact that there was something painfully familiar about the flashing of cameras.)
With his fingers covered in blank ink, Tommy was then escorted to a dull, gray room with a table with two chairs. He wasn't handcuffed anymore, much to Tommy's relief. He hated it when He restrained Tommy; he was glad that the police didn't restrain him either.
The gray was familiar. It was cleaner than Tommy's basement, but it was familiar. The only issue was the fact that it was bright. Tommy, being the big man he is, had a bright idea.
---
On the other side of the glass (the boy was blissfully unaware of his audience), two detectives stood staring at the anomaly that was this blonde kid. According to reports, he was generally quiet and he only spoke once to the SWAT officer who brought him to the station, and it was apparently about the outside world. As if the kid had been taken.
Of course, the detectives, no matter how horrible it sounded from these reports, couldn't automatically assume that this kid was innocent. He was in fucking Dream Taken's, an elusive criminal who was the mastermind of a powerful syndicate mainly based on gang activity (although they couldn't pin the bastard for that one) and drug smuggling. It was safe to say that it was a bloody career.
Puffy, the Captain of the Organized Crime Unit, simply gaped as the kid stood up on the table to unscrew the lightbulb whack in the center of the room. Suddenly, the room got much dimmer. It wasn't perfectly dark, as there were fluorescent lights in the room, but it certainly made it dimmer.
Either way, the kid sat back in satisfaction before curling up underneath the table to sleep.
To sleep.
In a police station.
As a suspected accomplice of Dream Taken.
Her partner, Detective Sam Green, had the exact same reaction.
"What the fuck?" they said in unison, not even bothering to look at each other.
There was no criminal that woke up one day and decided that unscrewing a lightbulb on the ceiling was a good idea to do smack in the middle of a police station. They just wanted to test the waters, to see how the kid would react to being put in an interrogation room, but it was as if the kid didn't care in the slightest.
"Cap, the fingerprint results are back," her intern, Foolish (who was also her son), knocked on the door, holding a file. Despite the good news, her boy looked at his mother with a grimace. "But it isn't necessarily good news."
That was when they opened the file to see Theseus "Tommy" Minecraft sitting there in the file. The last photo available for this teenager who was at least 15 was a fucking photo of him as a 9 year old. Right underneath his family information, sat the words:
"Theseus has been missing since September 9th, 2013, presumed to have been abducted on the way to the bus stop."
And the words underneath that made Puffy's stomach drop.
"As of December 2014, the Minecraft family has declared Theseus Minecraft dead. He is buried in Allium Cemetary in an empty casket."
Well, fuck.