Chapter Text
The desert stretches out endlessly in all directions, parched by the red-white ball of flames slowly making its way through the washed out sky. There are no signs of life to be seen among the yellow and ocher sand, not even a scrubby dried bush or a lizard scurrying under a rock. Heat rises from the ground making everything wavery and hazy, the horizon line blending into the sky in the distance. And even though Fundy’s shoes have thick soles, he can feel the hot sand burning his feet through them.
A shudder goes through his body as he takes in his surroundings, the familiar dread setting in. These – nightmares, visions, whatever they are – are growing less and less frequent with time, but he fears they will never completely go away. Phil has been a real help, especially considering he has absolutely no experience with anything like this – he’s been bringing Fundy resources about stuff like meditation and lucid dreaming, and he feels like it’s actually making it a little bit better – but eventually, inevitably, he always finds himself back on this desert.
Fundy knows from experience that there is nothing he can do to make the dream end any sooner; all he can do is wait it out, to see what it is that the desert wants to show him. So he grits his teeth and draws in a heavy breath of the hot and dry desert air that burns his lungs on its way down. There has to be something around here that looks out of place, something to nudge him into the right direction.
He notices it almost immediately. Angled slightly behind him, partially covered by the desert haze is a high structure, a wide piece of road held up in the air by a bunch of sturdy concrete pillars. It isn’t connected to anything, like it’s been ripped out of the highway it’s supposed to be a part of and dropped here, on a desert in the middle of nowhere.
Fundy walks towards it with cautious, hesitant steps.
The closer he gets to the structure, the clearer he can see it through the haze. The graffiti-covered pillars gradually become more and more clear. Behind them is a skatepark, nestled under the bridge. It's a tight space for a place like that; under the bridge, there's a wide dried-out chasm that splits open the cracked ground and forces the hills and ramps of the park to sit close together in the embrace of the downhill slope.
Dust and sand puff into little clouds around Fundy's shoes on every step he takes. The silence is uncanny. Not even the slightest breeze moves the heavy, thick air. There’s only the sound of sand crunching under Fundy's feet.
He wipes his forehead with his sleeve. The sun of this place is relentless. This desert is much hotter than any real place Fundy has ever been in. But it's not like he's got much experience of actual deserts – for all he knows, his mind could have conjured up a perfect replica of the real thing. They're hot and sandy, and that's pretty much what Fundy knows about them.
He's pretty sure they don't usually show people awful visions of coming horrors, but – again – it's not like he's an expert on the subject.
He's never seen anything good happen here. This place shows him bad things, a nightmare after nightmare. That's it. Bad things, never good, and he can never do anything to stop them from happening, neither in this place nor in the real world. He's spent his whole life trying and it never works.
“You don’t have me anymore,” a furious voice carries over from behind the pillars. Fundy stops.
He knows the voice.
His heart is pounding in his chest, an uncomfortable weight sits in his stomach. It’s never good to see anyone he cares about in this desert. All it ever means is pain.
He wants to turn around and leave, not watch this awful scene unfold. If he just turns his back and refuses to see, then it’s not his fault when he can’t stop it from happening, whatever horrors he is about to see.
What are you still doing up? A familiar voice whispers to him, a memory from an eternity ago. Isn’t it past your bedtime? You know how important tomorrow’s meeting is. I need you to see something for me.
Can I just – stay up for a little longer – I’ve had a rough day, I don’t wanna–
Come on, Fundy. Everyone else pulls their weight. I don’t ask you to help at the casino or any of my other businesses. I don’t ask you to put yourself in any kind of danger for me. All I ask is for you to take a little nap and tell me what you see. Is that really such a big deal?
He shivers despite the heat around him, and takes a deep breath that is anything but refreshing. He can’t count the sleepless nights anymore, the amount of coffee he’s drank, the times he’s curled up on the sand just wishing it’d be over. Or the times he’s lied in his bed trying to force his mind to drift off to sleep despite his terror of knowing it’d just be another nightmare.
He doesn’t want to. And didn’t he already decide that he doesn’t need to, either? There’s no one to force him, not anymore.
But he’s hearing another voice, too. A deeper, softer voice that has comforted him through some of his hardest nights. Phil’s voice. There must be some reason you have a power like this, it hums to him. Maybe you can make peace with it by using it on your own terms, not because someone else is pressuring you.
He hesitates.
He’s never been able to stop the things he sees from happening, but…
Oh, fuck it. He needs to see what this is all about.
He braces himself, gritting his teeth and pushing his shoulders forward, and sneaks closer. Leaning to peek from behind a pillar – the concrete feels cold and rough under his palms, these dreams are always more realistic than his normal ones – he can see two figures standing face to face between the ramps and ledges.
The silhouette of Tommy’s wings shines golden in the orange glow of the desert.
The other man is wearing almost uncannily neat and tidy clothes. The dust and sand of the desert doesn’t seem to dirty his clothes the way it sticks into everything else. The thing that stands out the most about him though, is the surgical mask on his face, leaving only two cold, sharp eyes visible.
A shiver of horror runs down Fundy’s back as he realizes who the man must be.
He resists the urge to move, to do something. He knows from experience that it’s no use trying to help anyone in the desert; he’s not actually where this is happening, it probably hasn’t even happened yet. He would just risk messing up the vision and missing something important.
There’s another man in the shadows, a man Tommy doesn’t seem to notice. He’s wearing a dark blue uniform and there’s something on his hip that grisly resembles a gun.
“Mmh,” the man who must be Dream hums to something Tommy has just said, and Fundy takes his attention back to the conversation he’s involuntarily witnessing. The man's voice sends cold shivers down his back. It’s soft, but not in a comforting way. Soft like a snake’s slither. “Well, that’s not very smart of you. Too bad. I really did think you’d come with me voluntarily.” A short pause, and then: “Punz.”
Tommy comes fully into view from behind a pillar, suddenly so close that Fundy flinches back, but of course the elytrian doesn’t see him. He scampers up a hill to get to the bridge, but a man in a dark blue uniform grabs him and drags him back. Tommy’s wings thrash at the man, but he just wraps his arms around Tommy in a way that stops him from moving his wings or his arms. His movements are practiced and efficient. Like someone who’s entirely familiar with holding someone in place for them to be hurt.
Never in his life has Fundy wanted to run away from his vision as much as he does right now, but at the same time he feels like he couldn’t if he tried. He’s nailed in place, forced to watch through the nauseating horror that locks his muscles in place and refuses to set him free.
The men hold Tommy in place under the bridge for a little while longer, Dream leaning in to say something to him that doesn’t carry all the way to Fundy’s ears, before dragging him up to the road where a van is waiting. Fundy follows. Tommy thrashes and screams, but Fundy feels entirely numb. He can barely hear what Dream snarls at Tommy after having him thrown into the van. An awful cloud of horror dampens his senses like he’s underwater.
Then, it’s like all sound comes back at once, deafeningly loud. The bang of the van doors being slammed shut echoes through the desert like a gunshot. It makes Fundy flinch so violently that he tumbles out of his bed and finds himself on the floor, tangled into his blanket, barely aware of where and when he is.
It takes him a few moments to ground himself enough to recognize the bedroom around him, and quite a few more until the pounding of his heart has calmed down enough for him to breathe deeply and stand up. As soon as he’s not shaking too much to grab the doorknob, he rushes out of his room and into Tommy’s, without bothering to knock. He has a sinking feeling that he wouldn’t get an answer anyway.
His stomach drops when his worst fear is confirmed by the sight of an empty bed.
Two minutes later Phil rushes down the stairs with Fundy right behind him. All sleepiness is gone from both of them, replaced by the sheer panic of knowing Tommy is in danger.
“Do you have any idea when it’s going to happen? Or where?” Phil strides frantically down the stairs, and Fundy has to skip every other stair to keep up with him.
“No, I don’t know – I didn’t see anything that would indicate the time,” Fundy stutters. “It might be about to happen, or it might be happening right now, I – I don’t get details like that – fuck, I’m so sorry I can’t help more–”
“Don’t worry about it.” Phil rummages through the basket on a side table, the one he always swears he’s going to sort out and never does, pulling out the car keys. “How about a location?”
“It was – there was a bridge.” Fundy strains his memory, trying to hold onto the quickly fading remnants of the dream. It always starts disappearing right after he wakes up, the details becoming fuzzier and more distant, but he’s forcing the image to stay clear in his mind with sheer willpower. “Uh, I think it was a highway, and it was… it was crossing a river, I think, it looked different there but I think it was a river. There was a skatepark, graffiti everywhere–”
“A highway crossing a river?” Phil grabs Fundy by his shoulders, his grip stern from worry. “Are you sure?”
Fundy swallows around a lump in his throat. No, he wants to say, he’s never sure about anything when it comes to his odd visions, but this isn’t just about him – this is about Tommy, and right now Fundy is the only link between them and him.
“Almost sure,” he says, and Phil nods.
“That’s enough for us. It’s our best bet right now.”
“What’s going on?” A sleepy voice calls from the stairs, and both Fundy and Phil turn to look. It’s Wilbur, standing at the top of the stairs in his pajamas. “Why are you up?”
“It’s about Tommy. Fundy had a vision,” Phil says as he pulls out his coat from the closet by the door. Fundy will never stop wondering how Phil can keep his calm in a situation like this. He can hear the strain in Phil’s voice, but his fingers don’t shake around the car keys. Fundy is all shake and panic, but Phil is stone and determination. “He’s gone out there by himself and somehow Dream found him. He’s going to be taken back there if we don’t find him first.”
“I’m coming with you,” Wilbur says without missing a beat. It’s not a question; he says it the way one says something so obvious it doesn’t need debating.
Phil doesn’t agree. “It’s too dangerous. I’ll go with Tech and Fundy–”
“Cut the bullshit, okay?” Wilbur cuts him off. “This is not something you have a say in. You might be my dad, but there’s no way in hell you can make me sit here and twiddle my thumbs while Tommy is in danger.”
Phil opens his mouth to say something, but he’s interrupted by two new pairs of footsteps. Tubbo and Ranboo appear behind Wilbur, and from the horror on their faces Fundy guesses that they heard a large chunk of the conversation so far.
“What danger?” Tubbo’s face is pale as ash and his wings vibrate so frantically that he has to grip the railing next to the stair to stop himself from floating up. “Where’s Tommy?”
Wilbur’s face is a storm cloud about to erupt in thunder. “We don’t have time for this, Phil. Every second we spend arguing about this is another second of something horrible potentially happening to Tommy. So you might as well give up now and stop wasting our time, because we don’t have any of it to waste and you are not going to win this.”
Phil is silent for three agonisingly long seconds. Then –
“Fine. But you better be ready to leave in two minutes. Techno is already at the car, he’ll drive.”
“Then we’re coming too–” Tubbo begins, but Phil cuts him off with a stern movement of his hand. “No, you two are not coming with us. Wilbur is an adult and I can’t stop him from putting his life in danger, but you two are kids and I’m responsible for you for as long as you’re living with me.” His voice softens, the edge dulling just a little bit. “Someone needs to look after Michael and the house. Stay awake and wait for us. If we’re not back by morning, call Jack. He’ll know what to do.”
Tubbo glances at Ranboo and then back at Phil. “Fine. But you better bring Tommy back or I’ll never forgive you.”
Phil nods, not like a man trying to reassure someone, but a man who can’t do anything but nod. “I promise.”
Exactly one minute and fifty seconds later they all sit in the car, Techno on the driver’s seat, Phil next to him, and Fundy and Wilbur in the back. They speed through the dirt road so fast that Fundy is grabbing the edge of his seat with his heart in his throat.
That pales in comparison to the fear he feels for Tommy, though.
There has been exactly one time in his life when he felt this kind of terror before. The day he left Las Nevadas.
When he thinks back to that day, the memory always starts from the party upstairs. Loud music, people playing games on the various tables around the hall, cigarette smoke so thick that the ceiling was covered in a dark grey cloud. And Quackity sitting on an expensive-looking couch in the middle of it all, leaning back with a drink in his hand and a wide smile under the sunglasses that he always wore, even indoors. A king watching over his kingdom of crime.
“Is that really such a big deal, Fundy?” he insisted, tilting his head forward until Fundy could see his eyes peek out from under the sunglasses, and the scar going over one of them. “Is it too much to ask?”
“You – you’re right,” Fundy replied, fidgeting with the edge of his sleeve, his ears twitching at every loud sound around. “It’s not. It’s just – I haven’t had a good night’s sleep in ages, Quackity. I’m exhausted.”
“If you see something useful, maybe we can try with the pills again,” Quackity suggested. Like he was giving Fundy the most generous of gifts. “They help, don’t they?”
Fundy shrugged. They took away the dreams, all dreams, so they at least gave him a break from having to spend his nights seeing horrors after horrors unfold in front of him. But they also left him drowsy and out of it for hours, sometimes the entire day, and the dreamless sleep hardly felt refreshing.
Quackity didn’t usually like him trying to prevent the visions from happening though, so him offering Fundy the option was a surprise. This meeting he talked about must have been something really important.
He settled on kind of shrugging and half-smiling at Quackity. “I’ll think about it.”
“Please do.” Quackity grinned, a sight that was probably meant to be reassuring but managed to have the exact opposite effect. “I know you’re not much of a party guy, so you’re probably bored up here anyway. See you in the morning.” He sent a gleeful little wave at Fundy’s direction.
And Fundy left. But not to the direction of his bedroom.
Even with his eyelids hardly staying open, he wanted to delay the inevitable for just a few more moments.
So he wandered around the halls, opening doors at random and looking for rooms he hadn’t seen before. The party was big and loud and it seemed to seep its way into every corner of the huge casino complex, but eventually the sounds through the walls started to gradually quiet down. Fundy was pretty sure he was still in the east wing, but the particular hallway he was in didn’t feel familiar.
“Fundy from L’Manberg? What are you doing here?”
Fundy cringed at the name of his hometown. He hadn’t been there since the day he had the big fight with his dad and left without looking back. He had no idea how Charlie even knew about it, but he had made it Fundy’s nickname and no amount of arguing had convinced him. Eventually Fundy had decided to just let the guy use it.
He turned around. Charlie had emerged from behind one of the doors on the hallway, a slightly too wide smile on his face, his skin glistening green in the dim light. Some slime was dripping from his chin to the burgundy carpet.
“Just, uhh… kinda looking around,” Fundy said, trying to brush it off. The last thing he wanted was to open up about Quackity to this guy. “I’m about to go to bed anyway. This is just… an evening walk.”
Charlie nodded knowingly. “An evening walk. A very human thing to do. Good way to use the bones in your legs.”
Neither of us are human, Fundy thought bitterly, but didn’t say it out loud. Sometimes he didn’t know if Charlie had a few screws loose in his head or if he knew something no one else did. He did not like the guy’s company. Something about him creeped Fundy all the way down to his bones (a topic Charlie also liked an unsettling amount).
“Uhh, yeah,” he said, gesturing at the hallway. “And I wanna finish that walk now, so I’ll be on my way, okay? See you tomorrow.”
He turned around and continued towards the end of the hallway. The sooner he’d get away from the guy, the better.
“Fundy from L’Manberg,” a faint voice called out from behind him. “If I were you, I wouldn’t go that direction.”
Fundy stopped in his tracks. Every hair on his skin stood up.
Slowly, he looked over his shoulder, fighting the nervous sense of premonition. But the hallway was empty. Charlie was already gone.
“Fundy?” Phil’s voice breaks through the memory, shaking him back to the present. “Is this the right spot?”
Fundy opens the door and steps out of the car. The place is eerily familiar; he’s never been there before, and yet seeing it is like remembering something you thought you’d already forgotten. He can barely remember his dream anymore, but he does remember the path leading down to the skatepark.
There are marks on the dirt by the street, obvious signs of a struggle.
Something is stuck onto a branch near where the path starts. Fundy steps closer and takes it between two trembling fingers.
It’s a golden feather.
“This is the place,” he whispers. It’s all the sound he can get out of himself.
Phil sees the feather and his eyes go wide. “He’s been there. They got him.”
“Not for long, if we have anything to say about it,” Techno grunts. “Get back in the car, you both. They can’t have gotten far. It barely took us ten minutes to drive here, and it couldn’t had happened yet when Fundy woke up, right? So they might only have a few minutes of a headstart.” When no one says anything, he hits his hand against the wheel so hard that both Fundy and Phil flinch. “Come on, what are you waiting for? We need to go after them!”
Phil nods frantically, like he’s bringing himself back from his thoughts. “You’re right. We don’t have a second to waste.
They get back into the car and Techno puts the pedal to the floor. They speed over the bridge, Fundy’s back pressing against the back of the seat from the force of acceleration.
He grips the edge of his seat and prays to whichever higher power is willing to listen that they’re not too late. That right now Tommy isn’t being dragged down a hallway somewhere deep underground, so deep that they’ll never be able to dig him back up.
An image creeps at the edges of his mind, a memory that feels more like a dream. The door he had never opened before. The long stairs down, down, down, the sounds of the party left somewhere far behind. The dim-lit room filled with enormous glass tubes, glowing with faint green light, big enough to fit a human each.
He remembers walking closer to them, his legs carrying him forward like he had no choice. Just like with the horrors he saw in that desert every night, he knew he couldn’t leave. He did not want to find out what this room was for, and he knew that he had to.
He didn’t stop until he saw the green, slimy palm pressed against the inside of the nearest glass tube.
That’s when he turned around and ran. Out of the room, out of the hallway, out of the building, without looking back.
“I see them!” Phil shouts. “Is that the car, Fundy? Fundy?”
Fundy leans to the side to see better from between the front seats. The car’s headlights are blinding in the darkness, a pool of light that the asphalt rushes through under the car. Beyond what little they illuminate, the night is a sea of dark. Except for…
There. Now Fundy sees it too, a little spot of white ahead of them, another splotch of light rushing through the night on the dark road.
“Yes.” The single syllable comes out before he can form a rational thought, before he can ever think back to what the van looked like in his dream. He knows Tommy is in that car. Somehow, he just knows.
Techno leans forward as if he could will the car into a faster speed. The engine groans under the strain.
Outside the window, the barely visible landscape rushes past in dark flashes.
The van is getting closer now. They don’t seem to have noticed that they’re being followed.
Closer.
Closer…
“Hold on to something,” Techno grunts. “It’s gonna be a bit bumpy.”
“Techno.” Wilbur’s voice comes from behind gritted teeth and tense muscles. “Keep in mind that Tommy is probably in there.”
“Believe me, that is crystal clear.”
They’ve now almost caught up to the van. It’s picking up speed, like the driver has realized that there is someone after them.
The two cars shoot through the landscape.
Fundy’s fingers sink into the edge of the seat. His heartbeat hammers through every vein in his body.
The cars are now side by side.
“Here we go,” says Techno, and yanks the wheel sharply to the side.
Fundy panics for a fraction of a second. That’s all the time he has for panicking, because right after they crash into the side of the van so violently that he reels to the side and hits his head against the door.
For a few seconds there is only nauseating darkness and a loud ringing in his ears.
The van may be bigger, but Phil’s pickup truck isn’t a flimsy thing – it’s sturdy and heavy. If Fundy had to pick a car to be inside during a crash, Phil’s car would be pretty high on the list. So it’s no surprise to him that after his vision stops spinning and he regains enough of his senses to figure out what just happened, he finds the inside of the car relatively unscathed. The van has been forced off the road, one of its front wheels in the ditch by the road and the opposing back wheel up in the air. It’s not going to be driving anywhere for a while.
With weak, trembling hands Fundy pushes open the door that bruised his temple and staggers out of the car. For a second he has to lean against the side of it, just trying to catch his breath. His legs don’t seem to want to stop shaking. It occurs to him that he’s never been in a car crash before. That’s kind of cool, he supposes. A car chase and a crash, a hell of a story to be told.
Why is he using his brain capacity to think about that? Maybe so he wouldn’t have to think about what happened to Tommy…
Tommy! His head snaps to the side, his eyes searching for the back doors of the van. He stumbles around the car to find Phil already there, yanking at the unbuckling doors.
Fundy is just about to join him to help when Techno pushes both Fundy and Phil out of his way, grabbing a door handle in a grip of each of his enormous hands. “Step back.”
He pulls, the muscles in his arms bulging under his skin, the metal groaning and moaning under the strain – and then, just like that, he tears both doors from their hinges and throws them on the ground.
Fundy stares in awe and something that could almost be fear if he didn’t know Techno so well. He never found the man particularly scary, even though he knows that many people flinch when they see Techno for the first time. At this moment he thinks he understands them.
And right then, someone pounces at them from the back of the van, crying out in relief and wrapping his arms around Techno without a hint of fear.
It’s Tommy.
Techno hugs him back, first tightly, but pulling back one of his arms when Tommy flinches as his right wing is touched. It’s bent in an awkward position, but there are no other visible injuries.
“I’m so stupid,” Tommy sputters against Techno’s chest, “so fucking dumb, it’s all my fault, I didn’t think they would – I didn’t think…”
“Shh.” Techno rubs his hand up and down Tommy's back, careful not to touch the broken wing. “I've got you, kid. I'm here. I've got you.”
“Where – where are – where–”
Techno squeezes him with all the force of a man who just almost lost a brother. Gentle arms and fierce, raging eyes. “They won’t get far. Phil went after them.”
Tommy pulls away from Techno’s grip, turning to look at the shadow of grand, spread wings soaring above the field towards two figures stumbling away from the car. “No, he can’t! Punz has a gun!”
“Not anymore, he doesn’t,” says Wilbur, flickering from invisibility into view right next to them. “I went through the car door and grabbed it from its holster before they realized what was happening. I threw it as hard as I could. Good luck to anyone trying to find it in this darkness.”
Tommy doesn’t seem convinced, his head snapping from Techno to Phil to the men running through the field to back to Techno. He wraps his arms around Techno like he fears the man might disappear into the dark.
Techno hugs him even tighter for a second, but then gently places the boy on the ground and unwraps Tommy’s arms from around him. “Wilbur, can you stay with Tommy for a second?” He turns to look at the humans, and Fundy is sure he sees something dark shine through Techno’s eyes, a terrifying fury. “I think I have a few words to exchange with them as well.”
“Of course.” Wilbur hurries to Tommy’s side and grabs him by the shoulders at the exact moment Techno’s arms leave him. “Are you okay? Are you hurt?” His eyes flicker to Tommy’s gruesomely bent wing and he flinches. “Oh fuck.”
Fundy takes a deep breath, refusing to shudder at the sight of Tommy. Instead, he puts his hand on the boy’s shoulder in a gesture that he hopes comes off as comforting. “It’s okay. It’ll heal, right? At least you’re alive and here. We’ve got you.”
“You came for me.” Tommy shudders the words out in a quiet, breathless cry. “You came to save me.”
Wilbur rubs his hand up and down Tommy’s back, mumbling words of reassurance into his hair. “Of course we did, man. Did you think we’d ever let you be taken back there?”
A thump reverbs through the air, so sudden and strong that the ground seems to shake under their feet. They all turn to look at the field.
Phil has landed, his form huge and terrifying with his dark wings spread in all their impressive span.
The men, having been stumble-running on the uneven terrain, stagger to a stop, their escape suddenly blocked.
They turn, frantically looking for another way, but Techno is fast approaching them from behind, menacing determination in his step, leaving them trapped in between.
Fundy doesn’t need a closer look to imagine the terror on their faces.
Techno is the first to swing his arm at them. Fundy sees one of the men tumble over with a scream, the other one taking frantic steps back, but there’s nowhere for either of them to go.
He instinctively turns away from the sight. Wilbur wraps his arms around both him and Tommy, pulling them closer to his chest. “Don’t look,” he whispers.
Fundy takes his advice, burying his face in Wilbur’s shirt. But out of the corner of his eye he sees Tommy’s face, and he can tell that the elytrian’s eyes stay wide open, fixated on the sight, until the screaming finally stops.