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Part 1 of Inherited Means it's Ours to Change , Part 1 of Absent Works of an Anon
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2020-10-21
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2022-07-01
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What World Have We Inherited?

Chapter 10: Regret

Summary:

Three days have passed, counting now, and Technoblade is still nowhere to be found. Tommy isn't sure how to deal with it.

Notes:

An update? In my story? It's far more likely than you'd think.

I'm so so sorry, my dear readers. I know you've been waiting for quite a while now. I can't offer much in return aside from this chapter, so I sincerely hope that you enjoy it. I've been struggling a bit with a few personal health issues (NOT covid, please don't worry!) Which mixed rather poorly with writer's block, haha. But I finally managed to wrangle out about 6,000 words of plot. Thank you kindly for your support, and for your patience. I know how painful it can be to be left without an update. If I'm honest, I'm not satisfied with this chapter, so it may undergo some very major changes if my feelings on the matter stay the same, but I wanted to at least let everyone know that content is still being worked on.

As one final side note: I want to thank everyone for the absolutely incredible fanart I've been receiving over the past week or so. I genuinely cannot believe that my fic inspires such wonderful art, and every time I see it it pushes me to work even harder, Technoblade style! I cannot even begin to thank you all enough, it always makes my day.

As always, comments, kudos, criticism, and feedback of any kind feed my ever tired soul. Without further ado...

Please enjoy <3

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text


The song of the old, the song of the weary. Whispered between quiet aches, mumbled between grimaces and bitten tongues. Between bloodied bandages and the raw ache of loss, shaped in deals and cut in contracts that should never have come to pass. 

The song of the fallen, sung silently beneath the beats of an old anthem, as unfinished as the land it had once been dedicated to. 

That was the song of those trapped in the remnants of war. 

-----

+

-----

A million years ago, before discs and battles and more bloodshed than anyone could stand, a too-tall kid in a set of matching too-big boots stared at a man in awe. The echo of his deeds was swept heavy around his shoulders in waves of rippling velvet thick enough to drown in, and Tommy was almost to his eye level, but it didn't matter. The pig-man looked larger than life itself, the wisps of his fur cloak licking like flames at the nape of his neck. 

The kid was staring, and the warrior had noticed a long time ago, but he only elected to reluctantly prompt him after another prolonged silence.  

"Hm?" 

"Techno, why do you always look so tired?" 

The monotone of the first clashed awkwardly with the energy of the second, but that was fine. Tommy was used to the way people looked at him sometimes, like he was more of a bother than a help. It stung, admittedly, but he'd prove them wrong. He always did. 

The warrior peered at him like he was made of stone, and the bags that hung under his eyes looked like pressed-on tattoos, smears of dark against the light of raised scars. 

"... 'cause I'm tired," the warrior replied, flatly, "don't go expectin' anything complicated." 

"Why would you be tired?"

Questions, questions. Tommy was full of them. He had to be, because Tubbo had never been quite able to voice his own, and Wilbur had always been too concerned about his reputation to disrupt the flow of the river. That was fine too. Tommy could take all the questions in for them. The warrior shifted in his seat, twisted the hilt of his sword in his hand so it caught the stray beams of the sun. 

"I'm tired of fightin'," he confessed, after a moment that dragged on so long Tommy was certain he wasn't going to talk at all; "I'm takin' a break, if you don't mind." 

It was a dismissal, Tommy knew. He ignored it, something he did very well. 

"Aren't you the best?" 

"Bein' the best isn't all it's cracked up to be."

Tommy scoffed. That was absurd. Being the best was always… well. The best. (Look, Tommy had never claimed to be a wordsmith.)

"That's stupid," he declared, with the utmost authority. 

The warrior rumbled, almost a laugh but not quite. Even then, Tommy had wondered faintly if the other man even knew how. It didn't look like it, with his expression set like a chilled statue, sword drawn across his lap like it was another addition to his painting-suited pose. Too regal. Too old. 

"Maybe," he admitted through stray pink strands, "but that's just the way things work. Too many people tryin' to challenge me." 

"If you're that tired, why don't you just let them win?"

For the first time, a vibrant gaze flicked up from the hair's edge of his sword. The man shifted and the god sat in his place, dripping with phantom streaks of vibrant crimson. Tommy blinked, and the vision was gone, quicker than it had appeared. The stutter of his heartbeat remained, like the threat had shed an old cloak. 

"People train their entire lives for fightin'," the man said, like it was some great wisdom; "they spend all their time trainin', practicin', the whole deal. It takes years to learn to fight, and years longer to fight well." 

Technoblade took a breath, like he was contemplating something. 

"... It's like spittin' in their face if I give them a hollow victory. That's just the way things are." 

Tommy walked away from his first meeting with Technoblade with no better of an understanding of him than he’d had before — well, to be fair, it was Techno himself who moved first, but semantics had never been his expertise — but that final sentence had stuck with him, in a strange way. Lingered in the echoing hallways of a mind unwilling to accept it. Then, Tommy stood across from Dream with an arrow pulled back and a feather pressed flat to his cheek, and he heard it again. Saw the old aching wisdom of it in the lines of Dream’s unyielding posture, the grim set of his mouth. 

The arrow fired, and with it streaked a vibrant cut of flames. 

The bridge melted away, taking Dream with it. An arrow embedded itself into his shoulder, and he went crashing to the — floor? 

Tommy pulled himself up from the dirt, spitting and gagging when he inhaled too deeply, choked on a plume of smoke that turned the sky to ashes around him. It should have burned, but it only felt like choking, and he was too panicked to comprehend why. 

Manburg — L'Manburg, it was L'Manburg — was in fucking flames, it was all burning and there wasn't a thing he could do about it. He'd gotten to Wilbur, he'd tackled him down, smashed the fucking remote, and it still wasn't enough. 

He'd failed, and Wilbur had blown up the festival. He'd blown up everything, everyone, and —

Oh.

He was standing at the edge of the epicenter. His head shot up and he whirled, and the ground around him melted into the flaming remains of the podium, more of a crater than a stage. He shoved through debris with frantic, burning hands, and he didn't care if flames licked at his skin, because Tubbo had been on that fucking stage. 

He shoved and he threw and he chucked wooden debris over his shoulder, smashed the remains of what almost looked like jars underneath the soles of his shoes. Faster, faster — where was he? Where?! 

"Tubbo!" He screamed to the open air with everything he had, shocked that he could even breathe between the suffocating swirls of death, even more so that his voice felt so strangled, so near silent despite his desperation, "Tubbo! Where are you, big man —" 

He whirled in place, swept his eyes over the flaming remains of their country. It was happening again, and this time they didn't have any goddamn walls to save them. Schlatt had broken them all down, and Wilbur had… he'd...

Tommy stumbled over something, tripped and fell and skidded his palms painfully on shattered glass and pebbles. 

He looked back to see what the hell had stopped him, and…

Oh god —

+

"TUBBO!"

Tommy shot up so aggressively that his stomach cramped immediately, trapped by his sheets as his torso twisted wildly in the confines of his bed. His chest heaved with frantic gasps in an attempt to regain his oxygen, ragged and rough and agonizingly ineffective. The echoes of his voice rang out in their cave like a sadistic mirror, bounced off their stone walls like they were determined to survive forever. 

Stone walls. Bare stone walls, empty of the chains and lanterns that hung from cobbled beams. Their cave. 

Not Pogtopia. Not L'Manburg. Through his frantic heaves, he only barely managed to register how much he wished he didn't still find comfort in that.

Tommy buried his face in his bare hands, trembling and pale as he tried to hug his chest. It was an instinctual action, and it did nothing for the crushing pressure that threatened to squeeze out his lungs. It felt horrifically different from Techno's grounding presence, but he didn't have any other options,  so he squeezed and he inhaled and he hoped desperately that the blinding fog would lift if he lasted long enough. His breathing was labored and quick, too shallow and too weak as he tried in vain to calm his beating pulse. That was the worst the dreams had been for nearly three days, by far. 

Three days, his brain whispered with an undertone he wished he could smother; Techno had been gone for nearly three days, counting today.

His weak attempt to shift gears left him no better off than before. The dreams had been getting better — or at least so he'd thought — easing up somewhat under the eased up pressure of their new environment. The nightmarish hell had seemed to be settling down at least, moved from vivid, blinding terror to almost quiet — but consistent — unease. He hadn't accounted for them. He should have fucking known, and he was a goddamn idiot for forgetting, for thinking he'd be able to — be able to… 

Tommy choked, this time on a wrenched out sob.

It was just an image, that was the part he hated the most. An image he never saw, constructed from the blurry images of his subconscious, with no logical reason to believe any of it looked like that at all. That was all it was. That was all the pictures that haunted him were. They were fake lines scribbled between the few dots he'd managed to scrape together, so why did they haunt him like they were real? How was that fucking fair? 

Tommy had woken up three times over the course of the one night. It was on the third, this time, that he finally gave up, threw his blankets aside with as much force as his trembling limbs would allow — another half a wink of sleep wasn't worth this. 

He'd been sleeping fitfully at best, barely managing what felt like even half an hour in-between. To make things even worse, it looked like it wasn't even morning. The little of the sky he could make out through a miniscule window Techno dug was still a deep blue from what he could glean, bathing the world in that odd foggy chill that preceded the rising of the sun.

It reminded him rather painfully of the start, the seemingly endless days when he couldn't even shut his eyes without seeing the burning wreckage imprinted on his eyelids. Even that image had no right to be as vibrant as it was —  Techno had reached out and tilted his head away from it, blocked out with his cloak as he slowly guided Tommy away on weakened limbs. The latter memory brought a new spark of pain, fresher than the last with the selfish connotations that made him feel too much like a desperate child. 

Breathe, Techno's voice echoed, almost a ghost of an old conversation left in the open air; breathe, Tommy. You're hyperventilatin', you need to breathe. 

If Techno had been here, the dreams would have been easier. It was always easier when he was present, stable and quiet and threatening in the most comforting of ways. Tommy had been resentful of the need for that, once, but now he longed for it with an unabashedness that surprised him. He and Techno had only one another — it had been so fucking long since Tommy could depend on someone. He'd lost Wilbur long before the man left himself. 

Tommy wiped hard at his face, sucked in a shaking breath that chilled his throat and iced his lungs. It wasn’t fair to be mad at Technoblade — he knew it wasn’t. But god, he missed him, and he thought at least that was fair. 

He squeezed his eyes shut and tried to pretend there was a shadow falling over his bedside, tried to pretend he could hear the shifting of heavy fabric and the quiet clop of battleworn bootheels meeting stone floors. 

Slowly — painfully slowly — Tommy lowered his arms. He unclenched his nails from where they'd dug crescents into his skin, where they'd bunched up the fabric of his already creased sleeves and smeared them with his tears. By the time his vision cleared up enough for him to actually see the area around him for longer than a second, he felt more exhausted than he had the night before, like he'd been dragged through soul sand and dumped in a pit. 

His blankets were on the floor, and he had to stoop down to reach for them, dragging them back up and onto the mattress with his uselessly clammy, trembling hands. He dug his fingers into the material, clutched it as tightly as he could just to feel the pressure, just to see his grip stabilize against the plush. It was a hollow victory. 

When he could finally manage to breathe without his lungs aching in his chest, he carefully pushed his blankets to the side, bunched them up against the corner instead of shoving them recklessly to the floor. His bare hands ached at the knuckles like he'd punched a wall. Bandages. He needed his bandages. He’d tried to stop wearing them to bed since they needed to be replaced once he woke up anyway, but maybe it would help if he resumed the old habit. 

He pulled himself up by propping his hand against his headboard, squinting as vertigo threatened to bowl him over. He walked unsteadily to the chest, collapsed to his knees as he dug around. Bottles, iron, tools…

Bandages. 

He pulled a roll from the pile, uncaring for if it was the one he'd already started to use up. He pulled the thin fabric around his hands methodically. Maybe , he thought quietly with another bout of humor he truly didn't feel as he pulled it around his wrist, it would be enough to keep him together. Another cheesy line that settled like concrete powder in his gut, heavy and painful enough to ache. 

At the very least, the pressure helped. The trembling eased up a bit as he clenched and unclenched his bandaged fists, pressed protected knuckles against his palms to test them. He'd gotten incredibly efficient at the process, enough so that even sleep deprivation and exhausted panic couldn't ruin it. He ran his newly wrapped hand roughly through his hair, pushed it back and away from his face. It had grown out longer than he'd wanted it, reminded him of the older days in ways that both warmed him and ached. 

He glanced up at the singular window once more, hidden carefully as to avoid attracting suspicion. The meager light that streamed in from it was slightly brighter now, although still tinged with more blue than yellow. Dawn then, if not early morning. Tommy tried not to think about how long he must have spent on his bed, curled in half like a traumatized toddler. A brief glance was thrown back to his bed, then down to his hands, contemplating. He reached for his crossbow. There was no way he was going back to sleep, so he might as well try and burn off some of the remnants of his anxious energy. Maybe then he'd be able to stomach breakfast. 

+

The air of the morning always felt different. Far chillier to be sure, but the crisp, near shocking nature of it was almost like a splash of ice cold water to the face. When Tommy stepped out with his crossbow slung carefully over his shoulder, he inhaled. 

He decided he'd go to the top of their cliff — hill? — and shoot at the mobs below for target practice, something Technoblade had him do every once in a while to get better at spotting them hiding amongst the trees. Mobs were always especially plentiful in the mornings, since coming off the tail end of the evening meant that many of them had run instinctually for cover from the first streaks of sunlight. They usually tended to thin out their numbers somewhat as the day went on, distracted by their animalistic urge to attack and consume until they stepped out and burst into flames. Tommy never really figured out why, but he assumed it had something to do with the magic that reanimated old remains. 

When Tommy managed to climb to the top, he hopped the fence that surrounded the area, vaulting over the edge with a quiet huff. The fenced off "training area" was something that Techno had built around the time they'd started. It was remarkably sturdy; the fenceposts were chiseled from wood and set deep into the dirt, so they took his weight easily as he leaned heavily against it when he stared out across the treetops. The morning fog that littered the area was still present, a heavy blanket of white that blurred the trunks below until it all looked vaguely haunted. Once, it had been something unsettling, but Tommy had grown terribly familiar with it during their time holed up in their cave. He'd considered carving his name into one of the tree trunks, an old tradition he'd brought from each base, a way to mark his existence if he ever moved on. 

(He hadn't done it at Pogtopia though, the first of his many bases to miss it. They couldn't afford to make their mark, lest they be found — Wilbur had made that very clear back then, tones varying from gentle and firm to near manic with ripples of paranoia. Tommy squeezed his eyes shut, shook his head hard to try and clear the memory away.)

Training, he murmured soundlessly into the cool open air, clinging to the sting of ice against his lungs; focus on the training. 

He squinted down below and tried to track any movement on what was essentially a lower cloud. He couldn't see much, but he could at least make out the trunks of the trees, and if nothing else it would help to sharpen his instinctive aim. Technoblade was near terrifyingly good at all forms of combat that he'd displayed, but his instincts seemed to be one of the strongest senses he had. He'd listen and look, observe his surroundings even as he was firing off his first shot, already moving like lightning to load the second. It was remarkable, and it was something Techno almost seemed to believe Tommy could do too. His faith had been enough to propel Tommy forward into his efforts, and aiming practice had quickly become one of his most active skills. He hadn't been bad at it before, but his improvement was incredible, to the point where even Tommy could see the vast strides. Had he this kind of training back then, he probably would never have… 

("Ten paces, fire!"

Tommy had whirled with the adrenaline and terror bleeding into his veins, hands near trembling as he threw his body backwards. An arrow flew right by his face as he went crashing over the side of the bridge, plummeting into the water below, barely enough time to snag even a glimpse of Dream, standing with his hands steady and his aim steadier, expression hidden and petrifying behind the emotionless porcelain. 

He gasped, almost lost his grip as he swam up, gagging on stolen air. Even then, he'd reached for his bow, strung another shot. It missed wildly, Dream barely had to sidestep as he pulled back an arrow of his own, speed near blinding with the energy of a madman. 

He saw the green of his cloak billow seconds before he felt it. 

His first shot had missed Tommy's head by mere centimeters. The second met its mark in his shoulder, and that was the end of it. He'd never had a chance.) 

His grip around the crossbow tightened to the point where he faintly worried the wood would splinter beneath his bandaged fingertips. He let go immediately, a spark of quiet panic rising at the very thought. 

His first bolt left his weapon with ease. It whirled away with nary a whistle, out of sight in half a millisecond, but he heard the heavy thunk as it vanished into the branches, buried within the leaves and caused the tree itself to shake. A few errant birds flew out, squawking angrily with the rage of the disturbed, and he huffed amusedly to himself. He'd hit it, even if the shot was a little too high — a little too wild, off-centered by his stiff muscles. It wasn't a bad start, and the weapon in his hands was a hell of a help — not that he was surprised. Anything made by Technoblade was duty-bound to perform with a punch. 

He remembered with near blinding clarity the day Technoblade had given it to him. Techno, as Tommy had long since discovered, wasn't exactly prone to fits of open pride or emotional gestures. His gestures of approval tended to be more subtle, less words and more action, more quiet faith and constant presences than it was elaborate tapestries. 

It had been right before the chill had begun to set in, perhaps only a few days before the mornings began to be accompanied by fog. Techno had pulled him out of the cave for another morning training session, and Tommy had gone without protest. Since the first attempt he hadn't touched Techno's crossbow, but the brand new weapon the pig-man handed to him that day was similar enough to it that he'd nearly done a double take. A mistake, right? It had to be a —

"If you can't start usin' mine," Techno had said, the tone no-no sense and booking no room at all for Tommy to attempt to deny it, "then we'll try gettin' you used to this one instead. Your old one is terrible." 

Tommy agreed, because that was what you did when Technoblade had an opinion on your weapons, and that had been that. 

The next shot missed by a wide margin, soared into the forest and likely buried itself into the grass instead, never to be discovered again. Tommy cursed quietly under his breath, almost unwilling to speak any louder lest he break the near tranquil calm. His next shots met steady tree trunks, carved even arcs into the air and buried themselves into the wood. He tried his best to focus on the distant buzz of pins and needles against his palms, and not on the lack of a steady presence behind his shoulder.

(It only sort of worked, but really, he had grown not to expect anything more.)

+

Tommy had grown to hate the trips down to Schlatt's cell, but in a manner his past self likely would never have imagined. 

Ever since that day, since the day it had finally sunk in in every manner he'd wished it wouldn't, Schlatt had been… uncomfortably silent. Near avoidant, even, as he pressed his back to the same god-damned wall. It wasn't to say that the man was absent, or that his eyes had softened — but his gaze was wearier now, plagued by something heavy that Tommy couldn't quite decipher. Something he'd refused to see before, save for a brief moment where they both had been weakened shells. A moment he would rather have forgotten. 

He looked... old. Older than any of them should have been, even Schlatt, really — and Tommy felt an unfamiliar sense of new disquiet swirl in his gut whenever his eyes met uncomfortably dimmed yellow. More the pages of an ancient book than the shimmer of polished gold. Privately, he still wasn't sure if that was because of his own surprising willful ignorance or because of the unease the situation provoked. He'd begun to even predict the patterns of the days, the trips and the maps of Schlatt's heavy steps. The amount of clicks it took for worn out soles to meet iron bars, then back again. 

Schlatt's tone had been almost placid when he shattered the silence. Conversational. So casual that Tommy's brain stuttered to keep up, to register the sentence before it finished.  

“So,” Schlatt’s voice was an echo in the chamber, bounced off his walls like they had purposefully closed their ears to it, “when’s he getting back from the nether?”

Schlatt’s voice was raspy, roughened from disuse and scraggy, almost in the same manner as his hair. Even so, he spoke with a quiet smooth ease, practiced and disturbingly near gentle, like he hadn’t been keeping up some strange silent ritual for what amounted to nearly two days. Tommy wanted to strangle him, but he stomped down on his reaction with all the force he could, pushing his stiff hands down to fall to his sides. It was a strange impulse, reactionary and reckless in a way that he no longer knew if he would ever identify with again. 

“What?”

To his credit, his voice was remarkably steady as he spoke, lacking the tense anxiety that suddenly rocketed up to his throat. He didn’t even sound choked up, since he quickly managed to coax his voice to what he assumed was his neutral irritation. But for all his efforts, Schlatt seemed undeterred, tilting the half-full bottle of water in his fingertips like an old hourglass. 

“You heard me,” the ram-horned man drawled, low and calm, “when is he getting back? Only so much shit someone can do there, right? Not that I’d be worried, he’s been through too much crap to die to a stupid magma cube.”

Schlatt scrunched up his face, ran a heavy hand over his scruff of a beard. His back was pressed once again to the farthest wall adjacent to the bars, and he wasn’t even making eye contact. And yet, Tommy suddenly felt flayed open, shot right where he hadn’t been expecting it. How had Schlatt even known? More importantly, had he known the entire time? No, that wasn’t possible. Technoblade would have told him first. Tommy gritted his teeth, but he kept his expression carefully neutral, twisted it into near incredulity — or at least tried to. He suddenly wished he'd shared Wilbur's penchant for acting, back before it turned into something horrific. 

“You’re losing it down here,” he grumbled. 

“Maybe,” Schlatt agreed, faint, and something in his voice made Tommy think he believed it, "But not about this. A lot has changed about you, Tommy, but you’re still a pretty shitty liar.” 

The sentence would have been accompanied by a wry smile, a long time ago. A toothy grin pulled from hell itself, swathed in the souls of those trapped between its' wicked bones. But Schlatt didn't smile as he spoke, didn't smirk or sigh. He tapped a fingernail against the glass of the bottle, he made direct fucking eye contact, and he still managed to look exhausted. Tommy didn't reply. Schlatt looked almost like he'd been expecting it. 

"Can't believe he left you alone, either," Schlatt continued, almost distant; "I mean shit, doesn't seem like you were ready for it. Kind of hasty if you ask me." 

He didn't, but Schlatt knew that. Schlatt may have changed, but he hadn't lost his mind. Tommy pressed his tongue to the flat edge of his molars, bit down gently enough not to draw blood, but hard enough to silence his answering grumble. Schlatt was right, he was a bad liar, and he couldn't afford to be hasty. To his equal fortune and misfortune, Schlatt seemed surprisingly open to filling the space. An ill-fitting suit he hadn't donned in long enough that it no longer slid snugly over his shoulders.

“I think I liked it better when you shut up.”

Tommy’s voice was sharp, but he wasn’t sure if he meant it. The silence had been nearly oppressive, and as much as he hated their conversations, he had been growing antsy alone. It was likely only because of that that he hesitated, that he didn’t just bolt up the stairs and away. 

The silence returned. Tommy had to resist the urge to shift his weight from foot to foot as he trained his eye on Schlatt's water bottle — the only real, concrete reason he should even still be here. 

“You know what this kind of reminds me of?” Schlatt asked, as if Tommy had never spoken at all, “this reminds me of that one book… the one with the guy who eats people, y’know? They kept him in a cell for consultations, and this chick comes to visit and ask him about other crimes. He gives her advice in exchange for answers about other shit. Quid pro quo, that kind of thing.” 

It was the most Schlatt had spoken in a while, and of course it had to be about something that made Tommy’s skin crawl. 

“That’s a fucked up story,” Tommy replied, lacking the bite of venom he wished for, “what, is that a confession, big man?” 

Schlatt laughed. The sound was quiet, almost muffled, a direct contrast to the boom of the past. 

“Nah,” he chuffed, “too bloody for my taste — no pun intended.”

At last, he drained the remainder of the water in his bottle. He set it on the usual little ledge and took his usual steps back, and Tommy grabbed it with his usual speed. Usual, normal... strained. 

Tommy had a hunch that Schlatt was going to say one more thing. He wasn’t sure why that was enough to slow his steps. He wasn’t sure how he felt about being right, either. 

“You look like shit you know,” Schlatt called over his shoulder, “not that I’m any better. Try sleeping.”

Tommy scoffed, and he didn't bother dignifying it with a response. It didn't feel like a victory, but he didn't pretend it was one. 

He needed to take a walk. 

+

Schlatt didn’t know what he was talking about. 

Tommy tugged the leather of his strap tightly against his shoulder, dug his fingertips into the edge until his knuckles turned white. He’d grabbed his bag hastily as soon as he’d gotten topside, only stopping for a second to throw on a diamond chest plate and hook a sword to his side. To his credit though, he hadn’t done anything particularly reckless — Techno would be glad to hear that he hadn’t gone and punched another wall. 

It was mid-afternoon, perhaps a bit later, and the sun was still near the center of the sky as he quietly closed the door behind him. The crossbow at his back was heavy, almost grounding as he squinted up past the trees. He started off from their clearing, weaving quickly in-between trees and allowing his thoughts to run with the gentle breeze. 

He had time to fish, maybe. The river had become a place of solace for him now, somewhere the silence could fall instead into white noise, free of the pressures of forced solitude and strained absences. He could sit by it for hours — had, on the second day, when the buzzing had grown too loud and he needed a reminder of real lasting sound — and feel almost normal. He hadn't brought his fishing rod, but that was fine. He'd grown to be pretty resourceful, and although impractical, he really didn't want to go back for it now. He wasn't near boiling, but his skin felt too tight, and he wasn't certain he'd be able to keep his level calm if he caught another glimpse of the door. 

He ran bandaged palms over his sleeves, brushed off a few stray leaves that had caught on the fabric. His white undershirt was permanently stained a bit near the cuffs, but that was fine. All things considered, he was more impressed that his clothes were still functional. He wasn't certain what he'd do once they weren't — maybe he'd try and do what Technoblade did and patch up the holes with streaks of spider's silk, almost like the bandages. On the other hand, considering the mess he'd made the first time, he could count all sorts of ways that he'd only make matters worse.

He broke abruptly from the treeline where it met the riverbank, and with it came the familiar rush of bubbling sound that was enough to blot out the distant buzz of old anger and quiet upset. Relief, Tommy had come to realize, came often in the strangest of forms. He glanced around perfunctorily, but there was no sign of any wayward mobs. Not even a distant zombie hiding beneath the leaves for sparing cover. It looked so peaceful that it almost ached, and Tommy wondered faintly when that had become his baseline. Probably somewhere along the lines of his exile, if he was being frank with himself. The unpleasant memory stung like an old injury that got a bit too cold, so he shook it off in hopes of getting it to fall away from his mind again. 

As he bent down with his weight on one knee, he examined the flow of the river. He couldn't see any fish, but that was alright. The plan — loose as it had been — was only for the sake of having it. Tommy settled by the side, uncaring of the sand that snuck into his shoes. He pressed his bag close to his legs and stared up at the rolling of the clouds, and he didn't bother rolling up his pantlegs. He didn't plan to actually wade into the water. On the other side of the river, he spotted a small yellow lump, hanging from one of the branches. From it, a small shadow emerged, striped in perfect lines of black and yellow. 

Was that…?

("Wh — pfft — Tubbo, what the hell are you doing, big man?" 

Tubbo glanced up at him once, then twice, like he hadn't noticed Tommy had been walking up to him at all. He waved him away almost aggressively, bent down on one knee with a hand outstretched to something Tommy couldn't quite see. 

"You're scaring the bees, Tommy!" Tubbo admonished, like Tommy should have known. 

"The fucking what?" 

Tommy couldn't help his snort, but Tubbo looked nearly affronted, and he found out why a moment later. He watched as a little yellow bug flew right out of his reach, and he flinched back a bit as it flew by his ear. He hated the buzzing bit — the bees themselves were fine, but it always made him fucking paranoid.

Even so, Tubbo's irritated expression was enough to make him sigh, to press his palms flat against open air. 

"Let's go look for a hive," he suggested, as if that wasn't a terrible idea bound to give them a hell's worth of stings. Tubbo wouldn't shut up about it otherwise, he reasoned. Better to get it out of the way now. 

And if Tubbo's answering grin was enough to make Tommy look a little past dusk, hey, he'd never claimed to be a bad friend.)

Tommy blinked, and the vision that haunted him faded into the background, drowned out by the rush of water against the stones. But even as it vanished into the air, the little hive remained. Bees and all. 

Maybe grabbing honey wouldn't be a bad idea, he thought, as a gift for Technoblade when he returned. Tubbo would certainly approve, he was certain. He'd always been so sure of honey's status as the perfect gift back when he'd been able to keep his bees in peace. Versatile, non-perishable, and delicious. 

So was that why..?

("I found bees in the office, once.") 

...

In hindsight, he just hadn't been focused. It was his fault, it had to be. He only barely heard it, distracted as he was. Not to mention that the sound was very nearly drowned out by the rapid speed of the water lapping against the sand.

The hiss processed a second too slow to run.

Tommy turned, tugged his bag into his arms on muscle memory alone as his heart dropped into fucking bedrock. He was just in time to catch a glimpse of flickering, blinking green, a warped frowning face with sparks of mindless rage behind the eyes. Just like it had before, months ago, a flash of horrific green preceded disaster, a silent footman of the four horsemen. 

For the second time in Tommy's blur of a recent memory, everything erupted into smears of blinding, shattering orange and horrific, wretched red, and all he could think was — was —

God, he should have just built the fucking fence.

-----

+

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Notes:

Detailed Summary:

Tommy wakes up three days after Technoblade went into the nether, stirred by a terrible nightmare. He goes to train to clear his head, a habit he received from Techno over their months together. He feeds Schlatt, who has been keeping up a strange silent treatment for that time, finally breaking his silence to reveal that he knew where Techno was the entire time. (So it seems, anyway.)

Tommy leaves to sit by the river and blow off a bit of steam, even taking a moment to reminisce about bees and his old friends, but his short-lived peace is quite literally blown to pieces by a passing creeper.