Chapter Text
She stares at the letter laying innocently at her desk, neatly tucked under her ink bottle, with a sky blue wax seal embedded in the opening of the letter, a bouquet of flowers laying beside it. In the bottom-left corner of the mail was a name written in a shaky cursive. Her name.
To: Cloudy.
The last time a mail had found it’s way to her, it was back at her childhood bedroom, at her nightstand. A letter of farewell from her parents, who had abandoned and left the house to her as they find their way to freedom where there isn’t a child in the picture. Back then, she was just 10 years old, wondering why her parents hadn’t come back from the supposed two day work shift. Though this time, an 18-year-old is now standing infront of her desk, watching the mail lay there innocently, a familiar dread making it’s way to her stomach as she clenches her fists and tells herself, ‘it is just a prank.’
A cruel prank.
She opens the letter anyways.
my beloved mentor, my favourite sister,
aolani is a befitting name, for somebody as heavenly as you were,
that held a thousand years of knowledge into mind,
and our bond that fate had designed.
It hasn’t been at the end yet and she already broke.
Falling to her knees, she makes sure her tears does not stain the letter as she weeps silently, gripping the paper intensely but making sure it doesn’t rip. She already knows how this will end, had lived through it before, had known even before this moment came that this ending is one she cannot overturn. Even as her gift graced her with this vision a million times over, no amount of knowing can stop an event that was doomed to happen, not when the people in it had already resigned to their fates.
Thus now she kneels, trembling in the same grief she had held before, wishing for the words divert from their original purpose and rewrite itself to assure her that this isn’t happening, that none of this is happening, that she had succeeded in saving a life that ended without a scream, their final words uttered in this fragile paper.
“Aolani means heavenly cloud in hawaiian,” she remembers telling him one day, when he had asked about her name, “Quite ironic, how my parents named me something beautiful and left me in ruin.” It was a quite afternoon, she realizes. The distant sound of shouting and conversations outside their club being the background noise of their current activity.
“Ruins can be beautiful too, y’know,” he had retorted, not looking up from the book he was reading—The Story of Icarus, the headers read—and flipped a page over. “I mean, look at abandoned houses and castles; the green of mother nature taking back what was hers, even when it wasn’t built by her own hands.”
She had teased him that he sounded like Technoblade—Student Council Vice President, their campus’ best swordsman and fencer, Tommy’s eldest brother—to which she recieved a slurry of curses and one ‘I’m cooler than him!’, which had made her laugh.
you looked my way and saw something worth saving,
while others had turned away and thought of nothing,
you looked at me like i was something to be worth keeping,
like i was someone worth keeping.
“How foolish,” she rasps, still shaking yet no longer crying, “For you to think you weren’t worth it.”
It was truly foolish of him to think of that, he was worth more than what he had been forced to believe. Worth more than what was taken from him by that monster, who had looked at Tommy and decided that he simply musn’t shine, taking the youth out of him and stomped it down to the dirt and told him, “You’re worth less than a rat starved to death.”
The nights she had spent up gathering evidence after evidence, interviews from those that had suffered the same fate as him, compiling each data she had found into a document and finding even more evidence that contradicted that damned camp’s description and their actual work. Digging up old court cases and allegations buried by the same system that preaches it’s justice as it turns blind the moment bribery is involved.
All of it was worth it. Every single one of it.
‘While others had turned away and thought of nothing’
How many times had he walked up to the front desk and marched into the principal’s officer, begging for his (and many others) voices to be heard? How many times had he pleaded the staff and faculty and they all turned away, not wanting to risk their jobs if it meant getting paid? How many students had been silenced in favour of avoiding a scandal they couldn’t even dare to utter?
How much more would befall the same fate, if she fails this promise?
Because you were someone worth keeping, she longed to tell him, but she can’t now, not when he’s—
No.
not once did you look at me in anger,
even when i was stumbling into the quiet abode of yours,
instead, you offered me an ink and paper,
and said, “write your mind, let’s hear that loudness of yours.”
‘Why’, she asks, she pleads, ‘would I be mad at you, when my abode was made with the safety and warmth I lacked? The same safety and warmth you’ve looked for since that day?’
She picks herself up and walks over to the nearest possible couch, flopping down and lying in her side. She looks at the window and sees two birds chirping, having a conversation amongst themselves, the rays of the morning sun peeking through the window, the leaves descend from their place on the branches and lands softly at the waiting grass below the trees, and—she wishes, to whatever God still dares to listen—hopes that Tommy’s fall was as elegant and soft as the leaves were.
blue hyacinths, irises, and white chrysanthemums,
these flowers reminds me of you,
it’s why the bouquet in your desk is filled with them,
as it is my final gratitude.
She scrambled upright to take the bouquet from her desk and smelled it, hoping to find traces of Tommy’s perfume that always smelled like the rainforest— a stark contrast to what he is —yet all she could smell was the faint fragrance of the flowers. She bit back a sob and opted to study the bouquet carefully.
It was filled with irises, blue hyacinths, and white chrysanthemum.
Blue hyacinths represent constancy— a reflection on how Tommy found solid ground in her little club, where nothing really changes except the conversations that starts but never ends unless they prompted it to. Where the quiet doesn’t mean it is silent, but rather a sense of serenity that combats their school’s chaos.
Irises represents a lot— can represent faith and valor; both he had entrusted upon her after two months of him keeping his guards up. She can’t blame him, trust can so easily be broken like fragile glass, like a thread against a scissor. Though it can also represent wisdom and friendship; both she had offered to him, not directly, but through asking his thoughts and offering him a place here in the stillness, in this club.
White chrysanthemums represents the truth— something she had always told, had never covered it in honey nor sugarcoated it. She had always told the truth the way it was shown to her; ugly, devastating, beautiful. Where everybody else would’ve tried to blunt the blow, she refused to do so and instead opted into telling it, no matter the harsheness of it.
She fights back the tears. Ignoring the lump in her throat.
you remind me of the moon sometimes,
high up in the sky, my guiding light,
in the darkness that is my life,
you shone upon the roads, that lead me to you
But the moon only reflects the light of the sun, and the sun has always been Tommy. Bright, burning, clear in summer skies and through the window in her club. In the absence of that light, only a lone moon overlooks a planet decaying—because what is Mike, if not Tommy’s Earth?—as they both mourn the loss of the light, their light.
She starts crying again when she realizes how devastated Mike would be once he receives his own letter, handcrafted from Tommy’s hand that are now dead.
You were our guiding light, just as much as we were to you.
you’re like if space was compressed and compiled into a singularity
that happens to be you, cloudy
your abode is like the nebula
a graveyard for a lone star that once shone
Perhaps teaching him about the cosmos was a mistake, if only to save herself from feeling this absolute devastation from Tommy’s letter— Tommy’s mind —yet she cannot find herself to feel truly regretful of it.
“Nebulas aren’t exactly a graveyard of stars,” she corrects him, voice gentle as it was and lacking any anger nor disappointment, just patience that she always had, “it may sound like it, yes, but they were made from the explosion of a dying star, not an already dead one. Think of it like a phoenix, where the ashes marks not the death of the bird, but rather it’s rebirth.”
Yet there came no responses of a boy with star in his eyes and asking for more information about it, nor will there be quick movements of opening a page on his journal and write what he had learned. There won’t be a boy who’ll jump straight into Mike’s arms and parrots to him what she had told, only the silence accompanies her in this moment and she hated it.
when you talk to them, please do not be mad,
they did not know of the suffering i had,
kept in the dark from what had transpired,
and only now— through these ink stains—the truth shall be found
Perhaps she was more predictable than she thought. Afterall, marching up to his family’s door and demanding why they never realized the sheer difference in how Tommy behaved is exactly what she wanted to do. He knows—even in death—that she’ll screams and yell and sob and ask why, would ask why they failed him this badly that death was his only escape from this nightmare. Would ask why they never wondered the details about this camp, even when they should’ve gotten a reminder 5 days before the supposed camp, why never got an email regarding any information about it.
Cloudy briefly wonders about his classmates and their families too. Were they on the same page? Had they known and did nothing about it? Had they also been clueless until they were confessed to by their own children? She sincerely hopes that they knew what had happened on that camp, hoped that they were angry like her and filed a formal complaint to the principal.
(She also hoped that they did something about it after they found out, she cannot stomach the idea of parents knowing what had transpired and did nothing—maybe even encouraging it—about it.)
She wished nothing more but to knock some sense to them, to tell them everything, to ask why didn’t they try to save him— But it’s also hypocritical of her, when all she did was watch him spiral into the abyss, barely helping him.
and only now— through these ink stains—the truth shall be found
She’ll make sure of it. She’ll make sure that Dream—advisor, murderer—is exposed to be a fraud and a danger to children, will make sure the camp also faces their own consequences. She’ll drill the spear of justice through Dream and the camp’s heart and leave both to rot, the same way they had done to Tommy’s classroom. She’ll drag them through the mud and ensure their name is to be said as a warning for both the clueless and perpertrators.
i apologize for breaching the calm quiet,
i apologize for making my problems be yours to deal with,
thank you for teaching me in my final moments,
farewell, let’s be siblings in our next life
“Don’t,” she sobs, bringing her knees close to her chest, “Don’t ever apologize, ever again. You were always— always welcome here. And even if you kept this problem from me, I’d find out anyways, because you were so easy to read, Toms.”
He was, and that was the devastating part; It was plainly obvious that something happened to him and others, their attempt at hiding their discomfort can be considered futile due to how jittery and easily startled they could get. The way half of them flinches at the mention of the camp and Dream. It was obvious in the way Tommy always stays close to Cloudy on bad days, even going as far as to try and convince both his brothers (despite their busy schedule) to come with him to the club.
Techno and Wilbur only drops him off on her club’s door, never going in as they were in a rush.
She sometimes hoped they did.
“Why did you have to go?” She asks in the air, hoping the remnants of her little brother still remains to listen, “You didn’t have to wait for the next life— we can be siblings here, right now.”
But it’s already too late, the gates had opened and the angels had welcomed a soul home.
(She prays he had a peaceful passing, a quiet rest.)
She doesn’t know how long she stayed there, in her couch, dried tears and ringing ears, but what she does know is that it was long enough that the morning rays of sunlight from her window had turned a familiar orange— the sunset —when Mike bursts through the door and frantically looked around trying to find her. When he spotted her, he lets out the biggest sigh of relief she had seen him do and started walking towards her.
“Do you happen to know where Tommy hid his safe?” He asked, straight to the point and no little chit-chat. That did got her to stand up, carrying herself through her drain energy to walk towards her desk.
“Hello— and yes, I do,” She circles around the desk as she put the bouquet to open the top drawer and pull out her keys, “I actually displayed it on the the shelf right next to the couch I was laying on.”
“Oh.”
She walks over to where the shelf was and latched the key into the keyhole, twisted it, and pulled the glass door to take out the safe and put it in the coffee table. She and Mike sat on the couch and stared at it. Now that she’s properly looking at the safe, it was a rather simple, with a keypad as it’s security. There was nothing else interesting about it’s design, but it works wonders because how the fuck had that not been stolen yet?? The fuck???
“Toms included a code in my poem,” At that, he showed her his poem, quickly reading over the morse code because she doesn’t think she can handle reading mike’s poem. “You think—”
“0409,” She says, quickly grabbing the safe and inputting the code. The safe pinged and let out a hiss as it’s door opened, revealing a collection of trinkets as well as letters tied to them. Mike lets out a small gasp while she winces, she takes one of the letters and carefully reads the recipient.
To: Wilbur
These are letters for his family and friends.
She starts glaring at the floor, willing herself not to cry infront of a teen who was already having another breakdown. Instead, she thinks about the reaction of his family, of what they’ll think once they sit in their home and read the poems handcrafted and willed into existence by their youngest, who meant the world to them. She thinks of what Miss Kristin would think, would react, if she opens her letter and finds a farewell instead of a hello.
She feels a weight on her shoulder, and pulls the other boy closer as his sobs echoes through their quiet abode as she stares distantly at the opened safe and reading through every recipient’s name—Ranboo, Tubbo, Techno, Wilbur, Mom, Dad—and whispers an early apology in the wind.
She belatedly realizes that the passcode was his birthday, and starts crying too.
Neither of them wanted to deliver to the Crafts’ household their letters, not wanting to look them in the eyes and lie that everything is alright with their youngest, but in the end, it was Mike who volunteered to deliver their letters. He didn’t want to face Ranboo and Tubbo considering the bad blood between the duo and him.
So here she is right now, waiting at the spot she had called the two over after she attached a note in their locker that just said the location. Which she now realized is quite ominous, but it’s been a very hectic week for her so she couldn’t be bothered to care.
Currently, she is watching the fishes swim at the bottom of their school’s fountain, marvelling at the simple life they live. The surroudings lacked the usual crowd that always comes whenever lunch strikes, thus all she could hear were faraway conversations and the sound of wind breezing through the trees. She sighs and looked at the letters she’s currently holding, color-coded with white and green respectively.
“Hey!” She hears someone shout behind her, and turned to see both Ranboo and Tubbo approaching, both of them holding the paper that she attached to their lockers earlier. She notices that Ranboo seem to be fidgeting—nervous, she guesses—and Tubbo seemed a bit surprised to see her here, “Is there something you need?”
She shook her head and hands them their letters wordlessly. She watches as the two took them and reads their names in the percipient line. Tubbo looked up at her in confusion while Ranboo continues staring at his letter.
“Read them once you’re either home or alone,” She tells the two, “Or both. You’ll need it.” She doesn’t waste any more time and starts walking away from the two, not sparing a glance at them as she blinks away the tears that threaten to fall.
“I’m sorry for what is about to come.” She says loud enough for the two to hear, and vanishes into the crowd.