Work Text:
“Hey Toms,” Tubbo called to the tall, blonde figure in-front of him.
“Oh! Tubbo! Bee boy!” Tommys words stumbled over each other as they spewed out his mouth, running lopsidedly towards the grinning brunette. He held his arms out as an invitation, and Tubbo tumbled into them, smiling against his long-standing best friend, “How’s it going?”
“Im doing good, big man!” A heavy blanket of nostalgia settled across his shoulders, both a comfort and a constraint (for it locked him to the past, yet also provided him a rare glimpse at the childhood he so longed for, despite never realising it.)
There was a best of silence, as Tommy quietly appraised him, a glint shadowed in his eyes that set the dark-headed boy on edge.
“Been a while,” Tommy burst the settled bubble of quiet, “since I’ve seen you, that is….” a quiet, accusing you never visited me was tacked on the end of the sentence (No one heard it.)
Tubbo tilted his head in, a questioning look about his person,
“What- eh?” His words felt like chalk in his mouth, as confusion overtook the murmur of his thoughts. He’d seen Tommy only the day before, right? His memory, despite not being the best, wasn’t that bad.
Tommy peered back with mirrored perplexity - Tubbo obviously hadn’t heard him, or didn't know what he meant…or both? Now they really were both as bewildered as each other.
Tubbo blinked owlishly at the other. Out of the corner of his vision, he unconsciously noted a figure, blurring in and out of reality - he didn’t truly recognise it as a figure, not till it approached Tommy, Tommy who was no longer a cohesive figure, but a mess of red, crumpled as a tin can, and lying in hateful contrast to the perfectly nostalgic environment surrounding them.
And the figure, the devastatingly tall figure that stood as a towering force, proffered a hand, offering a choice, something he hadn't had for a long time, that left his mind tripping over itself, and his world tilting beneath his feet - all accented with vivid red in disdainfully mesmerising patterns with equally as neon green.
His bandaged mind fell to pieces, and Tubbo questioned the deity who presided over his life, asked which god could be so egotistical, so as to enjoy the dying pleas of children?
The green offered the answer, of course,
Dream.
Dream had placed them in the firing line under guise of comedy, and he, Tubbo, had fallen for the joke and become the punchline all in one; he had exercised the only power he’d ever had, in order to rid himself of his one, long-standing friend, only to forget all about him in the punishment he allowed.
Tommy had always been there for him; His isolation in exile had led him to yearn for any human contact, but Tubbo in particular - begged for a compass, a compass that would always point towards Tubbo, just to remember the chocolate-haired boy, no matter how dire his situation became - a situation that was all too horrifyingly visible in the degradation of his writing and coherency; neat handwriting, with a hint of hysteria, became jumbled scribbles that barely resembled words, hands unused to naught but mining and re-mining for the same gear, day in, day out.
Dream had tortured Tommy to a shell of his sunshine-bringing self, and Tubbo had ignored it in favour of the heady bliss of power.
Tommy’s invitations, the ones never received - stopped by the post-man, yet believed to have been simply ignored, were detailed in painful depth.
They truly shattered Tubbo’s fragile web of hope to nothingness.
Tommy’s desperate, hidden notes, compiled to the diary that he now clutched like a lifeline, exposed the blondes inner monologue, one of increasing despair and emptiness.
Tubbo had returned Tommy’s plea for help, for peace and security amongst friends, with a banishment order, a banishment order to hell on earth which drove him to lengths that he wished he didn’t have to read, envision.
Tommy, the boy who looked out for everyone he could, who refused to show anything but love and kindness towards those in his life, yet was always rebutted with harsh words and biting remarks of “selfish child” that stung where no one could see… and Tubbo had abandoned him as soon as he saw Toms as no longer useful….Tubbo had cast him aside, and his hollowed mind now grappled with this fact.
At the end of the day, the folded every-which-way body, once belonging to the only person who truly had been innocent all along, bled out guilt - It was entirely down to Tubbo’s actions, he was the final nail in the coffin.
And, by god, he’d never forgive himself.