Chapter Text
Tommy was spiraling.
He could hardly think through the thick fog in his head, the all-encompassing what the fuck what the fuck what the fuck that had been on loop in his mind ever since he had woken up in the past with a mysterious voice of a woman saying "Do good with your second chance" in his ears. He was staring at the sleeping nation of L'Manberg, obsidian walls high and protecting just as much as they were isolating them in the middle of the night.
Over the years, he'd slowly forgotten what it had looked like before it had been blown to smithereens (twice). There were craters even now, visible from where he was standing atop a lonely hill in the distance. He couldn't remember who had caused those first explosions anymore.
L'Manberg – his L'Manberg – was beautiful at night, even though it lacked the pretty lanterns Fundy would install high up in the air in the future. It was more town than city still, though he knew that it would rapidly grow over the course of time. There was no ugly fucking overgrown obsidian grid above it, for starters. He'd run to get out of the town — to get out of the streets that had so much history strewn atop them with no one even knowing.
History that had been erased.
Because someone had given Tommy — Thomas Careful Danger Kraken Innit, of all fucking people — a chance at a do-over.
Tommy's breathing was slowly starting to get out of control again as he looked out over the nation he'd given his life for. The nation he'd been exiled from twice, that he had fought his way back to from the depths of Pogtopia and the horrors of his exile, that he had seen burnt and destroyed time and time again. He had lost so much over this country and its people.
(And he would do it all again in a heartbeat, but admitting that hurt because apparently, he was the only one.)
What was he doing here? He had killed himself, for Prime's sake, he'd torn Punz and Dream and their playing at being gods out of the world alongside himself. Why was he alive again? Had he not suffered through enough pain yet? Was he ever going to find peace in this cursed place that dug its claws into him and wouldn't let him go?
How was he here? Why was he here?
Do good with your second chance.
Tommy didn't want to do this anymore. He had seen all the horrors life had to offer, been murdered and ripped back into life by unnatural forces not once, not twice, but thrice at this point. He was alone, alone in a past he could barely think about without bursting into tears, with the weight of the future on his shoulders and no idea where to go, no guidance, nothing.
All he knew was that he wasn't dead. Because he'd seen the afterlife and beyond it. And he was at the point of missing it, because at least he didn't have to deal with this bullshit while he was dead.
Had he been wrong? About... everything? He'd pretty firmly believed that the world was better off without him. That it would thrive once he was gone and the threat of Dream and Punz with him. That Tubbo could finally live a quiet life now that he wasn't there to constantly poison it anymore. Had he been entirely wrong? Because he was here now, hyperventilating under a starred sky, the words of an unknown entity ringing in his ears over and over.
Do good with your second chance.
Tommy couldn't believe it. He just couldn't. He was so far back in time that the final control room hadn't happened yet. So far back that Wilbur still had passion for this country. So far back that he still had his discs, that Tubbo didn't have burn scars and was still blond for fuck's sake, that the server was devoid of any traces of Technoblade or Quackity or Schlatt. The Eggpire was only starting to establish itself as a neutral party, simply observing the conflict between L'Manberg and the Greater Server.
Dream had no idea what the Book of Revival even was.
Cold fear coursed through Tommy's veins as if his blood was turning to ice at the mere thought. He could never let Dream get his hands on that book, ever again. Or anyone else for that matter. He had to find it and destroy it. And make sure that it never resurfaced again.
His heart raced wildly in his chest as he settled into the grass, lying flat on the ground in a futile attempt to calm himself. It was so quiet out here, save for his ragged breathing that wouldn't slow. His mind was tumbling into disarray and he didn't know how to stop it from doing so. This was ludicrous. He was back in time, back where it all started.
In his uniform's jacket, his discs weighed more than they should. He had never felt more and yet less attached to them. His discs. The stupid fucking discs that he had lost so much for, that he'd killed and waged war and destroyed friendships for.
He'd have to get rid of them, that much he knew. No matter how much it felt like tearing out a piece of his soul, they were a weakness that he knew all too well would be taken advantage of.
He didn't want to let go of them again.
They meant so much more than just attachment. They were listening to music with Tubbo, looking out over the sunset of the server. They were a symbol of his belonging to this world, to this server. A token that meant he had dwelled and lived and loved here.
That he was... that he had existed.
And that he had fought.
The discs were his greatest victories and his biggest losses. Without them, he felt like he was next to nothing. But he had learned over and over again that they had never been and would never be nearly as precious as the one who had helped him fight for them. The person who he connected with them in all the good and the bad ways.
Tubbo.
Why am I here? Tommy wanted to wail. He wanted to curl up and sob. He wanted to rest. Why am I here?
Do good with your second chance.
Was that all the guidance he'd get?
He closed his eyes and wished there'd been a Church Prime in this time. Somewhere where he could pray and wash his trembling hands free of the feeling of blood that he could never quite get to go away. All he had right now was the path that had led him up here. The only connection to a god that had never cared to answer his questions. Maybe Tubbo had been right to believe that there were no gods or deities out there, that there was nothing but the people trying to do their best in a world that often only offered the very worst.
Tommy felt selfish for it, but he already missed Tubbo so much that he thought it would kill him. He had wanted him to live a better life without Tommy in it. But when they were apart, it felt like the worst kind of torture.
Though Tubbo was here, technically speaking. Fourteen instead of nineteen, not nearly as scarred or as broken, but still Tubbo. And yet Tommy had lost his best friend, forever.
Because even as he sat on the ground and tried his hardest not to start crying, he knew that he couldn't let the future play out like he had witnessed it before. He could save L'Manberg. He could save everyone. He could change the course of history as he knew it and the world would be none the wiser.
Tommy was grieving everything he knew because he knew that nothing would ever be the same, ever again.
He would make sure of that.
Sunrise saw him with blood on his hands and he was just barely glad it was his own.
After his breakdown was finalized, he crawled into L'Manberg's sewers in search of the Egg's red vines and had a lovely conversation with them because he was just not ready to talk to actual human beings. The vines told him about glory days long gone, armies and monsters and all these wonderful stories he heard in its hisses as it tried to capture him for itself. He still had absolutely no idea why he was immune to its call.
Maybe it was because he was the seemingly only person on this cursed server who actually believed in Prime.
The dead of night had become his friend in the months he spent wandering the world as invisibly as he always wished he could be. He'd learnt to move without a sound, the soles of his boots barely grazing the ground as he went. In the darkness, he was alone but not lonely; for once, he felt like the world was his again, like it had been when he'd been young and dreaming of a bright future.
He and Tubbo should've run away when they still had the chance. They should've taken one long look at Wilbur's declining mental state and booked it to the hills. They should've left and never come back, but they chose to stay. Something about this server just refused to let go of them, it seemed.
Now Tubbo was gone. His Tubbo, anyway. He was alone with his dead dreams.
Tommy wandered across his nation, searching for one of many not-yet historical places. The final control room seemed so unassuming from the outside looking in. He entered and debated disconnecting the redstone contraption that would reveal Dream and his people, just for fun. He didn't really know what to do with the room.
Wilbur had despised Eret for years to come even where Tommy had long forgiven them for their betrayal. But the betrayal had given them ground to grow, or at least Tommy remembered it was the first time he had taken a step back and tried a slightly more calm approach to the war. He could use it to explain the rapid change in his personality that for sure at least Tubbo would notice. As much as Tommy already knew he'd try to isolate himself from his people, they'd take notice. They were far from stupid, after all.
He didn’t remember what he’d been like at fourteen anymore.
He'd have to look after Fundy a bit more. And dye his uniform the proper deep blue instead of this pastel bullshit Wilbur thought was so cute on him. He'd have to do a lot of things differently.
The final control room would give him an adequate excuse to avoid Dream and Punz, too. But the thought of dying made everything inside of him curl and shrivel. The pure dread that overtook him was enough to have him reconsidering, the memory of the void too painful and fresh in his mind.
Tommy made his decision. Then he hit a wall again.
Because he had no fucking idea how redstone worked. How did that contraption go from button pushed to people popping out of walls? He looked at the ceiling in a silent cry for help, and per usual, no entity answered.
Was he supposed to just let Dream axe him? Seriously? He could take one for the team, theoretically, even though it would probably make his issues about a gazillion times worse. He had to end the war, and he ended it after they lost their first canon lives. After too many battles were fought and too much blood was spilled that even fourteen-year-old him saw that this horror had to end.
Battles. Shit, he almost forgot about that; he had to build up his reputation as L'Manberg's vice president. Those had been his glory days. Tommy had always loved the adrenaline of a good fight. Back then, it had felt like leading troops was what he'd been born for.
Nowadays, he was sick and tired of fighting. But he'd summon the will to get through what was necessary. He would have to play the long game in so many different ways. He'd have to become more politically active than he'd ever been before, to steer Wilbur back on the right path of maybe just fucking resigning if he hated being president so much.
He'd have to be a plethora of things he'd never been, actually – cunning, and callous, and maybe even cruel. He didn't know another way to survive this. So he'd have to become smarter than anyone thought him capable of, slyer than his enemies, steady on his path.
Like he thought Wilbur was, once upon a time when to him, Wilbur had hung the stars and the moon. He'd have to become the person he had needed when he was younger, a protector from the evil that took root deep in the heart of this server.
So he scouted; because Tommy wasn't redstone-savvy or smart, but he knew how to be sneaky.
Digging himself a little tunnel out of L'Manberg was easy even though his hands were painfully free of the hard callouses all the fighting would give them in the future. He stuck to the shadows once he got to the surface beyond the walls and snuck out into the Greater Server, treading the Prime Path, looking around at all the builds that would be torn down in the future, all the places he knew would be the ground for structures in his version of the future. How far did the snowball effect go? Were none of those things going to get built again simply because he was here?
He didn't know; and to be honest, Tommy didn't really care. He slipped into his old dirt hut, burrowed into a hill, no flowers planted before it yet – because he had not seen death up until this point, not even once. It didn't take him long to find a shovel lying around and dig into the tunnels Dream built underneath his house during the first disc wars.
Tommy couldn't shake the goosebumps that bloomed all over his skin as he dropped down into the dark tunnel and lit himself a torch. A boat was set down a couple blocks before him, and he sat in it and stuck the torch into the holder for it, taking up the paddles.
Boats on ice were fun, but not fun enough to distract him from the eeriness of the sheer size of Dream's tunnel system. Tommy tried counting the blocks he whizzed by, but he gave it up pretty instantly, counting the spare torches Dream put on the wall instead. He could guess the distance he was putting behind him and his house by those, and he was pretty sure the tunnel headed all the way to the community house.
A foreign memory flickered before his eyes, something he'd seen in the void of his afterlife. Dream's laughter echoed in his ears, happier, younger. Tommy used the rows of the boat to stop it in its tracks before he could smack into the end of the tunnel.
He sat in the boat for a moment and gripped the rows tightly enough to make his fingers go numb, something burning in his chest. His feelings about Dream were a raw wound that kept getting infected with these doubts about whether or not he was as bad as Tommy thought he was – wasn't he there for him in exile? Wasn't he just a victim of Tommy's chaos? Wasn't he, wasn't he, wasn't he–
Dream was not a good person. He was never a good person. The tunnel he was sitting in was enough proof of that. Exile was torture and he had taken way too long to see that and way too long to even begin to heal from it. And of course, he hadn't healed quite as well as he wanted to.
Seeing plains biomes still made him tense. Explosions were pretty common, so he'd gotten used to them in the moment they happened, but after they subsided was when they made him break down. Creeper holes ticked him off. Nether portals ticked him off. He felt downright crazy sometimes, which wasn't really helped by the fact that the only person he'd ever really told about how close to giving up Dream had driven him in Logstedshire had been Wilbur. And then Wilbur had just left.
It was for the best, Tommy knew as he got out of the boat and climbed up the makeshift ladder at the end of the tunnel. He opened the trapdoor at the top of it and peeked out, but the community house was dark and empty. Of course. They were guarding the walls, probably, not the community house.
He pulled himself out of the ground and closed the trapdoor carefully, looking around. Prime, he'd completely forgotten what this place had looked like before Dream had blown it up. And then pinned it on him. He had never really cared for this house, but he supposed in a way, it was to Dream and his friends what the hotdog van was to him. Home. A strange home, but home nontheless.
It was for the best that Wilbur had left this cursed server. He needed to heal, and no matter how much Tommy loathed it, he wasn't the best person to do that around by a long shot. He and Wilbur were a strange sort of family that held too many painful memories and bloodstains to ever be truly at peace as long as the other was around. But now...
Tommy fought the urge to burst into tears right there and then. Wilbur was still here. He wasn't dead yet. None of them were.
Which brought him back to his primary objective. Making sure that shit stayed like that.
He looked around in the room he was in – sure enough, there was a table with a map of the SMP on it. He walked over, halting shortly as the planks of the floor creaked under his boots, but then shook his head at himself. No one was here.
They hadn't been sly enough for spyfare back then, or just too proud in a way Dream never was. Tommy tried to not leave anything out of place as he rifled through the room, trying to find some plan for the redstone in the final control room. He ended up sneaking through two more rooms before he got to an office-looking space where finally, he found a layout sketch of the thing detailing how it worked.
It was Dream's handwriting. For some odd reason, that really didn't surprise him.
Tommy stuffed the plan into his jacket and tip-toed back to the trapdoor. He needed to get himself some invis. Soon. He would never, ever fucking admit it out loud, but he'd developed somewhat of an addiction problem with potions – being invisible was a relief he couldn't stop remembering as he climbed into the suffocating tunnel and speed-boated back to his house.
But he'd worry about that later. Actually, he'd worry about that when he got to it. His mind was running wild with ideas and panic and Prime, what if he forgot something? What if changing history was impossible and he was wasting his breath? What if, what if, what if–
Do good with your second chance, the voice echoed in his ears again. A firm reminder that he had to be brave even as he felt like collapsing.
The sky was just starting to turn grey when he got back to L'Manberg, and as he shoveled the tunnel under the walls closed and haphazardly hid it by strewing grass and weeds on top of it, his palms stung. Tommy looked, and blisters had formed on his soft hands and popped open, blood running over his palms.
Staring at it, he forced himself to take a deep breath.
He needed to be strong.
The Nether was unbearably hot as always, and Tommy felt conflicted about being there even more than he did usually.
He'd abandoned his uniform's navy jacket, left it in his room in the cabinet. No note, no nothing about where he was. He was pretty sure Wilbur would yell at him once he got back, like a lot, but he was too much on his shit right now to care. He hadn't slept after messing up the redstone in the final control room, instead opting for going straight to hell.
Literally.
He was standing knee deep in lava at the moment, looking for a nether fortress. Tommy loathed and loved this dimension at the same time – there were so many terrible memories here, but the heat and the monsters and the dark colors with the contrast of the bright, beautiful lava made something in his brain happy.
Techno had told him once that he thought Tommy was from the Nether. That he could smell it on him or something, like calling to like. It had been just about the only thing he'd had in common with the Blade.
As he looked up into the gloomy red darkness, he couldn't help but think that maybe that was the reason why the thought of dying here had always been so appealing to him. Came from there, died there. That sorta thing.
Tommy couldn't remember where he'd come from, anyway. One day he’d been no one and then he'd been himself. Tubbo had been by his side, and he'd participated in MCC with nothing to his name and come out a winner the other side, along with Philza, Techno and Wilbur. He'd followed Wilbur to SMP Earth, and was elated when Wilbur in turn followed him here.
And then they both died here. And just kept dying. And Wilbur made it out, but Tommy never did.
He took another sip from his fire resistance potion and kept wading through the shallow lava, aiming for the shore not too far from him. He was carrying a shitton of gold already, and the shiny hue of the equally as golden helmet on his head kept the piglins at peace with him, but he needed nether warts. He'd been gathering stuff for hours now, ender pearls, ancient debris, wither skulls. He wasn't even really sure what his goal was aside from getting what he needed for invis.
Tommy's eyes burned with sweat, his crudely made iron armor was weighing him down, and he was worn-out and tired from the emotional rollercoaster the last probably twelve hours had been for him. He had long lost his nether portal, but he didn't really care anyway. He had a compass, and once he got back to the Overworld one way or another, he would be able to find his way back home.
Something was keeping him here, in the fiery darkness of the Nether. He just couldn't figure out what it was.
He spotted the familiar hue of a fortress in the distance and let out an ecstatic laugh, his spirits lifting suddenly. In a burst of new energy, he lifted his legs out of the heavy lava and pulled out planks he'd made out of the strange wood the Nether offered. This dimension was warped and wrong, too hot and deadly, but Tommy loved it here. The bad memories weren't enough to keep him from admiring the lava.
Maybe it was still a little bit the wanton he'd felt when he'd first looked at it in exile. A leftover ghost of that pull he'd felt towards it. The echo of the pure ecstasy the mere thought of jumping had left on his tongue.
Tommy shook the memory off hard and quick, focusing on his goal. He needed to get up there, pronto.
He wasn't reckless enough to speedbridge over the lava, instead leaving himself enough time to build a nice staircase up to the top and looking out for blazes and ghasts and skeletons that might’ve shot his ass down. Once he was at the top, dark bricks firm beneath his feet, he sighed and pulled out his pickaxe, swinging at the ground. The top of the fortress was weirdly deserted – he hoped it hadn't been looted already.
Tommy pried a tiny hole in between the bricks with the first swing and punched through the ceiling with the next. In no time, he dropped down into the hall, pickaxe still drawn defensively.
Nothing. He turned in a circle and squinted, eyes adjusting to the darkness, but no sound of mobs rang out. The fortress really was deserted.
He narrowed his eyes at the end of the hallway and pulled out a torch, lighting it. The flickering light of the fire cast eerie shadows along the walls, illuminating the bars on every window. Tommy felt his heart pound in his chest as he walked towards the end of the hall, to the open room with stairs upwards and the lava well. He had a bad feeling about this fortress.
But he needed nether warts for his precious invis. His hand shook a little harder at the thought. It drove him forward even though his hackles rose when he entered the room.
What am I doing here? he asked himself, but the intense craving for invis wouldn't let his rationality get louder. Tommy crept through the room and up the stairs, careful not to make a sound in the weird silence, broken through by the occasional bubbling noise of the lava well. He peeked around the corner and found himself on an open path to the other tower of the fortress, fences to his sides.
He made to start jogging across the path, but then a flicker of purple in his peripheral vision distracted him. Tommy turned and looked, torch burning into the dark, and froze in place.
It was a Nether portal, fully intact. Not far from his bridge.
And on his bridge, he spotted five unmistakable people he would've never thought he'd see here today; Eret, George, Sapnap, Punz and Dream.
Oh, fuck.
Tommy dropped his torch and crushed the glowing embers under his boot, wishing he hadn't been an idiot and worn any other color than bright white with shining iron on top. He'd taken off his leggings for practicality, but stupidly left the rest on. It didn't matter now anyway.
He was too late.
Dream, up front, pointed at him from blocks and blocks away and yelled something intelligible. Tommy unfroze from his shock as his fight or flight instinct kicked in brutally, and he turned on his heel and started sprinting towards the other side of the fortress, away from his bridge back to where he came from, away from them.
What the fuck where they doing here? Tommy's mind ran wild as he leapt down the flight of stairs, holding onto the railing and grinding to a halt instantly upon seeing two patches of nether warts under the stairs up. Cursing wildly, he ripped out a bunch, stuffing them into his inventory with trembling hands, and then he was running again.
"Oh, Tommy!"
The sound of Dream's voice made everything inside of him freeze to ice. Tommy slid around a corner, driven forward by nothing but pure terror, and cursed again when he saw that the end of the hallway was open and leading towards what he assumed was a pool of lava. He weighed his options as he slowed to a halt again, skidding across the brick floor, and looked into his inventory.
"Tommy!"
He heard Dream before he saw him, the gleeful sing-song of his voice and the same sound of boots against bricks. As he turned, he saw them round the corner, decked out in netherite in a way that sort of buffered his fear for a moment. If only because he wanted to roll his eyes at how... pretentious all of them looked. Eret had their helmet down, her sunglasses perched on their nose.
Tommy had checked his communicator in hectic intervals throughout his stay in the Nether. None of L'Manberg had fallen to them. The final control room had failed due to his sabotage. So why was Eret with them anyway? And why were they here?
Sapnap threw his axe from one hand to another, a sardonic grin on his face. Jeez, he’d forgotten that this guy kind of used to be an asshole. "Kind of a dangerous place to be all alone, Tommy," he loudly mused. "Where are your revolutionary friends?"
He didn't let himself think about it any longer. Instead, Tommy just rolled his eyes and spoke his mind.
"My days, you need to get laid," he told Sapnap, and jumped into the abyss.
To be fair, he had a plan to it. He pulled out his last fire res potion mid jump and downed the contents of the bottle in one large gulp, switching it out for an ender pearl. As he plummeted towards the lava below, he twisted in the air and looked at the environment he was working with, trying to get his thoughts in order.
There was the fortress. There was his bridge. There was their nether portal. Tommy grinned as the rest of his half-baked plan slotted into place in his head. He could work with that.
He threw the ender pearl at his bridge as hard as he could – then he was in the lava.
Lava didn't feel liquid. It felt like swimming in dough. His movements were slow and all he saw was red for a split second. Then he teleported with a thwip and landed on top of his bridge. Everything spun for a moment, and he shook his head hard trying to keep himself balanced and threw a glance over his shoulder.
Dream and his companions were already after him. Tommy took one look at their bows and made a break for it, instinctively ducking and yelping when an arrow whizzed right over him where his head was a second ago. He was having trouble seeing through the droplets of lava that kept running into his eyes, and his unsteady balance slowed him down quite a bit, but he still sprinted as fast as he could, mind racing. He had a plan. He just didn't know how to make it work just yet.
The answer came to him a literal second before pain exploded in his calf.
Tommy screamed sharply, every alarm bell in his head ringing as he just about lost a quarter of his hearts. For a split second, as he stumbled and tipped to the side, over the edge of the bridge, he was back at the prison, and his own bloodcurdling screams echoed in his ears as he stretched a weak hand towards Dream, towering over him, and begged him to stop.
No.
He came back to himself when he started to fall, and he barely managed to twist and grab onto the edge of the bridge, arms straining as he let out a pained noise. When he looked down, he saw an arrow sticking out of his thigh, the flesh around it sizzling as it burnt. Enchanted bow. Tommy cursed himself for forgoing the goddamn iron leggings.
He looked up and found what he'd been looking for.
Tommy summoned all of the strength he didn't have and pulled himself up, his arms shaking as he stemmed himself over the edge of the bridge and swung his leg over it. Dream was just a couple feet away from him, axe drawn, the glint of the blade eliciting a very particular kind of panic in Tommy. He had slowed to a saunter, watching his every move. Tommy swore he could see him grin under his mask, but with his bad vision, it was hard to tell.
He pulled his now (at least outwardly) virtually useless leg onto the bridge with both hands and made a show of scrambling backwards, looking up at Dream with wide, frightened eyes. He'd never been much of an actor. It helped that his terror was incredibly fucking real.
Dream clicked his tongue. "Wonder what Wilbur will trade for you," he said, voice dropping to that specific tone he always assumed when taunting someone. "Do you think you're worth giving up his precious independence, Tommy? Or do you think if I made him choose between L'Manberg and you, he'd forsake you to protect that sham of a country?"
Well, that taunt felt empty knowing what he knew. Tommy still felt the ghost of blue against his hands. You're free now. Wilbur had been a multitude of flaws wrapped into a very peculiar fish-fucking, nation-exploding, sometimes manipulative person. But he'd been honest with Tommy those last couple of weeks. He'd been honest about L'Manberg. And everything he'd done, in a way, he'd done it all for Tommy.
His silence, of course, was taken as an answer. Dream laughed and stepped closer. Tommy saw movement out of the corner of his eye, saw the rest of them building the bridge out on the side so they could stand in front of him together. He scooted farther backwards, shaking.
"Tommy, please. I'd like to think that you're reasonable. Eret here has long realized that fighting for L'Manberg is a fruitless cause. Wilbur would give you up for that idiotic independence in a heartbeat and you know it."
He wouldn't. He'd rather blow the place to smithereens, actually.
"You can help us. We won't hurt you, I swear. What do you say?"
Sapnap was staring him down with cool disdain, but he offered him a hand.
He cleared his voice. It still came scratchy from underuse when he spoke.
"To your left."
To their credit, they all did look to the left. Precisely when the ghast that had been hovering closer and closer, as if eavesdropping on them, shrieked and spat a fireball right at them.
Tommy jumped to his feet in the commotion that ensued, reflexive screams, arrows being drawn to hit the fireball back towards the ghast, and threw the second ender pearl he had prepared for his escape – far over their heads, towards their portal. He caught George's eyes before he teleported away, and the guy looked slightly impressed by his maneuver, an amused smile on his lips as he gave him the barest of appreciative nods.
He reappeared in front of their portal and jumped into it, praying he'd land at the Hub or somewhere he recognized in the Overworld. Nether portals made him nauseous, and he closed his eyes as his stomach twisted, everything around him warping, ghast shrieks and yelling echoing in his ears as Dream and the rest of his entourage finally clocked what he was doing.
Cool air hit him and he blindly stumbled out of the portal. Fucking hell, the portal wasn't connected to the Overworld Hub's. It was night, he was in an oak forest, and he whirled around and pulled out his diamond pickaxe, the material already worn down from use. He swung it and buried it in the obsidian frame of the portal, destroying one block and therefore the entire thing.
He didn't pause, too terrified that they were going to find their way back here, and instead turned and started running again, blindly stumbling through the unfamiliar forest.
His leg hurt like hell. It was burning as if someone had dipped it in acid, and as he was debating over how serious the injury he sustained was, he pulled off his armor and slowed down a little. He didn't know where on the server he was, and he was afraid of making the arrow wound even worse.
But he was already limping horribly and gasping for air with every breath he took, chest heaving uncomfortably. He barely managed to get to the edge of the forest and then froze.
He was in Logstedshire.
The beach was untouched, no craters in the ground, no pillar towering over the land. It was raining, Tommy barely noticed, it was coming down hard, making it difficult to see.
He was still standing under a treetop, somewhat dry; the world was spinning. Tommy barely managed to conclude that it was blood loss that made him so weak. Oh, fuck. Was he going to die from that? That would suck.
He didn't know who had fired the shot. Would he lose his life to Dream once again if this arrow ended up killing him?
And in Logstedshire, too. He'd never wanted to return to this place again. He had wanted to die in it, before. He didn't now. He didn't know if he could take another step forward.
A twig snapped behind him and pure fear struck into his heart. He whirled, but it was just a skeleton.
For a second, he relaxed. Then he realized it was going to shoot him with the bow it was holding, and he scrambled to get his shield up.
His movements were too slow.
The skeleton's arrow hit his shoulder a second before he could get his shield out of his inventory.
Why in the fuck had he thought that taking his armor off was a good idea? So to not be weighed down?
Tommy stumbled back, the impact from the arrow forcing him backwards, out into the rain. His shoulder and leg screamed with pain, and he let out an accordingly ragged yell when he put weight on his bad leg. It almost gave out under him, but he stood standing, and held out his shield when the skeleton drew another arrow onto its bow.
He deflected them until its bones fell apart, hit by one of its own deflected arrows. Everything was spinning around him even harder now, and nausea crawled up in his throat. For a moment, he was almost certain he was going to die. And to be honest, Tommy had no idea if he was back to three canon lives, or if he only had one now.
A flicker of... something in the corner of his eye made him turn back towards the beach.
A woman stood on the beach, back turned towards him. She was as blurry as the rest of his sight, but Tommy felt the urge to go to her and talk to her. He stumbled forward, barely managing to drag himself through the mud that the rain was making of the ground, shaking maybe from the cold, maybe from a fever.
The woman turned around when he got closer. She had black hair and wore a purple dress that looked a bit like robes he'd expect a wizard to wear. Her sleeves were long enough to drag in the sand, and the flowy hem of her dress kept being caught in the wild waves of the ocean. Tommy dragged himself to her and collapsed to his knees at her feet.
He was burning. He felt like he was on fire, and simultaneously, he was shaking with cold. The ocean waves washed around him, the water liquid ice. He remembered waking up drowning in its depths. He still didn't know if he'd tried to end his miserable life in his sleep or if his sleepwalking self had just tried to go home.
Cold hands touched his burning skin. The woman bowed down to him and brushed her fingers over his temples gently, gifting him a sad smile. A guttural shiver went down his spine – he knew suddenly that he was in the presence of a powerful entity.
Lady Death. He was looking her right in the eyes.
"Am I going to die?" Tommy asked, voice slurring. He couldn't make out her features, but her expression registered in his brain regardless.
She shook her head. "No," she said. "You were never meant for death, Tommy."
He smiled, not really knowing why. She was the one who sent him here. He recognized her voice. "I don't know what that means."
"You'll know." His sight was too blurry. Her voice was coming from far, far away. "You need to get up."
A burst of energy went through him. He blinked the blur of his sight away. He was alone on the beach.
Tommy got up. He set down a crafting bench, pulled out an axe and went back into the forest. He found a fallen tree not too far from the edge of the woods and hacked two blocks off the log, placing them in his inventory. His leg and shoulder still hurt like hell, but he pulled through it. He wasn't about to disappoint the one that had given him this second chance.
He turned the wood into planks and fit them together into a boat, crudely crafted and barely stable, but he pushed it into the waves and waded into the ocean. The saltwater washed over the wound in his thigh and lit it aflame again, but he was almost glad for the pain. He needed to stay awake.
Tommy heaved himself into the boat and took up the paddles he'd made himself out of warped wood he'd still had in his inventory. He pushed against the waves and rowed out into the stormy ocean, leaving Logstedshire behind.
When he was out on the sea, he looked back. The beach looked so innocuous, beautiful even, already fading into the rain and the darkness. He imagined himself standing at the shore, staring after the boat disappearing on the horizon.
He wondered what Wilbur had felt.
Logstedshire vanished in the distance.
Tommy kept rowing, the waves getting more and more wild as he created greater distance between him and the island, towards wherever he was actually headed. He'd make himself a Nether portal as soon as he hit land and try to find his way back home through there. He doubted that Dream or his entourage would predict him going back to the Nether.
As he rowed, he kept looking down at the water. Things were glowing underneath the surface, sometimes he saw colorful coral and flashes of sunken ships. He wasn't entirely sure if he was lucid or hallucinating when an elder guardian appeared before his eyes. Was he near an ocean monument? He hoped not. He kept rowing no matter what he saw beneath the surface of the dark ocean.
But the longer he kept going, the faster he seemed to lose hope. There was no land to be found, no shore in sight. He couldn't even see stars to orient himself after. The moon was a barely visible light behind thick storm clouds. Rain kept pelting down on him, and from one moment to the other, one of his paddles slipped from his loosening grip.
Tommy wildly cursed, bending over the side of the boat and reaching out for the paddle. A wave crashed into the side of his boat and tipped it over, helped by the way he was leaning over the edge. Tommy barely had time to think Oh, fuck before he fell out of the boat and into the icy ocean.
His shoulder and thigh screamed, which might’ve saved him from getting paralyzed by the icy water. Tommy kicked out with his legs violently, hit his head on his boat and thrashed against the wild sea pulling at him. He felt like he was fighting against a ravager for a couple of seconds, a gigantic beast that tore at him and wanted to eat him alive.
Then his head broke through the surface and he inhaled greedily, spitting out salty seawater and coughing. He spotted his boat, drifting away from him as the winds flippantly changed, and he started to swim towards it, fighting against the ocean as hard as he could.
Somehow, he made it back to his boat and managed to pull himself back into it, trembling from the cold and still coughing out water. He realized suddenly that he’d lost both of his paddles, and as lightning cracked above him, he gave it a rest.
He lay down in the boat, rolling onto his non-injured side and closing his eyes. In the Nether, he'd taken the time to make himself a symbol of Prime out of warped planks. He pulled it out of his pocket and fervently curled his fingers around it, and then he started praying.
The familiar rhythms of his prayers drowned out the rain pelting down on him and the pain in his body, dulled the cold and the agony. He fell asleep repeating one beg over and over again, pleading with a god that he wasn't sure existed anymore.
Help me. Help me. Help me.
He woke in cold sweat, his entire body shaking uncontrollably. Everything was blurry around him, and his body ached – but it was all hazy and he couldn't bring himself to stay awake for long. His leg felt like it was on fire. He might've been screaming. Then it was all gone again. He was gone again.
His shoulder was aflame. His leg was aflame. Through the haze of his pain, Tommy was only vaguely aware of the world around him. He was pretty sure that he was crying uncontrollably with the agony in his limbs. He felt sick and fatigued and couldn't keep his eyes open long enough to know where he was. He passed out.
He saw Lady Death again. She rowed for him with the paddles he'd lost. Tommy wanted to ask her why she'd chosen him. He wanted to ask her if Prime was real. He didn't ask any of his questions, he just lay drenched in his own sweat as the sun burned his face and the lava in his veins kept boiling hotter and hotter. You were never meant for death, Tommy – so why did he still feel like he was dying?
He wasn't sure what was real and what was a fever dream. He saw Tubbo, begging him to come back from the prison. Jack, begging him to spare his last life. Dream, telling him he ruined everything. Wilbur, saying he'd never be president. Hot shame and anger coiled in his gut as he remembered what he'd done. Lied, killed, destroyed. Tommy had been a child when he'd done bad things, and he had seen the error of his ways, but he'd seen them too late, after exile had drained him of anything that made him himself. He wasn't sure what was real at all, and it reminded him of Logstedshire.
Time didn't mean anything. Time meant absolutely nothing. He blinked days and nights away, the waves rocking his boat from side to side like a mother cradling her child. He was homesick. There is more than one kind of sickness, he thought.
He was fantasizing about lava again. He wasn't sure how old he was. He wasn't sure if he was even still alive.
For a moment – or maybe an eternity – he saw a train station.