Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

His mind counts the days again, and again, and once more to be sure. It's hard to know with no calendar, but he's been counting every day so he would never forget the date. It makes his mind reel.

It won't be the first family birthday that he's missed. Hell, his family probably held the world record for most family birthdays missed. Tommy recalls years and years of his own birthdays spent alone, waiting, or multiple years of being with Will, or that one time his birthday landed during a peaceful period in L'manberg and he had had a full celebration for the first time in so long, that he almost forgot that his dad and oldest brother weren't present. Almost.

There's probably more years even then of birthdays that Tommy had missed. He often pondered what Techno and Phil did on their birthdays spent away, when one would turn a year older on one of their adventures. He didn't know how old Techno would even be turning, but the date was engraved into his head. Years spent staring at calendars marked with only Wilbur's scrawl, and clocks ticking down, had left him with a skewed sense of time but a good remembrance of dates. It's Techno's birthday today, he's almost sure of it.

The sun rises over Logstodshire, and in L'manberg the sun is still hidden, and at Techno's cottage a man sits at a stained kitchen with a cup of tea and a resigned smile.

Tommy waits. He's never asked Dream the date before, because he'd never had to. He knew when it was around Christmas for obvious reasons, but it had been three months since then. If his timings were correct.

Tommy's neck hurt again. He sat up from the floor- Dream hadn't allowed him a bed in the tent, just a blanket and pillow- and directed his neck side to side with vicious intent. One side cracked loudly but the other stayed silently locked. He sighed and stood from his makeshift bed. If there was one thing that exile had done for him, it was improving his cleanliness. With nothing to do but wait for Dream all day, Tommy had taken to cleaning his area a lot. He starts with his 'bed'. Laying his flat pillow down at the top, and his thin blanket neatly overtop. Every morning, the rules of respawning run through his head. If your bed is obstructed, you will no longer respawn. Tubbo destroyed it. Tubbo got rid of my bed. Drea- Tubbo is going to kill me for good. Dead. Drea-

But he pushed those thoughts away. Tried not to think about other rules, like healing, and how if you weren't sleeping in a proper bed meant to respawn then you would never heal sufficiently. He's sure Dream isn't doing it for that reason, it was convenience. That's what he told Tommy on one of the first nights here, when Tommy still had a defiant streak underlying despite the dread in all of his bones, and the hurt in his eyes.

Tommy grabs his bandana off the slab of wood he supposed is a nightstand, and tied it around his neck. It didn't do much to suppress the chill on his bare arms, but at least his neck was warmer. The early morning in March was always crisp. He would see his own puffs of breath come out in front of him, his fingers would go slightly numb and goosebumps would begin up his arms, making his hairs stand on end. At least the sun was nice this early. It shone on his tent, heating it up just the slightest, and when Tommy bit the bullet and finally stepped outside onto the cold ground, at least the sun offered a slight heat against his back whilst he meandered around camp, waiting for Dream.

Tommy wishes he never came at all that day. He thinks he does, anyways. He has a hard time sorting his feelings for Dream. Resentment at his own predicament and the abuse Dream pushed on him meant that his presence was feared, and even though he spent all day waiting, he often wished Dream didn't show up at all. But despite all that, Dream was the only one still showing up. His only friend. The only one who cared, he loved to remind him. But this day was particularly worse. Maybe it was the birthday that reignited the flair of defiance in Tommy, or maybe he was just choosing to blame it on that. But Dream enters the nether portal and greets him at midday, and they sit around the fire as the March air is still cold, even with the sun beating above them.

"I wanted to ask you something." Tommy says in a beat of silence. He doesn't raise his eyes from the fire, staring down at the flames intently as if they would flare up and swallow him whole. Dream hums.

"Make it quick. I've got something special for you today and I've got plans elsewhere." Tommy swallows the lump in his throat.

"Right. What's the date today?" He raises his eyes finally to Dream, and regrets it immediately. That blank stare of the mask had always terrified him in wartime. The sullen, frozen smile masking his true feelings bore deep into his soul when he'd watched this man blow up his country, shoot him, threaten his now dead brother. But what's worse now is that he doesn't wear the mask around Tommy. It sits around his head, pinned to the side. Tommy thinks it makes them closer, at least Dream trusts him enough to show him vulnerability. But now it's scary again. His face is hard, a jagged scar prominent across his nose, but his eyes are narrowed and his eyebrows furrowed down.

"Why do you need to know?" He asks, a steel tint to his voice. Tommy quivers. He doesn't know the grounds between Techno and Dream anymore, but they've never exactly been the best of friends. Bitterly, Tommy reminds himself that himself and Techno aren't on good grounds either. And hadn't been for a long time. Tommy stays quiet. "Tommy…" Dream says in a warning voice. 'Theseus', echoes Technoblade's voice in his head, from years ago.

"No reason." He lies. Dream sighs, one hand coming up to Tommy's face to force him to look at the elder as opposed to the floor.

"Don't lie to me." He practically spits, venom on his tongue. His grip tightens on Tommy's jaw. Tommy is frozen solid, but it's not from the cold as the fire is burning hot against his legs. Dream relaxes his grip, letting go of the younger's jaw but not tearing his eyes away. Tommy let's his gaze fly back to the flames and his desire for them to consume him.

"You know I only want what's best for you," Dream says with a sigh. It's a phrase Tommy had heard multiple times. "You might as well tell me why." The silence stretches on. Dream follows Tommy's gaze into the burning embers of the logs, and allows a minute of tension filled silence to pass along.

"If the fire is so interesting, touch it." He says calmly. That causes Tommy to snap his gaze to him in confusion. Dream lets out a soft laugh. "Go on," at the confused blank stare of the boy ahead of him, Dream tuts. "Do I have to do everything for you?" He hisses, grabbing Tommy's forearm in an iron grip. His fingerless gloves are leather and rough against Tommy's skin, which is already dry from cold conditions and lack of water.

"Wait, Dream-" Tommy protests, trying to yank his arm away as Dream tugs it towards the roaring flames. A year or so ago, maybe less, Tommy might've been able to pull his arm away or do some sneaky trick to worm his way out of this situation. But he was no longer that Tommy, no longer at war, no longer always fighting. No, he was in exile.

So his resistance is futile as his hand is pressed into the fire regardless. He lets out a scream, but Dream's hand on his forearm doesn't relent until his own fingertips are close to being licked by the flame. At that point, Tommy's knuckle was pressed against the burning logs, the heat smouldering, and the fire was lapping around his wrist. His screams of pain don't deter Dream at all, and for a long moment of agony, his hand sits in the fire against burning logs. His throat was raw from screaming, his voice starting to break and shift as a raw sob ripped from his throat, tears sliding down his hot face. The pain was white and past the point of hot or burning. He feels like he's gonna pass out, fall backwards from the log they sit on and hit the ground beneath him. He can no longer feel Dream's iron grip on his arm, he only knows it's there because he's still desperately trying to tug his hand away even though black is ebbing at his vision. When he finally does let go, because his fingertips have started to turn slightly blackened, it's so sudden that Tommy nearly loses his balance off the log. He scrambles away from Dream, his smouldering hand still burning hot and blisters bubbling. He can't even hold it close to his chest for the soft fabric of his dirty shirt is too much to even withhold. He slips off the log and curls into a ball on the ground, cradling his arm as sobs wrack his writhing body. He doesn't even register that Dream was talking, had moved, as everything feels like static beneath his ears and his vision is so blurry that he only just catches the sight of him leaving the camp.

He lays on the ground for a long time. Until the sky is dark and the air is impossibly cold and the disgusting fire had long since gone out, yet Tommy still burned. His sobs died out, the tears dying on his face until he was just staring at the darker ground in front of him, chest heaving and his arm flat against his side. Childishly, he wishes someone would come. If he waits long enough, someone would be along soon enough and lift him off the ground, shush him gently with soft smiles and kind words and fluffy brown hair and yellow jumpers and dad's not home again, and-

It hasn't been like that for years. The reminder of Wilbur flutters in his head, and for the first time in a long time he feels sorrow pang in his heart as he remembers the times spent in that house alone together. Long before war and hatred and death, when Wilbur, only a teenager, would be sitting patching up his seven year old brother who kept falling over. Tears prick in his eyes again once the old, torn memories fade away and the blistering reminder that no one will ever come, no one other than Dream, worms it's way into his head. He takes a deep breath, steadying himself, but no breath will ever be deep enough to push down the grief and sorrow in his chest. It sits deep rooted, weighing him down. The breath can't prepare him for the searing pain in his arm when he stands up, either. It's like the blood rushes from his head to the rest of his body and the pain restarts in his arm. He can't see the wound, not in the oncoming darkness, and he doesn't dare use his fingers to feel. He trudges to his tent, soul weighing heavy.

There are no bandages here, or food, or water, or light. There is a whole nothing in the tent, other than Tommy and his bed. His bed that won't respawn him if he dies, and won't heal the burn on his arm. He feels around in the dark, gasping when his tender arm hits the soft covers. For the first night ever, he doesn't get under the blanket. Despite the freezingness of the night, Tommy burns.

-

In L'manberg, a president sits in his personal office with his head in his hands. For once, his suit fits him nicely but it almost makes him miss the hand me down, too big uniform he used to adorn. He stares ahead at the calendar for March, his eyes re-reading the line for today's date over and over. When he'd first seen it this morning, his mind had skipped over it. He wasn't a L'manberg resident anymore, and really, he never was. The only damn reason he's on the records is because for a short period of time he was a trusted citizen, invited to the festival.

The festival. It rings out in Tubbo's head and he lets out a violent shiver. He will never forgot the confines of that box, his trembling voice, the wide eyes of his supposed ally. Even now, when he's at the top, he feels the burn of firework explosions so severe that even respawning could not spare him the scars it left. Worst of all, he remembers Technoblade's harsh words on government, the way that once he worked out they were putting Tubbo on top his face had contorted into annoyance and anger, and he shoved the boy until he fell to the floor, towering over him with his trident in hand. Tommy had fought for him that day, and despite the horrors that date brings him, the thought of Tommy stepping in to block the hit brings a smile to his face. He had even further severed his relationship with his family that day, for Tubbo. God, does he miss Tommy. Not a day goes by where he doesn't think of the blonde. It's impossible, when everything he passes in the town he supposedly owns was built by Tommy, or owned, or had been a place where Tommy had been. It was hard not to think of him when Tommy should be the one sat in this office, running L'manberg, and not him.

He exhales, standing up from his chair. It didn't matter now, anyways. The day had passed, in a few hours it wouldn't even be Techno's birthday anyways. He should take him out of the records, too. He could do it right now, since he's away, and he should write it down so he remembers. But he doesn't, because once he deletes the first person from their records, when does it stop? Does Tommy's file, the one that's been there the longest, get deleted too? Philza's? Wilbur's? Does he get rid of the whole family?

He doesn't. He licks his finger and wipes off the marker that dates today as Techno's birthday. That will be enough. A shiver runs down him again as the thought of deleting the family's records that once took him in, the family that he could maybe say that once he was a temporary part of.

He locks his office door, his head full of all things Tommy again, and walks down lonely streets to his house.

-

His arm is fucked.

He wakes up late, but only because he barely slept at all. Each time he drifted off he never truly felt asleep, aware of the deep set burning and the deep set fear in his veins. He still can't see his arm.

Dream had never been this… physical before. Sure, he'd shoved Tommy around a bit and messed with his feelings, but the addition felt like ice cold water being dumped on his head. He thought they were friends.

When he wakes up properly, the sun is directly above his tent and shining in his eyes. He sits up quickly; he'd never woken this late before. Dream would be here soon and-

Oh.

He sits up quickly, the memories coming back quickly. He stares at his arm in dismay, tears snagging the backs of his eyes.

His fingers had swollen, each one touching the next even when he painfully tried to spread them apart. And where his fingers weren't charred totally black and bleeding, he could see giant yellow bubbles. They travelled over the back of his hand and palm, staggering out as it reached down his reddened forearm. Dream's grip had left bruises, but those are far less important.

The sight is garish, and it makes Tommy feel sick to his stomach even though it's his wound. He notes with annoyance that soot had travelled onto his pillows and covers, staining them.

He stands up, his good hand cradling just above the burns to hold his arm away from anything. He squints at the sun, swaying for a second as he remembers he didn't eat yesterday. He should've eaten before asking Dream anything, now his stomach growled painfully. He grabbed his bandana, walking out of the tent and onto the dry ground. Most of the snow had melted in the camp due to Tommy's incessant moving around, and the sun had further dried the soil.

With no medical supplies, no soap, no nothing, Tommy feels slightly fucked over. He can't see through his blackened fingers, but he can feel the open wounds there. He's not stupid, a burn this bad could easily catch an infection with the correct medical supplies. And he's got none. He huffs, takes a deep breath and looks around. The water, the ocean, is ahead. He'll take salt water over nothing.

He kneels on the dirt, hesitantly placing his bandana on the floor. He'd rather clean that too, but there's nothing else to cover the wound if he does that.

The first dip is painful, he lets out a sharp gasp as his charred fingers touch the freezing water. He hovers for a second, with only his nails in the water, before hogging a deep breath and plunging up to his elbow in sea water. He shrieks when he goes too far and his fingers painfully brush over wet sand, pulling his sopping arm up quickly. Some of the soot had washed off, but most of it was clingy, like Tubbo, and his fingers still remained blackened.

He dips his hand again, only going up to his wrist, and places his clear hand in the water, breathing deeply. It's only a gentle touch, but even the slightest of brushes makes his skin burn all over again. He sucks in air, ignoring the tears falling down his cheeks, and rubs harder. He starts on the back of his hand, and he feels the chalky soot disintegrate before his fingers, and then he feels welted skin and blisters. He rubs the sides gently, turning his hand over and beginning to touch the soot and welts on his palm. They came off easy too, but not without pain. The open wounds that aren't sealed by blisters scream as the salt water envelopes them, and Tommy whimpers and tries not to grit his teeth too hard. He goes up his fingers next, breaths coming in deep and quick, because this is the most painful part. He looks into the water and sees the black come off in the water, and tinges of red, too. He can't bear the pain of touching the top of his fingers, so he works his way back down until his fingers brush over his knuckles where he had previously missed, and he lets out a scream of pain and shock.

His hand is clear now when he brings it back up. There is no black mask, he can see everything. Which is why he suddenly tucks his damaged arm into his chest, which makes it scream, and leans over on one hand to vomit onto the grass, the grotesque site forcing up the last of his previous meal. He wipes his hand on his mouth, cringes at it, and then dunks it back into the water to wash away the residue.

He pulls his arm away and looks at it again. Maybe it was the shock that got him the first time, because he manages to stay upright whilst examining it.

His palm was covered in large, bubbled blisters, some turning yellow and some exposing raw skin underneath. The back of his hands were in a similar state, except his knuckles, which had been pushed against the burning log, and now exposed bone. The edges had torn away, and when Tommy looks he can see the white edges of his own knuckle staring back gruesomely. Unfortunately, his fingers are in a similar state. The tips were all flesh, and the parts where his bones jutted out normally were fully exposed. Every finger joint was bloody and had bone exposed, barring his thumb.

He was gonna need more than this bandana, he thinks with an annoyed but determined glare at the thing. He tied it up around his neck awkwardly, with only one hand to spare, and then propped his leg on the grass. It wasn't too hard to unpick the seams halfway up, and once he'd done it on one side it tore apart easily. He cuffed the rest to keep it from unravelling, exposing one of his legs to the cold air. He shivered, but kept going.

Now was the painful part. He slid the pant leg over his hand, pulling the seams at the side closest to his elbow and tightening them, then tying the up in a knot. The fabric is long enough that he does it at the other end, above his fingers and encasing them in a grey-green pocket. He admires his handiwork for a second, which quickly fades as he notices wet patches of blood and pus beginning to soak through the material in various spots. Whatever, it's not like he wanted the pants back anyways.

Dream still hadn't come yet, which made Tommy frown. If he'd managed to piss off his only visitor, he'd really fucked up. Dream gave him food everyday, destroying the leftovers at the end so Tommy couldn't hoard any, and would bring him fresh water since it wasn't available in Logstedshire. Without Dream for company, food and water, Tommy would die out here, whether it be of loneliness, starvation or dehydration. He stands up, brushing the dirt off his pants and slowly stepping back to his tent. His injury was making him tired, and the lack of food or water was beginning to make it worse. He's sure the poor excuse of a bed means his arm will be like this for a while.

Usually at this time, he'd be sat with Dream somewhere in Logstedshire. Probably around the fire since it was cold at this time, maybe eating, maybe destroying all the items Tommy had acquired. Instead, Tommy climbs into his soot marked nest and rests his head. Despite the overhead sun and his irritated arm, he falls asleep quickly.

He half expects to be woken up by Dream finally arriving. The other half of him wakes in a start, pulling his arm away from a fire that doesn't exist.

The sun was going down, the overhead sky turning a dusky gray. There was still light out, and the few torches strewn across to stop mobs entering the land give off enough light for Tommy to at least walk around. Stupidly, he can't help but think that the torches don't compare to the lanterns in Pogtopia, and then a shiver runs down his spine as he reminisces. He stands up on shaky legs. He still feels exhausted, but he's not tired to sleep anymore. His body just aches with pain and hunger, and he feels hot all over.

He wobbles to the tent entrance, stepping outside until he reaches the logs by the fire. He sits on the one next to where Dream burned him, and faces away from the fire, even though it has long since burnt out. He plucks a torch wedged into the floor and plants it in the floor next to him instead, and then reconsiders his position and sits next to the wedged torch, with his back against the shaky log.

There's still some light out, plus the redness emitting from the torch, so he can easily see that his leg sleeve arm bandage was weirdly stained. The material had dark spots on it, some tainted red, but mostly just wet splotches all the way up. There were more dampened spots than there were dry, and Tommy gulps slightly.

He undoes the makeshift seams tied at the top and slides it off, wincing at the feeling. The material is stuck in some places, and a small whimper leaves his throat as he has to apply force to rip it away from his torn up fingers. He places it gently on the log behind him, breathing deeply and holding back a retch at the sight of his arm. It doesn't look any better, he's not sure what he expected. Some of the blisters had popped, leaving clear and yellow liquid oozing out of them or having already coated his sleeve. There was a weird sort of crust around them, and the edges of his knuckles and fingertips had stopped bleeding, yet now he could see his white bones peeking through even more.

He swipes away the panic taking over, or tries to, as he rubs his eyes with his clean palm. Technoblade used to drill into his head that he had to have a clear mind or he would fail, when they were younger and sparred with each other. And Wilbur used to say a similar thing, when Tommy's pride and anger got ahead of him and he raced on into battles he couldn't win.

But this was different. This wasn't excitement leaving him open for a quick jab with a wooden sword when he was 12, this wasn't Wilbur's disappointed eyes as he stood with a bow and 1 arrow against Dream; this was all consuming panic, deep set in his stomach with no way to escape. He takes in a deep breath, his lip stuttering slightly, and then another. He shivers as a rivulet of some sort of nasty liquid slides down his arm in a cold rush.

"No one's coming." He mutters, coldly. The previous night, the thoughts of not being saved had consumed his entire being, causing him to curl into himself and sob at his aloneness. But tonight was different. That same spark that happened on Techno's birthday, the one that caused him to get his hand burnt, is alight again.

He stands up, facing the sun as he watches it disappear on the horizon. It reminds him of sitting in a bench in a war-torn uniform, playing a stupid disc that he has fought so hard for, with Tubbo at his side. How times had changed.

He stomps over to his tent, picking up his nasty bedding. His arm had leaked through in the night, leaving patches of yellow and red on the blanket, not to mention the black soot from the first night. It needed washing anyways, since he'd been here for months. He tucks his pillow under his arm, throwing the blanket over his shoulder and holding the torch in his good hand, slipping the disgusting 'bandage' between his fingers.

He falls to his knees at the waterside, far enough away from last time that he can't smell the vomit anymore. He dumps his laundry beside him, and pulls his leg back up in front of him, and begins to pick away at the seams once more to create a duplicate sleeve.

His legs are fully open to the breeze now, which forces a shiver out of him, but he has to power through.

Before, there had always been a reason to keep going. He had to protect his discs, sure, but he couldn't die without a bed because of Wilbur, because of Tubbo, Fundy; Eret, even. Back then he thought that maybe Phil would finally be proud of him and Wilbur for making a name for themselves and maybe he'd finally respond to their letters or come and see them. He had to keep going for friends, for family. Even when he had a bed to respawn in, the fear and horror on their faces were enough for him to never allow himself to do it again. He didn't have that same reasoning anymore. Wilbur was insane and dead, Tubbo was the one who had sent him here, in order to protect a country that didn't even belong to him. He hadn't seen Fundy in a while, but the fox probably resented him anyways, and Eret likely wasn't even aware he was in exile. Did he still have his crown? His castle in the dSMP? Was it worth the betrayal that stung us all?

He still couldn't die. He wouldn't allow it. For pure spite, he can't let Dream kill him, or die on his watch. He doesn't deserve it.

He plunges the blanket into the water, swirling it around with his good hand, before pulling it out and standing with the sopping wet blanket weighing him down. He paces over to the tree, slinging the blanket over it and praying there was no dirt on it. He does the same with his pillow, and then his sleeve bandage. Finally, he plunges his hand into the saltwater, swishing his arm around as much as he could tolerate and watching the crust and gunk that had collected be washed away in the water. A shiver rolls over his body, his shoulders shaking and nearly touching his ears. The water is freezing, it's a collaboration of ice cold engulfment and the painful, nearly hot but not quite, stinging sensation across his entire forearm and hand, but the night is even colder. It's unforgivable. He can remove his hand from the water but can never escape the cold that nips at his body until every exposed part is frozen numb and the air begins to creep down his neckline, threatening to freeze his heart solid. It's worse when he removes his hand; the cold air does nothing to remedy the freezing limb, only blows over it in a freezing combination. But he didn't dare light the fire again.

Even though it was inching towards summer rather than winter, it felt colder by the day in Logstedshire. He almost regrets washing his blanket so that he could at least wrap it around his shoulders, but the nasty soot left on it was beginning to rub his skin and irritate him. He pays his arm down gently with the body of his shirt, and it still hurts, and then slides on the cover to protect it. The movement and rustling sting, and he bites back yelps of pain. When he ties up the ends, and slows his breathing from the sharp intakes back to normal breaths, he regrets drying his arm as now his shirt touches his stomach in wet, cold patches that stick to his skin. He gets to his feet, vision blurring at the edges and fading black as he stands up, and he sends a silent prayer to God that he won't faint and fall into the water. He doesn't, and whether that's god's doing or not he chooses not to acknowledge it. The black ebbs away after a few seconds, and he's left with a fuzzy feeling in his head, like cotton had replaced his brain, and weak knees threatening to buckle. He turns his head to watch the last of the sun disappear over the horizon, and is struck by nostalgia and a sick feeling.

It fell pitch black now, aside from the torches strewn around, and Tommy becomes shockingly aware that he is all alone. It's in moments like these, with silence in the air, that he feels an odd sort of clarity. He's all alone, and no one cares, and yet it feels rather peaceful to truly be left in peace. He'd been fighting for so long, fighting for things that didn't matter, weren't ever his or people who didn't even care about him, that now that's it's not expected of him, he feels sort of empty, in a way. The peace is nice, and though his mouth is dry and his stomach empty, his young body isn't being thrown into fighting and war, it's resting for once.

He doesn't know how long his dead eyes stare ahead at a torch on the floor, or when his body dragged his feet to sit on a log instead of standing aimlessly. He could've sat there for minutes or hours, all he knows is that time passed continuously, never ending.

He's snapped out of his trance by a bleat, and the shuffle of a sheep somewhere behind him. He snaps his head to look, but the grass is dark and could hold many things. Dream used to kill every mob near him, so that nothing could attack and Tommy couldn't acquire any of his own food, and if he ever did manage to, it was blown up before his very eyes.

Tommy picks up his torch in one hand and ventures towards the noise. He's not allowed to cross this far, he thinks as snow begins to crunch under his worn shoes once he crosses the boundary between camp and the outside world. The sheep bleats again, a weak sounding cry as it spots Tommy, a glow of orange light a few feet away. Tommy bites his lip, walking closer. His head spins with dizziness, he needs to eat so badly, and there's practically a meal in front of him. He pushes back some leaves hanging down, glancing behind him once more and finding that he's not too far from the camp. He turns his head back around, a small smile gracing his lips as he could finally eat.

He stops short, his eyes locking onto the sheep's. It's a brown sheep, slightly rarer than usual, and cowering on bony legs. It's wool is matted, it's eyes look dead already and it stares as if Tommy is the butcher and he is already the meat. Despite its weak stance, knotted wool and brown colour, in the dark it almost looks like Friend. Tommy's lip wobbles, eyes filling with tears as he stares down the fear stricken sheep and he forgets his hunger as he sees someone other than Dream in front of him. His knees buckle, and he quickly stabs his torch into the ground before it burns the forest down, and then he brings up his hands to wipe away the tears that won't stop running.

The sheep stares at the boy, confusion wavering in its eyes. It could run now, leave Tommy in the dust, swearing because he could've skinned that sheep for warmth, and cooked it's meat for food. But who is Tommy kidding? He wouldn't dare light the fire, nevermind go near it. The sheep bleats, leaning forward to butt its head against Tommy, who lets out a wet laugh as his arms drop from his face. The sheep cowers a bit as he raises his arms, but relaxes as they find home in his knotted, matted coat and dig down to scratch at his skin.

In the end, the sheep follows Tommy back to his tent, where his pillow and blanket are still not there, and Tommy falls asleep with a warm, heavy, probably flea-ridden, weight across his legs. It's the best sleep he's had for days, and despite his stomachs loud rumbling, he falls asleep quickly.

He wakes up quickly. Eyes wide and hands coming to meet the ground beneath him. The noise of the portal whirring had woken him up, and now, the unmistakable footsteps of Dream approaching his tent. He's still bleary and dazed when the opening flap is pulled upwards, and he squints at the white area as he waits for his eyes to adjust.

"Rise and shine!" He grins as Tommy squints up at him, hands moving from the floor to tangle in brown wool still stretched over his lap. "Tommy, get up." Dream says after a beat of silence. Tommy pushes the sheep off his legs, moving it to lay on the floor as he scrambles to his feet. His arm still stings, he supposes sleeping with a dirty animal laid on you doesn't help. His vision goes entirely black as he stands, his ears feeling full of cotton. He stumbles his way out, blinking as the black slowly dissipates. He can make out Dream's figure, he had retreated to the campfire area, which made Tommy flinch. By the time he sat next to him, his vision had cleared significantly.

Dream nudges his shoulder, holding out an apple in his palm. Tommy brightened, hand hovering in the air.

"For me?" He asked, voice croaky.

"Who else?" Dream said back, smile evident in his voice. Tommy grinned, grabbing the apple with the quickness of a raccoon scavenging and took a hefty bite, relishing in the sweet taste and the wetness on his tongue. He swallowed quickly, taking another bite and ignoring the way that bits of blood lingered wherever he bit due to his poor teeth hygiene. Tommy bites all the way to the core and almost eats that too. To his disappointment, he's still ridiculously hungry.

"A thank you would be nice." Dream says. Tommy gulps, clinging onto the core.

"Of course! I was just so hungry I-" Dream swivels his head to harden a look at him. "It's my fault, I know. Thank you so much, Dream." He says it with such sincerity, earnest in his voice, that Dream allows a quirk in his lip. He tosses a piece of bread down too, which causes Tommy to practically jump in his seat with excitement. Dream lets out a huff, grinning under the mask.

"I noticed you had something in your tent." He says after a moment. Tommy was tearing into the bread, pulling off chunks of stale crust, not that the level of freshness mattered to him. Tommy paused, fingers halfway through tearing into the bread. He keeps chewing, mouthful of dough, but his body tenses. His mind races quickly- how could he be so stupid?

He watches as Dream stands, one hand resting on the hilt of his sheathed sword. Tommy tries to swallow the bread, but the lack of water in his mouth makes it hard to digest and swallow, but he doesn't dare spit it out even as the clagginess overtakes his mouth. His hands shake, fingers pressing hard against the crust of his bread as he desperately tries to swallow bread that has turned to sponge.

Dream is walking slowly to the tent now. It's only a few quick steps from the wood. He rips open the flap, leaning down to glare into the tent. The sheep bleats loudly at him. Tommy releases his held breath.

Dream tuts, eyes still on the mottled runt of a sheep laid on the floor.

"What's this, Tommy?" Dream asks, swivelling his head to look at Tommy, frozen in his seat still clutching the bread. Most of it had been swallowed now, and his mouth was unbearably dry. "You make a new friend?" He unsheathes his sword slowly.

"Please don't," Tommy says, standing on shaky legs. He ignores the wave of dizziness and how his vision goes dark once he stands, pushing through the darkness to stumble to the tent. Dream ducks down to enter and Tommy frantically follows. "She hasn't done anything wrong!" He cries, not daring to grab Dream but also not willing to let the sheep die.

"You always have to go behind my back!" Dream seethes, raising his sword. Tommy drops the stale bread, it lands with a gentle thud. The sheep bleats, staring at Tommy with large, brown eyes.

Dream moves his arm, raising to swing, and Tommy darts in front of the sheep. There's a swoop as the blade cuts through air, a scream as it slashes across Tommy's face, and a thump as he falls to the ground.

Dream drops the bloodied sword on the floor, cursing. He hadn't expected him to do that. This wasn't part of his plan.

"You fucking idiot!" He cursed, kneeling down. Tommy had collapsed as soon as the cut had landed, falling onto his knees in front of the woolen blob and holding one hand to his bleeding face. Dream held out a hand to assess his own damage, but Tommy just lets out a low moan of pain and reels away.

"Please," he mutters, "please don't."

Dream's hands fly up to his hair, pulling.

He stands up, casting a glance at the teenager on the floor.

"This is your fault." He says coldly. Tommy tilts a bloodied face up to stare at him. The gash had obstructed from his right eyebrow, across his eye, and slid past his nose to cater off. Blood was dripping past it, his whole right eye completely red beneath the stained hand that covered it. He had brought up his injured hand to hold it too, but now the makeshift bandage on his arm was covered in blood too. "Stay here another night and maybe I'll consider helping you." He pauses. "If you even make it through the night."

Tommy breathes heavily, staring at the floor. Dream closes the tent flap behind him, kicking the stale bread from the tent before he does. Tommy slumps down completely, laying on the floor with one eye blown wide.

The other is in excruciating pain. He couldn't see from his right eye at all, and everything across his face stung to an unimaginable pain. The sheep nudged at his back, and he turned his bloodied face to stare at it.

"I'm sorry." He muttered to it, eye lidded. It doesn't reply.

He couldn't stay here, not anymore. Things were changing, Dream wasn't his friend anymore.

He picks himself off the ground slowly. He peels his hand away from his face and lets out a low grunt as he feels blood begin to pour again. It turns cold as it rolls down his face, icy red droplets drip down his collar.

Each movement sends another wave of horror past him, another wave of nausea that makes him firmly close his lips. The sheep is smart, somehow, and on shaky legs stands beside Tommy and allows him to lean. Tommy shook violently. Each breath felt cold and rattled his empty chest; he had never been more aware of how little he'd eaten.

Standing up is the worst part of all. His hands, even the one burnt beyond relief, flail in front of him for any grip but find nothing, until he stumbles to the pole that holds his tent upward. He picks the bread up from the floor with a bloody hand which stains the crust red. It doesn't bother him much, he would eat anything right now. His hand shakes ridiculously as it tears off a chunk and presses it into his mouth. He doesn't recognize the presence of a saltwater tear falling from his non damaged eye as the droplet feels the same as the cold blood rolling down his face. It's only when he licks the corner of his lip and tastes salt and not metal that he realised he was crying.

Once he finishes the loaf, the bread sitting heavy in his stomach for all it's low amount, he stares at the sea for a few moments. The thought of washing his face with the saltwater to try and help his condition makes him do a full body flinch, turning away from the water to the treeline. His arm infection, though it smelt like rotten flesh, suddenly seemed minor. He still couldn't feel his fingertips, the ones that had been burnt from existence, but the full facial throbbing and consistent burning in his eye was a large distraction.

The burning, he deciphers, is the worst problem. It's mind numbing, making it hard to think as he gingerly presses his uninjured hand to the spot beneath his eyebrow and eyelid. Even that makes him flinch backward, too close to the gash in his eye. His finger feels like ice, he nearly hears it sizzle on contact, on his face. Pulling it away creates more agony, so he pulls the bandana from his neck and clutches it in his hands as he resolutely makes his way towards the treeline, where the snow was less walked on and way more fresh. He places it down, slowly dropping into a crouch to fill up the bandana with snow.

The contact on his eye makes him gasp, hands pausing on the two ends of the bandana as his brain catches up. A bit of snow lightly dusted across his face before he securely ties it over his eye, struggling to manage with only one working hand, successfully encasing the injury in snow. It's weird having a blind spot, he realises when he stands back up. He hadn't had a moment to think earlier, when all he could see was red, but now it felt wrong. He had to turn more to see his right field of view.

He scans the area, eyes catching on various things like his partially destroyed tent and the tnt holes littering the floor. They stop at his blanket and pillow, still thrown over a tree after he 'washed' them.

The only thing that registers when he sees them is 'it's cold.'

It's cold because the ground is covered in snow, and being near the sea should give off a nice, salty breeze but instead brings biting winds that slide up his sleeves and into his bones. The snow on his eye that helped the throbbing had begun to chill him even more. He grabs the blanket, now completely dry due to the harsh winds and cold atmosphere, and wraps it around his shoulders, tying the blanket together at his neck in a sort of makeshift cape. He fumbles with the pillow, tossing it around in his hands. He doesn't know where he's going, though he's partially praying to come across a village that he could stay in. But if it takes days to find that, the pillow could be useful if he finds himself half dead in a cave. As he tucks the pillow into his waistband and beneath his shirt, he thinks that it will be nice to have some form of comfort when he inevitably dies out in the cold. God knows he doesn't want to die here.

He tries to organise his thoughts into somewhat coherence. Should he walk for as far as his legs will take him and then collapse in the snow and let his final life be taken by blood loss, starvation and cold?

No, he may be muddled and severely injured, but years of knowing Technoblade hasn't failed him. First order of business was to find food while he still had the energy to. He barely had any energy, as he dragged himself to the treeline, nevermind the energy to hunt down food. But if he had no energy to hunt, how would he find energy to walk?

He slumps against a tree, exhaustion taking over again. He forces his vision to not turn black or white and scans the forest floor.

He had to find wood, a fallen branch would do. If he could find a fallen branch, he could make himself an axe and if he made an axe, he could get tools.

He finds the hefty branch on the floor after walking a while. He picks it up, examining the stocky wood and spiky handle. This would do fine.

It takes him a while to make it. He slams it down on sharp stone to cut it, making his arms ache and his body taunt him with the idea that he may pass out. On his search for vines to wrap around the handle so he could avoid splinters, his vision goes entirely black and he finds himself on the floor. With gritted teeth, he picked himself back up and grabbed handfuls of long vines.

Within a couple of hours, he'd made himself a stone pickaxe, axe, and sword. Every part of his body is screaming for him to lay down, to stop and let him rest, but he still hasn't found food. His tools are heavy, so he leaves them in a pile with the remainder of his wood, his pillow, and his blanket. He keeps a tight grip on his sword- the axe would do more damage but the sword is lighter and easier to carry- and a handful of dirt in his bad hand so that he doesn't lose his way.

His breath hitches when he spots an unsuspecting rabbit, and he badly wishes for a bow right now, standing about 15 feet away from him. He carefully raises his sword welding arm above his head and throws it through the air with as much power as he can muster. The rabbit speeds off into the undergrowth and the sword stabs into the dirt. Tommy lets out a sigh, standing up to retrieve the sword. It seemed it would be a long time of hunting before he got anything useful.

He doesn't want to stray too far from where he's left his belongings, so he tries to stay in a radius of that. In a stroke of luck, he finds a patch of melons growing by a tree, followed by a few stray pumpkins. It wasn't exactly what he wanted- though if he was that desperate he would've already killed his sheep- but it was better than nothing.

He cut the root off, lugging the watermelon into his arms and holding back a scream of pain when the weight hits his still severely burnt arm, letting out a muffled screech instead that barely escapes his lips. He starts his walk back holding one watermelon, unable to carry anymore weight, and starts the trip back to his setup.

It's about ten minutes when he's lugging a watermelon and on the brink of starvation and dehydration, but he makes it back. His sheep, who he then decides to name Clementine, is waiting on his blanket, her head rising off his pillow when she spots him.

"Hey, Clem," he greets, collapsing onto the dirt next to her. She bleats at him in greeting. He reaches over to pluck his axe from the pile, wiping the mostly clean stone edge on his shirt. He splits the melon down the middle, and then halves it again. When he was younger they would cut them into perfect slices, but he's ravenous at the moment so he grabs a hastily cut quarter and bites down. Watermelon juice coats his cheeks, but he's sure they're already covered in dry blood by now anyways, so he doesn't really care for it. He hadn't realised how thirsty he was until he bit into the melon, and now he gasps for air as he eats too quickly.

He breathes deeply as he places down the rind, wiping his wrist over his mouth to 'clean' it. He wordlessly picks up another quarter and places it in front of Clementine, who hadn't moved from her spot on the blanket and was watching him with large eyes.

Tommy devours the rest of the watermelon, and then begins his way back up the trail to grab another one.

Even after the second, which he eats entirely on his own after Clementine won't touch another quarter, he still longs to go back and grab another one. But he had seen the sun begin to lower on the horizon, the golden hour light peeking through the forest, and knew mobs would soon spawn in.

He debates his options. As much as his body wants him to lie down on the forest floor and sleep for hours due to the food he'd eaten, he knows that even in his exhausted state he would die before midnight struck. Going in a tree was out of the question, it would be impossible to get Clementine up there and he'd struggle himself with only one good arm. The only option is to dig down and make themselves a small cave for the night. The thought of picking away at stone made Tommy recoil, but it was that or die a gruesome fate.

There's a pocket of stone nearby, where the dirt was misplaced and revealed the smooth underneath, so Tommy sits on the spot and starts to mine.

He has to use both hands on the pickaxe, and any pressure on his burnt one is agony, but he still does it. Each throw of stone onto stone sends pain shooting up his arm, but he carries on until he's built a small pocket underground. Hid head hits the ceiling when he stands, and when he finally coaxes Clementine down into the box and has laid down his blanket and pillow, there is hardly any space at all. He climbs out of the box on the rickety step shapes he had carved in the stone and heaves himself out onto the dirt. He couldn't wait to lie down, even on the hard stone floor, but he forced himself to haphazardly cut up a piece of wood into something akin to a trap door, and then he wedged it into the hole he had appeared out of, pushing it closed once inside.

His stomach rumbles and he sighs. He guesses fruit isn't really enough to quell the feeling of months of starvation and food deprivation.

He's glad he brought the pillow after all. It's nice for his head, and he pushes it into the corner of the room so that his back is against the wall. He's sure his body will ache later, but for now he allows exhaustion to take over. The last thing he recognizes is a weight curling into his side on top of the covers.

He wakes up in pain again the next day. The snow had totally melted, and in his sleep the bandana had slipped off his eye leaving it exposed. His first reaction when he wakes up is to rub his eyes, and the slightest touch of his hands- both of them, because in his dreary state he had forgotten about his burnt one- against his face sends him reeling backwards and biting back a yelp. He had barely touched his eye, his palm had only grazed it, but it's enough to make him jump far enough to hit his head on the wall behind him.

He panics, fumbling around for his bandana in the dim light of the hole. The only light alloted was from the trapdoor, and even that was minimal. He shaking fingers clasp around it, and it offers way less relief when not filled with snow, but he still pushes it onto his face with a trembling hand. Clementine stirs from where she was laid against his side, and Tommy lets out a shaky breath. He slowly moves his legs, allowing the sheep to stay laid down, and pokes his head out of the trap door.

The forest was still quite dark, mobs were likely still roaming, and the sun seemed to have only just come up.

Everything hurt. His face was throbbing, his arm felt worse by the day, his neck hurt from his shitty pillow and his back hurt from sleeping weird. But he was alive, and there was no Dream around.

He heaves himself out of the hole, stepping into the faded light and squinting out of his one good eye. It was still quite dark in the shaded area of the forest, he could make out his surroundings and himself but it was definitely obstructed by the lack of light. He has to squint at the ground to find the trail of dirt that would lead him to the watermelon patch.

Tommy spends the day crafting better tools for the most part. He knows he has to move- there's no sustainable food here and his health conditions and only worsening- but the melon patch is keeping him alive long enough to at least become more prepared.

He can't manage well enough to mine properly. Like before, he needs two hands to properly drive the pickaxe into the ground and his injured one can't manage it anymore. His small mining trip offers him a measly seven pieces of iron, and a few lumps of coal. Clementine waits patiently at the top of his mine for him to re-emerge, which he does about an hour later. He crawls into the daylight that was bright enough to light up the forest ground on shaky arms and legs. The trip had been short, too short to find anything better, yet he was still exhausted. He sits on the ground, leaned against a stump of a tree, and begins to forge a furnace using his crafting table.

His mouth feels dry from being in the mines, and he's sure his face is covered in dust along with dried blood. His next order of business would definitely be to find a source of water, but who knows if he'd get that lucky.

He feels hot tears begin to run down his face as frustration starts to well up in his moment of peace. The stench of rotten flesh, his own, is overpowering and if it weren't for the fact that all he had in his stomach was melon, he thinks he'd be heaving again. And he's hot, so unbearably hot he wants nothing more than to sink into a pool of ice. It's warmer in the forest, most of the snow sits atop the leaves rather than on the ground, and the thick foliage stops most of the rain and wind from getting in. He tries not to worry about how warm he is in an undeniably cold biome, and what it means. He tells himself that there's no use worrying since he can't do anything anyway, yet it's all he can think about. He hasn't looked at his arm in days, but the infection is definitely there, and whilst his face wound is still fresh, he also knows that pretty soon the surrounding area will turn yellow and begin to ooze like his arm. It's hard not to think about that, and how he still can't see from his right eye. He sometimes wonders if the infection will cause him to become zombie-like, and he too will wander the world with a glazed over stare, and make soft grunts when annoyed, and chase after any living thing he can find.

The light of the furnace goes out. He stands, tears still dripping from his face, and opens the door. Forging tools and armour is hard. It requires the ore to be hot and malleable, requires leather gloves, and it's overall easier to get from a blacksmith or work in a team with other people. It's very hard to do when one of your hands is useless, and you lack any sort of hand protection.

He grabs a stick he found earlier and lays it down in front of the furnace, and then uses his stone sword to push out two of the iron ingots. They hit the floor and started to melt towards the ground, wrapping around the stick. Carefully, Tommy used his stone sword to push the iron into a proper shape and force it to strongly bind to the handle. A helmet is the easiest thing he thinks he can forge without proper tools, so he carefully pulls the ingots out onto the smooth stone and shifts them into a dish shape with the edge of his sword.

It hardens quickly, and Tommy tells himself that once it's done he'll leave in search of the village.

In the meantime, he collects up his things. He's still ridiculously hot, so he doesn't really want to smother himself in the blanket and pillow. Instead, he grabs one of the vines he had picked out for his sword handle and places the pillow on top of Clementine, securing it around her middle with the long vine. She seems pleased with the extra weight and warmth, though Tommy is still worried about her overall health; she's nearly in as bad a condition as he is. Malnourished, covered in fleas and possible infected bites.

He decides to discard his axe since it's so blunt it's practically useless, and the wood was weak so it's on the brink of breaking. He doesn't need the extra weight. He tosses his sword away with it too, since his iron one would be ready soon. All that's left is the pickaxe, which he grabs from the floor and tucks the vine riddled handle into the waistband of his pants with the stone resting flat over his t-shirt. He fiddles with his blanket for a while, turning the material in his hands. He didn't want to wear it like before, especially with how hot he felt, but he didn't want to just leave it. He couldn't burden it on Clem- it was too long and would drag on the ground and just generally be annoying. He eyes up his burnt arm, which aches from the action of just dangling it. He hates looking at it, because even though it's covered by his pant leg, he can see where blood and pus had leaked through and left damp spots practically everywhere. A glance at his arm was a reminder that as everyday went by, his clock was ticking. He could practically feel the infection spreading up his arm.

He folds the blanket a few times and then slots his burnt arm in the middle, throwing the two ends up over his shoulders and tying it behind his neck. He reached over with his spare hand to open up the folded area beneath his arm to offer relief, and it worked. His arm sat comfortably against his chest, less angered by being held upright.

He leaves towards the afternoon, when the sun had passed midway in the sky. His sword tucked into his waistband and his helmet on his head, he and Clementine travelled for hours through the snow. It's hard enough to lift his frozen feet through the thick layer of snow, and it only gets harder when a flurry of snow begins to cascade, making it hard to see. He moves with the sun to his back, walking towards where the moon will soon rise and tries to keep a sense of direction. He still feels hot, even with snow to his ankles and wet, frozen feet, and snow blowing onto his face and casting flakes on his eyelashes and eyebrows, yet his back is wet with sweat.

As the light begins to fade, the sun feeling less hot on his back, and the moon just beginning to show on the horizon, Tommy decides to call it a night.

He mines out a small room on the side of a mountain, only having the energy to make it as big as it needs to be. He unties the pillow from Clem's mid section with trembling fingers on one hand, the other firmly sat in its sling. He shakes the dirt and snow and possible fleas off it, pressing himself into the corner. In the dark, cold stone of his cave, his heat begins to leach and he can't help but shiver. His hair was damp with snow and he was suddenly unbearably aware of how cold his feet were. He blinks red, irritated eyes, takes a deep breath to stave off any tears that attempt to spring to his eyes, and begins untying his shoelaces.

His hand is frozen numb, and now his whole body is shaking from the freezing cold. But he manages to kick off the sodden shoes, and then peel back his soaked socks to reveal equally wet and cold feet. He lays the shoes and socks by the entrance in hope they will dry out a bit, and then shoves his numb, slender fingers through the knot in his makeshift sling. He hisses as pressure releases, his arm falling slack to his side.

A shock slides through his body, jolting him. His arm is limp at his side, and he stares at the offending limb with horror in his eyes. It won't move. It dangles limp at his side and no matter how many times he tries to move it on its own, his arm stays heavy at his side. At a push, he can feel a nerve shoot down his arm when he attempts to bend it upwards, and a painful sensation when he tries to wiggle his fingers. A fire spreads through his arm, as painful as the day it was burnt, enough to make him gasp and choke on his own spit, his other hand hovering above it but not knowing how to relieve itself of the horrific, consuming pain.

Tears sprang to his eyes. Everything hurt. His arm was useless, and he couldn't see it in the increasingly darkening light, but he could now smell his own rotting flesh. It didn't take a genius to work out how bad the infection was getting, how blood poisoning could soon be on his list of problems if he didn't fix it soon. His teeth chatter together, the coldness of the floor feeling even colder tonight. God, he just wanted a proper bed. One that would heal him properly overnight and let him set his respawn point.

Instead, he sinks his freezing cold body into the freezing cold wall of the freezing cold stone, and pulls a ratty blanket around himself. He tucks his arm close to his chest, tries to ignore the way it screams in protest and pain and focuses on how warm it was, burning hot through his shirt. The sheep settles next to him, down near his legs this time, resting it's chin on his calf. Tommy shivers, tries to ignore the way he can see his breath float around the room around him in the darkness.

The next day he walks like a zombie. He feels it, too. He hadn't seen his reflection in a while, but his cheeks had sunken in even more, and his already frail body swayed like a tree that had only just begun to grow. Deep bruises beneath his gray eyes, feet dragging through the snow at a sluggish pace. He even smelt like a zombie- his arm had long since turned into rotten flesh. He doesn't see smoke billowing in the distance, his hazy eyes stay trained ahead, staring but not really seeing, and with each step his malnourished body grows more and more tired.

And that's how Technoblade finds his youngest 'brother'. Collapsed face down in the snow, ice cold and clothes soaked through. At first, annoyance worms its way into his heart. Of course, Tommy had gotten himself into a state and Techno would be picking up the pieces; he would never visit unless he needed something. And his first though as an older brother is to take the piss out of Tommy's grown out hair, splayed out around him in the white snow he's sinking into.

But fear strikes him cold and hard when he realises he's not moving. No matter how hard he tries to convince himself that he only cares for Phil, and maybe Wilbur a little bit, but certainly not the little runt Phil had found and Will had raised, the one that Technoblade had watched as a baby but could never stick around long enough as he developed.

He ignores the half-dead, matted sheep laying protectively next to his brother. Tommy had always been interested in animals when Techno knew him. As a kid, always dangling worms around but being cautious with the cats that roamed their houses. When he and Phil left once Techno was a teenager, on his odd visits back to their house that no longer felt like home, he often recalled the youngest tending to livestock in a farm he had created by himself.

He crouches in the snow and pokes Tommy like he's roadkill with the handle of his axe. He's deadly still, and when Techno man's up and places a hand on Tommy's shoulder to push him over, he nearly recoils at the shock of cold.

Techno sighs again, bracing himself for cold as he slides his hand underneath Tommy in the snow, his hair raising at the freezing temperature. He pulls the boy, who's all too light for Techno's liking, into his chest and frowns at the arm half sliding out of a makeshift sling, and the bandana soaked in blood across his face. Even though his urge is to peel back the blanket and the cover sitting over it, he ignores it and decides to look at it once he's home. He turns to the sheep, but it's already standing up on frail legs to follow him. It plods up to him on unsteady legs, a pillow tied to its back, and tilts its head to knock against Tommy's legs suspended in the air.

It's not long to the cottage, even with Tommy laid in his arms, and once he reaches the wooden steps leading to his home, he places Tommy carefully on the cold steps and then turns to the sheep. It shakes in the cold, and Techno offers her a small smile. He would have to shear her, but the half dead teenager sitting on his porch had to be his priority for now. So instead he unties the pillow, letting it fall into the snow, and guides her to a vacant pen. He quickly grabs a feed bucket he had prepared earlier for a different animal, and there's fresh straw already down. He could deal with the other issues later.

When Techno picks him up again from where he is still unconscious, leaned against his porch, Tommy stirs. His eyebrows crease together and a murmur of pain leaves his mouth. Techno moves him carefully into the warmth, dropping him onto the couch and then stepping back to remove his heavy coat, his cloak, and his jumper, and then rolled the sleeves up on his white dress shirt. He reaches for his communicator, sending a message to his most recent, most used contact.

You need to come back to the cottage.

And then he places it down quietly on the kitchen table, and tries to silently rifle through chests to retrieve bandages and healing potions, and an empty bowl and one filled with clean water and a sponge.

He carefully places his supplies down, and then crouches in front of the couch to get a better look. For a moment, the elder is still. Contemplative. His… brother looks so young yet also like he's aged a thousand years since Techno last saw him. Techno had thought he'd looked a bit rough during Pogtopia, though his poor appearance had been outshined by the mental breakdown of their eldest brother, but this was horrific. His hair was matted and flat with grease, face a sickly pale colour and cheeks sunken in. From the one eye he could see, there were dark bags beneath and puffy eyelids. The other eye was covered by what was once a green bandana, but now resembled more of a dark, splotchy piece of fabric hastily strung across his face. He could see dried blood wiped across his neck on that sign, and it had dropped onto the white of his shirt.

Techno reaches behind his matted hair that has grown way too long- it reaches his shoulders now- and unties the blanket. His arm falls limp on his chest, concealed by a dark, khaki coloured piece of fabric that Techno can easily guess is the leg of his pants, if the exposure of once blue, now bright red, bruised knees is anything to go by. It snags on his arm, and Techno furrows his eyebrows. A rancid smell had started, one that made him think of zombies before he killed them, but he gritted his teeth and held the covered hand in his own as he tried to yank the sleeve off from where it had stuck.

Tommy's eyes flew open, a gasp dissipating into the air. It only takes him a second to yank his arm from Technoblade, cradling it with his other arm as he pushes himself into the couch, eyes wide and frantic and heart beating fast. His eyes scan the room, each nook and cranny, each book marked on his wall. They pause on one book, The Art of War, and then finally fall onto the face of Technoblade.

The last time he had seen him, his lavish red coat had been draped over his shoulders, his face contorted in nasty victory and a skull mask pushed up to his forehead, a long pink braid flying behind him. But now, his face was entirely exposed, a calm yet bewildered appearance, and his long hair was mostly pushed behind his head, entirely loose. His shirt seemed casual, the lighting in here was warm. Tommy let out a sigh of relief and Techno felt his posture sag. Tommy, for whatever reason, wasn't scared of him. That would make this all easier.

"Oh thank god." He sighs, sinking into the couch and closing his eyes, still nursing his wounded arm.

"Tommy," Techno starts, though he isn't sure what he plans to continue with. What happened? Who did this? Are you alright? It's okay, it's just me? Tommy lets out a breathy laugh.

"You're not real." He states, voice monotone. Techno reels back.

"Tommy…" he trails off. His brother opens his eyes, pupils dilated wide but eyelids hazy.

"I thought I'd see Wilbur or some shit, not you," he lets out a half laugh. Techno huffs from his nose, eyebrows crossed in confusion. "Happy birthday, by the way."

"It was my birthday two weeks ago, Tommy," he says softly, staring into gray eyes.

"Okay," Tommy replies, voice sluggish. He reaches out his uninjured hand, pale and shaky and bony, heading straight for Techno. His head lolls back against the couch, eyes closing gently. "Hold me while I go, 'kay?" Techno blanched, eyes going glassy and wet as his mind knit every clue and hint together. He reaches for the hand, it makes him shiver as the fingers faintly grip onto his, weaving their fingers together.

"Okay," Techno whispers. Is this it? Another death? Phil wasn't here yet.

"You almost feel… real." Tommy mumbles, passing out again. As his body goes still, Techno slides his hand down Tommy's hand to his wrist, holding two fingers there with baited breath. He waits, and he waits, and his face crumples and he bites his lip as tears well up in his eyes. He might dislike the kid, barely even know him, and maybe not even truly think of him as a brother the same way he thinks of Wilbur, but in the end he's always gonna remember those old days when he was younger, when a kid with golden hair and bright blue eyes lit up his brothers world and begged for Techno to teach him how to fight.

And this is where he dies. Truly, dies. Not in a war, not on a beach on bloodied sand with a man in a mask, not in the snow walking for miles, but here. In a cabin in the middle of nowhere with a brother he thought hated him.

As the first tear begins to slip down his face, he feels the slightest bump against his finger rise up and then drop again, so faintly he almost misses it. Techno's head snaps back up again, his own hands beginning to tremble. It pulses again, and he moves his hands away, allowing himself a second to breathe as he pushes his hair away from his forehead, fingers clinging in strands, and then stands up. He practically runs to the kitchen, filling a pan with water from a canister he collected a few days ago, and then carries the pan over to his open fire and lays it down on the metal grate to heat up. He grabs the only blanket he has that isn't his duvet- a ratty old thing, with scratchy material but a blanket nonetheless, and wraps it around Tommy's shoulders. He allows his hands to linger there on his shoulders, staring at his face with furrowed, worried eyes. And then he sits on the sofa behind him and holds the bowl of water on his lap, grabbing Tommy's arm by the elbow.

He carefully pats his arm with the wet sponge, soaking the material and then finally sliding it off. He sucks in a breath, from both the smell and the sight. It's so clearly infected, his arm is a mess of yellow and anything that isn't raw and open is bright red. There's dirt and crust in every crevice of every burn mark, and as he checks up his fingers he gags at the sight of white bone poking through. Who knows how old this injury was?

Phil always was a better medic out of the two of them, but Techno has been by himself before. He'd learn the necessities. Kinda.

He pats his arm down with the wet sponge. He'd have to quiz him when he woke up about what happened to it and how he'd treated it, since despite all the grime, dirt and pus leaking out of his arm, Techno can imagine it was a lot worse when it first happened. He leans over to grab his second bowl and uncorks a regeneration potion, dumping the contents into the bowl and then unravelling a bandage into the mixture. After a few minutes of absentminded swirling around, he pulls it out and carefully begins to roll it back up, dipping it once more when he was done for good measure.

The wet bandage clings to Tommy's skin as soon as it touches his forearm- Techno imagines that if he weren't laying in the snow for god knows how long, it may have sizzled on contact. He wraps his whole forearm, and tries his best to delicately wrap each mangled finger and cover his palm. Tommy doesn't stir at all, just lays completely limp with his chest barely rising. Techno ties the bandage off and carefully moves the bowl off his lap and back onto the table. He grabs the now boiling water and puts it in a small canister. It's an old trick he'd had to learn from being out in the cold.

He wraps it in a cover and places it on Tommy's lap, repositioning the blanket around his shoulders carefully.

A deep breath. In, out. Straightens his shoulders. Pushes his hair behind his ears in a stressed manor and tries not to fret over the kid who had given him nothing over the years.

He kneels down. It's just another body, he tells himself, just another soldier.

It doesn't help. Because Tommy was a soldier, a warrior, but he shouldn't be anymore. Yet here he is, dying like one.

Techno kneels down so that he's eye level with the limp body on his couch and begins to untie the bandana wrapped around his eye. He places it carefully down, eyeing the complex pattern and odd colouring. Green. Tommy's colour is red, his mind supplies, he would never consciously wear something green or pick something out like that, at least to Techno's knowledge. He places it aside for safe keeping.

His face is gross. The blood had dried a crisp layer amongst most of his right side of his face, and the slash across the tail of his eyebrow all the way to the edge of his nostril was wide open, dark red and oozing yellow liquid. His eye had fallen closed as he was asleep, and Techno cringed as he realized the cut didn't cross his eyelid, meaning his eye was probably open when it happened. Meaning his brother was probably partially blind now.

He cleans it as carefully as possibly. Gently dabs the day's worth of dried blood and dirt caked up on his face, dampens his hair to pull out clumps of blood and tries his best to not reopen the wound. A few streaks of blood slide across his somewhat clean face, but nothing to worry about.

He carefully lays down strips horizontal to the cut to close it, and then bandages across his face, covering diagonally across his eye and tying it behind his head. He sighs at the result, how it obstructs most of his face. But it does the job, he thinks.

Techno lingers for a little while. Carefully checks Tommy's pulse, how warm he is. Sits besides him and just stares, and then gets up and washes out the bowls he used. For a minute, he stands with his back against the sink in the silence of his kitchen and stares at Tommy's limp figure on the couch. Furrows his eyebrows and tries not to think about the kid who used to run around the garden excitedly, who would greet him with wide eyes and a wholesome grin as if they hadn't seen each other in years. What happened to that kid?

After enough lingering, Techno finally decides to go sort out the flea ridden sheep probably infesting his herds.

It bleats when it sees him, butting its body against the fence wall. Techno glances in the feed bucket- empty- and notes the dent in the hay he had left down for her.

He grabs a rope lead from the adjacent pen and slips it around her neck, leading her out of the pen and into a different block. It was just an old, empty pen he used for shearing. He didn't use it much since sheep weren't of much use to him, so he only had a few.

It's simple work and it takes his mind off Tommy and his injuries. As he suspected, the sheep was underweight beneath the giant wooly coat he had stripped, and mottled with flea bites and scratches. He sponges her down with soap and water, rinsing her off with a hose. For a wild one, she's surprisingly easy. Doesn't try to bite him when he shears her, stands mostly still while he hoses her down in freezing water, walks next to him calmly as he walks her back to the vacant stable.

He grabs an old rug he uses for the sheep in winter and ties it around her, adjusting the straps til it fits the small sheep. Just as he's leaving, it knocks its head into his side.

Tommy wakes up later in the day, confused and disorientated. He blinks dazedly, eyes crossed and unfocused. There's something constricting around his face, and a flash of panic overtakes him and with his mobile arm he pushes a hand to his face and feels around the edges of bandages wrapped around his eye.

It's warm, both the temperature and the lighting. If he wasn't so damn uncomfortable not knowing where he was he could've sunk right back into the warmth and stayed there forever. As it were, he couldn't remember a damn thing other than walking in the snow for what felt like hours.

He turns his head quickly at a noise coming from his left, snapping his head towards it. Technoblade turns at the exact second Tommy does, and they meet eyes while Techno's fingers clamp around the wooden bowl he's holding.

"You're awake." Techno states. And to anyone else, it would've been monotone, brooding and bored, even. But to Tommy, to someone who had looked up to this figure for years and in recent times despised him, he sees the millimeter difference as his eyebrows scoot upwards, how his fingers grip slightly too tight into the bowl and his voice slips a quarter of an octave up in surprise. Tommy doesn't dare nod, and goes stiff as he stares at the elder.

Techno's hands are gentle when they touch Tommy, carefully pressing the back of his hand to Tommy's forehead. He frowns slightly, noticing the way Tommy's breath hitches and he flinches back from the hand. He's warm, overtly so even with the excuse of the fireplace and the blanket around his shoulders. Techno assesses his eye bandage first, and winces at the few patches of yellow and red seeping through. Tommy watches with wide, fearful eyes as his fingers dance around the bandage; Techno doesn't make eye contact. He moves away from his face and gently grabs him by the forearm, and Tommy jerks backwards, his good hand coming up to resist Technoblade.

"Who do you think fixed you up?" He asks, hand unrelenting above his elbow, a hint of irritation in his tone. Tommy gulps, lowering his hand but still remaining rigid. Techno tears his eyes away and focuses on the bandaged forearm in front of him, placing his hand underneath Tommy's for support. He's not expecting the wince and sharp intake when they make contact, so he drops his hand despite the way Tommy's whole arm is shaking from keeping it up. This is worse than his eye. Most of the bandage was covered in a crued yellow to red tye dye effect, leaving barely any patches of white apart from where it led to his elbow.

"You had this one longer?" Techno questions, dropping his elbow. His arm falls weakly to the sofa and Tommy chokes on air at the pain of it. He nods hesitantly. "It's infected, y'know." He says, staring back as he waits for a reply. Tommy has wide eyes and is blankly staring back. "I'm not always gonna be around to fix you up! Why does everyone see me as a tool?" He says, anger seeping into his tone. He awaits again for that usual snappy bite he would get back from Tommy, but the boy is still wide eyed and blank, mouth shut but trembling. Techno sighs and sits heavily on the couch next to him. "You gonna tell me what happened?"

Tommy is silent for a moment, gaze shifting from Techno to the fire burning ahead of him. The same way the fire had once burned his arm instead of the logs. He shuts his eyes. Techno huffs, moving as if to get up, but the croak that leaves Tommy causes him to falter.

"Dream," his voice cracks. He clears his throat. "Dream- Exile." Techno tilts his head, leaning forward to grab a glass of water he had left out a while ago for Tommy in case he woke up by himself. It was probably quite warm now, due to the fire, but Tommy didn't seem to care as he gulped it down like he'd never been offered it before.

"Exile?" Techno grunts. Tommy nods, taking a deep breath.

"I'm not allowed in L'manberg anymore." He says. "Tubbo exiled me from the country, and Dream decided to…" he mulls over his words, tongue twisting, "keep me company." He says after a pause. Techno twists his eyebrows together, stacking the ideas together. "He was trying to help. He brought me food and he was the only one who ever visited! And… and-" Tommy takes a sharp breath, the visible eyebrow furrowing to the middle of his forehead. He motions to his arm and face. "Amongst other things."

"We need to redress your wounds." Is all Techno says, in his blank sort of way. He stands up, reaching for the bandages on the table and striding into the kitchen for a clean bowl and bottle of regeneration.

Tommy turns on the couch, sitting so he'd face Techno when he retook his seat. He takes a deep breath and lifts his arm up, finding the loose end by his elbow and he starts to unfold it. It snags immediately somewhere on his forearm and he sucks in a breath and holds back a whine as he tugs it off still. There's still a layer underneath, and when he begins to tug away at that too it snags his skin and starts to bleed again. He bites his lip, pulling away slowly.

"Could you not have waited." Techno deadpans, setting a bowl down on the counter and taking his spot back on the couch. He looks at Tommy's face, scrunched up in pain and tears threatening to leave his eyes.

"I thought you wanted me to do it." He uttered, dropping his arm carefully into his lap. Techno shakes his head.

"Don't be stupid, Tommy." And carefully takes his arm from him, dampening the area underneath with a sponge and meticulously tugging away at each area slightly meshed with his skin. His arm is still horrific to look at once he's pried the dried up bandage off his arm. The sight of his fingers still makes Techno feel faint, and when he looks up to grab the bowl, he sees that Tommy himself has gone pale, yet his eyes seem fixated on his arm.

It looks less infected, at the very least. Most of the pus was drained out, at best leaving raw marks all the way up his arm, and at worst leaving bone sticking out from his fingers. He soaks a bandage in a regeneration potion and starts the process again. It's harder with Tommy awake, he flinches away and his arm is stiff and harder to control.

"How'd this happen?" Techno asks as he wraps the bandage over his wrist carefully, in that same bored, uninterested tone he always had.

"Dream put my hand in a fire." Tommy mutters, voice soft yet just as dull sounding as his elder. Techno pauses, hand stilling on the bandage for a second. He must still be out of it from sleeping for so long, and the fever. Techno seriously doubts he would be spilling his guts like he is now if it weren't for the fact his face felt like a million suns, and his arm still resembled the embers from a fire long since burnt out.

"Why?" He asks as he continues to wrap the wet bandage over his inflamed arm. Tommy pauses, twisting his lips.

"'cause I asked him what the date was."

"Oh." Techno says back, tucking the end of the bandage into the area he'd just wrapped. "That's not normal."

"Yeah." Tommy whispered. Techno hummed.

"Why not fight back?" Tommy flinches the hardest at his words, not his touch on his arm. He scowls, a defensive, defiant look crawling over his features. It's a look Techno recognises a lot, a sort of childish annoyance, usually accompanied by the denial of whatever he'd been accused of. But now it looks unnatural, the furrowing of his eyebrows half disappears behind a wall of bandages, and his eyes are part way flooded with tears already, and instead of denial in his eyes, it's inflamed annoyance. Or, resignation.

"T-tried." His voice cracks in a similar way to a ball on a window pane. Loud, shatteringly loud, in an otherwise silent room. "I'm always fucking fighting." He says it bitterly. Techno can honestly say no guilt arises from his chest- it wasn't his fault Tommy was on the opposing side of his blade- but when he looks at the face of a child, littered in scars and fresh wounds and bandaged like a mummy, he can't help the pity that wallows deep in his soul. Perhaps the look of sadness and betrayal had been in his eyes a long time, as long as Techno had been on the SMP and he just hadn't noticed. Tommy had a way of making his voice loud and it was hard to concentrate on anything but that. Has the look in his eyes belonging to men hundreds of years older always been there? Had he just been too far away, always on the opposing side of a ravine splitting through the ground, always looking past his brother and not at him?

"No one will ever beat Dream." He says after a beat of silence. Techno freezes at the blank tone and the statement.

"Weren't you the one always claiming you would beat him?" He replies in a half mocking tone. Tommy stays silent. "Speak for yourself, anyways." Techno grumbles after a moment. The visible eye on Tommy's face goes wide, his head shaking side to side.

"No, not even you. You don't understand, Technoblade! Anytime he's lost… he's been pretending. He could never lose, he'd beat anyone on here if he wanted to. Everything's a game to him!" Tommy pleads. For a second, Techno is taken aback by the sudden outburst, and he tries to quell the annoyance that Tommy doesn't think him strong enough to beat Dream.

Silence passes between the two. Techno tightens his grip on the bowl. Tommy seems to shrink back into the sofa at every second that passes of passive aggressive silence. Techno raises his hands to peel the bandage off his face, and Tommy flinches backwards as if he'd been struck. Techno waits, arm outstretched, as he slowly reels back in.

The bandage catches on the cut, and Techno grimaces as he uses his free hand to dampen his sponge to slowly wet the bandage. A string of yellow comes off with the bandage, as well as fresh pin drops of blood beginning to form on the line across his face. At least it was just a jagged line now, instead of the gaping gash it had been before. Thank god for regeneration potions- even if the toll would end up knocking Tommy out for a few days. Techno takes a deep breath at the eye beneath the bandage. Where on the other side, a blue eye tracks his hand silently, intent on following his every move; his right eye was swollen, crusted up with infection and beneath blood and dirt, all he could see were clouds swirling in the pools of his eye.

That's the kicker. The thing that sends him over the edge. As the bandage falls from Tommy's head and provides a small weight in Techno's hands, he feels his calmness slip too. He can't help it. The stupid, unblinking eye of a fallen brother unknowingly stares at him, unfocused. He turns his head to escape from the clouded gaze and looks at the sofa for a minute, resting his hands on his legs as he feels them begin to shake.

"Techno?" Tommy asks apprehensively. His voice is small, meek, and so unlike him. Techno nods woodenly, forcing his gaze to steel over so he could look at the boy again. He holds the sponge in a shaky hand when he dips it into the potion, and brings it up once it's steady. He bobs his head in response slightly as he dabs at the inflamed wound. His previous dressing had helped a lot, but at the end of the day it was still a rotting cut, poorly treated for weeks on end with infection mangling its roots. A day of recovery just wasn't gonna cut it. "Are you alright?"

Techno stills again, damp sponge still to his brother's face. He makes the mistake of looking at the eye his sponge is at the edge of, and he flinches minutely. He purses his lips, hesitating before he speaks.

"You can't see at all through that eye, can you?" It's in his usual drone, but he can tell that Tommy is within the small group of people that can hear his tiny tone change, the way his voice ever so slightly wavers. Tommy swallows.

"No, I can't." Even though deep down he knew the answer already, could tell that a blade through the eye would tear your sight away, could tell that a seeing eye did not have a milky layer swirling in it, but the confirmation still makes his bottom lip waver and forces him to make his face devoid of emotion again. "I thought at first that it was the blood that meant I couldn't see." Techno can't help the way his mouth slightly falls open, intrusive images of the face in front of him covered in blood, the very wound he's healing dripping blood over his right side. "And then I blamed it on the stupid bandana." Tommy sighs, his uninjured hand coming up to rub at his left temple. Techno realises with yet another heavy feeling on his shoulder that Tommy will now always be one side inclined; he'd never be even. "I just didn't wanna admit it."

A few beats of silence as Techno took a long strip of gauze, soaked in potion, and leaned it against Tommy's face. He tore off two pieces of tape to secure it flat against the perpendicular cut across his face and then pulled away. He starts to gather his supplies, pulling the spare bandages back on the table and pushing the wooden bowl sloshing with leftover potion onto the table too.

"So how did he do this one?" Techno asks, as if he were a wondrous child and Tommy were telling him a made up story and not the details of his own abuse. Tommy purses his lip, reaching his hand up to where his eye would be if not obstructed by the gauze. He must be feeling tired again, because his eyes are half lidded and he's mostly relaxed back on the sofa, a drowsiness overtaking his actions.

"I wasn't supposed to have Clem." Tommy starts.

"Clem?" Techno asks. Tommy smiles.

"My sheep. I found her after I burnt my arm." Techno purses his lip at the use of 'I' and not 'he', but stays silent. "I'm not supposed to have anything he doesn't approve of. He...he…" Tommy goes quiet, voice squeaking as his eye wells up with tears. "I had a cow named Henry, and Dream killed him to show his power. I loved that cow." An upset grimace passes his face, "so I wouldn't let him kill Clem, not this time, I couldn't let it happen again." He takes a deep breath, smoothing his hand over his trousers. Techno glances at the khaki shreds covering the top half of his legs and then up to the short sleeve red and white shirt splattered in blood stains; once Tommy had had another rest, they'd have to wash him and change his clothes, for his sake rather than Techno's. "He went to slash her up- she's only little and frail, she was just laid there." A bitter look passes his face. "I couldn't let him." Tommy shook his head, bottom lip quivering.

Technoblade is a warrior, not a nurse. Not an empath, not someone who knows how to comfort a child with an obstructed eye gone blind and full of tears, body wrecked with abuse and infection plaguing his bones. So he settles for placing a hand over Tommy's. He's too hot. Tommy offers a watery grin, eyes practically closed as his head lolled back on top of the sofa. Techno waits for him to fall asleep before scrunching his nose and blinking furiously, removing his hand from the child's frail grip and then busies himself cleaning up.

If he really wanted the kid to heal, he'd need to make another bed. His own was in the loft, it was far too cold up there for any human, never mind an ill, malnourished kid, but he'd also built it up there because he wouldn't be able to get it from downstairs to upstairs. And there was the added problem of Tommy then setting his respawn point to Techno's house- not that it really matters, he thinks with a shiver down his spine, because Tommy's on his last life anyways and even with a bed to respawn in, he never would if he died again.

It was a conversation to have with a more coherent Tommy, but not even Prime could tell them when that would be. Techno would love to estimate that he only needed a few days rest, but his arm had been chocked full of dust and charcoal, boils blistering and skin raw to the bone. The infection had spread up his whole arm, not to mention the lines of yellow brimming his eye- a few days' sleep and regeneration potions would help, but Tommy needed a doctor. He needed someone with sterile tools and sheets and proper care. The tundra was no place for him.

But that's all they had. Phil would be there in a few days- Techno had not yet warned his father that his youngest had arrived- and he promised himself that he'd only send a message for help if Tommy kept getting worse.

The rest of the day is slow again. Techno resigns himself to building a bed for Tommy, but it's a laborious, loud task that he'd have to do outside, which he doesn't look forward to, and Tommy might refuse it anyways. Beds meant a lot to some people, what with it being the place they'd return to if they were killed, and him and Tommy were far from on good terms.

Tommy sleeps the full day, and Techno pulls up a chair next to the sofa when he detects no movement as the sun descends. He nods off occasionally, head lolling back in the chair, but wakes up continually to check on Tommy. Sweat mats his hair to his forehead yet he shivers throughout the night, and Techno can't decide whether it's best to add another blanket or add a cold compress to his forehead. Only two more days and Phil, blessed Phil, would arrive with enough knowledge to save the both of them.

Phil is late by a day. He sends a message early in the morning of the day of his arrival saying that L'manberg is, yet again, suspicious of anybody leaving the country. Techno chews his lip, staring at the figure on his couch. He had gone from sitting up in the corner to laying fully down after a day; Techno had supplied him with a pillow from his own bed and given into the urge of swapping the scratchy blanket for the duvet from his bed, too, as he'd been sleeping either on the floor next to Tommy or sat upright in a chair for the past few days. His fever was getting worse, he burned to touch and sweat had plastered all of his hair to his head, yet Techno could still hear him violently shivering sometimes. He'd re-bandaged his wounds every day, and Tommy had only come around once to mutter small things in a confused tone, or lift his head up to half open his eye to see his brother. His body always stayed boneless and it was only for a few seconds at a time. His arm was still gross, but the stench of rotting had gone down, and there were less yellow blisters. Out of fear of potion withdrawal and backlash, he hadn't touched another one, instead applying homemade mixes he hoped would fend off infection and bring his fever down. His eye was still gammy the last time he checked, though Tommy hadn't even tried to open either of his eyes yesterday and had stayed unconscious the entire time, but Techno could see the gammy parts sticking out from beneath his eyelashes, probably covering his eyes like spiderwebs. He couldn't really do much about it other than wipe over his eye a few times and then clean and re-wrap the wound.

He cleans up Tommy. Paces for a while. Sits on his chair and doses for a few hours or minutes. Wakes up again. Check Tommy. Cleans up the kitchen, makes food. Tries to get a partially conscious Tommy to eat with varying levels of success. Go for a short nap again. Purple bruises beneath his eyes. Build more of the bed outside. Check his livestock. Check Tommy. Wait for Phil.

It's in-between obsessively checking on Tommy and dusting his already dusted shelves when his eyes land on a book. He'd been running a cloth gently over the top of all his books- he'd collected them for years and years in preparation for his retirement, yet he'd found himself with lots to do despite the term. He'd hardly read any of the new ones; The Art of War was in neat condition, but clearly his most read, as morbid as that was, to see illustrations and colour and art within warzones filled with blood. It's spine was cracked multiple times, worn with use, and some of the pages were showing miscolour, some pages dog-eared, and discarded paper he'd used as a bookmark was littered within the book from where he'd started reading and never finished, and started again. But his eyes dropped on a medicinal book he had only ever carded through with little to no attention, or to look at a specific treatment. 'The Guide to Healing' was a cluttered, disorganised book half full of self-love and respecting one's body bullshit, and half littered with life saving medical advice. He'd barely touched it when he was active and had rarely found the medical advice useful, and he'd kept it because he'd been foolish enough to believe he would finally be able to accept himself and start on his own path to healing. He scoffed at it, but plucked it from the bookshelf nonetheless and crossed the room to sit in his chair.

He cards through pages yet again- some of them have illustrations of herbs and plants that supposedly cure your inner aura. He glances at the cactus on his windowsill, the potted mushrooms scattered on bookshelves; none of which are mentioned in the book. He flips through pages of 'learning to love yourself' to find pages about various infections, illnesses, diseases and ailments. Trench foot, due to water leaking into shoes and causing dirty water to ignite infection; dislocated bones and ways to fix them; voices in your head, insanity.

Each page aggravates him more. Just when he thinks he could be closer to finding out about what to do to help Tommy more, if there even was a way, he flips the page to find illustrations of lavender and mint, reams and reams of written scripture about how to accept and love himself. He's about to slam the hard back closed, violently turning the page to the point where the paper rips, when his eyes land on the title.

Sepsis (serious infection, seek medical advice)

He glances at the symptoms, fear hitting his heart. Temperature, shivering, fast heart, possible disorientation or confusion… The list seemed to last forever, each one describing Tommy. He reads the descriptor box with newfound vigilance.

Sepsis is the body's extreme response to infection and can be fatal. This can occur when an infection is not treated properly and spreads throughout the body, causing a chain reaction. If the symptoms are not caught in time, sepsis can begin to shut off internal organs.

Techno snaps his eyes from the text to Tommy. Everything rang alarm bells in his head. An improperly treated infection spreading up his arm, his head hot to the touch but his body shivering, his confusion towards if Techno would hurt him or not, if Techno was Dream or not. He reads the treatment paragraph with increasing worry- he needs to be in a hospital, not a cabin in the snow. He needs a clean, sterile place, with constant rewrapping of his wound and sterilisation, as well as multiple doses of healing potions. The two regeneration potions he'd used when he first found Tommy had helped, but they'd been powerful enough to keep him asleep for days. Who knew what multiple doses of pure healing would do for him?

He dog-ears the page, slamming it shut and sliding it on his table. He takes a second to rake his hands through his hair, forcing straggling strands of hair to push behind his shoulders. Tommy needed a bed, that much had been clear from the beginning. Beds allowed more healing, they were incremental in a large healing factor, yet Techno wasn't even halfway done with it yet. He needed wool- more wool than he could get from his own sheep who he had already sheared, but that meant travelling far to find other sheep and steal their wool too and he wasn't willing to leave Tommy for that long.

His mouth pulls in a tight line. He grabs all his tools from where they're hung up and heads into the loft to do what he should've when Tommy first arrived.

It's still a laborious task. Taking apart his bed is hard, he has to break the frame into four pieces just to fit down the ladder, and it's hard work climbing down a ladder holding intricate pieces of wood. It takes him a few hours to dismantle the bed frame and bring it downstairs. He takes a break once all four pieces are sitting in his living room, brewing himself a cup of tea. He looks back at Tommy, red and still sweaty on his couch, and brews him one as well. He hadn't woken up in days, and Techno has to admit himself for the blame. He wasn't the best nurse- he was forgetful at the best of times. He hadn't woken Tommy up enough for meals or water, and thinking back on it, he can't remember how many days it had been since Tommy had arrived.

He crouches on the floor next to him, placing two cups of tea behind him on the table, and gently shakes Tommy by his right arm. His head lolls back, and Techno pushes his shoulder a bit harder, calling his name louder.

He wakes up groggily. Sleep lines evident in his face, his cheeks puffy and his tongue making smacking noises in his no doubt dry mouth. His eye seems dazed for a minute, before his eyebrows lift and he stares at Techno on the floor.

"Hey," he mutters, leaning back and closing his eye as the world begins to spin.

"Hey, you need to drink this," Techno says, holding a cup and reaching for Tommy, who eyes him with slight suspicion, before taking the cup in a shaking hand and slotting his fingers into the ring. Techno relaxes, leaning back against the table and picking up his own mug. Tommy sits up more, dragging his feet beneath him so he can half rest the cup on his thigh. His stomach growls at the first sip of tea- it's sweet and soothing, passing easily across dry lips into his empty stomach. Techno bites his lip between sips of tea- he'd been so busy worrying that the wounds wouldn't heal, he totally forgot about waking him up to eat. Come to think of it, he hadn't eaten much in the past few days either.

He rises from the floor, standing up with his cup still clutched in his hand.

"I'm gonna go make some food, try to stay awake?" With a hesitant hand, he reaches towards Tommy to pat his head. Tommy doesn't quite flinch, but goes completely still, his grip on the cup tightening.

"Sure," he mutters. "Thank you." As an afterthought.

Techno tries not to be too long with the stew. He chops brown mushrooms into squares, carrots and potatoes into rings and chunks, and slices beetroot into circles. He puts it all in a pan, pours over kettle water and handfuls of whatever he could forage- coriander, spice from some peppers he came across. He pulls out a slab of raw beef from a container in his cooler. He'd slowly been eating away at it, taking chunks as the days went by, so he empties the container onto his wooden block and dices it into small pieces, throwing it into a separate pan to cook quicker. The kitchen starts to smell good, and even Techno feels his stomach begin to rumble. He debates adding bread, but has to remind himself that Tommy was on a limited diet and he doesn't want the kid to start throwing up. With that in mind, he grabs a fork and starts to mash some of the vegetables into a more digestible mush in the water pot. It looked less appetising, but he figured it would go down better on a small stomach.

He brings over the bowl to Tommy about 20 minutes later, steaming up and topped with beef. Tommy was dozing off, empty cup still clasped in his hands but his head was leaned back.

"Tom," Techno muttered. Tommy's head pulled up slowly in acknowledgement. He takes the bowl with a clumsy, shaking hand, the spoon clattering in its bowl, and then stares helplessly at his practically immovable arm. Techno grabs a pillow and places it in Tommy's lap for him to set the bowl down on, and he nods in acknowledgement, immediately picking up his spoon and sipping at the hot broth. Techno settles onto the couch next to him, where his feet were before he tucked them up underneath himself. He's glad to see Tommy eating, though he's going a bit fast as if Techno would take the bowl back.

"Tommy, slow down," he says without thinking. Tommy freezes and a bit of stew splashes onto the pillow. His whole body shakes, enough so that Techno worries that the pot will slide off the pillow. He leans forward to hold it steady, and Tommy snaps his head to look at him with horror in his eyes.

"Please! I'm not done, please don't take it away!" He bawls, his hand gripping the bowl. "I'll clean up the mess I promise just let me finish." Tears are already pooling in his blue eyes. Techno goes still, retracting his hand. He stares into his stew.

"I wouldn't ever take it away. You need to slow down so you don't get indigestion, and I don't care about the spills." Tommy nods, fearful in every movement, and slowly brings the spoon to his lips, watching Techno's every move. Techno stands once he's finished, stretching and carrying his bowl to the kitchen. He leaves Tommy to finish his own; he'd noted the tremble in his hand when Techno stood up, the way his grip tightened on his spoon and his body stiffened.

He finishes the bed frame. Tommy looks at him whilst he sets it up closer to the fire, and awaits his return when he disappears into the loft to retrieve his mattress. Tommy already had his duvet downstairs, so that wouldn't be too tricky. He'd finished his stew by the time a single bed was sitting in front of the fire, the beef sitting heavy in his stomach, bordering on uncomfortable.

"I'm gonna move you into a bed so you can heal better." Tommy's eyes suddenly start to glisten. He hadn't had a bed throughout all of exile, he kind of figured Techno was moving the bed down for himself.

"A-are you sure?" His voice is scratchy. Techno nods. He hadn't slept in a bed in months.

"Of course, I should've done it when you first got here. Are you okay to move?" He asks and Tommy nods eagerly, setting the bowl on the other side of the sofa and the pillow on the floor. He swings his legs to the floor and presses weight to them, clinging onto the sofa arm to push himself up. He stumbled, arms and legs shaking, and in an instead Techno is beside him, holding his arm. "No offense," he says as he gingerly holds Tommy's good elbow, "but you fucking reek." Tommy lets out a small laugh for the first time in what feels like forever. "Do you think you could handle a bath first?"

No, is the first that comes to his mind. But he's already inconveniencing Techno by taking up his time and resources, the least he can do is not stink up his living room. Besides, he can feel his hair, matted with grease and blood, sticking to the back of his neck. He nods and Techno grunts, shifting so he can half carry Tommy to the bathroom. He places a towel on the floor first and guides his brother to sit with his back against the tub, and then begins to fill it with water. He'd built a well outside, and rigged a flame underneath the water tank to heat it up enough to not be freezing cold.

He sits cross legged in front of Tommy and carefully removes his bandages, which he'd needed to change anyways, from his arms and face. He pulls his shirt over his head, leaving him cold and shivering, pale and malnourished against the cold tub. Techno can see each rib and each dark shadow defining each one, and bruises and discolouration.

He bathes his younger brother gently, and a strong pang of nostalgia hits him when he raises a bucket to wash his hair. The water is slightly red and dirty when they're done, and Tommy hisses like a cat when he first touches the water, putting his arm under feels like touching a vat of acid. And the water on his hair stings because there's wounds beneath his hairline, too, and his hair is so clumped with dirt and grease and blood that each drag hurts him. It's awfully domestic and familiar, the man with rough hands and pink hair and animalistic features bathing his small body.

Techno gives him clean clothes and underwear, and when Tommy protests, he promises to wash and give him back his torn shorts and thin t-shirt. It seems to calm him enough for him to accept the baggy leggings and plain blue jumper that Techno offers, though he looks mournfully at his pile of destroyed clothes, probably stained past any wash could fix.

He feels better, laid in a bed that he sinks into, in clean clothes with clean hair. It takes enough of his energy that he offers his arm with no complaint to Techno, his eyes already closing before he's even had the first bandage on.

He'd be knocked out for the next couple days, Techno thought as he slathered his arm in healing potions, desperately trying to rid him of the supposed sepsis. The clean sheets and bedding ought to help, as well as the bath, but Techno was still worrying. His arm was beyond mutilated, he probably had no movement left in most of his fingers and hand due to nerve damage and the way his bones are stuck outside of his body.

Phil arrives the next day early in the morning. Techno takes the couch instead of the floor or chair now since Tommy was no longer occupying it. He's only just woken up, glasses perched on his nose and shirt wrinkled, when he hears the creaking of footsteps outside his front door. He swings his legs from beneath his blanket immediately, glancing at Tommy's sleeping form first, and then creeping silently to the door. He grabs his sword from its handle on his way, the netherite scraping against the stone holder, and begins to wield it close to his shoulder as the door opens.

Phil's frame fills the door. Techno breathes out a sigh of relief as the door closes behind him and he allows his body to go slack, sliding the sword back into its holder as his father removes his snowy boots and hat, leaving them by the door.

"It's good to see you," Techno says honestly. Phil can see something in his son he hadn't seen in a while- stress taking over his whole body, lines beneath his eyes and shaky hands.

"You too," Phil says as he takes his big coat off, draping it over the back of a chair to dry. He pats Techno on the shoulder when they cross paths, and he stops short in the open doorway to the living room. "Is that…?"

"Mhm," Techno grunts, standing next to him. "Found 'im a few days ago, freezing and near dead."

"Okay," Phil takes a moment to steel himself, rolling up his sleeves. He hadn't seen his son in a while, and from Techno's worried stance and the bed by the fire, he assumed the worst. "What have you done so far?"

"His arm is burnt badly." Techno goes quiet for a second, and his next sentence is a few octaves lower and more akin to a whisper, "I don't think he can move it at all, Phil." Phil nods, swallowing the lump in his throat. "I had to clean it and use regen pots," he pauses, "but I think he has sepsis. I managed to get him in the bath yesterday and I've moved to healing potions."

Phil swallows his fear and walks into the room, stopping at the bed. He always thought his youngest was the most similar to him. Blonde hair, pale skin, blue eyes. He often looked angelic when he slept, too, his blonde hair appearing gold, and brown flecks from the sun often frequented his face, and when the light would shine on his face when he was younger anyone would swear he wasn't human.

He had never looked more human. Pale flesh, bony frame and a sunken face. Purple circles beneath the only visible eye, the other covered by a white bandage, his whole arm bandaged and his chest barely rising. Phil couldn't handle another dead child of his.

"What happened to his face?" He all but whispers.

"Dream slashed it. He, uhm, can't see out of that eye."

"Oh." Phil replies. A moment of silence as he surveys the child beneath the blankets and bandages. "Did you check him this morning?" Techno shakes his head.

"No, I woke up when you got here." He automatically pulls the chair he usually sat in closer, nearer to Tommy's head, and then leaves their father there to watch in disbelief whilst he goes to rifle through chests. He boils his water, going through the monotonous routine of pouring some into a bowl of water, grabbing a clean sponge and a health potion and two more bandages. He carries it all back in one go, balancing the bowl in one hand and everything else in the other. He slides his glasses from his head to on his nose and settles in the chair next to Tommy's bed. Phil had pulled up a chair further up the bed so as to not get in the way.

He watches with slight wonder and disbelief as Techno dresses his wounds carefully, confident in each step after having done it so often. Phil gulps at the sight of Tommy's arm. Raw skin built up against welts and even raw-er skin, remnants of pus prevalent in his wounds, bones sticking out from frail fingers. Techno seems unfazed, and Phil immediately realises the wound must've been marginally worse when he first arrived if even this level wasn't bothering him. The gash on his face is healing well, judging from how Techno seems pleased with just the thin sliver of blood touching the bandage. It's a long, thin line travelling from his eyebrow to his nose, four strips of tape holding it together set evenly down it.

"How bad was that when he got here?" Phil asks. Techno bites his lip.

"Pretty bad." He makes a pinching motion with his finger and thumb, a few millimetres between them, to indicate how big the gash was. "I don't know what to do."

"You seem like you've figured it out pretty well." Phil says, nodding his head towards where Techno is taping a bandage back down over his face wound after applying more healing potion to it. Techno shakes his head, pursing his lips and pulling away from the boy after feeling his forehead.

"He's hot to the touch but he shivers constantly. It's not just him being near the fire- he has a fever." Techno says, turning his head from Phil to the fire at the foot of Tommy's bed. "He's covered in bruises everywhere else. He's beyond starving. He flinches whenever I come near and I don't even recognize him anymore." He admits the last part in a whisper.

"More blankets. He needs to sweat the fever out." Phil says. "Have you been feeding him three times a day? Making sure he's getting lots to drink." Techno ducks his head, shame coating his cheeks. Phil takes the silence in stride. "I'll start on breakfast, then."

The next day's pass easier with Phil there. He's more diligent with feeding Tommy, and with that comes a quicker recovery. In a few days, there's more colour in his cheeks, which already look fuller.

But with his physical recovery, his mind starts a journey of his own. With physical recovery came Tommy being more conscious for longer amounts of time, no longer riddled by his fever but now his thoughts, his mistrust in the two people who had nursed him back to health.

When he really starts recovering, still bed bound but awake for hours and hours at a time, he flinches at every sound, every movement either of them would make. He'd stare into space for hours; the silence disconcerting because this was Tommy, the loud kid who provoked everything and everyone by annoying them.

After a week of Phil being there, they remove Tommy's eye bandage. He's awake, silent but staring them down. If he had hackles, they would be raised.

It peels away from his face with no blood or pus. His eye was still swollen and slightly crusted, but now all he had to show for the horrific wound he had presented Techno with was a thick, red line zipping across half his face. It would lighten overtime, fade to white, but it would always be there. Would always obstruct his vision.

Phil puts Tommy's arm in a sling after a few days, winding the bandage across his arm around his neck too, to alleviate the pressure.

A couple days later, he allows Tommy to leave his bed.

He shakes uncontrollably when he moves back his mounds of blankets, legs sliding over hesitantly and feet gently touching the floor. He pushes off the bed with one arm, knees knocking together as he rests his weight on them. Techno senses his fall a few seconds before he takes the step, quickly swooping in to catch him as his legs give out.

He walks for a few minutes only, doesn't even get to go outside, before Phil tells him to go back to bed. Tommy glares at him with his working eye, his only actual defiance of the man's orders since he'd gotten here. In fact, Tommy had been mostly silent since Phil's arrival.

He'd shrugged off Techno after a few seconds, hobbling around the room carefully. Whenever he checked over his left side, he had to completely turn his head in an unnatural way that made his cheeks go red from embarrassment.

He walks to the door, legs still quivering, and Phil sighs. Techno couldn't help but fall into a less prominent role in Tommy's recovery since his father had arrived, and even now he stood back and let Phil deal with him.

"Tommy, I don't wanna ask again." Phil says, not standing or looking at Tommy from where he sat at the table, had been sat for the past five minutes whilst Tommy walked around- a stark contrast to Techno, who couldn't help but hover in doorways ready to catch the runt before he fell over. Techno's mouth twists into a firm line at Phil's words, the way Tommy suddenly goes stiff where he's stood, entirely still, and then walks back to his bed with fear in each movement. Techno tracks him out of the corner of his eye, not saying a word.

Five minutes turns to fifteen the next day, and then that spurs into an hour on the third day. He walks easily now, but Techno can't help but to hover around him carefully in case his legs turn to jelly. He's usually tired when he goes back to bed, potion exhaustion and lack of muscle use made him easy to wear out.

It's on the third day, after Tommy had been up for a while, standing around the kitchen and actually for once being slightly warmed up around his two saviours, when a knock lands on the door. A silence settles around the once warm kitchen, everything turning cold. Techno dries his hands on a towel, turning to Tommy.

"Hide." He mutters, watching Phil practice fake casualty and pull out a chair at the table. Tommy nods, swallowing a lump in his throat and walking towards the living room with haste. Techno hesitates at the door, waiting for Tommy to cross into the living room behind him. He swings the door open.

"To what do I owe the pleasure?" He asks, a bored tint to his tone. Dream's soulless mask stares up at him, but he imagines there's a grin beneath it.

"Techno," he waves a hand, peering into his cottage to glance at the elder, "Phil. I'm looking for someone."

"You'll have to be a bit more specific," Techno drawls, eyes narrowed. Despite his somewhat lackluster appearance compared to his usual outfits, he still looked scary. He lacked his usual composure that came with a planned battle, which was braided hair and big, lavish cloaks, fancy button ups and red sashes, boots that gave him a few more inches. His hair is pulled back, resting behind his head in a low ponytail, with some stragglers resting around his face. His white shirt lacks its usual fringe or flourish, and the top few buttons are undone, the sleeves hastily rolled up and slightly damp from washing up. But his mundane appearance would never let anyone look past his eyes, shining a brutal red, and now sharply narrowed as he scrutinised the man in front of him. Dream clears his throat.

"Tommy. I'm looking for Tommy." One hand rests on his sword laid in his hilt attached to his hip. Techno raises an eyebrow in faux surprise.

"I wasn't aware you two were friends." He says, probably a bit too coldly. A beat of silence.

"He was quite… upset, when I last saw him." He evades the question. Silently, Techno bristles underneath his own skin. "We see each other a lot, but it's been weeks now."

"I haven't seen him," Techno says, grinding his teeth. Underneath the mask, Dream furrows his eyebrows.

"Mind if I come in? It's a bit cold out here." Techno masks his scowl as Dream puts his boot in the doorway, forcing his way in.

"Of course." He grinds out. He tracks snow into the house, not bothering to wipe his feet.

"I fear he's trying to get back into L'manberg." Dream says, leaning on his axe. "He was exiled, I've been keeping him company but he's… strange."

"Strange?" Techno narrows his eyes. Dream nods.

"Not himself." He doesn't care to elaborate more than that. He walks around, testing the creaks in his floorboards. Pokes his head into the living room.

Tommy grips his hands over his mouth as his breathing picks up. He'd crammed himself between a cabinet in the alcove that didn't fit correctly, and a coat stand Techno had put there to cover where the cabinet fixture didn't quite fill. It wasn't that big, his shoulders were crammed in on either side, his legs bent to the floor, his back against the wall; a large red cloak hiding him from Dream. He can hear his movement, hear him wandering from the kitchen to this room. He clamps around his face so hard he fears he'll leave bruises, but he refuses to let his breathing be heard.

He goes past the cloaks. Tommy's heart hammers. Techno waits with his arms folded in the doorway.

"Happy?" He asks.

"Not in the slightest." Dream replies, the smiley face staring down Technoblade. He moves towards the door anyways. "Thank you for your help."

"We're not friends," Techno hisses as he approaches the door, "don't forget that."

"Of course not," he waves his hand as a goodbye, the large oak door slamming shut behind him. Techno waits for a second, looking out of the window as the green figure disappears into the treeline, and turns into the living room as he hears a yelp.

His cloak stand was on the floor, the red thing similarly fated, and Tommy was crouched behind it, tucked into his alcove. His hands were in his hair, clinging to his scalp as he breathed sharply in and out.

"It's okay, it's okay it's just me," Phil placates him.

"Don't touch me!" Tommy yells like a wounded animal, flinching even further into the wall when Phil reaches an arm out. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry," he sobs and hiccups, "please, I'm sorry I didn't mean to!" He yells, voice scratching and tears rolling down his face.

When they finally manage to calm him down and get him into bed, he doesn't move for two more days. He holds his arm out to Techno for bandage changes, he drinks his tea with one good hand, he eats mechanically, all whilst staring ahead with a distant, retrieved look in his glazed eyes.

"Hey," he says hoarsely on the third day, eyes still glazed but looking more recognizable, more blue. Techno grunts in affirmation. "Can I get up again today?"

Techno startles a little bit, his hands stilling their motions for a second.

"Of course, can finally contribute to cleaning the house," he jokes, like he used to when Tommy was a kid. Instead of a playful shove and a sharp tongue, Tommy flinches backwards and then starts nodding like a maniac.

"Yeah- I- of course, I should've- Yes. I'll clean up. I'm so sorry I hav-" he says frantically, words spilling from his lips like a waterfall and eyes wide.

"Tommy, I was joking." He says gruffly, slight annoyance tinged in his tone to hide his pity. Tommy reclines further backwards and doesn't reply.

True to his word, he gets out of bed and cleans. He strips his own bed one handed, the other still in a sling, and sits to wash them in the kitchen. His breathing is ragged from just scrubbing at sheets and pushing them around in a bucket of soapy water, even though he's sat down. He hangs them on the indoor line to dry them. He sweeps, he makes Techno a cup of tea, he wipes down the table and counter tops. Techno stops him when he starts to wash up the few pots collecting in his sink with a guided hand, gently landing on his shoulder.

"Thank you, Toms." He says the nickname effortlessly. Tommy nods, residing on the couch in an exhausted manner. Techno huffs at the small frame cuddled up to a pillow in the corner, grabbing his cloak and pushing it over him. Tommy falls asleep quick- Techno changes his sheets for him once they're dry, and then wakes him up to move him to bed. A question weighed heavy on his mind as he looked at the kid; he was still scrawny, but less malnourished now. Still flinching but a fire still lit in his heart. Still a soldier when there was no war. Techno always needed a soldier, especially for his upcoming plans.

Phil opposes him when he proposes the plan. It's late, Tommy was dead asleep in front of the fire. They'd have to move the bed somewhere, sort somewhere else for him to go. He was nearly healed- or as healed as he'd ever be. A blooming, purple-red scar was lit harsh across his skin, bumping up and down unevenly, at least an inch. Scarred. Still blind. His arm was a bit scabby, a bit dry, a few blisters still on his slightly raw skin. His fingers still showed bones- no one knew how to fix that. But Tommy said it didn't hurt anymore since he couldn't feel a thing in his arm anymore, so that was a plus. But it's late, dark outside across the arctic, the kitchen is lit with warm lanterns as it usually is.

"He's handicapped!" Phil says, slight outrage at Techno at his outline of doomsday. "We don't even need him."

"We could always use more, no matter how good we are. He needs to pull his weight, anyways," he grunts.

"I was under the impression you were going soft, mate," Phil says, placing a hand on his shoulder. Techno grunts again and shrugs it off.

"No, he might be injured but he's still Tommy, he's still for L'manberg. If he proves his loyalty I'll help him, I'd even allow him into the syndicate. If he denies, he can leave. I won't help anymore." He folds his arms, leaning back in his chair. His sleeves are rolled up, hair on his arms raised, bottom fangs pressed against his top lips in a snarl. Bright red eyes.

Phil shrugs.

"It's your plan. I'm in either way." He pauses, leaning back in his chair and mirroring Techno, "I don't think he'll say yes."

"Why not? They're the fuckers who exiled him, who caused all this shit." Techno says, spitting venom. Phil still doesn't look convinced.

"Yeah, but he's loyal. He's still loyal even after all they've done; fuck, he'd probably still be loyal to Dream if he asked nicely."

"Well, surely he can be loyal to us? We nursed him back to health." Techno combats, but Phil still looks iffy.

"I don't know if a few weeks warrants that kind of loyalty. We've still done bad things, even if we have helped him out a bit." Phil says evenly. Techno huffs, blowing a hair away from his lips.

"I'm still gonna ask," he says, tucking it behind his ear and standing up to roll up the plans. Phil nods curtly, resting his elbows on the table as Techno disappeared up his ladder to store away the plans.

Tommy's still sleepy when he wakes him up. Usually, he'd let the kid come around or he'd wake him at a more usual time. It's around half five, Phil was snoring away on the couch and Tommy was peacefully asleep, the fire crackling small embers, a mimicry of what once was.

"Huh?" He asks, opening his eyes and sitting up quickly, blinking at the man hovering over him.

"Get dressed." Techno instructs, holding a pile of his own clothes. "We're gonna tend to the animals." Tommy's eye lights up, the other staying dull and cloudy.

Techno doesn't wait for a response, instead heading into the kitchen. It's half dark outside, the sun just skirting the horizon and lighting the snow up. He flicks the kettle on, pouring them both cups of tea. He's just pulled out a chair when Tommy appears, rubbing sleep out of his eyes, his hair messy and tousled. Techno blinks, swallows harshly, and is transported back to an easy time; Tommy stumbling down the stairs, swaddled in clothes too big handed down from his older brothers, eyes puffy and sleepy, limbs short, arms reaching out for his big brother when he finally returned home.

He shakes his head, sitting down heavily and pushing the mug over to Tommy. The clothes are too big, he's rolled up the sleeves and the pant legs, and he's expertly tied the waistline of his trousers by looping the button through the belt hook to make them fit better. He doesn't have a cloak, not grandiose like Techno's red one, billowing with fur around the edges, or a plain one like Phil, brushing the edges of the earth just slightly but never getting dirty. Techno supposed that if he joins them for doomsday, he'd make him one. Grey, like his cracked up eye. Fur lined but not for looks, for comfort, since the kid was always cold. Maybe not even a golden clasp, like his and Phil's, but a red one, to match his old clothing. And he'd look grand, standing aside his brother and father, cloak billowing in the wind, face cracked with victory, a vicious grin etched on his face as he blew what once exiled him to smithereens. The family nearly reunited.

But only if he said yes.

They drink their tea quickly, Techno tosses a pair of old boots to Tommy, sliding his nicer ones on and zipping them up. Tommy's arm was still in a sling, hidden beneath the large hoodie Techno had given him. It didn't need rebandaging, in fact it barely needed it's bandage at all. The sling was useful, as it kept it from being an uncontrollable dead weight, but the bandage around his arm did nothing except hide his deformity.

It's not as bitter as he expects outside. There's no rain or snow like usual, other than what coats the ground, but the air is crisp. A peaceful layer sits across the ground.

He tends to the dogs first. They spill out from the doghouse freely, ready to roam the perimeters, and then circle back once they notice the meat being thrown around. A few of the older ones don't bother to try run first, knowing that his owner holds a bucket of fresh steak.

Tommy coos as one of them finishes and slyly walks over to him, butting his head against his hand.

"Hey buddy," he rubs between its ears and it melts, nudging its head closer. It's quite big, reaching Tommy's waist, tan in colour with brindle marks across his waist. "What's his name?" Tommy asks, Techno scoffs.

"I only name the best ones. There's like fifty dogs here, Tommy, I can't name them all!" He replies, chucking a piece to a newer, less trusting one.

Tommy crouches down, grinning at him.

"Walter." He says. It stares into his eyes, snout long and quivering. "His name is Walter." He calls to Techno, giggling as he pushes his nose against Tommy's face.

"Whatever you say, Tommy." The others have mostly run off now, to scout the perimeter and fight pests off. Techno takes a deeper look at the big dog. "He's one of the worse ones," Tommy looks offended, covering Walter's ear with one hand, "doesn't scout the perimeter much, just runs around like a lunatic. Not a good guard dog."

"I think he's perfect." Tommy grins at the dog, rubbing it's head one more time and standing up, shuffling around to Techno. Walter sticks by him, snuffling at his hand and walking in stride with the boy. He sorts the bees out, collecting their honey carefully in bottles. Tommy stands outside, absentmindedly petting Walter. The bees remind him of Tubbo, and Tubbo stings. He sighs, he'd been around bee extractors enough to know collecting honey isn't a two second job. He turns his back to it, crouches down, and scoops up a handful of snow, forming it into a ball. Walter jumps, leaning his front legs down and his tail up and wagging. Tommy lobs the ball in the direction of where most of the other dogs are- farthest side from the house. Walter yips, lurching after it at incredible speed. Tommy grins, turning back to the bee hut. Techno's near the end now, balancing a crate filled with clear glass bottles full of honey. As much as Tommy had loved L'manberg, loved the community, loved the dependency- he half hoped that one day he'd be this self-sufficient. Have all his needs cared for by him, no one else. Have crops, have animals and pets with no issues of dragging them into wars. Have a home he trusted no one would set fire to. Have a place not dictated by labels of country, embassy, and therefore not run the risk of being chased off his own land.

He's startled out of thoughts of sustaining himself by a wet nose tickling the back of his hand. He turns, expecting Walter, and being met by a sleek, smaller black dog with beady little eyes.

"Oh, hello," he mutters, crouching again to pet her. He turns his head as Techno exits the final door, holding crates of honey. "Does this one have a name?" Techno glances over. She wasn't that new, but she also wasn't great at fighting off threats either. Much preferred to linger near the house.

"Will you stop adopting all my dogs?"

"So, no?" Techno nods his head. Tommy grins.

"Hi, Betty," Techno rolls his eyes.

They place the honey by the door. Walking back around to the stables.

"Can I see Clem?" He'd asked a lot about her during his time healing. Both Phil and Techno refused for him to go see her as it was too cold out here.

"Course." Techno said, sliding the barn door open. Carl lets out a whinny and Techno smiles, petting his nose and then moving to fill his feed bucket and refresh his water. "She's down there," he points to the other occupied stable. He wouldn't admit it to Tommy, but he'd grown quite fond of the little sheep. She'd grown a layer of fuzz over her body, which Techno had helped heal from its bumps and small cuts. No longer flea ridden, and no longer showing her ribs. She was still underweight, but nowhere near as bad as before.

Tommy scurries to her stable, sticking his head over the door and gasping at her. She bleats loudly, standing up from where she laid in the hay.

"Clem!" Tommy muttered, unlatching the door and slipping in the stable. She bumped her head into his leg, allowing his hand to rest between her ears. He kneels in the hay, grinning widely at the sheep in a much more healthy condition than she was with him.

"You can feed her if you want!" Techno calls from Carl's stable, where he brushes out the horse. "Purple bucket in her pen," Tommy stands up to Clementine's chagrin, locating the bucket immediately. Licked clean and stood on its side. "And the orange bag is leaning by the wall." He exited the pen, not bothering to lock the door properly.

"How much?" He calls out, grabbing the orange bag.

"Quarter, then add some water from the hose." He calls, turning from Carl to lean over the stable as Tommy walks past. "About half. Chuck in a carrot from the bag over there and you're good." Tommy nods, grinning, and goes to the hose. It only takes a few seconds, and he breaks the carrot up into smaller pieces, sneaking her a second one too. She wobbles towards him, first knocking her head into his leg and then into the bucket, already trying to eat out of it before he put it down.

He reluctantly leaves Clem when Techno calls him to go do the crops.

He always liked farming. Getting his hands dirty when he was a kid was easy and fun, and Wilbur quickly found that the easiest way to make a messy, destructful kid productive was to stick him in the garden. So they never had a beautiful garden when Phil left. It used to be full of sunflowers, tulips and hydrangeas. Plants Tommy couldn't even name sprouted the ground. Phil had a green thumb, and for the first few years of his life, all Tommy saw was green and bursts of colour from the garden. He only ever destroys things. It's first a sunflower, and then he accidentally tramples on a flower bed, kicks a football into a plant pot and it shatters. Neither of them knew how to take care of the garden their father had left them, and each day the plants got more and more trampled, their food source dwindling, when Wilbur finally dug most of it up and replaced it with actual food to grow. Tommy got more respectful then. Learned how to tend to his crops without breaking them. Learned the beauty in wheat, orange and green coloured things rather than bursts of colour from useless flowers.

Granted, it was hard to garden with one hand, but Tommy made due. Betty and Walter kept prancing over every now and again, never straying as far as the others and often coming up to Tommy and sniffing at him. He laughed each time, greeting them as if they were old friends and not two scruffy dogs he'd just met.

Techno puts him on carrots, the opposite end to the wheat, where he decides to work. It's easy to dig up the carrots even with one hand. One large dig with a trowel, a dig with his hand and he was holding a carrot or two by the root. He replanted as he went, sprinkling bits of bone meal over each plant, as supplied by the composter. He fills the basket up with dirt covered carrots and replants until he can just see a fleck of green above the wet soil. It's calming, familiar.

They work in silence, occasionally breaking it when Techno directs Tommy on where to stack the carrots (into the small crates they had). He's tired by the time they're done, even though they don't harvest the whole farm, just enough for the week. Techno was smart like that, stunting his farms so that they'd grow apart. It's still three boxes of produce to carry back to the house, so Tommy takes one and envies the way Techno can use both hands to carry two. Betty and Walter weave around them, running off but circling back, until they reach the steps and Tommy departs from them with a pat to each of their heads after placing his box on the porch. Techno rolls his eyes, unlocking the door and stepping in.

Phil's awake, sitting at the table. He grins when they get back, standing up and taking a box off Techno. Tommy yawns, slouching as he places his box of carrots down on the table.

"Still work to do, gremlin," Techno utters, sitting down heavily at the table. Tommy rolls his eyes, mirroring his position and resting his head on the table. He waves his hand in dismissal.

They take a break for a bit- the day's still young, and Tommy was tired from the sudden movement after being still so long. Tommy stumbles to the living room, tugging off a few layers and leaving them at the end of his bed before collapsing in his bed tiredly.

"You have to help later, y'know." Techno says, standing over his bed. Tommy grins sleepily.

"Jus' a little nap first, yeah?" He mumbles, eyes closed. Techno huffs but goes to close the curtains.

Tommy wouldn't even know that this was his last time in the bed. Only later would he wish he savoured the warm feeling more.

And it's when his hands are engulfed in water, washing the dirt off carrots and potatoes alike whilst Phil turns wheat to bread and Techno is shoulder to shoulder with him, also washing off fruit, that Techno asks.

"I'm going to be straight with you," Techno starts, "you can't stay here forever," Tommy's heart drops, "unless you really, truly want to join the syndicate." Perhaps not the best way to start off.

"The fuck is the syndicate?" Tommy asks, slightly too aggressively to cover up the loss and hurt he was starting to feel.

"It's an… anti-government movement. Can't go into too much detail. But you'd align with my values, help me out and you'd be welcome here forever." The offer was tempting. The warm cabin was nice, the real bed was nice, reconnecting with his past family was nice.

"You uh, you know I don't think like that, though." Tommy mutters, hands stilling under the water. Techno's expression darkens.

"Doesn't matter. On the 6th, we're destroying L'manberg, whether you join us or not." Phil was silent, head bowed. Tommy's eyes went wide.

"What?! Are you crazy!?" Tommy yelped, looking at the taller and suddenly feeling full of dread and fear.

"Am I crazy?" He boomed, "you know what they did to me!" The butcher army had happened a few weeks before Tommy had found the cabin. Techno had shared the results a while back, ranting and spitting about governments and vague mentions of plans. Plans he set back because he was nursing Tommy back to health. "And think about what they did to you too! If L'manberg didn't exist, if Tubbo had never exiled you-"

"Don't." Tommy stated coldly, cutting him off from his rage induced speech. Techno glared.

"Oh, Theseus, Theseus! Always trying to be the hero, the bigger man." He slammed his hand on the table. "Don't you want revenge!? Stop trying to be a hero and take what you want!"

"I don't want to destroy L'manberg! Don't you get that?" He yelled back, tears building in his eyes at that stupid, stupid nickname.

"Doomed to die by the hand of your friend," Techno spat, "be lucky I stepped in and saved you from that fate. The least you could do is help me back." Tommy's head spins, his grip slipping from the counter.

"I can't. I won't." He uttered, looking down. He hears Phil sigh behind him. Techno turned off the tap.

"Leave, then. And never fucking come back here and try get help again." He hisses. Tommy moves quickly to the living room, socks slipping against the floor. He wipes away tears from his cheeks- all he ever wants is peace and all he ever gets is war.

He doesn't have any belongings, not really. He takes the liberty of grabbing the jumper Techno had given him and slipping it back on, hands shaking and breaths coming out shakily. He turns back to the kitchen with nothing in his hands and goes to slip on the boots that Techno had let him have earlier. The man is leant against a kitchen chair, watching him with sharp eyes. He throws a pile of tattered clothes and a tattered blanket at him.

"I don't ever want to see you again, Theseus." He says, eyes full of hurt.

"Did you really think I was going to join you?" Tommy asked, face crumpled.

"After everything I'd done for you? I must've forgotten how ungrateful you are." He utters, venom in his tone. Tommy's hands go still.

"That's what Dream used to say," and Phil can't help the flash of concern striking in his chest, and he wonders if Techno feels it too, and that's why his son hesitates on his next line.

"I should've let him have you." It doesn't take long for Tommy to scurry from the kitchen, through the door and into the arctic after that. Phil sighs, resting his elbows on the table. Techno turns back to the sink. "We didn't need him anyways."