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Tommy had been seven years old when Phil dragged him out of the house, threw him into the car, and drove him to their local climbing gym. Though he didn’t realize it at the time, Phil had just set his hyperactive playground menace on a path that would change his life forever.
It had only taken Tommy a month to match the team kids in skill and grow double their dedication. Combined. Within a year, he had been finishing climbs hard enough to make adults cry in frustration. After two years of blood, sweat, and tears, he was infuriating the majority of the local climbing community on a daily basis. As a warm-up.
That’s when he started competing. In the span of two years, Phil went from driving Tommy to the climbing gym seven times a week to taking him all over the country for competitions every other weekend. And that wasn’t even beginning to get into Technoblade and his fencing.
Sometimes Phil wondered what it was like to have a normal, boring family.
Tommy is sixteen when he screams himself hoarse from the front row of Techno’s first Olympic qualifiers. Then, just a week later, Tommy is competing at his first IFSC Climbing World Cup. The podium winners immediately qualify for the Olympics and let’s just say that Tommy has always been a prodigy.
Phil figures that normal, boring parents never feel the same kind of pride that pounds in his chest when he spends hours each day driving his sons to practice.
So that’s how Tommy ‘Theseus’ Watson ended up standing in front of a 15-meter behemoth of sheer, overhanging monstrosity called the Olympic lead wall with only two coherent thoughts making it across his mind.
1. OHMYGODIMGONNAFUCKINGDIE
2. When was my college essay due? Wait, what day is today? Why am I not writing about being at the Olympics again?
No, that wasn’t right. The entire reason he couldn’t write about the Olympics was because… he was at the Olympics.
Oh my god I’m at the fucking Olympics.
Tommy glances back at the crowd and damn that’s a lot of people. He tries to find Phil among the crush of colorful banners, flags, and uniforms but there is no familiar green-and-white hat in sight.
Having won the gold medal at the World Cup, he is last on the wall so the seven other athletes are all sitting in lounge chairs off to the side, ready to watch him climb and praying that he doesn’t uproot their spots on the leaderboard. Tommy almost feels bad for whoever’s about to lose their gold medal. Almost.
He scans the obnoxiously large clock counting down his time to prepare because that’s technically what he should have been doing this whole time but honestly, it’s a bit of a lost cause at this point.
Sure, every other competitor might have taken their time to survey the wall but Tommy knows that there is only one direction he will be going anyways. Up. The rest of it will probably come to him as he goes.
He dips his hands in the pouch of white powder – chalk, absolutely not any kind of powder that should be snorted and yes that was from experience – buckled around his waist and swings out his arms. He’s still vaguely shaky from the first bouldering half of the Finals just a couple hours ago.
Damn those routesetters. What the fuck was that two-finger pullup bullshit.
The clock continues to tick down from ten seconds and Tommy figures he might as well just get ready for his time to start. He checks that the man belaying him is actually paying attention and not likely to let him fall out of the sky halfway through this. Because that would be plain embarrassing.
He sets his hands on the two holds in front of him and presses his right foot into the designated tiny square screwed into the wall. The wall arches steeply over his head and a combination of fear and excitement thrums through his veins. The final seconds on the clock slip away. Deep breaths.
Beep.
The clock resets to six minutes and Tommy is off.
As expected, the first few moves are easy, setting him up for the first crux. He easily drags the rope into the carabiner dangling by his shoulder. Tommy estimates that it’s been about thirty seconds by the time he makes it to the giant hold marked with a sign that marks the first point. And so it begins.
Reaching the crux, a move without any footholds, Tommy lets himself dangle for a fraction of a second longer than necessary. He basks in the feeling of his fingers wrapped around the rough, familiar texture of plastic rock, soaking in the sound of the crowd already falling away beneath him. Sure his coach might not have approved but he was a Big Man and he lived for moments like this.
He swings his feet onto another giant hold and snags his fingertips on the next tiny ledge. Tommy flies up the wall, dancing between plastic holds without ever hesitating like this is what he was born to do. He cruises past holds marked with numbers, racking up points and quite literally climbing the ranks.
Tommy finds the crux after slipping the rope through the seventh carabiner clip. By now, his forearms have begun to ache and his breath comes in faster rhythms but he still feels in control. He slips the rope through the last clip before preparing for the insanity that is the move he is about to perform.
He dips his right hand into the chalk bag behind his back, hooks three fingers into the hold, forces himself to take a deep breath, and his world narrows to block out everything but himself, the wall, and the space in between.
When Tommy lets his feet swing out to his right, the crowd goes silent. His right heel presses against the top of another volcano-shaped hold and levers his body into an almost horizontal position. He lets go with his left hand.
Tommy hangs from three fingers and his heel as he reaches with his left hand for the same volcano-shaped hold that his foot currently occupies. Deep breaths.
He looks up and the crowd is in front of him.
From here, there are no more fancy acrobatics. Tommy can feel his strength being sapped from hanging with his entire body weight on his arms. He lets go with his right hand and lets himself swing around to face the wall again.
Tommy can feel his forearms burning now. He doesn’t know how much of his six minutes are remaining but he has no time to spare anyways.
He brings the rope through the second-to-last clip dangling in front of him and begins to wage war against the final stretch to the top.
The holds are barely large enough to fit all four of his fingers on but the top is right there. Pull. Reach. Step up. Deep breaths.
Tommy nearly misses the foothold as he shifts his balance to the left. He is just two moves away from the top. Pull. Reach. Step up. Breathe.
Shit. His hand is rebelling and his entire arm is shaking with strain but the hold is just too slippery to control. This is the last move all he has to do is grab the final hold.
Pull. Reach. Step up.
Leap.
It almost seems like time slows down to let him witness his demise. The momentum of his desperate jump and the unflagging force of gravity fight for dominance as Tommy prepares for the familiar sensation of falling.
But Tommy’s gaze does not break away from the top hold during the fraction of a second that his body leaves the wall. It has been nine years since he first fell in love with rock climbing and he refuses to let himself down this close to the finish line.
So the boy named after the hero who fell takes flight.
His hands close around the hold, biting into the pads of his fingers and in a movement of practiced precision, he guides the rope through the last carabiner clip.
Click.
The crowd goes ballistic and Tommy spares a second to hang from one arm, turning to face the crowd and letting them share this moment with him. He gives a scream of pain and joy and pride, not caring that it gets lost in the crowd’s cheers.
After becoming the only climber to reach the top of this Olympic lead wall and securing himself the gold medal, Tommy finally allows himself to be lowered back to the ground. It takes only seconds for him to touch the ground but the entire time he dangles on open air, he is hollering incoherent words of triumph.
The moment his feet touch the ground, Tommy scrambles to untie the rope around his harness before colliding with the other athletes. Tubbo rams into him, ecstatic as though Tommy hasn’t just replaced him on the podium for first place. Ranboo is just a second behind and the trio dissolves into gleeful shouts and celebration.
Tommy peers over Tubbo’s shoulder and Phil is crying in the front row with Techno next to him standing just slightly less stoically than usual with a proud grin on his face.
The trio spend a few minutes shaking hands with other climbers, coaches, and some other people that Tommy does not recognize.
When the chaos and screaming has slowly begun to peter out, Tommy, Tubbo, and Ranboo walk towards the podium. Tubbo had been in first place with his insane bouldering score and somewhat more average lead points until Tommy had overtaken him. Ranboo had finished just one point below Tubbo when he had failed to reach the top hold.
“You are an absolute waste of height. I bet you didn’t even have to reach.” Tubbo whispers at Ranboo in faux annoyance. If any of the cameras or officials notice, they don’t care to stop the bantering.
“What? It doesn’t even matter, Tommy still would’ve beat you.” Ranboo retorts.
“Both of you shut up.” Tommy interrupts as they call Ranboo’s name.
Ranboo steps onto third place on the podium and Tubbo stands at second when his own name is called.
“And Theseus Watson in first place.”
Tubbo and Ranboo turn around in unison to playfully mock the Greek hero’s name that Techno had chosen during his mythology phase. Tommy rolls his eyes and steps onto the center platform between them.
If the crowd had been loud before, they are deafening now as Ranboo practically folds in half to allow the bronze medal to be slipped over his head. The official barely has time to clear Tubbo’s head with the next silver medal before he is shooting upright, cheering right back at the thundering crowd.
When Tommy stands again with the gold medal cool against his sternum, he drags his friends up onto the center of the podium with him and they stare into the audience as they hear their names echoing in hundreds of voices.
The moment they are led back to the waiting area, the trio scatters to find their families waiting for them. Tommy dives into Phil’s waiting arms, ignoring the joyful tears soaking into his shoulder. Techno hesitates for a moment, trying to figure out whether he should continue standing off to the side or joining the embrace.
Tommy makes the decision for him, throwing his arm over Techno’s shoulders and yanking him close.
“Say it with me, kid.” Technoblade drawls as per their usual post-competition ritual.
“Not even close, baby-” Tommy starts.
“Not even close.” Techno pats Tommy on the back as Phil just rolls his eyes.
“You were flying today, mate. I’m proud of you.” Phil murmurs with Tommy’s head tucked under his chin.
“Yeah,” Tommy whispers, “I flew.”
Later that night when Tommy’s writing his college essay – which he finds out is due in a fucking week – he tries to put into words the feeling of floating fifteen meters above the ground with nothing but a rope to tether him to a climbing wall. He tries to explain the moment he throws his body upwards when pure force of will isn’t enough to keep his fingers from slipping off of rough plastic.
He tries to tell himself how he knew that he could defy the invisible hand trying to drag him towards the ground. He tries to describe how the impossibly far destination suddenly grew so impossibly near and then real beneath his failing grip.
He ends up writing about how definite it is that he flies up the wall, like how there was nothing for Theseus to do but fall when he was pushed off of a cliff.
So he calls his flight falling and himself the hero who couldn’t prevent his fate.
When he climbs, he calls himself Theseus – falling into the sky.