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Dalia knows this a mistake, but there are no other choices. Once, she had been offended at the idea of putting her child up for adoption. Horrified at the thought of leaving a poor, defenseless child on the steps of a firehouse.
She looks down at this baby, this baby who not a week ago had been inside her belly. Dalia had finally gotten out of the hospital, after three days staying there to make sure both her and the baby were okay.
Dalia looks down at this child, and gives his sleepy little form a smile.
It hurts her soul to do this, but she can’t go to her parents, and she definitely can’t go to Schlatt.
“I’m so sorry, little one.” Dalia murmurs gently at Tommy, letting him grab her finger in his tiny fist. Tears gather in her eyes as she looks over him.
Small, fluffy blond ears blending in to his golden hair. He’d only opened his eyes a few times, but she knows that he has her same blue eyes, his pupils slit vertically.
Tommy softly coos back up at her, only a few days old but already so curious about everything around him. Tommy grabs at his blue sheep stuffie, nomming gently on it’s ear as he looks up at her.
She gives him one last kiss, making sure to wrap his ‘dad’s old, light blue hoodie tightly around him to keep him warm until one of the orphanage ladies found him. Tommy opens his eyes, only a little, and peers up at her.
Dalia gives him a small wave, her smile sad and sorrow filled before she turns away, and disappears into the night.
***
“Tommy, please!” Ms. Kadence pleaded with the seven year old. Tommy stood on the dining table, as the entire orphanage was currently having dinner.
Every time Ms. Kadence tried to grab the young child, Tommy would rush away from her arms, and cackle straight in her face. “No! I wanna play!” He shrieked playfully, a few of the younger kids around his age laughing and screeching that they wanted to play, too.
Finally, Ms. Kadence manages to grab his hoodie sleeve, and pull him toward her. Tommy was dressed in a light blue hoodie. His favorite color was actually red, but the hoodie was the only other thing he had of his parents. Or, more accurately, of his mom.
“-nd this is where the children are eating, we can have you in a meeting shortly…” The head mistress of the orphanage, Mrs. Witherspoon, trails off as she takes in the scene before her. Next to her, three men stand.
Tommy takes them in one by one- one dad, an older looking man with reddish blond hair and dressed in greens and whites. And two teen sons, both Piglin hybrids by their tusks and the pig looking ears on either side of their heads. One has bright pink straight hair, and the other has fluffy brown curls.
“Hi!” Tommy yells to the men and Mrs. Witherspoon. His voice is softly accented with a New Yorker accent, but when he gets excited or upset, it comes out stronger, thicker. “I’m Tommy!” He continues as Ms. Kadence sets him on the ground. The hoodie goes down to his thighs, but luckily Tommy put on his pants today, so he doesn’t look like he’s just dressed in a hoodie.
The dad- who looks kind, Tommy doesn’t want to admit, turns to look at Mrs. Witherspoon. Tommy almost doesn’t hear him over the snickers of the other children.
But he does, by all odds, and Tommy hears the man ask, “Can we meet him?”
Tommy doesn’t hide his laughter at Mrs. Witherspoon’s face. He giggles all the way to the meeting room, and is practically vibrating with excitement when he impresses the three men enough into making the dad- Phil, he learns- sign the adoption papers.
Tommy doesn’t even bother to hide his excited bleats and ‘baa’s as he gathers up his clothes into a bag, and isn’t embarrassed like he normally would be when he animatedly talks to BahBah, his stuffed sheep, the other remaining thing he has of his mom, about how they’re getting adopted.
When Tommy gets home, after a few hours because the Watsons live far from the orphanage, he collapses on his new bed, and cuddles into BahBah.
Despite Tommy being seven, Wilbur and Techno don’t make fun of him for having a stuffed animal, and Phil doesn’t threaten to take it away when Tommy is bad or doesn’t listen. Tommy never is hungry, or starved, and he gets new clothes regularly, instead of having to wear them until he physically can’t and beg for new ones.
Some part of Tommy wants to be with his biological parents, even if he knows the Watsons are probably better for him, and even though he feels guilty about thinking of his birth parents.
When he brings this up at dinner one night, Techno and Wilbur both say that that want is probably never going to go away. Still, Tommy wants it to disappear.
***
Techno lives in the tundra, now, in a small, cozy cabin, which Tommy never pegged him as the type of person for, but whatever gets him away from Dream, he guesses.
The beanie he’s been wearing ever since he came to the SMP is snug on his head, and Tommy feels a sense of comfort in wearing the hat and the hoodie he’d had his entire life.
Inside his large hoodie pocket rests BahBah. The name is bit more embarrassing now than it had been when he was a kid, but Tommy can’t feel anything other than gratefulness when he looks at the torn and worn stuffed animal. It’s been with him through everything, and Tommy was immensely relieved to see Dream hadn’t destroyed it.
He walks through the snow slowly, feeling sluggish from the cold, which nips at any and all exposed skin.
It’s just a stroll, because Tommy felt like he was going to die if he spent any more time in Techno’s stupid cabin. So, he’d, with his big man brain, decided to go on a short walk, even though Techno was gone right now, and he’d explicitly told Tommy to not leave the house while he was gone.
He walks through the thick snow, feeling relieved to finally be out and about rather than stuck inside Techno’s cabin. It got boring rather quickly, especially since Techno liked to leave for hours during the day and leave Tommy with nothing to do.
Suddenly, Tommy spots a figure. Wearing his hoodie. Confusion bleeds through him like blood and he squints his eyes in a vain attempt to look better at the other person.
Like him, the person has horns. A strike of hot, unfiltered anger runs through him. The only other person on the server was Schlatt- well, Glatt, as he calls himself.
“What the fuck are you doing here!” Tommy yells, his New York accent becoming strong, thickly coating his words as he begins to get louder and louder. He steps closer to the ghost man, and feels his eyes only narrow further as he nears the other.
Glatt looks over his shoulder with a flat face before he fully turns around to look at Tommy’s figure. Tommy growls out, “Well?”
The other’s face is still bored and flat, but he answers anyway. “I got bored of being in the void.” He shrugs.
Tommy is obviously not pleased or placated with the answer, and starts yelling. “Oh my god, you motherfucker! Get off my goddamn land you piece of shit!” He shrieks, accent thick against his words. His tone is trembling with unconcealed rage.
The accent reminds Glatt- Schlatt- whatever his name is- of something familiar. Something long old and forgotten, something from Schlatt’s life long ago. Tommy stares at him with angry, angry eyes that are so blue it almost knocks Schlatt over. His eyes remind him of a women Schlatt had loved so desperately.
He floats closer to the teen, and puts a hesitant hand out. It makes his nonexistent heart burn, to see the hoodie and the eyes and hear the accent that reminds him of home.
Finally, Schlatt pulls the beanie off, and is pushed back into a life he’d lived so long ago.
Schlatt could remember the curves of her hips and the beauty of her eyes vividly.
Dalia (her name, ironically, means lucky, he thinks with an internal bitter, humorless laugh) had stolen his heart, and they had foolishly gotten pregnant.
Teens, at the time, dumb and young and much too broke to afford a child. Schlatt had yelled and screamed in her beautiful, beautiful face that he couldn't raise a kid at 17. He regrets that, now, but what's done is done. His trademark light blue hoodie gone from his closet- Dalia had been wearing it when she pressed a gentle hand to her stomach and told him about the small miracle inside her, and she had been wearing it when she left, with teary eyes and sheep ears against her head in explosive hurt and bitter anger.
Now, Tommy, this stupid, foolish kid who idolized him as his cool older brother's best friend, wears that same hoodie, his ears fluffy in the same way Dalia's were.
Schlatt can see her in him, and it plagues his heart.
“You’re my son.” He says, voice hollow and god dammit Schlatt just wishes he was fucking normal. Normal includes not having a long lost son, and normal means not having a long dead lover, and normal in no way indicates being fucking dead because he couldn’t put down a bottle.
A broken, empty laugh escapes him, and Schlatt feels tears burn at his eyes, angrily clouding his vision.
How long has it been since he’d last cried? Fuck, probably the night he realized he’d lost not only Dalia, but also his unborn child. Or maybe it was the day during his presidency that he realized Tubbo, his wannabe son, was the traitor so many had warned him about.
Confusion rests on Tommy’s face, and Schlatt can’t believe that this of all ways is how he meets his kid.
“What the fuck are you talking about?” Tommy asks, voice so angry and so, so tired and Schlatt can relate. Really, how hadn’t he realized this sooner? Probably because of that god awful beanie, which covered Tommy’s sheep ears just perfectly.
Schlatt can see the beginnings, too, of horns peeking out from Tommy’s hair.
Pain seeps throughout his body, but it’s flushed out with so much regret Schlatt almost falls on his ass into the snow.
He can’t help the words escaping him in rapid succession until his throat aches and burns.
“Your mother and I- god- Dalia, your mother, she’d gotten pregnant with you before we were even out of school.” Schlatt says, words stumbling and stammering and Tommy looks like he’s on the verge of tears. It physically hurts Schlatt’s soul to see him so hurt.
He continues quietly, with short words and shorter sentences that feel too vague. “I yelled at her to leave when she told me. She was wearing my hoodie,” He says, gesturing to the light blue hoodie Tommy has encased himself in. “I heard from her parents that she had been killed after giving birth to you. Sheep hybrids used to be killed on the regular, so I had assumed you had been taken and killed, too.” He says.
The words are quiet and not enough and they don’t change everything Schlatt has done to his son, but he thinks maybe they’re a start.
Tears trail down Tommy’s rosey cheeks, and the boy looks like he’s seconds away from breaking down. Schlatt opens his arms in a half attempt to offer a hug. It hurts, but Tommy shakes his head, and Schlatt lets his arms drop. He’s made too many mistakes to be forgiven right now.
The air is cold and icy and still Schlatt feels like he’s being burned from the inside out.
“I still hate you. I can’t love you… right now.” Tommy says, hesitantly tacking on the end part, like he’s scared Schlatt won’t want his love.
Schlatt gives him a weak, straining smile. “I know, kid.” He says. There are so many things left unsaid that need to be heard, Tommy needs to know that Schlatt had never forgotten about him, or his mom, and every day of his terrible life he had regretted what he’d done, how he’d reacted.
He nods, and lets his smile drop. “See ya’ later, Tommy.” Schlatt says, his ghostly form flickering in and out of visibility.
It’s whispered, and quiet, and Schlatt barely hears it, but Tommy breathes out a, “Bye, dad.”