Chapter Text
It was the day for Wilbur’s weekly town trip. Tommy would usually come along, because, well, staying at home alone was terribly boring, and his brother didn’t trust him not to burn the house down on accident, but this time he was able to dodge it with the excuse of feeling unwell.
“You sure you don’t want me to stay with you?” Wilbur had asked, brows furrowed in concern as his hand lightly touched Tommy’s forehead. “The trip can wait for another few days.”
“And what are we going to eat in the meantime? Phil’s herbs?” Tommy didn’t jerk away from the touch but rolled his eyes and snorted loudly, “No, thank you. Besides, I feel fine. Just a bit tired, that’s all.”
Perhaps Tommy was too good of an actor. Yes, his pale face and shaking shoulders were the part of acting and not the effects of anxiousness and shame burning his insides. Tommy went over this decision a hundred times already, and he was not turning back when he had finally built up the courage to make it reality.
“Get some sleep, gremlin,” Wilbur ruffled his hair, gesture affectionate rather than mocking, “I am going to return as soon as possible.”
And with that, he was gone. Tommy waited until Wilbur's tall figure faded away in the shadows of the forest and sprinted for his room.
He kneeled and pulled out a bag from under the bed. Tommy did his best to narrow down its contents to the minimum necessities when he prepared it last night, but it still felt heavy on his shoulders. Spare clothes took the most place, wrapped around a small bundle of food - extra buns from the breakfast, pieces of jerky and a dozen of bright red apples and sweet carrots – everything he was able to gather in a week without Wilbur noticing. Not much, but that would have to do for the first week of his journey. Once he gets far enough from here, he could trade for more food in villages without the fear of being recognized and returned home.
Tommy went to Wilbur’s room next and felt his face reddening and heartbeat speeding up as he counted out a quarter of the golden coins from the drawer of his desk. It’s not stealing if he is stealing from his family, he had reassured himself as he slipped them into his own pocket. Besides, Wilbur won’t need to take care of Tommy anymore, and waste money on him eithe, so he could probably manage to handle until Phil returns home from whatever journey he went to this time.
With the bag on his shoulders and a compass in hand, Tommy gave his childhood home a very last look and speed walked away into the forest in the opposite direction of where WIlbur went.
Tommy didn’t make a hundred steps from the house when someone jumped on him from behind. He fell on the ground, screaming and swearing loudly as the person pinned him down and wrapped something around his wrists, all while Tommy fought and kicked violently, “WILL! HELP!”
The bastard must have knocked him out there, because the next thing Tommy knew, the world was pitch-black, and two voices argued somewhere head-achingly close to him.
“-is wrong with you?!”
“...”
“We discuss how we should start by earning his trust, and the first thing you do is knock out and kidnap him!”
On the second thought, it seemed more like the two voices were scolding someone third. There was a sound of pages being flipped, and then scribbling, like someone pulled out a notebook and written something inside it.
“It’s not kidnapping if we are him?” Someone yelled, obviously angry and frustrated, “Yes, it is! What is wrong with you?! You just kidnapped a child! ”
Okay, they are not making any sense right now. Tommy’s eyes slowly fluttered open, his face wincing from both the bright light and a mild headache, “I am not a child.”
And suddenly, three faces snapped at him in unison and Tommy felt his stomach flip.
One of them wore a mask, gleaming white, with a simple sad expression drawn on it. Two black dots – imitation of eyes – stared straight at Tommy unnervingly, but he managed to catch the flash of something in his hands before the object was shoved in the pocket of his bright-red hoodie. He didn’t try to hide a trident behind his back. Tommy never had seen any of these and took a moment to admire it before remembering that he was, in fact, kidnapped.
He should have probably tried to sneak away when the men were arguing. Too late to regret it. Tommy thrusted to the side, hoping to get a surprise advantage, and couldn’t move from one place. His hands hit something solid, “What the-”
“Hey, hey, calm down,” a second man stepped towards him, a long, stripped tail brushing against the ground, and a couple of white and dusty yellow ears poking out of his long, braided hair. They twitched constantly, unlike his face, which stayed with the same neutral, maybe slightly tensed expression. Tommy couldn’t really tell, because half of it was covered with a light blue scarf wrapped all around his head, the tip disappearing under a short red cape. (Furred collar, really? In this weather?). He raised his hands and kept them visible for Tommy, like he was approaching a wild animal. Which would have worked better if Tommy wasn’t literally tied up to a tree, back leaning tightly against the trunk.
“What do you want from me?” he spit.
“Uh, I guess we wanted to talk.” The Racoon man, as Tommy internally decided to call him, answered, sharing uncertain gaze with his companions.
Tommy raised a brow, “You three kidnapped me to talk? ”
“I have nothing to do with this!” The third guy yelled, finger pointing towards the Masked man, “It was all him!”
The most notable feature of his appearance was a pair of massive light-grey wings. Tommy never saw any other avian besides Phil in his life, but still couldn’t wrap his mind around the fact how small would have his feathered crow appendages look in comparison with this guy’s, especially if he spread them to the full wingspan. He had his face covered as well; Tommy started to see a pattern here, though this person had it arguable the weirdest. He could understand the scarf, the mask, even, but bandages? Was this guy cosplaying as a mummy, because it surely looked a lot like that. Skin barely visible under all that fabric, he had one of his eyes covered as well, and the other swirled with constant aggravation, like he didn’t like being here at all. Tommy could honestly relate to that feeling.
“Stranger-danger,” he muttered, “And here I am, thinking Wilbur was just being paranoid.”
The Racoon man caught his words, flinched strangely at the mention of Tommy’s brother, but managed to hide it in a shrug of his shoulders, “We are kind of sorry for this.”
Kind of.
“Are you going to untie me or something?” Tommy huffed, staring at the Avian. He seemed like the most adequate here right now, albeit a bit too loud for his headache’s liking.
“Sure thing, big man.”
Now this was an odd coincidence. Tommy had never heard anybody else in his life to use that nickname towards anyone, yet alone himself. He eyed the Avian suspiciously as the guy went around the tree and sliced the ropes on his wrists with something sharp.
“Wow, creeps.” Tommy rubbed the reddish skin, easing the weak, but unpleasant throb from where his hands had been tied to each other. “Have you been spying on me?”
The question sent all three of them into a suspicious silence.
“No,” Racoon man deadpanned.
The Masked guy stayed silent, tilting his head slightly to the side.
The Avian, however, appeared with a dagger in hand – wait, that was Tommy’s dagger – and scratched the back of his head, chuckling awkwardly.
“Heyy, we wanted to talk, didn’t we? Right, guys?”
Racoon man signed, “I told you we needed to make a plan first. Now this is going to be extremely uncomfortable conversation.”
They seemed distracted with each other again. Now that he was unbound, Tommy considered bolting into the forest, for a moment, but then he met a dead gaze from the white mask and suddenly lost any desire to move at all. He wasn’t scared. Tommy never got scared. But this guy, he seemed too odd, and apparently was the one to kidnap him in the first place. Maybe not mess with him much, yeah.
“Ah, forget it. We have messed this up too much already.”
Racoon reached for the scarf on his face and pulled it down.
Tommy swore loudly.
The man looked so much like him. Like Tommy. Same face shape, same chin, same mouth, literally everything on his face resembled his own, albeit the older man’s features had a sharper, rougher edge to them. His nose seemed noticeably crooked, like it was broken and healed several times in the past, and his eyes shone duller than Tommy’s diamond blue. A whole net of small white scars crossed his face, making it harder to tell the man’s exact edge. The Avian moved closer to Racoon’s side, making Tommy’s gaze unintentionally snap in his direction. When he gave it a longer, careful look, he noticed the fact the eye and hair color of the two matched perfectly with each other and almost perfectly – with himself.
“Tommy, we are your brothers.”
What.
“Like real, blood brothers.”
What.
This was getting so absurd Tommy had to double-check he wasn’t sleeping right now, because it sure did feel like an odd fever dream. Maybe he got sick after all or ate wrong mushrooms. Ugh, he knew he couldn’t trust Wilbur to make the stew yesterday, the guy always had a talent of making strange substances with strange effects. Drugs, he called, them, and jokingly talked about his plans of creating a drug empire one day. Tommy was supportive of the idea but not when he was the one getting drugged.
“So, let me get this straight,” Tommy cleared his throat, “You two claim to be my biological brothers?”
"Yeah, and we are also twins.”
Tommy skeptically eyed the stripped tail of one of the men and then snapped at the giant wings behind the back of the other. The Avian noticed his gaze and laughed nervously, “Genetics, aye?”
“Okay, but who is that supposed to be? My weird murderous cousin or something?”
The third man, the one wearing the unnerving white mask with a sad face on it, tensed, hand slipping on a handle of a netherite axe, and instantly received an elbow to the stomach from the avian.
“Yes. Our weird murderous cousin.”
That was supposed to be a joke.
Tommy could almost feel his own face stretching in what must have been the world’s most confused expression. This day was supposed to be the one when Tommy cut the ties with his family - or what was left of it, at least – and not gain a new one. Especially if it was the biological family.
Tommy was an orphan, wasn’t he? Or at least abandoned, because four-year-old children don’t normally wander around the forest alone only to be adopted by a stranger living in the said forest. Tommy didn’t remember anything from before he was taken in by Phil, like that part of his life was completely erased from his memory. He didn’t bother even to try to reach it, because he didn’t really need to, until now.
Either his family suddenly decided to remember him whole ten years later, or these guys were just a group of blatant liars, and Tommy would be more willing to believe the second version if it wasn’t for the fact they looked so much alike. He and the Racoon guy, at least. Not the Mask nor the avian had shown their faces yet.
“I don’t remember any of you, “Tommy grumped. “I don’t even know your names.”
Then there was the long silence again. Wow, they really could use some proper socialization.
“Theseus.” The Racoon introduced himself. Tommy couldn’t miss the glance the avian had thrown Theseus – an intense mix of irritation, hatred and disgust, clear as day even in the single eye - and was granted with the same expression in return. This was so much like Wilbur and Techno in the good old days that Tommy was almost ready to believe these guys were twins, too.
“And you?” he nodded at the avian.
“Uh, I guess you could call me Thomas.”
There was a short wheeze, cut out as suddenly as it started. Tommy almost missed the fact the Mask was the one to make it, the first sound he heard from him throughout the entire conversation.
“What is his deal?” he asked, facing Thomas and Theseus.
“Calls himself Lucid. Stupid, innit? He is mute - I am pretty sure he is just faking it, though – and he acts all cryptic and arrogant.“
A murderous gaze was instantly shot in his way. Thomas pulled up a middle finger on Lucid. Tommy barely even blinked, and Thomas was already running away with a high-pitched scream, the masked man close on his heels, absolutely silent, clenching a trident like he was about to pierce his head with it, which he probably was trying to do. Theseus eyed the scene with a clear expression of pain and suffering. He didn’t try to stop them, though, and Tommy assumed this wasn’t happening for the first nor the second time.
Lucid suddenly stopped, dropping his trident. Thomas’s halted, too, wings puffing up a bit and the scream dying in the favor of defeaning silence. Tommy followed their gazes and saw a tall figure stepping out of the forest, raising a loaded crossbow.
“Get away from by brother,” Wilbur growled.