Chapter Text
Tommy sits on the edge of his apartment roof, biting hungrily into a chocolate-chip muffin. If he tilts his head and closes his eyes, he can pretend he's a normal schoolboy in a world full of supers. If he closes his eyes, he can pretend that he isn't sixteen years old, sitting on the edge of a roof, the traffic of L'manburg roaring below his feet.
He glances down at his exposed wrist, where two soulmate bands lie—and despite his situation, despite what's happened—he smiles at them. One of them is green, branching off into a circle. A black and yellow twisted circle lies in the middle, reminding him of the boy that it was connected to.
The other is black speckled with white—reminding him a bit of the night sky and the pinpricks of stars—and a red and green circle lies in the middle of the "stone" of the soulmate band.
He was lucky. He had two bands, two people.
Tommy jumps down the fire escape, ducking through the cracked window into the one-room apartment that he's only able to rent out because the apartment owner is kind enough to look the other way when he pays late, every month, without fail.
The wallpaper is peeling, and the single shelf dips with copies of Hybrids & History and schoolbooks that his first soulmate doesn't touch—maybe once he would have been interested in it, but not anymore.
The stove has to be lit with a lighter that lies in one of the musty cabinets, and the single pot that he uses to cook ramen once or twice a week lies on the rack. He doesn't have enough money to replace the lightbulbs, so they're dark, the only light the now-setting sun.
The incriminating stuff lies under the saggy mattress, in a safe pocket. It's a single uniform made by his second soulmate—made with shaky hands and pushed into Tommy's hands with love in his eyes.
(His first secret is that he is a vigilante. Vigilantes are illegal, but when has Tommy ever listened to anybody?)
A mask that covers the lower half of his face made by his first soulmate; a voice modulator and a half-gas filter included. It's the signature colors of his vigilante persona—black and gold. Tommy's afraid of the day that it wears away, because he cannot replace it.
A pair of black combat shoes with steel nails nailed into the heels because he cannot afford steel-toed shoes. Tommy did that, with a hammer and many bruised fingers and his soulmate's laughter in his ears.
Two retractable batons that slide into sleeves in his uniform. He got those on Amazon for $16.99 apiece. Great price, shitty weapons—they work fine for hitting people. He's only had to replace them seven times because they snapped.
And finally, a pair of dirty brown contacts to hide his cerulean eyes. He would hate to have people recognize him because of his eyes—his hair is covered by a hood that is pinned. He's not stupid.
"Yes, you are," a voice says behind him, and Tommy turns to see his first soulmate standing there, brown hair and chocolate eyes and a smug grin. Tubbo smirks up at him, his bird-like forest-green wings rustling slightly. Tommy's own back aches as he stares at the feathers longingly. Tubbo always kept his so well preened.
"I'm not stupid, Tubs," he grumbles, flopping down on the bed. "You're stupid. I don't even need the contacts anymore."
"I created your mask," his first soulmate hums, crawling onto the mattress next to him—there's only one, after all, because mattresses are fucking expensive as hell. For some reason. Capitalism, he thinks.
"That didn't work with 404." George, whatever. There was no such thing as secret identities when his soulmate screamed his name at the top of his lungs when the villain fell off a building.
"You took your mask off," Tubbo says pointedly, lying down facing him. He doesn't touch him, and doesn't move to.
Tommy sighs when Ranboo pops into place on the other side, all purple sparkles. "Hi, boob boy," he says miserably.
"I thought I told you not to call me that," Ranboo scoffs, shoving his hands in his pocket. He's the tallest of the three and an Enderman hybrid to boot, and Tommy shifts slightly when his second soulmate lies down heavily on the other side of the mattress.
Despite that, it's cold, as all three of them fall silent. It's cold because they don't have a blanket and there's no heating, and there's also no light.
The sun dips below the buildings, and the room is nearly pitch black. It is cold, and Tommy wishes valiantly for a blanket—there is nobody to give him one, nobody to bring him one. There is nobody left that cares to give him enough money.
When he wakes up shivering the following day, both Tubbo and Ranboo are gone, as usual.
He sighs and sits up, walking over to the sink and grabbing the toothbrush and scrubbing at his teeth with some baking soda—it works just as well, if it tastes a bit like shit. A two and one deal, if you ask him.
It is eight in the morning when he walks down the chilly streets to the bakery three blocks away, where he works morning to night shifts. The owner, Niki, is a retired hero and wouldn't usually allow children to work such long shifts, but she knows he needs the money, and he won't accept any of her pity help. He knows she makes him do the easy shit—waiter and all that stuff, but he'll do what he has to do.
His back aches, and he grimaces. Time to invest in some more Advil. He doesn't understand why it's so expensive for such a small bottle—about $23—, but he's going to need it, or his sleepless nights are going to become even more sleepless.
He's lucky he chose not to go patrolling last night. Sometimes he doesn't have it in him, but Ranboo and Tubbo always whisper that he is a hero, that he deserves to be one.
"Hi!" Niki says brightly as he walks in, hands shoved in his pockets and a nasty frown on his face. He attempts to lighten up slightly, straightening his aching back and putting a slight smile on his face.
It is hard to smile nowadays.
"Hello," he says, as she hands him an apron with the pink letters Niki's Bakery printed on the front.
"Here's a muffin," she says brightly, handing him one that is this time butter and blueberry. He scarfs it down—technically, it is not part of the handbook; he's fucking read that thing, but Niki insists that her employees get free breakfasts.
To be fair, he's the only employee. They're in the mid-districts—Tommy lives in the poor—so she doesn't exactly get an abundance of customers, but he knows that Niki cares more about quality than quantity.
"Thanks, Niki," he says, tying the apron strings behind his back with practiced movements and throwing the muffin wrapper in the trashcan. She smiles at him as she sets up the register for the morning, and he can already smell the lemon cakes baking.
"How'd you sleep?" she asks sincerely, and Tommy's heart warms for a second before he remembers that she is, in fact, a retired hero—and he thinks that even though she likes him, she would turn him in if she found out he was a vigilante.
"Fine," he says.
"Heater still broken?"
He forces a smile as she steps back and lets him take over the register. "I'm gonna call someone in to fix it."
That's a lie. He's saving up his money for something more important, but he's good at lying nowadays.
"How're your roommates?" Niki continues, straightening the cake pops in the display cases. Tommy tilts his head, thinking, his left arm tingling slightly as his soulmate bonds ache for people who aren't near him anymore. It doesn't hurt, but it does remind him that they're somewhere else. Ranboo went to school, and so did Tubbo.
Tommy never had, but it didn't matter.
"They're good," he says seriously. "Tubs and Boo are the same as ever."
She smiles at him before disappearing in the back, leaving Tommy in a quaint bakery-bookstore—Niki's always been kind to him, and he wishes he could tell her the truth, so he can have an outsider to confide him.
There's a reason she's an ex-hero, though.
Supers aren't born with powers. You have to get your powers, and it always comes with drawbacks. Hybrids were usually descendants of supers—and as incredible as they may seem, only about fifteen percent of the population are hybrids—and most of them are something mundane, not bird hybrids.
If you had a power, you had what was known as an Achilles heel. A spot on your body, that if scratched, caused immense amounts of pain. A spot that if you were shot or stabbed in—while not killing you usually—would kill you in an instant. They weren't all in the same space. They weren't public.
It was common knowledge that Niki's Achilles heel had been leaked, and villains and commonfolk all over wanted a chance to take down the sweet hero. She'd given her power back in a way that Tommy hadn't even known was possible, and had quit being a hero. No more Achilles heel—no more powers.
It was easier that way, he supposed.
Niki was always bittersweet about her brief time as a hero—a period of four years—but she'd gotten funds from the government as an apology for leaking her Achilles heel. That's all—just money.
Tommy didn't think that was worth it, but he bit his tongue and stayed dead quiet.
In order to become a hero, after all, you had to put down your Achilles heel in the official recordings—just in case you turned into a villain or something. It was innovative, but also stupid. Niki's had been leaked, and her career was done. Tommy feels sad for her—she'd been a wonderful hero, one of the best, and she'd been great among the firemen because of her aquatic abilities—and then the government hadn't put enough firewalls up, and it was all done.
The bell jingles, and Tommy blinks, unclenching his hands from where they lie at his side. He blinks again when he spies the person that entered—but he's not nervous because there's no way that Icarus will recognize him.
He's not nervous.
Okay, maybe a bit.
Why the fuck is Icarus here?
"Is Niki here?" the hero asks bruskly, his gold wings shuffling behind him. Tommy blinks at him again, noting the chocolate eyes that painstakingly made him think of his Tubbo, and the curly brown hair that framed his face.
Of course heroes don't hide behind masks. Why would they want to? Why would they need to?
"In the back," he answers after a moment. "Why?"
"Wilbur!" Niki says brightly, the kitchen door opening. Tommy inhales the bright smell of chocolate cake and valiantly wishes that everything was better. "It's nice to see you!"
Icarus smiles genuinely at her. "Sorry I haven't been around much," he says, and that's true, in the three weeks that Tommy has worked here, he hasn't seen Icarus—sorry, Wilbur—once. He didn't even know that the hero frequented the bakery. "Been helping Techno around the city."
"I know how it is," Niki says sympathetically—and she's right, she did know how it happened. Her hair is pink now, instead of blue. Tommy remembers seeing her on her patrols at night before she'd left hero duties.
"You mean the Blade?" he bursts out, and Wilbur looks at him.
"...yeah," the hero says. "What other Techno do you know?"
Tommy shrugs, feeling slightly uncomfortable. "I dunno," he says truthfully. "He's cool, I suppose."
"I suppose?" Wilbur sputters, and Niki raises a hand and giggles slightly, amusement gleaming in her pale eyes. She knows that Tommy's jibing the hero on purpose. "He's the number one hero!"
"Not in my books," Tommy snorts, though secretly, he really enjoys how the Blade speaks out against the government, especially after the leak that caused Niki's downfall. "There are cooler people out there."
"Like who?" Wilbur scoffs. "Me?"
"What?" Tommy says. "No, you're lame."
"I'm not lame!"
"You're just in denial," he parrots back, crossing his arms.
"I'm. Not. Lame."
Tommy narrows his eyes at the taller hero, feeling entertained for the first time in literal months. He was talking to a hero, too. "Theseus," he says. "Theseus is cooler."
"THESEUS IS A VIGILANTE!" Wilbur shouts.
Tommy knows this.
Theseus is him.
"Hey!" Niki says, raising a hand and pointing it in the hero's face. "No shouting in my store!"
"Sorry, Niki," Wilbur grumbles, adequately cowed.
"Ha," Tommy says. "Loser. L."
"I will literally—" the hero lets out a small breath. "You are so annoying."
"That's my middle name!" he chirps, bringing out a badge that had the words Tommy Annoying Innit printed on it. "See?"
Wilbur stared at him. "Why the fuck do you have a badge with that?"
"Because so many people call me annoying that I had it made for five bucks at Target," he says seriously. It was worth the money to see the looks on people's faces when he pulled it out.
Wilbur stares at him for a second.
Tommy sticks his tongue out.
The hero bursts out laughing so hard that Tommy startles slightly before cracking a slight grin.
As much as he is afraid of heroes, they're not so bad. At least they don't try to murder civilians.
"You're funny, Tommy," Wilbur chuckles.
"I like to think I am," he says.
He buys a bottle of Advil at the nearest convenience store with his dinner money and downs three. Perhaps it's not good for him, but he doesn't care. Ranboo and Tubbo are in the apartment again, and he waves at them before stepping away to change into his vigilante clothes. The mask is slightly annoying, but it hides his face, and his eyes water as he stares at the muddy brown contacts.
When he turns away, his eyes are brown, and they flood with tears.
His stomach growling—he's not going to dig into his savings; he can go one night without dinner—he hops out the window, Tubbo and Ranboo conversing in the kitchen, arguing over something stupid. He smiles at his soulmates' forms before popping up the fire escape. Tubbo turns and eyes him slightly, clearly worried, before Tommy waves his first soulmate off. Clearly, Tubbo is agitated if the wings have anything to do with it.
His back aches, and Tommy tampers it down with a slight grimace as he pulls his hood over his head and jumps to the next rooftop over, glad that it is nearing summertime and it hasn't rained in a few days.
Wilbur—or Icarus, as the hero goes by publically, though his name is available information—was pretty cool. He'd talked to Niki in the corner, probably about hero shit, before ordering a latte and a piece of pumpkin bread. Before he'd left, he'd thrown a few more jibes at Tommy—who had replied half-heartedly—and then he was gone.
Sometimes Tommy wanted to be a hero. It wasn't so bad—but he wasn't old enough to be a hero, and he'd have to give up his background information.
Which was a definite no.
A no fucking way in hell sort of no.
Tommy grabs onto another fire escape, walking down it and lowering himself to the ground. The moon is high in the sky—it is one in the morning.
He should be sleeping. If he were a regular kid, he would be. If he were anyone but himself, he would be going to school and focusing on learning and maybe becoming a hero when he grew up.
He's sixteen.
It's illegal even to have a power, much less become a vigilante.
Tommy has powers, but he also had two soulmates. Soulmates are rare, but tricky. You can be born with them—like Ranboo and Tubbo both were—or you could grow into them, like Tommy's marks had. If your soulmate has a power and they die, their power goes to you. As well as their Achilles heel. It's sort of complicated.
And not really something he wants to think about at the moment.
A man is trying to break into a car. Tommy clears his throat.
"Uh," the man says. "This is my car. I locked my keys inside."
"Nice Subaru," Tommy tells him, voice modulator cracking slightly. He'd have to fix that later.
"Thanks," the man says.
Tommy draws his baton and whacks the man across the head. He goes down so fast that he doesn't even have time to pull the gun out of the secret halter. "It's an Audi," he tells the unconscious person. "At least try to have a better cover story."
He doesn't own a phone—never had—but he reaches into the man's pocket and pulls out the phone. He doesn't touch the gun.
Tommy hates guns.
He dials 8-6-7, which is the hero's hotline number.
"Hey," he says.
"Theseus," says the tired voice of the operator on the other line.
He grins. "You know my name!"
"You call like four times a night," Fundy snaps back at him. "Every night. For the past seven weeks." That's how long he's been a true vigilante. "What now?"
"Well, there was a car thief."
"Let me guess—you illegally stopped him."
"Yup!" Tommy says brightly.
"You should have just reported it."
Tommy frowns. Stops. Realizes that Fundy can't see his face—fortunately. "I'm frowning."
"You're a grumpy vigilante. I could have guessed that even with your Viper mask."
He snorts. "What am I, a VALORANT agent? Anyway, send someone down to—" he glanced at the road sign. "Sadge Avenue. What kind of fucking name is that?"
"Don't ask me; ask the road builders."
"You know," Tommy said as his finger hovered over the hang-up button. "You're not too bad for a hero."
"I'm tired of your shit, Theseus. They'll catch you eventually."
"No, they won't," he snorts. "They haven't caught me in seven weeks." He hangs up before Fundy can retort back and drops the phone on the unconscious man's body, uncaring if it splinters or cracks.
He freezes when he hears the brush of wings.
"Tubbo?" he says.
"No idea who that is, mate," Zephyrus says, and Tommy warily turns to face the blue-eyed blonde-haired hero.
"Why'd they send you to pick up a car thief?" he asks, hiding his shaking hands behind his back.
"They sent me to pick you up," Zephyrus corrects, looking slightly saddened. Maybe he doesn't want to—no, he does, he's probably sad about something else. "Fundy was stalling you."
Tommy frowns. "Of course he was," he says. "Well, I'm never calling him again."
"Look, mate," Zephyrus tells him. "You don't have to be a vigilante. You can be a hero."
"And give away my weakness to the government?" he snorts. "Fuck no. Remember what happened with Ni—Nihachu?" He plays off the accidental name drop with a cough, praying that Zephyrus is too stupid to realize.
Zephyrus's smile is pained. "That's only happened once in five years."
"Yeah, but I'm not risking that."
"You risk yourself more as a vigilante."
He hisses through his teeth irritably. "Just—fuck off or something. I don't want to become a hero. I don't care about that." Only half-true.
"We know you can teleport short distances," Zephyrus presses, stepping closer. Tommy takes a small step back in response. "How'd you get your power? I thought we stopped illegal dealers long ago."
"What is this, a fucking interrogation?" he grumbles, frowning slightly as his mask tugs at his skin. "I'm not fucking telling you."
"This is important," Zephyrus says. "We can't have villains running around with unknown Achilles heels."
"Too late for that," Tommy says and then bites down on his tongue. Whoops. So much for not giving away info.
"...what?" Zephyrus says, looking slightly pained.
"Bye!" Tommy yelps, and he's gone in a painful blast of smoke as Zephyrus curses and reaches for him. He appears two alleys over, gasping for breath and wishing he could teleport as well as Ranboo had.
He crumbles to the cold ground, the stars twinkling above him between the dark buildings, and he tugs off his mask, gasping. He raises his knees to his chest, and he feels the tears slide down his face.
He wishes he were better.
He wishes he had been good enough.