Work Text:
tommy thought he had left the emptiness behind.
long, cold nights in logstedshire, sitting cross legged on top of the table he built for a beach party that never happened. scent of the salt water surrounded him, gentle lapping of the waves echoed in his head, rough wood poked into his feet. he stared at the sky for hours on end, whether it was lit up with a thousand stars or completely blank, waiting aimlessly for another day to begin.
days of swinging a pickaxe, the days where no one visited, not even dream. down, far below ground, where no one would be there to help him if he accidentally fell in the lava. mindlessly mining the stone, packing the cobble into his sack to put into the chests later. dusty smell that hung over him constantly, the faint sound of spiders clicking around somewhere in his tunnels, rocks tearing at his skin without his notice. sometimes, days would pass and he wouldn’t know until dream hunted him down through his tunnel systems, bringing him back to the surface to destroy everything he had made.
tommy thought he had left the emptiness behind. the numbness, the mind crushing boredom, the suffocating quiet, tommy thought that after he left logstedshire, he wouldn’t have to deal with it ever again.
he’s been away from it for months. he surrounded himself with chaos, especially after the nothingness that was full to the brim with pain, after death. tommy destroyed things to pull others in. he redrew his boundaries again and again, both physically and mentally. he made shroud a home, he started to fill the tunnels under his house, he gave up his armor and tracked it down again and gave it up and used it and hid it away.
there’s no reason for the emptiness to remain. he’s played with the secondary god of the server, he’s started a million projects that will never be finished, he could do anything. tommy isn’t monitored anymore. no one to blow up his things, no one to lie to him.
except, tubbo has quackity now, apparently. and wilbur has ranboo. and tommy has shroud, so who’s the real winner here?
(dream. dream is the real winner. it’s been months, years really, and still tommy has nightmares. nightmares of nothingness, of a train station, of a high cliff, of a long boat ride, of saying his goodbyes, of bombs raining down on them for days, of a blown up community house, of frostbitten fingers curling up in his hiding place at techno’s place, of a long pillar of wood and the wind on his face, of how it felt to just step off—)
(the winner was never going to be tommy.)
(the winner will never be tommy.)