Chapter Text
“I confess I do not know why, but looking at the stars always makes me dream.”
— Vincent van Gogh
***
Nebula — Tommy hears it once in class, the word tossed carelessly from the mouth of a girl in the front row with pink cheeks and a too-bright astronaut costume, rattling off stars and planets as if wonder were cheap. He hates the way she says it, all flat and schoolroom proud, reducing the cosmos to a chart on the wall.
But the word lodges itself in him like a splinter.
Nebula.
A vast cloud of dust and gas, yes — but say it again, softer, like a prayer: nebula. The cradle and the grave of stars. A cosmic wound that blooms with light. A pyre for old suns and a womb for the new. Phoenixes in fucked-up cosmic form, born in the same breath they burn.
They call them star nurseries, as if the universe has any tenderness at all. As if humanity can imagine gentleness better for hydrogen and helium than for each other.
Nebula — no oil painting can capture it. No cathedral can hold it. A thing too large for words but small enough to live in the mind of a boy in a superhero costume, scuffed knees and raw palms, six and reckless enough to believe flight is just a choice away.
He thinks — neurons flashing and buzzing so brightly they might as well be stars, they might as well be constellations, fathomed — I am Tommy, but I am meant to be Nebula.
And so, he is — a riot of destruction and creation, a boy on fire with the promise of stars, born from ruin, burning to make light of it all.
Nebula — he chooses the name himself. He writes it over and over until the letters carve ruts in his mind, until his hand knows them better than his own pulse — until it would take a cataclysm, a planet-shattering catastrophe, to erase it from him. It is his. The one thing they have not stripped away.
But no one asks what it means.
No one leans in, gentle-eyed, to wonder why he chose it, to coax the story from between his teeth.
No hero ever did.
Even though he practiced the words in front of a mirror cracked like old ice, rehearsing the explanation as if it were holy scripture — preparing to speak about how it wasn’t just pretty, wasn’t just space, wasn’t some careless aesthetic draped around him like a cheap costume. He tried to make it make sense, to hold out the meaning in trembling palms so they might see.
A nebula, he wanted to say, is where stars are born. It’s the promise that collapse is not the end, that destruction can carry seeds of brilliance. It’s proof that something beautiful can come from breaking.
But they didn’t care.
Humanity rarely does. It carries its lists of needs like commandments etched in stone: a fighter. A hunter. A weapon. Anything that cannot serve those purposes is unnecessary, unworthy, unneeded. Not even worth the brief entertainment of a question.
They wanted someone who could cut villains down where they stood with surgical precision and flash a flawless smile for the billboards that rose like monoliths of worship over the city. Someone who fit neatly into a headline. Someone who obeyed like a dog that didn’t even need a leash. Not a boy with the cosmos ringing in his chest like a bell full of longing, tolling for all he could be. Not someone who hesitated.
Even though, Tommy fears, that’s all he can be. He hears the word in school, remembers it hooking into his ribs. A nursery for stars. A grave for stars. A place of violent, holy birth. That’s what he wanted to be. What he decided to be.
Because his mother used to cup his face in her hands and say: You were made from and for the stars, darling. Sometimes I fear you’ll float away to them, leave us behind.
Because his father would cradle him on his lap, press his big rough palm to Tommy’s thin chest, and tell him: You’ve got them in your bones, my son. Stardust. You’ll make light wherever you go. Don’t let them put it out.
Because they were the only ones who seemed to care how small he was, how young, a baby star — theirs. The only ones who tried to keep him from burning too hot, too fast. Tried to keep him from going out like a match struck too hard.
No one else has, not since they’ve died.
Not since the day Dream draped that heavy arm around his shoulders, all false warmth and oil-slick charm, leaning in to rasp Star power, eh? in a voice that slithered into the marrow of Tommy’s bones, has he felt anything but hollow. Dream’s eyes had been cold as moons, reflecting the grief in Tommy’s own — grief so cavernous it devoured every constellation his mother once claimed she could see swimming in his gaze. We need a star, Dream breathed against his ear, the words heavy as shackles.
Tommy knows — oh, he knows — how stars are truly born. It's the first page of his most treasured book, the spine cracked from love, the pages soft as worn linen. He can still see his mother and father beaming over the cake candles of his seventh birthday, pressing the book into his eager hands and murmuring, Here, love. Now you can learn how you were made.
Stars are born from collapsing clouds of gas and dust called nebulae. Gravity draws them inward, a slow, inexorable embrace. The center grows hot — unbearably so — until, at last, the heat cannot be contained. Nuclear fusion ignites. And a star is born.
It was beautiful. It was kind. It was his.
But Dream has his own creation myth. One carved from pain. From fists driving into ribs already tender and blooming with yesterday’s bruises. From the metallic tang of blood pooled behind his teeth like communion wine. From cameras that flash like hungry teeth, demanding smiles that show nothing of the wreckage within. From cold city streets that swallow you whole, so that you disappear even as millions watch you burn.
Training, they call it. As if he is being honed to brilliance, to something worthy of awe.
Tommy knows the truth. He knows the word in his heart:
Breaking.
And some nights — those endless, gasping nights when his breath hitches in his ruined throat, when his body aches with memories it cannot forget — he wants to die.
Wants to crash, spectacular and final, into the dirt and vanish into molecules. Wants to stop holding his breath, stop clenching his fists, stop being useful. He wants to go home. And there’s no home left except the universe itself, what his parents became. The stardust they are now.
He wants to be part of that.
Because his father once swung him around beneath a sky so bright with stars it hurt to look at it, and said: The universe was made of love, lovely. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.
But here, on the ground, all Tommy can taste is blood. All he feels is the dirt beneath him, cold and greedy. And it doesn’t want him the way the stars do. Not yet.
Not until he burns out.
He’s still burning. A low, guttering flame, choked on fumes and desperation, fed by half a stale sandwich and a stomach full of Red Bull. He sags into the threadbare couch like it’s a confession booth, eyes bleary as the TV flickers — blotchy watercolors of heroes and villains bleeding into one another, their outlines melting and reforming, righteous and damned by turns. He wonders, with a grim amusement twisted into nausea, why they haven’t shown Dream’s face yet.
And then — of course — the communicator chirps.
Speak of the devil, and the devil arrives in shining brass and neon.
He stares at it. The thing sits heavy in his palm, deceptively innocent — a perfect circle, cool metal of cheap gold glinting in the TV’s light, numbers ghosting neon blue like electric veins. He wants to break it — already woud’ve — if it weren’t for the fact that Tubbo made it for him with so much care he’d screamed. He still polishes it obssesively, fingers smoothing its face until he can his own broken reflection.
He wishes he could smash Dream’s face on it — watch the glass web and crack and collapse in a rain of diamonds. He’d have done it years ago, if it would’ve killed Dream. He probably would’ve sobbed while he did it. Because hating Dream is the only constant left to him besides this longing for death.
He forces himself to pick it up. The metal bites his fingers.
“Insomnia,” he croaks, the word tasting like bile, even though he wants to spit his actual name the way Dream says his — like honey laced with razors.
“Good evening,” Dream says.
It is not evening. It is deep night, the hour when even the city holds its breath, when the shops are shuttered, when Tommy’s favorite pizza place is dark behind its smeared glass. But politeness is a paycheck.
“Tommy,” Dream purrs, rolling the name around his mouth like a cat with a mouse. “I need you on patrol.”
He looks at the costume draped over the chair, accusing and inevitable. He really should stop leaving it there, but he almost wants someone to see it. To see him. To call him out. To stop him.
“Isn’t it 404’s shift?” He keeps his voice light, detached, even as dread pools cold and viscous in his gut.
“It was,” Dream says, voice gleaming with false delight. “But now it’s yours. Isn’t that wonderful? You get a chance to shine. To be a star.”
Dream’s voice drops, turns leaden with threat:
“And tell Tubbo to pick up his communicator. I’d hate to put him in the box.”
Tommy says nothing. Words would break in his throat anyway.
Dream doesn’t wait. He never does. The line goes dead with a cheerful beep, and a theatrical, mocking “Toodaloo!”— like he’s a pantomime villain.
It would be funny. If it weren’t so real. If it weren’t so monstrous that this man can snuff out Tommy’s world with a whim, can decide if he eats, if he has a bed to sleep in, if Tubbo and Ranboo stay safe.
Tommy is still burning. The last of himself curling up like paper in the flames. He aches to collapse, to crumple into nothing, to die and be done with it. Maybe then, he thinks bitterly, he’d finally be the star they want him to be.
But, for now, he is still burning — still burning with spite and rage and a hunger that thrums beneath his skin — so he wears the costume and leaves.
He does not come back.
They drag him in bound and bleeding, a ragdoll in torn armor, mask cracked down one side like a broken moon. The room is cavernous, cold, lit only by the sterile glow of overhead lamps that make the blood on his suit look black.
He’s stopped fighting. Oh, he tried at first. When the Syndicate grabbed him, ambushed the patrol, took the civilian he was supposed to protect — he clawed and bit and burned so hot he thought he’d eat himself alive from the inside. But there’s only so much even a star can burn before it gutters out.
Now he’s all ash and ruin, head lolling on his chest as they toss him to the ground. He stares at the concrete, thinking how beautiful it might be to die. To be unmade, scattered into dust finer than nebula clouds, all the angry hydrogen in him finally given up to the birth of something new. To go the way of every star he’s ever studied.
I want to go home, he thinks, but home is dead. Current home is a shitty one-room apartment with peeling paint, where he can’t even make rent because Dream’s docked his pay again. Home is cold microwave meals and the stink of disinfectant he uses to scrub out bloodstains. He hates that place. He hates that there’s nothing else left. He’d rather go anywhere — the void between galaxies would be kinder.
The Syndicate’s henchmen circle him ike carrion birds. Laughing. Mocking. He resists the urge to remind them about all the times he’s shattered them, whilst shattering. It is pointless now, anyway.
“Look at this fucker,” one drawls. “What’d the newspapers call you, again? The Great Nebula, huh? Spitfire my ass. You’re pathetic.”
“That billboard on 15th Cross. What’d it say? ‘Star power’ — was that the slogan?” someone snickers. “What is it now? Black hole, ‘cause you suck so hard?”
“Careful,” says another, voice oily with glee. “Don’t make him cry. Don’t want him short-circuiting whatever cosmic bullshit he’s got going on.”
Ozymandias stands at the front of them all, cold and regal. He’d recited poetry at Tommy’s first patrol, all theatrical grandeur: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair. And Tommy, too green to know better, had laughed at it. Now the man uses that same rolling voice, slow and cruel, to pry him open.
“Come now, Nebula,” he says, tasting the name like poison. “You’re going to tell us everything. We can do this the hard way, or the harder way.”
Tommy shudders. His powers crackle weakly, a dying star’s last gasp. The room smells of ozone and iron. He feels sick.
Ozymandias smiles. “Attaboy. Let it out. Don’t hold back on our account.”
They get what they want from him. He’s too tired to hold it in. Too tired to fight. They want codes, patrol routes, Dream’s half-assed plans. He spits them up like blood.
At last Ozymandias sighs, dusting his gloves. “Well. I suppose that’s it.” He nods to his lieutenants. “Kill him. Make it messy.”
Tommy’s mouth works soundlessly at first. Then he rasps, voice wet and ragged, powers bleeding from him in flickers of starlight.
“Any last words?”
There are multiple — fuck you, I hate you, please kill me. But Ozymandias’ power still holds tight over him, coiling like serpents and sinking their fangs. He is weak to their power. He lifts his head with effort, eyes glassy, glow guttering in the depths of them like a dying sun.
He breathes once. Twice. Then says, voice raw and cracked and holy with ruin: “I hope the universe loves you more than you ever deserved.”
Silence. Not the gentle hush of snow, nor the reverent quiet of prayer — but a silence thick and suffocating, like wet velvet pressed against the mouth, smothering breath and thought alike. It hangs heavy in the air, oppressive, bruising. It is the silence before the fall, the silence of something sacred dying.
And then — it ruptures.
Laughter, or something fouler masquerading as it: a ragged, serrated sound torn from the throat like meat from bone. Not mirth but a mockery of it, something out of a storybook’s worst villain, dripping malice, giddy with cruelty. It bubbles up loud and unrepentant, unable even to pretend at restraint, as if it has no clue how it to be anything else.
Ozymandias cocks his head to one side, the way a vulture might examine fresh roadkill, eyes glittering with cold delight. His voice is soft, almost gleeful. “Well,” he all but croons, tasting the word like something sweet on his tongue. “Now we have to see the face behind that poetry. Don’t you think? Our little spitfire. Our worthless, broken starboy. It’s only fair.”
Somewhere behind the veil of torchlight and shadow, The Blood God answers, voice as grave and final as the toll of a funeral bell. “Debt for debt.” It should be absurd, him lurking in the dark — he is not made for it, not a creature of subtlety — but perhaps Tommy’s lost the thread of sense entirely. Perhaps this is madness at last, come to claim him.
“Yes,” Ozymandias whispers, savoring it. “Only fair. Balancing the universe.”
Tommy wants to laugh, and it nearly chokes him. You don’t know anything about balance, he thinks viciously, the words curdling in his mouth before they can escape. You know nothing of the universe and its impossible grace. The way it expands and births galaxies in its dying throes, the way it holds itself in fragile, breathtaking equilibrium. You know nothing. Nothing at all. But he does not say it. He is too tired, too spent. When has it ever mattered, truth flung at deaf ears?
The hands come for him — rough, unkind, fingers digging like claws into the ruined edges of his mask. He does not fight. Why would he? There’s nothing left worth defending. Nothing but this last shroud to hide his shame, and even that is a mercy they will not allow. Let them see the last thing he has to lose.
The mask comes away with a harsh scrape of cracked ceramic, striking the stone floor with a clatter that ricochets in the hush, impossibly loud. Final.
He lifts his head.
And silence reigns anew — but now it is a stunned, appalled thing, sharp as broken glass underfoot.
There is nothing there to inspire dread. No monster forged in fire and vengeance. No grim, iron-clad hero honed to kill. Just a boy. Only a boy. Small, thin to the point of cruelty, golden hair matted and dull with sweat and grime, cheeks hollowed by exhaustion and hunger. Blood crusts in his lashes like some obscene parody of tears.
He blinks up at them, slow and dazed, eyes wide and unguarded, reflecting the torchlight like the eyes of an animal caught in a snare. His chest flutters with unsteady breaths, frantic and fragile — a bird caught in a fist, beating its broken wings inside the cage of his ribs.
His mouth opens, cracked lips parting as if to speak, to curse them, to beg, to confess something unbearable. But nothing emerges.
There is nothing left to say.
The Syndicate stares.
Someone inhales too sharply.
And Ozymandias — who had mocked him, who had promised him pain — turns slowly, deliberately, to face his crew. His voice is soft, lethal.
“If I hear one of you so much as breathe wrong at him, I’ll carve your tongue out and feed it to you. He’s a child. Do you understand me?”
Another henchman, shaking, dares a whisper. “Boss — he — he stole —”
Ozymandias doesn’t even look at him as he draws his blade. “Say one more word about what he’s done. I dare you.”
And Tommy, small and shaking on the floor, just closes his eyes. Imagines the universe beyond the ceiling. A billion stars being born and dying, cradled in dust.
He was supposed to be one of them.
Maybe he still will be.
Tommy has never felt so ruinously, humiliatingly exposed. It’s as if the world has been peeled open along with him, skin stripped raw to reveal the soft and twitching meat beneath. Every second stretches unbearably, the silence hanging heavy and oppressive after Ozymandias’s declaration. He feels flayed by it, laid out for the gods to see: every trembling breath a confession, every flutter of his pulse an admission of fear — of confusion.
He is bare-faced. Open. His chest jerks and stutters, catching on broken little inhalations that sound like sobs even though he’s trying not to. His eyes are glassy with pain and something worse — shame. When Ozymandias shifts, Tommy flinches hard enough to rattle his teeth, like an animal expecting the killing blow.
But the man only lowers himself to one knee with excruciating slowness, a parody of supplication that makes Tommy want to scream. His gloved hands hover in the space between them — strangely hesitant now, trembling at the edges.
“Don’t—” Tommy rasps, voice shredding in his throat like cloth on barbed wire. He tries to shove at him, weak and unsteady, wrists so pathetically thin they might snap with a child’s careless tug. “Just — finish it. Please. I don’t — just —
But Ozymandias doesn’t even acknowledge the plea. He moves with a terrible patience, peeling the gloves off finger by finger and discarding them, his eyes fixed unblinking on Tommy’s battered face. His bare fingers, so stained with other people’s blood, touch Tommy’s cheek with feather-light caution, as though he’s terrified of breaking what little is left of him.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” he breathes, and it’s no longer the voice of a conqueror, but something ragged and human and horrified, cracking like old marble under weight. “How old are you.”
Tommy tries to sneer, because he’s Nebula, and he’s supposed to be mouthy even when he’s bleeding out. But it’s a ruin of a sneer, cracked lips wet with blood. He tastes iron.
“Old enough,” he wheezes, breath hitching, “to kick your —”
But he can’t finish. He’s too far gone. His eyes flutter back, lashes clumping with sweat and tears, body shivering violently just from the effort of staying awake.
That’s when the Blood God moves. He’s been hovering behind them like some vast, murderous storm cloud, his red eyes burning coals in the dim. Now he steps forward, huge and monstrous and shaking with fury barely held in check. He crashes down to one knee so hard the ground seems to quake, voice rumbling like an earthquake muffled in gravel and something worse — panic.
“He’s a runt, Ozymandias,” he snarls, but there’s no triumph in it. Only horror. His massive hand gestures, helpless. “Look at him.”
“I am looking.” The words crack out of Ozymandias like a death rattle, he sounds liek those creepy, pale waxy dolls in horror movies. He exhales so hard it sounds like being punched in the gut. His hand cups Tommy’s jaw too firmly now, trying to keep him there, alive, present. “How old,” he repeats, shaking him gently. His voice cracks. “Tell me, starboy. Say it.”
Tommy’s lips work uselessly, trembling, and the word comes out in a breaking, childish whimper. “F-fif—fifteen.”
The Blood God chokes. He makes a sound no living thing should make, rearing back and actually turning away to snarl curses at the ground, as if the floorboards could answer for this sin.
“FIFTEEN,” he roars, voice ragged with disbelief and something that sounds suspiciously like grief. “He’s FIFTEEN — Ozymandias, he’s fifteen —”
Ozymandias’s fingers dig into Tommy’s shoulder, hard enough to leave bruises but for once, not intentionally, grounding himself as much as the boy. His eyes are wide and shining with something like sick horror.
“Fuck,” he spits, voice cracking on it. “Fuck. Okay. Okay. It’s fine. We’re not —” He can’t even finish.
The Blood God moves then, fast for something so huge, gathering Tommy’s limp body up with ridiculous care. He practically scoops him like a child with a broken doll, pressing that battered frame to his own massive chest. One giant hand cups the back of Tommy’s skull so delicately it’s absurd.
“No one’s killing him,” he growls, voice shaking like a thundercloud about to break. “Don’t even think it.”
Tommy sags against him, too bewildered to fight, too weak to understand. His head lolls on that broad, armored shoulder, the world swimming in and out of focus.
“Wha’,” he slurs, blinking up at the Blood God’s harsh, contorted face. “You were — s’posed — you were gonna kill me.”
The Blood God makes a strangled, inhuman noise. “Shut up,” he orders, voice breaking, thick with something awful and protective and raw. “Don’t say that. Don’t even think it, little star. Never again.”
Ozymandias staggers upright, breathing hard, snapping out orders like gunfire to his men, voice fraying at the edges.
“Pack it up,” he snarls. “We’re done. We’re leaving. Now.”
“Boss —” one of the henchmen tries, voice wary, but he never even finishes.
“Do I need to repeat myself for your rotting ears?” Ozymandias doesn’t turn around. He’s staring at Tommy like he’s some kind of ruin he can’t look away from. His voice drops to something murderous and shaking. “If any of you even think about what we planned to do, I’ll gut you myself. He’s a child. Do you hear me? A child.”
And the Blood God just nods once, curt and final, before hefting Tommy higher in his arms as though he weighs nothing, as though he’s the most precious thing in the world. He moves with agonizing gentleness, every step chosen to keep from jostling the boy, as though Tommy is made of glass on the verge of shattering.
“Hold on tight,” the Blood God murmurs, voice dropping to something unbearably gentle. “Gonna be bumpy.”
And then they’re leaping, bursting from the warehouse window into the night. The city sprawls out beneath them, rooftops silvered with moonlight, sky vast and wild above them. Stars everywhere. Burning. Watching.
Tommy stirs against the Blood God’s chest, barely conscious, eyelids fluttering like moth wings. The wind claws at him, biting through the thin fabric clinging to his skin, and his ribs scream with every jolt and shift. But still, his gaze tilts upward, squinting — past the blur of rooftops, past the cold, and into the vastness beyond. And it is beautiful. It is the kind of beauty that feels like a betrayal. An impossible tarp of black and ink-blue and silver and every pinprick of light from distant suns. A nebula stretched wide and alive. Infinite. Indifferent.
They land hard. A grunt from the Blood God, a skidding thud on gravel, boots hitting the rooftop with the impact of falling gods. The second figure touches down beside them, coat flaring around him like a storm made flesh. Ozymandias.
He turns, crouching low, eyes flaring gold in the moonlight as they scan the boy wrapped in the Blood God’s arms. His jaw clenches.
“Jesus Christ,” he mutters. “Look at him.” His voice cracks around the edges. “All bruises and small bones and freckles—” Tommy scowls at him. He lets out something that could’ve been a laugh if it weren’t so full of grief. “—and fucking attitude. Like a goddamn baby phoenix that forgot how to fly.”
Tommy tries to scoff, but it catches, splinters into something closer to a whimper, his throat dry and torn, lips cracked and trembling.
“Your metaphors get worse with each growing day,” The Blood God adjusts his grip, pulling the boy in tighter, as if the mere act of holding him could stitch the brokenness back together. “You’re okay,” he says, turning back to Tommy, voice low and velvet and desperate. “We’ve got you now. Look at me, little star. Look at me.”
Tommy’s voice is a paper-thin rasp. “’M not a star.”
“Wrong,” Ozymandias huffs, crouching down until their eyes meet. The wind tousles his hair, his coat flaring behind him like a monarch’s robe, his expression carved from something older than grief. “You’re nothing but starlight. That’s the whole fucking problem, kid. Burning too bright, too long. Thought you had to do it alone.”
“I — I don’t —” Tommy’s lips tremble. His brow creases. The pain is catching up to him now, soaking through the adrenaline, deeper than the marrow.
“Shhh,” the Blood God interrupts. He’s stroking Tommy’s hair now, actually stroking it, fingers carding gently through the blood-matted strands. “You don’t have to think right now. You don’t have to be anything but here. Just stay awake, yeah? Just stay with me.”
Tommy’s voice breaks on the next breath. “I wanna go home,” he murmurs, the syllables sharp and fragile, his glass heart shattering into pieces, yet again.
The Blood God stills.
“Where is home?” he asks, though there’s no urgency in the question — just something slow and aching and impossibly gentle.
Tommy swallows, but there’s nothing left to say. His eyes close for a second too long. His next words fall out like dying embers. “I don’t know.” And then he sobs. The sound of it catching in his throat like a bird trying to fly from between his ribs.
Ozymandias closes his eyes. His jaw tightens.
Ozymandias presses the heels of his hands to his eyes, jaw clenched. His shoulders shake once.
“That’s okay,” he breathes. “That’s okay, starlight. We’ll find it. We’ll make it. You don’t have to know right now. Just — please — don’t go dark on us. Not yet. Fuck, please, don’t — don’t you dare.”
They start moving again. Rooftop to rooftop, through the freezing night air. The Blood God’s massive frame shields Tommy from the wind, and Ozymandias leads them, eyes cutting through the dark with predatory vigilance.
Every time Tommy whimpers, they shush him gently.
Every time he slumps too far, they jolt him awake with soft curses.
They keep looking at him like they can’t believe what they’re holding. Like he’s a miracle they can’t believe is still breathing. Like they’re terrified he won’t be, if they blink.
Like they’re scared to let go.
And above them the stars burn, ancient and watchful, cradling the city in a cosmic hush, as if the universe itself is listening to this small, broken boy being carried home, or at the very least — maybe, just maybe — the beginnings of it.
He falls asleep at some point — he doesn’t know when or how, just that he did — he wakes slowly, like a star coming back from collapse, like the universe itself is pulling him upright one atom at a time.
His breath is ragged at first, hitching in the dark, chest tight with the memory of pain — but when he really inhales it’s not blood or iron or the rot of the city sewers he’s been forced to crawl through. It’s softness. It’s something warm and human. He blinks, confused, lashes fluttering against his cheek.
He’s lying on sheets so soft they feel obscene, like molten velvet, like the clouds in a painting he’s never dared to touch. The mattress swallows him like a crater, holding him in a gravity well of safety he doesn’t understand. His ribs don’t scream when he shifts — they twinge, sure, but in that polite, well-behaved way pain has after it’s been seen to.
He groans, tries to sit up, and freezes because he’s wearing something. Something that isn’t torn tactical gear or bloody T-shirts. A sweater. Rich red like the heart of a dying giant star, deep and sumptuous as old wine, so soft he wants to weep. Cashmere? Velvet? Something even softer, impossibly so, as if they skinned clouds for it. Gold thread glints in embroidery along the cuffs and hem in swirling, baroque lines like constellations given physical form.
He pulls it up with trembling fingers and stares.
Bandages. Neat. Clean. White as new stars. Peeking between them, skin pale but unbroken. Thin silver scars curling like crescent moons, but fading even as he watches.
He runs a hand over his stomach and hisses, but there’s no real pain. Just a memory of it, like heat from a long-dead fire.
His hair falls in his eyes.
He frowns, grabs a strand. It’s clean. Silky. It smells like something gentle, something green and herbal and soapy and real. He rubs it between thumb and forefinger and makes a wet, confused sound in his throat.
He sniffs at himself like an animal and then pauses, startled. He doesn’t smell like blood or sweat or sticky tiredness, he smells nice — human. He feels fifteen, fifteen and fifty shades of soft. Like someone took him apart piece by piece and rebuilt him with tender, furious care.
He turns his head slowly, the universe groaning on its axis with how hard this is to process.
And there — on the other side of this ridiculously big, god knows where room — is a pile of stuff.
His stuff.
He stares at it.
Henry the Cow is there, floppy and tragic, one ear stitched up with bright red thread like a surgical scar.
Blue Sheepy — named with all the creativity of a child who once thought etymology was too big for him to deserve — is perched on a pillow, tiny black eyes glittering with mute, endless judgement.
A new bee plush has appeared beside them. Plump. Cheerful. Striped in the rich ochre of old library pages. Someone has looped a small tag around its neck that just says Property of Nebula in looping calligraphy.
He drags himself closer with a grunt. Fingers outstretched, shaking.
There’s a sheaf of paper resting beside the bed. Heavy, thick-cut, expensive stock — the kind you'd never waste on nonsense unless you meant every syllable with your whole chest. On the front, in a whirl of looping, swooping letters that unfurl like ivy — For You, Nebula — the same handwriting, he notes, that had been scrawled into the tag of the bee.
Tommy blinks. His eyes sting. His heart, until now a skittering, frantic thing in his ribs, starts to slow. He’d know that spidery script anywhere — stubborn, unmistakable, like the person it belongs to. Tubbo. Of course.
He opens the first page.
For the record, it begins, in big blocky letters and a frowny face, you absolute insufferable, self-immolating, reckless, star-born dickhead, you’re NOT allowed to die. Not until we say so, and we’ll never say so.
Tommy stares at the words. Then, slowly, quietly, he sets the letter down, and a smile ghosts over his face — soft, private, one no one else will see. It nestles somewhere warm in his chest, in that tender place Tubbo always managed to reach. Because Tubbo — who distrusted anything on paper, who once set a twenty-pound note on fire just to make a point — had taken the time to write this for him.
For him.
He lifts the letter again.
Fuck Dream, the letter continues, fuck your boss — yes, I know they’re the same people, I wanted to say FUCK YOU to him twice — fuck your paychecks. We were supposed to break this to you gently, you dickhead, but since your suicidal ass nearly got killed, we might as well break it open now. Ranboo is a spy for the syndicate, we were supposed to intigrate you ourselves.
Tommy blinks. Once. Twice. Rubs at his eyes with the heel of his hand to make sure the words aren’t dancing away, and then — despite the way his ribs protest, despite the way everything hurts — he wheezes. A cracked, pathetic noise that’s somewhere between a laugh and a sob and a gasp. The sound of something trying to claw its way out of his chest. He can't stop it.
Ranboo. Ranboo, with his scarecrow limbs and hunched goblin posture, who would stand perfectly still for six hours unless told otherwise — a spy. For the Syndicate. The sheer absurdity of it sends pride blooming through his chest like a sunflare, mingling with joy, with disbelief, with exhausted, breathless laughter. Of course he was. Of course.
To make sure we’re clear, we do not work for the Syndicate. They work for us. Don’t get kidnapped again — unless you want to see us go from “neutral” to “actively murderous.” We’re very good at murder. Be polite and don’t die. Don’t make us prove it.
Tommy rolls his eyes, the movement fond and aching all at once. He can practically hear Tubbo’s voice in his skull, ringing sharp as a thrown wrench. If Tubbo were here, they’d be forehead-to-forehead by now, Tommy’s brain still rattling from the force of it. He glances around the room, paranoid — then sighs in relief.
No Tubbo in sight. Thank the stars.
There’s another note, neatly written beneath the first — smaller, straighter, a little too careful. Ranboo’s handwriting.
PS: The bee is for emotional support. We will know if you don't use it.
In the margins, tiny cartoons blossom like flowers in the white space. Ranboo’s doing. A tiny, furious Tommy with enormous angry eyes and a star sparking over his head like a migraine. Ozymandias, exaggerated into some Saturday morning cartoon villain with a bomb strapped to the Hero Association. The Blood God rendered as a giant red bear cradling plushies like precious loot. And Dream — Dream, drawn as a literal worm in his suit ★YOU SUCK★ written over it in glittery letters.
Tommy stares at it until his eyes burn.
He reaches for Henry. Clutches the cow to his chest like it’s the last atom of oxygen in a suffocating void.
He shakes.
He’s too tired to cry.
But he can shake.
He buries his face in the plush fur and breathes like it’s the first time he’s ever filled his lungs properly.
Absentmindedly, some instinct stirs beneath the skin — not a thought, not quite — more a twitch in the marrow, some muscle memory shaped by flickering VR simulations and cheap, stuttering training tapes that pretended to teach survival. It tells him he could run. That he should.
There’s a window, wide and waiting, glass smudged with the ghosts of other fingers, other chances. There’s no one guarding him. The door hangs ever so slightly ajar, humming with invitation. He could leave. Tommy knows how to vanish when he needs to. Light-footed, thin as a shadow, a breath in motion. It would be easy.
But —
Beyond that window is only black, and cold, and endless. A starless kind of night. A silence that would swallow him whole.
And inside — inside, the room holds its own gentle gravity. It is warm, inexplicably so. The air smells faintly of something human: fabric softener and dust, a cup left half-drunk on a nearby table. The walls don't reach for him, but they don’t push him out either. There is a light on.
The choice is easy, then.
Inside this room, a tiny supernova curls in on himself and tries to remember how to shine without consuming everything he loves.
Inside this room, for the first time in forever, the universe feels like it might be big enough to hold him without letting him burn out alone.
He’s still sitting there, blinking slow and stunned at the note crumpled in his hands, fingers ghosting over the loops of ink like they might rearrange themselves into his heart if he just touched gently enough. Around him, a graveyard of plushies rises like some stationed, ridiculous soliders — soft and sagging and safe, protecting him from whatever it is that seeks to hurt him. A place that, for once, forgets to echo back his loneliness.
And then the door slams open with the grace and subtlety of a goddamn meteor, and he jerks. Legs scrambling and arms flailing, nearly pitching off the mattress entirely. He clutches Henry like a drowning boy with a lifebuoy, shoving the plush cow’s dumb stitched smile into his mouth to muffle the sound clawing its way out of his throat. His heart is tap-dancing its way into arrhythmia.
And in the doorway —
It’s not him. Not the shadow-cloaked specter of Ozymandias that haunted monitors and whispered from rooftops, with his operatic diction and marble sneer, his eyes like ruins and voice like thunder cracking across history.
No. The man in the doorway is —
Well.
Dressed like a mortal. Sweatpants clinging to long legs, and an ancient band shirt so riddled with holes it looks like it’s been through a war, constellations of wear and tear across the fabric like galaxies collapsing. His hair is a glorious mess, strands spiraling like comets escaping orbit, and his face —
His face is bright. Open. Laughing. That too-big grin like sunrise unfurling across battlefield ruins, illuminating every broken thing in gold.
“Wilbur,” he says, and the name lands like honeyed light through stained glass, glowing and colored and too soft to be safe. There’s a cocky lilt to it, yes, but it’s swaddled in warmth so radiant it almost hurts. “That’s my name, you know. Wilbur. Don’t you dare make fun of it. We’re dropping the mask now, right? Figured you should meet the real deal. The full experience, y’know?”
Tommy can only stare at him, frozen, blood roaring like ocean waves in his ears. His tongue feels clumsy in his mouth as he mumbles, “Uh. Mine’s Tommy.” It’s more unfinished than he’d like, weak, a half-built bridge barely held up by nerves. It sounds more like a question than anything.
But Wilbur lights up — actually lights up — like some dorky sun-god who thinks the clouds part just to see him smile. How the fuck did Tommy think he was a fearsome villain. He makes this utterly undignified cooing noise and says, “Aww, you do look like a Tommy! I’m so glad, Techno thought your name was something pretentious, like Preston or something, and I was like, nahhh, Nebula’s cool, he’s got a cool name —”
And then he’s striding into the room like it’s a summer afternoon and nothing’s wrong with the world, arms overflowing with takeout menus — that seem to have appeared out of nowhere — their glossy pages fluttering and crinkling like autumn leaves caught in a breeze. He tosses them in a fan across the foot of the bed, some landing upside down, some sliding off entirely.
Wilbur leans in, close enough that Tommy could count the freckles dusted across Wilbur’s cheekbones if he wasn’t so busy panicking.
“Now,” Wilbur proclaims, with all the gravity of someone announcing a kingdom’s fate, “critical decision time. Italian or Chinese?”
Tommy opens his mouth.
Nothing comes out.
Wilbur’s grin softens into something real and crooked, like the moon with a bite taken out of it. He plucks Henry from Tommy’s death grip and sets him neatly on the pillow beside Blue Sheepy, then flicks Tommy’s forehead with maddening gentleness.
“C’mon, starlight,” he teases. “Gotta feed you. You’re barely bigger than your own attitude.”
Tommy finally sputters. “Wha—I—what the fuck is happening.”
Wilbur clutches his heart like he’s been shot. “Language! In front of Henry? And Blue Sheepy? And—” He picks up the bee plush reverently. “—whatever we’re naming this one. Don’t traumatize the children.”
Tommy drags a hand over his face, scrubbing at the tears he will deny until his dying breath. “You’re insane.”
Wilbur shrugs, dropping onto the edge of the bed like a languid cat. “Occupational hazard. So. Italian or Chinese. Answer carefully. Your fate depends on it.”
Tommy glares. “Chinese,” he mutters.
Wilbur beams, radiant as a supernova. “Excellent choice. Garlic noodles. Dumplings. Very soft. Very easy to chew. Good for children and the dentally impaired.”
“I hate you,” Tommy says without heat, his voice wobbling like an untuned violin.
Wilbur’s eyes crinkle, and for a second Tommy forgets to breathe. He’s never seen anyone look so…fond. Like the night sky smiling down on a lonely planet.
“Oh, I know,” Wilbur says airily. “But you’re stuck with me. Occupational hazard for you, I’m afraid.”
Tommy curls in on himself, sweater swallowing him whole, sleeves too long and plushies tumbling in all directions. He tucks his chin down, eyes flicking up warily.
Then, quietly, hoarse as old paper:
“...why haven’t you killed me yet.”
Wilbur goes very still.
The silence stretches. Expands. Blooms like a cold, dark nebula.
Finally, his voice drops. Quieter than the grave.
“Is that what you think this is?”
Tommy shrugs, but it’s pitiful, a shake of small shoulders drowning in fine red fabric. “Tubbo’s note was…vague. Thought maybe…this was. I dunno. Last mercy. Before you…”
He can’t finish. His voice cracks apart, fragile as old starlight.
Wilbur’s eyes go wide. Then horrified.
He actually recoils, hand to his mouth, like Tommy just sprouted knives.
“Oh my God,” he breathes. “Tommy. Tommy.” He sounds like he’s tasting blood. “You thought — you thought we’d clean you up and feed you before killing you?”
Tommy scowls, hugging Henry so tight the stitches creak. “I dunno. Villains. Dramatic. You are the asshole who read poetry at me whilst I bled.”
Wilbur makes a strangled, unholy noise and dives forward so fast Tommy squeaks. Hands on either side of his face, thumbs brushing the wet beneath his eyes with infuriating gentleness.
“Tommy,” he says, voice breaking like surf on rocks. “Sweet Christ, you baby. You cosmic miracle. We are not going to hurt you.”
Tommy shivers. “But you said — before —”
Wilbur closes his eyes, breathing hard. His fingers press a little tighter, grounding.
“We didn’t know,” he says. “We didn’t know you were this. You. Fifteen. A kid. Look at you. Look at your face.”
He shudders, opening his eyes again. They’re wet too.
“I’m so fucking sorry,” he whispers.
Tommy’s lip wobbles. He tries to sneer. It’s a disaster. “You’re a dickhead.”
Wilbur actually laughs, breathless and cracked. “That’s the spirit.” He sits back enough to brush Tommy’s hair from his forehead, tucking it behind his ear like they’re in some tragic YA novel.
Tommy sniffles. “So. Not gonna kill me?”
Wilbur’s voice goes low. Serious. Cosmic.
“Tommy. If anyone tries to hurt you again,” he says, words molten iron, “I will burn this entire city to the ground and salt the earth. Do you understand me?”
Tommy makes a tiny sound.
Wilbur taps his nose, all dangerous fondness. “Now. Wipe your tears. We’re getting Chinese. You’re gonna eat until you pop. And then you’re gonna pass out on these ridiculous sheets while I sit in the corner and pretend I’m not the world’s biggest sap.”
Tommy glares. But it’s weak. So weak.
“Fine,” he grumbles.
“Good boy,” Wilbur says brightly, standing up. He snatches the menus back and waves them like a flag. “Now let’s decide on dessert. I’m thinking fried bananas. You’re too skinny. Stars need fuel.”
And for a moment — just one — Tommy lets himself lean back into the pillows, breathing slow and deep.
Lets himself be fifteen.
Lets himself be someone’s.
Because the universe is vast and cold, but here, in this stupid safehouse with his plushies and this maddening villain wiping his tears, it feels just a little bit smaller.
Just a little more kind.