Archive of Our Own

Mr. The Blade, the letter begins — the handwriting precise, almost delicate, as though even now, Tommy believes his name ought to be spoken with reverence. A title, not a person. Something larger, older, sacred. Blood God. Technoblade. Philza’s favorite son.

That’s you, Techno wants to say. Wants to press his forehead against Tommy’s and chuff, amused. You’re everyone’s favorite. You were the one who made rooms warmer just by walking into them. You were the one made of love and for it.

And then — a shift. A breath between lines. Softer now, quieter. As though the pen had trembled.

Techie.

A name he hasn’t heard in a long, long time.

Techno doesn’t pause.

Not even as his heart does.

The ink smudged as I wrote, though whether from haste or the weight of what I meant to say, I could not tell — only that there are not enough words in any language for what I owe you.

“There is nothing you owe me,” Techno says aloud, and the voices in his mind rise in soft, chaotic chorus — Baby! BrotherInnit. Technosoft. No debt! Child thinks debt? Little baby. Runt. Treasure. Treasure. Treasure — they echo and tumble like pebbles in a river, but for once they all agree: there is no ledger between them. No coin left to balance. No weight that Tommy’s presence hadn’t already lightened.

There was never a debt, not truly. And if there had been, a single moment in Tommy’s orbit would have wiped it clean.

But still the way the letter is written — and Techno ignores the dread that builds up in him — it courteous. A courtesy Techno had taught him — because Prime knows Wilbur would teach him nothing but dramatics and soap operas — my boy, Techno thinks, the edges of his mouth twitching despite himself, at least he learned from the best.

I do not know how to write to a ghost, but I think you would laugh at me for trying.

He wouldn’t. Prime knows, he wouldn’t.

He has spent too many years haunted — by bloodshed, by silence, by the echoes of things he should have done and didn’t. He has followed the specters of his past through snow-covered fields and crimson-stained battlefields, whispering names into the cold just to hear them aloud.

Techno reads the words again, slow this time, like they might bruise if touched too quickly.

To mock Tommy for this — for reaching across the impossible — would be like striking a mirror for showing him his own face.

No, he thinks, fiercely. Not you, Theseus. Never you.

I have no right to ask for your forgiveness, but I whisper your name into the dark anyway, hoping some part of you still listens. I should have been braver. I should have stood beside you. But I was small, and scared, and now I am nothing at all.

The words do not wound — not because they are soft, but because they are wrong. There was never anything to forgive. That truth is already rising to his tongue before he can stop it — solid and certain, like a sword placed gently at someone’s feet.

Because there was no forgiveness to be given.

He reaches for a scrap of paper, his fingers surprisingly steady, and smooths it flat against the table. For a long moment, he just stares at the blankness of it. Then, with the same quiet ritual he once used before battle — the deep breath, the slow exhale, the setting of his shoulders — he begins to write.

To Tommy.

The first thing he writes is the truth.

There is nothing to forgive.

You always said there was no honor in dying for nothing. I don’t know if I died for something, but I know I didn’t die beside you, and that is a regret I will carry into the dark. I love you, and I am sorry, and I am gone.

He stops writing — the realization will hit much later, that is a letter he cannot respond to, a letter that will never be able to reach Tommy’s hands — he stops.

He reads the letter once. Then twice. His hands do not shake, because warriors do not tremble — and Technoblade has been a warrior longer than he has lived; (though, a voice whispers, he has been a brother for far longer) — but his breath slips ragged through clenched teeth, and his eyes burn like the edge of a forge.

“Theseus,” he rasps, and the name tastes like ash. Like the pyre. “You stupid, stubborn little runt.”

The letter crumples slightly in his grip, paper groaning like a wound pulled open — but he doesn’t tear it. He couldn’t—not when it is the last of Tommy that still speaks. The last of Tommy he will ever have. And even now, Techno is greedy for it.

How merciful of his little brother, Techno thinks bitterly. How kind, how generous, to have written something that attempts to feed Techno’s hunger.

(Tommy, always giving — even in death, even when the words themselves could never fill the emptiness. Always trying to give Techno the one thing he could never ask for: forgiveness. A gift that had always been Tommy’s to offer, even when it should never have been asked of him.)

(Tommy has always been too kind for this own good.)

(The thought is sharp, cutting through the dark like a blade that knows too much. It gnaws at the edges of Techno’s heart, not because he’s angry, but because the bitter truth of it sits heavy — like something swallowed too fast, burning on its way down.)

(Tommy had always known. Knew that Techno was too proud to ask, too proud to want it. But somehow, in the chaos of it all — in the blur of battle, in the noise of their endless war — his little brother had found a way to offer it anyway. Even in the absence of all things, Tommy had given him this final gesture: a letter that could never fill the void. But a letter all the same.)

(And Techno — despite himself, despite the hatred of himself for it — is grateful.)

He presses the letter against his forehead, eyes squeezed shut, as if he can press the words back, push time back — into the past, into his hands, into the shape of a boy who should still be breathing.

“You weren’t supposed to die first,” he chokes. His voice catches on the edges. “That wasn’t the deal.”

But there is no one left to answer him.

And so he kneels — for the first time in years — alone in the quiet. And though his back is broad and his will iron-forged, his shoulders still shake under the weight of a grief that will not be moved.

Philza Minecraft, the letter begins, The Biggest Man Ever.

And immediately, Phil feels it — that soft, familiar tug in his chest. Endeared. How could he not? When he can practically hear Tommy’s voice, loud and bright and almost in the air? Phil can see it, even now: Tommy’s wide, sparkling eyes and that stubborn grin, the one that never quite fades, no matter how much time passes.

He chuckles quietly to himself. It’s impossible not to — how could he resist, when Tommy’s spirit is so alive in this small, imperfect letter? When he can almost feel the boy standing there, all proud and earnest, just waiting for Phil to read these words and hear that same voice in his mind?

There’s a smile on Phil’s face as he continues, his heart lightened by the gesture, and then — tucked in the corner of the page — a drawing. A raven, so simple and so Tommy. His lovely little boy, so brilliant, even in this small thing.

He’ll have to draw one, too, of course — even though it’s been years since he’s written a letter, much less drawn something — but for Tommy, he will. He has to. He does, however, need to complete the letter first. So, he does.

(He has never regretted anything more.)

You have always known the language of the wind and the sky, so perhaps you will know what I mean when I say that I feel like a bird too long caged, writing to the one who taught me how to fly.

He frowns at that, Tommy should never feel caged — though Phil understands what he means — he thinks of all the times Tommy had been that free spirit, the wind in his hair, always wild, always reaching — reaching for something bigger, for something outside the walls they had built around him. Phil’s heart aches at the thought of the boy feeling trapped, even for a moment.

He’s struck, too, by the sudden, quiet longing to take Tommy on a flight once more, to soar through the skies with him the way they used to. Even if his wings don’t work the way they once did.

When Tommy had been small, Phil would lift him onto his shoulders, and they would go — together — to see the stars, to stretch their gaze beyond the smallness of the world. When everything became too heavy, too loud, too close, there had always been the sky.

I wish I could do that again, Phil thinks, soft and desperate. He wishes he could wrap his wings around Tommy, take him to the stars once more.

Maybe. Maybe he will. He will come to see him. It has been far too long, after all. They don’t need to fly to be father and son.

But you are the child of the sky, Phil thinks quietly to himself. The words feel as if they belong to the wind, to the stars, to everything Tommy had always been — too much for the world they lived in, for the hands that tried to hold him.

Phil doesn’t say it aloud, though. He has never been able to. It has always felt like Tommy belonged to the world more than he has ever belonged to them.

I am afraid, and I do not know how to tell you, because you have always been the one who wasn’t.

Oh, my boy.

Phil’s hands close slowly around the letter. The words blur at the edges. The world shrinks down — to him and this letter, him and Tommy.

You thought I wasn’t afraid?

Tommy had saw wings and thought it meant that Phil never fell. Tommy saw steadiness and mistook it for certainty. But, Phil has always been afraid — of failing his boys, of losing them, of waking up one day and finding out that he has missed the moment they stopped needing him. He carried the fear quietly, perhaps too quietly.

He wanted to be strong for them, so he taught himself to walk like stone and speak like the wind, but he was never made of either. Only with bone, and blood, and the kind of love that made him want to hold back the sea with his bare hands.

If you were afraid, you only had to say it. Phil thinks desperately as if the the thought will engrave itself into Tommy. You only had to look at me.

He would’ve come, he would’ve wrapped Tommy in his wings and told him what he should’ve told him sooner — that is is not weakness to be scared. It is human. It is brave to speak. Brave to carry it and go on.

I would have told you: I am afraid, too. Phil says, feeling the age Tommy has always mocked him for. Every day. And I still choose to stay. To try. To love.

He would’ve told Tommy that he’d never had to be the strong one alone.

I used to watch you with wings stretched wide and wonder how it felt to never fall. But I know now—even birds break against the wind. I should have told you I was falling. I should have let you catch me. But it is too late, and I have hit the ground.

Phil reads it once, then again.

The breath leaves his lungs too fast, too sharp. Not like grief, not yet — more like impact. A collision with something old and terrible and final.

For a moment, he just stares at the words, as if disbelief might rewrite them. As if staring hard enough might force time to reel backward, just far enough to let him see the moment Tommy began to fall — just far enough to catch him.

You were falling, he thinks, and the horror of it blooms cold and slow through his chest, a sickness that begins in the heart and spreads through the bones. You were falling, and I didn’t see.

He had always told himself he would know. That he would feel it, if Tommy ever slipped too far, if the sky ever turned on him. He had always believed that love — his love — was strong enough to notice, to stop the descent. He was wrong.

Even birds break against the wind.

The phrase repeats like a curse. Phil presses a hand to his heart — as if grief, if left unchecked, might destroy what’s left of him.

“I would have caught you,” he whispers. “Tommy, I would have.”

But the page doesn’t answer. The wind outside doesn’t shift. The silence that follows feels like punishment.

He sees him now, in that last image: not a soldier, not a spark, not even a storm — just a boy, small and breaking apart under weight he never should have carried alone. A boy crashing toward the earth while Phil, wings outstretched, looked the wrong way.

The worst part — the part that claws and tears and refuses to be soothed — is that Tommy wanted to be caught. And Phil hadn’t been there.

He closes his eyes and lets the letter fall into his lap, hands shaking for the first time in years.

You hit the ground, he thinks. And I wasn’t there.

You were the closest thing to a father I ever had, and I think that’s why it hurt so much to leave you behind. But even crows fall silent in the end, don’t they? I love you, and I am sorry, and I am gone.

The moment he reaches the last line, Phil drops the letter.

His breath catches — sharp, broken — and he presses the heel of his hand to his mouth, as if that small gesture could stop the sound rising in his throat. But it’s no use. Grief is louder than silence, and far more stubborn.

“No,” he whispers. “Oh, darling, no.”

His son.

Not by blood, but by bond. By sky and soil and years pressed close together. By every scraped knee, every starlit flight, every time he said you’re safe now and meant it with all the aching truth in his bones.

He should’ve known. Gods, he should have known.

He should have seen it — the way light flickers before it goes out, the way birds grow still before they fall. He was meant to know these things. He was supposed to.

His hand tightens over his chest, uselessly, as though he might hold himself together by sheer force of will. But it doesn’t stop the unraveling. It doesn’t stop the grief as it tears through him like a storm that will not spare what it loves. Wild, just as Tommy had been.

He does not look at the letter — cannot even bear to think about it — he bends forward, forehead touching the table, and he weeps — great, shuddering sobs that pull from the roots of him, as if mourning might bring the world back into balance. As if it could call him home.

(There was a time where he was able to call Tommy back home. And a little boy would run back, cheeks pink and hair windswept and into Phil’s arms where he belongs.)

“You didn’t have to go, little bird,” he chokes. “You didn’t have to go alone.”

But the wind does not answer.

The house is still.

And Tommy is gone.

Tubso, the letter begins — the handwriting uneven but unmistakable — and Tubbo snorts, the sound half a laugh, half a sigh. A smiley face is drawn just after his name, the ink smudged a little at the curve. Typical. Stupid, endearing. So Tommy.

He smiles, despite himself. Despite everything.

At least Tommy hadn’t used his real name — a small mercy. Prime knows he would’ve burnt the letter if it’d started with, Tuberculosis. It’s sweet. The kind of thing only someone who knew him would remember to avoid. Only someone who knew when something was armor, and when it was just skin.

Still, Tubbo finds himself frowning faintly, eyebrows pulling together as his fingers trace the edge of the page.

A letter.

Why not a communicator? Why not something immediate, something fast and loud and alive, like Tommy had always been?

Why write at all — unless you’re already halfway gone?

The thought prickles at the back of his neck, unwelcome and unshakable. He tries not to think it. He tries, instead, to picture Tommy’s face as he wrote this — tongue poked between his teeth, eyebrows scrunched, talking to himself the way he always did when something mattered.

He hopes it mattered. And he dreads that it did.

I have spent so long turning these words over like sea-glass in my hands, hoping that by the time they reached you, they would have softened at the edges—but even now, they still cut.

Tubbo stands when he reads. He always does. He likes to keep the moment apart from everything else — whatever he was building or fixing or half-finished with — and give the letter its due.

He reads them in one go. That’s the ritual.

Quick, clean, like ripping off a bandage made of memory. He’d roll his eyes at the melodrama, snort mentally at whatever ridiculous thing Tommy had said this time, and already start planning a reply in the back of his mind. Easy. Familiar.

But this one makes him stop.

His eyes catch on the sentence like it’s barbed. He reads it again. And again.

It’s a very Tommy line — dramatic, a little poetic in that odd, unrefined way, like he’d picked the words off the ground and strung them together with wire. Random. Sentimental. Something you’d find in a song, or a story, or whispered after midnight when the world felt a little less judgmental, under the stars.

But there’s something wrong with it.

Not wrong in the way Tommy used to misspell half his sentences, or mix metaphors like soup. Wrong in the way Tubbo’s logical brain doesn’t know how to file it. There’s no data point for the weight he feels in his chest. No tag for the way it pulls his breath sideways.

It’s like hearing the end of a joke and realizing it wasn’t a joke at all.

His fingers curl slightly around the page.

Something is wrong. Something is wrong.

Because Tommy — Tommy has never written like this.

I think I have been carrying this silence between us like a wound, and I do not know if this letter is a bandage or a knife

Tubbo blinks.

He reads the line twice — not because he doesn’t understand it, but because he does. Too well.

But it lands different — not in the random, Tommy way that he knows — but different. Not sharp, exactly, but wrong. Like a question that shouldn’t have to be asked. Like something left unsaid for too long suddenly dragged out into the open air.

He frowns, trying to puzzle through it. His brain scrambles for a clear answer, something he can hold — a memory, a moment, a reason. Was there silence? Had he missed something? They joked. They fought, sure. But that was them. That was always them. Right?

Was it a wound?

His first instinct is to write back you're being dramatic, followed by some half-hearted joke about how no knife could hurt as bad as the time Tommy ate all the suspicious stew and blamed Tubbo for poisoning him.

But that instinct stalls.

Because something in the letter feels delicate. Not careful — Tommy was never careful (that’s a lie) — but fragile. And that difference matters.

Tubbo presses his tongue to his cheek, brow furrowed. It’s probably nothing. It’s just Tommy being dramatic. Probably just wants to make sure Tubbo still cares — which is ridiculous. Of course he still cares. That’s not in question. It never has been.

Still, his fingers hover over the page, unsure.

Are you okay? he wants to write. But that feels too big. Too final.

Instead, he murmurs aloud to the empty room, “What happened, Tommy?”

Because something did. He doesn’t know what yet. But this doesn’t feel like a bandage.

And God help him — he’s starting to worry it’s the other thing.

You were the first home I ever had, and I left you standing in the wreckage of it. I do not deserve your forgiveness, but I will beg for it anyway, because you are the only thing I ever truly wanted to keep. I should have told you I loved you before it was too late. You’re my best friend, Tubs, y’know that right? You and Ranboo?

It’s funny how his mind is immediately, instinctually geared for Tommy. He doesn’t even blink. The response comes without hesitation, without even thinking about it. Pops up at the forefront of his mind.

You’re my best friend too, Toms, he thinks easily, he should write that in the response first. Before confronting Tommy. You’re my soulmate. Why do you need my forgiveness? There is nothing to forgive — what do you mean it’s too late?

His fingers hover over the paper, his heart still caught between lines as he re-reads the words. There’s a cold edge creeping into his chest, something unfamiliar but growing. He leans back, rubbing at the back of his neck, trying to make sense of it.

He rereads the last part, the admission that Tommy—his best friend, his soulmate—thinks it’s too late. He doesn’t know where the fear is coming from. He has to be fine. They always came back to each other, no matter what.

No matter the silence. No matter the distance. They always came back.

But the words in the letter cling to his mind. Too late. He doesn’t like the sound of it. His thoughts race, trying to latch onto the practical, the logical — maybe it’s just his usual overthinking, maybe it’s just Tommy being dramatic like always. But something about the way Tommy says it feels final.

Tubbo bites his lip, frustrated. What happened?

But he doesn’t say that, because he already knows. He knows something has happened. The words are wrong, too heavy for Tommy’s usual flippancy. Too serious. Too careful. He’s always been reckless, but this? This feels like a goodbye.

But no. No, he won’t let it be that. Tommy is his best friend. His soulmate. He’s sure of it. And it’s never too late. Not for them.

He gets out a piece of paper, breaking routine for the first time, and scrawling out a response. It’s never too late, Tommy. Not for us. I’m here. Always.

I wanted to stay. I wanted to make it back to you. But some storms don’t pass, some damage can’t be undone, and some people don’t come home. I love you, and I am sorry, and I am gone.

His hands shake so badly the letter nearly slips through his fingers. His chest is tight, so tight it hurts to breathe, and his whole body feels cold, numb, unreal.

“No. No, no, no, no, no—”

He squeezes his eyes shut, but the words are there. They’re burned into him. Etched into his ribs, heavy, jagged. Impossible. Unfathomable. He can’t think about anything except the impossible, unbearable fact that Tommy—Toms, his best friend—is dead.

He grips the letter so hard it crinkles, but he doesn’t care. He doesn’t care about anything. How could he care about anything except the terrible truth that won’t let him breathe, that Tommy—his soulmate—is dead.

His mouth opens, but the sound that comes out isn’t a scream, isn’t a sob. It’s something high and raw and wrong, a mix of all the broken things that come when the heart snaps in two. His knees hit the floor with a thud, and he bows his head over the paper.

“I should’ve been there,” he chokes. “I should’ve stopped you. Why didn’t you tell me, you idiot? Why didn’t you let me help?”

His fingers knot into his hair, pulling as though the pain in his scalp could somehow pull him out of this, could drag him back to a time before this moment. A time when Tommy was still his. Still alive. Still here.

But his breath comes in ragged gasps. His chest feels like it’s caving in, and he wants to scream, wants to fix this, wants to bring Tommy home—

“I should’ve—” He doesn’t know what he should’ve done. There is no action, no answer, no way to make it right.

His best friend is gone.

And no matter how tightly he holds the letter, no matter how many times he begs the air to bring him back, it will never be enough. There is nothing left but the shattered, aching silence where his best friend used to be.

When Ranboo gets the letter from Tommy, he can’t help but grin. The same grin he always gets when he thinks about how, somehow, in a world that’s so full of chaos, he has three best friends now.

Tommy. Tubbo. Michael.

And Tommy? He was Tommy’s best friend, too. That was real.

Tommy told him so, just recently. And even more than that — Tommy had made it clear in the way he laughed at his dumbest jokes, in the way he pushed Ranboo to be more than he thought he could be, in the way he’d wrapped his arms around Ranboo in a hug that always made him feel safe. Tommy wasn’t just a best friend — he was Tommy. That’s all that needed to be said.

He opens the letter with that same delighted anticipation, fingers trembling with excitement.

Ranboob, the letter reads, and Ranboo’s smile grows wider. He’s learnt now that Tommy’s love comes in insults and swearing and cursing but also, so much more, because Tommy is a sweetheart, even if he won’t admit it. He is proven right, when right after the word bitch boy, there are drawings of flowers: sunflowers, daisies, tulips — scattered across the page like a splash of color in a black-and-white world. Tommy’s love, Ranboo thinks. Right there in ink, in the ridiculous flowers.

Because Tommy’s love isn’t limited to just that — no, it’s in the things he does when he doesn’t even know he’s doing them. It’s in the way he’d sing to flowers, in the way he’d squeeze Ranboo’s hand when they sat together, so sure and so steady, like Tommy’s grip could anchor the whole world.

You’re worth so much more than you think, Tommy had said. And now, here, Ranboo has proof of it. A letter, for him. Something tangible. Something made of Tommy’s heart and thoughts. A piece of him.

The flowers are for the world, sure — they always are with Tommy. He gives and gives, as though there’s an endless garden inside him. But these flowers? These ones on the page? These are for him, for Ranboo. His heart flutters at the thought. They were Tommy’s smile, even if it wasn’t a smile in the usual sense. It was Tommy’s way of showing he cared, even if he didn’t say it directly. Even if it was wrapped in insults and bitch boy— Tommy was Tommy in every way.

And so, Ranboo holds the letter close, pressing it to his chest like a secret, like something that’s his and his alone.

This letter — this gift — is something he can keep. Something he can hold forever. A token of their friendship, proof of their bond, something that will never fade.

It’s real.

It’s Tommy.

Some people are born belonging nowhere, and some belong to so many places at once that the weight of them all is unbearable—I think you and I have always been both.

Ranboo’s smile falters.

The words don’t hit like a punch. They seep. Slow and steady, like ink bleeding through the thin skin of the paper. Like rain soaking into stone, unnoticed until you realize you’ve been standing in the storm far too long.

He blinks at the letter. He reads the line again. And again.

And then he starts shaking his head. Just once at first. Then again. And again, like he can dislodge the thought before it settles too deep. As if shaking his head can rewrite the truth. As if it could bring Tommy back.

This is a goodbye, a part of him whispers.

But it can’t be. It can’t be.

He looks down at the sunflowers. The tulips. The little sun with sunglasses made next to his name, the one that him laugh not five minutes ago. The joy still clings to the page like a ghost, and that’s the worst part. He was happy. So stupidly, stupidly happy.

And now—this.

There’s a betrayal in it. Not loud, not cruel. A quiet one. Gentle. The kind you don't notice until the knife's already in.

Because Ranboo is not stupid. He knows Tommy. He knows how he thinks, how he hides himself in pretty language and half-jokes and metaphors that sound like nothing until you tilt your head the right way and realize they were confessions all along.

That line wasn’t meant to be dramatic. It was meant to be believed.

You and I have always been both. The ones who didn’t belong, or belonged too much. The ones who smiled too wide and meant too much and carried everything in silence.

Ranboo wants to scream. He wants to tear the letter in half. He wants to go back in time five minutes and never open it. Never feel this.

But he can’t.

Because the letter is still here. And Tommy is not.

You once told me that forgetting is worse than death, so tell me—how do I grieve someone who is still slipping through my hands?

Ranboo stares at the sentence. His breath stutters, then stops altogether.

The world tilts slightly, not enough to fall, just enough to stumble—like a house where the foundation’s cracked, but no one dares say it aloud.

He remembers that conversation. Not just the words, but the weight behind them. The kind of thing you say in the dark, between jokes and half-truths, when everything feels fragile and too big at once. He’d looked at Tommy and said the only truth he knew.

Forgetting is worse than death.

Tommy had believed it because Ranboo had believed it.

He still does.

Which is why this line—this god-awful line—feels like a destruction. Not a sharp one, but the slow kind. The kind that lingers. That asks for your pain, instead of stealing it.

“Not by this, Toms,” Ranboo whispers, voice cracking, barely audible. “Not by this.”

He grips the letter tighter, fingers trembling now, all the warmth in his chest gone cold.

Because he knows what Tommy’s doing. He’s leaving pieces of himself behind like breadcrumbs. So no one forgets. So Ranboo won’t forget. And that’s the most Tommy thing in the world—carving himself into paper so the silence afterward won’t swallow him whole.

But Ranboo doesn’t want breadcrumbs.

He wants Tommy.

He wants tackle hugs and sunflower doodles and bad jokes yelled at 3 a.m. He wants to argue about nothing and sit in the quiet and know—know that Tommy’s still out there somewhere, burning as bright as he always did.

Not this.

Not a letter with soft words and blatant goodbyes. Not a grief Ranboo doesn’t know how to hold.

He wipes his face with the sleeve of his hoodie, eyes red, throat raw.

You were the only one who ever looked at me and saw something worth saving, and I let you watch me drown. I hope you forget me. I hope you never do.

The words slide into him. Not cruel. Not even angry. Just honest. That’s the worst part. The softness of it. The exhausted kind of love.

Ranboo closes his eyes.

And feels it—the slow, sinking horror of someone already half gone speaking as though the world has moved on without them. As though they’ve already vanished. As though they are grievable.

He reads the sentence again. And again.

I hope you forget me. I hope you never do.

It hurts.

It hurts because Tommy was always loud, and bright, and present, and here. A presence like wildfire, like summer storms, like a voice that never let you forget the sound of living.

And now, he’s asking to be forgotten. And asking never to be.

Ranboo presses a hand to his mouth. His eyes burn. His throat is full of something he doesn’t have the words for.

How ironic is it, he thinks, that they call us hopeless romantics—when we are the ones who carry the most hope.

Because Tommy did hope. Always. Recklessly. Loudly. He hoped in spite of it all. In spite of everyone. In spite of himself. And now those words, I hope you forget me, sit on the page like a prayer and a punishment all at once.

Ranboo wants to scream at him. Wants to shake the letter and ask how dare you? How dare you believe you were forgettable? How dare you think you weren’t worth saving, when you were the only thing keeping me from drowning?

He leans back, stares at the ceiling, the letter trembling in his lap.

“It’s impossible to forget you, Tommy,” he whispers.

But a quieter voice, smaller and crueler, presses in from the corner of his mind: What if I do?

What if time wins? What if the laughter fades, the sunflower sketches smudge, the memories blur until all he has left are half-formed echoes?

What if his mind betrays him?

Because Tommy is gone. Not missing. Not late. Gone.

And Ranboo is terrified. Not just of losing him—but of forgetting he ever had him in the first place.

He clutches the letter tighter, folds over it like something sacred.

“No,” he says quietly. “No. I won’t. I won’t. I promise.”

Because someone has to remember him as he truly was.

Not broken. Not drowned.

But brilliant. Loud. Impossible. His.

You always feared being forgotten. I fear being remembered wrong. Maybe this way, neither of us have to be afraid anymore. I love you, and I am sorry, and I am gone.

The letter slips from his fingers, soft as falling snow, and lands in his lap. He doesn’t try to catch it. His hands are shaking too hard.

His vision is blurred—whether from tears or something deeper, something breaking open behind his eyes, he doesn’t know. His breath is shallow, catching on the edges of every word he doesn’t know how to say.

“Tommy?” he whispers.

But the name doesn’t summon anything. Not laughter. Not light. Not the boy with fire in his voice and sunflowers in his hands.

Because Tommy isn’t here.

Tommy is gone.

The grief seeps in quickly now, a glass of water knocked over, it bleeds into all the empty spaces where joy used to live. It’s quiet. Too quiet. A lion quietly eating it’s meal, ripping the meat into shreds with a kind of tenderness that onlu brutality has.

Ranboo shakes his head. Over and over. Like that will undo it. Like denial is a magic spell, and repetition might rewind the world.

“You weren’t supposed to leave,” he says, and his voice is cracked porcelain, barely holding. “You said—we said we’d figure it out. You promised.”

His hands press into his arms, his ribs, trying to hold himself together as if the pieces might listen. As if the ache might retreat if he just holds tight enough.

But the sob breaks loose anyway. A sound that is all pain, all love, all the terrible truth that’s come to roost.

“You should’ve let me save you.”

That’s what keeps circling, over and over. Like an echo in a room that will never be full again.

But Tommy is gone.

And all that remains is the letter, still warm from his hands. The only proof that someone so loud, so bright, so brilliant, ever existed at all.

Ranboo lowers his head, pressing his forehead against the page, as if he can press memory into skin. As if he can burn it there. As if that will be enough to keep him from forgetting.

Because now, he must remember for both of them.

“Tommy,” he whispers, futile.

But Tommy is gone.

And Ranboo is left to remember.

The price of resurrection is not mercy. It is ruin.

It is Wilbur who says it first. Not because he believes it will work, but because he has always believed in impossible things—trains that never stop, men who never die, second chances carved from the bones of the world itself.

“It has to be him,” he says, voice low, teeth bared, cigarrtte smoke spilling from his lips. He does not look at the others when he speaks, only at the cold, undisturbed grave before him. “The world took Tommy, but it left Dream. And that’s a mistake we can fix.”

Phil does not argue. Phil, who has buried too many sons, who has watched too many bodies burn. He should argue. He should be the voice of reason, the steady hand on Wilbur’s shoulder, but his fingers only tighten into fists at his sides. He has lost Tommy twice now. He will not lose him a third time.

Tubbo is the first to move. He doesn’t speak, doesn’t have to—he simply turns, walks toward the ruins of a god, a monster that still rots amongst the green earth, hungering and withering and cruel. 

Technoblade watches them go, watches the fire in their eyes, the madness curling at their heels. He exhales slowly.

“Blood for blood,” he murmurs. He has only half believed in gods, but he knows a worthy sacrifice when he sees one.

They do not kill Dream like a man. A man is put to the sword. A man is buried, mourned, forgotten.

A god does not die like a man. He has to be undone.

But Dream is no man—he is rot given breath, a god made from hunger, and if they want to bring Tommy back, they must tear him from the bones of the world.

Ranboo speaks up once, when all the bloothirsty faces around him — and one bloody one — start to get overwhelming. “What if it doesn’t work?” He asks, hands trembling at his sides.

Wilbur smiles. It is not a kind thing. “Then at least he stays dead.”

They drag Dream from his cage, his mask gone, his body weak, and lay him at the foot of Tommy’s grave.

Wilbur is the one who cuts the bindings from Dream’s wrists, lets his body slump into the dirt at the foot of Tommy’s grave. He crouches beside him, fingers tangled in his hair, yanking his head back until their eyes meet.

“You wanted to be a god,” he breathes, voice shaking. “So, feel what it’s like to be hated like one.”

Phil does not wait. His sword is steady, his hands do not falter. The first cut is to the throat, clean and deep, and Dream gasps—a wet, gurgling sound.

But it is not enough. It will never be enough.

Technoblade grips the dagger in his hand so tightly his knuckles go white. He drags it down Dream’s chest, across his stomach. Not clean. Not merciful. He does not hesitate. He has seen death a thousand times before, been the cause of it multiple times, but this—this is not just death. This is justice.

Tubbo bounces impatiently at Techno’s side, delighted when he finally gets a turn, kicking his boots — metal made — into Dream’s face, smile widening at the crack of bone that echoes.

Ranboo’s hands are slick with blood as he presses them into the earth, as if he can push the sacrifice deeper, into the roots, into the dark. Take him, he pleads. Take him, and give us back what is ours.

Wilbur presses his forehead to Dream’s, his breath warm against his skin. "I hope it hurts,” he whispers, voice trembling. “I hope you see his face when you go."

And then he drives the dagger into Dream’s heart.

The ground shudders. The air hums. The earth bleeds in hues too cruel for nature—sickly neon green, pulsing like something poisoned, threaded with veins of red that bloom like roses.

The gods open their mouths.

And Tommy screams.

He wakes up coughing, choking, his body curling inward as though something inside him is breaking. His lungs burn, thick with salt, as if they have carried the weight of an ocean he never drowned in.

Hands—too many hands—grasp at him. Tugging, clutching, holding.

“Sunshine.” Wilbur’s voice is wrecked, raw, near desperate. His hands cradle Tommy’s face, his thumbs tracing the curve of his cheekbones like he cannot believe he is real. “Baby, starlight, sweetheart—look at me.”

Tommy’s fingers curl into the fabric of Wilbur’s coat, clinging. He is shaking. His body feels like it has been put back together with broken parts.

Phil presses a kiss to his temple, murmuring something against his skin, something close to my son, my son, my son. His hands shake where they hold Tommy close, breath shuddering against his hair.

Tubbo is sobbing, one hand clasped over his mouth, the other gripping Tommy’s wrist like he’s afraid he’ll slip away again. “Toms, oh my god, oh my god—”

Ranboo’s breath is ragged, his fingers tangled in his own hair. He looks sick. Terrified. “You—you weren’t—you were dead, you—”

Technoblade is the last to touch him. He kneels beside him, one hand braced on the earth, the other reaching out, slow and careful, until it rests against Tommy’s forehead.

“Runt,” he murmurs. “Atlas.” His voice is thick, strained, for the first time in the long time Tommy has known him. “You were never supposed to carry it alone.”

Tommy blinks up at them, chest heaving, body aching from the weight of something vast, something unknowable, something he was never meant to return from.

He breathes.

He is alive.

He stares at them, sees what’s left of a god—a man—and his tongue drags across his lips, catching the grit of earth, the ghost of blood. He swallows, once, hard, as if to keep it down, as if it might rise.

“That,” he croaks, “was so fucking dramatic.”

Wilbur laughs first. Hysterical, sharp, wrecked. Then Tubbo, a wet, broken sound. Then Phil, a breathless huff that barely covers the way his hands are shaking.

Tommy grins. His face is streaked with dirt, his voice is raw, his body is trembling. He feels slightly off in a tilted way, as if the pieces of him have been reassembled just slightly wrong. And somewhere, just beyond the edge of knowing, something calls to him—faint, insistent, like a thread pulling taut.

But he is alive.